~~~
Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews so far. In response to Arafel's comment: Yeah, I know about the whole "sempai" thing in both the Japanese language version of the anime and in the manga. I'm not in any way suggesting that Milly was working at Bernardelli first, and it may not be entirely accurate to presume that they started there at the same time. But, it would be rather difficult to rewrite this fine detail in a way that would be satisfying, since it would mean an alteration of a lot of the plot I have planned out. My justification for Milly calling Meryl "sempai" is somewhat the result of some small age difference, but you'll notice I don't have the term being used anywhere in the first or second chapters, so you know that this can't be the whole reason. I'm considering it as a term of respect, among other things, and you'll notice that Meryl hasn't exactly done anything to earn Milly's respect… yet. All shall become clear.
Thanks for the info, though. It's quite nice to see that someone is concerned with the fine details these days…
~~~
Chapter 2: Of Paper-pushing and Disaster Claims
The two new acquaintances made themselves more comfortable seated up to the long wooden conference table. After a few moments of awkward silence, Milly confirmed that she had been waiting there for at least half an hour before Meryl had arrived. This, she considered, was probably why she'd decided to pass the time in such an obviously ridiculous fashion. Fortunately, the string lay long forgotten on the ground, and the more sensible of the two women had surreptuously pushed it further underneath the table with her foot.
Five minutes later, Meryl was regretting her hasty decision. With her Cat's Cradle long forgotten, Milly had decided to entertain herself by talking endlessly to her less-than-interested new companion of her family tree. It didn't take Meryl long to conclude that it needed some pruning.
"…and Jacob (that's my second oldest brother's brother-in-law, you remember, Mattie's older brother?) is working in New Colorado as a banker, but there's a baby on the way soon. They're due in three months, so the whole family is very excited…"
Meryl's eyelids were beginning to sag. It wasn't that she wasn't happy to have met someone so friendly on her first day at Bernardelli, but couldn't it have been someone a little less talkative? Or someone who discussed something other than family? She would have preferred one of her mother's lectures or, hell, even a few caustic remarks from the lips of Mr. Andrew Andrews.
"…and Angela's son Thomas is thinking of joining the cavalry, which Auntie Georgina isn't happy about." Milly paused for breath and glanced upwards pensively. "I'm not sure what I think about it, but I know that my mother says you should do something with your life that makes you happy."
"Is that so?" Meryl asked flatly as she cracked a knuckle.
Milly looked slightly taken aback. "Well, of course!" she. Her face slipped into an expression of serene reflection. Oh, God, Meryl knew that expression; she'd seen it too many times on her father… some ridiculous philosophical spouting was sure to follow -- and sure enough it did. "You should always do what makes you happy," the cheerful giant mused, her face the very image of dreamy pensiveness. "That's what life is for… to be happy."
Meryl wasn't sure how she felt about this philosophy. What would really make her happy at the moment was to throw herself out of the nearest window so that she wouldn't be subjected to any more stories about half-cousins, thrice removed --- but she didn't imagine that this would be the best course of action. What she did instead was raise her head up to look into Milly Thompson's innocent eyes and meet her gaze with a very skeptical expression plastered across her features.
"Well," she interjected a bit more rudely than she'd intended, "are you happy?"
Milly's honest brow furrowed in the act contemplation. She wasn't entirely sure she'd understood the question correctly. After a moment's awkward silence, she replied, "Yes, I'm very happy."
Meryl raised an querying eyebrow. "Really?" she managed, unable to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "You're happy about coming to work at Bernardelli?"
A nod in the affirmative.
"About working in the insurance business?"
Nod.
Criminy, this woman was even more foolish than she looked! Meryl rallied. "About slaving your life away in a nine to five office job, feeling miserable and insignificant, locked up indoors while the world and its excitement passes by without you, selling your soul for retirement benefits and a dental plan?"
Milly paused mid-nod and frowned. The expression didn't suit her at all, the head still twisted a bit at the neck and her chin tilting upwards. "No…" she replied thoughtfully, pursing her lips in concentration. Meryl appeared somewhat satisfied and leaned back in her chair as if she'd proven a point.
"But, I'm happy to work at Bernardelli!"
