World Tree MUSH

    The man at the door looks Luigi up and down, and then over to the young man who has seemingly appeared with the lanky green-clad man. "You two the ghost busters, right?" The man's in his mid-40s, with graying hair, a clean shave, and a portly build that says he enjoys food. The condo is nice as well.
    The man rubs his face and sticks out his hand. "Teddy Andrews, nice to meet you both. My daughter's been complaining about ghosts. She's 16 for chrissakes and way too old for bogey men. But..." Here he hesitates and looks up and down the hallway. "- with all this weird stuff coming in from outworld, never can be too sure, right?"

    It wasn't like Yahiko was a professional ghostbuster. In his world they weren't really a thing! Probably. Maybe. He can certainly relate to skepticism! But travel needs money, and if there's one thing he has experience with... it's solving weird mysteries.

    "There certainly are strange things in these worlds," Yahiko agrees. He's still dressed traditionally, which probably adds to the mystique even if it's just him being stubborn more than anything. Luigi is probably the expert here, but Yahiko immediately does a small bow... then hesitates and takes the hand. "Yahiko Myojin. I'll take a look around." For less supernatural causes, he doesn't add.

    "That's-a right!" Luigi replies with a smile. Though to be fair, one could be forgiven for doubting him. He looks like he's got a red vacuum cleaner strapped to his back. The handshake is accepted and returned... though he does have kind of a weak handshake. "I'm-a Luigi," he offers in return, as the older fellow introduces himself.

    'Expert'? Maybe -- Professor Gadd knows more about how these things work, Luigi just points the Poltergust at the ghosts and sucks 'em up! But, it's true that ghosts ARE something he's had dealings with in the past. Maybe they're nice ghosts, and the girl's just scared of them?

    He also gives a smile and a wave of greeting to Yahiko. "Hello!" he offers cheerily. "Thanks for letting me come with you! I might be able to help if there really are g-ghosts." Did he just stammer? Yeah, he totally did. Though he's trying not to seem TOO scared. Not yet, anyway. Maybe they're NOT ghosts!

    Teddy nods anxiously. "Well, I-I've got some work to do, so don't let me keep you. Dorothy, that's my daughter, is in her room if you need to ask her any questions." He says quietly, after glancing towards Dorothy's half-open bedroom door. "She's going through a goth phase."

    With that, Teddy scuttles off to the office in the condo, saying "I'll be in here if you need anything." as he does.

    "Sure, we'll see what we can do!" Yahiko reassures as he adjusts his kimono, then smiles to Luigi. Skittish fellow, but he seems to actually have the equipment so... might as well assume competence. For now though, Yahiko decides to talk. "Let me know if I forget anything. She's closer to my age - I'm fifteen - so maybe she'll open up to me."

    Hopefully. Maybe.

    So, Yahiko knocks lightly on the door and peers in. "Dorothy? I hear you've been having a ghost problem, we're here to see if we can't find the issue." Belatedly, he wonders if hee should have asked what a goth is.

    Luigi actually seems a little confused when Teddy seems perfectly fine with them talking to his daughter without him there. That seems weird to Luigi, but he doesn't comment. He just nods. And once Teddy's out of sight, he looks at Yahiko, with a confused look. "...Am I the only one that thinks that's strange...?"

    Though yeah... since the girl is closer to Yahiko's age, Luigi's totally willing to let him take the lead here in talking to the girl. He keeps quiet as Yahiko calls to her through the door, looking around.

    While they're waiting for Dorothy to answer, he shines the 'Dark-Light' on a nearby piece of furniture, just to see if he can see anything.

    The dark-light exposes some weird little spirit things hiding in corners of the room minding their own business and possibly gossiping. The dark-light makes them scatter like cockroaches though. Something larger withdraws under the couch just as the dark-light is waved over it.
    There's a quiet wave of electronic music coming from Dorothy's computer speakers. She's dressed in a black t-shirt with the name Bauhaus on it and black jeans. She's not wearing socks or shoes in the condo, but Dorothy looks up as Yahiko knocks. "Oh yeah, they like to try and talk to me and complain about how they died. Really annoying when I'm trying to sleep."

    Weird music. Modern music. Actually after all the time in Athena's world, Yahiko is used to that, but the answer draws him up short. "Huh? Really?" He stops and thinks about that. "Don't they have somewhere better to go? Is there something keeping them from finding peace and moving on?"

    He looks back into the other room. "Oh sorry. I'm Yahiko. Yahiko Myojin. Where I come from, there are ceremonies to fix this... not that the dead talk to me."

