revivalproject | Ghostly Interventions

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Ghostly Interventions

WHO: Tommy Shepherd
WHERE: Peanut Party Greenhouse, Around the Peanut Party and Glitter Food
WHAT: Plant dealing, Ghost hunting
WHEN: Early May, Mid May
WARNINGS: None

I. They Aren't Mars Potatoes But They're Something

Listen, where else would you look for a Tommy while in space these says? Sure, the ships are way larger than the old ones, but they still impart a sense of claustrophobia to him. So he stays busy. And today that's tending this little piece of Earth.

That's the best part about the ship greenhouses. They've been secure from the storms. Which means he can plant familiar things here. Which is why he's walking through hip high corn right now, his hands roving over it as he smiles to himself.

Perhaps this is one of the happiest alone moment's he's had recently. So when someone walks in he's smiling broadly.

"Hey, grab that basket over there. I need to harvest some of this corn. Gonna make it fresh for everyone who comes back from their adventures. Maybe roast it by a fire."

II. It's A Jumpscare Sort of Night

Sometimes you just need the quiet of a good view, and for Tommy tonight that was the Deep End. He sat watching the big window into the water area, longing for fish, nursing what absolutely looks like a pina colada. It's a good night, a good drink, and all is so far right in the world.

Which is of course when the unsettling thing happens. A noise, something rattling behind him. A brief flash of faintest purple beside him. The speedster leaps to his feet and whirls at superspeed. Only... the light is gone. What the hell? The bottles still rattle and he turns to them and they're still.

"Turbulence in space?" he wonders before turning back to his table. And...

"Where the fuck is my drink?"

He looks around and turns back to find it sitting on the bar. How?

"What the fuck?"

III. Ghost Hunters In Space | On Either Ship

Enough was enough. Tommy was tired of jump scares, spooky shapes in the distance, and wailing forms that made no noise and looked like Wanda. He was tired of all of this bullshit. Which was why he was in the area of the ship's fountain, chalk in hand, writing a series of letters really big on the ground.

"Gonna solve this one way or another, spooks. And then you're being banished back to wherever souls go. Without taking me with you."

Don't mind him and the chain of garlic around his throat, or the bundle of sage, and the incense and candles. He's not the magic user but he's seen enough magic done that he's got theories of how this all works. So maybe he can make it stop.

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It presented a baffling tableau for anyone coming upon Tommy. The display of candles around the gentle bubbling of the fountain suggested perhaps a romantic arrangement, though such a high traffic area would make that a strange choice. His vegetables might have been for a salad. He looked ridiculous. Enough for Tony to stop dead where he meant to slip quietly by and avoid lingering too long where he would be noticed, considering Tommy, then glancing around the chamber like there might be something else nearby to give him an idea of what the kid might be up to. D.A.T.A., held against his hip where the robot's legs could only give en ineffectual, impatient wiggle, tracked his gaze, then peered up at him curiously until Tony met his camera-eye and had to shrug. As Tony risked slinking closer to get a better idea of what Tommy was doing on the ground, the clicking growl of the device in his other hand grew more evident over the murmur of the water. "I think all of the kids know how to read," he ventured when he made out the alphabet that Tommy was working on. "I appreciate the spirit, though. Very physical, very engaging."

Tommy had been so consumed in his work that he hadn't even noticed the approach, not even with the noises. And since he was so on edge from fucking ghosts, he reacted in the reasonable way. Of course, jumping when you had legs with strength like his meant he was several feet up in the air and just barely managed to land without toppling over.

Yeah, he was jumpy.

"Tony! I'm trying to do an exorcism or whatever. Ship's haunted!"

Tony's eyebrows raised with Tommy, and they didn't come back down while Tommy found his footing again, not until he made his declaration. Then Tony was frowning and rolling his eyes, and sucking his teeth as he narrowly assessed Tommy's strange accoutrements now with this context. "Nothing is haunted. There's some kind of--electrical problem," he corrected. To prove how convinced he was of this theory and how much there totally wasn't any ghosts to be afraid of, he waved his geiger counter over Tommy's performance area and said, "This is nothing, this isn't going to do anything. I thought you were making a salad. A ghost doesn't care about salad and hopscotch."

"Excuse me, that's sage And the garlic is because maybe the ghosts are the vampires that tried to kill people," Tommy says. It's definitely reasonable. Then he gestures to the letters.

"It's not a perfect ouiji board but it will let the spirit communicate. And it's got to be a spirit. It moved my drink Tommy. Faster than I could follow. That's not really possible!"

