"In Medias Res", Ace Manhuge shouted across the mass of seething muscle.

Rex stopped to think about this a moment. From where did the name "Ace Manhuge" come? And how was it that he'd decided on this specific beginning to what was to become his masterwork? In a moment the answers came to him. Obviously someone who was superhumanly studly, as any main character has to be, needed a fitting surname, and any specific first name would serve only to alienate his audience. Hence, "Ace Manhuge". And he'd been unsure as to how to begin his story, so jumping into action seemed prudent, but so over-done. Hence the self-referential poke at fun. How to proceed... well any hero needs a sidekick, so

"What?" replied Gilbert Uppercut, Ace's close companion and co-conspirator.

"It's the latin phrase meaning 'in the middle of things'. It describes a story that pushes the reader directly into the story, worrying about background and introduction later."

"That's great, Ace, but why do you bring it up now?"

"Let's flesh out this world a bit", thought Rex.

Ace looked around him for a moment, allowing himself to consider the question. What about this horde of angry, lethal pirates had caused him to feel the need to inform his friend of a literary technique? It's not as if the rushing, hulking brutes with their cutlasses and blunderbii prompted particularly analytical thought. They were more often the impetus for feelings of annoyance and anxiety. This last point was especially relevant at the current moment, when there existed perhaps fifteen pirates each, with the expressed and unobstructed goal of murdering Ace and his close friend. In fact, the moment for musing upon this conundrum was almost past, as another wedge of scratched steel began its flight from a pirate's weapon-sash to his gut.

Rex leaned back from his keyboard for a moment. "Ok," he thought, "we've been introduced to this person's thought process as amusing and relatable, and we've thrust him into a fight against ugly and presumably evil foes, causing sympathy from the readers. Now how else can I cause affection towards my main character?" Rex was also looking for a way to write him out of the jam into which he'd placed him, though he didn't admit this even to himself. No writer would have dived into a scene without a way out. "I'll give him a superhuman quality!", he surmised, "that will drive another dimension to the audience's connection: admiration! And what does everyone want to have? Strength!"

The cutlass's flight, however, was easily cut short by a shattering blow from Ace's fist. The slathering monster of a pirate who wielded it was momentarily shaken by the mechanical oscillation induced in the rigid metal member by the high-magnitude point-force ("Oh," thought Rex "This technical stuff is pure gold! Who would have thought that simply writing like an intelligent person could be so satisfying?" Rex was obviously writing only for those who would appreciate this manner of storytelling). The sudden interface in differing stiffness that the cutlass-hand boundary constituted caused significant energy dissipation as the waves of motion propagated into the pirate. Bones chipped, cell membranes lysed, nerves discharged their electrochemical potential prematurely. In short, the pirates hand became useless. Ace used the opportunity to dispatch the buccaneer in a more permanent manner, his other fist driving itself more through the enemy than simply at him. A rearward foot-plant accompanied the blow, temporarily increasing the frictional force between his foot and the floor in order to propel this nautical nightmare into the air, then into a conveniently placed wall. The extent to which the pirate slumped was greater than that which one would expect from the flight alone. Ace new his enemy was down for the count.

Rex felt very pleased with himself. Not a chapter in, and he'd already revolutionized the way fiction was written. It was so obvious. He wondered why more people hadn't introduced more specific language into fight scenes before. Obviously the world of literature would be divided into pre-Riptide and post-Riptide eras.

Now he was bored. He'd already accomplished a lot with this little fight scene, but it was uninteresting to continue. How could he conclude it satisfactorily?

Within moments, Ace and Gilbert had neutralized the rest of the thieving sailors in the room. Some they crushed, some they head-butted, some were forcibly "suckered for the classics" with a closed fist to the face ("Woah, ease off on the violence. He's losing the high ground, here"). Breath still quick from the exertion, they faced each other to discuss the matter.

"Let's introduce some elements that will tantalize the reader. Maybe I'll explain them later, maybe not."

Ace spoke first. "Must be Bowser Deltoid, right Gil? He's the only one we've seen use pirates before. I mean... since The Incident (Using caps to insinuate significance gave Rex chills. This was good stuff!)."

"It's worth looking into, Ace, but I don't want to go right to his Dark Castle of Doom just yet. Let's check some of his contacts in The Town, first." Gilbert, always a thoughtful one, surmised.

