Under The Radar 5

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Train didn’t work.

I had a hell of a time getting Pink Pixie’s attention, too. For about half a second, that challenge left me puzzled. Luckily, puzzles are why saws were invented. And saws were why puzzles were invented. See, way back in ancient Egypt, where the forests grew out of control, ancient lumberjacks used saws to cut pieces of wood in ways that only allowed certain parts to fit with each other. They did this while singing a merry tune and dancing a jig, so they became known as jigsaws. Later, the Egyptians would be conquered by the Persians, who had invented colors, thereby revolutionizing the world of puzzles, artwork, and racism all in one fell swoop.

I don’t know if any of that was true, but let that be a lesson to y’all.

So, despite Matty warning me that this was a horrible idea sure to tip someone over the edge and upset the delicate balance with Venus, blah blah blah, I went out into the world to take on Pink Pixie again.

The new sewer escape worked. I didn’t have to go too far, but the cramped pipes left me a little scared of Germans while I was down there. Claus-trophobic, I mean. If any alligators actually grew in there, they’d have to get out of my way, though. I’m the king of that jungle. King Gecko of Shit Mountain. Look upon the verdant fields where I grow and harvest fucks, and sniff of the fertilizer.

Once I got out, I decided to ignore Matatoa. Right after texting Carl where he could find some spare cash and head out to an amusement park with him.

Usually when I exit a manhole, it’s just because I shoved my hand up there. I don’t involve the rest of the body as a general rule. Hard to clean up. I didn’t have that choice this time. With that, I stopped by a pharmacy for a hell of a lot of deodorant and perfume. Except I holographically disguised myself as Pink Pixie.

I stood in line to pay, then grabbed the wrist of the woman in front of me as she reached into her purse. “I have you now, evildoer!” I said. I should have eased off the ham, but it’s a habit when pretending to be a hero.

“What’s this all about?” asked the woman, who tried to slap me. Funny thing about slapping someone wearing a metal helmet: it doesn’t end well for the slapper. If you would like more intimate details of that sensation, please have another whiff of the fertilizer.

Disguised as Pink Pixie, I grabbed the woman who assaulted me and tossed her over to the makeup counter. There, I helped her apply some free samples of the makeup. Well, they became free samples right about the time I broke them out of their boxes. When I finished with the accused shoplifter, I showed her a mirror. She was so happy, she screamed. “Yay! You look just like the Ultimate Warrior now.”

She screamed again, so I gave her a hug and told her. “You’re welcome!” Then I threw her out the door and into the side of a car. When I followed after her, I stood over the crumpled car and yelled, “Take that, Captain Shoplift! Your reign of crime ends now, you nefarious bitch.”

You know, I enjoy using nefarious. It’s a nice word.

A few people clapped; they couldn’t see the pulpy corpse embedded in the car. Those who stood closer looked horrified. I held up my hand and waved to the not so adoring crowd. Once again, the day was saved.

After that, I focused on larger crimes.

Like this one bank in the city that acted a bit irresponsibly. Matatoa talked me into this one during a performance of Cats. We didn’t dance or sing in it; we just attended the thing. It’s great. Everyone should see it, especially if y’all like catboys and catgirls. He turned to me while Bombalurina and Demeter gyrated, and told me, “I’m not going to try and stop you, but remember that you try to direct your urges to something constructive. And now, look at this.” Then he gently knocked me on the side of the head and my search browser opened up on a search.

After the consolidation of financial and investment banking, various banks began to pursue some interesting investments. At first, they just bundled together home loans and sold interest in the debt as investments. Those investments made them a shitload of money, so then came the part that shouldn’t have been legal. They ran out of people who could pay the home loans, so instead they started offering them to people who they knew couldn’t pay. They didn’t give a shit about repayment, just all the money that could be made by the mortgage-backed securities.

They also tried to protect themselves and write off their own liability by taking out insurance policies on the securities, but that’s beside the point. Well, except for the insurance companies that went under. Though, if you’re interested in how all this is legal, then you might look to an insurance company. Universal Property and Casualty Insurance Company can’t legally bribe anyone, but they can give away $10,000 door prizes for the people at their holiday party. Just like it’s illegal to bribe them, but not illegal if the CEO invites influential friends to a birthday party and they happen to bring presents for him.

