Brooks spoke, and his voice had a hard sing-song accent I had a hard time placing, “Couples?  Four guys and only two girls?”

Newfoundlander, perhaps? 😉

Also obviously two of the guys will go as a gay couple, what did you expect? Won’t that make for a nice triple date, going to the Merchant party together?

…though considering how many shitty people they’re gathering in one place, there are bound to be a bunch of homophobes. I guess that’s a good reason to have it be the buff guys.

“Minor escorts me.  Senegal escorts my friend.  And…” she took Jaw’s hand and placed it on Brooks’s shoulder.  “You have your date.”

Alright, that’s the opposite of the arrangement I just suggested, but fair enough. I guess the muscle is more here to keep the girls safe anyway.

Jaw laughed, and Brooks turned red, anger etching his face.

What can I say, dude. Should’ve seen that coming!

“The fuck?” Brooks growled.

Calm down, please. It’s not that bad.

“Watch it,” Minor spoke.  He didn’t raise his voice or add any inflection, but I could see Brooks react as if he’d been slapped.

Right, you don’t question the boss’ decisions, especially that rudely.

“Hey, Danny, you know how I said I wanted to attend a Merchant meeting just to see what they’re like? I actually did it, but here’s the thing – I ran into that girl you were talking to the other day, your… daughter, was it? Anyway, she was there with her six-foot ex-soldier boyfriend… seriously, the dude looked like a grizzly bear.”

“No comment,” Jaw rumbled.

Maybe Tattle does Know, but knows Jaw doesn’t like to talk about it and likes to tease him about it by bringing up how she’s “waiting to hear” it.

That left only the smaller guy.  “Brooks,” she told me, “Our field medic, though I’m hoping we won’t be needing his services there, and ex-airforce.  Handy with radios and computers.  Also pretty good with a gun.”

Ah, neat. That would be the ways he makes up for his size. 🙂

Jaw nodded assent to that.

“These four will be our lookouts, bodyguards and helping hands on our little errand.  We can pose as couples.”  She grinned at that.

Hehe, got some fake dating in here. Might be fun. Did you have some pairings in mind, Lisa?

Although let’s be real, it sounds like there’s quite a bit of age disparity. You sure it wouldn’t be more believable to do fathers and daughters?

These guys were soldiers.  Coil’s, and now Tattletale’s.

Indeed.

Lisa pointed at one of the taller men, a blond guy with a long face.  Not long in terms of being sad, but in terms of how genetics had put it together.  “Minor.  Team captain.”

Ah, alright, I guess Minor got his nickname for ironic reasons. And here I was about to say this was probably Jaw.

The next guy, darker haired, with unshaved scruff on his cheeks and chin, she identified as Senegal.

Which means either the grizzly guy or the small guy is Jaw, and the other is Brooks.

I’m gonna guess grizzly guy is Jaw, then. Unless the small guy is called that because he’s got a way with words to weigh up for his lack of intimidating size.

She smiled as she turned to the burly, overweight man.  “Jaw.  I’m still waiting to hear where he got the nickname.”

Heh, alright. 😛

“Come in!” Lisa called out, then she told me, quickly, “We’ll get into this later.”

Sounds good.

Seeing the first three men come into the room, I was left with the distinct impression that Lisa had picked out the biggest, meanest looking men in her retinue.  Then I saw the fourth guy.  Where the first three were in the neighborhood of six feet in height, physically powerful, the fourth was an inch or so shorter than I was, though he was still in good shape.

Better shape than me, for sure, but not someone imposing, like the rest.

Hm. I guess what he lacks in size and intimidation, he makes up for in some other way. Also, I imagine there are no points for guessing which one of these guys is “Minor”.

Of the four, I noted the guy who was wearing the most wrinkled clothes, with the thick beard and the broad gut.  He wasn’t imposing because he’d packed on muscle like the others, but because he was big, looking like a grizzly bear that was dressed up like a person.

Niice.

What caught my eye, though, was the ironic fact that this same guy was having the hardest time at shrugging off that stiff-backed, square-shouldered military bearing that had been hammered into him at some point during his onetime career.

Hehe.

I’m guessing this is… Senegal. Or Brooks. I doubt it’s Jaw, at least, since that’s a nickname you’d think would be given to a guy with a noteworthy jaw.

Here’s an idea: What if word somehow makes it to Danny that Taylor was spotted at the Merchant party?

She frowned, “I’m going to kick his ass, for being that-” 

I appreciate Lisa’s protectiveness of Taylor. 🙂 Although for what it’s worth, Brian did try his best to not let her down too hard. I don’t think he deserves an ass-kicking, having the full picture from Taylor’s perspective.

“No!”

Lisa frowned at me.

Pfft.

“Can’t I kick his ass just a little bit? For you?”

I went on, “Don’t interfere, don’t make things worse than they already are.  He’s mad at me, he’s hurt by what I did, and, um,” I bit the corner of my lip between my teeth, tried to think of how to gracefully state what I wanted to say, “We’re already separated.  You get what I mean?  We’re each in our own territory, doing our own things.  If something happened to push us further apart, I dunno if I’d even ever get his friendship back.”

Ah, yeah, very good point.

“Oh, Taylor, no-” Lisa started.  Before she could launch into any reassurances, there was a knock on the door.

I guess it’s time for reinforcements rather than reassurances.

Hm. Honestly, I’m not sure I like the escort thing. It’ll make for fewer opportunities for Taylor and Lisa to really talk, like they were doing just now.

As she put the phone away, she shrugged at me.  “I know you’d rather Brian come with, but he’s got his own thing going on, you know?”

Yeah, Brian and Aisha are the ones we knew from the phone call couldn’t be in on this. At least Brian.

“Oh, no.  I’m ok that he isn’t coming,” I told her.  “Things are bad between us.”

Oh yeah, I suppose these two haven’t really had a chance to talk about Taylor’s relationship with Brian in a while, have they.

“I totally didn’t know you’d confessed to him, you know?  I saw the awkwardness between you two, and the distance, but I assumed it was because you’d used him as a shoulder to cry on.

Right, the whole gang did find out about the confession recently, so that’s something at least.

My power filled in those blanks all wrong.”

Seems like it, yeah.

“Yup.  Confessed.  Not sure what sucked more.  Him saying he thought of me in the same terms as he thought of Aisha, that he considered me a friend, knowing I’d fucked said friendship up, or him implying he’d only been nice to me because he pitied me.”

Ouch.

I suppose this is another case of Tattletale taking risks on others’ behalf without consulting or informing them. She doesn’t seem to have informed Taylor about the identity risk of this mission before taking Taylor into a room where the risk was in full effect.

Which also ties back to what I mentioned about Tattle herself not seeming to care much about her own secret identity in the past.