Double Birthdays Are Not Cool, Fezzes Are

Sergio, Nikki and Corolla were all sitting around their Response Center’s table. On it, there was a cake with several different phrases on it. The most important one was “Happy Birthday Nikki”, although there were some odd ones like “This cake is not a lie”.
“I’d sing ‘Happy Birthday’, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience,” Sergio said jokingly, “and before you say anything, Corolla, you aren’t going to sing either”
“But-”
“I heard that last time you went to the Karaoke Room the microphone shut itself down.”
“Don’t worry, it’s fine” Nikki interrupted them, “The cake looks tasty enough to compensate for it.”
“Time to light the candle, then. Expect something awesome!” Sergio said while pulling out a lighter from his pockets. The lights went out right afterwards.
“Corolla, you should have shut off the lights after I lighted the candle.”
“It wasn’t me!”
Sighing, the Agents resorted to whatever source of light they had in order to reach the door.
The corridor outside was completely dark, aside from the light spells, electric torches, actual torches and other assorted lighting implements used by other Agents.
“Well, looks like DoSAT messed up something big today.” Sergio commented.
“Actually, the energy generation is DoDAEG’s duty.” Corolla corrected him.
“DoDAEG?” Nikki asked.
“Department of Dead Author Energy Generation,” Corolla explained, “apparently the sheer amount of badfics being written is making the authors spin in their graves so fast that they can used as energy generators.”
Nikki blinked a couple of times while Sergio started fiddling with the console.
“That’s… sick.”
“Yeah, but they’re supposed to be failure-proof,” Sergio added, “Until now, that is. Good, the console seems to be still working, they must have an alternate power supply. I’ll send a complaint.”
“You better do that,” Corolla said with a worried voice, “ I just realized something bad.”
“And it is?”
“If it just a power outage, we’re fine. If it is some technology-disabling thing…”
Corolla gulped.
“Hey, relax. It’s not like you need to be plugged in or anything.”
Corolla cast the Protection spell around her as a response, basically enclosing herself in a semi-transparent light blue sphere.
“I still feel safer this way.”
Sergio sighed, and started typing.

An hour passed, and the three Agents didn’t get any response. Or, rather, no response from DoSAT, as the console kept receiving messages that weren’t supposed to be for the three Agents.
“Well, let’s try writing to DoDAEG then.” Sergio said.
“Why are you so calm?” Corolla asked. The tiny Unison Device was still inside her barrier, despite the various attempts made by Nikki to lure her out.
“Heh, it’s a power shortage. I’ve been in worse situations… and I think you were with me in a couple of them.” Sergio calmly answered while typing.

To: [DoDAEG]
From: [sturbo.console124204wc759525.rc1587.SOD]
Subject: Current power outage

What’s going on? The only thing electrical still working here is the console, and it’s acting up weird too. I tried to contact DoSAT too, but I’m not getting any response.

Need answer ASAP. Corolla’s already freaking out and, if you don’t happen to know that, SHE’S MADE OF TECHNOLOGY TOO.

Also, we’re running out of batteries for the torches too.

Agent Sergio Turbo, Department of Floaters, Special Operations Division, Response Center 1587

“We aren’t running out of batteries” Nikki said.
“They don’t know that, though. And if they think we are running out, they might work harder.” Sergio justified himself.
The answer came after just a minute.

To: [sturbo.console124204wc759525.rc1587.SOD]
From: [caroline.dosat]

As Corolla functions off of an internal energy source her functions should be unaffected. This should only afflict the technology that was attached to the PPC main power source at the time of the outage. Thus, beings like her and myself are unharmed. Should further complications arise Anne has devoted most of her spare bodies to creating short-term fixes for Agents. It is extremely probable that eventually she will find your RC.

– Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device Humanoid Testing Droid DoSAT Technician Caroline

“Great. I write to DoSAT, nobody answers. I write to DoDAEG, DoSAT answers. And this console somehow thinks that we are in 2013, too,” Sergio said while rubbing the back of his head in puzzlement, “At least, we know that nothing is out there to get you, Corolla.”
Corolla crossed her arms.
“I still feel safer here.”
Sergio sent an answer to the technician, and turned around.
“You’re being silly, you know?”

