Munmun(74)

This stupid plan actually worked pretty good, probably just out of dumbluck. I jogged into a middlepoor house to swipe coal, got shrieked at, pretended like oops, wrong house. Jogged into another house, family was backyarding and didn’t see me, swiped a little coal from the stove. Back outside, hid my sweet hoodie under a bush, shirtwrapped my hair, and quickly drew a sharkface on my stomach, pretty crude and bad but whocares. Breathed deep and cool and headed back to the Sitadell super casual like, don’t you remember me, boys, it’s your old pal, Sharktum the Halfnaked Faceboy.

Surenough, roof gunmen waved at me all bored, I waved back chill and wordless, they looked at their phones. Really smooth behindtheback I lobbed my handbomb at the loadingdock door, jogged around the side of the Sitadell, got to the reservewar side when I heard the boom, ground shuddered under me. Raced up the fireescape, opened the door, stepped in, alarms were going off, faceboys were running around with faces of hey what the heck, and nobody was looking at me like who’s this jerk because I was also running around making a concerned face of hey what the heck, who’s the maniac who’s attacking us faceboys, how about we all do our jobs and defend the homebase, okay great.

Checked a room, faceboys and tramps were wrapping cash in there.

Another room, empty.

Another one, empty with bloodstains.

Another one, two faceboys on computers, type type typing and sniffling from dust.

Corner room, tables, cabinets, Shoulderheads, Usher.

Two years since I’ve seen them, now Usher is a little rat on a tabletop and Shoulderheads is just another Liftylooking guy my scale, swollen with ink and muscle but not any bigger than me, eyes a little more tired and hungry.

They didn’t look up at me, even when I shut the door behind myself, crossed to behind the table, put the gun’s nose in the big goon’s spine. Instead Shoulderheads reached behind without looking and shoved me into a wall, must have thought I was some rando facekid having a goof.

“Stop with that crap, kid,” said Shoulderheads. “No games right now. Get downstairs where they need you.”

Puny ratscale Usher was crouched on some texty documents, drawing lines through words with a pen, Shoulderheads stared and whispered.

Okay fine, I thought, I guess I’m a rando facekid now.

“Boss, I need little stuttershakes,” I told him. “Gotta take him somewhere more secure.”

Shoulderheads looked up at me now, confused.

“What’s your name,” he said.

“Sharktum,” I said.

He looked at my tum.

Okay whatever, no more pretending, I thought.

I pointed my gun at his tum.

“Okay look,” I said. “I’m stealing that little guy. Your choices are, be chill and quiet, or bleed a lot from the tum.”

He chuckled a little.

“Man are you dumb,” he said, swiping at the gun, but I was twitchy and tweaky, too fast for this slow strangler, immediately I had bashed his throat.

He slid off his stool, did some medium gasping and writhing, meanwhile I picked up Usher.

“Don’t worry, it’s me,” I told him. “It’s your buddy, Warner.”

“I kn n know w,” squeaked little gray Usher.

He looked bad, stubbly pimply shaved head, the back of his skull all tatted up like in Dreamworld, dirty and reeky too. But he locked eyes on mine, blinked, gave me a loopy smile.

And my dry dusty heart couldn’t take it, it started flooding, my eyes stung, my throat lumped like somebody had bashed mine too.

“Let me call us a ride,” I said quickly, squeeze the words out before I can choke on them.

Because a fourth huge cleverness smacked me in the face, Warner you idiot genius, Markfive can drive right up to us through the reservewar, it’s just a dry completely waterless bowl.

He drives a freaking tank, all doublecars are bulletproof, even if they start shooting he’s got nothing to worry about.

He can drive right under our window, we can jump in through the sunroof, tear on out of here, rescue Usher.

Ride to Votech, take the test, celebrate my new Mathy life with my rescued friend.

I whipped out the phone to call my getaway driver like a brilliant hero.

But my phone had stopped being a phone.

Instead it was now a scolding Fresh But Chill employee.

“Fresh But Chill had a rough time balancing your account, please press here to call Fresh But Chill to restore chill to your balance,” said my phone.

“Dang dang dang,” I said, fighting panic, tred to swipe away the freshbutchillscreen, nope, phone’s locked.

I tried resetting and restarting, noluck, the phone remembered that it hated me still. Fine, I punched CALL FRESH BUT CHILL, comeon comeon you evil peenheads.

“Hello Warner,” said the Fresh But Chill robot,

“Comeon comeon comeon,” I muttered,

“We’ve partnered with Bankfinder to find you the nearest bank where you can rearrange your finances,” said the robot,

“Dang dang dang,” I gritted,

“In order to put some munmuns in munflow and resume a chill, stylish account relationship with us,” said the robot as automatically my phone became a Bankfinder, this way to the nearest bankbranch, how about you scale down a little.

“Okay,” I told Usher, tucking him under my arm, shoving the babbling phone back into my pants, “it’s fine, it’s chill, let’s just cruise on out of here,” and maybe we could have, maybe we would have.