Summary: The events of "Crocker Shocker" drained power from Pixie World; Longwood reluctantly tracks down the lost Sanderson.

Characters: Longwood, Naelita, Rosencrantz, H.P., assorted pixies, Sanderson

Rating: K+

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge about Vice President Longwood preferred

Posted: August 3, 2016

98. Terrible Timing ("Crocker Shocker")

Thursday December 18th, "2008"

Year of Water; Winter of the Frozen Planet

"Are you staying hydrated, tip-top?" she asked.

"Well enough, thank you, Nat. It's been a cool day today."

"So, um, is Sunday your giant end-of-the-year 'How I contributed to the company and the human race' presentation? You're not overly anxious, I hope? I'm sure you're going to do fabulously on it, right?"

Longwood leaned his chair against the wall, twirling his pen between his fingers. The soft spinning sound blended with the static twitch of the phone at his ear. "I might need a little more luck than that. Sanderson and Hawkins teamed up against me and Wilcox again. H.P. always pairs me with Wilcox. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a pixie who can't keep his eyes on the task at hand for longer than ten minutes without giving into the urge to shapeshift into a purple rat or a lizard or a canary?"

"Um. Have I?"

"No. But- but this! He was in here yesterday yakking on about how he'd left his wand back at Rapunzel and he needed to borrow mine so he could get his fagigglyne fix. Ten minutes, Naelita. He almost could have skimmed there and back in that time."

She laughed just long enough to make Longwood almost smile. "At least he's one of the smarter ones, right? Can you imagine if you had to work with Sanderson?"

"Oh, don't even go there."

"Hey, of course not- aren't you the boss?"

"Of you, maybe, given that you're a selkie." He adjusted his star-tipped hat with the cap of his pen. "But someday, Naelita, everything that can be seen from the penthouse tower will be mine. And then." His fingers curled. He squinted behind his shades. Tightening his teeth, slashing a line across the top of the stack of papers on his desk, "And then, I can assure you that there will be no more ridiculous thirty-seven-year plans to take over Fairy World."

"Really? Isn't that, um, against everything you guys stand for? Pixie tradition?"

"It's not Pixie tradition. It's just H.P.'s… thing. He just won't let it go. But when I'm in charge, there will be no more aggressive attempts to get the Fairies to treat us like we're more than just a servant race if they don't want to. There are five hundred of us against a million of them; there's no chance to change their minds. We're going to accept who we are, and nobody is going to get hurt anymore. We'll be going passively-aggressive neutral, all day, all the time. Just like Mother Nature intended."

Quiet. Naelita liked her silence, and he liked letting her have it. Still pressing the little flip phone to his ear with his shoulder, Longwood leaned his cheek to his hand and picked up another paper. "What exactly is this? Why am I being instructed to add a saucerbee field on the east end? Why does H.P. go over these things with Hawkins and Sanderson and not with me? I was under the impression that we already have a saucerbee field that we never use except when Hamilton occasionally decides to set up his multi-muscle lemonade stand in it or something."

"Doesn't your Head Pixie own a saucerbee team or something?"

Longwood sized up the short stack of paperwork in the black wire basket on the edge of his desk. Much too short. "Yes. An utterly pointless waste of money if you ask me, which isn't like him, but he couldn't resist. We're still talking about me, right? Because really, so many questions. And this one- this one: 'Move Jensen's office down to Floor 3'. Shouldn't this be the Fairy resources manager's job?" He dropped it. "I'm in charge of a dozen buildings fully-staffed at all hours, and I don't have enough to do. Perhaps I'll take up monochrome painting in my off-time. You're still there, aren't you, Nel?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I see you later?"

She sighed. "Isn't it Thursday? Don't you get off early this afternoon?"

"I might," he said, fingering the zipper of his brown jacket. He could cancel with Wilcox again on the pretense of vice president duties; all that was left to do with their presentation was cut out the different (and already printed) bullet-pointed segments, back them on dull gray paper, and glue them to the dull gray poster board. That was easily done by one pixie alone.

