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Title: 'Domo
Arigato,' Mr. Roboto Author: Sue E-Mail: susieqla@yahoo.com Website: None Category: Gen/Het Rating: PG Summary: The Gunmen and Yves strive to attenuate some extraordinary stolen property. Disclaimer: All the X-Files characters and references are property of C. Carter, 10-13 Productions and FOX. 'Domo Arigato,' Mr. Roboto His threadbare covers were knotted around his long, bone-white legs. As Yves continued to take in the less than exhilerating sight, she wondered if he was wearing anything underneath that ratty blanket. God, she hoped so. Taking her cue from her bandana-sporting companion, whose eyes were festively sizing her up and down, she smiled. Quietly, she ventured closer to the blond's sad dishevelment he laughably called his bed. "Why's he hugging his pillow like that? Found true love at last?" The questions had been decoratively arched, and sounded droll. "Normal. For him." Gamely, Frohike returned the sleek, raven-haired woman's mocking smile. His he reinforced with a wry twist to his lips. "His current squeeze doesn't want to rush things." Sounding surprised, Yves commented, "Smart girl, whoever the brave soul is." She stopped twirling a silky wisp of her hair. "If I wake him, will his first impulse be to strike?" "I know you're anxious, but better let me rouse sleeping beauty. He's a far cry from sociable first thing in the morning." "And this is news because?" Yves bandied her right hand, gesturing widely at Langly. "Have at him, then. Far be it from me to ruin my chances in my bid for his help." Under her breath, she muttered, "Wonder if a 'grande' spot of Starbuck's magic would've greased the wheel better?" "Nope. He hates their swill. He only drinks what he brews...oh, and my stuff too when he's desperate enough." "Blast," Yves mouthed. Frohike winked at her saucily. "He'll agree, safe enough to say. If you haven't begun to notice, pretty lady, he's a sucker for good causes..." "Not to mention for all sorts of things I fail to understand what the big fascination is." Yves held herself stiffly. Frohike's eyes warmed as he leisurely ambled over to his friend's bed. Yves' sigh filled the small cluttered bedroom. Her airy strains whispered of goal-attainment yet realized. "Not only is the cause good, but could prove very lucrative if handled just right." The comatose body entangled in the blanket shifted with an abrupt gulp of a snore. Langly's mouth opened and closed nosily. A fish wanting some company would have found it. What looked like the beginnings of a hesitant yawn was in the making. "Brings him around every time," Frohike touted, offering Yves some very knowing, soulful eyes. "What does?" Yves humored. "Money talk. Strikes a cord deep within his subconscious. Dates back to when he raised chickens and sold eggs on his family's farm. You'd never know he has a head for business by looking at him..." Yves gave Frohike a 'hold that thought' look that could have reasonably passed for a sneer. Through a wheezy breath they heard, "Tha..at's ri..right, Scully... Li..like w..way cool. Wh..who's y..your daddy?" Frohike's eyes bugged. His lips twisted in on themselves to hug his teeth. "Apparently you aren't the only git who's torrid for the titian-haired temptress in government guise." Yves' face was animation in the making. "The formidable 'femme fatale...'" "Wake up," Frohike spoke gruffly, "hippie!" The disheveled blond's plastered-shut eyes remained closed. Following a soft, low moan of a couple of seconds' duration and a shiver of jittery movement, Yves and Frohike stared into a pair of crispy blue, groggy eyes. They appeared somewhat crossed. "What's the big idea, huh? You and Scully?" Wringing his scrawny neck was too good for him Frohike judged. Having a hard time focusing, and through a wide yawn, Langly accused, "What the hell's the big idea? Bustin' in here like this?" Warning Frohike was a waste of time. Stronger measures would have to be taken. But, later for that. He was still too sleepy. The bleary blond yanked the pillow he had wrestled into an affectionate embrace and wedged his head beneath it. "And a bright cheery good morning to you too, luv." The nervous habit Yves had of tapping her foot against anything handy was alive and well. In this instance, Langly's Star Wars garbage pail, the one with Chewie's furry face on its front and back, as opposed to the one in the far corner crawling with X-wings, fit the bill. "Go away," Langly barked. The rasp sounded like it was buried under several layers of material perfect for muffling. "Rise and shine, dear boy," Frohike instigated further. Where was a pointy cattle prod when it could have been put to excellent use? He dipped closer to the bed, tempting fate. "Go the hell away--leave me alone! I'm whipped." "What a whine