Week 1b

[captainryan]

It began with the earthquake. In the middle of the night when everyone but Egon had gone to sleep, the ground shook fiercely enough to knock them all out of their beds and shatter the glass in the windows.

Ryan hadn't thought New York was prone to earthquakes.

Regardless, he helped the Ghostbusters in cleaning the mess the quake had left behind, quietly listening to the bickering and laughing that went on around him.

"It was not a normal earthquake," Spenglar insisted before explaining what his machines had recorded. Something to do with a massive amount of psychic energy. When the police arrived to ask for help, Ryan slipped into another room to avoid being seen. The less attention he drew to himself, the better. A minute later, and the 'busters had a new case. Ryan just kept cleaning. It's not as if he had anything else to do, and it let him repay the men for taking him in during the past week.

The team's out for the rest of the day, searching for Marduk, apparently  the god responsible for the earthquake. They rush back in, siren blaring, in the early afternoon. Ryan heads to the garage to greet them and ask Stantz if he has time to look for the Door today. The moment he gets there, though, that doesn't look like a possibility. The men are rushing around, gathering equipment and supplies as they explain to Ryan what's happened and what they need to do next, Ryan included.

"You want me to do what?"

Comments

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

"Tiamat in sight," says Winston into the radio. "And here comes Marduk, right on schedule."

"I see him!" says Ray's voice excitedly, and the chopper descends towards the dragon. "I'm starting my run now!"

"Be careful!" says Egon as a streak of protonic fire lances through the air towards the dragon.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan watches the fight through the binoculars. The dragon recoils as it's hit, allowing Ray to blow past it and start to circle for a second attack. Tiamat recovers quickly, though, and a moment later shoots a blast of flame at the chopper.

"Ecto-2 has been hit," Ryan reports grimly. "It's going down. Marduk is engaging now."

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

Winston mutters something under his breath as Marduk slams into the dragon. "They're gonna wind up tumbling out of the park if they keep that up," he says.

The great red-skinned god is ferociously pounding the dragon with both fists and doing one hell of a lot of damage, but the thing is that Tiamat has five enormously strong necks. As Marduk raises one massive fist to smash in a forehead, Tiamat bends the neck that the god is clutching nearly double- and with a roar and a flicking motion, sends the god flying across the park to smash into the trees.

"And Marduk is down-"

That's Peter's voice, but Winston isn't listening. "Ryan, we got a problem," he says. "Ray's out of the air and there's nothing to distract that dragon from going after the rest of the city. We gotta get it to come around to be in range of all the proton packs."

Tiamat inhales deeply, then screams a bolt of fire into the trees. As the flames and smoke rise, a proton stream sparks back at the beast.

"Peter's not gonna be able to outrun that thing and we don't have a car. How are you with horses?" Winston jerks a thumb towards the stables they passed on the way up. "That's our only moving option."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"Werewolf," Ryan answers. "They don't like the way I smell, but I'm fairly fast on my own two feet." Not as fast as the horse, but still surprisingly quick.

"I can try to keep it busy until you get into position," he offers, glancing back at the dragon.

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Winston nods. "Fine. You do that. When Tiamat turns my way, you make for Egon and the car, all right?"

He gives the Englishman one swift thump on the shoulder before bolting for the stable.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

That...was unexpected, but Ryan has a job to do and can't dwell on it now. He darts out from behind the wall until he has a clear shot at the dragon and flips the switch on the proton pack to 'on'.

At first, the beam goes wide (Venkman wasn't kidding when he said it kicked like a firehose), but Ryan quickly corrects and drags the proton fire to the creature, making it shriek.

Huh. So this is what it's like to have a nuclear reactor on your back.

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

There's also a positron collider involved. Positrons are antimatter. This seldom makes anybody happy to find out and so no one really talks about it very much.

Tiamat's green wings flare upwards as the heads flail madly, but it recovers quickly and snakes one head around in Ryan's direction. As it roars again, the other four heads draw in breath. Ryan can probably smell the internal furnace stoking in preparation for another jet of flame.

Fortunately, Winston seems to be familiar enough with mounted operations to let off a stream from his own pack; the fires go wide as one of the other heads is hit.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Perfect timing, though it doesn't stop Ryan from ducking and rolling.

Being burned head to toe sucks, and once was more than enough.

The dragon's turning towards Zeddmore now, and Ryan wastes no time in running to where the car is waiting. The other three Ghostbusters are already there, and Stantz gets a particular look over to be sure that the man who can get him home is alright.

"Get ready," he warns as he slows to a stop.

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

Ray, for his part, looks remarkably good for a man who fell out of the sky. Egon is perched atop the car, at the controls of a large blue device that resembles nothing so much as a foreshortened tank barrel; he nods. "Where's Winston?" he asks.

"Right here!" calls the other Ghostbuster as his horse charges through the brush between two trees and lands squarely on the asphalt in front of the car. "And Tiamat's right behind me."

"I see him," Egon says, taking aim. "We've got him right-"

"Where he wants us," says Winston- but he's out of the saddle now, and he's got his thrower trained on the dragon too. So do Peter and Ray. "Ready, Ryan?"

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan hopes so. "Yes," is what he says, the word short and terse. A moment later, five proton streams hit Tiamat, who screams in anger, necks writhing. The beams wrap around the creature, making it glow brighter and brighter, until it seems to shimmer. Ryan soon realizes it is shimmering, and the five men turn off their proton packs as it breaks apart and swirls into nothingness.

Ryan looks at the empty sky where the dragon was a moment before, frowning thoughtfully.

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

"And that's all she wrote for Tiamat," says Peter.

Winston shakes his head a little. "And Marduk," he reminds his compatriot.

"What happened?" says Ray, shouldering his proton thrower.

"I suppose," says Egon, "that they couldn't exist without each other. Ecto-symbiosis."

"Too bad," says Peter, as Winston turns away to check on the horse (yes, it's still there). "I kinda liked the guy."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

The horse gets a curious look from Ryan, who's wondering if it might be in shock. None of the animals he's familiar with would stick around after something like that. But Spengler, Stantz, and Venkman are loading the equipment back into the car and animals have never been that important to Ryan, so he leaves the horse to Zeddmore.

Perhaps it would be different if he upwind of the thing.

"What about the helicopter?" he asks, carefully settling his pack into the back of the hearse.

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

"It crashed into the shallow end of the Reservoir," says Ray. "The police are going to retrieve it for us. They usually do, when something big like this is going on."

The horse whinnies briefly; Winston is returning to the car and the others. "Nice work, guys," he says. "You did real good, Ryan. Thank you."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan's pack is the last and he slams the door shut. "You're welcome," he replies simply to Zeddmore, nodding once. Ryan's missed action like that, and if he's going to be here, it's the least he could do to offer his services.

Besides, he'd rather not be bored.

"I believe I could use a little more practice with the proton pack," he admits. "It has a surprisingly strong recoil."

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

"Next time we get a chance, I'll take you out to Floyd Bennett Field," Winston says. "The city doesn't like us using these things much outside of actual jobs, but they don't complain if we go there. Used to be an airstrip out in Brooklyn. The city hasn't used it in years."

The conversation will go on from here, of course, but for now it fades into inconsequentials as they drive homeward.