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Ray hasn't gone home yet from the other night. After Romana came out to meet him, he broke out his holocomputer and got a compatible imaging device from the Bar for it, and pretty much every possible visual aspect of the Acrocanthosaurus parts he brought back got captured and recorded for future study. Right now he's still out back working on the head in question, but that's because it needed to be stripped down and cleaned as thoroughly as possible. Lots of photographs, lots of samples taken, you name it.

At least the skull (which is currently in two pieces, having been neatly split down the middle courtesy of Ray's lightsaber) is laid out neatly on a tarp close to the Bar's outer rear wall while Ray works on cleaning up the last few traces of squishy matter. He'd probably be good with a distraction, though.

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Sooraya's on her way indoors, after a long night. She stops at the sight of Ray and a head that looks to be nearly as long as she's tall.

before she recovers. "What is that? Was," she amends.

"Acrocanthosaurus atokinensis, I think," says Ray, looking up from carefully scrubbing out one of the gaps with a very soft, very small brush. "A predatory dinosaur about... mmm... eleven or twelve meters long, I think. Maybe longer. One of the bar's occasional patrons is a predatory dinosaur from the early Cretaceous and I went to visit her time with her, and this guy here-" He gestures at the skull. "Tried to eat us."

"Keeping a trophy?" She looks at it, still wide-eyed. "Understandable. The only dinosaur I've seen here so far was Cera--on Security. You weren't unarmed, I take it?"

"Well, that and the paleontological research I can get out of it'sreally beyond anything else that would be available in my time. It's only 2007 where I come from, and I think there's a grand total of about five viable Acrocanthosaurus skulls in museums in general. I won't be able to publish any results, because people would ask where I got the skull from, but I can at least hang it from the ceiling in the garage."

He grins, holding up a metal cylinder that looks like a bicycle seat post with several grips and a number of other cryptic little devices welded on. "Nah, I wasn't. Are you at all familiar with the Jedi Order?"

"Somewhat," she hedges. "I've heard of them, yes. Someone told me there's a few that visit the bar...oh!"

"Yeah." Ray grins. "To the best of my knowledge I'm the only Order member on Earth at the moment, unless you want to count my nephews, and I'm about as Force-blind as they come- but that was how I made it out alive. My friend Red and her daughter Scribble and I were running for the entrance to Milliways, but I tripped and the door closed behind them, so it was either take down the giant predatory dinosaur or make some poor paleontologist have a heart attack when he found human bones inside a dinosaur coprolith."

"That's very considerate of you," Sooraya manages with a straight face. Then she laughs, head shaking. "Does this sort of thing happen to you often? And, how did you manage to join the Jedi if you don't have the Force?" She can understand why he'd want to easily enough.

"Nature pretty much hates me," says Ray. "I do all right scuba diving, but when it comes to the natural world and being on land I'm pretty much condemned to a life of 'come and get it, big tasty bait' in any ecosystem you care to name. As far as the Jedi thing goes, I got permission from Anakin Skywalker to attempt to build a lightsaber- this was back when he was here, I think he's gone on to unity with the Force now- so long as I promised to do everything that I could to follow the Jedi philosophy and live up to their ideals and do their work if I ever got it right. When I finally got a saber design to work, Master Qui-Gon Jinn accepted me as a padawan apprentice despite being Force-blind."

"hm. Deserts included?" she wonders, but decides not to pursue that subject.
"It's the gadgets that interested you, or the meeting people who were more advanced, at first? Jedi philosophy being..." she's trying to remember the movies, but also realizes that they may not be relevant to the Jedi who come here.

"When I was testing one of my more complicated energy systems in a sector of the Nevada desert so remote that the US Air Force uses it for a bombing range, I was attacked by a rabid timber wolf the size of my couch," Ray says. "I didn't even know they had timber wolves in that part of the desert."

He steps away from the skull for a moment, wiping his hands on his work shirt. "Oh- the gadgets, to start with. When I was six years old I tried to build a lightsaber with a flashlight and some crystals I grew with my home chemistry set. I sort of set the family cat on fire by mistake, but in my defense I thought I'd closed up all the entrances to that part of the basement and I didn't really understand just how easily that cat could squeeze through the gap between the water pipes and the rest of the wall. After that it was the people, and the duty to uphold justice and decency and defend the people of my city against the really incomprehensible, which is what I was doing for a living anyway when I started coming here."

Sooraya facepalms. "Rabid...It's sounds as if you could have used a way to learn to be intangible, too," she says.
"Ah. that, I can understand. You're lucky that you can do it for a living, and openly. I'm still trying to figure that part out." She shrugs a little.
"Do you need a hand with this?" belatedly realizing that if she wants to interrupt the man, she should at least offer.

"Possibly. Considering my track record, I'd probably get stuck that way," Ray says. "At least I put the poor thing out of its misery. I didn't want to hurt it, but when it gets that far there's no real hope for it, you know?"

Then he smiles a little. "My New York City is completely up to the eyeballs in all kinds of supernatural and paranormal events. For the past three years- four, come October- my job's been to capture and remove ghosts, spirits, supernatural entities, and what have you so that everybody else can get on with their lives. It's been interesting. I take it you've got a calling of some kind that's been thwarted wherever it is you live?"

