With a blink-fast push, she flies down the street through Frau's high-income quarter, past three blocks— only to find a line of people, all eagerly waiting for their turn to enter what looks to be a massive curtain of darkness.
The Masteress of Light just stares on in dumbfounded stupidity. Why the hell would they be channeling a magic darkness over a house lot in the middle of her town?
"Do you know what's going on here?" she asks to an older gentleman at the back of the line.
He shrugs. "Who can say, but it looks thrilling."
"It's a haunted house adventure," the middle-aged woman in front of him says with a snide, expecting tone. "Apparently its all the rage in high omniverse society these days, so clearly its worth your time," she adds in a way that makes Order want to slap her.
"Well, why would they be doing that here?" Order asks with a mute expression, though her eye color is turning steadily redder.
The woman guffaws with a put-on poise. "You longevai have no sense of what's current! Clearly they're doing it to culturally-enrich our society! They're heroes!"
Order's expression possesses the sort of knowing blandness that a tired god must look down upon humanity with. She knows she probably deserves this kind of treatment; it's what she gets for spending all hours of her day in her house when she's not at work. Dealing with the pretensions of human society gets pretty tiring if she has to make good impressions every generation— over and over and over again; dealing with the same putrid egos, but simply under different names and faces.
"Right," she responds, "well I'm going to take a look ahead." She starts forward, passing the old man and the lady, who instantly huffs with incredulous shock.
"You'll what? Now just who do you think you-"
"Seeth'Eya," Order says to herself. At once, the woman jolts back along with the elder man. Being a knight and a paragon of virtue is great and all, but she's found over her later years that her skills as a witch are of better use. Playing fair with humans is perfectly laudable, until you're old enough to figure out that the rules don't really apply to you.
As the woman demands that Order show herself, she walks alongside the hour and a half-long line. She can see it would be unbearable if it weren't for Tea Ceremony Minion serving cups alongside Kale Benefits Minion, who is passing along his disgusting vegetable concoctions on the sheer principle of them being free for people waiting in line. Order rolls her eyes, and puts forth every effort not to trip Kale Benefits Minion as she passes by; he can see her with her spell, after all, though the common public cannot.
Order marches all the way up past Definitely A Human Minion— who is just tall and clothed enough to pass by as a really cute-looking foreigner— and she moves in through the black, midnight-blessed curtain under the lazy cloudy sky of the afternoon.
Instantly, she sees what is hidden.
Aglow with neon decorations, windy sound effects, the meowing and howling of night creatures and more, is what appears to be a replica of her house. It's not quite her house, however; the arches are painted in a nightmarish fashion, and its front columns are graffitied like a modern art piece. It's to this house that the line of excited haunt-goers lead, small groups of one to three being let through at a time.
"Like it?" a squeaky, smart-voiced minion calls behind her.
She looks aside to see none other than Dimensionomancy Infrastructure Minion, one of Chaos' very rarest. He only has part of his body visible as if in a constant state of dimensional flux, which most would find mysterious, but she's well aware that he's at work in multiple places at once on a regular basis. He's much busier than her, and it kind of makes her feel bad to be less hard-working than one of Chaos' stereotypically lazy minions. In fact, if he weren't a minion, she'd look to make him a Royal Knight in a heartbeat— considering dimensioncraft is among the most difficult and sophisticated magics, and definitely the most valued magical school overall; even she has trouble with it.
It's a strange dynamic for her, being able to collapse a dragon's skull with a single punch, but still getting intimidated by this short nerd.
"Oh, it's you," she says. "Yeah, so what the hell is this, exactly?"
Only at the height of her shoulder, he smiles. "His Head Dimensionlessness thought it appropriate to have an appropriately-scary setting for his very first haunted house."
She smirks. "Sure, but why here?"
He laughs. "Why not?"
Her smirk curls crassly. "Okay, I get it."
"I'm sorry, but he was quite opinionated about it."
"It's okay. You can't not do your job I guess."
"Suppose not. It was a joy to do as well. It's always nice to love your line of work."
"Work sucks."
