Ying, Yang and Ambivalence Read online

  They's eye was caught by one particular frame. "Is that the pub menu?"

  "You've got to have some inspiration to get you through the day." Spiritwind placed a bowl of tortilla chips, drenched in cheese, in the microwave.

  They, took up his usual seat on the sofa, in reach of the coffee table and its various gaming and distracting paraphernalia. "Any nearer to knowing what you're meant to be doing?"

  "We presume giving out information, but nobody asks us anything we know." Brick placed a closed sign on the window. It felt like time for a break. He rolled across to the gathering, on his chair.

  "You should have a word with Irony. An information booth without information should be on her files somewhere."

  "I'm not asking her any more questions." Brick rubbed his chin in remembered pain. His inquisitive nature was often taken as offence, especially by Irony. She was endlessly suspicious mockery was afoot, particularly when Brick was on the end of a question. The fact he'd noticed her ears were of differing sizes had not gone down well.

  The microwave pinged, signalling it was done with its brief task. It was a sound to Spiritwind as seductive as an angel flashing an ankle.

  "So, what brings you to town, They?" Brick moved the topic away from angry women with grudges.

  "Bit of work. Been in the park telling people that blades of grass tell their mates to lie down when they sees a lawnmower coming."

  "I've heard that before? Sends out a chemical when it gets cut. That's why you always end up with a clump of lawn that looks untouched." Brick embellished without effort as Spiritwind placed the bowl of snacks on the table, returning to the fridge for some self-made dips. Brick picked up a sample. He had to drop it through excess heat and fear the cheese was about to meld as one with his skin.

  "Oh I like that. Can I steal that?" They was going to, whatever the answer.

  "You can do, but I think it's the truth."

  "Of course it is." They's nod and wink made Brick doubt his own long held belief. "What time do you finish today?"

  "We're not entirely sure. The lights don't work so it has to be some time before it gets dark. I presume there's a purpose behind your question?" Brick tried to raise one eyebrow. He'd been practising, but without a mirror he had no idea if he was succeeding or not. His efforts were interrupted by Spiritwind adding flavoursome condiments to the gathering.

  "I'm off to meet a few of the fella's in the pub if you'd like to join us?"

  "Any reason?" Brick didn't need a reason. He just thought he should know if he needed to prepare a toast, or tell anyone he'd forgotten to get them a gift.

  "It's Monday. Best way to get rid of those Monday blues you humans go on about is to treat Monday like a Friday."

  "We'll finish dinner then pop round. Usual place?"

  "Why change what works." They doffed his hair and left, securing a handful of slightly cooled crisps as he went.

  The fella's in question referred to the group of concepts that had helped Brick and Spiritwind save the Earth in their first adventure. Fate, Coincidence (Fate's brother), Fut (official spreader of cool, calm and funk) and They, were resolutely available and were becoming something of a drinking group. Karma (Fate's girlfriend) and her best friend Irony would appear at their own whim, dependent on mood and Karma's opinion of her boyfriend at that particular time. Her job required extremes of positive and negative actions. Her personality perfectly reflected such finely poised shifts.

  More recently the ship they had inherited as a reward for saving the universe, Magical Causality, had also been tagging along. Its ability to morph its shape and size meant nobody objected to whichever pet they chose to disguise it as. An inquisitive owl was proving most popular at the moment.

  ***********

  The night out followed the usual trading of laughter, anecdotes and nonsense. Spiritwind defeated Brick in a game of flick the beer-mat, as the paper cuts across his cheek attested to. The bottle-top shaped wounds across Spiritwind's forehead attested to the bald hero's attempt to prove he could soak up half a pint of water in his already ample beard. He couldn't.

  The peripherals of the evening had trickled along a familiar path: Karma had stormed off before Fate's apologetic chase convinced her to return, but not to inform him what he was apologising for, Fut imbued a sense of calm into the pub giving the entire night's clientele a feeling of satisfaction and thorough enjoyment, and Coincidence and Irony suspiciously disappeared at the same time every so often, only to sit around the table avoiding eye contact whenever anyone else was around. Maintaining their flitting snog/hatred relationship was growing ever more transparent. Only Brick, Spiritwind, They, and their ship Magical Causality, had embarked on the after-pub quest for a dance and now food.

