Head Games: A Romulenna Adventure

No matter which number she dialed they all had the same result. Frustrated she through the new phone Rome had bought her on in the corner of the library where a couple of pillows were.

“What the hell is wrong with those numbers? I know they are right, I use them for years.” She pulled her laptop closer again and tried to find the hidden phone number on his homepage. But for some reason she didn’t find it. Since a month now she tried to find out what was going on but everything she tried was a dead end, just as dead as she was apparently. Suddenly the library door burst open and in came Rome.

“Lennie I was looking for you.” He grinned as usual, when he was planning something naughty.

Like she did the past month she hid that she was worried about Bobby thinking it was dead.

“What is it this time?” She smiled at him tired.

“It’s boring here, I’m sick of resting a healing. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s go for a trip. Just you and me and this time you don’t run away and no one gets shot. What do you think?”

Now Lenna grinned widely. “Yes let’s sneak away, and see what we find. I can be ready in 30 minutes.”

Lenna picked up her phone and closed her laptop before he could see the file that said she died in Chestertown. She just not yet ready to tell anyone.

The two manage to sneak out unseen and were on the road. The soft buzzing of the road calmed her down. She was driving, while he was playing with his phone.

“Rome do me a favor and have a look what I found. It’s on my laptop, just open it. Rome did and looked at the death certificate of her.



((Feel free to add mor of their sneaking away if you want to or you know change what Rome does or says.))

Rome was 110% all for getting too much attention, but even he had limits, and the well-meaning Tex and Father Theo couldn't watch him all the time. Plus, he would occasionally spot Tex putting Hunt folders together, like they were ready again, and she was just waiting on giving them out. It wasn't that hard for him, either, now that he knew what to look for, to spot those mysterious "wild animal attacks" in his news feeds. He really should design a program that would do this for him, and almost a month of resting on his ass was probably prime time, but he'd only just thought of it. So he started now, at least the research phase, on his smart phone, while Elenna was driving.

When she asked him to take a look at her computer, he hoped against hope it was something Hottie & Naughty or at the very least, a new hunt for them to do while they were out here rather than just joyride around until Tex got pissed enough to threaten to Hex them if they didn't come back--and the Father let her--but the window that met him from her open laptop was the last thing he expected.

He almost got a little choked up reading it, honestly, so he had to take a step back and make sure he was properly sophomoric about this:

"So you're legally dead, too? Awesome! Is that what this is about? Are we going to sneak into your funeral? I'm really frakkin bummed I missed mine, it was probably..." he caught the hurt in Elenna's eyes and slowed down, "amazing... Uh. Chica? You okay with this? What's wrong?"

Lenna looked straight ahead. “Okay with this? He thinks I’m dead, burned in this stupid car all alone. I can’t reach him, he number doesn’t work and… I know he thinks it is his fault, because he let me go on my own hunting. And then I met you yahoo a new hunter who had no idea how the job works. He never knew that you were the one who kept me safe.”

She didn’t care if her funeral was amazing, she didn’t need one.

“I don’t wanna be dead or him grieving that I am.”

Somehow, Rome took a sick sense of satisfaction from this: at least he wasn't the only one she ran away from. But what he said out loud was,

"Okay, chica, take it easy, I hear ya. I--" he remembered, briefly, before he batted the memory back down, the look of surprise/joy/fear/hope in his dad's eyes when he had, apparently, come back from the dead, how badly they both had wanted it to be true before Andre... Rome coughed. "Uh. Yeah, okay, so where does this Bobby guy live?"

"South Dakota."

"That's a big state, chica."

"Sioux Falls," she replied petulantly.

"Okay. Then get off this road and get onto I-135, I don't know how you're trying to get there."

His phone rang in his hand.

"Aww, snap. It's Tex."

Elenna looked at him. "Are you going to answer it?"

"Should I?" It continued to ring. "Crap. Um." With a resigned sigh, he answered the call. "Hey, Texie--"

"Where you at?"

"Never Never Land?" Rome supplied playfully.

