The toy people
Aug 6, 2009 19:52:55 GMT -5
Post by Adrian Veidt on Aug 6, 2009 19:52:55 GMT -5
Micaela had now been a regular presence from day to day for around two months now. Veidt had gotten into the habit of bringing her along to business meetings and the like, to give her some exposure to what she would one day be expected to carry out herself.
If she was bored, she was polite enough not to show it. She had a remarkable talent for keeping her head held up at points when most teenagers would be staring at their hands and yawning at best and flat-out nodding off at worst, no matter how well-behaved they were.
At the moment, a meeting with what Veidt called very simply "the toy people" was wrapping up. The main purpose of the meeting was to submit a few prototypes of the Meritites dolls for Veidt's approval, and to also go over a few details regarding tie-ins for the cartoon that was due to begin the following midseason.
"Gentlemen," Veidt was sighing, "while the design is completely acceptable, you continue to overlook the chief marketable aspect of the Meritites line. We could have an alternative to Barbie that is considerably more palatable to the modern parent- one who doesn't wish to impose such rigid gender-typing on their daughters. And sons, for that matter."
"Well," one of the representatives from the toy company replied, with the slight nervousness people tended to exude around Veidt regardless of circumstance, "we have considered this, but the fact remains that the princess mentality is what sells."
Micaela, meanwhile, was looking over one of the dolls and testing a few poses. The doll had her face, simplified and reproduced with reasonable accuracy, but it didn't seem like the designer had taken into account the fact that sometimes, all she wanted to do after one of the long workouts Veidt put her through was flop in the middle of the floor and languish. The doll didn't flop much at all, really.
"I'm not saying to absolutely cancel out the idea of providing more traditionally feminine accoutrements as accessories within the line," Veidt continued, "but I do not think that is the main thing we should be focusing on. Besides, what purpose is there in providing... domestic accessories such as a kitchen set to a figure representing a character who spends her time on the television series travelling the world and taking out armies of costumed villains? And even if she didn't- well, that hardly seems conducive to this so-called 'princess mentality', either."
They'd at least gotten the relative scale of the Ozymandias figure next to the Meritites figure right, Micaela noticed.
"Can we at least make the party dress?" one of the other executives asked.
"I see nothing wrong with that," said Veidt, "so long as it is more or less incidental to the image we are trying to create here. We are not seeking to create another blankly smiling fashion doll when we have the opportunity to begin a new line of-"
He was cut off by a slightly tinny and overenthusiastic voice interjecting "Bubastis, heel!" He glanced up in irritation, while the others sitting around the table merely looked confused, but his expression softened when he realized that it had come from the Ozymandias figure in Micaela's hands.
"Sorry," she said sheepishly. "I didn't realize it talks when you press the belt buckle."
She put the figure on the table, frowning slightly at how the action figure had sounded almost nothing like Veidt at all. They must have used the voice actor hired for the television series instead.
"That's quite all right," Veidt told her, giving her hand a cursory pat and then glancing at his watch. He added, sounding rather as though he had planned the whole thing, "Oh, dear, just look at the time. I'm afraid we shall have to continue this at a later date. Thank you for your time, gentlemen..."
The people arranged around the table began to rise as one group, while Melissa bent down and went over a few details with her employer. After a few moments, Veidt rose as well, and motioned for Micaela to follow him.
"Do I give them back the prototypes?" she asked, nodding at the exiting toy executives.
"I think they would be more than happy to let you keep them."
Veidt smiled at Micaela, and she smiled back, though she had the strangest feeling that he somehow assumed she still played with dolls.
Micaela went to the anteroom of the board room and stood by the window while Veidt said goodbye to a few of the straggling toy executives. In the brighter light coming in from the large plate-glass window, the dolls seemed less accurate, more caricatured. She scrunched up her mouth on one side, while there was a soft bong noise from the elevator behind them, and held the Ozymandias doll to the light. Even the outline seemed somewhat off.
