Chapter 2: Testing, Testing, Ouch
Around the same time as the Library, Roosevelt Hotel Roof...
"HIT THE DECK!" Roger Donny yelled as a stray beam of positively charged particles sliced through the air, where he would have probably been cut in two from just above the stomach though it didn't stop from decimating an entire row of decorative plants from being buzzsaw in half with a little bit of fire in its wake.
The stream cut off abruptly before it reignited again, leaving a bit of a scorch mark across the sidewall for a good 30 feet before cutting out also.
From behind a tipped-over table behind the user, Roger looked around the right edge, "Is it done?"
Jack Wofton, with a helmet strapped tightly to his head, looked over the edge, "I think-" *SHZAAPK* He quickly retracted back behind the barricade as another rogue stream went out slicing part of the corner. "NO! NO, IT ISN'T!"
"FOR GOD'S SAKES BEN! JUST TURN IT OFF!" Roger yelled out.
"I CAN'T! IT'S STUCK!" Ben Smith, the second youngest of the team, who at the moment was wielding the gun that didn't stop firing, shouted as he tried again to fight the extreme recoil.
It is said that a proton stream is comparable to a wild firehose. In that, if you don't have a sound footing and firm grip, it could get messy pretty fast. But even after you've been used to it, when its a level a bit higher than you're used to, it's bound to overcome you first.
For Ben Smith, however, while it held a firm grip, he was at the moment perfectly demonstrating what a person would look like as a deflating balloon with a laser at the end. At one moment, he ended up hugging the thrower to his chest that made it aim downward right as it triggered again. He could've probably achieved vertical takeoff with how the momentum was slowly building up, but the sound of the alarm sounding ended that.
With a burst of steam, the cores vented, cutting off the stream holding Ben in the air as he collided with the ground.
"Oww..." he groaned with his cheek pressed up against the roof.
Without a moment to lose, Jack jumped up from behind the wall and ran over, quickly coming up to the pack as he went to a small keypad mounted over the booster frame and immediately shut down the pack. Letting out a deep sigh of relief as the tone of a power dying down was music to the trio's ears.
Slowly Roger peaked his head out before coming out, "Well... that was a giant fiasco." Ben groaned in agreement.
"Well..." Jack rubbed his cheek, "At least we know that the power divergence didn't explode."
Reaching to the bottom, he unscrewed the massive bolt that was now used to hold the hose in place, this one much beefier than usual has it was a much thicker cable with dozens of wires wrapped around it feeding into the pack or to varies parts. Rolling Ben off to the side just enough to grab the thrower from beneath him, he brought it over to a small trolley he had asked form the janitor staff of the hotel to haul their supplies in.
Placing the thrower on top of a brace that locked it in place, Jack looked over what was, or at least he hoped, was his next big addon to the pack.
Despite still getting used to the equipment over the summer he had been learning under Derek and Leo, mostly the latter as he was being taught the same way Leo was, with his breakthrough with the slime blowers he was tasked with the more 'collateral' of what was basically a two-person research and development department.
His current project before him, one that he's been in the works with for about four weeks now, consisted of a standard thrower that he a power cell battery mounted just under the main body hooked to what was basically a massive secondary barrel that connected to the unused forward port with a large conductor hanging off the right side. A cylinder roughly big enough to fit a softball was on the left with a rapidly rotating ring of 10 red lights flashing. His goal in mind, as with the dire need of many cables, was to be able to 'split the power' of the proton pack to be able to either achieve double thrower with one serving as a separate module for boson darts or for other modes.
(Would add Ref images but FNN is a butt with links)'
But like all things involving technology that really pushed its limits until it broke something he, like many minds before and to come, couldn't get past the one barrier, power. More specifically, power distribution that could allow two separate modes to be fired at once. From what the fictional lore told them, the other incarnation of the video game pack was the simplistic 'stylized/cartoon' version that had only three modes to the pack, with each one getting its own 'nozzle' to be fired from.
He thought of a similar design, but with the math, he found it wasn't viable as once again, because of the power. He figured maybe to add a mini-cyclotron like Derek's rifle to it, thus a very, very tiny unit that could help hopefully in theory.
Good in theory, but in practice...
"You know Jack, I am honestly surprised that that thing didn't explode the moment Ben turned it on," Roger stated as he helped Ben back to his feet.
"Why would it explode?"
"Because most of the new stuff that Leo, and by extension, you, builds usually does when we all least expect it."
