Back From The Dead

[July 29th, open only to those of Scamp's immediate family who make sense to be here; that is, my two, Collette and Tramp. And yes, fail title is fail, I just couldn't think of anything better XP]

Annette screamed.

It looked very un-ladylike, all told. Her maw was wide open with the most high-pitched sound imaginable eminating from it, and her eyes squeezed closed in the hope that the ghost she'd run into would be gone by the time she opened them again. Despite the fact she was reasonably sure there were no such things as ghosts, the fact that she was facing one said otherwise.

The 'ghost', a scruffy grey pup who was unusually solid for what his sister thought he was, watched in amusement. Scamp hadn't really meant to go for so long without letting his family know that he was back along the living, but what with his plotting against Patch with Mooch and catching up on lost time with Vitani, he just somehow hadn't managed to get around to it.

So, when Annette had happened to walk straight into him, she had thoroughly freaked out. Enjoying the show, Scamp didn't bother trying to correct her assumptions - she'd find out soon enough that he was real, anyway.

"Annette??"

Collette had heard her sister's scream from practically half way across camp. She had been thinking about what Boris had been teaching her, losing herself in thought, when the familiar shriek pierced her concentration. That was all it took to get the long-eared female to take off running to find the source. She didn't want to assume the worst, but wondering what had caused her sister to scream so led her to believe that something was trying to attack her. Collette was almost certain of that fact, but as she finally caught sight of her sister her thoughts began to ebb away. The worst case scenario hadn't occurred.

"Annette, what's wrong? You sound as if you've seen..." Collette began, but she trailed off when her eyes wandered to where Scamp was standing. Silence filled the air and Collette found herself speechless. She tried to reason with herself. It couldn't have been him. He'd been dead for months! However, there was no denying that the grey-furred pup before them looked exactly like Scamp right down to the tuft of fur atop his head.

"Hey, sises," Scamp had to work very hard to keep the casual tone in his voice when all he really wanted to do was laugh aloud at the expressions of shock on both girls' faces. Annette had stopped screaming with Colle's appearance, but her maw was still hanging wide, and beneath her honey-coloured fur she looked very pale. It was just too amusing, and after a moment, the male cracked up, laughing. "You should... see your faces!" he chuckled, once he'd recovered a little bit. Those expressions... man, it had been worth being resurected just to see the reactions!

He didn't say anything else right then; it was too hard to manage around his amusement, instead just waiting for the two girls to recover enough to actually say something - Collette, he couldn't help but notice, looked the one most likely to achieve that the soonest.

As it turned out, Scamp was quite correct in assuming Collette would be the first to recover from her initial shock. His laughing wasn't necessarily helping matters, but at that moment that didn't seem terribly important. It was the fact that he was there - alive and well on top of that - that Collette was focused on. How... how was it possible? Everyone knew what had happened in the Outlands the night Patch had betrayed them. Scamp had been killed! What was he even doing there if that was the case? It had only been recently that Collette had visited his grave. Something was going to be explained, and she wanted that to happen as soon as possible.

"Scamp, how are you even here? You're supposed to be dead!" Collette managed to say. Ignoring the fact that her statement was very obvious and probably expected, Collette did want to know what had happened. Brothers didn't just go around coming back from the dead without good reason. "...Not that I'm not glad to see you again. It's just... well, strange." she said to clarify.

Annette, chaffing under Scamp's laughter, had snapped her jaw shut as their sister had spoken, and now she looked at Scamp too, who grinned. He should have known his sisters' reactions would have been worth seeing, even more so than 'Tani and Mooch's. The expressions they'd been wearing were so priceless... His expression darkened a touch, however, as Collette enquired how he was here. He didn't really want his family to feel any sort of inclination to trust Patch again either, but if he didn't tell them, they'd probably find out soon enough anyway.

"Oh, Patch decided he wanted to get back on Angel's good side after he'd killed me, so he got this crazy monkey-shaman-guy to bring me back." Scamp shrugged, trying to impress upon his sisters that it was no big deal. "He's just doing it to get close to Angel so he can hurt her again, but me and Mooch and 'Tani are going to break them up soon," he finished. He was glad to be back too, no doubts there, but he wasn't about to roll over on Patch's say-so and let him break Angel's heart again just because he'd been the one to arrange the resurection.

"Isn't that a bit far-fetched?" Annette finally had recovered enough to speak again, although she still looked seriously shaken, and was keeping farther back from Scamp than Collette was. Her brother shot her a dirty look at her words, but Annette wasn't about to be silenced by him again. "I mean, resurecting you just to hurt a girl who we don't even know is still alive? No-one's seen Angel here in ages."

