"Morgan Tech is a privately held company, whom has been supplying advanced solutions for the hardware access and device driver developers' community since Two-thousand-three.
"Focusing on the cutting edge of software technology. One of our top priorities is early mastery of new operating systems and programming languages; so the customer benefits from our technical knowledge and can avoid costly in-house training. We strive to be accessible, responsive and efficient in meeting software needs.
"We are now entering the software development department. To your right you can see our state of the art technology facilities which are utilized by our extraordinary computer programmers.
"Morgan's software product line enables developers to quickly create custom device drivers that can run on a multitude of operating systems without modification. Morgan Tech's high-availability product line, Nefertina, a software infrastructure, provides a complete hot swap software solution for the CompactPCI high-availability market.
"In less than two years, Morgan has become the technological leader in the software-"
"Ut-excuse me. Are we coming to a rest area soon?" A lone hand twitched above the heads of the crowd. Two dozen pairs of eyes stopped to look at him in silent relief. The guides hand stopped in mid-sentence. It only took a moment for her fading smile to perk again.
"We'll now take a ten minute break to use the rest areas." She announced. The quiet sigh of relief echoed through the large dark blue hallway. Raphael watched as the rest of his family wandered off with the crowd, leaving him standing alone on the thin carpet. He yawned to his shoulder and proceeded to wander off on his own.
For such a big building, it seemed almost abandoned that day. He had been to Donatellos' work once before, and it seemed much more boisterous then. Of course there was a big marketing thing going on at that time too. It seemed to have lulled from then.
An empty copy room at the end of the hall caught his attention, and he went in. This was not how he should have been spending his day back home. He was leaving later that afternoon, and all he had done that day with his family was gone on a corporate tour. He wasn't even allowed to talk to them while they walked either.
Hopping onto the mail desk, Raphael adjusted his jacket so he could sit better. Donatello had snuck into the tour group with them on about the sixth floor and walked with them all the way up. Unfortunately the guide recognized him and almost succeeded in getting him forward to help guide the tour. He hung his head from the rest of the tour and mumbled to himself all the remainder of the way.
Who went on these tours anyway? Most of these people didn't seem like they were corporate managers or anything. Did they round up strangers off the street to take tours of the seventeen floor building? What were these people thinking. Retards.
What he would've given to escape from this infernal tour with his brothers and his girlfriend and escape to the old pizza joint for the rest of the afternoon. It just wasn't fair they had to be here.
Soon Kelsey walked in, and he straightened up. She saluted and he slouched again. His feet actually hurt from walking all the floors. Climbing eleven flights of stairs. The elevators were being repaired. He was happy there was a break from the death march.
Kelsey came and stood between his legs, resting her hands on his thighs. He had almost forgotten about that, and frowned.
"What's wrong?" She asked.
"I was just thinking about what you said." He furrowed his brow and looked at her belt.
"So you've accepted bell bottoms aren't coming back?"
"Not that. About you meeting my brothers. We haven't had a chance for us to hang out." Outside of last night. Those were all preliminaries though. He still wanted to show of to his brothers; his girlfriend. She wanted them to like her still. Plus he wanted to prove he was really getting his act together now. They had all thought it was just another rebellious phase when he started going on archeological digs around the middle east. Moving away from home. And there was that time he went to Ethiopia for three months and never called.
If he could just show them he had finally found someone, someone even crazier than himself, maybe they would catch that he wasn't the same psycho they though he was. Had settled down. If it could be called that.
He had been in seven major fights that year alone. Been bitten by snakes, scorpions, and spiders twelve times. Three attempted kidnappings. And narrowly escaped a cave-in in Baghdad. They had a right to be worried for him. But he had a right to live without them.
"Hun. Don't worry about it." Kelsey trailed her hands along his thighs. "We'll see them all again. Wasn't Mike saying he was coming through Boston sometime?" Raph nodded. "And we can always come through again this summer-" The lights flickered and flipped off. They both looked up at the flourescent panel. A few moments of the darkness past with silence. The door slid shut and several sliding 'shhhuk's followed. At the same time-
Security Breech in Quadrant Two, Security Breech in Quadrant Two
Raphael and Kelsey looked at one another a pair of red light turned on in the corner.
Full lock down initiated.
The deep voice abuptly ended. In the hall, a repetative series of wailing began, softening to a dull roar through the metal door. Nearly a minute passed on Raphaels watch before anyone made a move. They both sighed. They couldn't go anywhere without something happening. The curse had followed Raphael from his family.
Kelsey pulled herself onto the table beside Raph. "Locked?"
"Yup." He said.
