Another Brick in the Wall

Participants:

colette_icon.gif kendall_icon.gif magnes_icon.gif melissa_icon.gif odessa_icon.gif

Scene Title Another Brick in the Wall
Synopsis There's more in the basement of Melissa's new home than she and Kendall bargained for. The assembled discuss what to do about the ghosts therein.
Date April 20, 2010

Little Green House

This is a medium-sized two-story home, and one that, in its better days, was no doubt a very warm and welcoming home. Now, however, it's succumbed to time, looters and squatters. There is graffiti on the walls, and trash litters the floors. Most of the light fixtures no longer work, and the plumbing, while updated, is more of a joke than anything else. There is dust on everything, and the windows are so dirty that they do almost as good a job at keeping out light as curtains would.

However, the structure of the home is still nice. There are large bay windows which let in plenty of light, and several of those windows are really French doors that lead out onto the back patio, or onto a small square balcony on the second floor. Even the attic has a few windows which normally would keep that space from looking dingy or even creepy.

The first floor consists of a foyer, large kitchen, living room with a fireplace, bathroom and what must be a sort of laundry room. When there are any appliances in the house. The second floor has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, one off of the main bedroom. These rooms are all rather decent sized, though there are doors missing, and broken windows, but for anyone with a vision, this house has something.


It's cold, and there's a ton of snow out there, but Melissa called up people, and nagged them into showing up at this Staten Island address, promising pizza and beer, and asking for help. Only a good friend or a crazy person would've taken her up on it with snow piling up high enough to cover a one story house in places.

Luckily there are several crazy people in this city.

It's not much to look at from the outside, or from the inside for that matter. It's run down, and no doubt has been abandoned for several years, given the condition of it. But it's got potential. And someone has already begun cleaning, if nothing else. The outside hasn't been touched yet, and the graffiti remains on the walls, but there are already a few trash bags set against one wall, full of some of the litter that was strewn about the house.

The lights still don't work, at least not all of them, so there are a few lanterns spread around to help add to the light, and leaving things pretty well illuminated. And on the one remaining table in the house, are four pizza boxes, and below it, a cooler filled with soda and beer.

The door's unlocked so people can come inside, and once they do, there's a Melissa, hunched over and half hidden in the fireplace, cleaning it out. A black bandanna with white skulls covers her head, and a white bandage covers her right hand, and both are covered in soot, as is her face.

Perhaps the most amusing thing present though, isn't soot covered Melissa, but the stack of "For Dummy" home repair books set on the table.

Kendall didn't have much of a choice in the matter, so he's here. Not entirely enthused with the fact that he has to help too, he is puttering around in one of the other rooms, unenthusiastically picking up pieces of trash. Eventually he comes into the main room, nose sniffing at the pizza. Fooood.

Some people are more crazy than others. Enter from stage right Odessa Knutson. She's shrugging off her red wool coat and tossing it on a patch of floor that looks fairly clean. "I half expected this place to either be crawling with feds, or a secret discotheque," the blonde admits as she looks about the sparse area. "I have to say, though, I think it's got some serious potential." There's an approving nod and a curious glance to the stack of books before Odessa approaches the fireplace to lean over and try and get a better look at Melissa.

Melissa leans back to sit on her heels when Odessa speaks, and she gives a half-hearted smile to the woman. "It does. You should ask Kendall to show you just how much potential it has." She glances to said illusionist, motioning him over. "Hey Kendall, this is Odessa. You remember me talking about her, right?"

Kendall looks at Odessa curiously. "You're the time traveler?" he asks with some surprise, coming closer. "I, uh… nice to meet you. I expected you… er, nevermind." maybe he expected her to look like Doc Brown or something. His eyes dart to the pizza, then to Melissa. He clearly wants some pizza. Can he have some?

Odessa wishes. "Not a time traveller, no. A manipulator. Specifically, I stop time. As much or as little as I want." She offers the boy a small smile. "Nice to meet you, Kendall."

Melissa follows Kendall's gaze then rolls her eyes and grins. "If you're hungry, grab some pizza. I didn't get it just to look at it, you know." She rubs the back of a hand over her forehead, leaving a black smear. "You too, Odessa. And there's soda and beer in the cooler. Help yourself. I figure when everyone else gets here I'll give the grand tour and we can get started."

Kendall doesn't need another invitation and helps himself to two slices of pizza, already halfway eating one in the first few seconds. Being a teenage boy, likely he could eat an entire pizza by himself. He pauses and swallows after the most recent bite, and looks at Melissa innocently. "Can I have a beer? Just to see what it tastes like." hopeful look.