    Luigi gives a quiet, "Oh?" at the sight of the small spirits. But the larger thing that sweeps under the couch to avoid being seen? That gets him to emit a short, involuntary blubbering noise. OK, yeah. NOW he's scared! Might be enough to note that there's definitely something here. At least, something that's enough to scare Luigi. Then again that's not too hard; it could be a particularly large cat.

    But when Dorothy starts to talk, Luigi sort of steps back towards her room, partly so he wouldn't have to take his eyes off the rest of the condo. And also so he can be between whatever's out there and Dorothy. Just in case. Turning slightly to the side, so he can address her, he asks, "D-do they do anything else? Steal things, scare you, try to scare your dad?"

    Yahiko's introduction reminds him. "Oh! Yes! My name's-a Luigi." He waves meekly. "Sorry. I think I saw a few of them. Little spirits?" He doesn't mention the bigger thing yet. No sense spooking the girl. "I dunno about rituals, but I m-might be able to g-get rid of them if you want..."

    It doesn't occur to him that she's probably special for being able to see them unaided...

    Dorothy's face wrinkles a bit. "Only my dad and teachers call me Dorothy. Just call me DA." She looks over Yahiko and Luigi. Then she looks confused at Luigi. "Little spirits? I dunno how big they are, I just hear them. One of 'em is a real creeper too. Even the jocks at school would blush." She shudders thinking about that particular apparition.
    The young woman grumbles. "Ever since that awful school field trip. Try to summon one dead person for a school report and suddenly none of them will go away."

    Oh that's a nice detail to know. Yahiko double takes at what Dorothy says, then looks at Luigi. "Little spirits?" He doesn't know what Luigi is talking about. The boy shrugs, and then hmns, "All right, DA. So you did something to make them talk to you and now you can't undo it. What sort of thing did you do?"

    Dorothy hmmms. "Not really? Not like, knocking things over and making weird noises kind of scary. The creepy one is kind of scary. All the nasty things. I mean, God, I get enough of that bullshit on social media."

    From his study/office, her father yells out. "Dorothy, watch your language!"

    Aha. Yeah, that's was Luigi was afraid of -- that thing that slid under the couch wasn't a large cat after all. Though first he nods to Yahiko. "There were a few little ones outside. I think they were talking. They ran away when I saw them." He hunkers down when the yelling of her father happens though. Not in fear, though it did kind of startle him a little.

    But then he nods to Yahiko's words. Speaking to Dorothy, he notes, "You might have opened up a door, or made yourself particularly attracted to you somehow." Sadly, that's not something he can do anything about. He looks out again, at that couch, but he doesn't shine any lights out there. No, he doesn't want to startle the thing again. He doesn't want it coming after him! Shiver!

    Dorothy sighs. "I found a weird bookmark in a weird book at the library that was about summoning spirits and ghosts. Since we had to write about Sutter's Mill after the school trip I thought it'd be cool if I talked to somebody who'd actually lived there. So I found something to summon a ghost and tried it. Except it unleashed all sorts of weird ghost riders in the sky and phantom cows and got everybody panicked like sheep. It was pretty awful. Nothing like the movies."
    She listens to Luigi's hypothesis about why this weird stuff keeps happening. "Maybe? I hope not. I really don't want to be like that kid from The Sixth Sense and helping ghosts 'pass on' or whatever."

    Yahiko frowns, "That sounds much more theatrical than anything I've seen recently." Mostly. He doesn't deal with the dead too much. "Do you still have the bookmark or book? I have no magical talent myself, so it's probably safe for me to look at." He hopes. "It doesn't sound like you made yourself someone to pass them on..."

    He is hardly the expert here, though.

    "Does any spirit seem to be the leader? Maybe that creep?"

    Luigi listens to the explanation and nods. "That does sound like a door got opened," he comments. "They'd naturally be attracted to you, then. Because you... well, when you walk through mud, you track it everywhere, right? Maybe it's something like that -- when that door opened, you 'walked in' the spirit-stuff, so they follow you around?" At least, that's what he's hoping.

    And it's here, when Yahiko asks about 'that creep', that Luigi ventures, speaking to them both, "I did see... s-something out there... I didn't get a good look at it, though... it ran away from my light..."

    The black-clad girl (whose nail polish and toenail polish are also black in truth goth-phase fashion) squints hard at under the couch. "Did it look like pure grease? Because that's what Creepazoid sounds like. Grease like you'd get out of a five-day old fryer at McDonald's."
    Dorothy explains, "Yeah, I got the book still. The bookmark's not around anymore..." She steps over to the couch Luigi indicated and leans down to peer into the dust-bunny infested half-light of underneath. "Yeah, not seeing anything other than the dust-bunnies, Luigi. You said you had a light...?"

