> warsox9: lol wtf dude

> 0megalul: its true!!! fuck u guys

> siggy: uh huh

> bryan99: take my advice, if you get caught saying that shit kid, they'll actually hurt you. you gotta stop.

> 0megalul: i'm not a kid!!

> 0megalul: srsly herd theres a protest in omegard

> 0megalul: *omegrad

> ax8895: fed

> ax8895: he's a fed he's fedposting

> 0megalul: f u i'm just not a coward

> 0megalul: fuck these fascists

> 0megalul: i know a guy

> 0megalul: did demo for blue

> 0megalul: tell me what you need

> no-mega666: cool

"McAllen!"

The chupadore at his computer jerked with a squawk, then he glared over his shoulder, snapping back: "What?"

He stopped, stared at the priest glaring daggers into him, then cleared his throat awkwardly before straightening and awkwardly brushing out his dirty robes. "I mean uh, yes, Father Tenebris?"

The lanky chupadore put his hands on his hips, glowering at the squat, rotund chupa. Tenebris was tall and angular, a priest who had served loyally in the military for as many years as he could before his age forced him to move to a different profession, and now here he served as the behest of House Omega, an honor afforded to precious few across the face of Sirca.

So did Alphonse McAllen, his polar opposite. But while they were both priests, their duties outside of the church were very different. "HADES sent me another complaint about you."

Alfie ruffled up, brow furrowing over his piggy eyes. "What?"

"You've been taking Lord Omega's name in vain again, I see."

"N-No!" McAllen bristled indignantly. It almost turned him from an egg into a fluffy ball. "I am running a very important intelligence operation! I've gathered information on hundreds of traitors and we've arrested at least fifty defectors since I started!"

Tenebris rubbed slowly at his temples. True, it angered him to see all these sinners openly blaspheming across the communication network and broadnet forums. But many of them were young or stupid or angry, and thought they were faceless and invisible. They were saying things they didn't mean and it felt like a waste of resources to have them arrested and detained and questioned and punished.

On the other, well. What else were they going to do with McAllen?

The ruddy little canis adustus chupa misread Tenebris' frustration as some kind of acquiescence, and he sniffed loudly as he rubbed his greasy fingers against his robes and then tried to smooth his hair back over his balding pate. "That's right. You go back and tell HADES to stop spying on me and I'll report to them once I set up this next sting. I have a very promising one!"

He wasn't getting anywhere with this. There was no point to even trying. And yet all the same, Tenebris asked, the same tired question he always asked: "Will you please at least cut back on the blasphemy and the vulgarity?"

"Ugh, no, I can't. Look, it's not like I like it or anything, obviously, but I have to play the role." McAllen touched his own chest, posing as dramatically as his four foot midget frame would allow. "This is the role that Omega chose for me and I have been fully authorized to do whatever is necessary to lure these traitors in and eliminate them."

"Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should." Tenebris said tiredly, rubbing slowly at his forehead before the tall chupa straightened and said: "It would be appreciated if you would clean up and be present at mass."

"Yeah. No problem. I'll finish up here, I've got a great catch on the line." McAllen said, and then he offered a big lame smile and a nervous wave when Tenebris scowled at him before he shook his head and left, closing the door behind him.

Alfie groaned and relaxed before the fat little dwarf spun around and clawed his way up into his chair. He closed the adult website he'd hacked into, relieved that HADES was just complaining about the illegal messages he was sending, rather than the... well, the other stuff. The, you know, the uh, personal hobbies.

He checked a few of the forums, absently scratching his rump above his short, partially-severed tail. He peered through his messages and responses, fingers flicking rapidly over the keyboard as he muttered under his breath: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you... yeah, fuck you too... doubt your cock's that big, dipshit. Dumbass..."

He paused, then grinned as his beady little eyes locked on the image, absently scratching at a balding spot on his arm and carelessly tossing the fluff and dandruff away. "Okay, here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah."

> hot_boi_69: codes worked got into base

> 0megalul: >: ]

> hot_boi_69: k u seem legit

> 0megalul: UR WELCOME

> hot_boi_69: k k k thank u awesome

> hot_boi_69: u got info

> 0megalul: will get and set up dd

Perfect. He'd get to tell HADES to stop messing with his job and turn over a rebel to them at the same time! They'd set up a fake dead drop and the rebels would get grabbed by Omega's elites when they went to pick it up.

He spun out of his office chair, staggering his way to the door before he grumbled and spun around, skittering back to the computer to turn it off. Then he hurried back to the doors and let himself out into the corridor.

