Note: What can I say, inspiration struck in an everyday conversation!! I know the stories a bit out there, but it could happen!! ^^; Thanks Liewe for the unknown bright idea!!
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For: Liewe- I hope you get some type of kick out of this. I even used the English spellings, instead of American English…
Wired
Midii sunk further down into her seat, watching out the side widow as the yellow lines of the road sped by in a blur of colour. She twisted a strand of hair around her finger and yanked tightly. Why the hell had she agreed to do this?
"Trowa? What am I doing?" she groaned, wiping away the thin sheen of fog she'd caused to appear on the window. "Explain to me why I agreed to this, I've forgotten." She swung the seatbelt away from her neck, placing it between her and the seat.
Her partner chuckled, leaning across the car to pat her gently on the shoulder. "Midii, you know this is the perfect job for you." Midii snorted.
"You know I'm not exactly a people person." The fog from her heated breath had returned on the window, so she amused herself by drawing random shapes and figures on the glass. She stared at them a minute before turning to face Trowa. "Besides, weren't you the one who got me this job in the first place?"
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, letting a smile snake its way across his face. "Did you want a station near where I work or not?" Midii scrunched her nose.
"I hardly call this close. It's not like it's a walk down the corridor, it's a walk across the canal." The car bumped as it went onto the bridge. Trowa sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
"Perhaps, but it's the closest thing available at the moment, and considering Lady Une wanted to send you up to the colonies… This is the best thing I could get that was close and kept you on Earth, especially on such short notice. Besides," he quipped, pointing to the small island ahead of them. "This is a good chance for you to practice getting along with others."
Midii threw her hands up in mock defeat. "Honestly!" she moaned. "Since when did I, Prevetner's best spy, lose all honour and become a mere waitress?! I should have taken Auntie's assignment, rather than suffer this disgrace."
Trowa blinked, doing a double take. "Waitress? I never said you were going to be a waitress." Midii spun and gripped his arm.
"What?! Yes you did, Trowa Barton, and I can recall the exact conversation. You told me I was going to work at the Wired Café."
He slowed the car as they entered the parking lot, prying her fingers from their deadly clench on his arm. "Midii, the Wired Café is a net café. Preventers that are off duty or travelling come here in order to access computers and databases."
Midii slid from the car, slammed the door and looked up at the building in disgust. The sky was already grey, low clouds hanging just above the trees. She flexed her fingers, feeling the humidity cling to her skin. A storm was coming, she could feel it. The building was lit with neon signs, flashing the name WIRED CAFÉ in bright green letters. Midii tuned, letting her head fall onto the hood of the car.
"So you mean I have to entertain tourists all day long?" She felt Trowa wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face in the back of her neck.
"It can't and won't be that horrible," he promised. Midii merely sighed, leaning back into him so he could guide her toward the entrance.
The café was small and cramped. Computers were situated on every available space, including being fastened into the walls for those wishing to stand. Midii was stock-still for a moment, taking in the scene. Travelling preventers were already lined up waiting to sign up to a computer.
Midii spun and made an attempt to bolt for the door. "Now Midii," Trowa cautioned, grabbing her shoulders as she struggled. "Are you seriously going to just leave? Are you going to back out of a mission?" She stopped fighting and glared at him.
"Now you listen here, Mr. Barton. I accept your challenge," she stormed toward the front of the store. Halfway there she slowed and turned to face him one last time. "Trowa, the girl who used to work here, what happened?" He thought for a minute.
"Well," he drawled, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking up at the ceiling. "I'm not sure if I remember all the details, but I think your aunt said that Heather had some sort of nervous or mental breakdown. Nothing too serious." He looked back at Midii, noting her slack-jawed expression before turning and leaving her to the impending doom.
Midii dug her nails into the tender flesh of her palms, risking another glance at the clock. One twenty-three. She growled, resisting the urge to throw something at the slowly ticking machine. She'd only been here for three hours and twenty-three minutes, but already it seemed as if her mind were slowly giving away to insanity.
"Ahem…" someone coughed for a third time.
She spun, biting her temper and desire to ask if the customer needed a cough drop. Instead she smiled sweetly, grit her teeth silently and batted her eyelashes. "Welcome to the Wired Café," she spoke slowly, observing that his eyes were gradually moving down to her chest. Midii rolled her eyes and counted to ten before pretending to shiver. "Oh my!" she said innocently, grabbing her jacket from the coat rack. "It does get a bit chilly around here. I suppose I should turn down the air conditioner." She wrapped her jacket around her body, becoming even more aggravated as she saw the disappointed gaze in his eyes. She took a deep breath, praying for patience.
"Welcome to the Wired Café," she repeated with less gusto. "How may I help you?" The preventer officer chuckled, leaning onto the counter.
