"Whoa!" David cried, "He never even made it into The Afterlife! First time I've ever seen that!"
"Gross!" Esther moaned. "That stuff feels horrible! It makes you feel like something's crawling all over your body!"
"What makes you think something isn't?" The Ancient One answered. "It'll take a while for the negative energy to break down and be absorbed into us."
"Why would we want it?" Esther asked.
The Ancient One looked at her rather perplexed. "We need negative energy," he answered, "just as much as we need positive energy. The only difference is, we can control it, they can't."
"Speaking of them," David remarked, "look what's down here."
The Ancient One looked to where he pointed. Three grotesque, deformed figures lurked in the hallway below. "Yes," The Ancient One answered, "It'll be several hours before this body is found. We usually don't let them feed if we can help it, but they've been helping us. Come on! Let's get out of here so they can have their snack."
"Talk about making deals with the devil!" Esther moaned.
"Definitely not my idea!" The Ancient One agreed. "But we have to keep our bargains. Without their support we'd be losing right now. Be grateful they're smart enough that they don't want to destroy everybody!"
Esther nodded. They found a balcony and took flight. They landed at a posh shopping mall. Durga went in and opened the door for them. They made their way to a suite of offices. "One moment!" The Ancient One snapped. He opened a panel and pressed some buttons. When the screen on the panel read inactive he shut it. "That takes care of the security system," he muttered. "Durga?"
Durga again opened the door. "Why don't we just walk through them?" David asked.
"Because for this particular mission," The Ancient One answered, "we need to stay materialized. He made his way into the office, exposed a safe, and worked the combination As he opened the safe two large packages of a white powder could be seen, and a large package of money. The Ancient One passed a package of the powder to Durga and the other one to Esther. Then he handed the money to David. "Come on!" he snapped.
"Isn't somebody going to be upset when they find this is gone?" Esther asked.
"They're going to be very upset!" The Ancient One answered. "The people that run this operation will undoubtedly kill the manager here and his wife. They probably won't kill their daughter because she's involved with a member of their group. But her parents are most certainly dead, considering they deposited a large amount of money to their bank account recently, which they got through some other mischief. Their employers will never believe that, however."
"Nasty!" David remarked, "Nasty!"
"Why go to the trouble of doing it ourselves," The Ancient One remarked, "if we can get somebody else to do it for us? Either way, poof, whatever accomplishes the purpose!"
They flew to a nearby educational facility and The Ancient One led them into the furnace room. "Really handy," he remarked, "so many people going back to wood furnaces! Gives us a lot more places to get rid of this stuff. Throw it in!" he snapped.
Durga and Esther disposed of their burdons then made their way to a local food bank. The Ancient One entered without difficulty and began to open the safe. "Question," David asked. "How do you know the combination?"
"Well, in this particular case," The Ancient One answered, "these people work for us. They gave me the combination. In the other case, when somebody types in a code they energize the keys. The keys slowly lose energy. I hit the key that has the least energy first, and go to the one that has the most. Most people don't repeat numbers. More often than not, whatever it is opens." He motioned to David and he put the money in the safe and The Ancient One closed it.
"Is it true," Esther asked, "you can't use any of that for yourself?"
"Yes," The Ancient One answered, "it would be far too dangerous. It might lead very unpleasant people back to our operatives. Besides that, we're not supposed to profit from the use of our powers, only accept what rewards people offer of their own free will."
"You should be getting a lot more gratitude," Esther moaned.
"Come on!" The Ancient One snapped. "Something else I'd like to take care of before we get back to our lady friend and her niece."
They flew to a rather depressed looking part of the city. The Ancient One landed at a dumpster that was full of jagged pieces of metal. He selected one and walked out into the road. Cars whizzed by him. When the one he wanted was approaching he put the piece of metal down in the street. The car's tire hit it, and began to deflate. The Ancient One caught the piece of metal and threw it back in the dumpster, then, followed the car. The others took up pursuit. The car pulled into a vacant parking lot and the driver got out. It was a very attractive young woman! Another car pulled into the parking lot and three young men got out of it.
"Whoo woo!" one of the young men cried, "Look what we found!"
"Knock it off, Bobby!" their apparent leader snapped, "We don't want to frighten the lady. Have you got problems, ma'am?"