Ace looked around the hall here in The College. It wasn't as if they could further their interests by staying here. "Ok, Gil. Lead the way"

"Man, this vagueness coupled with Capital Letters is a surefire formula!" Rex obviously didn't want to make it so obvious that he was basing the story on his own life, but didn't want to specify any other locale, either. "But vagueness sums. We need to get some detail into the equation." Rex secretly also wanted to try his hand at some of the vivid-imagery-style passages that other authors use to set the scene.

They stepped into the bright Spring sunlight, and were again instantly assailed, as they always were, by the contrast between the gleaming freshness of The College and the stale, drab Town. The Incident's effect was eternally visible whenever there was light, as an ever-present mist, casting alternating shadows and rainbows on the relative squalor of the people and buildings of The Town. There was no dark alley, no winding artery of commerce that was not totally suffused in the suspended water droplets. No building was without the damage that condensing water caused. Algae and moss bloomed wherever there was an open space. The green and brown would have caused a striking boundary between itself and the grandeur that previously existed, if it didn't so completely cover everything. Yet here and there, the sense of power and majesty for which The Town was renowned in years past poked through the ruinous cloud. The dimensions of some tower or another, its stone now cracked and eroded by life and weather, could only have inspired the trim, clean masses that once briskly walked through the pedestrian causeways and under the painted stone arches that surrounded it. Now the causeways were coming apart at the edges, moisture softening the underlying ground and pulling the bricks away from the center. Where water pooled, the material of the passage discolored into one color or another, nothing uniform about it except that it detracted from its history with each year. The stone arches were long since stripped of paint, and some had fallen at one time or another, the clammy wetness of their new reality seeping into the cement that kept them up. Unbreakable by physical force, the ravages of corrosive environment eventually tore them down. Gone, too, were the smartly-dressed, purposeful crowds. People Ace and Gilbert passed were dressed in layers of inexpensive fabric. They could never get the wet cough quite out of their lungs, though they often tried, in public and unashamed. The cough kept them bent, too, as if always living in reverence to the past that was stolen from them. Only Ace and Gilbert stood tall and proud, having The College's environmental protection systems to protect them.

Yet for every shadow, there was a rainbow. For every poor soul who couldn't leave the squalor that was thrust upon him, there was a wealthy tourist who came in a tour group, led by an armed escort and followed by a gang of beggars and opportunists. They came to see the plant life that sprang up so quickly after The Incident, caring not for even the stateliest works of man. The rapidity with which vegetation replaced concrete was a marvel only to those who didn't have to live among it, but what a marvel it was! Trees larger around than those that grew anywhere else dominated views to a degree that the joke was often made that soon the plants would supersede the skyscrapers. The canopy that roofed the denser sections of town let light down in only mottled shafts that caught the mist with crisp edges. Where the vapor condensed down into streams, it fed enormous swamps that crept forward every year, in which one could get lost amid the unmoving life that nevertheless was taking over the Town. Rainbows next to shadows, prosperity next to squalor, soaring trees next to hacking cough. The Town certainly was its own.

Rex blinked. Where had that come from? Holy crap, did he really just write that? Was he sure he didn't accidentally plagiarize it? He read back through it. Rex didn't like to be surprised, least of all by himself. And this was obviously A-level stuff. There was, for example, imagery. And themes. In fact, Rex found himself recalling many words that middle-school English teachers used. And if they weren't the objective standard of literature's value, what was? He was fairly sure he had never seen a numerical scale.

On second thought, those last few sentences took themselves just a bit too seriously. Rex struck them.

The cloud caught the light in such a way that the long limb of a rainbow became visible to Ace and Gilbert as they rounded their last corner. Here the houses of stone and metal were too far gone, and the beggars and scavengers used wood from the tough trees that sprang up in their midst to build their shelters. They were looking for someone very specific, but "indistinct" was the word that best described the people that made up their view. Small fires didn't burn here, so the only warmth was to be had through layering. People, no matter how thin, appeared bulky and muted in their sodden cloaks. Ace and Gilbert nodded to each other. It was time to split up.

"I go high, you go low" intoned Gilbert. Ace acknowledged and stepped from the split-log path into the muck. It was Gilbert's turn to have the high ground, as Ace had taken the more pleasant route last time. Resolutely Ace trod off into the swamp below the wooden structures.

