Raymond Stantz

"I am sorry, Doctor Stantz, but I don't believe that will be efficient."

Eddie slowly rose, burning fuel furiously as he rose straight up. While his thrusters had never been designed to raise him such a level from the ground, he worked them heavily, exceeding design tolerance.

He would never forget the screams when he had ran out of the suspended door - Ray's fingers on the outside had made it possible. He had ran and leapt, toes pushing off from the door's threshold. Once he had been far enough away, he had transformed, and the new wave of screams, he had found... amusing.

Now, he rose. Slowly, steadily, carefully compensating for the wind shear around the building.

"Hold on to the lip above my cockpit if you can, Mister Wells, Doctor Stantz." The source of the clear tenor was difficult to pinpoint - if even possible, but the CPU at the foot of the cockpit was gleaming for a moment longer before the glass sheilded with the same shade of brushed bronze as the hull. The stories were passing, receding below. The lip of the building was nearing.

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*And the Sumerian temple at the top of the building is coming into view.*

*Andrew cranes his neck as far backward as he can, staring.*

Sweet mother of Heinlein.

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gone_byebye

Ray still clung to the lip above the cockpit with all his might, but for this, he's just about willing to open both eyes.

The temple that Sargon's people had written about had been dedicated to most of the Sumerian pantheon, but the gods of the Underworld had had pride of place, and so Sargon had gone to some effort to deface the most potent portions. This architect had built those elements up to stand the tests of time and New York weather. The lettering was worn away in places, but the statues remained- the great grinning face of bearded Nergal, the bland but wild-eyed smile of vengeful Ereshkigal, the unwholesomely long-limbed form of Namtar the Herald. There were smallish altars here and there, and smaller statues, and circles engraved on the pavement. A flash of red towards the back spoke of cloth, possibly, but towards the front-

Well.

Seven feet tall and built like a mass of writhing, squirming vileness, the drip-glossy black form of Namtar waited. Beside him stood a shorter, but no less sinister figure: bearded, kilted, and armed, a strongly-built human, Ivo Shandor. At his feet lay the crumpled but still-wriggling form of a nebbishy accountant by the name of Louis Tully.

And some paces away, towards the front, two men in perfectly ordinary, everyday suits- and proton packs.

There is an expression in the American cultural psyche, thanks to a battle of the Revolutionary War: don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.

Right now- even on dread Namtar- there's a lot of whites to go 'round.

(OOC: Okay. Here, I think, might be a good spot to split into individual subthreads- for Garion, for Sooty, for Eddie, and for Andrew. This way we don't have to worry so much about time-zone foo. Fair?)

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As they passed the lip of the building, Eddie turned. The sweep of one wing cleared the stonework, and arched like a slide toward the building's roof. "You may dismount now," said the plane, weapons systems warming up. His sensors were giving him quite a show.

He'd never been designed to detect such things, but now he couldn't avoid them. This was astounding.

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gone_byebye

Shandor stared. This... this was not happening.

He had built the building. He had interred himself in that verdammt crypt for decades on end. He'd awakened in time to seize control of it, he'd had enough sheer power at his fingertips to rend the sky and summon Namtar without having to fork over a sacrifice- it was all perfect! It should have gone off without a hitch! But there were people and they were resisting, and he'd just killed that idiot with the sword of green fire-

And the idiot had risen RIGHT BACK INTO HIS LINE OF SIGHT on the back of some kind of, of, of bronze dragon-

"Alsi ku nushi ilani mushiti, Kal amatusha malla-a sseri!!!"

"... um, what?" muttered Peter Venkman to Egon Spengler.

"Loosely translated? "Oh my God, what the fuck, get the hell out of my sight"."

"Okay."

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*Andrew scrambles off Eddie's hull and onto the firmer ground of the rooftop, looking around frantically.*

Hiding place, hiding place --

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gone_byebye

Andrew was gone, Eddie was tilting- time to let go-

Ray rolls off Eddie's hull because there is no way he's going to be able to walk off with any kind of dignity. Fortunately, Eddie's wing is in exactly the right place to pull this off, and Ray has just enough luck to right himself before hitting the rooftop with a splat.

He nods once to his colleagues, and then turns to the Sumerians, and calls out something that makes Egon clap a hand over his face. One of Peter's eyebrows goes up.

