Time for finals!

That means it's time for doodle procrastination. Woot!

I've been drawing lots of Angeli lately because figuring out how six wings fit on one back is quite an ordeal.

See, another one. It could be Consolata, Memoria's sister.

Speaking of Birthright, I attempted to draw the scene where Andra and the boys are trying to escape the warehouse where Fabello's thugs have them trapped. I don't like the composition, but I do like Andra and Matteo's faces.

And now, Mistborn. 

Because Vin is one of my favorite badass lady heroines ever.

Also, she and Elend are so adorable together. (I gave up on drawing Vin's clothes becase mistcloak is more important than clothes.)

And now, change of pace. I've been thinking about my teenage spies lately. It would be so fun to make their story more original and actually use them for things. The lovely Baeli with her sexy messy bun.

Timo and Baeli flirting their heads off. "No. I'm not fixing it again." "But I broke it!" "Your point?" "You're morally obligated to fix it now." "Am not either."

And there they are doing homework together. Because in addition to being hot together, they are also best friends. It's pretty great. Also, I gave up on Timo's legs, in case you couldn't tell.

 Not to switch topics abruptly or anything, but let's have some Magical Steampunk Gypsies now. Specifically, my sassy gypsy viper and her garroting wire. (Gave up on her hands. Surprise.)

And here is Katia's new sky pirate character, Gideon the ship's boy. He's like whoa adorable.

And then there was Drama with a D between Erik and Suvoi, and there was angst and sexual tension  and they just need to bang already but they can't because he killed her family but she doesn't know that yet and just gaaaaaaaaah drama. It's awful, but I love it so much.

And switching again, here's a jaguar-centaur lady I made up for my treasure hunters to hang out with. She's a sihiri dawa and yes, I realize her boobs are showing. Get over it.

And here's a random faerie, which means it's prolly time to make another faerie door. I think I shall name her Speckle.

And here's the Marquis de Cabaras, the slimy git himself. Actually, I like him lots, but he is pretty slimy. (Neverwhere is so fantastic. I'm still not done reading it, but I love Neil Gaiman's style.)

Tenth Doctah! I still can't draw David Tennant, but whatever, he's still frickin' awesome. I'm watching Ten's seasons again with Matt because he hasn't seem them yet, and it's so fantastic, I can't even gah.

And lastly, Laini Taylor announced the title of her last book, Dreams of Gods and Monsters! I might just die of excitement. Anyway, to celebrate/procrastinate, I drew Akiva and Madrigal makin' out. Because they're sexy beasts.

So yep, that's what's been happening in the margins of my notes for the semester. More doodles later, perhaps.

But first, finals. Yeah.

Commander Kip
"Am I the only one who sees the foamy white stuff flying everywhere?"
Normal is overrated!

life, the universe, and...

... drawrings. To prove that I still can.

Mark of Athena is out now! I have no way to get ahold of it, of course, what with lack of monies, but I drew a picture of Reyna all the same because I'm SO EXCITED.

Martin from Standard Action, a sweet little webseries based on Dungeons and Dragons. I like Martin because he's a grumpy, bitter jerk, but so cute. Like Darcy. And Rochester. I seem to have a thing for those types.

Zeus. Because Kippy has had faaaaar too much Greekyness of late. FAR TOO MUCH. And we have so much Bible to read over break! *cries*

Whoa, and I'm not sure how this little guy happened. Anybody remember Derek from that weird little spything I wrote ages ago? Savvy, or whatever? I feel like this is probably him. Snipping cables, as is his wont. That weird smear on the paper? It's tape. I tried to brush the eraser shavings away, and the edge of my ring caught and tore the whole page. I had to tape it back together, and my smeary fingers got the tape dirty on the sticky side. Rrrrr.

And now, my hastily improvised Nerf Maverick holster! Yay camouflage duct tape!

I added a strap around my leg so it doesn't jounce around so much when I run. Unfortunately, the strap is just tape, and it doesn't buckle or fasten, so I have to step in and out of it like a strange pair of underwear. But it works, and it looks cool, so whatevs.

Side note: I think I figured out what I'm gonna do for my Halloween costume, and it should be pretty awesome. I got several of the parts I needed at Ragstock yesterday. Now I just need some - well, I say some, I mean quite a bit - well, I say quite a bit, I mean yards and yards - of purple fabric...

