Welcome to SU: Legacy, a next-gen Supernatural RP that takes place in the year 2040. The Men of Letters has expanded to include three base locations across the continental US. Angels and demons have gone mostly dormant but there are still supernatural evils lurking in the shadows. The legacies could use your help. Are you in?
Giving credit where credit is due. A big thank you to all the coders at PBS and various resource sites for any codes, plug-ins and templates.
Thanks to Nick @ Fidelius for the fabulous mini-profile. Everything else was created by our own staff. If we missed someone please let us know.
We don't own Supernatural, we just enjoy it's awesomeness. Thanks Eric Kripke for creating it, all the writers/producers for putting out a great show and the CW for keeping it on the air for almost 10 years now!
Travelling in the back of a mail van was always boring. Sometimes it was just plain dull being a ghost. There was no company to entertain her and there never was enough light to read any of the mail she was stuck with anyway. Of course, that didn't stop Nicki from occasionally opening some of the more interesting looking parcels in the mail bags she was in-corporeally perched on. It never ceased to amaze her what strange things people ordered through the post. When she unsuspectingly opened up a pickled hand sent from laboratory to a university one time, that kind of put her off doing it again for a while. So right now, she was just kicking back trying to remember all the guys she'd ever kissed in her life time.
After four years of being dead though, some of the names were harder to remember than others and that made her a little sad. Getting murdered had not been on her list of things to do in her life, but she'd come to terms with it, even if she wasn't sure why she hadn't passed onto some kind of afterlife. She knew she wanted the guy who'd done it to pay for his crime, she knew what he looked like. Would remember that face forever, not like the fleeting visages of other people in her life. But he'd never been caught and the case had gone cold and since she was at the mercy of being dragged everywhere her stupid pendant went, there was little she could do about it anyway. Still, at the back of her mind, she wondered if bringing him to justice would finally put her at peace. Otherwise, she was she bound to be an aimless ghost for the rest of eternity.
The mail van jerked to a stop at a set of traffic lights and one of the sacks of letters and smaller packages toppled over, it's contents spilling straight through her spirit body so that she was literally knee deep in mail. She stared for a moment and then huffed, figuring that since she didn't have anything better to do she might as well pick it up and put it back.
With a little amount of concentration, she mentally gathered up the letters first, focused on moving them from where they'd fallen through her legs and back into the open bag. Her abilities to manipulate objects had evolved so much since she first found out she could affect the world around her all those years ago. There had been no instruction manual for being dead, no easy to follow step by step guide on how to do things when you were a ghost so a lot of things she'd only found out by accident or trial and error. Moving small objects like envelopes was relatively easy. She could move bigger things with her mind too, like pushing furniture, but she found it was often so much easier to simply make her body coporeal again and go do it by hand. Though that tended to leave witnesses a little bit freaked out.
By the time she was done the truck had stopped and everything was back inside the mail bag. Though it probably wasn't in any kind of order and she suspected a few people would be getting the wrong mail today. It really didn't bother her, in fact she found it kind of amusing. Maybe someone else would get to open the pickled hand today instead.
A little time later and the small brown padded envelope that she was being tugged along by was posted into a mailbox in a small apartment block. Nicki stood in the empty hallway, staring at the faded numbers on the front of the box, trying to work out if it read 120 Park Street or 170. Either way, she was fairly certain, it wasn't the address she recalled seeing on the envelope when her last 'aquaintence' had written it out. There again, the sweaty man did have appauling hand writing. No wonder it had gotten misdirected. Especially since it had been Nicki sorting the mail that day.
Assuming that 120 was a ground floor apartment, she wandered off in search of it, curious to see who it was she was stuck with this time. The distance she could go away from the pendant seemed to be a little variable, though it never went more than a block or two at the most. She'd find that if she strayed too far away, she would simply blink back to wherever the silver necklace was again without warning, which had been very annoying more than once. It always seemed to happen just when she had found something very interesting to observe, or when she was about to hear something scandalous. Such was life. Or rather such was death. You never really got to the good part.
