One Might Need More Than a Hunch

Well, this ended up a lot longer than anticipated, but please bear with me until the end! m(_ _)m We finally (mostly) find out why Nigel has not just one, but three computers...

****

"Why do you even have three computers? Oh, plus the laptop. Why do you need them all? Why don't you have just one super-duper powerful one?"

The question was met with blinking. Nigel had never even thought about fusing all of the cores to one.

"I couldn't do such a thing."



"Sure you could! I really don't think that it'd be beyond your capabilities", the woman went on. She hadn't deciphered the answer correctly. It wasn't that Nigel couldn't merge all the technology and processing power into a single PC, or even a laptop, of course he could have. But he never would do such a thing. They were all very separate entities. It'd be like sewing people together.

"Look, they all have very specific separate functions and I'd like to keep it like that. Also it helps with the security as I can have them all firewalling each other, so to say..." His voice trailed off as his eyes followed the woman, leaning in over him, and the hand that was reaching for a mouse.

"And what is it that they do, actually?"

Her hand waved the mouse, lighting up one of the screens. A wallpaper of a beautiful SOS-Brigade Mascot girl dressed as a maid was smiling gently at them.

"Emma! Please don't touch my stuff without asking first!" He finally managed to snap at the woman. Letting go of the mouse, she sat back down on her chair, sneering at him.

"I did ask, you just didn't reply fast enough."

He sighed and rolled his eyes.

"What is it to you, anyways?"

"Just curious, that's all", she shrugged, "I'd like to know you a bit better, now that we're friends and all."

Friends. When did that happen? It was not that Nigel minded calling Emma a friend. She was cool and enjoyable enough company, despite her uninterest in computer wares and her habit of mentioning the nobby every so often in unrelated topics. Nigel could count the people he could call friends with his thumb, and now added with the index finger. And it seemed so odd that the mercenary turned White Knight still wanted his company. They had very little in common. They weren't of similar ages, she was almost ten years his senior. She was into sports, which Nigel understood even less about than partying. She was outgoing, self-confident and seemingly popular with her colleagues, all of which Nigel most definitely was not. And still, she came over to chat almost every other day.

"Want to know me better, hm?" he said softly, shaking his head, "And my computers are the way to go? How about my childhood, or something?"

She waved her hand dismissively.

"A person's interests tell a lot about him. Know the interests, you know the person", she declared with a wink.

"Fine." He tapped another mouse, flicking on a screen with a serene spectacled girl on the wallpaper.

"Emma, meet Yuki", he pointed to the screen. Instinctively, Emma waved her hand as a greeting.

"Yuki is my databank. Every bit of info I retrieve gets stored into its quite massive hard drive. Unlike your basic storage unit though, Yuki will continuously cross-reference everything, add or delete tags as it sees fit and will even move the files around if it thinks that a new order would be better than the last."

"'It'? Not 'she'?" Nigel gave Emma a look that quite clearly said 'please'.

"And isn't it bothersome if the files are always moved around? How can you find anything?" She was given another similar look.

"Who would bother clicking through endless files when I can just ask it to search for the ones I need? That is the whole point of making it do references and tags."

"But what if it doesn't tag something with a tag you'd want it to tag?"

"Then it wouldn't be my PC."

Emma shrugged. Nigel turned his attention to the second screen. When it lit up, a girl in a sailor uniform waved frantically at them. Besides the figure a speech bubble appeared, saying 'Hello!'.

"Oh, it's an animated wallpaper, isn't it? Cute." Emma asked with an amused voice.

'Who are you calling a wallpaper?!' appeared on the screen. The anime girl now had a frozen smile and a twitchy eyebrow.

"Haruhi, calm down", Nigel exhaled.

"This is Haruhi. Haruhi, meet Emma." The screen was now filled with a beaming cartoon face, giving the impression that it was measuring Emma from head to toe. Apparently she passed the inspection as the image withdrew, now showing a full body image of the school girl.

"What?!" was all that Emma finally managed to say. She looked from the screen to Nigel and back again, her eyes wide with amazement. Nigel couldn't help but curl his lips just a bit at her amusing expression.

"They are highly personified. Each one of them has an avatar that they can move around, but Haruhi – mostly because of its persona programming – is the most vivid one. I had to put it on mute since it got on my nerves with the constant chattering."

Emma now peered carefully at each of the three screens.

"Oh, I see her blushing!" she exclaimed, pointing at the screen she had herself activated before. The maid on the screen was indeed becoming increasingly red in the face, which in this case made it even cuter. Noticing that this had been noticed, the figure started to slowly back out of the right border of the screen.

"And this one blinked!" she continued, now pointing at the first screen. The face there was unmoving.

"Oh, that was a good catch, Yuki rarely moves", Nigel complimented.

