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twilightthefoxicorn · 19 days ago

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Talevember 2024 Day Two: P.I.E.

For yesterday’s today’s prompt, I wanted to talk about the history of P.I.E.! As this’ll be quite long, I’ll be putting it under the cut (I tend to ramble sometimes). Also, heads up: this post will briefly mention death/lost of loved ones and a house fire and related injuries, so proceed with caution.

P.I.E. is the brainchild of a very young Johnny Ghost and Johnny Toast. As kids, the two shared a love of the paranormal, and they enjoyed reading, watching, and listening to anything they could find regarding the paranormal; they decided they wanted to open up their very own paranormal investigation company when they were adults, much to the dismay of the adults around them. Around the ages of 7/9, the two started conducting their own “paranormal investigations,” which in practice usually consisted of them going into the woods at night and almost dying to vampires. Ghost’s mom was not a fan of these nightly wood searches (they often returned looking worse for wear), so the two had to switch things up and explore places around town. As they grew older, they began conducting more thorough searches, and were even allowed back into the woods, so the two were excited.

Until the Toast twins moved back to the UK for secondary school. Ghost and Toast were devastated. Not only were they not going to be able to see each other for who knows how long, but they couldn’t conduct paranormal investigations together :( It was definitely hard on both of them at first, but they would call each other almost every day and update each other on any paranormal findings/new information they had discovered. Flash forward to Ghost’s high school years, and he befriends John Boast, Johnny Roast, and William Barricade. While Ghost had met Barricade when they were kids and lost touch, all 4 were interested in the paranormal (Boast was really into the extraterrestrial) and quickly became friends. They all started hanging out and conducting paranormal investigations together, and whenever Toast would visit all 5 of them would!

Around Ghost’s junior year, he met Dark Pit. While everyone else saw Pit as literally just a normal person, Ghost knew better. Pit was an angel—like, from the Great Beyond. After Ghost unsubtly asked the question, Pit told him that, yes, he was an angel, and that their connection to the Great Beyond had somehow gotten severed, leaving him stuck on Earth. Ghost promised he wouldn’t tell anyone (and he didn’t exactly, but he did tell Toast he had met an angel), and the two became friends. Ghost would teach Pit things about life on Earth, and Pit would tell Ghost about what things were like in the Great Beyond. Eventually Pit started hanging out with Ghost’s ghost-hunting friends (as Pit liked to call them), and he started going on paranormal investigations with them every now and then. After all, Pit was an angel, and he was fully equipped to kill a demon if they needed to protect his new friends. Goodness knows these teenagers shouldn’t be messing with demons… Pit did eventually tell everyone he was an angel, and everyone nerded out that they were friends with an angel and no one else was (which Pit corrected, saying that angels did indeed befriend humans, just that it wasn’t that common).

After Toast completed his degree at Uni, he and his recently-married wife Mary moved to North Carolina, USA. (Side tangent: Mary’ and Toast’s wedding was a bit of a hot mess due to Gavin-related shenanigans, but everyone ultimately had a great time. Karaoke that night was legendary, you just had to be there.) After talking with everyone over some pizza, P.I.E. was officially born! It was a night to remember, that’s for sure; everyone’s dedication to the paranormal was finally paying off!

At its founding, P.I.E. focused solely on researching the paranormal, investigating places of interest so they could document their findings. During this time Toast worked on his book on the paranormal, although he didn’t publish it until a year or two after the OG P.I.E. team disbanded. Various members would go to places rumored to be haunted and record their findings in whatever way they could. Boast and Ghost liked to film their trips, while Barricade and Toast would write frequent notes. Roast wasn’t good at documenting things, but he had a memory of steel, so it didn’t really matter. Regardless, P.I.E. was slowly making a name for themselves through their research and documentation of the paranormal. Things were looking good!

Until a series of tragedies tore P.I.E. apart. Roast passing away, Boast dying on a demon case, Pit going missing and presumed dead, Mary’s death… It was a very difficult time for everyone involved. Everyone’s loss was greatly felt, and P.I.E. went on hiatus for a few months so everyone could process what had happened. During this hiatus, Barricade decided he would be stepping away from P.I.E. Ghost and Toast didn’t blame him or feel hurt by his decision to leave at all; they knew things weren’t the same without their late friends, and Barricade needed a fresh start.

It was bittersweet when P.I.E. went to being just Ghost and Toast. The two had grown up going on paranormal investigations together, but after doing so with their friends for years… It felt odd with it just being the two of them. Since P.I.E. was a 2-person organization now, they decided to start doing case work. Sure, they still wanted to do research, but that doesn’t pay the bills, and boy did they need to pay the bills. Due to their months-long hiatus, P.I.E. had lost their research funding and needed to find any legal ways to fund their work. The first few cases were somewhat awkward, as the two still didn’t really know how to go about searching for paranormal entities within people’s homes, but they eventually found their groove. One of their first clients, who has remained a frequent client to this day, was the Acachalla’s, and Ghost and Toast quickly learned that some entities are very good at holding grudges, wouldn’t you know?