"'Metal Dragon Eddie, I choose you'," Egon translates wearily.

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From Eddie's external speakers came guitar riffs as Eddie cued up. He rose further, and then his missile doors opened. There were two armaments on the arm that lowered - one was a Truncheon imposion missile. The other was a proton thrower, which he engaged without the least doubt. And then his twin pulse engines flared, bringing him into a long, sweeping turn so he could aim - and he aimed well--

Over the rock music that he played, he stated, "Targets acquired."

And then the proton thrower fired. The plane didn't waver. The stream was aimed for Namtar.

There were so many calculations to be made. He knew the angle he needed to fire the missile, and he knew that now was not the time. There were many other stages to go through first.

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*Andrew taps Ray's elbow, and indicates with a jerk of his head a pile of fallen masonry that used to be an obelisk. It looks like pretty good cover, from here.*

There.

*And he runs for it, skidding around two minor altars and a fairly ugly statue of a winged lion on his way.*

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gone_byebye

Ray nods once, igniting his lightsaber as Eddie's guitar riffs started to play-

Whoa. Wait. problem.

As Andrew ran, Ray turned to look over his shoulder, back towards the edge of the building-

"Guess that's our cue!" Peter exclaimed almost cheerfully, and another proton stream split the air.

We're not the only ones on this job-

Three streams. And Namtar the Herald, Lord of the Sixty-Four diseases, started to scream-

"Dread One!" bellowed Shandor. "What-"

Where the hell are Garion and Asar-Suti? Ray wondered.

"My mistress! Bring her here, quickly!" the deity howled, writhing and staggering backwards several steps.

Ray's head snapped up sharply. "Oh, no-"

Shandor's club came down on Tully's neck with a sickening finality.

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Eddie cut off his stream as his CPU processed. He began scanning more deeply, seeing facial expressions - reading Ray's 'oh no', and he began to circle. He would need more input if more was going to be brought into this - more deities? More opponents. But he wished knowledge of who before he started to attack.

He had learned the lesson of collateral damage.

[Doctor Stantz,] he sent over the radio frequency - it took little searching to find, [I require an update on the situation.]

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Oh no --

*Andrew's fingers dig into Ray's arm.*

Was that Louis Tully? Did he just kill Louis Tully?

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gone_byebye

Silently- he didn't trust himself to speak- Ray nodded.

Then came Eddie's voice over the headset, and a sudden, irrational surge went through Ray- a surge of gratitude. If he had to give orders then he didn't have to think-

"Eddie," he said through clenched teeth, one hand going up to tuck the headset a little more securely into his ear, "something's going to come through that hole in the sky very soon, something big, and if I know my mythology at all it's going to have a couple of bodyguards. Possibly airborne ones, possibly not. Take out anything that can fly first and then go after targets of opportunity on the rooftop- if it isn't human and it isn't Asar-Suti or a shapechanged Garion, it's a target. Am I understood?"

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Garion flies up. Things are a little hectic, the winds wiping past his feathers a few times before he regains his footing (or winging) and then he's there, flying towards Ray.

Tell me what to do! Sorry...more wind then I'd thought.

Should have been a falcon and damned the stealth.

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gone_byebye

"It's okay," shouts Ray, relieved. "You're not dead, that's the-"

The livid, rippling sky ripples further. Pulses of purple and black swirl together, drawing themselves inward in rapidly glimmering concentric rings-

Something that would be a lightning strike if lightning were ever composed of pure, unwholesome greenblackpurple iridescence rather than a jagged blue-white flash shoots simultaneously up from the center of the roof and down from the hole in the sky, and a figure easily twice the size of Namtar steps out of it. A pair of winged creatures that might, once, have been the sort of lions one finds in the southern reaches of Tolnedra dive down from the clouds to flank it.

"Mistress!" shouts Namtar. Ray pales.

"'Mistress'?" Peter repeats, momentarily looking away from Namtar and diverting his stream. "Ray, who-"

The figure lets out a stream of terrible sounding syllables as it raises one arm. Ray pales; Egon translates.

"'If you do not send that god to me-'"

"Garion! We need to get rid of both Ereshkigal and Namtar!"

"'-According to the rites of Erkalla and the great Earth-' "

The lion-things spread massive, blackened wings and grin in ways that no cats should be able to.

