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It is time become the storm! The Kapsicle is in town. Its been ice knowing you.
Kate's Kosy Blizzard Thread
4 posts in this topic.
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Week 40 - Blizzard Week One
Spoiler
Sally just laughed again. “Mm Hmm. Yup. Professionalism to a tee, I’m quite certain.”
Anna resisted the urge to just hide her face in her hands. “This was not going to be forgotten, certainly not in a hurry and certainly not by people named Sally.”
“So, where do we go from here then?” asked Sally. “I think you said we had about one more topic to reflect on. Are we still continuing with that?”
Anna nodded vigorously. “Yes. Yup. We are. Don’t worry. I have not forgotten. Just got a little bit distracted but I’m fine. So, let’s do that now. Just going to walk around in a circle like I always do between such transitions. As you know, it's a famous thing that I do quite often.”
Sally giggled along with Safi who looked to be doing her absolute best not to burst out laughing. Even Serafina looked slightly more smiley than usual. Anna took it in and let herself laugh just a little.
“Fine. It was hilarious. Everyone gets to laugh. It’s okay.” That seemed to be all the room needed to just explode into laughter and Anna allowed herself a proud smile. This team was shaping up quite well. It wasn’t the most conventional group but those were the really boring teams anyway. It took a few more minutes for everyone to calm down, mostly because of Safi. She had the sort of laugh where you completely forget what the funny thing was and laugh at her laugh. If Safi minded the fact that they were technically laughing at her, she either hadn’t noticed or didn’t let on. Judging by how Serafina had acted up to now Anna assumed that Safi just didn’t mind. Serafina seemed very good at reading the girl and knowing when to protect her.
Once the laughter died down Anna moved back into her place. “Alright so flying monkeys, demons, no wait there were no demons. Readings. Locations. What else did we have? Oh yes. The victim. We had something to decide on the victim that Kate managed to dig up. This is the one I most wanted to talk about actually. Anna brought up the relevant piece as it flashed on screen. She’d somehow managed to nearly forget it with everything else that was going on.
“So our victim here has an interesting connection in that he’s not supposed to be dead.”
“Huh?”
“Well not dead yet anyway.”
“Time traveler?”
“Not quite. But sort of yes. Time travel is definitely involved to some extent.”
Sally frowned. “Let me guess. Body dumped across time?”
Anna shook her head. “That was my exact reaction but no, it is somehow not that.”
“Then?”
“He was pushed through time. Yes. But he wasn’t quite dead nor was he quite alive.”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry that does not seem like it makes any sense,” said Safi, looking confused for the very first time inside their situation room.
Anna nodded. “Yeah, it's a bit confusing. That might have just been me waffling about too much without actually getting to the point of things. Sorry. What’s happened is we’re looking at someone that was killed during a time period that wasn’t meant to exist and was accidentally yeeted through time a little before finally being killed in that spot.”
“Sorry?”
“Sorry. Basically this person was attacked at a time that couldn’t be tracked even by the likes of Kate and then through something or the other he ended up here where he was finished off.”
“Kate managed to figure that out by doing research at a desk?”
“It's Kate.”
“Right.”
“So yeah. That’s a thing we have to consider.”
“Well, it's going to be a massive lead. Sort of,” said Safi, now no longer looking confused.
“Hmm?”
“It's a big lead that we can use to figure out a thing or two, but ultimately it's probably just gone and made things more confusing rather than easier to track down.”
“Well it should narrow things down if it comes down to a very specific set of clues,” said Serafina, speaking up again. She was doing that more and more often now. “But yeah, in the grand scheme of things it will probably just slow us down. There’s really no two ways about it.”
Anna nodded. “Agreed yeah.”
Sally hummed along. “Yes. Very cool lead but also very confusing. Which to be fair is pretty much everything that has ever had anything to do with time travel.”
“Strong opinion but honestly I kind of have to agree on that one. I really don’t know how they do it.”
“I guess we know why Kate and Vankous and the rest exclusively handle those. You need to see through time and be immortal to stand a chance in that department.”
Sally nodded. “You can say that again.”
Safi nodded. “Yeah. Well. On that note. I think we’re done?” Serafina nodded from the corner, which Anna noticed looked far more protective than a nod of agreement usually should. Anna should probably stop noticing these signs, but once a behavior analyst, always a behavior analyst.
Sally let out a small sigh. “Woo.”
Anna didn’t stifle the giggle at that. “Alright. No need to showcase how boring you think I am. Everyone can get to work now. We’ve got what we need. It's time to really reel in those results.”
Sally let out an honest to goodness squeak at that. ‘I didn’t mean to imply anything. Sorry.”
Anna didn’t need to stifle a giggle that time. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I was joking.”
Sally did not stifle her giggle as she burst into laughter. “Oh you fall for that every single time.”
Anna hid her face with her hands. She did fall for that. Every. Single. Time. Damn her heart for being so soft. For once couldn’t it be the brute that everyone expected it to be. Anna managed to look upon the world again after a few moments of hiding.
“Well on that delightful joke,” Anna said, trying to look as dignified as she possibly could even as Sally seemed to be just trying to regain her composure. Safi and Serafina. Serafina. The traitor. Even she was looking very much like she was trying desperately not to snicker at what was happening here. Maybe this team wasn’t as incredible as Anna thought it was shaping up to be.
Judging by Sally's expression, Anna was going to be sent to hell and brought back only to be dumped right back. Who knows? Sally could probably sweet talk Kate into actually doing precisely that. Before Anna could find a way to turn that into a weapon against herself involving how Sally was going to sweet talk Kate, Anna closed her current presentation simply putting up a few files of the main data they’d received the other day in relation to their findings.
“Alright, well everyone just get working on whatever seems most promising. No real need to observe order. Just note down all of our main points and we can reflect on them and analyze each one as a team once we’ve got it all laid out in front of us. The initial little splooge is what’s going to end up being the biggest thing that we need to get down on paper. And then the rest of this investigation is whittling all that down until we either have answers or so many new questions that we have to start over. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, not that it would be devastating. It's honestly quite common but under our current conditions. It wouldn’t be ideal. Of course no pressure. I want that to hit home here. If things worked out it'd be wonderful but it doesn’t necessarily need to actually work out.”
Safi nodded as did Serafina. Sally naturally was too busy laughing at the previous joke but Anna knew she understood just fine.
“Let’s begin then. It's time to crack this case wide open.”
“Wider open,” said a newly sane Sally. “We’ve got some cracks already.”
“Yup. Let’s make those bigger.” Anna settled down at her workstation pulling up the data to do with the man. She was almost 95% sure that Serafina and probably Safi along with her would go ahead and tackle the flying monkeys. Sally would probably join her in a second to look at this. Those readings would probably have to go to Safi if she somehow chose to not help Serafina or Sally if she realized everyone was tackling the other problems already.
Anna scanned through the details they had, trying to match the vague bit of id they had to all the details that Kate had managed to dig up with her search. There wasn’t a whole lot that could be done in terms of actual direct correlation. Him being from a seemingly undetectable time obviously meant no searching through databases, not without even a year to work with and because he wasn’t killed in transit it wasn’t exactly like that was something that could be used to narrow things down either.
Well, there was the whole time period thing coming to haunt them already. Well, not quite. It wasn’t actively hampering them quite yet, it was just not actively helping them either at the moment. Anna supposed that it could theoretically be a little bit worse so it would probably be wise of her not to be complaining about it too much.
Putting aside the information of the time for the moment, ready to be used in case they got a situation where it could actually narrow things down, Anna focused on getting through the major identifying marks for the man. Those were going to be the only real way that they could find any kind of witnesses for this one. It didn’t take geniuses to figure out that there hadn’t really been anyone in those houses around where the man had fallen. They probably were going to be hard pressed to even find an animal that might have been witness to this particular murder.
“This dude is a nobody and then some,” said Sally, sliding her chair in much like Anna had predicted earlier. She tried to avoid the little fist pump she usually did to celebrate. That was probably going to lead to questions which would have her hiding her head in her hands in embarrassment before long and Anna preferred to avoid that if she could. It would reduce productivity. That was most definitely the only reason that Anna was trying to avoid it.
“Yeah. It's going to be a real challenge to get any kind of witness or literally anything. I don’t think we can call this any sort of act of instant violence or random murder fuelled by rage. This is almost certainly the work of someone who planned this out meticulously from top to bottom. I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised if this murder was specially planned so that it would be flagged as a case on the lowest rung. They might have made their first slip up by accidentally getting it to the second rung. Well sort of. I guess it would’ve hardly made a difference to the overall result, but I just have that feeling.”
Sally nodded. “No, I get that. We shouldn’t be trying to chase after that to actually prove that was what happened, but I think it's a good assumption and who knows, it could be one of those details you accidentally uncover as we just thoroughly get a look at this thing as a whole.”
“I would not be surprised. I would not.”
“Mmm Hmm. So prominent details. What have we got?”
“None of the usual suspects. Not quite. This person seems to be your typical, just person. We’re not seeing strong identifying marks or a strong lack of identifying marks. We’re just kind of stuck in neutral. And the fact that we can’t necessarily just run him through this time period’s database because of him being from a different era just completely removes our ability to track with that. “
“Well isn’t that fun.” Sally groaned. “I guess we could always just go by the clothes.”
“Well that’s kind of our only option. Not even the stupid hair… is well stupid and noticeable.”
“Yeah. You’d think someone from a different time would have at least an odd wardrobe, but nope.”
“Well I guess maybe we can assume two things from that though. Either someone changed his clothes after death or during it, or this is a time period that’s close enough to us that there’s no detectable difference. Wasn’t 2020 one of those massive dead spots. It’s close enough to have made things a bit interesting.”
“2020. Now that’s a theory. Well hmm conundrum though. Would Kate have told me if that was a possibility given how obvious it would be or did she think it was so obvious she didn’t even have to tell mea?”
“This is Kate we’re talking about.”
“She was confident that I’d manage to figure it out.”
“I’ve heard that some people consider you to be quite smart Ms. Scilliana.”
“Oh is that so? I haven’t heard anything.”
“Cause you’re too tall.” Sally burst into laughter again and Anna had to roll her eyes. She had walked headfirst into that one. Sally was too good at that. Reusing the exact same joke fifty five thousand times and somehow still managing to surprise people every single time. She needed to get one of the research team to actually get her some numbers once things had calmed down into a lull.
“Right. Thank you for enlightening me Ms. Tervine. I never would’ve found out this crucial information without you. You’ve done me a great service today.”
“Of course. I aim to please.”
“Well you can do that by figuring out how best to describe these clothes so that most people can understand without generalizing them so much that it could’ve been literally anybody wearing anything.”
“Beautiful. I can work with that.”
“Chop. Chop. I think I’m going to look into those readings now unless you saw Safi get started on that.”
“Nope. They are both chest deep in flying monkeys right now.”
“Well I guess they were the ones who were affected the most by that little attack.”
“Yup. Well Serafina was and I don’t know if you need to be Kate to guess that Safi is going to be helping Serafina before anyone else.”
Sally chuckled. “No you don’t. Although being Kate helps because Kate could actually figure out if the two idiots confess at any point.”
“They will. They will. I’m sure.”
“Wanna bet on that little missy?”
“Little missy? Where did that come from?”
Sally shrugged. “I don’t know. It's something my grandma used to say.”
“We’ve worked together for five years and this is the first time you’re using that.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I say that like. All of the times.”
“All of the times?”
“So my grammar was a tiny bit off? Are you going to arrest me for that?”
2,519 words -
Week 41 - Blizzard Week Two
Posting this on behalf of Kate
Spoiler
"Well I'm not going to arrest you. Yet. But you are lying to your superior officer here and that's the conclusion that I've come to based on your incorrect grammar so for that yes I could technically arrest you as a potential risk of mutiny."
"Anna."
"What?"
"Literally no one in the history of this organization has ever been arrested or attempted to arrest someone for that."
"That's cause no one has actively tried to stage a mutiny yet."
"And? You think I'm going to be the first."
"No. Obviously I wasn't actually going to arrest you." Anna resisted the urge to audibly whine. This time she knew very well she was being played. Like a cheap little kazoo.
Sally burst into suppressed laughter again. She then proceeded to hide her face in Anna's shoulder to avoid disturbing Safi and Serafina and Anna nearly fainted on the spot. To have the audacity to not just completely derail her thoughts by playing her like that but to also nestle into her neck like that and... Anna's brain was just flashing a large error message saying "Anna.exe not responding.".
While Anna slowly died, Sally seemed to not even really notice where she was currently nestling into and for a very scary split second Anna wondered if Sally had just gone right back to sleep after having to wake up early to come in. Thankfully, the laughter seemed to subside a few minutes later and Sally pulled away, a little flush coloring her cheeks.
Jack snorted. "Do you know how to play poker?"
"No?"
"Blackjack?"
Mallory swallowed. "I didn't realize gambling required so much... skill."
Jack sighed. "You're hopeless. You're lucky you have me to guide you here."
Mallory flinched. "I know. Thank you, Jack."
"Good." Jack led him deeper into the noise den, glancing around. "Let's get you started on a slot machine. Little skill. Pure luck. Perfect for someone clueless like you."
"Great." Mallory's throat closed with shame.
The deeper Mallory went into the casino, the more lost he became. The cigarette smell was messing with his head and he hated that there were no windows. He was completely barred from the outside world. When Jack sat him down in front of a slot machine, he didn't have the strength to protest. He just stared wide-eyed, truly overwhelmed by the beast before him. On the screen was a little reel where a cherry, a rectangle labeled bar, and two of those bars on top of each other were prominently displayed. That didn't tell him anything. Above the screen was a sign
Jack looked at him and sighed. "Alright. Don't touch anything. I'll do the first time for you."
Mallory nodded as Jack stuffed a twenty dollar bill into the machine.
"This is a one dollar slot. For every dollar you put in, you get one credit."
Mallory nodded. "One dollar. One credit."
"Exactly. One would think that was obvious and very simple, but I guess not."
Mallory flinched, but swallowed down the hurt. "Sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?"
"I..." Mallory squirmed. "I don't know."
"Settle down and pay attention then." Jack pointed at a button below the screen that read 'bet one.' "You press that to bet one credit."
Mallory reached out to press it, but Jack slapped his hand, glaring daggers at him. "I said don't touch anything!"
Mallory drew his hand back as quickly as he could, his coming to a metaphorical stop in his chest.
Jack glared at him for a few moments more before moving on, pointing to the next button. "This is the button to bet the max amount of credits. This machine allows three credits at a time."
Mallory nodded mutely.
"And this button is to make it spin and actually bet for you."
Mallory nodded again, rubbing the back of his hand. It was stinging now that the shock of the strike was fading. He thought that Jack was getting "handsy" during fights now.
But I knew it was just Life's aggression showing face. He could only pretend to be kind for so long. Mallory was in dire physical danger.
Jack just kept marching on. "You press this button to get your money after you're all done."
Mallory nodded. "O-Okay."
"Now. Go on ahead."
Mallory hesitantly reached out to press the 'bet one' button.
"What are you doing?"
Mallory blinked. "Betting one credit...?"
"Why would you do that?"
"Because... I thought that was... good?"
Jack scoffed. "No! Always bet max. That's where the best pay-outs are."
Malory flinched. "Okay. Okay. Betting max." He finally pressed the bet max button.
"There you go."
Mallory relaxed a little at the encouragement, pressing the spin button. He watched as the reel spun, settling in a two by six formation. The first column was a cherry and three bars. The second just a seven centered. The third was another seven on top of a bar.
Mallory looked up at Jack. "What did I get?"
Jack sighed. "Nothing. Just keep working that, I'll be at the bar."
Mallory opened his mouth to question him, but he was already walking away. He was alone. Swallowing, he turned back to the machine. He could do this, right? Just keep pressing the button until he ran out of credits. Or won big, but that seemed unlikely.
He pressed the button again, no longer trying to make sense of the reel. He just watched his credits. If the machine didn't give him the money automatically, it had to do there.
Nothing happened. He just had fourteen credits. Frowning, he pressed the button again. Eleven credits. How did people enjoy this? It was just the number going down with nothing back.
"Am I doing this right?" Mallory looked around, as if someone would come and ease the confusion away.
But there wasn't. He was still alone.
He just went back to watching his credits, pressing the button. Eight credits. Five credits.
Mallory squirmed slightly. What happened if he never made any money back? Would Jack and Dr. Indra retaliate? Were slot machines really luck or was there some level of skill he was missing?
With a small sigh, he just pressed the button again. It's not like he could do anything else.
His credits went down to two. He sighed. That was it.
But then it suddenly skyrocketed, the numbers reconfiguring.
"What?"
The new credit count was two hundred and two.
He stared in disbelief. He won? He really won?
Mallory looked down to the console, pressing the button Jack told him would give him his winnings. Jack would be proud, right? He had to be.
The machine spat out a small piece of paper. Mallory took it, reading it as quickly as he could. It was a voucher.
He stood up, looking around to find the bar. He didn't spot it immediately, so he just set off in the direction Jack went. They would run into each other eventually, right?
He searched the casino, weaving around much more complex machines and card game tables. Maybe he would learn all of this, but that seemed unlikely. He eventually stumbled onto tile floors, finally in the bar area.
“Jack?” He scanned the seats until he spotted him. “Jack!” He ran up to him, voucher in hand.
Jack turned around, his usual whiskey in hand. “Mallory? Did you run out of money?”
Mallory shook his head. “I… I won.”
“You won?”
Mallory held out his voucher. “I won.”
Jack took it, reading it carefully. He frowned slightly. “So you did. Two hundred bucks after a twenty dollar deposit.” He looked up. “Not bad. You did good.”
Mallory was practically glowing. He did good? Jack thought he did good? He grinned. “So… how do we cash it in?”
Jack rubbed his shoulder. “We take that to a machine and we’ll get our money.”
Mallory nodded. “Okay!”
Jack led him away from the bar, keeping him close. Mallory couldn’t help but lean into the touch. It had been too long since Jack had been proud of him. He was going to soak this in when he could.
“So, what do you want to do with your winnings?” Jack smiled down at him.
Mallory hummed softly. “I don’t know. Maybe just… go home. While we’re ahead.”
“Aw come on. You won that with twenty. Imagine what you could win with two hundred.”
Mallory frowned. “But imagine how much more money we’d lose.”
Jack sighed. “Spoil sport. But fine, we can stop today. Tomorrow, you’re going to the big leagues.”
Mallory suddenly found himself dreading tomorrow.
The next day, Jack led him right back to the same slot machine, a wide grin on his face. “Alright. Get three sevens on the pay line and we’ll get one thousand.”
Mallory blinked. “A thousand?”
Jack nodded. “You can do that for us, right?”
Mallory swallowed. “I’ll try.”
“Good job.” Jack clapped his shoulder. “You know where to find me.”
Malloy nodded slowly. He could do this. He could make Jack proud. He fed the machine another twenty. Hopefully that’s all it would take.
Twenty credits later, Mallory had completely failed to win a single prize. Three sevens on the pay line? What did that even mean?
Mallory chewed on his lip. Jack would be so disappointed. But he could keep going. Add more money, try harder. Be better. That way Jack would be happy with him. He just wanted Jack to be happy again.
He dug through his pockets, pulling out another twenty. Forty dollars for a slot machine. But a small price to pay to make Jack smile like that. Three bets later and he still had nothing to show for it. Five bets was more of the same. How was it possible for him to lose this much? At some point, he had to get the smallest scrap of anything. This was getting ridiculous.
He had very little hope for his sixth bet. His bad luck was back. There was no way he would ever see a thousand.
The machine started ringing, lights flashing across the screen. Mallory flinched back, his heart racing. “What the…?”
The word ‘JACKPOT’ flashed across the screen. Mallory’s eyes widened. Did he really manage to do it?
As the screen dissipated, his credits jumped to one thousand and two.
“Mallory?” Jack was back, glass of whiskey in hand.
Mallory turned back. “I did it. I… actually did it.”
Jack leaned in, reading the screen. After a moment, he let out a low whistle. “Wow. So you did.” He laughed. “You did good, babe.”
Mallory was glowing at this point, all flushed from praise. “Thank you.”
Jack kissed his temple. “We’ll have to come back if you’re a little good luck charm. Come on, let’s cash this in.”
Mallory nodded profusely. “Yeah. Yeah. Coming back. Good idea.”
“Look at you learning how to have fun.” Jack’s smile only grew. “You’ll have a great time.”
Mallory basked in the glow of how happy Jack was. Yeah. He’ll have a great time. A great time making Jack happy.
And so Life lead Mallory further down his spiral, now actively giving up his cash almost every day just to please the insatiable celestial. All sense of hesitation melted away under the weight of Jack’s praise, the way his touch would be so much gentler after a big win. Soon he moved one from one dollar machines to five dollar machines. Anything to bring that voucher to Jack and curl up in the afterglow.
Mallory didn’t even have a grip on how much he was spending. Twenty after twenty added up in minutes, and soon he was spending hundreds of dollars a day for winnings that didn’t quite match his efforts. He didn’t notice the way his money from Dr. Indra dwindled to almost nothing. He didn’t notice how the time between each win was only increasing each day, Life laying his heavy hand on the scales to make sure he got what he wanted.
