"Shit." He stands up, ties off the hat, and puts it in his backpack. "What'd you see -"

"Um - so the gym teacher was missing today and I happened to notice for unrelated reasons that the basement looked like, uh, like a really big slug had gone through it, and it smelled like something was rotting down there? And then I checked the gym teacher's office during passing period to see if anything was weird about it, and I think someone cleaned up part of whatever was there but they, uh, didn't get all of the slime."

"All right. I'm gonna tell someone to look up kinds of critter that might be, in case it has any weird vulnerabilities or abilities we should know about, and then I think we should go after it today when we can easily follow it. Is that okay with you?"

She nods seriously.

"You okay?"

"Uh-huh. I didn't look through the basement for it. I, uh, only have a wooden stake right now."

"I got stuff in the car but I haven't taught you how to use it yet. I guess a knife isn't wielded all that differently from a wooden stake."

"This is true. Probably. I am not an expert. I can probably figure out stabbing things with a knife, though."

"The important question is whether you're safer with a knife than without one. I think ...you probably are? But a baseball bat might be even safer. Yeah, let's do that." He walks briskly towards his car.  

Cool. Baseball bats seem nice and uncomplicated.

"Do you want to see the basement, or..."

"Yeah but I'd like to go in armed even if we're going to wait for identification before we follow it. In case it's back."

She nods and accepts a baseball bat.

He takes a crowbar and a gun and something that might be a grenade and hands them both earplugs and in they go.

The basement is creepy and quiet and continues to smell of rotting meat. There are greenish slime trails on the floor and on the ceiling.

He looks at them intently. "Okay. I asked Michael to call a friend of ours with a big database, see if they can identify it. I'll let you know when they have something."

"You asked - oh, the telepathy. Cool."

"It doesn't work on vampires, actually, which sucks, it'd make it pretty much impossible for them to sneak up on us. But it's useful for this kinda thing. Not something you can learn, sorry."

"I figured it was a... you thing." At some point she should really write up a list of all of the abilities of - archangels? Not-archangels, so that she doesn't get confused. Maybe write up a list of all of the abilities of everything she runs into, in case that ever comes in handy.

"Yeah."

A person with a sufficiently comprehensive database of demons could probably narrow it down to a few different things that climb on walls and eat people and leave slime trails that may or may not be about that color. Of the likely candidates, the Atrashi demon spits acid and the Kulaxa has a really ridiculous number of claws. Neither is thought to be intelligent.

He conveys this. "All right. Let's follow the slime."

"Cool."

There are slime trails leading in and out of the vents, and also slime trails leading to and from the boiler, and - ah. That would be the gym teacher. He's looking pretty cut up and melted at this point.

"...ah."

"You wanna stay here or go up?"

"Nah, I wanna find it. It's the third murder this year, I'll live. - unless I don't, I guess. How do we get to it if it's in the vents?"

"Good question. I'd say we could gas it out but there are probably still people in the school....hmmm."