After being defeated by Garland in Final Fantasy Dissidia (argh.), I am posting this.
Just like in the last chap, I had everything written out on paper, but changed it drastically.
I was gonna go by what I wrote on my looseleaf yesterday, but for some reason, I just didn't feel like going into my room to find my notebook. It was probably sudden laziness, but because of it, I went ahead and typed whatever I had in my head. Ideas, Ideas, Ideas...
Thank you CoF666[glad to make your day..! :D], Amy, Lauren, and 'Tima' (lol)! I always appreciate the reviews! I'm glad you guys like the pairing just as much as I do. Between you and me, I've only read 2 fics w/ the pairing that I really like.
Well anyways, on to the chapter. I hope you enjoy it!
Oh man...and I keep forgetting! .
For the past 3 chapters and this chapter here-on, I don't own Taki, Cassandra, Xianghua, Maxi,..._(blank)_...nobody except the generic, nameless workers and characters! Namco owns Taki and them.
There. NOW I hope you enjoy it.
"Taki, you look stunning today, as usual."
Taki mentally addressed her convenient outfit and thrown together hairstyle a bit self-consciously while Mr. Sorrel looked down at her. She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear.
"...Thank you sir."
"It leads me to wonder how stunning you looked last night while doing whatever you did…"
Sigh. Taki shook her head, annoyed. The tall Frenchman chuckled and thankfully didn't prod any further just as the elevator stopped and opened up to a hall with floor to ceiling windows all the way down it. They allowed a thorough view of the city's perpetual momentum along with other tall skyscrapers and business buildings that crowded the area along with local restaurants and bars. Cars, dog walkers, random pedestrians, the occasional odd looking fellow trotting along in a variety of colors and patterns or a simple, yet conspicuous trench coat-all was the norm and was always trying to get to or from somewhere in an endless loop of routine and activity.
A round, pleasant looking woman pushing a small cart full of cleaning supplies for the windows stopped when the President and his worker stepped out of the elevator. She smiled and greeted the pair with a warm 'hello'. Taki simply returned the greeting whereas her overly friendly boss stepped up and remarked about the woman's attractiveness despite her janitorial uniform. Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, his waiting secretary let out a puff of air through her nose. When the woman began to blush at the charismatic man's flirtatious advances, she couldn't help the fraction of a smile that crossed her lips when the woman girlishly tried to hide her smile. It looked like he was successfully buttering up another defenseless female staff member of the building, be she married, or single (married, most likely). No matter what, he always had time to appreciate the women of his workplace and they always appreciated his attentions (and seemingly inadvertent propositions). There were some females who tried their best not to be swayed by his charm, but sooner or later, they always melted in his grasp. As an openly eligible bachelor and experienced ladies' man, he never had trouble charming the very lingerie off of any woman he wanted. Any woman, except for one, that is, and she was closer in rapport and reach than any of the others, ironically.
The janitor giggled like a young schoolgirl. In the midst of their conversation, the blond man had advanced on the bashful little woman and, holding her hand, placed a lingering kiss on its back.
"Even when using cleaning supplies day in and day out, your skin manages to remain so soft and supple. I am very grateful for your work here, Julise."
"A-all I do is clean the windows around here, dear," she stammered smartly. She tried to keep her composure, but Raphael's charm was not lost on her. She placed a steadying hand over her most likely hammering heart as her lightly tanned cheeks reddened even more. His smoldering amber gaze lifted and found her wide eyes. Her voice got quieter. "...I-It's a pretty easy job..."
"Well you do an exquisite job, my dear."
He pecked her hand again and slowly lowered it as he moved back to Taki's side. Taki watched his display and actually rolled her eyes this time. Julise was spellbound, to put it basic terms.
"...T-Thank you...Mr. Sorrel...sir."
He waved at the older woman as he and Taki continued on their way down the hall, leaving the janitor to stare after them for a few beats before snapping out of it and getting back to work. Upon looking up, a smile could be seen on his features. 'Is this why he comes to work every day,' Taki thought as they passed a few doors on their way down the long hall.
"Now, as we were."
Finally situated at her semi-circular desk and workstation, Taki leaned back in her chair, relieved at finally being able to be productive. With a farewell wink and words, Raphael had continued down the hall to her left and entered his office and Taki had happily took her place behind her double-leveled desk. As the hefty desktop computer booted up, she pulled out her personal laptop and set it next to the bigger machine. She surveyed her work spot. Everything was the same, despite how unusual her weekend and morning had been. A few decorative plants were still on the eggshell floor of the junction and various nuetral paintings hung from the walls like always. Adjacent to her desk sat two single chairs with a wooden circle table between them stacked with magazines. Everything was the same. Something felt off, though. Taki could sense it.
