The Daily Grind - Chapter 122 (Patreon)

Alright.  Took a week off to not die, but we're back now.  Let's roll.

_____

James was currently sitting in what used to be his office, fingers steepled in front of his face as he leaned his elbows on the new desk that now occupied the room.  He was on the other side of the desk from normal, facing a middle-aged man in a grey suit.

The man’s name was Randall, no last name given, and he was a bit of a twit.  Big nose, shaved and polished bald head, and the kind of narrow eyes that made him look almost perfectly neutral all the time.  He wasn’t exactly the kind of person James thought of when he thought “FBI field consultant”.  But then, that was probably the point, wasn’t it?

The bigger problem was that he was skeptical to an unhealthy degree.  Actually the bigger problem was that he was probably reporting back to an agency that it *might* not have been a good idea to tether themselves to, but James had a mild case of in-a-coma-itus at the time and hadn’t been on hand to argue.  But it was a constant irritation to have this guy interrupting conversations to ask people to *prove* that there was magic at play.

He never called it magic, either.  And while the ongoing shifting battle lines of who used the term ‘magic’ and who said things like ‘dungeontech’ were a running joke to most members of the Order, it got a lot less funny when this stuffy jerk started criticizing them for improper terminology.

As if James wasn’t the one *writing* the terminology in the first place.

It wasn’t that he didn’t accept the weird stuff.  Randal had met Secret, was aware of the Akashic Sewer, and had apparently been taken on a brief non-combat tour of Officium Mundi.  He’d witnessed blue powers in action, and at least one absorbed orange spawn, though specifically not Anesh duplicating himself.

They weren’t quite prepared to tell him about the Anesh thing.  Or about lot of things.

They were serious about taking advice from him, where it mattered.  Harvey, specifically, was basically taking full time classes on security and counterintelligence, even if they didn’t quite have the resources to apply them all yet.  And right now, James was even trying his best to listen to the guy with an impartial ear.

Which was hard, because, as mentioned, he could be a bit of a twit.

“You made several mistakes in your handling of the terrorist organization OA-1.”  Randall was saying.  He kept his eyes tilted to the side, reading a sheaf of papers and not even bothering to glance at James.  “To begin with, your handling of-“

“Sorry, OA-1?”  James interrupted him.  “You must mean Status Quo, why the name change?”

“It’s how their internal documentation refers to themselves.”  Randall blandly offered.  “Now, your strike against the-”

James cut him off again.  “Why are we using their name for themselves?  That seems like an amount of casual respect that I do not possess toward their corpse.”

His comment went entirely ignored, in a way that almost amused James.  There was a tendency he knew he had to bias himself toward people who appreciated dry wit the same way he did; Randall here clearly did not.  To the point that he just didn’t acknowledge it.  James wasn’t sure if it was because the man was purposefully needling him, or because he was an idiot, but either way, it was funny and annoying in equal measure.

“Your strike against OA-1,” Randall was saying, as if James hadn’t spoken, “was effective, but failed to maximize use of  force multipliers that you have access to.  Despite a preemptive attack against an unaware enemy, you still sustained casualties that weren’t needed.”  He pulled a piece of paper to the front of his sheaf and started reading.  “The things you call camracondas should have been deployed in greater numbers. Also, any other autonomous units you can create should be made use of at every opportunity where they can replace human operators.  You lack useful long range support, specifically sniper cover.  Your organization also clearly requires training in small unit tactics; I’ve reviewed the footage and…”

“Uh… how?”  James cut in.  “The footage thing.  We leveled the building.”

“From your own body cameras.”  Randall eyed him like he was an idiot, and James cleared his throat quickly, holding up an apologetic hand and hoping the FBI consultant didn’t question too hard about why he had never seen a single one of those cameras in the building.  “Now…”

“No, no.  Not done yet.”  James jumped in again.  “The camracondas are people, not weapons.  Ditto for any Life we create; that’s not an efficient weapon.  If for no other reason than that using living things as weapons always, *ineveitably* backfires.  Case in point; my secret base has several dozen expatriate camracondas in it.”  He paused for a heartbeat, tapping his fingers in a pattern on the desk as he leaned back.  “Also it’s super unethical.”

