Life as a New Hire Ch. 08

"You have to understand you are not my number one girl, Buffy," I told her. Oh, look. She was about to treat my weenie like silly putty.

"I'm his number one girl," Aya declared proudly. My penis was saved.

"As long as I'm the first one he sleeps with," Buffy asserted.

"Too late," Aya said before I could find a more political way to approach the crisis.

"You sleep with Cáel?" Daphne teased.

"Yes, of course I do," Aya sighed in exasperation. "Why do all the girls keep asking me that? Where else would I sleep, but with Cáel?"

"Is he a wonderful and considerate bed-buddy?" Daphne teased. Ow - cock - Buffy's hands.

"Best Daddy ever," Aya beamed.

"I go to sleep in his arms to the sound of his breathing," Aya got dreamy again, damn her. "If I have a bad dream, all I have to do is touch his hand and he wraps it around me. He keeps me safe and I know he'll never let anything bad happen to me." That statement stumped all three women listening.

Buffy could have had a father. Whatever relationship they may have had was severed now. Daphne and Katrina didn't even have that. Mothering an Amazon was tough work. It required a callousness not normally associated with maternal instincts. Every Amazon had to be a killer - it was their cultural imperative.

I doubted Daphne had the opportunity to continue her genetic legacy yet. Katrina would never have the chance, being sterile. What Aya was describing was more associated with a three year old than a girl of nine. A few Amazon women scorned this as weakness. Daphne and Katrina didn't. It was almost a wistful jealousy.

"Where did you learn to take care of little girls?" Daphne inquired softly.

"What do you mean?" I kept my attention on Buffy.

"Aya, Silly," Daphne grinned.

"That's your mistake," I sighed happily. Buffy smelled good. "Aya is both a child and my comrade-in-arms."

"I can never let her down because she'd never let me down," I added.

"She can't save you if you get in trouble," Daphne said.

"That's your problem," I looked to Daphne. "I don't expect her to save me. If all you look for is results, you'll always get the same results." Not true, but what the fuck.

"To me, it is the effort that matters. Only through effort to we excel," I winked to Aya. "And why does Aya excel?"

"Because Aya is a winner," she glowed.

"Repeating that phrase won't feed you in the wild, or craft you a weapon," Katrina reminded her.

"Aunt Katrina, everyone is afraid I will fail," Aya's tiny body became taut as a bowstring. "Cáel waits for me to succeed. I'm so afraid of letting everyone down, except with him. When I'm with Cáel, I feel the stillness you and the others tell me about. The fear goes away and I feel right and good."

"Aya, one day you may have to kill Cáel," Katrina studied her niece. Aya looked at me and wept silently.

"He's died for me twice already," Aya choked back her sob. "He'd do it again to protect me."

"Eat up," Katrina ordered. That ended the discussion. As they were leaving, I noticed Daphne had cried a bit as well.

Nikita showed up at 2 pm, in uniform, with a senior female co-worker/training officer. I imagine the novelty for the other woman of going into a skyscraper like this allowed this unfortunate event to happen to me.

"Nikita!" Aya squealed. She stayed at her station - good for her.

"Hey Aya," Nikita smiled at my cohort. I got the dark, grumpy frown.

"What are you doing - here?" she sizzled. "And, what are you doing making Aya do work? There are Child Labor Laws you know."

"Its National Take A Death Dwarf to Work Day," I informed her. "Hello," I addressed the partner.

"Officer Skylar Montero," she replied with a more positive attitude.

"Odette," Nikita bit off the name, "told us you had a three-way Sunday night." Thanks Odette.

"That's not really fair," I spread my arms out in a placating gesture. "There were five of us, but we tag-teamed in and out so there were only three on the bed at one time."

"I see why she wants to shoot you," Skylar chuckled.

"Don't shoot Cáel, Nikita," Aya piped up. "He loves you."

"He loves a bunch of women," Nikita growled.

"That's not so," Aya persisted. "He has sex with a whole bunch of women. He loves you enough to not have sex and that makes you special."

"That makes her unique," Katrina muttered.

"It makes him bizarre," Skylar agreed.

"Cáel, am I the only girl you are seeing who you are not having sex with?" Nikita sighed.

"Do you mean didn't intend to have sex with, or was intending to have sex with but was interrupted?" I inquired.

"Don't make me pistol-whip you into obedience," Nikita menaced.

"It is not as easy as you would believe," I groaned.

"That's true," Aya added. "Elsa beat him into unconsciousness Monday afternoon and he didn't learn a damn thing." Aya was so proud of me...for getting my ass beat. This happens more than you would believe.

"Elsa? That wacko at the door Saturday night?" Nikita gasped with disbelief. "Why did you let her get close to you?"

"She came at me in the gym while I was on the sparing mat with a...lady I met," I told her.

"Dude, do you ever rest?" Skylar chuckled.

