Title: five possibilities + one certainty
Fandom: IDW Ghostbusters, and five others in this order: Minecraft (The Aether mod + popular Origins mod), Splatoon, Sonic the Hedgehog, IF (2024) and The Fall Guy (2024).
--
In one world, Egon’s full name is Egon Elias Spengler - a disgraced parapsychologist who just wanted to see what’s above the clouds of his world, but lost his humanity in the process.
Bandages cover much of his face and he’s forced to wear a thick cloak, even in the throes of a hot summer. What’s beneath the bandaging and cloaking and all this effort is silken and healed up for the most part, the only part that has not healed is his self-esteem. The incident wasn’t intentional - none of it was. He’d been hard at work, attempting to prove the rumored stories correct.
In this world, there is a dimension different than the mythical words of the End and the Nether, but instead of sinking into the darkness, it rises into the light of the skies. By that edict, it was given a name among the few parapsychologists he knows of, the few that had once been his motivation to pursue the science.. the Aether Dimension. From a text he had translated by himself with his burgeoning skills, and with the help of his fellow professor, Venkman, Egon had thought he had it.
A working portal to the Aether, or so he believed. But he’d done one very crucial thing incorrectly, the actual frame itself.. It was meant to be glowstone, he’d mistranslated and used the wrong material - had it not been for his pet spider Prometheus, he could have died when the portal exploded due to the magically ignited shroomlight blocks.
However, this beget a new problem, which Egon struggles with at this moment still, a problem that prompts him to collapse with the pink petals and the shade of the sakura blossoms far outside the limits of the college that rejected him hours ago. His cloak splays out around him, revealing.. His arms, two of the four appendages still half bandaged from the accident, dirtied from the initial rains he had run from. Now, the sky is half-cloudy and the sun peeks through, scorching like the flames of the Nether, and Egon figures this is his punishment.
Egon thinks back to the only other person who’s treated him not as the monster he feels - a Blazeborn hybrid healer that treated him so carefully, cauterizing some of his worst wounds near his new arms, using herbal creams and normal antibiotics for the rest. Ray Aurora Stantz, he remembers this one was named. Ray had a kind demeanor, but a firm one, an energy he has rarely seen in people. Carefully with his regular arms, Egon takes out a small slip of paper - the notes Ray graciously wrote down for him before he was discharged from the small clinic for those affected by magical accidents.
Egon Elias Spengler - Arachnid-human, ultra-dimensional accident victim.
Knocked into unconsciousness by the explosion and a concussion - seemed as if dimensional burn damage happened as well.
Recommendation - therapeutic mental recovery is a must. No excess movement of head nor second arm set for two weeks.
…and for the love of the Gods, Dean Yeager, be nice to him, alright? Dr. Glass is sick and tired of you mistreating Mr. Spengler and since Dr. Glass had me write this report this time, I’m saying it for him.
Egon stares up into the cherry tree branches just above his head, letting out a very shaky breath as he partially sees the ultraviolet light the sun puts off, and yet seeing also the normal human view of the light as he removes the bandages from his upper forehead to let his extra eyes have some time with the open air, like Ray had suggested.
…
……..
He finds the shaken self-esteem rising back in his mind the more he simply lays in the pile of cherry blossom petals he’s sat in, so Egon tries again to close his damn eyes and relax. He forgets the drill, he forgets his plans for isolating himself, and for a moment only, he forgets that he wasn’t born this way - a spider-like humanoid with no job and no housing now. Then, Egon remembers the small bag of prototypes he was allowed to keep, and he gently grabs the straps of the bag with his normal set of hands to continue to try and ground himself.
The research he’d wanted to do.. he wonders if he can still do it like he is now, and then the moment of peace is over considering the sun will go down very soon. Egon sits up, and then stands to his feet while using the tree he was sitting by to help him up. With care, he slips the bag back onto his back under his cloak, and continues on his way, seeing a curious black tower in the distance thanks to his somewhat enhanced eyes. The scientist adjusts his glasses, and considers his house plan, looking to the normal forest that the cherry trees bleed into.
–
In a second world, his full name is Egon Jude Spengler, sub-commander of the Ecto Unit within the Elite Octoling Corps.
For the seventh time, he adjusts the black leather coat the DJ provided him, extra nervous due to the reports he’s been getting. A few Octarians have gone missing already since the young teen known between his students as Sango started infiltrating the higher domes. Sango’s about one dome away from the Royal Octo Stadium, where he is currently. A slightly shorter figure approaches him, tapping twice on his shoulder - a practiced motion he has come to know means his husband wants him.
…unofficial husband, Egon amends in his mind, given Octarian law has exorbitant marriage lisence fees even among Elite Octolings of his caliber. Regardless, he slips off his goggles and regards his daughter Calliope. The blonde-headed Octoling juts her head to a side area, which Egon heads away from, irritably brushing a forehead tentacle out of his face while entering the side room. (Cod, I need to cut my tentacles again.. Maybe that’ll be better than the rations I’ve had to feed Calliope as of late..)
A red-headed Octoling in similar Elite Octoling uniform style as Egon waves his hand, wearing a simple handmade ring on a chain around his neck. “Oh!! You’re here!”
“{You’re improving on Inklish,}” Egon observes thoughtfully, stepping within and seeing all of his husband Ray’s research scattered across the room. “{...you do know Octavio-heika doesn’t like messes, right?}”
Ray sheepishly smiles and starts cleaning up, his shorter tentacles curling and uncurling while he picks up the papers and stacks them neatly by research topic. “{Anyhow, yes, I think I’m just about as fluent as you, Egie! I kind of wish Nyx hadn’t gone MIA.. Do you know how much harder it’s gotten to get surface books since she disappeared?}”
Ray and Egon both lose their pleasant expressions at the mention of their once-superior Nyx Tamaki - she’d gone missing after both had been inducted into the Elite Octolings ages ago, and now they are but a few of the remaining lead Elites. Egon takes a moment to pick up one of the books Ray got from the surface recently, probably from one of the lower Octoling spies considering the bad condition the book is in. He flips through it curiously, his spirits lightening a little again when he realizes he’s reading scientific materials.
“{Ray, is this a scientific journal? I have not seen new literature in years,}” he says with restrained excitement. Ray grins and after he grabs his notes, he leans against Egon’s much thinner shoulder, pointing some things out with a gloved hand.
“{This is great, isn’t it? Aiko got this one for me from an Inkfish library. It’s so fascinating!}”
Egon keeps flipping through the scientific journal, parsing its contents to be something about Inkfish history, especially in the Lost Territories.. He’s surprised to hear the surface scientists call the Mollusk Era by the same name as he would, causing a rare smile to pop back up on his face. If he wasn’t reading it incorrectly, he’d almost assume the Inkfish on the surface aren’t as bad as the DJ normally claims in his speech material.. Egon feels he has to concede on that one, seeing as Sango hasn’t truly killed a single Octoling so far in their journey..
Speaking of, an alarm sounds, and the gruff voice of DJ Octavio rings through their small haven.
“{ALL ELITES TO THE CENTER STAGES. I REPEAT, ALL ELITES TO THE CENTER STAGES. MAKE SURE YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS ARE SAFE IN THE RAFTERS BEFORE HEADING DOWN. OUTIE 8000.}”
Ray and Egon both sigh, and pack up their research as quickly as they can. With all their papers and stolen Inkfish surface books packed in their duffel bags, Egon calls out to the hallway. “{Calliope dear! It’s time! Will you go and ask Acht to help you to the rafters?}”
The blonde-headed long-tentacle bearing 19-year-old salutes dutifully to Egon, and then superjumps in another direction - towards the rafters outside. Egon takes Ray’s hand and squeezes it, and Ray squeezes back, muttering a long-forgotten intoner prayer under his breath before walking ahead of Egon. Their places are among the other Elites in the lowest rafters closest to the stadium floor, a lot of the Octarian population here just besides the numerous Octolings. Above his fellow Octarian friends, Egon can’t really hear what’s going on below, but he can see his king and an Inkfish down there..
(Golden-orange ink, inside suckers.. That must be Sango down there. I see something ferocious in her green eyes.. They remind me a little of how Calliope looks when she’s excited.)
After a brief conversation, Egon sees the two begin their battle, and.. Oh, oh no..
He hears parts and pieces of Sango’s lyrics - it’s clear to Egon that Sango is attempting a rap battle whilst literally firing ink at DJ Octavio, half-struggling under the sheer weight of the more experienced rappist’s back-track and lyrical content, but the Inkfish continues, pushing back the DJ’s attacks with ease.
(At this rate, he’ll..) Egon leans forward while Ray calibrates the DJ’s Sting Ray a few seats away, clutching his own hidden chained up ring under his uniform with anxiety behind his goggles. (Octavio-heika, please…!)
The audio system at Ray’s fingertips changes rapidly in color, and Ray yells out as magenta and green light begins to cover up all the statistical information in a few different patterns and wavelengths. Egon groans as the light reaches his own goggles, unsuccessfully attempting to cover his eyes. A beat sets in shortly after, its long notes seeming to encourage the Inkfish below, to give her new strength. Even Octavio is mesmerized, but something indelible and important rises in Egon’s hearts.
These are intoners’ voices.
And they call for him to be free of the black flower that is Octavio’s pain and refusal to change.
“Sango! Can you hear our song?” he hears over the radio. His goggles spark and then snap in half as he stares down at the stadium, his hearts thumping loudly in his chest to the beat.
That melody.. Those words..
Egon is enraptured as he hears more than one voice sing along to the melodies, despite most of the Octarians not knowing Inklish as well as him and Ray, he hears the sentiment. Sango fights ever harder while singing with their loudest possible voice, every attack slamming into Octavio and his mechanical DJ’s booth with harder and harder force. Egon mouths the words as a prayer as he shuts his eyes, something reverberating in his chest with the pure overwhelming sound.
Hope.
