Marik woke up next to a naked Sai.  He smiled as he thought about how nice it was to be able to live a married life like this, with the woman he loved being at his side at the start of the day.   He sighed and decided he should get up and get dressed so he could make the most of his day.  He kissed Sai's calm sleeping face lightly before getting out of the bed to find his clothes. 

As he finished putting his shirt on he looked over to see a lovely face with a full and content smile watching his actions.  He smiled back at his wife and watched in fascination as she sat up in all her glory and stretched, unconsciously emphasizing her most physically attractive assets and making him reconsider his choice to wear clothes.  He managed to hold himself back as he saw her notice his moment of indecision with a knowing smirk.  She shrugged as if giving up on trying to entice him further for the moment and got out of the bed to begin putting her underwear on.  He watched the reverse strip show for a few moments, enjoying the swaying tail movements as her panties came up snug against the base.  

"So I thought about it some and I figure with my sister being busy for a bit that we should use this time to do one of two things.  Let's say we set the time line for a week.  Either we can work hard for the week to make a lot of money and get started on ranking up, which will allow us to be a little more free afterwards to work on our arcane arts, or we can be careful with our money for now while enjoying our time together and working on arcane arts and then start working hard with my sister there, too.  Yes, I'm including my sister in our plans because I'm sure I wouldn't be able to convince everyone to just let me be completely alone with you after all."

"Hmm?  Wait.  If we're going to just have fun, why are we getting dressed?"

"Well, I want to get something to eat regardless of what we decide to do.  Plus, it was fun watching you put your clothes on."

"I see."

She glanced at his waist and kicked her lips as her tail started saying back forth.  She put herself in the sexiest pose she could manage while she slowly began reaching one hand towards his pants. 

"What if I want to have you for breakfast?"

Marik really wanted to oblige but his growling stomach made them both pause.  Sai sighed a little as she let her hand drop and reached for her shirt to finish getting dressed.  Marik chuckled a little and walked over to her.  He grabbed her chin and pointed her face toward him to give her pretty little lips a sweet kiss.  They indulged in one another's taste for a few moments before Marik finally pulled away. 

"Now that you got to have a light snack, let's get some actual food and figure out what we want to do from here on."

"Mm.  I think we might have to take the option of making money as soon as possible."

"Huh?  Why?  Did something happen?"

"Yes.  You happened and my underwear won't last much longer."

Marik was speechless.  It wasn't that he felt particularly embarrassed by this point but that he actually couldn't come up with a good response to her comment that was said with the same kind of tone as someone talking about the weather.  Giving up on actual words, he gave a grunt of acknowledgement and went over to open the window.  He gave one last look around to see that there was nothing else that needed to be taken care of at that moment and went to the door.  Upon opening the door he saw a middle aged tigerkin guest passing by in the hallway wrinkle his nose slightly but no comments were made so Marik pretended not to notice and headed downstairs with Sai to get some breakfast. 

As they say down next to each other at a corner table to eat, Marik brought up the earlier conversation. 

"So.  You decided we should forgo the life of indulgence for now, right?  Honestly,  it's kind of surprising to me.  Usually you prefer to jump at what you want over taking more careful actions."

"How do you think of me, exactly?"

"As a sexy vixen who's mere existence constantly tempts me but who also acts on her impulses more often than not."

"Okay, I admit I may want to have sex a much as the next girl-"

"Probably more, actually. "

"As much as the next girl! But just like you sometimes do things randomly, sometimes I like to try and do things your way.  Besides, you're the one who once told me that if you do the work now you get even more fun later."

"Okay okay.  I wasn't really complaining, just commenting on my surprise.  So with that said, do you want to try and aim for just making as much money as we can as quickly as possible or finding more enjoyable jobs as long as the pay is decent?"

"Fun, please.  I didn't like yesterday..."

"Understandable.  Once we're done eating we'll go see if we can get about a week's worth of at least okay jobs reserved for us."

---

"So hey,  I'm glad I'm with you and all but these past few days have been boring.  I thought being a mercenary was all about running around and killing people and stopping assassin attacks and arresting gangsters and hunting bandits and...well...more fun stuff and you know..."

"Sai.  Honey.  Dear.  We've undoubtedly stopped assassins by doing our job and guarding people, we've been running all over so much that we're tired while guarding people, and arresting people or stopping gangsters is the guard's job."

"But I'm so boooorrrrreeeed..."

"Well it's not like bandits just randomly pop into existence every few minutes, especially near a full sized town like this in a relatively well patrolled area.  Plus you're still tenth rank at the moment.  Make ninth and you may get chosen to go on a bandit hunting expedition if one crops up."