"....Bet we're stuck here for awhile?" The drone of the sirens made her raise her voice just so. From the floor, their eyes drifted upwards ponderously, eventually meeting each others...
Still a bright afternoon, Morgan tech finally evacuated the upper floors. Employees streamed slowly from the double glass doors out into the brick verenda. Dark green security cars were parked askew around the street, now being passed through by lazy pedestrians.
Seated on the edge of the stone fountain, Raphael and his girlfriend grinned at no particular thing. Sprays of water behind them occasionally hit close and flicked at the back of their shirts. Lifted eyebrows passed them by as they seemed completely unfazed by the company lockdown.
Finally the tour group was released and spilled out onto the verenda. They were hot and disheveled from two hours locked away, but appeared at least mildly entertained. Standing up, Raphael waved to his brothers. Kelsey stood beside him and smiled when he hung his arm around her hips. The three young men made a beeline for the fountain.
"Nice goin', turtle boy." A man quipped as he passed. Raphael recognized him as someone from the tour group.
"Yeah, thanks." He answered, exchanging a perplexed look with Kelsey. Someone else whistled.
"What the?" He pulled her closer. She looked up at him, furrowing her brow. "Do you think they know?"
"How could they? Hey guys!"
"Hey!" Michelangelo greeted loudly, exstatic over his regained freedom. A stupid blushing smile plastered his face. Leonardo and Donatello both kept their eyes averted. Their sleeves had been rolled up, Mike held his tee shirt in one fist. "How you guys!"
"Great." Raphael responded simply. Mike's eyes exploded, his neck tensing to with hold the laughter. Donatello turned a reddish green and looked away under his hand. Leonardo simply smiled, and Raphael frowned.
"I bet you are!" Mike declared.
"Alright, what's going on!" He demanded.
"The bigger question is, what isn't going on?"
"Mike." Leonardo rebuked. "You've had your fun." He turned to Raph and Kelsey. "Sorry… The tour group reconviened before the security breech. We all …wound up being locked in the main camera control room… All the cameras were still working while we were there…achem, including the one in the copy room."
"Oooooh god." Kelsey drawled, turning bright red. Even Raphael had the modesty to blush. He suddenly felt his stomach drop to his feet. He hadn't wanted to show off that badly.
"You're an animal, Raph." Mike jested.
"Way to defile my office." Donatello finally spoke. Kelsey face became blood red, blushing all the way down her chest. Raphael was too shocked to speak for once. Hiding her face in her hands, Kelsey felt terrible. She would've done anything to just die, or melt or something. Nothing had been so embarrasing.
"You must think I'm such a whore." She said more to herself. Mike laughed out loud. She looked up to see all three brothers chuckling. Taking her arm, Michelangelo locked it through his, pulling her away from Raphael.
"Don't worry about it." He still smiled, his voice ripe with laughter. "You're cool with us." Leonardo took her other arm as Mike walked her through them.
"Yeah, damn straight." Raphael added, falling in line beside his brothers, heading away from the building. "Now let's get some pizza."
"Yeah, you stud, you."
"Stallion."
"Animal."
~Epilouge~
Darting lazily in and out of lanes, the little compact pulled up near eighty on the highway. The sun was beginning to set off to the side, making the mountains stark before its glow. Raphael glanced over at Kelsey, thumbing through the jackets of CDs.
"They're still the same ones they were ten minutes ago." He reminded her. She jerked up, mildly startled, and laughed.
"Yeah." She looked back down, examining song titles.
"So what's the hold up?" He offered.
"You know, I think I like your family." Raphael smirked, watching the 'Leaving New York' sign pass by the window. "They're good guys."
"Yeah." He said solemnly. "Plus you made one hell of a first impression."
"Will you shut up."
"Seeing us doing it really endeared you ta them." He said through a grin. Kelsey groaned.
"It better have. Cause I'm not doing it again."
"What?!" Raphael swerved away from the guardrail.
"Jesus, watch it! God, I meant with them… you know." He released his breath.
"Yeah. Right." Kelsey took out a disc and tossed the pack into the backseat.
"I just hope Don gets that video." She added. "I don't want a bunch of security guys standing around jacking off to us."
"Maybe… we could ask him to send it to us…" Raphael mused.
"Hmmm…" Kelsey scratched her chin with the disc edge. "Well… it's not like Don would want to keep it."
"Yeah…" He began to smile. "A video…" Kelsey smiled, slipping the disc into the stereo. She looked over at Raph, still staring out the window ponderously.
"I love you, you know." She blurted softly. He looked over at her and smiled.
"Yeah, I know."
~ The end~