[b][u][center]A Very Pink Halloween
For VeronicaFoxx and Gemini
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]








It had been in Boomtown for three weeks. Not that long for being spit out of a portal, not that long since being alone stopped hurting. Mostly because it stopped being alone. 

Gemini sat on the roof of the big comfy building that its new friend worked at. The black top felt soft and squishy under its legs, and the pink dog-boy - as it chose to be at that moment - looked down at the city below. It was big and bright even at night, and it liked to look at all the people that kept coming to the bar. 

It was used to seeing costumed people - heroes and villains, Latexia called them - coming to the bar at all hours of the day, so it took Gemini a while to notice a difference that day. It started with people wearing costumes that didn’t look all that ‘super’, like they’d bought them from a shop or something. Gemini cocked its head to the side at seeing them, a little pink dog-head popping out of its ear and going ‘aroo’ curiously before the pink dog-boy shrugged it off. 

Then it started noticing other things, like kids wearing costumes on the street, and cars going by with orange and black stripes on them, and women wearing big pointy hats that didn’t seem to do anything. More and more new things kept popping up, confusing things, different things, interesting things. 

Then...Gemini saw someone get scared. 

Looking down at the streets, Gemini saw a man in a wolf costume jump out of an alley, roaring at the top of his lungs and flailing his paws and claws around. The kids, all dressed up in different costumes, jumped back, yelling. It was on its feet already, spreading its pink goo-body into wings, when the screaming stopped and the kids started...laughing. 

Laughing. 

Why were they laughing?

The wolf-head on the costume came off, and the Doberman underneath laughed with the kids. He handed them something from the alley before waving them off. 

“Am so confused…”

Gemini hopped down, dog-boy shape turning into a dragon-girl one. It pushed open the door to the bar, shaking its head, little question-marks bubbling up through its skin and surfacing for a few seconds before popping away. The more questions it had, the more marks popped up, so it wasn’t surprised to feel the popping going non-stop. 

So focused on the weirdness going on outside, Gemini wasn’t watching where it was going. It stepped right into a swathe of web, gasping and spinning and flailing. 

“Latexia! Heeeeeelp!”

“Honey, it’s a fake web. Just stop…You couldn’t stop, could you?”

“Mmmmph!”

Gemini was tightly wrapped in the webbing, its body bound up. Sighing through the gaps that the web left around its body, Gemini collapsed into a puddle, quite literally, and oozed through the gaps of the web. By the time that it had re-solidified outside it, Latexia was there, undoing the mess that it had made and pulling the webbing back into place. 

While the hippo was working on that, it looked at the rest of the bar. Now that it had a chance to get a good look, there was more difference than ever between the super-customers and the regular people. Yeah, they were all dressed up, but the costumes were different, and some were silly rather than serious. Some looked cool, some looked stupid, and some were making silly faces, and some were flinging out candy and - 

It made no sense. 

In the air, little droplets would fall from the ceiling and turn into bats halfway down, flitting through the air and nesting in different parts of the room. Some would fly overhead and land on speaker-boxes near the stage, while others would dart down and chase people, screeching so high that it sent little micro-ripples through its goo-body. One darted right at Gemini’s head, making it duck out of instinct. 

“It’s just a play bat, Gemmy. It’s okay.”

Gemmy. That was the name that Latexia called it when it was getting a bit out of it. Needed to think a bit better. 

Turning to see the black bat absorbing itself back into the hippo’s body, Gemini pointed all around. 

“What’s this? What’s all this? So many costumes, and people scaring people, and getting candy and...So confused. Don’t understand. What is this?”

“...You don’t have Halloween where you come from?”

“No. What’s that?”

“Uh...huh…”

“Boss! We need some more -”

Latexia waved off the blue dragon that was shouting for her, then gestured for Gemini to follow. The pink goo-cat - flexing its shape to help express its curiosity - followed, all while the hippo shook her head. 

“Is Halloween fun? Is it bad? Do I do stuff? Can I do stuff? Should I? Am I doing bad stuff by not doing stuff? People need protecting? Scaring bad, but people laughing, so what -”

“I’ll explain in a second.”

