It was strange how one thing could color so many others. How one incident could change the trajectory of several days time...

That night they had a fight, a real row, one of the biggest they’d had since they’d gotten together.

Clancy had just gotten home after three days in the Monochrome, three days from the “real” world’s perspective, six or so in Monochrome time.

Anne was inside, as always. Though this time, she had company. The day was a filming day. Which meant that she had some of her crew there with her. Mostly the usual suspects, friends that Anne had made in school, who’d gone into business with her when it looked like her little mom and pop magic crafting set up and muu-tube channel might turn into something real.

Paulette, Regina, Kate, and Leona were Anne’s camera woman, editor, workshop-assistant, general advisor respectively.

There were a few other people there, some of them wandering in an out of the kitchen and out of Anne’s workshop.

Assistants to Anne’s friends, faces that Clancy didn’t really know on a personal level, with names he’d never bothered to memorize.

Two of these unknown names belonged to faces that you’d see on a men’s fashion catalogue and lithe, rippling physiques you’d rarely expect to see outside of the silver screen.

They weren’t what this fight was about though...Anne and Clancy weren’t the just jealous type. At least Clancy wasn’t the jealous type, his feelings for Anne were mixed with a certain measure of guilt.

He just wanted her to be happy, if that meant being the best man he could be for her he could do that. If that meant letting her go, though it’d probably kill him, he could do that too. In his head, it was the least he could do.

He and his father owed her that much, at the very least.

But again, that wasn’t what this was about, the two men were just hired help, models. Recipients of some magical tattoos, that were allowing Anne and her company to videotape the process in return for her giving them the enchanted bodyart free of charge.

Clancy got home, popped his head, and waved hi to the crew and then went to go do his own thing. He showered, he ate. He slept. Sleeping like a dead stone.

Two or three hours after his head hit the pillow, he was woken with a kiss. One kiss became two kisses, two kisses became three, three kisses somehow turned into oral sex.

Clancy was at the foot of his bed, his head between Anne’s thighs, when things went down.

“So...uh, where the hell were you last night?” she purred. Eyes glittering in the dark.

Since his mouth was occupied, he spoke with his head, using magic and their “special connection” to get his thoughts across from his head to hers.

[Working, babe….]

“Regular work or...dangerous work, Clancy.”

There was something in her tone of voice that let Clancy know that they weren’t having fun anymore. Throwing ice water on the moment they were having.

“All my work is dangerous, hon. You know that.” said Clancy. His voice tight and defensive. His inner voice aware that he was likely taking the wrong track, the wrong tone too.

Aware that he was making a mistake by reminding his girlfriend and sometimes wife, that his occupation was just simply dangerous as a fact.

She sat up, arms crossed over her milky white breasts, her expression stern without being stern. Her face set in a particular way that Clancy had long grown to recognize as a warning sign.

“Yes...I am aware that all your work is dangerous, but hon, I’m pretty sure we both know that sometimes your work is more dangerous then it needs to be...Or rather sometimes you do it so its more dangerous than it needs to be.”

Clancy’s met his girlfriend’s gaze, both of peers of red eyes seeming to glow in the gloom of his bedroom.

He stepped back for a second, stepping out of himself. It was of those moments where a guy can see themselves making a mistake. Where one can see one’s choices and watch how they could blow up in one’s face. It was like seeing a glass placed on the edge of a table and knowing that in all likelihood, if nothing was done, the glass would likely fall and be broken.

It was all these things. Seeing the future and knowing how things could go wrong. And it was one of those moments where one makes the mistakes anyway.

“Anne, you’re making a bigger deal of this then it needs to be.” Thirteen little words, that served as the shot heard around the world.

She went from being perturbed and concerned and to being pissed. He doubled down by calling her a nag. Which got Anne from being pissed to being furious, which lead to the ever dreaded ‘you’re just like your father line.’ That always got through all his defenses like a heat seeking missile. Hitting his sore spot every damn time.

At which point they both started shouting. With Anne shouting because she knew that Clancy was supposed to have been back a day ago. Given this knowledge because he’d assured her that the job, the first job, would be quick and relatively safe for a reward of its level.

And instead of defusing things, Clancy ended up shouting back, like trying to put out a fire with explosions, because sensitive bruisers like him generally didn’t like being yelled at.

It was the kind of fight where both parties ended up in tears, though Clancy was too much of a man to consider it as anything more than conspicuous beads of anger sweat, in his case.