He glances left, to Calliope and Acht. They too have the look in their eyes, an awakened soul in both of them. He glances right, to Ray and also his twin brother Ellis, and they too bear the look. The song continues to echo, and shift, and engrave itself within him even after Sango leaves and the Great Zapfish vanishes. The concert, for how short it was, was breathtaking and life-changing.. Something within Egon’s lonely soul finally wakes again, his hope, his freedom -
He must seek this freedom, the crystal sky and sea the song spoke of - and all he does to communicate this to Ray and Elon is a simple double-nod and the widest teary-eyed grin he’s ever managed.
(If he were to recount this five years later to Nyx’s daughter Mercury, and her two friends Kira and Michael, Egon wouldn’t describe the battle as a battle, but of a dance, very likely, and the song as a light of hope. And if they were to react to Egon’s story, it would probably be a common sentiment of freedom - freedom to pursue steady paychecks, freedom to express one’s identity, freedom to break from family tradition..)
(It so happens for Egon, the day of the fateful concert - and of Sango’s arrival to the center stadium - happened to check all three boxes.)
–
In a third world, Egon’s full name is Egon Isadore Spengler, a tenrec happening to study at Spagonia University..
Egon’s week thus far has been a bad one, one that makes him want to drown in his coffee pot and sufganiyot to forget it all. The excavation of the Gaia Manuscripts has gone off without a hitch - the part of the world formerly known as the Land of Darkness had a temple containing the Manuscripts somewhere in Adabat, and thanks to Raymond the Quokka’s keen eyes as well as Peter the Betta’s haggling, the mission went even better than before. But Venkman’s visions were, unfortunately, concerning and spot-on.
The day after the three got back to the University, they came to a room cluttered and chaotic - they’d missed the earthquakes on account of having been jet-lagged, and now their professor is missing. What’s worse is that Egon readily recognizes the machine parts, those of the Robotnik family make. (Ugh.)
But just as they exit the room, Egon fiddles with his newest machine, a prototype sensor array meant for extrasensory things he can’t catch - after all, Egon is the odd one out of his friend group, and possesses no Chaos Energy to sense things with. The meter’s antennae jump up with a suddenness just as he’s the last out of the study, blinking both a bright green and a deep purple, the two respective energy signatures that his sensors have reported in Greece and in Mazuri. Raymond has taken to calling the two signatures different ends of the Gaia Psychokinetic Energy spectrum, or the GPKE..
(Huh? Why is it registering this strongly…?) The dark brown furred tenrec’s thoughts stop as a familiar cobalt blue Mobian walks by. It’s none other than Sonic the Hedgehog, a teenage hedgehog with a penchant for saving the world from Dr. Ivo Robotnik all the time, and one of the Mobians of the world with a high Chaos Energy output..
(And yet..)
Sonic looks towards him, Raymond and Peter. “Uhh.. Is everything okay?”
Raymond’s fuzzy ears lower, and he shakes his head, dull red fur puffed up due to the sudden onset of stress. “‘fraid not, Mr. Sonic... The professor’s been kidnapped.”
Sonic’s expression falls, as does that of his companions, one whom Egon knows to be named Tails Prower, and the other someone he’s never seen before.. He keeps a hold of his sensor meter as Sonic, Tails and the mystery fairy dog rush into the professor’s study. Peter leans a little to the left, cupping a scale-covered hand over his mouth to muffle what he’s about to say.
“You got that reading, right, Egon? Something’s up with Sonic and that fuzzy living plushie.”
“..you may be right.. Both of them have strong GPKE readings,” Egon concurs, shutting the meter off and writing down the observations with a precise, careful hand. “I suppose it must make sense, however, with the readings popping up near the Gaia Temple locations.”
Raymond blinks slowly, putting his hands on his hips. “But.. it doesn’t entirely make sense either. If I translated the manuscripts correctly with Professor Pickle, it’s too early! If it’s really Dark Gaia causing the darker end of GPKE to pop up..”
“Yeah that.. Really doesn’t sound ideal,” Peter growls, his fins billowing slightly with irritation. “So what do we do about it? Egon’s at risk ‘cause he doesn’t have the same Chaos Energy thing we do, Ray.”
Egon falls deep into thought, staring at his written notes, and feeling the last week of events slam into his aching self like a sledgehammer. He knows Peter’s point exactly – as per Raymond and Professor Pickle’s joint translation of the Manuscripts in question, those without natural chaos are vulnerable to the corruption Dark Gaia’s power brings. Making him especially vulnerable..
He shakes his head, and finishes his notes for now.
– Later, at nighttime.. –
A dance of darkness under a moonlit sky..
That’s as much as Egon can perceive through the veil of darkness that makes his head feel heavy and himself like he’s taken at least twenty hits on weed, at least until he hears a distant murmur of voices. Something about something not being right..?
(T.. that’s.. right..)
A flash of light sends him crashing to the ground, and he mumbles dazedly as two sets of hands pull him to his feet. Peter especially is irritated, his fins flaring. “Egon, you dumbass! I told you not to come out here willy-nilly!”
“..Ungh.” Egon blinks tiredly, looking over by chance towards his right. He sees a bulk of dark blue and light teal fur fleeing, and then a small familiar fairy dog rushing off after them, recalling that the fairy dog had been with Sonic a day before this moment. “..Wait, is that..?”
Their professor emerges from hiding, humming in a pleased manner, and he comes over to them. “I will chalk another victory up for Sonic. I’m glad Tails’ camera was able to help you, Spengler.”
Egon stares back at his slightly taller professor, and then glances back at the empty space the beastly figure once was.
“He was.. Sonic? I thought the hero of our world was a hedgehog?” he asks dazedly, and Ray and Peter nod in agreement.
Professor Pickle laughs slightly, and he then puts his hands behind his back with a confident stance he’s been adopting more and more since Tails joined the research collective. “Yes, he still is. There’s a lot I need to tell you three.. Didn’t exactly get to do so on account of Robotnik having kidnapped me. I’m sure you are keen on the explanation..”
“Well, yeah. Egon got fuckin’ possessed, dude!” Peter cuts in, throwing up his arms. “Dark Gaia’s darkness is getting so much worse! I’m getting pretty worried here, Professor!”
“I understand that, Venkman.. Come along, and I’ll fill you in over a plate of cucumber sandwiches.” Peter grimaces at the memory of his professor’s rant on the subject of those sandwiches in question, but Ray and Egon’s stomachs growl in unison at the thought of being able to eat food after a night of nothing in their stomachs. Egon does lag behind for a few more seconds, and realizes Sonic, in this new bigger form, has returned to check up on some of the other townspeople, and he wonders if maybe this form was Dark Gaia’s way of doing something good - something against its nature that he’s heard from the Manuscripts.
The tenrec shakes his head and follows his friends back to the university in silence. Dark Gaia might not have the capacity to be that merciful, split off and angry and exhausted as the whole being must be for being woken up far too early.
–
In a fourth world, Egon’s full name is Egon Joshua Spengler, and the world of parapsychology is different. Maybe just a bit more childish, but also..
…
This is the first party he’s ever gone to, at least one that wasn’t a kid’s birthday party in the summer of 1984. But it’s exceedingly boring even in the deep purple suit he has adopted, and nobody has approached him for a conversation. Aside from Ray, nobody else has approached him at all, and it’s clear Ray’s just as uncomfortable as him in the situation. Not many enjoy talking complicated mathematics and theoretical physics regarding the appearance and disappearance of various ghosts and anchored imaginary beings like them.
What’s surprising is the glaring lack of Peter - even though Ray drove the both of them here, the butterfly-suit dressed psychologist is nowhere to be found in the main crowds like he might usually be. So, Egon strides through the crowd, quietly picking up some iced tea on the way before going outside to the outer portions of the 102nd floor observatory - after a long flight of stairs, of course. Due to the party between all the politicians and city leaders of NYC being here, the observation deck is relatively empty save for a few stragglers..
..but there is also Peter, dressed in a strange outfit only he would have the gumption to wear willingly. His dress shirt is missing its simple dark green jacket right now, just the customized dress shirt with tips that resemble butterfly wings, and he’s leaning on the railing in a particularly hazardous way that bothers Egon deeply. And Peter’s smoking a cigarette right now, making Egon feel even more bothered, so he strides over. “That’s hazardous, Peter. Really. Will you at least turn around?”
“Nah.” Peter talks around his cigarette, one hand gripping the railing while the other gestures freely. It’s a wonder he hasn’t yet to lose his balance..
“Peter, I swear to God-” Egon grips the back of Peter’s clothes, and Peter startles for a few seconds before re-balancing. “If you’re not going to move, at least let me keep you from falling.”
“...Ughhh.. Fine, Spengie.” The psychologist looks unsteady regardless, now that Egon can see him up close. (Why won’t Peter stop calling him that by now? He knows how Peter looks at Ray..) Peter looks.. rough, not drunk enough to fall asleep, but at least just barely enough to start showing he’s coming off a particularly strong set of drinks. It worries Egon enough to try and talk, his heart sinking at the thought that maybe Peter’s thoughts are going places they should not.
“Why did you even get this intoxicated? Isn’t this party meant to be for all of us?”
Peter looks down at the dizzying city depths far below them both.
“It’s just a place to rub a bunch of elbows of people who don’t give a crap about our research, Tex. They barely respect me, so I don’t wanna be out there. I thought you were gonna be talking out there.”
“..not particularly,” Egon admits, leaning on the railing the other way around while he drinks his nonalcoholic tea. “I’m not exactly excellent at my communication skills as it is. We figured that out rather quickly on this journey of ours.”
“Lucky for us wallflowers then,” Peter grumbles, the smoke barely being moved by the wind. Egon lets the silence fall for a few moments as he drains half of his clear plastic cup, not really enjoying the harsh bitter bite of the tea. (It was overbrewed and oversweetened at the same time..)
After a few seconds, Peter squirms slightly. “‘Kay, I’m sick of this.. Sick of it.”
Egon puts down his drink before slowly helping Peter shuffle the other way, but the intoxicated man stumbles and bumps his head on the railing, cussing. “MotherFUCKER- That hurt like hell!”
“It’s your fault for sitting so precariously,” Egon huffs, but he checks Peter’s head anyway. “Ugh, it’ll be impossible to check for a concussion this way..”
