As far as meetings went, Stone was usually patient and attentive. This time, however, he was certainly in agreement with the doctor that this particular meeting was honestly boring and pointless, and it wasn't just Robotnik's "hating meetings" -thing. The only reason the two of them had to be attending at all was because Robotnik had a presentation of his own to add to the collection that was happening right then, which meant that nothing the other people said was actually relevant to their jobs or worth listening to – they were just waiting for their turn. There was nothing interesting going on, and it was made worse by the people presenting their points doing it in the least interesting way they could and droning on and on and on about their projects.
Stone was, quite frankly, contemplating the merits of pretending to get a phone call and leaving the room to take it and then simply not coming back after. The only reason he didn't was because the doctor would murder him for leaving him to suffer alone. The torture that came first would make this bore of a gathering seem like a cakewalk in comparison, and then it would end with his mother grieving for her dead son. It was probably better for his career prospects to stay. Or he could take the window instead, this was the seventh floor, it'd be a swift end and he'd avoid the torture part…
His morbid ways of self-amusement were interrupted when the doctor – sitting on his right – suddenly moved. More precisely, his hands un-steepled themselves from the table and started forming words.
'This is bullshit and I wish this droning dunce had drowned in the womb.'
Stone snorted. He hastily cowered up for it by pretending to cough a couple of times, which thankfully had people turn their gazes away in disinterest. He saw Robotnik's moustache twitch in obvious amusement.
'There are grade schoolers out there with better skills at d-i-a creation, public speaking, and retaining the audience's engagement.'
Stone nodded, holding back a smile. It seemed the doctor had found a sneaky way to alleviate the boredom for both of them.
'He has an awful moustache too. I'd wonder if it was fake, but why anyone would spend any amount of money for that monkey's hairy - - - of a moustache is beyond me.'
'What is - - -?'
Robotnik spelled out "ballsack" letter by letter and Stone bit his lip and felt his abdominals tighten with unreleased laughter.
"Excuse me, Doctor Robotnik?" chairman Hayes asked loudly from the front of the table. The person with the- the moustache (Stone tried not to think about the moustache or look at it) fell silent, and all the eyes turned on either the chairman or the doctor.
"Yes?" Robotnik asked with a perfect poker face.
"You're being disruptive, please cease it and focus on the meeting."
This could only end well.
Robotnik raised both of his eyebrows and spread his hands. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you want me to quote the last five miserable minutes of the dreadful droning back to what's-his-face word for word to prove my focus? Unlike most of the simpletons here, I have enough IQ points to concentrate on multiple things simultaneously and retain the presented information effortlessly."
Stone hoped the doctor wasn't actually able to do that, because memorizing anything from this meeting was a waste of memory storage.
"No need to do that, I'm only asking you to stop with the… signing. It's distracting."
"Are you telling me I'm not allowed to trade thoughts about the meeting with my assistant? I know for a fact that I am permitted to do that as long as we're not making it so that other attendees are unable to hear the speaker. We were being completely quiet about it, so that's that. The one who brought this entire shindig to a halt was you, if we're pointing fingers here."
The chairman looked like he wanted to argue and was wracking his brains for a way to do so, but the doctor was completely correct – no surprises there – and there was nothing to be done about it.
"...Fine, you may continue", chairman Hayes said with so much visible reluctance that Stone could almost feel it in the air. "However, if I catch either one of you, say, laughing-" a look was shot in Stone's direction. He pretended not to notice. "-then I'm going to have to prohibit it."
'I'd like to see you try', Robotnik signed with a smug smile, then opened his mouth again. "Are we attending the same meeting, chairman? I didn't know there was a comedy act coming, it wasn't mentioned in the agenda."
Stone didn't blame the chairman for the long suffering sigh.
The meeting continued in relative normalcy after that, punctuated by Robotnik's running commentary to Stone in sign the whole time, albeit with less flat-out jokes now to keep Stone out of too much trouble. It was still entertaining and amusing, which kept both of them much happier for the duration of the endless presentations than they otherwise would have been.
He could see that the other people attending were increasingly unhappy about the situation, but nobody challenged them again.
What came after shouldn't have come as a surprise, all things considered…
ooooo
"Suspended? What do you mean suspended?!"
Stone winced and held his phone, and the voice of his yelling boss, further away from his ear. "I don't know any more than you do, I swear! I got a call just a moment ago and I was told to not report to the lab this morning, but to come straight to the headquarters for an investigation upon my person. They didn't specify what for, only that I won't be working until they're done."