Speaking of grudges, the original P.I.E. HQ literally went up in flames due to a certain god blaming Ghost for his banishment to a pocket dimension. All of their belongings, all of their hard work, all of their case files and documents, all of their memories—gone, ruined. Ghost managed to snag some sentimental items, burning his arm in the process, so at least something was able to be salvaged. The two were devastated, and it took some time for them to get back on their feet. When P.I.E. came back, they came back more confident than before.

It was difficult at times with just Ghost and Toast doing everything. Ghost often stayed up late into the night completing paperwork and subsequent filing, while Toast tried to keep equipment running with the tight finances they had. Sure they were a business, but they tried to keep their prices low; lives were potentially on the line, so they tried to keep prices semi-affordable. While doable, at this pace they were going to be stressed and overworked forever.

Then along came Fred “Spooker” Soup. Toast was unavailable for a case, so Ghost had put up an ad to see if he could get some help. He sure did get something, that’s for sure. Ghost did not get along with Spooker at all, and the case was a bit of a disaster, but hey, at least no one died—yeah, Spooker got himself killed by that Level 25 demon. And came back as a ghost. But then went back to being human so everything’s fine—don’t worry about it!!! Anyway, Spooker was now who P.I.E. would call whenever they needed an extra person to assist on cases, and Ghost and Toast got the bright idea that maybe they should hire employees to help out with stuff?

And thus, P.I.E. was no longer a 2-person body. After talking to his grandmother, Toast got the funds so P.I.E. could get a new HQ, as well as to hire some employees to help things run better. And run more smoothly they did! P.I.E. went from doing maybe 4 case maximum a day to having a record of 24 cases in a day (everybody shudders when they think of that mess of a day, but at least lots of money was made). Since more cases=more money, they were able to expand even further, eventually hiring Spooker part-time since they called them in so often. Eventually Chris (who expressed interest in helping out with cases in the future) was hired part-time, too, so P.I.E. now had 4 paranormal investigators!

And thus, P.I.E. is what we know of it today. While they mainly work cases in the surrounding areas of Little Butts, North Carolina, they can be found conducting investigations all over the world.

Some little headcanon bonuses because why not?

The fact that P.I.E. as an acronym is also a word for food was purely coincidental. Ghost used to hate it when people pointed it out, but Boast got him to eventually like it.

As they’re closed on Sundays, the first Sunday of every month Ghost and Toast throw a pizza party for all the staff. They usually put on movies or play multiplayer video games, so usually everyone attends.

While they primarily do case work, P.I.E. does contract work for the US government. As the government knows Ghost and Toast come back from the dead, the two get called to work cases that are likely to get them killed. Yay, expendability! At least it pays well…

While not well known in general due to the media covering things up about the paranormal, P.I.E. is well known to those who are interested in the paranormal. Ghost and Toadt try to attend international paranormal investigation conventions when they can, and they’re surprised about the amount of people that recognize them.

While Ghost, Toast, Spooker, and Colon are the only ones in P.I.E. to actually do case work, there is a strict rule Ghost has imposed regarding demon investigations. If Spooker/Colon are on a case and they think demonic activity may be afoot, they are to leave immediately and call Ghost/Toast so one of them can come work the case instead.

To try to make staff meetings less boring, Ghost started to implement themed meetings, where people could dress up to the theme and they’d talk about the theme before getting to the actual meeting stuff. Everyone gets to vote on the theme, too, so there’s ample time to get outfits/info together. A lot of funny images have come out of these themed meetings, and it’s one of the only times people have ever seen Ghost not wearing his hoodie.

While money is ideal, P.I.E. will accept other means of payment. One time Toast was on a case for himself and came back to the office with 20 homemade pies as payment. Nobody was mad, and Toast actually buys pies from that client to this day. (She makes really good pumpkin pies, but Toast loves her blueberry pies, too.)

Most of P.I.E.’s employees are employed on an as-needed basis. For example, their medic isn’t just chilling at HQ all day, but only whenever they call him in. It helps save people’s time and money that way.

Halloween is a weird subject at P.I.E. They throw a staff Halloween party the Sunday before Halloween, and everyone has so much fun. But on the other hand, actual Halloween is a hot mess due to the sheer influx of calls (many of which are prank calls). So P.I.E. both loves and hates the holiday, and can anyone blame them?

Most of the cases P.I.E. work involve ghosts or poltergeists, but they get a lot of vampire cases surprisingly.

Since business has picked up, Ghost and Toast can conduct research again, just on their own dime. They haven’t published nearly as much as they did in the past, but they’re steadily getting to do some really cool projects.

Besides demons, one of P.I.E.’s least-favorite entity types for a case is fairies. Those tricksters are a pain to deal with, especially if you accidentally stumble into the Fae Realm…

#my textposts #textposts #taleblr #talevember #p.i.e.#johnny ghost #johnny toast #johnny boast #johnny roast #william barricade #vt dark pit #mary toast #fred spooker #chris colon ghostie

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