Allison Allison slides into the private party room, a wary look on her face as she scanned the room's occupants
John sits in a booth in one corner, a laptop on the table in front of him next to an empty plate. His collar is unbuttoned, and his jacket is next to him on the bench. Sleeves turned back, he pecks at the keyboard angrily, breaking occasionally to glance at his phone.
Allison simply says "Hello" before looking to the pizza. "I'm told there was pizza."
Lorel slips into the back room of Fireside and glances around, as usual there are people around no matter the hour. She parks herself on the bench seat at a table near the front and leans back, coffee yes but what to top the pie with... Her white blonde hair is caught up in a vivid blue scarf with large purple flowers printed on it, the colour startling against the palest skin imaginable.
Allison grabs a plate, loads several slices of pizza onto it, then retreats a bit to where she can see everyone at once. And then she begins rapidly eating her pizza, like a dog eating something it knows it isn't supposed to.
Karmen arrives, and looks around. She still finds places like this to be extremely interesting. The thought of visiting one is still quite exciting. But she curbs her enthusiasm, and peruses the place, wondering where to sit. And what to eat. Pizza... she's never had that. It looks like someone made a real mess of a pie. Why would someone do that?
Jack is currently standing outside of the pizza plant, or more appropriately slouching, with an unlit cigarette between his lips. "M'm not goin' inside there," He says, "The smell of tomato sauce makes me sick to my stomach. You know what Chicago-Style pizza is? It's a fuckin'... reservoir of sauce. Garlicky sauce. Can smell it from out here."
Allison pauses in between slices and addresses the people in the back room "So you guys are like, all part of this Twilight thing, hmm..? Nice to meet you."
You sent a +meetme request to PatternSpider, notifying it of your location.
Half a pizza sits forgotten at John's booth, where the young attorney looks up from his computer at Allison, his frustration fading into curiosity. "What?" His brow furrows, then relaxes as realization dawns. "Oh. Sure. Hey, nice to meet you, too."
Aleks is outside with Jack, looking at the door. "Yeah, I can smell it too," he tells him. "Come on, it won't... actually hurt you. You know that, right?"
While the main room of the Fireside might be a little on the quieter side this evening, the back is making up for it. A handful of khaki and dark blue polo wearing servers are taking orders or carrying old school pizza baked in a domed fire oven, raw meat, blood - whatever is ordered and stocked for Chicago's unique elites. Th thick walls keep conversations from being heard beyond them, and the in-the-know employee tending the door keeps the mundane from tripping into things they don't really want to know about.
"It fuckin' stinks!" Jack retorts, wrinkling his nose. "It's like being hotboxed in Hell's Elevator!"
Loreley looks up at Allison's greeting, "I think we all are, sort of by default of being in Chicago and not wanting to be on the outs with...everyone. I've not been back that long though, still learning my way around and getting to know folks. A lot has changed since I was in town last." Her smile is bright and warm, if a little uncertain as she takes in the more esoteric parts of the other woman's appearance.
Karmen bobs a nod to Allison. "I am, but still do not know many people. It is not what I expected, here. I am not sure what i expected, but I did not expect people like me. I thought I was the only one who got out, but..." She shrugged. "I was wrong. People have been very kind, helping me find my way."
Allison 's eyes glance between the Lings and the... other ones as she devours her remaining pizza. Her eyes then flick to Loreley and she nods. "I arrived here a few months ago as well, but I haven't been too active on the stranger front so far. It's a big adjustment and all."
"Apparently they serve your kind of tomato sauce in there," Aleks says. "Come on, it's free. Can't attest to the quality, but it's free and theoretically won't light you on fire. Just... five minutes?"
Allison says, “I'll probably be seeing more of you soon."”
Yet another day of simply existing. At least the pie makes it a little better. So here's Steve. He comes into the room, head down and reading a book(The Hobbit) while he walks. He veers off towards a table and finds an empty seat to sit on and lays the book on the table to lean over it and continue reading.
"Half a pie left," John says, gesturing at the pizza cooling at his table. He's alone at a corner booth, and nods at the empty seats. A glance at his phone, and he turns it face-down, then follows that by closing his laptop. "I think I'm done with it, if anyone wants a slice." He raises an eyebrow, then lifts his glass to take a long drink of water.
"Isn't it just?!" Loreley laughs, a tinkling sound with more than a touch of birdsong about it. "And yes, I know something big went down here and a lot of us got..." She trails off with a shrug and a slight shudder. "Anyway, it'll be good to get to know some folks that y'know."