There was a deathly silence on the other end of the line.
"Sir? I swear I haven't done anything. You know what I do in the lab, and you can check any and all correspondence that I sent out recently, as well as any items that have been coming in. This has to be a misunderstanding of some kind, or they assume I know something about a crime committed by another agent. Whatever it is, it will get cleared out. It can't be too serious if they just call me and ask me to come instead of sending someone in to apprehend me."
"Pray to whatever deity you half-heartedly believe in that you're correct, agent. Nobody will like it if I have to step in."
There was zero doubt about that.
"I'll let you know what's up as soon as I can, doctor."
"If I don't hear from you in two hours, I'm sending in armed reinforcements."
It was nice to know the doctor cared. The heads up was also nice, this way he could warn whoever was interrogating him about the time limit they were operating under if this shitshow dragged on.
"Thank you, sir. I'll call or text you within two hours."
ooooo
Omw to the lab, unharmed and unsuspended :thumbsup:, Stone texted to his boss as soon as he was out of the medical examination room he had spent the last ten or so utterly pointless minutes in, after spending an equally pointless half an hour being told what was going on and getting very few actual answers to his own questions.
The silver lining was that the whole ordeal had taken less than an hour of his time, and there was no waiting period for the results. Not that it made him any less pissed about this.
As soon as he was behind the closed doors of Doctor Robotnik's laboratory, he was accosted by the doctor himself and a medical variant of a badnik. He was scanned without further ado, and the doctor circled him like a shark with a "not worried at all, only suspicion here, don't even imply I care" kind of a frown.
"You smell like a medical area", Robotnik said, and Stone wasn't sure if he was weirdly flattered or just weirded out that he had apparently just been sniffed at, of all things. And that the doctor had accurately identified his last location by his scent alone.
"Funny story, that", Stone said, with no humor in his voice. "Someone reported me as potentially hearing deficient. An agent suffering from hearing loss exceeding 25 decibels can't continue their work as an agent, so if they had been correct, I would be packing my things right now. If I had to wager a guess, I'd say someone wasn't happy about yesterday's meeting."
Robotnik looked ready to commit murder. "I see. I hope they're having a good, long laugh about it right now, because soon they'll not be having much fun at all. Trying to take my assistant from me, are they? Let's see if they're ready to pay the price for stepping their toe onto my turf."
Again, Stone wasn't sure if feeling flattered was the correct reaction to have, but he was having it all the same. He watched the doctor whirl around with flaring coattails towards the computer lab.
He had to admit, Robotnik's fury was beautiful when it wasn't directed at him.
ooooo
A couple of days later an expensive Mercedes exploded in the employee parking lot of the G.U.N. headquarters during the lunch hours. The explosion was marvelously well contained, with only a few pieces of inevitable shrapnel damaging the other cars on the lot, but the car carcass itself staying in its spot while melting into an unsalvageable wreck from bright blue flames.
Simultaneously, a work laptop acted up and died on the spot, and no amount of tech support could get it back running or recover the files. It would be found out later that the desktop at the man's home was in the same condition.
A cell phone suffered the same fate. Two cell phones, in fact – one being the work phone and one the personal phone. A personal tablet joined the list of casualties.
Unfortunately, the man also has a smart fridge and a roomba. His home wasn't very welcoming once he finally left work, on a cab, after the truly exhausting and stressful workday.
Of course, an investigation was launched right away. Angry, accusing fingers were pointed at Doctor Robotnik. He had a motive, they said. Nobody else could have hacked into all the smart devices, they said. Nobody else could have destroyed them from the inside out so thoroughly, they said. The (alleged; there was nothing salvageable enough left of the wreck to identify anything from) bomb in the car, the blue flames, were too advanced to have been made by anyone else, they said. A lot of things were said, and the doctor denied all of it, although the words of praise about his genius were very flattering, thank you.
There was no evidence. None whatsoever that wasn't circumstantial. The investigation remained inconclusive and any charges were dropped.
The doctor brought a bottle of expensive champagne to work for completely unrelated reasons, to be shared between himself, Stone, and the four bodyguards that had their shifts during the doctor's work hours. Just one glass each, it was no big deal.
