Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater

(featuring the Searrs family pet)

Fine dining was an important aspect of high-level business transactions. In addition to the social contacts made and deals hammered out while "doing lunch," fancy dinners were often important to negotiations, either as a measure of hospitality before or celebration after.

Alyssa Searrs, therefore, had been introduced at a young age to the etiquette of such occasions. Even at eleven years old, she was very well aware of which utensil to use, which fellow diners she could converse with, what etiquette of eating was significant, and a dozen other matters that kept a simple meal from being a social trap for the unwary.

When she sliced into her pork cutlet and found that it was not cooked all the way through, however, it was more than a minor problem. Had the restaurant been associated with a competitor or rival, this fact could have been played to her advantage, but in this case it was not. The restaurant's owner was a famous chef who had been, in fact, backed in his attempt to parlay his name into a successful business venture with Searrs Foundation money. Sending the food back would only humiliate her own company and raise serious questions as to her own judgment as the one making management decisions.

On the other hand, she really didn't want to risk a bout of trichinosis, or even a more innocuous form of food poisoning. If she'd wanted her meat uncooked, she'd have suggested sashimi.

It was, she decided, a test. Not a deliberate one, but nonetheless one of those moments in life when an obstacle presents itself and the ingenuity of a person is forced to confront it. Alyssa did not like to fail tests.

Fortunately for her, she quickly thought of a solution. It might have seemed like cheating, but she was going to be the head of the Searrs Foundation one day if she had anything to say about it, and knowing how to operate in situations where exceptional resources were available was as important—and much more likely to actually arise—than knowing what to do when alone.

Artemis, she thought, please initiate the following two-stage instructions, commands to be executed on my mark.

The small golden satellite Eclipse One Artemis, currently hovering unobtrusively in geosynchronous orbit about five feet off the ground between a coat-rack and an aspidistra, beeped softly. As an artificial HiME, Alyssa was capable of communicating voicelessly with her CHILD, which had been fairly important when Artemis was dozens of miles up in space and was even more useful now. Thrust ports hummed as it rotated, tracking its target.

Now.

~beep!~

A flicker of golden energy pulsed across the restaurant, the flash gone in no more than an eyeblink's time, and scissored through the shoelaces of a busboy. The server went over immediately as his shoes shifted out from under him, and the tray full of empty dishes went crashing to the floor with a tremendous clatter of rattling silverware and breaking china. Everyone in the restaurant swiveled their heads to look at what had caused the racket.

This meant that no one at Alyssa's table was watching when Artemis moved on to its second target and at Alyssa's next command unleashed a lower-intensity but wider-spread and sustained burst that raised the temperature of the girl's cutlet to a uniform one hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

"Perhaps," she said to her guests when they turned back, "that incident makes for a good segue to discuss the role of automation in future Searrs operations. In my personal experience, I have found machines to be more reliable and efficient than humans in performing rote tasks."

~beep~

The gentleman who was taking down his coat at that moment immediately decided to swear off three-martini lunches. Obviously he'd over-imbibed if he was thinking that an electronic tone could sound smug.

~X X X~

A/N: And here's a shout-out to reviewer Trscroggs, whose comment to me in a PM about wanting to see Artemis doing household chores made me say to myself, "Yes! This is a thing that I want to see, too!" So I wrote this story so I could see that. Thanks for the inspiration! (Also, yes, I know nothing five feet off the ground can be "orbiting," but darn it, these are the jokes!)