Treats and Tricks! Ch3

# Chapter 3 - For Love and Justice!

### Tae-Eun

    *Halloween sucks. It's stupid. It isn't even a real holiday. What's the point? Something about ghosts, witches, and zombies? Do people actually believe that stuff in the western world? Or at least enough of them that they need to use it as an excuse to dress up in stupid costumes, eat junk food, and… what is it even for? Worshiping a giant pumpkin?*

*What a stupid 'holiday'...*

    "What's bugging Tae this time? We let her be the blue one, even though I wanted it."

    "I think she's just jealous of Erika-chan."

    "I am not!" As usual, when I'm already in a bad mood I can count on Kohaku and/or Mariya to poke fun at me over it. And, also as usual, it's the 'and'. I'm just not in a very holiday mood… I don't even *like* pumpkin that much.

    "Come on, Tae. Put on the costume so we can go to the party. It'll be fun once we're there! I promise you'll have a good time. They have chocolate! Everyone loves chocolate! So hurry up." Kohaku is even more annoying than usual. Probably thinks she's in charge just because she got to wear the lead costume…

    "Yeah, Ai put hers on, and you're way more used to this kind of stuff than she is."

    "So what if you're, uh, more slender than the rest of us? You're a model, so isn't that a good thing? And just think, your dancer's legs will look better than anyone else's in the knee-high boots. That's gotta count for something, right? Work with what you've got and all that."

    "Well you *can't* work with what you don't have, so I've never thought that expression made much sense… Er, sorry Tae. I didn't mean it like that. You have plenty."

    "Yeah, just… not there…"

    "I think you'll look really cute in it…" Ai flattered me, and I wanted to hide my face, for reasons that will be clear very soon. "They're really flattering…" Okay, several reasons.

    "Yeah. And how could any of us have known? She's a *really good* actress, plus her mom's a supermodel, so I'm not surprised that she's built like that. She must have a great tailor…" Kohaku mused on the great big elephant in the room.

    "She must have all her clothes made bespoke…" Wondered Mariya out loud, before even Ai got in on it.

    "M-Maybe she just… you know… *squish*."

    "Anyway, this isn't the time to be jealous. You still have the nicest legs and the second nicest hair, so chop chop! We're going to be late!" Kohaku grabbed my costume off of the back of my closet and thrust it at me commandingly. I grumbled as I took it from her, but only because I didn't want her to ruin it.

    First of all, they have no idea what they're talking about. I have a lot of reasons to dislike myself but my appearance has never been one of them. I know I'm cute. I know I'm in great shape, and that I have certain features which are widely regarded as being very nice, like my hair and, as Kohaku pointed out, my 'dancer's legs'. So it isn't like I'd ever actually be upset over something like this, but it feels so… so… ***unfair!*** It's already not fair that she's famous, popular, an accomplished actress, ***and*** now a singer and dancer as well, but she pulls her entire 'cute widdle imouto' act while she's… she's…

    It just isn't fair, okay?!

    And where does she even *hide them?!*

    Is she an actual witch or something?

    "Hey, come on, we all understand. Right, Kohaku? I was a late bloomer, so Ai was actually taller than me for almost the entire first year we roomed together until my growth spurt. Then *zip!* Up and out."

    "Y-Yeah, and I live with her now that she's *zipped*, so I kind of get it…"

    "That doesn't help… I'm too old to… *zip*." Being tossed into last place by Erika is bad enough, especially because her entire totally fake persona is all about imitating a certain type of popular girl you see in anime and manga. The small, childlike kind who's short and petite all over. Except while she is, in fact, short, is she petite?

    That's not the word anyone is thinking…

    "I think you're worrying over nothing. Some people really like slender girls…" Ai tried to make me feel better but all it did was make me more nervous, even though I know she was referring to someone else altogether. She can't help it though, and she didn't do it on purpose. Ai is a sweetheart. Just a more or less normal, sweet girl who grew up on a farm and is almost as different from the other four of us as you can get. Though now that she's in a little white and yellow sailor uniform and not an oversized pastel pullover, at least it's confirmed that she too, in fact, has a perfectly average figure for girls our age, exactly as I always assumed.

    *Average for a supermodel…*

***Ai's hot!***

    I knew she was cute.

    But cute and hot are two very different things.

    And now I know that she's both…

    I don't even think that ***she*** knows that.

    Which makes it like… fifteen times worse, at least.

    And the way she's blushing a little because she's not used to wearing stuff like this…

    I'm super weak to cute stuff like that…

    So that's problem number *two* - too many attractive group mates in cute little sailor outfits - and that just gives me another reason to hate Halloween.

    "Tae-Eun-sama! Hurry up! The party's going to start soon."

    "I don't think I want to go anymore." N-Not because of all the stuff they were teasing me about. Who cares about stuff like that? Halloween is just dumb, and there will probably be like fifty girls crammed in the common room in outfits like this, so… It's too much!

