A dialogue snippet that turned into this:
Standoff (TGAMM Oneshot: Spoilers for season 2)
Summary: Half-feral, trapped in a snare barely big enough for his fluctuating form and Oliver Chen's gun trained directly at his head, Scratch is out of options.
So why isn't Ollie taking the shot?
Intrinsically, Scratch was a pretty simple, lazy guy. He liked an easy routine, a familiar path. The hardest work he did most days was figuring out how to avoid hard work. He didn’t have the patience for strategy (why, when cheating was faster and easier?) and trying to think in multiple directions at once just sapped his strength and made his head hurt. All that variety, all that junk humans did to ‘better their mind’ was just so hard.
Astonishingly, it was made ten times harder when he was near bursting out of a containment unit, a wide barreled gun trained directly between his eyes.
He couldn’t even pinpoint where everything had gone wrong, too much focus funneled into clamping down on a base instinct: trapped in a snare barely large enough for his normal size and his afterlife on the line, Scratch’s scare form had started to take over.
He strained against the effort of keeping his ectoplasm intact, phantom breaths coming in rapid huffs even as his teeth lengthened, spines burst from his arms, his shape swelled and pressed dangerously against unyielding steel and electrons. Somewhere, quietly in the back of his mind and underneath the screaming need to SCARE SCARE SCARE SCARE, he realized dimly that he’d never been afraid of being crushed until now, after he’d gained the ability to phase through objects at will. Well, most objects. Go figure.
So it was here, desperately trying to reign in his higher processes, that through an animalistic red haze Scratch glowered into the eyes of his captor. Ollie stood mere feet away, that biohazard-yellow gun a shield between him and his helpless prey, and Scratch acknowledged a terrible gleam of satisfaction as even now the weapon trembled in the boy’s hands.
Across the other side of the warehouse, behind the orangey shimmer of the Chens’s forcefield, Molly lay prone, the tiny movement of her breaths the only reason any of the Ghost Chasers were still alive. Esther knelt next to her, first-aid kit in hand, expression one of barely-contained terror. Not his doing, but he’d take credit. Maybe next time she’d learn not to chuck a knockout bomb at a child. Well, at him. Molly had taken the metaphorical bullet (not a pretty mental image, given the circumstances), and if anything happened to her then Scratch was going to make all their lives a living hell.
Provided he got out unscathed. Somewhere, out of the thick of battle, Andrea fought to take the snare’s electronics offline, and no doubt June was blocking every attack with equal fervor. And even with legs as long as Libby’s, it would take too much time for her to reach the McGee’s house and bring back Pete and Sharon. Time Scratch didn’t have.
Imprisoned, half feral with the urge to survive, and one finger twitch away from total erasure, Scratch was out of options. Just him and Ollie, and the trap and the gun.
And the father.
Ruben stood, face and hands pressed against the forcefield, vibrating with adrenaline. His attention laser focused to his son, caught on the opposite side with the enemy (that was Scratch, he had enemies now), the shouts of excitement and encouragement died at Ollie’s hesitation and veered distinctly into confusion and urgency.
“Finish it, Ollie, it’s trying to take attack form! End it before it escapes!”
Ollie’s only acknowledgement was the hitch of his shoulders, eyes locked with Scratch in a way that felt like he was missing context. Scratch had seen this boy’s hatred firsthand, he put things on the internet that should not be there, so what stopped him now?
A memory flashed to mind: Molly throwing herself in front of the knockout bomb, and someone shouting ‘NO’ nearby, and Scratch swelled painfully against the snare as a fresh wave of rage tore through his ectoplasm like the hiss from behind his fangs.
Ah. So now he knew.
“We’re so close, Ollie,” Ruben continued to not shut up, voice like fingernails down Scratch’s strained self-control. “Our family’s whole legacy has led up to this! You can give us everything we’ve ever dreamed, just pull the trigger!”
The monster was caged, and still fear shone like a beacon behind Ollie’s eyes. Everything they’d worked for at his feet and he still didn’t move. Didn’t look away.
