1 ⚙️

[callbacks]

[Remember that one Spectre randomly accosting people for interviews on fuck all? Looks like some teenage D-bag in shades actually saw fit to entertain her questions. Oh dear. The brief interview doesn't get nearly as much unreal air as li'l Miss Invidia of poisonous fame, but it's playing here and there today. The brief clip might not merit any attention at all, except...]

...local establishment you think more Invidians should know about?

[The kid lights up suddenly without actually smiling, rising up a little on the balls of his feet with his hands still jammed in his pockets.]

Shit, dawgs, you have no idea. You got yourselves a national--or, like--at least a municipal treasure sitting like a bereft and sack-clothed widow at the corner of Ignored and Abandoned. You assholes don't know what you're missing. It's a downright indignation, the lack of patronage enjoyed by this magnificently unironic piece of shit business modeling. Hold on to your asses because I'mma need you to get 'em parked pronto-mundo in the chairs at Mr. Dudeguy's BBQ and Foot Massage-While-You-Wait.

[He takes a breath, and it's at this point the interviewer really should have moved on, but it's too late. It's always already too late.]

Got a long-standing nation in my imagination
All staycationing in line at the bee-bee-queue,
Awaitin' pork and grilled onions while Granny get her bunions
Caressed lovingly in the hands of a master in toe-fu,
By which I mean podia-shiatsu-jutsu-fu,
Though you could probably order tofu, too, I mean, I ain't the boss of you
If that's the shit you want to order smoked and spice-rubbed for you.
Uh, anyway,
All I'm sayin' is it's the sweetest jerk-and-rub of a release
Your mortal soul can experience post-cease.

[...Did he just--]

You know, if that's how you feel about it. Anyway, yeah. Check it. Cat does a sweet kebab.

[In any case, business is now booming at BBQ and Foot Massage-While-U-Wait. Lines are out the door and around the block. A full street away, a hunched, furtive-looking blond is bargaining in desperate, hissed tones with a seller of hoodies.]

Please, no, I'm begging--no. I can't give you the sunglasses, I'm on a strictly no shades-trades platform. Can't you just--holy shit.

[Sensing someone looking at him, he stiffens and turns away further. He will ollie off this entire layer if he has to, Jesus.]

Comments

[schardynfreude]

[Oh, someone else has noticed alright. It's fine. Chiron will just caaaaasually lean against a wall here and not look directly at the. boy? Seems young in spite of himself.

Hard to tell sometimes, really.]

You have quite the mouth on you. Did they censor you in realtime, I wonder, or is there an editing room?

[callbacks]

Fuck.

[Despite the flat delivery of the word and the lack of visible expression, the boy jumps and half-turns to look at Chiron. He stares for a few seconds without a word, but, well. It's not a lack of words that's usually his problem.]

Don't think that shit's typically done live. The station strings together a bunch of clips to make like a feel-good local color montage to do their citizens proud, so heart-warmingly diverse in every dimension your ribs'll still feel the static tingles from the metaphorical fuzzy sweater by the eleven o'clock crier. So. Yeah. Left some percussive cussing on the cutting room floor there.

[As he mumbles on and on, he slowly takes the back of his T-shirt collar and pulls it up over his hair, like this too-little, too-late stab at masking his identity will help in any way.]

[schardynfreude]

This place doesn't always work as things did in the living world. Cut corners, fewer details, so there's really no te--what are you doing?

[honey put your collar back down you're going to be more conspicuous that way]

[callbacks]

Like you just said. Cut corners, fewer details. I'm like a ghost and it's like a sheet. It could work.

[schardynfreude]

[He opens his mouth to argue that people aren't that stupid, but then he looks around. These people aren't as dull and fast sleepwalking as those in Limbo, and yet they are still only Spectres.

...waitasecond]

You're aware of your situation. Oh! Well, then--yes, we ought to get you somewhere slightly safer in that case.

[callbacks]

...Who's we.

[YOU CAN'T GET HIM TO NO SECONDARY LOCATION. STREET SMARTS!]

[schardynfreude]

Myself and the others who are also aware. It's a much smaller number than you'd think.

