We're halfway through already! And just in time before Scratch returns in Chibiverse is his team-up chap with Ollie!

This chapter follows up after my first TGAMM fic 'The Ghost Friends in: Haunted Hijinks at the Hexed Chateau' It also marks the point of passing the already written Season 3 scripts that occur in this timeline.

A portal opened in the eternal night of the Ghost World. A grumpy blue ghost floated through with a book in hand. How long had it been since he'd been summoned to the Dark Dais? Though unlike before when he was summoned by force, this time he was here by request.

"Scratch! Good to see you!" Waved the chairman glowing orange from his desk. Ollie was the only one here today. The remaining members of the Ghost Council were on a 'corporate retreat' as their chairman had explained it. Really it was an excuse so he and Scratch could have some one-on-one time without being disturbed. "You brought the book of rare curses, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it right here." The older ghost waved the tome in his hand.

Scratch handed the book to Ollie, who floated over from his desk. "I told you we weren't done with this conversation." The robed wraith referenced an earlier event between the two. The other night, the Ghost Friends had been on a mission in a 'hexed chateau' and while the ghost had been fake, the outing revealed that Scratch was in possession of the missing Book of Rare Curses that belonged to the Chairman.

"Hey, I'm not the one who kept the book! Molly hid it before I gave up the robe." Scratch defended himself, and maybe threw Molly under the bus a tiny bit.

"That explains why it's color-coded." Ollie flipped through the book that was now filled with sticky tabs of blue, yellow, pink and black. "Ooh, she even made an index."

The former chairman leaned his elbow on the current one's shoulder. "And by the way, the council doesn't know I had the book right?"

"Um, not to my knowledge, no."

Scratch clapped his hands together. "Great! I do not want Alister finding out in particular. He'll get all 'high and mighty' that he was right about me hiding the book." Sassy hand gestures accompanied his words.

Ollie continued to skim through the pages of rare and powerful curses; the colorful tabs were really helpful in sorting through the different types of haunted hexes. "Portal into the mind, entering dreams, time loop, this thing does have some powerful stuff in it!"

"Got an idea of what'cha wanna cast first?" Scratch read over his shoulder.

The chairman hesitated. "I don't know if I'm going to cast any curses." He may be in a ghost form now, but he was alive. Casting curses sounded like something left to real ghosts.

"Come on! You make me give back the book, and you aren't even going to use it!" The blue one complained.

"I mean, I've only used a curse once to close that abyss." Ollie recalled the incident where he received his position. "Was that even a curse?" He wondered.

Scratch flipped himself in front of Ollie, a strange determination set ablaze within him… and it wasn't from the spicy burrito he'd had for lunch. "I cannot float by and do nothing while you waste this potential! You are the most powerful being in the afterlife right now, and you haven't ever done a real curse! The time has come for me to pass on my wisdom of all things cursed and 'chairman-y' to you my swoopy-haired protege."

Ollie did a double take. "Hang on, what's happening?"

"I'm teaching you how to properly cast curses." Scratch laid it out plain and simple. "You're actually the second kid I've ever taught cursing to. The first was Darryl, but that was a different kind of cursing."

OXOXOXOX

Ollie sat at the desk with a notebook, ready to jot down any notes from this lesson. He had to scour the pages for a blank one. Scratch caught something and stopped the pages. "Is that a doodle of Molly's name inside a heart?"

That was when Ollie discovered he could blush in wraith form (he didn't have blood now. How did that work?) "How about we get to that first lesson!?" The boy closed his notes in embarrassment.

There'd be plenty of time to tease Ollie about that later. Scratch had knowledge to impart. "Tell me Ollie, what do you think the most important part of a curse is?" He quizzed his student.

Ollie thought about it carefully before answering. "A failsafe? So the curse can't backfire."

Scratch had a different answer in mind, but the kid had a good point. Time to pretend that was where he was going. "A failsa-Yes! A failsafe! Very good! Because it is so important to make sure a curse can't go horribly, horribly wrong. Although they pretty much always go wrong, so deal with the hand you're dealt."

"So what sort of limitations do you recommend?" Ollie asked.

