two knights' defense, ghost of a sense

Wels is not having a good time.

First, he gets knocked out by some stupid steel beam to the stomach. Then, his spirit separates from his body. And now, some stupid freaking ghost snatches his body (and sword) and runs off while Beef was trying to fix the problem, and he simply has to cope with it. To make matters worse, Wels realizes that he physically cannot venture too far from his body without being pulled back to it, so he’s forced to dash after his stolen body.

After leaving the HC headquarters, the body snatcher runs down the sidewalk, occasionally jaywalking across a street or two, before stopping at an intersection. 

“Shit,” the snatcher curses. “Where can I even go?”

“You mean you didn’t even have a direction?” Wels asks, voice seething with irritation. “Gods, of all the body snatchers that had to take my body, why’d it have to be someone like you?”

The snatcher jolts, presumably surprised at hearing the voice. “Eh? You’re still here? I can’t even see you!”

So he isn’t visible. Just great. Wels groans, trying to think of how to advance this situation. 

“You should probably return my body,” Wels says, though it’s less of a suggestion and more of an order, if anything. “They’ll come looking for you shortly, I expect.”

“Aww, really?” The ghost pouts. “What if I just hid, though?”

“You won’t be able to,” Wels says, growing increasingly agitated by the moment. Even if he’s dealing with an annoying ghost, this is still his body that he has to keep safe. “What are you going to do for so long without any money, food, or a place to live? Have you thought about that? Also,” Wels adds. “You look suspicious with that sword. Don’t blame me if the cops show up.”

There’s a pause from the ghost. “You’re right,” he admits. 

Wels sighs. “Take a left from here.” He decides that if he wants to deal with this idiot ghost, then he might as well take care of it in the safety of his own home. Most of his money is in a safe, and the idiot body snatcher didn’t grab his wallet on his way out of HC, so he probably wouldn’t be able to find much in the house anyway.

“Where are we going, funny ghost voice?” the snatcher asks while turning left.

“My house. The keys are in my pocket. Also, don’t call me that.”

“What, funny?”

“No— ugh, whatever.”

Wels spends the next ten minutes or so pointing out directions, which the body snatcher follows quite well. During this time, he also reasons with himself that if they stay in his house, with time, the guys at HC will come looking for him, right? So, it shouldn’t be all that hard, he hopes. He’ll just need to stall until then.

“Just go right down this street, and it’ll just be the first townhouse on the curb,” Wels instructs one last time. 

“Thanks, GPS!” the body snatcher cuts across a red light again— this one’s not the type to regard rules, Wels thinks. Whatever. It’ll be over soon anyway.

Once they reach his house, the ghost fumbles with his keys for a few seconds, trying to find which one fits through the lock. After half a minute of struggling, he finally succeeds and pushes the door open.

“Holy shit dude, your head is so close to the top of the door!” he comments. “Didn’t realize how tall you were until now!”

“Can you stop marveling at my height and get some first aid?”

The ghost glances down at the body to see it littered with bruises and cuts. “Oh. Yeah. We’re kinda bleeding out.” He pauses for a second. “How do I– uh… do first aid?”

Wels groans for the umpteenth time in an hour.

And so, to no surprise, he ends up babysitting the ghost by guiding the way to applying bandages and ointments and how to cut cloth without getting stabbed with a pair of scissors. The ghost is painfully incompetent at even applying basic first aid, which honestly, based on all the impressions he’s gotten so far, Wels isn’t surprised at anymore. Finally, after fifteen minutes of struggling back and forth (and getting way too much blood on his carpet), the idiot ghost finally manages to wrap up the assortment of wounds on his body.

“You know, if they’re gonna come find me anyway, then you might as well let me watch T.V. one last time,” the ghost says, walking over to the couch and crashing into it. He yelps upon impact. “Lord— fuck! Why does your stupid body hurt so damn much?!”

“Why the heck do you think I was getting first aid?!” Wels retorts with a facepalm. It’s not like the ghost can see him, but he might as well express his annoyance physically anyway. “And fine, you can watch T.V. Just until they get here.”

The ghost lets out a noise of triumph and grabs the remote, flicking on the T.V. Might as well just deal with this for now. It’s just television, Wels thinks. It’s harmless; it’s not like anything bad can happen by watching some silly shows.

He’s proved so, so wrong within a second, when the program opens to the live news.