The champagne was sublime.
ooooo
The next meeting hosted by chairman Hayes – who, for the record, wasn't the person who had tried to get Stone fired – came with a note. The note stated that sign language was banned in all of the future meetings, including the one the doctor was invited to at the time.
Robotnik cackled in pure, unbridled glee. "Stone, we're about to get so much work done in the next few weeks! Ooh, this'll be glorious!"
Stone was not given an explanation, he was only told to not make any preparations to go to any meetings in the foreseeable future and to bring Robotnik the phone when the chairman called.
A few days later, when they didn't show up to the scheduled meeting, the call finally came. Robotnik snatched the phone out of Stone's extended hand with a look of manic joy.
"Hello, chairman, fancy hearing from you. …Oh, the meeting? I'm so terribly sorry, but I'm not going to show. …I'm aware, yes. …I know I didn't, but you see, that was very much deliberate. I will not tolerate such blatant ableism that is the new rule you decided to install. I refuse to participate in setting such a precedent in our fine, illustrious company. …Not joking, no. …No, I don't think I will. …You will find out that boycotting rules such as that will not, in fact, be counted as unlawful insubordination in my record. I'm working for the government, not the military. …Very fascinating, I'm sure, to someone who cares. Unfortunately that someone isn't me and I'm not interested in listening to this. Toodles!"
Stone felt like he was having a stroke, and he had only heard one half of the conversation. He numbly accepted the phone back.
"Don't answer any call from Hayes", Robotnik said cheerfully. "In fact, don't answer any calls that you know are associated with meetings that fall under that new rule. Don't reply to the emails or texts either with anything other than letting them know we're boycotting this, unless the rule is repealed, which it won't be, because Hayes is too prideful to do that."
Robotnik let out a truly diabolical laugh that sent shivers down Stone's spine. He would be lying if he said they were bad kind of shivers, for that matter.
"Yes, sir."
ooooo
The next three-ish weeks were honestly amazing, in Stone's opinion. Robotnik's mood was at an all time high practically all day every day, with endless music blasting through the lab's announcements system and the doctor dancing, humming, and singing along as he leisurely worked on projects that had their deadlines in a state of limbo or had been collecting dust due to a lack of time to work on them.
After all, if he didn't attend the meetings that were directly relevant to his work progress and oftentimes hinged on it, no progress could be recorded, no input could be given or requested, no new orders or changes, everyone else was left in the dark, nobody could meet their goal posts, new deadlines couldn't be assigned… in short, his, and everyone else's, deadlines were shot and the doctor could do whatever the hell he wanted, because it didn't matter anymore at that point.
Of course, being diligent and proud of his work, the doctor got all of his work up to speed with the old goalposts, and made a project completion estimate for the work that remained so that future deadlines could be set accordingly once he inevitably picked the work back up. But then he ditched all of them on the shelves and went hogwild with the more experimental projects that weren't requested by anyone or specifically funded – the tinkerings that would advance his work in the long term and potentially be submitted for approval for their own funding if he wanted them in wider use. In short: passion projects.
With no deadlines weighing him down, no meetings to interrupt his work, and the freedom to work on things he actually wanted to do, Robotnik flourished and it was breathtaking to watch. Stone's heart was positively singing every morning as he arrived at work.
Of course, nothing good could last forever.
"Doctor, Commander Walters is on the line."
Someone had pulled out the big guns.
A short phone conversation later, just setting up a face to face meeting later in the day, Robotnik handed the phone back with a pat to Stone's shoulder.
"Alas, the vacation will be over soon", he said somberly, but then smirked. "But worry not, the victory will still be mine, just you wait and see."
Stone didn't get to attend the private meeting between his two bosses, but the outcome was signing being unbanned again and Hayes looking sour about it for weeks. Robotnik didn't receive any kind of a punishment either, miraculously, and Stone had no idea how he pulled that off. It had to be because the man was simply a genius. In Robotnik's opinion, losing the freedom to miss all the meetings was punishment enough, and Stone agreed.
At least they could talk shit in sign during meetings again, which warmed Stone to the core every time.
A/N: The meeting between Walters and Robotnik, in short.
Walters: Doctor, is this boycotting really necessary?
Robotnik: -deadpan, removes his hearing aids from his ears and puts them on the table between them- Tell me again how my assistant and I are not allowed to use sign language during meetings. Open your mouth and say it to my face. Or write it on a paper, I suppose, if you want me to understand you. I dare you.
Walters: ...Right, fuck.