(no subject)

[bring_a_sponge]

 
Picture this:

The Man in Charge. Master of All He Surveys. The Chief. The Boss. The Big Man.

Agent Zed.

In his office at the heart of MiB HQ.

A good day. Quiet. Productive. The kind of day a man expects he'll be able to look back on with tremendous satisfaction.

Well, half a day, anyway....

Comments

[nita_callahan]

"Great," rueful. "This is a regular occurrence?"

[bring_a_sponge]

"Every ten years or so."

"Their wars go on until whatever is the prank of choice becomes a priceless commodity. Could be any damn thing: whoopie cushions, rocket boosters, firecrackers, grease paint, whatever the hell. Both sides sink their planetary economies into Total Prank War and drive themselves straight into a massive market depression."

"Not that the Annelids give a shit. They just think it's funny. But it's kept the Krylians screwed for the better part of five centuries."

[nita_callahan]

Her eyebrows go up.

"Huh. Victory by market forces. Adam Smith'd be proud."

[bring_a_sponge]

"Maybe. Or maybe he'd find a table in the nearest pub and start smacking his head against the table over and over. Who can say?"

"Anyway, we're not here to talk about anything as inherently surreal as Annelid foreign policy. This is supposed to be a meeting about K's crazy damn notion--. Errrrhh, I mean, your application for an internship here at the MiB. So why should I be considering that an even remotely sane idea?"


Which would be Nita's signal to make her opening pitch.

[nita_callahan]

"For starters, because I can take the idea of an interplanetary prank war in stride, and probably communicate with the Krylian ambassador's body if you want to push the next one off for slightly longer?"


:D?

[bring_a_sponge]

Congratulations, Nita. You're barely thirty seconds in, and you've already left Zed sitting there with his mouth hanging open.

Which is just part of his general look of thunderstruck-ness (and maybe a little horror) on Zed's face as he thinks, My god, she might be right....>

[nita_callahan]

"I'm assuming you've read my file, but -- I'm a wizard, and I use the Speech in my work. It's a universal language, so I can talk with anything that's sentient and a lot that isn't by human standards. I'm not sure how well it works with non-verbal flailing, but . . ."

Oh. He's impressed.

Nita stops babbling.

[bring_a_sponge]

"Maybe you're a wizard."

"We still haven't determined whether the Speech is effective in this dimension."

Zed doesn't actually cross his arms and start tapping his foot but he might just as well have.

[nita_callahan]

"As far as I know, the universal language aspect of it should work here whether or not my powers do. It'd be a pretty useless universal language if it didn't." She shrugs, brushing her hair back. "I'd be happy to put both aspects to the test, if you want."

[bring_a_sponge]

"I'm not getting any younger, Callahan."


Not drumming his fingers on his desk, but might just as well be.

[nita_callahan]

Nita can't decide whether to be intimidated as hell or giggle.

She wisely decides on neither and mutters a few words under her breath. A small, bright sphere of light pops into being over their heads, casting sharp shadows in all directions.

A grin. "Powers work okay. Got a plant I can talk to to check the rest?"

[bring_a_sponge]

Zed grunts approvingly at the sphere. He's looking unimpressed, but he's having to work at it.

"Plant, huh?" He gets up, and walks over to one of the glass walls of his office. Planting a hand on what seems to be a random spot, the wall pulls back to leave an open space. Zed leans over and bellows loud enough to echo through the entire main hall.

"H! Get that goddamn fern or shrub or whatever the hell it is off your desk and bring it up here!"

"...And haul ass! Haven't got the damn day!"

Closing the wall again, he heads back to his desk, with a smirk at Nita, and sits down with a look on his face that defines, "It's good to be the Chief."

[nita_callahan]

. . . And she's going to be working directly for this guy?

Is it too late to have second thoughts?

. . . Yeah, probably. She extinguishes the wizardlight with another word as she watches the agent's progress up to the office.

[bring_a_sponge]

Agent H is a blond guy with the weathered-look of a middle-aged surfer dude. He's carrying a small potted plant that looks suspiciously like an aloe plant.