on him," Yves highlighted. Langly sank his teeth into the pillow. "I told you I was gonna sleep-in. Like what part of that didn't you understand when I said so last night before turnin' in? Now scram--both of you!" One early morning tirade softened by his pillow. He stuck his head out from under it, wishing to drive home his point with a vengeance. "Try TKU downloading over blue-code?" He shot them evil looks. "Now get!" He pasted the pillow more securely to his head. "Remember our conversation of two days ago?" They heard him 'humpff,' and turn over so his narrow back was facing them. Yves would not be deterred. "What if I told you that the two laptops reported missing from Central Strategic Command in "I'd say you swiped 'em. Which is what I told Byers when you finally left. You spider, but we do it better." Langly forsook the pillow. Taking sloppy aim, he chucked it at the shapely young woman. Never volunteering to be a target, she easily sidestepped out of his lumpy missle's way. "And you'd be quite wrong," Yves needled with a burnished smirk of complacency. "Quite." "You borrowed 'em?" Frohike nimbly cast into the pot. Content to lead her on with his perfected sense of timing, he grinned. Yves wasn't fooled by his understanding brown eyes showcasing his chamelion charm. "No, Melvin," she verbally stroked in kind. With a mellowing of her innocent-looking eyes, she forded on, "I came into their possession by duplicitous accident. "Yeah," Frohike squeezed through a laugh soaked in brine," right." "Who'd you bump off this time?" Langly riddled with his versatile brand of sarcasm. "It wasn't I," Yves afforded, looking around the room as though she was just discovering its non-existent appeal for the first time. She wouldn't let Blinky, her sweet calico of two years, eat in here. "Then, who?" Langly anted, absentmindedly rubbing his left hand over the kneecap of his right leg. The ice hadn't helped one bit, despite Kallie's insistence that it would. The next time he got into a softball game with her clan of jocks, he'd let her know up front that sliding into home plate with her two-hundred pound of pure muscle cousin covering it wasn't the best idea. Showing off for his girl...what a lame excuse. A joke, he'd played on himself. There were easier ways to commit suicide. This much pain and suffering was never worth it; not even for love...if that's what Kallie and he really had. It was too early to tell. "A former colleague tipped me off. I was told where to go--" "I have one place in particular where you'd have lots of company," Langly zinged. Still desiring his help, she decided to let that snide crack slide. "*And*," she emphasized, packing more power into her tone, "with whom I should meet. I followed directions to perfection. No sooner had the contact shoved the prizes into my waiting hands, and streaked away for the helicopter waiting for him not more than twenty meters away, he was gunned down. The Hummer was black, complete with tinted windows. There were no plates." Frohike and Langly, having yanked himself from semi-unconsciousness, exchanged calculating looks. They barely edged out "Something tells me you're no ways finished," Frohike second-guessed. "Correct. It's not the half," she said when she judged sufficent time had passed for her to continue. With a little grunt of acknowledgement, Langly allowed his bane in tight-fitting clothes to gently maneuver his glasses onto his face, wondering what had gotten into her. Acts of consideration towards him weren't her speed. The suspicion grew that she wanted something from him. He slipped a leg at a time off the bed, wanting to stand. He knew that when he did the soreness in his lower quadrant would hurt like there was no tomorrow. Mashing down on his lower lip with the upper, he lifted up in stages. And was promptly rewarded with not as much agony as he had anticipated. "What does your grisly little tale do for an encore?" Frohike nudged Langly with sparkly eyes that he needed to rearranged his shorts. Yves inhaled a breath of relief. He wore boxes, the point being he was wearing something. "Ever hear of a recently-privatized firm by the name of Nitsugami Technologies?" Downstairs, from the kitchen, they heard Byers shout, "I can only keep these omlets warm for so long, you know..." "Sounds as though your chum's knickers are decidedly in a twist," Yves insinuated. "Nah," Frohike parried with a glint newly-ignited in his playful eyes. "He's in his jammies, goin' commando at the moment." "Ooh," Yves interjected with a look of distaste on her face, "sorry I ventured that opinion." Sounding a shade more irritated than he was, Langly said, "So what about this outfit?" "I'm surprised you haven't a clue," Yves fanned. "Just cut the dilly-dally crap and lay it out," Langly sniped, fixing Yves with dagger eyes; not