Much like Kendall, Odessa doesn't need a second invitation to help herself to a beer. It's popped open quickly and brought to her lips for a long drink. The taste is still fairly vile to her even now, but it's alcohol, and that's what's important.

The question has Melissa glancing back to Kendall, and arching a brow. But then she shrugs. "Sure, why not. Hell, you're sixteen and it's just a beer. But I swear, you start getting trashed and coming home to trash this place, I'll kick your ass." She rises, moving towards the others to grab herself a beer as well, gulping down several swallows. "Thanks for coming, by the way, Odessa."

Wootwoot. Permission! Kendall grabs one before Melissa can change her mind, kinda glancing at Odessa to see if there's any special way of doing it. There isn't, so Kendall finishes his one slice of pizza then grabs a beer, opening it and drinking it like he would a can of soda. Or at least, he starts to, but then he tastes it and starts spluttering.

"Oh, hey, no problem," Odessa assures Melissa with a wan smile. Kendall suddenly sputtering causes her to press her lips together to suppress a chuckle. "That was roughly my reaction to my first beer. You get used to it." She exchanges a glance with Melissa before adding, "Not that you should be in any hurry to get used to it."

There's a sudden knock at the door, and after Magnes' long day that he can't quite remember, he's standing there with a short black jacket unzipped with enough pockets in the sleeves to make Liefeld proud, a white long sleeved shirt with a stylized yellow JSFR logo, and some blue jeans and black snow boots. And at the moment, he's wearing a guitar bag across his back.

Of course one look at his face and it's pretty obvious he's gotten into something recently, since his face is covered in bruises. He's been punched in the eye, both cheeks, his mouth, the side of his head, and there's even a few small bruises littering his neck and what bit of his collar bone one can see. But anyone used to seeing such a thing can tell that they're a few days old now, and the swelling has long since gone down.

Colette got to see the bruises too, and she's tagging along carrying the large wicker basket he took time to weave with the aid of a YouTube video, stuffed with all sorts of store bought and homemade treats. The excuse Colette gets for the bruises? He was training.

"Jesus Christ!" Colette whines behind Magnes, juggling that basket, her olive-drab courier bag and a few plastic grocery bags stacked up inside the wicker basket. "Next time warn me that it's going to be three billion degrees below zero before we go flying!" Colette's shrill voice when she gets squeakingly frustrated is unmistakable to those that know her. "If my face falls off I am going to haunt you! Do you hear me! Haunt!" Out on the front porch with Magnes, Colette shifts the weight of the basket in both hands, then bumping up one shoulder to keep the strap of her courier bag from falling off.

"You're not getting your foot stepped on right now 'cause— I owe you for the other night." Though Colette will never, ever admit what for. "So— so remember that mister!" Nose wrinkled, red cheeks puffed out and dark brows furrowed, Colette shifts from one foot to the other, banging with one boot against the door to aid in Magnes' knocking.

"It's cold out here, let us in!" Colette adds with a huff of breath, blowing an errand lock of windblown hair out from her face.

Melissa's lips twitch at Kendall's reaction. "She's right, you will." Her amusement spreads to Odessa then. "What? Like I said, he's sixteen. Nearly an adult. So long as he doesn't get trashed and do something stupid, I'm cool with a beer every now and then. I'm not like…I dunno. A dictator or something."

The knock has her glancing over, then walking over to open the door. "Hey Mags, Colette. C'mon in. Pizza and beer are over by Kendall and Odessa." Then her lips curve. "I doubt your face is gonna fall off, honey. But come warm yourself up. Was just cleanin' out the fireplace so we can build a fire."

Kendall wrinkles his nose. "It doesn't taste any better this time than that other time." What other time? He doesn't get rid of the beer, though, taking small sips at a time, alternating with the much more yummy pizza. He's on his second slice now, and he looks over to the door when he hears a familiar voice. Hey, it's Magnes!

Odessa smirks faintly over to Melissa. She's clearly a more fun guardian than any of hers were at Kendall's age. … Half her beer is suddenly gone. And she's working on the second half when she sees Magnes in the doorway. Oh gosh. It's McGruff the Crime Dog. If he mentions her morphine habit even cryptically… "We may need more beer."

The bruised Magnes takes the basket from Colette and smiles to everyone, though he raises an eyebrow at Kendall with a beer. "I'll pretend he's not illegally drinking alcohol, since we're having a social function and all." Magnes says with a slight sigh, though he seems to be relaxed and patient right now, looking for a place to sit his basket.

