Discipline

     “I shall be right back.” Tibias exclaimed and rose from his ornately decorated desk. “"I just cannot stand this anymore. If it is going to be a long night, and indeed it will be, I shall require some reasonably hot tea. I am sick of the cold that surrounds you two" .” He picked up the teapot on the nearby shelf, which was also vivid since it was on Tibias's side of the room, and strolled out the door, in the direction Kole assumed of the kitchen down the hall.

     As soon as Kole's eccentric partner left, Kole turned his thoughts to his subordinate, Keera. He didn't think anybody else would see the steady rise in the number of demon appearances. I knew she was clever He thought to himself But I can't let her onto my suspicions yet. I need to confirm them first. Plus, I am not a fan of tools knowing more than they need to. Speaking of tools... Kole did a mental grunt of irritation and turned to his underling.“Keera, we need to find your inept coworker.”

     Keera scowled from the desk that she was sitting at. She looked up from a couple sheets of paper she was currently sorting. “Really? We just got back. I know Royal is a bastard-much like yourself-but when he returns, you can yell at him then. Why waste all that energy hunting him down?” At that moment, a scene played out across Kole's mind. There was a girl in a dark, yet very familiar apartment building fidgeting with something right in front of her face. She seemed to hold a small expression of shock. The girl was in a black leather coat and had a very short pink and blue hairstyle jutting out from her head in a way Kole found mildly amusing. Soon she turned her attention away from whatever it was she was looking at and moved away. The vision then vanished. Kole audibly sighed. 

     “Because, Keera, I unfortunately need you two to perform a task for me. Besides, whoever said we needed to go anywhere?” Keera rolled her eyes and mouthed some words under her breath which Kole assumed meant to be some sort of derogatory jibe at himself, so he ignored her. “Get the lights Keera.” She grumpily arose from her comfy seat and flicked the light-switch off in an exaggerated manner and went back to her seat. Now the only illumination was coming from the windows that were almost unearthly clean thanks to Tibias. The sun was setting and caused the entire room to be engulfed in sunlight which created long shadows that bathed the room. Starting to feel a bit more comfortable in his favored element; Kole relaxed a bit. This was now his element, and here he was all powerful.

     Looking around the room, Kole gestured and sent out a bit of willpower, causing the shadows around the room to waver and draw closer to him. Exerting a little bit more effort, the shadows disconnected from whatever object that was casting them and congregated in a ring around him, like eager pets, waiting for a treat. Kole then cast into the shadows a mental image of the person he desired along with a single command, Find! The shadows went rocketing off at an unearthly speed away from him and charged out of the slit under the closed door. There was a muffled 'Bloody-!' come from outside the door where the shadows just left from. Kole walked over, and pulled it open, revealing his colleague Tibias frowning up at him, with a tea kettle emitting steam.

      “Jesus! I can't leave you alone for five bloody minutes to boil some water!” Tibias moved back into the room and shivered! “Those shadow beasts of yours almost gave me a heart attack!. God, I hate it when you work that mojo, it feels like the room temperature dropped by ten degrees!”

     “Sorry.” Kole replied, in a very non-apologetic tone and went back to his desk.

     “And look at this room now, it looks so damned skewed without all of the shadows here to take up some space. It ruins the aesthetics!” Tibias gestured to the rest of the room. Indeed, all of the shadows except for Tibias's and Keera's shadow now seemed to be missing. Tibias was looking intently at his desk which now cast no more shadow. After a while, he eventually stopped scrutinizing the room, sighed, poured himself a cup of tea and sat himself down at his now shadow-less desk in resignation when suddenly he lifted his head in sudden realization. “Oh dear Lord, you have me talking like a dandy!” He sighed. “I need to get out of this office if the only thing I can find wrong with a room with no shadows is the aesthetics.” Changing the topic, he looked up at Kole. “So, are you trying to find your missing minion? Concerned for his safety?” Tibias joked.

      “Not in the slightest.” Kole replied, ignoring the obvious sarcasm in his room-mates voice. “Someone activated the glyph I placed back in the Fortier residence. We only left a couple of hours ago, so either an unfortunate friend of the family stumbled in onto the scene before our clean-up crew got to them, or it is somebody involved with the summoning. It was a girl that looked of questionable repute so it could be either one.” Keera's eyes looked up, interested in the fact that Kole was actually sharing information with her and his teammate. And she knew that when Kole shared information, she better listen. “So I am trying to find my missing assistant and have him accompany Keera here to the Fortiers abode. I will have to lecture him for deserting us afterwards.”

      At that moment, one of the shadows that Kole sent out, a shadow of what appears to be a small desk-lamp, came flying back into the room and circled the floor around Kole's feet. Kole couldn't help but grin at how much delight the shadows got out of serving him. Tibias was eying it while sipping his tea, feigning disinterest. Kole reached down and touched the shadow. For the second time in the same day, his mind flooded with images. This time, the images were of a narrow street that was poorly paved and a sign that said “Rochefort's Pub: Food, Beer, and Spirits” Kole recognized this place as a bar only a little bit down the road from here. It was a place where he sometimes ate and drank when he felt like engaging in those activities. Inside the pub he saw the figure he was looking for, talking with a couple of young ladies, obviously trying to flirt with them. The man was of normal stature and was was covered with freckles. The image ended there. “Got you.”