After all, dating Mallory was only temporary.
Four months, two weeks, and six days later, Mallory finally hit the end of the line.
Mallory had seventy-five dollars at the beginning of the day. It was all that was left from his winnings and his supply from Dr. Indra. Jack gave him a soft kiss on the cheek and a good luck.
And Mallory failed. Spectacularly.
You see dear readers, slot machines were supposed to operate on random number generators. But things weren’t perfectly random when Life was the one spinning the reel. So seventy-five dollars went in.
And no money came back out.
When Mallory’s credit count reached zero for the last time, he stared blankly at the screen. No. That wasn’t right. That couldn’t possibly be it.
But it was, and the screen was unforgiving.
He shook his head slowly. “No. That’s not…” He reached into his pockets, fingers grasping at air. “No. No!” His breath speed up. He always came back with something. Even if it was just a twenty buck win, it was still something. He stood up, scrambling back from the machine like it had burnt him. “Please. No. This can’t be happening.”
A couple of machines down, the jackpot bell rang loud and clear. People were cheering. He felt sick.
“Jack. Jack has to understand. He’ll understand.” Mallory turned around to rush to the bar. He would beg for Jack to understand. Get on his hands and knees if he had too.
The machines and people passed by in a blur as Mallory barely restrained himself from sprinting. Jack had to understand. He had to. He had to.
He almost crashed right into Jack, barely keeping himself together at this point. Jack turned around with a grin. “Mallory! What are you bringing me today?”
Mallory stared at him in horror, trembling slightly. “I… I…”
Jack nodded. “It has to be something big if you’re acting like this.”
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Life? Yes? Well, it’s not enough.
Mallory swallowed and shook his head slowly, his gaze drifting to the floor.
Jack froze. “What?”
“I… I didn’t win anything…”
Jack stared at him like Mallory just insulted his favorite pastime: emotional torture. Mallory shifted, wringing his hands. “But that just happens sometimes, right? Not every day is going to be a winner.”
“How much money did you spend?”
“What?”
Jack set down his glass. “How much money did you spend?”
Mallory had to take a deep breath. “The… the rest of it.”
Jack took a deep breath, his face twisting in the way that made Mallory’s stomach drop. “And she won’t give you more?”
Mallory shook his head wordlessly. Dr. Indra wanted him to fund himself now. She had only gave him the first stack of cash.
Jack shook his head. “I… I can’t believe you Mallory. I’m… disgusted right now.”
Mallory flinched. “I’m sorry-“
“Save it. I just… I can’t keep doing this for you, Mallory. I try to be supportive, but you fail me every time. How do you expect me to stay with you?”
Tears sprang to life in Mallory’s eyes. “I… I guess I thought… you loved me enough… to stay.”
Jack scoffed. “God, you’re so selfish. You think I’m here to bend over backwards for you? That’s not fair, Mallory. You’re in therapy. Why aren’t you any better?”
“I…” Mallory looked back up at Jack, shaking freely now. “I don’t know.”
Jack picked up his drink and chugged the rest of it, slamming the empty glass down harder than necessary. “Then we’re done. I want you out of my house. You can come crawling back when you’re finally better.”
“No!” Mallory practically lunged for Jack’s hand. “Please… please…”
Jack tore away. “I’m sick of being your babysitter, Mallory. You’re helpless. You’re stupid. You’re so incredibly needy. I want you out.”
“I… I’ll be better. I promise I’ll be better. I’m sorry.”
“I have heard that too many times from you.” Jack crossed his arms. “I’ll take you back when it’s true.”
Mallory laced his hands in his hair. “How am I going to get my stuff? Where am I going to stay?”
“Improve fast enough and you won’t have to worry about that.”
Mallory shook his head. “I… I still have tonight.”
“Find a park. You’ll make do.” Jack pushed past him, leaving Mallory decimated with no retort, no possible response. Jack was just leaving him to sleep outside? Like they weren’t anything at all?
“Jack… Jack please!”
He didn’t respond, leaving Mallory entirely alone at the bar. He started to panic, pacing back and forth. He had no money on him. He had no access to a bank account without Jack. He controlled the cards. Mallory didn’t even have a wallet.
Find a park? Wasn’t sleeping out there illegal? What other choice did he have? Mallory shook his head and slowly wandered to the exit, heart pounding. He could win Jack over, right? He could find some way to have Jack let him come back home.
Meanwhile, Life went back home, hopping into his home plane with a sneer and a little shimmy. He went back to his bedroom, falling on his bed. The image of Jack melted away, being replaced by a stone figure with glowing eyes.
It was only three minutes and six seconds until there was a knock on his door. Life waved his hand, letting it pop open. “What is it now, Deathie?”
“I’m not Death.”
Life turned to the door, a massive grin on his face. “Oh my god! It’s you! Aren’t you too busy to talk with little ole’ me?”
“I know what you’re planning. You’re not going to like the outcome.”
Life snorted. “You can see the future now?”
“No. I can use common sense.”
He huffed, sitting up on his bed. “Why don’t you get back to stalking the planet?”
There was a sigh from the door. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
As footsteps receded from the doorway, Life leaned forward. “Hey! I’m older than you! Don’t tell me what to do, kid.”
There was no response.
Back on Earth, Mallory entered the nearest park, shivering slightly. It was cold in the evenings, how was he supposed to sleep completely exposed? Wiping his nose, he trudged on, making sure there was no one in the park that would bother him. Thankfully, it seemed deserted.
He sat down on a bench far away from the entrance. This was it. This was his life now. He laid down, curling into himself. It was so cold. The metal of the bench, the bite of the air. How was he going to do this?
He looked up at the night sky, the light pollution of his city decimating the stars. “I don’t know who up there is doing this to me, but can you please stop? Leave me alone?”
There was no response, but something in Mallory told him to sit up. “What did I do to deserve this? What have I done wrong to you? Why me?”
“I don’t think there’s rhyme or reason, kid.”
Mallory flinched as he turned around. A man he had not spotted during his check of the park stood beside the bench, wearing an oversized jacket riddled with holes. He was unshaven, his beard turning grey. His face was coated in dirt.
Mallory swallowed. “I… I didn’t…”
“Know I was here? Yeah. A few years of doing this and you get good at hiding.” The man sat beside the bench. “Why are you here, kid?”
Mallory watched him hesitantly, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I… I got… kicked out. Told to sleep outside until I’m good enough to come back.”
The man sighed and shook his head. “You’ll never be good enough. People like that… you can never please them.”
“No. That’s not true. He was happy. For a time. I just… ruined it. And if I can ruin it, I can fix it.”
“That’s not how it works. Trust me… I would know.” The man leaned against the bench with a soft groan. “Once you’re out here… you’re invisible to the world. No one’s taking you back.”
Mallory chewed on his lip. “Why are you out here?”
He chuckled. “I lost my job. Hit hard times. I couldn’t seem to crawl my way out of it, so now I’m here.”
“Oh,” Mallory whispered softly. “I’m sorry.”
“Eh, I’ve been sorry long enough for the both of us. Don’t bother.”
Mallory nodded stiffly, crossing his arms. “Okay.”
The man raised his hand. “The name’s Hugh.”
Malloy hesitantly took his hand, giving it a quick shake. “Mallory.”
“Well, Mallory. You shouldn’t sleep on the bench. You’re too exposed. Any person can sneak up on you.”
Mallory shrank back. “Where can I go, then?”
Hugh stood up slowly, using the bench as support. “Well. I’ll take you somewhere. Just follow me.”
Mallory briefly considered if he should follow a perfect stranger into the night, but he didn’t have much of a choice. “Alright.” He stood up too, frowning slightly.
“Don’t worry, kid. I don’t bite.” Hugh led him on to the grass, holding his jacket close. “People are a little chewy for my taste.”
Mallory stumbled slightly. Did he… has he really…?
Hugh laughed. “Oh, that was good. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
Mallory forced out a laugh, hoping he didn’t sound nearly as scared as he felt. “No, no. It was… a good one.”
Hugh frowned. “You okay?”
Mallory swallowed. “Just fine.”
“Got used to being homeless that fast?”
He spluttered. “Other than that, of course!”
Hugh chuckled again. “Just checking. Come on. We’re almost there.”
Mallory’s face was burning. Was Hugh making fun of him? Was he upset with him like Jack was?
Soon, Hugh led him to a dark corner of the park, far away from where the hubbub would be. There was a small tent there, tucked away from prying eyes.
“This is where I’ve been sleeping.” Hugh looked at it with almost a sense of pride. “I’ll probably move on to somewhere else in a couple of days, but feel free to stay here until then.”
He turned to Mallory. “Where are your supplies?”
Mallory fish-mouthed for a second before looking at the floor. “I… I don’t have any.”
Hugh frowned. “You didn’t grab anything before you left?”
“I… I wasn’t home when I was kicked out. I didn’t have a chance to grab anything. Besides, Jack controls all the finances.”
“Who’s Jack?”
Mallory sighed. “My boyfriend.”
Hugh stared at Mallory for a bit, making him squirm. Was Hugh homophobic? Had he just ruined his chances of having a safe place to sleep tonight?
Hugh cleared his throat. “Well, he set you up for failure. Stick with me as long as you need to, kid. I’ll make sure you don’t die out here.”
Mallory shook his head. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. It’s fine.”
“You don’t even have a jacket. You’re not going to last out here.”
“I…” Mallory shifted. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“And I don’t want you to freeze to death out here.” Hugh sighed. “Look, I can’t force you to accept help. It’s not my place. But at least actually consider it. There’s safety in numbers. Going off on your own with nothing is a one way ticket to the dirt.”
Mallory squirmed. “I’ll stay one night. We’ll see.”
Hugh nodded. “One night. I should have a spare sleeping bag. Let me check.”
Mallory nodded slowly. “Go ahead.”
Hugh ducked into the tent. Mallory sat down in front of the entrance, picking at the grass. How do he get here? Only a year ago, he was happily married to Sarah. And now… everything had completely fallen apart. How was he ever going to recover from this?
Hugh popped out of the tent with a sleeping bag and a blanket. “It’s not luxury, but it’s better than sleeping on a bench.”
Mallory stared at the bundle in his arms. “How did you get all of this stuff?”
“I used to camp a lot in my glory days. When I got my eviction notice, I packed as much as I could.”
“Smart. I wish I had that opportunity.”
Hugh shrugged. “I wish I wasn’t evicted at all, but wishing’s not going to do much.” He sighed, handing everything off to Mallory. “Sleep on the grass. It’ll hurt less.”
“Thank you. For the stuff.”
“Sure, kid. I’ll be in the tent if you need me.” Hugh disappeared back into the tent, this time sipping it closed.
Mallory set the sleeping bag down in the patch of grass beside the tent, looking around to make sure no one was watching him. When he was satisfied, he eased himself in, nestling in as comfortably as he could for someone sleeping on the hard ground. “Goodnight, Sarah,” he whispered. “I hope you still love me after all of this.”
He curled into himself, squeezing his eyes shut, and hoped for sleep to come.
The next morning, Hugh shook him awake. Mallory shot out of bed, gasping for breath.
Hugh patted his shoulder. “Rise and shine. We need to find a way to eat today.”
Mallory nodded, untangling himself from the sleeping bag. “So we do.”
“I usually go to the soup kitchen a few blocks east. Feel free to join me.”
“I… I think I will.” Mallory finally stood up, brushing himself off. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Then follow me. It’s a decent walk, so I hope you can handle it.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Mallory fidgeted with his shirt as he followed Hugh out of the park.
Hugh chuckled.
Mallory smiled. “Hey, Hugh?”
“Yeah?”
“Why were you fired?”
Hugh sighed softly, a sense of weariness dulling his eyes. “I was laid off. The company was downsizing and suddenly they didn’t need me anymore. Happened to a bunch of people.”
Mallory frowned. “Don’t they have to give you unemployment?”
Hugh shrugged. “Yeah. But unemployment only lasts so long. Besides, I had… big expenses then.”
“Did you just buy a new house or something?”
Hugh shook his head, slowing down. “I wish. But no. My…” He cleared his throat. “My son died. I was trying to put together a funeral.”
Mallory flinched. “Oh. My… my sympathies. How old was he?”
Hugh swallowed. “Sixteen.”
Both of them walked in silence for a minute before Mallory managed to speak up. “I… I lost my wife and daughter in a car crash. She… she was in labor. I never got see my daughter’s face.”
Hugh turned towards him, a sudden understanding crossing his face. He looked much older with the apparent grief, his wrinkles almost smearing shadows across his eyes. “Oh. What… what was her name going to be?”
Mallory looked at the floor, feeling tears start to build. “Mila.”
“That’s a beautiful name.”
Mallory let out a weak laugh, wiping at his eyes. “Thank you.” He took a deep breath. “What… what was your son’s name?”
“Allen.” Hugh smiled softly. “Named after his grandfather.”
“I’m sure he was lovely.”
“He was. Way smarter than me. If he had a chance, he would’ve changed the world.”
“I’m sure he’s changing wherever he ended up.”
Hugh nodded. “That’s a nice thought. I bet your daughter is living an amazing life too.”
“She deserves it.”
Hugh nodded. “I’m sure she does.”
Mallory wiped his eyes again for good measure. Jack had never been that kind about Sarah and Mila. He didn’t understand the crushing weight of their deaths. But Hugh did. Hugh was gentle in a way Jack never could be. How was it that a stranger was kinder than his boyfriend? It didn’t make sense.
Neither of them spoke until they arrived at the soup kitchen. It was ran in a small church, and most of the volunteers seemed to be teenagers.
“Just do what I do. It’s not hard. Most of the people here are sweet.” Hugh stopped to ponder. “Probably best not to mention that boyfriend of yours, though.”
Mallory nodded. “Okay…”
Hugh stepped into the line, Mallory close behind him. He grabbed two trays, passing one off to Mallory. “Here. Don’t drop it. You’ll never forget that embarrassment.”
Mallory snorted, holding his tray close. “Noted.”
The first teenager behind the line grinned. “Hello! Would you like some soup?”
Hugh nodded. “Please.”
The teen handed him a bowl of a nondescript tan soup. “Enjoy!”
He gave her a strained smile. “Thanks.”
As Hugh moved forward, the teen turned to Mallory. “Hello! Soup?”
Mallory nodded.
The teen gave him the same grin, giving him the same soup. “Enjoy!”
Mallory nodded again. “Thank you…” He quickly shuffled forward.
The next teen looked significantly less enthusiastic. “Bread?”
“Yeah.”
The teen handed him a plate with a hard roll of bread on it. Mallory smiled. “Tha-“
The teen sighed. “Next.”
Mallory scurried off, his heart pounding. Was he going too slow?
The last person was an older woman, wearing a soft smile. “Water?”
“Yes. Water.”
She set a bottle of water on his tray. “You’re all set.”
Mallory cleared his throat. “Appreciated.” He turned around to try and find Hugh.
Hugh waved at him from a table further away from the line. Mallory rushed to join him, sitting across from him.
“That bad?”
Mallory fanned his face off. “I apparently left all of my ability to speak to people at home.”
“Don’t worry. It’s stressful for most. Just eat up and be glad you only have to do it once a day.” Hugh tore his roll in half, dipping one piece into the soup.
“How do you get lunch or dinner?”
“I usually don’t. You can try to find someone else who will give you something if you want, but in my experience it just ain’t worth it.”
Mallory slowly gathered a spoonful of soup. “Got it. One meal a day now.”
Hugh gave him an affirmative grunt around the bread in his mouth.
Mallory went to swallow the soup, only to start coughing.
Hugh snorted. “Too much salt for you?”
Mallory shook his head. “N-No. There was… something in my throat. It made it almost impossible to swallow.”
He cleared his throat. Nothing came up.
“Something… stopped you?” Hugh furrowed his brows.
Mallory nodded, suddenly out of breath. His throat was so tight. He could scarcely breathe.
“Mallory? Mallory are you okay?”
Mallory coughed weakly. What was happening? Why did this all start now?
Life hung from the ceiling as a spider, watching Mallory choke on his own throat. If he could, he would smile. This play would guarantee that Mallory would suffer for the rest of his life.
Hugh pressed against Mallory’s throat, his face paling. “Someone call an ambulance! Right now!”
Mallory was wheezing, barely grasping what was happening. “H-Hugh?”
“Don’t talk right now. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”
Mallory’s face was getting warm. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t see anymore. He reached out to Hugh, struggling for breath, before pitching backwards in a dead faint, tumbling towards the floor.
When Mallory woke up, he was being jostled, like he was in a moving vehicle. He couldn’t move. There was something in his mouth. He felt so light-headed.
“Patient is gaining consciousness.”
“Good. Good. Mr. Mallory? Can you hear me?”
Mallory whimpered, trying to open his eyes.
“You passed out due to oxygen deprivation. There is a lump on your throat we suspect is a tumor.”
A tumor?
Was he dying?
“Just hang in there, sir. We’ll take care of you.”
Mallory slowly lost consciousness again, drifting away.
An hour, twenty minutes, and thirteen seconds later, Life was back to being Jack, pacing in front of Mallory’s hospital room. Human doctors would be able to figure this out. This was meant to make Mallory suffer, not kill him outright! There had to be something.
A doctor, with the name tag Dr. Dissanayake and long black hair tied back in an elegant braid stepped out of the room. “Are you Jack?”
Jack nodded. “I am.”
“I’m afraid I only have bad news to give you.”
Life wanted to kick himself. This wasn’t the plan. “Okay?”
“Mallory’s cancer has spread to his lungs. His tumor is big enough that it’s pushing against his trachea. There’s no hope of recovery.”
Jack growled. “What about radiation? Chemotherapy?”
“Mallory can’t breathe, sir. His body is shutting down due to lack of oxygen. It’s too late for that.”
Life wanted to scream. Why did he have to pick throat cancer? He just wanted Mallory to struggle with eating! Was that so much to ask?
“I’ll give you time to say goodbyes.” She gave him a pitiful smile and walked away.
Life opened the door and marched in. Mallory had a breathing tube in his throat, his face completely slack with unconsciousness. Life could feel the brain death he was going through.
A hand landed on Life’s shoulder. He turned around. It was Death, looking like a perfect copy of Sarah. We told you this would happen.
Life scoffed. “This is your fault! Stop him from dying! I don’t have control anymore!”
I can’t. Just like you can’t spontaneously make someone be born, I can’t stop this. You killed him, Life. Let him go.
“I didn’t mean to! Just stop it!”
It doesn’t matter. He’s gone. I’m here to take him home.
Life screamed, stomping his foot. The lights in the room flickered. “No! You can’t! You can’t!”
Maybe you learned your lesson this time. Death peeled back the air and stepped through the hole, disappearing into thin air.
Life trembled, his eyes glowing a dark red. He stormed up to the window and punched it as hard as he could. The glass shattered on impact, a chunk of the wall falling to the ground below. Life turned into a morning dove and flew away.
Meanwhile, in Death’s domain, Mallory blinked his eyes open, groaning softly. His throat felt clear and he had no breathing tube. He rubbed his temples. He was in the bedroom he shared with Sarah before… everything. What happened? Was the car crash just a terrible dream?
He sat up, only to lock eyes with someone who looked exactly like Sarah. Her same almost mischievous smile and everything. But… no. Something was wrong.
“You’re not Sarah, are you?”
The person, Death, shook Death’s head.
“But you’re going to take me to her?”
Death nodded, holding out a hand.
Without a hint of hesitation, Mallory stood up, taking the hand. “Thank you.”
Death’s smile turned slightly sad as Death led him to the door of the bedroom. When Death opened it, Mallory’s face brightened, tears streaming down his face. “Sarah!” He ran through the door. Death seemed to watch him for a bit before following, closing the door with that same thud.
“So my grammar was a tiny bit off? Are you going to arrest me for that?” <- Don't count (6010)
"Well I'm not going to arrest you. Yet. But you are lying to your superior officer here and that's the conclusion that I've come to based on your incorrect grammar so for that yes I could technically arrest you as a potential risk of mutiny."
"Anna."
"What?"
"Literally no one in the history of this organization has ever been arrested or attempted to arrest someone for that."
"That's cause no one has actively tried to stage a mutiny yet."
"And? You think I'm going to be the first."
"No. Obviously I wasn't actually going to arrest you." Anna resisted the urge to audibly whine. This time she knew very well she was being played. Like a cheap little kazoo.
Sally burst into suppressed laughter again. She then proceeded to hide her face in Anna's shoulder to avoid disturbing Safi and Serafina and Anna nearly fainted on the spot. To have the audacity to not just completely derail her thoughts by playing her like that but to also nestle into her neck like that and... Anna's brain was just flashing a large error message saying "Anna.exe not responding.".
While Anna slowly died, Sally seemed to not even really notice where she was currently nestling into and for a very scary split second Anna wondered if Sally had just gone right back to sleep after having to wake up early to come in. Thankfully, the laughter seemed to subside a few minutes later and Sally pulled away, a little flush coloring her cheeks. She proceeded to look at Anna for a long moment like she was seeing Anna in some sort of new light then promptly looked away.
