"Fmecks?" Are you telling me that those little things managed to take out the MIB?" Edie said.
"No, they couldn't have. They're too small. Just being in the room with that stuff would probably be enough to kill them." Zara said. It's nasty to say the least. It's probably a good thing that the worms didn't get any of that cake. I would hate to see what it might have done to them."
"Go and tell your cousin what's going on." Aileen told Zara as she watched the Fmecks. At least they weren't making a move towards the agents yet, but she was sure that would change as soon as they were sure that the agents actually were out of the way. She knew all too well from stories that she had heard from Kay that despite the Fmecks' small size, they could be a king sized hazard. She motioned for Edie to hand over her communicator and punched in Kay's number. They couldn't just shout out a warning to the worms over the current hook-up without alerting the Fmecks, and then who knows what they might do. She just hoped that Kay had his communicator on him.
"X?" Zara called to her cousin as she went back into the hall. "Where are you?"
"Just pulling into the parking lot." X said as he slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the SUV. He could see the clerks at the front of the store cringing as he approached. Apparently an hour wasn't enough time to forget the horror of having the serve the worms.
"No, not you! You can't come in this store!" The manager said as he threw himself against the doors to try to keep X from getting in. "Isn't what those little brats of yours did earlier bad enough? Have you came back to finish off my store?" When X wouldn't back away, he grabbed a mop, and waved it at the agent as X pushed his way in. "Get out!"
"They aren't with me!" X shouted. Okay, what the worms did was bad, but really, wasn't this guy kind of taking it a bit too hard? "I have an emergency!"
"With children like that, you have an emergency all right. Two stock boys quit after they saw what those brats did to the coffee aisle. Go." The manager moaned as he slumped to the ground. "Go and demolish the rest of the store. My children don't really need to eat, and I'm sure that college education they were hoping for wasn't very important."
"At the prices that you're charging, where were you planning to send them to college, Alpha Centauri?" X said as he snagged a buggy, and then after a moment snagged a second one, scanning the signs for a moment before spotting the tea aisle and racing for it.
"No, not you again!" The stockboy said as he spotted X coming, and jumped up onto a display. "I'm not facing those monsters!"
""They aren't with me!" Just his luck that the tea was on the same aisle as the coffee. X reached out and started to jerk boxes down as fast as he could before he spotted something on a shelf. "They have ready made tea! Zara, would that work?"
"It can't hurt to get some and give it a try." Zara said. "But we've got a problem back at MIB headquarters. It looks like some Fmecks are on the loose in the building. We're trying to figure out how to warn the worms now without letting the Fmecks know they've been spotted."
"You mean the Fmecks did this? I'll get a fly swatter and smash them." X grumbled before snagging the stock boy again. "I need another cart now!" He couldn't believe this. True, his partner had claimed that the Fmecks had kidnapped her once, but he still didn't see how they could be a serious threat. He had always thought that Elle had allowed the Fmeck to take her so that she would have an excuse to get into the field.
"No, there's no way they could have done this. They're too small. The poison would have taken them out before they could have got it anywhere near a human. That doesn't mean that they're not going to take advantage of the situation."
"How in the world did they find out that the MIB was out of the way, though?" X said as the shaking clerk came back, and X dumped the rest of the jugs of tea into the new cart, then somehow managed to catch them all for the trip to frozen foods, and the orange juice. "I'm shopping as fast as I can. Just tell the worms to hold on, and I'll be right back. How hard could the Fmecks be for them to deal with? They're ten times bigger!" And maybe he ought to swing by Jeebs' shop on the way back, to arrest him for something preemptively? No, better wait until he had dosed Little Ears, though. He was sure that she wouldn't be willing to sacrifice a few fingers to keep Jeebs in line.
"Just hurry. I know they're small, but with the condition those poor humans are in, even little weapons could do a lot of damage to them." Zara warned him.
"What do you think I'm doing? Do you think I want to spend anymore time around the manager here than I have to? I think the worms gave him a breakdown. He seemed much saner this morning." X didn't even look, just pulled every jug of orange juice off the shelf until the carts were filled to overflowing, before heading for the counter. "I'll be on my way as soon as I check out. Zed's probably going to wish the poison had finished him off when he sees the bill for this."
"Okay, I'll give you the dosing instructions on your way back." Zara said as she headed into the living room again. "Aunt Zoe, what's happening with the Fmecks? X should be on his way back in a few minutes."
"They don't seem to be going after those poor humans yet, anyway." Zoe replied.
"But things would be going a lot better if the worms would pick up Kay's communicator." Aileen murmured. She cringed slightly as she got a better look at one of the Fmecks. They had their heaviest weapons with them, and she didn't want to think of the damage that a blast could do, given the humans' conditions. She hit the connect button again and prayed that this time a worm would notice.
"Zara, little problem here." X said over the communicator before his cousin could get involved in the Fmeck situation.
"What?"
"I'm halfway through checking out and the humans just ran out screaming. You know Drek?"
"The one with the hot hands? Who could forget him? Why?"
"He just knocked over a bank." X sighed as he dumped the bagged groceries in with the ones the humans hadn't gotten to yet before they fled. If they weren't brave enough to stay and check out, that had to mean he didn't have to pay.
"That's terrible. I'm sure those little humans will be very upset, but I don't think you have time to arrest him right now."
"That's not the problem." X said as he came out and started to load the grocieries as the humans ran around screaming. "He literally knocked over a bank. It's in the middle of the street. I'm going to have to find a detour to get back to headquarters."