"Wow... Just, wow... V, you're even more amazing than I thought." This came as a total surprise to Nigel, who was not used to getting much positive feedback, especially to his face. Clearing his throat he turned to Haruhi's screen so as to not look Emma in the eyes.

"Haruhi here is the working girl", he explained with a lecturing voice, "It runs all the programs and searches I want, using Yuki's data if needed. This one has more RAM than an average computer class combined."

"What's it doin' now?"

"I'm following a hunch. I've been searching for legends of great elemental magic items, since you guys have recently come into contact with so many of them. This might tell me more about the Red Man you've been looking for."

"What Red Man?" Emma was genuinely clueless.

"They haven't told you about it?" Nigel frowned. Maybe it was a higher ranking Knight thing, something she wouldn't have clearance for... "Well, it isn't a current priority to the Knights. It's just something I'm researching on my own for now."

"Do you think that it should be a current priority?"

"I'm not the one making decisions", Nigel said, slightly irritated. He didn't want to venture into this conversation with her, if he slipped something he shouldn't.

"You don't seem like one to be following decisions either, V", she grinned, although it was an uncertain one.

"I'm looking into it, that's all I can say. Or do."

"Allright", she said with confidence that he would know the right thing to do. Then she turned to the third screen, whose avatar was peeking behind the border.

"So you've got the quiet databank, the lively executer and the shy... what?"

"Well, Mikuru here is also a kind of a storage."

"What, like a back-up?" Emma asked, pronouncing the word like it was something she rarely used in relation to binary data. To Emma a back-up was something that covered your back in a tight situation, not something to have in case your originals were destroyed or corrupted.

"No, I keep it separate of Yuki's files. Mikuru... Those are a bit more... personal."

"So that's where you keep all your porn, right?"

Nigel coughed, feeling coke run through his nose. After a few moments of gaining control again, he looked at the stone-faced woman, with a grin as hot as the sun boiling under there.

"Well... Yeah", he finally admitted. No point in denying it now, with sizzling liquid spread all over the floor. "It's not all that though!"

"Well, now I'm curious", said the woman with a look very much resembling a cat. A very evil cat, an evil mastermind even. "What would you have, that's personal but not porn, I wonder?"

Nigel felt his own face redden. Emma wasn't stupid, he had know that from the beginning, but every once in a while she showed such a sharp mind that he felt like he was playing checkers against chess pieces. He was saved though, by a bang of the door downstairs. Audrye had returned home. And both Nigel and Emma knew what that meant. And now it was Nigel's turn to sneer maliciously at Emma, who had quickly paled.

Today was the sixteenth birthday of Alistair Weston-Pryce, the nob's younger sister. She had been born and raised to be a White Knight and as she had now come of age, she would be joined to Elder today, making her an official cultists of the Death by Ageing. A flamboyant ceremony was to be had, complete with white robes, incenses and a bloody gong. The older brother was at their parents' mansion getting things ready which was why Emma had been spending the day with Nigel instead. They had carefully avoided talking about the later event. It was a formal black tie party for every White Knight of the region, which most had been looking forward to all year. Emma Ernsthart, however, was not someone who even knew what 'black tie' meant.

Audrye had been astounded when Emma had said that she could wear her black tank top over her least used black cargo pants and even polish her boots a bit. 'Black, yes, but cargo pants, don't even think about it!' had Audrye said while dialling the Mexican's phone number, asking the man to help her with her fashion-intervention. Nigel wasn't that aware of the actual circumstances how Emma had finally agreed to getting a make-over for this party, but she sure seemed now to regret it.

"There you are, Ems!" Audrye greeted them with a beaming smile that had no hint of malice, but which made Emma cower in fear.

"We better get started! I'll put the heat rolls in place and then we'll get started on the manicure. I'll let Tico be the judge of the final coating colour, though, but we only have, what?, fours hours to prepare and the clock's ticking!"

Emma shot a look of agony at Nigel, who shrugged back. It was best to just get it over with, he'd say if he dared to speak out loud.



***



Matt was doubling over from laughter. If looks could kill, Emma would have burned a hole through his head.

"No, really, the rolls suit you, Uniform", the thief finally managed to say, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

"They're not going to be part of the final look, stupid!" Audrye cut in, frowning at the man who was now poking at the large pink rolls tucked in Emma's blond hair, "Ems! We can start with the make-up now so come with me to the bedroom!" With that the pink clad bouncy girl swoshed away.

"I bet you don't hear that so often, especially from someone that cute", Matt grinned. In a blink of an eye he was in pure agony though, as Emma grabbed his groin with a painful grip. Her face was that of a killer.

"Now listen, Foxtrot, and listen well", she growled with a soft dark voice, "I'm going to play along in this dress-up game for this one time, so enjoy it while you can. But remember, that this night will end and... do you really want me to remember your snickers tomorrow? Hmm?"

