bridge_carson | Angel Grove, California [Thursday Afternoon]

From the outside, the building looks just like an ordinary office tower, no different from the others on this street.

The inside, though, is a different story. Inside the building is where the current headquarters of the SPD Earth branch is located. In a few years, with the creation of Newtech City, SPD will go public. But for now, they remain secret.

	In keeping with the "we're just an office building, really" there's a front-desk with a bored looking receptionist. She's talking on the phone and looking for all the world like she's not actually paying that much attention to her surroundings.
Bridge	Bridge, dressed in an SPD technician jumpsuit in place of his usual uniform, leads the group in to the building, heading directly for the elevator.
	"Can I help you?" The receptionist? Not looking quite so inattentive now.
Luke	Luke was wearing a similar jumpsuit. "Routine maintenance," he said with a bright smile, focusing on her eyes. "We were expected." It was worth a try.
	"There's nothing about that on the list." The receptionist frowns, flipping through the book on her desk.
Luke	Luke's fingers flicked out. "It's on the list," he told her, concentrating.
	The receptionist blinks, staring down at the appointment book again. "Oh! It is on the list!" she echoes, smiling at the group brightly.
Luke	Luke smiled at her, then a little sheepishly at the rest of the group. "Thank you," he said.
	"You can go on ahead," she says cheerfully, waving them towards the elevator doors. She's probably going to get in trouble for this later. They hadn't exactly anticipated Force users when coming up with the security procedures.
Anders	"Nice," Anders said, impressed, as soon as they were out of earshot.
Xander	Xander nodded his agreement. "Handy power. Pun intended." He was wearing a plain mechanic's coverall, figuring it would blend in enough with the others and much easier than trying to get hold of one of the SPD ones in his size.
Bridge	Bridge might not be the world's biggest fan of that sort of power, but he's not going to deny its usefulness. Especially if it helps avoid a fight. "Yeah, thanks dude."
Z	"I want that power," Z complained under her breath. "Why couldn't I get that power?" The jumpsuit was definitely not her best look, but she thought she'd accessorized it well.
Anders	Anders gave her the Eye. "On behalf of those of us who don't have one at all, just go with it?"
Luke	"You wouldn't believe the grief you can get for using it," Luke said in an undertone to Anders as they walked towards the elevator. "It's not something I'd wish on you."
Bridge	"Dr. Manx's office is this way," Bridge says, gesturing down the hallway. "Let's split up- if two of you can try and draw attention away from the labs, Z and I can go in with someone keeping lookout."
Xander	"I'm up for distraction duty," Xander volunteered. He actually had something of a tradition with it, even if this time he didn't have a talkative cat on his shoulder.
Anders	"I'm good for helping with that if you want, Harris," offered Anders.
Z	"Great, and Luke and his mojo can come with us," Z said decisively.