Scratch actually had to think hard about that one. "Hnnn… a time limit! The longer a curse stays, the more suffering it usually brings. Which is great if you're cursing someone who cut in front of you at the hot dog stand. Not so great when it takes the fear away from your best friend, and she launches herself across the city."

Ollie took his words to heart, coming up with a quick curse for their own convenience. The chairman floated up higher and took on a more saturated hue. "AS THE CHAIRMAN I IMPOSE MY MIGHT, FIVE MINUTES I LIMIT ALL MY CURSES TILL THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT." Ollie shrank back down to normal size, a glow settling on him briefly as his curse went into effect. "Now we don't have to worry about a curse overstaying its welcome."

"Eh. It was fine for what we needed." Scratch conceded. "But your technique is lacking on multiple levels. Lucky thing you have the best curser as your mentor. I've cursed myself and Molly nearly a hundred times by now! I know all the moves."

The orange wraith was actually excited to learn. "This is going to be a (hopefully) very informative Saturday!"

"It's Sunday, actually." Scratch corrected him.

"Is it? Man, time feels weird here." So Ollie has increased his hours here recently, the eternal night was probably throwing off his sense of time.

Moving forward, it was time for Scratch to teach his 'protege' his actual first lesson. "Now aside from that little introductory bit we just did, this is going to be the REAL first lesson." He made sure Ollie was listening intently before continuing. "The true, most important and valued part of a good curse… PRRRRRRESENTATION!" He trailed his 'r's and struck a pose.

The current chairman looked skeptical. "How is that the most important part of a curse?"

"Observe-" Scratch stretched his ectoplasm and moved into position. He does the following but without changing shape or distorting himself, staying as blue and blobby as he always is. "Curse casting! Something, something rhyming! Ghostly whoozits or whatever!" He dropped the act. "Now did that send a shiver of fear down your spine? Or were you left bored and ready to change the channel?"

"Yeah, it was pretty boring." Ollie nodded.

"Observe again-" This time Scratch twisted himself into horrifying shapes and appeared genuinely scary. His voice echoed with an unsettling tone mixed with his own voice. "CURSE CASTING! SOMETHING, SOMETHING RHYMING! GHOSTLY WHOOZITS OR WHATEVER!" Even the background changed color and bent to his will. He dropped the fake curse and took a bow. "You may now applaud!"

That display definitely earned an applause, which Ollie gave earnestly. "That was so much better! Could you have been a theater kid when you were alive?"

"Probably!" Scratch had no idea, but being a performer sounded like a pretty good life! Whatever he did before he died had to have been incredible. "It's your turn Ollie. Pick a curse and put on a show!"

Ollie took out the book and referred to the index Molly made. "Let's see… blue is for shape-shifting, yellow means shenanigans, the pink ones are curses Molly loves, and the black ones are genuinely bad curses." Curious as to his girlfriend's taste in curses, Ollie picked out a page with a pink note. "Here I go-" The chairman allowed his form to stretch and tower over the Dark Dais, his face no longer visible from under the robe which glowed a more saturated orange. He tried putting more flare into this curse than the previous one. "AS CHAIRMAN OF THE GHOST WORLD I REACH DEEPER INTO OUR SOULS. REVEAL WHAT IS UNDERNEATH AND WHAT MAKES US WHOLE."

The dramatic curse settled on the two present, and Scratch awaited whatever it would cause. Nothing visibly happened as far as he could see… but he could smell something. A lot of something's. "What is that smell?" He sniffed under his armpit. "Some of it's coming from me!"

"I cast the 'Soul Scent' curse." Ollie revealed the page he had read from. "It reaches deep inside us and releases the unique scent of our very being. For instance, you smell like strawberries and the ocean."

"This is the best I've ever smelled, actually." Scratch mentioned. "And you smell like fresh-cut grass and a moonlit night. I don't know how but you do."

The young chairman invaded Scratch's personal space as he awaited his feedback. "How was my presentation? Where can I improve?"

The former chairman used a finger to scooch the orange wraith a few inches away from him. "Not bad for an amateur. Still a bit rough around the edges, nothing the best mentor in the Ghost World can't smooth out with a few more lessons."

