Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 6)

It had been a couple days since Lily and I were briefed by the karate club and had begun our search. We were still putting up posters, questioning people in the area, and jumping at just about every wavering shadow and rustling bush we happened to skirt on the search, but we still couldn’t turn up any leads. Or any cats.

Rats.

Lily and I were outside a gas station store, taking a break from looking. Needless to say, I was terrible when it came to talking to — and generally just being around — girls, but for some reason, I was a-ok around Lily now. Either I had gotten used to working with her, or the fact that she was such an oddball was making me feel less self conscious. And however awkward wandering around town with her may still have been, it sure beat hanging around at school. I still couldn’t shake the condescending looks and barely muffled snickers that followed me wherever I went. My career as an unpopular loser had reached stratospheric new heights. Forget never living down the cafeteria mishap in my lifetime; at this rate, my asking Lily out would go down in history as the lamest 30 seconds in the history of the entire school. Hell, the entire city maybe. My only consolation was that Lily herself didn’t seem to care. I sat hunched on the curb while Lily licked a popsicle on a stick that was sticking out of a sticky wrapper.

“Would you like one, Boss?” she asked. She pulled an identical popsicle out of one of her magical mystery maid pockets. It looked like she’d bought two, courtesy of my RED budget. Good use of government funds. I meant that.

“No thanks. It’s a little too chilly for a popsicle.”

“I see.” She finished off the first and, since I’d refused it, tore into the second.

“You like frozen things, huh?”

“Yes, that is correct. They help keep me from overheating.”

Huh. So Lily did eat after all. I figured she might have refused that orange when Monty had offered because it wasn’t cool enough. Grandpa sure had designed a sophisticated robot.

There was one thing that had been weighing on my mind about all of this though. Now, I figured, was as good a time as any to bring it up.

“Hey, Lily?”

“Yes, Boss?”

“Why do you keep calling me ‘Boss?’”

“Because I am the assistant, and you are the boss, Boss.”

Her reasoning was simple enough, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. Being called “Boss” all the time felt plain weird. I figured if she insisted on it, she could at least call me “boss” instead, but even that was pushing it. Pushing what? Hmm… that was a good question. My buttons, I guessed. And while “boss” would have been better than “Boss,” even that was a little too much, I thought. I wished she’d just cut it out altogether.

“Well,” I said, “do you think you could stop? No offense, but it’s kind of…”

How was I supposed to put this?

“...weird,” I decided. “Err, I mean. I just don’t like it. I’m not used to it is all.”

I was trying and probably failing to be the first person in the world to follow the phrase “No offense” with something actually inoffensive.

“I see,” she responded, her usual expressionless and emotionless self. Reading people was never my strong suit to begin with. With Lily, it was downright impossible. “Then what should I call you?”

“Just Wallace is fine.” My name was basically the one thing about myself I actually liked, and I figured I’d prefer if Lily called me that too.

“Very well. From now on I will call you ‘Wallace…’”

Wow. That was easier than I thought it would be.

“...Boss.”

Or not. Well, it was worth a shot. At the end of the day, it wasn’t as if being called “Boss” was as painful as being shot through the heart or anything like that. And besides, Lily wasn’t to blame for having given me a bad name. After all, it may have been part of her programming. Or maybe it was the fact that she was still learning how to act human. Come to think of it, she was probably still honing her motor skills too. At least if the whole chili episode was any indication.

Apparently, her foodborne woes were far from over. She had already dug well in to her second of two popsicles, and if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought she was purposely licking this one into as lopsided a lump as could possibly still cling to a stick.

Just as I was beginning to wonder what sort of wacked-out molecular bonds could keep what was left of the popsicle stuck to the stick like that, the inevitable happened, and the last tiny scrap of syrupy mush began its unceremonious descent, tumbling around and around like it was an Olympic gymnast going for the gold. Only in this case, "the gold" was a thin scrap of sidewalk with a few sad weeds sagging through its cracks.

Lily noticed too late to make any sort of successful save. “Oh fu—”

And then, everything went topsy turvy.

“Boss, get down!”

