Title: An Interesting Tale of Pens

Series: Tales From the Trail #1

Origin: Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, just south of Greenland.
Author: Taz
E-Mail: ringteign@yahoo.co.uk
Disclaimer: Sci Fis, not mine. Less profit, more fun!

Summary: What do you call a load of badgers?

Feedback: You want fic? Earn it.

Spoilers: None

Rating: PG-13 for language.
Author's Notes: This is number 1 in a series of ongoing fics called the Tales From the Trail series. Each fic was inspired by random events during a years worth of travelling around North America and will include an origin location for curiositys sake. Be warned, I have many and I dont think a single one of them has a point. However, feel safe in the knowledge that half of them were stolen in Vancouver.

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An Interesting Tale of Pens

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"So what do you call a load of badgers?" Darien Fawkes asked out of the blue one fine, sunny morning.

"Huh?" Bobby responded absently. He squinted out of the windshield of the van at the car stopped at the lights in front of them and leaned on the horn. "Come on asshole! Shift it! Some of us have to get to work sometime this week!"

"Hey Hobbes? Crank it down would ya? Were only late by-" Darien glanced at his watch and his face fell. "-Fifty six minutes."

"Shit!" Bobby cursed. "The Fat Man's gonna kill us!"

"Yeah, so what's new?" Darien yawned. He propped his foot up on the dashboard. "Wanna stop for coffee? Piss him off some more? It's always worth it to see his face go that freaky colour."

Bobby glared sideways. "Think this is funny Fawkes? Let's see if it's so funny when he hands us to Eberts on a silver platter for paper push duty. You won't be laughing then, huh smartass?"

Darien grinned. "Oh, come on. That last time? You cant deny that was classic. When you...." he started laughing. "...Y'know, with the.... and the macaroons?"

Bobby cringed. "I told you-"

"Yeah, yeah. Never to be mentioned again, blah blah blah. But still..."

"No!"

"When the-"

"Stop it!"

"And then when the paramedics showed up-"

"I'm warning you Fawkes!"

"And the look on the guy's face when he had to remove the-"

Darien's fond rememberances were cut short with a muffled oomph when his face became suddenly well aquainted with the side window as Bobby jerked the van into a sharp left turn.

He rubbed the sore spot on his cheek as he glared over at his partner's smug smirk.

"Didn't make it any less funny," he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.

They rode in silence.

And more silence.

And yet more silence.

"....macaroon man," Darien mumbled.

"Shut up!"

"So, seriously, what do they call a load of badgers?" Darien's natural exuberance rose to the surface and he straightened up from his sulking slouch. "I mean, you get a school of fish and a pride of lions and a flock of geese, what about badgers?"

"I dunno, herd?" Bobby asked, too busy concentrating on avoiding the sudden swarm of elderly drivers that took every opportunity to get in his way to pay proper attention to Darien's usual inane ramble.

"A herd of badgers?" Darien repeated incredulously. "A herd of badgers," he repeated again, straightfaced. "You ever listen to yourself sometimes, man? A *herd* of badgers."

"I dunno!" Bobby yelled, exasperated. "What am I, Dr Doolittle? Herd, flock, pride, they can come in frickin six packs for all I care, they're badgers! They don't threaten the security of the nation, so I don't care! And they smell," he added as an afterthought.

Darien gazed at him thoughtfully. "You taken your pills today man?"

Bobby suppressed a growl and screwed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. He occasionally got a pain right behind his eyes, constantly actually. It had been there for the last few months. Almost a year really. No, going on two. It wasn't always bad, just a general dull throb. No, come to think of it, it was pretty much a constant sharp, aching want-to-rip-your-eyes-out pain. Although now that he thought about it, it wasn't really behind his eyes, more kinda to the right a bit. No, maybe a bit further. About a metre really. Hed even named his pain. He'd named his pain Darien Fawkes, and it just kinda fitted somehow.

His pain spoke, a nervous tinge to the voice. "Uh, Hobbes? You really think you should do that while driving?"

Bobby's eyes shot open and with a muted curse he wrenched the van off the sidewalk, leaving shocked women with pushchairs to contemplate the meaning of the jumbled assortment of flashed images just presented to them.

Darien looked around. "Where the hell are we going anyway?"

"Short cut."

"Short cut? You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"I mean, short cuts are usually, y'know, shorter, right?"

"Yeah," Bobby replied gruffly.

"So, if we were to take a route that, y'know, wasn't actually shorter, it wouldn't be a short cut?"

"It's a short cut, alright?!"

"I'm telling you man, this ain't no short cut."

"It's a short cut!"

"I'm telling you...."

"Hey, haven't we had this conversation before? Stop questioning me! Who's the agent here? Who's trained in evasive procedures? Who's trained in defensive driving? Who spent three months undercover as a strip joint operator in Vegas? Huh?"

"Strip joint operator? What's that gotta do with anything?"

"Nothin. Just like droppin' it into the conversation sometimes..."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't change the fact that you don't know where the hell you're going." Darien paused. "Strip joint, huh?"

"Strip joint." Bobby confirmed with a faraway look in his eyes and a grin on his lips. "See if your seventeen million dollar gland gets you anywhere near *that* cushy little position..."

Darien was suspiciously quiet.

"Fawkes. No. Whatever you just thought, no."

"Spoilsport," Darien grumbled.

"Anyway, it's a short cut."

