In which friends are discussed.
Click!
Fwoosh!
There was no sound in the massive monitor room but that of a yellow lighter being turned on. The flame was applied to a long cigarette, and then extinguished as suddenly as it had been lit.
The cigarette itself was currently held in the lips of a woman dressed in purple, the smoke gently spiralling up into the air. On its long journey towards the faraway ceiling, the smoke formed a greyish halo around the woman's entirely purple-dyed hair. Entirely, that is, except for a single white tuft in the middle of her forehead.
The rows of television screens covered every available square centimetre of space on the ten-metre-high wall. Each one showed the view from a corresponding hidden camera in the battlefield outside. Heavily armed men wearing red and blue uniforms endlessly battled outside. But here the was no sound, no screams, no gunfire.
Just the sound of a yellow cigarette lighter.
And of course, the purple woman's regular speeches through the PA system's microphones.
The Administrator placed the lead of her microphone into a slot marked 'BLU (all)'.
"Alert, BLU team! Our control point is being contested!" The microphone lead was switched, this time to a slot marked 'RED (all)'.
"Well done, RED team. You have captured the control point." And again to the BLU slot.
"Capture our control point, BLU team!" And one more time.
"RED team! Defend our control point!"
The microphone was removed once more. The Administrator leaned back in her chair, job complete…for the moment.
"Hmm…" mused the Administrator, glancing over to the left of the monitor bank.
"Well now, what's that spy up to?"
Spotting a shimmer of red in a screen, the Administrator took a closer look. Suddenly, she reared back, cigarette dropping out of her mouth in alarm. She jammed a mic lead into its slot.
"Alert! The RED spy is in the base!"
"The RED spy is in the base?" On the screen, the BLU soldier echoed her words, charging full pelt towards the briefcase room and away from the concealed camera. The Administrator groaned.
"Ugh. The Scout, you idiot. He's disguised as the scout." As much as she would have liked to have done otherwise, however, she delivered this verbal chastising with the microphone in the 'off' position. Such a shame that it would have been a breach of protocol.
The Administrator sensed a sudden presence behind her chair. She removed the cigarette from her mouth, holding it in two fingers. Without turning around, she asked,
"Is there a problem, Miss Pauling?"
The notion that the secretive Administrator had supernatural powers frequently occurred to Miss Pauling. How else could she unerring tell whenever someone was standing behind her? It wasn't as if Miss Pauling was anywhere near her chair…
"Um. What makes you say-"
"Because you're hovering. And you only hover when there's a problem. Let's have it."
The petite woman licked her dry lips nervously. "We did a background check on the mercenaries. Standard protocol, nothing-"
"Sometime today, please," interrupted the Administrator irritably. Miss Pauling glanced down at the computer printout she held in her hands.
"Um. It's…well, it's the BLU soldier and the RED demoman." This pricked up the Administrator's ears. Still facing the monitor bank, she peered at Miss Pauling out of the corners of her eyes. Miss Pauling stared at her feet. Did she dare to say this out loud? She swallowed, and said,
"It looks like they've become…" The Administrator steeled herself for the worst. "…Friends, Ma'am.
One of the Administrator's expensively purple-shadowed eyelids twitched. This was bad. This was very bad…
"For how long?" she hissed. "How did we not know about this?"
"Within the last six months, Ma'am." Miss Pauling spread a small pile of freshly-developed photographs onto the switchboard in front of the Administrator. "As far as we can tell, they met at a projectile weapons expo. It, uh…seems to have blossomed into a life-long friendship."
The Administrator stared in annoyance and livid rage at the photographs in front of her. Every one, a different scene. A Las Vegas casino, complete with expensive cocktails and equally expensive women. A tour bus trip of the famous RED- and BLU-owned gravel pits and mines of the USA. A beer-fuelled Badlands Brawlers baseball game. A fishing trip on a luxury yacht, quite mundane but for the swordfishes caught with nothing except sheer muscle power. And, of course, a visit to the Eye Museum. In themselves these photos would be acceptable. The RED demoman and the BLU soldier acting in an overly comradely manner, on the other hand, was quite possibly the worst thing since unsliced bread.
Miss Pauling unwisely tried to fill the sudden silence.
"Heh. You know, forgetting for a minute that we don't condone friendship, it's sort of…almost…uh…" she trailed off as she caught a glimpse of the Administrator's face. "Reprehensible. Completely and totally reprehensible," she finished lamely.
"We are in agreement, Miss Pauling," said the Administrator. "This friendship is a profound betrayal of our trust. Why, friends could easily…could…hmm." This time it was the Administrator who petered off. For once, she was at a loss as to the situation. "Miss Pauling, you strike me as the sort of person who would have…friends." She spat the word out like an unpleasant morsel of food, or indeed a particularly vile cigarette. "Tell me, what do they actually do?" This was not the sort of question Miss Pauling usually found directed at her. More usually, the questions asked by the Administrator where rhetorical, as she was berated over and over again for not quite getting every small detail correct.
"Um. Go skating…look at gun catalogues…sometimes we just talk…"
"Talking?" interrupted the Administrator. "Friendship is even worse than I thought. No, no, no, this won't do at all. If they talk, Miss Pauling, they might talk about work. And if they talk about work, Miss Pauling, they might talk about us."
She steepled her fingers and thought deeply for a few seconds, then turned around in her chair and spoke.
"This is what we will do. Call Mister Hale. Tell him we have some custom orders for him. Tell him money is no object. And most importantly, Miss Pauling, tell him we need them right now."
"Yes, Ma'am," replied Miss Pauling. "Anything else?"
"Open channels to our two new best friends. I have a proposition for them." She tapped a few keys on the control panel in front of her. In two of the monitor screens, the profiles of the mercenaries in question appeared. "In my experience, Miss Pauling, nothing kills friendship more than a healthy competition."