He hummed his way down the hallway, hem of his robe dragging along the floor as he waddle-ran his way towards the HADES office just a short walk away. He huffed as he threw the door open and walked in, several officers glaring at him as he pompously strolled past to the desk and then grinned lecherously at the female soldier on duty. "M'lady Mia!"

"Priest McAllen." she said stiffly, glaring down at the leering dwarf. "What can I do for you?"

"First of all, HADES needs to stop monitoring my extremely important mission that I was given by Omega himself!" Alfie said loudly, straightening with a sniff and a cocky smile. All chupa present glowered at him: if it wasn't for the fact he was both a priest and lucky enough to be a member of House Omega, by now someone would have stuffed him into a cannon and fired him into Nerom. "Secondly! I need someone to set up an ambush for some heretic scum."

The officer sighed. The creepy, no-necked, somehow both balding and scruffy chupa only had one talent, and that was getting idiots to confess or play along with crimes against Omega. He was very good at reeling in and finding deserters, rebels, and blasphemers, which was the only reason he hadn't been executed for blasphemy himself for some of the horrible things he'd written and said about Omega. "Very well. Will you turn over the evidence?"

"Give me your personal email, honey." he said, trying to look smooth as he leaned on her desk, but he just ended up looking like a small ugly child begging for candy.

Her face wrinkled up, and she resisted the urge to gag as she answered: "Official communications require official contacts, Priest McAllen."

Alfie groused, then nodded and shoved himself back. He stood in front of her, licking his lips, beady little eyes staring up at her, and she did her best not to look directly at the egg-shaped excuse for a male as she instead tapped quickly at her console and cleared the security alerts from it with the note 'ALF.' "We will continue to monitor your communications as standard procedure, sir."

Alfie puffed out his chest as his nostrils flared, putting his hands on his hips as he snapped: "Well, excuse me, princess! Then I suppose I'll just have to forward my complaints directly to House Omega and HADES command!"

"I guess you will." she said tiredly.

Alfie squinted at her, then he clucked his tongue and wheedled: "Or maybe we could have a nice private chat about this, maybe over dinner..."

"I'm not permitted to fraternize, sir."

Alfie scowled at her, then grumbled as he looked up and caught sight of the clock, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. "Fine! If you change your mind, come find me after mass."

He stormed out of the room, and all those present gave sighs of relief the moment he was gone. The battlefield was better than trying to deal with that nepo-brat.

Alfie had to change into nicer clothes if he was going to be present for mass, since he'd probably take part in the rituals. So he showered, and brushed his chubby, hairy body, and applied lotion all over the various balding patches across his fat little form, grumbling to himself. Then he slicked back his hair as best he could over his head and put on his wrinkly outfit, which only had a minimal amount of crumbs in the pockets.

Mass was unexceptional. If you didn't know Alfie, or about Alfie, he was just a very short, oval chupa with a grating voice, but otherwise he did all the same motions and said all the same things as the rest of the priests.

But everyone knew Alfie.

Child of a servitor of House Omega, a brother on the High Council, another who was a colonel, and a sister who was a revered Shrine Maiden, his family line going back through warriors and diplomats and even a conquering blue warlord.

And then there was Alfie. Sneaky, prideful, shit-talking Alfie who had escaped many of his punishments thanks to the influence of his parents. He was 'unsuitable' for war, a death sentence for most chupa, and he was slimy and dishonorable.

But he was good at pointing fingers, luring people in, catching them at their worst. That was how a Priest who liked to say stupid things on his computer got to serve in HADES intelligence and why he could get away with his 0megalul persona:

> 0megalul: for the last time faggots 'omega' isnt real its made up

> [Mod] Starker: GESUS FUCKING CHRIST ALFIE YOU'RE GONNA GET THIS WHOLE SERVER SCRUBBED STOP SAYING THAT SHIT

> 0megalul: eat shit

> [Mod] Starker banned user 0megalul

"Oh fuck you, moron, can't even debate me properly."

> [Mod] [Unknown] unbanned user 0megalul

> 0megalul: lolololololllll

> [Mod] Starker: wtf hey who unbanned him?

> 0megalul: u cant ban me I'M OMEGA

> [Mod] Starker banned 0megalul

> [Mod] [Unknown] unbanned user 0megalul

> [Mod] Starker banned 0megalul

> [Mod] [Unknown] unbanned user 0megalul

> [Mod] Starker banned 0megalul

> [Mod] [Unknown] unbanned user 0megalul

> [Admin] Tank blocked ipaddress xxxxxxxxxxxx

> 0megalul: lol vpn

> [Admin] Tank: do you srsly have nothing better to do

> 0megalul: doing this from my toilet bitch

> [Admin] Tank: knock it off with the ykw talk

> 0megalul: fine i'm not omega i'm sirca

> [Mod] Starker: so you're a girl?

