(Community/Warehouse 13) crash course in interplanetary diplomacy, Part 2 for ozmissage

[perdiccas]

Tuesday

Claudia didn't protest when they insisted she come back to the apartment and answer a few question, or even when Abed pointed a desk light at her as she sat at their kitchen table, like it was an interrogation room. She did, however, insist on taking out the weirdest looking phone Annie had ever seen and tinkering with it before she would so much as look at any of them.

Annie didn't know what she was up to, but there was a lot of poking around with wires and muttering and at one point something that sounded like a Lewis Black impression. Whatever - that wasn't the important thing. Annie has some questions of her own, first.

She grabbed Troy and Abed by an arm each and dragged them into the Dreamatorium, leaving the door open a crack so they could still see Claudia. Then she crossed her arms in her fiercest, most no-nonsense way, and glared at them. "Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

"Don't worry, Annie," Abed said. "We have it under control."

Annie just kept staring at Troy. Abed wasn't going to break. But Troy?

She counted in her head. Five, four, three, two -

"Claudia's an alien and her spaceship crashed to earth last week and also there were dinosaurs," Troy babbled.

Abed looked at him reproachfully. "Agent T."

"Sorry, man, she looked at me."

Annie threw her arms in the air. "That's what this is, one of your silly games? You ran out of class, dragged some poor girl over here in the middle of the night, almost broke your necks running through the forest in the dark, all for some game?"

"It's not a game, Annie," Abed said seriously.

"I swear, there was a dinosaur out there. It almost got us."

Annie sighed. The trouble was, they sounded so sincere. And Abed could make anything sound convincing, but Troy was usually more of an open book, and now...

Now he really sounded like he believed it. Which worried her, a bit.

"Fine," Annie said. "I think I'd like to hear what Claudia has to say about all this."

They stepped back into the living room in time to hear Claudia arguing with someone.

"Cross my heart and hope to die, Artie, which I almost did like fifteen minutes ago, so I'd think that would count for double."

An angry, oddly tinny, voice responded. "Did you at least get any useful information?"

Another, even more distant voice added: "Yeah, did you get a vibe?"

"No, Pete, I did not get a vibe, because of the way I was running for my life. As for useful information, that's what I called you for, and you've been so very helpful." Claudia looked over her shoulder, saw Annie and Troy and Abed watching her, and turned back to her conversation. "Look, could you guys just try digging around and see if anything jumps out? I gotta go."

She snapped the lid on the phone quickly and put it in a pocket.

"So here we are," Claudia said. "You know, usually I don't go home with boys after the first date, especially not if it's two boys and their female roommate all together."

"We need to talk." Abed sat across the table from Claudia, with Troy standing over them. Annie hovered on the edges, not sure what was going on except that they were all being very silly about it.

"About?" Claudia tried for nonchalant and failed, miserably. She coughed and tried again. "About what?"

"We know you're an alien and you have something to do with this."

"Abed!" Annie protested, exasperated by all the nonsense and determined to finally get some sense from somebody. "She's not an alien. How would that even be possible? I'm sorry," she turned to Claudia, "they get too wrapped up in their games sometimes."

"Look, you're both right," Claudia said. "I'm not an alien."

Troy looked disappointed.

Claudia sighed and continued. "I might have something to do with the dinosaur, though."

"Please, Claudia, don't encourage them - " Annie started.

"I'm here to hunt down a mysterious artifact with the power to warp reality."

Annie threw up her arms and left the room, though the gesture was probably undercut by the fact that she snuck back in again a moment later. Okay, so everyone was being completely irrational, but she couldn't help it if she was a teeny bit interested in whatever it was that was going on.

Abed gestured at Troy. "A word?"

They shuffled a few feet away from the table, though Annie could still hear them just fine, which meant Claudia could, too.

"Consensus?"

"I don't know," Troy put his fist to his chin, visibly thinking. "We've been so focused on aliens, I didn't consider other possibilities. This changes things completely..."

Abed turned over to look at Claudia, who was - Annie scooted closer to be sure - silently laughing into her hands. "This artifact," he started. "Could it be from another world?"

Claudia coughed again and straightened up, mimicking professionalism. "Probably not."

Abed and Troy whispered back and forth for a moment.

