Working Nine to Five
Middleton University wasn't really a bad place to work, nor was the work particularly difficult. But to an electrical engineer like Electronique it was quite humiliating. It hurt her considerable pride to have to do jobs best left to henchmen. Like all villains worth their salt, her ego was as bloated as it was brittle.
"I'm way to overqualified for this. This must be an all-time low."
Most of the time she was left to herself. Word had gotten out on who she was and why was working at MU. Although she had to wear ugly, green overalls she carried herself with as much arrogance as she could muster while fixing blocked pipes or greasing window hinges. In combination with her reputation it was enough to make most students to scurry away or at least pretend to be busy doing something other than interact with the new caretaker with the weird skin colour.
Electronique was secretly pleased that she still could instill, if not abject terror, then at least unease in 'normal' people.
Every Friday she would meet with her parole officer. Although he was pompous and self important, Will Du was also a reliable guy and actually seemed to take his task seriously. He was also a stickler for protocol and doing things 'by the book'. That made him boring but at least she knew what to expect.
"So...about your list of electronic equipment in your apartment."
"Yes, what of it?"
"Telephone, TV-set and a few lamps?"
"Yes. But I use candles when I can. The stove uses gas."
"Care to tell me why?"
"No I don't care to, but I guess you will insist."
"Look, Miss Iordanescu..."
"Electronique. Call me Electronique."
"Well, Electronique, if we are to make this parole work as it is intended to I am required to try to make communications between us as open as possible."
Electronique sighed with exasperation.
"Yes, yes. Fine, I'll tell you. I don't use electronic devices more than I have to because it is easier to relax without them and, frankly, under these circumstances I do not need any excitement that tempts me to get some criminal work done. It also keeps you people from nosing around my home all the time."
Agent Du took notes while he listened to Electronique's little rant. When she was agitated her accent became more pronounced.
"I am glad we have that sorted out. That will be all then. Good luck at work and see you next week."
The following weeks came and went and Electronique was beginning to chafe under dull the dull everyday routine.
One Wendesday she was sitting on a stepladder in a corridor, fixing a faulty light strip. She'd pushed her goggles up so she could see every single path of the electron flow overlapped over her field of vision. It made repairs so much easier and on this small scale it didn't give her a headache.
One of the labs had the door open and she could feel the comforting smell of ozone and she heard voices talking.
"But if we can't contain it the whole thing will blow up."
"That would be kinda cool though."
"We'll flunk the course if we have nothing to show but an explosion. Not so cool."
"Yeah, I know. So what do we do?"
"Dunno. The field just isn't strong enough and we aren't allowed to drain the city grid for more power. Mom and dad said so."
"Maybe they won't notice... OK. Bad idea."
Electronique climbed down from her lofty position and looked into the lab. Two teenage boys sat looking at a small force field projector. Apparently they'd made it themselves from the looks of it.
"Not half bad." She had to admit. The power generator attached to it looked big enough but she saw what was wrong right away. Her electronic and engineering genius and her ego couldn't resist the temptation.
"You can not use alternating or direct current. The entropic power bleed is too great."
The boys looked up and saw the woman with the blue-grey skin and weird goggles in the doorway.
"But there aren't any other kinds of current, Miss."
"Yes there is. Just use a Schroedinger Trinary Sub-Observational current."
"Err...there's no such thing...right?"
Electronique bit her lip.
"What am I doing? I shouldn't be talking about stuff like this. I should stick to my job and get this parole over with." She looked over her shoulder. Good, seems no one was around to hear her.
"No, of course not. No such thing. I just made a joke."
She folded the step ladder and picked it up.
"Just forget it, OK? Good boys."
Electronique walked off, hoping the boys would shut up about the brief conversation.
Jim and Tim Possible looked at each other across their field projector.
"That was weird. But interesting."
"Uh-huh. Wanna do the numbers and see if it would actually work?"
"Hicka bicka boo!"
