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

"Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms." Dilan offered, "Not kill, they're animate but not alive - like cartoons. I hope that he won't have to destroy everything."

From the noises on the other side, however, Braig wouldn't be too upset.

Pocket checking gave him two odd cards, some pokemon cards with things written on them, an ace of clubs and a handful of business cards! "...can we still write a paper on them if he smashes them all?" THIS WAS OBVIOUSLY AND IMPORTANT QUESTION!

"Dude, show and tell! We can all get a piece!" There would certainly be enough to go around as far as the smashing was going?

"No," Aya sighed over the radio. "The pieces still belong to the museum and you can't take them."

"AWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

"Yes, you'll just have to rely on your memory more." Dilan informed them, then Braig yelled back, "I'm just smashing their mobile parts! No legs seems to be stopping them!"

In Katzu, Dilan mumbled something about being glad his job was not cleaning up after this. In any way.

"Awwww, but that's an eye over there! He knocked out an eye!" one of the boys laughed. "Just one piece?!"

"No," Aya repeated over the radio, glad the extraction team had left it on broadcast. "Stay down, stay still." And she was...blocked on the back exhibit stairs too. Bohr.

"I'm going to have to come in over the balcony, I may land hard, sorry guys."

"Don't worry about it." Dilan said as he stood, "Aim for me, that will at least keep you from breaking anything. Including the desk. Kittens, stay under the desk."

"Might not have time but I'll try," Aya admitted, grimly cheerful as the sound of crashing statuary echoed from the upper levels. "And just so you know, jade is getting in on the game now." Not just terracotta, stone, and clay any more!

Fun times.

And yes, that would be her, slapping a hand to the railing above and leaping out into the open air just before a large, carved trunk slammed the railing to splinters.

Dilan couldn't have explained everything that went through his mind if he had three times the amount of time to do so (four times, though, and he could). He just figured out where he needed to be to catch her and get both of them out of the way of a swinging battle axe that Braig hadn't managed to disarm yet, then spun on light feet to get them both back to the desk and set her down.

"Can I have the cards and the bag?" he asked her politely, "The cards you have, too." to the kids.

She'd braced, and been ready to roll and hope for the best when she saw that battle ax but...wow, okay, suddenly be scooped out of the air? That was a new one for her. Nice, but new. Too bad he was FBI instead of a cop. They could use someone like him...

...granted, someone like him on the bigger picture was probably good too. Damn, even in random thoughts she looked at the greater good. DAMNIT. Her libido was going to cry or something. Oh well.

"Yes, give me a moment," to adjust to being set down and to pull the backpack stuffed full of backpacks off her shoulder! The weird cards were in an outer pocket at least?

The kids were a little to in awe to do more than hand over every card ever yes.

He took the cards and dumped them into another of those foil-like bags without ceremony, when the full deck was in there was a sparking shower of purple light and things got very quiet.

One turned head later he looked at his partner, leaning on the sledgehammer with a deceptively mild gaze at the marble carnage, "Mom's going to kill us." the little man said.

"No she's not." Dilan said immediately, "I didn't break anything. She's going to yell at you."

...well...that was weird.

Yes, very weird.

More importantly it was something she could think about later. She winced as the terrible thud of airborne statues, suspended for a moment beyond the silence, crashed to the ground. Yeah, this would fun to justify in damages. One one thousand...two one thousand...

"Grab each others hands and DO NOT LET GO. Stay low, follow me, it'd time to go kids." Because that was the next priority yes, getting the children OUT of the scene. She had teams waiting outside, handing them off was probably the most relieving aspect of this mission.

The two men left through a different set of doors, ready to head back to the Warehouse and give their oral reports. The paper ones would come after that.

The transfer order for one Detective Brea, NYCPD, to a podunk town out in the middle of nowhere by order of someone-or-another with REDACTED posted all over Aya's copy took about two weeks.

The first she knew something was up was coming into the precinct after her morning run and Danny blustering in a corner. Her partner blustered about a lot of things, but the look he shot her over the crowd that was joining in meant this was relevant bluster. "You can't tell me it's okay!" Danny said halfheartedly to their captain.

"Done deal with higher pay grades than mine," Cpatin Baker sighed. "Brea, front and center!"

"Well, she's good, but..." Danny grimaced, playing the game.

"Hey, guys? In the room?" Aya noted, letting the waterbottle thump to her thigh as she went to see the captain.

Um. Transfer.

WHAT?!

Yes, that was why she was in the middle of nowhere, stone faced and not at all happy with a duffel on her shoulder.

Not. Happy. At. All.

A tall, thin woman who looked almost exactly like the short one-eyed ATF agent, while looking entirely like herself, was waiting for her outside of the building.

"Detective Brea, welcome, please come in. I'm sure you have many angry questions, but do let me explain before you ask them."

