[b][u][center]Standards for His Assistant Chapter 2: Interviewing His Assistant For Taiko By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b] His burrow was on the outskirts of the city, not so much out of any personal preference, but because of the fact that city inspectors could shut down his dens and harems as easily as Alek could if he tunneled around under the city the way that he wanted to. The first three times that they’d evicted him from it – complete with throwing his furniture and magical equipment out on the streets – he had gone on a rampage in an attempt to both get his stuff back and get some measure of revenge. After two more times, he realized that the city was a machine in its bureaucracy, and there was little that one person could do against it, even someone as magically powerful as he was. [i]Maybe that’s a magic in and of itself,[/i] he thought as he stepped out of the taxi. [i]Bureaucramancy?[/i] The orc’s thoughts flitted around the concept, playing with it and turning it around in his mind to see if there was any point in taking it further. It was an interesting idea, at the very least. Collective thinking turned into a warping of reality to what was and what was not acceptable, and the inevitable punishments that were pushed through, summoned by the rituals of paperwork were not dissimilar to some of the slower magics that he had seen… But that, really, was what convinced him not to bother. [i]Slow[/i] magic. If there was anything that was genuinely not his style, it was [i]slow[/i] magic. Shaking his head, he tossed Darren over his shoulders, holding the human in his grip as tightly as he could as he leaned down towards the driver’s side window. “You need anything else, Master?” Keven asked. “I don’t need anything right now. I [i]do[/i], however, feel that you need to get better at oral. Your skills are a little lacking for right now.” “I’m sorry, sir. What do you suggest?” “Go buy a dozen dildos, each one bigger than the last. Then start fucking yourself with half of them and start sucking on the other half. When you’re about halfway done, then you can come back to me. Meet me at Novus Ager Memorial Fountain, and we’ll talk.” “But…how do I know you’ll be there, Master?” “I’ll check in. Now.” He reached into his beard and pulled out another crystal. The orc hesitated, realizing that the store of magic that he’d brought with him was…more depleted than he’d like. The three spells that he had placed on the taxi itself had sucked up a great deal of stored power, leaving those crystals essentially worthless, and the one that he had used on Darren had required more base power than he had expected. The human had a surprising amount of willpower. Using another crystal would leave him with five more in his beard and whatever Alek had left him in the burrow. It wasn’t ideal, and it would take him some time to replenish them all. That said, he knew better than to leave a loose end. He reached down, pressing the crystal to the dragonoid’s head. “Repeat after me. ‘Nothing happened this afternoon. I drove around alone for a few hours, and then went home after having no luck with finding customers.’” “Nothing happened this afternoon. I drove around for a few hours, and then…” To his surprise, Keven blinked. Not like he was coming out of the trance, but as if he was struggling to continue the sentence. [i]Ugh…not another continuity problem…[/i] It was the problem with simple, fast spells. They were incredibly effective for a simple task, but the moment a problem came up, it was worse than a speed bump under a carriage rocketing down the road. The spell could be knocked loose immediately, forcing him to start all over. Pulling the crystal back, he sighed. “Where do you live, Keven?” “Uh…I live in the taxi, Master.” “…It’s a mobile home?” “I wouldn’t call it that –” “It’s a mobile home.” The orc pressed the crystal back to the dragonoid’s head, repeating his earlier statement with the idea that the taxi was the dragonoid’s home. This time, it worked. “You saw nothing, you did nothing. If anyone asks you about passengers, you will tell them that you never had any.” “I will tell them that I never had any, Master.” Keven nodded, and Bruha pulled the crystal away. “But, Master –” “Go home, Keven. I’ll see you later.” “Yes, Master.” The taxi pulled away, and it was only after it had gone round the corner that the orc realized that he might have made a mistake. That being, if he ever needed to find Keven in a hurry, he had no idea how to summon him again. Nothing to remember the dragonoid by, no fluid samples, nothing but the command to eventually meet him at the fountain. Not to mention that he didn’t actually [i]remember[/i] where the Novus Ager Memorial Fountain was, nor did he remember what it was, actually. “…Dammit.” Grumbling under his breath at having gone through a singularly unproductive afternoon, Bruha turned away from the street and back to his burrow. From the outside, it looked like little more than a shack, but that was a long-standing illusion. Combined with a few wards that almost nobody besides Alek could actually get through, the ‘shack’ was more of an entryway, disguising a room larger on the inside than it was on the outside. Other little tricks and traps along the walls, under carpets, and scattered across the room made sure that any vagrants or homeless people that tried to sneak in were trapped well before they could become a problem, and the same went for any dragons that were trying to get out. Usually. He tossed some of the rugs about, finding the trapdoor that led down into the tunnels of his burrow. Orcs had always had an affinity for caves, something that they shared with the dragons that they were constantly in competition with. Bruha grunted as he dropped down into the tunnels, following them into the depths. [i]Dammit, Alek, did you have to take the magic out of the tunnels, too?