P.I.E. Operation: PARASITIC

LI: A Friend in Need

"You know who I am, Toast." Jimmy smirked.

He's smarter than you think, Jim. He won't agree if you tell him lies. Ghost's voice resonated through Jimmy's head.

I-I don't have to listen to you. Jimmy thought back to him, covering an ear in response to how loud Ghost was.

"You can't be Johnny... He would never turn to such violent ways--" He coughed sharply enough for his head to jerk towards the ground. He looked back up. "Excuse me." He spoke with a bit of sarcasm.

Jimmy crossed his arms and rolled his eyes as if this were a lecture. "I know what you were going to say. You've repeated it a few times already."

Toast was almost glaring at him, but it was more of a distant stare.

"Listen, bud." Jimmy could feel Johnny Ghost mentally cringe at the word. "I haven't seen you for a while. You couldn't have possibly known what unspeakable things I've done while you weren't breathing down my neck."

"Unspeakable...?"

Jimmy gave him a grin wide enough for Toast to see his sharpened teeth.

Sharpened teeth?

Johnny Toast looked again, but Ghost's smile was as normal as any other human. I must be delusional. He thought.

Jimmy finally answered his question. "I may or may not have killed a girl."

Toast gasped. "Sir, you couldn't possibly have--"

Jimmy's crazed smile became more of a sly one. "Don't fret, Johnny." Jimmy interrupted. "In fact, you've seen the girl today. Alive." He gazed through Toast, as if thinking. "She was certainly one of the strange superhumans, like you and I... but I'm not actually sure how she came back so quickly."

Johnny still stared at him. He was sort of rocking back and forth with how weak he felt.

"Based on recent events, it seems her will to live revolves around winning the love of one of your boys, Toast."

The Acachalla siblings glanced at each other at the same time. What Maddie had said earlier about cloning herself must have been accurate after all.

"While that girl may or may not have been immortal, I know you have a breaking point. You can only be hit hard so many times until you perish." Jimmy said, roughly poking Toast in the stomach.

Johnny's abdomen caved in for a second, and he doubled over, a tiny puddle of blood pouring out of his mouth. When he lifted his head again, a look of pure anger spread across his face. Toast couldn't take this.

However, as he was considering whether or not it would be polite to uppercut Ghost, he realized Light was told to come up to him first as he seemed to be the security-guard-powerhouse of the five.

Zeron held Johnny Ghost to the wall with the front of his hoodie, his fist to the side but aiming towards Johnny's nose. The force of holding onto Johnny tore open the barely patched knife wound Jimmy created, causing more blood to spill.

At this point, Light had already lost a lot of blood until the arm wound began to close, as there was a large stain of red spread across his sleeve, so losing more made the situation a little less feasible. His arm began to drop, along with Ghost, who was smiling at him.

Sally ran over to guard the front door to prevent Jimmy from escaping the house completely.

Billy went to run for the back door. On the way, he stepped on an oddly discolored wood board and two opened under his feet, throwing him into a lower floor of darkness. His cry of surprise faded quickly.

Sally gasped, and forgetting the door anyway, ran up to the trap door where her brother plummeted through. She stared down into the hole, but it was pitch black.

Light dropped to the floor and unintentionally let go of the murderer, leading Toast to pick up the slack and finally give Ghost the uppercut he deserved. "Sorry, sir... it had to happen at one point." He weakly grabbed onto the arm of the disturbed P.I.E. member. "Sorry." He apologized again, but to Light this time. "Are you able to get up?"

"I can manage... It's only my arm." The other stood up somewhat easily.

Zeron and Toast turned around in unison to find the two caved-in floorboards and no Billy. Sally leaned over the hole left by the trap door.

"Where does this go?!" Sally asked, worry dampening the volume of her voice.

"It... It just leads to the basement, nothing more..." Johnny replied. "The stairs are over--" He pointed to the kitchen pantry (which had another secret door on the inside), but Sally and Light both had jumped down into the abyss of a basement.

In Johnny's case, he only took the stairs to keep himself from cracking his skull on the ground through the 'shortcut.'

Ghost kept making loud thud noises from his legs constantly bumping on the steps as Toast walked further down.

With his other hand, Toast felt the wall for the light switch. When he finally reached one, it didn't work anyway.

When was the last time he replaced the basement lights again?

He took out a keychain flashlight from his pocket. "Uh, Sally? Light?" He called out. His call echoed back to him. "Billy?"

There was a faint, greenish glow coming from the far end of the room. Toast shined his light on it, warily moving towards it.

The glowing spirit noticed him standing there, and cried out in the darkness for the P.I.E. leader.

"My love, Johnny Ghost! Dieu Merci!(Thank goodness!) You have finally come to set me free after all these months passed in this dark, scary place, oui?"