Dean stuck his chopsticks in a box of chow mein as Sam grimaced at the photos splayed out on the table between them. Their blazers hung on the backs of their chairs and their ties were loose and crooked around their necks, and the quiet only lasted another full minute before Sam leaned back and held up both hands in front of him.

"Okay, I have no idea how you're able to eat anything right now," he said. Dean glanced up, a couple noodles dangling from his lips, and his brother looked sick. "Especially that."

"'Specially what?"

Sam turned one of the crime scene photos and pushed it forward. It was the most recent one, the corpse of a Parker Brooks half-hidden in dying grass along one of the exits at the end of a highway with wriggling, writhing earthworms stuffed in his mouth and ears and nose and eyes. All alive, all pink, all fresh; the cause-of-death call had come in just as they'd gotten back with their take out, and Brooks had been found electrocuted to death with non-related chemical burns on his skin.

Dean blinked at the picture and shoveled more chow mein into his mouth. "Yeah, shrgross. And?"

"... You know what? You have a point. I shouldn't be surprised." Sam shuffled all the photos into one pile and flipped them over. "You did eat that lizard over in The Bad Place."

"What was I supposed to do? Starve?"

"We'd only been there for like an hour."

"I was looking at possible food sources. We could've been stuck there for days!"

"You're disgusting."

"I'm a survivalist."

"Yeah, okay, Bear Grylls."

Dean rolled his eyes. He swore Sam acted more like a princess ever since they stepped into a motel room of zebra print and water beds and a general 80s pimp vibe, and each time the little bitch raised an eyebrow in judgment was another shirt he was going to iron with that nasty Malibu Rum he knew was hidden at the back of the bottom shelf in the fridge. And it wasn't his fault this case took them all the way west to Burbank. A swanky city was a swanky city, and of course he was going to spend it at this piece of history.

"History?"

"Hello? Safari Inn? True Romance?"

"What?"

"God, I hate you."

But in all honesty, the banter was a good distraction from the fact they had no idea what they were dealing with. None of the crime scenes had EMF, the victims' only connection was the body being in the same approximate part of town with no suspicious activity they could dig up, and none of the families or possible witnesses so far saw anything strange. Just people who had gone missing only to turn up as a worm disco.

"I think our best bet might be to look around the hiking area nearby," Sam suggested. "There could be a curse latched onto the area that spawns worms of doom."

"But the only relation is where the bodies end up, and that's shaky at best. They were found on sides of roads, dirt pits, that soccer field—"

"And the Verdugo Mountains looks about dead center."

"... Shit, you really think there's something in the mountains? That thing's billions of acres!"

"Maybe. After we talk to the Brooks family we should look at the history of that place. Could be a suicide, or a hiker that had an accident."

"Man, I don't wanna go hiking," Dean groaned and inhaled even more of his food. He got Bitchface #32 for that one (you're a human garbage disposal), and they only stayed in the room long enough to finish their take out before blazers were getting swung over shoulders and they were stepping out the door while adjusting their ties around their necks.

Dean made it about three and a half steps towards Baby before stopping cold in his tracks. Sam only paused at the passenger's side when the door didn't unlock.

"You forget something?"

"No, it's..." He squinted and headed a little bit down the lot and closer to the red mustang innocently parked amongst the scatter of the other cars. A glance down at the back bumper and he was met with the Missouri license plate CHR - YPI.

Sam made his way down the lot and peered over his brother's shoulder. "Someone you know?"

"Yeah, you remember I was tellin' you 'bout that doc I met on the ghoul case in Mississippi a couple months back?"

"Suplex City?"

"Suplex City!" Dean grinned. "Dr. Sakura Haro—Haray—" he snapped his fingers— "Haruno? Haruno! She does some kinda research in St. Louis and runs info sometimes. Didn't think I'd see her in Burbank next, though."

"Huh." Sam tucked his hands in his pants pockets and stared from the corner of his eye. "You sure remember a lot about some random hunter you met only once."

