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Six years ago…
It was right after school when Kali heard the news. She dropped her backpack beside the door, hung up her house keys, and made a beeline to the living room. She turned on the TV only to be greeted with a local news channel, the same one her father always put on in the morning. Her finger was over the button to change the channel when she heard his name.
“ ████ █████ was found dead last night—“
The phone rings from behind her and she shrieks a string of cuss words that would make her father give her a very disappointed look were he at home right now. With the TV blaring behind her, she picks up the phone. It’s one of her school friends, practically screaming into the phone.
“Kali!”
“Whoa! Are you okay?”
“Did you hear—“
“I heard.”
“Oh my god… what do we do?”
“What do you mean, what do we do? He’s super-famous! It’s not like we could go to his funeral, right?”
“Do you think we can call out of school for this?”
“For a celebrity? No way! Dad would never let me, even if we told the school it was a friend or something who died!”
“Why does your dad have to know?”
“He’d just know! I don’t have any friends who just died!”
“Ugh… fine! Oh my god, we have to call the others! We have to do something! Like, a memorial service or something!”
“Calm down, calm down. You’re gonna start crying.”
♡♡♡
Kali’s father was not home for a long time that night.
♡♡♡
Tonight…
A dark figure encased in a pale pink glow stands in the doorway. It mirrors Kali’s figure to a T— the flow of the waves in her hair, the way her sleeves puff out just a bit. Its eyes are the only distinct features it has, soulless and glowing as it stares her down. On its forehead is a diamond-shaped red crystal. “What the hell are you?” she whispers as she takes slow, cautious steps away from the figure.
It doesn’t respond. It only stares at her with those glowing, soulless eyes. After a moment of silence, it raises its hands, and an entourage of dark-shrouded silhouettes rise from the floor. Five of them, to be exact. Their faces are visible, but their bodies are slightly see-through. Incorporeal blood drips from their broken forms. One of them surges forward, its body moving as if strung up like a marionette.
Kali’s eyes only break away from the figure approaching her to watch her clone, or whatever that damn thing is. It raises its hand and gestures forward, and the blood-drenched ghost takes another step. The clone of her is controlling those mutilated spirits…
As the puppet-esque shadow approaches, dragging along the floor with a trail of blood in its wake, Kali meets its vacant eyes. The shape of its clothing and hair looks oddly familiar. A strange white line crosses one of its eyes, as if mimicking a scar. A very familiar scar, in fact. “Wait… you look like… no.”
The others turn their heads toward Kali in unison. Five pairs of glowing eyes lock onto her. Four are fairly level with each other, and one is at about half their height. “What the hell are you?” she chokes out. “You look like my ghosts. But… you’re not.”
One of them suddenly drops into a position no human could stand in. It collapses like a ragdoll, bending backwards before tumbling to the ground. Kali screams and jumps back away from it. “What the fuck?” she screams. “Stay back!” And yet it crawls forward, its lower body dragging limply along the ground.
Kali leans in closer to the blood-soaked shadow on the floor. Its head tilts upward in a far steadier movement than the sudden, floppy gestures of its companions. The details of its body begin to fade into view, more clearly than anything she’s ever been able to create with the usage of her ability. It’s as limp as a worn-out stuffed animal, fumbling for a steady grip on the tile floor. It’s wearing a coat that drapes over him like a blanket, and its hair falls in its face almost too neatly for the condition the rest of her body is in. As each of the ghost’s recognizable features come together, her eyes widen in shock.
“No.”
“No…”
“No, it can’t be.”
Kali takes a slow step back. Her hand raises to her chest, clutching over her pounding heart. “No…” she whispers again. “No. Are you… oh, god… you can’t be. What is this? What’s happening?”
♡♡♡
Kali’s bedroom door slowly creaked open and quiet footsteps tiptoed inside. Hirotsu bent down beside his daughter’s bed and patted her head. She was fast asleep, curled up underneath the covers. He tapped the side of her face again, and her eyes opened in response.
“Dad…?” she mumbled. “What time is it?”
Hirotsu looked down at his watch. “About four in the morning.”
“Why’re you waking me up?” Kali asked. Her voice was raspy, and her eyelids were drooping as she looked up at her father.
“I just wanted to let you know I’m home.”
“Where were you all night?” Kali slowly sat up, the covers falling away from her. “You didn’t call or anything.”
“I’m sorry. There was… an emergency at work. I couldn’t have left.”
Kali pulled her messy hair out of her face and groaned. “Ugh… okay.”
Hirotsu hesitated for a moment. He knew teenagers could have their sulky moments, but Kali didn’t seem to get like that as often as others. “Is everything alright?” he asked.
“Today was kinda horrible…” Kali sighed. “Those guys in my class were being assholes again and my teacher wouldn’t listen to me about it, and then on top of that crap, I heard right after school that ████ █████ was, like, murdered or something. Like… as if today couldn’t be bad enough already.”
