Of Cake and Tea
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, and now they REALLY don't like me, because I didn't even let them have any cake, darnit!
Summary: Drake, Wendy, Nancy, Yomiko, and a joyful morning spent fleeing in terror from a gaggle of sugar-crazed office ladies. Nope, they'll never live this one down.
It was a dark and stormy night late in autumn, if one discounted a few important facts about the situation. These included, but were not limited to, the fact that it was the middle of the day, rather mild and sunny, and the tail end of April. In other words, it was not at all a dark and stormy night, being neither night nor stormy. Nor was it particularly autumn - at least, on the side of the world in question, in which April belonged very decidedly to spring, and had not recently buggered off to play tetherball with September and the gang.
If it had been a dark and stormy night, Wendy might have been decidedly bitterer about skipping up the steps to the library's main building to begin a fresh, new day of work. She usually was, when Mr. Joker decided out of the blue that she would be needed for some important task in the dead of night, although the overtime pay was generally able to cheer her up somewhat. Nevertheless, had it been a dark and stormy night, she would have been trudging more likely than skipping, and grumbling bitterly rather than singing cheerily as she withdrew her access card.
To be sure, the lovely and talented, if slightly accident-prone Miss Earhart did not begin every day singing cheerily, and by this point in the day had more ordinarily barely achieved a coherent mutter.
But today, she had lots of good reasons to sing. It was to be her last workday before a week of holiday, which tended to spark in her lots of musical impulses that made people look on fondly and reflect that, since the girl would clearly never be much of a dancer, it was only fair that she could sing decidedly more than decently.
In addition, there was the matter of the massive slab of chocolate cake, iced in sticky, gooey, and altogether delicious fudge icing, that she was balancing carefully between her knee and the wall as she hunted for her card (until, that is, a kindly young man noted, with no small amount of alarm, disaster in the offing and hastened to offer his assistance in holding the big brown paper parcel for her).
Really, it was a bit silly to be this excited over the prospect of bringing a cake to work to share around with all the other girls, but everyone had seemed so gloomy this week that, after being snapped at for four days when she had ventured too bright a smile, Wendy was anxious to do something.
Hopefully, it would help. Chocolate was known to be a cure for almost anything, wasn't it?
"Thank-you!" she chirped to the young man currently holding the cake as the door clicked open.
He watched her go, shaking his head bemusedly.
Always the strange one, that girl…
Fifteen minutes later, Wendy was less inclined to burst spontaneously into joyous song and very much inclined to whimper in fear.
Rows of sharp, hungry eyes watched her every move, her every suggestion that she might move sometime in the near future, unblinkingly.
This was not going exactly the way she had expected. When she had bounced happily down the isle lined with cubicles, announcing brightly that she had brought a cake, she had anticipated several indulgent, yet basically indifferent smiles, and maybe an appreciative murmur or two. Then, sometime late morning, they might all have a nice break, during which they would distribute the cake to be enjoyed with a cup of tea or coffee. Afterwards, they would all go back to their work, feeling refreshed and slightly jittery from all the sugar.
Instead, an electric shock had seemed to pass through the inhabitants of each cubicle at the word 'cake', and a deathly silence had filled the large room as thirty-three women had slowly risen from their seats, gazes trained predatorily on the little blonde and her big gooey chocolate cake.
"What did I do wrong?" she asked the universe at large, watching the slow, creeping approach of her co-workers with large, pitifully terrified eyes.
That simple question seemed to be a sufficient catalyst to release the tightly controlled energy of the horde, and the next moment Wendy gave a shriek of terror as all "the girls" lunged at her as a body.
"Good God," a voice from the doorway breathed, horrified. "It's a feeding frenzy in here."
Wendy stole a glance at the doorway amid dodges, and gave an exclamation of delight and relief. If anyone could fight all these sugar-deprived women off of her, he could.
"Mr. Drake!" she called desperately. "I think they've all gone mad! What do I do?"
"Drop the cake, and play dead," he advised, sprinting towards her.
"What! But I spent all night on this thing!"
"It's not worth your life, Wendy," he said reprovingly. "These women will tear you to pieces unless you give them the cake, now."
"Oh, come on," she laughed nervously as he ducked beneath a nearby desk and dragged her after him. "That's just silly!"
"I'd like to know how silly you'll think it is after one of them gnaws off your arm."
With that, he snatched the cake from her, tore the brown paper wrapping down the middle, and hurled the whole messy thing into the sea of women. He nodded in satisfaction when they all turned away from the pair, uttered a simultaneous yelp of joy, and leapt at the cake.