"What do you mean? Her plate says cherry pie and she blew up a mansion. 'Course I'm gonna remember her."

"I don't think you mentioned what she looked like."

"Pink hair, green eyes, cool letterman." He shrugged. Fun, badass, called me Kansas. "Definitely out there."

"Cool. Is she pretty?"

Oh, Dean knew that voice, especially that stupid, smug undertone. And so what if he did look her up before he got back to the motel that day? It was only natural that he saw if she was telling the truth, and she was; a professor heading a research lab at WashU doing some disease science on mice. He might've not understood most of what was on that website, but the mice x-rays were pretty cool.

"Let's interview that family first," he decided and spun on his heel back to the Impala. Sam followed at an infuriating leisurely pace. "We might run into her later 'cause you know, we got a job to do."

"Sure."

"I mean it."

"Uhuh."

"Sammy."

"Dean."

They stared at each other for a few seconds before Dean glared and slid into the driver's seat, Sam slipping into his own with a self-satisfied smirk. The key twisted in the ignition and when Baby purred to life, Dean made sure he was on the road before,

"You got a lotta cheek for someone who got their toothbrush dunked in the toilet last night."

::

"That was a bust," Dean sighed as they descended the porch steps and to the car.

"Yeah, seeing that all he'd been doing was getting his car checked." Sam frowned, dropping into his seat with a furrowed brow. They peeled onto the road and back to the hotel with every intention of hunkering down for who knows how long, and really, the only case that this one could be remotely similar to might be Luther Garland's. "There's still a chance it's a serial killer. A plain old disgusting serial killer."

"That makes worm pinatas? I still think it's too weird of an MO."

"Well, worms have been tied to both death and renewal in the myths they're featured in. We could look at it like it's about regeneration and healing, but it's probably a little more morbid seeing as they're taking over bodies after death." He pretended he didn't hear the 'nerd' muttered from the driver's seat. "It wouldn't hurt to start off with prominent death entities capable of something like this; should we start with rogue reapers and work our way from there?"

"Sure, I got nothin' else."

At least, they would've dove headfirst into random lore for the rest of the day if they hadn't seen the figure typing away on their phone while leaning against the side of a red mustang. The pink hair was a dead give away, tied up in a short ponytail with some strands framing her face. Her plain white t-shirt was tucked into navy blue slacks that rode up just enough to show microscope-patterned socks that went into brown wingtips. She wore a matching navy blazer, and when the Impala pulled up in the space just one over from her's, Sam gave his brother an innocent look.

"So she is pretty."

He got jabbed in the ribs before he managed to stumble out the door.

The woman looked up from her phone and smiled. "Kansas!" She greeted as she offered the back of her fist to bump, and Dean faltered and raised a hand in reflex and smacked his palm against her knuckles instead, much to Sam's endless amusement. And besides 'Kansas' being one of the cutest nicknames he'd ever heard, he was never going to forget the sight of his brother's cheeks flaring pink only two seconds into seeing Suplex City again.

Eileen was going to love this.

Her eyes slid over to him next, bright and green and light as she offered, "Dr. Sakura Haruno."

"Sam Winchester, nice to meet you," he returned with a smile of his own and shook her hand. And, wow, super strong grip and she had hands that've been in the business for their fair share of years. Old calluses, scars, and he was pretty sure that her fists would leave some mean broken bones if she ever bashed anyone's face in. "What brings you to Burbank?"

"I brought my lab to attend an Immunology Convention here in Southern California. The undergrads get experience, the grads get a break, and my postdoc gets a vacation after submitting her grant proposal," she said.

"Oh, your whole lab's here?"

"They're seeing sights right now, but I'll check in with them around dinner time." Sakura glanced at them and their get-up. "What's your case calling for? Insurance investigators? Homeland Security?"

"FBI," Dean smirked, and her smile turned a bit into a laughing one. "There's been a string of weird deaths in the area that we're trying to get to the bottom of, but we're comin' up messy."

"How sticky."

"Trust me, the stickiest part's gotta be all the dusty books we're gonna have to dig up."

