xp_logs | The Samsonite Job

Nathan gets the girls up in the very early morning for training. Amanda is tired, Jubilee is hungry, Clarice is whiney and Terry is a morning person. Nathan wonders why he's the one who has to deal with them all.

Jubilee groaned, and flailed at the arm attached to the hand that appeared to be shaking her shoulder. After a moment, the hand got more insistent and she opened her eyes to see Nate standing above her. A quick glance at the clock showed it to be 4am in the morning. Considering she'd only gotten to bed at 1am, being woken up at this time of morning was to be considered grounds for pouty look.

Nathan stared flatly at her, ignoring the pout, and then straightened, turning back to the interconnecting door to the room Terry and Amanda were sharing. Terry and Clarice would have gotten along just fine, of course, but it had been decided that putting Jubilee and Amanda together was probably tempting fate.

"Wake up Clarice," he ordered her, his voice cool. “Downstairs. Ten minutes."

Jubilee, grumbling a few choice Mandarin curses under her breath, reached over to wake up Clarice.

"Wah? I just went to sleep..." Clarice mumbled, rolling over and pulling the blanket with her.

Nathan walked into the other room, leaning over and laying a hand on Terry's shoulder a little more carefully. "Theresa," he urged as her eyes opened. "Get up and meet us downstairs in ten minutes. Work to do."

Terry, by comparison to the other girls, simply rolled out of bed with a blink and a groan. She kept her grumbling to a low steady stream of Irish curses and moved almost automatically to dress.

"Are yeh going to feed us, yeh great bully?" she asked over her shoulder of Nate who was still battling with Amanda.

Waking Amanda was a little harder, given the amount of work she'd been doing on the required spells. Acting instinctively, she threw up her shielding spell as she was shaken, burrowing further into the pillow. “Sod off," she mumbled thickly.

"Up you get, kiddo," Nathan repeated firmly. "And we eat once we're on the road, Terry. Grocery shopping hasn't precisely been high on the list of priorities just yet."

"Mickey D's?" Jubilee asked from the other room as she struggled to pull the blanket off Clarice. "Dude, get up! Don't make me get the hose."

"I'm up! I'm up!" Clarice yelled, rolling out of bed. "Herd of elephants...I swear..."she mumbled as she dressed and pulled her hair back with a bandana. Blech.

"If you make us eat that shite I'll do somethin' horrible t' you when 'm awake enough t' figure out what," Amanda growled, hearing Jubilee's suggestion for breakfast. Blearily she looked up at Nathan, trying to figure out why he was all blue. Oh, right. Shielding spell. Canceling it, she threw off the blankets and set her feet on the floor, rubbing her eyes and trying to get something resembling thought happening. "You sure you need me for this?" she asked Nathan pitifully, using the Look without shame. "I've been bustin' me arse gettin' the spells we need lately, I could really use the extra kip..."

Terry finished dressing and pulled her hair back into a tight braid. "If the English girl says its not food then you know it's true." She bounded across the room and tugged on Nathan's arm. "Real food. Please! Don't let Jubilee decide on breakfast."

Nathan took a deep breath. Dear God, he was insane and Haroun and Remy were going to have to come out looking for the bodies once this was all over. "All right," he said firmly. "Jubilee, no, Clarice, suck it up, Amanda, you too, and Terry? Definitely no McDonald's." He turned away. "I will be downstairs. Ten minutes," he reminded them and made his escape.

Jubilee grumbled inaudibly about the lack of McDonalds while she hunted around for her socks. They'd been here last night, she was sure of it. Looking under the bed, she made a small cry of triumph and reached under it to drag out her lucky blue socks. She'd had them forever, and she always wore them when she needed a bit of luck. Something told her she wouldn't be taking them off while she was in Vegas.

"So, if we ain't gettin' Mickey D's, what are we gettin'?" she asked. She could figure out where Nate was taking them afterwards by the simple technique of whining annoyingly till he told them. Breakfast foodage however, was a vital question and needed to be solved forthwith.

"Sonic?" Clarice asked hopefully, after successfully tying her shoes. Coordination was not happening for her at 4am. "They have those breakfast burritos, yum!"

Amanda grunted, pulling on the handiest pair of pants, which happened to be a pair of jeans so threadbare, she was through both knees and nearly through the butt. Muttering something about American obsessions with chain food places, she began the early-morning IQ test that was tying the laces of her Docs - at least the new laces made it easier.

"Real breakfast!" Terry insisted before running down the stairs. She was obscenely cheerful considering the hour. Obviously the redhead was one of those dreadful morning people. In the living room, she found and accosted Nathan again. "Don't let Clarice pick breakfast either. I'm begging."

Jubilee followed at a more sedate pace, trying without success to wipe a BBQ sauce stain from the bottom of her shirt. She had no idea how it had gotten there and could only surmise that the little brat of a kid she'd been stuck beside on the plane on the flight down had done it. She hadn't bothered with clean clothes at this time of the morning, especially not with the ten minute time limit imposed on them by Nate.

She looked up finally as she reached the living room, leaning against the wall near the doorway as she watched Terry bounce on her toes near Nate. "Dude, Breakfast tacos are real breakfast. Food of champions, I swear. Next you'll be tellin' me you want to go out for one of those sausage, egg and bacon style things that Pete seems to live on."

"An' what's wrong with that?" Amanda pointed out, stumbling down the stairs still rubbing sleep grit from her eyes. "Just 'cause you Yanks feel the need t' eat that plastic shite you think is food doesn't mean the rest of us want to."

"You'll eat what I feed you," Nathan said a bit warningly, in no mood for Jubilee-banter. "We'll grab something on the way out of town.
We've got training to do, ladies, of a sort we can't quite manage in the living room."

Perching herself on the arm of one of the armchairs, Amanda looked at Nathan questioningly. "So, I'd be right in guessin' that since yer've got me on this little excursion, we'll be doin' that rapellin' thing?"

Jubilee shrugged, ignoring Amanda's question for one of her own. "So, where exactly are we goin' on our magical mystery tour, Nate?"

"Enough!" Okay, so that had maybe come out a little louder than he really intended. They were all looking at him with that narrow-eyed 'Did you just yell at ME?' look that young women who didn't burst into tears when someone yelled at them tended to be able to do so well. "We are going out to the desert," he said much more levelly. "Where we have mock-ups of the safes to work on, and lovely rock formations upon which rappelling can be practiced, and plenty of nice, isolated places to hide your bodies if you keep asking me questions and don't leave me time to answer them before you ask the next."

Whoops. Had he said that aloud?

"Well then," Amanda said at last after a long, cautious silence, her grin irrepressible. "Let's go out into the desert then, shall we?"