Chapter 35: Down Time

Arch 2: Ghosts and Dragons


To say that just about everyone gathered around ready to unleash hell was a bit surprised to find that a building unlike any they've ever seen came out from the dome. Those close enough to hear Derek spread the word around that surprised a good many in that this was their home and headquarters. The square lines, the red brick that was a huge contrast to the handbuilt structures around it. It was far from the largest building in the city, but everyone knew that it was probably built in such a way that it would be very difficult for them to figure out.

For the Ghostbusters, it was like Christmas came early.

"Someone make a note to send our thanks to the Chronicler for this." Derek said as he approached the large red double doors of the main building. Going to open them before they suddenly jolted forward.

Stepping aside they all watched as Danny repositioned the Ecto to slowly back up into the firehouse as they soon followed suit. Everyone taking quick note of everything present from the toolboxes still strewn out to the rec area to the front office and so forth. For Spyro and Cynder, it was definitely strange. Everything that they hadn't remotely been shown by the team all looked alien from what they've seen and given how big the actual interior of this place was compared to outside made them both feel that there had to be magic involved.

The space was massive enough that it could probably fit all the guardians in here minus the off chance of them banging their head against one of the overhead lights, their tails knocking things over or smashing into the 3 bronze poles that came down from the decorative ceiling to the floor. A wood balcony that was oddly inside towards the back overlooked the front office that was connected via the midway of the stairs housed a mess of things around or on a large table. Car parts along the right wall even passed the rec area. Dozens of wires covered the walls going to places unknown.

Though while this was just 1 area of this giant complex, it was still astounding to be in.

"Geez, when you talked about living in a weird place you really meant it." Spyro said looking around to every detail. Though upon realizing it he quickly added, "Weird in a good way, I mean."

"Haha! Don't bother." Derek waved him off. "Lot of people both fans and regulars always get a kick at seeing this place. It's a cultural icon and a symbol that anyone going passed will easily recognize. Though it originally didn't look like this, this is just the main garage bay. There's a whole lot more to this place than you think."

Nodding in understanding, the purple dragon continued to take in everything bout the place. Scanning over the walls of some large pictures of various things; one of a giant green statue with a torch and a slab, another of a black and gold symbol with a yellow, red and blue star, their own logo on a black background with the bottom simply having the word 'Ghostbusters' with the 'O' replaced by the logo and a couple of more.

What oddly caught his attention was a set of lights around the room with 2 on each side opposite of the first 2 sets of windows. Mounted on a large dark red plate with caution striping as 2 glass containers held a green and red bulb inside. However, what caught his attention was the fact that the red was slowly blinking.

"Hey guys, what's the lights for?" He pointed to the flashing bulb.

They all looked up a little confused by what he meant, but their reaction was one of complete shock.

"THE CONTAINMENT UNIT!" Jack shouted in horror running to the underside of the stairs with Leo and Derek closely behind. All three disappearing from sight minus the sounds of boots on wood and a door slamming open.

Danny revved the car's engine; knowing that if anything bad was to suddenly happen they best evacuate in a hurry. The others held with bated breathe; waiting for the outcome of either nothing or something bad. After a good 20 long seconds, the red light went solid and switched over to the green bulb that stayed constantly on.

There was a collective sigh of relief from everyone present until some jumped from a large bang echoing from the corner of the room where a large fenced-off hole in the wall leads to a shaft.

There was a low, deep humming sound coming from above as the cables within the cage started moving. Slowly the sound of something squeaking came up from below the floor as the top of a box passed the ground level and continued. Once it rattled to a halt the large fence doors folded away revealing Derek leaning against a small control panel.

"It's all good. Just had to flush the system. Probably would have had to do it to the PCU if it had anything inside it."

"Would have been helpful a week ago..." someone muttered. Though who it was no one noticed.

Still complexed by what was being said Spyro asked, "So with this place, you guys can help us even more?"

"Spyro, with this place, we can wage a full-on war against Malefor without getting caught out in the open and without being properly prepared. But for now though," He turned to his team, "We'll put this downtime to use. Get everything moved back over here and checked over. Get the trucks fixed, make sure everything is 100 percent. Leo and Jack are already going over the containment unit for any possible kinks and afterward the data we've gotten over our time here."

His focus went to Danny and Roger, "And an important note, one that I highly doubt the Chronicler knew about, we have no GRASS satellites and the sensory by rough guess can reach just outside of Crystalline. So we're gonna need Ecto-2 fixed up as soon as possible."

With a quick snip of his belt and pulling one strap off Derek hung the pack over to one shoulder, "In the meantime, you guys want a little tour before the bureaucrats start knocking on the door?" Both looked at each in question but returned with eager nodding.

