“I’m nearly broke!” barked the wolf, looking at his latest bank statement. The savings he had long held onto and coaxed into town on had finally dried up.
Advrik scratched his shaggy head as he went over his latest expense report, with the latest outing he’d spent with Brigid having pushed him closer to the red than ever. Not that it hadn’t been worth it, mind, but he wanted to show her a good time much as he himself wanted to have one.
Even the random encounter with that Druncher failed to spoil the mood. Brigid had been more than capable of handling herself, her and that awesome pair of… daggers.
The shirt she wore, he vividly recalled, was something else! Brigid was really unlike any other fox he’d ever met. They were a species that varied extremely little in builds and were known for being the least fatty beast race on the planet, yet Brigid…
He glanced at the monitor again as a gentle rain pattered against the windowsill right outside; what had once been in the five-digit range was now edging closer to double digits, and he had no job prospects in sight.
But the smile that scarf that he bought for her when they arrived back in the mountains had been worth it. He’d just have to keep his financial situation a secret until he figured something out is all. No need to make her worry, or worse, ditch him because was jobless and broke.
Not after having finally realized how important she’d quickly become to him.
Despite the enthusiastic forecast for a dry, cool week in the paper, Brickhedge once again found itself in the middle of a parade of rain showers. The weather mercifully did not warm back up like Advrik had expected; Something that was fairly common no matter where one went this time of the year.
Brickhedge had miraculously defied his expectations yet again.
No pun intended, however, but the storms had dampened his mood. Job hunting itself was frustrating enough, but to trek from one appointment to the next through the train was a main in the tail regardless of how nice the town was one had to walk through.
He checked his emails once more, hoping for another possible monster hunt contract, but to no avail. The hunts he had performed prior to the Loveless rally had paid very little when one looked at the sort of work being done. Fighting monsters wasn’t an easy job, particularly big nasty roaches that liked to mimic beasts! It wasn’t a job a lot of everyday townies like himself were willing to take on, let alone do so for so little cash.
Scrolling through Facebook, the wolf’s brain began to rev up as the earliest particles of an idea began to circulate: Highly flammable particles that could ignite in an explosion of genius should they find the right spark.
He clicked on the ‘Marketplace’ tab and then continued scrolling. Very few Brickhedge residents were on social media and those that were kept their location a secret, though with recent events, that had become harder and harder.
Nevertheless, from beasts that were using the platform, there were listings aplenty! Beasts of all ages, species, genders and so on requesting help or looking for something. Heck, there had even been a few bounties posted here by nearby police departments.
For beasts, not monsters! (though there were plenty of those as well)
It wasn’t until he scrolled past one particular ad that had been nothing spectacular—Just an old opossum seeking a piece of his childhood in the form of a specific plastic red truck. But it was the title of the post that set the wolf’s idea aflame.
It read: “HELP WANTED”
***
"Now you know I’m not one to mince words, right?” The mole said as he rounded the coffee table, headed towards where his taller, leaner companion sat at the kitchen table. “Didn’t wipe my claws off, by the way.”
Rain still fell at a light yet constant rate outside, and the mole had thoughtfully left his yellow raincoat on the hook outside on the shielded stoop to drip dry. His walk to the wolf’s house had been a frustrating experience.
Not because of the rain but the constant string of quips from the few other beasts that had also been braving the weather.
“Hiya, Georgie!”
“Stay away from the storm drains, little’un!”
“Don’t ever go near that graveyard,”
The last one had been humorous, he’d admit. Correct author, wrong story.
“Repeat your idea to me one last time, I needed to hear it in person before I tell you how I feel.” Desmond stood opposite Advrik, who was busy munching away at a slice of leftover pizza.
The wolf’s ears drooped now. He knew Desmond would be brutally honest with him; that was the mole’s whole shtick—brutal honesty, whether you liked to hear it or not.
“Well, you know how we’d just kind of started picking up monster hunts—“
Desmond wagged a long white claw at the wolf, “Nuh-uh, we weren’t picking them up; they were being offered to us. To you, specifically.” His tentacles were wavering in a gentle, rhythmic way now.
“Whatever. Anyway, I was looking online, checking out the help wanted ads for a job listing so I could get some money rolling in when it hit me,” He took another bite of pizza, chewed and swallowed. “What if that was my job, eh?”
Desmond raised an eyebrow, tentacles still waving gently. He sat down and adjusted his spectacles, his brow lopsided, “You’ve lost the shit out of me, Vrik.” He internally winced as the nickname slipped from his jaws. The fox had taken to calling him that, and now Desmond had involuntarily taken to using it as well.
“The odd jobs! Not the ones I specifically saw on Facebook, but, like, stuff around Brickhedge specifically. There’s a lot of elderly living here, you know?”
The star-nosed mole knew perfectly well, having befriended one of the other boarders back home who was, in fact, an elderly beast herself. Mossia, the Coluga. World traveler, ex-journalist and a hell of a unique-looking character. Weak and frail, she was not.
“So, you’re just wanting to go and take up random odd jobs from the Want Ads for a living?”
“No! I mean, yes, kinda.” The wolf then spun his laptop around, revealing a mock-up of a website. Something that looked like it had come right out of 1997. The mole was secretly impressed by the authenticity of the design. Slap the Windows 98 taskbar down below it, and it’d be an aesthetic he could appreciate.
“See, this is the website I want to have built, and I was kind of hoping you knew how, or at least knew someone that could do it. I can’t really afford to pay anybeast right now, but if I could just get this off the ground…”
***
Advrik looked at the expression of amusement and surprise dance across the mole’s face, the topmost tentacles mimicking his own gesture as it scratched the top of his nose, mirroring his right claw scratching the top of his head.
“I chose the Angelfire website look because it was easy on the eyes, and everything was readily available to the viewer,” he said as he clicked the arrow key to the right, replacing the image with the mobile version mock-up and a graphic denoting that a QR code would be used to access the site.
“What the fuck, I’ll do it. I’ll even code it in HTML for extra authenticity.” The mole declared after some serious deliberation. “I’ll do the main page and two side pages and the form itself for free. Anything else and I will have to charge you.”
What, just like that?” Advrik asked, tone full of confusion. “I mean, thank you, of course. But I wasn’t expecting you to agree so quickly… or cheaply.”
“Well you see, wolf,” He sat down, pulling the laptop close to him as he began to fiddle with something unseen from Advrik’s vantage point. “I do have one minor stipulation, plus you’ll still be needing a host and a domain and all that shit… There!”
He turned the laptop around, revealing an edited version of the logo he had presented to the mole. Next to the sign that bore several similarities to the actual hand-carved signs around town(including the town entrance sign) was a big and bright yellow star with an orange glow around it.
“You put a star on the logo—Oh, I get it,” He said, tapping the tip of his own nose with his padded finger. “You want to leave your mark on it, I see. Clever, very clever, little mole.”
“That’ll be my payment. It’s subtle, but I’ll always know that that star is a nod to my nose here and all its fleshy, veiny glory.” The tentacles all flexed at once, weirding Advrik out just a little for the first time in several months.
“You got yourself a deal, friend,” He reached out his claw, the mole taking it and grasping it in his own.
“May I suggest a tagline as well?”
“S-Sure, but keep it clean.”
“Thank you for contacting Side Quests*, where we handle any job you can throw at us, from fixing toaster ovens to toppling Behemoths.
So, how can we help YOU today?”
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