Trooper Station, Tuesday

[firstofitskind]

Liam checked in at the Trooper Station after breakfast at Verity's, and had rolled his eyes at the desk covered in cat toys.

(That he may or may not have played with during his time as a cat. Shh, he wasn't telling.)

Then, he'd headed out to do his usual rounds of the island. Which he'd kept up with as a cat, of course, but he was in much more of a position to actually do something if any problems larger than, say, a gremlin, popped up.

But nothing actually had, things were the usual sort of quiet... and so a somewhat rain-soaked Liam settled in to his desk to catch up on paperwork.


[ooc: oooooopen.]

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[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan dropped by the station and info-mugged a Trooper outside. He was relieved Liam was back. He wasn't sure he trusted Officer Hothead to have done a proper job in the tunnels.

He headed inside. "Liam. Welcome back. How was your vacation?"

[firstofitskind]

"... Vacation?" Liam gave Kaidan a confused frown.

He hadn't actually gone anywhere, Kaidan. He'd just lacked opposable thumbs for a while there.

[spectre_alenko]

"You were gone for like a week?" Kaidan explained, slightly confused, "I assumed it was a vacation or a conference or something."

[firstofitskind]

"No I wasn't," Liam replied. "Well, I guess sort of? I didn't actually go anywhere. But I did spend the last week as a cat." That last bit was said with the tone of slightly-confused-but-also-resigned that one got after being in Fandom long enough.

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan processed that and then eyed Liam, "Did I pet you?"

Because honestly, if you put a pettable animal within arms' reach and it didn't immediately try to bite him, Kaidan was probably going to pet it.

He also made a conversational turn without signalling. "Have you talked to your other officer? She of the curly hair and scowl?"

[firstofitskind]

"I think so," Liam said with a nod, to Kaidan's first question. He'd been... strangely less touch-averse as a cat, it seemed.

"Rosa?" he shook his head. "I haven't seen her yet, why?"

[spectre_alenko]

"Thanks for not biting me, I guess," Kaidan offered with a lopsided smile, "Appreciate not needing a booster shot."

"Remember a couple weeks ago when you were telling me the potholes went missing, and how strange weirdness was sometimes a sign of incoming crapfests?" Kaidan began, hoping to edge into the whole 'this thing I did was stupid and you're going to realize how stupid it was the second the words leave my mouth' thing.

[firstofitskind]

"Yes?" Liam said slowly, and yeah, he did not have a real good feeling about where this was going.

[spectre_alenko]

"While I was jogging, I saw one of the pumphouse doors open, where it's always been locked before. I wasn't sure if it was kids messing around or if it was one of those portents of incoming crap that you mentioned," Kaidan explained, "Though I'm betting on crap, unless there's a reason there'd be slime monsters living down there?"

Who knew, there might be. Rosa had seemed to think the slime monster was a citizen.

[firstofitskind]

"Slime monsters," Liam echoed. "And you know this because..."

Because Kaidan had gone down there, by himself, if Liam was remembering radio from the other day correct. But he wanted to hear him say as much.

[spectre_alenko]

"Because I went and checked it out," Kaidan admitted, "I dealt with the slime creatures on my way through. The tunnel terminated in a door to IKEA." Helpfully, he said, "I put a padlock on the pumphouse door afterward. I gave the keys to, what's her name, Rosa?, and told her she might want to bring a flamethrower down there."

[firstofitskind]

"Of course you did," Liam sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Did you bring backup?" he asked pointedly.

[spectre_alenko]

"You weren't here," Kaidan said, "I did call."

[firstofitskind]

"I was a little busy being four-legged, yeah," Liam said with a nod. "But there's still any number of people on this island who would've been a good choice to head down there with you."

[died8yearsago]

"Oh, hey, you're back."

With an investigation on her hands (a stupid one, true, one that the person involved hadn't even wanted, but when did she care what other people wanted), Rosa had almost forgotten that she was mad about something. But as she passed by after a morning of some 'field work' and saw Kincaid at his desk, it all came back to her. And, just like that, the anger was back, scowl on her face, arms folded in front of her as she stood before him.

"We need to talk."

He could...probably guess what about by now.

[firstofitskind]

"I never really left, but yeah," Liam nodded. "About..." and Rosa's narrative was right, he did have a pretty good idea.

[died8yearsago]

"About how maybe," Rosa dug right in, "the next time you want to let your meathead Navy buddies go vigilante in the tunnels, you could possibly let me know? I know this is a piss-poor excuse for a police station, but it would be kinda nice not to be blindsided by that crap, especially," and here there was almost a sweet smile if it wasn't, you know, completely dripping with venom, "after being denied a professional request to basically go and do the same godddamn thing."

She'd written words, Liam! You said words back that she then actually was going to listen to! The feeling of betrayal was legit.

