Halloween

Krill awoke, well not really awoke because Vrul don't sleep, but more like drifted out of a daydream, completely unsuspecting. Then again, when it came to humans, he was almost always completely unsuspecting.


Krill generally took his hiatus in the in the medical bay, since he spent so much time there. There was, however, one drawback to this.... He woke to the sight of Conn, the starborn, floating suspended in a corner of the room. His large black eyes were wide and unseeing, his large, round mouth was parted revealing the sharp interior vortex of teeth. He saw nothing, ad he responded to nothing. It had been months since the event at the prison, and still, the starborn remained comatose. Internal cranial scans had not shown anything definitive. Starborn were difficult to read when compared to humans, but still it was frustrating they could find nothing.


Over all else, Commander Vir blamed himself, Conn had saved his life before falling into a coma, and the man seemed to think it was partially him to blame, Krill couldn't have disagreed more, but there was no arguing with the man.


It was rather early, and the medical bay was empty, the lights above had been dimmed to mirror solar cycles and allow for the proper function of the human circadian rhythm. The biggest protest Krill had against this practice was it made everything dark and kind of creepy, especially when you had a brain dead starborn floating in the corner. The shuttered internally and turned away from the corner quickly making his way from the room and into the dark hall.


Admittedly it wasn't much better out here. While the medical bay had a comatose starborn, the outside hallways were covered in an exposed layer of pipe, and without the reflective white surface of the hospital interior, the hallways were much darker.


Due to safety concerns, the hallways were lit by a single light every twenty feet, but that was seriously no help. He swallowed his concern beating it back with logic and made his way down the hall. The Commander would be awake soon, and krill had a few concerns he wanted to bring before the man.


He was passing a T intersection on his way to the bridge when an echoing clatter reached him from down the hall. He turned peering into the darkness, his night vision was relatively poor, so he saw nothing, but switching over to his thermal vision, he could see the faint figure of a human standing in the hallway. It was a rather hunched person, but other than its heat signature, he couldn't see anything else.


He switched back to his regular vision, "Hello?" he called into the darkness.


Another soft clattering, and a figure appeared from the balck stepping into the penumbra of light right at the edge of darkness and visible light. Krill blinked in confusion.


It was a woman, or at least he thought it was. She had her face concealed by ragged drapes of long black hair, her head tilted down towards the floor. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hands were held down to the side. She wore only a long white t-shirt, or perhaps a night dress. Krill might have mistaken it as a hospital gown.


Seemed odd, usually the crew were at least somewhat dressed and presentable?
Perhaps they were sleepwalking, humans did that sometimes, "Hello." Krill called again."


He took a step forward, and before he knew what was happening, she was crawling across the floor limbs contorted feet scrabbling.


Krill leat off a high pitched squeal turned and ran even as her scuttling followed after him a horrible brushing slapping noise as her hands came in contact with the metal.


She was so close he could hear her breath.


He shrieked again, and somewhere along the hall a door opened.


A large blue head appeared form the doorway blearily blinking, "Krill what." Sunny froze when she turned to look eyes growing wide, then grabbing krill up in one arm, she crouched into a fighting stance head lowered.


The 'thing' pulled up short, and then sat back on its heels. Dark hair parted about a grotesque face grey and cold with dark black about the eyes and a horrid blackness about the lips, "That is really hard on the shoulders, by the way."


Sunny and Krill stared at the creature in surprise as the woman got to her feet dusting off her hands and knees throwing her dark hair over her shoulder. She giggled, "You should have seen your face."


"Damn Cortney, that was just mean." Krill and sunny turned again to find the Commander standing at the end of the hall followed by a possy of other humans, and all of them were..... Well they were dressed very strangely. The Commander himself was wearing a maroon button up shirt tucked into tan pants and a brown leather gunbelt and boots. Over that he wore a brown leather jacket that reached almost to the floor. Most surprisingly is he had replaced his eyepatch with a prosthetic eye.


Sunny cocked her head, in confusion, "What is this all about?"


"Hold on, Krill though, that's low hanging fruit."


The woman shrugged, "He was the only one I knew who I could scare and not get stomped, besides." She grinned, "He squeals like a child."


"Captain, we're wasting time." One of the bridge crew had stepped up to the Commander's side. He was wearing a strange blue long sleeve shirt, black pants.... And well his ears seemed rather pointir than they should have been.


"And You are absolutely right." he motioned the group behind him forward, "Come on wouldn't want to miss anything."


Sunny and Krill stood by in confusion as the humans walked past in the wake of the captain. Behind him, a bearded man in tan robes and a brown cloak followed by another in a strange blck suit of armor with some serious breathing issues, and then a bunch of white armored men after that. In stark contrast to that a few people came by in very dated clothing the women with large skirts, and the men with fancy tipped canes. Sunny found one of the costumes quite unsettling, a human painted with a whte face but bright red lips, and nose with a shock of orange hair and a very strange lacy costume. When he smiled at her, it made her shiver.


After that, A human in a long black and red cape, dark hair slicked back. He smiled at them, and his teeth were far longer than they should have been. Sunny could tell by the way krill cringed, that he wasn't particularly pleased with this.


They continued to parade past in a column, strange armor, stranger clothing. Sunny recognized some of them from the multitudinous amount of movies Vir had made her watch.


