Agent Carolina (topoftheboard) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2018-01-01 21:49:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | agent carolina, yue katou |
Who: Katou & Carolina
When: Early October
Where: Chateau Katou
What: Katou recruits Carolina while she cooks dinner
Rating/Warnings: Some cursing, but mostly low
Status: Complete on posting!
Katou wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about Carolina’s cooking. It wasn’t something he’d ever tried before, but she sure didn’t seem like someone who knew how to cook. Then again, Katou probably didn’t seem like much of a cook on first glance either and he liked to think he did just fine. He hadn’t had any complaints at least.
And pasta was kind of hard to fuck up, so long as one didn’t overcook the noodles. Besides, he couldn’t afford to offend her just before asking her for her help. “So, uh, how long have you been cooking for?” he asked her.
Carolina looked up from where she was in the process of mincing two cloves of garlic. “Since June.” Technically, she had been cooking for the majority of her life, but it hadn’t been until her husband had opened his big fat mouth that she had considered taking it seriously. It had been easier than she had expected to translate her martial arts knife skills to cooking knife skills. More than that, chopping something to itty bitty bits was actually therapeutic after a stressful day on base.
Today’s experiment was chicken alfredo. She had been tending toward Italian recipes since that was what Dan had originally made for her and Wash. Much like fighting, Carolina had already begun to exceed in her cooking endeavours. This was due not so much to a miraculous, undiscovered skill, but rather the fact that she had been studying and practicing various cooking techniques as often as she practiced her kata. Three months of constant practice would give even a novice cook some amount of skill. She had even managed to find a “learning to cook” podcast to listen to on her daily commute. So she was relatively confident that she could handle an alfredo sauce. Probably.
At least she knew the noodles would be fine. Those had come from a blue box. Carolina had watched an episode about making pasta and had quickly come to the conclusion that it was beyond her abilities. “Don’t worry, I haven’t poisoned anyone for at least two months.” She quipped with a straight face.
Katou had to agree that his favourite part of cooking was getting to cut up the ingredients. His finger blades weren’t exactly made for dicing and slicing vegetables, but they made do. Sure, end product wasn’t as pretty as it would be if he had used a kitchen knife, but he had five finger blades that he had full control over, and it sure made things go faster.
“You know, I don’t think that’s nearly as comforting as you think it is,” Katou muttered. Oh sure, she was probably joking about the food poisoning thing, but on the other hand, maybe she wasn’t.
Carolina dumped the far-too-tiny, smashed garlic pieces into the pan and tossed them in the oil. It gave her plenty of time to shoot Katou a look. That was supposed to have been sarcastic. Apparently she still had a lot to work on when it came to her sense of humor. Surprising no one. “Relax. I’ve been taking lessons.” For only a week or two, but that still counted, right?
Wiping down the board and blade with a moist towel - why the hell were they called tea towels, anyway? - Carolina tried to remember what to do next. Setting down the towel, she studied her notes on the recipe. Oh, right. Wine. Why did Italians always seem to not only use wine in every recipe, but practically mandate that the chef drink the stuff while cooking? What was wrong with a good, stout brew? She shook her head and headed to the fridge to pull out the bottle she had brought. “Wine?” At least this way she wouldn’t be the only one drinking.
Katou liked to think he was usually pretty good at picking up on sarcasm, but his mind was on other things at the moment. He’d never taken cooking lessons in his life and he wasn’t sure how much they’d help, but he’d accept it as meaning she probably knew better than to poison him.
He wasn’t a big wine drinker, but alcohol was alcohol and he wasn’t about to pass it up. Especially since he’d probably need all the liquid courage he could get for later. “Like you had to ask,” he said cheerily, and was about to add that he probably needed it for her cooking. He bit it back though, because to him, it seemed like there was a good chance she’d hit him if he kept insulting the cooking he hadn’t tried yet.
Out of respect for Kanan, she probably wouldn’t punch Katou if he started getting snarky about her cooking abilities (or lack thereof). Probably. All bets were off if he started trying to feed leftovers to Damien. Carolina didn’t know where the annoying little creature was at the moment, and so long as he wasn’t biting or gnawing at her, she really didn’t care.
Grabbing two glasses, Carolina headed over to the counter close to Katou. “Didn’t know wine was your thing.” She couldn’t remember if there was a corkscrew in the house, so she pulled out her swiss army knife. It was a bit more old school and required a bit more force, but that didn’t bother her. Hell, it was a bit more fun that way. The cork was twisted out and the glasses poured while the food simmered behind her.