One upside to being a spirit was never having to knock on doors. If Nicki wanted in somewhere, she would merely walk through the obstruction and make herself at home. Though when she walked through the door of her new, temporary residence, she was...how to put it? Disappointed.
"Please don't tell me I'm stuck in a place that no-one lives in." She said aloud, dreading the prospect of having to rattle around here for what could turn out to be a very long time. If no-one ever came to check the mail box, she was effectively a prisoner in this place.
At first glance, the apartment was pretty sparse. There was little in the way of furniture, a ratty couch and a tv that had seen better days, maybe better decades. The kitchen had the basics, but that was about it and when she opened up the fridge to see if she could find any indication that there was recent activity here, she was greeted with an interesting smell, a couple of six packs of beer and a lot of empty shelves.
"Okay, that's not a good sign." She closed the refridgerator door distractedly, turning her attention to the cupboards instead where a little hope resided. There was plenty of dried food here and canned food. The kind of supplies people kept in for emergency use. Nothing fresh which meant that her new landlord was most likely not a person who spent much time here.
With a small sigh, Nicki moved on to exploring the rest of the apartment, stopping by the bedroom to stick her nose in the wardrobe.
"So the mystery guest is a guy, huh?" She muttered to herself as she pawwed through shirts and jeans.
"A guy who's really not that big on dressing up much. Brilliant. I'm stuck with a bum who's never here. My life is so much fun." She deadpanned, rolling her eyes at the few pairs of dirty sneakers in the bottom of the wardrobe. She tilted her head to one side when something caught her attention and she picked one of the shoes up to inspect closer.
"Is that blood?" She pulled her face, realising the dark red splodge probably was. Ketchup didn't tend to look that dark and flaky. She put the sneaker back and stood up straight again, not sure what to make of what she had discovered so far.
"Okay, that's kinda creepy." Mulling over the prospect that the guy who lived here might be a serial killer, Nicki returned to the main room and flopped down on the couch to stare at the tv. If she was going to have to wait it out, at least she could watch tv to fill the time. With a blink of her eyes, the tv set came to life despite the fact it wasn't plugged in and she mentally flicked through the channels. Another perk of being a ghost was her ability to be a walking remote control. She didn't know how or why she was able to affect electrical items, she just knew she could. It was always entertaining wandering into an electrical store and making everything suddenly go haywire. Well a girl had to get her joy somewhere.
"No cable!?" She frowned, clearly annoyed. "What kind of weirdo is this guy?"
Greg was exhausted and more than a little beat up when he pulled his tan Jeep Wrangler into the parking lot. Usually he preferred the comfort of a motel room than his own apartment, but after what he'd just been through in Mexico with Danny, his own place was looking pretty good.
He was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. Both were dirty and smeared with blood. The shirt was ripped where the beast had clawed his shoulder, but the wound was healed now. He'd packed a few other outfits before he left, but all of them were equally gross. Such was the life of a hunter.
Greg used his key to open the front door and checked his mailbox. There were quite a few envelopes, most of which were probably bills. People didn't usually send him snail mail. It usually took him a while to get it and it was the Age of the Internet.
He examined the padded brown envelope, squinting down at the address. Did that say 120 or 170? Maybe 150? He sighed and closed his mailbox, taking the little package with him. He could look at it later after he had a hot shower and a nap.
When he got to his door he paused just outside of it. What was that humming noise? He unlocked the door, keeping one hand on the handle of the knife in his belt. He had a Devil's Trap drawn under the carpet just inside the door. Anything evil inside would be right in front of him.
He pushed open the door quickly, but didn't hit any evil beasties in the ass. There didn't appear to be anyone or anything in the living room or the kitchen, both of which were visible from where he stood. That was one of the benefits of living in such a small place. His TV was on, though. The hum he'd heard had been static. There was no way he'd left it on before he left.
"Hello?" he called, stepping inside and closing the door. He locked it with the chain and the deadbolt, waiting for a response. "Hey, is somebody in here?"
