Chapter 6

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Life was not going well for Ikkyu.

When his week had begun with the loss of his favourite coffee guy, he had known that it wouldn't be a good one, but never, ever would he have been able to predict the pain, the aggravation, the fatigue, and the sheer inconvenience that the days ahead would hold.

He glared at the young carrot-top, the fifth clone of Peter he had made that week, who was obviously waiting for a response to his suggestion as to the best candidate for the new assassin team.

"Everyone," he began through gritted teeth, "I would like you to all think very carefully about this for a moment. Can anyone tell Peter where the problem lies in his suggestion that we send a team comprised of clones of King Arthur after our runaway coffee guy?"

One oldish man with a sizeable bald spot and grey tufts of hair over his ears raised his hand tentatively.

"Yes, Steve? Go ahead."

"Well, King Arthur would have no knowledge of modern technology, and might be disoriented for a time."

"Also," the girl with the long brown ponytail added, beaming proudly at her own intelligence of complex psychology, "as a king, he would have little experience with taking orders."

Ikkyu was silent for a long, long moment.

"Not exactly, Cindy," he said coolly. "It has more to do with the fact that King Arthur never existed! Now, I assume that you can all see the problem that this poses."

Ten recently cloned scientists (or rather, clones thereof, as the originals, or at least the previous clones, had mysteriously disappeared) nodded mutely.

"Excellent," Ikkyu said a wee bit sarcastically. "I'm glad that we won't have to hold a brief seminar on the nature of reality versus fiction. And now that we have that cleared up, does anyone else have a suggestion as to whom we might clone and send after Joe?"

Cindy waved her hand frantically in the air.

"Mr. Ikkyu, I have an idea!"

"Go ahead, Cindy," Ikkyu said, much relieved.

After all, Cindy was a woman, and if he knew one thing, it was that women were always, always much smarter than men. At this thought, Ikkyu blinked, and then internally shook his head.

I've been living in this universe too long, he thought sadly, just in time to nearly miss Cindy's suggestion.

"I think we should send Erik after Joe!"

Ikkyu raised one eyebrow.

"Erik, you say? The young man at the reception desk?"

"No!" Cindy exclaimed as impatiently as it was safe to get with one's boss, particularly when said boss had a tendency to clone and then kill those who annoyed him. "I mean Erik! The Phantom of the Opera! He was brilliant, and he had the voice of an angel, and he was really, really sexy!"

"Wasn't he hideously deformed?" Peter asked, scratching his head.

"And psychotic?" Steve added.

"Well, yeah," Cindy shrugged defensively. "But on the inside, he was really sexy!"

"Only if you're a gay man," one particularly crass young man named Alan, who truly never knew when to keep his mouth shut, snickered.

"Cindy," Ikkyu began slowly. "I fail to see how the Phantom of the Opera would be of use to us."

"Sir, Erik was brilliant! And he was really, really devious! He'd catch Joe for us in no time! And all that rage really motivated him to get things done!"

"But wasn't his rage confined to those who thought he was ugly?" Steve asked.

"You could just make him really, really ugly, so he could be enraged with everyone," Cindy suggested hopefully, eyes growing shiny at the thought of twenty Phantoms of the Opera hanging about headquarters for her to swoon over.

"A very good idea, Cindy," Ikkyu said pleasantly, with the sort of pleasantness that tended to characterize his tone just before someone died. "There remains only one problem. Think back, if you will, my dear, to exactly what the problem would have been with twenty clones of King Arthur."

Cindy thought about this. Then, gradually, her face fell.

"Oh, right. The not-existing thing."

Ikkyu closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten.

"Yes, Cindy. The non-existing thing."

"I know!" the scientist arbitrarily named Dan said excitedly. "We should use Count Dracula!"

"Yeah!" Cindy squealed. "He's really sexy, too!"

"And he can drink Joe's blood," Dan added.

Peter looked dubious.

"But then he'd get all hyper from the coffee we put in Joe's blood. I don't know, guys. A really hyper vampire just seems kind of dangerous to me."

Something snapped in Ikkyu's brain at this. His smile widened by a bit.

"Hey, why don't we take a break for a while? I'll take you all to see my weapon collection…"

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"Um, Mr. Joker?" Yomiko spoke up hesitantly, breaking the rather uncomfortable silence in the office.

Interrupted from his reverie, which had taken the form of a death-glare in Joe's direction, Joker looked up abruptly.

"Yes, Agent Paper? What is it?"

"Are we…are we going to do anything at any point?"

