2019-10-11 - Take Me On

Finch hasn't felt normal in over a week. She's all kinds of sick thanks to her charmingly adorably yet maddeningly frustrating boyfriend. Sitting in the Grizzly Den Diner feels normal only in that she's not in bed puking up her guts into a bucket ever twenty minutes or so. She blinks around in confusion for a moment, trying to remember how she got here and coming up epically blank. "Did I order anything?" she asks Itzhak, because she can't recall.

Itzhak's slumped back in the booth, one knee hiked against the edge of the table, flipping through the Auto Trader. He just bought a shop truck but several people have asked him to scout out cars for them. What a burden! He looks bizarrely healthy for a guy who just barely got out of the hospital and then went and instigated a fistfight. "I ordered you toast and tea," he answers Finch. "Ugh, can you believe they're asking eighteen thousand for that junk!"

August, the reason Itzhak is looking remarkably hale and hearty, is looking a lot better himself. He could still stand to put in some weight, and he's working on that in the form of a pair if waffles with whipped cream and bananas, which he doesn't remember ordering. They taste good, though! ...he thinks.

"Not a shocker, they way overcharge for garbage anymore. Why you think my car's ten years old?" He'll just use glimmer to keep it on the road forever at this point.

Finch makes a sound at Itzhak. "I am so sick of tea and toast," she mutters. She doesn't need William Gohl up in her skull to be cranky, the Flu has had that covered. She picks up her tea, then squints at the sound of her phone and begins looking for where she put it.

"Hear ya," Itzhak says, glancing up at Finch with a hitch of a sympathetic smile. He picks up one of the cups of coffee, looks back down and what the hell. Those eyebrows go alarmed. He flips the pages back and forth. Is he seeing this right? "Uhhhhh, guys?" The illustration of the person in the ad is not doing as they should and staying in one place! Is he hallucinating from the flu again??

August pauses midbite to peer at the ads with the still image person. He slowly lowers his fork, leans over to squint. "What...on Earth..." He glances up at the waitress back down at the figure. He sighs, looks askance at Itzhak. "Please tell me we're not Over There."

"Iggy?" Finch asks, staring at the phone, swiping through. "Guys? Iggy's in trouble I think." She turns the phone for them to see, and catches a glimpse of the magazine and the moving figures. "That....looks wrong..." She blinks.

"Oh no." Itzhak cranes his long neck to look at Finch's phone. "I'm gonna be so mad at him!" He scowls ferociously at tiny-Iggy. ...Are the Auto Trader people going after Ignacio?! Itzhak barks at the magazine, "Hey!" and reaches into the frame to stop them. That is NOT GOING TO WORK, Itzil! Or is it...?

"What the hell..." August peers from Finch's phone to the Auto Trader. "Can you tear out the page? Will that stop them?" He sees Itzhak try to reach into the page, grabs his other arm. "Careful," he warns, "who knows what we're dealing with."

"What the hell is going on?" Finch declares, and she watches Itzhak get pulled into the magazine, yelping and reaching to try and grab the mechanic's foot, much as Ignacio grabbed hers when she was pulled into that Hedge.

There's a screech of brakes from out front of the diner, as what looks like an unmarked police cruiser brakes and swerves slightly in an effort to avoid a trashcan that spontaneously tumbles into the street. The thing has bull bars mounted on the front for a reason. And that reason has nothing to do with rogue garbage receptacles. CRACK as the vehicle comes to a halt and half crumples the thing, sending it skittering away to the curb.

Not August too! Finch grabs the magazine, trying to see what happened to the two men and looking for Iggy in it, yelling obscenities at the top of her lungs, some of them in Spanish. Of course the first words Iggy taught her were curse words.

Ignacio is somewhere terribly proud. It's a beautiful thing.

Itzhak curses as he trips over the trash can, stumbles to a halt, and discovers he's now an illustration too. And that his cursing was silenced, this is a family show! He pulls August through with him, to his dismay. "----!" Now August is also a drawing.

August falls in after Itzhak, stares at their surroundings, Itzhak, himself. His expression gradually changes to 'you have for to be fucking kidding me'.

The cop car swings up to the curb and the lone occupant climbs out, also dressed like a bit of a cliche; which is to say, in the black on black and hefty duty rig of a patrol officer. Never mind that this particular cop is a captain, and his job requires he wear a (cheap) suit. He looks down at himself in some confusion, then through the window of the diner at Finch sitting there. Confusion.

Finch gets up from the booth and she heads for the door, spotting the police officer. She kicks it open with a combat-booted foot and stomps over to him, all five feet, four inches of her. "Do you see people moving in this!?" she demands of him, shoving the magazine open to the strange ads in his face. Oh look, there are illustrations of August and Itzhak, and they are moving. "We need to get to Steelhead Garage like NOW!"

NOT HIS CAR! Itzhak roars, "Hey you BLEEP get away from my *BLEEP*ing car!" and charges the dude, six foot one of illustrated Jewish fury. He goes for him fist-first without hesitating.