Greg wasn't much for having guests, but there were a few people who crashed here now and then while he was out. Usually they called first to let him know so something like this didn't happen. Unless it was an emergency.
Greg picked up the remote from the table and shut the TV off, tossing the mail onto the coffee table. He headed for the bedroom in the alcove and looked inside. There didn't seem to be anyone there. He looked around and under the bed, and then headed for the closet. Had someone been rifling through his wardrobe? He furrowed his brow. It didn't look like anyone had taken anything. So why go through it at all?
He went back out to the alcove and opened the door to the bathroom on the right. It was tiny, like a closet with a sink, toilet, and nice little upright coffin to shower in. He opened the glass door and looked inside the shower. No one there. Puzzled and a bit annoyed, Greg went back out to the main room.
"Alright," he said. "If someone's here, you better let me know now."
He waited for some kind of response.
Please don't be a demon, he thought. He didn't think he could handle a battle right now.
"Sweet Jesus on a pushbike!" Nicki yelped reflexively when the door unexpectedly slammed open and what she could only describe as an extra from Dawn of the Dead burst in. She jumped so much that she fell through the couch she had been sitting on so that she was now sat on the floor with her ghostly body inside the couch, her head and shouders just above the seat cushions.
"Way to make an entrance there cowboy." She grumbled, picking herself up to go and get a proper look at her new roomie.
"Hello? Hey, is somebody in here?"
"Some body? Heh, not quite." She giggled to herself, snorting a little at her own joke. Now she was getting a better look at him, her theory about him being a serial killer seemed to be getting more realistic by the second. Though underneath the blood stained clothes and the dirty skin, she suspected he was quite the handsome guy. But handsome men could still be serial killers.
Whilst he wandered off to check the rest of his apartment, Nicki took a moment to glance at the rest of the envelopes he'd dumped on the table, curious as to what this man's name could be.
"Mr. G. Marsh." She read aloud. "Hmm, I wonder what G stands for? Gary? Geoff? Gordon? Giovanni?"
"Alright, If someone's here, you better let me know now."
"Ooh, kinda paranoid there aren't you G?" Narrowing her eyes a little, she wondered whether or not to make her prescense known. On the one hand, she didn't want to scare him off just yet, even if he was a serial killer, he was still company and she was long past being lonely. Besides, from his appearance and the way he was acting, she guessed it probably took quite a bit to scare a guy like this so she let her mischeivous side get the better of her and blinked the tv back on again.
Greg stood in the middle of his living room, waiting for some kind of response. He went through a mental checklist of all the invisible-type creatures he could think of that may have been able to get into his apartment. A reaper came to mind first, but he wasn't dead or dying so he highly doubted that was it. Then of course there were spirits, but he already knew the building wasn't haunted. Unless someone had died in it while he was gone... Some special types of demons could move too fast for the eye to see or shimmer in and out of corporeal form...
Before he could get any further on the list there was a small click as the TV screen lit up. The sound of static accompanied the gray and white snow on the screen. Greg eyed the remote, sitting on the table beside the mail where he'd left it.
"So you can work with electrical stuff, huh?"
He picked up the remote and pressed a button. The screen turned blue for a moment and then the menu for the current DVD in the player popped up. He'd been watching episodes of The Simpsons before he left.
He set the remote back down, letting the menu music play. It was better than listening to static.
"Listen, if you're looking for a fight, today is not your day. If you're able to show yourself, just do it and get it over with instead of sneaking up on me in the shower later. This isn't the Bates Motel."
Again, he waited. If this thing was physically able to manifest itself and choosing not to, he hoped it would just appear already so he'd know for sure what he was dealing with. How the hell had it gotten in anyway?
"Okay, this is new. Your tv just randomly switches itself on and instead of banging the side of it to see if there's something wrong with it like most people do, you start talking to thin air? Hmm..."
Nicki put a finger to her lips in thought, even more curious about G 'the serial killer' now. She had ruled him out as being psychic pretty early on, since he hadn't reacted to her speaking aloud, but bizarrely he still seemed to be aware that there was a spirit in the room. She'd never encountered that reaction before and in a way it made her quite excited to be stuck with him. At least if she tried to communicate with him, he wasn't going to flee immediately or sit in a corner and cry.
