Chapter 7
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"I'm in a bookstore. It's the seventeenth one I've seen in the past four hours. I'm loaded down with what's got to be two hundred pounds of books, and it looks like the load's going to increase, because Yomiko looks about ready to drop, although it isn't stopping her from buying more. We've still got to catch a cab and get to the hotel before the managers decide 'to Hell with the British Library' and give the room Joker booked for us, to someone else. Strangely enough, I'm having the time of my life."
Yomiko turned from the shelf, her arms full of intended purchases.
"What did you say, Nancy?"
"Uh, nothing," Nancy replied innocently, one hand frantically shooing the cameraman to whom she had been delivering her monologue.
"Oh; I thought you had called me," Yomiko said, shooting the other girl a smile before turning her full attention back to the business of book-shopping.
"That was Yomiko," Nancy said, addressing the cameraman, who had just crept back out of the Vegetarian Cooking section. "She loves books. Like, more than breathing. And…and why am I doing this again?"
"I think it's because we're really bored," the cameraman replied seriously.
"Right," Nancy sighed. "So, what did you say your name was?"
"Uh…I didn't," he said quickly, edging towards the door and shutting off his camera.
"Hold on," Nancy said in a tone that brooked no argument, as a frown creased her forehead. "You look familiar."
"I…I do?" the man laughed nervously, readjusting his thick black glasses which, oddly enough, caused his mustache, the black of which did not match his sandy-brown hair in any way, and his massive nose, to bob a little.
"Yeah," Nancy replied, peering at him more closely. "For some reason, when I look at you, I really want a cup of coffee."
"Um…uh…I can't imagine why," the utterly nondescript, yet vaguely familiar man laughed nervously.
"Hi, Joe," Yomiko greeted, turning from the bookshelf with an armload of books that had managed to double since the last time she had torn herself from her browsing. "What's with the fake glasses and mustache and nose?"
"Oh, it's you," Nancy said flatly, realization dawning at last. "Why did you follow us? Joker told you to stay at library tonight, just in case the I-Jin started looking for you."
"Yeah, but you know me: Joe the Dummy," Joe laughed, forehead beginning to gleam with perspiration.
"And how," Nancy murmured. "But I guess I'd better let Joker know where you went. He might be worried."
"No, don't do that!" Joe yelped as she pulled a cell phone from her pocket and punched in the number.
"Joker," she greeted a moment later. "It's Miss Deep. We just ran into Joe, if you've been wondering where he went."
She was greeted by a long silence on the other end. Then…
"That isn't possible, Miss Deep," Joker said flatly. "Joe is in front of me right now, trying to ply me with that damnably good coffee of his so that I'll be distracted when he makes his next inappropriate advances on my secretary!"
Nancy flinched, and a few customers looked up as this tirade ended in an angry bark easily audible through the tiny speaker in the phone.
"Well, then we're dealing with more than one Joe," she said with a shrug, "because we've got one here, trying to sneak out of here with the clerk's coffee cup."
"More than one Joe!" Joker exclaimed, prompting a dismayed whimper, decidedly high and feminine in register. "Calm down, Wendy; I'm sure there's just been a misunderstanding," he said, voice growing distant to Nancy's ears as he presumably pulled the phone away.
"Joker, lay off the coffee," she said flatly. "Seriously. It's doing bad, bad things to you."
"Why, what do you mean?"
Nancy moved the phone away and counted slowly to ten in an effort to calm down and keep her temper.
"Miss Deep?" Joker called, puzzled by this silence.
"I'm here," she said. "Now, remember who we're dealing with. Joe is a clone of the greatest coffee guy in history, right?"
"Yes," Joker replied slowly.
"Now, if they made one clone of Joe, it's safe to assume that they could make another one, right?"
"Yes," he said again, and then sighed impatiently. "Exactly where are you going with this?"
"They've sent out another Joe!"