"Come on!  We're supposed to be trained fighters and killers and stuff, right?  Other than my test to join I haven't fought or killed anyone since we got here."

"You know, that's usually considered a good thing since it's a sign that everything is peaceful and people are doing what they're supposed to.  Besides, like I said, your still only tenth rank.  Even if we were in an exciting area with all of that happening all the time nobody would let you do it, anyways.  Your rank is supposed to show a level of skill, trust, and experience.  You have skills, for sure, but not so much the rest yet.  That's part of why I decided to come here for now.  It's actually easier to get through the lower ranks in a peaceful yet crowded place like this where low rank jobs are everywhere.  You'd feel even more bored if you had to do the same thing you're doing now but less often and while watching lots of other people do the more exciting stuff, wouldn't you?"

"*sigh* Stop making sense.  I just want to get this week over with so we can finally have some fun."

"Hey now.  I offered a few quickies over the past few days..."

"Ya and I offered to make them more than quickies but you kept saying it was a bad idea."

"I mean...you do want to get to the point where yo can do the fun stuff as soon as possible, right?"

"I said to stop making sense!"

"Fine.  Look, The Bear's done with the last guys.  Let's go turn in this job and see if there's anything a little more exciting for you to do."

"I doubt there is..."

Marik got up from the table in the bar area and walked towards The Bear's desk while assuming Sai was following him.  Once there he placed his signed documents saying that he completed the job on the desk.  The Bear looked at him and then slightly over his shoulder before giving a wry smile.

"You wife looks like someone pissed in her cream."

"She's just bored, really.  I had to explain that most of the more exciting things she was imagining about the job were for higher ranks, mostly."

"Hmm.  Well, there is an excursion coming up soon.  I wasn't going to mention it since you said you'd be taking a break this coming week, but..."

"Sai?  Your call."

"Sure," Sai said while happily coming forward at last.  "As long as whatever it is ends up actually being exciting!"

"Oh, it usually is, lass.  Do you know what an excursion is, though, lass?"

"Nope!"

"Right.  Figured.  An excursion is where we send a bunch of people out for a few days."

"..."

"..."

"That's it?"

"For an excursion in general?  Yes."

"Bear," Marik interjected.  "Please stop teasing my wife.  I'll be doing that myself later."

"Way to take the fun out of it.  In this guild we only handle a few types of excursions.  This particular one is a group hunting excursion.  Group excursions are where we link up with outside groups and hunting excursions are where we go after some kind of group bounty targets, usually bandits.  Put them together and it means we'll be sending out some people to meet up with some other groups in order to hunt some group down.  I'd give more specifics but this is one of those where the details are after acceptance."

"That sounds like fun," said Sai with a huge smiling face full of interest, complete with sparkling eyes.  "So what do I gotta do to sign up for this thing?  I wanna sign up right now!"

"Easy, lass.  Get the lad here to sign up for it himself and then recommend you as a personal partner."

"Marik!  Sign up!  Do it now! Go go go go go go go-"

"Alright, fine," said Marik while putting his finger on her lips to shush her.  "I told you it was your choice, remember?"

The Bear pulled out two stacks of documents and laid them side by side on the desk next to the job complete forms that Marik had placed there earlier.  He motioned them closer and handed each of them a pen to write with.

"Let's get your finished job out of the way, first.  After reading through and signing those documents make sure you're here first thing in the morning four days from now.  The rest of the job will be explained then along with a few more things to sign.  Now, tell me.  Should I go ahead and pull out the documents for the next job you two were going to be doing tomorrow or does this mean you'll want to go ahead and take your break now?"

"No, let's go ahead and do what's already been slated for us.  We should still have about a two day break after that, so..."

"Got it.  I'll pull that out, too, then."

---

Marik sat with Sai at a table in the corner of the dining room at the inn.  They decided to wait for Sara, who was supposed to be finishing with her retraining with The Bear's wife this evening, somewhere outside of their room where it would be easy to spot and greet her.  They had discussed about whether they should tell her about their arcane arts or not and finally decided to tell her only part of it.  As far as they knew she couldn't use any mystic arts anyway and as long as they didn't mention too much then she could still try and learn it someday if she wanted to.  

As they waited, away from the few other patrons in the room, they looked over one of the books of notes that Marik had made before leaving his master's place.  They were looking through a variety of spells and methods for ways to adjust Sai's arcanistry variants or improve on the ideas that they had talked about.  As they were getting caught up in their enjoyment of discussing their latest ideas on how to do this or that while looking intently at the pages and pointing at things so that they wouldn't have to let somewhere overhear the wrong things, someone sat down across the table from them.  Marik quickly pulled closed the book and pulled him towards himself while looking at the face of their sudden visitor.  Sara looked back at him with a tired smile.

