Oh no you don't!
Grim knew NY was prone to weird incidents, but this was getting ridiculous. Some nutcase trying to take over the world with lizards and a gang manufacturing alien tech was bad enough, but then the aliens said finders keepers didn’t count and opened a hole in the sky.
(was it actually a hole in the atmosphere? Where they all going to die of suffocation before the giant snake things got to them. Also, how were they flying?)
Don’t ask him about the gang thing. He hadn’t meant to find out on purpose, but his last set of foster parents had been a real piece of work. Two halves of a whole illegal disaster zone. They hadn’t done much anyway, probably wouldn’t for years, since the stuff kept blowing up and killing people and outing their bases, so it was a controlled disaster waiting to happen, if nothing else.
He ducked a stop sign as it went hurtling where his head had been, and prayed Kala, the ghost girl he had met at his high school and had magically befriended on the spot, wouldn’t haul him into the air. When the gang was having a shoot out on the top of a building she pulled him off and down into the street in a free fall before catching him, and he was deeply shaken up by that. Like, real bad, and he was great with trauma usually.
The building behind him was on fire. Maybe someone inside had had the gas on. But plenty of spirits were already on it, subtly keeping the flames at bay and guiding people, invisible angels of protection.
Ghosts normally couldn’t do much, unless they really got worked up. Not I-got-annoyed-at-something-I-couldn’t-stop emotional, like I-saw-my-murderer-kill-someone-else emotional, the kind of thing that could cause a saint to commit murder.
With all that was happening all around them, there was plenty of emotion to work off of.
Kala hissed like a cat at a snake-like flying alien as it passed, to no effect. Obviously.
He ran forward, hopping over growing cracks and holes in the pavement without hesitation. Most people would be in shock by now. Most people would be cautious and careful, wincing at every creak and inhuman roar.
Grim, he decided as he watched Iron Man whiz by and shoot effing lasers at some levitating slug beast and just kept running past that whole mess, was pretty firmly not most people.
But he certainly wasn’t the bunch of superhero maniacs running around trying to blow these things up either.
But he could still help. His messenger bag, half school supplies and notes on mythology (a slightly more than casual hobby to anyone who asked) and half medical supplies, since injuries carried over on someone’s body in death.
He could set up a temporary help station. Something to treat broken bones and burns and stuff. It’d be hard, juggling the living and dead and not getting got in all this nonsense, but his stupid help-people-instinct was going again, and he just couldn’t stop himself.
He’d cheer himself up with ramen later. Make up for it in his subconscious.
Because imminent danger over a long period of time is totally fine as long as he gets some food out of it, according to his monkey brain.
Ok. He had to find a building tucked out of the way, but not too far out of the way, and stable. Get set up. Herd people over, probably help in evacuations knowing him.
Ghosts, his brain supplied. Ghosts could help.
Haul people out of wreckage and calm them down instinctually, restock him on supplies and make sure the building wasn’t about to crumble.
He looked around a bit. Most of the buildings in this area were offices, full of glass (shattered) and steel. (easily spread germs, no thanks) That wouldn’t work.
He mapped out the area in his head as he vaulted a fallen support beam. Coffee shop on the corner, glass on two walls, nope. The open decorative brick square was a good landing area for freaky sky giants, even if the clear space was tempting. The brief historic area was better; it had less glass everywhere. But he didn’t know how stable the ancient things were. But it would be full of people…
Curses. He was going to be so dumb today, huh?
He asked Kala to scout out the block for somewhere good enough, and she saluted him before vanishing through a crumbling concrete wall. He sighed through his nose and stopped in an alleyway at the sound of crying.
No time like the present, right?
They eventually found a restored brick building that had been an open-floor office, with copper instead of steel for the Aesthetic and stuff. After checking in with the local spirits for any hazards, they got to work.
Ghost games of telephone are surprisingly efficient. Soon enough, Ghosts were hauling unconscious patients through the door right to him.
