75 Godiva Street, Saturday Afternoon

[geniuswithasmartphone]

So, everything was terrible again. Hardison was pretty sure that Tony and his TA were evil, Eliot had brought home a version of Kathy that needed babysitting a lot more than she needed to be out heroing, there were slugs pretty much everywhere, and last night Eliot had insisted they all sleep down in the panic room in the basement. Which was actually more like a 'panic suite' because Eliot had built it and he was kind of extra about things, but even so, it was a little more claustrophobic than Hardison was comfortable with. He'd found himself calculating how much air was available in their hidey hole, which wasn't something he'd done since they'd moved from Portland.

That itchy restlessness hadn't left him, even when they'd all come back upstairs for brunch. He needed to get out for a little while. Do something. Spend some time in the open air while feeling useful. So once the meal was over, Hardison grabbed for his jacket and his laptop bag. A walk across the island to the school for some quality research time would hopefully settle him.

[Open for housemates and visitors!]

Comments

[vdistinctive]

"Where the hell do you think you're going?!"

Hardison thought he was twitchy? Eliot was buzzing. He still hadn't slept. Even with his people in the safe room (most of his people, he had one Kathy, but he was sure there was still another one out there), his brain still hummed with anxiety, bad memories, and all the worst things that might happen if he didn't watch out every moment. He couldn't let Hardison out of his sight. He'd barely let them all come upstairs to eat.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"To the library," Hardison said calmly. Anything else would just feed right into Eliot's anxiety spiral again. "They probably need folks to help research. An' maybe I'll stop an' check on Tony an' Steve. He was doin' me a real concern the other day."

Oh, yeah, that'd definitely help his case.

[vdistinctive]

"You want to stop along the way?" Yeah, there really wasn't much avoiding that anxiety spiral. "So you can get caught by some kind of giant sphinx thing again?!"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Radio ain't said nothin' about monsters this time," Hardison reminded. "Just slugs an' weird people."

One of which was probably his TA, which had him extra-worried.

[godilovedthis]

Kathy was very carefully copying down all the notes she'd written on her hands and arms. She'd promised to help with the dishes, but she was worried that all of her reminders would wash away. And then she'd be even worse at remembering anything!

Ooh, and maybe after the dishes, a shower? She was wearing some of Eliot's old clothes while hers were being washed, but she wanted to get clean, too.

And then she'd go and fight because slugs bad and Stop the bad guys were things she'd just copied down onto the paper and those were important!

[vdistinctive]

"Whatcha workin' on there, kiddo?" Eliot asked, when he wasn't madly trying to keep everyone here and safe. "Anything I can help with?"

Please give him a distraction Kathy. Preferably one that didn't cause any flashbacks on its own, but hell, he'd take almost anything right now.

[godilovedthis]

"Hi mister," she said cheerfully. She knew she knew his name, in a minute, she'd remember it again. This was just a momentary memory lapse, those were okay. "I'm making a list of all my notes," she said, showing him the paper she was writing on. "Because I'm going to help with the dishes and then take a shower and they'll get smudged or washed away. So I want to keep track of them all so I can rewrite them when I'm done."

Beat.

"Eliot!" Ha! She knew she knew it!

[vdistinctive]

She'd done that enough times already that Eliot only twitched a little bit. It was about the only thing he was dealing with okay right now.

For certain values of "okay".

"That's a good plan. What can I do to help?"

[whoisalicewhite]

Whoops. Looked like Hardison was making a break for it without planning it first. Well, she'd help. Mainly by distracting Eliot, probably.

[ooc: back in 2 hours or so.]

[geniuswithasmartphone]

He didn't need to sneak to get out of his own house! He was a grown ass man, he could come and go as he pleased!

...Also, there was no way in hell he could outsneak anybody in the house, other than possibly Kathy, so he saw no reason to really try. Sometimes boldness worked where subterfuge would fail.

This did not seem to be one of those times.

"Dammit, Eliot!"