exactly what she had hoped for at this stage. Frohike was already closing in on the door. The sudden acrid smell of what was burning had put an end to the watering of his mouth. It was a given though that no matter what state of singe breakfast was in, Langly would chow down, no complaints. "They're co-developers of the world's most powerful supercomputers, as part of a contract with the United States Department of Energy. I have the twin prototypes and their robotic counterpart." "Well I hope you people are satisifed," Byers shouted again. Whenever he hollered like that, it sounded as though his voice was stretching. "Remind me never to volunteer for preparing something special, any time soon! This is the thanks I get." There was a brief pause, and then a booming, "NONE--" "I'm goin' down," Frohike plugged, revamping his hasty retreat. Byers with a real temper wasn't a pretty sight. "See you at the table." Langly folded his arms across his bare chest and glared at his uninvited guest. "So..." He was enjoying this immensely. He let the full force of the assessing look in her eyes sink in. "And like, I come in where?" Nodding, Yves said with an uncharacteristic note of placative irony standing in her voice, "Would you help me on this?" "Me? Not Kimmy?" "Kimmy who? When I need overblown delusions of microscopic grandeur, I won't ask for it." After lapping that up, Langly stipulated, "For a price though." It had rolled off his tongue like melted butter. "Name it." Her arms were crossed over her well-endowed chest now too. "Me, you. Shockwave Tetris--my config. No rules. Winner takes all." He pulled his lips into a wry grin. "Game?" Laughing, she settled her hands on her hips, clearly squaring off. "You're on, soon to be trounced one." Yves, her eyes flashing dire intent and expertise, returned his hardboiled smirk measure for measure. On a dime, she turned on her heel and pranced off to the door. Langly shuffled into worn slippers that looked as though they'd been chewed on. He snapped up his ratty bathrobe lying on the floor next to the bed. Hurriedly, he loped right behind her, following her out of his room. Feeling him at her heels, she thought on second thought that sweats and the linty T-shirt he always wore were not bad things. In his gangly case, they had it all over nudity. Beating him at his own game likewise held a rarified charm. "So, like...what exactly do I gotta do?" "You'll see," she baited with a beguiling smile. ====== The furrowed creases in Langly's brow threatened to become permanent. Yves, sitting directly across from him at the other laptop, frowned too. The rate of their no-progress was frustrating. Sneaking little peeks at her, Byers noted how he'd never seen her looking so haggard. "Both of you could use a break," he told them. Neither of them looked up from the harshly-lit laptops that washed out what little color Langly had in his face. He glowered at the bright screen. "No," was his terse remark he deigned after a telling moment. "I'm gonna try one more thing. Could work. Cross your fingers." "My configs spooling." Defiantly, Yves tapped her keys faster, but her effort wasn't panning. "Like all those other things that haven't worked yet?" Yves harped, mirroring the sullen look Langly shot over at her. "I haven't heard your, 'Eureka--I've cracked it!' Yet." He rolled his eyes at the streaming flow of enigmatic data. He saved his best eyeball action for her, last. Grumbling, he pursed his lips. "It's harder than I first thought. It doesn't follow any set pattern." There was no shame admitting that, and he had no qualms saying so. The code, in only the loosest sense, was a doozey. It raised the bar on encryption. It was waves upon waves of influxing, inverted algorithms that only made silken sense to the mysterious responsible for crafting the burgeoning population in the first place. He was good, but he wasn't feeling anything like the touted wizard; not at the moment. "Decrypt--decrypt-- decrypt--damnit" he exclaimed about as fast as the unbranching packages of data chunks paraded across the notebook's screen. Yves' machine had crashed; her screen had gone dormant. She stood. Byer's doubtful expression relaxed a bit. Something was happening he saw, if only gradually. His friend's aplomb was beginning to pay off. As though veils were being lifted, and cerebral foreplay was catching up with the barrage of software, the data began making better sense. Langly turned to face him and both grinned wickedly at each other. "See--told ya," Langly gloated for Yves' benefit. She craned her neck as she came around to Langly's side to see what he was crowing about. Canting his head at her, he said, "I kind of expected that to happen. Kind of plays out on a fail-trap. One's let in, the other's shut out." "It's..." Nodding with a smile she