Practising Busting Makes Me Feel Good

Posted on Sat Jun 13th, 2020 @ 6:04am by Lieutenant Tchaikovsky Ford & Level 2 Chiyo Takei & Captain Ash Shultz & Level 2 Itishaam “Tim” Mughabghab PsyD & Level 5 Nicholas "Nick" Medhurst

Mission: It's... A Bus Station
Location: NCGB HQ - Bus Station
Timeline: May 7th 2020 Late morning

He hadn't noticed the spot of gloop on Ectol-1's windscreen, but in fairness Ford had his mental hands busy with a bunch of newbies sporting proton packs. Everytime, regardless of the level of experience within a group, this was a seminal moment. People put that heavy nuclear powered backpack on and it changed them, just a little bit. He loved that.

Trainees, with varying levels of confidence and experience, all stood out in the parking lot behind the bus station, looking awesome. He grinned and raised up his own neutrona wand, his back to the heavy transport truck and the abandoned motel as he regarded their initial team of busters.

"So," Ford announced, getting right into it with no preamble. They'd already done the dry safety checks and start-up procedure in the vault when he was the only one touching the pack. Now came the fun part. "Three stages to securing your pesky spirit. Sap 'em, cap' 'em, and trap 'em."

He indicated the trap he'd placed in the open space between him and the recruits. "Let's start with switching your packs on and checking your heat levels." Ford nodded and gestured with his hand to the others. "Then the fun stuff."

Chiyo standing there with her fancy new jump-suit and still misses her hoodie, she sighs and looked at the heat levels instruments and nods "Green, are we going to use a dummy ghost for training...or you call it training ghost to capture it?" She asked looking at Ford.

"Good stuff," acknowledged their instructor as everyone else followed suit. He already knew they were all green because he'd checked them all first thing this morning. "Kinda," Ford answered Chiyo. "We have Oscar here," he kicked the button on the trap's line and a projection of a classic horror movie ghost-in-a-white-sheet appeared in the air above. "He'll take a kicking, metaphorically speaking, but he won't vanish until I switch him off. You each get a turn to show me your stuff. Chiyo - since you're keen you go first."

Tim gave Chiyo an encouraging grin. “Good luck, Miss,” he said encouraging, ever the psychologist. “You got this.”

Feeling like she got candy trapped with this, Chiyo took a deep breath and just shrugs walking forward to the target that Ford had indicated. The instructions were quite simple "Click this..." She mutters to herself as the device on her back made some noise that made her look at her shoulder for a second and then back down, aiming forward and placing it at her side, with a firm grip on the ground and fired the gun. The beam pushed out of the device was difficult to control, it swung to the right...to the left and she finally managed to hit the target, but only for a good 8 seconds as she turned it off, exhausted by it.

Ash looked out her window and envied Ford. Rarely was she needed for training now. Instead, Nick had given her a list of customers. Five. As he was learning to tell between hoax calls and real ghost emergent calls, she did not mind looking at various cases. Some were in the Wake County area. She marked the on In Willminton with a tack. Not a high-priority, but also not something to worry about at the moment.

As she began to e-mail the curator of the battleship museum in Willmington, she looked out the window once more with a sigh of longing.

And she was just in time to see Tim whooping and cheering for Chiyo. "Good job!" he called cheerfully.

Ford echoed Tim's compliment. "Nicely done!" he said, but he'd also noticed the physical toll the effort had brought onto the youngster. Endurance work for Chiyo moving forward, the trainer noted.

"Okay, Tim, you're next up. Let's see what you got," he grinned at the man and pointed up at the waiting 'ghost'. Behind Ford, though, something flickered in the air between buster and the old abandoned hotel. Just a subtle hint of something more than air, an almost invisible ripple that suggested to a trained eye that an entity might be watching the class.

"Hope I don't embarrass meself," said Tim with a grin as he stepped forward. Like Chiyo, he carefully went over the procedure in his head before taking aim and carefully pressing the button.

It was a lot harder than Chiyo had made it look. He struggled with the stream for several moments, desperately trying to keep it trained on the 'entity' for as long as possible. Finally, though, he had to release the button.

