ic Horrorshow

[Fox]

GM

 

"I do mean to apologize, again," Doctor Browning was insisting - for about the fourth time, by Indira's reckoning - as he stood there wringing his hands. "I really simply do not know how the alarm went off like that, much less falsely. It's the budget cuts, you see; we don't really have many maintenance staff left...."

 

 

The building had certainly seen better days. At some point in the past, the Hanover site had been some manner of large research and development facility, with the footprint of a warehouse and the multi-story brick design of an office building. As recently as a few years ago it might have been a bustling center of the sort of science that came accompanied by mad laughter and lightning bolts, but from what the ghost and the alien had seen on their way up it now housed sheet-covered machines and abandoned labs, the outside keeping up appearances while the inside was slowly claimed by dust and entropy.

 

Not that foreknowledge of the metaphorical rot in a financially collapsing research institute would have kept them out, of course. Kimber Storm and Indira Singh had been in the area on other business, but they weren't likely to ignore a piercing shriek of an alarm, nor an old man rushing down the sidewalk shouting about assailants and his "precious findings". Which, unfortunately, led them to their current predicament.

 

 

"Problems of the past, surely!" chimed in Doctor Whale, before anyone else could - a recurring problem. He was thinner than his portly companion, and clean-shaven to his partner's mustache, with only slightly more optimistic hand-wringing as he circled their prized possession. Clear on the top floor of the building, they'd found the object of their concern sitting exactly where it had been left yesterday: a curious sphere, pulled apart into two halves, wires and devices trailing out of it and into the monitors and unnameable science paraphernalia. "Why, we'll be back on the map with this, in no time. You'll see. No false alarms will stop us, no sir, no how, and then we can get this place right humming again, with all-new alarms and better security and new labs...."

 

The only person not wringing his hands sighed - a larger, better-dressed businessman with close-shaved hair, briefly referenced to by the others as a 'Mr. Bole'. "Please pardon them," he said in a light accent, offering Ghost Girl and Wraith a sympathetic look at the severe lack of polite disengagement they'd been offered so far. "I don't want to waste any more of your time. They're brilliant, but...excitable. It's the sphere, you see - some military and government groups are starting to offer 'safe' alien or extra-dimensional technology out to some of us for research, if they can't make anything of it, and...well. I guarantee that what happens here will finally pull this company back out of the red, but you don't need to be here for that. If you don't mind, I'll show you out myself, before Doctor Hitch bursts in and completes the trio, and you never esca--"

 

The door to the lab burst open, a severely winded man in a lab coat gasping for air after apparently sprinting his way up the building - a scene the heroines had seen three times, now, in ever-diminishing levels of impressiveness. "I got the - t-the alert!" he shouted, too much volume echoing around too much space. "Is...is it okay? Did anyone break in and t-take it?"

[Gizmo]

"Oh, don't be silly! It's always nice to see someone this excited about their work!" Ghost Girl assured Bole with a sunny smile while the newcomer was brought up to speed  by his peers. Having been expecting trouble she'd arrived as translucent and blue as ever but thankfully Freedom City was the sort of place where that didn't raise too many eyebrows even among scientists. If anything rushing toward an alarm in a more mundane guise would have demanded more answers. "I bet this sort of thing is exactly the reason they got into science in the first place, eh? I mean, alien technology! Very neat, very fun. Do you know what it is?" She directed the question toward the trio of agitated researchers but glanced pointedly toward Wraith. If anyone there was likely to recognize the bauble her money was on her friend, the actual-factual alien.

[Fox]

Wraith returned a simple shrug from the other side of the science team - but with all eyes on Kimber at her inquiry, the alien's torso rippled to briefly form an engraved word: 'Lor?'. "It does look very alien in nature," she supplied, torso smoothing back out, "but I am not a scientist - its purpose is not obvious to me."

 

She'd been inspecting the device since they arrived, more out of curiosity than any great recognition, and out of the novelty of seeing better technology again. She'd been on Earth for so long that it was easy to forget just how far behind Earth was in some regards...even if she didn't necessarily know what this particular bit of metal and wire did. "You are sure it is safe? You do not seem to have much security, and your lab is not well-shielded."

[Fox]

GM

 

"Oh! Oh, yes, no, it's fine, I promise!" Doctor Whale insisted, holding up his hands. "We know what it does -"

 

"Mostly," interjected Doctor Browning.

 

"- yes, well mostly, yes, and we're quite sure it's safe to be around. It's some manner of amplifier, you see, you give it power and it gives you more power back, but...well. It isn't very efficient."

