After blindly guessing Engineer's BankAmericard PIN number - 1929, a pretty stupid PIN for a genius to choose - Scout purchased all the books and even a little one of those shiny silvery chocolate spheres beside the cash register. They were this tiny mound of chocolate that were a forbidden fruit to all those who lacked Rockefeller's income. His Ma never let him and his brothers have any because they were much too expensive for their bite-size, no matter how much Scout pulled on her skirt and begged.

"Okay, so now we got all dem stupid books and all dat, but how're I gonna get Engy outta dat bucket?" Scout asked the librarian lady. He crinkled the chocolate open and popped the dollar-worth niblet into his mouth. He tossed the wrapper at the nearby trash-can and arched his brows in surprise; "Mm! Holy fuck dis is uh-maaaazin'!"

She blinked.

Scout suddenly felt guilty, which is depressing because his guilt only seems to direct itself at pretty young ladies and not unconscious mentally-scarred teammates. "Wait, am I makin' ya jealous?" He pouted exaggeratedly. "Dude, I am so fuckin' sorry. I'll buy you one. You want one? I'll buy it. Whaddaya like..." Scout's hands shuffled through the selections on the chocolate shelf. "...cherry, caca'nut, mint, dark choc'late, whatever dis says, white choc'late..."

"No, thank you," she said slowly. "I don't eat chocolate."

"Oh, so it's meeee yer jealous of!" He laughed. "Haw haw haw, y'know, I wouldn't mind eatin' you up too. Man, you are a fiery one, Alice."

There is no adequate response to that.

Scout reached to snatch a milk chocolate and threw it on the counter. "I want anudda one."

There went another dollar from Engineer's monthly income.

After finishing the chocolate, Scout crumpled the wrapper up and threw it at the faraway trash can, only to miss.

"Yeah, so, anyway, I wanna go home already," Scout continued, bits of chocolatey spit flying from his chocolatey lips. "I guess I'll just wait here 'til he wakes up. Can I, like, hitch a chair at your desk?" He grinned, exposing chocolatey teeth under chocolatey gums.

"I'd truly prefer it if you don't," she finally said.

"Okay, I'll just stand den." Scout shrugged.

There was a tranquil pause; 5 minutes of solemn staples and Scout spacing out while staring at bookshelves.

"I AM GONNA READ DA BOOK DAT I BOUGHT ABOUT WORLD RECORDS NOW!" he announced proudly.

Everyone hissed. Hell, the walls hissed.

Scout made his way across the bookstore and plunked his butt down beside the New Reads bucket to wait for his buddy to regain consciousness.

"Hcccch...PFTOO!"

That was the first thing Engineer heard as his eyelids finally cracked open. He had a blazing headache and his back throbbed because it was currently laying against a jagged mound of pointy angles. He could hardly see anything because the stars he saw before his eyes sort of blocked everything else out.

"Who...what...?"

"Hcccccccch...PFTOO!"

Had it all been a dream? "Scout? That you?"

Maybe it all was a dream. Maybe he was back at the base, laying in some crate of discarded scrap metal, and it was time for a good old trip to the bookstore with Spy and Medic just like last week -

Scout's voice boomed throughout everything. "Aw, FINALLY, Mistah Sleepyhead! Do ya know how long I even waited fer you, even? Like, ten thousan' goddamn hours. What if we get back to da base and no one even remembers us and all? Huh? We'd be kicked outta da team, dat's what. And den ya gonna cost me my job, and your job, and it's all 'cause yer a fagbag and ya started gigglin' fer no reason in a bucket. Dat's why. Now get outta dere so we can go home and I can play kickball wit Pyro - if Pyro still remembahs me and didn't get Asperger's or whatevah it's called. Amnesia, yeah, dat's it."

(In reality, three minutes passed.)

Engineer was wincing in severe pain, because such droning high-volume shouldn't be applied vigorously to eardrums after a massive concussion.

"Okay, on three, ya better get out or else Imma, like, sue you. Yeah, speakin' a money..." He grinned apologetically. "...yeah, I sorta spent like 10 bucks from yer credit card on choc'late. I'll pay ya back, I swear it."

"I'll get out," groaned Engineer. He blindly threw a hand up and out of the bucket. "Help me up, son."

"Help yerself, 'cause I'm busy tryin' ta set a record by spittin' furtherest in da entire world. So don't break my concentratin', okay?" He took a deep breath and then hacked; "Hhhhhcccccccch...PFTOO!" His spittle hit the marble with a smack, right beside his toes. "Aww, dat ain't even close t'a hundred feet! No fair."

With every move he made, his temples throbbed in a new and awesome method of pain. One cannot understand how it is possible that Engineer didn't even let out the slightest squeak.

He attempted to stand and...

...discovered the bucket was on wheels.

"WOAH!" yelped Engineer as the bucket scooted up dangerously. "Scout! Scout, hold the bucket, Scout!"

But Scout was in his own world; the record-breaking spittle-distance world. "Hccccccccccccch!" hacked Scout, throwing his head back all the way as if it made any difference to his terrible spitting skills.

Alas, Engineer's boots don't make for the best bucket navigation device. His arms spun on their hinges like hummingbird wings. He felt a sudden lurch forward. "SCOUT! IT'S FALLIN'!"

Scout wasn't done. "HCCCCCCCCH!"

