Issue 1 Downtime

It was after midnight and the moon was full in the sky, shining through the windows of the student dorms when the two monstrous looking specters drifted in through the walls of Brigid and Haley's room. Letting out a faint hissing sound, the two floated over to Haley's bed, flexing their long and tapered claws.

Haley's eyes fluttered open, and as the room came into focus, she froze.

And that's when she screamed bloody murder, her TK smashing out in all directions, into the bed above her, cracking the drywall next to her bed, and shattering the windows of the room.

"...what the hell?!" Brigid started awake.

The blast threw the specters against the wall, leaving them both screeching in pain. They didn't seem to share Regan's weakness to psychokinetic energy though.

And, as one demonstrated by shredding the couch with its claws, they also didn't share her inability to influence the physical world.

"Oh, that's it..." Brigid muttered, snapping to wakefulness and getting out of bed.

"You leave her the hell alone!"

She picked up a chair, and swung it full force and with frightening accuracy at the one on the couch.

The chair knocked it to the ground, but it was getting back up quickly.

Meanwhile, the other one was about to charge Haley again when a redheaded blur flew through the wall and tackled it. The two grappled and spun in midair, the thing trying to throw Regan off of it.

Brigid kept swinging the chair, not letting up.

"Stay down!"

"Get the fuck away from me!!!" she screamed almost incoherently, her TK smashing things wildly

The specter Brigid was attacking was smashed into the floor over and over, screeching and scrambling at the floor like a wild animal. It wasn't dying, but it was getting hurt.

Meanwhile, Regan wasn't doing so well. The specter she tackled had her by the throat and was lifting her above its head.

"Tubby!" Regan says, "A little focus please! Blast this thing!"

Haley continued to scream, sounding more angry than terrified now. She tore the covers off her bed, rising from it, and the whole room shook, cracks forming in all of the walls until a pummeling wave of TK flew at the specter Regan was grappling, the air visibly distorting in its path. It was hard to say if Haley had enough control to avoid hitting Regan as well.

Brigid meanwhile was doing pretty well until a chunk of plaster fell on her head, staggering her.

The specter tried to move out of the way, but Regan held it tight until the wave hit them both. The specter screeched in pain, matched by a scream coming from Regan, The blast threw the specter into the wall, staggering it so that it looked like it was struggling to move.

Regan was on the floor. For a moment, she didn't move. Then slowly and unsteadily she got back up to her feet. A dark cloud was forming around her hand, swirling around in the air.

The specter charged and Regan intercepted. The clouds formed into a shortsword, the blade black as the midnight sky and dotted with the bright lights of stars.

Unfortunately, Regan was not really trained for sword fighting. The specter dodged and knocked Regan away with a wave of its arm.

Meanwhile, the one Brigid was "fighting" was trying to crawl away. It looked about as weak as a kitten.

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!!!" Haley screamed, tearing at the air with her hands, trying to rip the shadowy creature in half with her TK.

Chloe, meanwhile, was perched on the windowsill, trying to figure out the quickest way to get in.

It worked. The creature was split in half, dark smoke spilling out of it. The fogs flowed back into Regan's prone form, the specter disappearing as Regan reabsorbed it.

Haley whipped around and tried to do the same thing to the other specter currently crawling away from Brigid, practically roaring. Blood started to rush out of her nose and he room spun.

The creature exploded in a spray of dark fogs, being reabsorbed back into Regan. Regan lingered for a moment, before fading away and disappearing.

Haley sunk to her knees, panting, blood staining the front of her shirt and dripping onto the floor from her nose, gripping her head and opening and closing her mouth like she wanted to cry out in pain, but no sound was coming out.

Brigid meanwhile was blinking past the pain of getting bonked in the head.

"What... what just happened?"

"I....I don't know," Haley whispered, curling up into a ball on the floor, tears running down her face, blood still dripping onto the carpet.

"Do...do we still have kleenex in here? Somewhere?" she asked, finally trying to stem the flow of blood from her nose with one of her hands.

That was about when someone, and fittingly the one who could most accurately zero in on where all the crashes and shaking floors, was coming from, started pounding on the door.

"Not so loud!" Haley yelled at the pounding, immediately regretting it, wincing, closing her eyes and practically whimpering. "Fuck... my head..."

The pounding stopped, and was replaced by... some sort of sound with the lock.

Chloe, meanwhile, had managed to get the window open, and flapped into the room.

"...Jesus, how did that bird get in here?"

In answer, Chloe shifted into human form "Is everyone alright?"

"My head hurts so much..."

Haley was curled into a ball on the floor, her hand covered in blood from her nose.

"You...you okay Brigid?"

And with a click, the lock unlocked. Huh. That was harder than it said on the website... Cal opened the door. "What happened? Is everyone okay? Is... Haley? What happened?"

"I just got knocked about a bit..."

She looked to Chloe, then to Cal.

"...really? The whole campus comes rushing in now?"

"That window was bloody hard to open!"

"Hey, I ran the whole damn way and just got here!"

"I'm sorry I broke our room, Brigid," Haley said quietly, not really acknowledging the others now in the room.

It was a disaster in the room; hunks of drywall were missing on nearly every wall, the windows were spiderwebbed with cracks, the couch was shredded from where the ghosts attacked it, and flipped onto its back.

Mercy stumbles out into the hall, wearing a long black cotton nightgown. She has her phone clutched in one hand as she approaches the commotion.

"What's going on? Should we call emergency?"

"I... ah... probably maintenance," Cal said, glancing back at Mercy. Huh. Thought goth girls would wear lacier things to bed...

"Does anyone know where the other girl went?"

"Um, I don't know the maintenance number. I tried calling 911 but I guess that doesn't work here."

"Is... everybody okay?" By now Mercy has made it to the doorway, though she doesn't poke into the room.

"She was fighting them too. She's... oh God, what if she's hurt?"

Haley pushed herself up to a seated position woozily, holding her hand over her nose to try and stop her nosebleed. "She just disappeared after I tore those things apart. She like. Ate them, and then faded away."

Haley winced. "Will someone find some tissue and Excedrin. I don't think i can stand up without falling over. Fucking room won't stop moving.

"I... Ah... Yeah, give me a minute," Cal said, glancing up the hall and then hurrying off to get some Tylenol or whatever the hell he had.

"Sorry, Brigid," Haley sighed, her hand still pinching her nose closed. "Didn't mean to..."