Notes:- Just a little something I wrote a while ago but never got round to posting until now. Enjoy!

Paperwork

It was another Friday evening and Captain Wesker had gathered a few members of the S.T.A.R.S Alpha team as well as the Bravo rookie, Rebecca Chambers, in the S.T.A.R.S office to catch up on paperwork. No one was particularly happy about it, least of all Chris Redfield. Wesker had stuck around for a few minutes, supposedly to show willing, before making his bullshit excuses about some oh-so-important meeting with Chief Irons. Chris snorted derisively. It was highly likely that Wesker would be in some bar by now whilst they were stuck in the office doing paperwork. Paperwork! Chris hadn't joined S.T.A.R.S to be mired in red tape! He'd joined it for the action. He'd much rather but leaping over things (or rolling under them) and shooting stuff than sitting at some scratched ancient desk, pen poised. He leant back in his chair, ignoring the ominous creak.

"I don't trust that guy," He said to no one in particular, nodding towards Wesker's now empty desk.

"Really"? Jill feigned interest, barely looking up from her paperwork. "You haven't shared that thought with us before" She added sarcastically. Chris pulled a face at her back. Jill got so damn serious when she was filling in reports! Chris tapped his pen on his stack of papers and started to hum a little tune. After a few seconds he heard Jill's heavy sigh. "Do you really have to sound like some sort of demonic bee"? She asked, still not looking up from her work. Chris shut up immediately. Jill really wasn't a woman to cross.

"I'm gonna get a coke, anyone want one"? He offered, getting up and stretching elaborately. He looked around the small office. Barry, Brad, Rebecca and, of course, Jill were all sitting with their heads down, pens scratching. Chris sighed and left the room.

His trip to the vending machine wasted a lot less time than Chris hoped it would. He'd been hoping to bump into someone along the way, that hottie Leon perhaps, but the corridors of the R.P.D building were eerily quiet. He wandered back into the S.T.A.R.S office and if he didn't know better, he could've sworn that time had actually stopped. Everyone was in the exact same positions and doing the exact same thing as they had been when he'd left. He sat back down at his desk and opened his coke. He drained half the can and looked around the general detritus of his desk for inspiration. His eyes fell onto the dark brown leather wallet containing his S.T.A.R.S warrant card and a box of paperclips that stood beside it. A rather interesting thought crossed his mind. Why had he never thought of this before? Exactly how many of those paperclips could the little plastic window of his S.T.A.R.S wallet hold? Smirking to himself, he grabbed the box and wallet and, somewhat excitedly, started to stuff the different coloured paperclips into the plastic window.

Two minutes later, the different coloured paperclips were starting to form a long chain. The whole idea with the S.T.A.R.S wallet had been interesting at first but it soon became obvious that the capacity of the little plastic window was surprisingly deceptive. His exclamation of 'This thing can hold hundreds of 'em!' had been met by silence and all of a sudden, the whole idea seemed pretty stupid. He did briefly consider how many paperclips he could fire into Jill's empty S.T.A.R.S mug with the use of an elastic band but Chris was rather attached to his genitals and his face was how he got all the guys. He continued to thread the paperclips until he ran out and they made an impressively long chain. Now that he had the paperclip chain, it raised a very important question. What was he going to do with it? He looked around at his hard working colleagues for the perfect victim. Jill was already pretty annoyed so he should probably leave her alone, at least for the moment. He certainly wasn't going to mess with Barry and as for Rebecca, well, it was mean since she was only a rookie. That only left one viable option. Brad Vickers. Chris stood up, making out like he needed to stretch. He needn't have bothered however, as everyone was too involved in their work to notice. That would definitely work in his favour. As nonchalantly as he could, Chris wandered over to the door and tied one end of his epic paperclip chain to the knob. He wandered over to Brad's desk; which was at the furthest point from the door. He stood behind his colleague and cleared his throat.

"Alright Brad"? He said chattily. "Look, I don't know what to write…can I see what you've written"?

"Sure" Brad replied. Chris grinned feeling no ounce of guilt for taking advantage of his colleague's kind nature. He leant forward to examine Brad's work and, at the same time, nimbly hooked the loose end of his paperclip chain to Brad's belt. Trying his best to hold in a chuckle, Chris did his best sage nod.

