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

[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.)