"You're here super early. And I see it's back to the blouses again," Angela said as Shilloh showed up in the lab, once again kicking her shoes into their usual corner.

"Yeah, I promised the boys cookies for today. I made enough for everyone, though," she replied, handing Angela a batch, and then looking into the plastic bag she was holding, she grabbed two more, handing those to Angela as well, "those are for Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth."

"Wow, looks like you had a quiet weekend," Angela commented, taking the top off of her batch and grabbing a cookie.

Shilloh hummed in response, then replied, "these were therapeutic angry cookies though."

"You made me angry cookies? After I shared my lunch with you?" Hodgins said as he and Zach showed up, both carrying containers with some form of bug in them.

"It was never agreed upon in what condition the cookies had to be made. You simply assumed home made automatically correlated with love," she pointed out as she placed the largest two batches at Jack and Zach's stations respectively; she then looked around for a place to throw the plastic bag away while holding a smaller baggie of cookies.

"Also, I have some extras here in case I missed anyone," Shilloh held them out next to her as she turned to her left to throw the plastic bag in the trash. Angela grabbed them from her before she lost her balance.

"Dr. Goodman would like them, I'm sure," she said.

"Dr. Goodman?"

"He's the administrator," Hodgins supplied, "and why are my cookies angry cookies?"

"How can cookies be angry?" Zach asked before Shilloh could respond to Hodgins.

"It was a form of therapy- I was very angry and so I decided to make a lot of cookies; the act of measuring everything out and mixing everything together worked very well as a type of meditation. And I was angry because I was harassed at dinner last Friday," she answered both questions, stealing a cookie from Zach because she knew he, unlike Hodgins, wouldn't complain about it.

"I see, so they are called angry cookies because you were angry when you made them," he deduced.

"Yes. Much like when you say something is made with love; only it's more aesthetically pleasing to say something like 'angry cookies,' as apposed to 'cookies made with anger,' plus, it's shorter to say, too," she stole another cookie and was about to grab a third before Zach slid the container onto the other side of his desk.

"You were harassed?" Angela asked, trying not to let herself get hung up on the idea that flashed through her head, 'Made with Mother's Anger!'

"Don't worry, I slapped the guy," Shilloh nodded, pushing herself up onto Zach's desk and swishing her feet back and forth.

"Wait- what?" Hodgins was paying attention now, looking up from the container holding the bugs he had gathered.

"Friday night we went out to some over-priced boring restaurant that happened to have a dance floor; there was a guy that asked me to dance, I said no. When I got up to leave, he touched my butt, so I slapped him," she said, looking only at Angela. She was still angry about what had occurred, but she was also a little embarrassed to talk about it in front of her guy friends. "I was still angry about it on Saturday, and thus, angry cookies."

Hodgins, to her amusement, actually looked relieved at her story, and then settled into anger. "When you said you'd slapped the guy I thought you meant he'd tried to take more liberties than just that. And for the future, if that ever happens again, skip slapping and just punch," he said, trying out a cookie; "although, these cookies do taste spectacular."

She smiled at him, and in a very condescending tone, said, "of course they are, I made them, and I am naturally gifted at everything I do," she nodded over at him from her perch atop Zach's desk, striking a regal pose.

"That is not statistically possible," Zach said, pushing her legs out of the way so he could open a drawer.

"Zach! You're horrible for my self-esteem!" She complained, and when his lips quirked up slightly, she made a face over at him and said, "the next time I make cookies, everyone else is going to get a sampling of my favorite kinds, and you are going to get just plain old sugar cookies!"

"I like sugar cookies," he said, before turning away from her and towards the metal table that now housed the completed skull of Mary Whiteland; it was time to begin placing markers on.

Shilloh slumped over amongst the laughter of both Angela and Hodgins, before deciding she had best get off to work. Stealing one last cookie from Zach, she slipped on her shoes and waved goodbye, making sure Zach could see that she had taken a cookie; and then she made the trip to her office, munching happily as she went.

