THE WYVERN
PART TWO

Filed by Mike Devicente, GBWC Reservist
GBI Case File No. GBWC-2009-27/320

"Take it from me: With prices these good, not buying a new car from Rochester Nissan would be scary!" Mick gave a gleaming grin and a thumbs-up to the camera. The director yelled 'cut' and the camera man wheeled the camera away. Jeremy undid his arm from the taller, wider, white-suit clad shoulder of Mr. Rochester, who gave him a stout clap on the back.

"Thanks for comin' in to...scare up....all this new business for me." The manager laughed, spitting a cloud of cigar smoke at the Ghostbuster.

"Yeah...*cough* anytime..." Jeremy left Mr. Rochester's side and went to Mick's.

Mick was taking his choice from the catering services table set up for the commercial shoot. "I feel upset..." He said while holding a couple of triangular sandwich slices between his fingertips.

"No kidding, Mick. Who woulda known you were going to scream so loudly at that lighting director just for walking into your scene...?"

Mick gave a sigh. "No, I mean we shouldn't be doing this. It's hard to focus on community service when you know you've let a soul sucking ghost freely terrorize the community."

"You're making too big a deal of this," Jeremy said, picking up a bagel and taking a bite out of it. "We've been in situations like this before, and I know the most important thing we need to do is not panic and cause unneeded hysteria."

"Sure, sure." Muck sighed. "Still, I'd feel better about this whole thing if we had a little nerd help.

"OH MY GOD!"

Jeremy was startled by the scream that he bit his tongue instead of the bagel. "What was that?"

"It came from outside!" Mick and Jeremy dashed out of the showroom with neutrona wands drawn. Nothing outside, then they looked slightly down and saw a figure just below their line of vision. He was a nerdy looking gent, with hair cropped short, a round belly and a short stature. He was giving the two of them the same look a fangirl would at a convention.

"Eeeuuhhhmmm...Can we help you?" Jeremy said, scratching his head.

"You guys are Ghostbsusters aren't you?"

"Yeah....we are." Mick slid one of his feet to the side. He didn't know why but this guy was making him uncomfortable.

"You know, you know, I do a bit of that myself." The short man reached into a fanny pack he had on the side of his belt and pulled out a couple of business cards. They read:



Mick's eyes turned from unease to sheer focused disdain after reading the card. "Is that so?"

Mike gave an energetic nod. "Yeah, I'm a student of paranormal and the occult. I just moved here from Texas. You should read my dissertation on La Llorona. Also, I have research with photographs proving the existence of a Chupacabra terrorizing rural areas outside of Albuquerque..."

"Yeah...yeah..." Jeremy repeated over and over as Mike continued to jaw over and over about his studies. As he did, Mick slowly began to slide his way back to the ecto.

"La Llorona, Chupacabras....he talks a good game, but it's not like he's ever seen the things." Mick ranted from behind the wheel of the Ecto-cruiser as it negotiated traffic back to the warehouse. Jeremy rolled his eyes between bites of peanuts from a little packet with the Rochester Nissan logo on it.

"I'd say he'd be pretty lucky if he never ran into La Llorona." Jeremy said with a chill.

"I'd say he'd be pretty lucky if he never ran into any Chupacabras." Mick added.

"So, you don't think he was sincere? Cause I can probably say: he sounded pretty freakin' sincere."

"That's not it," Mick looked over at the business card sitting on the dash. "He's another rookie amateur trying to squeeze in on our business. All he's gonna do is end up making a mess that we've gotta clean up later."

"I guess you're right," Jeremy crumpled up the peanut pouch and stuffed it into one of the Ecto's cup-holders. "It's a real shame though: A kid like that. Right out of college. He doesn't know who to turn to with an education like his. So naturally, he had to find a way to contact us."

"You're too easily flattered." Mick scoffed. "One, even if he is fresh out of college, he's gotta be pushing 20. He looks about as old as you are. Two, if he is interested in becoming a Ghostbuster why doesn't he go through the proper channels instead of passing these things out?"

"Well I just thought..." Jeremy was interrupted when his radio clicked on. Rose was on the other end. "Jeremy, are you there?"

"Yeah, we're just headed back to the warehouse."