"AAAAAUUUUGGGH!" With a crash, the floor came up to meet the bucket and a tsunami of hardcovers sprinkled all over Engineer like sharp, prodding snowflakes.

"PFFFTOOO!"

Engineer felt a strange warmness trickle down the side of his neck.

"Holy fuck! Engy, is dat...AW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW! OH MAN! OH MAN! I JUST SPIT ON YA!" Scout doubled over and snorted through the entire bookstore. "HAW HAW HAW HAW!"

By then the bookstore was empty and it was sure to lose any potential customers for the next decade.

So Scout's just ruined two lives and killed a bookstore's reputation. Actually, he ruined Engineer's life impressively well too. Count that as three.

They were strolling down the road with Scout occupying the entire sidewalk and Engineer miserably floating behind him in a cloud of sorrow. The wind had already risen so it wasn't as hot as before. In fact, the breeze helped dry Engineer's juicy wet-armpit-stains. Sorry if that wording made you lose your appetite.

But Scout didn't lose his as he continued with his selfish candy ingestion time. He plucked another chocolate from his cupped hand. "How're we gettin' home, genius?" asked Scout as he smackily chewed away on his next chocolate.

"Let's not take the bus," suggested Engineer.

Scout licked the chocolate off his fingers in a very delicate fashion. "So..." He gulped. "...den what?"

Engineer watched him enjoy the chocolatey treats.

"Ah want one," Engineer said quietly.

Scout grinned and dropped the five chocolates into his front pocket. "Called it!"

"Ya can't just 'call it', son!" snapped Engineer, who felt that he deserved at least one chocolate. "Hell, ya ruined my day." He began counting Scout's sins on his fingers; "Oh, and Ah payed for 'em! And you knocked me out with Encyclopedia Britannica so you could steal my credit card ta buy yerself a useless book of records." He was up to finger three. "And Ah didn't even invite you on this trip and you basically ruined the only wonderful day I had off this week." He crossed his arms oh-so-assertively. "Gimme a goddamn chocolate."

"Boo-hoo on yer prickly pickle pear ass," snubbed Scout with nose in the air. "I already licked 'em. All of them. I'm serious."

"Yer bluffin'!" called Engineer who was beginning to become as stubborn as Scout.

Engineer, however, did not know the Ten Commandments of What Makes Someone a Faggot because he didn't have a big brother named Timothy who would always list those sorts of things. Scout recalled the exact wording and then responded, "Commandment 3. Only a faggot wanna eat somethin' another dude licked. In other words, yer a big fat flit-in-a-bag, that's what y'are."

But no one cares how well Scout knows his Fag Commandments. Especially not Engineer, who ignored him to begin thinking about how they were going to get home.

Because there was no use of talking, Engineer decided to think his way through things as they continued walking down the avenue.

That there's a payphone, ain't it?, Engineer thought, looking down the street and spotting a red telephone booth. And ya put nickels in a booth. So them things're activated by the weight of a nickel as it's inserted, right? The coin activates a sort a' pulse, and that pulse starts the dial tone of the phone. Hmm... He raised a glove to nibble on its index finger's tip as he began a little mental machinery. If Ah construct a tiny scrap of metal with an equal weight and radius of a nickel, Ah can rig the booth to make it perform a call fer me...

His eyes grew wide in realization.

Oh, gosh, am Ah sorry, Jesus. Oh, oh gosh, Ah'm a sinner...well...Ah know Ah owe ya one, but Ah don't got a nickel and Ah need a way ta get home. Fergive me! Fergive me, would ya? Ah promise, Ah promise, Ah promise Ah'll be extra nice this week...

"HEY!" shouted Scout suddenly, knocking Engineer out of his thoughts-and-apologetic-prayer.

Engineer flew back to earth with a shudder. "What? What?"

"MY HAT!" Scout belted a hand forward to point at his hat drifting off in the wind. "DA GODDAMN WIND FUCKIN' STOLE MY FUCKIN' HAT!"

He rolled his eyes. "Scout, you have more hats at home. Life goes on."

"GET IT!" Scout looked furious. He jabbed the finger forward and pointed at the black baseball cap floating through distant sky like a bird. "ENGINEER! GET MY HAT!"

Engineer shook his head as he looked at the tiny dot undoubtedly sailing through the air at the rate of a turret's fire. "Listen, Scout, that hat's much too far to chase. We're not going to go after it. No deal." Looks like life provided him with some assertiveness training as well.

"But..." Scout's shoulders sagged and his lips quivered like a child's. "B-but...but dat was my lucky hat my brudda Carl gave me and all..."

"You have more brothers at home, too." Engineer hurriedly patted him on the back. "Okay, so, anyway, about gettin' home...we're gonna need to find a piece of scrap metal, a chisel, and a - "

"I ain't movin'," Scout growled.

Engineer blinked. "What?"

"I ain't movin'," he repeated, looking completely cross. "I ain't movin' until I get my lucky hat back."

"Okay, fine." Engineer huffed at him and started down the street. "Have it yer way, pal. Ah can finally, FINALLY git rid a' you, and my sweet an' tender heart won't even feel bad none about it." He looked up at the sky with a smile of relief. "Oh, Lord, thank you yet again..."

Scout couldn't look at Engineer. He was trying very, very hard to look angry.

But, of course, nothing could bother Engineer in his technical trance. By the time Scout had turned back around, he'd wandered off down the road, searching in his pocket for a piece of scrap metal and a chisel.