Raymond Stantz

Maybe, thought Eddie, the lion would like to know how flame felt. Eddie flew toward it, came close, then pulled up, yawed, and flamed his engines in high scramjet mode, their pulses beating hard against the air as, for just a moment, he was in a standstill. And then he was circling the building. If his cockpit hadn't been sheilded, it was fully possible that the glass would have shattered. Thankfully, he had fixed that.

[I will keep the aerial fight as far from the rooftop as possible. Contact if you require backup. Tinman out.]

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gone_byebye

Ray nodded, took one more look for Sooty, then dashed into position just in time for ANdrew to vanish completely from the line of sight of anything on the rooftop.

The lion saw Eddie's approach and bunched itself for a single great wing-pumping leap. It had no intention of being caught by the proton stream again-

wait, why was the dragon turning like that?

It was bright, but alas, not bright enough. The leap began a fraction of a second too late, and its hind legs were caught in the engine flames. Had Eddie been capable of olfactory processing, the reek of barbecued cat hair would have been terrible.

Legs still aflame, the lion writhed, rolling to keep its pointy ends towards Eddie as it plummeted. If that thing came any closer it would either burn or be gutted. It let out a pain-fueled exhalation; perhaps it might burn anyway...

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Pounds of heavy cat landed on Eddie's hull and to Eddie, the solution to this was obvious. Even with paint bubbled, he was certain the claws wouldn't gain too much purchase.

He swept into a barrel roll, spiralling in perfect control straight ahead, sensors trained on the horizon - so long as he could reorient once the roll was done, even if the lion did manage to cling, he could manage.

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gone_byebye

The lion tries to cling, and if Eddie's skin was made of any lesser substance it might have had a chance. But these are claws that can dig into stone, not metal. They lose their purchase and the lion tumbles uncontrollably as Eddie goes into his barrel roll.

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As the lion tumbled Eddie pulled out and turned, aiming with bullets purchased at the end of the universe - at least that was one thing the lion could claim. The phrase 'I came from the end of the universe to kill you' could truly apply.

Too bad that, soon enough, the lion would not have the ability to recount that tale. Eddie fired. He'd had enough dodging and playful pursuit. Things were getting worse. His sensors told him that much - while he'd been fending off aerial attack, things had progressed.

[Targets will soon be destroyed. Fifty over one-hundred at current. Next orders?]

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gone_byebye

Staggering back from the edge of the roof, nerves jangling with adrenaline and shock, Ray clapped his free hand over the ear with the headset in it. "The major threats have been neutralized groundside, but the minor threats've multiplied. Adjust the proton thrower to a frequency of seventy-five thousand, wide dispersal, and fire full stream on anything airborne that isn't verifiably solid. And scan for anything that is solid- we need to know about it before anyone takes any steps towards it one way or another."

The air below, it so happens, is chock full of remarkably less-than-solid targets.

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BOFFF.

A huge black ape fist silences the lion, and then purple gorilla eyes, magnified a hundred times, turn on Ereshkigal.

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gone_byebye

The lion, horrified, lunges away, leaping after the overhead bronze dragon. If its nose could bleed, it would have a nosebleed after a hit like that.

Below, on the street, there is a shocked silence.

"Dude!" cries a single overexcited human voice-

(The thing about New Yorkers is that you can evacuate them from the site of danger and tell them they mustn't go near it, and they'll do that, but the more dangerous it is the more they want to be there. And the other thing about New Yorkers is that quite a lot of them own binoculars and telescopes that have never once been used for birdwatching or astronomy.)

"-that's King Kong up there! Lookit!"

And as the murmur goes up from the crowd the goddess whirls to face the ape.

"You must be a god," she rasps in the Sumerian tongue. "Not even Gilgamesh was so foolish as to offer My lions harm-"

"Go get 'em, Kong! Go Monkey Power!"

With a screech of fury, Ereshkigal wrenches a piece of masonry loose and swings it at the ape's head.

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The giant ape ducks so Ershkigal misses, overbalancing; then, he attacks her from behind.

