Chapter 8: Chapter 8

Mul was now working for both spirits. As if she hadn't had enough with Snatcher, Moonjumper also put her to work too in his plan to conquer the Subcon Forest. From stealing things in the outside world for Moonjumper’s house on the horizon, through kicking away groups of cultists that would come to find answers in the Forest, to try and solve the mystery in a forgotten desert in the search for the Sandworm that long ago devoured the former oasis city of Connectimafia to try and take ahold of worm’s power. One time Moonjumper made her catch cursed items from the very edges of the Horizon in high and dangerous places, mentioning how some of those cursed items could prove useful in their invasion while he finished his puppets.

One day she found a pile of rags of different colors at the side of a tree. The pile of rags suddenly stood up as if it was alive and yawned, scaring her over. Mu screamed and fell back in her butt.

"OH. My. GOD. I'm totally busted! How EMBARRASSING!” The creature spoke to her in a weird, distorted voice that sounded like a glitched record more than an actual voice. The creature's head was all black and had what appeared to be more than 6 eyes in different positions, all blinking slowly.

“What? What… on earth… are you?”

“I’m the Shapeshifter of course! Who else could I be?”

“Umm, I think I should go.”

“Go? Where? Are you going to tell them?”

“Tell them? Tell what? Tell who?”

“Oh well, you know, let’s just say I did something really, really bad! But I just had to do it! The voices… they wouldn't stop! The progress society has made in transportation it’s just so awful, with those trains and single-stage powder-based incendiary propulsion machines! They are so damaging to the ecosystem! I hate them! I hate them all!” The Shapeshifter laughed, but it sounded more like a broken CD more than anything. “I went back and changed it though. Those piles of useless feathers didn’t notice, I made sure I fixed it all up, and after that, they just thought it was part of the movie!” They repeated his same laugh from before sound by sound. “But I left in case they found out.”

“What are you even talking about?” Mu stood up slowly and backed away slowly from the thing.

“Well, it’s better if you don’t know.” The Shapeshifter looked around and lowered her voice. “Wanna hear a story? When I was in kindergarten, I knew a girl who looked just like you…” The Shapeshifter got closer to her, Mu tried to look around for openings and get away. “And whenever I would talk to her, she would yell… THE MURDERER'S IN HERE!"

“AAAAH!” Mu ran away from the place as fast as her feet allowed her to without looking back once. Hoping to never see that thing ever again in her life.

Moonjumper’s jobs were shitty and sometimes outright life threatening, but at least he was giving her a place to sleep and Moonjumper was now able to cook now that she kept stealing ingredients. The corpse made her some of what he called his famous, fantastic crispy bacon with fried eggs, which she thought were okay.

The most annoying thing was having to work with Snatcher as well when he found her outside the Horizon walking through the forest.

“I still have your soul, remember? Now get back to work!”

“How many more stupid jobs do I have to do? I have been working here for weeks!”

The weird part of that all was that when she was outside of the Horizon, Hatkid came by always trying to help her.

“This time you will have to uh… fill up the well’s bottom.”

“Fill up the wells bottom? But it is all ice here!” Mu asked him. “It’s freezing!”

Hatkid looked at Snatcher, confused.

“It’s a freezing well, sure, and normally I would ask you to uncover it, which trust me! It is just as hard, but right now there is a spot at the bottom where there is one small hole on the side, and the earth is sort of… falling down, and the bottom becomes hollow. Every person that falls into that hole ends up on the other side of the planet, or even worse, they never come out!”

Hatkid was still confused, how did the earth below fall down if the bottom of the well was frozen in solid ice?

“Wow, how charitable of you to make sure people don’t fall to the well! If it is so dangerous! Why don’t your minions do it if they are already dead anyway?”

“Oh of course! If the people keep falling in the hole in the well, I will never get to steal their souls!” Snatcher smiled at Mu sarcastically, but gave a confused look when he saw Hatkid ready to shovel. “And what are you doing here?!”

“Bleeh!” Hatkid pulled out her tongue.

“You have contracts to finish with me, you know? Back in the spaceship?” Snatcher frowned trying to remind her. “I already finished the costume you wanted. Remember? Remember the costume? The one you want me to make of pure gold with the pieces you found in the attic?”

“What, pure gold?! Mu asked both of them out, as usual, Hatkid just smiled without anything else.

“You!” Snatcher pointed at Mustache Girl. “Why is this brat tagging along with you now?”

“What do I know! She just comes here and tries to work with me! I thought you had brought her to supervise me or something!” Mu exclaimed and the two of them frowned, looking back to Hatkid. Both of them were confused.

Hatkid just smiled, still completely silent.

“You know what, whatever. Just don’t make a mess and finish this out!”

“You shouldn’t make a couple of kids do your work!” Mu yelled at him while Snatcher left the well, leaving her alone with Hatkid.

“Why are you even here anyway?”

Silence, still no answer from the other girl.

“If you are planning something, you are done for!” Mu yelled at the girl as well, Hatkid just started shoveling.

