Ace's Apartments of Dreams & Dwyrin's Bar

Cortlen smiled under his the faceplate. Really brave, Ace. Really brave, he thought. "Now tell me Ace, do you have any idea how to kill or banish a ghost, or how to even communicate with something that has no vocal chords? To me it makes as much sense as talking to a transparent rock, and then hitting it with silver to try and kill it."

"Who said anything about silver??" She asked Cortlen, then shrugged. "Everyone knows silver is totally ineffective against ghosts. But you're in luck! This is one of my specialties!"

Dwyrin then did something very uncharacteristic. She grabbed Resha's hand. Resha was still holding onto Ace and so Dwyrin began to drag the little train towards the last place they had seen the blur. Looking past the two attatched comrades, she smiled at the men still standing near the front desk. "Coming??" she asked with a brief smile, as she continued walking eagerly forward.

Zane smiled slightly. "I don't think you'll take no for an answer," he said and followed the little train they made.

"I don't want to!" Ace screamed as he tried to get away from Resha's grip. "Come on, Dwyrin, I, I, I have to do that paperwork! It can't wait! Post haste! Take me back to HQ!"

"Cortlen! Use your ghost buster suit to destroy it!" Ace yelled as Dwyrin thoroughly dragged them into the store's basement.

Resha grinned and tightened her grip on Ace. "Come oooon!" She felt really excited. She was really interested in these scary paranormal stuff. "This is so much fun and exciting so we can't miss it!"

Silver ineffective against ghosts...? Hm. To every one their own.
Cortlen laughed at the ghost buster comment. "Sorry Ace, this is more of a human splatterer suit. Sad but true. Mind you, if it was still alive and hostile, I would be a great one to call." He rubbed his index finger along the trigger, luckily for everyone, the safety was on.

Ignoring Ace's whining, she grabbed a flashlight off the banister along the downward flight of stairs and clicked it on.

"When are we going to get some lights down here, anyway?? You should have known something like this would happen," she told Ace, as if this were a common situation. After brushing away a few cobwebs from the surrounding brickwork walls - which were far too close together on the stairwell, in Dwyrins opinion - they got to the basement floor.

Zane followed quietly from behind to the basement, amused.

Ace struggled against Resha's grip as they descended the stairs. "Guys! I don't wanna!" he continued.

He cringed as he moved through the icky cobwebs.

He looked around the dark room. The group had become uncustomarily quiet as he each one searched the room for the ghost they'd all glimpsed earlier.

"Ah, you know what? Yeah, that's definitely what happen," Ace smiled.
"What we saw is the phenomenon known as Indoor Mirage. There was never a ghost here. The lights reflected temporarily during a spacial leap to form a strange visage that in our minds we characterized it as a flesh eating war veteran ghost. But that's not what happened! It's an Indoor Mirage. Ah, we were really fooled, huh?"

Resha blinked, really believing that there's a ghost not the indoor mirage Ace was saying because she was pretty sure he was saying this to be able to go woosh back under his desk.

But she saw something on his shoulder that sparked interest in her. She moved in closer and stared at his shoulder. "Ace, look!" she grinned. A big spider rested on his shoulder. "SO CUTE!"

Cortlen looked at the spider, and noted the markings. "Try not to scare that one Ace. It's poisonous. Even I'm not ballsy enough to eat that if I ran out of supplies." He rested the barrel of his rifle rest on Ace's shoulder, beside the spider, hoping it would go on the gun. No such luck.

At Resha's call of 'So cute' Dwyrin spun around just in time to see Cortlen raise his gun to Ace's shoulder. "Ace isn't poisonous!" she said before she realized what was on his shoulder. "But he might be if that thing bites him."

She spun Ace around and negligently flicked the spider to the ground then squashed it with one big boot. Thoroughly. Poisonous insects had been rampant in Aerugo and she was quite sick of them.

"How did you even see that, Resha??" It was a compliment to the girls eyes, really - it was pretty dark down here out of the flashlight beam. "Maybe you should be in front."

"She's weirdly obsessed with them spiders," he said. "There may be more of these things."

Ace felt very relieved that Dwyrin had saved him from the spider. "You're a hero, milady," Ace said.

He looked over toward Jan and froze. He pointed behind her. "G-gggg-...GHOST!"

(HAHA LOL! you called me JAN xD)

Resha grinned. "Spiders are uber cute! And thankies, Dwyrin," she nodded but stopped at the mention of ghosts. She turned quickly and she saw faint glimmer then nothing. "Ohhh," she turned to them. "I think I saw it!"

Cort saw the distortion in the dim light. "Same. Now what," he asked, taking the safety off his rifle. Taking the shot seemed easy, but how could he confirm that the round would kill the specter. He couldn't. Cortlen was stuck waiting for orders.

She twirled around again and saw nothing of the supposed spectre. Maybe I'm scaring it off or something... Giving her companions a quick look-over, it was obvious who to hand the flashlight off to. Dwyrin held her hand out to Zane, then dropped the light into his saying, "Here ya go. It's not doing me much good." Then she started to wander through the rooms in the basement a bit, hoping to catch the ghost off guard.

Zane took the flashlight in his hands. "I wasn't paying much attention," he admitted. "Do you want me to light your way ahead?"

He browsed the area with the light and noticed one dense part. Small stuffs seemed to scurry together. Then it was obvious. "Ace? When's the last time you cleaned the basement?"

Ace laughed and looked at Dwyrin. "Didn't we hire a cleaner for the basement? Why would I clean my own basement, sheesh. That's like asking a Put-Put golf resort owner if he cleans the icee machine by hand. He finds people to do this stuff."

"Whoever you hired sure neglected this basement," Resha thought out loud, looking around. There were lots of bugs and cobwebs and everything's covered in dust.

Cortlen removed the clip in his rifle and let the hammer fall, blowing all the dust in the area outside through the walls. "I agree, Resha. Ace, take a vacuum to this place at least. Otherwise the spiders might drive customers away."

{ So uh, I'm a little confused. Did you just blow a hole in our wall??}

(no, there are always little cracks in walls. Just look. )

A faint click coming from the room she had just wandered out of caught Dwyrins attention. Instead of having the clear view she had expected to find as she looked over her shoulder, the thing they had been searching for appeared once again. Right next to her. A startled little gasp escaped her and she inadvertantly backed into a wall, sending dust and grit pluming out around her. Coughing and rubbing dirt from her eyes, she watched the ghost float eerily towards the group in the main room.

Zane blinked as a bluish transparent form hovered above Ace, Resha, Cortlen and him. He vaguely wondered what Dwyrin did to make the ghost come out.