---

It was the third time that Argo had made his way to Oakland Church. By now, the place was an eyesore, in all honesty. He'd purified the place in flames multiple times now, but these accursed ghosts and ghouls just wouldn't stop flooding in. He thought back to all the times in which he had caught Chloe's angry gaze as he returned to this place time and again, exploring the church's catacombs in search of restless souls. Whoever managed this place clearly had not a single goddamn idea what they were doing, and Argo was forced to acknowledge that he had to keep coming back until such a time where there would be no more spirits.

Even so, why is it me?, Argo would think as he moved closer towards the entrance of the church, pondering why he was called on so often to this place.

Once again, the man was asked to wait for night. And so he would stand, waiting to see the priest girl once again to ensure that he could greet her properly. He'd treated her like a nuisance on previous missions, but he wanted to see what would happen if he treated her as an equal. After last time, when he demanded that she be stronger for the next occasion should it arise, Argo was now curious if his priest companion had taken that to heart or not. Only time would tell, if nothing else. The girl had promise, but was clouded by some kind of doubts within her. It wasn't this man's business to see to it that she improves, but he also couldn't allow himself to walk away without telling someone how weak they truly are.

Almost as if knowing without needing to even look, he knew she was approaching from his left flank. "It's been a while.", Argo would say while turning on his heel to greet her, curious as to how this interaction would progress from here.

---

WC: 326/2,000

Argo's body turned to face the young woman before him, taking in a much different person than the last time they'd met. Priestess Chloe was still mostly the same, with a few major differences. Namely, her armored robes and sheathed sword at her hip; but most notably, her tired yet resolute expression that betrayed a great passion within her. A passion that burned brightly and could set ablaze even the most durable of fire-breathing dragons. Argo, silently and without much expression, struggled to keep his hands from dancing.

As strange as it sounded, his inner muscles wished to work towards nothing at the present but allowing his fingers to curl upward and dance with one another, as if an evil mastermind were conjuring a dark scheme. This didn't happen, of course, because Argo was a man of higher standards than that, but the very thought that it could've even occurred at all sent the man into thought for a moment. He stared at the priestess with a small smirk as he rubbed his chin and stared into her own eyes until she averted her gaze and looked towards the church.

“I don't know what that look is about, but shall we get going? I wish to help end this church's maddening cases of haunting once and for all.”, Chloe blurted out in frustration, visibly a little uncomfortable under her ever-darkening gaze.

Argo nodded, agreeing with her statement. This church had such a problem with spirits that the man had to wonder if somebody was intentionally bringing them back again and again – but who would be stupid or insane enough to do that? It would be counterproductive to everything that the locals had worked towards, including the pair once more venturing inside. Argo would scan the area outside as he placed his hand on the door, looking back to see if anybody was watching. After looking for a long moment and confirming that nobody was, he disappeared inside the church with a turn on his heel.

---

WC: 662/2,000

After the pair had entered, Chloe turned to face Argo face to face. Her hand was on the handle of her sword sheathed at her hip, and his glare towards Argo could kill. The suited scowler would tilt his head towards her curiously, wondering what was to occur in the next few seconds. “What are you doing?”, he would ask, clenching his fists in preparation to act in an instant to defend himself if necessary. All the while, his eyes would not leave hers, and the two were locked there for a moment in silence, allowing his question to hang in the air echoing throughout the empty cathedral. Eventually, she would sigh and remove her hand from the handle of her sword. “It's nothing, I just wanted to see how you'd react. I've been brushing up on my swordsmanship after you said I should improve myself. Though if you want to see firsthand, I wouldn't mind after we're done here.”

Argo raised a brow at this last statement and raised a hand to his chin in thought, wondering what had sparked this change in her. Surely he hadn't been so convincing with so few words? She was almost entirely different despite how little had changed, and he couldn't quite put a finger on why that was the case. After another second, a smile crept across Argo's features – a rarity to be sure, and not at all appreciated by the priestess before him. He nodded in acknowledgement of her explanation, and gestured for her to advance further into the church; now was not the time to think about what post-job activities they would get into, that would instead be saved for the moments after it was done. It'd be pointless to speak on matters when there was always the chance that they might not even live until the end of the day. Argo was confident to the contrary, but there was always a slim chance of anything occurring, wasn't there?

“Let's get going then. Those spirits won't kill themselves.”, Argo stated plainly with a chuckle towards the priestess, gaining a hint of emotion on his otherwise blank canvas of a face before returning to his expression that let it be known that he was all business. Chloe didn't find it amusing.

---

WC: 1,043/2,000

Argo took in the sight of the cathedral once again as he and Chloe moved through it. Rather than simply head down to the basement to take care of business, Argo made his way up on the opposite side, up a staircase leading. He'd reach the elevated floor and look down at Chloe, who was still on the ground floor down below. “Go to the basement ahead of me, I'll be down momentarily.”, he'd state in a tone as if giving an order, and Chloe seemed as if she was about to protest before stopping herself as Argo continued. “You seem prepared now, at least in terms of your equipment. Or are you scared like a little rabbit fleeing from predators?”, he would finish, looking at the priestess with a judgmental stare.

Chloe would scoff at this and make her way towards the basement, opening the door and closing it behind her quickly and with determination towards her task. With that, Argo would move back and further into the second floor of this cathedral and towards a pair of doors on the opposite side. Upon opening these doors, Argo would find himself outside, standing on a balcony overlooking Oak.

