Participants:
| Scene Title | Police in a Pickle |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Never prank a Lighthouse Kid. |
| Date | September 11, 2020 |
The Watchtower, Locker Room
Friday, Friday gotta get down on Friday. FriYAY. The clock is soooooo close to the time when it's time when the regular nine to fivers kick off their working shoes and let loose. Right about the time when things start picking up at the station. It's Friday night, which means that the officers on duty have gone up by a small margin. All the rookies get to clock in, because someone needs to work those shifts and the vets all got seniority.
A few officers are gathered around the door to the women's locker room, coffees in hand, snickering. It's obvious that whomever is in there, is alone. The voice isn't bad per se, but it's loud, and when it reaches the chorus of whatever song it's owner is singing… they straighten. Offended.
That's when Lieutenant Harrison, almost at the end of her shift, is summoned.
"You gotta do somethin' Elltee! This ain't right!!"
The voice in the bathroom is still belting out its tune and three arms from three beat officers point at the closed door.
"New York City cops, New York City cops~
New York City cops, but they ain't too smaaaaaaaaart~"
Elisabeth normally doesn't bother dealing with this kind of bullshit — there's a desk sergeant for this. But it's still a small enough precinct that we don't have the manpower for everything and although there's a good balance of female officers, there aren't that many. Since she was on her way out anyway, the blonde lieutenant rolled her eyes and headed for the women's locker room. She can hear the singing from the stairwell — advantages of being an audiokinetic. She just doesn't recognize the voice.
As she approaches and the three officers in the hall all point at the door, Elisabeth puts her hands on her hips. Really? She briefly sucks on her front teeth, lips pursed in contemplation. "People who hang around eavesdropping outside locker rooms should never expect to hear good things about themselves," she observes mildly, and then jerks her thumb toward the stairs. "G'wan, get gone." She has no patience for people who take offense and whine when they hear shit they don't like. Grow a thicker skin and a spine and deal with it, if it's really an issue — this is just whiny bullshit.
Watching them go, she smirks to herself and then heads into the locker room. "Oy. You're off-key," she notes in amusement to the singer as she steps in.
“I am not!” Is the indignant reply from around the corner. As Liz rounds the bank of lockers, she can see Hailey Gerken wrapping a straggly bit of hair around a tight bun at the back of her head. She’s dressed in her rookie blues, but she was given a special uniform, one of a kind. Her knee high black boots are polished to a mirror shine, her riding helmet sits beside the sink on the counter, given just enough room by the large leather jacket that’s taking up most of the space. She’s been trying to arrange her long hair the way she was taught at academy, but that one flyaway keeps flying away.
Her eyes widen as she spots the Lieutenant in the mirror and she spins around to stand at attention, cracking her elbow on the counter in her hurry.
“Sir!”
Also something she learned from the academy.
The young empath doesn’t let her pain show. It’s that pain you get when you hit that sweet spot on your elbow that just makes you want to vomit right there. To her credit, the rookie holds it in. “Sorry, Lieutenant, I was just getting ready for my shift.”
A brow quirks, amusement still twinkling at the corners of her lips. "At ease, … Gerken?" She glances at the nametag to make sure she has it right. "I have no idea why they call that the funny bone — it's the exact opposite of funny when you hit it," Elisabeth comments sympathetically. That crack was hard, she can imagine the cursing that's going on in the rookie's head.
"Are you getting settled in all right?" she asks, crossing her arms to keep from Mom-ing the young woman and helping her get her hair under control. God, she's just a kid! Elisabeth suddenly feels kind of old. Then she pauses. "You're going to be part of the new unit." The tone is perhaps a little surprised — the horse-unit is brand spanking new.
The moment Liz tells her to stand at ease, Hailey grabs her elbow to rub it; sucking a hissing breath inward because for some reason that helps to ease the pain. “Yeah,” she affirms about the unit she’s placed in. “I think it’s because I come with my own horse.”
She had asked during recruitment and kept asking. Mostly because she needed a place to keep the animal, to ease the pressure at home. For some reason, her brother didn’t enjoy his very own Mr. Ed poking through the kitchen window. Hailey couldn’t fathom why, no one else seemed to mind. She was sure that Joe secretly fed the steed peanut butter behind her back.
Pursing her lips, the blonde nods. "Riiiight." There is one thing she remembers, though, and she eyes Hailey. "You're one of Brian's wards, yeah? The Lighthouse children?" A moment's pause and she crosses her arms to study the young rookie. "Are you going to be the officer who demands why for every rule?" There is a tone of laughter to the query — as if Elisabeth knew Brian well enough to give him a little bit of crap for being Brian. Or maybe she just knows that children of the Ferry are far more likely to be rule-breakers instead of rule-followers.
And if the expression in her blue eyes is anything to go by, it's not really going to be an issue regardless of Hailey's answer.
