stuck in the middle -- open

[Micheal Alpotere]

"Any questions?" Micheal smiled as he turned from the white board in the conference room to face the rest of his team. He had been working on some statistics on how much the mutation from radiation would affect human's physical strength. He had explained, with many notes and lots of equations and writing, that depending on what sort of radioactive substance had mutated the humans genes and what the genes looked like to begin with, there would most likely be the same result since most humans gene were roughly the same or at least the genes that the radioactivity affected.

he looked around the room and found most of his co-workers understood but there were a few who had very apparently gotten lost or very uninterested, which made him more than a little irked. He had been working on these statistics for the last week - considering his I.Q. and how long it normally took him to do things like this that was a long time - and he had been proud of his results. Micheal sighed. "Alright. No questions? Then I guess you guys just get back to your offices. Those papers wont sort themselves." He tried to joke but most of them seemed so uninterested it made him want to cry.

They slowly left the room and Micheal to clean up his notes and prepare the room for whoever needed it to present next. He wiped the white board clean of his messy equations and solutions and then sat down to gather up his notes. He put them all neatly into his binder than he carried practically his life in and closed it sighing softly once more.

Micheal put his head down ontop of his arms, resting on his binder and closed his eyes. He had been more than a little tired lately and he knew it was because he had been so fervently working on this set of results. That seemed to be all his life revolved around. Computing out the latest results. Wasn't there something more he had to live for? There had to be. He couldn't have just been put on this earth to go through it only as a human calculator. Immediately his mind drifted to the thought of love and how it was rather difficult to find such a thing at his age, under his conditions, and in his department. Unfortunately, it just wasn't convenient and as much as he disliked it, unless some miraculously cute, understanding, adorable boy walked into the room he was going to have to stay unhappy until such a thing did happen.

"Fat chance that is, Mikey boy." He grumbled to himself, still resting his head on his arms on the binder on the table.

[Mia Teeger]

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I regarded the world as such a sad sight,
Until I viewed it in black and white

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Work was so done for the day, and Mia happily skipped down the halls, a dumb smile placed on her face. Nothing had got done today, no new cure for a deadly poison, and she didn't even get much information on one she was studying. Yeah, a lot of the other Techies weren't happy with her, but she had a fun day today. She got into this signing contestant with a Techie she had worked with. Mia didn't happen to win it unfortunately, nope her friend did. Mia had a great day, and she hadn't got into any accident either. Two good things in one, she though she was on a streak.

She had slowed down as a crowd of people walked past her. They all seemed to have something else on her mind, and barely noticed the small girl as she tried to weave her way through the crowd. She got pushed around a bit, she wasn't the tallest of people, but manged to catch herself. It was when everyone had cleared out and Mia went back to skipping that someone ran into her. A new Intel it seemed like, because he ran down the hall, carrying a bunch of papers in his hand. He swiftly knocked into the red haired girl, and she went tumbling past an open door.

This time she didn't catch herself, and the little, rude boy who knocked her over kept running. She collided was some chairs and a table, and everything landed in a mess on the ground. "Oh, that stupid little boy." he grumbled out loud to herself as she jolted up. she glared at the door, and the empty hallway, mumbling rude remarks to herself. She was about to walk out the door and give him a piece of her mind. "Too late." she sighed to herself turning around to face the room she had tumbled into. "It was a good thing this place was so empty." she joked to herself as she glanced around. that was when her she saw the white haired boy she knew so much. "Mikey!" she squealed happily, totally forgetting about the mess on the ground, and running up to embrace him in a bear hug.

[Arthur Fox]

Arthur was quietly cleaning up his things after the meeting. Once again, he had gotten lost but in a fascinating way. Micheal was always interesting to listen to when he was going on about some new results that he had calculated. When he looked up, he saw that Micheal had put his head down on top of his binder. He had to admit, the kid was frankly adorable and intelligent, which were two exceedingly dangerous elements. He smiled and walked over to Micheal and ruffled the boys hair. "Good job today, kiddo." Arthur smiled. "Keep up the good work, kay? I can't wait to see what you come up with next." It was his job as an agent of Intel to cheer up the boy. So young but so brilliant.

When he heard a squeal, Arthur jumped and tripped over a chair. "ACK!" How he managed to not hit his head, he wasn't sure but he was sure glad. He sat up, rubbing his back side. "Jeez...that hurt!" He stood up with his binder of notes and doodles in hand. With that he gently tapped Mia on the head with it. "Oye, short stuff. Careful who you knock over." He chuckled. "One of these days one of you is going to put me in a cast of some sort," he joked with a smile.

