5.
"Sumimasen Menyuu o onegaishimasu," Egan yelled across the room, waving his hand.
A pretty young woman waved back, and hurried over, "Hai!", she answered, dropping a large folded leaflet in front of each of the Ghostbusters seated at the circular table in the middle of the restaurant.
"Mizo, o onegaishimasu," Egan asked, holding up an empty glass.
"Hai, shou omachi kudasai," the waitress replied as she walked back to the kitchen. She returned a minute later holding a pitcher of ice water, and filled each of the glasses on the table.
"Doumo," Egan replied, still running his finger up and down the menu.
"Can you understand any of this?", Peter asked, pointing to the menu.
"Some," Spengler replied. "I'm not very good with Kanji, but fortunately most of the important things are duplicated in kana, which I can read."
"When did you learn Japanese?", Ray asked.
"I taught myself just enough to read Manga at a 6th grade level," Egan replied.
"Let me guess," Peter dead panned, "Pokemon."
"Sailor Moon, Actually" Spengler replied.
With Egan's help, the three of them managed to order dinner. Stantz and Spengler managed to master the chopsticks, but Egan had to ask the waitress for a fork for Venkman. An hour later, after a leisurely dinner, they left the restaurant and walked back to where the truck was parked.
"Thanks for the recommendation, Sarge," Ray said. "That was an excellent restaurant."
"I told you I know this town," the robot truck replied. "Now should I take you back to your hotel, or the hangar?" Egan hesitated before getting back in the truck. He looked skywards toward center of the city. "Look, you see the light against the sky?", he asked, pointing to the top of a tall building.
"Oh no," Peter replied, "Looks like deja-vu all over again".
"I'm afraid so," Ray sighed. "I think we'd better go back to the hangar, just in case. We might be needed tonight."
Yuko's apartment was in the corner of the building on the topmost occupied floor. Above her apartment the building narrowed, and the top two floors contained utility rooms for air conditioner compressors, elevator host motors, electrical junction boxes, and water tanks. Along the tops of the facades surrounding the outside of the building were several grotesque statues. These gargoyles faced inward, and looked up towards the top of the building, where a chromed spire pointed upward at the sky from the tip of the roof. Lighting flashed between the clouds directly overhead, and the eyes of the concrete beasts glowed red.
Yuko tested the temperature of her bath water with her elbow. It was just a bit on the cold side, so she turned up the temperature control. Cobalt was sitting in front of the television set in the recliner chair. "Are you getting ready for bed, Yuko Chan?", he asked.
"Hai," Kobaruto," she replied, "I'm getting my bath water ready, I'm going to shower and then soak for awhile."
"OK," the lanky robot replied, "Just holler if you need me!".
Yuko undressed in her room and then wrapped a towel around herself to walk into the bathroom. She knew she shouldn't feel uncomfortable appearing naked in front of Cobalt, he was, after all a robot, and couldn't feel lustful towards her. He was really like an innocent child and a knight in shinning armor rolled into one, just as Astro was. But his image was so perfectly human looking, and she was used to covering herself up with the towel anyway.
Once inside the bathroom she latched the door by force of habit, something she knew she didn't need to do, and maybe under the circumstances was a bad idea. With the bath water now at a comfortable temperature, Yuko hung up her towel and turned on the shower. She quickly lathered herself up, and rinsed off, twice, before lowering herself into the tub. The warm water felt good, and she lay back, leaning against the wall. Not quite as good as being at an onsen, she thought, but almost.
Cobalt heard the shower water run for a few minutes, followed by the splash of the tub water. Suddenly, a loud crash came from the kitchen. He got up out of the recliner chair and ran quickly towards the sound. The door of the refrigerator slammed open, and a voice growled "ZUUL!" as what looked like a cross between a bear and a bull ran towards him. Cobalt felt himself crashing through the apartment wall, and he was then thrown through the closed elevator doors in the hallway. He fell down the shaft, and was then knocked silly by the sudden stop at the bottom. Cobalt quickly came to his senses and pushed the doors open on the ground floor and climbed out, only to be chased out of the building by the monster that had tackled him upstairs in Yuko's apartment.