"Uhm yessir, Brian, Gillian, and Erik's." Hailey responds to the first two questions. Then she stops, pausing there for a moment. Her eyebrows twist a little this way and that as she thinks about the last question and how to answer it. "I won't demand," she finally says, as a sort of compromise. "And just on the really weird ones. Like why do we have to keep gummy fish in our pockets on Fridays. Are they really for the homeless people? Why do we give gummy fish to the homeless people instead of buying them coffee or bringing them to a safe place to get a meal or sleep?"
It seems she's thought a lot about that particular rule. Though, poor Elisabeth gets the brunt of the questions. To be fair, the audiokinetic brought it up.
There is a really really long moment where she stares at Hailey. And Elisabeth starts to laugh. "Uhm… if there's a rule around here about gummy fish, I am unaware of it. And I plan to stay that way," she chuckles. "So… I'm Elisabeth Harrison, Officer Gerken. Welcome to the NYPD." God, she's so *young*. "It's good to have you aboard." She gestures toward the door. "Don't worry about the whiners — they're just miffed that you're singing about stupid cops." Her gaze still has that spark of amusement. Hailey is not in any trouble.
"But since they got me to come down just to meet you… if there's anything you need, my office door is open, okay?" If for no other reason than to look out for Gilly and Brian's kids, it would be an open door policy anyway.
Hailey glances toward the door and then bows her head, shaking it sadly. “And Lance tells me that I have no taste in music. Have those lameos never heard of one of the greatest bands to ever come out of New York ever?” It’s not like she was rapping the verses she’s been torturing her housemates with for almost six months. Plus, the Strokes have the added bonus of no swear words, at least in that song.
“Maybe next time I’ll sling a little N.W.A. at them if they like listening at the ladies room door.” She doesn’t say it but she does mumble a soft freaks.
The empath holds out her hand for a shake.
“Seriously?! The Harrison? Primaaaaaaallll.” There might have been stories, loads of them. “You were with Magnes, right? He didn’t say anything but you, like, came back from the dead with him.”
Ohhhhhh my. 'The' Harrison? Yikes. Elisabeth rolls her eyes. "Something like that," she agrees, reaching out to shake Hailey's hand easily. "Although please don't ever talk about that in public, especially not around here, okay?" The smile she offers is just a hair strained. "We're really not supposed to talk about what we were up to while we were 'away'." That Magnes apparently informed the Lighthouse kids, well… not something she was aware of. She never met Hailey in the other world, but she knew Lance — and Hailey's daughter Lene — quite well. A pang makes her heart ache. God she hopes they're all okay. But she takes her hand back calmly.
"I'm looking forward to seeing you rise through the ranks, Gerken." Hailey's sacrifice in the Wasteland is not something she'll forget. And she's of the firm belief that the core of a person doesn't change. "I know you've got a lot of friends on my squad, so feel free to poke your head into their bullpen. They'll be glad to help you out if you need it."
“Oh, yeah I don’t know anything about that,” Hailey says quickly, tapping the side of her nose and giving a quick wink. She doesn’t really know what happened but she does know that one day Magnes and Elisabeth were dead and then they suddenly weren’t. The empath had always assumed that Magnes had died in the war like some of their other caretakers.
“Your squad? … uh… sure,” the younger blonde says quickly, pulling a small baggie of gummy fish from her pocket. “I guess if you don’t know the gummy fish rule, it’s probably some sort of rookie hazing, right?” She looks at them for a moment and squints before nodding in resignation and shoving them back in her pocket. “I’ll play along today, but I’m totes going to get them back for this. I just have to think of something really good for this botswarf.”
Elisabeth starts laughing quietly. "That's a word I haven't heard … in a long time." It's one Aura was too young to use. "If that's the extent of the hazing, you'll be fine," the blond observes. Hailey has Lighthouse siblings — she can hold her own with a little roomie teasing. The lieutenant will just keep her ears open to be sure it's in good fun and not shit that needs her boot up anyone's ass.
"The SCOUT team. Abby and Colette are both up there. Kaylee… will be when she gets better." What happened to her sister(-in-law) still has the power to make her absolutely enraged. She pushes that off, though. "Tell you what — you handle the ones that left you the gummy fish rule and I'll deal with the whiny-asses and their musical incompetence." She winks. "I'll inflict the old stuff on them. Good music."
Hailey’s grin only grows wider as she hears the names of the team, a crew that represents her end goal. Right now, she’s just an academy grad, a rookie. “Maybe I could get assigned to help you guys sometime,” she suggests, very obviously trying to plant that earworm in Liz’ mind. “I’ve got a few pets that are handy and one of them’s a bonafide cop.” Of course she’s talking about Officer Dayton… the horse she graduated with.
“The uh..” whiny asses, “people that told me about the gummy fish are probably the same ones listening outside the door.” Hailey says with a smirk, “but don’t worry about me Lieutenant, I can take care of it. After all, you can’t prank a Lighthouse, not really.”
"Somehow, Gerken, this surprises me not at all. I'm …. Acquainted… with your brother. I'm pretty sure you'll hold your own with anything these guys can throw at you," Elisabeth acknowledges with a grin. "And perhaps you can. Time will tell. In the meantime… good luck to you, young lady. I expect I'll be hearing good things." She'll have to warn Colette and Abigail about their new horse officer.