"Then could you make up your mind before I miss the tram? Maybe I could… grab you a sandwich and a lemonade or something? Um, and I'll meet you up in your room by the time you float back?"

"I'm listening."

"Okay…" Longwood heard her sharp nails drumming. "And I guess H.P. doesn't have to know if I don't go home tonight? Not if you don't answer your phone? I mean, he can't spot-check your place every evening, right?"

"Hm?" He was already daydreaming of movies they could watch. He liked movies, especially the calmer ones in simple black and white. "I still have that quilt you gave me a couple winters ago. We could curl up on the couch and fall asleep snuggled up like seals."

"So, sandwich?"

"With water. No ice. Just plain and dull."

"And maybe we could, uh, hold hands or something?"

He licked his teeth. "That's a bit forward, but I did enjoy that last time. You win- it's a date. While you're there, we should watch another one of those older classics. Anything but 'Wizard of Oz', I'm good with."

"Isn't it my week to pick? How does 'Bye Bye Birdie' sound? Whatcha wanna go get pinned for?"

"If you gotta go, that's the way to go. When they've gotcha hooked, then you're really cooked. Whatcha gonna-"

The lights popped. There was no flicker, no buzz, no warning before the room plunged into absolute darkness. Frustrated pixie voices rang out up and down the hall from those who hadn't recently saved their work on the computers. Longwood glanced at the ceiling, waiting for the backup generator to kick in. It didn't.

"… I'm going to have to call you back, knick-knack. Power's totally dead and H.P. might need to get through." He hung up and pocketed the phone. He sat a moment more, arms folded, as he awaited the lights that would not return. Finally, the dead heater forced him to drop his seat onto all (floating) fours and sent him pacing so he could keep warm.

People. Doors. Voices. Wings. Longwood wanted to be out there in the halls, joining in the anxious chatter. Oh, he wanted it and it stung him deep that he couldn't have it. But he forced himself to grind his teeth and keep behind his door. As company vice president, he wasn't permitted to leave his office- not if he weren't on break. Even for the annual Olympics. Either the generator would kick in, or H.P. would send him instructions on what to do. That was how it would be. That was the rule that had been drilled into his head time and time again. The minutes squealed by like rusty conveyor belts across tin.

Longwood was deep in a game of Should I, Shouldn't I? as he clung to his phone when, after half an hour of blackness, a tentative knock sounded at the door. The pixie drew back the little curtain over his window and made out a glowing blue dot in the black of the hall. He clicked his tongue.

"Lower your starpiece and state your name."

"It's Rose. Oh, um, Wilcox is with me too."

"Why are-? Well, all right. You're allowed in on the grounds that you're Rosebud." Longwood swung his door inward and Rosencrantz scuttled through, clutching an ambiguous furry lump to his chest. He let it drop to the floor. After throwing Wilcox a ticked glance, Longwood pressed, "But why are you on the C-level floor? Especially you, Rosie- shouldn't you be down the street in laundry?"

"I was delivering a m-message to Madigan, and you know I get fluster-nerves about carrying letters alone like that." Rosencrantz tapped his fingertips together and appeared to glance away in the dark, probably dwelling on all the reasons why he was grateful the boss had never named one of them Guildenstern. There was a motion like he'd tucked a loose strand of black hair behind his ear. "When S-Sanderson was my mentor, he always taught me that you're the safest one to be around when things go wrong, because you'll protect me."

Longwood narrowed his eyes. "Sanderson said that? Why?"

"Because you're a big squeamish nymph when it comes to blood."

"Okay, wow." Longwood opened his door again and made an attempt to propel the undersized pixie back into the hallway, with its wandering crowd, whipping wings, and clumsy feet. Rosencrantz squeaked like a selkie and clung to the frame of the door.

"Um- um- Why are you still inside your office?"

"I'm waiting for H.P.'s instructions, as is proper protocol." Longwood's lip twitched. His eyes slid down towards the floor. "Wilcox, are you winding your dirty self around my legs?"

The pat of soft paws on paper made it obvious that the purple cat had just leapt onto his desk. "Sorry. I like to keep tabs on where everybody is."