Anna's brain was too busy rebooting to try and process that right away but the moment it returned to semi full function it was almost taken out immediately trying to understand what that could possibly mean. Sally being flushed was definitely to do with all the ridiculous laughing that she was doing. That was a common color on one Ms. Tervine's face on most days with how much laughing she tended to get up to even in the early hours of the morning.
The moment Anna managed to dismiss the flushing that strange long look came to life. Sally was now fully focused on the screen staring like she was unravelling all of the secrets hidden within but earlier. Anna hadn't seen that look before. Or had she? Sally didn't do that? What did? Maybe she needed to talk to Kate about this. Nope. No. Never. Not that woman. She'd be asking about dating and other terrible things that definitely weren't relevant here. Kate always had only the one answer when it came to these situations. OKay maybe that wasn't quite true but Anna was allowed to generalize in these situations when she was in genuine danger of going insane because of very stupid feelings amidst a very important investigation. Not even Safi and Serafina seemed to be acting that strange and they were very clearly crushing on each other.
"So are we finalized on this then?" asked Sally, finally breaking Anna out of her thoughts. Anna took a moment to register, having to shake off the temporary cobwebs that had formed in her brain from drifting off for too long.
"Yeah. Yeah. Outfits. Details. We compound them as best we can. We try what we can. I don't expect to pull in much. The magic and the monkeys are what's probably going to do the most although I get the feeling the monkeys are going to just pull us elsewhere. Maybe. I don't know. I have a hunch this is turning into more than a single murder. Kate's got some master plan here and we're playing a part. We'll get to chose what part but its something."
Sally let out a soft hum. "Well that's another theory. Honestly I don't know what to think on that. I haven't been on the receiving end on one of those yet but I've heard stories and I would not mind. Let's just focus on this and see where it takes us. If there's one common theme when it comes to things with Kate, its that you shouldn't sit around questioning it too long or try to overthink. Well sort of. Most people would say you should totally go with the flow but Kate likes a bit of thinking. Its a mixed bag. But sitting and only thinking is not good. I'm sure of that one."
Anna nodded. "Mmm Hmm. Shall we check out the monkeys and see if everyone is up for checking out the magic proper then?"
"I think that would be time pretty well spent to be honest. Most of this is going to just kind of do itself here in terms of the actual generation of this description and the distribution so I would suggest we enter this to the list and check in. We are both in agreement about the fact that this isn't going anywhere else right?'
Anna nodded. "Yeah. I mean I got nothing. We need another detail of some kind. Something has to come in before we can make more sense of this and get more concrete in terms of what exactly this person was doing here and what this person was doing and if all this other information that we have at the moment happens to even be useful after all."
"Yup that's going to be a nice fun wait at least because we do at least for the moment have a good amount of other leads to be going ahead and following up on. So we're not just completely lost here having absolutely nothing to do. Now that, that would be a truly awful fate if we had to wait for just something to come up."
"Thank goodness for the flying monkeys then."
"Well that's not a statement I ever expected to see come out of the great Anna."
"Well its happened."
"I know. It was glorious. I'm still savoring it."
"You don't have to make a big deal out of it."
"That doesn't mean that I'm not going to make a massive deal out of it, because I very much can and you very much can't stop me about it since you were kind of the person that ended up triggering it. Willingly I might add. Its not like I even prompted you to say that like I probably would have had to if I wanted to make you say it at some point."
"Alright that's enough about flying monkeys. Let's wrap this up and then okay well we're back to flying monkeys."
"Good." Sally giggled and her fingers flew on the keypad as she logged it all up to go on the screen for later when they compounded this all. Anna laid back for a moment letting it happen. It was progress and tangible progress at that. That was good. That was really quite good. They needed this, quite a lot of this to make it through. Almost two hours of this morning had already gone by so they really did need to start having things to actually show for all of that as time went on here.
It wasn't long before Sally hit the enter key with a satisfying click. That was a feature Anna absolutely loved. There was never something quite as satisfying as one big click to end something like that. Touch screens were only great when you wanted to be all quiet and efficient. Okay so maybe they were great for basically all of the occasions but that's still certainly not going to be equivalent to all by any means whatsoever.
Before Anna could somehow manage to distract herself on the pros and cons of buttons vs touchscreens of all things. Gosh her mind was just not at it for some reason. She blamed Sally. Sally was doing so much to just be everywhere all at once and her mind was searching for anything in the moment to try and latch onto so that it didn't end up thinking for too long about Sally. Thankfully before Anna's mind could latch onto the thought about latching on, they were already moving towards Safi and Serafina.
It looked like the two were still quite deep in conversation, whispering to each other quite loudly as they stared at several pages of information on what was definitely the flying monkeys. Unless for some reason they were trying to look for clue in the mating rituals of random primates. This case had been an odd one, but it wasn't quite so odd that they had to be looking at mating rituals, especially among primates of all things. And gosh Anna hoped the talk of mating rituals wasn't going to end up on any reports. That was going to lead to more than a little bit of teasing if her mind continued to behave quite this stupidly around Sally like it had been doing for... Anna wasn't entirely sure at this point.
"Agents, how are we coming along here?" asked Anna, pulling up a nearby seat as Sally proceeded to do the same, sitting down beside her.
"We've actually made some really good progress we think."
"We're actually kind of just discussing random theories until you guys finish up with what we think is the description that you two decided to handle cause we feel like tackling and theorizing on the magic bits is going to be a four person job or at least would be better as a four person job," rattled off Safi in quick succession as she whirled around.
Serafina nodded in a couple of places like she was quickly punctuating everything. Anna nodded in agreement.
"That actually sounds perfect. Cause we." She looked to Sally who continued.
"Were pretty much thinking the same sort of. We were hoping you were done with our friends the flying monkeys so that we can all get together and tackle the magic. There really is quite a lot to be done there and it does feel like besides the monkey doing whatever, that's the biggest clue we have to start actually investigating more things and following up on leads that aren't simply the body and that location."
"Yup, Yup." Safi nodded rapidly. "That's great. That's great. We're all on the same page. That's a good place to be."
"Yup. Always a great place to be. Always the place you really want to be honestly no matter what stage the investigation is in and now matter how successful or even how unsuccessful said investigation has been. Well on that note that, do you guys want to quickly finish up and fire that into the big screen. We'll be over there by the larger computers then for us to all take a look at the magic together."
"That sounds just about perfect."
"Wonderful, so we're going to move back and let y'all finish up here then without slowing you guys down by talking any more." With that Sally was already getting up to leave followed soon by Anna after one last glance at those mating rituals that they were looking at. If those mating rituals were going to play a part in the things submitted that discussion later was definitely going to take on an interesting extra subplot. Well one would think so anyway. It was entire possible it didn't involve any of the actual mating. Sally was too much a bad influence. Anna's mind kept drifting to things she really shouldn't be.
Thankfully Anna hadn't drifted off enough that Sally had to draw her attention again and she started pulling up chairs once they'd reached their little station. She formed a little semi circle so they could gather around it properly without having to awkwardly peer around people. Sally sat down predictably at the right edge of the circle. Anna debated for a moment. She could sit at the other edge, let the two be sandwiched in between or sit next to Sally and let them be off to the side. Taking way too long to make the decision it was the sound of Serafina and Safi getting up from their chairs in unison that finally made Anna's decision for her as she basically fell into the chair right next to Sally. Sally and Serafina walked up quickly sliding into their chairs with basically no hesitation. Safi to no one's surprise immediately took the chair right next to Anna to be closer to the center while Serafina settled in easily to the seat in the other corner. Given Serafina's love of corners Anna had no doubt that it would've ended up just as smooth and with the same seating arrangement no matter who ended up reaching the chairs first.
"So we're all here," began Anna, once they'd all pulled their chairs in just a little bit closer so they were all shoulder to shoulder and staring at the screen that Anna had called up quietly.
"We are," said Sally.
"I think we can begin," said Safi. "Nothing really to it. We did our discussions."
"Yup. Yup. We can just begin. No need to exactly discuss anything, just open things up begin some comparisons and start thinking of the kind of conclusions we can draw and then we just rattle them off into the file that gets submitted to the big screen. We might be all doing this together in this moment but we're not yet at the stage where we're trying to eliminate things or pursue things further, unless of course one things sticks out so massively and so urgently that we absolutely must."
"Makes sense," said Safi. "I'm ready to crack on."
"Ready," chimed in Serafina with a rare word. Anna glanced towards Sally who flashed her a smile and a thumbs up. Well that was a new change. Serafina coming in with more words than Sally. To think she'd seen the day. Turning back to her screen, she opened up their first comparison.
"So first up we have our most useless one technically or possibly most useful I don't know but its the kinetic side of things and it just didn't look great at the start. All this information that we have gotten up to now later it is really not looking any more promising now than it did earlier unless we've all collectively been blind upto now and we're about to see something but I doubt that. Those happen incredibly rarely and and even then its even rarer that they're genuinely helpful.
"Well I'm sure no one here really wants that," said Sally. There was another one of those collective murmurs of agreement that Anna was slowly getting used to know. That seemed like it was going to be a feature that stuck around their little team for some time to come. Anna wasn't complaining. It was a lot better than the dead silence she used to get sometimes when new recruits got involved. Heck, sometimes it didn't even have to be new recruit.
"Alright so on that note here are the numbers. Let's get to typing." With that a small hush descended over their little group and everyone seemed to get distracted by one number or the other and focused more on it. Anna herself was trying to see how the older readings matched up to the new baselines and for any evidence of drift that couldn't simply be attributed to time. The average drift readings and everything had already been programmed and accounted for among all of the many ranges by the system so all Anna had to do was a whole lot of comparing.
So compare Anna did. It wasn't the hardest of work. It was much more like trying to solve a simple puzzle except the pieces either seemed to fit into each other in all of the ways or none of the ways and none of them had a clue what exactly they were even trying to piece together. As ridiculous as it sounded though, Anna enjoyed that. It was why Anna was here after all. Like their earlier debate had proven quite conclusively no one got into this job without really, really wanting it.
Anna stood staring there for about ten minutes watching as Sally proceeded to input something and Serafina threw in a whopping two things before she finally pulled away shaking her head slightly. The numbers just didn't seem to be telling a story. Well if they were telling anything, its that there's nothing to really tell. If the others had found anything, Anna didn't know anything about it. The kinetics told a story of just absolutely nothing happening in this remote corner of the universe that really no one seemed to care all that much about. Well Anna supposed there were people who cared somewhat. Anna was one of them technically.
"Alright I'm done. Anyone else got anything else to fish out of these numbers?'
"Nope. nothing whatsoever from me," said Anna, as Serafina shook her head too. Safi seemed to be giving everything one last quick glance before she said something but she too eventually turned around and shook her head. "Nada. Those kinetic just looks really dead in the water. And just normally dead, not even the kind of dead that makes you wonder why it happens to be so dead."
"That about sums it up pretty well."
"Yup so moving onto the more spicy one or the spiciest one?" asked Sally.
"If we go in order I guess we technically go for the spiciest one," said Safi, "If I read that correctly, and his is a silly request but could we delay that one for the last. I like to leave the biggest ones for last. I don't know. I like to keep my disappointment for the start. Or I like the big reveal. I don't know."
"Oh no. Please. That's quite reasonable. Everyone has their little preferences. I don't see why we can't do that. Anyone opposed?" No one even blinked.
"I think that confirms my theory," said Sally. "So shall we cue up the third set of readings then?" There was another one of those collective murmurs of agreement and Sally reached over to flick the screens along. It wasn't long before another set of numbers were flashing on screen. Now these numbers. These numbers were a lot more exciting. Of course they were all just numbers, but this one had a lot more things the computer was already flagging for them and the numbers in general just seemed to have done far more than the previous readings ever had in the past century.
That was already a welcome sight. Anna was honestly surprised at the numbers. If the last set did in fact turn out to be the most interesting, that was going to be a proper light show of warnings to be able to outdo what they were looking at right now. They were probably going to quite legitimately end up getting into the territory of having a little too much information. At the very least that wouldn't be a complete surprise. Those other readings definitely did appear to be the most tampered with. It wouldn't be a surprise if that just flagged things multiple times both for being strange and then also being potentially tampered with. The system liked to go ahead and flag absolutely everything and leave it for the agents to make the decision on whether they wanted to narrow things down and exactly how and by how much they wanted to actually narrow things down.
Focusing back on the current set of readings Anna set about scanning them too. This time things came a lot easier to her. She was the first to type something up, followed very closely by Safi this time. That was an interesting pattern. It was almost definitely just a coincidence but Anna allowed herself a tiny little smile at the observation. She kept up her scanning. This one would definitely present more than just the one theory to type up. Of that she could be quite confident. It didn't take long for her to add three more things even as the others added several too.
All in all, that ended up being a very productive session, probably the most entries of any category so far unless there'd just be a ridiculous amount of monkey talk. There had probably been a ridiculous amount of monkey talk. They had taken a hot second to come over from finalizing that. Anna could figure that out when it came to it. For now, it was time to see if they were going to be moving onto the second set of readings.
"Is everyone all set to go for our next set now?" she asked. "I'm done and I've noticed that no one has entered anything in a bit now. It looks like we're trickling to a stop on this set as productive as it has been."
"Yeah I'm done. I was about to ask if we should move on myself," said Sally, leaning back and letting out a little sigh. Safi nodded too. "Yup. I'm sort of looking things up still but nothing that I really think is worth flagging, I'm just sort of memorizing a few things I think might be of use to remember down the line."
"You do you. If you need more time let us know. We can hold for a little. Always follow up on little hunches like that one. They can prove invaluable sometimes so I'll never tell you not to follow up on one."
"Thank you. I've got what I need really. I was just kind of doing a final scan but I'm done now. Yup. Won't be needing this one much more. I am positive on that one."
"Wonderful," said Anna. "Serafina? Are you done too or do we need to remain on these readings a little longer?"
"Oh I'm done." She gave Safi a look that was a second too long to be called a glance and then nodded again. "I'm done. I think we can move onto those last readings."
"Wonderful." Anna tried very hard not to think too much on how Serafina had clearly checked to see if Safi really had been satisfied with her time before agreeing and turned back to the screen.
"Alright then. Its time to look at the second set in the magic section. This is going to be an interesting one. There's definitely going to be a whole bunch of numbers that look very interesting. Honestly, I would caution everyone to calm themselves down a little for this one despite all the suspense that's now built for it, just so we reduce the number of false positives we jump to just cause its going to look so interesting here."
"Yup," said Safi. "I am definitely keeping that in mind. We don't want to be jumping to conclusions that lead us astray. That's just never something that ends too terribly well for anyone. I absolutely do have that in mind."
"Great then. On that note. Sally if you could do the honors." Sally was once again reaching in and shifting things about as after a little bit of fiddling about the final set of readings finally found themselves on display on their little screen all ready to go. Sure enough, it was just as intriguing as Anna had expected it to be. The numbers were absolutely all over the place.
Anna took a long second to try and just talk it all in. There were almost definitely more numbers that had been flagged here than not. It was not a sight that you tended to see too often in this system. Anna wondered if this was going to make it to that one big compilation of weird moments they always made for the annual Christmas party. It was definitely doing plenty of things to be able to qualify for it.
Anna didn't quite get a hit immediately, first trying to just wade through the noise that was basically caused by areas rendered useless by just a little bit too many warnings coming up. It was quite obvious there were either ridiculous discrepancies over time or someone had doctored things to a ridiculous extent to have all of those come up. Anna did her best to wade through the obvious ones before finally just succumbing to it a noting her first entry down as the possibility of someone having doctored things. It was going to be one that literally every single one of them would have submitted but it couldn't harm them for Anna to submit this now. Anna's brain was helpful in pointing out that everyone else might have thought the same and refrained from submitting too which would lead to an awkward scenario where no one had done anything so at least now Anna was sure there was definitely one entry in the system that would in fact be accounting for it.
Moving past that little roadblock at the start, Anna was finally able to see through the main sort of noise and start looking at more specific instances, and there were certainly plenty of those too. They were of course not as plentiful as everything else had been. Anna was thankful for that because that would likely suggest the readings were just going to be falling into the too much information category and need to be relegated for later things or for further processing. Here they might still get use out of them and given the fact that they were so close to the actual threshold they were probably then going to be getting the maximum information you could wring out before it became too much. That was pretty much the dream when it came to evidence of this nature.
Anna went about breaking it all down as best she could, trying to make the most sense that she could make out of it and not lump things into categories that were too broad or too narrow. It was a delicate balance but Anna had a pretty respectable number of years behind her to give her guidance. It was fairly plan sailing for the most part and she was only broken out of her concentration by Sally audibly sighing as she lay back in her seat. Almost on cue she spoke up.
"I'm done. Wow that took both less time than I thought it was going to and somehow at the same time more time than I thought it was going to. That was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster of a piece that one. Much thinking. Much smooth sailing. But it do be done so there's at least that for relief."
"There is in fact that," said Anna, "Unfortunately you're going to need to wait just a bit cause I still need to finish up a little here."
"Alright. I'm going to try very hard not to fall asleep. You guys finish up. No rush of course. Everyone take your time. We want the best results here. This is obviously no race."
They was a nod from Serafina and an answering "Ah Hmm" from Safi before everything fell back into the routine it had been stuck in surveying the readings. Several more minutes passed by rather quickly. Once again it was plain sailing, Anna this time being broken out of her little reverie, which at this point was pretty much her final look, by Safi leaning back in her seat followed almost instantly by Serafina. Anna once again just had to note that. It was almost certain that Serafina had been done already before Safi was, maybe done for a pretty sizeable amount of time close to when Sally had been done but had stayed there just in case Safi needed the time. It was ridiculously adorable and right now it wasn't impeding their investigation in anyway so Anna wasn't going to even try to investigate or stop it.
"All done there agents?" she asked, giving the readings a last cursory glance before leaning back in her seat herself. She allowed herself a small sigh. It was a fairly big step they were on the cusp of completing here.
"Yes. That did take about as long as Sally said it would," said Safi. "Too long but also just not long enough. It was definitely worth the suspense though. I think that was a great order to do it in."
"Agreed," said Serafina.
Anna nodded. "Well I'm glad that worked out too. I kind of like this system of yours to be honest. I might just adapt it myself going forward. And if Serafina is on board."
"Count me in. We're going to be called the drama queens before long if we do presentations in that order but I am absolutely all for it."
"You know drama queens wasn't the badass team name I was assuming we were going to get especially once we had a Serafina on board it." Anna winked. "But that's not bad. Teams have been called worse and honestly I kind of like it. Might even lend us a certain level of unpredictability cause people will hardly grow to fear that."
"Well I don't know about badass team names," said Serafina. "But I really like the sound of unpredictability."
"I prefer princess over queens, that's just me, but I'm still royalty, I'll take it," said Safi. Sally burst into laughter at that."The sheer seriousness there. Sorry I just couldn't hold it in. I know you are being serious too, sorry I'm not trying to diminish that. Its just quite the statement to make with a straight face and that outfit."
"I know," said Safi giggling herself. "No hard feelings whatsoever. It is quite a funny thing to say when you think about it for a second." Anna allowed herself a little smile at that and she noticed happily that Serafina had allowed herself a tiny little smile too. It was good to see her loosen up a tiny bit too. Of course it would be suspicious if Serafina ever ended up laughing as much as Sally did, but a tiny little smile did still go a long way in this profession.
Anna allowed herself to bask in that little moment of happiness for a moment. It was a nice little feeling to be on after there was confirmation they there were in fact basically done with this particular neck of the woods. She reached up again after a bit and quickly fired things off and set the system to finalize it as it now closed the main data to be sent towards the archives while the ones they'd selected and highlighted as theories would remain there for them to now go through as a team.
"Okay I think we're done with that phase. That was a good four hours of the morning here," said Anna, letting out a little breath. Safi glanced down at her watch. "Yup. Three hours forty two minutes and roughly twelve seconds and counting. I think that's a pretty decent time given we did actually have a bit of three pronged research situation to do here."
"Yup. It wasn't the most evidence I've seen on a case but it was a decent chunk for something of this size and scope and I think we crunched it down quite well. Now I suggest we all catch a good break. Its nearly lunch. Let's look into that a little bit, deal with that and then regroup in the evening to make more
Jack snorted. "Do you know how to play poker?"
"No?"
"Blackjack?"
Mallory swallowed. "I didn't realize gambling required so much... skill."
Jack sighed. "You're hopeless. You're lucky you have me to guide you here."
Mallory flinched. "I know. Thank you, Jack."
"Good." Jack led him deeper into the noise den, glancing around. "Let's get you started on a slot machine. Little skill. Pure luck. Perfect for someone clueless like you."
"Great." Mallory's throat closed with shame.