"Actually," Sam jumped in, ignoring the look his brother shot his way, "if you're not too busy, a pair of fresh eyes could really help us out. I've heard you're mostly on the info side of things?"

"As much as I try, though my friends and I never failed to find ourselves in unsavory situations." She typed one last thing into her phone before sliding it into her back pocket. "But I would love to offer my assistance. What do you have currently?"

Dean stepped up and gestured towards one of the first floor rooms with a friendly "This way," and led her forward as he threw the nastiest glare he could over his shoulder. Sam responded in kind, fluttering his lashes and mouthing Kansas before coughing away his laughter when pink flushed tan cheekbones. Even as he turned back around and focused on jamming the key card in the door, the tips of his ears burned red and Sam was this close to taking a picture and making it his new contact photo.

Inside the room their weapons were stashed under the beds and a few firearms were stuck behind headboards and taped to the undersides of their chairs. Of course this wasn't a problem considering that a) Sakura was probably a human and was apparently cleared with both holy water in an ICEE and close proximity to an iron poker and b) if she'd been in the life as long as she implied, she probably set up something of the same precautions in her own room.

Sam picked up one of the folders on the table and handed it over. "All the victims in this case died of electrocution but somehow are covered in what seems to be completely unrelated chemical burns. And after death the body cavity fills with live earthworms that just—feed on the corpse, I guess, even when it's still warm."

"Those worms don't usually eat meat too, do they?" Dean asked as he looked down at the open file in Sakura's hands. The crime scene pictures were just as gross as earlier, but for some reason he really wants some more chow mein. "The little dudes barely have half a brain cell when you have to chuck them off the sidewalk after it rains."

Sam's face screwed up. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'm just saying if they're half as stupid as they look—"

"They're worms."

"That's what I'm saying!"

"The reason why these bodies fill with earthworms are because of the pheromones left behind by the chemical burns. They have no exact name, but their composition is similar to the effects of sulfuric acid and its corrosive properties and severity." Sakura tilted her head at one of the pictures with a clinical sort of fascination, sidelining the bickering completely. "Regular worms love it. Like bumblebees to their queen."

Dean opened his mouth, closed it consideringly, and opened it again. "So, uh, I take it you know what exactly we're dealing with?"

"It's an olgoi-khorkhoi. I believe the direct translation to English is 'large intestine worm,' and they're only found in Gobi Desert. But there's a more common name for it, I'm thinking?"

Sam's brows drew together in his patented 'hold-on' face, not quite one of his bitchfaces but damn near close, and he slowly pieced together everything he'd been told. He'd heard that description before, where had he heard it before? Dune by Frank Herbert flashed at the back of his head, old and dog-eared from its place half-tucked under his bed at the dorms back at Stanford, but that wasn't quite it. Huge worm, chemical burns, the Gobi Desert—

His jaw slackened. "Mongolian Death Worms are real?!"

"Yes, that's the name! My friend has one." Sakura beamed and shuffled to the documents behind the pictures. "His name's Tempura."

Dean blinked. "Your friend or the worm?"

To be fair, he kind of deserved Bitchface #59 (please tell me you're actually not that stupid) for that.

But she only chuckled and set the folder back on the table. "Tempura is fully grown for his species, nearly a meter and a third in length and blood red in color. Poison secretes from the skin and is dangerous to all organic non-plant matter, and there are acid ducts as well as electricity receptors in its mouth that can be used as a defense mechanism against its target. The range for these attacks, luckily, is only about as long as the length of its body."

"... It spits acid. And electricity," Dean deadpanned.

"And prefers to eat the goyo plant as well as the roots of the saxaul tree."

"Great, our exogorth's a vegan."

Sam rolled his eyes and turned to give Sakura his full attention. "If they only live in the Gobi, any idea on what it's doing here?"

