Daphne Price
Daphne yawned as she made her way to campus, another day of classes and standing around mindlessly scanning items. She went to her History of Journalism class, which she slept through, barely managing to take notes. Then she went to Basics of a Front Page Story which was a bit better, the instructor was pretty lively.
She made her escape from that class after about two hours and then went to lunch with Simon, her boyfriend.
"Hey look! Daph!" said Simon.
"What?" She asked.
"Look at that table over there, the two guys, what do you suppose they're doing?" He said, subtly gesturing to two older men at a table to her left who where talking heatedly while pretending to look at their menus. Then the man with small square glasses got up and left, leaving the other man staring daggers at his retreating form.
"Oh, I don't know Si, what do you think?" She asked knowing that he would already have a theory, he always pointed out things like that.
"I bet those two are a spy and his contact plotting an important mission." He informed her. Daphne laughed a bit at that, he always thought he saw spies everywhere. She took another look at the man still sitting at the table, what was he doing? It looked like he was talking to his hand…
She was there at last. A cabin in the woods in the middle of Germany housed a piece of dangerous software that no one was supposed to find. Bad guys these days were paranoid. Turning off the engine of the lame car that the agency rented for her, she scanned the clearing noting all possible danger. In her black fatigues, she stepped out of the car and made her way up the stairs to the door of the cabin.
Psh, crack, crackle, "Nightshade, status?" Asked the tech guys over her comm.
"I'm at the door right now, are there any traps that I need to look out for?"
"None that we're aware of, you may proceed."
'How comforting' Daphne thought to herself.
As she was picking the lock to the front door however, she heard a branch break not too far away. When she looked to see what it was, she saw to her dismay that it was her adversary, Paula Ottoman, who was an agent at an opposing agency, and she was coming her way. Thankfully Daphne hadn't been spotted yet. Daphne quickly picked the rest of the lock and got inside the cabin.
She rummaged around looking for the disk that held Persephone so she could stash it before Paula got in. No such luck.
"Well, well, well, Agent Price, what a nice surprise. Now hand over the disk." Paula smirked.
"Don't you wish? You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands." Daphne said defiantly back.
"Fine, we'll have to do this the hard way."
Paula lunged at her and was about to strike when Daphne kicked her in the stomach. Paula countered with a punch to the face that sent Daphne sprawling to the floor.
Paula stood over her, with a foot on her chest and laughed, "And you thought you could beat me?"
"As a matter of fact, I did!" Daphne yelled. She quickly rolled to the side and kicked her leg out, hitting the backs of Paula's legs as she did. She grabbed Paula's hand and faster than she thought was possible, and handcuffed her to the wood stove.
"And as always, you lose." Daphne bragged as she brushed herself off and stood up. She located the disk and left a screaming, sputtering, angry Paula in the cabin.
"Base Ops, I have the disk. I ran into a bit of trouble but I'll be at the extraction point. ETA 60 minutes."
"Ma'am… ma'am?" asked a waitress.
"Daph!"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll have the ham sandwich..." She sheepishly replied. She fingered her glass of water and smiled while thoughts of Krav Maga, dangerous software and spies meandered out of her head.
Bowling class was the last class of the day before she had to go to work. It was better than the morning classes because you actually got out of the classroom and bowled. Right now the instructor was showing them the correct way to get the ball to curve.
It was Daphne and her friend Maureen's turn to try to curve the ball correctly. They went up to their separate lanes and let them fly. Maureen's went straight into the gutter while Daphne's went in a nice curve.
"Stupid shoes! I thought they were supposed to be magic!" Maureen joked, looking down at her ugly bowling shoes.
"I know, you'd think that someone would come up with pretty shoes for bowling." Daphne responded looking down at her own horrid shoes.
Daphne was excited, today was her first runway show. She was a shoe model, and today, she was modeling some very beautiful, not to mention expensive, bright red Prada pumps. She put her earpiece in and lined up with the rest of the models. The music started and as the line began to move, she felt butterflies in her stomach.
Psh, crack, crackle, "Daphne, go!" said a small voice in her ear, and she obeyed. Daphne took a step and found confidence. Then, with a slight smirk playing about her lips, she began swaggering down the runway…
"NOW WOULDN'T IT BE EMBARRASSING TO FAIL BOWLING?" asked the instructor, looking straight at Daphne. She jolted out of her thoughts and smiled innocently at the instructor but in her head she was envisioning him modeling something.
'Work, I hate work', Daphne thought as she donned her ugly red smock later that day. She made her way to the front of the store with her price sticker gun and began placing new items on the shelves and pricing them as she went. All of a sudden she heard show tunes being belted out by an obnoxious tourist looking family walking past her. She laughed to herself, 'Who toured Wisconsin?'
'Right foot left, back to start, circle the arms, step, step, step,' thought Daphne. She was on stage and doing her dance for the show. Daphne was a back-up dancer in a sell-out Las Vegas show. Timing her movements to the music perfectly, she moved in sync with the dancers around her. It wasn't simple, not by a long shot but she did it anyway, dancing while wearing an incredibly stiff sequined costume with a giant headdress was really difficult. Make a wrong move and you'd topple right over.
Psh, crackle, "Now, just make it off stage like you've practiced and you're done." came Neil, the tech guy's voice in her ear. She felt relieved knowing her part was almost over and danced her way off the stage to the applause of the audience.
Crackle, crack crackle. "Daphne to check station 5, Daphne to check station 5!" blasted the store's intercom, disrupting Daphne's thoughts once again. She sighed as she took the box and price gun to the back of the store and silently wondered why people were looking at her funny. She checked herself, she was humming the same obnoxious show tune as the family earlier and on top of all that, she was actually dancing down the aisles, no wonder. She quickly stopped.
'Beep, beep, beep.' went the scanner as she rung up an old lady's items. "Thank you for shopping Piggly Wiggly Mrs. Sinclair, have a nice day!" Daphne called after the old woman walking out the door. As the door opened she felt a blast of cold air chill her, Wisconsin in the winter time was unpleasant to say the least. It looked like snow, and that meant she could go skiing with Simon and her friends.
She was skiing leisurely down the mountain, she felt like she had the best job in the whole world. She was the Ski Patrol in the Switzerland region of the Alps. Skiing all day and yelling at random rowdy snowboarders was a sweet deal.
"Whoa!" she jumped as she felt her radio go off and heard the psh crackle crackling sound as she turned up the volume. She stopped to the side of the trail to listen.
"All available ski patrol to the Snake's run immediately! EMERGENCY!" shouted her fellow colleague, Franc. It sounded serious and she was available so she got back on the trail and skied her way there using various shortcuts.
"Excuuuse me?" Asked a snotty little girl looking at Daphne with a scowl on her overly made-up features, "Are you like planning on scanning this and getting me on my way or do I like have to call your supervisor?"
Daphne matched her snotty demeanor and said in a voice mimicking the girl's, "You don't have to like freak on me, all you've got there is 99 cent lip gloss and really cheap eye shadow, so like, hold your horses."
She smiled as the girl's scowl deepened and she finished scanning the girl's items.
"Have a nice day!" Daphne called after her as the girl left the store in a huff. It was quitting time anyway so she got Franc to take her place and went back to the staff room to place her smock back in her locker. She thought about the impending snowfall and skiing down the Snake run as she drove herself home.
As I stated above, read enjoy and review!