Abed turned back around. "But it's something mysterious with unknown, inexplicable powers?"

"Yes."

"Dangerous?"

"There's a very good chance."

"Old and valuable?"

"Old, probably, valuable, it's a toss up."

Abed and Troy looked at each other for a moment, and said, perfectly in synch: "Indiana Jones."

So much for Claudia getting the boys to make more sense. Annie stepped forward again. "Okay, I think you all need to have a good night's sleep and really think things over."

"Yeah, I should probably go," Claudia said, gathering her things. "My friend's probably worried about me."

Abed looked down, thinking, and looked back up again when he made the connection. "Annie's government friend. She's not your antagonist, she's working with you."

Claudia just smiled.

Annie felt thrown for a loop. "Myka? What does she have to do with anything?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Abed asked. "They work together. Think about it: strange lights in the sky, and the next day, there's a new girl in town who claims to just be an average student but is really hunting a mysterious superpowered artifact of undetermined origin. Next a government agent comes calling, supposedly just to help out an old friend, but it just happens to be the same time that dinosaurs appear in Greendale? Unlikely."

Annie rolled her eyes. "Guys, Myka's here to help me out with the career fair."

"But did you ask her to come, or did she bring it up?"

"Well, I asked her, but - " Annie stopped, and thought about it. "I mean, I asked her a while ago, and she was busy, but then she said she could make it out this week. But that doesn't prove anything," she insisted, as Troy's face lit up.

"Hate to break it to you, kid," Claudia said, while Annie asked 'kid?' in outrage, "but Myka's here for the same reason I am. Seeing you is cool, sure. And she's really excited about it. But it's also about the artifact."

Annie gave in. She wasn't going to protest it anymore; their story just kept getting weirder and weirder. Besides, the next time she saw Myka, she could just sort of casually bring it up, and Myka would explain that of course this whole thing wasn't true and everything would be neat and orderly and make sense again. That was a good plan.

Annie headed off to bed and left the strangeness of the night behind her. And if she dreamed and too-small trees or a horrible noise drifting through the cold air, she didn't admit it to anyone.

-

Tuesday (still)

Annie chattered about plans for the upcoming career fair the whole way to school, partly because it helped her assuage her nerves, partly because she still had some details she needed to work out, and only a little bit to keep Troy and Abed from talking about aliens.

Once they got to school she was so busy running around, between classes and extra credit assignments and talking to the Dean and making calls...

She didn't have time to call Myka, but anyway, there wasn't anything to be worried about except maybe that she was going to have to listen to way too much John Williams for the next week or two until the guys found something else to glom onto.

So she'd pretty much managed to put the whole thing out of her mind and focus on the things she needed to get done by the time she ran into Claudia in the hallway.

"Canny Annie! Just the person I want to see." Before Annie could open her mouth to respond, Claudia dragged her into an empty classroom. "Can we talk?"

"You know, we can talk in the hallway just fine."

"Nope, not really." Claudia shut the door and leaned up against it, as if barricading it from some unknown menace.

Whatever annoyance Annie had about the situation ebbed as she took in Claudia's state of being. Her hand and arms were covered in little scratches and bruises from their flight through the woods last night, and her hair was a mess, like she'd been running her fingers through it all day. Her eyes were wild, with dark circles underneath them, and she looked...worried.

"Are you okay?" Annie asked, because what else what she supposed to say?

"Yeah, no, I'm great." Claudia breathed shakily. "I just spent all night wandering around the woods looking for dinosaurs. No big." At the look on Annie's face, Claudia hastily continued. "And before you tell me there was no dinosaur - I get it, pics or it didn't happen. And you're smart, and you like logic, and rules, and you want the world to follow those rules, but the world doesn't always work like that. Trust me, weird shit happens all the time, and most of that time it sucks."

"You realize how crazy you sound?"

"Trust me, I know all about sounding crazy." Claudia laughed. It wasn't a very happy sounding laugh. "But I think this whole thing that happens last night is bugging you a little too much and you're trying so, so hard to pretend it was nothing, but you can't quite make yourself buy it. Am I right?"

Something about this conversation was putting Annie on the defensive. "I don't have to answer that," she snapped. "And you can make Troy and Abed play along, but you don't know me or you wouldn't bother trying."