"That's what's trouble. The olgoi-khorkhoi tend to concentrate away from the desert borders and are under protection to keep them in and curious looks away. From what my friend Shino has told me, the closest they'd gotten exposure had been from American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews in the early 1900s." Sam perked up. "Andrews gained his fame by his writings on his expeditions in the Gobi where of course he'd have listened to rumors about the worm. He'd searched and almost caught sights of it here and there, but locals directed him to think they were only myths and that the tartar sand boa had actually been the creature in question."

"That's amazing," he said, awe sparking in his eyes as he soaked up the impromptu history lesson. "Roy Chapman Andrews was some of the inspiration for Indiana Jones and he almost found out about the supernatural."

"We named the dog Indiana," Dean imitated under his breath. Sam threw an elbow into his side and quickly got back on track.

"So do you know how to kill them?"

"Yes, and luck that it's easy. The hard part lies in capturing." She crossed her arms with a decisive nod. "Would you mind if I accompanied you on this hunt?"

"Nah, you're the expert here—better to cover our asses than end up with worms in them. Heh."

Sam took a deep breath and turned fully toward his smirking brother. "Could you actually be more gross?"

"Yes," Dean answers immediately, and seriously, and so focused that Sam was three steps away from wringing out his neck for being so embarrassing in front of a doctor. Sakura snerked and patted the former's arm.

"Whatever ends up happening to your ass, let's hope I don't end up saving it a third time."

Dean sputtered. Sam's shit grin could light up the sun.

"It will be best to deal with the olgoi-khorkhoi during nightfall when there are less eyes. There are also a few things I will need to pick up, but if you can manage a few pounds of salt along with gasoline and matches, it will make it easier." She walked over to the door and threw back a smile as she crossed the doorway. "I will be back after sunset. See you!"

And when the door shut behind her and her shadow passed by the sheer curtain windows, Sam ran his tongue over his teeth and turned to bask in the joy of ignoring the murder in Dean's eyes.

"She's so out of your league."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You made an ass joke to someone who went to medical school."

"Are you done?"

"Does she know about the cases where you tried to suplex other monsters like that vampire in Nebraska or that vetala in—"

::

It was half past seven when Dean opened the door to Sakura in her satin letterman, a stuffed garbage bag on her left, and a foul smelling crate covered in black painted sigils he didn't recognize on her right.

He pointed to the crate first. "What's in there?"

"Food I found being thrown out of a vegan restaurant. Melon rinds, old vegetables, coffee grounds, soft fruit that isn't a citrus." She waved at Sam when he appeared in the doorway shouldering on a brown jacket. "The less preservatives the better, according to Shino. Are we taking your car?"

"Yeah, he doesn't like leaving the Impala all by itself," Sam answered as he picked up the crate, wrinkling his nose as he did.

"Herself," Dean griped as he closed the room door and hoisted the bag. It was a little lighter than he was expecting with all the bulk and bendy material he could feel inside. "How long have I had this car? How long have you ridden in this car? You know better, and I'm disappointed."

"Anyway." Sam continued as the trunk popped and he settled the crate in. Sakura hung back with her hands in her pockets and an amused quirk to her lips as Dean bumped his brother's shoulders. "If all this food attracts regular worms, it also works just fine with what we're dealing with too?"

"Worms are worms. If they don't find their favorite foods, they'll turn to the next things they can eat."

"And that doesn't include people?"

"They're usually docile, but attack when threatened. My theory is that in exposing itself to people unaccustomed to exceptionally large worms, they weren't very accepting of the reactions and lashed out," she replied. Dean snorted and swung back around to the driver's seat after dumping the bag in the back.

"It better be worth stinkin' up Baby."

"Doesn't stink come from babies' trunks anyway?" Sakura asks.

"Doc, please, let me grieve."

It was on the way to the Verdugo Mountains that they, in what Dean called Sam's extremely boring nerd way of getting to know people—"You mean asking questions?" "Yeah, but the way you do it, loser."—that they learned a fair bit more about Sakura and her day job. She'd been a surgeon in Japan and only went research-based when she accepted a position as a PI at WashU, taking over a lab focused on discovering immunological systems and processes, and taught an Advanced Human Dissection lecture. Her colleague, Dr. Neji Hyuuga, taught the lab portion.

