Claudia: Welcome to my secret IRS Warehouse

[moonshadows]

Claudia loved New Agent Day. It was all the excitement of Christmas morning combined with the thrill of long-term (but less than a decade) companionship, like what she imagined adopting a puppy was like. This would be her first New Agent Day as Caretaker, and she was finally going to be able to do things her way.

They pulled up almost at the same time, rental cars (theirs would be shipped by next week) nearly identical, and stepped out in their crisp business suits. That always cracked her up. She knew it wasn’t fair, they were being reassigned and meeting their new boss, they wanted to look their best and thought they’d be expected to. They had no way of knowing what lay in store for them.

“Hi,” she said brightly. “Yes, you’re in the right place. My name is Claudia. Come on in, we have cookies.”

Artie always made cookies for New Agent Day. Helped the new agents settle in.

The door opened with its usual creak, and she waved them down the half-flight of stairs. “Don’t touch the bombs,” she said as she closed the door behind them and wove her way past the bewildered man and woman. “Follow me, it’s just up here.”

The optical scanner chirped at her, and the inner door hissed as it unlocked. A push, and it whooshed open on its hydraulics. Steve hit play and gestured the new agents to seats at the table, where warm oatmeal scotchies and cold milk were waiting. Claudia strode to the middle of the office.

“Welcome to my secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain,” she sang, making one of them choke back laughter. “I hope that you’ve enjoyed your stay so far; I see you’ve met my assistant Scarface.” Artie scowled. He knew what was coming. “His appearance is quite disturbing, but I assure you, he’s harmless enough.” She leaned over to hug him. “He’s a sweetheart, calls me Master. And he has a way of finding pretty things, and bringing them to meee….” The music faded out. “Okay, I know you’ve got questions, and I’m pretty sure I know what they all are, so let me answer them for you.”

“This ought to be good,” one whispered to the other.

“First question,” Claudia said, ticking a finger off, “Is this chick for real? She looks about nineteen. Answer: yes, I am for real, and for your information I’m twenty-two and a half, thank you very much.”

The one on the right snickered.

“Second question: are you shitting me? Who would let a punk-goth girl be in charge? Answer: no, and they didn’t have a choice. I’ll explain that later. Third! Are artifacts actually real? Answer: they are indeed, and I will prove it to your satisfaction before you leave for the tour. Fourth: are artifacts really that big a deal? I mean, how dangerous can they be, right?”

“Right,” murmured the one on the left.

She snapped her fingers, and Steve started handing out printouts. “The Spine of the Saracen. First artifact to nearly kill Agent Lattimer. Took enough electricity to fry a horse to get it to let go so it could be beaten until it broke. Man Ray’s camera. First artifact to nearly kill Agent Bering. Stole about fifty years of her life and gave it to a rich broad willing to pay out the wazoo to be young again. We had to steal that youth back from the guy who got the camera from Man Ray before she died of old age. Page from Shakespeare’s Lost Folio. First artifact to nearly kill Agent Jinks, the man handing you these. If Agent Bering hadn’t been there with her encyclopedic knowledge of literature, he would have suffocated.  Johann Maelzel's Metronome. The reason Agent Jinks isn’t pushing up daisies. He’s like the Highlander, only cutting his head off won’t stop him. A chunk of masonry from the British House of Commons. Artifact nuclear bomb. If it were to go off right here, there would be nothing but a smoking crater. We know this for a fact because it happened. Magellan’s astrolabe. The reason this place isn’t a smoking crater with the world descending into chaos and despair. Using it causes you to develop your own evil twin who wants nothing more than to undo and destroy everything you hold dear. The only way to save yourself aside from using the astrolabe a second  time is…to be stabbed with Francesco Borgia's dagger, which will cast the evil out of you and leave you with holes in your psyche that, if the evil was strong enough, will result in enough brain damage to kill you. Any questions so far?”

The blonde woman looked up from the astrolabe’s printout. “Who used it?”

Artie braced himself. “I did.”