[/i] His interfering family…Normally, the walls of his tunnels were spelled with more of his crystals, marked in a way that very few people could read to guide them along through the warren of underground passages that his burrow consisted of. Even he had some trouble without them. Not enough to get lost, but enough to delay him. It was more than that, though. They also gave a hint of pleasure to the air, giving a sort of low-level happy buzz when they were active. It wasn’t quite like making those that lived in his burrow high, but it was a sort of feeling that made one content with what their life was. A sort of magical antidepressant. There were days when it was something that kept him from being completely angry and out of sorts, he had to admit, and he made a mental note to start replacing the missing crystals as soon as possible. First, though, he had to deal with the human. “Hmmmph…normally, I could have done this on the surface, but due to [i]dear[/i] Alek…Looks like we’ll have to use the Induction Room.” # The Induction Room was a dome-like structure in his underground home, something that he had set up a long time ago when he was still getting used to the way that his magic work. Ever since then, the Induction Room had been a chamber of his home that was refined with each new location, each new iteration of Chateau de Bruha. He made improvements, channeled everything that he learned into making it stronger, and hoped that, one day, he’d be able to use it to challenge his family for what they kept taking from him. Until then, he would use it for his own ends. Setting the human down in the middle of the dome room, he walked about, checking the crystals set further into the walls. He ran his fingers along the surface, feeling for the resonance of the different little bits of magic, making sure that nobody had run off with them. The dragons in his harem were as bad as Alek for stealing his stuff when they were finally let free. [i]One missing, but…most of them still active,[/i] he thought after he made a few circuits of the room. [i]Easy enough to replace. No holes in the chamber, though. That’s a plus.[/i] It would mean another couple of crystals lost, forced to merge them later to fix this place, but that was better than losing the effectiveness of the whole room. That [i]had[/i] happened before, and it was a bitch to start over, particularly as the Induction Room was how he accomplished a lot of the crystal enchanting in the first place. But for now, it was still functional, and that was good. He could use it to scan Darren. “Now, human.” He turned around, looking down at the young man. Dressed in a suit and tie, the dark-skinned man looked very out of place in the underground. He would have looked better on the streets, in a bank, or somewhere that was less rough than the underground. He would have looked better naked, too, Bruha had to admit, and had the experience of seeing the human in just such a state. It was certainly better for him than a suit. But there would be time to strip him down and correct that later. For now, he needed to check for other problems. The orc spread his arms out wide, and in response to his own power, the crystals in the wall started glowing. It spread a blue-green light through the entirety of the chamber, casting it upon him and Darren, and the human started to rise off the floor. [i]Correct that crystal later,[/i] Bruha thought, looking at one of the far walls. [i]And charge that one again, it’s getting low.[/i] But those were notes to be kept in the back of his mind. He pulled at the threads of power that ran between the crystals in the wall, that spread through the middle of the room. They were connecting to each other, forming magical networks that reinforced and supercharged one another. Each crystal would be five, ten, fifteen, twenty times as powerful in this network as they would have been separately. The orc ran his fingers along one of the energy lines that ran across the room, plucking it. The sound reverberated through the room, echoing like a guitar string being tested. Darren arched his back, his body suddenly supported by one string, then another, then another, the different bands stretching and curving around his body until he was supported in a web of them, dangling in the light in the middle of the room. One of the strands reached up, wrapping around his head like a circlet. As soon as it was wrapped around tightly enough to not come loose, Bruha snapped his fingers. Click. Darren’s eyes opened. He was still out cold, the orc knew, but the eyes had become projectors, spilling thought and memory upon the walls of the Induction Room. Bruha turned, waving his hand about, spinning one finger forward, then back as he maneuvered through the different thoughts and memories that had occurred since the last time that they had met. Rolling back the memories to the last time that they had enjoyed each other in the hotel – and what a lovely time that had been – he turned the thoughts forward a bit further. Walking home from work, going through some bad neighborhoods, getting home – “Huh. You get invaders too, hmm?” It was some sort of cat, he realized, someone that was a bit disheveled but wearing better clothes than his state of cleanliness suggested he should have. It looked