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“What is that thing?”
Phoebe typed rapidly at the computer, heart thudding as she tried to not think about what she was doing.
She had no idea if this would even work the way she was hoping it would.
“It’ll allow us to temporarily exist on the same dimensional plane.”
She crouched in the chamber, nerves thrumming as she waited for the machine to activate.
When it did, at first Phoebe worried she hadn’t programmed it right. Aside from the lights, nothing was happening.
And then it hit her.
Phoebe screamed as she felt something tearing at the foundation of her being, at her very soul.
It was a pain that lingered after the fact, echoing through her muscle tissue and bone or well, whatever ghosts had as she stepped through the glass surrounding her, although it faded as time passed.
“What’s wrong?”
Phoebe didn’t know what was going on. She had finally done it. She was a ghost and was on the same level as Melody.
On the same level as the teen she had grown close to surprisingly quickly.
She was experiencing things she had no way to reconcile with the mortal, physical senses she had previously possessed.
Somehow she could feel grief from Melody. Grief tangled with a deep-seated longing for something forever out of reach.
Phoebe froze, her mouth opening in a silent scream moving without input from her as something took her over.
“I’m sorry. Garraka can’t control humans. Only ghosts.”
Power flooded through her with the frigid chill of the darkest Arctic nights as she numbly chanted in a language long dead and wiped from the face of the earth for a very good reason, unable to stop herself, unable to resist at all.
Garraka, for she had no doubt that’s who this was especially not after what Melody said, was uncaring of what happened to his temporary host. He pushed power into her regardless of what damage may have been done with his brutish manipulation of the delicate link between her body and soul.
The orb broke, shattering into hundreds of pieces and freeing the dark god.
Darkness exploded into the room, shrouding everything in shadows.
There was something breathing heavily behind her, a presence calling to mind a frozen-over lake with a shadow lurking beneath. She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see what her stupidity had brought into the world.
Turning around, Phoebe beheld Garraka in his glory for the first time.
He pushed down on her with something she couldn’t even begin to describe with the living senses and language she knew.
Glowing white pinpricks in the fathomless darkness pressured her with a deep-seated fury that burned with the force of a thousand suns. Shadows lurked in an icy palace that struck fear into the hearts of any who saw it. Bloodlust drenched the walls with hundreds of victims.
(A betrayal by a traitor hanging from frozen chains buried in the heart of Him)
“Your world will shatter. Bones and ice. My empire will rise.”
This was a god, one who would see the world encased in ice and wiped free of all who would not bend before him. Of that Phoebe had no doubt.
“If I brass-plate the components of my pack, it could give us a chance.”
Brass-plating her pack was a last-minute move born of desperation as she searched for any advantage they could get against Him.
Although truthfully, Phoebe didn’t know why the old Ghostbusters hadn’t done it before. Brass-plating, especially with psychically charged brass, would theoretically vastly improve the ability of the proton beams to affect ghostly beings.
She didn’t know for sure if it would work like she hoped, or even if it wouldn’t cause the pack to blow up in her face, but she had to hope.
It was all she had against Garraka.
“Was any of it real?”
Emotions swirled through Phoebe as she stared at Melody. The teen ghost had tricked her.
But…
Memories played of chess matches, of ranting about unfair parents, of Melody’s sorrow and grief when she betrayed Phoebe.
She almost felt like she could feel a faint tinge of that sorrow and grief as Melody stood in front of her once again.
But her analytical mind dismissed it as sentiment and hope.
(But then again, nothing’s wrong with a little hope.)
The explosion from the containment unit rupturing hit Phoebe like a train, but seemed to go through her blowing her into the wall.
Reeling from both that and seeing Melody again, she made her way upstairs.
Her proton pack still worked, thankfully. Seeing it send Garraka reeling was proof enough of that.
(Although the green trails were oddly similar to ectoplasm, and she could feel it seeping from the back of the pack.)
It worked. And she could do this. She could beat him.
“Bye, Phoebe.”
Dying was both not as bad as Phoebe had thought it would be and much, much worse.
She could feel her body freezing over as Garraka used more power against her than he had with her friends family.
And then it was blackness. She couldn’t see or hear anything, her soul trapped in a body not quite dead but not alive either.
She only had a moment to wonder if this was to be her fate for all eternity before she once again felt that great and terrible presence.
Garraka.
The dark god was curious, wanting to see the soul who had hosted Him and then remained defiant despite knowing His power.
Phoebe resisted with all her might, but she was nothing before Him. Slowly Garraka pulled her spirit from her corpse body, pain wracking her being as her soul was once again forcibly torn from her physical shell.
And then it stopped just as her willpower was about to give way.
Phoebe didn’t know what had happened, could feel nothing but that overwhelming stinging frigidity that was both Garraka’s presence and her body’s frozen state.
A rush of warmth and fire returned life to her, and she wasted no more time than a second to take a breath before she was attacking Him again.
“I’ll see you in the fabric of the universe.”
Melody slowly dissolved into particles and Phoebe stared at the space she had once occupied, tears flowing freely as she mourned.
The forever-teenage ghost may have already been dead, but Phoebe had not known her in life. It was only after death that they had met each other and grown close.
And some may be confused at a relationship between a ghost and someone living, but it worked for them.
(It was all they were able to have, permanently parted from the one person who understood.)
“It’s an ancient god from another dimension. Who’s to know it’s atomic composition?”
It should not have been the surprise that it was that there were aftereffects to Phoebe Spengler’s body and soul.
She forcibly separated her soul and body, which let Garraka possess her.
The dark god’s power and presence are near-unfathomable, and both were scored into Phoebe’s soul as He manipulated the fragile connection that remained between her and her body.
Later on, before she had even begun to recover from the last two events, Phoebe was exposed to strange radiation and ectoplasm from her makeshift brass-plated proton pack.
Phoebe Spengler died. Killed by Garraka, and then her soul was nearly torn from its frozen prison by Him.
And something without quite the impact of the others is that she opened herself willingly to a ghost, to someone on the other side of the Veil. Baring your deepest self to Them will always have an effect, whether that effect be benign or harmful.
Phoebe Spengler, the girl woman who has been touched by the Other Side, was no longer as she once was.
She had been through too much to truly remain there, to be cut off from that which she has tasted.
And desired more of.