Guevara Penthouse
Seattle, Washington
4:30 P.M. Sunday
Max was sitting down on her bed, pen in her mouth, paper on her computer-programming textbook. She had to think of a plot tonight for her short story English assignment she'd gotten a week before from her professor. It was due Monday, and had to be two double-spaced typed pages. Her outline was no help - the more she thought about the outline's plot, the more she realized it was idiotic and would be impossible to write.
Sighing, she swept her medium-length, darkly golden-brown, curly hair back into a ponytail and gazed out the window. The whole day was dim; it was raining, the sun was gone, and she wasn't using a lamp for light. The music playing on her radio behind her was throbbing, the lyrics provocative. She could feel the bass reverberating through her bed and into her bones.
The setting reminded her of the talk that had been floating around school about the club CRASH, when everyone had first discovered it. The joint was located downtown Seattle, and without realizing it, she began to put pen to paper, not noticing the words flowing easily from the tip as she combined her many experiences into the place's description.
The place was crowded. People were everywhere - some drinking at the bar, looking morosely into their mugs; some out on the dance floor, outfits glittering and gleaming with every movement; some chatting at the tables along one wall. Still others were playing at the old, beat-up Pinball, Foosball, and pool tables.
Neon lights flashed in time to the throbbing, pulsating beat of the music. Lyrics were incomprehensible, lost in the shouts of speech traveling among the bar, tables, and game area.
"Crap." Max gnawed at her pen as she thought. "I need a name." She snorted. "Tch, knowing guy or girl would be helpful." She stopped and thought deeply for a bit. The decision wasn't that difficult to make. "Guy. I'm better at writing from their points of view anyway. Now, as for a name..." She leaned over her bed and opened her door very carefully, as it was nearly five feet away. "MUM!" she yelled down the hallway.
Mercedes poked her head into her daughter's room just seconds later, making Max realize that her mother was probably already heading towards her room, or standing very close by already. "Remember what I said about yelling?" She grinned wryly.
"Yes, Mum," Max cheekily replied, slipping into her British mode for a second. "But I had a question on homework." She shot her mom her most innocent puppy-dog eyes, which she could tell had practically no effect. Damn.
"And...?"
"Oh. Um..." Max's face screwed up, her nose wrinkling cutely. "Right! Um, what was Kevin's uncle's name on his dad's side?"
Mercedes looked surprised at this question, but she answered it anyway. "Louis. Why?"
"Eh, that won't work..." Max stuck her pen in her mouth again, much to the dismay of her mother. Mercedes had hoped that Max would have been more like her father when it came to mouth fetishes, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Between the two of them, no writing utensils in the house were safe.
"Mum?" came Max's inquiring voice.
"Huh? Oh, sorry, babe. Just thinking. What'd you ask?"
"Geez!" Max looked a bit hurt. "What's wrong? You've been ignoring me, or spacing out, or both a lot lately." Her worried, velvet-brown eyes peered deeply into her mother's brandy-coloured eyes. "Is it Manticore?"
Silence.
"Mother!"
"What?" Mercedes snapped. She ran a hand through her hair to get the strays out of her face.
"You're supposed to tell me when a problem comes up about the business!" Max's voice softened slightly as she regarded her frazzled-looking mother with a soft smile. "We've been able to share anything, Mum, and I'd rather like to keep it that way." Her eyes twinkled. "Even past 40."
Mercedes sighed. "Hon, there's nothing you can do about the Manticore organization. They're cruel, heartless people, creating human beings in order for the organizers to rule the world through military prowess."
"That's only the soldiers, Mom. They're the ones who can do the damage," Max pointed out. "And even then, they seriously don't know any better. It's not their fault – it's their programming."
"Yes, well." Mercedes dropped the subject abruptly as she stood up from where she had taken a seat on Max's bed and headed towards the hallway. "Kevin's coming over tonight to help me on research. Are you going to go out with Zack tonight?"
"I've decided against it, actually. I have work to do for my AP English course, which is what I originally brought you in here to ask about. I need a good guy name - and before you ask, 'Louis' just isn't gonna cut it."
"How about 'Blaise'?" Max's mother suggested.
"Wait a sec -- innit that a girl's name?"
Mercedes laughed. "Of course not! It was the name of one of my best friends growing up. Granted, he was gay, but he was most certainly not a girl."
Max burst out in laughter. "Oh my gosh! I didn't know that kind of thing was that well-accepted in the '90's!"
"It wasn't by most, but my friends were obviously okay with it." Mercedes smiled. "Supper will be done soon - I'm expecting Kevin, of course, but I'm going to be ready just in case anyone else shows up."
