Still Room 2342, Yee-Haw

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The sign on the outside of the door says IF YOU ATTEMPT TO ENTER THIS ROOM YOU WILL BE SHOT.

A slightly smaller sign below says UNLESS YOU'RE ON THE SHIFT ROSTER- PEDO MELLON A MINNO.

The latter part is Sindarin for 'speak, friend, and enter', or possibly slightly different translations thereof.

Comments

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There is a knock at the door.

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Ray starts a little, looking up. Danny's more or less in full-on sulk mode at the moment, so he calls out, "Who's there?"

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Egon's voice comes through the door: "Mellon". He's even got the accent right.

Who knew that Egon Spengler spoke Sindarin?

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Ray actually smiled at that. "Aiya meldomelin. C'mon in, Egon, it's safe."

Someone who had at least a little Quenya to his name, maybe.

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Egon opens the door and very carefully closes it. He has a roll of paper tape and a thick, old-looking book with him.

"I brought something else to assist with the bindings, just in case." He holds up the tape. "He was fairly quiet last night." Which is good.

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Ray glances over at the still form. "I have this vague urge to get a stereo and play easy listening music at him, actually," he murmurs in a low tone. Then he shakes himself a little. "Sorry. Um. What do you need me to do with my part of that?"

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"Just make sure I get the mogen david done up right." He unrolls part of the tape to show finely-written Hebrew on it. "The Bar lent me the Lesser Key of Solomon and I started to put this together...."

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"Oh, cool," Ray says. "As long as the essential elements aren't incompatible with what's already marked out, this should work pretty well-" He glances over at the containment field again and lowers his voice. "I don't think his world's particularly big on the old school approach, from what little he's told me. It's almost a dead certainty that his parents won't have used anything from the mystical side of the equation in their equipment, so he won't know how to handle something like this."

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The roll turns out to be six long strips, long enough to make the Star around everything else. A little fun-tak keeps it together and on the floor, not disturbing anything. Then, when it's all set up, Egon touches it and mutters quietly to himself in Hebrew, after a quick glance at the book.

The Hebrew flares briefly, then settles down, the letters a little darker on the paper.

Egon adjusts his glasses. "....I wasn't expecting that," he admits.

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Ray blinks, staring for a moment. "Oh-kay," he says, settling back on his knees. "I knew this place was energetically funky, but I wasn't under the impression it was anything like that active. Of course, his Nibs there could be leaking- would that kind of residual energy be enough to set off that kind of reaction?"

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"Possibly," Egon says, "Or perhaps the combination of all of these things, including the nature of the place itself, combined. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury for the experimentation we need; any attempt to discern the situation might lower the protections and cause undue difficulties with the future."

Yanno, he only gets REALLY wordy like that when he's really worried.

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Yeah. Ray's Egon is the same way; hence the question...

"We could ask Lenny, you know."

He's got a matchbox-sized, um, box strapped to his wrist.

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Egon grimaces. "....all things considered, the expedience level might be useful. Especially knowing if we have any conflicting containments that might concievably destructively interact." He braces himself mentally.

"Go ahead."

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"You look positively hyperthyroid when you do that."

Ray pops open the box, and the tiny demon sticks its head out. There is a very faint smell of smoke. The truly discerning will recognize it as tobacco smoke. "Yo," it announces, looking up expectantly. "Whadda we got this time?"

Ray points at the work the two Ghostbusters have just done. "Got anything special to report? That's acting funny."

"Funny how?" The imp leans as far over the edge of its box as it can. "Hoo, boy, have you guys got an interesting feedback loop goin' here. You got the joint's mana-level energetic flows doin' tricks I haven't seen in a long time- I mean, yeah, you got your basic spirit barricade action goin' on here with the basic layer, any bozo can see that, but-" One tiny arm points to the tape. "Hope you two ain't lookin' to get your security deposit back, because that ain't comin' off any time soon. Not the way it's radiating into the upper ends of the thaumic spectrum. What the heck you got it feeding off, anyway?"

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"We're not actually sure. I took a standard spirit binding from the Lesser Key of Solomon, and I gave the proper incanatation to activate it." Egon pauses, then raises an eyebrow. "....could it have actually locked into..." Egon pauses, and he slowly looks upwards. "Fascinating."

