New chapter! This one contains swearing, violence and scary women in fuzzy pink dressing gowns.
A special thanks has to go to CraztIndigoChild who beta edited this for me :3
All typos are to be blamed on my boyfriend who's sitting next to me and messing with my laptop in order to get my attention.
As it turned out Vicky didn't want to talk me or Misto about her date; she simply said it was nice and now she was tired and would like to go to bed. And so, Misto and I were left standing by ourselves outside the girls' room. As we walked down the hallway to our respective rooms I turned to look at Misto with a tired grin.
"What's the bet she's not texting her friends right now about the juicy details she doesn't want us to know about?"
The corner's of Misto's mouth twitched upwards but he managed to keep a straight face.
"About a hundred to one would be my guess."
"Psssht, give my daughter some credit! I'd say a thousand to one." I would've liked to stay and talk with the tux some more, but I wasn't too sure if I'd be able to not collapse on the floor and start snoring in the process. It was well past any conceivable bedtime when I'd arrived back home and, in my state of barely conscious, even taking a shower would be risky.
Despite the thick duvet cover I had, kicking off my shoes and crawling into bed was still freezing. Tomorrow was definitely going to be a cold-weather-clothing day, but with any luck I could avoid wearing the fluorescent yellow parka that Tugger had given me for my birthday last year. How tasteless can a fashion icon get? I mean come on, yellow...
I shivered again even as my natural body heat finally started to warm up the bed. Automatically I rolled over to the side of the bed where my spouse slept to seek the warmth of another and the familiar feel of a body against my own. It was already too late when I remembered I was alone and I fell off the bed, only just saving myself from a painful landing by throwing my arm out in front of me and grabbing onto the bedside table. Sighing, I wriggled back into bed and buried my face in a pillow. Don't get me wrong, most of the time I love having a double bed all to myself; the extra space is wonderful and it means I never get over heated in summertime, not to mention the epic mattress forts that are constructed when my chicks want to play nerd wars. But sometimes, when it's just me it gets so...so... never mind.
The next morning I woke up before anyone else in the house, even (miracle of miracles) before Jemima. I dressed as quietly as I could and tiptoed down the corridor without turning on any of the lights. If any of the kids, Skimble, Misto, or Heavyside forbid Jenny found out what I was up to I would have a hard time explaining myself. Just as I was pulling on my shoes I heard the sound of a bed groaning upstairs and footsteps walking towards the upstairs bathroom
'Oh shit, if I'm caught...'
I shoved my feet into my shoes without bothering about the laces and unlocked the front door as quietly as I could. Meanwhile, the foot steps had left the bathroom; if they came downstairs I was deader than a dodo on dopamine. Stepping outside and heading towards the car I allowed myself a small sigh of relief until...
"And where do you think you're going this early in the morning, Mistoffelees?"
I flinched slightly and turned around guiltily to face my doom when I realized the name the voice had used wasn't mine.
'Huh?'
Stepping back inside, I found Jenny dressed for battle in an overly fuzzy pink dressing gown with matching curlers in her head fur towering over a visibly quaking Mistoffelees, who was standing with a pair of shoes in his hand. He had obviously been attempting to do exactly what I'd been doing: escaping the house before breakfast. A sin which, in Jenny's books, is completely, utterly, and inexcusably unforgivable. According to her going without breakfast would cause you to pass out by tea time, loose twenty points off your IQ, and compel you to eat a dozen supersize yorkie bars before lunch. It didn't matter how adorable Misto was, he was in for it.
"I...I was...I just...I" Misto was fast loosing his comprehension abilities, making whatever excuse he'd eventually come up with even less plausible. And Jenny certainly wasn't helping matters. My Aunt knew full-well the power of her scare outfit and was using it to her full advantage; down to the pink slippers garnished with fluffy Pom-pons.
"Well... I'm waiting" said Jenny, tapping her foot expectantly.
"I..."