She was startled from her reverie, though, by the sudden sound of Melissa screaming, followed by the Ozymandias doll suddenly blasting to pieces in her hand with a loud bang.
"Get down!" someone shouted, followed by another voice screaming "He's got a gun!", and then the abrupt feeling of Veidt throwing himself in front of her, like a human shield, and knocking her to the ground.
"What's happening!?" she shouted over the general commotion. There was another loud bang, and Melissa hit the ground with a thud, dropping the armload of papers she had been carrying. As Micaela sat up again, she could see the source of the confusion: a man in what looked almost like a haz-mat suit, brandishing a gun, who had just shot Melissa dead where she stood.
Micaela's reflexes were suddenly racing. She stood in time to see the gunman lift his arm again, aim the gun at Veidt, Veidt lifting an arm as though to shield himself-
"Adrian!" she screamed, and she plowed into his side to push him out of the way.
Something warm and wet sprayed her cheek in the same instant she heard Veidt's breath intake sharply, with an accompanying groan of pain.
Oh God... no... no, he can't have been shot...
"Shit," Micaela mumbled. "Shit..."
And yet he was still moving, seizing a huge gold lamp stand from the wall and swinging it hard enough to knock the gunman into the fountain. Micaela watched as Veidt clambered on top of the intruder and seized his throat, and then she saw it:
The bullets had hit Veidt in his right hand, one after another, and reduced his first two fingers and his thumb to a broken pulp.
This seemed to be of little consequence to Veidt himself, as he was still nearly strangling the other man.
"Largo sent you, didn't he? Didn't he? That's a Repo uniform-"
He shook off the gunman's helmet, revealing a terrified, staring face underneath, and struck him in the mouth. The gunman's lips moved wordlessly, and then a white froth began bubbling from his mouth.
"A suicide pill? Answer me, you son of a bitch-"
The gunman's eyes rolled back, and his body went slack. Veidt dropped him in disgust.
"This was Largo's doing. Revenge for Blind Mag..."
For the first time, a look of real pain crossed his face, and he lifted his shattered hand to look at it. Micaela hurried to his side, splashing into the fountain behind him.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit... Oh God, Adrian, are you okay?"
For a moment, all he could do was stare at the remnant of his hand. The pained look faded, leaving only a sort of astonishment in its wake, as though the very concept that he could be physically harmed was new to him.
Slowly, he turned to look at Micaela. His expression shifted again, as though he were seeing her for the first time.
"I will be," he sighed, after a long moment of silence. He gave her a slightly baleful look and added, "What did you shove into me for? I'd've caught the bullet..."
"Oh- Oh God, I'm sorry..."
She hugged him tightly, not caring that his blood was getting on her dress.
"It- it can be rebuilt-" he whispered, stroking her hair with his remaining hand.
"Rebuilt- you mean your hand?- and what do you mean, you'd've caught the bullet? I mean, you couldn't poss-"
Veidt glanced at her again, and she fell silent. Micaela looked at the dead gunman. It was somehow easier than looking at Veidt himself.
A clutch of security officers hurried out of the elevator. As a few of them began taking statements from the toy executives, another one looked down at the broken pieces of the Ozymandias figure sprayed across the floor.
"What are these plastic shards from?"
"My would-be assassin shot the doll right from Micaela's hand," Veidt answered as he climbed out of the fountain. He had by now pulled off his blazer and wadded it around his injured hand, and the lower edge of the bundle was already dyed crimson with his blood.
Micaela shivered, climbed out of the fountain, and sat on the edge, hugging herself and starting into space.
"Your hand, sir-"
"Shot. Micaela attempted to push me out of harm's way, and I'm afraid my hand took the bullets that Largo intended for my heart."
Micaela opened her mouth to apologize again- apparently Veidt wasn't going to say anything about catching the bullet to his security staff as he had to her- but at that moment he turned around to face her and called, "Come here, sweetheart."