He blinked away the sheer absurdity of the situation, and focused on the problem at hand. Second and third degree burning, probably from the fire he saw earlier-
Some time later (he didn’t know. He never claimed to have a good sense of time, never would. Things were a blur right now anyway, one of his coping mechanisms when stuff got too wild for him to handle all at once) Bruce Banner himself puttered by in a bucket of bolts generously called a motorcycle, and he just couldn’t justify not stopping him. A weird medical condition unexplainable to modern science? That was most of what he did nowadays, skipping school to listen to stories and patch up shimmering figures right and left.
Also, the green energy coming off him in waves was pretty concerning all on its own. No one else seemed to notice, so it was probably a Him Thing.
“Hey! Hey, sir! You alright?” He could pass it off as not knowing him, maybe worried he had a head injury. He was riding straight towards the portal thingy, so that would probably fly alright. Banner blinked at him, slowing involuntarily as his clunky engine sputtered. Perfect opening.
“I’m fine.” He said, looking dazed. Straight to the point, plus he had ground to stand on with the concussion thing. Hallelujah, amen b*tches.
“Sir, you’re driving into a disaster zone and you don’t look too great.” He pointed out in his best Concerned Customer Support Voice from helping out sometimes at the hospital. (he hadn’t been able to figure out how to sneak in and help the dead there, it was a mess anyway despite his trying. One of the surgeons thought he was nuts, and a whole group of the night nurses were convinced her was a cryptid.) “Are you sure you haven’t hit your head?”
His lips pursed. “I’ll be fine. I… have friends out there. You might want to move, too. This area might get attacked.”
To be fair, they were now two blocks from the portal weirdness. He sighed, eyeing the perimeter of the dead shoulder to shoulder around the building protectively. “We’ll be fine, trust me.” A hacking cough, then a groan from behind him. Sh*t, the burn patient!
He turned around, scanning the woman instantly, and after some ‘miracle’ ointment he made himself, (chemistry, people. The witches of old knew what was UP) he turned around to nothing. And no Kala. He caught glimpse of mint green-silvery familiar silhouette trailing a motorcycle in the distance, and sighed.
Did he trust his personal wreck friend to handle an alien invasion while being dead?
Absolutely.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks since The Invasion. There had been an actual invasion, evacuations (eventually), defense measures, a freak lightning storm, something about Norse Gods (he did tons of research in the aftermath because of it, he liked to come to these sorts of things prepared) and then superheroes. IRL superheroes.
He thought that on top of the ghost stuff, he had his life time supply of weird.
He, according to Squirrel Girl and Spiderman outside battling a human-rhino mutant man in the street, was very, very mistaken.
It was turning into a legit ‘villain of the week’ scenario. The neighborhood by now just knew that when stuff got funky, to head straight to him, the super ‘lucky’ emo kid who seemed untouchable in the worst situations. (and only the worst situations)
This led to him babysitting four elementary kids while Kala hit Rhino Guy with a street sign. He kept roaring at her and Spiderman, and Squirrel Girl sounded like she was on drugs. A junkie disney princess. That was four feet away and hitting an animal-man-hybrid repeatedly with an actual superhero and enough squirrels and birds to drown in.
“Mama says you can help. Can you help?” A girl with copperish red hair asked him, gripping her box of sidewalk chalk tightly.
He recalled the medical station from earlier in the month, and nodded.
“Then why don’t you go beat ‘em up!?” Accused a nine-year-old boy.
He looked him in the eye. “Violence isn’t the answer to all problems. Sometimes you have to be smart.” He remembered all the times being able to sneak around kept him alive in foster homes, once in a natural disaster, and now in a superhero comic book’s opening plot arc. “Like spies, or ninjas.”
A girl in a tie-dye skirt wrinkled her nose. “Ninjas hit people.”
“But only when they have to, yeah?” He booped her on the nose, and she giggled and swiped wildly at his face in revenge.
“So Spiderman’s not helping?” Asked Angry Child, looking slightly lost. Grim slipped a hand into his hoodie pocket and kept a straight face with a bit of effort at the ridiculous conversation happening here and outside.
“Nah. He’s helping his way, I’m helping mine. Ok, I have candy, don’t ask how or where, and definitely don’t tell your parents. Don’t choke, ok?”
Kala is a gummy-stealing fiend. But it did come in handy sometimes.