//------------------------------// // Get him! (Edited) // Story: Ghostbuckers! // by heavy weapons brony //------------------------------// Octavia Melody walked calmly through the gloomy concert hall, the dimly lit hallway inspired a certain filly like fear in her stomach. She entered through a open doorway into a massive rotunda, it was as dark as the the hallway outside, through the dimness she could barely make out the instruments left by the other musicians lining the wall in their respective cases. the rotundas massive size didn't help her uneasiness as she walked down the red carpeted stairs to the very row she and been practicing on just two hours before. the november cold must have been invading the poorly heated room as Octavia felt a cold breeze pass through her gray sensible welt kept pantsuit. As she continued down her aisle she came to her seat, she glanced down at the magenta plastic seat and remembered all those uncomfortable hours practicing in these kinds of plastic seats ever since she was a filly in private school. one would think such prestigious places would have funding for better seats, its as if their were designed for torture. Octavia dismissed these thoughts and returned to the matter at hand, the sheet music laying on the standee in front of her seat that she was meant to bring with her home to practice, it was only until she got home she realized she forgot it and returned on foot rather rely on the public transport in the massive city of Ponyville. Through the dim light that shone through massive shaded arched windows of the rotunda she reached for the sheet music, picked it up, folded it and stuck it into the pocket of her pantsuit. She turned to leave when she noticed a quiet, put heavy fluttering noise, like a two ton butterfly with several sets of wings had entered the room. Octavia looked up to see a very frightening sight, the sheet music from previous concerts on the standees in front of the seats on the top row had suddenly started throwing themselves into the air, Octavia's eyes darted around to search for the source of the vandalism, but when she didn't find anyone running below the seats she shrieked in fear. That shriek suddenly became a scream as the rows below the top one, including the one she was standing in started throwing their sheet music as well. Octavia screamed and flailed her hands above her head as she bolted to the staircase at the end of their aisle and proceeded down it to the service door which she knew was the quickest way out of the rotunda rather then the door she came through. Octavia jiggled the handle to find it locked, she turned around and held her body flat against the door, she continued screaming for help until the last of the sheet music fell to the floor. Both the cellist and the room fell sill. Octavia's chest heaved from the sudden excitement and her dark and silver hair hanged in a unruly fashion on her forehead. Octavia failed to make a noise when one of the most scariest events she ever had to bear witness to unfolded before her very eyes, each instrument was suddenly coated in a eerie green glow as the floated about four feet from the floor, the sound of latches coming undone filled the room as well as the creaks of opening cases as each instrument floated out of their cases which were each dropped producing a large BOOM! causing a frightened Octavia to jump. Then each instrument floated with silence to thier respected places in the rotunda floating as if their were held by the musicians themselves, each instrument pointed towards the center and waited, violins bows at the ready, tubas and trumpets fingered their keys by themselves and waited. Octavia took a step forward, she had no idea what to think, or how any of this was possible. Then a large green light appeared on the conductors stand, it started out as a blob then it, slowly began to take shape, first arms, then a torso, followed by the head of a pony!? Octavia's fear finally retook control as she shrieked with fear once again as she flew up the staircase jumping over the many cases littering her path and slipped only once in the large piles of sheet music that littered the floor, after she recovered Octavia ran out the door she originally then down the dark hallway and entered the main lobby of the concert hall to be intercepted by the team of janitor ponies who caught her and tried to soothe the hysterical wreck. Dr.Rainbow dash PhD a cyan pegasus mare with a rainbow colored mane wearing a shaggy pantsuit with her tie so loose she should have not wore it at all sat in her grimy little office (Well by what the university meant by office Dr.Dash referred to it as broom closet with its small size, lack of paint, continuous stream of janitors going through the collection of mops brooms and window squeegees in the corner, the smell, lack of drywall which let to exposed wires) at a desk designed for one of her many experiments in psychology. This one was to see that if faced with pain, the pony mind will rapidly develop telekinetic abilities, she was at the point of the test where she stopped caring and decided to just mess with the subject's heads. "I donno!" is it aaaaaa..... square? a lanky young stallion with his mane done up in a afro at the opposite side of the desk guessed. "Close!" said Rainbow Dash exclaimed, the test subject's face lit up with hope. "But not..close...enough" Rainbow Dash said flipping over the card revealing a circle, she slowly put her finger on the button on a black box in front of her and pushed it down. "Aaaaa!" the test subject wailed as a small voltage went from the black box, down the twin wires and entered his body through insulated bands on both of his wrists. Dr.Dash turned to her other test subject, a young mint colored mare with a white and green mane, so that if the experiment proved successful in one gender it would show in the results, so far, it was showing. " Aaaa triangle?" the mare asked with confidence. Dr. Dash looked at the card she held in her