She finally managed to pop the rubber sealing and gasped. “I plunged to my doom,” she groaned.

  “WHY I OUGHTA-!” The sailors played roared in anger, one gripping his pool cue by the skinny end, ready to crack it over Snap's skull.

  The cue never connected, caught mid-swing. “Hey! Leggo!” The sailor staggered back as the pool cue was yanked from his shaggy paws and yelped, staring into the yellow eyes and shimmering visage of one Chicago McCool. “C-Chicago! Whoa! Sorry! I didn't see you come in!”

  “Get lost,” he ordered bluntly and the sailors scrambled to put space between themselves and him. He turned to Snap, sitting up, coughing splinters, pausing only to gobble down a few wayward eight balls. “Are you all right?”

  “No, I'm Snap Zasperate, who in the name of Snap Zasperate are you?”

  He rolled his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Okay.”

  “Mr. McCool,” Zola Johnstone intoned, idly brushing some splinters off his suit sleeve. “You're early. And no sister. The stipulations were negotiations would be held with her and her alone.”

  “We were pressed to make double time, there's a supercarrier in the vicinity.”

  “Ah. There's always a supercarrier in the vicinity, do better.”

  “And...she's in the middle of a musical number.”

  The gorgon's brow furrowed, along with the brows of all his snakes. “Musical number?”

  “It's complicated. She goes to the beat of her own drummer. Although ironically I'm the one who usually plays drums in our late night jam sessions.”

  “Hey!” Snap popped up between them, tail wagging. “I play drums too! Yee-ow, yee-ow! Brrrrrr! Bang bang, pa-toonk pa-toonk! Na na na! Na na na na na! Bang bang!”

  “How very droll,” Chicago murmured.

  “Did you just call me 'Barry Troll'?” Snap asked.

  Manny watched it unfold from next to the bar. He tapped Samson on the shoulder, the hapless Holstein choking on his banana split. “Looks like the shark's taken the bait.”

  “Oh? I thought the shark was over there vomiting up blood.”

  “Zola Johnstone, most powerful lawyer in Pareidolia City,” Manny mused. He tapped his watch, a three-dimensional hologram of Frankenstein popping up. “Boss, we got movement.”

  “Follow them. Keep tabs, but don't get too close.”

  Manny frowned. “How the heck do we do that?”

  Frankenstein shrugged. “I dunno, spy casual?”

  “Nice. Thanks for the advice.”

  “Don't mention it.”

  “Hey! It's that sparkly dude!” Samson groaned. “Oh man, look at the way Snap's fawning over him, making him feel special!”

  Manny looked and grimaced. “She's currently got him in a headlock and bashing his head into the wall.”

  “I know right!” Samson sobbed. “That was us at one time!” He raised his hand as the music began to swell. “At one tiiiiiime-”

  “So help me, you start singing I will turn you from a bull into an ox.”

  Samson clammed up.

  Chicago wiggled out of Snap's grasp, no easy task, staggering back and crashing into a table, the contents splattering all over him. The pirates around it howled with laughter, pouring the rest of their beer on him. “That's for messing with my Mom!” Snap yelled, shaking her two right fists.

  He spit out beer in a little arc fountain and gave her a wry look. “Ah, so NOW you remember me.”

  “I remember everything!” Snap declared. “I remember why the dew shimmers in the morning! I remember why constipation makes me shudder! I remember who put the 'bop' in the 'bop shoo bop shoo bop'! And I remember YOU!”

  “Remember yesterday!” the cage band played. “Walking hand in hand! Love letters in the sand! I REMEMBER YOU!”

  “That wasn't a request!” Snap yelled, hopping up and down. “Although I DO love that song.”

  “Come on, Snap,” Manny groaned. “Don't blow it.”

  “HEY!” In flew Floyd, Chicago barely finding the reflexes to snag his towel before he slammed into Snap. “I'll get you for what you did to Chicago!”

  “It's all right, Floyd,” he urged. “I'm fine. Nothing a little baking soda can't wash out.”

  “Not that! It's the principle of the thing! Nobody messes with a McCool and gets away with it!”

  “Floyd, the older you get, you're going to learn to get head in life, you have to be willing to make some sacrifices.”

  Floyd looked puzzled. “You mean to get ahead in life?”

  Chicago was silent. “Yeah, that's what I mean.”