"Yeah," Drake grumbled in agreement. "You dragged us all the way here, and now all we're doing is sitting in your office, not talking."

"We're simply waiting for the I-Jin to make their first move," Joker said, returning to the unruffled politeness more common to him. "Until they make their next appearance, there is little we can do. After all," he continued with a chuckle, "we can't very well protect Joe from the I-Jin if the I-Jin aren't threatening him in any way."

"Wait a minute," Yomiko began slowly, frowning slightly. "When I first met Joe, he said there were guys after him already! If the I-Jin aren't doing anything, what were you running from?"

"Hey, you try living with the suspicion that there are people after you at all times!" Joe exclaimed defensively. "So I panicked a little, and maybe those two groups of kids in white t-shirts and jean jackets and pompadours that advanced on each other snapping their fingers weren't I-Jin, but darnit! They could have been!"

At this, an even more uncomfortable silence fell over the room as Drake, Nancy, and Joker glared daggers at Joe.

Yomiko simply blinked big blue eyes in confusion.

"Well…they could have been, Mr. Joe, but I think you definitely overreacted."

"Great," Drake spat, standing up from his chair so abruptly that it flew back across the room and nearly took out the ever-unfortunate Wendy who had chosen just that moment to peek unobtrusively into the room to be sure that she wouldn't interrupt any particularly gripping and important meetings by entering just then.

Or, at least, to be sure that Joe wasn't there.

"Ack!" she shrieked, ducking out of the way of the apparently possessed chair.

"Hey, sorry," Drake called over his shoulder before returning his attention to Joe.

"No trouble at all," she called back weakly before staggering away, presumably to trip over something.

"So, what you're saying is that there are really no I-Jin after you, and you're just too paranoid for your own good."

"Or maybe," Joe said tersely, glancing about the room nervously, "I'm not paranoid enough."

"No, I definitely think you're too paranoid, Joe," Yomiko said gently.

Joe took on a wounded expression.

"I was trying to have a dramatic moment."

"Well, don't," Nancy suggested flatly.

"Fine," the coffee-guy pouted.

"Either way," Joker said authoritatively, thinking it high time that this runaway train of silliness got back on track, "I think it is still premature to assume that there are no I-Jin after Joe. Particularly when we have come across several already."

"What?!" Drake exclaimed. "We've been attacked by I-Jin already and you didn't capture them?"

"No, we have come across them," Joker corrected. "Earlier today, Marianne reported having been served a pastry by Mary Wollstonecraft, who apparently didn't possess the proper qualities to be a member of an assassin team."

"Hmph. I'd think a feminist like that'd be a great assassin, as long as the target's a man," Drake muttered, only to receive a frosty glare from Nancy.

"And I'm all man," Joe announced proudly, grinning at Wendy, who was beginning to have severe reservations about entering Joker's office that day, as this was the second time that decided misfortune had befallen her immediately upon doing so. "Right, babe?"

"I-I wouldn't know," Wendy replied through gritted teeth.

"But you will," Joe assured her with a wink.

"Errrrgh," Joker said calmly, just as calmly tightening his hands around the armrests of his chair and nearly prying them off.

"Right," Wendy murmured weakly, setting a stack of files down on a free inch of space on Joker's desk, where they immediately tipped over and scattered about the floor. With a despairing sigh, she began to collect them, and continued. "I just came to drop this off. And predictably all over the floor, apparently. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to slip into the other room and hide in a hole in the wall, praying for merciful death."

Joker looked up.

"As long as you're taking a break, Wendy, why not work on…er, what we discussed earlier?"

Wendy thought carefully about this.

"But…don't you need to be there, too?"

"Not that," Joker replied through gritted teeth, feeling quite as though this day should have ended long ago – perhaps yesterday.

Wendy thought carefully again, and then brightened.

"Oh, right! Although, I did have one question."

"Yes, what is it?"

"Are we going to be flamboyant-evil, or realistic-evil?"

"Realistic-evil," Joker replied. "Definitely realistic-evil. As toned-down as you can keep it."

"Oh," Wendy said, looking mildly disappointed. "So, does that mean I ought to return the long, flowing black velvet cape and leather bathing suit and pointy black boots and whip?"

"No, no, don't do that," Joker hastened to reply as Joe clamped both hands to his face to stem his sudden nosebleed, Drake and Nancy highly disturbed glances, and Yomiko picked up the nearest book and finished the fourth chapter fifteen seconds later. "They still might come in handy."

"Well, if you say so," Wendy shrugged. "I'll just keep them in my closet for now."