"Yo, Chief. I've told you, it's a Centauri-."

"--Put it on the desk."

"Her name's Sophie."

Zed squints. "The. Desk."

H dutifully puts the plant on Zed desk, and then seems to give it a pat. "Don't mind him, baby."

Bizarrely enough, the plant almost seems to respond to that.

Zed rolls his eyes.

[nita_callahan]

Nita gives H a grin and sits forward to pat one of the plant's leaves.

"Hi, Sophie. I'm Nita."

Sophie is surprised to meet a human who can talk to her, though not as surprised as most plants would be, because come on, this is MiB headquarters. She's got lots of conversation, honey, but it's all from tourists and you know that gets so dull with the oh, have you been to the Statue of Liberty and the what should we go see on Broadway and yadda yadda yadda.

". . . Well, um. Don't worry, I'm from New York. I'm only about half a tourist. Do you like it here?"

Sophie informs her that she could tell right away Nita wasn't local, but that's fine, since she's a good conversationalist. Oh, and H treats her very well, even if Sol doesn't have quite the spectrum of radiation she would like, but it's not like there's anyone she has to impress around here, so if her color's not quite what it could be, it's not that awful.

"Oh, no, really? What wavelengths are you missing?"

[bring_a_sponge]

Sophie starts in with, 'Hey, I'm not complainin',' but admits a little more down toward the indigo end of the spectrum would be nice, since you know, that's what she usually gets back home, what with all the purple jellyfish things floating up in the Centauri stratosphere, shifting the color that way.

[nita_callahan]

Nodding, Nita looks up. "Hey, um, Agent H -- she says she'd like some shorter wavelength light, like, 400, 450 nanometres. Indigo?" She grins. "But you treat her right."

[bring_a_sponge]

H beams at Nita, and she can just pick up a barely whispered, "Duuuuude."

Zed, meanwhile, looks like he's chewing on a lemon. "All right, H, pack up 'Sophie' here and get back to work."

And then with an annoyed sigh, he adds, "And fill out a requisition template 38-B7-pi-9, so we can get her a new spectrum emitter array."

Cradling Sophie, H is already heading for the door, but furtively raises his hand in a fist with thumb and little finger extended in a shaka to her as he heads out.

[nita_callahan]

Grinning, Nita waves surreptitiously before the door closes behind H.

Beat.

"So that part seems to work okay too."

:D?

[bring_a_sponge]

"It did," Zed agrees, a very slight smile on his face. "Truth is, Nita, you'd never have gotten through the front door if I hadn't been impressed by your application."

Because, of course, Zed is the Man. In complete charge of all he surveys. The definition of Being on Top of Everything. Totally in the know.

Which is precisely when there's a knock on the door.

[k_in_black]

Speaking of confidence, K comes through the door with a smile for Nita.

"Afternoon, Miss Nita. I'm guessing from the look on Agent H's face that we're looking good here?"

Zed rumbles an assent.

[nita_callahan]

"Agent K!"

She grins, and gives him a discreet thumbs up, mouthing Thanks for the warnings.

[k_in_black]

K replies with an even more discreet nod, and then takes a seat next to her.

"Chief, now that we have a new intern for the bureau, I thought we should address a related matter."

Mildly annoyed to have a moment of victory get the rush job, Zed grunts. "And that would be?"

"Replacements for the recent losses during the Rimiran operation. With the heavy casualties we're going to be understaffed, especially for remote operations, for the foreseeable future."

Zed gives K a suspicious look. "...True enough."

"Well, no longer a problem. I've found an ideal solution."

[nita_callahan]

This seems to be Nita's cue to sit back and stop being nervous, so she does the first and works on the second.

And watches K and Zed talk, eyebrows climbing higher with each sentence, until--

"Damn," says someone outside the office, with a wolf-whistle, "and I thought I made this look good."

[bring_a_sponge]

K gestures grandly toward the office door, left ajar in anticipation of the moment.

"Zed, Nita, I give you a new era in the history of the Men in Black:

Agent Beta. And Agent Gamma."


It's that last word that twigs Zed to what's about to happen to his bureau.

"K, what the fu--?"