  Snap grinned, ear-fin to ear-fin. “You sure about that? You REALLY sure about that?”

  “Ooh! I don't like that guy!” Samson moaned.

  “Yeah!” Carcharodon growled, several wadded up tissue papers shoved up his nostrils, all of them soaked through with blood. “I don't like him either! Vampires ain't supposed to sparkle! They're dark and brooding and exude fear, not chuckles!”

  “What say we team up, combine our powers,” Samson whispered, “and put him out of our misery!”

  “Yeah!”

  “All right!”

  “Let's do this!”

  “WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!”

  “Let's go, let's go!”

  Manny stared at them, his incredulity with this dynamic duo of dumbness reaching awe-inspiring levels. “You two are kinda stupid, yanno that?” The guys grabbed steins embossed with the restaurant's logo and mascot, smashing them against their skulls, beer soaking them. “I take it back, there ain't nothing 'kinda' about it.”

  They marched over, shoving any sailor, biker or pirate they encountered aside, Chicago regarding them with all the warmth he often reserved for a barnacle in need of scraping. Floyd puckered his face. “Want me to?”

  “No,” Chicago sighed wearily. “I'll handle it.”

  “I could totally go 'Scanners' on them.”

  “Nah, too messy. Besides, they probably have no brains there to explode anyway.”

  Samson flexed, stretching his shirt taut, tauter, until it exploded in a shower of fabric confetti. Chicago didn't react one way or another, casually brushing off flecks from his sleeves where they landed. “Stay away from my woman!” Samson bellowed, steam blasting from his nostrils.

  “Your woman?”

  “Yeah! My woman!”

  Chicago thought it over and reached his conclusion. “No. She's my woman now.”

  At this, Samson had a complete and total meltdown reversal, turning into a blubbering imbecile. “Oh no, I wasn't expecting this rejoinder! MANNY!”

  Manny's teeth clenched together so tightly he felt the enamel erode. “Don't use my real name, you moron!”

  Samson gawked at him. “Wait, we're using codenames? Really?”

  “Oh my God! Weren't you debriefed?”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Damn straight I was debriefed!” Samson declared excitedly. “Miss Lawful took me into her bunk and debriefed me personally! And everything that goes along with it!”

  “NO!” Manny slapped his forehead. “Don't mention HER!”

  “Miss Lawful?” Zola echoed, Samson gripping his horns and hiding his face behind his elbows. “As in Abigail Lawful? Director of the Department of Supernatural Intelligence & Investigation? Now why on earth would the DSII want with this rundown out-of-the-way breast-a-rant? There's nothing remotely supernatural or extraordinary out here? Is there a reason to be concerned? Or is this a case of entrapment? Good thing I'm a lawyer, we might have been ensnared in government overreach.”

  “You're not a government agent though,” Chicago chuckled, grabbing Samson by his throat and throttling him, his hands like steel vises, cold and unyielding. Samson choked up, his eyes bulging out, his face turning a royal shade of purple. “Therefore, eliminating you would not engender any retaliation now, would it?”

  Snap grimaced. “Eh, let him go, Chico. He's annoying, but...he is a valuable source of protein.”

  “I'll let him live if you vow to be my eternal bride – ow ow OW.” He let Samson go as Snap calmly twisted his ear, pinching it between her sharp claws. “Dang girl, you rough.” She let him go and he limped off, head at an odd tilt.

  “Come, Snap,” Zola urged, gesturing up to the second story. “There's a lot of exciting stuff going on. I think it's time for you to see for yourself just how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

  “Ha!” Snap chuckled. “I get that. It's a Matrix reference. Well, lucky you, I'm red pilled and based!”

  “It's not referring to – okay, yeah, you know what, yes, you're absolutely right, I was referencing 'The Matrix', you philistine. Now get up there.”

  “Or what you'll sue me to death?” she snorted, then hastily added. “That is not at all a challenge or invitation to sue me to death, please don't sue me to death, please please please, I don't own anything. Not even a nothing burger.”

  “Snap!” Samson sobbed, on his knees, hands clasped pleadingly. “Don't go through that door! I have a feeling I'll regret it!” Snap mulled it over, then calmly trotted up the stairs and went through the door.

  Samson stood up. “Huh. I didn't regret it.”

  Snap did, because she stood in a room that's interior dimensions did not match the exterior. Her pink eyebrows popped up and she nodded. “Golly gee wilikers, it's BEEG in here.”