hands, it depicted three squiggly lines Dr.Dash's face lit up with surprise "you're right! are you sure you can't see these?" Dr.Dash asked while mock searching around for anyway she could be cheating. "I dunno, they just come to me!" the mare said with excitement. Dr. Dash them turned to the stallion holding up the back of the new card, "Aaaa.aaaa...rectangle?" the stallion asked very slowly with a hint of unsurety, Rainbow Dash looked at the card with the picture of a rectangle,"Oooh!" then donning a look of disappointment slammed her hand on the button on the box in front of her "Ahh! thats it!" the stallion stood up and ripped off his wristbands with frustration. "Hey! sit back down and suck it up! we're paying ya! you volunteered for this!" Rainbow Dash yelled a bit disgruntled. the irate college student spat back " this is B.S! theres no way she guessed those cards! you can keep those 5 bits! im outta here!" "Oh don't worry we will keep the bits get outta here wussy!" Rainbow Dash answered back as the stallion stomped out of the room. Dr.Dash sat down and pouted, a bit sad that her game for the day had ended so suddenly. Rainbow Dash looked over at the mare behind the desk, she looked very confused, "You can go now" Rainbow Dash said to the mare as she picked up a sheet of paper on the desk in front of her that was full of doodles she doodled so it would look like she was talking notes, crumpled it up and underhanded it into the wastebasket by her door and continued to pout. As the mare was leaving Rainbow Dash heard her bump into someone outside followed by a familiar voice saying a familiar apology. then she groaned as she heard quick and excited foot steps leading into her "office." A short grey colored mare pegasus with a blonde mane wearing a stained loose pant suit covered in a big blue raincoat rushed into Dash's "Office." judging by the look on her face and the fashion she was waving her arms around the mare had something to be very excited about. "Rainbow Dash we got one! we finally got one!" the grey mare exclaimed with a smile below here gold colored mismatched eyes. "One what Doo?" Dash asked with hardly an interest for what the wall-eyed mare was about to say. “ At precisely 1:45 nearly six people at the Ponyville Concert Hall experienced a free floating fully formed vaporis torso apparition! it blew sheet music everywhere and tossed instruments from over twenty feet away! it scared the socks off some poor member of the orchestra! we got to go down there to check it out!" Dr.Doo yelled with excitement while assaulting one of the shelves behind Dash taking both a video camera and a film picture camera. "I Am very excited Doo i really am" Dash said very sarcastically "Go down there and get back to me with every detail." "No Dash you're coming with me! I sent Sparkle down their earlier and the P.K.E. readings she got where off the charts! buried the needle! we are close on this one i can feel it!" Dr..Doo retorted. And with a huff Dash picked up her brown tattered rain coat and said "I can feel it to Doo, i can feel it to." and followed Dr.Doo out into the brisk november weather. "Listen as a friend i gotta to say you and Sparkle have gone off the deep end with this ghost business, speeding around to meet anypony who has any ghost related story to tell! I mean how much of this stuff have you ever proved real?" Dash asked as both her and Doo proceded up the grand stairs lined with elegant 19th century statues of lions and timberwolves just out front of the ponville concert hall. Both mares entered through the tall mahogany doors of the hall to find the main lobby, a large room with a concession stand and two ticket booths in front of large dark halls leading down to the seats where ponies watched the concerts. "You forget Dash I was there during the paranormal muffin migration!" Doo said loading her camera with film. "Those muffins moved ten feet! in five weeks! I told you the table was uneven!" Dash said back before the scientists found them both distracted by the colleague. Sparkle was a tall purple mare unicorn wearing a striped overshirt covered in suspenders which held up her black dress pants and the whole ensemble was covered in a brown raincoat, she was on her knees leaning on one of the ticket booths, she held up a suction cup to the side of the booth, the cup had a wire that lead to a tape recorder and the tape recorder had a wire that led to a pair of headphones that held down her two tone purple mane. Dash found the opportunity to have some fun as she sneaked behind Sparkle and started moaning in a "I'm a ghost in a creepy swamp" fashion. Sparkle’s face took a look of surprise as she listened closely to what she was hearing, failing to notice it was Dash behind her. Rainbow Dash then flattened out her hand and slammed it down hard on the side of the booth right next to Sparkles listening device. "Ow!" Sparkle uttered as she grabbed her ears in pain. She turned to see her two colleagues behind her, "Oh! you two are finally here! now we can question the victim of this incident, my P.K.E. has been going off the charts! if theres a ghost anywhere, its here." Sparkle said as all three proceeded over to the concession stand to the left of the ticket booths, around the stand were five janitor stallions wearing matching green coveralls with Ponyville Concert Hall embroidered on the left breast, one policemare and a grey mare with a black and silvery mane lying on the stand with her head elevated with the coat of her sweaty pantsuit. "I couldn't see if it had legs but it definitely had arms because I remember it reaching out for me!" Octavia said to the policemare who was writing down all she said, Sparkle looked skeptically down at the cellist. "Could be a repressed childhood memory, or a nutjob wanting attention" she said with and amount of skepticism that matched her look. Dash leaned down on her knees and look very intently at the mare on the countertop. "Miss melody, we need to ask you some questions, just