unthinkable | Pre-Milliways: Lunch. Or not.

Pre-Milliways: Lunch. Or not.

It's the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday when no particular operation is going on, so the Laundry offices are as peaceful as it's possible for Laundry offices to be. Not very peaceful, maybe, compared to your standard government office; but when one thinks about what they do at Capital Laundry Services ("Washes cleaner than clean!") it's definitely qualifying as peaceful.

Dr. Mo O'Brien, SSO-4 Combat Epistemologist who spends most of her time thinking professionally, looking like a badass and playing an extremely powerful violin, is currently on afternoon leave from TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD and planning to go meet her husband (Bob Howard, SSO-3 Information Technology/Active Operations who spends most of his time playing Neverwinter Nights and occasionally doing something out of the office) for the pizza he's been bribing her with for the past week. ("If you'll just take a few hours off you can come by IT and have lunch with us!")

Of course, she knows the people in IT well enough that she's not that surprised that when she gets to the cubicle farm surrounding Bob's office she finds his immediate staff, Peter-Fred and Claire, eating pizza.

Claire actually takes her boots off her desk when she sees Mo, and gestures with her thumb over her shoulder to Bob's open door. With her mouth full. "S' in hffice," she says, and Mo takes that to figure he forgot about her visit.

Which does not, even remotely, stop her from walking into the doorway and hovering.

Silently, mind.

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"All I saw was the side of a computer," she tells him, attempting to still keep the straight face, not shake her head, not roll her eyes. "And maybe a few pixels moving around. I don't have a good view of your screen from the door, which I thought was, well, intentional in the office design."

"You were supposed to come in all the way, then, weren't you?" he demanded, looking a bit furtive around the edges.

Didn't she realise she was going to ruin his point if she wasn't watching from behind his shoulder the whole time?!

"I didn't actually think you realized I was there, or had a clue who I was."

She's probably right, too. Or else, that's what Mo thinks.

"So," knowing he forgot, and full well acting as if she didn't, "where is it?"

"Your attention? How should I know where you're keeping it?" Bob shoots back, desperately trying to cover for himself while he figures out what she actually means.

"No!"

What, did he expect help with that?

"Then what did you mean? I can barely pay attention to where I keep my own attention!"

Maybe she wouldn't notice that he was actually asking, if he phrased it in a belligerent enough manner. Was that going to work?

Unfortunately for him, she's still Mo, and is still able to see right through him without much of any effort at all.

"You're the one who invited me," is the only hint she gives him.

Invitations, huh?

Invitations, invitations... Bob casts about his office, desperately seeking clues, and finds a mostly-empty pizza box.

Oh.

Fuck, that was it, wasn't it.

"It might still be warm," he tries.

"Oh, well, in that case."

Mo is disdainful, but only mildly; it's the sort of semi-affectionate disdain Bob usually gets. This is fairly standard for their relationship, and if Mo weren't expecting this sort of thing every now and again they probably wouldn't still be married.

But nothing gets in the way of them still being married. Plenty of things have tried, and yet it never seems to quite split them up.

"Or I can make Claire fix it," he tries, somewhat more cheerfully. She didn't say no! "Oi! Claire!"

A brief scuffle in the doorway results, momentarily, in his eternal-intern Claire sulking off down the hallway with the box of not-at-all-still-warm pizza, destination: the microwave.

He hadn't actually asked her a yes-or-no question, so there was no opportunity for her to say no! Mo appeared to feel bad for Claire, shaking her head and 'tsk'ing under her breath.

"You can't microwave something yourself?"

By the time he's not in the doorway anymore, Mo is sitting up on top of his desk, legs crossed. Pity for Bob that his wife never wears skirts unless she's undercover; typical combat pants and Doc Martens.

Of course, because he never gets much chance to think what he's missing, Bob doesn't really notice that she isn't in skirts. Thus, his punishment... fails, as punishments go.

"She's young and spry!" he protests. "Besides which, it's unbecoming for me to go off and do it myself! I would be leaving you alone in here!"

Except for Peter-Fred and Claire, obviously.

If only Mo actually thought of it as a punishment. Because it's not something she ever does, she isn't really thinking about it either.

"Technically, you just did, but only for about six seconds. It's considered rude to turn your back on your guests, too. But it's not like you're not young."

Spry -- well. She'll give him that.

"If you're trying to get me to call you old, I won't," he laughs. "I'm not that stupid, either! Hullo, you," is added but a moment later, once he's up in her space all nice and cozy.

(Conveniently, of course, up until a moment previous, this was also his space, and thus it's terribly easy for Bob to be cozy in it.)

Just as he's about to lean in for the kiss, of course, there's screaming down the hall.

(And, just outside the door, something really miraculous happens: Peter-Fred actually notices, immediately, with the end result that his startled "Claire?!" is also quite audible.)

Mo, being -- well, Mo, but more importantly being agent CANDID, whirls around on instinct without even realizing she's doing it consciously.

(If she had been thinking, no doubt she would've made a comment about Peter-Fred actually noticing something happened without taking at least ten minutes to catch up.)

Instead, she's grabbing for her violin case, which she'd put only just out of arm's reach, leaned up against one of Bob's filing cabinets. Not knowing what the situation is, she's only picking up the case and running out the door and in the direction of the scream, instead of taking the violin out.

It's a judgment call.

It may or may not be the right judgment call.

She doesn't look to see if Bob's following.

