Reports from a Nuthouse

[ooc: Technically not an OOM, but....]


A typically disgruntled Zed has been sitting in the bar he hates, drinking the bourbon he loves, surrounded by people who make him crazy. But the bourbon has been a welcome break from all the after-action reports he's been reviewing from a delicate mission for a rookie agent that went badly wrong.

That sort of thing doesn't happen very often back in Zed's world. Just about all of Zed's missteps during the whole of his thirty-plus year career in the MiB have happened in the last five years and been oddly clustered within the confines of one particular multiversal bar.

Funny how that happens.

Which is why Zed normally spends as short a time in Milliways as possible, and that usually means he never has to use the facilities (or as he's wont to say, take a leak). But those depressing reports back in the office made one more bourbon sound like a good idea, so now he's feeling the urge. Of course, in theory his office is only on the other side of the Door, but people are people and it only makes sense to take care of business before heading back.

So Zed is washing up in the men's room of Milliways when an apparition appears in the mirror. Inevitably, it's former rookie Agent F, standing behind him.

Zed sighs and mutters, "Goddamnit."

He turns. "Agent F."

Agent F stomps forward, "What the hell, Chief? I mean what the--?"

"Now wait a goddamned minute!" Zed barks. F stops in his disembodied tracks.

"Did I not warn you ahead of time?" he growls.

"Yeah, but--."

"Did I not warn you three times?"

"Yeah, but--."

"Did I not specifically tell you not to call the Xigawak ambassador 'Ambassador'?"

"Yeah, except--."

"Did I not tell you exactly what you'd be saying about his mother if you did?"

"Well, yeah--."

"Did I not I tell you exactly what would happen? With three diagrams, a spectrometer, and a holographic simulation?"

"That was a pretty good simulation," F allows.

"And then what you did do?"

F mumbles.

"Huh? Speak up!"

"I, uh, I went right up to the Xigawak ambassador, and said, "Welcome to Terra, 'Ambassador Blowak!"

"And what did he do?"

"That simulation really was a pretty good."

"Wasn't it just? Goddammnit, F. I can't save agents from themselves. And don't think I don't wish I could sometimes."

F ruminates on that for a while. Then: "So what happens now, Chief? Am I stuck here, like you used to be?"

"No, this is just the Landlord fucking with me. It's got nothing to do with you, F. You've earned your leave, with interest. I'm taking care of the paperwork now."

"It's not gonna say--."

"--It's my call, F. You made a mistake, but you're not the first agent who did, and not the last either. Full honors and reputation in good standing. My word on that."

F beams. "Thanks, Chief."

Zed nods. "Get some shuteye, Agent."

F is still beaming as he fades. And when the vision has completely disappeared, Zed sighs and looks up.

"There, you sonuvabitch, had enough holiday fun now?"

The Man in Black heads for the door back into the bar, but just before opening it, he stops and turns back toward the room. "One other thing."

"You want to screw with Agent K, you want to screw with me, fine. You dragged the both of us in here, and we're prepared to put up with Your demented fun and games."

He pauses.

"But if You fuck with another of my people like that again, then whatever and wherever You are, You and I will be having words. Count on it."

Zed slams the door on his way out. And the room remains quite silent after him.

 
[After this.]

MiB Headquarters
Planet Earth
0900 hours

Fresh from a breakfast of Denebian flapjacks with bugbutter syrup, Zed heads back to his office and settles into his chair, mashing the button that deactivates the stasis field on his desk and picking up Bob Wonka's Guide to the Loompas now that he finally has time to read it.

"Chapter one: The Loompas--."

BEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

Zed mashes another button on his desk, the one for the intercom. "Yeah?"

"Chief, it's T, in the Landing Bay. We just caught the Annelids selling smokes up here again."

Zed slams his fist on the button, cutting off the feed, and lurches to his feet with a growl, "Goddamn worms, goddamn Neeble," and stomps out of his office, heading for the landing bay.


MiB Headquarters
Planet Earth
1100 hours

Back in his office, Zed settles into his chair. "Try this again," he mutters.

"Chapter one: The Loompas--."

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

"Nnnrah!" Another mash of the button. "WHAT?!"

"Chief, it's M. The Lurian ambassador is down here on Level C and, whoa, is she pissed off. She's screaming something about the Dentazi delegation hauling fifty gallons of bacon grease into her suite and dumping it in the jacuzzi. And you know how the Lurians are about saturated fats."

Zed smashes the com button again and hefts himself up and then out the door. "Got to do every goddamn thing myself around here."


MiB Headquarters
Planet Earth
1300 hours

"....And hold my calls. If it's not a galactic emergency, I don't give a shit."

"Sure thing, Chief."

Zed dims the windows of his office and settles back into his chair. He pauses for a deep breath.

Breathe innnn. Breathe ooouuut.

Ahhhhh.

This time for sure.