"Well first off, you can turn up the heat." Midii's eyes narrowed.
"Excuse me?"
The officer grinned, leaning closer to her face. "Yeah, turn up the heat so that you can't wear that jacket anymore. Besides, it ain't that cold in here in the first place."
It took every ounce of self-restraint she possessed not to let her palm fly across his face. "Well, sir," she scoffed, her tone icy. "I think that the heat would be the last thing you needed." The officer straightened, giving her a questioning look. "Because," she continued, batting her eyelashes again. "Obviously you're already delusional."
The officer glared, slapping five dollars onto the counter and grabbing the access card she held out tauntingly. "Thank you, sir," she shouted sweetly after him, waving like a pageant winner. She hit the cash register, the door swinging open as she shoved the money into the drawer. She looked at the clock again. One thirty. Only four and a half hours left.
Midii massaged her forehead with the heal of her hand as she began to root through her bag. Where was that damn bottle of painkillers?
There was a large crash of thunder, the noise shaking the room. Midii swung back in her chair, abandoning her search. It was useless. At this rate, she'd need a sedative to calm and stifle the rage inside her. It was so intense it began to pulse through her head like a heartbeat. People had been asking the most dim-witted questions she had ever heard.
"Why doesn't this work?" one lady had asked, nibbling on her perfectly French manicured nails. "I just don't understand electronics, they're so confusing!" Midii could only shake her head, hit the on button and watch as the girl's face light with excitement. "So that's how you do it! I was ever so curious."
A few moments later, a man had gone into a complete fit because the store didn't have the mouse he preferred to use. "What do you mean, this is the only mouse you have left?! You must have another, I want the levitating mouse, the one that floats on nothing but air!" She'd spent the next half hour explaining to him that such a thing did not exist, and in the end resorted to snatching the mouse he held in his fingers, shouting "HOCUS POCUS!" and then thrusting the mouse back into his chest, to his disgust and her delight.
There was flash of lightning, followed by another boom of thunder. The electricity flickered for an instant before sending the room into darkness with a silent whirr.
"Damn it," she said weakly, resting her forehead on the counter. "What did I do?" she muttered to absolutely no one. "What did I do to deserve this?"
"Hey, uh, lady…" she heard an irritated voice shout from across the way. "What the hell is your problem?" Midii grabbed her purse, flinging out the flashlight she kept for emergencies. She shone the light around the room, searching avidly for the perpetrator.
The beam fell on a brawny preventer, his combat boots resting on the top of the desk. Mud slipped down onto the keys of the computer. "Excuse me, sir," she spoke acidly. "I'll have to ask you to remove your boots, you're ruining the equipment. And I'll also have to ask," she added, common sense slowly slipping away. "What you meant by your last comment."
She watched him stand, the muscles rippling behind his taunt black shirt. She heard a few female preventers swoon and heave heavy sighs. Midii felt slightly embarrassed. Some women were so flirty and flighty it amazed her. "Well, why did you turn the power off?" the preventer grumbled. Midii arched her eyebrows in slight shock.
"Why did I turn off the power?" she asked, amazed. "Are you saying that I'm the one that plunged us all into darkness?" she spat in a sarcastic tone. "Willingly?" she added.
"Well if the boot fits," he growled, flexing his muscles for the ladies. Midii shook her head in disbelief. What was her aunt thinking, letting morons like this into preventer? It was a disgrace, and it was downright repulsive. She shook herself, her sharp sense of humour returning.
"Well, than it couldn't have been me," she responded in the cheeriest, superficial voice she could muster, propping her foot onto the counter and displaying her shoe. "I'm wearing sandals, but…"she continued, shining her light first on the trail of mud and then on the man's shoes. "You're wearing boots…"
"Don't get smart with me, you little bit-" Midii spun on her heal and flipped the switches in the fuse box. The room was again illuminated, computer monitors and CPU's humming to life. The large preventer narrowed his eyes, storming back to his seat. Midii glared at the clock. Two forty-two. She fell back into her chair, grabbed her purse and resumed her futile search.
Midii slammed the sides of her laptop in anger. "Connect, God damn it!" she hissed under her breath. She needed to talk to Trowa desperately. The phone line was off limits, in case a fax came through. Her only alternative was online. She just prayed that he was logged on. The computer gave a quick, lilting tune, proving that it had finally accessed the preventer frequency. She clasped her hands in quiet gratitude, signalled the sign of the cross and prayed that she could find Trowa. She typed his name into the computer, yelping with joy as it found him. She typed ferociously, fingers flying across the keys.
EyeSpy12: Help me! You told me I could handle this, that it wouldn't be that bad!!
She drummed her fingers on the counter impatiently, throwing threatening glances across the room to anyone that dared look at her. There was a soft beep. Her eyes shot back to the screen.
