Mark Russell stooped and offered Nikki his hand to help her to her feet but she continued to stare up at him in dumb fascination before she finally shook off her bewilderment and accepted his help. She winced as she was hauled up to her feet and Mark's other hand grasped her elbow to steady her.
"That was terrifying." He remarked, wide eyed. He shook his dark hair out of his eyes where it had fallen in the struggle and Nikki took in his disheveled look. His breath still came in heaving spurts from his encounter with the vengeful addict ghost, and his casual grey dress shirt was rumpled against the muscles in his torso. He tugged the hem of his shirt down over the top of his jeans nervously, looking over Nikki's shoulder and at the surrounding alley for confirmation that the ghost was indeed really gone. He finally swallowed and ran a hand across his forehead, brushing away the beads of sweat that had formed there. "Are you hurt?"
Nikki tested her legs and glanced down at herself briefly. Her knees and one of her shins were scraped and bloodied beneath her black jean shorts. Her right elbow was stiff, though when she flexed it, the pain was thankfully tolerable. She winced as she gently hugged her arms to herself and felt the obvious scrapes on each of her elbows as well. She plastered on a casually disgruntled expression and shrugged nonchalantly.
"Just a few scrapes and bruises, but nothing seems to be broken I don't think." She replied softly. She fixed Mark with a critiquing stare. "What did you just do?!"
Mark looked relieved for a moment at hearing she wasn't too seriously injured and at her sudden conversation switch his mouth curved downward self-consciously. He glanced down at his right palm, turning it over with consideration before he clenched it into a light fist and wrapped his other hand around the wrist beneath it.
"What are you doing here?" She asked him then, sensing that he was struggling to form a quick explanation. His shoulders seemed to slacken and he released his hands in favor of putting them in his jeans pockets.
"Well, I hadn't heard from you in days…even went by the bookshop you worked at yesterday and the day before but Rachel told me you weren't there. She told me about your friend's passing…said she was really close to your dad and the other Ghostbusters. I figured I'd give you some space and then finally I decided to take you up on your offer of just running by the Ghostbusters' headquarters. Good thing I heard you screaming over here…if I'd been just another minute or two later, there might not have been anything left." Mark ended the explanation with a slight smirk, making light of the situation that had blown out of proportion so quickly. Nikki stared up at the young man, her brows furrowed in thought. Mark cleared his throat and removed his hands from his pockets, gesturing vaguely at the alley around them. "I'm surprised you let a ghost like that hang around so close to your neighborhood residence. Advertising for the business or something?"
"Truth be told, I've taken this alley shortcut several times and I've never seen her before." Nikki said, shaking her head. She held open her own hands wonderingly, her heart rate greatly lessening now that the threat was gone.
"Here, is this yours?" Mark asked, motioning to the ruined cardboard box resting on its warped side. He walked over before she could respond and he gently nudged it with his tennis shoe, causing a tinkle of glass to shift through the other collectibles inside the box.
"Yeah…what's left of it, anyway." Nikki answered drily. Mark bent and picked it up easily, turning back towards Nikki. She offered him a grateful smile as she waited until he'd reached her side to begin walking down the alley in the direction of the road that would lead them to the firehouse.
"What did that ghost look like to you?" Mark asked curiously when they'd walked a few feet. Nikki pursed her lips, remembering their light conversation a few days back at the bookshop. He had some Sight too, though in their short talk it wasn't clear what the extent of his abilities were. Nikki shrugged thoughtfully.
"She looked like a regular homeless person…a drug addict of some kind maybe. Baggy clothes, hunched posture…she could've come off of any street corner around the city." Nikki said, a flash of the woman's huge bloodshot eyes and claw-like hands blinking through the back of her eyelids. She opened her eyes as they emerged from the alley and found Mark studying her intensely. She held his bright eyed gaze for a second, feeling her face grow hot in embarrassment. "I mean it was hard to really focus on her when she kept throwing herself at me…"
"That's what I saw too – that hungry look in her hallowed face. Truly desperate…" He murmured. Nikki nodded, flicking her awkward stare off of his lightly stubble-darkened face as they continued on the short walk to the Ghostbusters' firehouse.
