milliways_bar | (no subject)

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As of yesterday's conversation with Mark, Angel's passed through 'worried' and carried on immediately to 'pissed off.' This music stuff has fucked with his family, and that's never something he takes well.
Other than that, fairly standard operating procedures: Couch by fireplace, notebook, rather large mug of tea, basket of paradoxes, Mark's spare camera.
A distraction, or some kind of good news on the music-problem front, would be quite welcome.

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Then- lo.

"Hey, Angel."

"Hey. What's up?"
Angel's not at his most talkative today, it seems.

Ray's seen that expression before, and heard that attitude. Mostly on Egon.

"I haven't had the chance to talk to Carl but I think I found our Patient Zero anyway."

"Really? That's very helpful. Just hope we're not too late."
He means every word of that, though stress may mean it comes off as a bit sarcastic. It's one of those things.

Again, Egon. As long as there's some emotion in the voice, there's still hope.

"How bad is it?"

"Mark didn't even recognize me yesterday. Not right away. Got about five seconds of clarity out of him, so at least as of yesterday he was still in there somewhere, but then his eyes went all blank again. Think he tried to fight the stuff and pissed it off."

"...crap."

"That about sums it up. On the bright side, I think I may have figured out how to chase it out, if we still have time."
Angel sighs. "So. About Patient Zero."

"I didn't get a name out of him," Ray says, "but I've seen him, I've heard his voice, and I'd recognize his readings anywhere. I'm pretty sure the music tried to get at me while I was talking to him. I had this weird urge to get out a harmonica at one point, but it passed- remind me to thank the Jedi Masters for teaching me how to barricade my head. He was playing the guitar in particular, although I think piano was also an option for him. Young man, about so tall-"

He indicates the approximate height.

"...Hmm. Might've seen him around, but the way people've been with music the last week and a half - hell, even Mark had a guitar, for a while there. If you didn't get a name, did you at least get a face?"

(OOC: And he did get a name, actually, or at least a nickname. 'Call me Buddy,' and all that.)

(OOC: Ray's a little bit sleep deprived these days because of the amount of guard duty he's pulling on Danny. It's made him slip up in a couple of areas, like remembering things on the first try. He has to be prodded sometimes to get the details.)

Ray thinks for a bit, then snaps his fingers. "Buddy," he said. "That's what he said. I'm sorry, Angel. God, at this rate I"m going to have to start taking K's sleep compensators after all..."

(OOC: No worries, then.)

"...Really."
Angel thinks for a moment, then says, "If that's who I think it is, it's the guy who had the bug in the book. Hopefully, it just snuck up on him again or something. Might make our lives easier, in that case."

"Oh?" says Ray curiously. "How did they wind up solving things in the book?"

"According to the book, the music was around at the beginning of everything, and was going to stick around straight through to the end, one way or another. I think if someone points out it's at the end of the universe, it might decide to cut its losses."

"Huh."

Ray thinks about this.

"You get Buddy distracted. I'll get the duct tape."

Angel grins, though the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes. "It may not be quite that easy. If anything, Mark's situation proves the stuff fights hard to keep what it's got."

"Well, I figure it's harder for it to ignore what we're saying if we tape the guy to the window while someone explains what's going on out there," Ray say. "There are alternatives, of course. Most of them having to do with the Grim Reaper, or one of the local deities. Would it be inclined to listen to a deity?"

"Well, in the book it took the local personification of Death to get the stuff to knock it off, so I'd think it would..."
Angel trails off, remembering something he was pretending not to know for a while yesterday. "Or there's his granddaughter. She's here, I was talking to her yesterday, she knows what happened the first time. Wonder if she'd help..."

(OOC: Actually, that thread's still in slowtime, so if some of this gets discussed there, we'll chalk it up to Angel's own little memory slip. XD)

"Okay, then. I'll keep that in mind, in case I run into someone of that caliber along the way."

"Cool. Meanwhile, I'll just wish the stuff was tangible so I could beat it upside the head."
Did we mention Angel doesn't like stuff messing with his family? And really, there's no use taking it out on the kid who brought the stuff in (not until they find out whether he meant to, anyway).

"I dunno about tangible," Ray says, "but if we can persuade it to manifest in such a way that it resonates at the fre-"

He can see Angel's brows drawing together in puzzlement, he just knows it.

"-well, uh, if we can make it manifest with the same sort of characteristics of some kind of ghost, I can probably trap it..."

"Oh, it's done plenty of resonating already. Have you listened to any of these people when they start talking? People's voices shouldn't do that. But trying to trap it sounds like a good backup plan."

"I mean my traps won't work if it isn't sufficiently ghostlike. It has to resonate at the same etheric frequency as ectoplasmic entities, or else I have to figure out how to get my equipment to work with its kind of vibration. And I've only ever heard of anyone doing that once- in Egon's continuum- and I wasn't there for that."

"..So basically, it's possible, but you don't know how at the moment, and there may not be time to work that out?"

Ray nods. "Yeah, unfortunately. I'll try with the equipment I've got, though."

"Bound to be better than nothing."

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