Fuel for the Fire! (Open.)

While many would find such a statement elitist, Ghosts tended to appear in poorer districts far quicker then anywhere else in whatever city you happened to find yourself. It was a simple fact of life that Jonah had discovered quite quickly and all pretense aside it made sense; Poorer people tended to live harsher lives then those with a little more breathing room in their lifestyle thanks to a little extra cash and that harshness took its bloody toll. The fact that what little these people did have they treasured so much more then their richer counterparts ensured a unhealthy supply of anchors that bound their owners to the living world after death.

As Jonah walked with the hood of his jacket covering his hair like a man on a mission and without fear of the shadows of the street light lit street, his lips tugged up just the faintest as he was left in peace on his journey. While it had been a joke like meme on the internet he had once read, he had to confess that it had been spot on in this regard; Dangerous people tended not to attack who they believed were other Dangerous people. It was counter-productive and a major risk to ones health.

Still, the fact that Jonah was seeing by a light that only a limited few could see helped boost his confidence a bit when walking in these shadows. It was a cloudy night. Nothing but black clouds in the sky, the threat of rain hanging in the air like a spider dangling in front of your eyes by a strand of web. But he was not here for the muggers. Tonight, his duty demanded that he make the lives of those who lived here by dealing with the dead.

He wasn't quite sure who this ghost had been in life, but in death it was restless. A victim of an apartment fire who knows how many years before, the spirit had refused to pass on for reasons Jonah didn't know and was hoping to discover it tonight. It was also violent. The building it had died in had been rebuilt three times in the last thirty years, each time due to a fire that claimed life. It was almost finished being rebuilt once again and if left alone history would repeat itself.

Turning a corner, Jonah's gaze turned to the only building in the street that showed signs of construction. It was a big, ugly brick of building meant only to put a roof over the heads of those who had to live here. At this hour and in this neighborhood their was no construction crew in sight... but Jonah did notice the three teenage kids sneaking through the open front door of the building.

Unheard to anyone but him, the cries and soft wailing of an upset twelve year old girl meowed softly in the back of his mind. While no one else would have been able to hear any words from the sobbing mess, Jonah nodded his head in agreement. "You're right. This just got trickier..."

Annabella was on the hunt and her prey couldn't see her coming. The plump rat just ate at a piece of fruit, unaware he was about to be made a meal. Annabella eyed the rat from the low hanging branch. She watched, waiting for the perfect moment. The rat started to clean itself. Now was her chance. She leapt out of the tree, hands outstretched to grab the rodent.

The wind shifted suddenly and the rat knew she was coming. The rat quickly ran off, chattering away. Annabella landed on the ground, grunting as she hit the hard dirt. She got up and chased after the little scoundrel. The rat was quick but so was Annabella. She made several attempts to snatch it but failed each time.

She ran through an open door inside a building. She chased the rat upo probably a couple stairs, still yet to realize she was in a building. She noticed as the rat started to wear out. She smirked and leaped forward with a hiss. Her hands grabbed the rodent tightly and he let out a nasty sound. Annabella squeezed him as hard as she could, his eyes bulging out of his head. Annabella waited for the struggle to stop and the sounds to stop and the rat's eyes to roll in the back of its head. That moment slowly came. She smiled as it happened. She relaxed a bit, biting off a bit of its body.It was only then she realized she was in a building. She continued to eat though, looking around her.

Just when he believed things couldn't get any weirder then they already were, Jonah watched as a fourteen year old teenage girl wearing what appeared to be a cowgirl outfit (minus the hat from the looks of it) bolting after a rather big rat like it was the most delicious shortcake in the world that had somehow grown legs and was running for it into the building he was planning to enter himself.

For what felt like a long moment, Jonah just looked at the front of the building as if he was expecting something else to happen. Slowly, he managed to get enough of his mind working again to ask seemingly no one "That... just happened, right?". The answer wouldn't have been heard by anyone else, even if they did they would have only heard sobbing and the hiccups of those who have cried so much that breathing has become a problem. Jonah had to take a moment to reflect that asking the mostly human Geist that could only communicate with crying and wailing inside of his head if it had just seen something in order to double check his own sanity was kind of a mute point.

Taking a deep breath as he accepted the fact that the dice had been rolled and this was what he now had to deal with, Jonah carried onwards towards the building himself. Crossing the threshold of the open door, Jonah took the time to look around at what he guessed was the lobby. It wasn't much. There were two elevators (or at least the doors where the elevators were going to be housed) and two staircases, both leading upwards. There was currently no sign of anyone who had come into the building just yet.