"Still on that other Joe, are you?" Joker said in a tone that indicated that he was shaking his head in despair at the over-abundant imagination of his agents.
"Don't even joke about things like that, Miss Makuhari!" the same feminine voice as before called in the background, sounding almost teary.
"Tell Wendy," Nancy began through gritted teeth, "that we're past the point of a joke. The other Joe is right here in front of me, reading '101 Favourite Tips For a Better Cup of Joe'."
"He's reading a book about the best way to put himself into a cup?" Yomiko asked, wrinkling her nose as she turned to Nancy. "He's even weirder than I thought!"
"That was Yomiko, then?" Joker asked wearily.
"Yes."
A pause.
"You girls are in a bookstore, aren't you?"
"Yes," Nancy replied again, not entirely liking the amused tone in his voice.
"The first one you've visited?"
"No."
Another pause.
"I told you so," Joker said mildly.
"Oh, shut up," she muttered. "What do we do about the second Joe?"
"Why don't you bring him back here for Wendy, since she clearly likes the first one so much?" Joker suggested with a vague hint of resentment in his tone.
Nancy blinked, startled, as this suggestion was met with an outraged squeak and the slam of a door in the background on the other end of the line.
"But seriously. What do we do with him?" she asked briskly.
"Oh, try to bring him back here, I suppose," Joker sighed. "Perhaps he can tell us exactly what the I-Jin are up to."
"Uh…and the other eighteen lined up outside the bookstore?" Nancy asked slowly, eyes trained on a bizarre spectacle.
There were, indeed, several more copies of the same young man peering through he window of the bookstore.
"Eighteen!" Joker repeated, horrified. "Eighteen Joes to deal with!"
"Yeah," Nancy confirmed grimly. "Do you think we've found this assassin team?"
"They sent Joe after Joe," Joker said thoughtfully. "Rather clever, if a little risky."
"Uh…how?" Nancy asked flatly.
"Well, there are any number of things that could go wrong," Joker replied.
"That's…not what I meant," Nancy admitted.
"Ah. Very well. Either way, Miss Deep, you and Agent Paper try to detain as many of the Joes as you can, and I'll be down there as soon as possible with our Joe."
"Hey, hold on!" Nancy began as the phone disconnected. "You…don't know where we are," she finished with a sigh. "Yomiko? I think we have a problem here."
"Yeah," Yomiko agreed, edging nervously away from the window. "There are a bunch of guys who look just like Mr. Joe, staring at us!"
"There's a bigger problem," Nancy informed her. "Joker's an idiot."
Yomiko blinked.
"I thought you meant something new," she said.
"We're supposed to capture as many of these Joes as possible for when Joker gets here, but he hung up before I could tell him where we were," Nancy continued, shaking her head.
Yomiko blinked again.
"Oh. That's why?"
"That's why what?"
"Why Mr. Joker's a…not-so-smart person sometimes?"
"Yeah; why? What were you thinking?"
"Well…just this and that, you know."
Nancy nodded emphatically.
"I know. I mean, does the guy even know the meaning of the phrase 'tidy up'?"
Yomiko looked a little sheepish, an image of her own apartment popping into her head within the thought bubble that popped up an instant before it.
"Uh, right."
"And that hair thing? It's one thing to see a girl smoothing her hair down all the time, but a guy?"
At this, Yomiko nodded in full agreement. She had never understood that, herself.
"And how about…hmm. I guess that's it," Nancy admitted. Well, let's go after the Joes before they all wander off for coffee."
"Okay," Yomiko agreed enthusiastically, withdrawing a stack of cue cards.
Nancy surreptitiously drew her weapon, and the two left the store, Yomiko stopping to bid her intended purchases a sad farewell.
"I'll try to come back for you, okay, guys?" she called as Nancy took her arm and steered her toward the door and away from another bookshelf.
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"Doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo," Drake hummed to himself as he wandered down the streets of London, hands shoved into his pockets.