Lenna grinned, he was on her side. She was scared to ask if they can go and talk to Bobby, show him that she wasn’t dead. That all she was, was a wanted felon by the FBI for a couple of things. She thought what Bobby had told her about other hunters that died or more meant to be dead, so they could start a normal live. But none of them got out. The past always caught up with them, either a monster found them or the police. There was no happy ending in becoming a hunter. She didn’t really listen to what Rome said to Tex. She quickly look on the laptop screen remembering the words Bobby wrote about her, and out of nowhere she pulled over and stopped that Ferrari, grabbed her laptop and her cell and deleted numbers and everything else that linked her to Bobby Singer.
Note to myself: Never use the name Summer Roberts again!
“He is safer when he thinks I’m dead.” Her voice was trembling and it hurts as hell to say this, but she was protecting him.

Rome was trying (unsuccessfully) to talk down an irate Texas Mosley who was literally about three seconds from sending the hounds after them, when, tires squealing, Elenna took the Ferrari from 60 to 0 in three seconds on the shoulder.

"Jesus, Lennie! Tex, I'll call you back," Rome turned off the phone and set it on the dashboard before turning to Elenna.

"What the hell, chica?"

She was ignoring him, frantically busy on her laptop and her phone. Deleting numbers. Erasing websites.

"Wait. First you're freaking out about him thinking you're dead and now you want to forget he exists?"

Lenna looked up finally. She was handing him her laptop back. “How do I delete the history of my web browser?”
She looked impatient at him. “You should know that I’m complicated. But With everything we got into lately, I mean the FBI is looking for us. I don’t want him to get into trouble just because of me. So can you help me to, please?”
Lenna was searching her phone for old messages from or to Bobby. “I know it makes no real sense but think about it, as long he thinks I’m dead, no matter how much it hurts me, he stops worrying about me and starts helping other hunters again.”

She was psycho. It was official. She was literally pants-on-head-bipolar-apesh*t-nutso. That was cool, though, he could handle this.

At least she was funny, too.

Rome couldn't help bark out a laugh, especially an appreciative laugh at "You should know that I’m complicated," but he quickly wiped the grin off his face and took the laptop she was shoving into his hands.

"Seriously, chica?" Didn't everyone know how to delete browser history? How else do you hide your--erm--okay, maybe that wasn't quite an "everyone" thing. Well, not that they'd admit it. Those people at least knew how to delete their browser history...

He shut up as she glared at him. "Okay, okay," he raised his hands in surrender. He wasn't going to argue with the crazy. He'd learned better long ago. "You want me to do do a hard-wipe and defrag and everything while I'm at it?"

"What? Rome, stop talking nonsense."

"What? I'm not--" Rome shook his head. Leave it to the girl who doesn't know how to delete her browser history to not know the first thing about computers. No wonder this thing acted like a stone-age paperweight. "Okay. Look. Never mind, I got it..."

Rome looked around him. "But do we want to find a town or a McDonald's or something? Or do you like sitting out here in the middle of nowhere letting the battery run down? I just got her a paint job, I didn't get a new battery."

Suddenly, the computer screen fritzed.

"Hey, what are you doing to my laptop?"

"That wasn't me!" Rome shouted, before the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and, for the hell of it, only to confirm a suspicion he already held quite strongly, he nudged the volume on the radio up a bit.

The sound was flickering. Static-y.

"Crap," they said, together.

"Demon? Ghost?"

"It could be anything, Rome."

Rome sucked on his lip. "Awesome."

A small smile appeared on her face. As usual the hunts found them. Lenna put her phone away and stepped out of the car, to have a look around.
“Come on my personal EMF meter, let’s see what we find here in the middle of nowhere.”
She was looking around carefully. “You know after nearly a month of just sitting around studying I was looking forward to actually do something again. Get my hands dirty and some new bruises since the old once nearly had vanished completely.”

Rome shook his head, a wild double-take. "You kinky girl," he grinned widely. "Didn't know you went in for that whole bruising thing."

She whacked him--hard--in the chest, insisting that wasn't what she meant, and he was delighted to find that, for the first time in a long time, the punch didn't hurt more than it should have.

"Contrary to the nutjob in my present company, I'm actually quite content to feel healthy and uninjured, and, damn it, I only just got this hot bod put back together, so I'm not exactly looking for trouble or bruises, no matter how kinky the circumstances, so let's be smart about this, okay?" he lectured as he got out of the car to look around, making sure his Desert Eagle was on him.

"And for that matter, you can get your own damn EMF meter. It isn't as if I can turn it off and on, and if I start glowing red and beeping we'll know something is definitely way more wrong than just some supernatural activity in...the...vicinit...y..."

"Rome? Rome, what is it?"

