((ooc: This is the aftermath of Kaz’ phone call in "Hide and Seek: Southern Section", fourth post down. ))

Charles Triggs, one of the three members of Calley’s very own support team, was laughing his ass off. Considering the distinct void on Frank Newton’s face where a facial expression should be, this might not have been a wise idea. Nicholas Williams was taking things much more calmly. With an amused smile towards the guard who was bearing Frank the bad news, he asked simply: “And you’re really going to listen to him? This Kaz, I mean.”

“What can we do? Mister Antonescu left him in charge.” Charles might be laughing and Nicholas might be smiling, but the guard clearly did not like the way that Frank was impassively looking at him. Everything from the fact he hadn’t blinked in three minutes to the way his shoes were resting perfectly level on the floor to the measured way he was stroking the back of the uproariously purring ginger-stripped tom cat in his lap said that Frank was a man who was paying attention. Close attention.

“In charge. Yeah. As a figurehead with elf ears,” Charles put in. He mimed the elf ears with his hands, in case anyone needed a visual. “Do you think he’s really going to follow up on this? He’s got no way of enforcing that order, ‘cause he’s got no way of knowing who to enforce it on. Lock everyone in solitary who knew about Tempest along with everyone working at the time he came in, sure, that’s a brilliant use of man power.”

Nicholas looked supremely thoughtful, like a little boy who’d just been handed a blacksmith’s puzzle. “How many people do you suppose knew of him? All of the gate guards, of course; Frank, Charles, and myself; Calley; Doctor Ingram and his staff, surely, because of that... accessory; everyone watching the camera footage; a significant number of people who were simply walking in the hallways, including some of the lab workers... And he really said everyone who was on duty when the boy came in?” He tapped the top of his poker cards twice, then refocused with another smile to their guard. “Nope. Monsieur Kaz has about as much of a chance of enforcing that order as he does of being served flying pig this evening as a side-dish to his roast ego.” Charles snorted, and doubled over. Nicholas kept on with the same exact friendly smile: “In fact, if he did succeed in enforcing it, he would leave the Labs entirely compromised. Additionally,” the thoughtful look again, “I do not believe we have enough solitary confinement cells for such measures...”

“He’s in charge,” the guard repeated, stretching out his hands to his sides in a ‘don’t shoot the messenger’ manner. He’d just realized that Nicholas was also on the list of people to be imprisoned without food, drink, or light for the next twenty-four hours. He’d also just realized that Nicholas’ smile had gotten neither a hair broader nor a hair smaller in the last minute. The guard was reminded, suddenly, of his fear of clowns. Those painted-on smiles, covering things best left uncovered.

“That he is,” Charles put in, still chuckling intermittently. He attempted to straighten up a bit, though. “And from that, we can figure out that he means these orders to be followed. Since the orders make no sense, we can figure out he’s a complete idiot that Mister Antonescu left in charge only because that cold-ass Zephyr brat was off doing something more important. Now what does that tell us, children?”

“Uh—”

“Rhetorical question. I ask those some times. What it tells us is that he’s not bright enough to have realized what this order would do, so he’s not bright enough to recognize the results even if we do them. So what we do is this: we draw straws, and lock up a couple of us—and any of those Lab techies we don’t like. We do not by any means lock up the entire shift. What we do, is we put everyone else in the barracks. Say we ran out of room in solitary, which will be true enough. Then everybody gets a day off, Kaz is happy, and we haven’t put half the security force behind bars, so the real Boss is happy. Or at least, he’s not not happy, because if anyone attacks while he’s gone, we don’t have to explain why half of us were in solitary instead of on the front lines.” Charles nodded quite happily at his own interpretation of Kaz’ orders.

“I don’t think we can—” The guard noticed that Charles was chuckling at nothing. Nicholas was still smiling. Frank was sedately looking at him. The ginger-stripped tom cat was laughingly purring. In fact, the guard himself was the only one in this break room who wasn’t sitting down and looking perfectly content, if not cheerful. He swallowed, and tried again: “I don’t think we can just—”

“I don’t think he understands.” Charles said, turning his head with a hearty chuckle to share a grin with Nicholas.

“No.” Nicholas agreed, from behind his smile. “No, I do not believe he does. Pity. Frank? You’ve got one minute to convince him. Then it’s my turn.” His smile inched just a little broader.

Frank spoke quite simply, with clear enunciation: “Our orders are to remain on-call for support work. Confinement interferes with these orders. I decline.”

“I’m pretty sure you can’t just—”

Nicholas glanced at his watch, pleasantly: “Forty seconds, Frank.”

Frank attempted even simpler terms. “Our orders came from Hunter Antonescu. They are effective until he tells us otherwise. The orders of Kaz Corydon do not supersede these. Therefore, we cannot submit ourselves to imprisonment.”

“Twenty seconds,” Nicholas announced.

Charles put an elbow on the table, and his cheek against his hand. His other hand was occupied with tracing small circles overtop his hand of cards, which were face-down on the table. “Twenty seconds to agree with us, friend. Tell us when you do. Otherwise, our game of cards gets ruined. Nicky here can get... messy.”

“Thirteen seconds, actually,” Nicholas corrected, as a point-of-fact. “Ten.”

Charles began the count-down. “Nine-eight-seven-six-do you like razors? Nick does-three-two—”

“Okay. Whatever.” The guard gruffly barked, attempting to look like the big man in the room. Considering he was standing and all three of them were sitting—and the big silent one had a little kitty-cat on his lap—it shouldn’t have been so hard. “Your files are getting turned in with the rest, though.”

“Bye, darling,” Charles waved cheerfully, as the guard stomped from the room. He picked up his cards again, and tapped them against the table. “So. You in, or you out, Frank?”

