A pair of legs thumped down on the desk. A spread newspaper hid the rest of the legs' owner. He scanned the headlines for the day: Prince to Meet Delegates in Historic Summit; Harpy Migration Officially Over, West Pass Safe for Travel Again; Demonic Possession Actually Just Gas. He confirmed that none of it was what he was looking for.
"Leif!" he called. "What do we have today?"
Leif's voice floated in from the kitchen. "Schedule's empty today, Mo."
A low growl became a groan of boredom as Mo tilted his head back. "It's been like this for two weeks now! How the hell are we supposed to pay rent like this?"
"Would you quit complaining?" A young man walked through the open door, a mug held in each hand. He had a no-nonsense kind of face, with blond hair above and business casual below. Leif passed a mug to Mo. "We've had slow spells before. Think of it like a vacation."
"Some vacation..." he muttered, accepting the coffee from Leif. He took a sip and nearly choked, dropping pages of newspaper all over.
"Is this generic brand?!"
"We need to make cuts where we can," Leif sighed.
"Screw that!" Mo yelled, jumping to his feet. At six and a half feet tall, he cut an imposing figure in spite of his spindly frame, especially with a head of black hair and a black-all-over ensemble. He flipped a pair of reflective aviators down over his eyes. "If work's not coming to us, we're gonna go out there and find it!"
===========
Mo's Consulting Co was headquartered in an ancient townhouse which had long ago been converted into an office. The building itself had a respectable, if worn, brick facade, which masked the much cheaper materials everything else was made from.
The surrounding buildings were similarly old, a mix of residential and commercial with no real logic behind the distribution. It was a cheap district to live or do business in, so not surprisingly it attracted residents like the two now exiting the office.
Mo descended the crumbling brick steps in front of the door, followed shortly after by Leif. It was time to rustle up some business.
They weren't really consultants, inasmuch as "consultant" means anything. It was more accurate, perhaps, to call them handymen, odd-jobbers, or occasionally, mercenaries.
Professional bums, essentially.
But for all that he looked like he belonged on a motorcycle barreling down a highway somewhere, Mo was actually an excellent salesman. It was only a matter of finding the customers.
"Take this down, Leif. That house needs its gutters cleaned. I see three cars that could use repairs. Old lady crossing the street at two o'clock."
Leif faithfully recorded leads for new jobs in a notebook. Unfortunately, nothing looked particularly lucrative today. He also had the nagging suspicion that the two of them had fallen pretty low, these days...
Unbeknownst to the both of them, their slow day was about to get awfully complicated. A few blocks back, in a dark alley, a homeless man settled on the ground, leaning a weary back on the old brick of the wall of the alley. He'd been out of work for some time, had lost his home, and now after weeks of begging and looking for work, he'd lost all motivation to continue.
This wasn't the first time he'd sat down like this to contemplate where his life had gone so wrong, of course. But this time he was joined by an unexpected guest.
Suddenly standing before the man was a child. Or no mere child, but one that seemed to be a shining white all over; less a child, perhaps, than a child-shaped hole in space. Two black eyes floated into existence on an otherwise empty face.
The man found himself transfixed by the spectacle before him. It was clearly abnormal, but he was simply too tired to care. The child opened a black mouth that only started existing at that moment, and uttered what would be the last word the man would ever hear.
"LAZY."
==========
Two hours later, Mo and Leif were taking a break in the park. Mo slouched on a bench while Leif reviewed his notes.
"Altogether that is twelve potential jobs spotted. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any here that we can realistically charge more than fifteen marks for. It's all odd jobs."
"We can't be too proud, in this economy," Mo replied. "Every little bit is that much more toward rent."
"Even so, we're going to need to find a big job, and soon. We can only go on like this for so long."
"Weren't you the one that was saying we should enjoy our vacation?"
"I didn't say anything about enjoying it."
"Sometimes I forget you're the kind of guy that doesn't know the meaning of 'vacation'..."
Leif closed his notebook and sighed. "I'm starting to miss the harpies. At least that was regular work for a few weeks."
Mo shuddered. "Don't say that. I still have nightmares about cleaning up the bike afterward. They're like pigeons that take bigger..." He trailed off, then sat bolt upright. "Hey. You hear that?"
The sounds of the park mostly drowned it out, but less than a minute later he heard it again, louder this time. A scream of terror, cut short.
"What in the world--" Leif was slow on the uptake, but Mo was already up and ready for action. Through the trees, having entered the park from the opposite side, the two could just see the source of the noise: a small, white humanoid, a pile of still smoking ashes and clothes sitting in the grass in front of it.
"What is that?" Leif asked, voice shaking.
"That--" Mo said with anticipation, "is what I've been looking for."