Rome was looking at it: a small--but significant in the scheme of things--pile of candy wrappers by the side of the road. Butterfinger, Skittles, Jolly Rancher, Snickers. That was weird. And his Spidey-sense was tingling.

So he poked it with his shoe.

BAM! A human figure, grinning mischievously, flickering in and out of focus. Eating candy. Looking smug. There was blood on his hands. And he was laughing at him.

"Ahh!" he cried, going instantly to one knee, holding his head.

God, this sucked out loud! And he'd been doing so freaking well! He hadn't had a vision in...almost a month! Just when he was ready to relax, assume he was normal, and this had all been a frakked up dream...

Plus, Elenna was right: he was just a walking EMF meter, and he hated it when she was right!

Lenna walked quickly to Rome, making sure he was just falling on his knees and not worse than that. Her hands were at his shoulders.

“Rome? Are you okay? I didn’t mean that you have to get a vision right away.”

Lenna sounded worried, it was so long ago that he had a vision and he never was that good with handling his visions. She let him catch his breath and moan over the headache.

“What did you see?”

Rome looked blankly at her, his eyes still gray, fading slowly back to their usual green. “A guy eating candy, laughing at me.”

“What that makes no sense at all.”

Lenna helped him up back in the car.

“I think there is a town close by, we crash there and eat. I guess you are just hungry and this vision meant nothing.” She tried to sound sure of what she said, but she kept looking worried at him.

Rome let her guide him back to the car, but pushed her away as soon as he felt comfortable doing so. "It's fine, I'm fine, thanks, chica. You're probably right," he said. "I just need to..."

Rest my eyes? Take four Advil? Put a cold compress on my forehead? Drink whiskey out of the bottle?

Jesus, these are getting worse. Is that even possible?

But he managed to smile at Elenna. It would have convinced anyone else in the world that he was fine, and it probably convinced Lenna at least 95% of the way. He needed to stop being a little bitch about these things, and the sooner everyone stopped treating him like one, the easier that would be.

"Um." He pinched the bridge of his nose as the pain lingered. "Yeah. Let's head into town. I think--I think we can find some place to grab a java and try to do some research on this. Not that--" he shrugged, "not that we necessarily have a lot to go on, even if that wasn't just a freak thing."

When were they ever just freak things?

He sighed and looked up at her. "We'll see if anything weird's going on in this town, and call Tex. She can...maybe she'll give us a hunt if there's anything nearby. Maybe she'll make us come home." Somehow, he didn't have the strength to care. All the energy that had been exploding to get out of him a few hours ago felt drained. "Either way, we're getting coffee. So let's roll."

Lenna rolled her eyes, she knew that he didn’t liked this visions but she still thought if he would more than just try to get through them they would be less horrible. And it never saw how he looked when he has one. It was worse than any fit she heard of.

“Honestly I don’t think we should call Tex. She will order us back because she thinks you and me alone mean trouble. So I think we have to figure this one out on our own.”

She pulled the Ferrari back on the road she left the I-29 and drove to Canton. Lenna stopped the Ferrari outside a coffee shop; she took her laptop and got inside. She turned a couple of times around to check if Rome was still on two feet and following her.

She knew he would get the coffee she sat in the corner and turned on the laptop. It looked different, the background picture of her and Bobby was disappeared and it was just a black background. She sighed, and opened her file of monsters and their descriptions. When Rome returned she asked.

“So did you saw any more details? Anything I can use for the search?”

Rome frowned as he waited in line for coffee. His head still hurt, and, as much as he thought Elenna was right, the idea of lying to Tex--again--didn't exactly warm his heart.

And his head still hurt.

And that worried him. Way more than the vision itself.

So when he returned with coffee to the table where Elenna was lost in research--having been too distracted even to flirt with the dark-haired barista--her question startled him.

"So did you see any more details? Anything I can use for the search?"

"Uh." Rome plopped himself down across from Lenna, and didn't answer for a minute. "I...Don't. Remember." He rubbed his face. "Uh, I mean, he had a distinct face. I could probably recognize him if I saw him again. He had these, like, beady eyes, and this sharp nose--he kinda looked like the guy from Full House, you know?"

Elenna looked concerned. "Uh. No, I don't."