He's surprised to see Odessa there, tilting his head over at her. "It's nice to see you're doing well."

"We'll see." Colette notes over the top of the grocery bags to Melissa, coming clomping in to the house with both dark brows raised, green eyes lifted to the ceiling. "Wo-oah," she notes with a whistle of appreciation, dark brows up into her hairline, "totally Addams' Family!". Glancing over to the table the beer and pizza's laid out at, the teen makes a slow progress over there and right past Odessa without noticing her due to the stack of shit she's carrying. Only until Magnes takes the basket and the groceries from her Colette look over to the blonde, green eyes wide and smiling crookedly.

"Oh— ah— hey." There's an askance look over to Melissa, then back up to Odessa as Colette offers out a hand with a smile. "Guess you're a friend of Lissa's? My name's Colette, s'nice t'meetcha." She's outgoing, she's nominally chipper, and she's making an effort to introduce herself to people and seems generally to be in a bubbly good mood.

Melissa pauses, and her brow furrows as her gaze sliiiiides back towards Kendall. She stares at him for a moment, then looks to Odessa, then the cooler. "More? Well, there is another case, just wouldn't fit in the cooler…" She looks back at Magnes, arching a brow. "Glad to hear it," she says dryly.

Mel laughs. "Addam's family? For now, maybe. But that's why you guys are here! Though I think Kendall is hoping we'll have a ghost. So long as it's a Casper type ghost and not Thirteen Ghosts type ghost, I wouldn't mind. For now though…Eat up, drink up, and when everyone's good, I'll show you guys around."

"Well if people start mysteriously dying, I think we'd better find some glasses that let us see things that we couldn't otherwise." Kendall nods sagely at that. He looks around, still taking sips and bites. "Not sure why you have a cooler, anyway. It's cold enough to keep ice cream frozen." that's why he's wearing a jacket and multiple layers.

"It's not that cold," Odessa scoffs quietly. Out of the wind, this feels rather nice, actually. Then again, her ability afforded her a method of travel that has left her without the effects of wind chill making her feel initially more frozen. Unlike Colette, her face is in no danger of falling off. "I'm 'Dessy," she offers as she takes the outstretched hand. Magnes' well-wishes are completely ignored, but at least she doesn't roll her eyes.

"I think we could fix this place up, it'll just take a little research and team work." Magnes hunches down to the floor after sitting the basket and groceries down, then touches it. "I could probably start by killing all the bugs hiding in this house. Have you had an inspector take a look at this place to make sure it's not structurally unstable? I can probably make sure to some extent, but…"

"Hey, sweet. Shortened it for me," Colette notes with a crooked smile, "and it's fuckin' freezing when you're hanging on to Superman over there and he's doing like five hundred million miles an hour through the air." Dark brows lifted as she rolls her eyes at the notion, Colette shakes Odessa's hand and then shifts her footing to look over to Kendall. There's a momentary look of do I know you on her face, until the dark-haired teen lets out a squeak of surprise and rises up onto the ice-crusted toes of her boots.

"Ken!" Colette shouts, immediately hustling over to the young man and throwing a suede-covered arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a headlock and grinding one of her knuckles gently into his hair. "I haven't seen you in forever! I'm so glad you're safe!" After all, the last time she saw him was at Summer Meadows during the riot.

Releasing Ken's neck, Colette wrinkles her nose and offers a playful smile before motioning over to the basket Magnes is carrying. "Lissa! I brought you some groceries, I dipped into the supply room at Grand Central but it's all canned stuff so nobody'll mind. I got'cha like a buncha' canned vegetables and macaroni and cheese and some canned fruit and pasta and all'a that stuff that won't go bad." As she's talking, Colette swings around her courier bag and pulls up the front flap, rummaging around inside at the tail end of her hyperactive whirlwind.

Melissa shrugs at Kendall. "Hell if I know. Habit, I guess. I'm from the south, remember? Only in the dead of winter does it get cold enough to keep drinks cold," she says, leaning against a wall and sipping on her beer. "No, haven't had anyone out here but you guys. Considering that this section of the island is abandoned, it wouldn't really be practical or smart. But far as I can tell, the structure is good, it's everything else that needs work."

She cocks her head and looks towards Colette and Kendall, before she smiles. "Glad you guys know each other. And you didn't have to that Colette. Sure they don't want me having that stuff right now anyway. But c'mon! Everyone grab a beer and follow me!" she says, heading towards the stairs leading down, into the dark, dingy basement. Bum bum buuuuum.

