Ash watched as Abbey’s scale coated fist cut through the air and drove its armored knuckles straight into the gray X she had made on the wall. She connected right on target with a thunderous boom of crumbling drywall that echoed off of the bathroom’s blue tiles. A fleeting cloud of dust kicked up as she tore a new hole into the wall triple the size of her clenched fist, and as it cleared Ash could see Abbey grinning ear to ear as she got to revel in a little destruction.

  The new hole she made was cracked around the edges, and was wide enough for her to grab its sides with both of her hands. With an extra grunt of effort, and her feet still firmly planted on the tiled floor, she started to pull with all of her might as the cracks she just made started to widen.

  “Get ready!” Abbey yelled over the sound of crackling drywall. “I feel something big on the other side of this that doesn’t want to be found!” Ash didn’t question Abbey’s senses as he held up his right hand and flexed his fingers reflexively. He summoned his five shot support as easily as second nature now with a burst of flames, and then held the gun with both hands to keep it from shaking.

  “Are there soulseekers in here after all? Or is something in Betty’s stream hostile?”

  “Open up! I’m done with puzzles!” Abbey shouted as the rest of the wall finally gave under her scale covered strength. Her hands came free, clutching smaller pieces of the wall as she as she now stood in front of an opening twice her width that ran all the way from the ceiling down to the floor. Still holding the pieces of drywall in her scale cloaked clutches, she dashed through the new opening leaving Ash to follow.

  Holding his revolver with both hands, he carefully advanced, stepping over small chunks of debris. Through the wall of the spacious, but single occupant restroom was a room easily five times its size, but not nearly as well lit. The same checkered tile remained a constant theme from one room to the next, but the decor had at least one major change. Along the back wall of the dimly lit tiled room were nine of the same porcelain perches, all evenly spaced apart from one another.

  However, the one sitting directly in the middle of the lineup already had someone sitting on it. An older looking man, with short hair graying at the roots, eyes closed, and hands resting in his lap as he sat on his quiet throne.

  “Ren!” Abbey shouted out, a newfound urgency coloring her voice that Ash hadn’t heard before.

  “That’s him? Is he okay?” Ash’s eyes quickly scanned the remainder of the room, but with very little light to cover its edges every corner looked like an ambush waiting to happen.

  Abbey took off running, still holding the chunks of drywall in her hands as she booked it across the tiles. “Ren! Wake up, dumbass!” Abbey barely sprinted across two feet of the room before two of the toilets surrounding what seemed to be their missing Diver started to shake, trembling enough to audibly crack the tiled floor directly underneath them. She clenched her teeth midstride, already bracing herself for what might come next as she continued barreling forward.

  The lids of the toilets flanking Abbey’s sprinting target suddenly flew upwards. They were blown back by sudden, explosive streams of the same thick, inklike substance Ash first encountered when he entered the soul stream. The explosive ink geysers shot straight up into the air before they came crashing down to the ground right in front of where Ren sat. The ink twisted and thrashed as it collided with the ground, forming a massive sludge boulder that coated the tiles where it landed in a slithering inky discharge.

  The fat leaking blob throbbed on the ground before it suddenly held still, just as the ‘front’ of it shifted to reveal a large, singular bloodshot eye emerging from its inky depths. The pupil, dark and deep, bounced around the eye’s confines until it locked on to the person heading straight for it.

  “What the hell is that thing!?” Ash shouted, doing his best to aim his gun forward, but his hands were trembling each time he tried to raise his weapon.

  “Target practice!” Abbey answered back as she pumped her brakes, shoes digging into the tiles underneath her as she threw her arm back like she was about to throw a major league pitch. In her right hand was still another piece of drywall, just slightly bigger than her fist. Her grip tightened for just a moment during her windup before she sent the piece of drywall flying towards the writhing mass in front of her.

  The blob didn’t have enough time to react as the drywall chunk was suddenly hurdling towards it. The single eye on its surface opened wide in surprise when just a moment later the drywall chunk collided with its unprotected ‘face’ dead center. In a small explosion of dust and debris the ink ball let out a pained hiss even though neither Abbey nor Ash could see an opening where sound could come from.

  The eye that appeared on the writhing sludge boulder closed as it shook back and forth after the chunk of wall hit it where it hurt, giving Abbey exactly the opening that she needed. When the newly spawned creature finally opened its eye again, Abbey had already closed the distance between them. Ink coated tendrils grew from the creature’s sides to protect itself, but it was already too late.

  With one scale covered fist low to the ground, Abbey planted her feet as hard into the tile covered floor as she could. Her arm moved quickly enough to slice the air around her as her knuckles sunk directly into the sludgeform’s single eyeball. The poor surprised entity curved around her fist for a split second before it rocketed up into the air and collided with the ceiling, sending a loud and echoing splat throughout the room.

