67 Auto-Correct
Once Lucas's brain has woken up enough to start processing his surroundings, 427 fills him in on what he missed during his little power nap. Noticing that Jonathan is diligently messing around on his phone to make sure all is in order, he reaches out towards him and curls his fingers a few times in a 'give that to me' motion. Jonathan immediately complies without giving it much thought, with a small sigh he gets back to his excessively complex paperwork.
Lucas pokes about a little on his phone, but mostly just checks Jonathan's number and goes back to his own phone, finally adding him into his contacts and sending him a text message comprised simply of the number 11. He goes back to Jonathan's phone long enough to use the message to add himself, then tosses it back at its rightful owner.
Jonathan catches it at the last moment, almost dropping it. Before putting it away he takes a peek, noticing the text from Lucas and freezing for a few seconds before having a look of enlightenment.
"Well, um, everything seems fine. You know, like you, uh, said, in-in my case the fine print doesn't matter. I'll just, um, go through it quick." Clearing his throat loudly, he makes a show of switching to merely scanning over the contents of the paperwork, flipping through it at a fairly rapid pace. After a few pages at this rate, he even goes to grab the pen, starting to initial and sign in the requisite locations.
Miss Calculated isn't paying any attention to him, at all. Now, she has both Willy's and her tablets on her lap, as well as a notepad at her side. Constantly bouncing back and forth between using the tablets and writing, scribbling, and erasing on the notepad, she seems to be hard at work at something.
[Aw, no fair. She seems to be writing in some sort of personal short-hand, her notes are complete nonsense even to me.]
'Heh, some nerd you are.'
[…No matter what way I approach that, it's an insult one way or another.]
Lucas has a small smile while casually flipping his phone around in his hands, bored but too stubborn to actually take a nap after being mocked for it.
Unburdened by judgmental systems, Willy and Miss Masher are sound asleep.
Miss Chievous tried to keep up with Jonathan for a little while, but as he started increasing speed through his quick scanning for places to sign, she's mentally admitted defeat. Not that she gave any outward indication of such.
Looking around the room, she realizes that her twin is lost in her own world, her younger sister is passed the fuck out, the cute doggo is out of commission as well, and Lucas looks just as bored as she feels.
Just as she starts combing her mind for ideas on how to mess with Lucas, he suddenly seems to think of something and starts rapidly typing away on his phone. Even if she's bored, it is not enough to be worth snooping on a random stranger's texting habits.
Without any worthwhile distractions, she just sinks back into the cushy couch with her arms crossed, half-watching Jonathan's movements as he goes through the thick stack of documents at a steady clip.
[Ah, since you hadn't messaged any of them yet, I figured you were waiting until seeing them in person or such.]
'I'm seriously that bored. Besides, it feels less awkward asking this way than face-to-face.'
After a bit more time spent fighting with the phone's keyboard, Lucas is finally satisfied with his efforts.
To MARK (10:23 AM): hey man this is lucas
To MARK (10:23 AM): so like i was talking to sum ppl bout wut it would cost 4 a hq n wtf its so much
To MARK (10:23 AM): how much is urs it gotta b so much lol
If 427 could cry, he probably would be doing so right now after looking at the way Lucas sends text messages.
Unaware of 427's intense suffering, Lucas thinks for a few moments and decides to assault someone else's eyes too.
To dog pix (10:24 AM): hi dan its lucas
To dog pix (10:24 AM): tell silf hi 4 me thx
To dog pix (10:24 AM): franz 2
Before his rampage of affronts upon the English language can continue on much longer, Jonathan has gained Lucas's attention by poking his knee with the heavily laden clipboard.
"Hey, um, I think I signed everything I need to, I left it on the first page you need to start with. Here." As Jonathan finally gets to foist the formal form-filling drudgery off onto Lucas, he can't help sighing and sinking into the back of his own plush couch.
Pulling his phone out once more, Jonathan wastes no time going straight into a game, a certain iconic tile-matching puzzle game of gradually increasing speed. The algorithm used seems a bit suspect, considering he pulled three T-shaped pieces in a row.
'Just tell me where I need to sign, thanks.'
[...Considering how bored you are, you still manage to be as lazy as possible, it's borderline impressive.]
