It was a tight fit, but somehow Cassie had managed to squeeze all nine people at her round dining room table. Considering that her table was only supposed to comfortably hold five people, she gave herself a mental pat on the back.
"Ya know, I"m not sure what ta think 'bout this after tryin' your chicken pot pie," Alec said as he accepted a hefty serving of lasagna from Teal'c.
Vala snorted at the other thief's hesitance, "You obviously don't eat very adventurous foods."
"And you do?" Alec shot back as he experimentally sniffed at the familiar looking food.
Vala grinned at him as she scooped up a bite of cheese, ground beef, and vegetables, all covered in a thick, heavy sauce. "I was once stuck in a place where the natives ate dung beetles as a delicacy. For three months."
Silence met Vala's declaration as she slowly chewed the lasagna in her mouth. After a rather pregnant silence Teal'c added his two words for the day, "I believe you had informed me previously of the insect in question being a centipede, Vala Mal Doran."
Vala stopped chewing for a moment before swallowing and answering with a, "Different planet."
Her answer was met by the sound of clattering forks as Nathan, Sophie, and Eliot simultaneously dropped their cutlery onto the ceramic plates before them. Cassie set down the last serving of lasagna in front of her own seat as she sighed and gave Vala a look that very clearly told her to fix the mess she had just created.
The space pirate's eyes widened as she realized her mistake. "Place," she said forcefully. "The centipede tribe was in a different place."
"You said planet," Sophie said with wide eyes, pointing accusingly at Vala. She turned sharply to look at Nate, "Didn't she?"
Nate nodded, his eyes narrowing accusingly at Cassie, "She said planet."
"Well that's silly," Parker put in as she took a bite of the lasagna. After swallowing she added, "Everyone knows there no such thing as space travel and aliens."
"You sure about that?" Alec asked, his eyes dead serious as they locked with the master thief's.
"Don't you think that people would know if there was life on other planets?" Parker said firmly, leaning forward slightly to help get the point across. "Secrets that big can't be kept for long."
Cassie cocked her head to one side as she sat down with the rest of them around the table as if it were any other Saturday night. "Why do you say that? Sounds to me like the government would want to keep something like that secret most of all."
Parker shrugged as she answered, "A secret that big can be kept by a small number of people, but the US government isn't wired like that. There's always a way in if you know were to look. Remember that news story a couple years back about that business guy -- Alec Coleson? He obviously knew something."
Cassie had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from commenting on the well known situation after Coleson had been given a sample of Asgard DNA.
"Computers have been able to do shit like that for years," Hardison countered with his usual flippancy.
"But can computers do this?" Parker asked as she pushed her plate away and in its place set a familiar looking pocket watch with its face glowing softly at the crowd surrounding it. Parker pressed down on the glass like surface and the others watched as it gave way to the gentle pressure. A beam of light shot up from the center of the watch and expanded to sort of scan the room.
It lasted only a moment, but then a 3D image of a woman's head popped up and a monotone voice spoke, "Temperature 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Nine familiar life signs present and strong. Four unfamiliar life signs also present, potentially hostile."
Within a moment, Cassie was up and out of her chair, the pocket watch closed and in her hand as she made her way toward the rest of the apartment. There were only a few places the intruders could be hiding -- namely, her bedroom, the closet, or the bathroom. From somewhere she slipped a dagger into her hand as the silent Teal'c liquidly followed her. Eliot looked as if he wanted to follow as well, but held back, instead, he stood and took a stance beside the table, ready to defend any of his team members to the death if need be.
Nate frowned at Vala as she stood from the table but didn't follow the other two. She pulled her sidearm from the base of her back when she caught his look. The alien shrugged, "They can handle themselves in a fight against twice that number. I can't leave you all with only Eliot for defense."
Despite the barb toward the human, her assumption proved correct as sounds of fighting could be heard from Cassie's bedroom and not thirty seconds later it broke through into the living room. Literally.
Eliot had to admire the scene as not one, not two, but three of the assailants were shoved through the bedroom door and onto the floor through the splintered frame. The next thing he knew, Cassie jumped onto the only one left conscious, leaving the other two for Teal'c to watch after.
"Vala! Behind you!" Teal'c shouted in his deep baritone as one of the other assailants woke up and tried to start fighting again.
With fluid movements, the space pirate turned in time to come face to face with a maliciously grinning young man about the same age as Cassie. Her eyes went wide as she recognized the man she was pointing her gun at. His own weapon was unfamiliar to the humans huddled together on the other side of the table, but it looked vicious and threatening. "Malichi."
Cassie's head shot up at the name, one of her hands still ruthlessly gripping the neck of the prone man beneath her. "Stay down," she growled at his half conscious face before she got up and pulled a snake-like weapon from his body as she moved to stand behind Vala. Her weapon was held in one arm as if she were holding a gun with a low recoil.
"What are you doing here?" Vala asked with clear confusion in her voice.
Malichi cocked his head to one side as he smirked. He moved his finger to the trigger of his weapon as his eyes flashed. As his finger tightened on the trigger, Cassie reacted.
A beam of electricity spurted from her weapon and into the man's head, causing him to fall into a heap on the floor.
Vala knelt down to disarm the intruder as Cassie went in search of restraints strong enough to hold the aliens attackers in the living room. Teal'c kept watch on the unconscious bodies of the attackers as well as keeping an ear on the rest of the apartment in case there were more who had just arrived.
The team of thieves watched on in awe as the others worked on securing the apartment as if it was an every day occurrence. Indeed, that was exactly how it had been handled.
Hardison summed up their confusion quite well when he finally found his voice again a few minutes later. "What the hell was that?" He looked around at those next to him, "And what the hell happened to Tesa?"
"I'm right here," the redhead said with a wry look on her face as she showed up with a first aid kit for the cuts on Cassie's hands.
Cassie glanced at Hardison and the others, all looking at her as if she had just sprouted a second head. She tossed the paracord she'd found to Teal'c, knowing he and Vala could restrain their prisoners easily enough and that Tesa would have a fit if she didn't sit down and get her scrapes checked.
She motioned with her head to the group in the living room. (Teal'c was currently tying them up while Vala removed their shoelaces out of spite.) "Obviously a group of thugs looking for an easy mark."
"His eyes glowed," Eliot put in seriously, not enjoying her flippant response. "That ain't normal."
Just then, the front door opened and a very stern gray haired man walked in, followed by a blond woman and two men sporting similar hair cuts in their brown hair. His quick eyes took in the scene before coming to rest on Teal'c and Cassie.
His eyebrows rose as he jovially commented, "I see we seem to have missed the party."
A/N: ... Please no rotten tomatoes tonight. I'm sleepy after the month I've just had. Sorry it's short, but at least it's something. My muse (while not over this story just yet) is being particularly fickle right now. Probably the course load. When in doubt, blame it on college. Yeah ... blame it on college.
Answers for the Leverage team are coming up next. Promise. ... I just won't promise WHEN that will be.