 

"N-not at things we've tried," countered Hitch. "You can't feed it back into itself, see, a-and it works b-b-better for some things than others. It was - it was clearly designed for something in particular, and if we can find that it w-w-will be a m-m-m...a great thing."

 

"As long as nothing else goes wrong," said Bole, pinching the bridge of his nose. One got the distinct impression that he was accustomed to the chattering of the Doctors Three, but had never quite gotten used to it. "I assure you, we'll be fine here. This building does have some automated security left, and this company will be fine for a long time as long as nothing else goes wrong today."

 

And on cue, the lights cut out, plunging the room into quiet darkness cut only by the thin shafts of light that managed to filter in through the heavily-shuttered windows; Bole, barely visible in the darkness, could be heard muttering something extremely unkind about the world's sense of humor.

 

"W-well," said Browning, his hand-wringing nearly audible with all the machines off, "that's...well. At least the fuse box for this lab is right outside. If...if it is just this lab. Do you...you do suppose it's just this lab, don't you?"

[Gizmo]

Ghost Girl diplomatically cut off her burst of laughter with a cough. "Sorry. It's a little funny," she insisted with an apologetic tone. "Not to worry boys, Wraith and I are what you'd call your creature-of-the-night type heroes. You can tell from our dour, brooding demeanours!" The poltergeist waited a moment for the joke to land before pushing through the awkward silence that followed instead. "I'm saying we can both see just fine in the dark. I'll go take a peek at your fuse box, see if the power's off anywhere else. Maybe try unplugging the power absorbing alien ball?" She shrugged broadly enough for the gesture to be clear even in the dimness of the room. "Just a thought! You're the scientists, eh?" She exchanged a significant look with her friend; before they were done at the lab it seemed likely that some cabling might need to be chopped with a shapeshifted metal limb.

[Fox]

GM

 

Wraith smiled and gave a short bow, even as one of the scientists could be seen slowly feeling his way through the darkness. "It is the least we can do. I fear the advice may be good, however; if your building cannot handle the experiments you are doing, you may not have a chance to unlock the secrets your device holds."

 

"Oh, no, no problems there, I assure you," Doctor Whale insisted, feeling around for the doorknob to the lab's main exit. "We don't even have it hooked up to the building's grid, for just such a reason. It's just asking for trouble, of course! It is odd, though, we just had the grid checked last week for an earlier...." His hand found the doorknob, and with a small noise of accomplishment he opened the door to the hallway. "....experiments. Ah. ....hello."

 

Standing behind the open door was a six-foot man shaped from soft red light, who - from the features barely-visible under its luminescence - seemed just as surprised as the good doctor.

 

"....goodbye," Whale said, and closed the door, spinning around to rest his back against it. "Well! I, for one, am truly glad that you two--"

 

The doorway smashed inward, flinging Doctor Whale across the room to skid to a heap against some boxes. The thing stepped into the room, smashing its fists together in clear and unambiguous aggression. 

[Gizmo]

"Well that's new," Ghost Girl mused aloud even as she rushed forward through the air. Her belted coat billowed out behind her, tossed by a phantom gale and even in the dimness of the unlit room the shadows beneath her hood seemed to deepen ominously. "Make sure he's alright," she called to the remaining scientists, a faint echo creeping into her voice as though from the other end of a long tunnel. "I'll make sure our new friend is comfortable."

 

With her back to them the civilians couldn't see the ghost's jaw stretch and distort unnaturally into a chasm from which the full fury of winter erupted. Howling winds spilled forth along with sleet driven sideways in a widening cone than engulfed the luminous intruder. The blizzard poured forth for long seconds, the temperature dropping in the room and a thin layer of frost forming on the glass of beakers. When Ghost Girl finally closed her mouth with a clack that was audible in the abrupt silence the creature and indeed the entire shattered doorframe were coated in a thick layer of rime, jagged spires of ice swirled with patches of white trailing backward. 

[Fox]

Their luminescent foe flickered briefly at Ghost Girl's display, but it didn't have much time to react, otherwise - as soon as it seemed to realize what was going on, it went from glowing menace to glowcicle, head and one limb trapped helplessly in a jagged block of ice.

 

Wraith spared one glance toward the scientists before deciding that priorities were in order, given how easily that thing had blown through a door; she hunched, limbs reforming into heavy-limbed brawler that covered the distance in two bounds to claw into the ice and bring one fingerless, over-sized maul of a limb down into the creature's exposed head.

