//------------------------------// // Desperate Times // Story: The Cutie Mark Allocation Agency // by Hoopy McGee //------------------------------// The early-morning sunlight shone into the tunnels that led into Gnomington. This sunlight was gathered and redirected by meticulously hand-crafted mirrors, marvels of modern gnomish craftwork. From there, the light was sent to other mirrors throughout the city before finally being captured and diffused by certain rare crystals. It was a beautiful, awe-inspiring sight. Unfortunately, most gnomes slept right through it. A pair of exceptions made their way to a run-down apartment building, stopping once they reached a particularly ratty-looking door at ground level. There was a pounding at the door, followed by the raised voice of a slightly agitated young gnomette. The pause that followed was met with silence, and the silence was met with a more vigorous pounding and some angry shouting from the gnomette, much to the mortification of her otherwise loyal young gnome companion, who had arranged to meet her here at the crack of dawn. The pounding continued until Glummwriggle’s upstairs neighbor poked his head out of his window and added some shouting of his own. Claribelle returned fire, thus guaranteeing that the entire apartment block would be woken by the shouting of the two gnomes. Naturally enough, a few of these unfairly-woken gnomes went to their own windows in order to join in their little game. This game was called “Why don’t we all start shouting at too-damned-early-o’clock”, and variants of this game are played in cities and towns across the multiverse. Tinseltoes tried to interject the occasional apology, but the shouting was much too prevalent. Eventually, he just gave up and relegated himself to fading into the background as much as was possible. After about ten minutes of this, and repeated threats of calling the police coming from both sides, one of the residents got the clever idea of filling a pitcher with ice-cold water and flinging it at Claribelle and Tinseltoes. This didn’t achieve the desired level of quiet, at least not at first. Instead, it produced a shrill shriek, somewhat like a train whistle, followed by more shouting that was, if anything, even more abusive than it had been a moment before. The enterprising apartment-dweller went back for a second pitcher-full, and several other neighbors caught on and ran back to their own kitchens for pitchers of ice water of their own. This was enough to finally convince the two young gnomes to take to their heels, steadfastly ignoring the jeers of the inhabitants of the apartment complex. Still, the damage had been done. The apartment gnomes now found themselves far too wound up to go back to bed. Many a pot of coffee was brewed and, amidst much angry muttering, drained. Thus it was that a few gnomes who were habitually late for work managed to surprise their supervisors by showing up incredibly early. This was because average gnome would sleep in well past nine in the morning, provided that gnome had no sadistic bosses who were forcing them to do otherwise. The exception to this was the headquarters of the CMAA, and this was only because a little blank-flanked pony could reach epiphany at any time, day or night. The skeleton crew that manned the security posts overnight tended to get a little squirrelly towards the end of their shifts, as no amount of coffee truly made up for their predilection to sleep until the day was nicely broken in and breakfast was due. Thus it was that Claribelle and Tinseltoes found themselves marching up to the tired-eyed guards drooping listlessly outside of the CMAA Headquarters. Claribelle’s expression brooked no dissent, her attitude indicating that, if someone were to put a brick wall in her way, she’d push straight through it face-first if she had to. “So, uh… what are we gonna do?” Tinseltoes whispered to Clari as they approached the guards, who were staring at them with dull-eyed exhaustion. “We? No. I am going in. You are going to keep your mouth shut and follow my lead.” Tinseltoes sighed, mentally waving goodbye to his newborn career. He supposed that there was always work with his Uncle Stinky, though a life in Sewage Management was less than appealing to a bright-eyed young gnome. The guard at the doorway straightened as he approached. Just as they reached him, Claribelle jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Tinseltoes, who was walking a short distance behind