Super late update, but be happy! This might make your Monday a little better. I'm sick today, hence the update during school time.
Oh, I almost forgot, if your interested in having a conversation or whatever, my tumblr URL is lemonyorange. My blog is mostly Hollstein and Cophine, but there's the odd Bechloe post in there too. I'd love to hear from anyone, so of course, reviews on this are also welcome.
Updates might be few and far between until toward the end of June. My Leaving Cert is happening, so I need to do super long exams, which require super long hours of study. But hey, it might be worth it when I get into college.
Chapter 2 - Same Ol' Decent
Beca stormed into the house, slamming the door behind her and stalking up the stairs into her room/office. Why on earth did she have to be assigned the new Miley Cyrus album! It was completely not her style! She knew jack shit about wrecking balls and adoring people, so why the hell was Jake putting her with Hannah friggin' Montana? She threw herself into her chair, throwing a dart from her desk at one of the many boards on her wall. She hit the bulls-eye, if you could call it that. Almost all the boards had been hit so many times, they were practically falling apart. She sighed, and made a mental note to replace the worst ones. Turning to her laptop, she started it up to find she had an e-mail from Jake regarding the album. She shut it down without reading it, and dropped her head into her arms, just sitting there for about ten minutes before Benji walked in.
"Bad deal, huh? Who'd you get this time?" he asked, sitting on the edge of her bed.
"Miley. I got the one girl I can't actually stand no matter how few clothes she's wearing." Benji laughed. It was no secret that Beca was gay. A series of fan-girling sessions over Emily Bett Rickards whilst watching Arrow had revealed this to the others in the group, and a couple of high-school crushes had been truly destroyed by Benji and Jesse's teasing.
"Miley Cyrus... Any way you can make her sound... awesome? She used to be an icon. Find some way to strip her back down and then build her back up. Like a really complicated firewall. There's always a first line of code, you just have to work your way back." Beca looked up from her forearms and stared at him, wide-eyed.
"Behind the nerd speak, I'm 90% sure that was sound advice. Thanks man."
Benji stood up. "Well, now that you're not sulking, you gotta come downstairs. Jesse and I found some new info about Glitch."
Glitch was a new criminal gang that had recently become prominent on the L.A. scene, expanding from the original drug industry into hired thievery and contract killing. The leaders of the group weren't too fussed about what they had to do in order to get their hands on what they wanted most - which was money. As much of it as possible. The trio knew that the only way to take down the gang was to take down the leaders, but for the past couple of months there had been no progress on discovering who they were.
Beca followed Benji back onto the groundfloor, and then down a shorter staircase into the basement. The basement was more like Benji's Bat Cave. It was kown to the trio as the Den, because it was absolutely stuffed wih computer monitors, hard-drives with dated stickers, filing cabinets neatly filled with alphabetically sorted folders and boxes containing technology in various states of completion, ranging from messes of welded wires to small black shells that looked formiddably efficient.
Jesse was sitting at the round desk located in the centre of the Den, his feet on the table and eating a bag of Quavers. Benji's eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"What the actual fuck do you think you're doing! No food in my Den! Get the fuck out, with your muddy feet and your cheese-flavoured fingers! Do you even know the damage you might do to my servers! Do you want to ruin all of the work I have done here!"
Beca fell into her seat laughing at the scene unfolding before her. Benji hauled Jesse (who had done this purely for Benji's reaction) out of his chair and up the stairs, landing a few weak punches onto his back and shoulders on the way. He came back, panting, and sat in his spot.
"Really Benji, don't you think that was a teeny tiny bit of an over-reaction? You know he just did it to annoy you. He's nowhere near anthing he could potentially harm." said Beca. Benji glared at her and folded his arms. He said nothing until Jesse returned, cleaned up and without food.
"Alright. I'm gonna jump right in. Basically, I spent the morning trying to dig up potential Glitch bases in the city, based on cell-phone triangulations and transaction sites. I got numerous hits, which was expected, but I managed to narrow it down to a couple of locations that would actually make sense. However, there was still about twenty adresses on the list, so I looked up the registered owners of each unit. I am aware that anyone smart enough to operate a sophisticated criminal group like this wouldn't use their actual name, so I wasn't really registering them when I found a familiar one." Here, he turned his tablet around to show them an ID on the screen.
"Bumper Allen. Fan-fucking-tastic." Jesse slammed his fist onto the table.
"The only criminal both intelligent enough to run a fully functional ring while still being stupid and arrogant enough to actually give his actual identity in a business transaction." Beca slumped back in her seat, pushing it out a little and spinning it around as she thought. "It would be exactly Bumper's style. I mean, we all know he's in this for the money, just like Glitch. His motives match, and the basic structure of the crimes is similar to his MO as well... I think this is as good a shot as any. When do we move?"