"You're a cat. You can see in the dark five times better than we can."

"Oh. Then I've got nothing. Are you wearing Naelita's coat?"

Longwood removed his shades and rubbed them on his shirt. After he replaced them, he half-wondered why he'd bothered to do that. It made no difference in the dark. His ear itched. "Is that important?"

"Write me a check for a couple hundred, let me sleep in the rabbit hutch tonight, and it doesn't have to be. If you know what I mean."

No, H.P. couldn't find out. So, Longwood stripped off the fluffy brown coat and, once he'd kicked it beneath his desk, he muttered agreement. As he did, his phone let out a chirpy noise inside his actual gray jacket. He flicked the cover down and held it to his ear. "We're Pixies, Vice President Longwood speaking, how may I help you?"

"Head Pixie on the line. Send out an alert for everyone to follow emergency evacuation procedure immediately. Thane and I have been examining the generator, but it won't come on. It would appear there is purple fur or something of the like lodged in the vent."

Rosencrantz and Wilcox gulped audibly.

"Yes, sir. Will that be all?"

It was, so Longwood did as he was instructed and pinged off the proper text. Beyond his door, he could hear ringtones up and down the hallway as it spread from the top-tiers of the company down to those on the lower end. Stuffing his cell phone away again, he called, "Come on, Rosebud. Wilcox."

Now that official instructions had been released, things were flowing much more smoothly beyond the door. In an orderly fashion, pixies were exiting the building. The three of them caught up with Madigan near one of the stairwells, not taking the stairs but flying straight down between the wideset spirals, as they tended to.

"I wonder sometimes why we don't just go out the windows," Rosencrantz muttered.

"What exactly are you implying?" asked Longwood, turning his head.

"Well, um, I just think it would be faster. To get outside that way."

He blinked a defensive blink. "The entrance to the building is located at the bottom of the structure."

"I dunno. Maybe we should think about updating evacuation procedures, sir."

"Have you ever even seen a paper wasp nest?" Longwood touched his finger to the starless tip of Rosencrantz's fabric hat. "Listen, Rosie- when you're vice president of the colony – I mean, company – then you can draw up all the evacuation procedures you want. But climbing through the windows is most certainly not professional workplace behavior."

Rosencrantz fiddled with the largest button on his oversized suit coat and remained silent.

Outside in the square, pixies gathered in clumps on the wall of the dreary fountain, on chew-proof metal benches, or in the air to gaze quietly at the ever-starry sky above their heads. The Sun had moved on its westward course between Earth and the cloudlands. Longwood left his companions behind and flew off to meet the Head Pixie, who hovered only a short ways from the Headquarters building with his right fist planted to his hip and baby Finley sleeping in his other arm. All the windows almost glowed with darkness above them.

"Sir?"

H.P. replaced his starpiece in his jacket. Clearly, it hadn't had any effect at bringing light back to the building. Straightening his tie with two fingers, he sighed slightly through his nose. "And this would be why my father told me it was a bad idea to invest in magic lightbulbs."

"Sorry." Really, it ought to be against every instinct he had in his body to argue, or to dare to ask a question, but Longwood couldn't make his eyes move away from the faded scars along H.P.'s right cheek. It wasn't possible for the Head Pixie to screw up that badly. No one was laughing, but this had to be a joke. "You strung magic lightbulbs through the company, sir?"

The boss's salty glare shut him up. "I don't need this from you today, Longwood. It was a different time back then. I was working through some personal issues involving my- Never mind. This is going to put us deeply behind schedule if we dawdle."

"My apologies, H.P. Would you please review the facts of the case with me so I can ensure I'm on level with your knowledge?"

"'The facts of the case'? You've been watching Sherlock Homely with Naelita again, haven't you?"

Longwood opened his mouth, but no words came out. H.P. shook his head.

"The Big Wand in Fairy World must have shut down, for reasons presently unknown. This hasn't happened for centuries, and the last time it did, you were away on some frivolous errand to James Madison, or some sort of odd tidbit."

"It was the Constitutional Convention."