      Kole said with a smirk. “He's close enough to shadowport to.” Kole straightened himself and let the little desklamp shadow resume it's rightful place on top of Tibias's desk. “Tibias, may I borrow your shadow for a moment? The others haven't returned yet”

     Tibias sighed and arose from his desk, forced to put down his cup of tea that he was thoroughly enjoying in this chilly room. “Make it snappy.” He said in an irritatedly. “I absolutely detest the feeling I get when you use my shadow.”

    “I will be as quick as I can.” Kole said and headed for Tibias's shadow which now stretched across the entire floor. When Kole stepped into his partners shadow, Tibias shivered a bit and muttered something about goosebumps. Wasting no more time, Kole let his body dissolve into shadows and into the darkness. Finding with his senses another shadow near where he wanted to be, he reformed his body there and emerged out of the shadow of an alleyway right across from the pub. With an act of will, he dispersed his scythe back into the shadows and entered the pub.

     Royal was still there, and hadn't seen him yet. There weren't that many patrons in the bar since it was still in the early evening, but nobody really noticed him. Kole had a way of blending in. Although he did note with a mild amount of surprise that the bartender did in fact look up and watch him enter the room. Even Kole found his steady bartender gaze unnerving so he put on a small smile and nod and walked over to his target. He was talking one on one with a mousy woman with long dark blonde hair and an Irish accent.

     Royal only noticed him after Kole walked up behind him and cleared his throat. The freckled man jumped suddenly and reached for the gun in his shirt pocket which Kole had already placed a hand over. “You are needed. Come.” Ignoring the mans protests, he grabbed the other persons arm and dragged him to the bartender. Talking over the others shout's, Kole handed over a fifty dollar bill to the bartender with the unnerving stare and then dragged Royal out of the pub and into the nearest shadow.

     They reappeared in Kole's office without much of a bang. They simply walked out from the nearby shadow of the desk which had by now returned. Kole tossed the man to the ground, created another scythe out of the shadows, and placed it at his neck. “What gives?” The man shouted. “If you asked I would have come with you willingly.”

     Tibias chuckled a bit. “Certainly Royal, you know that Mr. Tarrant would have found that not nearly as dramatic, whatever it is he did.”

     “Thank you Tibias,” Kole said dryly. “But I did not ask for your input.” He turned to his subordinate with a scythe at his throat. “ Now, what I am really wondering is why we had to resort to our backup plan to handle the demon, which might I add, had got away?”

     Royal turned and faced him with gleaming eyes. “I thought Shera could handled it so I went to the nearby pub. I obviously wasn't needed. After all, there is a reason you guys are called Reapers.”

     “What were you even doing in the pub?” Keera interjected looking up from her papers. “You don't even like humans.”

     Before Royal could respond, Kole pressed down on the scythe a little more. Any closer and it would have been breaking skin. “Enough Keera, and that may be so Royal, but I wanted her to be a backup plan due to her destructive nature. If you had handled things, It might have gone a lot smoother, and who knows, we might have been able to kill the demon. Something weird is going on now and you might have prevented it. You basically gave me extra work. And I do not like more work.”

      Royal finally lowered his gaze, knowing he lost the argument. “I am sorry Kole, I am at fault.” He said this through a mild mannered disposition that revealed that although he still thought he was in the right, he would just about say anything in order to get out of the situation.

      Kole removed the scythe anyways and let him get up. “Royal, I have killed people for doing far far less annoying things than what you have just done. Know that you are lucky.” Kole paused a moment to let that sink in. After a few seconds, he continued speaking. “I would lecture you more but as of right now, I need you both to perform a task for me. Royal, Keera, I want you to get back to the Fortier apartment as soon as possible. Keera, can you carry him if you fly?”

  

     Keera gave a repulsed look at her coworker. 'I can, but do I have to?” Royal in return flicked her off.

     “Yes”

     Keera grunted in begrudging acceptance. “All right, fine.”

     “Also, Keera, You're in charge” Kole then looked at Royal with as much of a glare as he could muster, which was actually quite a lot of glare. “Royal, BEHAVE!” His two subordinates left the room, giving each other glares. Within the first fifteen seconds he heard an argument break out between them as they were going down the hall.

     Tibias just sat there, drinking his tea and watching the whole event. “I say, you do seem to have the most horrible time controlling you subordinates.” He said with a grin on his face. He then got out another mug “Tea?”

     For all that Kole didn't like about Tibias, his sarcasm being one, and his British accent being the other, he thought that his colleague wasn't all that useless. “Thanks.”

     “I have a feeling that soon we will be living in quite more interesting times than we are now.” Tibias said while pouring the tea for his partner.

    “You noticed that too, huh?” Kole asked.

    “Well, as a soul-seer, it is my duty to be informed, but alas, I don't know much this time around.”

    “Well then, weren't you complaining about how tonight was gonna be a long night? Let's do some research.”

    “Indeed.” He replied while handing the other mug to Kole. “Cheers.” He added before taking a sip.

     Kole nodded to Tibias and sat back down into his desk. “Let's start by talking to the psychics.” Tonight will definitely be a long night.