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Episode 01x17 - Christmas With Slappy

Malex:

Where did we leave off? Ah yes, as private detectives. We no longer had an office, and there really wasn’t anything we could do to remedy that on Christmas day. So, we were stuck.

I don’t really hate Christmas, but crikey, it seems like holidays are just designed to emphasize the fact that you don’t have friends.

Icepunk:

I walk home from the mall and burrow my hands deeper in my hoodie’s pockets. Stupid mall was closed, so now I gotta walk home through a foot of snow. Man, I’m so hard to shop for. I just don’t like anything at all. Well, except for stuff from the local gun store, but they won’t let me in anymore.

A whistling sound. I duck and watch as a sugar-white spherical object flies over my head at a tremendous velocity. “Ha!” I call, looking to see who the culprit is. “Missed!”

Smack. My vision turns white. “Dang!” I yell. “Reflexes too slow to compensate for multiple snowball weaponry.”

“Boy, you was askin’ for it! Ah’m gonna kick your butt!” Slappy says, aiming a weapon at me.

“Not you again! Aren’t you dead?” I ask him, wiping snow out of my eyes.

“Do I look dead?” The fiend responds.

“Sorta,” I admit. “Dude, Slappy, give it a rest. The bus is GONE! Remember? I don’t have it anymore!” I yelled angrily.

“This ain’t about the bus anymore, ya freakin’ vermin!” Slappy screams hysterically. “I’m gonna have your guts for pantyhose!”

“You meant garters, right?” I beg. “Please, please tell me you meant garters.”

Malex:

While I was moping around the apartment, I heard sounds of impending violence. I quickly rushed to and looked out of the nearest window.

What I saw was quite astounding. Apparently, Icepunk was getting blasted repeatedly by a brittle old man with a fully-automatic snow cannon.

I may not have considered Icepunk a good friend, but there was no way that he was going to continue paying his share of the rent if he were to asphyxiate under a ton of snow. I quickly slipped into another layer of protection and hurried out to help.

Icepunk:

“Aw for crappin’ out loud!” Slappy curses, “Mah snow cannon’s jammed! I’m’a gonna have to kick yer butt the old fashioned way!”

Slappy and I stare at each other across a vast field of snow. I can’t believe I have to put up with this old man on Christmas! What do I have to do to get him to leave me alone?

I bend over and scoop up some snow. I begin shaving off all unnecessary snow to make it the perfect size and weight, for maximum damage. Slappy is doing the same, except he also seems to be packing small pieces of glass into his snowballs.

“Hey, good idea!” I call. I find a bottle in the recently snowplowed street, smash it, and stuff the sharpest pieces into my snowballs. I accumulate an arsenal of lethal snowballs and prepare for battle.

“This ends now, Slappy,” I told him.

“I agree, crap face!” Slappy said.

Malex:

Interested only in preserving the peace, I rushed out onto the field of battle and yelled, “Put down your arms! Surely there is a better way to resolve your differences!”

“Git outta mah way you nincompoop!” the old fart yelled as he delivered me a concussion-inducing blow.

Needless to say, I went down. I quickly recovered though, picking large, sharp shards of glass out of my skull. “Icepunk!” I yelled, staggering toward Icepunk’s fort and waving my arms about wildly.

“Yeah?”

“KILL!”

“You might wanna duck first dude,” Icepunk suggested, tossing a death ball to himself. “You’re solidly in the way.”

“Oh. Right.” I scampered around to the safe side of Icepunk’s hastily constructed fort, and took my first good look at our opponent. “Good grief! It’s YOU again!”

“Just call him ‘Slappy’. It seems to annoy him,” Icepunk told me.

“Yeah, ok.”

Icepunk:

Malex has interfered with my duel, crouching next to me in a makeshift snow fort. So that he’s not completely useless, I set him to work building death balls.

“Oh, merry Christmas, by the way,” I say to him.

Malex yanks another splinter out of his forehead. “Same to you, old chap.”

“I didn’t get you anything.”

“Me neither.”

I lob a death ball over our defenses. A moment later several more fly over from the opposite direction. “Whoa. He’s really zealous about killing me. And possibly you, now that you’ve gotten in the way of his crusade.”

“What a great way to spend Christmas,” Malex grumbles sullenly as he extracts a shard of glass from his eyebrow.

Malex:

After another several cascades of deadly snow, I poked my head above the protective wall and yelled, “Yo! Slappy!”

“What do you want, you miserable critter?!”

“Merry Christmas!” I called.

“What?!” Icepunk smacked me a good one. “The day he deserves a merry Christmas is the day he finally bites it!”

“Well, but...” I trailed off.

Suddenly, Slappy vaulted over our defenses and confronted me. “What did you say?!”

“Uh, merry Christmas?” I said hesitantly.

Icepunk, always at the ready, grabbed a few death balls and eyed Slappy suspiciously.

Without warning, Slappy burst into tears and hugged me. Between sobs, he managed to croak, “Nobody’s wished me a merry Christmas since my parents died grisly deaths and left me to be raised by my Japanese grandfather in Louisiana.”

“Dude,” Icepunk interjected, “get over it! We’ve all got our little problems. Heck, I had a hangnail this morning! How do you think I feel about that?!”

After a few choice Japanese cuss-words, the brittle old man leapt at Icepunk and started beating him.

“Ah well,” thought I as I started back up to the apartment, “I’ve done all I can.”

Icepunk:

After taking my beating like a man, Slappy lets me go due to a coughing fit. I proceed to fill his mouth and shirt with snow, then drag him to the nearest retirement home.

Entering the less-than-luxurious establishment, I walk up to the desk with my captive in tow. “I can almost smell the senility in here,” I say.

“Can I help you?” A snobbish-looking man with large glasses asks from behind a beat-up desk.

“Yeah,” I say, walking up to the desk and tapping my fingers on the top of it. “I wanna get rid of this guy. He just won’t leave me alone; he keeps coming after me and trying to kill me. It’s not as if I mind the occasional duel, but he seems to have made it his life’s goal to snuff me.”

The clerk nods sympathetically. “I understand. Did he abuse you as a child too?”

“Well, no, but he’s been after me for quite awhile,” I say, scratching my head. “There’s no way he can get out, is there?”

“I assure you, he will be completely safe here,” the clerk says, nodding and rubbing his hands together. “All I need is a valid credit card and your signature. By the way, that’s a good trick - gagging him with snow.”

I dig around in Slappy’s little fanny pack and pull out a credit card. “Platinum okay?”

“Yes! Absolutely. Sign here,” the greedy little man says.

“Great. By the way, he needs a daily dose of a combination of laxatives and sedative,” I say, snickering.

“Uh, ok,” says the clerk, jotting down notes. “Right. Have a merry Christmas.”

“Oh, I will.” I say, saluting Slappy as I turn to go.