Work Text:
Sophie sighed, placing her hands on her hips and looking out across the intersection in front of them. “Didn’t we fix this up last week?”
It was littered with holes and cracks, looking as if no one had given it any love for at least twenty years of hard use.
“Yeah,” Max shrugged, “but Phantom and that dragon were at it again. Tore up half the city.”
Sophie made a sound of realization. “Ah! So that’s what the rumbling was last night.”
Max looked at her incredulously. “How can you not know what it was? They were at it for hours!”
Sophie huffed as she crossed her arms. “I have to sleep sometime! There’s always something crazy going on!”
“You can’t sleep through a ghost attack!” Max said, clearly exasperated. “That's just common sense! You’re gonna join the ghosts if you're not careful.”
Sophie snorted, grabbing the wheelbarrow. “Then I would tear up the street in front of your house every day.”
Max groaned. “Don’t even joke about that.”
“Well, let’s get to it.”
After working their way through a part of the closed of intersection, Sophie stopped and really looked at the holes they were filling in. She paused and turned to call over to Max. “Look at these holes! I think they’re footprints.”
“No way,” Max said as he walked over, clearly happy for a break.
“Yes, way. Look!” Sophie said, gesturing at the holes and their distinct oval shape.
Max snorted. “Ha. Someone needs to ease up on their calories.”
“Really?” Sophie raised an eyebrow. “You’re fat-shaming a dead person?”
“What?” Max waved her off, “I need to have some fun in my life.”
Sophie ignored him and followed what she was now certain was footprints. Then she paused, confused. “They turn smaller over here.”
Max shrugged, getting back over to his work. “See, not footprints. They don’t just change size like that.”
“Maybe they do,” Sophie defended.
Max gave a snorting laugh. “What? And they’re some sort of dragon-human hybrid? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“We’re talking about ghosts,” Sophie reminded him.
“Yeah?” Max asked, now distracted by his shovel.
Sophie shook her head, getting back to her own work. “Never mind.”
A few sweaty hours later, it was finally time for lunch. Sophie plopped down on the curb and brought out her sandwich, smiling at the realization that they day was half over.
Max sank down next to her with a groan. “You would think this got easier with all the practice we get in.”
“Sure,” Sophie agreed. “If only it wasn’t so demotivating to repair the same streets over and over again.”
“You said it,” Max grumbled and dug into his own lunch.
They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes before Sophie caught sight of a hole in the wall across the street from them. The fact that it had taken her this long to notice it said a lot about the state of the town they called home.
She paused with her sandwich halfway to her mouth, lowered it, and said, “Is that…” Sophie trailed off.
Max followed her gaze and then tilted his head, narrowing his eyes as he inspected the hole. “Phantom, I think.”
“Hm,” Sophie hummed, bringing up her hand in front of her face and made as if to measure the hole from a distance. “I think he’s gotten a bit taller? Compared to how big the holes usually are.”
“Really?” Max asked, skeptical. “I think he just got hit harder. The dragon, remember?”
“That wouldn’t really make the hole longer, now would it?”
“It would! The force would absolutely make the stone—”
“That’s not how it works!” Sophie cut him off.
Max opened his mouth as if to continue arguing, but both of them were startled by a stern voice from behind. “It doesn’t matter how it happened. Our job is to fix it.”
Both of them straightened up. “Yes, boss!” Before scrambled to get back to their tasks. They had an ongoing bet whether the foreman was a ghost or not, what with his complete disregard for everything a human needed to live, like lunch and toilet breaks.
Still, Sophie could hear Max muttering, “What’s even the point? They’re just gonna tear it up again.”
She gave him a smile. "It's a living. Besides, we still need to make sure the town works for the people actually living in it.”
“...Was that a pun?” Max groaned.
Sophie gave him her most innocent smile. “No?”
“I hate you.”
Sophie let out a deep sigh. “The Fentons again.”
Max groaned. “Why do they still have their driver’s licenses? And why do they insist on shooting everything?!"
Sophie agreed, but felt like arguing out of principle. “I would rather they shoot the buildings and roads than people.”
Max snorted. “They wouldn't be able to hit people if they tried! For all we know, that’s what they’re trying to do, and their aim is just that shitty.”
“Lucky us, then,” Sophie said as she inspected the impressive number of ten whole road signs broken on one small part of the road. She let out another long sigh. “Really, they just had to shoot all the road signs? Again?? Do you think they use them as target practice?"
Max groaned. “And then people wonder why,” and here he put on a clearly fake high pitched voice that Sophie was fairly certain tried to mimic a certain Pamela Manson, “the busses are always late and the traffic is so bad even though we live in such a quaint small town.” He gestured aggressively at the potholes and smoking craters in front of them, “Look at the roads!”
Sophie could do nothing but agree. “Yeah. Really, we have enough work to do as is. We don’t need humans to contribute with more destruction. Maybe we should ask the mayor to talk to them again.”
