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Well, I'm runnin’ down the road tryin’ to loosen my load
I got seven men on my mind

There's nothing wrong with a little improvisation. Not to Grace, anyway, since the radio in the police cruiser she'd taken seems to be on the fritz. She's already destroyed ‘Hard to Handle.’ Flicking cigarette ash out her window, she smirks at the long stretch of open road and kicks it up to 95. The engine hums along.

Four that want to own me
Two that want to save me
One says he's a friend of mine.

She's driving south on Interstate 35, toward Kansas City and Wichita. She hasn't run across anyone since Charlie, back in that weird town. There have, however, been some interesting craters in the road that she felt compelled to check out. Grace doesn't know what's going on, but she’s certain of two things: it makes sense to head for Oklahoma City, and this is somehow all Earl’s fault.

Take it eaaaaaaaaaaasy...

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Dinah's close behind Grace, and now draws level, head turned towards the sound.

"Now's where you explain away the station's mascot," she says helpfully.

"No mascot."

Lip curled, she peers up into the gloomy gray light.

"Unless you count Butch, but he cleans and walks himself most days."

Grace moves up another half-flight, keeping close to the wall. One more floor and they will be where they need to be. If only whatever is up there hadn't caught their scent and started in the same direction.

"Well, shit. It's on the move," she whispers, though that's perfectly obvious. Whatever it is, it's not subtle.

"I noticed."

Dinah clears her throat like someone else might cock a gun, and starts up the stairs faster.

"You as curious as me?"

"Yeah I am."

Watch it be Gus-Gus. If it is her dog, Grace plans on lecturing him and then buying him a steak.

It's not.

As they charge up the stairs, Grace catches sight of a clawed foot coming down, then some sort of snout.

"What the..."

Dinah draws back, a hand out to warn Grace from shooting.

"It still might not be hostile."

Grace nods, stopping on the landing. She's keeping her gun ready, just in case, but right now her face is screwed up in disbelief. The creature lumbers toward them -- it's body clearly wasn't made for stairs -- and lets out a noise that is probably meant to be threatening, but sounds more like a rabid squirrel stuck in a dishwasher.

"Whatever it is," she says, "it's damn ugly."

The creature stops before it reaches the landing, looking back and forth between them.

"God, is that a rat?"

"Yeah," Dinah says. "Biggest one I ever saw."

She glances between Grace and the rat, and shrugs.

"Animals I can handle."

You know that high pitched whistles that some animal handlers use to subdue their animals? Just on the very edge of the human register?

Well, Dinah appears to be singing in it.

Well, that's new.

The unusually sized rat -- it looks like it's been crossed with a giant wombat, and a little stray dog thrown in for good measure -- tosses its head from side to side and makes another angry noise, almost like a bark. But it doesn't move.

Moments later, the same noise echoes from other parts of the building. And from outside.

"Sit, Ratty. Sit." Grace is so helpful. "Kinda seems like it wants to lunge for your throat."

Dinah - who can't really talk right now - offers Grace a pair of raised eyebrows. You don't say?

She glances around and steps up the stairs, hoping the rat will back up or otherwise let them pass.

Neither option seems to appeal to the beast. Instead, it shuffles backwards and awkwardly flees up the stairs, back the way it came.

"Probably wants reinforcements." Grace frowns after it, drawing even with Dinah. "I don't want to know what sewer that crawled out of."

She's got a finger in her ear, shaking her head.

Dinah stops with the sonics as the rat backs away, and nods.

"Me neither. You want to carry on up?"

Leaving them alone is a perfectly valid option.

"Yeah," Grace answers, and she proceeds to do just that. They've come too far, and she won't rest until she knows whether or not this is her place. "What was that thing you were doing?"

The lack of a gun is starting to make sense.

"Sonics," Dinah says casually, as she falls in beside Grace. "It's a talent."

"I'll say."

