River Frogs

( for Jay and I)
A mass of black hair sunk further into her office chair, tired eyes trying to focus on the report she was trying to type for her supervisor. However, it was made difficult by the teen sitting on the edge of her desk, talking amiably to the air, though the conversation, she supposed, was supposed to be directed at her She sighed, bringing the teen's attention; Theta Sigma, an alien menace to the lower ranked members of NYC UNIT for several months now; her coworkers, the younger ones anyways, seemed to find him easy to get along with and laid back, but she couldn't see this at all; he was no better at being quiet than her own 7 year old son back home.

"Theta, don't you have something better to do?"

The Timelord dropped the piece of ginger colored hair he was trying to braid (it was a tad short for braiding, yet), frowning and shugging in response. His answer came out in a distinct Australian accent, though as he talked it wavered between sounding a bit English or American.

"Not really; all the people I normally travel with are off doing school and work and the such, so I just... started hanging out here" he grinned "not that here is a bad place! You still remember the mock-Thresh Festival last month-?"

"Yes, I remember" more like, she remembered how the reports she'd been working on for a few days had been soaked by a water balloon, thrown by a coworker in a nearby cubicle.

"Look, why don't you do something productive, like a UNIT case?" she brought up some old UNIT archives on her computer, and clicked on one randomly; they were all dropped cases, but the teen didn't need to know that. She just needed to give him something to do so he'd go already and leave her to finish her work before her shift was over. The case highlighted something along the Miami river in Ohio, a sighting from several people of a young lizard or frog man; they'd originally thought it could have been an extraterrestrial, but after a year or so of no news from the area, even when they sent some agents out to investigate it, they'd concluded it was a false alarm.

"there was a possible extraterrestial spotted in ohio a few weeks ago, and we've been needing someone to go investigate it; think you could, since you're so lacking of things to do?" Theta frowned, glancing up at the folder the file was in; dropped cases. Never the less, he smiled reassuringly at the woman as if he actually believed it was an important, active case.

"Of course! See ya, er, Jessica was it?"

Jessica nodded, grabbing the phone by her computer and quickly punching in a number "Yeah? This is Jess. Who's the closest junior unit to Loveland, Ohio? ... okay, let him know that there's someone coming over to help work on an old case. It'll provide him with some field experience, anyhow. The scientific aids always seem to need more of that"

It was a slow day at the Runnymede Playhouse facility, which really wasn't saying much. The out of the way site, largely focused on R&D regarding alien technology had long ago been nicknamed the place where 'careers go to die'. So, it was a natural location to shuffle an underage scientific aid. In fact, said young man, Jay, could be found sitting at a small table in the lab area. Various bits of machinery strewn about himself and a pair of safety goggles adorning his face...

For all of the minute and a half it took for a large, redheaded man in a more military UNIT uniform to stride over to the young man and dropped a mania envelop into his lap before folding his arms over his chest. "Congratulations, you've got your first field assignment, kid."

Startled out of his thoughts, Jay glanced from the envelop to the redhead and back to it. "Um, Major Gardner, I'm actually really close to a breakthrough on this system and-"

"No buts. You need the experience, and the equipment wont be changed from when you leave." The Major retorted, hiding an amused grin. It wasn't that he disliked Jay (although he did have misgivings about the young man being dumped on him) it was just that... these moments were so easy. "You'll be meeting up with another agent coming in from the New York office. They're thinking real alien sighting."

Technically true, the Major assured himself. Once they thought that. Some still did. Especially in recent times when any shadow was an alien (rather than, once upon a time, Communists.) "The envelop has all the information you need. Transport will be arranged in half an hour."

Jay's response was simply to purse his lips in annoyance, realizing he'd lost this debate... mostly because it hadn't been a debate at all! And thirty minutes later found him bundled into a military marked truck, driven along by another officer who's name hadn't been volunteered, and Jay hadn't asked as he read all available data in the folder. Although he had to wonder if he should have even bothered studying so... 'thoroughly'. They had one soldier and a truck with the bare minimum of equipment for an investigation. It was abundantly clear this was going to be low-priority and left him straining at his decision. He could either coast through the investigation, or actually try and see it through to spite Major Gardner.

By the time they had arrived to the outskirts of Loveland, Jay had settled on 'spite'. He'd see this through to as successful a conclusion as could be found. Proving conclusively either that YES there was something going on, or NO there wasn't. No room for a 'maybe'.

"Not an especially big town." He considered. "So, finding our liaison shouldn't be too terribly difficult..."

It was only after he'd spoken those words, while still staring at the 'Welcome To-' sign for the town that it dawned upon the young scientist: Major Gardner hadn't actually told him anything about the man he was supposed to meet with.

"Oh for crying out loud..."