"I see, yeah…" He said knowledgably. "Ok, thanks Bud"

Brad shrugged and Chris made his way back to Brad's desk. Now all he needed to do was wait until Brad needed to move. Chris drained the rest of his coke and waited as patiently as he could. When ten minutes had passed and stupid Brad still hadn't moved, Chris decided to take matters into his own hands.

"Hey Brad"! He called over to Brad's desk. "I need a file out of that cabinet" He nodded to the filing cabinet a couple of metres away from Brad's desk. "Can you get it for me"?

"Of course" Brad stood up and Chris could barely contain his excitement. As Brad made his way to the filing cabinet, the paperclip chain started to tighten. No one else had noticed it but Chris, which would make the whole thing so much more satisfying. The closer Brad got to the cabinet, the tighter the paperclip chain went. Eventually, the inevitable happened and the paperclip chain exploded, sending stray paperclips flying in every direction. A satisfying amount of the paperclips landed all over Brad's desk and the floor surrounding it. Jill looked up from her work and immediately back down again. Chris knew her well enough to know that she was obviously trying to ignore the situation for fear of 'encouraging him'. Barry was also following the ignoring route; his only acknowledgement of the hilarious prank was to flick a stray paperclip from his desk. He could hear Rebecca giggling but by far, the best reaction was from Brad himself who looked as though he was going to explode in a similar fashion to the paperclip chain.

"God damn it Chris"! He exclaimed, yanking what remained of the chain from the back of his belt. Chris rocked in his chair, trying to fight wave upon wave of laughter. He hooted, he snorted, and eventually some stuff came out of his nose. Brad picked up his papers and shot him a dirty look before leaving the S.T.A.R.S office, muttering darkly about going to finish his work at home.

As soon as Chris recovered from his laughter, he decided to chase his last coke with another one. One uneventful trip to the vending machine later, it became all too obvious that his previous prank, as awesome as it was, wasn't going to satisfy his boredom. Now that Brad was gone he was going to have to focus his energies on another victim. He glanced over at Jill who was still diligently working away albeit looking a little more chilled out than before which meant now would be the ideal time to strike. A quick look around provided him with the perfect tool for his new prank. His guitar! It was propped beside his desk as it had been for months now. He never really played the thing any more and if he was being really honest, he never could play it. That fact however, would make his prank even better. His and Jill's desks were laid out so that if they were both facing their desks, they'd be sitting back to back. Chris picked up his guitar and spun his chair so that his back was now against the wall. He positioned the guitar correctly and noted, with much glee, that the guitar's headstock was deliciously close to Jill's left shoulder. He gave it a couple of strums for good measure, ignoring Jill and Barry's resigned sighs, before starting to tune it. If there was one thing he knew that Jill couldn't stand, it was the sound of a guitar being tuned. He started to twist the cap stands and pluck the strings at random. He saw Jill's shoulders and back tense up and smiled to himself. Perhaps he should add a little lyrical content?

"This thing, called love, I just, can't handle it"! He sang loudly and with gusto, continuing to pluck at the strings in a terrible interpretation of the classic Queen song. He was getting into the music now so he started to swing the guitar in time to the rhythm. Each time he swung it; the headstock collided with Jill's shoulder and back. This continued for a few seconds before Jill suddenly whipped round in her chair.

"For god's sake Chris"! She shouted. Her eyes were almost wild with anger. She glared at him and brandished a pair of scissors menacingly. "Don't make me cut the strings Christopher," She added dangerously. Chris quickly put down his guitar and spun round in his chair so the pair of them were back to back again. He wasn't beaten yet! He waited until everything went quiet again before singing as loudly as he could.

"Oh yes! I'm the great pretender"!

Without another word, or even a glare, Jill, like Brad before her, gathered up her things and slammed out of the office. Chris grinned smugly. Two down, two to go, he was pretty good at this! He decided to celebrate with yet another can of coke. As he was making his way back to the S.T.A.R.S office, he came up with the next part of his genius plan. He strolled through the door and did his best elaborate stretch. Chris was one of those guys who thoroughly believed there was only one way to finish off a good stretch and that was with a good fart. Chris had somewhat of a reputation surrounding his wind. Being downwind of a Redfield fart was, as many people could attest, was something that even the hardest members of HAZMAT would struggle to deal with. So, at the very end of his elaborate stretch, Chris let out an amazing specimen that was greatly improved by the office's acoustics.

