The day had been little less than exhausting, and Max could feel the pull of his muscles with each step he took downhill, the pain in his legs growing duller and duller with each passing block. He cursed Johnny Jhonny somewhere in the back of his hazy mind, and vowed revenge for his scooter- someday. Right then, he would be satisfied to meet the cold air of the corner store- home, though he was still unsure he wanted to call it that- and the familiar curve of his mattress.

He trekked up to the front doors, reaching a hand out to pull a handle and retracting it as soon as he remembered that it was, after all, a sliding glass door, and sliding glass doors didn't have handles. Max stepped out of the hot sunset and into the blasting AC. If he was mumbling his grievances under his breathe, it didn't register.

Up the stairs he slumped, tired enough of the weight of his backpack to let it hit each stair on its own as he dragged it behind him. His metal bat sat like a heavy brick meant as a shackle more than a weapon, and after the fight he and the club had been through that day, he wasn't willing to think much else of it. Spirits seemed to enjoy terrorizing the dead- undead?- of their school, and punching them in the face with a metal bat was therapeutic on occasion, just not today. The stupid half-mountain-lion half-rattlesnake had them running all over the school the entirety of lunch period and then some; he cringed remembering what it was like running into the student council without a hall pass, and grimaced at the feel of the detention slip weighing down his back pocket. Spender had said he could get it alleviated, but Max still wasn't sure he could trust him to remember. The man did seem to be in his own world, lately, at least, more than he was the first day Max had been there. Maybe he was simply seeing the "Real Spender", but something told Max his arrival in Mayview was the mere beginning of a handful of changes for the club.

What those changes entailed, exactly, Max was far too, unfortunately, ignorant to guess.

He tossed his backpack onto the couch as the sole of his shoe hit the final step, grunting and slinking towards the kitchen in search of sustenance. "Remind me to demand lunch breaks off." He could hear his father and Zoe talking, probably lounging around the kitchen waiting for him to return so they could have take out and watch reality TV. Max entered the room with a wave that went unnoticed.

His dad sat leaning over the table with his hands clasped, and had Max not known his father to be one of the chillest people the world had ever seen, he might have thought the tightness of his eyes was an indicator of- stress? Apprehension? Fear? Zoe looked more relaxed, slouched as far back as she possibly could be in her seat with her arms crossed like shields over her huffing chest. She was on the defensive, clearly, and that had Max's attention. He reached into the fridge and opened up a bottle of orange soda substitute, raising an eyebrow. "What's going on?"

Zoe turned her sharp eyes on him, nose scrunching up as she snorted and hopped to the floor. "Ask Casanova!" She waved in Dad's direction and twisted on her heel, and before Max could even register what she'd said, she was gone.

His dad sighed, and leaned against the table, burrowing his head into his arms.

"Dad?"

"Yes, son?"

"What's going on?" Max had a thought, and spit the sip of juice he'd gone to take. "Oh god, are we moving again already?"

"No! No, no, no, no. Don't be silly, loinfruit!" ("We had a conversation about that word, Dad, and your prohibited use of it…") His dad sat back up and pat Max on the back a few times, uneasy smile inching from one crooked side of his face to another. "It's great news, actually! I suppose your sister just isn't ready for this big of a change, yet…"

"Are we sending Zoe off to boarding school? Because, ya know, I could really get behind that-!"

"I've got a date!"

Max paused, biting down on his lips to keep another sip of juice from pouring past his tongue. He already had one mess to clean up, after all. At first, he wasn't sure he'd heard his father correctly. After all, it'd only been five years, and the man seldom showed interest in the actresses in the new superhero comics, let alone real women. He'd never shown any surmountable interest in the blind dates their friends and family were constantly trying to set him up on, and Max had been convinced that was partly the reason for the move to Mayview! He'd never questioned it- after all, if Dad wasn't ready, he wasn't ready, and he wasn't exactly jumping at the thought of replacing Mom, either.

He'd figured his dad just, well, felt the same way.