finished, "Well, that's more like it." The coalesing patterns of diagrams fuzzing to resolution were beginning to jive. She helped herself to Langly's shoulder, giving it several pats. He looked ready to jump out of his skin over her doing that. "They look like convoluted modular paradigms." "Give 'em time." Langly engaged several keys in rapid succession. "This should speed things up." The onus of pulling this off was uncomfortably his, he acknowledged with a blistering glare at the keyboard. He wondered if he gave Kimmy a call, would he come over. He shook his head. You rue what you spit in haste, he considered, recalling how he'd told his on-again, off-again friend that he was too stupid to live, to his mildly acne-scarred face. Frohike entered the corner of the office where all the fun was, his greasy-looking apron tied around his waist. He was bearing cups of coffee. There was even one for Yves. "How's it comin'?" "Langly's opened a portal." "Took me long enough," he breezed at Byers who was lifting a cup from the tray. Glad for the moment, he still had his work cut out for him. At this stage, the organizational interlays forming connections were still up for grabs. Frohike handed Yves a cup and she even managed to give him a smile after taking a sip. "This stuff isn't bad. I suppose it's growing on me." She weighed what felt right to say next a moment longer than she had to. "The three of you are." She eyed them fleetingly, monitoring their reactions. She heard Langly snigger, and Byers merely unfurrowed his brow, unsure whether he should say something to fill the awkward void. He remained silent, pretending to fascinate himself with the detailing the data on the screen was taking itself through. "We're becoming fans too," Frohike said expansively, secure in the knowledge that none of what he'd confessed would go to anyone's head. "Now this truly looks promising," Yves warmly congratulated. The beating of her heart quickened. "Yeah, but it could be a false lead. Wait." Langly hammered the control, shift and F11 keys. Lastly then, he mashed the F12. Allowing himself to feel more confident was a luxury; one he couldn't afford. "There's something hinky here." Nodding, Yves replied, "So I've been told." Byers' and Langly's eyes stormed her face for some explanation. Before she decided to give them one, the fruitage of Langly's labor came into its own. "Welcome to the "How on earth is this possible?" Byers voiced, scooting closer to the screen to gain a better perspective. Langly strove to refine the image evolving on the screen. "Somewhere in the " "Yeah, that would be the most likely location. Maybe twenty or so miles out." Langly looked off to their left as his ears had picked up on the soft whirring-burring sound. The ovoid robotical counterpart had become operative. "This weirdness just keeps getting better," Frohike said with a preoccupied look that belied his rapt interest. "Tell me about it," Langly remarked with a feral smirk. "I'm having the hardest time realzing that something this aggressive, falling into my wrong hands." Yves' statement was partly true, but the way she'd said it was convincing enough. So much so, that Byers placed his hand upon her closest shoulder. "Now, what are *we* going to do about it?" Easing up on his sneer, Langly said, "It's not like we've never suspected a covert governmental agency responsible for controlling weather patterns existing, but to have documentable proof before our eyes is way intense." Sagely, Frohike replied, "It's something Mulder's been convinced of ever since we met him." That was confirmed by the three's simultaneous nods. Langly, with a bit more tweaking was able to pinpoint an exact location from where the source of the pulse signature was emanating. Yves looked apprehensive then. "Is there even the slightest possibility that a trace could route the tap back to here?" Proudly, Langly boasted, "What tap? No such animal. I fixed it so if anyone's monitoring, all they'll capture is mapped ghost-over resonance." She hid her relief, while going over to the robotic counterpart that had since begun glowing a cool glacial blue. "I suppose it wouldn't be too far-fetched to surmise that this spiffy piece of mechanization is a transponder of the highest order." "Saavy gal," Frohike awarded, moving over to have a closer look at the robotic entity himself. "Stands to reason this small marvel doesn't synchronize alone." "I'm for showing off this trophy to Mulder. The G-dude'll freak biggest time," Langly said, the strong overtone of prophecy ringing in his voice. "He's waited close to a decade for a revelation of this magnitude." Before Frohike could add his two cents, their visitor alert signaled that they had a visitor. "Jimmy," he predicted, and went to let their big lug of an apprentice in. Langly kept watching his