"FuckFuckFuck," Parry grumbled, rounding the wall at the bottom of the stairwell, tripping slightly on the body of something-someone? Something. Maybe. Didn't matter. The Celestial reached up one handed, snapped a finger to the beat of Lucy in the Sky, and took in the mess of his basement as the lights popped on.

He would gladly admit that he was a materialistic bastard. A lot of classic clothing, some banal weapons that he absolutely could not be parted with, but for all the fantastic, there was a lot more useless junk- records, magazines, VHS tapes of foreign films and all the Super Bowls, and then the engine to a 1971 Ford Mustang. Still had to find the body and tires that went with it.

Either way, he had to make sure that the place was locked up and get ready to go. Nemsemet kind of wiped whole dynasties off the historical and metaphysical map for a few centuries. So yeah, Camden was going to be a shitty place to be. Maybe Los Angeles would be better. Or Tokyo.

Silk shirt was traded for a wife-beater and jean jacket, the one with the lovely pink triangle Jason had left him a few months ago. The Gucci diaper bag was where he'd left it last night- on the hook by the Beatles collection. Grabbed that. He paused briefly and twitched his nose.

The daycare was his Sanctum, and by all the gods there was a measure of control he could exercise over it. The sugar, flour, and candy canisters would be swapped out into the party safe beneath the stairs for the more, er, proper contents. 

[b][i]Call me a fool, call me a slut, call me a hundred different things. But don't ever call me negligent around children.[/i][/b]

It felt like he was down there plowing through piles of clothes and boxes of junk for years- probably ten minutes- before he realized something very, very important.

"Rusty," Parry said, "I don't hear you claiming to be a Chinese restaurant up there... You are dialing, right?" That number was not usually something he thought about, but the direct line to Murael's secretary in Verona was definitely a nuclear option. If it didn't work, they were well and truly isolated. There would only be two ways out of the city- one of which involved a bullet to the brain and answering to his superiors about all that unauthorized vacation time.

Option two was even less pleasant, and required he find some items he hadn't needed for a very very long time. But the vacation could continue.

So of course he toppled over an entire pallet of Pampers diapers in a search for his own holy grail, misplaced so many years and blunts ago. And when it wasn't under that one, he started throwing the Huggies onto the Mustang engine.

"So, uh, Rusty? Who's left alive out there? Has the mummy, like, put a Pharaoh hat on and everything? Also, if anyone needs to sober up- Stella, I'm looking at you- the green baby bottles in the fridge have my Saturday Morning Cure in them. And yeah, the nipples are clean.

"Feel free to raid my upstairs wardrobe for clothes. We burned your pants in the fire pit out back last night. It seemed like a good idea at the time."