This shocked her almost as much as the gunman had. "Sweetheart" was a word that seemed so far from Adrian Veidt's typical vocabulary that it was almost surreal. Nevertheless, she found herself slowly walking toward him, across a floor where Melissa lay cooling in a puddle of her own blood.
"What you did just now was terrifically brave," Veidt said gently, tilting her face up to his with his good hand. "I must admit, you showed a shocking lack of concern for your own safety- but you were still very brave, nonetheless. I have never been more proud of you."
He held out his arms. Micaela walked slowly into the embrace, still confused and shaken.
Her confusion only grew worse when he wrapped his arms around her and stroked his remaining hand through her hair.
"What are you-"
"I told you," said Veidt, "I'm proud of you. If I had lost you-"
His voice had a sudden note of fright to it, and he hugged her tighter, with a sigh of relief, and kissed the top of her head. Micaela's confusion and surprise reached their peak, until she realized she was hugging him back with equal worry and relief.
Maybe this wasn't as weird as it had all seemed at first, she thought. Maybe this wasn't just some out-of-the-blue stab at getting an heir. Maybe he-
Maybe he really did just want to be like a father to her?
Micaela tried to read his face, but his expression had returned to one of hard-edged purposefulness. He released her, after another quick kiss on the top of her head, and turned away to look at Melissa's body. He was beginning to look a bit ashen from the blood loss.
"Have the police been called?" he asked the closest security officer, without looking at him.
"Yes, sir. And an ambulance."
Veidt pulled away the blood-soaked blazer and stared at his mutilated hand again.
"Can anyone find the pieces of Mr. Veidt's hand?" someone shouted, presumably trying to be helpful.
"Don't worry about it," Veidt announced loudly. "It only needs to be bandaged for now."
"But Adrian, your hand-"
He turned around to look Micaela in the face again.
"Micaela, as soon as the police have taken their statements from everyone, I want you to go clean up and pack and then fetch Baillon."
"Pack?"
"We are going to Karnak as soon as possible."
"Karnak? You mean in Antarctica?" Micaela gasped.
This was all happening so quickly... too quickly...
"We can continue your training there, and I can have the scientists from my research laboratory construct a mechanical prosthesis to replace the missing parts of my hand. It's far safer that way for now."
"But Adrian-" Micaela began.
"But what? Micaela, I'll be all right, but I can't risk losing you again. You are too important."
He started walking to make sure the executives were all right. Micaela trailed after him.
"Adrian, I don't want to go to Antarctica-"
The police arrived next, and then a team of EMTs who tried unsuccessfully to get Veidt to come to the hospital. Micaela sat sullenly in the corner, muttering under her breath about being ignored, with her arms wrapped around her knees and listened to them argue, and then watched as one of the EMTs wrapped his injured hand in thick gauze and used her walkie-talkie to send word to the hospital to have the blood bank send its blood to Veidt's penthouse instead, so that a doctor on his payroll could supervise a blood transfusion before the long flight to Karnak.
Micaela was questioned, and her photo taken, and Melissa's body placed on a stretcher with a sheet covering the face. A forensics team supervised the removal of the gunman's body and promised to make sure they would find out whether or not he really was working for GeneCo. The paparazzi were the last to arrive, as Veidt took Micaela down to the lobby of the building, where he answered the press's questions even as he had to lean on the podium hurried in from the employee lecture hall to do it. It was the weakest Micaela had ever seen him look, and it frightened her.
"This is only a small setback," he told a clutch of men with microphones. "I will recover. The real hero of the evening is Miss Micaela, who selflessly put herself in the line of fire in order to try to protect me..."
Micaela was pushed forward, though she didn't know who pushed her, and into the flash of a hundred cameras and people who asked her to say something. But she couldn't, and was photographed looking bewildered and scared rather than saying something impressive and heroic, before she and Veidt were both hurried away again (Veidt having to lean on a pair of security officers, and deeply resenting having to do so, if the look on his face was any indication). She saw him lead into his own bedroom, where a group of doctors with the Veidt International insignia on their coats waited with blood for the transfusion, and then stood alone in the hallway after the door shut in her face.