  "Why don't we send Magic to pick us something up and meet us at home?" Brick proposed sending their craft to Babylon for the traditional fried chicken.

  "I'm not sure they'll serve a shrunken spaceship, even at this time of the morning. Plus he's in a right state. Not sure he could do it." Magic hovered above a grid in case any liquids should escape its fuselage.

  "Could he fly us there?" Brick offered his second proposal as the trio watched the counterfeit owl stutter and stumble in an attempt to hover.

  "If he's going to fly you there, I know a special little takeaway just outside the galaxy; has a pretty outstanding nightclub attached to it too." They unveiled his universal wisdom.

  "Probably safer than asking him to take us down our street; not as many parked cars in space." Brick saw an extra positive.

  "There won't be any objections from me." Spiritwind raised his non confronting arm. His confronting arm was busy arguing with his pocket about a five pound note it claimed to have left there earlier. "Are you coming, They?"

  "I'd better not, got to go to China in the morning. Tell them you can see that Great big Wall from space irrelevant of what people keep saying. That astronaut has ruined so many years of work I put in to that."

  "Can you tell us where this bar is before you go. Better still, tell Magic. May as well fill a colander with Um-Bongo for all the good my head is right now."

  "Of course." They, waddled over to Magic and whispered towards him, before realising his error and turning away from the bin he'd just given a hot tip for a galactic hang out. As the message found the correct sound sensors, Magic's sub-systems reacted and passed the establishment and its co-ordinates to the navigation unit. The sub and navigation systems tutted and rolled their LED's at Magic's intoxicated state, again. It had become far too common under the stewardship of the Earth's finest heroes.

  Magic blearily realised something was going on and attempted to sober up quicker than a teenager approaching their parent's door. The craft turned and zig-zagged its way towards the waiting duo, morphing from a tawny bird back to its bulbous, white exterior on the way.

  "I've passed on the information. I told the bin too, just in case Magic forgets." They commented as he continued to walk.

  "Are you sure you're not coming?"

  "No. I've been putting off this China thing for ages. Have fun though. It'll be hard not to if I remember the place rightly." They disappeared as he transported himself home.

  "At your honourable service." Magic grew to its standard accommodating size then fell over.

  "Is this a good idea?" Spiritwind had to ask, seen as nobody else was there to point out the obvious mistake they were making.

  "Is anything?" Brick had a seamless riposte.

  "Good point." Drunken logic stepped in and offered reassurance. Magic laid out his armchair ramp in his tilted position.

  The duo boarded without worry as They arrived home and passed out on his sofa. Why he didn't transport himself directly to bed was a question for sobriety. His last thought concerned the pair having as much fun as he had had at Fluffy McCoy's, while a bin sat in the street and wondered why a man had whispered Huffy Leroy's in his general direction. It shrugged and failed to follow up its concern. Humanity was its own prob
lem. It only had eyes for the litter that sat so enticingly close when the very solution, and only purpose for the receptacle's existence, had been dropped irritatingly nearby.

  Contents

  Chapter Two

  "You'll never take me alive, Clavical. And this town won't see another day. Jiggery, release the concrete." Bumraaticus Calamitus (Bum-Raa to save both time and spelling errors in day-to-day life) stood upon the hill surrounding his home town. An aspiring megalomaniac, he had ambitions to one day rule all that is, but for the moment he and his best friend, and self appointed henchman Jiggery Pokery, were struggling to even take over their meagre sized community. The reason, as always, was the interruption of Hatch Clavical, the town's resident saviour and life-long fan of Hugo Cortizone: the greatest and best selling hero of all time.

  Jiggery pulled the strings as instructed. They were connected to two vast vats of concrete that sat atop an elaborate series of guttering. The guttering wound its way down the hillside towards a number of strategic points in the town. They would deliver the penalty for allowing Bum's deadline to pass.

