milliways_bar | (no subject)

... wake the dead?

Nico's ears may have perked at that one as he glances up from over the top of his cereal bowl.

(Honey-nut Cheerios. Soggy-style.)

Ray gets the aforementioned coffee, which is black and not quite sludgy, and a bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. Thanks to the wonders of Bar topology, he winds up being directed to a seat near the Cheerios eater; he gives a small wave before picking up his napkin and doing his best to wipe off the worst of the goop on his hands. "Sorry," he says. "Didn't mean to intrude, there."

He shakes his head, but the mention of the dead (or stirring them in their sleep) is passed. Most people probably don't mean it literally anyway.

(Not like he may or may not mean it, himself.)

"What's that on your hands?" he asks instead, eyes moving to the goop.

"Ectoplasm. We had a spectral herd manifestation in the Meat-Packing District and you do not want to know how much worse the others came out," Ray says. "Nobody ever really appreciates just how many cattle passed through the old slaughterhouses before the area went hipster, and as nearly as any of our readings can tell a good two-thirds of them are still around in some way, shape or form. This? Is what got through the seals on my work gloves."

Yes, Ray has always been Captain Oversharing. We're sorry.

Uuuuuh.

Nico is going to pretend he understand any of that besides the very last part about it getting through his work gloves.

So let's start with the basics!

"Oh. What's ectoplasm?"

You are talking to a pretty regular (if one can ignore the whole son of Hades thing) eleven year old kid.

When Ray started coming to Milliways, he adopted a habit of carving a notch on his proton pack every time he made someone's eyes glaze over with work-related babble. He's had to start carving on a second pack since then, because he ran out of room on the first.

"Essentially it's the substance left behind when a ghost or other paranormal entity manifests on the prime material plane- the result of ionization across the planar barriers." He rubs thumb and forefinger together. "Ghost slime, more or less. Messy and unpleasant, but not nearly as bad as it looks."

Huh.

That earlier statement in his head? He takes it back. This may concern the dead after all!

"I ... didn't know ghosts could do that," he remarks. "Leave anything like slime behind."

Would that mean King Minos could technically be turned into a heap of slime?

"Not all of them necessarily do," Ray says, "and I've found that the ionization phenomenon doesn't always apply in continua other than my own- but it's a very common thing with the ghosts and other beasties of my world's etheric plane. It's a real bear to wash out, too."

"Oh. Okay."

... it's possible Nico might still have intentions of trying this out anyway, maybe with a leser-important ghost. One of the already judged for punishment ones.

In any case, his bowl of cereal is long forgotten now. (At least for now. It wasn't that good anyway.)

"What's your world like that they do that? And how'd you come to deal with ghosts anyway?"

"My world's a relatively normal early-twenty-first-century Earth in terms of technological and social development," Ray says, "but we've been experiencing serious marked and measurable increases in just about all the major areas of paranormal and supernatural activity on record since 1925. Possibly even before that, but quantifiable data wasn't being properly gathered or recorded in-"

He stops, grimaces.

"Sorry. I've been on a major study kick lately and I always backslide into my old academic speech habits when I do that. Long story short: ordinary Earth, but the barriers between dimensions've been fluctuating and wearing thin in places for a while now, and between deliberate human activity burning holes and weak spots in the barriers, and what amounts to the stars being right, we've been having all kinds of things creep across into the world of the living for some time now whether anyone wants them or not. As far as how I came to deal with them, I started off as a parapsychologist studying them and other phenomena at Columbia University. My name's Ray Stantz, and these days I'm a Ghostbuster, among other things. Hi."

... Nico may or may not be looking for some kind of logo on his uniform now.

"You're a Ghostbuster," he repeats. "I know you. Well, not personally. But I met someone who knows who you are and he told me about you a little."

He pauses.

"He said you were really smart."

And by the sounds of it, Beauford was totally right.

Right arm. Just below the shoulder. Mind you, it's accompanied by an Autobot emblem and a Dyer Antarctic Expedition patch, but it's there all right.

"I've been coming here for a few years now," Ray says. "Nice to know I leave an impression."

Ah, there it is.

It's kind of cool.

"I'm Nico," he responds. "I didn't know you could study that stuff either. How long were you a Ghostbuster?"