Fox

With the more immediate threat at least partially handled, Dragonfly and her drones stood down - she dropped to more-or-less person level, drone lights shifting back to a pleasant neon blue to help cut through the darkness as they traveled. "Accidental travel, as far as we can tell," she supplied, one drone turning upwards to project a holographic slideshow of confirmed-safe images of recovered artifacts and such. "Not a full invasion force. Evidence of wanting very bad to get back, couldn't manage it. Local powers - Atlanteans, Lemurians - got riled up. Mandragora had power, they had numbers, home field advantage. Wore his forces down. Last record is him leaving to do...something. Die in battle, maybe. Not clean enough for danger presented. That's why we're still here, instead of destroying everything and going somewhere nicer. Need to control or eliminate any lasting threat."

Dragonfly muttered a handful of swear words at Miss Americana's transmission, gritting her teeth as she eyed the newcomers. "Not after 'secrets', not remotely stupid enough to try leveraging Terminus technology without being very, very desperate; will personally remove anyone trying to steal knowledge, for safety. But if we thought destroying everything was a safe option it'd be done. Wanted to myself, had to get dissuaded. We found evidence of a Terminus incursion here, from long ago. Trying to make sure there aren't lingering problems from that. Trying to do it safely," She dropped toward the ground a bit, but not a single drone left combat mode. "Going to repeat myself. According to radio, you three are already causing reactions with artifacts we want quiet and destroyed, probably just by being here. You will stop using powers, and you will leave the area, and then we will all talk like sane people and good scientists and will not cause catastrophes." Her helmeted face was impassive, but her posture was not - it betrayed no fear, but a whole mountain of caution and a bomb defuser's tightly-wound nerves. "Not optional."

"STAND DOWN." Dragonfly was pretty sure airlocks were for people without short-range teleports; she'd been on Steve's heels when he left, and now she was hovering in the air between the three of them and the building. Four glowing wings of spun energy and space shed at least some light on both her armor and her friends - though the latter betrayed their position soon enough anyway, each drone's face-dominating eye lighting blue as it booted and shifting red as it immediately went into combat mode. Not quite all of those eyes were pointed toward Tarva and Ghost Girl. "Don't know who you two are, or why you're here, but you'd better have good reasons. We are slightly busy doing science to prevent potential apocalypses, and if any of you start throwing around exotic energy unprovoked while we're trying to control a situation probably involving exotic energies I will personally drop you and put you in a holding cell until you figure out why that's stupid. Talk, or leave, but stand. down."

"Yeah, I'm gonna go make a pile of dogs and sleep in it 'til I can't sleep anymore." It was probably the best plan he'd had all night, and the dogs approved - all but one started wagging their tails, tiredly, looking forward to the rest. "You should change your bandage," noted the odd dog out, nosing at his arm. "Yeah, fair." Matt frowned at its singed edges, offering the creature a quick pet with his better hand. "I'll re-wrap this and then sleep in a pile of dog. See you, Raina, and, uh, thanks." He'd paused halfway to Claremont's walls, all but one of the dogs already trotting forward, into, and through the otherwise-solid fortifications. "You didn't have to come out, and you did, favors or no favors. That means a lot." He gave her a tired wave, and dissolved into a dark smoke that poured like ink through water up the wall and down the other side into blackness, a second cloud quick on his heels as his companion followed suit.

APPROVED!

"Yeah, for a little while." Talking shop was so much easier when it didn't involve dead little girls and his own nihilistic issues and failures. "I've only run into 'em a few times, but I held 'em off with big stage lights once. They start swarming around the edges of stuff, though, and eventually they find whatever's making the light and get mad at it. You could probably do pretty well with a glowing ball or a flare or something, though." He pulled in to park and killed the engine, enjoying the quiet noise of his car cooling down for a moment. "It's not just those things, though," he said, popping his door open to step outside. Dogs piled out of the back, milling around his legs in as unhelpful a fashion as they could manage. "They're pretty rare. But even without 'em, I guess everyone deserves to rest, y'know? Some ghosts are fine, and we've even left some of them alone, 'cos they're doing great. But most of them are just....stuck. They're people; they deserve the help they need to move on."

