Title: Disaster Planning (1/2)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Leslie/Ben
Word Count: 2785
Timeline: Stops at 3.06 "Indianapolis"
A/N: Originally started as a quick, silly fluff piece for the very first prompt (The Observer/Third Wheel) of the very first round of the very first Hiatus Fest (hence the pre-Harvest-Fest timeline), this fic ended up getting a lot longer than I expected once I sat down to write it and got pushed to the side when I wasn't able to complete it by the deadline. But since we find ourselves once again in need of Hiatus Festing I figured I'd finish it up! :)
Summary: In the way only a truly gifted criminal mastermind possibly could, Greg Pikitis gazed upon a Human Disaster and saw something like a miracle.

Part I

It was, in a word, serendipity.

Or at least that was how Greg Pikitis viewed it, when on some nondescript day in early fall he'd been absentmindedly flipping through the TV channels and suddenly stumbled upon a golden opportunity.

In the way only a truly gifted criminal mastermind possibly could, Greg Pikitis gazed upon a Human Disaster and saw something like a miracle.

Before that moment the thought of his next strike on his archrival Leslie Knope could honestly not have been farther from his mind. Greg, who always made sure to have his sources within City Hall keep him up to date with the latest happenings in the Department of Parks and Recreation, had been among the first to hear about Leslie's Harvest Festival plan and the risk it's potential failure held for her department. After a bit of an internal debate, he'd finally come to the firm and final decision to give his favorite Deputy Director a pass, at least until the festival was over. After all, if Leslie got canned, how would he ever find someone even half as fun to torture?

It was one of the few promises he made with an actual intention to keep. In fact, he'd even gone so far as to talk the festival up amongst his friends (with a special emphasis on, you know, not wreaking havoc on it). But now, with this stammering former teen mayor falling helplessly, perfectly into his lap —well, how was he supposed to take it as any thing less than a sign from God? He couldn't have dreamed up a more perfect target for himself if he'd tried.

From the way Leslie jumped to defend him, to the way she waited patiently to support him, to the way they passed the kind of subtle smiles and glances that said "you're the only other person in the room" (while simultaneously making Greg want to hurl), there was no doubt in his mind that this imbecile represented a direct path to Leslie, a crack in her usually impenetrable armor. There was something there, something new and uncertain, substantial yet entirely non-concrete, something pulse racing and stomach flipping. The kind of thing that was perfect for exploiting.

Like with most underhanded, shady plots bent on inflicting maximum psychological torment, the first stage of Greg's plan relied heavily on timing. It had cost him several days of his classmates' lunch money, but he had been able bribe a city employee handsomely enough to get the detailed schedule he needed to pinpoint the perfect time to launch the first phase of his plan.

And so it was that he strolled into City Hall just after 4 pm that Wednesday. He had it on good (or, well, at least heavily bribed) authority that every Wednesday Leslie left there around 3:30 in order to make her weekly checkins with the Community Center and Park Rangers before heading home for the day. Her boss, one Mr. Ronald Swanson, would wait about 10 minutes (assumably the time needed for Leslie to have gotten far enough from the building that she wouldn't catch them heading out) before announcing they had gotten done all the work they needed to that day and everyone was free to go home.

And just as expected, when Greg passed by the Parks and Recreation Department that day he found it to indeed be empty. He felt the quick surge of mischievous delight he got every time a piece in one of his schemes fell precisely into place. Stifling the beginnings of a cackle, he continued down the hall according to the directions his informant had given him earlier that day until he recognized the door marked with a crudely taped piece of office paper that identified the occupants as "Temporary Emergency Budget Auditing Office, Christopher Traeger, Benjamin Wyatt" (though the name "Christopher Traeger" had been crossed out with what appeared to be orange highlighter since his return to Indianapolis the previous week), Greg took a moment to compose himself, allowing for one last positively sinister smirk before knocking on the door that would tip the first domino of his masterpiece, his tour-de-force, into motion. Donning a straight face, he tapped his fist against the wood.

A few seconds passed before Greg found himself face-to-face with the one, the only, star of Youtube's "Guy Totally Looses His Shit on Public Access!,"Ben Wyatt.

"Oh, uh, hi, I'm really sorry to bother you," he said, voice coated in a thick layer of feigned innocence and nerves. "I was just looking for my aunt, Leslie Knope?"

It had taken only the mention on her name and Ben was suddenly at full attention, eyes brighter, face softer, the corner's of his mouth betraying the slightest start of a smile.

Greg Pikitis had stolen candy from babies before.

This was going to be easier.

The next morning Leslie made what had become a routine stop at Ben's office before heading to her own.