Yesterday was good. Right when we got back from shopping, I got killed in Assassin, which made me the first blood of the game. ARGH. But the whole game played itself out in one day, and my assassin was the one who ended up winning, so it was all cool. And I think we get to play again this weekend, since the first game ended so quickly. Also, yesterday, I got me some Halloween Oreos. It doesn't feel like Halloween until there's Halloween Oreos. And my friend Anna got a shiny new Maverick to play with, so we spent a goodly portion of the day shooting the crap out of each other. And she gave me her air restrictors once she'd removed them, so now I have an air restrictor bracelet. And last night, we went to the drag ball they were having in the Pause in honor of Coming-Out week. It was interesting. I had to borrow a shirt from Matt, because the woman's button-down I was wearing didn't quite tuck into my pants and it was awkward, but since Matt's shirt hung down past my knees, there was more than plenty to tuck in. Suspenders work rather well for containing a MASSIVE TENT of a man's shirt. Also, suspenders are cool. Anyway, after that I had to work the desk, so first Anna sat with me and we watched the first episode of Sherlock (holy crap - SO GOOD, and it's hilarious how impossible it is NOT to ship Sherlock and John in it. Even the other characters ship them. It's hysterical.) And then Anna went to bed, and I had to sit there for another hour, so I talked to Milady for a bit and then watched Firefly with Matt. Egad, Out of Gas makes me go through too many feelings. Because of the timeskips, I think. Much like Doctor Who.

Oh, and Friday night, Anna and I watched Treasure Planet because she'd never seen it and it's awesome. Once she found out Emma Thompson was in it, she was sold. And she thought Doppler and Amelia were adorable together (which they totally are.) You guys, I love that movie.

Oh, crap, I should prolly go to lunch. It ends in fifteen minutes. Later!

Commander Kip
"Shut up." "I haven't said anything." "You're thinking. It's annoying."
Normal is overrated!

bag, and stuffs

Awright, so here's the OSM DRAWSTRANG BAGGIE OF OSMNESS. Phear mah skillz. By the way, that project took for flippin' EVAR. Gaah. The Seal of DEATH and DOOM and DESTRUCTION and DEFENESTRATION, in that order. Requested by a fellow OYANer for some secret purpose unknown to the interwebz. In other words, she told me, but I'm supposeta keep it a seeeeecret.

TAM! *flying tackle* Dude, I love this guy. His real name is Tam McKarthy, but I drafted him into the Takacs Project to be the scary floaty vampire that chases Fletcher around and eventually bites his head off. Normally, he's your typical scarred, broody modern-day vampire assassin. On-project, we call him Nox. Oh, the other day, it was so funny, he got sick of running after Fletcher and decided it would be more awesome to FLOAT after him, so he got himself a pair of hoverboots and chased him that way for a while... until they got to the part where Nox pushes Fletcher in the river and they go over the waterfall, and then he realized that the water would short his boots out, so he had to kick 'em off before he dove in, and it cost me a fat ugly hesitation between two sections. Yeah. *smites*

And look, I actually DID draw all four of the Agents! Wut naow, ppls! See if you can guess who is who. And check it out, Timo actually looks like Timo. And Derek's coveralls are all wrinkly. And yes, his hair actually does that. XD

So this happened when I was trying to draw something else entirely, muaa. It's Loor from the Pendragon series, wearing her cowboy getup from Reality Bug. At least, that's the idea. Can you tell I was making things up as I went along and certainly NOT getting the book out for reference? Yeah. I think she had a hat in that scene, but after about ten tries, I erased it and gave up. Sorry for the belly, everyone... but I'm pretty sure Loor wears less than that on a regular basis. She comes from a desert planet and all that.

ALMOST DONE WITH PIPPIN!!! Just have to go over the whole lineart with a really skinny line in and around the knotwork, then he'll be CLEAN and I can start painting him. Yay!

Also, I'm finishing up Chapter Six of the STILL unnamed OYAN novel, in which Memory... dies. *epic wail* NOOOOOOOOOO!!! I tried SO HARD to keep her alive, and she still decided to up and die on me! Gaah!

Commander Kip

I's in ur basement, shootan fireballz BAMBAMBAM

Normal is overrated!

back to the doodle phase

Kay, you guys ready for this random pile of stuffs?

Pippin is being a brat to clean up, so while I'm working on him, here's some other doodly goodnez. Look at this, it's the first-ever drawing of Timo from Savvy! And it fails at life. XD But I don't care, because it was just a quick tablet sketch for the clothes. It doesn't actually have to LOOK like him. This is a floater named Claws. He just hopped out of my pencil during Advanced Biology a few weeks ago and scared the study hall people half to death.

