New York In The Time Of Monsters: Chelsea Piers

[gone_byebye]

Ray and the troupe on the West Side Highway managed to force the monsters' mastermind to show herself. Dr. Mary Mezga of the Museum of Natural History has been a very, very naughty scientist, it seems. Conjuring the dead into life is NOT GOOD SCIENCE AT ALL. Especially not when it involves modern-day humans getting hunted down like rodentia.

It's a bit worse when you know the motive...

At any rate, Ray caught her announcing her final target and broadcast it to the NYPD. Anyone with a portable radio on them knows, now, exactly where the crazy lady and her animals are headed: to the entertainment complex at 24th Street and the river, Chelsea Piers.

Comments

[evil_koala_626]

"Aggaba!"

The remains of the herd are being seen to by everyone else. No one appears to be paying attention to the strange lady or her giant pet... whatever that is.

Stitch rushes toward the Indricotherium, attempting to cut it off before it presumably escapes into the water.

[gone_byebye]

The Indricotherium stops before it reaches the water. It may not be able to see directly under its head, but it knows that SOMETHING was moving down there, and it doesn't want to get tripped up- so it stops.

"Dr. Mezga, what is it you want?" shouts Ray, who's displaying his usual truly sterling survival instincts and following Stitch.

"The same thing everyone who ever had to suffer at the hands of people who put more value on muscle and coordination than mind and study wants," Dr. Mezga answers. "To teach them all a lesson they'll never forget."

Her right hand flicks outward, two small brown fragments of something solid hitting the water and disappearing into the river's depths. She's making some very complicated gestures almost as soon as they leave her hand, despite the fact that now one or two of the police are shooting at her (and missing- all the sharpshooters in Manhattan were tied up at the UN or the Dalai Lama's thing in Central Park). "I abjure thee, o great beast of the Deep," she calls in a voice the people on the boat can hear, "obey my bidding! Or, to put it in terms all of YOU lot can understand-"

History! Show us again and again, how Nature responds to the folly of men!!"

And the river foams, and trembles, and shakes, as something huge begins to well up from the depths...


"Ohgod," Ray says as the muck-covered, serpentine, armored heads erupt in a shower of Hudson froth.

[hopeitsworthit]

"Dude. Blue Oyster Cult?"

Dean's looking pretty pissed right now.

"You did not just--"

Nevermind.

She's going down.

Some stuff just wasn't meant for use by evil villains intent on world domination by prehistoric mammals.

Like kickass rock music.

[evil_koala_626]

...

Well that's certainly unexpected.

The great beasts come to earth with a tooth rattling crash, Half resting on the ruined remains of the pier. After the spilt second's hesitation due to shock, the Indricotherium and its rider are forgotten. Stitch leaps forward and lands a punch squarely on one of the new arrivals' snouts.

[gone_byebye]

These beasts are Basilosaurus. They're ancestral whales, huge snakelike things, monsters of the deep a good sixty or seventy feet long, full of rage and tooth and awful magic.

Stitch is a scientific experiment by a mad genius who may be as crazy as Dr. Mezga.

"AYIIIIPE!" cries the Basilosaurus, thrashing frantically. Its flailing starts kicking up the Hudson's waters, throwing the docks into upheaval and sending waves out that give the boat a hell of a time staying upright. One more good punch from Stitch and it's likely to turn tail and run.

The other is another story. Ray's baiting that one, running back and forth in front of it with his saber, shouting at it about its utter failure to develop an organ of echolocation and its inferiority to a common dolphin and its primitively pathetic stubby little legs. "RAY!" shouts Peter. "Quit taunting the sea monster!"

Ray turns to see what Peter's talking about. The whale senses its opportunity and lunges with its jaws open-

"Daddy!" screams Ecto. There's a noise, as of something mechanical going to pieces and reforming itself in a matter of seconds.

And Ray is swept out of the monster whale's path by one of his suddenly-upright daughter's hands.

Observant ears will note that it's now Dr. Mezga's term to say, "Ohgod."

[calderon-crow.livejournal.com]

...Tavi will need lots of explanations.

For right now, though? Staring.

[gone_byebye]

Tavi is not alone. Everybody is staring. Everybody. Cops, Ghostbusters, crazy scientist lady, ambulance workers, people in the street- even the small child Christine has, although she's still holding onto the yautja with all her might. Winston is the first to shake it off, shouting, "Ecto! Get the crazy lady! Everybody else, concentrate your fire on the sea monsters! Don't let them get to the boat!"

Ray, for his part, is too stunned by his current situation to do more than pull out his radio and call, ""Um, Optimus? I, uh... I think you might want to see this."

"This area is secured. I'm on my way, Ray."

[gavemea_45]

Dean's reaction is succinct.

"Holy fucking shit."

For his part, Sam can only nod agreement-- but when Winston yells, it snaps him back to the present.