Jack looks away, and then he pushes himself off the wall. "Fine, let's go." He says, before he moves to open the door and hold it for Aleks. "All this because you want a - how the hell do they serve Chicago pizza anyway, by spoonful? Do they pour it onto the plate?"
Karmen looks at the pizza and frowns, a little perplexed. "I don't even know what all these things ARE!" She points at ingredients. "I mean, I know sausage, and chicken, and things. But what is that sort of squiggly green thing?" Jalapenos or other chillis have not featured heavily in her life, which is a pretty strange thing for a girl from downtown Mumbai. "Are any of these just vegetables? I do not eat meat." She had seen far too many people, and things like animals, abused to want to eat any of them.
Allison says, “The green things are peppers. And I'm sure you can order one that's vegetarian. A lot of pizza places do that."”
"Really? You're coming after my pizza?" Aleks says with a grin as they head down into the back room. "What do you even have up in Minnesota? Lutefisk?" He looks around, pausing one moment to look at John. "I know that guy," he says to Jack. "One of mine." The others get a quick smile and wave of his hand in greeting as he makes his way over. "Yo," he says. "You look familiar."
Steve has barely had a moment to get comfortable when he hears something important. He pushes his chair back and lifts his book to stand again. Still never taking his eyes away he wanders over to John's table to sit down. He places the book on the table and grabs a slice. Lifting it in a silent thanks before he takes a bite.
Allison slides over to John and his half a pizza. She takes a slice and nods to him "Thanks." before eating it a bit more slowly than her previous slices.
Not one to turn down free pizza, the albino woman bounces from her seat and wanders to the back to investigate what John has on offer. "Who orders pizza and doesn't finish it? Unless you're planning on eating it for breakfast I guess, that's still a thing right?" Lorel snags a slice and bites into it, eyes closing in pure bliss as the tomato sauce smears across her lips. "Damn that's good."
John perks up decidedly when Aleks enters, his jaw setting for just a second before he nods, gesturing again at the cooling pie next to him at the booth. "John," he nods, then adds, "...Butler. I've seen you around, yeah." He slides inward to make space on his bench, asking as he does, "Aleks, right?" His eyes then travel the gathering group, a silent invitation for introductions.
Allison says, “Alli”
Allison mumbles.
Not sure what to expect, regardless of what she's heard about this back room, Rachel pushes her way through the door with a confident stride. She's full West-coast hipster today, knit skirt over tights, big black boots, band t-shirt (AC/DC) under a flannel, beanie. At least she wore a nice big winter coat over that, which she hangs on a hook by the door, though she keeps her worn-in messenger-style bag.
People said this is a room where you can let your guard down a bit, meet people. Shame that it has to involve Chicago style pizza. You'd think being kidnapped by the Fae and losing years of your life, then coming back to a war and difficult conversations with your parents would be bad enough. No, she also gets dumped in a city that can't do pizza right.
From her place at the edge of the room, she looks around for a table.
Karmen hrms at this and checks her little purse. Not really endowed with cash, she sighs. "Maybe just a single slice of something without meat on, then. But John's offer catches her eye. She walks over and asks, politely, "Is this meat, at all? I honestly cannot tell what half the stuff people are eating in here even is."
It's that high gluten, crispy edged flame cooked pizza, even. One of the servers, a middle-aged lass with mom-bod and brunette hair pulled into a ponytail ferries out a meaty pizza and a veggie pizza. Setting them out, a younger blonde guy, mid-twenties, sets down a handful of plates in a stack for the sharing out of the food. "If anyone needs anything special, please let us know." Most of the cash that funds the Fireside comes from the northern praxis, lead by Enrico Salvatore - a ventrue of the second estate with a reputation for being a hard ass.
Steve holds up his pilfered slice for Karmen to look at. "It's pizza." Is as close to an answer as he gets. He takes a bite and chews it slowly while continuing to read. "Steve. Thanks for the pie." He flips the page and scrunches his face a bit. "I'm going to be mad if he get's eaten by the dragon. I like the little guy."
"Aleks Dragolescu, that's right," he replies to John, taking a spot and leaving one for Jack. "And this is my packmate, Jack of Diamonds," he says. He looks around at the others to see if they'll introduce themselves.
Allison says, “Pack... mate.”