  Bum had stuck to an age old megalomaniac tactic: threaten the target, show them a glimpse of your power to prove you're serious, and then demand an ungodly amount of money to prevent you carrying out your intentions. Having seized the cement factory, and filled the mayor's house with the grey slurry as a demonstration of his power, the hopeful tyrant's bank account was still overdrawn, he'd severely underestimated the cost of quality guttering, meaning the town had decided not to pay up, again. For such disobedience they would suffer the penalty he promised; their beloved community would be flooded with concrete, turning the entire landscape into one block of smooth, lifeless dismay.

  Jiggery signalled to his boss that the strings had indeed been pulled; then leapt to the megalomaniac's side as they faced Hatch Clavical, once more.

  The trio swapped grimaces and postures as they circled each other, the naughty pair sniggering as Hatch was visibly torn between the battle and saving the people from their grey destiny. Bum let the thought of victory enter his mind, a smile of satisfaction flickering across his face; it was the moment Hatch Clavical had been waiting for. Slowly, his ponderous distress turned into a grin that suggested everything was going exactly as he intended. Only then did Bum realise the guttering remained empty of the intended river of doom, and that the gentle pumping action of the vats had been replaced with increasingly violent jolts and splutters.

  Jiggery reacted by tensing his seven foot bulk and looking towards his boss in worried confusion. Following the classical two arms and legs attached to a torso design, Jiggery's head had opted to meld a stallion with the lower jaw of a piranha, teeth to match. Bum returned the sense of concern from his more modest five feet of portly dimensions. His ginger beard and uncontrollable hair masked the majority of his face, but nothing could hide the two foot, Swiss army knife that served as an arm. A childhood accident involving a see-saw had seen his birth limb lost. The ensuing popularity at parties, as a man known to always have a bottle opener, had done little to quell his sense of being picked on by the universe.

  The naughty duo turned back towards Hatch's wide smirk, then to the mechanism, then back to Hatch, then one last focus on the piping; in particular the funnels. A giant cork sat smugly in each.

  Bum-Raa seethed and raised his prosthetic arm, leaping forward in rage at the meddling hero. Opening his eyes he expected to find his nemesis skewered upon a particularly vicious serrated blade, instead he found himself poking a laughing gentleman in the chest with a blunt tin opener.

  Hatch casually pushed the offending chunk of metal to one side and continued to smile, throwing in a gentle belly laugh for effect. The tool of Good proceeded to raise a small baton with a flashing red light on the end. Jiggery paused as he'd been about to launch a devastating thump.

  "Exploding corks! A Hugo favourite." Hatch winked, pushed the button, then pulled his cape over himself and curled up in a ball. The cape hardened as smoke billowed from the blocked nozzles. The cheeky miscreants had just enough time to look knowingly at each other before light, sound, and quick drying concrete filled the area.

  Hatch emerged from his buoyant ball of protection after several minutes. Having risen to the surface of the increasingly hardening liquid, he clicked his heels to produce the skis that were built in to his hero boots, and surveyed the scene with a glimmer of pride. The entire hilltop had been covered in concrete, flattening out its numerous crevices and dangerous pointy bits. Clavical quickly saw the potential revenue in a car park with a view, and realised what he would ask for as reward for saving the town once more. He wouldn't be young and strapping forever, and it was never too early to start saving a nest egg.

  Turning around he spotted two figures covered entirely in grey sludge, slowly grinding to a halt, mid-run. Hatch proceeded to glide across to them. He couldn't resist having a few words with the increasingly statuesque Bum and Jiggery.

  "It seems your evil plan wasn't set in stone after all." Hatch went straight for the easy pun. Even though it made no sense his confidence gave it credence. Bum-Raa would have raised his eyes in disgust, but by the time they'd got there the moment would have long passed.

  "You'll make a nice centrepiece to my new car park. Maybe I'll turn you in to a fountain. Hahahahaha." The belly laugh continued as Hatch skimmed ahead, all the time working out potential capacity and a reasonable charge for vehicle safety in such a stunning location.

