Just a Bit Harder Than Usual

"Are you sure you will be all right?" Aunt Suraiya asked.

Raika nodded tersely. "Yes," he responded.

Like his aunt, he was not speaking the common language of Sharo, but the ancient language known by a much lesser amount of the residents. He had grown up with it, as had his aunt and uncle, and so therefore hardly noticed any change in between the two languages at all.

What he did notice was that while his aunt's voice seemed concerned, her face did not seem as much. He was a soldier, after all. Even though he was still a minor and would have a while to earn actual rankings in the military, he had been on many long and difficult missions just like many others who were all older than him.

Plus, as the chief of the Sharian net police, his uncle was a likely target. Therefore, his home had more security that several others in the base, including cameras stationed in most of the rooms with security navis- better ones than the lower level generic type- that would be quick to report any sort of quirk or misconduct that could possibly cause any sort of harm.

With all of these assets combined, surely, him just having an insignificant cold of all things in his aunt and uncle's home, rather than another mission in the harsh snowy terrain of Sharo, he would be just fine.

. . . Right?

Suraiya smiled, then thankfully did not linger. Raika merely gave a simple salute, after which his aunt quickly left and he heard the front door close behind her with no further ado.

He did not know that his aunt later laughingly assured her friend that her somewhat sick nephew would be just fine, due to his ever watchful net navi.

Raika sighed, not even looking at the door after hearing it automatically click shut. There was no way that it could be even accidentally be left partially open.

Despite his aching head, he went toward the pantry for several of the ingredients to make biscuits as part of supper later, which his prestigious uncle was actually going to be home for. Several nights a week he was kept at the main building for various major viruses or otherwise that plagued the area. If nothing else major came up within the next half hour, then he would be home in about double that time.

Raika sighed, attempting to not massage his forehead as he gathered the flour and other such ingredients from the pantry and the cupboards nearby, then the milk from the fridge. He was glad that at least he was making something familiar. Suraiya had also made a creamy chicken and vegetable sauce earlier, and it was staying heated in the crock pot.

Though he would vehemently deny it to anyone else than perhaps Searchman, his navi that had become his best friend, he truly did want to just sleep at the moment . . .

But that was completely beside the point. He was on this "mission" that he had agreed to two weeks prior. Mundane as it was, he was not making something just for himself, but the chief of the net police.

Plus, when one was at a military base, sometimes it seemed that they were never truly off duty, after all.

At one point, he had heard his Aunt Suraiya sigh and tell her husband that he was much too serious for his age, but Raika was now not particularly sure how to behave otherwise around other people. He was plainly used to military behavior as he had enrolled in the junior department at age seven. (Part of that was "not" to get away from his parents. No, "not at all". Despite what his oldest aunt and uncle thought, he never did get along with them. . . to say the least. He was quite glad that he did not see them often anymore.)

Raika almost automatically poured in the flour in the small mixing bowl, and then reached for the smaller powders. He then frowned, realizing that he had somehow forgotten the baking powder.

The cupboard with it was nearby, and he reached for the container, uncharacteristically rubbing his tired eyes with one sleeve.

"Raika, that's the baking soda."

Raika blinked, hearing Searchman's voice from his PET. He then looked at the container in his right hand. Sure enough, the label was not the one that he was after.

Sighing, he put back the container and looked more carefully at the label of the container to the left before grabbing it.

He was lucky- though rather irritated at his own abnormal inattentiveness- that Searchman warned him before he made several mistakes in the simple recipe. The dough was saved from being too sweet by him almost using the tablespoon instead of the teaspoon for the sugar; he nearly poured in too much milk- which would have been solved by adding more flour, but more work involved than necessary; he starting rolling the dough too thin for the first round of biscuits; and before that, realizing that the shortening was almost out and he had to get some more from the basement storage, and then nearly fell down the stairs in a short dizzy spell.