"Little presumptuous to call yourself the 'best mentor' in the Ghost World." Ollie playfully smirked.

"Hey! I'm a better mentor than I am a chairman. Which is not easy for me to admit. I mean I wasn't the worst chairman, sure I got taco crumbs in the curse cabinet, but it's not like I blew up Death Valley or anything!" He shiftily looked away, smiling nervously. "Which brings us to lesson numero dos: unintended consequences."

Ollie pretty much figured what this lesson would entail. "Like, say, if you put a curse on a girl to always be with her, she gains the ability to summon you?"

"Molly told you bout that, huh." It had been so long since he was magically summoned to Molly's side. Of course, nowadays, they didn't need a curse to always be together or come over when the other needed them. It also led to stricter 'don't bother Scratch while he's in the tub' guidelines. "Yeah, that's the kind of unintended consequences I'm talking about. To demonstrate, I want you to pick out a shapeshifting curse and cast it on us. But you can't read what the curse does ahead of time. We will endure the effects for a measly five minutes and come out wiser than we were before."

"Okay…" Ollie flipped to a blue-tabbed page and only read the curse as he cast it. Not going super big with his performance on account of having to hold the book, Ollie still went for the echoing voice and towering figure. "TRADE AN OUTWARD TRAIT BETWEEN US TWO, A SIGNATURE PIECE TO MARK WHO WE ARE. ALLOW US TO EXPERIENCE EACH OTHERS LOOK, AS LONG AS WE KNOW WHO IS WHO!"

A cursed cloud engulfed Ollie and Scratch, sending them both into coughing fits. "(Hacking noises) That one has some kick to it!" Scratch hit his fist into his chest, knocking out a little puff of green smoke from his mouth. He looked at the wraith, not looking any different from before the curse. "Huh, that should've done something…" Scratch scratched his head.

Ollie's ghostly yellow eyes widened. "Uh, you might want to check a mirror." He advised the ghost.

"What? I got some burrito in my teeth?" Scratch took a hand mirror out of nowhere and looked at his reflection. His cutie bit was gone, replaced with very familiar swoopy bangs. "AAAAHHH! I'VE GOT YOUR TEEN HEARTTHROB HAIR! Oh no…" he flew over and pulled down the hood of Ollie's robe, the orange wraith lacked his signature hairstyle and now sported the two blobs usually on top of Scratch. "YOU'VE GOT MY CUTIE BIT! GIMME BACK MY CUTIE BIT!" He tugged at what should be his hair, but it refused to budge off of Ollie's head.

Ollie wasn't bothered by the switch, he was actually pretty amused. He lightly laughed as he tried to console Scratch. "Hey-hey-It's only for five minutes, remember?"

"FIVE MINUTES IS GOING TO FEEL LIKE AN ETERNITY!" The ghost was not consoled at all. He was now rocking back and forth in a fetal position.

"Come on Scratch, it's not so bad." Ollie attempted to coax him out of his ball of woe.

"Maybe for you! But the cutie bit is MY signature look! Now I look like the lead singer in a boyband!" In his frenzy, Scratch accidentally did the hair swoop bit that Molly was a fan of.

Seeing the hair flip from another perspective, Ollie kind of understood what it was now. "So that's how that looks…" That gave him an idea, and he took his phone out of the robe's sleeves. "Oh! Let's take a picture and send it to Molly."

"Eh-" Scratch's face twisted in disgust and then fear. "NO! NO ONE CAN EVER SEE THIS!"

Ollie wrapped an arm around the blue ghost and posed for a selfie. "Say cheese!"

Scratch's anguished wails filled the air while he pulled on Ollie's robe and tried to wrestle the phone away from him. "Over my already dead body!"

The current chairman couldn't help but laugh as they had a tug of war over the phone. "Come on Scratch! You look cute!"

"STOP MAKING IT WEIRD OLLIE!"

In the skirmish, the camera went off. And through the grabbing of the screen, the correct sequence was dialed for the photo to be texted to Molly.

Back in Brighton, Molly and Libby were chilling in the latter's room. Feeding her turtles and snacking on chips. Molly heard her phone ding and pulled it out of her pocket. "Who's it from?" Libby asked.

