Well that was it, the article[1] with her face and words plastered all over it was out. At least, she pondered, the picture wasn’t horrendous. Reactions on various people, however, Bruce hadn’t had the time to find out. She’d spent most of the day in her office and hadn’t appeared to have received any howlers yet. There was obviously the possibility of the eager Miss Tansi managing to intercept before they reached her desk.

It was just after lunch that Bruce decided she needed a change of scenery, and a word with one of her colleagues. The previous day, Spectre had held a departmental meeting, one where, if invited, attendance was expected (meaning mandatory). She’d been rather irritated, but not surprised, by the empty seat beside her own where a great big Kurby Bagnold shaped hole remained.

“Well,” Bruce started as the door to the large multipurpose room was pushed open. She was sat on one of the small wooden stools, back against the wall. Her wand was grasped in her left hand, but she made no move to point it or stand. She’d sent Bagnold a memo for him to meet her in here. They’d not duelled since her attack in 2008, and she fancied brushing off the cobwebs a little. “If asked, you love oysters. Well, not anymore.” She gave a shrug and screwed up her face in amused disgust. “First thing I could think of to explain my team member’s ominous absence from a meeting he’s been called to. Bad oysters.”

1.	First Werewolf Leader of the Werewolf Wing Promises Security

Most of the time, Kurby Bagnold knew about how far to push his luck.  A summons to his superior's office could be safely ignored; it wasn't as if Ballentyne was going to get any more angry at him for skiving off departmental meetings.  But a directly-worded memo to meet her in Level Four's dueling room wasn't so easily avoided.  If he remembered anything about Bruce Ballentyne, it was that as much as she hated confrontation, she also never failed to call out her underlings when she thought they were jeopardizing the team.

But he'd known that when he'd decided to snub Spectre's meeting, and Kurby had already decided that he didn't care what hellfire the Head of the Werewolf Wing wanted to reign down upon him.  She could give him an icy shoulder; she could chide him about acting like an adult and picking his battles; she could even dock his damned pay, and it still wouldn't budge him.  If Ballentyne didn't understand why this was a stand worth taking, then he wasn't about to try explaining it to her.

He'd half-expected to get flattened the moment he pushed open the door.  But when he did so, all he saw was Ballentyne seated, seemingly waiting patiently.  Wall behind her.  Wand out.  That meant she had something up her sleeve, probably literally.  If she'd only wanted to yell at him, she would have come to ambush him in his office.

Letting the door swing shut behind him, Kurby took a few paces into the room, stopping to face her.  He didn't bother to draw his wand; if she'd demanded his presence here so she could hex him, they might as well get this the hell over with.

Oysters.  He snorted.

"You could've just told everyone that I think Spectre's an arse and I wasn't about to waste half my day listenin' to him prattle on about 'new directions' and 'departmental unity,'" he said bluntly, eyebrows raised.  "What the hell is he goin' to do?  Sack me?"

No surprises came when Bagnold showed no sign of remorse for failing to attend the meeting. In truth, if Bruce could get away with not attending half of the meetings she was expected at, she wouldn’t go. Unfortunately for her, her absence was noted more than the surly head of the WCU. He may have deeply disliked Balfour Spectre, but the wizard still had a job to do. He still had a responsibility to show up where directed.

“He might.” Bruce shrugged, pushing herself to stand. Who was she to predict the whims of their new boss? Bruce and Balfour had been on friendly terms, but she’d not known him all that long before the accident; and she certainly didn’t know him in terms of being a boss. Bagnold clearly had more history with the bloke.

“You don’t need me to tell you that if people avoided meetings because their boss is an arse, you’d have about 3 show up if you held a team meet.” The witch smirked, twisting her wand around in her hand. It was only part true. Bagnold wasn’t the best people person.

“I’m not gonna’ lie, Kurb, I’ve got my concerns, but at the end of the day, he calls a meeting, we go.”

If Ballentyne had summoned him here just so she could nag at him about doing what he was told, then he was almost disappointed.  Everyone on Level Four seemed to think that the best way to deal with even the slightest hint of insubordination was to bark commands like they would to their beasts.

He flashed her a sharp smile at the suggestion that Spectre might fire him. Kurby suspected he could push things much farther with the one-time dragon handler than he already had, if only because the Scotsman had enough of an ego that he'd surely try to reason with him directly before giving up on the situation.  At the crack about his team, the werewolf hunter's smirk grew sharper still.

"Probably," he agreed nicely, ignoring her last comment.  "That's why I don't hold any."

