Compartmentalization (Part 11.5)

11.5 The Sidelines

    “Nouveau Porc is a hell of a city, huh? Even their super markets are huge!”

“I guess.”

Kate couldn’t believe that everybody else just wanted to stay in the hotel. This is the first time most of them have been outside of that desert, and they just want to stay inside? She had to drag Gwen out of the room under the pretense of ‘buying supplies’ for the rest of the group, but really she just wanted to see what the big city was like. It was much cleaner than she thought it would be, but also a lot more empty. Kate wasn’t sure if this was normal, or if maybe the city just didn’t want to stay up late tonight.

“Gwen, look at this!” Kate grabs a box of cereal off the pristine white shelf, “Man, I haven’t seen cereal in YEARS!”

“You can get cereal back home,” Gwen said disinterestedly to Kate.

“Yeah, but not the real stuff. Look, I mean c’mon, it is all branded and everything!!”

“We could buy non-generic stuff back home.”

“Yeah, but its so expensive!

“It’s the same price.

“Well, it isn’t expensive when Maxwell gives you the okay to buy supplies!”

“We shouldn’t...”

“Will you relax? Jeeze.”

    Kate liked to hang out with Gwen. They have a nice balance, but sometimes Kate thinks that maybe if she spent more time with more people, she would feel better about herself. Though it wasn’t as if Kate didn’t like herself, she just thought that her life has been in a bit of a lull lately.

    “Gwen,” Kate begins, “Do you like being an anti-assassin?”
    Gwen was eyeing a can of tomatoes and seemed to be caught off-guard by the question, “What?”
    “I mean, we just go around, stopping crazy people doing crazy things, there is no real ‘career advancement,’ people just hire us until there isn’t a problem. We are just treated like exterminators, but instead of killing the cockroaches, we catch and release, so they can just come back another day. It just all seems so pointless.”
    “I don’t mind,” Gwen said as she put the can of tomatoes in the cart, “it’s not my job to care, so I don’t.”
    “Oh, so you let your job dictate what you should care about?”
    “If I enjoy the job? Sure.”
    Kate couldn’t tell if she admired what she considered as ‘Gwen’s simplicity’ or if she hated it. Maybe, Kate thought, she was jealous. Kate tries her best at the job, but even at her best, she never quite lives up to Gwen’s level. Though she quickly realises that if she had to sacrifice parts of herself to become more like Gwen, she would never do it. Kate enjoys the fight too much to just give up because someone is better than her. One of the maxims Kate lives by is that she doesn’t try hard because she is strong, but because she has so much to improve on.

    “Anyway,” Kate then decides to change the subject, “So you met the big Smoker boss? How is he like?”
    Gwen begins to look up at the walls, “Is there no clock around here?”
    “No, supermarkets never have clocks.”
    “We need to be back by 2400 hours.”
    “Oh come on, when have we had a night out of just us girls!”
    “We sleep in the same trailer.”
    “Sure, but I mean OUT! C’mon, it's only,” Kate checks her cell phone, “11:30, and if the others really need us, they’ll call us.”
    “I need to be back because I need to sleep.”
    “You can be such a spoilsport Gwen.”
    “We have an important job tomorrow.”
    “And we are back-up, Josh and Max have all the positions, we are just there if they mess up.”
    Gwen takes a pause, and stands still. She looks around and says, “...I am not sure about that Josh guy.”
    “Really?” Kate said, surprised, “if you saw him at the last mission, he looks like the real deal to me.”
    “Its not his professionalism I am suspicious about.”
    “I dunno, he seems like too much of a doofus to try anything too fishy.”
    “That could be his whole act.”
    “Oh? He is doing a terrific job then.”
    “Smoker and Josh used to work together and compete with Maxwell. The rivalry was supposedly pretty intense.”
    “Where did you hear that from?”
    “Dan.”
    “You know, Dan never talks to me. He doesn’t hate me or anything, right?
    “No, I don’t think so. I think he is just quiet.”
    “You’re quiet and you talk to me!”
    “That’s because...because you’re my friend.”
    “Jeeze Gwen, don’t you sound so genuine! You are already making me awkward with all your admiration and devotion.”
   
    Kate understood that Gwen was just the introverted type, and she appreciated Gwen for who she was. The problem was that Gwen always wanted everything to be the same, trying to make Gwen do anything new or go anywhere was like pulling teeth. When Kate became a anti-assassin, she was expecting to go on trips, travel the world, and have exciting adventures. It turned out, Kate does all these things, but they weren’t how she imagined them. She wanted it to be like how it was when she saw her mother in the UWG forces. Constantly moving from place to place, going to see her mother stop international incidents, and being with her father on the sidelines. Those were exciting times, but when Kate finally found her way into the UWG army, the times had changed. She was confined to a desk job. Kate quickly found an out, and made a deal to do the rest of her obligation of service to the UWG through Maxwell’s group, but she found that while the highs were higher, the boredom between was much worse than sitting in a air conditioned office. That is why she treasured her friendship with Gwen. They may not be on the same page most of the time, hell, Kate thought, they are barely in the same book, but it is that difference that keeps things interesting.

    “You didn’t answer my question, by the way. How is Smoker?” Kate said while walking the aisles looking for the toiletries.
    “He didn’t seem that big a deal. When I first saw him, he just seemed like any other politician to me,” Gwen said while following behind.
    “Really? Wasn’t he some amazing anti-assassin who was too badass to stay with the UWG?”
    “He didn’t seem like it. There was this oddness to him though.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like, this nervous excitement. This energy that just felt...I don’t know...off.”
    “That’s a turnoff, for sure. I was hoping he was some ‘pretty boy assassin.’ Oh well. Hey, you need any more tampons?” Kate yells as she goes down the aisles.
    “You don’t have to yell that in the supermarket.”
    “What? Haha, do you mean tampons? HEY GWEN! DID YOU MEAN TAMPONS!? DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO YELL THE WORD TAMPONS IN PUBLIC?! THAT IS PRETTY ODD, ANYWAY, TAMPONS? TAMPONS! TAMPONS?”
    Sometimes the best part about hanging with Gwen was teasing her. The face she makes when she was angry or embarrassed is priceless, in Kate’s opinion.

    “Alright, here is what we are going to do,” Kate said to Gwen while they are at the self checkout lane at the supermarket.
    While Gwen was checking in all the supplies she responded, “What are we going to do?”
    “We are going to put a bug on Josh, and if anything goes wrong, we can just follow him!”
    “Tracking Josh isn’t going to make sure we catch Smoker.”
    “Yes, but I got a feeling that anything goes down, Josh is going to be in the center of it.”
    Gwen thinks for a second, “I agree. You get the tracking device, and I’ll plant it.”
    “How are you going to do that?”
    “Max put me down as one of the staff, I won’t be able to be there right away, but moments before the show, I’ll be able to meet with them backstage.”
    “You think we should do a skin tracker?”
    “No, I don’t see Josh as the touchy type. We’ll go with an ingestible one.”
    “Hmmm, I think I got some of those in my tool kit. Even if I don’t, I can get one pretty quick here in the big city.”
    “Now, let’s go home and get some sleep.”
    “Roger, boss!”

    This operation turned from a boring mission from the sidelines, to something Kate was looking forward to. Her sense of boredom and dread turned into excitement, and it made the lull she was in fade away. Something big was going to happen, Kate could feel it in her bones.