Feeling the excruciating light begin to dim, Phil opened his eyes to see the interior of the machine bay once more. As soon as his ring began the time jump, he took both edges of his cloak and wrapped them tightly around his body, and that is how he now stood in front of the observation window in the present day.

"Welcome back to the land of McDonald's and internet, how did our little venture to the past treat you this time?"

Only sixty seconds had passed for Paolo, and judging by the high energy and shit eating grin, he had still not gotten over seeing Phil in these godforsaken pants. The next challenge for Phil was to get by Paolo and into the locker room without him trying to sneak a peek at the pants again, not unless he wanted him to get a front row seat to a viewing of his bare behind.

"Same old, same old. Got drooled on by a Lycan this time, how many other office workers can say they started their day like that?"

"I pray to God that I never have the privilege of saying that, I'll leave that to you specialists, how does that sound?"

"You're too kind Paolo."

Paolo was one of the many employees of Sius that had never gone back in time, even though he had been given the opportunity many times. Whether it be going a few weeks back for a delivery, like someone did today; or accompanying a specialist back on one of the occasions in which that was actually permitted, he always turned down the offer.

Getting to the top of the stairs, Phil opened the door to the workshop, officially done with the time machine for the day. Paolo had various folders open on his desk, and was booting up his drawing tablet as Phil stepped inside.

"So, any exciting stories from the 18th century before I get to work? I could use the excuse to procrastinate."

Now that Phil had finished his assignment, all that he had left to do was write up a report of the events. Needless to say, he was in dire need of some procrastination as well, but not when his pants were threatening to slip down around his ankles.

"Oh I've got an interesting one for you, but just let me go get changed first.

"Hey now, you need to stay in those things as long as possible, I need to get as much satisfaction out of this bet as possible."

Phil was worried about this, he was already expecting it ever since he lost the bet. Knowing Paolo, he was going to try and guilt him into wearing leather pants for the entire day, just for the pure entertainment of it. While there may have been a slim chance of that working out for him at the beginning, now that the pants were half the outfit that they used to be, Phil wanted to get them off as soon as possible.

"Tell you what, if you let me go and get changed, I'll promise to make you laugh when I get back."

"You're on."

Since he was not exactly known as a funny man, he knew that this was an offer that Paolo couldn't refuse. Paolo would be stirring with anticipation the entire time that Phil was gone, wondering what could possibly make him so confident that he could make Paolo laugh. Meanwhile, Phil was trying to decide if he would clobber him or not after he gave Paolo a good laugh, at the moment it was around a fifty percent chance.

There was no one in the hallway from the machine to the locker room for real this time, no one hiding behind a corner, or waiting to jump out from behind a door. Phil motored down towards the locker room, slamming open the door with his shoulder. Miraculously, there was no one in the locker room either. Finally feeling like he could relax, he made his way over to his locker and spun the combination lock.

Laying out his office clothes, he began to remove his 18th century outfit. The cloak was stained with blood as usual, he'd have to dispose of it once again, along with the rest of his wardrobe. It was common practice to destroy everything that was brought back with a specialist into the past (except for the specialist themselves, naturally). They could not risk disease spreading from one point in time to another, as the people of the era would have no natural resistance to most of the sicknesses of another period. If they weren't careful, then they were going to have another Black Plague incident, and no one wanted to go through that again.

Once he was fully disrobed, Phil donned his office attire once more. Not every specialist wore professional clothes around the office, some chose to wear a simple t-shirt and slacks while they were in the present day. Phil was not one of those specialists however, he preferred to have a uniform for everything. The large black cloaks for when he was out on a job, his comfy sweats and shirt for around the house, and a tailor-made black suit for when he was at the office. As he pulled his tie flush with his neck, he could feel himself changing personas, from Phil the hunter to Phil the office man.

Phil the office man tucked his mission wardrobe underneath his arm, and exited the locker room once again. He had promised Paolo a good story, and he was fairly certain that he was going to enjoy this one.

Stepping into the workshop once more, he saw that Paolo was already hard at work on his drawing tablet. For all the times that he acted like he couldn't care less about his job, Paolo remained the best engineer the company had ever had. All of the other engineers never had a problem with the job itself, but the creativity was where they faltered. It was easy enough to build a crossbow, but designing one that had a pulley system rudimentary enough that it could have existed in the 16th century is a different beast altogether.