“...guess I deserve it for being a schmuck,” the psychologist mumbles, and when Egon stares at him with confusion, Peter continues talking, his alcoholic flush bright enough that the freckles are nearly impossible to point out like Egon can usually do. “It’s probably bad that I have to drink like this just to forget it all over again. The hurt that your absence caused. You left me behind, you dumb fuck.”
Egon draws back, looking sharply away past the railings. “I never meant it, Peter-”
“I ain’t done yet. Please.” Peter’s glassy eyes start to fill with tears - a total rarity considering how much Peter really hides these days. “You leaving me and Ray behind had to have been karma, right? Because of everything that happened after. Ray’s parents dying.. Mom’s cancer. Losing my job at Columbia, all my failed girlfriends and boyfriends..”
He lowers his head, even his fluffy brown hair looking dead and greasy as he sheds his tears silently.
“I.. I should have gone with you, Egon. But I don’t deserve to.”
Egon finds his hands shaking around his cup as he sits on his knees, practically kneeling next to Peter on the edge of the observation deck. “Why do you think so?”
Peter’s voice chokes as he grips the edges of his dress shirt, surprising Egon when he notices a small trail of eye makeup (Janine’s, likely) trail off his friend’s face with the tears.
“I’ve been selfish as hell this whole time, Egon Spengler. Why, you might be wondering?” With a shaking hand, Peter forces that hand towards the collar of his now wet, wrinkled shirt. “This right here. It betrays me even when I’m sober, Egon. You remember how I was as a kid..? About why I never mentioned liking anybody, wanting anyone to date?”
“...” Egon doesn’t move any closer, and Peter seems to visibly take it as a cue to keep talking, gripping his shirt so tightly it looks like it should hurt, but with the alcohol it’s likely Peter himself barely feels it.
“It’s you, Egon. You’re- you’re the only one I’ve liked, ever. It’s not fucking fair, because you don’t - you don’t like me, you never have. Elon sure didn’t.”
“Elon has Alexander,” Egon points out as calmly as he can. “But I’m afraid you’d be incorrect on your feelings to a degree.. To who is worth your time. You’re missing someone very important in all this - he’s the whole reason you and I ever met.”
(It’s really true, this final point.)
(It’s the whole reason he was ever able to talk to Peter, being so new then at socializing.)
Peter stares up at Egon, still crying, and the tall scientist very carefully puts a hand on Peter’s tense, cloth-covered shoulder. “I deeply value this friendship.. But I’m.. I don’t think romantic endeavors are possible with me. We’ve been apart for too long. But you and Raymond - you’re good for each other. You look so much happier in his presence, and you work together quite nicely.”
He sighs, and leaves Peter’s shoulder alone, drawing back to his own corner.
“And.. anyhow, I.. I still find I’m not competent at any of this. Empathy and comfort, those are Ray’s arenas of expertise, and yours. All I am good for is objective fact and science.”
Peter then grabs his wrist, with a surprisingly gentle but tight grip.
“Do you even hear yourself, Egon?! That brain of yours is why I like you! It’s.. it’s something you share with Ray too. I like both of you, so cut it out with the self-deprecation, asshole! I care about you.”
“..Only if you cease your own,” Egon says, and he finds himself shocked to find that he agrees with Peter’s sentiment about his attractions. He takes a second to re-contextualize his recent interactions, and makes that conclusion. His lips tremble slightly, and he twists his wrist very carefully to support Peter’s arm more properly. “I.. I care about you a good deal as well, and I hate to hear you talk about yourself that way. I’m very sorry I ever compounded things for you.”
“..and.. Uhm.. ‘m sorry for being so weird toward you.” Peter lets out a short laugh, before shakily taking his other hand and gripping Egon’s hand fully. “Help me up?”
Egon does just that with one of his usual smirk-adjacent smiles, and with some cautiousness to account for Peter’s lingering unsteadiness as the two men stand back to their feet in the cool October air. Peter takes a few breaths, and wipes his eyes despite the makeup smudging all over his dress shirt sleeves, leaving dark blue and light green marks. “Ugh.. I feel like crap.”
“That’s the alcohol speaking, to a degree.” Egon chuckles slightly. “Maybe we ought to tell Ray of this developme-”
The distant sound of thunder interrupts Egon, its source being a good bit north of them, past Central Park. During their conversation, the skies of New York City have gotten far darker than they’re supposed to, and if Egon squints, he can see torrential rain beginning to fall over Central Park near -
“Oh fuck me,” Peter mumbles, as if the alcohol has all but never been consumed as his body suddenly straightens, which coincidentally covers the rest of the strangled panicked thought that Egon has. “Egon, ain’t that Dana’s apartment building?! Look at that shit - doesn’t that look like the thing we saw the summer we met?!”
“...It’s spreading,” Egon says intensely, secretly feeling every bit of the panic that Peter does as he begins to see IFs popping up a few floors down. “Peter, it’s spreading. Something’s going on with the imaginary entities! That is no normal storm.”
Peter tugs on Egon’s arm, his good mood vanished as Ray appears in his own suit, bursting out from inside as the rain steadily approaches the Empire State Building. “Egon, Pete, we’ve got a situation! Winston’s downstairs waiting on us with our stuff.”
Both Ghostbusters nod in unison at each other - the assignment between them is understood. Ray ushers them inside with a motion, his PKE Meter that he’s holding buzzing loudly with alarm, and the sounds of panicking people a few floors down does not help Egon’s personal feelings on the matter.
(The notion that something horrible is about to happen.)
–
In a fifth and final place, he’s called Egon Ashley Spengler, a movie director with a past as a filmographer and a tragic ex-relationship that leads to a chaotic first movie and the hidden trouble beneath the surface of the filming process.
In the quiet hours of the morning, he’s still awake - Egon has only gotten maybe a solid two and a half hours of fitful sleep after everything he’d witnessed the night before. A lot of things about the news reports feel wrong, falsified even. Some video was released to the press claiming the death of the one good stunt double he used to have is a murder - committed by one Raymond Stantz.
And the worst part? Ray can’t even answer for himself, because he’s dead now.
He listlessly messes with a model of the truck type Ray was driving around the day he was accused, and then he examines the footage.
“Following a dramatic boat explosion on Sydney Harbor, police -” Egon rewinds, and scrutinizes the footage, leaning towards his laptop with determination. “- Following a dramatic boat explosion on Sydney Harbor, police are currently investigating the suicide of Raymond “Ray”--”
Something presses against his shoulder, and Egon lets out an uncharacteristically loud yell before absolutely shoving his elbow into the person who’s just grabbed him, aiming for what he hopes is the solar plexus before realizing he’s hit part of a costume meant for the alien stunt doubles. The attacker groans, using the voice changer in the suit.
“Calm down- ow, stop please-”
Egon goes for the face next, using the brick phone prop set on his desk to wail on the person. “Do not tell me to be calm! I will use my krav maga training to break your body into little pieces!”
Egon stabs the person in the leg with his pen (which they scream in pain at, voice modulation and all), then knocks over the alien costume-wearing person next, and just as he’s gotten the mystery person knocked over in an uki-otoshi position, the person frantically cries out.
“No-no-no wait wait!” The person shakily points at themself and then makes a motion so familiar that Egon drops the person in shock, causing him to groan after frantically giving a thumbs-up. Egon gasps, and mutters various apologies as he removes the helmet and false alien head within. Ray, frankly, looks like he’s been knocked around quite a bit, not a single scrape or bruise treated - but he’s alive, and that’s enough for Egon, who draws himself in to hold Ray’s head close to his own.
“I knew it, I knew it - I saw it in the news footage. You’re alive, Ray, you’re alive..!” Egon says desperately, these rare emotions feeling like a gut punch.
Ray dazedly smiles despite the pained look in his eyes, and he mumbles a reply that is like music to Egon’s ears. “..water training 6 days a week for three years, Egie.. that’s how.”
Egon curls slightly and presses Ray’s forehead to his own, now his mind has room for the other emotions in this situation. The anger, the disbelief. The lies his goddamned producer Walter Dickless gave him. Thank goodness all of those lies were wrong. Still, it makes his hands tremble with the feelings of frustration, enough that he sees Ray shakily put his own hands up to Egon’s face.
“Breathe, Egie, breathe. I know you’re probably feeling really mad right now but- I had to warn you. I couldn’t let Dan win.” Egon pauses at that, his eyes wide.
“Dan did this?!”
Ray nods, and Egon quietly tries to sit Ray up, only to hear Peck’s muffled voice outside his truck trailer. With wide eyes he hands Ray his helmet back and motions for him to hide in his trailer closet, at the same time frantically clearing the broken and knocked over things. “Walter, give me a minute please!”
The redheaded producer enters, hey grey hairs looking especially irritating as he checks in. “Everything alright, Spengler?”
“I- I’m fine. Just was shaken..” he mumbles, adjusting his glasses and double-checking that Ray is still hidden and that none of his blood is on the carpet. “He-he was my ex-partner, of course I would be upset..”
“..Just stay calm today, alright? If I have to, I’ll help direct for you,” Peck says, crossing his arms. Egon shakes his head, insistent.
“No, Walter, I’m alright. I will still direct. Please have everything ready in one hour, before Dan arrives.” Walter grumbles at this, but eventually he relents and backs up, back into the beach area that serves as the filming location.
“Alright. If you do need anything, call.”
Egon just stares as he shuts the door.. And a few moments later, he presses his back against the door to give Ray room to exit the closet.
“...that was much too close.”
Ray stumbles out of the closet and sits on the ground again, panting. “I don’t have time or a lot of proof, but I at least know Dickless’ plan. Him and Dan are trying to frame me for the death of Howie with this.. deepfake stuff Phoebe told me about. I’m gonna guess their lame plan for trying to blow me up was a part of it.”
Egon leans on the door still, feeling so angry he could drop.
“So their cowardice was the reason for that explosion at the harbor?”
Ray sits up the best he can, grunting faintly in pain, and he nods.
“There’s got to be some manner to kick their faces in,” Egon says in a threatening tone, seeing red. “Have Phoebe and Trevor heard of this?”