Carolina set one of the glasses in front Katou before picking up her own glass. She studied him over the rim of her glass. Huh. She knew that look. That cat-got-your-tongue look that people got when they were trying to figure out how to ask for a favor. She took a long sip of wine before setting down the glass. “Why do I get the feeling that you didn’t come over just to talk about my cooking skills?” Carolina barely resisted crossing her arms.
Luckily for Katou, there was no love lost between him and the alien cat either. His one saving grace was that he was that, since he was made out of plants, he wasn’t particularly tasty. It didn’t stop Damien from gnawing on his metal arm every now and then though.
Katou shrugged. “If it’s got booze it’s probably my thing,” he said. He frowned at her question, and then took a large gulp of his wine. He let it sit in his mouth for a moment as he mulled over how to proceed, and then he swallowed. “Well, obviously I didn’t come to just talk about your cooking skills,” he said airily. “I’m supposed to eat your cooking too.” He cleared his throat. “And if I survive that, then uh, I was gonna see if you wanted to do some Agency stuff.”
“Agency stuff.” Carolina gave Katou a considering look before shaking her head and turning back to the stove. The pan also needed some wine. “What kind of Agency stuff are you talking about?” While she did fight on the front lines during Orange County events, most of her free time at the Agency currently consisted of filling out paperwork. That would likely change again after she was no longer on active duty, but for now it was double paperwork and double fighting.
Pulling a small spoon from the drawer, Carolina scooped up a bit of sauce. “Try that.” She held out the tasting spoon for Katou. The look on her face stated clearly that trying to get out of being the first guinea pig for the new recipe was not going to be an option.
Katou gave a defeated sigh and then leaned forward to eat the sauce Carolina was so kindly holding out for him. At least taste testing would give him time to come up with some kind of explanation for the whole end of the world thing. He gave a surprised blink, and leaned back in his seat. “It’s not bad,” he said, genuinely impressed. He’d eaten out of enough dumpsters in his day to not say no to free food, but he was glad to realize that he was actually going to enjoy this meal.
“Anyway,” he said. He knew he couldn’t smoke inside, but goddamn did he wish he could. He took a gulp of his wine instead. “I guess some idiot got the Seventh Seal of Armageddon or something from their dreams and hid it under their mattress. Then it got stolen during all the confusion with your dream stuff. So the Bosslady told me to get together a team to like, find it and, you know, not let the apocalypse happen. You down?”
Carolina gave a satisfied nod at Katou’s words. Considering the nature of the guinea pig, ‘not bad’ was definitely high praise. Three, maybe four stars. Not bad for her first try. Wash was scheduled to be the third guinea pig tomorrow, with a slightly different recipe. She tried a bit with her own tasting spoon. Hm. Maybe a bit too much garlic. She took a sip of wine to wash away the taste while she tried to figure out what to do. How the hell was someone supposed to recreate the recipe when all the cloves were different sizes?
The food was distracting, but not so much that she didn’t catch what Katou was saying. Carolina frowned and set down the wine glass. “Back up. You said the what was stolen?” She must have misheard something while she was daydreaming of garlic and alfredo. “What kind of idiot hides the Seventh Seal of Armageddon under his mattress?! How did the Agency not know about this?!”
As far as Katou was concerned, there was no such thing as too much garlic. He didn’t cook with it often - normally he made Japanese food - but when he did he tended to use a lot of it.
“It’s called the Egg of Wormwood,” Katou said, flushing a little bit. “It like, summons this big star called the Star of Wormwood to wipe out creation.” He cleared his throat, and then took another gulp of his wine. His nose scrunched a little as the liquid poured down his throat. “Anyway, guess they didn’t tell no one, including the Agency, ‘cause they thought that not telling anyone was the best defense. And because they didn’t know the Agency was a thing when they got it. But I mean, you can’t really blame someone for not wanting to think of the thing they used to destroy the world, right? I mean, if it was me I don’t know if I’d do any different.”
Carolina gave Katou with a sharp look. She hadn’t missed him flushing. Some idiot. Right. Jesus Christ. The kid would be a horrible poker player. Her fingers itched with the urge to run a hand down her face in frustration. “Not thinking about something doesn’t make it fucking go away.” Yelling at the kid for being an idiot wasn’t going to help things either. But oh did she want to anyway. The old her would have, she knew that for damn sure. “What were you thinking?!” Okay, so maybe the new her would as well.
