A/N: I was inspired by this little gem on the way out to the Dark Angel Gathering 2005 in Vancouver. Long trip….just a couple little problems. Thanks as usual to Alaidh for betaing.
-0-0-0-0-0-
"He said it was going to be an easy mission," Max grumbled to herself as she paced back and forth in front of an airport ticketing agent. "Just get in, get the disk, and you get a nice flight back to Seattle. Well, he can kiss my ass if he ever thinks I'm going through this again."
Just a few extraordinarily long days before, Logan had called Max with another of his "urgent save the world quests," to which she had foolishly agreed to participate in. Hitch a ride in the cargo hold of a Class A dirt bag's luxury private jet. Snoop around and see what exactly he's transporting. Follow him back to his home/headquarters, and steal the set of disks containing his financial info, employee roster, other associations, and whatever else she could find on any of his assorted evil deeds.
It all sounded so simple at the time. Max's first mistake, thinking that. Her second mistake, by her reckoning, was that she didn't tell Logan to shove it the minute he'd asked her to help him.
She had no difficulties skulking around the personal airport of one "Mr. Smith." Her stealth and training enabled her to figure out exactly which private cargo jet was scheduled for takeoff that night (as Logan had conveniently neglected to mention that the Class A dirt bag had a veritable fleet of cargo planes). She stole into the hold just as the plane was lifting off, unbeknownst to the idiot pilot and brainless bodyguards that were flying up in the small passenger cabin. It was in the cargo hold that she had come face to face – literally – with the cargo.
It was chickens. Fifty feathery, clacking, clucking, squawking, shitting chickens.
Not that Max didn't like chickens...as long as they were suitably de-feathered and smothered in some tasty sauce. She just didn't particularly care to room with fifty of them for six hours in a stuffy cargo hold while they headed towards the east coast.
The chickens didn't seem to be particularly taken with Max, either. They likely sensed her feline DNA, and decided that she was someone more interested in eating them rather than leaving them alone. Not that that wasn't particularly wrong. She was interested in eating them. Just not at that moment. The herd of chickens had taken it upon themselves to complain about her presence at the top of their chickeny lungs the entire trip, coupled with the fact that a few of the more intelligent fowl had escaped their pathetic cages and proceeded to peck at her for hours.
Max fought her instinct to just snap their scrawny little necks and be done with it. However, she didn't want to give away the fact that she had stowed away in the hold, so she was forced to just deal with it. Although, and she smirked remembering, that there were a few chickens who might never cluck the same way ever again.
She had managed to sneak out of the plane shortly after landing. It was only when she was back in fresh air that she realized that she smelled like a large pile of chicken shit. She would have killed – preferably a few chickens – for a shower, but the bodyguards had quickly divided up into a team to remain with the chickens, and a team to rendezvous at headquarters. Max was disgusted to realize that she had to follow them immediately, or potentially lose her lead.
Granted, the true objective of the mission was a success. She had managed to steal quite a nice little cache of information for Logan. It turned out that the chickens each contained a large portion of cocaine and other assorted illegal drugs that were being trafficked towards the east. A return shipment would have the methamphetamines that were currently the rage on the west coast. She also obtained a lot of the financials and other miscellaneous information that would allow Logan to severely incapacitate the ring…at least until some other chunk of scum decided to pick up where this one left off.
The newest problem seemed to be getting home. Since neither Logan nor Max could predict when she would be able to complete her objective, Logan had just handed her a credit card with one of his aliases – a female alias, which she prayed with all of her might he had never actively used when he was in the field – and told her to find some cheap non-cargo hold flight whenever she was done.
Instead of snapping the necks of chickens, Max now had a few other necks in mind to snap – beginning with the desk clerk who was doing her best to make the rest of Max's life as miserable as possible. With a seemingly frantic amount of typing, Mindy the Clerk smiled the most cheesy and utterly despicable smile she'd ever seen. Max was nearly willing to hunt up Lydecker and turn herself over to his brain washing team if it meant she didn't have to look at it for a second longer. "We can send you through Petersburg, and then up to Philadelphia, across Peoria, down to Pheonix, and then send you straight up to Portland from there."
Max just stared at the woman in disbelief. "I am not interested in conducting a study of cities beginning with P today. I want a flight. A flight. Single, uno, one. From here directly to Seattle."
Mindy managed to look insulted even through the grin. "It's direct to Portland from Pheonix, and then it's nothing less than a small hop to Seattle."
She can't be this dense on purpose. Not even lead is this dense. "Here to Seattle. One trip, Mindy." Max tried to put on her own shining display of teeth to win over the clerk, but it came out more as a grimace than anything else. "I know you can do it." Finally, she huffed a breath and leaned over the counter, grabbing Mindy by the neatly starched lapels. "Please, I'm begging you. Whatever it takes. Direct flight."
Mindy calmly peeled Max's hand off her lapels, and went back to typing.
Max rolled her eyes and walked towards the view screens. The majority of them seemed to be up and running, and she could clearly see Seattle listed for fourteen different times for the carrier she was talking with. The other carriers in that particular airport wouldn't be able to fly out until the next day. That was simply unacceptable. She wanted to give Logan a piece of her mind as soon as possible – along with her laundry bill.
