Melatonin

Arrival

Here goes nothing.

The castle loomed over them, covered in shadowy darkness. The place vastly contrasted his old home, with old friends. Friends they knew weren't going to last long. A manic on-and-off amnesiac, a ball of light and the energy of a horse instilled in a skeleton were not compatible with his personality. They grew unbearable after a few months.

Cross stood before the castle, awaiting company from anyone, a star sans to tell them to go home, someone from within the castle to approach them. Tell them to go away or welcome them to the place. Anything was better than the uncomfortable silence of their current situation. They step closer, now picking up on the sounds of faraway bickering, voices somewhat familiar. They breathe for a moment, going to knock on oversized doors, far too tall for anyone living here. The door slowly creaked open the second they lay a hand on it.

They panic, stepping back behind the now open door, away from the sight of anyone nearby.

"Who's there?" A quiet voice murmurs, definitely one of the three who were fighting earlier. They take a quick look through one of the many cracks in the door to see who this could be. Ah, perfect. Killer, despite his name, is probably the least terrifying person to live here. A few more seconds go on in silence before Killer starts to grin, whispering something to himself before looking in Cross' direction. "You're not very good at hiding now, Cross. What do you want?"

The door opens wider, forcing them to come face to face with Killer. They look behind him for a moment, only to see Horror and Dust sitting on the floor, with a deck of cards. The interior of the castle was surprisingly nice, they'd expected it to be much...darker? Scarier? They'd never been easily frightened, even if some of the people working under Nightmare sent chills down their spine, but even then, they hadn't expected it to look this much like a real home. Killer got impatient, clapping in front of Cross' face.

"Earth to Cross? What do you want?? None of us are looking to fight right now, we're..."

He trails off, looking towards the other two, who were still playing cards. Clearly incorrectly, they couldn't tell exactly what game they were playing, as amongst the normal deck of cards were...Uno cards...they look a little closer, they're not even real Uno cards.

"...busy...right now. Where're your friends?" They snap back to reality, looking at Killer's slightly annoyed, slightly intrigued expression. They look down. "Yeah, about that..."

Killers eyes widen, and his grin grows slightly wider, he pulls Cross inside. "Aw, you left them for us! Great, we needed a fourth person for our little game. You probably should talk to Nightmare first though, don't want him thinking there's an enemy in the castle, here, I'll call him now-!" He pushes Cross into the group of two in front of them, resulting in them landing on the pile of cards. "WHAT THE HELL-"

"Niiiiiiiiiiiightmare! Boss! We got a new guy! He just showed up at the-"

Cross sighs quietly, covering his face, slowly standing up again. "Yeah, no, not uh- not he, actually, uh, prefer they, you know..." they doubt Killer even heard them, they didn't exactly speak very loudly, not looking to start a fight over this or piss anyone off further than they already had. Killer looks over at them for a moment, blinking, before giving them a thumbs-up. "They showed up at the door! Left the star-"

"I'm here, I'm here. Would you stop yelling already?" His presence was slightly overwhelming, they felt the need to look away as if eye contact alone would anger the god in front of them. Killer laughed quietly, watching Cross stare at the ground whilst Nightmare stares them down. "What's he-" Nightmare began, Killer quickly cut him off. "They." Nightmare paused for a second, looking between Killer and Cross for a second, before continuing. "What are they doing here?"

"They left the stars."

They slowly gathered up the courage to look up at Nightmare, who had a surprisingly calm expression on his face. He stepped a little closer to Cross, towering over them. "And now you want in with us, I assume?" They nod, looking away again, expecting to be told to leave. They shouldn't have come here in the first place, this was never going to work out. Their reputation with the stars should've made it almost impossible for anyone here to take a liking to him. Nightmare laughs under his breath, Cross looks back at him for a second.

"Took you long enough." Nightmare stood back. "Welcome, Cross. I look forward to working with you, moving forwards." And with that, he left the room, vanishing into the shadows, leaving Cross stunned. That worked?

Killer took their hand, before sitting back down with Horror and Dust, who'd gotten their cards back, handing Cross their own deck of cards. "Winner gets to stay back here when the others do the next job, so basically we have 4 Uno cards, 3 cards from the regular deck and 1 leaf, and you play the game like paper scissors rock, so leaf beats-" They looked down at their cards. The Uno cards weren't regular colours, instead, there were colours such as 'orangey-green with a yellow centre' and 'purple turned red.' The regular deck of cards were unusual too, they'd never heard of a '4 of circles.' 

And of course, the leaf. Not much to say about the leaf, for it is a leaf.