In the top of the spire that stood in the center of the twisted wasteland that was Lost Angles, Hexadecimal, the self-styled Queen of Chaos, was draped across the arms of her throne, staring at the ceiling with blue eyes in a neutral mask. Scuzzy, her familiar, hovered watchfully nearby. Occasionally he would zip around the throne a few times and come to rest again in the same spot.
Hexadecimal was bored. To her it was a bad thing and to the rest of the system it had the potential to be a very, very bad thing. You know what they say about bored Chaos viruses.
She sat up suddenly, her eyes green and her mask a bright smile. "I know! Perhaps we could…" Blue eyes, frowning mask. "No. We did that already." She lay back again with a sigh, her mask resuming its neutral expression. Scuzzy zipped closer to her and took up a position about half a nanometer over her head. She waved him away absentmindedly.
"Ooh!" she exclaimed, sitting up again. "I know! I could…" Blue eyes, dejected mask. "Actually, that wouldn't be very much fun at all. Would it, Scuzzy?" Even if her familiar had known what she was talking about, his response would have been the same – he just hovered a nanometer away from the throne, making a peculiar purring sound. She frowned at him. "Hmph. You're no help." Hex returned to her contemplation of the ceiling.
After another nanosecond she sat up again, eyes green and mask smiling. She swung herself around to a proper sitting position on her throne. "Yes!" Sinister, sharp-toothed smile. "That would be perfect."
~***~
"You're late," Megabyte informed his henchbots coldly. He rotated his throne to face them. "You know how I disapprove of a lack of punctuality in my minions." He held up one fist, extending the claws just a tiny bit in order to get his point across.
The two robots backspaced a little, shuddering. "B-b-but we don't even know what a p-p-punctuality is, boss!" Hack protested.
Megabyte blinked at them, then put a hand over his face. His best lines were wasted on low-level programs such as these. "Never mind. Do you have it?"
Slash proffered a red box in his direction. "Yessir, and here it is!"
Megabyte smiled as he took the box in his hands. "Excellent. Once we have broken through the encryption, the codes to the Supercomputer will be…"
"Why hel-lo, dear brother! And what are you up to this time?" Megabyte whirled around to face Hexadecimal, who was hovering to the left of him. Her eyes were green and her mask was a perfectly amiable smile. How infuriating.
"It is not any of your business," he informed her curtly, holding the box protectively. Why did she have to choose now, of all times, to pester him?
Her smile turned into a grin – not a nasty grin, but certainly a mischievous one. "What's in that precious box of yours?" she asked, gesturing at the object in his hands. "I'm curious." She leaned closer to him.
"Nothing you would be interested in," he snapped. Hexadecimal's mask changed to a pouty frown and her eyes went from green to blue. She leaned back again.
"Now now, why can't you be polite to your sister? I came to pay you a perfectly friendly visit and what do you do?" She sniffed theatrically. "You yell at me." Her eyes turned red and her mask became a scowl. "Well, if you won't be nice, then neither will I." Before Megabyte could react she had snatched the red box out of his hands and zipped upward, out of his reach.
"That's not yours, Hexadecimal," Megabyte growled. "Return it to me now."
Her mask was a smile, but her eyes were red. "Only If you ask nicely. Then I may give it back to you." She held the box up in one hand and looked at it curiously.
She would probably break the computer core, just to spite him. Megabyte clenched his fists. "It's mine. Give it back."
"I said ask nicely," she snarled at him. She knew perfectly well that her brother considered being beaten to deletion with a null a favorable alternative to being polite to her.
Megabyte slammed his fist on the arm of his throne. "You will return it to me this instant or I will…"
Hexadecimal threw back her head and laughed. "What can you do to me, dear brother?" She looked him in the eye, her mask a nasty grin, as if expecting him to answer. But she was right, and Megabyte could do no more than glare at her.
She turned her attention to the box, her eyes went green and her mask became a pleasant smile. "Now, let's see what it is that you're making such a fuss about." Megabyte ground his teeth as she opened the lid of the box.
Hex's mask looked surprised for a moment. Then it became a smile, and she started laughing again – not a cackle this time, but a laugh of genuine amusement. Then she turned the box around in her hands so that he could see what was inside.