  Watching his nemesis escape, victorious once more, Bum-Raa managed to open his mouth wide enough to allow speech out. He aimed it towards Jiggery. "I think it's time we turned our fortunes around."

  "What are you saying?" Jiggery couldn't hear past the concrete in his ears. It wasn't essential. Bum was speaking more for himself than anyone else.

  "We need to increase our gang for a start. You need a fellow henchman. You can't be watching my back and pulling strings at the same time."

  "I can't hear a word you're saying."

  "We need training, from professionals. We need to sign up to Evil University."

  "You want to open a nursery?"

  "Never mind Jiggery. Just you realise it's going to be okay. We are going to succeed."

  "But I don't like seeds."

  The night closed in on the hill and its newest occupants. Whispered narrative fluttered through the air and suggested they'd find their way out of their concrete prison to fight another day, otherwise why even mention them?

  Contents

  Chapter Three

  Spon Dooliks sat at his desk, beseeched by piles of marking he had yet to sift through. As Vice Chancellor, and Head Assessor of The University of Evil and Generally Mean Doings, it was his job to add up all the marks received by a student and offer a final grade along with a paragraph summarising their performance and potential. Spon was renowned for his accuracy and intuition in the field, but he had other things on his mind as his favourite marking pen twirled around his fingers.

  As a true scholar of darkness, Spon knew every technique, tactic, and downright naughtiness Evil had ever employed, and he could see where they went wrong, yet he could not convert all this knowledge in to practice. Ever since moving in to his suburban oasis he'd coveted his next door neighbour's garden. Not for any nasty need on his part. Spon was not inherently evil; he'd just been born without a conscience. He revelled in the complexity of the challenge, solving the puzzle of society.

  As a tutor of misdeeds, Spon thought nothing could be simpler than taking the land for himself, yet years had passed and every ploy had failed, not acquiring even an inch of that he desired. The dilemma plagued him: why could he not bridge the gap between theory and reality?

  The available reading material, documenting Evil's side of its every exploit, was minimal. Partly because the Evil base would usually be destroyed, and partly because Evil never took admin overly seriously; they were too busy feasting at banquets and fighting in unruly gatherings of peers to make sure th
e books were up to date. As such, Spon had ventured in to the tales of Good to advance his research. He envied how seriously, Good took organisation, and wished to instil such discipline into Evil, but until he became Chancellor that could never happen. As he further pondered, the incumbent block to his promotion walked in.

  "Morning, Dooliks." The door swung open to the physical request of Dip Sing Doolally, the current Chancellor.

  "Yes. Morning it is." Spon spun round from the window he'd been dreaming through.

  Dip Sing Doolally was a rotund fellow standing no more than four and a half feet. Impeccably dressed he was everything an academic statesman should be, facially he was everything a light brown Yorkshire Terrier resembled, yet his heart still beat with the ferocity of a wronged lion. Spon was altogether more spindly in build, reaching up to six and a half feet when he could be bothered. Painfully thin, you could be mistaken for thinking his hands floated in the air were you to catch his arms in the right light. His face resembled a walnut, his dress that of a countrified gent.

  Dip had spent many years as a henchman, his fierce heart promising to deliver what his bulk suggested may be lacking; however, after being filmed helping an old lady cross the road, without even dipping his hand into her handbag, he'd been fined by the Henchman's Union and ordered to carry out community service. That had translated into taking the role of Chancellor at the newly founded Evil University. Perceived to be a gimmick by many, everybody had presumed it would go the same way as Dragon Training School and close within weeks, although hopefully without the all-engulfing flames; thus nobody had applied for the position.

  Initially scornful and filled with resentment, Dip grew in to the job and slowly fell in love with the tailored suits and expenses account. Staying on long past his sentence had been served, he'd turned the qualifications the institution offered into a respected niche within the Evil world and had ambitions to take things further, but as much as he tried to assume the behaviour of a revered statesman, the rage of a misguided henchman still bubbled beneath, and often broke the surface.