Work Text:
Being the new chairman of the Ghost World was no easy task, but Ollie thought he was handling his new responsibilities pretty well. “And I’ve finished carving the ancient rune of ghostly terror. That should take care of the scare-itory dispute.” The orange wraith handed the stone tablet back to the purple ghost.
Lucretia accepted his work. “Excellent! I’ll get this sent down to processing at once.” It was only the two of them at the moment, soon to be just one. “All that leaves is to proofread the proposal for Maim Street to be re-paved.” Nobody actually walked anywhere in the Ghost World, but that didn’t mean they had to settle for uneven pavement.
“Oh, I can go over that by myself if you want to take off. You shouldn’t have to miss out on a visit to the Hot Screams just to help me out.” Ollie offered. The Ghost Council were on a day trip to relax, but Lucretia returned early to bring Ollie to work and inform him of today’s tasks.
“Are you sure?”
“Totally. Leave it to the chairman.” The robed wraith assured her with a smile.
It was almost as refreshing as the Hot Screams to have such a reliable and caring chairman. Lucretia had worked for two chairmen before him and they were either efficient but a tyrant or good-hearted but lazy… and rude… and messy… and was Scratch. “I hope you know how lucky the Ghost World is to have you as the chairman.”
Ollie rubbed his neck bashfully. “I’m just doing my job.”
He bid Lucretia goodbye as she handed him the proposal scroll. Ollie started to open it up. “This won’t take long at all.” The scroll unfurled continuously, rolling down the side of the Dark Dais until it laid down on the stone floor at the bottom of his desk. “… Oh.”
15 Minutes Later
Ollie was still thoroughly reading the scroll. Carefully reading over every word and phrasing with a fine comb. One typo or mistake and there would be even more work to do. He involuntarily yawned and his eyes felt the need to close. “Guess I’ve been putting in a lot of hours lately. It couldn’t hurt to rest my eyes for one minute.”
His eyes closed and he instantly fell asleep.
… it was dark.
Pitch black darkness in all directions.
It wasn’t anything like Ollie’s usual dreams. The kind where climate change was thwarted, ghosts everywhere were happy, and he and Molly were on a romantic date in a flower field.
Then again, his nightmares could be pretty dark, but that was a metaphorical darkness not a literal one.
Ollie felt sharply aware of everything, as if he were still awake. “Is this a lucid dream?” He looked himself over, he was still in his chairman form. His orange glow being the single source of light.
Until a tiny blue flame appeared not far away.
The young chairman noticed the flame, and how it was coming closer to him. He felt frozen in place, unable to do anything but wait for the flame to approach.
Once the blue flame was directly before him, it grew. The flame stretched out and extended into something taller than the boy. The blue embers subsided and revealed another figure wearing the same robe that he bore, and an icy blue ectoplasm glowing where a face should have been.
Ollie had never seen this figure in person, but had been told all about who stood before him. “You… you’re-you’re the Old Chairman!”
The original Chairman looked down and addressed the current one. “At last we meet young Oliver.”
“How is this possible? You were destroyed-“ Ollie realized a detail slightly more shocking than his appearance. “You can SPEAK?!” From what he’d been told, the old Chairman was silent and communicated through gestures and judgmental glares.
“You can hear me because we are in a shared dreamscape, where one’s thoughts are conveyed directly. It’s an effect of you falling asleep while wearing the robe.” the Chairman plainly explained.
A dreamscape… “Wait, so are you just a part of my dream, or…”
“Make no mistake, I am very real. I am a lingering remnant of memory in the threads of the robe, who will once again cease to exist when you wake up.”
Ollie could hardly believe what he was told. “This is crazy,” he shook his head in disbelief. “There’s a dreamscape WITHIN the robes that hold a fragment of your consciousness?! Does that mean there’s also a sliver of Scratch’s consciousness in here too?”
Behind the Chairman, a tiny apparition of Scratch’s face materialized. “Tacos!”
The Chairman swiftly squashed it before Ollie noticed. “No.”
Taking a good hard look at the taller ghost, Ollie’s belief was cemented. This was really the old Chairman, or at least a piece of him. He was really freaked out, but knowing he was real made him all the more wary. “Okay, and is that how you already knew my name?”
“I know what the robes have seen, and who it has chosen to be my successor.” The Chairman gave a straightforward answer.
