Season 1, Episode 3 - The Ring Dings XXI - "The Denouement, Part 2"

At 3 o’clock, Chairman Stockham was back in his office, with a new pair of faces greeting him.

Audrey looked like she was going to cry. Yeah, she had gotten in trouble before - big trouble - but all the stress and fear and anxiety culminated in a torrent that rushed up against a dam, almost ready to burst. Reed, on the other hand, sat with her arms crossed, disapproving of authority in general and Stockham in particular.

Stockham, for his part, remained as jovial as ever. He genuinely enjoyed working with his students, seeing them grow up, become stronger...especially since that meant they became more useful to his long-term goals.

“Apparently, you two girls ignored a curfew order, broke into an innocent convenience store, killed a man, and stole three cents,” Stockham summarized, his voice firm but not unkind. “What do you have to say?”

“We...I... AHH-HUH, AH HA HUH HUH, AHHHH HOO HOO HOO HOOOOO WAH!” Audrey covered her eyes as an unintelligible mass of crying came out of her mouth.

Reed looked at Stockham; Stockham looked at Reed. Both of them shrugged.

“Please, don’t feel any pressure," Stockham said gently. "This is not a meeting to dole out punishment, to disparage the two of you. I just want to know what happened.”

Reed debated patting Audrey’s back or something, but Reed didn’t do particular well with human contact, so she just said, “Aw hell...heck, Audrey, I’ll do the talking. Just stop crying...and wipe your nose or something.”

Audrey collected herself, still sniffling, and ended up using Reed’s sleeve to blow her nose.

“Christ,” Reed muttered. She would have to burn the whole uniform now. But at least Audrey stopped talking.

“Alright, I’ll explain what happened,” Reed said. “I have a number of issues with your summary of the events, Stockham. First, ‘breaking curfew’ is such a strong phrase, especially when we only had an hours’ notice and no soldiers on the ground ever informed us of a curfew. In fact, you can’t even prove we knew there was a curfew...in fact, we didn’t know there was a curfew.”

Stockham let her continue, clearly amused.

“Secondly, this is the least innocent convenience store I’ve ever been to. First of all, it was a front store used by a smuggling ring to launder money. Second of all, it’s only employee was a serial killer. Bam, right there, that’s two crimes. That’s two more than zero. And that’s terrible. I’ve never been to any other convenience store that’s committed one crime, let alone two. Well, there was the incident at Pavel's Zrucnasc up near Kanakana Station, you know which one I'm talking about? The one around the corner from it that had the rat problem. But rats are much less serious that drug-running. And have you read Bay Mart’s return policy? Take one step outside and you can’t return anything? Even when you’re only outside for thirty seconds. That’s malarkey, Stockham, and you know it. I bet that’s how they launder money. Using return policies like that. And their Ring Dings weren’t even that good. Not saying they’re stale, or bad, but average. Mediocre. You might be thinking, ‘oh, if the Ring Dings aren’t that good, that’s on the supplier, not the convenience store.’ Nope. It’s on the store to keep the Ring Dings rotating so fresh ones are always at the front of the shelf. You might think it’s better economically to sell the older ones, but as a customer, I demand freshness. So, all in all, this convenience store oughta be hanged in the town center for war crimes.”

Reed cracked her neck. “Thirdly, we killed a serial killer. That makes us heroes or something like that, right? We brought justice to some asshole who killed a number of girls. Teenage girls. Innocent teenage girls. Innocent teenage girl students who were innocent and teenage and girls. We did something the Military Police or even State Police could do. We should get medals for this. Or a parade. Hell, I like parades. I’d take a parade.

“And finally, if you round down, I didn’t steal anything at all. Actually, if you round down, I’d have taken only seven dollars and seventy cents, so I lost two cents out of this whole ordeal.”

“Don’t you...” Audrey sniffled. “Don’t you round up when it’s five? Five or more, let it soar?”