But I’m the criminal.

All this may sound strange coming from someone who would much rather dance around a Mexican grocery store in an inflatable cow costume, but y’all should be expecting the unexpected by now.

So that’s why I attacked one of these banks disguised as Pink Pixie. For clarification, the bank wasn’t disguised as the Pink Pixie. A still make mistakes in English, so it’s best to be clear.

“Alright! Everyone on the-…wait, sorry,” I paused in my announcement on the counter of the bank. I’ve made a habit of ordering people onto the floor of banks. I forgot I didn’t need to this time. “I meant to say that I’m here about a crime. Someone in this bank stole a metric buttload of money. Technically, it’s closer to a fuckton, but I don’t need to get technical. Now, I need access to the manager’s office.” I jumped off the counter and didn’t wait for cooperation.

Admittedly, the manager alone wouldn’t do the trick. A cog in the machine, he just acted on instructions from higher up, if he even had to do anything at all. But, I thought as I shoved my way into his office, he had one kickin’ leather office chair. His access helped, too. I couldn’t delete all the records, but an awful lot of people in Empyreal City lost their mortgage debt.

Pink Pixie left me unmolested despite my actions in her name. A shame. I wanted that teen girl to molest me. Before y’all start, I meant that innocently. I mean to murder her. Perfectly innocent.

The really weird thing is that no one responded. I mean, sure, the cops showed up. But no one that stood a chance tried to stop the Pink Pixie. But if I covered everything I do to cops, we’d never get to the juicy stuff. The juicy stuff about the train, that is. Not the part where I stick cops in a giant juicer.

Matty had other suggestions, though. More evil suggestions. “Here, here, and here,” he said, pointing to where Empyreal City would be on the Fool’s Cap map on my wall. It’s an old map.

“Can you zoom in a bit?” I asked. He nodded and tapped the map, causing the view of the world to shift and close in on Empyreal City, which suddenly appeared on it in its current layout. Then I grabbed the middle of his cane and started tapping the end of it against my crotch.

Matty pulled the cane away from my grip. “It’s not going to look any bigger that way.”

“Aww. Well then, if you’re done playing with your wood, why don’t you tell me what you had in mind, Matty?”

That’s how I wound up dropping in on a bunch of anti-meat protesters hanging around Wall Street, wearing my freshly-aired out armor and the projection of Pink Pixie. I had the explosive cylinder attached to my belt as well. If everything went well, Pixie wouldn’t need to worry about her reputation much longer. Or breathing.

“Alright, evil vegans, in the name of the Pixie, I will punish you!” I yelled at them, taking a pose.

They kept on shouting their phrases about fur being murder and animals being people too. Unfortunately for them, I brought a sack. “Alright, people, I have heard your concerns, and I would like to address them with one simple phrase…release the snakes!”

With that, I reached inside the sack and started tossing snakes of all sort at the protesters. Cobras, constrictors, kings…my goodie bag had fun for all inside. Except for snakes. I had to almost freeze the little bastards to keep them from fighting in there.

The animals didn’t seem to approve of their defenders. One of them ran over to me and waved at her flailing friends. “Why are you doing this? Who are you?!”

I put my hands on my hips and looked off over her head. “I am the Pink Pixie, and I speak for the trees.” Then I looked at her and jumped back. “Ew, you have a snake on you!”

She looked at the moccasin crawling on her shoulder and screamed. I did too. Then, to reassure her, I said “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.” I grabbed a nearby mailbox and went to town on that snake slithering along her arm. Then I helped the rest of her friends out.

When it was all said and done, I think I did a good job. Sure, there were some fatalities. Ok, there were a lot of fatalities. Maybe a couple people got away. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the attention I attracted to my cause. The attention of Pink Pixie, who swooped in and must have seen a snake on me. Except where I used a mailbox, she threw a car.

She didn’t even tell me to stop in the name of the moon or anything like that. All she told me was, “Raaaagaghg!”

