sliceitwithwind | Warehouse AU because of course it is.

Warehouse AU because of course it is.

"We've got a ping." the quiet voice of the man at the computer nevertheless managed to cut through the back-and-forth of the people taking care of routine business in the rare downtime they had to do such things as reports, maintenance of their gear, and general unwinding.

"Who's going, and where?" the largest of the people in the room asked, already folding the papers he'd been working with into a neat file which he handed to the one-eyed man who'd been woken by the magic words. Anything else and it took him hours to come to awareness, but a ping? Seconds.

"You two, and New York City. We've got reports about a museum's statues coming to life. Go."

The file dropped onto the desk with a grunted, "Sign it when I get back." and the two men headed to NYC to see if they could figure out what needed to be snagged and bagged.
~~~

At the museum they looked around for the cops in charge. There were always cops, and how they could talk to the boys in blue made all the difference. Stopping outside of the line defined by uniforms the bigger (and more diplomatic) man murmured, "Could you please point out the person in charge? Thank you." with his badge in hand so that they could avoid misunderstandings. The smaller man's badge was likewise out, but he was more angling to see what he could without interrupting the locals.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Detective on scene is Brea, she's inside, watch your heads there's a thing flying around in there," a uniform admitted. "Just...be careful."

There was a team of cops by the door, seeming more a chain getting ready than anything else, the radio crackled with "Now?"

"No," the voice from inside came, "Not yet. The kids move and we get a reaction. They're safe for now, I'll figure something out." The chain, naturally, wasn't happy with that. Having to sit still with a school group in a museum gone a little crazy, well... "Who the hell rigs a museum with robots?"

"Well that'll be the next project to work on, sit tight boys."

Through the double doors there was a ring of old wood, a high desk, and a blonde sitting atop it, a children's backpack was sitting just past the ring, torn up, and the whimpering indicated that the school group was huddled under the edges of the desk while yes, statues paced a circle...

...or in a few cases swooped from the upper landing. The detective was tossing pencils at the fliers, apparently they enjoyed that. "Okay you're next Angie, I just want you to stand up baby and see if they notice you okay?" That was all. She was sorting out who the statues were targeting carefully?

The two men looked at each other, then nodded. The smaller one stayed outside, the larger one slid in carefully to see if he could get the attention of the statues onto himself and off of the kids.

His low, rumbling voice murmured, "Detective Brea? My name is Agent Dilan of Lenna Clan, I am a member of the FBI on loan to an agency that deals with this kind of thing. What do you need at this moment?"

"No sudden moves," Aya suggested, eyes still glued above as a little girl slowly stood to peek up over the edge of the desk. "One step left..." And yes, time to toss another pencil and tumble forward to tackle the girl back down. Well then.

"So far we've only got about four they don't react to," Aya spoke from behind the desk. "Once they settle again can you escort the four out?" She'd figure out the rest later?

"I'm very sorry, but I can't do that." his voice was apologetic and he continued the slow, smooth walk towards the desk, "I'm genetically wired to stay with the kits in danger. My partner may be able to do so, assuming that the statues don't go for him instead."

What? The look she shot him as she slowly climbed back up on the counter was angry but it softened once the 'katzu' bit clicked. Ah. "Sorry. I can't leave them." So that left them still here. "The extraction team by the door doesn't really know how to move slowly, if your partner does we'd love the help." The outside team really couldn't leave kids either, they'd try to take them all and some of those statues were heavy.

Hell, the marble owl had already scraped gouges in the desk and it was hardened mahogany. "To make things more interesting we've started hearing heavy things from the upper floors. As I recall there's a mythology exhibit up there right now..." So stone gorgons would be fun as soon as they found the stairs.

"You said FBI. You have an idea why they're after the kids?

"Braig." he said in the same calm, paced tone, "Come get the kits. No, Detective, not yet. I'm going to need to talk to the kittens, do you think you can hold things off while I do so? Otherwise I'll need Braig to come back in after he'd got the four away."

"Yeah, they're statues. They overbalance easily." And she had a chunk of lamp she'd been using on the land bound ones when they got too close. "As long as I don't run out of pencils for the fliers to fetch we should have a good ten minutes or so..." Hopefully?

"Kids, this man is with the FBI, he wants to talk to you all, please behave, I've got things in hand," Aya introduced, standing back up fully on the counter and tossing a pencil. Yay.

Dilan settled down near the kids, legs crossed, and handed his badge to one of them so that they could look over it themselves. He then introduced himself and asked; "Have any of you recently found or been given any strange items? Especially old things, but it might not be too old."

"Old stuff?" One of them laughed. "Like really old? That's museum stuff and they're weird!" And belonged in museums!

"Medals? Coins? Anything you passed around?" Aya prompted, nudging a clay warrior over. "Stacy, Eric, James and Clara, you're first up, someone is coming for you."

"They might have just been weird, too." Dilan admitted, "Or, current situation aside, have any weird things happened? Smelling fudge when there wasn't any? Hearing people speak weird languages when you know they don't speak anything out of the ordinary?"

The smaller of the agents stepped in somewhat less gingerly than the larger one, striding towards the desk with perfect confidence in his own ability to handle...everything the world could throw.