Anger was familiar territory for her, but in this case it would only make things worse. Carolina grit her teeth and forced herself to calm down. The deflection probably was some sort of guilt reflex anyway. Katou was new to the Agency. Not trusting them with a seal of the apocalypse was understandable. Probably. “Never mind. Not important right now.” She waved her hand to the side to get her mind back on track. Focus on the problem now. They could talk about the stupidity of keeping WMDs under one’s bed later, once the end-of-the-world crisis had been averted.
Right. Back to the real problem. “I don’t remember anything about an Egg or Star of Wormwood in the Book of Revelation, so I’m guessing it’s a Dream thing.” Carolina remembered Kanan once telling her that he had a literal guardian angel looking out for him in Katou. Hopefully they would all have a figurative one looking out for them in this search. God knew, they were going to need all the help they could get. “So. How exactly does it work? Do they have to open the other seals first?”
Katou probably deserved to be yelled at, he knew that much, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it. His face took on a mask of listlessness, and he stared out past Carolina, willing to take it but allowing any emotion to cross his face during it.
“The Star’s in there. ‘The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter,’” he recited from memory. He'd spent quite a bit of time the last few days reading all he could about this. “It's mentioned a few times in the Old Testament as well. But no, I don't think no other seals need to be broken. When I set it off in the dreams,” it was, after all, obvious that Carolina knew it came from his dreams now, “all I needed was a whole lot of astral power.”
Lucifer had activated Kings Cross and opened the Gates to Etemenanki, God’s realm before he'd hatched the Egg. But he didn't know if that had anything to do with the summoning of the Star, and it was best not to rely on something like that. “The good news is, as far as I know, I'm the only person here with enough astral power to set it off.”
“That’s definitely good news.” Still, Carolina was wary about relaxing just yet. She probably wouldn’t be able to relax entirely until the damn thing was safe and buried wherever the Agency kept their WMDs. “It’s not smart to steal one of the seven seals without knowing how to make the damn thing work, though. How did you manage to stop it in the Dreams?” Not that many solutions carried over, but after being on the response team for over a year, Carolina had gotten pretty good at improvising with what they had to work with in the real world.
“So how does it work? Is the Star another way of saying the egg can call down an extinction-event meteor?” She was really going to have to brush up on her Bible study. Her old Sunday School teacher would’ve been mortified if she knew Carolina’d forgotten about the trumpets. “Another thing. How did they even know you had it in the first place? Did they track it somehow?” If they did, then it stood to reason that they might be able to use that same method to figure out where it was now.
Katou frowned. Whoever stole it probably also thought it would only take out the evil 1/3rd of the population, like he and Uriel had thought. They'd been informed shortly after Katou set it off that it would actually wipe out everything. Make a blank slate for God to try again with.
“No idea.” He answered her question cheerily. “The star’s what finally did me in for good in the dreams. I was one of the first to go. For all I know it did wipe out the world.” He wanted to believe Setsuna had found a way. Found a way to kill Lucifer. Found a way to save the world. “My memory’s a little fuzzy from around then. But I think that's about it. Poisoned water, giant meteor, maybe something about a bunch of darkness. I got a tracking spell set up since it first disappeared, but we've had no luck so far. I don't know how they could've found it though. Some kinda cult with magic at their disposal maybe. But the goal is to definitely find it before it hatches, because honestly, I ain't got a fucking clue if this thing even can be stopped.”
Well, that was disconcerting. Carolina frowned at Katou. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit. It was one thing to sign up to put your life on the line, but it was another thing to have that choice already made for you. Katou didn’t ask for dreams, or for the egg to appear, but here he was, dealing with it when shit went wrong anyway. “Well, you’re not going to die this time, so we’d better figure out how to stop them if they manage to figure out a way to opening the damn thing without you.”
Nodding, Carolina went to turn off the heat on the stove. She didn’t want it to burn and it was probably about done, anyway. “Tracking spell is a good start. What about the local chatter? The only magic people I know are on the Network. Do you think they’re part of Valarnet?” She narrowed her eyes. The idea didn’t sit well with her that one of their own would’ve done this.
Katou swallowed. He hadn’t even thought about the fact that they were likely members of Valarnet. It wasn’t that he trusted, or even knew everyone on the net, but it had still always felt like a place where he could let his guard down. “I didn’t think of that,” Katou admitted. “I’ve been hanging around the Magic Guild a bit, but I ain’t picked up nothing there.”
