Work In Progress

Introduction

"D-daddy... I'm scared..." Bell said to him quietly.

"Don't worry sweetheart... everything will be just fine, I promise..." he responded back to her as they continued walking.

They had almost reached the top of the mountain when a human soldier stopped them, "Halt."

He stopped, his family behind him as he stood tall in front of the man. "Yes? There a problem?"

The soldier looked down reading the name on his jacket, he soon called over 3 other soldiers who seized Edmund's entire family while the first soldier held him back.

He struggled to get out of the human's grip looking back at his family with a fearful expression, "What are you doing?!"

"Ed! What's happening?!" Lily yelled at him, her voice was filled with intense worry.

"I-I don't know, j-just stay calm Lily!"

The human that held Kristen threw her down onto the ground, her body hitting the cold earth with a thud. He took his sword out of its sheath and stood over her, the blade pointed directly toward her core.

"NO! GET AWAY FROM HER!" Edmund shouted at him, struggling to get out of the soldier's tight grasp but it was soon too late. The blade descended, impaling her through the chest. Few moments later she was nothing more than dust on the earth.

Lily screamed, her knees giving way as she fell down to the ground.

"DAD!!" Bell yelled back at him, tears streaming down her face as she sobbed loudly.

"Bell! Just stay calm! Please! We'll be okay!" Edmund tried to reassure her, but across the way from them as Lily cried openly, another soldier stood over her menacingly holding his axe above his head aiming toward her.

"NO!!" Edmund broke free from the grip of the man holding him. He ran over to the soldier holding the ax above his wife's head and punched him in the stomach. The soldier doubled over, dropping the ax beside himself. Edmund stood over the soldier a moment before leaning down next to Lily. The soldier holding him a moment before had slowly snuck up behind him as Edmund knelt down beside his spouse. Raising the butt of a rifle he held on his back, he aimed and hit Edmund in the back of the head. Within an instant, Edmund's vision turned to black.

With Edmund knocked out cold, it wasn't hard for the soldiers to finish off the job they started with the rest of his family. When one of the officers pointed his musket down at Edmund's head, Gaster ran out of his place in the line of monsters and knocked the gun out of his hand. Grillby followed behind Gaster, ready to attack the menacing humans if necessary to protect his friend.

"What are you two doing? Get back in the line!" The head officer said to Gaster and Grillby, who both refused to leave their spots from standing in front of Edmund protectively. Gaster even grabbed the man in his 'blue attack', a magical defense mechanism he had acquired when he was very young that allowed him to grab the souls of people and throw them as if they weighed nothing at all, and tossed him up into the air and back toward the center of the town down below to get him to shut up.

The next in command quickly ordered 3 of the guards nearby to grab all of them, handcuffing them. Grillby even tried to burn them but it didn't matter, him and Gaster were both incapacitated. They had failed their friend. The strong human soldier walked up to them both and looked over Gaster, Grillby and Edmund silently for a few moments before glancing at the three soldiers holding them back from doing anything rash.

"Take them back down to the city below. I think the doctor might be pleased that he found 3 new monster test subjects with our aid." He told the three, his voice harsh and unsympathetic. Immediately the soldiers began to push and shove the two back down the mountain while the last simply started to drag Edmund's lifeless body with him, as if he weighed a ton.

Down the long, winding and exhausting path the mountain had for them, at the far edge of the town that stood at the base of Mount Ebbot was a large building that the soldiers lead Grillby and Gaster into. The outside of the building would read, 'Nisha Scientific Study Inc.' and once they were lead inside the soldiers threw both monsters onto the ground. Gaster and Grillby grunted as the men hit at the back of their knees, making them kneel onto the ground with their hands behind their backs as a young, tired looking scientist walked up to the officers.

"What is it that you've brought to me this time?"

The soldier carrying Ed dropped his body down on the ground with a loud thud. "Three monsters, two skeletons and a fire elemental. We handcuffed these two but we had to knock this one for being uncooperative with the new order of the surface."

The young man looked over the three subjects with interest, pushing up his square framed glasses with his finger. "Excellent... They will deem useful I'm sure. You may return to your duties."

The guards all nodded in response to his demand and left the lab quietly. The scientist looked at Gaster and Grillby with a soft smile. "Welcome to Nisha Scientific Study. I am Doctor Maurus, I'm currently one of the heads of research here at the laboratory. The process we have here is rather simple: If you comply with the task given to you and we obtain what we need from you, then no harm will come your way and you will grant certain freedoms around this laboratory. If not, consequences are not in short supply here. Any questions?"

Neither of the two monsters replied to his question, only giving him hateful glares.

"Good." Maurus walked behind Gaster first and helped him back up to his feet and began speaking again as he helped Grillby. "I will ask the first question then, this other skeleton on the floor, what did he do to make the mercenaries knock him out?"

Gaster, against his better judgement, growled lowly at the doctor and spoke in a grated and harsh tone. "Protecting his family from that group of MURDERERS that are supposed to be helping the monsters up the damn mountain!"

Maurus chuckled softly at that and shook his head in amusement, "They have been known to have a tendency of holding grudges against your kind. Perhaps one of them recognized him as they were walking and took out their frustrations on him?"

"Taking out frustrations are one thing, killing a man's entire family in one fell swoop is homicide." Grillby replied back to him in a much calmer tone than Gaster.

"Nothing to go back to means we can do whatever we need to on him. I mean even if he did have something to go back to that wouldn't stop us anyhow." Maurus mused as he walked back in front of the two monsters. "There are individual rooms for all three of you to stay in. Once your friend here wakes up in due time we will start with the tests we have prepared for each of you. What we've found so far we can't be too sure that skeletons all have the same powers, usually there are variations in their magic so we'll have to test the both of you separately." He looked over at Grillby and Gaster and pointed to them in sequence, "You're in room one, and you in two. Your unconscious friend here will be in room three. Go there now please."

Begrudgingly, both of them did as he said. Leaving Doctor Maurus to take Edmund into his own room.