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Zelma's presentation went relatively well. She passionately raised her voice at one of the board members when they saw her temporal anomaly and called it a toy that won't work. They said that without even seeing the math and plans she had designed for it, luckily her hero Dr. Romeo had her back. Dr. Romeo was the reason Zelma's research budget had increased by 10%.
They say don't meet your heroes but for Zelma meeting Dr. Romeo - the woman who built Zion Ver Labs with a focus on welcoming women of color in STEM - was what Zelma aspired to be. Zion Ver Labs didn't focus on time travel, that was just Zelma's focus while at the company, which is what allowed each floor to focus on the four letters of STEM; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Having an increased budget did not mean Zelma was getting paid but it did give her a better chance of making her apprenticeship into an actual paying job by the next budget meeting. So, Zelma continued to work night shifts at the department store. It was what she needed to achieve her dream and she's worked so hard to let anything stop her
The holidays meant even more random work hours, but on the plus side, her internship had the holidays off for about two weeks. Meaning Zelma could work those days which was a good thing because holidays meant more pay for overtime and catching up on her sleep.
Some may call Zelma spending the holidays working or at home sleeping while everyone's out celebrating sad. She called it productive, considering her family was on the other side of the country and she was tight on money to take a vacation and buy plane tickets.
Zelma wasn't hurt by the fact she didn't get to see her family in person during the holidays, mainly because if she wasn't working and being told "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" by a customer after every transaction she would have had no clue it was her birthday.
Zelma de Mi Alma was a Christmas baby, and she was the worst at keeping track of dates.
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Being told he was going to be given a slot at a proper fight at the boxing ring where he worked, Diego had started to prepare for it. He even had a whole mental list of things he needed to prepare for, and on a night of crime being slow he decides to park at an open department store for some bandages and other necessities
Once he had the white plastic bag in hand and ready to leave, Diego spotted the employee of the month wall and on the frame was Zelma's employee photo which was her just staring at the camera with a bored face. The man in all black turns around to the cashier, "Zelma works here?"
"Yeah," Theo simply replies trying to hide the sketchiness of the question as customers rarely asked for Zelma – unless they were complainers and Zelma stepped up considering she was the most experienced "You know her?"
Diego was able to charm people, it wouldn't seem like it once you got to know him but it's how he was able to blend in at crime scenes he wasn't supposed to be at, that is before he gets caught by a certain brunette friend.
The music in the store gets cut off by a message being spoken into a microphone, "Zelma to the register. Zelma to the register"
The dark-haired girl rolls her eyes, dropping the basket of things she needed to put back on the right hooks before walking to the front of the store shouting over the soft music, "Theo we have walkies for a reason!"
"But this gives me so much power," Theo speaks into the mic making his words be heard throughout the empty store
From afar Zelma was only able to see two blurry blobs at the register making her furrow her eyebrows only recognizing one was Theo and the other she had a hard time placing in her memory. Zelma didn't have the worst vision ever, but seeing things at a distance was hard for her without her glasses or contacts. Contacts which she had taken out after a long day of them drying out on her
About ten feet from the register is when Zelma is able to recognize the black-dressed figure carrying a white plastic bag, "Diego?"
Theo looks between the two wondering how Zelma – the girl he worked with for two years – knew some guy dressed in all black with a buzzcut and a scar on the side of his face, "Ima take my break"
"Yeah, yeah. Go for it," Zelma dismisses her coworker who walks away from them and once she sees him take out his phone she turns back to Diego, "I've been meaning to say thank you, you know if I had a way to reach you"
"Are you trying to get my number?" Diego asks not expecting to run into her at a store she worked at since he thought he'd deduced she was some sort of scientist or student.
It wasn't that Diego snooped around her small apartment, but she did say he could shower and eat her food if he wanted so he looked around her apartment. Thanks to his no-good Dad, Diego was able to understand some of the equations and photos Zelma had posted on a standing whiteboard. Rather than a TV, Zelma had her whiteboard and a small projector, by the looks of the magnets and stickers splattered around her apartment Diego could assume that she listened and watched a lot of crime shows.
"No, I'm trying to say thank you for finding my car," Zelma gratefully says as her beat-up Volvo had appeared in such a public place that the cops had finally called her saying they'd found her car but when she went to pick it up it was all in one piece, sure some things were stolen but nothing of importance, and luckily nothing nasty was left behind.
Diego walks over to Zelma who moves to sit on a stool next to the register and asks, "What made you think I had something to do with that?"
"By all means Diego, if you didn't find my car and the cops deserve all the credit do tell. I'll have to send a fruit basket to the homicide detective who contacted me," Zelma smirks as the first sketchy part of a cop having found her car was it being a homicide detective, and there being no homicide surrounding her car
"You met Eudora," Diego nods not having expected the two women to have met face to face
"Detective Patch, yeah," Zelma states as she picks up a bag of Skittles and starts looking through the bag for a purple candy while thinking back to the conversation she had with the cop.
Detective Patch had brought up Diego, wondering why he needed her to get the car picked up. At the time, not knowing Diego's last name Zelma had to assume the cop was talking about the only Diego she knew and had just said he's a friend. Which made Eudora laugh because she knew Diego did not have friends making Zelma bring it up, "Turns out friends is not a word I should use to describe us"
"We're friends?" Diego crosses his arms just as Zelma offers him the Skittles bag and he takes it only to pick out the red ones
"If you eat all the orange Skittles, yeah. You can call me a friend," Zelma replies as she didn't have many friends. Being a woman in STEM made it so she was surrounded by men making her not only compete with men but compete on another level with women in the field. Even the women in her lab were more acquaintances than friends, and she only talked to them because it was her turn to pick up coffee orders.
Diego eats all the orange Skittles, not wanting to fuck up the new friendship at any moment like how he did with Eudora.
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really gonna be playing with Diego's insecurities soon
