Kahli stood there, holding Agent 42's severed head, and watched as the short, stocky figure of Agent 69 powered up his laser rifle and pointed it at his fellow agent's head. What lengths to go to for an emotional affair, Kahli thought.
"Last chance!" said Agent 69.
Kahli thought about this for a moment. She hoped that, if she played it safe, she could thinking this through in the present moment instead of having time freeze and having to go through a whole other round of scenarios just in order to decide what to do here. After all, this seemed like, if anything, a good opportunity to let Agent 42 die. After all, he was already dead, so if Agent 69 blasted him to smithereens, well, then that was that. There would be no worrying about being caught with his severed head when Kahli inevitably slipped up using her [Tale Teller] [skill] like she was starting to fear. There had to be a limit to how ridiculous things got here in this facility, didn't there? And what was the deal with this nebulous, apparently worldwide organization? What was going on? Agent 42 lived in the facility? Was he even a normal person? Was he grown here in a test tube or something? None of it made any sense, but it was starting to make Kahli very uncomfortable. She just wanted to go home, back to Gifflenberg. Then again, Gifflenberg was overrun by skeleton monsters... What a mess.
"Damnit, you called my bluff!" said Agent 69. He lowered his gun and sighed deeply. "Fuck. I just can't do it." He looked at Agent 42's severed head with pain in his eyes. "I can't bring myself to kill you, Agent 42. Not like this."
"Oh gods!" swooned Agent 42's wife as she fell to the ground in shock and stress.
"That's why I'm challenging you to a duel," continued Agent 69. "It feels just, well, it doesn't feel right to snuff you out like this in your home. It feels grisly. Plus, I know that the agency would never allow it, and I don't want to get kicked out of F.I.S.T."
"Don't you mean F.I.N.G.E.R.?" asked Kahli.
"What?"
"You said F.I.S.T., don't you mean F.I.N.G.E.R.?"
Agent 69 had a confused look on his face. He pulled out a badge. "Ma'am, do you see what this emblem says?"
Kahli squinted at the badge. It had a large 69 on it, and along with that, the text read 'Agent of F.I.S.T.' "Wow, Agent 42 must've lied to me about your organization being called F.I.N.G.E.R. or something." It wasn't like it was possible for her to have been wrong, what with her great hearing and picture perfect memory.
"Agent 42, lie about something?" Agent 69 looked at Agent 42's severed head fondly. "No, no, he'd never do that. Agent 42 never lies, ever." Agent 69 stroked the thick hair of his goatee protruding from the living wood on his face. "You know what? I think that these badges must be a misprint."
"A misprint?" Kahli looked a little skeptical. She really did think that Agent 42 was a liar, so it was easy for her to jump to that conclusion.
"Yes, that's got to be it. Agent 42 wouldn't lie, would you, Agent 42?" Agent 69 looked at Agent 42's severed head and smiled. "What a great guy. That's the stone cold silence of an honest man. It almost makes it hurt that I've emotionally cuckolded him, and plan to shoot him in the middle of headquarters at the top of lunch hour."
Kahli swallowed air uncomfortably. Was Agent 69 serious about dueling Agent 42? It definitely seemed so, and would of course give her an easy out that she was hoping for in that she wouldn't have to account for his death. Still, it would require her to continue to use her [skill] to deceive people further regarding Agent 42 still being alive. And what was worse was that she wasn't sure how she'd set up the duel so it seemed to others like Agent 42 was still alive. Would she have to just prop up his corpse and leave it there? Would she have to lie to everyone who happened to be at headquarters during this strange 'lunch hour' that Agent 69 was talking about? It all just seemed to be far too messy and terrifying to imagine, and yet, she had no real choice. It wasn't like she or Sahdi or Unit 5a23 could stand up there with Agent 42's corpse, though - what if Agent 69 fired at them by accident? The last thing Kahli needed right now was one of her companions, unlikely (in the case of Sahdi) or otherwise, dying an untimely death.
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While Kahli stewed over these thoughts, Agent 69 whipped out a small conch and started to pull on its cords. Soon enough, it was sounding off the calls of seagulls, and soon after that he was blabbing on the phone with someone.
"Yes? Yes? No, no no no. Yes. Yes? No. No? Yes. Hello!" Agent 69 smiled widely. "Yes, yes, I'd like to report a misprint. No. No... Yes? No, no, yes. Yes, yes, no. Exactly. Well, not really. Excellent!" Agent 69 turned to Kahli and beamed, stroking his goatee with pride. "All good, the agency will fix this soon enough. I'm glad you brought this forward to someone of my stature."
