Director Emily Piggot set down the cup of coffee and rubbed her eyes. The clock on her desk computer ticked over to 8am. She tilted her head slightly, listening carefully, fully expecting alarms and sirens to be going off any second along with screaming.
One minute passed.
Another minute passed.
After ten Emily decided to get back to work. Alucard was on the clock and knowing him he was going to do something that was going to make someone's day just that much more 'exciting'.
She really hoped it was some one else.
The reports started coming in about ten. Ghosts haunting the lower offices, creepy voices coming from dark rooms and vents, giggling laughter in the stair wells and all the banana pudding in the mess went missing.
Some one was going to find the pudding in their storage locker, Emily knew it.
She hoped it was Assault with how he was with food.
There was also a report showed the entire stock of Alucard plushies was gone from the gift shop on the ground floor, though evidently that happened yesterday, and they were paid for.
So it was with some surprise that around eleven o'clock, Alucard strolled into her office.
The man's new uniform was a step up from his old one in her opinion. It was still glaringly blood red, but the zoot suit had been changed to a nice dress shirt and slacks with a large red long coat. He kept the stupid hat however, but now instead of looking like Daffy Duck in Book Reverie, he looked like a male Carmen Sandiago.
She fully expected Snoop Dog and Martha Stewart to have matching outfits by the end of the month.
"Alucard?" Emily questioned.
"Yesss?" The self proclaimed 'Fuck Mothering vampire' responded as he dropped down into a chair before her.
"What have you done that you are preemptively hiding in my office?"
Alucard got a look on his face that she did not expect. He seemed almost sad.
"Absolutely nothing." He grumbled." Which is the issue."
"Why do I not believe that. You were making plans and giggling to yourself all last night." Emily accused.
"Oh yes I had plenty of awesome ideas, it was gonna be great. Then I come in all set to start my brand new day and just cut loose, only to find that everything I had planned, some one else already did." Alucard griped.
"What?"
"Ghost dogs, some one had rigged up a bunch of tinker tech holo projectors. Then there was the sneaking through the vent system to bother people, but some one was already doing that."Alucard griped. "There were hidden speakers tucked in all sorts of dark corners and up in the ceiling tiles making soft noises that didn't seem to be there. All the paintings in the public areas are already slightly tilted to the right. I was gonna fill Armsmaster's suit with banana pudding, but some one took all the pudding from the mess hall... and all the cheese."
Emily closed her eyes.
"I did find the pudding however. Someone filled my locker with it... of course this means war. I'm all for hazing the new guy, but not when I'm the new guy."Alucard grumbled. "Soo any way, do you mind if I flood b-2?"
"Flood? What?! NO!!"
"Cool! Thanks boss!" Alucard grinned and dropped through the chair and the floor vanishing into the lower part of the building.
"Ah gods, you would think I would know better by now." Emily buried her head in her hands.
Two o'clock rolled around and it saw Alucard, Mouse Protector, and Assault in her office along with four other people.
Assault and Mouse Protector were completely soaked. Mouse had a hunk of cheese jammed down on one of her helmets ears, and Assault was oozing lime jello from the edges of his uniform. Both of them had shit eating grins on their faces.
Alucard also had the same grin on his face, though he was also half covered in containment foam and was being menaced by mop wielded by a wiry dark haired man with a name tag that read Spadowski.
The other two were Spanish speaking cleaning ladies each of them on either side of Assault and Mouse, both of them looking ready to beat the fool out of the pair with brooms they held like Roman pike men.
The final man was a burly brown haired man wearing the same uniform as the other housekeepers in the building, from what she could see of his name badge as it bounced off his chest as he ranted, his name was 'Mike'.
He was currently raising hell about the mess the three had left all over the building. He was yelling at her about the lack of personnel they had to cover the whole building on a normal day.
He claimed if this crap was going to be normal than she had either better open the bank roll for them to hire more people or start handing out mops to the rank and file, because his team had neither the time nor the patience to clean up after a prank war on top of everything else.
He also ranted about various degrees of cleaning duties, supply shortages, and then tried to force her to make everyone on staff watch a potty training video so they could learn that poop went IN the damn toilets.
Four couldn't get here fast enough, she could go get Amy and have a good hour of normal before she officially introduced Druid and Alucard to the rest of the local PRT and Protectorate.
For the moment though.
"Mike. I take you are in charge of the janitorial staff?" Emily questioned cutting the irate man off before he went into any more detail about what happened in the public areas of the building.
"I'm the team lead yes. The last manager ran away screaming after the watermelon incident." The man huffed before glaring at Mouse Protector who was whistling innocently, or trying to at least.
"So who is your chain of command?" Emily asked hoping to pass this off on some one else.
"I've been reporting to the General Facilities Manager, she handles the guys who do the repair work, but Mariline isn't here today and the next in line after her is the Deputy Director who's out to lunch, which is why we are here as you're next in my chain."
"Right because of course that's how it works, I have all these underlings and anything that comes up still comes directly to me. Okay here's how we are going to do this. Mike, congratulations, you're now the janitorial manager, talk to personnel see how many people you can get in the next round of hiring, they need to be vetted so it might take a while. "
Mike blinked and nodded.
