Written back in April, but just now uploaded.
My connection was down for a couple of days there, so I decided to write up a fic idea that my muse had been bugging me about since mid-February but I'd never been able to get started (it's like I know what I want, but I can't get it going). I suppose this should be my last A/R thing, ne? Until IG gives us something "official" (coughbetweengameplotcough), at least. Hey, you can't just completely write out a character...can you?
Each chapter/part is a different time frame or character viewpoint (well, actually, this whole thing's in the third person, but it changes who it focusses on a few times).
Fizzwidget was a booger to characterize. We only see the "real" him (assuming Qwark is the one killing all his words from the beginning of the game) for all of two minutes, and so everything here is just based off Qwark's bad acting and that little snippet of a cameo. So, instead of searching my thesaurus (or my walking, talking dictionary of a friend Kat) for long, obscure words, I just tried to keep a sofisticated aire to him. Did it work?
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply. Mesa owns nada.
Abercrombie Fizzwidget slid his Megacorp identification card through the narrow company door slot. The computer inside beeped momentarily with a cheerfully feminine, "Good morning, Mr. Fizzwidget!" and opened the door for him. It closed a moment later, narrowly missing his posterior.
"Whoops!" he laughed. "I ought to be more careful. Or perhaps I should have one of the technicians install a new motion detector on it so it wouldn't close on me while I was still there..." The thought didn't occur to him to go on a diet. He began to make his morning rounds of the building, taking in the various sights left behind by his many employees. After all, in a company that numbered in the thousands - though there were only a hundred or so who regularly came to this particular building - someone was bound to have left a comical mess of things!
An open door in the genetics division caught his attention. Those doors, of all the doors in the company headquarters, were the most important to keep closed. They were twice as thick as even the doors in the chemical division, so that should a mutant creature break free of its cage, it still had a foot of pure carbonox to break through. Each room also had its own ventilation system to facillitate the spraying of sleeping gas without knocking out the whole sector. Abercrombie murmered to himself about giving the both the geneticists and the night guardsmen good, long lectures on safety - perhaps even sending them to a company workshop on the subject - but after a look inside, he changed his mind.
A Hound of Cuddly Doom snored peacefully in its cage, each breath beginning with a traditional inward snort and ending with a whistled exhale. Its big ears, torn from fights with other hounds, ticked absently at its own breathing. Progress had been made, it seemed: its muzzle was not broken from viscious lunges at the bars; its temperment seemed more normal. In front of the small metal cage, several vials of catalists and restricting agents lay neatly arranged. A microscope was set a few inches in front of that, the petri dish on it clear, but the DNA strands inside were cut to shreds by resticting agents left for too long. And, splattered in a most unruly way before it all, her face half-burried in her gloves, was Angela Cross.
But before he had time to cross the room and wake her, a slightly purring chirp caught his attention. The miniature blue ball of fur hopped over to him and raised itself up on its toes. It opened its mouth in a toothy-but-friendly smile and danced from one foot to the other, begging to be held and petted. Mr. Fizzwidget gladly obliged; it was no secret he liked the Protopet, nor that he had a soft spot for all things small, cute, and fuzzy. Having no children of his own, he treated nearly everyone - from company employees to experimental GMOs - like grandchildren. For this reason Megacorp was never understaffed; prospectives clammored both to work under a kindly boss and for a successful company.
Holding the blue fuzzball in one hand, he gently shook his employee's shoulder with the other. "Ms. Cross? Ms. Cross? Angela, wake up!" She did indeed wake up, and quite suddenly. Her head shot up and she twisted to throw Mr. Fizzwidget's hand from her shoulder in a fit of half-sleep, but ended up falling out of her chair. She blinked up at her boss, at first confused, then embarrassed.
"Sorry, sir. I was working on the Hound project and I must've dozed off." She rubbed her eyes sleepily and stood up on shaky legs, still half-startled and wobbly with adrenaline.