Yes, Spanish workbook bores uss.

I actually have been working on this for a while now. Mortal Instruments FTW, dood. I hate most of it, but I'm so tired of fiddling with it that I'm calling it done. Top to bottom, left to right: Jace, Magnus's eye, the Mortal Sword, Magnus Bane (I killed his hair, blast it), an angel wing random thingy-thing, some shirtless Shadowhunter person who is smiling WAY too much to be Alec, Clary (botched her bad) and poor Simon's broken glasses. Awesome books, yo.

I was supposed to go to this LotR movie night on Saturday, but Reedfrost and Dan kidnapped me and dragged me to see Avatar instead. And by the way, it was pretty flippin' sweet, despite the scantily clad natives that Amzi was freaking out about. XD *glomps Amzi* It wasn't THAT bad. Plus, everything GLOWED in the DARK and the sheer amount of WORK that must have gone into all that graphics stuff was completely mind-boggling.

Wendy in her pirate-flag dress from Peter Pan in Scarlet. I want to do a fancy pic of her and Peter in his frock coat one of these days. Ignore the head on the middle right, by the way... I was trying out a different style of face and ended up hating it. Yeah. Drawn all in PEN, dude!

River Tam, from the movie Firefly: Serenity. She's a crazy ninja person. No, literally. XD

Lirael from Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy. Necromancy rawks when he writes about it. The magic system with the bells and Charter marks is awesome.

Oh, lookit, it's our old buddy Frodo, from the cover of the FotR dvd. I wasn't trying very hard; can you tell?

I was trying a new style on this and it ballooned out over the whole page and turned into Hermione Granger from HP. Which is weird, because I've never drawn HP fanart before in my life. O.o

Okay, that's it for now. Since I'm lazy and busy, I'll put up links to my DevART account in an upcoming post so you guys can go see the rest of the faerie doors. Sorry for the inconveniance.

Chapter Five this week! I love the end of Chapter Four, cuz it has a fight scene in it, and blood, and awesomeness, and jumping out of thirty-foot-high windows. WoOt!

Commander Kip

Crap. This is going to RUIN my day.

Normal is overrated!

Savvy, Part Five (at long last. Yeesh.)

Yes, I finally sat down and finished this. It's... long. Very long. And it was going to be even LONGER, but then I realized that I had three pages and counting and I was like O.o... never mind.

This time: We get to follow Timo as he demonstrates his ninja skillz and saves Baeli from Certain Death! Muaa. And then Baeli, being her awesome self, turns around and saves his butt right back.

Part Five: Timo
Disclaimer: Derek, Timo, Jakky, Baeli and Cricket (and the briefly mentioned front desk lady) are mine... but nothing else is.

