Luke's, Saturday

[vdistinctive]

Eliot's dreams last night hadn't been anywhere near as awful as they'd been the night before, just the usual anxieties about ferret!Parker getting trampled or Hardison deciding he couldn't be with a man he didn't trust, a "damn killer", and leaving. Eliot had a blissful few moments after waking of imagining that yesterday had been a one day thing

Comments

[glacial_queen]

There were very, very few occasions when a mother thought that it was a good idea to tuck a child into a freezer for safety. Being stuck on Fandom island, without Craft, in the middle of a full-on invasion still didn't qualify--unless the freezer in question was the one in Luke's Diner. Or whatever the current iteration of the name was; Karla had trouble keeping track.

But a freezer that was bigger on the inside, complete with parkas, polar bears, and a goddamn tram system was, indeed, the exception to the 'don't put people in freezers' rule.

Which was why Karla came running into the diner, Kayla strapped securely to her back, bladed sticks out and covered in blood, ichor, and various other effluvia of unknown provenance.

"I am in a mood," she snarled as she entered. "If you're looking to tangle, let's go. If you're not, then start cooking. My daughter wants strawberry pancakes and if she has to deal with Mommy murdering jhinka while walking through town, she gets to have bloody strawberry pancakes

[vdistinctive]

Eliot raised an eyebrow, then gestured to the still cowering kitchen staff with his sword. "Well? You heard the woman. Get cooking."

It was nice to have another burst of righteous anger to push back the terror from the staff with. Not that Eliot had any idea that was what was going on. Magical empathy wasn't really in his wheelhouse.

[glacial_queen]

"Eliot," Karla said, looking a little relieved as she spotted him. She'd been scanning the room for anything that looked like it might be hostile, not cataloguing who was present. But Eliot was good. Eliot carried himself like he knew what to do in a fight. "That's right, you own this place."

Sorry. In the back of her head, she just still thought of it as Priestly's, just like she still thought of Dite's as hers. Habit, she supposed.

"Well, if you're here, then I suppose I don't have to try to claim this in the name of Glacia temporarily," she said, offering him a fierce smile that absolutely did not answer whether or not that had been a joke. She walked over to a booth and sat down to start the lengthy process of freeing Kayla from her sling. "Probably for the best," she added. "I do hate annexing territory before I've even had a cup of coffee."

[vdistinctive]

"In my experience, that kinda thing just ends up bein' messy." Eliot was not, in fact, joking. But speaking of coffee, the staff had apparently managed to get some brewing before the spider showed up. Eliot grabbed a pot and brought it over. "Ain't you just excited to be back in town for this," he said, and offered Kayla a small smile. "How's it goin', kid?"

[age_of_the_geek]

"Eliot!" Hardison hurtled downstairs to the diner, throwing himself inside with more concern for the laptop he cradled in his arms than his the potential for bodily injury. "Eliot! Guess what? I think I found somethin'!"

Because obviously he'd thrown himself into searching the net for something, anything that might help explain what was going on. That was what he did.

[glacial_queen]

"You did?" Karla asked, wiping Kayla's hands down with a rag. She had transformed herself into a maple syrup elemental over breakfast. "That's excellent! Go to the library. That's where they're assembling."

[age_of_the_geek]

"Umm...okay?" Hello, random stranger that Hardison wasn't expecting. "Uh, they? Did you come from there?"

[glacial_queen]

"Hi, I'm Karla," she said, feeling his confusion plain as day. "I'd shake, but I'm second-hand sticky." So sticky. Soooo sticky. "Is this your first major invasion?"

She gave him a smile filled with amused sympathy. "If so, I'm sorry and welcome to an island where the question 'Is this your first major invasion' is both apt and distressingly common."