"Ollie. He and Scratch are doing something in the Ghost World today." Molly unlocked her phone to see the text. What awaited her was a pretty good shot of something that made her cringe. "I told Scratch not to send pictures of his butt anymore!"

OXOXOXOX

The first two curses had worn off, and their ectoplasmic hairstyles returned to their rightful owners. "Woo-glad that's over." Scratch stretched his back and arms. "Moving on and never speaking of the previous incident again. This next lesson is going to be an improv exercise."

"Sounds easy enough." The young chairman naively believed.

"And that is where you are wrong. Improv is a difficult art form to master. You must be quick with your wit and ready with a spontaneous response to anything. It involves a lot of 'yes and's and thinking on your currently nonexistent feet." Scratch lectured, holding a deep respect for the theatrical arts once again. "Curses are the same way. The book has some specific stuff but we living impaired usually come up with our curses on the spot. And we make 'em rhyme. It's chaos. And Ollie, you're a little too orderly for spontaneous improv cursing."

"What?! I can so do an improv curse!" Ollie insisted.

Scratch smirked. "Prove it. Show me chaos."

He could do this, Ollie knew he could. What kind of curse would be spontaneous and chaotic? There had to be a way to figure out-NO! He couldn't overthink this! He had to do something-ANYTHING! He clenched his eyes shut and ran with whatever the first idea that popped into his head. Growing into his scary, cursing mode, Ollie let his mouth do the talking for his head. "I CURSE US, SCRATCH AND OLLIE, TO uh… WATCH THE ROBE DANCE AND BE GROOVY! TO START A DISCO PARTY AND- I don't know-HAVE MUSIC PLAY OUT OF THE ROBE'S HOOD… IE!"

The curse went into effect, taking the chairman's robe away from the orange wraith and causing it to burst into a disco dance while appropriate music played from the opening at the top. Scratch and Ollie watched from the sidelines, watching the ancient, powerful article of nether-worldly fabric boogie like the seventies were still a thing. To be fair, there was an overabundance of disco music in the Ghost World, since it was also considered 'dead'. "Tada! Is this weird enough for you?" Ollie held his arms out and gestured to the dancing robe.

"I've seen you eat a veggie lover's pizza with a fork. This ranks pretty low compared to that." Scratch bluntly stated. "You get a passing grade for this curse though. Never knew the robe had such moves!" Wait a minute, Scratch recognized those moves. "Hey! It's doing the shimmy 'n' sweep! I made that up to get everyone else to do my work!" He saw the judging look Ollie was giving him. "Why are you surprised? That is the kind of person I am."

Pushing aside that nugget of information for later, Ollie did notice how the robe was dancing. It copied not only some of Scratch's moves but some of his moves too. From that time he taught Geoff a new dance move during a songburst montage in an episode that 'totally' made it to air. "I guess it's recalling the muscle memory of those who've worn it. Although I don't recall ever doing those kinds of moves." The robe switched to some strange moves that seemed more in line with a villainous victory dance.

Scratch had a feeling he knew who the robe got that from. "Ugh. I bet it picked that up from Jinx when she had it that one time. She would do a gloating victory dance wouldn't she? The nerve!" Scratch rolled his eyes.

Hearing the name of the ghost who tried to take over the living world reminded Ollie of something that happened recently. "Speaking of Jinx, she finally found out I'm the new chairman." Ever since that same incident when she took the robes, the purple ghost had been trapped in June's phantom canister.

"Oh, and how'd she take it?" Scratch couldn't wait to hear this.

FLASHBACK

Ollie portals into his garage after a long day of chairmanning in the Ghost World. June is sitting at the workbench with a communication device hooked up to Jinx's canister. "Welcome back Ollie, how was your chairman work?" His sister greeted him.

"Hold up-" A voice came out of the device, Jinx's to be exact. "Did you say chairman work?"

"Yup. The Chairman robe chose my brother to be the new Chairman of the Ghost World." June answered casually.

It ended up becoming a test of how loud the communicator's volume could get. "AS IF SCRATCH GETTING THE ROBE WASN'T A BIG ENOUGH INSULT TO THE ONE TRUE CHAIRMAN NOW ALL THAT POWER IS IN THE HANDS OF A LIVING TEENAGER?! WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE I-" June winced and set the volume to mute. The siblings shrugged and moved along with their day.

