Fwip. Fwip. Swoosh. It was your average evening in MRC's main room. Someone was decorating the office ceiling with pencils, someone else was shooting paper balls into a can, and someone across the room disapproved. Not everyone on the force approved of such behavior... though many of these folks really didn't have the initiative to complain. Later, Quin would likely find a nice box of pens passive aggressively left on her desk as a subtle hint that maybe she ought to switch from pencils. And Ashton would get a new stack of paperwork. Though that was likely unrelated to basket paper ball.

They were bored. As bored as one could be during the down-time between cases and calls. Despite his efforts, Ashton had already caught up on his paperwork, and the night was relatively calm. The calls that had come in had been fielded by other cops or MRC. They hadn't had anything reach out and nab their attention. Maybe soon. Hopefully. Until then...


Ashton started doodling on a paper pad.

"You would think," Quin said as she looked over at Ashton, "That by now they would have replaced this ceiling tile." The thing was wrecked, the holes left over from so many thrown pencils peppering the surface with pits that were starting to look more like swiss cheese than ceiling tile.

"I don't even have to look anymore." she commented, grinning and looking right at him as she threw the next two, the grin shifting to a smirk as they stuck perfectly into her tile. Out of pencils, Quin raised her eyes up, giving a tug on the erasers with her power to make the pencils float back down into her waiting hands.

"If it wasn't a curse to say I was bored...I would totally say I'm bored right now."

He returned the grin, along with a smirk. "They're lazy," He commented. "Or figure a new one would suffer a similar fate." That latter one was probably true. MRC officers were trusted with a lot of things, one of which was to live up to expectations. If they had an expectation about Quin involving said ceiling tile. they'd trust it. Or, they were just horribly lazy. That worked, too.

He shook his head, and a light chuckle escaped him. Boredom, a curse. "You have to be careful with that. If my old man heard me saying stuff like that, he'd always give me chores. He'd probably give me chores right now if he heard me calling him my old man, come to think of it... heh." Again, he shook his head, amused with the thought. The old man's face appeared in his mind, glowering. With a mental sweep of his hand, he brushed it away. What didn't tick his father off? Aside from his football team winning consistently, that was.

"Somehow it's not hard for me to believe that your dad was a hard-ass." Quin said, starting the ritual over. The sound of the pencils hitting tile was kind of like a ticking clock, it's absence at this point was louder than its presence.

"On hard-ass begets another...isn't that how the saying goes?" There really wasn't a saying, but Quin was amused with herself and smirking at Ashton anyway. That seemed to be the theme of the night, after all. Smirking and throwing pencils.

"I am surprised you don't know what I'm referencing though...it's one of those things people never say in hospitals or police stations. The second someone says...'I'm bored..."

As if on cue, the phone rang.

Smirking was the facial expression of the day to everything she'd said to him. Right, right, and right. The smirk vanished right as the phone started ringing. "Maybe you'll have to meet him," Ashton said. He plucked the phone off its hook, turned it towards him, and cradled it between his ear as his shoulder as he glanced her way. "Sometime," He finished. To the phone, he stated 'Hello!'"Yeah?" He listened. "Yeah?" More listening. "Okay..." Less listening, and more jotting something down. "We're on our way." That said, he hung up.

Ashton looked to Quin, arching one eye with perfect delivery. "If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?" His right index finger pointed her way.

Quin raised an eyebrow. She knew what she was supposed to say, but that didn't mean she was going to say it. Oh no, that was far too easy.

"MRC, I guess..." she said, feigning ignorance.

Rising from her chair and stretching, the redhead grabbed her coat from the back of her chair and started pulling it on while she waited for Ashton.

"If it's a mutant who can shift into a marshmallow and is terrorizing people at a coffee shop, I don't even want to know."

The chair legs scritched slightly on the floor as he pushed up out of his seat. His black coat hung on the wall a short walk away. "Sadly," he stated, as the coat slipped off its perch. "That isn't the case. We've got a haunted house a few weeks past Halloween. Moans coming from it, and the neighbors complained. Someone who said their name was Fred swore he saw a ghost." He did his best not to roll his eyes or make any comments about mystery machines.

He smiled at Quin as Ashton straightened his jacket, and smoothed out the shoulders. "Guess that leaves us."

It was good, though. It didn't involve any gunshots heard, yet. At most, he figured they'd have to tell off someone being noisy or nosy. Someone out of their gourd. Maybe Fred was seeing things? Though that seemed more a Shaggy thing.

"Moaning eh? Quin said as she and Ashton made their way to their squad car, "Maybe tonight will be less than boring."

So there was a 'haunted' house. There were several options here, "What do you think?" the redhead asked as she climbed into the passenger seat of the car, "My vote is for teenager who just found out he can be invisible and is having a good time playing with his new powers."