"Sometimes I can't stand him," she sighed, "but we're begrudging training partners, so I suppose it works out."

"No treadmills?" Dean joked, flashing a grin through the rearview mirror. She stuck out her tongue.

"Not at all." She turned to peer out the window as a car passed them by. "We simply take turns beating each other up. It always cheers me up if I get to punch in his face."

Sam made a slightly choked noise at the back of his throat, and mumbled too low for the backseat to hear, "Okay, I'm starting to see it."

They chose a trail that wound through about the center of the attacks and set the crate down about fifteen minutes of a hike through dirt and underbrush and a particularly stupid twig that poked up Dean's pant leg and he tried to jiggle off as Sam and the Doc gushed over even more lore.

"The sigils on the box are rooted in Tengerism and will prevent the box from disintegration by the olgoi-khorkhoi's poison," she explained. Sam was lit up like a hunter in an illegal gun shop, and Dean rolled his eyes as he pulled a pair of rubber gloves from the bag before grabbing a handful of too-ripe fruit to scatter and lead to the trap box. "Have you ever heard of the Irk Bitig?"

"That's the only known complete manuscript written in Old Turkic script, right? Bobby's, uh, another hunter friend of our's, has only been able to get bits and pieces of copies, but I'd kill to see the original."

"No killing required!" Sakura held up her phone with a dimpled smile. "If you're promising to return it, I'm sure my friend will be willing to lend it to you for a while."

"Your friend has the original?!"

God, all this book talk was gonna give him hives.

Dean didn't know how long he forced himself to zone out, but he was inevitably brought back to the mountain side that smelled like a fruit fly's paradise by Sam's annoyingly loud whispers that suddenly weren't about musty books.

"—went and tried to suplex a huge stuffed lion possessed by this fisherman spirit and ended up ass over teakettle right into the ocean—"

"SAM!"

::

The Winchesters were professionals.

They'd been to Hell, were friends with its Queen, fought the old God, had dinner with the new one once a month, and drank beer with an angel on the weekends.

So when they'd trapped the dirt worm in the crate after a couple hours of yanking weeds waiting for it and Dean went to pick it up, he should've expected to brace himself for the wicked kickback that sent him stumbling into Sakura, who was sent stumbling into Sam, who under the combined weight of two people fell back and instinctively reached out to grab Sakura's arm, who grabbed Dean's jacket, and they all tumbled down a hill full of dust, small rocks, and a single conveniently placed cactus.

::

"It was a manly scream," Dean defended. He coughed and swore a tan cloud puffed out of his lungs.

"Dude, you fell into a cactus. I'll let it go," Sam grunted as he finally managed to pull himself up into a sitting position. He hiked up his jeans on his right leg and, upon meeting the swollen splotches of purples around his ankle, sighed and laid back down. "Yeah, I'm not walking on that anytime soon."

"... So we've killed hundreds of demons."

"Uhuh."

"Probably just as many angels."

"Yup."

"Time traveled."

"Mhm."

"Please tell me we're not getting old."

"I mean... aren't you turning for—"

Dean hung his head. "Dammit."

Sakura slid back down the hill just as dusty and scruffed as them both, but lacking the distinct air of suffering a midlife crisis. In fact, there was a bit of a spring in her step. Guess that was what happened when she had one brother cushion her fall and the other to take the cactus. "I chained and locked the box before dragging it back to the trunk." She frowned. "I almost feel bad about having to salt and burn it."

Dean leveled her with a look. "There were spines in my face."

She reached over and yanked one of the spines he missed on the side of his face.

"Ow!"

"Any pressing injuries?" she asked as he rubbed his face. "Do any of you need help making it back to the car?" She glanced over his shoulder. "Sam?"

"I can walk," Dean grumbled, jerking his thumb behind him. "His leg's busted though, so we'll need to get him up the hill and down the path. It's gonna be a bitch, but between you and me I'm sure we can make something work."