    Of dust bunnies? "Those can be deadlier than you might think." Though Luigi nods at the mention of the light, holding up the end of the Poltergust, as if for inspection. There's a light in there all right. He leans down also, near where Dorothy is, and shies that dark-light under the couch, to see if he can locate anything underneath the couch. "It might have moved to another place already," he notes, as he peers into the dark-lit underneath the couch.

    McDonald's is a reference Yahiko gets, at least. He frowns and follows the other two in there, rubbing his chin some. "Well then we should concentrate on that one, since he's the one bothering you. I'll try my own methods." Unfortunately, 'swordsman's spirit' detection isn't really all that reliable.

    The spirit is still there when Luigi shines his dark-light while Dorothy, Yahiko, and he peer under the couch. It looks oily and dark, with a distinctly malevolent shape. The thing makes a loud howling sound that only those who are attuned to the supernatural can hear, lunging for the dark-light in spite of its incorporeality.

    Yahiko can't hear the howl fully, but even he can see the murky malevolence. The samurai draws his wooden shinai, since a metal blade wouldn't be any more effective. "Maybe..." He isn't sure if an incorporeal spirit would fear it, but at the least, perhaps a quick strike can 'herd' it away, keeping it somewhere contained. "Is this what you saw, Luigi?"

    Luigi's instinct is to do three things. One, yelp in fear and surprise. Two, jump back. And three... to flash the flashlight of the Poltergust at the ghost. Special lights installed by Professor Gadd might be able to immobilize or blind the thing, incorporeal or not.

    It's only once he's safely out of the spirit's path -- since he's not sure if it can hurt him or not -- that Luigi nods to Yahiko's question. "L-l-l-l-looks like it," he stutters. He's visibly frightened now. But nonetheless, he looks to Dorothy and asks, "W-w-wa-was that... w-w-wh-what you saw?"

    The lights from Luigi's Poltergust blind the ghost long enough that the wooden practice blade wielded by Yahiko bops it hard. It seems very stunned.
    Which gives a very angry Dorothy an opening. "I think it's the creep! You~!" and the young woman says some very not PG-13 things as she reaches for it. To her surprise and the ghost's, her hand actually makes contact with the ectoplasmic form and yanks it out from under the couch. Wrestling with it, she shouts "Whatever that thing does, do it!" at Luigi, trying to point the spirit towards what she expects the Poltergust's business end would be.

    Yahiko looks startled, but that doesn't slow him down. Dorothy can hold it, so he decides to just keep it from running off, his wooden sword hovering nearby and jabbing if it moves too much. "I didn't expect an actual ghost. How come I always end up with actual magic? Just once can't it be someone faking it?" He isn't complaining too much though... he has a wide grin on his face.

    Someone likes adventure more than they'd admit.

    Now THAT surprises Luigi! He doesn't know anyone who would just jump in and WRESTLE with a ghost. Either way, he does get Dorothy's idea, and as she points the spirit in the direction of the Poltergust, Luigi switches on the ghost-sucking-up feature! It sounds like a vacuum cleaner too.

    Though it doesn't just slurp the ghost up into the cannister -- it needs to draw away its spiritual energy first, which might take a few moments. Hopefully Yahiko can help with wrangling the ghost until the Poltergust can contain the spirit.

    Dorothy is not quite so patient and is trying to actively stuff the thing into the Poltergust, with Yahiko's helpful jabbings to keep it from fighting back too much. "Thought this was some stupid trick! But NO! Ghosts are real!" She 'helpfully' makes sure that one of Yahiko's sword strikes gets the thing in the face (or what passes for one) before it finally gets hoovered up by the PolterGust.
    And then there's a thump as Dorothy's father faints in the doorway of his study.

    Sigh. Yahiko tucks his sword away and looks at Teddy. "Well, DA, I guess you have a bit of a story to tell your friends. Might want to see if that book is from offworld. Your father might need a little help too..." He grins, "I'll get some water or something and put him somewhere comfortable."

    When the spirit is pulled into the Poltergust, there's silence from Luigi for a moment, as he's waiting to make sure the thing's not going to try to come out. When nothing happens after a moment, Luigi sighs in relief. "Whew..." he sighs. His confidence seems to come back for the moment, and he smiles broadly. "We got it!" he announces happily, with a short leap of joy into the air. A short leap because he doesn't want to damage the ceiling. And then... suddenly...

    Thump.

    Luigi blinks, looking at Dorothy's father. "Um... Mr. Andrews...?" he calls uncertainly as he heads over to the fallen man. "Mr. Andrews?" Poke. Poke poke.

    He'll help Yahiko with moving Teddy -- he's stronger than he looks. And he might need to stick around to shoo any other smaller spirits away. But hopefully, with the Big Creep gone, the small fries will leave. Though he'll need to take Big Creep to Professor Gast to more properly contain, so it can be studied...