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The situation in Brooklyn is about what you'd expect when sixty-five trainee Ghostbusters have just had a day's worth of dealing with both Long Island spooks and a seaside diplomatic visit. Tomorrow there'll be sixty left, Ray's just sure of it.

But that's tomorrow. Today, Ray is making up for the time he didn't have in Brooklyn; he's out back, practicing with his lightsaber and the training drone on its highest difficulty setting. Compared to dealing with that many people, it's positively meditative.

He'll be back inside later. For now, he's doing the absolute best a Forceless human can.

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A little fresh air never hurt anyone, and since there's plenty of it out back and it's not too cold out there, out back is where he is.

Upon seeing Ray, he gives him a wave before settling in the grass and kicking back with his hard-earned beer and nachos.

Edited 2008-04-12 23:03 (UTC)

"Hey," Ray says, and that's about it, because the drone is currently putting Tocklafane everywhere to shame in its apparent homicidal bloodthirst. he'll be done with the pattern in ten, nine, eight...

... okay, there we go; it's dropped to the ground. Ray wipes his forehead on the back of one arm and grins. "Hey, Ramirez. Sorry about that."

He waves it off.

"We all gotta practice, man. Well, everyone but me. The perfection is natural."

He offers up the plate of cheesy doom.

"Want some?"

"Have you ever met Dr. Venkman?" Ray says, settling down nearby. "He could take some lessons from you." Then he leans over and reaches for a handful of doom. "Thanks."

"Just the once," he says with a grin, "and we kinda had shit to do, so there wasn't much time for takin' on padawans."

He took a handful himself.

"Practicing to practice or something nasty coming up?"

"Practicing to practice. Our operation's been nationalized back home, and we're training the first class of new recruits. At Venkman's suggestion, it's being filmed and broadcast as a reality TV show," Ray says. "It looks like it's going to be very popular so far."

"Ha," is all he manages to come up with.

"Considering all the training I have to do, it would be nice if I could wrangle a deal like that. We're strictly Need To Know."

Ray makes a face. "It seems like my colleagues and I are the only paranormal responders around here who operate in the public eye," he says. "Sometimes I wonder about that- but even if we hadn't been federalized I wouldn't recommend going for secrecy now.It's much too late for that."

"Well, we've got our reasons," he admits with a brief smile. "But that doesn't make it any more or less suck."

He takes another bite.

"We're in a war, man. The more people know, the more people in it."

He grins then and leans back.

"What you been up to otherwise, man? Or is it all TV and glamor?"

Ray makes a rude noise. "Glamor? Please. We gave the camera crew hysterics the other day because they had to figure out how to film half the initial class after running afoul of a slime geyser in Staten Island. Ghostbusting and glamor go together about as well as vampires and Oreos... Otherwise it's been fairly normal. I've had to divide my time between the new recruits and the diplomatic work with the Deep Ones; they're all kind of on edge about the presidential election coming up and how whoever gets elected in November's going to stand on Atlantic fishery issues and the Clean Water Act. Plus I've been working with my nephews individually, and there was that incident where it was 1905 in Manhattan for three days."

He just takes it all in stride. Considering his own work...

"I wish that didn't sound familiar but it totally does. I'm training recruits again this summer, I've had a record number of exorcisms, two possessions in the last month, a couple of minor hexes that needed dealing with, one demon, and things are deteriorating with the Fae Courts again."

He sips on his beer.

"Life's beautiful, ain't it?"

"Pretty much," Ray says. "Although honestly, if you'd told me when I was still a professor at Columbia that one day I'd look at a stretch like that and say 'yeah, that's about normal for this time of year', I'd have laughed in your face." More nachos. "How bad was the demon?"

"Nothing big," he says with a wave of a hand. "It was just a little bit bigger than a nasty thought. It was the kid who summoned it that was the real trouble."

His eyes are a little haunted.

He has good reason. Being a Warden hasn't been much fun lately, not that it ever is. The number of kids slipping into dark magic is worse than it's ever been, considering how the Wardens were a bit busy with other work.

"All done, though. Today was pretty tame. Well, other than the news but you can't do everything."

Ray nods soberly. Demons don't figure large in the work he does, but when they do turn up, it's almost never good news for anyone, anywhere. At the last sentence he cocks his head. "News?"

"Nasty business in the paper this morning," he says. "Nothing to do with me, but it's just not the kind of thing you like to wake up to."

"Oh," says Ray. "Yeah, I know the feeling. That kind of thing just never goes away."

He shakes it off.

"Anything fun happening around here? You know, uh, other than than me looking like I should be peddling coffee and--"

...he wasn't finishing that. Not at all.

"I missed April Fool's Day," Ray says. "Apparently there's some kind of ongoing game of watergun warfare left over from then, though. They might be taking new players?"

"You didn't miss much," he says. And he is distinctly Not Looking At Ray.

"That bad, huh?" Ray says. "Blech. Did you at least get to keep your usual gender?"

"I preferred being a girl," he says with a snort.

"Wow. That's... I'm tempted to ask for more detail, but at the same time I suspect it'll end up with me wearing the nachos if I do."

"You ever watch Looney Toons?" he asks, very very very quietly.

"Loads of times, sure," says Ray. "Oh. Oh, boy, that can't be good."

"Speedy. Gonzales."

That's all he's saying.

Ray considers this for a while.

"As much as I'd like to roll on the floor laughing... I got turned into Megatron at Halloween, so I'm not really sure I'm in any position to do so."

"Arriba. Arriba. Andale."

He breathes out.

"Do you realize how bad that Spanish is?"

...okay, maybe he's saying more.

"I don't speak a word of Spanish," Ray admits. "Peter does the translation for us when it comes up."

"I was chased around the bar by a cat furry!"

"... okay, um, when you say furry..."

"Well, it was probably just a cat person but it was all--persony."

It sounded slightly more pathetic that way. And he did want a little sympathy.

"Okay. Okay. I'm sorry, I just- I had this image-" Ray shakes his head. "Man. That must've been one hell of an experience even so."

He takes a long bite and a long sip.

"Yeah."

Then he grins, breathing out.

"Wanna sit, enjoy the chips, not talk, and enjoy the fact that things are just 'normal'?"

"I can live with that," Ray says. "Something horrible's probably waiting on the other side of the horizon, but right now, I can live with that."

Edited 2008-04-13 01:38 (UTC)

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