The mire was still structured. Foundation-rocks and fallen rubble in equal parts determined the areas of low growth. But every time Ace returned, he was greeted by a different landscape. It simply wasn't possible for someone to keep up with the interminably roiling muck. That is, it wasn't possible for someone who didn't live there. Ace got the disturbing feeling that someone was watching him (It was, of course, impossible to accurately get this feeling in real life, but Rex had to make some concessions to the art of suspense). As he plodded on through the mud, treading on stiff roots and broken stone where he could, the shroud of water around him waved and twisted into shapes that easily could have obscured a pirate horde. His enormous, manly muscles bunched and relaxed of their own accord, readying themselves for a conflict that seemed inevitable. His breath quickened, putting his own warm mist into the chill of the cloud. Just then a man leapt from a dense portion of the fog, as if he'd drawn it about his body to better conceal himself. He opened his mouth to speak...

And instead coughed and retched in a manner that was only natural to the life-smitten inhabitants of The Town. (Rex thought it was getting far too serious, anyway. No one wanted to read someone trying to be smart.)

Ace spoke, "Oh, thank goodness it's you, Gray. I was worried for a moment. We need to talk."

Gray tried to draw in breath once more to vocalize his response, but instead induced another spasmodic fit. Ace waited for him to simply stop trying to expel the moisture from his lungs. It wasn't possible.

At last he responded, "Ace, Ace, Ace... Do they still call you Ace-hole in The College? Hah... I started that nickname, you know. Whenever I think of it I still get amused beyond expression. But then again, it was so little compared to what you had done to me. Every time I cough I am significantly less than amused." ("Let's get some tension between these guys. That's how fiction is done, right?")

"Come on, Gray. You did this to yourself. Anyone could have been instrumental in your assignment here. Now I need some information." Ace leaned forward against the slopping pressure of the mud. He flexed his enormous, rippling, chiseled ("Too far? I really do want people to get the impression that he has muscles." Rex struck the delicate balance between literature and good taste) muscles to remind the poor, fallen Gray to whom he was talking.

"Why should I do this for you, Ace? What will you do for me?"

"You were assigned here, not banished. Always remember that. It could have gone so much worse. Don't you want to get back to your studies?" He pulled out the big guns, "to your warm, dry dorm?"

This gave Gray pause. Ace had seen that face before. This was Gray deciding whether to do something terrible. Now, though, the balance tipped the other direction. "Maybe this time helping you works for me, Ace-hole. Maybe. What do you need to know?"

Ace looked at the little, shrunken man in the enormous, damp cloak. Long seconds passed. "Pirates."

Gray burst out laughing, the individual guffaws framed by hacks and gasps for air (Rex really wanted to make him hideous. Nothing else would inspire enough pity. Also, the deal with the tension and questionable moral relation to Ace? Priceless. Rex marveled at how these things wrote themselves). "Pirates?" he forced out of a raw throat. "You suspect Bowser Deltoid because of Pirates?" Ace nodded. Gray became sober once again. "You really don't know?" Ace nodded. "Bowser Deltoid is away from The Town. Needed to get out for his health. He's gone somewhere dry, like the Sahara. Any pirate attack wasn't from him."

"Then who, Gray? Who still uses pirates?"

"I don't know. I'm assigned to Bowser, as you know so well. Whoever else is not my problem." With that, Gray turned to stalk off, which was rather difficult to do well in knee-high mud. Nevertheless, he got himself positioned for a walk-off specially designed to intimate superiority, then failed utterly when the soaked swamp pulled at him with every step.

Rex thought this was a good time to get a nice carbonated beverage. He came back feeling much refreshed, but also at a loss as to how to finish. "But this is fiction," he remembered, "anything I say happened happened", and with that he began to write.

Later that day, Ace and Gilbert returned to the relative safety of The College. They found all traces of their earlier pirate fight erased from the hall. The staff would not stand for the other students thinking the halls were unsafe. They'd lose their place as the best college in The Town. Ace had versed Gilbert on what Gray had told him.

"But it doesn't add up, Ace. Who but Bowser uses pirates?"

"No one. Not since The Incident. That's why something's fishy. ("Let's get some more interpersonal tension going") Could he be compromised? He wasn't deliberately misleading us today, but he could have been fed disinformation."

Rex had no idea as to how to continue, if he was honest with himself. He also had a sneaking suspicion that this was getting very boring. He had a clear image in his head of a reader yawning and navigating away from his story. Perhaps he'd been mistaken to stray from the scientific "arts" into the artistic "arts". He'd been lured in by spectacular stories with lofty ideals, but began to suspect that the whole "fiction" thing was just another infectious memetic hazard. He needed some action to salvage this shipwreck.