She is to tall to be picked up in classic King Kong style, but he swipes her, mercilessly, and starts pushing her twoard the swirlling rift.

So, where was that follower he was supposed to throw in after her?

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gone_byebye

Overbalancing ain't the half of it. Ereshkigal's masonry swipes through the air and smashes several obelisks, scattering chunks of concrete and stone; Peter and Egon are forced to let up their proton assault and run for cover. The goddess shrieks and drops her weapon, unable to hold onto it after the blow the ape's dealt. "Wretch!" she cries. "How dare you-"

She suddenly lifts both arms over her head and drops to her knees. This is probably not as great an advantage as it looks for the ape, because it means the goddess now has room to attempt to punch him in some vulnerable spot (knee, crotch, stomach, ankle) while chanting loudly in unimpeded Sumerian.

Across the roof, staggering to his feet with a look of pure rage in his eyes, a black-bearded man with a sickle in one hand and a club in the other can be seen.

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Gorilla. Crotch. No problem - there is hardly anything there, compared to the sheer size of ape. Same, stomach. But ankles - not so good.

So the giant ape grabs one of her arms and pulls her backwards, towards the rift.

One (comparatively) small purple eye keeps the black-bearded man in sight.

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gone_byebye

Very true. Bad target zone. There were no gorillas in ancient Sumer. Ereshkigal was assuming the ape would have a man's vulnerabilities.

"Hey, I think Kong's going for that hole in the sky! He's got hold of this glowing chick or something-"

"RAY! What are we supposed to do now?" shouts Peter. "The monkey's on our side, right?"

"Ezphares," cries Ereshkigal, who's thrashing frantically as she tries to writhe free and maybe land a heel strike on the ape's knees. "Olyaram, Irion-Esytion-"

"Yes he is! Don't hurt the monke- I mean the ape!"

"This is no time to be arguing taxonomy, Ray! Peter won't understand it anyway!"

"Eryona, Orea-"

"I resent that, Egon-"

The black-bearded man, heedless of the logistical difficulties inherent in kilt-wearing, scrambles over shattered concrete and launches himself towards the ape at a dead run.

... wait, no? No, it looks like he's planning to run past the ape...

"KONG! KONG! KONG!"

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The cheers from below fires the giant ape up like good wine. Followers, albeit temporary New York ones, are sweet intoxication to any deity.

A lash of one strong arm lifts Ereshkigal off the stones, and smashes her back down, making her stop her incantation for a moment; the other hand grabs the black-bearded man trying to escape. Just a silly human.

In the heat of the moment, Asar-Suti lifts his human captive high into the air, waves to the crowd, and roars while pulling Ereshkigal inexorably towards the rift.

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gone_byebye

Oh, that's gonna be messy. Ereshkigal gets the wind knocked out of her, or should- it's difficult to tell when a deity needs to breathe and whent hey're just pausing to build up dramatic rage. The man, on the other hand, starts kicking and squirming immediately.

"GET YOUR PAWS OFF ME, YOU VERDAMMT PURPLE APE!"

The crowd below hoots appreciatively. There will be crappy little stuffed gorillas for sale on Canal Street by sundown, you can count on it.

"Orasym," gasps Ereshkigal, taking a cue from housecats everywhere and going utterly limp in self defense. "Mozim!"

The air about the ape stills suddenly, the otherworldly winds stilling. There is a monstrous feeling of swelling, of every particle of Power in every part of the vicinity simultaneously needing to flee from every other particle at the fastest speed imaginable-

"Ray?" Peter asks tremulously. "That, uh... that was bad, right?"

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There is the rift now, and the squirmings of the man, or the incantations of the rather minor goddess, don't impress a King Kong. Nor an Asar-Suti.

He lets go of Ereshkigal for just a second, to grab her again that very instant- by her hair.

Dramatically, he swings her around by it, razing evil-looking statuary that reminds him of the Field Of Beasts outside his own fortress of Valgaard. When she comes around, he shoves her into the rift, feet first.