Sakura looked at Sam before she traced the path up the hill with her chin in her hands as she puzzled something out for the stretch for a few seconds. Then she nodded and shucked off her jacket, holding it out. "Carry this for me, please?"

Dean blinked. "Holy shit."

Because she'd been wearing a tank top under that jacket and the blazer from earlier and all they'd got out here was moonlight and bulky flashlights they'd stuck in the ground, but it was enough to shine on those biceps she hid and honestly? Jesus. Those muscles could snap a dude like a celery stick, holy mother—

"How much do you friggin' bench?" he gaped.

"Oh, hm, I haven't really checked in a while since I switched from benching to doing pull-ups with the plates held up in my crossed legs, if that counts? But I can lift ninety kilos comfortably. Very useful for pulling my friend away from the instant noodle aisle in stores."

Sam, still reclined in the dirt, folded his hands over his stomach. "How—How much is 90 kilos?"

"Maybe two-hundred pounds? Around?" She quickly waved him off. "Don't worry! I've most likely carried people much heavier than you."

"Carry?" Sam repeated. With every step closer she took, the quicker realization dawned, and it dawned horribly. "Oh, no, no, no, no, you don't need to carry me, I swear I can limp all the way back to the—"

For the first time the whole day, Dean beamed so wide his cheeks burned.

"—wait, hold on, I can actually seriously hop back WAIT—"

And suddenly he was slung over Sakura's shoulders in a fireman's carry.

"You're injured, there's no need to be embarrassed," she chided, then strode up the hill like there wasn't over two hundred pounds of jolly green giant she was hefting.

Dean laughed so hard his stomach cramped, and the shouting he got for the picture he sent to Charlie was totally worth it.

::

Valeri Srivastava liked to think of herself as a laidback postdoc. Or at least, tired enough to be laidback and so on top of her projects that she can mindlessly enjoy her caramel drizzle ice cream as she and the rest of the Haruno Lab chattered and walked back to the inn. It was a shame Dr. H couldn't join them for dinner—the desserts cafe they stopped by at had a lot of cool stuff.

"You think she'll like the strawberry bubble waffles we got for her?" Alex, a junior undergrad, asked as he swung the box of takeout at his side. The Masters student, Riley, slurped her berry smoothie and pushed her red hair out of her freckled face.

"She likes anythin' you get 'er. 'Member how happy she got when we rolled up with coffee last week?" She side-eyed the man walking next to her. "I mean, not that we needed if if someone's gooped up 'speriment hadn't blasted like a ticked time-bomb that had us stayin' 'til three in th'mornin'."

BP snorted and spooned rocky road into his mouth. "I'll put it in my dissertation for brownie points."

"I had a presentation! At eight!"

"You didn't have to stay."

"I woulda looked like a jackass if I didn'!"

"Getting riled up, Riley?"

"Hi-larious."

Bright-eyed freshman Betty watched the volley as she quietly ate her mint chocolate chip.

So yeah, Valeri figured she was pretty laid back. All the students were good kids and Dr. H did nothing but encourage them despite being a relatively new staff member. Who cracked her knuckles at the campus security when they tried to accuse Alex of breaking into the building. And once carried Riley up an entire flight of stairs when she broke her leg falling off a fence and the elevator was under maintenance. And who shared banana splits with Dr. Hyuuga in the main quad while they almost threw hands over the best way to run their classes.

"She'll like it," Valeri agreed as she dug lazily for a chocolate chip at the bottom of her cup. "She's cool like that."

She basked in the easy background noise of BP and Riley's bickering paired with Alex telling them at large, or mostly at Betty, about how the mouse guillotine he found at the back of a cabinet he was cleaning one day definitely shouldn't be messed with—until a black muscle car rolled up to the lot and parked next to Dr. H's mustang.

The driver door swung open and a guy in an army jacket heaved himself out, streaked in sweat and grime. There was part of a shrub in his hair and he sunk into a crouch with the biggest sigh in the history of sighs.

