The holographic projector on Tama’s desk was flickering, casting a sickly, bioluminescent purple hue across the peeling concrete walls of the Gentayangan.co startup incubator.
"Competitive intelligence isn't just about knowing what your rivals are doing, team; it's about intercepting their venture capital before they even realize their seed round is dry," Tama announced, pacing back and forth with his translucent loafers clicking sharply against the floor.
Senior Pocong let out a low, rattling groan from his ergonomic rolling office chair, shifting his tightly bound linen frame with visible reluctance. "Can't we just let the other ghosts haunt in peace, Tama? My spectral sciatica is flaring up, and I didn't sign up for corporate espionage when I died during the colonial era."
"Peace doesn't scale, Big P," Tama snapped back, jabbing a translucent finger at the pulsing holographic display. "While we were busy optimizing Kuni’s ASMR weeping campaigns, a rival entity popped up across town offering free, unmonetized jump-scares. Free! Do you know what predatory pricing does to our market share?"
Kuntilanak, who was currently floating upside down near the ceiling rafters to ensure her hair draped over her face at the most cinematic angle, let out a delicate, chilling snort. "Let them try, boss. Their aesthetic is giving absolute garbage-fire energy. I checked their profile—they don't even use ring-lights. They’re haunting unlit alleys like absolute peasants."
"Peasants with a Series A backing from a shadowy conglomerate," Tama corrected, his voice dropping an octave as he swiped through a flurry of encrypted data packets. "Look at this metadata. The 'SpectreSync' startup isn't just undercutting our pricing; they're scraping our user data and poaching our high-value poltergeists with promises of dental benefits and unlimited ethereal coffee."
Pak Joko poked his head out from the breakroom kitchenette, holding a mug of cold, dark spectral sludge that looked suspiciously like dirty dishwater. "Dental benefits? Wait, do ghosts even get dental coverage? Because my lower incisors have been loose since nineteen-forty-eight, Mas Tama."
"Focus, Pak Joko!" Tama yelled, slamming his hands flat onto the metal desk. "If SpectreSync steals our top-tier haunting pipeline, the King of Tuyul is going to repossess our cloud infrastructure by midnight. And you know what happens when the Tuyul takes back his servers? We get demoted to haunting roadside public restrooms with zero Wi-Fi!"
The room fell into an immediate, terrified silence. Even Kuntilanak righted herself, her pale face turning tight with genuine panic at the thought of a life without broadband connection.
"Restrooms?" Kuntilanak whispered, clutching her emerald kebaya as if she might hyperventilate. "Not the highway toll plazas, Tama. The plumbing alone is a biohazard. My aura would never recover."
"Then we strike first and we strike hard," Tama said, his eyes gleaming with the manic, unhinged light of a founder who had nothing left to lose except his spectral equity. "We deploy a counter-intelligence raid on their server hub in the abandoned warehouse district. Senior Pocong, prep the Ecto-Roller."
Senior Pocong groaned, burying his faceless, bruised-indigo head in his bound linen hands. "I hate you, Tama. I hate this company. I miss the simple days of just standing under a banyan tree and waiting for a lost traveler."
"Innovation waits for no corpse, Big P," Tama urged, tossing a glowing tactical thumb drive onto the Pocong's lap. "Plug that into their main terminal, download their customer database, and let’s show these amateur disruptors how a real unicorn handles market competition."
"If my linen gets stained with engine grease during this corporate raid, you're paying for dry cleaning out of your equity share," the Pocong muttered, kicking off the floor with his caster wheels and careening haphazardly toward the exit.
"That's the spirit! Go disrupt some market share!" Tama shouted, watching his operations lead zoom out the door in a blur of rotting fabric and plastic wheels. He turned back to Kuntilanak with a razor-sharp grin. "Kuni, babe, get your streaming gear ready. We're about to livestream our hostile takeover."