The loud crash that could be heard from all the way down the corridor was the sound of Meryl's chair tipping over backwards. In her surprise at Milly's answer, she'd leaned back a little too far and was now regretting that quite a bit.
"What?" she sputtered in shock as she tried to salvage some dignity. This was a bit difficult to achieve whist lying on the ground with her limbs sprawled out and her skirt hiked up over her undergarments in the aftermath of the fall. Quickly, she stood and began hastily smoothing out the suit, but there was nothing to be done about the pantyhose. It had acquired a tiny run which, by the day's end, would no doubt be a hole big enough to pass a thomas through. She silently cursed the bastard that had invented pantyhose.
"Milly," she groaned in exasperation, "please don't tell me that you actually want to be here?! Nobody comes to Bernardelli because they want to, they do it because they're forced to." She sighed and ran a hand absentmindedly through her hair. "If it were up to me, I'd be halfway across the desert by now with a gun and a thomas and the excitement of the unknown, but it's not up to me. That's why I'm here. Because I have to be."
Milly frowned and walked around the table. When she was standing right next to Meryl, she bent down and set the fallen chair upright with one effortless motion and then drew herself up to her full height. Despite all reason, she was managing a rather remarkable take on Mr. Andrews's disapproving glare. Meryl flinched and diverted her gaze from Milly's .
"Why are you here if you're so unhappy?"
Meryl looked down at her feet and shrugged. It was a pretty valid question, and the standard answer obviously wasn't going to convince this behemoth of a woman. A reply like "because I have to," certainly wouldn't jive well from Milly's perspective.
"I guess… because I wanted to prove something." She fidgeted with the buttons of her jacket. "I wanted to prove that I was capable of making something out of my life, I wanted to show my family that I'm not hopeless like they think I am." She paused and sighed heavily. Now that she came to think about it, that wasn't that satisfying of an answer either.
Milly, at least, seemed satisfied. She stepped back a bit and nodded amiably, the warmth returning once again to her features. "Yeah, I guess I understand."
Meryl stared, dumbstruck.
Milly continued. "I think that if it made my family happy, I'd do things I didn't want to do, too."
A respectful silence hung in the air between the two, for an understanding had been reached. They might not entirely agree with one another, but mutual understanding was at least the foundation of a friendship. Perhaps Meryl had found something of a confidante in this strange young woman after all…
"So… do you want to try the Cat's Cradle now?" The long, straw-colored strand was once again dangling loosely from Milly's fingers.
Never mind. Scratch that thought.
"Milly…" Meryl moaned, holding her head in her hands and groaning. She thought she'd hidden that blasted string.
Just then, the door swung open and a man stepped through. He was perhaps five or so years older than either of the women, and his face was fixed in an expression of surprise mingled with a twinge of bemusement.
"Hello. I'm Peter White," the newcomer said with a smarmy, condescending grin as he sauntered forward. "I'll be your supervisor during training. I assume you're Ms. Stryfe?" He smiled as a mortified Meryl Stryfe removed her hands from her face; his gaze drifted down to her feet and made its leisurely way back up to her face (taking a slight rest stop halfway through its journey). His lips pursed a bit as he noticed her annoyed return expression, and he had the decency to wipe the ridiculous grin off his face.
"I see you've met Miss Thompson," he said amiably. Meryl glowered.
"Yes!" Milly replied cheerfully. "We're becoming good friends."
"Now, wait just a…"
"Aren't we, Meryl?" the taller woman asked, interrupting her companion's protest.
Meryl took a sharp intake of breath to steady herself. There was no sense in bursting Milly's bubble of self-contained ignorance. Besides, she probably meant well…
"Yeah," Meryl replied somewhat unconvincingly. "Good friends."
The man let his smile widen a bit more and wrung his hands in a business-like way. "Glad to hear it," he replied flatly, "because you two will be working with each other in the training process, and teamwork is going to be very important -- Is something wrong, Ms. Stryfe?"
Meryl had been unable to stop the expletive from slipping past her lips. Was she really going to spend all of training listening to stories about all of Milly's distant cousins? It was too much to bear.
"Er, nothing," she replied hurriedly. "I, um, just stubbed my toe." She looked down at her foot and swung it a little bit to demonstrate. "But, I'm fine now."