"Got some burnables for you." Phil called out, gesturing with the pile of clothes that he held in his arm.

"Just throw them in the hamper with the rest, I'll deal with them this afternoon." Paolo replied, without looking up from his work.

All of the discarded clothing would rest in a hamper inside of the workshop until it was carted out for incineration. Phil did as Paolo requested and put his clothing into the container, but he kept the pants with him, a prop for the story he was about to tell.

"So Paolo, want to know how you are going to be an asshole at some point in the near future?"

This caused Paolo's attention to jump from his work to Phil in an instant, spinning around in his chair and leaning his head onto his hand. He looked far too gleeful at the idea of knowing that he was going to be an asshole, but Phil was hardly surprised.

"Always."

Phil took the leather pants and held them up in front of Paolo, then put his hand through the top of the pants and out the back, waving to the engineer from the torn hole in the ass. Expectedly, this caused Paolo to lean back in his chair, laughing all the way.

"Did that happen when you were back in the past?"

"Yep, must have happened at some point in the fight."

"Shit, did anyone see you like that?"

"Yeah, the witness did, James something-or-other. He won't be telling anyone though, he's not about to cross a man that he just saw beat an Albino Lycan."

"Albino? Seriously? No one has ever run into one of those before, and I've sent specialists off to kill dozens of Lycans."

"Seriously. Whatever gave him white fur was probably the same thing that made his skin so tough. Some birth defect that turned him into a visually different, but physically superior beast."

"Oh shit."

"Nah, it's not that big of a deal, the fight was pretty short consid-"

"No, not that, I just realized something. You shouldn't have shown me those pants!"

"Why not?"

"Because I haven't designed them yet!"

Phil had never even thought about that, he just thought that Paolo would get a kick out of seeing the rip in the leather. He was right to be worried though, because of their little chuckle, they were in danger of breaking the biggest rule that Sius Technologies had.

Do not change history, under any circumstances.

When Phil first heard the rule, he thought it to be a rather impossible concept. How are people who are going back in time to save people supposed to avoid changing history? Even once he had been told the answer, it still took him a long time to get a firm grasp on it. Whenever a specialist goes back in time, they must first have done extensive research on the moment that they are going back to.

Very particular conditions must be met for a specialist to ever go back in time, if their research fails to satisfy the boss then they'll be stranded in the present until they make it better. They must look through historical records to find rumors of impossible creatures, extraordinarily powerful beasts, or monsters that terrorized locals. Just knowing that a creature like that existed is not enough, however, they must also prove that it was slain by an unknown warrior. Once all of these conditions have been met, then they could be fairly positive that the beast was killed by one of the company's specialists.

They never changed time, they just worked around it. They became the unknown warriors of legend that killed those incredible beasts, and they did it all from the comfort of an office building.

In this case however, Paolo may change history without ever leaving his workshop.

"I still have to design those pants, but now that I know that they are fated to rip, how am I supposed to design them? Do I design them purposefully fragile so that I know that they will rip? Or do I design them like normal and hope that they rip anyways? What even is normal? How am I supposed to know how your pants were fated to be designed?"

Paolo was pacing around the room now, frantically screaming out his panicked worries. The pants that Phil wore on the mission were going to be sent back in time after they were finished, but how can they be sure that he would receive the same pants, now that Paolo knew the fate of the seam around his butt?

Thankfully, Phil had been trained to keep a cool head in such situations, and a possible solution made its way into his brain.

"What if you don't design it yourself?"

"Excuse me?"

Phil was about to open his mouth to elaborate on his plan, but Paolo cut him off before he ever got the chance.

"Yes, yes! I hand it off to one of the other engineers, they design them as best they see fit because they don't know any better. Then, I get someone else entirely to make the pants themselves, and they get shipped back to today whenever they're done! As far as we know, that's what happened anyways!"

"We don't change time Paolo, we just work around it."

"Yes, yes, good. Now get out of here, I have to work."

Phil got up and did as he was told, waving to Paolo as he left. At the very least, it had turned into a very eventful morning, hopefully things calmed down a bit from here.