Within one of the test rooms, Mors locks the door behind her as she moves towards the center of the room. She puts both the Ouija board and the spirit box on the table, dragging a nearby chair over. She takes a seat before turning on the spirit box.
There's a long moment of silence, and for a while, Mors thinks that the ghost had genuinely fucked off. Instead, Azazel flickers into view, mock-sitting on a chair across from her before going back to being intangible.
"Yeup. So who told ya? Surely no one remembers-"
"Agent Hessonite." She interrupts him, arms crossed.
The box crackles for a while, then
"Hess?" A gasp left the box's speaker. "Like, Bad Ass Motherfucker DPO Agent Hessonite?"
He muttered something unintelligible, something about fucking over formalities. Mors paid it no mind.
"âŚwell fair enough. Damn, how'd I never notice her? I swear I would've noticed someone like She- her."
Mors raises an eyebrow. "What were you about to say?"
'Quick. Too quick. But a meaningless secret.' Mors thinks to herself. If it comes up again, she'll pry, but for now, she'll let his demons lie.
"So how'd such an an agent like Cadmium end up dead in a high school?"
"Ugh, don't remind me. You think I wanted to die in the high school I fuckin' graduated from?"
"You graduated from that place?"
"Yeah. Just before they shut it down, too." Azazel flickered into view for just a brief moment, but in that moment, Mors could see the grimace on his face. "Lot of my classmates died. Never got assigned to it, but from what I heard the first ghost in there was a Demon. Bad shit."
"âŚfirst ghost?" Mors didn't get enough time to properly read through that Brownstone file, so she didn't get to see the past ghost records. But judging from Azazel's tone of voice, no matter how distorted from the spirit box, it was clear he wasn't the second ghost to have haunted that school.
"Eesh, yeah. That second ghost was weird as fuck." It seemed like he was about to say more, but chose to keep quiet.
"So that second ghost was why you went to Brownstone?"
"âŚhow- how much did S- she tell you? Hess."
Mors leaned back. "Well⌠she told me you worked in the DPO with her, and a little bit when it became SCRAP, but, you retired. Gone and off the radar for more than a decade."
"Shit, it's been that long?"
"Oh fuck." His voice had gone more hollow. The room grew slightly colder, the box going eerily silent. Mors knew she had to take his mind off of it.
"How'd you get the nickname Cadmium?"
Suddenly, everything went back to normal.
"Well, most people actually called me CD. I was a big CD guy and everyone pretty much knew about it when I worked at SCRAP, so everyone called me CD. I don't know how exactly it went from CD to Cadmium though. I'm not, uh... really great at that sort of subject."
"Poisonous when inhaled?"
"Now I feel like I'm missing something."
Mors narrows her eyes at the ghost.
"What? The moment's passed."
"Whatever." She takes a moment to figure out what to say next to the ghost. "Was that⌠other ghost back at Brownstone the reason why you went back?"
"Oh. Uh⌠yeah. I kind of⌠went rogue after I 'retired'. Did my own ghost hunting shit because the SCRAP back when was not as good as the SCRAP right now."
She really shouldn't ask, but
"Do you think I'm doing a good job?"
Silence. Not the silence like before, the spirit box was still filled with static, but a thoughtful static.
"I mean, I would think so. You haven't done anything I'd be against if I were alive. I was just messin' with ya earlier. You gave me weird vibes when I first saw you, so think of all my bullshit like a test."
"âŚan unnecessary test. I'm a perfectly qualified PRRD agent."
"You know you said that in a way that made me think otherwise."
A laugh echoed from the spirit box, hearty and full of life. Ironic, but it made Mors want to join in.
"Woah, the enigmatic and mysterious Mors is laughing? Is the world ending?"
She didn't realize she did join in.
"Aaand that's my cue to go for my lunch break." Mors stood up, turning away from where she thought Azazel still was.
"It's not even noon anymore!"
Mors was about to turn off the spirit box, but instead it got picked up, Azazel's ghostly form appearing with the box in tow.
"What, one moment of vulnerability and you're already running? Tsk tsk."
"Fiiiine. Go do whatever it is old weird women do these days."
Mors did not want to know what Azazel meant by that, but he thankfully switched topics.
"âŚcan we do this again?"
"Will you actually show up?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die."
"You know you can't be sayin' shit like that."
Azazel rolled his eyes as he set back down the spirit box. "Whatever grandma."
The ghost - somehow - turns off the spirit box for Mors, but not before he shot her a grateful smile. Then, he was gone, probably off to spook some poor Squishie again.
"âŚwhat a weird guy." Mors said as she gathered up her things. For once, she had good material to write a report on.
