The Narrator moved his mouth in the approximation of a grin. He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Oh. No. I should clarify. I can’t really put us in immediate peril right now, because I…” The rest of his words were lost in an incoherent mumble. He pulled self-consciously at his tie and tried again. “Okay, this is difficult to admit, but for the sake of avoiding misunderstanding I should probably enunciate, ahem…”

He brought a hand to his forehead. “Okay, okay… full disclosure: I don’t have the ability to… to artificially engineer a ‘Big Bad’, even one that could potentially unite us.”

“Well, good,” the Repairman muttered, annoyed. “I don’t see why you’d do that anyway.”

He took a quick look around as he finished packing his tools away. Miraculously, he saw that his staples from before were still there. He just had to go further into the office.

If the human narrator would let him, that is.

“Um,” he started, awkwardly, “Could I just…finish this and go…? I know you don’t really want me here, but I have to do this…”