"I looked, a little. My dad's an architect." Not that the fact really qualifies Kendall or anything, but it's better than most people could do. "Besides, we've been going all up and down the stairs and stuff and nothing has busted so far." then he flinches when Colette mobs him, and he blinks at her. Who the… huh? Wait… "Oh… I remember you." how could he forget such a spastic person?

Odessa takes a small step back, giving Colette the room to catch Kendall and engage in some sort of camaraderie ritual she doesn't understand and instead turns to follow Melissa. "Is this where you're hiding the secret discotheque?"

Magnes eyes Colette and Kendall for a brief moment himself, but then just stands up and starts following Melissa. "I made a basket for you guys, had to look up how and mess up a few, but eventually it came out alright. Then I made a few snacks and bought some of those fancy meats and cheeses."

Quirking a brow at Magnes, Colette looks past him and over to the open pizza boxes, then back over her shoulder to Melissa as the blonde starts to head to the stairs leading into the basement. Hastily making her way to the table the pizza boxes are laid out on, Colette lifts one lid, wrinkles her nose and closes it, moves to another, repeats the process, then finally steals a slice of the third pizza. "Yeah hold on— " she takes a bite, talking with her mouth full, "mn' com'n!" Unshouldering her courier bag, Colette leaves it down on the floor with a heavy clunk, then turns around and starts making her way for the stairs.

Colette's the last in line to head down the stairs, ducking her head and looking up for cobwebs anxiously, then down the stairs. The teen furrows her brows, pupils dilating wide and then narrowing to pin-pricks surrounded by a sea of green as she concentrates the ambient light into the basement, darkening the upstairs and illuminating the downstairs more so than it already was.

Melissa laughs as she grabs a lantern and heads down the stairs. "You found me out. This was all just a ruse to get you guys to pay the cover charge to come party in my place. Forget Tartarus, welcome to Mel's House of Disco! And that's awesome, Magnes. Thanks."

The basement is rather small, smaller than one might expect for a house of this size, and is unfinished. The floor is dirt, and there are exposed pipes everywhere. It's not really a place that a person would want to spend a great deal of time in, at least not how it is now. Even when Colette helps out with the light, it doesn't help much. The place actually looks better in the dark.

There is one odd thing about the basement though. One wall isn't the large cinder blocks that the other three walls are made of. Rather it's smaller red bricks, and they don't look professionally laid. It's actually pretty sloppy.

Kendall blinks at Colette when she does her little light trick, and he finishes his beer and sets it on a table, also trooping downstairs. "Why are we going down here, again?" he asks. He looks behind himself longingly. Maybe he should've grabbed another bite of pizza… "Disco?" Kendall queries, disgust evident in his tone. "Were either of you even old enough for disco?"

"I knew it!" Odessa gasps triumphantly. She casts a glance to Kendall and shakes her head. "I mostly listened to Baroque," she admits with a shrug. "A discotheque is just a dance hall anyway. Doesn't mean they play disco. Though Donna Summer is awesome."

"I don't know a lot about disco, unless you count Dazzler." Magnes easily admits, walking up to that red brick wall, then looks around at the rest of the walls. Soon, he's making a real effort to determine the age of the brick wall, tapping his chin. "Are you sure there aren't any bodies here? Do you have any idea who owned this place before?"

Little tiny firefly motes of white light drift around Colette's fingers as she makes her way into the basement, a dark brow lifted and green eyes up towards the ceiling, nose wrinkling. "I've seen worse," the teen admits, "this place isn't so bad. I mean, needs a fresh coat'a paint and like— a whoooole lotta' scrubbin'." Colette's boots don't leave tracks in the dirt floor, nor do the others down here given how hard the ground is from the cold and the frost, it feels like sandy concrete underfoot.

"Woah, these pipes are like…" Colette furrows her brows, walking a bit off from where Melissa is, rising up on her toes and reaching up with mitten-covered fingers to one of the copper pipes. "Frozen solid." She notes with a wrinkle of her nose, "Andy was bitchin' about that happening at the Brick House, means that when all this snow and ice thaws there's gonna be leaks everywhere. I think he said something about needing a plumber…" the teen muses, brows furrowed.

Melissa watches Magnes, then eyes the wall and shrugs. "I haven't found any bodies. And no idea who owned it before. Why? Don't tell me you think Kendall's right about there being ghosts down here," she says with a bit of a smile. "Did wonder about that wall though. I mean…It doesn't look…right."

Colette's words have Mel glancing towards her. "Probably, yeah. It's why I got all those home repair books. I'm hoping I can do most of the work myself."

