ic Your Spirit Lives On [IC]

[Gizmo]

LaMarr continued to charge ahead with heavy, purposeful steps, taking his cue from Nick and heading up the stairs. It didn't take him long to find the remaining gang bangers and envelop one of the youth's gun hands in his own sizable palm. "Get out of here," he ordered in a low, level tone that allowed for no disagreement as the young men practically tripped over each other to flee the scene. "Alright magic man, I take it you have a plan to put an end to this?"

[trollthumper]

"Yeah, I do," Nick said as he raced up the stairs. "First we've gotta find him, though. Four floors, bunch of rooms, and this guy can go through walls --" As Nick cleared the first flight, however, he stopped. The phantom was moving through a wall right in front of him, scanning for any trace of now long-gone Rojos. His eyes lit on Nick instead, and his eyes seemed to express confusion. That confusion lasted just a second, however, as he raised his guns and opened fire.

"Or he could come right to us."

The phantasmal bolt caught Wail instead of Nick, giving Nick a chance to return fire with a blast of his own. The ghost was took quick, however, dodging the gout of eldritch flame. "This guy just doesn't give up, does he?"

[Gizmo]

Grunting as he stepped in front of the eldritch attack, Wail bent his knees to steady his stance. The ghost's phantasmal bullets hurt worse than the real things, sizzling through clothes and against superdense flesh. The building's stability wasn't quite what Wail would have liked but he was even less keen to chance taking too many more hits of that sort. "Let's not get into a war of attrition with a dead boy, son." Taking a deep breath, the earsplitting educator let out a bass note that shook the walls around them, the opposite force pushing footprints into the floor beneath him. The attack hit the now corporeal specter like a hammer hitting a nail on the head and continued past to blow a sizable hole in the wall. "Don't make us fight you, Darius!"

[trollthumper]

The ghost of Darius paused and turned towards Wail, as if he had just realized that the hero was addressing him. He didn't say a thing - not to object, not to plead his case. He just raised his gun to fire... but he wasn't so quick on the draw this time. Wail's blast caught him off guard, knocking him off his ephemeral feet. Before the ghost could react, Nick swept in, ectoplasm coalescing on his hands into hideous talons. He took a rake at Darius's corpus, aiming not to wound, but to hamper. But the claws bounced off the ectoplasm, as if it was made of sterner stuff.

"Okay, that's not normal," he said. "Think there's something wrong with our dearly departed friend..."

[Gizmo]

"Only now you think this is wrong?" Wail drawled flatly as he moved to one side of the hallway to avoid Cimitiere's attack, his broad frame still taking up most of the width. The ineffectiveness of the necromancer's attack didn't bode well but the older hero noticed that the weird claws rebounded off of the ghost rather than simply passing through it. If it was solid enough for that things were back in his field of expertise.

Surging forward as Cimitiere stepped back he drove an open palm into the phantom teen's surprisingly corporeal shoulder, carrying his momentum through to crash his target against the wall with enough force to rattle what was left of the building. Tightening his fingers, he pinned the ghost in place, giving it a stony look face to face. "Anytime you want to end this foolishness."

[trollthumper]

"Oh, it was weird to begin with," Nick said, "but now it's a different kind of weird. He doesn't feel right..." He started scrutinizing the ghost, and the power running off of it. For the most part, it looked like the ghost of Darius... but there was something, like a gleam out of the corner of his eye. And then, there it was. Found you. He seized the thread, and with it in his grasp, unwove it.

Before Wail's eyes, the ghost of Darius Green collapsed slowly, like a snowman under a heat lamp. Puddles of ectoplasm dribbled to the floor before suffusing away into iridescent mist. The faint glow of an oil slick under the sun was there for half a second before it, too, faded away.

"That wasn't Darius Green," he said. "Someone's playing a lot of people for fools."

[Gizmo]

"So it was a real ghost," Wail surmised, flicking his wrist to remove some of the ectoplasmic residue still dissipating from his fingers, "but it was a fake real ghost." Turning his hand over and grimacing at it even once the phantom goo had disappeared, LaMarr turned to Cimitiere and let out a slow, audible breath through his nose. "This does not put me in a chuckling mood, son. What can you tell me about..." He gestured in the general area the ghost had inhabited. "...this?"

[trollthumper]

"This?"

Nick poked the swiftly-fading ectoplasm with a tentative finger, picking it up and measuring it. "Ghosts aren't the only things made up of ectoplasm. Some people are able to manifest it if they know what they're doing. And if someone knows how to keep the whole thing together, they can create a fetch. A double. Sometimes you get disembodied intelligences that use them to look human, but some necromancers are able to make their own."