"A few," she admitted, clipped but controlled. "After you." Naturally. Because she had NO IDEA WHY SHE WAS STANDING IN FRONT OF A WAREHOUSE.

None.

"Well then, Detective," she opened the door and into the elevator, "this is Warehouse 13. Within the walls of this building linger every piece of weird, powerful, and most of all weirdly powerful bric-a-brack that the world has managed to contain. Not, of course, everything, however what is missing is missing because it has been destroyed. Thank you for your assistance getting the cards back."

...

...

...

...

"You don't pull active detectives to babysit, ma'am." Which meant not everything that was 'missing' was because it had been destroyed. Either they needed someone with her skills or they were wasting her time, either way she hadn't been asked. "I appreciate the aid of your...department?...in getting the kids out safely."

"We're not exactly a department. You met my boys at the museum, Braig is my son and Dilan might as well be. Braig is ATF, Dilan is FBI, but they are both Warehouse agents first. No one is asked, Mr. Ansem acquires who he wants." there was some wryness in her voice, she had been perfectly happy in the EPA before her transfer even if she was perfectly happy with her husband and children.

"Then what, precisely, are you?" Because she may as well? "And it was your boys that turned around the museum event. Everyone else was axillary." Everyone could get therapy, the written report was prooobably shredded, the end.

"EPA." was the response, with a beautific smile that widened into a grin as the doors to the warehouse proper opened up, "My husband owns the bed and breakfast that agents live in."

...

...

Don't strangle the woman. DON'T STRANGLE THE WOMAN. She probably did mean to be as infuriatingly obfuscating, but she probably didn't mean to be as utterly grating as it was coming across. That would be lack of sleep and stress.

She'd just stand, and wait, for an actual answer, yes. It was the best option right now. Rows upon rows upon rows of junk spreading from beyond the doors? Those couldn't answer questions. She'd stare at them later.

"The Warehouse is the Warehouse. The oldest one we know of, Warehouse Four, dates from the first few dynasties of the Egyptian empire. There has been a warehouse as long as there have been artefacts, and there have been artefacts as long as there have been people doing amazing things. Come this way, please."

She took off with long strides, the strides of someone used to walking with Katzu, towards the shelf where the cards rested, figuring that Aya would want to see them.

Great, she'd been redirected to a a claimed historical storage yard. She watched where the woman was headed, honestly debating if she was simply going to go back out to her car and drive home instead of following deeper into the cryptic warren.

The reason to follow? She'd been a chaperone for her partner's kid; Danny had twisted his knee on a bust, and then teh world had gone insane and statues had attacked her charges. Ben had been the first out those doors, the minute she'd figured out he wasn't a target she'd sent him out with orders to get the damn National guard if he had to. She'd had access to the desk phone soon after that, but Ben had gotten out.

And there had been statues attacking kids.

So, yes, she followed. It was a close thing though.

"Here we are, the sketches of Pyanet's gargoyles and grotesques for Notre Dame." she tapped the case firmly, "When activated, they bring statues to life in a manner that attempts to protect whatever building they're in. From, unfortunately, whoever activated them." then she mumbled something in Katzu to the effect of or my son with a sigh.

"Everything in here does something that it shouldn't. From a mirror that releases an insane Alice Liddell, to dodge balls that multiply and attack everyone around. Our job is to stop that from happening. When we hear about something, we investigate, and once we've found it we snag it, bag it, and tag it."

The cards. The cards that had sparked and spat when dropped in a foil bag of all things. She looked, in fact she stared, like one would when memorizing a map, but she did not touch the glass. No. Some things were just too dangerous.

Or too weird.

"And who, exactly, got final say on my transfer again? I don't recall an Ansem anywhere near my chain of command." She wasn't Federal, or anywhere close to Federal. "This may all be strange and odd, and so many things besides, ma'am, but I'm a homicide detective. I was caught in the museum incident accidentally."

"No, you wouldn't. We take the secret part of our job very, very seriously. At the top are the regents, they are the people who make the decisions about what will and will not happen with the Warehouse. I know that they've been watching you, but only because Ansem told me; I have no idea who the regents are. You won't either, they don't advertise. I know that they're made up of ordinary people, for the most part, and not the rich and powerful."

The rich and powerful were always the ones most likely to go for more power without thinking of the consequences.

"There have been...quite a lot of artefact related deaths lately. Braig is very good at chasing down people who run drugs or weapons, and you will never meet an analyst better than Dilan, but neither of them is trained in how to deal with a murderer. It's most likely that you were tapped now because you're a homicide detective."

She started walking again halfway through the speech and into one of the many, many rows with weapons in until she got to a simple looking knife; "The knife of Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo. The man who ended up with it killed ten people before we managed to get our hands on it. Dilan was stabbed in the gut and really only being Katzu saved him."

Because even with a stab wound in the gut his instinct was to kill the thing hurting him that badly. It was not an unconditional win.

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