like someone that had come barging in, knocking down the doors or windows to get something that they wanted. A burglar, he thought. Up until the point where the snow leopard started to fuck with the human. He stared at the pornographic show for a moment or two, then turned to look back at the human floating in the middle of the room. “I almost wonder if you’re a magnet for this stuff, but I know for a fact that particular ability belongs to a certain mule…” He shook his head, fast-forwarding the memories again, spinning his finger about to rush through some of the more sexual memories. Surprisingly, the snow leopard had remained part of Darren’s life after that particular home invasion. Not just part of his life, but a significant part, taking him out of Novus Ager and into a new job in a far away city. No wonder he hadn’t been able to find the human back at the hotel when he’d gone back; he’d been spirited away by a horrible, horrible person. Shaking his head, putting aside the thought that it was [i]that[/i] horrible, he kept watching. It was like watching one of those television comedies that his grandchildren kept telling him about. An unemotional, uncaring boss that forced many duties down on his employees, the snow leopard had been working Darren to the breaking point and beyond, shuffling him about in different cities, putting him through different meetings, threatening to whore him out if he didn’t get something done: it was all textbook abuse, as far as the orc was concerned. Even he, with his treatment of his dragon harem, didn’t go so far as to send them out and do chores like that. They were kept in his underground home, kept in the caverns that they were used to. They weren’t sent to do things for him. They weren’t sent to different cities, far from the people that they cared about, their own family here in the underground. And they sure as hell weren’t told to bend over for clients and other businessmen in the boardroom. [i]What the hell? Why would you ever…[/i] Was the human that desperate for a better job? Was the hotel business that bad these days? He had thought of Darren as a qualified servant, someone that had everything together, but apparently, it had been more difficult than he thought. For all of his frustrations with how the snow leopard was treating the human, though, he had to admit that the businessman seemed to have a good head on his shoulders for how to get the human to obey. There were numerous scenes where hypnosis had been part of the routine, and there were…programs…that the orc recognized. Ones that he hadn’t thought of, either, and which he might actually make use of. But that wasn’t the main thing that caught his attention. After all, a sexual encounter was a dime a dozen, but what Darren was capable of here… [i]Hmmm, now I see why he took you away…[/i] It wasn’t the sexual work, though the human seemed quite talented with that, too. No, it seemed that Darren was a very, very good assistant, the sort that only came around once in a year for those that knew what to look for. He was qualified with scheduling, paperwork, accounting, and he had a nature to him that soothed those that were more likely to get annoyed at the process that they were going through. And more to the point, he knew how all the tech worked, and he was willing to make all sorts of appointments, do all the communication…essentially, he was the ultimate assistant, making everything happen so that his boss didn’t have to think about anything but the meeting at the end of it all. Once more, he glanced back at Darren, shaking his head, but this time in appreciation rather than sympathy. “You are even better than I thought you were, apparently.” And it was giving him ideas, too. Ideas that he would need some time to truly effect, but it would be worth it. From everything that he was seeing projected on the wall, it would be more than worth it. Bruha flicked one of the magical strings again, and the projection changed, showing a different image on the wall. It was like a library catalogue, a series of scrolls that had been stored inside of the human’s mind as memory. As the orc started to root through them, gesturing at the different vellum and parchment rolls, he found the ones that touched on the snow leopard – this ‘Kai Lee’ – and started altering them. “You didn’t meet him and get taken away. You found him in your apartment and you kicked him out,” he muttered as he changed that memory. “You would have nothing to do with this man, and you weren’t going to listen to any of the temptations that he might have had for you. No matter how you were living at the time, you weren’t going to disrespect yourself and go off into another city.” The parchment scroll went back, and he saw some of the others change, the other memories fighting to stay the same while the root memory was forcing them to alter here and there. He pulled out another, looking through it. “The paw print on your chest was not left by the snow leopard. You went and got that as a tattoo the next day, putting it on you to show that you had beaten someone that was threatening you. It is the mark of a warrior. Not a mark of submission.” Further and further he went, literally re-writing the memories that Darren had in his head until they were more suitable for what he wanted in a servant. The snow leopard was left as a figure that the human had bested, but had then punished him from afar. Getting him fired, getting him kicked out of his house. All of these things were forced to take the place of the other memories. Abusive and horrible as Bruha was making the snow