Desperate

Chapter 9

Warning: If you are sensitive to graphic (described character death) or gross scenes, do not read this chapter! Thank you! :)

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Vlad exited the Ghost Portal then glanced around at the room he entered, a bit surprised with the appearance of it. It was well-organized, which he expected, but very small, which was odd considering whoever built the portal needed a substantial amount of space to fit it.

He flew further in, noticing a rather small table holding beakers filled with what looked to be ectoplasmic blood alongside several test tubes with various colorful substances. From his angle, he could tell they were chemicals of some sort but had no idea what kind of chemical they were. "Strange," he muttered then glanced over to his right to see another small table with what looked to be weapons sitting on top, "who owns this place?"

He glanced forward, noticing another small table but that one didn't have any weapons or chemicals cluttered on top; instead, there was a stack of papers alongside a few pens. He rose a curious brow and flew over to it, reading off of the papers. They were newspaper articles, magazine articles, and journal entries of mostly ghosts or paranormal activity except for one news article. He picked up the distinctive article, immediately noticing a picture of a family on the front of it along with the headlines of 'Unexpected death of the Davis family. Mother of four accused of involuntary manslaughter but found innocent in trial.'

He rose his eyebrows in surprise then skimmed over the article, reading that the Davis family was killed in an unexpected fire in their household six years ago; the mother was the only survivor. "Oh no," he whispered, sympathizing for the poor widow, "she must be devastated."

"What did you expect?" a shrill and penetrating voice yelled from behind him.

Before he could react, he let out a short-lived scream when a burning pain hit his lower back and rammed into the table in front of him then fell on his knees, hissing as the burning sensation spread along his back. He resisted the urge to scream again as he carefully stood up, feeling blood trickle down his back. He looked over his shoulder, noticing a woman, most likely in her forties, dressed in a purple jumpsuit and aiming an unidentified weapon at him. He lifted his hands up halfway, hoping the gesture would calm her. "Ma'am, please, I mean you no harm."

She scoffed. "'No harm'? If you ghosts didn't want to hurt me, they would have never murdered my family!"

His eyes widened when his ears picked up the alarming sound of the weapon starting up again and took to the air right as a pink beam shot at the spot he was originally standing in before. "Ghosts murdered your family? Why?"

"I didn't exactly have time to ask as they were strangling me!" She lifted her weapon, aiming at him.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry for the loss of your family, but I had no hand in their murder!"

"It doesn't matter! All ghosts are killers, liars, and deceivers!" She shot another beam, making him quickly move to the right to avoid the blast. "And you will pay."

He grunted when the impact of another blast forced him to slam into the ceiling. He held his head, it pounding against his skull, and narrowed his eyes. "So you want to play rough? Fine. Let's play rough."

He shot a pink ectoplasmic blast down at her, forcing her to jump out of the way then continued to shoot up at him. He flew around her secret lab, trying to make his flight pattern unpredictable, and continued to shoot ectoplasmic blasts down at her.

After several minutes of their battle passed, Plasmius' glare intensified. "This is ridiculous!" He turned invisible, forcing the widowed woman to stop firing. "I am not here to hurt you! All I want is for you to shut down your Ghost Portal!"