Ray shakes his head no, so Egon opts to radio Winston, speaking quietly and feeling extremely glad he tends to keep his radio channels to one or two people per channel.
“Ecto-1, this is Gozer. Need to chat with you in twenty. Would you mind giving a status check on Pheebs and Trev?”
After a few seconds, Winston replies. “10-4, they’re fine. Just got to set with Callie. We’re on for the last major chase sequence in one hour, like you want it. …but hey, did Vigo make it?”
Egon glances at Ray quizzically, and Ray mouths something about “just go with it”, so Egon replies back. “...yes, Vigo is here with me now. Make sure Dickless hears nothing of this conversation, and get with Lotsabucks and Vinz as soon as possible. I need a lot to make sure this goes off without a hitch - recording team needs to be especially attentive to my stunt people and Dan today. Oh, and get with Louis and the pyro team. I’ll need them as well. Details in twenty.”
“Got it. Over and out.”
Egon puts down the radio, and he turns to Ray and the model map of the filming location Ray is partially leaning against. Ray bites his lip, clearly nervous as he looks up at Egon. “..Good that you’re on the same page now.. Winston was with me when Dan’s phone got trashed last night. We were gonna give it to you, but.. well, Peck and Dan’s stupid assassin blew it up.”
“No matter. There are alternatives.” Egon pushes his glasses up and picks up the truck model, placing it on the model of the filming location. “It’s to do with our dream scene in our movie’s former script. You know, when Harold drives the children and Carrie to safety away from Vinz Clotho?”
Ray’s eyes widen in recognition. “Oh, that’s right! But I thought you were going to get rid of the scene since Dan didn’t wanna do it.”
Egon presses the car’s model towards a particular gap in the mini-beach, determination buzzing in his veins.
“Oh, I’ll get him to do this particular scene on schedule. I will have Peter and Janine get with you and prepare a recording during the actual stunt..” Egon pantomimes the car leaping over the gap. “The threat of possible death or severe injury to that farce of an ego will make him talk. He’ll have no choice but to concede his part if he were to confess.”
Ray nods, his expression becoming very determined. “Okay.. I think I can do that. Just hope I don’t waste the last Cadillac we could get our hands on..”
Egon places a hand on Ray’s shoulder again, giving a genuine (if slightly deranged) smile before standing up.
“You got this, Ray. I believe in you. My plan may not be the best, but it is as solid as I can make it. We are not alone in this, I swear it.”
“Y-yeah.” Ray nods again, and he hugs Egon before standing back up once more, ready to begin the plan in earnest..
–
In this world, Egon Spengler is just that. Egon Spengler, Ghostbuster, dear friend to some and enemy to others.
But he is a hero many times over.
Egon blinks awake, groggy with sleep and a half-remembered dream. At first he wonders if it’s the temporal echoes bothering him again, given how many times he died before this timeline, but it isn’t anything like that. No, he feels none of those phantom pains upon waking up in his bed at HQ, but he does feel a.. resonance with the Interspatial Teleportation Unit again. The others aren’t currently asleep either, meaning he has overslept, judging by the noises downstairs. Egon groans, and sits up, dizzy from the most recent of his dreams caused by the lingering temporal energy still in his body.
(“..I still register on the PKE Meter?” he remembers asking when he brought up the dream about the party on the Empire State Building getting interrupted by rogue imaginary friends and Gozer’s usual tricks far in the future.)
(He remembers his partner’s uncertain look as he sips at some soda, scribbling down the reading. “You’ve got to remember, Spengie, you were under Tree’s looping curse for a long while. I don’t think the reading will quite go away till at least 2000..”)
(Egon sighed at Ray, tempted to slam his head into the desk at terminal velocity to deal with the frustration, but he did not do so, and he only had replied, “- but you had said the temporal energy would fade off in 1995, Ray.”)
(“Well.. that would have been the case if all those visits from other worlds didn’t happen.. It’s kinda weird to me still that Abby was able to figure out really fast about your loops.” Ray had cringed, and Egon shook his head at the time. Ray then continued, “She had a point, though. Because of the times you were near the ITU, that dimensional energy is going to have its own separate echoes, so to speak. You might temporarily resonate time and again with other Egon Spenglers across time and space. Holtzmann said she knows someone that can mitigate that stuff if you want, but I understand you’d be kinda hesitant to mess with temporal things again..”)
His head aches by his forehead despite there not being a trepenation scar this time around, and Egon swings his legs over the edge of his bed, opting to reach over for his dream journal - something Peter suggested he keep.
(Oddly enough, this time the dream is of a scenario I’ve actually gone through,) Egon muses as he scribbles the story down. (The loops where I went into the movie-making business.. Ah, except my last loop, I had been the stunt-person, and Ray had been my loving director/cameraperson..)
The record is complete after a few minutes of writing, and just as Egon’s put the book down to get ready for a day of work, Ray hurries up the stairs, calling out. “Hey, Egie! Could you come down again to the lab? I’m still having trouble figuring out that stone tablet me and Pete took from the Met.”
“..Ah? I wish you’d woken me up sooner, Ray..” Egon practically rushes around the room regardless of his faintly aching legs from having laid down for too long, before a strange sense of deja vu settles over his chest. (Oh no. That cannot be good..) he thinks to himself mid-shuffle of his dress pants, not liking the deja vu popping up in his mind again. But he can’t really place the feeling as he picks a blue suit jacket and a plain black tie to go with his dark pants, at least until he’s deep in conversation with Ray.
“-This is going nowhere, Ray. There was nothing in Tobin’s, or Spates, or any of the dozen other books we’ve checked so far.” Egon picks up a water bottle, trying internally again to figure out which goddamned temporal loop of the 83 options in his crammed, traumatic memories he may have seen that familiar tablet in. Ray, currently in a dark grey shirt, blue jeans and Egon’s lab coat, checks another book. He shakes his head as he continues onward with the conversation.
“Well, we have to figure out what it is, Egie. Otherwise it’s a ticking time bomb, just waiting to be set off. I wish we could make some sense of those characters etched on there. I assumed they were Greek.”
That phrase is what ends up jogging Egon’s memory - the 47th loop, he’d been in this exact situation because his water bottle had been opened and tipped over. Now he remembers he had trouble remembering this exact moment due to the ghost within the tablet, he’d been possessed, he knows that much due to the Mood Slime that had to be used afterwards-
The water spills on Egon instead, while he had intended on holding the water bottle, he’d tipped it, and it tips all over his shirt, snapping him out of his stupor at least in part. Peter groans, facepalming after he’d set the gigantic pile of books down. “Shit - sorry, Egon.”
Egon doesn’t reply for a second, his body untensing after he realizes he must have frozen in place again. Peter looks nervous, and is about to wave a hand in front of Egon’s face. “Egon, you’re not having a flashback again, are you?”
“I.. I’m alright, I just..” Egon looks down at the water bottle, which is now on the floor at his feet. “..the tablet would have activated when water touched it. My apologies.”
Ray, at this point, scratches his head with a confused look, slightly worried as well. “Should we take a break, guys? We’ve both been at it all afternoon..”
Egon shakes his head, leaning on the table for support as his arms start to tremble again. The echo of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that killed him last time makes him feel like he really, really detests the ocean suddenly again.. But he does his best to swallow down that memory, and he takes another breath, speaking haltingly.
“It is comprised of familiar root-words in languages typically spoken around the Mediterranean.. I think. I don’t remember much about the last time I saw this tablet, I got possessed then.” When Ray and Peter both get worried expressions as if about to repeat their sentiments of taking a break again, he shakes his head at them. “I promise you, I’m alright. The rest of that loop is intact in my mind. But.. To trap this ghost, at least one of us will have to be bait, and we’ll need to go to Battery Park to do the bust - around dawn. I.. believe that is when the ghost will be responsive.”
Peter groans, and Ray snaps his book shut, shocked but excited. “That’s great that you remembered, Egon!”
“Ray, didn’t you hear him? One of us is gonna have to get willingly possessed! That’s not as great as you may think!” Peter argues. He even shakes Egon’s shoulders for emphasis. “I don’t think I wanna see Egon possessed again either! That sucked last time we did this!”
Egon’s head amusedly lolls back and forth like a bobble-head before it steadies, and he sighs. “At least with this knowledge I can say Mood Slime works perfectly fine on its own to expel him. ..the, ah, ghost in the tablet, I mean.”
“That doesn’t make it better, dumbass!”
Egon tunes Peter out for the time being, taking a second to glance at Ray’s face again, watching him very carefully. His Ray, the one with freckles, dark red hair, mismatched eyes and the broken remnants of the necklace of the very ghost who put Egon and Ray through so much around Ray’s thick neck. The slightly younger scientist presses closer, giving an extra-worried glance to the tablet and that glance becomes more determined, Ray’s expression back to what it usually would be in normal circumstances, which encourages Egon to speak up once more.
“Venkman!”
Peter stops, his shoulders lowering and his rant fizzling out. “What, Egon?”
“If it’ll really make you feel better, you can de-possess me yourself, alright?”
Peter rolls his eyes, muttering “You’re impossible, Spengler,” but the relief is there in his body language in how his shoulders untense entirely, and it’s at this moment that Ray fires off possible strategies to deal with the ghost Egon brought up, so Egon stays quiet, keeping a close eye on the tablet while he idly tries drying his shirt with a nearby towel, mentally cataloguing the strategies.
– FIN –
Fandom: IDW Ghostbusters, and five others in this order: Minecraft (The Aether mod + popular Origins mod), Splatoon, Sonic the Hedgehog, IF (2024) and The Fall Guy (2024).
Rating: PG for the second segment, PG-13 for everything else (see sprawling content notes).
Length: 7887 words
Content notes: Brief description for burn injuries, light body horror (Segment I), possession (Segment III), drunkenness, hinted suicidal thoughts (Segment IV), brief violence (Segment II + V), spoilers for IDW Publishing's Crossing Over and Interdimensional Cross-Rip comic maxi-series, for the Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary mini-series first comic, in addition to tangential spoilers for Splatoon, Sonic Unleashed, IF and The Fall Guy - as well as for a personal AU in Segment VI. Oh, and there's swearing peppered throughout.
