Chapter 2: Fortune, Fame And Fashion

Leena Toros finished dressing for the morning. With a bagel clutched in her teeth, she sat down at the computer screen in her private room on the Hover Cargo's upper deck. She bit through the stiff dough, and grabbed the bread as it began to fall away from her mouth. She chewed slowly.

The standard desktop interface glowed on her computer monitor. The mail icon pulsed in the upper right corner of the screen.

She touched the button on her keyboard, which opened her e-mail program. She closed her eyes. "Please let there be just one e-mail." She opened her eyes, her expression dressed in hope. As her view drifted toward the Inbox Icon, she read the number of new messages and winced. "Six hundred and eighty-three new messages!" She broke into a rage, and threw the partially eaten bagel at the monitor.

The bagel bounced out of her view.

"Will it ever end?" Her fists landed on the display screen guard.

The monitor hummed slowly back to a standstill.

Leena squinted her eyes as the mental images of several bad dates haunted her memory. "I am not a celebrity you under-challenged, womanizing boneheads! I am a Zoid Pilot! Not some frilly little bimbo star!" She paused, the veins in her neck bulged. "IDIOTS!"

With all the rage that made her a force on the Battlefield, Leena's eyes went wild with anger. She imagined herself in her Gun Sniper. She pushed the controls, and placed it in a crouched position. In front of her, six hundred eighty-three loser men ran toward her in a mob. The evil in her smile matched the anger in her eyes as she flipped the hatch release button on the Wild Weasel unit access controls. Her eyes gazed at the yellow button marked "Full On." It was her favorite button. She pushed the button and the missile launchers opened. Leena moved her thumb to press the simultaneous launch button. The imaginary Gun Sniper cockpit shook as hundreds of missiles rammed their way out of their storage holders and into the air.

With clenched teeth, Leena watched the imaginary missiles balloon outward in front of her, and then pull back together as they descended on the group of six hundred eighty-three loser men. Plumes of smoke, and dust arose amidst the explosions on the ground. As the dust cloud dissipated, not a trace of a loser man could be seen. Satisfied, Leena pulled her finger from the Remove Spam button on the her keyboard. The inbox icon plainly stated two messages.

The first message she read was from her teammate, Jamie. It was a short note that he and Bit were going to town to look for Zoid parts.

The second message was from Chris Tasker.

Leena blinked.

The second message was definitely there. The spinning movie-reel icon to the right of the title told her it was a video message. She read the message title eight times.

Hi!

Leena thought for a moment, and in the privacy of her room, she spoke out loud. "I don't really have any animosity towards the Tasker Sisters. Their Lightning Saix Zoids were fast, but we evened the score in the Royal Cup."

Leena put her thumb in her mouth, and bit down. "Why is Chris emailing me?" She searched her memory, tried to find an unfinished conversation, an invitation, any sort of reason she could think of that Chris Tasker would want to send her a video message. Nothing came to her mind. Leena sighed, and shrugged her shoulders. "It's just a video message." She clicked the link.

The video message opened on Leena's monitor, and the face, and bust of Chris Tasker was centered in the video. The video angle told Leena that it was sent via a vid-box. The background behind the Zoid pilot told Leena that Chris had sent the message from The Judges Chambers, a local club where Zoid Pilots hung out. A place she now avoided without a well-crafted disguise. Leena clicked the "Play" button on her keyboard.

The video of Chris smiled in a friendly, and nervous manner as it played on Leena's monitor. "Hi Leena!" Chris' voice sounded friendly, and awkward. "Hey, I'm sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you knew what Bit's favorite color was? He and I are going to the Summer Fest tomorrow night, and I wanted to pick a dress in that color. I thought you might know, since your team traveled a lot in the Hover Cargo. If I hear from you great, if not I understand." The video of Chris cocked her head. She smiled, and waived. "Hope to hear from you. Bye."

The video message closed.

Leena reclined back into her desk chair, and crossed her legs. "I've been so busy dating losers that I never really noticed what the others were doing." Her mind drifted back over the last few weeks that followed the Blitz Team winning the Royal Cup. "We were together for all of those social events, the Zoid Battle Commission call-outs and the ZBC Young Fans events." Leena's focus detoured. "Those young Zoid fans were amazing. Those kids know more about my battle history than I do. How do they remember all of that stuff? Why? Where's Brad been lately?" Then Leena just blurted it out. "Green." She remembered the color, and she remembered it coming out from one of her, and Bit's many bouts in the Hover Cargo Lounge. She just couldn't remember when.

Leena hit the "Reply" menu option to Chris Tasker's video-mail. She selected a text message. Leena typed ."Hi" and then tapped in "Bit's favorite color is green. Bright green. Like grass." Leena typed a couple of returns, copied, and pasted her signature file. She moved the mouse over the send button, and paused. She tried three times to click on it, but her finger stopped. She looked down at her pink blouse, and white pants. Leena shook her head. "I hate green." She forcefully tapped the send button.

The "Sent Box" icon popped open, and closed on Leena's monitor.

Leena decided she was going shopping today. She wanted a new dress. She had already picked out the color in her mind. Purple.