"Thank you," Nikki said, shaking her head in dazed disbelief. "I've never really been ambushed like that…"
"No problem. I'm just glad I was here," Mark said with a chuckle. He hefted the box of oddities uncomfortably and Nikki moved to grab for one side of it.
"Let me help," She offered. Mark easily shifted it out of her reach and flashed her a timidly cocky smirk.
"Look what happened when you carried it." He teased, giving the box a gentle shake so that the tinkle of glass and broken bits shifted around inside. "I'd better take it the rest of the way. We're almost there, yeah?"
Nikki narrowed her gaze at the man, not one to enjoy being thought of as a helpless female, incapable of toting heavy things. She nodded down the road straight ahead in the direction they were headed.
"Yeah, it's just another block down on the right." She said lightly. He grinned at her in relief and his smile broke suddenly when an obnoxiously loud siren flipped on just behind them. The pair stopped in surprise and Nikki turned to see the Ecto-1 cruise to a crawl and then halt in the middle of the low-traffic street. The passenger side window rolled down and Shawn stuck his head out to greet Nikki frantically.
"Nikki! Oh my God…" Shawn's eyes took in his girlfriend's face and then lingered on her very visible injuries for a long moment. "We hurried back as soon as we were done…are you okay?!"
"I'm fine," She reassured him, hugging her arms to herself to try and cover up the worst of her bleeding scrapes on her elbows. Her knees she couldn't do anything about, but Shawn read her emotions and switched his worried stare to the bronze-skinned man standing beside her with a quizzical expression of his own. Nikki caught Shawn's hesitant stare and she gestured to her savior awkwardly. "This is Mark –"
"Mark Russell?!" Ray's voice piped up from inside the car. Nikki glanced past Shawn to see her father straining from behind the wheel of the car to peer around Shawn to the stranger too. Mark chuckled quietly and nodded once in greeting.
"That'd be me," He admitted lightly. Ray's face was full of intrigue as he looked quickly between Mark and Nikki then down the road towards the firehouse.
"Hop in, we'll take you both the rest of the way and then you'll have to tell us everything that happened." Ray said, flipping a button on the dashboard that allowed the back passenger side door to pop open. Egon was revealed in the very back of the car, fidgeting idly with one of the proton packs where it released a few tendrils of smoke around his head. Nikki ducked into the car, offering a weak smile at the busy scientist who only spared her a brief nod to acknowledge her presence. She took the disheveled box from Mark and slid it along the floorboard to allow him room to climb in after her. As soon as the car door was shut, Ray pressed the pedal to the floor excitedly, causing Egon to drop the screwdriver he had been using on the pack. Egon flashed his over-eager colleague an annoyed grimace before he simply crossed his arms and stared in silent obvious interest at the newcomer sitting by Nikki's side.
"How was it, Egon?" Nikki asked conversationally. The tall, lanky Ghostbuster shrugged indifferently as his stiff expression softened a bit. He turned his gaze to Nikki and looked her up and down.
"As uneventful as a ghost in a post office can be. Though once we were packing up to leave, Shawn said he felt something was wrong. Looks like he was right…" Egon commented lowly. Nikki nodded, clasping a hand over her asphalt streaked knee self-consciously.
"Yeah, I uh, got jumped in the alley –"
"What?!" Shawn and Ray exclaimed simultaneously from the front seat. Nikki's mouth hung open where she'd been stopped mid-sentence and Mark quickly intervened.
"It was just a ghost having a bad day, Nikki must've caught her by surprise walking through there on her way here…" He related casually, his deep voice of authority seeming to ease the tension in the car. Ray slowed to a stop just past the firehouse door and hit the horn in two short bursts to signal that they had returned. As they waited for the doors to be opened, Ray swiveled around from the driver's seat.
"You got jumped in the alley by a ghost? What about your…?" Ray raised a hand and waggled his fingers, a worried look on his face. Nikki winced ironically.