"Morning," she greeted him cheerfully, handing him what the untrained observer might assume to be a cup of coffee.

Ben, of course, knew better. He was fully aware the cup contained 1% coffee drowned in 99% whipcream and sugar, the beverage equivalent of liquid diabetes. Yet even with that knowledge, he still proceeded to smile, take a sip, and even manage to get out a small "Thanks" without accompanying it with his breakfast.

It was an act he'd been keeping up since a few weeks earlier, when Leslie had been drinking the concoction herself and insisted that he try some. He'd done his best just to stifle the resulting gag, not wanting to offend her and maybe also sort of sheepishly hoping it might win him a few extra brownie points.

However, thinly veiled disgust being, by far, the single most positive reaction her favorite beverage had ever received, Leslie had taken it upon herself to start bringing in an extra cup for her seemingly-similarly-sugar-enamored coworker every morning (since, as she had explained, asking for it from anywhere else could result in some rather hurtful words from a few of Pawnee's snootier baristas). She'd even mentioned making a special stop at the grocery store just to pick up some of those little lidded to-go-cups. The least Ben could do, he decided, was try to stomach the stuff. Besides, if it meant an added excuse to see her every morning, it was worth the 10+ years it was more than likely shaving from his life expectancy.

"How'd everything go yesterday after I left?" she asked, taking a sip from her own cup. "Did you manage to finish that last spreadsheet?"

"Oh yeah, I did," he smiled a little as his thoughts fell back to the previous afternoon and (what he at least thought was) his rather successful interaction with one of her most beloved family members. "Actually, your nephew stopped by to pick up those flyers you made for his bake sale. Cool kid. He seemed really disappointed that he missed you."

"My nephew?" Leslie asked, brow furrowed in confusion. Her mind started trying to process who Ben could have possibly mistaken for her nephew.

Ben raised an uncertain eyebrow of his own, not sure what to make of her reaction. "Yeah, when you weren't in your office he thought you, uh..."

His mind quickly flashed to "Walice" explaining, "Honestly, the way she's always talking about you, I thought she might be in here making out." The kid had said it in this cool, casual way that made Ben feel as though he was in on some sort of joke.

He decided (not surprisingly) to leave that detail out. "You know, that you might have had a meeting with me or something, and since I have those extra keys to your office—"

Her eyes shot open in realization, a look of almost indistinguishable loathing and repulsion flashed across her face. In that instance, she knew-"PIKITAS!"

Before Ben could blink, Leslie had torn off down the hall, a (thankfully) all-but-empty coffee cup flying disregarded out of her hands and onto the floor. Ben, completely dumbfounded, jumped up from his desk, trotting to catch up.

By the time he did, she had already reached her office and stood, seemingly frozen, just inside the door. Ben, taking a second to catch his breath, looked over the room and then at Leslie, who's wide eyes and frozen face seem to reflect nothing less than abject horror.

She started shaking her head, slowly at first but then gradually picking up speed. "No...no...no, no, no, NO," she hit the last 'no' with a strange sort of choked gasp.

Her eyes narrowed as her voice fell to a seething whisper, "Oh that fantastic, incredible little bastard."

"Leslie, what are you talking about?" Ben demanded, worried but still unbelievably confused as to why he should be.

Her gaze snapped towards him. She grabbed frantically onto the collar of his shirt, "How long was he here? Did you watch him? Ben! How long was he not the DIRECT focus of your line of sight? BEN! Are you listening to me! How long!"

Flustered by both how close she had pulled his face to hers and how nonsensically hysterical she was being, Ben pulled himself back, stammering a little as he attempted to get out some kind of answer. "N-not long! I was going to go with him, but the phone rang just as-"

"Of course the phone rang!" Leslie bit, her eyes turned back to the room, darting back and forth over every object as though she expected one to jump out and grab her."Who did you think you were dealing with? Some kind of amateur?"

"Yes!" His voice cracked a little as he said it. He was honestly more confused then when she seemed to be deeply, genuinely offended by a particular type of Italian food. "The kid was like 14! He was only gone for a few minutes and your office looks exactly the same!"

Watching Leslie's expression remain completely unchanged, he felt a weird sinking feeling in his gut. "He-he came back with the flyers," he added feebly, though he wasn't really sure how he expected it to help.

"Oh, Ben," she sighed, gazing at him with something that closely resembled pity. "Oh, dear, sweet, innocent Ben. How can I possibly confer to you the diabolical genius that is Greg Pikitis?"

She seemed to consider it for a moment. "Imagine someone could combine James Bond with Darth Vader with Einstein with Professor X with Hermione Granger...with Batman with Nancy Pelosi . Except make them all be super evil. And also invisible. And then wrap that all up and shove it into one douchey little teenage turdbag."

