Honor Among Thieves
Starring Shifty and Rhyme
Featuring Flippy
We start in on Rhyme, who's looking among the stores for something to give his cousin, who's nursing a broken leg, courtesy of Lumpy improperly setting up the tightrope for their performance not but 3 days ago. While he sees plenty of cool looking gifts, everything from stereos to unicycles to even new sparkling uniforms, nothing seems to hit him as the perfect gift… that is until he walks by the grocery store and sees the gift to end all gifts… a gourmet assortment of wonderful, delicious peanuts! The deer knows how much his cousin loves snacking on those shelled nuts and is about to go inside to get them… when he sees the price listing for the assortment and his jaw nearly drops right through the cement…. 600 dollars!! As he feels inside his jacket and pulls out his wallet, he sees to his dismay that he has nowhere near enough money… having used most of the money from their act to help pay for Mime's cast. But as he looks at the price tag, he knows he's not ready to try getting another job… not just yet….
It's then that he notices a familiar fedora-wearing raccoon walking up, and he sees that, to his surprise, his brother-in-crime, Lifty, is M.I.A. Calling to the raccoon, he asks where Lifty is? Shifty sees Rhyme and replies that Lifty's got the stomach flu and is too sick to help him out with the robbery he'd planned on the store that night, so now he's looking for an easier score. Shifty then asks the jacket-clad deer where his own cousin is and Rhyme tells him how Lumpy messed up the tightrope of their last performance, causing them both to plummet 50 feet to the hard ground, Mime landing on his left leg and snapping it like a pretzel under his weight and was now looking for a good get-well gift for his injured friend.
An idea starts to form inside the kleptomaniac's head. He offers Rhyme a deal, if he helps him carry out the robbery on the store, he'll let him make off with the peanut assortment for Mime. At first, Rhyme is totally insulted, knowing he would have to be pretty desperate to resort to thievery to get a gift for Mime.. But then he remembers the look of pain across Mime's face when he was sitting on the ground, his bones poking through the fur on his leg and takes a long hard look at both the assortment and at the grinning raccoon standing before him… With a heavy sigh, Rhyme says that he's in and and we iris in as he shakes Shifty's paw signifying the new truce between them
Moral: …. Gotcha!
Later that night, we see both Shifty and Rhyme watching through a set of binoculars across the street the owner of the market, Lumpy, locking up the store and it's all Rhyme can do to keep his dark self in check so he doesn't attack Lumpy and blow the whole plan, but after a few deep breaths he's able to calm down. Shifty notices the angry look on Rhyme's face and asks him what's wrong, only to get a small sigh and a "never mind" in reply. Once the moose walks out of sight of the two seekers, they cross the street and blend into the shadows surrounding the store. Rhyme stands guard while he watches, out of the corner of his eye, Shifty skillfully pick the lock and open the doors to the market. With a coy laugh, Shifty walks inside, Rhyme right behind him.
The two of them can't help but look in awe at all the goods surrounding them, surprised that there wasn't even an alarm set for so many valuable goodies. While Shifty goes to work ransacking the meat section, Rhyme heads straight for the display holding the vast assortment of yummy peanuts. It's then that he notices a glass case surrounding the nuts and he reaches into his jacket and pulls out one of the sharp throwing knives he uses normally for show. Gently pressing the tip of the blade against the glass casing, he slowly cuts a circle into the glass casing.
Unbeknownst to the two of them, the night security guard of the market, Flippy, is watching them through his monitors in the back room and at first the veteran bear reaches simply for his baton to chase them away with… but then he hears the screeching sound of the knife carving into the glass and is slowly reminded of the grisly sounds of the bones of his fellow soldiers being carved open and the marrow drunken by the enemy line. Instead of grabbing the baton, Flippy breaks the glass case surrounding the fire axe with his bare fist, not even wincing as the shards cut through his hand, and grabs the sharp tool with a loud growl escaping from his lips. Not even bothering to use the knob, Flippy cuts a hole right through the door and crawls through the jagged hole in the wooden door.
Rhyme finally finishes cutting the circle into the glass and with a push of his paw, knocks the circle onto the floor. Once he sees hole fall to the floor and shatter, he crawls through the hole, the black boots borrowed from Shifty preventing the broken glass from cutting up his feet, and snatches the large box of assorted peanuts. With a small smile on his face, he crawls back through just as Shifty dashes back to him with his arms laden with meaty goodies, enough to feed him and his brother for at least a week. Rhyme starts to show Shifty the box he got, but suddenly sees a shadowy figure creeping up behind the raccoon. Shaking fearfully, he motions for Shifty get out of the way of the figure and the raccoon starts to wave off the gesture, but a loud growl from behind him causes the raccoon to slowly look behind him and see Flippy standing there, a demonic look across his face and a sharp fire axe being smacked coldly against his open palm. Shifty tries to run off, but Flippy quickly grabs him by his tail and readies his axe to decapitate the raccoon. But as he starts to swing it, a sharp bolt of pain causes him to drop the axe and release a terrified Shifty, who quickly ducks behind Rhyme, who's still standing there, a small grin on his face. As Flippy looks down, he sees the source of the bolt, a throwing knife imbedded into his right leg and starts to yank out the knife, not even wincing as he feels the steel scrape against his bone. Without wasting a second, Rhyme and Shifty dash out of the store only seconds before Flippy removes the knife and, picking up the axe, dashes out after them.
