(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]

"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--?"

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

Right on cue, Goldilocks and She-Hulk make their entrance through the office door, both attired in MiB Suits and standard issue Ray Bans. The Suits fit perfectly, and accentuate their curvy forms in the best possible way.

"...555-Beta," Goldy is saying over her shoulder to someone who remains out of sight, and she is holding up her brand spanking new MiBlackberry. "Call me!"

Coming to a stop in front of Zed's desk, she then focuses on the man before her and awards him a typically lazy smirk.

"Hello, Zee. Are you okay there? You look a bit peaky."

[gammagammahey.livejournal.com]

Jen knows that there is a time for show stopping entrances, and she's very, very good at them.

She also knows that this probably isn't the time for one, due to the calculated risk of Zed flatlining when she and Goldy step into the office. (She'd graphed out the risk on her highly personalized Stark Industries calculator beforehand.)

Nonetheless, she does pause in the doorway, demurely kicking up a heel and letting her Ray Bans slide down her emerald green nose.

"Hi, Chief. Need a glass of water and a defibrillator?"

Needless to say, her blouse is bright purple. And is that suit black, or a shade of purple so deep as to be indistinguishable from black? Only certain claves of Jovian entities with organs ridiculously sensitive to electromagnetic radiation know for sure.

Hopefully, it'll pass. If not? Jen has other means.

[nita_callahan]

. . . So this is what K had up his sleeve.

Stifling laughter, Nita glances between the women and Zed.




This is the fastest Nita has ever built a sound-muffling shield in her life.

[bring_a_sponge]

Zed? Is Very Calm now.

Very, very calm.

He knows what this is. It's simple really.

He's in the fucking bar.

The fucking Landlord grabbed his ass when Zed wasn't looking, and has kept him there so long, Zed has actually fallen asleep. And that's what THIS is, his fucking nightmare after being stuck in Milliways for who knows how long.

So Zed waits for a few seconds. Because after this shit, he must be close to waking up screaming.

So Zed waits.

Except.... that doesn't seem to be helping.

"...I'm not waking up."

Beat.

"Goddammit, why am I not waking up?!?!?"

[3rdtimelucky.livejournal.com]

"This the real deal," Goldy chuckles, perching herself on the corner of Zed's desk. Her blouse is a more traditional MiB white, but the cut is low and revealing and it has no buttons or collar. Okay, fine, it's more ivory than white. It's closer than Jen's though!

"Jen and I are primed and ready to be your new part-time agents," she says, while absently setting the balls of his Newton's cradle executive stress toy into motion.

Tack... tack... tack... they go as they pendulum into each other.

"We filled out the questionnaire and everything."

[gammagammahey.livejournal.com]

"Don't play with his balls, sweetie," Jen admonishes, with a radiant smile that effectively makes her statement a non-admonishment altogether. In fact, it might be taken as a mild encouragement. "That's where a man is most vulnerable."

"We did complete the paperwork, Chief. I even attached a comprehensive appendix listing all the systems where I'm a known quantity, welcome or unwelcome. I think we've got social capital that will be valuable to the organization."

The fact that Jen manages to say this with a completely straight face is a testament to the years she spent fighting it out in the trenches of the New York State Unified Court system.

She nods and smiles at Nita. "Hi, kiddo."