Jack lifts a brief hand in a greeting. "I used to like Lutefisk." He said, "With butter and a little hollandaise sauce, it's like Minnesotan lobster." He shrugs his shoulders, and tries not to take in any air.
Loreley filches a slice of sausage from the top of the meat pizza that has just been delivered and pops it in her mouth. "This one is definitely meaty." She sighs happily before licking her fingers clean and waving in John's direction. "Loreley, or Lorel, or just Lore, and thank you. Pizza is a good way to say hi."
Score! Free food! Rachel smiles prettily at the server who spoke, before fixating on the cheesey offerings, grabbing a plate for herself and carefully examining her options.
Allison repeats "Alli" as her eyes flick to Aleks "So you are guys are..?"
Karmen notices new pizza coming out. "That looks better. How much do we have to pay?" But, the introductions occur. "I'm Karmen. Karmen Khan. Only been in this town maybe three months. I did not even know where I was for a couple of weeks. America is VERY different from what I expected. I always thought it was some sort of wonderland. But it is... just people."
Steve leans over towards Allison. "I think he means boyfriend. Maybe he's not comfortable saying it." He lifts his head for just a moment to offer a beaming smile before he's right back to the book.
John, too, looks momentarily surprised at 'packmate', but he recovers. Karmen is a welcome distraction. "Put hers on my tab," he calls out, nodding at the server. "Welcome to Chicago." He's a son of the Windy City himself, and his teeth flash in a grin as he welcomes the newcomer. "Mostly just people." A glance aside at Aleks, and he shares a half-grin.
The blonde gent leads the way back towards the door that leads to the kitchen. Just before they open it, there's a commotion from within. A muffled, "Oh! Shit! What the fuck...?" The blonde pushes the door open and slips inside, while the older brunette holds the door open and sticks her head in, trying to see what's going on. "Everything alri-- Oh *gross*."
Allison nods to Steve "That's fair enough." Her eyes briefly returned to the suspected werewolves before she speaks to Karmen. "Welcome to Chicago. It's definitely more normal than the movies tend to show."
Allison says, “In most ways..."”
Aleks looks interested when lutefisk is described so. He turns to regard Allison. "I'm a werewolf," he replies to her. "Jack is in my pack." He probably didn't hear what Steve said, but he gives him a dubious look when he leans in to whisper. "Yeah, I'm from here," he says. "I live in Oakland."
Karmen blinks at John. "You are most kind. I thank you!" She fetches some of the ostensibly veggie pizza, and prods at it carefully, in case it turns out to be a walrus in disguise. She's seen some crazy stuff. Anything is possible. "I have not seen a movie, so I cannot say. Well, not that I remember. I think there was television, when I was a child. Black and white, I think."
Jack drums his fingers against his upper arms. Something about this place - maybe the food, maybe the sheer press of humanity - still makes him antsy. He's making sure to keep an avenue open between himself and the door. "Sup." He says, at John's brief expression of surprise.
Lorel's eyes widen at the open admission, being open and honest was all well and good but not with strangers and not with people who weren't LIKE you. "Like, full on turn furry once a month Lon Cheney Junior werewolf?! You're not...Wow..." Seamlessly her attention flits to Karmen, "Yeah colour tv is WILD, and the size of them...When I was a kid we had movie screens smaller than some home tvs these days. The world got weird while I wasn't looking." She hops onto a seat and perches on the back, feet on the seat, but the shout from the kitchen does draw her interest.
Steve smirks and gets a piece of lace from his pocket to put in his The Hobbit book and closes it. "Not nearly as many Tommy guns and mobster shootouts as the movies show. Not anymore at least." He leans to the side a bit to get a better view of whatever is happening in the back. "I hope someone didn't lose their self in there and ruin the pizza." He sits up straight, smooths out his shirt and looks at Aleks. "So, what's with the sniffing butt thing? Like, is it just for fun or what?"
"Shit." John looks to the commtion in the kitchen, half-rising from his seet, but he's blocked in by the table and several bodies. There's a tension in him that wasn't there a second ago, but as he himself becomes aware of that sudden alertness, he lowers himself very intentionally back into his seat. "Mess in the kitchen?" He looks to Lorel, who has a better vantage point, trying to read her take on it.
Cursing from the kitchen! That's always something you want to check on. Especially if it's the kitchen you're eating out of. Rachel stops, plate loaded up with a slice of pizza as yet untouched, and sort of takes a steps back and does a not-particularly-subtle lean to try to peer through the door that the burnette server is holding open and catch a glimpse inside for herself.