Kahli frowned. Agent 69 was shorter thanher. What was he on about, exactly?
"I'm speaking figuratively, of course," he added. "I'm one of the higher ups in the organization, hell, I'm well above Agent 42. Which, of course, only makes it all the more messed up that I had this emotional affair with his wife. Regardless, Agent 42 is a straight shooter, of course not as straight as I am of course because I intend to kill him in our duel, but regardless, a straight shoot all the same, and if he said indeed that our organization is called F.I.N.G.E.R. then it damn well is, and all these badges are a bunch of misprints! Erm, only, I have a question."
"What?" Kahli asked incredulously.
"What does F.I.N.G.E.R. stand for, again?"
Kahli racked her brains. Was her perfect memory going to fail her? No. Suddenly, she was struck with the memory of Agent 42 telling her exactly what those letters stood for. "It stands for Fighting Interlopers but Not Getting Evil Revenge, of course."
"Of course!" Agent 69 smiled. "Yes, that is indeed exactly what our organization does, we are always fighting against interlopers, such as these skeletal beasts presently emerging out of anomalies around Gifflenberg and the wider world of Nomachiato. Along with that, we never once try to get evil revenge - we are strictly neutral as an organization goes, so I do quite like that. Of course, we could also throw something in about not being good either, or about being neutral, but then we'd have to tack on even more letters, and F.I.N.G.E.R. is already a mouthful. Yes, that's got to be it." Agent 69 spoke again into his sending shell and communicated the acronym to the person on the other end. He had to argue back and forth about the letters and their meanings for a bit, but, eventually, they were happy enough. Afterwards, he hung up the call and confirmed with Kahli and Agent 42 the location for the duel.
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Kahli sat in the pod with Unit 5a23 and Sahdi and sighed in frustration.
"I just don't know what we're going to do!"
"He really wants to duel with a corpse?" asked Unit 5a23. "Also, by the way, I have some toast if anyone is interested."
Kahli took some toast and chomped down. "Hey, this isn't half bad, Unit 5a23."
"My sensors are well calibrated, Kahli. I wouldn't offer you bread in any form if it were not at least palatable. Can you imagine how irritating it would be if I was constantly offering you near inedible bread? I know that I would find that quite frustrating."
Kahli finished the toast with a smile. Sahdi ended up taking a slice as well.
"The other nice thing about this toast," said Sahdi as she chewed her food, "Is that its smell is covering up the smell of Agent 42. Not that I would know of course on account of my anosmia, but Unit 5a23's olfactory sensors detect a pretty foul odor. Not that you'd be able to tell since you're carrying Froufrou around and seem to have gone noseblind to everything that smells bad yourself. Not that I can talk, of course, but still."
"Oh no," said Kahli. "He's starting to smell?"
"It's a dead body, Kahli, of course it's starting to smell," said Sahdi as she tussled her hair in that familiar way. "Really, this is an awful situation we're in. I can't wait to get the hell out of here."
"I don't mind it, these agent saved my life," said Unit 5a23. "However, I do find this whole situation a bit odd. How long has this F.I.N.G.E.R. organization been around? It seems pretty expansive. And if the agents are to be believed, then they have facilities all over Nomachiato. What exactly are they here for?"
"They seem to be containing things. Anomalies. Perforations, apparently. And, along with that, the odd cryptid," replied Kahli. "It almost seems like this organization exists to pervade normalcy above all else."
"That explains why we're here, then," said Sahdi. "Especially you, Kahli. Nothing about you screams normal. Well, at least, it's not normal to carry around a disgusting, tentacle-clad creature from the depths of wherever."
"Hey, leave Froufrou alone!" Kahli said with vitrol, protectively hugging her disgusting horror from the Pit of Despair as it cowered inside its velvet handbag.
This minor argument was soon interrupted by a large crackling and echo of a loudspeaker.
"Attention all agents, attention all agents. Your lunch hour begins in five minutes. Attention all agents, lunch hour begins in five minutes. Thank you, over."
The speaker crackled off.
"Gods, this is like a post-pre-post-pre-third-dary school or something," said Sahdi with a sigh.
Kahli grimaced as she looked at Agent 42's corpse. Five minutes to lunch hour? That meant she only had five minutes to think of how to handle this duel with Agent 69.