"Chapter one: "The Loompas--."

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

"GODDAMMIT!" He smashes the button. "WHAT?!"

"What the fuck's crawled up your ass and died?" B snarls through the com. "I need you down here in the lab."

"I'm busy! Whatever it is, take care of it! Show some goddamn initiative!"

"Fuck you and fuck your initiative! How the hell am I supposed to work in this dump with only three atomic matter condensers?"

"You know how much each one of those costs?" Zed roars.

"Yeah I know how much they cost. I filled out the goddamn requisition forms, didn't I?"

"And I authorized every one, you sonuvabitch, so what're screaming at ME about?"

"'Cause I don't need three, dammit, now I need five!'

"THEN FILL OUT ANOTHER FORM!"

"YOU GOT ANY IDEA HOW BUSY I AM?! I DON'T HAVE TIME TO FILL OUT ANOTHER DAMN FORM!"

Zed stops just long enough to smash the intercom button five times before storming out the door to head down to the lab and strangle B with his bare hands.


MiB Headquarters
Planet Earth
1500 hours

Zed is still hyperventilating by the time he gets back to his office and slams the glass door behind him, managing to put a half-inch crack in the ("guaranteed, your Altarian megabucks back, no questions asked") unbreakable Glassteel.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a few minutes and then stalks over to his desk, sits down again and cracks open the book.

Chapter one: "The Loompas--."

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!

The com gets something between a roar and a shriek, all of it pure, undiluted rage.

"So you remember that time," K starts, "When the Arquillians threatened to leave the Earth a blasted cinder if they caught us trying to run Dentazi Bloatbusters to the Xirkat resistance again?"

Zed lets out a long sigh as his head thumps on his desk.

"Yeah, I remember that."

"Well, guess what."

He heaves another sigh. "I'll be right down," and gets up to join K down in the Main Hall. The office door closes softly behind him, but the crack shatters anyway, sending half the Glassteel door straight at the floor where it smashes into a million shiny little pieces.


MiB Headquarters
Planet Earth
1700 hours

There's a metal blast panel hammered into place where Zed's office door used to be. And a heavy table has been propped up on one end and shoved against it, barricading the way in. The office windows have all been dimmed to black. The intercom system has been ripped out of the desk and lies in a crackling, smoking pile of wires and circuit boards in the hallway. Inside, a single spotlight shines down through the darkness from behind Zed's head onto the first page of the book.

"Chapter one: "The Loompas--."

"Finally," Zed growls.

And the first line reads: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy....

"What the fuck?!" Zed roars.

Which also happens to be the second line: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy....

For page after page after page.


The preliminary reports that claimed Zed managed to hurl the book right through the metal blast panel were, of course, incorrect. That would've been impossible.

No, he took the time to unleash five plasma bursts from his personal Korlian XT-17 first, leaving the door a molten pile of white-hot slag and triggering every Omega-class alarm in the entire building.

Then he threw the book.


[Next.]

 
Most Men in Black keep their letter names for their whole career, but ever so often an agent earns an exceptional promotion, and after years of brilliant innovation in the tech labs, Agent B is now one of them, sub-director of a new post over all of MiB’s R&D. Which means the bureau needed a new Agent B to head the top laboratory, and now they have one. In fact, he’s just completed his first week on the job.

So he’s the one Agent Zed bellows at when he comes striding into the Main Lab, deep inside MiB Headquarters, while holding up the patched-together remains of a certain infamous iPhone, "B! I need this thing operational."

To which the newly appointed Agent B replies, "What, are you nuts? I’m not helping you rebuild that damn thing, you idiot, you’ll blow up New York."

"So rebuild it so it won’t blow up New York. You’re supposed to be this big fucking brain. Prove it."

"I am a big fucking brain. Which is why I wouldn’t have built this thing in the first place."

"Well, if you can’t do it--."

"I got more important things to do, dammit! Still trying to get that—," B utters not so much a curse as a strangled noise, "—bio-glop chain gun finished for Maxwell’s mech, not to mention that combat-ready MiB skirt Goldilo-, bwrrrr, Agent β keeps bugging me about. And don’t even get me started about that Ebola Surprise module you want so damn much for the Rollerball arena. Screw it, I’ll give it to the new guy."

"You’re the new guy."

"I mean the other new guy."

"I don’t like the new guy."

"What's wrong with the new guy?"

"He creeps me out."

"What d’ya mean he ‘creeps you out’? What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means he creeps me out!" Zed growls. "All that shit he goes on about rehabilitating Agents. ‘Rehabilitating,’ ‘resuscitating,’ ‘regurgitating,’ what the hell’s that word he’s always using--?"

"Do you know how many Agents we lose around here?"

"Yes, you asshole, I do know how many Agents we lose. I'm the one who assigns them, aren't I?"

"Well?"