Yuko noticed that the bath water had seemed to have gotten warmer. She leaned over to turn down the temperature control, but the knob appeared to be stuck. Suddenly the water around her began to bubble and glow red. She jumped from the tub and tried to open the bathroom door, but the latch was stuck. A loud grow came from the tub, as a dark hairy beast with horns emerged from under the bath water and charged at her. She pounded on the door, trying to open it to no avail. She could smell the stench of the beast's hot breath on her face as she fainted and passed out.
Police inspector Tawashi was sitting in his police car across the street from Yuko's apartment building, right in front of the glass walled dining area of a popular steak house. He'd called in for takeout, and was waiting for a text message on his cell phone informing him that the order was ready to be picked up. Suddenly a familiar figure dashed past the front of his car, followed by what looked like a savage beast. Kobaruto smashed through the glass door, creating a cloud of shards, the wild animal chasing him made an equally large hole in the wall right next to the door. The inspector quickly grabbed the police radio microphone hanging on the dashboard, and yelled into it his location and a description of the emergency, before charging into the melee.
The four concrete gargoyles surrounding the central structure on the roof of the building glowed fire red as their rock like skin crumbled away, revealing their inner beast. The hideous creatures dismounted from their concrete pedestals and made their way towards a large doorway in the central structure. There they waited, in anticipation of their master's appearance.
Dazed and confused, Yuko slipped into a loose, revealing dress from the back of her closet. Her hair blew loose in the breeze as she exited from the front door of the apartment building and wandered towards the lights of the downtown area of the city. With a mindless expression on her face, she looked about the crowd of people out for the nightlife, looking for the special being. Standing in front of a shop selling popular manga, stood a number of fans, dressed in cosplay. Yuko's eyes lite up and she approached them. "Is one among you the keymaster?" she asked.
Cobalt picked himself up from the floor and dusted himself off. He made his way through the crowd of people that were running away from the beast that had decimated the dining area under the glass roof. He then bumped into the inspector, looked into his face, and asked, "Are you the gate keeper?"
Ray Stantz jumped quickly when the red phone that had been installed in the hangar trilled loudly. "Moshi Moshi", he got out, and then heard the inspector's voice. "Right," he replied, as the sound of Tawashi's police siren grew louder.
Cobalt was led, handcuffed to the inspector, into the hangar. Tawashi then sat him down in an available chair. "I found him dazed and discombobulated in the wreckage of a restaurant after he and a cougar or a bear ran amuck through the place," he said, "What do you guys make of this?"
Egan held a PKE meter in front of Cobalt and watched as the LED's mounted on the motorized arms scanned up and down, blinking madly. "Where did this happen," he asked the inspector.
"Right in front of that old landmark building they just converted into apartment housing," Tawashi said.
"That's Yuko Kisaragi's place," Peter yelled out.
Looking droopy, Cobalt reached towards Egan, and pulled a pen from his shirt pocket protector, and took a bite out of it. "Are you the gate keeper?" he asked.
"This is incredibly bad," Egan voiced. "If he thinks he's the keyman, and is looking for the gate keeper,"
"Then Yuko's in danger!", Peter completed his sentence. "We've got to get over there in a hurry!"
"Yo, Sarge!", Ray yelled. "Power up, we've got to get a move on!"
The ghostbusters quickly loaded up the truck and jumped on board.
"Wait you guys, what the hell should I do with Cobalt?", Tawashi asked.
"Keep an eye on him!", Egan yelled through Sarge's rear window, "Don't let him out of your sight!"
The robotic truck roared into life, and hauled ass out of the building.
