Captain, Limonade, and Phil were at the dentist's looking to rent a border collie for the weekend, and the only one available—a computer engineer named Concave Dave—was priced well out of their range, but, having emerged victorious from the... well, whatever it was that was chasing them before, between then and now they probably emerged victorious from at least one thing, and, in so doing, they received a quest reward amounting to nearly half a cent—which buys you a lot of aglets in these parts, believe me—and so, their budgetary woes solved, they splurged and exhausted their fundage in hiring the services of Concave Dave, who immediately stole their belts and went to the planetarium.

“Find me 'neath the dome of Heaven,” laughed Concave Dave as he fled on a feral gazebo, disappearing from sight and the narrative almost as quickly as he'd entered them.

The fellas were aghast, angular, and not given to deceit. Captain, holstering his Bible and putting on a new ascot, said, “This sounds like a job for Ella Barsport.”

“Ella Barsport died in 1985,” said Phil.

“Oh,” said Captain. “Then I guess we have to do it.” He put on a still newer ascot.

Captain led the charge, running across the street without looking both ways, and Limonade brought up the rear. Phil missed his cue to form the middle, owing to a scheduling error, and had to go work at the bank for three months before he'd be allowed to own an ID, leaving Captain and Limonade alone, except for each other, which made for the very antithesis of aloneship. They huddled together for warmth under a Volkswagen.

“Unmanned already!” said Captain. “Truly, this battle has gone upended, and hastefully!”

“Hastefully,” said Limonade, “but tastefully. Now—look over there. You seeing what I'm seeing?”

Limonade pointed toward a manhole cover, which stood in a rack waiting for sale, aside a fresh bowling ball and a napkin. Captain could put two and two together—anyone could, but could he afford it? No—Concave Dave cost them all their money. I just got through explaining that, and I don't want to have to repeat myself. —nah, just kidding, I love that. So, what good could a manhole do?

“So,” said Captain, “what good could a manhole do?”

“Manhole cover,” said Limonade, keen to see the original artist credited. Even newspapers and zebloos—no offense, but that's a combination of a zebra and an igloo—make that mistake sometimes.

“Just the cover?” said Captain. “Well, that can only mean—”

It could only mean that Tito McGuava was unretiring and getting back into the cockfighting game, and Captain knew that—everyone knew that. They “knew” that. But knowledge is sneaky. Many people know many things which are false, and often there's much and more lying beneath the surface. Get it? Beneath the surface.

“Of course,” said Limonade, “I refer to the tubas.”

“Of course,” gasped Captain, reluctantly unseeing that coming.

Now the corps of tubas rounded the corner, each spewing sparks from its water key, notwithstanding the government's regulation about pie, and they got into formation, and each said their name in turn. They were all named Egcuardo Bon Pizza, for reasons better left unearthed by chauvinist trapeze artisans whose lives spanned centuries, and it took forty-five years for them all to say their names, since there were so many of them—nearly six. And after they had announced their presence, before the youngest carpenter in the municipality could retire, they began—well, bury the children, for they began—dancing.

Now, dancing is obviously illegal in Paltropisburg—we've covered that—and it's illegal here, too, since it was a place that was technically part of Paltropisburg, though only the stickliest of sticklers would press a charge—and so they did. The police were quick to take action, and drove up and down the streets in steamrollers, barricading themselves into the cockpits, arms and armor at the ready and waiting, champing at the bit for the pending confrontation.

Phil finished his stint at the bank and came and joined Captain and Limonade under the Volkswagen, which had aged terribly, but a lifetime of bittersweet heartbreak does that to a person. Supposedly.

“Golden years indeed,” muttered the Volkswagen, and it death rattled and died, and fell down on top of Captain, Limonade, and Phil, and pinned them in place.

Just then, the police engaged with the tubas, and a great bloody battle took place, but Captain, Phil, and Limonade were shielded by the Volkswagen's dead corpse, and so were protected from the flames and lightning bolts, and were unaffected by the three earthquakes, five tornadoes, and seven tsunamis that followed. And then it was winter and everything froze over, so the police went to the daycare and burned it down while trying to use the restroom. The tubas escaped.

“Confound it!” said Captain. “Of no advantage to us! Say, Volkswagen, get yourself to a different zone!”

“I can't,” said the Volkswagen, “I'm dead.”

“You're more than that,” said Limonade. “You're a nuisance and a thief, both.”

“So,” said Phil, “I got my paycheck from the bank. You guys want to go to the casino and double it?”

“There's no higher number,” said Limonade. “Let's see it happen.”

“I'm in,” said the Volkswagen.

Captain rolled his eyes, but he knew the craps dealer wouldn't go for it. After gazing 'pon the police doing their duty for a mere dance—hardly sinful from where Captain took his birth—he could be sure that the gamblarium would expect the engagement of the discipline of the rule book at all times. Clearly, the real rule was law here in Dot-Speck-Water-Trail.

“Did you know,” said Famous Cram, “that there's a word for the way it smells after it rains?”

There was another explosion, but the skyscraper dodged adroitly, cursing the vampire plane.

“Yeah,” said the brawling shoes, eyes aplane and ascraper both. “Wet.”

The vampire plane circled back around, and the bomb bay doors opened and let fly with everything it had. Ten hundred tons of nuclear warheads plummeted towards their targets, more or less. There were explosions anew, and big ones at that, but the skyscraper pranced past them, and only some commuters were harmed to death.

“No,” said Famous Cram. “Petrichor. I think it's a good word.” She paid little heed to the explosions—she was too mature for that sort of thing, you see—and was invested in some soft catalog. It was possibly stolen, but I'm not sure, I was kind of tuned out at the time.

F., at the vampire plane's controls, pulled the big switch, and all the cannons fired, and then watered, and then grounded. Another knickknack store exploded into pieces of eight. It could've been an enemy combatant, perhaps, so you can count that as a hit.

From the top of the lawyer's office, Odorless Beige, seated on a pearl tiger, waved five flags and said, “Try harder, O little lass! I'll not give up without a fight that'll make a fight look like a fair!” The lawyers around him, swords drawn, posed acrobatically, and one assumed their suits unnormal and special-made to take to such ligamenturative positions. The screenshot saved, they leapt back to their posts, manning turrets and such.

The brawling shoes jumped out of the hiding place in the fishbowl and said, “C'mon and give me your pulse! You look like you'd love a great big laundry day! Or, what's wrong—you haven't got a chemistry textbook?” Her blood was born for battle, and there'd be fire in her eyes if it wasn't trite, but instead, she stuck herself into the soil of the Earth and became one with it, and was named Foilumina. She roared and crackled like weather, but her reach was as short as her patience, and her voice reached not above the forest, nor to its roots. She failed to flummox Odorless Beige.

F. flew low in the vampire plane, casting a sleeping spell over some of the lawyers, and when they woke up they had lost everything in the divorce market, having bet it all on red—classic rookie mistake. F. smirked as he saw them fall into the gutter behind the garage.

“It's neat,” said Famous Cram, turning a page back and forth.

“What is?” said Foilumina, perceiving her at last.

“Petrichor,” said Famous Cram. “That word.”

“But not the thing itself?” said puzzled Foilumina.

Some of the lawyers commanded the robot gorillas to build a giant net made of very sticky barbed wire, but the gorillas balked at this idea, unionized, and returned to the lawyers with a list of demands, not the least of which was five years of paternity leave every weekend, and a new motorcycle every third Arbor Day. Of course the lawyers refused, which meant no net, which meant there was nothing to stop the vampire plane from crashing into the third floor—F. already safely ejected, don't worry—and sinking its fangs into one third of the lawyers, sucking their blood, and turning them into planes like itself. With a triumphant belch, the master plane flew off and the henchplanes followed it, and they went on to have many exciting adventures—well, okay, that's a lie. They had like, three exciting adventures, and another six that were really iffy.

“No low you won't stoop to, eh?” said Odorless. He tutted and dialed a too-big mobile phone.

“My house better have a stoop!” said Foilumina. “Or at least a chicken coop!”

“Oh!” said Famous Cram. “Yeah, I like that idea. Let's decorate it with doilies. Like these—” She said that as she unfolded a tablecloth and from it sprang a moth as big as two half-sized hice, and the moth had always wanted to be an actor, or it least it thought it did, but it didn't have the self-confidence to... well, to do anything, really. It didn't know the first thing about—about, how to even get started with the whole thing, but it still seemed ideal somehow, you know? So the moth decided to guess at episode one, at least, and listened to a ten-hour version of “La Cucaracha.”