  At the end of the long, non-euclidean hallway of checkered squares in black and white with the occasional red and even less occasional ocher, stood a high-backed chair on ball casters. “If there's a dead body in that chair when I spin it around,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper, one filled with intense doubt and worry, “I'll probably eat it because I. Am. SO. Hungry!”

  She grabbed the chair and spun it around, ready to chow down, but alas her hopes for a bit of postmortem cannibalism were dashed like a ship on shallow shoals. The chair's occupant was alive, well, and most important of all, family.

  Her face lit up, blue eyes sparkling.

  “Uncle Orville! You send me to Snoreville!”

  “Snap, how wonderful,” the tall thin man in a white lab coat and goggles chuckled, standing up and clapping his hands on her shoulders, the evil super villain equivalent of a huge bear hug, and Snap sniffled, feeling nothing but 100% love. He smiled, his face long, his nose aquiline, no mustache but a graying black beard. “Together we shall rule the galaxy as uncle and niece!”

  “You're kidding me, right?”

  “Yes, of course I'm kidding you, get a grip. Tempting you to the dark side is the LAST thing I want to do. Sully my plans by tossing the gigantic colossal monkey wrench that is you into? The chaos you bring, the calamity you engender? I think not. No, alas, Snap, we must remain sworn enemies, I the lord of doom and chaos, and you, well you're also a lord of doom and chaos but you're way cuter than me.”

  “Darn tootin'!”

  “Anyway, how are your little unicorn friends?” Uncle Orville Awful asked, settling back in his chair.

  “I dunno, I haven't eaten any unicorn in days. Weeks. Haven't eaten much since I demolished the galley buffet.”'

  “Ah, galley, so you've been on a ship?”

  “Oh yeah, yeah! A great big ship with lots of guns and little flying things, whaddaya call 'em?”

  “Planes?”

  “Plains! Yes, like my least favorite donut, the plains. The only thing I like plain is my Robitussin – no, wait, that's wrong, I prefer cherry.” She frowned. “Wait a second. Are you trying to milk me for information?”

  He smirked then laughed, slapping his knees. “Oh, Snappy! You got me dead to rights!”

  “Uncle Orville!” She beamed and freeze framed as the credits rolled, the studio audience erupting in laughter and applause.

  Outside the door, Samson and Manny had their ears to it and pulled away, frowning in confusion. “Does it sound like there's a studio audience in there, or just me?”

  “Maybe they're playing 'Happy Days' on the television or something?” Manny replied with a shrug.

  “Speaking of which, why did they always have a disclaimer about being filmed in front of a live studio audience?”

  “Because they were lying, there was no studio audience, it was all per-recorded laughter designed to hide just how painfully unfunny the writing was.”

  “Wow.” Samson eyes widened. “A little piece of my soul just withered and died just now.”

  “Sorry, dude. I should have prepared you better.”

  “Eh, you work for the government, little is expected of you, even less in the results.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause and Manny frowned. “Hey!”

  “So the donuts take off from the giant coffee cup,” Snap explained, resorting to a combination of charades, puppets and semaphore to get the point across. She made the iconic sound of a bi-wing propeller plane, jumping off her uncle's desk and flying the donut around the room, coming up short of the coffee and landing it on the vast pink carrier that was her tongue.

  Uncle Awful sat in his chair, resting his chin on his fist, watching with some trepidation as her story unfolded. “Frankly, child,” he said with some whimsy, “you fascinate me!”

  “And YOU fascinate ME!” Snap squealed.

  “This is preposterous,” Zola groaned, his snakes all in a tizzy. “We need to relocate immediately. If the government is already here-”

  “Oh please, spare me your grievances,” Mr. Awful sighed, gesturing dismissively. “I've been well aware of the DSII's involvement in these affairs for some time. Hell, the Chinese and the Israelis have their noses up my butt.”

  “Woo hoo hoo hoo!” Snap squealed. “Kinky. The Sino-Judeo-Anglosphere just got a whole lot more risque! I love geo-political eroticism fan fiction! Sign me up on the mother lovin' dotted line! Yee-ow!”

  They stared at her obtusely. “Are you REALLY related?” Zola asked. Awful smirked, throwing his hands up.