Down a Hallway That Isn't In The Science Wing

Xander	"There's ye olde fire alarm?" Xander said speculatively as he glanced down the thankfully-empty hall. "But I dunno - they might go checking all the offices to see if everybody got out, then."
Anders	"Fire alarm in high-tech building might not be such a good idea," Anders replied, running over some of Aly's past lessons in his mind. "I mean, the odds that we pull the lever and monkeys with hoses start pouring out of secret hatches aren't exactly high."
Xander	Xander sighed. "I miss Fandom."
Anders	Anders had to give him a funny look at that. "Okay, you rebuilt the school. Are there monkeys with . . . this isn't the kind of distraction we're going for here." He did a quick turn, checking for people wandering through the halls. "Don't suppose a flaming Twinkie attack would come in handy?"
Xander	"I'm fairly sure that would bring down the hose-monkeys on us." Xander pulled out his phone and eyed it. "Though. Hmm. We could do something with Twinkies? Maybe in front of the security cameras so they all start watching to see what the hell we're doing?"
Anders	"You realize," Anders said slowly, "there's nothing I can say in response to that that isn't going to make me sound twelve?"
Xander	Xander gave him the eye and pressed the button to drop a twinkie into his hand. Then another. Then... another. The motion started to look a little like something you couldn't describe without sounding twelve. Or look at. Or... actually perform. At least not without giggling.
Anders	. . . which would be why, yes, there was a sound that could be very easily mistaken for -- but not actually, mind you -- a giggle, coming from behind the hand clapped over Anders's mouth. Not actually a giggle, though. ~~Cylons~~ Anderses don't giggle.
Xander	"You mock my Twinkification skills?" Xander asked, still with the repetitive stress injury motions, though he'd stopped trying to catch them and was just letting them pile on the floor near one of the security cameras now.
Anders	"I would never mock your mad Twinkification skills," Anders said, affecting an affronted look. "Can you make a pile big enough to . . . jump into and flail around before your battery goes out?"
Xander	Xander kept Twinkifying. "My battery's never gone out. Like...ever."
Anders	"Excellent," Anders said, and after a moment's thought, pulled out his Palm Pilot and started producing Jujubes to add to the pile -- sadly, without the entertaining and oh-so-easy-to-misinterpret hand gestures. ". . . what exactly are we doing, here?"
Xander	Xander dumped three or four more out of the phone before crouching down to the pile. "Building...something?" He started stacking the Twinkies like they were Legos. Spongy golden individually-wrapped Legos.
Anders	"Something deceptively simple but diabolically brilliant?" Anders hazarded as he started working on his own section of Twinkie-Lego wall, and lined it along the bottom with jujubes.
Xander	Xander studied his own section, before adding a few more Twinkies from the phone. "Well, we've got the simple part down. It's clearly a really good deception."
Anders	"It's an awesome one." Anders bit his lip as he carefully stacked the Twinkie wall two spongy golden layers higher, then squinted at his jujube arrangement and tweaked a few of them in exaggeratedly microscopic increments. Out of the corner of his mouth, trying very hard not to let his lips move, he added, "We just have to keep looking like we know what we're doing . . ."
Xander	Xander pointed to one corner of the construction project for all the world as if he had definite plans for what they were going to do to it, and suggested, sotto voce, "Maybe we're building an edible halfway house for really tiny mental patients?"
Anders	Anders squinted then nodded as if he'd memorized the blueprints. "Because they totally exist, of course," he said, and placed another Twinkie with tongue-poking-out-of-the-corner-of-his-mouth precision.
Xander	"The bad guys try to bake people into giant pizzas in this dimension," Xander pointed out. "I....actually wouldn't be all that surprised if this place did have monkeys with hoses."
	What comes along just then is not a monkey with a hose, but rather an SPD officer. "What's going on here?" he asks suspiciously.
Xander	"Uh!" said Xander helpfully, attempting not to jump out of his skin since the guy had approached from his blind side.
	"Not actually an answer," the officer points out.

Meanwhile, at Kat's Office...

Bridge	Getting Dr. Manx's access code is easy enough: all Bridge needs to do is hold his hand out in front of the keypad and the correct numbers start to glow in his vision. Convincing the lock to disengage without Kat's fingerprints? That takes a bit longer, but a little creative rewiring does the job and eventually the lock disengages with a click. Bridge pushes the door open and enters the small office.
Z	Z slipped in behind Bridge and hissed, "You realize we don't even know what we're looking for?" at him.
Bridge	"Um, something incriminating?" Bridge says, flicking on the light and heading for Kat's desk. He starts rifling through the papers on her desk, looking for something, anything, that might mention him or the other members of C-Squad.
Z	"Right," said Z. She went to a filing cabinet and opened the top drawer, also looking for anything about C-Squad (or Jack) or those morphers that went boom. "Hey, look for the name 'Landors,' too," she reminded Bridge.
Bridge	Bridge nods, moving on to searching through the files in her desk. He glances at the computer, wondering if it'd even be possible to get through Dr. Manx's security.
Z	Z followed his gaze to the computer and muttered, "Too bad we don't know her password." Then she thought about that for a second and added, "Too bad it's not likely to be as easy as a password."
Bridge	"Yeah," Bridge makes a face. "Last year's computer workshops didn't exactly cover hacking alien systems."
Z	"They should have," Z grumbled, picking out a file to look through it. No, nothing interesting there.

A Hallway That Is In The Science Wing. Look, It's All Sciencey. And Wingy.

	Working security in the lab wing was, generally speaking, not the most exciting of jobs. About the most excitement one could expect is in dealing with one of the Academy's handful of cadets who'd either gotten hopelessly turned around and wandered in to the wing by accident, or was wandering the corridors on a dare from a classmate. So when he spots the teenager standing outside Dr. Manx's door he doesn't think much of it. "Hey, you. Kid!" he says, picking up his pace and heading towards Luke.
Luke	Luke gave the man an innocent smile. "Yes?"
	"You're not authorized to be in this area, Cadet," the guard says, peering at Luke over the tops of his sunglasses. Why he's wearing sunglasses indoors is anyone's guess.
Luke	"Good thing I'm not here, then," Luke said, concentrating hard on making himself appear invisible in the man's consciousness.
	"Huh," the guard says, frowning. "Coulda sworn there was..." he mutters, staring at where Luke's standing without actually seeing him.
Luke	Luke stayed absolutely still and hoped whatever Bridge and Z were finding wouldn't take all that long.

