Finally, another end

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 33
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Back at headquarters, The Bad Guys circled around their loot - a veritable treasure trove of a small amount of groceries. Yum!

Circling was pretty much all they did, though. Nobody was eating. Nobody was looking at the food. Not even the lettuce (which was far greener than usual, considering the season) caught a wandering eye.

All eyes were on the toy blimp, sitting just outside the circle, swaying gently on its elliptical side, back and forth in the slight breeze that flowed through the cavernous hall.

Upon further review, the Bad Guys’ circle was more of an ellipse itself once taking into account the curvature of Sally’s tail. Whatever the shape was, it stayed that way, frozen, for minutes.

After these minutes passed, Rog moved: “I’ll put this thing in one of the closets.”

Midnight stopped him: “No. We’ll take it back.”

Rog: “That’s a nice thought, but you saw what happened. The door wouldn’t open until we stole it! We are stuck with this thing. We’re stuck with it…”

Midnight: “Then we’ll leave it outside the door. Surely there are limits to our chains.”

Cal: “Why did we even do this?”

Rog: “I just explained that, man. We had to!”

Cal: “No, we didn’t. There was hardly a gun to our head. We hadn’t eaten for one day, and we stole an old widow’s most cherished possession – her blimp.”

Rog slumped back into the ellipse: “Her zeppelin…”

Cal: “Nobody calls it that anymore.”

Rog: “The note did.”

Cal: “That’s the problem.”

Midnight: “We’ll take it back. The food, the blimpzlin thing… all of it. We promised we’d fight back if we were ordered to deprive anyone of their humanity. We failed, but we’re not yet condemned.”

Everyone agreed. A rush of adrenaline swept over the company. For once and at last, the adrenaline targeted a task that was fundamentally good.

The sweeping rush succeeded in complimenting more than troop morale. It also fed the wind, helping to push the blimp off its repetitive course of rocking, away towards the open air, and then down, down, down into the empty pool.

POP!

Cheap rubber met the end of a scorpion corpse, and that was that.

Sally left. Rog left. Midnight picked up her roses, burying her face behind them; she left.

Cal stared at nothing. There was nothing to stare at.

He did, however, eventually read his new note:

Congratulations. You are level 2 Bad Guys. More (plus) on back.

See you here tomorrow. Plus – These are your pants. Obviously.

END CHAPTER 1