Even though I ran all the way from my cube in Data Central, I barely made it into the Hub ahead of the lockdown sequence. By the time I got there, slightly out of breath, the doors were closing. Drat. In an unorthodox maneuver that I hadn’t had the chance to rehearse previously, I completely skipped the authorization phase and dove over the door, rolling into a crouch on the other side. Behind me, I heard the whistle and bang of the sleeper cannons firing. I ignored them and made for Baeli’s station, grinning to myself. Ha. Missed me, cannons.
Derec had miraculously beaten me there. He was already peering at Baeli’s computer screen, head cocked in confusion.
I jogged up and peered with him. “Hey, guys, find anything?”
Baeli scrunched her nose up in a frustrated scowl, fingers flying over the keys. “No. Derec was just asking me the same thing. And the answer, unfortunately, is the same.”
“Where’s Jakky?” Derec asked suddenly, twisting in his seat to look at me. “Last thing I heard, he was still in the chem lab with the Professeur. Did he get here or no?”
I conducted a quick visual scan of the Hub. Nowhere in the confusion of technicians and agents and humming machinery did I see my friend or his mentor. “Guess not. I don’t see him.”
Derec made a face. “Darn. I thought he could’ve made it. The chem lab is pretty close to here.”
“Well, I don’t see him,” I repeated. He must not have made it in. I frowned, worried. “Maybe I should go look for him.”
S.P. Onage jogged up to us, his new cadet trailing behind him. “Timo, do me a favor and keep an eye on Cricket for me. Show her the Hub. Don’t let her get into trouble.”
The cadet pouted and crossed her arms. “Trouble? Me? Since when do I get in trouble?”
I rolled my eyes at Derek behind the cadet’s back. This was not going to be fun. “Sure. Stick close to me, Cadet, and I’ll show you around.” I am definitely going to regret this.
Onage strode away, barking orders to various technicians and the more lowly agents. I got the feeling he was glad to be rid of his new cadet for a while. Blowing out a sigh, I beckoned Cricket toward Baeli’s tech station. Derek scootched his chair over so she could see the screen. Baeli ignored us all, clacking keys at a furious speed.
“Cadet, this is Derek Andy and Baeli Jones. I’m Timo,” I said. “Baeli’s our software specialist. Find anything, Bae?”
“Actually… yes,” she said slowly. Her eyes grew wide behind her glasses. “The one place I didn’t think to check…”
“Guys! G-guys!” Jakky ran up to us, puffing for breath and waving his arms. “Get under the d-desk! L-like, n-n-n-now!”
The cadet gave him a critical once-over. “Who’s the nutcase?”
“That’s Jakky.” I flapped a distracted hand in the cadet’s direction, then addressed Jakky with some concern. “What’s up? We didn’t see you and the Professeur come in. What kept you?”
Jakky’s eyes were even wider than Baeli’s. He stuffed the cadet under Baeli’s desk, stuttering, “W-we ran into the f-front desk lady on the w-way h-h-here –“
“The ceiling!” Baeli screamed. “They’re coming in through the –“
All of a sudden, the Hub exploded.
The ceiling fractured into a zillion pieces that began to fall the dozens of feet to the floor. The world shook. I was hurled onto my face. People were screaming as large chunks of ceiling came hurtling down towards us, along with a swarm of men in black jumpsuits on rappelling cables. I rolled onto my back in time to see the giant slab of concrete that was about to land on top of me.
Acting on instinct, I reached out and grabbed Baeli, who had landed near me, and hurled both of us out of the way. The debris crashed down behind us, the shockwave of its impact knocking us flat again. I lurched to my feet, Baeli’s stiff, frightened body clutched to my chest. The long row of desks, just a few feet away, was largely buried under ceiling detritus, but I staggered to it anyway and crawled under Baeli’s cubicle. Cricket was there, cowering back into the cramped space, her small face pale. I set Baeli down.
“Baeli, are you okay? Baeli!”
Her glasses were broken. A shallow cut scored one cheekbone. She wiped away the trickle of blood with a shaking hand. “I… yeah. I’m okay. Where are the others?”
Another explosion rocked the Hub as damaged electronic equipment blew. On the desk above us, the computer monitor sparked out with a startling bang. The cadet jumped and screamed, high and shrill. “I’ll be back,” I said, and ducked out into the chaos again. Immediately, I dove for the nearest pile of shattered concrete as a Nastonian in a black jumpsuit aimed a projectile weapon at me. I heard the bullet slam into the other side of the pile, and dashed towards the center of the Hub. The six-foot holographic globe that normally dominated the space was flickering precariously, sparks flying from the projectors beneath it. A hand clamped down on my arm and yanked me down beside the projector base.