In response to his comment about being able to work with electrical stuff, Nicki blinked again and switched everything that required power to work on in his apartment. Instantly the lights flickered, the microwave in the kitchen came to life, the volume on the tv got turned up full and Greg's computer switched itself on. When the screen lit up, she got an idea.
"Listen, if you're looking for a fight, today is not your day. If you're able to show yourself, just do it and get it over with instead of sneaking up on me in the shower later. This isn't the Bates Motel."
"What kind of woman do you take me for?" Nicki replied with a sly grin, her voice falling on deaf ears as she wandered over to the computer. She wasn't quite ready to actually show herself to him, but she did want to talk if she could so she concentrated on the keyboard and began to type.
'What does G stand for?' Appeared on the screen, the cursor at the end of the sentance blinking patiently, awaiting a response. She wasn't expecting him to type anything, just talk out loud like he had been doing, at least she hoped he would tell her his name.
As Greg went to put the remote back down on the coffee table, he jumped and dropped it when everything in his entire apartment that had been off turned on at once. The microwave, the lights, the computer, the coffee maker - everything. The volume on the TV cranked and the small radio in the corner started blaring the Foo Fighters.
"What the fu--?" Greg couldn't even hear himself over all the noise. He went to shut off the radio, turned down the TV, and went into the kitchen to shut off all the appliances. He heard his alarm clock beeping in his room and went inside to shut it off.
Greg sighed, walking out into the living room. "Nice trick," he muttered.
He ran a hand through his hair, greasy and full of dirt. He went over to his laptop, which was sitting on the wobbly excuse for a table he had in the kitchen. Google was open: the default webpage for his Internet browser. He read the text that had appeared in the search bar.
What does G stand for?
He put a hand to his face, rubbing the few-day-old stubble, a bit puzzled.
"You really should have a shave and maybe get that shower y'know. I know I've been dead for a while, but I'm pretty sure that tramp-chic is not in fashion." Nicki commented distractedly, listening to the sound of his dirty nails as they dragged roughly through his scratchy stubble.
"G? What G?"
"The G on your mail silly. What else would I be talking about?" She replied, her tone suggesting that, to her at least, his question was the most stupidest ever. "I suspect it's not G for genius."
Instead of typing her reply, Nicki went for the more playful alternative, turning to concentrate on the pile of letters on the coffee table then putting her lips together in a silent 'O' to blow air across the room, causing the mail stack to fall from where it sat as if caught in a draft. She grinned to herself at the effectiveness, a little proud of her showmanship skills.
Greg stared at the sentence on the computer screen. He wasn't a dumb guy, but he was terribly exhausted and his brain wasn't firing on all cylidners.
Something caught his eye and he turned just in time to see the stack of mail slide off the coffee table as if being blown by a strong wind. A few of the pieces of mail landed on the floor a few feet in front of him. He looked around hesitantly before kneeling to pick up one of the envelopes. He examined it. 'G. Marsh' was printed on the front.
"Oh. Duh," he muttered. "Greg," he answered.
He turned back to the computer, closed his Internet browser, and opened Microsoft word. The curser blinked on the blank page. He moved to the side to give this thing room to type. He was assuming it was a spirit, but given the last spirit he'd encountered, he decided not to get in its way until he knew more about it.
"Oh yay! He gets it!" Nicki did a little triumphant celebration dance that pretty much just involved her jumping up and down where she stood, glad that her new (unwitting) best friend was receptive to her attempts at communication despite him not being psychic.
"Nice to meet you Greg." She smiled, watching him as he clicked on his mouse a couple of times.
"Who are you?"
"I am the ghost of Christmas past, ooooo." She chuckled as she waved her arms in a gloriously over the top fashion, amusing herself while she returned to the computer again. Guessing that he wasn't really in the mood for playing games right now (and who would be when they looked as rough as he did?), Nicki simply typed her name on the screen.