"I think I know you just the littlest bit," Claudia said. "Come on, smartest girl in the room but people still treat you like a kid? You get so focused on your goal that you end up breaking under the pressure?"

Annie broke eye contact.

"And I know one other thing about you," Claudia continued. "I know you're perceptive, and I know you saw those trees and you know that wasn't right. Maybe the dinosaur is just me and the guys playing a joke, and maybe that weird sound was - was an owl or something stupid, but you're the one who saw those trees. Those were not the right trees. They're not even the same trees that were there when I tromped around the forest at ass o'clock in the morning last night. And you know that's not right."

"There's an explanation," Annie insisted. "Every time something weird like this happens, and people say it's - aliens, or magic, or miracles - there's always something real behind it."

"Oh, it is real," Claudia said. "That doesn't stop it from being something weird."

"This is ridiculous," Annie said. She felt like she'd been saying that all her life. She pushed past Claudia to get to the door. "You should really take care of yourself. You're going to get sick if you keep this up."

Then she opened the door and strode through it boldly, making a point that this was the end of this nonsense.

And then stopped, because nonsense had come to smack her in the face.

The hideous fluorescent light, linoleum floors, and posters of students photoshopped to look like they were smiling - gone. The other students - gone.

Greendale - gone.

Instead Annie found herself standing in a luxurious hallway. Thick carpet hushed her footsteps; tapestries hung along the walls. The air was thick with silence and warm humidity. Annie felt sweat prickling on her brow and wiped it off absentmindedly.

The light was dim, so it took her eyes a moment to adjust. It seemed like the only lighting came from a candle chandelier over head.

"Where..."

She trailed off, not even sure how she'd finish that sentence.

"Holy old money, Batman," Claudia whispered behind her. Her voice held an odd note of reverence. "I think something weird just happened again."

Annie thought about arguing that this was a hallucination, or a mirage, or just the quickest, weirdest remodel of all time, but she couldn't make herself say anything, particularly not once she turned around to look at Claudia and saw that the door they'd just walked through, instead of leading to a classroom, led to parlor. A parlor, with light, fancy furniture, and a large bay window, and was that a harpsichord in the corner -

"Edison!" Claudia called to her, possibly for the second or third time. "Keep it together, Edison. We gotta figure this thing out."

"Right. Right, we have to figure out where we are, and how we got here, and how to get back. Simple."

"Yeah, easy as pie. One, two, three." Claudia didn't sound all that much more collected than Annie was, but as long as they were both faking it Annie thought they'd be okay. "So, this is, what, a mansion?"

"It looks like something from Pride and Prejudice," Annie thought out loud. "The one with Colin Firth, which was way better than the Keira Knightly movie."

"Eh, I only like the one with zombies."

"What, you never wished for a Mr. Darcy?"

"I spent my teen years hunting for a different kind of guy," Claudia said cryptically, drifting down the hallway. "Whoa, portraits."

Annie followed after her, poking her head through the doorway to see - yes, row after row of portraits of stoic looking men and women, just like the ones people used to have made of their family members. None of them were labeled, though, so they weren't particularly helpful to Annie.

She followed Claudia through the portrait room and into a large with one of those impractically long tables.

"Check this out," Annie said, getting a little bolder as she walked over to a display case filled with fancy little knick-knacks. "This stuff must cost a fortune."

"And it's all in a pretty nice package," Claudia said, eyes still scanning the room around them. "This is unreal, I didn't think places like this still existed."

"Maybe it's a historical building," Annie suggested.

"I think those usually have plaques," Claudia pointed out. "Maybe just some rich person really likes the classier, impractical things in life."

"Maybe," Annie said. She looked around again. "There's just - it's weird."

"What?"

"Oh, it's probably nothing."

"No, out with it."

"Well...there's no light fixtures, or electrical sockets."

"And no AC," Claudia added. "Unfortunately. Hope my deodorant holds out."

"And it's in really good condition," Annie continued. "If someone put money into keep this place nice, don't you think they'd modernize it just the littlest bit? I mean, this can't even be up to code."