Tawashi watched the truck turn the corner on three wheels as it speed away. In the distance he saw a huge bolt of lighting come down from the sky, striking the top of the very building that he'd just come from. The inspector turned to where Cobalt had been sitting, and his jaw almost fell to the floor. A moment ago, he'd had the lanky robot handcuffed to himself, but now that end of the manacle was locked to the chair he'd left the android sitting in. "Oh crap," he sighed.
Cobalt jogged away from the ministry, heading in the direction that Sarge had taken. He followed behind the robotic truck, his glassed over eyes seeing the world in a spectrum of colors shifted towards the blue.
Yuko wandered the streets in a large circle surrounding the apartment building, with only one thought in her mind, she must find the keymaster. A block from where she had started her aimless wandering, she spotted Kobaruto. "Are you the keymaster?" she asked him.
"Hai!, are you the gatekeeper?", Cobalt replied.
Sarge roared through the streets taking every shortcut he knew. At one busy intersection, he blew his horns loudly, as he took a sharp turn over the sidewalk, parting the throng of pedestrians like Moses did the Reed Sea. The robotic truck took the final turn on three wheels and jolted it's passengers as it screeched to a rapid stop in front of a tall building.
Ray Stantz was the first of the ghostbusters to emerge from the truck. He ran around towards the back and pulled the rack containing the proton backpacks towards him, and quickly strapped on of them one. He was immediately joined by Peter and Egan. The three of them looked upwards towards the roof line of the building, at the spectral light show that illuminated the sky above.
Suddenly the ground shook, as seismic warning sirens sounded. The ground shook as several large pieces of concrete fell from the roof of the building, and crashed down on the street. The asphalt cracked and a large sinkhole opened up underneath where Sarge had parked. The robotic truck started to fall into the hole in the street, and the three ghostbusters also lost their footing and tumbled down into the opening. Sarge quickly fired a rocket driven grappling hook which wrapped itself around the steel work of the facade of a building across the street. His frame mounted cable wrench hauled him out of the crevasse, along with Egan, Peter, and Ray, who had managed to grab hold of the truck's door handles.
"Here we go again," Peter moaned. "Let's get up there and kick Gozer in the ass once more."
They entered the building as people in the street cheered them on. It was a long climb up the central staircase to the roof. Once on top of the building, Ray studied the layout. It was clearly the same setup they had faced a few years ago on Central Park West. In the center of the roof, a structure capped by a chromium dome and illuminated by spot lights set in each corner of the building glowed with a blinding brilliance. Standing in front of the structure, stood Yuko and Cobalt, their hands locked together, bowing before the large doors of the structure. They were flanked on either side by demonic looking creatures, the gargoyles that had come to life and had been waiting for their arrival. The large door opened to reveal the altar of a temple. It glowed in a golden light, and a slender being dressed in white with a hideous face glared down at them.
"It's the personification of Gozer," Egan replied.
"Now Choose!", the being in the temple demanded. "The destructor is coming! Choose his form!"
"I know," Ray said to Peter. "I'm clearing my mind."
"My mind is also a blank," Egan added.
The ground shook from heavy footsteps in the distance. Then came the sound of reverberating cry that echoed between the buildings. A dark bipedal figure over eighty feet tall with large scales and a long tail dragging on the ground behind it, stomped towards them from the distance. It shot flames from its mouth, igniting the downtown area in flames.
"My bad this time," Peter sighed. "I couldn't sleep on the flight over here from New York, and there was a Godzilla movie marathon running as the in flight entertainment. He just popped into my head."
The ghostbusters grabbed for their proton guns in unison. "Aim for the temple and cross the streams!", Egan said.
Gozer's hand reached out, and extended three beams of light that encircled the crew. Before they could fire their proton weapons, they were zapped by a wall of pure energy. "I'm prepared for you this time! Your toys have been made inert!" the higher dimensional being laughed. "Now await the end of your world!"
The ghostbusters tried to move, but they had been encased in some kind of force field.