"Hello, you two.  Looks like you've been having fun while I was busy."

"Not really," said Sai with a cute pout.  "We've spent, like, the whole week doing all this boring work with barely a break.  We finished the last of it just a while ago and The Bear said you'd be done this evening so we waited for you here."

"What Sai said.  Now that you're here, let's head up to our room for a bit.  Oh wait, did you get yourself a room yet?  If not then you might as well get one and then meet us upstairs."

"Umm, okay?"

Marik picked up his book and stood up.  He and Sai went upstairs to their room and sat on the edge of the bed.  Marik placed his book on the floor and slid it under the bed near where they kept their bags.  He was looking forward to when they could move to the inn he wanted to move to.  While they waited for Sara to show up, Marik decided to have a quick decision with Sai.

"So I know you don't really like to try and write and everything down like I did with those books but I'm willing to help you make your own little notebook."

"Hmm?  Why?  Can't I just use yours?"

"I mean, sure.  I'm just saying if you come across something that you might want written down that I probably wouldn't or couldn't use much but you could then just let me know."

"I guess.  I'd prefer if you just made some your way and let me use them, though.  That way I can just tell you if I want something added."

"Alright."

They sat in silence for a bit and cuddled together some while they waited.  Soon enough there was a knock on the door and Sara finally entered after Sai's prompting.  She looked like she was wary of some kind of trap as she entered carefully but once she started sniffing at the air lightly Marik figured out why.  He gave her a wry smile.

"Don't worry, sis.  We haven't had the time to go too far recently and we make sure the window is open most of the time when we're not busy having fun.  Come on in and close the door.  We have things to talk about and we only have a short break of a couple days before we have to leave on a job."

"Right.  So, what did you guys want to talk about?"

"Well, let's get the obvious out of the way first.  You're going to be basically sticking with us for a while, right?"

"I mean, that's why I came here.  I was told I had to guard you, so..."

"Ya.  So, here's the thing.  We got secrets we want kept."

"That's okay.  I won't tell anyone anything you guys tell me not to talk about."

"No, well, that's fine but that won't really work.  There are people who can literally pluck the thoughts and memories out of your mind if they want to.  You'd never even know it happened.  So, if you're going to be around us from now on then you'll need some kind of protection against that kind of thing.  I'm thinking of talking to Kiara to see if she can work out something with her master but until then you should be careful about where you go or what you do.  This town should be safe enough, thankfully, but..."

"Don't worry," Sai chimed in.  "I'm sure Kiara will be able to do something.  Marik can always offer to just break her arm or leg or something if she doesn't agree at first."

Marik decided to not comment anything about that.  Since Sai also knew his sister better than he did and already knew what they needed to tell her, he just kept quiet for now and cuddled up with Sai as she proceeded to take over his part of the conversation.

"Mmm.  So anyways, other than that you know we can do mystic art stuff, right?  So we're kind of special and stuff and don't want people messing with us and knowing about it and things.  We talked about it and decided that it would be best if you never ask or pay too much attention to how or when we start doing stuff with it.  So, like, if we're looking over his books and stuff, it's better if you don't try to join in or anything and pay as little attention to what we talk about, okay?"

"Okay, I guess?  I don't get how that's that big of a deal since I probably wouldn't really understand much of it anyway but if that's what you want..."

"Pretty much.  Hmm, what else did we need to talk about?  Oh ya!  So we get to go on a fun job soon and it's supposed to take a few days or something.  We can give you a little money if you really need it but you should be ready to do guild stuff now so it's probably best if you do that while we're gone.  We're going to try and get our rank up as fast as possible or something and so you need to try and do that, too."

"Right.  I was told a little about the ranks and stuff.  Well, I think I'll take a break tomorrow and just relax then I'll go see what I can do to raise my rank as fast as possible after that.  I shouldn't need any money for now.  You said that you guys have a break tomorrow, too, right?  Should I come over...never mind.  I can already see you two getting ready to to start."

"It's okay.  You can come watch if you really want!"

"NO!"

"Fine.  If you really want then we can do something together tomorrow afternoon or evening.  It's not like we can keep going for an entire day...yet..."

"Okay.  I'll knock first.  If you guys are free then let's walk around town and maybe find a good place for sparring later.  If I'm going to be with you guys from now on then we should probably get to know each other better and I'll probably feel bored by myself with nothing to do for the whole day.  No, I'm not going to come watch you just to not be bored."