"Maybe - "

"You there!" a stern voice rang out from the other side of the room. Annie and Claudia looked up to see every stereotype of a butler, bundled into one, pointing at them and looking politely ticked off. "How did you get in here?"

"I think that's our cue to leave," Claudia whispered.

"After you," Annie said, and they took off at a run.

It took them a good five minutes of twisty turn - "Jesus, how many rooms does this place have?" "Wait, we're going in circles!" - to find an exit. The butler almost caught up to them once, but Annie knocked over a couple of chairs and a few unlit but heavy candelabras, for good measure, and they lost him in the chaos.

They finally reached the outside and kept running, down the large sloping lawn of the mansion and past the ornate metal gate.

They didn't stop until they'd found a wall to hide behind. Annie held her breath, listening to hear if they were followed, but heard only her racing heart.

She turned on Claudia when she felt sure they were safe. "Is there always so much running with you?"

Claudia laughed maniacally. "Here I was about to ask you the same thing."

"No, never," Annie said, before rethinking. "Well, sometimes."

Claudia clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Annie, I think you have a promising career of mystery solving ahead of you. That, or petty crime."

Annie looked at her, outraged. "I would never solve mysteries!"

Whatever breath they had managed to catch back they lost to laughter.

"Claudia, you know something about this, right?"

"Oh, so now I'm not just a crazy person?"

"Okay, maybe I don't know everything in the world," Annie admitted. She waved an arm out, encompassing the beautiful landscape around them. "But I know that this is not Greendale Community College, which is where we were a moment ago, so something has to be happening, right? I just...have you ever seen anything like this?"

Claudia thought about it a minute. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Once. Movies were getting superimposed over the real world."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Annie said weakly.

"They were real, though. They could really hurt you. And one of them was about a scientist who destroys the world..."

"But that didn't happen. So there has to be a way of stopping it, right?"

"First things first," Claudia said. "Where are we, how did we get here, how do we get back, right?" She pulled out her steampunk phone again and flipped it open. "Maybe we can get an assist on this one. Hey, Artie, we have a problem with - " She looked down at the screen belatedly, and stopped talking. "Um."

The screen was nothing but static.

"Damn it!" Claudia slammed the lid shut. "Why does that keep happening?"

"It's okay, we'll figure this out ourselves." Annie looked around. "We just have to find clues."

"I always wanted to take a vacation with Nancy Drew," Claudia said, pocketing her phone. "So what's the story here?"

"It's not just the house," Annie said. "Look at this whole place! That's an actual lamppost."

"A lamppost on a cobblestone road," Claudia added.

Annie started counting on her fingers. "There's no cars, no pavement, no mailboxes, no fire hydrants..."

"No signs of modern civilization."

"This really is like Pride and Prejudice. This is looks like a period piece set over a hundred years ago."

"So either we're in Amish town, which seems unlikely given the lack of barn-raising and totally rockin' beards, or." Even Claudia seemed reluctant to say it. "Or we really are a hundred years back."

"That's impossible," Annie said. "Isn't it?"

"Not really sure," Claudia admitted. "Not like this. But we could find somebody and ask them the date. Or a newspaper or something, God, that's so cliché."

"All right, let's go," Annie said, feeling determination to accomplish the goal settle in and obscure any fears or doubts or lingering thoughts of this is so, so crazy, little Annie Adderall. She set off in the opposite direction from the house they'd first been in, looking over her shoulder at Claudia. "We'll find something in no time, I'm sure!"

"You're not going to find anything walking backwards," Jeff said.

Jeff?

Annie spun around to look forward, and sure enough, there was Jeff. There too were lockers, water fountains, a bustling mass of unshaven students, squeaky floors, a faint smell of chicken fingers.

They were back in Greendale.

"Whoa," she heard Claudia say behind her. "Someone reset the world, we've got a serious glitch."

"Are you two all right?" Jeff asked smugly. "You look dazzled. I often have this effect on women. Tragically, it's incurable."

"Oh, well, between that and your giant forehead, you must be the expert on tragic conditions," Claudia said.

Jeff reached up, about to touch his forehead, then tried to play it off like he was scratching the back of his neck. "It's not that big. Right?" he asked Annie.

Annie shrugged and held up two fingers close together, in the unspoken gesture of, 'yeah, a little.'

Jeff walked away quickly.

