Interlude Two: Understanding
Notes: Thanks go to Miah and DML for beta duty. There were some loose ends from my last mission, so I wrote this to tie them up. Not much else to say about this.
O’Neil was relaxing in his nest when a mop and bucket were portalled into ‘his’ response center. The contents of the bucket sloshed around a bit, but did not spill, which was good, because they smelled awful. O’Neil wrinkled his nose and wandered over to the bucket. Normally, he would have plugged his nose and gone back to relaxing in his nest, but he had suddenly had a flash of inspiration. The contents of the bucket were the perfect revenge.
Several hours later, Thomas fell through a portal, back into his response center. This proved lucky for him, as he triggered a tripwire, which set off what looked to be a trebuchet made out of detritus from his side of the response center, that launched a familiar looking bucket, which would have hit him in the head if he had walked through the portal. Instead, it slammed into the wall on Orken’s side of the RC and splashed vomit all over the clean generic surface. O’Neil began gibbering in Unas, obviously expressing his frustration. Thomas began yelling in English, obviously expressing his anger.
“What was that for? O’Neil, what have I ever done to deserve a bucket of puke being launched at my head? Tell me, dude, and it better be a good answer, because I’m in no mood for your shenanigans!”
O’Neil began deriding Thomas for pretending to understand him, and tried to explain to him how doing so made their relationship like that of a master to his pet.
Thomas, of course, pretended to understand. “I don’t think that’s a very good reason. I’ll talk to you later, dude, because right now…” His sentence was punctuated by eight minis (and one mite) wandering through the portal. The three mini-Unas began sniffing, obviously picking up the scents of O’Neil and the vomit, while the five mini-Wraiths surveyed the room cautiously.
Witmol stayed off to the side, watching the tableau with quiet amusement. Let the others fumble around, acting like fools. He would be watching like a cat, and only do what others wanted if they were willing to reward him.
The mite made a bee-line for the vomit. It was organic material and Maybe, the mite, was not too picky. Thomas grabbed Maybe before it could do something disgusting, and dug through his side of the RC, looking for a cage. “I’m sure I have one somewhere, dude.”
It wasn’t long at all before the eight minis (and one mite) were followed by a ten year old boy. The kid was looking wide-eyed around the response center, but jumped back when O’Neil charged him with a letter opener. Thomas, who had just found a cage for Maybe, dumped the mite in and yelled “O’Neil! Don’t attack our guest!”
O’Neil once again disappointed in Thomas, nonetheless obeyed. He just had to come up with a better way to express his displeasure.
The child, the Science Lad, was still backing up, and only stopped when he reached the corner of the room. He began shaking, never taking his eyes off any of the minis.
Thomas noticed. “Aw, dude, Science Lad, these guys won’t hurt you. O’Neil’s just defensive is all. I mean, these other dudes wouldn’t hurt you.”
The eight new minis all made various noises and began bobbing their heads, trying to reassure him that their intentions were pure. The reassuring effects of their actions were slightly dampened by how terrifying a bunch of gibbering mini-Wraith and mini-Unas all moving about restlessly could look.
The Science Lad still wouldn’t take his eyes off of them. Thomas decided to get him out of the RC, and away from the minis.
He turned to O’Neil. “Alright, dude, I’ll be back to get these minis later, but first I have to take care of this kid. I’d like to get them out of here before Orken comes back. We need to talk, and I need to be all responsible and such so I have the moral high ground, or whatever it’s called.”
O’Neil nodded. He’d keep the minis occupied, all right.
Thomas led the Science Lad through the corridors of HQ, humming the theme from Law and Order under his breath. He just happened to glance over at the Lad, and realized that the kid still had no idea what was going on.
“Aw, dude, I totally never told you where you are. This here is called Headquarters. It’s this awesome place where people from all over the multi-verse live and work to protect stories from bad people, like that girl in the lab. You remember her?”
The Lad nodded.
Thomas, realizing that there was a better question, asked “Do you know what the multi-verse is?”