Gilbert was just formulating his answer when the view around the next corner made the question moot. Here was the reason that the duo hadn't passed any other students on their way: An enormous pirate spanned the hallway from wall to wall, ceiling to floor. Two arms like tree trunks terminated in cutlass-handles seemingly embedded directly in meat. An eye patch was slung over the block of bone that constituted its head. It was clothed in coarse fabric that might have been pulled from a sail for all that its quality indicated. No commercial or salvaged boots would fit those slabs of feet, so they were simply bound in more of the sail-material. A ridiculous, thin beard completed the picture.

It was Ace's turn to go high. They both understood this, and without so much as a wink or nod readied themselves for the flying punch technique. Gilbert's arms were strong enough to throw an object much larger than Ace the distance to the pirate-hulk, but not with the precision necessary. Gilbert put an iron grip on Ace's shoulders, took as much as a second to position himself, and bent backward, throwing Ace behind himself as he did so. During his flight, Ace turned in air to face the monster. He calculated his fist's potential velocity profile at every point from Gilbert to the pirate, and the start-point that produced the highest velocity at the surface of the latter's face, he selected ("Oh man, this is awesome!"). The result would have crushed any normal man's head. In fact, it would have crushed most similarly-sized industrial pressure containers. It did not do this to the pirate. Its skull deformed rather than fractured, as if it was designed for taking impacts like these, and was thicker by far than Ace's mental model. ("Is this moving too fast? I definitely remember skipping over entire paragraphs when I was reading fiction. I should space out the action a bit.")

Though the deformation lessened the shock absorbed by Ace's fist, it was still far more than he'd expected. When he landed, he did so cradling one arm. The giant, however, had hit the ground before him, being aided somewhat by a thunderous blow from Ace. What hadn't gone into fracturing the huge skull had gone into propelling it downward, toward the hard floor. It seemed only an instant between the impacts. The tile floor of the hall shattered where the pirate's gigantic head was propelled into it. Chips flew into the air almost as quickly as cracks radiated out, reaching the walls.

As Gilbert joined Ace, the pirate's form remained motionless. However, as they took stock of their situation, it began to stir again. A torso of absurd proportions slowly raised itself, the head perched atop an enormous neck shaking as if to rid itself of some veil between it and reality. A low moan issued from its mouth. The bulbous buccaneer ponderously got to its feet, cutlasses scraping on the shattered tile of the floor. The duo readied themselves, but this time a battle plan would not form itself so easily. Ace spoke:

"Ok, did that count as all of my turn going high? Or do I get it throughout this fight?"

"That definitely used up your turn. It's mine, now. You go low."

"No, I don't think so. In the swamp, we were out there for like half an hour, but this little back-and-forth only lasted seconds. I should get another turn."

"That's not fair! This is why we implemented the high-low system! I knew you'd try to twist it like this. Plus, look at your arm. You're fricking cradling it. Not only is it my turn, but I'm the best suited for it. Come on, man."

It was always good to have some comic relief. Rex didn't want people to think he was trying too hard.

At this point, Gilbert was cut short by the sound of a lumbering footstep. As the giant threateningly strode toward the pair, huge arms poised to cleave through anything between him and his goal, Ace and Gil finished up.

Ace: "Ok, compromise. You're going low, but we go for a low attack. Deal?" He didn't wait for the affirmative. He knew this was a satisfactory arrangement.

Though their high/low roles hadn't changed, this time Gilbert was the missile. That was the compromise. Gilbert began a low run at the charging brute, and leapt at a small angle with the ground right when Ace was the midpoint between himself and his projected monster-rendezvous. When he reached this midpoint, Ace grabbed his arms and slung him upward once again, preserving his pirate-ward momentum and redoubling his upward momentum. The result was a double-fisted impact into the pirate's shins, halfway from the knees to the feet. The torque this force exerted on the pirate spun it about its center of gravity, pitching it forward and causing its head once again to rebound on the cold floor. The massive face crushed itself momentarily, warping its thin little beard before springing back and bouncing about 50cm from the floor. Gilbert shot out from under the massive pirate before the impact, skidding to a stop in time to watch the lumbering anti-lubber's head bounce to a stop. But again, as with Ace's blow, the pirate shook it off. It got to his feet, shakily and groping the wall with a cutlass-hand, and began to slowly turn this way and that, wondering which of our dynamic duo to pursue.

