The Overwatch Halloween Party was a tradition at this point, even after the organization had been disbanded for the second time. They'd just stop using the Watchpoint and rented a place large enough to host everyone. This year, to everyone's surprise, the party had been organized in Château Guillard. Now that its owner was long dead, the city right next to it, Annecy, had taken the castle back and rented it. Everyone had been surprised when they'd received the invitation, but they'd all made the journey anyway, and, as usual, they'd brought their kids.

Alya was very quick to separate herself from her mothers and grand-mother once they'd arrived at the castle, barely greeting everyone she saw in passing. The main dinning room had been decorated and prepared for the occasion, the fireplace lit and assortments of food and drinks laid on the old dinning table. Everyone was in costume, the adults and the children, though Alya couldn't see any of her friends around. She quickly spotted McCree though, and stopped right beside him, taking him out his conversation with Winston.

"Well would you look at that!" he said as he looked down at Alya, "You make quite the superhero! Who's that, Captain America?"

"Kinda," Alya replied quickly, not wanting to waste the time to explain all the details. "Do you know where Amanda is?" she asked quickly.

McCree smirked and scratched the back of his head. His monster hunter hat wobbled a bit on his head before he set it straight.

"I think I saw her running of that way with Neelam."

Alya nodded quickly and ran off, barely thanking the old man before disappearing in the library. This castle was very strange, she thought, all open to the outside every room she went. She didn't find her friends near the old dusty bookshelf, though. She was faced with a choice, between going outside in the dark, cold night, or down the dark stairs, or up a small set of steps and into an old, abandoned office. The choice was easy. She turned around and went up the steps.

The office was mostly empty, with just a desk and a few wooden boxes to occupy the space. When she looked down the stone banister she could see the party, where all the adults in Halloween costumes were talking and drinking. She quickly noticed her mothers, talking with Tracer. Angela was dressed as a witch, like every year, and Fareeha was a headless knight. Well, she was supposed to be, but wearing a black bodysuit under pieces of armors wasn't very convincing, in Alya's opinion. Tracer was dressed as a werewolf, and beside her, holding her leg like it was a life line, Alya noticed what she assumed was Charlie, dressed as a ghost, with just a white cloth thrown over his head. She decided to go and fetch Charlie, and maybe together they could find Amanda.

She turned around and yelled. Amanda and especially Neelam dissolved into laughter. They'd scared the living hell out of her, waiting for her to turn around to jumpscare her. Alya could still feel her heart pounding in her chest. Amanda quickly recovered from her laughter while Neelam was still giggling and hiccuping, bent in half. Alya glared at her. It had to be her idea. The six-year-old was a menace and a bad influence ever since she'd been a baby, Alya always thought. Of course, Amanda was too kind to see it, but Alya knew the truth.

"You should have seen your face!" Neelam finally managed to let out.

"It's not funny."

"It so is!"

Alya continued to glare at her. Neelam was dressed as a Mexican skeleton with flowers decorating the bones all over her body. A cackling skeleton, Alya thought it suited her well. She stopped glaring, however, when Amanda took her hand.

"I'm sorry. I thought it would be funny."

Alya smiled.

"It's okay. But let's not do that again."

Amanda nodded. She was wearing a Captain Marvel costume like they'd agreed a month ago or so. They were two super captains, Captain Marvel, and America Chavez. Well, maybe Alya's eyes were a bit too blue and Amanda was a bit more Asian than she should have been, but they didn't really care about that.

"Hey look, it's Charlie!" Neelam declared.

She ran down the stairs and disappeared into the crowd.

"Let's go fetch him." Amanda agreed.

They walked down the stairs, their hands parting, to Alya's displeasure. On their way through the crowd, they found Neelam being scowled by her mothers, especially Sombra, in a very animated Spanish. And when faced with an angry dragon and Frankenstein's bride, the little skeleton was not talking back.

Alya and Amanda arrived first to Charlie, who was still clinging to his mother's leg. They stopped beside him, almost twice as tall as him, and he stopped shaking slightly.

"Hey, Charlie."

"Hi..." he replied in a small voice.

"Hello, girls! Nice costumes."

They looked up with a bright smile toward Tracer, who seemed rather embarrassed to have her son glued to her like that. She probably wouldn't have had a drink if someone hadn't brought it to her.

"Thank you, Mrs. Oxton! Can Charlie come play with us?" Alya asked.

"We promise we won't scare him," Amanda added.

Lena smiled and kneeled to look at Charlie. Only his little gray eyes behind his glasses were visible through the two holes Emily had cut in a white sheet.

"What do say, buddy? You want to go play with the girls?"

He shook his head.

"You sure? They're dressed like superheroes. They can protect you from the monsters."

"Really?" he asked in a little voice.