“Out.”

“Nick?”

“In.”

The poker game went on. The ginger-stripped cat in Frank’s lap kept purring, and trying to see Charles’ cards. Three claws into Frank’s legs meant up the ante, one meant save your money. It had been Nicholas’ idea. Chuckling Charles was a little too good at this game. Group payback time...

((OOC: Calley, that was amazing...hehe))

((ooc: *winks at Tempest* Thankies, kind Sir, thankies. ))

Charles was down $150 and a pair of pants. He wore bright green silk boxers with kiwis on them. The bird, not the fruit.

More importantly: the Triforce had realized there was someone in the Labs who they could contact their real Boss through. Doctor Ingram. They’d let a shivering Charles get a new pair of pants from the barracks before they’d gone to track down a man who didn’t like to be bothered, and made torture machines as a side-hobby.

A short walk and a long story and many layers of security, finger-printing, retina-scans, and generalized paranoia later, they had seen the man himself. For five seconds. Then they’d seen a slamming door. It had been time enough to get a phone number thrown at them and for the ginger-stripped cat to grab a finely made screwdriver off of the good doctor’s workbench and to bolt back out with it between his teeth. Frank had picked the cat up by the scruff of its unrepentant neck. Now the cat was on his shoulder, the screwdriver was set outside of the closed-and-bolted door, and Frank had a ringing phone pressed against his ear. It was a land-line, and as secure as was available at the Labs. When the Boss left for long stretches of time, it was a fair bet that he didn’t want calls from ‘back home’ to be traceable.

“Hello. This is Frank Newton, from work. There’s... an interesting company policy that the new CEO just put in place. Is this a good time to call you?” Frank said levelly, once the other end had been picked up. He was hoping that it was his employer who had picked up, and he was hoping that no one else was in listening range. That would simplify this conversation greatly. Frank had just gone past his quota of silly double-speak for the day.

Hunter set down his fork and pulled out his phone. It was the labs. Fortunatly Paragon was out, she he was free to speak. "Newton, it's Antonescu," Hunter replied, "What's going on? What has Kaz done that threaten's to upset the balance at my lab?"

The only ones who could contact him were Ingram and Nigel, and as Nigel had left just twenty minutes ago it must have been Ingram who gave them the number. That being the case then something really was up, as normally Newton and collegues couldn't get close to Ingram.

Frank did not heave a sigh of relief that Mister Antonescu was free to speak. That would be unprofessional. Instead, he said the most consecutive words the cat on his shoulder had ever heard out of him: “Mister Corydon has ordered an entire shift of Lab personal confined to solitary for the next twenty-four hours along with several other off-duty employees; guards from the other shifts have been requisitioned from their normal duties to stand outside of the solitary cells.” Frank did not say ‘to make sure those orders are followed’: when orders were given at Mondragon Labs, they were followed. Enforcers were not needed for Lab employees. As far as he could tell, his own team of three were the only guards not walking down to solitary and shutting their own doors in obedience with Kaz’ orders. It was a... precarious position to be in, especially if Mister Antonescu ruled in Kaz’ favor. Frank had zero delusions as to the ease at which he could be replaced.

“Given the amount of personnel currently stationed in and around solitary, it is my personal assessment that any attack on the Labs for the next day would not be responded to in as quick and thorough of a manner as I believe you prefer.” In short: Lab security had been compromised. “This includes attacks from the outside, as well as those from the inside. Additionally, if his orders are followed in the strictest sense, Doctor Ingram’s work will be interrupted for the next twenty-four hours.” It was for that reason precisely that the good doctor had given them Hunter's number, Frank suspected. The man didn't want to spare three minutes for a phone call: twenty-four hours was out of the question.

Frank had already gone down the slippery slope of ‘personal assessment’; he decided not to wade into the quagmire of ‘suggested alternatives’. He had some, but they would sound infinitely trivial to such a man as Hunter Antonescu.

Hunter listened with no small amount of irritation. "Alright," said Hunter once Frank had brought him up to speed, "First of all go down to the labs and get the minimum amount of security staff out of the labs to ensure adequet defence from a full scale assault on the labs."

"Second, speak to Ingram, find out who from amoung the research staff can be spared for twenty four hours. Everyone else goes to solitary. Finally, get the absolute minimum of administrative staff out to ensure that everything doesn't grind to a halt. That should leave Kaz with enough people to vent his fury on without compramising the labs. If he complains tell him the orders came directly from me, and if needs be get him on the phone and I'll tell him myself."

"One more thing, keep this number. Should anything else happen down at the labs to compramise anything, let me know immediatly. Is that understood?"

“Is that understood?"

Frank stood at attention in the middle of the hallway. “Yes, Sir.” He waited a moment more to see if Mister Antonescu had anything else to say, then he hung up the phone. He stared at the receiver and replayed the number he had dialed over and over in his head, until it was cemented in. He had been entrusted with Mister Antonescu’s own telephone number. Frank Newton felt... honored.

“You look a little sick there, Frankie.” Charles audaciously interrupted this beautiful moment. “What did the Boss say?”

Needless to say, Hunter’s orders were obeyed to the letter. Quite a few guards and general staff were very happy about this: quite a few relatively new research interns—some of them having just gotten on work—were short-listed by Doctor Ingram to spend the next twenty-four hours taking the place of more important people in tiny lightless rooms.

When all was wrapped up neatly, and they were still waiting on Kaz to get out of his training exercise and explode, the Triforce went back to their card game. Charles wanted his pants back. Unfortunately for him, there was a pale red parakeet perched on his shoulder. In Tail-Feather-ese, a flick to the left and a wide feather spread meant ‘two pair’.