Ballentyne still had her wand out in her left hand, her wand hand, twisting it between her fingers as if to call his attention to it.  Kurby let his gaze flick over briefly.  Bruce, awaiting him here in the practice room, twirling her wand and with her back conveniently against the wall.  Even Charlie Harris would have been able to guess what she wanted, but the idea of sparring with his onetime, now-crippled mentor sat a little too uneasily with the werewolf hunter, as if he'd actually had an unfortunate lunchtime encounter with a bad-luck oyster.

Much safer to ignore it.  Ballentyne could take her shot at him, and then they could both go on their way, far better off than if he tried to retaliate and accidentally leveled her, or if he let her drag him into an uncomfortable conversation about moving into offices or avoiding meetings. Probably, his best chance to get out of this was to try to prick her temper, but Kurby also wasn't about to blow up the fragile truce between them by making a crack about his former mentor's newfound penchant for coming, sitting, and staying when she was told.

"Is that it?" he asked instead, knowing full well that it wasn't.

Like water off an oversized duck’s back, Bruce’s comment slid over Bagnold. Such a reality didn’t come as a surprise for the witch that had spent many years working with him before her accident. Bagnold did as Bagnold wished. As a boss, you could gently guide an encourage, but to bark orders unless out in the field would never work. Therefore, she’d stated her point and made it clear that she’d have preferred he actually drag his arse into the occasional department meeting.

"Is that it?" Bagnold asked, clearly having not taken their little chat with any seriousness.

“Of my request for you to suffer as I do through these meetings, yep.” The witch said with a nod. No one enjoyed long meetings. The werewolf wing crew preferred a quick memo rather than hours of discussion. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how the rest of the department or ministry seemed to be run.

With a flick of her wand, the door to the practice room slowly faded until it had completely vanished.

“My wand’s a touch rusty. Help me dust it off?”

And there it was.  There wasn't any other reason for Ballentyne to voluntell him to join her in Level Four's practice room, but maybe he'd been under the fog of a mistaken Confundus charm.  A hint of uneasiness rippled across the werewolf hunter's normally guarded expression, and he stayed where he was, barely stopping himself from glancing over his shoulder at the now-vanished door.

There were a few ways he could try to get out of this.  The simplest and most direct would be to snipe back at Ballentyne that she shouldn't be dueling; he could even borrow from Carstairs' words if he really wanted to try and rankle her temper.  She'd probably respond by flinging a hex at him, which would at least be a straightforward conclusion to an otherwise complex problem.  But the likely aftermath -- the resumption of high tension between them; the cold, aggrieved way that Bruce would look at him -- made him feel equally apprehensive.

As for other options... -- there weren't really any other options, Kurby realized unhappily, as he ran through the disconcertingly short list in his head.  He could mouth off about Bruce being a werewolf, but that would probably be a bigger punch to the gut than quoting Carstairs.  Making a pithy comment about not wanting to duel his boss and summoning the door up again would just draw this out longer.  For all of her laid-back approach to conflict, Bruce Ballentyne could be at least as stubborn as he was when she started digging her heels in.

"I thought that was what the warrior wife was for," Kurby retorted, though he didn't meet her gaze as he fired off the quip. 

There wasn't a way out of this.  Exceedingly slowly, he began to go about the usual motions of checking his gear (he didn't have any) and searching for his wand (though he knew exactly where it was).  Hopefully, he could get out of this by dragging everything out as much as possible, throwing up a few shields, and letting Bruce land a few easy hits.  She'd be satisfied, he could flee back to his office, and they could both finish out their lives without ever being put in this situation again because now he knew never to respond to her summons when she requested his presence in the dueling room.

"I thought that was what the warrior wife was for," Evidently not eager to go toe to toe with his boss, Kurby Bagnold tried to fob her off to her wife.

Bruce grinned, pushing herself up off the stool.
“She cheats.” Not that there were any rules. Bruce and Kurby had never followed rules and she’d sorely missed duelling with him or being in the field with him. Heck, she’d sorely missed just being in the field at all. Turning into a desk jockey was as inspiring as facing a lifetime of sharpening quill tips. “And there’s this unspoken expectation that you can’t maim your spouse. Ridiculous, I know.” Before her attack, Bruce had made a formidable adversary for Zora. Now, despite her bolshie attitude and faked arrogance, she wasn’t so sure. Having two fully functioning legs really was quite an unfair advantage.

“Have you updated your moves, Bagnold? Or are you a bit like a stagnant puddle?” The welsh witch taunted, twisting her wand in her hand. Her cane was grasped in her right hand, fingers flexing over the wolf handle. She quickly raised her wand and flicked it at Bagnold with a mutter of “Caecus”