"Hey, listen to me ok? It's no short cut. You're gonna come out by St. Mary's."

"So?"

"St. Mary's. The school. St. Mary's."

"St. Mary's. Got it. So?"

So, Mr. Gotta-Be-At-Work-On-Time, it's Monday. It's nearly nine o'clock, were in a narrow one-way lane, and youre heading down past a school."

The cocky arrogance faded from Bobby's expression a split second before he rounded the corner and the school came into view.

Kids.

Hundreds and hundreds of kids. Hundreds of kids, running in the road, off the road, by the road, getting out of cars blocking the road, dropping their little kid lunchboxes on the road, scuffing their little kid shoes and shouting in their little kid voices and waving their little kid waves.

And all of them solidly in the way.

Bobby kept a firm grip on the steering wheel as the van ground to a halt behind the already substantially long queue of vehicles, kept his eyes firmly focused ahead. He didn't need to look. He could feel Darien beside him, grinning his little Darien grin and smirking his little Darien smirk and flipping his little mental Darien finger and he knew, he just knew that if he looked, if he took his hands off the wheel, he'd be getting an invoice for seventeen million dollars in the mail.

And he had only just paid off that damn $800 window.

So, in the interests of not giving Eberts a happy, he turned his attention to something else.

"Set?"

Darien looked confused. "Huh?"

"Set."

"Set what?"

"Set. It's a set. Badgers come in sets."

"Set? Isn't that where they live?"

"Yeah, well, its also what a load of thems called."

"You sure man?"

Now that he thought of it, Bobby wasn't really all that sure. "Yes."

"Wow. That's gotta be confusing."

"Yeah, I'm sure its top of the list of what's bothering them when they get up in the morning. Where the hell d'you come up with this crap anyway?!"

"But, wolves right? Wolves come in a pack, but they don't live in one, they live in a....a den. Or something. Right?"

Bobby narrowed his eyes. The damn kid thought too much. The downside of that- he forced Bobby to think too. Not that Bobby was by any means unintelligent, oh no. Not Bobby Hobbes. Bobby Hobbes was as smart as they came. Bobby Hobbes just preferred not to have to explain to the Official how he was pondering animal cracker questions instead of scoping the area when the witness he's supposed to be protecting gets shot by a rooftop sniper. Yeah, that would just go down great.

He didn't have an answer for Darien so he ignored him. Always the safest thing to do. Not that it ever fazed Darien in the least.

"Well," Darien started off again, "I suppose if Toad could live in a Hall..."

"What? Hall? Toads? What?"

"Toad. He lived in a Hall. Y'know, Toad of Toad Hall?"

"I know Toad of Toad Hall. Breeze in the Elms."

"Wind in the Willows."

"Or something."

"Or something." Darien repeated with a roll of his eyes. He leaned his arm out of the opened window and casually picked at the flaking tan paint on the door.

"And were back to the questioning," Hobbes grumbled. "I knew it, just gimme, gimme a chance, ok?"

"Takes a while for the 'ol brain to creak into action huh?" Darien fired back.

"Less of the old there pal. Experienced, yes. Well matured, maybe. Seasoned if you will. Cured like a finely honed ham...."

"Dont know about ham, but youre sure full of bull."

The van moved forward a few feet. Bobby glanced over.

"You know the Fat Man's sending you a bill for that door right?"

Dariens gaze flicked from some kids cool Tickle-Me-Elmo lunchbox to his door where his fingers were picking off a sizable chunk of the aging paint. He looked repentent for a split second before he shrugged and stretched.

"Ah, let him. I'll get him back. Go QSM, kill a few pedestrians, whatever."

Bobby grinned.

"Plus, Im GS6, I can afford it," Darien needled, knowing the reaction he was going to get.

Bobby stopped grinning.

"Stupid frickin' Agency. Bust my ass, shunted out to every backwater crick of a country, eat termites for a month- termites, Fawkes! Dust in places dust should never be allowed to see, shot at by every frickin guy and his dog and what do I ask? Just that extra little zero on the itsy bitsy piece of paper that turns up late every month, Yes Bobby, no Bobby, three bags full Bobby, no problem Bobby, your'e a good agent Bobby, budget's a little tight this month Bobby, then they go and drag in some punk-ass convict with a gland in his brain who never wanted to be there in the first damn place and suddenly Oops! Sorry Agent Hobbes, all those extra zeroes just *fell* onto his paycheck, honest. Here, have some vacation time to make up for it but take it after you've caught this guy, and after that could you just track this one down and then I'm sure you can fit in a frickin lost puppy after that, don't mind do ya?!"

Bobby paused for breath, caught Darien smirking behind his hand and realised he'd been played. Oh, he'd been played good. Darien was getting to know him too well and it pissed him right off.

"Don't do that to me, partner, it's not nice."

"Oh, but it's so much fun."

"Not nice. Nice people don't make fun of their partners."

"Oh, they don't?"

"Not nice people."

"What does that make you?"

"Never said I was nice."

"Just egotistical, huh?"

"Hey, don't get all fancy on *me* Mr. Terminology."

"Not nice."

"Never said I was nice."

"Hey, Hobbes? Drive the damn van will ya?"

"I'm drivin, I can drive and talk at the same time."

"Ooh, special."

"Jealous?"

"Drive the damn van."

"I'm drivin!"

And so began Monday morning.

~Fin~