The two brothers trade a quick, grim look and turn their fire on the giant whales. It'll be a race to see if the sea monsters can be drawn off or killed before the boat goes down.

[jokerswildwest.livejournal.com]

When Alex hears the sound of gunfire -- not to mention giant robot thing and prehistoric sea-whale-things and crazy bitch riding whatever the hell that was -- he reaches for the other sidearm and moves to the edge of the water, keeping himself behind a chunk of concrete in case anything else comes flying out of the water as he fires in the general direction of the whale things.

They're big animals.

The click-click of empty clips meets his ears, and instead of taking the time to dig for ammo in his bag and reload, he does the next best thing he can think of.

Which is grab a chunk of concrete, heft it in his hand, and then hurl it in the direction of the thing trying squirm into the water. He's got a decent arm, but it lands short, and he swears, growls, and picks up another, hurling it.

This one lands with a thunk on bone, and he grins, before ducking down behind the rock. Once the adrenaline wears off...he's going to be hurting.

[evil_koala_626]

Stitch flattens his ears against the sound of gunfire behind him. He ducks and weaves with a few startled "Hey!"s as he attempts to avoid the barrage of bullets. Bullets may not pierce his skin but it's still painful to get struck by anything traveling at those speeds.

With a snarl, he turns his frustration back on the beached Basilosaurus. Admittedly, this one doesn't have quite as much oomph behind it as the last.

[sighteddancer.livejournal.com]

Christine has been absorbed in the "how do you get the tiny, screaming, clinging alien to let go" conundrum. It grabbed her mask and braids and wrapped its legs around her bicep back when she fired the plasma cannon.

Growling at it has not worked. Neither has a quiet command. Neither has splashing water on it. Neither has roaring. Neither has hanging upside-down over a two-story drop (one hand at its back) loosened its grip. Truly these are tenacious creatures. Heat crosses her mind next, but the bar humans are extremely careful about flame, and she can hardly risk harming it after taking the responsibility of saving it.

Which is why an innocent paramedic, having just cleared a guy after he had a minor rubble-related injury, is lurched at by a giant shape.

She had forewarning.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" announces Christine's passenger, which it has been doing tenaciously for some time.

"You. Remove this."

[gone_byebye]

It's still plenty. The Basilosaurus lets out another terrified yelp and does its best to look small and inconspicuous and harmless.

This does not work.

Ecto, meanwhile, eases Ray up onto her shoulder and moves to follow Uncle Winston's suggestion. The Indricotherium is proving to be rather less tractable now that there are OMG GIANT WHALE MONSTERS erupting out of the river. Dr. Mezga scarcely even sees Ecto coming, though she puts up a little scream when Ecto scoops her up in her other hand. "Dr. Mezga," says Ecto, holding the woman at eye level, "you're a really smart lady. You ought to know better than this."

The cops are firing on both the whales now, though not so much the one that Stitch is hitting. No sense accidentally hitting the little blue thing, since it seems to be on their side. The other whale is doing its best to slide into the water before something goes horribly wrong.

And as for the paramedic, she makes an 'eep!' face before nodding and oh-so-cautiously reaching up to remove the child one finger at a time.

[autocommander.livejournal.com]

There is thunder coming south.

No. Thunder doesn't crash so rhythmically.

He may not be in vehicle form, but Optimus Prime's down the West Side Highway, through the traffic, has been just as inexorable and unstoppable. On the median, jumping cars and dodging motorcycles and one leap over a set of utterly hornswoggled tourists who had no idea the traffic in New York could be that bad, he made for Chelsea Piers as fast as he possibly could.

And at the sighs of Ecto, he pauses, and mutters, "Ratchet and I are going to have a very long talk about 'authorized activities' when I get back."

But there's still danger, and his right arm shifts again, turning into a massive cannon, which he extends. One eye goes dark, then comes back on again.

He waits for the opportunity, locked onto target. Once it's clear...

[gone_byebye]

This is a very, very, very bad day to be Dr. Mezga. Oh, the triumphant rush of being able to call all of the animals she's spent her career on back into life was brilliant and she'd do it again in a heartbeat if she had the means to. That's for certain. But it's gone downhill from there; all of her favorite predators were dusted, most of her best enteleodonts ran off into the park to look for food, and all that's left of her siege ruminants is a cluster of very confused aurochsen that're currently trying to determine if they can all hide behind an overturned hot-dog cart.

And now her whale- the one that didn't get introduced to the concept of 'ow' by a small blue alien package of doom- is right in the center of Optimus' sights.

(Oh, and she's being held immobile about seventeen feet off the ground by a robot who used to be a converted hearse. There's that too. At least the robot appears to be shocked speechless for the moment?)

[autocommander.livejournal.com]

"CLEAR!" Optimus has learned this from the soldiers he's worked with - when you can, let people know something big is coming.

