AN: My daughter and I have been playing a lot of these kinds of games online, which drove me to write this little thing. Hope you enjoy this story before I post my next big epic! (Whole lotta chapters! LOL)...Kricket
After a long, hard morning reading annals upon annals of dry, hideous FBI bylaws, Spencer Reid decided he needed a break. And food. His stomach growled, protesting to him that he needed nourishment far more than he'd thought he did.
He'd come in very early that morning because he couldn't sleep. So early, he didn't expect to see anyone else hanging around, especially near the vending machines by the commissary. He was quite surprised to see Penelope Garcia, sitting at a little table, tapping away at her laptop computer.
He watched her for a few moments, and noticed that it wasn't her usual, radiantly quick style of typing. Instead, she was peering at the computer, then clicking a mouse she had attached to the computer, and then peering again. It made him curious, wondering what she was looking at.
Stepping behind her, he peered at the screen himself, and then said, "Ah..what-"
"Ahhh!" she cried, jumping in her seat and rattling her laptop. She clapped a hand to her heart dramatically. "Don't scare people like that!"
"Sorry," he said, smirking somewhat. "What are you doing?"
She took a few breaths, obviously calming herself down, then started explaining. "I'm playing a game. It's a mystery game with lots of logic puzzles. I started playing this last night, and I can't stop. I'm kind of stuck on one," she replied, then looked up at him with a grin. "Wanna help?"
"Sure," he said, taking a seat next to her, his hunger temporarily forgotten, as it usually was when he had a conundrum to solve.
There was a reason he was so thin!
He drew his brows together, the little wrinkle between becoming more pronounced, as he examined the screen again. "What sort of mystery is this?"
"A ghost is murdering people," she answered, wiggling her eyebrows above her colorful glasses. She was very expressive and dramatic. It was one of the things he loved about her; Garcia knew how to tell a story. "I'm a detective, on the hunt for this paranormal baddie, trying to stop him before he hurts my cousin Esmeralda,"
He quirked a brow. "Cousin Esmeralda?"
Pen nodded. "You'd like her. She's pretty...in a fifteenth century sort of way."
"Oh," he said, looking close to the computer. It was a rather simple number puzzle that related to geometry and angles, sort of like a Sudoku on a three dimensional cube variant instead of singular plane.
He explained that to Garcia, who simply answered, "Can you do it?"
Smugly, he grinned, leaned over her laptop...and solved the puzzle in forty-nine seconds.
"God!" she groaned. "I had been working on that thing for three days! It was impossible."
He cocked his head to the side. "Ah, actually, it's quite possib- hey!"
Penelope had reached her fingers into her glass and flicked him with water, glaring at him.
He smiled back, and watched as the next scene opened up. There were a bunch of items, rusty and old, laying in a field. On the bottom was a list of said items they obviously had to search for. Reid now saw the reasoning behind her peering at the screen. He looked close. "A dirigible?"
"That's a blimp," she answered, peering even more closely.
"I know. I just don't see a blimp anywhere," he replied, leaning closer.
Both of them had their heads close together, sharing the space, when Penelope squealed and pointed.
"There!" she said excitedly. "On the side of that elephant!"
Reid frowned. "What elephant?"
She shook her head. "The elephant tattoo on the clown!"
"Oh," he said, pulling his chair up closer. He hadn't even noticed that. This was far more difficult than he'd originally thought!
After finding all the items in that screen together, Penelope guided them through room after room of the haunted mansion and the surrounding landscape. They were looking for a key that was going to save Esmeralda from a tower being guarded by a wicked wizard.
"You know, this is a misnomer," he said, interrupting her for a moment. "It rides on a wrong assumption."
She stared at him. "Huh?"
"Most wizards weren't wicked," he explained. "The majority were actually more like Native American medicine men or Shamans"-he made air quotes around the last word-"experimenting with herbs, plants, etc."
"I don't care," she said flatly, looking back at the screen. "This one is."
He nodded in agreement. This ghostly wizard was indeed a badass.
On and on, they looked in every field, nook, and cranny in the game. There were so many disgusting, dirty rooms with rusty objects, it made him think he was going to get tetanus!
However, all in all, it was a very pleasurable hour.
A small alarm went off on Garcia's computer.
"Oh, no! Two minute warning," she growled. "Not now. We've almost saved Esmeralda!"
"We're done?" Reid asked, feeling terribly disappointed, too. He was curious to see the ending.
She nodded sadly. "We're at the climax of the game, the hardest part. Unless we find that enchanted key in two minutes, we're done for."
"It's under a tree in the courtyard, facing the cemetery," Rossi said, carrying a coffee.
Hotch was standing next to Rossi, carrying a cup of the cheap cafeteria coffee, too, and was obviously surprised at Dave's interjection. "How did you know that?"
"I keep up with this stuff," he answered, shrugging, before walking away.
Hotch grinned and shook his head, then turned to Reid and Garcia. "We're meeting in ten minutes."
"Yes, sir," Pen said, clicking under the tree Rossi had indicated.
Moments later, they'd freed Esmeralda and derailed the curse.
She closed the computer, sighing happily, and looked over at Reid. "Another job well done!"
"I have to agree." He was beaming. "And you were right-I did like Esmeralda."
Smiling, she stood and picked up her laptop, then looped her arm in his. "Come on, boy wonder; time to rescue some real princesses."