"Mom?" Mercedes's only daughter dropped the British nickname in her suspicion. "It's not going to be a blind date now, is it?"
"Whatever gave you that idea, love?" Mercedes could only laugh as she dashed out of the room, narrowly avoiding the incoming barrage of pillows and stuffed animals.
"Parents," Max exhaled with frustration, disgust, and a bit of amusement all mixed together. "Now... Where was I?"
Blaise looked around casually, taking in any and all details that he could. Yep, he decided. I could like this place.
He leisurely stepped down the stairs leading from the door, trying to figure out whether he should go straight into dancing or just get a drink first. He knew the liquor would loosen him up substantially, and help him forget his lack of dancing ability, but he still had to drive home.
Bugger.
"Well, this is quite a dilemma..." he mused out loud. He hadn't totally realized he'd spoken when a voice with a Southern accent sounded behind him:
"Dilemma? And why's that, sug?"
Whoa. Surprised, he whirled around, to come face-to-face with a pretty girl. She looked to be about 14 at first glance, but he remembered to never assume all was not as it seemed.
"Tell me about it," Max absently muttered around her pen, distractedly reaching behind her to a knob on her CD player, cranking the volume on her Dark Angel soundtrack. The hip-hop bass beats, haunted harmonies in the background, and the stimulating meaning of the lyrics made a perfect blend. Max was lost in the whirlwind, the paper taking up her entire concentration.
Her hair was a crimson-auburn mix, with the two front-most locks of hair being platinum. There wasn't a dyed quality to any of it, making him wish he knew her beautician. Her skin was flawless - what little he could see, at any rate. She seemed to be covered from head to foot: gloves on her arms and hands where her shirt didn't reach, a scarf around her neck, pants hugging ever-shapely curve of her hips.
Getting back to her eyes, though - a pretty brown-ish green (too brown to be a true hazel) - he realized something. They were too old for one who looked so young. In them, Blaise could have sworn that he could see the contents of his soul reflected back; he could see the world in those murky depths.
Giving himself a shake, he said the first thing on his mind: "Is it natural?"
She looked amused and not offended; a plus in his favor. "Yes. I was involved in an... incident a few years back, and this" - she fingered her silvery locks - "is my trophy." Upon his silence, she asked, "So, handsome, you have a name, or just go by 'Nanashi'?"
"'Nanashi'?" he repeated, slightly puzzled.
"It means 'no name' in Japanese, roughly." She smiled. "Gonna answer my question?"
"Oh!" Blaise was jolted out of his stunned state once again. "Of course! Um... Blaise. I'm Blaise Zabini. What's your name, if I may ask?" He turned on his full charm, hoping to make up for his lack of communication in the initial stages of their conversation.
"I'm Marie."
"Is there an equally beautiful last name to go with the first?" He smiled with what he hoped to be a look to induce trust.
"Nope. Just Marie." She laughed, breaking the slightly tense mood. "Do you want a drink? My treat." Her eyes look younger when she smiles, came his absent-minded thought.
"MAX!" came the bellow from the kitchen area of the Guevara penthouse. It startled her so much the abused pen skidded across the paper, blotting out some of the words.
"Arghhg!" She tossed her book, papers, and pen down onto her coverlet of green, silver, and black dragons and snakes. She wrenched her door open, left it thus, and stomped down the hallway, turning to the right and into the dining room.
"Remember the rule, Mum?" Max asked with false sweetness when she was within normal hearing range. At her mother's blank look, her grin turned predatory. "No yelling in the house." Skipping into the kitchen, she forced Mercedes to quell her murderous rage and urge to commit homicide. Mercedes had said once that her kitchen was her most favored room in the entire penthouse, and if the linoleum was so much as dusty, she went on a killing spree. Outside the kitchen, of course.
"That's not fair, Max, and you know it!" chuckled Mercedes, giving up. She knew that her daughter could outwit her in many things, and this, apparently, was one of them. If I'm not careful, she thought, Max'll take over the business from underneath me. She's not ready for it!
Stamping her fear down, she brought herself into the present, which probably wasn't a good idea. Max was bent over the pots on the stove, and Mercedes could just imagine what she was doing.
"Stop!"
Max whirled, eyes wide. Mercedes pointedly looked at her hand, where fingers were clutched around a bit of the chicken tenders that her mother was making for supper that night to go with the fettuccini alfredo.
"...Stop what, Mum?" Max popped the piece of chicken into her mouth, as if to hide the evidence. "W'a'd I 'o? I 'innit 'o any'ing!" She succeeded in keeping bits of food from flying out of her mouth as she spoke.