While most ten-year-olds would probably have given Thomas a blank look, or tried to pretend like
they knew, the Lad just nodded knowingly. He was a Science Lad, after all.
“Cool, dude. Well, since you don’t really have a home, we’re giving you one here. There are lots of nice folks who’ll love to get to know you. There’re some kids your own age, too. You can make friends.”
The Lad perked up at the mention of friends. After all, he had never had friends before, and the idea was appealing to him.
“Well dude, if you have friends, you’ll need a better name than Science Lad. We should pick one out for you. Do you have any names you like?”
The boy nodded.
“Which ones?”
The Lad shook his head.
“Come on, dude. Speak up! I won’t bite.”
Turning his head to stare at his feet, and in the very quiet voice, the Lad said “Shawn.”
Thomas smiled. “You want me to register you as Shawn?”
Shawn nodded.
“Alright dude. I’ll do that.”
At that convenient conversational moment, the two arrived in front of the Nursery.
At that same moment Orken 7861 arrived via portal in the Department of Personnel. It did not take long for him to get into the office of the Marquis de Sod.
Agent Orken. How… pleasant to see you! This better not be about your partner again. I told you months ago, what he did to Agent Hannibal is not grounds for reassignment.
Orken, thinking about the last interaction between his partner and himself, grimaced. “I’m not here about him, sir. In fact, I’m here about a new recruit.”
The Marquis perked up. A new recruit! Excellent, Agent Orken, fresh blood is always appreciated. Not really rewarded that well, but certainly appreciated. He made a point of looking around his office. Of course, unless they are invisible, I don’t see them.
Orken looked down nervously. “Well, Marquis, sir, she’s a Sue, and…”
Please don’t tell me it is the one you were supposed to assassinate.
“Sir, the situation was such that…”
You want to recruit a Sue you were supposed to kill? I can’t say that it has never happened before, but unless you can personally vouch that she’s going to change, and accept full responsibility for her actions...
“I will, sir.” Orken said quickly.
The Marquis said, sighing tiredly, We do need the recruits. Bring her here. We’ll have fic psych look her over, have medical check her glitter levels… Agent Orken, if this blows up in my petals I’m going to see that you are transferred to Twilight Division, Bad Slash Department.
Orken nodded soberly. “I’ll get her, sir. And don’t worry, a transfer will not be necessary.” He portalled out of the office and onto a deserted stretch of Florida beach to retrieve Priyala the former Sue.
In a different part of Headquarters, Shawn Cooper Wright, the Science Lad, was taken off Thomas’ hands by an Operations agent. Thomas, while a bit sad to see him go, was more worried at that moment about getting the minis out of his RC before Orken showed up. This plan met with failure at the hands of those very same minis. When Through stepped through the door of his Response Center, he was greeted by another tripwire. This one was not attached to anything. It was just designed to do exactly what the name implied; to trip. Thomas fell flat on his face, and was suddenly being held down by eight minis.
O’Neil, meanwhile, was sitting in Thomas’ chair and eyeing the situation with approval.
Thomas was struggling to look up at where O’Neil was sitting, trying to figure out what was going on. “O’Neil! Dude! What’s with the ambush? Why are you suddenly all mad at me?”
O’Neil launched into another tirade about Thomas’ deception.
Thomas, oblivious to the problem, said, “O’Neil, that’s something we can fix. I’m sure I can do exactly what it is you want me to do for you. I’m sure I have whatever it is I need to fix the problem right around here somewhere…”
Lt. Col. Samantha Cater, the mini-Unas poked Thomas with her knife.
“Ow! What was that for?”
O’Neil started talking again.
Thomas interrupted. “That’s not a problem. I can fix this, just tell these dudes to let me up.”
Cater poked him again.
“Ah! Stop doing that! Come on, dude, I can’t even understand you!”
O’Neil gave a one word command and all the minis jumped off of Thomas. He looked at them in confusion. “What…”
Orken walked in at that moment, swaggering with an arrogance that could only mean he was feeling guilty and overcompensating. “Agent Thomas, I believe we were supposed to have a…”
He stopped short when he encountered the tripwire. Orken fell onto the still prostrate Thomas, who gave an “Oof,” and began wondering why he had been sat upon twice that day.
