fandomtownies | Trooper Station, Friday

Sarah was serious as she walked into the Trooper Station Friday morning. Breaking cover wasn't within her orders, but her orders didn't allow for the fact Fandom was what it was, and she needed the help of the island police to even start to make sense of things. And she needed to make sense of things before she could even start to look for potential agents.

"Good morning," she said, the tiniest of smiles on her face.

"Listen, if this is about people turnin' into animals again--" Yeah, okay, after an hour of those calls, Ray mighta be running on his last limb here. Whackjobs.

Of course, that's when he actually looked to see who'd just come in, and sat up. "Um, I mean, morning, ma'am, can I help you with anything?" He swore attractive women just swarmed the island or something.

"Possibly," Sarah said, a little amused. The guy reminded her of Casey just the tiniest amount. "Though not with people turning into animals."

She leaned closer, resting her arm on his desk. "I was hoping to talk to one of the officers about ... well, about Fandom, My name's Sarah Walker."

"Detective Ray Kowalski," he shot back, leaning forward himself for absolutely no reason at all. None. "Which, uh, makes me a resident officer of the law. Fandom. Wacky place, right?" Oh, he was smooth. "Anyway, what do you need to know?"

"What's your background, Detective Kowalski?" Sarah asked. It wasn't an idle question.

"Background?"

Huh. Man, she was direct.

"Been a Chicago cop for the past couple of decades," he said, "Then I came here like two months ago. Laughs all around."

Being direct when she could usually served Sarah well. She nodded slowly and pulled out her badge. "Agent Sarah Walker, CIA, six years," she said quietly. "Wanted to make sure I wasn't breaking cover to somebody who fell off the turnip truck yesterday. Can I have a seat?"

And that was a double-huh. He pulled the face to match it. CIA? Hope she was better than the Feds, or he'd be hucking it up for a while.

"No turnip trucks here," Ray said. If he'd been in any way unprofessional before because of the whole looks factor, the CIA thing seemed to neutralise it. "Uh, grab a chair, be my guest. CIA liasing with the FPD now or something?"

Sarah took the offered seat with some satsifaction. It was nice that he didn't seem to be talking to her just as a pretty face anymore. "My handlers didn't set up anything that formal with FPD as far as I know," she admitted. "I'm supposed to be looking for potential future recruits and seeing what's interesting on the island."

She ran a hand through her hair. "I think they underestimated exactly how interesting Fandom was going to be."

"Yeah, the island is kinda nuts," he said, scratching at the back of his head with his pen. "Dinosaurs, gender changes, I got the memo. You might be working for the next couple've centuries with a brief like that."

"Oh, it gets better," Sarah said, twisting a pen in her hand. "Usual protocol for recruits is: Agent meets them, we talk, I send a profile back to the L.A. field office for them to poke around and make sure I'm not trying to recruit a felon. Except nobody from Fandom is in any of our databases. The analysts are going nuts."

"They might," she added, slowly because this was a long speech for Sarah, "at least have warned me about the different worlds."

"I think somebody-" Fraser, "-mentioned it being a, uh, dimensional hub kinda thing." He pronounced that part like he had absolutely no idea what, exactly, it amounted to. Ray tended to feel like that a lot around Fandom. No good, old-fashioned criminals anymore. "Can't give you anything from ours without, uh, Mustang's tag-off, though," he added, before she was gonna ask for something like that. Weirdness aside, he knew this ballgame.

Sarah knew this ballgame too, which was why she sighed, closed her eyes, and didn't argue. Nobody ever wanted to give up turf, whatever the alphabet soup after their name was.

"Mustang's in charge?" she asked. "What's he like?"

"Sheriff Mustang. Decent kinda guy, eyepatch, weird taste in uniforms," Ray shrugged. Hey, it wasn't like he sat around asking for extra work, and he didn't know Mustang's procedure like he'd known Welsh's or any other Lieu's. Always best to play that one safe. "He say okay, I say fine."

"And it would make me nervous for you if I wandered in off the street and flashed a badge and you gave me full access," Sarah pointed out. "I'll follow protocol. It's not like I don't have time.

She rested her chin on her fist. "So what's your best guess about what's going on here? I don't have one yet."

"My personal theory? I got a friend who's a weirdness magnet and he set up camp here. Add a couple of 'em in one place, bam, you got an island where it rains paint." He poked at his empty cup of coffee for a minute. "Or it, uh, it could be aliens."

Ray was a real believer in the alien theory.

Sarah gave both of these theories full consideration. "If it's aliens they aren't advertising," she said. "But it could be that we're like lab rats for them. I like the weirdness magnet idea better. Niot scientific, but it works."

Chuck could get in so much trouble here.