> [Admin] Tank: Starker stop

> 0megalul: fuck you

"Asshole." Alfie grumbled in his dark apartment, which was lit only by the glow of his personal console. He brought up his control console again to access the root address that Starker was posting from, then brought up the most heinous illegal material he could find on another website. A few crude edits to his ip address history, and it created some fake evidence that Starker had been looking at some extremely extreme stuff.

Then he emailed HADES, titling it with: "IMPORTANT PEDOPHILE BUST"

> 0megalul: hey stark have fun in dead

> [Mod] Starker: ...what?

> 0megalul: lol get rekt son

> [Mod] Starker: you're not my mom

> 0megalul: I FUCKED HER LAST NIGHT

> [Mod] Starker: cool she's dead so that's gross

> 0megalul: she sucked my fat cock in HELL

> [Mod] Starker: did u mean she ate you out 'cause you're a bitch?

> [Admin] Tank: knock it off

Alfie hammered his fists down on either side of his keyboard, growling in frustration before he flicked away from the website. He went through a few other posts and replies he'd made across several other forums, until something else caught his eye.

> rblyll: explored old red base today

> runner55: derelict?

> rblyll: yeah. gonna go back take some pictures

Urban explorers were always fun targets. He could have them arrested for trespass, then get someone to drop old supplies in base, then send some rebels there to get their trust. The Movement was a huge pain in the ass to Omega these days.

The question was whether he wanted to go through official channels for it or make a deal with mercenaries. If he got HADES involved he'd get a lot of credit, but if he got some Freelancers to grab them, he could make them split the money with him.

You'd think House Omega could spring a few bucks for his work, all he got were 'thank yous' and warnings that he was really toeing the line with all this blasphemy and blasphemy that.

Like they didn't say or think the same things. Like they were so much better than him.

He sneered at the screen as he swapped to his email. Yeah, he heard them now and then. Even Tenebris sometimes complained in private about the direction House Omega was going, or how their laws wasted the lives of too many young chupas. Once he'd even asked him if he could focus more on the Movement and less on other blasphemers!

It didn't matter to him if they were five, ten, or twenty years old. Talk shit, get hit. Law of the jungle, baby. Wasn't his fault he was the top predator in the food chain, and they were giving him everything he needed to gobble them up.

He scratched at his rump through his dirty underwear, then frowned and leaned into the screen as a message popped up in the middle of it. "Huh?"

> HELLO

He clicked on it, and it opened the internal message panel. So it was someone on the intelligence network, but it was... weird.

> HELLO '0MEGALUL'

> MCALLEN: who is this

> A FRIEND

> MCALLEN: yeah right what do u want?

> ASSISTANCE

"What the hell?" He accessed his intelligence programs, but ground his teeth together in frustration. None of his programs were designed to work on internal networks and they refused to provide anything useful-

> TUT-TUT. DON'T PEEK.

Alfie squawked and flinched away from the computer, staring wildly around and spinning in the chair before he came to a slow halt, and then he glared at the computer, hammering angrily on the keyboard and attempting an override and-

> CRUDE. TRY THIS:

A scrawl of command code and data, and Alfie scowled before tapping this in.

A response came from the server. It wasn't coming from Omegrad. It was coming from Kaprime.

> THERE YOU GO. WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE?

Alfie pursed his lips.

> MCALLEN: who the hell are you?

> A FRIEND. IF YOU WANT ME TO BE.

The chupa scowled, tapping his fingers against his desk. This was supicious. This had to be some sort of trick. This had to be a test.

> MCALLEN: what do you want from me?

> FAIR. I WANT YOU TO USE YOUR TALENTS.

> SOME PRIESTS HAVE GOTTEN TOO CLEVER FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.

> SOME OF THEM THINK THEY KNOW BETTER THAN LORD OMEGA.

> DO YOU RESPECT OMEGA, '0MEGALUL' ?

He leaned on his elbows, peering at the screen as the gears worked slowly in his head, before he leaned back with a huff and gave his answer:

> MCALLEN: I do what I need to survive.

> GOOD ANSWER. THAT IS WHY I LIKE YOU, MCALLEN.

> IT IS SAD THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE TOO CLEVER FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.

> THAT THEY THINK THEY KNOW BETTER THAN OMEGA. THAN US.

