Author's Note on Time frame: This takes place, time-wise, after chapter 4, but before chapter 5, or at least starts there. It's definitely before chapter 6 (which takes place about 10-20 minutes later). Because of this extremely short period of time, the chapter is going to be shorter than the last couple of chapters. But don't worry, the big ones will be back next, when we return to our Xander/Jonathan conversation.

It only took a minute or two, at most, for Anna Wu to return the dolly to where she'd gotten it to help Xander unpack his van, but that was enough time to help her get her head back on straight. Mostly. She was still a little distracted, and it was noticed by her fellow Nerd Herders. Or, at least, by one of them.

"Hey, Anna," Lester said. "You look weirded out. What's up?"

"That guy is our new Assistant Manager," she said.

"What, the lawyer guy? I thought he was from Wolf... place?"

"No, the other guy," Anna said, shaking her head. "The guy with the eyepatch."

"Wait, wait...," Lester said. "Maybe we should get everyone over here for this." He stepped out from behind the Nerd Herd desk and grabbed the nearest green shirt he could find. "Hey, get everyone. Anna's got some news."

It took about five minutes to collect everyone around the Nerd Herd desk. Well, except they couldn't find Morgan, Chuck, or John. Well, and Big Mike was in his office, yelling at someone on the phone. And noone really cared enough about Emmett the Efficiency Expert to invite him. "So, what's the deal?" one of the green shirts, a chunky fellow with curly blonde hair.

"Anna, tell 'em what you told me," Lester said.

"That guy - the one with the eyepatch? He's our new assistant manager," Anna said. She felt better now, and it was actually kind of fun being the one who had the 'scoop' for once. There were times that she felt like she didn't have a clue what went on around her.

Little did she know that that was because she didn't. But she couldn't be blamed for not knowing one of her coworkers was a NSA assassin and another one had all of the information ever found by the U.S. Intelligence agencies in his head.

"What?!" came the collective response. A lot of murmuring started as the varied employees of Buy More discussed this latest information.

"I help him bring a couple of display cases and some other stuff in," Anna said, drawing everyone's attention back to her. "There's more. That guy, even with one eye... he sees things."

Jeff Barnes, the Buy More's second-oldest employee (after Big Mike) grinned, "Cool. He drops acid? Figures the guy'd fit in here."

Apparently, Jeff's head (and most of the rest of his body) were still in the 1980s.

Anna turned her gaze on her fellow Nerd Herder, filled with disdain. "No. He sees things. About us. We were together maybe five minutes and he knew I did martial arts. He said he could tell just by how I moved. I've worked with some of you for years and you didn't know that. It's not in my personnel records, I've seen them."

"I'm saying that if he saw that in me that quickly, if he sees like that into all of us, that things are going to change here. No more purposely avoiding difficult customers. No more avoiding the bad jobs, like the baby changing station. No more sleeping in the john. No more hour-long smoke breaks. Don't you get it?"

This caused a louder set of murmurs, but Anna overrode it. "I'm not done."

When things settled down again, she continued, "You saw him wearing a suit, right? Did you know he was wearing a gun underneath it?"

Once again, the collective "What?!" sounded throughout the group.

"He didn't bring it back in with him when we brought the display cases in, but he had one, yeah," Anna continued. She, of course, didn't know that he would bring it back in when he pulled the van back around to the front.

"He took it off when he took off his jacket to get the display cases," Anna went on. "I guess he didn't want it bouncing against his side or anything. He also rolled up his sleeves, which..." Here she paused and looked at the group, to see who was there. Or, more precisely, who wasn't there. "... which, I admit, wasn't too bad. He looks... strong." And this time, Anna was looking directly at the only other female employee at the Buy More. "But I also noticed that he has a lot of scars. And they didn't look like tool scars."

Here, she paused again, "I mention that 'cause, apparently, he makes his own furniture. The display cases, I mean. He said he made them, himself."

This blow was almost as bad as the 'he will make you actually work' one, and they all knew it. If a guy like him, with only one eye, could hand-make wooden furniture, what kind of excuses could they come up with to sluff off of work? There was just very little that could trump that.

"But... I know it doesn't help much, but he seems like a nice enough guy, from what little I saw of him. I guess that's everything." She didn't really think that mentioning an obsession with snack cakes was all that important.

With that, the majority of the green shirts returned to various places in the store. Morgan came out of one of the back rooms.

Five minutes later, John Casey came back in, carrying the leftovers of his lunch as he finished them off. Xander Harris followed him in, his eye narrowed in thought.

After another five or so minutes, Chuck got back. As he slid onto his seat behind the Nerd Herd desk, he noticed that the three already there were a bit tense. "What's going on?" he began to say, but his cellphone started ringing. Checking the caller ID, he saw that it was Sarah, and smiled, flipping it over to answer it...