But, well, he is, of course, because while he might "just" be a middle manager, or "just" an I.T. guy, that's only due to the Laundry's style of matrix management –

The rest of the time, well, he's an active-duty operative, too, even if he's never been quite so prominent as to require a codename like good ol' Agent CANDID, and even if his own occult weaponry tends more toward the tiny pigeonfoot HOG-3 (hand of glory, three charges) around his neck, or the various PDAs he's had over the years.

The NecronomiPod is in his hand by the time he reaches the door, already at a full run – putting the lie to the idea that he's not even a little bit spry, of course – and flapping a hand at Peter-Fred to tell him to stay put (not that Mr Young isn't quite intelligent enough to do just that anyway).

IF Claire is screaming, and Claire went to the microwave, and the scream is coming from that way, and it isn't the sort of scream that says 'oh my god, how could someone let their cheese explode everywhere and then never clean it up' but rather the sort of scream that says 'arrgh, arrgh, the unspeakable horror from another dimension has broken through and is trying to eat my brain like popcorn', THEN...

Bob skids around the corner, narrowly missing Zombie-Guard Fred from Accounting, takes in the scene before him, and –

Pauses.

The unspeakable horror from another dimension had broken through but was not trying to eat Claire's brain. It isn't actually touching Claire; it is standing -- is that standing? -- Mo can't tell how Cthonian beasts' posture is meant to be interpreted sometimes -- in the kitchenette not actually looking at Claire.

Claire's squeezed into a corner with a gun trained on it.

Mo's standing with her violin out by the time Bob gets there, poised, waiting for the creature to actually do something.

It seems to have an interest in the microwave, more than Claire.

It also appears to be growing.

"Feeds off radiation, maybe?" Mo stage-whispers.

Bob does not, at the moment, pause to wonder a) why Claire has authorization to use a gun, b) why she's keeping one on her at work, or c) where, in fact, on her person she's been keeping it.

He's a little busy, at the moment, chanting "oh fuck" under his breath repeatedly and frantically scrolling through sub-menus on the iPhone, trying to find the right app in the tumble-drier sub-menu.

The little x-ray magnifying glass, that's the one, isn't it? Bob crosses his fingers, taps it, points it at the Microwave Devourer, and hopes.

And glances at his screen, of course, and sees...

... a dog?

"Fuck, that can't be right," he mutters, and goes back to side-scrolling.

"The hell, Bob," Mo sighs, and actually does stop to roll her eyes, but only for a fraction of a second. That's because she has to start playing right away, before the creature tries to consume the microwave whole.

Since there's definitely a tentacle reaching toward that aim.

Without stopping to warn anyone to cover their ears -- no time for that either, and they'll recover -- she plays. It's a Song of Immobilization, and at this point, Mo has enough skill to be able to focus it entirely onto non-human creatures in a five foot radius. Bob and Claire are safe (except for their ears, as like most magical songs it's cacophonous as all get-out) but Angleton's nearby collection of seamonkeys might not be.

About thirty seconds later the creature is holding still -- frozen, in fact -- and Mo's fingertips are only barely oozing blood. She doesn't notice.

"Um," says Claire. "I'm sorry --"

"It's not your fault," replies Mo.

"Is it?" Bob breathes, still staring, puzzled, at his iPhone's screen.

He does not, in fact, think that it's Claire's fault.

But his phone is really, really certain that the tentacle monster reaching into the microwave after the pizza really is a dog – a dog straining nose-first into the microwave, in fact.

"I'm stumped," he announces. Loudly, over the cacophonous music. "D'you have a song to turn it back into a dog, love?"

She's stopped playing now, so it's easier for Mo to hear Bob -- and confirm that neither of the humans have been accidentally immobilized. But as she's about to say 'yes,' because she does have a Song of Transfiguration prepared, she hesitates.

"Wait. Back into a dog?"

Silent, Bob steps forward, pacing with care, keeping the iPhone's camera angled toward the – creature – until Mo, too, can see it.

Dog, see?

Mo's eyebrows, already making friends with the middle of her forehead, move closer still to her hairline.

And then she raises the violin again, figuring the other two will figure out to step off if they've gotten any closer; Bob knows to get out of the way.

It's not a Song of Transfiguration, though.

It's a Song of Origin.

First to react, of course, is ... the pizza, or what's left of it, still in the microwave.

(Of course, it's sheltered from sight by the tentacle-beast and the microwave itself, so it'll be some time, yet, before any of the humans around are able to tell what's happened there.)

The monster is second, perhaps because of the previous song's effects, and perhaps because of the effects of whatever turned it into a tentacle monster in the first place.

But it doesn't just transform back into a dog, no matter how helpful that might have been.

No... instead, it shakes itself, as a wet dog might, and then unshakes itself, somehow, and then –

Then, it gets strange.

(Yes, then it gets strange, and wasn't particularly, before.)

Then, it starts returning to its origins, by ... moving backward. First it unreaches into the microwave, and then it unducks from beneath the counter, and then it starts to back its way right out of the room... and off down the hall, so long as Mo keeps playing.

Mo makes a little 'come on then' gesture with her head, not able to move either hand, and -- follows it.

"Just... go back to work, maybe?" Bob tells Claire, sighing, and fights down the urge to follow the tentacledogthing down the hall either backwards or in slow-mo.

(Behind him, as he follows Mo out of the room, he hears Peter-Fred's voice saying something about "Hey, what happened to the pizza?" – but he doesn't dare turn around and look back.)

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Pre-Milliways: Lunch. Or not.

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