The job was about the uniform. Some people might tell you otherwise, but it was a universal truth. Business people were neatly pressed into their dress shirts and suits that defined their ranking in the hierarchy. Cleaners wore coverall suits of carefully selected muted colors that neither faded in industrial washers nor emphasized the patches of stain that never quite left.

Color was important. Black left a very different impression than white. White was a pretentious shade, all sanitised and guiltless and pure, but in the end it was just a coat. Unbutton it and you were just as human as anyone else. Interesting, that the police wore white coats. It made a strong statement, in a Saturday morning cartoon sort of way.

Black was another strong statement. It was slimming. Black stripped, like turpentine, until what was left was all business, primal, and raw.

Pink was...not the new black by any stretch of the imagination. Even Max's imagination wasn't quite elastic enough, and that was why Max was currently gripping one of her curls between her fore and middle fingers and pulling it in front of her face in order to scrutinize its newly granted crimson hue. As the elevator paused in its decent, she released the curl and, with a heavily put upon exhalation, blew it back up into place. She glanced at the shiny interior doors just before they opened. Her reflection stared back at her. Dark crimson hair, slate turtleneck, neutral trousers, vitally needed height granting yet silent (and therefore dull) boots, and cherry wood bracelets to remind the world that she was female and could get away with such frivolities.

She looked all grown up. Her father would sing hallelujah if he ever saw her like this. Her sister would fall to the floor laughing. She gave herself one last millisecond once over and straightened her posture. She did the polite who the hell are you smile schtick with the pencil pushers who entered the elevator. She recalled that both the commissioner and the department head who would be interviewing her were women, and for the first time in her life she found herself wishing that her boobs were more modestly proportioned.

First impressions sucked.

In a surprising turn of events, Max got to directed to Renee Travis's lab-slash-office (turn left, straight, left, left, up, double back, right, right, left––next!), got redirected with directions better suited to navigating the maze (e.g.: turn left at the intersection with the weird blue stain and then follow the smell of drinkable coffee straight on 'til morning), and still got hopelessly lost. Apparently the Bat's ability to traverse the twisted entrails of Gotham's underbelly with uncanny ease flew out the window once the cowl came off.

Max finally bit the bullet and ducked her head into one of the cubicles on the right side of the hall. A man in a thin sweater and slacks sat bent over a desk. "Um, hi?"

A spine stiffened. A folder slammed shut. A head turned and eyes glared at her from behind green reading glasses. Forcing herself not to gulp and not to stare at the computer screen's optically scrambled data, she inched back to shield a maximum percent of her body behind the cubicle wall. Piss off the possible coworker by poking her nose in as he sat reviewing confidential information. Great first impression.

A hand snatched off the green specs, and the eyes refocused under the different light to scrutinize her. The gaze softened a bit after a moment––even without pink hair, she remained undeniably cute––but not by much. "Are you wasting my time for a reason?" he asked with a tilt of the head. The chair swiveled a precise 120 degrees clockwise, and he leaned forward inquiringly, elbows on thighs, chin on the tips of steepled fingers, slight sardonic smile hovering just above that.

She decided that, should she obtain employment, then she could hate the prick. And if she failed to obtain employment, then she would hate the prick. But until either scenario happened, she needed to play nice. So she smiled. "I'm sorry, but I'm trying to find Renee Travi––"

"Eight stations down, redhead, Ted, bat your pretty eyelids and he'll take you anywhere. Bye now." And he turned back to the computer, sliding the specs back onto the bridge of his nose.

On second thought, it was safe to start loathing the man right now. Nonetheless, with trepidation, she moved eight cubicles down the hall and looked in. There was another man, this one younger, white, dressed in a slightly rumpled shirt and a knit cap. No red hair visible. She moved to stand in the entryway and bit her lip. "Excuse me, are you Ted?"

The man turned, revealing red bangs. Without a word, he looked her up and down for a minute, and then declared, "I'm gay."

Okay. Not what she had been expecting to hear, but okay. "Um"––she stared, mouth working––"I'm completely lost here."

Ted, or so she assumed, leaned back. "Omar sent you, right?"

She jerked a thumb awkwardly. "If Omar is the guy eight cubicles––"

"Stations," he interjected.

"––Ah, stations, back that way, then...yeah, he did. You are Ted, right?"

"And gay."

She laughed, pained, through her teeth. "Yeah...I kind of got that the first time you told me. Okay, here's a deal: tell me where I can find Renee Travis and I won't ask what the hell just happened here?"

