Chapter Text
On Interstate 76, somewhere between Toledo and Valparaiso, Indiana
Drive time
Despite any and all efforts to air it out, to drive with the windows down or bathe the interior in Febreeze and Lysol, the SmartCar had yet to lose the faint and stubborn odor of fish. That’s the last time I let the Boss use my car to transport a flying pike, thought Wendy Watson for neither the first nor last time.
She didn’t want to be on this trip. She didn’t want to be driving to and through and past Chicago; she didn’t want to be away from her illegal sublet loft or her friends for an indeterminate number of days; she didn’t think she needed to be spending this much quality “vacation-like time” with her boss, and she most certainly did not want to be scoping out potential threats to the highly secretive and incredibly elusive backing organization that fronted the Middleman Operation. As far as she was concerned, Wendy Watson, the Boss, and his thorny robotic assistant Ida were squarely and comfortably set up in middle America, and should stay that way: bigger heroes were required for bigger cities, and despite the absolute authority Wendy felt comfortable wielding on any given day—supplemented with her kick-ass lessons in kicking ass, provided by Sensei Ping, and the serious hardware she was packin', provided by the aforementioned elusive backing organization that fronted the Middleman Operation, Wendy did not feel like taking on a big city's-worth of Big and Bad.
Bwub-bwub went the Middlewatch, and Wendy took one hand off the steering wheel to press the ‘answer’ button. Instantly the Boss’ face filled the watch’s face, although from a slightly stranger angle than normal: the Boss was driving separately on this trip. No doubt Wendy was looking at his Howdy-Doody-clean visage from somewhere around ten-and-two.
“How’s the open road treating you, Dubbie?” the Middleman asked cheerfully.
“Just fine, Boss. In fact, exactly the same as the forty-two other times you’ve called to ask how I’m doing.”
“Safety first, Dubbie! While I certainly don’t approve of talking on the phone while driving, the Middlewatch qualifies as a hands-free device, so I don’t regret checking up on you. We can’t have either of us falling asleep at the wheel. This is an important task we’ve been given to undertake and wrapping either of the Middlemobiles around a tree or a lamppost because one or the other of us dozed off would put this mission in quite a pickle.”
“Don’t worry about me, Boss. Even if Sensei Ping hadn’t taught me the eighty-five meditations on the lotus blossom to keep my body focused and my mind alert, my dad taught me a whole bunch of inappropriate songs he used to sing to himself on long flights to keep himself awake.”
“Sensei Ping taught you the eighty-five lotus blossoms meditations to keep the body focused and the mind alert?” the Boss sounded both surprised and pleased. “He waited a year into my training to gift me with that knowledge!”
“What can I say, Boss? I guess I’m a charmer.”
“He was probably getting a contact high from being too long in the same room with you,” a voice sniped from outside the view screen, and Wendy made a face. Ida would be sitting next to the Boss, plugged into the portable HADAR they were hauling in the backseat of his Middlemobile.
“Have you done nothing but think up pot-smoking jokes for the duration of this trip, Ida?” Wendy snapped.
“Getting cranky, honey-buns? Is the buzz wearing off, or are you just getting the munchies somethin’ fierce?”
“Wendy, Ida has some updated information for us regarding the person or persons with whom we must make contact,” the Middleman broke in, as he usually did when Wendy and Ida started snarking at each other. “We should pull off at the next available exit to confer face-to-face. Besides, I need gas.”
“Again?” Wendy and Ida chimed together, and Wendy grinned. Her Middlemobile, a Smart Car, got 38 miles to the gallon, but her Boss’ ’78 Charger could only go a few hundred miles without needing to suck down some more petroleum.
“Frequent stops on cross-country road trips allow us to stretch our legs, keep us from getting hypnotized by the monotony of the roadway, and give us opportunities to see areas of America we might otherwise miss had we taken the Middlejet or commercial air transportation,” the Boss said, as always, sounding like he was quoting from some manual or brochure. Which wasn’t entirely impossible, Wendy reflected: a former Navy Seal with a photographic memory, she wouldn’t put memorized recitation above one of her Boss’ resume-worthy applicable skills.