"Well, I was ready to handle it that way, but it's like she knew what I was going for and she didn't want me to cross her over, I guess. She kept avoiding my hands and attacking me…"
Winston emerged from the building, pushing open the heavy double doors and waved to Ray who tore his concerned stare from his daughter to turn back around and switch the vehicle into reverse. As he began backing the Ecto-1 into the firehouse, Nikki glanced over at Mark whose eyes seemed to shift nervously between the other three Ghostbusters in the car before finally landing on Nikki with hesitation. She got the sense that his cool demeanor had evaporated in the Ghostbusters' presence and she offered him a reassuring smirk in response as Ray flipped the car to park and cut the engine.
"How'd it go? You pick up the mail while you were there?" Winston asked cheerfully as Shawn pushed open his door first, climbing out of the car holding a smoking trap that had been resting in the floorboard by his feet. He held it up away from his face, sputtering out a cough as he'd accidentally inhaled a lungful of smoke upon picking it up. Nikki smirked as she caught a glimpse of the trap covered in mismatched postage stamps, possibly stuck on there from the whirlwind capturing a ghost can cause. In a post office, there was no telling what kind of mess the poor workers must have been dealing with after the Ghostbusters had performed their ghost-catching duty in their mailroom.
"A little more work than we originally thought, but we got him in the end." Shawn answered lightly. He handed the trap off to Winston gratefully and Nikki saw a hint of distrust in his face as he watched Nikki climb out of the backseat of the car after Mark. She held her boyfriend's gaze for a moment, giving him an almost imperceptible shrug. He blinked dismissively and nodded in indication to her obvious injuries. "Nikki looks a little worse for wear and she didn't even go with us!"
"Wow…what the hell happened to you, Little Stantz? Those books in the shop fighting back now?" Peter asked through a mouthful of sandwich as he emerged from the second floor doorway at the top of the stairs to greet his returning colleagues. Nikki rolled her eyes and turned back to retrieve the torn and dented box from the car to allow Egon space to get out. The taller scientist slipped out of the back door and rounded the back of the car to open the hatch and begin unloading the proton packs. Shawn took one and followed Winston to the basement, apparently deeming it necessary to remain armed while they dumped the captured ghost into the containment unit. Nikki caught his torn expression before he straightened himself and descended into the basement. She mentally tried to send him some reassuring emotions, hoping that would ease his worry as she turned her attention back up to Peter's chastising way of showing concern.
"No, this happened from my encounter with the ghost of a homeless woman. She acted like she was interested in this junk at first and then when I explained there was nothing of value in here, she turned violent. She attacked me and then I –" Nikki stopped before she could recount that she'd seen a flash of Janine's presence in the alley. The Ghostbusters' former secretary had been trying to divert the angry ghost's attention from Nikki so the girl might've had a chance to run, but in the next instant she'd disappeared. Nikki almost wondered if she'd imagined seeing her. She flicked her gaze over to Mark who was still standing casually by the Ecto-1, an indifferent expression on his face as he watched her explain her ghostly encounter to her peers. "–And then Mark stepped in and scared her off."
"Tough-looking guy like that, I'd be scared off too." Peter joked, stuffing the last of his sandwich in his mouth. He chewed lazily for a moment and then called back down once more. "You need the first-aid kit down there or do you plan on coming up here anytime soon?"
"We'll be up in a second," Ray answered him. He walked over and took the heavy box from Nikki, eyeing it warily. One corner had been dented inward, and it was a wonder the heavy amount of collectibles inside hadn't fallen through the ruined box. He regarded Nikki carefully before carrying the box and setting it on the work cabinet just beside the lockers. He patted the pockets of his jumpsuit as if feeling for a knife or something to slice open the box but then he must have thought better of it because he just patted the box gently and turned back to Nikki. "I'm hoping the box got it worse than you did…?"
Nikki nodded at him reassuringly, seeing that he was trying to find something positive in the fiasco that had just occurred. The occult collectibles that she had brought back for him to sift through could wait – it would probably take a good while to determine which could be salvaged and which had been turned into absolute junk from the ghost addict's wrath. Ray's shoulders sagged in relief and he directed his attention to Mark, who was scanning the car with clear amazement.
"Dr. Ray Stantz," Ray cleared his throat and introduced himself. He crossed over and offered the man his hand, and Mark shook it eagerly.
