Chapter 4: Cooking-Momo

Momo steeled herself for the incoming ghosts once she made it to the cafeteria. More ghosts flew at her and she waved her wand accordingly. A few of them flew a little faster than the ones she fought off back in the library, but they were still slow enough for her to focus her spells. While the ghosts were not exactly the smartest beings, she really hoped that they would at least fly at her a little more gracefully.

"Please don't hit the tables!" she taunted the ghosts as she zapped them. "It's not polite!" She didn't let her wand down for a second, but she noticed that more and more ghosts were converging around her despite how slow they moved. Momo was sure she could keep on using her standard spells, but even her wand hand was bound to get tired at some point. "There's gotta be a better spell I can use to deal with more ghosts at once," she thought.

--------

Down in the school's basement levels, Mao Mao and the others ran down the halls, racing to where Camille said the magitech archive holding the old magic blaster might be, assuming Camille even knew what she was talking about. He didn't bother asking Camille for directions along the way for two reasons: one – she'd probably just babble on about likely unrelated nonsense, and two – there were signs on the walls that gave directions to the basement's various areas for him to follow. He made some twists and turns around a few corners until he got to the room where the archive was, seeing before him a tall and lengthy cabinet containing some clunky and old-looking metal devices resting behind a glass pane. He scanned the machines through the glass, looking for labels that would tell him the names of these devices.

"Hey, which one is this 'blaster' you mentioned?" Mao Mao turned to Camille once she finally caught up.

"Hm," Camille hummed, looking over the extensive display with her unevenly synchronized eyes. "If I remember it right, it should be right about…" she pointed, "…here."

"Perfect!" Mao Mao laughed. "It may be a magical machine, but it should do the trick for any non-magic person like myself! Well, let's get it open then!"

"Dude, what's your deal with magic?" Badgerclops felt the need to point out once again.

"Well, Mao Mao said it's like cheating, right?" Adorabat commented.

"Well, it's not really cheating if you're trying to fight magic monsters," Badgerclops pointed out.

At the same time, Camille had just decided to answer Mao Mao's request to open the display case with a rather inconvenient response. "Well, actually, the academy prides itself on keeping its crown inventions in pristine condition, so the display cases are made to be thiefproof. Not sure how to unlock this thing…"

"Oh, come one!" Mao Mao growled. Instantly, he drew out his golden sword and prepared to strike at the glass. He lifted the blade over his head and prepared to slice it down, his strike began moving forward, and then…Honey went over to the display case and pulled out a key, inserting it into a slot with a click and then turning it, causing the glass pane to pop open like a window. Both Mao Mao and Camille looked somewhat caught off guard, with Mao Mao being a little flabbergasted while Camille didn't have much of a reaction.

"That simple, huh?" Camille quipped. She then went over to the rifle-like blaster of dust-covered metal, lifted it off the shelf, and then swung it around for the group to see. In that same moment, she faced Mao Mao and tossed the blaster to him. "Well then, let's see if this baby's still got it!"

Mao Mao pulled a little handle on the blaster that appeared to be connected to the barrel, a very audible click sounding from it as he primed it to lock and load. "Alright team," he addressed Adorabat and Badgerclops in his low guttural baritone, "time to answer the call."

--------

Momo had to run to another corner of the cafeteria once she rested her wand arm as more ghosts came at her. She had already been casting as many of the waving-pattern spells she could come up with and she was sure she didn't have enough juice in her to finish off the remaining horde. "Come on, think!" she kept her golden eyes on the approaching ghosts. "Simple but powerful…" She tried to recall one of the spells she came across in the book she read that was currently stolen. She forced herself to think faster as she saw the ghosts getting closer, but that's when it clicked in her mind. Feeling her wand hand having gotten enough rest, Momo raised her wand above her head and with a rapid swish, brought it down in the shape of a zigzag. Following the zigzag path of her wand, yellow magic sparked out the tip of her wand in an electric trail, causing streams of electricity to branch out everywhere and strike the ghosts as bolts of lightning. "Yes! That's it! I did it!" she proclaimed happily from seeing the spell she evoked, feeling glad that she remembered such useful magic just in time. But it wasn't over yet.

