Author's Note: InkPaperDoll488 gave me this prompt, and I hope I did it justice. And as a side note, over 100 reviews! You kids are amazing, and I couldn't continue without your wonderful suggestions. This is just as much your work as it is mine.


He has a problem.

She isn't going to like it.

It hadn't been his fault, really. She must have had some program running he didn't know about, a hidden prompt that he'd failed to see until the last possible second. And then…disaster. He'd only typed in a few words, a simple search into one of the names on his too-long list, the sort of query he'd done a thousand times before, except in this particular instance, catastrophe.

A dialogue box had opened up, warning him there was a failure of some sort, the kind he wasn't even aware could be a failure, which then progressed into a further warning screen imploring him to perform some action before drastic measures were taken.

He'd hesitantly clacked away at a few keys, worried they might bite back at him.

Now he sits frantic as the screen freezes, and yet another pop-up proceeds to tell him there will be a memory dump in less than sixty seconds. This…cannot be happening. He'd only searched a few words, harmless words, little words he'd typed in before, and now there was a spiteful prompt informing him he'd utterly failed at solving this computer puzzle and how could he have caused this disaster and thank you very much, I'm shutting down now.

He stares at the screen.

He hears an ahem.

His eyes close, his mouth goes dry and he wonders if his status as the meanest, toughest vigilante on the street will be enough to wheedle his way out of whatever this really bad situation had become.

He plasters on a smile, musters up a happy face, and turns to meet her withering look.

Nope.

He's in trouble.

The black screens behind him seem to be pointing at him, making faces and naming him as the reason for all this mess. She is glaring, glaring at him, though her face holds no small amount of shock. Her hard work, her pride and joy, all turned to blank nothingness because he considered himself rather deft at handling advanced twenty-first century technology.

He tries, he really tries, to placate her, but the words aren't forming right and she is only giving him a harder, sterner stare the longer he goes on. Finally, thank the good Lord, she speaks up, having left him to flounder in his explanation long enough.

She says move.

He moves.

Hopping out of the normally comfy chair – which now resembled more an torture device – he steps aside and prays she isn't going to hold this over him for long. He doesn't think of her as the vindictive kind, but then again, he's never gone and completely ruined an entire computer system before. One that belongs to her, more than anyone else. One she's nurtured like a child.

She sits, ignores him, and goes about attempting to salvage what she could from the tangled mess he'd created. He can't help himself; he goes back to attempting to soothe her, and he gets a distracted shooing motion from her hand, an adult dismissing a child in trouble for lack of knowing what punishment to deal them.

He gladly scurries away to find something less technologically advanced to carry on with.

He doesn't think she will allow him to play with the computer for a while.