Lethal Beauty~
"Hey! Wait up! Kid! STOP!"
Numbuh 274 froze. Kid? Some had just called him kid? He hated being at Arctic Base. He truly did. Chad couldn't remember a time when he had been this young and uninformed and annoying. He turned slightly to find a cadet standing behind him.
She was tiny. All the cadets seemed small to Chad, he was nearly 11, as it was, but this was a slip of a person. Her dark brown hair was cropped short to her neck and tied off into little pigtails that were threatening to slip out and free the brunette locks. Smudges and scratches covered her face and she looked exhausted. Numbuh 274 would never admit to tiredness, but it was certainly something one became accustomed to during training. "Name and Rank?" Chad demanded, a slightly bored tone to his voice.
"Virginia Sims, Cadet Numbuh 23," she repeated. The sides of her scuffed sneakers slammed together at attention. When she spoke, Virginia did not look at Chad's eyes, they were trained off to side.
274 was running late. "Speak," he drawled.
An arm previously positioned at Cadet 23's side lifted up and she pointed at Chad's hip. Her fingernails were bitten down to stubs. "It's beautiful," she murmured.
He looked down to find his newest weapon slung across his hip. The thing wasn't even acronymed yet. He nodded tightly, but the fact that a cadet, and a girl cadet, at that, was able to recognize this weapons lethal beauty introduced hope to his previously pessimistic view. It was sleek and classy, unlike many of the other things kids used for protection. "It's new. You can't know anything about it," Chad informed the girl.
Cadet 23 nodded. "That'd be true, if I hadn't designed it." She smirked then, the side of her mouth rising up and her lips kept tight. "The laser produced, well, it's made mostly of sugar. Much too complex for you to comprehend I'm sure. Sugar and me, we go way back." Her voice was kind of deep, and if Chad hadn't been developing a crick in his neck from looking down at her, he would've predicted someone much older was speaking.
Blonde hair swooped sideways as Numbuh 274 shook his head slightly. It was always a bit unnerving when these kids didn't know who it was they were back talking. "A little cocky, are we?"
Virginia's smirked widened. "Not really. They say I'm pretty good. I hear they said the same to you, and look how that turned out, Numbuh 274," she said. Quickly, before he could make a move to stop her, 23's hand reached out and brushed along the shaft of his weapon. He knew how it felt to see something you made, created, become real. And he couldn't blame her for the awed expression.
She left quickly, with a hasty salute. He realized that Cadet 23 knew all along who he was and she didn't hesitate in the slightest to set him in his place. As Numbuh 274 walked out onto the hangar, he couldn't help but feel a heightened sense of hope for this new batch of trainees. He'd need a couple prodigies, just as he had been a few years ago. Virginia Sims, Cadet 23, with bitten down nails and her huge smirk and a fascination with sugar? She would go places.
A/N: Getting this up now, editing later. It shouldn't be too bad though. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEPH! It's got 23 and 274 and it wasn't all that hard. I've never written 23 in my life so sorry if I murdered her character. I like it, actually. So yeah :DD For Steph, I have sacrificed the dreaded 50th fic. It's official. I have no life.