"Oh my, a ghost! Get it away!" the one lady shrieked while grabbing hold of the other.

"It's a g-g-ghost!" the other shrieked while grabbing hold of the one lady.

Pyro just floated there, regarding them dispassionately. He had seen more than enough in his time to know they would calm down in a minute (or else faint, the cowards) and then he would be able to go about his business and buy groceries. He was getting pretty tired of this whole 'scary ghost' thing. It was a little bit fun to possess an object near someone he knew was evil and freak them out, but unfortunately that meant freaking everyone else out as well, and he was less fond of that.

For Sammi life once more resumed as per usual but, for Pyro, the afterlife left something to be desired. Sammi's house did not accommodate his interests or account for his desires. There was a chemistry station, the perch for Kyo, a sculpting station, a toilet, shower, one dining room chair, a fridge, kitchen sink and the single solitary counter to have survived the blaze which Pyro had unsuccessfully attempted to put out. There was also a garden. A garden which Sammi regularly tended in order to improve her ability to interact with plants because she was still hoping to plant a plasma fruit someday. Of course, Sammi was also hoping to move to a highrise, which would make gardening nigh on impossible.

But that still didn't really give Pyro anything to do.

He didn't have to stay in the house. He could go out. But getting from point A to point B was a tediously slow process when your only movement speed was lethargically wafting from one place to the next, and taxi drivers always acted shocked and appalled by a ghost getting into the back seat (Sammi took the car to work with her, of course). And, when he did get wherever he was going, Pyro always caused a tremendous stir. People stopped and stared, some of them fainted, others would point and shout at him, still others would be repulsed and disgusted just as Sammi had been when she first resurrected him. They acted just as if he was going around, loudly shouting a list of the grossest sounding words he knew at everyone he saw.

After exiting the grocery, Pyro managed to freak out several more pedestrians on his way to the waiting taxi. He did enjoy that one of them was one Rafael Striker, ambitious party-animal and former lover of Jessica Talon. Pyro didn't feel particularly bad about frightening him. Besides, televisions scared the man, and a ghost was quite a bit higher on the scary meter than a television set.

It didn't matter if Pyro went to the park, the library or the local junkyard, everyone behaved the same. He even caught Sammi doing it sometimes before she seemed to remember who he was. Then she would come forward to make a romantic gesture as a way of apologizing for her instinctual response.

Being able to float nonchalantly through closed doors and solid walls and bookshelves and couches was small compensation for the slow pace Pyro was now restricted to. Even if he could somehow get someone to get over their revulsion long enough to hire him, what job could he do when it took him half an hour just to get across his own property line?

The only one who did not seem the slightest bit upset was Kyo, who jabbered happily with Pyro for hours if asked (or not asked). Kyo hadn't seemed surprised by Pyro's becoming real, or his subsequent death and resurrection. Though he expressed fear of gravestones and death, the bird didn't seem at all distressed to find himself living in the same house as a ghost. He did bite Pyro sometimes though, but that was probably just to make sure Pyro remembered who he was playing with.

Pyro wasn't just unwanted because he was a ghost. Even though he lived with Sammi, none of her friends thought he was cool enough to be worth their time to talk to unless he spent time trying to impress them. The only way he could do that was by dropping Sammi's name, because he had nothing else to work with. A lifetime of being imaginary had prevented him from gaining much in the way of skills, and it taking all day to get from his house to the library certainly didn't help him improve any.

The only things he had to his name were an ugly umbrella and a book entitled Do I Exist? Both of which were a holdover from a time when the answer to the question posed by the book was somewhat less clear than it was now, back when he really was just a product of someone's imagination.

Even though he was a ghost now, Pyro continued to age. While Sammi was still in the first quarter of her young adulthood because of being a vampire, Pyro was much older than she now, especially as he'd spent some time in the future and had aged there just as he did here. It almost seemed pointless to try building a life now, especially with this not insignificant handicap, and the fact that invention was all he was really good at and now he had to trek all the way to the fire station to work on anything.

He knew he had the courage needed to fight fires, but clearly the skill eluded him and there was no way he could be effective when time was such a factor in fire fighting.

But the worst of it was that Pyro could see that sometimes when he sailed gently into a room where Sammi was, he would startle her so badly she would forget all of the things she was supposed to do, which was bad if the list was long and somewhere on it was going to work.

Perhaps it was because he had sprung forth from someone's imagination. Or maybe it was because he had done that, then become real and then become a ghost. But Pyro was almost uncannily aware of reality on another level from those around him, and he could see when they had been planning to go fishing but then stopped cold because he approached them before turning around and going to do something else because they had quite literally forgotten what they were going to do a minute ago.

While in the netherworld, Pyro had heard of a recipe which could cure his troubles. But he understood also that he didn't have enough time left in afterlife to learn from scratch everything he needed to know. Not only did he have to learn to be an expert cook to even understand the recipe, he would also have to get the ingredients himself. And those ingredients were rare.

Sammi might be able to manage it, but not working full time and only being able to hunt for special seeds and fish during the night. There wasn't time for that. Not for Pyro.

One evening, Sammi came home elated because she finally had enough simoleons to afford that great highrise she'd been wanting. It was then that Pyro knew it was now or never.

"Sammi... I need your help."

"With what?"

"Sammi... I don't... I don't want to stay a ghost forever. I've spent most of my life invisible and unknown to anyone except you. Now I cause revulsion, disgust and fright wherever I go. Sammi, I want my life back. Please. I don't want to have to be ashamed of what I am anymore. I don't want people to run away. I don't... I don't want to live as a ghost. Not again. Not after I've learned what it means to be real and alive. I want to feel you again, Sammi. Really, as I could when I was alive."

Sammi felt conflicted. He'd told her about that recipe, and she knew she could give him what he asked, if only she would give up the life of a vampire so that she would have time during the day to work on building her expertise. Otherwise she'd be on fire before she caught a single fish.

It was a lot to ask, too much really. But Pyro asked it anyway.

Sammi had set him free once, and he was sure that she could do it again... if she was willing.