leopard, he considered it a mercy to the human to take out the worse ones. The idea of being pushed so hard, of being made to do such extreme things for someone that didn’t even seem to know the [i]words[/i] to thank someone else… [i]At least I made sure that my harem knew what they were worth,[/i] he thought. [i]Dragons or not, they knew that they were doing a good job. They knew that I wanted them once I took them down here. They knew it. I never let them doubt it for a second…[/i] He shook his head, continuing down the line of memory edits, taking away more and more of the real cruelty and giving Darren more and more of the imagined ones, and to him, it still felt like the human was getting a better deal out of this. # In the back of his mind, Darren floated in a mix of truth and lies, reality and fiction. The human groaned to himself as he felt the images of his past flickering around him, some of them going dark, some of them going too bright to look at. “Sir,” he muttered in the darkness, looking at a silhouette. Snow leopard? Orc? Something else? It kept changing as he stared at it, and there were times when he felt like he knew him, and there were times when he felt like the shape was no one that he had ever seen before. [i]Mmmph…[/i] He groaned as he rolled his head, trying to look around, trying to get context in the dark. There was so much, and so little at the same time. He saw a hazy memory, a moment on the sidewalk. Talking on the phone, trying so hard to come up with an understanding of what he was supposed to be doing. He had just returned from the department store, having picked up Sir’s ‘gifts’ for his underlings (Sir never understood how far appreciation needed to go, and Darren picked up that slack) when a car – no, a taxi – had come screaming up to the curb. It had banged open, a big green foot in the air, and a hint of big, green balls on the car seat. He’d seen a meaty hand grab him, and – not wanting to risk losing the gifts that he had picked up to keep Sir out of trouble – he had rushed forward, almost jumping over the orc’s lap to the far side of the car before sitting down. Even then, he’d almost stumbled, too tired to think clearly, too tired to hold himself together the way that he normally would. Sir had been on the phone – Or had Sir… Was Sir… Hard to think. So hard to think. He had been shopping for Sir? Or had he been rescued by the new Sir? Darren groaned, the flickering around him getting worse, his memories getting hazier and darker, the silhouettes shifting around. The snow leopard, the feline that had been Sir. It was still there, but the silhouette was shrouded in a fearful red, one that made him want to pull away. But where? Green. Green arms around him, wrapping about him from behind, pulling him tight. Not even thinking, the human leaned against them, letting the warmth and the strength wrap around him until it was so intense that he couldn’t think of fear. Green. Green was good. # Bruha was a sweaty mess by the time that the memories had been warped and changed to his satisfaction. It was still not perfect, but the orc had to admit, he had done a pretty good job for lacking some of his usual materials. It was impossible to remove all memories of the snow leopard from the human’s mind, if only because it would cause a complete mental collapse. This ‘Kai Lee’ had been too involved with the human for the last few months, and to take all that would leave a black hole in the human’s memories. Darren would be able to work around it for a while, but Bruha knew the signs of an impending collapse when he saw it. Too much fiddling and erasing had pushed it closer than he liked. However, he had been able to tweak them all, turning Darren’s former employer into more of a monster, someone that had pushed the human away after using him, ruining his life in Novus Ager, pushing Darren right into his arms. It was an easy, if rough job, and he’d need to come back to it later, but it would set the groundwork. After setting himself up as the rescuer, it had been easy to play on the human’s emotions, pushing those feelings of gratitude into a fetish for orcs. Gratitude and preferences were very tightly entwined with one another, and it was easy to turn it from an emotional preference for an action into a sexual preference for the person that performed said action. After that, all he’d needed to do was re-install the urge to make people happy, and Darren seemed to be as good, if not better, than he had been back at the hotel. [i]Now, I just need to wait for him to wake up.[/i] # Drifting in the mists of memory, Darren felt…confused. All around him were the thoughts of his present and past, and while they all had a ring of truth to them, they had a sense of dissonance, as well. [i]That…was that…right?