Note to self: Don't Anger The Customer (Open)

[Anonymous]

When the candles arrived, she took her seat.  She didn't see the ghost immediately--largely to do with the fact that she was standing directly behind Ka.  She crossed her legs, always feeling like a child when she did so, and lined up the candles.  Really, they were for seeing, not for ritual--and everything on display was for show.  Typically if she was going to charge for this ordeal, she liked to give people a look at what they were paying for.  A little showman ship, a little exaggeration and more often than not, the ghosts were up for participating, if they could.  Some however, had no patience for it.

Taliana was muttering to herself.  She enjoyed this business--it kept them in pocket--but she hadn't bargained on working for her ride home.  At least, not work of this kind.  She shushed herself, and opened up the soft leather pouch.

While most of this would be used for show, all of it had real value.  Astral projection was her favourite gig, but it was ten times more dangerous now with a non-necromancer soul fused to her own.  There had been a time when thrusting herself out into purgatory had been a real feat.  Now however, it was less-explored.  

She set down a square cut of silk (clothing from a man murdered in cold blood--this was always good for attention-grabbing), a collection of small, child-like bones (from a small monkey, but who was going to be brave enough to ask, let alone call her on it?), a vial of her own blood (had she been willing, she'd have dashed her palm open for the more enthusiastic customers--just so they would pay a little more for the pain.  Finally, a severed human finger, still relatively fresh.  The finger was dipped into the blood and used to draw a circle on the silk cloth.  Within that she drew a pentagram for protection.  That one did work--it would have worked better had she drawn it in fresh sacrificial blood on consecrated stone, but it stopped any of the common nasties popping through should she have to push someone through into the next life.  

She lit the candles using a matchbook with the name of some bar from one of the many pleasure districts.  She wished she had a little more magic in her blood.  She knew a necromancer with a witch for a mother.  She was able to snap her fingers and light all her candles at once.  She had gotten all the high-paying freelance gigs for a while until she met her untimely death.  Possessed in her sleep after not dealing with a deceased necromancer.  She was drowned in the outhouse.  

That was when a woman (although she was barely a woman at all with her youthful expression), stuck her head around the side of Ka.  Pandora jumped, expelling a lungful of air in surprise.  The candles winked out.  

"You scared me." Pandora said, losing her composure immediately.  The woman stood over her.  Pandora didn't like the feeling and rose to her feet, being careful to step around her items.  "Nefel?" She asked, having picked up the name over the intercom during the captain's earlier conversation.  The trick to giving people something to look at, was to be attentive.  

Pandora waited for that spark of recognition.  "About 5'2, lots of pale blue hair.  Young."  She reeled off the immediate facts that she could gauge, looking past Nefel to the Captain for recognition. To Nefel, and any other ghosts lurking in the room, she had an aura about her; a faint glow that altered colour according to the light source.  The Neon Sign, as Taliana would call it.

"I'm Pandora.  The captain here has asked me to come here and talk to you.  Find out why you're here, and in return, I'll do what I can do help.  Are we good?"

[Anonymous]

Nefel looked at the woman with interest, she had halo of light around her head. Was she an angel…no the captain was talking to her so…Necromancer? Probably. She guessed the captain sending for one was okay, she couldn’t communicate with them in her deceased state, not that the captain hadn’t tried.

     The woman then spotted her and jumped blowing out all the pretty candles she just lit.

     "You scared me,” the woman said.
She then got to her feet, “Nefel?”

     “That’s me.”

     "About 5'2, lots of pale blue hair. Young."

     Why was she telling her her own description? Nefel turned round to see where she was looking. Oh she was speaking the captain, that made sense.

     He nodded, “Yeah that’d be her. Not that we can see her.”

     The necromancer than looked back at her, "I'm Pandora. The captain here has asked me to come here and talk to you. Find out why you're here, and in return, I'll do what I can do help. Are we good?"

     Nefel nodded again, “Nice to meet you Pandora. I was kinda wondering when the captain would bring a necromancer in. As for why I’m here…That’s because they don’t use Blanc anymore. They stripped her of her parts and left her to rust. That wasn’t very nice.”

     Even though it was a machine, Blanc was like a friend to her, it was her partner. The fact that it had been essentially butchered for parts for the three new mechas whilst its shell was left to rust annoyed her.

[Anonymous]

Pandora's brows rose a quarter of an inch.

For a moment her emotions waged between surprised, relieved and a little annoyed.  That was it? Boy.  Pandora made a mental note.  Should she ever insist on staying behind, it would be for something really difficult and complicated.  Just to get her own back on all those people who asked her to do relatively simple things.  One had asked her if she could remind him how many nails were in his collection.  Another had wanted her to eat an entire jar of jam and give them a running commentary on how it tasted.  Another wanted her to shave the next door neighbour's cat, who had killed them because of a severe allergy.