[Fox]

GM

Whatever the thing was, it could apparently take a full-force Wraith-blow to the head and live to tell about it; it didn't seem particularly happy, between its sub-zero prison and metal shot to the skull, but it didn't seem out for the count, either, dazed and making an awful, distorted growl of frustration as it struggled against its prison - with no small strength, given the dent its ill-positioned free arm left in the floor, but to only superficial damage and little progress toward freedom.

 

Across the room, Doctor Browning had apparently decided he was brave enough to venture out of the shadows and give Doctor Whale a helping hand, the latter struggling to keep his feet as he tried to get wind back in his lungs. He'd live, at least - if he could keep the heroes between him and their assailant.

[Gizmo]

"Alright then tall, glowy and smashing," Ghost Girl addressed the restrained intruder, pulling her hood back with one hand and daintily working her jaw back into place with the thumb and forefinger of the other. "Now that you've had a chance to cool off, do you want to tell us what you think you're doing breaking down perfectly serviceable doors and knocking people around, eh?" Her patient tone as she floated high enough to look the luminous figure in the general area that should have contained its eyes and the way she planted her fists on her hips suggested she wasn't angry, just very disappointed. "That's no way to make a first impression, bud."

[Fox]

GM

 

"Man, #### you," came the...surprisingly human response, the thing managing just enough leverage with its arm to badly crack Kimber's ice. "We didn't come all the way here to get stopped by floating ice women and....and...."

 

It slumped back in the ice, all the fight going out of its form...and all the glow, too, retracting across its body like some kind of energy field until it left only a human behind. He was hard-faced, shaved bald (by choice, apparently - he didn't look like he'd had access to a razor in the last couple days), dressed in a dirty tank-top and what looked like khaki pants. He could have been any generic street thug if it weren't for the odd device strapped to his chest, a slowly-dimming disk the size of a dinner plate hanging from heavy cables and wires that ran around his shoulders and up to a three-pronged headpiece molded close to his skull. "#### it, I'm not winnin' this one, am I? Ain't all the fancy science junk in the world gonna beat you two without backup. I shoulda waited."

[Fox]

"....waited with the others?" Wraith asked. She was still sitting on the impromptu ice sculpture, perched on what would have been the man's chest like some kind of awful bird of prey - not overtly menacing, but a distinct reminder and threat, none the less, especially with one arm still so disproportionately large and club-like that the blunt end was resting against the floor next to her. "You said 'we' did not come here...and I have not known many people who could create such a power that would call it 'science junk.'"

 

"We must know how many of you there are. There is no shame in losing when you are out-numbered, and perhaps helping us here will do you some good."

[Fox]

GM

 

"I b-believe I may help with that," announced Browning; he'd managed to find a battery-operated lantern of some kind, and under its faint glow he was armpit-deep in a series of wires and cables that he'd gotten running between their 'amplifier' device and a set of old computer monitors. "We d-don't have p-power, but the old security cameras have emergency b-batteries. The s-security room is downstairs, but if we can get enough p-p-p-p- enough juice into the screens and one of the machines, maybe we can t-take a look."

 

Even as he spoke, with his injured fellow limping his way over on his companion's shoulders, the screens flickered to life.

 

Quote

"-actly do you mean, they 'went on ahead'?"

He was a small man, and unimposing, from his twiggy build to his balding sandy-brown hair, which made it all the more amusing that he was trying to get into the personal space of someone who was six and half feet tall if he was an inch. "I'm unsure what, precisely, you meatheads thought was unclear about waiting until I showed up. If, indeed, you thought at all!"

He threw his hands up, turning in an exasperated circle that gave his victim almost enough time to sigh before the ranting figure's oddly heavy walking stick was back in his face. "I got you all out of that pitiful hole you call Bedlam. I gave you purpose! A reason to look forward to tomorrow! And all - all! - that I ask is that you do as you are told!!"

Spinning again, he swept his arms out; whatever he was after (and the heroes didn't have to make many guesses) he'd brought a small army of men and women with him, all of them varying levels of rough-looking and each wearing a device identical to their iced-over friend's. "I made you all strong! You were thugs! Worthless! Now you are as strong as you think you are - as powerful as your confidence! Your bravery, made manifest, by my brilliance! And you can't stay calm and unafraid long enough to use it because you're too busy finding every way you can to RUIN EVERYTHING! But fine."

He deflated, wagging a hand toward the stairwell. "Fine. If that's how you want it, that's how you want it. Go! Spread out. Find me what I - what we, wanted. At least go join up with the others."

