Chapter Text
Cabanela felt light. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, there was nothing holding him down. There was no sense of duty or responsibility weighing on his back, no bitter regrets or memories to ground him, not even a thin layer of fabric draping over his shoulders.
He didn’t like this feeling.
Muffled voices began trickling into his consciousness, and he struggled to make out the words. They were just jumbled sounds to him, but he was certain he knew the language. Then, clear as a summer’s day, he heard, “And that obnoxious coat.” Cabanela jolted awake to give his usual response (“It’s a metaphoooooooore, baby!”) when the sight that greeted him froze him in his tracks.
It was himself. Or rather, it was his body. His lanky limbs were in a tangle on the ground, and his expression was lax. His eyes were open, glassy and unfocused as they stared off into the night. But most alarming of all was the jagged hole torn in his black shirt, right over his heart. Inky darkness seeped out from the hole, staining his shirt and pooling on the ground beneath him. His white coat, once a source of great pride and meaning for him, was ruined, covered in blood, a vibrant red against the dirt staining whatever was left. There’d be no getting that out, he knew.
Cabanela supposed all this meant he was dead. Oh well.
Those same voices pulled Cabanela's attention away from his lifeless body, and he turned (how could he turn when he was dead?) to see a peculiar duo. Two men were standing together, talking. The first one was a sight all on his own: he wore a fedora low over his face and a rather sharp suit, if Cabanela did say so himself. He carried a golden shotgun against his shoulder, but it was his skin, blue as the sky, that made him a sight to see.
It was the other man, though, that gave Cabanela pause. His hair, lemon yellow, pointed upwards to make a cone at the top of his head (the inspector made a mental note to ask him what it meant later on, because such an outlandish style couldn’t simply be for the sake of fashion) and he wore sunglasses even though the sky was already dark. He was a tall man wearing a red suit over a black shirt, with a long white tie. He carried himself casually as he spoke with the other man, his weight over one foot and a hand on his hip. Something nudged at the back of Cabanela’s brain as he looked at the stranger, but he couldn’t figure out why. That is, until he heard a name leave the man’s lips.
“Lynne.”
Memories came shooting back into his mind, like a bullet from a gun. Tonight was the scheduled night of Jowd’s execution. The Manipulator was responsible for landing his friend in prison. Alma was dead. Lynne didn’t trust him. Pigeon Man was working with him to uncover the mysteries of the meteorite and the Manipulator. And the man in the red suit should’ve been long dead.
And just like that, all the weight Cabanela had been missing slammed into his back. He had his memories. He had purpose. Dying didn’t erase the fact that Jowd was about to face execution, and Cabanela’d be damned before he let his friend into the afterlife without getting to see his daughter grow up. The inspector looked back at the man he’d as good as killed all those years ago. The bitterness of his own failures seeped into him, but Cabanela shoved it aside. The man – Yomiel – should’ve died ten years ago, but clearly that wasn’t the case. The inspector had seen the corpse. He’d spent nights drinking with Jowd, lamenting their failures. The man before him was an impossibility, and Cabanela only knew of one other like him: the Manipulator.
Cabanela rearranged the facts in his head to accommodate this new information. Yomiel was likely the Manipulator. Had Yomiel killed him? He couldn’t remember, but it was probable. Gods knew he had a motive. He also had a motive for framing Jowd with the murder of his own wife. At this thought, rage bubbled up inside of Cabanela, smothering his guilt. As red began to bleed into the inspector’s vision, he struggled to push it aside. He had work to do.
“C’mon,” Yomiel said, cutting off the inspector’s thoughts, “all that’s left is the brat. After we kill her, you’ll get your money, since you didn’t do shit with this job.” The blue man grumbled something about not getting the chance, but Cabanela was no longer listening. Lynne. They were going to murder his baby! Cabanela’s only thought was that he had to do something, but how? He was dead. It wasn’t like he could just jump back into his corpse and start dancing around again. Yomiel and the blue man were walking towards him. Cabanela floundered for something to do as they approached, but his body was lifeless and he had no way of moving.
“Outta my way,” Yomiel muttered when he looked down at the corpse. Swinging back a leg, he gave a forceful kick, and Cabanela fell with his body down to the first level of the junkyard.
So much for doing something.
He heard the sounds of footsteps as the two men sauntered down the metal stairs. Wondering why they’d bother walking to the bottom level when the exit to the junkyard was upstairs, Cabanela started when he heard the pay phone blare. Yomiel snatched the receiver up, leaning against the phone box with one hand stuffed in his pocket.
“Things didn’t go as planned,” he said after a pause. “The inspector showed up. ’S dead now… Jeego was useless… It doesn’t change anything.” Impatience leaked into Yomiel’s voice as he spoke to whomever was on the other side of the phone. Cabanela could hear snippets of a garbled voice through the static, but was unable to actually understand anything that the person was saying. “Yeah we’re gonna take care of it now… Her apartment… Ok.” Yomiel hung up the phone and looked back at the blue man – Jeego, Yomiel had said. He made a jerking motion with his head, gesturing to the stairs and said, “Alright, let’s go.” With that, the two climbed the steps again. Cabanela listened to the metal door to the junkyard rattle open and then slam close as the two men left to go murder Lynne.