The deeper Mallory went into the casino, the more lost he became. The cigarette smell was messing with his head and he hated that there were no windows. He was completely barred from the outside world. When Jack sat him down in front of a slot machine, he didn't have the strength to protest. He just stared wide-eyed, truly overwhelmed by the beast before him. On the screen was a little reel where a cherry, a rectangle labeled bar, and two of those bars on top of each other were prominently displayed. That didn't tell him anything. Above the screen was a sign
Jack looked at him and sighed. "Alright. Don't touch anything. I'll do the first time for you."
Mallory nodded as Jack stuffed a twenty dollar bill into the machine.
"This is a one dollar slot. For every dollar you put in, you get one credit."
Mallory nodded. "One dollar. One credit."
"Exactly. One would think that was obvious and very simple, but I guess not."
Mallory flinched, but swallowed down the hurt. "Sorry."
"Why are you apologizing?"
"I..." Mallory squirmed. "I don't know."
"Settle down and pay attention then." Jack pointed at a button below the screen that read 'bet one.' "You press that to bet one credit."
Mallory reached out to press it, but Jack slapped his hand, glaring daggers at him. "I said don't touch anything!"
Mallory drew his hand back as quickly as he could, his coming to a metaphorical stop in his chest.
Jack glared at him for a few moments more before moving on, pointing to the next button. "This is the button to bet the max amount of credits. This machine allows three credits at a time."
Mallory nodded mutely.
"And this button is to make it spin and actually bet for you."
Mallory nodded again, rubbing the back of his hand. It was stinging now that the shock of the strike was fading. He thought that Jack was getting "handsy" during fights now.
But I knew it was just Life's aggression showing face. He could only pretend to be kind for so long. Mallory was in dire physical danger.
Jack just kept marching on. "You press this button to get your money after you're all done."
Mallory nodded. "O-Okay."
"Now. Go on ahead."
Mallory hesitantly reached out to press the 'bet one' button.
"What are you doing?"
Mallory blinked. "Betting one credit...?"
"Why would you do that?"
"Because... I thought that was... good?"
Jack scoffed. "No! Always bet max. That's where the best pay-outs are."
Malory flinched. "Okay. Okay. Betting max." He finally pressed the bet max button.
"There you go."
Mallory relaxed a little at the encouragement, pressing the spin button. He watched as the reel spun, settling in a two by six formation. The first column was a cherry and three bars. The second just a seven centered. The third was another seven on top of a bar.
Mallory looked up at Jack. "What did I get?"
Jack sighed. "Nothing. Just keep working that, I'll be at the bar."
Mallory opened his mouth to question him, but he was already walking away. He was alone. Swallowing, he turned back to the machine. He could do this, right? Just keep pressing the button until he ran out of credits. Or won big, but that seemed unlikely.
He pressed the button again, no longer trying to make sense of the reel. He just watched his credits. If the machine didn't give him the money automatically, it had to do there.
Nothing happened. He just had fourteen credits. Frowning, he pressed the button again. Eleven credits. How did people enjoy this? It was just the number going down with nothing back.
"Am I doing this right?" Mallory looked around, as if someone would come and ease the confusion away.
But there wasn't. He was still alone.
He just went back to watching his credits, pressing the button. Eight credits. Five credits.
Mallory squirmed slightly. What happened if he never made any money back? Would Jack and Dr. Indra retaliate? Were slot machines really luck or was there some level of skill he was missing?
With a small sigh, he just pressed the button again. It's not like he could do anything else.
His credits went down to two. He sighed. That was it.
But then it suddenly skyrocketed, the numbers reconfiguring.
"What?"
The new credit count was two hundred and two.
He stared in disbelief. He won? He really won?
Mallory looked down to the console, pressing the button Jack told him would give him his winnings. Jack would be proud, right? He had to be.
The machine spat out a small piece of paper. Mallory took it, reading it as quickly as he could. It was a voucher.
He stood up, looking around to find the bar. He didn't spot it immediately, so he just set off in the direction Jack went. They would run into each other eventually, right?
He searched the casino, weaving around much more complex machines and card game tables. Maybe he would learn all of this, but that seemed unlikely. He eventually stumbled onto tile floors, finally in the bar area.
“Jack?” He scanned the seats until he spotted him. “Jack!” He ran up to him, voucher in hand.
Jack turned around, his usual whiskey in hand. “Mallory? Did you run out of money?”
Mallory shook his head. “I… I won.”
“You won?”
Mallory held out his voucher. “I won.”
Jack took it, reading it carefully. He frowned slightly. “So you did. Two hundred bucks after a twenty dollar deposit.” He looked up. “Not bad. You did good.”
Mallory was practically glowing. He did good? Jack thought he did good? He grinned. “So… how do we cash it in?”
Jack rubbed his shoulder. “We take that to a machine and we’ll get our money.”
Mallory nodded. “Okay!”
Jack led him away from the bar, keeping him close. Mallory couldn’t help but lean into the touch. It had been too long since Jack had been proud of him. He was going to soak this in when he could.
“So, what do you want to do with your winnings?” Jack smiled down at him.
Mallory hummed softly. “I don’t know. Maybe just… go home. While we’re ahead.”
“Aw come on. You won that with twenty. Imagine what you could win with two hundred.”
Mallory frowned. “But imagine how much more money we’d lose.”
Jack sighed. “Spoil sport. But fine, we can stop today. Tomorrow, you’re going to the big leagues.”
Mallory suddenly found himself dreading tomorrow.
The next day, Jack led him right back to the same slot machine, a wide grin on his face. “Alright. Get three sevens on the pay line and we’ll get one thousand.”
Mallory blinked. “A thousand?”
Jack nodded. “You can do that for us, right?”
Mallory swallowed. “I’ll try.”
“Good job.” Jack clapped his shoulder. “You know where to find me.”
Malloy nodded slowly. He could do this. He could make Jack proud. He fed the machine another twenty. Hopefully that’s all it would take.
Twenty credits later, Mallory had completely failed to win a single prize. Three sevens on the pay line? What did that even mean?
Mallory chewed on his lip. Jack would be so disappointed. But he could keep going. Add more money, try harder. Be better. That way Jack would be happy with him. He just wanted Jack to be happy again.
He dug through his pockets, pulling out another twenty. Forty dollars for a slot machine. But a small price to pay to make Jack smile like that. Three bets later and he still had nothing to show for it. Five bets was more of the same. How was it possible for him to lose this much? At some point, he had to get the smallest scrap of anything. This was getting ridiculous.
He had very little hope for his sixth bet. His bad luck was back. There was no way he would ever see a thousand.
The machine started ringing, lights flashing across the screen. Mallory flinched back, his heart racing. “What the…?”
The word ‘JACKPOT’ flashed across the screen. Mallory’s eyes widened. Did he really manage to do it?
As the screen dissipated, his credits jumped to one thousand and two.
“Mallory?” Jack was back, glass of whiskey in hand.
Mallory turned back. “I did it. I… actually did it.”
Jack leaned in, reading the screen. After a moment, he let out a low whistle. “Wow. So you did.” He laughed. “You did good, babe.”
Mallory was glowing at this point, all flushed from praise. “Thank you.”
Jack kissed his temple. “We’ll have to come back if you’re a little good luck charm. Come on, let’s cash this in.”
Mallory nodded profusely. “Yeah. Yeah. Coming back. Good idea.”
“Look at you learning how to have fun.” Jack’s smile only grew. “You’ll have a great time.”
Mallory basked in the glow of how happy Jack was. Yeah. He’ll have a great time. A great time making Jack happy.
And so Life lead Mallory further down his spiral, now actively giving up his cash almost every day just to please the insatiable celestial. All sense of hesitation melted away under the weight of Jack’s praise, the way his touch would be so much gentler after a big win. Soon he moved one from one dollar machines to five dollar machines. Anything to bring that voucher to Jack and curl up in the afterglow.
Mallory didn’t even have a grip on how much he was spending. Twenty after twenty added up in minutes, and soon he was spending hundreds of dollars a day for winnings that didn’t quite match his efforts. He didn’t notice the way his money from Dr. Indra dwindled to almost nothing. He didn’t notice how the time between each win was only increasing each day, Life laying his heavy hand on the scales to make sure he got what he wanted.
After all, dating Mallory was only temporary.
Four months, two weeks, and six days later, Mallory finally hit the end of the line.
Mallory had seventy-five dollars at the beginning of the day. It was all that was left from his winnings and his supply from Dr. Indra. Jack gave him a soft kiss on the cheek and a good luck.
And Mallory failed. Spectacularly.
You see dear readers, slot machines were supposed to operate on random number generators. But things weren’t perfectly random when Life was the one spinning the reel. So seventy-five dollars went in.
And no money came back out.
When Mallory’s credit count reached zero for the last time, he stared blankly at the screen. No. That wasn’t right. That couldn’t possibly be it.
But it was, and the screen was unforgiving.
He shook his head slowly. “No. That’s not…” He reached into his pockets, fingers grasping at air. “No. No!” His breath speed up. He always came back with something. Even if it was just a twenty buck win, it was still something. He stood up, scrambling back from the machine like it had burnt him. “Please. No. This can’t be happening.”
A couple of machines down, the jackpot bell rang loud and clear. People were cheering. He felt sick.
“Jack. Jack has to understand. He’ll understand.” Mallory turned around to rush to the bar. He would beg for Jack to understand. Get on his hands and knees if he had too.
The machines and people passed by in a blur as Mallory barely restrained himself from sprinting. Jack had to understand. He had to. He had to.
He almost crashed right into Jack, barely keeping himself together at this point. Jack turned around with a grin. “Mallory! What are you bringing me today?”
Mallory stared at him in horror, trembling slightly. “I… I…”
Jack nodded. “It has to be something big if you’re acting like this.”
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Life? Yes? Well, it’s not enough.
Mallory swallowed and shook his head slowly, his gaze drifting to the floor.
Jack froze. “What?”
“I… I didn’t win anything…”
Jack stared at him like Mallory just insulted his favorite pastime: emotional torture. Mallory shifted, wringing his hands. “But that just happens sometimes, right? Not every day is going to be a winner.”
“How much money did you spend?”
“What?”
Jack set down his glass. “How much money did you spend?”
Mallory had to take a deep breath. “The… the rest of it.”
Jack took a deep breath, his face twisting in the way that made Mallory’s stomach drop. “And she won’t give you more?”
Mallory shook his head wordlessly. Dr. Indra wanted him to fund himself now. She had only gave him the first stack of cash.
Jack shook his head. “I… I can’t believe you Mallory. I’m… disgusted right now.”
Mallory flinched. “I’m sorry-“
“Save it. I just… I can’t keep doing this for you, Mallory. I try to be supportive, but you fail me every time. How do you expect me to stay with you?”
Tears sprang to life in Mallory’s eyes. “I… I guess I thought… you loved me enough… to stay.”
Jack scoffed. “God, you’re so selfish. You think I’m here to bend over backwards for you? That’s not fair, Mallory. You’re in therapy. Why aren’t you any better?”
“I…” Mallory looked back up at Jack, shaking freely now. “I don’t know.”
Jack picked up his drink and chugged the rest of it, slamming the empty glass down harder than necessary. “Then we’re done. I want you out of my house. You can come crawling back when you’re finally better.”
“No!” Mallory practically lunged for Jack’s hand. “Please… please…”
Jack tore away. “I’m sick of being your babysitter, Mallory. You’re helpless. You’re stupid. You’re so incredibly needy. I want you out.”
“I… I’ll be better. I promise I’ll be better. I’m sorry.”
“I have heard that too many times from you.” Jack crossed his arms. “I’ll take you back when it’s true.”
Mallory laced his hands in his hair. “How am I going to get my stuff? Where am I going to stay?”
“Improve fast enough and you won’t have to worry about that.”
Mallory shook his head. “I… I still have tonight.”
“Find a park. You’ll make do.” Jack pushed past him, leaving Mallory decimated with no retort, no possible response. Jack was just leaving him to sleep outside? Like they weren’t anything at all?
“Jack… Jack please!”
He didn’t respond, leaving Mallory entirely alone at the bar. He started to panic, pacing back and forth. He had no money on him. He had no access to a bank account without Jack. He controlled the cards. Mallory didn’t even have a wallet.
Find a park? Wasn’t sleeping out there illegal? What other choice did he have? Mallory shook his head and slowly wandered to the exit, heart pounding. He could win Jack over, right? He could find some way to have Jack let him come back home.
Meanwhile, Life went back home, hopping into his home plane with a sneer and a little shimmy. He went back to his bedroom, falling on his bed. The image of Jack melted away, being replaced by a stone figure with glowing eyes.
It was only three minutes and six seconds until there was a knock on his door. Life waved his hand, letting it pop open. “What is it now, Deathie?”
“I’m not Death.”
Life turned to the door, a massive grin on his face. “Oh my god! It’s you! Aren’t you too busy to talk with little ole’ me?”
“I know what you’re planning. You’re not going to like the outcome.”
Life snorted. “You can see the future now?”
“No. I can use common sense.”
He huffed, sitting up on his bed. “Why don’t you get back to stalking the planet?”
There was a sigh from the door. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
As footsteps receded from the doorway, Life leaned forward. “Hey! I’m older than you! Don’t tell me what to do, kid.”
There was no response.
Back on Earth, Mallory entered the nearest park, shivering slightly. It was cold in the evenings, how was he supposed to sleep completely exposed? Wiping his nose, he trudged on, making sure there was no one in the park that would bother him. Thankfully, it seemed deserted.
He sat down on a bench far away from the entrance. This was it. This was his life now. He laid down, curling into himself. It was so cold. The metal of the bench, the bite of the air. How was he going to do this?
He looked up at the night sky, the light pollution of his city decimating the stars. “I don’t know who up there is doing this to me, but can you please stop? Leave me alone?”
There was no response, but something in Mallory told him to sit up. “What did I do to deserve this? What have I done wrong to you? Why me?”
“I don’t think there’s rhyme or reason, kid.”
Mallory flinched as he turned around. A man he had not spotted during his check of the park stood beside the bench, wearing an oversized jacket riddled with holes. He was unshaven, his beard turning grey. His face was coated in dirt.
Mallory swallowed. “I… I didn’t…”
“Know I was here? Yeah. A few years of doing this and you get good at hiding.” The man sat beside the bench. “Why are you here, kid?”
Mallory watched him hesitantly, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I… I got… kicked out. Told to sleep outside until I’m good enough to come back.”
The man sighed and shook his head. “You’ll never be good enough. People like that… you can never please them.”
“No. That’s not true. He was happy. For a time. I just… ruined it. And if I can ruin it, I can fix it.”
“That’s not how it works. Trust me… I would know.” The man leaned against the bench with a soft groan. “Once you’re out here… you’re invisible to the world. No one’s taking you back.”
Mallory chewed on his lip. “Why are you out here?”
He chuckled. “I lost my job. Hit hard times. I couldn’t seem to crawl my way out of it, so now I’m here.”
“Oh,” Mallory whispered softly. “I’m sorry.”
“Eh, I’ve been sorry long enough for the both of us. Don’t bother.”
Mallory nodded stiffly, crossing his arms. “Okay.”
The man raised his hand. “The name’s Hugh.”
Malloy hesitantly took his hand, giving it a quick shake. “Mallory.”
“Well, Mallory. You shouldn’t sleep on the bench. You’re too exposed. Any person can sneak up on you.”
Mallory shrank back. “Where can I go, then?”
Hugh stood up slowly, using the bench as support. “Well. I’ll take you somewhere. Just follow me.”
Mallory briefly considered if he should follow a perfect stranger into the night, but he didn’t have much of a choice. “Alright.” He stood up too, frowning slightly.
“Don’t worry, kid. I don’t bite.” Hugh led him on to the grass, holding his jacket close. “People are a little chewy for my taste.”
Mallory stumbled slightly. Did he… has he really…?
Hugh laughed. “Oh, that was good. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
Mallory forced out a laugh, hoping he didn’t sound nearly as scared as he felt. “No, no. It was… a good one.”
Hugh frowned. “You okay?”
Mallory swallowed. “Just fine.”
“Got used to being homeless that fast?”
He spluttered. “Other than that, of course!”
Hugh chuckled again. “Just checking. Come on. We’re almost there.”
Mallory’s face was burning. Was Hugh making fun of him? Was he upset with him like Jack was?
Soon, Hugh led him to a dark corner of the park, far away from where the hubbub would be. There was a small tent there, tucked away from prying eyes.
“This is where I’ve been sleeping.” Hugh looked at it with almost a sense of pride. “I’ll probably move on to somewhere else in a couple of days, but feel free to stay here until then.”
He turned to Mallory. “Where are your supplies?”
Mallory fish-mouthed for a second before looking at the floor. “I… I don’t have any.”
Hugh frowned. “You didn’t grab anything before you left?”
“I… I wasn’t home when I was kicked out. I didn’t have a chance to grab anything. Besides, Jack controls all the finances.”
“Who’s Jack?”
Mallory sighed. “My boyfriend.”
Hugh stared at Mallory for a bit, making him squirm. Was Hugh homophobic? Had he just ruined his chances of having a safe place to sleep tonight?
Hugh cleared his throat. “Well, he set you up for failure. Stick with me as long as you need to, kid. I’ll make sure you don’t die out here.”
Mallory shook his head. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. It’s fine.”
“You don’t even have a jacket. You’re not going to last out here.”
“I…” Mallory shifted. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“And I don’t want you to freeze to death out here.” Hugh sighed. “Look, I can’t force you to accept help. It’s not my place. But at least actually consider it. There’s safety in numbers. Going off on your own with nothing is a one way ticket to the dirt.”
Mallory squirmed. “I’ll stay one night. We’ll see.”
Hugh nodded. “One night. I should have a spare sleeping bag. Let me check.”
Mallory nodded slowly. “Go ahead.”
Hugh ducked into the tent. Mallory sat down in front of the entrance, picking at the grass. How do he get here? Only a year ago, he was happily married to Sarah. And now… everything had completely fallen apart. How was he ever going to recover from this?
Hugh popped out of the tent with a sleeping bag and a blanket. “It’s not luxury, but it’s better than sleeping on a bench.”
Mallory stared at the bundle in his arms. “How did you get all of this stuff?”
“I used to camp a lot in my glory days. When I got my eviction notice, I packed as much as I could.”
“Smart. I wish I had that opportunity.”
Hugh shrugged. “I wish I wasn’t evicted at all, but wishing’s not going to do much.” He sighed, handing everything off to Mallory. “Sleep on the grass. It’ll hurt less.”
“Thank you. For the stuff.”
“Sure, kid. I’ll be in the tent if you need me.” Hugh disappeared back into the tent, this time sipping it closed.
Mallory set the sleeping bag down in the patch of grass beside the tent, looking around to make sure no one was watching him. When he was satisfied, he eased himself in, nestling in as comfortably as he could for someone sleeping on the hard ground. “Goodnight, Sarah,” he whispered. “I hope you still love me after all of this.”
He curled into himself, squeezing his eyes shut, and hoped for sleep to come.
The next morning, Hugh shook him awake. Mallory shot out of bed, gasping for breath.
Hugh patted his shoulder. “Rise and shine. We need to find a way to eat today.”
Mallory nodded, untangling himself from the sleeping bag. “So we do.”
“I usually go to the soup kitchen a few blocks east. Feel free to join me.”
“I… I think I will.” Mallory finally stood up, brushing himself off. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Then follow me. It’s a decent walk, so I hope you can handle it.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Mallory fidgeted with his shirt as he followed Hugh out of the park.
Hugh chuckled.
Mallory smiled. “Hey, Hugh?”
“Yeah?”
“Why were you fired?”
Hugh sighed softly, a sense of weariness dulling his eyes. “I was laid off. The company was downsizing and suddenly they didn’t need me anymore. Happened to a bunch of people.”
Mallory frowned. “Don’t they have to give you unemployment?”
Hugh shrugged. “Yeah. But unemployment only lasts so long. Besides, I had… big expenses then.”
“Did you just buy a new house or something?”
Hugh shook his head, slowing down. “I wish. But no. My…” He cleared his throat. “My son died. I was trying to put together a funeral.”
Mallory flinched. “Oh. My… my sympathies. How old was he?”
Hugh swallowed. “Sixteen.”
Both of them walked in silence for a minute before Mallory managed to speak up. “I… I lost my wife and daughter in a car crash. She… she was in labor. I never got see my daughter’s face.”
Hugh turned towards him, a sudden understanding crossing his face. He looked much older with the apparent grief, his wrinkles almost smearing shadows across his eyes. “Oh. What… what was her name going to be?”
Mallory looked at the floor, feeling tears start to build. “Mila.”
“That’s a beautiful name.”
Mallory let out a weak laugh, wiping at his eyes. “Thank you.” He took a deep breath. “What… what was your son’s name?”
“Allen.” Hugh smiled softly. “Named after his grandfather.”
“I’m sure he was lovely.”
“He was. Way smarter than me. If he had a chance, he would’ve changed the world.”
“I’m sure he’s changing wherever he ended up.”
Hugh nodded. “That’s a nice thought. I bet your daughter is living an amazing life too.”
“She deserves it.”
Hugh nodded. “I’m sure she does.”