“Ethics isn’t a part of the math of an efficient operation.”  Randall informed him, looking exasperated.

James nodded.  “That’s nice.”  He said.

“This also ties into your handling of prisoners.”  The fed continued.

“We didn’t take prisoners.”  James tried really hard to not sigh deeply.  In this moment, he wanted to be doing literally anything else aside from having his actions second guessed by this asshole.  “So, that kinda covers that whole section.”

Randall glanced up, hard eyes meeting James’ own.  And suddenly, James realized, he knew that this man wasn’t some inexperienced idiot who spent his days moving paperwork around.  There was a feeling, laser targeted on his soul, that the guy in front of him was a *killer*, in a cold, calculated way that had nothing to do with either ethics or emotions.

“Yes.”  Randall said, blandly.  “You failed to apprehend any of the surviving members of OA-1.  Instead, you chose to release those that you had in custody, creating the window of opportunity for the reformation of their organizational structure, the creation of new hostile groups, and the resurgence of the same threat you set out to eliminate.  Except now, every hostile agent knows of your existence and an outline of your capabilities.  Furthermore, you forfeited the potential intelligence that could be gained through long term interrogation of the membership of OA-1, especially any leadership that went unidentified.”

James scowled.  “I have a number of counterpoints.”  He said, and got a brisk ‘go ahead’ hand motion from Randall.  “First of all, we have nowhere to house prisoners, long or short term.  I know I keep calling this place a secret base, but it’s not like I’m a Bond villain, with underground holding cells and a shark tank.  We don’t have anywhere to hold people.”

“That is a valid point.”  Randall nodded.  “Though space could have been acquired.”

“Maybe.”  James conceded.  “Second point, though; taking prisoners wasn’t our objective.  Our goal was to remove their ability to effectively function as an organization.  As far as we know, that was their headquarters, and roughly half their staff, gone.  As well as their ability to produce more of the ma… dungeontech that they use for field operations.  We weren’t interested in wiping them out, just in taking away their ability to keep doing what they were doing.”

“Also valid.”  Randall admitted.  “Though you forget something important.  Or perhaps haven’t learned it yet.”

“What’s that?”  James leaned forward a bit, actually curious.  This was starting to feel more like a conversation and less like a rundown of his faults.

Randall tapped his papers into an orderly stack against the desktop.  “The people you fight are under no obligation to tell you the truth.”  He gave the smallest of shrugs, barely a twitch of the shoulders.  “You have no way of knowing, without proper intelligence, if this *was* their headquarters, or their only point of operation.  Because people *lie*.”  He hissed out the last word.  “You didn’t even track their remaining agents to potential safehouses after the combat concluded.  Amature.”

“And instead, we should have, what?  Locked them up and tortured them?”  James’ face set in a hard frown.  “I’m not really interested.”

“Torture doesn’t work.”  Randall told him, his gaze going back to flat neutral.  “You should be aware of that already.  Long term interrogations rely on human rapport and ideological conversion.  Short term on appealing to self-interest. Torture is for the vengeful, the inefficient,  or the stupid.  That’s why the CIA makes use of it heavily.”

James turned a yawn into a strangled cough to hide something that was trying to be a laugh.  “Okay!”  He said, after he’d caught his breath.  “Wasn’t expecting that.”  James muttered with a low tone.  “So, cheat more in a fight, take prisoners, anything else I did wrong?”

“It’s not about what you did wrong. It’s about fixing flaws before they get you killed.”  Randall spoke in his neutral voice, but James got the distinct impression that this was someone talking down to him, like he was a child.  Though, from Randall’s perspective, he probably was; and once he noticed that, James decided that maybe pulling his head out of his ass and actually taking objective advice wasn’t the worst idea.  “The only other problem is that you failed to capture the more valuable assets available during the operation.”