There was a long moment of silence.
"God damn it," said Micaela.
If she was bored, she was polite enough not to show it. She had a remarkable talent for keeping her head held up at points when most teenagers would be staring at their hands and yawning at best and flat-out nodding off at worst, no matter how well-behaved they were.
At the moment, a meeting with what Veidt called very simply "the toy people" was wrapping up. The main purpose of the meeting was to submit a few prototypes of the Meritites dolls for Veidt's approval, and to also go over a few details regarding tie-ins for the cartoon that was due to begin the following midseason.
"Gentlemen," Veidt was sighing, "while the design is completely acceptable, you continue to overlook the chief marketable aspect of the Meritites line. We could have an alternative to Barbie that is considerably more palatable to the modern parent- one who doesn't wish to impose such rigid gender-typing on their daughters. And sons, for that matter."
"Well," one of the representatives from the toy company replied, with the slight nervousness people tended to exude around Veidt regardless of circumstance, "we have considered this, but the fact remains that the princess mentality is what sells."
Micaela, meanwhile, was looking over one of the dolls and testing a few poses. The doll had her face, simplified and reproduced with reasonable accuracy, but it didn't seem like the designer had taken into account the fact that sometimes, all she wanted to do after one of the long workouts Veidt put her through was flop in the middle of the floor and languish. The doll didn't flop much at all, really.
"I'm not saying to absolutely cancel out the idea of providing more traditionally feminine accoutrements as accessories within the line," Veidt continued, "but I do not think that is the main thing we should be focusing on. Besides, what purpose is there in providing... domestic accessories such as a kitchen set to a figure representing a character who spends her time on the television series travelling the world and taking out armies of costumed villains? And even if she didn't- well, that hardly seems conducive to this so-called 'princess mentality', either."
They'd at least gotten the relative scale of the Ozymandias figure next to the Meritites figure right, Micaela noticed.
"Can we at least make the party dress?" one of the other executives asked.
"I see nothing wrong with that," said Veidt, "so long as it is more or less incidental to the image we are trying to create here. We are not seeking to create another blankly smiling fashion doll when we have the opportunity to begin a new line of-"
He was cut off by a slightly tinny and overenthusiastic voice interjecting "Bubastis, heel!" He glanced up in irritation, while the others sitting around the table merely looked confused, but his expression softened when he realized that it had come from the Ozymandias figure in Micaela's hands.
"Sorry," she said sheepishly. "I didn't realize it talks when you press the belt buckle."
She put the figure on the table, frowning slightly at how the action figure had sounded almost nothing like Veidt at all. They must have used the voice actor hired for the television series instead.
"That's quite all right," Veidt told her, giving her hand a cursory pat and then glancing at his watch. He added, sounding rather as though he had planned the whole thing, "Oh, dear, just look at the time. I'm afraid we shall have to continue this at a later date. Thank you for your time, gentlemen..."
The people arranged around the table began to rise as one group, while Melissa bent down and went over a few details with her employer. After a few moments, Veidt rose as well, and motioned for Micaela to follow him.
"Do I give them back the prototypes?" she asked, nodding at the exiting toy executives.
"I think they would be more than happy to let you keep them."
Veidt smiled at Micaela, and she smiled back, though she had the strangest feeling that he somehow assumed she still played with dolls.
Micaela went to the anteroom of the board room and stood by the window while Veidt said goodbye to a few of the straggling toy executives. In the brighter light coming in from the large plate-glass window, the dolls seemed less accurate, more caricatured. She scrunched up her mouth on one side, while there was a soft bong noise from the elevator behind them, and held the Ozymandias doll to the light. Even the outline seemed somewhat off.
She was startled from her reverie, though, by the sudden sound of Melissa screaming, followed by the Ozymandias doll suddenly blasting to pieces in her hand with a loud bang.
