Summary: Ellie and Natalia attempt to avoid the the university grant team, Carlos finds someone in need of help and the team have an unexpected reunion.
The sunrise was just beginning to scream as Dr Green first opened her eyes sleepily. She glanced over at the clock, which, from what her blurry vision could tell, had the hands dripping some kind of yellow fluid. Ugh, Ellie thought. I'll have to fix it again, which will involve putting on my glasses which will involve moving, something she felt not willing to explore at the present time.
She decided immediately that that was a problem for a few minutes time and snuggled back into her pillow. At least she thought it was a pillow. She raised her hand to her face lazily to rub her eyes.
Her vision began to clear and she realised that she had been sleeping not on a pillow, but on Natalia's chest, the top of the biochemist's head nuzzled into her girlfriend's neck. Which was in all fairness, Ellie mused, a rather comfy place to sleep.
"Mm..." Natalia murmured, shifting slightly and Ellie's head hit the mattress with a thump, her comfy resting place indignantly pulled away from her. Ellie scowled and poked Nat's ribs lightly.
"Naaaaat, wake up!"
"Huh?"
"It's morning. Wake up." Ellie fumbled for her phone and glasses, sliding the latter onto her nose clumsily. She unplugged and unlocked her phone, looking at the supposed time, as well as her messages. Then a message notification made her heart drop down to her stomach.
There was a text from the oddly nicknamed 'Uni Grant Team DO NOT ANSWER'. Ellie opened it.
'We are coming to the town today. We have not heard from you in a long time and we wish to speak with you if you aren't missing.'
Ellie visibly paled and turned to Natalia, whose face was half buried in her pillow.
"Wake up!" Ellie jumped on top of her surprised companion.
"Ow! What the hell, Ellie?!"
"We need to get up NOW."
"Okay, okay, geez. Is something wrong? Did the Faceless Old Woman set something on fire again?" The astrophysicist sat up sleepily, adjusting her tank top strap, which had drooped over her shoulder. Her hair was a mess, a slight smudge of makeup that hadn't quite been removed right around her eyes, and as far as Ellie was concerned, she had never been more beautiful.
"No, no," the biochemist waved her hand dismissively "the university grant team is coming to Night Vale, which means we need to hide. Dammit, I need to call Brent."
"I don't understand." Natalia said, running a hand through her frazzled hair. "What's so bad about the university grant team? Carlos is the one in communication with them, and he is always organised with anything to do with the team's effectiveness...mostly."
"Except it's not Carlos in charge of the money the university sends us...." Ellie admitted.
"What? Why not?"
"He tried to spend a big chunk of it in the first few weeks. It was understandable given the amount of horrific stuff there was those first months, but the university wasn't having it so they transferred control of money."
Natalia nodded at that. Carlos had been overwhelmed for most of the initial six months in Night Vale. The team had had to band together on several occasions to force him to leave the lab. It was probably a good job that the team had the funds in someone else's hands, or otherwise Carlos would have spent it on experiments and run the budget dry in four days.
"Okay, not so bad."
"They transferred it to me." Ellie cringed.
"A little worse, but what's the big problem?"
"Wellllllll, during the Strex incident, we needed to rebuild a whole bunch of things and get new equipment that the donations from the council didn't really cover, and I had access to the grant's bank accounts..." Ellie said sheepishly.
"Oh no. You didn't." Natalia's eyes widened and she gave the other woman a pointed look.
"I may have overdrawn a bit. Which is exactly why we need to call everyone right now and hide ourselves until they leave."
".....how much?"
"About $10,000."
"SHIT."
~
Carlos' morning was going great. He had no idea how long it had been since he'd called Cecil or his team, the masked army had messed up in the construction of his temporary lab, and he'd fallen over more than six times in the last hour because of his stupid shoes, and now, NOW, Doug wanted a favour.
"Yes?" Carlos forced a smile and looked up at the towering figure.
"Something has been spotted by one of our scouts."