Laughing ruefully, Mercedes just threw were hands up in defeat for the second time in ten minutes. "You're impossible!" Her daughter just grinned. "Hehe, now; get out of my kitchen! Go wait for Kevin, Max no baka(1). Shoo! Go!"
Max skipped out of the kitchen happily, despite the insult from her mother. It was said lovingly, anyway, so she didn't mind. Plopping down on the soft, Italian-leather sofa, she flipped on the music, turned on the TV, and took her laptop out from under the cushion by her feet. Getting comfortable, she keyed in the accurate code to get into her hidden files. As she hummed along with the current song, she plugged the modem into the phone jack she and her mother had requested to be placed by the TV and couch.
Idly Max hacked into the TV station, an antique thing existing since pre-Pulse. Keeping the line open and secure (the station had no one onboard who would know how to recognize a hack if it hit them square in the eyes), she got up and hooked the stereo into her computer. She sent the "virus" containing the music and a few images she'd scored through some massive digging on the newly-established Internet into the TV station's mainframe. Soon enough, the boring pictures of lying politicians kissing babies - a trait her mother said that hadn't changed since the early 20th century – was suddenly decorated with dancing chibi Shinigamis wielding thermal scythes(2), her pre-Pulse CD Amethystium odonata playing in the background.
"Hehehe." Max snickered, clearly enjoying the show.
Just then, the buzzer sounded, and she ended the transmission, leaving the reporters to pick up the pieces. She got up and answered the comm.
"Yes? ... Oh, of course Kevin is welcome, Mr. Jones! ... Please, yes, go ahead and send him up ... [laughter] we know, Mr. Jones, and thanks again for looking out for Mum and I. ... Have a great day!" Max ended the conversation at just the right time, because as soon as she let up the button the doorbell rang.
"Kevin!" The man in question found a Max-shaped blur attached to him as soon as the door opened.
"Oof!" His arms snaked around her to hug her in return. "Max, you're getting too old for this!" he smiled.
"Nah. You're just getting out of shape," replied Max cheekily. Taking his bad and coat, she led the way into the penthouse. "Make yourself at home! Mum says that chow'll be ready shortly. It's good, too." Her lips quirked. "I still got it," she proudly stated.
Kevin laughed. "Great! I taught you well, young grasshopper."
"No you didn't. I just learn easily." She plopped down onto her recently vacated place on the couch, having put his coat away while they talked.
Kevin took in the room. As per usual, nothing had changed in the decorations. It was a lovely design that even conformed with the feng shui that had become so popular on the west coast when the room was adorned. The living room was still a warm orange, the metal fixtures a bright gold. The couches were dusky brick red leather that was so soft they made you feel as if you were sitting in a pile of downy feathers. The carpet, thick and plush, was a rich yellowy-cream color, only covering the places where people walked. Wood planking was under the furniture, which was where the modem plug-in was located.
Speaking of modem...
"Hacked into the TV station again, Max?"
Startled, Max looked down from her study of the ceiling. "Nani(3)? I didn't do -- " She spotted her laptop still hooked up to the stereo and the phone jack in the floor. The TV was still on, too. "Ehheh... Um..." She blushed, and suddenly found her old, beaten up pink ballet slippers fascinating.
"Max..." He sighed. "What did I tell you about this?" Kevin watched her face closely.
She didn't look up while she answered. "'Don't hack into something that will cause trouble for the innocent.' But Kev, it was just there, and I was so bored - "
"Hon, I know. But there are rules to be obeyed. You must follow them, or otherwise you'll get into trouble." Kevin patted her knee. "Don't worry. I'll ignore this incident for now, but next time, you won't be so lucky. 'Aiight'?"
His usage of the slang she and her friends used daily shook a laugh out of her. "Yes, Father." she said jokingly. Bending down to unhook the computer, she missed the look of pain that flitted across his face.
"Supper's ready! Max, has Kevin arri -- oh, hi, Kevin!" Mercedes entered the room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a purple hand towel. She smiled broadly. "When did you get here?"
"Oh, I've been here about five, ten minutes. No worries," he finished, standing up to return her hug. "I heard the food is to be excellent...?" Kevin wore a smug smile, a comfortable-looking pair of black jeans, and an emerald green soft cotton shirt. His shoes were an old pair of brown leather moccasins. His coal-black hair, a bit shaggy, hung partially over his brilliant green eyes, which gazed at Mercedes with an adoring cast.
