Chapter 22: Seek

Sunday, June 23rd 2002

Main Branch - New York Public Library

10:25 PM

The Library. It was said that the Ghostbusters' true start began at this very building. Being closed on this Sunday was no different than any other Sunday. Guards roamed the halls of this historic place as silence fell sans the footsteps of said guards. In main security, a guard had a laptop sitting on his control bench in front of the monitors, him playing a game of solitaire on the main screen. As the guard played his game, he noticed movement on one of the monitors. He lowered the lid of the laptop and looked quickly…

Nothing was there. The monitor was focused on special collections. He grabbed his radio, "Mitchell, this is main. Come back?" The radio gave a short burst of static, "Mitchell. Go ahead, main." "Yeah, I got a small blip on one of the monitors. Rare Collections, basement two. Over?" "Copy. Go back to your game, I'll look into it."

The guard at the console was about to raise his laptop's lid when suddenly someone pushed the lid back down from behind. A man with slicked back silver hair wearing black was in the room behind the console closing the computer. The guard gasped, startled by the man's appearance in the room with him. "Hey," He started, "You're not supposed to… MMMmmMMph!" A hand with a rag inside of it clasped over his mouth and nose. The guard collapsed and landed on his laptop. The guard was knocked cold.

Behind the guard was another guard. She was placing the cap back onto the bottle of chloroform as she looked to Matthew, "Man, I wish we didn't have to knock him out."

"I understand, Sister Daniels," Matthew spoke in an even tempered tone as he looked to the unconscious guard, "but as you and Brother Mitchell had explained, he was a new hire. Our time is growing shorter by the day; we didn't have enough time to bring him into the Order of Asatro. Besides, we have sufficient number of followers as is," He walked from behind the console and proceeded toward the room's door, "Call Brother Mitchell and advise him of my approach."

"För gudarna."

Ghostbusters HQ

11:00 PM

Dan, Eduardo, and Lita had returned to the firehouse some time ago and were researching the information they had gathered with Egon, Kylie, and Roland. Roland was attempting to modify PKE meters using old information Egon and Ray had gathered from the original Jeremy Whittington encounter as far back as 1986. It was becoming a rather engrossing conversation, "From what it looks like," Kylie was switching back and forth between books, "the Stanzas were separated sometime after the 13th century in Newfoundland."

Egon had been typing furiously on his computer sending emails in a rapid-fire succession, "I managed to get in contact with some of the museums in the region that might have some information on any documents that would have been involved with any of these music sheets. It will be some time before we get a lead on any of the Stanzas. I have requested Janine to keep an eye out for any replies."

"Great," Dan said sarcastically, leaning against Egon's bench, "Who knows where the hell they are after this many years. They could be all the friggin way in Norway with the way our luck is."

Roland broke in, "Going on Lita's suggestion, I've modified the PKE meters to detect the vibrations any of the exposed documentation using previously collected information," He closed up the back of the meter and tossed it toward Dan, him catching it, "Just fire it up and select the recall function. A preloaded program will load and detect anything involved."

"Maybe at least we'll be able to find the bozos that're involved with this," Lita looked ready to ring someone's neck, "I can't believe people would want to destroy the world like this!"

"I donno why you're gettin' upset," Eduardo was eating an apple, taking a bite of it. He chewed for a bit, then attempted to speak again, "I mean, for us, this is your average Sunday." Eduardo took another bite, but this time some of the juice got into his cut on his lip causing him to flinch in pain. Dan sighed as he placed the PKE meter on his belt, "He's not wrong."

"I do have at least one other idea," Egon turned in his chair to the others as their attention was now drawn to him, "Lita, I'm curious about something."

Lita cocked her head to the side, "What, Egon?"

"Can Raye still perform those fire readings Amy told me about?"

Roland was confused, "Why are you asking her if Ray can do that?" Dan answered, "No, not Ray Stantz, Roland. Lita's friend Raye. She's a temple priestess and can perform vision-seeking readings using fire."

"Wait a minute," Kylie had a small trace of glee in her voice as she asked, "Raye - the girl whose grandfather owns a temple," she tried to hold back a laugh even harder as she looked at Dan, "that Dan crashed into." Dan looked to Lita, a look of absolute annoyance on his face. Lita blushed and grimaced as her head sunk into her shoulders, "Uh, oh." He shook his head and spoke to her in mock anger, "I'll rain fiery death on you later." Pulling herself out of her fear-of-death-by-tickling state she knew she was going to endure later, she finally answered Egon, "Yeah. She still performs them daily."

Kylie was rather impressed and furthermore, curious, "Is she very advanced with Pyromancy?"