"… No", the man coughed. The grip loosened. Emma made the perfect mannequin smile with her head cocked to the side.

Audrye's head poked through the doorway.

"Ems? Come on now! Oh, and Matty! Go pick Tico up, will you? I'll be needing him in a moment!"

The man ran for the door, still slouching and covering his tender bits with the cup of his hand. After the door banged close, Emma had no choice but to follow Audrye to the Valley of Doom of Eyeshadows.

With the rucus finally calmed down for now, Nigel returned his attention to the report Haruhi had sent him. It was a bit too good to be true. Too convenient, too soon and too easy.

In recent months several great magic items had passed through the hands of the London Knights. First they had found the lost bracelet of Gretel and the ring of Hansel which despite their fairytale names, were actually a very powerful pair of wind element items. Just as the Knights had gotten hold of them, they had been stolen by a powerful entity whose avatar was a man with blazing red hair, according to the description and sketch they had send to the Normandy HQ. Next, they had found that Quentin possessed a locket of ice magic. They also found out that the matching water locket had just been stolen from her sister. And in no time, so was Quentin's as well, by that same red-haired man.

Red Man also had a side kick, a blond black-eyed man who roused much more attention at the HQ than his boss. That was because the black-winged angel Lucifer was nothing short of an obsession to Nigel's boss Michael. Nigel didn't want to underestimate his superior's adversary, but despite the fact that no sign of the Red had been seen when the Knights had lost half of the fire element pendant to the Fallen One, he was sure that the mysterious entity was more powerful than anyone anticipated. Despite his thoughts on the matter – and Weston-Pryce's reports – the Supreme Commander was sure that Lucifer was the one pulling all the strings.

Nigel knew – as did the Knights – that the other half of the fire pendant was with the Assassins, and should be recovered eventually. The Knights however would be going after them mostly because the were Assassins. The pendant would be a mere bonus after getting rid of their most hated enemies. Nigel on the other hand thought that the pendant was the more important target. These were no ordinary items. Most people couldn't even use them since they required such an immense amount of magical capability. All of them seemed to come in pairs, and counting five elements of magic, the Red Man had exactly half of them by now. Nigel feared what he could do with them once he had collected them all.

And now he was staring at an auction ad. The "Purple Diamond Twins" earrings had been "finally reunited after being separated for centuries and were for the first time being sold as a pair". The other stud had been treasured by a widowed countess who had had a taste for tasteless jewellery. The other however, had been in the possession of a Science faculty of a private university, experimental energy studies department. Of course the previous owner had been unnamed by the auction house, but this was nothing for Haruhi's nose, so to speak.

Nigel's train of thought was interrupted however, as at the same time as the thief arrived with the Mexican, Emma was running away from Audrye who apparently was threatening her with a jar of wax. Luckily the latino was capable of calming the women down, distracting them with nail polish colours. Matt brought them all another round of cans and the men waited for the ladies to be done with their preparations.

Nigel glanced at the Mexican, who was now sitting on his couch. Both of his hands were silky smooth, without a trace of injury, unlike half his face, which would forever bear the burn scars. Nigel could not help but feel resentment towards him, not after seeing Audrye so exhausted. But she didn't seem to mind – of course she didn't – and she considered this man one of her best friends, so he should probably try to tolerate him.

"Roho, you Knight's, what's you current agenda?" he asked. If the Knights were pinning on the Red or the items themselves, it would make sense for him to give them a helping hand. The man however showed a face of utter cluelessness. Well, so much for that then.

"Aaaand! Here she is!" Audrye finally shouted, dragging behind her a woman that Nigel would definitely believe to be a millionaire, but not an SBS captain Ernsthart. He could hear both of the other two men whistling in approval at the sight. The two women were total opposites. Audrye was a bubblegum angel, her cotton hair bouncing with her excitement and her smile radiating. Next to her, was a Maleficient in a Gucci dress, oozing discomfort and gritting her teeth.

Nigel had only ever seen Emma in her trademark cargo pants and other casual clothes, but he had to admit that she did look good in her black knee-height stiletto-heeled boots, little black dress with an asymmetric sleeve and her hair curled. He admitted it out loud. He sensed a cold stare directed at him, but he had to ignore it as Emma wanted someone to share her misery and demanded that Nigel come to the party with them as her avec.



***



There had indeed been a gong. And incences. Nigel couldn't decide whether Weston-Pryce had looked more pompous in a white tux or the white robes. He and Emma had quickly decided that the upper-class crowd inside the mansion were not their kind of crowd and had sought refuge on the porch at the front of the house. He was feeling very uneasy, but it must be the itchy suit the girls had forced on him. The suffocating tie was already tucked in his pocket.