"Of course."

He seemed to consider what to do for a good minute. Finally, he moved away from his mother, very slowly, and grabbed Alya's hand. His hand was all clammy, but Alya didn't complain. Charlie had always been a bit of a scaredy cat.

"I think I saw marshmallows on the table. You want to check it out?" Alya asked, bending slightly to look at Charlie's eyes.

He nodded, and they slowly made their way toward the main table.

As they were eating their fourth candy or so, Neelam found them once again. She instantly smiled when she saw Charlie.

"Hey, Charlie! Nice costume!"

Charlie's eyes smiled back at her, looking a lot less scared than he'd been before. He detached himself from both ten-years-old girls and hugged Neelam, his ghost costume hiking up his arms and showing his orange and blue woolen sweater underneath. Neelam hugged him back and replaced his costume once they separated.

"I like your costume too. Is it a skeleton?"

"Kinda."

Neelam leaned to her side and picked up a handful of candies from the nearest plastic pumpkin. She handed a small red one to Charlie and stuffed all of the others in her mouth at once. She chewed for a good minute non-stop, looking more like a hamster than a skeleton. Alya crossed her arms and declared:

"If you eat too many candies you'll get a stomach ache."

Neelam just shrugged, and, after struggling to swallow her mouthful of candy, she replied:

"Worth it."

Amanda didn't add anything, though she agreed with Alya. She was looking at the entrance, waiting for someone else to show up. Neelam was about to take another fistful of candies, and Charlie was debating whether he should do the same when Amanda declared:

"Wei is here!"

They all looked up at the entrance of the room, where Wei had walked in with his parents. Neelam quickly took off to fetch him too, and Amanda and Alya followed more slowly, after having both taken one of Charlie's hand to guide him.

Wei's parents had already left him, but the family's bodyguard was still standing right behind him. Charlie tried not to look at him, because even if the tall and very large man was getting old, he was still scary looking, and even more so in his Frankenstein's monster costume, with all the stitches and such. Wei was wearing a lab coat over pretty normal looking clothes. It must have been one of his mom's because it was barely too big for him. Wei was the tallest, even taller than Alya, even though he was only eight.

"Hey, Wei."

He had a very calm smile, always a bit shy.

"Who're you suppose to be?" Neelam asked.

"Hum... I'm Linus Pauling. He was a chemist..."

Wei quickly noticed no one else but him knew who Linus Pauling was, and after nervously pursing his lips he declared:

"It's okay..."

They all heard Roadhog behind him grunt something, but between his mask and his accent, no one knew what it was. Only Wei seemed to understand.

"'T's okay Roady. We won't get into trouble."

Roadhog didn't move at first, and they all thought he wasn't going to, but finally, he groaned something and moved toward the large group of adults in the dining room. Once they were out of his sight, Neelam glanced around to make sure none of the adults were focused on them, and with a motion of the hand, she prompted everyone to follow her.

"Now that we're all here, there's someplace I want to explore."

They all followed her back to the library, where she stopped at the edge of the stairs leading to the catacombs.

"Down there." she pointed.

Alya felt Charlie shake and cling to her.

"D... down there?"

"Yup."

Alya shook her head.

"I don't think it's a good idea. What if there is something dangerous under there?"

Neelam smirked.

"Don't tell me you're scared."

"I'm not. But Charlie is, obviously."

"I'm not sc.. scared," Charlie replied, while still holding on firmly to Alya's arm.

"Plus, we're not all here," Wei noted.

They all looked at him like they had no idea who he was talking about.

"The twins?"

Neelam laughed.

"They're four! We're not taking the twins with us! They're just babies."

"You're six, Neelam, why should we listen to you?"

Neelam continued to smirk and shrugged. She began walking down the stairs, one step at a time.

"Well, I'm going! See you later."

Neelam quickly walked down the stairs and disappeared into the darkness. All of the other kids exchanged a look. Finally, Alya sighed.

"We need to go after her. We could get into trouble if the parents know we let her go down."

"Wouldn't she be the only one who got into trouble if we don't follow her?" Wei asked.

Amanda explained:

"She's six. We're older than her, we're supposed to take care of her."

Wei nodded and looked down at the dark bottom of the stairs.

"Well... I guess we have to."

But before they could take another step, Charlie pulled back.

"I don't want to go! What if there are monsters down there?"

Alya kneeled in front of him and took both of his hands. She looked into his scared gray eyes and explained:

"We have to go down and find her. If you don't want to go, you can stay here and wait for us, alright?"

Charlie nodded.

"You want to stay here?"