"Riiiight." White chuckled as he shook his head and continued grinning in a very knowing sort of way. "Well, if you feel you're fit for walking, Ms. Stryfe, I'd like to show you some of the offices." He gestured to the doorway.
White turned around and walked back out into the hallway, this time followed by a customarily cheerful Milly and a somewhat apprehensive Meryl. The dark haired young woman was at somewhat of a loss to explain what she'd even been brought up the conference room for in the first place, since they were so hurriedly abandoning it. Of course, Meryl thought somewhat shrewdly, if she'd been a supervisor in charge of Milly, she would also have wanted to keep the blabber-mouthed Miss Thompson shut up somewhere where she couldn't do herself any permanent damage until the training actually began. Sticking Meryl in there also had probably just been a way of herding the neophytes together, not a personal insult to the woman herself. At least, she hoped that was the case… it was a bit hard to tell anything about these Bernardelli officials, let alone their motivations. Peter White, on the other hand, was making his motivations a bit too blatant for comfort: he kept tossing his gaze over his shoulder in Meryl's direction, and unless he'd managed to get an overlarge piece of dust caught in his eye, he had definitely winked a couple of times. Blech!! If she weren't specifically trying to stay on her best behavior, White would have been rolling on the ground in his own personal hell by this point, clutching at his groin in agony. Hmmph. The stupid pervert ought to be castrated where he stood.
They were led through several offices, and White went through lengthy explanations about what sort of work went on in each of them. Most of the jobs appeared to deal intimately with large amounts of paperwork. Meryl felt herself cringing at the sight of toppling piles of paper stacked up on poorly-built desks. It was hard to picture herself spending the rest of her working days in this sort of dull, dreary environment -- or Milly, for that matter. The ditz and the tomboy were going to stick out like sore thumbs amidst the pencil-pushers of Bernardelli, and being inconspicuous seemed to be what everyone here favored. The workers dressed mainly in dusty, sensible shades of gray, and their faces seemed much the same from where Meryl stood. One bleary-eyed woman smiled at the dark-haired newcomer, and it was a burden for her to return the smile. Places like this could suck the happiness out of anybody.
The three didn't even manage to make it through the rooms before Milly clumsily knocked over one of the aforementioned towers of paperwork, and an angry insurance agent chased them out with a stream of indignant curses. Milly looked as though she were about to cry. Meryl felt her face burning with embarrassment for the oversized oaf and for her fate as a temporary training partner.
~~~
For the rest of the day, the two women were handed over to a couple of seasoned veterans in Bernardelli. Peter White seemed a bit disappointed and offered to stay and help out if they so desired, but Meryl was only too happy to be rid of the creep. If Milly thought there was something out of the ordinary in his offer, she certainly didn't show it. She nodded amiably as White glanced wistfully once more at Meryl and paced off back down the hallway.
Meanwhile, the new Insurance Girls were introduced to the two agents who could have been described as "distinguished" by more tactful people. The woman, known as "Mrs. Talbot, with a T," appeared to be in her mid sixties. Mr. Jones, the other agent, offered Meryl a sweaty hand and shook hers with a perilously tight grip. "Glad to have you with us. It's always good to get some fresh blood about the place." His bemused grin was contagious, and Meryl felt her lips betray her as their corners twisted upwards of their own accord. Damn!
As Talbot and Jones began demonstrating the proper methods of report-filing, they simultaneously began barraging the two young women with a nonstop stream of advice.
"You'll want to wear more sensible shoes from now on," Talbot lectured as she eyed Meryl's feet with a hawk-like gaze. "Interns do a lot of running up and down the stairs carrying memos, and a few days in those heels will turn your feet raw."
"Insurance claims are sorted based on severity of the damage," Jones explained as he deftly maneuvered her away from his own paper-piled workstation and settled her in at an empty desk. "Class A is minor, small-time damage like what happens on a regular basis. We don't usually have many losses from those sorts of claims."
Meryl nodded vaguely as he spoke and tried to pay attention, but it was awfully hard to make sense of a lot of the information she was being given. It was all so horribly mundane.