He chuckles. "How long has it been, seven thousand ye-"
"Almost."
"And you still haven't learned to love your work?"
"Dealing with you assholes? No."
Dimensionomancy Infrastructure Minion shrugs. "That's not unreasonable, but it is unreasonable to yourself."
"Yeah? Let me guess: I should just grin and learn to love it."
He grins. "I think so, at least. I'm not as old as you. Perhaps there's a lot to be said ab-"
"Trick or Treeeee-"
Orchard Minion, dressed up in a sheet from one of his apple crates, receives a kick from Order so devastating that it propels him out of the intersecting dimension and back into Frau.
"H-he was trying to get candy, you know." Dimensionomancy Infrastructure Minion says with a parental mix of concern and crossness.
It makes her stomach churn that a minion can take that tone with her and get away with it. She sighs before replying: "What?"
"This is for All Hallows' Eve!"
Her features sharpen. "That pagan holiday?"
"If that's how you want to see it. It is a celebration after all, so I suppose you get to decide how you get to enjoy it, don't you?" He says in his typically blasé, rather charming manner.
She scoffs. "Sure. Well this has been cute, but you need to get these people out of here and collapse the dimension, or Rayda help me I'm going to slam your-" She glances aside to gauge his expression, only to find him gone.
"Enjoy yourself~" he says, the last vestiges of his presence disappearing.
With a bitter, tired grumpiness she crosses her arms. She's going to have to find the realm seal and do it herself. She's aware that Dimensionomancy Infrastructure Minion is too busy to be tied down to one realm, so it's probably placed somewhere inside the house. It should be just as simple as finding the seal and breaking it; then, like a gently-pricked balloon, the realm should start to lose coherence— to the point that the people and minions should just spill out due to lack of space. She's not all that hot at crafting dimensions, but she certainly knows how to fold them back.
Order starts forward with a trot up to the front of the door; none other than Royal Knight Justice is near the head of the line.
"Ch-chief?" Justice asks, readjusting the reindeer-themed wool scarf on his neck. Of course he could see her, being magically skilled enough, and of course he would be dense enough to get tricked into something like this.
Order just looks at him. "…Really?"
"Wow, I'm so glad you're alright! I thought you were having another one of your episodes!" he says, jumping out of line and embracing her.
She sighs. "I'm fine, but why are you here?"
He reaches into his autumn vest and pulls out a letter. "Don't you remember? You invited me over!"
"No I didn't." She snaps the letter from his grip, unfolding it quickly to read:
– – –
Ey Justice,
O shit I got alllll dis fukkin coffe n I need some1 to drink it w/me. B a doll n help me th fuk out~
Thank
Ordz
– – –
Following at the margins of the letter is a surprisingly-good cartoon illustration of her dying underneath a massive pile of coffee cans— her eyes exed out comically with her tongue hanging out, and for some reason there's also Parvo doing a radical skateboard kickflip over the mountain of ground roast.
Order looks up with a hopeless gaze, taking her time before looking back to Justice, who winces.
"I thought you were drunk!" he explains with a nervous tone as the people in the line look at him strangely for talking to someone they can neither see nor hear.
Order takes a deep, deep breath, and folds back the letter. "I don't write like that."
"Well, sorry chief but the handwriting was really on-key! But I will admit I was suspicious. You can't draw nearly this well."
She unfolds it again just to peek; it is really really close to her handwriting, especially her drunk handwriting. It must have been Forgery Minion, that devious arse.
"Well either way we need to close this dimension down. The seal's probably inside."
"So we gotta get inside and find it!"
"Yup. Come on."
Order leads Justice all the way up to the front door of the fake, haunted version of her house, where Holiday Minion is dressed up like an undertaker. Of course, seeing only Justice step past everyone makes the line's constituents more than a little indignant.
"Miss and mister," Holiday Minion starts, "would you both please wait in line and wait your-"
To the line, it looks as though Holiday Minion's head just projects into the porch by an unknown force— with the door mysteriously opening to let Justice in afterward. The door shuts, and the invisible Order and warm Justice enter the haunted abode.