“We took most of their stuff.”  James raised his eyebrows.  “What… oh.”

“The… ahem… items… aside, you failed to acquire the means to produce *more*.”

“Yeah, no.”  James shook his head.  “From their own documentation, it looks like those things take not just blood, but something on par with the abstraction of life itself to run.  You literally cannot use them without killing people.  So, no.  Blew ‘em up, and I’ll do it again if I need to.”

Randall tapped a pencil on the desk in a slow rhythm.  “You didn’t know that at the time.”  He flatly accused.

“Had a feeling.”  James bit the words off.

“Hm.”  The agent made a note.  “Well.  That’s all for now.  I wanted to make you aware of my assessment.  A more comprehensive report will be completed soon, now that I have your input.”

“Thanks.”  James put forth a massive effort to not roll his eyes as he stood up.  Then he realized what he was doing, and corrected himself.  “Actually thanks.  I know this has probably been a lot for you, over the last couple months.  And I do appreciate the advice, even if I decide to not follow it.”

Randall actually looked up, and this time, his gaze didn’t feel quite so dangerous.  “Good.”  He said.  “Now leave.  I have work to do.”

Ah, and we were so close to a bonding moment, James thought as he closed the door behind himself.

_____

Overhead, the sun blazed.  It was a beautiful June day; hot, but not sweltering, clear blue skies, and a slight breeze to make it just perfectly comfortable to someone outside.  Around them, the hum of insects and the light rustling of trees filled the air, along with the smell of earth and pollen.

It was marvelous, and James was covered in mosquito bites.

“We couldn’t have done this anywhere else?”  He griped.  “I feel like we’ve been walking for an hour.”

“It’s been fifteen minutes, you giant baby.”  Alanna chided him from the front of the line.

“My leg is broken!”  James called back to her, propping his crutch under his arm and using his good hand to swat at whatever was trying to drain all the blood out of his neck.  “And while I am aware that I could use my acceleration boost on limping, that seems like an *awful* idea!  I should have stayed back at the Lair.  JP was teaching me how to fight with a sword.”

“Left handed?”  Anesh cocked an eyebrow.  He was behind James in their three person hiking line, carrying a heavy cooler braced against his thighs in an awkward walking position, and a heavier duffel bag over his shoulders.  “That doesn’t seem… easy?”

James let out a flippantly dismissive noise.  “I needed something to do.  And JP’s the only person who didn’t care that I’m injured.  Honestly, I kinda felt like I didn’t have a whole lot to do, especially since some nerds keep trying to get me to nap all day.”

“You need your rest you ass!”  Alanna yelled back over her shoulder as she shoved a tree branch out of her way.

“And yet, here we are.”  James waved his crutch around at the woods they were in while he tried to figure out how to maneuver over the log in front of him.

The three partners were out for the day, nominally because Anesh wanted to do some closer experiments with one of the bracelets liberated from Status Quo’s agents, but mostly just because they wanted to spend a little time together.  Originally Anesh was just going to take one of them to a local shooting range, but everything being closed for the lockdown, mixed with the fact that they probably didn’t want to show off any gun magic in public, had led them here.  To a spot that Alanna had known about, and had a fondness for.

It was a little clearing in the trees; maybe sixty feet wide, with a few large and mostly flat rocks poking up out of the ground on one side.  The remains of a fire pit stuck out next to one of the rocks; evidence that they weren’t the only people to know about this place, but overall it was a nice little spot to stop and enjoy the beauty of nature.

It was also far enough away from any other human that they could do some target practice and not worry about being interrupted.

“Nice place.”   James grinned appreciatively as he settled his butt onto one of the rocks, propping the crutch up next to himself and slapping another bug off his leg. He’d worn shorts out of necessecity, the cast on his leg and also the heat making any longer pants a pain.  But he’d almost begun to regret that choice.  “You sure it’s okay for us to just hang out here and shoot off guns?”

“Oh yeah, it’s fine.”  Alanna nodded.  “My dad used to bring me camping here.  I mean, you were in the car; you know how far off any main road we are.”