Author notes: This can be considered a sort of denouement for an AU I'm writing another thing for during Amnesty 78 here - and a sort of celebration of my autumnal / summer writings I did off-site when I first got struck with the Ghostbusters brainrot.
Also, I really didn't mean to write almost 8000 words for this, good lord. I hope it's not too much trouble to read.. I did my absolute best to keep stuff coherent between segments.
(Patch notes: Changed title slightly to show the main two challenges used. Sorry about that, mods.)
Written for: Five Things + Variation (all segments), Anywhere but Here + Travel (Segment I), Voice + Influences (Segment II), Shadow + Coincidence (Segment III), Breakdown + Confession (Segment IV), Teamwork + Fight (Segment V), Looking Back (Segment VI). All are for Amnesty 78.
Summary: Five things other Egon Spenglers have done across the multiverse, and one Egon Spengler too painfully aware of them all.
--
In one world, Egon’s full name is Egon Elias Spengler - a disgraced parapsychologist who just wanted to see what’s above the clouds of his world, but lost his humanity in the process.
Bandages cover much of his face and he’s forced to wear a thick cloak, even in the throes of a hot summer. What’s beneath the bandaging and cloaking and all this effort is silken and healed up for the most part, the only part that has not healed is his self-esteem. The incident wasn’t intentional - none of it was. He’d been hard at work, attempting to prove the rumored stories correct.
In this world, there is a dimension different than the mythical words of the End and the Nether, but instead of sinking into the darkness, it rises into the light of the skies. By that edict, it was given a name among the few parapsychologists he knows of, the few that had once been his motivation to pursue the science.. the Aether Dimension. From a text he had translated by himself with his burgeoning skills, and with the help of his fellow professor, Venkman, Egon had thought he had it.
A working portal to the Aether, or so he believed. But he’d done one very crucial thing incorrectly, the actual frame itself.. It was meant to be glowstone, he’d mistranslated and used the wrong material - had it not been for his pet spider Prometheus, he could have died when the portal exploded due to the magically ignited shroomlight blocks.
However, this beget a new problem, which Egon struggles with at this moment still, a problem that prompts him to collapse with the pink petals and the shade of the sakura blossoms far outside the limits of the college that rejected him hours ago. His cloak splays out around him, revealing.. His arms, two of the four appendages still half bandaged from the accident, dirtied from the initial rains he had run from. Now, the sky is half-cloudy and the sun peeks through, scorching like the flames of the Nether, and Egon figures this is his punishment.
Egon thinks back to the only other person who’s treated him not as the monster he feels - a Blazeborn hybrid healer that treated him so carefully, cauterizing some of his worst wounds near his new arms, using herbal creams and normal antibiotics for the rest. Ray Aurora Stantz, he remembers this one was named. Ray had a kind demeanor, but a firm one, an energy he has rarely seen in people. Carefully with his regular arms, Egon takes out a small slip of paper - the notes Ray graciously wrote down for him before he was discharged from the small clinic for those affected by magical accidents.
Egon Elias Spengler - Arachnid-human, ultra-dimensional accident victim.
Knocked into unconsciousness by the explosion and a concussion - seemed as if dimensional burn damage happened as well.
Recommendation - therapeutic mental recovery is a must. No excess movement of head nor second arm set for two weeks.
…and for the love of the Gods, Dean Yeager, be nice to him, alright? Dr. Glass is sick and tired of you mistreating Mr. Spengler and since Dr. Glass had me write this report this time, I’m saying it for him.
Egon stares up into the cherry tree branches just above his head, letting out a very shaky breath as he partially sees the ultraviolet light the sun puts off, and yet seeing also the normal human view of the light as he removes the bandages from his upper forehead to let his extra eyes have some time with the open air, like Ray had suggested.
…
……..
He finds the shaken self-esteem rising back in his mind the more he simply lays in the pile of cherry blossom petals he’s sat in, so Egon tries again to close his damn eyes and relax. He forgets the drill, he forgets his plans for isolating himself, and for a moment only, he forgets that he wasn’t born this way - a spider-like humanoid with no job and no housing now. Then, Egon remembers the small bag of prototypes he was allowed to keep, and he gently grabs the straps of the bag with his normal set of hands to continue to try and ground himself.
The research he’d wanted to do.. he wonders if he can still do it like he is now, and then the moment of peace is over considering the sun will go down very soon. Egon sits up, and then stands to his feet while using the tree he was sitting by to help him up. With care, he slips the bag back onto his back under his cloak, and continues on his way, seeing a curious black tower in the distance thanks to his somewhat enhanced eyes. The scientist adjusts his glasses, and considers his house plan, looking to the normal forest that the cherry trees bleed into.
–
In a second world, his full name is Egon Jude Spengler, sub-commander of the Ecto Unit within the Elite Octoling Corps.
For the seventh time, he adjusts the black leather coat the DJ provided him, extra nervous due to the reports he’s been getting. A few Octarians have gone missing already since the young teen known between his students as Sango started infiltrating the higher domes. Sango’s about one dome away from the Royal Octo Stadium, where he is currently. A slightly shorter figure approaches him, tapping twice on his shoulder - a practiced motion he has come to know means his husband wants him.
…unofficial husband, Egon amends in his mind, given Octarian law has exorbitant marriage lisence fees even among Elite Octolings of his caliber. Regardless, he slips off his goggles and regards his daughter Calliope. The blonde-headed Octoling juts her head to a side area, which Egon heads away from, irritably brushing a forehead tentacle out of his face while entering the side room. (Cod, I need to cut my tentacles again.. Maybe that’ll be better than the rations I’ve had to feed Calliope as of late..)
A red-headed Octoling in similar Elite Octoling uniform style as Egon waves his hand, wearing a simple handmade ring on a chain around his neck. “Oh!! You’re here!”
“{You’re improving on Inklish,}” Egon observes thoughtfully, stepping within and seeing all of his husband Ray’s research scattered across the room. “{...you do know Octavio-heika doesn’t like messes, right?}”
Ray sheepishly smiles and starts cleaning up, his shorter tentacles curling and uncurling while he picks up the papers and stacks them neatly by research topic. “{Anyhow, yes, I think I’m just about as fluent as you, Egie! I kind of wish Nyx hadn’t gone MIA.. Do you know how much harder it’s gotten to get surface books since she disappeared?}”
Ray and Egon both lose their pleasant expressions at the mention of their once-superior Nyx Tamaki - she’d gone missing after both had been inducted into the Elite Octolings ages ago, and now they are but a few of the remaining lead Elites. Egon takes a moment to pick up one of the books Ray got from the surface recently, probably from one of the lower Octoling spies considering the bad condition the book is in. He flips through it curiously, his spirits lightening a little again when he realizes he’s reading scientific materials.
“{Ray, is this a scientific journal? I have not seen new literature in years,}” he says with restrained excitement. Ray grins and after he grabs his notes, he leans against Egon’s much thinner shoulder, pointing some things out with a gloved hand.
“{This is great, isn’t it? Aiko got this one for me from an Inkfish library. It’s so fascinating!}”
Egon keeps flipping through the scientific journal, parsing its contents to be something about Inkfish history, especially in the Lost Territories.. He’s surprised to hear the surface scientists call the Mollusk Era by the same name as he would, causing a rare smile to pop back up on his face. If he wasn’t reading it incorrectly, he’d almost assume the Inkfish on the surface aren’t as bad as the DJ normally claims in his speech material.. Egon feels he has to concede on that one, seeing as Sango hasn’t truly killed a single Octoling so far in their journey..
Speaking of, an alarm sounds, and the gruff voice of DJ Octavio rings through their small haven.
“{ALL ELITES TO THE CENTER STAGES. I REPEAT, ALL ELITES TO THE CENTER STAGES. MAKE SURE YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS ARE SAFE IN THE RAFTERS BEFORE HEADING DOWN. OUTIE 8000.}”
Ray and Egon both sigh, and pack up their research as quickly as they can. With all their papers and stolen Inkfish surface books packed in their duffel bags, Egon calls out to the hallway. “{Calliope dear! It’s time! Will you go and ask Acht to help you to the rafters?}”
The blonde-headed long-tentacle bearing 19-year-old salutes dutifully to Egon, and then superjumps in another direction - towards the rafters outside. Egon takes Ray’s hand and squeezes it, and Ray squeezes back, muttering a long-forgotten intoner prayer under his breath before walking ahead of Egon. Their places are among the other Elites in the lowest rafters closest to the stadium floor, a lot of the Octarian population here just besides the numerous Octolings. Above his fellow Octarian friends, Egon can’t really hear what’s going on below, but he can see his king and an Inkfish down there..
(Golden-orange ink, inside suckers.. That must be Sango down there. I see something ferocious in her green eyes.. They remind me a little of how Calliope looks when she’s excited.)
After a brief conversation, Egon sees the two begin their battle, and.. Oh, oh no..
He hears parts and pieces of Sango’s lyrics - it’s clear to Egon that Sango is attempting a rap battle whilst literally firing ink at DJ Octavio, half-struggling under the sheer weight of the more experienced rappist’s back-track and lyrical content, but the Inkfish continues, pushing back the DJ’s attacks with ease.
(At this rate, he’ll..) Egon leans forward while Ray calibrates the DJ’s Sting Ray a few seats away, clutching his own hidden chained up ring under his uniform with anxiety behind his goggles. (Octavio-heika, please…!)
The audio system at Ray’s fingertips changes rapidly in color, and Ray yells out as magenta and green light begins to cover up all the statistical information in a few different patterns and wavelengths. Egon groans as the light reaches his own goggles, unsuccessfully attempting to cover his eyes. A beat sets in shortly after, its long notes seeming to encourage the Inkfish below, to give her new strength. Even Octavio is mesmerized, but something indelible and important rises in Egon’s hearts.
These are intoners’ voices.
And they call for him to be free of the black flower that is Octavio’s pain and refusal to change.
“Sango! Can you hear our song?” he hears over the radio. His goggles spark and then snap in half as he stares down at the stadium, his hearts thumping loudly in his chest to the beat.