"Boo-yah"! He crowed triumphantly. He put his hands on his hips and made an impressive show of taking a deep breath, as if he'd just reached the top of the Arklay mountains before cupping his right hand and 'batting' the fart in the direction of Rebecca's desk. "Suck on that"! He strolled back to his desk; his chest puffed out with pride, and sat, waiting. A few seconds later there was a gagging noise coming from Rebecca's desk.

"Oh god"! Her hand shot up to her face, covering her nose and mouth. "That is so wrong"! She added indistinctly. Her hand moved towards the switch that controlled the air conditioning but then stopped suddenly as she obviously remembered the AC had broken ages ago and no one had bothered to fix it. "Right that's it" She stood up and, with her one free hand, picked up her sheath of papers. "I'm gone," She added, making a swift exit. As the S.T.A.R.S office door slammed for a third time, Chris couldn't help but feel satisfied. This was way more fun and interesting than Wesker's paperwork! He leant back in his chair and pondered his final move. He finally felt brave enough to tackle Barry. The only problem was that so far; Barry had been the least reactive out of everyone. Stupid paperclip related pranks didn't work; neither did bad guitar playing or singing and as for farting, had Barry not smelt that last one! Chris had a feeling that if he was going to get Barry out of that office, he was really going to have to pull out all the stops. It took a good few minutes of thinking before he finally came up with something. Grinning at his own brilliance, Chris opened his desk drawer and pulled out his S.T.A.R.S issue handgun. Protocol dictated that weapons were supposed to be stashed in the designated weapons lockers but Chris had always kept his handgun in his desk drawer. It just seemed to make much more sense. If anything was to happen in the R.P.D building and all went to hell, you wouldn't see Chris Redfield scrambling around for the keys to the weapons lockers! He even kept a couple of spare magazines in there, just in case. He smiled at his trusty weapon. This would be the key to cracking Barry. If there was one thing the older man couldn't stand, it was people mistreating guns. Guns to Barry were like family members to most other people. Not that Barry didn't care about his family of course. Chris glanced over at him, still steadily working his way through his stack of papers, scribbling away in that neat sloping script of his. Christ whistled to himself as he slapped a magazine into the handgun. He thought he saw Barry twitch at the noise but other than that, the simple act garnered no reaction. Still whistling, Chris started to pull on the slide of the gun which; in turn, started to eject bullets from the right hand side of the barrel. He did this fifteen times until the magazine was empty. The bullets had landed all over the place with some on Chris' desk and the others, which had bounced off the wall, on the floor surrounding him. Chris smirked, that had actually been strangely fun! He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the second clip. He slapped it in and within seconds Barry had gotten up from his desk, marched over to Chris and was standing over him expectantly. The older man didn't say a word, but simply held out his hand. Chris knew better than to mess with Barry Burton. Smiling at him rather sheepishly, he handed the gun over. Barry put it in his pocket and left the office wordlessly. Despite that slightly unnerving encounter, Chris suddenly found himself in a completely empty S.T.A.R.S office. He'd actually done it! It was definitely a momentous occasion. There was however, one big drawback to his genius plan. Now that the office was devoid of his colleagues, it meant that Chris was actually going to have to do the paperwork. That was something that struck him as a little odd. The boredom that had driven him to his pranks was now driving him to actually do the work he should've done from the outset. Deciding that he should probably just get on with it and get it over with, Chris picked up his pen and got started.

It was almost ten that night when Wesker finally made it back to the S.T.A.R.S office. He'd given his team strict instructions to stay where they were until he got a chance to check over all the work they'd done. Sure, it was little bit patronising for a group of adults but that was how Wesker liked to keep order. He opened the door, expecting to see his team diligently working away or at the very least blowing off steam having finished their work. It came as a surprise to him when he found the place deserted apart from the lone figure of Chris Redfield sitting at his desk. The younger man looked up at offered Wesker a brief smile.

"Where did everyone go"? Wesker demanded.

"Search me" Chris replied with a shrug. He continued to scribble away on the paper that he was working on. Wesker took a brief tour of the other's desks and found that the paper work was largely incomplete and a lot was missing.

"They didn't even bother to finish the job" Wesker muttered to himself, looking back to Chris who scribbled a few last words before throwing down his pen.

"Slackers"! Chris announced with a wide, self-satisfied grin.

The End.