I finished this while I was at Anime Expo but had to wait until I got home to edit and upload. On the bright side I GOT TO SEE OLLIE'S VOICE ACTOR ALAN LEE IN PERSON! I couldn't stay for the whole panel but I was able to pop in and watch the sports anime jeopardy for a bit! I also saw the voice of Esther again at the Shadow the Hedgehog panel!
For this chapter, we've got Ollie teaming up with our favorite gay ghost couple Geoff and Jeff! Fun fact; One little bit from Jeff is actually a bit that was scrapped from Scratch's Death Day episode according to one of the co-creators.
"-And that concludes our business for today!" The young chairman straightened out the curse documents he and the council had been going over. It had been a two-hour long discussion on recently enacted curses that had taken the entirety of Ollie's chairman shift to sort through. He didn't mind the paperwork, and that alone was enough to earn the admiration of his council.
"A most productive session, Mr. Chairman." Lucretia stated. "We stayed on topic the entire time." The change in authority had been very much welcomed. Although the council could call Scratch a friend now, he was terrible with these sorts of discussions. They'd be lucky to go through half of what they went over today. No scrolls had been doodled on either, they'd lost count of how many little drawings of tacos or a butt had to be erased before the scrolls were filed.
Ollie handed off the documents to Alister, who promptly filed them inside the Curse Cabinet. "And going 'digital' has kept the Curse Cabinet from overflowing!" Their new chairman continued to hit their admittedly low-bar of approval.
Grimbella pulled out a vintage weekly planner and double-checked the schedule for tomorrow. "We have you scheduled for tomorrow from four to five thirty Mr. Chairman, does that still work for you?"
"Yes, I'll be ready and waiting at the usual spot." Ollie confirmed the pick-up. He couldn't open the portal or turn into a wraith on his own. He relied on one of the council members to conjure the portal for him. "Thank you all as always."
"It's our pleasure, Mr. Chairman!" Bartholomew graciously made a quick bow before he and the rest shuffled off to wherever they were heading next.
Ollie pulled down the hood of the robe, swooping out his bangs in the process (Somewhere in Brighton, Molly's 'swoopy sense' went off) and took a short detour before he returned to his body. He opened up a portal to what could only be described as the afterlife equivalent of the DMV. It was where the scaring seminars and spooky business were held. He wouldn't feel right leaving the Ghost World if there was still someone that needed his help.
It seemed like the place was dead today… pun totally intended. Ollie guessed that meant his job was officially finished today and prepared to open another portal back. He heard a gasp and suddenly the boy was pulled into a squishy, marshmallow-y hug. "Hi buddy! It's me, your pal Geoff!"
The wraith chuckled. "Yeah, G-E-O-F-F, right?" He teasingly asked.
"Not to be confused with J-E-F-F, which is me." Another ghost followed behind his afterlife partner and greeted their living friend. "Hey Ollie, just getting off work?"
Geoff let go of the orange ghost and returned to Jeff's side. "Guess what! We're thinking of opening a Dead & Breakfast!" He could hardly contain his excitement. "We just got our paperwork! Once we fill it out, we can bring our dream we've had since Tuesday to unlife!"
"That's fantastic!" Ollie was happy for them.
Jeff fondly rolled his eyes while rolling his arm around Geoff. "We're still work-shopping a couple of ideas. We haven't settled on a location or a name for our place yet." So far their biggest disagreement was whether they should allow Scratch to be a guest. Jeff was insistent that it would be a horrible mistake.
"But there is one thing that's been decided!" Geoff continued, trying not to burst from excitement. "My household-famous flapjacks will be the main attraction of the breakfast part of Dead & Breakfast!"
"That sounds delicious." Ollie did enjoy a good pancake, especially with maple syrup and fresh fruit.
The green ghost nodded. "Eeyup. No better way to show how much you appreciate someone than by making them a special dish."