Orken was the first to speak. “Agent Thomas, why is there a tripwire in the doorway?”
“Minis set it up.”
“Why?”
Thomas tried to shrug, but was unable to under Orken’s weight. “Dunno, dude.”
Orken, feeling Thomas’ feeble attempts at shoulder movement, picked himself up off of his partner.
O’Neil, realizing that he still hadn’t really accomplished anything, jumped off of Thomas’ chair and onto the floor. Thomas had admitted that he didn’t understand him, but he still didn’t understand O’Neil’s anger. He began digging through Thomas’ piles of stuff, hoping to find something to drown his sorrows in, or at least a dropped Bleeprin tablet.
Orken watched him with some amusement, before noticing the substance dripping down the wall on his side of the response center. “Agent Thomas, is that…”
Thomas just nodded.
“O’Neil?”
“O’Neil.”
Orken glowered at the mini. O’Neil, feeling Orken’s glare on the back of his neck, stopped searching and ran over to Orken’s leg. He gave it what could best be called a leg hug. He wasn’t mad at him, after all. It could be useful to have an ally.
The angry look on Orken’s face softened somewhat. “O’Neil, I will take that as an apology. You’ve done more than some people I know.”
Thomas picked himself up off the floor and began beating at the dust on his pants. “What should I be apologizing for?”
Orken rolled his eyes. “For the incident with the Plutonium, Agent Thomas. You still won’t admit…”
“For the love of Apophis, you won’t let that go. I just got our bathroom a little bit irradiated, and maybe made Agent Hannibal a little bald…”
“Completely bald.” Orken interjected.
“…but you shouldn’t be talking. You just recruited a Sue! I thought you hated Sues.”
“She isn’t that bad. She is just as much a victim of that story as the Canon characters. She had one chargeable offense that she committed…”
“Oh please, dude, her presence caused all the rest of the canon warping. Admit it Orky, we should have killed her. You just went soft for a second.”
Orken looked at the floor. “Maybe we could have killed her, but we most certainly did not need to. Besides, the Marquis was happy to see we finally recruited someone.”
Thomas, who had been about to rebut Orken’s point, instead said “Since when have you cared about what the Marquis thought? You want to make him happy so you can get a new partner?”
“No, Agent Thomas, I just think that pleasing one’s superiors is an expedient action. Besides, I’m a professional, I take no joy in having them dislike me.”
“So… you don’t want a different partner, even though I think you went soft and made the wrong decision?”
Orken gave him a confused look. “Why would I want a new partner, Agent Thomas? In all likelihood, he would be worse. You are at least mostly adequate, and do your job right more than half the time.”
Thomas felt the anger slowly drain out of him, to be replaced by a warm feeling that was not anger. It was the first time his partner had ever told him what he thought of him, and it was surprisingly positive. “Orky, that may be the nicest thing you have ever said to me. Uh… thanks.” Thomas moved over to his chair and sat down. “Dude, it’s good to be able to relax. Sorry about fighting with you about the Sue. I guess it means that I have something to be mad at you about. Maybe that makes us even. Oh, and I got the Science Lad all squared away, and…”
“Agent Thomas.”
“Hm?”
“The minis?”
Thomas sat up, and looked at the eight minis that were still in their RC. “Oh, for the love of-“
He would have complained further, but then he remembered the vomit on the wall. “Oh. Yeah, I’ll get on that. Come on, mini dudes.” Thomas jumped out of his chair and practically dashed out the door. The minis, slightly confused, followed him anyway.
Orken gave the spot where he had been sitting a quizzical glance. “That’s odd. Why would he be so enthusiastic about taking the minis to the adoption center?” Then he remembered the vomit on the wall. “Ah. That’s why. It’s on my side of the response center, and he didn’t do it. Why would I make him clean it up?”
O’Neil gave a miniature shrug.