The Brats & The Dragon
Valiant and Mischief had a way of always taking things too
far. Valiant, despite his name, was never up to good things, and Mischief, much
like her name, was always up to mischief. When separate they always made things
mad and when they were together, as they always were, they made even the
monsters that go bump in the night flee for their lives.
One day Valiant had found a massive bag of candy outside of
a dumpster and decided to take it home. When his parents discovered it they
threw it out; Mischief fished it out of the trash and they hid it in their
room. Over the course of the next hour and a half they cracked two teeth each
on too old jaw breakers and contests of who could bite to the center first.
This, of course, wasn’t the end of it. In the spirit of taking things way too
far, Mischief and Valiant spent the next three months consuming the entire bag
of candy in secret and they were eating no small amount of the garbage every
night. By the time they were done with it their teeth were black and rotten and
they were forced to visit the dentist.
Dentists can choose to be nice. A dentist can take their
time and carefully spot the sensitive parts of your teeth and gums and
gradually work around them to avoid causing you pain. Dentists have that
choice. The dentist that they went to chose to do a quick and nasty job since
they were all baby teeth anyway. The pain was horrendous and Mischief made sure
to pour all of the thumbtacks under his desk and beneath his chair covers as
revenge. Not just all of his thumbtacks either; she snuck out to the office
supply store next door while the dentist was working on Valiant and bought as
many pack of tacks as she could with the money the tooth fairy left her; which
was no small sum mind you.
Ever since that day the two siblings had more silver in
their mouth than enamel and a healthy fear of ever going back to the dentist.
Before either of them could fall asleep at night they would thoroughly brush
and floss.
Now all of that is nice and good but right now there was madness
and there is no greater madness than the quotidian nature of siblings. Valiant
and Mischief are a bonded pair that antagonize and harass one another but in a
genuinely loyal way. Much like a couple who have fallen into their twilight, these
siblings regard each other with a sense of jaded caution; each knows enough to
destroy the other and yet they dote on one another and protect each other
without that being the reason why. They’re odd and strange and difficult to
understand; and that makes them very dangerous to the creatures that are in
their way.
“I’m your sister, aren’t I?” Mischief asked Valiant.
“You’re going to ask me for something.”
“Well, if I was your sister then you’d love me and if you
loved me then you’d go into the bathroom and kill the bug in there.”
Valiant wasn’t going to go into the bathroom to kill a bug,
especially not one that elicited the kind of scream that came out of Mischief.
Bugs were creepy and crawly and felt a particular brand of icky when they
touched your skin. The very thought of smashing a bug and feeling its inner
goo-ooze about made Valiant shudder.
“Come on, it’s just a beetle!” Mischief pleaded to her
brother. She had found it laying on its back struggling to right itself on the
sink counter; its multitude of legs were writhing in the air as it was working
to correct itself. Perhaps if it wasn’t the size of her fist or if its mandible
hadn’t clacked into a hissing sound, Mischief would have gone about brushing
her teeth without making this into an incident. Unfortunately it was and it had
respectively and now it needed to die before she could go to bed.
“Fine, if you’re not going to help then we need to get a
cat. Cats take care of pests like these. Where can we find a cat?”
“That’s your solution to every problem. I’ve told you, you
find cats in alley ways that smell like hobos and pee.”
It was a strange law of the universe that street cats were
attracted to the smell or hobos and pee or perhaps it was those smells that
were attracted to street cats. Sometimes the smells would find their ways to
the cats even if there weren’t any hobos; there was always pee though. One way
or another there was always going to be pee. If you’ve never owned a cat then
just know that they are little pee monsters.
As Mischief was getting on a coat to go outside, Valiant
found his way over to her, “I’m coming with you. I want to pet the cats.”
“No you butt. You won’t kill the beetle for me so you don’t
get to pet the cats.”
Valiant scrunched his nose at Mischief but she was already
sneaking away. Of course Valiant could hear her tip toeing towards the door
even if he couldn’t see her, but he understood that she didn’t want him to come
along. This, of course, meant he’d have to trail her at afar so that he could
play with the cats after she had found them.
Hiding yourself and following
someone sounds all well and like a good idea until you actually try to execute
it. As Mischief dodged around the corners and peeked behind the alleyways, the
night conspired to mask her presence. Owls hooted, mice squeaked, and shadowy
monsters scratched at the bricks. Valiant was used to these things so he wasn’t
terribly scared or startled, but he certainly couldn’t keep up with Mischief
like this and before long he was further behind her than he wanted to be.
