Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon

Magtok puts a chrome hand to his chin. He idly wonders how this would play out if he paid the annoying goblin and then called up Reinholdt and warned him in advance about a duplicitous caramel killer. It'd probably make for quite the show, but there's no guarantee he'd ever get to see the show, so what's the point in stirring up a ruckus like that if you don't even get to see everyone's faces when they get worked up over it? Plus, Reinholdt would immediately suspect Magtok of being responsible for hiring the goblin, for playing both sides, because that's the kind of backstabbing, dishonorable chaos we've always enjoyed causing. It would be impossible to convince anyone we weren't pulling all the strings for our own amusement, and then all the HALO people plus Ashley Gummerpumpernickel would show up here, mad as hell and demanding revenge or recompense for the dramatic battle and confusing argument with hot fudge hitwoman that broke their stuff and shot their people.

We can't just send her away empty-handed either, however, because if we do that, her instincts are going to take her to the cat, who won't be nearly as interested in keeping the peace. Well...actually, we don't know that for sure, but we can't really risk it, can we? Our cloning situation is a lot less stable than the cat's, as uncomfortable as it is to admit that, and even the loss of one clone, this clone, could be dire. If he decides on a whim that it'd make for a funny prank to send the goblin our way, there's not a whole lot we could do to stop her without risking our own personal safety or that of others. On top of that, our memories aren't saved in the databank like the other Magtoks, so a death now would set us back by years of progress, as the next stupid asshat to descend from the fleet would have to squint at our notes and figure everything out again from scratch. Worse still, the new guy might be enough of an arrogant blowhard to kick our wife-in-everything-but-name out of the cave, since our brief chats with the fleet have told us the other clones aren't too keen on having Caelynn around. It's one thing to put our own life in jeopardy, but if someone's poor judgement might put our current favorite catgirl out on the streets...

"Do you charge extra for special requests? Like say for example, I wanted him captured alive and then eaten by zombies, similar to what happened to his son, or secretly irradiated until he can't have any more kids, or killed by an assassin disguised as one of his own clones to get them pointing fingers at each other and looking for impostors, would any of that be viable?" he asks, running a mental inventory on how much MagMart is projected to earn this Thanksmas season, now that online shopping and one-day teleportation shipping services are cutting into his profits. He should still have enough dosh lying around to cover this and still give out presents. We might have to save Raven and Jedrek's presents for next year, but Jedrek isn't into material possessions anyway, and Raven was probably going to burn anything we mailed her out of spite. That precocious little tyrant holds her everlasting grudges almost as passionately as her dear old dad.