Kal flexed his – Greg’s – hands. He stretched, briefly testing out various muscle groups. Oh, that’s rough, he thought as he found that he couldn’t even touch his toes. “Greg,” he said out loud for Taz’s benefit, “you need to work out, my dude.” A popping noise in his shoulder emphasized his point.

Greg thought he’d be more freaked out about no longer being in control of his body, but it felt less like being a prisoner and more like watching a movie. He felt disconnected, not exactly numb, but distant.

That is to say, he felt stable enough to roll with the joke. “I’m- was, an engineering student. No time for that stuff,” he thought to Kal.

Kal shook his head. “Tut-tut. Well, you’re going to be sore tomorrow, that’s for sure.”

“That’s what she said!” Taz laughed.

Greg mentally rolled his eyes.

Kal scanned his surroundings while he said, “It’ll be fine. Give me a second to bulk up.” He took a breath and focused. His soul, still bound to the bat, housed the majority of his power. Reaching through the ephemeral link between this body and the bat, he siphoned over bits of his soul, infusing it into Greg’s flesh, muscle, bones, and organs.

Can’t forget that last bit, blunt force trauma is a bitch on the internals.

Tendons grew taught, bones denser, and the skin tougher. Kal wasn’t a numbers kind of guy, but if he had to quantify it, he definitely reached the optimal threshold for bonking. He tested the bat against the ground, a single tap. Satisfied, he stepped up to one of the tombstones, drew his bat, and smashed it across the gravemarker.

The top quarter shattered, spraying dust across the grass and sending a chocking cloud of debris in Taz’s direction.

Taz glared at him, and said, “You’re paying for that.”

Kal grinned and rapidly said, “He means you, Greg.”

Greg mentally groaned. He asked, “I don’t suppose you have any magic that can fix that up?”

“What do I look like, a repairman? You called me up for smashing-”

Taz interjected, “Phrasing.”

Kal continued, “-not for un-smashing.”

Taz nodded sagely, then adopted a sober expression. He said, “Alright, enough fucking around. We’ve got a malefic entity claiming dominion over this cemetery, and it needs to be exorcised. I will force it to manifest, and Kal will strike it-”

“Bonk!” Kal interjected, miming a batter’s swing.

“-down until it is destroyed. A cut-and-dry plan for a straightforward situation.” Taz thought for a moment, then said, “No time to waste, we shouldn’t let it build up any more power.”

Taz immediately began chanting in a lilting tongue while retrieving a candle from his backpack and lighting it with a flicker of hellfire.

The reaction was swift and violent. A rumbling baritone groan of frustration accompanied a burst of wind that whipped through the fog, attempting to extinguish the flame. Another noise of frustration echoed out when the hellfire refused to be snuffed. A demon’s flame is far stronger than a simple gust.

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The fog stilled, then writhed under an intangible pressure, squeezed by unseen restraints. Soon the mists coalesced into a humanoid form. Hovering just above the ground, the phantasm flailed its wisp-like limbs, leaving trails in the air that quickly dissipated. Where the head should have been, instead was a bonfire teal spirit embers. It howled, spraying flecks of flame at the duo. When it touched skin, it sizzled and popped, leaving light, stinging burns. The brunt of the sparks simply dissipated on contact with their clothing.

Burn cream ~ $15

Greg would remind himself to pick some up on their way home.

Kal charged the phantasm with a wicked grin on his face. He raised his bat on the approach, and when he got in range, added his momentum to the horizontal swing, aiming for center mass.

Greg wasn’t sure what to expect. He had given it fifty-fifty odds that the bat would simply pass through, leaving the group up shit creak without a paddle, or that the ghost would take the hit but simply shrug it off.

What he didn’t expect was for the ghost to launch into the stratosphere like Kal just hit a home run. Nor did he expect the ghost to reappear from the mist that pooled at the group’s feet, right behind Taz.

Kal, having anticipated the ghost’s plan of attack, had already begun sprinting towards Taz, bat raised and ready to strike.

The ghost had only just finished manifesting itself before being hit with an overhead swing, pancaking against the grass. The hothead’s head of heat burst like a balloon, forcing Kal to shield his face with his clothed arms. Taz, still channeling the binding rite, had no opportunity to defend himself. Pain overwhelmed him as the flames scorched the backs of his legs, nearly bringing him to his knees from the agony. For a moment, the rite was interrupted.

Without hesitation, the ghost flared in its anger, forcing Kal to take a step back to avoid the waves of spectral heat.

Sensing the strength of the ghost climb as its anger did, Kal knew he had to give Taz the opportunity to continue the rite. He drew his bat and swung it in a golfer’s swing. Being weightless, and given the absurd strength of Greg’s enhanced physique, the ghost was punted back into the wall of mist surrounding the duo. It did not immediately reappear, as it had been momentarily stunned by the release of its bindings and Kal’s assault.

Kal looked over to his friend with a concerned look and asked, “Are you ok?”

Taz nodded, biting his lip and sucking in a breath. Without any preamble, he launched right back into the lilting tongue of demons. Greg did not miss the now pained tone Taz chanted in, where it before had been a practiced, elegant thing.

One again, the mists coalesced before them, manifesting the raging ghost. It warbled, trembled.

Kal flashed his teeth in a bloodthirsty grin.

The ghost was afraid.

The possessed human ran forward and rained blows against the spirit. His enhanced musculature and soul-reinforced weapon worked in tandem to deliver devastation upon the ghost. All the while, sparks continued to fire off in random directions, though only a few landed on bare skin. One came dangerously close to Greg’s eye, only missing by sheer luck.

Greg was frightened yet could not help but feel secondhand the thrill of battle.

This better not awaken something within me. My life is not a shonen battle manga.

That wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen to him, but it was up there with cultivation and edgy grimdark settings.

“What’s a show-men?” Kal asked between swings.

“Oh hell no,” Greg thought back.

Kal chuckled.

Accompanied by the sound of rattling chains and the clunk of a heavy lock, Taz finished the rite, blowing out the candle.

Greg felt reality solidify, which was somehow a thing he could quantify. If he had to describe it, he would say it was an experience adjacent to waking up from a daydream, or when a set of circumstances finally sets in, and you fully realize the implications of the situation you are in. Kind of like the opposite of disassociating.

The ghost had a much starker reaction to the phenomenon. It started flailing violently, wailing a ghastly wail, the flaming head doing its best impression of a sparkler.

Kal tensed bringing his bat to bare. He infused as much of his remaining soul as he felt comfortable expending into the weapon. Crimson waves rippled across its surface, a faint black aura haloed it.

Without hesitation, Kal brought the weapon down upon the ghost. Rather than be smushed against the ground, the spirit cracked, fissures spiderwebbed out from the point of impact. All at once, the ghost shattered like broken glass, the fire snuffed.

The ghost had been exorcised.

Well, beat to double-death, but same thing.