Week 2

[captainryan]

Another week’s gone by and Ryan’s still trapped in the animated Stantz’s world. It’s frustrating knowing he can’t open the Door to Milliways himself, that he has to rely on the other man to get back. Not that he’s unreliable, he just tends to get distracted. Ryan would ask him to try the doors more often, but he’s seen the man come home covered in slime. He deserves some downtime.

Which he had yesterday. When Winston was teaching him how to shoot, the other guys had the day to themselves. Stantz can open a few doors for him today and one of those will lead to Milliways. He hopes. Ryan steps into the main room just in time to here something about baseball. An American sport, he thinks, dismissing it and heading towards Ray.

Comments

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"What?" Ryan answers distractedly, eying another fan and his hot dog. Mmm, food. But he turns his attention to see where Winston is looking. The next instant, his head is up, neck straining forward to try and catch some sort of scent from the light.

"What is that?"

[gone_byebye]

It smells a little like the ozone stink around a lightning strike, especially as the light swiftly circles the ball several times and grows brighter.

"No idea," says Winston, but that's not usually part of the game."

The lights vanish, and the ball drops again, the Jaguars fielder just barely missing his catch.

"Hey, uh... you mind if we stop by the library on the way home?" Winston asks. "I think I wanna look up the history of the stadium. See if anything weird ever happened here before."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"Not at all," Ryan says, still looking at where the lights were. "Can we stop and pick up a sandwich on the way, though?" Ryan doesn't have any money, not here, which is why he hasn't asked earlier, but he knows what a bad idea it is to be hungry in a city full of potential food. So he swallowed his pride and requested the food stop knowing full well Winston has to pay for him.

[gone_byebye]

"Oh, yeah, sure, no problem," says Winston vaguely. "There's a gyro place down the street from the library. We can stop there."

Ryan's welcome to come into the library when Winston goes, but there's seating in the restaurant and the portions are pretty big. If he wanted to stay behind until it was time to get back to Manhattan that's not a problem either.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

YAY FOOD!

He means, uh, *ahem*, good.

"Thank you." Gyros, Ryan has found, are a bit like kebabs, and very good. The werewolf will happily chow down on one, after having ordered in an American accent so as not to draw attention. He eats fairly quickly for the portion size he's been given, and he'll join Winston if he's not finished.

What an interesting selection of books on the supernatural.

[gone_byebye]

Winston got the more mass-market ones, as it happens. He's not that familiar with the referencing systems in the books Egon and Ray normally consult. Still, as he digs through them all, he seems to be holding his own.

He stops at one particular book's picture of some peculiar-looking Native American art. "Huh," he says. "Whaddya know."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"What have you found?" Ryan asks looking up from a tome on werewolves.

It's rather amusing actually.

[gone_byebye]

Yeah, the werewolf lore in this continuum is interesting.

"An old Indian legend," says Winston. "From a couple of different tribes. It says that the land the stadium is built on is the site of a battle between spirits of good and evil every five hundred years or so. Some kind of big ol' ceremonial fight, shaped by whatever's in the area when the spirits arrive."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"In this case, a baseball game. Was that the game we watched, or are the lights signaling something else?"

[gone_byebye]

"I think those might've been the preliminaries," Winston says. "You know, sorta signaling everybody to come on down. I dunno for sure, though. We should bring these back to the Firehouse and see how it measures up."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"All right," Ryan agrees. He's the recruit here. Even if he wanted to argue, he wouldn't know what to say.

[gone_byebye]

Winston nods and gets out his library card.

The reception back at the Firehouse is somewhat skeptical at first. Most of it centers around the weird lights barely being enough to justify disrupting the game.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"Supernatural is supernatural," Ryan points out neutrally. He doesn't usually say anything when they have these conversations, but this time he was there.

[gone_byebye]

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean we're about to have another Indian war break out," points out Ray. "Not necessarily, anyway. We can always check it in the morning."

"I guess," says Winston. "I'm kinda interested in this, though. Anyone mind if I just settle in for some reading tonight?"

"Just don't get between me and the TV and it's all good," says Peter.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"I may join you for a bit," Ryan says. He wants to look over the collection of books the Ghostbusters have, and least before his nighttime run.

[gone_byebye]

Winston nods. "We've got enough books for it," he says. "I put bookmarks in the important ones. Have fun."

He's going to be smelling restless and edgy most of the rest of the evening. Winston is currently a very distracted man. The full extent of it isn't going to become evident just yet, though. Not until some time after Ryan heads out for his run, anyway; when he returns, it's to the sound of a phone call and frantic preparations. "Good, you're here," says Venkman. "Suit up. We got a problem in Brooklyn."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan thanks him before looking over the book with the most marked pages, a Tobin's Spirit Guide. It seems to be a rather useful tome, and he gets a good hour or two in before he heads out.

"What is it?" Ryan asks even as he's done as he's told. It's probably a very good thing that he was a soldier years before he ever became a werewolf. The order slides down much easier than it would otherwise.

"And where's Winston?"

[gone_byebye]

"Winston's the problem, as it happens," says Egon grimly. "He went back to investigate Jaguar Stadium. While he was touring the premises with the night watchman, the place apparently went into full supernatural manifestation mode. Winston sent the watchman to phone for help and stayed behind with his proton pack."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

"He went without backup?" Ryan scowls, suppressing a growl. He'd thought the man smarter than that.

He's not as fast as the rest of the Ghostbusters, but he does get his borrowed suit and proton pack on quickly enough. "Let's go."

[gone_byebye]

"Even Winston has lapses of judgment once in a while," says Ray, sliding into the driver's seat.

It's not much of a drive to Jaguar Stadium, as Ryan no doubt remembers, but the stadium is no longer available for callers. The night watchman who meets the Ghostbusters points nervously to the great glowing half-dome of energy that covers the place. "He's back in there," says the watchman. "That's the bravest man I've ever seen."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan eyes the dome, eyes narrowed. It's glowing in the night, lighting up the surrounding area like a large bonfire of epic proportions.

"How do we get in?" he asks when he can see no obvious path.

[gone_byebye]

Egon's expression goes grim as he pulls out the PKE meter. "We're going to have to blast our way through this barrier. If we shoot four particle beams at the same spot at its base, we can form a tunnel through, but it won't last long."

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

It doesn't have to last long. If they blast their way in, surely they can blast their way out again.

Right?

Ryan draws his particle thrower and steps forward with the other three men. "Let's blast!" Venkman shouts, and four proton beams strike the barrier, converging on one single spot. Slowly, a hole starts to open, the beams chasing the edges further apart.

"Now!" Egon yells and the four disappear within the dome as the energy snaps shut behind them.

[gone_byebye]

You'd think the ground would be level with the entrance; you'd be wrong. The four men find that it quite abruptly vanishes from beneath their feet, tumbling the four of them from a red and blue sky to a ground that has nothing at all to do with any baseball stadium they've ever been into before. Peter lands first, Ray thumps to a stop on top of him, Egon lands third, and Ryan hits the top of the pile.

"It worked!" says Ray, just as a vast, red-skinned, red-eyed being LOOMS over the four of them.

[captainryan.livejournal.com]

Ryan's usually pretty quick on his feet, but having the ground disappear from under you is a good way to lose your breath. What that means is that instead of immediately rolling off the pile and to his feet, he groans and then does so.

"You do not belong here," the thing says in a deep booming voice even as Ryan brings his thrower to bear. It's only that and the fact that it seems to be dressed like an umpire that keeps him from firing.

"Where's Winston?" he asks, growling.