Like something was slowly changing.
She shrugged off of her jacket, and with it, the weirdly intuitive feeling and draped it behind her office chair.
As if one crazy night would change everything. It didn't seem likely. Life wasn't that streamlined to be so easily affected by one event.
She signed into the computer and pulled up her email where a few new messages and junk mail awaited her. Nothing odd about that. After a few moments of deleting spam, a yellow slip of paper on the higher level of her desk caught her attention. Someone probably came by looking for her at her normal hour and left it. Mentally berating Xianghua, she plucked the sticky note and read the scratchy writing.
'I wanna take you out sometime. Call me.'
- A. from accounting-
The slip of paper was flicked into the waste basket without any regards for the cellphone number scribbled underneath the little line. The workplace was not a place to focus on petty things such as 'taking someone out sometime'. She shook her head at her admirer's stupidity. It really aggravated her that he was more worried about a potential date than getting his work done. What an idiot. And what was more idiotic was the fact that his note was not the first that she'd ever found on her desk.
'It's the middle of September and that has to be the twentieth one,' she mused, rubbing her forehead in irriation. 'Men. Senseless fools.'
Of course Xianghua, whenever she visited Taki's desk, would probably go through her waste basket and pick out the number for entertainment purposes. Idly rolling her chair back in front of the desktop, Taki recalled the brunette carefully (stress on the carefully) picking out a piece of paper from her trash one day and giggling to herself. She had texted the guy's phone, pretending to be Taki. The real Taki didn't pay Xianghua any attention until the next day when the same guy came to her desk asking if he'd made her 'hot' from the pictures he sent her because he had been just from texting her. Of course, Taki had no idea what he was talking about, so she regarded him with cold indifference. With another woman, the poor guy would probably have laughed it off and pushed on with his indecent questions, but with the calculating Japanese woman, whatever hard-on he had was deflated on the spot as she calmly suggested that he 'not bother her with such petty little things and return to his desk'. Upon exiting the building for the day, she was confronted by her happy-go-lucky friend who asked her about the guy and burst into peals of laughter when Taki repeated what she had told him.
"HAHAHA! It was the size of my MINI-STAPLER," she guffawed, hanging on to a confused and slightly annoyed Taki's arm. "HAH! 'Petty little thing'? No kidding!"
Well, at least that love note wasn't as suggestive as a few others had the nerve to be.
While still reading a few of her emails, Taki lifted her phone from off its hook and hit the 'message' button. She flinched at the shrill voice that met her ear on the other end.
"Taki? Takiiiiii! Are you there? Aww you're gonna be late this morning, huh? Well you should go out with me and Kilik and Maxi more! You'll build up a tolerance to the nightlife!' Taki grimaced at Xianghua's pause, then her loud laugh. 'Well I sent you some text messages! I'm sure you got them by now-OHMYGOD, Taki! ...Oh, Maxi's not here either..?" There was some noise in the background. "Hm. He's probably just a little hung-over but he'll be over it soon enough. Not like Kilik." An exaggerated, heavy sigh was heard. "Anyways, Taki…-OH. MY. GOD. Last night! We have to do it aga-"
The delete button was mashed and a curse was muttered under her breath for listening to the pointless rant about last night. Now she was on edge about finding out again. Thankfully, the next message was from was from someone with sense.
'Hello, Miss Fujioka. This is Elisa Kay from the switchboard...um,' she trailed off then continued quickly, 'I have an important meeting with Mr. Sorrel. If you could call me back whenever possible at my extension, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!' Click.
"Odd,' Taki thought to herself. The woman sounded a little dodgy about her request. A personal meeting? What was so important that she couldn't fill out a form of request or complaint and hand it into human resources? Well, it wasn't any of her business, so she called the woman back and spoke briefly with her. After doing that, she dialed Raphael himself.
"Oui," he answered on the first ring.
"An Elisa Kay from the switchboard says she has a meeting with you, sir. Is this true?"
"...Ah, yes." He chuckled. "I nearly forgot about her." There was a desiring edge in his voice that didn't go unnoticed.
"She's on her way up."
"Right, send her to my office immediately. Thank you, dear."
He hung up and Taki resumed emptying her email of worthless junk. Every few days she'd get calls like that one from the female workers requesting a 'personal meeting' or to remind her to let the president know that it was 'urgent'. Taki crossed her legs and began typing up the scheduled weekly newsletter to send to all of the employees. She sighed and shook her head, a look of mild disgust on her features.
"...Men."
"You actually got boobinator to go to a club? Which one? And where the hell was I?"