"Pyro-what-see?" Eduardo had finished eating his apple the threw the core into Egon's trash can when he heard the word. Egon of course explained to his student, "Pyromancy; the practice of channeling spiritual energy through fire. The last I heard, she had been known to pull prophetic world-ending predictions from the fire; some of them very vivid to her. Our third trip to Tokyo was one of her visions."

Monday, June 24th 2002

Cherry Hill Temple

Tokyo, Japan

1:25 PM

Raye Hino is seen in the main temple sweeping up for general visitation and had also cleaned her fireplace of the now cool ashes that had burned the night before. It had become a mundane task for her seeing there were at present no more threats to encroach from the Negaverse. The quiet was good for a time, but she was again becoming restless. The silence was deafening. She sighed as she began sweeping up the dust and ashes she had collected into a dust pan, "It is so quiet around here. I wish something exciting would happen again."

She began walking to the trashcan in the kitchen as the phone began to ring. She had her hands full attempting to put the ashes into the can without causing it to fly into the air. She called out, "Hey, Grandpa? Can you get that? I'm in the middle of something!" The short old balding man was outside watching as the girls near the Cherry Blossom trees sat below and talked in the summer weather. He was undressing them with his eyes as he heard his granddaughter call out again, still hearing the phone himself. He had become annoyed when his woman watching was interrupted. He walked back inside and proceeded to the phone.

He looked to the caller ID that was beside the phone. He read the number as the ID read, "New York Call." He was thoroughly annoyed now because he recognized the number from before. He picked up the phone, "Cherry Hill Temple. Look here, you klutzy idiot…"

On the other side of the phone Lita took her ear away from the phone as Raye's grandfather started yelling obscenities into it. Still in Egon's lab, she was sitting beside Egon using the phone. Egon heard the yelling emanate from the phone speaker, "Is it common for him to just start yelling at anyone who calls?"

"No," Lita responded, ear still far away from the handset. She looked at the phone and winced at the profanity pouring through the phone, "He got a caller ID recently because of all the prank calls they got. He notes a number and when he sees it again, he gets angry as he answers it."

Eduardo commented, "I guess that Prince Albert joke can get old after a while."

"...and furthermore, you so much as think of this phone number again…!" "Grandpa Hino, stop!" The old man stopped yelling into the phone as he recognized the voice on the phone, "Ms. Kino? What are you doing calling from an American number? What are you doing calling from the Ghostbusters office?"

"Nevermind that now, I need to speak to Raye. The Ghostbusters need her help with something."

"Those jerks?" He was starting to lose his temper again, "Give me one good reason I should let her help that bunch of clowns."

Back in New York, Lita was also beginning to lose her cool, "How about this? If I don't speak with Raye in the next 5 seconds, not only will I no longer visit the temple, but I'll convince Serena to do the same!" She heard the phone drop onto a table and the sounds of rustling and shuffling was heard. The next thing she heard was Raye bickering hearing her grandfather mumbling behind her. The voice became louder to where she could make it out, "Grandpa, will you stop shoving me? What's gotten into you?" "Works every time," Lita had a smirk on her face as she said that.

"I don't get it," Roland was feeling out of the loop again, "Why is he so difficult?"

Dan chuckled, "He's still pissed that I wrecked his roof. The advantage she has over Raye's grandfather is that he's a dirty old man." "What does that have to…" Roland began asking, then it dawned on him what that meant, "Oh… Ohhhh!"

The phone rustled a bit as she heard her friend's voice on the other end, "Hello?" "Raye, it's Lita. Hello from New York!"

Back in Tokyo, Raye had a look of surprise on her face. She suddenly became excited, "Lita! How are things going out there?" "They could be better. Had a few hiccups while I was here. Um… I've joined the Ghostbusters."

"WHAT?!" Lita took the phone away from her ear again as a new string of obscenities streamed over the phone. With her free hand, she facepalmed herself. Even Kylie could hear it from her research table, "Yep, she's definitely related to her grandfather."

"Raye, Raye!" Lita started talking into the receiver trying to get her to stop. She lost her patience again, "Will you put a sock in it!" Raye finally stopped yelling into the phone as Lita found it safe enough to put it to her ear again, "This isn't a social call! We need your help!" "Why? What's going on?" "Well…" Lita was stuck. She looked to Egon for an explanation, "What do I say?" "Just tell her," Egon took a breath of air before he started, "we had experienced an ectoplasmic-induced tectonic plate shift caused by a quasi-dimensional recorder utilizing Norse ethereal vibrations in the form of music."

Lita stared at him blankly, "...Uh…?"