Mu tried to start and shovel as well but something fell out of her pocket. It was a phone she had stolen recently.

“Wow!” Hatkid saw the phone and took it.

“Hey! Give that back!” Mu ran towards Hatkid trying to get the phone back from her, Hatkid just ran upwards towards the platforms of the well looking at the device. It had so many applications and functions! Even including a 0.4 Megapixel Camera at the front and back!

“I told you to give it to me!” Mu reached the platform and was about to hit her, when Hatkid turned around to her and gave the phone back to her.

“Give me that!” Mu took the phone back and looked at the screen looking for damages, when she saw something on the screen that said. “New Contact Added.”

“Uh.. kid, you wrote Me as the name of your contact.”

Hatkid smiled and went back to town to shovel, having a contact for Mu was super important in her plan! First they would become friends again, then pals, then comrades, best friends, and then fullon sisters!

“You are supposed to write your actual name on a contact! Kid? Kid!” She grunted and then went back to shoveling.

Outside the well, Moonjumper was confronting Snatcher. He had come out of the Horizon in search of Hatkid to see if he could recruit her as well, but he didn’t find her anywhere, instead he had found himself with the ghost that was wandering through the forest.

“Go back to your grave, moonboy! Don’t make this harder for the both of us!”

“Hello there, my ghostly half.”

“Aren’t you tired of being an impostor?” Snatcher slowly got close to him.

“It seems you are still afraid of looking at a mirror, Snatcher.” Moonjumper smiled at him. “That trauma you got back from when you were young is still there, when you were in high school, and everyone thought that you were really ugly!” He laughed back at him while Snatcher just frowned.

"Ha! I might not be the most attractive ghost, but at least I'm not the one creeping around in other people's memories. Talk about a violation of privacy. Next time, try asking permission before you start poking around in someone's brain!"

“Oh but it is my brain now, my mind, my head. And it has been as long as I can remember.”

Snatcher tried to launch himself and attack him, but Moonjumper stood up before he could catch him.

“Just… move on from the pecking past already, and get your own life.” He told him while he tried to stand up from the floor to attack him back again.

“I think it’s time for me to leave.” Moonjumper ran away from Snatcher and went back into the horizon.

The task of filling up the well took a couple of days, the hole just became larger and larger every day, bringing earth and sand and dirt from other places of the forest back to the well took time but it seemed that the floor beneath them just sank faster than what they could fill it up.

Hatkid just kept working diligently along with Mu day by day, Snatcher gave her no more than 5 contracts when she had to work for him, so if they finished soon they could probably go back to her ship and talk things over, hopefully.

Mu on the other hand was just confused, without hearing any words from here she just kept wondering what was going through her head at all. Hatkid was not in a contract with Snatcher to help her clean the well, and after so many days, it didn’t seem she was plotting anything in particular.

“Hey, kid, can I ask you something so you can be honest with me?”

Hatkid stood up and nodded at her.

“So, you have been helping me, like, a lot, these days, and no matter how much I think about it, I still don’t understand why you are doing it. What is your goal? Why haven’t you gone back home–”

You are reading story Lost Souls From the Forest at novel35.com

Hatkid was playing with her umbrella as she listened and accidentally ended up falling into the hole, cutting Mu short.

“AAAH!” She screamed as she fell at high speed, until at the end not even her voice could be heard.

“Uh, kid? Are you there?” Mu asked, looking carefully into the void. “Is she… oh no.”

*Ding!* Her phone made a notification sound. Mu unlocked the screen and checked the text, it was from Hatkid herself.

“I’m alright!” Mu read the message out loud, afterwards she went back to work.

***

“Come on kiddo! Will you at least think it over for a moment?” Moonjumper asked Hatkid, at the end, he had finally found her working along with Mu and he invited her one time to go to the horizon.

“No way!” She crossed her arms. There was no way she would help Moonjumper in trying to take over the Forest, Snatcher was her BFF! Well, it seemed that Mu was working with him now, so they probably were planning something, but she wasn’t really worried, considering how powerful Snatcher was, he had tons and tons of minions at his disposal! Yeah, trying to defeat him was a fool’s errand!

“You understand that I’m the legitimate prince of Subcon, right? I am the right person to deal with my people here.”

Hatkid snorted.

“Oh! Come on! Don’t tell me you think I’m also some sort of copy! Do you?”

“Yeah.”

Moonjumper deadpanned and went back to look at Mu.

“What about you, kid? Could you somehow, I don’t know, convince this girl that I’m not some sort of impostor?”

“What are you talking about? Of course that you are a copy.”

“What? No, not you too!”

“It’s the truth!”

“If that’s the truth then why are you here then? You are still working for me, right?”

“Yes, but that’s because you said you were going to help me get my soul back!”

Moonjumper grunted. “You know what? Just get back to work, I have things to do on my own.” The corpse left, leaving the two girls alone.

“Nice home.” Hatkid said to Mu, trying to sound sincere.

