Part 1
Mouse sauntered into the Diner like she owned the place, earning an annoyed glance from Cecil. She headed straight for Dot�s vid-window strewn �working booth� without waiting for the maitr �d�s assistance, which then earned her a look-that-could-kill from Cecil. She flopped down unceremoniously opposite her friend, who hadn�t yet gotten around to looking up from her current project.
"What�s processin�, Sugah?"
"Mm."
Mouse rolled her eyes slightly.
"So how�s life been treatin� ya?"
"Fine."
"So where�s Bob at?"
"Game."
"Where�s Matrix? AndrAIa? Enzo?"
"With Bob. With Matrix. At school."
As far as Mouse could tell, Dot hardly even realized she was talking to someone. The girl really needed to relax. Suddenly the Diner doors opened and AndrAIa trotted into, making her way to the others with her usual grace. Cecil, Mouse noted, obviously didn�t seem to have a problem with her. Finicky thing he was. AndrAIa grinned and slid into the booth next to Mouse. "Hey, Mouse. How�s things?"
Mouse tipped her head in Dot�s direction. "Ms. Command.com there hasn�t said a sentence with more than two words in it in the last second, as far as I can tell."
Dot didn�t look up from her keypads, but she did grin at the good-natured remark. AndrAIa shook her head, laughed, and elbowed Mouse to get her attention. "Watch. I learned this trick from Bob and Enzo." With that she reached across the table and flipped the datapad closed, nearly shutting it on Dot�s fingertips. Before Dot could reach for it again, AndrAIa had slid it off the table and into her lap. Dot glared a protest.
Mouse nodded, looking impressed. "I�ll keep that in mind, Sugah." She turned back to Dot. "Now look, honey, you haven�t taken a break all cycle. You�re gonna send yourself to an early deletion if ya don�t stop to rest every now and again." Dot opened her mouth to protest, and Mouse cut her off again. "And sleepin� don�t count! I�m talkin� real R&R here!"
Dot sighed, finally getting a chance to speak. "But Mouse, I�ve got these accounts and there�s some shipments coming in and Gavin�s stopping by later to see about dredging the Saucy Mare 1..."
At this point, Bob and Matrix finally arrived. Changed by Web and circumstances they both might be, but at this point they had an unmistakeably juvenile �We So Bad� look about them. AndrAIa rolled her eyes, but grinned as Matrix sat down beside her, even though the booth was getting pretty crowded. Bob sat down opposite, slinging one arm comfortably around Dot�s shoulders. Almost in unison, the two arrivals said, "Where�s your organizer?"
AndrAIa and Mouse laughed, the former holding the slim black datapad up for a moment. Dot made a surprisingly quick grab for it, but was stopped on two fronts by a slightly quicker Bob and a masterful appliance hand-off by AndrAIa. Cecil smiled his debonairist as he bore the organizer away from the table. Mouse smirked. "We got ya now, honey."
Dot sighed, but smiled. "You guys are awful."
"Look who�s talkin�." Mouse shot back.
"You really should take breaks more often, Dot. I know there�s a lot of work just now with getting Mainframe running smoothly again, but still..." Bob turmed a puppyish look on his partner, then looked at the sprites across the table. "I know...let�s take an evening off and have some fun. We could go jetbowling or something, maybe a circuit race or...." He trailed off, realizing that at least two of the females present were giving him what could be called slightly disgusted looks. "What!?"
After exchanging a look with AndrAIa, Mouse replied, "Sugah, that is not what that poor girl needs."
"And just what does the poor girl need?" Dot chimed in dryly.
"I think what you need, honey, is a girl�s night in."
Matrix and Bob looked at eachother, confused. Dot started to shake her head, but looked hesitant.
AndrAIa piped up, "Mouse, you�re exactly right. Dot, we�re going to have a girl�s night in, and you�re going to like it. Say, Bob, can we have your apartment for the evening?"
"WHAT!?"
Mouse rolled her eyes. "Well we can�t let her be anywhere near the Diner, Sugah."
AndrAIa nodded agreement. "Look, it�s just for the night. You can stay here with Matrix! And you could go jetbowling, and hang out with Enzo Minor, and spend all evening without us around to make you be sensible and all..."
The guys looked pretty close to caving, presented with that argument.