“How did you…survive? I mean, I’m assuming…”

“His partner of fifteen years sacrificed himself to fill the holes with his own mind. Luckily for him, the holes were big enough and The Evil had been strong enough that he was able to stuff all of his mind in there. Agent Nielsen here, aside from having the honor of being the longest-surviving agent in all of Warehouse history – which stretches back over two thousand years, by the way – also has the distinction of housing Agent MacPherson within his body. This is not a split personality. This is two distinct minds who up until the year before last were two completely different people. Which brings up the next thing on the agenda: proving that artifacts aren’t a trick. Agent MacPherson?”

Artie slipped the thimble onto his pinky. Claudia tried not to smirk at the gasps.

“This, children, is Harriet Tubman’s thimble. Agent Jinks, could you – ah, thank you.” He gave them a moment to look at the printout. “It’s rather disconcerting for everyone involved if I don’t use this when I am given control of the body. Do pay attention to Miss Donovan’s warnings; I have seen many agents die to moments of carelessness. Quite right,” he said to a comment no one else heard. “Die, or worse. And there is worse. Now, you may be wondering why I have been invoked, since the mere alteration of my appearance won’t lay your doubts to rest. It’s because,” he said, picking up a riding crop, “I’m the only one comfortable with using this.”

A sharp twist, and the black man gasped as he stood rigidly up, walked stiffly to the desk, and scribbled on a sheet of paper before resuming his seat, where he relaxed as the pressure on the crop was released. Another twist, and the blonde woman performed the same steps.

“Do either of you read Latin?” James asked pleasantly. “No? Too bad. Arthur, old friend, would you translate?”

“Sure,” grumbled Artie, “leave me to take the thimble off.”

Both new agents still seemed to be in shock; the transformation from James back to Artie didn’t even register. He picked up the paper, squinted, and sighed.

“Your handwriting is better than mine and you’re using my hand. It’s not fair. It says: The juice has gone off. You should get a smaller bottle if you’re not going to drink it. So,” he said to the stunned newbies, “do either of you need to examine this to prove to yourself that it’s not your handwriting? No? Okay, time for the next demonstration. I need a coin, doesn’t matter which.”

Wordlessly, each of the new agents dug a coin out of their pockets. Steve handed them to Artie.

“Ah, thank you. And now…” With a flourish, he picked up a paintbrush. “…you get souvenirs.” A few seconds of painting, and he handed them back.

The penny now sported a distinctly female face, curly red hair, and pouty lips. The nickel looked like Moe from the Three Stooges. Steve placed them on the table, where the two cartoon coins snuggled up to each other and began to kiss.

“You’re free to keep those,” Artie said pleasantly. “Just…tuck them down deep in your pockets or they’ll escape. Uh, Claudia, I think we broke them.”

“Yeah, let’s let them just…assimilate what they’ve learned. I’ll drive them back to the B and B,” Steve offered.

Claudia grimaced. “Good plan. Make sure they take the cookies, and tell Pete and Myka to go gentle. I’ll see you for dinner.”

He glanced at the shell-shocked pair. “Will do, Claud. Tell…” He shook his head at the fact that she was gone. “I thought it was bad when Mrs. Frederic did it.”

The blonde stirred. “Wait…she’s gone? Where did she go?”

“Who knows,” sighed Artie. “You’ll get used to it eventually. It’s a Caretaker thing. She’ll explain it tomorrow.”

 

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 “Hey, Leena,” Claudia said casually as she was suddenly in a place she hadn’t been. The innkeeper jumped slightly, but the tall and sturdy Asian man didn’t even blink. “Slight change of plans, you get to meet the newbies in a few minutes and I’ll give them the tour tomorrow. Maihar’du, you done with your pie?”

The bodyguard scraped the last crumbs off his plate and licked his fork. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re going to spoil him, you know,” she told Leena with a smile. “Keep it up. He does good work.”

Leena laughed. “I was planning on it. We’ll see you for dinner?”

“Unless something goes dramatically wrong, yes.” She pulled out her phone and flicked a few times with one finger. “Looks like I’ve got…three Regents left to introduce myself to. And terrorize. Just a little bit,” she added reassuringly as her bodyguard frowned. “Shall we go?”

The big man fought back all but the hint of his grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

A hug for Leena, and moments later she was settled in the back seat of the sleek black car that had belonged to her predecessor.

“So,” she said as they pulled out and navigated the long, winding driveway, “you really don’t mind that I call you that?”

