ic Soot & Cinders

[Fox]

"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."

[Electra]

"Ugh, that doesn't actually sound like much of a perk," Raina opined, sipping her coffee. "Though I guess you could always drop it into a conversation with Fred that you're temporarily immortal, maybe without the 'being put back from your component pieces' part. She needs more sturdy friends." Merlin chirruped an absent assent to that notion. "I kinda doubt your power set would make you a good muni defender, and the Freedom League probably wouldn't take you, both because you're green and you'd have to be a part timer. Getting a career in the cosmetics business wouldn't be so bad. Have you got decent grades?" 

[Fox]

"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."

[Electra]

"After spending a year in superhero school, I can say with confidence that subtlety is lost on most of you," Raina pointed out with a faint smile. "Fred's lonely and looking for a direction. She's got a good thing going with the makeup stuff, but she's only going to feel guilty about it if she's not helping other people out at the same time she's fixing up her own life. You need a job that's not superheroing but that lets you take time off to do your thing, plus you don't stay dead if something bad and monstery happens. She likes you, you like her." She shrugged. "What's not to like?" 

[Fox]

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."

[Electra]

"Neither of you cares that much about money or status, so you're not too likely to fight about it until you get to like hobo-level subsistence, and even then you'd probably each be trying to give the other the last bowl of shoe soup," Raina countered, ticking off on her fingers. "Even alchemists need people to wash beakers and move big boxes of reagents and stuff. She'll have to hire folks to do the grunti work, so at the very least you'd be qualified for that. I suspect she'll probably come up with something better, but it's her business plan and I don't pay attention that much." 

 

Merlin looked up long enough to point out that even with all Fred's progress over the past year, she was also going to need trustworthy people around her who had much better understanding of present day society and technology. Raina nodded agreement. "Good point. And there's different kinds of responsibility. I'm not suggesting you put on some damsel in distress thing and let her rescue you. But she wants to feel like what she's doing matters to somebody besides her. She's already trying to make sure that Riley and Robin have a place to live when they graduate, despite their best efforts. You could probably help with that too, come to think of it." She ticked off another finger. "Everybody needs help sometimes, no matter how put together they are. You've just got to pay attention to her." Raina folded down her last finger and looked at Merlin. "Was that everything?" Merlin nodded. "Good." She took a leisurely sip of coffee. 

[Fox]

"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."

[Electra]

She snorted. "Then worry about it when you get there. There's nothing saying you have to make a career out of it, I'm just suggesting that for now, you've both got something the other needs. If it turns out it's not working, then quit and go deliver pizzas or something." Raina waved an impatient hand. "Or don't do it in the first place, it's not really any of my business." She reached out a hand to Merlin, flat palm up. Without looking, the monkey put the denuded and somewhat chewed cake pop stick on it. She grimaced. "Next time I'm getting you a cinnamon roll." She put the stick back in the paper bag it came in, then looked at Matt. "You about ready to go? If I don't get back before Cathy goes to bed I'm like as not going to find a sock on the door." 

[Fox]

"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."

[Electra]

Raina slanted a glance in Matt's direction, weighing her answer for just a moment before laughing and flicking her fingers dismissively. "I don't need to make plans, my boyfriend owns something like ten percent of Mexico's GDP. But if I were to need somethnig to do, I'd be a perfect human figurehead for the tech company Merlin could form. Surprisingly few companies are willing to trust a monkey for their IT solutions, which is really closeminded of them." Merlin chirruped disagreeably at that. "Well you can't just keep doing up fake IDs and obnoxiously reporting security flaws to companies forever," she pointed out. "That's not gonna keep you in monkey chow."

 

She could sense Merlin teeing up some response about keeping them both in monkey chow when she broke up with Anibal, but she gave him a quelling glare before he could vocalize anything. "Do you have to feed the dogs?" she asked Matt instead. "They seem incorporeal most of the time, but they also seem kind of... doggy. Can they eat if they want to?" 

[Fox]

"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."

[Electra]

"I wonder if I could talk to dead people," Raina mused, changing the subject without really needing to think about it. It was all automatic by now. "I have a really great translation spell I hardly ever get a chance to use, except for the permanent version on Himself over here." She waved a hand at Merlin, who ignored her. "It's supposed to let me talk to anybody or anything, even stuff that's not technically alive. I've used it on rocks and cars and things like that, but never tried it on a ghost. I guess the first problem would be seeing the ghost in the first place." She looked over at Matt. "I don't suppose there are any resident ghosts on campus I could try it out on? Maybe the less-deadly non-poltergeist versions?" 

[Fox]

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."

[Electra]

"Oh well, guess I won't be the next big TV medium." Raina smirked a little, then sobered. "What were those dark shadow things, anyway? I meant to ask earlier, but forgot with all the fire and her turning into a little kid and all. It looked like they were trying to get at us, or maybe at her." She rubbed her hands over her arms, chasing away an imaginary chill. "I saw a movie on TV once where these gray things with long arms appeared right after a bad guy died; they latched onto his ghost and pulled him right down and out of the world. Is that the sort of thing those creatures were trying to do with her?" 

[Fox]

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."

[Electra]

"So if you had to, you could keep them off with one of those million-candlepower spotlights or something?" Raina guessed. "Might make it hard to be low profile after that." Merlin mused aloud that it would be informative to know what part of the light spectrum could actually dissuade the things, because then it might be possible to create a less-bright alternative. "It's ghosts, it's not exactly regular science," she reminded him. "Regular rules might not apply." They weren't quite back at the school yet, but they were close enough to be back in neighborhoods Raina could recognize. She began repacking her bag, though without Merlin this time as he'd obviously decided not to be scared of the dogs anymore. "I guess I can see why you want to make sure you get the ghosts where they're going, if that's the competition you're working against." 

[Fox]

"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."

[Electra]

"Yeah, nobody deserves to be stuck here forever," Raina agreed, sounding a little pensive even to her own ears. She wondered for a minute how many ghosts might be stuck in the basement of her old home, then decided that was not something she wanted to be thinking about at all. It was unlikely she'd ever see that house again anyway, so it wasn't like there was much she could do about it. She climbed out of the car and stretched, then extended an arm so Merlin could easily climb her shoulder. "Well, it was an interesting experience, I'll give you that. And it's always fun to get a little playing with fire time in. You all done for the night?" 

[Fox]

"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.

[Electra]

Matt disappeared before Raina had the chance to say anything, which was just as well. It had been on the tip of her tongue to offer to help him with his arm, which was stupid anyway because what the hell did she know from first aid? But wrapping a bandage around one's own arm had to be tricky. Maybe some of the dogs had thumbs or something and could help out. Familiars with thumbs were much more useful than any other type. 

 

Merlin took that opportunity to point out that it was late and he was getting cold, plus with their luck one of Madison's goon squad would be out patrolling for evildoers and see them outside the walls after curfew. "What, you don't think I could take 'em?" she asked aloud, pretending affront. Merlin just rolled his eyes and said it wasn't a matter of 'could," so much as 'want to.' Fighting against the girls who thought she was evil incarnate had always been pointless, but now it wasn't even fun anymore, so why bother? 

 

Raina sighed and unstoked her broom from her bag, plopping down on it sidesaddle and riding it over the fence to settle by the dorm. "You're taking away my one hobby," she pointed out to Merlin, half-irritated. "Besides, it's not about having fun. It's about being right. Come on, let's get in before the cold front hits." Merlin seemed unconvinced by her arguments, but followed her in anyway.