Maybe if Tony stared at him for long enough with a raised lip and reluctant nod, Tommy would come to his own conclusions about how rational the vampire-ghost hypothesis was. They were going to have to come back to science quickly, before Tommy started imagining zombie-vampire-ghosts. "The Agrii moved you from Earth," Tony pointed out. "That was possible. We just got here through a wormhole which, listen, the technology could have a cascading reaction that wasn't properly accounted for, this is just wormhole echoes. Things move. It's, honestly--I'd be more surprised if things stopped moving, that's the impossible option."

Given the world they literally live in, vampire ghost was literally possible. Come on, Tony. Don't be silly. They'd both seen worse things back home, whether it was the same home or not. Though of course you couldn't be a zombie vampire ghost. That was just ridiculous.

"Dude, Mojo kidnaps people from Earth too. Don't pretend that's weird. And ghosts are real. That isn't a question either. Hell, vampires are real. My brother has literally teamed up with Blade. Soooooo, still waiting for proof it's not vampire ghosts. As for things moving, it moved faster than I could perceive, Tony. Not even a flicker of it starting to fade, no light sparkles, nothing. That's fucking strange."

Tony slowly tipped his chin down to eye Tommy over the rim of his glasses this time, where he could see when Tony glanced around the room, looking for who Tommy thought he was talking to, or if he forgot Tony was there entirely. The guy who had claimed something impossible had happened must have been somewhere else. "So, you saw the Agrii moving you. That's big, that's, listen, I won't tell anyone else, but I think that puts us on opposing teams," he noted. "When we figure out this little electrical problem we're having, you should probably tell me why you're working with them. Don't worry, you've got time, I still haven't isolated the source of the problem." Chin back up to peer through his glasses again, this time down at his geiger counter, he complained, "The ambient radiation out here is making subtle changes difficult to detect, unfortunately."

Also, dude, what's with the glasses? Mad scientist much?

"That's so bullshit," Tommy rolls his eyes. "Spirits are real, Tony. Geez, we know souls are real. How is ghosts hard for you to take? Also that's literally a geiger counter. That's for measuring radiation. Are you expecting uranium electrical breakdowns?"

Yes, Tommy knew what a geiger counter was. He was a specialist in disaster response heroics after all. And since the greatest issue with nuclear related problems is length of exposure, he was a great go to when the properly suited to it people weren't around.

Of course Tony then goes on to explain what he's doing and that's annoying and maybe Tommy shouldn't have tried to blurt out all of that at speeds so fast that probably even a dog couldn't have heard it. Dammit.

So he takes a deep breath and tries again.

"Seriously, what do ghosts, or technical glitches, have to do with radiation," he says at a human pace of speaking.

Now Tommy wasn't even pretending that Tony was worth talking to, making Tony squint as he tried and failed to follow that monologue, then sigh and look around for the next obvious heading to solve this problem while Tommy entertained himself. It was with some surprised that Tommy got his attention back when his became audible again, and Tony had to work out that they were still arguing about the presented methods, lifting his device inquisitively to make sure they were having the same conversation. "I haven't worked out the, uh, exact, you know, causation," he had to admit, halting without any good proof for or against either the technical or occult theories. That didn't mean it was a ghost. Just that Tony didn't know what the nature of the problem was, and, crucially, "I'm covering my bases. I didn't imagine a vampire-ghost and put it at the top of the list. Logically."

It wasn't that Tony wasn't worth talking to. It was that Tommy was sorta freaked out here and that got rid of his sense of time sometimes.

"I didn't put it at the top of the list. Ghost, yes. But garlic in case. But, come on, if you don't wanna try my way, show me what your tech is gonna do then."

"It's not that we're not trying your way. Your way isn't doing anything. I've been standing here for forty-five minutes and your lettuce is wilting," Tony replied, gesturing broadly across Tommy's inert assortment. At least DATA was looking around, taking records of the otherwise very normal and empty room and keeping any ghosts from sneaking up on them. Tony sniffed and announced like it was the practical next step that he'd had in mind all along, "We should check the on board temperature controls. They've been spotty, and should reveal where the failure point is."

"I'm still setting my way up," Tommy counters before quickly writing out more letters. "Also, where do we even find those? What do you mean it's been spotty?"

Temperature fluctuations haven't hit him as hard yet.

Tony was very ready to answer, "Downstairs. In the belly," and yet remained planted where he was, like he could do any more fiddling with the device in his hand to get them there, face carefully neutral. He might have been happy to spend time with the ship's strange machinery, before the lights started flicking off and things started moving around of their own accord. For safety reasons, of course. "It's like someone's messing with the AC. Some rooms are freezing, just cold, not a pressure fluctuation like it could be a hull issue. Just the environmental controls, really straightforward electrical problem."

"In the belly."