Raika was rather glad at that point that Searchman had been quick to remind him that there were handrails on the stairway, even though his left wrist was a bit sore afterword.

He was about to cut the first few biscuits when he heard a loud thump on the door. Raika frowned a bit, but did not worry about it. There were several active children that lived nearby that were the offspring of some higher ranking officers (or in the case of two of the houses, nieces and nephews), and occasionally a ball or a Frisbee managed to whack against the side of the house. The thump had sounded like that type of toy.

Annoying as it was, he could just ignore it. Most likely the sound was nothing to worry about, and definitely not hard enough for another dent in the door, as he had heard Suraiya say had occurred at one point.

Less than half a minute later, though, he heard shouting, then frightened screaming from outside, followed by a couple of more thunks on the door. Raika frowned, in the middle of taking the cut biscuits out of the first round of rolled out dough.

He put down the soft biscuit he was holding and washed his hands briefly before practically storming toward the door. Raika unlocked the door and opened it. A small colored ball rested on the porch. Outside on the sidewalk, there was a group of children in a ragged circle. He assumed that at least one of them in the group had been the thrower.

Raika huffed. "You ought to know not to play like that around here!" he irritably called out. "Go somewhere else!"

He was speaking more harshly than he perhaps should- he knew that- but he was quite tired . . .

Raika made a large sweeping motion with his arm, and all but one of the kids quickly ran away. The girl left looked at him with an odd expression on her face, before running up to the porch and hastily grabbing the ball. She then dashed off in the opposite direction that the other kids had gone.

Raika wondered a bit at the girl's strange expression, but quickly forced the thought away.

He had just closed the door, when Searchman spoke up again. "Raika, you were speaking ancient Sharian."

Raika then felt his face flush a bit, and resisted putting a hand over his eyes.

"Of course," he intoned, quite embarrassed. The kids outside perhaps even thought him a deranged brute of some sort.

He had no idea that he had actually stopped the bullying of the lingering younger girl, due to accidentally fulfilling a frightening story told by another lesser victim student at their school just earlier that day.

Raika returned his attention to the biscuits, pulling out the last from the first rolled out dough. Searchman then warned him against him about nearly knocking the container of flour onto the floor with his elbow, which had somehow moved precariously near the edge. Raika moodily caught the container before it fell, and set it back firmly onto the counter before picking up the rolling pin. He had again floured the pin and was about to roll out the dough for the second round of biscuits, when the phone on the wall interrupted him.

Sighing, he went toward the phone. He did not recognize the number on the small screen, but generally his uncle's home was protected against scam calls. Raika picked up the receiver to hear an unfamiliar voice that tiredly asked if a kid named Margaret had finished painting the blueberries yet- or that was what he thought he heard. It was quite probable that he either did not know the situation, or his hearing was getting quite muddled with his cold.

"Sorry, you have the wrong number," Raika responded wearily, and hung up.

He then heard Searchman speak again. "Raika, that was-"

"I was speaking the wrong language again?" he interrupted, sighing as his headache pulsed some more. Someone that did not know ancient Sharian could have thought they had either gotten a foreigner, or even the wrong country somehow.

He did not know speaking that language on the phone call was the last in a set of queer events that would lead the caller to talk to his youngest sister for the first time in years.

Less than a minute later- and nearly dropping several of the biscuits on the floor- he heard the phone ring a second time. Raika scowled this time, very much wishing that he was allowed to have Searchman temporarily disable the phone. Unfortunately, he recognized the number this time.

"Yes, residence of Chief Malenkov," he stated, hoping that the caller was not a certain annoying someone that was around his age.

At least he did not have to worry about language this time, though. All of his family had been speaking ancient Sharian as long as he had.

Instead of the cousin he had been expecting, though, an older female's voice responded. Raika then was quite confused, as he could not immediately place the speaker, though they seemed vaguely familiar.

"Hello, have you heard of the blue region program that recently was corrupted by hackers?" the voice asked briskly. "I hope that you have not gotten ahold of it yet. Security breaches are quite common, especially in mines in the northern part of Sharo."

