Hello.
Anyway, I was just overlooking my stories today and I thought, "Hey, I really liked that story of Artemis when he retold his most embarrassing moment." So I took the liberty of writing a oneshot for Mulch for his embarrassing moment.
When I first wrote it I thought the ending was too abrupt and un-Mulch-like. So I wrote a little bit more, and I hope the ending is better.
Disclaimer: I'm not Irish. Thus, I'm not Eoin Colfer.
Mulch Diggums was a thief. Anyone who didn't know this vital piece of information obviously hadn't been paying attention to the first four books of the series. But he had once been a really good thief. Not that he wasn't a good thief now, obviously, but he had had his days, and those days were the good ones. Him and his cousin Nord… they had been a great team. Eventually they had to go their own ways.
This story is a perfect example of one of the not-so-good-days. Mulch was visiting the Louvre, but not as a tourist. He was there to steal a painting.
No! Mulch, you couldn't steal the Mona Lisa! You just couldn't!
Well, he wasn't. The Lisa hanging there was a fake, placed there in 1875 during the confusion of the museum's renovations, and ever since then the original copy had been bouncing through hands like nobody's business.
And, besides, the Mona Lisa was too big of a painting to rob anyway. The first person he'd try to sell it to would end up being either a bunch of undercover cops or the LEP. (Those guys managed to blame him for the most wildest things…)
No, Mulch was there that day for something else. Orphan Girl at the Cemetery. He himself didn't really like the picture, but he had a buyer that wanted it for whatever the reason. No problem, he told himself. It was barely two feet tall anyway. Easy in-and-out job. Yay.
Mulch wasn't going to bother with trying to replace the painting after he stole it like most folks did. His artistic abilities hadn't exactly won him an award recently. He was going to let the people panic for two weeks, then allow them realize that they still had Lisa and calm down a bit.
But this still was a pretty big job. The Louvre! Wow! He'd been here once before, and that had been with Nord. Mulch was a bit reluctant to head over there again without backup. And so, to calm his nerves, he had a big breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. And snacks in between. (There were six of them.) Patting his content stomach, Mulch slipped on his knapsack of supplies and found a nice tree to start digging by, eating the family of squirrels he found inhabiting the tree while he was at it.
When Mulch and Nord had raided the Louvre a few years back they had learned the best way in. The janitor's room. And that was where Mulch was headed.
As he dug, the dwarf contemplated on what he'd buy with the two hundred seventy-five grand he was being offered. Maybe he'd go buy himself a plane to the States. Or perhaps he'd stay in France for a while. They had excellent tourist attractions over here, and Mulch could totally picture himself wearing a French beret while eating a croissant on a gondola. Or maybe the gondola was Venice…
His dwarf senses told him he was directly below where he needed to be. He dug up a meter to find himself in a dark and damp room that he knew to be the custodian's closet. Mulch rummaged around until he found the control panel, sliding off the lid. He stared at the incomprehensible pattern of wires and screws and buttons for a minute and wondered what the heck he was going to do so that he didn't end up having to create a rescheduled getaway.
Eventually he just snipped off all the red and green wires, just because he was in a Christmas mood, and not because he knew for a fact that the green wires disconnected all the video cameras and the red ones were there for decoration.
Mulch Diggums slipped out of the room, feeling very much like a secret agent kids nowadays loved pretending to be. The fact that he was wearing all black and about to steal a very precious painting helped a bit.
The dwarf found the correct set of passages until he reached the painting. Something rumbled upsettingly in his stomach, urging to be freed, but Mulch held it in. Now was not the time.
He pulled out a slab of rock that weighed the exact same as the painting out of his bag and laid it on the ground. He licked the control-monitor so that it would lose focus and swapped the two, shoving the hundred-years-old painting into his knapsack as if it were no big deal.
Mulch was halfway down the hallway when his stomach rumbled again. He froze, thinking, I shouldn't have eaten the squirrels, I shouldn't have eaten the squirrels, I shouldn't have eaten the—
Too late. Mulch groaned as alarms began to go off. He ran for the janitor's room, but metal walls lowered themselves in his path and blocked him off. He tried to make a run for it, ditching the bag to lose the extra weight, but he was too slow. Mulch slammed into the wall the second it fell down completely. He rubbed his head and looked around, evaluating possible escape routes. Well, there was tunnelling. The dwarf looked down to find the floors were conveniently made of marble.
This is going to hurt, Mulch thought as he unhinged his jaw and took his first bite.
Three minutes later when backup arrived at the museum, they found a rock covered in what appeared to be solidified slime where the painting of the orphaned girl used to be, the real painting stuffed in a bag a few corridors away along with what appeared to be teeth marks in the floor, leading to a tunnel that led outside to a tree that had scattered squirrel bones lying about.
Mulch managed to make it to the apartment he had called home for a few days when the LEP arrived, pointing two Neutrinos at his head.
"Don't move, Mulch," said the elf, the one who seemed to be in charge of the operation. "No one's head has to become a scorch mark on the wall if you cooperate."
Mulch would have tried tunnelling had the third member of their crew not snuck up on him and tackled him, eventually overpowering the dwarf and snapping on a mouth-ring.
"Now we can leave," said the elf, moving forward to add handcuffs. Mulch took his unfortunate fate in the face boldly, accepting that he had lost this battle, and allowed himself to be led away with pride. And I didn't even say anything, he thought, permitting a small smile.
"Oh, wow," snorted the elf as they walked outside. "Mulch, my wife just threatened me with divorce and a gnome's got me with a five thousand dollar debt. But somehow you just made my day."
On second thought, maybe defiant was the way to go.
Mulch swallowed the elf and slammed the handcuffs on the head of the approaching officer. He spat out the elf (who tasted horrible, by the way), when the last guy shot him with a taser.
J'aime pas la France, Mulch thought as he collapsed sideways, unable to feel anything in his limbs except pins-and-needles.
So much for croissants and gondolas.
Anyway, I hope that didn't suck too much.
I now grant you the ability to review. So review and stuff. It's not too hard, you know.