As Derek lead the two towards the back, the others began dispersing about. Leaving the two men to look at each other pondering their conundrum; though a quick glance to the dragons got them some ideas.


Sometime later...

"Alright... easy. Easy... HEY! I SAID TAKE IT EASY!" Roger shouted as 3 large wind dragons 'carefully' lowered the crippled helicopter onto the roof pad. While he would have preferred to have placed the chopper in storage and just unpacked it here, both he and Smith had agreed that doing so could jar something out of place and cuz more damage.

But so far, after commissioning the help of the wind dragons that were much more precise than most dragons, he was seriously considering that the former would have been the better of the two evils.

The way that they had their grip on the chopper, one holding the cut tail and the other two holdings on the underbelly and rails, made it to where each clang or screech of a claw on metal made the pilot wince like a fork on a chalkboard. So far they managed to carry it from the temple all the way over without much of an issue, but with the hanger and the needed angle so that it could be towed in made it to where rear dragon nearly crushed the front half of the hanger when lowering. Moving it forward to avoid this would mean it would be too forward heavy and tip over the side of the building into the rec area above the garage.

"ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT THAT'S GOOD!" he waved his hands in a settling gesture for them to place it where it was. It was at a bit of an angle but workable. "Alright, that will do."

Stepping back from the helipad the dragons gave a nod with him giving a two-finger salute in return as he went into the hanger. It wasn't the most extravagant of places; given how it was directly over the portion of the building where everyone slept and right next to a chimney/vent that leads to the basement, it was built to just be big enough to fit the entire area of the roof without being stupid and having space for a full pad.

Inside was mostly bare minus tools, workbenches, and several spare parts mostly for the chopper itself with the broken tail stuffed in a corner. They would usually have to bring it down and around the back into the garage for equipment service. For now, though it was the process of getting it airworthy again.

From the roof access across on the main building, a set of double doors burst open with Danny hauling up the stairs an electric welder dressed in his welding gear and having to make sure to have a firm grip on his toolbox. Once he got halfway between the hanger and door seeing the chopper he froze with astonishment.

"What the hell did they do to it? Open it like a can?"

"I think they more or less underestimated how sharp their claws are for the most part. But..." Roger took a glance at his baby with sadness, "...yeah."

Danny groaned spitefully. Fixing the tail would take him a couple of days with just him and his brother but Ben was busy working on the trucks. Even though Roger wasn't a mechanic he still knew aircraft; given that it would probably take just a bit longer to reform, cut, gut and everything else needed to make sure it was as strong as ever. Bodywork, paint, and windows were just dabs of salt in the wound.


Sometime Ago...

After giving the dragons a basic tour of the large building from the huge garage bay, the rear offices, the second-floor lab, the wonders of an elevator, Spyro having a moment of his youth come back when he tried the fire pole, flew back up the stairs and did it again at least seven times and of the third-floor housing area.

Now after coming down from where the actual living quarters were, they descended into what was more like a mix of the main floor and lab with a large clear layout with a medical bay along the back wall, an assortment of tables, racks, computers and the occasional mess someone forgot to clean up, Deak dead towards what looks like a normal room but with a giant door that looked extremely out of place compared to everything else in the room.

"And this," he walked over to the door," is what we call the 'Boom Room'."

Opening the door out it gently swung open revealing something like it belonged to a bank vault. A massive gray door just as big as the normal one with a massive tumbler in the middle and at least 7 different locks going in all directions. Twisting it to the left, Derek effortlessly moved the door to the opposite side where they were astonished to see a nearly 2-foot door of solid metal move like it was weightless. What suddenly stood out was the fact that the other side of the door was almost completely destroyed with soot covering every inch and bits of pieces from things unknown embedded.

The room itself was just the same with the walls just as thick. It was easily a third of the size smaller than one would think it would be but its condition said otherwise. There was only one light source above a massive metal block in the middle of the tight room that was filtered through small holes in a sheet that covered the source.

"We had this built in the case that if something we were handling became unstable and was going to explode, we would toss it in here. The walls are designed to mostly take contain the blast but it still shakes the building whenever something does get thrown in here."

"Real fitting name that is..." Cynder dryly said earning a small laugh from the guys.

"Yeah. Just about everything has been tossed in here. Proton packs, overloading traps, something that only Leo could explain if you don't fall asleep in the first 2 minutes, and most importantly:" he paused for a moment leaning down as if telling them a secret, "people that you just don't want to stand with at the moment."

It took a moment for them to think over what he meant by the last one. But as soon as they did both broke out in a laugh at the thought of what poor sod would have to do to get on someone's nerves here to get tossed in there for a bit.

Just as they all laughed, the door at the top of the staircase flew open. Standing there with the top half of his suit tied around his waist, covered in some grease, unknown lubricant and soot, Leo cast a grim look to his friend.

"Guys, we have a problem."


Meanwhile in the Basement...

To say that the firehouse had a big basement would be an understatement in of its own right.

The entire underground was practically the same size as the entire surface structure inverted. Even more so if you added the small sub-basement and the storage facility under where the back lot is. While it wasn't the most eye-pleasing design; mostly cinder block, large steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling, several large columns that went along the entire wall around the place that fanned out giving it a more aged look with large square lights hanging down. Despite the size, it was very well lite with even the floor is some places that had grates with lights coming up.

A long catwalk from both stair entrances extended out towards where the elevator was that went down to the floor with the left side-splitting off to a staircase to the area under the main building that housed the water and septic tanks along with various crates in the back. To the right, it went forward some then down a massive set of stairs into the main lab area before continuing all the way across the room over shelves, desks and so on before turning once more and ending with a small spiral staircase.

But the real eye-catcher was the massive tank-like containment unit that took up nearly a third the room when you looked at all the other pieces of machinery running around it. Its color was mostly red, something that extremely stood out compared to everything, with the front face being a chrome/silver with pipes a navy blue color.

While the Spyro and Cynder both agreed that this place was amazing and that they need to make sure Volteer doesn't find out about it, their focus was primarily following Derek and Leo down the sideway past the unit towards another odd device that looked like a metal door frame with 2 massive 9 foot wide rings between them with an unimaginable amount of wires leading everywhere.

"What the heck is that?" Spyro asked as Leo went over to a computer next to the machine.

"This my friends is the Trans Inter-Dimensional Rift Gate, or simply dimension gate or just gate for short."

"...huh?"

"It's basically a teleporter." Derek added clearing up the confusing name. "So what's the problem?"

Leo pointed a hand to the gate, "What wrong with this picture?" he asked not looking away.

Derek looked over the gate with confusion. Eyeing each part of the device everything seemed fine; no wires seemed out of place, all the modules were working, the dialing computer was operating with an 'Idle' icon of the logo slowly spinning around.

"Uh... Leo?"

"Just keep looking. You'll get it soon enough."

Derek shot a quick glance to Spyro who shot his own in return with a shrug. Usually, whenever someone did this it was something that everyone missed that was all focused on him. He continuing staring at the unit for a good 20 seconds before the realization hit him.

"... oh that is just fantastic..." he brought his hands to his face groaning.

"Indeed it is. Willing to bet the Chronicler didn't know about the gate or what at all it did. Depending on what level of information he has about us I feel its very veg at best."

Derek lowered one hand to look over, "So where does that leave us now? What are all three of them here?"

"The larger unit yes, the backup I haven't checked but I'm positive it is where we left it. Provided we haven't used it yet it's debatable if it's able to operate here."

"Ahem." They look to see Spyro with a bit of an annoyed look. "Listen, I know that we aren't the most advanced people in the world, that's most likely the moles, but some context would be helpful."

"In short," Leo walked around to the front, "This device allows us to go anywhere. And I mean anywhere. Simply having a set of coordinates will allow us to open a portal from right her to that exact spot anywhere. Rather it is upstairs, on the other side of the continent or on the edge of space. But its true purpose of being a gate is being a controlled dimensional rift. Allowing us to go to other worlds and dimensions. You got that so far?"

They didn't respond immediately but they soon nodded slowly, " In order to both connect and bridge to another dimension, the portal must have its residual energy code. Basically it's like how DNA is different for everyone with their own unique mixture. To lock on as each dimension can be different by only a smear or extremely. Once the appropriate amount of data has been gathered and the code generated, the system then relies on coordinates for the location to spawn a portal. The portal can be open in just about anywhere, including in mobile places as the portal can lock on a person or object's energy reading."

"So then what's the problem? If you have a portal here doesn't that mean you can go to your world now?"

"In the context of it, yes Spyro. We could. But because it's here it's we no longer have a link to Earth."

The confusion was thick. The dragons did understand the basics; it was a machine that could send someone anywhere in the world or to another world. The whole 'code' thing was a bit of a curveball but it was the latter that really didn't seem to fit.

"...why?"

