As Sam grudgingly learned to accept to be a norm in his life, he was a bounty hunter, doomed to track down escaped souls and send them back to hell. He just wished that those damned souls would be a little more considerate. Even though the Devil didn't believe in vacation time, Ted, his boss from the Work Bench, did. All right, so maybe he was forced to give his workers vacation time, but that still didn't change the fact that this was Sam's day off. His life might not fully belong to him anymore, but he still wanted to enjoy it a little bit, and he thought that this Tuesday would finally be the day he could.
He should have known that he'd be wrong.
"You're so going to hell for that," Sam spat as he lifted himself up from the pavement. The soul -- some gangly woman with hair unruly enough to give even Medusa a scare -- had blasted him down with thick streams of water shooting from her palms. He coughed up some of the salty liquid. At least now he knew why sinks, showers, toilets, and the like were bursting water at him today upon touch; a water bottle had even exploded in his hands!
Damn it, he thought as he looked around the lot for the vessel he needed to finally capture this soul. He had lost the rubber ducky!
The soul smirked and raised her palms at him again.
Sam dodged, colliding into a group of trash cans and barely missing the onslaught of water coming at him. He coughed up some more water still in his lungs, then grew elated when he saw the rubber ducky lying carelessly in a puddle. He grabbed it and lurched up to face the soul once again. Now if only he could figure out exactly how to capture it with this thing….
Another lunged forward and kicked him hard in the face.
Sam cursed, collapsing back against the trash cans. For the briefest moment, he actually saw stars dancing before his eyes, but that was silly; it was only mid-afternoon, after all. He then looked up and blanked for an even longer moment. A girl? It was some girl who had kicked him? Okay, so the soul he was fighting also happened to be a girl herself, but this new person definitely still belonged to the living. What was she doing, facing the soul like this? He had to stop her before she did something even more stupid….
Sam limped up to his feet and tugged her back. "Hey --"
The girl elbowed him in the stomach, and he crumpled easily. Holy --
"Whoa." Sam blinked to convince himself that what he was seeing wasn't the result of some sunlight glaring in his eyes. The girl, her arms swept out wide, glowed with a faint white aura seeming to intensify with each passing second. The soul stood transfixed before her, the deathly glower she had been giving Sam previously melting into one of awe. The girl gently grasped her shoulders, causing her aura to spread and engulf the soul with an unearthly connection. Then, with a flick of the head, the girl flashed a pair of dark, scowling eyes in Sam's direction. The two began to vanish.
"No!" Sam wrenched himself upward and grabbed for the girl to keep them from disappearing. The aura, blindingly bright now, lashed at him, and he staggered back. By the time he regained his balance, the two were already gone. "Damn it!"
Something sizzled in his hand. He lifted it up and realized that he was still gripping the rubber ducky. It smoldered, then exploded. He yelped, extinguishing the sparks licking his hand off on his soaked jeans. What the hell…?
The confusion briefly kept him from realizing that his other hand was holding yet another item -- fortunately for him, a non-explodey one. He unfolded his fingers and saw a broken silver chain. He must have accidentally ripped off the girl's necklace when he went to grab her. The pendant slipped from the chain and splashed into one of the small puddles. He bent down to pick it up, shock enveloping him when he saw exactly what that pendant was -- a Christian cross.