Great, so this guy has been watching him. “Yeah, well, I know about you too. I’ve heard what kind of heartless ghost you were before you were destroyed.” He’d heard from many ghosts how terrible this guy was. A tyrant, uncaring, really tall… alright, that last one wasn’t so bad. You know the Chairman was bad news when practically the whole afterlife celebrated when Molly vanquished him. “Wait—This isn’t some kind of revenge scheme to get back at Molly, is it?! Because I swear if she’s hurt-“
The Chairman’s… face-hole (he didn’t actually have eyes) flashed in recognition. “The Joy Bringer? Ah yes, what an ironic twist that my true successor is the romantic partner of the one who vanquished me.” Ollie thought he was strangely level-headed for someone speaking of the events of his demise. Evidently, the Chairman picked up on that thought. “Don’t get me wrong, I am furious that I was defeated. But wishing for revenge would be pointless now. There is nothing anyone could do to bring me back, nor would my nonexistence be satisfied to see her suffer.” He moved his bony hand up to stroke where his chin should be. “And I acknowledge that it was my own lack of foresight that led to my end. I was not afraid of Miss Molly McGee because of her young age and for simply being a wraith. I assumed she would be no match for my flow of failed phantoms. How wrong I was. I vastly underestimated the power of a golden soul and paid the price for my hubris.”
“And how do I know you’re not lying? You could be getting me to let down my guard.” Ollie wondered. This could be some sort of trap, or trick to get him to trust the Chairman and get backstabbed the moment he turns around.
“You are right to be cautious. But believe me when I tell you that I NEVER lie. Lies are something only the weak tell when they are not strong enough for the truth… Like Scratch.” The Chairman bluntly stated, and got another dig at Scratch’s expense. How could he not hold a grudge against that blue buffoon?
Ollie thought about it for a moment, and against his better judgment, took him at his word. “Then if you’re not here for revenge, then why are you here?”
It was simple. “I am here out of curiosity. A chance to converse with my REAL successor. I loathed that that fool Scratch was given the robes after my defeat. But he made one good decision: to curse the robes to seek the most worthy. And they chose a living teenage boy to become the new chairman. It is very intriguing to me.” The Chairman circled around the wraith, looking over him carefully. “And you, Oliver, you understand the weight of all this entails and take this sacred position seriously. Frankly, not many would.”
“Of course I take this seriously! I know how important this role is. I’ve seen the Ghost World crumble without a chairman! The stability of the entire Ghost World depends on me doing my job.” There was no greater responsibility than being the leader of the afterlife. Ollie couldn’t afford to mess up or be anything less than perfect. People counted on him.
“Yes, it does. Though our methods of leadership are quite different," the Chairman thought aloud. "You use your powers to improve the afterlives of your subjects. You do that… thing where you take other’s feelings into account. You know, when you try to understand someone other than yourself."
The orange wraith raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean ‘empathy’?”
“Is that what it’s called?” The Chairman didn’t think it sounded like a real word, but regardless, went back on track. “Either way, you put the needs of other ghosts before yourself. I never did that. You don’t punish any failure or send ghosts to an eternity of torture for disappointing you.” He wasn’t criticizing Ollie’s methods, just pointing out how different it was to his own. “If any of my subjects failed to please me, I just sent them to the flow. And if anyone attempted to overthrow me, I made an example of them by publicly torturing and subjecting them to their deepest fears until they were broken and begging to die again. Only had to do that a few times before everyone was too afraid to try.”
Ollie was very unnerved by how casually the Chairman spoke of his cruelty. “That’s terrible!”
The Chairman shrugged. “I know. But it kept me in power. And it was not only the ones who failed me that I banished to the flow; dire threats to both the ghost and living worlds were imprisoned too. Beings like the Frightmares or Lord Doom could upset the balance between the two worlds, and without that balance I could not properly feed.”
As self-serving and evil as his reasons were, it was clear that the Chairman took his job seriously. “I guess that explains why you never tried to take over the human world like Jinx did.” Ollie mused.
The old Chairman seemed to glare. “I am aware of my old Joy Hunter’s attempt and I cannot approve of it. The life and death balance would have been ruined.” That Jinx was a reliable minion, but from what he’d seen through the robe, she was over-ambitious and did not understand how vital the chairman’s role was. “Neither Scratch nor Jinx were suitable successors to my post. They were not worthy."
“Then… What makes me worthy?” Ollie looked away. That self-doubt still swimming inside his brain. “I’m just a kid. And I used to be a ghost HUNTER for crying out loud!”
“Actually, your role as a former ghost hunter is a part of what makes you a suitable chairman.” His predecessor admitted. “Besides your natural leadership and your… ‘en-paffy’, there is also a darkness in you. I've seen inside your mind, Oliver, and I have seen your guilt.”
“Yeah, it’s not a secret how bad I feel about hunting innocent ghosts.” Ollie freely admitted to his past regrets. He really wasn't sure how guilt was supposed to make him worthy.
“More than that. Your mind is filled with negative thoughts you keep to yourself. For example, there is also the guilt over how you have felt towards your own parents. How you’ve never told them how badly they hurt you.”