computer's screen, making rapid adjustments to preserve the integrity of the capture. He heard Frohike's low-key grunt and pithy comment a second before he let their visitor in. The familiar voice had him smiling. "Yo, Mulder, man. Your timing couldn't be more perfect." Yves gathered her dark hair into her hands before piling it atop her head. She fished in her leather bag for a banana clasp, and once finding it, secured her hair between its blunt, pointy teeth. She stared at the softly-whirring robotic uplink a moment longer before going back to stand beside Byers. "Is he telepathic?" she whispered in an aside. The FBI agent seemed to have a knack for appearing whenever she had sensitive goods on display. Yet, she had to admit, he could prove very useful in this instance. Byers straightened up, humoring her speculative mood, in her scrutinizing eyes. "Either he needs information, or has some for us that needs to be amplified or clarified. Sooner or later he comes to us; it's become a given. We're info central." He frowned. "Of course, he could be lonely." Yves gave a terse laugh, judging it wiser to keep her opinion on the subject of the elusive Federal agent, and the Gunmen's close friend, to herself. All she said was, "What...no diminutive partner of the auburn persuasion in tow?" "Even as we speak she's on a plane, bound for the West coast. She owes her relatives living in San Diego a visit," Byers related in a hushed voice. "Hey, guys, what's shakin'?" Mulder's brief laugh crackled in the air. When he caught sight of the raven-haired beauty, he paused long enough to make a guesstimate as to why she was there. "I see you've got company..." "Nothin' gets by you, Mulder," Langly said, full of irreverence. The FBI agent feigned a blow that never connected with the left side of the blond's smirking face. Mulder's arm fell limply at his side when the evolving buffers on the screen arrested his attention, rendering it undivided. "What have you got there, Geek-is-me?" Mulder inquired, obviously captivated. "Bet you already know," Langly quizzed, looking from Frohike to Byers, then, reluctantly to Yves, quizzically. It was then that the robotical counterpart commenced making high-pitched chirping noises, and it was also precisely then that images began bombarding the computer screen. "How'd you do it?" Mulder asked, with incredulous eyes. "I'm partly to thank," Yves seamlessly inserted, and with an insistent focus of her vision, indicated that Langly should give attention to the latest relavatory development that was currently unfolding. Langly, acknowledging, worked his finger-worn board, rat-tatting a swift series of algorithms so that no continuity was lost; not even a second's worth. "It helps, right, Mulder?" Astounded, all Mulder could do was nod, seemingly unwilling to breathe lest the highly improbable disappeared in the blink of an eye. "How long?" Langly let go a long-winded sigh. "In another six minutes, it'll make fifteen." He pointed at the screen with his index finger. "You're looking at a pre-monsoonal front off the North Korean coast. But, already, it's projected for a host of pre-determined landfalls. Wait now... See that? See how the pattern ebbs and flows according to the skew of those latitudinal coordinates?" Mulder gaped, noting that the small windows beside the equations pictorally described what the math entailed. "One guess," Frohike preambled, before lifting his coffee mug to his mouth. "Don't need one," Mulder replied, wishing for some of, what he hoped was, the brew that Frohike had made. It was still brutally early for ruse being thorougly stripped away without a trace. "One suspicion satisfactorily confirmed..." He stuck his face close enough to the screen for his nose to kiss it. "Old Smokey has been dropping enough hints lately. A couple of weeks ago I tailed Krycek to a place not far from a cozy little resort about thirty miles or so off the Floridian coast. Looked a lot like the window that was up before this one." Mulder asked if there was any chance of his getting some of what Frohike was drinking. The older man told him maybe, if he played his cards right. Frohike went to get him his brew with ears fine-tuned to the conversation. Having heard Krycek's name, Yves recalled her last exchange with rat boy; it hadn't been a very good one. Somehow, he had tricked her into divulging an informant's name they knew in common. 