He glanced at his father, then, and watched the crookedness of his smile turned almost hopeful, like he was sitting on whatever response there'd be, like whatever Max said next would make or break his world and the scale of the universe- his universe.

Max looked at him, took a long swig of his juice, finished the glass off, and nodded. "That's great, Dad! When is it?"

Tuesday

It was odd that Spender was up until midnight grading papers. He was, after all, a typically sufficient teacher, or so he'd liked to think. He just hadn't had the time for the last week. It seemed spirits were cropping up in even larger numbers than before, becoming more aggressive, even, enough to attack Isabel in the middle of class; getting out of that one hadn't been fun, and he was sure his class had been more than a little suspicious of why he'd decided on an impromptu trip to the park to study… the statues? He wasn't sure what assignment he'd given the students, then, and judging by the papers, the students weren't quite sure, either.

He sighed and leaned back in his seat, rubbing between his eyes and stretching his back as best he could with his butt planted firmly against the desk chair. "I'm getting too old for this-"

His phone began to ring, vibrating silently on the desk beside the mountain of papers he still had left to grade. He frowned and reached out to pick it up, hardly glancing at the number before answering. "Hello, Richard Spender speaking?"

His eyes popped open, and he sprang forward so suddenly that the sheer force knocked his seat back as he came to stand. "Master Hashimoto! Yes, of course, I-! Yes… yes." Spender frowned and stepped away from grading for a moment, letting his legs stretch as his back had earlier, as he paced to and fro in his bedroom. "I… suppose I could get in contact with Master Guerra? Hah hah, yes, he is a very busy man." He came to stand in front of his window, looking out onto the street as car after car crossed from one end of the panel to the next, leaving behind only the fading sound of pressured air. "Well, yes… Master Hashimoto? May I ask why you're requesting to see Master Guerra and, well, why I'm the middle man in this?"

More cars passed by, but Spender's mind was far far away from the road before him as he shut his phone and slipped it into his pocket. Lips in a thin line, he glanced to his desk, where the ungraded paper still lay, taunting him with each wave of a corner under the moving fan. "This may get messy…"

It concerns one of your students.

"You have to admit, I was pretty awesome yesterday." Max flexed one of his arms for Isaac to see, grinning from ear to ear as he watched his own muscle, or lack thereof, contract. He was finally getting the hang of the whole "spectral" thing, after all, and he had to give himself some credit where credit was due. Isaac seemed less than amused, if not borderline annoyed by his attempts at conversation. It had been like this for weeks after Hijack. When Isabel and Ed weren't following the two of them to school, Max found Isaac to be less than sociable company. Any attempt at conversation was met with an eyeroll or a scoff or one of his infamous anime "tch" noises, usually accompanied by a shrug of the shoulder, as though it put distance between the two of them.

Today it was an eyeroll, and Isaac wasn't even so kind as to make eye contact.

They still weren't cool, yeah, Max knew that, but he wasn't one to stand a silence, especially one with underlying malice. He was just trying to lighten the mood, and Isaac was too petty to even try. Max exhaled and rolled his eye right back, reaching into his pocket to grab his cellphone. If Isaac wasn't going to make conversation, then he'd have to find something else to occupy the silence. Dawghouse was usually up to texting…

Max: Hey man, wassup?

Dawghouse: Nothing much, Maxy Boy, how's the third week outta the city?

Max: Can't complain, I guess.

It was true. Aside from the random spirits sneaking in and out of his house at night and the ghosts pestering him in class during the day, he didn't have a lot to complain about. Mayview was, actually, a really great city. Yeah, it was pretty freaking crazy, what with teachers in lakes and a fully capable monetary system consisting entirely of laminated stars, but it was a scene to look at all the same. He was used to getting up and seeing the apartment complex across from his own, sometimes even waking up to awkward eye contact with the neighbor's naked cat- creepy, that little thing was, and evil too, he was sure- now, he woke up to sunrises and rainbows and green trees and hills as wide as the eye can see. He'd wake up and just think about how his mom would have loved it, how she probably had loved it when she'd lived in Mayview. She'd never really like the city. It was too crowded for her, too busy. She liked quiet; she'd produced some of her best works in the early AM, when the rest of the city was asleep. He'd found himself wondering why she ever left. I might not have been born if she hadn't…

Max: My dad has a date this week. Zoe's been skulking around the house like she did that one week she thought String Swirl Suzan was canceled when she was four.