Mallory wiped his eyes again for good measure. Jack had never been that kind about Sarah and Mila. He didn’t understand the crushing weight of their deaths. But Hugh did. Hugh was gentle in a way Jack never could be. How was it that a stranger was kinder than his boyfriend? It didn’t make sense.
Neither of them spoke until they arrived at the soup kitchen. It was ran in a small church, and most of the volunteers seemed to be teenagers.
“Just do what I do. It’s not hard. Most of the people here are sweet.” Hugh stopped to ponder. “Probably best not to mention that boyfriend of yours, though.”
Mallory nodded. “Okay…”
Hugh stepped into the line, Mallory close behind him. He grabbed two trays, passing one off to Mallory. “Here. Don’t drop it. You’ll never forget that embarrassment.”
Mallory snorted, holding his tray close. “Noted.”
The first teenager behind the line grinned. “Hello! Would you like some soup?”
Hugh nodded. “Please.”
The teen handed him a bowl of a nondescript tan soup. “Enjoy!”
He gave her a strained smile. “Thanks.”
As Hugh moved forward, the teen turned to Mallory. “Hello! Soup?”
Mallory nodded.
The teen gave him the same grin, giving him the same soup. “Enjoy!”
Mallory nodded again. “Thank you…” He quickly shuffled forward.
The next teen looked significantly less enthusiastic. “Bread?”
“Yeah.”
The teen handed him a plate with a hard roll of bread on it. Mallory smiled. “Tha-“
The teen sighed. “Next.”
Mallory scurried off, his heart pounding. Was he going too slow?
The last person was an older woman, wearing a soft smile. “Water?”
“Yes. Water.”
She set a bottle of water on his tray. “You’re all set.”
Mallory cleared his throat. “Appreciated.” He turned around to try and find Hugh.
Hugh waved at him from a table further away from the line. Mallory rushed to join him, sitting across from him.
“That bad?”
Mallory fanned his face off. “I apparently left all of my ability to speak to people at home.”
“Don’t worry. It’s stressful for most. Just eat up and be glad you only have to do it once a day.” Hugh tore his roll in half, dipping one piece into the soup.
“How do you get lunch or dinner?”
“I usually don’t. You can try to find someone else who will give you something if you want, but in my experience it just ain’t worth it.”
Mallory slowly gathered a spoonful of soup. “Got it. One meal a day now.”
Hugh gave him an affirmative grunt around the bread in his mouth.
Mallory went to swallow the soup, only to start coughing.
Hugh snorted. “Too much salt for you?”
Mallory shook his head. “N-No. There was… something in my throat. It made it almost impossible to swallow.”
He cleared his throat. Nothing came up.
“Something… stopped you?” Hugh furrowed his brows.
Mallory nodded, suddenly out of breath. His throat was so tight. He could scarcely breathe.
“Mallory? Mallory are you okay?”
Mallory coughed weakly. What was happening? Why did this all start now?
Life hung from the ceiling as a spider, watching Mallory choke on his own throat. If he could, he would smile. This play would guarantee that Mallory would suffer for the rest of his life.
Hugh pressed against Mallory’s throat, his face paling. “Someone call an ambulance! Right now!”
Mallory was wheezing, barely grasping what was happening. “H-Hugh?”
“Don’t talk right now. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”
Mallory’s face was getting warm. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t see anymore. He reached out to Hugh, struggling for breath, before pitching backwards in a dead faint, tumbling towards the floor.
When Mallory woke up, he was being jostled, like he was in a moving vehicle. He couldn’t move. There was something in his mouth. He felt so light-headed.
“Patient is gaining consciousness.”
“Good. Good. Mr. Mallory? Can you hear me?”
Mallory whimpered, trying to open his eyes.
“You passed out due to oxygen deprivation. There is a lump on your throat we suspect is a tumor.”
A tumor?
Was he dying?
“Just hang in there, sir. We’ll take care of you.”
Mallory slowly lost consciousness again, drifting away.
An hour, twenty minutes, and thirteen seconds later, Life was back to being Jack, pacing in front of Mallory’s hospital room. Human doctors would be able to figure this out. This was meant to make Mallory suffer, not kill him outright! There had to be something.
A doctor, with the name tag Dr. Dissanayake and long black hair tied back in an elegant braid stepped out of the room. “Are you Jack?”
Jack nodded. “I am.”
“I’m afraid I only have bad news to give you.”
Life wanted to kick himself. This wasn’t the plan. “Okay?”
“Mallory’s cancer has spread to his lungs. His tumor is big enough that it’s pushing against his trachea. There’s no hope of recovery.”
Jack growled. “What about radiation? Chemotherapy?”
“Mallory can’t breathe, sir. His body is shutting down due to lack of oxygen. It’s too late for that.”
Life wanted to scream. Why did he have to pick throat cancer? He just wanted Mallory to struggle with eating! Was that so much to ask?
“I’ll give you time to say goodbyes.” She gave him a pitiful smile and walked away.
Life opened the door and marched in. Mallory had a breathing tube in his throat, his face completely slack with unconsciousness. Life could feel the brain death he was going through.
A hand landed on Life’s shoulder. He turned around. It was Death, looking like a perfect copy of Sarah. We told you this would happen.
Life scoffed. “This is your fault! Stop him from dying! I don’t have control anymore!”
I can’t. Just like you can’t spontaneously make someone be born, I can’t stop this. You killed him, Life. Let him go.
“I didn’t mean to! Just stop it!”
It doesn’t matter. He’s gone. I’m here to take him home.
Life screamed, stomping his foot. The lights in the room flickered. “No! You can’t! You can’t!”
Maybe you learned your lesson this time. Death peeled back the air and stepped through the hole, disappearing into thin air.
Life trembled, his eyes glowing a dark red. He stormed up to the window and punched it as hard as he could. The glass shattered on impact, a chunk of the wall falling to the ground below. Life turned into a morning dove and flew away.
Meanwhile, in Death’s domain, Mallory blinked his eyes open, groaning softly. His throat felt clear and he had no breathing tube. He rubbed his temples. He was in the bedroom he shared with Sarah before… everything. What happened? Was the car crash just a terrible dream?
He sat up, only to lock eyes with someone who looked exactly like Sarah. Her same almost mischievous smile and everything. But… no. Something was wrong.
“You’re not Sarah, are you?”
The person, Death, shook Death’s head.
“But you’re going to take me to her?”
Death nodded, holding out a hand.
Without a hint of hesitation, Mallory stood up, taking the hand. “Thank you.”
Death’s smile turned slightly sad as Death led him to the door of the bedroom. When Death opened it, Mallory’s face brightened, tears streaming down his face. “Sarah!” He ran through the door. Death seemed to watch him for a bit before following, closing the door with that same thud.
“So my grammar was a tiny bit off? Are you going to arrest me for that?” <- Don't count (6010)
"Well I'm not going to arrest you. Yet. But you are lying to your superior officer here and that's the conclusion that I've come to based on your incorrect grammar so for that yes I could technically arrest you as a potential risk of mutiny."
"Anna."
"What?"
"Literally no one in the history of this organization has ever been arrested or attempted to arrest someone for that."
"That's cause no one has actively tried to stage a mutiny yet."
"And? You think I'm going to be the first."
"No. Obviously I wasn't actually going to arrest you." Anna resisted the urge to audibly whine. This time she knew very well she was being played. Like a cheap little kazoo.
Sally burst into suppressed laughter again. She then proceeded to hide her face in Anna's shoulder to avoid disturbing Safi and Serafina and Anna nearly fainted on the spot. To have the audacity to not just completely derail her thoughts by playing her like that but to also nestle into her neck like that and... Anna's brain was just flashing a large error message saying "Anna.exe not responding.".
While Anna slowly died, Sally seemed to not even really notice where she was currently nestling into and for a very scary split second Anna wondered if Sally had just gone right back to sleep after having to wake up early to come in. Thankfully, the laughter seemed to subside a few minutes later and Sally pulled away, a little flush coloring her cheeks. She proceeded to look at Anna for a long moment like she was seeing Anna in some sort of new light then promptly looked away.
Anna's brain was too busy rebooting to try and process that right away but the moment it returned to semi full function it was almost taken out immediately trying to understand what that could possibly mean. Sally being flushed was definitely to do with all the ridiculous laughing that she was doing. That was a common color on one Ms. Tervine's face on most days with how much laughing she tended to get up to even in the early hours of the morning.
The moment Anna managed to dismiss the flushing that strange long look came to life. Sally was now fully focused on the screen staring like she was unravelling all of the secrets hidden within but earlier. Anna hadn't seen that look before. Or had she? Sally didn't do that? What did? Maybe she needed to talk to Kate about this. Nope. No. Never. Not that woman. She'd be asking about dating and other terrible things that definitely weren't relevant here. Kate always had only the one answer when it came to these situations. OKay maybe that wasn't quite true but Anna was allowed to generalize in these situations when she was in genuine danger of going insane because of very stupid feelings amidst a very important investigation. Not even Safi and Serafina seemed to be acting that strange and they were very clearly crushing on each other.
"So are we finalized on this then?" asked Sally, finally breaking Anna out of her thoughts. Anna took a moment to register, having to shake off the temporary cobwebs that had formed in her brain from drifting off for too long.
"Yeah. Yeah. Outfits. Details. We compound them as best we can. We try what we can. I don't expect to pull in much. The magic and the monkeys are what's probably going to do the most although I get the feeling the monkeys are going to just pull us elsewhere. Maybe. I don't know. I have a hunch this is turning into more than a single murder. Kate's got some master plan here and we're playing a part. We'll get to chose what part but its something."
Sally let out a soft hum. "Well that's another theory. Honestly I don't know what to think on that. I haven't been on the receiving end on one of those yet but I've heard stories and I would not mind. Let's just focus on this and see where it takes us. If there's one common theme when it comes to things with Kate, its that you shouldn't sit around questioning it too long or try to overthink. Well sort of. Most people would say you should totally go with the flow but Kate likes a bit of thinking. Its a mixed bag. But sitting and only thinking is not good. I'm sure of that one."
Anna nodded. "Mmm Hmm. Shall we check out the monkeys and see if everyone is up for checking out the magic proper then?"
"I think that would be time pretty well spent to be honest. Most of this is going to just kind of do itself here in terms of the actual generation of this description and the distribution so I would suggest we enter this to the list and check in. We are both in agreement about the fact that this isn't going anywhere else right?'
Anna nodded. "Yeah. I mean I got nothing. We need another detail of some kind. Something has to come in before we can make more sense of this and get more concrete in terms of what exactly this person was doing here and what this person was doing and if all this other information that we have at the moment happens to even be useful after all."
"Yup that's going to be a nice fun wait at least because we do at least for the moment have a good amount of other leads to be going ahead and following up on. So we're not just completely lost here having absolutely nothing to do. Now that, that would be a truly awful fate if we had to wait for just something to come up."
"Thank goodness for the flying monkeys then."
"Well that's not a statement I ever expected to see come out of the great Anna."
"Well its happened."
"I know. It was glorious. I'm still savoring it."
"You don't have to make a big deal out of it."
"That doesn't mean that I'm not going to make a massive deal out of it, because I very much can and you very much can't stop me about it since you were kind of the person that ended up triggering it. Willingly I might add. Its not like I even prompted you to say that like I probably would have had to if I wanted to make you say it at some point."
"Alright that's enough about flying monkeys. Let's wrap this up and then okay well we're back to flying monkeys."
"Good." Sally giggled and her fingers flew on the keypad as she logged it all up to go on the screen for later when they compounded this all. Anna laid back for a moment letting it happen. It was progress and tangible progress at that. That was good. That was really quite good. They needed this, quite a lot of this to make it through. Almost two hours of this morning had already gone by so they really did need to start having things to actually show for all of that as time went on here.
It wasn't long before Sally hit the enter key with a satisfying click. That was a feature Anna absolutely loved. There was never something quite as satisfying as one big click to end something like that. Touch screens were only great when you wanted to be all quiet and efficient. Okay so maybe they were great for basically all of the occasions but that's still certainly not going to be equivalent to all by any means whatsoever.
Before Anna could somehow manage to distract herself on the pros and cons of buttons vs touchscreens of all things. Gosh her mind was just not at it for some reason. She blamed Sally. Sally was doing so much to just be everywhere all at once and her mind was searching for anything in the moment to try and latch onto so that it didn't end up thinking for too long about Sally. Thankfully before Anna's mind could latch onto the thought about latching on, they were already moving towards Safi and Serafina.
It looked like the two were still quite deep in conversation, whispering to each other quite loudly as they stared at several pages of information on what was definitely the flying monkeys. Unless for some reason they were trying to look for clue in the mating rituals of random primates. This case had been an odd one, but it wasn't quite so odd that they had to be looking at mating rituals, especially among primates of all things. And gosh Anna hoped the talk of mating rituals wasn't going to end up on any reports. That was going to lead to more than a little bit of teasing if her mind continued to behave quite this stupidly around Sally like it had been doing for... Anna wasn't entirely sure at this point.
"Agents, how are we coming along here?" asked Anna, pulling up a nearby seat as Sally proceeded to do the same, sitting down beside her.
"We've actually made some really good progress we think."
"We're actually kind of just discussing random theories until you guys finish up with what we think is the description that you two decided to handle cause we feel like tackling and theorizing on the magic bits is going to be a four person job or at least would be better as a four person job," rattled off Safi in quick succession as she whirled around.
Serafina nodded in a couple of places like she was quickly punctuating everything. Anna nodded in agreement.
"That actually sounds perfect. Cause we." She looked to Sally who continued.
"Were pretty much thinking the same sort of. We were hoping you were done with our friends the flying monkeys so that we can all get together and tackle the magic. There really is quite a lot to be done there and it does feel like besides the monkey doing whatever, that's the biggest clue we have to start actually investigating more things and following up on leads that aren't simply the body and that location."
"Yup, Yup." Safi nodded rapidly. "That's great. That's great. We're all on the same page. That's a good place to be."
"Yup. Always a great place to be. Always the place you really want to be honestly no matter what stage the investigation is in and now matter how successful or even how unsuccessful said investigation has been. Well on that note that, do you guys want to quickly finish up and fire that into the big screen. We'll be over there by the larger computers then for us to all take a look at the magic together."
"That sounds just about perfect."
"Wonderful, so we're going to move back and let y'all finish up here then without slowing you guys down by talking any more." With that Sally was already getting up to leave followed soon by Anna after one last glance at those mating rituals that they were looking at. If those mating rituals were going to play a part in the things submitted that discussion later was definitely going to take on an interesting extra subplot. Well one would think so anyway. It was entire possible it didn't involve any of the actual mating. Sally was too much a bad influence. Anna's mind kept drifting to things she really shouldn't be.
Thankfully Anna hadn't drifted off enough that Sally had to draw her attention again and she started pulling up chairs once they'd reached their little station. She formed a little semi circle so they could gather around it properly without having to awkwardly peer around people. Sally sat down predictably at the right edge of the circle. Anna debated for a moment. She could sit at the other edge, let the two be sandwiched in between or sit next to Sally and let them be off to the side. Taking way too long to make the decision it was the sound of Serafina and Safi getting up from their chairs in unison that finally made Anna's decision for her as she basically fell into the chair right next to Sally. Sally and Serafina walked up quickly sliding into their chairs with basically no hesitation. Safi to no one's surprise immediately took the chair right next to Anna to be closer to the center while Serafina settled in easily to the seat in the other corner. Given Serafina's love of corners Anna had no doubt that it would've ended up just as smooth and with the same seating arrangement no matter who ended up reaching the chairs first.
"So we're all here," began Anna, once they'd all pulled their chairs in just a little bit closer so they were all shoulder to shoulder and staring at the screen that Anna had called up quietly.
"We are," said Sally.
"I think we can begin," said Safi. "Nothing really to it. We did our discussions."
"Yup. Yup. We can just begin. No need to exactly discuss anything, just open things up begin some comparisons and start thinking of the kind of conclusions we can draw and then we just rattle them off into the file that gets submitted to the big screen. We might be all doing this together in this moment but we're not yet at the stage where we're trying to eliminate things or pursue things further, unless of course one things sticks out so massively and so urgently that we absolutely must."
"Makes sense," said Safi. "I'm ready to crack on."
"Ready," chimed in Serafina with a rare word. Anna glanced towards Sally who flashed her a smile and a thumbs up. Well that was a new change. Serafina coming in with more words than Sally. To think she'd seen the day. Turning back to her screen, she opened up their first comparison.
"So first up we have our most useless one technically or possibly most useful I don't know but its the kinetic side of things and it just didn't look great at the start. All this information that we have gotten up to now later it is really not looking any more promising now than it did earlier unless we've all collectively been blind upto now and we're about to see something but I doubt that. Those happen incredibly rarely and and even then its even rarer that they're genuinely helpful.
"Well I'm sure no one here really wants that," said Sally. There was another one of those collective murmurs of agreement that Anna was slowly getting used to know. That seemed like it was going to be a feature that stuck around their little team for some time to come. Anna wasn't complaining. It was a lot better than the dead silence she used to get sometimes when new recruits got involved. Heck, sometimes it didn't even have to be new recruits.
"Alright so on that note here are the numbers. Let's get to typing." With that a small hush descended over their little group and everyone seemed to get distracted by one number or the other and focused more on it. Anna herself was trying to see how the older readings matched up to the new baselines and for any evidence of drift that couldn't simply be attributed to time. The average drift readings and everything had already been programmed and accounted for among all of the many ranges by the system so all Anna had to do was a whole lot of comparing.
So compare Anna did. It wasn't the hardest of work. It was much more like trying to solve a simple puzzle except the pieces either seemed to fit into each other in all of the ways or none of the ways and none of them had a clue what exactly they were even trying to piece together. As ridiculous as it sounded though, Anna enjoyed that. It was why Anna was here after all. Like their earlier debate had proven quite conclusively no one got into this job without really, really wanting it.
Anna stood staring there for about ten minutes watching as Sally proceeded to input something and Serafina threw in a whopping two things before she finally pulled away shaking her head slightly. The numbers just didn't seem to be telling a story. Well if they were telling anything, its that there's nothing to really tell. If the others had found anything, Anna didn't know anything about it. The kinetics told a story of just absolutely nothing happening in this remote corner of the universe that really no one seemed to care all that much about. Well Anna supposed there were people who cared somewhat. Anna was one of them technically.
"Alright I'm done. Anyone else got anything else to fish out of these numbers?'
"Nope. nothing whatsoever from me," said Anna, as Serafina shook her head too. Safi seemed to be giving everything one last quick glance before she said something but she too eventually turned around and shook her head. "Nada. Those kinetic just looks really dead in the water. And just normally dead, not even the kind of dead that makes you wonder why it happens to be so dead."
"That about sums it up pretty well."
"Yup so moving onto the more spicy one or the spiciest one?" asked Sally.
"If we go in order I guess we technically go for the spiciest one," said Safi, "If I read that correctly, and his is a silly request but could we delay that one for the last. I like to leave the biggest ones for last. I don't know. I like to keep my disappointment for the start. Or I like the big reveal. I don't know."
"Oh no. Please. That's quite reasonable. Everyone has their little preferences. I don't see why we can't do that. Anyone opposed?" No one even blinked.
"I think that confirms my theory," said Sally. "So shall we cue up the third set of readings then?" There was another one of those collective murmurs of agreement and Sally reached over to flick the screens along. It wasn't long before another set of numbers were flashing on screen. Now these numbers. These numbers were a lot more exciting. Of course they were all just numbers, but this one had a lot more things the computer was already flagging for them and the numbers in general just seemed to have done far more than the previous readings ever had in the past century.
That was already a welcome sight. Anna was honestly surprised at the numbers. If the last set did in fact turn out to be the most interesting, that was going to be a proper light show of warnings to be able to outdo what they were looking at right now. They were probably going to quite legitimately end up getting into the territory of having a little too much information. At the very least that wouldn't be a complete surprise. Those other readings definitely did appear to be the most tampered with. It wouldn't be a surprise if that just flagged things multiple times both for being strange and then also being potentially tampered with. The system liked to go ahead and flag absolutely everything and leave it for the agents to make the decision on whether they wanted to narrow things down and exactly how and by how much they wanted to actually narrow things down.
Focusing back on the current set of readings Anna set about scanning them too. This time things came a lot easier to her. She was the first to type something up, followed very closely by Safi this time. That was an interesting pattern. It was almost definitely just a coincidence but Anna allowed herself a tiny little smile at the observation. She kept up her scanning. This one would definitely present more than just the one theory to type up. Of that she could be quite confident. It didn't take long for her to add three more things even as the others added several too.
All in all, that ended up being a very productive session, probably the most entries of any category so far unless there'd just be a ridiculous amount of monkey talk. There had probably been a ridiculous amount of monkey talk. They had taken a hot second to come over from finalizing that. Anna could figure that out when it came to it. For now, it was time to see if they were going to be moving onto the second set of readings.
"Is everyone all set to go for our next set now?" she asked. "I'm done and I've noticed that no one has entered anything in a bit now. It looks like we're trickling to a stop on this set as productive as it has been."
