Dom had spent the better part of the last fifteen years learning all the ways in which the world was frankly screwy as hell.
    This was by no means a deliberate action on his part. Dom liked people, he was a people person (if one asked his sister, Nora, one might even say he was a people pleaser) -- he was curious by nature, even-tempered, good-humored, clever enough to catch on quickly but, unlike his sister, hardly the kind of sharp-witted that left you in a government think-tank twenty miles below ground in a country with more consonants than reason.
    Or at least he'd prided himself on all those virtues of his until he was nineteen and stabbing something to death that shouldn't have by rights, existed outside of a kid's nightmare or The Brothers' Grimm Fairytales.
    He had a battle buddy back then, Frederick Franklin Filmoore, who for reasons beyond any of Dom's units understanding, had gone by Stewie, who collected religious symbols to himself like some dudes collected girlfriends, or changes of socks. In the aftermath, a half dozen of them standing around, winded in the 120 degree heat, Stewie had cleared his throat and declaimed loudly, "Gravytrain you just shivved a fuckin' genie."
    Under more normal circumstances someone possessed of more reason (namely Dom at the time), may have contested this.
       --except it's hard to argue facts when you have a six armed corpse with a pharyngeal fuckin' jaw oozing teal blood onto white sand, at your feet. Dom looks it up later. The jaw thing, not the genie thing. That shit was straight out of Aliens and Dom made the decision to never under any circumstances let his baby sister ever watch a horror movie ever.
    Except the weird and spooky seemed attracted to Dom. Or else damn well confused by his total inability to be bewitched, bothered, or bewildered by any of it. Dom gets something of a reputation as the Navy's monster catcher. It's a well-earned reputation even if he finds it inordinately baffling. He gets inklings when things are off.
Nora calls it his hinky-detector. Dom calls it having good instincts. Whatever the hell it is though, means when he takes the brass up on an honorable discharge when he's thirty after twelve years in the Navy, it leads to a job offer that results in him introducing himself as a mechanic of all things most days.
    'pparently the CIA can get real persnickety about legends and Dom's got enough tattoos and friends in strange places that really the only logical response was to-- actually. Dom doesn't really know. His job isn't to understand why humans are frequently whacko. His job is to shoot things, and let the tinglies lead him to some serious Lovecraftian spook shit.
    He's partnered with a man named Timothy Thoreau (no relation to the writer, a cryin' shame if you ask Dom which nobody ever does), whose built like a brick shithouse if brick shithouses were burly ginger dudes with patchy beards and poor taste in tattoos. Thoreau's prone to eating slimjims with fruit rolls ups twisted around'em and slathered in canned spray cheese. Dom is pretty certain the guy's never met gas station snack he didn't like and then douse in grease. He's got a pineapple tattooed in luridly colored detail on the back of his neck and up across the base of his skull.
    Dom who is a purveyor of fine arts in the form of body mods himself, knows from tattoo, he's got almost thirty individual renderings spanning his shoulders, the length of one arm and across his hips. He does not, to date, have any desire to tattoo fruit on himself. Even if Thoreau thinks it'd tie in nicely with the hardened, badboy veteran look half the department all seem to think Dom rocks.
    Dom paints in watercolor, crochets his kid sister blankets, gardens when he can, refuses to eat anything from an aerosol can, and stepping out of the government issue vehicle on a beach that's more FEMA chic than surfer picnic, he can't help but wish he'd packed a snack. The smell of flaming hot cheetos is stuck in his nose and Thoreau ambles around him with an orange grin that disappears so quickly Dom worries Thoreau's gonna drop dead of a heart attack.
 "Shit-- you remember that list I was tellin' you about in the car?"
There are a lot of lists. The last eight months of training and acclimitization has been nothing but lists. Thoreau gestures expansively toward a chopper nestled in the curve of a fallen building-- Dom is more interested in the hook beneath his sternum feeling that's got him turning a little away,
 "It's a nice chopper Timmy but I'm more interested in that big ass aquaduct where th'waters comin' out-"
    Tim let's out an aggrieved noise, "They called in the big guns offa that list Graves, means this is worse'n it looks."
Dom's fair sure Tim gets the screaming meemees working with spooks. Dom's got half a lifetime of experience figuring out how to ignore it. So the department called in one of the biggest honchos they could think. Dom's feet are already carrying him toward what's looking to be more and more like a sewer. Thoreau makes a noise that Dom ignores almost entirely in favor of scrambling down what's left of a concrete water break. It's one of those things he does. Let's the tingle tell him where to go. It's not yet steered him wrong. The department hasn't yet managed to put him in a situation where he hasn't been able to identify every single instance of Other come into contact with him or his team. Probably this is what stops him from getting gutted on the party hooks of a particularly pissed off rusalka. Xi's got the crazed look of infection, and half xir's face appears to have been melted off and the frankly slate scraping scream xi emits would be enough to make anyone stumble.
    Above him Thoreau shouts and goes for his gun. Three rounds too close to Dom's left ear and a couple talons in his gut, waist deep in sewage and sea water, he gets nylon cuffs around the creature and wonders what the fuck a rusalka is doing this far from Poland. He's got a ringing in his left ear that's going to give him trouble and above him a handful of department spooks, three FEMA workers and Thoreau are all gesturing for Dom to get the fuck out of the outh of a goddamn sewer aquaduct and hand off th "person of interest" --
    Thoreau manhandles him back up onto dry land and shoves him toward the tent city cropping up with the probably instructions of dealing with something, but Dom's still got a hand on the rusalka whose still screaming bloody murder and he can't think past the dazed looks on a growing number of faces. He shoves a waterlogged chocolate bar in the rusalka's mouth and says too loudly--
    "No one is actually buyin' what you're sellin' sweetheart so the quicker you calm down the quicker we can get you sorted." And possily figure out what the ever loving hell is going on here.
