Author's Notes

For those of you who read "Supercritical Arrangement" you will remember that towards the beginning Preston Tucci received a pair of Elgin cutlass pistols as a gift. And then, if you read that story, you'll notice they were hardly ever mentioned again in it. This was not a gaff on my part, or the inclusion of an unnecessary prop. I potentially have plans for them and couldn't see a better time to introduce them.

This scene alludes back to them.

The reason I removed this scene was because I felt it didn't enhance the story I was currently telling. If my readers are not familiar with Preston or Antoine, or the incidents with Rhonda, why am I bringing in these random players at the end? Who are they? Long-time Readers will know who Rhonda LeBlanc, Preston Tucci, and Antoine Radson are but why should the new Reader care? Answer: they probably shouldn't. - Thus, reason #1 to remove this scene.

Reason #2 was for the sake of keeping in character. Waylon Smithers would -not- be having this sort of discussion in front of his son. It's hush-hush "Burns business" and Waylon is far too discrete.

I also couldn't think of Ryan responding well to the idea that his father and Burns were okay with someone being chained (literally) to a desk in India. Ryan could reasonably freak out about it, and it would undo the progress made in Waylon and Ryan's father-son relationship. Ryan also doesn't like guns...

(Oh, and Preston has PTSD that he's bravely working through after getting shot. Waylon's aware of it, and would've handled this conversation more delicately.)

So, this was dropped for all those reasons.

ALTERNATE ENDING - Deleted Material

-was interrupted by the sound of a call coming in through the Durango's phone receiver.

Waylon answered it, and once the speaker identified himself as "Umed" he quickly switched it from speaker to his Bluetooth headset. Umed, the supervisor of a nuclear power plant in India. Just another humble expansion of Burns Consolidated Worldwide.

After a quick, and rather hushed conversation, Waylon disconnected. "I'm going to have to call Antoine and Preston," he explained, raising his head towards Burns. "It appears Rhonda's off her chain."

Ryan put his hands on Waylon's seat. "Who's Rhonda?"

Waylon tapped a hand on the wheel. "Oh, just a shared employee who happened to be outsourced to India a while back. She was working as the plant manager over there, but has decided to go awol."

"I see."

Ryan sat back, as Waylon placed a quick call. The line connected, and the lean face of a young man with rumpled hair, and clearly sitting in his living room, filled the small media screen in the console.

"Waylon… hi."

The man, apparently Preston as near as Ryan could figure, ran a hand over his hair to smooth it. "What's up?" he asked, confused.

Waylon shrugged as much as he could safely while driving. "Well, we had a little incident in India, and Rhonda's off the chain."

A cheerful voice interrupted from somewhere behind Preston. "That's a shocker! I've been saying that for years!"

Preston turned away from his screen. "Hush up, Antoine!" he hissed.

"Say hi to Waylon for me!" the voice, the unseen 'Antoine' crowed.

Preston rolled his eyes. "Antoine says hi," he announced to Waylon. "So… when you say off the chain…"

"Her handler went to take her for her morning walk, and the links were hacksawed through. We have no idea where she went."

Preston paled visibly. "So she could be… anywhere…"

Waylon gave an apologetic nod. "Yes. I think it might be premature to worry, but you might want to consider upping security measures, just in case. If I were you, I'd be possibly considering buying a gun."

Antoine leaned into the frame behind Preston. "We have those pirate cutlass pistols," he interjected.

Preston shoved Antoine away. "No, that's not happening. No one is giving you a gun. Look, Waylon, we'll have to talk about this more later." Preston turned, and before he disconnected, Waylon heard him and Antoine squabbling about the pistols. The line went dead, the screen went dark.

Waylon sighed inwardly and readjusted the review mirror.

Burns' voice suddenly cut in from the back. "Dammit, Smithers, we missed our turn!" He gestured over his shoulder at an exit ramp heading north. "Springfield is that way!"