"Think of it like this." He moved around to a shelf grabbing a trap and foot pedal. "Imagine this pedal is where the portal is. You activate it to trigger the connection through the cable. The cable then links the pedal to the trap to connect and activate the trap. Now say the Pedal was our world and the trap is your world with the cable being the bridge between it. What we had hoped was that if we had a portal where we could easily connect it to the one in our world. However, in this situation," he then pulled the cable off. Leaving it in the trap but going to fish out a hand unit instead. He attempted to plug it in but the cable wouldn't go.

"Now say this hand unit, it functions literally the same as the pedal but without the proper port, it doesn't connect. We have plenty of data from this world we could easily plug it into the unit and open a portal. But if the Chronicler brought all of our gates here, then that means our world has no anchor for us to connect to. And because it was our homeworld there wasn't a need for the code since the gate was the only way to gate out."

He looked up from the trap to the trio to see if they got the idea. Instead, he has given the blank looks from 2 and the slow movement of one.

"TMI, Leo. TMI." Derek said shaking his head.

Slapping a hand to his face in the fit that he just wasted his time, Leo sighed if off before going back to the computer. "My point still stands... That our current situation, while improved, still has a very large drawback glaring at us. With all three nodes are in this world..."

"...Then we still can't get back home." Derek finished sighing.

"Which means no backup." Mike tossed in as he and the others came down the catwalk.

"No more supplies," Rachel added.

"And no evacuation route," Jack added.

"Evacuation route?" Spyro asked as more of a question.

Everyone present went still at his question. Something that after months of learning made the dragon a bit uneasy in the stomach. But when no one seemed to acknowledge his question, even some looking idly around like they were wishing he didn't ask it, he felt like something was pinging in his mind.

"What? You were gonna leave us?!" He shouted in alarm at thought of his friends just up and leaving them.

"Spyro..." Cynder spoke softly trying to calm him down.

"No." Derek answered bluntly with not much worry about the dragon's actions. Though it didn't mean he wasn't preparing himself for some kind of backlash. "Not just for us. But for you, this city, and everyone else we can reach in time."

Spyro's spark of anger quickly snuffed itself which was just as quickly replaced with confusion. "Wha..."

"Leo."

Clearing his throat Leo explained, "Spyro, when you last fought Malefor in the core of the world, what happened?"

He didn't need a moment to think, "He tried turning either me or Cynder on each other, he managed to enact his plan of shaping the world but was dragged down by the spirits, I used my power and pulled the world back together. That's basically the simple version of the very end of it."

Leo nodded, "Alright, now if given the chance, could you do it again?"

"Absolutely! I would do anything for-"

"Not if you would, Spyro. We know you would for the sake of saving those close to you and many more. But the question is could you? Tamping into that power again and pulling the world back together."

Spyro thought this out for a moment. Truth be told he would be lying if he said that he wasn't completely sure it would have worked the first time. Giving the circumstances surrounding the time it happened, he didn't fully tap into his true potential. Even when talking it over with the Guardians after their return they agreed that while he did unlock a higher form of his power he still didn't have total mastery over everything.

To do it all again? He was stuck between saying yes for the sakes that for years he has gotten stronger with all his elements. But lean into no as he really didn't know if it happening a second time would yield different or the same result.

Looking up to Leo the man waited silently for his answer. When his mouth parted to speak he felt the words retract back to his head and shuffle around to be a better response.

"I..." he hesitantly said, "... don't really know."

"And remember Spyro, think of what the council is trying to do with us right now compared to when you, Cynder and Ignitus when to stop Malefor." Spyro nodded a little but cringed a bit when Derek brought up the latter name. "Say that if we do go to face Malefor, anything from right there can happen. We can get lost, killed, hell in a worse case corrupted by him and taken under him. Then they send you and Cynder out to face him, what then? Say we do face him and its not enough to drop his power down to a level that you can combat and you both fail, where does that leave the rest of the world if its two saviors are gone in some form?"

"Extinction... Damnation." Cynder answered quietly. Earning the soft nods from everyone.

"It is as much of the same reason why we were sending everyone still trapped in New York during Infestation here. Also with what Mike and Rachel added in more incoming help and supplies, we were able to minimize the casualties from tens of millions to what it is today. Now if the world was to begin to crack open again with no chance of saving it, would you rather be here watching hell itself break apart, or try to save everyone you could in hopes that one more life saved is a life that isn't lost."

A deathly silence filled the room with the only sound coming from the machines around it. The realization of what it meant that with all the portals here, while they can go anywhere and get anyone away from danger, there would be nowhere to go if the very world they stood on crumbled.

"So for now, as I have said already, all we can do for the moment is prepare for the inevitable."


Started: 1/22/20 2:46 am

Finished: 3/13/20 1:35 am

Just more filler till I can get a good roll.