"Whatever that is."

"… Sir, it was kind of important."

"It was the document that freed the enslaved Unseelie in the Earth's mainland, wasn't it?"

Close enough, except for the part about how the African-Americans weren't anything like the human version of Anti-Fairies, and the part where, well, it wasn't. Longwood nodded, just barely enough that H.P. wouldn't expect a further answer from him, but subtlely enough that he might question later whether Longwood had actually agreed or stayed silent. Satisfied, the Head Pixie turned away and snapped his fingers over his head, twice. Within a couple of wingbeats, the square fell silent. Phones disappeared in pockets, except for those who (to put it gently) weren't nearly as genetically identical to their boss in terms of brains. Necks craned.

H.P. nodded and lowered his hand. "It would seem that the Big Wand has crashed, and until it powers up again, or until I give my say-so, we will not be attempting to perform our regular duties."

A couple of light moans sounded from around the crowd, but they died away again.

"It's entirely possible that some sort of emergency could strike us here in our place of refuge while we are down. I want all of us to be prepared to defend ourselves if need be. Our magic will be draining fast, starting with those of you who are younger and haven't come into your full pools yet, but if this goes on, we will all be finding ourselves dangling wings that don't work from our shoulders. I would like every department head to perform a roll call and report back to Longwood."

Longwood half-choked on his own saliva. "All of them, sir?"

"Yes."

"Very well then, sir." Half-wishing he could make a show of dragging his feet while flying, he drifted over to a clearer area and waited as, one by one, the department heads gathered up how many pixies they had beneath their division, counted them off, recounted, and repeated the amount to him so he could jot it down.

It went on.

For a long time.

Longwood wanted to beat his head against the nearest cloudstone wall. He didn't. Regardless, it was days like this that he wished it were Sanderson in the dumb star hat.

But, after twenty-five minutes, Longwood finished marking down the numbers on a stray yellow sticky note (he'd long been forbidden to carry his real notebook for reasons he would never admit to), tallied them up, and paused. He re-tallied. Paused again.

"Including me, H.P., and Finley, that's only five hundred and five. We're missing one." A flashback whipped through his head in excruciating detail as he remembered the last time he'd come up one short and thrown the entire company into a ruffled lock-down. Turns out, he'd forgotten to count himself.

A heavy shadow fell over his body, sending his wings skipping so badly that he dropped down to the bricks. Uncertainly clutching his note, Longwood rotated his eyes upward. Faust peered over his shoulder, then reached forward to tap the marks with a fat finger. "Maybe you'd better count again, Woody."

Again, this time with sweat coursing the creases of his skin. "We're missing one. H.P., we're missing one, sir. I'm sure of it."

"Did you remember to include yourself this time?"

"Yes, sir."

H.P. scratched his cheek, then shrugged with the hand that wasn't holding the nymph. That was helpful. Facing the crowd again, many of whom had begun to drift away towards the fringes, Longwood held up his hands. "All right, everyone. We're going to do this the long way, in birth order."

"Can we go backwards?" someone pleaded from the rear of the crowd. Longwood couldn't tell for certain, but he rather suspected it was Verona.

"I can hardly count you forwards. The last three hundred of you I expect to be mostly guesses. Number one. H.P. is obviously-"

"I'm here."

Longwood mimed scratching that off an imaginary list, then tucked the invisible pen behind his ear and glanced about. "Sanderson?"

No reply. Wings shifted in the crowd.

"Nobody's seen Sanderson? Not a trace? Well, that was simple. That's the good news, however. Unfortunately, sir, this means he's alone." And getting into trouble, Longwood muttered in his head.

H.P. tapped his shoulder. "How do you forget Sanderson? No one forgets Sanderson."

"He is the only one in his entire department, sir, so he had neither anyone to report nor anyone to report to him. In addition to that, he contributes so little to the company and is gone so often, I simply tend to forget he's meant to be here at all."

"I don't pay you for your sass, Longwood."

"It's free of charge, sir." He sent off another text to Sanderson, but eight minutes passed and they didn't get a response.