"Yeah I'm done. I was about to ask if we should move on myself," said Sally, leaning back and letting out a little sigh. Safi nodded too. "Yup. I'm sort of looking things up still but nothing that I really think is worth flagging, I'm just sort of memorizing a few things I think might be of use to remember down the line."
"You do you. If you need more time let us know. We can hold for a little. Always follow up on little hunches like that one. They can prove invaluable sometimes so I'll never tell you not to follow up on one."
"Thank you. I've got what I need really. I was just kind of doing a final scan but I'm done now. Yup. Won't be needing this one much more. I am positive on that one."
"Wonderful," said Anna. "Serafina? Are you done too or do we need to remain on these readings a little longer?"
"Oh I'm done." She gave Safi a look that was a second too long to be called a glance and then nodded again. "I'm done. I think we can move onto those last readings."
"Wonderful." Anna tried very hard not to think too much on how Serafina had clearly checked to see if Safi really had been satisfied with her time before agreeing and turned back to the screen.
"Alright then. Its time to look at the second set in the magic section. This is going to be an interesting one. There's definitely going to be a whole bunch of numbers that look very interesting. Honestly, I would caution everyone to calm themselves down a little for this one despite all the suspense that's now built for it, just so we reduce the number of false positives we jump to just cause its going to look so interesting here."
"Yup," said Safi. "I am definitely keeping that in mind. We don't want to be jumping to conclusions that lead us astray. That's just never something that ends too terribly well for anyone. I absolutely do have that in mind."
"Great then. On that note. Sally if you could do the honors." Sally was once again reaching in and shifting things about as after a little bit of fiddling about the final set of readings finally found themselves on display on their little screen all ready to go. Sure enough, it was just as intriguing as Anna had expected it to be. The numbers were absolutely all over the place.
Anna took a long second to try and just talk it all in. There were almost definitely more numbers that had been flagged here than not. It was not a sight that you tended to see too often in this system. Anna wondered if this was going to make it to that one big compilation of weird moments they always made for the annual Christmas party. It was definitely doing plenty of things to be able to qualify for it.
Anna didn't quite get a hit immediately, first trying to just wade through the noise that was basically caused by areas rendered useless by just a little bit too many warnings coming up. It was quite obvious there were either ridiculous discrepancies over time or someone had doctored things to a ridiculous extent to have all of those come up. Anna did her best to wade through the obvious ones before finally just succumbing to it an noting her first entry down as the possibility of someone having doctored things. It was going to be one that literally every single one of them would have submitted but it couldn't harm them for Anna to submit this now. Anna's brain was helpful in pointing out that everyone else might have thought the same and refrained from submitting too which would lead to an awkward scenario where no one had done anything so at least now Anna was sure there was definitely one entry in the system that would in fact be accounting for it.
Moving past that little roadblock at the start, Anna was finally able to see through the main sort of noise and start looking at more specific instances, and there were certainly plenty of those too. They were of course not as plentiful as everything else had been. Anna was thankful for that because that would likely suggest the readings were just going to be falling into the too much information category and need to be relegated for later things or for further processing. Here they might still get use out of them and given the fact that they were so close to the actual threshold they were probably then going to be getting the maximum information you could wring out before it became too much. That was pretty much the dream when it came to evidence of this nature.
Anna went about breaking it all down as best she could, trying to make the most sense that she could make out of it and not lump things into categories that were too broad or too narrow. It was a delicate balance but Anna had a pretty respectable number of years behind her to give her guidance. It was fairly plan sailing for the most part and she was only broken out of her concentration by Sally audibly sighing as she lay back in her seat. Almost on cue she spoke up.
"I'm done. Wow that took both less time than I thought it was going to and somehow at the same time more time than I thought it was going to. That was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster of a piece that one. Much thinking. Much smooth sailing. But it do be done so there's at least that for relief."
"There is in fact that," said Anna, "Unfortunately you're going to need to wait just a bit cause I still need to finish up a little here."
"Alright. I'm going to try very hard not to fall asleep. You guys finish up. No rush of course. Everyone take your time. We want the best results here. This is obviously no race."
They was a nod from Serafina and an answering "Ah Hmm" from Safi before everything fell back into the routine it had been stuck in surveying the readings. Several more minutes passed by rather quickly. Once again it was plain sailing, Anna this time being broken out of her little reverie, which at this point was pretty much her final look, by Safi leaning back in her seat followed almost instantly by Serafina. Anna once again just had to note that. It was almost certain that Serafina had been done already before Safi was, maybe done for a pretty sizeable amount of time close to when Sally had been done but had stayed there just in case Safi needed the time. It was ridiculously adorable and right now it wasn't impeding their investigation in anyway so Anna wasn't going to even try to investigate or stop it.
"All done there agents?" she asked, giving the readings a last cursory glance before leaning back in her seat herself. She allowed herself a small sigh. It was a fairly big step they were on the cusp of completing here.
"Yes. That did take about as long as Sally said it would," said Safi. "Too long but also just not long enough. It was definitely worth the suspense though. I think that was a great order to do it in."
"Agreed," said Serafina.
Anna nodded. "Well I'm glad that worked out too. I kind of like this system of yours to be honest. I might just adapt it myself going forward. And if Serafina is on board."
"Count me in. We're going to be called the drama queens before long if we do presentations in that order but I am absolutely all for it."
"You know drama queens wasn't the badass team name I was assuming we were going to get especially once we had a Serafina on board it." Anna winked. "But that's not bad. Teams have been called worse and honestly I kind of like it. Might even lend us a certain level of unpredictability cause people will hardly grow to fear that."
"Well I don't know about badass team names," said Serafina. "But I really like the sound of unpredictability."
"I prefer princess over queens, that's just me, but I'm still royalty, I'll take it," said Safi. Sally burst into laughter at that.
"The sheer seriousness there. Sorry I just couldn't hold it in. I know you are being serious too, sorry I'm not trying to diminish that. Its just quite the statement to make with a straight face and that outfit."
"I know," said Safi giggling herself. "No hard feelings whatsoever. It is quite a funny thing to say when you think about it for a second." Anna allowed herself a little smile at that and she noticed happily that Serafina had allowed herself a tiny little smile too. It was good to see her loosen up a tiny bit too. Of course it would be suspicious if Serafina ever ended up laughing as much as Sally did, but a tiny little smile did still go a long way in this profession.
Anna allowed herself to bask in that little moment of happiness for a moment. It was a nice little feeling to be on after there was confirmation they there were in fact basically done with this particular neck of the woods. She reached up again after a bit and quickly fired things off and set the system to finalize it as it now closed the main data to be sent towards the archives while the ones they'd selected and highlighted as theories would remain there for them to now go through as a team.
"Okay I think we're done with that phase. That was a good four hours of the morning here," said Anna, letting out a little breath. Safi glanced down at her watch. "Yup. Three hours forty two minutes and roughly twelve seconds and counting. I think that's a pretty decent time given we did actually have a bit of three pronged research situation to do here."
"Yup. It wasn't the most evidence I've seen on a case but it was a decent chunk for something of this size and scope and I think we crunched it down quite well. Now I suggest we all catch a good break. Its nearly lunch. Let's look into that a little bit, deal with that and then regroup in the evening to make more progress and we can decide if we want a second visit or not as well."
"Yeah that sounds beautiful," said Sally. "Oh wow I did not realize how hungry I was until you brough that up Anna. Well you've awoken the beast now. You'll have to calm it down before we manage to get any more work done."
"Oh I'll calm it down alright don't worry. I have worked with that beast for quite some time. I know exactly what to feed it."
"Bold words."
"Bold words that I can back up don't worry."
"Is this beast feed going to be edible for us as well cause we probably need some of that as well?" spoked up Safi. Anna tried very hard not to show that she may have just forgotten the two of them were there. Oh god. Was she flirting with Sally now? Is that what this had turned into?
Anna managed to shake herself free of those thoughts as quickly as she possibly could. Going down that path was not going to end in anything but her just digging a much deeper, much harder to climb out hole for herself and she really did not want that to be happening.
"Well this one has a bit of a sweet tooth so I was going to feed that beast with some chocolate ice cream and probably a few doughnuts. Not the healthiest lunch in the world but we have this policy where we usually work so ridiculously hard our diets go to hell during investigations and we make up for it after things calm down a little."
"Wow. That sounds absolutely perfect. Please let me come along." Safi all but squealed. "I mean. I have no doubts that I need to worry about. Not exactly the muscular person here. I love a good ice cream or two. And doughnuts. I mean. Say no more. Absolutely on board with that plan one hundred percent and I know a big dark chocolate fan who's restraining her eyes right next to me so don't worry about that side of the semi circle either.
Anna lanced at Serafina who promptly looked up at the ceiling like the answers to our investigation had just been written there by Kate herself. Anna giggled. "Alright that's good to know too. Our doughnut and ice cream fueled sugar rushed are going to burn this place down one day but I am loving that fact that we are all fully on board that train because its a good train and we've been on board for some time so we know all the good stops."
"Well that's great to know," said Safi. "Maybe I can add to those stops too. I knew an ice cream place or two around here. I don't live that far away. Hey maybe we go to the same places without even realizing. I mean we might just been unlucky and missed each other every time."
"I could totally see that," said Sally. "Oh this is going to be exciting. I mean don't get me wrong. Cracking into a mystery is great but when you do it enough, its really the team you do it with that makes it continue to be special. And makes it a career. And this is shaping up quite beautifully right now."
Safi giggled. "I love that. That's such great advice. Oh my goodness. This team is definitely awesome so far. Thank you so much. I'm glad this is shaping up so well. Its been a great experience."
Anna beamed at the sight. Now that was the kind of interaction you liked to see as a leader, especially with a new team that was in the process of being formed. This was going really quite well. Now Anna just had to hope everyone continued performing as well as they had been because she definitely wanted all those reports to be very positive so she could keep this team beyond just this first mission. It had hardly been a day but Anna was already seeing things meshing more than most other teams would over the course of an entire week.
"Well this is lovely," said Anna, finally putting a voice to it. "I think this lunch is going to be a great time then. Just the kind of refresher we need after all of that work we put in. Good work team. Let's go cash in on that." -
Week 42 - Blizzard Week Three
Spoiler
With that final statement Anna reached out to finish up on their little vigil and get their display all working for later in the afternoon when they'd come back to review everything. That was going to be quite a bit of work. Sorting through everything that had been input to the system. They wouldn't have to do too much weeding out. The system was smart enough that things that sounded incredibly similar and things that would've been input by mistake would've all been removed or at the very least flagged clearly for them to sort out right at the start, but there was still likely going to be a whole lot of theories and they were probably going to narrow it all down to just the three or four before they actually went ahead and did serious research on any one theory. It was just the responsible thing to be doing.
The display all set to go however, Anna flicked this particular screen off, sending a message through the network to shut off all the monitors. The system itself would keep running in the background and load everything up for the afternoon. In fact the system was so fast, it had probably already done that but of course even if the work was done there was no chance that the system could actually be shutdown. It ran agency wide and while it was of course impossible to shut down the whole system from just one booth. Kate really was far too experienced to leave such a glaring weakness in their system but it was usually better for the system as a whole for all the rooms to be connected at all times, letting it take any reading it wanted from anywhere when it came to maintaining order and peace in their chaotic place of work.
Anna watched for the telltale little chime that told everyone the entire setup here had been switched off and for the display in the center to resume its idle state. Once that was done, she nodded to everyone who had all been watching the screen intently themselves.
"Alright team. I think we're all set to head out then. Its time for that lunch."
"That sounds wonderful," said Sally, the first to get up out of her seat with far more enthusiasm than you'd ever see here do for something that didn't happen to food or to leave for home.
Anna managed to resist the urge to chuckle at that enthusiasm. She was never not going to find it endearing, especially how the thought of food seemed to instill an incredible energy in Sally at a moment's notice right after Sally had previously declared that she didn't even have the energy required to breath. It gave her quite a few opportunities to tease so she wasn't about to blow that by revealing that she secretly very much loved that part of Sally. Oh dear lord. Had she just confessed to finding something about Sally endearing and loving something. Anna really needed to get her head screwed on properly. This was embarrassing.
Chapter Nine
Title to be Decided
(Safiana)
Safi got up from her seat slowly, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that she was a little stiff and definitely needed to stretch a little and possibly yet out a bit of a yawn. She took her opportunity when Anna walked over to Sally to ask something. Ducking a little bit behind the taller frame of Serafina, Safi allowed herself the smallest little yawn as she tried to stretch as much as she could without being visible behind Serafina. Thankfully for her, Serafina didn't seem to notice so no one turned around to catch her in her embarrassing act or question her about why she was doing it. The number of times people had asked her if she needed a nap just because she'd yawned a bit was a bit too high for Safi to take that lightly.
Stretching and yawning done, Safi was feeling considerably less stiff and she allowed herself a little smile as she cleared her throat.
"So, umm sorry if I sort of revealed too much earlier about the food. I knew you'd never actually admit to it and it was mostly harmless so I.."
"Safi its okay," said Serafina, a tiny smile on her usually stoic face. To most people it would look either forced or just unenthusiastic but Safi had known Serafina long enough to know this was actually a reassuring smile. The kind Serafina gave you when she wanted you to know she wasn't mad at you but she also didn't want to smile wide enough for anyone else in the room to think she was capable of smiling. It was enough for Safi to believe here. Serafina really was okay with her sharing that tiny little secret.
Safi grinned in return, not having any similar reservations about people finding out she was capable of smiling. Smiling was something she enjoyed. And it had its advantages, especially if you tended to smile a lot. Not a lot of criminals were expecting the agents to take them down to have a nice welcoming smile. Safi had learned that very well during her tests. Not that Safi could actually stop smiling if she wanted to. This was all very much an involuntary thing that had a positive side effect but Safi wasn't going to complain about it or ever try to stop her natural tendency to smile wide.
"Okay then. So I guess we're going for lunch together."
"With the team. Yeah. Its going to be quite the little gathering. I can't remember the last time I had lunch with that many people together."
"Really? Didn't we have a few lunches with the people at the academy sometimes. I mean usually it was the two of us but occasionally someone would join."
"Well Safi I think I made it clear I was talking about lunches that I would remember."
"Poor Amanda wasn't that boring was she? She knew a couple of decent jokes."
"I'm going to refrain from commenting on that. To protect Amanda's dignity."
"That's probably for the best."
"Are you two ready for lunch?" came Anna's voice from the side and Safi swiveled around rapidly, already nodding.
"We're good to go. Right?"
Serafina nodded. "Yes. All ready."
"Wonderful. Sally naturally was born ready to go have lunch so I think that's us. The room itself has been prepped. Don't worry. I saw to that. If you guys could just push in any chairs that we've sat at so we can keep this a little bit tidy as we head out I think we don't have anything more to think on besides what exactly we're having."
"Sounds perfect," said Safi, already moving to push in the chairs from where Serafina and Safi had been working on the flying monkeys. It didn't take long for them to get that all organized, even with Safi taking an extra second to straighten out the desks. As she looked up from the final desk Serafina was already standing there looking ready to leave while Anna and Sally were smiling at them from the doorway.
"Sorry about that. Just felt wrong to leave those out of order after we'd made everything else look so nice and tidy."
"Oh no worries at all," said Anna, waving aside Safi's concern. "That's a great habit to get into. We honestly don't do that enough. Thank you for reminding me of that. That's going to make lives easier for everyone here. We have an absolutely incredibly maintenance squad but hey they don't need to have any more work than they already especially cause all our teams that are out on the field doing quick work on that surge are definitely not having the time to straighten out any desks over there."
"That's good then," said Safi, trying very hard not to blush ever so slightly at the praise. If she stood up just a tiny bit taller as a result of that little talk by Anna, well then that was here business thank you very much and no one was invited to be commenting on it. She walked out along with Serafina, beaming smile on her face and held high as Anna and Sally stepped out leaving the door to close slowly. Before Safi could reach out for it, Serafina had already caught it and pulled it open, gesturing for Safi to walk through.
Safi gave her a small nod. "Thank you for getting the door."
Serafina nodded back and Safi stepped out, Serafina quickly catching up to walk alongside Safi. The two of them walked on like that, trailing behind Anna and Sally who were walking side by side up ahead. The corridor was certainly not so narrow that the four of the couldn't walk side by side but something told Safi that Anna and Sally were a tiny bit in their own world for the moment. The actual team building talks would happen around lunch.
The walk outside was a short one. Their little place was fairly close by to the exit that Sally and Anna seemed to want to take and they were soon all piled into the massive elevator headed up to the top. Surprising enough despite it being prime time for people to be taking their lunch break they didn't run into anyone else either in the elevator or even just wandering the corridors. It seemed work really was in full swing at quite the rate.
Safi had fallen silent on the journey to the elevator and it remained that way as they waited for it to arrive at the top. Anna and Sally had been deep in conversation on the walk earlier and they were still whispering about something to each other. Serafina on the other hand looked ever so slightly lost in thought. Safi didn't feel like interrupting either of them just quite yet. The silence wasn't exactly oppressive with the light laughter coming from Sally and Anna and the familiarity of Serafina's little thinking face. It was one of the less guarded expressions that the woman possessed and Safi always felt like it was a little bit of a privilege to be allowed to see that in such a... pure state.
A few minutes later, the elevator doors opened with a pleasant ding and they were quickly walking out the little convenience store that functioned as the disguise for this particular entrance. With a nod to the guards in disguise outside the four of them were outside. Safi let herself take a nice deep breath. The city air wasn't the cleanest in the world nor was it the most refreshing but it was still very much home and fresh enough for Safi to savor. It was nothing like the air out near the little countryside cabin her family loved to visit in the summer but Safi preferred this. It was familiar and it was comforting in a way that she doubted any place ever could be.
"So Safi, are you going to show us to a place or two or are we just going right to the spot Sally and I talked about earlier."
Safi shrugged. "Well its the first day. You guys were really excited about it. I think maybe you guys could show us the place. We did discuss that it might be one I'm familiar with too."
"That we did," said Anna. "That we did. And okay. That sounds like a plan then. Off we go. I'm going to refrain from announcing the name of the place, just to keep us in suspense a little longer. I know you're a fan of that." Anna winked and Safi resisted the urge to blush again.
"I. Yes. I am in fact a little fan of suspense." Safi tried to hide the little thrill that shot up within her at that. It was teasing. It was embarrassing. Yes to both of those but it was the kind of gentle ribbing that Safi knew was a big part of forming a strong team and Safi was just getting more and more excited for this little group.
"Good. Good. Then let's get going. Just follow us. Don't get left too far behind. I'm sure you both know your way around this city well enough that it would hardly matter but let's not have us getting separated be a reason that lunch ends up being shorter than it could be."
"That sounds like an excellent plan," said Safi. "Lead the way."
Anna nodded and started walking along again. Once again Sally and Anna fell back into conversation almost immediately and with the sidewalk not being the widest in all the land and with people very much headed the other way, Safi felt even more justified in sticking with bringing up the rear. Serafina seemed to be done with whatever thoughts had been keeping her occupied earlier and they were now just exchanging the occasional glance to check the other was there.
"So do you think this is going to be a place you've checked out before?" asked Serafina after a long moment and several glances.
Safi almost jumped at the question, a little too used to their almost companionable silence. She recovered quickly however. "Uhh there's a good chance. I have enough a sweet tooth that I don't think there's an ice cream shop or a doughnut shop that I haven't eaten at before. I would likely have visited the place at least once."
"I can definitely believe that, giving how someone tended to operate when it was Ice Cream Friday at the academy."
"Hey there was a lot of people who wanted ice cream and really not that much ice cream to go around. I had to do something in order to be able to have some."
Serafina raised her hands. "I surrender. I've missed the ice cream enough times to know that you do in fact have to run with the ridiculous enthusiasm you had in order to actually guarantee one every Friday but the very fact that you wanted to guarantee one every Friday is telling in and in of itself isn't it?"
Safi resisted the urge to squeak. "Has anyone every told you that you could make a great lawyer?"
"You have. Several times. In fact twenty three to be precise."
Safi giggled. "Wonderful. Well I guess you know then. If working at this agency doesn't work out, you have a wonderful career making criminals sweat."
Serafina nodded. "Thank you for the confidence in my abilities but I think I'm going to be sticking to making criminals sweat by other means for the moment."
"You do you."
"I do in fact do me at every opportunity I can. I don't believe in the concept of doing something other than me at any time really."
"I'm not going to refute that point. I can only every describe something you've done as Serafina like. There's something very you about the way that you operate."
"Why thank you. That's wonderful of you."
"I'm just stating the truth."
"I know Safi. But you'd be surprised at the number of people who have trouble understanding the simple truth."
"Well. Sorry. I know that."
"Yes you very much do. Thank you."
"What was that for?"
"Being you. Safi like things are thing too you know."
Safi couldn't help but blush a little at that. "Oh. I um. I haven't really heard of those."
"Well let me be the first one to tell you about Safi like things. You should really hear about them cause they're kind of great you know. People really seem to like them. Like quite a lot."
"A..are you sure about that one?"
