Silhouette

Dealing with the Shadow Commando and Sam had been swift. As soon as he had left the basement James crossed path with one of his loyal employees, and simply ordered them to lock up the basement to make sure no one would mess with the demon's corpse, as well as to inform the nuns or Mother Greenheld of this as soon as possible, as well as to tell them that he would be taking one of the orphans on a little trip.

"Uh, which one?"

"Trixie, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Yup!"

After that he dropped by Sam's auxiliary workshop he set up in the orphanage a few days before the expansion campaign to prepare the Techzooka and, after nonchalantly asking how long he had been gone precisely and being somewhat relieved that his soul mending had only taken a day, had invited him to go back to the sewers' lair with him.

"Sorry boss, but I think I'm going to stay down here one more day or two. I think there are a couple of things I could do to upgrade the security here, and on our way back I noticed a few interesting piles of scraps. Don't worry, I'll be back to working on new stuff soon, and we should still have enough made in advance not to worry about running out of merchandise. Worst case scenario Goliath should be able to handle it until I'm done."

"No problem, but now that a path to the 'normal' part of Zalcien is secured, we should be able to get our hands on new interesting materials."

"Meh, not as many as you think. The good stuff requires tons of authorizations, we'd be better off making an outpost in the Scrapeland or dealing with folks from the center slums."

"If you say so."

"Tell Goliath I said hi."

After that James directly left the orphanage in his civilian garb as himself. It wouldn't do to let the word spread outside of his little group that Silhouette had a soft spot for kids. At least he thought so. Villainous kids might see that as an opportunity, or maybe people would start using children as hostages, or maybe there would assumptions about why he was so easygoing with them.

Yeah, Silhouette is supposed to be creepy, but not a creep. Regular me is too dorky to be seen in that kind of light... I hope. Argh, how do other adults that hang out with kids that aren't theirs do it?

As soon as they passed the door Trixie looked around at the outside of the orphanage, taking in the sight of the ruined and abandoned Sunken City as she slowly floated forward after James. Maybe it was because he himself didn't have a face, or perhaps it was the same way he knew she was a little girl and had recognized her despite all of the ghosts being so similar, but James could clearly tell that it wasn't wonder or curiosity that filled her. It wasn't even sadness, it was... Just realization. Empty, cold realization.

"It's one thing to hear that the world has changed, another to see it yourself, isn't it?"

She nodded absentmindedly.

"I know how it feels. If you want we can take it slow before going up."

She shook her head and passed him, running ahead.

"It's not this way!"

She immediately lost all momentum and turned around to look sheepishly as she giggled - which, once you ignored the inane creepiness of the ghost of a child laughing, was pretty cute.

"Come on, let's go. Stay close to me and try to avoid attention. We wouldn't want an exorcist to get any funny ideas."

The walk to James' usual elevator station was pretty short, all things considered. It wasn't that far from the orphanage - though it still took a good thirty minutes to go there by foot, and Trixie occasionally stopping to gaze at a random piece of debris or skipping ahead in the wrong direction only made the walk longer. Really, the only reason it had taken that long for James to find Mother Greenheld's orphanage in the first place was that he had taken his time exploring during his first visit.

Still, at long last, they reached the station, and as soon as they walked in they were welcomed by the high-pitched and energetic voice of Mimi, the skeleton in charge of it, and today she was wearing an orange sundress with some floral motifs.

"Hi, James! Long time no see, cutie. I don't even remember you getting down here!"

Uhhh, yeah. Forgot about that. Sneaking by the vampire guy and turning into a planer is more discreet than doing things right, but I'm pretty sure it's not allowed.

"Hi, Mimi. And yeah, my boss found a neat trick. Can't tell you more than that though."

Despite her empty eye sockets, James was almost certain she winked at him.

"It's a secret, I get ya! Say, who's the adorable little darling floating behind you?"

James wasn't surprised that the skeleton could see the little ghost despite her best attempt at staying hidden, which for a ghost was unsurprisingly incredibly easy. It's hard to haunt a house and make spooky pranks when anyone can see you floating about casually, after all. But, although James didn't know much about the undead, he had found out through his Internet research after first meeting Mimi that all undead could sense "death energies" - whatever that meant - and therefore could sense each other at a basic level. It was why, despite being incredibly controversial and unpopular entities, most places with high security like banks had at least one undead staff member to make sure no one would pass through the walls of the vault.

"Her name is Trixie."

"Hi!"

"Hi to you too cutie! I hope James is being nice to you?"

"Yeah! Very nice!"

"That's great! But seriously James, where did you find her. She's adorable, but I can sense the traces of other ghosts on her and I don't want you to be attacked by a horde of vengeful specters trying to keep her. Feral undead are no joking matter."

"She's from Mother Greenheld's orphanage. Don't worry, I have her approval."

"Didn't you promise not to go there last time?"

"Remember my boss? He made a deal with her. Now there are a few of us hanging around there, taking care of things and repairing what we can. It's pretty cozy once you get used to the random apparitions. Much better than my last place for sure."

"Ah, if you say so. But trust me, James, it takes more than a few nice words to 'domesticate' haunting spirits. If they were easy to handle they wouldn't have had the will to stick to the mortal plane in the first place. Maybe I'm wrong and they regained their sanity since the last time we sent someone to check things up, but still, be careful."