"Peter! You and Egon concentrate on Big E there! Garion! You and Sooty lay into Namtar and Shandor!"

"'-I shall raise up the dead, and they will eat the living-'"

"Yeah, okay, Spengs, I don't think we need any more translation-" Peter swings his thrower around to face Ereshkigal. "Yo! Goth girl!"

"I shall make the dead outnumber the liv- AAAARGH!"

As Namtar staggers free of the streams and the goddess lets out her own scream, the lions launch themselves into the air.

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He lands on the roof a moment later and pulls the sword, throwing his Will to the Orb to ignite the sword in blue fire. Then he runs towards Namtar.

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gone_byebye

The vilely shimmering figure shakes its head rapidly to clear it, turning to face the oncoming figure. "Ah," it says, and though it speaks in no language Garion's world has ever heard it nonetheless makes its meaning felt. "A hero, is it? We have seen your like before, in the Underworld."

It flexes long, dripping fingers that end in needlelike claws before leaping towards Garion on all fours. The arms are longer than the legs, giving Namtar the heaving, rolling gait of the rock-wolves who dwelled with Grul.

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Garion's dealt with rock-wolves before, but the most important thing is that this creature called him a "hero."

He HATES that.

...only his wife can call him that.

Roaring like the Alorn he is, he comes in swinging, the massive sword moving with unbelieveable speed. He strikes low, using the training given to him by Hettar, of the Algars, tactics low to the ground suited best for battling while upon a horse.

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gone_byebye

Namtar is a god of Sumer, the oldest of civilizations according to the thinking of many. And the gods of Sumer were much given to war and struggle, even at times with mortal heroes who would contend with them.

'Were' being the operative word here. Their last original worshippers passed from the red dust of Earth four thousand years ago. Even Shandor's small congregation could only feed them praise and pleadings, not daily interaction as once they might have had. Namtar's pantheon has squabbled and fought among themselves for four thousand years, and while that does put an edge on one's skills, it carries with it a problem as well... namely, that after the first thousand years, one ceases to truly remember what it is to battle with a novel foe, or an unusual strategy.

The horses of Namtar's time were far too small to be ridden in battle. Quite simply, Garion's strokes did not exist when last the deity had contact with this world. He veers away at precisely the wrong moment; the blade slashes a long, sickening-smelling path along his flank, brownish ichor sizzling into smoke on contact with the blue flame of the Orb.

"Filth!" rages Namtar, planting his hands on the ground and twisting himself about to strike at Garion with a lithely bending kick.

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He jumps.

He wasn't as nimble as Silk, not by a long jog, but he was a bit more nimble than a man his sized tended to be since he'd been taught a hodgepodge of techniques and always kept very humble concerning any achievements. Thus, he'd pushed himself to at least keep up with some of the greatest warriors of the West.

The jump, however, is short and used to propel a spinning stroke towards Namtar's middle. It was a brash move, one more suited to an axe than a sword, but this sword was big enough to pull it off. Barak, the large Cherek who had been named the Dreadful Bear, the man who more than any other had protected Garion during their travels, had also added to Garion's teaching and it showed now as he used his size and strength.

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gone_byebye

The kick was meant to provoke Garion into jumping, true- but Namtar had reckoned on it pushing the hero backwards, to give him more room for a full-force lunge. He twists violently again (no creature should be able to twist itself so, not with its middle contracting like that) and brings up one arm, shouting vile syllables in something like a warding chant. It does him little good. Such things seldom do when they're interrupted by flame running swiftly around one's middle.

Namtar howls and flings himself at Garion's knees, aiming to come in under the swordsman's guard.

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Garion doesn't even try to block the move with his blade. Instead, he throws his Will to the Orb once more and shouts with as much force as he can manage;

"BURST!"

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gone_byebye

That is not something Gilgamesh and his ilk ever brought with them on their quests. Come to think of it, not even Inanna, the goddess of Heaven, had ever thought to do something like that.

There is a sickening, squelching rumblerumblerumble noise for a moment. And then as Namtar's claws swipe forward-

well-

A significant portion of the monstrosity's midsection sprays every which way, black gobbets of reeking sickness splattering over most of the rooftop. What remains of him shrieks with blind idiot fury and rolls heedlessly sideways, clawing at any surface that might give purchase and a chance to regroup.

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