And Tommy raised an eyebrow at that. Why was Tony here and not there then, if he thought the temperature was messed up? Could it be Tony was unnerved by all of this? Scared even? Too bad Tommy wasn't able to admit than himself, just like Tony wasn't.

"Fine. If you give me a few minutes here to see if I can get the spirit to talk, we can go do your thing next."

Tony did his best impatient pout, hand on his hip and sighing with a tapping foot, that didn't work as well when he glanced around warily, searching for the predator that would creep up on them while they were just standing here looking at the ground. "If you were trying to call me," he said, a pointed if because this was not his concession to Tommy's hypothesis in the least, "I would respond better to appeals to my base urges. Not..." He flapped a hand at Tommy's confused combination of warding fetishes on top of his alphabet. "You said it wanted a drink. That's first date territory."

"Ghosts aren't dating material," Tommy dismisses as he finishes scrawling his alphabet. Then he sits by it with his big hand made pointer.

"Come on. It takes two. Get over here, science guy."

"Dude," Tony challenged, unable to quite match Tommy's condescending tone but unwilling to quite commit to arguing the hypocrisy of recognizing ghosts and souls but not their humanity. Some ghosts were probably very charming. That was too close to acknowledging that this might have been a ghost.

"I did not agree to being involved," Tony pointed out to ensure no one got the impression that he would be doing anything he was told, even as he carefully perched DATA on the edge of the fountain where he could keep watch while Tony did something humiliating on his knees. Even while down there, he kept his hands raised daintily, like touching any of this was some kind of contaminant to his logical sciences. It takes two. Flagrantly baseless.

"It's a fair trade," Tommy points out with a smile. He nods and waits for Tony to put his hands on the pointer.

"Alright, spirits. We're here. We're listening. Tell us what is going on."

And then he waits. And waits. The candles flicker. Nothing happens.

It was an excruciatingly long time, possibly whole seconds, for no one to be talking. Tony's eyes darted, around the room, sure the shadows were never that dark, making DATA spin to get infrared coverage of every black corner. His lip remained raised in skepticism, his pinkies lifted where he barely touched ouija on the ground. "That can't be what you're going with," Tony complained almost immediately. "That doesn't work on anyone, 'tell me what's happening', jesus, might as well ask about the weather. At least make it sound appealing. 'I can't wait to hear what you have to say'."

"Really? You try then," Tommy says in frustration. "I'm not one of the family witches, remember? I just regularly defy the natural laws of physics for the speeds a human can travel at and do complex math in my head without thinking."

But only for how much speed he needs for something and when stopping and starting is needed and how to make things explode.

None of which are useful here.

This wasn't Tony's tactic, so he looked peeved by Tommy's frustration, which sounded like it should be ruling out either of them trying to communicate with spirits in the first place. It wasn't clear what Tommy thought would be helped by providing his resume, and Tony returned, "I can count to at least ten," but it didn't sound like it was Tony he was trying to convince. In fact, Tony challenged, "You're the one always talking about luck and destiny, and you're the one out here asking an unseen presence to talk to you. He, at least, watches Star Trek. You're the witch."

Dude, luck and destiny were real. There were mutants that could manipulate the former, and come on, there were people that made prophecies that came true in their world too. Tony knew it. Probably.

"Wow, I'm not a witch. He is. And I've seen Star Trek too," Tommy dismisses. What can he say, he's a fan.

"Fine," he says, annoyed as he stands up. "We'll try your way."

Tony looked unimpressed by this lack of argument, chin down with pursed lips to ask if Tommy was just waiting to be further 'accused' so they were both properly convinced. He wasn't going to waste any more time on that, though, if it was just going to distract from his perfectly sound plan. He was up quickly after Tommy, already reaching for DATA to grab onto his sleeve and pull himself up securely against Tony's side again. "Take a message," Tony instructed Tommy's array of esoteric playthings, and started for the stairs that would lead them down into the humming mechanism of the ship.

"Uuhhh..." Keith had made his way over, walking carefully and with a limp. Seeing Tommy on this ship meant that someone had let him in, and now he was doing... something... with their fountain.

"Is... uh... is everything okay?" Keith asked hesitantly.

"Yep. Seance in process," he says without looking up. "Didn't work on my ship. Figured maybe yours is the source of the ghosties."

So he's going to do the seance here.

"Seance... like they do in those ghost movies? or on TV? Do those even work?" Keith looked doubtful.

"Yeah. They totally work. Magic people use them all the time," Tommy says.

Except he's not a magic person so....

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Ghostly Interventions

III. Ghost Hunters In Space

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Feel free for Tony not to have understood any of the first talking paragraph

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III

Re: III

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