It wasn't the computer core. It was someone's lunch. A thermos, two plastic-wrapped sandwiches, a bag of carrot sticks and a pudding cup. Then she snatched the box away again and started examining its contents carefully.
Megabyte was only surprised for a moment – then he became angry. He rounded on Hack and Slash, who were cowering against the wall. "Would you care to explain this little mix-up?" he asked them, his voice cold enough to freeze flame.
"It was not our fault!" Hack insisted.
"We just got it from the binome like you said…"
"You told us not to open it…"
"…then we brought it here…"
"…so we could not make sure!"
"…and I was carrying it the whole way!" They were practically shaking themselves to pieces with fear.
Although Megabyte was now convinced that this mistake had not been their fault, he glared at them for another few cycles, since their cowering made him feel a little better. Then he turned away and tapped a button on the arm of his throne.
A few cycles later a VidWindow appeared in front of him, displaying the smiling face of Charl_E. "Sir!" the binome addressed him with a deferential bow. "Did you get the box I…" He noticed the expression on Megabyte's face and faltered for a moment. "…sent you?"
Megabyte tapped the tips of his fingers together. "I did indeed receive the box," he answered ominously. Then, with a wireframe-chilling glower: "Do you know what was in it?"
"Crunchy peanut butter!" Hexadecimal exclaimed happily. Megabyte spun around to shoot a quick glare at her, but ended up doing a doubletake.
His sister, green-eyed and smiling, had unwrapped one of the sandwiches from the lunchbox and was holding it in one hand. There was a bite of it missing, a bite that she had obviously taken, but as to how she had done it Megabyte could not even guess.
Leaving it as a puzzle for another time, he turned his attention back to his spy. "You gave me the wrong box," he informed the hapless Charl_E.
The binome gulped. "P-p-p-please sir, forgive me. It w-was a mix-up. I can get you the right b-b-b-box, I know what happened to it…"
Megabyte considered this. If there was still a chance of obtaining the computer core, he would take it. "Very well," he answered. "Bring it to the rendezvous point within the millisecond and we will forget about this…accident. Otherwise…" he lifted his right hand and extended his claws. Charl_E cringed, shaking as hard as the henchbots had been earlier.
"Yes sir, right away sir," Charl_E gibbered. Megabyte nodded, tapped a button and closed the connection. Then he turned to the robots.
"Hack, Slash, meet Charl_E at the rendezvous point and pick up the box. This time make sure that it's the right box."
Hack saluted. "Yes sir, your all-powerfulness!"
"Right away!"
"We will have that box in…"
"We will bring it right here!"
"Yeah, and everything will be just…"
"Now, you idiots!" Megabyte roared. The henchbots spun around, zipped for the door, and collided with each other on the way out.
Hexadecimal giggled. "I like them. They're very funny."
Megabyte narrowed his eyes at his sister, who had finished the sandwich (how did she do that?) and was contemplating the thermos. He would have to find a way to convince her to leave before Hack and Slash returned with the computer core.
~***~
In the cafeteria, Marcus put his lunchbox on the table before him and opened it, wondering what pleasant surprise his wife had packed for him this second. There was a surprise in the box, but it wasn't exactly pleasant. It wasn't edible, either. It was a complicated-looking device, roughly cylindrical in shape, resting in a bed of foam. Marcus was peering perplexedly at it when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around, closing the lid of the box as he did so, and saw Charl_E behind him.
"Hey, Charl_E! I thought you'd gone home for the second," he said brightly.
"Uhhh…well, I was, but I came back when I realized that we'd mixed up our boxes," he said.
"Oh. So that's what happened to my lunch!" Marcus picked up the box and held it out to Charl_E, who took it with mumbled thanks.
"I'm…afraid that I left yours in the locker room," Charl_E apologized. "Let's go and get it."
Marcus got out of his seat. "Okay! Lead the way!" Charl_E nodded and the two of them headed for the locker room.
Once they had reached their destination and closed the door behind them, Charl_E stopped and turned to look at Marcus. Only then did Marcus realize that something was terribly wrong.
"I'm sorry about this," Charl_E told him, "But it has to be done." With that, he hefted the red box and hit Marcus over the head with it, hard.