Carlos grit his teeth in response. The masked army were getting a little annoying with their constant skirmishes outside his new house and his temporary lab. He was trying to investigate this place and he liked the silence being alone gave him. He had always preferred doing his investigations alone anyway, and the masked army constantly barging around where he was trying to work was only cementing this fact into Carlos' brain. The only reason he tolerated the noise was because the army often had ideas about the things that Carlos should investigate.
"Any idea what it is?"
"They said it looked like a person."
"A person? What's so strange about that?"
Doug arched an eyebrow. "They are your size."
Carlos gaped. All of the masked warriors had to be at least three metres tall each. Carlos had had to add a sliding roof to his temporary lab so the army members could stand in it. Every one that was the same size as Carlos in the desert had been a citizen of Night Vale and had all vanished during the Strex incident, returning to their hometown through the old oak doors.
"Take me to them!" Carlos said eagerly.
Doug nodded and led the way, walking slowly across the desert as Carlos ran next to him in an attempt to keep up with the army leader's massive strides. After Carlos had exhausted himself running and was almost on the verge of asking Doug to stop, the masked man pointed towards a rocky outcrop around one hundred metres away, where a human was resting against the rock face wearily. Carlos edged towards the person until he could make out their shape. He recognised it almost immediately.
"Cecil?!" He cried. The silhouette of the person in front of him could not have been of anyone else. Carlos dropped his backpack next to Doug'a feet save for his water bottle and sprinted towards the figure. "CECIL!"
However, as Carlos got ever closer to the figure, something seemed off. The person certainly looked like Cecil, almost identical aside from three key features. Firstly, the skin tone was vastly more tan than Cecil's was. Cecil, despite the fact that he had grown up in a desert community, was rather pale. This was definitely not that shade, Carlos mused as he showed down and approached the figure more cautiously. Neither did the person have Cecil's almost white hair; it was darker, almost black, yet it stuck out at odd angles in the same bizarre way.
Lastly, and arguably the most shocking, were the eyes. Cecil's eyes were one of Carlos' favourite features. They were a deep violet and they shone with passion whenever he talked. Carlos' heart ached slightly when he thought of them. Whenever he stared into Cecil's eyes, he felt like he was staring into the man's soul. He wanted nothing more to see those eyes in front of him now, too kiss Cecil, tell him he would be home soon and then hopefully launch into several rounds of....well, Carlos could at least admit to himself that he missed the physical aspects of his and Cecil's relationship being apart.
But the eyes in front of him put all thought of Cecil out of his mind looking at the man in front of him. His eyes were dark, almost obsidian. There was no reflection of light in the man's eyes, as if the entire eyeball had been coloured in with an opaque black sharpie. He gazed in wonder at, aside from those three differences, how similar the two looked in terms of facial and body shape. The similarities really were striking.
"Hello?" Carlos asked hesitantly as the man seemed to stare past him. "Are you alright?"
"Smile....?" The man murmured wearily. His lips were cracked and dry. Carlos pulled out his water bottle and offered it to the man, who took it gratefully and gulped down huge mouthfuls of the liquid inside.
"Thank you, friend..." He said shakily.
"Are you alright? How did you end up here?" Carlos asked, offering an arm to help the man stand.
"I...I don't remember too much. I was talking to someone then there was this light....oh I can't remember too well."
"Look, scientifically speaking, I think it's best you come with me. I have a place you can stay." Carlos offered. "At least until you remember a bit more. Do you remember your name at least? I'm Carlos. I'm a scientist." He said, offering his hand to the man and shaking it as they walked back towards Doug.
"My name..." The dark eyed man said quietly. "My name is Kevin."
~
"While the crowd was distracted by the sudden weather, I was able to flag down a passing Sheriff's Secret Police helicopter which was conducting routine surveillance operations just overhead. I explained to the officers inside, all of whom where wearing loose-fitting gowns and Richard Nixon masks, that I was in need of a lift to the radio station for important community reasons. They did not respond, but they also did not do anything else. So, I hustled the representatives from the University of What It Is onto the craft..." Cecil's voice was drowned out by the scientists arguing with one another in the upper floors of the lab where the team used to reside before finding their own places.