Dawghouse: That's weird, man, I can't imagine your old man with anyone else.

Max frowned.

Dawghouse: Can you?

He inhaled, shut his eyes, and exhaled.

Max: If it makes him happy, I'm happy.

"Hey, losers!" Max screeched and juggled his phone in the air until he was sure he had a good grip on it again, twisting to glare at Isabel, who still had a hand planted firmly on his back. She reached around his shoulders and pulled one side of his body into her arms, squeezing him despite the protests he managed to make. "What's up?" She winked Isaac's way, and she too received an eyeroll. He scoffed and Max almost felt jealous at the cold shoulder combo Isabel had received. If she'd noticed, she didn't pay the attitude any mind.

"Nothing. You?"

Isabel grinned and raised a fist as though she was socking the sky itself. "Beat one of the older students in a rematch last night! Let's see them look down on me now!"

Max glanced around, finding a suspicious lack of blond within their general area. He raised an eyebrow. "Where's Ed?"

Isabel pulled her arm away from him, then, shrugging and turning her quickly sharpening eyes on the road ahead of them. "Don't know."

By the time the three of them got to the clubroom, Max's mood had lightened substantially, at least enough to get him through a school day. Isabel was a handful to deal with, but she was also an interesting conversationalist, at least by normal people standards. Sure, she wasn't somebody he could have fun snarking at- she often times ignored him- but she did have a lot to tell him about the paranatural world, and he certainly had questions.

She'd been explaining the in's and out's of spirit biology when they pushed the door to the clubroom open. Ed turned his head and waved at them before returning to the dragon he'd been painting in midair, brows furrowed as he stroked each individual scale, working his way down from the head to the tail. Spender was more distracted, pacing around the small room with his cellphone pressed to his ear. At their entrance he turned around and smiled, waving for them to come in.

Max came to sit on Ed's left, while Isaac went to sit on the armrest of the other couch, shuffling like he wasn't comfortable. Max looked at him and gestured to the entire empty couch, and then to the armrest he'd chosen instead. Don't you wanna sit on an actual seat? Isaac shrugged and crossed his arms. I'm happy like this. Max squinted and gestured more vehemently to the rest of the empty couch. What the flip is your problem? Isabel passed them both by and sat opposite Isaac on the other end of the otherwise empty couch, albeit on the cushion. Max glanced from the empty seat to Ed's right and then back to Isabel, who had her legs crossed and was doing an awful job of looking like she hadn't sat away from them on purpose. Ed, who must have been watching her, raised a somber hand and wiped away the incomplete dragon, brush in hand slipping like dead weight into his open backpack. Max frowned- it wasn't really his place to say anything, but he couldn't help but wonder...

Spender sighed and leaned against the desk, pressing one hand at his forehead, other hand still squarely at his ear. "Yes, I-! Yes, sir… Master, if you would just- yes? Yes. Yes, I understand. Should I tell Master Hashimoto seven- no? Eight. Eight o'clock. Yes…. well, that's very kind of you to say sir, I- oh, he hung up on me."

"Hah!"

Maybe Spender didn't appreciate Max literally pointing and laughing at him, because his eye narrowed behind his glasses.

"Max."

"Your sensei hung up on you."

"Yes, I know." Spender readjusted his glasses and stood up straight, hand reaching up to loosen the tie around his neck. "Now, if you children wouldn't mind, it is time for morning patrol." The whole of them groaned, Max with his head thrown back and Isabel slinging her upper body over the armrest. Spender smiled and clasped his hands together, tired eyes turning bright under black frames, if only for show. "Isabel, Max! It's up to you two today!"