I wasn’t familiar with the language, but it sounded beautiful. Rather than allow her to beat some understanding into me, I took off for the nearby subway station that Matty chose the site for.

Pixie flew, grabbing a passing car and tossing it at me with no regard for life, especially my own. It almost got me, but I slid down the stair rails and into the subway station below. There I had to pace myself and worry about timing. Unfortunately, pacing didn’t mean anything to the extremely strong and extremely mad young lady chasing me so I made it look like I ran down the tunnel. I stood there, invisible, as Pink Pixie passed by, only to be rewarded by the sound of an oncoming train. She looked down the way her doppelganger ran, then stopped on the platform. That coward wanted to let a train finish me off! It didn’t slow down on approach, either, which worked out great for me when I reappeared and pushed Pixie in front of it.

Didn’t work out so well when she turned and grabbed me by the arm just before it struck her. Because she kept the arm. And her grip on me. The sides of the train and tunnel played a game of pong with me as the ball.

As y’all can imagine, I was between a rock and a hard place. Bouncing back and forth, breaking my leg and hip bones into smaller and smaller pieces, I first hoped the ride would end quickly. I reversed my position when I realized I lost my little explosive cylinder.

In a way, the one problem solved the other. The explosion behind us nearly blinded me in that darkness. Rumbling consumed everything, and the tunnel began to collapse. The subway car wobbled, then collapsed on its other side. That proved favorable to my health. I can’t remember much about how the pressure from the blast felt on me, mainly due to the cripplingly horrible pain of having bone chunks in my kidney and halfway up my prostate. If I had a boner, it’s because an actual bone stuck out there.

I flew off as we skidded to a halt near the welcoming lights of another station. I think Pixie took a bump on the head and got knocked out. Now I just had to crawl along the tracks, pull myself up to the platform, crawl up the stairs, and somehow escape, all with an intact murderous superheroine chasing me.

No sweat. Good thing I replaced the nanites in the suit’s nanite quilt layer at the risk of death by extreme boredom. All my syringes cracked or fell into darkness during my wild ride. Or maybe one of them stuck halfway up my dick.

So I crawled until I could walk, then walked until I could run. Civilians rushed the platform to see what was happening. Many had cameras. With my suit too torn up to project shit, I took off my helmet. At that point, it was the most recognizable thing about me. With all the bouncing and shearing, the ride scraped off most of the colors on my armor.

They didn’t recognize me like that as long as I kept my helmet held with the face toward my chest. Aside from the people taking photos and videos, they were helpful, too. I got a pair of guys to help me outside while others ran off down the tunnel to try and help.

We were halfway up the stairs when I heard a girl’s voice shout, “You!” behind me. Looking back, I saw Pink Pixie at the bottom of the stairs with her arm around some guy’s neck as he helped her move.

“Guys,” I told my two helpers, “I can’t explain this right now, but we need to get me out of here. She’s trying to kill me.”

That began an incredible high speed chase. We were booking it. I swear, we almost hit one mile an hour there if we’d gone twice as fast. Despite the aid, Pixie closed in on me during my mad hop to freedom.

At that point, it didn’t even surprise me when they helped me out into the sunlight and I saw the Whambulance parked there with Matatoa, Carl, and Moai sitting around looking bored. “…right about now,” Matty said, looking down at his watch. Then he looked up. “Right on time. Carl, I think he needs some help.”

I patted the two random guys who helped me on the back. “Guys, thank you very much for all you’ve done. You touched me today, and I don’t just mean whichever one of you groped my ass. I’ll admit, I haven’t felt all that confident about the strength of human character lately, but y’all still have much to teach me.”

Then I grabbed them and tossed them at Pink Pixie. “You almost got me, Pinky, but know this: you haven’t seen the last of me!” I gave her a pair of middle fingers as I felt something lasso me with a clinking noise. Looking down, I noticed two things: a hook and chain around my waist, and the Whambulance’s engine cranking.

It occurred to me that perhaps my minions weren’t happy with my pursuit of this particular contract right around the time Carl took off and yanked me off my feet.

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