"Wow, sore spot much?"

"He'll get over it," Annie said. "But I think it's time we brought Myka in on this."

"On it. Assuming life doesn't hate me." Claudia pulled out her phone-thing and flipped it open. This time, the screen sparked to life with a tiny video of Myka's face, pressed up toward the screen and looking worried.

"Claudia? Where are you? I tried calling you - "

"Yeah, had some interference. Look, Annie and I have an idea about what's going on. Meet us in the cafeteria for lunch?"

"That cafeteria?" Myka wrinkled her nose. "Okay, but I think I'll bring lunch with me."

"Can't say I blame you," Claudia said before disconnecting the call.

"What is that thing, anyway?" Annie asked. "There's no way that comes standard from Verizon."

"No, it's more of an old-fashioned video chat walkie-talkie."

Annie stared at Claudia. "You realize that makes even less sense than before you said anything."

"Yeah, got that."

-

The study group had staked out the usual too-small table in the cafeteria, and since Myka hadn't showed yet, Annie thought they could at least say hi.

As she and Claudia approached, Annie noticed that Jeff had donned a cowboy hat at some point since their run in. He pulled it a little lower over his eyes when he saw them, though Annie knew he'd never admit it.

"Hey guys," Annie said, waving at the group. "You guys know Claudia? She's in Abed and Troy's Astronomy class."

There was a round of half-hearted greetings, the most apathetic of which came from Jeff. Claudia responded with a smirk and a "Nice hat, by the way."

Jeff played it off like he didn't care. "Oh, this? Some stupid stunt in our statistics class. Honestly, the theater kids are getting to be as bad as the hat club."

"You guys don't seriously have a hat club," Claudia asked Abed.

"Not since the lawsuit," he answered.

"I think it sounds fun," Britta said. "Wish someone would try to make my Philosophy class more interesting."

"But Britta," Annie said brightly. "I thought you loved that pretentious meandering hippie talk."

"Come on, Annie, there's 'hippie' and then there's 'too high to even remember that he's the professor' hippie. Which is really only funny for the first three lectures."

"How did the theater kids make statistics more interesting?" Claudia asked. "Did they really explore the deep motivation of the normal distribution curve?"

"No, they held the classroom hostage. Recreated it to look like an old West saloon. Did a pretty good job of it, actually," Jeff frowned, remembering. "Got some guys to play really convincing outlaws. In chaps."

"Jeff really liked the chaps, if you know what I mean." Pierce waved his hand suggestively.

Britta rolled her eyes. "I think we all know - "

"I mean because he's gay."

Shirley put on her best 'sweet now but going to give you hell later' voice. "Yes, thank you for that, Pierce." In a more genuinely nice voice, she spoke to Annie and Claudia. "Won't you girls pull up some chairs? We could make room at the table."

"How?" Jeff groused. "Britta's salad is on my sandwich already."

"You wish, John Wayne, your sandwich is on my salad."

"Oh, that's okay," Annie interrupted. "We're meeting my friend Myka for lunch. We still have a few things to talk about for the career fair."

Annie was conscious, suddenly, of twelve eyeballs resolutely avoiding her. Well, Shirley wasn't the only one who could menace with sweetness. "You guys are all going to be there early to help me set up for it, right?"

Mumbled responses.

"Right?"

"Yes, Annie," the study group sighed as one.

"Good!" Annie chirped, like that was a good thing. "Oh, look, there's Myka," she pointed to the agent, standing across the cafeteria and surveying it as though it were a crime scene. It seemed appropriate. It had been a crime scene on multiple occasions before, and there was about a fifty percent chance something illegal was going on right now.

"Well, it's been...a thing...meeting you guys," Claudia half-waved at the study group.

"We'll come with," Abed said.

"Yeah, you know how much we love...career fairs...and...cops...laws..." Troy trailed off like he wasn't sure where he was going.

"Great, we can use your help," Claudia steered him away with an arm around his shoulders. "Good job there, champ, I don't think they suspected a thing."