"Are we gonna bust it down then?" Kendall asks, sounding excited. Maybe he is being affected by the beer, who knows. "Do we have a sledgehammer?" WHOO destruction! "Ghosts would be kinda awesome, we could charge admission, provided they don't, y'know, kill people and stuff. Like the Jackal."

"I wonder if my ability would work on a ghost," Odessa muses under her breath as she crosses the basement to approach the wall of red brick, brushing her fingers over the surface as she narrows her eyes in scrutiny. "I don't think they really exist," she decides of ghosts. "Unless that's some other sort of Evo-ability. Which would just be strange."

"Considering theories like String Theory and the Observer Effect, ghosts are a scientific plausibility." Magnes states, though doesn't actually say if he believes in them or not, instead opting to place his hand against the brick wall. "We shouldn't knock it down, we don't have an accurate assessment of this house's integrity, anything could be holding it up. But I'm feeling to see if there's any bodies, bones have a certain… weight to them."

Wall? Colette belatedly notes, looking to Melissa first then distractedly around the basement to try and get an idea of where she should be looking. Only by spotting Magnes up near the brick wall does the teen's nose wrinkle and brows furrow. Settling down onto her heels, she glances over to Odessa, then back to Melissa and starts to tread across the floor with crunching footfalls. "Do— do you think it's really a good idea to— to like, mess with that?" Green eyes dart from the brick wall to Melissa then back again. "I mean, this is Staten Island, maybe like the mob or something bricked up somebody in the wall. I saw this movie once, with— that actor who's connected to everybody?"

Colette's green eyes flick to Kendall, then back to Melissa. "It was about this guy who was haunted in a house just like this one by the ghost of some like— " Colette's nose wrinkles, brows furrowing, "by the ghost of this chick who was beaten up and stuff and killed, and bricked up in a basement. He like— kept playing this song, over and over again, that was the last thing she heard when she died…"

Colette's green eyes flick to Kendall, then back to Melissa. "It was about this guy who was haunted in a house just like this one by the ghost of some like— " Colette's nose wrinkles, brows furrowing, "by the ghost of this chick who was beaten up and stuff and killed, and bricked up in a basement. He like— kept playing this song, over and over again, that was the last thing she heard when she died…"

She's always wanted to do this to someone.

There's a lot of stuff behind that wall that Magnes can feel. Some heavy, solid things, but there is something a little lighter, a little less innocuous. He said that bones have a certain weight to them, that that's how he could pick them out if they were on the other side of the wall. And they do. The fact that he can feel some now, separated from himself only by that brick wall proves it.

"I don't know. I mean, if there is something on the other side of those bricks, shouldn't we figure out what? We could always…dunno…put up a support, if that wall is providing stability?"

Mel grins at Colette then, at the mention of a movie, then back to the brick wall, and she pales a little. "What the…wait. Kendall, no freaking people out, alright?" she says, giving the teen a hard look. Just…giving the wrong teen the hard look. Poor Kendall.

Kendall lifts his hands in the air defensively. "I don't have anything to draw with, and besides, I can't see a thing!" ok, so Kendall was considering it, but someone stole his idea. Unless… "Maybe it's a real ghost!" he suggests, looking happy, and walks forward. "Hi!" he greets the face. "She doesn't look too happy."

Odessa stares at the ghost coming out of the wall with all the aloof composure of a proper woman of science, though she does dance back a quick step in case Magnes decides to scream like a little girl and faint or something. She's not catching him. "So what if the mob's walled somebody in there?" she asks casually. "We don't care. We'll just toss the body somewhere else." Right? That's the practical solution, isn't it?

Magnes jumps back clear across the room with a yelp, landing on the completely opposite wall with his legs bent. He lifts his head up to stare at the wall in the ghosts, eyes wide. "I felt a skeleton, there's a skeleton behind the wall, and there's a ghost too!"

Covering her face with one hand Colette offers a snorting giggle, face bright red and fingers spread to barely contain her laughter. She walks backwards into one of the opposite walls, bursting out with fitful giggling as the 'ghost' dissipates into firefly motes of colorless light that then wink out one by one. But it's when Magnes says there is an actual honest to god skeleton behind the wall, Colette's eyes go wide and it slowly dawns on her the gravity of the situation.

"Th— that's not funny Magnes!" Colette blurts out, face draining of color and green eyes wide, the ambient light she's adding to the room flickering and wavering like wind-disturbed candle light. "You— there's nothing that's not funny!" Now she's a bit creeped out herself.