"Hooh-sha!"
Friday finally came along with her first paycheck.
"Oh, you have to be kidding me!" Compared to her previous criminal income this was less than ten minutes worth of work.
"To think that I used to have an entire metropolis trembling at the mention of my name and the heroes of Go City getting the fights of their lives just to stop me from just take millions of dollars! And now this. I get a paycheck and I pay taxes. I'm a joke, not a villainess. No, even worse. I'm a citizen!"
Electronique was feeling so low after this realization that she couldn't muster up the energy to be sarcastic and snarky when she had her weekly chat with Agent Du. Unfortunately the latter had bad news for her.
"I'm afraid your appeal to have the restraining order overturned has been rejected, Electronique."
"Oh."
"Look, this can't come as a big surprise to you, can it? I mean look at your career..."
"Yes, I know."
"Look, I'll send the appeal in for you again when it's eligible, all right?"
"Yes. All right. I'm going home now."
"See you next week. And don't do anything stupid, OK, Electronique?"
"I'm going to get drunk."
"Uh...I see."
After the meeting she had gone straight to the liquor store and bought a bottle of wine.
About halfway through the bottle, she realized she really needed someone to talk to.
The problem was that a villainess didn't have any friends.
"I could call Aviarius I guess..." She dismissed the thought almost as soon as she'd formed it. The bird-villain was not only a complete and utter prat but also pretty disgusting.
"Shego? Not likely!" Shego had gone all 'save the world with Drakken' on the villain community a while back when the Lorwardians showed up and did their thing. Besides Electronique knew the green skinned woman would probably just mock her and hang up.
With no villains to talk to that only left her with one option...
A quick call to Information gave her the number. She hesitated a long time before she finally made the call.
"Go Tower, Hego speaking!"
The deep voice was as annoyingly loud and cheery as she'd remembered.
Electronique was quiet for a while, thinking about what to say.
"Hello? Anybody there?"
"Yes, it is me. Electronique."
"Electronique? You've overcome the effects of the attitudinator and have escaped prison and now you call to threaten Team Go?"
Since she was drunk she lost her temper rather than just groan in annoyance.
"Oh, fine! That's how it is? We've been enemies for over a decade and this is how you act when I call you? I might as well just hang up if years of trying to destroy each other means so little to you!"
She slammed the phone down and hung up.
"That went well. Not!" She poured herself another glass of wine. "What the hell was I thinking? Of course he doesn't want to talk to me."
The phone rang. She looked at it for a few moments while it rang some more.
She picked up.
"Hello?"
"Electronique? It's Hego."
"Oh. Umm..."
"Are you OK? You sounded a little drunk?"
"So what if I'm drunk? I can get drunk if I want to, can't I?"
"Sure you can. I'm just surprised you called me."
"That makes two of us."
"So...how come I can't see you on the screen?"
"Calling from my home telephone. How'd you find my number?"
"Go Tower has Caller ID."
"Ah, of course."
"Wait a minute, home telephone? So you have broken out of prison?"
"No, I'm on parole."
"Aha. That's good I guess. Hey, speaking of good, are you still good? I just remembered the attitudinator."
"No, the effects wore off. I'm me again."
"Oh. Congratulations, I guess?"
She chuckled a little. Heroes. Always trying to be good and say nice things. It was comfortingly familiar.
"Anyway, the reason I called you,Hego...well, I don't have a real reason, I just needed to talk to someone."
"Hey, good thing you called me! I'm a hero, doing good is what I do best!"
After that things went better. Electronique and Hego talked for quite a while. Mostly old memories and recounting how they'd bested each other in various ways through the years. It helped her take her mind off the disappointments in her life and it was well past midnight when they decided to call it a night.
"It's getting late, I think I should get some sleep."
"You do that Electronique. Good night...or is evil night more appropriate? What's proper form here?"
"Let's just go with good night for both of us."
"All right. Good night then, Electronique."
"Good night, Hego."