her. “Don’t worry, he’s with me,” she said, her voice full of brisk authority. And then she kept on walking, much to the guard’s obvious befuddlement. “Hey..?” the guard protested weakly. “Here’s my identification!” Tinseltoes said chipperly. The guard blinked his tired eyes and looked back at him. He took Tinsel’s ID, scowled at it for a moment, then shrugged and passed it back. “Go on, then,” the guard said. Tinseltoes caught up with Claribelle a few seconds later, though he had to jog to do it. “I can’t believe that worked!” Clari winked at him. “The key to getting into places you don’t belong is to act like you do.” “Huh. So, do you do this often?” Tinseltoes asked. The thought of Claribelle being some sort of spy or infiltrator was strangely compelling, and didn’t dampen his enthusiasm to help her out in the slightest. “No. I just figured it out yesterday, actually.” “So, where to now?” Tinseltoes asked, looking around the dimly-lit hallway they found themselves in. The bulk of the staff wasn’t due to arrive for over an hour, yet, which gave them some time to… well, to do whatever it was that Claribelle had planned. Clari’s voice was thoughtful as she replied. “Well, I would like to get Diamond Tiara’s folders back from Tallywaddle’s office, but if he’s involved, he probably destroyed them already. So, the first place would be to go downstairs to the Records Department and get a copy of the receipt he signed for them. That’s at least some evidence.” “Sounds easy enough,” Tinseltoes said, feeling both relieved and vaguely disappointed that they wouldn’t be doing more daring activities. “And then, after I get that receipt, we’re going to go through Counselor Tiddwiddle’s office like a tornado, just to see if there’s any trace of that box that he stole.” Ah. That’s more like it, Tinseltoes thought. ~~*~~ Counselor Tiddwiddle had just arrived, yawning but well-rested, having had the best night’s sleep he’d remembered having in weeks. And, as was his tradition, his first stop was the company cafeteria for a fresh coffee and pastry. The box was gone, which was a massive load off of Tidwiddle's shoulders. The constant, lingering fear of being found out had come to pass, but with the best possible outcome, which was that the Chief himself was now complicit in the cover-up. There was no possible way, as far as Tiddwiddle was concerned, that things could go wrong. It was then that he saw his fellow Counselor and rival, Figgwaggle, enter the cafeteria, casting about as if he was looking for somegnome before finally settling on Tiddwiddle, who put on a decent approximation of a pleasant smile. “Good morning, Figgwaggle! Fine day, isn’t it?” “It is, indeed!” Figgwaggle replied jauntily, also sporting something that resembled a smile. “Would you care to join me?” “Ah, I’m afraid I can’t,” Figgwaggle said, shaking his head as if in sadness. “I only stopped by to get my keys back.” For a moment, Tiddwiddle’s face froze in confusion. “Keys? Ah! Oh, yes. You loaned me your office keys yesterday.” He began rummaging around in one pocket after another. “Let’s see… No, that’s not it. No, that’s not it, either. I think… yes, I think this is part of my lunch from yesterday. Ah! Here we go! One set of keys.” He passed them over, and Figgwaggle took them with a smile of carefully-maintained civility. “Thank you. Though, I do wish you hadn’t left my doors unlocked.” “Did I? Oh, my apologies. Won’t happen again, my dear Figgwaggle.” Figgwaggle laughed. “Hopefully, there won’t be any occasion for it… to… Wait.” A strange look crossed over Figgwaggle’s face. “I say, are you feeling alright?” When Figgwaggle spoke, it was in a monotone whisper through a fixed, plastic smile. “Why did you leave the door to my office unlocked if you took care of the box yourself?” Tiddwiddle looked around in a near-panic at the mention of the box. Fortunately, there weren’t any gnomes around close enough to hear. “Don’t mention the box, you idiot!” he hissed through his own ersatz grin. “I know I locked my door,” Figgwaggle said, his plastic smile melting. “But it was unlocked when I got back to my office.” “And..?” “So, why did you even go to my office if you were going to take care of the… thing yourself?” “What in blazes are you talking about?” Tiddwiddle asked, not bothering to fake a grin anymore. “When we talked yesterday. After Tallywaddle’s office. You remember?” Tiddwiddle snorted. “As if I could forget!” “You said you took care of the box yourself.” There was a