Alias Uno threw up his arms in exasperation. It's made of fiberglass!”
“Oooh, perfect!” replied Mallet Girl. “I have just the mallet for smashing fiberglass. Thank you, Steven! You're the best!”
“Mally, no.”
“What?”
“No. Just no.”
“Oh, alright,” Mallet Girl reluctantly agreed. “Hey! You called me Mally! I thought I told you to never call me by my real name in public!”
“What?” Aliast Uno stared at her for a moment, unsure of how to react. “Wait, Mally's not your--”
“Ssshhhhhh!” Mallet Girl went. “Not so loud. You know that and I know that but people around here don't.”
Alias Uno continued staring at her. She looked so serious. If she had been fooling around at his expense, she gave no hint of it whatsoever, which was quite unlike her. Indeed, Malled Girl was possessed of many skills, chiefest of which was, of course, wielding her beloved mallets, but poker face was definitely not among them. She couldn't bluff her wait out of a gullible people convention for the life of her. “What?”
“What?” Mallet Girl stared back at him, equally confused.
“Ungh,” Alias Uno muttered then, holding the side of his head with his right hand. His head was throbbing again; pretty soon he'll be suffering through a full-blown migraine attack if this continued any longer. Time and time again, he had reminded himself never to get into an argument or confrontation with Mallet Girl but she just seemed to have a knack for getting his goat, for provoking him.
Slowly, he shook his head. Again. “Just let me do the talking from now on. At the rate you're going, we'll be here all day. We've already wasted most of the morning as it is.”
“Hey,” Mallet Girl protested, “I'm a pretty good bounty hunter, I'll have you know!”
“Yeah? Well, I'm not the one who just spent a couple of hours arguing with the ordering console of the Mac-In-A-Cup drive-thru. I'm not the one who insisted on following those footprints, clearly just newly painted on the sidewalk and an obvious advertising gimmick, all the way to the old shoe flea market. And I'm certainly not the one who threatened that poor, blind fellow with grievous bodily harm.”
“Oh, come on,” Mallet Girl retorted. “You can't blame that one on me. He looked mighty suspicious to me and I'm still pretty sure he knew where that Pistachio guy was holed up.”
“Gazpacho of the Andes,” Alias Uno corrected her.
“Whatever. That guy kept on insisting he hadn't seen anything. I got angry. So sue me.”
“He was blind! He couldn't have possibly seen Gazpacho of the Andes. Or anything else for that matter.”
“Well, how was I suppose to know that?” cried Mallet Girl. “It's not as if he was wearing a sign or something.”
“He did have a sign on him!” Alias Uno exclaimed. “There was cardboard sign hanging from his neck. It said 'Pity the Blind Foundation'. He had on dark, blind man glasses. And he had a cane, not to mention the guide dog.”
“Oh, fine!” Mallet Girl pouted, folding her arms and turning her back on her sidekick. “We'll do it your way. But don't blame me if get nowhere. I was on the verge of a breakthrough, too. I could feel it in my gut.”
Alias Uno let out a relieved sigh. He should put this on his blog. It wasn't often he won an argument with Mallet Girl. Not without getting a mallet to the face anyways.
“But first, let's take a short break,” Mallet Girl said then. “Bounty-hunting's thirsty work. I'm parched! Hungry, too. Must be getting close to lunchtime already.”
“Mallet Girl...” Alias Uno muttered.
But Mallet Girl wasn't listening. She was already walking away. “I'm in the mood for some extra-extra-caffeinated mocha latte chino with coffee bean sugar bombs and nata. Yeah,” she declared. “And a family-sized bacon, ham, and cheese sandwich with extra wasabi mayo.”
Alias Uno let out another sigh. An exasperated one this time. “I give up,” he said to himself. “I suppose it is time for a little break.” Besides, Mallet Girl appeared to be in one of her moods again. Huh. Must be that time of the month again.
He groaned. Mallet Girl was nigh insufferable whenever she got impatient for her monthly copy of the Malleteers Digest to arrive in the post. He prayed that the magazine will arrive early this month.
Mallet Girl suddenly shrieked with delight and excitement. She pointed at something across the street. “Oh, oh!” she exclaimed. “Look! A new hardware store is opening!”
“Don't even think about it, Mallet Girl,” Alias Uno cried. “You heard Jenna. No more shopping sprees until all the bills are paid.”
“Sigh... I know, I know. Until all the bills are paid. Whoopeee...”
In the meantime, a couple of buildings down the stree, just around the corner, a man in a full-body fried chicken wing suit was handing out flyers to passers-by. He was standing in front of the Kansas Fricasseed Chicken restaurant, the new one, not the old one, for things would have turned out differently indeed had it been the latter. For right beside the old Kansas Fricasseed Chicken restaurant were located the offices of the White Queen Courier and Laundry Services, the base of operation of the buxom, bonny lass Rivet Jane, self-proclaimed rival of Mallet Girl and doom of everything mallet-related.
A woman in a plain, blue dress and white apron stood in front of him. She carried a canvass shopping bag filled with groceries in one hand a flyer in the other. She was reading the flyer, a dubious look on her face. “Fried chicken wing caramel fricassee?” she asked. “Oh, my. Sounds...delightful?”
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