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[gone_byebye]

The first thing one notices upon opening the door into New York is that it's hot. August is a hot month in most of the Northern hemisphere, but even for August, it's vile outside. The smell of horse is on the air, and hydrocarbon. A nasty tang of ozone can be felt across the teeth; the sky has an unwholesomely orange cast across the darkness.

Ray glances around and lays a hand on the side of the building next to him. "We're home," he says.

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[lt-naraht.livejournal.com]

"Well, I suppose we're not doing much good on the surface now, are we?" Naraht says as he gets his grinders into gear. "I'm going in. Mind, don't follow me for at least 30 seconds. My acids neutralize themselves quickly, but I'd like to keep risk of burns to a minimum.

With that, the Horta begins eating into the asphalt, creating a sloping path downward through the roadbed and into the ground. Horta can cut through rock about as quickly as a human can jog. He soon nears the cavern. "It seems to be largely empty from the sounding," he calls back. "But, be ready to bolt if you hear me yell. Just in case."

He eats through the last bit...and glides into a huge cavern.

"Oh, my..."

It is most definately not a natural cavern. The walls sport intricate designs and what appears to be writing. Channels coated with more of the infamous orange gunk are carved of the floor and, in the center, a massive pillar rotates slowly...with a grating sound.

"Ray! Kay! Get down here!" Naraht calls. "This is incredible. I don't see any lifeform, though..."

"AAAARRRRAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!" echos out of one of the side tunnels. Naraht sighs. "Thank you, Murphy. YOu just had to smack me, didn't you?"

[gone_byebye]

Ray glances sidelong at Kay, lifting one eyebrow successfully for the first time in his entire life. "You heard the Horta..."

He pulls his goggles down, yanks his thrower from its hooks and sets off down the tunnel at a dead run. There's a light at the end of the tunnel and it's all in a spectrum the human eye can't see- the place is fairly bursting with psychokinetic energy. And magic. And possibly other things but the data is scrolling by in the left-hand corner of his display too fast to tell for sure. "We're coming! What's- Frith on a bridge!"

He skids to a stop, staring in horror at the pillar. What it is, he doesn't know. But there are spectral forms swirling about it, diving against the thing and bouncing off, clawing at the stone...

Something strikes him, and he looks down. The floor of the cavern ends only a few yards away, dropping off into a pit too deep to see the bottom. What he did see was several slanting troughs, running in from the quarters of the compass to the bulk of the rotating pillar- dry troughs. Completely dry.

Except for one that seemed to have the orange stuff seeping through cracks in the rocks that blocked it off from the sides of the pit.

"Naraht! That stuff is lube, you said?" He glances over his shoulder. "I think this is what's causing the earthquakes! It's not getting through!"

Up around the pillar, the swirling, invisible ghosts pause... and one by one, become visible.

[k_in_black]

K just yells down the shaft, "You're doing fine, kid! Keep at it!"

Ok, no. He doesn't do that.


K has Ray's back on the way down, but as soon as they emerge in the enormous cavern, he whips out the obviously *too* simple device.

"Goddamn Galoshans. 'Special offer', my ass." He wings the device at a cavern wall and watches it shatter into a million pieces with immense satisfaction.

He turns to Ray. "Let's go to work, kid."

"New York needs lube?"

He hefts his thrower.

"Well, I can be 'Trojan for a day'. How about you?"

[lt-naraht.livejournal.com]

At this point, the ghosts start attacking the pillar in earnest. The vibrations seem to increase as they shove.

"They're trying to break it!" Naraht shouts. "You ward them off. I'll get the lubricant going."

Yes, K's joke went right over Naraht's metaphorical head. He darts to the first plug, sees the orange goo trickling out and remembers how it felt with the tiny dose he took. It will be worse with him actually eating it.

"I'm going to so feel this in the morning," he grumbles as he slides into the channel and begins eating away at the plug. It doesn't take long before he's through it and a flood of lubricant surges over him. Naraht backs out, feeling a bit muzzy, and heads to the next one.

This cannot end well, he thinks.

[gone_byebye]

A small smile twitches at the fringes of Ray's mouth. "So long as I don't have to be ribbed for-"

The skies do not open and the heavens do not fall, because Ray doesn't get to complete the joke. That's the point when the ghosts start their attack and the Horta charges forward. "Right!" Ray says, turning a dial on his thrower. "It's showtime!"

They don't have enough traps for all these ghosts. Ray knows it. They probably don't have enough power in both their packs to hold the lot off as long as Naraht needs, not alone, not unless the Horta works really, really fast.

But dammit, they're going to do this. They have to.

This is New York, and the city's in danger, and you don't get to be either of these men if you don't face a situation like this head on.

[k_in_black]

K sprints in a wide arc around the pillar, feeling the proton pack revving up with a low whine. He's almost in position when one of the ghosts breaks away from the pillar and shrieks down toward him.

K's face goes cool. He back-pedals until his feet come up against depression in the floor. Then, feet firmly planted, he unleashes a proton blast right into the ghost's face. The orange-white energy hurls the ghost back through the air.

"WHO'S NEXT!?!"

[lt-naraht.livejournal.com]

By the time Naraht is through the second plug, he is squiffed.

By the time he makes it through the third one, he's toasted.

By the time he makes it through the fourth one, he'...well, if he was human, he'd giggling uncontrolably.

At least the pillar isn't grinding so much now. The lubricant is flooding the pit from four sources and the wails of the ghosts have taken on a desperate tone.