He got up. "Someone used Darius Green's memory to try and trigger a gang war. And they sent forth the kind of soldier that was certain to get the DGC into the fray."

[Gizmo]

LaMarr considered Cimitiere's words silently except for the faintly audible sound of knuckles popping as the muscles in his hands tightened. "...to be clear," he began finally, "I am not happy about this. How do we find the person behind this?" It would have been bad enough had it just been a plan to sow chaos and violence in Lincoln but using the memory and image of a dead child to do it push Wail well past angry. People had already died and he was resolved that the deception would end that night. "I'd like to have a word with them."

[trollthumper]

"Shouldn't be too hard," Nick said. "After all, we've got plenty to work from." 

 

The pool of ectoplasm had mostly sublimated by now, boiling off into strange, iridescent vapor. Before it boiled away completely, Nick snatched up the largest glob of it he could find, shifting it around in his fingers. Soon it became more solid than liquid, a gossamer cat's cradle that slipped around his fingers and began to form a cohesive whole. The strands eventually slipped his fingers, forming into a narrow thread that hung in mid-air. "There we go," he said. "Follow that weird eldritch thread." 

 

Soon after, the two found themselves outside a house two blocks out from DGC territory. It might have been something once, but now, it looked run down even by the standard of some of the dodgier real estate in the area. "God, it's just like home," he said. "This is likely the place. In addition to the decor, there's this... aura coming off of the place. Juju went down here in some point. You want to knock, or you want to barge?" 

[Gizmo]

"What do you mean 'or'?" Wail responded flatly as he stalked forward to the door indicated by the floating, glowing thread. With a single fist, the broad-shouldered hero slammed the decrepit wood. With a resounding thump accompanied by a sharp crack, the door was blown off of its hinges, flying inward and leaving the frame hanging limply in pieces from the surviving nails.

"Knock, knock," LaMarr intoned in a grim voice, stepping inside.

[trollthumper]

The door went down easily, though Nick felt something crackle like static electricity as the door went down, and Wail felt a mild tinge in his knuckles. Nick got a good idea of what it was - a ward, but one not strong enough to do much more than a severe shock. Incapacitating for most people, but not enough to actually kill. Inside, the house was like any other, if in a significant state of disrepair. The paint was peeling, and there was dust on the floor - if there was anyone using this place, either they were really bad at housekeeping, or they only used it occasionally. There was a wild bouquet in the air, however - salt, sage, and some old blood. 

 

"Yeah, there's been some mojo here," he said. He started scanning the room, looking for some trace of something. He found it soon enough - there was something coming from the basement. "Something downstairs. It's been ongoing for a while. Feels tinged with death..."

 

The door to the basement made the one outside look like a torn screen door - three locks, and a ward that felt like it could stun a T. rex. "Hold on a sec," he said, "gotta do some lockpicking." He scrutinized the threads of the magic composing the door, tried to reach out... and felt the threads slip out of his grasp, half a centimeter before he made what might have been lethal contact with the door. "Crap. Lost the grip. We could try going through the living room floor..." 

[Gizmo]

Flexing his fingers to shake off the shock of the front door, LaMarr looked at the one blocking the way to the basement with supreme annoyance. Magic wards, force fields, impervium alloys, it all came down to a bigger, better barricade. What he'd learned many years ago was that you could never barricade everything.

"Stand behind me," he told Nick, cracking his neck to the left, then the right, "and cover your ears." Taking a deep breath, Wail let out a bass note that was felt more than heard, a concussive wave that turned the walls and floorboards surrounding the protected door into splinters instantly. In the space of second the first floor of the dilapidated building had been torn asunder, leaving a gaping hole into the basement below. "Little pig, little pig..." he called downward, punching into his opposite palm with a meaty noise.

[trollthumper]

There was no noise down in the basement - no skittering, no thrumming, and no breathing. But there was still something that flared on the edge of Nick's senses as he took the stairs down one at a time, a feeling like a steel wall with a pulse to it. As he cleared the bottom landing, the cause became clear. 

 

At the far end of the room was a circle carved into the floor. At least, Nick believed it was carved into the floor - a white substance was crammed into the stone, forming an immaterial barrier ringed on all sides with strange symbols. Judging by the scent in the air, it was likely salt. And in the circle was a young man, just as immaterial as his prison. The young ghost was clad in street clothes and curled up in a ball. He looked up, blinking as he tried to process what he was seeing, and Nick recognized him instantly. 

 

"Darius Greene?"

 

"...the hell are you doing here?"

