[ PRP ] Always use Protection (Rep, Mark)

[Zoobey]

"Rep bad news! I found out that Caelius is gonna kill Ga-" Mark burst into Rep's "office" and immediately stopped whatever he was about to say and scratched his head. "Dude, you need nicer chair."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep's attention span wasn't too much better than Mark's and though he was certainly concerned about Gale's well-being, Cael was a regular sort of danger to be navigated. Instead he got a little bit offended at this critiscism of his man cave office.

"Look I know I do." he said, very quickly and hurriedly closing several browser tabs. "But we aren't all on a sweet assistant's salary."

He raised a brow. "Why's the boss going to kill English blonde and serious this time? I thought they got along."

Zoobey

 

[Zoobey]

"Dude that assistant's salary is a joke, most of my money comes from my personalized services." Ironically, this actually included just about everything but anything to do with the coitus. "Have you considered charging a fee for bounty hunting I mean like, I can think about five people who I'd love to have an arm or a leg miss- wait now is not the time for this."

Mark ventured about a footstep into the office, side-eyeing the fur pelt that was side-eyeing him. "Look, do you know how hard it will be to find someone as uh straightforward as Gale? Let's just march up to the office and explain our whole strike thing and then everyone will understand, and then I'll consider buying you a new chair. I mean if the strike thing works out."

There were multiple ways to interpret the last sentence.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"No one cares about bounty hunting." Rep said with the real anguish of a man who could kill almost anything on Earth but who lived on an island of people who weren't far off the same abilities and who didn't think that killing innocent bears, tigers and cute bunnies was a marketable life skill.

He was derailed by the prospect of a new chair, one which wasn't an old chair he'd borrowed from life division which had a few strange stains he hoped were coffee and which creaked and squeaked precariously every time he moved in it.

There was a moment where he beamed in genuine hopeful delight before hurriedly masking it with a more apathetic and socially acceptable expression. He sighed. "Fine." he said. "But if he touches any more super dangerous s**t I'm out. He's getting as bad as Lucky."

 

[WE ARE HALLOWEEN]

"I'll have you know I like Gale a lot and-" Mark suddenly blinked as he realized Rep had actually agreed, "I mean that's uh, that's great! Well."

He stiffly turned around, giving one more look at the rug before stepping fully outside. There, the Death assistant would talk Rep's head off as he waited for the other to close up and follow. "Gale isn't even close to Lucky. If there was a cosmic scale of how bad Lucky was compared to Gale, it would be like comparing my d**k oh, I dunno, like Melvin's. I don't even know why Lucky touches everything, I think it's because he lives on an existence where if he doesn't discover one new thing every day he might explode. I mean, and this is a huge secret by the way, I'm pretty sure Lucky is sleeping with the enemy. How else has he not been dropped out of any helicopters recently?"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"Well yeah." Rep said as he locked all 5 of the deadbolts he'd fitted on the door and tried not to think even a tiny bit about Mark's d**k. "Lucky is lucky. I think he's got some kind of ******** addiction to knowledge. I mean you can totally know too much, I prefer no knowing things if I can avoid it. I mean. Within reason. I don't want to forget what I know." And a little of the colour drained out of his face at the thought of Circe and what she was capable of.

"He's probably ******** the enemy, wouldn't surprise me, I barely even know who the enemy is in the first place. Whoever isn't trying to kill me is fine by me."

He shrugged. "What the hell's Cael doing this time?"

 

[Zoobey]

Mark held up a finger instead of answering, their trajectory now very close to the Death lead's office. He tiptoed near the open door, and peered in, and then quickly whipped his head back out to stare at Rep.

"Good news, and bad news," he whispered. "The good news is Gale is not here. The bad news is he's probably like, dead or something."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep looked a little relieved that no one was there, hanging back while Mark looked round while trying to look as inconspicuous as a guy with mountaineering boots, a huge fur trimmed coat and bright ginger and white stripy hair could look.

"He could be literally ******** anywhere." he said, still not raising his voice again in case Cael did his usual thing where he crept up behind you when you least expected it. "You should fit a GPS to him, like a cat with a bell."  

[Zoobey]

"An entire GPS?" Mark whispered back, raising his voice quite considerably, "Do you know how like, expensive those things are. I'm not made of money, I just bought a curved 60 inch TV and pre-ordered the new Nintendo Switch and I gotta watch my daily budget you know er these things used for work exclusively."

