06 / 30 / 09 - Bahir, Kelsey
=XF= Analysis Hub - Second Floor - Titan Enterprises
The second floor follows the same T'ed pattern of the first, with tech and computer labs tucked along the left side of the hall. The right, however, is taken up entirely with the Analysis Hub.
Glass doors framed by wide panels of tinted glass grant entrance into the center of the junction of three rooms that flow into each other without clear delineation beyond open arched doorways. Running in a long swath through the centermost, a computer lab reaches from a cluster of desks to a large projection screen mounted into the wall. One archway leads to a large meeting room, complete with its own projector and innumerable whiteboards and bulletin boards mounted on the walls. The other, near the back, leads to a lab with a collection of electronic equipment scattered liberally throughout and at every desk.
Along the far wall of the hub, a number of open doorways lead to other workspaces that steal all the long windows. They're filled with desks and computers and smaller meeting rooms. Some have gathered personal touches that proclaim them as taken, while others are neat and clean, save for when they're being used as extra counterspace. The walls everywhere are covered in maps of varying detail and focus that are often the victims of pins marking information on current and continuing cases. Elsewhere, the walls drip paperwork and photos and scribbled notes on whiteboard.
When your usual physical training doesn't agree very well with your new body, at least you have your mental-based tasks to fall back on. That in mind, Kelsey is curled up at her newly ordained desk, a spread of papers before her and one end of a pen--hopefully the one that /doesn't/ ink--between her teeth. Occasionally it is set to paper as she makes some note or circles some item, but it is soon returned to her mouth each time.
Elsewhere, Bahir rises from his desk with pink rubber ball in hand. Papers and photographs are scattered across his desk with a laptop off to the side. He is abandoning them, however, taking the ball to thunk-pock it off the floor as he stretches his legs. The noise is a familiar one in the analysis area, and it nears Kelsey's workstation. Bahir looms over her shoulder and shamelessly peeks. "Watcha doing?"
"Lookin' at papers," Kelsey answers, continuing to do so. "Makin' sense of all the little lines on them." She reaches out, snatches the ball on its way from the floor to his hand. It is set on her desk, firmly covered by her hand. "Did ye lose your ball, love?" she asks, making another mark on one of the papers.
"Well, at least you remember how to read." Bahir is INSENSITIVE. He half-heartedly grabs after the ball, but Kelsey is fiendishly fast, and his hands close in empty fists. "In fact, I did not lose it. Someone stole it from me."
"How /awful/. Your life is so difficult, gettin' your balls stolen all the time." Kelsey looks up, entirely innocent. "Lucky me, I can read!" She taps the chewy end of her pen against his middle.
Bahir looks down at the pen poking and then back up at Kelsey. He wrinkles his nose. "Getting my balls stolen all the time. /Really/, Ms. MacDougall." With two Ls.
"Oh, excuse me. I forgot how incredibly old ye are." So so sad, her expression reads. "What's it like bein' too serious for fun anymore?"
Bahir reaches out to steal his ball back, perfectly content to wrestle with her for it. "I'm sure you'll figure it out should you survive that long."
Kelsey offers a mild amount of resistance before giving up the ball. SADFACE. "I dinnae ken if I've got that many years in me, al-Razi. It's such a long time from now."
"How old are you? Twenty?" asks Bahir, underestimating with insulting intent. "Not /that/ long. You might even learn a thing or two in that time."
"/Normally/ twenty-five," she answers with narrowed eyes. Yeah, she got your intent, Bahir. "Though I'm thinkin' considerably younger right now." Kelsey cocks her head, looking up at him curiously as a small smirk forms. "I can only dream of bein' as worldly as you, Bahir."
The very appearances of that slight smirk puts Bahir off pace, pink ball clasped between curled hands. He eyes Kelsey with playful suspicion. "Again, you might have the chance to learn a few things by the time you get to my lofty and advanced age."
The smirk spreads. "Maybe I'll get to hear about a few things when Percy and I get pissed and dish about boys."
