Gummy Bear Power
"Well, what do we do now?" Luis looked around at the intersection.
Blake stared at the shimmering bits of glass on the road and tried to come up with something to say but he had nothing. Their leads had all dried up.
"Let's get back to the temple. The only lead we have left is Adam."
"Man. I have a real bad feeling about Jazzie and that cop." Luis sighed. "Here you go. You're gonna need a bit more power to deal with that scum of the earth."
«Congratulations. You have gained 20 power point from: Luis Olson. Passive sympathetic transference.»
Blake's eyes widened.
"Luis, shouldn't you be saving this energy for yourself?"
Luis chuckled.
"What the fuck good does all this green energy do for me? I'm stuck in this hell forever 'cause of all the nasty crap I did when I was alive."
He cleared his throat with embarrassment.
"You're the only one who can do anything with it and if I can donate my daily allotment to you, maybe you can make a difference against all this hopeless shit happening all around us."
His eyes grew wistful.
"Maybe I can do some good even though I'm personally no good."
Blake stared at Luis. He wanted to say something to console Luis but he knew that anything he said at this moment would only seem contrived.
"You get 20 a day?"
"Yeah." He sighed. "I've been living in this hell hole for a long time. The longer you've been here and the more things you do, the more experience points you get per cycle."
"How long is a cycle and when does it start?"
"It's different for everybody. It starts at the moment that you died and goes for 24 hours after that. The more activity you do, the higher your daily points get."
"I see. Thank you for your gift Luis."
Blake dug through his green energy list, scrolling through all the one energy points the sprites had gifted him until he found the energy points that he'd earned himself, living through a full 24 hour cycle.
His first cycle only gave him a single point, just like the sprites.
After killing the three people, and injuring Marvin and Anh Hai, he had raised his allotment to 4 points per day. Since two days had already passed, he had earned for himself a total of 5 points.
"I only get four points a day."
"You've only been here two days and killed three people." Luis chuffed. "Give it time. You know how much Marvin gets a day?"
Blake shook his head.
"He gets fifty a day, much good it does him."
"Come on. Let's get back to the temple. I need to check on my bandmate."
As the morning sun continued to climb into the bright blue sky, Luis and Blake hovered over the Sho Dai Temple watching all the activities going on within the temple.
It was ten in the morning, immediately after the morning chant sessions and they were doing morning chores, part of which was food preparations.
Luis watched with fascination as the monks sliced and prepared cabbages to make their own kimchi. He had eaten some the day before and knew how good it was.
As Blake watched alongside him, the little temple sprites gathered about, fluttering around him.
Luis shooed them off with a gentle wave of the hand so Blake took them over to his side to give Luis a bit of uninterrupted free time.
To keep them occupied, he absently reached into his bag and grabbed the package of gummy bears. He passed one bear to each child and watched with a smile as they grabbed the bear and flew around with it.
The sprites were tiny and the bears were rather large so it looked as if each sprite was holding a tiny stuffed toy in their hands.
It didn't look like they knew what to do with it so Blake showed them how to eat it by tossing a few into his mouth and chewing on them.
Interestingly enough, even though they could not eat normal food from the human world, since it had passed into Blake's bag it had fundamentally changed into something that could be eaten by the ghouls.
One by one, they all began to gnaw on the ends of the gummy bear ears they were holding and suddenly, the air was filled with tiny tinkling laughter.
They had never owned anything before, much less something that was so yummy tasting. It was far better than the bland white rice and kimchi they ate every day from the ghoul's meal table.
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: Flower. Passive sympathetic transference.»
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: Wind. Passive sympathetic transference.»
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: Berry. Passive sympathetic transference.»
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: Twig. Passive sympathetic transference.»
…
Suddenly, his entire visual space was filled with a dozen little popups of a single power point of passive sympathetic transference from each of the little sprites that were floating about.
Another handful of sprites that he had not seen the day before joined, wanting a bear so he gave one to each of them as well. More points came through from them, all with 'no name' attached to the gifts.
Blake smiled at the new-comers and pointed to each of them.
"You kids need names too. You can be Cinnamon. You are Cupcake. You get Lollipop. You are Cherry. And let's see, you're Cookie…"
He went about naming as many pastry and candy names as he could remember and suddenly, along with the garden sprites, there were the candy sprites. They all hovered about, holding their little gummy bears and looking so excited they could burst.
Blake laughed and suddenly realized it was the first time since his death that he'd had an opportunity to laugh. Things had been so grim lately that laughter was a precious thing to be enjoyed and cherished.
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: Lollipop. Passive sympathetic transference.»
«Congratulations. You have gained 1 power point from: Cupcake. Passive sympathetic transference.»
…
Suddenly, more passive sympathetic transference points began popping up. This time they came from the new kids who had just joined.
After tallying through his gains, in total he had gotten 46 points today.
Luis had given him 20 and he had gotten 4 on his own. That made 24.
From the tiny sprites, he had received 22 points total!
It seemed as if they got one point each day they lived as sprites, and they were gifting their single point to him in exchange for a little bit of gentleness.
That and a gummy bear.