[Gizmo]

Without waiting for an analysis or go-ahead from the expert, LaMarr stepped up the carved circle with heavy footfalls, unconcerned by vibrations caused by his prodigious mass. Shifting his weight he raised on boot and stomped hard with his heel, violently cracking the foundation of the basement so that the section beneath him tore away from the rest of the cement and tipped upward at a sharp angle, breaking the etched ring. Around the subterranean room objects fell from the walls or off of shelves, the small earthquake manifesting the aging heroes anger. "Who?" he demanded.

[trollthumper]

The blow of Wail's stomp nearly knocked Nick off his feet and gouged a long crack in the concrete, cracking some of the wards. Wail felt briefly like he'd stepped on the third rail in his bare feet, but the blast went through him with nary a scratch. While the wards were damaged, there was still some glow to the sigils, and the barrier was still together, if flickering. Darius flinched slightly, pressing up against the wall of his prison as the force kicked through, but sighed as his cage held. "Sorry, man," he said. "She put a lot of mojo into that thing."

 

"She who?" Nick said, though he had an idea. 

 

"Alisha." It was clear that it still hurt the young ghost to say it. "She found some power somewhere, tried calling me down as a ritual. Said the gang was having some trouble, needed someone to lead them, a figure they could rally behind."

 

"And you didn't want to." 

 

He shook his head. "Picking up guns, trying to be bangers? Hell, that was the last thing I wanted anyone doing! And I told her that. She didn't take it well. She stuck me in this circle. That must've been about a week ago. She'll come down here every day or so, try to see if I've changed my mind. Then she takes a little of..." He raised his arm - the consistency of the ectoplasm was solid, almost like flesh, but it still had some issues of jiggling with rapid movement. "Uses it to make those guys." 

 

Nick shook his head. He always hated the idea of binding, especially when the spirit was aware of being used as a puppet. Darius might not have been dangled about on ectoplasmic strings, but this was still damn close. "I think I can crack the binding. I just need --" 

 

He stopped talking as he felt something tickle his death senses. He turned to the top of the stairs, only to hear something like a trash can full of half-made Jello being upended. A mass of iridescent ooze hit the bottom of the stairs, with a sheen like melted silver mixed with an oil slick. The ooze began to convulse, splitting off into two masses that formed into the visage of Darius - almost. The image of the young man, clad in gangster garb, rose from each mass, before stopping. They attempted to move forward, and as they did, the part that looked human slowly began to collapse into the oozing bulk, with parts rolling in and out of each mass but never quite coming together into anything human. 

 

"Improvisation," Nick said. "Great. Guessing our dark sorcerer came home early." 

[trollthumper]

One of the fake Dariuses sprawled forward, phantom arms forming together into weapons as best they could. It lashed out for Nick, but he was too quick, and whatever consciousness had been poured into the ectoplasm wasn't too swift at adapting. He did a little quick calculation - if the consciousness had to be built, and whoever had dispatched these fetches hadn't had time to dot the Is and cross the Ts...

 

Phantom flame licked to his fingers. He didn't even need to hurl it - the creature was so close to his face that he could just drop the mind-rending blast on it. The blast disrupted the thing's form, leaving it convulsing on the floor like a jellyfish washed up on the beach. "Wow, that's kind of disgusting," he said. "This is why you should never go with second-rate necromancy." 

[Gizmo]

"Somehow shoddy workmanship doesn't strike me as the worst transgression here," Wail grunted, the explanation from what was left of Darius and the appearance of the misshapen doppelgangers doing nothing to cool his bottled fury. His movements were surprisingly quick for his size but devoid of grace or fluidity, an unstoppable, undeniable juggernaut free to take the most direct path between two points. One hand clamped over the second thrall's putty like face while the other caught the ectoplasmic creature in the stomach and lifted the whole thing over his head. Moving at the waist, LaMarr hurled the mockery into the one Nick was burning, the pair smashing together against the basement floor.

[trollthumper]

The ectoplasmic mockery collided with its bastard twin, sending out a wet thud like a piece of raw steak hitting a kitchen counter. The two blobs slid over one another, barely distinct figures colliding - and, in places, merging. It looked as if the two impostor Dariuses were trying to merge with one another while struggling to separate at the same time, like a hideous parody of mitosis. 

 

Just when I think I've seen the most screwed-up thing in this game... 

 

In time, one of the blobs surged forth from its compatriot. The half-formed fetch charged forward, aiming to lash out at Nick. But the separation had suffused the air with rent ectoplasm, and that gave him plenty to work with. As he drew his hand across the air, the ectoplasm gathered around it, hardening into claws. As he brought his hand down on the fetch, he tried very hard not to listen to the wet, squelching sounds as the claws tore through it. The fetch was hanging together, but was focusing all its attention on doing so. 

