Savvy, Part the First

Hey, peepuls! Notice thou the SNOW we had the other day?! Kipin was vurry excited, yuss yuss.

Kipin was feeling fragmental this morning. So, here's a fragment from my newest random sixteen-year-old-secret-agent story, Savvy. I think I might do semi-regular posts of this one. The first part is from Baeli's POV. Her field agent computer-clueless friend, Timo, just accidentaly blew up his computer, so of course he calls Baeli to fix it. She wasn't counting on all that smoke...


Savvy, part one: Baeli
I’m not so sure this counts as fanfic. I’m just using some charries from this puzzle box thing I got for my birthday. So yeah, I don’t own the official QUIET agents or QUIET itself or the Nasties. But I do own Baeli, Mattemio, Derec, and Jakky. And Tracie, the extremely blonde receptionist. Hee.

“Baeli, my computer locked me out again!” said the intercom unit on my desk.
I pushed the answer key and replied, “Just a minute, Timo!” Shutting down the search engine on my desktop, I threw my hoodie around my shoulders and ducked out of the cubicle, shutting the glass door behind me.
When I arrived at Mattemeo’s cubicle, I was startled, but not really surprised, to see smoke leaking out from under the door. “Oh, brother,” I muttered, slotting my ID chip into the reader embedded in the wall. The door slid smoothly open, releasing a cloud of smoke and a coughing Timo. His face was gray with soot.
I coughed and pulled him away from the stifling cloud. “Holy mole, what did you do?” I fanned away the smoke clinging to my friend with one hand as I pocketed my ID chip with the other.
He was doubled over, gasping for air. “Not sure… All I did was kick it a little bit…”
Timo always manages to irk me. “You kicked your computer? Are you stark raving bonkers? Machines have feelings too, y’know!”
“The darned thing wouldn’t let me in!” he pouted defensively.
“I’ll go see if Derec can fix it,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Wait here… and don’t kick any more expensive machinery.”
Timo is a great field agent, I mused as I hurried to the techies’ unit. Maybe the best in all of QUIET. Especially considering his age. Heck, he’s the first sixteen-year-old QUIET field agent in the history of QUIET agents. Not to mention the only one. But I’m sixteen too, so that makes me the second, even though I’m only a lowly programmer (a job otherwise and more commonly known as ‘hacker’.) Derec, our hardware kid, would be third, and Jakky the chemist-in-training, last.
Timo’s pretty good in the field. One of the best. But when it comes to computers, he’s utterly hopeless.

I ran smack into Professeur Le-Boum-Boum and Jakky on my way to the tech lab. As usual, they were both carrying vials of caustic chemicals.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly as a circular section of floor tile was eaten away by the spilled compound.
“Ah, ze compound, eet works!” cried the Professeur, grinning hugely. Jakky just looked startled. He’s a pretty quiet guy.
“Come, Jakkee, let us go back to ze lab and refine zis lovely stuff. Come, come!” She hustled Jakky down the hallway.
“Sorry!” I called after them, and continued on my way, skirting the hole in the tiles.

The tech lab was in an uproar when I finally made it there. Balls of wadded-up notebook paper flew through the air, and shouts echoed off the walls. There was an alarm going off somewhere. Desks had been overturned. Mechanical parts lay scattered about. I picked my way through the minefield, waving at a slightly frantic-looking Doctor Von Gizmo, who was yanking wires out of a big silver box. “Ach! Diz new alarrm rrefuses to be silent!” he shouted, rolling his R’s in typical German fashion.
I gave him an encouraging thumbs-up and resumed my search for Derec.
He was holed up under a desk, poking at a mess of gears and bolts. “Hey, Bae, what’s up?”
“Timo blew up his computer again… what’s that?”
He threw me a proud grin. “My latest and greatest mischief-making invention, The Chaos Generator. It remotely sets off all security alarms within a twenty-yard radius by emitting a high-frequency pulse beam – “
I’m a software girl. I had less than no clue what he was talking about, and was more concerned just then about the mayhem it was causing. “Well, can you turn it off?”
“Um, eh, actually…” he rubbed the back of his neck with a greasy hand, refusing to meet my eyes. “That’s the only problem with it… I’m not really sure how to stop it.”
Ugh, boys can be so stupid sometimes. Especially when they’re geniuses. I was irritated. Why did everything always have to happen at once?
“Here, try this.” I plucked a gear from the grinding mass. It squeaked to a halt. The alarm fell silent. “There.” I gave him a scathing look. “That wasn’t so hard. Even I could figure it out.”
“Hey, gimme that!” he exclaimed, snatching the gear from me and trying to shove it back into his havoc-inducing creation. “You’re gonna break it!”
“Good,” I replied curtly, grabbing his arm and hauling him out from under the desk. “Now come on, before Doc Gizmo realizes it was your fault.”
That convinced him. We ducked out of the tech lab, leaving fifteen baffled techies to scratch their heads in confusion, and raced back to the data center at top speed.

Hmm, that was long, but kinda fun. Yep, I think you guys will be gettin' regular helpin's o' this'un.

Commander Kip
Normal is overrated!