AN: Sorry this took so long. I was having a bit of writer's block. And this chapter isn't even that long! Oh well. On a different note! I honestly never thought I would hate one of my characters with a such a deep seated passion. But I do! I can't wait till Beetlejuice kills Alpha!

Alpha: Hey!

Shut up! You are an evil, nasty villain, and I hate hate hate you! Okay, thanks to Animekitty47 and Eris-chan for their reviews.

Chapter 3: The Calm Before The Storm

Epsilon was not pleased with Alpha's order to leave the machine as is. She found it to be inefficient, using far too much energy, causing its violent results. The machine wasn't built to kill.

The little scientist had made the calculations needed to fix that problem, and she sat at the controls, trying to decide if she should implement them.

And that's where Beta found her.

The older poltergeist took the seat next the little brown haired girl, and put her arm around her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

Epsilon glanced at her raven haired friend out of the corner of her eye. "This isn't what it was built to do. The machine isn't efficient because Alpha won't let me fix it. Why won't he let me fix it? He knows I hate inefficiency."

Beta sighed. She hated when Epsilon did this. The woman was all about efficiency, and she'd have a temper tantrum is she wasn't allowed to fix it. Alpha and her had found that out the hard way not long after they had recruited the scientist.

In her life, Epsilon had performed rather unorthodox experiments. Hell, in her time, being a female scientist was unorthodox. The cause of her death was one of these experiments. Apparently. she had tried to make a more efficient form of energy. Epsilon had miscalculated, and blew up her lab. The only reason she didn't look like she died in an explosion was because the chemical blast managed to preserve her before she died. The scientist wasn't sure if it was the preservation that killed her, or the explosion. But, as Beta had pointed out, it didn't really matter. She was still dead.

Alpha had asked Epsilon to create a gun that would use the poltergeist's energy as the ammo. It wasn't a difficult process and she quickly had a working prototype. However, it wasn't efficient. The weapon could only fire for a short time before it started to overheat. When she had gone to run some tests to fix that, Alpha had entered her lab, found the weapon, and decided to try it out. He thought it was perfect just the way it was. After Epsilon had figured out the equations needed for the weapon to perform more efficiently, she returned to her main lab to see her boss ready to leave with the prototype. She told him it wasn't ready, and she needed to integrate the equations into the weapons systematics. He said she didn't need to. He then found himself through the wall, Epsilon with the gun in her delicate hands, pointing at him, and telling him she wasn't done yet.

After that, he let her finish.

But this time, he wasn't going to let her.

Epsilon was lost in her memories when Alpha joined the two ladies in the control room. He looked through the window into the chamber of the machine and grinned.

"Y'know, I think we should leave them in there." He looked at Beta, his second-in-command. "What do you think?"

The raven haired woman stood and went to his side, glancing at the prisoners.

Lydia and Derrick were bound, unconscious, and still in their wedding clothes.

"I know killing breathers is highly illegal."

"We won't be killing them. The machine will."

"We left them in there."

"So? If someone leaves a baby in car and the car gets blown up, did they kill the baby?"

Beta wanted to say yes, but she knew he wouldn't understand.

Any further conversation was cut off when the door to the control was blasted off its hinges.

"Hey, boss," came Delta's strangled voice.

Nightshade had her arm tightly around his throat, one of her guns pointed at his temple. Beetlejuice stood next to her, his gun pointed at Alpha.

"Tell us where they are, and we'll kill ya painlessly." Beetlejuice grinned, green eyes glinting murderously. "Mostly."

AN: Yay! There will be action next chapter. But I dunno when that chapter will be up.