They yelled for hours, with Clancy only coming back to himself around hour three when Anne started pulling a Carrie, throwing things around and setting things on fire with her mind.

The fight ended with Clancy in his car, in the driveway and Anne in her room. Angrily working on one of her projects.

Clancy peeled out, the tires screeching as he headed off to give his girl some time alone and himself some time to cool off.

Miraculously he wasn’t pulled over since it was the early morning and he was going about 50mph in a residential zone.

As Clancy calmed down and slowed down, he sighed, remembering just how exhausted he still was.

“Fuck…..” sighed Clancy. Slapping the steering wheel.

The fight that he and Anne had just had shouldn’t have blown up like it did. Sure, his tendency to overwork and take risks, was a pet peeve of Anne’s but she’d never gotten that upset about it before.

As he went over the last few hours in his head he realized that the cause was something else. Something that had happened days before. Leaving his own head, to the shared, illusory third head that hung between the two, one memory stood prominent in their shared consciousness.

A certain magical kidnapping incident, his summoning from a few days prior.

Anne and Clancy’s relationship was steady as diamond plated steel, but their past was rocks and mountains and knives.

Clancy had grown up in a cult, a cult that worshipped a very real, very malevolent cosmic entity. A cult led by a psychopath that he had to call father.

As for Anne, she was kidnapped by this cult, condemned to be tortured by that psychopath and be a plaything to that psychopath’s son.

To call their lives within that cult nightmarish would be an understatement. Add to this, their unique nature due to Clancy’s father’s experimentation, and it was only to be expected that some kind of complex would be built on the matter. Sitting like a landmine in the back of their minds.

The long and the short of it, was that due to their pasts and the nature of their beings, the two had a shared fear that one day, something very dark and angry and powerful was going to come looking for them.

This was yet another motivation for them to cultivate their magic. They needed to become as strong possible. Stronger than anyone else.

They needed as much power as they could gather, because in the back of both their minds, it was less a question of what they’d have to do “if” the demon Dantalion came looking for them, and more of a question what they’d be able to do “when” the demon finally showed up to avenge itself against the usurpers of its throne, the thieves that stole its diabolical essence.

Sitting in Anne’s place, having Clancy’s just disappear, like he had, would have been terrifying. If it had been Clancy, he’d have likely lost his ability to reason. Making it astounding that she’d been able to go into her room and look up the tracking spells and dimensional breeching spells to find him.

Were it not for his over-protective tendencies making it so that he was always the receiver of any summonings or harmful spells,... had it been Anne who’d been taken instead of Clancy... he’d have probably just panicked, using raw magic to get her back. Smashing through the fabric of space and time, nearly shredding himself apart and doing his best to kill whatever stood in his way till he found her again.

Clancy pulled over at coffee shop and bought two. He ended up drinking both, because he realized he wasn’t quite up to facing Anne again yet.

Instead of going home he went to the Foundation Office of all place. Sitting in the foundation parking lot and calling a number he’d saved but never expected to actually have to call.

The phone rang once, twice, three times. Then finally someone on the other end of the call picked up.

“Good Morning, you’ve reached the offices of Prospero Foundation Administrator Hammond. Might I ask who is speaking?” said the voice of Foundation Administrator's Secretary.

“Ah...Well, this is Clancy Ambrose, Foundation Freelancer Class-2, Freelance Agent - 492771. I’d like to ask if the Administrator could see me this morning... He gave me a job offer a little while ago and I wanted ask if the position was still open…” said Clancy.

For a few minutes there was no answer from the other end of the call. Then the Secretary’s voice cut back in.

“...Administrator Hammond won’t be able to see you today, but if you’d like he has time free on his schedule for tomorrow around 6 AM.” said the secretary.

Clancy sighed. Pinching the bridge of his nose. Questioning if he really wanted to take the step and answering his own question instantly because he knew that working like he did, and letting both him and Anne languish in semi-security as he’d been doing would no longer cut it now that they’d both been put on edge with this recent reminder of their relative weakness, both economically and in terms of cultivation.

While he couldn’t fix all of their problems with money, he knew that they needed resources and in his head getting them the necessary resources was his job.

If they needed more resources, then for Anne and his sake, he needed to start working smarter instead of just harder, when it came to how he got those resources. He needed to make more and do so in a relatively safer, definitively more reliable fashion.

“Yes, thank you. Tomorrow Morning at 6 AM will be fine.” said Clancy.