[callbacks]

...Oh. I mean, if you're talking about the I See Dead People thing, I kinda thought the number'd be like .5 on average. You know, just based on casual observation.

[He glances back at the hoodie seller, who is absolutely oblivious to the finer points of their conversation.]

What do you mean, 'safer.' Didn't seem like you were concerned until I said the G-word.

[schardynfreude]

Safer means the young lady in charge is not the biggest fan of what we can do. Given that you're unfamiliar here, it's likely you haven't come into your powers yet? I can't say it's impossible she'd come after you if she knew, but she did attempt to poison the rest of us.

Some of us are understandably a little on edge.

[callbacks]

[That gets him to finally stop turtling in his T-shirt.]

Wait.

[...]

What is even the point of trying to poison anybody here. Isn't everyone already, you know. Past our 'best by' dates.

[schardynfreude]

Apparently if you 'die' here, you more or less lose all you've gained and turn into something of a...protoplasm? Something unformed, basically the spirit version of a baby and have to work your way back up again.

[callbacks]

Oh, what. Gross. That's bullshit, I got no business being some kind of... ectoplasmic goo baby. Of all the things re-death could be, it has to be the stupidest. ...You think the broad'll come after me just 'cause I looked in a mirror like, shit, dude, you're looking fine and deceased this chronologically equivocal morning?

[schardynfreude]

Perhaps not terribly likely. She doesn't so much see us individually as threats as what our collective goal is. But she did try to kill us, so that can hardly go unanswered.

[callbacks]

TBH, you're buttressing a pretty damn strong case for me to traipse off like a plucky but brainless ingenue with a strange adult clown to an as-yet undisclosed location. Is it the circus.

[schardynfreude]

We're mostly holed up in some of the apartments while those poisoned recover, but there's a nice house further up than here that several of us are calling home at the moment.

If you're feeling a deep and unrelenting sense that something is extremely wrong, it's because the mechanism for allowing those dead to reincarnate is busted, and if you agree to it, you'll get powers to fight monsters that were once souls stuck here too long so you can help us fix it and get Purgatory flowing the way it apparently is supposed to again.

The young lady in charge of this city does not, in fact, want to reincarnate.

And I have noted your clown comment. [*Chiron will remember that.]

[callbacks]

Uh, sorry if that's not your line. Not that I'm knocking the profession, clowning's an ancient tradition that's attracted a kind of cultish reverence in some circles. But maybe those circles are not your circles and you just dress like you do because of. Reasons.

...

They're some slick shoes.

[schardynfreude]

Not everyone has the same sense of fashion as what is available here.

But the shoes are nice. And the patterns are, hm, familiar and pleasing.

In any event, we're not clowns. We're...hm...we transform into new appearances, can perform magic and superhuman feats, and are the only ones capable of fighting monsters. [does eos have anime and if so would he know what anime is, questions I never thought I'd be asking myself]

[callbacks]

Holy shit, you're anime.

[schardynfreude]

I'm...animated?

[callbacks]

Yes. No. Well, none of us are. I just meant... you know Saturday morning cartoons?

[schardynfreude]

Oh. Superheroes and such? Yes, something like that. I'd show you, but I would rather not draw any undue attention.

[callbacks]

[Breathed like a prayer:] Anime is real...

[Anyway. No. There are important things what got said. He shakes his head and looks away, finding some spot of sidewalk to the side to fixate on.]

You're right. It doesn't feel right for shit to be stopped up like this. Can't say I'm hype to hop into combat with messed-up monster souls, but... I mean, if that's what it takes to get things working again. [Shrug.] Maybe. I don't know. Guess I don't have anything better to do.

[schardynfreude]

...You're going to get along with some of the girls just fine with an attitude like that. [Not sarcasm! Several of them basically went 'I have nothing better to do' as their reasoning. So.]

What moniker have you been supplied with? I awoke with a title of Your Majesty, but that...has felt less like a true name, so now I currently go by Chiron.

[callbacks]

It's just Clocks. That's what I remember.

Is there a way to feel underdressed but, like, with your fake ghost handle.

[schardynfreude]

We have someone who woke up with the name Pariah, and another who's Kingslayer. I think you're fine.