He'd sigh out into the night air, looking up at the moon hanging high above. Something in him reacted with such primal energy whenever he saw it so full, though he could never place a finger on why. It ignited a spark in him, and his blood felt as if it could set ablaze at any moment, and yet he never knew why. It frustrated him at first, and though he still sought an answer even now, he was eventually forced to realize that he might never know; and overall, he had to come to accept that some oddities in his memory and being, some painful inconsistencies in who he believed himself to be, would simply need to be written off as his own mistakes.

---

WC: 1,367/2,000

It seemed as if the top floor of the cathedral and its outwardly extending balcony were free of spirits, save for a few of the bottled kind laying emptily about. Argo grinned at the idea of alcoholic priests, for what fool of a preacher would indulge themselves in drunken mischief if they were truly a man of the cloth? The presence of a higher power, ideally, would be all one needed to guide them towards righteousness and true oneness with the universe. With that being the case, perhaps Illumin was nothing more than a fabrication, or perhaps as Tomoe would put it, “a money sink for the desperate and the insane”. Argo thought on these words, pondering whether Tomoe was much better with his own psychotic ramblings about a woman that might very well be fictitious, and that the Joyan's entire obsessive reason for continuing to live could indeed be nothing more than a farce.

At that moment as Argo thought these things, he felt an extreme pain wash over him. His head rang, and he fell to his knees on the floor, collapsing in pain. It felt as if someone were banging a loud temple bell while he was inside it, feeling a rumbling and ringing all around him with no escape. All he could come to was that this was a punishment for him even thinking that SHE was fiction; a curse potentially placed upon him by Tomoe himself during one of their meetings. Argo was one of the more trusted among that cultist's colleagues, so it surprised even the suited scowler himself to realize that Tomoe seemed to truly trust nobody. If pushed, Tomoe probably didn't even trust himself, at the end of the day.

“How... completely absurd...”, Argo blurted out as he rose to his feet once more, the ringing and the pain subsiding for the moment. Beads of sweat dripped down his face, and he stood still for a minute to regain his breath. After he had done so, it was time to move on and check in on his partner in this quest.

As he moved down the stairs back towards the ground floor, he was thankful that he'd told that woman to go on alone – he didn't want to give her the pleasure of seeing his agonized expression.

---

WC: 1,753/2,000

Argo would move through the main area of the cathedral once again, taking note of the lack of spirits in the chapel. He did feel a tinge of pride at this, as at the very least the gloom and dread was relegated to the basement entirely now, rather than the haunting fog and ominous noises or outright ghost attacks right as one walked in the front door. It was a sign of progress, even if it seemed like this damn church would never be free of the accursed ethereal fools that still roamed. Were exorcists even people worth paying, or was their job just to spout some hocus pocus and then claim their payments, acting like they'd done anything at all? Argo's job was simply to eradicate ghosts here, but the process of ensuring that more didn't leak in and replace the old ones, was on the part of the church after the fact. It wasn't his fault that they kept coming back, now was it? No, it was the world that was wrong.

The suited scowler would make his way down into the basement of the cathedral, lagging behind Chloe by a few minutes. He was confident that the priestess could take care of herself, and if she couldn't, she shouldn't have acted so self-assured; a person's greatest folly was often an overestimation of their own abilities, after all. Still, he respected the woman's determination after a handful of words – it was adorable, like a puppy desperately trying to get its master's attention.

Upon reaching the dark basement, Argo immediately felt as if something was off. Looking down, he saw a small puddle of blood, followed by more droplets leading further into the basement and around a corner. It went without saying that ghosts couldn't bleed, and thus there was only one other possibility to account for. A bow appeared in Argo's hands from his pocket dimension ring, and a moment later, so did a set of black leather armor. As he turned the corner, the archer prepared for the worst.

Turning the corner, Argo immediately saw a group of ghoulish spirits surrounding Chloe, who was bleeding from cuts, her armor cracked in places, and yet still holding her blade in hand with resolve. She took swings at the ghosts, crackling lightning trailing off the edges of her sword. It seemed she had been practicing a bit of magic as well; Argo would applaud if not for the fact he was already stepping forward to assist her. Taking aim, he would blast arrow after arrow into the ghosts, felling one with each shot. He got by on muscle memory alone, not even truly remembering where he'd learned to use this bow that Tomoe had allowed him to borrow. He didn't think about it though, instead choosing to dedicate that mental energy to killing the ghosts before him.

Eventually, being taken out so easily with Argo's smug expression staring them down, caused the remaining spirits to start smashing apart the basement and destroying property instead of attacking either of the living opponents before them. They sought to destroy what they could before once more departing from this world, breaking apart crates and delicate belongings in the basement while being killed. At the end of it all, the basement was a wreck, but the ghosts were no more – once again, that is.

Argo and Chloe would once more leave that wretched cathedral. As they were about to depart from the area entirely, Argo stepped in front of the priestess for a moment, his eyes sharp yet still somehow betraying a small warmth underneath. “You did alright today. Passable, I suppose. If we meet here again some time, I expect much better. You could have been killed if I wasn't around.”, he'd say with a dry tone, speaking purely off of results rather than effort. Yet, Chloe couldn't disagree. “Fine. I'll do better for next time, if there is a next time. Happy?”

Argo would nod, and then the two parted ways. The priestess was even more standoffish and verbally short than usual today, and it made the man curious about how much rest she'd been getting lately. Not that it was any of his concern, anyway – Argo cared deeply for nobody in particular, in the end.

Instead of dwelling on anything, risking becoming the subject to another painful bell-ringing headache like earlier, he would collect his money from his employer and vanish. Hours later, Tomoe's Winged Lemur would emerge from the cathedral building as well, laughing as it carried out stolen candles and anything else it could find to pawn off on some random peddler later for extra pocket change.

---

WC: 2,000/2,000

- EXIT -