dangerous moment of silence, one of those moments where, if you listen very carefully, you could hear a fuse burning down towards a stack of high explosives. “I most certainly did not!” Tiddwiddle shouted. Which, naturally enough, drew the attention of every gnome in the cafeteria, as well as several who had just been walking by. “You said you did!” Figgwaggle shouted back, panic making his voice reedy and unpleasant. “When in blazes did I say that?” “You said..!” Figgwaggle looked around and lowered his voice to a hiss. “When I asked you if the box was gone, you said ‘What box?’ and winked at me!” Tiddwiddle’s box opened and closed a few times before he managed to say, “I thought you meant that you got rid of the box!” “I thought that meant you did!” Figgwaggle shot back. “No! I left it in your office!” “It’s not in my office!” Figgwaggle rasped in an attempt to whisper-shout. “Believe me, I checked! Three times!” “Well, I don’t have it!” “Neither do I!” The two gnomes glared at each other furiously for a few seconds before simultaneous horrified realization set in. As one, both of them abandoned any pretense of dignity as they bolted towards the cafeteria room door. ~~*~~ Tinseltoes sighed wearily. It had been a long day, yesterday. It had been a longer night before he’d managed to return home and get a few precious hours of sleep. Then he’d been up again before the crack of dawn to try and track down his uncle Glumm, who apparently disappeared from his apartment. Either that, or he was really good at ignoring Claribelle at her most insistent. As the aforementioned gnomette argued loudly with Ninabella, Chief Tallywaddle’s personal assistant, he decided that it was much more likely that Glumm was out of the apartment. Either that, or dead. “I told you, I am not leaving until you get that tub of lard out here! He’s got those folders, and I have the receipt to prove it!” Claribelle shouted, her face flushed and her eyes nearly glowing as she waved a white piece of paper in the scowling assistant’s face. On second thought, Tinseltoes decided as he listened in awe to Clari’s ongoing tirade, even if his uncle had been dead, Glumm probably would have still answered the door when the gnomette had started shouting. Several loud thumps came from behind the closed office door. Tinseltoes stiffened and tried to fade back even further into the wall as the door was flung open, revealing an apoplectic Tallywaddle, who strode into the office and added his own shouting voice to the mix. So far, everything had gone according to Claribelle’s plan. Well, except for not finding the mysterious box of potential evidence in Tiddwiddle’s office. The receipt that Clari was waving around was a fake, a distraction just for this moment, when everygnome’s attention would be focused on her and her “evidence”, without sparing one iota of thought for the completely unremarkable Tinseltoes. He was already quite good at not attracting attention. With Claribelle running interference, he was practically invisible. As the shouting reached a fever pitch, Tinseltoes quietly slipped inside the Chief’s office. This was their last gambit, an act of complete desperation. A receipt for a pair of missing folders could be spun in any number of ways, and almost certainly wouldn’t do anything to bring attention to their cause. They needed hard evidence. And, Claribelle had hoped, that evidence would be somewhere in the massive, disorganized piles on Tallywaddle’s desk. He knew what he was looking for: A crumpled folder and a pristine one. Both would have bright new labels attached with numbers from Claribelle’s revamped filing system. Still, the mountain of paperwork was daunting, and Tinseltoes could only stare in despondent shock for a long moment as he wondered how he was going to find those two particular needles in this metaphorical haystack. Just then, the shouting from the outer office reached a fever pitch. Tinseltoes started. “Well, I guess I’m as good as well as fired already,” he muttered. “May as well have some fun.” And, with that, Tinseltoes began sorting quickly through the mounds of paperwork on the desk, carelessly dropping anything that wasn’t Diamond Tiara’s folder onto the office floor. ~~*~~ “What in the blue blazes happened to my office?!” Tiddwiddle shrieked. “How should I know?” Figgwaggle glanced around at the destruction. Drawers had been opened, cabinets had been ransacked. Papers and folders were strewn across the floor. “It looks like a tornado’s