"Get down!" someone shouted, followed by another voice screaming "He's got a gun!", and then the abrupt feeling of Veidt throwing himself in front of her, like a human shield, and knocking her to the ground.
"What's happening!?" she shouted over the general commotion. There was another loud bang, and Melissa hit the ground with a thud, dropping the armload of papers she had been carrying. As Micaela sat up again, she could see the source of the confusion: a man in what looked almost like a haz-mat suit, brandishing a gun, who had just shot Melissa dead where she stood.
Micaela's reflexes were suddenly racing. She stood in time to see the gunman lift his arm again, aim the gun at Veidt, Veidt lifting an arm as though to shield himself-
"Adrian!" she screamed, and she plowed into his side to push him out of the way.
Something warm and wet sprayed her cheek in the same instant she heard Veidt's breath intake sharply, with an accompanying groan of pain.
Oh God... no... no, he can't have been shot...
"Shit," Micaela mumbled. "Shit..."
And yet he was still moving, seizing a huge gold lamp stand from the wall and swinging it hard enough to knock the gunman into the fountain. Micaela watched as Veidt clambered on top of the intruder and seized his throat, and then she saw it:
The bullets had hit Veidt in his right hand, one after another, and reduced his first two fingers and his thumb to a broken pulp.
This seemed to be of little consequence to Veidt himself, as he was still nearly strangling the other man.
"Largo sent you, didn't he? Didn't he? That's a Repo uniform-"
He shook off the gunman's helmet, revealing a terrified, staring face underneath, and struck him in the mouth. The gunman's lips moved wordlessly, and then a white froth began bubbling from his mouth.
"A suicide pill? Answer me, you son of a bitch-"
The gunman's eyes rolled back, and his body went slack. Veidt dropped him in disgust.
"This was Largo's doing. Revenge for Blind Mag..."
For the first time, a look of real pain crossed his face, and he lifted his shattered hand to look at it. Micaela hurried to his side, splashing into the fountain behind him.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit... Oh God, Adrian, are you okay?"
For a moment, all he could do was stare at the remnant of his hand. The pained look faded, leaving only a sort of astonishment in its wake, as though the very concept that he could be physically harmed was new to him.
Slowly, he turned to look at Micaela. His expression shifted again, as though he were seeing her for the first time.
"I will be," he sighed, after a long moment of silence. He gave her a slightly baleful look and added, "What did you shove into me for? I'd've caught the bullet..."
"Oh- Oh God, I'm sorry..."
She hugged him tightly, not caring that his blood was getting on her dress.
"It- it can be rebuilt-" he whispered, stroking her hair with his remaining hand.
"Rebuilt- you mean your hand?- and what do you mean, you'd've caught the bullet? I mean, you couldn't poss-"
Veidt glanced at her again, and she fell silent. Micaela looked at the dead gunman. It was somehow easier than looking at Veidt himself.
A clutch of security officers hurried out of the elevator. As a few of them began taking statements from the toy executives, another one looked down at the broken pieces of the Ozymandias figure sprayed across the floor.
"What are these plastic shards from?"
"My would-be assassin shot the doll right from Micaela's hand," Veidt answered as he climbed out of the fountain. He had by now pulled off his blazer and wadded it around his injured hand, and the lower edge of the bundle was already dyed crimson with his blood.
Micaela shivered, climbed out of the fountain, and sat on the edge, hugging herself and starting into space.
"Your hand, sir-"
"Shot. Micaela attempted to push me out of harm's way, and I'm afraid my hand took the bullets that Largo intended for my heart."
Micaela opened her mouth to apologize again- apparently Veidt wasn't going to say anything about catching the bullet to his security staff as he had to her- but at that moment he turned around to face her and called, "Come here, sweetheart."
This shocked her almost as much as the gunman had. "Sweetheart" was a word that seemed so far from Adrian Veidt's typical vocabulary that it was almost surreal. Nevertheless, she found herself slowly walking toward him, across a floor where Melissa lay cooling in a puddle of her own blood.