"Not yet you're not," Rose said, the urgency in her tone becoming apparent. "We've got a call. There's a toy store not far from your vicinity experiencing poltergeist-level activity. You need to go in to investigate."

"Roger that. We're on our way." Jeremy clicked off his radio.

Mick parked the Ecto outside the street in front of the toy store. Usually, at the beginning of a call like this, there was a hysterical store owner waiting for them up-front. This time, there was nobody. "There's a chance the owner may have been abducted. Go ahead and power on." Jeremy and Mick switched on their packs and slowly walked towards the door.

Jeremy slowly pushed the door open and the two walked inside. Inside the store owner looked to be just fine. He was in good spirits actually, and chortling a bit while conversing with somebody crouched behind a stack of blocks stacked as high as the ceiling.

"You sure you didn't do this? It'd make a neat store display."

"No," The owner replied. "It had to be a ghost. I'm not good at stacking like this and neither is my wife."

The man behind the blocks stood up. It was Mike Devicente once again. In his hand was a crudely constructed PKE meter made, mostly, out of an electrical outlet box attached to a bike handle. He looked around him. In addition to the extremely tall stack of blocks there was a perfectly symmetrical stack of red fire engines, video game boxes, and teddy bears. "This is obviously the work of a very anal-retentive poltergeist."

"Well, he got the answer right." Jeremy whispered to Mick.

"Hmph, even my grandma knows what symmetrical stacking looks like." Mick weaved his way through the stacks to where Mike and the store owner were. "Hello, Ghostbusters at your service."

"What?" The store owner asked. "You sent reinforcements? Is this gonna cost me extra?"

"No, we're here to answer your call."

"But...a few minutes after we called this gentlemen showed up. Don't you guys work together?"

Mick snorted. "No, we don't." Mick gave Mike an icy stare. "Did you tell him that you're a Ghostbuster?"

"Well, I didn't tell him I wasn't..."

Mick was now officially pissed. "Okay, that does it! Listen up you pear-shaped pretender, I'm sick and tired of your people squeezing your way into our lucrative Ghostbusting business."

Mike's timid face suddenly grew mad as well. "My people? Just what do you mean by 'MY people'?"

"You come all the way over here just so you can do a shoddier version of MY job at a cheaper price!"

"Where the hell do you get that crap from? I bet it's from that Sean Hannity guy. Awwright, hombre, I'm 100% American, see? I was born in El Paso, guey. You see some Mexican doing your job and you automatically think I'm some career stealing rodent? Estupido gringo racisto!"

Mike continued to rant, only this time it was all in Spanish and instead of speaking about his accomplishments, he was hurling insults. Mick took a step back looking stunned towards an equally stunned Jeremy.

"What is he calling me?"

"Oh um, it's actually pretty flattering." Jeremy snickered. While he did not speak fluent Spanish he did, by some opportunity, know all the swears. "Oh! He said 'menso,' that means 'genius.' Oh, and he also said 'culo,' maybe that means 'cool.'"

Mick shook his head and moved in towards Mike, grabbing his shoulders. "Okay! Okay, relax, relax! I didn't mean it like that."

Mike heaved a sigh. "Whatever. Well, if you two don't mind, I have a ghost to find." Mike spun around and walked away, right into the pillar of blocks, which fell in a rain of wood onto the floor. "Oopsie."

Suddenly, the wood on the floor began to jump around, as though there was an earthquake, but only the blocks themselves moved. From nowhere there appeared the wanted poltergeist. It was a blue, glowing, human-looking spectre with arms and a torso, but no legs. It resembled a portly-looking teenager with a striped t-shirt and a lot of wild curly hair, like an afro. It gave a piercing shriek and then began to whip up the blocks in a cyclone.

"Ah-Ah-Ah!" Mike dashed out of the way of the spinning blocks which hit him repeatedly all over his body and leapt behind a tall aisle shelf, the two Ghostbusters and the store owner joining a moment later. "It's not like a poltergeist to react so suddenly and violently to one of its creations being destroyed is it?"

"Kid, you got no idea." Mick pulled his neutrona wand and looked back towards Jeremy who gave a nod. "Okay, on three."

"THREE!" The two leaped out from behind the shelves and fired at the ghost. It shrieked, flailing its arms back, but eventually pulled itself from the proton beams and hurled more blocks at the Ghostbusters, who went back behind the shelves.

