unrelenting_rhapsody | You know, it's probably the carbon monoxide levels....

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You know, it's probably the carbon monoxide levels....

Who: Dera and Yama
When: Some time after the damn company softball game.
What: Well, and then there were Thunderbirds.

Dera leaned his head back against the overly warm metal and giggled tiredly. Yes, he giggled. It all seemed so damn stupid now. It had been a normal day after all. Yama had been stretched out in the break room after the morning workouts, and he'd been reading a book, his legs draped over his partners...granted, it was a safer book than normal, but no point in taking chances. So, yeah, a normal afternoon mingling with the other agents before getting called off to the office.

It seemed a good week for monster migration. Everyone was getting pulled, their personal assignment? Get their asses to California and tag the first pair of Thunderbirds anyone had seen in decades. Tag. Like they were fucking Bald Eagles or something.

Sure, they were endangered and sure they were awesome as fuck and all that? But tagging. For fucks sake! Their lead had suggested drugging the cattle being stolen so the birds would sleep. Simple plan. Yeah.

Except the fucking BIRDS HADN'T EATEN THE DAMN COWS. One of the pair had scooped up unripe burger and they'd flown off, they were halfway along the flight trail in tailing the pair when the damn things came back. He'd been the one to reach out and grip Yama's wrist; they couldn't kill the birds...plus a sword would be a VERY BAD IDEA with LIGHTNING BIRDS. It wasn't exactly magic, his partner's powers might not cancel out a natural ability like energy conduction.

FUCK FUCK FUCK "Kiss the dirt!" DOWN DOWN DOWN!

The birds were grabbing more cows.

THE FUCK WOULD THEY NEED MORE COWS FOR?

In hindsight he should have figured that one out; when they ran out of cows to snag they went after anything that even moved. Or after anything that had a bioeletric impulse system. He was pretty sure they sensed nerve conduction. And it kinda fucking hurt when they got picked up by giant birds and yanked upward fast enough to force a nosebleed and then blacking out.

Why did normally private creatures migrate across country borders?

Nesting.

FUCKING NESTING.

The thunderbirds were set up in the local electric company; the factory burned coal and coke if the scrubbers and smoke stacks were any indication. And more importantly there was always a dim layer of smog before the tops of the exhaust vents were visible. The birds were practically invisible in their chosen heights. They had pulled the top scrubber out of one stack and were stuffing cows (and agents) down in the space between the main cycler and the outer steel plating. Apparently babies preferred their meat smoked. He came to with his head stuffed at an awkward angle under Yama's arm, his chin bearing the brunt of his weight since most of his body was wedged above his damn chin and against Yama....and cow. Well then. He was kind of grateful he hadn't broken his damn neck in the drop?

The birds were sitting at the top of the smoke pipe. They were blocking smoke release.

And CO2 release.

And that was probably why he giggled helplessly once he managed to wiggle off his damn chin. "Shiiiiiit....this can kill us!" Carbon Monoxide poisoning was not a dignified way to go really.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What about one of the eggs? He could raise it from a baby!

And, uh, crap. Somehow, he'd kind of forgotten about that, or not forgotten so much as ended up paying more attention to other things, like bird riding. He tugged at its head, trying to turn it, and just ending up unbalancing them both with a yelp. He was fine! Just a temporary and sudden loss of altitude.

No. The answer was NO and the bureau would never let them keep it!

That was a yelp. HIS PARTNER DIDN'T YELP MUCH AND THAT WAS A BAD SIGN! "IF YOU FALL TO YOUR DEATH I'M PUTTING BEATEN BY BIRD ON YOUR GRAVESTONE!" Just so he knew!

It was also a pretty good reason to get himself down through the nest even faster now though to get the mate tagged!

The bureau wouldn't or Gokudera wouldn't? People had taken home stranger pets. Granted, not giant death birds, but...

If he was dead and probably eaten by the bird, would he really care what was on his gravestone? He laughed, anyway, sounding only a little bit worried. "It's okay! It's fine! I'm fine!"

BOTH in this case. There were harsher limits on large animals as opposed to small. He'd read them.

And hell, he might, there were some pretty convincing arguments for afterlife existence in the bureau! "WHAT?! DID HEAR THAT PAST THE DAMN HOLE AND BIRDS!" And the wall of metal he was crawling closer to.

They could hide it somewhere?

Hopefully not too close. The bird continued to lose height and eventually, Yamamoto just jumped for it, banging his shoulder into the side of the opening, but managing to drag himself in far enough before the bird recovered. Ow.

Still alive enough for weak chuckles, though. "Said 'm fine?" And hey, the birds were tagged now?

Yama had a lot of faith in their ability to hide a giant electrobird. There wasn't a fucking shield or illusion in existence that was enough to hide a pissy thunder predator!

"And now you're back in a fucking smoke stack, congrats," Dera snorted, slapping the tag on the trapped bird before pulling the hole off it's legs and...tumbling down to safety yup.

"But mission accomplished this time!" That counted for something, right? It totally counted for something. Sure, it was still entirely possible they'd die in here, but they'd die with the glow of success around them.

