Electric Butterfly - 003

 In retrospect, it must have been horrifying to see a six-foot-tall woman built like an MMA fighter lunging at him over a mattress, half covered in blood and trying to hold him down like some horror movie villain. Still, being taller, faster, and stronger, I managed to grab him after a brief struggle, the electricity dissipating against my fur as I looked down at him.

“Relax, relax…” I tried my best to soothe him. I really wasn’t good at that, though, and he was a trembling, whimpering mess despite my attempts. “Just, okay…listen up, we aren’t going to hurt you but I need you to calm down okay? Okay.”

“W-well…wait…who are you…? I thought…I was dead??” he asked, clearly confused by everything. I wanted to do my best to explain to him how he literally fell into my arms from some tall apartment building in the city, but as always, Zein was quicker to the draw, leaping over the bed and taking a seat in front of us with that overexcited grin of his.

“You see…” he began. “This big spooky girl, Kim -- she brought you here, because you fell from a building or whatever, right into her arms. Bam! Like in a movie!” He smashed the fist of one paw into the open palm of another, eyes lighting up at this part. He really was an easy to amuse person, but this overbearing excitement was only bound to terrify the fennec boy in my arms even more. I was right, of course, because he flinched at every little movement, from the leap to the punch, he squirmed and trembled in my arms, and I could only let out an exasperated sigh in response to it all.

“Then, she brought your bloody-barely-alive-body here. I thought you were gonna die too, but she let go of you and you just shot off lightning bolts everywhere!!” he waves his arms wildly, doing his best to emulate lightning bolts to him. “And now, you’re awake, and Kim’s echoes is preventing you from making more electricity, yeah. You’re an echoes user now, Sam! You looked death in the face and now you’re like, a superhero!”

Sam’s face went from shock to disbelief, back to shock, then what appeared to be a combination of outright confusion and disgust.

“How do you know my name?”

“Kim pilfered your wallet when you were all dying and stuff.” he said rather bluntly, tossing the wallet back to Sam and flashing him another cheeky grin.

“I did not.” I said, shooting my boss another displeased glare. I could only imagine the thoughts going through Sam’s head at the time, first awakening to find out that he was not dead, then that he had supernatural powers, and to top it all off to find out that two strangers had essentially stolen his wallet to learn about him.

“You know, I really can’t believe you’re twenty-two!” Zein continued, leaning forward to inspect Sam. Sam scooted back against me, looking over to the kitsune rather fearfully.

“Fennecs are just…small” Sam muttered, trying his best to keep his distance from Zein while still being held quite firmly by me. “Uhm…u-uhm miss… could you let go of me?”

“If I do will you stop electrocuting everything around you?”

“How am I supposed to know that!? I don’t even know how I’m doing it!” he exclaimed. I let go of him at that point, his body sparking up as another arc of electricity shot into the air and dissipated above us. As soon as he saw this, he stopped and looking up in bewilderment, the sparks settling down. Then his eyes got wide and he let out another shriek, the sparks growing stronger as several arcs of electricity shot across the room, one colliding with a small alarm clock that was sitting next to the shattered nightstand lamp. The small black box exploded as it was struck, shards of plastic and circuitry shooting across the room. I lunged at him again, grabbing his small form and pulling him close to prevent him from causing any more damage.

“Can you please, for everyone’s safety, just calm down for five minutes?” I blurted out, staring down at him. He looked back at me, stunned into silence by the sudden reprimand. “It looks like the electricity your body is generating is directly proportional to how overstimulated you are. So if you’re freaking out and flailing around, you could probably kill us all. You aren’t able to do anything while I’m holding you because that’s the kind of ability I have. I nullify energy”

I paused, letting him take in that information. “So if I let you go, will you try to stay calm?”

Another long pause, then he nodded in agreement. I let him go, and although he was still trembling, the sparks had died down to a very light, infrequent static discharge. I slowly backed away from Sam to give him some space, and Zein leaned forward a little bit to inspect him. His eyes scanned the smaller male with an almost perverted curiosity, and Sam flinched back slightly as Zein peered at him.

