Today…was just the oddest day for Detective Jorge Cervantes. First of all, his alarm did not go off at all and he was nearly late for work. His good tie had a strange stain in it that he could not identify, his shoes were pinching, one of the side mirrors on his car was cracked, and for some reason, the second he stepped out onto the concrete leading up to the front door, two black cats quickly ran across his path before disappearing straight into thin air.

What the hell was all that about? But even as Jorge tried to push the thoughts away and start his day, he again marveled at the strangeness of the world he was within. There just seemed to be in impenetrable fog of ickyness in the air. As much as Jorge wanted to forget it, it was imposing, snarling, and gnashing its teeth right in his face. Something was wrong in his world…but what it was? He was going to have to discover.

Stepping into the precinct, the man sighed as he walked into the MRC division and looked about. Everyone else seemed to be going on with their regular day as if absolutely nothing was wrong. But he could just feel it…something was wrong. But…what…?

He paused as he stepped up to his desk and laid down to his jacket.

“Hmm…what’s going on?” he muttered as he stood before his desk. Something seemed…off about that too. What, was he in some episode of the Twilight Zone or something? Who was messing with his world?

The detective sighed he slightly looked up and immediately saw something strange. His desk, which was normally fairly crowded with his materials, including stuff that he crammed into the other desk. And that was when it struck him. Looking up, he noticed that the desk that was normally attached to his and remained empty a majority of the time, suddenly looked cleaner. As if someone had just given it a good scrubbing and preparing it for use.

“Use?” he muttered out loud as he leaned down to take a whiff of the desk. Yup, it had just been freshly cleaned. But…why…

“Hey Cervantes,” a voice said, belonging to Clemens a man that Jorge barely had a good standing with.

Jorge nodded to him before he suddenly stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Clemens, normally you’re the first to know these things.” He nodded to the desk. “What’s going on here?

Clemen’s rolled his eyes as he stood there regarding Jorge. Finally he just shrugged. “Got a new recruit. Getting her desk ready. Shame too. I hear she’s a real ball buster…”

Jorge paused, considered, then shook his head. “No way…can t'be her…can it?”

“You wan’ Me To WHAT?!” Miri looked across the desk at the New York Director of the FBI with confusion and a bit of annoyance spread across her face. Was he really serious? Of all the agents in the entirety of the New York City FIB office why did he have to pick her for this? And why the 18th?

“I know this is very different from working undercover all the time but we felt that you were best for this particular assignment thanks to your background. Not only was your father in the NYPD but you recently worked with them on a case. And if I am remembering correctly it was the detectives at the 18th that you worked with.”

Miri let the shock fade away but still sat looking annoyed at the whole situation. Sure she had the connections already but there was no way she was going to be okay with working in the NYPD and the director knew that.

“Miri you are a good agent. You know our prodigal and procedure better than some of the most seasoned of agents. And I know you know the basics of police procedure. You are the best choice for this and you know it. You wanted this new assignment now go out there and do it.”

Crap he was freakin right. Miri really did have the best background for the assignment whether she liked it or not. She sighed and let go of her annoyance before choosing to speak. “Yur right, but does it really gotta be tha 18th.”

“Yes and they are expecting you today. Report to Kellerman before you leave. He’s going to be your inside man on this one. Now get out of my office.”

Miri simply stood and exited without another word. She may not have liked the assignment but in all truth she had set herself up for it with the things she had been doing over the past year. First latching onto the pattern killer case and then her work with the local PD in San Francisco. She had dug her own grave and now she had to lie in it.

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It wans’t long before Miri was well on her way to the 18th precinct of the NYPD. She had gone into her office at 9 expecting to have a great new assignment and she got this. It was just her luck latly. First she gets called away from the most interesting case she has had in a while to go consult in California, which is full of space aliens in her opinion. Then she comes back to find the one person she has absolutely no desire to see anytime soon is back in New York and want to try and talk things out. Like Miri would waste her time trying to talk things out with the woman that didn’t even give her the chance to do so. Only to find out that the case she thought she was going to be able to hide in for a little while did not actually cross state lines and therefore she had no business working on it and it was passed off to someone new. And now we have the icing on the cake. Miriam Castle was going to have to spend god only knows how long working with the MRC as a FBI liaison to the 18th. Oh joy. She had spent so much time avoiding that very precinct until recently that the idea of having to walk into it every day was painful.