And he promptly fell back on his ass. "Sure, that wasn't embarrassing at all," he laughed, getting up and dusting himself off.

"Hey, you made it look good, buddy," Ford assured him. "And it takes a bit of getting used to." He grinned. "But you're in good company, I sat down on the job a couple times when I was a newbie too."

Nick stood back, neutrona wand in hand and powered on but his finger off of the firing button. Watching as Chiyo 'roped' the simulated ghost and held on for dear life and then released it. Flicking the safety switch on his wand, he raised his hand. "Mind if I give this a shot, Lieutenant?" he asked, the last word feeling foreign to him.

Ford made a sweeping flourish with his right arm, giving Nick the go-ahead. "By all means," he said, cheerfully. "We're here to see what we're working with."

Nicholas flicked the safety switch and pressed the button, causing a orange and blue beam to erupt from the end of the wand, ensnaring the holographic 'ghost' in it's grip, similar to a lasso. As the wand began to rumble in his hands, he gripped it as tight as he could. To him, this was almost as easy as handling a Seahawk in high winds off of a pitching deck. Dropping to one knee to steady himself, he spoke up to Ford while not taking his eyes off of the target. "Little help?"

"Sure, buddy," noted Ford, swiftly as he circled around the trap and its upward cone of light. He could see the shake in the neutrona's wand and he moved quickly to Nick, stopping to drop to a crouch just alongside the man.

"Here," Ford said, reaching out not to take control, or relieve the trainee of his burden. "Just a little." And his firm, supportive hand wrapped about and steadied Nick's wrist some, providing an extra weight to the other man's hold. "Now, push down on your left foot as if you're flooring a gas pedal, and take control in your own time."

Before anyone could explain any further, a shrieking howl of delight preceded the unmistakable rush of a fat, ugly slimer ghost that materialised from somewhere amongst the tech atop ECTOL-1 and rushed at the group standing out in the open.

Taking a breather from the practice made Chiyo a bit lay back and not paying attention to her surroundings as she suddenly felt a spike of pain grabbing to her head. Chiyo looked at the direction of the ghost without realizing it “Ah f*** no...” getting pushed backed the ghost passes through her and making another round to the others. Chiyo rolled backwards and looked up from the ground to the ground with her being covered under slime “What the hell... it slimed me... gross”

Ford ran towards Chiyo as the slimer vanished back towards the old hotel in a rush of muttering and slathering noises, doughnuts dropping from that gaping maw of a mouth. The Lieutenant stood above the young woman for a moment, giving Chiyo a quick look over, then looked up towards the window where he knew Ash worked. Back to Chiyo then with his full attention, Ford, offered a hand to help the kid upright again. "You okay?" He asked, utterly serious in that moment. "He got you good..."

Feeling the slime drip of her as Chiyo tries to get up on her own "Freaking slimy ghost..I will bust that little..." She cursed on her own as Chiyo looked at Ford and grabs his hand with the slime now on his hands as she stood up "I am going to get in there...break the whole building down to find that little..." She was furious and wanted to walk towards the motel.

"Don't worry about him," Ford promised Chiyo. "His days of sliming people are definitely coming to an end." He rested a strong arm on the young woman's shoulder though, adding the gift of gloop to the firm grip of his long fingers with the definite intention of preventing her moving on. "But we handle that as a team, Chiyo. Understood?" Ford clicked his radio. "Ash, we got a live one."

Feeling the firm grip of the man on her shoulder only made her pull her shoulder away from his hand "Fine..." Chiyo replied and walks back to the station to cool her temper.

Ash stuck her head out the window, "I'm guessing one of you pissed it off by shootin' too close to its dwelling?"

"No," replied Ford, the word accompanied by a wry smile and a roll of his eyes. ""My bad. It wanted the doughnuts...."

He looked then from Ash, to the scattered gathering of trainees and gave a decisive nod. "Right, you're all gonna get a chance to practise for real now then," Ford decided. "Let's try not to demolish the hotel at the same time, ya hear me?" He scooped up the training trap, and jerked his head in the direction the slimer had dashed. "Time to do some bustin'. Everyone ready?"

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