“This,” said the moth, “is bliss.” It drank the rest of its juice.

This caught Odorless Beige quite off guard, and he leapt to safety just as one of the pearl tiger's legs fell off. It—the pearl tiger's fallen leg, not Odorless Beige, he's not an “it”—was collected by Harvey Totalpercentage, the Great Gatecrasher, and hung in the foyer of his museum-RV. Harvey laughed in a way he thought was normal as he drove the museum into a junkyard, intent on hiding in plain sight—or at least in plane sight, if the vampire was still around.

“Now, I've bested better earlier than this!” said, with a small fume, Odorless Beige. In truth he'd lost a third of the lawyers and a quarter of his tiger legs, while Famous Cram, Foilumina, and F. were totally unscathed. In fact, Famous Cram wasn't even paying attention to the battle, and was still picking out doily patterns, fortunately. It was, though, not all bluster, for Odorless's veterage was well-established, and he was far from straining his supply line. With an emerald whistle, he summoned an eagle trained in meditation, and commanded it to hypnotize a battalion of hobos into knowing the secrets of time travel and—

However, just then, Mayor Yonilicus rolled up, for the battle that had been consuming Hoglistwune had interrupted the tricycle show and evoked their ire. They undressed their tires, pleated four trees, and stood between the factions, braking the conflict abruptly. This was to the chagrin of all the hobos that were lined up under the guise of receiving book soup. As the mayor adopted an akimbish enough posture to disperse all audiences, the hobos shuffled off in certain directions in such a way that, if one were at a suitable height, and drew a line connecting all the hobos from youngest to oldest and back, it would spell several hilarious and rude words, like bean.

“A battle?” said Yonilicus, as if that wasn't plain already. “In my city? With explosions? And planes? And a moth? You fools! You wood-brained jackals! You ones whose knowledge excludes the donkey book! Look what you've done—you've damaged a fine pearl!” Yonilicus took out their book, the book with bad names written in it, names that are ripe for danger and doomed to epiphanies no one was expecting, and they licked their finger so as to ease page-turning, and spun to the first blank leaf. “Your names will be writ here, and on the day they are read you will be served up to suffering and eternal dispity! That day is a day of my choosing, and none shall see it coming, not even the wisest and eldest among you!” And so Yonilicus wrote down Famous Cram and Foilumina's names in the book, and then came to F. “What's your name?” they said.

“F.,” said F.

“That's not a name,” said the steamed mayor. “Complete yourself!”

“Oh, I'm not falling for that one again,” said F.

“A stalwart denial?” said Yonilicus. “No—you shall have a fall!” They snapped their udders and ten deliberate waiters came and wrapped up F. and Famous Cram and Foilumina with a warm red scarf and threw them into a barrel that was full of acid and poison, and sealed the barrel closed, and threw the barrel all the way down the stairs, and turned off the light. Then Yonilicus turned to Odorless Beige, and bowed low, and said, “Lord Shirechester—amends shall be made.”

Odorless Beige put on a hat made of cardinal directions and put his hands away. “You are too kind, Mayor. I had hardly noticed the imp's impetus. Now, let us concoct the next step.”

The echoes of industry arose and drowned out the fury of Foilumina.

Now, that woman, she was good at her job—would be, if it were a job. Job. A modern conceit. Well, for those at the bottom, scraping to get by, they'd have to take what they could get, and sell their bodies and minds in exchange for a little sustenance, for as long as they were useful. Those of us at the top, those of us who care, who care about the world and doing things right—we know what needs to be done, and we're simply out to do it. And she was good at doing it. The best. Right? Yeah—yeah! Better than the others. Better than anyone. And they're coming and telling her what to do, telling her to follow rules? Y'know, they think they're something special, they think they're better than everyone else, got it all figured out, but they're doing the exact—same—thing. And so they descend—they descend, not her, no. No, this wasn't a punishment. Isolation's let her figure it all out. Yeah. That's right. All figured out. So that means—

—that means, it's never enough.

So, she grabbed all her keys and went out, but paused at the door for a minute. She'd probably never be here again. No one would be. No one, probably, ever was here in the first place.

“Goodbye, me,” she said sardonically, and left.