"Give em hell, Kay!" he calls out as he makes his way toward the fifth plug...but movement down one of the side passages catches his attention. "What have we here?" he asks, turing and sliding off into the darkness, the remaining plugs forgotten in his haze of intoxication.

And the intoxication is a good thing, because it prevents him from feeling the least bit of fear when the troll-like being chained up in the next chamber roars at him. "Good morning to you, too, buddy," he says cheerfully.

[gone_byebye]

The foulest stench is in the air, the funk of forty thousand years, and grisly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom...

There are times when Ray hates his brain. This is one of them.

And no one's going to save you from the beast about to strike-

He fires, again and again and again. Keep them away, get them out of the way, trap the ones you can-

Night creatures crawl and the dead start to walk in their masquerade, there's no escaping the jaws of the alien this time-

There's a horrible little squeal behind him. THat's the low charge alarm. Followed, two proton bursts later, by the 'shutting down now kthxbai' alarm.

Ray sets his teeth grimly and shucks off his pack. "Keep going, K! I still have you covered!" he calls as he drops the pack to the ground. One hand dips into his uniform, coming up with a silver cylinder the size of a state trooper's maglight.

It is just about possible that the whmmmm of a lightsaber being activated is drowned out by the sudden searing of three proton beams, as the other Ghostbusters charge down the tunnel, but the world may never really know.

[k_in_black]

By the time the Ghostbuster Cavalry arrives, K's pack is on vapors too. He drops the thrower, letting it hang by his side, and whips out the Deatomizer, smacking the dial to its maximum setting. The piercing whine makes three of the ghosts peel off from the pillar and come streaking straight for the Man in Black.

"Come to Poppa," K whispers, then cuts loose.

Wastebaskets don't hit back. Ghosts do. But a Deatomizer can sure ruin their day. The blasts tear into the ghosts, raising some kind of hell with their ectoplasmic fields. Looks like it hurts, and that's good enough for K until the Peter, Egon, and Winston can finish the job.

Then he hears the roar behind him.

[lt-naraht.livejournal.com]

Back in the cavern, the rather intoxicated Horta has come to a conclusion.

Shackles = bad. Therefore, shackles must go.

"Hold still, buddy," he says as he sets to work.

In a manner of moments, a sound like a teakettle orchestra can be heard as Naraht leads the creature out into the cavern while whistling "Closer To Fine". "Hey, Ray!" he laughs. "Look what I found. I'd name him George, but I used that already!"

[gone_byebye]

Ray's in the middle of actively slicing through the few ghosts who're stupid enough to get close when the whistling starts. The ghosts freeze. The Ghostbuster freezes.

The troll bellows, and leaps at the spectral masses.

The anguished wails and scatters of ectoplasm make your typical fight between cats look like a badly choreographed game of Rock Em Sock Em Robots. As the ghosts flee the creature hops away from the worst of the mess (far, far too nimbly for a thing its size, there's no way a monstrosity of that sort can move that swiftly, thinks Ray) and drops gracefully into the pit.

"What the hell?" begins Peter, but he gets no answer. Or, rather, the only answer he gets is the sound of rocks flying and the sudden flow of hissing orange goo, and the end of the terrible grinding noises as the fluid snakes its way all the way up the pillar's many channels.

"Naraht," says Winston, staring as the thing climbs out of the pit and starts examining the pillar, "I think you just let the janitor free."

[k_in_black]

K lets the Deatomizer drop to his side and watches as the troll roars by. He watches for a bit, nods, and then silently walks back over to the Ghostbusters, arms still down at his sides.

He gives Ray a look like, 'I take it our work here is done,' then turns to watch the far more preferable mayhem erupting around the pillar.

If his New York has one of these, he hopes like hell it doesn't become his problem.

[lt-naraht.livejournal.com]

"I did? Oh good," Naraht says. Voders don't slur, but it does get burts of static due to his current state. Not to mention his path isn't quite the straightest as he moves toward them. "Where'd you come from? Beam in? Think I'd prefer beaming out. The floor's gone rather rippily for some reason. We're not still having earthquakes, are we? Because it would really tick me off to go through all that and not have them stop." He catches sight of Peter. "Dr. Venkman! Good to see you. Though you're not the you I'm used to. Just how many of you are there, anyway. We should hold a convention." He snickers. "Take you all back to the Enterprise for it. I'm sure Commander Peck would be delighted...the sludgehead."

Looks like Naraht's a chattery drunk.

[gone_byebye]

Ray nods to K, switching the saber off and tucking it back into his uniform. The troll looks over their way, grunts, snorts, and does something that may or may not be a salute. He returns the gesture, wobbling a little in exhaustion.

"Nah, we don't have transporter technology," says Winston, who's finally remembered where he's seen the Horta before. And who's remembered that it's not nice to tip your hand too far about the fictional thing. "Ray hasn't worked that one out yet. The car's parked right outside. C'mon, let's get you back to the firehouse- you can sleep it off there..."

"And you," says Peter, turning to K, "are more than welcome to stick around if you want to. Me, I'm gonna be up most of the night dealing with the press and the cops, so you got my bunk if you want it."

Ray rubs at his face with one hand. "Just as long as nobody gets between me and the couch," he mutters. "I dunno if I can even make it up the stairs."

"You good to drive, buddy?" asks Peter, as they start back up the tunnel.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Just not once we're home."

Besides, Ray thinks as they reach the car, I kinda think Ecto knows the way herself.

He scarcely even notices the cheering New Yorkers as they make their way home.