Max missed the looks of love exchanged between the two adults as she dived towards the table laden with food and drink. She was about to start filling her plate with the first layer (the fettuccini noodles) when she was stopped by a swat to her hand with the towel her mother had been using just the minute before.
At her wounded look, Mercedes stated, "Sorry, baby, but wait until we're all seated, please?"
A sigh came from Max. "Okay..."
Mercedes had succeeded, once again, to dazzle Kevin with what she "just whipped up in a few hours." Besides the chicken fettuccini alfredo, there was steamed broccoli, fresh Italian breadsticks - homemade, of course - and a glass of white wine for all of them (even though Max was only 18, at home her mother allowed her to drink sparingly). No one had shown up to join them for dinner, of which Max was very grateful. All of the blind dates her mother had set up for her ended in disaster.
"Well, we're off to the computer room, Max. I need Kevin's input for the Manticore case, along with a few others I can't solve." Mercedes stood up and placed her napkin on the table next to her plate, Kevin following her movement.
"Okay." Max drank the last of her wine and also stood up. "I've got homework to do, anyway."
"All right, well, have doubtful fun. I'll contact you if necessary." They headed in the direction of the computers.
"Geez, Mum, it's not like it's the military or something," muttered Max, putting her jewel-toned sapphire cloth napkin beside her plate as well. She got up and went to the kitchen for a wine cooler. She'll never know.
Back in her room, Max turned her music on and cranked it. She picked up a pair of headphones that were plugged into a suspicious-looking hole in the wall that was hidden by her bed and punched a code into the keypad beside it.
Have you got a better feed, Merche? It was Kevin's voice. Max had bugged the whole penthouse, and the computer room wasn't bereft of its share of the devices.
No! I've been trying for days, but the cameras in Manticore's lab are practically un-hackable.
Have you tried...?
Max tuned out the conversation, content that they were actually working and not making out. According to her, even parents were capable of getting their freak on, no matter how disgusting it seemed. She often wished, though, that they would just stop beating around the bush and get married before the world ended.
Taking her paper, pen, and book in hand again, she started to write again, describing Blaise having a few drinks with Marie before taking her back to his place where, totally unsuspected by her, she was asked if she knew how to hack into a TV station. Upon her answer in the affirmative, she was held at gunpoint by a man that she hadn't even seen in the shadows, forced into a computer chair by another, and instructed to hack in and do whatever her captors said by Blaise. She was also instructed that if she ever told anyone what happened that night, she wouldn't live to be helped.
So, Marie did what they told her; she hacked into the TV station's mainframe and planted a virus. It wasn't an ordinary, I'll-take-out-your-mailbox type of virus. No; instead, it was one that would infiltrate all broadcasts made, and would show specific signals that only certain people understood. These signals would tell the people to come to an arranged destination, where the criminal overlords, the people who kidnapped her, would plan their takeover of the government. Apparently there were thousands of them, because their meeting place was immense.
After Marie was done, they gave her a substantial amount of money to pay her off in order to ensure her silence and dropped her off three blocks away from her home. The next week, Washington, D.C. was utterly destroyed, and anyone even remotely connected with the government (a grandmother of a janitor in the basement of Ford's Theatre, for example) was eliminated. The thugs took over, and Marie never said a word. She didn't have a chance - police found her body in the river the day before the coup (4).
When she was done, her mind seemed to be shaken out of its focused daze, her ears suddenly hearing the music without voices coming from the headphones, her eyes abruptly realizing that they were really dry, and her inner clock immediately sensing that three in the morning was way passed her bedtime.
"Ugh..." Jerkily because she was tired, Max dropped her writing materials onto the thick, green carpet that was her floor and slammed the 'off' switch of her radio, effectively stopping Blink 182's lead singer in the middle of the phrase "rock show." She dragged the covers over her head, forgetting in her exhausted state to turn off the lights.
She woke up late the next morning, having forgotten to set her alarm the previous night. A vulgar expletive rhyming with 'muck' escaped her mouth as Max glanced at her bedside digital clock and flung herself out of bed and into her closet. She rummaged around for clothes, throwing a bra, shirt and pair of pants on with abandon, not caring if they matched. Grabbing the story that she wrote the previous night, she dashed to the kitchen. She snatched a breakfast bar from a cabinet before running out the door, slipping into shoes on the way. A brief silence reigned until the door burst open again, and Max tore her leather jacket from its peg.
"Bye Mum! Love ya!" And the door slammed shut.
In Hurricane Max's wake, a moan from the general direction of Mercedes's bedroom was heard. Hangovers sucked.