It all happened in a split second. As her last lump of popsicle unballed itself into a crimescene splat on the concrete, Lily dove. Headfirst, I might add. And straight into me, I do add, because getting tackled out of the blue hurt.

The two of us came tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down to the hard ground while a black pulse blurred past above, fast as lightning.

When I saw what it was, I was sure it was even faster than lightning.

Cheetahs, meet your match. With lashes of black fur straightened nearly to spikes and a hiss so shrill it had to have been bordering the upper boundaries of the human hearing range, a small, all-black cat glowered at me.

“Jesus! That was one hell of a pounce.”

“Are you intact, Boss?”

We stood up and brushed off.

“Yeah.” At least I thought I was. I’d worry about the scrapes on my elbows later. “Uh, thanks. You saved my skin.”

“Do not mention it,” was all Lily said. Too late for that. “My danger scanners were picking up a reaction from the bushes. I am just glad that they kicked in in time.”

This explained the sinister sense of dread that had been hanging out around me all afternoon like my own personal raincloud though. Ever since we left school, I had had the strangest sensation that I was being followed. Watched. Stalked, practically.

Who would’ve guessed that the culprit would be a cat? Well, probably anyone who knew that I had strung about 100 of them along with the false promise of catnip just the other day, but cut me some slack. Lily helped execute the idea, so it was only like 50% my fault.

From the look on this cat’s face though, it wasn’t happy about it. It wanted revenge, and if it hadn’t been for Lily’s last-second save, it would have gotten it. How did I know? Even I didn’t know the answer to that. I just did. Reading people may not have been my strong suit, but at least I knew I had a bright future ahead of me if I ever decided to start reading cats. Wallace Wade: Cat Whisperer. I liked the sound of that. Only problem was that the cats sure didn’t. At least if this one was any indication. Its glare stung like lemon juice on a knife wound, and it was giving me a hiss that could make even a snake cut and slither with its tail between its nonexistent legs.

The cat approached again, step by sinister step, ready to pounce again at any second.

“Psh. Psh. Psh. Psh. Psh,” went Lily, trying to soothe the savage beast.

Surprisingly, it worked. Black Lightning (that was the cat’s name, I decided) gradually laid off the hissing and the back arching and the fang baring and tip-pawed its way over to Lily like absolutely nothing was wrong, making sure to shoot one final razor slice of a hiss my way as it did.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Black Lightning even let Lily pick him up in her arms, and started purring as she patted his head.

I knew I had never been the most popular guy around, but this was just depressing.

“Black Lightning… how could you do this to me? How could you be so cruel? I thought we had a special connection. Predator and prey.” I tried fake crying a little bit. I was so bad at it I thought I might cry for real.

Lily’s turn to lob me a glance, a quizzical one. “Black Lightning?”

“Uh, never mind. Anyway, isn’t it pretty weird how we’ve seen so many cats outside but not a single one of them has been Teabone?”

“Yes, that is suspicious.”

“And that’s not all. Remember how I told you before it felt like someone was following us?” I had mentioned it almost as soon as we left school. I didn’t think Lily believed me at the time. Hell, even I didn’t believe me.

Lily nodded, her face sinking behind the dark, fine tufts sprouting from between Black Lightning’s ears.

“Well, I still haven’t shaken the feeling. Which means someone’s still out there snooping as usual.”

I bet it was another cat on the prowl, out for my head after the stunt I’d pulled with the catnip, just like Black Lightning.

I couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“Wallace Wade!”

The shout nearly gave me a heart attack. Out of the blue, someone called my name. Or maybe I should say “out of the green.”

With a not-so-furtive rustle and a “Oh. Oh, god. Ow. Stupid twigs!” a mysterious figure emerged from a nearby tangle of bushes. A mysterious figure I knew all too well, and so really wasn’t all that mysterious, actually. And when I thought about it, he really didn’t have much of a figure either, what with how scrawny he was.

What he did have was twigs and leaves lodged in every cranny they could find on him, and two pairs of glasses teetering off the front of his ugly mug.

It was Six-Eyed Sheldon.

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 6)!
To be continued in Part 7!