Ollie was shocked, he knew about that? “I-I…”
Seeing as the boy was at a loss for words, the Chairman went on. “They don’t know about the sleepless nights crying in your room, because the only other option was to sleep and be confronted with nightmares of being rejected and thrown away. They don’t know about the times you broke down from the weight of your guilt, or how their dismissing of your attempt to confide in them over ghost morality crushed your heart. They don’t know that you ever doubted that their love was genuine.” The Chairman stared closer at the young boy, whose eyes were wide in fear.
Hugging his arms across his chest, Ollie knew it was pointless to shove his fears back down. “Yeah, it hurts.” He simply said. More than heights, more than any flash mob, Ollie’s deepest, primal fear was being unwanted and alone. When his parents rejected what he told them at Necrocomic-con, it made that fear so much more tangible. Sure, they came around after a while, but what if they hadn’t? He couldn’t shake the thought of them removing him from the family, or his actions catching up with him and all the ghosts deciding they want nothing to do with him! And the mere thought of June or Molly rejecting him was too much to even consider!
The Chairman could sense the boy was spiraling, and it was getting annoying. “Your chipper exterior hides the pain you cannot rid yourself of. However, this is necessary, for a true chairman must understand the darkness inside of them to reach their full strength.” He watched his successor loosen up ever so slightly, listening to what he had to say. “I knew only darkness, and with it, I had the power to bring fear to all and empower myself with misery.”
“That’s how you ruled. I don’t want to do that.” Ollie found his courage returning. Ollie knew when he took this job that it would make him the most powerful being in the Ghost World, with powers he'd only scratched the surface of. He had indeed thought about what he was capable of in this form, and that scared him too. One wrong curse or loss of control could hurt someone, maybe worse. Embracing his inner darkness could only end badly, because—well… It's darkness! “I won’t use my powers like you did.”
To Ollie’s shock, the old Chairman agreed with him. “I would not recommend copying my own methods either. Not when you have a much greater potential, one that encompasses both positive and negative emotions.” Say what now? “As you mature and grow, so will the seeds of a unique power within you. One that would not require the robes to use.” Was the Chairman talking about a ‘ghost talent’? A term Ollie had dubbed for ghosts with a special power. “However, such an ability will not awaken nor be discovered until much later in time. Perhaps not until you are truly a ghost. Though I doubt you will make much direct use of such a power given the type of personality you have.”
Cryptic hints to a secret power aside, Ollie was having a hard time wrapping his head around all of this. Great power? Being acknowledged as the Chairman’s true successor? Maybe this was all his subconscious trying to give him an ego boost? “Chairman, I have to know, why am I the one with this potential? Without the robe, I'm only a normal human. There’s not anything special about me.”
The Chairman seemed… kind of amused? “I would laugh if I were capable of it. The Joy Bringer disrupted more than her own soul’s fate without even knowing.”
“Wait, you mean Molly, right? What does she have to do with this?” Ollie worried for his girlfriend. “Please, no cryptic, vague musings. If Molly is involved I have to know the truth.”
“Very well. You and her were never supposed to become ghosts.”
… What?
“You see, the colors of a soul reflect what sort of person they are and what drives them. And often, they indicate how likely that soul is to remain as a ghost after their passing. I am sure you’ve noticed how few warm-colored souls are present in the ghost world, and orange and yellow hues especially being so few they are almost nonexistent.”
Ollie stared at his own orange ectoplasm. He had taken notice that he’d never seen any other ghosts with his or Molly’s color or anything close. Their wraith selves were the only yellow and orange ghosts to be found.
“Those are the ones with too much ‘goodness’ in them. If any make it to the Ghost World, I simply let them complete their unfinished business and pass on. Better to not have that energy around.” Those might have been the only cases where the Chairman actually encouraged souls to move on rather than have them serve him. “Among all the colors a soul can be, gold is a special hue. It is only born to those who will bring about great good and joy to the world.”
“That sounds like Molly alright.” Ollie couldn’t help but smile a little, before forcing his face back to a serious look. He kind of hoped the Chairman didn’t notice that.
He noticed that. “Molly McGee’s soul should never have touched the Ghost World at all. Doing so damaged her fate enough, but eliminating myself has irrevocably altered whatever karmic destiny she was supposed to have. And the ripple effects did not stop with her. Your own soul was also one meant to pass on without ever touching this world. Yet, here you are as its new leader. Why do you think that is?”
Ollie only needed a moment to think it over and quietly gasped, realizing the implications. “Are you saying that becoming close to Molly drastically altered my karmic destiny too?!” He had always known meeting Molly changed his life for the better, though he never expected it to reach this far. Not that he’d ever change a single moment or anything, but it’s still a big surprise.