"Stop calling her that! We went to the nice one uptown."
"Oh, the big one! I love that place! This one time I went there and saw this hot, sexy beef-muffin blondie who-"
"...Beef-muffin, Cass?"
"What? He was yummy looking. Anyway, you must be talking about Edge. Was the bouncer a tall black dude with a weird golden eye?"
"Oh my gawd, YES. He was scaaaaryyy. I think his name was Z or whatever...?"
"Yep. That was Edge. So, what's up with Taki?"
"Well...I think she forgot everything about last night..."
"Huh? How the hell do you forget everything? She remembers nothing?"
"I dunno..! And I guess not..."
"Well, what did she drink? The Taki I see around here would know how much she could...- Wait, has she ever had any..?"
"Uhhh..."
"Don't tell me you threw her to the wolves in there! You know those bartenders love exploiting the weaknesses of newbs...especially lady-newbs!"
"Especially the ones with nice racks!"
The two whispering women both glared at a laughing Maxi who was meandering over on his way to the restroom. He shrugged. It was the truth.
"Shut up, Maxi," Cassandra hissed, motioning for him to keep his voice down. She turned back to Xianghua, who was still peeking over her cubicles wall into Cassandra's neighboring one. A smack met the chinese girl's hand as she tried stealthily to snag a king-size pack of M&M's from the blonde's desk. "Mine!"
"Owww...! Cass, you don't need any chocolate anyways. I thought you were going on a diet..?"
"I am," Cassandra harrumphed, whipping around in her swivel chair to place her sacred M&M's into a drawer secure with a 4-digit combination lock. "M&M's are nutritiously delicious. Now, back to Taki and Maxi getting the HELL OUTTA MY FACE."
Maxi had closed in on Cassandra at the mention of her being on a diet. Eyebrows raised and mouth open, he feigned a look of utter shock, looming over the sitting woman who openly tried to ignore him. "Cassy? On a diet? Whatcha tryin' to lose?"
Cassandra stood and looked him square in the eye and was about to say something along the lines of "fuck the fuck off" before Maxi reached around and pinched her butt, causing her to utter a tiny noise of surprise instead.
"Hn...I wouldn't lose this, if I were you. It's nice and soft, just how I like it," Maxi said as he slowly withdrew his hand from her backside. He knew that while she was stunned, it was best to move away slowly, but efficiently, and without any sudden movements. Leaving the flabbergasted blonde standing on her tippy-toes and the barely-surprised looking chinese woman to their own devices, Maxi continued on his way to the boy's room with a snicker about her wearing a pair of man-slacks. 'Shoulda been wearin' a skirt or somethin'. Oh well. Cassandra-1. Maxi-1. At least we're even.' He plopped down in his seat triumphantly and began to type away, smirking. Kilik looked questioningly over the barrier between them, but didn't say anything. His head was still blaring and he tiredly rested his head in his hands.
"Cassandra...just calm down," Xianghua said, trying to sooth the blonde whose face looked like it was left out in the Sahara desert on the hottest day of its summer. "He was only kidding...! You know he does that a lot."
Slowly, Cassandra did sit down, but her eyes were focused somewhere else.
"...I think I'll hit the gym tomorrow instead of just going on Wednesday," she muttered distractedly as she pulled her M&M's back out of her security drawer and began munching. Xianghua sighed and held out her hand. Cassandra poured some of the chocolate snacks into her hand without blinking.
'Well Maxi's lucky she isn't as upset about him groping her,' Xianghua thought as she munched gratefully on her blue, red, and yellow oblong treats. She knew Cassandra well enough to know that her body was always something she obsessed over even though everyone else saw nothing the matter with it. It would be awesome to have hips as curvy as Cassandra's and a butt as full, too. At least that's what Xianghua thought.
"Um, anyway," Xianghua began, to which Cassandra snapped out of it.
"Huh? ...Oh yeah! Like I was saying...You didn't know Taki doesn't drink? How do you not know that?" Cassandra gave her a funny look. "...And why on a big, fat Sunday?"
"How was I supposed to know," Xianghua whined, exasperated. Yes, she was very close to her, but she didn't know what she wouldn't tell her. Xianghua considered her a very good friend who was more private about her life than most very good friends. It was never considered a problem between the two. Not until last night when she had begged her to try a combination of drinks without knowing whether or not she had some sort of tolerance...
"And it was a spur of the moment thing, ya know? We were all wrapped up in the fun, and Taki was too!"
"Sheesh, Chai. Some friend you are," Cassandra snorted having turned back to her computer and resumed typing. Xianghua's head lolled on the wall that separated them guiltily. Her neck length hair managed to cover her face as she solemnly agreed to Cassandra's remark.
