The Birth of the Great Pun Detective! (Part 7)

“Yes, puns!” grandpa said. “Puns, the greatest of all of the bothers that trouble us today. Puns, that phantom menace that lurks in the shadows, besmirching our otherwise sunny days with a vile pestilence, enshrouding us in a confused haze. Puns, the greatest scourge this school has ever faced in its entire history.”

Uh. Pretty sure the biggest scourge we’d ever faced was him, actually. I’d give it to puns once grandpa had bought back our chairs and stopped acting like he owned the whole school and everyone in it.

“And that’s where the FPI come in. Boys!” A jagged shock, like lightning, ran through the air as grandpa clapped twice quickly, and I heard the same sound I had heard just before I passed out. Boots on the ground moved in unison, an unsettling stampede.

It was the same sound, I realized, that had punctuated the opening assembly this year, when those paramilitary-looking guys had busted into the gym unexpectedly and had crowned grandpa king of the school.

So those were the FPI, huh?

Or rather, so these were the FPI. Craning my neck around as far as it could go, I looked behind me. There, filed into a single row, was the paramilitary bunch I had seen that day, outfitted with riot shields, crowd-control gear, helmets. The works. As I strained my eyes, my neck, my everything to get a better glimpse, I saw it: a blur of blue on each black, padded shoulder that read “FPI.”

“Wallace,” continued grandpa, “I’d like to introduce you to the FPI. Also known as the Funny Pun Investigators. They’re the country’s foremost organization dedicated to the research and investigation of puns.”

“Funny Pun Investigators? Doesn’t look like a laughing matter to me.” As far as I could tell, not a single one of these goons had so much as a smirk on his face. In fact, a few of them didn’t even have faces at all, the visors of their riot helmets pulled down low, hard black curtains that, by design, would never betray even a glimmer.

All the better, the way I saw it. The ones whose visors were up wore some of the ugliest mugs I’d seen in a while.

“Believe you me, it’s no laughing matter at all. In fact, it’s a crying one. Every day for the past month, your poor old granddaddy’s cried himself to sleep each and every night, sobbing, ‘Why? Oh why are the puns that plague so unaparalleledly powerful, so wholly unstoppable?’ Or should I say ‘punstoppable?’ Well, regardless, a hotbed of pun activity like our beloved school has fallen into requires a, dare I say, gentler touch than your average FPI officer is willing or able to provide. This we learned the hard way.”

From behind me, I heard a shuffle of gear, and some low murmuring.

“W-we tried our best.”

“Aw man.”

“Shucks.”

I guessed grandpa was throwing them — or their handling of the pun situation at least — under the bus here. Figured. I’d bet dollars to donuts it was actually his fault they weren’t able to do anything about the puns here at school, and he was just pinning the blame on them to divert it from himself. But of course I didn't know for sure.

One of the FPI goons whistled. Another coughed. I even heard some absolutely pathetic sniffling, muffled as it was by gear meant to protect against… against what, exactly? Puns? I mean, I didn’t like puns either, but did you really need armor to guard against them? Those getups were absolute overkill. Talk about being overdressed. Images of a Victorian maid looking like she’d just practiced her synchronized swimming routine in an Olympic swimming pool of chili flashed through my mind. What was with today and the ridiculous costumes? Was there some kind of memo I didn’t get? “Welcome one, welcome all to disturbing cosplay awareness day” — or something like that?

Well, whatever. I had more important things to think about. Like how in the world I factored into this shitshow of an equation. I went flush again for a second, mad at grandpa for roping me into yet another of his schemes, for forcibly co-signing me into the deep end of all of this as he went off on tangent after incomprehensible tangent about puns and Funny Pun Investigators and who knows what else… and mad at myself for having been roped in (and roped, period) so easily to begin with.

“And? Why snatch me of all people then? And straight out of a bathroom stall no less.” Abducting a person from out of a public restroom didn’t seem to be in the best of tastes. Or the best of smells for that matter. “What does any of this have to do with me?” I snapped.

Grandpa laughed. The sound of it almost made me sick. It reminded me of the days when he would use me as a human guinea pig in his nutso experiments. “Why, everything, Wallace! Absolutely everything! You see, the FPI is far more than just the soldiers you see before you now.”

Considering I had to crane my neck at an angle no human body part should ever be forced to contort itself into to see the FPI agents at all, “soldiers I saw before me” was putting it just a tad insultingly.

But that was grandpa for you.

“It all goes back,” he said, “to equivoque. I’m sure you’re familiar with heroes like Spider-Man™ and The Hulk™ whose otherworldly powers derive from the effects of radiation? A simple bug bite here, a little bit of gamma radiation there, and viola!”

“You mean voila?”

“Semantics. As always, you’re missing the big picture. The idea is that radiation results in heightened abilities, heightened senses.”

“Ok. So what?” Would he just get to the point already? These restraints were starting to give me a crick in my neck, and I wanted out so I could hopefully massage it out.

“So, radioactive energy has proven effective in not only serving as the basis and backstory for many a beloved character… but also in establishing what has at present become an absolutely essential role within the FPI: the RED, or ‘radioactive equivoque detective.’ Think of the RED as a sort of private investigator for puns — only they’re not really private of course. While REDs operate with a great deal of autonomy, they’re nonetheless part of the FPI all the same. Most importantly, they wield a punning prowess the likes of which the world is very nearly not ready to accept. REDs are sages of wordplay, unparalleled pun champions. They practically breathe double entendre, seep puns from their pores. And they use their incredible powers of equivoque to put a stop to puns that prove too tricky for the normal rank and file of the FPI to handle. And from where does this truly inimitable power stem?”

He looked at me like he expected me to know. Or care. When it became clear that I did neither, he answered his own question, giddy as a horse, ugly lips curled back into a twisted peel, a mockery of a smile:

“Radiation.”

“Alrighty. Still don’t see what it has to do with me. Can I go now? I have a crick like you wouldn’t believe in my neck, and trying to soothe it while strapped in here is gonna be a real… uh…” — as much as I resented what I was about to say, I said it anyway — “a real pain in the neck?”

“Aha! See? There it is. The power I’ve been looking for. That innate if latent punning prowess, roused from its secret sleep by the miraculous effects of radiation. You, Wallace, have that power. The power of a master equivoquer!”

The end of The Birth of the Great Pun Detective! (Part 7)!
To be continued in Part 8!