Max had yet to get that shower.
"Seattle!" Mindy exclaimed proudly.
Max zipped back over to the desk and pounced. "That's it! If it's Seattle, and it's today, it's mine," she growled.
"Yeah, it's yours," Mindy blinked, taking a slight step back. "You'll have to run to make it, though."
"Run? I still have to go through security."
"Better hurry up," she said facetiously, as she passed Max her ticket.
Max took a quick glance at the ticket and sprinted off, thankful she didn't have any luggage to check. The plane was leaving in twenty minutes, and the line for security was huge. People seemed to be moving at a snail's pace, as they were stopped and scanned. She noted that the people didn't seem to be harassed quite as often here as they do in Seattle, and decided that the long-term effects of the Pulse must just be seen in a different manner. After a few minutes, she finally reached the gate. The attendant verified her picture on her "i.d." and compared the name to the ticket. Logan's source for i.d.'s held up as the attendant made no mention or complaints. Max stepped through the metal detector at the guard's direction.
A loud beep sounded. The guard motioned her back. "Empty out your pockets, please."
She furrowed her brows in confusion as she went through her pockets. They were completely empty with the exception of her id, credit card, and a few loose bills, all of which she dutifully dumped into the tray. She walked through again.
Beep.
"Son of a bitch!" she exclaimed, eyeing the machine as stepped backwards and through once more.
The guard rolled his eyes and motioned her off to the side. He pulled out a small wand and waved it up and around her. When he came to her neck, the wand let out a shrill beep. The guard just shrugged. "Been abducted by aliens lately?"
Max had by that point realized what was causing the beeping. Only she couldn't tell the guard that it was indeed an implant of sorts. She just tried to laugh it off, saying, "Yeah, I guess." She quickly scooped her money out of the tray and ran off towards the gate. She got there just as the flight attendant was closing the door. Max shoved her ticket at the woman and quickly walked down the ramp.
In the plane, Max glanced at her ticket stub and up at the numbers lining the aisles. There seemed to be people smashed into every seat. Max finally got to the back of the plane, and realized that her row was directly in front of the lavatory. She looked at the seats, and sighed. The middle seat was the only one open, between two rather…large…individuals. Neither seemed interested in moving, so she carefully maneuvered by and squeezed herself in the middle. She was now resigned to the fact that if she ever saw Mindy again, she was going to kill her in a very slow and painful manner.
Two hours later, she realized that it wasn't Mindy she was going to kill. After all, the poor idiot had done nothing but what she'd requested – get her on a plane to Seattle. No, the real villain here was Logan. She was going to kill him at the first opportunity. Between the man on the aisle, who leaned over her lap ever 10 minutes to see if the view in the window had changed, and the man in the window seat, who had fallen asleep on her shoulder (Max swore he was drooling), she was entirely miserable. And it was all Logan's fault. If only she could make him as miserable as she. She sighed and wedged herself out from between the two men, reaching for a magazine.
She flipped through the magazine quickly, and realized it was a catalog. As she looked at some of the strange crap they had for sale, the phone in the back of the seat caught her eye. Suddenly, she became aware of the credit card in her pocket.
Logan's credit card.
Max grinned a very sadistic grin.
-0-0-0-0-0-
Logan wheeled into his computer room, swearing he'd heard something, and thought that Max might be back. He didn't see her there, but neatly stacked on his desk were a few small disks. He wondered why Max didn't stay, but figured she might be a little tired from the long trip.
A few days later, he still hadn't heard from her. He was really curious to hear about her adventures with a bunch of chickens. He'd paged her several times, but all of his messages went unanswered. He'd gone to Jam Pony to try to hunt her down, but everyone shrugged and said she was out on runs. Logan got the vague feeling that the bike messengers were running interference for her. He gave up and went back to his apartment. On his front door was a note from Bling.
Logan, there's been some package deliveries for you. Be careful coming in. – B
Logan frowned. "Deliveries?" Turning the door knob, he had a sinking feeling as he remembered that he still needed to get the credit card back from Max. Sure enough, as he opened the door, his new fear was realized.
Apparently, Bling had – gleefully, likely – taken some time to unpack all of the boxes, which must have taken him a while. All around the apartment were piles of complete crap. Tents, tables, dog beds, log holders. On the dining room table were some smaller items, such as a comb guaranteed to regrow hair, blackhead removers, and creams guaranteed to reduce wrinkles. He moved further in, and noticed, of all things, a giant ceramic sumo wrestler. "What the hell happened here?" he wondered aloud. He noticed a note on top of a small box. The box contained "The World's Largest Crossword Puzzle." He peered at the note.
Logan, next time, you deal with the chickens. Maybe after you finish this puzzle, we can talk, but until then, I don't want to even see you around. – Max.
Logan looked at the instructions for the puzzle. The estimated time for completion was months to a year. He whistled low under his breath, wondering what the chickens had done to Max. He then decided that he'd better get started, and looked at the first question.