Mouse grinned. "Done. Dot, get to work. We�ll be back when you close up the Diner." Cecil was apparently listening, for he returned the datapad to his boss.
Bob sighed and stood up reluctantly. "I�d better go home and pick things up a bit." He stole a quick kiss from Dot and headed for the door.
"Don�t even." Dot told Mouse, Matrix, AndrAIa and Cecil firmly.
Sly grins turned speculative, then the four chimed in unison, "Awwwwww!"
Bob poked his head back through the Diner doors. "/When/ are you all going to stop doing that?!"
The guilty parties shrugged and beamed unapologetically, then scattered to prepare for the evening ahead.
Mouse and Bob returned to the Diner at closing time, leaving AndrAIa behind to finish staking out the apartment. A wary Bob was presented to big and little Enzo, and Dot was dragged away from her final vid-window calls and escorted to Kits Sector. Mouse grinned as they zipped along. "Sugah, you are gonna /love/ this."
AndrAIa greeted them cheerfully. "Hey, I just finished nuking dinner! Come on, Bob�s got satellite ixTV and they just started showing Dawson�s Datastream!"
The three settled comfortably on and around Bob�s sofa, each with a tray of food. Mouse glanced around at the decor, then poked Dot in the side lightly, causing the woman to nearly choke on a chip. "Hey Dot, this place could use a woman�s touch, eh?"
AndrAIa giggled as Dot blushed and coughed, still trying to swallow the previous chip. Mouse grinned and turned back to the ixTV. A few moments later a piece of ice hit her squarely in the back of her neck and slid down her back. "Crash!"
Dot beamed sweetly, pretending to be absorbed in the show. It didn�t last long though, as Mouse pulled a bolster from the sofa and hit Dot squarely in the face. Dot sputtered indignantly, retaliating with a swat of her own, which sent Mouse reeling back against AndrAIa. The sprite pushed Mouse onto the floor irritably.
"Stop it, you�re blocking the show!"
Dot took the opportunity to tackle Mouse and smack her with another pillow. Unfortunately this sent a chip from Dot�s abandoned plate sailing towards AndrAIa, pinging delicately off her forehead. With a provoked hiss, AndrAIa grabbed another pillow and joined in the melee.
Matrix set down a notation on the jetbowling scorecard and voiced the question that had been plaguing him and Bob all evening. "Soooo...what do you think they�re doing?"
Bob snorted, watching the jetball ricochet down the alley. "User only knows."
Small Enzo nodded, tugging at the buckles on his jetbowling shoes. "Hah. Girly stuff. Whatever it is, I bet it�s so boring!"
With a slight frown at the three pins left standing, Bob made his way back to the others. "Probably all sitting around drinking tea or something."
Enzo nodded, trying to heft a jetball much larger than he could handle. "Yeah! Sitting around acting all prissy and girly, talking about hairbows and stuff!"
The three sprites lay flopped around the floor of Bob�s living room, surrounded by pillow-fluff, crushed chips and a few half-melted ice cubes...the warzone after a pillow-fight to the deletion.
"Well...we missed the show." said AndrAIa, giggling intermittedly.
Dot grinned from her spot on the sofa, legs draped over the sofa-back, the rest of her hanging upside-down off the sofa edge. "Aw, who cares. That was worth it."
Mouse flicked a bit of disembodied pillow at Dot and laughed. "Now you�re gettin� the hang of this. You have a mean right-hook, honey."
Dot smirked, shaking her head a bit to get her upside-down hair out of her face. "Did you figure that out from the pillow fight, or did Bob tell you that?"
Mouse blinked. "You mean you punched him!?"
"Yeah, he called me basic. Once."
Mouse burst out laughing. "I knew you two were made for eachother!" She pulled a bit of chip out of the carpet, looked at it for a moment, then blew on it and popped it into her mouth. "Whew! Just look at the mess in here!"
AndrAIa was happily splashing a puddle of partly-melted ice in the carpet. "Eh, we can clean it up later. This is a party, remember? So...what�s next?"
Mouse struggled to her feet and grinned. "Let�s make some cookie dough."
The three relocated to the kitchen. AndrAIa and Mouse deferred to Dot to prepare the food, since she at least had some experience with cooking from running the Diner. The other two perched on the counter, tossing Dot the ingredients as she needed them.
"Sugar?"