    "But you have to! There are five space warriors. Kohaku-sama is the brave leader in blue and pink, Mariya-sama is the feisty red one, Ai-chan is the boycrazy yellow one, *I'm* the tall and strong green one, and *you're* the smart blue one. If you aren't there then our costumes won't make any sense!" As she rattled off the details of whatever it is we're supposed to be dressed as - some kind of magic sailors or something - Erika counted up to five on her fingers until her entire palm was inches from my face.

    "They don't make any sense either way. Who even knows who we're supposed to be?"

    "Uh, *everyone?* Didn't you have a TV in Korea growing up? Magical girls are *always* super popular." Kohaku responded as though I had issued a personal affront to her sensibilities, which given that they chose this group costume because she already had a screen-accurate reproduction of the lead magical girl's uniform in her closet, I may just have. Just because she thinks she's magic or whatever doesn't mean that…

    Ugh. Fine. So I used to watch the show literally every day after school. But only because there was nothing else good on! It's not like I watch it anymore unless I'm at Bibi's and there's nothing else to do, and that's only because she likes it so much.

    "Fine! I'll put it on…"

    "Yay! Thank you Tae-Eun-sama! Halloween is the best!" Erika bounced up and down excitedly in her annoyingly cute little green sailor uniform, and… I looked away very quickly, because she's obviously not used to wearing anything so… form flattering…

    *That's **so** unfair…*

    I kicked everyone out of my room so I could change into the blue and white sailor uniform in peace. Obviously, as we all knew it would, it looked great on me, knee-high boots and all, even though my hair was the wrong style and cut, but cutting it would be insane just for a costume… Meiko would literally murder me if I even tried it. But other than that, it looks great. On my way out the door I popped my head into my closet to grab something because I was feeling generous or… whatever.

    "Here. Just take it already." In the hallway everyone was confused at what was transpiring and why I was pointing a strange object at our leader-for-a-night.

    "How do you have that?!" She shouted with barely contained shock.

    "My appa bought it for me or whatever. You're just borrowing it, got it? It's really valuable because they only made-"

    "Two-hundred and fifty-two magical space sceptres! I've been trying to get one for ages but they always sell immediately when they come up at auction!"

    "Well… don't break it, okay?" As Kohaku took hold of the prop she took a series of deep breaths and I'm pretty sure her eyes teared up a little. She opened her mouth and made a strange squeak - which I think was supposed to be a thank you - as the other girls looked on, probably wondering what was happening, because to the uncultured the object being handed over just looks like a toy.

    "Tae-Eun-sama, do you happen to have a magical space lance I can borrow too?" A bright shimmer passed over Erika's eyes as she held her hands together in the hopes that I would be able to arm her similarly. She's younger so she probably doesn't understand how collectibles like this work, and that even owning a single one makes it a crown jewel in your collection. The odds that anyone would have been able to guilt their appa into buying them all five magical charms of the cosmos would be astronomical, so there's absolutely no way I would be able to do that.

    "I'm sorry, I cannot." Bibi borrowed it for her costume this year along with my character's star sabre. It's different for the lead space maiden to go into battle without her mystic sceptre though. That's where all of our powers come from, so letting that happen when I could prevent it would be inexcusable, especially because I'm pretty sure it just made Kohaku's entire… well more than her night. At least her week. Which is ridiculous, because she should at least have one of the cheaper versions they mass produced. I mean she has that expensive cosplay outfit but not the props to go with it? What's the point?

    When the idea of a group costume had been initially proposed I hadn't immediately fought against it, and that was my mistake. However, there are a lot of costumes that wouldn't be nearly as embarrassing as this kind of children's character, and at its core the idea of a group costume sounds like it could possibly almost be fun. We could have just worn actual idol costumes, which we have to get used to anyway, and which honestly aren't all that different from these anyway minus the otaku vibes. We could have been zombies - at least one famous music video makes a very good argument for dancing zombies being a thing - but Ai thought that would be too scary. I even proposed we could go as vampires, which would just require we wear cute black clothes and get some fake fangs, but Erika objected because she already played a vampire on a TV show and therefore "everyone would recognize her right away". Then she suggested we go as magical girls, and Kohaku got all excited and ran to get her costume to show us, and then it was pretty much guaranteed to go that way.

    I even had to fight to get to wear the right color. Mariya thought she should be the smart one, but that isn't even slightly relevant to wearing a costume. And maybe I already had the blue costume at my parents' house because Bibi *begged* me to go to one of those stupid conventions with her when we first met, and owning two costumes like this feels like a real waste of money.

    On the way up to the fourth floor I had to ask Erika something, if only because I needed something to distract me from the fact that pretty much nobody else in the dorm seemed to be in costume - something which I'm pretty sure all of us were noticing. "Why do you like Halloween so much anyway? Isn't it kind of dumb?"