“Multiple souls close to Molly McGee were affected by her actions and diverted to new paths. Of those, yours diverged the most drastically.” The Chairman made sure Ollie looked at him directly in the… glowing face hole-before continuing. “Though the two of your souls are young, both of your fates have gone off whatever path they were supposed to follow. Nothing and no one, not even myself, can predict how they will develop. You are an anomaly.”
“I…” Ollie was at a loss for words. How are you supposed to react to being told that your intended fate has been broken, and your new fate has the potential to be anything?! He was 14 for crying out loud! Yes, he was already the chairman, which proved his destiny had gone completely out of whack. But what does it mean for the future? “I really don’t know how to respond to ANY of this,” Ollie admitted, feeling overwhelmed by the revelation. “I am going to need some time to process it all." He sighed, at least he was certain of what he had already committed himself to being. "The one thing I do know is that I’m already the new chairman. And I will be a chairman that is good and just. That’s the path I know I’ll follow.”
His predecessor did not look convinced. “How can you be sure about that?”
“What?” Ollie faltered.
“I said that no one can predict how you will develop. That means you can’t either. After all, you could end up following down a path like mine just as easily.”
“No! I am already a different kind of chairman, I care about ghosts and help others instead of serving myself! I won’t ever be anything like you!” This touched a nerve for the young boy.
“You may not have a choice,” Ollie froze at the Chairman’s words. “It’s easy to lose yourself in your current state. Your identity, your memories, and all that you care about can be forgotten before you ever realize it’s happening. You won’t be Oliver, you’ll only be the Chairman. Everyone you love will mean nothing to you. All that will be left is an emptiness you can never fill.” The Chairman’s bony hand pointed at the boy. “Without a tether to your humanity, you will turn into a being just like me.”
The wraith crumbled, stumbling back from the fear pulsing through his soul. Ollie shook his head, frightened and on the verge of hyperventilating at the possibility he could become something like that. “You—you’re wrong! I’d never forget everyone!” That would mean forgetting his friends, his parents, June, Molly… His ectoplasm felt cold, dread washing over him—No. He couldn’t entertain that possibility. The Chairman was just trying to mess with his head. “A-and what would you know about feelings anyway?! You never cared about anyone but yourself!” The Chairman was wrong. He had to be wrong. “You don’t know how powerful love can be! You’ve got an empty void where your heart should… be…”
Ollie stopped. Something in the Chairman’s own words caught his attention. “An emptiness you can never fill… is that why you fed on misery? To fill your emptiness?”
He saw it. For a single moment, the Chairman flinched. He stayed silent, not answering Ollie’s question. For the Chairman does not lie, and any answer he would say would be the truth. So he said nothing.
In spite of the non-answer, Ollie tried reaching out to the Chairman. “If you ever had a tether to your humanity, could you have changed too?”
The Chairman could not empathize with the wraith. He did not wonder what it would be like to have actual feelings, and he barely understood why anyone would want to. And yet he saw that it was the young man’s connection to others' feelings and wish to understand those different from him that made the boy a good ruler. “No. I never had any humanity to begin with. You best hold onto yours, Oliver Chen, or this is what your future will hold.”
“Wait! What do y-“
“HEY OLLIE!!!”
The orange wraith gasped and sat up abruptly. He blinked a couple of times and realized he was still sitting at the Dark Dais, the scroll still lying across his desk. A blue blur floated in front of him, and once his eyes refocused, he saw that it was — “Scratch?”
“You weren’t sleeping on the job, were you?” Scratch grinned, a tad amused.
… “Please don’t tell the Ghost Council.”
Scratch chuckled. “I won’t snitch. ‘Sides, I’ve fallen asleep while doing boring chairman work more times than I can count.” He opened up his hand to count his fingers and made a whole row of extra fingers pop up down his arm.
Ollie rubbed his eyes and stretched out. “It’s not boring. I think I’ve been running low on sleep lately.” He has had some long nights. After work, he still had to go and attend to all his human responsibilities like homework or tending to his flower garden… wait, did he remember to water them yesterday?
“Anywhose, I came by to rope you into the latest Molly scheme.” Scratch got down to business. “And you get the easy part, all you gotta do is fake pulling a hammy, so two old ladies can dance and be friends again.”
“Sure.” Ollie didn’t even bat an eye at that request. This was tame in the grand scheme of Molly’s schemes. “Let me finish proofreading this, and I’ll hop on over back to my body.”
Scratch was pleased, and maybe a little jealous that all swoopy hair had to do was sit down while he got the hard part of possessing people's legs to keep them dancing. “I’ll go tell Moll, meet us at the Caribou Club in thirty minutes.” He portaled away, leaving the young chairman on his own.
With a moment of quiet to think, Ollie felt… weird. Like something had happened that he could no longer remember. He knew he had a dream while he was asleep and tried to recall it, but he couldn’t. There was something important in that dream of his, but it was already forgotten. All that remained was an uneasy feeling settling in his chest.