"Whatever, I'm just saying. He was just eating candy and laughing. And he had blood on his hands, like--" this was where things got metaphysical, and he got into what he felt about the vision, which was just psychoanalytic and weird and dumb, but he plowed on ahead, anyway, "well, he looked like he had done something totally evil, like, murdered his granny with a hammer or something, and found it hilarious." He swallowed thickly to keep the coffee down. Why did this crap bother him so much? He felt like a puss. He found himself wishing, oddly enough, that his sense of foreboding had less to do with his balls and more to do with the vision.

Lenna looked confused at him. “Okay I don’t think I can find anything with this vision. But maybe we find something in the local paper?”

Lenna got up and took the local newspaper from the front counter. She didn’t have to search long. There was one case in which a man was bitten to death by a Yorkshire terrier, and another death was caused by the gerbils of little girl. The girl (7 years old) said her father didn’t want to buy her the new bigger cage and that made the gerbils angry. She read in a book that their name means clawed warriors. And the third case was a rat problem in town. Rats climb out of the toilet and bite the people in the butts.

Lenna finished reading and looked at Rome. “All of that sound like a joke. It could fit to your guy who thinks a having bloody hands is hilarious.”

No matter what he said she was still worried about him. Having for so long no vision she nearly hoped for him that they had stopped.

“Let’s find a place to crash and see what we find out about those incidents. There is a motel the Gateway Motel it is close by.”

Rome laughed, and suddenly felt worlds better. Maybe the coffee was helping. Or maybe just laughing was helping. The vision faded in his memory until it was just the opening credits of Full House with Joey laughing, and that didn't seem so bad anymore.

"Rome, you're sick," Elenna admonished as she began to pack up her computer.

"Rats biting people in the ass? Come on, that's hilarious! Hang on, I'm gonna grab a cuppa for the road."

This time, there was no one waiting in line, and the vision wasn't bothering him, so the attractive dark-haired barista could have his full attention.

"Does your girlfriend want anything?"

"What? Oh, no, no!" Rome corrected. "That's not my girlfriend, she's my sister. My little sister. Hey, have you heard--"

Suddenly the barista was in tears. She mumbled something to the manager and ran out.

Rome locked eyes with Elenna and followed her out.

"Umm...Tiffany?" Rome found her outside on a bench, sobbing, still luckily wearing her apron and nametag which helped him out. He gave Elenna the silent let-me-handle this as he came up and gingerly put his arm around the girl. It was probably nothing. Hell, it was probably just a girl thing.

But, with their luck, it was very probably something else.

"Oh, God! My sister!"

"Oops, I said the wrong thing, did I?" Rome tried to sound playful, but she only buried her head in his chest and wept louder. Rome put his arm around her with an internal "comfort sex!"

"No, no, it's not your fault, it's just--her stupid gerbils, and they were talking to her and said they'd kill dad if he--and now he's dead! Oh, my God, it's insane!" she squeaked.

Rome's eyes widened and he beckoned Elenna over.

"Okay, um, Tiffany? Tiffany, this is Elenna. We're with...Animal Control, and I need you to calm down and tell her what you just told me."

Lenna rolled her eyes she hadn’t heard what the barista said but she was crying, hopefully not because Rome was bothering her and now she had to tell her that he was a nice guy to get in her pants. But when she was closer she heard Rome say.

"Okay, um, Tiffany? Tiffany, this is Elenna. We're with...Animal Control, and I need you to calm down and tell her what you just told me."

Lenna looked questioning at Rome but it was the barista, Tiffany. “My sister’s gerbils talked to her that they need the larger cage, but dad said no the cage is large enough and at night the gerbils got out of the cage and slaughter him in his bed. I mean who would think those little things can do such a thing.” Tiffany was sobbing and shaking in Rome’s arm. She didn’t look like the kind of girl that would have comfort sex. Not even with Rome.

“We need to see the... um gerbils.” Lenna felt like laughing this whole story sounded like one huge joke. This felt more like one of her crazy dreams she gets when she read for days in the library without sleep.

It was becoming readily apparent that no comfort-sex was forthcoming (hur hur hur), so Rome began to lose interest in Tiffany, even as Elenna became more and more interested in the house, the little sister, and especially the gerbils. Rome couldn't believe they still kept them: it was grotesque, macabre even, but in a cartoonish sort of way.

"Rome, look at this!" Elenna hissed as soon as they had a moment alone, waving him over to the gerbil cage. "There's EMF all over this thing!"

"So? Doesn't that mean ghost?"

"Usually but not always. I mean--it's unlikely, but I guess it's possible that Sammy and Deanna here--"

"The little bloodsuckers have names?!"