“You’re quality!” Zein said, sitting back and smiling. “Definitely a quality fen. You’ll make a good addition to the team!”

“Team?” he asked, backing up against the wall nervously. Sam sparked up a little at the mention. I kept an eye on him just in case things got out of hand again, but he seemed to be trying his hardest to prevent another device exploding in the apartment.

“Well, yeah, team.” He replied with a shrug. “You have an Echoes ability now, so you’re kind of stuck with this little crew here y’know?”

“N-No…” Sam managed to stammer. “I…I don’t really…no, I don’t want to do whatever you guys…do… what do you do?”

“We’re ghostbusters!” Zein exclaimed, curling his tail around himself and hugging it tightly. “Like the movies, but more badass. Kim here can block almost any attack with her super badass Kung-Fu-movie moves �" “

“It’s Tae Kwon Do” I corrected. Zein just kept talking over me.

“And I have a powerful weapon, super strong, called the Hurricane Gauntlet! Think of me like Doomfist but without all the doom �" oh! Or Vi, but with only one fist!”

“What’s a…doomfist?” Sam asked. Although, that question went unanswered as Zein rambled on about the ‘benefits’ of being an exorcist, or as he so affectionately called them, ‘Ghost Busters’.

“Think of it this way, you get to learn how to control that wild living-Taser ability, you get to go on adventures and be a celebrity with the world famous Divine Territory Exorcist Company! We’re government funded, you know” Zein said, leaning in with a smile. “Which means benefits out the a*s too. 401k and all that jazz, right?”

“Divine…Territory?” Sam asked, scratching the back of his head.

“We aren’t as world famous as he likes to think.” I replied, pulling my phone from my pocket, casually scrolling through text messages as we spoke.

“We aren’t…okay, so we aren’t world famous, exactly, per se…” Zein said. His excitement was a bit dampened, but knowing him, that wouldn’t last for long. “But we have traveled to all sorts of exciting places. Wouldn’t you like that, lil guy?” He reached forward to pet Sam’s head as if he were a small child.

He scooted closer to me in response, sparking up a bit and looking up at Zein with the slightest hint of anger in his eyes. “I’m small, but I’m not a kid.” he said, crossing his arms. I raised my eyebrows and looked down at the pouting fennec. He may not have been a child, but he certainly had a boyish cuteness about him.

“Still, the point stands, Sam!” Zein said, standing up and staring down at us both. “You’re in a position where you can either accept help or become a walking electrical time bomb!”

I immediately grabbed Sam. Telling someone they were a time bomb wasn’t exactly conducive to keeping them calm. He squealed and tried to pull away from me, tears welling up in his eyes as he shouted at Zein.

“Why would you say something like that!?” he exclaimed, small paws clenched into fists. “That’s so mean!” He wasn’t wrong.

“Sorry, sorry…” mumbled Zein, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes a bit. “The point is, you’re going to need to learn to take control of this power, man. Right now, Kim is holding you back, and if you’re with us, then she’ll be able to help you out if things get out of hand, but at the end of the day you can’t just rely on someone like her to literally hold your hand and keep you from actually hurting someone”

An uncomfortable silence fell across the room. Zein wasn’t wrong for once, right down to the way he approached the topic with Sam. He was, surprisingly, extraordinarily accurate with his observations. It was rare, but these moments always made me wonder if I didn’t give him the credit he deserved. A childish man, but intelligent when he needed to be, I guess.

I tried to speak up a couple times to break the silence, but couldn’t find the words, merely letting out an awkward sounding ‘uhm…’ after a moment. More silence followed.  There really wasn’t an appropriate line of conversation to follow at this point. Zein gave Sam an ultimatum, and I was just sitting there, holding him and looking from one boy to the other. Zein had started fiddling with his phone during the wait, and Sam was staring at the ground looking dejected. I figured at this point, it was safe to let him go, so I slid away from him and stood up. He looked up at me, a little surprised at the sudden motion, but not enough to cause another arc of lightning to erupt from him.