A week later
Local public high school
Seattle, Washington
"So, what'd you get?" Original Cindy, Max's best friend, was sitting to her right in their English class. They were able to talk because the teacher was passing out the short stories they'd turned in just the day before.
"Haven't gotten it yet," Max muttered, watching the teacher anxiously. Even though she'd stayed up to three in the morning handwriting the rough draft and had to rush before school to get it typed, she thought she'd done a really good job on it. And here, the teacher was taking her own sweet time getting it back to her.
Waiting was most definitely not one of Max's strong points.
As it turned out, hers was on the bottom of the pile. The teacher appeared above her, and when she gave it back, she didn't offer a comment, unlike she had done with the other students. Feeling somewhat rejected, Max glanced dismally at her paper, intending to put it in her folder immediately. Instead, the massive amounts of writing in red at the top of the page caught her eye.
Max, your story is completely implausible. Even with our government in the slump that it is, it could still withstand an attack from the inside, even of that magnitude. Your story is still 'A' material, but next time, please try to follow the guideline: a true story next assignment would be more conducive to your grade.
"Pfft." Max showed the writing to Original Cindy, who simply raised her eyebrows because talking wasn't allowed once lecture began, and thrust the story into her bag by her feet. She never liked this teacher anyway.
When she arrived at the penthouse, she marched directly into the computer room and shoved the bundle of papers and ink under her mother's surprised nose.
"Read. Now. Tell me it's good." Her tone brooked no argument.
By the end of the story, her mother's face had gone white as a sheet, much to Max's confusion. When she asked what was wrong, Mercedes's voice shocked her to the core. It had the most frightened tone to it; one Max hadn't heard since they had almost been robbed and her mother had to face the would-be criminal out with her handgun.
"Honey... Were you by chance listening into the conversation Sunday night between Kevin and me?" Mercedes flicked her eyes between Max's, her voice breaking on every other syllable. She'd never seen her mother this scared, and it prompted her to tell the truth, even though she really wanted to keep it a secret.
"...I have the entire place bugged. I listened in to see if you guys weren't making out or something similar" - here Mercedes's face regained some of its color due to flushed cheeks - "but then I tuned it all out while I concentrated on the story. Why?" Now Max was worried. It was just a school project...! What did I do wrong?!
"I can't lie to you and you know it." Mercedes took a deep breath before continuing. She pointed at the mass of papers in her hand. "This is actually happening. I received wind of it about five days ago. A gang down in west Seattle is looking for the person who keeps interrupting the TV signals from the scheduled programming, sending out music and dancing characters." She intensified her search of her daughter's face, now turned slightly away, and saw the precise moment when it all hit home.
"Oh, my God." Max's eyes glazed over when they met her mother's. "They're after... me."
(1) 'Max no baka' is Japanese for 'Max is a stupid.' It's used here, however, to mean 'Max you idiot.' I figure Japanese has become a rather popular language among the "upper classes." Funfun! ^^
(2) 'Chibi Shinigamis wielding thermal scythes' means 'little gods of death handling poles with curved jets of laser energy in the form of scythes.'
(3) 'Nani?' is Japanese for 'What?'
(4) 'Coup [coo],' as defined by Webster's Dictionary, means 'a brilliant, sudden move that is usually highly successful.'
Author's Note: Y'know what's crazy? I at first thought that this thing was longer than any other chapter so far, but guess what? Chapter two is the longest, coming in at 4,237 words. This thing is only 4,059 words. Totally crazy! Hehe. Anyway, this is chapter six. Love it? Hate it? Just want to read it? Go ahead! I don't block people from viewin' my work. ^.~v Sorry for the delay, though – I've had this done since July 26th, and I just kinda…forgot about it once it was done, ehheh heh…. ^^;
Oh, hey, One last thing (disclaimer here, too): This is kinda a silly chapter. Kinda. The main male character in the club scene is from the Harry Potter books. If you read the books and fic, you'll know that Blaize/Blaise (no one remembers) Zabini is the Slytherin character of whom no one knows the gender. In this he's male, but that doesn't mean I own him. He's very much the property of JKR. Just as much, the main female character in the club scene isn't mine, either. She belongs to Marvel Comics as the X-Man Rogue, a.k.a. Marie. Just so ya know. ^.~v A more extensive disclaimer is at my personal archive for this fic: http://www.angelfire.com/wa/DesertRose/reverse/index.html Click on "Disclaimer" and yer set. ^^ Oh, and yes, the soundtrack that Max listens to is also most definitely /not/ mine. You'll see why I say this after you read it. *snicker*
Tschau!
Lanna