“There’s a filling station and a truck stop at the next exit, eight-point-one-five-two miles ahead,” Ida announced, and this time there was no sarcasm, snark, rudeness, or snippiness in her voice—by which Wendy could tell she was in HADAR-search mode, if only for the few seconds it would take to find out whatever she needed to know. HADAR was like Google, only on steroids; like Yahoo, only on speed, and like Lexus-Nexus, only much, much friendlier, even with Ida at the helm. And that was saying something.
“Filling station and truck stop, got it,” Wendy said, eyeing the upcoming road sign that said basically the same thing. Ah, technology.
“And you might want to take that opportunity to change into uniform, Dubbie,” the Boss put in, changing lanes behind her so that she could pull into the right lane in front of him. They were driving caravan-style, as the Middleman called it, which was kind of a reverse following technique that made it very easy for Wendy to change lanes but impossible to drive faster than nine miles an hour over the speed limit—the fastest the Boss would go. The reminder about the uniform also put Wendy back into the funk she’d been driving in for most of the day: the funk of a child who knows that she has to sit still and b-e-h-a-v-e at Grandma's house, lest she upset a mothball-smelling old woman; the funk of a pet who doesn’t want to let the little kids from down the street pull her ears, tail and fur, but must, lest the neighbors think her a hypertense guard dog; the funk of, well, an entry-level employee whose boss hasn’t said thing one about overtime, hazard pay, travel reimbursement, or even tracking mileage. Being the Middleman's sidekick certainly paid better now that she'd passed her term of probation and training by Sensei Ping, but Wendy still had the idea that all these Peruvian flying pike, energy-drink-trout zombies, and gemstone-chewing aliens should warrant her a little boost in her paycheck, if nothing else.
“Uniform….got it.” Wendy saw the Middleman’s wide, wholesome, dairy-loving grin before he clicked his own Middlewatch off. She tried, for the eighth or ninth time on this drive, to feel optimistic about operating in a new city, but the good vibes just weren't coming: she had to clamp down, once again, on the feeling she and her boss (and, she sighed inwardly, Ida) were moving in on someone else's territory. She'd caught snatches, once or twice, of Ida or the Boss saying something about “other teams” or other “specialists” who dealt with their kind of trouble, but on a larger scale. The Boss assured her he was the only Middleman, and she the only Middleman-in-training, across the globe, but their kind of trouble (problems across the infra, extra, and juxta-terrestrial spectrum) shouldn't limit itself to mid-sized towns like the one in which Middleman HQ was located. And O2STK couldn't just be keeping its secrets and itself from the Midddleman. They had to be big enough and secret enough to be hiding from other people, too.
At the rest stop, Wendy used the remarkably clean bathroom to change into her Middleman uniform: black pants and tie, white shirt, sensible shoes, and olive-green Eisenhower jacket. She sighed, wishing for something a little more jazzy, but she didn’t think the Middleman would take her seriously if she kept pressing the issue about new uniforms. ..if he took her seriously at all on anything…
“Fatty snacks will slow your metabolism and make you feel sleepy,” the Boss said at her shoulder, as Wendy halfheartedly perused the cheese-product-dusted offerings of the filing station. She glared at him and grabbed a bag of trail mix to go with her giant soda (the trail mix had m&ms in it, so she felt a little better about the raisins and cashews she’d be chewing for the next four hours or so).
“Boss, one thing I’m still hesitant about,” Wendy said as he finished topping off his gas tank. She took a huge gulp of soda while he screwed in the gas cap. “These folks we’re going after, they haven’t actually done anything yet, right? And O2STK isn't actually sure they're going to do anything bad? And yet we're still driving. Why undertake a twelve-hour roadtrip if you don’t know you’re gonna get the payoff at the end?”
“First of all, Dubbie, you must remember Paragraph Number Six, section Tango-Foxtrot Niner of the Middleman Handbook: Orders which proceed direct from the parent organization, hereafter referred to as O2STK, a.k.a the Organization Too Secret To Know, must be followed with all possible and plausible speed and efficiency and take precedence over any and all preceeding orders.” He uncapped his own drink—a large bottle of plain milk—and took a large drink before continuing. “Second, by all reports, these folks are just a fisherman's inch from perpetrating a juxtaterrestrial event.” He looked sidelong at her, and Wendy had to smile: she secretly appreciated his euphemistic turns of phrase, although she'd definitely give him the mickey for them later. They'd come a long way, she reflected, from the spiky science-lab intern who'd snarked at him for ruining her temp gig that had already been ruined by a tentacle monster made of eyes, lips, and buttocks; the Middleman had turned up, blasted the monster, and blown up the lab she’d been working in. Becoming his sidekick had been a rather forced career move.
