Trooper Station; Monday [08/13].

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Trooper Station; Monday [08/13].

Sure, the weekend had been insane and stupid and insanely stupid, but Rosa was feeling pretty good about getting to be an actual cop for once around here, even if it wasn't exactly busting up drug rings or solving murders. But then Monday came. Monday always came, and Rosa was reminded of one more thing she missed about the Nine-Nine that she most certainly took for granted, and that was, in a larger precinct, there was always someone else to do the god damn paperwork.

"How can an island with so few people require this much paperwork?"

It didn't help that her usual frustrations with technology seemed to be in full force that Monday, having to stop several times to glare at her screen, smacking her hand against the side of it as whatever she was working on fritzed out or froze or sometimes just went to a black or blue screen of death.

Eventually, it got so bad that she just ripped her monitor up off the desk and threw it to the floor. Which did not bode well for the monitor, but she pulled out her wallet and threw a couple of bills down on top of demolished equipment. "I'll pay for that," she promised, ever her technology-sucks-anyway motto, and then she dropped back into her desk and...filled out some forms longhand or whatever.

Until Ralph brought over a spare monitor and hooked it up, receiving the brunt of Rosa's glare the whole time. "Thanks, Ralph," she said between her teeth, and you could tell she really, really meant it...

Oh. And don't even get her started about the Pumpkin...Half afraid that Arlo 2 would try to eat the damn thing (were those just Arlo 2's regular excited licks or something more hungry? She didn't know, but she didn't want to explain to someone, yeah, my dog ate your pet), she brought the Pumpkin with her to the station, leaving a message for the little green kid to come pick up her damn....Pumpkin.

[[open station is open!]]

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Peridot had had her suspicions from listening to the radio broadcast, but hadn't been sure until she recieved the phone message confirming it.

Pumpkin had been found!

... Granted, she'd only been missing for about a day, but that was a day too many, and Peridot was pretty much tearing in through the doors with wide eyes, taking another few running steps, tripping over her own feet, and landing on her face.

"Pumpkin!"

Back up onto her feet and another few steps. Another trip.

She'd probably gone about it that way for most of the trek here, honestly.

"Pumpkin, you're here!"

Apparently, it was a bad day for the floor of the trooper station.

Pumpkin didn't seem to mind, though, as it made rushing over to Peridot to eagerly get all up in her reunited business so much easier. Rosa, as a caretaker, had been...okay. She was good for pocket treats and a new fluffy friend, but that was pretty much it.

The first faceplant had been alarming; by the second one, Rosa was a little concerned and a bit relieved that Larry had already cleaned up the monitor mess from earlier.

"...you okay?"

"We Peridots are sturdy," Peridot assured Rosa as she rolled over, sat up, and immediately wound up with a lap full of Pumpkin, who was getting all the hugs. All of them. "Was Pumpkin a good pumpkin? Was she? Was she?"

And one little kiss right to the gourd's face for good measure, right there.

Rosa had just been embroiled in a weird shadowy darkness thing fronted apparently by that stupid fish from the Wednesday activities that made inanimate objects attack people who'd been hypnotized into being trapped inside of it, and yet this...this was just weird and made her feel uncomfortable.

"Uhhhh, yeah," she said. "She was...great." Rosa didn't have a good measure for how pumpkins should act, so she figured that was a safe answer if anything.

"...did you really name your pumpkin Pumpkin?"

Asked the woman who was literally just naming her dogs in numerical order.

Peridot blinked up at Rosa at that.

"... It's what she is. What else would I call her?"

Kind of an 'it,' really. But the whole matriarchal alien society with no true physical sex differentiation sometimes led to the odd bias here and there.

And that...was honestly some of the most sound logic Rosa had ever heard, and she looked mildly impressed as she realized that she could not only refute that explanation, but she wouldn't have wanted to anyway.

It definitely made more sense than what everyone else used to name their pets.

"Good point," she said, nodding. "Anyway, glad you're okay and could come pick her up."

If she hadn't heard back from the kid in a day or two, she was just going to go foist the thing on Pet Shop Boy. That was kind of his business anyway, wasn't it?

It was an animal shelter! So... Zack would probably take it, but wonder if maybe Pumpkin would be better off at Covent Garden, honestly.

"Me too," Peridot decided, and then looked up at Rosa, a little awkwardly. She didn't generally do this part. "... Thank you. For. Keeping her safe."

