Versus Asque

It's a draft! More specific detail needs to go into this, methinks . . .

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It's not that I'm a mean person, Shin'nen told herself as the first of the toads disappeared into Asque's desk drawer. I'm totally not. It's entirely his fault I'm having to resort to this. In fact, before working with Asque she'd only been party to three practical jokes, two of which had been full-class efforts against a particularily incompetent high school choral instructor, so she considered her work quite admirable, for an amateur.

There were six toads, and it had taken her all morning to catch them, even after she'd enlisted the help of two second graders determined to prove they weren't afraid of such things. She'd have preferred frogs--toads were far too generic--but hadn't quite felt like sloughing around in the wetter areas. Newts would have been ideal--she could give them little signs with Monty Python quotes--but that was most certainly out of the question. Now, in the heat of summer, toads were everywhere, so she was willing to make due.

Week two of the Get Asque to React plot was progressing . . . well, rather terribly, Shin'nen had to admit. She could only chalk it up to her own inexperiences; at least, she could only let herself chalk it up to that. If the actual truth was that the plot itself was flawed, she didn't want to hear it--at least until she'd come up with a better plan.

It wasn't as though there was that much else to do, after all. It had been another of those slow months at the office, which meant there were useful things to do about a tenth of the time and nothing to do but read romance novels and tax returns besides. (Shin'nen had immediately decided that if she ever caught Asque reading romance novels--or herself willingly reading tax returns--she'd consider herself defeated.) It had been when she'd noticed herself considering enrolling in an online university that she realized something had to be done. And since, as she was sure Asque would agree, her boredom was all her coworker's fault, it was only fair that he be the subject of her new hobby.

So far, of course, all her pranks had fallen utterly flat. It wasn't so much that they'd all failed to work, exactly--gluing his pens to the desk during lunch hour had been a particular favorite of her--but none gained any sort of reaction beyond mild annoyance at the inconvenience. Yesterday's crickets had ended up in her jacket by the time they finished for the day, which she would have considered a victory if Asque hadn't ignored their presense altogether. The man, Shin'nen was beginning to believe, was a robot--only less prone to hilarious misinterpretations and completely impossible to reprogram. If the toads didn't work, she was considering just dumping a bucket of water on his head.


Except, she admitted, that wouldn't be nearly as fun. The last of the frogs vanished between a two folders labeled "S-Sj" and "Sk-T", and she slid the drawer shut, scampering to her own desk just as Asque returned in all his sweater-vested glory. Show time.