A/N: I very nearly forgot to post this before I went to bed... Sorry True!! But here it is, the next installment of The Adventures of Hydrogen Bond!
This used to be Daydream Drabbles. You did all see that the name got changed, right?
Anyways, enjoy!
The Peppermint Assignment
by: True Colours
No, Alex thought, no. Not this again!!!
Alex tried to force his battered, exhausted body to move, to roll off the conveyor belt that was grinding inexorably towards the great melting pots of the mint factory. But what would be the point of jumping off the conveyor belt, only to fall to his death on the factory floor, a hundred feet below?
All around him machinery clanked, moving him mercilessly forward. Everything was off-white or metal, the sheer walls, the lofty ceiling, the steel gantries and observatories running round the warehouse.
"Stop!" Alex yelled, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "I'm not a mint! Put me down!"
Nothing happened. There was no one to hear. Maybe if I'd kept a straight face, Alex thought bitterly, I wouldn't be in this mess now. I'd be back in class, listening to lectures about hydrogen bonds and inter-helium reactor pads and flavnoids and… shut up, shut up. If only he hadn't laughed when Blunt tripped on the mint…
Mrs. Jones marched him along to Blunt's office, her face filled with determination. She stopped outside, took a deep breath and entered. Alex stopped and stared, dumfounded for the second time that morning.
Every available surface was covered with peppermints. White heaps were piled on the floor, mint humbugs filled the pot of the office plant, and when Alex tapped the filing cabinet it gave off a suspicious rattle. Two security guards were sorting through them while Blunt watched with an unfathomable expression.
Mrs. Jones took a deep breath of un-minty air from outside, slipped a lemon drop into her mouth and began to speak.
"Mr. Blunt, I trust you received my letter informing you that I will no longer require these sweets."
Alan Blunt looked up. His face was that of a man who has endured almost more than the human mind can bear, and his voice was heavy as he replied:
"Yes Mrs. Jones. May I – er – congratulate you on giving up these mints?
And…and…thank you to enterprising young (*gulp*) Alex…"
Mrs. Jones beamed and patted Alex proudly on the shoulder. Alex was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He'd seen the expression on Blunt's face many times before; usually it was a warning sign that the wearer was going to throw you in a jellyfish tank, or order your immediate dissection, or something similar.
"You sent for me, Mr. Blunt?" he asked, hoping to steer the conversation onto safer tracks.
"Yes, but I suppose it doesn't really matter now…ah, you may go…now, Mrs. Jones, as regards the nature of these peppermints. I never saw such a compulsion manifest its self befor…arrrgggghhh!"
Alex whirled round in the doorway, just in time to see Blunt step on a conveniently placed mint and go flying. His foot shot out from under him and he fell backwards, arms flailing, into the nearest pile of sweets.
There was an almighty crash as he landed, spraying them in all directions.
Alex and Mrs. Jones covered their faces as they were sprayed as though with machine gun fire. The pile crunched and rattled, an all-consuming sound which threatened to shatter the world. Then silence. Mrs. Jones and the guards all stared, appalled. Alex clenched every muscle in his body, but as the seconds lengthened he began to think that he might, possibly, be OK.
A mint slid down, bouncing off Mr. Blunt's nose.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Alex burst out, pointing at the head of MI6. "SO FUNNY! HAHAHA!"
Blunt sprang furiously to his feet, and about ten kilos of mints fell out of his trouser legs.
"Hahaha!" Alex laughed, hanging onto the filing cabinet for support.
Blunt glared, jerking at his collar, which spurted more mints in all directions. Alex doubled over, giggling weakly and clutching the stitch in his side. The two guards lifted him bodily and dumped him in the chair in front of where the desk had been. Blunt marched over and sat down on the pile of mints (which subsided several inches) to face him.
Alex sniggered a bit more.
"Mr. Rider," Blunt said icily, "I am concerned…" here he paused to shake a mint out of his shoe. "I am concerned about the content of these mints."
"Well, I'm concerned about the way these mints are being contained," Alex answered, staring pointedly at Blunt's feet.
"Therefore I intend to send you to the factory where they are produced, to search for anything suspicious. Any involvement with drug rings, nerve poisons…if Scorpia are behind this, you should certainly be our man,"
Blunt concluded, looking uncharacteristically smug. Alex stared at him, sobering up, so to speak, rapidly.
He could not believe this.
HE COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS!
"And what did you call me for in the first place"' he managed after a second.
"Ah, well, that was all a test, you see. A test to show whether you possess sufficient imagination."
"Sufficient imagination for what?" Alex whispered, dreading the response.
"To become the face of our new fishbowl cover scheme." Alex closed his eyes in horror. Maybe if he didn't say anything it would all go away.
