40 days ago, I requested permission. Two weeks later, my permission giver begged off, citing Life Reasons. He transferred my request to Delta Juliette. It's been 22 days and I haven't heard a peep from her. Not even a 'Hi, I exist.' My permission request is on the third page now with no sign of ever being answered, so I'm reposting it. Here are my prompts:
Two agents sat in RC 113a. One, an anthropomorphic fighter plane, was performing maintenance on her main gun. The other, a human woman with gold eyes and long black hair tied back in a ponytail, was using said eyes to attempt to glare lasers at the RC's console. This did not work, due to her unfortunate lack of laser vision. After several silent minutes of fruitless attempts to destroy the console with her gaze, she asked her partner, “Effie?”
“Yes, Min Ra?”
“How do you manage to keep so calm all the time, what with that Agni-damned console that you refuse to blow up and won't let me burn going off at unpredictable intervals? It's hard to even complete a firebending form without that blasted thing beeping!”
“It is our duty as PPC agents to be ready at all times to exorcise the influence of Mary Sues. I rather look forward to it,” Effie Raptor answered.
Min Ra leaned forward from where she was sitting on her bed, pondering what her partner could possibly mean by that. She was looking forward to being woken up at any hour of the night...day… however time worked in HQ. How was that kind of attitude possible, unless…
Min Ra suddenly sat up straight.
“I got it!” she exclaimed, “it's reverse psychology! The console always beeps when you don't want it to, so if you want it to beep, it won't and you can get some time to yourself! I'm gonna try that!”
She then stared intensely at the console with what was probably intended to be an eager look. Effie, curious about what would happen, observed her quietly. She didn't have long to wait before Min Ra's attempt turned up a result.
BEEP!
“Darnit!”
Min continued to curse at the console as it lit up and displayed their next mission, like always. Effie made sure to read all the data and conceal her smile at Min's expense, and Min Ra got their gadgets ready for the assassination to come. Oh well, maybe she'd get the trick to it next time.
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In all of Min's experience, Effie Raptor was not someone prone to being frantic. She had never yet observed her partner being anything but calm and precise, presumably because being distracted at Mach 2 and 30,000 feet would likely result in a death that would be quite spectacular to anyone but the unlucky fool who had to experience it.
And yet, there Effie was, nearly tearing the RC apart in search of something. After a few minutes of Effie fruitlessly looking for whatever she'd lost, Min decided to ask her, “What's lit your hair on fire, Effie?”
“I lost a package of TNT.”
Min replied, “Okay, that's bad, but-”
“I think it's on your side of the room.”
That got a response. Min immediately got off the bed, declaring, “Okay, I'm looking. I am not risking getting blown up in the middle of firebending practice.”
Min started looking through her stuff, searching for whatever it was that Effie had lost. She had turned her living space into quite a mess by the time she realized she had no idea what she was looking for. She knew what TNT was, but she didn't know what this particular batch looked like. So she asked Effie, “Um, what should I be looking out for?”
“An unpainted metal box, small enough to be held with both hands-” Effie began to respond, before Min interrupted. “You've got tons of those, you even gave me a few when I broke my shelf last week.”
Effie shot her partner a disapproving look at the interruption. “And it is clearly labeled 'Trinitrotoluene, 4 kg'”
Min Ra thought for a bit. “Wait, you meant this box?” she asked.
She then rearranged some of the mess to reveal a small metal box, one of several around. The difference was that this one was entirely unpainted and very clearly labeled 'Trinitrotoluene, 4kg'. Min handed it to Effie, who looked rather surprised to see her problem solved just like that. She asked Min: “How did you miss that one?”
Min shrugged and said, “Didn't know what I was looking for and thought it was the one I stored my firebending scrolls in.”
Effie stared at her partner with something resembling visible disbelief. “But it was clearly labeled with what it was. How could you miss it?”
Min Ra was confused. “No it wasn't. It's labeled trinitrotoluene, and you were looking for TNT,” she told Effie.
Effie, exasperated, corrected her. “They are the same thing. TNT is short for trinitrotoluene.”
Min sat there for a few moments in silence, blinking and taking what was, in hindsight, freaking obvious. 'Trinitrotoluene' was rather unwieldy to say in casual conversation, and English was very conducive to shortening long words. There didn't seem to be any more she could say on the topic, so instead she apologized. “Sorry about the mistake. I really hate contractions. Pictographs are so much more straightforward.”
Effie reassured her, “That is comparatively unimportant. Rather more important is that you ask me what you're looking for before tearing up your room. That will take hours to clean up.”
Min Ra sighed in irritation. Like many teenagers around the multiverse, cleaning her room was very low on her (metaphorical) list of things she liked to do with her spare time. So she pleaded with Effie. “Can't I just leave it like this?”
Effie, now that the trouble was over, had resumed her cold and emotionless demeanor. “Your neuralizer is part of that mess, so no.”
It took a while and much more foot-dragging, but eventually Min Ra cleaned up her side of the RC under Effie Raptor's watchful eye. As Effie kept pointing out more important things that she'd missed, either accidentally or on purpose, Min hoped that the console would beep and she'd get a mission she could use to procrastinate her room cleaning.
But, in accordance with the Laws of Narrative Irony, it never did.