Gnort and GnomCorp.

[G]

The Sunday following the discovery that Charlie Jericho had gone missing from the ruins of the GIT, a quite angered Gnort ordered an immediate meeting with GnomCorp's head of human relations, their chief scientist, and operations manager. There were a few issues he needed to go over, and he wanted them present. Along with an ogre they have employed on one of the Minor League TDL teams in Urnst.

That Sunday, at HDT Enterprises Tower located in Trigole, G stood looking out the window and over the bay. The three gnomes shifting nervously in their seats, fiddling with their fingers as their large eyes glanced from him to the drooling, yellow eyed ogre standing in the corner.

"So." he spoke at last. "You went against my orders, and retrieved the body of Charlotte Jericho. Without my knowledge, permission or request."

Without turning, he tightened his grip on his wrist with one hand, simulating a severe sense of barely controlled rage.

"Gentlemen. You must know that this is totally unacceptable. I want to know precisely what your intentions were with her body. If you give answers I don't like, I'm sure Mr. Dox here will be more than pleased to help you edit your response."

With that, the ogre grinned an evil, tusky grin, looking all the more eager to see G angry, and hoping that at least one of the gnomes displeased him further in some way. Dox wasn't one who liked Gnomes or Elves much.

The Gnomes lowered there gaze, then looked at each other before, apparently fearing that lack of response would bring the ogre down on them, the Human Relations Head, Ogie Ogletorque, spoke quickly.

"GnomCorp was going to sell the body to the highest bidder as a TDL collectable figure! We meant no harm by it!"

"Ogie, no, be quiet!" said Jarmo Myllys, the Chief Scientist. "We were going to do no such thing." He quickly turned to Gnort, shaking his head. "We were not doing any such thing."

G had turned at this point to give a stern glare to the three gnomes, indicating that the ogre might get all three to play with.

Jani Hurme, the operations manager, sighed slowly, looking up to Gnort and shrugging. "Ogie is correct, sir. We assumed that with the time it took you to actually inspect the ruins of the Golden Ivy, that we assumed you wouldn't care what happened to the body. So, rather than just let it rot, or get razed, or whatever they do there when they build over a burned out hulk, we felt that there could be some benefit in selling the body to someone who would take proper care of it."

It sounded almost as if Jani was accusing Gnort of gross neglect in regards to the body of Charlie Jericho. And his eyes never strayed from the head of HDT Enterprises. He was taking a stance because he felt he'd done something useful. Gnort eyed him and leaned on his desk, hands in fists as he looked over all three of them.

"While it may be true that I didn't get to the ruins fast enough for your tastes, what is an issue is the selling of a personal friend and valuable asset to this company's body. If you had a question in regards of what to do, you should have brought it up to me, before going off on your own. Technically, it was *my* property."

"It is as you say, sir." replied Jani. "We should have. But we didn't. And we were not aware it meant so much to you. If we had known, rest assured we would have informed you of our intentions immediately." Clearly Jani had prepared for this day once the idea of selling Charlie's body came into question. He obviously knew he'd be called to task for it.

"What made me think that you didn't care about the body, was the fact that you just left her hanging in the freezer. I don't know much about human customs for the dead, but I'd have thought that burial, burning, or entombing were the most common forms."

This gnome had balls.

[G]

"Yes. Those are the more common ways for humans to dispose of the dead. And in this case, I was preserving the body for.. personal reasons. And before you even ask, it had to do with Nausikaa. I had no desire to see them with her body so I kept it someplace I assumed was safe. How amusing it was to see that her burning of my Tavern failed in one task of destroying the body. How entertaining it is to see that now she came back from the dead, that Charlie is lucky I did so."

He turned a cruel eye onto the three gnomes. "Speaking of which. How did you do it? Before, you simply animated her and made her move. This time, she's fully self aware. What did you do?"

That was the true reasoning behind this meeting. That Charlie Jericho was alive was a good thing, but the knowledge of it being done wasn't known, and G hated not knowing.

The three gnomes looked at each other for a few minutes as if communicating personal thoughts. Jarmo shifted in his chair uneasily again, giving a quick glance to Dox before looking down at his knees.

"We.. ahh.. don't really know."

"You don't know?"

"We don't know." he replied, looking up to meet Gnorts eyes. "I was there when it happened. We had just wheeled her naked body out from the remains of the freezer so that the buyer could inspect the body. All we had done at that point was to make sure its flesh was in good, structurally sound condition, made a few.. well.. ehnancements to bring out her figure... we are talented in what we do, Mr. Talanador, we made sure her body was in perfect working order."

Jarmo shook his head as he spoke about what happened that day. "The next thing I knew, the Buyer wondered how we made her eyes open. And when we looked, she sat up, took a look around, asked what happened to the GIT, took The Buyer's shirt, and went off to the Red Dragon. We were speechless because it was nothing like we'd ever seen. And that's the honest truth."

Gnort had listened intently the entire time they spoke. He believed their story, as gnomes weren't known for outright lying, and this situation was slightly unorthodox, but he wasn't going to show them that he believed them.

Taking a seat and sighing, folding his hands in front of his nose, he looked over at the three gnomes.

"You conspired to steal a corpse. Then you were going to sell it for profit. Then you fail to detain the corpse when it gets up and walks away. Striking story. I wonder how it will end."

He let a few moments pass without word as he ran through several thoughts. Chuck was alive for some reason. What does it all mean? Could he benefit from it somehow? What about these gnomes...

"All right. Jarmo, Ogie, and Jani. Here's my proposal. Since I value GnomCorp's services, I'll only be cutting my support of your underwater expidition project. I never liked it much anyway. I will allow a respite from having personal time with Dox. but I *Do Not* want anything like this happening ever again. If you take something from me, I'll do more than refuse funding for one of your minor projects."

The three gnomes were actually unhappy at the loss of funding for undersea exploration. It was something they looked forward to greatly and while they could get funds from another source, it would take a great deal of time and negotiations to do so. On the other hand, they weren't an ogres dinner, and HDT was still funding most of their other projects.

With a sigh, the three spoke in unison. "We understand."

Nodding, and motioning for Dox to leave the room, which he did grudgingly, G leaned forward.

"So, let's talk about your military contracts..."