His simple comment reminded Ollie of the occasional tea breaks he and the council would have, and the exquisite mini-quiches Bart would bring. Those four old souls had been helping guide him as the new chairman for close to two weeks now. He'd thanked them every time but had never given anything to show his thanks. It gave him an idea. "You're right Geoff! In fact, I should cook something for the Ghost Council to show how much I appreciate them!"
Jeff's curiosity was piqued. "Wow. Coming a little out of the blue, but a nice gesture. What'll you make?"
Ollie opened his mouth… and deflated to silence. He had no idea what to make, and he didn't know how to cook either. "Uh, I-" he trailed the vowel out "-have never cooked before."
"For real?" Jeff was surprised.
"I mean, my dad tried to show me how to make root beer once…"
We cutaway to sometime in the recent past, Ruben and Ollie cannot get anything to come out of the root beer keg of Ollie's batch. They opened it up and the root beer was SOLID. Not frozen, straight up a solid substance.
"… didn't exactly go well." Ollie rubbed his neck nervously.
Geoff was back to invading his personal space in a matter of seconds. "No need to fret little buddy, we'll help you out."
"You will?" Ollie smiled hopefully.
"We will?" Jeff raised an ectoplasmic eyebrow.
"Sure. Tell you what, we'll meet up at your place tomorrow and whip up something so delicious and full of love, it'll make a grown man cry." Geoff promised. Granted, in these sorts of scenarios, he was usually the grown man that ended up crying.
Ollie grinned. Together they would make something amazing before he had to go to work tomorrow. He couldn't wait!
OXOXOXOX
The following morning, Ollie was already in the kitchen after breakfast. He'd gotten everything out that he believed he needed for cooking and was just waiting for his ghost pals to show up.
Ruben chose that moment to walk past the kitchen just as the ghost portal was opening. "Hi, Ruben!" Geoff burst from the portal and gave the man he'd once traumatized a hug. Jeff exited behind his partner, eying the living man skeptically. He hadn't forgotten about Halloween.
The green ghost released his hug and went with his afterlife partner to join Ollie in the kitchen. Ruben shuddered at the ectoplasm coating his shirt and jacket, trying to wipe off the slimy substance while a thought crossed his mind. "If my parents ever come to visit, I've got to introduce them to Geoff. They never believed me, but who's got ghosts in his house now, dad!"
Ollie looked up from his phone and greeted his guests. "Morning Geoff and Jeff! Thanks for coming over to help."
"Anything for a friend!" Geoff cheerfully stated. "Now about the dish-I found a recipe for some guy's 'Super Awesome Nachos' that sounds like a blast of flavor!"
The young chairman didn't seem as excited by the suggestion. "Nachos might be too messy for the council."
The indigo-colored ghost voiced his idea next. "OK, how about this, have you ever had sliced prosciutto on melon?"
"Uh, no. I'm a vegetarian." Ollie explained.
Jeff shrugged "Eh, Your loss."
"How about something with chocolate?" Geoff suggested. "Everyone loves chocolate. I even drowned in it."
"Actually, I already found a recipe." Ollie pulled up a web page on his phone, showing it to the ghosts who hovered over his shoulders. "Cornbread scones. Healthy yet delicious, it won't make a huge mess, and every ingredient is humanely sourced."
Reading over the recipe, the ghost couple agreed that it sounded simple enough. "Sounds like a plan!" Geoff approved, watching as Ollie brought out the ingredients he bought last night.
The three of them got to work. The dead duo passed Ollie the ingredients as he mixed them. It seemed to be going well. The key word 'seemed'. Ollie had never done this before, and minor things slipped through the cracks. Not sifting the flour made it a bit clumpier, and the amount of sugar and baking powder required was accidentally doubled in a measuring error. It shouldn't have come out too badly… although Ollie setting the oven heat too high caused a much larger setback.
"… Is it supposed to be on fire?" Geoff calmly asked.
"No. No it is not." Ollie responded, stunned with shock.
