"What are your political views?" asked Nero pensively as he saw his door open and a shadowy figure creep in.
"My political views?" asked Raven.
"Your thoughts on the upcoming election," clarified Nero.
"And yours?" Raven replied. Nero steepled his fingers.
"It has to be Malpense, Trinity, or Darkdoom," he replied. "None of the others stand a chance. Between the three? I really can't say. Trinity had been doing the best, maybe. Darkdoom had been doing the worst."
"Why did you ask me, then?" Raven asked, always eager to get to the point.
"I asked," said Nero, "because you have dramatically changed the whole situation. Trinity had been doing the best. Darkdoom had been doing the worst." Nero gaze suddenly intensified.
"And now?" asked Raven.
"Now that you have suddenly shown your support for Darkdoom," Nero said, "it is impossible to tell. Unless Mr. Malpense finds a way to negate your signature..." He let the thought trail off and continued to watch Raven expectantly.
"I could destroy it," Raven promised. "Tonight, even."
"No," said Nero. "I'm afraid that you couldn't. Malpense, Trinity, Brand, and Fanchu saw you. If it was just Darkdoom and Argentblum, I would let you. Darkdoom would not complain, and Argentblum has always been apt to exaggerate. However, word would spread, and we always like to convey the impression that we never search students' rooms."
"You had me steal their device when they tried to escape!" Raven pointed out. Nero nodded thoughtfully.
"Very well. You may go." A careful observer might have, at that point, seen a dark shape leave the room.
Nero couldn't understand why he was suddenly so furious. It was only a signature. Of course the staff was going to pick sides! Pike had already given Malpense his photocopier. Colonel Francisco was almost certainly supporting Trinity and Fanchu. The Alpha stream was dividing. This irritated Nero immensely. As he kept track of potential students for years before their induction, he had a clear sense of their potential. Every Alpha student had the potential to lead, but not all of them recognized this talent. Some of them had instead chosen to favor skills that they already had before their arrival at HIVE. In fact, of the six students who were in a position to win the election, Argentblum was the only one who had become more of a leader, and that was only because all of his previous skills only dealt with the eating of chocolate.
Nero had to remind himself to be more cautious. Despite Raven's past loyalty, Nero had a feeling that it wouldn't pay to be too rude to his assassin. Of course, no respectable villain would ever, ever apologize to his staff. Nero decided that the suitable thing to do would be to offer Raven a pay raise in the extremely near future.
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"I am thinking that we will not be needing to ask the Contessa," Franz announced early the next morning.
"Really?" asked Nigel, yawning hugely. "After playing the hazmat janitors-am I using that correctly?-and almost getting murdered by the best-or would that be worst?-assassin ever, we're not soliciting an insane Italian who can make anyone do anything with her voice for a signature?" Franz looked startled.
"Someone is falling on the wrong side of the carpet, no?"
"Getting up on the wrong side of the bed," Nigel corrected. "Although I imagine that falling on a carpet would be unpleasant, regardless of whether the side one has fallen on is the right side or the wrong side."
"That is precisely what I have been thinking," announced Franz.
"Good," said Nigel.
"I will be finding some colored paper now," said Franz.
"Good," said Nigel. Franz hurried off. Nigel wasn't even going to ask what the paper was for. He had a feeling he didn't want to know.
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"Laura," said Shelby.
"Yes?" A slightly muted voice came from the bathroom.
"What are these boxes?" Shelby asked.
"What are which boxes?" Laura replied indignantly. "Don't be ridiculous; there are no new boxes here. The only boxes that we have are filled with your half-finished homework." An irate Laura came out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in her hand. "Which boxes?" she demanded.
"Those boxes," Shelby said, pointing. Laura gulped.
"None of your business," she said. Shelby, of course, bounded across the room and peered inside the boxes.
"Wires?" she asked. "Again? What could you possibly do with so many wires?"
"Wires?" asked Laura. As far as she knew, those boxes were filled with cameras that she had picked up from SciTech friends. She walked over to the box and peered in. The box did appear to contain a knotted mess of wires. Laura tugged on one. A mass of wires slowly came up from the boxes. To Laura's eyes, a hand was rising out of the sea to give her a sword (and hopefully some cameras). Shelby saw a quivering mess of spaghetti. Fortunately or unfortunately, there were no cameras or spaghetti to be found in the box.
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"I have," said Shelby, "a brilliant idea."
"Brilliant?" Wing frowned. They were both sitting near the waterfall in the atrium. "As I recall, your last plan had little success." Shelby scowled.
"OK, I wasn't exactly right," she muttered. "But it was really more Ms. Leon's fault. I mean, once she said that, it was kind of hopeless." There was a moment of silence as they both reflected on Ms. Leon's unfortunate reaction to their idea of recruiting their classmates as spies. Wing broke the silence.
"I do not believe that we need spies," said Wing. "I believe that we have a good idea of what our adversaries are up to."
"I don't know." Shelby looked thoughtful. "You know, this morning, Laura had several boxes of cameras in her room." Wing looked perturbed.
"Are you sure?" he asked. Shelby rolled her eyes.
"Of course I'm sure. I destroyed every single one of them before Laura woke up."
"That was not a very noble thing to do," Wing pointed out. Shelby snorted.
"Noble?" she asked. "Since when has anyone ever cared about 'noble' in an election?"
"'Better not to be at all than not to be noble,'" quoted Wing. Shelby wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"Alfred Lord Tennyson," replied Wing with great dignity.
"Alfred Lord-what?" asked Shelby.
"Alfred Lord Tennyson."