Egon won't admit the disturbingness yet, though. 'cause it is.

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The imp watches Egon with a jaundiced eye. "Well, it ain't exactly tapping the Class Eight you got behind the Fenton shield, yanno. That's your fault? Shoulda known. You got a lot of the same smell on you."

"You spend half your time in that box with a cigar, Lenny. I hardly think you're one to talk about smells."

The imp snorts. "Different kind of smell, screwdriver boy."

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Egon is quickly getting used to the demon. "What kind of smell? I'm not certain what you mean?" Oh, wait. He can't mean... surely, even with the Dragon, that was just family legend and using deduction and logic. The man wasn't a REAL sorcerer...

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The imp taps off a minuscule amount of ash and looks up at Egon. "The fancy word for it is parasympathetic quantum resonance. You got the Law of Contagion where you come from? Once together, always together? Well, that's what we got here. You put the effort into it, you put the words into it, you put all of that mental energy into it, it's gonna leave a mark. Parasympathetic quantum resonance." It taps its nose. "Smell. Same energy in both places."

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Egon nods. "Yes, that makes perfect sense. For a moment I thought perhaps I'd accidentally tagged into the power of He Who Spoke The First Word, which strikes me as faintly risky here where the sentence ends." That's almost poetic.

"Well, there's an incantation for shutting it down in here, but I think I'll hold off on it. I'm going to make sure I memorize it, as well. Thank you.... er, Lenny. Most interesting."

Egon's gonna scan himself with a PKE meter later, you just know it.

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Lenny laughs, which is really not a very nice expression, and flips Ray a lazy salute before diving back into the box. Ray snaps it shut and looks up at Egon. "Nice one," he says. "You took that a lot better than I thought you would. Peter got all weird the first time he showed up on a PKE meter."

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"Well, the evidence was before us; something happened that was outside the default experiences. Therefore, there must be an explanation." He rubs his chin. "Perhaps I should read this book completely before returning it. I might find something useful to this situation. I merely paged through it looking for spirit bindings."

"Besides, it's entirely possible the entire situation is part of the enhanced paranormal situation - I might walk out that door and have all the PKE resonance of an eggplant."

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Ray sighs, but it's a good sigh. "Thank you. I was starting to wonder if something was wrong with me for thinking that way, given how hysterical Peter can get about the situation at times. Honestly, I love him like the brother my parents never gave me but there are times when I think that psychology degree went straight to his head, and not in a good way, either. I'd read the book if I were you, though. Definitely."

He makes a mental note to ask Ecto if she'd rather play Compare the Versions with his old copy of Tobin's and his new one than read more of Spates when he gets home. It'll be nice, to see New York again...

"Yeah, that's true. Still, you shouldn't necessarily be too surprised if there's some kind of-"

He stops, blinking.

"Hey, I wonder how much of it might be related to your currently transitional state according to the world outside the Milliways main door? I mean, let's be honest here- how much of the old school approach had to do with walking in two worlds at once?"

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Egon looks at Ray. It's at moments like this he realizes just how much he underestimates the man sometimes - relying on him for his heart, not just his mind.

"The traditional shamanic-style magics were based on that, as were some of the more esoterically based Celtic and Hellenic concepts. It's an interesting idea - the fact I am somewhat between existences may be the difference. That's quite brilliant, Ray. Quite brilliant. I may have to work on this hypothesis." Then he blinks.

"Ray... could I have come here, now, because you need me, and I cannot go until the situation is resolved? You have greater experience here than I do." That would be rather reassuring, come to think of it - that he's here because this situation needs not just Ray and Peter, but also himself for whatever reason.

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Ray gives this some thought, and then-

"Yeah, actually," he says. "That's distinctly possible. I've found that the only times I've come here by accident, other than the times that involved falling off the Shandor Building, it's been because something or someone here needed me specifically. And that if I try to leave when I've got an obligation hanging over me here other than my tab, the Bar tends to send me to the wrong universe for whatever reason. So I'd say it's very possible that that's why you're here, and why you can't leave just yet."

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Egon takes this all in.

"Then I had best begin reading in depth, then, shouldn't I?" He's immersed himself in fiction in the past few days. Now?

Now it's time to get to work, Ghostbusters style.