OOO

She had been just about ready to leave for lunch when Cherryl cornered her, her face completely blank except her lips, which quivered slightly. It scared Shilloh; they looked like two large purple bugs wrestling each other.

"The files on the brochure project are a complete mess," she started, and Shilloh had to think a minute before remembering that yes, she had sent that project off last Friday. Cherryl continued, "Print's complaining that they have missing links; which they didn't realize until after a trial print. They're saying that even if they discount the missing files, several of the ones they do have are too small a resolution to print properly," her lips quivered again, and Shilloh wondered at why Cherryl would choose such a vivid shade of plum purple lipstick.

"But I packaged all the files; I even sent a high-quality print PDF just in case. And I didn't make the files- I was told they were already edited, all I essentially had to do was place them," she defended herself, not quite understanding why Cherryl had come to her with the problem- this was an image problem, which she hadn't had any part in. She had simply used them in her design of the brochure.

Of course, she probably should have noticed that the resolution was too low; why hadn't she noticed that? She tried to think back on any of the poorer-quality pictures she'd worked with, but she couldn't remember a single one that had looked pixel-y.

"Well I don't know where the problem came from then, but you need to have it fixed before five tomorrow," and then Cherryl stalked away, her purple lipstick matching her purple heels.

"Jesus H. Christ," she sighed, before deciding it could wait until after lunch; she was positive that she had sent a packaged file.

OOO

"Today I will make Batman with my string cheese!" Shilloh announced as she skipped up the steps; she'd had a lot of time to think it over on the trek to the lab, and had come to the very serious conclusion that her lunch needed more action heroes.

"String cheese and an apple for lunch again?" Angela asked as she let Shilloh in, clear disapproval in her voice.

"It's not the only thing I eat during the day- I get hungry before coming here and eat my sandwich at my desk," she tried to defend herself. It was a complete lie, but she didn't want Angela to know just how strapped for cash she was; and it wasn't as if she was starving herself, she always ate something for breakfast and dinner, too.

"Cheesy Batman? Holy original ideas, Robin!" Hodgins called from above Shilloh and Angela; him and Zach already being at the usual lunch spot.

"How very puny of you, Jack. And I think all of those sentences usually ended with Batman, not Robin," Shilloh yelled back, following Angela up the stairs, the two exchanging amused but exasperated looks.

Shilloh flopped herself onto the couch gracelessly, limbs flailing about however they pleased, and sighed comfortably as she settled herself in. Turning to her right, she tucked her feet up under herself and looked over at Zach, scrunching her nose in thought.

"You eat macaroni and cheese for lunch every day," she stated.

"Yes."

"I just now got your nickname."

Zach looked at her for a moment, not quite sure what she meant; apparently she understood that he was confused, because she expanded on her statement, "Zackaroni. Like macaroni- I just now got it," she said.

Apparently done with the conversation, she moved her legs to lie between them, and began eating her apple as she tried to decide how she was going to create her Batman masterpiece.

"Hodgins is that all you're going to eat for lunch?" Angela asked, trying to sound like she was scolding him and failing.

"What? They're good, and burritos can keep for a couple days in the fridge," he replied, grabbing another cookie, moving his pile away when Angela tried to grab one, "go grab your own, I know she made you some," he said in response to her frown.

"Guys, I can't remember how long his cape is," Shilloh interrupted before either of them could devolve into petty squabbling. When neither one seemed inclined to answer her, she continued, "this is serious business here. How are my abilities as an artist supposed to be taken seriously if I cannot accurately portray Bruce Wayne's Batman costume?"

"You're portraying it in string cheese. I think that ship sailed long ago," Hodgins said, fishing around for a cookie with more chocolate chips than the others.

Zach was highly confused by the conversation, and he wanted to ask several clarifying questions, but this time he decided to try and pay more attention to how Shilloh and Hodgins were saying things than on exactly what they were saying.

He had managed to deduce, that while the conversation held some form of light banter and over-all meaning, it was essentially just 'random,' things that Shilloh had decided to say, and Hodgins would intermittently decide to make fun of (in fact, he had figured out long ago that most of what Shilloh said was metaphorical and random in some form or another. The only reason it did not frustrate him was because she was usually able to clarify for him when he asked, which meant that she at least wasn't speaking nonsense).