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I don’t mind, Miss Donovan. It shows that you respect and appreciate me, although I can’t really see you as Grand Nagus.”

“Yeah,” she laughed, “I’m more like Q. But I’m better-looking. To a straight man,” she added, before he could protest.

“You do have more style,” he conceded, making her laugh again.

All the way to her first unscheduled appointment, they debated who she would be in the Star Trek universe.

 

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 “Hey, Claud!” Pete grinned as she walked into the dining room. Myka, Steve, and the new agents Raymond and Sandra were already seated, the latter two looking decidedly uncertain. “Captain Creepy give you the evening off?”

She snorted as Myka smacked him. “Please, you make it sound like I answer to him. Hey, Leena, what’ve we got tonight?”

“Pot roast and biscuits,” she answered, placing the last serving dish on the table and sliding into the seat next to Claudia. “Artie got distracted, he’ll be here in a minute.”

After everyone had filled their plates, Pete said, “So you’re saying you don’t answer to him?”

Claudia gave him her best are-you-shitting-me look. “Please tell me you don’t think Mrs. Frederic had a keeper.”

Myka sniggered quietly.

“Well, no, but…I mean…look, I don’t know what kind of Borg Queen politics you’ve got going on,” he finished lamely. “What?” he asked in an injured tone when Claudia began to laugh.

She waved one hand, trying to control the giggles. “It’s nothing. It’s just that I asked him if he was okay with me calling him Maihar’du and he said yes, but he couldn’t see me as the Grand Nagus, and then we discussed who I would actually be and settled on the Borg Queen.”

Half the table stared in incomprehension. Myka cleared her throat.

“So, Claud…I’m kind of surprised that you still live here. I mean, now that you’re…you know.”

“This is my home,” Claudia said quietly. “Maybe some day I’ll want to live in the schway mansion and hold myself aloof from the day-to-day things, but this is my home and you’re my family and there isn’t a single person in the world who can force me to give that up. Me having taken Mrs. Frederic’s place just means I need you all more than ever. I need to stay grounded in who I am so I don’t get lost in what I am.”

“You mean besides a devil child?” Artie said as he hurried in.

“And a genius tech goddess,” she shot back, giving him a hug as he sat down to her other side.

“Pain in my rear,” he mock-grumbled.

“Not my fault you can’t keep up with me, geezer.”

“Please, I…” He stared at nothing. “Oh, really? I didn’t know that. Yeah, no, you’re right.”

Steve and Claudia had a quick round of paper-scissors-rock. He lost. “What did he say?”

“Hmm? Oh, James was just telling me how Claudia figured out the whole thing with Warehouse Two from a handful of unrelated comments and one obscure hint.”

“Incidentally,” James added, one hand making an aborted motion towards a pocket for the thimble, “now that the blinders of my own foolishness have been removed, I would like to thank you for preventing me from carrying out my plan. I doubt former agent Wells would have been an entirely trustworthy compatriot.”

The two newest agents remained frozen in fascination at the minor drama of two men in the same body, forks hovering mid-air, while the two oldest looked intrigued.

“You were going to debronze a former Warehouse agent?” asked Myka.

“H. G. Wells,” Claudia supplied with a look that said she knew full well what kind of furor she was about to unleash. “And let me tell you, that is a spectacularly bad idea. Sister-friend is about as off her rocker as you can be and still have one.” A pause, just long enough for a sly sidelong look. “About as unhinged as you were, James, when we bronzed you.”

Watching Artie’s face while he and James squabbled for who wouldn’t be front was amazing. James lost.

“I suppose…in retrospect, having my plan foiled at that point was about the most appropriate thing that could be done. Ah, Myka, come by the Warehouse later and we can discuss Ms. Wells to your heart’s content.”

Myka visibly reined in her raging curiosity. “Right. Good plan.”

“Now will you let me go back?” he grumbled at his partner. Facial expression and posture shifted. “Alright,” Artie conceded. “I think we broke them again.”

Sandra shook her head. “No, I…just…that was…”

Beside her, Raymond reconsidered the bite on his fork and laid it back on the plate. “It wasn’t seeing the two…in the…”

“It was seeing that everyone else was used to it. Like…here’s this guy, who suddenly is the other guy, and we’re the only ones who think there’s anything out of the ordinary at all.”

