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Luke's, Saturday

Eliot's dreams last night hadn't been anywhere near as awful as they'd been the night before, just the usual anxieties about ferret!Parker getting trampled or Hardison deciding he couldn't be with a man he didn't trust, a "damn killer", and leaving. Eliot had a blissful few moments after waking of imagining that yesterday had been a one day thing -- and then he'd seen his mother's dead body draped over the couch, just like she'd been when he was fifteen.

After that -- and a listen to the radio to catch up on all the other crap that had gone down yesterday -- he grabbed Val (who Parker was having apparently a glorious time riding around like a little ferret cavalry officer) and his sword, gave Hardison strict orders not to get himself stuck in another coffin while Eliot was gone -- or, you know, ever -- and then headed for the diner to make sure the place was secure and his staff hadn't gotten themselves killed.

A wave of terror hit him as he entered, making him balk for a moment, but he was pretty used to pushing that down and he drew his sword, keeping Val and Parker behind him as he entered -- to find his staff cowering behind the lunch counter while an extraordinarily large spider climbed up on one of the booths.

Anger immediately overrode the terror and Eliot noticed the kitchen staff slowly standing up behind the counter as he stalked towards the spider, dodged a swipe of one of its legs, and ran it through, pinning it to the table until the death spasms stopped.

"Alright," he growled. "Which one of you idiots let that damn thing in?"

Today's specials
Take shelter in the freezer with the polar bears

Luke's was open. Ish.

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There were very, very few occasions when a mother thought that it was a good idea to tuck a child into a freezer for safety. Being stuck on Fandom island, without Craft, in the middle of a full-on invasion still didn't qualify--unless the freezer in question was the one in Luke's Diner. Or whatever the current iteration of the name was; Karla had trouble keeping track.

But a freezer that was bigger on the inside, complete with parkas, polar bears, and a goddamn tram system was, indeed, the exception to the 'don't put people in freezers' rule.

Which was why Karla came running into the diner, Kayla strapped securely to her back, bladed sticks out and covered in blood, ichor, and various other effluvia of unknown provenance.

"I am in a mood," she snarled as she entered. "If you're looking to tangle, let's go. If you're not, then start cooking. My daughter wants strawberry pancakes and if she has to deal with Mommy murdering jhinka while walking through town, she gets to have bloody strawberry pancakes!"

Protection and also lunch. She was hungry.

Eliot raised an eyebrow, then gestured to the still cowering kitchen staff with his sword. "Well? You heard the woman. Get cooking."

It was nice to have another burst of righteous anger to push back the terror from the staff with. Not that Eliot had any idea that was what was going on. Magical empathy wasn't really in his wheelhouse.

"Eliot," Karla said, looking a little relieved as she spotted him. She'd been scanning the room for anything that looked like it might be hostile, not cataloguing who was present. But Eliot was good. Eliot carried himself like he knew what to do in a fight. "That's right, you own this place."

Sorry. In the back of her head, she just still thought of it as Priestly's, just like she still thought of Dite's as hers. Habit, she supposed.

"Well, if you're here, then I suppose I don't have to try to claim this in the name of Glacia temporarily," she said, offering him a fierce smile that absolutely did not answer whether or not that had been a joke. She walked over to a booth and sat down to start the lengthy process of freeing Kayla from her sling. "Probably for the best," she added. "I do hate annexing territory before I've even had a cup of coffee."

"In my experience, that kinda thing just ends up bein' messy." Eliot was not, in fact, joking. But speaking of coffee, the staff had apparently managed to get some brewing before the spider showed up. Eliot grabbed a pot and brought it over. "Ain't you just excited to be back in town for this," he said, and offered Kayla a small smile. "How's it goin', kid?"

"Doggie!" Kayla said excitedly, pointing at Val. "Fwuffy!" This time she bonked Karla on the head to point at Parker. "Pway!"

"You'll have to ask Mr. Eliot's permission," Karla said, continuing to untie, unbuckle, and unfasten. She'd taken no chances that Kayla would be able to wriggle free of this device until they'd gotten to the diner. "And you have to do nice. Hear me? Kayla play nice."

She glanced up to give Eliot a tired smile. "Just thrilled. I'm really loving being able to feel what everyone else is. On the other hand, you want a hit of unadulterated joy, hold Kayla when you tell her that she can P-L-A-Y with the critters. Or when her pancakes come out."

"Pannycakes!" Kayla shrieked, clapping her hands. Karla winced. She hadn't needed that eardrum, kid. "Pannycakes for Kaywa!"