“What’s going on? Where’s my cadet?” Onage demanded, crushing my upper arm in his steely grip. “Is she safe?”
“For now, sir,” I replied, trying not to wince. “She and Baeli are under Baeli’s desk. I don’t get how all these Nasties –“
Onage jerked me to the side as another bullet shattered the plastoid next to my head. Chips of it stung my face. “The roof,” Onage said briefly. The robot half of his face looked no different than normal, but his human eyebrow was hooded in a fierce scowl of… pain?
I noticed the dark bloodstain marring the leg of his pants. “Sir, you’re injured…”
“Same darned leg,” he grunted with the barest trace of humor. “Now get on back there and keep Cricket safe. Go!”
He hurled me away from him, out into the melee. Glancing over my shoulder as I dodged flying bullets and broken concrete, I saw Onage grappling with a Nastie, the two of them rolling over each other in the mess of papers and debris that blanketed the floor. I debated for a split second, then decided that Onage could handle himself. I turned back around and ran smack into a Nastonian.
The man grunted and swung the butt of his tri-mode rifle at me as he stumbled back. I ducked under the swing and knife-kicked him in the knee, then flipped out of the way as he toppled with another grunt. “You Nasties don’t have a very big vocabulary, do you?” I said, relieving him of his gun.
As I ran back to the desk, I fiddled with the Nastie weapon and set it to sleeper mode. The next Nastie that took aim at me was gonna get knocked into next week.
Baeli had gotten hold of a laptop somehow and was clacking away at it with a fury. Cricket peered over her shoulder. I slid into the space beside them, still clutching the rifle. “S.P. wanted me to come back here, so I didn’t get the chance to look for Jak and Rex. You two okay?”
“Fine, thanks,” Baeli replied, squinting through her cracked glasses at the screen. “I’m trying to get the internal sleepers online… but the password’s changing every thirty seconds… so every time I’m close to cracking it –“
“Whoa, every how many seconds?”
“Thirty. It’s security protocol.”
A spray of bullets hammered into the side of the desk. “Just a sec,” I said, and crawled out of the space.
A pair of Nasties were firing slugs into the desk frame. I nailed one with a sleeper burst from my rifle and sailed into the other feet first. He went down with me standing on his chest. The first guy snored beside him.
I was so busy feeling good about myself that I failed to notice the gun barrel poking me in the back of the head for a good five seconds. “Where is it?” demanded the Nastie standing behind me. “Tell me where it is, or I’ll shoot!”
I may have some skills, but I’m not stupid. I dropped my rifle and watched it clatter on the floor. “Where’s what?”
“The Specimen!” the guy shouted. “Where is the Specimen?”
I wondered if I was going to get any help getting this guy off me. Glancing around, I realized that the fight was as good as over. Black suits were everywhere, herding our people into groups, gesturing with rifle barrels. I was very conscious of the barrel jammed to the base of my neck as I carefully answered, “I have no clue what you’re talking about, I swear. Seriously. I’ve never heard of this Specimen thing.”
I heard a click. “Tell me where it is NOW.”
Oh, crap. Clicking is usually not good. It usually means a weapon is being cocked, or something equally frightening. I felt my shoulders tense.
The next thing I knew, there was a whistle and a bang behind me. The Nastie grunted, and the cold metal of the gun barrel fell away from my neck. I twisted around in time to see the black suit slump to the floor, unconscious. Confused, I scanned the rest of the Hub… and watched in complete disbelief as every single Nastie on the premises crumpled to the ground.
Baelie scrambled out from under her mangled desk with Cricket on her heels. The cadet punched a fist into the air. “Yeah, take that, stinking Nasties!”
Ah. That explained things. “I take it you got the internal sleepers working,” I remarked to Baeli, prodding the senseless black suit at my feet with a toe. She nodded, straight-faced, pushing a few strands of hair out of her eyes. “How’d you guess?”