Melissa frowns when Kendall claims innocent, and she grabs for the back of Kendall's shirt to drag him back away from the ghost. "Are you serious, Magnes? If you're joking about this, so help me I'll make you wish that you had been born without a head. Either kind of head, for that matter," she threatens as she stares at the figment.

Then it dissipates she's frowning in confusion. "Okay, if Kendall didn't do that…and if there really is a skeleton behind that wall…Anyone else wanna run upstairs real quick and hit the beer hard and heavy?"

Well now, Kendall has another idea. He can one-up whoever did the ghost! He goes back into the shadows and grabs a pencil from his pocket, sketching something in the ground. He doesn't actually have to see it, he just has to know it's there. When he finishes and stands up, there's a thumping sound coming from the wall, and then a bit of brick seemingly falls out of the wall, a skeletal hand reaching out to try and grab an arm if anyone's close enough.

Odessa snaps her head back to look at Magnes, then quickly turn back to look at the wall of bricks as if she could somehow see through it. "Seriously? Now this I have to see." So she's a little macabre. Skeletons are just like jigsaw puzzles waiting to be put together again, though. It's fun! Honest. "Don't be ridiculous. Whatever's behind that wall is already dead."

The temporal manipulator looks over her shoulder at the rest gathered in the basement and smirks with a good-natured roll of her eyes. "I'm here. There's nothing to worry about."

Except perhaps for that knocking on the other side of the wall. Odessa turns to look back at it with a confused expression. That cannot be ri— Holy fucking shit! What is the proper reaction to a skeleton grabbing the front of your dress?

You rip the arm out of its socket, that's what you do. Odessa reaches out and wraps her hand around carpals, ulna and radius and yank it toward her.

"What… the…" Magnes isn't saying that for a third time today. He lands on the floor, slips his guitar off, then reaches into both sides of his jacket for what seems to be five inch metallic pipes. He swings them both, which causes another five inches to slide from them both, creating ten inch pipes, then he suddenly screws them together, and just like that, he's swinging a twenty inch pole at the skeleton's head. "Run, I'll fight this thing!"

Colette just shrieks when she sees the skeletal arm reach out through the fallen brick, boots scuffing against the packed dirt floor and light dimming further before blossoming a touch brighter. There's a moment where she's backing up and then a moment when she's just gone. Painted over to be a part of the background, optical camouflage taking effect as she bends light around herself and plunges into the dark, sensing by feeling light rather than seeing but the skeleton is still there in her mind because she believes it is.

Scrambling invisibly, Colette doesn't need to be told twice to run for it, and the teen collides with Melissa unintentionally, stumbling and tripping and blundering into another wall, then scrambling up the wooden stairs with clomping footfalls. Ghosts are wholly outside her field of expertise.

This time Mel is keeping an eye on Kendall, since he didn't just let her drag him away, and he gets a whap upside the head. "Hey, stop it. This isn't funny. There's a dead guy in our basement. I don't like dead things. Mostly."

But then there's Odessa's reaction, and she winces a little. Right before she's plowed into and goes down on her ass. "What the…Everyone stop! Kendall, that especially includes you or I swear I'll burn all your little card things!"

The skeleton is destroyed, and suddenly the wall is back to being whole and undisturbed, and the actual skeleton is where it was to begin with. That new sound everyone hears is Kendall suppressing laughter. He doesn't duck Melissa's whap, as it's kinda dark in here, but he can't suppress anymore and nearly falls down laughing.

One moment, she's holding a fleshless arm in her fist, and the next she's simply not. This must be what it feels like to be all the others whose grip she's wriggled out of using her own ability. Huh. Slowly she turns back around to try and see Kendall in the dark. "I cannot believe you just did that."

"No Final Fantasy for a year." Magnes suddenly announces, deconstructing and collapsing his pipes before sliding them into his jacket again. "Alright, everyone calm down now. There really is a skeleton behind this thing, so we have to figure out what we're gonna do about it."

Colette's at the top of the stairs, still invisible, breathing heavy enough that the puffs of steam from her breath would be indicative of her position to anyone who was actually up there. Alone, however, she doesn't go any further, just tries to get a hold of her breathing, hunched forward with hands on her knees as the invisibility begins to peel away like strips of flaking paint, piece by piece revealing her as a dark silhouette at the top of the stairs from the light coming in through the doorway.

Melissa glares at Kendall. "Dude. Not cool. I'm glad you're having fun with your ability, but time and place, Kendall. Damn." She glances around, sighing. "Let's all go upstairs and figure out what to do about the wall and skeleton, alright? And no more skeleton jokes, dammit," she mutters, heading towards the stairs.