“I admit, I started to get nervous when your directions took us driving down dirt and grass.”  Anesh grimaced as he dropped the cooler into the soft earth.

Alanna threw her arms up.  “It’s totally legal!  They’re technically park roads anyway!”

“I more meant that I was worried James’ car was going to fall apart.”

“Hey!”

“James, the most durable part of your car is the passenger window, and that’s only because we got a new one installed for you while you were in a coma.”

James protested, “My car is a noble beast!  It has survived twenty four years of…”

“Yes, that’s largely the problem.”  Anesh interrupted him.  “Get a new car!  We have the money for it!”

Alanna sat back on one of the rocks opposite James, and cracked open a can of soda with a snap and a hiss.  She didn’t say anything, instead just enjoyed the feel of the sun as it filtered through the tall trees above, and listened to her boyfriends bicker good naturedly.

It really was a great day for this.

The three of them spent some time throwing jokes around, and getting comfortable, before Alanna finally stood and stretched languidly, like some kind of woman-shaped lion in the sun.  “Alright.” She said, unzipping one of the bags they’d brought and pulling out a small black case.  “We got you a gift.”  She said to James.

“Is it,” he asked, “something dangerous?”

“Everything’s dangerous in it’s own way...okay, okay!  Yes!”  She laughed and used one hand to bat away the crutch that James was trying to poke her with.  “Here, take a look.”  Alanna said as she placed the hard plastic case on the rock in front of him.

He snapped the latches on it open, and pulled the lid up, to reveal a very specific model of handgun set into the foam insert of the case.  A Walther p38; exactly the right one for the skill orb he’d picked up what felt like a lifetime ago now.

Next to it, there were three loaded magazines of 9mm ammo, and also, a small bracelet in its own little pocket.  James looked down at the gun for a minute, before reaching out to pick it up, turning the heavy metal weapon over to peer through the open slide.  “These things are always heavier than I think they’ll be.”  He commented quietly as he set the gun back in the box, and wriggled his fingers through the loop of the bracelet.

“The bracelet’s already bound to the gun.”  Anesh told him.  “Though it’s a different one than you originally had.  That one still has about sixty days left until it can bind to something new, since you got your last gun vaporized.”

“You say that like it’s my fault!”  James protested, mouth hanging open slightly.

Alanna laughed to herself as she sipped at her canned drink, before latching onto the tab with her teeth to hold the can up while she rummaged around in the bag again.  She came back up with a couple long poles, sharpened on the end, a - not alive - stapler, and a cardboard tube.  Realizing she’d made a mistake thinking she could carry five things, one of them a drink, all at the same time, she took the time to abandon the can on top of a rock before walking to the other side of the shaded clearing, and beginning to drive one of the poles into the dirt under the carpet of dead leaves and pine needles.  Once both poles were secure, and she’d safely ignored whatever James’ comment about spears had been, she popped the tube open, pulled out the paper target sheets, and stapled a silhouette to each pole.

“Alright!”  She announced, walking back over.  “Range line!  If we’re fucking around with guns, we’re doing it safely!”  Alanna walked a straight line past the boys, carving a furrow in the ground with her heel.

“Headphones?”  Anesh offered James a pair of muffled ear protectors as they stepped up to the line.

James looked at them for a second, then down at his hand.  He’d set the crutch against the rock, figuring he could stand for a bit without help; his leg wasn’t *that* badly shattered or anything.  But he still only had use of one hand’s fingers.  “Um… do you mind…?”

Without waiting for him to finish, Anesh smoothly leaned over and slid them into place on James’ head, following it up with a light kiss on the cheek.  It felt comfortable; not just the headset - James would correct him at some strategic point in the future about the earmuffs being ‘headphones’ - but just the whole action.  It occurred to James suddenly just how comfortable they’d gotten with each other, how completely their lives had fully blended together over the last year-and-change of adventure.

