You've Got Another Thing Coming

A tall apparition made itself known at the Headquarters of Le Résistance. It was a blonde blur as it zoomed from room to room, screaming nonsense and madly waving around pieces of furniture. Members of the resistance threw themselves out of its path in fear for their own well-being and welfare, as the apparition tornadoed its way to the grand office.

In the office sat Le Président and he was spitting out cigarette smoke more violently than a steam locomotive. He was pondering on about the package, silently and – every now and then – not so silently cursing himself for not keeping it. He had rattled it and it had rattled back the sound of wrapped up crystal glass banging together. Le Président had a very good ear when it came to glass. He appreciated them very much, and had a wonderful collection of them back home; but if there was something Le Président liked more than a fine piece of glass, it was a fine piece of gold. Preferably in large amounts, but he wasn’t too picky.
That Pears wizard lived in a gingerbread house, he knew. It must’ve cost him a fortune with all that dough; and let’s not forget all that candyfloss fabric he hung in his windows. If anyone was rich, it would be that wizard. And if a rich and powerful wizard sent a package to a rich and powerful queen, the contents of said package must be extremely valuable.

Le Président inhaled the smoke like a drowning man gulps for air.
“Liam!” he shouted after a couple of moments’ consideration. Almost immediately could the sound of heavy footsteps be heard.

“Oui,” said a velvety voice in Le Président’s ear after a few seconds.

He hopped out of his chair and began pacing around the stuffy room, ever so often glaring at the newly entered young man standing in attention by his desk. That is to say, Liam sat comfortably at the side of the desk, his arms lazily crossed behind his head.

“Liam,” said Le Président slowly and deliberately in his native tongue. Liam coughed at the puff of smoke that rushed for his face.

“Oui?” he wondered, screwing his face up in contempt over the nasty smell of the particular cigarette brand.

“What is the prisoner doing at this very moment?” wondered Le Président, staring inconspicuously at a spot somewhere behind the young man’s head.

Liam arched a dark eyebrow.
“Sleeping, sir,” he answered, letting a question mark hang unsaid in the air in the exact same way a brick wouldn’t.

“Hm,” puffed Le Président. “Where’s the package?”

“On a chair in the prisoner’s room, right next to the door, by his luggage,” said Liam, now metaphorically highlighting the question mark with red paint.

Le Président resumed his pacing, all the while huffing and puffing out bits of smoke. Liam waved his hand in a failed attempt to clear the air just beneath his nose. He watched his superior for a while, until said superior halted mid-pace.

“What ever the wizard gave that wimp of a boy it must have been something valuable!” he concluded, waving the cigarette around and dropping ashes all over the floor. “I don’t care if he’s from the Barcelonian Resistance; I want to know what is in that package!”

Liam now raised the other brow and made the unspoken question mark jump up and down in anticipation.
“You mean you haven’t heard, sir?” he wondered, quite impressed by Le Président’s obvious unawareness.

“Heard what?” snapped Le Président. If there was something he didn’t like, it was to appear ignorant. Also, he disliked broken glass, but that has nothing to do with the matter at hand.

“I can’t believe you haven’t heard him!” teased the young man, showing up his perfect teeth in the process.

“Heard who?!” Storm clouds were beginning to gather atop Le Président’s head. Or maybe it was just cigarette smoke; no one could tell.

PIGS IN SPACE!

“The prisoner,” grinned Liam. “He’s been screaming in his sleep, sir. Mostly nonsense about witches, being abroad and equal rights for transvestites.”

Le Président narrowed his eyes. “What has this got to do with anything?”

Liam’s grin widened. “Ah, well. You see, sir, he’s also been yelling about angry women, the Queen and potions.”

The small, beady eyes of Le Président had practically been hidden in the bags of fat underneath his eyes. Now, however, they vanished as the Frenchman exposed all his yellowing, stubbly teeth is something that could almost be reminiscent to a smile. Liam had to struggle not to make a disgusted face.

“Potions?” asked Le Président rhetorically. “Potions are in glass vials. Glass vials equal the noise from rattling the package.”

“Really?” Liam faked an innocent look, shoved his hands in the pockets of the uniform pants and rocked back on his heels. “Is there something you wish for me to do regarding this new piece of information?” he wondered casually, looking pointedly at Le Président.

The plump little man had tucked away his bad excuse for teeth in favour of another smoke. He was once again pacing up and down the room, breathing nicotine at an impressive speed. The beet-like face carried the expression of complete concentration.
After a while and some mutterings under his breath Le Président came to a complete stop before his subordinate. With deliberate care he extended one hand, the one carrying the cigarette, and brought it so close to the young man’s face Liam went cross-eyed in his attempt to stare suspiciously at the bud.

“You…” said Le Président carefully. “You are going to go back to the prisoner’s room.”

The gorgeous young man nodded, eyes still crossed and completely focused on the cigarette less than an inch from his nose.

“Then,” continued the Frenchman, “you are going to open that package. If there are any potions you will then make the prisoner drink them and see what happens. Whatever it is, it might be useful.”

