The girl jumped as the scroll in her hands rolled up and vanished in a poof of purple smoke. A moment later it reappeared, now in the massive hands of the person before her.

"Ahahahaha! That's one more contract standing between you and your soul, kid!"

She stuck her tongue out at the Snatcher. Bleeh! He didn't scare her! He was just a giant purple noodle man who liked mailboxes and being all floaty. Floating wasn't scary – it was really cool! One day soon she was going to figure out how he did it, and then she'd be the giant floaty noodle! Take that!

"Alright, I'll just add my stamp at the bottom, and we'll be all set! One fresh soul contract under the name of…" He trailed off, squinting at something.

The girl quickly stopped trying grab the tip of his tail to see what it was made of. Had he noticed? He'd looked so focused on that piece of paper!

The Snatcher curved his body over and pointed at the bottom of the form. "Kid, I have no idea how to read this."

Oh good, he hadn't noticed the tail grab. She looked up at the part of the paper he was pointing to. Let's see, fancy scribbles, weird blocky letters like she'd seen on those movie posters, pictures of the forest, and… oh, her name! She gave a thumbs up, and he rolled his eyes at her. Oooooh, she hadn't even known you could do that without puupi- pewwpi- paowpi- eye dots! Without those little eye dots!

"No, you little brat. I get that you wrote it. But I've never seen this script before – how do I know it's really your name and not some kind of meaningless garbage you wrote."

He loomed over her head, jack-o-lantern grin widening until it was larger than her entire face. "Are you trying to get out of our deal?"

She snorted. If he wanted to be scary, it wasn't working. His face looked exactly like a bouncy ball she'd had back on her ship. His face was even squishy! See – squiiiish!

The Snatcher reeled back from the contact and started scrubbing at his face like he'd been slapped with something stinky. Rude! Rude noodle man! It was his fault she was wandering through that smelly swamp in the first place! She blew a raspberry at him and stole the scroll back while he was distracted.

He made a really funny sound when he realized she'd gotten it back and tried to grab it again, but held back when she pointed at her name.

Slowly and carefully, she ran her finger over each part of her name as she said it out loud. It was a bit tricky to get hold of the right kind of moments to layer while in the middle of whatever the Snatcher's weird contract void was, but she managed.

He just stared at her as she finished, unmoving, before his tail started to twitch in agitation. Aww, he looked like a big cat! She snickered.

"Kid…" he started, then paused, then started again. "I have no idea where to even start there. Is that actually your name?"

She nodded, grinning. It was the best name!

The ghost looked somewhat unnerved. "How is that even a name? It sounded like a bunch of different instruments all played at once. I don't think I could make that noise, and I don't even need vocal chords to speak!"

The girl smirked at him. Not everyone could be as cool as she was. He could still float though, which was pretty neat. She patted his hand consolingly and gave him a thumbs up. He looked down, before shoving her back and out of reach.

"Alright, enough wasting time. Weird name or no weird name, I've still got your soul and you've still got a job to do. Now get to it, brat!"

With a swirling motion, he disappeared back into the ground, just as her hand almost closed around the tip of his tail. Dang, she'd almost gotten it that time!

The girl shouldered her umbrella and looked out into the forest. Well, she was sure to run into him again soon. With a flourish of her hat, she set off to find the first place on her map.

oOo

"Wow, you really do love getting caught in those traps, don't you, kid."

The girl glared at him. It wasn't her fault – he made them hard to see on purpose!

The Snatcher coiled his body over her like a smug rainbow made out of purple jerk. "I was going to let you off easy, but if you're so eager to work for me, we might as well draft up another contract!"

With a poof of smoke, another scroll appeared before her. She grabbed it with a glare and started to move for the pen, before he snatched it away.

"Ah ah ah! Why don't you write your name in normal letters this time, just so that I can know for sure that you're not trying to wiggle out on our deal."

What? But she had written it in normal letters! She'd even used her best handwriting. It wasn't her fault that his weird letters were dumb and stupid. She stamped her foot and glared at him, daring the ghost to challenge her.

"Whoa hoh hoh, looks like someone's got a big temper for such a tiny kid! But don't you think you should be picking on someone a little bit more… your own size."

Suddenly, that grin didn't look nearly as silly as it had moments before. As if on cue, the empty place inside her chest ached. Uncomfortable, she looked at the paper again. Some of the weird tiny letters looked kind of similar to the ones she was used to. Maybe she could smush some of them together and that could work?

She grabbed the pen and started tracing some of the letters to try and get their shapes right. She wished she'd gotten more language-learning time with the girl she'd met when she first arrived on this weird planet. They hadn't managed to get much past the basics before the hooded girl had figured out what the Time Pieces did and ran off.

"Get a move on, kid! I don't have all day. You've been staring at that thing so long that you're making me think you don't know how to read!"

She flinched. Uh oh. Mmmaybe he wouldn't notice?

"You don't know how to read, do you." Peck.

She hunched her shoulders and braced herself for the laughter. For the calls of not being good enough. For everyone snickering and saying she was too little, too young. For him to decide that of course she couldn't run the important missions, so why not just give her the baby tasks with the toy ship and let her play house out on the edges of the timestream where she won't be in anyone's way.

The Snatcher looked like he was about to say something, then paused. He looked constipated for a moment, grumbled to himself, sighed, and then threw his arms up dramatically. "Well, guess you're in luck, kid!"

What?

"There's a group of minions who've been bothering me about teaching them how to read. Normally I wouldn't bother, but I can't be everywhere at once and the Keep Out signs have been looking lackluster lately."

The scroll in front of her disappeared, only to be replaced with a new one. This version had doodles of subconites holding various books and letters, looking happy with themselves.

"We have one more slot open for this afternoon's group, but it isn't going to come for free!" He turned over, floating on his back and grinning at her from the side. "After the lessons, I want ten new signs all over the forest, telling everyone about how great I am! They're good for minion morale."

She- she could totally do that! He'd better- better get ready for some signs about how dumb his face is. All wobbly and distorted. Hard to even see him right now. Dumb stupid face. For some reason he just laughed at her when she stuck out her tongue at him this time. Stupid dumb face.

"That's the spirit, kiddo. Now what do you say?"

The girl grabbed the pen out of the air, and scribbled her name down on the contract. It rolled itself up and poofed back to the Snatcher, who read it over and stamped his seal at the base.

"Well then, that seals the deal! Now what are you waiting for, Kid? Get to work!"