 

"I can see why she's keeping her distance," Nick said. "I'd be ashamed if this was my kind of handiwork." 

[Gizmo]

Wail responded to the necromantic peer review with a rumble like sustain thunder crashing mere feet away, a wave of sound that blasted into the pair of fetches and continued part them with enough force to leave a spiderweb crack on the concrete of the opposite wall of the basement even after the half-melted creatures took the brunt of its power. The closer of the two rippled like a puddle of mud as a boulder fell into it, splashing to the floor as it lost all semblance of humanity. "Wrap this up, son, I'm well out of patience."

[trollthumper]

The sheer aural assault caused the lesser of the two fetches to let out something like a broken scream before it collapsed into a pile of raw ectoplasm, which swiftly boiled away into nothing. Its companion, however, held up, and responded to the assault by lunging forward towards the heroes, step by misshapen step. 

 

"Working on it," Nick said. He brought his claws down on the remaining fetch, but felt them swipe through a rather soft patch of ectoplasm - so soft that it seemed to knit together as soon as the claws were extracted. "God, for shoddy products, these things are a real pain in the --" He was interrupted as the fetch rendered up a fist like a sledgehammer out of its depths, and brought it down on his chest. Even with the protections from his jacket, it went deep into his upper body, sending pain shooting throughout. "Yeah. Like I said." 

[Gizmo]

Wail had long since run out of patience for their situation but the resounding blow Cimitiere took to the chest added a new note of urgency to the fight. "Enough," he growled flatly, surging forward with a hard set to his jaw, a humanoid wrecking ball not to be denied. Super-dense tendons and bone crashed into the remaining fetch and kept going, emerging out the other side, ectoplasm splashing outward and running downward like a candle melting in fast motion.

[trollthumper]

The last of the affronts to flesh and spirit fell apart at great speed, dissolving into little more than silvery dew over the long-neglected floor of the basement. The second it fell, Nick was on the wards, applying all the effort he could to cracking them. While they'd been strong enough to make cracking them in the midst of battle a challenging prospect, they weren't strong enough to hold up to careful scrutiny. In less than half a minute, they were down, and Darius was free. He got to his feet, and looked right in the eyes of the necromancer. 

 

"So. How are we gonna play this?"

 

"Well, I could send you back to where you were most cruelly ripped from," Nick said, "but I've got a feeling that's not what you're up for right now. I have a feeling you're up for some good old-fashioned vengeance."

 

"Don't want her dead," Darius said. "Just wanna get a chance to put all this madness to rest." 

 

"Huh," Nick said. "Well, I think I know just how to do that. Come on. We've got a party to crash."

 

As they walked up the stairs - or floated, in one case - Darius turned to Wail. "So... what happened to the hood since I've been gone? Alisha told me things, but... something tells me she wasn't the most reliable witness." 

[Gizmo]

LaMarr was silent for several beats before telling Darius, "Won't blow smoke, son, it's not what you're going to want to hear. You got a lot of friends loyal enough to miss you but thick enough to think forming another damn gang was the best way to honor your memory." The entire evening had frustrated the civics teacher to his limits but he forced his tone to remain level and calm as he spoke to the young man's ghost. "Here's hoping you can talk some sense back into them."

[trollthumper]

Darius shook his head. "Don't know if there's much sense left to talk into them," he said. "But maybe if I actually show up saying something, 'stead of shooting some fool in the head, maybe they'll get the drift." 

 

---

 

The DGC clubhouse was still bustling by the time Wail, Nick, and Darius got there - apparently news of the club's namesake wreaking holy vengeance against his enemies could keep a party going like nobody's business. As the two heroes showed up, the same kid from earlier took notice - but when he saw the spectral figure standing between them, he damn near hit the roof. 

 

"Holy crap," he yelled. "Hey, guys, he's here! He's here!"

 

The crowds on the porch turned their heads slowly towards the din - and a new din went up as soon as they registered the identity of the ghostly guest. They rushed out onto the lawn, with plaudits at the ready. 

 

"Aw, man, great to see you --"

"Way to protect the hood --"

"What'd they say when they saw your face? They beg?"

 

Darius looked immensely uncomfortable to be in the middle of all this. "Look, I can... talk about it later. But first, I got some questions. Where's Alisha?"

 

"She went inside to talk business with Deacon. Why?"

 

Nick took the measure of all the hubbub of the crowd, and turned to Wail. "Guessing she's heard the hailing of the conquering hero. Back door?"