“On this day, the beloved hero Welsknight was reported to have passed away in a coma just this morning,” the reporter’s voice announces through the speaker. Wels’ head snaps towards the screen, gawking at the image of his face with the text, ‘RENOWNED HERO, DEAD AFTER BATTLE.’

What?

Beside him, the ghost’s face— his face— also stares in shock, blinking a few times just to make sure that what he’s seeing is real. 

“NileCorp, which oversees the heroes' alliance, was quick to declare his death as a result from the recent fight against the notable Syndicate villain group,” the reporter continues. “However, as rumors spread, the location of his body currently stands unknown.” 

NileCorp. NileCorp. Oh, that stinking bastard CEO.

The screen changes again, this time showing a video of a bearded man— Beef— in front of the microphone. “We’re currently still on a search for any whereabouts of where he may have gone,” Beef explains, practically squirming in his spot. “We promise to get him back in the end.”

Beef was there when the ghost escaped with his body. There is no way he is saying this of his own will, which is enough to convince that NileCorp was the one to meddle in the affairs and wrongfully announce him as dead.

The more Wels thinks about the report, the more it falls apart. Coma. Fight. Unknown body location. It just doesn’t make sense, which is to be expected, given that these corrupt higher-ups only had about less than an hour to come up with some BS story to cover up his little accident.

He can’t let this happen. Wels makes a grab for his phone on the table, but his hand just phases through the surface. Oh, right.

“Hey, you need to call Beef right now,” Wels orders the ghost, clinging onto some sort of hope that he’ll listen. 

And to his (unsurprising) dismay, the ghost ignores him. “Your name is Welsknight?” he asks, genuinely awed. “That’s a pretty stupid thing to name a kid.”

“You— What?! You don’t know me?” Wels shouts in disbelief. “I’m a hero around this city! And that’s not my real name!”

“Still pretty stupid for a hero name,” the ghost snorts. “That’s like naming your cat ‘kitty.’”

“Well, if you’re going to call my name stupid, what’s yours?”

The ghost frowns, tapping his chin a couple times. “Hm. I’m not quite in the mood to give you my real name, so how about this? I’ll make a silly nickname just like yours, to match. How about… Helsknight? Ay?”

“You can’t just steal my name!”

“Oh, I didn’t steal anything! At school, this is what we call ‘changing it a little so the teacher won’t notice.’ So, I’m Helsknight now!”

“My gods,” Wels says, though he’s well aware no gods can save him now.

Pushing himself up from the couch with a whistle (Wels doesn’t even know how to whistle, so how in the world), Hels saunters towards the hallway. “Seeing as your friends probably won’t be arriving any time soon, I’m gonna get some food. Where’s the kitchen?”

Wels slams his head into the wall. Surprisingly, his incorporeal body actually collides against the surface, but unfortunately, he feels nothing. He slams his head again regardless.

Hels pauses when he hears no response. “Knight? Where’s the kitchen?”

“Go forward and left,” Wels responds reluctantly, helmet pressed against the wall as his soul slowly seeps away with every passing second.

From the corner of his eye, Wels notices a smile curl up on Hels’ lip. “Sick. Thanks!”

Hels turns and disappears down the hall, whistling his annoying tune, leaving Wels wishing he never went to work that day.

But as it turns out, Wels can’t even spend his time just staring at the wall in misery. Once Hels enters the kitchen, Wels’ form suddenly dissipates into the air and appears again right next to Hels.

Despite having worked with XVoid’s portal powers plenty of times, something about being suddenly displaced startles Wels, and he has to catch himself by the counter so as to not fall over. 

“Gods—” Wels gasps, remembering how he was pulled in the same way when Hels first escaped. “This is happening again?!”

“Huh? Knight, you’re here?” Hels looks around for Wels’ voice. “Woah, how’d you get here so fast?” he asks. “Can you teleport? I couldn’t teleport as a ghost…”

“I— I don’t know!” Wels says. When he pushes himself away from the counter, he notices his translucent hands are still cloudy, like scattered mist trying to regroup again. Somehow, this feels even worse than the first time it happened. “I don’t even know what happened!”

Hels raises an eyebrow. “Well, it’s not my problem. I see you’ve got instant ramen over here, so I’ll just be making that while you sort out your little crisis.”

