Eleven

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs – Alexei Sayle

Tintin hid in his room for most of the day, blasting his way through a horde of darkspawn and venting his frustration on the broodmother. He never bothered to play video games anywhere other than his room any more: the Captain had an awful habit of pretending to be reading, while secretly he was watching the action on-screen. Then, during a particularly nasty battle, he'd start rooting for the other guy, and Tintin was sick of having his concentration ruined with shouts of "Go on, Ezio, fall! Fall! Yeeeeaaaaah!" or "Kill him, Loghain! Kill Alistair in the face!" He still played Grand Theft Auto in front of the Captain though, although those games quickly descended into random acts of violence, or timing each other to see how long they could keep evading the police with the maximum number of 'wanted' stars.

He'd paused the game a while ago, when the Captain had finally got through to the dreaded Henri De Villars, and tried to listen in to the conversation, but – for once – most of it had been rather civil, and the only raised voice he'd heard was the Captain losing his cool and shouting "No! You listen to me! Blistering barnacles, I know where you live, you horrible little man! Don't make me fly up there!" Then everything had gone quiet again, so Tintin had gone back to playing his game.

Eventually, the door to his room opened and the Captain came in. He lay down on the bed, his back against the headboard, and watched Tintin, who was sitting on the armchair facing the television and Playstation 3.

"Any luck?" Tintin asked cautiously.

"I don't like that man," the Captain replied. Snowy jumped up to join him, snuffling at his hands until the Captain had to spread them wide to show the dog that he hadn't come baring treats.

Tintin shrugged. "He's not so bad." He was at a critical point in the game now. He was playing on nightmare difficulty, and had used his last mana potion to resurrect Sten. The broodmother was almost dead though, and Sten was a tank of a character.

"He's a swine," the Captain said. "Happily, I was able to persuade him to my point of view. He's faxing some documents over to Flipke. Once they're signed, all of your early work belongs to you. And that includes most of the good stuff you wrote under Jack Keller's name."

Jack Keller had been another journalist at The Reporter. Once, he'd been a good reporter, and had worked for The Chicago Tribune, but when he'd arrived in Europe he'd been burnt out, and by the time Tintin had known him he'd been a wreck of a man who spent his days drinking vodka and pulling in a hefty salary from The Daily Reporter by getting Tintin to write the articles and submitting them under his own name, which carried more weight than an unknown, cub reporter.

"Really?" Tintin looked around in surprise. He'd expected the Captain to threaten his way to getting access to every article written under the Tintin pseudonym, but not anything he'd written for Jack. The copyright for those articles should rest squarely in Jack's name.

"Go on, broodmother! Kill him! Finish him!"

Tintin turned back in time to see Sten wandering too close to the broodmother. She reached out one tentacle and picked him up, and proceeded to smash him against the ground. "Damn you!" he screamed. "Stop putting your bow away!"

"Sweep the leg! Sweep the leg! Yeeeeaaaah!" The broodmother finished with Sten and tossed him easily at Alistair, who went down under the weight of the dead body. Seconds later, a swarm of shrieks appeared and quickly wiped out the rest of the adventuring party and Tintin tossed the controller away in disgust. "Good fun!" the Captain chortled happily.

"Ugh, frustrating game. I'm bored now. I think I'll head into the village for a while."

"Need a lift?" the Captain asked.

"Nah. I'll take my bike. It's only the village."

"I really don't like that bike. It's dangerous."

"No it's not: it's a heap of metal."

"It's a heap of metal that goes very fast."

"Ah, but it's me that makes it go fast," Tintin said quickly, grinning up at the Captain. "Don't worry: I'll stick to the speed limit."

"You should get a car. Let me buy you a car."

"No." Tintin stood up and stretched before pulling on his battered, brown leather jacket. "I like my bike."

"You must be the only teenager in the world that won't let someone buy them a car. How did I end up with you? Blistering barnacles, I must have done something terrible in a past life."

"I'll be back in about an hour."

"Can I play Grand Theft Auto?" the Captain asked hopefully.

"Knock yourself out," Tintin replied. "Keep Snowy here, though. I'll walk him when I get back."

xxx

It was remarkable how such a simple invention could bring so much joy to an old man. The Captain rubbed his hands with glee as he waited for the game to load up. He'd carried the PS3 downstairs, to the front sitting room – he preferred to sit in here: the couch was sinfully comfortable – and set it up. Calculus was in the corner, reading a book and talking his usual crap, but he was easy to tune out as the game started and Niko Bellic began his rampage.

