Based on the following prompt: It's a tough time to be starting a business (when is it not?) so when the new owner of a hair salon manages to snag a really amazing antique barber chair for a bargain they think they're getting a real deal. It's sure to bring in customers after all, right? But what if this was one of of those that once belonged to Sweeney Todd?
"Remind me again – why are we always the ones who get the weird cases?"
Honestly, he'd been so excited when they found out where their latest case was taking them. Philly cheese steak, right from the heart of Philadelphia itself…he could still taste it in his dreams.
Of course, Artie then had to go and shoot down all of his excitement by giving them the actual details of the case. He could have been out enjoying a nice steak right now instead of being here, right smack bang in the middle of a goddamn makeshift sword fight.
Myka shot him a glare from where she was busy battling with the salon owner. "We can talk about that later, Pete! Just get to the chair now!" she exclaimed, quickly ducking away from the wildly swinging knife the woman in front of her was wielding.
"Sweeny Todd's chair…honestly, who dreams up all this stuff? Is it like some universal plot to make sure that we. Never. Have. One. Relatively. Normal. Case?" Pete grumbled as he tried to sneak pass the dueling women.
Myka was now holding off the owner – Kerry Jones – with a sword she'd managed to produce from somewhere that he really didn't want to know about, but it was obvious that she was losing ground. The other woman's artifact generated psychopathy was giving her an adrenaline rush that Myka couldn't hope to combat.
All the while, the chair that was the center of all the chaos sat innocently in front of a floor length mirror.
Claudia had managed to whip up some sort of goo shooter once they had realised that the artifact causing seemingly random people on the streets of Philadelphia break into sudden, inexplicable murderous rages.
But he only had one cartridge, and shooting the chair while Jones was determined to protect it – well, that was going to be somewhat difficult. That was made doubly hard by the fact that Jones had managed to surprise both Myka and himself into dropping their Teslas right at the entrance of the place, and it was just too far away for him to return for them at the moment. It would take too much time, time that Myka just didn't have.
The knife nicking at his right ear just proved that.
"Pete, I don't believe that I'm actually saying this to you, but stop standing there and thinking and BAG THAT CHAIR!" it was Myka's panicked scream that finally pulled him out of his thoughts.
It took a bit of fancy footwork, if Pete did say so himself, but somehow he managed to duck under Jones while she was distracted by his partner and get out a shot at the chair.
A crackle of electricity later, and Kerry Jones suddenly collapsed onto the floor like a sack of bricks – or, as Myka would later write in her report, like Pete after an hour's brisk jog.
"It's later now," Pete panted, looking between the woman on the floor and the seemingly harmless chair, "Would you like to enlighten me now as to why we're the ones chasing down Sweeny Todd's chair and Jinksy and Claudia are busy playing with stuff from the Warehouse inventory?" he demanded.
"First off all," Myka said, also panting. Her knees finally buckled and she sat on the ground, "they aren't playing, they're testing what artifacts that can be used relatively safely in order to check if they've degraded over the years-"
"Same thing," Pete interrupted her.
"And second," Myka continued, completely unfazed by the interruption, "I guess we're just the lucky ones."
"Lucky ones," Pete scoffed under his breath, throwing another glance at the chair and Kerry, "If that's lucky, I really don't want to see what's unlucky."
"Anyway, that's not what we should be worried about at the moment," Myka said, pulling herself up.
"Really?" her partner asked incredulously, "If that's not what we should spend our time worrying about, what should we be concerned about then?"
"Well…the artifact's the chair, right?" Myka asked, looking at the chair in question.
"Yesss…"
"Well, we're not exactly allowed to dismantle artifacts, and we can't pack that in our bags for when we get onto the plane…and we both know Artie will want us to try and get this back without actually involving him, because he's Artie and likes to make us do most of the work…"
"Sure…"
'Well," Myka said, placing her hands on her hips, "How exactly are we going to get this back to the Warehouse? I can't think of any companies that would box and ship a gooified chair, do you?"
Pete gave the chair in front of him another once over. "Well, damn."
As Myka turned her attention away from the scene in front of her in order to use her Farnsworth to call Artie, and Pete walked out to talk to the local police department, which had arrived when the neighbours had heard the scuffles from the fight between Myka and Kerry, they also didn't notice Kerry's body.
And so they missed the faint black smoke that rose out of Kerry, and the sinister laughter that rang softly through the shop before the figure made out of the smoke seemed to dive back into the chair.
So, this is my first time writing for this fandom, and I'd love it if you guys could drop a comment on your way out and let me know what you thought!
I hope you enjoyed it :)