"That's not true!" Jack rebutted.
"Oh?" Roger said in a 'matter of fact' tone, "What about when you first tried making the slime formula? Or when that Class 2-3, whatever it was, in that poor lady's basement standing still and you ended up hitting the fuse box with a pistol you tried adding a cyclotron to, and wasn't it just three weeks ago that you tried building a grenade and destroyed one of the toilets?"
"It was overheating!"
"And what would that result in."
"An explosive-" Jack immediately shut his mouth upon realizing that he just walked right into Rogers's claim. The pilot, in turn, lightly laughed.
"I rest my case." he then clapped his hands, "It's 40 somewhat degrees out here, we're on top of a giant building, and I'm hungry. Imma gets something to eat. Try and not to destroy anything!" With that, he heads away from the 'testing area' back to their rooms.
Feeling a little peeved, Jack went on and yanked the bottom plate of the thrower as he tried clearing his mind and focus on not messing anything up. But just as he goes to work, he sees out of the corner of his eye Ben place the proton pack against the wall next to him and starts to leave."
"Stay here." He said, glancing at the Smith then back to his work.
"Wwwwhy?" Ben stopped mid-step, looking around slightly in thinking to change his direction. He honestly didn't want to be here, to begin with, he was just roped into this when Jack grabbed him on his way out, told him to put on a pack and meet him on the roof.
That was almost an hour ago. And now he was getting a bit peeved himself that he wasn't on the other side of the river helping his brother in the shop. True, he liked to use dangerous stuff (some noting that he'd probably become the test-dummy for all the new hardware they build), but he enjoyed working with Danny more than being a ragdoll.
"You're..." Jack tried to think of something, Ben, while not the sharpest tool in the shed compared to everyone else, still had enough matter in his skull to know when to either think it was acceptable or just ignore it.
After a quick shuffling of thoughts, something did click, "you're... my... tech assistant! I need someone to help man this stuff while I make the changes."
Ben took a step forward but turn to him, "And that means...?"
"It means that as we test this stuff, I need your feedback on how it reacts." Jack looked up to see if Ben got the idea. The look on the Smith's face told him it more or less flew over his head.
"*sigh* It means you basically see what is working or not."
"Question."
"What?"
Ben raised a finger, pointing behind Jack, "Is that suppose to do that?"
Down below on the street, the Ecto-X slowly pulled into its spot behind Ecto-3 on the side of the hotel. From pulling up, the trio could see a group of maybe six people all taking turns posing with a selfie-stick taking pictures of the side of the vehicle. Even when they started getting out, the group looked over, held the stick even higher, and took pictures.
"Bet they're having the time of their life," Derek remarked as he stepped out.
"They probably have a better day than we are," Rachel remarked as she combed her hair again, finding more ectoplasmic residue that gave her glove a greasy green lookâsighing as she wiped a bit of it on the side of the car.
"Well, look on the bright side," Leo said as he popped out. Taking a finger swipe of the slime, "At least nothing's exploded so far to-"
*CRA-THOOMM*
In a flash that the average person would think that the building was just struck by lightning, the trio blinked away the haze in their eyes as they glanced up the building to see a small pillar of smoke rising from the roof.
"Leo..."
"Hey, you can't blame me this time. I was with you and at the library, all day and nothing blew up there."
A lot shorter than I wanted to as it would have involved what Danny and Mike were up to, I felt it wouldn't fit the flow of events here and figured that the next chapter would be better suited for their parts.
With my Caretaker story finished and that this is now getting the second chapter out of what projects I hope to do will take a collective 11 years to complete... I wanted to get back to my usual. This chapter, along with the next, will mostly be about how the team is doing now that they've unofficially moved to New York. It'll be around Chapter 6 when the story really gets the future rolling.
Another part to add is how complex their technology and equipment are going to get. At first, it was what was basically the 2009 Video Game gear with some more slap together stuff given how, in this, its still a very young technology, and as time goes on, especially in this story, it will become more and more advance and complex.
Its the situation that whenever I see an official or custom fan-made piece, I feel that its something the PGB would build into their arsenal that is either a side branch or a step in the tech's evolution.
Side note: currently trying to find more 'sound effects' for stuff and presently combing through the IDW comics to mine from.
Plus, with Ghostbusters 3: Afterlife now inching ever closer to us, I'm going to pull a lot of ideas from that new material as well.