"Yes, do that. And by the way, try to get through as much of this as you can tonight," Joker said, voice muffled as he disappeared for a moment behind his desk, and the next moment emerged with a massive tome that seemed to send an electric jolt through Yomiko.

"Big book," she noted in awe.

Joker sighed.

"Yes, it is, Yomiko."

"Can I see?" she asked pleadingly.

"Perhaps you can read it once Wendy's finished with it."

"No, you can give it to her now," Wendy said hastily, eyeing what was easily two thousand pages, all for the sake of a gag. The Oxford Book of Balance, indeed!

Eyes shiny, Yomiko leapt forward and made a grab for the book.

"Ack!" she intoned sadly as suddenly, the book was no longer there to grab for.

Shaking his head sadly, Joker turned to the blonde still embarking upon the futile quest of tidying up an office that had won prestigious awards for its sheer disorganization.

"Wendy, do try to get through as much as you can tonight. After all," he added thoughtfully, as one to whom a very good idea had just occurred, "I'd hate to see you have to stay in Friday evening to finish it."

"At least one of us would," she sighed, casting a pained look at Joe, who was busily brewing another pot of coffee and humming the theme from the Folgers commercials, somehow in four-part harmony.

Then she smiled brightly around the room, failed utterly to catch the heavy volume Joker tossed to her, uttered a dismayed squeak as she was pinned to the floor under its weight, and crawled away, dragging it after her and muttering angrily about everything in the universe, reflecting as she went that finding the motivation to turn suddenly evil might not be so difficult as she imagined.

"So," Drake said briskly once the door had clicked softly shut behind Wendy, "we actually doing anything today or not?"

Joker made a helpless gesture.

"Honestly, Drake, if the I-Jin don't try anything, we have no reason to."

"Well, instead of sitting around here and waiting, I'm going to find something nice for my daughter. And to draw my fortune for today. I get shaky and irritable if I don't do it at least once a day," he confided before tromping from the room.

"Yeah, I guess there's no reason to stay here all night," Nancy shrugged, watching him go. "Yomiko? You want to go find a place to stay for the night?"

"Hmm," Yomiko murmured absently, flipping a page.

"Uh…Yomiko?"

No response, save for another page being flipped.

"Yomiko!"

Another page.

Lips tightening, Nancy pondered for a moment what was to be done about this, and then stood up, walked around behind Yomiko's chair, and rested her chin on the other girl's shoulder.

"What're you reading?"

Yomiko went very still at the question, asked from directly next to her ear.

"Um…reading? What?" she asked a little dizzily, two little red spots appearing on her cheeks.

Nancy straightened up, shaking her head with a fond sigh.

"Nothing. You want to get out of here?"

"Well, I guess," Yomiko said doubtfully. "Is that okay, Mr. Joker?"

"Of course," the blond man smiled. "I'll be in touch to let you know when we find something."

"Okay!" Yomiko chirped. "So, what should we do?"

"I don't know," Nancy said. "Any ideas?"

"Oh, dear. She's sealed her own fate," Joker noted aside, amused.

Yomiko thought carefully.

"There's a really good bookstore near here," she said slowly. "Not nearly as good as Toto Books, but I've still heard good things about it. Um…would it be okay if we went to take a look?"

Nancy looked dubious.

"Just one bookstore?"

Yomiko looked sheepish.

"Well…"

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The laboratory was dark, save for the light cast by the flickering flame of the (badly-set) Bunsen burner.

One lone shadowy figure moved about stealthily, trying for grace and silence, but simply looking vaguely like a cartoon villain creeping around to the sound of a string orchestra playing a very staccato-ish piece.

"I don't care what Mr. Ikkyu said," the figure hissed to herself. "I will have my Erik! I will find a way! All I have to do is combine the wit of Oscar Wilde, the strategic brilliance of Napoleon, the scientific vision of Leonardo Da Vinci, the musical genius of Bach, and the appearance of John Merrick! And soon, the Phantom of the Opera will be mine!"

With that, Cindy threw back her head and foolishly let loose a melodramatically evil laugh.

The next moment, as the sound of pounding footsteps down the corridor grew louder, she uttered a dismayed squeak and dove under the table.

"Mine, I tell you!" she whispered from her position under the lab bench as the door swung open and several very bewildered people noted that the room was, indeed, empty. "All mine!"

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End Notes: Hmm…I don't know if this Phantom of the Opera sort-of-clone will play a large part in the action, or if he'll just be a silly one-gag character who then fades into the woodwork. Either way, thanks for the interest, please leave a review, and I hope you enjoyed! Y'know, the usual stuff. :o)