Shay didn't like his calm voice as he explained things to her. It made her feel bad, but she didn't want to be alone -- or useless. The girl crossed her arms and stood stiffly, squaring her shoulders.
Shay decided not to dispute whether or not she was being manipulative, she couldn't deny it, and she didn't want to accept it, the third best option was simply to ignore it.
"You mean there are going to be dead people all around? I know. I hear them, and I've seen plenty of dead bodies, Officer Angelo." She didn't say that most of them were in her mind, even though it was real, it wasn't quite as real as it could have been. "And you won't need to watch over me. I'll make you a deal. If I hinder your ability to help other people, I'll come back, but you have to, at least, give me a chance."
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Well, she certainly had him there - her power meant she had seen lots of dead bodies. Maybe even more then him, which was a pretty rare thing. Angelo had seen (and, if he was being fair, made) more corpses in the first two decades of his life then most people would ever see in theirs. They'd for the most part simply stopped phasing him, and unless it was something particularly heart wrenching, like a young child... well, it simply didn't bother him.He didn't like the idea of her coming along at all, but he liked the idea of her sneaking out even less. There was absolutely no way he could expect someone to take care of her, short of sticking her with the small pet section and expecting her to stay.
He chewed on his lip, obviously mulling it over.
"Fine. You can come with me, but you have to do as I say, alright? If I say jump, you jump. If I say duck, you duck. If I say stay put, you stay put." If she wasn't willing to do that, there was no way he could take her. He had to know she wasn't going to be a liability for the people out there.
Shay's face brightened with a victorious grin. "Yes, sir, Officer Angelo." She liked the sound of that, 'Officer Angelo' as if that weren't clear by how often she was saying it.
Shay wasn't sure how much of an actual help she could be. She had no extra strength or speed to speak of, and she was but a small girl, but who knew how that would come in handy here. What she lacked in those aspects she made up in dedication and intelligence.
Terrible as it was, she mostly just found it endearing that he was firm with her. Shay didn't have many adults in her life (not ones whom she would consider in her life, at least), so it was endlessly amusing to her when someone spoke to her in that manner. Was that normal? She thought not.
"Who knows, maybe I'll even help you." She wondered if this had ever happened to him before.
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[BCOLOR=transparent]Angelo was entirely convinced that he was making a mistake. He didn’t understand just what the mistake [/BCOLOR][BCOLOR=transparent]was[/BCOLOR][BCOLOR=transparent] at that very moment, but he knew it was a mistake anyway. He was absolutely one-hundred percent certain that in twelve hours or less he’d be pointing at that exact second as the moment when things went wrong.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=transparent]Hopefully he would just be pinpointing it to [/BCOLOR][BCOLOR=transparent]himself[/BCOLOR][BCOLOR=transparent], and not to another cop taking his report.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=transparent]“Just... remember what you agreed to, alright?” [/BCOLOR][BCOLOR=transparent]Even as he said it, his brain was still whirling in place, trying to come up with a better alternative. There simply wasn’t one though; His only options had already been ruled out.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=transparent]He expected her to follow him as he set off, heading towards the supply station and grabbing a bag. There was no time for people to be going one by one, so instead they simply got pre-supplied bags. Medical supplies, some energy bars, some bottles of clean water, an emergency flair, and a variety of other odds and ends they might need. He slung the heavy bag over his shoulders, heading back down the gentle slope into the water.[/BCOLOR]
[BCOLOR=transparent]“I should have invested in some rubber boots,” [/BCOLOR][BCOLOR=transparent]he muttered under his breath.[/BCOLOR]
Eroshay nodded enthusiastically. She was going to get to help people. To feel important and make a difference. She followed Angelo to the supply station and grabbed a bag after he had. He would hear her grunt and something loud hit the ground. Turning around would reveal a very red-faced Shay holding a supply bag by the strap. She couldn't lift it off the ground. It was much heavier than it looked.
"Um," she said as she cleared her throat to try and hide her humiliation. "So I guess we only need one of these bags, huh?" She took a step away from the bag, watching it like it might come alive and attack her.
A second later and Shay was skittering passed him into the water. She slowed once she was knee deep, careful to watch for anything below her. She could see so many ghosts, looking around, confused. Some cried, in strange, hollow voices. She didn't think all of them realized they were dead yet.
The few her knew she could see them -- Shay wondered if that was something spirits knew intuitively? -- drifted over to her, clinging to her. She was used to that cold, arm-hair-raising feeling they gave.
"Officer Angelo?" She asked, wondering if he could see them like she could.
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Angelo knew better than to laugh (that would have been awfully mean), but he couldn't help cracking a grin at her. "One is enough, unless you're planning to get injured." He said with a little chuckle. The supplies would have to stay where they were, and he took a step back, grabbing the extra bag and lifting it easily back onto the pile.Too easily. It was throwing him off more and more that even after all he'd done, all that wading through water and lifting and hauling, he still felt fine. No, better than fine. He felt better than he had in months, if not years. Lifting the heavy bag didn't even phase him.
Just what, exactly, was going on?
He decided it was probably better to think about those things later, and he turned back towards the water, wading after her.
As they pressed away from base camp, he became aware of all the spirits. Not angry ghosts or anything like that, but presences. He couldn't even see them, as nice as it was, but he could feel them, and... well, it was a bit disorienting to realizing they were moving. Coming together around Shay.
Angelo frowned, brows knitting together in obvious concentration. They were definitely there, but that in itself was odd. Normally they kept close to their bodies unless they passed on or had a reason to go elsewhere. He wasn't really an exorcist - if a ghost was walking around, it was beyond his abilities, but the weak shades that surrounded them were simple enough for him to handle.