"What you did just now was terrifically brave," Veidt said gently, tilting her face up to his with his good hand. "I must admit, you showed a shocking lack of concern for your own safety- but you were still very brave, nonetheless. I have never been more proud of you."
He held out his arms. Micaela walked slowly into the embrace, still confused and shaken.
Her confusion only grew worse when he wrapped his arms around her and stroked his remaining hand through her hair.
"What are you-"
"I told you," said Veidt, "I'm proud of you. If I had lost you-"
His voice had a sudden note of fright to it, and he hugged her tighter, with a sigh of relief, and kissed the top of her head. Micaela's confusion and surprise reached their peak, until she realized she was hugging him back with equal worry and relief.
Maybe this wasn't as weird as it had all seemed at first, she thought. Maybe this wasn't just some out-of-the-blue stab at getting an heir. Maybe he-
Maybe he really did just want to be like a father to her?
Micaela tried to read his face, but his expression had returned to one of hard-edged purposefulness. He released her, after another quick kiss on the top of her head, and turned away to look at Melissa's body. He was beginning to look a bit ashen from the blood loss.
"Have the police been called?" he asked the closest security officer, without looking at him.
"Yes, sir. And an ambulance."
Veidt pulled away the blood-soaked blazer and stared at his mutilated hand again.
"Can anyone find the pieces of Mr. Veidt's hand?" someone shouted, presumably trying to be helpful.
"Don't worry about it," Veidt announced loudly. "It only needs to be bandaged for now."
"But Adrian, your hand-"
He turned around to look Micaela in the face again.
"Micaela, as soon as the police have taken their statements from everyone, I want you to go clean up and pack and then fetch Baillon."
"Pack?"
"We are going to Karnak as soon as possible."
"Karnak? You mean in Antarctica?" Micaela gasped.
This was all happening so quickly... too quickly...
"We can continue your training there, and I can have the scientists from my research laboratory construct a mechanical prosthesis to replace the missing parts of my hand. It's far safer that way for now."
"But Adrian-" Micaela began.
"But what? Micaela, I'll be all right, but I can't risk losing you again. You are too important."
He started walking to make sure the executives were all right. Micaela trailed after him.
"Adrian, I don't want to go to Antarctica-"
The police arrived next, and then a team of EMTs who tried unsuccessfully to get Veidt to come to the hospital. Micaela sat sullenly in the corner, muttering under her breath about being ignored, with her arms wrapped around her knees and listened to them argue, and then watched as one of the EMTs wrapped his injured hand in thick gauze and used her walkie-talkie to send word to the hospital to have the blood bank send its blood to Veidt's penthouse instead, so that a doctor on his payroll could supervise a blood transfusion before the long flight to Karnak.
Micaela was questioned, and her photo taken, and Melissa's body placed on a stretcher with a sheet covering the face. A forensics team supervised the removal of the gunman's body and promised to make sure they would find out whether or not he really was working for GeneCo. The paparazzi were the last to arrive, as Veidt took Micaela down to the lobby of the building, where he answered the press's questions even as he had to lean on the podium hurried in from the employee lecture hall to do it. It was the weakest Micaela had ever seen him look, and it frightened her.
"This is only a small setback," he told a clutch of men with microphones. "I will recover. The real hero of the evening is Miss Micaela, who selflessly put herself in the line of fire in order to try to protect me..."
Micaela was pushed forward, though she didn't know who pushed her, and into the flash of a hundred cameras and people who asked her to say something. But she couldn't, and was photographed looking bewildered and scared rather than saying something impressive and heroic, before she and Veidt were both hurried away again (Veidt having to lean on a pair of security officers, and deeply resenting having to do so, if the look on his face was any indication). She saw him lead into his own bedroom, where a group of doctors with the Veidt International insignia on their coats waited with blood for the transfusion, and then stood alone in the hallway after the door shut in her face.
There was a long moment of silence.
"God damn it," said Micaela.