Wels has never wanted to punch someone so badly, much less his own body. The urge to deck Hels in the face only grows when he sees Hels pouring water into the plastic cup and shoving it straight into the microwave without even adding seasoning.

“What in the— Hey! Aren’t you going to add the flavor packet?!” Wels marches up to Hels and stands in front of him, but Hels only walks right through his ghostly body. “You’re going to get unseasoned ramen!”

“Is that not how you eat it?” Hels says, voice dripping with smug arrogance. “I’m saving the packet for better things.”

While waiting for the two agonizing minutes to pass by, Hels searches around the kitchen for silverware while Wels wonders about what went wrong with his life to bring him to this point. And whatever the heck Hels meant by better things. He shudders.

The microwave lets out its beeps of doom, and Hels yanks it open, reaching eagerly for the ramen.

“Aren’t you going to wait for it to cool down?” Wels asks.

Hels scoffs. “Pshh, I’m not a fuckin’ pussy— OW!” His hand jerks backwards, shaking off the pain. “Fuck!”

“I told you so.”

Grumbling, Hels waits for a few more seconds before taking the ramen out and setting it on the counter. Watching Hels eat the unseasoned ramen is… quite unpleasant, to say the least, but Wels is at least able to somehow comfort himself by comparing unseasoned ramen to lightly-flavored broth noodles. It doesn’t really work, but it’s better than nothing. 

However, the true horrors arise when Hels finishes the noodles. Hels grabs the flavor packet he set aside earlier and drops it into an empty cup, and before Wels can protest, Hels aggressively dumps the hot water from the ramen bowl straight into the cup.

“What are you doing?!” Wels screeches. “Stop that!”

“A seasoning packet is like a tea bag, right?” Hels says, lifting the cup to his lips. “Can’t waste it, after all!”

“No! It’s not!”

Shrugging, Hels ignores Wels’ distressed screaming and takes a sip. “I’ll have you know, this is quite good. Do you want to know what it tastes like?”

“NO!”

“Warm chicken broth, heavily salted, with a hint of green onion—”

Wels buries his face into his gauntleted hands, releasing a pained groan that can rattle cupboards. If this is the man he’s stuck with for the foreseeable future, then he’ll need to retain as much sanity as he can before he loses it completely. Wels can only hope that his friends come to retrieve him soon…

---

Days pass, and nobody has checked on his house. Still, Wels can’t find it in himself to be angry at his friends. They are trying their best; he knows it. That damned CEO must have had to do with this. But Hels, on the other hand…

Wels is thoroughly convinced that the ghost who stole his body cannot be older than a teen. Most likely a college student, due to the… observations of horrible eating habits (the instant ramen supply is already beginning to run low), and now, apparently for the way he handles taxes. 

“Urgh,” Hels groans. He taps the end of a pen on his chin, staring at the stack of papers in front of him contemplatively. “What payment goes for what again?”

“Seriously?” Wels glances down at the tax papers, empty outside of the address being filled out. “Is this your first time doing taxes?”

“I mean, last time, my mom did ‘em with me…”

“It’s just basic percentages.”

“I studied law; do I look like I know math?”

Wels opens his mouth to insult Hels again, but stops suddenly when he realizes he can use this to turn Hels away from the responsibility of having a working adult’s body. Hels seems to survive purely off social media and T.V. shows, so perhaps a little scare with the pain of the adult’s life can get him to lay off?

“Why are you still sticking around if you can’t do this?” Wels asks, voice raising with slyness. “You have to pay bills and taxes, and you also have to make food. Isn’t that too boring for you?”

“I—” Hels starts and pauses. “...You do have a point.”

“So?” Wels’ chest rises with hope at the thought that Hels might just give up and return his life to him. “Are you going to—”

“But!” Hels interrupts him rudely, twirling around on the swivel chair and conveniently meeting Wels right in the eye with the biggest shit-eating grin known to man. “I’ll get to annoy you every day if I’m here, so I think that’s a perfectly acceptable tradeoff!” 

Wels facepalms with the might of gods. Yeah, of course. “Why did I even expect you to leave my body?”

“We’re in this together now, ghost! Now, tell me how to do this or else the IRS is gonna kill me a second time, and neither of us want that.”

Rolling his eyes, Wels steps beside Hels with irritated reluctance. He just had the misfortune of getting his body stolen by the most incompetent individual in the city during tax season, but he’s already procrastinated on filling out his forms for far too long, so might as well deal with it now.