Annie glommed onto Myka as soon as they were within arm's reach. "Okay so really weird things have been happening and apparently that's what you do, is really weird things, which, you know, you could have told me before, but I can see how you didn't, there's probably all kinds of confidentiality agreements, am I going to have to sign one of those, because that really - "

"Annie, breathe," Myka instructed. "I know this is probably sudden, and you hate having unexpected things pop up, but it's not a big deal. No one's dead - "

"Yet," Claudia interjected.

"Claudia, not really helpful."

"Ah, but you killed my fun. I wanted to see how long she could talk without stopping for air."

"2 minutes and 26 seconds is her best time," Abed said.

"Why don't we go have a seat somewhere?" Myka looked around the cafeteria again. "Maybe outside?"

"That works," Annie said. She breathed a couple times, regained her composure, and walked outside to a bench like a rational, mature adult. Then she turned to Myka and blurted, "Are we all going to die?"

Myka's smile would probably be better described as a grimace. "Just Claudia, when I kill her."

"Do that, and no one will ever know how to program the DVR again," Claudia warned. "You'll just have the same season of Storage Wars for the rest of eternity."

"Man, that show is intense," Troy said. "Did you see the one where they found a dead body?"

"Different show, Troy," Abed corrected him.

"Oh. Yeah, on second thought, that wasn't really a fun episode at all. That was actually pretty horrible."

Myka ignored that aside and turned her attention to Annie. She managed to sound reassuring without being condescending, and Annie remembered why she'd kept up with that little pen pal project when no one else bothered, how nice it was to have someone tell her she was going to do fine and say it like it was a fact, not to be disputed.

"Listen, Annie, Claudia and I have been working in artifact retrieval for a long time now, we've collected, I don't even know how many," she looked at Claudia for verification. "Hundreds?"

"One a week, two if it's sweeps."

"A lot," Myka said. "A lot of artifacts. And we're still here. There are just some strange things in the world that can cause a little trouble if they go unattended, and we're here to make sure that doesn't happen. Okay?"

"Right, of course." Annie straightened up and smiled, a little self-deprecatingly. "Anything I can do to help?"

"You can tell me about your experience with the artifact."

"Okay, well, Monday night we were in the forest outside of town and supposedly there was a dinosaur."

"Oh come on, why would we lie about that?" Troy demanded.

"To be fair," Annie said. "I'm a little more open to the whole 'dinosaur in the woods' thing after today."

"And what was today?" Myka asked.

"A thing happened today and we missed it?" Troy asked, devastated.

Abed looked down, a little sadly. "I even brought my bullwhip today."

"Really, it wasn't that exciting," Annie assured them. "Claudia and I just stepped through a doorway, and instead of it leading to the hallway as it should have, it led into a 19th century mansion."

"Not an old one," Claudia said. "Brand new. Straight off the line."

"Straight off the 19th century line?"

"Basically," Annie shrugged.

"So the artifact made a dinosaur and a house appear out of nowhere?" Myka mused.

"I don't think so," Claudia answered. "It wasn't just a house and a dinosaur. The whole landscape changed. Either there was some very convincing illusion at work, or we actually traveled through time. Which would be so fucking cool."

"If it was an illusion, and we were just seeing it," Annie said slowly, thinking out loud, "People still would have seen us, right? Because we were running around in that house and no one here seemed to notice."

"So, time travel," Myka said. "Brief, uncontrolled trips outside the timeline that bring you back where you started."

"And it didn't just happen to us," Annie said. "It sounds like Jeff and Pierce had something like that happen in their poker class."

"Maybe that was just a good set design," Claudia suggested.

"From our theater program?" Annie scoffed. "Trust me, I saw Midsummer Night's Dream here, time travel is way more likely."

"Hey," Troy protested. "I was in that play."

"And you were lovely in it," Annie assured him.

"I'm sure you're a regular Hasselhoff or Shatner," Claudia added.

"Thanks."

Abed shook his head. "Not thanks."

Troy frowned. "Wait, they aren't - "

Myka cleared her throat. "Let's stay on point here, shall we? There's a problem and it's not going to solve itself, and we need to find the artifact that's causing it. And you need to stop encouraging them when they get like this," Myka pointed sternly at Claudia, who didn't look chastised in the least. "You're as bad as Pete sometimes."

"Aww, I like you too, Mykes."

"And whatever this thing is," Myka continued. "It started on Monday? Nothing weird happened before that?"

