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 Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 6:13 pm
Two trainees. Two. One of which was already decidedly Lex, meaning she only really got one choice. Ami squinted at the trainee roster for the eighty thousandth time. There were quite a few good candidates, but picking only one? ******** occurred to her that she'd have to be smart about all this. Perhaps she could get a few favors. No, wait. Perhaps she could get work for free.
Feng knew Chinese, didn't he?
An evil idea formed.
---
A few hours later and her plan developed, Ami headed towards the dorms. Actually, towards her old dorm even. As she walked past it, she noted that nobody had yet moved into it. Well good. She felt a tad uncomfortable knowing someone could start living there. Even though she was all moved out, it was still hers.
There came a knock on Feng's door. Poor, poor Feng.
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:17 pm
The thing about being alone in his dorm was that Feng could be comfortable.
Comfortable Feng was an embarrassment to God and his country.
When he answered the knock at his door he was in his off-duty clothes; a ratty old AC/DC tee and lame a** cargo pants, his feet bare and toes wiggling against the floor. There was a pen stuck behind his ear, his hair was pushed back out of his face in an unflattering fashion, and his cheeks were puffed out with the handful of granola he'd stuffed in his mouth before he'd gone to answer. He may have resembled a hobo hamster.
He nearly spit out all of the granola at his visitor when he realized just who he was looking at. As it was, he swallowed hard and coughed as he choked. "What are you doing here I haven't even done anything to you lately!" There was some flailing and indecision - was it inappropriate to slam the door on a superior?
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:21 pm
If Feng could've looked uglier, Ami would've given up on humanity altogether. It was hideous, how teenage and disgusting he was when he was clearly a grown man. This was why she would never be friends with him.
She could use him though. Using and befriending were two completely different things. "Follow me." She clearly expected him to follow as she walked away. If he didn't, there would most likely be hell to pay.
Of course, where she was going was probably hell too. Feng didn't know that though.
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:35 pm
"Wha-"
That was her back. She was walking away. Jesus christ what the hell was he supposed to do? He was off duty! Hence the clothes! He should just close the door.
"Ami! Ami where are you going?" If he sounded a little desperate and stressed, it was only because he realized closing the door would surely result in another beating. Groaning in frustration he shoved his feet into the combat boots by his door and tripped down the hallway after her. Movies made hopping while tying your shoe look way easier than it actually was, because the real result was so much noise an elephant would have been annoyed.
"Seriously Ami what are we doing?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:37 pm
"You are doing something. Not me. Just shut up until we get there, you're noisy enough without using your voice."
That was all the explanation she gave him until they got to the library.
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:45 pm
... Well then. He scrunched up his nose and tried to walk by her quietly, but mostly he just clomped in his big boots. It was hard to move that much mass quietly. When they got to the library he just looked around in confusion.
"I'm not even sure I knew we had a library," he whispered loudly.
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 9:10 pm
Ami could've slapped him for that comment, but that wouldn't do. she needed his help, and scaring him off wouldn't do.
"You don't need to whisper," she said, rolling her eyes. Out of her pocket she conjured a key ring and stuck one of them in the door. The library was normally locked at this hour, but she didn't have "hours" anymore. Kekeke.
Walking into the library, she continued to offer him no explanation. Brusque steps moved her and the boy a spot near a window, right next to a shelf filled with scrolls. Without a word, she pulled three off the shelf, barely even looking to see what they were. They had great imagery painted on them, but it was the text she was concerned with. "You read Chinese, correct? How many can you have translated by morning?"
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Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 2:24 pm
Feng's face screwed up in confusion. "Of course I need to whisper, it's a library. You whisper in libraries." Uh, duh.
He was jut lucky she was so petite and he was so tall, because it made it easier to match his stride to her quick steps. Otherwise he might be tripping behind her like a moron.
... Who was he kidding? He was still tripping behind her like a moron.
He stared, wide-eyed, at the scrolls. "Uh, yeah? It depends on how old they are, or how long, I guess. Probably two or three. Maybe more if they're short. Wait," he paused, rewound the question, "Tomorrow morning? You want me to translate tonight? Like, tonight tonight?"
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Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:01 pm
Ami rolled her eyes. "You don't have to whisper when we're the only ones in here and the only ones that will be here," she explained flatly. Her message was quite clear. Feng would be alone. Absolutely alone. All night.
When Feng began fumbling his words, Ami gave him a stare. She could either get mad and crack down ... orrrrrr ........
"If that's not too much ... I'm sorry I didn't mean to impose, I just thought- with how smart you are you could do- oh I don't know- four or five tonight." A complete expression change grew on Ami's face, eyes growing dopey, batting her eyelashes slowly. She inched closer. "I could ... help you know."
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Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:53 am
"Four or fi-" He choked a little on the number. Translation wasn't easy - English was definitely his first language, and there were more Chinese dialects than he really cared to count. Five huge scrolls was nothing to shrug at.
He sputtered as she grew closer and tried, desperately, to regain control of this conversation. He didn't know that he could get anything done with her in the same room, let alone trying to help (he had vague suspicions that her help would be a physically painful process for him), but... but if he did this, she might ease up a little.
A world where Ami didn't hate him was like... heaven, or valhalla, or something.
"I could... probably do five? But on my own! I can't really do much with someone hanging over my shoulder..." He rubbed his neck, already calculating approximately how much coffee and tea he'd need for tonight. It was going to be a long one. "Which ones do you need done first?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 12:53 pm
As soon as Feng agreed, Ami leaned back (might've even taken a step back, to prevent Feng's cooties from crossing over) and dropping the innocent look from her face. This wasn't that heaven Feng. Her expression was just as cross as ever, and the emotional manipulation was done.