"Mark Russell, though you've already seemed to put that much together." Mark chuckled nervously. "It's a privilege to finally meet you, Dr. Stantz."
Shawn took that moment to come back up from the basement, his cheeks flushed from his hurried trap-dumping in an effort to rejoin the group. He pushed up the sleeves of his Ghostbusters' uniform and headed straight for Mark, extending his arm in greeting as well.
"I'm Shawn, Shawn Barlow. Nikki's boyfriend," He added with a knowing wink at Nikki. His expression went briefly serene as he shook Mark's hand. "Thank you for saving Nikki – that's usually my job, but I'm glad you were there this time."
Nikki put a hand to her face in embarrassment. Both young men shared a jovial laugh at her reaction and when she lowered her hand again, Shawn had moved past him and to her side. Mark was talking in hushed tones to Ray, who nodded excitedly. Ray must have already begun the interrogation of Mark's similar psychic abilities compared to Nikki's. With a weary smile, Nikki looked away fondly and then leaned into Shawn's embrace as he wrapped her in his arms.
"Was that a little too much?" Her murmured into her hair as he squeezed her to him possessively. She scoffed good-humoredly and shook her head against his chest.
"Cliché, as always." She joked lightly. He rubbed her back and she winced as he hit a sore spot, but she tried to play it off as she shifted and hugged him tighter in return.
"That ghost really hurt you, didn't it?" He asked her, loosening his hold on her so they could look at each other. "You're pretty shaken up, I can feel it…"
Nikki unhooked her arms from around his waist and nodded briefly, switching her focus back over to Mark. She shrugged and tucked the stray hairs that had fallen from her ponytail back behind her ears self-consciously.
"Hey…" Shawn murmured before she could fully turn her attention back to Mark and his explanation to Ray. She turned her face back up to his, a question in her eyes. He seemed to study her face searchingly for a moment and then his eyebrows pinched together in thought. "You didn't have to cross over that ghost…?"
"No, like I said before, Mark scared her off." She said slowly. Shawn looked about to say something else, but he was interrupted by Winston's wild outburst.
"So, not only can you see ghosts like Nikki can, you can cross them over too? That's just so…" He trailed off and rubbed his head in amazement. "…coincidental. Nikki always thought she was the only one!"
"Well, I wouldn't say I crossed her over…I don't really know what happened. One second she was there and then she…she just wasn't." Mark admitted with a bewildered shrug. He glanced over at Nikki. "I just had it in my head to make her go away because I was really beginning to get worried about that one…"
Nikki felt Shawn unconsciously squeeze her hand. She smiled at his slight jealousy and then gave the clock on the wall a glance before she made the suggestion to get everyone moving.
"Well, how about we go upstairs then? Dad and Peter can play guinea pig with you for a change and I can get cleaned up." She said, indicating her scrapes and bruises. "Then we'll try and piece together what happened in the alley."
"…and you've been able to do this type of thing since you were a teenager?" Ray summarized after running Mark through almost three hours' worth of tests and interrogation. Mark himself sat in an uncomfortable metal chair, electrodes taped to his temples and the usual armbands to keep track of his heart rate along with several other wires that Nikki recognized from her own early psychic tests. She offered him a supportive smirk as his nervous weariness was finally beginning to show through.
"Yeah, that's the first time I remember really interacting with a ghost. This woman was asking for directions but rather than thinking she was just a usual tourist – I'm from Florida you know, I saw numerous of them daily – but this ghost lady…her questions just weren't making sense for where we were. She seemed confused, and I just didn't know how to help her so she got frustrated and just…vanished. That's how I knew she wasn't just some normal tourist…"
"Ghosts more often than not are always confused," Nikki nodded in knowing confirmation.
"But the one you met today didn't seem to be…" Shawn grumbled, having spent the better part of the first hour of Mark's interrogation patching Nikki up from her attack. The first aid kit still sat open on the counter, band aids and antiseptic wipes and ointments spread out around the box. Nikki turned around from her perch on the pool table to give Shawn a tight-lipped stare.
"The way she reacted could have been argued as confused…" She relented, pulling her knees to her chest and absently pressing her palms over the bandages there.
