Another good deed done. (Minor collateral damage.)
After the magic's over Written by: E.E. Nick Edited by: Amelius
"Well I'm back." Vance said to the group.
"Welcome back Vance." Said Doctor Elistrea. "I'm guessing you want to talk about your recent trip to Velsing."
"Oh do I ever." Vance said gearing up for full rant mode.
"Here we go." said Alex but Vance ignored her.
"Well normally I don't do divorce cases but sometimes you just got to take what jobs you can get and truth be told being divorced myself I can emaphathise a bit."
"Jerks of a feather flock together?" Xan suggested.
"Exactly." Vance agreed unbothered by the implication about his character. "Anyway my brother Gil's some how managed to actually stay happily married so he isn't up for as much bounty hunting work as he used to be so I had to look else where for help. I probably could have asked my sister or someone else in the family but then it would have gotten back to mother and I didn't want that.
"Does your mother disapprove of divorce?" Doctor Elistrea asked.
"Yea, she is kind of old school like that. She's big on that whole till death do you part thing. When I had marriage problems she wanted me to cut out my ex's heart and offer it to one of the lord of darkness."
"Really?" asked Doctor Elistrea raising an eye brown.
"Well okay she told my ex to do that to me but you get the point. But back to Velsing, I got in touch with an aquatence of mine Skrag and got him to sign on for the gig along was a friend of his. That is where things first started to go wrong 'cause Skrag and his partner Prix never showed up."
"What happened to them." Asked Xan.
"I don't know." Vance confessed. "I didn't really bother to check it."
"You didn't even care? What if they got killed?" Alex asked alarmed at Vance's disregard.
"Well then it is a bit late for me to help them now, besides they're adventurers they should be able to take care of themselves." Vance said matter of factly.
"If "adventurer's can take care of themselves" why did you need them to come help you on this job?" Alex said accusingly.
"Hey I DID end up doing the whole job by myself missy!" Vance pointed out. "And besides just 'cause I can do the job by myself doesn't mean it isn't a LOT easier with some help."
"Missy?" Cinder said and laughed amused.
"Shut up." Both Vance and Alex said together.
"So when I finally get there it is a mess. The woman, Jessie, is screaming and crying and throwing stuff at the guy Will."
"How did she find out about you?" Xan asked.
"She didn't." Vance said.
"Then what was she upset about?" Doctor Elistrea asked.
"Apparently they were trying to name their kids and will suggested naming one after her mother." Vance said.
"What is wrong with being named after your mom?" Alex said with a frown.
"Sometimes quite a bit actually." Said Xan more to himself then anyone else.
"Is that something you want to talk about Xan." Dr. Elistrea asked.
"No." Xan said simply but with great finality.
"Well you would have to meet this guy's mother to understand why it was a problem for this particular family unit but trust me on this, you wouldn't want to meet her." Vance explained. "So after I arrive the guy runs over to me and begs me to save him from her. Tells me all this stuff about how his wife is a monster and wants to feed him to her babies and all this stuff all the while yelling at his wife Jessie about how she is being all moody and controlling lately. Naturally after all this she starts crying and yelling at him about how he doesn't listen to her at all and why can't he understand.
So I say 'look I don't want to make a big production out of this if you have my fee on hand I can just kill your wife and be on my way' (after I'm sure she is a monster of course but I wasn't going to tell him that till after he paid just incase). So then she gets mad again accusing him of taking the easy way out and how I was just a new way to avoid her."
"I agree with her." Said Alex.
"You would." said Vance.
"Well he did hire you to kill her, didn't he." Alex said.
"I'm getting to that part." Vance said. "Apparently he didn't really know for sure or not. I was all set to start hacking away once he ponied but this Will guy starts giving me a song and dance. 'Oh I don't know, I mean she is pregant and unarmed so I probably shouldn't kill her' and that maybe I should come back later. Now needless to say this news upsets me greatly so I tell him that I've come a long way and regardless who gets killed I do have a fee just for coming out plus expenses and stuff. I mean he posted up a call, right, and I came. I've already performed half the service.
But he goes into this whole long thing about how he really shouldn't have to pay me 'cause I'm not doing anything. So I get a little hot and yell at him about how I'm carrying this big ass sword around and that is work enough and if he disagrees I can leave it in one of his internal organs for a day or two and he can let me know just how much effort it is to cart this thing around. Anyway he tries to force me out of the house so I smack him around a little and he starts crying or bleedimg, I can't remember which. It was some kind of bodily fluid."
"I hope you washed your hands before you came here then." Xan said.
"I was wearing gloves." Vance said. "So anyway then she gets upset at me for beating up her husband. So then she starts lobbing spells and what not at me, tough stuff too fairy royalty I'm guessing. If she hadn't been the size of a blimp all pregnant she probably would have kicked my ass. So anyway I'm in the midst of battling her getting ready to give her the old kick to the ovaries."
"Vance you are a wonderful human being" Alex said snarkily.
"Huh?" said Alex's familiar Cinder. "He is? He sound to me more like he is a nasty vicious little…"
"Ahem." Said Doctor Elistrea interupting cinder.
"I don't see what is so bad about that." Xan said. "Women talk about kicking men in the balls all the time."
"Thank you." Said Vance though if he was thanking Alex, Cinder, Xan or Doctor Elistrea it was unclear. "At this point I'm pretty satisfied if she is tossing around spells its time to start slicing and dicing. Then Will starts begging me to stop. How he had a horrible mistake and that how he loves her and all that nauseating stuff. So, and this is the worst part, she buys it and they start hugging. At this point I just don't care as long as I get paid by someone so I give them the choice of paying up or taking a group ass kicking. Anyway she says "Will its time" and wraps her arms around him and they start glowing. Well I don't want to get into the disgusting details but anyway when the glowing stops they're both gone and their is a brand new cloud of baby faries which promptly take off giggling and hugging and generally carrying on."
"So what did you do?" asked Doctor Elistrea.
"What could I do? I ransacked the house a bit for anything of value and moved on." Vance said. "Oh which brings me to my next point. If any of you want to buy cheap swag I'm having a garage sale this weekend."
"Please no sales pitches while we're in therapy Vance." Doctor Elistrea said. "So what did you take away from this experience Vance."
"Well I got back from the whole thing and I did some thinking on the whole matter. I came to realize that sometimes you have to put the disagreements of the past in the past and focus on what brings you together in the future. That sometimes all it takes to relight the flames of love is the spark of adversity. That perhaps as the song writers say, we're all souls who've been hurt and we're just looking for somene to fill in the holes in our spirits that life has taken away from us."
The room was momentarily quiet all touched by Vance's words.
"So what did you do with this revelation?" Asked Doctor Elistrea.
"Well when I got back I got in touch again with my ex-wife and told her about what happened and I told that it was silly for me to keep pretending like she doesn't exist. She said she would have to think about" Said Vance.
"And so what happened." Asked Alex.
Vance replied. "She decided that she wanted two paintings and a letter opener but only if I knocked off 10%."
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