"I let her try some Jell-O shots and she didn't mind those...I let her try the STP (of course I didn't tell her what it stood for! Heh heh!)...and she said it was pretty sweet..." Xianghua couldn't help the slow giggle that spilled out of her mouth. Cassandra couldn't hold in the giggle-snort.
"She said that..?" At Xianghua's nod, she burst into peals of laughter, earning a few curious looks from her coworkers. When the two of them got their laughter under control, Cassandra asked, "So what else did you let her try?" Xianghua's answering look made the Greek woman swivel her chair back towards her friend eagerly. "Oh Gods...what did you make her drink, Chai?"
Xianghua looked embarrassed and uncomfortable...but Cassandra's expectant yet stern look took her back to when she was a young little lotus flower in her mother's nice home back in China. Whenever Xianghua got in trouble, her mother would give her a look of equal scrutiny that injected an invisible truth serum into her bloodstream, infecting her with a case of word-vomit...
"Xianghuaaaa. What did you give herrrrr," Cassandra prodded, waving a red M&M in front of the disturbed face.
"MIND ERASER," she blurted out and hung her head over the separating wall as if she had literally vomited the name of the fated drink.
Cassandra gasped, gaped, and smiled at the same time. "You didn't," she all but shrieked. When Xianghua nodded mutely with her head still hanging, Cassandra turned mutely back to her computer screen, still smile-gaping. After a few moments, she turned back to Xianghua and repeated herself. "...You didn't!"
" I did," she grumbled. "...And she liked that too, so it's not like I threw it down her throat! Taki's a big girl. She knows how to say 'no'." All Xianghua had wanted was for her always systematic/workaholic friend to get out and enjoy life a little! What better way to do that than to go clubbing with a pretty chinese chick and her band of goonies (Kilik and Maxi) while trying a few drinks, one of which was quite potent, even for seasoned drinkers?
"Well, after that, what didn't she say 'no' to...?" The blonde woman muttered thoughtfully aside before addressing her chinese gossip-mate once again. "You're the one who practically dragged her by her ankles to go out. Everyone heard you begging her all last week, Chai."
A grimace crossed Xianghua's face. That was true. But it still wasn't her fault! Taki could have politely declined...and she did. Numerous times. That hadn't stopped Xianghua from asking again. And again. And again.
And again.
"Back to the point though. What happened after that? Did she, like, loosen up?"
This time, her head lifted, and she was back to her old self, complete with an excited smile.
"Oh my gawd, Cassy...you have no idea! There was this dude who-! Oh, and she was-!"
"Get-to-work-or-my-ass-is-snitchin'." Maxi coughed coherently enough as he walked by on his way back to his desk.
Xianghua looked annoyed, but then laughed at herself as Cassandra fumed and grudgingly returned to work. As Cassandra muttered obscenely about how she wanted to castrate Maxi among doing other inhumane and illegal things to him, the former returned to her work and read her desktop's time: 10:51 a.m. She sighed. Anxiety was beginning to creep up on her as she thought about what was going to go down in almost the next hour and a half. Even so, she was excited to be reunited with her oh-so-serious friend and let her know the details. It just wasn't right to gab to Cassy before she gabbed the truth to Taki. Xianghua wasn't a lot of things, quiet being number one on the list, but she was a usually loyal friend. 'Usually' being Taki's word of emphasis.
She had to remember to thank Maxi on her break for stopping her from blabbing. She popped her last M&M in her mouth and hoped that Taki would be in a jolly mood when lunchtime came. Her vivacious friend's life probably depended on it.
There you go..!
I recently bought Steamboy on DVD. It's by the same guy who made Akira. I've never seen Akira, but I've heard nothing but good things about it. As an incentive for finally posting this chap, I will be watching it tonight. *big smile* :D
I like Cassandra. I'm just not very good with her in-game. I love her SC II throws. I haven't had a chance to really play SC III (broken Ps2) or IV (no Ps3), but I love the way she looks in IV.
Anyways, in RL, I've gotten some really good news. ^_^ I haven't had any in sooo looong...I'll post the details on my page sooner or later.
Thankyou again for reading!
Note: STP used in this case has nothing to do with the STP in chemistry. STP stands for 'Sweet Tight Pussy' which, as the name implies, is a sweet type of drink(...LOL). It's popular with females ( or so says the drink site I got that from). Think 'green popsicle' in terms of taste.
PS:: I beat Garland's ol' heavy behind in a rematch. *final fantasy fanfare music* Also, _(blank)_ is soon..!