Riley's eye twitched slightly as he looked over the top of his computer screen at the man sitting across from him, taking a moment to glare at the stupid mop-hair that nearly covered the Quartermaster's face. So cliche, a computer genius suffering from neglected shaghead. Even back when Riley did have long(ish) hair, it was never that out of control. The guy was seriously feeding into the hacker stereotype, right down to the overly-large sweaters that he used to cover up his embarrassingly small and pale frame-

"Am I doing something distracting?" Q asked without glancing up from his screen, and failed to hide a victorious smirk. "Or are you finally stumped and quietly admitting defeat to my obvious superiority?"

The twitch in Riley's eye turned into a glaring squint before a wicked smile of his own crossed his features. He sat back with a sigh, placing his hands on his head (a head of clean-cut hair, thank you very much). "Yep, looks like you got me. I mean, how could a guy who completely took over Buckingham Palace's security system from a bathroom stall with a laptop ever compare to the Great and Powerful Q?"

Ah-ha! There it was, that little purse of the lips Riley had been shooting for that signified he had gotten under the Quartermaster's skin. Feeling acutely proud of himself, he went back to typing away on his keys, a new form of energy fueling him - the, "It's good to be obnoxious sometimes," form of loopy and completely immature kind of energy.

And now it was Q's turn to fire death rays at his associate for what had to be a full minute. That little stunt at the palace had cost him hours of labor as he had to completely reinvent every measure of security in not only Buckingham, but in every other even remotely-important building in the whole bloody nation. It was an embarrassment to the Crown, and what he felt was an utter waste of his brilliance that could've served better elsewhere. Whoever was hired to install the security in the first place should've been dragged out in front of the bloody palace and formally executed for his incompetence, as it would have done the world a favor to have one less idiot running around pretending to be of any actual use to national security. Add to that the firing of the individual who so utterly failed in checking the false security expert's credentials in the first place, and hopefully there would never be another incident again. Not that there would be. Q's new systems could be running entirely by themselves and still make someone of his own caliber pause before attempting a breech. That meant Mr. Poole's days of infiltrating any of England's systems again were well and truly over with.

Still, he supposed the man did earn the point on that one. As appalling as the security measures were, to have so easily slipped through them from, as he said, a bathroom stall on nothing more than a laptop was admirable, if not a bit concerning. Had he been anything more than a simple treasure hunter, far more than England's pride could have been damaged in the affair. It was a very good wake up call for them that most likely resulted in the prevention of what could've been a more nefarious and drastically more devastating breech in the future.

Not that Q would ever admit that to Mr. Poole's face, of course. His own pride was at stake, after all, especially now while the two were assisting one another in a puzzling conundrum that could effect both their nations. And, yes, they were actually assisting one another, despite what it looked like at the present. They were shifting code back and forth across their screens to check over and analyze everything, to fill gaps in one another's logic, to allow a different eye with a different perspective to attack the problem. That didn't mean it wasn't a competition to see who could solve the overall riddle first, though. They had been at it for three days straight, now, neither willing to take an actual break outside of the need to relieve themselves for fear that the other would get the upper hand in their absence. It wasn't just Q against Riley Poole. It was America's best pitted against Great Britain's best, neither one wanting to look the lesser in front of the other in fear of looking the fool to their own countrymen.

Or perhaps that was Q's primary concern. It was entirely possible that Mr. Poole simply was that competitive without care of what his country thought of him. Q briefly wondered what that must feel like. He imagined it would be a bit liberating. And frightening. Something akin to the bicycle messengers that flew through the city with no brakes to stop them or to even slow them down, their lives entirely reliant on their own measure of self control. Riley currently worked for his President, yes, but his individual goals had won out over his patriotism in times past. What would happen when a new President stepped into office, one whose tune didn't vibrate on the same frequency as Mr. Poole's? Q imagined the hacker would simply set himself free to do as he wished again, with only his own moral compass to keep him in line. The very thought made Q wary, and almost a bit thrilled by the concept, if he had to admit it. Which he wouldn't, of course.

Just as Riley didn't want to admit that, as Q accurately predicted, this stubborn drive to keep going into exhaustion really didn't have anything to do with looking good for America. In reality, despite the confident front he was putting on, all he wanted was to not to look like a complete idiot in front of MI6's Quartermaster. To be honest, Riley didn't even know what he was doing there. He was one of the best hackers in the US, sure - "one of" being some very key words, there - but all he did to pay the bills nowadays was find out how to break into systems before laughing at how easy it always was, and then fixing the holes so no one else come through behind him. Why they had chosen to send him to England and not someone who was actually spy-trained like Q remained a stupefying mystery. He was pretty positive that the CIA had to have someone more qualified than him to do this. If he had to admit it - and it would take a lot of very painful torture before the words would come out of his mouth - he was kind of terrified that he was so far outside of the Quartermaster's league that he wasn't even on the same freaking planet. Because, seriously, this guy walked secret agents through life or death situations of world saving importance. Every day. And Riley was known for - what? - keeping jerks from selling historical treasures on the Black Market. Whoop dee-freakin-doo. To put it short, he was feeling pretty damn insecure, which of course made him that much more outwardly cocky and stubborn and gleefully annoying.