“But - MMMMPH!”

Gemini flailed as one of the bat drops fell right on its head, the black goo running through the top of its ‘skull’. It was rippling around inside of its body, trying to get free, trying to make a shape. Felt really, really weird. 

“Oh, Christ. Open up.”

It did just that. Latexia stretched out one arm, feeling around tendril-like inside of its face until the goo was removed. Gemini gagged, shaking its head when the tendril was retracted. 

“Blech. Bad bat.”

“Heh, well, I didn’t expect to have two types of goo running around. Come on. Into my office.”

The goo-cat nodded, stepping through the doorway and into the office. It was blacker than the other rooms, though today it had a few orange stripes running through the walls. They looked like fur, though. Maybe Latexia had picked up some tigers for different looks roaming through the walls. 

Gemini sat down, and Latexia sat across from it. The hippo folded her hands, the latex of her body running down and making ‘wise old woman’ sleeves in the process. 

“Now...you don’t know about Halloween?”

“Nope. What is it? Like opposite day? Know about that.” Gemini shivered. “Bad day. Very bad day.”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

The hippo chuckled. 

“Think of it like...like a day where everyone gets to be like you. They get to choose to be whatever they want, and nobody can take that away from them.”

“...Really?”

Gemini could only imagine what something like that would be like. Considering where it came from...well, choice wasn’t really a thing. Choice was a thing for other people, not for it. Choice was something it didn’t deserve when other people needed things. There was a day where everyone got to just...pick?

It was a fun idea. The goo-cat liked that. 

“Yeah. Everyone gets to pick what they want, and people go around trying different things. Going to different houses, playing trick or treat -”

“What that?”

“Trick or treat?”

Gemini nodded. 

“...Hon...Oh, I haven’t done this in years.”

“Done what?”

“What you and I are doing tonight. I’m going to have to cancel a couple of appointments, but…”

Latexia shook her head as she got up, already rippling from head to toe as her latex started bubbling. Gemini had been around the hippo long enough to know that meant there were a lot of thoughts going on in that big head of hers, and that meant that the older woman was planning something big. 

It scooted back to allow the boss lady room to walk out, hearing her mumble something about ‘what kind of fuck doesn’t teach a kid about trick or treat…’ before she was out of earshot. 

#

Ten minutes later, Gemini was on the streets with Latexia wrapped around its back. The feeling of something else gooey against its body was strange, but the hippo said it was the best way for them to stay together. Gemini wasn’t about to argue that; it needed the company, but wearing a black cloak was really weird. 

Made it feel kinda cool, though. It reached up and adjusted the witch hat that Latexia had provided, feeling a mouth giving its finger a little kiss. 

“Feeling good, girl?”

The voice came from several mouths at once in the costume that Gemini was wearing. Admittedly, the witch costume wasn’t exactly practical. It could remember a number of witches that they’d fought in the past, and they’d never kept to skirts and stockings and the silly stuff like this. But the hat was nice. It liked the hat. 

“Feeling okay.”

“Don’t be scared.”

“Not scared.”

“Good. Now, I’ll be able to stretch to fit just about anything, but don’t start getting ideas. No growing anything in the crotch, you got that?”

“Why grow something there?”

“Right...I forgot you neither are or want a dick or a cunt. So, we’re good.”

“So, what we do?”

“Well, first, let’s start by going trick or treating.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, you go to a house, and you say ‘trick or treat,’” the hippo explained, the pair of them walking down the street. It took Gemini a second or two to get used to the squish-squelching of its body and Latexia’s rubbing together, but it was more just making sure that it projected a firm enough outer layer to keep their fluids from mixing. As soon as that was done, things were better. 

“Why trick? Why treat?”

“It’s an old tradition. You ask for people to be nice to you, to give you a treat. And if they’re nice, then you’re nice back. You smile, maybe give ‘em a hug, let them take a picture. That kinda thing.”

“...if?”

“Some people aren’t nice.”

