The Red Cow Flies at Midnight
Lisbon is being purely professional in her courtesy. Of course she is. The man is a colleague, obviously. Though he's not one of her team. An equal, in fact. And though she doesn't know it, she agrees with Van Pelt. Definitely a little bit foxy.
It is lonely, being in charge. People don't always understand that she has to think about all of them, not just the needs of one. Particularly when the one is being childish and annoying and self-absorbed and there are times when she could just throw him in a vat of Belgian choc...er, boiling oil.
Then, when she pushes her hair back behind an ear, and smiles back at Smith, Jane slides out of his chair and across the room in one easy motion, collecting Lisbon by the elbow.
The team exchange careful glances. They've never seen Jane get territorial before. Lisbon has quite frequently swallowed a visible chagrin when Jane has flirted with, well, pretty much anything, but this is new.
"I don't trust him."
"And your reason?"
"He's just wandering around in the middle of nowhere being cryptic."
"Jane, that's what you do."
Jane growls.
Lisbon looks at him curiously. Jane, growling? A smile flicks the corner of her lips. Is he...?
"You're just sore that he got a magic trick past you." She raises her eyebrows. Your turn.
Jane's eyes narrow. Challenge accepted. But before they can get into it, there is an interruption.
Somewhere, outside in the night, a cow is having a Very Bad Evening indeed.
Grace Van Pelt had grown up in a small farming town, and she wasn't ashamed of it. She understood how devastating the loss of stock and crops could be to a community. She also remembered the communal outrage when a gang of college frat boys had taken to driving out from the city for an evening's drunken cow-tipping. So, hearing sounds of bovine distress, she takes off in pursuit. Surer footed than the others over rough ground, and with good night vision, she's in the lead when they make the field.
Van Pelt isn't easily scared. She's quite confident in her ability to make an arrest, as she brings up gun and flashlight.
Except...what she's looking at isn't even human. It looks like the mutant offspring of a rottweiler and a ghila monster, poised on its hind legs. A forked tongue flickers over a blunt snout, and a crest of spines raise in alarm. It has glowing red eyes.
She thinks of all this later. What she does do is to let out a scream that Fay Wray would have been proud of.
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Cho once sat opposite Rigsby at an all-you-can-eat ribs'n'chicken buffet. The carnage is giving him flashbacks. A tangle of white bones, stripped clean, and a few sad remnants of overlooked flesh.
Van Pelt looks to be on the verge of throwing up. Lisbon isn't surprised. The place smells worse than the men's locker room in high summer.
"Lisbon, I just trod in a cow." Jane inspects his shoe. "No blood."
"No weapon marks."
"No way." Lisbon looks down at what can in no terms be described as a foot-print.
"Er, guys..." Unaccustomed nervousness in Rigsby's voice. "Those little red lights out there? The ones in...pairs?..."
"Ah, yes. Eyeballs. Definitely." Smith sounds mildly disconcerted. "Yes, well, slightly more of them than I thought. Might be a good idea to...run."
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There is a time to make a stand, and there is a time to get the hell back into shelter and regroup. No point in trying to make it to the cars - out in the darkness, there are odd shrieking calls, and once, the sound of something heavy striking metal, the tinkle of broken glass.
Jane has folded his coat up, and is sitting on it, chin on steepled fingers, an expression of bright interest on his face. It makes a change to see someone else on the other end of Lisbon's exasperation. Since he rather regards that as his place in the scheme of things, it is not a totally comfortable experience.
"You said they were teenagers!"
"I didn't say what species." Smith defends himself. "I told you where they were from, but no, you didn't believe me, and now you're all mad because we're being advanced upon by a horde of slavering interstellar lizard-beast-things..."
"Yeah, about that..." Cho mutters, checking his ammo.
"Now, I can probably sort this out, but..."
"But nothing. Are you armed?"
"Well, I'm not a great fan of guns."
"Then right now, you are a civilian, and you're in my way. Now sit down." Lisbon barks at him. Smith subsides, eyes wide.