"And when an MiB goes down, he stays down. I might not like it, but I sure as hell don’t need a goddamned MiB Zombie Division shambling around here trying to chow down on my skull for lunch."

B throws up his arms. "I can’t believe you’re this closed-minded."

Zed rolls his eyes. "What the fuck is it about this lab that makes people go batshit insane? If it’ll keep Agent H from pumping more of that weird, green, glowing shit into everything he sees then, yeah, get him working on this damn phone. Tell ‘em I’ll let him try rejuvenating the next Bug we get in here. Serve him right if he ends up something’s lunch himself."

Zed turns on his heel and heads out the door, bellowing, "Now, get busy, before I start thinking about demoting the old B's ass back in here."

"Asshole," B grumbles, failing to hear an evil Zed!chuckle from down the hall a few seconds later.

Zed is down in the bowels of MiB HQ, sitting in his usual spot in the bureau's main cafeteria, glowering at a defenseless bagel that had the audacity to be wheat instead of cinnamon-raisin.

Another sign the goddamn universe is going straight to hell.

Bad enough he has to cope with attacks by Black Oil and a Rollerball arena that is threatening to devour even the MiB's nearly limitless budget. Now he's even got to deal with a fresh crop of Agents from that fucking nuthouse Milliways.

What next?

Zed is still trying to figure out how the hell he ended up in a charity gig for the goddamn bar. Must have been some fit of insanity. Or maybe some bastard spiked his drink. Anything's possible.

But now that he has to sort through the damn bids, he figures he ought to find out what the hell people have in mind before he agrees to one of them. With this bunch, you never can be too careful.

Goldy would have to be high on that list, though. It's not like Zed hasn't noticed she's hot--he's just not about to admit it to her face. And since he knows K is supposed to have some sort of dinner date with her coming up, that's a good incentive to get a one up on the guy.

Which is why Zed finds himself outside Room 111 and knocking on the door...

MiB Headquarters,
Post-Black Oil Infestation Recovery Operation: Day Twenty-Two,
Office of Agent Zed

Zed passes his hand over a small sphere set into the surface of his desk. The curved glass window around his office darkens and goes opaque. Indirect lighting keeps the light at a steady level, but the room doesn't feel quite so exposed now.

"You really think she needs that?" K asks. "The kid's tough, Boss."

"I know," Zed replies, not looking up.

K looks at him for a bit, then goes back to moving one of the chairs to the front of Zed's desk. That done, he walks over to the glass door that leads out to the catwalk and the rest of MiB Headquarters. Hand on the entry panel, he waits.

Zed finishes putting his papers and neuralyzer in order. Then with a sigh, he nods.

K taps against the glass door. Even he can't help feeling a touch of vertigo as the glass door swings open to show, not the catwalk, but Milliways just beyond.

Sure enough, she's standing there, waiting.

K smiles. "C'mon in, Steph. We're all set here."

The smile's a lie. K is just as worried as Zed about what may be about to happen. But showing it would probably just make things harder.

A silence falls over sublevel C, broken only by the occasional clatter of falling debris, and the quiet chatter coming over the MiB comm, as the surviving Men in Black escape from the DeNeuralyzation Room upstairs and fan out to see just how bad things are.

Well, they sure aren't good. But the destruction of N, Y, T in the shooting gallery has left the Oil for dead, apparently everywhere else in the Headquarters.

That wasn't supposed to be how the Oil worked. But then, Zed thinks, MiB got most of its data about the Black Oil from those same Agents.

He looks around what's left of the gallery, and of Marvin, and then finally the rest of his team.

A long pause.

"I'll say this much for Milliways."

"The place is a fucking nuthouse, and always will be."

"But the people there know how to kick ass like nobody else."

Looking to the right, the hallway goes quite a ways down. There are several doors along the way, but also an open space at the far end that looks like it might be a stairwell.

Unfortunately, it's immediately clear that these hallways aren't going to provide any cover whatsoever.

The questions eventually die down. Everyone has what they need. Zed can still see the Door.

It's Time.

Zed leads the group across the Bar and puts a hand on the Door as he turns to look at them. When he gets their collective nod, he drops his hand down to the door knob and waits as they take defensive positions.

Zed's been spending most of the day staring out the Observation Window. He doesn't need the holographic data or the floor plans anymore. He really didn't need them in the first place. He could have run this entire scenario in his head if he had had to. Laying it out on paper and screen was just a matter of convenience, and a way to double-check that he wasn't making an obvious mistake.

Either way, the time for prep is done. The word's gone out to the volunteers about tonight's briefing, and they have already begun to show up. Zed's found a quiet corner of the bar and a small table, on which sits the cylinder which is now projecting a holographic image of the MiB logo.

He's been staring at that logo. It's never been more compromised than it is right now. By the time this mission is done, it will stand for something again--or be finished for good.


But then comes the sight of the first people arriving, and just like that, all his worries are cast aside.