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.

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...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.

A shadowy highest power and unknown chain of command was NOT reassuring. At all. This sounded more like some kind of cult than a legitimate job that could demand transfers. Fun. They'd been keeping track of her; she would be flattered but really that was the last thing on her mind. "And Ansem answers to them?" Convenient.

Lately? That implied some sort of...mystic escalation? She sighed when that thought ran through her mind, wincing away from the fact she'd thought it. Mystic escalation. Riiiight. "I hunt people," Aya pointed out softly. "Not items. You can't crawl into the head of a knife..."

Not even an antique like the Rostov Ripper's knife.

What was she suppose to think? That his tool had been so immersed in the slaughter that now it was some kind of evil demon knife? "What about the rest of his knives?" she asked blandly. "And teh man who did the stabbing...did he behave like himself or like Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo"

"I'd really love to say you were right, but, well. Ansem answers to the warehouse. You get enough artefacts together, for enough thousands of years, and there develops a sort of proto-personality."

"No, you can't crawl into the head of an artefact. You can, however, crawl into the head of the people who created the artefact. Even though artefacts aren't made deliberately each and every one of them holds the imprint of their creator. Nikola Tesla was a good man who wanted to do good things, and we're able to use many of his inventions in our work. Chikatilo's knife drives people the same kind of mad as Chikatilo himself.

"You're probably going to say something about an FBI profiler here. I'm just going to cut you off and tell you that Quantico was chomping at the bit to get you in order to make you one."

Aya tilted her head to the side, narrowing her eyes slightly as the woman seemingly skipped right over answering her actual questions. Some interesting things were said though, despite. The relevant ones at the moment being the fact that artifacts were not deliberately made and that 'same kind of mad'. It didn't preclude there being more knives, or fancy new personalities with an artificial taste for killing.

Or the questions in her head. Had the killer been as brazenly half-assed as that Ripper had been? Meticulous in one thing, uncaring in another? Did they...

...ah, yes, the next comment did make her brain skip away from the questions. It wasn't like they'd get answered at this rate anyway. "Quantico," she noted with a hint of wry amusement, "as if you have trouble getting FBI agents out of there." Not judging by the two warehouse agents she'd met.

And it was actually slightly frightening to think this 'Ansem' preferred someone who had not been as trained as she could be in that field. And she knew herself, if FBI had come asking she'd have said yes. "So what decisions about my own future, exactly, have been left for me to actually decide for myself at this point?"

"Well, no, but to be fair Dilan's a warehouse baby. Literally, he's only around because his mother got whammied by an artefact that made her fertile with a Katzu. He's half-Olia." Elcy said with a soft sigh that had equal parts missing her friend, loving her 'other son', and mourning for her Katzu-teethed-upon furniture.

"If you fight it hard enough, long enough, you might be able to leave." Elcy said after a moment, with a shrug, "I can't promise you that, though. I can't promise you'll live to retirement, although eventually it does become an option if you live that long."

You wouldn't know it to look at the agent, really. She wasn't certain she bought it, but then again, moving statues. She wasn't sure what to think any more. "I'm glad he was around to help with the children." That much she was certain of?

The next part though, oh, it would have been kinder to shoot her. "Ah," that was the sound of doors closing really. Of being locked in a cage and never having seen it coming. What were her options when a higher power, someone that could pick and choose and play with lives, decreed her life elsewhere was over?

Well, she'd be thinking about that. A lot. Leaving the county and perhaps opening lines to Interpol came to mind. How quickly could she liquidate her assets and leave? That was a better question.

"Me too. Dilan is very good with children, endless patience on top of the Katzu half." Elcy agreed with a small laugh, "I have to admit that often I wish he'd become a teacher instead of FBI. He'd have had a chance at normal, then. Braig's always been a lost cause, though. Weird shit actively seeks him out."

She opened her mouth to reply and the words froze in her throat. She couldn't do pleasantries right now, she couldn't pretend this was jut a normal day. No. She did not want to work in a place where a person's civil rights could be overridden and she was seriously reconsidering living in any country that allowed it, and that left no room for the level of interaction Elcy was going for.

So, really, there was nothing left was there? She closed her mouth, grit her teeth, and managed a "I'll be going now," before giving the woman a polite, chilly nod and turning on her heel to retrace her steps. There'd been a gas station back in town, that was as good a place as any to fill up, grab a drink, and get her partner on the phone to discuss options.

As she exited the warehouse there were male voices speaking to each other in a companionable tone. They weren't going in, having grown up where they did they knew that people were generally extraordinarily pissed off the first time they were inside, but they weren't trying to mask their presence either.

Elcy's son, and having seen her he couldn't be anything but her son, raised one hand in a casual 'hello' that required no answer. The other man turned and did the same thing. If she was going to leave, they weren't going to try to stop her.

They'd been godsends, honestly, when first she saw them. For that fact alone she'd have stopped, but today? Today they were very bleak pair to see. Elcy's son who couldn't get away, her adopted son by the way she spoke of him who didn't. This left her near vibrating in place as she eyed them, etching detail into her memory to make up for the lack of such evaluation earlier, then she just had to ask "were you this angry when your future was decided?"

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