"We were practicing Brazilian jujutsu," I evaded. "There was suddenly an issue and that led to Elsa coming at me."

"The lady you met," Nikita fumed. "She was your date, right? The one you were interrupted from fu - having sex with." The 'fuck' was cut off for Aya's sake.

"Yes - yes she was," I confessed.

"Aya, come here," Katrina summoned her diminutive kin.

"How badly did the psycho hurt you?" Nikita sighed. No good answer, so I went for the truth.

"She beat me with a spear," I informed her. "The only places she spared were my face and testicles."

Nikita, trusting me as fully as she did, opened my shirt. Both she and her partner gasped.

"How is this not a crime?" Skylar remarked.

"It was a training exercise," I joked. They weren't laughing. "Look at it this way; I will never press charges and no one will bear witness to the beating - end of story."

"Damn it," Nikita pulled me tight, "what are you going to do?"

"What do you think?" I grinned. "I'm going to make Elsa pay."

"You can't take the law into your own hands," Skylar inserted.

"This is not about a beating, or revenge. This is a Human Resources complaint," I reasoned.

"At Havenstone, this is the process we all agree to. Elsa disagreed with how I mishandled a resources issue. She came at me and I lost," I explained.

"If she had a spear, what did you have?" Skylar asked.

"I didn't get a weapon," I replied. "That and my bad leg are my reason for 'revisiting' the dispute."

"What lethal weapon to you plan to use?" Nikita mumbled.

"The New Jersey," I teased her. Skylar snorted. Katrina opened a drawer.

"Take these to the nice policewomen," Katrina handed two Nerf guns to Aya. Aya gave me an apologetic look as she dispensed the pain.

"What are these...," Skylar got out before Nikita started unloading into me - in the stomach.

"If you are not going to use yours, give it to me," Nikita reached out to Skylar.

"You know that female violence against men is a rising epidemic in this country," I pointed out.

"We can classify this as police brutality then," Skylar smirked and fired off her six as well.

"Do you really pay this monkey a quarter million to do this?" Skylar asked Katrina.

"No," Katrina said with iron-clad certainty, "we pay him to save the world." Wow.

"How do you see that?" Nikita grumbled.

"Do you know how many armed law enforcement agents have gotten past the front desk - ever?" Katrina began.

"I'll make it easy on you - none," Katrina gazed at the two outsiders. Funny, I was thinking of myself as a member of Havenstone. "Do you know the last time I was in the same room as a person with a firearm who did not either work for me, or with me? It has never happened. This has occurred now because of him and 'no', I am not having any level of intercourse with Cáel."

"What would you do if I arrested you right now?" Nikita challenged.

"For starters, you wouldn't get off the floor. Your communications would be jammed, all doors locked and elevators kept at their current floor. You would not be negotiated with. Your surrender would not be considered. A military force would examine the scenario and then neutralize you," Katrina recited in a bored manner.

"Murder us?" Skylar gawked. "What about the witnesses?"

"What witnesses? Two Havenstone personnel who can pass for you will dress in the appropriate uniforms then drive your car to a distant location. Your dead bodies will be delivered by a different route, the patrol car burned and all evidence eradicated," Katrina droned on.

"The only person who might testify is Cáel, but he won't do it because it will solve nothing. You two will still be dead, no one worthwhile will believe him, and it will result in his eventual relocation. More to the point, his personal sense of loyalty won't allow him to betray me," Katrina was finishing. "None of that will happen though because Cáel is saving the World."

By the flabbergasted expressions on the two cops' faces was pretty much what I expected. Sure, I had told Nikita I worked for bad people, but she was thinking 'gun runners', embezzling from government contracts, or the illegal dumping of toxic waste. Sure, they might beat a nosy reporter up and even kill someone who couldn't take the message.

Katrina was a totally different creature than what she had imagined. Katrina had NO respect for the law and order Nikita and Skylar represented. Of greater importance, she had the ironclad belief that she didn't need to respect them, or their uniforms. This was movie-CIA spooky. The specter of tens of thousands of Havenstone employees on seven continents came rushing in.

"Cáel, if Elsa hadn't been sure I would have opened fire, would she have forced the door Saturday night?" Nikita whispered.

"Without a doubt," both Aya and I confirmed.

"Cáel, do you want to get out of here?" Nikita offered. "Right now, with us?"

"Where I come from, you don't leave others to pay for your mistakes," I explained. "I have to see this through, or one Angel, one hellspawn and a truckload of depraved souls end up not doing so good."

"This is not the time to joke," Nikita hissed.

"I'm not, Nikita. There are people out there putting their lives on the line so that I can keep mine," I repeated Katrina's words. "It would be the height of ingratitude to leave before I see how things turn out." Nikita didn't know what to make of that.

"We need to leave," Skylar pulled on her partner's sleeve.

Nikita gave me a quick hug before they left. Skylar warily scanned her environment until they stepped into the elevator and the doors shut.