“And you’re all so calm about artifacts,” Raymond added. “I have a cartoon nickel in my pocket,  and you’re all like ‘oh yeah, another cartoon nickel, we see those every day’.”

“Not true,” protested Pete. “Artie doesn’t let us play with Disney’s brush anymore.”

Myka was more sympathetic. “I know it’s a lot to take in, and trust me, I was extremely skeptical my first week.”

“You want skeptical?” Steve asked. “I have the ability to tell when someone’s lying to me. I saw a guitar shooting purple lightning and had Artie tell me that if Claudia didn’t play it right, it would take down the entire eastern seaboard. I saw her calm the guitar down. And I still had a hard time believing in artifacts.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Leena assured them.

They’d all gone back to eating for about a minute and a half when Pete suddenly exclaimed, “Ooh, ooh, I just remembered where I know you guys from!”

“We’re your co-workers,” Steve deadpanned.

“Not you guys, the new guys. Remember the time I accidentally brushed myself out of existence?”

“Not as well as you do,” muttered Artie.

Claudia raised one eyebrow. “I remember the time a few years back that you got all rambly and touchy-feely on us and Artie asked what you’d touched and you went That’s exactly what you said when we broke you out of prison! and Mrs. Frederic started laughing. Is that what you meant?”

“Yeah, yeah, the time I touched the upholstery brush in the Christmas Aisle and got swept into a bizzaro world where I never existed. Well, Artie was in prison and you were in an institution and James was still crazy pissed at the Regents and Myka was in DC, and the two agents in the Warehouse…were Sandra and Raymond.”

Everyone else at the table glanced around at each other. A moment later, the room was filled with overlapping voices and phrases like ‘sounds about right’ and ‘that explains it’. 

“You will get used to it,” Claudia promised the two confused agents. “I’ll take you on the tour tomorrow and explain things. Normally the procedure is to ease new agents into the world of Endless Wonder And Sometimes Death, but…” she glanced at Artie, who returned her somber look. “To be honest, I’ve seen too many new agents die because they don’t really grasp how dangerous artifacts can be, and how hard it can be to see that danger. I’d rather break your brains a few times first and make sure you’re going out there with your eyes open. And now you’re back to wondering about me because I’m so young. Well…my parents were killed when I was six. A very angry music box possessed my sister and she telekinetically hurled their car into a tree. She had to be put into an induced coma for everyone’s good, and I was raised for the next three years by my brother, who was in college at the time. Then he vanished into an interdimensional rift as a result of failing to recreate human teleportation via an artifact, and I got adopted by Artie. In the course of my time living in this house, I have seen twenty-five agents die and another twelve suffered non-death fates. Pete and Myka have survived as partners longer than any other pair I’ve seen.”

In quiet horror, Steve blurted, “She’s telling the truth.”

The only three who didn’t flinch, cringe, or blanch at that were Claudia, Leena, and Artie.

Myka leaned over to hug the somber man. “No wonder you didn’t open up to us,” she said sadly. “Why bother explaining everything and getting attached when we’re just going to die in six months?”

 “And now,” James said as Myka sat back up, “you know why I was so intent on…changing the way things are done.”

Pete nodded grimly. “Yeah. Not a good track record. Good thing Claudia’s in charge now.”

“I’m working on taking out as much red tape as possible,” she said cheerfully, serving herself more potatoes. “In this line of work, red tape can get you killed and I’d rather you not be killed. I’m also working on getting our post office back. Ideally,” she added as the table erupted into cheering, “in the actual post office building, but I make no promises.”

“Brenda will be happy,” Pete said.

Myka grinned at him. “She might even forgive us for being IRS agents.”

Steve nearly choked on his drink. “We’re what?”

“Our cover is that we’re IRS agents,” said Artie, “and that the Warehouse is where all the tax returns in the country are stored.”

Raymond laughed. “That’s actually a good cover.”

“Yeah, but it means the people of Univille aren’t very fond of us. Although,” Artie added thoughtfully, “they’ve warned up to me a lot since I brought Claudia here.”

Face in his hands, Pete groaned.