"Quite alright, quite alright," he replied, waving his free hand dismissively. "Do you know what time it was you fell asleep? I'd like to pay you overtime for what you worked."
"I don't know. I..." Angela trailed off. She didn't want to tell him that even though she had been half-dozing since midnight, and fully asleep since three AM, she had been daydreaming for quite some time before that. She had worked tirelessly her entire shift, but after her lab partners went home and were no longer clink-clinking around behind her, her mind had begun to wander. And wander it did. From Greblin to Veldin to Pokitaru, the vacation world she'd only heard of... It seemed to come back to Veldin quite often, however. Back to Veldin, to the Kyzil Plateau, to a small garage on the edge of civilization.
"Well, no matter then." Mr. Fizzwidget's voice snapped her out of her reviere. "How about I give you today off instead? You seem in need of it." He studied her face, and though it was at least a foot above his and of a diffrent species, he could easily pick out that she was not just still sleepy. She was outright fatigued, mentally as well as physically.
"No, no, it's alright. I shouldn't be using company tables for my naps."
"I insist, Angela. You've done more than enough for the company as it is; I don't see why you shouldn't take a holiday here or there. You've got so many sick days and paid holidays saved up, you could take a year off! In fact, why not take a holiday to Veldin? I'll give you the rest of this month off; that should be sufficient time to fly there and back, as well as enjoy yourself for a bit. The heat and dry air might do you some good." 'And perhaps there are other things on your mind as well, my dear. A certain young lombax, perhaps.'
"Veldin? But why - "
"Just a suggestion," he cut her off. No need to tell her he had long ago become suspicious of her affections; this was not the first time she had stayed all night to work, and more often than not, he heard her mumble at least one thing about what sounded an awful lot like Ratchet. "I thought it might do you good...good to be with your own species, yes? Now, go on, go on, be off with you!" He shooed her out the door and went to call a janitor. The table top was covered in a thin layer of drool.
However, Angela did not heed her boss's advice immediately. She flew straight to Greblin and her home on the icy Tundor Wastes. One of the Y.E.T.I.s screamed in rage at her ship, but did not attack. The whole species seemed reluctant to leave the ice fields, no matter what. The strange hippy, her only neighbor for hundreds of miles, lived at the very edge of them and was never attacked, even if he had food cooking and the wind was blowing the scent to the beasts. "Stupid creatures," she muttered, shaking her head. The wind was a little chilly, even to her, and she hurried on into her house.
Inside, she was greeted by her own personal Protopet, one of the millions of copies of the Megacorp original now scattered throughout the Bogon Galaxy. It hopped around enthusiastically, happy to see its master again. She shook her head and laughed slightly at the silly thing; why should it be so happy to see her? Picking her way past it to her bedroom, careful to avoid her sparse furnature with all its rounded-off corners and edges, she began to nose through her closet. "Now where did I put...? Oh, there it is." She pulled her old theif costume, chortling to herself at how rediculous it really looked. A piece of body armor to completely hide her figure, a cape, and a helmet with a mask. Rediculous. There was nothing to steal - she wasn't a kleptomaniac by nature - but it was the only truely concealing piece of clothing she had, and she didn't want to become the talk of the water cooler for the next month and a half. An intergalactic flight could run you into people you never knew worked with you.
Fastening the armor and cape around herself, she began to pack other supplies into two small suitcases. The amount of clothing and toiletries she brought really could have fit in a single large suitcase, but she found it easier to carry two smaller ones, with one on each side so as to have a ballanced load. She placed the two into her small spaceship, then went back for a few food supplies. Bread, butter, milk - only the basics; her onboad refidgerator was very small. Supplementary foodstuffs would have to be bought along the way. There was something to be said of taking a week to fly from one galaxy to the next for a simple vacation. Gathering up her Protopet, as she didn't trust the hippy with a key to her house and couldn't leave it alone for a month, she climbed in the ship and set off.