As Rhyme and Shifty run for cover, Flippy at their heels, Handy comes out of the diner right next to the market and, upon seeing the deer and raccoon run by him, nearly knocking him down, he starts to yell for them to slow down…. But he's only able to get out "slow--" before he sees an axe blade emerge through the center of his belly. As the blade is slowly pulled out, ripping into the beaver's organs, and Handy gives a gurgling, blood-filled groan before he falls to the ground, dead, we see Flippy standing over him, a look of indescribable glee and rage on his face as he takes off once again after the two thieves.
But as the two shoplifters run past the pet store a few buildings down, Shifty stops in his tracks and kneels down clutching his tummy. Rhyme sees Shifty kneeling and, knowing there's no time to waste, grabs the raccoon by the hand and drags him into the dark alley between the pet store and the bar right next door. Once he's gotten Shifty sitting against the cold wall, he looks out towards the street and sees, to his horror, Handy falling down dead, a gaping hole through the center of his chest. Before Handy falls down to the ground, revealing Rhyme, he ducks back behind the wall and kneels next to Shifty, who's holding his tummy and moaning as everything in his stomach starts to churn. Rhyme quickly figures out what's wrong, the poor raccoon caught the stomach flu from his brother, and softly asks him if he needs to throw up. Shifty nods, but whispers that doing so would attract Flippy's attention. Right as he finishes the sentence, Rhyme hears Flippy's footsteps and motions for Shifty to be quiet. Flippy runs towards the bar he saw the two criminals running to and looks around for the shoplifters, his already shattered mind growing even more angry at the thought of two enemy soldiers having destroyed his buddies and getting away with it.
It is then that the door to the bar opens and who else should walk out, but a now-drunk Lumpy. The moose doesn't even get two feet from the bar before Flippy tackles him and knocks him to the ground, quickly sobering up the moose. As Flippy starts dragging Lumpy towards the edge of the sidewalk and swiftly punches the struggling moose upside the head, knocking him out. Once Lumpy's fallen unconscious, Flippy carefully positions the moose's head against the curb and raises up his foot. With an animalistic cry, he brings his foot down, crunching the moose's skull against the curb and causing the head to splatter into a gory mess of blood, bone, and little pieces of brain tissue.
The sound of Lumpy's head exploding makes Shifty feel even more queasy and he looks around for a place to empty his stomach safely, but Rhyme motions for him to just stay quiet, that he'll get him to something when it's safe. Meanwhile Flippy, his rage fully ignited upon the two thieves supposedly escaping, looks around for another victim to take their place. He doesn't have to wait long before he hears the sound of the bell across the street ringing and he sees Russell leaving his fish shop and starting to lock it up. With superhuman-like speed, Flippy dashes across the street and leaps onto Russell, pinning down his arms and legs. It's then that he notices the display in Russell's front window, a huge tank of fierce man-eating Amazonian piranhas, and a sadistic idea forms in his head. Lifting the sea otter's head up, he bashes it twice against the glass window in front of the tank, stunning the otter and causing the window to start to crack. Russell pleas for his life, promising all the fresh fish Flippy can eat in return for his life, but Flippy just gives a hollow sounding laugh before lifts Russell's head back and, with full force, shoves it through both the glass window and the side of the container holding the piranhas, slicing up the pirate's head horribly and causing his blood to pour into the tank water. Once the piranha get a taste of the sea otter's blood, they waste no time in chowing down on Russell's gurgling head. Flippy waits until Russell's gurgling yells stop, all the while bathing his senses in the death screams of the pirate and letting out a moan of pure sadistic glee, before he pulls him out of the tank and marvels at what's become of the poor sea otter. His head is now nearly completely barren of all the skin and muscles that had once surrounded it and all that's left is a bloody skull and as the bear drops the body, the exposed spine breaks against the pavement and separates Russell's head from his body as he laughs in demonic delight.
