Carnivac looked out the window of his office, late afternoon had melted into early evening and a chill wind had started to pick up. He chuckled to himself and opened the window, stepping onto the ledge.

“Guild Master? Sir?” Talios questioned, looking up from a stack of paperwork. “We still have some more budget policies to go over, sir.”

“No worries,” he soothed, “just welcoming some new job applicants.”

“Job applicants?” they asked, raising a horn-ridged eyebrow.

“Meet me downstairs with any paperwork you think necessary,” he ordered, and lept from the second story window to the street below.

He landed softly, barely making a crack in the cobblestone. A real wolf would probably manage to bounce from the drop, quiet as a whisper, off the wall and over the buildings. Of course, a real wolf also wasn’t comprised of 230 kilograms of magiSteel and various other bits and bobs. Lately, Carnivac found himself often wondering how he compared against the flesh and blood creatures he was made to emulate.

He dashed down a side alley and around the block in order to approach a pair of shabby and starved fawns that were timmedly peeking around a corner at the Guild Hall.

“I think this is as far as we can get you Miss Pixie,” Annie lamented.

“If they see us, they'll probably get angry,” Doran agreed. “Us just existing seems to make all of the adults mad.”

Carnivac poked his head out to peer around the building with them.

“What about that wolf guy, he seemed okay,” He offered.

“I guess,” Annie said, noncommittally.

“The food was good, at least,” Doran added.

“That’s good, be sure to finish it before it goes bad,” Carnivac said, nodding.

The fawns turned to look at him and their eyes bugged as they shrieked and scrambled back to the other side of the corner. Both of them pushed themselves into the brick of the building, squatting down and trying to make themselves small. Their eyes, locked onto the ground. BombShell spread her wings and beat them furiously until she slowly lifted up and flew off of Annie’s head; landing onto Carnivac’s shoulder and transforming back into bot mode.

“Ah! Miss Pixie!” Doran squeaked, looking up for a moment, locking eyes with Carnivac, then back to the ground.

“Thank you for taking care of my friend here, her name’s BombShell. Her brothers are waiting for her inside.”

“We didn’t steal her!” Annie blurted out.

“I know, you’re here about the job interview,” Carnivac said, slyly. “No worries, but coming to an interview, it usually helps to clean up a bit. And, of course, to always look your prospective manager in the eyes, to show confidence.”

“Interview?!” Doran said, incredulously, looking up at Carnivac.

Annie looked at Doran, then up at Carnivac, but slightly pushed herself between the two.

“Right. That’s the eye contact sorted, now let's see about the cleaned up bit.”

Carnivac scooped up a kid under each arm, much to their alarm, and headed into the Guild building. He expected them to start kicking and screaming, but instead they froze up, like bundles of potatoes. Frozen potatoes.

They met with Talios in the Guild lobby, who directed him to a public bath house a few blocks away. Carnivac wasn’t too keen on the idea of bathing the kids himself or having to enter the bath in the first place. His armor and clothes weren’t, exactly, removable. After some sweet talking, a couple of promises, and a bribe later, he was able to pass the duty to clean the fawns up onto Talios.

While they got cleaned up, he picked up two sets of simple clothes from a second hand shop, just before they closed for the night. Talios was beaming when they came out of the bathhouse, maybe taking care of the kids triggered something parental in them. The kids, while cleaned and dressed, looked exhausted and cranky. Likely on the losing end of a battle of some sort against the celestial receptionist.

“Back to the Guild Hall for our interview?” Carnivac asked.

“No. These children need food,” Talios scolded. “And you’re buying. Come along children, Uncle Carnivac will be getting us all anything we want from the Phoenix of Delight.”

“What... is a phoenix of delight?” Carnivac asked, confused.

“Ooh, that restaurant always smells so good...” Doran said wistfully.

“We can’t go there!” Annie said in a panic. “They’ll know we don’t belong and they’ll call the Watch!”

“Nonsense,” Talios reassured, “It’s not like we’ll be digging through their garbage.”