Kendall frowns, immediately going into sulk mode. "Well I wasn't the one who did the ghost." he complains. "Why am I the only one getting punished?" like the others, he goes up the stairs. Hmmph. It was a joke! Lighten up! "It's not like a skeleton would actually hurt anyone, so what's the big deal?"

Magnes sighs after feeling the brick one last time, then he's heading after Melissa. "I'd say call the police if we could get them out here, but we definitely don't want them snooping around. So…" He shrugs, at a loss for ideas at the moment.

"S— Snooping?" Colette notes with a raise of one brow as she watches everyone coming up the stairs, moving ahead of them back into the main floor, having forgotten she dropped her slice of pizza somewhere in the basement. Green eyes divert over to Magnes, then up to Melissa. "Some— somebody should come and look at it, okay? I— I mean, nobody's moved in yet and— and I know a cop who'd come out here and not ask too many questions about everything." There's a faint hint of a smile, and Colette rests her hands on her hips, looking at Kendall with furrowed brows and a squint.

"My— My dad's a detective," Colette offers, dark brows raised, "he knows what I do too, he hasn't asked me to Register and he knows what my uh, side job… is… too?" Being vague about the Ferrymen can be difficult at times. "So, like, he could come out here. Because— because if somebody actually died we need to, like, handle it properly. The police all won't come out here but I bet he could take a look around an' tell us what to do, or maybe— I dunno. He's smart."

"No cops," Melissa says to Magnes, shaking her head. She's very emphatic about that. "I'm still wanted, remember? And going back into a cell? Not something I have on my list of things to do before I die. And you're the only one who freaked everyone out, hon. That's why you got whapped. But I really am happy that you had some fun with your ability. It's not so bad, huh?"

Melissa pauses and looks at Colette for a long moment, before moving to the cooler to grab another beer. "You sure your dad wouldn't like, try to arrest me or anything? Or ask too many questions beyond the dead guy?" she asks, glancing to Kendall. Live kids trump dead guys, after all. "I moved here to avoid the authorities. I don't want them swarming the house."

"Well does it have to stay here? I mean, can't we just move it somewhere far away and let someone else find it? Or pretend it's not there?" Kendall eyes Magnes. "You're the one who said there was one there, how do we know you're not just trying to scare us?"

Odessa sighs, "You guys find some way to unearth the damn thing, and I'll take care of getting rid of it. Melissa's right, we don't need cops involved."

"No!" Colette insists with a pout of her lower lip, "that skeleton might've been somebody's daughter or son or something! Can you imagine a family wondering if their kid ever died or just went missing, worrin' about that every day and never knowin'? No, you gotta' have someone take a look at it you can't— you can't just hide it! You can trust my dad, he wouldn't do anything bad. I'll tell him you're a friend, he'll— he wouldn't ever do that, trust me."

There's a furrow of Colette's brows at that, eyes focusing over on the beer, but with how upside-down her stomach is from the excitement of the basement she doesn't quite feel like drinking anything at all. "I promise, but if there's somethin' you're really worried about, just keep it out while he's here, you know? Have Ken go stay at the Lighthouse for a day, it's plenty safe there and he can hang out with Gillian and Doyle and stuff."

Maybe mentioning the puppet-master around Odessa wasnt the wisest move, but Colette has no way to know about their shared animosity.

"Magnes if you're lying I'll— " There's a squint of Colette's green eyes, a wrinkle of her nose and a furrow of her brows, much like a very angry kitten she looks.

"No cops, none." Magnes peers at Colette, shaking his head as they leave the basement doors, and he leans against the wall. "I'll call someone and the body will be buried somewhere in Tibet in a week. That work for you all?"

"The Lighthouse? Don't forget, I'm not a part of the club anymore. I don't have any right to go there now," Melissa mutters. Oh yeah, someone's bitter. Very much so. "Colette has a point. There could be someone out there who is wondering what happened. But I really would prefer no cops. So how about this…We get it out, move it somewhere. Somewhere that the cops can find it. They can identify it from dental records or whatever. Fingerprints, if it still has 'em. That way the family can be notified and we don't involve cops. How's that sound?" she asks, looking around at everyone.

"I didn't say hide it." Kendall explains in annoyance. "I said put it somewhere for someone else to find. They'll call the cops, they'll do an investigation, and it'll be fine." unless it was a crime scene, but hey. "Works for me." he frowns a bit. "I'm not an unwanted package to be passed around." and due to the hormonal imbalance that is the teenage years, Kendall goes stomping off upstairs.