He took a deep breath and steeling himself for about five seconds, strode into the office. "It wasn't Gale's fault! We went on strike and I changed the e-mail passwords but I mean I'll change them back and rights and stuff and I demand to be treated like an equal and also GPSes are very expensive!"

In a very interestingly paralleled moment, the Death lead took of his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"And - and my buddy Rep has something to say about it too!"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"I've got no hope of the ******** switch." Rep snapped, muttering to himself as Mark went, adding more quietly. "Gotta convince Ace."

He followed him into the office without thinking what he was doing, pausing next to Mark, before very subtly edging behind him. "Hey boss." he said. "I'm all better."

He wanted to add and I'm not with him. But brotrayal was frankly a sin.

"We er...wanted aye. Equal rights and s**t...like... that."

He'd stood in front of H's desk and told him he was a clone one time only to realise he wasn't. This was probably on a par with that.
 

[Zoobey]

There were about thirty long arduous seconds as the Death lead put his glasses back on, and went back what looked like a most arduously planned out map more impossible to read than the Tokyo train station.

Another thirty seconds passed. Mark was getting fidgety and having cellphone withdrawals.

"Password." Caelius finally said quite simply, and the Death Assistant stiffened and immediately obliged, scooting over to the laptop neglected on the desk.

"Okay fixed," Mark scooted several feet backwards and wringed his hands together. "So about my pay raise," he began.

Dead silence.

"Cool, well, great talk. I'll just, we'll just yeah, good times." He gave his lead a double thumbs up. "Also Gale's not dead right?"

Silence. And then. "No."

"Cool, cool, and um, about the Rep thing."

Caelius looked sharply up at Mark.

"No Rep thing, no Rep thing, nothing wrong with Rep, we're leaving!"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep listened, barely daring to move, certain that at any moment both he and Mark would be thrown into or out of something horrible. He wasn't sure where they were going with their efforts but in a sort of giddy way he felt like they were making progress by not being chopped up into tiny bits.

He did a double take at Mark's question about him.

"What Rep thing?" he asked, suddenly anxious.

Zoobey

 

[Zoobey]

There was a quite recent rumour that the Death lead had gotten lenient in his time of post and that most encounters in his office recently had not involved any missing arms, limbs, hands, or fingers of choice. This may have been because of his longer ventures away from the Island or perhaps because now through plenty of safety pamphlets, precautionary tales, and trainee orientation, most Hunters knew better than to run into his office demanding information not nearly equal to their personal value.

Most Hunters.

While Rep may not have felt anything too different about the current shift in atmosphere, his weapon through years of finely honed skills and combat may have detected very obvious warning signals of get out right now. In the corner of Rep's eye, he could see Mark suddenly taking a long step to one side.

Caelius meticulously closed the map and placed it inside a drawer before folding both hands on his desk and giving Rep his direct eye contact. "Do you think you deserve to know."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

The direct eye contact would have been enough to shut Rep up on its own even without Tracey anxiously doing the weapon equivalent of tugging on his sleeve. He froze for a split second.

"No." He said reflexively, self deprecation always on the tip of his tongue. "No sir I don't, sorry."

For someone who got into constant fights rep folded like laundry day to authority.  

[Zoobey]

This seemed to placate Caelius just enough as he went back to his task at hand. Mark also visibly exhaled and grabbed a hold of the back of Rep's coat, hoping that movement alone would disengage his buddy from being frozen in one place.

"Come on bro, let's just-"

The Death assistant didn't finish his sentence as he was nearly bowled over by another Hunter running in, one arm clutching their laptop, cord still trailing behind him. "Sir! We found it, we found their legacy archives. They're heavily guarded since there's only the one remaining-" He blinked and backed away slightly as Caelius stood up immediately.

"You three," the Death lead brushed past by Mark and was already on the door out, "Lighthouse mission in five minutes."

At least this time he told them what was going on.

The third Hunter, who's laptop cord was still trailing on the ground, looked at Mark, then at Rep, then at himself, visibly counting to three before groaning and leaving as well.

"Cool," said Mark upon everyone's retreating figure, "that's cool. Everyone just ask me what I want okay!" He sighed and began to pick up a various assortment of items from his desk, stashing them who-knows-where. "Hope you don't forget runics this time. I guess I'll see you in oh, four minutes."

Baneful