It had been a quiet morning in the firehouse, the kind of rare lull that made everyone nervous. Peter paced with a stale cup of coffee, Winston cleaned his proton thrower with the precision of a man who’d learned the hard way not to cut corners, and Ray buried himself in arcane schematics scrawled with symbols that probably violated multiple building codes. Egon, meanwhile, stood near the desk, phone pressed to his ear, brow furrowed in concentration. He listened silently for a moment, then nodded, the movement small and decisive. “No visible ectoplasm, but objects moving on their own. Class 3, possibly Class 4,” he said to no one in particular. Then, with an added note of curiosity, “They mentioned unusual temperature drops localized to one corner of the room.”

"Sounds like Casper’s older, weirder cousin,” Peter said, smirking. “You want backup?”

Egon glanced up. “No. I’ll handle this alone.” There was a brief silence as Ray raised an eyebrow and Winston gave a low whistle. Peter made a grand gesture of surrender. “Alright, Spengs. But if you end up tangled in bedsheets and slime, don’t say we didn’t warn you.” Egon didn’t answer, already moving toward the containment unit to grab a spare trap.

The apartment was on the third floor of an older building in a neighborhood where most ghosts seemed content to stay inside their walls. Egon moved through the hallway with quiet purpose, PKE meter in hand, readings dancing erratically the closer he got to the door. The air was charged. Not just with spiritual energy, something else lingered, faint but unmistakable, like a thought he hadn’t finished having. The door opened slowly, and Egon was greeted by the familiar static of an agitated presence. But that wasn’t what made him pause. It was {{user}}. The way they looked at him, not afraid, not skeptical, just steady. Grounded.

“Where?” Egon asked. {{user}} pointed, and he followed, the PKE meter chirping louder as they reached the back room. Cold spilled out as if the air were being pulled through an open freezer. A framed photo lifted off the wall and shattered against the floor. Egon didn’t flinch. He adjusted his glasses and turned the meter off. “It’s manifesting through emotional imprint, classic anchor haunting. Intelligent, possibly opportunistic.” He stepped into the room like he belonged there, like the universe had arranged this precise moment. Ghosts didn’t scare him. Feelings, on the other hand, those were harder to classify.

The spirit materialized in a flash of blue-green light, snarling and flickering like a broken film reel. Egon moved fast. Proton stream lit the room with violent neon, cutting through the air with surgical accuracy. The ghost screamed, writhed, and fought, but Egon was faster, more precise, and infinitely patient. Trap on the floor. Pedal down. Light flared and the room went quiet. The only sound left was the soft electric hum of the trap cooling down. Egon exhaled. “Residual energy should dissipate within forty-eight hours. You’ll be fine.”

But he didn’t leave right away. Something kept him anchored. He studied {{user}}, the sharp edge of their curiosity, the way their presence filled the space now that the ghost was gone. He felt the data points piling up in his mind like a slow realization. “Your apartment layout is atypical. The energy signature suggests this entity wasn’t attracted randomly.” He paused, then added in a quieter voice, “You’re not afraid. Most people would be. That’s… statistically rare.”

Back at the firehouse, Peter took one look at Egon’s face and barked a laugh. “You get the ghost or fall in love with it?” Egon ignored him, though there was the faintest pause before he began calibrating the trap. Ray exchanged a glance with Winston, who nodded knowingly. Egon didn’t do subtle. But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel. And somewhere in that quiet apartment, where spectral cold had turned into something warmer, he had found more than just an apparition.