'If he weren't so infuriatingly handsome,' she rued. Byers was about to say that the information they had supplied Mulder with for that particular 'excursion' had been subject to change all along, when a concentrated plume of silvery-hued vapor started venting from the robotic entity. Not by coincidence, the data and visual link-up on the screen began flaking out. "Crap--what the hell gives?" Langly cried, performing some dogged finger interplay in an effort to hold on to what had been hard won. As the cryptic fading of the blurbs and chunkets of alpha-numeric glyphs accelerated, the technophile dissolved into a slurry of colorful language unfit for the ears of impressionable minors. "I'm surprised you held onto it for as long as you did," Mulder said, thanking Frohike for the coffee he had just been handed. "What did I miss?" Frohike asked, staring at the screen that had just gone completely blank, save for a handful of white dots winking on and off. "Was that suppose to happen?" Langly grilled him with a glare. Frohike let the build-up of the blond's attitude fall flat by shrugging. "Engineered sabotage; time-sensitive and precise," Mulder informed, following a noisy sip. "He glanced at his watch, a drippet of coffee slid down the stained 'Patriots' mug. "Whatever you did held it longer than the last time I was privy to the very same hallmarks." "Where? When?" the four baffled individuals in present company asked with confused expressions of varying degree etched in their faces. "Can't say. If I did I'd have to kill the lot of ya." When the robotical counterpart began rattling from side to side, and spewing its inner workings, the four drew back, but not Mulder, and Yves, with her eyes narrowing, overcame her initial apprehension and made an approach. "I was rather becoming attached to the dodgy thing," she said, ducking just in time to avoid being struck by a flying piece that looked sort of like a mainspring. "They let you get so far with the interlocking parameters, and then pull the rug out," Langly pieced together aloud. With a nod, Mulder awarded, "Give the bright bulb an additional hundred watts." Draining the coffee from his mug before adding additional input, Mulder said, "Seems the '*they*' are pulling away from the pack these days..." The Gunmen each snorted in their own singular ways. Yves pursed her neutrally-tinted lips, secure in the knowledge of her own gouty suspicions. "And that's why *they* don't want us printing the features we do," Langly rasped, shutting down the notebook. He wondered if he asked, would Yves say he could keep them both for investigatory purposes. Looking at her he asked, "Mind if I tinker with your presents before you take 'em back?" "I thought you'd never ask." Arching an eyebrow, she addressed the three. "I'm curious about manufacturers' serial numbers and such. After the trio of you go over these items with your respective fine-toothed combs, I'm certain you'll give me places to start." "Yeah," Mulder interposed, "but those places usually come with high security and threat of untimely death." Everyone nodded, looking grave. To brighten the somber mood, Frohike offered, "I'm in the mood to dazzle certain guests and in-house brethren with my new and improved recipe for eggs Benedict. Laid in some fresh hollandaise sauce. Bought the Thomas' English muffins just yesterday. Takers?" Everyone nodded, but this time facial expressions looked a lot more optimistic. "I'd like to lend a hand, if I may," Yves offered with a whimsical smile. "Sussing out weather-controlling shadowy-powers-that-be has stirred my appetite. I'm game." She and Langly shared a wordless acknowledgement of their head-to-head set for some future date. "There's a certain Amazonian tribe...they hold a week-long gorge-fest before the rainy season sets in. Who knows...maybe we're in for a very big change in the technologically-enhanced weather from here on out." Mulder's lopsided grin was purposely ignored. Before retiring to his room to dress, Byers wrapped his robe more securely around himself. Sounding as though he was clearing his throat, he said, "After breakfast, I'm taking a crack at Mister Roboto. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility of locating a grav-luvial of sorts embedded within." The aspect measured gravitational forces. "And I've got just the device that can help with that," Langly insisted, standing, and then moved off to locate what he was talking about. Softly, they heard him hum the tune of a ditty he used to whistle and tap when he was in graduate school at M.I.T.. He'd driven many a fairly well-adjusted professor to flail arms in quiet desperation owed to his tone-deaf, automatonic rendition. Mulder couldn't suppress a geeky smile of his own, recalling the eighties song with the hypnotic words..."'Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto...'" The agent gave the weathered counterpart a pat on the head as he walked by it. Hope and expectation welling up inside him were familiar stomping grounds. Something, anything, useful that edged him ever closer to the moorings of truth was fairest game. He believed in his friends, and the three believed in him. That truth was in here within these sheltering walls. ========= End |