  There came a knock at the door. Calmly, Zola walked around the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a loaded gun, a Sig Sauer 9mm, encrusted with emeralds to resemble serpent scales. Snap whistled sharply. “Sweet piece.”

  Zola made a gesture. “Open the door.”

  “So, you want me to...do you a favor? And open the door? And let 'em in? Yeah yeah yeah!”

  “If you start singing, I'll shoot you and open the door myself.”

  “I'm opening it, I'm opening it! Yeesh!”

  She skipped over to the door, flapping her arms so they smacked her thighs with every skip, tail wagging happily, and threw it open. “Ha ha! Steely Dan! My nemesis-is-is!” She stopped and frowned. “Splotches?”

  “Don't know no 'Splotches', ma'am,” the mighty minotaur answered, waddling in, wearing Jessica's pink visor, her uniform top stretched over his huge torso, stretching it all out of shape, the pizza logo looking warped and distorted spread across his chest. In his right hand, palm up, was a stack of pizza boxes. “The names Jessica, er, ahem, Jessi-CO Whitehall.”

  “Shoot me.”

  “Gladly,” Zola said, cocking the gun.

  “NOT. LITERALLY.” She turned on Samson as he set the pizza boxes down, stretching and flexing, showing off his ripped physique. “Splotches, what the H are you doing?”

  “Just doing my job, ma'am,” he replied. “Someone here ordered the Big Sausage Pizza, and I intend to deliver with extra sauce!”

  Snap's face fell, literally, her jaw hitting the floor with a loud CLANG, recoiling back when she twisted her ear-fin. “Okay, NOW you can literally shoot me. Seriously, take a firearm, preferably something endorsed by the NRA, put it to my brain and employ a heaping healthy dose of lethal force!”

  “Look!” Samson said. “Somebody here ordered the Big Sausage, good taste optional, and I'm not leaving until I get my moolah! Get it, I'm a cow, 'moo' lah? Get it? Get it? You don't get it, do you. Oh, hi, Mr. Johnstone. Mister JOHNSTONE!” He stopped, the distinct sound of a spring going BOING as he swayed back and forth, took another look at the gorgon lawyer, frowned, looked again, frowned harder, looked again, and screamed. “Shoot. I just blew my cover, didn't I?”

  “Like one of them t-shirts blown out of a cannon at a NASCAR rally,” Snap growled.

  “Ah, Mr. Luggage, what a pleasant surprise,” Zola mused. “I understand times are tough in this economy, but to think a billionaire's heir taking up a side gig to make ends meet is one I never truly anticipated.”

  Samson responded with a three foot streamer of drool pouring out his mouth into a large puddle on the checkered floor. “Wow, Splotches,” Snap grunted. “I'm so turned on, just toss me on the desk and tear all my clothes off, why doncha?”

  “Really?”

  “No. Not really. Not at all. Not in the slightest. You big dumb dope.”

  “Did your mother send you?” Zola asked.

  “Yes!” Samson was almost too quick and too happy to latch onto this dangling thread of hope so randomly presented him. “Yes! She did! SHE sent me! SHE'S behind this! Just don't tell her she sent me.”

  “No, heaven forbid.”

  “Freeze mortar framer!” Manny lurched into the room, sidearm at the ready. “You're under arrest.”

  “On what charges?” Zola asked calmly.

  “I'll figure that out later.”

  Snap grinned at him. “Did you just say 'mortar farmer'? God, I love you straight arrow types, you're so unrepentantly LAME.”

  “Deputy Assistant Director Vasquez,” Mr. Awful said, raising from his chair. “Welcome. I am Mr. Orville Awful, Snap's great-uncle.”

  “Not that great,” Snap said. “Sorry! Sorry! Couldn't resist.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Director Lawful told me all about you. The evil twin syndrome.”

  “Would it pain you to understand that it is my esteemed brother, Jefferson, who is the evil twin?”

  Manny mulled it over a moment. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “Me too!” Snap gasped. “Would that make ME the evil twin to Uncia?”

  “You're not twins,” Samson pointed out.

  “Oh. Well then I guess that clears me of all wrongdoing!”

  Commotion could be heard brewing outside and Zola took the initiative to peek through the window blinds down into the bar proper. “Well. Looks like the McCool family is all together again.”

  “That's nice,” Snap said. She worked her tongue around in her cheeks, as if taste testing a rare vintage, before blurting out, “Who are they again?”