Dirk Destroyer Part 6 Chapter 2 part 2

Though this is the 6^th installment of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother, everything is just getting started. Check back every Friday (or the five previous Fridays,) for other excerpts.

Whatever Ceasaran had been about to say was cut short by three MOIST agents. One of the women who was wearing an official limited edition Moist trench coat shouted, “Hey you!” Ceasaran sighed and closed his window.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned that I’ve been around a long time, and you might think that I had learned a thing or two. Sure, I knew how to levitate a bag of cigars, and draw gold out of the ground, but that didn’t stop me from having the same reaction that every male has had for eternity when a woman yells, “hey, you,.” I looked around at a landscape that included several hundred sheep, a swamprat bird, and myself, and threw up my hands in the universal gesture, ‘who me?’

“Yes, you,” shouted the MOIST agent. “Come here, and try not to bother the sheep.”

I gingerly picked my way through to the edge of the flock, pausing each time one of them wanted to sniff the bag I was holding, my shoes, my crotch, anything that in their stupid minds they thought might have food in it.

“Took you long enough,” grunted the agent as I finally got through. The other female agent – not wearing a limited edition Moist trench coat, probably because she was much prettier than the first, pointed at the bag I was carrying.

“Are those fizzle wisp phew cigars?” she asked.

It was an odd choice of words, but I nodded my head.

“Can I sizzle sniff slurp one?”

As you might expect, telekinesis doesn’t worry me. My brother played every possible telekinetic joke on me before he was banished to oblivion forever the first time, but my brother wasn’t there, so I was a little surprised when the bag lifted out of my hand.

“Don’t be stupid, Ono,” said the first female agent in as abrasive voice as I’ve heard billarian clinbirds use, and that’s as abrasive as a voice can get. My bag jerked high into the air with cigars and matches flying in every direction.

“Whoops whoop yelp,” said the second female agent in an apologetic if not intelligible voice. I summoned what skill I had in gathering the errant cigars before they hit the ground, but most of the matches landed in puddles of sheep urine – a very effective solvent for mercury tipped inflammatories.

“Cigar smoking is a nasty habit, Ono,” said the first agent.

“It bugs the sheep,” said the male agent, who until that moment had been standing silently in the background. He also was not wearing a limited edition MOIST trench coat, but not because he was pretty at all. He was short, dumpy, balding and had on a particularly ugly shirt.

The first agent stared at the male, as if her eyes had the ability to melt rock. Curiously that is not the hyperbole it seems, for I had seen Dirk do just that to a rock that Uriculous Wisehind had been sitting on. For a moment I thought the first agent had such an ability. The face of the male agent disappeared.

He did not fall over however, and when I heard the void above his collar say, “sorry,” I concluded that he probably hadn’t been melted.

“As you can see, brother of the evil Dirk Destroyer,” said the first agent, “you are in the presence of two very powerful wizards, so I would watch my step if I were you.” Her warning would have carried more force if not for an unfortunate coincidence. As she stomped forward to emphasize the word, ‘step,’ her foot landed in… Well, there were several hundred sheep around.

“Boot slop,” said Swampy helpfully.

The second agent- the pretty one - who was apparently named, Ono, smiled at the hideous bird, and Swampy flew over to perch on her shoulder without releasing any form of defecation.

“As I was saying,” said the first agent. “The man who stands before you, destroyer-brother, is the great wizard, Mage-e-not. He has the power to make himself invisible!”

The headless apparition before me straightened, supposedly to assume his full – though not impressive height which was further diminished by his missing head.

“But I can see you, Mage-e-not,” I said.

“You see my clothes!”

I looked over the eighty percent man in front of me. “But I can see your hands too.”

“But you can’t see my head!”

“I have a good idea where it is,” and I flicked a urine-moistened match in the general direction of his nose. The man flinched, but too late as the match bounced off of something.

“Stop that!” demanded the first agent. Mage-e-not’s face reappeared, and he wiped it with the sleeve of his newly urine speckled shirt.

“This young wizard,” said the first agent, gesturing to the other woman agent, “is Onomaterpoeia Upsala.”

“We just call her Ono,” said Mage-e-not, who then disappeared again when the first agent glared at him.

“As Onomaterpoeia has already demonstrated, she is a master wizard of matter displacement.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said to Ono.

“Hoot tickled,” she responded in a friendly fashion.

“Hoot hottie,” said Swampy, who made me think, not for the first time, that he had a better command of human speech than he was letting on.

“My name is Elmer,” I said.

“We know who you are, Elmer Destroyer.”

“Actually, my last name is McFarland, but it’s been so long since anyone’s called me that that I just answer to…”

“Tremble in fear!” bellowed the first agent who had not introduced herself, “for there is one other member of this glorious party – the greatest wizard of them all.”

“A Light Bringer?” I asked.

“THE Light Bringer,” the first agent boomed. “The great and magnificent, Lustavious Brachenhun.”

“Oh,” I said, “where’s he, or she?”

“HE’s back at the ministry,” said Ono. “HE couldn’t come.”

“Yeah,” said Mage-e-not. “He had a date.”

“Will you come with us peaceably,” asked the first agent, “or will our wizards need to bind you with their glorious power?”

“No, I’ll come.”

The first agent stepped forth magnificently except for the squishy sound that her sheep begrimed boot made. The other two hung back a couple paces, and I fell in step with them.

“So what’s with her?” I asked. “Is she some sort of wizard too?”

“Oh no,” said Ono, “She’s just a slap slash whip whirr agent.”

“What’s her name?”

“Youtickubus Akwar.”

“Yeah,” said Mage-e-not, “she’s a real pain, and she shows up everywhere I go.”

And that’s all there is of chapter 2. Only 40 to go (give or take.) The good news is that you’re starting to meet the characters in the story. The bad news is that Youtickubus Akwar is one of them.

Speaking or annoying people…