"Well there's gotta be something you find fun..." Ramsey muttered, hands on his hips as he stared at the cheerless little thing. According to Varick, his charge was extremely lethargic when mortals weren't around and actually spent a lot of time as a formless black smoke in the crawl spaces of the house.
Kodiak didn't answer him. He wasn't up for it anyway. As much as Varick was trying to get him to raise his energy levels and be more intimidating than mopey, Kodiak couldn't do it. Maybe when he was a few decades older. Or maybe mopey was just this thing. Kodiak would be fine with that.
Now, he barely even let Kodiak be by himself, because he knew the moment the poltergeist was alone he liked to go incorporeal, and that was bad for his growing powers. To get stronger, he needed to be physical except for when he was trying to travel quickly. Varick started letting his friend come around, a loud, obnoxious trickster creature named Ramsey who wore bright colors and clashed really badly with the falling-in abandoned house Kodiak was created in and continued to occupy, much to Varick's distaste.
Ramsey wondered how Kodiak even managed to manifest in the first place. The spirit barely had the spirit to do anything, it was like he was made of eggshells he was so easily crushed. There was hardly room for a single mistake up in that over-worrying head of his yet here he was, lurking all over the place and scaring mortals out of their skin through mirrors. Weren't poltergeists supposed to be full of rage or something? Haunting occupied houses so they could chuck things at mortals any given minute of the day or start spontaneous fires? Ramsey didn't know much about ghosts, he was a trickster and his niece was a demon-spirit hybrid. He knew that sometimes things moved around Kodiak on their own, like what was left of the shutters would rattle, but it was hardly the archetypal poltergeist activity.
"Fun... isn't really my... thing." he replied, sprawled across the sagging couch.
"You're a teenager, right? You look like one anyway, let's go into town and find you something." Ramsey suggested as the idea hit him.
Kodiak needed a breather. "I don't think... I'm supposed to do that..." he whined, worrying about what his absent mentor would have to say about it. "Varick would be... mad if he found out."
Ramsey waved his hands dismissively, his trickster nerves buzzing at the thought of anything related to chaos or rule-breaking, "If he found out, which he doesn't have to. He wants you to perk up a bit anyway, and I see why, you're like a little black raincloud."
"Thanks..."
"You're welcome, now c'mon." Ramsey said, grabbing the ghost by the back of his jacket and snapping his fingers.
The next thing Kodiak knew, he was in an alleyway somewhere in the city in the middle of the night. He had only ever heard of the city referenced as a far-off place, some lights in the distance he could see from the attic window but had zero desire to go near.
Ramsey busied himself with using his magic to make Kodiak look more human, which wasn't too hard, it just took a change of eye color and adding some rosiness into that lifeless little face. "So, what's something mortals your age do for fun?"
"Talk... to mirrors... in the dark." Kodiak answered sarcastically.
"Movie theatre it is!" Ramsey said, looping his arm through Kodiak's and dragging him out onto the sidewalk. "It's a friday night, plenty of kids your age will be out here."
"Physically... I'm only... six months..." Kodiak said, mostly just to be contrary.
"Well then you're very mature for your age mister, here we go!" The trickster grinned, spotting a group of kids looking at the selection of movies playing. "Just remember to talk a little faster, mortals aren't as patient."
With that, he was giving Kodiak a hearty shove, sending him stumbling forwards, but he managed to recover before anybody noticed. He stared up at the wall distractedly, eyes roving over the bright posters and bold titles.
"Ugh, god, fine. Look, maybe he can help us pick." a voice to his left groaned, and Kodiak felt a hand tap his shoulder in a friendly manner, "Yo shortstack, can you give us an opinion real quick? We're trying to pick between Light of the Void and Blind Date."
He looked over at the group Ramsey had shoved him towards. Two guys and three girls. All five of them were taller than he was. Maybe Kodiak actually was short. A gangly dude in glasses was the one to talk to him.
"Uh... I don't watch a lot of movies." Kodiak drawled, "I haven't seen either of those."
Glasses shrugged, "Do you think horror or sci-fi is better?"
Kodiak took a stab in the dark, "... Horror." He didn't know what sci-fi was.
Glasses elbowed the girl next to him, "Told you horror is better, let's get tickets for Blind Date, it's the best slasher to come out this year."
One of the other girls leaned around the group to look at Kodiak. "I've never seen you before, do you go to St. Laury's or Westview?"