He didn't notice the way Isaac tensed or the growing slump of Ed's shoulders, but Max did; he noticed it as he stood and slung his backpack over his sore arm, and he noticed is still as Isabel wrapped one arm over his shoulders and waved a goodbye nobody but Spender returned.

He wasn't always in a bad mood. He couldn't say he walked around his house grunting and pouting, though it wasn't like there was ever anybody in the house to accuse him of it, so maybe he actually did, but he didn't feel grouchy at home. He didn't feel like crushing the controller in his hands when he was playing a video game. He didn't want to throw a mug across the room and see it smash against the white wall when he had tea to calm him down before he tried to sleep. His bed never left him feeling cold, because it was warm and it enveloped his entire body like a good hug, and in those small moments he was- well, maybe not happy, but he was content. He was satisfied. No, he never felt like his insides were tearing him apart, or that his heart was slowly decaying and simply wanted the peace he himself so badly yearned for. The only thing home and school had in common was that he was alone- always, always, always alone. Maybe that wasn't good, maybe he wished that his parents were around, but if they were then he'd just be reminded how distant they were and how nonexistent their entire "family" is and-

… and home would be just like school.

Isaac wanted to go home. He wanted to be done for the day. When the seventh period bell rang, he felt such relief, so much that it lifted him out of his seat and swung his lungs in a circle and made his heart leap, just before it went crashing down into the furthest depths of his stomach, sending his entire spirit into the murky waters of reality. Of course, he still had club to go to, how could he forget?

Isaac huffed and shut his locker door, carrying his uncooperative body to the clubroom.

He thought about quitting the club sometimes- not all the time, just most of the time. It was a thought that occurred to him when he'd feel a little more hurt than irritated, or the annoyances he called teammates were trying to push him to the brink of insanity. It always came like a small, beaded light in his mind, flickering like a candle he dare not touch, but each time it came to mind, the fire would grow just the smallest bit larger. It mingled with his pain like it was flirting, gracing his lips, pushing him to maybe say-!

No. Perhaps surprising, his pride always won out in the end- pride and logic. Where else would he have even a chance of getting information? Where else would he go if he had questions? There was no telling what information he'd be cut off from if they decided to spite him; he had little faith they wouldn't.

Maybe it was fear.

When he entered the clubroom at last, he found Isabel and Max still hadn't made it. His heart leapt in his chest, and he couldn't help but shove the feeling under as many murky, cloudy, dirtied emotions as he could to hide it, to pretend he hadn't thought for just a second that he might have been disappointed that Max hadn't shown up yet. He's a liar like they are. Ed and Spender were crowded around the monitors, almost oblivious to his entrance. Isaac grimaced and cleared his throat.

"Is there something going on?"

Spender twisted around in his rolling chair and clapped once. "Ah! Isaac! You're here! There appears to be a spirit causing trouble in the west hallway. I'd like you and Ed to get things under control!"

Ed finally turned around and met Isaac's gaze, giving him the most unsettling, toothy, smart-aleck grin Isaac was sure he could muster. He sighed, and shrugged.

Isaac dodged what appeared to be an extended, muddy claw as it reached and grasped for the floor where he'd once been. Had he been a second slower, those claws might have done more than just pierce skin… He cringed at the thought. "Ed, try to cut it at its core!"

"What do you think I've been doing," Ed cut down one of its many limbs and chuckled to himself at its screech. He turned his gaze on Isaac and gestured to the width of the hallway, or more presumably, the spirit itself. "Dancing with it and having pina coladas?"

Isaac grunted and rolled his eyes, using his aura to deflect another claw headed straight for his face. The limb bounced off and went flying for the ceiling. "Could you maybe, I don't know, cut it with the sarcasm for a hot minute?"

"No, but I could cut it for a cold minute?"

Isaac winced as another arm changed directions and charged for him almost faster than he could pull up another shield. It hit the ground instead. He stumbled. "Ed!"