That melody.. Those words..
Egon is enraptured as he hears more than one voice sing along to the melodies, despite most of the Octarians not knowing Inklish as well as him and Ray, he hears the sentiment. Sango fights ever harder while singing with their loudest possible voice, every attack slamming into Octavio and his mechanical DJ’s booth with harder and harder force. Egon mouths the words as a prayer as he shuts his eyes, something reverberating in his chest with the pure overwhelming sound.
Hope.
He glances left, to Calliope and Acht. They too have the look in their eyes, an awakened soul in both of them. He glances right, to Ray and also his twin brother Ellis, and they too bear the look. The song continues to echo, and shift, and engrave itself within him even after Sango leaves and the Great Zapfish vanishes. The concert, for how short it was, was breathtaking and life-changing.. Something within Egon’s lonely soul finally wakes again, his hope, his freedom -
He must seek this freedom, the crystal sky and sea the song spoke of - and all he does to communicate this to Ray and Elon is a simple double-nod and the widest teary-eyed grin he’s ever managed.
(If he were to recount this five years later to Nyx’s daughter Mercury, and her two friends Kira and Michael, Egon wouldn’t describe the battle as a battle, but of a dance, very likely, and the song as a light of hope. And if they were to react to Egon’s story, it would probably be a common sentiment of freedom - freedom to pursue steady paychecks, freedom to express one’s identity, freedom to break from family tradition..)
(It so happens for Egon, the day of the fateful concert - and of Sango’s arrival to the center stadium - happened to check all three boxes.)
–
In a third world, Egon’s full name is Egon Isadore Spengler, a tenrec happening to study at Spagonia University..
Egon’s week thus far has been a bad one, one that makes him want to drown in his coffee pot and sufganiyot to forget it all. The excavation of the Gaia Manuscripts has gone off without a hitch - the part of the world formerly known as the Land of Darkness had a temple containing the Manuscripts somewhere in Adabat, and thanks to Raymond the Quokka’s keen eyes as well as Peter the Betta’s haggling, the mission went even better than before. But Venkman’s visions were, unfortunately, concerning and spot-on.
The day after the three got back to the University, they came to a room cluttered and chaotic - they’d missed the earthquakes on account of having been jet-lagged, and now their professor is missing. What’s worse is that Egon readily recognizes the machine parts, those of the Robotnik family make. (Ugh.)
But just as they exit the room, Egon fiddles with his newest machine, a prototype sensor array meant for extrasensory things he can’t catch - after all, Egon is the odd one out of his friend group, and possesses no Chaos Energy to sense things with. The meter’s antennae jump up with a suddenness just as he’s the last out of the study, blinking both a bright green and a deep purple, the two respective energy signatures that his sensors have reported in Greece and in Mazuri. Raymond has taken to calling the two signatures different ends of the Gaia Psychokinetic Energy spectrum, or the GPKE..
(Huh? Why is it registering this strongly…?) The dark brown furred tenrec’s thoughts stop as a familiar cobalt blue Mobian walks by. It’s none other than Sonic the Hedgehog, a teenage hedgehog with a penchant for saving the world from Dr. Ivo Robotnik all the time, and one of the Mobians of the world with a high Chaos Energy output..
(And yet..)
Sonic looks towards him, Raymond and Peter. “Uhh.. Is everything okay?”
Raymond’s fuzzy ears lower, and he shakes his head, dull red fur puffed up due to the sudden onset of stress. “‘fraid not, Mr. Sonic... The professor’s been kidnapped.”
Sonic’s expression falls, as does that of his companions, one whom Egon knows to be named Tails Prower, and the other someone he’s never seen before.. He keeps a hold of his sensor meter as Sonic, Tails and the mystery fairy dog rush into the professor’s study. Peter leans a little to the left, cupping a scale-covered hand over his mouth to muffle what he’s about to say.
“You got that reading, right, Egon? Something’s up with Sonic and that fuzzy living plushie.”
“..you may be right.. Both of them have strong GPKE readings,” Egon concurs, shutting the meter off and writing down the observations with a precise, careful hand. “I suppose it must make sense, however, with the readings popping up near the Gaia Temple locations.”
Raymond blinks slowly, putting his hands on his hips. “But.. it doesn’t entirely make sense either. If I translated the manuscripts correctly with Professor Pickle, it’s too early! If it’s really Dark Gaia causing the darker end of GPKE to pop up..”
“Yeah that.. Really doesn’t sound ideal,” Peter growls, his fins billowing slightly with irritation. “So what do we do about it? Egon’s at risk ‘cause he doesn’t have the same Chaos Energy thing we do, Ray.”
Egon falls deep into thought, staring at his written notes, and feeling the last week of events slam into his aching self like a sledgehammer. He knows Peter’s point exactly – as per Raymond and Professor Pickle’s joint translation of the Manuscripts in question, those without natural chaos are vulnerable to the corruption Dark Gaia’s power brings. Making him especially vulnerable..
He shakes his head, and finishes his notes for now.
– Later, at nighttime.. –
A dance of darkness under a moonlit sky..
That’s as much as Egon can perceive through the veil of darkness that makes his head feel heavy and himself like he’s taken at least twenty hits on weed, at least until he hears a distant murmur of voices. Something about something not being right..?
(T.. that’s.. right..)
A flash of light sends him crashing to the ground, and he mumbles dazedly as two sets of hands pull him to his feet. Peter especially is irritated, his fins flaring. “Egon, you dumbass! I told you not to come out here willy-nilly!”
“..Ungh.” Egon blinks tiredly, looking over by chance towards his right. He sees a bulk of dark blue and light teal fur fleeing, and then a small familiar fairy dog rushing off after them, recalling that the fairy dog had been with Sonic a day before this moment. “..Wait, is that..?”
Their professor emerges from hiding, humming in a pleased manner, and he comes over to them. “I will chalk another victory up for Sonic. I’m glad Tails’ camera was able to help you, Spengler.”
Egon stares back at his slightly taller professor, and then glances back at the empty space the beastly figure once was.
“He was.. Sonic? I thought the hero of our world was a hedgehog?” he asks dazedly, and Ray and Peter nod in agreement.
Professor Pickle laughs slightly, and he then puts his hands behind his back with a confident stance he’s been adopting more and more since Tails joined the research collective. “Yes, he still is. There’s a lot I need to tell you three.. Didn’t exactly get to do so on account of Robotnik having kidnapped me. I’m sure you are keen on the explanation..”
“Well, yeah. Egon got fuckin’ possessed, dude!” Peter cuts in, throwing up his arms. “Dark Gaia’s darkness is getting so much worse! I’m getting pretty worried here, Professor!”
“I understand that, Venkman.. Come along, and I’ll fill you in over a plate of cucumber sandwiches.” Peter grimaces at the memory of his professor’s rant on the subject of those sandwiches in question, but Ray and Egon’s stomachs growl in unison at the thought of being able to eat food after a night of nothing in their stomachs. Egon does lag behind for a few more seconds, and realizes Sonic, in this new bigger form, has returned to check up on some of the other townspeople, and he wonders if maybe this form was Dark Gaia’s way of doing something good - something against its nature that he’s heard from the Manuscripts.
The tenrec shakes his head and follows his friends back to the university in silence. Dark Gaia might not have the capacity to be that merciful, split off and angry and exhausted as the whole being must be for being woken up far too early.
–
In a fourth world, Egon’s full name is Egon Joshua Spengler, and the world of parapsychology is different. Maybe just a bit more childish, but also..
…
This is the first party he’s ever gone to, at least one that wasn’t a kid’s birthday party in the summer of 1984. But it’s exceedingly boring even in the deep purple suit he has adopted, and nobody has approached him for a conversation. Aside from Ray, nobody else has approached him at all, and it’s clear Ray’s just as uncomfortable as him in the situation. Not many enjoy talking complicated mathematics and theoretical physics regarding the appearance and disappearance of various ghosts and anchored imaginary beings like them.
What’s surprising is the glaring lack of Peter - even though Ray drove the both of them here, the butterfly-suit dressed psychologist is nowhere to be found in the main crowds like he might usually be. So, Egon strides through the crowd, quietly picking up some iced tea on the way before going outside to the outer portions of the 102nd floor observatory - after a long flight of stairs, of course. Due to the party between all the politicians and city leaders of NYC being here, the observation deck is relatively empty save for a few stragglers..
..but there is also Peter, dressed in a strange outfit only he would have the gumption to wear willingly. His dress shirt is missing its simple dark green jacket right now, just the customized dress shirt with tips that resemble butterfly wings, and he’s leaning on the railing in a particularly hazardous way that bothers Egon deeply. And Peter’s smoking a cigarette right now, making Egon feel even more bothered, so he strides over. “That’s hazardous, Peter. Really. Will you at least turn around?”
“Nah.” Peter talks around his cigarette, one hand gripping the railing while the other gestures freely. It’s a wonder he hasn’t yet to lose his balance..
“Peter, I swear to God-” Egon grips the back of Peter’s clothes, and Peter startles for a few seconds before re-balancing. “If you’re not going to move, at least let me keep you from falling.”
“...Ughhh.. Fine, Spengie.” The psychologist looks unsteady regardless, now that Egon can see him up close. (Why won’t Peter stop calling him that by now? He knows how Peter looks at Ray..) Peter looks.. rough, not drunk enough to fall asleep, but at least just barely enough to start showing he’s coming off a particularly strong set of drinks. It worries Egon enough to try and talk, his heart sinking at the thought that maybe Peter’s thoughts are going places they should not.
“Why did you even get this intoxicated? Isn’t this party meant to be for all of us?”
Peter looks down at the dizzying city depths far below them both.
“It’s just a place to rub a bunch of elbows of people who don’t give a crap about our research, Tex. They barely respect me, so I don’t wanna be out there. I thought you were gonna be talking out there.”
“..not particularly,” Egon admits, leaning on the railing the other way around while he drinks his nonalcoholic tea. “I’m not exactly excellent at my communication skills as it is. We figured that out rather quickly on this journey of ours.”