"I cannot believe you embezzled money from the university, Ellie!" Jeffries scolded. "You put all of us at risk! Especially Carlos!"
"M'sorry..." Ellie said with a quivering lip. After the utter fiasco that the people of Night Vale had pulled in 'greeting' the new outsiders from their university, the team had retreated to the lab, safe in the knowledge that the grant team had left the town or were at least far away from the laboratory, and had immediately began arguing.
"What do we even do now? Do we even have the money to pay them back?" Rochelle asked in annoyance.
"No, don't be stupid, of course not!"
"I-I'm sorry." Ellie suddenly sobbed. "I.....I-I didn't know what to....what to do at the time and we had to p-pay the rent and repairs on the same day and you know what happened the last t-time someone didn't pay the rent on time!"
The team fell into shocked silence, apart from Dave and Rochelle, who looked incredibly confused as they had not been present for that particular problem. Jeffries and Johnson however, remembered all too well. It was in the first few months of living in Night Vale. Carlos forgot to pay the rent and Ellie had been targeted by the landlord and a chunk of the woman's leg had been taken out. She still had a large scar from where it had been torn out.
Tears rolled down Ellie's cheeks as she stood shaking at the memory. "I d-didn't want anyone to get hurt..."
"Ellie..." Natalia rushed forward and the biochemist sobbed loudly into her girlfriend's shoulder. "Ssshhhhh, it's okay, it won't happen again. We're all safe." She squeezed the young woman tightly and turned around to look at the rest of the team, as if daring them to say anything else.
"We'll pay it back in instalments." Brent said. "Maybe we can ask the council or secret police for a loan. They still owe us a favour or two."
Ellie raised her head. "Really?"
Brent gave her a reassuring smile and decided enough was enough in terms of making Ellie feel guilty and he did his best Shrek impression. "Really really."
Ellie choked out a small laugh in response before wiping her face, Natalia still holding her gently and protectively in her embrace.
"It doesn't mean you're off the hook, Dr Green." Dave said. "For starters, you have to tell Carlos."
"Oh god." She groaned. "Carlos is awful with bad new-"
The blonde biochemist was interrupted by a loud knock coming from the downstairs door. "Aaah! They've found us!" Ellie screeched and hid behind Natalia. The team all glanced at each other.
"I call dibs on not answering." Rochelle blurted.
"Me too!" Dave said.
"Nope!" Ellie added. Natalia just looked at Brent with a hopeful smile.
"Fine. But you owe me some of those waffles you're so good at making, Johnson." The ginger bearded man grumbled and headed down the stairs.
The rest of the team stood hesitantly at the top of the stairs as the characteristic sound of a door opening echoed from downstairs. A moment or two passed until Jeffries called up.
"Guys! Come down, quick!"
"That sounds like trouble." Dr Green grimaced and tightened her grip on Natalia's arm. There were a few prolonged moments of silence, then all of a sudden there was the thump of footsteps coming up the stairs. Ellie panicked and looked around the room, settling on a examination metal tray and standing behind the door to the communal area in order to ambush whomever was coming. Natalia, Dave and Rochelle followed her lead and hid behind the door. Ellie raised the tray above her head as she heard Brent say to his companion in the doorway "After you."
"Kyaaaaaaa!" Ellie shouted and brought the tray down onto the person who stepped through the door, briefcase in hand. Except, shockingly, the person, dressed in long slacks and a turtleneck, caught it with their spare arm. The person turned around, shaking his bald head and giving the smallest of wry smiles.
"My my, you have not changed a bit, Eleanor." The tall man said to the shocked woman in front of him.
Edwardo Perez held up his suitcase and his old lab coat in gesture as Jeffries grinned at the team behind him. "Now, I believe I came to ask the acting head scientist of this team whether I could have my old job back."