A woman in full plate armor clanked her way past walking side by side with a man wearing ablack suit, dark hair reaching to his shoulders. He had a very closely cropped dark beard, and under one arm he held a stuffed beagle.... Whatever that was about.


After they had gone past, sunny and Krill tagged onto the end of the line following the group of humans into the rec room where they ranged themselves comfortably. Commander Vir motioned them closer, "Come on you two, don't' think I didn't forget about you." Sunny was a bit confused when he handed her a very strange looking weapon shaped sort of like a teardrop, but with two prongs. When she pressed a button near the handle, the entire thing lit up with analogue blue electricity.


Kril got some sort of black covering with a red hourglass shape on the back.


"What is this?" Krill demanded


The commander grinned and opened his arms wide, "This my friend is october 31st, Halloween."


"A hallow whatsis?"


"No Hloween. Probably about the greatest holiday ever."


"Like christmas?" Krill wondered.


"Exactly like christmas. A pagan holiday evolved overtime for commercialization to squeeze every drop of income out of the general populace, and absolutely the best." Krill and Sunny looked back and forth between each other in confusion


"What does that have to do with the costumes?"


"Well originally i think it had to do something with wearing masks so a demon couldn't see your real face or something, but now you just dress up as whatever is cool, and then the kids go around asking people for candy. For adults it's an excuse to get drunk, eat their kids candy, and watch a scary movie marathon."


Sunny crossed her arms, "And which one of those will we be doing now?"


The Commander grinned at her, "Well, now that we are dressed up, we will be doing a scary movie marathon, eating candy, and then later we are going to party and get drunk.... Within reason."


Oh great, this was going to be a disaster. Humans always thought alcohol was a good idea..... It never was.


The commander took a seat on one of the couches and then patted the cushions next to him, "See, I Reserved seats for the three of us.... oh , just one warning though, I am a total pansy when it comes to scary movies. I will scream, no question about it."


"Than..... Why are we doing it?" Sunny wondered


"Because it's halloween, the entire point is to be scared at at least some point during the day."


-


He was very much ot kidding. He did scream, a lot, and he had a habit of grabbing sunny rather violently when anything jumped out at them. Sunny personally didn't see the big deal, there wasn't any monster for real, and even if there was, she had a couple of ideas on how to get rid of them, and most of them involved a sharp stick of some sort, or a grenade. It also didn't help that the humans were always stupid, she knew humans and she was very aware of how well their flight or fight system worked. No human she knew would walk into a dark room after something creepy happened to them.


But these humans, they loved it, if they weren't freaking out they were laughing at the others freaking out, and even those who were freaking out ended up laughing a few seconds later. She was sure that Krill had some paper in mind about human social bonding, or perhaps a theory about the calibration of the flight or fight system encouraged by the viewing of scary movies, but she wasn't convinced.


Watching Adam almost pee himself was rather entertaining, and out of the two of them, she liked it when he was forced to rely on her. In this case, he mostly just borrowed her as a shield, but still, it was funny.


Krill was not particularly happy with the amount of trash food consumed. He hadn't exactly known about health science when he started, kind of assuming that humans could just eat anything they wanted, but now he knew better, and knowing better meant being annoyed at the human's poor life choices.


As for the strange costumes, it turned out that the humans had dressed themselves up as popular characters from movies, books, or history. If not a specific person, than they chose for an aesthetic. The woman in white was from a centuries old horror movie called, the ring. As for Commander Vir, he described his costume as "Coming from the best underrated sci-fi television show to ever grace planet earth.


She would have placed him in a western rather than science fiction, but it seemed as if humans didn't like following the rules of their own genres.


As for Krill, he did have a couple of theories to write about. Yes, sunny was right about the first two, and in conjunction with each other. Laughter was, mostly, a social emotion, sure humans laughed to themselves, but they did it at a much higher frequency around other humans. Furthermore, from what he could tell, many humans didn't like to watch these sort of movies alone which condcluded to him that fear was designed to be a social experience. In fact, humanity seemed to have designed a way to foster greater social bonds in people by having them experience fear together, not only that, but the human sympathetic nervous system was allowed to work in a safe environment readying itself for if something DID happen, and practicing for the eventuality.


He came to the conclusion that it was probably a good practice for the humans. It was a safe way for them to experience stress with other humans and prepare mentally for dangerous situations. For once, Krill actually approved of the behavior, it was safe, nothing dangerous about watching a movie.


As for the costumes, he had a theory about that too. Humans, and partially the Drev, were the only creatures known to design fictional events through fiction, as demonstrated by the movies. The Drev had generally used it the purpose of religion creating gand epics of fantastic warriors in order to teach their children attributes proper for a warrior. Humans would make up anything for the entertainment of it, they had an uncanny ability to imagine themselves in fantastic situations, and many spent time looking for these stories actively. Krill wondered if it was a way to practice empathy, putting yourself in the shoes of another, or if it was some sort of learning. Perhaps they gleaned information from unusual situations preparing themselves in case something were to happen.


The Commander's opinion? Well he pointed out that it was fun to be someone else for a while, someone who was braver than you, smarter than you, better looking than you, or maybe had a more interesting life then you. It gave you an excuse to act in ways you wouldn't normally do, and allowed others to accept your actions as, not you, bu of another person.


Humanity desired nothing more than adventure, and perhaps.... That's why they went to space before bothering to find out what was in the depths of their own ocean.

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