"That's what I've been saying," he said. Okay, Ray liked her better than most've the Feds he'd met. He was gonna theorise whether it was the CIA thing or the female thing or just the not runnin' around flashing her badge at every opportunity thing. Still up in the air, that one. "Introduce one weirdness magnet, you get nuclear subs and talking to yourself in closets. Introduce a dozen, who knows?"

"Mine had me working at Wienerlicious as part of my cover," Sarah said in distaste. "And there was this thing with a stuffed fish ... long, long story. I'm afraid for the island if he follows me here."

Though it would make her happy for other reasons.

"Eh, island looks like it can take a couple nudges," he shrugged, "You hear about the dinosaurs?"

Ray loved to talk about the dinosaurs.

"There are dinosaurs?" Sarah was shocked and intrigued. "Um, no. Not yet."

"Apparently a while back, a bunch of them invaded," Ray explained, "I mean, they got rid of 'em in the end, but not after some rearranged the local horti-something."

"Cloning gone wrong?" Sarah guessed. Hey, it worked in that movie. "And they aren't still lurking in the preserve, are they? I jog there."

"Haven't seen anything in the Preserve yet," Ray said, who was now wondering if maybe as a cop he should be looking out for that kinda thing. "But you never know."

"I'll jog in town for now," Sarah decided firmly. She was fine against humans, but dinosaurs were a little more than she wanted to fight.

There really wasn't much else she needed to ask right then, and she rose from her chair. "Thanks for talking to me, Detective Kowalski. I'll let you know if anything in particular comes up."

"No problem, Agent Walker," Ray replied, fiddling with his pen. He leaned back in his chair, "Talking, I can do."

It hadn't been until at least midday and about four cups of tea before Daisy made herself take a little break from her own work (the computer databases were a mess, really, and she realized that she was the only one who would even use them to the degree that made them so messy, but that was all the more reason to clean it up), but she finally left the world of spreadsheets, ones, and zeroes to get up, rinse out her mug (can't have a dirty mug), and then detoured toward her colleague's desk.

Which wasn't at all awkward or anything. One didn't make desk visits in London, not unless one was a supe and had either more work or more criticism.

"Kowalski. How goes it?"

"It's going awesome. It's going perfect. It's..." Ray had been bored out of his mind for a while and was currently trying to see how many bites it'd take to completely ruin his pen. Thank God for rolly chairs or he'd have had to kill himself already. "...Really, really boring, Day, you have no idea."

"I think I might have an inkling," Daisy mused, still blinking pixels out of her eyes. "But I'd hate to interrupt all your work with a little nudge about some sort of tradition you mentioned earlier this week? I wouldn't interrupt normally, but a tradition is to be respected, you know."

It took him about a beat to get what she was getting at, but by then he was grinning at her. "See, that's right. That's exactly right. Tradition, can't ditch it. Real important." Ray spun his chair a little to face her. And dropped the grin. He could only keep up wattage for so long. "Just lemme finish this, uh..."

He eyed the utterly unfinished stack of paperwork. "Eh, I can do that later."

Daisy followed his eyes. "You want some help with that when we get back from lunch?" she asked, offering only because she knew to have finished her own rather quickly, grinding it out with the patient dedication of a girl who was far too used to spending her days at a desk. Just thinking about it, though, made her realize that she really did need this lunch break, even if only for the fresh air.

"Nah, I can do it." In like a month. When the other paperwork would be up to his neck on the other side of the desk. Ray got the hell up out of his chair. "So, lunch. Pizza okay?" He hadn't been able to get pizza out of his mind for the past couple of hours. He blamed the Mountie.

Daisy was relieved for that answer, but was careful not to show it. Thankfully, she was too busy looking a bit apologetic. "I just had pizza earlier this week," she said, and she was still mentally lashing herself and upping her detox intake for the indulgence, despite the fact that the pizza decided on had been on the much healthier side of the options. "Any other thoughts?"

She was thinking she could go for a salad, preferably one with sprouts to help with the clearing out of the bad that was pizza, but Ray didn't exactly strike her as a salad kind of guy.

"Um, Mexican?" Ray had heard there was a Mexican place in town. Ray... ordered out kinda a lot. "They got good burritos," he continued, at which point he was already up and moving, snagging his coat. Standing still was not generally his modus operandi, and after sitting around all day he was feeling kinda jittery.

"That...could work," Daisy said, a little reluctantly, but she didn't want to seem ungrateful or difficult with a coworker. All she knew, though, was that her diet was going to go for one hell of a roller coaster around this place if she kept this up. She was already making plans to up her yoga. She reached for her own coat, shrugging it onto her shoulders and pulling out her ponytail from the collar before adjusting it comfortably.

"Okay, working is good, I like working," he said, pointing a finger at her for like two seconds before he was heading out the door. "Follow my lead, newbie."

Daisy took a moment to grin at his back, shaking her head, before following him out toward the Mexican place (http://community.livejournal.com/fandomtownies/3311257.html).

Trooper Station, Friday

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Going NFB pls

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