> WHY SOME OF THEM HAVE EVEN OVERRULED YOUR HARD WORK!

Alfie blinked and recoiled, and as if to prove it, a file was immediately sent to his console and it opened. It was a discipline record, and showed that Tenebris had actually stepped in to arrange for leniency for one of his prisoners. "W-What?"

> YES. LOOK AT YOU, WORKING SO HARD TO PUNISH THE WICKED.

> AND OTHER PEOPLE ARE STEALING YOUR GLORY.

> OVERRIDING THE LAW WITH WEAKNESS AND COMPASSION. HOW SAD!

"What the fuck!" Alfie blurted out, then he shook his head violently before hammering at his desk childishly, blurting out: "Bastard! He went behind my back!"

> HE DID.

"Yeah, he... did." Alfie's eyes bulged in horror, and then he covered his mouth, staring at the console.

> NOW NOW, ALFIE. WE'RE FRIENDS, AFTER ALL, AREN'T WE?

> WHAT I CARE ABOUT IS YOUR TALENT

> WE WANT THE SAME THING.

> AND I WANT TO HELP YOU ELIMINATE THE WEAKNESS IN OUR OWN RANKS.

> I'LL MAKE THE FIRST ONE EASY

A file was sent over.

It opened, and he leaned in quickly, staring at the still images taken from a security camera. Four shots of Tenebris: two showing him consorting with shady-looking chupas, two showing him signing papers that were clearly writs of leniency.

Alfie hissed out a breath, then almost giggled, his eyes gleaming. "I knew it. I knew it!Self-righteous shit! He's just as bad as anyone else!"

> YES.

Alfie scowled. "How do I know you aren't setting me up, huh? Why can't you report him yourself?"

> THIS IS JUST A HOBBY FOR ME.

> BUT A JOB FOR YOU. THEY WON'T QUESTION YOUR ACCESS.

> I WILL TEACH YOU HOW TO ACCESS EVERYTHING YOU NEED.

> SECURITY SYSTEMS, INTERNAL SERVERS, AND SO ON.

Alfie smelled a rat. This was too good to be true. "Oh, yeah? Then why not blackmail Tenebris? Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll mention there's a hacker on the HADES network, too."

> WILL YOU?

Would he?

His 'friend' was offering a sweet deal. But...

> MCALLEN: What do you get out of this?

> THE CRUX OF THE MATTER. YOU ARE CORRECT.

> I AM NOT HELPING YOU OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART.

> I AM NOT HELPING YOU OUT OF ZEAL FOR OMEGA.

> I WILL HELP YOU FIND THE TRAITORS AND SYMPATHIZERS FIRST

> AND WHEN WE HAVE ESTABLISHED TRUST

> YOU WILL HELP ME ELIMINATE A... PERSONAL PROBLEM

"Eh?"

> MCALLEN: What do you mean by that?

A file was sent to him. It opened, and displayed a blurry image of a chupa. He didn't entirely recognize who it was, but he sure as hell recognized the crest he was wearing. "That's House Omega!"

> UNTOUCHABLE.

> I WOULD LIKE HIM TO... GO AWAY.

"That's my... uh..." Alfie peered at the picture, trying to figure out who that was, before he said slowly: "Cousin?"

> WE WILL DEAL WITH HIM IN TIME.

> FIRST WE HAVE TO EARN TRUST.

He pursed his lips, then nodded at the screen. He hesitated for a moment, shifting back and forth in his seat uncomfortably before he finally grunted and answered:

> MCALLEN: K. so what do I call you?

> HOW ABOUT '@LPHALOL'

> MCALLEN: lol great

> @LPHALOL: I WILL CONTACT YOU ONCE YOU HAVE DEALT WITH TENEBRIS

And with that, the messenger closed, and the conversation was immediately wiped.

Alfie nervously looked around, then he clicked back to the pictures of Tenebris. He studied them intently, wondering what to do with them: he could blackmail him, maybe, get him to turn over whoever he was trying to protect and stay out of the way, or he could turn Tenebris in, which was clearly what his 'friend' wanted him to do.

Alfie's lips curled in a thoughtful smile. He could do both, too. Have a little chat with Tenebris. Squeeze the information out of him. Then turn him over to HADES.

The chubby chupa chuckled as he leaned back in his seat, proud of himself for being so clever and making the most of the situation.

After all, that's what life was all about. Looking out for number one and making sure you milked every situation for everything you could.

He was sure his 'new friend' wouldn't mind.

Red vs Blue © Rooster Teeth. Halo © 343 Industries. Concept by Myshu, assisted by The Department of Chupapology.