"Train the beam on him again!" Jeremy declared.

"It won't work!" Mick huffed "All those objects flying around are refracting the beam. We can't trap it if we can't get a clear shot in!"

"I've got an idea." Mike stood and walked over grabbing something from one of his display.

"Don't do it, it's too dangerous!" Mick grabbed Mike by the shoulder. Mike stopped, but then pulled his shoulder away and put his back to the opposite shelf.

Mike slowly moved out of the way of the shelves with an object behind his back. "Hey ugly: how about a hug?!" He then pulled the object from behind his back and lobbed it at the ghost. Suddenly, all of the blocks ceased spinning and clattered to the ground while the ghost hugged at the object Mike threw: a light brown teddy bear.

"Shoot now! Go!" Mike exclaimed. Mick and Jeremy shook away the stunned looks on their faces and fired their proton beams. The ghost hollered again, but this time it was stuck. With a flourish, Jeremy brought one hand off his wand, and onto the trap. He unhooked the trap, swung it underneath him and stomped the paddle. The trap opened and swallowed the ghost whole, letting the singed teddy bear drop to the ground next to it.

Jeremy bent over and picked up the smoking trap, then looked back at Mike. "Hey, that was some pretty quick thinking..." There was another sudden shriek. Jeremy turned around and frowned, a chill running down his spine. "I shoulda known."

Standing in place of the toy-loving ghost was the same one-eyed, bat-winged gargoyle that had attacked Rachel in the warehouse. It looked the same as before but it was bigger, and it had grown a pair of tiny, underdeveloped legs that twitched helplessly behind the pair it had before. Jeremy instantly shot a beam, which it easily dodged. Then it swooped down, forcing the entire group to duck and weave out of the way.

"Don't let it get away!" Mick declared, but as soon as Mick and Jeremy readied their beams, the ghost had escaped by phasing through the front window.

Jeremy sighed and lowered his neutrino wand to scratch his head. "I don't know how this could get any more embarrassing."

"Excuse me, I'd like to buy this." Mike said. By the end of the event he had turned his back to the two and was now buying a black-furred teddy bear from the store's owner.

"So you say you caught this thing before right?" Mike said, as he sat in the back of the Ecto, leafing through a tiny grey-colored notebook, his free hand on top of the head of the teddy bear he just bought. "Let's see, page 124." Mike put his notebook down and picked up a copy of "Tobin's Spirit Guide."

"Yeah, we had it caught before and we almost had it contained before SOMEBODY," Mick tilted his head slightly inward towards Jeremy, as he still had his hands on the wheel. "Miss-handled the trap..."

"Okay, okay. I screwed up. Let's acknowledge and move on..."

Mike ran a finger through the guide until it came to a stop at one of its numerous entries. "Okay, I think I have it: energy absorbing entity, grey-scales, bat wings. We have ourselves a wyvern."

"A What-vern?" Jeremy said as he turned around in his seat, facing Mike.

"A wyvern. It is commonly known as a medieval serpent-like creature that served as the emblem and coat of arms of many royal courts in the 15th century. Tobin's Spirit Guide says that the reason for that was the wyvern was commonly used as a magician's familiar. It's most unique characteristic: the ability to nourish itself off of magic."

"I see where this is going." Jeremy gave a nod. "There's no magic around, so this wyvern is feeding off of PKE."

"Exactly: because this particular wyvern has been existing on a diet of ghosts, it has some ectopresence, which is responding to your proton beams, but it isn't 100% PKE, so that first capture was a fluke, and we're going to need to come up with a new method of capturing the whole thing. We gotta do it fast too."

"I know this part too." Jeremy lowered his eyes. "What's the worst case scenario?"

"The wyvern could absorb more of this energy than it can control. If it does, well, I have no idea what'd happen. I'm pretty sure this sort of thing never happened to Merlin."

"Well then it's settled: we're staying on the beat until we can find this thing and get it under control." Mick stated firmly. "I'm calling in dinner at Antonio's. You like Italian, Mike?"

"Gringo....I love Italian." Mike grinned warmly and then idly gave his new teddy bear a squeeze.

To Be Continued

Based on Ghostbusters Created by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis

Ghostbusters West Coast Division Created by Andy Harness and Vincent Belmont