(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

Ray hasn't been in sight for most of today (he's been sticking things to other things and cutting things up before sticking them together, and you may take that however you like). He's had it about up to here with that for the day, though, so he's in the bar now.

Did you know that if you just ask the Bar for 'food', and you're geekish enough, she gives you this brownish stuff on a plate? It's not recognizable visually and it doesn't smell like anything particularly memorable, but it tastes ... um... not very recognizable either. It's just food.

He's got some. Yay him.

Comments

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

"Yeepyeepyeep!" Scribble bounds over to Ray, yapping happily-the food certainly smells good to her. Raptor Red follows, bobbing her head a bit at Ray in a non-threatening way. She drops a large chunk of meat with a thud, eyeing Ray carefully for a moment. "Snhhrr?"

[gone_byebye]

Eeeee! Dinosaurs! No matter how tired you are there is always room for dinosaurian joy!

Ray grins and slips off the barstool, ducking his head politely. "Evening, Red. Hi, Scribble! Hi there! Boy it's good to see you two..."

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

Scribble glances back and forth between Ray and Red, then bobs her head. Mimicry is fun! She bounces from foot to foot, eeping and waving her foreclaws. Apparently, she's happy to see Ray, too.

Red, meanwhile, watches Ray for a moment, then rips some meat off of the chunk and offers it to Ray. He's nonthreatening and he's watched after her chicks before, so it only makes sense to offer food like she would to a babysitting packmate.

[gone_byebye]

Ray's dealing with the baby first, so he does what comes naturally when Scribble appears: reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of turkey jerky for the little one.

Yes, he carries that stuff all the time now. In fact, Peter- his world's Peter, not the one in the Bar- has commented on it several times.

Then he catches the movement from the mother, and looks up. There are certain rules that the universe goes by, so far as he can tell. When somebody asks you if you're a god, you say yes. When the Russian ambassador asks you if you weesh hees governmaint's protektion, you say yes. And when a dinosaur offers you meat and it isn't visibly from someone or something you recognize... well, you don't say no.

"Thank you," he says politely, and accepts the offered meat. He hasn't really got the teeth to tear into the stuff directly, but he has got a Swiss army knife in one of his other pockets, and he always sort of wondered what the meat from Red's time tasted like anyway. He'll try hacking off a piece after sniffing it carefully. It's not like the Korean place on Thirty-fourth hasn't given him really good raw beef before, albeit with a nice marinade and shredded apple-pears to go along with it.

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

Scribble just bounces even more at the sight of the food. Ray is, in her worldview, one of the best things to every exist, as he's a source of food and amusement. She can't ask for much more. "Yeepyeepyeep!"

"Snhrrt." Raptor Red returns to the rest of the chunk, her teeth loudly scraping across bone as she bites at it. The meat she agve Ray-aside from having a bit of raptor saliva on it-looks and smells fresh. And judging from the size of the chunk, she's been hunting something fairly large.

[gone_byebye]

The turkey is dropped on the floor in front of Scribble and Ray gives the little one a pat on the head before she lunges in to devour it. He's got that Superball on him somewhere, but right now there are other things to deal with.

It doesn't take long to slice the meat into smaller bits, but as he does an idea occurs to him. "Bar?" he asks. "Culinary blowtorch, please? One of the little ones like at Williams-Sonoma?" It's simpler than asking for it to be cooked for him, and hey, who doesn't love a blowtorch? Mmm. Seared... somethingorother. Astroodon, maybe.

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

Scribble chirps at the pat, then gobbles the meat down. Red watches her and snorts a bit, but lets her eat. The strange food here hasn't harmed any of them yet. But the blowtorch gets her attention. She blinks and snorts, standing up a bit straighter.

What is that?

Red stretches her neck out with a snort, curious and confused.

[gone_byebye]

Ray notices the attention being paid, and switches off the torch. "It's a blowtorch," he says, holding it out for sniffing. There are butane fumes still clinging to it, most likely, and it is full of a butane canister, so plenty of smell to go around.

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

"Snrrht! Snrff. Snrrff." Red snifsf at it carefully, then jerks her head back, sneezing. With a grunt she stretches her neck out again, giving it an experimental lick. "Blech!"

[gone_byebye]

He chuckles. "Sorry, Red," he says. "That's mine. No biggie." He's not going to turn the fire back on until she's looking away. The last thing he wants is to have a Mesozoic death machine burn its nose.

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

Red shakes her head with another snort, turning her attention back to her meal. At least it smells right.

Scribble, meanwhile, peers up at Ray curiously. She doesn't understand the blowtorch either, but she finds Ray far more interesting. He gives out food. She glances around for a moment, squeaks, and runs off. A few minutes later she returns with a ratty, dusty rope octopus that she had apparently ferreted away somewhere, and drops it at Ray's feet.

[gone_byebye]

While the baby dinosaur is away, Ray hurriedly sears his meat and stashes the blowtorch. He's chewing on a piece of well-coooked extinct animal when Scribble returns, so he swallows and grins. "Gimme," he says, picking up the octopus and dangling it enticingly."

[redsnout.livejournal.com]

Scribble yaps happily, bouncing and then lunging at the octopus, sinking her teeth into it. She shakes her head witth a growl, waving her foreclaws. Red watches carefully and yawns, snorting a bit to herself.

[k_in_black]

Silent as a shadow, there's K looking over Ray's shoulder at the plate.

"I saw something like that when the Tarkonian delegation came through last year. Their's had some green chunks in it though. Not sure what they were. Didn't really want to know."

"What's the word, Chief? You ask for that, or was it Bar's idea?"