*danves* Go Baeli, go Baeli, uh-huh, what now! Does she not pwn you all with her madskillz? Anyway, this is only a slight cliffie. What Specimen was that Nastie yammering about, I wonder?

Yo, Lady Arin... would you happen to know when Miss Jasper's birthday is?

Commander Kip
We're gonna need a bigger jail...
Normal is overrated!

Savvy, Part the Fourth

Hey again. I know I already posted today, but I got Part Four of Savvy done, and I wanted you guys to see it. Hee, Kipin had way too much fun inventing QUIET's biometric security system. Enjoy, dahlings!

Savvy, Part Four: Derec
Disclaimer: You remember this, I only own Timo, Baeli, Derec, Jakky and Cricket, and NOTHING ELSE. Okay, on to the story.

I was still in the shower when the alarms started going off. Grumbling under my breath about random fire drills, I shut off the water and exited the shower stall, pushing the cheap waterproof curtain out of my way. I snatched up the towel hanging on a hook nearby and began vigorously toweling myself dry. The alarms blared all the while. A voice was talking over the ear-shattering horns, but it sounded far away. I didn’t think twice about it. Dumping the towel in the canvas hamper by the bathroom door, I scooped my techie coveralls off the bench and was shrugging my way into them when my cell started beeping. I only had one arm through my sleeve as I flipped it open and answered, “Derec here, and who’s there?”
“The Nasties are attacking,” said Baeli’s curt voice. “Get down to the Hub as soon as you’re decent.” And just like that, she hung up on me.
I guess I was pretty shocked, because it took me almost a full minute to get my other arm in the sleeve and do up the zipper. I wasn’t really thinking about getting dressed. My mind was occupied with thoughts like, Snap, the Nasties are attacking! How did they get in here? We must have an insider planted somewhere… that’s the only way a Nastie-pants agent is worming their way into national QUIET HQ. I mean, come on! We have some of the best security in the country! Anybody trying to get in here is gonna have Doc Von Gizmo and his not-so-silent booby traps to deal with. You’d have to be invisible, room temperature, and weightless to make it in… not to mention stupid. Either that, or extremely clever.
Hmm, seeing as we’re talking about Nasties here, I’ve got my money on stupid.
The Hub was always a busy place, but today it was just crazy. What with all the alarms going off and the backup and emergency security being armed, almost everyone in QUIET HQ was piled into that one room. Thank goodness it’s the biggest room in the building. Not to mention the safest. If the Nasties were to somehow manage to get past the booby traps, there was no way they were getting into the Hub without some kind of army tank. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the Hub are triple-reinforced titanium alloy, threaded at regular intervals with x-ray-blocking lead. Each surface is several feet thick. The massive doors, one in each of the four walls, are protected with several various locking mechanisms and retract into the floor when open, so if they get jammed (which has only happened once in QUIET history), it’s still difficult to force your way in. Each entrance requires an ID chip swipe, pinky finger scan, retina scan, and voice recognition. You are also swept for bugs by an automatic laser scanner the minute you get within ten feet of the door. And if anything is a mismatch, or you’re even a little bit bugged, the ball-bearing sleeper cannon mounted above the doorframe will knock you into the next millennia.
See why the Nasties would have to be stupid to try and get in here?
Once I had gone through the appropriate debugging, chip swiping, password-saying, pinky scanning, and eyeball scanning, the plethora of locks inside the mammoth door clicked open and the three-foot-thick slab of metal retracted into the floor with a loud rumble. I rushed into the Hub to find Baeli.
Like I said, it was a madhouse in there. Agents were running back and forth between the doors with big scary-looking weapons, waiting to unleash them at the Nasties the minute they poked their smelly faces in. A swarm of techies like myself were banging away at the joysticks and keypads that controlled the external cameras mounted in the hallways of QUIET HQ. There was a programmer at every console, sending out the commands to seal off all unauthorized entries and exits and initiate the lockdown sequence. The six-foot-wide holographic globe in the center of the room was glowing in a dozen spots. S.P. Onage, the new Headmaster in charge of training cadets and also the Chief of Operations, was studying the globe intently, flanked by a tawny-haired young cadet a year younger than myself. Her codename was Cricket, as far as I could recall. I yelled out to S.P. over the noise of chattering QUIET personnel and security alarms.
“Chief Onage! Sorry to interrupt, but have you seen Baeli?”
“Console fifteen,” he called back, not looking up from his analysis. The cadet, Cricket, glanced at me over her shoulder, eyes sparkling with excitement. Great, I thought. Another Proffesseur Le-Boum-Boum. She probably thinks it’s cool that the Nasties are attacking. Well, she’ll find out soon enough. They aren’t called the Nastonians for nothing.
“Derec, get over here!” shouted Baeli from a console several yards away. I ran, bashing into a few miffed-looking agents on my way, and skidded to a stop just before I did the same to the console. “Yeah, what’s up?”
She pushed her glasses farther up on her nose, throwing me a harried glance. “I can’t figure out where the alarms originated. How did they get in, and where are they now?” Her fingers were a blur over the keyboard. “I mean, they must have tripped a sensor at some point, obviously, but which one?”
The programmer at console sixteen next door stood up and dashed off. I reached over and snagged his chair, yanking it around the partition on two of its six wheels. Plopping down in it, I scooted closer to the monitor and examined the screen. “Well, what I’d like to know is, how are they planning to get in the Hub? We have stuff the Federal Reserve banks don’t have.”
She didn’t look up from the screen as she answered, “I’ve researched every possible weight-bearing point and weak spot on the floor plan, and there really aren’t any. The only way they might be able to get in here is to accompany a QUIET agent in right through the door. That would mean they could only come in one at a time. And actually, that wouldn’t work, because we just initiated lockdown.” Her eyes glinted mischievously behind rectangular lenses. “The sensor-equipped cannons are programmed to target any unauthorized personnel within their blast range. So, if the Nasties try to walk in the door…”
“Boom,” I supplied, grinning.
“Yeah, boom,” she agreed, grinning back.

You likey? Drop me a comment if you please, Kipin likes those.

Commander Kip, over and out!
Normal is overrated!
P.S. SNOW!!! *capers about madly*

Savvy, Part the Third

Hiya peoples! Kipin has some more Savvy for you! This fragment is from Jakky's POV. He has a surprise phone call from Timo in the middle of a dangerous chemical experiment. Wish him luck!


Savvy, part three: Jakky
Disclaimer: Jakky, Timo, Baeli and Derec are mine, but Proffesseur Fluide Le-Boum-Boum is not. I don't own QUIET either. Just for the record.