"Is she always?..."
"Yep." Jane smiles fondly.
They sit with their backs to the wall, watching the team check their sidearms. Smith rummages in a pocket, pulls out a small paper bag.
"Jelly-baby?"
"Thank you."
It's a red one. Jane regards it thoughtfully, then bites the head off. Chews for a moment before he speaks.
"You do it very well."
"Do what?"
"Act human."
Pause.
"Thank you. What gave it away?"
"Two pulses."
"Two hearts."
"Oh. Right."
They carry on sitting. Smith offers the bag again, and Jane takes another sweet.
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They are all cops. They know how it can be when a gang shakedown goes bad. Their best hope is to stay behind the barricades until they can raise help. Lisbon is still trying to think of a way of framing that request; they could all end up in a suite of matching rooms under the care of that nice Dr. Miller. And she'll be damned if she lets that harpy get her claws back into Jane.
Rigsby's damned if he'll let some tentacled monstrosity from outer space get its suckers on Grace.
"Don't do it, man." Cho warns him.
"Do what?"
"Rush out heroically. We're wearing the red shirts here. Metaphorically speaking. I'm the politically correct ethnic sidekick, you're the dumb muscle comic relief."
"Oh." Rigsby frowns. "Anyhow, what script are you reading from? I'm thinking 'Assault on Precinct 13.'"
"I was going with the whole 'Galaxy Quest' vibe." He turns. "What about you, Van Pelt?"
She sets her jaw.
"One of those goat-suckers pops up again, I'm going Ripley on their ass."
Rigsby watches her stalk over to the window, and sighs.
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"They haven't developed a taste for humans. Yet. If they do," Something implacable flickers in his eyes for a moment, "I'll have to put a stop to it. And I'd rather not have any more killing."
"Dog whistles." Jane says, out of nowhere.
"What?"
"The bat-like hearing. They didn't like Van Pelt's scream. Dog whistles."
"Of course." Smith bounces up in a swirl of coat. "Wide spectrum sonic resonance induction field. Brilliant!" Pats down his pocket, pulls out what looks to be a very fancy flashlight. Jane looks at it.
"Ray-gun?"
"'Scuse me, this is a precision instrument." Smith tosses it up, catches it. "Sonic screwdriver. Just got to get the right setting."
"Will it work through walls?"
"Ah. No." Screws his face up. "So, we just have to get past your rather volatile companion."
Jane gets to his feet, brushes off his trousers.
"Allow me. Oh, Lisbon?"
To her horror, Lisbon finds herself confronted by two wide smiles, one full of a confident charm, the other, gleeful mischief. She takes an involuntary step backwards.
"Lisbon..." A honeyed purr. She can't go anywhere. He's got both her hands in his, and she freezes like a rabbit in headlights. Oh, god, those intense sea-coloured eyes of his, all soft and sincere. "I'm sorry, but I have to do this..."
He looks deep into her eyes, and presses one slow, smouldering kiss...on the back of her hand.
Well, it works really well as a distraction for Lisbon, that's for sure. Works really well as a distraction for Jane too, until Smith grabs his sleeve, and they both pelt out of the door.
"Interesting technique there."
"Yeah..."
An unearthly and bone-chilling shriek slices dark and vengeful through the night.
"JANE!"
Suddenly the stitch in his side doesn't seem so bad. He picks up the pace a little.
They make it out to the edge of the field, and Jane holds onto a fence-post for a moment. Maybe it's time he started taking a bit more exercise. There are coloured spots dancing in front of his eyes...or not.
"Erm. It might be an idea to fire off that sonic boom of yours sometime – now."
"Er, what? Nonono..." Sounds of frantic clicking. "Just need a moment..."
"That might be a problem."
Jane takes a deep breath, straightens up with his back to the fence.
A sea of spines, red eyes, fangs and claws and the worst breath ever. Tough crowd. This was going to be worse than Cleveland.
