"Ray's Occul…." Phoebe started to say as she picked up the suddenly ringing phone from the front.
"Pheebs, hey, it's us." Podcast cuts in, and just by his voice, Phoebe Spengler guessed her friend was all but vibrating with excitement. Or possibly a growing indulgence in carnival-grade spun sugary treats.
"What is it? A ghost?" Phoebe asks, now cradling the phone against her ear as she took aim and smashed the book; she'd been skimming down on a toddling collection of mini marshmallow puffs, now attempting to 'stealthily' drag a pair of scissors and a sharpie across the countertop towards their waiting companions.
"Not exactly." Lucky's voice steps in, and going by the jostling over the line listening, Phoebe guessed it was due to her brother's kind of more than strict friend having straight up taken the phone receiver from Podcast's hand. "But it is something you're not gonna want to miss." Her fellow Ghostbuster encourages.
"Lucky I'm working the shop right now. I can't just…." Phoebe sighs now attempting to scrape still giggling mini puff mush from the spine of her book against the edge of the counter.
"Trust me on this, Pheobe." Lucky interrupts yet again. "Drop what you're doing and get over to the park. I've already sent Trev to cover for you." She adds, "I'm gonna send Pods to meet you at the front entrance. Show you were to…."
"Sorry, Lucky. I have to go." Phoebe says quickly as a brought-shouldered, rounded, bellied man seems to stop with apprising eyes outside the shop front window and then squints in at her as he finishes off the last few bites of a corndog.
His bulky appearance as he threw open the door reminded Phoebe at first apprising glance of the firehouse's resident food poacher as Lucky's probing words drowned in the loud scraping clanging of the bell over the shop door.
"Hello, sir." Phoebe greets as she hurriedly replaces the phone against the receiver, with Lucky still attempting to call her back to the open line.
"You're one of those Ghostbusters, right?" the man asks after he'd eased himself through the door before Phoebe could finish out the more 'from the script' tag lines Ray had come up with in greeting shop customers.
"Yes, sir." Phoebe smiles in pride as the man pauses to pull a flattened and poorly wrapped sandwich from his pocket.
"Good. I need you to help me prove a ghost." The man huffs his fingers, fumbling as he unwinds the grease-spotted napkins from his squished excuse for a sandwich as he talks.
"Prove a ghost?" Phoebe parrots, only half listening now as she attempts to swap away a few hungry-looking Mini puffs when several foil-wrapped hotdogs spill from the man's jacket as he shakes the sandwich free.
The man nodes in almost gleeful confirmation, "Those judges can't call me just some kind of sore loser with you backing me up." He grins. "It's my prize. My title." He says, talking more to himself now than to her as he dips his head for a bite of his makeshift meal.
"I'm sorry?" Phoebe asks, confused, as she straightens her glasses against her nose. Mostly to keep the growing scattering of hurrying white blobs toddling fast towards the glinting grey-wrapped food prize her visitor hadn't noticed he'd lost in her sightline as the man stomped a little closer toward the counter.
Going by the so proudly pinned number on the front of his shirt, Phoebe guesses the man was in one of the many food-eating related companions advertised for the carnival around the city.
They'd had to take special care with Slimer after he'd caught Trevor and Gary talking about them the closer a few of the dates had gotten. The food-greedy slime monster has been moved- without Phoebe's help, thanks to her mother 'grounding her' from going to 'the Aquarium' as her mother still playfully calls the newer incarnation of Winston's research lab since the Separator incident to a better holding room temporarily to remove any temptation the green slimed class five sector had of crashing the events.
"One of your ghosts stole my competition." 'Human Slimer' spits out. "Stole it right out from under me." He complained, taking a rather large bite of the lightly smushed sandwich before he spoke again between chewed bites.
"Pheebs, up at the park. Luck said it was your ghost gi…." Trevor panted, apparently having run from the park to the shop.
"Don't worry, son. I've already warned her about the ghost." The big, bellied man smiles in greasy pride before his face hardens as his small, watery eyes land on the newly joined Trevor Spengler.
"You." Phoebe's brother groans
"You." The man snaps jabbing a finger towards Trevor. "You were with the others backing the judges wanting to up and give away my title."
But rather than fall for the baiting, Trevor rolled his eyes and shoulders his way towards the counter, his eyes on his sister now. "leave the gear at home, but Luc and Pods want you up at the park." he tells her "thought Mom did give us a heads up that Slims may have slipped his leash and is heading up there himself so keep an eye out for him but just be sure you catch Lucky first when you get there."
"What the hell are you saying? Leave the gear. No way." The portly man barked, now munching angrily on one of the hotdogs he still had stuffed into his jacket pocket.