END OF FLASHBACK

Scratch laughed loud and hard. "HA! Oh, I wish I could get a picture of the look on her face." He wiped away a tear forming from the laughter.

"Sorry, no visual data comes from the canister." Ollie regertfully informed him. "June took a lot of precaution to ensure she doesn't get out." And yet Jinx still continued to try and trick his sister into freeing her. It never worked. June was too smart to fall for anything she said.

Once the laughter subsided, Scratch couldn't help but feel a little pity for his nemesis (Hey! He had a real nemesis! Cool.) being trapped indefinitely in a device that looked like it was meant to contain the temperature of soup. He blamed the kids' empathy for rubbing off on him and pushed the thought aside for now.

OXOXOXOX

Once the robe had finished dancing and the disco died down (but it would one day come back with a vengeance!) Scratch and Ollie went back to the Book of Rare Curses to pick out one more curse for their final lesson.

"How about the curse that makes the songs stuck in your head play out loud?" Scratch pointed to a page.

"Too close to what we just did." Ollie dismissed the idea and turned the page.

"That curse lets you understand animals, but only when they insult you." Scratch pointed to another.

"No animals around here." Ollie reminded him and flipped the page again.

"Ooh, this curse can turn someone into an owl beast!" Scratch once more suggested a curse.

"I'd rather not." Ollie lost track of how many pages they'd gone through at this point. He turned the pages backwards and returned to the colorful index added by his girlfriend. "Hmm, We haven't done any that fall under the 'shenanigans' category." Choosing a random yellow tab, Ollie chose a page and liked the result. "How about a truth curse?"

Scratch tapped his chin. "Hmm, sounds like it could easily backfire on us… yep! That's a shenanigan! Fire away Ollie!"

Agreeing on the curse, Ollie went into his scary cursing mode. "I CURSE THE TWO OF US, TO ONLY SPEAK WHAT IS TRUE. WE CANNOT HIDE WHEN ASKED, REVEAL THE SECRETS ONLY WE KNEW!" The curse took effect evidenced by the brief blue glow around them. "We have five minutes to ask each other anything, and we have to answer honestly-"

"Got it! What's the most embarrassing thing in your search history?" Scratch beat him to the first question. He'd had the whole curse sequence to think of a question, and he was going for the big guns.

Forced to answer the truth, Ollie sighed and held a hand to his forehead. "'Why can't I whistle', everyone else can do it, but I can't get it right!" He was ashamed of this fact.

Scratch was more disappointed with the answer. That wasn't some awkward revealing truth! "Lame. OK, your turn now and make it good. I do not divulge my innermost secrets easily." Unless he was bribed. With food.

Considering his options, Ollie chose to ask one he suspected of the blue ghost. "Are you the one who keeps sabotaging the churro cart?"

"Yes." Scratch bluntly admitted to the crime. "AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN!" It was back to him again, he'd probably get similar answers to the whistling thing if he tried to ask about embarrassing stuff. Might as well ask something simple. "Let's see… huh… what do you think about being the chairman?"

"I still don't think I'm the most worthy for the job."

Silence. That was not what Scratch was expecting. "Wait, what?" Maybe the ghost heard him wrong. He could have some waxy ectoplasm building up in his ears. Did he have ears?

Ollie steadied himself, bracing for the unavoidable truth that was about to come out. "I was a ghost hunter for so long, and within a year I'd done a 180 and am now the ruler of the Ghost World. The robes say I'm the most worthy and every day I try to prove to everyone, including myself, that the robe made the right choice. But no matter how much engoodifying I do, there's a part of me that is still holding onto the guilt from my past and my mistakes-a-and it won't let me fully forgive myself even though I want to!" Why couldn't he let it go? He was trying so hard to move forward, but those midnight thoughts kept him up some nights as he tried to silence the doubts. How long has it been since that time in the video store? The guilt had shrunk considerably since then, but it still lingered in the back of his mind.