"No! It doesn't work!" Colette insists with a stomp of her foot to Magnes. "This— isn't like we found a dead cat in the basement or something, this is a person! What if it was someone you cared about and you never knew if they died or not! Don't— don't be such a douchebag Magnes!" Dark brows furrowed and face red, Colette actually seems upset about this, but it's a personal issue in a way.

"You found it, you— you found it you can't just go an' hide it and pretend it never happened! Move it somewhere else if you haf'ta, but you can't just— just pretend nothing happened. The family needs to know! You— I swear if you— " Tiny hands balled into fists, Colette actually looks on the verge of tears somehow from this argument. She should correct Melissa about the Lighthouse, but right now— she's too busy having a little breakdown over this.

"Let me tell you something." Magnes says in a tone that says in a tone as he gets down into Colette's face. "I don't need hypothetical situations, I've dealt with more screwed up stuff than you can probably imagine. And I'll tell you one thing; of all the people I know who are missing, I'd rather think they might be alive out there, causing trouble for someone, now washing up on the beach. If I had this corpse hid, I'd be doing them a freakin' favor. There's no such thing as closure with a corpse."

Melissa sighs when Kendall stomps off. "I'm gonna have to get used to that," she mumbles, shaking her head. Then she moves over to Colette, resting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. "We're not going to just pretend it didn't happen, Colette. We'll make sure that it's found. I promise. I just gotta think about Kendall first." And herself, but Kendall makes a better argument!

She looks towards Magnes and shakes her head. "You're wrong there, Magnes. I'd rather know someone was dead than spend my life wondering what happened to them. It's not an easy truth to hear, but it helps people move past it, so they can get on with their lives. We're moving him, and making sure that he's found. Now take it easy, step back, and chill out."

Odessa pinches the bridge of her nose. "I can make some calls, see if I can get someone to help tear down the wall so we can get at whatever's behind it. From there, we can assess the remains and then decide where to move the body so that Colette's father can retrieve it."

A wave of her taped-up hand freezes the room, save for herself and Melissa. "If there's evidence we need to worry about preserving, we can discuss letting him come here, with supervision. If he tries to cause any trouble, I'll take care of him." Odessa's definition of taking care of him may involve another body behind a wall in a different abandoned house entirely, but no one else needs to know that. Pressing her fingers to her lips, she waves her hand again and restores the room as if that entire side conversation hadn't taken place at all.

Colette almost snaps on Magnes, almost completely snaps on him before Melissa comes in to make her decision. Breathing in a shuddering breath, the girl brings up a mitten clad hand to her face, wiping one wool-covered thumb beneath her eyes before sucking in a hiccuped sob as her shoulders tremble and she backpedals away from the others, embarrassed. Face bright red and head ducked down, she's already starting to peel away from visibility as she turns, color bleaching away from her and turning into a black and white picture before disappearing entirely.

There's a noisy clomping of footsteps, the front door opens with a gust of cold air from outside, then slams shut. Her bag is still here in the house, up near the table where the pizza and beer is situated. Colette isn't going far, but she's not going to get the crying she needs to do out of her system in front of everyone.

"I can tear the wall down, and I have someone who can place the body where ever you want it." Magnes sounds a little frustrated now, beginning to head for the door with his hands in his pockets. "I'm gonna go out and get some air, I'll be back soon."

Melissa sighs and rubs her hands over her soot-covered face, then through her hair when Colette disappears, then when Magnes heads for the door as well. "And then there were two," she murmurs. "Sounds like we've got a plan though. Get the wall down, get the body out, make sure Colette's dad finds it, so everyone can be happy and safe." She glances towards the door. "The only question now…is when."

Odessa crosses her arms under her chest and sighs as the house empties out save for she and Melissa, and a brooding teenager upstairs somewhere. "Focus on the house for now. The body's not going anywhere. Do what you need to to be somewhat comfortable - heat and water and all that - and then we'll worry about taking the wall down." Odessa isn't quite sure why she's helped to take ownership of this endeavour, but it seems like the right thing to do right now.

Melissa smiles faintly and nods. "Yeah…yeah, that's the practical thing to do. He's not exactly gonna get any deader than he is right now. And I gotta make sure that neither me, Kendall or Jerry get deader than we are right now. Thanks for the help though. This…was not what I was expecting to happen tonight."

Odessa laughs softly, a dry sort of sound. "Nothing ever goes the way it's supposed to, I find. Don't worry about it, though. I'll help you take care of it. I read on a bumper sticker once that a good friend will help you hide a body." And she seems to think that that is an actual definition of friendship.

To be fair, it kind of is in her world.


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