He looks down at the skull. "If you wouldn't mind too much. I'd like to get this guy as cleaned up as possible, so I got some brushes that shouldn't damage the hard parts. The teeth're probably what I have to work on next."

"You could put it that way...X-Men are supposed to be protectors of a sort, but lately we've had to concentrate on our own survival more than anything else. A reality shift that happened in our timeline reduced our numbers to a fraction, so... and Mutants aren't exactly seen as humans by everyone, on my Earth. If you turn out to be one, you're safer not to let it be known--If you can. People are often too afraid even when there isn't a reason."

"No, I wouldn't mind." She nods. "If it won't be a bother. And I can be quiet if I'm distracting you here, truly."

"Oh! I know Rachel Grey," Ray says. "And I used to know a couple of other mutants here, too. Angelo Espinosa, I think- grey-skinned kid, I think that was part of his power... Yeah, I can see that putting people off. Wow. I'm sorry about the reality shift, it sounds like somebody* really had it in for you. That stinks."

"It's okay, you're not a distraction. I'm used to doing a lot of my lab work at home with what amounts to a flying intelligent booger yammering at me. Slimer's a good little ghost, but he demands a lot of attention sometimes. A human who knows what she's doing is something else entirely- oh, my name's Ray Stantz, by the way. Hi there."

*"somebody" = "the editors"

"All right." She wonders if he's feeling okay, as he doesn't seem to recall having met her before (http://community.livejournal.com/milliways_bar/16570629.html), Then again, he was rather tired when they met. Probably it just slipped his mind. "Sooraya Qadir, Earth 2003."
She decides to let that go, and looks at the acro's head. "Are we keeping any samples from the soft...tissues?" she asks.

His player is woefully overtired in real life, more like. Ray would've remembered if the player hadn't forgotten. For now, we'll blame it on the aforementioned exhaustion, and on the general stress engendered by the recent round of OMGWTFCARNOSAUR. Perhaps he hit his head on something in the process. And perhaps the player will be able to buy the Brooklyn Bridge this weekend-

ANYway.

"Not out of what's left," Ray says. "I already got those. My fiancee's got them in storage on board her TARDIS, including the brain- that was an interesting prospect, since there really hasn't been any way whatsoever for anybody to study dinosaur brains beyond what you find in skull markings. Muscle and skin samples too, and some of the glandular tissue. Romana's got them all nicely labeled and in stasis. The stuff that's left isn't important unless you know someone who'd need it for some reason."

Sooraya's player is now telling her firmly that no, she may not investigate either cloning or recipes that feature dinosaur parts.

"I don't believe so," she replies, taking a brush. "What's...a Tardis? A lab?"

"Oh- Romana's a Time Lady, from the planet Gallifrey. The Gallifreyans have devices that they use for both time and space travel- TARDISes. It stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. They're a lot bigger on the inside than the outside, so there's a lab in there along with a bunch of other facilities and living quarters."

"Ah," as she sets to work cleaning. "Paleontology, Jedi skills, ghosts--and time travel. Is there any field of science you wouldn't study? Politics don't count," she adds. "That's not a science, that's organized insanity."

She's wondering about something else too, but hesitates over asking.

Ray makes a face, then sets to work on his end of his half of the skull. "I wouldn't go near politics anyway," he says. "And I'm not particularly likely to study biology myself- Romana's more interested than I am, plus she's better equipped for it. I'm not especially interested in botany, I can tell you that for sure."

Wistful, "I used to hope to study zoology before, well, still might but informally." She's got other responsibilities, these days, and those are her priority by choice.
Ray. Um. You don't 'remove ghosts' here too, do you?" she asks uneasily.

"No," says Ray firmly. "Not here. I've only ever done that once, and that was because the ghost was a friend of mine who was being influenced by powerful magic. I had to get him out of the way before he destroyed most of the Bar, but I released him as soon as we had a place prepared upstairs to keep him until the magic's influence could be overcome. Aside from that, I've left a ghost trap with the Bar at the request of the Security team. That's as close as I get. Why?"

Relief's clear in her voice, hearing that. "I met one out here--I think that's what he is, ghost or revenant.
Only...this is a child, Ray. I mean, I can't know how long it's been since he died, but he looks no more than seven or eight years old. His name's Santi.

He understands some English, but doesn't speak it. Spanish, of which I knew barely enough for a few sentences." Sooraya winces, looking away. "He isn't bothering anyone. He acts young and scared too. But his appearance at first glance might scare some people, I think."

Ray winces. "I carry a PKE meter with me almost as often as I do my lightsaber. I could ... well, no. Scanning for him in these woods isn't going to work very well, since they're not a natural forest. They'd carry too much of Dream's energy for me to sort out a single ghost, most likely. Poor kid. Has anyone told the Bar's staff about him?"

"I'm not sure. I should probably have asked, but I was a bit nervous how they might react," she admits reluctantly. "I've been going over some language texts, hoping if I see him again I could better talk to him. He doesn't seem surprised to see other people, so I'm guessing I wasn't the only one he's met."

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