He tried, though, he really did.

What do you mean, you can't tell? {; P

Thanks for reading!

~Neshomeh

The wiki is my friend.

HG

To: Agent Huinesoron [eagleshade.console1325897ng23404402tr.rc7455.DOGA]
From: RC #999 [console349376sn2066720bc102875.rc999.DIC]
Subject: Re. Really? I thought he quit.

Agent Huinesoron,

Thank you very much for your offers. My partner and I do not have much use for weapons, I'm afraid, but we are intrigued by Men in Black technology nonetheless. Could you give us some details about the particular weapons in question?

I am told it is improper to discuss any other bids we may or may not have received. Please be assured that we shall pursue the offer that most interests us without favoritism or bias.

Agent Ilraen
RC 999
Department of Implausible Crossovers

---

To: Dafydd Illian [external address not listed]
CC: Constance Illian-Sims [external address not listed]
From: RC #999 [console349376sn2066720bc102875.rc999.DIC]
Subject: Re. Upping the ante

Agent Illian (or is it Mr. Illian?),

Thank you kindly for your offers. We are quite interested in the fire-lizard eggs, although we would have to find other homes for them in further trade—my partner insists that there will be no pets in the response center.

Since that is the case, would you consider throwing in the steampunk technology as well? We would appreciate more details on that, but we are sure it would "sweeten the deal," as I believe the expression goes.

I am informed that it is not polite to discuss what other offers we may or may not be entertaining, but I assure you that we shall choose only what best pleases us with no bias or favoritism toward any particular Eldarin line.

Agent Ilraen
RC 999
Department of Implausible Crossovers

P.S. I am sure I do not need to tell you that we shall not take any children in trade. However, if you are seeking peace and tranquility in your household, may we suggest a babysitter or two that you may find agreeable? For instance, we believe Agent Suicide is quite capable of subduing any unwanted tendencies toward unruliness and replacing them with a certain military discipline. Or perhaps Agent Gall and her Monstrous Nightmare could exhaust the children's excess energies with quality diversions of a physical nature?

---

To: Agent Huinesoron [eagleshade.console1325897ng23404402tr.rc7455.DOGA]
From: Ilraen-Aroline-Fothergill [ilraen.console10234h23045aa810923.rc999.DIC]
Subject: Re. Just a thought.

Agent Huinesoron,

I must admit to being extremely confused by your latest message. Even if I supposed for one instant that the former Agent Illian somehow colluded with the abominable Jaycacia, what would he possibly stand to gain by insinuating that we are the same person? And if we were, why would I enter into a trade with myself? It is quite absurd. I do not see your point in bringing this up.

Agent Ilraen
RC 999
Department of Implausible Crossovers

---

(( Because naturally Ilraen would handle anything requiring some amount of diplomacy.

They're obviously leaning toward Dafydd's offer right now, because fire-lizard eggs are pretty much as rare and valuable as it gets. Also, I like the idea of hosting a good ol' hatching RP with the lucky recipients—which will not be any of my characters, alas. I could see Ilraen with a fire-lizard (blue, of course), but the rest? Not so much.

Gall is totally up for giving dragon-back rides and flying lessons to interested kiddies. What, you weren't thinking anything else, were you? ^_~

~Neshomeh ))

(So I see Nume already has an ICEP address in the original post about them. You'll have to imagine I've corrected it.)

(hS)

You will be wanting to look in the archive for a post from me (or one of mine) dated around 30 September 2011.

But you don’t get away with this:

"This is extremely unpleasant," muttered Ilraen, wiping stands of bedraggled hair out of his eyes.
I assume you meant “strands”.

Irish beat me to the "detangler", and how didn’t I see the mini-Barog? Fallen into the old trap of imagining seeing what should be there?

HG

It was very entertaining, and you guys did a good job of explaining what was going on. I don't know anything about Ranger's Apprentice, but I was still able to easily follow that side of the mission.

The character interactions were brilliant, especially the stuff between Nume and Rina (I guess that went about as well as could be expected), and Ilraen and Zeb trying to do damage control on it. And I thought the way that Rina was showed as being unused to her new strength was a nice touch.

There was a lot of good scenes and nice lines. The bits that stuck in my mind particularly are:

- The bit where Nume refused Rina's help until she could 'string more than three words together' and she arrived saying 'See? That was four words.'. I thought that was a very good line on Rina's part.

- Nume's 'Tell me about it. Not literally' and Ilraen's reaction.

- All four of them having to cram into the wardrobe at one point. I couldn't really tell who was supposed to be saying which line, but that didn't make that scene any less funny.

- The exchange between Nume and Ilraen about carelessness:
"I have never seen such carelessness."
"Yes you have," Nume said.
"Well, not toward horses."
I just found that last line very amusing.

- Silens being dealt with using a weapon that she'd misused earlier was a nice touch (and the way that scene played out with Nume trying to charge her before it was technically too late was nicely done).

- And Nume going all 'drill sergeant' on the random orcs was brilliant. I really like his lines there.

There were a few bits and pieces that I'm not sure about:

- Nume and Ilraen were usually referred to as 'disentanglers', but there was one instance of calling them 'detanglers'. I know both terms can be applied to DIC agents (actually, the wiki page says 'untanglers' rather than 'detanglers', but it still makes sense as a name), but it just looks a bit odd when you use one term half a dozen times, and then a slightly different term just once - it just looks like a mistake to me.

- When Middle Earth shows up he gets referred to on one occasion as a mini-Barog (a mini-mini, one of the rarest creatures encountered by the PPC!).

- I was slightly puzzled by one of the earlier C-CAD readings '[Charlie Treaty. Human female. Uncanon. 48% Sue and rising.]'. Usually the percentages refer to how OOC a canon character is, and characters get classified as either: canon, bit, OC or Sue. It just looks a bit odd to me to see someone being classed as '48% Sue' (might just be that I'm not familiar with the kind of readings you get from a C-CAD).

- I was also puzzled by Rina's explanation of why the mini-Kalkara was so tall. It basically seems to be 'the original thing is tall, so the mini version is tall', but seven foot isn't that tall. If it were seventy feet then I could buy that explanation. As it is, it seems like her explanation should be more along the lines of 'yeah, Ranger's Apprentice has giant minis for some reason'.

- Also, regarding Nume's dialogue, he uses 'Christ' a couple of times, but there's a couple of times where he uses 'god'. If he's using 'Christ', shouldn't he be using 'God'? (There are a few times where he uses it at the beginning of a sentence, where it gets capitalised, but the couple of times he uses it mid-sentence it's uncapitalised). I think I might have asked about that before, but I can't remember what the answer was.

All in all, very enjoyable :)

- Irish