The Head Pixie shook his head and shifted Finley to the crook of his other arm. "I want us to look for him."

"The power ought to be coming back on soon enough."

"Last time it was four days." H.P. trailed off, touching his fingertips to his cheek.

"I trust he's smart enough to find his own way out, sir." Longwood almost gagged on the words. "He knows proper evacuation procedure."

And he did - it was a requirement for all pixies - but H.P. shook his head. Hard. "He has separation anxiety. If he's not here yet, that concerns me. And, he is merely one pixie. Tracking one down isn't nearly as hard as finding two. It's easy enough to manage, and with that being the case, I would prefer to keep all of you in one location. Is that understood?"

Longwood's neutral frown dipped by a fourth of a millimeter. "Yes, sir. Would you have us use our starpieces to light the way with bright beacons?"

"No. Five hundred and two pixies doing that would rack up far too high a price, and you'll burn the magic from the field sooner. We'll go without."

He was kidding. He had to be kidding more than a pregnant satyr.

"I'm not kidding." H.P. said, giving him a strange sideways look. "You can find him in the near-dark. Given the fact that pixies have pheromones in their blood, it shouldn't be difficult. A shame we can't summon him out here, but you all react to the taste and scent indiscriminately, and especially while you're here, I am not in the mood to deal with a swarm right now."

The vice president bit down hard on his lip. "Yes, sir. Did the rest of you hear that? Sanderson is still inside and H.P. has instructed us to search for him. Without attempting to summon him out with intentionally-released pheromones. I want all of you in pairs so none of you hurt yourselves in the dark. Find your even-odd partner, unless any of you feel strongly about going with someone else. Then you can work it out amongst yourselves. And…"

Longwood studied the pixies before him. As vice president, he could have his pick of any of them, really. Well, almost any. Faust and Newman were rarely seen apart - only when they were trying to outperform one another or Hamilton in some sporty exercise thing that had caught their interest - and the twins would want each other too. No way was he going with Wilcox if he could help it. Which one, which one…?

"Marconi," he decided, "you're to come with me." Marconi's inability to sit still for too long sent him flying up and down the halls frequently, and he likely knew his way around better than most. Besides that, he was on Sanderson's floor and possibly had an idea of what he might have been doing when the power died.

"Yes, sir."

"Assuming the lights don't come back on, we'll meet back outside in two hours. That should be enough time, with so many pixies working together. If no one has found him, we'll search again." Longwood checked this idea with H.P., then nodded when he got the 'okay' signal. "Right. Er. Let's go."

"And no pinging," H.P. called as they filed inside again. "There's no telling how long the Big Wand will stay down, and I won't have all you punks wasting what remains of your battery chips."

Since most of the others were still searching for their own partners out in the square, Longwood and Marconi had a head start. Their first stop was the second floor, where Sanderson's office was. The door was unlocked, but the room was empty, even when they thoroughly patted and/or kicked at everything. They searched various restrooms by the pale blue glow of their cell phone screens, with no luck there either. Nor on Floor 18, even though it had the C-level hot tub.

"Maybe he's down at the food court?"

He wasn't, but Longwood found his favorite jelly left abandoned on a table by someone who had obeyed the evacuation command. Since no one was watching, he snuck a bite before hurrying after Marconi, who had ducked into the connected kitchens that spanned behind the 'shops' on the southern side.

"Well, he's not back here. Let's head up to Floor 7."

They could hear wings buzzing in the dark as they pushed open the swinging doors. An occasional flash of light. The wings went up in a column- pixies were flying up between the squarish, spiraled stairs, and a whole lot of them. Wanting to avoid bumping someone in the crowd and causing anyone to get hurt, Longwood opted to take the long way by climbing the stairs themselves. He and Marconi floated down the seventh-floor hallway and took a right-hand turn.

"Whoa," shouted a voice. 'A voice' was about as specific as one could get in the middle of Pixie headquarters by the dull light of cell phone screens. The speaker swerved further upwards just in time to avoid slamming face-first into Longwood. A second reacted quickly enough to follow it. The four pixies paused to gather their bearings, wings whirring.

