Author: "Painbow"
Summary: Early Season 3; Angel faces his greatest challenge yet...
A/N: This story was inspired by essay season...auto-format is clearly the devil...
Disclaimer: I don't own Angel, Joss does...too bad...Oh, I also get no money for mentioning Future Shop...I just needed an electronics store and I'm too lazy to make up my own.
Angel didn't blink...he stared, eyes wide at his nemesis, at his greatest enemy. He'd been challenged before and he had not succeeded, but this time would be different...this time he would prevail...
Angel shifted slightly in his seat, eyes not moving from his quarry, muscles still tensed, ready for anything. He made his move.
Something changed...it wasn't what had been intended.
He blinked...
His left hand gripped the armrest of his chair before reaching for the phone...
"You've reached Willow and Tara's! Please leave a message after the beep."
"Willow...hey...it's Angel. Um...that thing happened again with the writing programme on my computer. I was trying to put three little stars under what I was typing and when I went to the next line instead of staying as three little stars it turned into this big line...and that's just the latest thing that's...Willow, just call me ok?"
He hung up the phone.
The computer was mocking him. He just knew it. It never did what he asked. Ever since they'd bought it Cordy had been the one to use it, but a month ago she'd insisted he learn how to us it too...and then refused to teach him how after he'd asked what kind of fish you were supposed to catch in an internet.
So Angel had turned to Willow for help because she had always been good with computers. The most Angel had ever been able to do with a computer was break it and cause a fire...and that had been while evil...
Well, his pride was on the line now. "I never should have tried to teach you," Cordy said last week. "It's like voicemail...totally beyond your vampire skills. You're just too much of a fogey."
Gunn and Wes had sat back and snickered at him, muttering cracks about his age and ineptitude that made Fred giggle from under her table while they high-fived each other to celebrate another "good one." After two straight weeks of "good ones" he'd moved the computer to his room.
He'd show them. Vampires could be technological. He'd learned how to use his cell phone...fine not the voice mail, but he could at least call people now.
And he was learning! If only he could figure out this Word thingy and something called "Auto-format" he'd be A-OK. Plus he'd learned how to use the chatty rooms...well, sort of. He didn't talk to a lot of people. Ok, that wasn't true. A lot of people didn't talk to him, mostly because it took him five minutes to type a sentence. It also may have been because his screen name had mysteriously appeared as "FarkVaenger" instead of the infinitely cooler "DarkAvenger"...and that also had to be the computer's fault.
And chatty rooms aside, he'd decided to leave the internet (which he now knew was not an i actual /i net and had very little to do with fishing) alone. He'd tried searching for information on demons and had found a lot of sites for porn. He'd then tried to find information on Barry Manalowe and had again found a lot of porn. As an experiment he'd typed in "bunnies" and found some really i interesting /i porn that he was sure the bunnies hadn't enjoyed. There was probably a trick to finding the information he wanted...but as he couldn't even use his writing programme he figured the internet could wait.
Angel decided to give his task another try...there just had to be a way to get those three little stars without the computer changing it to a black dotted line.
He used the mouse to slowly highlight and delete the unwanted black dots. Then clicking on the bottom line of type and setting the cursor to the left side of the page, he sat back for a second, taking a deep breath. Angel focused himself, ready to start again, ready to finally be victorious...
He reached a tentative hand forward to the keyboard to begin his task again when a sudden entrance in the lobby startled him. He turned quickly, hand knocking against something in front of him. When Angel looked back the entire paragraph was shifted over, indented, and he had no idea how.
But of course he did. It was finally clear. The signals had been right there all along: the taunting, the impossible programmes, the bunny porn. It was obvious. The computer was evil. And he fought evil.
Only one thing to do...
Lorne made his way up the stairs to Angel's room humming "I Will Survive"...the Gloria Gaynor version, of coure, not that mess Cake had made...some people just shouldn't be allowed near instruments.
A sound began to invade his thought process, and it got louder the nearer he was to Angel's room.
Lorne opened Angel's door to see the owner of said door standing, mangled keyboard in hand, over the broken remains of the computer that the aforementioned door-owner had vowed to learn how to use. The remains were starting to smoke.
"Umm...Angel cakes...did I come at a bad time? The evil PC giving you some trouble?"
Angel smiled, watching the plastic casing melt as the computer caught fire. "It was," he said. "Hey look!" he pointed at the flaming wreck. "I got it to do something! And I'm not even evil this time!"
Lorne eyed the fire cautiously and then looked at the slightly deranged vampire still clutching the broken keyboard like a battle-axe.
The phone rang. Lorne looked expectantly at Angel, who snapped out of the daze he'd fallen into watching the computer burn. He answered the phone.
"Angel Investigations. We help the hopeless......oh hey Willow......nope, don't worry......well, I........."undo" huh?......No, I, uh, figured something out......yeah thanks......talk to you later......bye."
Angel looked down at remains of the computer that hosted a dying fire. He dropped the keyboard on top and then turned to Lorne.
"Undo," he said like it was the simplest thing in the world. "Right there and I didn't see it...I KNEW this thing was evil!" He walked past Lorne and left the room. Lorne could hear him shout down the stair to the lobby, "Cordy! Where's the Future Shop flyer? We need a new computer!"
The End