"You're weird!" another kid pointed out cheerfully. "Why would we smell candy? They don't sell candy here!"

"You're being rude, Charles," Aya noted, eyes tracking the new arrival. Oh...Bremis. The statues saw him. Yes, one of the weirder thoughts today.

"Sorry sir."

"They wouldn't play cards with us on the bus," one of the girls spoke up. "The ones that get to leave."

"There's a lot of weird things in this world." Dilan said with a smile, "That's why there are so many questions to ask about things to try to figure out what's up."

He then turned his head towards the girl, "Oh? Do you have the cards you were playing with here? May I see them, please?"

Braig's smile blossomed as statuary started for him. One of the reasons he was as battered as he was, was the fact that the wild and weird were attracted to him even when he hadn't done anything. (One of the others was his instinctive need to Do Something if people were in trouble.) "Hey! Somebody send me a sledgehammer! Somebody else see if you can get past while I deal with statuary!"

"His is the word of God," Aya spoke into the walkie on her belt, "fetch it!" Because she was on point here so a green light was good. She had no idea what was going on but hell, she could make sure people were equipped!

"No, they were in Amy's backpack!" The girl answered.

"Son of Sam..." Aya swore. Several of the kids has lost their gear when the statuary had come to life. "If you need it and have this covered I'll go fetch it." From deeper in the museum.

"Hey, Dilan, you hear that?" Braig chortled cheerfully even as he started to dodge the statuary's attempts at reducing him to a smudge. Dilan sighed, a lot, and then ignored his partner in favour of;

"Better idea," Dilan said, passing up a pair of purple latex gloves and a small foil bag, "get the cards with the gloves, dump them in the bag. If they're the source of the problem there'll be a purple spark. If not, bring the bag and any other you can find back here."

"In this emergency only," Aya amended, amusement in her voice but the glance she tossed at the statue dodging man worried. They'd played dodge the clay fists getting downstairs, she knew the cursed things moved faster than they should.

Grape gloves and a foil bag. Well. It wasn't like she had any better ideas. "Kids, you're to listen to these men, they're here to keep you safe. If you need me I'm on channel three..." Because even if the FBI men didn't have radios anyone coming in to extract would. "I won't be long."

"Spoilsport." Braig said, dancing and dodging with the ease of someone who regularly worked out with a Katzu. If anyone understood that things could move faster than they 'should', it was the men and women who worked with, but were not, Katzu.

"Got it." Dilan said, nodding and then dismissing her from his mind so he could go back to talking to the kids, "Anything else you can think of that you'd consider important?" he asked them.

"Everyday," she was always someone's wet blanket really. Came with being a cop. Luckily she was also very good at getting a job done, even when the job was weird.

Such as now...dodging marble owls and getting up the stairs before some new arrival statues came down.

Fun.

"Jimmy took Ethan's pudding," stealing was important right? "And I wanna go home. I don't like the museum any more."

At least most of the statues wanted to get Braig, so she really only had to dodge the ones in a straight path towards her.

Dilan nodded at the commentary, "Who is Jimmy, and who is Ethan?" was his only question, followed by, "We'll get you all home. I promise, and I never break my promises."

Yeah, and that was just an additional layer of weird on the day really. So the statues wanted kids and a short agent? It made exactly zero sense really. Statues should have a better sense of fair play.

Or something.

She was probably tired. Yeah. That or she was tripping an ancient warrior statue down the stairs. Yeah, the paperwork was going to be fun.

His question got raised hands, both boys being in the group who weren't allowed to leave yet. "I took his string cheese last week though, so I guess it's okay? Are we in trouble because of that?"

"It's very unlikely." Dilan informed the boys, "So lets leave that alone and move on to any other strange things that have happened in, hmmm. Lets say the last three days. Especially to everyone in the group, but if anyone has something they want to suggest that just happened to a few or one of you that's okay too."

"Good, 'cause everyone steals lunch, it's a game," Jimmy laughed. "I don't know, my dog ran away?"

"And the class hamster had babies?"

"I had to go to dinner with my mom's Aunt and she smells like toothpaste!"

"Sledgehammer, coming through!" And two people in riot gear with big shields to escort a few kids out! "And a radio?"

Dilan kept nodding, and encouraging kids to talk. Alas that he totally stopped being focus of attention when Braig started in with the sledgehammer and warbling some sort of battle anthem. The Katzu just sighed.

Braig was just begging to become the main focus of EVERYTHING wasn't he? Well, until curious kids peeked over the counter and the flying statues took another run at them! "He's...really happy huh? Do you guys do this a lot in the FBI?"

"No go on the deck," Aya called over the radio. And you've got more company coming down the stairs below me. Hope you guys like mythology." She was going to have to find an alternate way down.

"Oh, he's not FBI." Dilan said with a sigh, "He's ATF. We're just both part of a multi-agency task force that deals with all kinds of weird stuff. Braig just really loves his job, and to be fair weird things love him so it works."

Dilan frowned, "I don't suppose you noticed if it's a whole deck or a partial?" went into the radio and, "Do any of you have cards?" to the kids.

"What's an ATF?" Slightly lesser known acronym among the gradeschool set these days! "But yeah they really like him. Or hate him. Is he going to kill them all?" Maybe? THAT WOULD WORK RIGHT?!

"...no. The box was old, cloth and soft. Hard to tell if there's space in it." So until she had a better idea she was gathering backpacks.

"...maybe? We were in the middle of a game when the bus stopped!" MASS POCKET CHECK TIME!

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