Wow! I haven't updated this in four months. Thanks to the following linklies: dOMITUPSYK, Krimzon 1, miss Yunie, ShadowQueen Lizz, Snowy Fox, Lovepuff, and Lenipez sideshow.
Poor Marvin. All this in just one day.
The elderly technician was from the part of the Slums that dependably refused to pronounce the letter R, and on occasion, claimed it had never existed. Marvin groaned. It was difficult to understand these types.
"How do I know youe eally the guy who ented he?" The man looked at Marvin sideways. "Do you have you signed contact ageement?"
Marvin thought back to his briefcase, on his desk, in the bowels of the BOTAFEA, where the carbon copy unpleasantly proclaiming the renter of the vehicle as "MaRlump" lay. He sighed. "Not with me."
"What's you name, son?"
"Marvin."
The man stuck out his hand, accidentally hitting Marvin in the leg with his walking stick. "Nice to meet you, Mavin. I'm Obet."
"Robert?"
"No, Obet." The man frowned deeply. "Hmmm..." he rubbed his chin for a while.
In the delayed silence, Marvin hopped up and down anxiously, trying like hell to remember where Destiny might have gone. After running up the dank staircase to the Tax Archives level, he'd headed straight for the lower parking lots. Destiny wasn't there. He'd checked three times, running between rows of zoomers and screaming his head off. Finally, he'd stuck a coin in the cheap paycomm and called Rent-A-Zoomer, requesting a technician.
"What for?" the secretary had asked.
Gee, I can't find my ass-expensive zoomer. "Ummmmmmmmmm... just got a question," said Marvin.
She sighed. "There's an instruction manual."
"I, uh, can't read," stammered Marvin.
"Pity." She clearly didn't think it was. "We'll send a technician out to your location."
Marvin had waited tensely, then sat down worriedly, then started his hopping up and down anxiously. Obet had arrived just a few minutes later.
Let's see. I got to work, got demoted, met a PreCC addict and the oldest known Havenite alive. He frowned. The tiny lamp he still held dripped oil down his pants as he jumped. Not far enough. Think back. Destiny dropped me off, and I told her to... "park yourself where no one will find you!" Marvin's eyes widened and he gasped.
"Oh, eh?" Obet looked up at him. "You didn't say that, did you? That's the wost possible thing to say to a zoome. Especially the Class twenty. Theye teibly loyal." He sighed and pulled a flat screen from his technician's bag. "Let's see what he fuss is all about." He twiddled with the controls for a minute, then arched his eyebrows. "Ah ha!"
"Did you find her?"
"Nope. But I did save a ton of obs on my zoome insuance." He hummed a little-known ditty about Mar's crocodog Yarg-the-Mildewy. Or, in his case, Ma's cocodog Yag-the-Mildewy. But it was a little-known ditty, and Marvin did not derive any pleasure from its hummed bars.
He fumed.
"What are you doing?"
"Scanning fo he Egional Indeect Locato."
"What?" Marvin couldn't quite grasp the series of sounds that had just assaulted his ears.
"He egional Indeect Locato. The locato device in he steeing column cente. It'll say whee she's paked."
"Oh, her Indirect Locator."
"That's what I said!" The technician scowled at him. "Fesh whippesnappe. Don't you get me stated. I fought in the last fou was against those Metal Heads to keep undeseving youngins like you unhamed…"
Marvin rolled his eyes and glanced at his wristwatch, waiting for the old man's spiel to end.
"Ae you awae that youe on fie?"
"What?" Marvin looked up.
"Youe on fie!" Obet pointed at Marvin's waist.
Marvin looked down. It took a few seconds for the flames and burning-flesh smell to completely register in his brain. "I'm on fire! Obet, help!"
"I'm a technician, not a fieman," he said, shrugging.
Marvin threw himself to the ground and rolled in the dust, screaming.
Obet calmly tapped codes into his flat screen. "Oo! I found he appoximate location."
"AHHHHHH!"
"She's somewhee in the Pot." Obet prodded him with the walking stick.
"MY LEG HAIRS MELTED TOGETHER!"
"Pobably hiding undewate. Not a place I'd eccomend."
"Other than that, I'm fine…"
"The Class twenty ain't exactly watepoof."
Marvin stood and slowly peeled his pants away from his skin. Due to the disturbing regularity of this kind of occurrence, he had quickly grown accustomed to pain. And not the regular 'I nicked myself shaving' kind of pain. This was pure 'the Precursors hate me and make my life a living exhibit in the painful gallery of the Life Museum Display of Pain' kind of pain. Marvin couldn't remember the last time he had nicked himself shaving. It was never just a nick, rather an open wound… he shook his head.
"So… where's Destiny?"
"In the Pot."
"The Port?"
Obet glared. "Yes! The Pot."
Marvin groaned. "How do I get her out?"