She thought about how much she was not going to enjoy this as she walked up to the large double doors of the old police building. She took a deep breath as she shifted the office box of desk supplies she had raided from her desk back in her and Greg’s office at the FBI. She had made sure to not take everything so it could still be claimed as her desk and only really took the things she would need to help identify it and make it feel more like home. She pulled open the door and made her way over to reception finally remembering how badly her last visit to this place had gone.

Miri put on a fake smile as she looked at the poor woman she had screamed at last time. “Hi. I’m Agent Miriam Castle. I’m supposed to be working here as a FBI liaison. I’m wonderin if you have a badge or something of me.” She tried to sound pleasant but that had never really been something she had been particularly good at. Thankfully for her the receptionist responded rather well.

“Ah here you are.” The woman pulled out a visitor’s badge and handed it to her. “It says I should tell you that I should have a real one for you by the end of the day. You can go right in. There should be an empty desk for you.” The woman put on an obviously fake smile that told Miri she may have remembered exactly who she was btu was trying to be nice in this moment, but knew she could torture her down the road. This was not going to go well for her.

Miri entered the office and started walking to the back. She knew she was going to be partnered with that George Cervantes character she had worked with on the pattern thing and if she remembered correctly he was in the back of the office. Sure enough there he was sitting with an empty desk across from him. Miri assumed that was for her and made a b-line to put down her box and get settled, hanging her computer bag on the chair before pulling out her name plate and putting it on the desk facing out into the walkway. Now to just get thee awkward over with, “Hello George. Nice to see you again. I guess we are going to be partners for a little while.”

Jorge had put the thought out of his mind. There was no way, simply no way in hell that it would be Agent Castle sitting across from him at that desk. She was FBI and this was grunt-work NYPD. They would simply not allow someone like that to work here because she’d just end up either driving herself nuts, or everyone else in the precinct nuts. So, no, the possibility was ridiculous and Jorge could move on with his day.

He was still irked though. The very idea that the chief would give him a partner made him cringe. One of the reasons he had moved to this precinct was because he wanted to get away from the whole concept of partners. The last that he had, well, it just didn’t turn out well, for either of them. Not that the same thing was going to happen with whoever it was that was being paired with him, but he would rather not risk it. Jorge barely trusted the majority of his police force around him and that took over a year to foster.

A heavy sigh fell from his lips as he looked at a couple of case files that had been left on his desk. The majority of them were unexplained cases, and therefore had to be the work of mutants. Missing people, murder scenes without explanations, sights of a man with a gorilla fist running through allies; their only commonality was the fact that nobody would securely identify what was going on, therefore it had to be the work of mutants and had to land on his desk.

He grumbled. Not all of it was tied to mutants. Well…except the one he had in his hand right now…

He shook his head as he looked at an old picture of Andrea after she had been attacked. The snakes that normally were nestled in her hair were missing, she had a battered and bruised body, and all of it because of some…Lion-Man that she was not able to fully identify. It was positively insane that they could not get any news on this joker. After all, if he was running around sporting a Lion’s Head, then wouldn’t it be more conceivable for there to be a sighting or two? Then again…if the man was shifter that only brought them back to square one.

Slapping the file on his desk he shook his head as he turned to grab his newest Miami Dolphin’s mug from the corner of his desk. The hot coffee within had warmed the entire vessel and Jorge sighed as he brought it to his lips for a sip. Hopefully the day could only get better.

The detective then started by flipping on his computer and seeing if he hand any more correspondences from contacts concerning his current cases. As he searched through his e-mails for notices on coroner’s reports, he spotted a movement out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t pay attention, he rarely did. After all few, if anybody, ever actually stopped by his desk. But as he sat there, clicking through the various files, he paused when he saw someone drop their cardboard box containing their professional life on top of the desk.

He sighed. He was so going to have a word with the chief on this one. But as he turned…he frozen in mid-sentence…

>> “Hello George. Nice to see you again. I guess we are going to be partners for a little while.”[/i]

“Agagss—“ he coughed fiercely as his word got caught in his throat. Taking a second to clear his airway, the man shook his head as he turned his gaze up to the woman. Nope…she was still there. “C-Castle? You’re the one who got assigned here? But…why? How?” What god up there in the universe dislikes him that much? “I mean, hi, it’s good to see you too, but…why am I seeing you?”

He meant that purely in the most flattering way possible...obviously…