I dug out my Genesis yesterday. :P I think the idea for this fic just flew into my head after I had about three Donovans and two Galsia/Garcias on the screen at once.
Mr. X sat at the head of a large table, his faithful right-hand, Shiva, at his side as always, ready to carry out his latest commands at the drop of a dime. The rest of his underlings were still gathering in the seats around him as they prepared for their meeting. They stayed clustered together according to the particular gang that they belonged to with the Signal gang in one section, the bikers in another, the ninjas...hiding behind a plant and pretending they were invisible for some reason, and so on and so forth. They rarely upset the status quo except to occasionally address friends, relatives, or rivals from another group. X didn't bother trying to get in between any petty arguments between old enemies. They knew better than to start an all-out brawl in his presence after Shiva threw the last two people to fight at a meeting out a window in front of the others as an example.
Once he was satisfied that everyone had gathered, he motioned towards Shiva to give the order to quiet down. "Alright everyone, the meeting's now in session! Please save the rest of your chatter for the water cooler!"
Everyone instantly calmed down except for Electra, who didn't realize what he'd said until she already blurted out, "Another one of my boyfriend's heads exploded today. It was a weird day for me." The words had been meant only for the girl beside her to hear, but she suddenly realized that everyone else had heard her as well when she noticed the awkward silence. She sank back in her chair and tried to disappear from everyone's sight.
"I hope he paid you first," one of the bikers teased.
"Shut up," she mumbled in response.
"Alright, thank you for your cooperation..." Mr. X stated. He gave Electra a weird look before motioning towards Shiva. "Before we begin, Shiva will make a few announcements."
Shiva picked up a stack of papers and put on a pair of reading glasses. He cleared his throat noisily before he began reading. "First announcement, next Monday is our annual 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day'. If anyone would like to participate by bringing their little girls in to work, there will be fun activities like last year's shank building workshop and, due to popular demand, the return of our 'Meth Cooking For Minors' class." Quite a few minions started nodding or considering the event while a few already began to look forward to bringing their kids in. "We would also like to remind employees to please stop punching the alien-robot-monster in our amusement park to death. We can only fix Vehelits so many times before it explodes." He placed the papers back on the table and stepped back so his boss could take over.
"Thank you, Shiva. First order of business then," Mr. X began. "Garcia! Give us your report on the results of the 'Running With Knives' seminar your group was required to take last week."
There was an extended silence as no one spoke up. Everyone started to exchange confused looks, wondering if maybe the boss had executed Garcia last week and forgot. It wouldn't be the first time. That would be the very awkward office birthday party thrown for a guy that X forgot was currently weighted down at the bottom of a river.
The boss glared at one of his lackeys when the silence continued. "Garcia! Report! Now!" he demanded.
The lackey looked confused. "Oh, you meant me? I'm not Garcia, I'm his cousin Carlos."
Mr. X looked surprised and a little embarrassed at this admission. He didn't want to say that all his minions looked alike, but...well, all his minions kinda looked alike. "Oh...I'm sorry. Where's Garcia?"
"I don't think he's here yet," Carlos shrugged.
As if on cue for some comedy act, the door flew open and a guy that looked just like Carlos, except he had red hair and a blue jacket instead of brown hair and a green jacket, walked in balancing several boxes of donuts in both arms. "I'm so sorry, boss. Particle and Molecule decided to take a ride in the elevator and they were both too heavy, so it broke. I had to climb the stairs." He held up the box. "I brought donuts!" There was a simultaneous squee from everyone in the room as they all rushed him at once for some donuts. "So, where were we?"
X was a little stunned. How had he not noticed that Carlos wasn't even in the room yet? He looked around the table at the rest of his minions and hoped that there wasn't someone else he was missing. He couldn't tell the Blue Signals from the Yellow Signals, aside from their jacket colors, and worried that someone might still be climbing the stairs somewhere as well.
"Um...my apologies. Let's just continue the meeting, shall we?" he said to try to steer the topic back on the task. He decided to skip over Carlos/Garcia/whatever the hell his name was for now and come back to him later, maybe after everyone had already forgotten his slip-up. He shuffled through his papers and looked up at the assortment of gangbangers, prostitutes, and bikers before him. "Who has the invoice for the destructible objects I asked to be placed all over the city?"
"I do!" someone in the back of the room raised his hand.
"Oh, thank you, um..." He froze when at least a dozen names came to mind. He knew that any one of them could be right, or they could be the name of one of the guys standing next to him. "I'm sorry...what was your name again?"
"Donovan," he replied. "You know. I'm the guy that brings you your coffee every morning?"
"Oh right...Donovan...now I remember. Please pass that invoice up here, Donovan," he requested in an awkward tone.
"Wait, you can't tell us apart?" Jack asked when he picked up on the source of the confusion. He glared at their boss. "Are you saying we all look alike?"
"No, of course not!" Mr. X denied the accusation, even though that was exactly what he was thinking.
"Oh really?" Jack cocked his head. "What's my name?"
The boss must have stared at him for a good five minutes. He cycled through several names-Soya? Beano perhaps?-before he finally guessed, "Condor?"
"That's not even the right class! You aren't even trying!" Jack retorted. "No wonder you didn't notice that Garcia wasn't even here. You probably don't even notice that Ash hasn't been here for weeks!"
Zamza quickly shook his head to protest Jack's statement. "Shh! We're in the American version! We're supposed to pretend that he doesn't exist!"
X heaved a deep sigh. He was beginning to get really annoyed with all the name guessing. If he didn't know any better, he would have assumed that this was all a ploy by his employees to drive him crazy. "Okay, let's just move on to the meeting now, okay?" He pointed towards the section of bikers. "Fog! How goes the progress on upgrading your bikes to make them all explode upon the slightest provocation?"
Once again there was a brief silence before the biker that had been teasing Electra earlier realized that X had been addressing him. "Oh, I'm not Fog, I'm Calm. He's Fog," he said, nodding to the guy next to him.
"I'm not Fog, I'm Tempest! That guy's Fog!" the other biker corrected. He pointed at another biker sitting at the end of the table with a chocolate frosted donut in hand.
"How ya doin'?" Fog replied with a mouthful of donut.
Mr. X was starting to get a headache from all the confusion in the room. "Okay, I've got an idea. Let's make everyone some name tags. That should help sort things out, yes?" Everyone thought about it and quickly started nodding and agreeing that that seemed like a great idea. Shiva quickly returned with some name tags and a marker. "Okay, let's start then. Which one is Donovan again?"
"Me!" about six guys who all looked exactly the same said at once.
"I give up!" X shouted as he threw up his arms in frustration. "You guys can have the rest of the meeting off! I'm going to my liquor cabinet!"
Everyone grew quiet and watched him storm out of the room and slam the door behind him. The only sound in the room was a few people chewing quite loudly on their donuts. "Wow!" Carlos said once he was gone. "Our plan to drive the boss crazy is actually working!"
"Oh, that's nothing," Shiva added. "I've been moving everything on his desk slightly to the left every day for the past month."