"Ugh, enough already! I know full well that you've got a spaceship and all that jazz, but unlike you, the rest of us have to work hard to have a place to live!"

Hatkid sighed. Getting along with Mu would be probably a lot harder than what she thought.

Normally there would be no need for this, normally, Hatkid would never have to deal with having to go to such lengths, she had an objective in her mind back then and people who didn’t understand her didn’t matter. But now, befriending Mu again was her goal, so new measures were required.

She took her tritonicprocessingnodesledxenonwarpanator out and wrote a message to Mu.

Mu heard the notification sound in her phone and read the message from Hatkid.

“I was hoping we could become friends again.”

“Ha.” She looked back at Hatkid, who was smiling at her. “You and me? Friends?”

“Yeah.” She replied.

“Do you even have an idea of what I have gone through because of you? Since you destroyed all my plans to fix things out and now people just hate me! Everyone just refuses to talk to me! Now I can’t even go back to my own town, and it’s all because of you! Don’t you think it’s a bit much to expect for us to go back to being friends?”

Hatkid’s smile dropped. Did Mu even understand what she had done before?

“Look.” Mu sighed. “I know what I did, and I know I made a mistake! But I still don’t feel ready to be talking with you. I had big plans for the future and now I have to try and think about what I am going to do next.” She looked away and closed her eyes. “Just… go, I need to think by myself now.”

Hatkid left afterwards and went home using her magic hat, just as she always did.

After a while, Mu got a message from her again.

“I know that you made a mistake before, but all in all, I don’t think that you are a bad person at the bottom. I have gotten to know you more these last months and I want you to count with me.”

She reread the message several times and scratched her forehead. Well, at least that was one thing that was clear now. She wanted her to be friends again, but why?

“Why do you even want to be friends again?”

“Because I think that you could have some company and support. Just like me.”

“Why haven’t you gone home?”

“I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s just say there isn’t really anybody waiting for me there right now.”

Well, that probably explained some things. But still, it just gave her conflicting feelings to think about it. She and Hatkid? Trying and being best buds again? No, that wasn’t probably a good idea now.

“Also, why do you not like to talk out loud when people ask you something?”

“Oops! I’m losing signal! I will have to hang up! Byeee!”

“This is text.”

“Sorry, I can’t hear anything. ZZzzzZZZbrrrrrBRRRR.”

“Alright, Kid.” She said out loud, saving back her phone, and then went back to work.

***

“Hey, kiddo? Kiddo, can you even hear me?” Snatcher had gone back to his ship to visit her and found her again there lying down in her room with her head to the ceiling. “Uh, I finished making that green dress you asked for, I will give it to you if you find some coins for me.”

Hatkid slowly sat down and took the map Snatcher had on his hands, then, she looked back to the dress Snatcher was showing to her.

“I don’t know why you would want to wear this dress. Personally I think that that old hag had terrible taste and her dress always looked horrible! But well, if you want to have it, you know what you have to do.” That had been the most lame thing Hatkid had asked him to do to accept his challenges.

She had taken a photo of the dress Vanessa used to wear when she saw the photograph while working in stealing her crowns with other Hatkids in her mansion. Stopping to take a picture had gotten her cursed and her memory became fuzzy after she became a puppet, but taking the picture had been totally worth it! She would finally have that cute green dress! Afterwards, she showed the photo to Snatcher while pointing to the dress and Snatcher asked if he wanted to have one like it as well.

“To get this green dress you will have to hahaha, to get this green dress, haha, HAHAHA, you will have to–” Snatcher couldn’t contain his laughter while trying to ask her what she what hat to do, it felt as if he was going to give her his most dangerous challenge yet, but his laughter suddenly stopped and he completely deadpanned at the last second. “You will have to go and find 3 coins of mine inside the forest.”

“Huh?”

“Yup, really dangerous coins, so go there and get them, go, go, right away, and if you die then bad luck I guess, although not as bad as having to wear that awful dress you want so much, but oh well, come on, get yourself to work right now!”

Hatkid had a slight smile on her face, she didn’t seem as happy as usual, but it seemed to be that she was still affected by what Tim had told her. She jumped into the portal and went looking for the coins.

Watching her looking for the coins would be so fun! Well, it’s not like looking for coins didn’t prove any threat whatsoever to her overall and it would be super easy for her to find them using her map badge. It’s not like he wanted her to try and cheer her up by giving her the dress, he was doing this for revenge, revenge! She would probably lower her guard sooner or later and then boom, he would give her a more challenging mission that would take her a lot time to complete! Without completely endangering her at all, no no no, it was all revenge!

Snatcher smiled while watching the kid finding her first coin, feeling a warm sensation in his ghostly stomach when he saw her smile at her find.

You can find story with these keywords: Lost Souls From the Forest, Read Lost Souls From the Forest, Lost Souls From the Forest novel, Lost Souls From the Forest book, Lost Souls From the Forest story, Lost Souls From the Forest full, Lost Souls From the Forest Latest Chapter