"Yeah, I mean, take for instance, someone suffering from Alzheimer's. They can get pretty hostile due to their confusion too." Mark offered. His gaze remained on Nikki for a moment and he shrugged. "From what you said before, you were doing everything right…talking to her calmly, being peaceful about discouraging her taking your money or whatever she wanted, and when she was denied that, she turned on you. And based on her appearance, I'd say she probably had that sort of mentality in life as well."
Winston, who had been leaning against the pool table alongside Nikki, pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head in disbelief.
"I'm sorry…this is just too freaky. There's two of you ghost-loving supporters now? You're talking about them like they're real people with feelings rather than…"
"Rather than what?" Nikki pressed him challengingly. Winston looked around the room at the other Ghostbusters for help.
"Rather than the pests they are." Peter chimed in from his place by the computer. The readings from Marks electrodes trailed lazily across the screen beside him and he turned away from it to scan the room with tired eyes. When Nikki's stern glare landed on him, Peter shrugged indifferently. "Or, can be, excuse me."
"Pete's right. We took on this job in the beginning because of the ridiculously high amount of ghost sightings there were in the area at the time. We're exterminators, just instead of bugs, we target other more supernatural pests." Ray said, easing the tension in the room.
Nikki unhooked her arms from around her knees and stretched her legs down the edge of the pool table. She glanced over at Shawn who, having been a ghost previously, was eerily silent during the direction this interrogation had turned.
"Ghosts did used to be real people. Well, most of them, anyway. Some, yes, can be pest-like and unapproachable, but most of them can be reasoned with." Nikki argued quietly. Mark, still in the hot seat, nodded curtly, his expression hard but sympathizing. "And I like to think that's why you've allowed me to become a Ghostbuster part-time. To try and give the ghosts you bust a chance to be reasoned with and be able to find peace rather than making a nuisance of themselves on this plane."
The room was silent after Nikki's outburst for several awkward seconds. Egon cleared his throat first, being the one to finally break the silence.
"Let's talk about your encounter with the ghost in the alley. You say nothing of that magnitude has happened to you before when confronting a ghost?"
Mark shook his head, his eyes wide. Nikki noticed his hands twitching slightly where they rested in his lap. She had a sudden flashback of the first time she had crossed over a ghost…she had been nothing but a little girl at the time and she'd been wandering in the woods with her 'imaginary friend' (her mother's term) down behind her grandmother's house. Beth, the ghost girl, had grabbed Nikki's hand in order to help her cross a creek when suddenly Nikki's energy had been zapped and she'd woken up alone on the path across the creek. That had been a lot for Nikki's young mind to process, and at the realization that this afternoon had been Mark's first time doing something similar, she felt a sudden wave of pity wash over her.
"…I feel fine though. I don't know why you'd get the idea that I'd be exhausted." Mark was saying as Nikki came back from her recounting daydream.
"Whenever Nikki helps a ghost to cross over, it takes a lot out of her. She's winded for a good majority of the rest of the day afterward." Egon explained, sitting on the other side of Mark's chair, watching another computer screen. Having completed whatever tests they'd wanted to put him through for the evening, Egon stood up and began removing the electrodes from the young man's head. Mark glanced over at Nikki, his bright eyes fixed on her carefully as he swallowed hard.
"…is that what I did? Did I cross that lady over?"
"I've…never seen anyone else do what I do before, so I don't know what it really looks like from someone else's point of view. But like we've been saying for the past few hours, she was there one minute and gone the next. What else could be said?" Nikki shrugged unknowingly. Mark seemed to consider that for a moment, setting his jaw thoughtfully before he nodded in relenting acceptance.
"Are we done? Is that it?" Mark asked after Ray unwrapped the armband from his forearm and slid in his desk chair to replace the cord on the counter by the computer it was hooked to. After clicking through a few windows on the monitor and scrolling through the collected information there, Ray turned back to the young man with a teasing grin.
"I mean, if you'd like for us to drag up a ghost from our containment unit and see how you fare against it, we could try that."
Mark's face paled and he looked between each of the Ghostbusters' steadily serious expressions before he looked to Nikki for help.