“That went so well last time. Remember their attempts at driving the flying car through town to minimize damage? Remember the hole in the school when they crashed it??”
Sophie shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”
“This is disgusting,” Max complained, grimacing down at the green on his shovel.
Sophie kind of agreed, but put on a nonchalant tone of voice as she shrugged and said, “It’s just ectoplasm.”
“It’s everywhere!” Max countered, dumping his shovel’s load into the wheelbarrow where it made a disgusting wet sound as it joined the small pile already there. “And it feels like snot!”
Sophie raised one eyebrow. “Know how that feels, do you?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Max said as he slung his shovel around, spraying droplets of ectoplasm in an arch around him.
Sophie jumped back, “Careful with that!”
“I thought you didn’t care,” Max taunted her with a smile.
“Doesn’t mean I want it on my clothes! Why isn’t the decontamination team here? They have the right clothes for this!”
“Something about a possible leak of concentrated ectoplasm in a residential area.”
“Let me guess. The Fentons?” Sophie asked tiredly as she dumped her own shovel-full of green slop into the wheelbarrow.
“No idea, but I wouldn’t bet against it.”
She paused. “Hey, wanna go after work and egg their house?”
Max raised an eyebrow. “You really think they’ll smell it over whatever they have down in their basement?”
Sophie slumped in defeat. “That’s fair.”
“But,” Max tapped his chin with one gloved hand, “It would make me feel better. I’m in.”
“Yay!” Sophie did a little happy dance, careful not to slip on any ectoplasm, which was hard considering the hole alleyway was absolutely covered in the stuff.
Max gave the alley another disgusted once over. “Why is it splattered all over? Did a ghost explode or something?”
“Who knows,” Sophie said as she got back to shoveling, “Maybe there are ghost ticks?”
Max shuddered, joining in with filling up their tenth wheelbarrow for the day. “That’s horrifying. Or a vampire ghost! Can you imagine? Disgusting.”
Sophie grimaced, not thrilled by that idea. “Whatever it was, it’s probably going to give us some overtime.”
“We’re lucky mayor Masters gives a lot of funding to the maintenance division. I might actually be able to take that vacation I’ve been dreaming of this year,” Max said, sounding a lot happier all of a sudden.
Sophie added another disgusting load into the pile. How many times had she done this the last few years? How many more times would she do it? “Yeah, true, but it would be nice to have some money over to do something nice for the city. You know, build something new instead of just repairing the same streets and houses over and over. I mean, we have all that money, and the town still looks like... this .” She ended with a gesture around them at the green dripping from the walls, too many potholes to count dotting the ground, a chunk of concrete missing from one of the houses, and two bent lampposts.
“Fair,” Max agreed easily. Then he smiled mischievously and added, “But don’t worry! The Fentons will help!”
“Help the ghosts destroy the city you mean!”
Max pointed at her with a wide smile. “Exactly!”
They both broke out into laughter and got back to shoveling.
After a few minuted Max broke the silence, “Speaking of Masters, I could have sworn I saw him fistfight the Fenton boy last Thursday in the Nasty Burger’s parking lot.”
“What?” Sophie asked, glancing up from her work, “No, you didn’t.”
“I did! And the craziest thing is, I saw him punch through the side of a wall. A brick one!”
“Okay, now I know you're shitting me.” She paused, and hated that she lived a life where she had to ask, “Wait. The Fenton kid or the mayor?”
“What?” Max blinked in confusion.
“Who punched through the wall?”
“The mayor!” Then he paused and seemed to think before adding, “No, both actually.”
Sophie shook her head. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I’m not!”
“You know what? I don’t care. Let’s just get this done.”
Max gave the walls another disgusted look. “I’ll call the decontamination team and see if they’re done.”
The water pooled on the street, running down the dented asphalt and Sophie just knew that this was gonna be a real pain in the ass to fix.
Max stepped up beside her. “What happened here?”
“No idea. It almost looks like…” She paused as she thought. “Hey, do we know any ghost who has ice powers?”
“Ice?”
“Yeah. I think someone froze the pipes.”
“It’s July!” Max sounded scandalized.
“Then try give the ghosts an almanac,” Sophie deadpanned. Then she groaned into her hands. “This is gonna take ages to fix! We need to dig up the whole street!”
Max seemed lost in thought for a second before saying, “Can’t we just wait a few days for a ghost to do it for us?”
Sophie stared at him, incredulous. “You want to weaponize the ghost fights to do construction work?”
Max shrugged. “It’s time they payed back some of the damage they do.”
“Good luck explaining that to them,” Sophie said.
“If I were a ghost I could just go down there and fix it. No need to dig it all up. Imagine,” Max said dreamily.
Sophie raised one unimpressed eyebrow. “Now you’re gonna kill yourself to do a better job?”
Max laughed, “No! Besides, I don’t think I could do a better job than I already do even if I tried. You could never top this perfection.” He ended with an exaggerated gesture at himself.
