“Geez, this is a list, Doc! How do you survive from day to day?”
“I don’t tend to listen to music from day to day.” Sixer waved off the stares from the minions. “Besides, I’ve been able to avoid these songs for quite some time at home.”
"Pretty good on them for not setting you off.” One of the minion’s picked up a page and looked it over. “A lot of these are yellow...hey! I recognize some of these titles! We’ve been using them in our drill playlists!”
“Yes, and I’m starting to consider them representations of our time training, rather than anything else. You can keep playing those, at least.” Sixer leaned against a wall of the room that he and the flame throwing platoon of minions met up in somewhat regularly. They needed a place to store their equipment and talk over drills before taking a training deck, after all.
“That’s good.” The minion gave a thumbs-up, then kept looking over the small stack of pages that was covered in song titles.
“So if yellow’s what we can start with, what are the red and black markers for?” A second minion pointed at some of the later pages. “Man, I wasn’t aware that there were this many romantic songs in the world. Although I don’t recognize some of these titles.”
“Not yet you won’t,” Sixer said with an odd expression. He paused. “Black is a straight-up no-go. Red markers are the same, but not to the same severity. If I can get past the yellow markers and not have any problems, then we might be able to breach the red portion. But don’t do things too quickly.”
“Yeah, if this is something you want to work past, you’ve probably had this problem for a while if the list is this long.”
The other minions poured over the list, marking some of the songs on the yellow list with stars or smiley faces if they were already in their drill playlists -- for their good rhythms to keep them moving, or just as a way to brighten things up. They didn’t ask questions about why Sixer had such a list compiled, but he could tell from the way they glanced at each other, they likely had their own list they were compiling.
A list of questions. Sixer hoped they would go unasked.
“...say, Doc, you’ve been with us for a while and you’ve never mentioned anything about important days.”
Sixer raised an eyebrow as one minion in particular spoke up. “What are you implying, Reynald?”
The minion ducked his head. “I-I just...wewanttoknowwhenyourbirthdayis.”
“You’re going to have to speak faster than that if you want to keep me from knowing what you’re asking,” Sixer said dryly. As Reynald ducked his head further, Sixer chuckled and shook his head. “It’s June 15th. I’m going to be at home on that day, though -- the intention is to have a quiet gathering among family, so I should hope that none of you try to sneak after me.” He gave the assembled minions a pointed look. “Especially since my family doesn’t know who I work for.
The minions responded with varying degrees of “Sure, Doc, we won’t crash your party! We swear!”
Sixer nodded. Hopefully they would keep that promise.