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[Valerian Wolfstadt]

When the chair clattered to the floor, Valerian jolted to his feet and scanned the room as he pushed his glasses back up from where they'd slipped down his nose. He hadn't fallen asleep; of course he hadn't, that was unprofessional and immature, especially for an agent of OS. He grit his teeth as his survey found the room almost empty, and he glanced up at the clock on the wall in front only to find that he couldn't see it from where he was sitting.

Oh, that's right, he'd fallen asleep because he wasn't able to see the board from where he was sitting, that despite how closely he pressed his glasses to his face the numbers the presenter (Michael, if he recalled correctly) melded together into an unrecognizable blur. He hadn't gotten much sleep lately, but then again, neither had any of them, but even that wasn't an excuse for falling asleep in the middle of a presentation.

"Verdammt," He muttered under his breath as he saw how disappointed Michael seemed to be. He said again, "Verdammt," emphasis on the second syllable.

Valerian glanced at his notes and saw what could have been a string of numbers that scrawled their way across and off the page. He checked the desk next to his notebook and noticed a line of indecipherable graphite scribbled into the surface. As surreptitiously as he could, Valerian licked his thumb and wiped it over the pencil marks, cleaning the table but leaving a rather nasty black smudge on his thumb. He rubbed it against his pants, gathered his notes, and headed to the front.

"One of these days one of you is going to put me in a cast of some sort," He managed to catch his Intel coworker saying.

"Arthur," Valerian acknowledged him with a small nod of the head.

He looked over to Michael, possibly to apologize for his rude behaviour, but the boy was preoccupied with being caught in a bear hug, so he turned his attention back to Arthur.

"Are you well?" He asked, the faintest hint of a "v' sound on the beginning of the last word. "Quite a tumble you took there."

[Micheal Alpotere]

First it was a pat and a ruffle on the head. Micheal disliked it when people messed up his hair but not enough for him to throw a hissy fit like some high-maintenance snob. It wasn't like him to be snippy. And plus, he really didn't have time to before Mia came bursting through the door, barreling Arthur down and embracing Micheal in a large, inescapable yet extremely uplifting bear hug. Mia always made him feel better. "Hey there girlie." Mikey smiled and hugged his best friend back, feeling a good warmth wash away whatever little deflation and depression that had filled him.

He pulled himself from Mia's embrace finally and linked his arm through hers. It was a good thing that Micheal wasn't too much taller than Mia because otherwise it would have been a little difficult. Micheal pushed the random thought from his mind and started walking over to Arthur and Valerian, both of whom had commended him but he had noticed that they hadn't been really paying attention. Or at least it didn't seem to him that they had been.

"Thanks you guys, by the way." Micheal smiled sweetly at the two men after deciding on impulse that as long as they knew it later, it didn't matter if they had paid attention to the presentation. "How has everyone been?" He asked, looking around. Micheal wasn't the best for easing into casual conversations but he was damn cute when he was random.

[Mia Teeger]

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I regarded the world as such a sad sight,
Until I viewed it in black and white

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She hadn't heard anything, or saw anyone when she first say Mikey. Maybe then she wouldn't have pushed Arthur to the ground, causing quite a fool of herself. When she realized what she had done, she frowned, and would have been fussing over him, if she hadn't already given Mikey a big bear hug. She went along with linking arms, and followed in pace with Mikey. "I am soooo sorry Arthur." she said, frowning slightly, and twisting a long strand of her red hair. "The whole cast thing was planned for tomorrow." she added with her big, goofy grin. "And Mister, if you got some back bone this wouldn't be a problem." she added her two cents in, and stuck out her tongue playfully.

"But I have been great Mikey." she told him, nodding a welcome to Valerian. Man, she really did screw up today didn't she. Not only did she knock over Arthur, she tripped of chairs in front of three different people. Maybe Mikey wasn't that bad to screw up in front of, and Arthur would hold it against her as a older brother sort of deal, but what about the other dude. The red head's thought whizzed around dramatically, playing different scenarios in her head that all ended up with her being laughed at. "I got some new poisons to look into. Haven't seen any before, very interesting." she babbled, glancing up at the ceiling ever so often to think of the poisons she had come across.