a formality, but we need you to answer as truthfully as you can okay?" Dash said with her voice full of mock concern. "Okay" Octavia replied. "Alright, does your family have any history of Schizophrenia? Mental incompetence? Or other insanities?" Dash asked. "Well I had an aunt who believed that she was the rightful king of france! she lived in a garbage dump." Octavia replied. "Well i'll take that as a yes" Dash said and turned the police mare "You should take her down to the station, check her out, get a background check and get back to us if you get anything it would be very important to our studies, Okay?" Dash said to the policemare quietly. "Okay" she whispered back and helped Octavia up from the counter of the concession stand and out the tall wooden front doors. Doctors Sparkle, Doo and Dash Walked quietly down the hallway that led to the main instrument storage room. Sparkle led the other two slowly as she held out a strange device known as a P.K.E. reader. it was a long rectangle with a short handle on one end. It had a single, round screen that depicted a wavy white line and one little red light that would light if it detected high amounts of P.K.E. energy. The group rounded through a doorway into the instrument storage room, and what they saw in their made all three reeled back a bit in surprise, a neat stack of various instrument cases was built to the ceiling. the three mare looked up in astonishment at the stack of cases. Through further inspection they found the cases had been covered in a strange dark blue liquid that made the P.K.E reader go nuts. "Wow actual ectoplasmic residue!" Doo exclaimed pulling out a small plastic cup "Take some samples so i can analyze it later" Sparkle said handing Dash a similar cup "Good, somebody blows their nose you wanna keep it and look at it under a Microscope" Dash said sarcastically "Come on Dash you got to say what we are seeing is some pretty hard evidence!" Ditzy said with her usual excitement, "Yea cuz no "pony" could stack cases like this" Suddenly the silence was shattered with loud dynamic orchestra music, the trio jumped at the sudden noise. the three proceeded down a service hall from the storage room to the rotunda that was the suspected source of the music. Sparkle came to a door at the end of the hall first, music blared through the other side of the doorway confirming that on the other side of the door was the source. She tried the lock to find it locked, she looked at the other two to find a look of confusion on Ditzy's face, but a look of "you can't be serious right?" on Rainbow’s, Sparkle looked down to see the door had a lever on the knob to unlock it. Sparkle mentally face palmed as she twisted the lever and opened the door. The trio stared wide eyed as green goulish light cover their faces. The door opened at the bottom of a large rotunda, on every row where instruments with no one playing them, instead a green aura had covered every instrument and was playing it while suspending it in the air. At the front of the rotunda, just feet from the three mares, was a ghost of a unicorn stallion. The ghost was green and transparent but it could be seen that he was wearing a old 18th century suit complete with tails, his mane was scraggly and his skin looked like that of a mummy that had been buried for centuries. He had no legs but a torso, arms and a head were completely visible. His arms flailed about in rhythmic rigid patterns at he conducted to ghostly orchestra. the trio looked at each other in surprise and fright. Ditzy lifted her camera and started snapping pictures, Rainbow dash stepped forward and walked right behind the ghost, "Excuse me sir but, your not scheduled to play here tonight" Dash said quietly without thinking of anything better to say. the music abruptly stopped, all three mares gulped as the ghost shot up straight, then slowly turned his head to the cyan mare. The dry cracking skin that made up his face donned a look of pure unrelenting fury as he looked down at Rainbow Dash, like he was a disgruntled grammar teacher and he just caught Rainbow Dash chewing gum. He lowered his hand to his mouth, held up a single index finger and said "Shhh!", then without further word snapped his head back to the front, hunched over the pedestal and restarted the orchestra, Rainbow Dash returned to her group and shrugged. Ditzy stopped snapping pictures and gave a look like she was lost in deep thought, then her face lit up. "Girls! i have a plan! just follow my lead" Ditzy whispered and started tiptoeing towards the ghost with both her friends in tow. Then Ditzy counted "one...two...three... GET HIM!" She shouted. All the instruments fell to the floor with sickening crashes as the ghost shot around, his eyes shot back into his skull, he grew to about ten feet tall from his head to his waist. His arms shot to about six feet in length and his hands became as big as manhole covers. then he uttered a roar so loud it flew each mare's mane back like she been caught in a hurricane, all three mares screamed, Sparkle bolted out the service door immediately while rainbow dash dived at the ghost per derpy's instructions, flew through it and landed with a thud on the wall on the opposite side of the room., Derpy however screamed and flew upwards then around the room in a effort to find means to escape, but her search was cancelled when a piece of sheet music shot up in the draft of the ghost's roar and covered her eyes causing her to fly wildly about before crashing through the nearest window escaping to the outside. Rainbow recovered and bolted out the the service entrance to following Twilight down the hall, they both ran through the large doors and down the stone staircase to the front lawn of the concert hall. Both mares stopped under a nearby tree huffing and puffing out of breath. "Wait!...huff*..wheres Ditzy?..*huff." Sparkle managed to sputter. A answer soon came after as the sound of a crash erupted from the tree above where their colleague hung, out cold.