The next door to open was the passenger's and—oh boy, when Dr. H's trademark pink hair popped over the roof, Riley slowed to a stop and BP ran into her shoulder, the rest of the lab falling into a hush as they watched her stride around the car and to the backseat door. Her letterman hung around her waist and she looked way too happy for someone who looked like she took a dive into a sandlot.

And then she pulled out another dude who was as tall as a skyscraper.

"Um?"

Army's head jerked up and Dr. H turned her head, a bright smile stretching her face as her eyes landed on the group. One of Skyscraper's arms was slung over her shoulders and he avoided their gazes with an embarrassed tinge to his cheeks.

"Hello, everyone!"

Alex blinked. Slowly. "Hey, uh, whatcha been... up to?"

Dr. H shrugged. "We went and fought a mountain lion."

Valeri sniffed and chewed. Maybe she should've added bananas? No, that would've taken away from the caramel, and this was some damn good caramel. "Did you win?" she asked as her spoon knocked against a stray chocolate chip. Score.

Sakura pouted. "Val, I'm hurt. Do you truly have to ask?"

Fair.

"Fair," she amended. "I don't know if you've eaten, but we got you a strawberry bubble waffle." That prompted Alex to hold up the take-out bag in one jerky motion. "Also, did you get the email from the lab building? We've got a bunch of receipts about those work orders again."

After Dr. H transferred Skyscraper's weight to Army's, she jogged over to them with an absolute sparkle in her eyes. It was a usual expression she wore, ever-excited to speak with them if she wasn't already thirty-six hours overdue for some sleep. BP stared at her scraped, bloodied knees through the rips in her jeans. "They can keep their yelling about it until we get back," she dismissed. "And thank you! You guys are so sweet."

"We asked for extra cut up strawberries. And caramel drizzle," BP added.

"Hope the whipped cream ain't melted."

"Whipped cream melts?"

Alex turned incredulously to the group as Dr. H took the bag from his hands. "Are—Are we all just gonna ignore the fact that Dr. H and her buddies went off and fought a mountain lion—"

"Oh yeah, forgot y'missed the hikin' trip where Dr. H went an' wrestled a whole bear," Riley said. Skyscraper squinted. Army muttered an offended what.

Betty's jaw dropped in horror. "I thought the bear was a myth," she squeaked. Valeri would've thought so too if she hadn't been there, glasses askew from her spot on a tall boulder while she could only watch her boss lock her arms around the bear's neck and drag it away from the main path. When she came back, BP was slack-jawed in a stream and Riley was half-way up a tree as she pulled out a crumpled map to try to find where they were on the path. After forcefully dragging a bear.

"What kind of PI would I be if I allowed my cute students to be attacked by a bear?" Dr. H frowned and turned back to her friends. "Do we still have salt in the trunk?"

Army cleared his throat. "Um, yeah?"

"I might use some on the waffle. It will really balance out the sweet," she said, and faced back to the lab group. "Are you turning in, or continuing?"

"We'll probably check out the pool in a bit." Valeri shrugged one shoulder. "Want to join us after..." She gestured in front of her with her plastic spoon. "...all this?"

"Of course! Let me clean up, and I will be texting the group chat," Dr. H bid. She headed back to throw Skyscraper's arm over her shoulders. With a parting smile at the group, she helped Army lug him back to one of the rooms.

"So that Alaskan bull worm—" Valeri heard Army mutter.

"Alask—you can't just make stuff up, Dean—"

"That's not the worm, that's its tongue!" Dr. H piped up, and Army's barking laughter followed them until the room door shut behind them.

Alex pressed his hands to his forehead looking the same way he does when he tries to do his coding homework and Betty was staring blankly into her ice cream cup, but at least the grad students were taking it better.

Valeri finished off her ice cream. "If you thought that was weird, you should've seen her rip a phonebook in half while she was shouting at someone down the office landline."

::

Here's an amazing commission by frost-marris on tumblr because if I have to suffer from this idea, she does too.