Ghostbusters: Regeneration

Chapter Twelve

Melissa and Hiroko returned to the Firehouse the next morning to resume their new jobs. When the two emerged from the subway across the street from the old fire station, they found a crowd outside the building's main entrance. Most of the people gathered seemed to be from the media, supported by camera crews and vans, while others appeared to be New York citizens anticipating the re-emergence of the Ghostbusters.

A female news reporter was set up on the pavement across from the Firehouse, being filmed interviewing what looked to be a trio of Ghostbusters superfans. Melissa felt a pang of bitterness upon observing this. If things had gone the way she had originally planned, she could have been the woman covering the current situation.

Bitterness quickly turned to anxiety as it dawned on her that reporters and crew from MNN could be here. She was not fond of being the centre of attention at the best of times, but being reported on by people from the place she had just been fired from made that prospect even less appealing. This did give her a vengeful little idea of agreeing to an interview with MNN, then using the opportunity to put her old boss Meredith on blast. It could be an incredibly effective burn, but it ultimately would not be a good look for her or her new employer.

I'm actually an employee of the Ghostbusters, she thought to herself, remembering just how crazy the situation was. Reminding herself how blessed she was to be living out her lifelong dream, she put MNN and any ideas of revenge out of her mind.

Having read the news online and trawled social media over breakfast, Melissa and Hiroko had expected a certain amount of media coverage going forward. However, they had not anticipated a crowd of reporters hindering their entry into the Firehouse. Not wanting to deal with this media mob a moment more than necessary, Hiroko called Callum's mobile phone and got him to wait by the side door so they could slip inside as quickly and stealthily as possible. Before anyone outside had time to realise who they were and what they were doing, they had slipped inside and re-locked the door.

The two women then followed Callum up to the first floor, finding Janine, Ray, Egon, and Winston looking through the day's newspapers, reading the coverage of the paranormal uprising and the valiant return of the Ghostbusters. Judging from the coverage both in print and online, a lot more bystanders than they had expected had taken smartphone photos and videos of yesterday's jobs, particularly of their bust in Central Park. Thankfully, almost all the reporting on the team seemed to be positive, with the media and the people of New York seemingly grateful for the Ghostbusters' return during such a crisis.

Melissa leafed through a copy of the New York Times, which had dedicated more than half of its page count to the current situation. She was surprised to find an entire page focusing on her, Hiroko, and Callum with the title 'Who Are The New Ghostbusters?' Each of the new members received a few paragraphs of text containing what the publication had found out about them, accompanied by not-so great photos of them snapped during yesterday's events.

Out of the three of them, the publication had the most information about Melissa, which was not surprising given that she had published work online for both MNN and her vlog. Thankfully, the article did not go into any details about her personal life nor mention anything about her family.

Given that her father and brother were senior executives at one of the biggest Japanese electronics firms, Hiroko had probably been the easiest one of the trio to identify. However, the article seemed to focus mostly on her famous father, probably due to a lack of information on Hiroko herself. The paper appeared to have no concrete information on Callum at all, only listing him as 'Unknown Male Ghostbuster'. Though he was probably not happy to find that his face was in at least one of the major New York papers, he could at least rest assured that himself or anyone related to him had yet been named.