Lindsay was cooking something in the mobile lab. She wasn't quite sure WHY she was cooking anything at all, especially after the rest of the team's rather negative reaction to her cooking before, and she also wasn't sure why she was cooking in the mobile lab in particular. And she wasn't sure WHAT she was cooking, except that whatever it was, she was boiling the hell out of it.
Peter ambled in, peered over Lindsay's shoulder, and then asked the question of the day… "What's cookin'?"
Lindsay shrugged, and scooped out some of whatever it was. The material resembled soggy corn-flakes that were colored a rather pathetic gray. Suddenly, she remembered what she had been cooking. "Spaghetti. Try some." She poked the vile stuff at Peter.
Peter took a step backwards, trying not to cringe too much. "Uh… no… that's okay, Linds. You should get the honor of trying your… uhm… spaghetti… first…" He paused. "Are you quite SURE that's spaghetti?" Lindsay's spaghetti looked like it was going to crawl off of the ladle at any moment.
Lindsay peered at it critically, and then nodded. "Yeah, totally sure. What else would it be? Now try some." She poked the spoon at Peter again, abandoning the boiling substance. "Try it or die."
Peter backed up. Several thoughts of what exactly Lindsay was poking at him immediately came to mind, the foremost of which were melted wombat guts and moldy feathers. But he kept those particular comments to himself. "Uh… given the choice… I think I'll… run." He turned around and dashed for the door.
"I'LL GET YOU AT DINNER!" Lindsay screamed after him, waving the ladle in the air, and sending chunks of gray spaghetti flying in every direction. She turned back towards the spaghetti, which was beginning to boil over. Confident that it was done, she turned off the oven and carried it over towards the sink.
A good, safe distance away, Peter determined that he would be eating dinner someplace that was very far from where ever Lindsay and her spaghetti were. He then wondered if he should warn Anton and Matt, but decided against it and ran to the team's van, started it, and took off.
Matt had been sitting on the steps when Peter came racing out, and watched as he leaped into the van and disappeared in a cloud of dust and screeching tires. He looked over his shoulder to see if whatever had spooked Peter was following him, but nothing came out of the lab, so he headed up the steps and peered in. He headed over towards Lindsay. "Hey… what have you got there?" He asked casually, wondering if perhaps Lindsay was trying to kill a ferret in the sink, or something.
Lindsay was actually trying to strain the spaghetti, but the gray matter would not allow the water to pass through the bottom of the strainer. So, she was attempting to get that water out, with little success. "I have got…" She said, turning, "Dinner!" She triumphantly announced, displaying the contents of the strainer like it was a golden treasure chest.
Matt peered suspiciously at the contents. "Whose dinner?" He asked finally, praying that Lindsay wouldn't try to make him eat something that she had 'cooked' again. The last time he had eaten something Lindsay made, it had tried to climb up his throat and throttle his brain. He wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance.
Lindsay gave him a look which clearly said, "You imbecile, you know perfectly well 'whose dinner'. Now stop standing there staring like an idiot, and go tell Anton that we're going to have a company dinner." In just as many words, as well. She then gave him 'The Stare', the single most powerful weapon in a human's arsenal, but commandeered completely by women.
The stare is well documented in history. In ancient Troy, Helen launched a thousand ships with the Stare. Some say it was her face that launched a thousand ships, but the people that said that did not see what was on her face… the Stare.
Medusa was also a woman who had a complete mastery of the stare- to such a point that any creature living, besides other women, would turn to stone if they made eye contact with her. That was, consequently, also the reason that men rarely liked to make eye contact with angry women.
Matt blinked, looked down at the ground, back up at Lindsay, and then at the ground again. "Yes ma'am." He said finally, rather meekly, and went looking for Anton.
Lindsay smiled as Matt left, and then dumped her spaghetti into the pot. Or rather, she tried to. It was pretty well stuck, so she was forced to scrape it out with a knife. She then liberally added spaghetti sauce. After a moment of trying to stir, she brought out the egg beaters.
Anton was sitting in the conference room, reading a book, waiting for the case to officially close at HQ. Dapper in a finely trimmed beard, he looked totally innocent, unprepared for the horrible doom which was to soon fall upon his head.
The sound of the eggbeaters was the first sign that something was wrong. Foolishly, Anton did not stand to run. Matt entered the conference room. "Guess what." He asked with a smile.
Anton didn't try to guess. "What?"
"We're going to have brains tonight for dinner." Matt announced.
The older man blinked and then, rather politely he thought, asked, "Brains?"
"Yes." Matt replied cheerfully. "Lindsay's brains."
"Lindsay's brains?" Anton repeated, a problem he had seemed to have for awhile now. "Don't you think she'd miss them?"
"Naw. Actually, we're having spaghetti. They just look like brains." Matt informed him.
"Lindsay cooked them?" Anton asked. Matt nodded. "Oh my…"
"My thoughts exactly." Matt replied. He paused. "She's between us and the door."
Anton looked around. "Do you think we could fit through that window, there?" He asked, pointing at a closed window that showed tantalizing parts of the free outdoors.
Matt investigated the window. "Yes. I'll get it open." He hurried over to the window and started to crank it open.
On the other side of the mobile lab, the sound of the egg-beaters stopped. "Matt?"
"Yes?" Matt asked as he fought with the window, which apparently didn't want to open.
"Hurry."
"Yeah, yeah, what does it look like I'm doing?" Matt demanded. The window snapped open. "Yes! Freedom!" The Case Manager helped Anton through, and then scrambled through himself.
"Where's the van?" Anton demanded, looking around.
"I think Peter took off with it." Matt replied.
"He could have warned us…" Anton muttered. "Okay… we'll just hide in the woods until he comes back."
"Sounds like a plan to me." Matt replied. The two men scurried off into the woods, failing to realize that they were just hiding from a bowl of soggy noodles.
From inside the mobile lab, Lindsay watched Anton and Matt take off. She chuckled and headed into the conference room, popped the top off of a can of coke, and sat down with a bag of popcorn.
All in all, she was just relieved that she wouldn't have to eat the gray matter herself.
End. Back away slowly…