Standing behind them, having affixed a pair of earplugs, Alanna started giving range safety orders.  “Alright!”  She barked out loudly to be heard over the ear protection.  “Safeties off!”  She paused while the two did so, mostly Anesh, who had to look at his gun sideways to make sure he was doing it right.  James just flicked the safety like he’d been holding a gun his whole life.  “Fire when ready!”  Alanna told them, when they were both in shooting positions.

James adopted a bladed stance, one leg forward, left arm almost straight out.  It was, a weird part of his brain informed him, how they used to train officers back in the days of trench warfare.  It was also weird because his Skill had him automatically adopting a very clean form of the stance, but with the wrong leg extended for a left handed shot.  He corrected.  Tilted his head at just the right angle to look down the pistol’s sights, and then reached out to file a mental request with the bracelet on his wrist, and triggered the Cluster Shot ability.

The air filled with the cracking of firearms as James and Anesh took careful shots at the targets downrange.  James went slower, letting Alanna keep a close eye on his form from the side as he let the bracelet’s power take over and do something fucky with the space inside his gun, but even so, his magazine ran out before Anesh’s did.  There was a pause in the noise while James tried to reload with only one-and-a-half functioning hands, and Alanna corrected Anesh’s posture a bit.

“Elbow *up*.”  She was telling him, hands correcting his form.  “Remember, we’re not target shooting; you need to get used to keeping your feet so you can rotate your torso to focus on actual things trying to murder you.  Try it like this.”

They practiced their aim for a bit, half honing their skills for what James had resigned himself to being the inevitability of a fight in the future, half just goofing off together.  Anesh took a break after a couple magazines of shots to also stare at James and his use of the bracelet, idly drinking some off-brand soda and making commentary on how it didn’t actually seem physically possible for the magic to be doing its magic.  He was looking *close*, too, Alanna using their bond to dump hours and hours of perception into him.

“Of course it’s not possible!”  James’ voice was louder than he intended as Alanna helped him take the ear protection off.  “It’s literal magic, my dude!”

“Bah.”  Anesh gave the best possible rebuttal he could muster as the friends stowed their weapons and took seats on the rocks.  “It’s just… well, the Office stuff all kind of manipulates matter, in some way.  It moves things around.  Even when it creates things, it creates them ‘from’ somewhere, if you follow.  But this looks more like it’s layering physical actions on top of each other in the same moment.  It’s time nonsense again.”  He looked down at the can in his hand.  “Also, you know what’s weird?”

James leaned back and reached out a foot to tap at the prone form of Alanna, who had doubled over with laughter as Anesh asked what was weird *on top of the gun magic*.  “Is it the bracelet’s reload thing?  Actually, quick question on that.  Would it be a good idea to have one bound to one of the DMRs that we can rechamber, so that we can just… manufacture bullets?  I feel like that would save us a lot of money, depending on if we can take the created bullets out of the guns.”

“Uh… yes?  Probably?  I’m honestly not sure what the value of a single charge is.  Maybe text JP when we have cell service again?”  Anesh shrugged.  “But no, I was going to say it was weird drinking Dr. Pepper.  Can you tell me the last time you had a soda that wasn’t from Officium Mundi?  Like, something… and I hate to say it… normal?”

They thought about it for a second.  Eventually, Alanna raised a hand.  “I have coffee basically every day?”

“Wizard coffee?”

“No, coffee from the place down behind our apartment.  Though they could change their name to Wizard Coffee and probably do okay by it.”

James nodded.  “I would drink at a place called Wizard Coffee.”

“Of course you would.”  Anesh gave him some friendly mockery.  “You’re trying to set yourself up as a wizard king or something.  You’ve gotta be on brand.”

“Fuck that.  Wizard king is a coward’s title.  It implies you have some kind of idiotically tall tower, and never actually do anything useful.”  He snorted derisively.  “You know,” James said, turning slightly serious, “I honestly think that’s what the FBI thinks I’m up to?”  He shrugged, tilting his head back to look up at the sunny sky overhead.  “Honestly, I cannot believe that they’re dealing with us because they think we’re ‘experts’ in the unknown.  Randall has been in our Lair for more than five minutes, he should know the closest thing we have to expertise is the uncanny ability to fall ass-backward into new dungeons.”

