Better late than never

Howdy folks. If you are reading this, that means Blogger didn't eat my post again. Today's post was supposed to have been part of last week's blog hop... but Blogger ate it. Considering how big it is, it's probably better that I'm posting it by itself anyway.

There are two Onion "news" articles mentioned in today's post. I did not make them up, either. You can find them here and here. Without further ado, I present a peek into the daily grind of the Guts and Butts news room!

**********

“Nick, we gotta talk.”

Nick looked up at Ziva, the love of his life, with part apprehension and part utter fear. When a female said words like that, it usually went very badly for for him.

“I love the new website, don’t get me wrong,” Ziva continued as she sidled around his desk and sat on his lap.

“But?” Nick asked, trying to keep his mind on her words and not her luscious mouth.

“The content leaves a lot to be desired.”

“What’s wrong with the content?” Nick asked, trying to remember what had been on the news feed the last time he looked at it. “I thought it looked good.”

“The Onion is very entertaining, sure. But it’s not news and really should not be passed off as real news by a legitimate news organization like G&BG.”

“Sweetie, it was just a story about human reproduction,” Nick said consolingly. “Maybe it was a bit tongue in cheek but surly the monkeys will appreciate us making the effort—“

A bellow of rage followed by a resounding crash interrupted him. Nick popped to his feet and would have dumped Ziva on the floor if she hadn’t also been getting up to investigate. He opened his office door but had to slam it shut again as a body came flying out of nowhere. The next time he opened his door, he peeked out cautiously first before slipping out.

“What the hell is going on here?!?” Nick yelled in his loudest pissed-off-alpha voice. The two wolves at the center of the maelstrom of flying office furniture stopped rolling instantly, Mooney on top with his fist poised to slam Rex’s bloody face again. Rex looked up at Nick then back at Mooney. The bloody wolf snickered. Mooney let his fist fly, slamming Rex in the nose with a sickening crunch.

“Mooney!” Nick barked. His baby brother, a born beta, never picked fights though he was always more than willing to join in when someone else started it. To see him beating an alpha like Rex into submission was… shocking. And Rex was giggling like a little girl, spitting blood and teeth out but not making any attempt to defend himself. What could make an alpha submit to a beta like that? And why would Mooney not accept Rex’s submission?

“How many heads do I need to bust before someone tells me what’s going on?” Nick growled ominously as his eyes scanned the mess of what used to be the news room of the Guts and Butts Gazette.

“This fleabag insulted my mate,” Mooney snapped.

“I did no such thing!” Rex gasped as Mooney’s big beefy fist found his ribs. “The boss said to set up one of those news aggregation things for the paper’s website. I chose stories that would be interesting to our readers. Mance is the one who made the joke, not me.”

“Then why is it you who’s laughing cat-box breath?” Mooney snarled.

“Because it was funny, monkey-lover—Ow! Crap, stop hitting me!” Rex whined when Mooney’s elbow made contact with his jaw.

“Knock it off! Tell me what’s going on or both of you are going to end up in traction!”

Mooney glared balefully at him through blood-shot eyes, a rivulet of bloody snot running from one nostril proving that Rex had at least begun the fight with the intent of winning. From what Nick could see, that one solid hit to the nose and a pair of bloody fists were all the injuries Mooney sustained, though.

“The cat-box muncher posted stuff on the G&B website making fun of Marissa,” Mooney muttered reluctantly. Nick raised his eyebrows in disbelief and looked at Rex, who was rolling on the floor in obvious pain. Ziva stepped up behind him so he looked back at her.

“As I was saying about the content being added…”

Nick rolled his eyes in disgust. There was no way a few harmless fake news stories could have cause this much trouble. Then he saw Marry waving her hands over her head. He looked at her then at Jamie, silently demanding the swish-tail red wolf translate.

“Boss, Marry said she’s gotten five complaint e-mails in the last hour. Three from the Ladies Rotary club demanding we remove the sexist smut from out website, one from the mayor about journalistic integrity and…” Jamie paused while his hands began dancing back at the deaf/mute fem sheep. Nick crossed his arms over his chest and began tapping his foot in irritation. One of these days he was really going to have to take the time to learn sign language so he wouldn’t have to rely on others to translate for him. “And one—no, now two e-mails from bunnies asking if we were going to be running a special on advertising for the Summer Solstice mating event.”

“What mating event?” Nick asked impatiently as Ziva growled.

“Those damn rabbits get “in the mood” at the drop of a hat,” she spat angrily. “Now I’m going to be fielding nasty personal ads about how they use 100%of the package God gave them and other drivel.”

Nick looked at her in horror, realizing which aggregated articles had started all this. Rex had posted one about some study saying humans only use ten percent of their reproductive organs and another article about a who-ha doctor being recognized for female sexual break-through. He had thought they were funny as hell. He understood exactly why his baby brother, who was mated to a human, got bent out of shape over the inevitable puns the other wolves had made, though. And judging by the stink-eye Ziva was giving Rex, he had better act fast before his own mate picked up where Mooney left off and killed the flee-bitten bastard.

He looked around the trashed news room wildly, trying to stall while he thought about this. Then it hit him: the perfect answer to two problems.

“Rex, Mooney, you two get this cleaned up. No more fighting. Ziva, you have the website now. Get those articles off and replace them with something that might calm down our readers.”

“Hey, the website is mine!” Rex whined pitifully as he rolled to his feet.

“This situation is proof that you have not not the necessary panache to do G&BG proud without some supervision. Ziva has the kind of class to do it right.” Nick looked down at Ziva, hoping to see some approval for this change. He hadn’t really meant to stick her on the personals for this long. It wasn’t his fault he liked to see her riled up, was it? And nothing riled his feisty mate up quite like dealing with the paper’s love-sick readers.

“What am I going to do, then?” Rex whined. “Are you firing me?”

Nick looked at him then looked back at Ziva with a sneaky grin.

“Nope. You have the personals desk.”

**********

“Hello, G&B personals. How may I help you. No, I’m afraid we aren’t running any Solstice specials this week. If you would like to place and ad, it will have to be at the regular price. Ok, I’m ready. ‘If you are tired of you man giving you only ten percent, give Buck Bunny a call. I’ll help your woo-ha hoot all the way home.’ Do I have that right? Uh-ha. Thank you for your ad.”

Rex hung up the phone, putting the receiver into the cradle gently as if doing so harder might encourage the vile thing to start ringing again. Three day, he’d been on the personals desk. Three days of dealing with hormonally challenged bunnies. Wasn’t breading season over? As the phone began ringing, he put his head down on the desk, pounding his forehead no the wood in time with the bleating of his new torture machine. He was so going to get back at Mooney for costing him his choice position…