Scanning the room for anything that might seem like a door to the basement, Jonah sighed in disappointment. So much for this being easy... Moving towards the elevators, he hit one of the buttons to see if it would call anything. There was no response because there was no power. Taking another small sigh, Jonah turned towards the staircase and started to head up it. In order to get to the basement, he needed the elevators working. In order to get them working, he needed power. Since he couldn't get into the basement, he just had to hope that the power could be turned on up on the roof.

Annabella nibbled some meat off a rat rib as she gathered her surroundings. It was a room. It didn't have much in it. It had a roof and a floor and four walls and a door frame. The floor was wood surprisingly. There was another smaller room connected to this one. A bunch of pipes stuck up out of the ground. A bathroom possibly? She wondered if this building was going to be a hotel or something. Kind of a shabby hotel if it was. 

She tore off the tail of the rat and slurped it up like a hairy noddle. She smiled. "I should probably stay put. No one saw me come in here, right? It wouldn't hurt anything." she mumbled, licking her lips of the rat blood. She looked out a window and watched the sky, wishing she could actually see it and not just clouds. She ate the rat, spiting up bone and fur once in a while.

As Jonah made his way up each new flight of stairs, he couldn't help but feel the chill that slowly began to creep up his spine and put the hairs on the back of his neck on edge for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold. He was waiting for the first shoe to drop. There was a ghost in the building. Even if he hadn't done his research, just being in the building would have been enough to tell him that there was a specter of the departed somewhere here. The problem was that because he could sense it, it could sense him in return. Honestly, he had no idea how it would react to him being here. It was always something of a gamble, since some ghosts could be quite pleasant, others would be desperate and resort to threats and others were just completely insane with rage and would lash out at anyone or anything.
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In the room with the snake girl, the light bulb turned on. This was weird for a number of reasons, the least of which was that no one had touched the switch. Within seconds, the light started to glow painfully bright before the light blub exploded in a shower of hot glass, drowning the room back into a darker darkness then before as burning hot glass shrapnel flew around the bare room.

Annabella hissed at the light as it turned on, first hating light and second frightened by it. She hissed and curled up in the darkest corner she could find, hiding her eyes and face. She let out a loud painful hiss as the light bulb exploded and hot glass shot at her and in to her skin. It was on her hands and her neck. She sat up, grumbling. She inspected the glass in her hands. She looked up at the light spot. She narrowed her eyes at it. She started to try and pull the glass out but it was really hot. "Fudge. How that hell did that happen?"

Jonah felt the spike of activity below very clearly. It was like an ice cube pressed against the base of his neck. He stopped with his left foot on the next step as he considered his options. He could keep going towards the roof, turn on the power and make his way towards the basement, thus finding what he was looking for and dealing with this ghost one way or another as quickly as possible, hopefully limiting the damage it could possibly do by dealing with it quickly enough.

On the other hand... there were people in the building who had no idea what the hell they were dealing with. With a sigh, Jonah took his foot off the step and started to head down, trying to pin point that were that last spike had come from. He wasn't stupid enough to call out to anyone, instead making his footsteps as easy to hear in the silent building as possible for the moment.

Sometimes he just hated other people...

Annabella heard the footsteps and her eyes widened. She huddled back in the darkest corner of the room. She couldn't fight well at the moment, she was still working on digesting the rat, and she had to avoid fighting most she could. She didn't want help with the glass in her either. She would get it out some how. She held back a hiss, knowing that would alert whoever or whatever it was where she was. She stayed as silent as possible. She watched the door way. Some of her blood had stained the floor in her previous spot.

After moving down two flights of stairs, Jonah paused in order to listen and feel around. He heard nothing. This meant one of two things: Either the person in question had already fled the area after whatever happened happened without screaming like a little girl, or they were currently dead or dying and thus beyond Jonah's ability to help them just yet. He was bout to turn and go back up the stairs when he felt as if someone dumped a bucket full of ice water into his veins. Something was happening nearby. Something big!
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In the room of the snake girl, the inner most wall seemed to brighten up, casting an eerie glow over the rest of the room. After a few seconds, a ghostly fire consumed the wall, the silvery flames drifting lazily upwards at its own pace, the fire not even harming the cheap paint job. Despite how weird it looked, it gave off the impression that touching it was a really bad idea.

Annabella started coughing a bit from smoke. She hissed and crawled away from the fire. She crawled herself out of the room backward, watching the fire hatefully. She stood quickly and looked around for the way out of the hall. She knew someone was here.

She saw him and, her eyes narrowed as she faced him. She couldn't fight him but she couldn't exactly run either. She hissed at him. No snakes close from what she could tell. Where were her snakes when she needed them. She felt her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Her fangs were full. She could use those if she had to. Annabella watched him, trying to hide her injuries from him by putting her hands behind her. She concentrated elsewhere though. She was in search for snakes within 100 yards in any direction. Hopefully they would help if it came down to a fight.