 

Doctor Browning made a noise, and his fingers played a staccato across the keyboard - several more old monitors blurred to life, each showing packs of glowing figures making their way through the disparate floors of the building. "O-oh. Oh. Oh dear." He glanced back at the shattered door, then to the screens, then to the heroes. "Oh no. ....h-how do you two believe you'll fare against...?"

[Gizmo]

"Language," Ghost Girl warned their captive while the security feed was being brought up. Once they'd heard the diminutive mastermind's rant the poltergeist let out a low whistle of commiseration. "Jams. What's his damage, eh? Gotta appreciate the thorough explanation, though!"

 

An unsettling smile spread across her face as she leaned forward to inspect the device strapped to his chest. "So this thing only works if you're not scared?" She made as if to poke the disk with an index finger but instead her hand passed right though and deep into the thug's torso, plunging well past the elbow. She lifted her head to make eye-contact with him only to reveal empty, cavernous sockets as flesh melted away to reveal polished bone. Ghost Girl slowly retracted her arm and her fingers reappeared wrapped around a elegantly curving wooden handle. It continued to slide effortlessly out of their defeated intruder's chest until the wicked tip of the scythe's blade protruded from right between his eyes, its impossibly black length bisecting his face and throat as removed the weapon fully with a theatrical twirl. By the time she had it spinning in lazy circles by her side her face had fallen away entirely leaving only a grinning skull. "Oh, Wraith! And it's not even my birthday!"

[Fox]

"That may have been their plan," Wraith noted, pondering the screens with interest. "Cutting the power not only aids in confusion, security, and escape, but in the darkness their...energy field?...is quite striking. It may scare others, and it is far easier to be brave when you are the monster. How unfortunate for them."

 

She grinned, which was a pretty neat trick for someone who didn't even have a mouth a few seconds ago; it grew more like a crack than a smile, etching its way across the sides of her head to uncover long, awful teeth in a jaw so wide that the whole top half of her head seemed to hinge backward at the neck. She was still for a moment, upright but inhumanly slumped, until an arm pulled its way out of her throat, emaciated and shining, fishing for purchase until it could dig its claws into her mouth and drag the rest of a new body up behind it. It was thin, wet-looking: old metal skin wrapped too-tight over an inhuman skeleton and an angular face with sunken black eyes from which no light could escape.

 

"Perhaps they should have worried about other monsters," the thing brightly mused with thin lips over shark-tooth fangs, resting its head conversationally in its hands, elbows propped against the lifeless lower jaw of a somewhat deflated body that still trapped its lower half, like some awful insect only half-free of its pupal host. "We should say hello."

[Fox]

GM

The thug had watched Ghost Girl's transformation with increasing distress, but his response wasn't really needed by the time she was done: his own panic was clear, and as soon as she'd started pulling a scythe out of his torso his device had, by all appearances, shorted out entirely, losing what glow it had left. Curiously, the device itself had resisted her passage somewhat - not enough to keep her from her dramatics, but enough to imply that at full power whatever field it created might not be so easy to trespass.

 

The scientists had watched them both with a mix of horror and scientific curiosity, but the former appeared to be winning - especially for their business friend, Mr. Boll, who was trying extremely hard to look calm while simultaneously trying to position himself near the trash can as his face slowly lost every color but white and green.

 

"I, uh. Y...yes, well, that's....oh. Oh, oh dear." Browning mopped his forehead with his tie, deliberately turning his back to the pair to watch his slowly-dimming screens. "Yes. Well. I'm...I'm certainly glad you're on our side. If we may be so bold, there are two groups of three quite nearby, one on this floor and one on the floor below. If...if you could kindly clear those out, we will try to block ourselves in, in case you - in case anyone you miss makes it up here while you work your way downstairs. Good, uhm. Good...good luck."

 

"Do p-p-p-please p-p-ut your faces back on before you come back?" ventured Hitch, which earned him a cautioning kick to the shoe from Whale. "I-i-if you w-want, I mean."

[Gizmo]

"Haha, gross!" Ghost Girl cheered her friend's macabre showing with delighted laughter, exposed jaw bones clacking. "I'm a sucker for the classics but she's always so much more creative, y'know?" she explained to the group of scientists, seemingly oblivious to their discomfort. "Comes from having no skeleton, I think. I mean, I don't have a skeleton either, haven't had one for ages really but that's a whole conversation and we've got things to do!"

