[Job] The new Peter Barker

Noon had just passed, as Iris was making her way through town. For once in a while with a proper destination in mind. After all, one can't life off of nothing, so she had spent the morning strolling, looking for typical ”Help Wanted” poster in windows and stray newspapers that would list the kind of short term employments she was looking for. Eventually the girl had come upon one such newspaper which was looking for help on their own account and not for third parties. Figuring whatever the job could be, might be fun to try. After all, newspapers were one of the few things Iris had little experience with aside from reading them occasionally.
With that plan in mind and a folded tear-out of the page in question in pocket, her goal was the building located at the address mentioned in the ad, likely the publishing house of the so-called 'Yorknew Times'. As it goes with just after noon times, the city was packed with housewives shopping groceries and workers of all classes taking lunch breaks. But nevertheless, Iris reached the place eventually, not one bit less motivated then when she set out on the journey.

Past the glass doors separating the outside from the inside of the building and protecting any stray birds from flying into the spacious lobby, the climate immediately changed. Where Iris could feel the comfortable warmth of the midday sun outside, in there a slightly cold chill would grab anyone, probably some air conditioning working overtime on top of the interior not being warmed up by the sun like an outdoor location would be. In the middle of all this chilled, empty space sat a semicircle of a reception desk, with bored looking secretaries behind it, working telephones, computers and ledgers. Green-hair approached said table nonchalantly and expected to get some kind of attention for standing there and looking at the women doing their jobs. But alas, only after she slammed the piece of newspaper onto the countertop with a flat palm, resulting in a resounding slap, one of the secretaries glanced at her over the rim of her glasses. “I came for this. That help still needed?” Iris reinforced her point, waving with the piece of paper for a brief moment.

Wordless as ever, the secretary pulled a stapled bunch of papers out of a tray and skimmed the pages. “In fact, it is. We need extremely recent photos of some places around town for tomorrow's print and the guy usually taking them is very indisposed. You want to take that stand-in?” - “Sure do.” While Iris didn't exactly had photographic experience to boast about, how hard could taking a few pictures be?
Without further questioning, a drawer under the reception was pulled open and the leather pouch unearthed this way put on countertop. “We're providing this camera for the job as well as this list of places.” A twice-folded sheet of print came to sit right next to the camera. “Results need to be in as fast as possible, tomorrow's edition starts print at sunset.” the secretary advised before turning back into her ledgers, continuing the work she was being paid to do. Iris pocketed the camera without further inspection for now and skimmed the location orders on her way out.

All of the destinations seemed like well-known public places, so finding them would not be a problem for Iris. The real art would be to get acceptable pictures taken, so likely not just kind of snapping one while passing by. First up, the Courthouse, as it seemed the closest from where the tour started. Arriving relatively quickly, her expectations were well fulfilled. The space in front of the building was full of people and thus, the lower halves of pictures taken directly like this would be consisting of a lot of people's hairstyles. Not exactly professional. “Elevation.” It was a clear solution, though options to realize it weren't exactly widespread. The houses and buildings around the place did not exactly look like publicly accessible, so quickly getting on some rooftop or high floor at least, was out of the question. The only other things that stood out somewhat from the crowds were street lamps.
Being short on alternatives, it took the girl not long to decide climbing a lamppost was probably the best shot she would get. While she despised heights of any sort and was only average at climbing poles, with most of her allotment of bravery for the day she made it to the top fairly quickly. Attention of bypassers included. Ignoring the “Someone call the fire brigade.”, “Is this a publicity stunt?” and “She must be crazy.” commotion, Iris took two shots with the provided image capturing device, because the first one felt like it wasn't quite good enough. Slipping the camera back into her jacket, she herself descended from the temporary perch down to the ground in a controlled sliding motion. “One in the bank, two left.”

[830/800 Words]

After having a bit of trouble leaving the scenery of slight uproar, almost two hours had passed before the photographer-to-be reached destination number two: the central bank main building. As opposed to the Court, this was a modern structure of steel and glass, relatively high and probably hard to capture on a 4-to-3 aspect ratio image, unless she was ridiculously far away. But Iris had another idea. Instead of far away, she'd get in as close as possible without making security guards think she was up to shady business. That way, or so her plan was, she could shoot a fancy perspective from the ground all the way up the building. Doing that with little extra effort, she felt like she had picked the most difficult one first. Finding a good rooftop angle for the Cemetery Building probably was not too difficult, the thing was quite the attraction after all. So with a fair amount of time until the deadline, green-hair continued her tour towards the final location.

To her disappointment however, there were no official places to get a good aerial view of the famous building requested for the final picture. Not that a lack of obvious solutions had ever stopped the young woman. Devising a plan involving emergency lies, she strolled into the ground floor shop of a building, one street out from the Cemetery Building. The local cashier was stocking up shelves and generally not much seemed to be going on. “Could I perhaps quickly use your bathroom? It's incredibly urgent.” she asked, lieing. The clerk seemed unimpressed, but ultimately decided to help out a stranger in a pinch. “Through the curtain, door on the left.”
And so she went. Although not through said door on the left, but rather straight ahead into the stairwell. It was a gamble to hope there would be access to it from the store, but in the end it worked out. Quickly flying up said stairs, she reached the buildings roof after five floors. Not the most impressive, but it would have to do, at least she had a vantage point mostly higher than other buildings. Taking the snap after trying out which orientation of the camera would be better, Iris' work was officially done and she hurried downstairs to not raise too much suspicion.

A questioning look from the salesperson did happen, but nothing came of it, after she quickly thanked the guy and rushed out of the store. To her luck he probably couldn't get himself to indecently ask what a girl would be doing in a bathroom for easily ten minutes. All that was left to the job was returning the valuable intel to the 'Yorknew Times' within the hour. Not a problem for a brisk walk with some determination. Making sure the camera was actually still inside her Jacket where it should be, Iris sped up her step as the upper few floors of the place came into view above and between other buildings after a while.
The chilling breeze from earlier seemed to have abandoned the lobby where the receptionists were still doing their work. Instead, it almost felt warmer then outside. Regardless of this uncomfortable change in climate, Iris would manage to walk the last dozen or so meters up to the reception counter to deliver the results of her handiwork well in time.

Opposite to how it went just after noon, she had no need to slam for attention this time. The secretary from before fixated her stare on the fill-in-photographer almost immediately and wasted no time to check the pictures taken on the camera she had just received. “We can work with this.” the far more mature woman judged. After the cold reception from earlier, this sounded to Iris like a job well done. And even if it were not, she herself felt satisfied with what she had archived, to her the most important thing. Although earning coin to live off was pretty important too.

[662+830 / 800 Words ; 1492 Total]