As Miss Chievous is enthralled by how rapidly Jonathan is playing, her fingers get itchy and she can't resist downloading the same game and playing as well. Unfortunately, she has trouble playing at even one-third of his speed, causing her a great deal of frustration.
Lucas manages his share of the paperwork in significantly less time than Jonathan had taken, partly due to how much less he had to fill out, and largely due to just blindly following 427's directions and not bothering to read any of it at all. His phone had made the default chime for a message received a few times while he was doing it, but since 427 seemed to take the speed run to heart he doesn't have any opportunities to check it until he's finished.
Tossing the offending clipboard of overly verbose legalese nonsense onto the coffee table like it's a hot potato, Lucas immediately grabs his phone to see who responded.
From MARK (10:31 AM): ...Please do everyone a favor and go into your phone settings and turn on auto-correct.
From MARK (10:31 AM): Anyway, hello, took you long enough. Daniel said that he heard you bought your phones almost an hour ago.
From MARK (10:31 AM): And yeah, anything reasonably priced is already leased out, it's gonna be rough for you.
From MARK (10:34 AM): I had to go check, I haven't looked at the payments in a while. [laughing emoji] Anyway, it's about 11 mill a month for the lease on the building alone, I try not to think about the electric bill. I swear, service bots cost more to keep running than you'd ever would have guessed.
From MARK (10:34 AM): Oh, your order should be heading out for delivery this afternoon, I'll send a few service bots to watch over it until you're home to get it, and I won't even charge you extra. :)
While Lucas is at first surprised at how much Mark sent in a short amount of time, he outright drops his phone when he reads the 11 million estimate.
[...Well it IS a large building.]
'I take back anything nice I said about Boss System! It's a cheapskate!'
[…]
Once Lucas finally collects his wits enough to pick the phone back up and finish reading, he backs out to go hunt down the auto-correct feature, noticing that there are messages from Dan as well. Deciding to stay on target, he does manage to find and turn on the setting before seeing what he had to say.
From dog pix (10:26 AM): Hi
From dog pix (10:26 AM): They said hi too
As Lucas has his priorities in the exact same order as usual, his course of actions should be fairly self-evident.
To dog pix (10:37 AM): Can I have a picture of them
[...At least the auto-correct helps.]
After fighting the urge to just simply wait for the desired picture, Lucas deigns to actually respond to Mark as well, hoping he won't get a wall of messages in return this time around, though.
To MARK (10:37 AM): Found it
To MARK (10:37 AM): That's so much OMG guess I'm not getting 1 anytime soon
To MARK (10:38 AM): Thanks
With his mind still entirely devoted to the coveted cute animal pictures, he tabs back over to stare at the last message he sent to Dan.
Miss Calculated is still focused on her impromptu project, not having noticed that they finished with the pile of forms. At this point, everyone is basically in an idle holding pattern, requiring an outside trigger to come and break it.
-----
Lucas kills this chapter: 0
Lucas total kills: 7
Lucas deaths this chapter: 0
Lucas total deaths: 10
Lucas current GDV: 8.91
Lucas's fame level: 2.5* (Mostly just local)
Lucas's hero suspicion level: 1* (Only highly paranoid people)
Jonathan kills this chapter: 0
Jonathan total kills: 5
Jonathan deaths this chapter: 0
Jonathan total deaths: 2
Jonathan current GDV: 1.96 (+.01 net change)
Jonathan's fame level: 1.75* (Just local)
Jonathan's hero suspicion level: 1* (Only highly paranoid people)
Supervillain social circle size: 6 (Mark, Dan, Josephine, Mikah, Wraith Hunter, Iron Spirit)
-----
Little character theater:
Jonathan, using the most expensive phone possible to slide and tap away vigorously at a bunch of colorful squares: Heheh, still got it.
Willy, curling up in a ball after Lucas's phone just barely missed hitting his head: Bark...
Lucas, staring at his phone as if that would make the requested picture spawn faster: Come on Dan...
427, continuing to regret looking at Lucas's outgoing messages: [Are you allergic to using punctuation marks?]
Author, sobbing: Lucas, you caused me physical pain when writing this chapter.
Mr. Quacks, eager to try the game too, disregarding the challenges he would have with the controls: Quack!