[whoisalicewhite]

By the time they were fifty, all of them would be saying "Damnit ___" at least once a day.

"Whoops." Parker looked outside and said, "I don't see any worms." Which meant nothing, so. "Do you want my taser?"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Slugs, mama," Hardison said absently. "They're slugs."

Not that taxonomy was really important right now.

"You think Eliot'll be any less panicked I go out there armed?"

[godilovedthis]

Kathy smiled at Parker, picking up the plate that she'd been using. "Are you done with this?" Kathy asked. "I'm doing the dishes." Beat. "I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

This wasn't the first time she'd needed to ask.

[whoisalicewhite]

"Parker." And didn't that just make her heart all squeezy every time. "But you know, you can call me whatever you want. I'll know who you mean." And then, "And you don't have to do the dishes." Especially if she was going to forget she was doing them in the middle, or wash off any of the important writing on her arms.

[godilovedthis]

"Parker!" Kathy said, excited. "I know you! I have your name on my arm!" She pushed up the sleeve of Eliot's old t-shirt to show her upper arm, where the names Eliot, Parker, Hardison were written in a circle over her bicep. The letters were faded, written over ghosts of previous iterations from where she'd updated them over the year. "Is Sarah here too?"

[vdistinctive]

Eliot knew that face. "What are you plotting, Parker?"

[whoisalicewhite]

"Stuff," Parker said in her most guileless voice. Which wasn't very. "Do you think we have enough food? Should we be digging a moat so the slugs can't get to us? Would it be easier to just put salt everywhere so they crawl on it and die?"

[vdistinctive]

Oh sure, Parker, give him even more things to obsess over. "There's plenty of food. And if the slugs can get past locked doors and windows, they're probably not going to be much deterred by moats or salt."

[tigerundercover]

Raven had been hanging out in the preserve as usual, and thus missed most of the craziness so far. She'd spotted the people coming through the portal from a distance, and after immediately feeling like she should maybe murder the lot of them, had chosen to keep that distance for awhile.

Once she was back in town, she checked in back home to look for Kathy, but couldn't find her. She headed for Godiva Street next, figuring she and Mr. Spencer might be working out a strategy for -- whatever. And she could check to make sure Hardison was okay, too.

And sure enough, there everyone was! Raven knocked on the back door and waved, waiting to be let in.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Raven!" Hardison flung the door open, arms wide. "Dammit, TA, I been worried about you! Get in here!"

And he was already throwing his arms around her for a hug by the time he realized that just because she was blue didn't mean that she wasn't still Nega-Raven.

Oops.

[tigerundercover]

Judging by the abbreviated roar from the other end of the room, Eliot had not missed that part.

"I walked through a zombie apocalypse," Raven pointed out, faintly amused as she hugged back. "A slug filled island isn't exactly hard."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Yeah, but there's other versions of folks an' an evil cult an' plans to 'burn it all down' or some kinda nonsense," Hardison said, conveniently not mentioning that she was one of those people with alternate versions who wanted to jump start the apocalypse. "I was mostly worried you'd be out in the Preserve, mindin' your own business, an' someone would start botherin' you while you were tryin' to take a nap or somethin'."

Or something indeed.

[godilovedthis]

Kathy looked up from washing the dishes and screamed, dropping one the plates to shatter on the floor.

That face, she remembered. And it had her reaching for a knife from the block on the counter.

This would go well!

[tigerundercover]

"Kathy!" Raven rushed over as soon as she could. "Kathy, what's wrong, are you okay?"

Did she have to hurt someone for hurting her? Because she would! She so would!

[godilovedthis]

"Stay back!" Kathy said, her grip on the knife steady and sure. She might end up forgetting the word for the weapon she was holding, but her body remembered what to do. "Don't you touch me! Or any of them! I promised to protect them and I swear I will!"

Where was Dante? Or Anders? Or Stars-somebody? Or even Carthage? The blue one was one of the more dangerous members of the cult and Kathy couldn't kid herself about her abilities to hold her off for long.