“Lucky for us wallflowers then,” Peter grumbles, the smoke barely being moved by the wind. Egon lets the silence fall for a few moments as he drains half of his clear plastic cup, not really enjoying the harsh bitter bite of the tea. (It was overbrewed and oversweetened at the same time..)
After a few seconds, Peter squirms slightly. “‘Kay, I’m sick of this.. Sick of it.”
Egon puts down his drink before slowly helping Peter shuffle the other way, but the intoxicated man stumbles and bumps his head on the railing, cussing. “MotherFUCKER- That hurt like hell!”
“It’s your fault for sitting so precariously,” Egon huffs, but he checks Peter’s head anyway. “Ugh, it’ll be impossible to check for a concussion this way..”
“...guess I deserve it for being a schmuck,” the psychologist mumbles, and when Egon stares at him with confusion, Peter continues talking, his alcoholic flush bright enough that the freckles are nearly impossible to point out like Egon can usually do. “It’s probably bad that I have to drink like this just to forget it all over again. The hurt that your absence caused. You left me behind, you dumb fuck.”
Egon draws back, looking sharply away past the railings. “I never meant it, Peter-”
“I ain’t done yet. Please.” Peter’s glassy eyes start to fill with tears - a total rarity considering how much Peter really hides these days. “You leaving me and Ray behind had to have been karma, right? Because of everything that happened after. Ray’s parents dying.. Mom’s cancer. Losing my job at Columbia, all my failed girlfriends and boyfriends..”
He lowers his head, even his fluffy brown hair looking dead and greasy as he sheds his tears silently.
“I.. I should have gone with you, Egon. But I don’t deserve to.”
Egon finds his hands shaking around his cup as he sits on his knees, practically kneeling next to Peter on the edge of the observation deck. “Why do you think so?”
Peter’s voice chokes as he grips the edges of his dress shirt, surprising Egon when he notices a small trail of eye makeup (Janine’s, likely) trail off his friend’s face with the tears.
“I’ve been selfish as hell this whole time, Egon Spengler. Why, you might be wondering?” With a shaking hand, Peter forces that hand towards the collar of his now wet, wrinkled shirt. “This right here. It betrays me even when I’m sober, Egon. You remember how I was as a kid..? About why I never mentioned liking anybody, wanting anyone to date?”
“...” Egon doesn’t move any closer, and Peter seems to visibly take it as a cue to keep talking, gripping his shirt so tightly it looks like it should hurt, but with the alcohol it’s likely Peter himself barely feels it.
“It’s you, Egon. You’re- you’re the only one I’ve liked, ever. It’s not fucking fair, because you don’t - you don’t like me, you never have. Elon sure didn’t.”
“Elon has Alexander,” Egon points out as calmly as he can. “But I’m afraid you’d be incorrect on your feelings to a degree.. To who is worth your time. You’re missing someone very important in all this - he’s the whole reason you and I ever met.”
(It’s really true, this final point.)
(It’s the whole reason he was ever able to talk to Peter, being so new then at socializing.)
Peter stares up at Egon, still crying, and the tall scientist very carefully puts a hand on Peter’s tense, cloth-covered shoulder. “I deeply value this friendship.. But I’m.. I don’t think romantic endeavors are possible with me. We’ve been apart for too long. But you and Raymond - you’re good for each other. You look so much happier in his presence, and you work together quite nicely.”
He sighs, and leaves Peter’s shoulder alone, drawing back to his own corner.
“And.. anyhow, I.. I still find I’m not competent at any of this. Empathy and comfort, those are Ray’s arenas of expertise, and yours. All I am good for is objective fact and science.”
Peter then grabs his wrist, with a surprisingly gentle but tight grip.
“Do you even hear yourself, Egon?! That brain of yours is why I like you! It’s.. it’s something you share with Ray too. I like both of you, so cut it out with the self-deprecation, asshole! I care about you.”
“..Only if you cease your own,” Egon says, and he finds himself shocked to find that he agrees with Peter’s sentiment about his attractions. He takes a second to re-contextualize his recent interactions, and makes that conclusion. His lips tremble slightly, and he twists his wrist very carefully to support Peter’s arm more properly. “I.. I care about you a good deal as well, and I hate to hear you talk about yourself that way. I’m very sorry I ever compounded things for you.”
“..and.. Uhm.. ‘m sorry for being so weird toward you.” Peter lets out a short laugh, before shakily taking his other hand and gripping Egon’s hand fully. “Help me up?”
Egon does just that with one of his usual smirk-adjacent smiles, and with some cautiousness to account for Peter’s lingering unsteadiness as the two men stand back to their feet in the cool October air. Peter takes a few breaths, and wipes his eyes despite the makeup smudging all over his dress shirt sleeves, leaving dark blue and light green marks. “Ugh.. I feel like crap.”
“That’s the alcohol speaking, to a degree.” Egon chuckles slightly. “Maybe we ought to tell Ray of this developme-”
The distant sound of thunder interrupts Egon, its source being a good bit north of them, past Central Park. During their conversation, the skies of New York City have gotten far darker than they’re supposed to, and if Egon squints, he can see torrential rain beginning to fall over Central Park near -
“Oh fuck me,” Peter mumbles, as if the alcohol has all but never been consumed as his body suddenly straightens, which coincidentally covers the rest of the strangled panicked thought that Egon has. “Egon, ain’t that Dana’s apartment building?! Look at that shit - doesn’t that look like the thing we saw the summer we met?!”
“...It’s spreading,” Egon says intensely, secretly feeling every bit of the panic that Peter does as he begins to see IFs popping up a few floors down. “Peter, it’s spreading. Something’s going on with the imaginary entities! That is no normal storm.”
Peter tugs on Egon’s arm, his good mood vanished as Ray appears in his own suit, bursting out from inside as the rain steadily approaches the Empire State Building. “Egon, Pete, we’ve got a situation! Winston’s downstairs waiting on us with our stuff.”
Both Ghostbusters nod in unison at each other - the assignment between them is understood. Ray ushers them inside with a motion, his PKE Meter that he’s holding buzzing loudly with alarm, and the sounds of panicking people a few floors down does not help Egon’s personal feelings on the matter.
(The notion that something horrible is about to happen.)
–
In a fifth and final place, he’s called Egon Ashley Spengler, a movie director with a past as a filmographer and a tragic ex-relationship that leads to a chaotic first movie and the hidden trouble beneath the surface of the filming process.
In the quiet hours of the morning, he’s still awake - Egon has only gotten maybe a solid two and a half hours of fitful sleep after everything he’d witnessed the night before. A lot of things about the news reports feel wrong, falsified even. Some video was released to the press claiming the death of the one good stunt double he used to have is a murder - committed by one Raymond Stantz.
And the worst part? Ray can’t even answer for himself, because he’s dead now.
He listlessly messes with a model of the truck type Ray was driving around the day he was accused, and then he examines the footage.
“Following a dramatic boat explosion on Sydney Harbor, police -” Egon rewinds, and scrutinizes the footage, leaning towards his laptop with determination. “- Following a dramatic boat explosion on Sydney Harbor, police are currently investigating the suicide of Raymond “Ray”--”
Something presses against his shoulder, and Egon lets out an uncharacteristically loud yell before absolutely shoving his elbow into the person who’s just grabbed him, aiming for what he hopes is the solar plexus before realizing he’s hit part of a costume meant for the alien stunt doubles. The attacker groans, using the voice changer in the suit.
“Calm down- ow, stop please-”
Egon goes for the face next, using the brick phone prop set on his desk to wail on the person. “Do not tell me to be calm! I will use my krav maga training to break your body into little pieces!”
Egon stabs the person in the leg with his pen (which they scream in pain at, voice modulation and all), then knocks over the alien costume-wearing person next, and just as he’s gotten the mystery person knocked over in an uki-otoshi position, the person frantically cries out.
“No-no-no wait wait!” The person shakily points at themself and then makes a motion so familiar that Egon drops the person in shock, causing him to groan after frantically giving a thumbs-up. Egon gasps, and mutters various apologies as he removes the helmet and false alien head within. Ray, frankly, looks like he’s been knocked around quite a bit, not a single scrape or bruise treated - but he’s alive, and that’s enough for Egon, who draws himself in to hold Ray’s head close to his own.
“I knew it, I knew it - I saw it in the news footage. You’re alive, Ray, you’re alive..!” Egon says desperately, these rare emotions feeling like a gut punch.
Ray dazedly smiles despite the pained look in his eyes, and he mumbles a reply that is like music to Egon’s ears. “..water training 6 days a week for three years, Egie.. that’s how.”
Egon curls slightly and presses Ray’s forehead to his own, now his mind has room for the other emotions in this situation. The anger, the disbelief. The lies his goddamned producer Walter Dickless gave him. Thank goodness all of those lies were wrong. Still, it makes his hands tremble with the feelings of frustration, enough that he sees Ray shakily put his own hands up to Egon’s face.
“Breathe, Egie, breathe. I know you’re probably feeling really mad right now but- I had to warn you. I couldn’t let Dan win.” Egon pauses at that, his eyes wide.
“Dan did this?!”
Ray nods, and Egon quietly tries to sit Ray up, only to hear Peck’s muffled voice outside his truck trailer. With wide eyes he hands Ray his helmet back and motions for him to hide in his trailer closet, at the same time frantically clearing the broken and knocked over things. “Walter, give me a minute please!”
The redheaded producer enters, hey grey hairs looking especially irritating as he checks in. “Everything alright, Spengler?”
“I- I’m fine. Just was shaken..” he mumbles, adjusting his glasses and double-checking that Ray is still hidden and that none of his blood is on the carpet. “He-he was my ex-partner, of course I would be upset..”
“..Just stay calm today, alright? If I have to, I’ll help direct for you,” Peck says, crossing his arms. Egon shakes his head, insistent.
“No, Walter, I’m alright. I will still direct. Please have everything ready in one hour, before Dan arrives.” Walter grumbles at this, but eventually he relents and backs up, back into the beach area that serves as the filming location.
“Alright. If you do need anything, call.”
Egon just stares as he shuts the door.. And a few moments later, he presses his back against the door to give Ray room to exit the closet.
“...that was much too close.”
