Detective Rosa Diaz (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
died8yearsago) wrote2018-08-12 08:16 am
died8yearsago) wrote2018-08-12 08:16 am
Entry tags:
Outside the Woods; Sunday Morning [08/12].
The funny thing about a stake-out was that they always sounded pretty cool...until you were actually on one. When it came to choosing someone to keep an eye on the forest and watch for any signs of where an entrance might be, Rosa was a pretty logical choice and, honestly, even if the focus was strange and stupid and some bizarro magic whatever, she was just kind of glad to be doing some actual cop work. She set up a task force with her and a few of the troopers to keep an eye all night, with the directive to shoot off a flare gun to let the others know if you'd found something. It seemed a pretty solid idea, really.
...except that nothing happened.
Nothing hardly ever happened on a stake-out, and that's why they weren't nearly as cool as one might be lead to believe.
Nothing happened, and now dawn was breaking, and Rosa shook the last remaining suggestions of coffee from her very empty thermos and sighed. What a bust. The thing had been thoroughly poked, none of the collected clues from yesterday seemed to make any sense, and now the entire night had passed without even a suggestion of something helpful. She took a moment to check her watch, sighed again, and decided to linger at least a little longer, at least until maybe some people started showing up for Round Two, before going to report her findings (or lack thereof, really) to the mayor.
[[ expecting one certain tiny green pathfinder, yes, but if anyone wants to swing by, it's open! Thread with Peridot will be last chronologically ]]
...except that nothing happened.
Nothing hardly ever happened on a stake-out, and that's why they weren't nearly as cool as one might be lead to believe.
Nothing happened, and now dawn was breaking, and Rosa shook the last remaining suggestions of coffee from her very empty thermos and sighed. What a bust. The thing had been thoroughly poked, none of the collected clues from yesterday seemed to make any sense, and now the entire night had passed without even a suggestion of something helpful. She took a moment to check her watch, sighed again, and decided to linger at least a little longer, at least until maybe some people started showing up for Round Two, before going to report her findings (or lack thereof, really) to the mayor.
[[ expecting one certain tiny green pathfinder, yes, but if anyone wants to swing by, it's open! Thread with Peridot will be last chronologically ]]
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But today's walk had only made it about as far as the park before her path corrected and she'd started drifting toward the woods, instead.
Pumpkin had followed, grabbing a stick along the way in the hopes that Peridot would play fetch or something, but by the time she had made it to the outskirts of the woods, it was pretty clear that playing wasn't on Peridot's to-do list today, either.
Peridot stumbled forward in a daze, and a small pumpkin dog followed behind, stick in her mouth, whining.
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"Hey!" she called out to them as they got closer to the woods. "Hey, kid!"
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She was also very much not paying attention, just quietly stumbling her way into the forest.
The pumpkin, at least, seemed to notice, looking back at Rosa and dropping her stick in order to bark, in that clearly distraught way that only sentient gourd-type creatures really can.
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When she realized the tiny green rock thousand year old being that was still totally being called a kid regardless wasn't stopping as she got closer to the woods, she stepped forward, but it was too late to do much of anything before the darkness swallowed her up. "Shit," she hissed under her breath, trying to shake the boredom of the long night off of her now that something was finally happening, took out her flare gun and shot it into the air to get the attention of the troopers, and then yanked the axe out of the back of her jeans so she could mark the spot where the kid had disappeared by forcefully lobbing it into the nearest tree.
And that is why a woman always needed an axe.
Of course, since she figured there was no guarantee the axe would still be there when she returned, she waited for the troopers to find her before going to deliver the news and have them stand guard over the spot. But it was a pretty big forest, so, while she was waiting for them, after a moment of frowning at the apparent spot where someone at least had managed to get through, she looked over at the pumpkin.
She...couldn't just...leave...a clearly upset pumpkin there, could she? Wrinkling her nose and fighting against something very deep inside of her that deemed this whole thing as stupid, she snapped her fingers to try to get its attention, letting out a little whistle, just like she did with her own dog.
"Here....pumpkin," she said, lowering her snapping fingers down to about the pumpkin's level and whistling again. "Come here....pumpkin, it's okay."
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... Well, at least the tall human one knew her name!
So, yeah. Peridot might have wandered off, but at least someone was on the right side of the big scary dark. Pumpkin was going to trot right on over and sit on one of Rosa's feet. Totally normal Pumpkin coping mechanism.
There. That was better.
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And that, you know, the woods were swallowing up only few select people and doing God-knows-what to them inside.
And that those troopers were really, really slow when you least wanted them to be.
She didn't know if pumpkins liked dog treats, but she knew she had a few of them for Arlo 2 in her pocket, so she fished one out and tossed it down to the pumpkin while they waited. Looks like she was going to play pumpkin-sitter until they figured this out. Or until she foisted it onto someone else, though she did wonder if Arlo 2 would get along with the pumpkin. That seemed a pretty safe place to keep...it for now.
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...and bring a lot of coffee, because damn it, he needed it if no-one else did.
So he was walking up dressed in his UMF outfit, mask off, drinking black coffee from a very large thermos.
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"Dressed up for the occasion, huh?"
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He took another long sip of coffee. Then a little reluctantly held out the thermos in offer.
"Anything new?"
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It...didn't sound like too much of a complaint, and it was a good thing he did offer the thermos out, because Rosa was going to begin staring at it (the thermos) like a starving person stared at a piece of steak. She took it with a nod of thanks and had no reservations about drinking from it deeply.
"Nothing," she said, when she finally came up for air. "All night and nothing. Not even any more of those dumb clues from yesterday. At this point, I'd be happy if one of the troopers sent up a flare over a snapped twig."
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He could get serious, though. "I thought maybe I could see something from above, but whatever this is, it's blocking it off from there, too. I tried getting a sample of whatever it is to test it, but no luck. At this point, I'm wondering if we have anyone that can tunnel under it."
That probably wouldn't do any good, either, but it didn't mean it wasn't tempting.
It also didn't mean he wasn't taking his coffee back. Share, Rosa.
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"Clearly not much," she said, with one more pointed look toward the sculpted...everything, before her own brow went wrinkled with concerned thought. "There's an idea, going under it. I know there was some stuff going on in the tunnels a few weeks ago, but this seems like something different all together..."
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"I wish there were something that science could do, though."
Miguel didn't mind that magic existed, really, he just hated knowing nothing about it and not being able to help.