Grace grins and, after a quick glance up, throws open the door and saunters into the vestibule before Major Crimes. Aside from scattered papers on the floor and the lack of people, everything looks normal. Even the glass door is intact. She pulls it open and enters, just as she does every day, and says "How'd you-"

That's when one hundred pounds of unusually sized rodent leaps on her side, snarling.

"Grace!"

The verbal reaction actually comes after the physical one starts. Dinah lifts a leg and kicks past Grace straight into the rodent's underside, sending it flying.

It's certainly the biggest rodent she's ever seen.

Huge.

What the hell.

In a manner reminiscent of a beached whale, it lands on its side and seems to have trouble righting itself.

Spitting mad, Grace rolls into a crouch, grabs a stapler and sends it hurling after the Thing; it smacks right between the rodent's beady eyes.

"Asshole," she mutters. To Dinah: "Thanks. The damn thing bit me!"

She examines her torn sleeve and bloody upper arm.

Dinah returns to a ready stance, watching the rodent carefully for a second, before dropping to crouch beside Grace and have a look at her arm.

"Does it feel OK?"

"Feels groovy," Grace answers, blowing out a frustrated breath. She hates being hurt; the wound is shallow, but it's the principle of the thing. "Any of your friends in Kansas have rabies shots?"

Using the desk behind them, she pushes herself to her feet. The rodent whines, eyeing them, and manages to pinwheel itself out of sight.

Grace snorts and begins rifling through desks.

"Last I knew, one of the 'porters had carried in a whole hospital."

Dinah shrugs. She's glancing around the office for signs of further animals, maybe weapons. Something useful.

"You don't have metas on your world, right?"

"No. Check the chief's office," she suggests, gesturing that way.

If she sounds distracted, it's because she just found the desk of her partner, one of the men she's currently sleeping with. Except-

There's a framed picture of Ham and Darlene, both of them smiling, front and center on his workspace. A man keeps a picture like that, it says I love my wife.

Not I'm doing my partner.

Grace frowns and turns the picture over, then searches the next desk; her desk, but there's no sign of any of her possessions or paperwork, not even that little foam Longhorns football Butch likes to leave there.

"I'm gonna grab some weapons."

Edited 2008-05-08 19:27 (UTC)

Dinah heads towards the chief's office, but her head turns towards Grace. Yes, she picked up on that distraction. No, she doesn't automatically know what it means.

"I know it's what you'd expect a cape to say," she says, "but go easy on the things that need disposable ammunition. There aren't any factories anymore."

That's okay. Grace doesn't really know what it means, either.

"Well, we have to have a flamethrower around this place somewhere."

It just keeps getting weirder. She's not entirely serious about the flamethrower, and it's hard to imagine permanently running out of ammunition. What happens then? Something tells her she won't be able to pick up Dinah's sonics on a whim.

"And maybe a crossbow."

Damn Earl.

Still muttering, Grace goes to search the locked file cabinet in the booth behind the one-way mirror of interrogation room three. It's an unofficial supply. If they had to file an official request every time they needed new ammunition, they'd never get a conviction. The Chief pretends she doesn't know about it, and everybody's happy.

Of course, they don't need an official request now, and there's probably more stuff downstairs. They'll hit it on the way out.

As she looks up from punching in the code, Grace nearly jumps out of her skin. The entire window is covered in blood.

"Jesus Christ!"

There's not a lot in the chief's office. Dinah, as so often happens, got a bit distracted in searching it by looking through his things and trying to imagine what kind of man he was.

But when Grace cries out, she jerks back into action immediately, vaulting the desk and sprinting towards the sound.

When Dinah arrives, Grace has her hands on the glass, fingers feeling along like she can trace patterns in the bloodstains on the other side.

"Something got torn up in there," she announces calmly. "What a mess."

All that's visible is the mangy fur of one of those abnormally large rodents.

Dinah slows and draws next to Grace, peering in at the big, strange rat remains.

"See any movement?"