"Eliot!" Hardison hurtled downstairs to the diner, throwing himself inside with more concern for the laptop he cradled in his arms than his the potential for bodily injury. "Eliot! Guess what? I think I found somethin'!"

Because obviously he'd thrown himself into searching the net for something, anything that might help explain what was going on. That was what he did.

"You did?" Karla asked, wiping Kayla's hands down with a rag. She had transformed herself into a maple syrup elemental over breakfast. "That's excellent! Go to the library. That's where they're assembling."

"Umm...okay?" Hello, random stranger that Hardison wasn't expecting. "Uh, they? Did you come from there?"

Eliot was in fact getting a good hit of positive feelings from the kid. And here he'd just thought she was that cute. "Well hell. That explains the moodiness around here."

Parker leaped from Val's back onto Eliot's leg and promptly scaled him to perch on his shoulder, peering suspiciously down at Kayla. "Sorry, hon. Parker's a little leery of new people. But Val'd love to meetcha."

Indeed, given the go-ahead of Eliot's slight nod, Val's tail started wagging happily and she came over to sniff Kayla's feet. Eliot found himself a real, bright smile as she did. Toddler and puppy beat the hell out of the bursts of terror coming from the staff.

Forgive the paranoia that had Eliot raising his sword again when you started shouting his name, Hardison. It wasn't entirely his own.

Then Hardison got close enough that his lack of paralyzing terror hit Eliot and he relaxed a little. "Whatcha got?"

"Hi, I'm Karla," she said, feeling his confusion plain as day. "I'd shake, but I'm second-hand sticky." So sticky. Soooo sticky. "Is this your first major invasion?"

She gave him a smile filled with amused sympathy. "If so, I'm sorry and welcome to an island where the question 'Is this your first major invasion' is both apt and distressingly common."

Kayla started bouncing just as puppy-excited as Val and Karla hastily finished unstrapping her. "There you go," she said, setting Kayla down onto the booth. "Play nice. Val's not like Uncle Ladvarian, who can tell you that you're hurting, okay?" At least, Karla didn't think the puppy was? She glanced up to Eliot to check for certain. "If she nips because you get too rough, you'll be in trouble."

Then, to Eliot, she explained, "Kayla's not mean to animals, she just gets excited and doesn't know her own strength sometimes. She's going to have plenty of playmates with claws and fangs who outweigh her by a good deal, so we're trying to teach her to be careful early on."

Eliot nodded. "Lotta kids are like that. I had to have a few animals teach me how to treat 'em nice, too."

"Mr. Spencer knows lots about kids," a small voice piped up from the booth next to Karla's. Eliot didn't react outwardly, but fun with empathy plague, everyone could feel the tremendous guilt and apprehension that boiled up in him at the sound.

"Lemme see how those pancakes are comin' along."

"'M Hardison. Pretty sure I remember you," Hardison said. "You were Della's mom that weekend with the kids, right?" Spike had been half in love with the girl who was some kind of magic princess or whatever. "Naw, this is probably my...third?"

Yes. This was his life now. Dealing with multiple full-scale island invasions. The things he did for love.

"But I still ain't get what the library has to do with it?"

The first invasion, he'd been brand new and panicked over Eliot. The second, he'd been abducted by aliens. Both of which were perfectly normal sentences around here.

Hardison couldn't even tell that Eliot was dealing with extra paranoia today. Eliot was always paranoid and, honestly, after yesterday's parade of dead girlfriends and coffins, who wasn't operating on slightly higher levels?

"Look, look, lookit what I found," he said, holding up his screen with an old newspaper article from Christmas Eve, 1990. "Article about a town that fell prey to what authorities are callin' some kinda cult. Everybody died--" Hardison realized he was still sounding too enthusiastic about that and tried to sound appropriately somber. "--uh, I mean, everybody died an' that was horrible, but before they did--look! They were reportin' evil spirits an'--get this--bein' able to sense their neighbors' feelin's, weird empathy, an' stuff like that! Look!"

"Yeah, we're gettin' some of that," Eliot grumbled. Your enthusiasm even feels weird, Hardison. "How'd they die?"

Sorry you didn't understand what enthusiasm felt like, Eliot.

"Doesn't say," Hardison said, scanning the article. Glancing at the giant spider carcass on the floor, he added, "But they might not have decided to include anything that would undermine the whole cult theory the FBI floated." He looked thoughtful. "Maybe I'll contact the Bureau to see if I can get any more information. There's probably a file or somethin'."

Eliot nodded, but was still a little skeptical. "There's gotta be better resources for workin' out this magic crap." Except that one of the main resources Eliot could think of wasn't corporeal enough to work a phone.