"A cover boy at MI6 is required to be innovative and resourceful, not just a pretty face," Blunt rambled on, oblivious to the sufferings of the young agent…or else really, really enjoying them. "And once you've completed the peppermint assignment – and that is NOT to become an official operation name, by the way – we'll look into employing you as a student therapist.
An impressive repertoire for a lad not yet fifteen. You may go."
If he'd kept his cool for just a few more seconds, he might not be in this mess now. The pile of sugar immediately in front of him poured into the huge pot in front of him, to be swamped with mint oil and gelling agents a year later. 'Uncle Joe's mints: Only three [declared] ingredients,' Alex thought sarcastically. Four, counting the cocaine they were cooking into every other batch. And five, counting the human. 'How many ingredients are there in a human? SHUT UP!' Alex thought again. He had to think, use his imagination and…
His fingers, scrabbling in his pocket, met a small object and pulled it forth. It was one of Mrs. Jones' lemon drops! He remembered her speaking to him: "Alex, in grave need, use the lemon drop. It will give you strength!"
Alex seized both ends of the wrapper, untwisted it and bundled the sweet into his mouth.
The sharp, invigorating taste of pure lemon zest filled his mouth, flooding his metabolism with energy. He sucked on the sweet and his blood sugar levels skyrocketed. With a wild war whoop, he sprang from the conveyor belt towards the walkway surrounding the warehouse.
He had felt for one wild moment that his leap must surely carry him straight over the railings and on to solid ground, but he had been mistaken. His grasping hands just managed to close round the bottom-most rod of steel before his body plummeted, almost wrenching his arms from their sockets. Next second he was dangling over the void, hands clenched round the slippery rails. Alex felt himself sliding…
Oh sugar, he thought, and then began to laugh hysterically, suspended a hundred feet above the ground. I really am going insane, he thought, when he suddenly caught sight of a lone figure, staring down at him with an expression of mild surprise. Alex blinked, and realised that it appeared to be Yassen Gregorovich.
This did nothing to convince him of his sanity.
"I take it you didn't give up spying?" Yassen remarked after a moment.
"Uh, no," Alex panted, trying to maintain his grip on the railings.
"Or join Scorpia either?"
"Well, as your advice is like blatantly contradictory from one week to the next, what was I supposed to do?"
"That is not a correct usage of the word 'like', Alex. You need to improve your grasp of the English language."
"Look, much as I would love to continue this conversation, it's my grasp on the rails that I'm worried about at the moment-"
Before he could get any further Yassen reached down and pulled him effortlessly up onto the walkway. For a few seconds Alex could only lie and gasp, then he managed to say:
"Thanks."
"Think nothing of it."
"Cool. So what brings you here?"
"I'm doing an assignment for Scorpia," Yassen replied illuminatingly.
"So it was YOU sending Mrs. Jones cocaine-spiked peppermints!" Alex cried. Everything was beginning to make sense.
"Mrs. Jones? Mints? No, we had nothing to do with that. Nor did the original owners, as far as I know."
Wow, thought Alex, she was really addicted to pure peppermint.
"It's a good idea, though," Yassen mused, rising. "I must go and suggest it to the high ups. Goodness knows we need something to do with this factory." He made as if to stride off, but Alex wrapped both arms around his legs and brought him crashing to the floor again.
"Oh no you don't, you plagiarist! And anyway, what do Scorpia want with a mint factory?"
"They have their uses," Yassen muttered evasively.
"Yeah, such as? You said it yourself, you have no use for them!"
"Fine," the Russian sighed, settling himself more comfortably…i.e. not very. "A month ago we received intelligence that Uncle Joe's was dealing in cocaine. Scorpia do not like competition, so I was sent to blow them up or buy them out, whichever proved cheaper."
"And which was cheaper?"
"Buying them out, of course!" Yassen threw him an exasperated look.
"That surprises me, I would have guessed blowing them up."
"Yes, it's really quite wonderful what the credit crunch – and a few skillfully applied threats – will do to people's prices," Yassen remarked.
"Besides," his face darkened, "the cost of uranium is skyrocketing. We're lucky if we can procure it at all, and even then it's low-grade stuff."
"It's all these people turning to nuclear energy to combat global warming," Alex tutted.
"Exactly. I consider it preposterous. In my day we – "
"And I hate to think what the economic downturn is doing to the terrorism business," Alex interrupted, shaking his head sorrowfully. "Assassins will be becoming redundant left, right and centre, I should imagine."
"Of course not!" the Russian snapped.
"Really? I would have said it was an ideal place to cut costs."
"There will always be a market for assassination among serious businessmen," Yassen declared, glaring.
"What is the point," Alex enquired, "of shelling out half a million pounds to some hotshot sniper when you can get much the same effect with a brick in a sock?"
"Never speak slightingly of the assassination business, Alex," Yassen said sternly. "Only people who can't get into it do that."
TC's A/N: From 'The Importance of Being Ernest', lol. Total crackfic in every sense.
Review? Please?