"Of course, we would have our most serious losses on claims for Class G or H damage. H is… well, just be glad we haven't had to deal with any of that or we'd be bankrupt. H is serious stuff."
Milly perked up her curious ears. "How bad is H?"
The older insurance agent merely grinned a horrible grin at the young women and laughed mirthlessly. "Well, let's put it this way… the destruction of July was only Class G Property Damage. I'll let your imagination decide what Class H entails…"
Meryl's interest had been piqued at mention of something a bit less mundane than paperwork. Class G property damage like July…?
"Now, now," scolded the other agent as she clucked her tongue at Jones, "don't you go scaring these poor young things with horror stories like July. We don't deal with those kinds of problems any more, thank goodness. Hasn't been anything that bad in years, and with luck there won't be again."
Meryl raised her eyebrows and smiled in a wide, mouth-gaping manner. "You mean, Bernardelli deals with cases like the Humanoid Typhoon?" she asked incredulously. The insurance business was beginning to sound a little bit more appealing…
"Well, yes," sputtered Mr. Jones. "Who do you think has to foot the bill when a town gets wrecked by outlaws? Bernardelli has had to pay out a lot of double dollars over the years because of damage caused by the Stampede and other vagabonds. Even so, we manage to turn quite a profit. The agency takes a lot of risks on, but they're very calculated risks. We gather precise numbers to determine at just how much of a risk each community is, and we base premium rates on those predictions…"
Meryl tuned out a lot of what had just been said. Her mind was still trying to wrap around one elusive concept. "You're saying," she repeated huskily, "that Bernardelli keeps files on criminals like Vash the Stampede, Brilliant Dynamites Neon, Angelo "The Wrench" Mortes, or…?"
"Yes," replied Talbot abruptly. "But, that's not really our department's concern. Records of that nature are maintained by…"
"But, you keep them?" Meryl interrupted impatiently.
"Meryl," Milly interjected desperately. She didn't really like the way this conversation was headed… she could see the woman's face purpling, but Meryl seemed oblivious.
"Quiet, Milly," she replied hurriedly, but the pause in her stream of dialogue gave Jones the footing he needed.
"Miss Stryfe, you would do well to not worry about such things," he replied with an expression of benevolent concern. "Bernardelli is run efficiently, each department a separate entity and yet a part of the cohesive whole. You need not concern yourself with anything at the moment, unless it involves filing these reports." He quickly shoved a pile of papers into Meryl's unresisting hands.
The rest of the day progressed relatively uneventfully. Meryl and Milly found themselves (willingly or no) becoming experts in the procedure of filing claims reports, and soon they had made a considerable dent in the piles of papers that had previously towered over the desks. The two mentors did not appear to have many complaints about their work that day.
"You may not look it," Jones said as he stared down at a now thoroughly exhausted Meryl, "but you're not such a bad worker when you put your mind to it."
Meryl wasn't sure to take this as an insult or a complement, though she managed a polite nod and a "Yes, sir."
Then the change had already started to begin, though Meryl herself did not realize it at the time. Just a day previously, young Miss Stryfe would have been thoroughly affronted by the implied insult of his statement and would have made a display of her anger, yet here she was already behaving in an obedient, polite manner.
Subservient.
Her mother would have been proud.
But, as the two new employees gathered up their jackets to leave Bernardelli after their first long day of insurance work, Meryl's mind was fixed intently on one vague possibility. She could withstand the mundane tasks, the lecherous stares, the lack of respect from her supervisors, if only she could have one thing…
…One thorough look through those disaster files. The opportunity to work on something exhilarating, to read about the adventures and excitement that was somehow at the root of all this dull paper-pushing…
If Milly had something on her mind, it was impossible to tell from looking at her. It was conceivable that Milly was really just hiding her intelligence from plain sight, but Meryl had convinced herself that no one could be that good of an actress. "Wow, that was a lot of work!" the taller woman said exhaustedly as they descended the stairs to the main entrance of Bernardelli Insurance Agency. "I hope it's not like that every day."
"Yeah," replied Meryl vacantly. Oh, to get her hands on those files…
The two walked out into the dusty street, followed by their elongated shadows in the setting sun.
~~~
Until next time… happy reviewing!