 

Spinning her scythe about so that its handle rested horizontally in the air she hopped up onto it as if rising sidesaddle. "You should probably try getting that doohickey off of him while it's not working. In the meantime, I defer to the master huntswoman!" She gave a courtly wave of her hand to the mangled mess of metal next to her. "Shall we?"

[Fox]

"I learned from the best," Wraith insisted as they left the room, body melting together into a less horrifying shape...and one that was easier to move around in. "Spending time with you, and movie nights, have been very good at teaching me what humans fear. Not having bones very much helps, though, yes."

 

She held up a finger just outside the door, eyes narrowing as she grew a multitude of long, thin spines that arched back from the sides of her face, gently twitching in the near-lightless air. "....they are not being very subtle," she quietly pondered, cocking her head toward one corner of the floor. "The ones below us I cannot hear well enough, but I believe they are on the far side from the stairs to this floor, breaking something. The ones on this floor are further away...I think there was another hallway there. They may have gone the long way around, checking other labs for the device."

 

She frowned, spines twitching as she tried to figure out how and where sounds were echoing across the old, abandoned office spaces. "....if we split up," she suggested, gesturing left and right along their own hallway, "we can follow the outer walls and sneak up on both sides of them. If you frighten them, perhaps I can knock them out, and we can trade on the next floor? At least they will have nowhere to run."

[Gizmo]

Ghost Girl made an appreciative coo, lacing her currently bony fingers together between her shoulder and cheek. "Aw! You are such a good friend, letting me go first. I better set the bar high! See you on the other side!" With a wave she faded from view into invisibility and sped off down the hallway. She sniffed the air experimentally as she went, confirming her suspicions. The properties of the psionic fields the thugs were wearing stopped her from sniffing out their fear the way she usually would have; it made a certain sense if they were covering themselves in a sort of bravery-made-solid. An inconvenience, certainly but then that might have made the game a little too easy. So rarely did she have a good excuse to cater to the predilections that came with being a poltergeist.

 

Invisible and silent she rounded the corners of the building before exhaling, a slower, more moderated version of the icy torrent that had trapped the first of the intruders. Instead of a blizzard an icy cloud poured forth, quickly filling the enclosed space with a dense field of concealing, shiver-inducing mist.

[Fox]

GM

Even without Wraith's tracking, the intruders wouldn't have been difficult to find - big, glowing figures in a darkened building tended to stand out somewhat. The small group had a variety of shapes and sizes represented, but all three had the same monstrous, glowing humanoid form that their frozen friend had sported, all three showed signs of having moved less around obstacles than through obstacles, and all three were growing desperately uncomfortable in the face of a fog they couldn't understand.

 

"D'you think they just turned on the AC? Like, it's acting up, or something."

 

"You idiot, we cut the power." One of the forms smacked another upside the head with a noise and force that implied something that would be more bone-crunching without their protective fields. "How're you gonna run AC without power? Someone probably just, y'know, broke a pipe."

 

This part of the building had high, lofted ceilings, once you were out of the offices - Kimber and Indira had been working together far longer than was necessary for her to guess where her friend had gone. She hung from the rafters invisible but for Ghost Girl's supernaturally perceptive eyes, growing an extra arm to flash her friend a quick thumb's up.

 

"Yeah, sure," muttered a glowing thug, his luminescent field flickering for a moment. "Broke a pipe. Probably didn't even notice, 'cos we're awesome."

[Gizmo]

The sound of metal scraping against the flooring caused one of the intruders to spin about and look behind him, just in time to catch an obscured silhouette slipping through an open door into one of the empty rooms they'd already checked and passed. It was difficult to tell through the thick mist that surrounded them and leeched heat away even through their energy fields but the shadow might have belonged to a person... just one too tall and with limbs too thin to belong to a human. Before he could investigate an echoing giggle came from the opposite end of the hallway and the mists rippled with the passing of something unnaturally quick and low to the ground, disappearing through another doorway. The laugher was off-key somehow, like something with the wrong flesh trying to replicate the sound.

 

The sound came more frequently then, all around them and accompanied by strange shapes in the fog, close enough to startle the hardened criminals but too quick to grab. All the while the open doors rattled, room they knew were empty now looming like gaping maws. All the while the temperature continued to drop until there was no brushing it off as some burst pipe or any other reasonable explanation. Something unintelligible was whispered in one man's ear, nearly causing him to throw a punch at the crony to his right. He turned about, eyes narrowed and searching for the source of the noises when abruptly they stopped.

