x_los | Fleshed Out Meanwhile Chapter of Ish- for Kelley's edditing

meanwhile
(a companion piece)

You would think, having spent half her life fighting the forces of evil and tyranny, that Numbuh Five wouldn’t find riding in an old pickup down a highway to be all that scary. Certainly the pickup was old, with rust holes in the floorboard that revealed nasuating vistas of the fast-moving pavement beneath. Of course the road was a develishly tricky one, more curves than straight patches, twisting a path of hommicidal little zigzags over the California terrain.

But Five had nerves of pure titanium alloy. She was cooler than the blues brother's put together. She was the embodiment of calm in a crisis. And so normally, she wouldn't have batted her big brown eyes at the most dangerous of journeys. But tonight was special. Numbuh Three was driving, and in the last twenty minutes Five had reorganized her own personal list of things to fear. Gone was the Delightful Dean. Banished was the threat of the Popos cracking down on her for dealing. Cree when she was severley PMSing? Utterly forgotten. In fact, Five had cleared the list completley, and disreguarded any sort of ranking system. Three's Driving WAS the list in its entirety.

“Ach, why are all these people so sloow?” Three muttered, swerving the truck into the right lane with about an inch of leeway. Personally, Five didn’t think 95 - the highest her speedometer went - was really all that slow. A sinister thought trickled through the back of her brain- was 95 the fastest this truck could go, or the fastest the speedometer could show? It felt like the latter...

Numbuh Two was mentally calculating exactly how dead they were going to be if Kuki messed up. If the truck was about 3000kg, and they were going 100 m/h… convert to metric… he shuddered visibly. Very, very dead. He looked over at Five, who was grasping the dashboard so hard her knuckles had turned white.

“Cool! Let’s listen to the radio!” The truck swerved yet again as Three bent down to fiddle with the knobs. The honking of drivers around them was suddenly drowned out as The Backstreet Boys filled the cab. Abby shook her head in disgust.

“This just ain’t right. On so many levels, this just ain't right. Four owes Numbuh Five big time.”

Three looked over at her quizzically, causing Two to gasp and grab for the wheel. Ignoring him, the Japanese girl asked, “What does Numbuh Four owe you?”

“Uh, a quarter. Look at the road, girl!”

Another swerve, this time sharp enough to make the taller girl’s stomach churn. This wasn’t any better than when Three had flown them home earlier. Actually, Five considered, it was worse. There was a lot more on the ground that could be crashed into.

“Oooh, let’s get food!” Kuki exclaimed happily, bringing the truck across three lanes and nearly getting run over by a semi before speeding up the exit ramp.

“Numbuh Three, you have to slow down, we’re going to tip-”
But it was too late. There was no way to turn - rather, the old Ford just went barreling across the road and right back off. The radio was joined by panicked screaming. Five would have been hard pressed to tell which sound was more obnoxious. Hitting the incline, they flipped over, and continued rolling down the hill before landing, right side up, in the middle of a field some distance from the highway.

Slowly, the screaming died down. The radio died suddenly as the engine went silent. It was quiet. Five looked at the other two.
“You all alright?” They nodded, wide eyed.

The truck gave a slow shudder and without warning dropped two feet on its tires as the much-abused suspension finally breathed its last.

Hoagie smiled slightly. “It’s okay, I can fix that, easy.” Abby looked relieved, and Kuki had already started coaxing the radio back to life. The Ford, however, had other ideas.

With a sudden WHAM, the sheet of metal previously serving as the hood flew up in the air accompanied by various parts of what had been the engine. As dozens of nuts, bolts and bits of metal rained down around them, Five just sighed quietly.

“That had better be some damn fine sex.”

“Aww, Numbuh Two, I’m bored.”

Hoagie looked at Kuki incredulously. “You blew up the engine, Three. It's gonna take awhile to fix it. If I can fix it.” He held up two small pieces of charred, oddly shaped metal and looked at them thoughtfully. He thought they might be the remains of a gasket of some sort, but in this state it was impossible to tell.

“Oh, stop whinin’ and relax, Numbuh Two. Is your brother bringin’ those parts?” Five’s voice rose, accompanied by a thin trail of smoke, from the bed of the truck where she stretched comfortably.

“Tommy refused to come help a bunch of ‘stinky stupid teenagers’.” He shook his head. “That whole KND team is worse than One used to be.”

“Still is, you mean,” Five snorted. Three giggled, stopped to consider, and then gave a hearty sigh.

“I’m still bored.”

“Well, since Five won’t let us call home for a ride, I guess we’re walking home?”

Five pulled herself over the side of the truck bed and looked at them both with a vague irritation. “Can Numbuh Five please finish her joint ‘fore everybody goes charging stupidly into the damn woods? Five's seen this movie, she knows the sistah gets killed first once everybody starts runnin' around in the damn woods. This is one sistah who's gonna die relaxed. ” She took another drag and smiled at them. “Either of you want some? This is some really good stuff.”

Two and Three exchanged a wary glance and looked back at the black girl, who had apparently found something very profound in the red paint. Two sighed profoundly.

"Great. Just great. We're far from home without our leader, who Five won't let us call, and now his second in command's abandoned her responsibility to get us home saftely in favor of getting stoned.