Hirotsu’s eyes widened in shock. ████ █████? How did she know Lippmann’s real name… oh, shit, that’s right. He was an actor as well. Matter of fact, he almost forgot at that moment about the poster Kali tore from a teen magazine and taped to her wall. That poster made him do a double take a few times before remembering that his daughter was simply a teenage fangirl like any other. “Oh… I’m… sorry about that. Would you like me to talk to your teacher tomorrow?”
“No…” she said, hanging her head down in defeat. “He doesn’t listen anymore. I keep trying to tell him and he just tunes me out.”
Hirotsu gritted his teeth, trying not to say something about that bastard teacher that’d take his daughter aback. He finally settles on “The school year will be over soon, and you’ll be out of his classroom.”
“I… guess it’ll be better then. Maybe if I have a girl teacher who gets it, y’know?”
“Yes, maybe. I’m sorry about ████ too.” Fuck, what could he even do about that though? He couldn’t let it slip that he knew Lippmann. He couldn’t beg Chuuya or the boss to tell him if there was some special trinket Lippmann would have liked to pass on, or dug through a desk for something with his handwriting on it. He couldn’t reveal to Kali what he really does for work. She still had another year of high school after that one, and she had such good prospects for university. He couldn’t possibly throw such a massive wrench in the course of her life when she had so much ahead of her. But he had to do something to make her feel better. If he couldn’t help with school bullies, he could at least make her feel better about her celebrity crush’s untimely death.
“…Why don’t you take a day off of school tomorrow?” Hirotsu could try to tell the boss some insane lie about his daughter being in the hospital or something, right? Even during such a time within the Port Mafia, this could be dealt with by everyone else except for him. “I’ll take the day off too. You can sleep in, and we can go to that ice cream place you like.”
Kali snickered and nodded her head. “Ah, yeah, I’ll take that.”
Hirotsu smiled down at Kali. It wouldn’t fix everything that he didn’t know how to solve for her. But at least, it’d make her feel better for a day.
♡♡♡
These ghosts are exactly who she thinks they are. They’re her ghosts, in some gory, corrupted form. The ghosts of the Flags, torn apart and mutilated into something barely recognizable. And yet, their faces are still visible. Chuuya had told her before that they didn’t just die, they were murdered. All five of them. She’d caught on about Lippmann, but oh, god, she had no idea it was that bad. It’s that bad and worse for every single one of them too. If someone had told her younger self that she would someday see the bloody corpse of her teenage celebrity crush on her kitchen floor in the form of a disgusting apparition, she never would have believed a word of it.
And yet, here he is now. Along with Piano Man, her dear friend, the first of the ghosts to appear to her. And Albatross, the one who smiles so bright whenever she brings him into visibility and still tries to hug her. And Iceman, who she’s caught many times standing in front of her as if trying to protect her. And Doc, who never left her side when she had the flu and was bed-bound for a few days.
“Was this… how it looked?” she whispers. “Was this how you looked when Chuuya found you?”
One of their eyes meets hers. It’s Iceman… the first one who had approached her. It slowly nods its head, confirming all of her worst fears. “You… oh, my god. You all… had to suffer through this.”
The figure behind them, the featureless clone of Kali, approaches her with a look in its blank eyes that somehow registers as pure, unadulterated malice. “You…” Kali mutters. “You did this. You brought them here in this state. The same way they were the moment they died.”
A bitter, acidic taste surges up into her throat. Her hand fumbles for the edge of the dining room table before grabbing onto it. “Oh my god. Oh… oh my god…” she gasps. This thing… this clone of her… it has her ability. The ghosts were summoned by her own ability. But they’re not the ghosts she knew, the ones who surrounded her like a shield of protection and cradled her with icy embraces while she was waiting for her husband to come home. This was something entirely different. They were torn open, drenched in blood, some with their insides visible. Kali had never seen anything like it, not in a movie or in real life.
Piano Man, her sweet Piano, begins to close in on her, as her out-of-control ability guides it forward. The thing mimicking Albatross follows suit, spilling towards her on twisted legs. Literally spills forward, actually… its body flops downward and a sickening mass of guts drops out of its torn-open torso. Kali’s throat tenses up and her chest heaves. The entire contents of her stomach spill onto the ground as she doubles over, coughing and retching. As she looks up from the disgusting puddle on the kitchen floor, she sees the ghosts continuing to close in on her, unfazed by the sight or the odor.
The last one appears from behind the others. It’s her dear Doc… well, only part of him. Only the upper half of him is splayed on the ground at her feet. The portion of his body that still remains crawls toward her with shaking arms, its head limply hanging forward. A red trail smears behind it like a cloud of crimson fog across the kitchen floor. Kali screams at the top of her lungs, until her breath runs out and her throat feels hoarse.