"That should buy us some time," he noted, seizing Wendy by the arm and dragging her from the room.
"Oh, this is really turning into one of those days," she lamented sadly as the door banged shut.
"Save it," he told her severely. "We need to put as much space between them and us as we can, as soon as we can."
"Why?" she asked, jogging to keep up with his much-bigger-than-she-could-manage steps.
"The cake's left its scent on us," he replied. "They'll follow it, and when there's no more cake, they'll be mad."
She stared at him in utter bewilderment for several seconds.
Drake glared down at her.
"What?"
"You're very, very bored today, aren't you?"
He snorted.
"Yeah, because this is the first place I'd pick to hang out when I have nothing better to do."
"What are you doing here, then?"
"Well, rumour has it we're going to be discussing a mission sometime today," Drake grumbled. "I'll believe that when I see it."
"Why are you here so early?"
"Because Joker conveniently forgot that we'd have to wait for The Paper to finally show up."
"Oh, right! Yomiko's coming today!" Wendy chirped happily. "I meant to save her a piece of cake, but I don't dare go back," she concluded, glancing sadly over her shoulder and mourning briefly the untimely demise of the lovely dessert she had taken such pains with. "Although, I suppose she would have been far happier if I'd brought her the recipe book…"
Drake chuckled.
"I don't think Yomiko knows how to…right, book," he finished, as Wendy arched an eyebrow at him, the gesture asking quite clearly if he'd forgotten just who they were talking about.
"And you shouldn't assume things like that, anyway, Drake," the little blonde chided gently as they strode quickly through the hallways, ever alert for the sound of thundering feet behind them. "Yomiko might be a fantastic cook."
"Yeah; I'm sure being distracted by a book every three seconds helps a lot."
All further discussion was effectively halted as a chilling chant of "MORE CAKE! MORE CAKE!" rose on the wind that somehow managed to spring up inside the building. With a round of muttered curses, Drake grabbed Wendy's arm and broke into a run again.
"I shouldn't have gotten complacent so soon, damn it," he noted in panicked annoyance as they rounded a corner and ducked into a room.
"CAKE! CAKE! CAKE!" the crowd of women agreed as they stampeded past the door in time with the click of the lock into place.
"Good," the blond man noted, nodding in satisfaction from his vantage point beneath the table. "The cake has addled their wits enough that they fell for the most obvious trick in the book."
"We hope," Wendy added nervously as Drake counted to fifty and then opened the door with an ominously slow creak.
"Mister Drake!" a sweet, feminine voice called happily.
Drake put up a protective arm, and in doing, sent Wendy toppling backwards through the open door.
"Sorry," he called over his shoulder before peering in the direction of the newcomer. "Yomiko?"
"Hi, Drake," the dark-haired girl greeted as she and Nancy Makuhari slowed to a stop. Yomiko peeked around Drake's shoulder. "Hi, Wendy."
The little blonde returned the greeting cheerfully as she peeled herself from the floor.
"So, what are you two doing?" Yomiko asked. "When you didn't come back, Mr. Joker sent us to find you."
"We're hiding," Wendy replied, glancing nervously down the hall.
Nancy looked from one to the other with amused curiosity.
"Does this have something to do with the crowd of screaming women that just stampeded past?"
"Yes, actually," Wendy replied with what Drake thought was excessive cheeriness, given their narrow escape from said women. "They all went simultaneously mad and tried to kill us when I told them I'd brought in a cake."
Nancy brightened considerably at this.
"There's cake?" she asked, interested, exchanging hopeful glances with Yomiko.
"Miss Makuhari!" Wendy said, eyes wide and frightened as she shrank back behind Drake. "Not you, too!"
"What?" Nancy shrugged. "I like cake."
"Yeah, that's great," Drake said, his hand tightening abruptly around Wendy's arm. "Unfortunately, so do the fifty harpies coming our way. Let's move."
"You've got to be kidding me," Nancy said flatly. "I'm not running away from a lot of sugar-crazed office ladies."
"Fine," Drake agreed as he bolted down the hallway, Wendy tucked under one arm and a placidly reading Yomiko under the other. "Let me know how that brutal dismemberment thing works out for you."
He reached the end of the hallway and swung around the corner, and gave a startled shout as Nancy collided roughly with him from behind.
He smirked over his shoulder.
"Thought you weren't running away from a lot of sugar-crazed office ladies."
"That was before I saw what they did to the little guy singing show-tunes."
"Oh, no!" Wendy whimpered sadly, squirming away from Drake. "Poor Elias!"
"There's no point in going back," Nancy said indifferently. "There's nothing left of him but a tie and a copy of Rent."