Gemini nodded. There were more than enough times that it had encountered the mean people. 

“So...what then?”

“That’s where the ‘trick’ comes in. If people are mean, then you get to be mean back. You say it so that people know that you’re following the rules. If they’re mean, you’re mean. If they’re nice, you’re nice.”

“This is...good?”

“Yep. Makes it so that you’re starting out nice, and they have to be mean in order for you to be mean. Most people stay very nice.”

Far as it could tell, that made sense. As long as they started nice, everyone else could stay nice. That was good. Maybe they’d even find enough good people that they wouldn’t have to do any tricks. Gemini liked to have people be nice. Nice people...nice people didn’t hurt. 

Latexia guided it onto a different street, the pink goo-thing shifting from cat to puppy. Just a bit younger, in the early teens rather than a young adult. The goo-puppy pulled on its hat, tugging it down shyly as some other kids passed by, swinging around bags of candy. Gemini paused, sniffing the air, its head turning to follow the bags. 

“...Uh, hon, the house is up ahead.”

“What’s that smell?”

“That’s the candy.”

“...Smells really goooooooooood.”

The pink goo-puppy grinned. 

“I get that?”

“Yep.”

“Wheeeeeee!”

Gemini just about ran to the first house, running up the steps, even stretching out its legs to move a bit faster than a kid really should have been able to. Up, up, up, almost leaving the witch-hat behind in the process. Then it paused, staring at the door. 

“Um…”

“Ring the doorbell, hon.”

“Oh, right!”

Extending a finger into a shape that was almost like a tentacle, it tapped the doorbell. The ding-dong sound, something that it didn’t hear often in some of the other places, made it giggle, holding a gooey paw over its mouth to stifle the sound. 

A wolf woman opened the door, adjusting her glasses as she looked down. 

“Oh, my, you are just a delightful little girl, aren’t you?”

“Thank you. Uh…”

“Trick or treat,” Latexia whispered in its ear. 

“Oh, yeah. Trick or treat.”

“Hehehe, such a good girl. You deserve a treat.”

The wolf woman turned to the side, stepping back with a chocolate bar in one hand and a caramel apple in the other. Latexia gave Gemini a quick black bag from the cloak, and the wolf woman dropped the candy into the bag, handing the goo-puppy the caramel apple. 

“Careful now, it’s sticky.”

“Thank you!”

“Hehehe, have a good night, sweety. That’s a great costume.”

The wolf woman patted Gemini on the head, sending a little...happy thrill of warmth through the little goo creature. Gemini turned, a little dazed, a little...weirded out, too, but just good. Very good. Even as the wolf woman looked down at her hand, staring at the bit of goo on her fingers, Gemini just focused on the memory of the head-pat, the good words, the nice tone. Just...being told that it was good. 

Wobbling down the streets, Gemini was just about to put the caramel apple into the bag when Latexia squeezed the top of its head. 

“Hey, hey. Don’t go putting something that sticky in there.”

“But...what do?”

“Eat it.”

“Mmmph. That’s haaaaaard.”

“Trust me. You wanna taste this thing.”

“Mmph…”

“Trust me, just try it.”

Latexia hadn’t been mean before. There were other people that told it to ‘just try’ something, and it always went bad. Never good. Always bad. Like the time when they started making Gemini all…

No, no, bad thoughts. This was good night. Not bad night. Good night. 

Taking the time to force the right equipment into its muzzle, the goo puppy sat down on the side of the road. It got comfortable, formed a tongue properly, and stuck it out. 

“Like this?” it asked out of a side-mouth. 

“Can you taste things?”

“Yeah...air tastes like smoke…”

“Well, shove the apple in. That tastes a hell of a lot better than that.”

“Okay, okay.”

Well, it was all or nothing. Gemini opened its mouth as wide as it could go, looking like some of the monsters in another world with how wide it went, and -

NOMF!

The apple hit its tongue, and Gemini’s eyes went wide as it froze. 

“...Gemini? Are you okay?”