>>"Moaning, eh?"

Ashton shot Quin a look.

>>"Maybe tonight will be less than boring."

"We'll see," he said, crooked smile on his face. His initial thought when he'd said moaning had been the spiritual kind. What kind of moaning was she thinking of? He certainly didn't dwell on that. And a good thing, too, because she clarified a moment later.

"Yeah. Possibly," He commented dryly. "I certainly didn't get hinky vibes off the caller's description of events." His door swung open, and he slipped into the drivers seat, shutting it again with a click. He buckled in and started the squad car up.

Honestly, she'd expected a better retort than, 'we'll see'. Maybe the slow night had affected Ashton's brain. That was okay though, they were out of the briefing room and on to bigger, better, and more exciting things now.

"Well, I suppose that's better than if it was hinky." she said, brows drawing together slightly. They'd had their share of hinky over the last few months, and it hadn't really been all that exciting.

"But still...what's your bet? My money is still on invisi-boy."

The vehicle's engine purred as he started it up. Turning in his seat, Ashton checked behind him so he could reverse without hitting any cars, people, or trash cans. "My vote is for Danny Phantom." He said, as he focused. Was it a joke? Was it serious? He didn't give a clue from his tone, either way. The squad car turned and pointed its way out of the garage.

~*~

Across town, at the aforementioned apartment, a set of shuttered blinds stirred, as if being moved by the wind. Yet, there was no wind. The window was closed. In a nearby alley, there was the sound of shattering glass, and a cat's hissing growl pierced the night. A moment later, the air thrummed with the hum of something that could only be described as ambient moaning, and a trash can lid hovered, then flew across the street to crash against a faded blue dumpster's wall.

It didn't take them long to get to the house in question, and Quin spent most of that time trying to figure out what the heck Ashton had meant when he mentioned Danny Phantom. Quin had never heard of the guy and wondered if he was one of the X-Men or if it was some obscure reference he was trying to stick her with.

"Either way, I guess we'll find out soon enough." she said as they pulled to a stop in front of the row house. "Doesn't look haunted to me...." she said, just as a loud crash exploded from the alleyway.

"Then again...I have been known to be wrong..." she said, drawing her side arm and making for the noise.

The building was in a row of old red brick apartments, with an alley in-between one, and another across the street. They looked run-down, but kept up, and someone had cared enough to mend the windows and keep the gutters clean. Between the houses, there wasn't more than a bare gap of a few inches, nearly a foot, and one could clearly see some cables running from building to building. Maybe some people were stealing it? Who knew? It wasn't something he cared to investigate, since his focus had moved from the crash to Quin to the alley.

"OooOoOooooOooOooOOooo!" A haunting voice trailed. He shot Quin a look that spelled a message very clearly. The message was three letters. A W, a T, and an F. Then, he snapped his focus back to the scene, side arm nice and snug in his hands and at the ready. As they got nearer to the alley, lights flashed in the windows of the so-called 'haunted house', and there was the sound of breaking china or glass... but the alley was empty. A trash can lay on its side, contents belched out onto the pavement in a mess of unappealing peels and beer bottles. One of them rocked gently side to side.

His voice came out rough, colored with a tone of dry annoyance. Whatever that had been, it certainly hadn't amused him. "Invisible boy is looking more and more like a winner," He said quietly to her. Louder, and turning towards the supposedly-abandoned house, he announced "This is the police. We got a complaint about noise. If you're causing trouble, come out and talk. You aren't in trouble." Quieter, he added. "Yet." There. That was the warning.

The alley was silent as the grave.

Yet.
That word hung in the chilly air...kind of like the trash can lid that came flying down the alleyway in their general direction. Luckily, it was one of those cheap plastic ones and Quin sent it to the side with an easy jerk of her head that left her hands free to hold her side arm.

"Again...this is the police!" she announced, "And we are not in the mood for games."

Something moved in the alleyway, casting a long shadow.

Quin raised her gun. "Come out with your hands up!!"

A big menacing shadow stretched towards them, and 'loomed' was a good word to describe it. A hundred different possibilities hung in the air. Was it a man with a knife? A shadow mutant? A dragon? A clown? That last one sent a cold shudder of childhood trauma through him that he kept to himself. Whatever it was, the shadow was drawing closer. It slinked towards them, and time seemed to stretch with it, compounding the tension of his held breath.

A pair of gold-green eyes flicked up towards them, and jaws pulled back in a fanged hisssssss. A black cat yowled. Ashton took a step back, and he was proud he didn't fall on his butt.

The cat's tail end tensed as muscles bunched. It sprang away further down the alleyway, making itself scarce.

The detective looked towards his partner. "That was scary!" He emphasized with a weak laugh.