“Ah,” said Liam, changing his general centre of attention from the cigarette bud and applying it full-force to Le Président’s enormous nose. “And what about the Barcelonian Resistance?”

Le Président narrowed his eyes at him.
“They don’t know we’ve got their agent. Mind you, I thought the Barcelonian Resistance had better recourses than that boy, but still… What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

The young man took a step back when faced with the full blast of his superior’s glare. Nevertheless, he wasn’t done yet.
“What if they’ll miss him and send out a search party?”

Le Président scoffed. “’Miss him’?” He snorted. “Even if they would, no one here has seen him besides you and me, and our loyal men.” He tossed the bud on the floor and stomped at it. “No one will ever find out.”

“But sir, don’t you think they’ll miss the package? Or maybe the wizard and the Queen themselves will come and look for it.” Liam was now trembling slightly, both out of fear of the two national authorities, and Le Président’s glare.

“No one will ever know,” he growled stubbornly, and against all reason. “Now – go and do what I told you!”

Liam found the courage to glare back at the ugly little man, but obediently turned on his heel and marched out of the room, slamming it shut behind him.

With his eyes, Le Président followed Liam on his way out. It focused on his retreating back, his retreating behind, and his retreating shape before it disappeared behind the door.

“Lovely young man,” he muttered through his yellow teeth. He randomly grabbed at an item on his desk and pulled out another cigarette, lighting it on his way over to his chair. Le Président hoisted himself into the soft, soft seat and tried his best not to picture his subordinate naked and…well, naked. He closed his eyes and was just about to drift off into a dream world of his very own when his office door was flung open so forcefully the top hinges came off.
A tall, blonde apparition stormed into his office and right up to Le Président’s chair. Large, pale hands grabbed him by the collar of his white-and-blue striped shirt and lifted him straight up into the air; and Le Président found himself staring frightfully into a pair of violet eyes shooting lightening, daggers and all other sorts of deadly material. A deep voice growled: “Where is the human?”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liam pushed back the heavy wooden door as quietly as he possibly could. It squeaked slightly, but the random snores coming from inside the room were uninterrupted. He stuck his head inside and spied with his lovely eye a large figure under a blanket on the bed.

Poor sod, thought Liam and pressed himself through the crack he’d conjured. He had to pull in his chest, but he didn’t think that was worth mentioning.

Right there, next to the door, was a chair. Right there, on the chair, was the infamous package.
He glared at it.
He then got the feeling it was glaring back at him, and averted his gaze. The figure on the bed spit out a stream of random profanities, but did not wake. Liam tip-toed over to the chair in an attempt to be as quiet as a mouse and somehow managed to sound like a spinning wheel in a rattling cage during night-time. From the depths of his pockets he produced a Swiss army knife and brought it forth to MacGuffin. He stopped mid-air, feeling a sense of disapproval practically radiating off of the package.

He shrugged and tried to comfort himself by whispering: “Orders are orders.”

He reached over to rip the package open when something caught his eye. Next to the chair was the prisoner’s luggage. Someone had titled it, causing it contents to have tumbled out on the floor. Amongst shirts, socks and dirty underwear were two, familiarly shaped glass items.

Liam picked them up.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Le Président was choking in his air. Or, perhaps more accurately, he was choking on his cigarette.

“I ‘ave no idea what you are talking about!” he asserted, waving his hands protectively in front of his face.

“Don’t lie,” growled his maimer-to-be. “I could smell your stinking brand of cigarettes all over the clearing. I followed its scent here. You’ve got the human!”

“We don’t ‘ave any prisoners!” howled Le Président. “Only zome boy from a brother organization, and ‘ee eez a guest!”

The ill-tempered attacker rattled him like a package full of unknown things one wishes would disappeared from the face of the earth.
“Bring me to him,” ordered the tall, blonde, furious man.

Le Président gulped. Then, he scurried off hastily with the man hot on his heels.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liam held up the two glass vials and critically examined them in the dim light.

“Ew,” he concluded.

One of the vials was filled with a clear, blue liquid that reminded him of ocean-scented hand-wash soap. The mere thought of drinking it made him cringe, despite its quite pleasant appearance. The other liquid was murky green, practically non-fluent and, Liam thought, of the same consistence like the gooey monsters kids think hide underneath their beds.

Whichever way he looked at it, they were nasty. Whichever way he looked at it, he wouldn’t feed unknown potions to his worst enemy. Maybe Le Président, but he was a different matter.

Liam glanced at the sleeping figure on the bed, and despite himself his curiosity began to tingle and tangle noisily. He really didn’t want to do it, but Le Président had told him to feed the prisoner with whatever potions he found. And, Liam thought, if I don’t have to open the package sent by a notorious powerful wizard to an infamous evil Queen, then I’ll hopefully live a little while longer.

Holding up the two vials, he examined them cautiously again.
“Monster or soap,” he muttered. “Brains, or bubbles.”

He then found the logical, nicer choice and walked over to the bed. Grabbing a hold of the prisoner’s shoulder, Liam carefully rolled him over on his back and grabbed a gentle yet steady hold of his jaw.
He then tipped the blue contents of the vial into the prisoner’s mouth, shut it firmly, and stood well back.