"Um…is he serious? Or was that a joke?" Mark finally asked. Nikki glanced over at Shawn who smirked at the older guy's nervous jitters. When Nikki looked back to Mark, preparing to explain that the Ghostbusters tended to have an odd sense of humor, she saw that Peter had silently moved behind Mark and had a devilish grin on his face as he poised to strike. He lifted his hand up and slapped it firmly on the younger man's shoulder, causing him to jump and let out a yelp in surprise.
"Relax guy, that was just a joke," Peter said after chuckling at Mark's frantic cry of alarm. He patted him on the shoulders again as if reassuring him but then Peter leaned down to his ear and lowered his voice menacingly. "Although…we did turn one loose on Nikki when she first let us in on her little ghost-seeing secret. It took a week before that smoky smell went away, and we hardly had him outta the box for two minutes…"
Mark flicked his gaze up to Nikki once more for confirmation as if asking whether those mad scientists as he saw them had really subjected the girl to such dangerous testing situations. She brightened her smile and nodded once, laughing when his face paled. He looked down to make sure all of the wires and things were removed from his person and then in the next second, he stood up, visibly shaking Peter's hands from his shoulders.
"Well, I guess I'd better get out of your hair then. This has really been fun…" Mark said awkwardly, clapping his hands together as if trying to shield his obvious unease.
"Don't go, they were just teasing." Nikki objected, giving the surrounding Ghostbusters a harsh look of annoyance. "We can help you figure out more about your abilities if you want, they've really helped me out over the past few years. Don't let them freak you out…"
Ray and Peter shared the same look of scorned puppies and Egon was the one to address Mark from his seat by the computer screen. The data he had collected from Mark's vitals still spread over the monitor and Egon pointed to it.
"Yes, I'd like to do some more experiments with you at a later date, if you wouldn't mind. While we may not jump directly into throwing you in front of an angry ghost just yet, we may want to see what other reactions we can get from you when maybe encountering a less hostile spirit."
Mark seemed to consider this for a moment, fumbling to roll the sleeves of his casual grey dress shirt back down over his forearms. When he'd managed to unroll one and re-button the cuff at his wrist, he visibly paused to glance down at his watch.
"You got a date, son?" Peter asked jokingly. "I mean, it's not every day someone gets offered to hang out with the Ghostbusters like this."
"You've really gotta stop with this bigheadedness of yours, Pete. Being too cocky is bad for business." Winston chided his colleague.
"No, I'm just supposed to meet some friends for dinner. I honestly didn't think this was gonna take so long." Mark admitted, wringing his hands together agitatedly. "Not that it hasn't been enjoyable. I've really learned a lot. Like for instance, how I can supposedly cross over ghosts now…that's pretty cool."
Nikki noticed the odd expression that passed over his face when he chuckled uncomfortably. He seemed to catch her observant stare and he moved toward her with his arm extended.
"And really, I'm glad I was there to help you this afternoon. I guess the adrenaline just caused me to react that way…"
Nikki shook his hand gratefully, and this time she was consciously aware of the humming warmth that radiated at their physical contact. She studied his hand as she shook it and then released it, feeling an abrupt snap as their hands lost contact as if he had swiped something from her grasp so quickly she hadn't been able to react. Before she could look up to see if he'd had a similar reaction, Ray was standing up to bid Mark farewell.
"We'll be in contact with you soon, Mark. You've caught us at a pretty vulnerable time but we're working to try and get everything back on track around here. Would you like to come back one afternoon next week?"
Shawn moved over to Nikki's side from his seat in the kitchen and he passed her a soda which she popped open eagerly and took a swig. Ray made a show of shaking Mark's hand excitedly, and Nikki caught her father's wondering gaze as he looked at her and Shawn over Mark's shoulder.
"That should be okay," Mark answered appreciatively. "Thank you for finally meeting with me, sorry it was under such odd circumstances."
"That's okay, thanks for playing guinea pig for the past few hours. There'll be a lot more where that came from, believe me." Ray said with a wink. Nikki smirked and watched as Mark shook Egon's hand as well before the bespectacled Ghostbuster led him downstairs, probably to head down to the basement once the younger man left.