Dan shook his head and sighed. He looked to Lita, "Do you want me to talk to her?" Lita nodded vigorously. There was another phone by Roland. He approached it and picked up the receiver and broke into the line, "Raye, it's Dan."

"Dan?! Oh, it's great to hear you!"

"Yeah, it's good to hear you too. For starters, you really need to pick up the phone more; you could have heard from me sooner if your grandfather didn't keep hanging up the fucking phone on me."

"Yeah, sorry about that. He's still…"

"I know. Like Lita said, this isn't a social call. We need your help on finding a handful of artifacts. Someone is trying to collect them and they're trying to destroy the world."

There was a silence, "...No pressure."

"Yeah, no shit."

"I can only help in tracking if I have a decent explanation of what I'm looking for. What is it I'm trying to find?"

"We were hoping we'd be able to email or even fax the information to you."

Raye scoffed, "Are you kidding? Grandpa couldn't SPELL fax let alone have and use one. However, Amy's mom has a fax machine."

"Good, so you can take down our fax number here at the firehouse," Raye listened intently as Dan gave Raye the number. She scribbled it down on the notepad beside the phone. "Okay," she peeled the sheet from the notepad, "How do I get her number?" "Just send something to us and the number will appear on the fax you send to our end. From there, Egon and Kylie will send a write-up of the information back. Raye?"

"Yeah, Dan?"

"Thank you." Raye couldn't help but smile to herself. She felt giddy enough to state out loud, "How come there isn't another guy like you around? To tell you the truth, if Lita wasn't dating you, I'd snatch you in an instant."

"Uh, Raye?" Dan had a concerned tone in his voice. "What?" "I heard that!" Lita's voice rang over the phone. Raye didn't know Lita was still on the line on a separate phone. Raye took her head away from the phone as a string of obscenities roared over the line. She very gently hung up the phone as she unironically commented, "Geez, what kinda person yells like that into the phone?"

Lita slammed the phone back onto it's hook. Dan put his phone on the hook more gently as he commented, "That went well." Lita was still fuming as Egon looked to the rest of his field Ghostbusters in the room, "Roland, Kylie, Eduardo, why don't the three of you call it a night. We'll begin again in the morning."

"Are you sure?" Kylie looked to her professor and attempted to protest, "I mean, we have to start on that write-up…"

"Kylie, Japan's 14 hours ahead of us right now," Dan pushed off Roland's work table as he approached Lita's side, "It'd be better if you got some sleep and started fresh in the morning."

"He's correct on both counts," Egon looked to the overtired Japanese woman beside him, "It's been an extremely long day. Go on home." Kylie stood from her chair quickly, annoyed. Roland patted Eduardo on the back, "Come on, I'll give you a ride home." The two men walked out soon to be followed by Kylie when Dan stopped her, "Kylie?" She stopped and turned, "What?" she snapped.

Dan didn't like the way she responded, but he tried to keep an even keel on how he responded in kind, "I know you want to take care of this quickly, but if we don't keep ourselves balanced, we're gonna make mistakes. I just want to make sure you guys aren't going to do anything that'll get you hurt."

The words. The words hit Kylie like a brick. It was almost like what Lita had told her a few days ago. She remembered how she never looked Dan in the eyes whenever the two of them talked. She looked now and saw how he had a sense of concern in his eyes. Dan approached and looked to her as he said with sincerity in his voice, "You're very dedicated to your research and your passion, and for that, I thank you." Kylie had a look of guilt on her face. She knew she had a few things to atone for, but even she knew that would have to come later. Dan looked to the lab door, "Go on. If you catch Roland, he'll give ya a lift."

She didn't know what to say. She couldn't say anything. She just smiled. Maybe what she believed was wrong this whole time. She did manage to get one thing out, "Goodnight Dan. Egon. Lita." She walked out. Dan sighed as she walked down the stairs, "This job is exhausting." He shook his head and turned to the last people in the room with him, "If you don't mind, Egon, I'm gonna clock early," he looked to his girlfriend, her having her hands on her temples, "I'm assuming Lita wants to, too."

"Very well," Egon turned back to his computer, "I'll keep looking for anything we can use in our search. You two have a good night's rest." Dan ushered Lita out and to the bunk room. The physicist stopped for a moment and watched as they walked out of the door, "I'm beginning to think they need more than just rest."

Dan opened the door to the bunk room and allowed Lita in first. Before she got too far, "Lita?" She stopped and turned to him, "Yeah, Dan?" "This is for telling Kylie about Raye's roof!" A smirk appeared on his face as he pushed her inside and closed the door. After a moment, the sounds of Lita laughing hysterically could be heard from the outside of the door, "Stop! Stop! I surrender!"