Matt didn't want to answer that question, in part because he didn't have good answers. "....hungry," he said, finally, frowning out into the dark of the night. It would have been better if there were fewer street lamps. "Okay, working mostly from stuff I've seen and stuff the dogs tell me? And they've got long memories. Some ghosts...uh, bleed. They get their ghostliness everywhere - you saw it, when the little girl was setting everything on fire just by being there? Stuff that doesn't burn. That was all her, just kinda getting everywhere because she had no control. And sometimes that's okay, and sometimes it draws....stuff. I don't know if those things are just awful ghost-ticks or if they used to be people or what, but they're sorta mindless and they show up to some of the ghosts like they're dying of thirst." One of the dogs snorted, and Matt turned to scowl at it. "You know what I meant. They didn't want us, they wanted her, or something like her, and I've never let 'em get close enough to a ghost to find out what happens. The dogs say it isn't good. They don't like light, though, so tonight wasn't so bad as long as the dogs could keep 'em back. They only really get bad in big numbers as long as you aren't trying to hit 'em with a physical object, they're basically shadows."

Matt looked at her askance, letting a few second fill with silence before turning his full attention back to the road. "Not since we tracked down Moaning Myrtle and sent her to Valhalla," he said. "There's not a lot of death on a campus like ours. Some animals, sometimes, but animal ghosts are usually pretty weak. Besides, they're...just dead?" He turned off the freeway, dropping his speed to something marginally acceptable. "Like, you don't die and get a free crash course in Ghost Language. If you find a ghost, and the ghost is still there enough to make words, they speak whatever they spoke when they were alive. If your spell can do normal languages, that's all you need." He paused for a beat, and then grimaced. "Sorry. Didn't meant to spoil whatever. Your thing might be more useful for non-ghost stuff? There are some real old psychopomps and things that show up sometimes, and those speak nothin' I've ever heard anywhere else. Or those things that were clawing at the edge of the Princess when she drew their attention, those start muttering if they stick around, but I've never gotten a word of English out of 'em. Probably be more useful there."

"They can eat, and they like it, but they won't ever starve or anything. They're corporeal, they just don't obey physics," Matt promised, glaring back at the four sets of glowing red eyes in the back of the car. They were supposed to remain normal-dog in public, but were apparently testing him with no one else on the road. He was going to have a talk with them about that, after he'd slept and remembered how to bury everything back down. "I never learned that trick, probably 'cos I'm from here and they're from...somewhere else. They don't go through walls 'cos they're untouchable, they go through walls 'cos they convince the wall they aren't real, and that's the best answer I've ever gotten about it. You want better, you ask them, and let me know how it goes." He frowned, glancing at one of his little pack like they were having a tiny conversation. "....actually, yeah, that's a good point. What do you wanna do? Like, borrowing from your boyfriend is great 'til he has to move to who-knows-where to take over the family business, and being the monkey's beard is cool and all, but that's all stuff other people are doing. You've got more drive than me and more people skills than Fred -" There was a noise from the back, and he paused to glare into his rear mirror. "....yeah, fine, and more than me unless you've gotta talk to dead people. Point is, it's hard to see you just settling down to be a really pretty face."

"Yeah, sure. Should probably drive back before the mocha goes away, anyway. Gonna crash hard after tonight." There was no dog under the table when they left, but there were two dogs still in the back of the car, and four by the time the engine started. "So what're your plans for after high school?" he asked, head turned to back out of the parking slot. "I...don't know a lot about what you do, I guess. Which makes me a real bad friend, but I guess that's, what, par for the course?" He shifted into drive and pointed his car toward school, glancing sideways at his passenger. "Guess that's what happens when you're always hearing about stuff a few hours too late. Oughta do better."

"Wouldn't be surprised if she invented a soap that did all her cleaning for her," Matt mused, draining his cup. "And if I put on a damsel dress maybe I could at least model her stuff for her." That was also probably a joke, but the word 'eyeshadow' floated up from the dog's approximate under-table position, and Matt deliberately chose not to hear it. "And yeah, she's trying to do as much as she can for other people but they can't just freeload off her, even if she'd be okay with it. S'not right. But y'screwed up the first one." He wagged an admonishing finger - an affectation from too much time talking to tiny orphan tots. Mildly patronizing, but oddly adult for Captain Teenage Apathy, and too practiced to be a one-time thing. "Money and friends isn't gonna be about running out of money, and you know it. Money changes things. Some people can probably do it and be fine, and some people can't, and some people kill each other over it 'cos their relationship goes bad - which isn't making up stuff to worry about, it's literally last weekend." He shrugged, openly - it wasn't a massive concern, but it was a concern, and she'd put her foot in it. "The problem isn't going poor, we're all basically poor already. The problem is friends having to figure out juggling friends and worker/boss. We're dumb with no subtlety, y'know. Isn't that easy."