gone through it.” Tiddwiddle looked around frantically. “Well, the box isn’t here, just like I said. What are we going to do?” “Maybe… Maybe we should tell Tallywaddle?” Disbelieving laughter exploded out of Tiddwiddle. “You’ve got to be kidding.” “Well, what else do you suggest?” Tiddwiddle considered that honestly for a long moment. “Maybe we can just ignore it and hope it goes away?” Figgwaggle sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I guess I don’t mind doing that. After all, it’s your name on all those files, right?” “Uh…” Tiddwiddle licked his lips and looked around his devastated office once again. “Maybe we should tell Tallywaddle.” “Right. Let’s go, then.” ~~*~~ The shouting in the outer office had reached a fever pitch by the time Tinseltoes found one crumpled manilla corner sticking out from underneath a precariously piled stack of papers. He brushed everything onto the floor and snatched the folder up, hardly daring to believe that this could be it until he opened it and read the name “Diamond Tiara” across the top. Another file, this one pristine, lay underneath the first one, and proved to have Diamond Tiara’s name across the front page as well. Tinseltoes did a happy little dance, which he cut off when he heard the Chief bellow for Ninabella to call Security. With a startled yelp, he bolted out of the Chief’s office, waving the folders over his head and shouting, “I’ve got them! I’ve got them both!” The three gnomes in the outer office stopped to stare at him, Tallywaddle red-faced and sweating, Ninabella scowling and pale, and Claribelle looking like she could cut diamonds with her eyes. “Give those here!” Tallywaddle shouted, lumbering towards Tinseltoes, who froze in momentary panic, holding the folders in front of his chest as if they were some kind of shield. Claribelle was faster, though. She scooted past the Chief and snatched the folders out of Tinsel’s numb hands. She turned, a fierce smile of triumph on her face as she clutched the file folders to her front. “We win, Chief. And you’re going down,” Clari said. There was a moment of tense silence. When the Chief spoke again, it was with a terrifyingly icy calm. “I don’t think so,” Tallywaddle said as he walked forward. As he reached a grasping hand towards the folder, Claribelle dodged back. Then, much to Tinseltoes’ combined delight and horror, she grabbed the neck of her sensible grey sweater, pulled it out to reveal a slender neck and part of a rounded shoulder that made Tinseltoes’ mouth feel suddenly very dry. Clari dropped the folders into her sweater and grinned victoriously. “What now, Chief?” she asked smugly. “You’re going to assault me to get these files back? The small spark that had started burning in Tinseltoes’ chest since he’d first run into Clari the previous day flared into a smoldering ember at the thought of the Chief going after those files. Much to his surprise, he found that his hands had balled themselves into fists. “Of course not,” Tallywaddle said dismissively. “That would be something a gentlegnome like myself could never do.” Clari relaxed just a hair. “Well… good.” “Instead, I’ll have Ninabella do it,” Tallywaddle said with a smirk. “What?!” Clari said, her voice a squeak of outrage. “What?” Nina said, her voice flat and disbelieving. “Go on, then. Those files are vital to the future of the CMAA, and they can’t be allowed to leave this office.” Ninabella glared daggers at her boss before sighing and walking slowly towards Clari, who eyed her warily. “Uh. Stay back?” Clari said hopefully. “Sorry,” Nina replied with a grimace. “I kind of need this job. Plus, I don’t like you very much.” As the two gnomettes reluctantly squared off against each other, Tinseltoes instinctively backed off. Every instinct he had was telling him he had to do something, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what that should be. Much to his discomfort, Tallywaddle had somehow ended up next to him. He had his arms folded across his voluminous chest as he watched the two gnomettes with an almost predatory gaze. Nina’s arm suddenly shot out, her fingers managing to snag the bottom hem of Clari’s sweater for a brief moment before the other gnomette let out an indignant squawk and batted her hand away. “Well,” Tallywaddle said with a leering wink in Tinseltoes’ direction. “Whichever one of those girls wins, at least we get a nice show!” At that, the spark that had been growing in Tinseltoes’ chest shot directly into his