Reed eyed her, then sighed. “All I’m saying is...we’re not innocent. We’re more than innocent. There’s guilty, there’s innocent, then there’s super innocent, like we are. Heroes, like you read about.”

Stockham took that all in, leaning back in his seat, smoking a cigar slowly. “You should be a politician one day, Hibiscus. I’d be very interested in seeing what this country would look like if you were in charge.”

“A Hibiscus Reed who likes politics more than television would be a real menace to society."

Stockham smiled. “Better not say that in public.”

He then shuffled a pile of papers in front of him. “But you do make some solid points. While you may have committed a number of violations along the way, ultimately, you defeated a Rddhi user and improved your strength and skills. And that user happened to be a notorious serial killer. The ends justify the means, and the ends here, all in all, are decent.”

Stockham let out a puff of smoke.

“However, there still needs to be some discipline. So, I will indeed have to punish you.”

“AHH-HUH, AH HA HUH HUH!”

Audrey blew her nose on Reed’s sleeve again.

“No need to fret, Ms. Audrey, your punishment has been reduced due to the merits of your handling of the situation. You will not be losing any meal privileges.”

Reed pumped her fist.

“Instead, you will be performing community service in the mornings for the next two weeks.”

Audrey pumped her fist.

“Community...community service?” Reed asked, sweating heavily.

Stockham nodded. “Highway cleanup, subway cleanup...well, a lot of cleaning up.”

“In...in the morning? When...when my cartoons are on?”

“When your cartoons are on.”

Reed opened her mouth, then closed it. The punishment swirled around in her head.

“...aw, man...”

“One more thing,” Stockham said, his voice much more serious. “Did you run into a man with a white trenchcoat?”

Audrey and Reed look at each other.

One scary son of a bitch.

“We might’ve...” Reed alluded. “If I can at least stay home and watch Saturday morning cartoons, I might remember something...”

Stockham wasn’t messing around. He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed.

“You’ll tell me what you know, right now, otherwise I’ll have you shot for insubordination.”

Reed gulped.

“...we ran into him on our way out,” she explained. “He made some big deal about changing New England in the future. He spared us – well, I mean, don’t get the wrong idea, if I was at full strength, I bet I could’ve taken him, but you know, things were a little rough then – he spared us because we hoped he’d be on his side in the future. If we weren’t, he’d kill us then.”

“Did he say anything or did you notice anything about his identity?”

Reed and Audrey shook their heads. “He wore the white trenchcoat and had some medals on his chest, but I don’t know what they’re for,” Reed said.

Apparently satisfied, Stockham leaned back in his chair. “That matches what we know about him so far. I’m glad you two made it out of there alive. That man is dangerous.”

“Who is he?” Audrey asked.

“That’s the scary part. We have no idea.”

Stockham turned his seat around to look out at the afternoon sky. “That’s everything, then. Your fellow classmates Hanai and Clayton will be joining you in your community service. They’ll let you know where to meet and when to start.”

He looked back at them. “Until then, take care. Keep moving forward and keep getting stronger.”

Audrey and Reed nodded at varying levels of meekness and thankfully departed.

Isaac and Alfie sat outside of Mr. Stockham’s office, waiting with varying levels of anticipation. Isaac felt jumpy, one of his legs restless, bouncing up and down. Next to him on the bench, Alfie closed his eyes and leaned back, resting his hands behind his head. Well, resting his one free hand behind his head and his one hand locked away inside the metallic anti-Rddhi device on his lap.

The whole thing seemed like an annoyance to him, probably because it was.

Alfie narrowly opened one eye, observing the leg bouncing. Isaac’s leg didn’t stop bouncing.

“Tch.”

Nope, still bouncing.

Alfie sighed. “You’re shaking the whole bench.”

Isaac blinked and stopped his leg. “Oh. Sorry.”

Alfie sighed again and went back to relaxing. Or at least, he tried. The interruption caused by Isaac’s leg brought him out of his relaxation and Alfie just couldn’t find the groove.