"Who on earth was Alfred Lord Tennyson?"
"Alfred Lord Tennyson was a British poet," said Wing. "It may interest you to know that he is the ninth most frequently quoted author in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations."
"Fascinating," said Shelby, yawning. "Now, do you want to hear my great idea or not?"
"What is your idea?" asked Wing cautiously.
"Is this a safe enough place to tell you?" Shelby asked, looking around. Wing sighed.
"Knowing you, the whole school will be informed of this within two hours," he said. "Also, the noise of the waterfall and the caterwauling of the swimmers should insure that our conversation remains private. However, I shall test my hypothesis." Wing stood up and called out to the nearest person to them, a third-year PolFi student. The boy did not even look in their direction. "I believe that we are safe," Wing said.
"Fine," said Shelby. Her eyes lit up. "We should have a party." Wing looked shocked.
"A party?" he asked dubiously, pronouncing the word as if the mere uttering of its syllables burned his lips.
"Yes," said Shelby. "We'll have a party! A 'Vote for Wing and Shelby' party!"
"Where?" asked Wing.
"Here," replied Shelby.
"What about the other candidates?" asked Wing suspiciously.
"That," said Shelby dramatically, "is where you come in. I've checked, and the only other ones in our block are Otto and Laura and Franz and Nigel. It's easy; all you have to do is distract them for, oh, say, five hours."
"Five hours?"
"If you feel really confident, we could always make it six," Shelby suggested.
"You believe that I am capable of distracting Otto, Laura, Franz, and Nigel for five hours? This seems to me like a Herculean task," said Wing.
"Of course you can," said Shelby. "All you need is some confidence. Hopefully, you'll be able to sneak away at some point and come to the party. Maybe you could smash one of Laura and Otto's projects or something. Murder one of Nigel's plants." Wing looked shocked.
"I will not sabotage my friends to win a class election."
"Destroying one of Nigel's plants would be good," said Shelby. "Do you want all of HIVE to be eaten by another Violet. Look, you can think of something." Wing realized that he was not going to be able to talk Shelby out of her idea.
"How will we get all of the necessary supplies?" he asked.
"What necessary supplies?" asked Shelby.
"I would assume," said Wing, "that a party would need invitations, food, organized activities, musicians..."
"Easy," said Shelby. "We can take some snack food from the cafeteria, and Big Blue can play the music."
"What about organized activities?" asked Wing.
"Why do we need organized activities?" asked Shelby.
"I've never been to a party without organized activities," said Wing. "Some of them were quite nice. In one of them, we-"
"How many parties have you been to?" demanded Shelby.
"Three," said Wing.
"That's impressive," said Shelby. "When?"
"When my mother was alive," said Wing, "she took me along to her parties when Lao was with his family."
"I'm sorry," mumbled Shelby. "But," she continued in her normal voice, "you have absolutely no experience. All we need is food. And, under normal circumstances, I would include dancing, but I don't want people to forget that the party is about us being elected. Listen, I'm an expert party planner. All you have to do is leave that to me and just distract the others for a few hours. OK. Great. Bye." Shelby strode away, leaving Wing wondering how on earth he could keep his friends away from their block for five hours. Also, he had just realized that Shelby had not answered his question about the extremely important matter of invitations.
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"I have something I've been meaning to tell you," said Laura uncomfortably.
"Yes?" asked Otto, fiddling with the gadget he had in front of him.
"The cameras are gone."
"How?" asked Otto.
"I think that Shelby may have wrecked them," said Laura. "When I woke up this morning, they were destroyed."
"I know," said Otto.
"How?"
"Wing apologized to me."
"Wing is never going to be a politician, then," said Laura.
"The poll thing didn't work either," said Otto.
"I know."
"We need another plan."
"We need a miracle," said Laura. "Who's going to vote for us anyway?"
"The whole SciTech stream?" suggested Otto.
"Not when we don't return the cameras."
"Ah," said Otto. "I guess we'll focus on that, then."
"We need about 200 cameras," Laura said. "Actually, I think it's 197."
"Please tell me that they're all the same," said Otto.
"Actually, yes," said Laura. "It was a time thing. All of them were pretty much the same." Otto looked even paler than usual.
"I don't see any way around it," he said. "I think we'll just have to make them ourselves. It can be a two-person assembly line." He stopped toying with the machine in his hands.
"What's that?" Laura asked.
"Something for the Maze," he replied. "It's supposed to simulate the flight of a housefly. It doesn't really work yet, though..." Laura looked at it critically.
"Where are the wings?" she asked.
"I was lying," replied Otto with a wink. "You'll find out later."
"Why not now?" asked Laura.
"Two can share a secret if one is dead, senile, unable to communicate, or comatose," said Otto. "Look, it's really a last resort. I don't want both of us to end up in the brig."
"The brig?" asked Laura. "Otto, what exactly are you doing?" Otto shook his head.
"Let's get the boxes now," he said.
Anyone who happened to have wandered into room ST350 that night would have seen two figures toiling over a box of wires and heard the complaints of the smaller of the two.
"I seriously need to ride a reindeer right now," said the aforementioned smaller one. "Being an elf has absolutely no job benefits except for being next to a herd of reindeer all the time. And we don't even have that!"
"The North Pole would be too cold for you," pointed out the other. "You even hate ice cream for being frozen."
"Not my fault," grumbled the first. "I don't see what's wrong with just cream. Adding the ice seems unnecessary to me."
Criticism and reviews are always greatly appreciated. I apologize for the line breaks; this is the best I can do. If anyone has any advice...