---

One night, Wels discovers that Hels can see him now.

It’s nighttime, and Wels looms over Hels sleeping with arms crossed (as one does), staring Hels down and hoping that his glaring can mind-project his annoyances into Hels’ brain. And miraculously, it somehow works, because Hels grumbles and slowly opens his eyes.

“Heh?” he mumbles, blinking a couple times. Hels squints, staring right back at Wels. “...The fuck?”

“So you can see me now!” Wels exclaims sarcastically. “Great!”

“God, you’re even more annoying this way,” Hels says, turning his head away. After a second, he glances back again. “Huh. Didn’t expect for you to have a dent in your helmet.”

“What?”

But before Wels can ask Hels what that comment is supposed to mean, Hels picks up his phone and turns it on. 

“Hey, ghost,” Hels says suddenly. “What’s your app store password?”

“Go screw yourself,” Wels spits. “Stop playing on my phone and go the hell to sleep.”

“Trick question,” Hels says cheerfully. “Thought you’d be a bit nicer to me but I guess not! Nice thing is that you’ve set up the fingerprint passwords. Thanks!”

“Gods. I knew I shouldn’t have set up my fingerprint password…” Wels sighs.

“Hey, don’t feel bad about that,” Hels says, voice surprisingly softer. “You really couldn’t have anticipated this. I don’t think anyone would have had ‘body gets stolen by a ghost’ on their list of things to watch out for.”

Wels blinks, surprised at how uncharacteristically genuine Hels was. Maybe he was wrong about Hels… “I— guess you’re right? Yeah, what was I thinking? Everyone has finger IDs these da— HEY! What are you downloading?!”

“Twitter, duh,” Hels says, having instantly reverted to his asshole self. “I can’t believe you don’t even have it already. I’m pretty sure most of your hero friends do.” Once the app loads up, Hels’ eyes bug right out of his face. “HAHA! Holy shit, you’re still trending after two days!”

Wels looks down at his phone and sees an official article on the top of the page. Influential hero Welsknight has passed away…

“They think you’re fuckin’ dead!” Hels cackles. “This is amazing!”

“Wow, I sure wonder why!” Wels exclaims sarcastically. “It’s almost as if a ghost ran off with my body, leaving my whereabouts unknown! And after that, my death was literally announced on the news!”

“Isn’t that crazy?” Hels says with a giggle, wiping the tears of laughter off his face. “Ohhhhh my lord…”

“What the hell are they saying about me?!” Wels demands. In all honesty, he really doesn’t know what people on that app are saying. He has an account, sure, but he’s never really used it before. He’s just assumed that official people use it for updates, or something. 

“Imma tell you ghost, scrolling through your trending tab?” Hels says with his voice laced with mischief. “They’re saying lots of things! You know about thirst tweets, right? They’re still going on!”

“Why would people post about needing water?”

“HAHAHA! No. Here, lemme show you.”

Wels watches Hels type a few words into the search bar and pull up a menu of various tweets. Clearing his throat, Hels announces, “From username Jamiemidge1. Quote, ‘I want Wels to step on me.’ End quote.” He then looks up to Wels with the biggest, smuggest smirk known to man.

Wels stares at the screen, utterly dumbfounded at what Hels just read to him. The very thought of him being perceived online in this fashion is not on the list of what he expected when first becoming a hero.

“What?” he sputters. “Why— Why would anyone want that?! Wouldn’t that hurt?”

“Oh hey look, some guy called Xylemblu is calling you ‘babygirl!’” Hels snorts. “My lord, your thirsters are crying right now! You can’t be their ‘babygirl’ anymore!”

“WHAT?!”

“Good lord,” Hels cackles, scrolling through the onslaught of awful, terrible tweets. “This is the funniest shit I’ve ever seen! I could read through these all day!”

“You are freaking ridiculous,” Wels groans. “Did your father ever teach you to be respectful?”

“HEY! Leave my family situation out of this!”

“YOUR WHAT?”

And on that same night, Wels also discovers that Hels did not have a father in most of his life. Well, that explains a lot.

---

Living with Hels is more of a chore than Wels ever anticipated. As another day begins, Wels watches Hels laze in front of the T.V. again, giving not a single care for anything else. 