HeavySilence3: Midii? What happened? You seem stressed…
"Stressed?" she squeaked in disbelief, the keys clicking in a mad storm. She hadn't been this stressed since the war ended two years ago.
EyeSpy12: I mustn't hurt the tourists must I?
HeavySilence3: Midii…
EyeSpy12: I know, I know. It's just so aggravating. But I'm seriously thinking about making an investment in stun guns…
HeavySilence3: Midii… What did they do to get you this riled up?
EyeSpy12: A lot of things but… well there's a man that lives somewhere, former Canada area I believe, but he still has an e-mail account here. Either way he hasn't checked it for an age.
HeavySilence3: …
EyeSpy12: And gah…he was just an asshole about it all. Either he had too many e-mails on the server and it deleted some, or someone else downloaded them because he was missing e-mails from the past month and he just got downright nasty.
HeavySilence3: Ouch. You didn't hurt him, did you?
EyeSpy12: Then he just stormed out of here. And no, I didn't, despite my sub-conscious egging me on.
She never saw his reply, because at that moment there was a gurgling, sizzling and crunching noise behind her. Midii spun and watched in disbelief as a thin tail of smoke curled in the air from the fax machine. The smoke alarm blipped a bit, before screeching. Midii plugged her ears, crawling on a chair and fanning the smoke away. The screaming stopped, and she was left with only the mess below her.
The fax machine gurgled, crunching pieces of paper as they were fed through the machine. It began to hiss when the paper became jammed, the ink jet still attempting to print the words onto the now fan-folded sheet.
"Stop stop stop!" Midii shouted, exasperated. She punched the paper eject button furiously, watching in shock as another sheet shot into the printer. "No!" she hollered, searching frantically for the power switch. She could smell smoke rising from the overheated circuits.
"Argh!" she finally screamed, stepping on the power plug and jumping back as sparks flew around her feet. Midii threw open the cover of the fax machine, yanking out the paper. This had better be important… she growled to herself crossly, refolding the paper to read the message.
"Hope your first day is going well! Love you always and see you back home!"
~Auntie
Midii took a deep, rickety breath, balling the sheets into a large wad and tossing it into the trashcan. She rushed back to the computer.
HeavySilence3: I'm glad you showed some restraint. I don't think we could cover their medical bill if you didn't…
HeavySilence3: Midii? Are you there?
EyeSpy12: I'm sorry, I had to fight the fax machine. He wouldn't give me the damned message.
HeavySilence3: …and who was it from?
EyeSpy12: Auntie…wanted to make sure I was having "a good first day."
HeavySilence3: I sense a bit of sarcasm. I'll be there at six to pick you up. I have to go.
Midii glanced at the wall from the corner of her eye. Only half an hour of hell left to endure.
Trowa walked in the door, slightly surprised that the place hadn't been reduced to shambles. There were no shotgun, bullet holes in the wall, and for that he was grateful. Perhaps he had should have warned those in the store that they shouldn't provoke Midii into a rage. He knew first hand the type of hell there was to pay.
He smiled as he heard her bright, cheery voice. "I told you, ma'am…we ran out of extra floppies two hours ago. I'm sorry. You can always forward the information to an account somewhere else, or print yourself a hard copy. But either way, we're closed, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave the store. No, no! Don't do that! Give those back! That's mine!"
Trowa chuckled, watching Midii and the other woman fight over the last remaining floppy disk. "Having a bit of trouble?" he joked. Midii let go instantly, the woman sprawling on the floor and the disk sliding under a table and soon forgotten.
"Trowa!" Midii shrieked, throwing herself into his arms. She nuzzled into his neck , kissing his jawbone lightly. "You've come to rescue me!"
Trowa smiled, spinning her around. "Yes, and you survived." Midii frowned, glaring at the other woman as she scampered out the door. After a moment, and the certainty that she had driven off, Midii fell into Trowa's arms.
"Yes, but it was horrible!" she gasped, clutching onto his jacket as he led her to the car. She fell into the seat with sigh. "You wouldn't happen to have any painkillers, would you? I have the most tremendous headache." Trowa started the ignition and pointed to the glove compartment.
"In there."
Midii opened it, snatching. She flicked two pills into her mouth, before thinking twice and popping another two into her mouth. "Midii!" Trowa chided, grabbing the bottle from her hand. "Don't be stupid."
Midii's face contorted as she leaned her seat back to a reclining position. "Trowa, you threw me to the dogs." She heard his gentle hum.
"But you lived."
Midii groaned, swinging the seatbelt away from her neck and watching the lines whiz by before they began to make her dizzy. She had a large enough headache as it was. She loved Trowa, but sometime he just couldn't understand. She was not a people person. "Trowa," she whimpered, squeezing her eyes closed. "Please just shut up and take me home."