Abed raised an eyebrow. "Define 'weird'."

Troy mimicked the gesture. "Define 'happened'."

"There was that meteor," Annie said. "Last Monday. But that could have been a completely natural occurrence."

"Assume it wasn't," Myka said. "Now, there hasn't been anything reported like this in newspapers, police records, medical files - "

"Would there be?" Annie asked.

Claudia shrugged. "It'd probably get written off as a delusion or drug trip, but the story would show up somewhere."

"So every incident we know about has happened on this campus or to people who spend a lot of time here," Myka said. "It's possible the artifact is somewhere on campus, and either got here or was activated within the last week or two."

"So what's happened in the last two weeks here?" Claudia asked.

"Long answer or short answer?" Abed replied.

"Probably go with the abridged version, buddy," Troy said.

Abed thought for a moment. "Sundae Funday ice cream party, Clothes Drive for Homeless Poodles, blatant rip off of Antiques Roadshow - "

"That one," Myka said. "Expand on that."

"A bunch of people donated old things and we auctioned them off to raise money for a new basketball court," Annie explained. "They made about enough money to replace one of the backboards on the current court."

"Yeah, people brought in some really, really weird things," Troy laughed. "Like, what kind of really strange person would ever spend money on this stuff?"

"Well, who did?"

-

There was no answer when they knocked, so Myka opened the door and stepped into the office.

"Why, general," a terrible Southern accent drawled at them. "I do declare, you are a tease."

Against all of Annie's fervent wishes, the office chair spun around, revealing the Dean.

To his credit, he looked almost as horrified about this as the five of them felt.

"Is this a bad time, Dean Pelton?" Annie asked.

"No," he said, still in his falsetto. He coughed, and resumed in his usual voice. "No, now is fine, just drifted off in a daydream for - well, you don't care about - " he coughed again and started over. "How can I help you?"

Myka stepped forward, no more phased than if he had greeted them that way from the beginning. "I'm Agent Bering, with the Secret Service."

"Secret Service? Have we done something wrong?" The Dean laughed a little. "No, of course, you must be here for Annie's little - "

"Actually, sir, I'm here about an item you recently acquired."

His whole face fell. "A what now?"

"I understand," she said purposefully. "That you recently bought a clock at an auction."

"Oh!" The Dean sighed visibly in relief. Annie tried not to think about where that reaction had come from. "The clock, of course, what else would it be. Don't answer that. It's right over here." He stood from his desk and pulled a clock from the wall.

It was a pretty plain-looking thing; white face with twelve numbers. Annie couldn't really see what the big fuss was. Maybe they had the wrong artifact after all.

It did seem significant that it was a clock, though.

The Dean was still talking, Annie realized, and she hastily tuned in. " - waste of money, honestly, the darn thing doesn't even work. But the man who sold it to me told me it was the clock, you know, the melting one. Said it used to belong to Salvador Dali. I know, I know," he continued, misconstruing the wide eyes and muffled exclamations that his visitors had upon hearing that. "Complete bull-poopy, but what's the fun in life if you're not going to get cheated at an auction buying a piece of whimsy from a suspicious man. With a very impressive mustache."

"Sir," Myka mercifully interrupted this over-informative stream of consciousness, pulling on purple latex gloves. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to confiscate this."

"Really?" the Dean looked disappointed.

"You said it doesn't even work, right, Dean?" Annie pointed out. "And your money did go to support the school."

"I suppose," the Dean sighed. "It's just a silly figment of my imagination. Just, ever since I bought that, I've been having the most vivid daydreams...You're sure you have to take it? It wasn't part of a," he looked around, as though someone could have snuck up behind him in his own office while they were blocking the doorway, then whispered, "drug smuggling operation?"

"I'm sure you understand that we can't talk about this," Myka said.

"Of course." The Dean nodded knowingly and tapped his nose.

"Thank you for your time, sir," Myka said.

As they left, Annie heard the Dean ask, "Wait, why do they get to hear about - " but the door swung shut and cut him off.

-

"Are you ready to goo?" Myka asked Claudia as she set the clock on a bench outside.

"Please," Claudia said cockily. "I was born ready to goo." Then she made a face. "That sounds really terrible. I apologize for that, to the world."