[firstofitskind]

"Okay," Liam said slowly. "First off, I did not let Kaidan do anything. He went in, of his own volition, and trust me, I'm not actually disagreeing with you that it was a damned stupid thing to do. He apparently called before he did so, a call I did not get because I was a cat at the time, which is also why I had no way of letting you know his plans." he paused, to take a deep breath. "And secondly, your request was regarding gremlins. This was apparently a slime monster. And, you know, I'm not exactly pleased with the fact that he killed it, either. But it was apparently threatening him, which is a step up from just existing." Be real glad that Liam had gotten a hold on proper human emotional responses, Rosa, because a couple of years ago this would have likely involved a lot of shouting instead of just excessive verbal italics.

[died8yearsago]

There were...a lot of things Liam was saying that was doing a good job of settling Rosa's sorer points, and she narrowed her eyes, wondering if he meant what he was saying or if he just knew that to say.

"Funny," she said, "considering how he just waltzed in here acting like he had the full backing of the whole FIPD. Demanding weapons, and then getting all pissy at me because I'm not about to just fork flamethrowers and guns over to some person I've never even seen before. And the only reason, from my understanding and from my own assessment of the scene after the fact, which you'll find in my official report, the thing threatened him was because he was in its territory. What if that was a student, Kincaid? Thankfully, it wasn't, it really was just some rando monster, but it could have been. At least with gremlins, we already know their deal."

[firstofitskind]

Both, Rosa! The answer was both.

"I get that," he said. "And I agree, I wouldn't hand out weapons to someone I didn't know either." If he'd been at the station at the time, he might have made the call to let Kaidan borrow something, but he knew Kaidan. Rosa didn't. "But, he said you did want him to lead you down there, but wouldn't let him even go get his own gun." He sighed. "And again, I don't like that he killed it, but there's no rule against carrying one's own weapon here in town."

[died8yearsago]

"Again, explain to me why I should be comfortable going into an unknown situation with an armed person I do not know," Rosa said. "Both myself and Ralph were going to accompany him, doing our jobs to follow up. The way I see it, the only reason this was a problem, was because your Navy friend wasn't expecting me to be here, and he was expecting to be able to circumnavigate the system because he expected you to let him. That's a problem for me, boss."

[firstofitskind]

And yeah, if Liam wasn't already sure he was getting two vastly differing accounts of what had transpired, he sure was now.

"It's absolutely your prerogative to say 'thanks for the heads up, we'll look in to it', if you didn't feel comfortable having him there when you went to investigate, which I get, because as you said, you don't know him," Liam said. "But if you wanted him to go with you, then yes, I think letting him carry his own weapon, which again, is not against any rules, is a perfectly reasonable request on his part."

[died8yearsago]

"God, you don't get it, do you?" Rosa said, shaking her head, almost staring at him like he'd grown another head. "This isn't about the guns, Liam. If he'd wanted to be armed so bad, he should have kept his own gun with him; I wasn't going to wait for him to arm himself and put myself in another dangerous situation, because I don't know if you know this, but where I'm from, people shoot cops. He came in, telling me about a situation, and I wanted him to take me to it, and when he had an issue with it, guess what? He stayed here and gave a statement, and Ralph and me went."

She stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath.

"But that's not the problem. The problem that I have...and that you should have, too...is that this guy came in here claiming to be doing this on your authority and I didn't know anything about it. I can't do my job if I'm being undermined by the very person who's supposed to have my back. Maybe I'm just expecting way too much out of this place, and you, but if you honestly don't see a problem with that, then we got another problem we need to look at."

She held up a hand quickly, because she wasn't done quite yet and didn't want him edging in. "I know, you were a cat. Communication got messed up and I didn't handle the situation as well as I could have, but I was pissed. I'm only bringing it up right now because if you're going to be fine with your friends going above the law, tell them to at least be smart enough to not walk right into the one person on this island who's trying her hardest to maintain some semblance of it. You can try to at least show me that much respect. And if you're not fine with it, you know about it, and you can handle it, and you can fix it."

And that was almost enough talking and emotion out of her to last her for the rest of the year. She was almost as pissed off about that as she was the whole situation as a whole.

[firstofitskind]

Cops were also pretty good at shooting other people, Rosa. Case in point, Liam's own father, who'd arranged to have him murdered during Liam's first day on the job. It hadn't worked, obviously, but Liam was well aware that the attempt had been made.

"Okay," he said, "If he came in here claiming to be acting on my authority, then absolutely, that's a talk that he and I need to have. Thanks for letting me know."

Privately, he didn't actually think that was what Kaidan had meant, but who knew? He did respect Rosa enough to not just dismiss her concerns because they were in regards to a friend of his.

[died8yearsago]

And, to Rosa, that if told her everything she needed to know about where she'd likely stand in anything regarding Kincaid and his friends. Her jaw tightened like a vice, eyes hardening to push back up that wall she'd foolishly just let down.

But at least now she knew.

"Good," she said, nodding shortly, turning to get back to the super important work she'd stopped to get into this mess. "Nice talk, boss."