The caffeine was kicking in. Matt's tolerance for stimulants was only middling, but there was at least light back in his eyes. "I already said it was a good idea," he pointed out, looking at Raina with raised eyebrows over the edge of his cup. "But, y'know, you asked, so let's go down the list. Devil dog's advocate." The dog half-hidden under the table made a noise suspiciously like laughter. "Mixing friendship and money," he said, ticking them off one his non-coffee hand. "The whole thing with what I'd help her with, since I don't even get half of her voodoo and I don't think fancy makeup people want their makeup delivered by dog. Making her responsible for other people, which I get from tryin' to help kids and wrangle dogs, and it's not fun sometimes. Sometimes it sucks. Even, y'know, assuming she needs help like she isn't one of the most put-together people I know."

"I mean, I'm murder on ghosts." That was probably supposed to be a joke. "I'm okay in a fight, sometimes helping ghosts means...not-helping people who make ghosts, y'know? Also not fun, but, no, I don't think Fleur de Whatsit's gonna be calling me. Even for what I do, they're gonna have better, probably." He took a sip of his drink, looking out the window. "My grades, are. They're...they exist?" He glanced back at Raina without turning his head, expression flat. "I'm not dumb, but it's pretty hard to see the point sometimes, and my attendance sucks. S'why I said college probably wasn't happening, at least not right away. No chance I'm getting a nice enough scholarship to get a degree in...whatever...when I'm on my own." There was a dog under the table. There hadn't been a dog under the table, but there was now, and it unceremoniously thumped its head onto the seat next to Matt for scratches. "But, yeah, I got that part," he said, obliging. "You want me to work with Fred on her thing. You are super subtle."

"Yeah, I only get away with it at school sometimes because Summers knows. I don't know how Summers knows," he corrected, raising his hands helplessly, "but Summers has to know. I never told, the dogs say they never told - and the dogs can't lie to me - but somehow I only get in trouble when I'm skipping for skipping, not when I'm skipping for ghosts. Don't think I'm gonna get that in an office job, or whatever." He paused, taking a couple sips from his drink, before slumping a bit. "Plus she can't permanently kill me," he said, dropping his head. "Which is an awful thing to think, but you'd get there eventually anyway. It's part of the deal: when I die, the dogs grab me and take me somewhere else - somewhere, uh, really else - and sorta put me back together. So, y'know, worst case I'm out for a day or a week or whatever and we both pick up some mental scars we take to our graves."

"Couldn't you just never do magic again?" That was a blatant challenge, but it was also fightier than Matt usually got; maybe the night was getting to him. "Just put it all behind and give your monkey away and move somewhere where you don't have to worry about jade statues and dudes with crossbows and fire ghosts that teach you that the world's an awful, cruel place?" Matt had followed her to the counter, knowing his far simpler drink couldn't have been far behind, and he'd been right; he scooped it off the counter with a nod of thanks to a barista who didn't even notice, taking a sip and grimacing. "'cos, yeah, it sucks sometimes, but that's life. Life sucks. Life sucks, and death has no answers. But the dogs're family and it's good to do something worthwhile, y'know? It helps. Or...I think so, anyway." He sipped again, longer, trying to will the caffeine into his body faster than biology might allow. "And some of it's okay: teleporting's pretty sweet, and...other stuff. I don't think they need me, anyway, like you think - they just kinda wanted to do what they did. If they didn't have me, they'd just be on their own. I can't do that to them."

"I mean, it'd be a dick move," Matt said, eyebrows raised as he sat in his seat. Slumped, really; he was still exhausted. The dogs, for once, were staying out of it - piled in the open back of his car, getting some rest of their own. "I just, what, ignore it and hope it's somebody else's problem? Figure it'll take care of itself while old buildings burn down and some little girl stays lost and alone 'cos nobody's searching the city for a toy nobody's made in twenty years?" "I mean, I probably could. The dogs wouldn't like it, and they'd be off doing their own thing whether I join 'em or not, but I could just stop doing anything about it. I can't stop knowing, though," he added, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "That's part of the deal. I can feel it. If we're ever talking or in class or whatever and you see my attention shoot out a window toward the city, it's probably 'cos someone or something died and that doesn't turn off. I try to do my own stuff, and have my own life, as much as that could even matter, but it's not like I can just forget for long."