Karla peered into the next booth, looking down at a tiny girl that she knew hadn't been there a few moments ago. "Hello there," she said. "And who are you there, munchkin?"

"Most of the time, we have no idea what's trying to kill us, why, or how to stop them," Karla said. "While the rest of us roughnecks wander the streets and fight, the researchers hole up in the library and figure out what's going on. You have information to share, that's the best place to disseminate it."

"Don't --" Eliot started, but he knew it wouldn't do any good.

The girl, about eight years old, bangs hanging low over her forehead, the rest of her hair in pigtails, clutched her teddy bear and smiled up at Karla.

There was a noticeable lack of any feeling coming off of her.

"Mr. Spencer knows me," she said. "He worked with my daddy. I liked him." She turned her head sharply to look at Eliot, her bangs swinging and giving glimpses of the neat black hole on her forehead, surrounded by powder burns. "You know, before."

Eliot flinched and jerked his eyes away, hand clenching on the hilt of his sword.

"Before," Karla echoed, sadly. Oh, Eliot. "I've had several befores myself."

"You were going to check on those pancakes, Eliot?" Karla asked, voice gentle. Whatever had invaded was playing games with them, but they didn't have to accept being toyed with. "I can handle things out here for a bit."

Eliot bristled at her tone -- he didn't need to be coddled, dammit -- but he also couldn't get away from the kid in the booth fast enough.

"Funny," the girl said, voice level but still carrying unerringly to Eliot's ears, even as he disappeared into the kitchen. "He never used to run from anything."

Val barked at the girl and put herself firmly between her and the kitchen.

Eliot had plenty of folks looking out for him, whether he liked it or not.

"Well, we could try to find that guy who looked like you with the terrible haircut?" Hardison suggested like the brat he was.

"The Library, huh?" Hardison said. "That sounds like a good idea. This might be kinda useful. An' I could find somethin' else. Thanks, Karla. I'mma do that."

"Anytime," Karla said, giving him a smile. "Purely selfish reasons anyway. The more information everyone gathers, the faster this will all be over and I can get this munchkin home."

Eliot just growled faintly.

Edited 2015-12-19 22:36 (UTC)

That's right, Eliot. Go be grumpy in the kitchen. Especially if you could be loud, too.

"Listen to me," Karla said in a low voice as soon as Eliot was out of the room. She snagged the girl by the arm and dragged her around so she was looking at Karla and not after him. "I don't know what you are, but I do know that you're not the demon-dead soul of a real little girl, which means that I don't have to play nice. The best I can figure is that you're some kind of spirit taking the shape of things that hurt people most, so that means you're not an object of pity, but the enemy."

In the kitchen, spines stiffened as Karla's fierce determination made itself felt.

"So you can either take this opportunity to get yourself lost and go pick on someone else, or we'll see what hurts more, a bullet wound or a knife to the temple."

Karla didn't know what was going on but she did not like it.

"You're mean," the little girl said. "And he deserves it." She smiled that empty smile again. "Even he thinks so."

Primarily he thought so. Eliot had been quietly punishing himself for what he did to this girl for nearly a decade.

And while Eliot couldn't hear a word Karla said -- though, yes, he felt every bit of that determination -- he could hear every word out of the girl's mouth, no matter how much noise he was making. Which, considering the way he was taking his frustrations out on a side of beef with a butcher knife, was kind of a lot.

"People think a lot of things," Karla told her, looking every bit as mean as the girl had said. "But I've noticed that people rarely have a good handle on what they actually deserve."

Karla snatched one of her sticks and leveled it at the girl's face so quickly that a few drops of blood that hadn't dried flew off to spatter against her skin. "Do we want to start talking about what I think you deserve, monster?"

Hardison grinned. It was so good just to be able to tease Eliot again. "What? Other than the haircut, he was kinda hot. You know, all nerdy an' stuff."

"Oh, I see," the girl said, still smiling, apparently completely unconcerned with the weapon in her face. "You're just like him. You can kill me if you want to. I know that's what you people like to do."

Eliot stormed back out of the kitchen, butcher knife in one hand, sword in the other. "It ain't. About. Liking," he growled, radiating as much anger as guilt now. "It's about what has to be done."

Except he hadn't had to kill this kid. He'd been ordered to, and Moreau had fully expected it. But she was the last person that Eliot had murdered on Moreau's whim, and without her death burned into his brain, he might never have found the path he was on now.

"He was excited about everything. Who does that?"

People who are not carrying several tons of guilt around on their shoulders, Eliot.

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Luke's, Saturday

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