Jeff flew over and grabbed a fire extinguisher, dousing the burning cornbread until it was nothing but charred goo. You couldn't even tell it was food anymore. "So the first try didn't work and fire is nothing to be ashamed of." The indigo ghost assured the crestfallen boy. "We'll toss this batch and try again."
"Hang on-I can't in good conscience let any of this go to waste." Ollie's concern for the environment took priority over the edibility of his creation.
The ghost couple cringed. "But this stuff isn't even food anymore!" The green one exclaimed. "You'd be basically eating garbage and what kind of depraved soul would ever do that!?" The three stared in silence for a moment, all of them coming to the same conclusion. "… Right, I'll go call Scratch."
OXOXOXOX
"Alright, so…" Geoff emerged from a portal after ten awkwardly silent minutes of leaving the other two waiting. "Scratch can't make it today. He and Molly are painting a mural together."
"A mural? Huh, well she does draw really good potatoes." Ollie mused, trying to imagine what his girlfriend and her ghostly BFF were painting.
Geoff reached an arm back into the portal as he spoke. "So I went and got the next best ghost to help… SHARKIE!" He led the aquatic ghost pet into the kitchen. The ghost shark entered with a happy flip, then nuzzled up to the one that brought him. "Scratch made Sharkie, and the little guy got his appetite and tolerance of garbage food from him. I know this because I am Sharkie's godfather." He proudly declared. Being the godfather to his best friend's shark pet/son was one of Geoff's greatest honors.
Sharkie flew over to Ollie and Jeff for more pets. The former indulged in giving him some scratches behind the fin while the latter picked up the tray of ruined cornbread. "Let's see if Sharkie can keep these down." Jeff hoped for the best and offered the blackened goo to the shark.
Turns out that Sharkie's taste buds were even deader than he was. The ghost shark ate up the food(?) with no problem and licked his lips afterward. Ollie wiped his brow, relieved "That solves the waste situation. Let's try this again."
Geoff and Jeff guided Ollie closer this time around. "Now, you gotta sift the flour before it goes in." The green ghost demonstrated, shaking the strainer dish so it rained the ground-up wheat into the mixing bowl.
"Right. Sift it in." Ollie was handed the flour after Geoff handled the first half. He continuously shook the strainer so no clumps formed. As it got down to the last bit, the remaining clumps of flour refused to fall apart and exit into the bowl. "Come on-" Ollie shook it harder. Desperate to finish sifting the measured flour.
"That's good, you can stop now." Geoff assured the boy.
But Ollie refused to stop. The flour had been measured exactly and if those last few bits wouldn't go in, then the calculations would be off! His wrists were sore from the continuous shaking, but he didn't stop, not until the strainer slipped from his grasp and flung itself into Geoff's belly, then ricocheted back into Ollie's face. The holes in the bottom of the strainer left an imprint on his face, but hey, at least the last bit of flour went in!
Jeff helped Ollie carefully measure every ingredient. And we mean carefully, it took an excruciatingly long time to slowly add everything down to the most precise measurement. Jeff tried a few times to tip the ingredient in a little faster, but Ollie would stop him and insist on keeping it at the speed of molasses. After five minutes, the indigo ghost got fed up and quickly poured the exact measurements for the rest of the ingredients. Ollie still felt the need to measure them with a ruler.
The more cautiously made batch went into the oven with high hopes. To the relief of all, the end result came out looking like the photo you'd see in a cookbook. "We did it!" Ollie cheered, grabbing the tray with his oven mitts and placing it on the cooling rack. "Geoff with a 'G', Jeff with a 'J', would you do the honors of the first tasting?"
"Do you have to ask?" Geoff excitedly took a scone from the tray, forgetting it was still hot. He ended up juggling it in his hands to avoid ghost burns. Jeff used a napkin to avoid the heat when grabbing his.
The ghosts bit into the cornbread scones and… their expressions did not look good. "Something's wrong. These things are completely flavorless." Jeff gave his honest critique.