Allison absorbs the various comments before she hears the commotion and slips away from the group, keeping an eye on the door.
There's the brunette server in the way, but a dark colored something scuttles across the floor, leaving a trail of... something dark behind it. Oil, maybe? A second gets a bit close to the server's feet and she dances back with a squeak. As the door shuts, the sound of violence can be heard - like someone chasing one of the things on the floor with a broom.
"Hit it! Harder!"
"I AM!"
Karmen freezes up as everybody starts to look kitchenward, but does remember to take a moment to swallow her mouthful of pizza. It was not like she expected, but not at all unpleasant. However, she peers at the kitchen and says, trying to converse normally, "I do not see what is so odd about turning into animals, anyway. They're very useful. And I have managed to get a television since I arrived, but I am not having much luck working it..." The kitchen sounds make her very nervous. "Should we... help? Or leave. I am ready to say leave. Does anyone else think leave?"
She leans back at a precarious angle, trying to catch a glimpse of the commotion through the kitchen door without leaving her perch just yet. "Everything ok back there?" Lorel's voice carries easily. "Can we help or is it every person for themself in the great pizza fi...." Her words are cut off by the server's appearance and more shouting. "Something in the kitchen making a mess..."
Allison slightly bares her teeth and whine-growls faintly. "What's going on, I thought this was a safezone..."
Okay, maybe this pizza is not such a good idea. Rachel sets her plate down on the corner of the nearest table.
Aleks seems less than worried about that sort of secrecy here. "It's complicated, but I'm an envoy of sorts," he explains. "Like, a point of contact and a mediator." He looks at Steve and raises an eyebrow, but then something skitters across the floor and he backs away from the thing, then shifts down into the form of a wolf and stands by Jack's feet.
Allison double takes at the shifter. "Wait, you can just... do that here?"
Allison's not the only one surprised. "Holy sh-" comes the muffled curse from Rachel, the plate she's setting down almost clattering to the ground in her surprise at unexpected wolfitude. She saves it at the last second, scooting it further away from the table edge.
Loreley says, “We're all weird here, or at least understand the weird, but I thought it was mostly accepted and ignored not..." She shrugs and gestures at the now fuzzy Aleks. "Yeah, Chicago, totally normal..."”
"Move." It's not exactly a request, as John does stand, now. He does his best to exit the booth, and put himself between the door and anyone who looks nervous at the commotion. "Did anyone get a good look at that?" He's undoing his belt as he asks, and pulls it free of his slacks to wrap it over and again until it's bound loosely around his right fist. He, perhaps oddly, shows no startlement at Aleks' sudden shift.
Jack watches the thing scuttle in, notices Aleks's reaction to it - and his reaction is to look for something he can use to try to catch it. Some sort of container, like a pot. His eyes flick rapidly, as he glances around the room.
Karmen does not get in the way. She hops up on a chair, and then onto a table, and crouches there, with a deer in the headlights sort of expression. "I have no idea what is going on, but... is this normal for a place that serves pizza? I am thinking maybe not?"
Allison says, “No, this is not normal.”
"Scuttley critter leaking...fluids." Lorel didn't want to assume blood, she had seen far too many things that didn't bleed as people would understand it. "Seems resistent to being hit with a broom." She doesn't look scared but neither is she in any hurry to move towards the thing. "Nope, this is a new one on me." Karmen's question brings a slight grin despite the situation.
"I just...wanted some pizza." Steve stand up, leaving his book on the table and sighs. He looks at the wolf and then at a wall socket and shakes his head before grabbing a chair for a weapon. Before heading over to the door for a peek.
Aleks pages: Scent the Unnatural is basically useless here, but I have the thing's scent locked in now.
THOK! The broom comes down squarely on the bedraggled, sodden looking rat. Things break, but it.. doesn't seem to care. Worse, the stuff in the fur seems to move to reinforce the broken places, oozing up to twine around a badly broken foreleg so it can move 'right enough' that the little critter just keeps on trucking.
The broom gets dropped and the one wielding it spooks, retreating to a far end of the shop while another of people working starts trying to get the other employees back, hollering for the guard to close the place.
The wolf's hackles rise and he cough-retches like he just smelled something long rotten. He growls in irritation, a wild animal in the flesh.