It was therapeutic, he thought: running around Liberty City and punching hobos in the face with their own bottles of booze. Lucky bunch of coelocanths. He shot a glare at Calculus. "How are you coming with that cure?" he asked.

"Oh, about half past four," Calculus replied without looking up. "Although I think I should take it with my milk of magnesium."

"Good for you," the Captain muttered. He narrowed his eyes and promptly found, in the game, a small man with a black goatee, and shot him in the groin. "Ha ha! Take that!" A quick car-chase later found him over on the other side of the city, tossing Molotov cocktails around a park with reckless abandon. He'd just lined up a good one when the bottle exploded in his hand and killed him. He groaned and watched as the screen faded to black and Niko woke up in the hospital.

A bang made him jump. Was that… Was that a gunshot? He paused the game and muted the television. After a few seconds, he moved to the window and opened it, leaning out into the cool breeze of the summer evening.

Bang!

There! Again! It was a gunshot, he was sure of it.

"Gunfire!" he said. "Tintin!"

"What?" Calculus asked.

Haddock tossed the controller on to the couch and grabbed his jacket. "Gunfire!" he shouted. "Gunfire!"

"A fire?" Calculus sat up, worried. "Where?" But Haddock was gone. He tore from the house and dove into his car, gunning the engine. "If they've hurt him," he muttered, "I swear I'll… I'll go Niko Bellic on them!"

He shot down the road, heading towards the village and scanning the grassy verges. It was all country here, and most of the land on either side of the road sat as meadows. Copses of trees dotted the verges, providing leafy shade to the walkers and hikers that seemed to swarm the area during good weather. He turned a sharp corner – the Stop sign had been knocked down a few months ago, and the council still hadn't replaced it: it would cause a lot of accidents come winter – and hissed as his wheels screeched with the pressure. Ahead of him, a large black Mercedes had pulled in to the side of the road. Two men were searching along the verge carefully. One looked behind him, saw the Captain's car and called a warning to his companion. They leaped back in to the Merc and shot off.

The Captain put his foot down, and prepared to follow the strange car, when a red glint under a large birch tree caused him to slam on the brakes. He skidded to a halt, his hands gripping the steering wheel, and looked again.

It was Tintin's bike.

He swore and jumped out, almost falling over his seatbelt in his haste, and ran to the wreck of the bike.

It was mangled. Bullet holes riddled the back and one side of the bike, and the back wheel was shredded. It had come off the road – as evidenced by the skid-mark that marred the old tarmac – and hit the birch. "Oh Jesus," he said quietly, his stomach dropping suddenly. Turning back to the road, he faced the way the Merc had gone. "Road-hogs!" he roared. "Bashi-bazouks! Phylloxera!" But they were long-gone, and his insults meant little.

He searched the verge himself, drawing closer to a small copse of trees. "Tintin!" he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Tintin! Where are you?"

"Captain?" a cautious voice called. "Is that you?"

The Captain stopped and looked around. It was late in the evening by now, and the day had taken on a hazy, almost dream-like quality. "Tintin?" he asked. "Are you… Are you a ghost?"

"What?"

The Captain looked up. Sitting on a high branch of a pollard willow, Tintin was starting to laugh. "No! I'm not a ghost!" he said. "I just hid up here!"

The Captain's heart started again, and he sagged against the trunk. "Thank God for that," he said, his voice heavy with relief. "I thought I'd gone mad with grief or something. Are you all right?"

Tintin carefully clambered down. "I'm fine," he said, when he was back on solid ground. "I thought I was done for when they opened fire. Where's my bike?"

The Captain laid his hand awkwardly on Tintin's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said. "It didn't make it."

"No!" Tintin gasped and covered his mouth with his hands. "You're wrong: we can fix her."

"I'm sorry, but it looks like you'll need a new one. I'm very, very sorry."

Tintin cried out when he saw the wreck of the bike. "Svetlana!" he said mournfully. "Oh, Svetlana! What am I going to do without you? We've been through so much together!"

"It's always hard when your bike dies," the Captain consoled. "Come on: help me get her into the boot and we'll bring her home."

"Can I get a Lexus?" Tintin asked suddenly.

"Sure. Whatever."

They manhandled the corpse of Svetlana the motorbike into the expansive boot. One of her wheels stuck out, while her handlebars and the front wheel were twisted, giving the impression she was staring up at the late evening sky, watching the sunset-red bleed slowly through the darkening blue. Tintin gave her a fond pat on her fairing. "Poor Svetlana," he said. "She was a good bike."