Raika just barely resisted rolling his eyes and settled for glaring at the receiver. "I certainly hope you, or especially your net op's siblings, have not heard of it either," he snapped, before hanging up.

"That was Marta's navi, I presume?" Searchman asked, naming Raika's youngest female cousin.

Raika nodded wearily. "Yes, I recognized the voice partway into the call," he responded. He then scowled again. "Absolutely ridiculous. I can only think that Marta's siblings somehow convinced her and her navi to participate in one of their incompetent pranks. Though I wonder how they knew I would be the one to pick up the phone."

"I do not have the answer to that," Searchman stated, sounding apologetic.

Raika sighed. "It's fine," he replied. "My main goal currently is to get through the rest of preparing supper without any more mistakes."

Unfortunately, he had only just picked up the rolling pin before the phone rang yet again. The number was not one he recognized this time, though he wondered if that was good or bad luck.

He was soon frowning at the phone again at yet another slightly familiar voice, this time male. Raika hung up the phone with more force than necessary.

"I should hope that my cousins and their navis would have more to do than this sheer idiocy of making prank calls," he stated, though with less force than he felt as his head started to pound again.

Raika then felt a slight bit of vertigo return, and braced his hand against the wall. The unwelcome sensation soon passed, but he just wished that he could just go back to the task in the kitchen and have it done with already.

"Would you like me to do something?" Searchman suggested.

Raika stared, both a little surprised and contemplative at the same time.

He then smiled a bit despite his cold. "Yes, I suppose just this once," he stated. "Their pranks have gotten more tiring over the years, after all."

"Yes, it had seemed that way," Searchman agreed friendlily.

Raika jacked his navi into the phone server, and then went back to the biscuits. He had just placed the last biscuit, formed from the last part of the dough and therefore a bit harder to shape, onto the glass pan, when he heard the familiar voice from his PET.

Raika went to the phone and jacked his navi out. "Was it a success?" he asked once Searchman was safely back in the device, though he knew the probable answer.

Predictably, Searchman nodded. "Yes, I believe so," he responded. "I do not think that you will be bothered by any more pointless calls tonight, at least from them."

Raika chuckled a little. "Excellent," he stated. "Though of course I do not plan on making this protocol for this type of situation."

"I didn't think so."

Raika inwardly smiled, thinking briefly of two certain young Netopian net savers, and how especially one of them would be quite surprised, to say the least, about him and Searchman actually pranking anyone at all. Certainly his rule-abiding uncle would not approve of it.

. . . Though at least the former definitely did not know how many times he had been pranked himself, no matter how many times he had attempted to avoid such jokes. Actually, he did not think he had ever mentioned to them about having any cousins in the first place, though they both know about his chief uncle.

Raika asked what Searchman had done, and he listened to the brief summary as he put the biscuits into the heated oven.

After the oven timer went off, and the hot bread was put to cool on the stove top- he made sure twice that he had actually turned off the oven- and then after yet another vertigo spell, he reluctantly adhered to his navi's suggestion that he work on a small task on his laptop on the couch, rather than at the counter.

Raika wearily sat on the couch with his laptop, intending on finishing an assignment even though the report was not due until next week.

He did not know that in an hour and a half, both his aunt and uncle had not only finished their supper after returning home, but had also gone through the replay from the camera footage of what had occurred while his aunt had gone out for a bit.

Unlike what many officers thought incapable of him, Chief Malenkov was laughing heartily. His wife looked in the direction of the room that her husband had gently placed their deeply sleeping prestigious nephew in about half an hour before.

She then looked back at her husband. "See, I knew that Raika would be safe with Searchman watching him," she stated happily, laughing a bit herself.

"Oh, yes," Chief Malenkov agreed. "From flour and pesky cousins alike!"


Thanks to Starsoarer for helping to edit this story.