You would have thought the dead would request deep, meaningful things.  Send her on epic quests and give her all kinds of amazing adventures.  The fact of the matter was, people wanted very little in life.  Even the tyrannical leaders just wanted you to make sure they were buried under the cherry blossom tree.  Thank goodness Pandora was not above lying when it came to answering questions about her career.

"A machine.." She said, blinking at the women.  The surprise ebbed after a few seconds and she plastered a smile on her lips, turning to fix the captain with a look.  "You ditched her robot? Android?...err..Sir." Best to at least be respectful, especially when she didn't know her androids from her robots, and was so often thrown out of bars for that slur.

"Oh man..." Chipped in Taliana, either trying to be theatrical, or was just being herself.  "Is she pissed? Oh, oh, is she going to turn that guy inside out??" A hand thrust awkwardly (and unnaturally) backwards, pointing at Ka.  

"No, she's a ghost--if she wants someone turning inside out (do you?) then it's my job."

"Right, right.  I keep forgetting..."

Pandora shook her head, smoothing down her confused expression, and did a quick sweep of the room they were in.  She saw nothing that resembled what Nefel was talking about, but then again, her experiences on board a ship were limited.  

"She's upset because you stripped off a...err...Blanc? and left it-or-them to rust.  She wants it restored fully and back in working order so it can be of use.  And what about an upgrade?" She asked, blinking at Nefel.  Sometimes it was difficult to tell the ghosts from the people and she forgot that she ought to be more subtle with her glances when addressing something no one else could see.  "Do you want upgrades?"  She'd give the Captain a thumbs up or down on the upgrade-front, depending on Nefel's answer.

[Anonymous]

Nefel was a little annoyed that Pandora wasn’t too impressed by her request. She probably didn’t understand, most likely the sort of person who had never had a pet. Though her bond with Blanc was different from that.

     “I don’t care about upgrades, it’d just be nice for her to be restored to how she was,” Nefel replied.

     The mechas of the Amadriegar were always made in threes, the first set had been called Dusk, Midnight and Twilight, the second Blanc, Noir and Bleu and the current ones Angriff, Wasser and Strecke. Noir and Bleu had not been used for parts, mainly because they had both been completely destroyed but still, it was unfair. Noir had been blow up by Aedolian troops, with its pilot Osun in side and Bleu had been crushed under a gigantic ship, fortunately its pilot Vel was not in the cockpit at the time.

     Nefel glanced towards the captain and Ka. The captain looked surprised but understanding. He was probably shocked that such a thing was the reason she hadn’t ‘crossed over’ but he understood the pilot’s partnership with their mechas. Ka on the other hand did not look impressed. He looked like he wanted to object but daren’t because she might continue to haunt the place.

     “Pandora can you tell Ka that if he can’t think of a use for Blanc I will allow him to use her for training purposes.”

     As long as Blanc was being used and not neglected she’d be happy and could die peacefully.

[Anonymous]

"Man." Exclaimed Taliana, who, although she was well versed in what Pandora did, it still took some getting used to.  The worst were those who insisted on playing peek-a-boo with their death forms.  They would revert back to how their corpses had looked when they died, specifically used to scare those who could see them.  A cheap thrill, if you will.  Taliana, since joining forces with her host, had witnessed men, women and children walking around baring all manner of sickening injuries.  Pandora hadn't informed her yet that when they first made contact, Taliana had done exactly the same thing.  

"I like it." She said finally.  "Yer not demandin'.  The last guy we got in touch with wanted us to kill 'is wife because he was convinced she was screwin' someone else."  A few expressions in the crew shifted and Taliana added hurriedly.  "We didn't, mind you."

Her shoulders straightened and she turned to Ka, clapping her hands together once, then rubbing them as if brewing up some brilliant idea.  

"Right!  Here's the deal.  You repair the Blanc, she says you can use it--sorry--" a pointed look Nefel's way before turning back to Ka.  "--her for training stuff.  But she says it's important that she's rebuilt.  Deal?  Then Nefel can stick around until it's done if she wants, or take your word for it--"

"I wouldn't."

"Tal!"

"What? Oh come off it, I'm just sayin', yeah? You can say you'll do something, and then just never get to it, yeah? Or lie.  Wouldn't it suck if you cross over and yer watchin' from up...wherever and you realise, 'oh shit! They ain't done it!"  She slapped her palm to her forehead for dramatic effect.

"I'm sure they will, it's a simple request, right?"  Nervous laughter peppered her words, paranoid about looking all the more crazy for bickering with herself.

"Well I dunno, I mean we tricked that guy over his wife, yeah?"

"That was a special case--" A hasty look toward Nefel, then the Captain.  "--Almost never happens."  

"I'm just sayin', if it were me, I'd wanna stick around."

She rolled her eyes, a blush crawling up her cheeks.  "Fix Blanc, and we're good."  She reiterated.