“We couldn’t anyway,” Doran sighed, “they lock it up at night to keep street trash like us from getting to it.”

“What’s the point of letting people starve when they’re just throwing the food away anyway?” Carnivac wondered.

Doran shrugged, but Talios looked serious.

“Image,” they suggested. “Having vagrants around makes them feel uncomfortable. It’s harder to pretend that they don’t exist if you see them going through your trash. In the eyes of a lot of people, they are no better than rats. Of course, some of them are rat folk, but that’s not the point.”

“Maybe we can set up a recurring quest to visit the various food stalls and shops to pick up leftover food that didn’t sell. Nothing eaten or rotten or anything, just stuff that they couldn’t sell at the end of the day. In return, we can offer them discounts on posting quests with the Guild. Then we can set up a pantry to distribute the food to whomever is hungry,” Carnivac suggested.

Talios stared hard at him for a while, the fawns looked awkwardly at one another.

“You, Guild Master, are a very strange person,” Talios said, thoughtfully. “I think that tonight, I’ll be letting you buy me those drinks.”

As they approached the restaurant, Talios stopped Carnivac and put a hand to his chest.

“I guess it’s a bit late, but you don’t have anything nicer to wear, do you? The kids and I are all freshly cleaned, but you... well, honestly, you look a bit scary.”

The fawns nodded in agreement but didn’t say anything.

“I don’t... Hmm... How about this?” Carnivac asked, as he imitated a finger gesture that he’d seen Victoria use.

A cloud of shadow wrapped around him. It was all theater, of course, but it gave the impression that he was doing ninja magic; which, technically, I supposed he was. The illusion that made him look like a black wolfkin with green eyes rippled and transitioned until his fur was a reddish-brown and white. His eyes turned bright blue and his nose turned pink. When the shadow cleared, the updated illusion made him look less like the Big Bad Wolf from any number of fairy tales and more like a friendly red husky.

“Very cute. I approve,” Talios complimented.

“You can do magic! Are you a mage?” Doran asked, getting wide eyed.

“Just a bit,” Carnivac said with a wink. “Though I guess my class would be Ninja rather than Mage so it’s Ninjutsu.”

Annie gave him a skeptical look full of thinly veiled hostility, like she was waiting for the hook to come and something bad to happen. Carnivac couldn’t help but to wonder as to the sort of life these kids must have lived to become so jaded at such a young age.

Once they got to their seats, the kids were too nervous to touch anything, let alone look at the menus, so Talios ordered a bunch of food for them and a bunch of alcohol for themselves. Carnivac couldn’t eat or drink anything so there was no point in ordering anything. Still, it would look weird to just sit there so he ordered an ale to pretend to sip at.

The amount of money that Carnivac had on him would clearly not be enough to cover this feast that Talios had stuck him with. I ended up having to get some pocket change from Prince Milliardo and shove it into Carnivac’s [Inventory] via my Shipping network.

“It’s funny, we’re like parent and parent out on a night with the kids. Lily is going to flip,” Talios smiled, after several tall glasses into the bottle of wine they had ordered.

“You mean mom and dad,” Doran corrected. “Parent and Parent sounds weird. Though a wolfkin dad and a celestial mom with some fawn kids sounds pretty weird too.”

“Why would I be the mom?” Talios asked, mischievously.

“You’re prettier?” Doran asked.

“Mmm... and that’s why you’re mommy’s favorite,” Talios said with a satisfied grin and another large sip from their glass.

“Doran! Talios can’t be the mommy. You know, we saw... that in the bathhouse,” Annie whispered, a little loudly.

“Celestials have both, you know,” Talios corrected, swirling around their wine. “I have a sibling, we have the same parents, but a different mother and father. In my case, Lusta was the father and Gabrius was the mother. In my sibling’s case it was the other way around. We were born on the same day, but we’re not twins.”

“That all sounds unreasonably confusing,” Annie said, frowning.

“That’s probably enough biology lessons for today,” Carnivac said, trying to halt things from getting too graphic, and feeling increasingly more uncomfortable.