“NO! FUCK… GET ME OUTTA HERE!” she cries, stumbling back from the twisted shapes of the spirits who once comforted her. “No… no! Stay back! Stay away from me…”
That beautiful, bruised, bloody face of Lippmann’s corrupted ghost smiles up at her, before his hand reaches out and grabs her ankle. She can feel its cold grasp much more clearly than usual. She instinctively shrieks and stomps down on it, despite knowing that trying to attack it wouldn’t help her case. Its face dissipates for a moment before reforming again and reaching out to her. This time, she runs, straight toward the bathroom in case she needs to puke again. She slams the door shut behind her and locks it.
For a moment, there’s quiet. And then her ability steps through the door. Straight through it… just like a damn ghost. Its horde of intangible corpses follows close behind. Behind the bathroom door, she’s trapped in here with all of them, and they’re all looking at her like she’s about to be served up for dinner.
The clone of Kali lunges forward past the ghosts and straight toward her. Its hands shoot out and grab her, swinging her toward the shower door. She manages to twist away from it, connecting with the wall and sliding down. She scrambles back up, but before she can get back to her feet, it throws her back against the wall. This time, the wind is knocked out of her on impact. It’s too damn fast, and the ghosts’ presence is throwing her off by catching her off guard every time she sees them out of the corner of her eye. But if she’s in an enclosed space with it, that means it can’t escape her as easily either. If she stays inside the bathroom, it’ll stay too, and she can use the walls to her advantage.
She grabs the clone and pulls it down with her, her hands wrapping around its neck. Even if it doesn’t have an airway to close off, she can keep it pinned down that way. She climbs on top of it, keeping it trapped under her body weight. Her eyes flick around the bathroom in a panic, searching for anything she could use as a weapon. There’s nothing particularly useful in here, but she can’t risk leaving the bathroom and opening up a larger arena to continue this battle in. ”Fuck, what do I do now?” she says to herself.
For a moment, she sees herself in the mirror, surrounded by the swirling, mocking figures of the ghosts. Hold on… the mirror. It’s a surface she can throw this thing onto, if it’s able to interact with the wall as a solid surface and not just pass through it like it did with the door.
She grabs its hair and wrenches it toward the mirror. It scrambles to grab at her, but she’s too quick. She slams its head into the mirror, hearing the glass break beneath it. Bashing its head in will actually work to stun it. She can keep this up. When she pulls it away, she catches a distorted glimpse of its featureless face in the broken glass before smashing it into the mirror again— and again, and again, and again. Shards of glass rain down to the floor, falling into sharp pieces. She takes a quick look down at the shards, analyzing which ones she could pick up and use as a weapon if worst comes to worst.
Eventually, she pulls the clone back again, looking it up and down. The crystal on its forehead is slightly cracked. Holy shit, that thing can break? An idea suddenly pops into her head, and she yanks the clone downward, dragging it to the floor with her. She grabs a shard of the broken glass from the mirror and jams it into the clone’s forehead, straight through the crystal. She can feel the glass cutting into her skin, but in the moment, she’s only focused on destroying her escaped ability.
One more blow with the mirror shard, and the crystal containing Kali’s ability is done for. It shatters on impact, a bright red glow emanating from it. The clone freezes in place, and then suddenly, it disappears into nothing more than a wisp of smoke. The ghosts fade away as well, taking their trails of blood and spilled insides with them. She feels a jolt in her body as her ability returns to her. It’s all gone as quickly as it appeared.
When everything disappears, Kali slumps back against the wall. The broken shards of the mirror lay on the marble floor around her body. Blood spills from the palm of her hand onto the floor beside her. Her ears are still ringing, and her heart thuds in her chest like it wants to break out through her ribcage.
“Lippmann…? Piano? Doc? Alby? Iceman? Are you there…?”
A cold touch to her cheek makes her let out a sigh. Slowly, she tests the waters of her ability, illuminating the figure just slightly. As the figure comes into view, she can see it’s Doc. Of course it’s him… he always appears when she’s injured. She looks him up and down, checking to make sure it’s the same Doc she sees when she summons the boys of her own volition. He’s all in one piece now, thank goodness. He’s kneeling on the floor beside her, looking down at her bloody hand. “I’ll bandage it up in a minute…” she sighs. “Just… let me rest.”
Doc looks personally offended by Kali’s lack of urgency. She just gives him a stare of pure exhaustion and shakes her head. “Not now. I had to battle my own ability and bash its head into a mirror.” She receives a confused look from Doc, but provides no further explanation. “I just… need a bit of rest.”
Doc wraps his arms around Kali’s shoulders, bringing her that chill that she’s learned to find comforting. She leans into him, tucking her head down as if trying to put it on his shoulder. Her eyes slowly close and a single tear rolls down her cheek.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she whispers. ”Please… I love you all too much.”