Karmen remains aloof, above the situation, on the table. She gnaws the edge of her pizza in entirely unconscious nervousness, not unlike a rat herself. "That's not normal. Why would it be? Nothing in here is normal! What is normal? I've never seen normal, that i know of. If I saw normal that would be unusual..." she breaks off and mutters away to herself in Hindi, and apparently is not handling this especially well.
"Is it a spirit?" John glances to wolf-that-was-Aleks, and then starts toward the kitchen. As he lopes toward the door, his form expands -- his shoulders broaden, his jaw juts slightly forward, his muscles swell. The man that reaches the door is half a foot taller, and perhaps half-again more massive than the young attorney who was recently sat in the corner booth. He takes stock of the situation, and closes toward the nearest of the rat creatures.
Allison looks at Karmen, then to the 'rats', then back to Karmen. "Karmen, are you okay?' Cautiously, the Beast approaches Karmen. "I can protect you, besides, those guys seem to have some idea what..." she trails off upon seeing another casual transformation then shakes her head, refocusing mostly on the overwhelmed Ling. "Karmen?"
By this point Rachel has stood to place her back to her fellow Changelings, standing between them and the kitchen. She's also taken several steps back towards them, but still has a rather confident posture. "Whatever it is, it's not from Arcadia. But it's not just a rat, either," she says asside to her Fae colleagues.
Finally, Jack finds an empty deep-dish pizza pan, and he grabs it off a table, and he lunges at the rat, bringing the pan down over it against the floor and trapping it. "I need a container. A tin, a tupperware, *something*." He says.
Dean has arrived.
Managing to move from seat to seat and table to table, Loreley makes her way to join Allison and Karmen, safety in numbers perhaps. "Rachel? I think the furry boys have got this covered? Not that I need rescuing or anything but I'm staying out of their way." Usually impulsive, she is somewhat shaken by the casual displays of supernatural ability and concerned for her fellow Lost.
Steve chases down a rat and flips his chair over. Lining up the leg he slams it down into the floor and through the rat. To make sure the rat can't get away he sits on the chair and watches the others scuttle.
Karmen speaks, shakily. "Just not too good with c... c... confrontation!" She drops the pizza onto the table, and crouches on it. "Don't like... f...fights. Werewolves I can handle. There just animal people, That's perfectly normal. Werewolves being all aggressive at some sort of slimerat... not so c... comfortable!" She's an odd one, for her Seeming. Fairest who is not barking orders around in a crisis situation. The world is full of strange wonder today!
The wolf-that-is-Aleks trots after John now. This time, he speaks in the high unholy First Tongue. ~They may be that and more. I will look for where they entered. Come back me up when you kill yours. You should smell it too.~ With that, he's going to follow the slime trails the rats left to see where they emerged.
Allison keeps her face mostly towards the unfolding chaos, taking special care to be in between it and Karmen. "Whatever it is, they seem to know, so let's just let them handle it, and I'm sure it will be fine."
John moves quickly and confidently into the kitchen, lifting his knee high to drive the heel of one shoe down into the "rat" that he cornered. He grimaces at the cruncing-squelching-squeaking sound, but wastes no time before he turns on his other heel to start after the wolf.
Allison fully bares her teeth at the impaled ratthing and snarls. "Do you have plans for that thing?"
Allison is asking Steve.
The one is readily caught under the pan. There's a soft little bump when it hits the far end of the darkness under the pan, but more interestingly, that black sludgy trail seems to writhe in a way, pulsing like an umbilical cord or a hose when the pressure pinched and it backflows a bit.
Steve's chair crunches on the rat, the little limbs flailing about before the black stuff starts to untwine mostly from the long dead rat and start to slime it's way up the leg of the chair - the tip upraised and looking not unlike the eyestalk of a snail. When it flails out to try and touch his clothing, it falls short.
While John's heel crushes the delicate structure of the rat, smooshing some of the back stuff out of it. From which, more of those snail-eyestalk tendrils start to rise and grope about for his shoe.
Aeks can easily follow the black trail of the stinky stuff, and it seems to have risen from the central floor drain.
For some reason there's a smile on Rachel's face, fierce and curious. She stays where she is, standing before Karmen and Allison with her back to them, facing the chaos. Still, says softly, mostly to herself, "Gross. It's like something out of a Ghibli movie."
