November 20, 2022

Luna walks into the kitchen and ignores the gay staring contest happening nearby between Isaac and Cole. She begins making ramen as Cole stares back at Isaac. Isaac begins a frozen stare.

"Dammit," Cole sighs as he stands up and hugs Isaac. He increases his temperature slightly.

"Everything okay?" Luna asks with her back turned to them.

Isaac stares ahead

"Isaac froze up," Cole sighs as he roughly taps Isaac on the shoulder.

"I see. Not entirely sure what the cure is for that. I thought hugging and warming him up worked alright." She's watching them now.

Cole shakes Isaac a little "I thought it worked too."

He continues to stare

"Maybe he's overwhelmed? Not sure what else would freeze someone up like that." Thankfully there is no Drake or Oculus around in the kitchen because a ding is heard from the egg timer. Her ramen is done, and she goes to the table to eat. Just then, a gurgling is heard in the sink.

Cole ignores the gurgling of the sink and flicks Isaac's nose. Isaac flinches and grabs his nose. Luna goes to investigate worried she just jinxed it. It’s been a rather common issue for Luna as of late.

A black substance rises to fill the sink.

"Ah Dren. Welcome back." Luna says with a welcoming smile

Cole slowly looks over at the sink while blinking, "what?"

"I’m like 99% positive this is how Dren appears?" she says.

Dren's silly face pokes up with a smile "Alohaa."

Luna smiles brightly. “Alohaa!”

Dren climbs out of the sink in a smooth distorted ripple.

"....." Cole stares at Dren while blinking in confusion

"That's erm, different. Never seen that ripple before." Luna leans her head to the side a little bit.

Dren shakes violently slinging black spit and water everywhere

Luna is directly in the splash zone. Yippee. "...well if this isn't an excuse to take a bubble bath after today's crappy day, then I don't know what is." She finishes her meal and disappears to take a hot bath. “I’ll be right back.”

Cole groans and snaps the black spit and water off of him as he mutters "Gross...."

"Dren need want ask what happen" Dren says looking to Cole. Isaac looks weirded out by seeing Dren.

"What?" Cole looks confused.

"Most house gone. Smell very halloween" says Dren.

"....what do you mean by smell very halloween?"

"Smell very" Drens eyes dilate some.

"Do you mean like barbecue.....?"

Dren nods

"Was there like a fire or something?" Cole is unaware of the events that have transpired at the manor.

Dren nods and Isaac’s eyes widen some.

"Where do you live?" Cole asks.

"In Cold, can show." Dren replies

"Can you just describe it to me? I don't feel like going anywhere today."

"Down very, cold, hall, no friends."

The gears are turning in Cole's head. Dren waits with a simple smile.

".......the manor??" Cole seems very unsure.

"Manor is up."

"A basement?"

Dren nods

"Where is the basement?" Cole's head tilts slightly.

"Under, all that's left" Dren sighs

"Left of what?"

"Of all of it"

“All of what? Can you like describe what your basement is under?" Cole asks.

"Under big house. Big house gone" Dren replies sadly.

"What does the big house look like?"

"Full of Moores."

"What happened to the big house to make it gone?"

Dren shrugs "Not know. Was asleep, smell alot, wake up, all gone."

Cole looks at the floor as he thinks and mutters "barbecue.....gone.....Moores...."

"...oh no" Isaac mumbles.

"Did the fucking manor burn down?!" Cole jumps out of his chair

Dren cowers some and nods, "At least what looks like."

"What the fuck....." Cole sits back down. "Do you know who did it?"

Dren shakes his head "Not know."

As Luna was walking from her arcade, she overheard the current discussion. When she walks in, she confesses, "Um. I forgot to tell you something Cole."

"Hmm? What?" Cole looks over at Luna

"Well... it's kind of a long story. Nyx came by earlier,” she takes a deep breath and pauses, "wait hang on, lemme start at the top.." Luna opens her phone and scrolls down to today's notes.

"Nyx?" Dren says with a hint of fear as she frowns.

"...okay, right. So it all started with yet another Mike and Mads argument but this time Lock got involved since she has to listen to all of it. She got really pissed off, and I thought it was the end of it. About an hour or so later, she came up to me asking to go back to the nonferal world, but she wouldn't specify why. I figured, what's the worst that could happen, so I blinked and she was there." Luna takes a deep breath to keep herself calm. "Um, so another 15 minutes or so later, Nyx came by to... basically call me a failure in life and that my girlfriend died for absolutely nothing and that I was weak for not protecting her 10 years ago and blah blah blah… She asked where Lock was, and at first I'm like wouldn't you like to know bitch, you just wanna hurt her cuz she had a birthday recently, but ...i kinda gave in and told her the truth. Nyx looked really scared for the first time ever. At least in terms of me seeing fear in her body language."

She begins shaking heavily. If anyone didn't know better, she'd look like she's about to hyperventilate, but in actuality, she's just terrified. Luna takes like a billion deep breaths to calm herself enough to get through this last bit. "Um.... just um.. the manor is gone.. and Lock did it."

Dren frowns

Luna looks to be on the verge of tears. Everything that Nyx said about her is overwhelming her, coupled with the Moore Manor Massacre, something she could have stopped by not letting Lock go. She pulls up a chair and puts her head in her arms.

"...I fucked up. We’re tasked to protect the nonferals and instead Nyx was right. I failed them."

Cole blinks, "you know Nyx is trying to manipulate you right?"

"I'm aware, still hurts like hell though." she looks up with sore and wet eyes, "May be manipulative in nature, but the points are still valid."

"Eh just ignore her, none of her points are worth stressing over" Cole sighs

Luna nods and wipes her tears. She tries to form a smile, but it's not possible right now.

"So um, what do we do now? Moore Manor is gone." Luna asks no one in particular.

Dren frowns.

She looks over, "I'm sorry Dren. Want hug fren?"

Dren waddles over to Luna and squishes as she hugs her. She accepts the hug even despite being freshly cleaned up and tears fall.