Neither Trevor nor Phoebe thought to point out a few of their little mini terrors were now attempting to climb up the man's pant leg towards another foil-wrapped hotdog whilst four of their fellows attempted clumsily to carry off the one; he'd still not noticed he'd dropped.
Three were slowly dragged or possibly attempted to roll the thing away whilst a fourth munched with wavering supervision on both foil and hotdog as they swayed back towards the cover of the counter.
"Without that gear, I have no way of proving…."
"Hey, Guy. She beat you, get over it." Trevor growls in answer. "It's just an eating contest. There's another one starting soon, so kindly shut up so I can talk with my sister."
"Trev." Phoebe gaped in surprise at the harsh comeback
"Forget about him, Pheebs." Her brother waved off as the thick-bellied man ripped open another foil-wrapped hotdog in his anger at being so bluntly brushed aside yet yielding a little in allowing the siblings to talk between themselves.
"I can't just forget him, Trevor. He's a possible client." Phoebe defends.
"Okay, fine, whatever. If he gets you to go to the park, then sure, take him back with you." Her brother sighs looking from Phoebe's still puzzled expression to the munching man and back again. "Just remember that Lucky's made sure Podcast meets you at the…."
"At the entrance, yeah," the man scoffs around a larger-than-needed bite of his dwindling hotdog. "now can we go?" he prods, twisting his puggy wrist to squint at his watch. "the last competition starts soon. I want to get that cheating ghost off my back and in front of the judges for her crimes before they wheel out that first tray."
Phoebe reaches down, pulling loose a spare PKE reader as Trevor rolls his eyes at the comment whilst their 'client' starts back towards the door.
"I just can't put my finger on it, but I'm positive this girl is some kind of ghost." The man she's still yet to find out his name other than 'kind of client' says again as if he hadn't been pestering her about this apparent ghost since they'd left the shop.
"No one alive could outeat me." He gloats, "No one."He reiterates tossing the balled-up wrappings off yet another polished-off sandwich into the trashcan as they walked but missed by a mile yet kept walking.
Phoebe quietly eyes a less than pleased ghostly sanitation worker glaring with literal dead eyes at the man at her side before she doubles back with a guilty "Sorry, Carlo" as she bent to pick up the liter.
"'s alright. At least you bother cleaning up after yourself." The spectral city worker shrugs, holding his equally transparent trash bag for her.
Phoebe smiled shyly at him with a small nod in agreement as she dropped the tossed-away food wrapper away before….
"What the hell are you doing?" her red-faced kind of client snaps at her. "I tell you there is a reputation-spoiling, competition-defiling ghost roaming around, and you stop to pick up the trash?" he wheezes angrily. "Is this the best I can expect from a supposed Ghostbuster?"
But his words chock off with a gasp as a few of the friendlier ghosts Phoebe had actually befriended during her walks to the park gathered like a shimmering wall between her and the man attempting to put her down.
All of them are introduced through Melody, of course, but it was nice to find another side of the city's ghostly population other than the disruptors she and her family are called to track and trap.
"Mind what you say, sir." The figure Phoebe knew to be a deceased line cook from one of the former side street cafés warns, raising a simmering tomato sauce-smeared spatula as if it were a true physical sword as his other hand reaches back to rest against Phoebe's shoulder in his own offering of reassurance. "This girl has done more for this city in the months she and her kin have been here than some of you other fleshies have in the decades you've…."
"Pheebs, hey, Pheebs."
Phoebe chews her lip to keep from laughing outright as Podcast gives another jump, waving at her. Munching as he was on a candy apple she quietly extracts herself from her small band of ghostly protectors.
"I was starting to worry you'd lost your way." Podcast joked, then paused when Phoebe gave him a rare side hug when he was within reach. His shock quickly changes to amusement when Phoebe pulls back to roll her eyes at him with a scoff,
"Please, I practically live here every other night; I could walk here blindfolded and still get here before you."
Podcast shrugs his shoulders, then glances towards the now oddly quiet and simi trembling man at Phoebe's shoulder.
"He was the reason I had to cut your call short. Came into the shop saying there was a ghost…"
"There Is a ghost."
"Everything alright here?" a new voice asks then, earning a low gasp of shock from Egon Spengler's granddaughter and an accusing
"That's the one. She's the ghost. She's the one cheating me of what's rightfully mine." The man at Phoebe's shoulder shouts to any who could hear him as his swollen fingers jab towards the newcomer.
Slowly, Phoebe turns then, hardly daring to believe her eyes once she truly meets the so-alive gaze of the man's apparent ghost.
"M—Melody." Phoebe gets out somehow.
"Boo." Her very much alive former chess opponent smiles in greeting.