Scratch was not a smart man on the best of days and now, claws scoring uneven grooves in the ground as their length oscillated with his concentration, he was grossly, hilariously far from his best. “Do it kid,” Scratch snarled, sucking harsh breaths from between gritted teeth. “You know what it’ll cost ya.”
“Do it, Ollie! This is our only chance!”
A long beat passed.
Ollie’s hands shook, but his trigger finger didn’t waver.
From outside, a roar, and then a scream. Good old Geoff. The Chens’s heads whipped towards the door, and their combined fear-smell nearly whited out Scratch’s mind for good.
“Go help June!” Ollie’s voice pitched high with terror, and something else that tugged Scratch’s mind back to clarity. Surprise registered through the darkness clouding his mind as his parents obeyed, gathering a limp Molly into their arms, and a strange quiet settled over the warehouse.
And then, there were two.
Most of the threat and the fear-smell were gone, but Ollie still had a gun to his head and Scratch was still angry. His hue shifted, deepening to a sickly green, mouth stretching wide in a grotesque grin. “So what’ll it be, Ollie? Gonna finish me yourself? Or gonna make your daddy do it for you?” The snare creaked ominously as his growth strained the limits. The ropes of plasma burned fierce red lines through the green, but he barely registered the pain. “Either way, she’ll never talk to you again. Won’t even look at you. She thought better of you, y’know. Tried her darnedest to change your mind. You want her to wake up and find out she failed?”
Ollie’s eyes hardened, and Scratch’s temperature dropped several degrees. He really should’ve known better by now than to make calculated risks, this one might’ve just cost him his life.
Ollie’s hand moved, and Scratch bit back a flinch before watching it dip into a pocket and emerge with a square device. As he pressed the giant, terrifying button right in the middle, Scratch braced for pain.
Instead, the pressure around him retreated, and Scratch floated up into the air. Free.
Free, and alone with the Ghost Chaser, who kept the gun trained on his head even as scared tears pooled at the corners of his eyes.
They stared at each other in a stalemate, Ollie unwilling to put down his weapon and Scratch wobbling between forms as he considered whether to put his uncomfortably pent-up scare energy to good use. Or at least entertaining use.
“Run,” Ollie whispered, and Scratch couldn’t tell if it was a threat or a plea.
The instinct-induced haze lessened. If Ollie took the shot, he’d be disappointing Molly. (Who was he kidding, life without Scratch? He’d be devastating Molly!) But if Scratch proved the Chens thoughts on ghosts right, he’d be doing the same thing.
Ollie hefted the gun higher, looking no keener to use it. “Run,” he repeated.
The easy way out. No lie, Scratch had considered it immediately. Molly was safe enough with the Chens, and all he wanted was to disappear into a dark corner and forget this whole nightmare ever happened. He could run, and they’d be more careful, and this whole debacle meant Molly would stop hanging out with Ollie, and Scratch’s life could go back to normal. Save being on the run. Forever.
(Or until the Chens died out, and with Scratch’s luck this would absolutely turn into a multigenerational blood feud.)
Facts were: he was outed, and so was Molly’s connection to him. They’d never be safe, not while the Chens were determined to cleanse the world of ghostkind.
Scratch took a deep breath and thought of his family, and the last of his spines smoothed and his colour returned to its natural blue and his shape stabilized. It might’ve been easier to go underground, but even these past few months of avoiding their (many, many) ghost traps had triggered an exhaustion that would’ve been called bone-deep if he’d had bones. He didn’t want to put his family through that, and frankly, Scratch was just damn tired. All he wanted was to sleep for a century.
He'd finish this first.
“Look, Ollie,” he started, relieved to find the bass in his voice had returned to normal. “As far as ghosts go, I’m a pretty lazy guy. Rather take a nap, y’know? All that exercise ain’t good for you.”
Ollie’s eyes darted to the side, face screwing up in that ‘um actually’ wince that Molly liked to adopt whenever she annoyed him enough to bring up the flat-earth theory. The first flicker of character he’d shown since this whole standoff started. “Not how that works, but what do you mean?”
Scratch smiled at his mortal enemy, and somehow it felt natural. “Means I’m tired of running, kid.”
END
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