Ray stumbles out of the closet and sits on the ground again, panting. “I don’t have time or a lot of proof, but I at least know Dickless’ plan. Him and Dan are trying to frame me for the death of Howie with this.. deepfake stuff Phoebe told me about. I’m gonna guess their lame plan for trying to blow me up was a part of it.”
Egon leans on the door still, feeling so angry he could drop.
“So their cowardice was the reason for that explosion at the harbor?”
Ray sits up the best he can, grunting faintly in pain, and he nods.
“There’s got to be some manner to kick their faces in,” Egon says in a threatening tone, seeing red. “Have Phoebe and Trevor heard of this?”
Ray shakes his head no, so Egon opts to radio Winston, speaking quietly and feeling extremely glad he tends to keep his radio channels to one or two people per channel.
“Ecto-1, this is Gozer. Need to chat with you in twenty. Would you mind giving a status check on Pheebs and Trev?”
After a few seconds, Winston replies. “10-4, they’re fine. Just got to set with Callie. We’re on for the last major chase sequence in one hour, like you want it. …but hey, did Vigo make it?”
Egon glances at Ray quizzically, and Ray mouths something about “just go with it”, so Egon replies back. “...yes, Vigo is here with me now. Make sure Dickless hears nothing of this conversation, and get with Lotsabucks and Vinz as soon as possible. I need a lot to make sure this goes off without a hitch - recording team needs to be especially attentive to my stunt people and Dan today. Oh, and get with Louis and the pyro team. I’ll need them as well. Details in twenty.”
“Got it. Over and out.”
Egon puts down the radio, and he turns to Ray and the model map of the filming location Ray is partially leaning against. Ray bites his lip, clearly nervous as he looks up at Egon. “..Good that you’re on the same page now.. Winston was with me when Dan’s phone got trashed last night. We were gonna give it to you, but.. well, Peck and Dan’s stupid assassin blew it up.”
“No matter. There are alternatives.” Egon pushes his glasses up and picks up the truck model, placing it on the model of the filming location. “It’s to do with our dream scene in our movie’s former script. You know, when Harold drives the children and Carrie to safety away from Vinz Clotho?”
Ray’s eyes widen in recognition. “Oh, that’s right! But I thought you were going to get rid of the scene since Dan didn’t wanna do it.”
Egon presses the car’s model towards a particular gap in the mini-beach, determination buzzing in his veins.
“Oh, I’ll get him to do this particular scene on schedule. I will have Peter and Janine get with you and prepare a recording during the actual stunt..” Egon pantomimes the car leaping over the gap. “The threat of possible death or severe injury to that farce of an ego will make him talk. He’ll have no choice but to concede his part if he were to confess.”
Ray nods, his expression becoming very determined. “Okay.. I think I can do that. Just hope I don’t waste the last Cadillac we could get our hands on..”
Egon places a hand on Ray’s shoulder again, giving a genuine (if slightly deranged) smile before standing up.
“You got this, Ray. I believe in you. My plan may not be the best, but it is as solid as I can make it. We are not alone in this, I swear it.”
“Y-yeah.” Ray nods again, and he hugs Egon before standing back up once more, ready to begin the plan in earnest..
–
In this world, Egon Spengler is just that. Egon Spengler, Ghostbuster, dear friend to some and enemy to others.
But he is a hero many times over.
Egon blinks awake, groggy with sleep and a half-remembered dream. At first he wonders if it’s the temporal echoes bothering him again, given how many times he died before this timeline, but it isn’t anything like that. No, he feels none of those phantom pains upon waking up in his bed at HQ, but he does feel a.. resonance with the Interspatial Teleportation Unit again. The others aren’t currently asleep either, meaning he has overslept, judging by the noises downstairs. Egon groans, and sits up, dizzy from the most recent of his dreams caused by the lingering temporal energy still in his body.
(“..I still register on the PKE Meter?” he remembers asking when he brought up the dream about the party on the Empire State Building getting interrupted by rogue imaginary friends and Gozer’s usual tricks far in the future.)
(He remembers his partner’s uncertain look as he sips at some soda, scribbling down the reading. “You’ve got to remember, Spengie, you were under Tree’s looping curse for a long while. I don’t think the reading will quite go away till at least 2000..”)
(Egon sighed at Ray, tempted to slam his head into the desk at terminal velocity to deal with the frustration, but he did not do so, and he only had replied, “- but you had said the temporal energy would fade off in 1995, Ray.”)
(“Well.. that would have been the case if all those visits from other worlds didn’t happen.. It’s kinda weird to me still that Abby was able to figure out really fast about your loops.” Ray had cringed, and Egon shook his head at the time. Ray then continued, “She had a point, though. Because of the times you were near the ITU, that dimensional energy is going to have its own separate echoes, so to speak. You might temporarily resonate time and again with other Egon Spenglers across time and space. Holtzmann said she knows someone that can mitigate that stuff if you want, but I understand you’d be kinda hesitant to mess with temporal things again..”)
His head aches by his forehead despite there not being a trepenation scar this time around, and Egon swings his legs over the edge of his bed, opting to reach over for his dream journal - something Peter suggested he keep.
(Oddly enough, this time the dream is of a scenario I’ve actually gone through,) Egon muses as he scribbles the story down. (The loops where I went into the movie-making business.. Ah, except my last loop, I had been the stunt-person, and Ray had been my loving director/cameraperson..)
The record is complete after a few minutes of writing, and just as Egon’s put the book down to get ready for a day of work, Ray hurries up the stairs, calling out. “Hey, Egie! Could you come down again to the lab? I’m still having trouble figuring out that stone tablet me and Pete took from the Met.”
“..Ah? I wish you’d woken me up sooner, Ray..” Egon practically rushes around the room regardless of his faintly aching legs from having laid down for too long, before a strange sense of deja vu settles over his chest. (Oh no. That cannot be good..) he thinks to himself mid-shuffle of his dress pants, not liking the deja vu popping up in his mind again. But he can’t really place the feeling as he picks a blue suit jacket and a plain black tie to go with his dark pants, at least until he’s deep in conversation with Ray.
“-This is going nowhere, Ray. There was nothing in Tobin’s, or Spates, or any of the dozen other books we’ve checked so far.” Egon picks up a water bottle, trying internally again to figure out which goddamned temporal loop of the 83 options in his crammed, traumatic memories he may have seen that familiar tablet in. Ray, currently in a dark grey shirt, blue jeans and Egon’s lab coat, checks another book. He shakes his head as he continues onward with the conversation.
“Well, we have to figure out what it is, Egie. Otherwise it’s a ticking time bomb, just waiting to be set off. I wish we could make some sense of those characters etched on there. I assumed they were Greek.”
That phrase is what ends up jogging Egon’s memory - the 47th loop, he’d been in this exact situation because his water bottle had been opened and tipped over. Now he remembers he had trouble remembering this exact moment due to the ghost within the tablet, he’d been possessed, he knows that much due to the Mood Slime that had to be used afterwards-
The water spills on Egon instead, while he had intended on holding the water bottle, he’d tipped it, and it tips all over his shirt, snapping him out of his stupor at least in part. Peter groans, facepalming after he’d set the gigantic pile of books down. “Shit - sorry, Egon.”
Egon doesn’t reply for a second, his body untensing after he realizes he must have frozen in place again. Peter looks nervous, and is about to wave a hand in front of Egon’s face. “Egon, you’re not having a flashback again, are you?”
“I.. I’m alright, I just..” Egon looks down at the water bottle, which is now on the floor at his feet. “..the tablet would have activated when water touched it. My apologies.”
Ray, at this point, scratches his head with a confused look, slightly worried as well. “Should we take a break, guys? We’ve both been at it all afternoon..”
Egon shakes his head, leaning on the table for support as his arms start to tremble again. The echo of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that killed him last time makes him feel like he really, really detests the ocean suddenly again.. But he does his best to swallow down that memory, and he takes another breath, speaking haltingly.
“It is comprised of familiar root-words in languages typically spoken around the Mediterranean.. I think. I don’t remember much about the last time I saw this tablet, I got possessed then.” When Ray and Peter both get worried expressions as if about to repeat their sentiments of taking a break again, he shakes his head at them. “I promise you, I’m alright. The rest of that loop is intact in my mind. But.. To trap this ghost, at least one of us will have to be bait, and we’ll need to go to Battery Park to do the bust - around dawn. I.. believe that is when the ghost will be responsive.”
Peter groans, and Ray snaps his book shut, shocked but excited. “That’s great that you remembered, Egon!”
“Ray, didn’t you hear him? One of us is gonna have to get willingly possessed! That’s not as great as you may think!” Peter argues. He even shakes Egon’s shoulders for emphasis. “I don’t think I wanna see Egon possessed again either! That sucked last time we did this!”
Egon’s head amusedly lolls back and forth like a bobble-head before it steadies, and he sighs. “At least with this knowledge I can say Mood Slime works perfectly fine on its own to expel him. ..the, ah, ghost in the tablet, I mean.”
“That doesn’t make it better, dumbass!”
Egon tunes Peter out for the time being, taking a second to glance at Ray’s face again, watching him very carefully. His Ray, the one with freckles, dark red hair, mismatched eyes and the broken remnants of the necklace of the very ghost who put Egon and Ray through so much around Ray’s thick neck. The slightly younger scientist presses closer, giving an extra-worried glance to the tablet and that glance becomes more determined, Ray’s expression back to what it usually would be in normal circumstances, which encourages Egon to speak up once more.
“Venkman!”
Peter stops, his shoulders lowering and his rant fizzling out. “What, Egon?”
“If it’ll really make you feel better, you can de-possess me yourself, alright?”
Peter rolls his eyes, muttering “You’re impossible, Spengler,” but the relief is there in his body language in how his shoulders untense entirely, and it’s at this moment that Ray fires off possible strategies to deal with the ghost Egon brought up, so Egon stays quiet, keeping a close eye on the tablet while he idly tries drying his shirt with a nearby towel, mentally cataloguing the strategies.
– FIN –
- Location:my new PC
- Mood:
mellow - Music:Murray Gold tunes
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