“So…” I began, trying to choose my words as carefully as I could. “I think…that you don’t know how to use this ability. So maybe…you should trust us to help you out with it. How about…” I paused again and crossed my arms, looking off to the side and avoiding eye contact with either my boss or my newfound acquaintance. “How about you work with us until you learn to control your echoes. Then, if you want, you can find a new job. We pay well enough, being exorcists and all that, so you won’t have to worry about making ends meet. So… a temporary hire.”

“Temporary…? I don’t have to stay?” I could feel him looking up at me, the desperation in his voice evident.

“Only temporary. Once you get on your feet, you can go back to doing whatever you want.”

“But I want him!” Zein protested.

“Listen. He’s not cut out for this line of work anyways.” I scowled, looking back at him from the corner of my eye.

“Wow, rude” he retorted, huffing and turning away from me. It wasn’t rude, it was the truth �" a guy like this working any kind of dangerous work wasn’t feasible in the least. Could you imagine an anxious, miniature Fennec working as a cop or a firefighter? He was scared of his own shadow, there’s no way he could hunt apparitions that were born from the darkest part of the human psyche, not at all.

“Look, I’m only being honest” was what I said in response, keeping my reasoning to myself for the most part. “He’s simply not made for this.”

“I dunno” Zein teased. “They said Mulan wasn’t cut out to be a soldier but look at what she did!”

“Mulan wanted to be a soldier, that reference doesn’t make any sense!” I groaned, turning to face him. I hadn’t noticed, but he had inched a lot closer to me during his taunting, to the point that we were almost nose to nose. I leaned back and grunted. Zein was so weird.

“Ok, so, more like… Oh, oh! That Assassination Classroom manga? They didn’t want to have to kill an alien overlord, but they had to adapt yeah!”

“I...sure, Zein.” I said, exasperated. I had never read whatever he was rambling about, and at this point in the evening, I didn’t have the strength to argue it any further.

“I’ve decided.” rang a small, hushed voice a few feet away. In the midst of our bickering, it had appeared that Sam had stood up and faced us. “I’ll do it. T-then, when I learn how to control this, I’ll leave. Now, um… Kim, was it?”

I nodded.

“Okay, Kim…and…who are you?” he asked, looking up at Zein. “I never…I never got your name.”

“I am the amazing Visitant Expert, specializing in Morbid, the world renowned Zein!” he declared, placing his paws on his hips and grinning wildly. “At the forefront of ghostbusting technology, I helped exorcise the legendary Gabriel in Puerto Rico �" “

“That was Ocean’s 7” I corrected.

“ �" and brought peace to the holy lands of Nashua, New Hampshire when a grudge threatened to consume the whole city!” he continued, mowing right over me.

“Holy lands…? I mean, you helped out with the Grudge issue, but…holy lands?”

“Me and my faithful partner and amazing roommate Jason Maccon also single-handedly defeated a malicious shaman that was enacting revenge on someone’s entire family and trying to drive them to madness with a curse, yeah!”

I was pretty sure that was a plot to a movie, but at this point, I wasn’t going to contest him any further.

“So, I guess you could say I’m a sort of celebrity around these parts.” He smirked, looking down at Sam, who didn’t seem to understand any of what was said �" after all, why would someone with no involvement in the supernatural understand any of this �" nod his head in false understanding.

“So Kim, and Zein,” Sam began with a gentle nod. “I will…I will work with you, to control this power, yes.”

“Well then, welcome to Divine Territory!” Zein beamed with excitement, before running off to the kitchen. After a moment, he ran back in with another beer, thrusting it forward to Sam and smiling. “Let’s have a drink to celebrate your new life as a ‘Ghostbuster’, yeah?”