And he fires his ion cannon at the whale, aiming for a part that, he hopes, will sever cleanly and proceed to cease and desist that whole 'reanimated' thing.

He's not sure he likes the idea of the dead returning to life.

[gone_byebye]

The whale had been rather desperately hoping to make it to the shelter of the boat, given the bullets pinging in from the people gathered on shore. It hadn't counted on the ion cannon, and so was only halfway to the boat when-

Well.

The NYPD's going to be dredging the harbor for that skull.

(This is about the point where Belle, the Indricotherium, very quietly lies down and tries to hide her head. Every instinct she's got says that was a lightning bolt, and Indricotherium as a species did not survive by allowing themselves to stay vulnerable to lightning.)

Ray, meanwhile, has recovered enough of his senses to raise a hand and wave shakily. Ecto's still staring, herself.

[autocommander.livejournal.com]

Optimus Prime regards the scene, then turns to Ray, and gives him a thumbs-up.

"Any other trouble spots you could use my help with?"

----

Up by the New York Waterway ferry terminal, two guys in what are called, in parts of the US, 'snorkel jackets', wearing puffball hats on their heads despite the seventy-degree weather, are staring at a huge divot taken out of the sidewalk.

"Wow, Bob," says the smaller, skinnier of the pair, "looks like the traffic is so bad in New YOrk that sometimes even the cars get up and walk, eh?"

"Awww, take off."

[gone_byebye]

"I think we're good," Ray says quietly.

Ecto is doing her best not to vibrate. There's a massive SQUEEE noise trying to get out of her processor and into her speech synthesizer, and given the capability of the synthesizer, there's a very good chance she'll hit a frequency that'll upset the remaining animals. Speaking of which...

Between one thing and another- and by 'one thing' we mean 'the wrath of Stitch' and by 'another' we mean 'gunfire from the cops, the Winchesters, and Alex West'- the thrashing Basilosaurus is really not doing very well at all. Desperate to get out of the little alien's range it rears up one more time and tries to push itself back into the water. Which gun fired the final bullet we may never know, but the monstrous thing suddenly dissolves into dust, and the skull plummets to earth- towards earth, at least. Stitch is a nimble little fellow who has caught himself a stylin' new hat, if he so chooses.

Dr. Mezga lets out a thin-voiced cry of distress. "Tezuka!" she wails. "Nakajima! My poor babies..."

It's all well and good, really- nothing like making the villain cry- but the police are realizing there are still giant animals left. Several of them reorient their weapons, aiming variously for the aurochsen or Belle. The foremost of the police raises a hand to signal the rest-



"HOLD IT!" rings out a woman's voice. "Hold your fire! Federal agent!"

"What the-"

"As the final representatives of their species, those animals fall under the protection of the Endangered Species Act!" shouts the woman in the white business suit as she races out in front of the police.

"Oh, I do not BELIEVE this," mutters the cop. His sentiment appears to be echoed by Venkman, who's staring at the woman as if she were a particularly loathsome species of bedbug. "Lady? I don't know if you noticed, but THEY WERE TRYING TO KILL US."

"And they're not any more," the woman returns, "so they no longer represent an immediate threat to human life or health, and are therefore entitled to the full protection of the law."

"Lady, who the hell are you?" Venkman asks.

"Amanda Schonthaler," the woman answers. "Environmental Protection Agency."

This: is approximately Venkman's facial expression. And that faint sound in the background? That's the sound of Egon, Winston, and Ray simultaneously facepalming.

---

When the smoke clears and the dust is swept up, it really could've been much worse. Yes, Ms. Schonthaler is busy getting a large cargo vessel to come and pick up the animals; they're going to be transported to the Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station until the law can figure out what to do with them. Yes, the people from Dr. Mezga's reunion cruise have to wait another hour to come ashore, but at least they're coming ashore. And yes, there was massive damage to major segments of the West Side Highway, but there was a repair initiative on the way anyway. It's just going to require a bigger chunk of the city's budget, that's all- and since video of the events of the day appeared on the Internet just as soon as the people with appropriately video-equipped cellular phones could type www.youtube.com, the city is getting expressions of tremendous interest in the bones from museums, scientists, and practitioners of traditional medicine all over the globe.

As for our heroes, well... there's going to be a long chat with Mayor Lenny soon. And with the Spook Squad. And with the Division of Motor Vehicles; it wouldn't be New York without someone complaining that the giant robot hasn't got a driver's license. For now, people are grateful. The cops, that nobody got killed; the paramedics, that they didn't have to treat worse injuries; and the concessionaires at Chelsea Piers, that people took their frozen desserts off their hands en masse at extremely reasonable prices before their freezers went offline completely.

In the end, it's all good. (Although Christine may dispute that somewhat. Spoon hasn't stopped giggling yet over the image of his hunt-sister with a small child clinging to her face.)