"Yeah, sure," said the Captain.

They couldn't shut the boot – Svetlana was too big for that – so they began to drive slowly back towards the Hall. About half-way there, just before the blind corner, a fire-engine screamed by, sirens blaring. Tintin frowned. "That's headed for our place, isn't it?" he asked.

The Captain swore loudly. "Oh, come on!" he cried. "Give me a break!" He put his foot down and they sped home. As they reached the gates, the Captain slowed down marginally and executed a terrifying hand-break turn. For a moment – a moment that slowed down and inspired terror – Tintin was within high-fiving distance of the tall pillars of the Hall's gates. Then the moment passed and they tore along the drive, spraying gravel as they came to a stop just behind the fire-engine.

"What is it?" the Captain shouted as he jumped out of the car. "Where's the fire?"

"Where's the fire?" Calculus asked as he hurried down the steps where he'd been holding court with the terse crew of the fire-engine. "Where is it?"

"What fire?" the Captain asked. "Why's there a fire brigade here?"

"No, it's the fire brigade. You said there was a fire?" Calculus gripped the Captain's arm urgently. "Tell me the truth: is it my lab?"

"No, I said there was gunfire," the Captain said. "Gunfire!" He turned to the unimpressed crew and grinned apologetically. "Sorry, false alarm."

"You do know there's a call-out charge, sir?"

"I'll get my cheque book," the Captain replied, glaring daggers at Calculus.

xxx

An hour later Tintin was packing up the Playstation. The Captain was sitting on the couch, his pipe perched in his mouth, while Calculus attempted to join the conversation. "It ends," the Captain promised. "It ends now. I've had enough, Tintin."

"I know," Tintin replied. He wrapped the wires around the game console and rested back on his haunches. "Somehow, this all revolves around Endaddine Akass. He planted his goons – the same two goons that tried to shoot me and run me off the road today – in an apartment over the gallery, and hooked them into the CCTV. Why, though? To spy on Fourcart? What has Fourcart to do with anything?"

"I swear you said there was a fire," Calculus said. He tapped one finger against the coffee table. "You said it distinctly: I heard it with my own ears."

"I must find out more about him," Tintin said softly. "I've tried the usual avenues: Google gave me nothing, and his Wikipedia page was a stub… Nobody remembers him before two years ago."

"Then we go directly to him," the Captain said firmly. "We go to him and get our answers. Where do we find the over-dressed windbag?"

"I assure you," Calculus continued, "that the way you ran out of here led credence to your claim of there being a fire. That is the only reason I called the fire brigade out. I wouldn't have done it, otherwise: they're a very busy organization and this sort of thing can be very dangerous. What if there was a real emergency somewhere else? Captain, you must be more careful."

"Oh, shut up you deaf old cyclotron! Where's my cure, eh? I've been sober for weeks. Months even."

"A cup of tea would be lovely, Captain, thank you. But that doesn't mean I'm letting you off the hook. You made me look very foolish."

"Great snakes!" Tintin wobbled with revelation, and almost lost his balance and toppled over. "I've got it!"

"Got what?" the Captain asked.

"I know where Akass is! Castafiore said she was going to sped some time with him, on Ischia."

"Yes, I hear she is," said Calculus. They glanced at him, mystified, then ignored him.

"Where's Ischia?" the Captain asked, baffled.

"Eh, Naples?"

"You want to fly to Naples."

"Yes!"

"When?"

Tintin shrugged. "Now? They say there's no time like the present."

The Captain rolled his eyes. "I'll start packing, you book the tickets."

"I'm already on it," Tintin replied as he whipped his mobile phone out.

Author's notes:

Ezio is from Assassins Creed 2 and AC: Brotherhood, at time of print.

The darkspawn, the broodmother, Loghain, Alistair and Sten are from Draogn Age: Origins, which is the game Tintin is playing on the PS3 (fun fact: trying to kill the broodmother on nightmare mode on a PS3 is frikkin' hard: after every new wave of 'spawn that teleport in, you have to individually go through the characters, switching from melee weapons to range, because the broodmother's tentacles hurt. Inevitably, during the few seconds it takes to pause, someone always wanders over to the broodmother with their sword, and gets smashed to pieces.)

Niko Bellic is from Grand Theft Auto 4. For those that think Tintin wouldn't have the personality to go on a mindless rampage through a computer game city, I dare you to work in a high-stress job and resist the urge to take it out on pixels. :(