Iron Phoenix

Holiday with a Catch

A/N: Hi everyone! So, I've been editing - and jeez, some of those early chapters were bad - but the main major change is that I've basically put Melissa and Sean together into one character. Saying exactly why would be spoilers, but in short, they were basically going to serve the same function and would have got in the way of each other. If you don't want to re read the entire story, just imagine that everything Melissa and Sean have done up to this point was done by Melissa. If you do want to re read the story, improvements have been made! As always, constructive criticism is appreciated, and thanks for reading!

The doors of briefing room two once again loomed in front of Kana as she approached whatever fate lurked behind them. She checked her watch – five minutes early. Crap, not early enough. Hurrying slightly, she blundered through the door, seeing all but two already assembled in front of her. Taking a second to compose herself, she strode over to her seat, grabbing a coffee from the tray in the centre of the table. She was not going to let this be a repeat of the last meeting they had in briefing room two; she couldn't help but shudder at the thought.

Rico hurried through the door a couple of minutes later, red faced and panting. Whatever had made her late though, also seemed to have made her absolutely over the moon. Not even a death glare from Roth could get her grin to falter. She sat down, but the room remained silent. Kana fidgeted restlessly; her interest had been piqued for a while and she was getting tired of waiting for answers. They waited five minutes, Rico occasionally looking as if she might burst with joy, Kana's irritation only deepening, then ten. When the clock finally hit quarter past seven, the door hissed open. Seemingly without a care in the world, in sauntered Rick. Roth looked about ready to strangle him.

He had finally ditched the awful scarf but seeming to need to flout the uniform in some way, he had swapped it for a black turtleneck. Roth gave him an utterly withering look which went completely ignored as he casually sat down. Sure, Kana hated his guts, but his seeming immunity to Roth was a superpower she was somewhat jealous of. Clearing his throat, Roth took his position at the head of the table, this time flanked not just by Holden but by Farley as well.

"It is distinctly not seven o'clock, but now that we're all assembled, shall we start?", Roth intoned. "By the way, Staar, can you stay behind after?"

Kana suppressed a smirk. That wasn't going to be fun.

"As you may have guessed, you've been called here today because we have a new mission.", he continued. "This is a new one even for us, and quite frankly, I think it's a stupid idea. With that in mind, here's the creator of that idea to explain it all. I don't understand all this science-y stuff anyway."

"Hi everyone!", Farley said bouncily, struggling with a huge flipchart that seemed wedged shut. She kicked it exasperatedly and it finally sprung open, toppling over on top of her and sending her to the floor with a shriek. Roth watched with disinterest as she picked herself up and finally set the flipchart upright, not even bothering to dust herself off. She turned to the first page, absolutely crammed with diagrams and surrounded by spider-like annotations.

"So," she said, her eyes lighting up behind her glasses, "for a while now, I've been monitoring a goliath in the northeast of Iceland. However – and this is a big however – this one isn't like anything we've ever seen before. It appears to be dormant at the bottom of a large geyser."

She flipped to the next page, gesturing wildly to a grainy image that took up almost the entire space. "This is a picture taken by a thermal imaging camera yesterday. And that's it.", she said pointing to a vague shape in the centre of the image. "I named him Cinnamon because he looks like a little doughnut, all curled up there. Isn't he cute?"

Kana had a vague awareness of the incredulous expressions around her, but she was far past being surprised. Farley had named the goliath Cinnamon. Seemed about par for the course at this point.