This is Halloween

Written in art class… sorta. Anyway, SD Gundam is owned by Bandai, blah blah blah, HALLOWEEN! Dedicated to Cybertoy00, who is awesome beyond all belief.

"Gentlemen…" Charon opened the convention center doors. "Welcome to Transworld Halloween Trade Show 2007!"

The enormous building was packed to the walls with monsters! Every manner of ghoul, beast, and goblin could be seen from the front door, hanging from rafters and crawling out of holes in the ground. The great space sang with screams of pain and helpless souls begging for mercy (as well as the standard "hiss-pop" of low pressure hydraulics). Among the monsters and terrors, though, were average-looking people, dressed in touristy shirts and looking at the beasts with a mix of amusement, surprise, and serious thought.

"Whaddayathink?" Charon squeaked. "Is it awesome, or is it awesome?"

The Gundam Force were cowering from the other side of the doormat.

"I'm not going in there!" Shute squealed from behind Captain.

"Do you not see the ghosts?" Baku's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates, body going pale. "They're everywhere!" Zero only nodded in a agreement, the rest of him too terrified to moved; meanwhile, Captain's eyes were fixed on what looked like a human male cleaved in two.

The sabercat only sighed. "They're robots! And dudes in costumes, none of this is real! This is a convention for the companies that make haunted house props!"

The blunt explanation toned down the Gundams' fear just a bit. Captain was the first to swallow the lump in his throat. "These are… facsimiles?"

"Yes." Charon moved a bit farther into the door. "Not real. Just plastic and an electric motor or two to make them move. Nothing in there is gonna hurt you unless you're stupid and stick your finger in one of the robot's joints or something. Now, are you coming?"

It took a few seconds, but Captain eventually nodded and the rest followed suit. The tiny group marched into the convention center, cameras at the ready and hair (or closest equivalent) standing on end.

&&&

"You see, most of this stuff isn't that bad." Charon pointed to the respective booths as her finger pointed to them. "Look, they got holographic portraits, Halloween masks, black light stuff-"'

"Hey, Zero, look!"

The Winged Knight's eyes snapped right to his samurai friend's voice; Baku was standing in said black light booth. He looked at his glowing appendages and chuckled. "I'm purple!"

"We'd better take you to the juicing room, then, Violet." With a flip of his cape, Zero was off again.

"What?" Baku shook his head and moved on, walking past Shute.

And then he stopped, because Shute was rocking back and forth on his feet and giggling like a schoolgirl.

"... Shute-"

"BAKU, CHECK IT OUT!" Shute immediately whirled around and forced Bakunetsumaru into his previous spot. "It turns from a lady into a black panther!"

"There are no such thing as black panthers!" Charon yelled from three booths down (the glow-in-the-dark bones booth). "They're black jaguars!"

Shute acknowledged the factoid and turned his attention back to Baku. The samurai was now literally hopping on his two feet, watching the portrait go from woman to cat with the tilt of his head. "This is very cool, Shute!"

"I know, isn't it?!"

&&&

"See, look, Captain, it's fake blood." Charon gently nudged the unexpectedly timid Gundam towards the demonstration booth. "Cornstarch and sugar. You could eat it if you wanted to!" She waved her hand to catch the attention of the blood mixer. "You can eat this stuff, right? Does it taste good?"

The mixer made a noncommital wiggling motion with his hand. Captain backed up another four steps. "I-I-I do not like the c-concept of eating blood..."

"It's not blood!" Charon shouted. "It's- it's red custard! Cap-"

"CAPTAIN!"

Bakunetsumaru ran out of nowhere and dive-bombed Captain, pushing him in the direction of the booth intersection. "G-g-g-g-g-g-g-ghooooost!"

"Got-dangit, Baku!" Charon snatched up the two terrified Gundams and pulled them towards the intersection. "I told you, like, fifty times, nothing here i-"

She came face-to-...hip with a 10 foot tall, deer-skulled beast. The three of them jumped, shivering only subsiding when they heard Shute laughing and Zero gasping.

"A druid!" The Winged Knight latched himself onto the bottom quarter of the beast. "I have not seen a druid since I was a baby! Do you tell stories?"

"Captain, I just saw the coolest booth!" screamed the human child as he jumped into Captain's arms. "They had, like, taxidermied animals like at my grandpa's house, only they had no skin!"

Charon mused to herself. "I liked that booth. Come on, guys, we're gonna head on over to the robots!"

Baku tugged on the "ghost"'s coat tails even as Zero continued to fawn over him. "You know... this thing is very ugly when you remember it's a man in a suit..."

&&&

They couldn't even get Captain past the first thing that jiggled. Push and shove all they tried, the Gundam's eyes were stuck on an electric chair set-up with a particularly vivid scream playing in the background. While his eyes were locked on the chair, his feet were locked on the floor.

"Cap-tain," Shute grunted. "It's-a-robot!"

Baku gave Captain a hearty shove on the bum, a tactic that usually worked at getting the scaredy-Gundam to go somewhere he didn't like. "Captain, go! You are ruining the trip for the rest of us!"

"This is one of the most ungentlemanly things you have ever done!" Zero growled, more to himself than his friend. He grabbed one of Captain's arms (they were both nervously tucked into his chest) and pulled, successfully yanking himself into Captain's faceplate. "Yeowch!"