The word saint crawled down Kodiak's spine in a distinctly uncomfortable way, so he answered, "Westview. I'm an exchange student."
Glasses nudged Kodiak's elbow, "Wanna see the movie with us? We go to Westview too, so you can have some friends if you're chill. You clearly have good taste. " he added this last part with a glance at the girl beside him, who stuck out her tongue.
"Sure."
Kodiak didn't know if the movie was good or not, it was the first one he'd ever seen, but it killed about an hour and a half and he wasn't bored, which was an unusual feeling. Glasses' name was Leighton, the other guy was Chad, Becca and Lucy were dating, and Gina kept staring at him when she thought he wasn't looking. She also kept whispering to him throughout the movie. He had to resist the urge to let his aura whisper back.
Once it was over the group of them walked out, Kodiak already subtly looking around for Ramsey's stupidly loud Hawaiian shirt. He was tired, and had his 'fun.'
The others were talking, and Kodiak was standing nearby, but not really listening.
"Hey, Koda!" He turned around when Gina called out to him. Becca and Lucy were grinning behind her and trying to hide it. "We usually go bowling after the movies, do you wanna come with?"
"Sure. I've never been bowling before." Kodiak said. Forcing himself to talk at a faster pace was making his voice get scratchy.
Leighton snorted, "Dude what have you done before? Did your parents just shut you up in a room for eighteen years before they moved out here and let you out?"
"No, I'm just boring." Kodiak deadpanned. For some reason, it made them all laugh.
And so he got dragged along to bowling as well, and he hoped that Ramsey was spying on him, because he didn't want to make that long trek back up to the abandoned house alone. The city was already extremely confusing as it was, cars and things were so loud.
Gina was also still sticking to him like glue, and he had no idea why. Between turns at the bowling alley (they let him have bumpers after he gutterballed it four times), she talked to him and asked him questions.
"You said you don't go out much, but what do you like to do for fun?"
He figured the truth of "nothing" wasn't a normal answer, and the only other things he did were his lessons with Varick, so he lied.
"I like to read, mostly. And go hiking." Vaguely normal answers, he was doing well.
"Ooh, what kind of stories?" she asked, leaning into his personal space.
"Scary stuff." He said shortly, subtly cringing away from her.
"Do you have a favorite author? Mine's Ricky Goldsworth, he writes a lot of true crime." Gina continued. Kodiak was starting to dislike her.
"I dunno, it's hard to pick." he said. His teeth were starting to clench involuntarily, and his aura, mostly suppressed, was starting to rise, becoming a subtle clammy feeling in the air, "I don't really pay attention to who wrote it, I go through so many anyway." His head snapped up. "It's my turn." he added, getting up quickly and picking up the much too heavy bowling ball. Chad had said to pick one that was easy to lift and Kodiak forgot to account for his supernatural strength, so his ball was much heavier than Becca's even, and she was on the football team.
Once bowling was over, Kodiak was starting to feel the spite of Gina's social hoops, and as they were walking out into the parking lot, he found himself suggesting, "Do you guys like ghost hunting?"
There was a general consensus of agreement.
"There's this house about twenty minutes out of the city..."
The next morning, Ramsey whistled sharply as he walked through the front door, (literally, he just teleported through it. The knob got jammed sometimes), "Yoohoo, rain-on-my-parade, did you make it back on your own?"
The trickster entered the living room, stopped, and smiled. Kodiak's mirror was uncovered against the wall, a few new snuffed candles joined the assortment of old ones from past games on the floor, along with two abandoned flashlights. There were some smears of blood on the rough floorboards, along with scratches from someone's fingernails. Through the doorway to the kitchen, Ramsey could see a mortal's legs, deathly still.
Kodiak himself was passed out on the couch, physical instead of incorporeal, (Varick said he had a bad habit of dissolving when he fell asleep), cheek mushed up against his folded arm, mouth slightly open, and his hands and jacket covered in blood.
He chuckled at the childish temper, then bent over and shook the poltergeist's shoulder. It took a minute, but Kodiak opened his eyes and looked at him reproachfully. They were back to their normal full pitch-black.
"You make some new friends?" Ramsey asked, trying to suppress his smirk and failing.
Kodiak growled quietly, then mumbled, "I hate... mortals..." Before promptly ignoring Ramsey and going back to sleep. Ramsey's grin nearly split his face in two. Varick was gonna be real happy with him.