Oh, sure, the time Peridot decided to do that part that she generally didn't was with someone who would honestly really rather she didn't. Rosa's mouth twisted a little with her general discomfort.

"Yeah, sure," she said, and had to sort of force herself to do this part that she generally didn't do, either. "You're welcome. Just...doing my job..."

Sort of. Her job had never involved watching a pumpkin before, but there was always something new every day.

"Okay." Peridot nodded, accepting that, and then stood up with Pumpkin tucked into her arms.

... And then just walked out.

She was still kinda bad at chillin' with humanity, that Peridot. Sorry, Rosa.

Hey, at least Peridot had a good excuse. Rosa had been human her entire (apparently very short) life and still was bad at it.

She took a moment to chase away a faint feeling that she was almost going to kind of miss that pumpkin, sighed, and went right back to all that dumb stupid paperwork, half of which honestly didn't even make any sense and she was starting to suspect that maybe the troopers were just messing with her for most of it.

Once he was awake and cogent, Kaidan started going through his phone list to do check-ins on the people he knew. He didn't have Liam's home phone number, so he called the station.

Ring, ring, ring.

One thing about this day-after-crisis so far was the lack of stupid phone calls from the general citizenry of the island.

She knew it was too good to be true when that lovely ringing sound danced through the station. And since Larry was cleaning up the computer mess and Ralph was busy with his own thing, Rosa sighed and reached for the receiver.

"Trooper Station, Detective Diaz speaking."

Kaidan heard the voice and made a face. Of course it would be Detective Crankypants. That was on par for his luck this entire weekend. His voice was calm and steady, "Hi. It's Major Meathead. Is Liam around?"

...well, at least he saved her the trouble of trying to parse out who he was for a moment by using his actual name. Rosa's face was probably not too dissimilar from what Kaidan's had been.

Great.

She looked up, partially as a show so she could say that she actually did check, and partially because you honestly never knew when a person could just show up like that around here, and sighed, getting that gross déjà vu feeling.

"Not at the moment," she said. "Want me to leave a message?"

A message she would actually just freaking leave this time and not say anything more and just leave it at that. And if it was important enough, she'd pass it on immediately, and then completely wash her hands of it.

"Yeah," Kaidan said tiredly, "If you would, please. Throw him a note and tell him I'm fine, and I'd appreciate him calling me and telling me if he's ok as well." He rubbed a hand over his face, "It was a shitty weekend."

Edited 2018-08-13 14:28 (UTC)

...well, that was an understatement.

"Yup," said Rosa, tone as careful and neutral as she could possibly make it, though she couldn't keep a faint undercurrent of irritation out of it. "Sure was. I'll let him know."

There was a slight pause.

"If it helps, as far as I know, he's fine."

His name wasn't showing up on any of the incident reports except the research on Saturday, and the troopers didn't seem concerned, so she figured it was all good.

Kaidan sagged back against the pillows in relief. "It does help. I wasn't in any state to notice who else was in the shit with me. Thanks. Both for passing on the note and letting me know."

Good thing they were on the phone so Kaidan couldn't see Rosa's expression go into full gross-out mode, silent gagging and tongue sticking out and everything. She hated people thanking her for stuff and seeming sincere about it, because then she couldn't give them crap about it or something.

"Yeah, sure," she murmured. "No problem."

This...was probably easier than making a big deal out of nothing, though, so there was also that flip side of having to confront that she really had to work to just interact with people like a normal human being sometimes.

Mid-morning a delivery showed up - a guy from the Perk dropping by with one of those large dispensing-boxes of coffee.

There was a note with it:

I hear you helped yesterday. Congratulations on being the first useful cop I've ever known. Have some coffee. - Miguel (aka Captain Tightpants, seriously?)

Like Rosa was going to be able to say no to coffee that couldn't be classified as whatever the sludge Ralph usually made.

The note made her snort, too, and if you looked really close, there might have been a smile. There hadn't been a thank you in there at all, and, yeah, what else did you expect to be called when you wore seriously tight pants?

She did make a little bit of a face over the fact that now she had to at least try to be nice to him, but, so far, it seem like he'd make it difficult for her.

She also forgot to tip the person making the delivery, even after a pointed clearing of a throat, but Ralph, with an eyeroll you could feel even through his helmet, got it covered.

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Trooper Station; Monday [08/13].

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Phonecall.

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