"Look, guys, this isn't gonna work. Captain, you go hang out in the costume wing with Rele and Genkimaru. We'll pick you up when it's time to go home." Charon gathered the others with a wave of her arm. "Come on guys, we got a date with a rock monster."

They disappeared into the animatronic wing, leaving Captain by himself. He HATED the animatronic wing; the humans at the convention seemed to be only mildly disturbed by robots. He was a little more than mildly disturbed; something deep in his processor reeled at the mere suggestion of humans in pain. Now, everything in front of his eyes was either bleeding, smoking, or shrieking like Madnug was slowly disassembling them.

But now he could escape to the costume department. Harmless little trinkets and racks of celebrity glasses he could try on with Rele. He turned to leave-

The clown looked like he'd been under Gunpanzer's treads. The skin on his jaw had been ripped away from his jawbone, exposing every vein and tooth. The back part of his skull was gone as well, and his exposed brain pulsed. "Hey, dude! Enjoying the-"

"CHARON!" Captain dove into the animatronics wing.

The clown only laughed and took off his mask. "Aw, man, I gotta start warning people..."

&&&

Baku laughed at the giant pig head that jutted out of the crate. "Zero! Zero, come see this, it's only the front part of the head!"

Tentatively at first, Zero's head poked out from behind Bakunetsumaru. "Really?"

"Yeah, look from the side!" Baku shoved Zero over by two feet. Indeed, the rather nasty-looking boar only existed from the "chin" to just behind his ears. The rest was a skinny hydraulic arm making it rotate along its axis.

"Oh! That's... interesting." Zero backed up behind Baku again. "But I still do not like pigs."

"Aw, come on!" Baku pointed to another robot; quaking, bloody plastic sacks with humans inside that Shute called "body bags". "These things aren't so bad when you get a good look at them! I think the gears are jammed on those ones over there!"

"Y-yeah..." Zero gently wrapped his hands around Bakunetsumaru's arm. "M-maybe I will stay close to you today."

"Baby."

"Shut up!"

"Don't worry, I'll hang onto you." Baku gave Zero a careless hug and pulled him to another wing of the exhibit.

&&&

"Quick, quick, quick, before it stands up again!"

Shute clambered onto the sleeping trolls lap and smiled! Through his teeth, he ordered, "Take the picture, take the picture!"

"Gah!" Charon fiddled with the tiny camera. "It turned itself off! Hang on a second!"

"Hurry up- AH!" Shute jumped as the troll began to stand and the joint caught a hold of his shorts. He jumped off in a hurry and dropped into a giggling fit, Charon joining him.

"I think we're ticking off the people who wanna take their picture."

"I know, but we're having fun!" Charon nudged Shute back to his feet. "Hurry, he's sitting down! We'll try aga- dumb camera! Turn on!"

&&&

"Shute?! Shute, where are you?!"

"No, no more pain..."

Captain's head snapped to yet another electric chair, this one more violent and LOUD than the first. With a yelp, he went in the first direction his feet pointed.

"ZERO! Please, someone!"

A hiss of hydraulics. Captain stopped as a blood-drenched, knife-wielding THING suddenly sliced the head off of a crying man kneeling in front of him. A twist of his heels, and he was gone.

"BAKUNETSUMARU!"

His face hit a broom. He looked for the human face and found only an alien set of mandible. His torso turned before the rest of him did. His hands actually hit the ground, and he ran on all fours like a dog before he had enough sense to right himself.

He didn't see until it was too dark to see. His hands touched moss; his face touched cobwebs. An unearthly roar to his right. He turned to see a rotted corpse horse and rider bearing down on him!

He turned to run again; a skeleton jumped out at him and reached for his neck!

Another turn! The pumpkins themselves, teeth jagged and bloody, rose out of the weeds!

Another turn! A massive dragon spread his wings over him, trapping him in the never-ending pit of terror and torment-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

&&&

Zero was in fumes. "Why have they chained up this defenseless rock golem?!"

"It's not real, moron!" Baku shouted.

"Just because he is made of rock does not mean he is not alive!" Zero pointed to the clumsy animatronic. "This is animal cruelty!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Zero jumped onto Baku's arm. The two panted in terror for a moment before Zero laughed. "That was a good one!"

Bakunetsumaru hit him. "That was Captain, moron!"

&&&

They found Captain a few hours later. He'd tucked himself into the back-back corner of a demonstration haunted house, curled himself into a ball, and cried uncontrollably until Shute (of course) found him. He quite literally had to be carried outside, and even then he did not calm down enough to walk until it dark enough outside to make him nervous again. Charon's father drove them all home, and Captain had to be walked to his room and consoled until he fell asleep. And several times afterward when he woke up screaming, sweating, and colder than death. Meanwhile, Bakunetsumaru went on a week-long kick about how amazing Halloween was, Zero stayed far away from pork products, and Shute got jitters around fat people.

EACH Transworld vendor had a least 3 Neotopian clients that year. Business had never been better.

DONE! Search for Transworld Halloween Trade Show 2007 on the website with the videos, and you'll find my reference. There are a couple things I pulled from other videos, but they're all from the same convention in Chicago. You can find 'em. It'll be fun.