Valiant had been listening for
her footsteps the entire time and had just lost them when another pair of
footsteps took off towards the haunted woods. That was strange – was Mischief
in trouble? Valiant ran as fast as he could to try to catch up to them before
they reached the woods. He failed but they were sprinting so desperately that
they left deep footprints; he took a gulp and summoned up as much courage as he
could to delve into the dark of the woods and save Mischief.
Meanwhile Mischief was walking
down yet another alleyway without success. These alleyways were all much too
clean and barren. Some had frogs and others had mystery boxes but there were no
street cats to be found.
Then it caught her eye: a cat
dove out of a dumpster down a stairwell into an open cellar. Mischief cracked a
grin ear to ear and went in after it. She knew that cats were wily beasts and
that it would escape and evade her if she wasn’t careful so she closed the door
behind her as she went in. The cellar itself was dark with a glow of red from a
burning furnace. The cat sat on the floor by the warm furnace licking itself.
Carefully, step by step, Mischief
edged towards the cat until she was close enough then she pounced at it. As she
predicted, the cat was onto her schemes and bolted for the door only to find it
closed now. In a fit of confusion and desperation it bolted around the room in
circles. Its escape was futile and it wore itself down after a few minutes,
allowing Mischief to scoop it up. Ah, there is nothing better to pet than the
sweet fur of a freshly caught street cat.
As the cat struggled against her
hold, Mischief pet it roughly on the head and made her way to the door, which
now refused to open. When she went to unlock the knob, she found that there was
only a keyhole; what kind of monster thought to make doors that lock that need
a key to open from the inside?
“Now you’ve done it you stupid
child, we’re trapped!” The cat shouted at Mischief.
“Shut up cat, you have to come
with me to kill a beetle in my bathroom.”
“I’ll do no such thing stupid
child, I am a powerful werecat and since we’re trapped in here I’m going to eat
you!” The cat began to hiss, foam, and snarl.
“You’ll kill that beetle or I’ll
bite you!”
“No I won’t!” The cat barked out
and so Mischief bit him. With a burning fsss of supernatural forces the cat
howled in pain and subdued.
You see, werewolves are all too
common in modern society, much like wizards, vampires, fairies, and
frankensteins. They propagate too easily and then just bum about in cities
acting as if they were people. Of course, just because they are commonplace and
blend in does not mean that they benefit from any sorts of immunities to their
natural enemies. As fire is to trolls, Mischief’s silver teeth are to werewolf-cats.
The cat gave one last mewl before
it settled down and bowed its head in submission to Mischief. Now the only
trouble was getting out of the basement.
If there was one creature that
never had problems with basements it was dragons. You never heard silly stories
of dragons becoming trapped in basements or other small situations because if
they did they would just blow it up with fire. That’s when the idea struck
Mischief: she’d blow the door open with the water heater in the room. With just
a bit of luck there were tools for just that laying about in the boxes around,
primarily a set of pliers and a wrench.
“Mr. Snufflebutt you’ll be
helping me push the water heater to the door.” As she set the cat down, the two
set to work pushing the water heater as close as they could to the door,
stretching the tubing out as far as it would. Mischief didn’t understand the
principles of physics or how pressure or combustion work, but she understood
that if you clamp down flowing water then it bursts with enough force to put
Valiant through a window. Valiant through a window was a unit of measurement
here and it was surely enough to take down a door. With two cranks and a clamp,
the tubing for the water heater was closed up and it began to heat up and boil
and was soon shaking and ready to burst.
Leaping behind whatever she
could, Mischief hoped that the burst of fiery breath from her makeshift dragon
wouldn’t have enough blowback to harm her – though it was better to fail and be
burned a bit than to be trapped in a prison forever.
Yet again with just a bit of luck
and stalwart fortitude, as the water furnace gurgled and churned and exploded,
the superheated shrapnel strayed away from Mischief and Snufflebutt, allowing
them a pleasant reprieve from an anxious moment. They were free! Also the
building was on fire. But they were free and that was all that mattered.
Mischief egressed and found a nice spot on a dumpster to sit on while watching
the fire department arrive.
“Oh, hi Valiant, did you follow
me?” Mischief noted as she saw Valiant attempted to sneak about.
“I tried to but I think I just
killed a ghost? I’m not sure.”
“Want to listen to the
firetrucks? I got a cat.”
“Can I pet it?” Valiant asked
hopefully, his voice exhausted from goodness knows what.
“You know what, sure. He’s a butt
cat and you’re a butt, you can be butt buddies together.” And so Mischief and
Valiant sat down together and poked, prodded, and generally harassed the poor
werecat.