[gone_byebye]

Ray pokes at it with a spoon. "This," he says, "is what happens when you just ask Bar for 'food'. I have no idea what's in it, but it hasn't got enough grain to be muscle meat and it sure doesn't look endocrine, so I'm not worrying about it being Soylent Brown."

He smiles. "Hi, K. Good to see you again. How you doing?"

[k_in_black]

"Well, Ray. You go right ahead and enjoy that."

"Bar? Bourbon, please." Part of every nutritious MiB meal.

"All right, I guess. Not too happy about being here. (he glances at the bar, "No offense, ma'am") Got a problem with a rogue Remilian back home. Had problems with him before--just loves stirring up trouble. Was getting ready to cordon off Manhattan when I went through the wrong door and ended up here again."

"So I guess it's my partner's problem now. He's a good kid. Could use the challenge."

"Now if we can just figure out a way to unscrew the Guggenheim back out of the ground...."

[gone_byebye]

Ray nods, listening, and then winces. "Oh, damn. That's not going to go over wel, is it? I can hear the insurance adjusters weeping from here. Just how bad did it get?"

[k_in_black]

"Messy. Rex always has the worst damn timing. He could've pulled that Guggenheim trick any time he wanted. So what does he do? Picks the month they were doing Calder mobiles."

"Ever try untangling fifty mobiles? Almost makes me glad I'm here after all."

"So what's this I hear about you almost getting eaten by a shark?"

[gone_byebye]

"The last time I had to deal with something like that, it involved my nephew Alex getting into my old box of chemical molecule modeling kits. Not nearly the same, but I was stuck picking nitrogen atoms out of my sister's carpeting for a dog's age."

"And his name is Ed- at least the part I can pronounce- and he never even got hostile at us. Just stated a warning. We were scuba diving with Naraht. What did Peter tell you?"

[k_in_black]

"Haven't seen Peter yet. Just overheard some chatter in the bar."

"What kind of warning? A "don't mess with me" kind of thing, or is he trying to claim part of the lake for himself?"

"Talk about pains in the ass. Last thing we need is a turf war in the lake."

[gone_byebye]

"Ah, okay," Ray says. "Basically, he said he'll do his best to follow the Bar's rules and that he's aware of them, but he's got instincts and one of them is to end distress. Terminally. Which basically means, no blood in the water and no freaking out."

[k_in_black]

"No freaking out? When are people here *not* freaking out?"

"I suppose somebody's posted a note in the bar about it? Guess as long as people are careful that's one thing we don't have to worry about."

"Saw Naraht sunning herself out there too. Figured I'd better steer clear of that one. Not sure there's much I can do to help, and I don't suppose she needs more men hanging around just now. I swear I leave this place for a week and look what happens."

"Oh, by the way. Brought something for you."

K reaches into his pocket and pulls out one of the PDA-ish devices Ray's seen him use before.

"Mine didn't help much during our mission to your New York, but I thought you might like to have one to play with. It's classified but it belongs to our lowest tech-level, so my boss was fine with my giving you one."

"It's called a Spectral Analyzer, but that title's deceptive. These bands of color here scan a lifeform and compare it to a library of known species. The color pattern tells you what you're looking at."

"It's a bit limited, and there are lifeforms here--like Horta--that aren't listed in the MiB databases. But you might get something out of it."

[gone_byebye]

"I mean no freaking out while they're in the water. Spazzing out in water that contains a giant shark is a good way of attracting 'mmm, big tasty bait' attention. At least he's too big to get into most of the shallows- and, yeah, there's a notice posted, so people are aware of it."

He sighs. "You missed it last night. She got bored with her research books and started singing to herself before she found out about siren song." He holds up his right hand; the second joint of his index finger is heavily bandaged. "I was in range. So was Pete, and so were a lot of other people. I kind of broke the skin trying not to respond. Wound up having to hit her with a paper wad to get her to break it off, and there was a lot of fuss afterwards from some of the affected parties.'

The device, however, draws an 'ooooooh' and a very interested look. "Okay, this I gotta see. Thank you! Did you want a PKE meter in return? NOt much good on the living but if any of your alien visitors have psychic powers, it'll generally notice when those are operational."

[k_in_black]

"Damn. Have to ask bar for some earplugs. I don't think MiB has anything to counter mermaids. Guess I better stick around more. Not sure if I could have helped, but you never know."

"Actually, Ray, a PKE meter would be just the thing. I mentioned it in my report about this place, and it's got our tech guys buzzing. They have a feeling there might be a lot in our world we're missing because we never thought of having something to scan that part of the spectrum. I think you guys have an edge on us when it comes to psychic abilities."

"Just be sure to use a plastic or ceramic wedge when you're opening the shell. The motherboard's sensitive to conduction. Don't want to have you losing any more fingers there."

"Any chance of Naraht switching back anytime soon?"

[gone_byebye]

"Well, she's not really likely to sing again. Massive guilt fits on her part; she's got enough of a conscience not to inflict that on anybody again." He looks ruefully at his bandage. "I'm just glad I'm left-handed."

He nods. "Well, that makes sense. You guys are xenobiology and advanced sociology. Me and Pete and Egon and Winston, we're parapsych and a couple of really odd branches of physics. I've got a spare meter upstairs- fair warning, though. If they're overloaded too quickly, you won't have the option of shutting it down. The presence of supersaturated psychokinetic energies in the very immediate vicinity, which is to say within two or three yards of the meter, has been known to make them explode before they can be switched off. The ensuing craters were roughly the size of a Toyota hatchback. Given that one of these was used to attempt to measure Great Cthulhu at a distance of a hundred meters or so and it didn't explode then, proximity and concentration of power are greater factors than mere power level."

He sighs a touch. "She won't be shifting back for a while, I don't think. Not until the pathogen burns itself out. Raven doesn't know how long that's going to be."