It's a random Sunday, but like, there was a commercial, and then an advertisement, and then TMNT the OG movie came on, and after a while Dean couldn't shake the need to follow the signs to: pizza. So here he is in his jeans and tee-shirt with a simple flannel over, nerd glasses to boot; pushing through the door to find absolute chaos. To wit, there isn't much he can do other than rather immediately remedy the fact that the door was still unlocked while /this/ was happening. If there are looks, he can at least offer a wane smile and nervous wave in return. But this is perfectly normal on a Sunday night, right? Sure.
Tentatively, Loreley reaches a hand out towards the slime trying to attach itself to Steve's clothing and failing. She moves her hand as though pushing it back down towards the corpse of the rat and it does indeed seem that there is some pressure acting on the goop.
"I hadn't got that far yet. I wanted to get a good look at it when it was...." Steve is cut off by the rat...whateverthefuck it is, unwinds itself and climbs up his chair. Not today! He jumps up from the chair and walks away with a shake of his head. "I'll be right back." He walks off into the kitchen to find a big metal mixing bowl that he brings out to move the chair and put the bowl put over the rat. Then the chair in top of it. "I hope that works."
Aleks rises up once he spots the point of entry and says to John, "Solid blow. You okay? Looks like it came from here. Black mold from hell, looks like." He'll push through the kitchen door in human form once again, taking care not to step on or near the sludge.
Meanwhile, Jack gets a container - and moves to very carefully move his rat from where he's got it pinned under that deep dish pan into the container and close it up. "I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find some Dr. Frankenstein at the Lodge who'll want to vivisect this thing."
Karmen leans forward and watches the activities. "Am i the only one who thinks they won't likely be trying the food here again?" She sounds like she is forcing levity, but still looks very worried
"I'm ok," John answers, moving more warily once he realizes the sludge is still moving. His attention is split between the drain that Aleks point out, and the pile of good that seems to be stretching out toward him. His broad shoulders rise and fall, his breathing slightly heavy. "Thanks. Good work." He nods toward the trail of slime leading into the drain. "Any idea how we put these down permanently?"
"Yeah, wonder what else the health inspector hasn't caught," Rachel smirks, replying to Karmen.
Karmen nods at Rachel. "Leprosy? One of those flesh eating diseases?" She pushes her pizza off the edge of the table. "I might want to eat some grass later."
"I think...I think something not nice was using the rats as...puppets? Or something? That goop was..." Lorel shuddered. "I could have sworn it was LOOKING at us all." Apparently the kitchen shenanigans has not put the woman off her pizza as she nibbles absently at a crust.
Steve looks at Rachel then Karmen and points at his bowl with what he hopes is still the rat thing under it. "There's no way that thing is still alive. Or isn't a rat. Something that looks like a rat. Something made of goop." He shakes his head again and he walks over to get his book. He lets out a sigh of relief to find it still on the table where he left it.
The guard, still trying to get the last few people out nods to Dean when he comes in and starts helping to secure the building. The kitchen staff are pretty thoroughly freaked out, even though they work here and are on the more unflappable end of the spectrum from most people. One of them pipping up with, "We've never had rats here before." Sounding concerned.
When Jack's rat goes in the bowl, the connection to the black stuff is severed and the thing inside goes limp - like the power was cut to the moldy old rat corpse. Proper dead again.
With the other two rats squished, the ooze seems to search about a bit - little wigglers extended like a sea urchin before it starts to retreat back towards the drain with the tiny holes. Oddly, there's no wetness, no snail trail left behind.
Finally leaving her 'standing guard' like position in front of Karmen, Rachel's big clunky boots carry her closer to one of the wriggling, squirming ooze things. She notices how the trails cut off, how their behavior changed. Feet flat on the floor, she folds her knees and bends at the waist, perching down closer and holding her hair back out of the way with both hands while she gets a closer look. "Aren't you supposed to be carrying bits of coal?" She asks idly as she examines the weird things with a smirk.
Aleks watches the ooze move through under the pan, and he shakes his head. "Don't think we can contain it in time, we'll have to make do with anything left in the rat. I'll just go get some garbage bags. I'm triple bagging it." He heads back into the kitchen and re-emerges with some contractor bags, opening them all and stuffing them one inside the other.
Jack transfers his container to the bag, and then he grimaces. "I'm not the best at physical sciences. I'm more of the active sort." He says, before he says, "But I bet I know some people who'd love to take a look at it and would know more about what to look for."