In the meanwhile, at DoSAT, Caroline was staring at a certain Unison Device who was waving around her arms in embarrassment.
“I know, I was having a freakout. But, please, stop staring at me!”

“I can’t believe I’m attempting to go to the Cafeteria, with the lights out and fourteen kilograms of metal on my back, to buy a Sue Soufflé only to get Corolla out of her barrier!” Sergio complained. The male Agent and Nikki were walking into the corridors, fending off the darkness with a couple of torches, a pistol mounted flashlight and a Lumos spell. On Corolla’s insistence Sergio took his Barrett M82A1 anti-material rifle too.
“Well, since we have to get lost first in order to get somewhere, isn’t the darkness helping?” Nikki asked.
“It doesn’t work exactly that way, but… well, it might be.” Sergio wondered.
The two Agents rounded a corner, and stopped as they found an angel statue in the middle of the corridor.
“What’s that statue doing here?” Nikki asked
“Don’t blink, keep watching it and keep illuminating it!” Sergio screamed. The Agent put away his torch and the Beretta, and aimed his Barrett at the statue.
Ten detonations echoed in the corridor. Sergio put away his rifle, and stared at the still-standing statue.
The stone was heavily dented and cracked where the bullets hit, but it didn’t look like it was critically damaged.
“… It didn’t work?”
“Uhm, Sergio, what’s that thing and why are you shooting at it?”
The male Agent started illuminating again the statue with his torch and pistol-mounted flashlight.
“Nikki, throw a grenade at it. The most powerful you have. And then run.”
Nikki nodded, and fished two plasma grenades from her pockets. The Agent primed them and threw them at the angel.
The duo started running as the grenades flew towards the statue, leaving a plasma trail in their wake. The two grenades hit the angel, adhered to it, and exploded.

Fifteen minutes later, the Agents stopped running and leaned to the wall, breathing heavily.
“I think that we shook it off.”
“Sergio, for the third time, what in Madoka’s name was that thing?”
Sergio inhaled, and answered.
“A Weeping Angel. It’s a creature from a TV series called Doctor Who. Do you know it?”
“Actually, no.”
“Well, the statue you saw was a quantum-locked-or-something Weeping Angel. They do that as long as you keep watching them. When you don’t, they kill you. And they’re apparently quite tough, too.”
Sergio removed the empty magazine from the Barrett, and showed Nikki a full one before inserting it in the gun.
“Raufoss Mk 211 .50 caliber high explosive armor piercing incendiary cartridges. One of these can punch through a lightly armoured vehicle and destroy its engine from two kilometers away. And that thing was still in one piece after taking ten of them at almost point-blank range! I need a freaking railgun.”
Sergio frowned with a worried look on his face. Nikki realized that it wasn’t a good omen.
“I didn’t understand half of what you said, but I guess it is a bad thing.” she said.
“Very bad. Let’s try to get back to our RC.”
“Good idea. In the meanwhile, can you tell me what this Doctor Who show is about?” Nikki asked.

Corolla sighed in relief as the lights resumed working. The Unison Device dispelled her barrier, and checked the console. The date shown on it was April 1st, 2012 and everything else was working normally.
The tiny Agent decided to call her partners. Even if the lights were on again, she was still going to get her Sue Soufflé!
[The selected communication device is unreachable. Remind the owner to recharge its batteries and do proper maintenance next time. M-T]
Corolla started worrying. Sergio’s phone was quite battered, true, but it always worked and, thanks to modifications made by DoSAT, could be reached everywhere.

“Ok, this isn’t good.”
Sergio sighed as he fiddled with the console of an empty RC in order to read the last message. The two Agents had decided to take shelter in it as they were unable to find their RC, and the thought of meeting another Weeping Angel was frightening.