He growled in anger. They wouldn't touch her! As if in response to his growing frustration, the sky opened up and rain began to fall. Desperate and angry, he floundered for something to do, some way to move, when suddenly he slipped. The world was completely white around him, and the inspector looked around in confusion. He was still in the old junkyard, but it was as if everything was made of snow – an old armchair, a desk lamp, even his soiled coat, were all bleached white. The only dots of color came in the form of little blue-white spheres, giving off a warm glow. The balls seemed to be nestled within objects, but the inspector couldn’t quite work out what they were. Looking up to further inspect the world, he saw that the drops of rain that had been falling were now all frozen in the air, as if time had stopped. Cabanela raised a hand to touch a drop when he stopped. He could move again. He turned his hand over in front of his face. It was the same rich brown color it’d been in life, except it was completely transparent. Was this… his spirit?
Cabanela looked down to see his corpse, white like the rest of the world, still crumpled on the ground. From his ghostly chest, he saw an odd blue glow. It flickered and danced in nonexistent wind, like a flame. He lifted a transparent hand to the glow on his chest, but it felt no different from the rest of his body. That is to say, it felt like nothing at all. Wondering how he’d ended up in this weird ghost world, he lifted a leg to take a tentative step. Or rather, he tried to. His feet were firmly planted to the ground under his corpse. He tried again, but to no avail. He couldn’t move.
His feet were stuck, but he had no trouble lifting a lanky arm and reaching out to the closest sphere, lying within a discarded traffic cone. He was intangible as a ghost (if his feet disappearing into his body were any indication) but his fingers curled around the white-blue ball as though they were solid. Cabanela gave an experimental squeeze. Yup, it was totally solid – for him, at least. These spheres definitely didn’t exist in the realm of the living. Wanting to inspect it more, he tried to pull back his arm to bring the sphere closer to his face. It didn’t budge. Cabanela cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. Well, this was interesting. He gave another, firmer tug, but still nothing. Squaring his shoulders, he lowered his chin to glare at the sphere in concentration and yanked back as hard as he could.
The world shifted around him. One moment he was standing over his dead body, and the next it was as if he had taken the place of the sphere. Looking down, he saw his torso disappear into the traffic cone. The blue flame was still flickering in his chest, but now it was as if his soul was in the place of the odd sphere.
Fascinaaaaaaating.
Cabanela tried to lift his leg, but it seemed that his feet were just as useless here as they’d been in his corpse. He looked about, and reached for the next closest sphere, which he found resting in a street sign. Reaching for it, he grabbed on and pulled again. And again he moved, snapping into place over the glowing ball. It wasn’t much, but at least he knew how to get around now. He repeated the process a few more times, darting from object to object, just to be sure he got the hang of this spirit-hopping thing.
“Looks liiiiiiiiiiiike we’re back in business,” he said with a grin. Now he just had to figure out how to actually do things. Plus he still didn’t know what this odd white Ghost World was. Looking back at the frozen rain drops, still suspended mid-air, Cabanela wondered how he could get the world all colorful again. The last time it’d just sort of happened. He’d been trying to regain his mobility, and with his usual methods unavailable, an alternative had just been… there. Maybe if he just concentrated it would happen again?
Cabanela didn’t know how long it took him to figure out how to flip between the Ghost World and the world of the living. It was like discovering how to use a new limb, learning to flex muscles he didn’t even know he had. Once he finally managed it though, he switched back and forth, watching the world around him flash from white to dark, like a strobe light. He lamented death if only because it meant he could no longer use his MP3 player. No matter, Cabanela’d never let a lack of music keep him from dancing.
But of course, he had a job to do – people to save. This wasn’t the time to be lolling around, dead. With this thought, Cabanela flipped back into the white Ghost World (he’d discovered he could only hop between objects on this side) and started planning. Protecting Lynne was the immediate priority. Jowd’s execution was scheduled for 11:00 PM that night. Cabanela had no sense of time as he couldn’t remember much of the evening leading up to his death, but something told him he still had time. Lynne didn’t have any time at all though, going from Yomiel’s conversation. And there was Jowd’s baby girl to worry about, who was living with Lynne since, well… her parents couldn’t take care of her.
Cabanela had to figure out how to get to Lynne’s apartment before them. While he’d learned to move (kind of) as a ghost, he doubted he’d make it on time. Lynne lived a little less than half an hour away from the junkyard by car, and Cabanela couldn’t exactly drive there in his current state. Plus he’d wasted time figuring out how to navigate the afterlife. Yomiel and the blue man were probably almost there already.
The inspector jumped into the Ghost World, but then paused when he looked up at the raindrops suspended in the night sky. Time flowed differently in the Ghost World, he remembered. Or rather, it didn’t flow at all. Cabanela felt a grin spread over his face at this. He’d be able to get to Lynne with this newfound trick, but there was still the issue of actually being able to do anything. Oh well, he’d always been good at thinking on the swing.
With this in mind, and fire literally in his soul, Cabanela darted from the old umbrella on the ground up to the pay phone to better reach the fan sitting on top of a pile of garbage – when suddenly he slipped again. Instead of the world going dark and grey like the night sky though, Cabanela found himself in a completely new environment. The world was still bleached white, but instead of the busted furniture and used appliances he expected, he was surrounded by what seemed to be living white strings, forming a tunnel with several forks branching off in the distance. They cracked with electricity and Cabanela could hear a metallic sort of buzzing in the air.
The phone lines, he realized. He turned around to see what could only be described as a portal, outlined by layers of white strings. An image of the old junk yard shown through. He could use this to get around, then. It was certainly more convenient than hopping from object to object all the way across town. Reviewing a map of the city in his head, he grabbed the nearest line and let himself be pulled in the electrical current and zipped away from the junkyard. He still didn’t know how he died, or if he was even capable of doing anything besides spectating the events that were about to unfold. But as was often the case with the loose and lanky inspector, the impossibilities that were before him were irrelevant. Things were going down tonight, and it wasn’t like he was gonna let death stop him.