Pre-Comment: Incompetence - When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.

- Despair DOT com

Chapter Four: So You're Legally Dead, Huh?

"I can't believe I left Viridisa for this," he griped and complained, taking another pull from a quickly emptying bottle of scotch.

Sure, it was cold back home, and a lot of things were out of order, and he had to deal with that guy, but it sure beat doing this. Anything beat doing this.

And then his phone rang.

Lydic looked at the nearest clock blearily.

The red glare of the numbers read—

3:07 AM.

Horrified, Lydic took to staring at his phone for the first few rings. And then, finally, he picked it up and gave a grudging—

"What psycho ward did you escape from and how did you get this number?"

There was the muffled sound of something moving, more smothered sound, a bit of static, and finally—

"Hello? Mr Verell? Can you repeat what you just said? I didn't quite catch that. It's Suzaku—Suzaku Kururugi. Remember? From the interview? I just wanted to cle—"

Lydic hung up the phone.

Of course it would be him.

It just had to be, didn't it?

ooo

Name: Suzaku Kururugi

Objective: World peace. And a part-time job for the summer.

Skill Sets: Knightmare piloting, killing hundreds of people and having memory blackouts about doing it, being legally dead, saving the world.

Past Employment: Military Officer, Knightmare Pilot, Student, Royal Knight, Knight of Zero, Zero.

ooo

"Stop slacking off! What am I going to tell Head Office tomorrow? 'Sorry, he can't make it to the meeting because he's leaving for Maui today?' You're such a—"

"Lydia, please just—"

"Don't Lydia me! And for the last time, it's not Lydia! It's Nakuru!"

Lydic winced and fell silent.

At this point in time it was just best to weather out the storm. There was no telling at this point whether it would go on a rampage and take out a few small cities at this point if he didn't. And while the latter portion of that statement was questionably true or even possible, Lydic didn't want to take the chances she didn't take out at least a few lives while trying.

"—one more thing, you just can't—"

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

Lydic looked up at the door and Nakuru paused to turn around and stare at it. His secretary slowly turned back around and stared long and hard at him. Keeping a straight face, Lydic returned her glare innocently.

Moving towards the door, she opened it so quickly the mahogany blurred. She almost jumped back at the sight of the kid standing there, as if expecting otherwise.

"I… ah… have an appointment scheduled. I was told to just knock on the door…"

Nakuru blinked and turned to Lydic—who smiled helplessly at her. Sighing in defeat, she let the boy in and stepped around him, slamming the door on the way out.

"Sit down, boy, sit down. Have a seat," he offered kindly.

The boy sat down nervously and pulled out a sheet of crisp, white paper from his bag and slid it over to Lydic.

It was a resume.

Of course it was.

But, for once, Lydic wasn't going to complain. He would take the company of anyone other than that raging demon that was the best secretary he ever had.

"I'm here about—"

The loud scream from someone (female) echoed throughout the restaurant. Followed by the hollow sound of a loud bang coming from relatively the same location.

Lydic merely smiled. "Please. Continue."

The boy cleared his throat. "Well, I'm here about the open position at your establishment."

"Oh really? Well, you know—" Lydic looked down at the resume to fish for a name, "—Suzaku, Pizza Hut is always looking for new family members—because, at Pizza Hut, we like to think of everyone as family. So, in light of that, I'd like you to tell me a little bit about yourself."

It was a standard interview question.

A standard interview question he usually didn't include in his interviews simply because he didn't care about useless information about other people and preferred not to make a show of caring otherwise.

But there were always exceptions.

"Well, I grew up with my dad at the Kururugi shrine. I had two friends growing up. One's sort of the Empress now and the other's… well… he's dead."

"I'm sorry to hear that. But you have friends in high places," Lydic remarked casually. "So why do you want to work here?"

"Well, I, ah, need some pocket change for the summer. You wouldn't believe it but the Empress is pretty strict about my salary."

Lydic raised an eyebrow. "You're already employed?"

Suzaku gave a sheepish nod.

Lydic looked down at the resume, "So you were Zero, huh?"

Why did that sound so familiar?

Suzaku pursed his lips. "Well… kind of. Not—Not really Zero Zero. More like a… spin-off of the real thing. You know—without the mass destruction and loss of life."

There was a long silence.

"I see. You know, you seem like a nice kid, so I might just hire you. But rules are rules," he sighed, glancing back down at the resume to read it through, "and they require me to go over everything like—"

He paused.

"—how it says one of your skills is being legally dead."

An oh-crap-I-knew-I-shouldn't-have-put-that-there sort of look passed over the kid's face momentarily.

"Well… you see… it's because I am. And I've always heard it's bad to lie on resumes so…"

Lydic blinked. "It is bad. Especially considering how you're not actually dead because you're sitting right here. In front of me. Very much alive."

"I swear I'm not lying! I have a grave and everything!"

Cue awkward silence.

"That aside, about your other skills… they're a little…"

Suzaku tilted his head apprehensively.

"…questionable. Like this one: Knightmare piloting. How would that benefit Pizza Hut?"

The kid's face brightened substantially. "Well, what if Pizza Hut needed to make the world's largest pizza? I could pilot a Knightmare to get it done. I've done it before—although the last two attempts didn't really go so well…"

"Okay. I can accept that. And this other skill… saving the world… Very admirable. So tell me, just how did you save the world?"

"I, uh, well… I killed my best friend."

Lydic's eyebrow rose.

"He asked me to!"

It rose higher.

"I had no choice!"

It went higher still.

Alright. So the kid was nuts and probably a psychopathic killer. Maybe it was time to—

Nakuru appeared in the window of his door and glared at him.

Quite viciously.

—prolong this interview as much as possible.

"Alright. I can accept that. Pizza Hut can accept people who practice euthanasia."

Nakuru mumbled something to herself and turned and walked away.

Lydic sighed.

Safe.

"But… what about this 'killing people and forgetting about it later' thing? While we can accept a lot of things and all sorts of people, we can't legally accept murderers."

This time, he flushed a true crimson. "That's… well… that's not really my fault. You see, a… uh… magic spell was—"

"Get out."

Okay, so maybe enduring a storm was better than this.

"But there really was—"

"Get. Out."

Sullenly, Suzaku picked up his things and left quietly without another argument.

Lydic sighed and pulled out his bottle of whiskey and prepared himself for the thunder and lightning he heard approaching.

Several days later, it was once again another sleepless night for Lydic Verell.

What was worse was that he was out of scotch.

And whiskey.

And every other form of alcoholic beverage capable of making him forget just how misera—

And then his phone rang.

Comments:

There's something to be said about persistence too.

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- Minute Maid

Beverage of Queens.