"Still looking, Longwood?"

"No luck. Smitty?"

"Walters. Ralston is with me. We've covered Floors 21 to 24. Watch out for Newman, Hamilton, and Faust. They're taking advantage of the dark."

"Right, thank you." Longwood reached past them and felt at the cold metal of the wall. "Elevator. Let's take it, Marconi."

"Elevator's down. Enjoy the stairs."

"Right."

"Where to?" the younger pixie asked as Longwood found the stairwell door and wrenched it open. This one was far less crowded than the one from the other side of the building.

"I'm not sure. I would assume the first few floors are covered. With those three broad-shouldered hooligans running about, it would be nice to walk along one of the outer halls with windows, but my guess would be that everyone had the same idea."

"I think our best option," Marconi said, rustling his wings, "is to head… down there."

Longwood gulped, but only in his head. He was very good at keeping his face expressionless. Probably the best of all the pixies, being vice president and everything. Although it mattered less in the dark. "The Labyrinth? Without light?"

In answer, Marconi swung himself off the stairway rail and flared his wings. While they weren't half as high as they could have been, Longwood had quite awhile to wring his tie and scrub the windows of his mental shields.

"It would make sense that he's down here," Longwood found himself admitting. "This place stretches a mile in every direction, and without Keefe supervising, he could have gotten lost. We could get lost."

The wooden door opened without a creak. Neither of the pixies moved, but stared into the deeper blackness of the storage room. While they couldn't see it, they could feel the yawn of empty space around the elevator and their stairwell entrance. They stood at the exact center point. Sanderson could have wandered in any direction.

"Hold my hand, Marconi. If you get lost down here where the passages wind around, you might starve to death before the power comes back on."

"Are you afraid of losing me, or of getting lost yourself?"

"I don't have to answer that. I'll lead. You keep track of which way we've come so we don't lose the stairs."

They felt their way to the nearest row of filing cabinets, the surfaces a stinging cold beneath their fingertips. "Sanderson," they called intermittently, tapping on metal to make sound. "Sanderson?"

Longwood tried to keep their course straight, but eventually they had to make turns. He kept asking Marconi if he remembered the path back, and after maybe twenty minutes, when the other pixie was growing more hesitant, Longwood decided that they would be best turning around. Obviously, Sanderson wasn't here.

"We could nip our skin until we bleed," he muttered, skimming between cold, hard cabinets.

"H.P. said no pheromones. He doesn't want a swarm."

"Yes, but we seem to be the only pixies down here."

Marconi considered it. "I guess… but you're the… y'know. H.P. doesn't like it when the swarming hormones get into your head. You… tip."

"He doesn't like it when Sanderson's missing, either."

"I suppose that's fair enough. All right. One round of paper wasp pheromones, coming up. Eep!"

After the word 'paper', Longwood had stopped flying forward, and Marconi took a smack in the nose from his wings. "Hold off on that. Oh, duh. We're quite dumb today. This entire time, we've been searching places Sanderson should be. But he's almost never here when we run through evacuation drills, because he's always trotting off with H.P. after some forsaken thing. Text or no text, when it went dark, he may not have even thought to leave the building. It's more likely that he'd curl up somewhere he felt safe. He wasn't in his office, and he's not allowed in the penthouse, so maybe…"

"… The loose paper room?"

"Exactly." When they'd finally returned to the elevator, Longwood pushed the stairwell door open and waved Marconi on with the apex of one wing. "Floor B2, here we go."

They were still at mid-cloudlevel, which meant no windows, which meant darkness. And yet, Longwood was feeling confident - cocky, almost - as he led the way forward, right, and right again. At the end of that last, hidden hall lay a door with a deadbolt on the outside. Unlocked.

Marconi, coming out from behind Longwood with his phone in hand, eased open the door. "Sanderson?"

