Who: Cal & open (I think it was Clark to the rescue?) Where: The basement When: evening-ish What: Ghostytimes & Cal learning he can lay an epic smackdown Warnings: Eh, NPC ghost violence and probably some swearing
Cal trudged down the stairs to the basement, he wasn’t sure why they kept the extra training mats down there anyway, or why it was so cold, it seemed colder even than usual, it was colder than usual, he could see his breath. He swore softly when he realized what was going on, with all the craziness happening all over the building, the attacks, he should have known that he wasn’t going to be exempt from it, but did he pay attention? No. No he didn’t, because he really was that bull-headed sometimes.
He was almost too slow to avoid the first attack, but only almost. The packing box the ghost had thrown caught him a glancing blow to the shoulder instead of square in the back where it had been aimed for, it was enough to knock him off balance and to see the next box coming, twisting out of the way, moving with a speed and agility that he didn’t know he’d had. He’d taken to carrying salt with him, just in case, because even while he was bull-headed stubborn, he wasn't a total idiot. Of course almost as soon as he had it in hand the ghost flickered out like a TV with bad reception.
Cal was too busy trying to see where it had gone to realize that it had a friend, one that apparently had the same plan in mind, taking Cal down. He managed once again to twist out of the way with that same surprising agility, though it just threw him right into the path of the first ghost again, dimly realizing that it was a man in coveralls, perhaps someone who'd been part of the maintenance crew when he was still alive. The second one was a woman, at least, he assumed she was, given that she was wearing a dress, both of them looked like they'd fallen right out of a Work World catalog, circa 1956, aside from the fact that they were quite clearly dead.
There was a crash as Mr. Maintenance toppled a cabinet, leaving Cal to dodge again before both ghosts flickered out like static once more, only to appear again closer than they had been, flanking him, cooperating like a pair of cheetahs taking down a particularly wily gazelle. Something about that, the fact that they were predators and he was suddenly prey caused something to click in the back of Cal's mind.
He could do that too.
His smile was all teeth once they stuttered closer again, letting his mind open and the gate with it, not bothering to concentrate on where he was going, just letting that sickly grey light surround him, it hurt, it hurt like hell, and he could taste blood, feel it spilling from his nose, and just like that he was gone, only to reappear behind the woman a moment later, salting her liberally and dropping into another portal as she whisked away, intent on doing the same to the man, but caught by surprise when he found the man waiting for him when he reappeared, grabbing Cal by the shirt and throwing him, hard. There was another crash as Cal hit the storage room door, hard enough to rattle it on its hinges and hard enough to send him reeling even more than he already had been.
But he was on top of it now, he knew what he was doing, ripping open one portal after another, flickering and fading just as quickly as the ghost did, waiting for an opening, waiting for a chance, probably looking like death warmed over himself at the moment, and probably like some fast-forward stop-motion animation to anyone watching, opening the next gate almost before he'd closed the first one, and above it all, or maybe under it all, he was laughing, a roiling half-cracked sound, because even despite the head-crushing pain, the fact that he was pretty sure being thrown into the door had cracked a couple ribs, despite that, this was fun.