He sighed.
"I don't believe it. I'm bored. Without having that idiot girl and that idiot coffee guy to look after, I'm bored."
He sighed again.
"Welcome to 'Drake's Down-Time.' Yeah. Whoo."
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"Nancy," Yomiko called breathlessly several minutes later from atop a pile of fifteen Joes neatly bound together by several strips of iron-strong paper, "when did you say Mr. Joker would be here to collect them?"
Nancy stopped dead in the act of reaching through one of the remaining three Joes to steal his car keys and bus pass to ensure that he had nowhere to run.
"Damn it," she muttered, whipping out her cell phone.
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"Um…Mr. Joker?" Joe ventured timidly from the other side of the back seat of the vehicle currently speeding merrily down the street.
"What is it, Joe?" Joker asked absently, looking up briefly from the files that seemed to accompany him everywhere.
Joe opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off as a frightened shriek drifted from the front seat, and the next moment, the car swerved wildly to the left.
"Wendy, do try to be more careful!" Joker expostulated.
"I'm sorry," she called from behind the steering wheel. "I'm just not very good with a car."
"Well, you ought to learn," he said firmly. "I have a feeling you'll be doing a lot more driving sometime in the near future. And at any rate, you're not doing so badly. You just have to control the urge to run away – or steer away, rather – whenever another vehicle comes anywhere near you."
"Yeah," Joe agreed. "You're way too timid."
"Oh, and I suppose you're an expert on driving, as well as coffee and tea?" she flashed back, turning around and glaring at Joe as viciously as she could.
Both men noted, with expressions of horror frozen on their faces, that this took her attention off the road, and meant that the car was hurtling recklessly forward, unmanned. Or unwomanned, if one was so insistent on equal opportunity.
"Wendy…road," Joker said in something remarkably close to a whimper.
She turned around just in time to give another horrified exclamation and slam on the brakes, and at the same time, lean on the horn.
"You crazy idiot!" she shouted out the window at the car in front of her. "There's no one stopped in front of you for miles! What the hell are you doing?!"
"Actually, we've just reached a red light," Joker pointed out, quite able to be calmly amused now that his life wasn't in immediate danger. "And there are several people stopped in front of our new friend."
"Well, the light's green now! They should be going!" Wendy retorted.
"Hey, that…that's good," Joe said with a nervous laugh. "You're getting over the timidity."
"Right," she grumbled, punching the gas and sending the car into motion with such abruptness that Joe could have sworn that, for a split second, he and the car seat had become one entity. "I'll show you timid, you beverage-usurping bastard…"
"Y'know, a little timidity isn't always a bad thing," Joe informed her, thus earning Joker's combined respect and pity as a pair of big blue eyes caught the coffee guy's in the rear-view mirror and glared so icily that the temperature within the vehicle dropped by at least fifteen degrees. Celsius, naturally.
The vehicle sped up, swerving around several others, cutting off one or two, and Joker was about to comment on this in annoyance, when a soft, repeated beeping from his suit jacket caught his attention. He pulled out his phone.
"Yes, hello?"
"It's Miss Deep," the voice at the other end said coolly. "We've been wondering if you were going to call back. You hung up before I could tell you where we are."
"Oh, my. Now that I think about it, I did," Joker admitted sheepishly. "Although, surprisingly, Wendy doesn't seem to have noticed yet."
"That's because she's too busy drag racing some kid in a 'Vette!" Joe informed him.
"Wendy's drag-racing a guy in a Corvette?" Nancy asked in a tone that implied a raised eyebrow.
Joker peered out the window at the old, rather ugly vehicle struggling to keep pace with his own Lexus, by now likely depreciated several thousand in value, thanks to the rough treatment it was receiving from his secretary.
"No, Miss Deep, that's a Chevette."
"Oh," she said simply.
"We've won, by the way."
"You must be very proud."
"Thrilled."