I was nervous about this new chemical. I had already seen what it could do to a tile floor. Proffesseur Fluide didn’t seem too worried, though. That woman has no fear.
Unlike me.
“All right, Jakkee,” she instructed, “I seenk we are very close to somesing. Grab me zat beaker zere, ze one with ze yellow stopper een eet.”
I obligingly handed her the beaker. She must have noticed my hand shaking, because she said lightly, “Come now, Jakkee, you must seenk like a chemist, no? Eef you are afraid off ze chemicals, how do you esspect to conduct ze essperiments?”
“Sorry, Proffeseur,” I mumbled. My hand still shook. I’m sure she noticed, but she was most likely concentrating on not blowing us up to say anything. At least, I hope that was the case.
Half of the pale powder in the yellow-stoppered beaker went into the vial she was holding before I registered the label on the side of the beaker. “Um, Proffesseur?” I asked tentitavely.
She kept her eyes on her pouring. The vial was beginning to fizz. “Yes, Jakkee?”
“Um… that’s baking soda.”
“Yes, eet ees. Adds a very nice… how you say… nice bubbles,” she replied happily. “Bubbles, zey are good.”
Huh. Nice bubbles, nothing. Those bubbles might be the death of us.
Sometimes I can almost swear that Fluide is a mind reader. “Do not worree, leettle Jakkee, I know what I am doing, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, not really convinced.
The cell phone in the pocket of my lab coat vibrated suddenly. I jumped about two feet in the air, startling Proffesseur Fluide and causing her to spill a few drops of the caustic stuff we had created.
“Sacre Bleu!” she shouted in excitement, bangles tinkling. The stainless steel countertop was dotted with sizzling burn marks.
I fumbled the cell phone out of my pocket with an apologetic grimace. She waved me off with one hand, carefully holding the vial upright with the other. Still grimacing, I retreated to the storage room and flipped open the tiny phone.
“H-hello?” I stuttered into the mouthpiece.
Timo’s voice answered, “Jakky? What happened? You sound freaked.”
Am I really that transparent? Or is Timo just uber-perceptive? “How d-did you know?”
“You only stutter when you’re really freaking out.” Oh. That’s why. “So what happened?”
I thought of the ruined countertop and grimaced yet again. “Chemical sp-spill. What’s up with you?”
“Weeeeeeell…” He drew out the word. I knew it was bad.
“Well, what?”
“Weeeeeeell… I kinda blew up my computer and now the entire data center is sorta full of smoke. I think Baeli’s a little bit mad at me.”
Well, no duh. “You th-think so?” I asked scathingly. I can be really sarcastic when I’m nervous. “Is if fixable?”
“Derec plugged it up with a fire extinguisher.”
He did what? “Timo,” I said slowly, “Just how b-big of a hole did you m-make?”
“No, he didn’t stick the actual fire extinguisher in it, he sprayed the foam all over my cubicle to seal up the breach. Buried my gadgets too. I am so gonna make him dig them out – “
“And how exactly d-did you make this breach?” I interrupted. This sounded like a full-blown fiasco.
He hesitated before answering. “Ummmm… I kicked out the cooling fan. At least, that’s what Baeli says. I didn’t know it was the cooling fan… if I had, I wouldn’t have kicked it.”
Proffesseur Fluide’s voice called from the lab. “Jaaaaaaakkeeeeeee…”
“Listen, Timo, I have to g-go,” I stuttered. “You can t-tell me all about it in R-rec this evening, okay?”
“Jaaaaaaaaakkeeeeeeee…” called the Proffesseur.
“Okay, bye – wait. Wait, what’s going on?” Timo sounded agitated. I heard alarms going off in the backround.
Confused, I asked, “What did you d-do, set the fire alarm off?”
Then the alarms started going off in the chem lab as well. The noise was deafening. I had to shout into the phone.
“Timo! Why are all the f-fire alarms going off?”
I detected a tremor of worry in his answer. “Those aren’t the fire alarms, Jak.”
Before he finished speaking, I knew which alarms they were.
“Security breach. (HONK.) Security breach. (HONK.) Please proceed to the Hub immediately. (HONK.) All personnel to the Hub immediately. (HONK.)Thank you. (HONK.) Have a nice day,” said a pleasant woman’s voice. She was punctuated by a HONK from the alarms every sentence or so.
Slamming the phone shut, I hurried out of the supply room and through the chem lab. Near the doorway, I almost ran into the Proffesseur, who was still clutching her lethal beaker. Her eyes were wide, and her short, curly blue-black hair was in disarray.
“Jakkee,” she shrilled, “Ze security alarms are goink off! Come, we must run to ze Hub, where we will be safe.”
“W-what?!” I near-shouted. “Safe from w-what? I’m not g-going anywhere until s-somebody explains -”
She seized my arm with her free hand and ran with me out of the lab, pausing for an instant to swipe her ID chip and seal the door shut.
“We need to get to ze Hub, Jakkee,” she repeated as we tore down the deserted hallway. “Ze Nastonians are attackink.”