Ed squated as another arm came for him, and hopped out of the way when it came down on the tile. He painted a thin line, as sharp as he could make with his non-dominant hand, and brought it down upon the claw. The spirit screeched again and pulled back. Ed's eyes followed the tile where he'd been, and he swallowed hard. "Hey, Isaac?"

Isaac took a shot of lightning at the spirit, aiming as best as he could for its chest. Its skin tore apart. His lightning missed, shooting through the gaping hole. "Yeah?"

Ed waved at him from across the hall, then pointed to the floor. "I think we have a problem. It's a poltergeist now. Causing damage to school property."

Isaac groaned and looked back, struggling to keep his hands on either side of the tentacle rushing him. It pulled suddenly to the left. Isaac's entire body moved with it. "Are you serious?"

"As can be."

"We need backup!"

His hands slipped at the last second, and Isaac found the wind knocked from his lungs as one of the arms rammed into his stomach. It sent him into the lockers, gasping for air. His vision began to blur, and he squeezed his eyes closed. Another arm came rushing at him, and he only narrowly dodged its attack. The claws hit the lockers and tore metal the way down, leaving lines as thick as a dragon's down the wall beside him.

"This world will be ours again."

Isaac gasped and looked to the mass that he'd assumed was the spirit's core, and he couldn't decide if he was in shock, or if it truly had grown an eye- a single, bloodied eye. It was staring him down, watching him as though anticipating his every breathe. The question on his lips was dead on his tongue, and he couldn't be sure they hadn't escaped him in a whisper so quiet he couldn't even hear it over the heavy beating of his heart. It blinked, and he swore its eyelid was inside out, like he'd seen other kids do in elementary to freak out the girls and the smaller children. He choked on his own air.

"We will reign again… and you will pay for this."

The most disturbing thing was how, underneath the echo of a spirit's voice, he could hear the undeniable sound of a human- like something out of a horror movie, like someone eaten alive screaming for help. Isaac went to ask, went to say anything to draw out that human voice, beg for answers so maybe he could help- and then Spender had cut right through it.

Isaac slid to the floor, heaving and coughing and- he reached up to wipe his mouth- was that… was that blood? "Not ectoplasm…"

"Is that…" Max appeared to be holding back a sudden nausea. "Is that normal?"

Isaac glanced up to find that it was everywhere. A mixture of human blood and ectoplasm alike, coating the walls of the hall like something straight out of a horror movie. Even Isabel looked frightened, eyes wide as she helped Ed to his feet, who could hardly function with the way he was looking at the floor. Spender stood in the middle of it all, brows furrowed, hands clenching and unclenching as he stood as still as stone.

What was that thing, if not a spirit? Was it- he felt sick to think it- a living thing? Why could they attack it if it was still living, then? Isaac wiped away the blood- ectoplasm? Something else?- from his jaw with the back of his hand, shuddering to think of all the questions building and fighting for top pick when he head was so… so muddied that nothing made sense.

"Isaac."

He blinked back to reality, glancing up to Spender, who then stood with his cellphone in one hand.

"You should go get cleaned up."

Isaac looked from Spender to Isabel and Ed, who were watching him, why were they watching him? "Yeah, I guess I should…" His voice trailed off like it'd known something he didn't, and he pushed himself to think about what he could be missing. What was wrong with the picture?

And then he saw it.

Ed wasn't as bad, but his legs were still nearly soaked in the weird blood-ectoplasm combination. Spender himself was covered from speckled face to drenched shoes, eyes narrowed behind the glasses he hadn't yet taken off to clear. He'd gotten up to make for the bathroom, but halted midway up from the floor. "Why am I the only one who needs to get cleaned up?"

If he was thrown off by Isaac's apprehension, Spender must have been a hard read. He swore he could see the man's eyes flicker behind his shades, and he pointed more avidly to the bathrooms. "Isaac, that's an order."

