Dry Mint Ricqlès (with a bonus of Canada Dry)

As soon as he sat down, Rachel raised her communicator up, flipped it to the side, and blinded him with a flash of light.

"Ow!" he instinctively rubbed at his eyes. "You trying to decommission me or something?!"

She smiled apologetically and lowered the device. "Sorry! I'm trying out the PICTOGRAM feature R&D came up with after MySector and Facemodule's coding leaked to the public."

"PICTOGRAM?" Patton raised an eyebrow and then sighed. Not another useless computer 'app' that was quickly becoming a favorite with the younger operatives. Why did everything have to become digital? What happened to things you can physically hold in your hand to talk to people like a WHAT or talking shop directly with a person instead of reading it on someone's social media account?

Thank Zero for small favors. At least Rachel had not lowered herself sending him status updates of drink trivia through the extranet instead of meeting him personally.

"PICTOGRAM. Personnel Images Cross-Referenced To Operatives General RAM And Memory," she elaborated while examining her screen. "After Numbuh 66.4 turned traitor and leaked our social media coding, the adults completely stole our means of personal communication with the likes of MySpace and Facebook."

He growled. "Yeah, I remember that slimeball. The creepazoid rounded me and a couple of cadets up back in the Academy. Said he had the formula for creating 'super soldiers'. Subjected us to all kinds of horrors."

Rachel nearly dropped her communicator into her drink. "I've never heard of that! Numbuh 100 allowed that to happen?!"

He raised up a lazy hand. "Easy there. Numbuh 100 wasn't in charge back then. Believe it or not, there was a time where there were bad Supreme Leaders just as much as there were good ones. Don't really want to call out his codename if that means anything."

"At any rate," he continued before taking a swig of his soda. "66.4 was a freak of a scientist. He made us eat mutated veggies then turned the lights off to 'cure' the fear of the dark. There were only two girls in our 'squad'. One immediately cracked and dropped out after the first experiment. Such a shame. She knew her way around 2x4 tech. A real natural."

The bartender arrived with another round of drinks. It was Rachel's turn to pick out the flavor of the week; she called it a 'refreshing' French spritz that tasted like chewing on a mouthful of breath mints. Her recommendation was to sip it generously like a priss right after he tried gargling it down like Pepsi and ended up igniting his throat with an ice cold sensation for his troubles.

Rachel quietly thanked the bartender and set the highball glasses down for a second round. He'll learn his lesson this time.

"That sounds horrible, Patton. I didn't..." she was projecting again, he could already tell, always internally blaming herself for something that wasn't her fault.

"You weren't even a cadet back then, Rachel. Relax."

"I know that," she murmured and lightly swished the light gold fizz in her drink. "Is that why you hate technology so much?"

Patton bit the inside of his cheek. "I don't hate it. Not really. 2x4 tech's is just as useful as your own fists and they go hand-and-hand to make a KND operative the best. It's just useless shiz I don't like. Like the PICTOCRUD."

She laughed. "PICTOGRAM! And it's plenty useful. It's equipped with specialized filters to enhance or single out particular points of interest in the image. It's perfect for KND Intelligence's arsenal. If I had this back when I was a spy, it would have made missions way more easier to complete. Here, look..."

The squishy seats in the booth shifted loudly when Rachel slid over until they bumped shoulder-to-shoulder. She raised the communicator above and flipped the settings so they could visibly line up for the camera. "Say Kids Next Door Rules!"

The words barely left his lips when the flash went off again. He spat out expletives that would make the Potty Mouth proud and he rubbed at his eyes again.

"Whoops," Rachel rubbed his shoulder with sympathy then rubbing her own eyes. "I'm sorry, I thought I turned off the flash that time."

"Yeah right," he snarked, blinking out the colored spots in his vision when she showed him a slanted picture of them. Rachel was grinning from ear-to-ear in the shot, but his mouth had been hanging open like an idiot trying to spell out Kids Next Door Rules. "Ugh, you better not upload that anywhere! Do another one."

"My, my. Who'd have thunk that Mr. Drill Sergeant was so photogenic?" she chuckled and squashed their sides together again for another shot, this time without flash.

The second one was decent, but something was missing so they ended up making goofy faces or pretending to beat each other up when she put it in shutter mode.

"I like this one!" she said after browsing each shot. Patton finished off his drink before peering over her shoulder and smirked.

"Not bad." Arms slung around their necks, she had propped her communicator against the tea candle so they could show off their drinks before the image snapped. They both sported cheeky grins. "I like how you look like you're ready to fall over."

"And you look a million times better with a filter on!" she teased and sucked in her bottom lip, but it was too late. He already caught her pouting. "See this filter? It sharpens the image and gives it a more timeless look."

"That's ridiculous," Patton rolled his eyes and shook his head. "How's that improving KND work?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "So R&D got a little excited messing with filters. Doesn't always have to be work all the time. I just want... hmm..." Gazing fondly at the picture, she got Patton worried when she smiled sadly. "Maybe I'm just scared a bit. I want a few memories. I know I'm going to lose them in the end, but..."

"Rachel..." he began quietly, but he really didn't know what to say to that except well, stopping her from thinking about bad things. "Alright, alright. You may have a point with this pictogram nonsense. Print me a copy of that. Physical. You know I can't do much with my communicator aside from calling if you try to send it to me."

Her dark expression disappeared and was quickly replaced with that typical beam that stirred lesser operatives into action. "Aye, aye! You should totally frame it and stick it on your desk in Arctic Base!"

"You just love the idea of making my cadets think I'm some kind of softy, don't you?" he accused.

"Yeah, pretty much." She raised her glass to him. "You ARE a giant softy!"

"As if!"

At the very least, no teen would have any use for their PICTOGRAM nonsense, so that kind of worked in their favor. Seriously, who would try to steal something from them already invented like taking pictures?

"They called it Instagram!" Rachel growled one day and slammed her fists on the table. It shook violently enough to startle him. "Can you believe they stole our tech?! AGAIN?!"

"Now I do," he grumbled, stealing back his folder of recruit applications from the table before his quivering drink sloshed all over it. "It's Facebook all over again. I told you these extranet ideas were no good to us!"

Rachel folded her arms and loudly ordered a Canada Dry for her upset stomach, flopping down onto her regular seat with a huff. She had dealt with so much paperwork over the ridiculous leak, it was physically taking a toll on her. "Someone's sabotaging us from the inside, but this time Intelligence has an idea who. Numbuh 2 actually emailed me offering a way to expose them."

"Oh?" While he couldn't wrap his head around coding or hacking, Patton did appreciate a battle whether it was with fists or wits.

"Remember when our extranet video streaming was copied? YouBranch? Well, we've decided to put our best scientists' heads together and purposefully shorten adult attention spans with something like that. The program is designed so that you can only record video for a few seconds and thereby making a fad out of extremely short videos. Numbuh 2's already coding in the details."

Patton wrinkled his nose. "Well that sounds stupid. How could you get adults to limit themselves like that?"

"They like challenges," she pointed out smugly, "so we're giving it to them. It'll be on every smartphone by the end of the month. They'll be so impatient watching longer videos that we'll successfully take back YouTube without a hitch. We're calling it Operation: VINE."

Suffice to say, the adults didn't even bother changing the name this time.