//------------------------------// // Desk Duty // Story: Fangs // by Sapphic //------------------------------// *~~~*~~~*~~~*...Maple...*~~~*~~~*~~~* I rummaged through the freezer, plucking up a few ice cubes and stuffing them into a bag before sealing it up and wrapping them in a sheet of cloth I had at the ready. I flinched as I picked up the makeshift icepack and lined it up with the throbbing pain on my head, taking care to set it down as gently as possible to reduce the pain to a still aching minimum. After a bit of positioning, I trudged away from the freezer and kicked it shut with a hind hoof as I made my way for the door. I was greeted by the familiar look of a dull room: gray wallpaper, closed blinds, an unused yet still beat up sofa at the side of the room. I groaned, taking my seat in a chair sat behind a wooden desk that was built into the wall. It looked like the kind of desk you see a secretary sit at, and frankly, that's what it felt like to sit behind it. "I still don't get why I have to take desk duty." I mumbled, earning a groan from the mare beside me. She was the one who usually sat here alone, but it seemed like she got some extra company doing nothing after her old partner got passed along to another place that she refused to tell me. "Maybe cause you got your butt kicked in by a vampire? Or maybe it wasn't that, but the fact your brother brought you in to HQ unconscious saying that you got your butt kicked in by a vampire. His words tend to carry since he is the captain you know." She was what some might call a smart ass, but, she did sit behind this desk every day reading nothing but the same newspaper over and over and drinking a cup of coffee that seemed to never run dry, so I guess she earned that right. Still, she didn't have to be so blunt with her assholery; the least she could do was be creative with it. I took a moment to curse my brother under my breath before responding to her, "But it's so boring here." I whined. She took her time in folding up her newspaper and tossing it forwards onto the desk that was filled with nothing but a stack of yellow papers that had a thin layer of dust covering the top of them. "Well, considering that we are a group that is supposed to not be known by anyone but a select few that are either wealthy enough to just call the main head quarters to get some professionals out there or are rich enough to solve their little 'pest' issue on their own with other sources, I suppose it would be a bit boring to work a desk job in a hardly known and noticeable building like this one." She said simply, making a lot of sense. "Don't get me wrong," She continued, "I hate this job just as much as you, the fact that I've had enough time here to fill out literally all those papers so that the only place left to sign is for whoever happens to walk through that door should be enough evidence of that." She said, making lazy gestures with her hooves. "But I wasn't trained to be a secretary." I whined again. "You think I was?" She asked with a raised brow and an equally smug smirk. I did nothing but relax back into the desk chair I had been given and sigh. Had I known this would have been the punishment I got for trying to help that gray mare in the forest, I would have ran out of the camp screaming. The days were long and the office was cold as ice, the only source of heat being the coffee pot and the coffee that was served strictly black. My mind settled on one thing. "Does anyone ever come in?" I asked, genuinely curious. "That's what I ask myself everyday, and I've come to the conclusion that the answer is simple: No one walks through that door except me, and now you." She sighed, seeming sad at the fact herself. Hours passed with idle chat and the occasional burst of creativity as I scribbled away on a piece of paper that I had found, and with a pen that I took from a plastic cup near the edge of the desk. I even learned her that her name was Rose, but she refused to give me any more than that. She even gave me some occasional entertainment by using her horn and flicking a ball of paper at my head, my job being to try and dodge it with out falling out of the chair. We gave up on that after the sixth time I fell out because of fear for my head and for fear of her suffocating from laughter. I had just begun drawing a small and sloppy sketch of a pegasus flying in a circle, my tongue sticking out of my mouth in concentration, when the most unexpected thing of the day occurred. The door opened. Everything dropped. My pencil flew back into the cup and my paper was immediately balled up and tossed at the trashcan, missing it by a few feet, while I tried desperately to present myself in a professional and secretary like manner. The mare beside me was just as shocked, but she only chocked on her coffee mid-swig and tossed her paper under the desk before following my lead in getting into a secretary like posture. The figure that walked in was cloaked for some reason, making this generally sketchy situation even sketchier. He was slow, calm, and confident with his movements; striding up to the desk with a posture that suggested wealth, until he came to a stop and waited in silence, apparently waiting for us to take the initiative. "H-hello sir." I stammered, getting a glare from the other mare and even a tiny chuckle from her as well. The frame of the cloaked figure was that of a stallion, so I assumed it was in fact a he. "Hello sir, how may we help you today?" The other mare said, her greeting much more confident and practiced than my own. "I understand that you deal with...'certain issues?'" He said, the sound of his voice confirming both my gender suspicion and my origin suspicion. His accent was Canterlot, and heavy at that. The mare nodded, sliding forward one of the signed sheets of paper she had been so proud of and cleaning off the dust. Next, she pulled out one of the pencils and put it on top of the paper. "Just read over the paper and fill in the blanks accordingly." She said as we waited patiently for the stallion to finish, and when he did, he did nothing more that turn away and walk out of the building just as quickly and silently as he had walked in. The mare and I were slightly offended by his lack of any form of 'goodbye', but we worked past it and took a look at the papers. She was first, skimming them over with hard eyes until they landed on something near the center of the page that changed that look completely, sending it into something resembling panic. She got up, left the room wordlessly and, judging from the sounds, went into a back room and begun to rummage around through one of the closets. I decided to take that time to hop playfully into her seat and skim over the paper myself to see what it was that had unnerved her so. Everything seemed pretty normal to me, of course this was my first day, so I tried to inquire on what it was that had panicked her. "Why her..." She muttered to no one but herself, "Oh this is going to get complicated." A thought popped into my mind and I re-skimmed the paper looking for the only name that I thought could be 'her.' It was the name place under the 'target' section, which also happened to be near the center of page, so I went out on a limb and asked her about it. "Rose, who is..." I took a second to go back to make sure I had the name right, "Who is Vinyl Scratch?" By that time she had stopped her rummaging and came back out, a telephone floating behind her and landing heavily on the desk with a groan. She let out a sigh and turned to me, finally giving me an answer. "Someone who the hunters shouldn't involve themselves with." She turned back to the phone and punched in a number, placed the phone up to her ear, and waited for the call to go through. I could hear the faint sound of ringing disappear and replace with the sound of another pony's voice; a mare to be exact, so I assumed it was another secretary. "This is Rose Bush, can you connect me with one of the commanders?" Her voice was clam, yet I could tell she was shaking on the inside. The voice on the other end of the line muttered something back, sounding a bit confused and agitated. "It's involving a contract that was just placed: it involves the mare..." She hesitated, "Vinyl Scratch." The other end of the line went silent before a different voice picked up, this one masculine and much more confident in tone. They went into a deep conversation that I only payed attention to for about ten minutes. After they had finished that, Rose put the phone down and rubbed her temples tiredly. "Why her?" She asked to no one. "Are you ever going to tell me what's going on?" I asked with a raised brow. She let out a long, shaky, sigh and placed her head down in her hooves for a moment, resting her head as if she was getting a head ache. She finally lifted up, her eyes much more hard and crisp than I had seen throughout that day. "All that you need to know is that when that name comes up anywhere inside of the order, it means trouble. And if someone has placed a hit on her, then all that means is trouble," She put her newspaper down to reveal her conflicted look, "and whatever trouble she managed to start is only the beginning of what is to come." She said sharply, reaching under the desk and picking the paper back out, unfolding it and going back to reading. *~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*