Materializing near the flaming hearth on the main cafeteria wall, a single white ghost resembling a bubbling cauldron was zeroing in on Momo, a toothy smile on its curvy face. Momo readied her wand again, feeling more confident that she now had a new magic trick up her sleeve. Remembering how she took down the boss ghost in the library, she flourished her wand to another series of diverse patterns, but now faced a new challenge of fighting off more regular ghosts that accompanied the cauldron ghost. "You and a bunch of goonies versus me," Momo quipped, "that's hardly fair." She continued to use her wand to shoot more magic at the ghosts, making sure to juggle between hitting the cauldron ghost and its allies as to avoid letting a single one of them get too close to her. When the time felt right, she unleashed another lightning bolt storm on all the ghosts present. Like a charm, the spell destroyed all the ghosts except for the cauldron ghost, and after that, Momo utilized one last simple pattern spell which sent the cauldron ghost spinning and then toppling over on its head, cracking in the middle and puffing away.

Momo smiled, twirling her wand in victory. But her ears perked at the sound of a powerful magic blast echoing from the other side of the cafeteria's main entrance. She took a few steps to make her way to the door, but she didn't make it past one table before she was startled by the sight of a random ghost suddenly zipping through the door, looking as though it was trying to get away from something. Momo pointed her wand at the ghost to use her magic again, but was then greeted with another surprise in the form of a lightning-shaped beam shooting through the door and zapping the ghost, turning it to nothing. Wide-eyed, Momo turned her eyes back to the door to see Mao Mao racing into the cafeteria holding a barrel-shaped machine. It looked clunky and worn, but Momo recognized the shape as being like a rifle or blaster. From the looks of it, it fired magic energy that neutralized ghosts too.

Momo saw that Mao Mao noticed her too, making her feel a bit more comfortable. It looked like the sheriff was now truly here to help. "Having a hard time?" she heard him say.

"Nah, this is just me getting my daily exercise," Momo shrugged her shoulders. She looked at the big barreled blaster in Mao Mao's hands. "Are you using old school tech?"

"Yeah, of course," Mao Mao answered, though he muttered, "well maybe I wouldn't exactly call it 'old-school'…"

Everyone was startled by the sound of Badgerclops firing his arm cannon at a stray ghost that wandered into the cafeteria where everyone else was. "Uh, guys? A little help?" Adorabat tried to help by biting into the ghost, but to no avail.

Without thinking, both Mao Mao and Momo raised their weapons and fired at the ghost at the same time, dissipating it in a spectacular light show. The air settled down with a faint cloud of smoke, vapor, and dust particles drifting down.

"Whooh, thanks," Badgerclops called to the two, giving a thumbs up. "You know, you guys already got this covered, so maybe me and Adorabat can just take five…"

"Not so fast, Badgerclops," Mao Mao interrupted with a raised pointer finger. "We haven't properly evacuated the school's entire population yet. You and Adorabat go with Camille and Honey to look for any remaining students and get them out to safety…and be sure to do a headcount."

"Mao Mao, can I come with you and Momo?" Adorabat flew over to her caped black cat friend. "I wanna see more of that magic and help do it too!" She had her attention on the magical blaster in Mao Mao's hands along with Momo and her wand.

"Sorry Adorabat, no can do," Mao Mao shook his head. "If Badgerclops can't hurt ghosts, I don't think you can either. Just stay with Badgerclops until we get to the bottom of this whole…haunting mess." Adorabat saw that he wasn't changing his mind, so he did what he said by flying back to Badgerclops's side.

Mao Mao turned his attention back to Momo despite his ears detecting the faint sound of a grumbling Badgerclops. He could tell that Momo was readying herself to leave the cafeteria to go to another area of the school, assuredly one that was still currently ghost-infested. "So," he said to her, pulling the handle on the blaster and pushing it back again, locked and loaded again for another round, "mind if I give you a hand?"

"Well, the more the merrier, right?" was Momo's reply.