"Well, you're gonna make fun of me for black drip coffee, so a medium mocha'll do," Matt drawled, shrugging and apology to the barista, who looked for all the world like he couldn't care less. "And, uh. You almost die, I guess," he answered, genuinely at a loss for a better answer. "Can't recommend it, actually dying sucks pretty bad. I was...pretty little." That wasn't a good memory, and he shut it out almost immediately. "They saw somethin' they liked. If you ever get a better answer than that out of them, you let me know, 'cos it was always weird to me too. In a story I'd be serving them, not the other way around, y'know? But that's the deal, I'm the boss of a bunch of crazy spook dogs."

"Ugh, no." Matt made a face of disgust, a standard-issue teenage boy reaction to Twilight as they pulled up to a coffee shop that was hopefully still open. "I'm actually my age. And getting older like anybody," he added, shrugging as he got out. "The dogs're pretty clear on that. Whatever happens in the meantime, I've got old age to look forward to, and then dying of old age. I'm as alive as anybody, mostly, and apparently there are rules." The line for caffeine was short to the point of nonexistence, one or two people getting off an obvious night shift being served by a barista who looked like they'd rather be sleeping. "I'm not as important as it makes me sound," Matt admitted, frowning at the menu. "Like I said, the dogs'n'I aren't the only ones. I'm the only....person?...I've ever seen doing it? But there's all sorts, and the dogs - and their parents, and their parents, y'know - have been doing it since way before I was born."

"Not the killing part." Matt probably should have been offended, or apathetic, or something, but just didn't have anything left. He hated those nights. "Death-capital-D-Death isn't a person, it just...is?" He glanced over, as much as he could while still driving safely, eyebrows pinched together to indicate that that was the best explanation he had. "Y'know what a psychopomp is? Like the Reaper, or the Ferryman, making sure the souls go where they're supposed to, making sure they don't stay around and go bad. That's them," he said, jabbing a finger back toward the dogs in the rear of the car, heads in the wind - heads with fur like smoke, and perfectly-round lidless eyes like burning coal. "Not all of 'em are like them, there's all types. But they see to souls, and I'm tied to them, so I do, too. But the Death-capital-D-Death is why I don't tell anybody. It gives people the heebie-jeebies. It gives me the heebie-jeebies sometimes, and I've been doing stuff like tonight since I was a little kid." His voice was tired, almost plaintive. "Nobody likes it."

"I'm death, sorta," Matt said, flatly and apparently in all seriousness. "It's - aw, Moon, no." One of his dogs had not quite made it up into the car, and Matt made him sit long enough to inspect a leg. "Nuh uh. You aren't walking around on that. I'm sending you back 'til you can make one that's healed. Without arguments," he added, Moon having opened his jaws to protect. "You get first dibs on a drive later, okay?" Moon dissolved into smoke, disappearing entirely alongside one of his brethren as the remaining three piled into the back and the teenagers piled into the front. "Y'know that first Halloween party, when I showed up as the Grim Reaper?" the boy continued, turning the key and backing out toward anywhere with light and caffeine. "Sort of a joke no one was supposed to get. People don't like it. Couldn't guess why."

"Focus, please," Dragonfly cautioned, with all the tone of someone who had to deal with a lot of borderline-mad-scientists. "Lemurian-Atlantean resistance, based on data," she corrected, gesturing without looking at one of the cheap CRTs. "Doesn't sound like they joined forces because they liked it. Underscores importance of keeping focus on...goal...posts? Sports metaphors. Not my strong suit." She sighed, dropping her helmet into her hands. Even with rest and food she was rapidly feeling like she wasn't getting enough of either. "Just...be careful. Always assume data is inherently dangerous, or leads to inherently dangerous things. Would probably even put this through memetic filters if I had time to study and invent them. Best case, find an old corpse, destroy site from orbit, loss of findings or not. Better that way."