And mentally pumping his fist in the air as he caught Q rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses. If he couldn't solve the riddle first, maybe he could at least stay awake longer before crashing on his keyboard. If he could accomplish that much, he'd consider it to be a win.

The victorious feeling didn't last. Another six hours, at least twenty more childish quips, and twice as many glares later, both men were on the verge of calling it quits. Still, they persevered, their eyes so strained from lack of sleep by that point that the coding in front of them was little more than a blur as they continued to slowly type away at it. The knocking on the door from concerned coworkers and friends had long since stopped as they gave up on trying to convince their two overly-competitive geniuses to give it a rest for a bit, leaving no witnesses to who threw in the towel before whom, yet they still continued on as if their very lives depended on it. It was only when a bit of coding that looked like it nearly formed the word, "Cheeseburger" on his screen popped up that Riley broke the air of stifling focus, barking out a laugh that turned into a lengthy chuckle that transformed into almost delirious giggles. When Q arched his brow at him, he merely highlighted the code and sent it across the screens; and, surprisingly, Q actually smirked at it, himself.

"Craving greasy American food, are we?" the Quartermaster teased.

Riley continued to laugh as two of his fingers danced at dizzying speeds between his 0 and 1 keys, coupled with his other hand dominating the Enter key and Spacebar. When he was done with whatever he was doing, he tossed that to Q's screen, too, which turned out to be a rather good, and highly amusing image of the Hamburglar crafted entirely out of binary code. Q couldn't help it. He snickered, and then also laughed as he returned fire with his own version of coded Grimace. It wasn't long before their entire cryptic puzzle was wrought with childish images as their anti-sleep competition turned into one of who could create the most impressive artwork out of nothing more than letters, numbers, and symbols.

And then it happened. Their game was ceased abruptly as both their screens went blindingly white and text appeared in screaming caps scolding the two for their antics. The puzzle that had been so carefully laid out for them demanded far more respect than they were giving it, according to the perpetrator, and he was highly disappointed that two men regarded with such high caliber would resort to the type of behavior they were engaging in.

"Wow. He's really pissed off," Riley commented dryly, and then promptly made a simple binary angry emoticon and sent it the villain's way.

Q grinned as he latched onto the tail of Riley's code just enough to slip a little hitchhiker onto it, an extra present for their formidable foe. When the man returned "shouting" at Riley, once again, for his impudence, the system began to melt away in front of their eyes. The puzzle and the drawings all vanished and were replaced by a little flashing cursor showing exactly where their hacker foe was located. Not that he noticed, of course. As far as he was seeing, everything was still exactly as it should've been while he continued to yell at the children in the room while he was now nothing more than a sitting duck for Q's agents.

"I believe we have been outmatched in our arrogance," Q commented, a touch of humor lacing his tone. "Well played, Mr. Poole. You drew him out rather nicely. I forget at times that the puzzle, itself, is not always the key to solving the larger dilemma."

Riley cocked his head to the side at the compliment, then smiled self-consciously as he shrugged his stiff shoulders. "Hate to disappoint you, but there was no genius plan involved with that one. Just me being me and the dumb luck that usually comes with it. I call it a miraculous side effect to my boyish charms."

"Well, then we'd better thank your boyish charms," Q smiled, a genuine one, before he abruptly stood and stretched his wiry form. "MI6 will handle the capture, Mr. Poole, then I imagine we'll be called upon to assist with any information gathered from the interrogation. In the meantime, I admit I'm rather tired, and famished. Would you care to join me for a bit of rest and a cheeseburger at the local diner?"

"God, yes," Riley sighed, but paused as he began to follow Q out the door. He looked back at the computers for a minute. "When we get back, you want to take another crack at the puzzle? Just for-"

"Pride's sake - God, yes," Q inadvertently parroted. "We can't be bested by a grown man who carelessly throws tantrums over our network."

"Good," Riley nodded, "because now that I think about it, I think I might've actually been onto something with that cheeseburger code thing..."

Riley continued to explain as they headed out, and Q listened with rapt attention. Perhaps the American was not as insufferable as he had initially thought; and Riley relaxed knowing that the Quartermaster was not as uptight as he had originally thought. Perhaps they could have a functional partnership in all this, after all.

~End~