brain, where it caught fire before zipping down into his right arm, causing his balled-up fist to launch itself directly into Tallywaddle’s potato of a nose. The memory of the resulting crunch, followed by a howl of pain and no small amount of blood, would serve to keep Tinseltoes warm on many a cold night in the future. ~~*~~ The commotion could be heard from far down the hallway, well before the Chief’s office came into view. The pair of Counselors stopped outside the reception area, exchanged a wary glance, and opened the door just in time to see the Chief stagger backwards, blood spurting out of his nose as he collapsed to the floor with a surprised wail. A young gnome, all knees and elbows, was standing in front of him, staring at his still-raised fist as if it had just performed an extremely impressive magic trick. Figgwaggle decided that this situation quite obviously called for a take-charge kind of gnome. “What is the meaning of this?!” he bellowed. It was a bellow that would have made a sergeant in the Gnome King’s army jealous. All activity in the room halted as every eye fixed on him. In the silence that followed, the two gnomettes in the corner exchanged what looked like an embarrassed glance, and then moved to opposite ends of the office. “He hibbee!” Tallywaddle said, pointing with the hand that wasn’t cradling his nose. Figgwaggle blinked, unable to make heads or tails of what the Chief had just said. “Beg pardon?” “He hib be!” Tallywaddle repeated, enunciating as much as his possibly-broken nose would allow. “Yes, I can see that,” Figgwaggle said dryly. “Hmm… You look familiar… Ah, young Tinseltoes, was it? I trust you have a good reason for hitting the Chief?” Tinseltoes looked at him, his eyes looking disturbingly glazed over. “Because he deserved it,” he said shortly. “Dey god de folbers,” Chief Tallywaddle blubbered from where he sat on the floor. Tiddwiddle sighed and went to help him up. “Beg pardon?” Figgwaggle said again. “I think,” Tiddwiddle said as he slowly managed to lug the Chief back to his feet, “that he said ‘They’ve got the folders.’” Figgwaggle frowned. “Which folders?” “Diabohd Tiara’s,” the Chief said, adding an urgent, “You godda geddum bag!” Icewater ran down Figgwaggle's back. “Diamond Tiara’s folders?” “Yeth! Diabohd Tiara! I forgod to dethroy dem!” Tallywaddle began the laborious process of heaving himself back up to his feet. “Dey cahd leave wid dem!” Figgwaggle and Tiddwiddle exchanged a glance. Between the pair of them, they fully blocked any access to the doorway. “I don’t think anygnome is going anywhere until we figure this all out,” Tiddwiddle said. Tinseltoes exchanged a glance with the gnomette that Figgwaggle recognized as Claribelle, then he turned back to face the Counselors. Slowly, his clenched fist began to rise. “I’m warning you,” Tinseltoes said in a voice that was trying for hardness but failed utterly to hide his nervous quaver, “I’ve got a fist, and I’m not afraid to use it!” He gave the fist an experimental waggle. “Why don’t we just talk this out?” Figgwaggle said, doing his best to sound reasonable as he approached Tinseltoes. The young gnome blanched and backed towards Claribelle. Claribelle spoke up, saying, “Tell you what, why don’t you get out of the way, and maybe Internal Investigations will go easy on you. Your best bet is to cooperate.” “Well, let’s see,” Tiddwiddle said, advancing shoulder-to-shoulder with Figgwaggle. He held up a hand and began counting off points on his fingers. “One, you break into the CMAA when you’ve been fired. That’s trespassing. Two, you assaulted the Chief. Three, unless I miss my guess, you’re threatening to steal CMAA property.” “Yes,” Figgwaggle said smoothly. “So, why don’t you give us the folders, before we have to take them from you. We’ll let you both leave, and we won’t even press charges.” “Whad?!” came Tallywaddle's muffled shout. Figgwaggle shot him a frantic look and then winked. “Oh… Oh! Yedth. We wohd not preth chargeth.” Claribelle scowled at that. “If you think that I’m going to allow you to—” “Excuse me,” a voice interrupted from the doorway of the Chief’s office. Figgwaggle turned to see Glummwriggle leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. Glumm was wearing a clean uniform for once, and his normally dour face was bright and cheerful. One foot was resting on a somewhat-abused filing box on the floor next to him. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Glummwriggle asked, grinning hugely.