    "Because it's the best!" She answered loudly and excitedly, refusing to volunteer any more.

    "Yeah, but *why?*"

    "Well… It's pretty much the only day I get to dress how I want, because nobody can tell who I am in a costume. It's like acting. So I can have fun with my friends like I'm a normal girl, and mama will never know!"

    "I see…" Erika's like four feet tall with bright pink hair. I don't think anyone is going to be all that fooled by the costume, but if she's happy, I guess that's what matters more…

    "Let's have lots of fun, everyone! Happy Halloween!", Erika bellowed to the entirety of the common area once we arrived. A few girls turned from whatever they were doing and looked in our direction, but most of them continued doing whatever they were engrossed in.

    "Wh-Why are we the only ones in costume?" Ai wondered aloud.

    "We're not! See! There's a monster trainer, and those two girls are dressed like zombie ballerinas, and… those ones are…"

    "Some kind of rabbit soldiers?" Mariya questioned, as though any of us would know.

    "I like that girl's blue hair!" Kohaku had already gotten into mahou shoujo mode and delivered her line forcefully, pointing with her sceptre at the blue-haired bunny soldier in question. The leporine girl looked slightly awkward as she tried to ignore us.

    "I d-don't think those are zombie ballerinas…"

    "I think they always look like that. They probably just need more vitamin D.", mused Mariya, entirely seriously.

    "I thought this was supposed to be a costume party?" Something smells fishy about the whole thing, and that something is probably about four feet tall, pink, and uncharacteristically busty.

    "It is! See? All the flyers say so!" Erika pointed at the flyers that were posted every few feet along the wall. Taking a closer look, they did indeed all say that this was a costume party, but the word "costume" was printed differently on each, almost as if someone had added the word after the fact with a magic marker. That manipulative, little pink brat…

    I wanted to scold her for tricking us and by the looks of it I wasn't alone, but before we could coordinate an appropriate punishment Erika started shouting excitedly and ran toward a large group of girls coming into the common area. Most of them were closer in height to Erika than the rest of us, and unlike the girls who had already assembled most of them were in costumes of some sort, with the ones who weren't in the indigo uniforms of our high school's junior school. We stood slightly confused as Erika bounded from one visiting girl to another, shrieking loudly whenever she found one she thought was especially cute. Many of the young girls were equally excited to meet a real life celebrity - which Erika denied, because she's in costume as someone else, obviously - and as they filtered in to explore the party she returned to us, dragging a starstruck young lady by the hand to meet us. The young girl was wearing a black Victorian-style dress, poofy frills and all, and had her hair dyed pink very similar to Erika's. In her free hand she was lugging around a tall wooden scepter of her own.

    "Guys, isn't she perfect! She's the vampire queen from *Psychic Detective Kawasaki!* Doesn't she look just like that actress who plays her? What's her name? Akari? Rika? I forget because I've never even heard of her!" Erika winked, not even a little bit sly.

    "You're a little tall to be Erika-chan, but it's a really great costume."

    "I think it's really cute! You all look like you worked really hard."

    "I like your scepter. It's even nicer than mine!"

    "I didn't realize it was a party for the middle schoolers…" Most of the girls are probably only a year or two older than my own sister, who will be entering Katsura All-Girls Preparatory Academy with them next year. Some of them may even end up being friends with her. So… I had better be extra nice, just for Yu-Eun's sake. "Your costumes are all really great." I flashed an extra friendly smile just to sell it. As Erika and the girl talked, which was really mostly just Erika talking and the girl standing there awestruck, more and more middle schoolers started to gather around us. It felt almost like the time when the space warriors had to fight an army of magically animated dolls, right when they were being cornered in an alley before the purple sailor - who everyone knows they were totally just shoehorning in to try and sell more toys - rescued them. But thankfully, since there are definitely only five members of Pastel Project, these are just ordinary, curious girls and not an army bent on taking our powers for their own. It was still strange enough being the center of attention in such outlandish outfits, but we're going to have to get used to it, because…

    "Are you idols?" Asked an adorable young lady dressed up as a white cat in a cute pink sundress.

    "We are! We're called-"

    "We ***aren't*** idols." I stated confidently, cutting off Kohaku somewhat rudely, but it was for a good cause. If we're in costume we have to pretend to be exactly what we appear to be, because most of the younger girls are in costumes, and if we admit that we're just in costumes then they'll know that we know that they're in costumes and not really what they're pretending to be. So really, we have to play along, or we'll ruin all their hard work. "We're the mystical maidens of the cosmos!" I struck the appropriate pose, though I really wish I hadn't lent Bibi my sabre. That really would have sold it. "And we're here to fight for love and justice!"

    My friends got the hint and repeated the battle cry, drawing a few gasps and cheers out of the assemblage of young girls gathered around us.

    Okay, I get it now.

    This is why people love Halloween.

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