"Don't worry Mimi, I know better than to get myself killed."

"You'd be surprised how many times I heard that."

"Hey, it worked out okay for me so far, no?"

"Sure. So, why are bringing the little cutie up?"

"I want her to see some non-dead kids. It'd be good for her to meet new people her age, and I'd rather not bring them down."

"Oof, yeah, good call."

"See? I'm not completely reckless."

"I dunno, I don't know that many guys who would trust a ghost girl, adorable as she may be."

"Say, do I have to make some papers for her?"

"Uh... It's not all that often that someone's first trip is on the way up... And usually, there's not much you can do if a ghost just wants to go somewhere... Ya know what? I'll let you go scotfree. Vladdy can't sense undead, so there shouldn't be any problem there. I only want one, tiny, little thing in exchange."

"Sure, what is it?"

"Honey, I NEED a new dress. The good shops down here are too far from the station for me to go and last time I showed up at the Black Block they almost burned me at the stake. Not that it would have worked, regular fire isn't that great against bones, but it would have ruined my favorite blouse and skirt combo."

"Eh, sure. I'll bring it next time. Any preferences?"

"Oh, I think I could go for green this time!"

"Got it. Thanks, Mimi."

"Thank you too, James!"

After that, they quickly went up. As Mimi had told them the vampire in charge of the upper station didn't notice Trixie, in fact, he didn't even bring up the fact he hadn't seen James go down in a while. He just kept on reading his magazine, not even bothering to check James' papers - it made sense, he was one who set them up to be made in the first place, but still, he could have been someone else that just looked similar.

In any case, once they were out of the Sewage Network station and the dirty flooded tunnels, James quickly checked that there was no one around before turning into what could be best described as a shadow centipede and crawling on the ceiling of the tunnel. The place was big enough that no one would notice him without purposefully looking up, which allowed him to rapidly and stealthily move about through the Sewage Network on his own without needing to wait for a sewer ferry. Martha had been amiable and a good source of basic info, but James liked his privacy and safety more. Plus, he didn't have to stay close to the water full of atrocious organic and inorganic waste and countless bacteria.

I'm no hypochondriac, but there's a limit to what I'll tolerate. At least the regular sewer tunnels have grates and are somewhat clean thanks to all the cockroaches roaming around, but this... Ugh, I'm sure I saw a body floating about the other day...

"Try to stay in the air, Trixie. You don't want to go splash in what's down there."

"Berk, water brown."

"Exactly."

After that the trip back to the passage to the sewer lair was easy. Thanks to his connections to infused objects James always knew where it was relative to his body, and the memory said body was capable of was nothing to scoff at. Being reborn into a different form was a weird experience, but at least James was glad his was a really useful one. Considering how many stories he had seen, read, or heard on the Internet about protagonists getting downright self-destructive bodies in stories on Earth, his shadow state really was on the nicer end of things. Especially with the whole "it has every Aspect known to man" thing.

Once James was back to the little passage he returned to his humanoid form. Every member of the Shadow Commando was in the Sunken City, either in the orphanage or helping reorder the various gang bases they had conquered, so were Sam and Solvent, and Larry and Barry and their two bodyguards were still managing the shop - which James should visit soon - so the only people left in the sewer lair aside from the ratlings were Polisson and Mischief, who were all infused and loyal, so James had no reason to play pretend right now. Well, technically Grover was still alive and around, but James doubted the prisoner would hear him from his cell.

"Kids, I'm home!"

Before he realized what happened James was being jumped on by five furry bodies that sent him tumbling to the ground.

"Daddy!"

"Dad!"

"Papa!"

"Father!"

"Old man!"

James chuckled as he formed various tentacles to pet the ratlings under the curious gaze of Trixie, and it took him a few seconds to realize something.

"Wait."

James stood up and lifted the ratlings into the air as he did so, still petting them all the while.

"You've grown."

The last time he had seen them, the ratlings were still smaller than regular rats - David especially so and Goliath not so much, with their remarkable sizes - but now that he took a good look at them, they were way beyond that, closer to cats than rats.

"Indeed, father."

"It's been a while, dad. How's work?"

"Foudre! Papa just came home, let him relax a bit."

"Eh, I don't think the old man knows what relaxing is."

"Stop being mean David! Daddy, you're going to stay around a little longer, yes?"

James chuckled and put them back down on the ground as he ruffled Goliath's hair.

"Yes, I'm taking a short break. And look! I even brought a friend for you to play with!"

The ratlings all perked up and looked behind James, noticing the ghostly form of Trixie for the first time.

"Hi! Me Trixie. You fuzzy! Very cute!"

"Oh gosh, thank you! You're adorable too.'

"Hi, Trixie! I'm Goliath! Do you want to watch Captain Cyan with us?"

"What Cyan?"

"Oh, you're going to love it. If David doesn't spoil any of the episodes we try to show you."

"Hey, I just like talking about the plot. It's not my fault she doesn't know about it yet."

"David, do not."

James simply watched over with an imagined smile on his non-existent face.

Yeah, I feel like I made the right call.