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By the time he finished, she was practically beaming. Her estimation for him rose from Muppet to Possible Coworker, and she gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "Excellent. Don't worry about any of the code or runes, we've found that its better to just do those separately first. It takes longer and more people, but the end results are more reliable."

When he asked what to focus on, she thought a moment. Eventually, he'll learn the more about the runes themselves and what they meant, but for now, "The doctor took you down to see the Core right? Excalibur? Focus on that for now, and it should be able to connect. When it does, you'll get a nice blue glow, then you just string them up for wearing and you're done. Any flawed pendants just set aside, so they can be destroyed later."

The pedant flared blue and then slowly faded, Clarice gave him a clap on the shoulder, "Excellent! Now, that was a regular pendant. It's the pendant the every hunter is given, it connects to our personnel database and lets it know who you are, and where you have the clearance to go. Also where your home is, so you can...I really hate to call it teleport, but if you can keep a clear head and stay still for long enough, it will allow you to relocate from one area to a specific area. It's not something to be used frivolously, if you use it while moving, only a portion of you will get moved. Also, it pretty much kills the pendant, which are a pain to replace." Though, chances were he already knew all about that, having been part of that last big trainee mission.

Taking the pendant from Before, she leaned down and held it up between them, "This...is your driver's license, your hall pass, and your get-out-of-jail-free card, all rolled into one. It's not something to fear, understand?" Straitening up, she handed the pendant back, and made her way to the door, "You finish those up, and I'll bring by a set of the ones you should watch out for, okay?"

The sound of humming filtered down the lab hallway. As it drew closer, the melody proved to be a particularly upbeat rendition of Silver Bells. The person humming paused right outside the pendant room's door for several moments and then continued on their way. Soon the smell of fresh baked cookies filled Before's little room. If he happened to open the door, he'd find a plate full of smiling gingerbread men beaming up at him with gumdrop eyes and licorice smiles. A glass of milk was thoughtfully provided as well.

It would take a few moments...or minutes, possibly even several of them, to notice the hooded figure watching from the doorway. Under normal circumstances, Doctor H would say something horrible, do his best to ruin the trainee's day, and then be off to do something more productive if slightly less entertaining. But in this particular situation? Such an effort would be pointless. Instead, the doctor busied his mind trying to think of ways in which to pawn the young man off on the Death Division in the quickest manner possible while Cael wasn't looking.

Also there was the small issue of what was obviously a drive-by cookie drop, damn that creepy old woman. This was the third one this week. She was ramping up her efforts to spread...happiness throughout Deus Ex and it was growing more and more disturbing.

"Are you quite done, young master?" He finally drawled out, interrupting the trainee's...performance.

"Oh well...I wouldn't go that far," the doctor murmured, considering the situation at hand. His most muppety underling, hopped up on cookies, singing holiday songs, and just being disgustingly happy. Though he did, apparently, get his work done.

In situations like this, Dr. H liked to ask himself one simple question...

What would Caelius do?

The answer, of course, was either threaten the trainee or beat them half to death in a fit of pique.

Arriving to this conclusion, the doctor set about to do the complete opposite. He took over the seat at the table, removed his hood, and helped himself to a cookie. "Gingerbread. Delightful." The man himself was of middle age, swarthy, and in need of a shave. From his eyes to to his jawline, the only thing that was soft about the doctor was his voice as he complained, "No milk? Ah well," he reached into his robe a pulled out a small flask, "...always be prepared. So...Bates...what sort of duet do you have in mind?"

Elsewhere, Clarice was searching for a clean set of control pendants, still under the assumption that all was (relatively) right with the world.

"Ahh...the epic tale of using your mutation to save the day and then gaining a position of power to one day crush all those who wouldn't let join in their little reindeer games. Excellent choice, Milton, simply excellent." The doctor was two cookies and three swigs down, and pretty much everything was starting to seem like a good idea.

And so it was, when Clarice entered the room five minutes later, it was to a rousing finish in which both doctor and trainee declared at the top of their lungs, that Rudolph would indeed be going down in history!

The assistant just stood in the doorway and stared. At first she wondered if she was actually in a coma. Then she remembered what her boss was like and the s**t he was capable of causing for funsies. The real question here was: if she left, would they follow her? Because having to witness this was one thing, being seen with these two in public was very definitely quite another.

"CLARICE!" The doctor happily called out in unison with the trainee. Rather than answer Clarice just stared. There was an unreasonable hope in her heart that if she just refused to acknowledge them, this would not be actually happening right now.

"Clarice, my dear, come join us." He put a jovial arm around Before's shoulders and gave him a rough squeeze, "Do you know the young master? This guy, Clarice, this guy." He let go, and then turned to cup the trainee's cheeks in his palms, head shaking in wonder, "I tell tell, if I had a son like this young man...why I'd..." he affectionately patted the younger man's head, "...probably put him up for adoption." He moved away, turning back to his assistant, "And YOU! Clarice. My god...if I had a daughter like you..." he shook his head in wonder, and raised his arm, approaching her for what looked like a hug. She stared back, slow horror creeping into her expression. "I would still break all kinds of laws just to get those legs wrapped aroun-"

"BEFORE," Clarice finally called out to interrupt that line of conversation, "DO YOU..." realizing she was yelling, she gave a small cough, flushing in both irritation and embarrassment, "...do you still want to know about the pendants, because if not I can leave you two alone."

Forever.

I hope this room burns down with you two in it.

Seeing that hand Clarice dove for the plate, "No-no-noooo more cookies, ok?! If you overdose your heart could explode out of your chest," she felt this sounded plausible, "...and we don't want that now do we?" Trying to keep the plate out of reach, she held out a box to the trainee, "Take this instead, and have a seat."

"Oooooooh," drawled the doctor, "...are we going to learn about the control pendants today?" He made himself comfortable on the edge of the table. "You'll learn quite a bit from this one, Milton. Clarice is such an excellent teacher when it comes to eager young men such as yourself."

The assistant just rolled her eyes.