Rex had no idea why no one had written like this before. It was obviously a brilliant new paradigm in the world of literature. So many fight scenes he'd read were simply imprecise, misusing terms with technical definitions like force, torque, power, energy. It's like the authors never even took a high school physics class! If you couldn't compile a free-body diagram of the fight, it wasn't fully specified. Oh, man. When people read this, they'd flip! Rex wondered how he'd cope with the fame.

With shocking speed, a steel blade whirled from the man-beast's side toward Ace. Testing the edge of his reflexes, Ace managed to get his good arm behind the cutlass, exerting force to increase its momentum. The extra velocity drove the broad edge into the tiles and concrete of the hall wall, and the resulting gash's tapered shape exerted a force normal to that which decelerated cutlass. This normal force, acting to squeeze the metal, caused it to deform, and when the enormous sword jarred to a halt, the deformation resulted in a continuing normal force. The resultant frictional force was greater than that which the meat-mountain's muscles could exert, effectively pinning it in place.

"Too much? I really could have just written 'Ace pushed the cutlass so it jammed into the wall', but that wouldn't have been nearly as... satisfying." Rex didn't want to become just another amateur author.

Gilbert estimated that, with the giant's torso relatively immobilized, he could punch its head hard enough to sever its spinal cord. Without the extra degree of freedom that a loose body gave, the blow would be undiluted by the former's motion. Gilbert took his time lining himself up, making sure he was at the exact correct angle to execute his maneuver, and consequently this threat. But before he got the chance, the giant revealed a speed unparalleled by his previous motions. The other cutlass blurred through the air separating them, on a course obviously designed to remove roughly half of Gilbert. It was massive, fast, rigid, sharp, and aimed directly for Gilbert's midsection. Gilbert didn't really see how a bifurcation could be anything but inevitable. Luckily for him, Ace did. He pulled back on the brute's elbow, changing the pivot-point of its lower arm. He didn't need to slow or deflect the cutlass, it naturally followed the same arc it would have, only around a different point. Gilbert hopped back, and just when the sword-whirl was finishing up, unleashed a savage uppercut. He heard a crack. The monster slumped ("Anyone boredly skipping through this paragraph might not see this vital yet short sentence. I'd better put some vivid imagery in"). The veins on its beefy neck had been pulsating with the awful, twisted version of life that had flowing through it. Now they were slack, and a little laterally taught from the unnatural extension of the broken neck. It took time for the body to sag, as long as ten seconds for the breath to leave its chest. It would take quite an effort to get this thing out of the hallway and into the dumpster outside.

"I need some science in here. Most scifi writers use their fiction as a medium to disseminate weird science ideas, so it's expected. Let's see if I can work it into the story..."

Just then the janitor rounded a corner. He had extrapolated exactly where he needed to be, and began to formulate a plan for removing the waste with a minimum of effort and discomfort to the students and faculty of The College. The janitor was a neuromorphic AI, an uploaded human mind, so he was technically capable of conversation, but over time he'd become less and less engaging. Ace had once asked him about this, and he'd been informed that, long ago, the janitor had initiated a subroutine with -- horror of all horrors, bane of the singularitarian's existence -- a terminal goal. It didn't matter what the terminal goal was; the only thing that mattered was that he'd allowed this entity to be hosted on the same hardware as himself. And because he was a relatively inferior build, derived from a human mind, he had to devote proportionally vaster computational resources to containing the process, which was so far beyond "hell bent" on getting out and consuming his mind that the phrase was meaningless to it. Since it was confined to one small corner of his whirring brain, so far, he'd been successful before at keeping it at bay, but its self-optimization was startling, causing an arms-race in which the janitor had no choice but to participate.

"I have no idea how to proceed now. I guess I should set up some sort of final battle."

Ace and Gilbert let the janitor work. He did so more efficiently than any human would have, but at what cost? (A little dramatic, perhaps, but Rex had been toying with adding "consumed by inhumanity" to that last sentence. This was better.)

Rex's assistant walked in. Wordlessly, she began to read over his shoulder. "What do you think?" he queried. She answered: "Why are you writing it? As in, physically typing the keyboard. Don't you normally... you know... multitask?" "No, what do you think about the story?" She paused for a moment. She obviously didn't like it but was too polite to say so. Rex knew. Finally she spoke: "Why did you include the thing about the janitor? It seems unnecessary." Rex went back to writing. She didn't get it.