"Any of the ones on this shelf," she said, pointing to one of the shelves. It was covered in everything from stone tablets to full fledged books. "I'll see you at eleven sharp. Goodbye Feng~"
With that, Ami was gone.
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Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 4:02 pm
Feng eyed the shelf Ami indicated, reaching out to run his fingers along one of the stone tablets. It would be a lot easier to go from the most recent piece first, but he had no idea which that would be. He turned to ask Ami if there was some sort of system to them - libraries were all about systems right? - but she was gone.
Great.
He turned back to the shelf and thumbed through the less worn books, pulling a few smaller ones out. Five was five, right? Didn't matter the size, as long as he was getting five translated. Ami would still be happy.
Hopefully.
God, he really, really hoped. He couldn't handle Ami always being around to radiate hatred at him like some dragon of hair-touching-hating rage. The horror.
He left the books on a table nearby and made a few quick trips for coffee and materials from the kitchen and his room, being sure to grab extra pens and more paper than he could ever imagine using. Translations would probably take a lot of space. And time. Ami had said eleven, right? That over half a day. Five tomes, half a day, plenty of paper. He could do this.
***
He definitely couldn't do this.
It had been a couple hours and he was halfway through the first book. His hair was a mess because he'd knotted his fingers into it in the first hour, he'd completely chewed through a pen cap, which was just immature and probably unsanitary, and he'd thrown out two or three pages already.
Just often enough to be completely aggravating Feng would realize he'd been incorrectly translating the meaning of a character. Usually it accompanied realizing the sentence he was writing made absolutely no sense, and that the real meaning of the character completely changed the contents of the previous paragraph or two. Which mean rewriting it. Augh.
He tipped a cup to his mouth, flicking his tongue at the dry lip of the mug and making a dissatisfied noise when he realized it was empty. That was... he didn't know how many cups of coffee. He should probably lay off.
You should just translate this for me. That would really rest my nerves.
You make it sound like labor.
That was unhelpful. And really true. Feng groaned and spun out of his chair to go make some tea and reboot his brain before he got back to work.
***
The next few hours brought a pattern. He'd drink some coffee, get through as much translating as he could, and then when he got to wound up and stressed out over the monotony of it all, lamenting over how Ami would probably make good use of him as a coat or a handbag, Shang would coax him into a cup of tea and his brain would get a minute or five to reboot.
He got through three of the five books by some time late in the night. With that brought the relief of knowing he was more than halfway finished. The end was in sight.
He found that it was easier to suffer through the task if he absorbed some of the information he was writing down. There were small passages about ancient runic weapons, fear observations, and battles. Little of it was information that hadn't already been improved upon in more recent generations of hunters, but it was all still interesting enough to keep off the edge of insanity.
***
He fell asleep at some point. Somewhere after the sun peeking over the horizon (though Feng only knew when this was because he had an alarm for it on his phone - the sun was hard to see past a room full of dusty old books) and finally finishing the fifth tome. He had been a mass of jittery stress and exhaustion.
Now he was laid out over his final sheet of paper, surrounded by neat stacks of translations topped with their respective tomes to keep them organized. There was one pen behind his ear and another woven through his fingers, pressed to his cheek and leaving a black smudge. His face was buried in the crook of his arm until all you could see was the hedgehog spikes of black hair pointing in every direction.
His last cup of coffee had long since gone cold, and it was probably only sheer dumb luck that kept him from flailing in his sleep and knocking it all over his entire night of work.
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Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:19 pm
Eleven o' clock. If the death march could've played as Ami slowly walked into the library, it would've blasted at unbearable volumes. It could've easily been Feng's execution day.
What she found had her somewhat surprised. Feng, flopped over the table like the disgusting buffoon he was. There were only a few books around him, but papers and pens, cups everywhere.
Ami thought of slamming a book on the table or maybe even just shoving him off, but that wouldn't be ladylike, nor attractive. Instead she settled on summoning Junpei and lightly prodding Feng's side with it. Like poking a corpse with a stick.
< Ami! That could hurt him. >
Oh please.
< AMI. >
A sigh. "Sleeping on the job, Mr. Wu?"
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:44 am
Feng grunted, shifting away from the prodding and trying to push his face farther into his arm so he could continue sleeping. The prodding had other ideas. Finally he cracked his eyes open and glared blearily up at his attacker. Didn't she know he'd had like two hours of sleep, tops? He had to get as much in as possible before Ami showed up.
...
Feng froze, his entire body going tense, and then he flailed backwards, narrowly missing his coffee mug. "Oh my god, no, not sleeping on the job, no. I just finished, I swear, and then I... fell... asleep?"
That probably constituted sleeping on the job, actually. He grimaced. Not a whole lot he could do about it now. Instead, he rubbed at his eyes and tried to surreptitiously stretch out his shoulders. "I got five done. Each stack is a different book. I can digitize them later if you need me to?" She had to be happy with that. He did good! He did exactly what she asked!
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Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 7:57 pm
Ami raised an eyebrow. "No. I have to review them before they get even close to the computer, lest you or-" Madeline, "Someone else thinks it funny to include something innappropriate for a public document."
A hand went to pick up the documents, thumbing through the pages quickly. Nothing seemed too out of place. Was Ami impressed? It didn't show.
"You're slightly less incompetent than I thought," Ami mused, beginning to read the first page. "How would you like to receive compensation?"
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