Hello, Agents (and all other nicknames you use) of the PPC! This is Agent Shieh hijacking someone else’s console to tell you that there’s a giant meatloaf monster in HQ. Some of you may have already met it. Get out of its way. It wants to eat you.
Seriously, don’t be stupid and/or insane and try to take it down on your own. It’ll just eat you.
Therefore, this is a warning to stay in your RCs, if you have them. If you don’t, take shelter in an RC. Lock the doors. The meatloaf monster rampaging through HQ doesn’t have opposable thumbs.

“A meatloaf monster?” Nikki asked and blinked a couple of times. It wasn’t a year since the day she joined the PPC, but she had already seen plenty of weird stuff.
Still, a meatloaf monster was something she wasn’t expecting to see.
“Power outage, Weeping Angels, and now this. It’s… well, it’s not what I had in mind for your birthday.”
Sergio sighed, and sat on the floor. Nikki managed to bring out a smile, and patted him on the shoulder.
“It’s not your fault. It’s-”
The lights resumed working, and the two Agents sighed in relief. However, as they tried to contact Corolla through the Console, Sergio noticed something else.
“Hey, it looks like this console thinks that we are in 2013 too… wait.”
Sergio checked the timestamp of the warning message. The console that sent it was set in April 3rd, 2013 too.
“… Nikki, I’m afraid that we are in 2013.”
“What?…. How?”
Sergio started walking in circles, thinking.
“Let’s see. All started when the power went out, and simultaneously several monsters got dragged in, probably by plothole.”
“I guess so. I ended up in the PPC by plothole, too” Nikki agreed.
“However, all of this is happening now, which is April 3rd 2013, which means that something misplaced us by one year. Another plothole?” Sergio wondered.
“Might be.”
“Yeah,” Sergio resumed, “but the PPC has the plothole technology to-”
“Technology needs energy!” Nikki interrupted.
“…That’s it! The power outage messed up with the PPC’s portals, and so the Angels, the meatloaf monster, us, and who knows what else got dragged in here and now! However, as we now have power again, all we need is to find a Remote Activator and start portalling stuff in the right places and times. Including ourselves.”
The two Agents stared at each other for a couple of seconds.
“And I feel so much like the Doctor now.” Sergio added.
[Bip.]
“Now what?” Nikki asked, “Don’t tell me that they let the Ypur loose or something. And why are you talking like we are the ones that will fix everything?”
“Sorry, I talked out of habit,” Sergio said while reading the message, “but it looks like we’re going to do that anyway.”
“Why?”
“Apparently, the Doctor himself wants us to help.”

To: RC 9L0121F4114C3 [rc9L0121F4114C3.DMS], RC 1587 [rc1587.SOD]
From: UNKNOWN [ERROR: INVALID CONSOLE IP]
Subject: Hello, Doctor calling.

Hello, temporal-spatial anomalies! This is your fellow visitor the Doctor. We need your help. There’s a monster chasing us. You may have heard about it before through a warning. Well, now I’m telling you to disregard it and come help me.
Meet us in front of Rudi’s Pub in ten minutes.

“But how did he know?” Nikki asked.
Sergio shrugged.
“I have no idea. But he apparently knows that we split up from Corolla, too, considering that he sent the message both here and in our RC. Let’s go!”
Sergio opened the door of the RC… and froze.
“Scratch that.”
Nikki walked over to him.
“Are you ok?…. Oh.”
The plate on the door read “RC #1587”.

“So, let me get this straight.”
Sergio walked down the corridors alongside Nikki while reading another message, this time on his phone.
“Not only our RC will be empty in 2013, but according to this ‘Robogirl’ Corolla is already back in 2012. Which also means that there’s another group of Agents who got thrown around in time, since the Doctor sent his message to RC number nine-el-something too.”
“Robogirl, Robogirl… I’m pretty sure I already heard that somewhere.” Nikki said. The brunette kept thinking about it for another minute, and then froze. Her partner turned around.
“Nikki?”
“… Wasn’t that the callsign Corolla wanted to use when she came back from fighter jet training?”
The two Agents kept staring at each other until Sergio caught sight of another pair of Agents, dressed in Victorian-style clothing and carrying some steampunk objects.
“You two must be the other set of temporal-spatial anomalies.”