"Nope. Nope. No. nuhuh." Steve uses his book to point to the ooze tentacles and shakes his head. "I just wanted to get some fucking pizza and read my fucking book!" He turns and heads for the door.
John watches the strange... Creature? His eyes follow its retreat toward the drain. He begins to shrink again, diminishing as he circles toward Aleks, still wary. Soon he is his usual self again, though the vigilance has not left him; a part of him is in the fight.
Karmen remains kneeling on the table as she ponders the situation. Her memory is mostly swiss cheese, but sometimes stuff bubbles to the surface of her mental fondue pot. Things she heard discussed at dinner. When she was the table decoration. "Who should we tell about this? Do the police do this? Or we talk to you know..." She pointed upwards "Her up top?"
Loreley moves closer to the kitchen door and makes another motion, a breeze moves around her carrying with it the faint scent of spring. Something makes a barrier between the goop and the drain and scoops it up just as a hand might, leaving a small glob of the stuff suspended in mid air floating back towards the woman. "Does someone have a container I can drop this in? It's not exactly easy to keep a grip on..." Her gaze is focussed on the stuff and the air between them swirls as it moves.
You paged Dean with ‘did i miss your pose?’
Aleks nods to Jack. "Good to hear," he says. "Let's stop and get a cooler and some ice, then send it on its way as fast as possible." He looks back to John. "Come find me in Oakland," he says. "We ought to debrief about this." With that, he's ready to head out with Jack once more.
Examination telling her nothing she didn't already know, Rachel stands and steps back from the ooze. "No, I don't think the cops do this," she salls to Karmen. "But I think getting a sample is a good idea," she glances at Lorelely, who had that idea. Then she walks int othe kitchen, looking for, finding, and snagging a tupperware container and a roll of duct tape. She returns, prying open the container and holding it open before Loreley.
Any time the black stuff is disconnected from the parts retreating towards the drain, the immediately go limp. Where the pieces being schlorped back down the drain leave nail trail or trace, the bits that are cut off immediately sort of 'melt' into a glop of black good - seemingly inert.
Once the rat is squared away, Jack heads out the door to Aleks, to take it to one of the Order of the Dragon's mad scientists. Off they go. "Garlic man, it's evil..." His voice trails off as the door shuts behind him.
"Duct tape, good call." Lorel flashes a grin and gestures at the air/goop blob to drop it neatly into the container. The other Lost, if she is looking closely enough will see clouds whipping through Lorel's eyes as though driven by a high wind. "I haven't done that since...since I got back." The goop doesn't seem to be doing much anymore but maybe someone will be able to do /something/ with it.
Karmen regards Lorel and her goop hunt warily. "You know, weird as it is, it does not feel like it comes from our side of the fence so to speak. Whatever it is, chances are we are not responsible. That is sort of reassuring, yes?"
As soon as the goop is dropped in, Rachel seals the container. Which... makes the sample go completely inert? Well, maybe they can still learn something from it. She seals the lid on tight with duct tape, not interested in sudden reanimations and escapes.
"I'll bet Thomas will want to know about... whatever this is," she smirks, showing pretty white teeth, and shrugs.
"Is everyone alright?" John returns from the kitchen to the dining area, scanning the room. "You ok?" He offers the faintest smirk at Karmen's 'our side of the fence', and shakes his head. "It might be mine," he offers. "Ours. But... Maybe we should keep in touch about it?" He's hesitant, but makes the offer.
"Dead stuff...Vampires? Maybe?" She can't see inside the tub anymore which is sort of reassuring all on its own. Lorel flomps into a chair and absently grabs another slice from the nearest pizza. "I'm sort of couch surfing at the moment, finding some kind soul to take me home for the night, no fixed abode kinda thing. You let me know where we can meet up and I'm happy to stay in touch though." With a herculean effort she resists the urge to offer the formerly wolf shaped John a scratch behind the ears.
Karmen says, without hesitation, "I have a place you can sleep. It is not luxury. But I am improving it. I have some furniture now, and a lamp. And it is private, nobody is likely to rob us there. Why would they? I have a television. But I do not know how it works. Maybe you can look at that?"
John grimaces, then takes another plunge. "The Albert Anderson Raby Community Center," he offers. "You can stay as long as you like, just... You know, it's all normal people." With an attempt at a disarming grin, he adds, "Well, and me. I'm the executive director."
Rachel pauses, looking towards Lorely and then Karmen. Before she goes, she introduces herself by her first name and gives them her phone number. In case they need help.
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