The brunette hedgie sighed. Barely an hour ago his agent called him up to tell him about a haunted house that needed investigating, the prospect of which was not at all enthusing. Nevertheless he got his shit together and took off for the address mentioned. Upon arriving, however, his heart sunk even more when it turned out to be the most stereotypical looking haunted mansion he'd ever seen. As if to punctuate, a bolt of lighting crossed the sky with a resounding thunderclap. He almost wanted to cry it was so bad.

"Wow, this place looks promising!"

Qw looked back at his ghostly companion. "You would think that wouldn't you?"

Ektiese stuck a green tounge out at him.

It was her fault he even had to be here, her continuing existence that he had to support by taking on these jobs. Unlike most ectoplasmic entities, Ektiese was not self productive. She was incapable of continuously producing ectoplasm to keep her essence in check, so she had to rely on outside forces to generate more ecto for her. This kind of thing would prove a lot less problematic if she'd just conserve her ecto by being normal and not playing slimy pranks all the damn time... but then where would the fun be in that? So to make up for this wasteful behaviour, Qw built an ectoplasm containment tank in his basement which he would replenish every now and then by doing some ghost busting as it were.

Upon walking up the steps to the place they were faced with a door with a great big knocker on it. "How original." Qw muttered to himself.

Ektiese chuckled, "I like it. looks very inviting."

Shaking his head, Qw grabbed the knocker and knocked 3 times, each clack against the door echoing from within. "I swear if this job is as cliche as it looks, I'm going to find that agent of mine and wring his neck."

"You still have no idea, do you?" The ghost girl muttered.

"You don't either." Qw muttered back.

"You don't know that I don't know."

"How would you know that I don't know that you don't know?"

"Just cuz!"

The hedgie grumbled as he knocked on the door again. "Well if you know and wont tell me then what's keeping me from believing you don't know and you're just messing with my head?"

"Exactly!"

"Well how would- ... wait, what?!"

Again she just stuck her green tounge out at him, this time making it stretch out long enough to lick his face. Great, job hasn't even started yet and already he can't stand it. Qw looked back at the door and grunted, lifting his leg up and thrusting it sharply outward into it, knocking it clear off it's hinges and sending it clattering to the floor with a resounding echo in the darkness. Stepping inside the first thing he noticed was the smell. Old. Ignoring the cliche nature, it was more than acceptable given this place had been standing for well over 150 years... maybe even over 200, the agent never specified. All he said was that it was pretty old, was owned by a wealthy family that had some sort of trading bussiness, abandoned at some point, and recently been subject to people dissapearing within. Being haunted was a possibility, but even if it wasn't people dissapearing meant something, so who better to look into it than a couple of nobodies with unique abilities that were based around escaping the most improbable of situations?

"So Ektiese, how ya feel about this place now?" Qw asked as he looked back over his shoulder at her.

She hummed as she floated in, the greens of he body giving off a faint enough glow just be able to see around the opening room of the place. "Well, I definitely feel a presence in here. Did we bring the jar?"

"Yeah I got it, plus an extra shot of ecto just in case." He responded.

The ghost girl grinned at him. "So you DID take my idea into consideration, hmm?"

The light in the room was insufficient, but she could tell he was blushing. "It's... just for emergencies! I didn't do it to be kinky!"

"I know you're lying, but I'll let it slide this time hot stuff!"

The hedgie narrowed his eyes at her. "I bet you made me do it somehow."

Ektiese raised an eybrow at him. "And just what makes you think that?"

"The only reason I'm standing here right now is because of you and your abilities! How do I know you don't tamper with my memories when I'm not using them?"

There was a pause as Ektiese contemplated.

The abilities Qw was talking about was her capability to take, alter, and contain what she reffered to as 'death memories'. A year or so ago, Qw's spirit stand in left his body for undefined reasons. Distraught at the thought of loosing her companion, the ghost girl tried to bring him back to life by using a bit of her own essence. Initialy all it did was reanimate the body with a copy of her personality, but having managed that much was a step in the right direction. After awhile of examining the mind her copied personality was occupying, she found a way to use the remains of his memory to restore him back to normal. It worked and Qw was back among the living... so to speak. Further fiddling around revealed that the memories Ektiese recreated could be altered if she saw fit, and she could also pysically extract or copy these memories in the form of small ectoplasmic orbs. Since Qw was a spiritless body this made him like a living computer of sorts. She could save copies of his personality in these orbs and alter his personality as she saw fit, keeping the copies as backups as she needed them. As time went on this ability revealed itself to be a strain on her ectoplasm levels, and she'd keep needing more to keep making memories with. Eventually it came down to having Qw going out hunting down other ghosts to gain ecto to support her so she could keep supporting him. On their first hunt she discovered she also had the same power over other ghosts, being able to extract their memories from their forms and keeping them as orbs as well. Since the trade off was a now harmless glob of ecto it became a relatively simple task of hunting down more ghosts, extracting their death memories, and collecting the excess slime for their own uses! And the memory orbs were easy to keep stored away in a great big jar so with simple containment issues it seemed like a win-win situation... except for Quickwing.

The hedgie was not happy to have been brought back to life, let alone that his feelings and memories were at her whim. How could he ever be sure she hadn't tampered with his memories when she could make alterations without letting him remember she did? Deeper still, how could he be sure he was who he thought he was when his body, memories and all, were basicly just her toys for her own ammusement? All his other friends had either abandoned him or died long before he was revived like this... or so he believed. What could he believe though? All he could remember is what she supposedly made him remember. It was so annoying to think about he'd just about given up trying... but still, that lingering feeling that he may not be who he thinks he is... it may hang over his head forever now.

Qw finally broke the silence by shaking his head in frustration. "Y'know what, forget it. Let's just find whatever's here so we can leave!"

Ektiese frowned. "Alright." She felt sad that he didn't trust her, but to some degree she knew she couldn't blame him. "Well, I guess we should split up and go searching?"

The brown hedgie nodded. "Yep. Since I went up and you went down last time, let's do it the other way around this time."

The ghost nodded back in agreement.

And the writer looked back over this whole thing and realized how much he sucks at getting to the point.