Bahir points a finger at Kelsey. "You wish." Ignore that slight uncertainty about Percy's discretion. Okay. /Major/ uncertainty. Turning, he leans up against a spare corner on her desk, and glances down again at her paperwork. "I bet the bad guys could find us just by looking for areas of large alcohol purchases."
Kelsey just smiles in a self-assured manner as she watches him settle against her desk. "As if the group isnae bad enough without bein' all...body-switched. I swear our alcohol consumption has doubled in the past couple o' days."
"Heard anything about stabilizing the kid so he can swap you guys back?" Bahir asks, one arm folded loosely over his midsection. "And what's with the other bodies, anyway? Er, your bodies, I guess."
Kelsey scratches the pen behind her ear idly. "I hear he should be good tae go in a couple o' days. Apparently Kaci's power has been workin' on him." Brows furrow at his next question. "What do ye mean?"
"I'd have expected some kind of -- something from them, if he was swapping minds, but they're just sort of comatose, aren't they?" Bahir reaches out to point a finger at Kelsey's forehead, then flicks it, lightly. "I wonder what happened to the mind that originally inhabited this body."
"I havenae exactly gone visitin' my body," Kelsey notes dryly. "I hope ye can understand why." She leans back in her chair, setting delicate Japanese feet up on her desk. "I dinnae ken. I guess it depends on how Joey's power works."
"Mm." Bahir gives Kelsey a neutral glance, humor fading from his expression. Look at those ... kawaii ... chibi-chan feet! "So do you just not care about the implications, or are you trying to avoid thinking about them?" he asks, more the blunt asshole than the playful. "Have any of you really thought about that, you think?"
That causes some major seriousness in Kelsey's expression. "I doubt much o' that kind o' thinkin' has been goin' on in the body-snatched club. Ev'rybody's just been thinkin' about gettin' their own bodies /back/." She considers, rolling the pen between her fingers. "Though, really...if there was a mind in here before, an' it's not in our bodies now, the damage is already done."
Bahir's expression tightens slightly before he shakes his head and looks away. He bounces the ball off the floor again: thock. It slaps up into his hand: pock. "Guess we'll find out."
Kelsey watches the thock-pock pattern with a distracted gaze. "It's just a shitty situation, aye? Any way ye put it."
Bahir thock-pocks a few more times. It is soothingly repetitive and it gives him something to do with his hands. "I don't know why it bugs me. But it does."
She watches him, her expression growing sympathetic. "Have ye seen our bodies? I mean...poked around, inside?"
"No." Bahir looks back over at Kelsey with a half-curve at the corner of his lips. It is more grimace than smirk, and stilted in his attempt, anyway. "Little too gruesome, I guess."
"Has Tom?" A frown creases her face. "Has anybody gone lookin' tae see what's inside those heads?"
"Tom and Nadia were on-site during the extraction, so I assume one of them has some idea," Bahir says, rolling the ball in his hands. "Didn't hear anything, though. No one seems to even care about the people whose bodies you are now wearing except so far as the existence of the bodies is a serious inconvenience."
"Well." This is not reassuring news. "I'm sure one o' them would have said somethin' if there were other livin' minds inside." Right?
Bahir looks dubious. "I think it is more likely they'd have said something if there /wasn't/ anyone home."
"If ye're so concerned," Kelsey says pointedly, "an' ye havenae heard anythin' from Tom or Nadia, I'm surprised ye havenae checked it out yourself."
Bahir makes a noise: not acknowledgment, not disagreement, but rather vaguely evasive. "Maybe I'll talk to one of the kids." That would be Tom or Nadia.
Kelsey has now started clicking the pen. Joy. "Maybe ye should." The words are not unkind. "Before we start gettin' put back."
Bahir straightens. "Yeah. I guess. Anyway. Always fun," he says, giving an ironic waggle of his hand as he rolls the ball back up in his hands, takes it, and goes home. Or at least back to his desk.
"Always a pleasure, al-Razi," she muses as she leaves, returning pen to paper to be productive. Alliteration is fun.
BUZZKILL STRIKES AGAIN.