In The Place Of Finding

Z	Inside the office, Z looked up from the filing cabinet and said, "It's going to be really funny if this was all a big burnt run. If by 'funny' you mean, 'I'm so going to jail for the rest of my life,' which I of course do."
Bridge	"You're not going to jail," Bridge says firmly as he opens up another desk drawer and sifts through the papers there. Something catches his eye, and the blood drains from his face as he lifts it out and begins to read. ...determine the correct energy matrix to produce the desired effect without sterilizing the subjects... "Z..." he manages in a choked voice. "I think I found it."
Z	"What?" Z asked as she came to peer over Bridge's shoulder. The words ...this must be undertaken with the utmost secrecy caught her eye. "Yeah, that looks like a candidate," she muttered as her eyes skimmed the page. Then she saw the bit about energy matrices. "Oh," she said weakly.
Bridge	"We cannot allow Earth to fall as Sirius did," Bridge reads out loud, still kind of in shock. "And if you will not proceed we will assign someone to the project who will."
Z	"'Destroy this message immediately,'" Z took up where Bridge left off. Obviously, that hadn't happened. She was quiet for a long moment before suggesting, doubt in her voice, "Maybe--maybe it's about something else."
Bridge	"Something else involving our parents?" Bridge points out the list of names on the sheet of paper.
Z	"Maybe," Z mumbled. "Okay. No."
Bridge	"There's more," Bridge says, looking through the stack of papers he'd pulled out along with the one in question.
Z	"She must've been building a paper trail," Z guessed. "Which she apparently never did anything with... We don't have time to go through all this."

In The Twinkie Wing With The SPD Officer And The Guys With No Jedi Mindwhammy. Oh Yeah, That'll Go Well.

Anders	Anders stood up straight and cleared his throat. "Special maintenance project, sir," he said, hoping like hell his voice didn't crack or do something stupid.
	"I see," the officer says dryly. "On whose authority?"
Xander	And of course the only two names Xander could possibly name were people they most definitely didn't want anybody checking with. Oh lame-ass borrowed military knowledge, I know you've been kinda scarce in the last few years but if you could pop up right around now just for a second it'd be awful keen... "It's classified, sir. Sorry."
	"Classified," he echoes, not entirely convinced. Then again, he's heard of stranger things happening around here. Like when one of the alien doctors was experimenting with containment techniques and had shrunk him and his squad to about a foot high. He still wasn't sure everything had unshrunk correctly- his favourite jeans had never been that loose before...
Xander	"The fate of the earth could depend on it," Xander answered, crossing his heart with a Twinkie.
Anders	"Just to name one planet," Anders added, gesturing emphatically with a jujube. "I know it looks kind of strange, but trust me, this is vital . . . stuff." 'Stuff.' Great. Really smooth, Sammy-boy.
Xander	That would be Xander not facetwinkie-ing.
	Right now? Would be a good time for running more than anything, as the officer is reaching for his walkie-talkie to call in an intruder alert.
Xander	"Too much?" Xander couldn't resist asking as he scooped up his phone in preparation for legging it.
Anders	"Maybe just a bit, I think," Anders said, dumping several handfuls' worth of jujubes out of his Palm Pilot onto the floor between them and the officer. "The fate of the Earth thing might've been a little overdramatic." Which wasn't to say that it was, in theory, a little out of proportion. But come on, who ever actually used that exact phrase in these situations?
Xander	"Giant. Pizza," Xander repeated, tossing Twinkies behind him as he ran down the hall and the alarm started to blare.

And Back At Kat's Office...

Bridge	Bridge glances at his watch and then back up at Z. "Photocopier?"
Z	Z glanced around the office. "I think it's part of the printer."
Bridge	"Right," Bridge says, heading over towards it. He's only halfway finished putting the sheaf of paper through when an alarm starts blaring.
Z	Z paled and hissed, "Print faster!" at the copier."
Bridge	"I don't think it can hear you, Z," Bridge says, grabbing the last of the copies and shoving them at Z before stuffing the originals haphazardly back in the drawer where he'd found them.
Z	"It might!" Z argued as she stuffed the copies down her shirt and zipped up her jumpsuit. "But that's so not the point. Let's get out of here!"
Bridge	"Right behind you!" Bridge says, following Z out the office and shutting the door behind them.
Luke	Luke felt them coming and held up a hand in warning. The guard was down at the other end of the hallway, but him turning around would be a Very Bad Thing right now. Luke reached into the Force, then slammed a door--hard--as far down the hallway in the opposite direction as he could see. "Go!" he whispered.
Z	Z? Went. With a quickness.
Bridge	And Bridge is, true to his word, right on Z's heels as he heads down the hallway.