"So…do you want to know where we are? Waiting patiently for you? With eighteen Joes in our possession?"
"That must be an interesting sight," Joker noted, nearly losing his grip on his phone as the car took a corner so tightly that it rocked, for a split second, onto two wheels. "Wendy, for goodness' sake, will you be careful?!"
"Is everything okay there?" Nancy asked hesitantly at this shout.
"Yes, just fine," he sighed. "Only, Wendy seems to have gone a little road rage. An attempt to prove something to Joe, I believe."
"It is not!" the blonde protested vehemently, immediately slowing down to a speed approaching the posted limits and deciding upon a lane once and for all.
"Still, a little psychology goes a long way," Joker said smugly.
An exasperated sigh emanated from the phone.
"Look, do you want to know where we are, or would you rather just keep driving around until you coincidentally find us? Somewhere in London?"
"Very well," Joker agreed. "So, where are you, then?"
"Mr. Joker!" Wendy called.
"One moment, Wendy," he said, holding up a hand.
"Uh, Mr. Joker, you should probably look at this," Joe told him, squinting out the window as the vehicle rolled to a stop.
"In a moment," Joker repeated impatiently.
Wendy made an exasperated noise.
"Mr. Joker, there's a man in a tuxedo and an opera cape and a mask, singing – with a surprising amount of echo – about how he will bring death to the treacherous coffee guy, Joe, as well as those who interfered with the beautiful love between him and his darling Christine!"
Joker was silent for a moment, digesting this.
"Miss Deep, I think we've run into an I-Jin. I'll need you and Agent Paper here as soon as possible."
With that, ignoring the protests from the woman on the other end, he pressed a button and tucked the phone back into his jacket.
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Nancy put her phone away, grumbling about everything in the universe, and a few things twice, as she did so.
"That's just fantastic," she muttered under the curious and watchful gazes of Yomiko and a heaping pile of Joe.
"What is it, Nancy?" Yomiko asked, concern clear in her eyes. "You sounded just like Drake for a minute."
"And it gets better," Nancy groaned, shuddering at the thought.
"So, what's wrong?" Yomiko prompted gently, climbing off the pile of Joes and approaching her partner.
"Joker and Joe – and Wendy, who seems to have been a little too inspired by Vin Diesel's fine work in The Fast and the Furious – just ran into what they believe to be an I-Jin. Joker has instructed that we get there immediately, but of course the idiot neglected to tell us where exactly that is."
Yomiko blinked for a moment, startled, and then brightened.
"Oh, he probably just wanted us to track him through his phone!"
Now it was Nancy's turn to blink, startled.
"Uh…we can track him through his phone?"
"Yeah!" Yomiko replied. "You didn't know that?"
Nancy counted slowly to ten, and then turned back to Yomiko.
"Well, no one was exactly in a tearing hurry to tell me," she pointed out.
"Sorry," Yomiko said sheepishly. "I guess I thought you knew."
"Don't worry about it," Nancy said briskly. "Let's just go."
Yomiko nodded enthusiastically.
"Right!"
And with that, the two girls took off from the street corner just outside the bookstore that they had been browsing, under the bewildered eyes of several onlookers.
The bewildered onlookers became even more bewildered when…
Joe #12 turned to Joe #5 as best he could, given their present situation, which was basically his foot being in his fellow Joe's ear, and the both of them sandwiched between Joes #3 and #4, Joes #6 through #11, and Joes #13 through #18.
"Hey, they're gonna come back to untie us, aren't they?"
-------------------------------------------------End Notes: Eheh…okay, I decided: the Phantom of the Opera is going to have a bit more of a role than I had anticipated. It's just too silly not to do! And I don't know why I'm developing a bit of a fascination with Nancy being the only one of the lot with a brain, but I guess it kind of works on some level. And it's only until Drake comes back and completely takes over the next chapter to make up, in my fangirlish little mind, for having very little of him in this chapter. :o)