Week 6 – UDC 7 – On the peripheral…

Serious

Bea liked the kid well enough, but she was always trying to be helpful where she wasn't needed, and it was hard to concentrate with her around. It was like being at home with her own kids, and right this moment Gadget was trying her patience.

Under any other circumstances, were she not trying to coordinate police cars from a communication board and headset, she'd have been actively listening to Gadget and the boy talk and would have realized who he was. But she wasn't, and didn't, and missed an opportunity for discretion.

Silly

Chip Chaykin been working with these kids for weeks while helping Doctor Mallardo implement the NeuroBrain system for MetroNet, but it was the first time he'd ever seen their leader, who was manic in the best of times, call them to arms. Even turned away from him, the young man's posture was electric, fist raised in the air.

He had to wonder, for just this moment, what the kid would have amounted to had he not ended up leader of a street gang. The leader certainly knew how to motivate his people, even if his words were ridiculous.

"All right, boys! Let's make the square hold!"

Charming

He stood in his office in front of cameras yet again because the police had found illegal weaponry in some warehouse that he owned, and all Reggie Braga wanted to do was roll his eyes and send the reporters away. This was just one more thing, in a very long line of things, and it was getting to be that he couldn't be a gunrunner without tripping over a police officer at every turn.

He put on his best smile, and proceeded to play to the people. "What do I know about guns? I'm in the nut business." And popped a pecan into his mouth for good measure.

Rude

He was going to give them all a piece of his mind for not letting him in on the action this time, when he'd been integral to the plan working in the first place so they could pull off the raid. Was going to, but then Sargent Parks threw logic at him and the cyborg mentioned something about a memo, and all Foster could do was barge out again in disgust, the wind taken out of his sails in one fell swoop.

One of these days, he was going to be there when they raided something, not after the fact, and he was going to take all the credit!

Funny

"If if goes bang-bang, I got it," the arms dealer told him as they stood in the middle of an abandoned church sanctuary filled to the brim with weaponry. Felix wondered if the man understood the irony of where they were having this conversation, or what he was about to ask of him. This had been a place of worship, or hoping for peace, of finding solace in an uncertain world that seemed to be more uncertain with each passing day.

Now, two men, one who just supplied the hardware, and himself who wanted to give a birthday celebration no one on the planet would ever forget, were discussing weapons here instead. A manic giggle threatened to overtake him.