He blinked a few times at her, then groaned, "I'm going to kill him. Uh, Renee...you want to go..." and he pointed thirty degrees above the horizon in a southeasterly direction. Max conquered the urge to bury her face in her hands, but that meant her exasperated expression was completely visible to him. He began rummaging. "You know what, give me thirty seconds to––aha! never mind––and I'll just show you." And, brandishing a coffee mug, Ted led Max down the hall, up the stairs, through five consecutive left turns and past an automatic sliding glass door. Glancing around, Max realized with a groan that she was only about fifty feet from where she had first asked for directions. Lovely. At least on the bright side, she now knew GCPD's entire interior layout.

Instead of simply pointing out the lab's location like she expected, Ted strode into the lab and thrust out his mug towards a hispanic woman in her seventies. "Renee," he greeted with an easy smile, "I'm contemplating murder."

Max's possible future boss simply raised an eyebrow. "Again?"

Twenty minutes and three cups of decent coffee later, Max had listened to about half of Ted's life story and three quarters of his workplace drama, and she was fairly certain that both Ted and Renee had forgotten she was there. To summarize, a little signals snafu between Ted and Omar early on in their very short lived partnership had led to Omar throwing the occasional working girl into Ted's lap for laughs and Ted taking up kickboxing for anger management. Max's motion that Omar was a prick had been seconded by Ted, although Renee had abstained from saying anything either away about the man. A thoughtful hum had sufficed.

It was only when Max made the mistake of pouring the last of the coffee pot into her paper cup that she got noticed by the pair. She awkwardly set the pot back on the desk and smiled at Renee. "Hi, I'm here to apply for the intern position?"

Having been exposed as young, cheap, desperate for work labor, Max spent the rest of Ted and Renee's heart to heart chat doing mindless data entry. Take the sample, do not touch the container's contents, do not jostle the container, enter the label's information into the spreadsheet, replace the sample without jostling, and repeat process until your possible future boss remembers you exist. This was all well and good but, considering she might go home jobless after a day of grunt work, very frustrating.

"So what do you think, girl?"

Max glanced up at Renee. "I'm sorry?"

The woman had stood and gone to a the box of samples that Max had just shelved. She was peering over with an expectant look. "I've got no use for someone that can't talk and do that brainless work at the same time. You can multitask, can't you?"

From within Max, the Bat gave one of its secret smiles. "I'm afraid I'm more of a cat person myself," she replied, putting on a rueful grin as Ted groaned into his coffee from the corner.

The age old argument over the merits of cats and fish continued good naturedly for some time. Both were good for people who kept odd hours. Cats were acknowledged as being worthy of worship, but on the other hand, fish could be kept at work and student housing without repercussion. Cats occasionally killed fish yes, but fish killed fish, too, so it balanced out. On the whole the conversation was a much better ice breaker than Ted and Omar's feud had been. Still, it had to come to end. Ted cut off mid-sentence, and Max turned to find Commissioner Gordon standing at the door.

Busted.

Renee was the only one to smile, warmly anyway. "Morning, Barb."

'Barb' inclined her head towards Max, eyes unreadable. "Is this the new intern?"

It was a question to which Renee only shrugged. The woman reached a hand into her pocket and withdrew a silver coin. As Max watched incredulously, she flipped it with an expert toss and caught it again in her small hand. A slap later and Renee lifted away to reveal the image of a profile head that had been nearly scratched off the surface. "Hmm. Tails. She stays." Max was flummoxed. Ted, still in the corner, looked amused.

Commissioner Gordon merely looked resigned, and maybe a bit sad. She turned to Max. "Well then, Intern Gibson, if we can have a private word?"

Shaking off the shock of having her employment decided by a coin toss, Max steeled herself and nodded at the Commissioner with a smile. Now for the hard part. Hard, as though the rest of the morning could be called easy.

I've noticed that, when left to its own devices, my brain loves to churn out characters constantly. Though to be fair, alternate versions of Ted, Omar, and Renee had been plotted out three years ago. And, gasp, one of them is canon. If you didn't catch the huge hint, you'll see what I mean later.

So, um, yeah, obviously didn't get nearly 50,000 words written this month. At all. However, it can't be viewed as a loss. I did manage to update several times, and I'm planning on trying for one chapter more tomorrow (we'll see, I have 4 projects due in the next few days), and there are WDH pictures on my homepage. Some are total crap, but I'm actually proud of three or so. Seriously, go there. I need feedback, on the site's layout if nothing else.


Ta.