Alanna let out a grunt as she rose and dusted the dirt off her shirt.  “Yeah, it feels bad.  Even Nate hates it.  Or he’s a better actor than we gave him credit for.  I don’t get why we don’t just wipe his memory and kick him out though.”

There were a number of reasons to that, which James and Anesh took it in turn to list off.  Secret wasn’t some kind of Men In Black memory wiping device, for one thing.  Also, the man’s supervisors would be instantly alerted that something was up.  Not to mention that he might have bugged the Lair anyway.  Also it was probably unethical.  And there was, of course, still the off chance that he was operating exactly as he claimed; just a liaison between the FBI and the mysterious group of people who somehow had an in behind the curtain of reality.

The most telling thing about why that last one was concerning was that it had been months, and somehow, in all that time, their FBI liaison had failed to provide them with concrete information, leads on any weird happenings, or even go so far as to ask for advice.

“I don’t think I like him much.”  James commented, regarding Randall.  “He’s just kind of an asshole.  Useful, sure, but I absolutely don’t trust him, and he’s a dick, and I wish to end our arrangement with the government.”

Alanna nodded.  “I’m getting increasingly more onboard with team ‘down with the man’, these days.”  She said.  “But there’s a bit of a problem.”

“Getting rid of him?”  Anesh asked.

“You make it sound like we’re gonna do a murder.”  James commented from his position on the sunny rock.  “No, the problem is that they’re not going to want to let us go.  They want us to be an asset, or a resource.  So this is gonna get ugly.  I’m not saying it was the wrong choice to go to them when it mattered, but… well, it’s not looking good for us.”

Anesh nodded, tossing his can into the trash bag they’d brought to keep bullet casings and wrappers in.  “No joke.”  He confirmed.  “And it’s getting exhausting having to pretend some things aren’t real.”  He added.

“Oh yeah.  I wanted to ask about that.”  James said.  “Before I fuck up; I know we’re keeping your duplication thing secret, but what else?  Skulljacks, I’m assuming?”

“We’re keeping the duplication secret *because* of the skulljacks.”  Alanna said.  “They are, hands down, the most cataclysmic tool in our arsenal.”  She sighed as she wandered over to pull down the shooting targets.  “Look; James, the cluster shot thing is so fucking rediculous, it literally puts all three bullets in the same hole.  And that’s maybe one percent as horrifying as the idea of the US government having people on payroll that can dig through the secrets of anyone they want.”  She rolled up the paper and offered it to Anesh, who started packing it back up in the cardboard tube.  “It’s the most potent intelligence gathering tool in the universe, short of actual astral projection, *maybe*.”

“Or some other bloody bullshit we haven’t encountered yet.”  Anesh added.

“Yes, or some other… yes.”  Alanna admitted.  

James found himself unable, and also unwilling, to disagree.  There were several things that he wanted in life, and several things he wanted to see from the world.  ‘Any government having mind powers’ was probably one of the last things that would ever show up on either of those lists.  Unless it was just an emergent property of the whole world having mind powers, and the government being made up of normal people.

Normal people with skulljacks.  Or their future iteration equivalent.

It was weird to think about.  But they weren’t really aiming for personal growth and small scale change anymore, were they?  At some point, they were absolutely going to unleash the skulljack on the world, and they needed to be ready for it.

He was going to have to hire a new programmer, James realized.  Honestly, he should probably hire an entire division.  Hitting on Virgil had been… a minor miracle.  The guy had been a genius, and while he’d sorta known it, he’d never gotten a big head about the whole thing.  Replacing him… wasn’t going to happen.  But replacing his role would be doable.  Five or six compsci students might have enough concentrated ego to create a black hole in the basement, but James was willing to take that risk.