Then, the black-bearded follower does just that - he follows, even if not from his own volition. Asar-Suti shoves him through the rift, sees him eaten up by the otherworldly glow, and his energy that called her forth in the first place now serves to reserve the process. The rift flares, brilliantly; purple fire illiuminates all neighbouring buildings for a moment; and in a hiss and a shower of sparks as if from a volcano ready to go off, the rift collapses onto itself.

Asar-Suti stares just for a moment; the last time something like this happened, it was him beyond a similar rift, and his Dark Overlord and best beloved follower Lochiel who was thrown into his Gate, and died there.

And just like the last time, when this had brought down the fortress of Valgaard, masonry begins to crumble.

There is cheering far below, and Asar-Suti remembers who he is supposed to be. The cheering fires him up again, and he turns, standing on top of the building while parapets and ledges drop around him. He raises himself to his full heights, lifts his heavy giant fists, and drums his massive chest.

And ROARS in triumph! To frantic whooping from down below, King Kong announces in his way that he has won.

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gone_byebye

Let him, he's earned it, is Ray's first impulse. But something makes him shift his 'sabre into his left hand, then reach into his sport coat and pull out the PKE meter.

Peter trots to the nearest solid roof edge and waves one hand- oh, sure, the thing with the goddess was bad, but there are fans! Who is he to disappoint his audience? Even if it is the big purple guy's audience, really. He waves, grinning; Egon turns to follow-

"Egon," says Ray tensely, holding up the PKE meter, "I think you'd better come have a look at this."

"You're going to have to tell me where you got that, you know-"

Ray thrusts the device under the physicist's nose. "Does it matter?"

"... holy Heisenberg!" Egon sucks his breath through his teeth. "That can't be right."

"Check it yourself. You've got your own meter-"

"Hey, no offense, but you two are seriously harshing my groove over here," Peter calls over his shoulder.

"Peter," Egon says in reply, "I think Shandor's still connected to the power of the building. He may be trying to reopen the rift from the other side."

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*Andrew emerges from behind a broken slab of masonry, looking alarmed.*

What the hazmana happened? The Tethra crystals went dark before I could finish the Severing, I didn't even get to start the Banishing --

*He stares at the sky, and then at Egon.*

Oh.

This is Bad, isn't it.

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gone_byebye

"Classically Bad," Egon confirms. Ray holds up the meter, forgetting that it's too far away for Andrew to see. "Ereshkigal got something off before the gorilla threw her and Shandor through the rift-"

"Mother pus bucket," hisses Peter, and stumbles away from his vantage point as if he's about to be stung.

And the Dead start coming.

There really isn't any other way to describe it. The chants below, of "KONG! KONG! KONG!", are suddenly lost in screams of absolute terror. Ereshkigal's chant has let loose all the dead of New York's history, and they swarm into the streets, the buildings, and the air. Indians who died of disease and warfare when the Whites pushed them out. Immigrants who perished of cold, starvation, God alone knows what else. Murder victims, abandoned infants, homeless people, suicides, accidents- all of them have arisen. About the only mercy is that the majority of them are insubstantial, spirits rather than shambling horrors; it would appear nothing older than fifty or a hundred years was able to hold together.

Of course, that's small comfort to the gathering on the roof. The spirits are most capable of flying, after all- and Ereshkigal summoned them. There are ghosts swarming in from every direction.

"Peter! Egon! Set the packs to seventy-five thousand and fire on wide dispersal! We can hold them back until- well, something! Garion, if you can think of something-" Ray's not even paying attention as he shouts. He hasn't got a proton pack. He's got something the size of a maglight in his hand and it's got a brilliant green self-terminating beam of energy protruding from it and damn if it doesn't look like a lightsaber, but it's hard to say because the wum wum wum noise is lost in the sound of him trying to drive the spirits back from his part of the rooftop. "Keep them away from Andrew! Andrew, can you finish the spell if we buy you enough time?"