"Secondly until said new staff members are accounted for, these three are now on your staff." Emily growled. "They will put in at least four hours of cleaning shift a day in addition to their normal duties barring emergencies. I will make sure they do NOT receive overtime pay for these duties and will be receiving the same pay scale your team is, which I will have reviewed to see if it can be increased. "
The cleaning people blinked, save the man who was still glaring at Alucard.
"Failure to do so will result in your wages being garnished to pay for temps to come in and clean up in your stead."Emily Piggot growled.
"Harsh." Assault huffed.
"That's a fair cop." Alucard shrugged.
"Still worth it." Mouse Protector grinned.
"And you are paying for the missing pudding and cheese." Emily added." ALL of it."
"Almost worth it." Mouse winced.
Emily Piggot tensed as she heard the sound of metallic clicking, she almost had to suppress a shudder at the sound. A glance to the clock showed she still had an hour before she needed to go get Amy.
It was a little thing, a faint whisk, and a click as if something was locking into place, then another whisk and click as it was unlocked and closed.
Her eyes drifted up from her computer to the mirror she had hung over it. A man sat in the chair across from her desk. He wasn't much to look at. Blonde, almost amber colored hair rested on top of his head cut short, in a quasi military style, he had a full beard though that was also trimmed close to his face .All of it was speckled with gray, though he was probably only in his mid forties, maybe early fifties.
He wore a uniform of the PRT, though his pips showed he was a Major, the highest ranking of the Troopers on site.
He was very well muscled for his age, not quite hitting bulky, but he was well past wiry and if he cared could probably enter and likely even place in a bodybuilding contest. The was a large ragged scar running along the side of his face crossing from the left side of his jaw over his lips without seeming to split them and up across his right eye before it vanished into his hair line.
The scar was old and mostly a white line, but his right eye had been damaged and the iris of it was a near brilliant red, a striking contrast to the green jade coloration of his left eye.
In his hand was a odd lock blade knife, that sort that looked like it was the kind of cheap garbage you picked up in a gas station in the south, or from a Bud K catalog.
Emily knew better that the blueish tinged pocket knife with a crescent moon engraved on the handle was far from a cheap toy knife.
She forced down another shudder as she turned to face the man, fighting down the subtle terror that clung to her as her eyes ran across the name badge hanging from his breast pocket.
Jer'rahd Kaisur.
Her drill instructor from basic.
She did not still have nightmares from her time as his 'Special Friend'.
She didn't.
Seriously.
She meant it.
"So what brings you to my office unannounced Major." Director Piggot questioned as she turned her chair around to face him.
"This meeting was going to happen sooner or later. It's been three days, I didn't expect you to have put it off this long." Major Kaisur grinned, his dental work from his wound being perfectly fixed to offer a bright white smile, though it also showed fangs. Less than what Alucard had, but very similar to some old slasher flicks with werewolves or devils in them.
Which of course was something he played up since 'The Demon' was his call sign back when he was in the military. "Imagine my surprise when one of my students wound up with a desk job above the position I had taken in my retirement."
"You retired?"
"From training for the PRT. My wife insisted, both of us were getting annoyed with the new rules and regulations about cussing and screaming and how we treated recruits."
"So how is DI Silvertail?"
"Her last name's same as mine now, let me tell you that was a fight and a half, but I won the chess match. I cheated, but I won."
Emily let out a long held breath.
"You married her…."
"We had been dating and spending all our time taking care of little babies any way,trying to mold them to be ready for the world. So yes, it seemed a logical step. "Jer'rahd grinned. "I have two daughters now as well. "Luna and Dawn. That's on top of her daughter Cloud from her first husband. A bit of a hippy naming convention, but I like how they sound."
Oh gods he's reproduced, Emily tried not to panic at that news.
"So then..." Emily began.
"Heard you died during that Ellisburg operation. I thought it was bullshit to be fair, no one I trained was going to die to some stupid goblins. I figured at worse you might have been mangled a bit. Scars build character after all."
He grinned again and Emily didn't repress the shudder as nightmares of that smile came back to her.
"What did you need Major?" Emily managed.
"Ahh, mostly to see how you were doing and to let you know I was here and in charge of the troopers stationed here. None of them are idiots, can't stand idiots."
Emily let out a small sigh of relief at that. Words like that were high praise from this man.
"Also to point out you only have me for perhaps another couple of months, I plan to retire, prolly next year for good this time maybe." He rubbed his chin through his beard, the faint click of his knife being unlocked and re-locked as he moved it in his left hand. "Wife's gonna have another kid soon before we get too old, figure I'll name him Pip if it's a boy and Platinum if it's a girl."
Emily blinked. "Retiring with another kid on the way? Are you trying to become one of those action movie tropes?"
"What, you mean the guys who always die if they have a newborn or are about to retire?" Jer'rahd asked.
"Yes."
"Oh I certainly hope life works like narrative tropes, it's gotten dull around here as of late, only three gun fights this week. So what's the worst that can happen? I mean nothing can go wrong can it? Or am I being a clever one?"
Emily stared in horror at him as he laughed.
"I could use a bit of excitement after all."
