Blacktail Deer Plateau The Gathering of the Clouds

And he replied with a look of sarcastic pity, Yes, I realize now that your ears really are just for show, but you don't have to keep repeating yourself, I know that problem solving isn't your strength either.  She was the equivalent of tech support asking if you've tried turning it of and on again.  Of course that's already been done!  Mal wouldn't be calling support all the way over here if he didn't need to try something different!  He was about to say something more when the other guy apparated out of nowhere, sort of.

He didn't seemed shocked by it -- wolves seemed to love appearing randomly around him when he was being snarky, so that was old hat that someone would be creeping around the shadows just waiting or something.  Mal had more respect for that guy than he did for the metaphorically earless wonder because at least he was suggesting something other than Tier 1 tech support.  Only problem was he'd be a corpse if he tried it.  Now, Mal wasn't gonna let on his primary skill was bluffing, as if he was forced to learn to hunt on his own, it was no wonder nobody taught him to fight either, and that was before you added on extenuating circumstances, Yeah, if it was just some loner, that's a solution, yeah.  But some of these freaks would love that opportunity -- showed up one time thinking it was just some thief kid, except that kid was bait and had their whole damn goon squad hiding in wait for me in hopes I'd do something.  You can't call for anyone else if you screw that up, you'd be dead way before they got there.  These are not normal people with their heads screwed on straight -- maybe the earth shaking drove them insane, I don't know, we were fine there for months.  As far as Mal could tell, they wanted you to do something so they could have the moral high ground when they killed you.  Maybe the Nightwalker edgelords wanted that too (since apparently this thread happens after that too) but he managed to catch them before they could try anything. 

And now we can't even back away from them because you're suddenly here.  So just let me go see if there is anything to see and then I can go back home and try to find a solution that actually works.  It was probably unsurprising that the more he talked the more he was stressing himself out -- if suddenly the earth started shaking, the majority of your pack just up and disappeared and hadn't returned, and weirdos started showing up inside your house all at roughly the same time (oh and btw, your backup plan is probably nixed), wouldn't you be stressed?  Couldn't the world give him a break just once?  Probably not.  Mal was doing everything right to protect himself and his home, but the world didn't care.