"Oh I most certainly am. Well I can't tell you with too much confidence about every other person out there but I can very much tell you that I like Safi like things. You know such as understanding people so very well and being an incredible friend."
Safi let out a little squeak at that one. "Y..you. This. This is not. This is so uncalled for. I have to give a speech in return. Tell you about why you're an incredible friend."
"You've done that a lot Safi. That's also another thing that very like you. You proceed to help everyone in your life the most and then proceed to also make that other person feel on top of the world."
Safi squeaked again. "Serafina. I am not kidding. You're going to make me melt into the floor and just perish out of sheer embarrassment if you continue like this."
"Well its what you deserve."
"I deserve to die of embarrassment melting into the floor of a sidewalk?"
Serafina gave here a rare grin. "You know exactly what I mean Safi."
"What do you mean?" Safi proceeded to pout. If Serafina was going to grin, Safi thought she'd managed to earn herself a pout in response to it.
"To be appreciated. To be reminded of how amazing you are."
"You're going to end up giving me an ego now."
"If anyone in the world is going to not just be bearable but actually nice while having an ego its probably you, so by all means let's get you an ego. If anyone ever deserved to have at least a little bit of an ego, its you."
Safi managed another impressive squeak. "Murder. Murder. I'm being killed in broad daylight by the power of kindness and respect and I didn't ask for this."
Serafina patted Safi on the book. "We're teammates now. Its the spirit. You're going to have to get used to it or you're going to perish."
"And here I thought the murderers that we were going to face as part of our job were going to be danger for the rest of my life."
"Well you thought wrong."
"I guess I have to watch my back against my own amazing best friend. Who would've thought the world would come to this?"
"Well it has. So get ready or get wrecked. "
Safi giggled. "Now that's a Serafina like statement."
"You miss are not about to turn this around on me. I had you almost on your deathbed. Now die and don't fight back."
"Since we're about to have ice cream and the world is going to learn ow much of a softie you happen to be, I'll refrain."
"What?"
"Sorry. You're totally going to eat that ice cream in the most terrifying way that an ice cream can be eaten."
"Thank you. That's far more like it."
Safi managed a little grin of her own, this time for a change returned by Serafina. They held each other's gazes for just a moment before they were soon falling back into that easy silence they've been walking in at the start. Safi was back to her resting face of a beaming smile and Serafina was back to her expressionless look but there was a little bit of a difference in the air. Suddenly, Safi felt like she was walking a few inches closer to Serafina than was strictly necessary and even more than that, Serafina didn't seem to mind. In fact she seemed to have drifted closer herself. Was Safi ever going to bring that up? Absolutely not. That secret would die a nice peaceful death in her head but Safi was most definitely not going to complain about it or drift away. She was going to enjoy this feeling as it lasted, no matter what actually ended up happening.
Their walk however didn't last nearly long enough for Safi to soak it in or try to process it. Very quickly Safi recognized the street and the very familiar shop that happened to be on it and the way Anna and Sally's conversation seemed to have slowly died out suggested they were in fact going to be headed inside it, which is why when Anna turned around already talking they talked over each other.
"So this is..."
"Is that.." Safi came to a screeching halt.
"Sorry. Please continue."
Anna nodded. "Well I was going to say that we'd reached the shop we were planning on going to and ask about how familiar you are with it."
"Yeah. So I am. Very familiar in fact. Of course I mean. I don't go here every day or anything, but its definitely a great place and one that I know like the back of my hand."
"Oh that's perfect then," said Anna. "So we're pretty much all going to be in a familiar location. Serafina, I take it you're the one least familiar with this one?"
"Well yeah. Although I wouldn't say its too low. Safi has dragged me here enough times that I think I know the place decently."
"Oh really? Wow. Well that's a stroke of luck. So no one's going to be feeling a little bit out of place. That's a wonderful thing. This team building exercise of ours is very much off to an excellent start."
"This definitely seems very much set up to be an excellent lunch," said Sally. "So is everyone ready to go inside then? We kind of have a usual spot we like to sit at but of course that's much more meant for two people so we're going to have to claim a new booth."
"Well I haven't ever come here with more than Serafina or someone else before so yeah I think I don't have a familiar four person booth either."
"I guess we have a little bit of a choice then to make then after all," said Sally.
"Well that's the perfect kind of choice I'd say. We chose our own booth for the rest of the times we're going to come here so no one feels like their spot is wrong but the place itself is familiar to everyone. That's a win win situation in my book."
Safi nodded. "Yup. That's great. Let's get inside and make that choice then."
Anna nodded. "Sounds about right." They stepped inside, Anna making for the back. The rest of them followed easily. An out of the way booth tucked into a corner was an absolute no brainer in terms of being the criteria they need to be looking at for this booth they were going to choose. Someplace quiet enough to discuss things and have a bit of fun, some place out of the way enough they could reference a couple of things if they had to without fear of being overheard and just a place that was out of the way of the hustle and bustle enough that they could reasonably spend some time there after their food was done.
As they all gravitated towards the corner, one of the servers that Safi recognized as Daisy came up to them.
"Anna. Safi. Sally. Serafina. Well that's not a group I would've predicted showing up together on the same day."
"Small world Daisy."
Daisy nodded graciously, accepting that she wasn't going to get more of an explanation out of it. Safi knew the girl very much loved a good story, but one reason Safi liked Daisy as much as she did was because Daisy also knew very well when not to ask too many questions and keep to herself.
"So we're going to need a booth for the four of us?" said Safi, stepping forward out of their group. She didn't even quite realize until Anna gently stepped aside falling back alongside Sally and Serafina. For a brief moment, Safi wondered if she was overstepping maybe and she should let Anna do the talking, but Anna's look suggested that wasn't going to be an issue here. They were here as a group of friends to have lunch. Safi was the most familiar with the place, she could do the talking. Well at least to Daisy. There were probably servers that Anna knew better than Safi did, given they seemed to have always come in at different times to have never run into each other there. Safi would certainly have noticed an Anna in the shop. Anna was a really hard figure to miss or forget.
Before Safi could go ahead and overthink that just a little bit more and get herself stuck in a little rut, Daisy, bless her heart, spoke up quickly, slicing through the momentary silence that had descended over to them.
"Well since Anna here needs a bit of space why don't y'all take that last booth over there in the corner. I don't think there's going to be a larger party coming in anytime soon. Not to my knowledge, so you guys can have it right there. Its meant for six people but I think you guys aren't exactly going to be complaining about the extra room."
Anna chuckled and nodded. "Thank you Daisy. I am definitely not going to be complaining about a little extra space."
Daisy nodded. "Right this way then miss." She gestured for Safi and them to follow as she led them to the booth. Safi fell back to the rear of the group alongside Serafina as Anna and Sally took the lead again. Safi allowed herself an easy smile again. This was going really well. Safi knew she was probably thinking that a little bit too much but she couldn't help it. Things were going so well at the moment that Safi was genuinely wondering if just maybe things were going just a little bit too good to be true. Deciding that pursuing that line of thought was most definitely not the play to be making in this moment Safi did her best not to overthink that.
Daisy stopped by the booth and stepped aside. Anna didn't waste any time sliding in, going as far inward as she could. She easily took up two spots if one was being generous or two and a half spots if one was being truthful but Sally slid in easily next to her without so much as a comment. Safi gestured for Serafina to slide into the other side, knowing full well that Serafina much preferred to be on that side. It was a quirk that not many people predicted. Serafina being so guarded everyone assumed she'd prefer to be in the position that let her leave the fastest but most people didn't have the little insider information that Safi had. And that of course was the fact that Serafina really didn't like people accidentally brushing past her. Even though this booth was out of the way enough that Daisy was probably the only one who could ever accidentally brush up against Serafina and Daisy being Daisy would know to be careful of that, Safi knew that Serafina would just be far more comfortable with this position than in any other one.
Serafina gave her the tiniest of nods to show her appreciation as she quickly slid into the edge of the booth. Safi slid in after her, scooting closer and closer just out instinct. Well that's what she told herself anyway. There being room for three people Safi could leave a pretty decent gap between them and still be comfortably inside the booth but that little magnetic closeness that Safi had felt earlier on the sidewalk seemed to have extended over to her. Serafina didn't seem to mind either so Safi didn't let herself think any further on that particular topic either.
"There you go. Looks like everyone managed to fit comfortably," said Daisy, a friendly smile towards Anna who nodded.
"Thank you Daisy. Really appreciate you letting us take this booth."
Daisy waved the thanks away. "Of course. Its the perk of funding a good ten percent of our business just from how much you eat here."
Anna chuckled. "That I do."
Daisy nodded and handed out four menus to them. "Just call for me when you're ready to order. I'll be hovering around the area. Its not too busy at the moment so I shouldn't be too far out of earshot at any moment."
"Alright Daisy," said Safi. "We'll call for you. Thank you again for the booth. I daresay you're going to be seeing a bit more of us over the coming few days."
Anna nodded. "I think you will be Daisy."
"Well I'm not going to complain about customers coming back miss," said Daisy, with a giggle of her own. "I don't think anyone working her would complain either."
Safi nodded. "I suppose that's true."
"Well don't tell anyone I told you this, but there are a few customers I'd rather not have back. I would say though that the four of you certainly do not fall into that category."
Safi gasped sharply, her giggle ruining the effect but she didn't really care. "Oh my. You have quite a bit to say there about customers Daisy."
"I do. I am a bit of a rebel as you may know." With one final wink, Daisy proceeded to walk away leaving Safi giggling slightly.
"I guess we all know Daisy," said Sally, once Daisy had walked away.
"Well I've seen her about four times," said Serafina, "but I suppose I guess I know her."
"You also happen to be hard to forget Serafina," said Sally.
Safi giggled at that, a few choice memories offering themselves up. "You could say that."
"Oh do I sense a story there?" asked Sally.
Serafina for just a moment looked ever so slightly worried and Safi didn't need more than a second to decide that she was very much not revealing that information quite yet.
"Well Sally you're an investigator. You've got far more experience than either of us do. Why don't you find out?"
"Is that a challenge there Safi?"
"Maybe."
Sally burst into laughter. "Oh you're going to fit right in."
Safi was soon back to trying very hard not to blush. Why did this keep happening her to this morning? Why was this day just going so incredibly well? Safi's paranoia was having a field day. At this point, things had gone so well, it wouldn't surprise Safi if the world decided to end that afternoon.
"Well thank you," said Safi, after she'd finally managed to somewhat recover from that little war of words. She was going to get addicted to this before long if she wasn't careful about things. She didn't want to be getting attached nearly this fast, mostly because she knew very well that it was pretty common that she'd be transferred to another team once they received the go ahead to actively keep doing field work. Of course there were plenty of stories of teams staying together, of course there was. Especially if they got along this well with Anna liking this all so much, they had a good chance. Kate was the one who had the final say in most such things and she was definitely the kind of person that understood the value of bonds that ended up being forged within a team. She wouldn't separate them if everyone in it definitely didn't want to be separated. The only thing that stood in the way of that little hope was Sally.
Sally was in the process of becoming a team captain in her own right and Sally was amazing. Sure she was a tiny bit late sometimes and a little different to most of the people that tended to frequent these halls but in the best way possible. Safi could very easily predict and would happily put her money on Sally quite easily being made a team captain without any qualms from anyone at all. That meant that Sally would obviously want to go ahead and take on a team of her own. There couldn't exactly be two captains in one team after all. There was no way Safi could hope someone would give up the future of becoming more successful just for a team but then Safi still did. The biggest thing that Safi could hope for was the bond that Anna and Sally clearly shared. They had definitely been working together for a while and neither of them seemed like they wanted that to change anytime soon at all. So if they both very much wanted to be around each other for longer maybe Sally wouldn't leave and then this team dynamic that Safi was fast getting very addicted to could work out. But there was just a few too many ifs and buts in that. Just a few too many for Safi to reliably pin her hopes on it because the last thing she wanted was to be the first person to start crying like a little baby inside that agency just because her team got reassigned. It happened all the time and people never seemed to care because of course you still ran into the same people in the agency every day. It wasn't like there were other branches that Safi was going to be transferred away to and never be able to see Sally or Anna or Serafina again.
"Safi, you ready to order?" Serafina's voice, a hint of concern noticeable in it cut through the thoughts in her head as it had been doing a surprisingly large number of times in the past few days.
Safi looked up, this time letting her thoughts flow away slowly instead of just yeeting them out. She wanted to remember this and think on this more today, especially once she finally managed to get home later in the day. She needed to reflect on this and come to terms with it on some level or these thoughts were going to bother her the rest of the time they were together and gosh at this rate they were only going to get closer and closer as a team so Safi's situation here wasn't going to be improving in any way shape or form.
"I'm ready. Sorry I got lost in thought for a little bit," she said, flashing Serafina a small smile. She knew instantly that Serafina would be able to decipher that things weren't wrong. But she also knew that if there was ever a person you could rely on to never question something like that too deeply, it was Serafina. Serafina in her own way would try to find out later on, in private with questions that were going to be so vague Safi wouldn't even notice the secrets she was spilling out but Serafina would never press her on it now so Safi could afford to look a little bit vulnerable. She trusted Sally and Anna enough by now that she knew they wouldn't exactly press her either.
Luckily she was proven right as Serafina nodded solemnly. "Happens to the best of us princess. So what exactly do you want to be ordering here? Well I happen to know the order that you always get, but there's always a first time for everything."
Safi tried not to react too strongly to the princess. That was a name that Serafina was starting to use more and more often with less and less inhibition in the way she used it and Safi was getting a tiny bit terrified that she was going to be wanting to hear that more often than her own name, especially from Serafina. It had always felt a little weird as a nickname whenever anyone else tried to use that but somehow right from the start of that stupid thing, she'd always liked the way that Serafina said it. Serafina seemed to be the only one who ever seemed to use it in the more regal sense of the word. Everyone just liked to call her a bit of a pillow princess. To be fair, she was. In many ways and she wasn't going to deny that. Her background certainly made sure of that. Even if she'd mostly grown out of it now she couldn't escape that past but Serafina was the only one who seemed to fully see past that.
Safi managed to shake herself out of those thoughts before she could get consumed again. While she didn't mind being a little vulnerable about the team separating, whatever these thoughts were that kept plaguing her about Serafina, they could wait to see the light of day. They could wait a nice long time that preferably would never actually end because they were just far too scary to be addressing right now. The kind of things it did to her really didn't need to be common knowledge. Maybe. Maybe if Serafina also managed to indicate she had some sort of feeling that was in any kind of ballpark close to where Safi's own scattered thoughts were Safi could try and entertain those thoughts but right now that was absolutely not true and not going to happen and Safi was going to refrain from thinking about it thank you very much.
"Well I think you know me well enough to know that when I find a order that I really love, the only way its going to change is if they take it off the menu."
Serafina nodded. "I had a feeling you were going to say that. Well in that case I guess you know your order."
Safi nodded. "Well Daisy knows my order. I don't think I've ever had to actually say that full thing out loud since like the third time I ordered it. Daisy has a really, really good memory when it comes to that sort of thing."
"Daisy does. She remembered my order after just one day."
"Well to be fair yours was kind of simple."
"Well like I told you and Daisy that second week, it might be simple but no one actually managed to remember an order of mine up to that point."
Safi shrugged. "Well fine. I suppose I have to accept that explanation like I did the other day."
"Its a great explanation."
"I'm sure. I'm sure. I'll bring up my theory later when I have more supporting evidence for it. I'm still very much in the gathering phase of it."
"I look forward to it."
"I'm sure you do, and I'm sure you already have a rebuttal planned for a theory that I haven't even fully come up with yet, but I'll have you know you're not going to be able to actually combat this one. I've got an airtight case on this and not even you will manage to actually fully refute it."
"A bold claim, but then knowing you that does actually make a tiny bit scared. I've never known you to make a bold claim that you didn't back up. So at risk of embarrassing myself in the future I'm going to not actually proceed with any trash talk in this moment."
"That's quite wise of you."
"Well some people do seem to think I am wise, like a certain Vialena that I know."
Safi giggled. "Sure."
"So can we assume that all of this means that you're both ready to order?" said Sally. Safi turned around with a grin and nodded. "It does indeed. The fact that you're asking that question means, can we safely assume that the two of you have been ready to order for quite a while and would really love us to finally be ready so we can all eat?"
"Okay well we haven't been waiting for that long. You guys didn't take that long but yeah. That would be a reasonable assumption to make."
"Wonderful."
"I'll call Daisy then," said Anna with a little chuckle. "I have a feeling alongside all the wonderful friendships that we're seeing blossom I'm also witnessing the birth of a legendary rivalry here."
"Absolutely not," echoed Sally and Safi together.
"See we agreed on that point, further disproving that rather unfounded theory," said Sally, somehow managing to sound so perfectly serious Safi almost wondered if they were in trouble.
Anna chuckled. "Perfect. This is just perfect."
Safi was soon blushing again. God she needed to stop doing that and maybe run home, hide under her pillows and have a long thinking session. She needed one of those. She'd been needing one of those for some time now if she was going to be brutally honest here. Things had been a little bit too wayward of late up in her head. She really needed to reign that thing in a lot more as this case got serious.
Unfortunately for her, she didn't actually manage to figure out a plan to run away as Anna chose that moment to finally call for Daisy. The girl had in fact been hovering really close to their table for a while and with Anna's voice able to boom out when she wanted to Daisy was there in a flash. Four varying smiles later, Daisy had correctly guessed that everyone there wanted to just have their regular orders and she set about writing it down. As she recited each and every one out to the four of them to confirm that the orders Daisy remembered were in fact the correct one, Safi finally managed to relax a little bit from the waves of thoughts that had been keeping her mind occupied this entire time. She really needed to find this time to loosen up a little. Maybe it was time she took up her mother's offer to take some sort of vacation. Well, now wasn't going to be the time, but maybe after a mission or two was gone. Except that was probably going to be a few weeks from now and Safi was definitely going to forget all about ever coming to this conclusion. Well, a vacation had been a fun thought for the time that it had managed to last for. At least she could proudly tell her mother she had genuinely considered the idea of taking a vacation. That wasn't something she'd have been able to say just an hour ago. Progress was progress.
Daisy was soon walking away, that smile that Safi could never truly guess the true origins of held firmly on her place. Everyone seemed to relax at last when Daisy had walked away to get their orders. Anna laying back, all spread out and taking up what was definitely a bit more than two seats while Sally reclined in her own way. If the fact that Sally was half laying on Anna's side was something ether of the two of them noticed, they didn't let on. It looked very natural, natural enough that Safi couldn't help but think this was a common position for the two of them to be in. Either that or they were just so natural together it very much looked that way.
Serafina on the other hand was a little different. She would never admit it out loud, but she liked to curl up into half a ball when she was waiting for things to happen, especially something like lunch being brought out but she never wanted anyone to know so Serafina usually ended up leaning a little against the wall, tucking her legs up just barely, unnoticeable to anyone not looking for it but very much a bit of a curl nonetheless and she completed it by folding her arms across her chest. To anyone who looked that gesture just seemed to speak of confidence and a challenging stance, leaning against a wall looking ready to bust down anything in her path and Safi knew very well that Serafina definitely could immediately switch to that. But Safi knew Serafina well enough to know she was also in this moment hiding from the world a little protected from the outside by the bubble created by her arms and her legs being curled just about enough for the agent to feel safe. Safi dd what she did best in these moments, which was provide a little bit of comfort without being obvious about it.
She scooted close enough to Serafina that Serafina could touch Safi just by reaching out with a finger and not having to stretch and then proceeded to lean every so slightly in that direction, head turned just a tiny bit towards Serafina with her normal smile in place. It wasn't something anyone could think too much of, but the ever so slight relaxing of shoulders that Serafina went through just a few seconds after Safi had settled in told Safi that her little mission to provide some comfort and let Serafina know that was there for her had worked.
Safi turned back towards the table, humming quietly and joining Sally and Anna in glancing towards the kitchen waiting to see when their order was coming out. Safi of course having eaten here more than enough times, knew that their order was gong to take about ten more minutes to come barring any unexpected delays but she joined in anyway. There was something ever so comforting about looking out for that sort of thing, just hoping that this was going to be the day that miraculously they were going to get the doughnuts made just a few minutes earlier. Serafina was the only one who was immune to that sort of whim.
Their silence grew as the minutes ticked by. It was an interesting silence, Safi thought. It was unlike any silence that Safi had ever been a part of. Safi had been a part of a whole lot of uncomfortable silences. It came with the territory with the childhood she'd led and the kind of dinners and gathering she still had to go to even now. The world of business at its higher levels just wasn't completely without a good ol fashioned uncomfortable silence. This wasn't that. This also wasn't the comfortable and companionable silence that you can have when you're just waiting quietly with a group of friends. Safi had been through plenty of those too. Enough to tell the difference. This was in between. It was comforting and simple in the way that it was with friends but there was a charge to the air. It was as if any moment the silence could suddenly flip around and it wasn't going to be so comfortable anymore. Or perhaps it would finally settle into the comfort it seemed destined to reach. It was a bit of a turning point Safi finally realized as she managed to make sense of what her senses were telling here. This silence was odd because it teetered on a knife edge for some reason. Despite how perfectly things had gone as far as team building could be concerned, it seemed an uncomfortable silence was just as likely as a comfortable silence. Well that was something interesting to think about. Maybe this day wasn't as fully perfect as Safi thought it had been. Maybe the world wouldn't end after all.