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I, I think so -- gonna have to compensate for it being on the other RAY BEHIND YOU!

*He points.*

*At Louis Tully -- an unmistakeably dead Louis Tully -- staggering to his feet, head swinging side to side, arms outstretched in a clutching gesture that swoops down directly at Ray.*

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gone_byebye

"What are- GAAAH!" Ray turns around just in time to see the swooping, and dives hard out of the walking corpse's way. This does not go as smoothly as one might hope, because Ray has this thing with not wanting to impale himself on his own energy weapon. He goes sprawling instead, scattering stone and gravel everywhere and scraping up a good portion of his face.

"RAY!" Peter yells, but he can't do anything because there's ghosts thick and fast between him and them-

Tully staggers on, seemingly too blind to notice Ray's absence, and lunges at something on the ground instead. Ray sits up panting, hastily checking to make sure he hasn't joined the Severed Limbs of Star Wars Club. "Louis- uh- I'm not gonna- don't try anything funny, okay?"

And then, oh, then the word and the sound Ray remembers in his bones, the way other men remember the sound of a shotgun being racked or the fall of the last pair of dice:

Egon, who's hopped up on a piece of statuary to get a better vantage point for holding the spectres off, points towards the park and bellows "LOOK!"

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*Andrew knows that sound too -- not in the visceral way that Ray does, but he's heard it a lot more often. And it makes the hair go up on the backs of his arms every. single. time. The accompanying sound is different, though, not the inexorable soft heavy tread of a giant marshmallow man, but a sharper sound, stone ringing on stone --*

*He turns to look. He couldn't stop himself if he tried.*

*And his mouth hangs open.*

*Because over the low stone wall surrounding Central Park has just stepped a twelve-foot-tall stone statue. Of a serious-looking man in an expensive 19th-century suit.*

*And he's looking up at the Shandor Building with his hands on his hips, like a man contemplating a tree he has a mind to cut down.*

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gone_byebye

Ray blinks as his vision adjusts to the fact that he's not looking for a big white head at an altitude of a hundred feet. It's rather like sending a tall person to make contact with Edward Elric without warning them about his height issues first; his gaze has to go down, and down, and...

... okay, yeah, there it is...

"That's... not right," Ray manages. Absently he slices a particularly inept ghost in half- he'd only meant to swat it away but there really isn't a 'swatting away' option on your standard issue lightsaber.

"I'll say it ain't," says Peter, who's come over to stare as well. "That's Irving Central!"

Ray turns and looks sidelong at Peter. "Irving what?"

"Irving Central," Peter repeats. "That's the guy behind Central Park- the man they named the whole thing after?"

The statue frowns up at the building a moment more before turning to face the Park again.

"... uh, Peter, I thought it was called Central Park because it was right in the center of the island-"

Even twenty-eight stories up and surrounded by the wailing spirits of the dead (and the grunting shuffle of Louis Tully), the statue's piercing whistle can be heard.

"Shyeah, right, and I suppose next you're gonna tell me that Grand Central Station's not named after Horace Grand, either."

The trees of the Park start to shake, as if Eddie were suddenly descending everywhere at once.

"Horace-" Ray chokes. This must be what it feels like to go mad, he catches himself thinking.

Down below, the few living who remain on the street- mounted police mostly- let out exclamations of utter shock. Creatures are leaping the wall- not dead things, creatures- and people-

"Holy cow, Ray, it looks like half the statues in the Park've come to life!" exclaims Peter.

"More than that," says Egon. "They're-"

"Attacking the walking dead," says Ray in a tone of wonder- because they are. "Andrew? ANDREW! Let's get cracking- we're gonna have company!"

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There was still a plane.

Eddie had his bay doors open, the proton thrower recalibrated as Ray had asked, and the beam was taking down one spirit at a time, making a steady circle around the building. The spiral only shifted when he had to chase down one that eluded him at first. One target at a time.

One hundred over one hundred on the lions.

A few hundred to go on the ghosts, if not more. But Eddie had a purpose, and right now, that purpose was guardian.

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