Halloween II: This Time It's Personal.

Halloween. I'm not quite sure if it's like Christmas or St. Patrick's day or what for you monsters. But it happens. And, with another October, the Cavalry has thrown our SECOND annual Monster Mash. Do other Cells throw Halloween parties? I mean, I can't be the only guy to have thought of a costume party with actual creepy crawlies. Or maybe other Cells are just boring, I dunno.

It was kind of a small turnout, about a dozen or so of us- so, y'know, it's a good thing we had a party instead of invading the CUT church this month. Still, food and drinks were brought, and good times were had. Brayker was even there, which meant I didn't have to be in charge! Whew.

We started the party with the second round of the official That Is a Thing Monster Movie game! It's a pretty simple setup, if you're not familiar with it. Basically, you put on a movie, and then the various monsters (read: you) get to complain about what it gets right, and what it gets wrong, and record your thoughts on a big poster for posterity.

This year, we got all classy.

And the results!

And as you can see from the fact that the movie apparently got more right than it did wrong, that means Abbot & Costello were making a documentary. Maybe Abbot and Costello were Hunters themselves. Who knows? 

Meanwhile, Cora got into the Halloween spirit by sharing some genuinely horrible tales of terror about her (convoluted) love life. It kinda reminded me of watching a slasher flick, only instead of yelling “WHY ARE YOU GOING INTO THE HAUNTED BASEMENT ALONE?” at the screen, it's more like “WHY WOULD YOU DATE A VAMPIRE WHO THINKS YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR GRANDMA?”

Still, soap opera shenanigans might be better than my own complete lack of a social life. It's...kind of hard to relate to other people who aren't caught up in this insane conspiracy business. On the other hand, I'm mostly terrified by everyone I meet who is in this insane conspiracy business, so it's kind of a catch 22. Reminds me of high school for some reason.

But enough about me. If I just wanted to bitch about my feelings, I'd get a Livejournal.

Back to Halloween stuff! Our Citadel bathrooms are haunted by Halloween Goblins. Again. I think this is going to be a Thing, guys. They slunk around, making prank phone calls (quoting Scream doesn't work when you're genre savvy like me), and otherwise being a creepy nuisance until Ellie the sharkgirl and Artemis and a few other people went into a hedge and told them to cut that shit out. So, y'know, good job on them.

Apart from the Halloween Goblins, the party was going really well until about 10. That's when the zombie horde showed up. Abomination zombie horde. Straight up Romero shit.

Cora and Artemis did some scry-y kind of stuff, and found out the zombies were coming from a ritual conducted by some random kids, who in turn got the book from a weird antique bookstore. We split up into three teams- Apophis, Mary the ghost-witch, and Ash marched out and killed the shit out of the zombies with fire and explosions. Kind of glad I missed that one.

Brayker, Cora, George, Weylin, and I went to investigate the bookstore itself. (Cora also texts and drives). Turns out, some doppleganger Servant dude killed the original bookstore owner, and took his place so he could pass the evil magic book onto some unsuspecting kids. We busted down the door, took the guy down (well, Weylin and Brayker did. I mostly stood guard), and then Cora pulled the releveant info out of his mind before we killed him. Brayker is kind of scary when he goes on away team missions, and George has got to hit the shooting range before he goes on another mission. Seriously. It's embarrassing. 

Artemis, Ellie, and anyone else I missed stayed back at the base, where they were able to disrupt the evil ritual and teleport the creepy magic book away from the kids. Yay magic. Is there anything it can't do? That's an actual question. I really have no idea how this shit works.

With the ritual reversed, the zombies melted into goo. This was particularly good, as we weren't the only ones the zombies went after- they were marauding after any Believers in the city, so now said Believers owe us one for saving their asses, or something. None of our people died (even if some of us got a little banged up), so we should definitely chalk this one up in the 'win' column.

This said, we need to get our shit together. This is the first time our new Citadel's been attacked directly, and something tells me it's not going to be the last. Our front gate got ripped apart during the zombie attack, so those of you with engineering skills (or at least those of you with lots of money to hire people with engineering skills) should get on repair duty ASAP.

Right now, the jury's still out on whether or not we're going to kick down the door of the CUT church next month- it's Brayker's call, ultimately, but I think a lot of it is gonna depend on what kind of backup we can get from Lex Talionis. Still, I can't imagine any of Dr. Watts' buddies passing up on an opportunity to go break shit, so hopefully things should go smoothly. Or, well, as smoothly as you can expect from the Accord.

But yeah. Clean your guns, sharpen your knives, polish your crystal balls, brush your fangs or whatever- 'cause I've got the feeling the rest of the year's gonna get rough.