Sam hesitantly took the bottle, popping off the top and taking a sip as he peered at Zein with a combination of cautiousness and confusion. There was another long pause before he piped up again, looking up to Zein with those big blue eyes I would soon grow accustomed to seeing five days a week.

“That’s all v-very nice, but…can I borrow your shower? Maybe a change of clothes?”

He motioned up and down his body, the blue button-down shirt tattered, most of his clothing soaked in blood.

“Clothes? Buddy you’re a bit shorter than me but I mean, like…” he thought for a moment, scratching the back of his head. “I’ve got a couple shirts and hoodies I guess? Nothing is really gonna fit you.”

“I just need something to walk home in that doesn’t make me look like a murderer”

Rather blunt all of a sudden. It made sense, though.

“Okay, okay. I got some stuff in the closet, help yourself,” he said, waving Sam off to his room. “You can use the shower connected to my room”

As Sam shuffled off, still in a haze and taking in everything that had happened over the past couple hours, Zein dropped himself on the bed, patting a space next to him for me to sat.

“So, Now that you and I are alone, what do you think of him?”

I sat.

“I think this is a horrible idea.”

“Yeah, but it’ll definitely make the animated series more interesting, don’t you think?”

“What?”

“Kimberly Rosario, the straight man in a world of weirdos, invites yet another one into her life when she so bravely saves him from a violent attack!”

He was always one for over embellishment, but this was ridiculous.

“How will this boy affect her life? How will they grow together, partners in a world of the supernatural!” he turned to me. “I could see it on HBO”

“Anything but that.”

He laid back, looking up at me and snickering.

“You gotta admit, it’d be entertaining”

“I’d have to say I disagree, Zein. I’m hardly ‘protagonist’ material, don’t you think? Wait, why am I even discussing this with you!?”

“Why are we even discussing anything at all?”

“Well, we were originally talking about my feelings on the whole situation, but you went ahead and made it weird”

“Kim you’re a talking tiger who fights monsters for a living I’d say we passed the point of weird about 3 pages in to this thing”

Pages?

“Wait, what does me being a tiger have to do with any of this?”

“Well, Tigers are kind of an East Asian thing, you know? It would look weird on paper �" a tiger in Massachusetts, I mean.”

“People immigrate to this country all the time. Didn’t you say that your family came from Okinawa?”

“Ah, the beautiful girl remembering something about her bumbling employer! A crush, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“Definitely not.”

“Yeah, your taste has always veered away from a charmer like me towards boys with…softer looks, put it that way”

I gulped and looked away from him.

“I don’t know what you’re implying!”

“You like soft boys, that’s all I’m saying!”

“Soft boys.”

“Boys who are soft, yeah.”

“Moving on �" “

“Soft boys who can you can carry like a blushing bride on wedding night!”

“Moving On!”

Zein had an uncanny talent for embarrassing me on a very personal plane. I did like men smaller than me, although the dating pool for someone who was six feet tall often consisted of shorter people to begin with, wouldn’t you think?

“You know, Kim, if you were more true to yourself, don’t you think you’d lead a much happier life?”

“Talking about men with my boss is inappropriate”

“Would it make you feel better if I told you my taste in men?”

“Absolutely Not!”

Sam stepped out of the bathroom just in time to see me barking angrily at Zein. He was dressed as well as he could be, given the height difference. A black hoodie with red and white markings up and down the zipper and sleeves, which would normally sit square on Zein’s shoulders, were now hanging down to the fennec boy’s knees. Beneath that unzipped hoodie was an equally large shirt that simply read ‘BREAD’ in large letters shaped with varying seeds. He wore the same jeans I found him in, presumably because nothing else fit him.

“Bread? Really?” I asked, turning to Zein.

“You wouldn’t understand passion because you’re such a simple girl” he retorted.

“Don’t you mean fashion?”

“That’s what I said!” He knew what he said.

“No, you said…passion”

“I mean, they’re basically the same thing!”

“Not at all!”

“Besides, you don’t understand either”

He made me so angry sometimes.

“So…what happens now?”