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  Before Abbey could celebrate the new splatter on the ceiling the rest of the porcelain thrones besides the one Ren was sitting on started to tremble. Abbey brought her arms up defensively, forming a shield of black scales as she readied herself for whatever would come her way.

  Ash took a deep breath, determined to be useful in this situation as the air around him suddenly turned frigid. One by one, each shaking toilet stopped in their tracks as translucent blue crystals formed at their base. It only took a couple of seconds for each trembling seat to get quickly encased in what looked like cages of ice that quickly formed around them.

  “It’s about time I found you guys.” Ash heard from behind him. With his gun still held in one hand, he quickly looked back towards the opening he barged in through, seeing Gray holding onto a part of the broken wall as he stood in the makeshift doorway. Gray exhaled as if he just took a deep breath, frosty mist flooding the air in front of him. The moment his gaze and Ash’s met, he gave him a small smile as he stepped into the room.

  Abbey didn’t look back behind her as she approached Ren still sitting on his unchanged porcelain perch. Since yelling at him didn’t work before, Abbey scooped him up and slung him over her shoulder without a second thought, looking ready to bolt, but as she noticed the ice shimmering around her she visibly relaxed. “Gray!” She yelled from across the room. “This place sucks ass and I want out already!”

  Gray cupped his hands around his mouth like a makeshift megaphone. “We can leave after we cut off the soul stream!” Ash looked towards him, gun still in one hand as he caught his breath. Gray brought his hands back down as he took a few steps closer as he rubbed his hands together, looking like he was trying to keep warm. “Sorry about all this. It wasn’t exactly what I had planned when I brought you along.” Gray apologized as Abbey started making her way over with her unresponsive cargo.

  “I’m sure it could have gone worse.” Ash tried his best to relax a little, letting his hands unclench as the gun he was holding faded away with a small burst of bright flames.

  “You already figured out how to summon your soulbond?” Gray took notice. “You’re doing even better than I ever could have hoped.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” Ash admitted, trying not to look at Gray directly. “Now that you’re here though, and we found Ren, we can save Betty.”

  Abbey stopped just a few paces away from passing Ash, still holding the unresponsive Ren over her shoulder. At the same time, Gray looked at Ash’s earnest gaze before quickly glancing at another part of the room. “I guess Abbey didn’t tell you then.”

  “Tell me what?” Ash was quick to ask.

  Gray turned his gaze back towards Ash as he rested a hand against the makeshift doorway that he came in from. “Betty, the waitress here, she isn’t like you, me, or Abbey.” Gray looked off into the distance, looking like he wished there was a better place to discuss this. “Vandal said it before, didn’t he? Divers have a certain special quality, and well,” he trailed off, sighing before he continued, “Betty doesn’t.”

  Ash didn’t respond, but Abbey walked up beside him with her goal still perched upon her shoulder as she gave Gray a nod. After Gray acknowledged Abbey, she continued on through the hole she made previously and disappeared from sight.

  “Wait, wait wait hold on,” Ash started, “so Betty is just dead? Dead dead? Without a chance of coming back like me?”

  Gray looked over Ash’s face, his own expression unchanging from its neutral state. “Ash, I need you to listen to me. People like us, souls like us, are very different.”

  “How am I supposed to know that if I don’t even know how she died? Is she even dead?”

  “Ash, we should talk about this somewhere else. I made a bad call bringing you to a job like this.” Gray’s gaze flickered from Ash to the wall behind him, staring at the porcelain perches he just recently covered in ice.

  “Well that doesn’t matter when I’m here now, does it?” He answered back. “What makes Betty so different from me?”

  Gray’s lips parted to answer, but he shut his mouth again before he said anything. “I’ll let you know when we leave here, is that enough for you to at least trust me for now?”

  “No.” Ash answered. “I need to know now. What makes Betty and I so different from each other?”

  Gray took another couple steps forward, closing the distance between himself and Ash as barely a foot of space was between them. “Fine,” he finally said.

  “This world, this system, doesn’t give a shit if some waitress dies.” Gray stands his ground, staring straight ahead with Ash right in the line of fire. “She could have lived for another ten, twenty, even thirty years, and she’d still be the same exact person yelling out of that lonely diner window.”

  Ash didn’t respond yet as he waited for him to continue.

  “She was dead long before her soul stream opened up, and we’re just here to make sure no one else slips on the mess she made.”

  Ash didn’t respond right away. It didn’t feel like there was anything he could say to argue against what he didn’t know. “Then there’s nothing I can do?” He finally asked.

  Gray placed a hand on his shoulder, his palm feeling as cold as the inside of a well maintained freezer. “You can tell her it’ll be alright,” he paused, his fingers tightening for only a moment, “even when you know it’s not.”