"Well-" Ben started in that tone that Leslie now knew meant-" I'm about to try to correct you about something in a way that will inevitably backfire by just making me look like a super nerd."

She held up a finger, because as much as she delighted in teasing Ben for being an even bigger dweeb than she was, now was simply not the time. She swept her hand out before her, gesturing to the room. "Exhibit A."

"I still don't see-"

"That's just it, Ben!" she interjected with a sort of semi-hysterical snort of a laugh. "That's how genius he is. He knew, Ben. Pikitis knew you'd tell me he'd been here, knew I'd know he was here, knew I'd know he did something to something but not what he did to what."

She began a slow, deliberate pace around the room, eying furniture like she meant to interrogate it. "So that's the question, isn't it, Ben? The question is what!"

Not sure what else to do, Ben just stared.

"What's going on?" Tom asked with only a moderate amount of interest from behind him, apparently not finding the situation strange enough to warrant a pause in whatever he was texting.

Ben turned, hoping Tom's face might hold a look of sanity with which he could commiserate. "Greg Pikitis?" he said, hands lifted slightly to make sure it was clear that just because he said the name, did not mean he had any understanding of its connotation.

Without hesitation, Tom's eyes immediately locked onto Ben's with an intensity that made the auditor glance to either side, as if expecting there to be someone else in the room for whom such a glance must be meant. Tom took a deep breath and then slowly, carefully, "Ben, tell me that Greg Pikitis did not spend time alone in this room."

Ben opened his mouth and tried for a word, but then shut it again uselessly. Apparently for Tom, nothing was answer enough.

"No, no, no, no!" he whined frantically, rushing over to look at his desk but taking care not to touch anything. He alternated between several low and high pitched incoherent moans of distress. For a moment, Ben was pretty sure he was about to see a grown man cry.

But of course, as usual, Leslie saved the day, Tom's distress apparently snapping her (at least momentarily) back to reality. "It's okay, Tom," she promised, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "It's not the end of the world. We're gonna figure out just what that little hellspawn did in here, we're gonna fix it, and then everything's going to be just fine."

"Are you kidding me?" Tom squeaked, glancing longingly at his autographed picture of Jamie Foxx, wanting so badly to reach out and comfort it with a touch but knowing better. "We're going to have burn or disinfect EVERYTHING in here."

For a moment, Leslie looked as though she might try to argue. Tom glared at her as though issuing a direct challenge,"Or are you really willing to bet there's something in this room that kid didn't fart on?"

Leslie dropped her head a little.

"He was only in here for five minutes!" Ben exclaimed, trying to be some voice of reason, but succeeding only in redirecting Tom's glare towards him.

"Oh yeah Ben? Why don't you pick something up then?"

There was a silent pause as both Parks and Rec employees turned their gaze to the state official. He fidgeted slightly. It wasn't like he thought the kid had really...it was just, they were making such a big deal about it...His own gaze fell to the floor.

"HAH! That's what I thought," Tom said, at that moment, appreciating victory wherever he could get it. "I told you you should have never made him that extra set of keys."

Ben's heart sunk a little. Even if they were overreacting, even if this Pikitis kid hadn't actually done anything, he still never should have let him go into Leslie's office alone. The kid had just been so damn charming! And what reason could anyone have had for doing something malicious to possibly the single most lovable deputy director in the world?

"Tom, stop it," Leslie said flatly, and Tom's glare turned more into a pout, still irritated but aware he'd probably taken it a step to far. "We'll just wrap Jerry in some garbage bags and shove him in here with a couple hundred cans of Lysol."

She looked around the room, biting her bottom lip, still clearly unsatisfied. "I don't know though...I mean, obviously, he knew Ben had the keys, knew Ben would be absolutely no challenge to get them from"-Ben made a slightly offended face. "And must have known would take back the keys from Ben as soon as we found out what happened"-Another less-than-pleased look from Ben. "So why cash in on an opportunity like that just to rub his butt on our phones? That's minor leagues, not Pikitis. He's smarter than that. He has to be after something bigger..."

She looked around again, eyes narrowed as she once again scoured the room for an answer. And there it was—hanging on the wall in front of her the whole time.

"Oh my god," she whimpered, eyes wide. "The Harvest Festival."

It struck her so hard she forgot about the possible contamination of her chair and fell back into it.

It was only Greg Pikitis, hiding in a bush just outside the window, that giggled as what might have otherwise been a dramatic silence was broken by the loud "Pppppmmmmfffffffttttt" of a very strategically placed whoopee cushion.

(tbc)