The goo-puppy didn’t say anything. It just started...vibrating. 

“MmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMM[b]MMMMMMMMMM![/b]”

It was everything. Everything amazing and good and nice and happy and just the best things in the world. So soft and sweet and chewy and sticky so that it didn’t slip where Gemini didn’t want it to go and making it just pop with juiciness and goodness and the bits of salt crystals through it and the - 

Gemini was vibrating so hard and happily that it was shaking off the costume. It pulled the apple - and the tongue, not forgetting that - deeper into its body, letting the taste continue while pulling Latexia back on. 

“You know, I’m really glad I can go numb. I didn’t think you could outclass the Turbo-Pounder, girl, but wow.”

“What that?”

“Not something someone your age needs to think about. Or...your species, I guess.”

“Mmmph, so good. Is all candy so good?”

“Heh, not as good, but there’s some stuff that comes close.”

“Want it. Want alllllll of it. All the things.”

“Well, we have all night…”

#

It took an hour for Gemini to finally finish the caramel apple. Not because it was that complex, but because it wanted to enjoy the taste and the flavor and the goodness of the apple for as long as possible. It had never had the chance to have that before, and it never wanted to forget it, just in case that was the only time Gemini got to enjoy one. 

In the meantime, though, the goo-puppy - and kitten, and lizard, and chameleon, and dragon, and puppy again - went from house to house, sometimes even going to the same one twice if it had plenty of good candy. Each time, the people inside were so nice, patting the goo-thing on the head, giving it candy, telling Gemini that it looked good and the costume was cute and that [i]it[/i] was cute. 

Of course, it was never ‘it’ from their mouths. It was he, or she, or something else, but there were so many different bodies and forms that none of the words really landed. The word was just a mush that came back to ‘it’ eventually. Gemini was fine with that. 

Latexia had almost fallen asleep on Gemini’s head when they went to...that house. A bigger one, with high steps and a bad yard, with two stories and a lot of dark rooms. If it wasn’t for the fact that so many things had gone nice, Gemini would have skipped that house, but at the moment, the goo-butterfly was so happy that it would have walked right up to a dragon’s cave and gone ‘trick or treat’ and expected to get a candy. 

With pink antennae bobbing and playful proboscis twitching, it knocked on the door and fanned out its wings with the cloak fluttering behind it. The door opened, a crotchety-looking cat poking his head out. 

“Trick or treat!”

BANG!

The door slammed shut in Gemini’s face. The goo-butterfly blinked, staring at the door, a bit shaken at the loud noise. 

At first, it thought that maybe the cat was going for candy in the back of the house. So...it waited. 

And waited.

And waited. 

After five minutes, Gemini pressed the button again. The cat opened the door almost right away, as if he’d been waiting there, and the goo-butterfly held up its bag again, smiling once more. 

“Trick or -”

BANG!

This time it didn’t even get to finish the sentence. Gemini stared at the door again, shaking its head. Was it doing something wrong? Had it made a mistake? No. Ring the doorbell, say the line, and then get candy. It didn’t...it wasn’t making a mistake. 

“This guy is an asshole, I guess. Looks like he gets a trick,” Latexia said. 

“No...let...let me try again?”

“...If you want, hon, but he’s not going to change.”

Ding dong went the bell, and the cat opened the door again. This time, Gemini really had to force the smile as it held up its bag. 

“Trick or treat.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

This time, the door didn’t slam shut. The cat reached out, grabbed the bag, and threw it across the street. It was so horribly, perfectly timed, too, as a car came whizzing down the street, hitting the latex container and sending the candy sprawling all over the ground, half of it crushed under the wheels of the car, the rest of it spread among dirt and dust and concrete. 

Gemini just stared at it, shaking its head slowly in disbelief. 

“Now get off my porch.”

“...Trick...trick or treat…”

“Shut up, you stupid kid.”

“Trick...Or...Treat…”

Its skin was rippling, shaking, trembling. Control of the small form was slipping, but it didn’t care. It had been nice. It had been nice all night long, had done the good things, had done the right things. People had been nice back. 