Rawharharharr. *makes piratical face* What thinkest thou? Hit the pretty little comment button and tell me what you think. Jakky makes me laugh, by the way. He's a mess of nerves, he is.

Hee, bubbles.

Commander Kip the Happy
Normal is overrated!

Savvy, Part the Second

Good Day, ye prestigious peepuls!

Here be Savvy, Part the Second, Timo's POV. Enjoy, dahlings!


Savvy, part two: Timo
Disclaimer: I only own Timo, Baeli, Derec and Jakky so far. Everybody and everything else is NOT MINE. Got it all from a puzzle box. So yeah, don't sue me.

Dang it, Timo, dang it. You know better than to beat up the equipment. I shook my head, watching the smoke pour out of my cubicle. Stupid, stupid. If only I had waited for Baeli to come deal with it. Then my office wouldn’t be full of fumes, and my computer, and my ego, would be intact. Grr.
Baeli ran up, dragging Derec behind her, as I was scrubbing at my smoke-blackened face with my sleeve. “Hey, there you guys are. S. P. was here a minute ago. He wanted to know why the entire data center smelled like smoke.”
Derec never paused. “Just a sec, I can fix it!” he called over his shoulder, charging into the roiling smog.
Baeli shook her head despairingly. Wisps of acorn-brown hair had fallen free of her customary messy bun, and her rectangular glasses were smudged. “He had the entire tech lab in an uproar. Holy mole. I swear, he’s going to be the death of himself and everyone within a five-mile radius someday…”
I let her rant. She needed to blow off steam sometimes. I always tell her she works too hard, but of course she won’t listen to me.
Within five minutes of Derec’s arrival on the scene, the smoke died down and I was able to enter my cubicle to assess the damage. The first thing Derec had done, apparently, was douse the entire room with a fire extinguisher. The chilly white foam was everywhere. Gobs of it stuck to my shoes as I looked dubiously at Derec’s hasty patch job. “Um, what exactly did you do, Derec?”
He grinned at me impishly, his spiky blonde hair sticking up in every direction. “I plugged it up with fire extinguishing liquid, of course! Handy and effective. Excellent sealant.”
The glare I skewered him with must have cowed him sufficiently, because he added, “It’s only temporary, until I can get back to the tech lab and find you a new cooling fan. That’s what you kicked, by the way.”
“Oh, brother,” Baeli groaned at my apparent stupidity. “You kicked out the cooling fan? Ugh, Timo, do you have any idea how hopeless you are? No wonder it exploded.”
Actually, I wasn’t so concerned with my computer, since I hardly ever used it. But my spy gadgets, sitting on my desk, were currently buried beneath a mountain of fire-extinguishing foam. I began scooping the gooey stuff off my desk, where it fell mostly onto Derec’s head.
He was naturally indignant. “Hey! Watch it, dude! You’re messing up my hair! I just saved you from a very painful death by smoke inhalation, and this is how you repay me?” He scooted backward, under the protective cover of my desk.
I took no notice and continued flinging foam off of my desk. “You covered my office in foam and buried my gadgets, so however messed up your hair gets, it’s your own fault.”
‘Guys!” Baeli shouted. “E-NOUGH! Somebody needs to go find S.P. and explain to him that we didn’t really blow up the entire data center… it just smells like we did.”
“Okay!” Derec made a dash for the door, eager to escape my wrath. Well, too bad. I snagged him by the shirttails. “Derec, you look like the Abominable Snowman or something…” I glanced down at myself. My clothes were sooty, and foam clung to my shoes. “…Come to think of it, so do I. That leaves Baeli.” We both looked at her expectantly.
She frowned at us like a mother berating naughty children. “Yes it does. If S.P. sees either of you like that, he’ll think there was an explosion.” She marched out of the decimated cubicle, calling over her shoulder,” Go clean yourselves off!”

And there you go. What thinkest thou? Interesting? Funny? Hmm?
Commander Kip, over and out.

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!