Chapter Text
Over the next two days everyone in the office was too busy to sit down and pick their prompts, even for a moment. On Tuesday everyone had been called out to deal with a city-wide panic after the New Hell Salem’s Lot Zoo got attacked by Femt and the animals were unleashed into the streets. Leo went home that night with a headache, more scratches than he could count and a newfound dislike of zebras. Especially the Beyondian-altered kind.
The Wednesday somehow managed to be even worse, with it becoming a two-day mission into HL’s sewers to assess damage done to many pipes via a nest of new super-grown amphibians, eating on a special kind of plant newly discovered in their ecosystem. Despite the hassle, the botanists and scientists of Libra were having a field day with the new discoveries. Although, they’d been shin-deep (almost thigh deep if you were Leo) in shit and sewage, Leo was pleased to see that Klaus was smiling at the end of it all.
The agents that could had gone home to shower and change before returning to Libra for de-briefs and writing their reports. Leo had been luckily enough to walk a few blocks over to his apartment and get clean, before he trudged through the (now) cleaner midtown, pick up coffees for whoever was left in the office that day, and make his way back over to headquarters for the rest of the day.
His hair was only just drying into its loose waves when he finally arrived (though he knew his sister would kill him if she knew he was walking around in winter with wet hair). Leo pushed the door open with one arm and balanced the cardboard tray in his other. It was a fine balance, but he’d done it enough times now to manage it.
“Hey, I got the coffee,” he called as he entered, and was immediately dived upon by Zapp.
“Man, finally, you took ages!”
“Well, I’m sorry, I just wanted to get the smell of sewer out of my hair! Next time you can grab your own coffee,” Leo said before dumping the rest of the drinks on the coffee table. Zapp said something under his breath, though Leo couldn’t hear it and the tall man swaggered off before he could pull him up on being rude.
Chain stepped out of the side hall then, probably from being in the bathroom, and made a beeline for the drinks. She picked up her Mocha and hopped up onto the back of the sofa to sit.
“Thanks, Leo,” she said, before taking a huge sip. Luckily the coffees had cooled a little since Leo had gotten them, so Chain wasn’t in danger of burning her tongue off.
“No problem, Chain,” Leo smiled at her, then picked up his own cappuccino. On the table was the bowl of prompts still, though the number of papers inside had considerably dwindled by now; some agents had obviously been keen to get their costumes sorted. The bowl was mostly full of all the ones Leo had started with now; he almost felt bad for the suckers who wound up with Zapp’s outrageous suggestions. Then he realised the office was weirdly empty. “Hey, where’s Steven? Shouldn’t he be back by now too?”
“He had to go and meet Lieutenant Law,” Chain said, “something urgent, by the sounds of it.”
“Oh yeah?” Leo said, perching beside Chain but on the proper side of the couch.
“Hmm,” she hummed, before turning around. Leo thought he saw some kind of dreadful twinkle in her eye. Oh no. She looked towards the coffee table again, then gestured with her dark head of hair.
“Picking time?”
Leo sighed heavily. It was going to happen sooner or later he supposed. Chain jumped back over the sofa to stand beside the coffee table. Then she leaned down and plucked two from the bowl, one from the top, the other she rummaged to the bottom for.
She held the two up, almost like she was going to give Leo the choice, before she clenched one in her fist and opened the other slip of paper.
Her smile was scary. “What is it?” Leo asked, though he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.
“Mine,” she said simply before stuffing it in her suit pants pocket. Then she got the other paper out, “Ready?” she asked him.
Leo gulped.
Chain unfolded the little paper, and a small more pleasant smile graced her face. Before he could ask, she turned the paper around for him to see.
He read the scratched down words, mouthing it slowly to himself. His shoulders dropped and he sighed. “Okay, that’s not too bad I guess…”
“Not bad at all,” Chain said, then ruffled his hair.
Leo swatted at her half-heartedly but leaned back against the sofa in the end and drank his coffee quietly.
“Cheer up,” Chain said smugly from above him, “you could have been a playboy bunny.”
Leo shuddered at the thought.
*
Just over half an hour later, Steven came back into the office, his hair and shoulders dusted with snow and his entire posture screaming tired.
“Hey,” Chain said, echoed by Zed and Leo. Zapp had wandered off to take a leak and probably ruin the restroom for everyone again.
“How was your talk with Lieutenant Law?” Zed asked.
Steven tipped his head back and sighed loudly, a more expressive gesture than he usually allowed.
“That bad, huh?” Leo said, then, “By the way, your coffee’s gotten kinda cold.”
That didn’t seem to phase the older man though, as he just strode across the room and began drinking the cold coffee with gusto. Many eyebrows rose as they watched Steven attempt to replace his blood with caffeine, and then Zapp wandered back into the common area and made an ass of himself.
“Yo, what’s gotten into you, Steven? Having a bad time with the ladies?”
Chain whipped her head around and glared at him, “You have no tact.”
“Yeah, then how come I – ”
“Over a hundred people are missing.”
Zapp and Chain paused their bickering. Everyone seemed to stop and look incredulously towards Steven. He swallowed more coffee before elaborating.
“Over the last few days, over a hundred people have gone missing – over a wide selection of areas but most especially the East side. Law says it's like they’ve all just vanished.”
“But people don’t just vanish – they must be somewhere,” Leo said.
“This is HL we’re talking about,” Zapp muttered darkly.
Steven sighed, “Well anyway, I said we’d look into it. If the situation grows more dire then it’s best that we stay looped into the situation and on our toes.” He looked down then, and seemed to notice the party bowl for the first time.
“Hmm,” he hummed, then reached down to grasp one of the few remaining slips. He read it close to his face, his expression not betraying a thing, before pocketing the paper and walking silently over to his desk.
His subordinates watched him the whole time, then exchanged looks with each other, before looking back at him. But his face remained the same, and he soon began shuffling papers and files on his desk in a way that was so obvious, they all turned back around and started talking about nothing.
You really didn’t want to mess with Steven when he got in one of his moods.