“Are you just gonna stay like this?” Wels steps between Hels and the T.V, quite ineffectively attempting to block the view. “We’re almost out of groceries.”

“Ehh, I’ll do it when we actually run out,” Hels says, craning his head to see the screen. “I’ve got some shows to catch up on since I’ve died.” 

“I’d better not catch you buying more instant ramen,” Wels says. He steps in front of Hels again. “You’re ruining my health with your awful eating habits!”

“What, you want me to go to the gym?”

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea! Get down and give me fifty!”

“What— hell no! Why would I listen to you?”

“Because I’ll scream until you do it.” Utilizing his vocal training to suck in as big of a breath as his ghostly lungs can hold, Wels releases the loudest, most ear-shattering scream ever produced in this city. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

“GOOD LORD, WHAT THE FUCK?!” Hels exclaims as he stumbles off the couch. “Okay— OKAY! FINE! I’m doing it!”

Dropping onto the floor, Hels begins completing the push-ups, but pauses on his fifteenth push-up, panting like a dog in the hot summer weather. “Fifty? Did you say fifty?”

“Thirty-five more to go, lazy-bones!” Wels takes a seat in front of Hels, crossing his legs smugly. “I’m not letting you ruin my years of training. And keep your butt down— it’s like you’ve never done a push-up before!”

Groaning, Hels reluctantly continues his workout once more. Wels swears he hears Hels mutter “stupid ghost” at some point, but it doesn’t matter anymore, because he has already taken his triumph.

---

“Hey knight, how the fuck do you open this shit?” Hels stands idly in front of the counter with a packet of frozen peas before him. “None of the ripping spots worked.”

Wels peeks over at the packet. From what he can see, the designated “tear me” spots seem to be completely untouched; it just looks like Hels gave up after trying once.

“You can always use scissors,” Wels points out, no longer shocked by Hels’ incompetence. 

“Huh, you’re right! Thanks, ghost!” Hels turns and marches towards the drawers, but stops after three steps. “Uh… where do you put the scissors?”

“Bottom drawer, third from the left.”

“Uh-huh.”

Hels retrieves the cutters and makes his way back to the counter. He holds the scissors right over the middle of the packet, and before Wels can even yell at him to stop, he rips a gash through the plastic, causing all the peas inside to spill out.

The two stare silently at the frozen peas scattered all over the counter and floor. 

“…Why did you hold the scissors like that,” Wels says, disappointed but not surprised. 

“I’m left handed, you prick!”

“Not the point.”

With a loud sigh, Hels squats down and begins picking up the peas. “Why was that packet so hard to open in the first place?”

“It wasn’t,” Wels remarks, rolling his eyes. “You could have opened it like any normal person, and this wouldn’t have happened. I bet you won’t last a month trying to take care of adult responsibilities in my stolen body.”

“I disagree!” Hels exclaims. He pops up from behind the counter with his palms full of peas. “You know what? I’m gonna pull a responsible adult move right now! Where is the vacuum?”

“Helsknight, if you get any frozen peas stuck inside my vacuum cleaner I swear I will scream in your ear until—”

“It was in the garage!” Hels says, completely ignoring Wels. “Thanks!”

As Hels rushes out of the kitchen, crushing a few peas under his heels in the process. Wels watches him run off and facepalms. Why does he even try?

While Wels listens to the clanking of Hels carrying a vacuum through the halls, he imagines a recap of the past week: First, he got knocked out by a steel beam to the stomach, which separated his spirit from his body. Then, ghost snatched his body and ran off while Beef was trying to fix the problem. After that, he discovered that his entire situation was ruled a death and that the shitty NileCorp CEO was most likely behind it. And finally, he’s now forced to live with the said ghost who stole his body and somehow not go completely insane.

If all goes well, Hels will give up and return his body within a month, and he can go back and clear up everything and return to his old life. He’ll just have to wait a little…

“Yo, ghost, why isn’t this turning on?” Hels calls out from the door.

“Did you try plugging it in?” Wels replies, making his voice sound as irritated as possible.

“Oh.”

Wait. He’ll just have to wait, that’s all. He can go to assure his friends that he is okay and maybe with a little luck, expose that bastard CEO for his crimes. 

Wels glances over at Hels struggling to drag the vacuum over the floor, screeching when the peas shoot back at him. He sighs. Something tells him that he’ll be in for a long, long ride.