"So how do you like being a Knight so far?" sounded like a good piece of small talk.

"It's OK, I think", Emma replied, taking a sip from her flask, "Although we're just hanging around more than I though we'd be. I dunno, I supposed we'd be doing a lot more action than this. Well, as long as I'm getting paid for doing absolutely nothing, I guess I'm good."

"Nothing? Surely you do something?"

"I've done some maintenance on my bike and the chopper we got. And well, you know", she added with a grin, glancing at the main doors. Nigel shook his head. He just had to deal with her suggestive remarks.

"You've got no investigations going on?"

"Not that I know of. Why?"

"As I recall, you stumbled onto some heavy evidence of Assassins while you broke into the fire station. Haven't you done anything of that trail? Or the Irish Porche follower that you tracked to Dublin? No wait, you weren't a Knight back then... Or the jewellery that you've lost to this mystery man?" Nigel was getting more and more agitated as Emma's face became more and more clueless with every question. Was he really the only person working here?

"I don't know of any intel that you mentioned of. I'm a noob here, as you say."

"But the snob must have told you something if you were after them, right?"

"D hasn't said anything", Emma said with a very level voice.

"Ok... Alright, Emma, listen. Remember that hunch I was talking about earlier? It might be nothing, but I'd feel better if you checked it out. And if you're not doing anything else..."

"What do you got for me?" Emma asked with sincere interest.

"There's a rare pair of earrings being auctioned off at the Fenning auctions the day after tomorrow. You should go there and see what kind of interest it's getting. Take one of the Musketeers with you, they might know better what to look for. And try to get them anyways. If they're not powerful, they're at least valuable."

"What do you mean, powerful?"

"They might be magical, but as I said, it's just a hunch."

"You're just covering your ass. Your hunches are my good intel."

"Not always. Remember Prague?"

"Everyone has their bad days", she shrugged, "And I got out, didn't I?"

Nigel left it at that.

"So will you go to the auction?"

"Sure, V, I'll see what I can do."

They were then interrupted by the Mexican Musketeer who also was one of the odd ones out. Nigel decided to put up with him, despite his resentment of the man's newly regrown left hand, since he seemed to be a friend to Emma. They had more in common with each other than he and the Captain did. Neither was comfortable with technology – although the Mexican was completely pathetic – and there was the Guild of the Special Left Hands they really should found. The other man he had to put up with because of her choice of friends and friends-with-benefits came after soon to join them. Well, maybe not just friends-with-benfits, not with the way Emma fawned over him the moment he entered her field of vision.

"Hi D!"

"Hi Ems!" The nickname was catchy, it seemed. Maybe there was just wrong with him, not using anything but proper names.

"Look, everyone here are wearing something awkward. But you carry it well", the snob said to her.

"Thanks, but honestly, can you imagine me in an outfit like this?" she asked in disbelief, spreading he arms to give a better look of her getup. The man scanned her from the loosened curls to the crossed legs that the tight skirt didn't much cover.

"I sure can now", he said, amused. After a blink of fluster, Emma met his gaze with a lopsided grin that was a bit more than just merely suggestive. Oh, get a room, Nigel nearly said out loud. They didn't though, at least for now. He had to finally admit it though, they probably were perfect for each other. Both had an army background – no wait, Emma was from the navy, not army – and had become Knight soldiers. Both had an unhealthy obsession with athletics, you could probably punch the snob to the gut and he wouldn't feel a thing. And they had thing about the motorcycles, and beer. And apparently suggestive remarks. That certainly was a lot more than what he and Audrye had.

Now come to think about it, he hadn't really seen her much after arriving at the mansion. She had first been busy with the ceremony as she was the one who would do the actual connecting of the young lady and her future deity. After that he hadn't first seen her in the crowd and then they had made their escape to the porch. Maybe she was hanging out with the thief? And just as an answer to his unspoken inquiry, there ringed a clear voice from the doors:

"Nikki!"

Audrye stomped over to them, her curls swaying behind her. Her angelic face was now painted with a mask of wrath. Ah, this was probably why he had felt so uneasy all evening.

"There you are, you slimy little bastard!" Allright, not that clear a voice after all, but actually quite blurred with alcohol.

"How is it, that you can tell Emma, that she looks good, but not me?!"

Before Nigel could say a thing, the Mexican cut in:

"But you do look good, Rey!"

"There, did you hear?! How can Tico be such a gentleman and you're not!" Audrye demanded while locking her arm with the man. Out of the corner of his eye Nigel could see that Weston-Pryce and Emma had already snuck out of the increasingly uncomfortable situation.

"You always look good", Nigel tried.

"And why you never tell me that, then?!" Well, neither did the Mexican before she demanded it. Why did Audrye always end up so unreasonable when drunk?

"I'm not unreasonable!!!"

Oops.