 

The was a beat of complete silence, then another and then with a deafening bang every door in the hallway slammed shut. Frames rattled and deadbolts clacked into place, mist pushed about by displaced air. Only one door remained open, at the very far edge of what the group could make out through the icy shroud, beckoning with a slow creak. 

[Fox]

GM

 

".....nuh uh," said one of the glowing figures; he and his compatriot flickered like bad lightbulbs as they backed away from the beckoning door, hands raised to ward off whatever this new evil was. "We didn't sign up for this ####."

 

"W-we were told supers, maybe," said the other fearful felon, his field collapsing entirely as he backed away. "Capes, y'know? Tights, speeches, worst you get is a concussion or a free trip to the doc's. I've seen this movie, man. Guys like us - guys like us don't survive to the end of this movie, man!"

 

The last of them snorted, as if he, too, wasn't mysteriously several feet further away from the door than he'd started. "You guys are...you guys are just-- wusses. That's what you are. Kids." He brought his fists together, psychic energy radiating outward as he psyched himself up. "Ain't nothin' that can stop us, y'know? Some freak in a cowl with a gas grenade, or somethin'. You'll see."

 

He walked down the corridor, field jagged and fading, but still protecting him. "Gonna show you there's nothin' for me to be afr---for you t'be afraid of. Yeah," he said, cracking his neck as he made his way through the door. "Nothin'."

[Gizmo]

Mist swirled about the floor of the darkened room, obscuring anything below knee height. The rest of the room was dominated by equipment covered in heavy tarps, indistinct shapes that might have been as benign as furniture but which invited imagination. The boldest of the intruders made it several steps inside in near silence, seemingly to confirm that it was indeed nothing more than an empty room.

 

As soon as he began to turn back around to call to his comrades the door slammed itself shut, followed by an empty bookshelf taller than he was toppling over of its own volition and joining a half dozen chairs flung by an unseen force to form a barricade preventing his immediate exit. The resounding impact of crashing wood gave way to a low, guttural moan behind him, deeper into the room. Staggering through the mists was the recognizable silhouette of the thug who'd gone on ahead of his fellows, the shredded remains of his technological marvel hanging loosely about his neck and sparking at irregular intervals. "Bro. We shoulda never come here," he wheezed painfully as he grew closer, arms raising with obvious effort to reach with grasping fingers. The sparks illuminated him enough to reveal that his head was sitting unnaturally atop his shoulders, bone jutting out of a neck snapped violently to the left, eyes rolled back and features slack. "I'm dead, bro."

[Fox]

GM

 

"Aw, Jacob, what'd--"

 

The thug made an odd choking noise as the spectre of his friend's injuries came to light, and his bravado fell away - quite literally, his glowing persona shredding against the terror for the poltergeist's projections. His legs went first, pulling his less responsive other half behind him as he fled for the door and scrambled ineffectually against the barricade, throwing chairs to the side and desperately banging against the bookcase. "Hey! HEY! GET - GET ME OUTTA HERE I GOTTA GET OUT, LET ME OUT, SAVE ME!!" 

 

 

On the outside, his friends had lost their meager remaining protections as well; one banged on the door as hard as he could, working the doorknob as the other turned tail and ran....only to reappear, hurled a few feet through the air and into the door hard enough to rattle it in its frame. Several hundred pounds of molten metal dropped from the ceiling without so much as a whisper, one of the frightened remainders turning his head to look into a terribly amused face that held one finger over lips it didn't have.

 

"Ssshhhh," said Wraith, eyes narrowed in a Kinigosi grin that the thug could barely register before the hammer came down on his head.

 

 

The rattling had stopped. No help was coming.

 

The thug inside the room turned around, backing into the barricade bookcase like he wanted to disappear inside of it. "N-naw, man, naw...."

[Gizmo]

"Save me, save me!" the shambling corpse mimicked in a voice that was suddenly distinctly female while waving its hands in mock terror. "That's what you sound like." The scrambling invade had only enough time to adopt a look of utter confusion before a blast of blizzard wind washed over him, leaving most of him encased in ice and rooted to the floor. A thump on the head with the butt of a scythe handle took care of the rest.

 

Ghost Girl was back in her own form as she passed through the barricade and closed door, humming to herself. She made a sound of professional appreciation as she surveyed Wraith's handiwork in the hallway. "Ha, didn't let them get far, did you? Be honest, were the rattling doorknobs a bit on the nose? I know, it's just exactly what you'd expect from a poltergeist but I was going for an aesthetic, eh? Getting back to my roots." She bent over far enough to tap the device attached to the chest of one of the unconscious thugs curiously.