“So how come we're going after these people, anyways? We're not recruiting for O2STK, are we?”
“From what Ida has told me, Dubbie, these folks are already gainfully employed in a similar manner and are not shortlisted to join our organization.”
” 'A similar manner'? I thought there could only ever be one Middleman. Well, one and an apprentice. Kind of like the Sith, you know? Only less facepaint and anger…and fewer lightsabers,” she added with a kind of sad sigh.
“There’s only ever one Middleman, that's true, but that doesn't mean that we're the only strange-crime-fighting organization that O2STK supports. There was a separate outfit in Chicago for many years; it was shut down in the 1970s because its agents kept having to travel to other locations to put down intraterrestrial events, but there was hardly ever anything large-scale and local.”
“I thought there was tons of crime in Chicago!”
“Sadly, there is, but it’s not the kind we deal with. Most of the time it’s ordinary humans perpetrating ordinary human violence. Very little by way of space aliens, warlocks, or underworld rumblings in Illinois, although they do occasionally have perfectly natural low-grade earthquakes.”
“So why scope out these folks now?”
“The recent events in New Mexico, New York, and elsewhere are making O2STK a little nervous. Alliances need to be reforged, Dubbie, and oaths pledged anew; O2STK is of the opinion that these kinds of events are going to continue to be more frequent and widespread in the coming months, possibly years.” He took another swig of milk, this time pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to carefully dot away the milk mustache that was left behind.
“So you and I aren’t being replaced?”
“Replaced? Great big sea, Dubbie, of course not! Is that what’s had you in such a foul mood since we left HQ?” When Wendy nodded, he only shook his head and smiled a little. “Ah, Dubster, you and I are doing very well in our own sphere of influence. We’re helping out the Organization by doing recon and passing along information. Neither your job nor mine are in danger, not in the least.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Wendy said, and the Middleman could tell she was, in fact, genuinely relieved. He slung a companionable arm around her shoulders. “Besides, I don’t know what I’d tell Lacey if I had to say there was a chance the two of you wouldn’t be randomly running into each other ever again.” She smiled widely as her Boss blushed: his and Lacey’s mutual crush had, once upon a time, been a thorny problem on their missions, but most other times it was just a gentle heartache between the two of them. Wendy still teased him about the crush-that-had-been from time to time. It was a delicate thing; her BFF Lacey had no problem expressing her deep and abiding interest in Wendy's as-yet mysterious and admittedly handsome boss, but he had the tendency to be slightly less open about his feelings and could react to teasing like a twelve-year-old boy sometimes. .
“Come on, meat-sacks, we gotta get back on the road!” Ida yelled from the Boss’ Middlemobile, obviously not caring—or else enjoying—that other patrons of the gas station stared at them. The Middleman coughed and straightened his jacket before chugging the rest of his jug of milk and tossing the bottle in the nearest trash can. Wendy returned to her mini-Middlemobile, started the engine, and pulled out, headed back towards the interstate; the other Middlemobile swung itself in line behind her, and they continued on towards Chicago.
Bwub-bwub went the Middlewatch again, about an hour later. “I’m surprised at you, Dubbie,” the Boss said, after she’d turned down the radio and answered.
“Surprised how? You know I can’t ignore the Middlewatch.” Protocol, protocol, she sighed internally.
“You mentioned lightsabers back at the gas station, but didn’t pursue the subject. I’d have thought you would have assumed we’d have them.”
“Is it safe to assume we have them?” Wendy asked, beginning to get excited. Lightsabers? Really? Sure, they’d used phase-polaron cannons and the HADAR’s shrink-ray on missions before, but real lightsabers?...!
“Always remember, Dubbie, that while a Middleman must expect the worst and perform at his or her best for every mission, they can count on everything else from the Organization.”
“Does that mean we have lightsabers??”
“Eyes on the road, Dubbie.” The Boss smiled his Captain-America grin and clicked off. Wendy groaned.