"Well that was interesting…" Peter remarked drolly, crossing his arms over his chest where he leaned against the desk behind the chair Mark had previously occupied. Peter fixed a raised eyebrow in Nikki's direction. Confused, Nikki glanced around at the others, suddenly feeling their heavy stares on her.
"…what?"
"Aren't you a little shocked that there is another psychic capable of crossing over ghosts? You acted like it's no big deal!" Winston blurted out in disbelief.
"Maybe she's not shocked about it because she's still in shock…" Shawn quipped, slurping down a gulp of his own soda. He swallowed and then when no one reacted to his light joke, he continued. "You know, from her episode of being jumped by that homeless person ghost."
Nikki put her free hand over her badly bruised and bandaged knee absently and shrugged. Ray considered his daughter with scrutiny for a moment and then fell back wearily in the desk chair, running a hand through his mussed up hair.
"Well, I kind of already figured he had similar gifts to mine when I met him last week, don't you remember?" Nikki reminded the group lightly. Her eyebrows slowly pinched together in thought as she recounted the alley and the ghost's built-up anger as she attacked Nikki from seemingly every direction. Every escape she attempted to make was thwarted by the crafty homeless addict ghost and then Mark had jumped in to her rescue as if it was his second nature. As a Ghostbuster, experienced in dealing with violent spirits herself, Nikki had been struggling for her safety. Mark had come in on pure adrenaline and handled the situation coolly.
"…can you imagine? We can have not only one, but two traveling crossers. We could cover more ground by having two separate teams tackling calls every day. It'd be a load off our shoulders for sure…" Peter was saying as Nikki reemerged from her wondering thoughts. His eyes were devilishly bright as he explained his hopeful plan for the future and Nikki almost wanted to take pity on the obvious reality that exhaustion was a big problem that came with the Ghostbusters' jobs. One phrase caused her to interrupt his scheming and she set her soda can on the pool table's edge beside her to lean forward and join the conversation.
"Excuse me…Crossers? When did we agree to call us that?"
"Well, it fits doesn't it?" Peter retorted with a pout. "Sounds better than 'psychically-enhanced individuals that can cross-over ghosts to the next plane', at least."
"Or, Crosser-Overers…" Shawn said, rolling his eyes as he matched Peter's sarcastic persona.
"We're putting you both in a whole new category, whereas before, you were the only one so it was more of a phenomenon." Ray explained, offering his daughter a supportive smile.
"Wow…that's sounds to me like a fancy way of telling her she's not special anymore…" Winston remarked with mock hurt. He moved over to Nikki and put a hand on her arm reassuringly. "Don't let them tell you you're not. Little Stantz will always be the best Ghostbuster–superhero around."
"Thanks," Nikki scoffed, shaking her head in amusement at their playful teasing. She cleared her throat and picked her partially emptied soda can, crunching it lightly with her thumbs. "So…I turned my notice in at the bookshop today."
When she chanced a look up at her father, she noticed the excited light in his eyes had died down again and he was also staring at the can in her hands. Peter cleared his throat too, but rather than speaking up in his usual deadpanned-humorous way, he remained in thoughtful silence. Winston patted her shoulder gently, finally removing his hand from her in favor of drawing one of the other desk chairs to sit down in. Shawn, who had known her plan since they'd talked it over earlier in the week reached for her hand tentatively and she twined her fingers with his, still crinkling the can in her lap absently with her other hand.
"I just figured you'll all need me back full time here…" Nikki went on softly. Still, no one spoke for a moment and Nikki just felt the urge to keep the silence at bay. "I know…I'm not Janine, no one ever will be…but I'll do what I can."
Ray was the first to move and he offered Nikki a forced smile, eyes shining with grieving tears. She hated to have brought up their mourning again, after the blessed distraction Mark's presence had brought that afternoon. Ray nodded at his daughter levelly, after scanning through his surrounding colleagues' similar expressions.
"Thank you Nikki," He murmured genuinely. As soon as his words broke the tense silence, the chink in the façade the group kept up for Egon's benefit shattered and there wasn't a dry eye in the room.