Then Anna decided to smile, Sally decided to shift a tiny bit closer. Serafina lowered her crossed arms and straightened a little and the balance shifted. The silence was comfortable. Daisy had appeared in the corner with their food. Safi resisted the urge to groan. This day was going to continue to be annoyingly perfect and of course the universe was going to respond to her thoughts like it was listening in on them and making things happen with the perfect sense of dramatic timing. With the heavenly smell of dark chocolate coming up to her though, Safi wasn't going to complain. It as it always seemed to do, was already melting away all the paranoia that she'd suffered through up to this time. Of course it would come screaming back when they inevitably made their way back from lunch but for the moment it was enough and Safi was going to go ahead and catch this break while she was still able to do so. Safi was many things but she wasn't the kind of person to let a chance for relaxation like that go amiss.
Chatter soon broke out across the table again as everyone started to eat and for this first time since they'd actually started this little stroll out for lunch the entire team was communicating as a whole. Safi sat back and let herself enjoy it with a small smile, chiming in with a quip here and a story there. Safi's prediction had been right. As much as they'd all been lost in their own worlds especially Sally and Anna when there was food in front of them and everyone was smiling brightly at the food, well not Serafina. Serafina was of course smiling brightly by her standards but if you asked anyone to guess, smiling brightly is not how anyone else would describe it. When everyone was smiling brightly in their own way and looking at a whole heap of admittedly unhealthy but incredibly delicious food, conversation was something that just flowed and flow it did during that lunch. Safi could hardly feel the time past and what felt like only seconds later Safi was eating up the very last bite. It was her favorite, just every delicious flavor condensed into one little glob of flavor that would stay in Safi's mind for the rest of the day.
Safi couldn't help but feel the twinge of sadness she always felt at the end of a good meal like that, especially when the conversation was slowly dying down as everyone else finished up their final bites too. That really had been quite the lunch. Had they gotten anything remotely approximating work done? Absolutely not. They probably didn't even know that much more about each other than when they'd started but Safi knew they all felt just a tiny bit closer and as a result the work this afternoon was going to have just a slightly different flavor to it.
Daisy was soon back to take away their plates and hand them the bill. That was usually the least competitive part of the day. Safi had established pretty early on that she was going to be the one that always paid for food especially when she was the one dragging someone to a place because it wasn't exactly the greatest secret in the world that she most definitely possessed the money required to comfortably buy this entire restaurant if she was in the mood for it. Today however things were a little different, Anna offering to pay for everyone owing to the fact that technically this had all been her idea and this being a team budling exercise with her being the team captain it was only fitting. Safi was about to pull out the fact that she was the one that'd be least affected wallet wise when Sally ended up suggesting it was probably best as a team budling exercise if they split the bill four ways. Safi only needed one quick look to confirm with Serafina that she did in fact currently have the money to be able to afford splitting the bill in that way and Safi was quickly agreeing. For the first time in a very long time Safi didn't pick up the whole bill. It was a weird feeling in yet another annoyingly positive way. Safi could never have guessed how things that were this simple could add up to make for an experience like this but here it was all happening right in front of her and despite her best efforts she was getting more and more addicted to it.
Pretty soon, all Safi was going to be able to do was just accept her fate and realize she was just doomed to be the person in love with this team. If she was going to have to become the first person to cry about getting reassigned that was probably a record she was just going to have to learn to wear proudly on her sleeve. There were probably far worse records. She could definitely recall someone mentioning having a record for the first person to have a bathroom related accident in the midst of battle. At least she didn't need to own a record like that one. Now that she could never live down even if the person who held said record had in fact managed to recover from that socially.
Those were the thoughts flying through Safi as they finished all the complication that tended to come with splitting the bill up between two different credit cards, a few carefully folded notes for Serafina and a very out of place looking little wad of cash for Safi. It really wasn't her fault that she didn't have a whole lot of change lying around. She didn't normally have to care about actually getting the right change back because she just genuinely didn't need it and the people she was paying would make better use of that money.
However, Daisy, every the efficient worked managed to get it all sorted out the change coming back to Safi who managed to just about get away with handing it all right back to Daisy to keep as a tip by pretending it was a donation to cover her chipping her glass while she was drinking water. If she was being totally honest that glass had been chipped when she got there but somehow all the highly qualified agents at the table had missed that detail and she wasn't about to complain about that right now.
With that sorted and Safi's change problem not something she needed to really worry about after all the procession to get back to their agency began. It was an oddly perfect reversal of the way they'd sat down, Safi jumping out first knowing full well Serafina now that she was in the mood to get out of this place would want to be out the corner as quickly as possibly. Sally, meanwhile, seemed to have a bit of trouble coming out of her cosy lean to with Anna who didn't seem eager to leave herself and the two of them ended up bringing up the rear as the foursome made it out the shop with many waves and thank you's to Daisy who was grinning rather widely at Safi's "donation".
The walk back to the agency was faster. There was a different energy altogether with the team as they trudged back in the direction of the well hidden convenience store. Something had clicked in a very particular way during that lunch and everyone seemed just a little bit extra eager to get back and get to work. Maybe it was the fact they'd all heard at least one silly story about each other. Maybe it was the fact that they were all really hopped up on sugar that they very much needed to burn off somehow. Or it was both. Most definitely both. Either way Safi loved it. Their little group just continued to gel together and while Safi knew the real tests for them would come much later when it was no longer just searching up clues and eating ice cream, Safi was confident they would adapt well to those too. After all the little bit of panic they'd been in earlier when those flying monkeys had made an appearance had gone fairly well. Granted it had been very short and Anna and Sally had basically been doing nothing but it was still a decent enough test, especially accounting for the fact that it had happened long before most of well today had happened. Today had been a ridiculously terrifying amount of progress and Safi had a really bad feeling they were all going to be in a group chat before long and it wasn't going to be one of those mandatory things that ended up with just five messages over the course of this lifetime. No. They were probably going to have one that produced well over a thousand messages in an hour when everyone was online and one where you could go for several hundred messages without a single word making sense to any normal human being.
Safi couldn't exactly lie and say she didn't really like the thought of that. With her eventually acceptance that crying was just something she was going to have to deal with when it came to this group of theirs, Safi was ready to just give into all of the little hopes that she had for their budding team. Okay maybe not all of the hopes. Getting matching t shirts and visiting the local amusement park seemed like a step too far, even if Anna would absolutely kill it in far too many games for them to not try it out someday. Before Safi could mentally start planning out exactly what sort of design it would be and send a text off to her father to get it printed, they were entering the hidden elevator heading down to the building.
The mood was slowly changing as it drifted lower and lower. The merry atmosphere was still very much intact but it was going from a crazy sugar rush of sorts to a more controlled and powerful little explosion of adrenaline and focus. They'd all been rather silent on the trip home and Safi had no doubt everyone besides her had been thinking up on the theories they were about to tackle. It wasn't like everyone else was crazily hopped up on the idea of their team. Safi had been thinking about that drama queens title just a bit too much in the past hour or so. She really wasn't the kind of person to love identifying as a drama queen but somehow it just seemed to work so incredibly well in the context of their team it wasn't even funny. Safi wondered how deep she was going to end up in this before everyone else realized that Safi was maybe getting a bit too attached this idea compared to everyone else being perfectly normal and professional.
Safi was fully resigned to the idea of getting found out about it by the time they made it to elevator. They way they all just sort of slipped out in perfect unison without ever having practiced it before. Safi was ready to squeal in excitement and run down the corridor like she'd done when she was five. Okay maybe she'd done that a bit more recently than that but certainly not inside the agency. Well not where anyone would see anyway. She'd made sure to delete the footage that the one camera at the academy had managed to capture. That had been quite the heist. Thankfully Serafina was the kind of person that would just break into a security room with you without ever asking why you needed to break in or why you'd rapidly deleted a whole bunch of footage. Safi had of course told Serafina about three months later about it, but the agent had never even given an indication that she wanted to know until the day Safi had finally worked up the courage and the trust to provide that piece of information.
As they made it back to the room, Anna flicking everything on as they walked in, Safi managed to refocus. It was probably a good thing. The expression she remembered Serafina having when Safi had gone up and just dumped all the information on here was just a little too powerful. Safi had never managed to fully figure that one out and with the kind of weird feelings that had been floating about of late that was the last thing she needed to be looking at. She definitely did not want to be looking back at absolutely any of that for a good long while until she'd figured out all the weirdness from now. Or more likely all of the weirdness was getting packaged away to never see the light of day again. Well until more weirdness came to dredge it all up but Safi definitely did not want to be imagining that right about now. Mostly because the weirdness kept getting weirder each time and Safi really didn't want to try and fathom how the next stage of this little evolution might go. At this rate, Safi was going to need to find out if they had some kind of super secret memory suppressor around the agency somewhere. They were definitely enough rumors. There was no way Kate and co hadn't figured that little hurdle out.
Before Safi could go off to find Kate right now and ask a lot of questions that would probably get her recommended for psych eval Anna was inviting them all to sit down in front of the big screen as it booted itself up, the theories all queued up and ready, color coordinated and flagged appropriately as usual. Safi had been impressed by it the first time she saw it, the whole thing feeling like pure magic. Safi was still impressed even though now she knew exactly what programs ran the show and could probably write something do that same thing herself. It was just an incredibly elegant system, the way everything just fell into place so effectively, cutting down a whole lot of time that would have been spent if this had to be done either way and it was all without resorting to ridiculously complicated systems that only two people would be able to understand. This sort of system could always be fixed by just about anybody at the agency if they'd passed all their exams. Given one had to pass everything in order to be here, that meant everybody. It kept everything a whole lot smoother and a whole lot cleaner because tech support only needed to really come into fix massive issues that would need dedicated time to fix anyway.
Safi sat down at the seat that she suspected was soon going to be designated hers as Serafina also naturally slid in right next to her. Safi didn't question it in the slightest anymore. They were definitely sticking together and Safi very much enjoyed having Serafina's very solid presence right next to her when it came to situations of this nature. Even before the weird feelings had started, Serafina was always a great person to be around. A sentiment that only Safi really seemed to share if you were to listen in on everyone around them, but Safi had hardly cared about what people had to say back then and she was hardly going to be paying attention to it now Serafina was very rapidly reaching best friend status what with them ending up here at the same time.
Safi leaned back in her seat, watching as Sally came to a stop next to her followed soon by Anna once she'd gone ahead and made sure that everything was being displayed correctly. Anna had brought the pointer with her to advance it along and she was soon reclining right alongside all of them to observe things. There was a moment of silence as Anna settled in before Anna herself broke it.
"Alright I think everyone is all fueled up and ready to go then? We can just dive right into this one. Its all compiled rather nicely I would say."
"It does look pretty solid," said Sally. "A little bit larger than I thought it was going to be if I'm being one hundred percent honest but then when has having a few more theories to go off on been a bad thing. No wait. Don't answer that. There are definitely more than a few times in history when having more theories than usual has turned out to be a bad thing but we don't. We don't have so many theories that we're approaching anywhere near that kind of situation. This is big but not so big as to be called really big if you get what I mean."
Anna nodded. "Yup. As you very eloquently put it. Its a decent mid point we find ourselves in if maybe a tiny bit towards the higher side. But not so far to that side that we have to actually be concerned about it. For now. I suppose one can never be too certain about these things."
Sally nodded. "Yup. That's the normal way of saying what I just vomited out earlier."
"I understood both," said Safi. "Don't worry."
"Good. I think we can actually begin on this then."
"I do believe that we can," said Anna. "How does everyone want to do this? Do we go from section to section or person to person or what kind of style do you guys generally tend to prefer?"
"Well before that Anna, shouldn't we do the run through of getting red of flagged duplicates and what not."
"Oh whoops. Yup. We were just going with the roll a little too much there. It completely slipped my mind that we kind of do have to get that part done first. We're definitely going to go ahead and tackle that right now. Good catch there Sally. That could've been a bit embarrassing."
"Whatever will you do without me."
Anna rolled her eyes. "I could think of a few things."
Sally gasped theatrically and pretended to collapse. Safi couldn't help the little giggle at that. One thing they would do a lot less of without Sally was laugh, Safi could definitely say that.
"While she's occupied with that shall we actually get towards making more progress on this then. I don't see too many flags on here so this should be a pretty quick process. I'm going to assume most of these are duplicates that are just off by one too many words for the system to auto filter it out.
Safi nodded. "That's usually what happens when the count is..." Safi scanned down through the list that was currently on there. "Yup. That count definitely checks out to fall in that category."
"Yup. So let's get right to it."
"I'm here too," said Sally, shooting up, completely forgetting all of her theatrics as Anna actually brought the big list up and started bringing up all of the flags.
The first four didn't even need to be seen twice, obviously being duplicates that hadn't been auto filtered properly. It was one of the little concessions that you did have to make when it came to keeping a system simple. Luckily it was never really more than a few seconds of trouble to deal with and the benefits of letting things remain simple just far outweighed the few extra seconds of effort that sometimes demanded.
The next couple were a bit more time consuming, given they happened to be worded extremely differently but ultimately meant the exact same. They were dealt with soon enough however and they were back to another string of five simple ones before the very last flag was brought up. This one gave them all a bit more pause. It was very clearly not a duplicate. It took Safi a couple of read throughs before she finally managed to figure out exactly what was up with this one. There was a very badly misspelt word somewhere and the system hadn't been able to figure out what word it could actually be. After Sally had hid her head with a squeak and sent in the correct word that she'd intended when she'd first typed it up, the final flag was moved to the completed section, and there was a pleasant ding announcing that it was all flag free and ready to be broken down. Safi sat back at that, another job well done for their budding team.
"Alright that was nice and quick. No unexpected issues so that just works out really well for us. We can simply get right into the flow of figuring out which of these theories seem the most likely and which ones we want to keep."
"Yeah. Always a plus when that happens," said Sally, who had gone right back to pretending like nothing had happened. Sally was really good at that Safi noticed. Both when it came to jumping on embarrassing moments for everyone else and just completely finding her way past every embarrassing moment that she managed to have. That was the sort of person that managed to recover from a bathroom accident with absolutely no issues whatsoever. Safi should probably ask for some tips on that, unless it just happened to be natural born talent. There was a chance that's what it was. People who managed to be like that generally tended to fall into the natural born talent category. Well Safi didn't exactly have the biggest sample size to work with. This was the second such person that Safi had found but the first person had definitely had most of the same general demeanor that made up a Sally. That person had definitely turned out to be in the natural born talent category. Safi still had flashbacks to that conversation and how she'd managed to understand absolutely nothing of it. She didn't know if she'd just been pranked really well or if she'd just been drunk by accident. Okay the last one was a bit of a stretch. She hadn't drunk a drop of anything alcoholic in her life. There was no chance that she'd been remotely drunk.
"Mmm Hmm. So I think we can circle back to our earlier conversation with that then. About exactly how we'd want to tackle this beast here. Its not exactly the most life changing decision either of us is ever going to make but I think the little things having some sort of order tends to help out when it comes to tackling the bigger things. Just a little something I've noticed over the years."
"No that sounds great," said Safi. "I get that. Its not the sort of thing a lot of people tend to think about but it really does make a difference. Its I think. Well I forget the term that the person used but I remember someone talking about this the other day at one of our lectures. How having the little things in a team sorted out and rock solid can help make tough situations just so much more cohesive and simple. Its fascinating actually. They did a whole study on it and found not just like measurable differences but big differences in efficiency that came about with things you really wouldn't expect."
"Oooh that's really interesting. Do you by any chance have any material from that? That really sounds like something I need to see."
"I could manage to find it I think," said Safi. "I do keep most of those records stowed away somewhere. It should be fairly simple to track that one down. That was one of my favorites so I'm pretty sure I saved it in a pretty easy to find spot."
"Sounds lovely. Send it over. I'll give you my number at the end. We should all actually probably exchange numbers, maybe make a group chat."
Safi did her best to hold in her desire to squeal. "Yeah sure. I think that sounds lovely. Both sending that over and the group chat. Let's do that at the end of the day."
"Alright that's settled. Speaking of the end of the day though, let's get started now, see if we can all agree on exactly what leads we keep and what leads we drop by the end of the day. I think it shouldn't be too hard to figure this out. We might even be able to get a little bit of a start on something before we call it a day. There's a decent number of theories but not many points that I feel like we're gong to be disagreeing on."
"I agree," said Serafina, chiming in for the first time.
"Yup. Well let's get to it. Section by section or person by person."
"I vote person by person," said Safi, quickly adding her thoughts this time. It wasn't exactly like it was the hardest of decisions to make either.
"Lovely. I rather like that too and I know Sally does." Sally proceeded to nod in agreement.
"That leaves Serafina," said Anna. "Do you want to go ahead with that or are you more of a section by section person."
"I'll be honest. I really don't have much of a preference at all."
"That's fair," said Anna. "Then its settled I think. We go person by person." Everyone nodded and Anna smiled. "Lovely. Let's get started then. I'm just going to go in alphabetical order so we're going with me first."
"Sounds good," said Safi.
Anna pressed a few buttons on her pointer and the relevant section highlighted itself before the screen changed to reflect just the theories that had been put forth by Anna.
"Let's start with descriptions, mostly cause there was literally nothing to go on there. We ended up deciding that its likely a good idea to send out a description and see what little bit of information we can dredge up but we really didn't manage to think of any other way of narrowing down what this dude here was doing before he was murdered or where he even happens to truly be from."
Safi scanned through everything as closely as she could. "Yeah going over that at a glance, that's pretty much the conclusion that you really have to come to. I can't immediately see anything leaping out at me. It doesn't look like there's much in the form of hidden information in there either if I'm being completely honest."
"Yup that looks like a proper dead duck," said Serafina. "I'd agree on just sticking to the very basics with the descriptions."
"Wonderful. I think we can knock that one out pretty much then. I mean we're definitely agreeing on the theory that the current situation has nothing to offer."
"Yup," said Sally. "I looked at that for far too long and really couldn't find anything."
Safi hummed. "Hmm in the event that there's maybe just a smudge and just because its good practice I say we leave it so Serafina and I can double check that thing. But if we also don't find anything which I really don't expect to, then I think we're good to go ahead with the plan of the descriptions. I don't have anything to say against that one. It seems the simplest and smartest course of action to take given the kind of situation that we've been offered up here."
Serafina nodded. "Yeah I'd have to agree with that particular assessment too. There's just really nothing to go off on besides that one so yeah if we find nothing by all means. Descriptions it is. I think the one that you mocked up there looks really good too. We should probably take a final look and make sure to agree on a final choice on what description exactly to send out but I don't foresee much of that really needing to change."
"That's great then," said Sally. "That's probably going to be the thing we can knock out at the end of the day. Which is great. That's basically one third of the areas that we had to cover today."
"Yup," said Anna. "A promising start."
"Wonderful," said Safi. "I think we can let that one go then."
"Yup," said Anna, with a quick nod. "This is coming along well. I'm moving on then. Second section would be them flying monkeys but of course Sally and I didn't go over those at all really so of course nothing to add from either of us. I think we can just breeze past that one."
"Yeah that sounds about right for us I think," said Sally. "Looking forward to seeing what the two of you came up with on that. It seemed like a pretty big section there as you were out tackling it."
"It wasn't too much," said Safi, "but we did get a fairly decent number of theories out. Although we both ended up agreeing on basically everything so ultimately we've just got a few unified fronts to present. We've looked through a few things that we didn't expect to including mating rituals of all things so I think we've got a really thorough case to present on that one."
"That sounds lovely," said Anna.
"Mating rituals definitely sound interesting," said Sally, with a giggle. "Although I don't look forward to covering those in too much detail."
Safi giggled along with her. "Oh its nothing like that. It was just a tiny section we needed to prove a little point of ours. Honestly you won't really need to think at all about the actual umm not so family friendly parts of things."
Sally chuckled. "Don't worry. Even if we did have to go through some of the not so friendly parts of things, that's just part and parcel of the agency. Besides their monkeys. We've had to analyze a few human mating rituals in our time. Now that was a case you needed to have a bucket handy when it came to some of the crap that we had to be dealing with. It was very much not the sort of thing you want."
Safi grimaced. "Well I'm glad I wasn't a part of that."
"Yup. Anyone would be." Sally shook her head like she was trying to dislodge a few particularly scarring memories.
"Well on that note shall we move onto the magic theories that I managed to come up with," said Anna.
"Yeah sounds about right," said Safi. "Line them up."
Anna nodded and scrolled them down to the proper section. "Well we've got the first section which was basically nothing from me. As you can see all we have is me saying this was a bit of a bust."
Safi nodded. "Yeah I think I agree with that theory. We can look into it to confirm everything fully but yeah I don't see anything wrong with that particular theory."
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