"He's with me Jenny," I said, stepping inside and directing her gaze at me instead of the tux who was staring at me with his mouth open. "Misto and I... decided to grab breakfast together this morning at Warren's Waffle House." In my experience as an adolescent and then a policeman, I'd come to know that a good lie contains one grain of truth, one vague revelation, and one detailed revelation. That ratio had gotten me out of trouble with crime lords, kidnappers, and school masters, but only had a partial success rate with my female relatives. "We're leaving early because we wanted to jump the traffic jam and, err, and Misto has a test to do this morning."
"I have to be there by eight forty-five for a nine o'clock start," Misto jumped into the conversation unexpectedly.
'Bravo Misto!' I cheered silently as Jenny's entire posture became less threatening. Now instead of looking downright scary, my Aunt's expression became scarily pleased. 'What on earth?'
"Well have a good time you two, drive carefully, Munkus," she told me as she stuffed Misto into his shoes and practically threw us out the door. "And make sure that you get some vitamins inside you as well as carbohydrates," was her parting farewell before she winked broadly at the pair of us and briskly clipped the door shut. I gawped after her for a few moments before turning to Misto.
"Do you have any idea what she meant by that wink?" I asked him.
Misto looked at the ground. "I...umm, I have no idea" he shuffled his paws a little. "How did you know I had a test to do this morning?"
"Lucky guess," I told him. "And you do seem to have a lot of assessments at the moment."
"You're telling me," he said dryly.
"So, why are you leaving now if you don't have to be there till eight forty-five?"
"Well, I actually have to be there at seven thirty, but Jenny didn't need to know that."
I chuckled at the tom's display of ingenious. "Do you want me to give you a lift? We could pick up breakfast on the way and you'll still be early for your class."
He looked at me uncertainly. "Won't I be inconveniencing you?"
"Just a little," I told him. "I'll expect you to get top marks for my trouble."
Misto actually laughed at that, causing a grin to spread across my own face. "I'll do my best not to disappoint you."
"I'm sure you won't Misto. Now, let's scram before Jenny changes her mind." Biting back a laugh, Misto followed me into the car and we fled the premises in search of caffeine and empty calories; as long as we cleaned the car out before coming back home, Jenny would be none the wiser.
Cori was pissed when I showed up at the yard a whole twenty minutes after our planned meeting time.
"Where the hell were you?" he asked as I headed towards my desk and started sifting through the mail that had been deposited there by some unknown rookie stuck with postie duty.
"Sorry I'm late, I was dropping Misto off at campus."
"So your kids' nursery-maid asks you to drive him across the city and you just say 'alright darling', do you?"
"I was the one who suggested it actually, and even then it took some persuasion before he'd say yes. And he's not a nursery-maid," I added belatedly.
"Wait... So you offered him the lift?"
"Yes."
"Gotcha," said Cori, pulling his mobile out of his jean's pocket. "So are you going to go to the Christmas party Bustopher's got going for us?" he asked, glancing towards the envelope I held containing the invitation to said party; the second one I'd received so far.
"I'd sooner become Ling's assistant," I affirmed as I tossed the envelope into the bin. Cori nodded and finished off his text before putting his phone back in his pocket. "Ready to head off?" I asked once I'd finished sorting through my mail.
Cori's grin was just short of being manic. "Let's go break some stuff!"
The whole reason for Cori and I arriving at the Satan's Saints clubhouse in the early morning was simple: no one was likely to be there at that time. And, sure enough, when we pulled the car over and stepped out onto the footpath the street was deserted.
"We're using the front door? I thought that the back door was safer." I glanced over at Cori who was swaggering down the sidewalk with a genuine cocky street-kid attitude. The pair of us were dressed in overly baggy jeans, hoodies, and converse to keep up the appearance of harmless ragamuffins. But whilst I looked like a Tom who had worn his son's clothing to a fancy dress party; Cori looked so authentically chav that I had to keep on reminding myself that the Tom beside me was my friend and not a townie I'd have to arrest within the next five minutes for smashing a phone box.
"Front and back entrances are reversed in the underworld," answered Cori. "Did you bring the lock gun?"
