Carver used her vines to shoot Barrel a thumbs up. It didn't take her long to scale the ladder and make her exit. She paused on the ladder, glancing around thoughtfully for a moment before heading to the pumpkin patch. When she reached the gate, she unraveled the vines from the metal frames of her limbs, produced a small wrench from a pocket in her cargo pants, and went to work detaching the arms and legs from the torso. Doctor Finklestein had given life to the central cage and the core vines; everything else could be removed, tinkered with, replaced, and reconnected as needed.

Once the limbs were completely detached, the pumpkin-headed creature put the various hardware and the wrench in the pants pocket for safe keeping. She then used a dozen or so sturdy vines to slither near-silently into the field of gourds. She knew just where to go: a small plot by the corner of a little stone wall, where massively deformed pumpkins and rotting jack-o-lanterns from seasons past were left for the scavengers to pick apart. 

Carver flopped down at the front of the pile. She lay perfectly still, her face blandly pointed up at a crooked angle like all the other rejects.

It didn't take long before the mice and rats came sniffing. Her head was fresher than most of what else was there, and the mouth hole was just wide enough to squeeze through, providing easier access to the inner flesh than chewing through the tough outer skin, which was required for the deformed pumpkins which had never been carved. Just wide enough to squeeze through, but not more than that. 

As soon as two rodents were inside at once, Carver snapped her mouth closed. The rat and mouse squeaked and thrashed desperately as she sat up and dropped them down her throat hole into the bird cage that formed the majority of the frame work for her torso. Satisfied with her catch, she slithered back out of the pumpkin patch and reassembled the rest of her body. 

She had a feeling she knew where Shock would be, and these would be her bait to get past the bone serpent.

---

Lillith hung upside down from Lock's tail, watching him. It was hard to tell whether her wings were wrapped around herself in a facsimile of crossing her arms or if that just happened to be the most comfortable position for them.

"I can talk to her again, but I doubt it would really help. The threat of not letting Carmilla sing might be enough to keep her in check during practice, but it's not as if she's the only one being problematic. Shock's been snapping down her neck pretty much since she woke us up this afternoon. I think your sister just wants an excuse to be mean to someone sometimes, and right now, that's Carmilla."