"I've already mapped out the building. A six-floor warehouse pretty far out in the suburbs. The job will definately require both of you, and you will need the bikes. I fixed up the damage from last time - " Beca grimmaced guiltily. Crashing straight through a glass wall hadn't exactly been an accident, but it had been a necessary manoever. " - and I have prepared some comm devices. Beca, you have fifty darts loaded with tranq, and ten filled with cyaninde. Jesse, your knives are on your shelf. I'm recommending five, make sure one of them's the Tanto blade. They're doused as well. I suggest heading out tomorrow. There shouldn't be any big dealings, it would go against the pattern."
Beca and Jesse nodded, getting to their feet and gathering the weapons Benji had indicated. While the two fighters playfully argued and messed around, Benji put his laptop away and they all left the room. Since the Den was where they kept everything incriminating, it was important that it couldn't be found. When the door was closed, it blended seamlessly with the surrounding wall. There wasn't even a handle. Benji had given each of the houses occupants a remote activation switch to access it. It was like a secret hideout. Jesse had literally fan-boyed when he thought of that.
Back in her room, Beca checked the e-mail she'd gotten from Jake.
Hey Beca,
I just got off the phone with Mr Cyrus. He gives you full permission to use your material in the album so you can make whatever you want. Guess your reputation preceeds you. Just, do whatever sounds right. I know you weren't happy with the assignment, but we're relying on you to turn her image around. Don't let her agent sway you. This girl has a serious problem, but don't let the music suffer. Also, you don't have to spend too much time with her. You can literally only deal with her while she's in the booth if that's what you want.
Denise is drafting a contract for the work. you can go through it and sign it tomorrow, I'll email it to you.
Keep mixing,
Jake
Beca smiled. Jake was one weird dude. He was very openly gay, but most girls seemed to fall for him anyway, and he took no shame in flirting with them to get what he wanted. In her opinion, he wasn't that good-looking, but according to every heterosexual girl in the department, she just wasn't 'seeing straight.'
She opened her mixing programmes and began listening to some of Miley Cyrus' older stuff, 'from back in the day'. Never having been much for Disney Tweens, she spent the next hour trying to find an angle to take in the new album. Obviously, it was gonna be upbeat, maybe a few dance tracks, but there was some serious potential for acoustic guitar in there too...
After a while she checked her clock, and saw that it was almost midnight. She saved her notes onto her work USB and collapsed into bed thinking about tomorrow's mission. Benji woud work out an action plan while her and Jesse were in work, and then they'd carry it out after it got dark. She grinned to herself. She loved taking down theives more then any other type of criminal, except murderers. Especially big time theives. Benji was working on the case from 20 years ago, trying to find out who exactly had broken into Barden National Bank, but Beca found it helped to consider every robber as guilty as the ones who had shot her mother. It was the main reason she'd started doing this whole vigilante thing any way. Even though it was kind of illegal itself, Jesse did it because he liked saving people, and Beca never wanted anyone to go through her ordeal. They made a good team, with Benji's assisstance, and they were getting more renowned with every job. The media speculated on a regular basis as to who was doing this, how many were involved, what was the motive... Beca found the whole thing amusing.
As an up-and-coming musician, she spent quite a bit of time in the media herself. The first time she got paparazzi, she almost had a heart-attack. Now however, she had learned how best to avoid them, or make sure nothing incriminating got to them. It was a little funny that she was so well publicised, yet no one actually knew who she really was. In interviews, she presented a witty and quietly confident front, in work, she was the go-to on all things production related and on the street she was your average celebrity, minus the sunglasses. Luke had taught her the importance of not restricting yourself intentionally. For this reason, she also avoided high-heels and tight skirts. Can't move a freaking inch in those things. Somehow, despite this avoidance of the clothing that most girls loved, she still managed to end up, along with Lzzy Hale, as one of Kerrang!'s Hottest Chicks in Metal. She reckoned she just barely qualified to be in there, after a few collab albums with a couple of big names in the genre, like Amy Lee and Gerard Way and her trademark slightly over the top eye-liner.
She stretched and rolled on to her side, still smiling as she fell asleep.
-LemonyOrange-
I didn't quite know how to end this one. Nothing really happened, but like I said before, I'm building up. We're gonna have action, but it's hard to fill in background when you're writing in the third person. This is my first time doing it, and I think I'm doing ok?
Anyway, the next one will probably be much longer, and there will be a curve of problem and resolution, so sit tight! Like I said before thank you so so so so much for the support, it really does mean a lot to me, so I will do my best to make this an entertaining read for you all.
Chapter title from Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups