z

Young Writers Society



The Trouble With Titanium-- Ch. 2

by zankoku_na_tenshi


Okay, here's chapter two, after a very, very long break. XD Tear it up, guys! :D

Let me know if it's too long-- I'm willing to cut it into two posts. ^^;; Typical chapters seem to have shrunk since my break from YWS, but I had a hard time finding a place to cut this up, since it's all one scene. *sigh*

Also, this story still has some very JulNoWriMo-y elements to it, so please let me know especially if anything feels too much like filler. I'm not too happy with Phoebe's second phone conversation and her conversation with Jennn for this reason, but if those lines are funny, I'll keep them. XDD

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II.In Which Telephone Calls are Answered

Phoebe Yu shifted the telephone carefully to her other ear.

“No, the Titanium Maiden isn’t in at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”

In her right hand, she seized a pen and clicked it.

“I see. I… see.” She chewed her lip as she took notes. “Have you…” she paused, to let the voice on the other end speak, then cringed. She held the receiver a little further away from her head, eardrums ringing. “Have you contacted the Department of Supernatural Damages yet? They usually handle Titanium Maiden’s cases. Yes, she’s covered. Yes, I’m certain. I paid the bill for it last month. Er… no sir. No, not long.”

Phoebe winced again and held the telephone an arm's length away from her ear.

“O-o-once again, the DSD, sir!” she shouted. “628-WRECKED, sir.”

She set the telephone down and took a slow, calming breath.

It’s a summer job, she reminded herself.

But honestly. Jennn and Miss Fry had made life very difficult for her on Wednesday when they had decided to take on the Otter Lady in the middle of a big public water park. One of the entire water slides had crumbled, a variety of swimmers had been injured, the Lazy River inner tubes would never be the same again, and one man’s dream of selling Dip’ N’ Dots at Mildly Damp World had been summarily crushed. At least Miss Fry had some mild regard for human life and property, but Jennn… well, Jennn could be difficult when it came to matters like that. And so Phoebe was fighting her way through all of the angry phone calls like the last one, which had involved a man insisting that his cheap disposable camera was a rare and irreplaceable historical artifact, or at least, had been a rare and irreplaceable historical artifact until one of the Otter Lady’s seaweed minions had crushed it into a lot of… well, a lot of little camera pieces.

Phoebe rested her head on the desk for a moment, taking in a deep breath before she picked up a pen again and began to go through the various appointments for the week.

There were two large whiteboards up against the wall of Titanium Maiden’s underground layer. One had “Titanium Maiden’s Schedule” written across it in Phoebe’s neat hand. The next read “Miss Fry’s Schedule.” Both had been divided neatly into sections for each day of the week, and those columns into rows for morning, noon, and evening activities.

Phoebe uncapped a dry erase marker with her teeth and set to work.

She wrote, Interview with Existence magazine, 10:00 AM, on Titanium Maiden’s schedule, and then, Interview with Existence magazine, 1:00 PM on Miss Fry’s schedule. She was sure she could not imagine why Existence wanted to interview Miss Fry. She was certainly a famous fashion designer, but mostly in the sense that once you made someone famous, it was a little difficult to make them un-famous.

Phoebe scratched her head as she capped the marker. There had to be a better place to work in patrols this week… it was often pretty hard to figure out how to keep Miss Fry’s schedule straight when it was written across two boards, but Miss Fry had insisted. She said it helped her to keep her separate lives separate. Phoebe didn’t handle assisting Miss Frey in the matters of her real job, for example. Sometimes she wondered who did, and what they thought their employer did with her time.

She glanced around, as if searching for a clue to help her on her way to get through this arrangement, but there wasn’t a lot around. A few feet away was her desk, littered with papers and five telephones in a neat row at one end of it. Beyond that was an enormous fish tank in which Miss Fry’s incredibly long-lived goldfish floated serenely. Most of the rest of the walls were consumed by wanted posters, newspaper clippings and crayon drawings from various cute little kids whose lives had been saved (despite what Phoebe assumed were Jennn’s best efforts). A pair of very nondescript bicycles leaned against the wall where a portal had been built to arrive in the midst of some bleak woodland just outside of Ciudad City.

The phone rang. Phoebe groaned but walked across the room and picked it up anyway.

“Hello?”

“Can I reach Titanium Maiden here?” demanded an irritable voice on the other end of the line.

“Uh… yeah. Uhm.” Phoebe cleared her throat, and launched into the rote-learned sentences. “The Titanium Maiden isn’t in at the moment. Would you like me to take a message?”

“Yes, I would. Would you mind asking her, oh, I don’t know, how she managed to destroy a rare Da Vinci sketch with her ill-coordinated horseplay?”

Oh dear, Phoebe thought. “When was it destroyed and how, ma’am?”

The voice on the other end spluttered or a moment, apparently at loss for words. Phoebe went back over her sentence, trying to figure out what part of it could have possibly offended the caller, before she grasped the assumption she’d made.

“Oh, I’m sorry! Very sorry. I apologize. Slip of the tongue. How and when was it destroyed, sir?”

The man on the other side of the line sniffed. “I should think so. Kids these days. They have no respect. As it happens, it was irreparably soaked in a deluge of common, dirty, chlorinated pool water, then ripped apart by a fleeing crowd, then—”

As the man launched into a lengthy description of the crimes against God and humanity (not to mention Da Vinci) that had been committed on the unfortunate piece of artwork, two women stepped into the room from the spiral staircase that led above.

The first was a tall, graceful woman with a figure that, in itself, may have belonged in the irate caller’s Da Vinci. A slightly logic-defying mass of blond curls tumbled to her knees, and her eyes were big and blue and wet, always giving Phoebe the uncomfortable impression that she was about to burst into spontaneous tears of joy.

Behind her walked a younger girl, a teenager, her light brown hair pulled behind her head in a severe ponytail. She walked with an effortless grace, in fact, she did everything effortlessly, as though she was announcing to the world, and specifically you, that she didn’t have to try at all to do it.

Phoebe placed a hand on the mouthpiece and nodded at the two women. “Miss Fry,” she said. “Jennn. Good morning.”

“Good morning, Phoebe,” Miss Fry said. Phoebe forced a smile. Miss Fry was kind, the pay was good, but it seemed as though the woman couldn’t help talking with the false enthusiasm of an overly tired kindergarten teacher. Jennn, though, simply shrugged and pushed her way past Phoebe so she could examine the schedule.

“—and then before I could react all the pieces had been eaten by the zoo elephant,” the voice on the other end of the line finished, sounding close to tears.

“I… see. That’s very terrible for you, sir—”

“Ma’am.”

“Yes?”

“It’s ma’am.”

“But you just said…” Phoebe began, and then thought better of it. “All right, ma’am. In any case, that’s very terrible for you, ma—si—ma’am. I just wish there was something I could do to help…”

“Yes, you could! Namely, two million dollars in damages!”

“… that’s not exactly what I had in mind, ma’am.”

“God, they’d better not be paying you.”

Phoebe took a deep breath. “Before we talk about damages… I need to know what day and time it was destroyed on. It’s for the Heroic Insurance Report, and all…”

“Last Wednesday, at three o’clock,” replied the caller.

Phoebe nearly dropped the phone.

“Uhm… ma’am, I think I misunderstood you. You mean to say that you… you brought it to the water park?”

“Yes.”

“A priceless Da Vinci sketch?”

“Yes, you undereducated buffoon, that is what I have been saying! Now, produce the damages owed me—”

“Uh…” Phoebe cleared her throat. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to fill out a form at the Department of Supernatural Damages, that’s the DSD, ma’am, 628—”

“It’s sir!”

“Oh! Oh, yes, of course. Well, 628-WRECKED, sir—”

“I will not stand by here and have my concerns be transferred—”

Yes, you will, thought Phoebe grimly. Out loud, though, she said, “Sorry sir. That’s 628-WRECKED, sir. Goodbye, now, have a nice day.”

Ma’am! I will be addressed as ma’am—”

Phoebe set the phone firmly into its cradle.

“Well, that’s some customer service,” hissed Jennn into Phoebe’s ear. “Just why the hell are we paying you, again?”

Miss Fry’s back was turned, of course. She was looking lovingly at her dressmaker’s dummy in the corner, over which she’d taped a sketch of a voluminous faux-fur coat colored a particularly lurid orange.

Phoebe wanted to shout at Jennn. It’s all because of you and your lack of caution that I have to spend every day dealing with angry gender-confused art nerds! It’s all because of your incompetence that I’m going to have to figure out how to coordinate the rebuilding of Mildly Damp World!

She kept all these thoughts to herself, though. She just nodded and said, “Sorry.”

Miss Fry turned around, beaming.

“So good to see you girls getting a chance to bond,” she said brightly. “what’s on the schedule for today?”

“Uhm…” Phoebe turned and faced the whiteboards. “Well, in half an hour Miss Fry has an appointment with Lancre Monthly about having your ‘Fries of France’ collection in their September/October issue…”

Miss Fry clapped her hands. “That’s the one. Oh, I’m so looking forward to that. That Mr. Lancre is a tough nut to crack, but in the end he’ll let me in all the same.”

Phoebe refrained from comment, though she herself was of the opinion that the staff at Mr. Lancre’s famous magazine would rather like their fashion to be a little more… fashionable.

“Uh… after the meeting, Miss Fry has a lunch date with an old high school colleague, after which she’s going to go and get her hair done.”

Miss Fry nodded. “And after that?”

“After that, Miss Fry will be retiring to her home for some much-needed rest.” Phoebe said, “and Titanium Maiden will be on patrol.”

“Ah, the curse of a double life,” Miss Fry said. “Always in two places at once. Are my responses all prepared for the Existence interview tomorrow?”

“Yes, Miss Fry. Would you like to go over them?”

“Tonight after patrol, perhaps. But I’m sure you did a very good job, Phoebe.”

Phoebe grimaced at the condescension. “Thank you, Miss Fry. Very well. I was just thinking… about the Existence thing… maybe you should fly around a bit before going to the Miss Fry interview. That way you won’t arrive so quickly after leaving that it seems suspicious.”

Miss Fry nodded. “I suppose that’s something to consider… I bet there will be personnel all over the place, so it’s not like I can just change in the bathroom, either. Hmmm…”

She wandered off towards her dressmaker’s dummy again, and Phoebe settled behind her desk.

Okay, so the job description had been secretarial work. She hadn’t really expected a whole lot, knowing that. But still… when she’d heard it would be secretarial work involving superheroes… maybe she’d gotten her hopes up just a little too much.

That didn’t change the simple fact, though—she needed the money. Even if it meant dealing with Camera Man and the Da Vinci Sketch Individual of Uncertain Gender… not to mention Jennn. Even if it meant a hundred Heroic Insurance Forms, a million arguments with the magazine and the newspaper trying to negotiate interview times for Titanium Maiden that didn’t clash with Miss Fry’s while preventing anyone from getting suspicious, even if it meant months of carpal tunnel. She had to have the money from this job if there was any way she was going to pay for med school.

At least she didn’t have to organize Jennn’s schedule, too. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what Radium Lass did in her ample free time, and was quite glad not to be a part of it. Maybe to Miss Fry, she made a good sidekick, but to Phoebe… well, Jennn was an occupational hazard.

She set to work on careful editing of Titanium Maiden’s planned responses for the interview, her head beginning to ache already. She wondered dully if it might be a secret identity giveaway for Titanium Maiden to say she always shopped at Suspiciously Clean Dan’s Groceries for her food, or whether it would be considered unauthorized use of the name and get them sued, or whether it would be considered a dismissal of the other stores and get them sued, or whether it would be called an endorsement and get Miss Fry a medal. That tended to be the way it was. Either Miss Fry got a medal, or Phoebe got sued.

Phoebe had just put her pen to the index card to cross out an incorrect use of the word “frippery” when the air screamed.

The first time it had happened, at the beginning of the summer, Phoebe had screamed, too, and had been inconsolable and shaking for nearly two hours afterward. Now she merely jumped, streaking a great red line across the page as the lights mounted on the ceiling flashed pink and blue.

“That’s the distress signal!” shouted Miss Fry unnecessarily.

Jennn, who had seated herself in a wide armchair in the corner, groaned loudly. “Can’t it wait?”

“Don’t be silly, Radium Lass! There’s Evil afoot!” Miss Fry began unbuttoning her coat. “We’ve got to suit up and come to the rescue!”

Jennn made her way rather slowly out of her chair, grumbling to herself the whole way.

Phoebe rose from her chair. I’ve got to say it, she told herself. It’s now or never. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You know, all that cliché stuff.

“Uhm… Jennn?” she said, and hesitated. Jennn didn’t even look at her.

“Jen?”

Jennn’s head snapped around. “What was that?

“Uhm.. sorry, I was just trying to get your attention…”

“You forgot the ns,” Jennn said, her voice, nearly shaking with rage. “My three ns. I only heard one n.”

“Oh,” Phoebe said, “Oh, right. Sorry, Jenn.”

Jennn’s eyes narrowed. “That’s two ns,” she whispered.

“Jennn,” Phoebe tried.

“That’s better,” Jennn said. “What’s up, Pheeb?”

Phoebe did her best to keep her eye from twitching.“Well, I kind of… had a question for you.”

“What?” asked Jennn, in a tone that suggested that Phoebe’s question was going to cause her hours of overwork and exhaustion.

“Uhm… well, I invited you to my orchestra concert last week…”

“Yeah?”

“And you said that you were totally psyched to go, and you couldn’t wait, and you asked me to give you some money for tickets…” Actually, Phoebe remembered it more as a loan than a gift, but under the circumstances, she was prepared to forget that qualification.

“Yeah? So?”

“Well… you kind of… didn’t show up. At all.”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“Uhm… well, to be honest, no one came.”

“Gee, that’s a shame,” Jennn said, tossing her hair. “Sorry, Pheeb. I had a thing.”

“What kind of thing?” Phoebe asked.

“You know the kind of thing you have when you don’t want to go to somebody’s stupid orchestra concert?”

“Yes?”

“That kind of thing.”

“Oh.”

Jennn gave her a look of mild disgust. “I don’t know why you do it, Pheeb. Like, I really don’t know.”

Phoebe stared at her, trying not to let her bewilderment show on her face. Was Jennn actually for once acknowledging the difficulty and general thanklessness of her job…?

“Do what?” she asked cautiously.

Jennn shrugged. “I dunno. Anything. It’s not like anyone’s ever going to show up at the proverbial orchestra concert of your life, you know? You’re kind of fated to be a bystander. There’s never been anything significant about you… I really don’t know why you bother with life, man. I just don’t get it.”

Phoebe stared at her.

“Jennn!” Miss Fry called from the other end of the room. “Come on, hurry, up!”

“Sorry, coming Miss Fry!” Jennn glared at Phoebe. “Geez, Pheeb. Way to distract me. Some secretary you are.”

She flounced off towards the portal way, where Miss Fry already had one leg swung over her bike, her long fluff of blond hair streaming out dramatically in the breeze. The bike, which had looked so ordinary before, was beginning to glow a faint white radiance, its shape becoming more solid. She kicked the bike into gear and zoomed off, leaving a trail of bright red fire behind her, which Phoebe wisely stepped aside to avoid. Jennn followed sulkily, and in a moment, Phoebe found herself quite alone.

Why, indeed, she thought.


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User avatar
739 Reviews


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Reviews: 739

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Wed Aug 11, 2010 7:30 pm
xXTheBlackSheepXx wrote a review...



#0040FF ">I think this went a little slow, but it’s still the beginning and you are probably setting this up for something. To me it wasn’t as interesting as your first chapter, but the writing was still good and I really love the characters. I didn’t see any noticeable grammar errors, so great job on that!!

Just an opinion, but the part about the three ‘N’s probably could’ve been cut, because it probably just for humor, and it wasn’t totally hilarious to me. Your choice though!

I really loved the he/she phone conversation, it was my favorite part! Made me laugh.

Sorry I can’t be of any more help, but honestly there’s nothing wrong with this, and I’m excited for the third part!
Can’t wait for chapter 3!!!!




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8 Reviews


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Sat Jul 17, 2010 1:25 pm
MasterofChaos wrote a review...



Hello, Zan!

Because you reviewed my story, which, by the way, I want to thank you for, I wanted to review your story as well. So, here you go! :)

I enjoyed your story so far, and I can't wait to read more! I love your level of detail, and I love how you describe the characters. They're people you can relate to, especially Phoebe. I can so understand her situation. XD

A minor complaint, however.

Oh dear, Phoebe thought.


When you write thoughts, normally, it would be easier if you wrote them like this.

I think that the person above got some of it down, but, to me, that's the only thing I would change. In conclusion, I enjoyed your story, and I want to read more. :)




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553 Reviews


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Sat Jun 19, 2010 5:43 am
MiaParamore wrote a review...



Hey Angela. Here I am at last to review the secind chapter.


So here goes the review:
Well I myelf want to be a fashion designer so it suddenly caught my interest. It is a perfect combination- a fashion designer and a superwoman.

“No, the Titanium Maiden isn’t in #0080FF ">here at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”


She held the receiver a little further away from her #FF0000 ">head, eardrums ringing.
Well, I think the phone receiver is nowhere near the head, it's a littl bit down. I didn' think it was correct. Correct me if I am wrong.

There were two large whiteboards up against the wall of Titanium Maiden’s underground layer. One had “Titanium Maiden’s Schedule” written across it in Phoebe’s neat #FF0000 ">hand.
Shouldn't it be handwrititng?

Oh dear, Phoebe thought.
So you should italicise her thoughts.

The voice on the other end spluttered #00BFFF ">for a moment, apparently at loss for words.


Behind her walked a younger girl, a teenager, her light brown hair pulled behind her head in a severe ponytail.
What do you possibly mean by 'severe'?

It’s all because of you and your lack of caution that I have to spend every day dealing with angry gender-confused art nerds! It’s all because of your incompetence that I’m going to have to figure out how to coordinate the rebuilding of Mildly Damp World!
It was funny.


I liked Jennn's character a lot-she's arrogant, sarcastic and self-absorbed super heroine. Also I loved her conversation with Phoebe where she bosses her off. The three n's concept was very funny and I wanted to read their conversation again and again.

Phoebe is somewhat reminding me of CHloe's character in my novel-A Criminal's Heart which you probably reviewed.

I don't have anything bad to say about this which is really irritating me now and I am feeling somewhat disgusted at myself for being such a lame reviewer. Your phrases are really beautiful, your description, your vocabulary is really so wonderful. I almost felt like reading a published novel. There were some errors here and there but oerall it was fabulous.

As for the second conversation of Phoebe with the male-female person, I thought it was quite satisfactory and there's no need of yours to be disliking it, even a bit. I liked these kinds of office-jobs in a book.

Characters:
All the characters introduced tilll now have a distinct quality to themselves and I really liked reading about their thoughts, attitude, and last of all their actions.

I was really no help at all, so I am going to try my best to do a better review in the next chapters. There were some mistakes here and there which if corrected will make this novel a beautiful piece. Also you should request for more reviews from other people also so that you they also could help you more and see to the things which I either missed or don't know about.

Good Luck writitng it and I hope you do continue writing it.
~Shubhi





I am big enough to admit I am often inspired by myself.
— Leslie Knope