Welcome to Gaia! ::

They were getting so used to desperate calls from outside that Fred and Sajid had gone so far as to dub Sajid's beat-up riceburner the Rescuemobile. Not that they'd painted it--as Cat had suggested, in one of her crazier moments; that would've been like a bullseye just waiting for the Children to shoot it--but whenever it was time to drive out and see someone who'd brought in a bunch of eggs off the beach and hatched out some sort of new critter, it was the Rescuemobile.

The Rescuemobile also fit comfortably in a compact "visitor" spot out in front of Rowan's dorm building. It was late--eleven or so--and Sajid winced as the engine coughed and grumbled to itself before he could kill it completely. "Are you sure it was a good idea to come this late, Fred?" he asked, pulling the keys from the ignition and stowing them in his pocket.

"On a Friday night? You've gotta be kidding me. It'd be suspicious if we arrived any earlier." He stuck his head out the window of the 'mobile, taking a deep breath of the air. "Smells just like I remember it. Wonder if they've still got Crazy Harry on as an RSO here..."

Sajid, halfway through opening his door, shot a look at his partner-in-crime. "You went here?" he asked.

Fred grinned, kicking open his own door and stepping out. He was trying to look suave, and mostly succeeded in looking like he had something against car doors. "Sure, for my undergrad work. Man, it seems like forever..."

"Fred, you're twenty-three."

"Hey, at my age? Two years is a tenth of my life!" He laughed at his own humor, waiting for Sajid to lock the car before heading up the walk. "#34B--that's gonna be upstairs. In fact--" He stopped, when he realized his friend wasn't following.

"Sajid?"

The other intern had turned around, staring off into the parking lot with a look of dismay on his face. "...Go in. I think I saw something."

Last time Sajid "thought he saw something", he and Fred had ended up barrelling down I-80 at ninety miles an hour, trying to lose a guntoting Child who was out for their heads. Fred swallowed, and turned back to the dorm building. Up the stairs he went, picking and choosing doors until he found the one to Rowan's wing.

He thought he did a pretty good job of not sounding spastic when he knocked on the door, though he hopped from foot to foot while waiting for someone to answer.

"Uh...hi? Are you Rowan?" said Fred, still fidgetting with his feet. "We're, uh, here to talk to Rowan--from the Institute?" He wasn't doing so well with this secret agent business. "We gave her a call early this evening, around seven?" Suave, Fred, real suave.

"Oh! Proof. Right, uhm..." Fred produced his wallet, rummaging around in it. "I've got my last paystub here--uhm, my phone with her number in the last-called...oo, that's where I left the--er, heheh..." He hurriedly shuffled a thin foil packet to the back of his wallet. "Got my driver's license, if you want to see that...oh, hell. Here." He offered her the entire wallet, smiling somewhat sheepishly. "I'm not sure what you'd want--I've got, uh, my friend Sajid out by the car, too..."

"Ahh," said Fred, appreciatively. "Yeah, okay."

He didn't quite expect to get slapped on the back, and so staggered--but managed to recover (somewhat) with a too-loud laugh of his own. "Yeah, Cher! I'm so glad to be here." He was capable--though somewhat awkwardly--of keeping up a line of patter agreeable to Cher's until they made it down to Rowan's hiding place. Then he dropped the Stan persona like a too-heavy winter coat.

"Ah--hi, Rowan," he said to the girl behind the door, wiggling his fingers in greeting. "I'm Fred? We talked earlier today...is, uhm. Is everything okay?" He attempted to peek in at her; sometimes they were scrambled only after someone had been beaten up, and that was never fun for anyone.

Fred cringed at Rowan's assessment of things. "I hear that," he said, rather meekly, and inched into the room as bid.

When he laid eyes on Equinox, though, he seemed to lose a great deal of his hesitation and hurried over forthwith to peer in at the trilobite. "Oh wow," he said; then, louder: "Oh wow. He's beautiful! And huge! What have you been feeding him?" He turned to Rowan--then seemed to remember why he was there, giving a rapid shake of his head.

"Er--I guess you can tell me in the car. Are--uhm--..." He couldn't quite resist the urge to turn and wiggle his fingers at the trilobite; it really was a gorgeous creature for someone who was as much of a nerd as Fred was. "--sorry. Are you ready to go?" Another pause, before he looked at Cher, somewhat abashed. "Were you coming, too? I don't know if we have enough, uhm, seats in the car for everyone including him." A nod to Equinox's tank followed this.

"Heh." Fred clearly understood Cher's choice, and so gave her a brief wave as she departed. He turned back to Rowan and Equy then, mustering a sympathetic expression.

"Yeah, I hear ya. We...didn't expect to be fighting a war just 'cuz Dr. Vrais picked up some eggs off the beach." He folded his arms across his chest uncomfortably at this, though he did have a smile for Rowan and Equinox's interaction. A smile he was jolted out of when the woman asked how they intended to get the trilobite out of there.

This sent him fumbling for the cellphone at his side. "Hang on just a sec? We've got buckets and stuff out in the car for this kind of thing." Managing to get the device unclipped from his belt, he flipped it open and pressed the button on its side for the short-range radio function. "Sajid? Can you bring down the buckets?"

He waited several seconds for acknowledgement; receiving none, he frowned--and looked over at Rowan again. "Uh...heh, he might be busy. Do you have a regular paint bucket around here? And some towels? A big trashcan might work, too." His voice was pitched low, as if he were afraid of someone overhearing him in his nervousness.

Fred still seemed distressed by Sajid's lack of reply, even as Rowan pulled out the cooler--providing an ample solution for their problem. "Oh, that'll do great," he said, not quite gushing but definitely running at the mouth. "We should probably wince it out with saltwater first..."

The phone on his hip crackled; he jumped, pulling it off--only to prove disappointed when no word came through. Back it went on his belt then, in time for him to catch Rowan's worrying-out-loud. "Uh?" he said, intelligently, then gave a shake of his head.

"Ah--sometimes they don't. Er, turn into kids, that is. At least, not right away. Have you been having any weird dreams recently?" he asked her. "Usually when they get that big, if they're gonna change into kids, they'll--oh, here, can I help you with that?" He reached out his hands to take some of the cans from her.

"Oh. Oh." Fred fumbled with the cans as they were handed his way, somehow managing despite obvious clumsiness not to drop any. It took a bit of effort to get them all stacked right--and now he managed to keep knocking them off the shelves, sending cans rolling everywhere. "Usually, uhm--the dreams...ow!" He went scrambling for a can he'd dropped on his foot, scooping it up and placing it on the shelf again. For a moment, it looked as if everything was going to fall off once more--and Fred held his breath, held his hands out in front of him to keep things from toppling over once more.

It held. He let his breath out. "Anyway, uh--the dreams...usually that means they're gonna change into a kid. And we don't starve people! Except when Sajid's cooking, then you don't want to...err." A nervous giggle escaped him when he realized Rowan had gone on talking, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Salt water sinks, huh? I bet that's, er, handy." The phone at his side crackled again, but nothing more came of it. Fred glanced down, gave a long-suffering sigh, then found himself distracted by Equinox's sloshing. "--Whoa, hey there, little guy, let's not dump all the water out on the floor," he said, hurriedly.