It didn’t deserve this. It didn’t. 

It turned to face the cat again, staring right up at his glasses, into his angry eyes, into his grumpy face. 

“Trick...Or...Treat?”

“Hmmph. You ain’t getting a treat from me, so you might as well -”

Black and pink tendrils shot out at the same time, the pink angry ones with spikes on the tip almost hitting the cat’s glasses, the black ones splitting them out of the way and to the sides at the last second. The hat tightened on Gemini’s head. 

“Let me handle this one, dear. You’re not ready for that sort of thing.”

The hat slipped off Gemini’s head and onto the cat’s, and as the feline soundlessly tried to shout, a black wave rolled down his face, over his mouth. He turned, slowly shutting the door, and then went back in the house. 

Gemini, on the other hand, sat down hard, holding its hands to its face. 

“No, no, no, not again...not again...Not bad. Not stupid.”

“No, you’re not,” the mouth in the cloak said. 

“Not stupid at all,” said its gloves. 

The cloak, skirt, and gloves spread over Gemini’s body, giving its a full body hug, gently squeezing and embracing it. The pink goo-thing dropped the butterfly look, shifting out of personhood and down into a pack of puppies and kittens. They mewled and whimpered together, the clothing left to fall on the grass. 

They rubbed against each other, finding comfort together until Latexia reformed, sitting down at their side and pulling them onto her lap. The hippo sighed. 

“He’s going to get his trick. But I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

Mewls and whimpers were all that the hippo got in return. 

Minutes passed, the hat eventually coming out of the window and rejoining the hippo’s body. Latexia stood up, gently helping Gemini come back together, the different puppies and kittens eventually melding into one another again. The goo-dragon stood up, rubbing its cheeks a few times, shaking its head. 

“That guy. Bad.”

“Very bad, but he’s learned a lesson now.”

“What you do?”

“Not for you to know, girl. You don’t need that kinda bad in your life.”

“Hmm. Bad enough, then.”

Gemini turned to the road, seeing one piece of its candy on the curb. It knelt down, picking it up. It was a silly little fruit candy, one with an apple flavor. It liked the apple before. At least it could have this. 

Tucking the candy into a goo pocket in its side, the goo-dragon was about to turn back to the bar when Latexia patted it on the arm. 

“What?”

“There’s one more thing.”

“Wanna go home.”

“Trust me, this one will make you feel better.”

“Why? More tricks?”

“More like tricks as treats.”

“...”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

#

The haunted house was a regular attraction at the edge of town. Most people that went there left with complaints on their breaths, considering that the owners were pretty well known as the sort of assholes that set up jumpscares and terror just for the sake of being mean rather than to be fun. 

That Halloween night, though, something different happened. For every bad jumpscare, for every terrifying moment of someone being cornered in the building and left to sob in fear, there was a story of a strange pink bat swarm that seemed to have taken up their nests in the building. That same swarm kept coming out when someone started crying, chasing back the monsters and chittering away until the scared person could get back to their feet, giggling away at the strange site. 

Eventually, security was called, management pissed that the bats were ruining the scares, but security never reported back. Neither did the second team, or the third. The fourth mentioned something black moving in the shadows, and the fifth never said anything at all. 

But there was a return call on the radio for the sixth. 

“Let Gemini have its fun. We’ll be gone by morning. Send a seventh team, and I’ll give you a reason to call it Unlucky Seven for the rest of your life.”

After that, management and security stayed quiet. The haunted house had a year of not being scary, and a hundred kids and families had stories of a friendly little bat swarm that escorted them through the house and scared all the bad people away. At the end of the haunted house, near a sign so black that it was almost illegible, offerings of candy could be left for the friendly bats, and almost everyone did. 

With the whispered thanks of so many children and grateful parents lifting its wings, Gemini left the building near dawn with a jack-o-lantern so full of candy that it needed Latexia’s help to carry it back to the bar. They set down on the top of the building, and Gemini’s last thoughts of the day were: 

[i]Halloween is good.[/i]











[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]