By now, Shifty can't take it anymore and, placing the soft meat he'd stolen in front of him and bracing himself, starts to retch. As Rhyme watches in disgust, the raccoon vomits up a thick stream of yellow bile all over the goods, the softness of the ground meats helping mask the sound of the vomit hitting them. Rhyme calmly waits for Shifty to empty out his tummy, even watching to make sure Flippy's not close by, all the while wondering what the hell he got himself into. After about a minute, Shifty's able to get himself under control and, wiping the traces of barf off his mouth, looks down in horror at what he's just done… he's contaminated his own purloined goods! Shifty starts to whimper sadly as he slowly and shakily gets up and allows Rhyme to carry him out of the alleyway, but right as they emerge from the alley, Flippy, having heard Shifty's nauseated whimpers, spots them and laughs with glee, he can still kill those enemy soldiers yet! Without wasting a second, Rhyme and Shifty take off, albeit the latter a little slowly, and dash out of the city, the bear right behind them…
After about a few minutes, they reach a big tree and Rhyme leans back against it, relieved that they got away from the demonic bear. As he looks to his right, he sees Shifty lurched behind the tree, puking his guts out, and can't help but feel a little sorry for the ill raccoon… that is, until he feels a very sharp pain in his chest. It's then that he looks down and sees his own throwing knife embedded right above the belly button into his stomach. With a whimpering moan, he pulls out the now bloody knife and looks up to see Flippy aiming the fire axe right at his legs. The deer is only able to give a small squeak before the axe hits, cutting off his left leg at the kneecap and sending him falling to the ground, blood spewing from the stump. Flippy stands above him, raising the axe high over his head ready to finish the deer off when he hears the sound of Shifty's lunch getting spewed onto the grass and is immediately reminded of the sound of his buddies guts being splattered on the rocky ground and bringing his rage up higher than it has ever been before. Seeing the large box of nuts laying on the grass near the raccoon, he picks it up and whacks the raccoon across the back of the head with it, knocking him down onto the pile of vomit. Without wasting a second, he lifts up the box and brings it back down upon the raccoons head, opening up a nice gash and causing the box to break open, scattering the gourmet peanuts everywhere.
When Rhyme, looking over and seeing both Shifty laying in his own vomit and his precious gift in ruins, he's reminded of his own past, bullies knocking the priceless coins out of their hands, beating him and Mime up and leaving them in a pool of their own blood and slowly he feels the anger swell inside him... soon all he can see is red and in the center of that red is one crazed war veteran. He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out two sharp throwing knives before slowly crawling over behind Flippy, who's actually laughing at Shifty trying to get up, covered in his own puke as if he was an enemy soldier wallowing in his own blood. Shifty slowly gets over onto his back and sees Flippy raising the axe high above his head, about to end his misery. But right as Flippy brings the axe back, he feels a razor-like jolt of pain go through his chest and he drops the axe... All he can do is look at Shifty, his vision slowly blurring, as he collapses to his knees, the two knives buried in his chest like a perverse set of hoops. Spitting out dark blood, he catches a reflection in the mix of vomit and blood and, looking behind him, sees Rhyme with the axe raised about his head and a look of utter rage and hate spread on his normally happy face. As Rhyme brings the axe down upon Flippys neck, decapitating him, the last words he hears the deer say, in clear english, are "Only cowards prey upon the weak...".
As he watches Flippy's headless body fall, he feels the anger in him still growing and he turns towards Shifty. He raises the axe above his head again, but as he looks at the raccoon, staring at him in fear, he slowly comes to his senses and buries the axe, not in Shifty's head, but in Flippys corpse, before collapsing down onto his knees, the pain in his severed limb excrutiating. Shifty slowly gets up, his tummy almost completely empty, and he looks at Rhyme, balancing on one leg like a scarecrow and offers the deer a hand up, amazed that Rhyme was able to control himself and not kill him too. As Rhyme takes Shifty's hand, and slowly gets up, he sees the raccoon actually start to cry, feeling scared after the whole ordeal and offers him his jacket to wipe his mouth and fur off. As the raccoon buries himself into the deer's black jacket, Rhyme can't help but think "Why is it whenever we work together, he always ends up sobbing??". Worn out and not even caring about the scattered nuts and ruined meats, Rhyme and Shifty head for home...
As they reach Lifty and Shifty's house, Shifty motions for Rhyme to stay there while he heads inside for a second. The raccoon's gone only a minute before he comes back out carrying a second large box of assorted gourment peanuts, which he gives to Rhyme. Stunned by the gift, Rhyme asks Shifty where he got it and the raccoon replies he and Lifty had stolen it the night before and he thought Mime would enjoy it more as he starts to turn around to head back inside... but as he reaches the doorway, he hears a loud thud and, looking behind him, sees Rhyme laying spread-eagled against the grass, drained of nearly all his blood and the box of nuts now laying next to his head and we iris in on Shifty calling for Rhyme to wake up...
Moral: Even thieves have a code of honor