Corolla sighed. She was sitting on the table, looking at the still intact cake. Three hours had passed since Sergio and Nikki disappeared, and even the minis seemed to understand that something was wrong. Nanoha Takamichi didn’t try to blast-light the candle on the cake, while Sakura Kiminoto kept looking at her feet.
Where are you?, the Unison Device thought.
Then, a portal opened in the middle of the Response Center.
“SERGIO! NIKKI!” Corolla screamed before hugging them. Or, rather, Sergio’s arm due to her size constraints.
“Wow. How long were we missing?” Sergio asked. The little girl’s reaction clearly meant that the other two Agents messed up the timing of the portal.
“Three hours. Three freaking hours.”
Corolla started looking at them with suspicion. Granted, getting lost in HQ was far too easy, but the fact that they lost track of time was suspicious. And they didn’t even have her Sue Soufflé, too!
“… Don’t tell me that you two were… celebrating all by yourselves.”
“NO!” Sergio and Nikki screamed simultaneously. The little Unison Device sighed.
“Sure, and Subaru is straight. Anyways, where were you all this time? I guess you weren’t in the Cafeteria, since I don’t see my Sue Soufflé.”
Sergio sighed, and massaged his right shoulder. Firing the Barrett without using its bipod hadn’t been a great idea.
“If you saw what we just dealt with… or will deal with?” Sergio looked at Nikki, who answered with a shrug. “Anyways, I bet you wouldn’t want to get close to that stuff anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, just a little mess involving us getting sent a year in the future, some Weeping Angels, a meatloaf monster and the Doctor himself…”

“… And so, today we learned that keeping stacks of Sue meat is a very bad idea and that HQ is even less stable that we thought. Oh, and also that I’m not going to shoulder-fire the Barrett again.”
Sergio leaned back against his chair. Corolla had listened intently to their story.
“Wow, I can’t believe that I will be the one restoring HQ’s power. It’s fantastic! I don’t understand why I am in DoSAT, though. I like working with you two.”
Nikki started looking down, and Sergio sighed.
“The truth is, Corolla, that we apparently aren’t going to be in the PPC anymore by next year.”
Corolla blinked.
“What?”
“We found our RC,” Nikki explained, “and it was empty.“
“I see, “ Corolla said, “but why are you so sad? It’s not like you are going to die or anything… right?”
“We don’t know, actually – in fact, we decided to avoid asking the question.” Sergio answered.
Nikki continued for him.
“The Doctor told me that he knew the date and time of his execution, and it didn’t do him any good… wait a minute here.”
Her partners stared at her.
“He said that he wasn’t able to escape the date of his execution. But he’s still alive.”
Sergio crossed his arms and smiled.
“Well, he is a bowtie-wearing, fez-loving madman. A wise one, but still a madman. Now, I think that we have a birthday to celebrate. Where is my lighter?”
“Starlight Breaker!”
Nanoha Takamichi, using a pen as a Device, blasted the tip of the candle, successfully lighting it.
“… That works too.”
Corolla turned off the lights, and everyone in the RC started watching the candle. It apparently was just one of those musical candles, but as soon as the music started a miniaturized fireworks show erupted from it.
The tiny explosions started spelling out the words of the “Happy Birthday” song, synchronized with the tune, and ended up with “Happy 18th Birthday Nikki” when the music ceased.
“Wow…” Nikki said, at loss with words.
“It took us one month to make this candle,” Sergio said, “ Corolla did the calculations, and I installed the miniaturized fireworks on it. Good thing that we still have that shrink ray.”
Nikki blew on the candle. In that moment, she didn’t care about the possibility of her life ending in less than a year’s time. She knew that she was going to have an happy life until the end, be it one year or a hundred, and that was what truly counted.