Matt wasn't known to swear, but swear he did, a drawn-out profanity of relief as he sank back onto an untended bench. He laughed, too, through more like he didn't know what other noise to make than with any actual humor. It was, otherwise, literally as quiet as a grave - the other dogs' work must have been done, because one by one they were padding (and, in one case, limping) out of the darkness to stand by. "They get stuck, right?" She hadn't actually asked about that yet, but he figured he would start there, and it was the only words he could find while he tried to get his legs back. He shook the burned hand, last traces of black something wafting off of it. "Like, someone dies," he explained, slumping back and looking out at nothing, "and sometimes they're okay. A lot of them just move on, which is good. Most of the rest are pretty okay with moving on once someone shows up and explains things, or gives them a push. And sometimes they're, y'know, out of it, but that's sorta reasonable and they come around. But some of them...." He gestured vaguely at the still-singed grass, the scorched dirt at the center of it all. "Took like two days, found an old newspaper article. Like, an old newspaper article. Didn't say how old she was, but...I mean, you saw. Too young," he insisted, like a stab in his own heart. "Didn't even have her name, but it had an old photograph. Little girl with her favorite toy. Police thought maybe she'd seen a movie that was in theaters...can't remember what it was. Had some scene where the princess is in a throne room with braziers, right? And hey, she had candles, and nobody was awake, and...." He did the not-laugh again, covering his face with both hands before trying to leverage himself back to his feet. "They get stuck. Some job, or attachment, or idea, spinning their wheels in the mud. Janitors who still clean abandoned hospitals 'cos they've got nothin' else, old women who protect their home 'cos they've gone feral, or a little princess who can't deal with what she did. S'not fair. Coffee sounds good. C'mon, I'll even buy if you're okay with cheap."

GM "But I can't go with you," said the ghost, and Matt visibly tensed before she turned to look at his arm - the hand he'd offered had burned back some of the wrappings over his bandage before she'd calmed, and the edge of a burn peeked out at her. "I've...I've hurt you enough. Maybe...princesses have royal dogs, don't they?" If the princess even noticed the dog's smoke fur and glowing eyes, she didn't seem to think they were unusual - one hand still clutched her bear to her bosom, the other reaching down to just brush the tips of the hound's ears as it led her down the path away from that section of the graveyard. "Perhaps it will be nice to rest," she said, to herself, or to the bear, or to nobody. "It's been a long time. And it's important to sleep." She held onto the dog's back by a handful of smoky fur, dwarfed by weight and nearly by size, as it led her toward an ornamental granite arch separating the mausoleum area from newer graves. "'cos you gotta get your sleep," she insisted. Her royal gown was a tattered bathrobe, trailing down behind her; her crown was an old tiara, a cheap and comically-oversized costume piece for such a young child's head. The teddy bear dragged behind, pulled along by one limb as it stared forlornly into the past. "That's what my mom always says. It's important, so you can get big and tall one day, and everyone's gotta be big and tall. Princesses got to get beauty sleep, 'cos a princess is always pretty. She said so, and the best books say so, so it's got to be true. Will she still read me stories?" The dog and the little girl passed through one side of the stone gate, and didn't come out the other.

Matt was all nerves and wire, but he didn't let it reach his voice, at least - that was as calm and as collected as he could make it, and he'd had the practice. "No harm done," he promised, smiling. He seemed...sad, somehow, but hopeful. "It's no wonder you got a little worked up, aren't you tired?" The ghost looked tired, sinking closer to the ground; she was still fixated on the teddy bear, but she looked up to see Matt's extended hand, and she started at that, too, then at him, like she saw something else. "I think it's time to rest." The princess in fire looked at him, and then looked at her bear, and then clutched it to her chest with one arm while extending the other. Matt's hand was black as it met hers, and his touch sent a wave of something back across her that made her less, somehow. Less real, or less attached, in a hundred ways: the graves behind her were clearer, the fire licking at her profile was calmer, her eyes seemed less clouded and more aware, if still fixated on something just past mortal reality. With her will no longer extended to it, and Raina having blown out the center, her graveyard fire died completely but for a few glowing embers in the grass, until that too was a memory.

GM The fire died. Not all the way, not gone, not with the ghost still there. But Raina could feel its strength ebb away, a tide receding back into an ocean as the ghost fixated on the stuffed toy like it was the only thing that had ever made sense. Gingerly, she reached out to take it; Matt visibly winced when her hands met his, but she took it none the less, and it burned way to soot and cinder the moment it was in her hands. In its place was an echo, like her: orange and red, the soul of a stuffed animal restored to its glory...probably. Frayed edges had become licking flames, but it seemed stronger, even if it was now see-through. "....it's a good gift. I like it. That was a good trick," she said, looking up to meet Raina's eyes. The pomp and circumstance had gone with the threat of teenage incineration, though with the fading of the flame the shadows grew closer and the dogs could still be heard pulling something, somethings, back into the dark. "Are you a good witch? I just get carried away sometimes. I didn't mean it."