"Of course they have names!"

"Well, yeah, but, I didn't expect you to know them..." Which, okay, if he thought about it, she totally would.

"Rome, we have no leads here, no clues, this could be anything. They could have been possessed--by ghosts, by demons--"

"I think I'd know if we were dealing with a demon," Rome said quietly.

"Okay. But it also could be a shapeshifter, heck, it could even be a witch spell, some sort of anthropomorphization--"

"Is that even a word? Seriously, I think you make this stuff up--"

"Rome! I'm serious!"

At that moment Tiffany re-entered with two glasses of lemonade, and the moment was lost. Elenna hastily shoved the EMF meter into her back pocket as Rome accepted the lemonade with an over-eager smile to distract.

"Um, so, are you gonna, like, take them away?" Tiffany asked. "Because they totally creep me out, but my sister wanted to keep them."

"Your sister. Can we talk to her?" Rome asked.

"She's at school now. She doesn't get home until 3."

Rome nodded somberly, looking sidelong at Elenna for clues. He couldn't read her when she had her thinking cap on, though, so he took the initiative:

"Yes," he said.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, we'll be taking them. Uh, we'll run some, uh...tests. They are, of course, categorized as a public menace, and may need to be put down. We will endeavor to provide a replacement, naturally, should the young lady express undue distress..."

God, blah blah stupid, blah, on and on and we'll call you and out the door. Rome's mouth went on autopilot as he found himself not really caring what he was saying or what Elenna was trying to communicate to him with her eyebrows, or even what Tiffany was saying.

As soon as they were back at the Ferrari, Rome dumped the cage unceremoniously in the trunk.

"This is just wrong, chica. This is sick, twisted, weird, out of our league, and bizarre, and wrong, and I want to go home, and I think we've got the wrong hunt."

He just had a vibe...

Lenna looked at him. She started laughing, so hard that Rome looked at her confused.

“I know I shouldn’t be laughing but come on we fought a god and now you are saying killer gerbils are out of our league? Look at them they look cute and not dangerous. Let’s free them at the side of the road and see if we find any story of ghosts.”

But no matter what Lenna couldn’t stop giggling. “Okay you are right this is sick, twisted, weird, out of our league, and bizarre, and wrong. But hey what do you say to get some food and find a motel to crash. Sorry Tiffany didn’t want you.”

Rome didn't see what was so damn funny.

There was a cloud of--of--well, he couldn't quite pinpoint it, but these were some seriously bad vibes settling over him like a fog, which came to rest like a bad tuna fish sandwich in his gut. Her suggestion of food made him want to hurl. Why couldn't she sense it?

Hell, why could he? And what was he even sensing? This wasn't a vision, not properly. Ugh. This bugged.

"We're not letting these things out on the side of the street," he growled, yanking open the driver's side door. "Get in," he told her, "I'm driving. We'll find a motel and figure out what we can do with these things. They might be shapeshifters, or haunted. I'm not just letting them free," he said condescendingly.

He glanced at her sideways as they pulled away from Suburbia and into hotel district. She had stopped laughing, and looked a little hurt.

He sighed: "Sorry, Lennie, I didn't mean to snap. I just feel..." he gave up trying to describe it, and changed the subject instead: "I don't know if even your research skills can turn up anything on this one, chica. We don't exactly have a lot of leads, definitely none that make an ounce of sense. I mean, okay: a staticky radio says ghost, a guy eating candy says, I dunno, nothing, killer gerbils sounds like shapeshifter to me, and rats crawling out of the sewers to bite people in the ass just says stupid. It is pissing me off how stupid this whole not-hunt is."

"So, what, you want to wait for the next victim to get killed?" Elenna bristled slightly.

Rome shrugged. "I'm just saying we just have to be prepared for that to happen--and that doesn't make me happy either. I'd almost rather have another Shining moment because, seriously, it's better than being in the dark on this one."

"So, you admit the visions..."

"No, I do not! Just because getting one of those melon-splitters is better than another civie biting the dust doesn't mean I like them."

"Rome, relax. I only meant I'm glad you're not trying to deny they mean anything anymore."

"Oh." Rome pursed his lips together. "Well. Yeah. I guess. I mean, we always knew they were...look, never mind." He pulled them up to a mid-range hotel that claimed wifi and a swimming pool, stopped at the door, and got out. "I'll go get us a room, be right back."