"What?!" Ollie gasped. "How did that happen?! I measured everything correctly!" He held up a measuring cup full of sugar and a pinch of salt. "See! The sugar is at the exact measure… ments…" That's when it hit him. He was holding the carefully measured sugar in his hand. The same sugar that was supposed to be in the cornbread.
The deceased couple watched the boy, who took a long, sharp inhale as he grappled with his second failed attempt. Geoff carefully took the sugar away from Ollie, whose eye started twitching, and brought up the good news. "Hey~ It's better than last time~" He had a 'sing-song' tone to his voice.
Finally exhaling the deep breath he took, Ollie passed the flavorless cornbread to Sharkie, who gobbled it up. "Good thing you have Scratch's seemingly endless stomach." Then the shark playfully booped his nose to Ollie's. "Aw, and the soft gooey center he hides in his heart."
Jeff, taking a sip of tea to get some flavor back on his tongue, added his two cents about the absent blue ghost. "Honestly, I think Scratch died of heart failure." He took another sip and looked up to see the shocked looks coming from his lover, the chairman and the Ghost Shark. "C'mon! You've all seen how he eats!" They all had to nod in reluctant agreement at that.
OXOXOXOX
Going super carefully still hadn't worked, so Ollie might have started taking his failures out on the recipe. He stared intensely at the ingredients he measured, eyes wide and unblinking. He sifted the flour vigorously, creating a dust cloud of flour that left everyone else coughing. But not Ollie, he didn't have the luxury to cough. He would perfect this recipe no matter how many times it would take.
After pouring in the sugar, which he made certain every last bit went in, it was time to mix. Geoff and Jeff both offered to help at several points, but each time Ollie flusteredly assured them that 'he had this', so they stuck to just passing the next ingredient over. Ollie might have been mixing a little too aggressively as the dough became tougher in texture the more he mixed. "Was stirring always this much work?" The boy struggled to move the whisk, because obviously the dough getting harder meant it hadn't been mixed enough and not the opposite.
"Ollie, you might be overdoing it just a tad." Geoff warned him.
When Ollie stopped the mixing, it had gotten so tough that the whisk had gotten stuck inside. "I can fix this! I can fix this!" He pulled at the whisk like it was a sword in a stone. Sweat and pulsing veins were evident on his face as he refused to cease his attempts to free the kitchen tool. Jeff couldn't keep watching this and simply used his ghost powers to lift the whisk out of the batter. "Ha ha… I got it." Ollie's voice took a more crazed tone, with him seemingly unaware of the ghostly assistance.
It took forever to get the batter out of the bowl and shape it into scones, not just because of the extremely tough texture but also because Ollie was insistent they each be exactly five centimeters and two inches. Geoff and Jeff stepped aside and let the young chairman mold the dough as he desired. The deceased duo floated over to the doorway for their own private conversation. "Geoff, should we really let him keep going like this?" The more muscular of the two asked his partner.
"Aw, he's just learning something new," Geoff assured Jeff. "You need to make mistakes so you can learn from them. Look at me, I've made so many mistakes and learned so much! And I've only gotten killed once." he sagely nodded.
Jeff raised an ectoplasmic eyebrow, not entirely convinced this wasn't going to end without something exploding. "Sure, OK, but we need a backup plan for when-"
"'If'-" Geoff corrected.
"... 'if' this gets too out of hand." Jeff knew there was no 'if's in this scenario. "I have a solution, but I'm going to need you to promise me something if we end up resorting to it."
The green ghoul gasped. "You know I'm terrible at secrets! I said I'd take it all to my grave, but then I got to my grave and everything came spilling out like when I tried to fit in that crop top!"
"No, this isn't something that requires a secret," Jeff clarified. "If we use my backup, then you have to promise that Scratch can't be a guest at our D&B."
"It won't come to that though, Ollie's doing great!" Geoff's praise could not be backed up as well as he believed. The ghosts turned back around to see that Ollie had got the ruler back out and was measuring each cornbread scone to ensure they were identical. Jeff wordlessly motioned between the boy and his lover, making sure he was seeing this. Geoff's eyes drifted slightly apart and his goofy grin remained "This is fine."