He nodded again. Alya stood up and looked at the two others. Wei already had a flashlight in hand, which he'd probably hidden in one of his inside pockets. Amanda nodded to her, and together they began walking down the stairs. Wei lit their way. The stairs led to a tunnel to the left. They'd barely reach the bottom of the stairs that they suddenly heard a bunch of hurried steps and Charlie yelling:

"Wait for me! I don't want to stay alone!"

He quickly reached them, almost tripping over his costume multiple times because of his rush. He once again took a hold of Alya's arm, and the four of them entered the tunnel.

They emerged in a large cavernous room with rusted metal rings attached to the walls and what seemed to be an old cell on the right side of the room. It would have been too dark for Neelam to see, had she not been using her powers. Two light blue orbs were shining in her hands, and her teal eyes were gleaming almost just as brightly. Wei pointed his flashlight toward her, just to make sure it really was her, and she began laughing.

"I knew you'd follow me eventually."

Alya rolled her eyes.

"Of course you did."

"Did you know this place used to belong to Widowmaker?" Neelam said as she looked around.

"Who told you that?" Charlie asked, his voice shaking.

"I heard my moms talking about it. Maybe that's why there are so many spiders here."

"Or maybe it's because this place is old and no one ever dusts it," Alya replied.

Amanda and Wei chuckled at that. This place couldn't belong to Windowmaker, this was ridiculous. Neelam continued to walk around the dungeon, looking at all the rusted metal bars and the many cobwebs attached to every inch of the place.

"You think her spirit still haunts this place?"

Charlie let out a strange strangled sound, like the thought alone was scary enough to make him quiver even more than he already was.

"Neelam, that's enough." Alya declared, in the same tone captains talked to their insubordinate soldiers.

"Yeah, let's go back up," Amanda added.

"You guys are not fun." Neelam let out.

She looked around.

"I wonder what is hidden around here."

She started to walk to the other side of the room, toward another tunnel, and the other four began to shout at her to come back.

"Neelam, come on!"

"This isn't fun!"

"Come back!"

"I want to go back up..."

Neelam was chuckling, about to continue on her way, when they suddenly heard it. Loud but slow footsteps coming toward them. They all froze. The sound was coming from the stairs in front of them, the ones leading back up on the other side of the castle.

"Where are you?" a voice asked.

It was like a raspy groan, muted somehow. Neelam slowly walked back toward the group. One step at a time. Wei quickly turned off his flashlight. Now only Neelam's hands and eyes were illuminating the room in a dull blue light. The steps stopped. They held there breath, waiting. Charlie was shaking so much he barely held on his legs. The steps continued, slowly. They were becoming closer. Finally, they heard:

"There you are."

They barely got a good look at the monster before they took running. A broken white face with red eyes. Leather jacket with spikes on it. Not much else. Neelam was the first out of the catacombs, and she continued to run straight to her nearest mom. She was followed by Amanda, Alya, and Wei, who all did the same. All of the adults watched in surprise when the four children ran up to them and begun pulling them toward the catacombs, screaming:

"There's a monster down there!"

"It's horrible!"

"We almost died!"

Suddenly, Lena looked down at Alya and asked:

"Where's Charlie?"

All of the children's eyes grew wide.

"Oh no! Charlie!"

"The monster has Charlie!"

Laughter suddenly echoed from the catacombs, and everyone looked at the stairs, where Charlie, now free of his ghost sheet, was being carried up the stairs by the monster. Only, it wasn't a monster. It was grandpa Jack, disguised as a killer from those century-old movies.

"Look who I found down there."

Charlie was laughing happily. Between waves of laughter he managed to tell the others:

"You guys are dumb-dumbs, it's just Grandpa Jack."

Once Jack let him down and handed him his ghost costume back, Charlie ran up to his mom.

"See, Mama, I'm the bravest of everyone!"

She smiled and picked him up.

"Oh I saw buddy, I saw."

Charlie was smiling brightly, while the other four kids were looking confusedly at their parent. Angela looked down at Alya and explained:

"We couldn't find you anymore, so Jack decided to look for you."

Quickly, Alya explained:

"Neelam went downstairs so we went to fetch her, that's all."

"Well, from now on, don't go down there anymore, okay?"

Alya nodded vigorously. She wasn't going to try and save Neelam's life from a catacomb monster ever again, that was for sure.

"Anyway, the twins are here. Can you take care of them?"

Alya looked around. Indeed, a blanket had been placed in a corner, where both four years old, dressed as little rabbits, were seating and playing with a whole bunch of toys. Their father was lingering near them while their mother had gone to the table to fetch them drinks.

Alya nodded, and she only stopped to pull Amanda with her to the inevitable. Wei joined them, though Neelam was once again being scowled by her mothers for dragging all of the kids down with her. The three older kids sat down with the two four years old, but frankly, Alya preferred spending the rest of the evening with the twins playing with plastic farm animals rather than going down the catacombs ever again.