She pulled out an eyedropper full of purple gel. "Check out the new delivery system." She squeezed the bulb and three drops felt onto the clock.

Claudia and Myka instinctively flinched away from it. Rookies to the artifact-catching business, Troy, Annie, and Abed were a beat behind, jumping in shock as sparks flew up.

"What was that?" Troy yelped.

"That was proof that this little buddy is the guy that's been making things weird around here," Myka said, smiling with satisfaction. "We'll take it back with us and everything will be back to normal in no time."

"Awesome!" Annie jumped in excitement.

"Yeah, awesome." Troy sounded dejected. "You sure you can't just forget to pack that with your stuff? Because I do that all the time, you know, I only have like three socks left because of that, and that's three individual socks, not pairs."

"Troy," Claudia sighed. "I know you want to time travel some more, because let's face it, who wouldn't, but you also almost got eaten by a dinosaur. Nothing is worth that."

"Yeah, I know," Troy sighed. "It's just - it could be fun. The time travel, not the getting eaten."

"Oh, Troy," Annie said. "You don't need time travel to have fun, you do that anyway."

"Dali's clock has nothing on us," Abed said.

"True story." Troy nodded, looking more upbeat.

Annie pulled him and Abed into a hug. Over her shoulders, Abed made eye contact with Claudia.

"Is this the part where you two ride off into the sunset?"

"You know, I think we have a day or two more in this mixed up town of yours," Claudia said. "I somehow promised this girl that I'd go to a career fair, I'd hate to back out and look like a jerk."

"The fair!" Annie gasped, breaking away from the group hug. "Oh my God, I still have so much left to do." Annie bustled off, crackling with energy, and calling to her roommates, who struggled to keep up. "Troy, I need you to find five hundred twist ties. Abed, you can make fake siren noises, right?"

"Did you even have to ask?"

Myka and Claudia watched, amused, as they disappeared from sight.

Claudia leaned into Myka. "How sure are we that there's not an artifact behind that?"

"Less than 40 percent. Maybe 30," Myka answered. "But honestly, if there is, I don't want to take it away from them.

-

Wednesday (epilogue)

"Here's the thing I still don't get," Abed said, sipping on his milk shake.

Claudia drank some of her own dessert as she nodded. "Okay, shoot."

"Myka's a government agent."

"Fact."

"And you work with her."

"Also a fact."

"But you're not a law-and-order type."

"Yeah," Troy said. "I was wondering about that a bit, too." Troy tried to take a sip of his milk shake, but couldn't get the straw in his mouth. "I mean, you're way too young to be the rogue cannon that the agency just keeps around because you get the job done."

"And that's an either/or scenario?" Claudia asked. "No third party candidate in this race? No Dr. Pepper on the menu?"

"Hm." Abed processed for a moment. "I got it. You're a master criminal; at your age, probably some kind of tech genius or super hacker. You were recruited to the side of justice, so now you use your skills to fight the good fight with whatever means are necessary."

"You know, he's pretty good at that," Claudia said to Troy, who nodded, and missed getting the straw in his mouth by five inches.

Myka and Annie walked in, Annie talking far too quickly. "And the whole thing's going to be ruined if we don't find some nail polish remover. Hey, have you guys seen - " She suddenly took in the scene around her. "What are you doing."

She and Myka stared at Troy, Abed, and Claudia hanging upside-down off the edge of desks while drinking milkshakes like they'd never seen anyone do it before.

"Drinking milkshakes," Claudia answered, with an all-but-spoken "duh" hanging in the air.

"Doesn't the blood rush to your head?" Myka asked in morbid fascination.

Abed nodded. "Yeah, it's great, totally prevents brain freeze."

"There's no way that's a thing," Annie said, in faint bewilderment.

"You should try it," Claudia held her milkshake unsteadily out toward her. "It's awesome."

"Just, please, don't show Pete that," Myka begged.

Troy tried again to take a sip, and poked himself in the face with the straw. "Ow, that hurt!"

-END-

Prompts:
-Nothing Good Ever Happens After Midnight
-Unexpected Connections
-Myka/Annie (gen)
-Claudia/Annie (gen)
-also I repurposed a prompt about Claudia going undercover at a high school