The Continuing Adventures of Barry Ween

"SHIT!"

Barry leaped back in surprise and flailed. "Jesus! I was just ah..... fuck. Busted."

He tapped his foot and smacked his head in frustration.

"And that was a perfectly good override code!"

Because that's the important part here.

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"I'm sure it was," Reno half-crooned, dropping down behind Rikku, landing easily with his baton still resting on his shoulder. "This what you do for kicks, Rookie? Break into other people's buildings?"

He'd been doing a good job of it. Reno was impressed.

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"We were gonna wait for you to figure out the rest of them, but it was taking way too long," Rikku sighed.

What? He'd been getting through them pretty fast, at that, but she and Reno were a couple of pros, here. Besides, she was trying to knock him down a few pegs. He had missed the motion-sensor, after all.

"So why'd do you want in my warehouse, anyway?"

Edited Date: 2014-05-16 06:07 pm (UTC)

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Barry crossed his arms and gave both of them a petulant look. "I had scouted this out as a warehouse for my shit," he said. "Until you came along and locked it all the fuck up."

Yes. It was Rikku and Reno's fault for putting locks on their own warehouse.

"And give me a break! Those are alien technology locks! I don't even know the fucking language!"

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"How's come you didn't lock it up?" Rikku asked. It was a fair question. "Nothing here said this spot was taken."

If he'd claimed it, he ought to have put up a sign. Or, like, six thousand locks, like they had.

"Is there something wrong with the next warehouse over?" she added. "'Cause it would have been way easier to, like, stop after the first lock and go put your stuff somewhere else."

Common sense, Barry. Look into it.

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"I like this one!" Barry sputtered because common sense and genius does not always mix well. "And... OKAY! Fine! Jesus! Fuck! I just liked the locks! They were fucking new to me and after the first one it was potato chips."

Because you can never have just one.

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"Are you dissing my locks?" Rikku asked, tilting her head at him curiously. Well, their locks, but close enough. "Because you totally disabled the ones you saw, but you tripped like two or three that you didn't, so ... I mean. It's not that impressive. We're here, aren't we?"

Okay, just one, the motion-sensor, but seriously. He wasn't even looking for one? Amateur hour.

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"No! The locks were..."

Barry looked sheepish. "The locks were fun. Okay? I liked the fucking challenge and-"

Wait a second.

"Wait. I tripped three alarms?"

...

"I must be slipping."

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"I said two or three," Rikku said, just in the interests of fairness. The motion-sensor had alerted them; she wasn't sure if he'd set off anything since then. "Find everything you tripped and I'll give you a cookie."

What? Learning to break-and-enter properly was an important life skill. She was being educational, here.

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"Wait," Barry said giving Rikku a suspicious look. "Does that mean you're not turning me into the cops?"

Because that would mean breaking out and wiping their memory and after the whole discussion with Eleanor earlier this week he was feeling guilty about that kind of stuff.

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"What, are you kidding?" Rikku laughed. "Although the cops here are so adorable. They just read you some rights and let you make phone calls and then tuck you in with a bedtime snack. Kinda feels rude to break out at that point, you know?"

She was watching him more carefully now. "You just broke in, right? I mean, you didn't take anything or try to poison the air ducts or, like, have a whole bunch of bodies you're trying to hide, right?"

Not all of those were deal-breakers, necessarily, but it was good to be clear on specifics. Like, he should be willing to give back whatever gadgets he swiped, and he'd better have dang good reasons for having killed all those people.

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"Actually I was going to move my shit in here," Barry replied. "I've got scientific projects practically coming out of my ass and I need someplace to build that shit without blowing up the fucking dorms."

Besides if Barry did have dead bodies he'd just deatomize them. Sheesh.

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"And of all the unlocked warehouses in town, you were gonna try to use this one even after it got locked up?"

Kid was almost as stubborn as he was. Reno had to respect that.

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"I told you I liked this one," Barry said with an eyeroll. "I liked the space and I. Liked. The. Locks. There's not many things that challenge me,"

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Reno just snorted and shook his head.

"Maybe we'll just set you up with a little box full of locks to crack. See if you can figure out the combination between Gaia and Spira tech without, I dunno, settin' off the little bells and whistles and shit. Doesn't mean you get to just go breakin' into space that's clearly already been claimed, though. Shit, for a genius, you're pretty dim, rookie."

Reno tapped his baton against his shoulder, tilting his head at Barry thoughtfully. And then glancing at Rikku out of the corner of his eye. And then looking, again, at Barry.

"How much room you need?"