Nicki.
"That's short for Nicola by the way. I'm not a man, if that helps make you feel more comfortable." She paused for a moment to see if he was going to ask her something else, considering how rude it would be to ask him if he was a serial killer or not.
Greg could see and hear the keys moving after he asked the question. It was weird to see an inanimate object being ineracted with, but no one interacting with it. He waited a moment after the typing stopped, making sure the spirit was finished, before stepping over to read the screen.
It said, 'Nicki.'
"Nice to meet you, Nicki," Greg said. "Well, unofficially meet you anyway." He sighed. "Okay, Nicki. How'd you end up in my apartment?"
He was a bit more relaxed now, fairly certain anything that wanted to rip his heart out through his ribcage wouldn't sit around chatting with him first.
Where was a psychic when you needed one? He knew three of them, and this thing had ended up on his doorstep. That was the universe for you.
"Well..." Nicki started, taking a breath before she carried on.
"It's a long story really, started out with me getting murdered which is a pretty nasty way to start a story and I absolutely didn't deserve it because I wasn't a bad person, but that's what happened and it took me a while to figure out why people kept ignoring me, but then I found out I was dead, just not dead dead, but like this kind of dead..." She explained, indicating her current state depsite the fact Greg couldn't hear or see her.
"So anyway, it turns out that I'm mystically attached to the necklace I was wearing at the time I got killed, which by the way is in that envelope you haven't opened yet and I don't know how you can get a strange package like that in the mail and not open it right away to see what it is, 'cause that'd drive me mad not knowing what it is, and I know the last person I was stuck with mailed it to his cousin and I'm pretty sure her name didn't start with a G." Nicki stopped rambling only to take a breath.
"Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I'm here because of that necklace and I've just realised that I've said all this to you thinking you're listening and I can tell from the expectant look on your face you're waiting for me to do something to answer you and I'm not about to type all this down for you so you're just gonna have to go open that package and join the dots yourself."
With a brief nod, Nicki wandered over to the coffee table again, saw the package she had been referring to and picked it up so that from Greg's point of view it was standing up on it's end, defying gravity, seemingly all by itself.
Greg waited for what seemed like a long while for a response. He kept his eyes on the computer, watching the curser blink and waiting for the keys to be pushed by seemingly empty air.
He didn't see the package move right away. After a moment he glanced over at the coffee table and saw it standing on its end, like somone was holding it up for him to see. He went over to the table, crouching to examine the semi-floating padded envelope.
"A mysterious package, and an invisible guest all in one day," he muttered. "I must've one some weirdo lottery."
He took the package carefully and stood, hesitating, before lossening the glued-down tab with his fingers. He peered into the open envelope and wrinkled his brow. It looked like jewelry. Who would have sent him jewelry?
Greg dumped the contents of the envelope into the palm of his hand. An amulet on a chain fell out and he examined it. It didn't look like anything mystical or special. Just a pendant.
"You're here because of this?" he asked, letting the chain hang from his fingers and swinging it slightly like a pendulum. "Okay... well, that's a start, I guess."
He sat down at the kitchen table beside the computer, putting the necklace down on the table top.
"So, where the necklace goes you go. Is that the idea?"
"A mysterious package, and an invisible guest all in one day, I must've one some weirdo lottery."
"Well you absolutely look the part honeybuns so who knows, maybe you did." Nicki replied, shrugging her shoulders in yet another pointless gesture that he could not see. It was old habit to do such things though, the same as it was to talk out loud even though he couldn't hear her. The same reason she tended to open unlocked doors rather than walk through them, or pick things up with her hands. It was like clinging hold of what it meant to be human and alive, to be able to interact with the world that she was now living in.
Sometimes she felt so alone and helpless she did mundane things and pretended she wasn't dead. When she got dragged along to the store to do grocery shopping with whoever it was that held her necklace that week, she'd imagine she was planning a dinner party and was inviting all the people she held dear to her heart. As she went up and down the aisles, she'd pick out the ingredients for what she would cook, even down to the dessert and the wine that would round off her imaginary evening. By the end of the trip she'd usually end up depressed and so disconnected that she would do something so totally out of character that she'd scare herself.