"Stand still for a second. You're... I don't know, attracting them? Like some kind of magnet." God only knew why, but they were. He trudged over to her, reaching his hand out gently to touch where he could feel one of them was. It only took a second, and then the presence faded - the shade having slipped out of existence, moving on to whatever came next. Bit by bit, he moved through the shades surrounding her, sending the majority off with the lightest touch.
Shay squeezed her eyes closed as he dismissed the majority of the spirits that hovered around her. Feeling them leave was odder than feeling them approach. It was like a sudden gust of cold and then...nothing. Sometimes she wondered if that was what dying must have been like. There and then not. Was it loneliness and emptiness? Was it being lost? Was it fear?
She breathed out once he had finished his work and peeked an eye open at him. "That happens a lot," she reaffirmed. She frowned. "They like to try and talk to me. It's...weird." Shay didn't want to repeat what they had all been saying. It was a lot, and most of them were just sad repeats.
"Where is my son? Is he all right?"
"Where am I? What's happening? Can you help me?"
"So cold...it's so cold here."
Shay had learned awhile ago that there were plenty of different types of ghosts, and very few of them could actually speak with a person.
She shook off the grief settling in her bones and replaced all that negative energy with determination. There were still people out there that she could help. She opened both eyes, now, meeting Angelo's and smiling strenuously. "We have more ghosts to send off and more people to help, right? Let's not waste any time."
It wasn't the last time during their search that ghosts would surround Shay, but she figured it just put them in a central area for him to send off. She thought that was a pretty cool power and at one point had asked, "Do you have to ask them? Or can you just force them off? Where do they go?"
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Lots of people assumed that Angelo was some kind of clairvoyant - that he could see and speak with the dead. It really couldn't have been farther from the truth. If he hadn't so often felt that feeling when confronted with a dead body, he might not have even realized that it was spirits he was feeling. There were no shadowy visions, no strange whispers. Just a feeling that something was there."I guess you can see them?" He was trying to be nice about it and not ask too many questions, but he was curious. There were so many different people with powers like his, and they all seemed to present in different ways. It made it hard to even guess at what someone could or couldn't do.
"No, I don't need to ask. I just kind of... help them along, I guess. Send them off who knows where." He tried not to think about it. Heaven? Hell? Some completely different afterlife humans couldn't even dream of? Theology got a lot more complex when some of your coworkers were literally angels and demons.
"Just keep walking, and I'll... basically just try and pick some off as they approach you." Most of the time, the presences didn't actually move, but something about Shay was making them. So he'd use that to his advantage. "We can just keep walking, keeping an eye out for people, and pushing them along. My best guess is that if I send them along now, it prevents them from becoming the kind of angry ghost everyone can see later."
"More or less," she said mildly. "I mean, yes. I can. I can talk to a few of them, too, but most ghosts seem just to talk to themselves. I don't think they can always hear me, you know? But they tend to come near me, anyway. I don't know why that is. It's just always been that way."
Shay paused when she nearly tripped over something in the water, she caught herself and closed her eyes to focus. To cover her near mistake, she said, "It makes me wonder if I'm somewhere in the in-between. Like, between life and death? I don't know everything about..." she held up a hand, "this. I'm young. But... what if I am? What do you think that would mean? Would it be bad? What if I'm a little closer to death than life?"
She listened to him explain his process, but it still felt like something was missing. Shay hated the unknown. "Like to Heaven? Do you not believe in Heaven? I mean there has to be a Heaven and Hell, right? We have demons and angels and stuff. They have to come from somewhere. Do you think those are just another place? Like a different country or dimension? Another state of living?"
As they walked, there were sections where the water was deeper. At least, up to Shay;s waist, which may not have been deep to Angelo, but Shay was small, and she lifted her arms, so they didn't have to touch the surface of the water. She moved slower then; nervous her foot might catch something.
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Angelo didn't immediately reply to her speculations on her exact state of being. The truth was, he'd wondered pretty much the same things about himself. He was a half reaper, and depending on who you asked, reapers could be either alive or dead. So wasn't he somewhere in between? If a reaper was half dead, did that mean he was a quarter dead? Did that mean the only reason he wasn't a beacon was because Shay was more dead than him? Or were they both completely wrong?"I would say... it doesn't really matter if you're part dead or not. I mean, you're obviously here, so that's the only part of living that really matters. Maybe you're fully, one hundred percent human, but you're one of those powered humans whose powers involve being a giant beacon for ghosts. Really, there's no way of knowing." He mused aloud, trying his best to comfort her.
As for Heaven and Hell? That was both easier and harder. "Well, I was raised Catholic, and I guess I still am. That said, it's definitely a bit more complex than the bible makes out to be. Yeah, we have angels and demons, but we also have stuff from other religions running around. I'm guessing the afterlife... kind of sorts you? I guess? Like, if you believe in Christianity you go off to Saint Peter to get sorted into heaven or hell, but if you're a Hindu and believe in whatever they believe, you go off to their version of the afterlife. Kinda sucks for Buddhists though, since on rebirth they could get converted to a different religion." He was not the most religiously incline of people, and his exposure to other religions was 'hearing it from a friend of a friend'.
When the water got deep enough, he held back, holding out his hand for her to take, keeping her supported to make sure she didn't fully submerge. The water was disgusting at the best of times, and he didn't like the idea of her head going under.
@FoxalypticWorld - I think it might have accidentally kept going another round or two