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Barry bristled at being called "dim" but at least they weren't arresting him.

"Well Boss, I probably need about a quarter to a half of the space. But I can guarantee that some of the shit I'm bringing in will make your cattle prod look like a crab fork. If you're interested."

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"Only person I trust upgrading my EMR is me," Reno snorted, giving his baton another tap across the shoulder. "Rikku gets to poke at it... sometimes, yo."

But he was sleeping with Rikku. So.

"I dunno..." He looked at Rikku sidelong, smirking faintly. "What do you figure we should do with him, babe?"

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There was a student here, so Rikku was going to avoid making pointed remarks about how much Reno liked it when she poked at his rod.

"Ra ec ytunypma," she laughed. "Fa cruimt ytubd res."

He's adorable. We should adopt him.

He reminded her of one of the Al Bhed, a child prodigy named Shinra. Better not to mention that; Reno always got a little uneasy around him. Not the kid's fault, but considering the name, she couldn't really blame Reno, either.

"How good are you with hydroponics?" she asked. "I could consider letting you share the space, if you help with some of our projects. My people back home need a lot of help."

Please. She was totally going to let him stay. She just, you know, wanted to see what she could get out of the arrangement, first.

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Barry frowned a bit. Share? He so sucked at sharing but damn it he really did want this specific warehouse.

"If you need a bitching hydroponics setup I can rig something up for your own people at no time with zero waste and either be solar or nuclear powered. Probably give you increased output too if you don't have too many weird fucking vegetables on your world," Barry said getting lost in thought as formulations for a portable hydroponics bay was formulated in his head. "I also have a food replicator that I created when I was ten but it only makes grits."

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"Solar," Reno said, about a beat too quickly. A moment later, he followed up with a slightly more subdued, "... Solar, yo."

And then he looked at Rikku and added, "Dra get'c csynd, ramm, Barry bnupypmo ajah sayhc famm, pid E's hud nayto du dnicd ra lyh nek ib y hilmayn bufanat cocdas fedruid dra nacimdehk cred-duh uv nyteuyldeja fycda dryd kuac fedr ed. E ys cu vilgehk tuha fedr nyteuyldeja fycdac yht kuttysh nayldun samdtufhc, yo."

Which, roughly translated, meant, 'Nuclear? Nope.'

Then he looked back at Barry.

"Solar. And we double that recipe. Edge is still starving after that meteor came down."

Not half as badly as it once was, since Reno had helped the WRO set up a rudimentary hydroponics system, and Karla and Aerith had done their magic land-healer voodoo on at least some of the desert out there. But it still wasn't pretty.

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"Meteor? Shit. So that simulation wasn't some George Lucas bullshit?" Barry shook his head. "Fuck. Okay. You guys are going to need more than some fucking hydroponics to get by. I can help out with that shit."

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Reno snorted.

"Lucas? Hardly. I toned that fucker down so as to not scare the class," Reno replied, dead serious. "Left out the reactor meltdown, the giant monsters, the planet's life force comin' up through the ground and spreading the infected cells of a million-year-old evil space bitch all around..."

Doomsday had kinda been pretty thorough on Gaia.

"... Like, all of the fucking pollution, though the sky ain't really the color of spinach-encrusted nosebleed snot anymore..."

Really, really thorough.

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Barry rolled his eyes. "Well then fuck me gently with a chainsaw," he said pulling out his cellphone. "We got a ton a shit to do then. I'm going to need air samples, soil samples, plant samples. If you guys and have any medical facilities I'm going to need a breakdown on the effects it's had on your physiology, blood samples, genome mapping. Shit, I'm going to need everything."

He took a break from talking to hit speed dial. "Yeah, account number 62-52-Delta-3-7-9-Alpha. In addition to my regular shipment I'm going to need some pool supplies, the entire collection of Punky Brewster on betamax and five cases of delicious chocolate Yoohoo. No. The fucking code word is delicious chocolate Yoohoo, I don't fucking want five cases of Yoohoo."

He clicked off his phone. "My shit will be here in twenty minutes. Oh, and unless I tell you otherwise, don't touch my shit unless you want a fucking ecological disaster on this island."

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"If you cause an ecological disaster on the island, you're totally evicted," Rikku said, in her sternest tone. "And you're gonna have to fix it and apologize, like, publicly. I mean it."

She was glancing back at Reno before lifting her shoulders. "My people aren't all ... screwed up by Meteor or anything," she said. "We're just trying to reverse-engineer our way out of the Stone Age. I'm not sure what we're gonna do if the satellite stops working."

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