August pauses for half a second to remind himself that last time other people were the cartoons, and it hadn't made sense even though he wasn't. He leaves the guy going after Heartbreaker to Itzhak, since he sounds mad enough to take care of it, turns his attention to the one after Ignacio. This isn't real, so he doesn't feel too bad about reaching out and trying to break the guy's fucking leg, one hand slowly curling into a fist and turning sideways with a swift yank, like he's turning the bone by hand.

Ruiz looks like he's still trying to orient himself to all of this. What the fuck kind of a dream turns him back into a beat cop, anyway? "Fuck," is his conclusion on that front, right before Finch rolls up on him with her combat boots and her stomping. "Who the hell are you?" What cop addresses people like that? Questions for the ages. He does move back toward his cruiser though, and pop the back door open for Finch. She gets to ride behind the cage!

"Finch Celaeno," the pink haired pixie declares. "I'm sure you'll remember that someday when you arrest me for murdering all the men in my family. But for now, people are in trouble. Go man, Go!" Finch is a weird name. He might remember a similarly bird-named woman from long ago, at a party, somewhere not here, what did she tell him her name was? Wren? Finch climbs into the back with a grunt. "Hurry, please!"

Itzhak makes an awful sound and drops to his knees, his scalp split open and bleeding terrifically in sketchy slashes of black. "----! YOU ------ING -----!" Okay, he can't be hurt that bad if he can scream curses at the top of his lungs. "Baby, don't leave me!" That's...to the car. Heartbreaker listens to him, and screeches to a halt.

August stares as the guy...bleeds? into nothing when August breaks his leg. Well, that's not how he expected that to go. Except then he's dodging a fire extinguisher and then Ignacio, so he doesn't have time to think about it.

More swearing from Itzhak. August turns, sees Heartbreaker speeding away. He's not thinking too carefully about what he's doing, just finds something big and important under the fiberglass hood and smashes it. He flinches when the block snaps in response to his grip on it, lets go immediately. With a wince, he says to Itzhak, "I'll fix it."

Finch? "Who the fuck names their kid after a bird," is what the cop grumbles as he climbs into his cruiser, and tries to think where he's seen this girl before. He sees a lot of girls, so she could be anyone, really.

The mean-looking beast swerves back onto the street and guns it for Steelhead.

"It's a family thing. My mom is a Wren, Gran is Dove, Auntie is Starling, I got off easy," Finch declares to the cop. "My cousins are Harry and Perry, short for Harrier and Peregrine. I may not feel ALL that bad when I have to murder them. They're kind of blond dipshits." Pause. "I think I have an great great uncle Pigeon somewhere in the old family tree too." She curses in Spanish as the garage comes into view.

Itzhak gets to his feet, and makes an utterly stricken expression as he hears the crash. "ROEN!" He looks at August accusingly. WHY, AUGUST? WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO HIM? He breaks into a run to get to his poor car.

"I can fix it!" August assures Itzhak. Well, assuming they can get the fire out. Which, could prove a problem, and this isn't a fire August made so he can't really...do, anything. Car, don't blow up, maybe. Please don't blow up! Fixing a blown up car will be much harder. He works on fixing things even as the fire eats at them, stubbornly trying to keep the car in one piece.

"Oh no," Finch breathes at the sight of the wrecked car. She checks the phone urgently, then the magazine pages, trying to find her people in that other world. "Let me out!" Stupid cop car back doors.

Ooh, that's not going to end well. The cop car skids to a halt in front of the garage, fishtailing slightly and kicking up dust as it comes to a halt. The correct thing to do here would be to call dispatch and alert them of the need for fire, and possibly a medic. Which he does, after popping the back door for Finch to climb out. Whatever thoughts he has about her parentage or familial naming scheme, he keeps to himself.

Itzhak is pissed the hell off but there's no longer anyone to expend his ire on. Except Ignacio who's thwapping him in the chest. "What?! Use your words!" He can see Finch through the 'window' of the phone, and follows Ignacio as he runs to where she's standing. "...We need a door."

Finch gets out of the back of the cop car, holding the phone up and moving it around, trying to find them, so she can reach them. THERE! There is Iggy and Itzhak. She chews her lower lip and just goes for it, shoving her hand through the phone to try and grab Ignacio's hand. "Hang onto me so I don't get pulled through!" she barks at Ruiz.

August keeps up the fight against the fire, fixing the car as much as he can. Because, well, there's a chance the car isn't the same one as the one in their world? But he's not taking that risk. Itzhak will hate him forever if it. So. It gets fixed. "Can she pull us back like we were pulled in?"

Ruiz doesn't need to be asked twice. He quits his lollygagging and hesitates a moment while he tries to figure out what to grab onto. And settles eventually for the girl's arm. The one not employed in trying to reach.. through her.. phone. This just keeps getting more and more fucked up. He holds on tight, though.

Itzhak grabs Ignacio's shoulder and August's hand. "Do it, de Santos!"