Ollie kept his eyes on the cornbread scones the entire time they were baking. The millisecond it looked like one was burning he'd be ready to save it. Thankfully for his sanity, nothing burned, and he removed the third batch from the oven without any complications. "Yes! Third time's the charm!" The boy used a pair of tongs to grab a piece and give it to Geoff.
One bite into the cornbread and Geoff felt his teeth crack. "T'is 's not f'ne." He spoke through broken teeth. Good thing he was a ghost and could fix that by the next scene.
Jeff and Ollie grabbed their own pieces and clanked them against the table. Bread should not make a banging sound. "You over mixed it." Jeff bluntly explained what had gone wrong.
"It's OK-I can fix it!" Ollie's eyes had a crazed ring around the iris. "We'll try again!" The swoopy-haired boy re-gathered the ingredients. "We'll do it as many times as it takes!"
"Don't you think you could use a break?" Jeff was concerned about this pursuit of cornbread perfection and how unhinged this scenario was becoming.
"No way! I can keep going for hours!" Ollie insisted while grabbing the milk. He poured the dairy beverage into the cup… which, in his overzealous state, he placed upside down. Milk spilled all over the table and all Ollie could do was watch with a frozen stare. He cried a little.
OXOXOXOX
It's getting sad watching Ollie's attempts to make another batch of the cornbread scones. Sharkie was still trying to eat the previous batch of rock-like bread while the boy was desperately trying to keep it all together. It finally came to a head when they realized all the cornmeal had been used up.
"We-we can't be out!" Ollie frantically searched around the kitchen. "There has to be more! CORNBREAD NEEDS CORN!"
Geoff and Jeff shared a glance, the green ghost finally caved. "Fine, go get the backup plan." He resigned to the previously mentioned conditions. Maybe it was for the best. Imagine what would have happened if Scratch had been allowed to stay at their D&B. It would have been a whole episode of conundrums.
Without another word, Jeff opened a portal and went to retrieve plan b. Geoff was left alone with the boy desperately searching the kitchen for corn and the ghost shark using the rock-solid bread as building blocks.
10 Minutes Later
Jeff finally returned, shopping bag in hand, to find Ollie clinging onto his afterlife partner and looking like he was trying not to cry. Geoff had him wrapped in a big marshmallow-y hug and was talking to him "-and that was the third time I ruined my pancakes. I also learned there wasn't a fire department in the Ghost World."
"Ollie-" Jeff got the boy's attention and lifted the bag for him to see. "You have to go to work in an hour and there's no time to try to make the cornbread scones again. Let's try something else." He reached into the bag and held out a box of microwave ready Bell Pepper Puffs.
Once the box was in Ollie's hands, he looked over every inch of it carefully. Then he pulled out his phone and started typing something. "Uh, what are you doing?" Geoff wondered what he was up to.
"I need to check the company that made this for work ethics and environmental impact." Ollie answered.
Jeff facepalmed. "Of course you do."
The online search came up clean, so Ollie gave the pepper puffs the OK. Following the instructions on the box, he put the puffs on a plate and set the microwave timer. An uneventful three minutes passed before the puffs were ready. Ollie removed the plate from the oven and inspected the food. "It looks good. But how about the taste?"
The ghosts were offered the puffs and each took a bite out of one. They both gave it a thumbs up. "It's a success!" Jeff confirmed. "Great job Ollie!"
"But I didn't actually make this." Ollie didn't feel he deserved the praise. He failed to make a dish and resorted to microwaving food.
Geoff slung an arm around Ollie. "And that's OK. You've learned an important lesson today. When you're really bad at something, accept that you can never improve."
Ollie and Jeff stared at the green ghost, proud of himself for delivering the aesop of the story. The young chairman finally spoke up after a brief silence. "… I don't think that's a good moral."