[/i] he thought, feeling the memory of being fired. [i]I don’t have that job…but…I don’t…[/i] But it must have happened. He had been kicked out. He’d been left homeless. His life ruined. Everything taken from him, nudging him to go back to the snow leopard. That felt wrong, but right? Right, but wrong? That the snow leopard would force him into things felt true, but the fact that he didn’t want to do them on some level… The mists pushed against him, swallowing him up, and Darren sunk through the dissonant yet true memories, feeling them molding him, shaping him, changing him until he slipped away into true darkness. Some time later (he had no idea how much), he woke up. His eyes were dazzled by a nearby torch, and he had to turn his head away, blinking away the bright light as he slowly came back to the world of the waking. He groaned, rubbing his eyes. “Mmmph…” “Finally awake, eh?” That voice. He remembered [i]that[/i] voice. Darren sat up, his head cocked to the side as he looked at the orc across the room. The man was huge, and more importantly, he was familiar. The green-skinned customer…the one that had come to the hotel, the one that had helped him learn some of the finer points of respecting his clients… The one that had saved him from the streets. Smiling despite himself, Darren got to his feet. Not without a grunt of discomfort, admittedly; he [i]had[/i] been roughly handled, he felt, though he couldn’t remember how. He bowed at the waist, old-style, as he remembered the orc liked. “Pardon me, Master Bruha,” he said, the word coming to mind quickly for some reason he couldn’t think to question. “I didn’t mean to oversleep.” “It’s alright. You needed the rest. Heh. Besides, gave me time to think of a job offer for you.” “A…job offer?” He blinked. “I thought all you could offer was bed and board for a time.” “I looked over my accounts. I can afford an assistant…and I think you could fill that role. How’s ‘Official Orc Technology Assistant’ grab you?” “It sounds like a monkey’s acronym, sir, if you don’t mind me saying. OOTA?” “Huh.” Bruha blinked. “I suppose you’re right. What if we add ‘and Body-Worshiping’ in there?” “That would make it OOTABWA.” “That sounds a little more interesting. So. Want the job, Ootabwa Darren?” “I would very much like the job, sir, though not the title. I do feel it is a little silly.” “Silliness can be excused in the name of business and pleasure. Speaking of which, human. Before we start with the tech…why don’t you come over here and show me just what your skills are capable of…” # The air of Novus Ager was no different than it had been on his previous visits, but Kai Lee felt…antsy. Under pressure. It wasn’t the first time that he had been on a time limit. Rescue operations, assassinations, and other such tasks often had a sense of time ticking down, but it had been some time since he was placed against someone who could warp the mind. And Darren, regrettably, had little in the way of mental defense. “Stop.” The lion and anole in the front seat jumped before following his order. “Holy…I almost forgot he was there,” the lion, Darl, muttered. “He’s so quiet,” Sam, the anole, added. “That is the point. Wait.” He stepped out of their car, crossing the street. Other vehicles shot by, missing him by a hair or a whisker, and would have hit him without the slight movements he made to avoid them. A tiny twist to the left, a gentle leaning to the right. Stepping into the alley across the street, he found a possum kneeling by a pile of trash. The small, scrappy thing had picked up something from the trash. A phone. A familiar phone. Kai Lee rested one hand on the possum’s shoulder. Muscles tensed beneath his palm, the arm connected to the shoulder starting to move in aggression. Squeeze. “Nnngh!” “I am having what I imagine is a very bad day. Do not give me reason to confirm that.” “Fuck…what the fuck did I do?! Let me go!” “That phone belongs to someone valuable to me.” “You want it?! You can have it, man, just let go!” He did. The possum slumped forward, hitting the ground. Wide eyes turned, looking at him, judging whether it was a good idea to run. They were smart enough to decide against it. “Here…here man, take it,” the possum said, kicking the phone back. “I didn’t need it anyway.” “Wait.” It was a simple command, but unlike what the pair in the car were given, this was followed by something more. He fixed the possum with a stare that rooted him to the spot, his eyes slowly turning in a motion that was already giving the feline a headache. Nevertheless, it [i]pulled[/i] the verminous trash-dweller to his feet, keeping him from running. “Speak. Freely.” “Mmmph…what…what about?” The possum trembled, his eyes wide, his hands trying to cover his mouth. “About. What. Happened. A taxi. A tusked man. Where this phone came from.” The story came tumbling out. A short event, one that ended with the taxi disappearing into mist in the eyes of the possum. Fear, perhaps, drove the smaller man into an unconscious state before Kai Lee could pull more information than the taxi number and a vague description of the driver from him. Shaking his head, the snow leopard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He ran his thumbs down the fingers of both hands, cracking his knuckles as he went. [i]An orc. I doubt there are many here. A taxi driver will remember that. Even if he was told not to…he will remember.[/i] Reaching into his pockets, Kai Lee pulled out three bills. Hundreds, each, enough for a series of meals or something else, if it comforted the possum. He knelt down, thankful in his own way for his gloves as he tucked the money into the possum’s excuse for clothing. As he left the alley, another thug looked down. The wolverine grinned at the possum, started making his way there – “Nnngh!” Only to stop as the snow leopard wrapped his hand around his furry throat. Kai Lee turned his head, the wind from the road ruffling his gray suit jacket. “Stay. Away.” “What’s he to you?” “Useful. Unlike you.” “…You got it, man, you got it…” He shoved the wolverine away, then crossed the street to the car. Sam and Darl looked back at him, neither saying anything, both looking antsy. Kai Lee took off his gloves, a glimmer of light on black ink on his palms before he replaced them with a new pair. “The local taxi dispatch company.” He paused. “Please.” [b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]