Ten

Whatever's eyes almost bulged out from their sockets. The chicken's most certainly did when he caught the reference and squeezed out of momentary panic.

"Becaw?" Whatever offered, brandishing the aluminium cans.

Mendel, having reached humanoid shape, stretched out on the tiles and plucked a can of Vigr soda from the cooler bag.

"Which of them is the sentient?" he asked. "We could accommodate a level sevenish clerk, for example. TF's taken." He cradled his character binder like a precious thing.

For some reason, every Accountants group tends to fight over the TF, despite the unremarkable stats. There can be only one Token Female, of course.

"Damnit," Whatever said once the initial shock had passed, giving way to his higher functions - that of roleplaying, of course. "I ought to have guessed."

Apparently choosing to ignore the jibe about sentience, he slung the chicken around his neck and opened one of the caffeine batteries. "Can I get a contact in Inland Revenue?"

''Baskerville, you're quite the gentleman'' Agueda teased.

''If I can't persuade you to walk with me, I might just ask you to do something about the specimens on the roof. The noises coming from there are... intriguing. Shall we see what's going on?''

"Total geekfest!" Baskerville pulled a face. "There was the red- this weird fellow who showed up, then he started choking the chicken, and now they're drinking caffeinated stuff with hardly any alcoholic content and playing role-playing games.

"Can you imagine anything so pathetic?" He sniggered.

Comfort and inertia once again scuppered his impulse to get up.

But he was secretly quite amused to be bonded to the only mage in the world (probably) who summoned demons for the sole purpose of playing pen-and-paper games and swapping programming tips.

---

"I thought you'd like to know," Suitov announced mid character-wrangling, "that Baskerville says the three of you are sad bastards."

"Favouritism, Skivvy," Weft said with a smirk.

"Not really. He called me 'the ringleading saddest bastard in the whole sad bastard lot of you'. Pithy."

"Pith duly taken," Mendel replied with every appearance of innocence, and sneaked a look at Whatever's triplicate character CV. "Ledgerdemain - good call."

The lad in red chuckled.

"Not sure if the old boy knows where the bone is anymore," Whatever said without hesitation and just as instinctively grabbing the chicken by the neck again and poked it in Mendel's face. All this without looking away from the frenzied pencilling that was slowly producing the very sketchy picture of... "Rooster von Letcher of Des Moines," Whatever sniffed, "only makes good calls. That is. Unless you're the one who answers the phone. Then it's bad."

He had drunk the other can, too.

''Ringleading saddest... Oh, now Basky! That wasn't very nice.''

She waggled a finger in his face and tutted good-humouredly.

''If you're being a bad boy, you must be punished accordingly.''

Pushing the thoughts that ensued from that comment to one side for a moment, she placed the having-been-waggled finger on Basky's closed lips.

''But I think your bark is worse than your bite.''

She cocked her head to one side in thought, as if she suddenly hit upon something, but she didn't quite know what.

She also happened to know that with her head on one side like that, the way her hair fell about her face made her look quite cute.

''It's a shame you don't like role-play games, though.'' she added.

Suitov frowned almost imperceptibly...

Skerv wasn't sure whether to nibble the finger, lick it or pretend to ignore it. All he knew was that even with the silly headfur, this was one cute chick. Er, cute strong, independent female, he corrected himself (our hellmutt, occasionally prone to paw-in-mouth disease, was still out of practice in dealing with mindreaders).

"I like games," Baskerville said thoughtfully, "of a more active nature." He did nip the finger then. Very gently.

And he detected something nobody else noticed - a withdrawal, a closing off. Looked as though he was off the leash. Prude, he thought.

---

"Get a snip on, will you?" asked Weft, reclining with head on elbow.

Suitov shrugged apologetically and began to recite. "New Tax Year's Eve is the biggest bash of the annum, so of course you're slated to work. Janvier's ledgers are swimming into each other before your eyes, and you realise your coffee has gone cold. Outside your cubicle the whole floor seems deserted, but from the window you hear Big Bertha finish chiming eleven, to general cheering."

Whatever sniffed. "I take my coffee cup, walk to the window and pour it down. That'll teach the general public to underestimate of von Letcher's ledgering. (I should have that in gold letters, you know... oh, pity I only have lots of silver...) Oh, right. And then I go cook more coffee. But not without first forcefully persuading the vending machines. Protection money, right?

