Editing The Amorous Adventures of Factol Hashkar (section)

== The Sixth Adventure ==
Factol Pentar yawned. She had tried to get here early to make a show of being willing to talk, but now she was just bored.

She stretched, idly noting that her new clothes seemed to be fitting well. She had chosen a form-fitting leotard of dark leather with a few cords and belts wrapped around it for effect after her previous outfit was destroyed in a forest fire she had started on the Outlands. She had kept a spiky bracer which had survived the inferno and some long boots from a much older outfit she had ruined the rest of in the Abyss; they seemed to match.

She drummed some fingers on her hips and had just begun to wish something exciting would appear when Hashkar walked into the room.

"Good morning," he said.

Pentar idly twirled her long, raven tresses and licked her lips; she knew it would be a bad idea, but she couldn't help but think of the destruction she could cause by hurling Hashkar out the window.

Hashkar studied his surroundings - a private room in a Guvner-run museum of weapons they had chosen for this secret meeting - with something approaching approval. There was just something about a perfectly symmetrical double-headed dwarven battle axe that felt... right. It was like a properly filled-out TPS report from Nemausus.

"I'll cut to the chase," Pentar said, scratching her neck. "Sure, I could see us cutters at least calling a truce, and we could rattle our bone-boxes all day coming up with an agreement, but how do I know you're not just worried about the new Chaos Blades we're making?"

"Well..." Hashkar said. Pentar cut him off before he could lecture her for the next hour.

"It was a rhetorical question, Guvner. My real question is this: Can you prove to us that you're more than just boring stiffs trying to put order in an inherently chaotic multiverse? Could you, I don't know, be...

...exciting?"

Hashkar reached for his belt.

Then he tugged it upwards, his usual little tic which signalled that he was about to analyse the wording of a question rather than answer the question itself.

"Well, my dear, to properly answer that we would first have to clarify:

a) Whether excitement is a subjective or objective emotion;

b) Possible causes of excitement;

c) The acceptability of said excitement within Sigil's laws; and

d) The potential impact of said excitement on Doomguard-Fraternity of Order relations..."

Hashkar lectured. Inside her head, Pentar cried.

All this just to get closer to the modrons and gather useful intelligence for crushing the next Great Modron March. Pentar knew she was going to be at this eight hours a day for at least a week, too.

As Hashkar lectured, Pentar fantasised about setting him on fire and hurling him out of a window.