"Ghostbusters"

[Guest Laarell]

(( I admit to shamelessly stealing the title and opening lyrics. Apologies to all.))

If there's something strange

In the neighborhood

Well, who you gonna call?

Ghostbusters

 

If there's something weird

And it don't look good

Well man who can you call

Ghostbusters

 

Who, I ain't afraid of no ghost...

- Ray Parker, "Ghostbusters"

 

Traipsing lightly up the staircase, Laarell smirked at the cliche she was roped into by duty. Prowling around a haunted house like someone out of a campy twentieth-century horror movie, she felt a little bit uneasy. Wasn't there supposed to be much death and carnage around this point -- cue much screaming on the part of the attractive female. Of course, either she or Joy could have fulfilled that role. But that was beyond the point.

 

Chasing spooks wasn't exactly her job description, true, but it was nice to get out once in awhile, wasn't it? She poked the wall curiously, wondering if one panel of the wood wouldn't swing away to reveal a secret passage to a high-tech institute where high voltage energy beings wouldn't be working away, unaware that they were considered to be ghosts by the residents of this world. Curious if that were such the case with their spooks -- so much depended on the perspective of the person evaluating entities in question.

 

Teykier thought back to their would-have-been guide with a sigh. J'ai hadn't seemed to be the scheming, untrustworthy type, but a tragedy-stricken young man who was confused with all of the changes that had affected him. A boy who was nearly in tears didn't come across to her as the type who had an evil streak lurking beneath that pained veneer.

 

And if they found him? He'd better have a good explanation, but that still didn't mean Laarell was going to write him off as a villain in this endeavour. It'd mean that he had no qualms about killing his brother (if the other, deceased, boy was indeed his brother and J'ai hadn't lied), and also that he had no qualms about lying to people who saved his life (if, indeed, his life was in danger to begin with, and he wasn't a plant).

 

But if her gut instinct was wrong, then Laarell was a worse judge of character than she'd thought. And that scared her as much as J'ai's intentions. She couldn't even trust her own perceptions anymore.

 

Had she gotten duped so easily? Maybe Segami had been right, at least partially. Or maybe he had scared the boy to the point that he fled. Hard to tell.

 

The Orion just wanted answers, and if she had to play Ghostbuster to get them, she would.