One occassion, her mood was so dark she inadvertantly materialised in the middle of the street and caused a traffic accident. The guy who's car she's suddenly appeared in front of was so terrified by her appearance he plowed straight into the store window. So no more imaginary dinner parties for Nicki. From then on, she didn't dwell on her past but embraced the present and her situation as it was.
"You're here because of this? Okay... well, that's a start, I guess."
"Apparently so, yeah." Nicki nodded, briefly bending at the waist to stare up close at the necklace she used to wear. It wasn't often she got to look at it this close up. She reached her hand up as though she wanted to touch it but there was, as there always had been since she'd died, what felt like an invisible barrier between her fingertips and the silver pendant. It was off limits to her, forbidden by whatever power it was that turned her into a ghost and prevented her from crossing over to whatever place she was supposed to have gone when she passed away.
"So, where the necklace goes you go. Is that the idea?"
"Oh, you're clever for a serial killer. I think I'm gonna like you." Nicki grinned, coming to perch on a seat beside Greg at the kitchen table. In front of her was the computer and she quickly tapped out 'YES' so that he would know his assumption was correct. She watched him for a minute then, his mind seemingly trying to figure something out, most likely what was the best way to get rid of her she thought sadly. Guessing that she might not have much oppertunity to ask her own questions of him and nagged by curiousity, she went back to typing again.
'Who's blood is that?' slowly spelt out on the screen, awaiting a response as Nicki's attention became fixed on the dirty red stains on Greg's shredded shirt. He didn't look injured so she assumed it was someone else's. Perhaps he'd gotten into a fight or something equally interesting.
Greg sat at the kitchen table, assuming by this point that he was dealing with a spirit. It didn’t seem vengeful, so it had to be fairly new. It hadn’t had time to turn bitter or go insane, which was good.
He heard the tapping of the keys on the laptop and glanced toward the screen.
YES
That confirmed the statement he’d made a moment ago. Where the necklace went, the spirit followed.
Great, he thought. Now I get to play host to Casper.
But, at least it wasn’t a vengeful ghost. Those had a tendency to be nasty, as he’d just witnessed on an extreme scale in Mexico. He thought for a moment, looking down at the necklace on the table. The name Nicki could have been male or female, but he didn’t know many guys that went by Nicki. The necklace had a feminine style to it, so he assumed he was dealing with someone of the opposite sex. As far as whether it was a little girl or an old lady, he didn’t know yet. Her typing skills seemed pretty good at least.
He heard the keyboard again and waited for it to stop before craning his neck to read it.
Who’s blood is that?
Greg looked down at his white t-shirt, smeared with blood from where the creature in Mexico had slashed him with its claws. But Danny had healed the wounds, so there was no evidence that Greg had been injured.
And now I look like I just murdered somebody, he thought. Fantastic.
“Believe it or not, it’s mine,” he said. “It’s kind of a long story, but in my line of work I get hurt… a lot.”
He scratched his head, grimacing at the dirt and grease he could feel in his hair and on his scalp. He felt disgusting, like a week-long shower wouldn’t do the trick.
"In your line of work? What're you, a lion tamer or something?" Nicki snorted a laugh, mentally picturing Greg with a top hat on, a whip in one hand and a chair in the other, trying to fend off a growling lion. She wanted to know more but the weary and miserable look on his face over the state he was still in made her feel a little bit of pity for him.
"Aw, perhaps I can ask you later." She tapped away on the keyboard again, leaving another short message.
Go. Promise, I won't peak.
It was a complete lie, she absolutely intended to peak if he got in the shower but there was no need to tell him that. Though he seemed to be handling the 'I have a ghost' issue quite well, underneath Greg could easily still be freaking out and she didn't like to un-neccessarily make people feel uneasy. To encourage him and to make it a little clearer what she had meant, Nicki got up and went to push the bathroom door open, standing aside so he could go get cleaned up.