Christ, we're probably going to have to spend the night out here until she's recovered."

"We could play chicken with the cars!" Three suggested with a look of manic cheer. She was almost scarily determined to have fun, at times.

"Not and keep all our limbs, we couldn't, and while you missing a few would only keep you out of troubble, I need mine to repair this piece of crud." Even with all his parts, Hoagie P. Gilligan had never been so hopelessly befuddled by a mechanical problem. The boy who prided himself on his ability to make anything run, to squeeze that little bit of extra mmph out of something long due for the junk yard, had met his match- an utterly, totally crapped out Ford. He admitted defeat in the face of its utter and total devastation.

"You're such a weiner, Numbah Two!" Three stuck out her tongue at him. "Car chicken is FUN! Numbah Four would play with me!"

"Yeah, but in a fight between Four and a semi, I'm really not sure who'd win. In my case my money's on the man with the wheels." Two jerked his head up in sudden surprise. "Three, you're a genuis!" Three nodded.

"I'm a pretty intelectual girl, true." She agreed sagley, tying a connection on her in-progress daisy chain. "Look at the stars!! They're so pretty! Like... like god's great big daisy chain!" Two ignored this evidence to the contrary.

"I mean the highway's our salvation! If we can just get a driver's attention, we can hitch-hike home! I mean, it's usually unsafe, but this is Northern California, what are they doing to do, braid flowers into our hair?"

"I like flowers!"

"All we need to do," Two tapped his chin considderingly, "Is get up there and start waving!" He grabbed Three's hand and started trudging up the hill. "Come on!"

"Aren't we gonna bring Five?"

"To wave down a car? I figure it'll be eassier to convince them to give the really stonned girl a lift after they've stopped, rather than bring it up up front."

After fifteen minuites of frustration and one middle aged man pulling up alongside and, after giving Kuki a once over, curtly asking Two "How much?", to which Hoagie had responded with a shocked stare and Kuki had stridently demanded "For what?!" loudly and repeatedly until the embarassed man had driven off, a small, pale blue VW Bug pulled off behind them. A girl with wavy blonde hair hopped out and walked towards them. Hoagie thought she looked terribly familiar.

"Need a lift?" She asked. She had a cheerful, plump, lightly freckled face, a nice smile, and an shirt that simply stated 'All your base are belong to us.' across the front. Hoagie felt his cheeks heat slightly.

"Well yeah, us, I mean we, we just, well, we just-"

"Say," she interrupted his babble with a warm grin. "You're that cute guy from advanced programing. I'm Annie Robbins." She stuck out a hand.

"H-Hoagie Gilligan!" Hoagie shook it with fervent enthusiasm. "Yeah, our car broke down." Annie leaned and caught sight of the pile of miscelaneous metal bits.

"That was a car?"

"Not to long ago, yes. But in the loosest since of the term." Annie pursed her lips.

"I was going into the city to a LAN party at a friend of mine's appartment. I suppose I could give you a ride back to Berkley and get there a little late. Or-" Her tone rose slightly, almost hopefully, "You guys could come with me, and I could drop you back in the morning. I'm sure my friends wouldn't mind."

"That sounds awesome!" Hoagie was the embodiment of eagerness. The night from hell had abruptly transformed, in his eyes, into a funny, cute meeting story he and Annie would tell their grandkids someday. She was so hot! He bet she coded in linux... "I mean," he coughed, "if it wouldn't be an imposition or anything."

"Oh, none at all! The more the merrier and all. Is it just you and your friend?"

"Me and Kuki and Abby." Two abruptly became aware of what that looked like. "Neither of whom is my girl friend. I have no girlfriend. None. In conclussion: I am single."

"Great! I mean, um, Oh." She blushed a bit. The play of the red on her freckled skin was the cutest, most absorbing thing Hoagie had seen since the latest issue of Ultimate X-Men.

"Well," she gestured towards her bug, "Climb on in! Where's Abby?" Come to think of it, where was Kuki? Kuki was discovered completing her clover chain a bit further down the embankment, and readily climbed in when called. Abby, once Hoagie explained the sittuation, smilled dazedly at the world, grabbed a black bag out of the glove compartment, and walked over to the car.

"What's in the bag?" Hoagie asked.

"Party favors. Numbah Five's little contribution to this potluck." Hoagie sighed.

"Jesus, Abby! For the last time, no one wants your-"

"Actually, I don't do anything, but my friends will probably be delighted to help her smoke that." Annie corrected Two, who was only too happy to have secured the passenger seat. "Buckle up, all." She turned to Two with a shy little smile, left hand- she was apparently left handed- lingering over the CD's disc selector. "Do you like techno? Ferry Corston?"

"I love Ferry Corston." Two assured her as they edged onto the highway again in a lull in the trafic. The little car pulled up to the speed limit, glancing its underbelly but never exceeding it. The little car manuevered as skillfully as if Two himself were driving. Hoagie and Annie began a conversation that didn't properly end until she dropped Hoagie, complete with a blinding grin that wouldn't quit, every number she had, and a promise to meet her that afternoon for dinner, followed by Tromafest at a shabby little independent theater downtown, and his freinds off at the treehouse the next morning.