“I hate to say it, but we at least have to check on everyone currently on the net. Especially the newcomers.” Carolina took a sip of wine, considering the situation. “I don’t know anything about magic. So if you’re asking me for help, that means you expect there to be something to fight.” Fighting she could do. Hell, it was what she did best. Even the Corps had pulled her back to have her do just that. She had never seen Katou fight, but she knew he could handle himself in battle. Unfortunately, if they also had to keep Katou safe, he couldn’t exactly lead the charge. Kanan was getting better with the Force, but she wasn’t sure just how confident he was to join in a full-scale battle. Definitely something to work on.
“Let’s assume the worst and whatever you’re fighting in the Dreams is going to appear here. What kind of star are we talking about? Is the damn thing going to pull the Earth into the Sun kind of star, or is it a smaller thing we can actually destroy before it kills everyone?” There were plenty of weapons at the Agency that they could use to try and destroy the damn thing. Carolina pulled out some plates. No sense in trying to plan on an empty stomach.
Katou scowled. This would teach him for keeping weapons of mass destruction under his mattress. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what to expect when Natasha had told him he’d be team leader, but he hadn’t expected it to be this difficult. Of course, maybe he should have when almost everyone in the county could be the person who took it. “Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. I ain’t so good with computers or nothing. You wouldn’t happen to know someone who’d be able to help narrow that down, do you?” After all, there were tons of people on the Network. He couldn’t very well look into all of them.
Katou’s memory from that time in his dreams was a little choppy. His soul had been leaving his body, and his mind hadn’t exactly been all there. But it was hard to forget the star that descended upon them. They’d been on the highest plane of heaven, so they had been the first to see it falling from the sky. The first to be engulfed by it. “No, it comes down. Like a bright meteor. I think if we had the manpower, we could destroy it. Like in Armageddon,” he said, giving a lopsided grin at the reference. He didn’t think drilling a bomb into the middle of the Star of Wormwood would really work, but something might. “Or at least redirect it. Especially with all them magic freaks we have running around.”
Occasionally, Carolina wished she could use the military’s resources for Agency business. This was one of those times. “The only computer wiz I know is currently an IT guy. He’s good with physical locks, but I’m not sure if cyberstalking is in his skillset.” If they needed to infiltrate a building with a state of the art security system, then York was their guy. Although to be honest, she wasn’t entirely sure what the guy did nowadays. Knowing the OC police department, he was probably battling blue screens of death on a daily basis.
To hear that the Star was more like a meteor than an actual star was probably the first piece of good luck in the entire damn situation. “Good. Manpower we can get. As for weapons…” Carolina smirked. Testing the Agency’s weapons had been the main selling point of her job. Certainly made it worth all the paperwork she ended up with. “I think we’ll have a few options. Depending on how close we can get and how fast it falls.”
Katou sighed. “Guess I’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. Just how I wanted to spend my weekend; reading through people’s old dramay bullshit.” Then again, he did tend to kill a lot of his free time scrolling through the Network already. It was infinitely more entertaining than Facebook.
Katou leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, frown on his face, as he thought it over. “I think it’s pretty slow,” Katou said. “We were right up there. You know, highest plane of heaven and all that, right where the damn thing popped out from, and it still took maybe an hour to do me in.” He frowned. “Maybe. I dunno; you know how time moves when you’re in the middle of a fight.”
“Welcome to the glamorous world of leadership, kid.” Most people who wanted to lead a team never quite realized how much behind the scenes research went into every game plan. “Just wait until you have to start the paperwork.” Carolina topped off both her glass and Katou’s before putting the wine away. It was a decent enough wine, although she usually preferred a good beer. Nothing wrong with good ol’ beer and tequila. Huh. Maybe that was why those finishing lessons never stuck.
“Slow is good. Slow gives us more time. An hour is plenty of time to mobilize.” Hell, they could probably pull it off in ten or fifteen minutes if need be, but she would much rather they have more wiggle room. “If they manage to open the damn thing, we’ll find a way to destroy it.”
“Ugh,” Katou groaned. With everything else, he had totally forgotten that he'd have to do all the extra paperwork that came with being a team leader.
A slow end of the world was probably better than an instantaneous one, he agreed, but he still wasn't sure if they’d have enough time. He didn't know the first thing about magic or about how to destroy stars. But Carolina had confidence that they could figure things out, and given the amount of county-wide disasters that always plagued this place, he had no doubt that even if he wasn't up for it, someone else would be. “Yeah, if there's anything the people in this county are good at, it's destroying shit,” he said with a lopsided smile. “We totally got this.”