Ghostbusters: Regeneration

Chapter Sixteen

Everyone scrambled to help Peter. Already on her feet, Hiroko managed to get there first. She approached the spot of the fallen stone - worst case scenarios rushing through her mind - as her outward senses frantically worked to assess the damage. It quickly became clear that the heavy triangular slab had landed corner-down, becoming solidly wedged into the firm soil due to the force of the impact. Hiroko peered over the vertical chunk of wall, still fearing the worst.

There she saw Peter, crouched down with arms shielding his head, completely unscathed. It looked like he had failed to budge an inch after Hiroko's and Melissa's shouts, and by sheer luck the heavy stone had missed him by a matter of centimetres.

He peaked through the gap between his forearms, his eyes quickly locking onto the relocated slab. After taking a moment to collect himself, he then gingerly began to stand back up. The rest of the team swiftly arrived by his side, but were quickly realising that Peter had survived the incident without receiving as much as a scratch. He looked from the segment of wall up to where it had fallen from, then into the faces of the rest of his team with an almost mirthful look of surprise upon his features.

'Well, it's not the first time this city's tried to kill me.' He then said as he pantomimed brushing dust off his jumpsuit.

Hiroko looked around at the group, seeing a deep relief across their faces but also horror at the thought of what could have been. Melissa in particular seemed overcome to the point that she appeared to have tears in her eyes.

As the team took a moment to collect themselves, Hiroko's thoughts were focused on the single-word outburst that had left Melissa's mouth. She had been willing to write it off as a mental slip; just something said in the heat of the moment. It could have been akin to the phenomenon of kids accidentally calling a teacher 'mom' or 'dad'. Peter and the others were authority figures to Melissa, Callum, and herself, so the theory was sound.

Her best friend being the daughter of a Ghostbuster would be outrageous. Completely out of the question.

Yet the more Hiroko thought about it, the more it made sense. It was not just the way that Melissa seemed more distraught at Peter's dice with death than his oldest friends; a lot of things about her past suddenly seemed to add up. She had always been fascinated with the paranormal and the Ghostbusters. She had never talked much about her father, who Hiroko knew was alive but had never really been a big part of her life. Peter seemed to be the one member of the original team that she seemed to bristle against. Heck, her favourite Ghostbusters action figure growing up had been the Peter Venkman one.

Hiroko was mentally reeling as the pieces fell neatly into place. If this was really true, then why had Melissa, her best friend, never told her? Was Peter aware that Melissa was his daughter? Did Ray and the others know anything about this?

As much as she needed answers, it did not feel like the time to start asking questions. Though the foundations of her entire world had just been rocked, she vowed to keep this revelation to herself for the moment. Thankfully, any sense of shock she had outwardly expressed went unnoticed as the team was still reeling from the other events of the last few minutes.

'Let's just move away from the crumbling scary building now.' Egon soon said, ushering Peter away from the wall.

The group began to leave the hospital grounds through the damaged gate they had entered through. As Hiroko retrieved her proton pack from the ground, she noticed that it had shut itself off and would not start back up again when she flipped its power switch.

'Don't worry about that,' Egon said to her, 'the other packs are probably the same. They're designed to shut down when under extreme duress to prevent a catastrophic overload.'