“Your Chairman,” Alfie said. “Does he always make people wait this long?”

“Mr. Stockham always makes people wait,” Isaac explained. “He says that time slips away from him sometimes, but he’s smart, so I bet it’s some sort of psychological warfare thing. Like if you’re meeting with a person who’s afraid of dogs, you bring your dog with you. Throw them off-balance, get yourself the upper hand. He’s smart like that.”

Given all that he’d seen, something like that didn’t surprise Alfie.

They spent the night at the school, using a spare pair of beds in the barracks below the Tertiary Building. Alfie thought the whole thing was sort of ironic. He was finally given a bed better than the one in a jail cell, yet he sort of wanted to go back to the jail cell. He could be alone there, at least. Instead, he had to spend the night with Isaac, who talked incessantly of all sorts of mundane things – do you floss, Alfie? Have you ever noticed the way people speak changes when they ask questions instead of just statements, Alfie? Can you put your leg behind your neck, Alfie?

And then, all of a sudden, Isaac drifted off to sleep, and Alfie found himself sort of wishing that Isaac was still talking to him.

Back in the present, the doors to the office finally opened, and out walked a pair of familiar faces.

“Stop crying on my goddamn sleeve,” Reed complained, trying to shake Audrey off. She saw Isaac and smiled cheekily. “Awww, did somebody get in trouble? Did somebody make a little accident? Piss their pants a little?”

“...no to all of the above," Isaac answered dryly. “If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been working on a mission these past few days. I’m on official business. If anyone’s in trouble, it’s you guys.”

Audrey burst into a disproportionate amount of tears. “It was so scary in there! He made us wait for so long in the hallway, I felt like he was doing some sort of warfare to my psychology! Aw, it was awful, Isaac, real awful! We really did get in trouble in there!”

Isaac gave Audrey a sympathetic look before smirking at Reed. “Oh yeah? What are you in for?”

Reed shrugged. “We broke into a convenience store and killed a man. What’s your business with Stockham?”

Isaac shrugged. “We raided an office supply store and killed a woman.”

“Ain’t that just the way?” Reed said.

“Ain’t that just the way. You didn’t actually kill someone, right?”

Reed shrugged. “Let’s just say that I ended up getting locked in a convenience store with a ne’er-do-well after all. And you didn’t actually kill someone, right?”

Isaac shrugged. “Let’s just say that she killed herself. I mean, which she did. Ain’t that just the way?”

“Ain’t that just the way.”

Isaac realized that Alfie remained silent throughout all of this. “Oh guys, by the way, this is Alfie. He’s the New...new partner on the team that raided the store. He’s a good guy.”

“Tch.”

“A new friend!” Audrey exclaimed, forgetting all about the problems of her life and the world. “I’m Audrey! Where did you transfer from?”

Reed rolled her eyes. “He’s the New York spy.” Reed recognized him from that unfortunate photo in the school newspaper that caught her red-handed with the blueberry bread. Being Reed, of course, she blamed Alfie for the misfortune, rather than herself.

“Oh, wow! A New Yorker!” Audrey looked at him with shining eyes. “Is it true that nobody drives in New York City because there’s too much traffic? And that there are those good fellas that tell people they’re walking here? And do your sports teams really say they’re from New York but actually play in New Jersey?”

Alfie looked at her. “You...you don’t hate me?”

Audrey didn’t understand. “Hate you? Why would I hate you?”

Alfie thought about it. “They actually do play in New Jersey,” he finally said.

“Wow! That’s wonderful!”

“Come on, Audrey, we have a dinner to make and 7 o’clock cartoons to watch,” Reed reminded her. “And Stockham said you two oughta go in now.”

Audrey waved them off, Reed nodding farewell, the two disappearing around the corner of the hallway.

“You got good friends,” Alfie said quietly.

“Huh?” Isaac asked.

Alfie pretended not to hear him, instead looking upwards at a painting in the hallway.