Ace spotted something. "Wait!" He held back the janitor's hand. "Sorry, Mr. Janitor. I see something." He carefully lifted a flap of the sail-material. A piece of paper poked out. The janitor's eyes were lifeless, waiting. There was no glimmer of comprehension.

The note was handwritten in a florid, experienced style. "Mungo: Go into The College. Kill Ace and Gilbert. -- B. Deltoid."

Ace and Gil looked at each other. "That's pretty darn incriminating."

"To the castle?"

Gil nodded. "Of Doom."

Ten minutes later they were there. Bowser Deltoid's castle was taller than it was wide. Its stone battlements stretched into the sky, higher than the low clouds. It was perched on a hill above the outskirts of The Town, where there was merely a higher-than-normal precipitation level. It was eternally dark. The thick clouds above it blocked out the sun more than the thin mist of The Town.

Ace sighed. "You go high..."

Without further prompting, Gilbert swung his grappling hook into a slit-window and planted his feet on the shear, crumbling walls. The soles of his sneakers worked loose moss and grit as he scaled the facade in a manner only describable as "batman-style". Within a minute he was up and in. They'd done this before.

Ace waited for a moment. Sometimes sounds reached him: impacts, scrapes, clangs, muted shouts of alarm suddenly cut short (non-lethally, Ace had been assured, or at least mercifully). Eventually the door at which Ace waited creaked open on its rusted hinges. Gilbert casually leaned on the centerwind (Rex made up that word, but no one would call him on it) of a spiral staircase. The illusion of ease was ruined by his labored breathing, however, and he had to pause for inordinately long before making a casual quip. "What's shaking, Ace?"

"You showboating git. Let's go."

But these were no hulking brutes. Pirates were Bowser's field operatives, but he wouldn't trust them to guard his castle. ("What's on the cultural level as pirates?") These were knights, decked in shiny armor. They stood up to a physical blow well, but a fall down stairs would sort them out. What made the situation worse, however, was the fact that the halls were lined with empty suits of armor for the very purpose of confusing potential intruders. They also packed quite a punch if you let them wind up. That heavy steel armor was a huge momentum-sink.

They were slow, though, so that if our duo met them at a run, they could usually deliver a good push to the chest, overbalancing the armor, before the knight's arms could react. They ran through many halls this way, but when they met more than two, there was always one left after the run-jump-push volley. This necessitated more complex tactics. Ace and Gil's old standby, the "I'm going to punch your face", worked less well as with pirates or other ill-doers. They needed a full-body impact (which was called such even when mediated by arms or legs; a flying kick was still a full-body impact because Ace's entire body changed velocity a nontrivial amount). More often than not this involved either of the dynamic duo flinging the other toward an enemy, but when they were swamped (defined by consensus to be surrounded by enemies that numbered more than double the number of allies) everything became a projectile, including other knights and the ostentatious gold candle-holders, several of which Bowser Deltoid had bought for each room. A projectile didn't have to be propelled by Ace or Gil, either. Sometimes a knight could be induced to take out another, provided careful attention to projected fist-flightpaths on the part of Ace and Gil.

Either way, they eventually got to the innermost lair of Bowser Deltoid. They leapt upon a surprised-looking High-Assistant and thrust the question upon him, "Why is your master trying to kill us? Why did he send a troop of pirates and an enormous nautical freak to The College?"

The High-Assistant paled and blinked. "M-m-m-master is not here right now. Where do you get your information? We haven't used pirates in months. We've been inactive for weeks now. But seeing as how you're here and threatening me, can I help you in some other way?"

It was Ace's turn to blink. His face went slack as he tried to work through the implications. He shoved the note that he'd found on the monster, Mungo, into the High-Assistant's face. "We have this note! Don't try to deny it. Your boss's name is right there." Yet even as he said it, he knew the Assistant wasn't lying. It wasn't written on his face.

"Let me see that..." Ace's victim put on a pair of reading glasses that hadn't been crushed by his abusive treatment. "Oh, yes. Here's your problem. Bowser Deltoid has a brother named Bob who just set up shop in town. This is his handwriting. That's who 'B. Deltoid' is." He looked from Ace to Gilbert. "Easy mistake to make, though. Totally understandable."

"Bollocks", the pair said together.

Yeah, this sucked. Rex would never show it to anyone, ever.