The old, grey street hound was roaming around the camp, half asleep. He had just woken up from having a terrible nightmare, mostly about his ex-mate and his son. He had tried to get back to sleep, but he just couldn't. Too many thoughts were flying around in his head, stopping him from sleeping.

His half-closed eyes shot open when he heard Annette's scream. A scream that was full of fear. He dashed towards the location that his daughter's scream was coming from. He wasn't about to let another Pup die, or go missing!

As he approached his two daughters, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the apparently alive Scamp. His eyes were full of shock. It couldn't be...It just couldn't. Scamp was dead. As dead as a doornail....But there he was...Standing right there...Living and breathing...."S-Scamp?" was all that he could say. He was utterly speechless.

"Pop?" Scamp sobered quickly at the sight of his father approaching, a gut-churning wave of homesickness washing over him at the sight. It had been ages, even before his death, since he'd last seen his parent - before he'd even started dating 'Tani, in fact - but in some ways - a lot of ways, actually - pop had always represented home for the scruffy pup more than the house itself, and it was only on seeing him again that Scamp realised how much he missed everything that word had ever meant for him. Forgetting all about Annette's skeptecism, the young male bounded towards his father, stopping just short of colliding with Tramp.

"I really missed you," he admitted, his voice sounding higher, even than its average, due to the emotion catching in it.

Collette nodded in agreement with Annette. As far as anyone else had known, Angel was pretty much gone. She'd left without a trace and it seemed unlikely that she would be coming back. "Annette's right, Scamp. Angel's been missing for a while now. And... well, no one's really gone looking for her either." Collette said. The latter part of her statement wasn't meant to hurt her brother, but it was the truth. As far as Collette knew, no one had even attempted to look for the golden-furred female. A bit of guilt filled Collette's eyes when she really let it sink in. What if Angel really was okay, but no one realized it and didn't go looking for her?

Collette was shaken from her thoughts with the arrival of their father. She had honestly been hoping he would show his face again, especially with the return of their brother, so that he might try and do something about how scattered everything in their lives seemed to be. "He says Patch had him brought back from the dead, dad. But that can't be true. Patch betrayed the heroes a long time ago, didn't he?" she asked.

When Scamp went over to him, Tramp realised that it couldn't be a hoax. It was true. Scamp was alive. He smiled and put his front left paw around the pup. "Welcome back, son." Tramp said, in a happy tone. This was the first time he had been truly happy eversince his family became broken. His son had been revived, why wouldn't he be happy?

His gaze shifted to Collette. What the young Spaniel mix said couldn't be true. Patch was the one that killed Scamp in the first place. Why would he revive him?....But he was Angel's boyfriend...Maybe there was some good in him?....No. If there was, he wouldn't have killed Scamp. "That can't be true. He did betray us, by murdering your brother." Tramp replied.

"Hey, I know what I saw," Scamp folded his forepaws and glared at his sisters, daring them to contradict him again. "Angel is alive, she's been camping out in the jungle with Patch because he's tricked her into caring for him again - I may have been dead, but I've still been watching everything. You know, from... up there," He waved his paw in roughly the direction he imagined Mufasa's Palace of the Great Kings to exist in. "The only reason Patch got me brought back was to try and get Angel to trust him again so he can hurt her some more, and I'm not going to allow it!"

This was too much for Annette to take seriously. Sidling closer to her sister, the shorter-eared cocker leant towards Collette and muttered "Did Scamp leave his sanity behind when he was resurected? This is completely crazy!" She still was having trouble believing that Angel was still alive, let alone that Scamp had been watching her from the afterlife or that Patch was trying to hurt her.

"But that doesn't make sense. Why would Patch want you alive if he's just going to go and live with Angel away from the war?" Collette asked. Never mind the fact that she didn't actually know if Angel was alive or not. It just didn't make sense for the puppy that had hated her brother and killed him in the first place to bring him back at all. He could have just lived with Angel and forgotten all about the heroes. "Are you sure you didn't just imagine seeing him? Couldn't it have been someone else that asked for you to be brought back? Like Mooch?" she asked.

(ooc: Bah... short post is short. XP)

"I know who it was, okay?" Scamp scoffed at his sister, his temper starting to flare a little. "Anyway Mooch was as surprised as you guys to see me alive." He shook his head at her disbelief. "Isn't it obvious? Angel probably doesn't trust Patch completely yet, so he had to bring me back as a show of good faith. If she believed he cared enough to undo what he'd caused, he'd be back in her good books - and I bet you anything he only wants to be there so he can hurt her again!" the scruffy pup finished with conviction, the look he gave his sisters daring either of them to try and contradict him.

Annette was only too happy to rise to the challenge. "Scamp, you're insane!" she retorted hotly. "I'm not going to question just who resurected you, but you're crazy if you think the whole world has become some sort of conspiracy against Angel while you've been dead!"