Eleanor nodded her head, grinning at the mental image of Silas fighting with someone in a bar over Harry Potter. “That does sound like him. I once made the mistake of calling someone a ‘Hufflepuss’ as an insult in front of him and he freaked the fuck out.” Eleanor really enjoyed Harry Potter references. “Something about how using ‘using the name in an insulting manner is blasphemy, Hufflepuff is a highly underestimated house and one that I happen to be a part of, Agent Summers.’” She shook her head and glanced at Skye, who kind of looked like she was having brain aneurysm. “Yeah, dead give away boss. You’re going crosseyed.”
“I’ve heard of him putting the Sorting Hat on agents and loudly declaring the results. It was a Yankees cap he claims to have no affiliation with, as it was snagged off a student on his way to class, but the experience was still pretty magical.” Skye’s face lit up with a sincere(ly tired) smile at the assessment Eleanor gave her, but the fact she could physically feel the the facial muscles it took to do so was probably supposed to concern her. “What a good look. I had plans for a nap now that my short and regretful career as a messenger has transpired, but I have a feeling the seven shots of espresso are about to kick in. Back to bed for you, huh?”
“The only thing that could have made this news any better is if it had been delivered to me while I was still laying in bed.” Eleanor visibly sagged in relief. “You know, I actually made a twitter account strictly to tweet weird things that Silas says. It has like, 2k followers.” She was actually quite proud of it. The account picture was just a normal picture of him but with a soul-patch photo-shopped onto his face. “By the way, why are you up at the hell-hour? Or did you just not go to sleep again?”
Shrugging off several inappropriate comments that came to her so quick she almost got whiplash (she had yet to unlearn some of the unwanted shit the Rising Tide experience, more commonly known as hours of co-operating with a dude from Arizona who definitely had a 4chan account, had rooted in her), Skye shot Eleanor an apologetic look, nodding to the coffee in her hand to let her know why the news had been postponed. “He got kicked out of a bar for fighting with someone over Harry Potter accuracy. It was the first thing he said to me, followed by the story of how he accidentally joined a mariachi band because of the language barrier. Then he told me his name,“ she grinned at the memory, but it fell short once she felt a random bout of exhaustion kick in. “Is ‘I’m hearing elevator music in my head right now’ a dead giveaway?”
Eleanor hit snooze at least 6 times this morning. Now it was 5:45 AM and she was regretting every decision she ever made and had 15 minutes to get from her room to her 6 AM computer security and forensics class (with Silas of all people, who was totally going to grill her ass for being late). Seriously though, what kind of speed were these professors doing to be able to teach classes at zero dark thirty?
She laid in bed for 3 more minutes, dying inside, before jumping out of bed and throwing on some proper clothes. She ran to brush her teeth (record timing) and then was out the door. 7 minutes left to get to class. Good luck, Summers.
She was looking down at her phone as she walked out of her building, tweeting her earlier thought about professors and zero dark thirty, when she bumped into someone. She looked up from her phone, “Sorry about that. This is why I should really stop tweeting while walking. My periphery is kind of shit.”
The trick to being up early was not going to sleep. It wasn’t the best idea Skye’d ever had, but ruining a reputation for making good decisions would require having one in the first place. Plus, it helped her respond to Silas’s SOS message right after she’d received it, in it more exclamation points than letters and wearing the 5 am timestamp with pride. As the part of her brain responsible for saying ‘no’ had promptly decided it was too tired to be triggered that morning, she found herself with a list of people she’d have to deliver the news to,only after her first order of business - caffeine - was checked off the list. Skye trudged through the campus against the cold wind (all that was missing was a soulful rendition of “On My Own” from Les Mis), desperately gripping onto the coffee in her left hand for some kind of warmth, the right one occupied with texting half-assed apologies to people on the behalf of the man. Bumping into someone made her snap out of the haze she was in, though with a significant delay. Sleep deprivation really wasn’t a good look on her.
“The ‘use more than five letters, an uppercase letter and at least one number in your password’ class is off,” Skye declared once she’d recognised the face, any intention of a proper greeting slipping her mind immediately. “Silas would’ve slid into your DM’s to say it, but we all know it’s impossible to fit anything in 140 characters when you actively use the words ‘lugubrious’ and ‘lethiferous’ in your daily vocabulary. Which, by the way, are the ones he used to describe the situation to me. I assume they mean something along the lines of sad and that I’m pronouncing them incorrectly.”
“I said stuff, not people,” Eleanor corrected. “I don’t want to get suspended or break my hand. I just want to get some basic lessons in self defense so that I don’t have to be babysat.”
“People won’t stay still like the stuff you train with, so if you want to learn about self defense, time to elbow someone in the face,” Skye stated matter-of-factly as she set her laptop aside to get up. She motioned Eleanor to come closer, rolling up the sleeves of her shirt. “In our case, me. We’re gonna try it out.”
“No, but Mrs. Webber was about 70, overweight, and work neon tracksuits.” Eleanor reasoned. “Ow. When do I get to actually learn fighting stuff? Less pull ups, more punching stuff.”
“I’m not stopping you. Go out, punch someone, make your dreams come true, spend a week in suspension watching vintage workplace harassment training videos. Or, stop listening to someone who specialises in hacking and ask an actual operations agent.”
“Working out with you sucks,” Eleanor announced, taking a swig of water. “I am sore, exhausted, sweaty and gross. I’m having flashbacks to high school gym class. Though I must say, you’re a lot better at teaching than Mrs. Webber.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that’s what happens to your body when you move vigorously for a long amount of time, no matter who you’re with. I’m not actually causing any of it. Biology is incredible,” Skye laughed. If anything, it was the most fun workout she’d had in a while, mostly because of the laptop sitting on her outstretched legs and the fact she wasn’t the one doing pull-ups. “Did Mrs. Webber read you an ehow article on exercise in her best Ward voice and hope for the best? Didn’t think so. Poor lady doesn’t stand a chance next to me.”
“Why are we here? I’m not talking philosophy, either. I mean why aren’t I back in my room with a nice latte instead of doing tai chi….which also sounds like a coffee name…”
“Because the bossman Silas Edlund himself saw one of you guys freak out over a browser freezing for half a second, and now he wants us to calm the fuck down and maybe stop living off caffeine. Hence, tai chi. Act natural.”
