[crow]

"You said I was looking for what?"

A shout broke out from a man sitting at a park bench in a well-groomed neighborhood park. Fabio didn't even bother trying to hide his irritation as he barked the question at Melanie over their wire. He did regret it a little when a passing lady gave him a funny look for it, but even then, it wasn't that much regret... maybe. Okay, maybe he should have been trying a little harder to look less conspicuous, but still...

[crow]

"A lost dog, Fabio. You're not losing your hearing, are you? We're going to have to tell the boss if you are, and then it won't be pretty." Melanie's reply came, but it didn't make him feel any better. He could hear the smugness in her voice, and he didn't care for it one bit, but there wasn't much he could do in the face of it.

It wasn't like she was here, and... Admittedly he didn't know what he would do even if she had been.

[crow]

Smacking someone just because you were annoyed at them wasn't a thing, and he couldn't really think of anything else.

As far as verbal skirmishes went, he already knew the answer to that one. Since when had he ever managed to win a verbal spar with Melanie? It was probably because she had so much practice at it, as a handler. All she did all day was talk on her wire. If she wasn't good at talking by now, all that time would have gone to waste.

[crow]

Deep down, Fabio knew that it wasn't her choice to give him this kind of assignment either. The types of job--- and even the specific job, sometimes--- that an agent got were all handed down from the higher ups, so it wasn't her place to decide, or her fault that it was happening. And Fabio knew that the big shots didn't want him doing anything dangerous... Him or Melanie, for that matter.

But even so, she could afford to sound a little less smug about it.

[crow]

She knew for a fact that Fabio chafed at this kind of job. The least she could do was show him a little sympathy and understanding when she delivered the news. Was that really so much to ask?

He wondered why she didn't feel stifled by comparison, always getting small tasks like this and not the real work that the other agent-handler teams got to deal with. She was smart--- and always going on about just how clever she was too. Wasn't she bored?

[crow]

"Come on Fabio, I don't see you moving! You're not slacking off just because it's an easy job, are you? I'll tell them you're not giving it your best," said Melanie over the wire.

Fabio muttered a particularly colorful string of expletives. Damn that GPS tracking. "Alright, I'm looking, I'm looking!" he said, doing his best to quell the spike of irritation that bubbled up, and for the most part failing to do so.

"You know what Xing says about these things," Melanie said. "Every job is---"

[crow]

"--- vital to someone," Fabio finished for her. He'd heard that one a million times. "I know. If you don't stop, I'm going to complain to him that you're interfering with my job."

"Interfering? I'm reminding you of the valuable tenets of the organization we work for! Just you try and tell on me, I'm sure he'll see my side of things," Melanie replied. She didn't even sound concerned, and Fabio knew it was because she was right. Xing did tend to see her side of things.

[crow]

He suspected it was because Melanie was more cautious, and more of a smart-aleck, and didn't complain about always being stuck with small jobs. All the things that Fabio wasn't, if you thought about it that way.

Thinking about Xing always gave him mixed feelings, so Fabio did his best to shove those thoughts away and concentrate on the task at hand. Lost dog. Right. Okay, so this was what his life had been reduced to, but he did still have to do a good job.

[crow]

Melanie was probably right about it mattering to someone, he supposed, but that wasn't really what he was thinking about. The more important thing to him was that his performance here was going to be looked at. Even if it was a small job, if he slacked off here, they could use that as an excuse not to give him anything bigger because he wouldn't take it seriously.

He didn't like it, but that was the way things were. So the sooner he found this dog, the better.

[crow]

It only occurred to him as he took a cursory scan of the park, however, that he didn't actually know what he was looking for. "... What's this dog look like anyway?" he said reluctantly.

"Oh, is Fabio ready to start working now?" said Melanie. Her tone really didn't help his mood, but he had already made up his mind to start working, so he grit his teeth and bore it. "I was wondering when you were going to ask. Here, let me pull up my file on it..."

[crow]

Fabio blinked, then scowled. "Hey, what are you saying that to me for? You didn't have it open either, right? You're in no position to be telling me anything," he said. Clearly he wasn't the only one who hadn't quite been ready to start the search, so how come he was the only one being heckled like this?

"Yeah? You want this information or not, then?" said Melanie, completely nonchalant in the face of his ire. "I don't have to tell you or anything, you know."

[crow]

Oh, right. The reason that he was the only one being heckled was because the power balance was so uneven here. Once again, Fabio couldn't do anything but grit his teeth against his feelings, and take a deep breath to steady himself.

"Alright, I was wrong. Tell me what the dog looks like," he said. It was all he could do to keep his one even, because he was dead sure she was going to nitpick if she thought he didn't ask nicely enough.

[crow]

"Mmm... I thought about making you ask nicely, but that's a bit much to expect from you, huh? I'll go easy on you today, since you're having such a hard time," Melanie said. Apparently Fabio hadn't asked quite nicely enough for her liking, despite his best efforts.

Honestly, he knew she was cutting him some slack in her own way, but it sure didn't feel like it. How did that proverb go? Giving the disease and then the medicine? it felt pretty apt for this.

[crow]

Fabio didn't say anything though. They had already wasted enough time. Besides, it wasn't actually like he enjoyed arguing with Melanie or anything, though it really did seem like she liked to pick on him.

"Okay. You ready? It's brown... Based on the pictures I've been given, you're probably looking at a chocolate lab mix of some sort, though I'm not sure about the other breed. Says here it was last seen wearing a red bandanna, though I don't know if it'll still have that on," Melanie began.

[crow]

She went on. "They say the real identifying characteristic is the white speckling on the back foot. The toes are white, and then it has three white spots going up along the back of the leg, like a little constellation or something."

"Like a... constellation?" said Fabio, his face scrunching up a bit.

"Hey, don't ask me, okay? That's just what it says here on the file," Melanie said. "I guess it's like with people and their kids, right? They get a little poetic about it."