It wasn't the first time Scratch had heard the boy pour his heart out, at least he wasn't sobbing on him like before. "Kid, you've been chairman for almost two months, right?" The wraith nodded a confirmation. "In that time I haven't seen any sort of screw-ups on your part around here. Compare that to me, I lost the robe to Jinx, overflowed the curse cabinet, left Sharkie unattended while I was getting coffee, I actually did blow up Death Valley!... dang truth curse." He wished he hadn't admitted that. "Point is, We are vastly different chairmen. I made messes. You clean up messes. Despite that we have a common ground, we've both made mistakes and learned to grow and change from them. I was grouchy, miserable and lonely before I made the best mistake of my afterlife, cursing Molly McGee."

Ollie couldn't hide the smile at the mention of Molly. "She does tend to see the potential in other people." Like himself. Truthfully, meeting Molly was what started the chain of events leading to both of their character developments.

"I've become a whole new ghost since she made me want to be a better person. And you, when I first saw you I hated you." Scratch honestly admitted.

"I know." Ollie didn't blame him. Their first real meeting did not go smoothly.

Scratch kept going. "I didn't think you'd ever change your ways, but look at you now! I would never have believed the ghost hunter would become the ghost chairman, probably also because I was chairman at the time. Even more unbelievable is that we're actually friends."

The young chairman let out a tiny gasp. "That's the first time I've ever heard you call me a friend!" He quietly said in awe.

"Yeah, this dumb curse won't let me filter my feelings with jokes and indifference!" Scratch needed to remind him that if he had a choice he wouldn't be getting so mushy. "And yes, you are my friend. You and Molly even let me third wheel on your first date so I could eat ice cream under the table! I'm going to go off-topic if I keep thinking about ice cream, so here's what I'm trying to say; those doubts might not completely fade, but the mistakes you made are what helped you turn into someone worthy of being the chairman." The ghost folded his arms and smiled proudly. "You've come a long way kid."

Moved by Scratch's forcibly honest words, Ollie held out his arms while his eyes sparkled. "Permission to hug?"

Scratch groaned reluctantly. "Permission granted." He couldn't brace himself for the incoming hug from his so-called protegee. It wasn't as crushing and tight as the hugs he got from Molly, which made it a little more bearable. Seeing how genuinely happy the boy was, Scratch wrapped a single arm around his shoulder. "Yeah, yeah, enjoy the sappiness while you can. The curse is gonna wear off in a minute or two anyway."

Like he'd said, the truth curse wore off shortly. The lessons imparted from the previous chairman to the current one had been finished. But Ollie still felt there was something they needed to do. "I know you didn't want to take a picture earlier… but what if we took one that was a little different?"

"Different how?"

Back at Libby's house, she and Molly were watching a video on the latter's phone. "And look! The dog is copying what the bunny is doing!" Molly was overflowing with joy from the cute video.

A notification came up, Libby leaned in to see what it was. "Another photo from Ollie." The girls both hoped it wasn't another Scratch-butt pic and opened the message. The image made the girls briefly jump back before realizing what it was. Libby grinned, amused. "Looks like Scratch's dramatic cursing is spreading."

Molly was feeling even more joy seeing the photo of her best friend and her boyfriend. Scratch and Ollie took a selfie in their scary 'cursing' forms. Scratch warped his face into a terrifying, sharp-toothed vision of nightmares. The bright orange glow obscured Ollie's face from inside the robe, but he stretched his torso around Scratch like a snake and grew his hands into intimidating claws. The horrific image had a single word underneath 'boo'. "Yep, those are my guys." She laughed.

Scratch and Ollie put away the Book of Rare Curses and prepared to head back to the living world. "I have to admit, casting curses is kind of fun." Ollie wasn't planning on doing it often. But a limited curse every now and then wouldn't hurt.

"See! Now you get it!" Scratch prepared to open the portal home. A different portal opened up in front of the two of them. "You expecting someone?" Scratch looked back at Ollie.

Alister emerged from the portal and noticed the blue ghost at the dais. "Oh Scratch, excellent timing. There's something important I need to discuss with you."

"I WAS NEVER HERE!" Scratch opened a portal, grabbed Ollie by the front of the robe, and pulled them both inside.

"... I was just going to ask if he wanted to join my lute band."