Three more done...
4. Medicine
It was a strange feeling, illness. Sebastian thought he was immune to the common cold, but... no. He grabbed another tissue from the small, flower-patterned box on his desk, and sniffed into it, then threw it into the trash. The wadded ball of paper missed, badly, as it flew broadly over the wire wastebasket. He didn't bother to pick it up, but stared at it for a second then returned to his paper. He'd sent Bashou and Buson out earlier to buy some medicine... they'd been gone for nearly two hours now. Typical, he thought to himself. Buson's devil-may-care attitude always seemed to turn even a task as simple as "fix the damn Jeep" into a monstrous undertaking, mainly due to what seemed like Bashou's constant need to keep his partner's macho ego in check. More than likely, Sebastian thought, Buson was playing God's Gift to Women with the poor girl working the checkout at the drugstore, as the comparably tiny Bashou vainly tried to drag him away by his arm...
Sebastian laughed quietly to himself at the image that had formed in his mind, and it finally occurred to him why he kept them around instead of demanding they be transferred to some other department where they'd be out of his hair for good.
Research just wouldn't be the same without those two.
5. Game
"Leave me alone, stupid cat, can't you see I'm busy at the moment?" The sound of tinny music filled the air as Giovanni obssessively tapped away at Tetris, nudging a hungry Persian away with his right foot. He wasn't typically a gamer, and was in fact playing the game on a lark- he'd found the old Game Boy left in the break room earlier while getting himself some coffee, and was driven by pure curiosity to pick it up. As soon as he'd got the hang of it, he knew he was lost. Yes, there was much work to be done on the plans for a Shinou base, and yes, even more paperwork, but something about the puzzle game thrilled him. How could something be so simple at first glance, yet so complex beneath the surface? The office was silent, as his fingers pushed the tiny buttons... rotate here, drop there, only to be attacked by yet another block. He glanced at the high score box. It read 15000, and he realized he was only 20 points away from beating it, if only he could get rid of that one group of blocks near the top... just one L-shaped piece stood between him and victory... but no, the piece came down faster than it could be flipped, and the words GAME OVER soon appeared on the dim screen...
"Curse you, you treacherous consonant!" Giovanni flung the Game Boy against the far wall of his office, and it shattered into a hundred little pieces.
He never touched a video game after that.
6. Flying
"Come on, James, it'll be fun." An exasperated, slightly annoyed Jessie was trying desperately to convince her partner to get on the helicopter. "I told you," he replied, "I hate flying." He looked at the small craft, then shot her a terrified glance. "I mean, look at this thing. It's so flimsy." He banged on the side with his hand. The helicopter responded with not a clang, but a soft thud, and James pulled his now bruised hand back. "Nothing this solid could ever fly, right?" he laughed, nervously.
"We're going by helicopter, and that's that," Jessie insisted, opening the passenger door. "I'm tired of nearly drowning every time a stupid Gyarados hits the Magikarp sub. The threat's practically gone with this thing."
"Yeah, so we can just get knocked out of the sky by some Fearow," James muttered, prompting a dirty look from Jessie. "What a great improvement."
Jessie sighed. She knew James was still somewhat traumatized by the blimp incidents in the Orange Islands, as well as the countless mishaps with the hot air balloon. She figured that as long as she'd exhaused her other two means of convincing him, bitchy and non-bitchy, she'd go for her last resort. Extra-bitchy.
"Do you know how much this cost us?" she asked him.
"Nope."
"Four whole months' pay. And I had to ask the boss for an advance. You know how hard that is. So don't you think you could be a dear and just get the hell on this thing? Before we screw things up again?"
James stared at her. After all her other "brilliant" ideas, he really couldn't care less. But the dreaded paper fan was out, and he figured at this point, it was best to just go along with it quietly.
"If you say so." He climbed into the helicopter and gazed at the ground longingly as it took off.
Two hours later, the helicopter was blown up by a particularly bad Thundershock. As the three flew off, all James could do was stare at Jessie pointedly and say, almost tauntingly, "Told you so."
Hope you like them. I'll work on 7-9, maybe more, this weekend, assuming I don't spend all of it on MD.