October 26, 1886.
11:57 PM.
It had been, pretty much, a normal day for Joe. Walking over the London Tower Bridge, he hefted his pack a little higher. He was halfway over the bridge when he heard a strange noise. This being the middle of the night in a big city, it wasn't completely out of the ordinary. Except, it was coming from the Thames, when the moonlight clearly showed an absence of boats. Joe walked up to the edge of the bridge, looking out over the river.
"Hello?"
Again, the strange noise, but clearer this time. It sounded like a small fountain, like the kind Joe had heard of in Italy.
"Is anyone there?"
Fear started to consume Joe as the sound repeated itself, clearer than ever.
The last thing Joe saw of the thing was the sunken appearance, rising from the Thames, before turning and running, screaming.
-= The Faraday Ghostbusters =-
Richard asked the man the same question one last time.
"What was it that you saw?"
The man shook, cold sweat soaking further into his clothes.
"It... was... I dunno... Monster..."
Saying nothing else, the man quieted down from sobbing and shaking to just trembling. Simon led the man out of the room, trying to get him into some form of sensibility. Richard looked to Simon, who looked ecstatic.
"This is it! We can use your gear to try and take down this entity!"
Richard sighed, putting a hand to his forehead as he did so. "For what's probably not going to be the last time, Simon, I made that pack as a favour for Tesla. It's incredibly dangerous and not for use by anyone other than me or Tesla himself."
"Why's it so bad again?"
"Having the Mark I on your back without some form of insulation or grounding is comparable to being struck by lightning while standing on a pair of knives while being crucified. Would you like to try it?"
Simon then edged away from the pack and towards the wall of his and Richard's small workshop, running a hand through his ginger hair.
"That's what I thought."
"But this could be a whole new branch of science we're pioneering here! Just think of the possibility!"
Richard growled, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Just… no. Ghosts don't exist. Face it."
-{TIME PASSES}-
Because of this, Richard still wondered what had made him decide to humour his friend and colleague in engineering, psychology, and a penchant for somewhat weird pastimes after they went to the tavern and… oh… right.
However, being stuck on the Tower Bridge at the middle of the night with a bachelor's degree in engineering, he couldn't really complain as he knew he didn't have a time machine or anything like that.
He massaged the bridge of his nose, starting to become sober once more, and hefted the pack higher up on his back. The diving suit he was wearing smelled like a wet dog corpse left in the gutters, but he also couldn't complain about that since he'd be deader than dead if he used the Mark I without a Faraday cage like this.
"The guy said it was about here," Simon said, becoming almost ecstatic as he waved around the Faraday Ambient Energy Detector, while the needle spun madly around the dial until it was at a fairly high setting.
"Remind me why I need this ratty old diving suit instead of a proper Faraday cage," Richard said, uninterested in spectres, spooks, or who said what.
"As drunk you said, 'thish shuit hazh lotsh a' metal... it'll make a damn good Faraday cagzh.' Besides, proper Faraday cages are heavy and impractical."
"THIS IS HEAVY AND IMPRACTICAL!"
"Well, then, let's make a proper Faraday cage suit when we get back, okay? Okay."
Simon's face lit up as the needle on the metre started inching up and they felt as if they were being watched.
"It's coming!"
Richard grunted, hefted the pack, and flicked a switch on the nozzle of the Faraday Elimination Apparatus, Mark I, removing the nozzle from the nape clip as he did so. A few cracks and snaps ripped as the high-voltage generator on Simon's back came to life, using its own energy and a flywheel controlled from the nozzle to start charging voltage in the Lancaster-Faraday Energy Beam Coil at the tip of the nozzle. He smirked as he heard the whizzing that meant his baby had come to life. He may not be so interested in the supernatural part of the experiments he and Mr. Simon Lancaster had conducted during their tenure at Oxford's London campus, but the engineering was something different altogether.
Simon's face fell flat when he saw the ghost appear from the surface of the Thames.
"Is it really only that big? I thought something that scared the living daylights out of Mr. Average Joe would have been bigger. Anyway, BLAST IT!"
"I'd be happy - to oblige!" Richard bit out as he let the energy in the Beam Coil vent towards the spectre, which had now reached a good head or so above Simon.
The raw electricity crackled through the air, making both scientists' hair stand on end, beelining (or would it be lightning-bolting?) towards the ghost.
The charged particles impacted the ghost, causing it to sway and shriek as it floated. The beam cut out, though, as Richard frantically pumped the flywheel lever.
"Screw the flywheel! RUN!" Richard said, speaking both scientists' minds as the ghost started to crackle with residual static charge.
The Tower Bridge left two scientists running, screaming, as one shot a stream of electricity at a ghost that was angry, and getting more so by the second.