"We achieve that every time," Dera couldn't help but point out, wiggling lower the moment momma (or poppa) bird started tearing into the nest looking for him. "I counted four eggs, they could take them and leave. get their asses back south since we pissed them off?"

"Well, yeah." Duh. And his shoulder really hurt again, so he was staying where he was while Gokudera scrambled down. "But you said 'back in a smoke stack,' and we are, but this time the birds're both tagged, so we're stuck in a smoke stack post-mission instead of during the mission."

~Logic~

"Don't think birds are sposed to move their nests, are they? Don't the eggs, like... do that thing where if you roll them around, they die?" He'd read that somewhere once, probably over Gokudera's shoulder in some big, boring book, but anything more than that escaped him.

"It was a comment on the existential uselessness of ever actually moving," he snorted, then laughed. Yeah, well. Job still done. "Radio won't work for shit in here." Sadly.

"Depends on age of eggs, young enough and they'll be fine as long as they don't get too fucking cold. It's either the adults take off with them or the teams come in to relocate them and we know which one they'll like more."

"Existential whatsits never finished a mission, I bet." Okay, so that word he did know, but it wasn't any fun if he just went along with it. He'd been stuck reading with Gokudera too often not to pick one up here or there.

The large hole in the outside wall was at least providing plenty of circulation, and the bird Yamamoto had landed on seemed less than keen to try its luck again so soon. Small favors and all that. "Either way we're stuck here, though, huh?"

He worked his way down carefully to sit next to him by the big hole, ah, breathing. Breathing was nice! "Well, yeah, that's why we get all the fucking credit and just get to talk about existential uselessness," he snorted.

"So, fucking vacation after this?"

If he sat still long enough, Yamamoto was going to end up sprawling on him, sort of like a creeping vine. A really cuddly creeping vine. When he spoke, it was a little wistful, as if they were talking about one of the more pleasant mythical critters they'd encountered. "When was the last time we got a vacation?"

Yeah, well, as long as Yamamoto didn't mind him wiggling over enough to stick a radio outside the hole in the smoke stack to hopefully get a signal he was good with it? "Well, by law we fucking earned days off, it says so on our paychecks and shit." JUST SAYING!

"And we tried, remember that lake?"

Naw, he was used to having a pillow that moved around a lot. Gokudera was squirmy at the best of times. "I don't know if the law was thinking about giant birds and stuff when it made that one."

"Oh... oh yeah. Don't remind me."

Hey, if he was absorbed in reading something he didn't wiggle! He was very still when his brain was properly engaged! "Hah, one fucking bar," he grinned, triumphant as the radio started squawking. Granted, it had to be out the hole and they weren't, but the fuckers knew Morse right? Right.

"Just saying we have had a vacation, technically, in the past few years. Due another though. No lakes."

If he was engaged in reading, though, half the time Yamamoto had fallen asleep, so he wasn't awake to appreciate it. "Maybe a lake, as long as there's nothing living in it. Think there's anything nasty in the Dead Sea?"

Well, that's what he got for having a power he didn't need to actually pay attention to! "Probably, remember that report of the disappearing, reappearing temple?" IT WAS POSSIBLE!

With their luck.

"Disneyland?"

But he was so well-rested those days!

He tipped his head back to eye Gokudera. "You want to go to Disneyland?"

Yeah, well, Yama sleeping well was also up there on Dera's priority list so hey.

"Fuck, not really? I could look at their hydroponics centers at Epcot, and some movie stuff? Mainly it's a main thoroughfare, heavily populated with humans which tends to discourage the beasties and ghoulies and shit."

That one, they could agree on. He didn't exactly sleep on missions, after all, so he had to make it up somewhere.

"That's Disney World, not Disneyland. That many people, there's bound to be a discontent spirit or two, though." He frowned. "I hate ghosts." They were so... not solid. "Hey, there was that one mountain spirit that kinda liked us. We could go visit her."

See? He had every right to make it a priority!

"Fuck if I care which one," Dera snorted. "And neither of us are mediums, they aren't likely to peg us among the however many thousands tend to go through the fucking place." JUST SAYING!

Huh, the mountain spirit huh? "Not a bad idea, but you remember how twitchy her domain is, we could get locked there for decades if someone chops a tree while we're visiting."

"With our luck?" They practically had supernatural bullseyes painted on them, from all the weird situations they ran into.

He was quiet perhaps a handful of seconds too long, considering that. "...Would that really be bad?"

"Yours is better than mine," he noted. "And I promise not to open any rifts while being bored in line?" THEY COULD TRY!

Oh. Huh. He was serious about that huh? "I'd get bored," he pointed out a touch regretfully. "And you'd get married or her Tengu would kill us both."

"Ha! Can you imagine some little kid's face if one of those frog things popped out?" Maybe they could dress it up, pretend it's a movie character or something.

He'd been nearly eaten (twice) by a giant, angry bird. You rethought some things when that happened. He'd get over it, though. He always did. "Yeah, guess you're right." ... "Maybe Disney wouldn't be so bad. They've got one in Tokyo, too. At least we're used to all the monsters and stuff there."

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