He wasn't really certain, but he thought that it was maybe a good thing when Shilloh laughed after Hodgins made fun of her; and he knew it was for sure a good thing when Hodgins complemented her cheese Batman and took a picture of it with his cell phone.

It seemed to him that the two of them were definitely friends, but it came as a complete surprise to him when she turned to him with a large smile and demanded that he complement her Batman as well.

"A forced complement would not be sincere," he said, blinking once, twice, before realizing she was doing that random joke thing with him; he looked over at her food art and had to concede that it did actually look good, in an odd fashion. "However, I would have complemented it had you not asked me to," he said, and felt good when her smile turned from what he would catalogue from now on as her 'comical smile' to her truly happy smile.

It made reading people easier if he was able to catalogue bits of them, but people had the tendency to change suddenly and surprise him. Even still, he had found it surprisingly easy to begin his process with Shilloh.

She was a very animated person who seemed to have no problems with showing that to the world; he had noticed it when he had been piecing together Mary Whiteland's skull. Shilloh had been very quiet, but her eyes had scrunched themselves up, smoothed themselves out, squinted one at a time, closed and widened. It was as if her face animated itself to her thoughts- it had made it very easy for him to recognize her emotions, if not exactly what they were or why they were there.

So now he spent lunches cataloguing her away just the same as he had the first time he had met Hodgins and Angela; of the two of his friends she was definitely more like Angela, but she had a wider variety of smiles, and it was very difficult for him to distinguish between her happy one and her joking one.

He would have to ask her to clarify when she was joking so he could try and narrow them down.

OOO

She couldn't figure out what happened, but when she'd asked Print to send her what they were working with, she was surprised they'd even attempted to make a test brochure. The thing looked horrible.

So she re-packaged the files; sent it down to them, and requested a mock-up of that to show to Cherryl for approval. This time nothing went wrong with the links, and the resolution wasn't all wonky, so as long as she hadn't messed up the margins the print job should work out just fine.

And it did; it worked out beautifully. The pictures weren't as great as what she had liked, but that's what happens when you work in .jpeg and in a lower resolution than strictly professional. Shilloh wasn't entirely happy with it, but ultimately no one except another designer would ever notice it, so it wasn't an issue worth worrying over.

Except to Cherryl.

"I can't completely re-do this, Cherryl. I don't have the original files, they're all low-resolution .jpegs, I complained earlier about it. I'm not going to go through and touch up something that will suck no matter what I do. Plus, the design I did is solid, it's not complicated at all, and it enhances the text without over-crowding it. I can't re-do everything before 5 tomorrow. It's unreasonable," she wasn't yelling, she wasn't pacing, and she wasn't looking at the floor.

"I have the original files, I'll give you a thumb drive with them on. If you can't get it done by tomorrow, how about Wednesday, then?" Suddenly Shilloh was struck with a terrifying idea- Cherryl thought she was being reasonable.

"But they have to be shipped on Friday, that'll give us only Thursday for any errors and printing," that was a really close deadline, wasn't it? She'd only ever pushed it that close in her college classes, she didn't think a big institute like the Jeffersonian would do the same.

"I was also thinking of a font change, I don't much care for Myriad Pro," Cherryl talked over her. Shilloh couldn't believe what was happening, redoing an assignment that had taken her an entire week, in two days? And who the hell didn't like Myriad Pro? If she said to change it to Comic Sans someone was going to get slapped.

Looking at Cherryl, she decided this was something she wasn't going to win, and so said, "alright, I'll see what I can get done in time for Wednesday, but I'm not changing the font; it'll save me several hours of formatting if I don't have to."

Cherryl smiled with her plum colored lips and set to work putting the original images onto a thumb drive. "Perfect! Try to add more blue hues, reminds our mailers that we're a science institute."

God, she was going to have to stay in the office until this project was done.