June 30, 2010

Alright, so maybe I over reacted, a little. Today was the first day of training. It wasn't…bad. In all actuality it was a lot better than I had expected. Things started off a little roughly at first. The first thing he says when he walks in is, "Alright, I'm ready to kick some serious terrorist ass!"
Of course, I immediately reminded him that despite what he may have seen on the Bond movie series, N-Tek is a professional work environment and profanity is not tolerated.
He simply threw up his hands and said, "Sorry green eyes, I meant butt. Is butt allowed?"
"Green eyes?" Can you imagine? I should have knocked him on to his cocky tail right then, however I just moved forward to the training.

As I said, training wasn't so bad. He's definitely in shape. He is, however, entirely too eager and too cocky. I know at that age you imagine that you are quite invincible but he is simply over the top. I can imagine him walking right into a terrorist compound while yelling "Come out so I can whip your terrorist asses." If he's ever going to be a successful agent he must learn patience and self-control. Both seem to be completely foreign to him. Getting him to understand the importance of these two things is going to be quite a challenge.

Max Steel looks quite differently than his Josh McGrath half. I might even be so inclined to say the probes have improved his overall appearance. Not that he was unpleasant to look at before…But I much prefer the brunette, blue-eyed super-agent look to the blond haired beach boy. And what of his personality? As I mentioned he is quite immature. However he has this…energy that seems to radiate from him. He is lively and very full of energy. He bounced around the training room like a four year old on a sugar high. I hate to say it but I don't know if I'm going to have enough energy to keep up with him.

A surprising bright side of my day was getting to work alongside Dr. Roberto Martinez. Even though he is a full year younger than Mr. Steel he is a certified genius and he is light years ahead of Max in terms of maturity. At first I couldn't get him to stop calling me "ma'am." However, I finally convinced him a simple "Rachel" would suffice. As I mentioned though Mr. Steel had no problem with formalities like that. I was surprised he didn't just start calling me "dude" or "hommie" or whatever it is the college kids are saying nowadays. Dr. Martinez is from Columbia but he's been in America for a few years. He told me all of his family is back in Columbia. Poor thing. He must be so lonely. It's no wonder that he and Mr. Steel seem to have hit it off so well so fast. Mr. Steel must be like a surrogate brother for him.

I didn't spend a lot of time today getting to know my new "partner" but I did find out that Mr. Steel has an adoring girlfriend who apparently has no life of her own. I found this out not by conversation but because she called him damn near every hour we were in training. I was literally seconds away from throwing his phone against the wall when the battery gave out from all the activity. Saved by smart phone battery drainage. I could have asked some questions about what she was like and how long they've been dating, but you know what? I didn't really care. I just wanted him to turn the phone off and concentrate on the training. No matter. There is plenty of time for training. I'm sure it'll be several months before Mr. Steel sees any real action.

To add to my surprising day I came home today to find Jake sitting on my door step. "Hi Beautiful," he said, "I thought you might be in need of some of this tonight." He held up a bottle of my favorite wine; He also had with him take-out from Le Cafe. I was so surprised! It was…incredibly thoughtful of him. I smile and kissed him. Then we went inside and ate our food and drank our wine and talked for half the night. It was the first time in a while that I felt really happy with him. Things have been so strained between us lately. It's been nothing but arguing and pointing fingers since I got back from Sweden a few months ago.

I can understand why he is upset with me and at the same time I can't. As an agent himself he should know that you often have to do things undercover that you don't want to do in order to get the mission done. I suppose I should have never even told him, but I wanted to do the whole "honesty thing." Lesson learned on that one. The way he carries on sometimes you would think that I enjoyed spending the night with Gustavsson and had planned it from the start. When in all actuality I was presented with an opportunity and I took it. I found it to be quite necessary in order to gain access to his personal files.

The files I obtained that night helped us stop Gustavsson's plot and save countless lives, and is the only reason I did what I did. If he can't understand that then there really is no hope for us. The good news is that tonight there wasn't even a mention of Sweden or Gustavsson. There was no arguing, instead we talked and we laughed and we dreamed about the future. Everything seemed back to normal. It gave me a little hope that maybe we will be ok after all. I really do hope we will be.

I should get to bed. I have another training session in the morning.

Rachel Leeds

Thanks for all the reviews guys! I found them all to be encouraging and insightful. Writing in this story style has some disadvantages that I didn't foresee, but at the same time it has some nice advantages as well. I definitely want to do some entries based on the episodes in season 1. However, I'm finding it pretty much impossible to find them anywhere online and it's been several years since I've seen them. I may just have to end up going off of what I do remember and skip the details. Ha. Anyways, hope you enjoyed the chapter!