Sophie held back her laugh as she deadpanned, “Imagine being so pathetic you’re dying to work.”
Max wagged a finger at her, tutting. “No, no, I want the dead to work.”
“Oooh, that’s much better!” Sophie laughed and Max joined in.
But something about what he’d said earlier about putting ghosts to use stuck with her. Why shouldn’t they try and use the ghosts own powers to fix the problems they caused? “...Do we know any ghost who has fire powers?” Maybe they could melt the ice at the very least.
Max hummed in thought. “Have you heard Ember’s new single?”
“Get down!” Sophie yelled, pushing Max down to the ground.
He yelped as he fell, but soon joined her behind their upturned wheelbarrow. “I thought it was over?!”
“Maybe they started again?”
“What,” Max hissed, “just taking a coffee break from beating the shit out of each other?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Sophie sighed. And they had been so close to finishing up this street.
Max watched the fight in front of them with a frown. “God, they just come out of nowhere. Creepy fucks.”
Sophie agreed. Even if one of the ghosts currently fighting wasn’t the worst of them. Phantom had always seemed to actually care about the people around him, if not the infrastructure. And Sophie guessed that was as good as it would get. The other ghost though, Skulker if her memory served her right, didn’t seem to hesitate to put everyone and everything around him at risk.
Speaking of. Skulker charged up what looked like a big blast, aiming it down at Phantom and towards the street. Absolutely not.
Sophie felt rage and indignation flood through her and before she knew what she was doing she had gotten up from their little shelter and stepped right between the brawling ghosts, brandishing her shovel like a weapon. “Don’t. You. Dare.”
Phantom and Skulker both looked at her with shock clear on their faces.
Phantom breathed out, “What?”
Sophie wasn’t deterred. “We just finished fixing up the holes in this street from last week. If you two break it again, I swear to god I’m gonna kill you again.” She turned to Skulker and his energy weapon, now sizzling out but still aimed towards the street, and growled, “And you. I’ll make your face match the hole I know you put in the wall of the library.”
Phantom held up his hands as he backed up slightly. “Jeez, okay, I’m sorry.” He turned and gestured for the other ghost to follow. “Come on, let’s go to the—”
“Not the park!” Sophie interrupted him, raising her shovel slightly, “We’re holding a festival there on Saturday and there's newly planted flowers. Go out of town!”
Phantom whined, “But that’s so far.”
Sophie crossed her arms. “I don’t care. You can fly.” She made a dismissive wave of her hand. “Shoo.”
“Unbelievable,” Phantom muttered as he flew away.
She could hear the other ghost say to Phantom, “It takes a good hunter to know when you are outclassed.”
And Phantom’s answering, “Keep telling yourself that.”
And then they were gone.
Max came up to her, looking flustered, “That was so stupid!”
“It worked didn’t it?” Sophie said, hefting her shovel over her shoulder to try and disguise her suddenly shaking hands.
Max gave her an incredulous look. “Yeah, I guess it did.”
“Let’s go home.” She gave him a smile. “Imagine! We can actually clock out in time!”
“I need to sleep,” Max agreed, then showed her shoulder, “You should too, and hopefully a dragon attacks so you get a good night’s sleep.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Sophie and Max stepped around the school’s corner, and immediately Max said, with triumph that didn’t match the devastation surrounding them, “Ha! I told you the mayor was fighting the Fenton boy!”
They were gone now, thankfully, but Sophie couldn’t deny that they really had seen the town’s mayor fist fighting a teenager. Rolling around on the ground, throwing insults and everything.
And then, of course since this was Amity, it had gotten strange.
First, Sophie had been sure they were about to become witnesses to the mayor killing a child when he threw the boy straight through a wall.
Secondly, the boy had gotten back up, grabbed the mayor, and flown off.
So maybe they had actually been witnesses to a child kidnapping the town’s mayor?
This was not what she had been expecting when they had gotten the call to fix the parking spaces outside the school.
They both stopped in front of the deep hole in the wall.
Sophie voiced what they were both thinking, “It was the Fenton boy who got thrown through here, right?”
“Yeah,” Max agreed, sounding so very tired.
Sophie felt the need to ask, “And he was fine, right?”
Max nodded. “Climbed out himself and everything.”
Sophie tried to really take that in. Then she paused as she looked at the hole. She brought her hand up in front of her face as if to measure it. “Doesn’t this look like Phantom?”
Max tilted his head. “You know what? Yeah, it does.”
They exchanged looks.
“You think he would agree to come work for us in the summer?” Max asked, hopefully.
Sophie laughed, “Ask him. I doubt he has the time.”
“Fair,” Max agreed and they both turned silent as they decidedly tried to not think of the implications of all his.
“Well!” Sophie clapped her hands and stepped away. “Let’s go fix some parking spots.”
“And a hole in the wall,” Max added.
“Yeah, and a hole in the wall.”