"Sugah!"
"Vanilla?"
"�Nilla!"
"Flour?"
"Flar...oops!" A fine white cloud drifted up from the broken flour-bag, now resting in the middle of the kitchen floor.
AndrAIa hopped down from the counter to salvage what was still left in the bag. "Here, Dot."
Dot shook the last dregs of flour into the mixing bowl. "I hope this is enough...I wonder if we could just use some from off of the floor...?"
Mouse shook her head. "No way, honey. Bob don�t strike me as the type to have a kitchen floor clean enough to eat off of."
"Point." Dot conceded as AndrAIa climbed back onto the counter. "Well, I guess this�ll have to do."
AndrAIa brushed flour from her boots. "It�s not like it matters."
Dot frowned slightly as she measured water into the mix. "But if there�s not enough flour, it won�t cook right!"
Mouse and AndrAIa stared.
"What?!"
Mouse blinked. "You mean you thought we were gonna /cook/ it?" AndrAIa burst into giggles.
"I have a lot to learn." Dot said, digging the mixing spoon into the dough and eying it suspiciously.
"Just try it. You�ll like it."
Dot did.And she did.
AndrAIa glared. "Hey, leave some for us!"
Three sets of floury boot-prints led back to the living room. Dot, Mouse and AndrAIa sat sprawled before the ixTV screen again, spoons in hand and the bowl of cookie dough between them.
"Dot, cut that out! You�re stealing it all!" AndrAIa spoon-dueled for a moment before wrestlng the last bit of dough from her sister-by-association�s grasp.
"I get to lick the bowl!" Mouse called, getting up for a moment as the episode of Adobe 5-0 playing on the ixTV came to an end. She returned with a deck of punchcards. "Let�s play poker!"
Dot grinned, taking the punchcards and shuffling them expertly. "What are we playing for?"
Mouse looked around the room for a moment, thoughtfully. "Well...Bob�s got a candy-dish of USBs on the java table...well, they were on the table." She picked her way across the room to the overturned table, retrieving the dish and the candies. "Here we are. Wait...where�d you get all the units?"
Dot beamed. "Bob�s sock-drawer. Come on, we can play with both. Five-punchcard stud, I�m dealer."
"Well as long as they ain�t my units." Mouse split the USBs and units among them. AndrAIa immediately popped a USB into her mouth.
"Hey, stop eating the bets! If ya wanna eat, eat the ones in the bowl. The ones I put in the piles are the fuzzy ones that got all mashed in the floor."
"Ech." AndrAIa made a face, then took the cards Dot dealt to her and fanned them out, eying them professionally.
Bob, Matrix and Enzo started to make their way back to the Diner for the night.
"Can I have the top bunk? Can I, can I?" Enzo skipped along ahead of the other two, babbling all the way. Matrix shook his head incredulously, asking Bob in a quiet aside, "Was I really that bad?"
Bob smirked. "No. Worse."
Matrix grunted good-naturedly, then added "Maybe we should go check on the girls. See if they�re all right and all."
Bob looked sorely tempted, but shook his head. "We really shouldn�t. I mean...not without a really good reason."
Matrix nodded, looking sly. "Ah. A really good reason..." They followed little Enzo into the Diner.
"Five aces from two wilds. I win again!" Dot pulled the ante towards her, adding the spoils to her already-large pile. Mouse grumbled.
"Iffen I didn�t know you better, I�d think you were cheatin�."
AndrAIa shrugged fatalistically and palmed a few USBs from Dot�s pile of winnings, eating them.
Dot wrinkled her nose. "I�m just lucky with the wild cards, is all." She slapped AndrAIa�s hand lightly as the sprite reached for more USBs. "Andre, eat your own!"
"I already did. All I have left is units."
Mouse grinned and pushed her own USBs to AndrAIa. "Well, we�ve been playin� this for awhile now anyways. And Dot�s obviously the expert. Let�s think of somethin� new."
Dot pulled a few pieces of pillow filling out of her hair and started sorting the units into a separate pile. "So what�s next?"
AndrAIa grinned. "Well we can�t have a party and not play dress-up."
Mouse nodded. "Yeah, let�s do it! Let�s all trade clothing formats! That�ll be fun!"
Dot looked dubious for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, I�m game. Mouse..."
"Yeah?"
"Hand over the units."