“Today was nice.  We should get ice cream!  That’d make today perfect.” James stated, still staring at the clouds. He waited for the other two to finish laughing - and agreeing with him - before asking, “So, what’s the rest of the week look like?  I’m getting the leg cast off tomorrow, and the hand one sometime next week.  But aside from that… delves?”

“Not sure it’s safe…” Anesh started, but Alanna caught his eye and gave a little shake of her head.  He quirked a nervous smile at her, and corrected.  “Ah, yeah.  Officium Mundi tomorrow.  Whatever goofy thing Sarah’s calling the attic on Friday…”

“Clutter Ascent.”  James added cheerfully.

“Why.”  Anesh half-questioned, rubbing at his forehead.  “Why not a normal name, like… Attic… something…”

Alanna, wide grin on her face, snapped her fingers at him.  “That’s why.”  She gleefully pointed out.

After a moment of groaning and eventually relenting, Anesh continued.  “Alright, fine.  A few people are going into Clutter Ascent on Friday; we’re doing a lot of research on its development, by the way.  And then that’s mostly it.  No major events, no planned crisis… oh!  Crisis response training on Sunday, for anyone who can make it.  Small unit tactics, same day, at night.  Am I forgetting anything?”  He looked over at Alanna.

“We’re keeping an eye on the school, obviously.”  She said.  “And we will go in if we can.  We need to actually get a book and keep it for replication.  Oh, and we’re aiming for purples this time in the office; gotta put that bootstrap kit together!”

“Wait, no classes?”  He glanced at Anesh.  “What about that one thing that was only available during the summer?”

Anesh looked askew and mouthed out ‘what…’ before blinking himself back to reality.  “Wait, what?  No.  That… I took that class.  I don’t need to take it *every year*.  Also I’m basically done with everything school related, except tutoring.”

“I wanna meet your math girlfriend!”  Alanna demanded from the sidelines.

The guys ignored her, James politely, Anesh with a flushed face.  “Well,” James started to ask, “if you’ve got time, wanna start doing basketball practice again?  I missed too much during the fight with the Old Gun, and I want to…”

“James, you can’t just name things like that.  You have to ask us first!”  Alanna interrupted.  “What if one of us had a better name already, huh?  Then you’d look pretty dumb!”

“Do you?”

“No!”

“So…”

Anesh stopped them.  “I’d love to do some basketball.  Alanna, you want in on this?  Oh!  We should put a hoop up in the back parking lot!  We could get the whole Order in on this!”

“I’m kinda surprised you’re this into it.  I thought that it’d be a betray of cricket or something.”

Anesh shrugged.  “You know, I feel like it’s kind of like the art thing.”

“Art thing?”  Alanna and James asked in unison, Alanna offering James a fist bump afterward, which he awkwardly returned with his off hand.

“You know, where people say they’d love to be able to draw, but never practice drawing?”  Anesh clarified, and got a pair of ‘oooooh’s back in instant recognition.  “Well, I suddenly know how to do this thing.  I’m not going through the early slog of getting good; I’m already good, and now I can get better, but we’re right in the meat of the thing.  It’s fun.”

“And you’re not squandering basketball.”  Alanna reminded him.

Anesh rolled his eyes.  “JP overreacts to things.”  He muttered.  “Anyway.  We about ready to head back?”

“Yuuuup.”  James hauled himself up with Alanna’s help, and they set about packing up their little spot.  Making sure there was no garbage, policing their brass, and stowing the guns.  The walk back to the car was a lot easier for Anesh with the cooler lightened, and easier for Alanna with all the bullets fired, and the trio were just happily relaxed as they pulled back onto the dirt road to head toward home.

They spent the drive discussing what kind of litmus test they should use to make sure they didn’t hire assholes.  Which turned into an hour long conversation on what it meant to be an asshole, and how people could change, and then turned into James talking about this one anime he once saw.  Overall, it was a great use of a beautiful June afternoon.  The only issue was when James wrested control of the music in the car away from Anesh, and the escalating argument about what qualified as ‘country’ music, that Alanna put a stop to by threatening to make them listen to political news podcasts.

Then they got ice cream.  And it really was perfect.