"Oh. And I'll be taking the ledgers with me. Even if someone shows up, that way I can look busy."

Mendel's TF walked the narrow band between "emmasculate" and "overfluffy feminine" with single-mother ease. She'd brought in carob brownies, shandy and cardboard party poppers and had persuaded Weft's doughty Procurements manager into a working midnight feast. She it was, tapping the American Rooster in the corridor and saying "I didn't know you were in too, chicken."

Her voice strayed not into the squeaky, nor the ladette. Mendel treated his Tokens respectfully.

Weft was staring into his water and drowbeating* his memory. What had the other bloke said? "Aargh", yes, but he'd heard a lot of aarghs and it hadn't been a particularly noteworthy one.

"It's W--, er, it's the W--" Something like that. Yes, that was what had been nibbling** at his mind.

He rescued a d3 from the gutter and looked at the stars.

---

* Like browbeating, but more whips are involved.

** Like niggling, but more teeth are involved.

Whatever's Rooster sounded as if he was straight from Atlanta, Georgia.

Rooster - or Rupert for the people who couldn't remember his name -, glared at the ledgers. "It's Rooster, ma'am. And every day is a good day for work." The sentence "except when I'm on paid vacation" could be read from his face. Which, of course, had a handsome nose.

Whatever blinked. "I think I need more caffeine," the RM-wannabe grinned sheepishly.

Pop.

"Ooh, I forgot I had chocolate."

"I have..." Weft checked his pockets, which, given the tightness of his clothing in general, didn't take long. "...a couple of manabars." They were sealed in watertight wrappers; a little piece of home for the Monk on the Go.

"Greeeeeat," observed the humaniform demon. "If you have any sense, chicken man, do not try those."

"I didn't offer them to you," Weft sneered.

Suitov snapped open a bitter apple can, conveniently contriving to conceal the secretive smirk he was sporting.

---

Baskerville glanced up at the slippery tiles and considered begging for chocolate, but reckoned that the dorks were too busy to notice.

So, slipping his arm through Agueda's, he strolled away into the barely-brightening murk of the small hours.

"Please don't offer any to me, either," Whatever smiled politely, relieved now that it seemed as if he wasn't going to get his head separated from his torso.

A while later he said, "Hey, what happened to the chicken?"

"I have a piece of string and three dowelling rods. Not tasty," Iceheart said, and rummaged through the cooler bag.

Weft blinked, prayed silently and took dainty nibbles from a manabar. Ouch. He must have been a bad monk.

"Did the chicken recognise you, Weft, and drumstick it?" asked Iceheart.

"Good point. I'd forgotten his track record with de poultry." Mendel giggled. "You remember that Big Sibling fiasco?"

"How could I forget it?" Iceheart pulled his traumatised face, Big Brother.

Weft lowered his gaze. "Mew," he said haggardly.

"My chicken!" cried Whatever. "Do you have any idea how much trouble I went to for that Gen-u-wine Air Chikkin?"

He tripped on it when he made the attempt to go look for it.

"Bother." Pause. "Got caffeine?"

Mendel swung the cooler in his direction.

"'Ware the gold cans. They're hard stuff, not for lightweights." He smiled helpfully.

The TF was trying to coax Rooster upstairs to join their midnight campout, while the Procurements manager embarrassedly kept his nose in a ledger. Accountants don't much like being jollied along, even when there is shandy and brownies.

(In the inn below, a reddish-brown small furry monster yawned and continued to study a drunken mouse.)

''I didn't mind the cute chick comment'', Agueda said, ''It was the silly headfur that I wasn't too pleased with. I'm sure, however, you will make it up to me.''

She'd wandered a little way off from Basky to explore some dense green foliage with large orange and red flowers bursting between them. Lillies. They were such beautiful flowers, especially when growing wild. They had a beautiful resiliant quality, hammered into them by the elements. Only one man had ever brought her lillies.

She felt a sudden pang of pain and guilt. Was she to be reminded of him everywhere she went?

She turned suddenly towards Basky, her eyes searching, questioning.

''Of course you will'', she said, walking away from the lillies back to his side.

This was subtext, he thought. Way over his gelled head. Or should that have been supertext?

Ah well. He looked at the flowers, having given up all hope of following her thoughts.

"Nice," he said. "Of course I will."

Placing her left hand on her hip and her right hand in his, she adopted the 'please do continue' pose.