He was just paying for a two-queens second-floor non-smoking with a wad of cash under the name "Colin Shea," when a familiar-looking man walked out of the elevator and past him out the door onto the street. It took a moment for Rome to realize where he had seen this man before.

"I'll be right back," Rome told the hotel receptionist, and ran after him.

Lenna was waiting patiently in the car every now and then turning around to the gerbils. A sudden urge forced her to get out. She wondered where Rome was. Normally it didn’t take him so long to book the room.

I can’t believe those gerbils scare me a little. Why would anyone use them to kill? This is crazy.

Lenna had her phone in her hand still waiting for Rome to come back. Needing to do something she wrote a text to Georgie. Rome and I are ok, needed to get some air. We’ll be back soon. We call as soon we can. She knew that Georgie will go mental about their disappearing again, but it didn’t change anything. They needed to find out what was going on here and make sure no one else was hurt.

And I really needed to be out of the monkey house for some time. Speaking of monkey… where is Rome?

Her finger quickly run over the keys of her phone when she typed Rome’s number. She waited for Rome to answer. “Come on Rome pick up!”

Rome practically leapt over the Ferrari in pursuit of the man from his vision, of candy-eating-bloody-handed-Joey-freaking-Gladstone, who was really hoofing it for a little guy.

Rounding a corner so fast he had to hold onto a drainpipe to make the turn, Rome met nothing but a dead-end.

The bastard was gone!

Rome rummaged in the garbage in the alleyway, and checked the one door and two windows, but they were both locked and, anyway, he'd only lost sight of him for a few seconds.

He had just disappeared.

Rome was about to return to the car, dejected, when some trash blew against his shoe, and it wasn't from the dumpster:

Candy wrappers. Yup, definitely his guy.

"The real question is what supernatural creature do you know of that farts candy wrappers?" Rome asked Elenna, throwing a Twix and Twizzlers wrapper onto her lap.

"Ugh, gross, Rome!" she said, before she stopped. Blinked. Looked back at the hotel door. Back at him. "Wait. How did you--"

Rome laughed. "I slid across the hood, chica, way to be observant. I saw our guy, but he disappeared into an alleyway and I lost him. Like, actually disappeared, I swear to go. No cold spots, no smell of sulfur, so, I dunno, check out anything that might have wings and like candy. I'll go finish flirting with the receptionist."

Rome jogged up a few steps before turning back briefly: "Hey, chica."

"Yeah?"

"Keep your eyes open for me, okay?" Rome winked.

Elenna replied by sticking out her tongue and making a rude gesture he wasn't sure he was comfortable with her knowing.

Lenna sat down on the hood and was looking through one of her books to find what they were hunting.”You could have at least given me the room key while you are busy. Now I’m sitting here with those friggen gerbils.” She mumbled while she was reading.
Nothing in the book was really helpful, and for some reason it bugged her today more than normally that Rome was flirting with the receptionist. She wasn’t jealous, well okay maybe a little but more that she had to share him and never gets the attention the other girls get. Not she wanted the same treatment but…

I’m officially dead and really would need him as my brother right now.

Lenna looked at the gerbil still on the backseat. They looked so harmless who would use them to kill. Also the rats, this was as if someone could let urban myth become true. What happens next a crocodile in the sewer?

The hotel room was mediocre, and not worth hanging out in. There wasn't even a pool. Gay.

"Okay, get your big girl boots on, chica: I want to go check out the sewer systems for this rat problem."

Elenna frowned deeply. "But..." She clearly wanted to sit and nerd out all afternoon. All Rome could think of to do in this hotel room involved Kleenex, lotion, and hogging the bathroom for twenty minutes--but with rats crawling out of toilets, even that didn't sound fun right now.

"Or you can chill here, and let me get devoured by mutant rats when I go down there by myself..."

"Okay, okay, fine!" Elenna slammed her laptop down and went grumbling through her bags until she unearthed a pair of muddy green Wellingtons. Rome pulled his army boots, which were surprisingly waterproof, out of his "unused but necessary crap" bag, and began lacing them up in place of his brand new Pumas. "Rome, this whole shoot-first, ask-questions-later thing has got to stop," Elenna scolded.

"What?" Rome pleaded the fifth. "I didn't say 'let's go explode the sewer systems!' I said, 'let's go check it out.' It's still research, it's just less boring," Rome winked.