Whilst Cori wrestled with and swore at the lock on the door, I concentrated on taking photos and a video of the scene for future reference with a phone camera. Then pulled out from my backpack a pair of ski masks, gloves, and a change of shoes that would help prevent identification if by chance we were caught on security camera. Once Cori had the door open we donned the gear and stepped inside the clubhouse.
I remembered the first room easily enough, it had been where we'd arrested Fat Al's gang, but once we walked through the second set of doors Cori and I began to move a bit more cautiously. We'd managed to learn the general layout of the building by closely studying the building's original floor plans as well as the few hidden cameras Scotland yard had managed to place here and there. But nothing could dissipate the ingrained feeling of unfamiliarity that lurked in the back of my mind as we made our way down the main corridor and crept up the clubhouse's dark and daunting staircase.
"Check this out!" Cori stage whispered as he stepped through the first likely-looking door. I followed him through and found myself in was appeared to be a sort of rumpus room. Crime was not supposed to pay, but Fat Al and his minions seemed to have done well enough. Not only did they have the traditional vending machine, pool table, and microwave for recreational use; they also possessed a two meter long plasma tv, a marbled bar area, and a sound system that would put a heavy metal band to shame. The finishing touch though was the three-quarter sized bronze statue of Fat Al himself, sitting astride a Harly Davidson looking like an English lord upon a stallion, and with a girth to match.
"Anything useful in here?" Cori asked turning to face me.
"Maybe..." I spent a good half an hour carefully cutting up the couches with my pocket knife, emptying the bottles in the bar, and even drilling a hole the statue for anything that might indicate illegal dealing. But nothing distinctive came up. "No. I can't see anything here."
"So can I?"
"Yes, Cori, you can mess up this room. But be careful."
Cori rolled his eyes. "Munkus, if you want me trash this place to disguise the fact that you've been poking around, then at least let me do the job properly." He didn't even wait for my reply but proceeded to tip over the chairs, smash the glasses, and douse the entire room with a liberal amount of silly string. Once he'd finished up by drawing a goatee and a monobrow on the statue's face the room no longer looked like it had been searched through thoroughly and carefully, but bombarded by a group of teenagers with a malicious party streak. That was the effect we were aiming for.
"You enjoy this way too much," I told Cori as he all but bounced out of the third room I had searched through and he had wrecked havoc in.
"You're clearly not enjoying this at all," he answered back. "Haven't you found anything useful?"
"Nothing. What we need to find is some sort of office with business records in it, or a storage area with Fat Al's illegal goods, that would be useful. I'm afraid that a games room with a playstation just doesn't cop it."
"Point, maybe if we tried the basement instead..."
"Well, well, well, look what the cat washed in," a voice called out mockingly behind us. By the time I'd spun round to see who the voice belonged to Coricopat was already attacking the nearest of the intruders.
"Cori wait!" I yelled, but it was too late; Cori had already pinned the first attacker down to the ground and would have moved on to the second if he hadn't had the presence of mind to draw his gun out and press it against my friend's temple.
"You should listen to your mate here more often," the Tom sneered at Cori. "We might've let you off lightly then."
"You put that gun away and I'll show you 'letting off lightly', fag-face," snarled Cori which caused the Tom growl and kick him soundly under the chin. Cori's head snapped back and he hit the wall with enough force to leave him temporarily dazed.
I spoke quickly before the henchcats could do the same to me. "We're not looking for trouble here, guys; give us half a minute and we'll be out of your fur."
"Oi, you're not the one givin' orders 'round here, punk," the Tom that Cori had knocked down earlier growled as he picked himself up. "You and your friend are trespassin' and you'll have to answer to the boss when he gets back. I'm sure you know who I'm talkin' about." He shot me a nasty grin. "And you'll be lucky if you have half you teeth in your head when he finds out what you've done to his statue."
'Oh shit. If Fat Al sees and recognizes us we're done for and dusted!'
Ohh cliffy much? And don't argue, I know you love it :P
R & R if you feel so disposed