In Jonah's short time as a Sin-Eater, he had seen some pretty weird sights; Almost all of which were supernatural in origin. However at the sight of the rat chasing cowgirl from before hissing at him like a snake Jonah was grown up enough to know that he had crossed into completely alien territory on the boarders of weird and that he honestly didn't have the time or experience to deal with it. He had bigger fish to fry.

"Look, I don't know who you are but you need to get out of here right now! Before" Jonah's sentence died as something small burst from the wall, flew through the air like a bullet and gazed his left cheek, leaving a small cut there before continuing on and burying itself into the wall behind him. Turning towards the cause of the sharp stinging pain in his cheek, Jonah saw what appeared to be the pointed end of a nail sticking out of the wall. Turning his head towards the wall that it had come from, Jonah was able to notice the spiritual energy that was now building up around other, evenly spaced parts of that wall. Almost as if...


"GET DOWN!" Was all Jonah shouted before throwing himself towards the floor, the first barrage of fast moving nails sailing overhead with fatal intentions in mind.

Annabella saw him drop and dropped as well as at the wall of nails aimed toward her. She pressed herself to the ground and kept herself low. She stared at the man laying on the floor in front of her. Why did he stop in the middle of his sentence and look away from her? She lifted her body up a bit to look over him from where the nails came from.

Why had she followed that rat? Oh wait, she was hungry...That's right...Wow, she never thought her hungry could get her in to this much trouble. She had dealt with heros before over food but never....nothing? Whatever it was she was facing now. It didn't seem to be coming from the man, which she didn't know if that made her feel better or worse. Probably worse though.

His cheek starting to bleed from the near miss with the first nail, Jonah waited until the nails stopped flying before daring to raise his head, waiting for whatever was going to happen next. Turning this way and that while trying to spot where the next assault was going to come from, the ice water in his veins started to ease up. The specter was... not leaving as such, but simply turning its attention elsewhere?

Getting off the floor but remaining on edge for a number of reasons, Jonah pondered for a moment why the ghost would cease its assault until he started to her a girl screaming a two floors above and a distance away. Oh right... them. Turning towards the cowgirl wearing snake like woman, Jonah sighed as he came up with a new plan of action. He didn't like it, but it was a good plan and the one that might have the most people alive at the end of the night. "Alright cowgirl, I don't know who you are and I don't really care right now. You and a bunch of stupid teenagers have walked into the haunt of a rather violent ghost of someone who I believed died in a fire here over thirty years ago. I'm here to put a stop to our ghostly friend killing people, but you and the other kids being here has screwed plan A so far into the wrong part of the wall that I need your help to fix it."

Glancing back towards the staircase for a moment as a two males started to join the screaming woman, he quickly continued explaining what was going on. "What's going to happen is that I'm going to go and try to save as many of the other bunch of stupid morons as possible. While I'm doing that, you're going to be heading to the roof in order to turn the power on. Then, you're going to ride the elevator down to the basement and you're going to look for something that looks around about thirty years old that has a strong emotional feeling about it. Not sure what emotion it will be, but considering how violent our ghostly friend is odds are it won't be a positive one. Once you find it, you're going to bring it to me. You're going to do it because you're not going to be leaving this building alive if you don't. Now come on!"


Without another word, Jonah charged for the staircase, pausing only long enough to make sure the cowgirl was following him. "Hurry up!" 

Annabella listened to the man on high alert. She had heard stories of the paranormal. Granted, she had kind of always thought they were just that, stories. But considering what she just witnessed, it would be hard not to believe him. She nodded and stood quickly. 

She walked quickly towards the stairs. She was on high high alert, letting nothing escape her notice that she could help. She couldn't run sadly so this is the best she could do. "I hope you don't expect me to run."  she said as she rushed fast as she could without her stomach hurting badly. She bit her lip a bit as she traveled.

Sometimes, Jonah had to ask himself just who he annoyed so much to wind up stuck in these sorts of situations. Of course he knew the answer to that; No one. Fortune had rolled its wheel of chance and he had gotten away with a minor loss. He may not like it and some things were no doubt going to be harder from here on out but he could live with it. If he complained about it for to long, to loudly there was a very real chance he wouldn't be invited to spin the wheel again.


Sighing a little at the girl's statement, Jonah simply said "Just remember, the longer you take, the more likely we're all going to die." With that bright and heart warming reminder, Jonah started to run ahead. It had been a while since he had heard the female of the other group screaming, but the two guys were clearly becoming my panicked as time past. That wasn't a good sign...