"Offe he a pesent." Obet packed up his flat screen. "Give he something eal petty. Class twenty thinks theye oyalty. Well, in a sense, they ae. Theye the best ou eseaches and develepes can make, in this day and age. When I was a young spout, manufactuing had just eached the climax of its enowned cuent status. Hee I go again, pining fo the old ways… Class twenty eally loves ed oses. Those ae expensive, though, so I wouldn't blame you fo not spluging on that paticula expenditue. I pesume you could seenade he with a song. Needs to be ight fancy, though. Class twenty takes odes seiously and neve shiks thei duties. You'll have to wok eal had to pesuad he out of he secet hole."
"What?"
Obet smacked him with the walking stick. "Bye, Mavin. Good luck!" He hobbled away and ducked into a bar.
"Thanks fo all you help," muttered Marvin, rubbing his shoulder. He glanced at his watch again. He had fifteen more minutes until the break was up. The Port was on the opposite end of the city. He'd need a zoomer to get there.
And a zoomer was exactly what he didn't have.
Fourteen minutes.
Marvin ran for the Stadium, wildly thinking that perhaps Cracky could give him a ride to the Port. In his frantic sprint, he completely missed the yellow and red warning tape, along with the fifteen cones and strobe lights around the open sewer hole, and fell.
"Aahhh!" He flailed in the dark, searching for something to grab hold of. The stench was overwhelming. He landed in a fast moving current of sludge and, quite probably, worse. Marvin flipped over and over in the frigid mess, struggling for the surface. Two waterfalls, an epic battle with sewer rats, and a flushing whirlpool later, the drainage system spat him out into slightly cleaner waters.
"Ugh…" Marvin shivered and wiped his face free of oily goo. A cruel-looking yellow fish with a tattoo on its forehead reading "Hook Me If You Dare" eyed him. Marvin hastily pulled himself up a ramp and collapsed on the sidewalk. A few women kicked him in horror and ran away screaming. Pink lights flickered from above, and he looked up.
The Hip Hog Saloon.
"Marvelous," muttered Marvin. "I could use a drink." He pulled his now slightly-brownish thirty three shades of pink shirt free of wrinkles and entered.
"That wasn't me," came a voice. "Did the toilet clog again, eh?"
A pretty barmaid wrinkled her nose as Marvin entered. A disgustingly disturbingly fat man sat in the boxing ring in the middle of the room, sniffing the air.
"Oh, it was you," he said, jiggling.
Marvin edged around the fat man, jumped onto a barstool, slid off, hit the floor with a splat, got up, and ordered a double Sicklian Brainblaster. He spilled the drink twice in his lap before giving up and eating some nuts instead. The shells stuck in his throat.
"Mr Krew, you're damaging my front shock absorbers," came a familiar voice.
Marvin turned around. "Destiny!" The poor zoomer was enveloped in the fat man's rolls, her back propellers barely peeking out from between his gigantic asscheeks.
"She's a darling thing," said Krew. "Much more comfortable than that blasted chair," he wiggled his butt affectionately and pointed to the corner, where an Obesity Hovercart sat dejectedly.
Destiny's equilibrium stabilizers whined and strained.
"She's mine!" Marvin ran to the boxing ring.
"Eh eh," scolded the fat man. "I found her in the Port. Abandoned objects belong to whoever finds them."
"She wasn't abandoned! She was ordered to hide!" Marvin shook one fist at him. "Give her back!"
"Or what?" Krew laughed, sending ripples, nay, tsunamis of collagen up and down the length of his body. Destiny whimpered.
"Or… or…" Marvin wracked his brain. "Or Rent-A-Zoomer will hunt you down! Destiny's rented in my name. If her fees aren't paid on time, they'll come to me, but I'll tell them that you stole her!"
Krew's face turned an angry red. "Hrm! I know well the temperaments of those damn Rent-A-Zoomer bureaucrats… lost two of my good men to their fee collectors…"
"See? So keeping her isn't worth it. Give her back. I bet you couldn't even pay her renting fees," said Marvin.
"Bet, eh?" Krew smiled. Marvin didn't like that smile. It reminded him of previous times when He Should've Thought More About What He Was Going To Say Before He Said It. "Some would call me a betting man. Why don't we have ourselves a little challenge, eh? If you can beat me in a wrestling match, you can have her." His cheeks rolled like a hurricane-beaten sea as he laughed.
The pretty barmaid gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth.
"And if I lose?" asked Marvin, as a baby ulcer opened its metaphorical eyes for the first time and began chewing its way through his stomach.
"You tell Rent-A-Zoomer you want to buy her," Krew patted Destiny's dashboard, a stalactite of drool hanging from his many chins, "finish the monthly installment fees, and hand the owner's certificate over to me."
Marvin gulped.
"And if you fail to carry through on your end of the bargain," Krew continued, "you can kiss your cute pink tulip button wearing days goodbye."
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For more information about Mar's crocodog Yarg-the-Mildewy, read "Shnorky's Story."