"Yes; my copy of Rent," Wendy continued, annoyed.
"Leave it," Drake said firmly, yanking her back by her vest. "If we don't move, we'll be next."
Five hair-raising (or perhaps just slightly dull and painfully silly) minutes later saw the merry quartet huddled beneath a table in the room that had happened to be nearby when the blood-curdling chant of "CAKE! CAKE! CAKE!" had drawn dangerously near yet again.
"So," Nancy said briskly, tearing her eyes away from the fascinating way that Yomiko's skirt seemed to be creeping up every time she moved. "About that cake…"
"There's no cake!" Wendy said severely. "Drake took it away and threw it at the other girls."
Drake shrugged a little uneasily as he was fixed with three reproachful female gazes. Really, Yomiko didn't especially care about chocolate cake, but if Nancy was disappointed, then she was too. Also, she had read somewhere that women were supposed to as good as put their lives on hold for chocolate. And if a book said it, it must be important.
"Hey, I was out of pepper spray, alright?"
"And that, Mister Drake, is why you ought to be prepared for every eventuality, at all times," a new voice declared with playful severity.
"Mr. Joker!" Wendy chirped brightly, sliding over to make room. "Hello!"
"Yes, hello, Wendy," he greeted, briefly patting her hair in a manner best described as fond absence as he crept beneath the table. "Now, might I ask what on earth you're all doing here?"
The four exchanged hesitant expressions. This was not an easy situation to explain. At least, not without giving off the distinct impression that they had all gone simultaneously out of their stress-addled minds.
"We're running away from a horde of sugar-deprived office ladies," Nancy finally said bluntly. "God, if word ever gets out about this…"
"Sugar-deprived office ladies," Joker repeated, no more bewildered than any reasonable person had every right to be. "I know they can become a vicious crowd if angered, but they're generally placid until then."
"Em, I'm afraid it's my fault, Sir," Wendy piped up nervously. "I thought it might be a nice gesture, you know, something to break up the monotony of the workday. But I didn't expect them to all attack at the mention of cake and tea."
As soon as she said it, the young and lovely, if far too talkative Miss Earhart, who was really becoming convinced that she had been born under the same unlucky star as Mister Drake, knew that she had made a big mistake.
The same electric shock that had earlier turned all of her friends, "the girls", into sugar-crazed harpies, swept over Mr. Joker and left that scary gleam in his eye. He turned very slowly, and stared piercingly at her.
"Tea?" he repeated.
"Oh, dear," Wendy sighed pitifully, before forcing a smile. "Y-yes, Sir, I have tea."
"Great," she heard Drake mutter amid Nancy's disbelieving snicker, and the periodic flip of the pages in Yomiko's book.
Time seemed to slow as Joker coiled back and then leapt…
By the time the terrified little blonde registered the sight of her boss lunging at her, she found herself sailing through the air, dragged once again through the corridors (and there certainly seemed to be a lot of them today!) by an iron grip on the back of her vest.
"Mister Drake!" she wailed. "Wait a second!"
"Yeah, right," Drake snorted with what little air was not going into the task of tearing through the halls to evade the tea-crazed noodle man currently in hot pursuit. "I'll 'wait a second' as soon as we lose him."
"What do you think he'll do if he catches us?" Wendy asked fearfully, struggling to catch her balance and do her own running, thank-you-very-much.
Drake shrugged as best he could.
"Tackle you to the ground and strip-search you, probably."
At this, an electric shock that was becoming chillingly familiar to poor Drake shot through Wendy, who managed by sheer luck to not only come to a screeching halt herself, but to drag him to one.
He watched in disgusted dismay as she pulled a box of tea from her purse, loosened her tie, unbuttoned the top three buttons of her blouse, and slipped a teabag into each of the lacy pink cups, and one beneath the frilly lacy band, of her pretty little underthings.
"There are some things I don't want to think about," Drake muttered, rubbing his forehead as Wendy pelted back down the hallway towards their pursuer, shouting at Mr. Joker that she would make him tea if he could find all the teabags hidden on her, "and this is about 99.93 percent of them."
End Notes: Teehee! That was fun. It's been a while in the works, but I think it's finally finished. Inspired by my current job working in an office, and noticing the super-hearing that we all seem to develop whenever the word 'cake' was being uttered. Seriously. I don't even like cake, and it happens to me too.
Also: yes, both Wendy and the mysterious Elias are both addicted to musicals. Including Rent. Why? Because it's funny. And yes, Elias will probably be killed a different way each time I write a story. Poor guy. :)