bzarcher | (no subject)

Hm. Idea hit me in the car.

They sat outside the office building, and if you weren't listening to them talk, they looked like two co-workers who had stepped out for a smoke.

George sighed, expelling a hazy blue cloud in the process. He'd been -so excited- when they'd offered him the chance to move from doing reality fixture graphing in the office to being on a field team. He'd expected action. Adventure. A cool uniform! Instead, he was sitting outside of an office in midtown, dressed in the same suit he'd worn to work for 3 years, and the only difference was that he got to be terrified out of his skull instead of bored out of his mind.

"I don't know what I'm doing here."

"Mm?" Roberts turned from where he'd settled down on the curb. "Oh. Having that moment of doubt, huh?"

"I suppose you could call it that. I mean...I'm an accountant. What am I supposed to do against things like that?"

"Oh, you did plenty."

"Yes, I imagine that screaming and running for the door was very helpful."

"Well, ok, that wasn't much, but those spreadsheets you dropped in the room? Those were good. Your math on the likelihood of the building actually holding a supernatural creature versus standard usage? Perfect." Roberts motioned to the curb next to him, and George sat, taking another drag off his cigarette. "The deal is, numbers have power. Especially when we get involved. That's the whole point of this business. We use the numbers to set the conditions for what we need, and to prove the outcomes we desire, right? So the better your math is, the harder it is for things like that to take hold and impose their own realities."

George frowned. "It didn't seem like it did that much to me."

Roberts chuckled ruefully. "Well, what we found in there happens to be a very nasty something. It takes a lot to force one of those loose. But you did weaken it a great deal. It's a great start that we can work off of."

"And if it doesn't work?"

Roberts patted the shotgun he'd set beside him like a beloved pet. "Well, that's when we use these."

George frowned. "Uh-huh. And when those don't work?"

Roberts smiled, gesturing to the road. "Well, that's when we call for backup."

A medium sized panel truck pulled up in front of them, marked with a few generic logos and the proud brand of '24 Hour Emergency Shoe Repair!'

"...A cobbler." George tossed his cigarette butt into the gutter. "So is this where you tell me about how shoes are some kind of anchor into the mundane world, because they're the medium that people use to walk through their daily lives?"

Roberts laughed, standing and walking to the back of the truck. "Hey, that's pretty good, George! I mean...it's totally wrong, but that's good! I'll have to save that for something."

Drawing another cig out of the pack rather than saying something sharp, George flicked his lighter, brought the cancer stick to life, and released a couple of little puffs before he spoke, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "Fine. So, why the cobbler?"

"Oh, he's not a cobbler at all. We just have that on there as a disguise for his truck." Rolling up the truck's back gate, Roberts stepped back, and to George's shock, a squat, stout fellow in heavy black tactical gear hopped down to the street. With thick, powerful looking legs, muscular arms, and a black, bushy beard, the only word that came to his mind was Dwarf!

"Jarl." Roberts nodded, respectfully.

"Roberts." The dwarf nodded back, his basso voice sounding like someone hitting a big bronze bell with a hammer. "New kid?"

"Uh...yeah. I'm George."

"Nice to meet you, George. Let's go." Reaching back into the truck, Jarl hauled out something that looked like a cross between a flamethrower and a squad automatic weapon. George could see little runes carved into the barrel and the stock. Roberts knealt, picking his shotgun back up and pumping a new shell into the chamber, before turning to George with a grin.

"See? We'll be fine. C'mon!"

Tossing another butt onto the street, George was really starting to miss his cubicle.

Whee!