No reply, at first. But Longwood could sense a slight disturbance in his dim surroundings, like a shift. The shifting came again- someone tentatively wading or outright crunching through thousands of heaps of papers. Discarded contracts. Certificates. Pieces embarrassingly wrinkled, or that had been wet so the ink had run. Things that a species bred for organization and filing had no use for, but couldn't bring themselves to give up, because without a cathartic outlet to be had, their instinct to tear and chew would lead to the destruction of more valuable items of interest. A bit of a panic room, if you would. A dark, shameful panic room that all of them would have difficulty justifying to an outsider.

Sanderson's groping hands came patting in the dark. One fell on Longwood's wrist, then slid up to his shoulder.

"I thought you all left me," the first pixie said. In the blue haze of his phone light, Longwood thought he detected a twitch of emotion in Sanderson's face. His wings fluttered, stirring loose papers, and suddenly his arms were clutching Longwood by the neck, nose buried in his shoulder. "I thought you all left me!"

Longwood tried to loosen his grip. "Why didn't you come outside along with everyone else?"

"When did they go outside?"

"Didn't you get the text?"

Flustered- defensive- "I- I have Longwood blocked. My battery was low." He wriggled his fingers in Longwood's mouth. "Who is this?"

"You blocked your vice president? Sanderson, you can't do that. That's a violation of company rules… Oh. Later, perhaps. For now, we'd better let H.P. know we found you." Hoping to rub guilty salt into the wound, Longwood added, "He's had every pixie looking for over an hour."

Sanderson hung his head. Satisfied, Longwood patted him twice hard on the back and let go of him.

Instantly, Sanderson yelped and made a grab for his tie. "Don't! Please don't sneak away! It's been two hours, cold and dark and alone, and I c-can't do this anymore."

Longwood made the attempt to shake Sanderson from his forearm, to no avail. "Come on," he said over his shoulder to Marconi. "Let's head back to the stairs."

Marconi fired off a text – likely alerting the company that Sanderson had been found – and nodded. After unfastening Sanderson's creeping fingers from his throat and letting the trembling, older pixie simply hold his hand, Longwood led the way.

"No one was anywhere," Sanderson said, clinging tighter. "The elevator got stuck somewhere between Floors 5 and 6. I tried to start it again, but something snapped and it plunged all the way down here. The noise was deafening, but no one came. No one even wondered."

"You're fine now."

"I-it took all my battery just to get the doors open. I thought I was going to be stuck in there. Singing doesn't solve every problem."

"Well, now we're here for you, and we're going to get you back outside with everybody else." Tugging on his hand, still dragging his free one along the wall, he took a left turn. "I won't let anything happen to you."

Sanderson slipped his arms around his torso, flattening Longwood's wings and forcing him to grit his teeth and drop to the ground. "I hope Longwood doesn't find out about this. He won't let it go."

With an ounce of hesitation, Longwood lay his own arm behind Sanderson's neck, sort of like he sometimes did to Naelita. "I think he'll understand. He probably wishes the both of you could simply get along. Now, you're squeezing my wings. If you could just-?"

As soon as the words left his lips, the lights jolted overhead. They came on. Went dark. Then they flickered on again and held. Longwood stared down at Sanderson, who stared back up at him with a yale-in-the-headlights-look. Clumsy hands on both sides fumbled to shove the other away from the sort of half-hug between gyne and drone. What absolutely terrible timing.

"Erm," Sanderson said, straightening his tie with a single swift jerk, "I'd better check in with H.P."

"I suppose you'd better."

Sanderson zipped off towards the stairs without a word of thanks.

Longwood's cell phone pinged with a text. He flipped it open and read, Fixed the generator! You're welcome! :) from Thane.

"'Don't worry, Sanderson, I won't let anything happen to you'. 'Longwood wishes you two could each lay aside the old rumors and your jealousy and be the best of friends'." Marconi nudged Longwood between the ribs with his elbow as he replaced the phone in the inner pocket of his jacket. "So, about you despising him for not ever really contributing to the company…"

"What's this here on your collar?" Longwood asked. On automatic, Marconi tilted his head down to see, and Longwood brought his finger up so it both smacked his chin and flipped his shades off. "Unless you want your pay docked, we don't speak of this to anybody."