Felicity and Laurel 14
Laurel was running a little late, her old iPhone having died sometime midafternoon and needing replacing. Hardly surprising really given it lives in her shoulder bag bouncing round in there with all the other array of essentials.
Things like her makeup, lipstick, a small bottle of perfume, hairspray, mouthwash, car and house keys, purse, a tiny sewing repair kit, travel toothbrush and paste, a spare set of pantyhose, hairbrush and dozens of other useful things, plus all the junk that had accumulated there as well.
A dozen car parking ticket stubs, a pair of disposable chopsticks she'd tossed in there one lunchtime and never retrieved, several safety pins, one of them bent, a matchbook from a bar (she doesn't even smoke or drink), assorted business cards from people she'd met once who were either interested in her job (ho hum) or her body (yuk), loose change, two Mentos wrappers and god knows what else. Honestly she needed to spend some real time cleaning it out; though when she was going to find both the time and motivation was beyond her.
Especially now, god knows she had few enough hours in the day, to the point she was starting to begrudge the three or four hours sleep a night she was getting, or would have if she didn't need them so badly. Laurel suddenly realised with a start she'd caught Felicity's babble disease. She closed her eyes for a moment before punching in the code to the lair. 'Oh god, not that too'.
Stepping down the stairs she waved to everyone, getting a chorus of welcomes, Oliver showing Roy how to fletch arrows while John and Felicity were looking at something on one of the monitors. She dropped the bag on her desk and pulled out the box her new phone had come in, the nice guy at the Apple store had swapped over all her contacts, messages, photos and other stuff, but it still needed to be properly charged before she could use it.
"Hey, got a new phone?" Laurel looked up to see Felicity standing there next to her.
"Uh yeah, my old one died. I picked this one up on the way over" Felicity nodded, already opening the box and extracting the new phone.
"I love good tech, and Apple make some nice toys" She flipped it over in her hands, already pressing and pushing at it as Laurel watched, perplexed. "Mind you, Android's pretty good though I'm not really a Windows girl when it comes to phones" She looked up. "Don't get me wrong, I run Windows on the systems here, but I'd rather have my computers run software designed for computers and my phone run software designed for phones" She flashed Laurel a quick grin as the back cover of the phone popped off. "Ah there we are" She peered in, smiling as she did. "Ah, my precious" Without thinking she'd already started walking back to her desk, Laurel's new iPhone cradled in her hand, as Laurel trailed after her.
"Felicity, what exactly are you doing to my phone?" Felicity was already flipping open a small box filled with small black squares.
"Oh, just putting a tracker bug on it" Laurel was nonplussed.
"You're bugging my phone?" She looked round quickly, that had come out a bit louder than she'd intended, seeing Oliver and Roy standing watching them, while John leaned against the desk nearby, wearing that quiet tolerant smile of his. Felicity however was unfazed.
"Yep, sure am" The small square went inside the rear of her phone, before Felicity snapped the back on and then held it over a scanner for a moment. The scanner beeped once and the hacker looked up, smiling. "All done" She held out the phone to Laurel, who gazed at it askance before taking it carefully.
"You just bugged my phone?" Felicity nodded, obviously untroubled by any hint of impropriety.
"Standard procedure, I bug everyone's phones, that way we can find you if we need to" She airily waved her hand round the room. "I do the same for all the team" Laurel frowned.
"Really?" Felicity nodded innocently.
"Yeah, I do the same for everyone's gear too" She noticed Oliver's frown, while Roy abruptly turned and walked over to the case with his costume in it, retrieving his bow and giving it a close examination.
"You do?" At Laurel's question Felicity smiled.
"Yeah, plus trackers in everyone's boots, well in your case your heels actually" Laurel noticed Roy pointing out something on his bow to Oliver, before she turned her attention back to the hacker.
"How the hell did you get trackers in my heels?" Felicity shrugged, unconcerned.
"You take them off when you get changed to train" Laurel opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. Finally, shaking her head, Laurel spoke.
"What next? Microchipping us?" Felicity's eyes lit up.
"That's cool, If I could, I'd microchip each of you; put a tag under your skin" Felicity paused for a moment, her eyes far away. "Y'know that could totally work. I could probably get it running off the body's own electrical field. You wouldn't need much power but it'd mean I could find you anywhere, even if they stripped you naked"
"Naked?" It was Oliver, he'd walked over to where they were standing; Felicity looked up at him and nodded.
"Well it's the first thing I'd do if caught you, strip you down to make sure you weren't hiding anything, no concealed items or weapons or anything else I needed to know about..." Felicity's cheeks suddenly coloured, leaving no one in any doubt where her mind had just taken her. "Not that I think about any of you naked, or anything..." In the face of Oliver's amused gaze she trailed off. Finally deciding to put Felicity out of her misery, Laurel smiled.
"Well in the meantime, while you're dreaming up other ways of keeping your eye on us naked, I'm off to charge my phone" Felicity covered her face with one hand while she waved her friend away with the other.
"Not helping Laurel" Laurel's laughter trailed after her as she wandered back to her desk to find Roy standing there.
"Y'know she's gonna want to do that" Laurel smiled.
"What? See you naked?" The frown she got more amused than intimidated her, Roy was far too pretty to be scary, at least to her.
"No! I mean why would you even suggest that, you want Oliver to use me as a punching bag again?" He glanced back to where Felicity and Oliver were talking quietly. "I mean the whole microchip thing" Laurel waved his concerns away.
"She was just joking?" He shook his head slowly.
"It's Felicity and tech stuff. She doesn't joke about shit like that" Laurel turned to watch as Felicity tapped Oliver's shirt right over the top of one of his scars; Oliver wasn't looking too happy, it didn't take much to work out what she was suggesting. Laurel bit her lip as it struck her.
"Oh god, I've created a monster"