He blinked again to clear his eyes, gaze running over the faces of his other teammates.

Isabel and Ed were looking away, eyes anywhere in the destroyed hall but him. He'd been expecting that.

Slowly, cautiously, he turned to look at Max, who stood on Spender's other end with wide eyes and a stomach he held between his hands. Their eyes met, and Isaac's brows furrowed because he was asking a question and Max had to have known, had to have understood because he had earlier.

Max frowned and turned his head to the side, hands falling limp at his legs, and Isaac knew he'd been stupid to think there'd be any other outcome.

He sucked the roof of his mouth with his tongue and stood up, hand clutching his sides were the spirit- person, thing- had gotten him earlier. "Fine." He turned away from the rest of the group and all but stomped in the direction of the west hall bathrooms, clutching hands turning to fists without him even noticing.

It was a good thing the school was empty come nightfall, Max mused to himself, because otherwise there was no way Spender could have called down a cleaning crew, of all things, and gotten away with it. It wasn't like that was their job, he guessed, they were just spectrals, friends, he called to help him out of a particularly messy situation, but still! "What was that thing if it wasn't a spirit?"

Spender sighed and leaned back against the wall, squeezing clean the hand towel he'd had Max break out of the janitor's closet. "A monster."

"Great. What, exactly, is a monster?"

"An overloaded medium." Spender dunked his washcloth back into the mess and began clearing as much as he could in one sweep. Isabel plopped her own down and began cleaning the same area, wiping as aggressively as she fought. Spender nodded at her in a silent acknowledgment, and Max didn't miss the smile that brought to her face. He glanced down at his own washcloth, finding the mixture of blood and ectoplasm to become thicker, more like rotten slush than, well, however the heck else blood and ectoplasm should hypothetically act. "Of course, this isn't something that normally happens, it's just" he paused and wiped away the blood that was beginning to crust under his glasses "in this case, the spirit is ready and willing to leave, but…"

"... the spectral won't let go?" Isabel's voice was sharp, like she was barely keeping it from breaking with emotion, and Max couldn't even begin to tell what she must have been feeling. She was used to all of the spirits and ghosts and stuff; she'd grown up around it her whole life, he hadn't, but in some ways he wondered if that made the new knowledge even worse for her. He was terrified, yes, and he probably wouldn't be able to wash the sight from memory for the next thirty years, but he hadn't been so deathly close to a threat like that his entire life.

"Exactly. A situation like that can only build so long before, well" he held up his washcloth and let the blood and ectoplasm flop off like thrown tomatoes "this happens. The humans and spirits fighting for dominance over one body eventually tore it apart and made a monstrosity of it. They don't think like we do, they have two sets of thoughts and memories. Most importantly, two sets of emotions, both terrified and angered, enough that all they can agree they want is, well, revenge or blood or whathaveyou. What makes things worse is that, because the body they both inhabit is still of the physical world, non-spectrals can see and feel their impact. That is what makes them so especially dangerous."

"And it sounds like there are a lot of them." Max dumped his washcloth into the bucket and let the hot water fold over his hands, soothing in the face of the chore he'd set upon doing. "And they're coming for us for some reason."

"The Consortium specifically, probably." Isabel amended, moving hair from her eyes as a bead of sweat rolled down a string of her bangs. "I've never heard of that happening within our ranks, so I'm going to assume that's the agency we branched off from."

Spender nodded. "Before The Consortium existed, there was an earlier spectral group. Mankind was still new to the paranatural world, and experience has taught us better. The spectrals who became monsters were some of the first mediums on record. The spectrals sealed them away in an undisclosed location."

"But one got out." Ed spoke up for the first time that hour, squeezing out his washcloth before wiping his reddened face with it. Max cringed. "So, what do we do now?"

"I'm not sure…" Spender glanced up at the other spectrals running around the hall, struggling to open lockers, dropping entire buckets of water and falling over the sopping wet floor- it might have been funny had Max been in a laughing mood. "I'll be speaking with the other agents tonight."