𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊 𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓⸻⸻[OC SHORT STORY]

FREAK ACCIDENT .

[TW// GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF BLOOD AND MURDER.]

"C'MON, JUNO! YOU'RE not even gonna go trick-or-treating with us?"

Juno let out a sigh as he cleaned his Retro BluFocals with the hem of his shirt. "No, I'm not, Ashby," he told his younger teammate, "don't you remember last year when all the parents gave us weird looks?"

"It wasn't that bad," she retorted, pushing back a long, jade-green tentacle, as the doors to the Battle Tower smoothly slid open without a sound. They had just finished a 10x battle and lost... terribly (15.3% to 84.7%, in fact). Juno was upset, but not so much Ashby and Sparrow.

"Maybe not to you, but to me, it was." Juno propped his Painbrush over his shoulder, digging his phone out of one of the many pockets of his Seahorse Shoreliner.

"It's Splatoween," Sparrow said, moving his weapon–an E-Liter 4K Scope–to his shoulder. "At least supervise. Act like we're your kids."

"I'm older than both of you by a year, but I don't look like it. I'm not going to do that!" Juno sighed once more, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Listen; I'm going home to watch a horror movie by myself. I'm not going trick or treating this year, not now, not today, not ever." He glanced at the time on his phone, muttered farewell, and departed.

Sparrow and Ashby traded distraught looks, both frowning. They didn't mean to make Juno so upset, they just wanted someone to go trick-or-treating with. And with Molli's passing so recent, Sparrow and Ashby wanted to do something for Juno, something to keep his thoughts off of her. They wanted to do something to keep their thoughts off of her.

"...We could scare him," Sparrow spoke up over the awkward silence between the two. The loud Halloween-themed music blared from the inside of the tower, slightly drowning out his voice.

"What?" Ashby turned and snapped out of her thoughts about her old teammate. "Whatcha say, Sparrow?"

"Let's do it, let's scare Juno." He turned to the inkling, tilting his head slightly. He fished something out of his shorts pocket and presented it to Ashby with an open palm. It was a key. "I have a copy of the key to his apartment."

"You.. have a key.. To our Team Leader's apartment."

"Yes."

"I don't even wanna ask why."

"You shouldn't."

~~~

"How do I look?" Ashby stepped out of the bathroom with a sly smile. Her usually long tentacles were cut a little below her chin, and her nails were painted black. She was wearing a glow-in-the-dark Swim Reaper mask.

"Ah, so that's why you went in there with scissors and nail polish."

"What else would I be doing with scissors and nail polish?" She swung the scissors around one of her now-black-painted fingers, a phantom of a smile on her lips.