Lunari's Halloween Special: The Remains

On a cold, blustery night, a chameleon was searching for the place he had been told to go to. *Just business... Just have to find the place...* he was thinking to himself, bundling up to protect himself from the biting wind. It was Derek, filling an odd request. Of course, as long as it paid, he was willing to do the job.

He finally found the building he was looking for, an old dilapidated hideout. He recognized the place, if only faintly. Back during one of his missions, he had been saved, brought here, met some unusual friends. He hadn't seen them in years, which made this...all the more unsettling, yet all the more worthwhile.

But now, the lights were out. Boards had fallen down, letting the wind rip through the remains of the place. Windows were shattered, things rattled in the breeze. Derek shyly opened the door, letting a little bit of snow from the night before blow in. He came upon the main room, with a small kitchenette and a destroyed dining table. The kitchen was empty; glasses broken, utensils strewn across the floor, chairs with legs broken. Among the debris was a bloodied knife, a red pendant necklace, and what appeared to be small broken pieces of circuitry. Derek looked the various things over, not interested in them. He was here for a gem. A round blue gem.

A moment passed in pure silence and cold, until something faint could be made out. Whistling. It was sad, and eerie. Derek trued to find the source of the sound. His own image flickered, as he used his chameleon powers to camoflauge. He had to be careful.

Slowly but surely, he followed the sound down a hallway, until he ended up in what seemed to be a young girl's room. Nobody was there, and the whistling stopped. He uncamoflauged, not sure what to expect.

This room was just as torn apart. Musical instruments were broken all over, in various phases of rusting. Sheet music was scattered about the floor too. Finally, to top it all off, there was miniature, makeshift furniture, as if whoever used it was mere inches tall.

Suddenly, Derek spotted a couple areas where the sheets of music were charred and spattered with blood; he decided to check the one by the back wall. Above the spot was a large crack in the drywall, which made him instantly suspicious. Kneeling down, Derek brushed away the papers.

Underneath, he found what he first thought was a doll, a purple hedgehog, small enough to fit in his hand. Then he realized how bloody the surrounding area was, and deduced that the poor hedgehog really had been a living thing. The hedgehog girl had the back of her head cracked open. *This was a murder.* Whoever did this had probably thrown her against the wall with so much force that her skull cracked open, killing her.

*If this happened to such a tiny little thing, I don't want to know what happened here...* However, since he was probsbly going to report this anyways, Derek pressed on. Not too far away was the other blood-spattered area, under the bed. Derek lifted up the dust ruffle of the bed, to see another grotesque sight.

It was the body of a fox girl, in her teens. She was wearing a yellow shirt, and blue skirt. She had horrible burn marks across her chest and face, charring most of her clothes. The rest of the room didn't seem to be burned, so what happened?

Derek couldn't process who would have done this. What kind of monster murders a teen and a shrunken girl? This didn't look like the handiwork of anyone he met before... except...

Derek moved on to the next room in the hallway, in search of the gem he was sent to retrieve. He ended up in a strange looking room, with runic patterns on the walls. There were shelves up on the walls too, where potions were neatly sorted... or at least, probably had been. Many of thrm had fallen to the ground and smashed, dying the floor multiple strange shades. Clearly, some kind of magician or alchemist lived here.

To Derek's left, there was a closet. Peering inside, he saw the next victim; a cat lady, white with black stripes. She had suffered a grave bullet wound to the head, making most of her face unrecognizable.

*"He never listened to usss...."* Two voices spoke, two ladies with different accents. Derek turned around, startled. "W-who's there? What happened here?"

*"Look at this place...."* Several more voices responded, all ladies and girls. *"We used to be like family..."*

"Show yourself! Now!" Derek ordered, pulling out his pistol.

*"But we have..."* A lady's voice answered, with a mild Spanish accent. *"Can't you see?"*

*"Put down your weapon, we mean no ill will..."* The same two ladies from before called out, reassuringly.

"Get out here!" Derek yelled, insistent on keeping out his pistol.

*"But we are here. You saw me, didn't you?"* A tiny voice squeaked. Something invisible yanked the pistol out of Derek's hands, sending it flying across the room. Fortunately, the gun didn't fire. Derek bolted across the room to grab it, but something stopped him. He couldn't move his body. What was going on?

*"No, nonono..."* Before Derek, two spirits flickered into existence. They were holding him back. Their voices were familiar, the same two voices that first spoke.

*But Derek didn't believe in ghosts.*

"Alright, alright, I'm imagining things. I'l find the gem, pick up my gun on the way out, and get out of here." Derek was mumbling to himself. Without struggling against the two spirits, Derek walked out, into the next room down the long hallway.

Inside the next room was a gamer's dream; the room was littered with headphones, controllers, and all sorts of things. This time, however, the victim was easy to spot; a dark navy hedgehog, with something strange on her head. It appeared to be cybernetics, ripped apart and still sparking. *He recognized this place, this one person. She was the one who saved him.*

After a minute of thinking, he remembered her name; Rosa. And then, the memories came flooding back. It was a summer night when he had been fighting that strange bat. He got badly wounded, and sent out a distress call. This woman, with her odd cybernetics, had come to the rescue, carrying him off to her hideout with her friends. He faintly remembered the others there; the leader of their group, the one who had hated him so much. The girl with the illusion that he didn't understand. He finally recognized the fox woman, who had been a young girl when they first met. He realized that the cat lady he had found was the very proper one he had met there. He couldn't believe it. They were gone.

His thoughts were interrupted by another familiar voice; it was Rosa's. *"Well, well, well. Looks like someone came back. Nice to see ya."* She said, somewhat snarkily, as if nothing had ever happened at all.

"Wait, how are you-"

*"You remember Lunari, right? That "illusion?" It took me a long time to understand too, but she was a half-ghost. And now we're all ghosts. He didn't even care..."* Rosa explained, though she sounded somewhat annoyed. Something was bothering her.

"Wait, he? Who-- oh,no...." Derek knew now. The fox girl, the burned flesh. "But why?" For a split second, he didn't even question the fact that Rosa was calling herself a ghost.

*"He lost it."* Suddenly, her transparent image appeared in front of Derek, along with many other figures. The illusion girl, Lunari. The fox lady, who's name escaped him. The two spirits from before, a black cat and a white cat. The little doll-sized girl he first found.

Derek was starting to panic now. *Was he just seeing things? Maybe the stress of his job was getting to him...* He was lying to himself, trying to reassure himself that this wasn't happening. And yet it was. "What's going on?!?" He asked.

"Hey, don't worry. We just wanted to see you..." Lunari answered, calmly.