Agent Stiffupperlip had a plan, and it was a decent plan too, but he knew that it had the same chance of working right as a snowball doing alright for itself in Heck. He was so nervous at the time, that he failed to remember his old college roommate Munroe the Obese Snowman who moved to Heck not long after graduation to take on the movie business. The last thing he heard was Munroe was doing just fine for himself, even getting to direct a few television commercials.
Readying himself to make his move, he signaled to Agent Rackensack, whose tie was flitting from side to side from the static charge of his nerves. Rackensack balled his starched white gloves into tight fists and dove headlong for the balrog. Agent Stiffupperlip made his move.
A troupe of henchmen were caught unaware by the intruder and ran over to see the commotion, giving Stiffupperlip the window he needed. Scurrying across the room, he stopped between two giant crates. The low spark of the high heeled boys was dizzying, but Stiffupperlip carried on. One of the crates had what he was looking for, the abandoned fantasy factory housed all sorts of ancient artifacts. There was one artifact in particular that he was looking for. And he knew it was here, because it belonged to someone close to him.
When Agent Stiffupperlip was nothing but a Rental himself, he was out on a night not too different than tonight that set him on the path to become the hardened suit he is today. The Winking Moon was full and bright, living vicariously through the denizens of the land of Make Believe, judging and just causing general mischief. Fresh from the tailor, Stiffupperlip strutted down the Avenue cheerfully soaking in the hushed whispers of charmed ladies and the not-so-hushed derisions of the local toughs. Times were different back then, and so were the fashions. Agent Stiffupperlip proudly wore a bright purple zoot suit with a yellow tie with orange polka dots. At the time, he thought he looked sharp, dapper, and in the right lighting, chic. Being the style at the time, Stiffupperlip had no idea how foolish he looked walking the beat. That was until, reacting to a catcall, he lost his focus and collided head on with Constable Ballyhoo.
Ballyhoo was a legitimate old-timer and a living legend in the department. Bearing the title of Constable dated him back to before the centralization of law, back to before the imagination conglomeration. Most Constables at the time assumed the title of Agent without a second thought, but Ballyhoo simply pooh-poohed that notion. “I’ve been Constable round these parts for some fifty ought years now. I’ll watch a rhino trade his horn for a drum set before I let some guvment fat cat tell me to change that—‘specially this close to mah damned retirement.” Constable Ballyhoo was prone to saying (that phrase or something similar) whenever anyone asked him about his title.
It only took about a shake and a half of a lamb’s tail of being aroung Constable Ballyhoo to make Agent Stiffupperlip feel self-conscious about his ensemble. He came to respect and revere Constable Ballyhoo for his devotion and his general, all-around badassedness. Agent Stiffupperlip felt more badass just by being around Ballyhoo—a fine example of awesomeosis. Stiffupperlip straightened out pretty quickly from being on assignment with Constable Ballyhoo, and soon enough they were the top suits in the department.
On the day of his retirement, Agent Stiffupperlip and Constable Ballyhoo went out on a routine mission. It was nothing more than a simple IQA-233.1—miming without a license. “Some damn fool mime done trapped himself in an invisible box again.” Ballyhoo commented as soon as the assignment came in over the squawk box. Arriving on scene with their pega-stallions, nothing seemed out of place: a damned fool mime was trapped in an invisible box, over-expressing his agony with a cherubic naïveté. “How did I get in this box?” he mimed. “Oh dear, how will I get out?”
Like he had done a thousand times before, Constable Ballyhoo strode up to the invisible box and running his hands around the edges searched for a seam. Finding it, Ballyhoo patted down his jacket pockets and pulled out an invisible key. The mime mimed relief to (not)see the key, knocking his fist on his forehead and other mime type things. As soon as the key hit the lock, the mime grabbed Ballyhoo and pulled him into the invisible box.
The mime flashed a sinister flat smile, revealing a hundred well-kept pearly whites and pulled an invisible iron from the floor of the invisible box. He pressed Constable Ballyhoo’s suit with Constable Ballyhoo still in it. Agent Stiffupperlip rushed to his partner’s aid, but by the time he busted the invisible hinges off of the invisible door, Ballyhoo was nothing more than a flat, wrinkle free pile of clothes. The mime cast an invisible fishing line from his mime-bike and dragged the pile of clothes behind him. Stiffupperlip took off after the mime and the pile of clothes, but his pega-stallion couldn’t keep up the pace of the imaginary bike.
Making one last ditch effort to save his partner, he grabbed a hold of Ballyhoo’s tie. For a moment he though he did it, but then it slowly slipped off the collar until all that Stiffupperlip clutched was a perfectly symmetrical double Windsor knot. Agent Stiffupperlip burned with hatred as he watched the mime make his escape. The silent clown’s horizontal smile ingrained into the back of his skull. It was a sinister grin that would haunt him every night from then on.
Ballyhoo had no next of kin, friends or even fellow suits who cared enough to mourn. He was a forgotten suit from a forgotten era. It made Stiffupperlip all the more disheartened. While still grieving the loss of his partner, Stiffupperlip was tasked with clearing out his partner’s desk. He was notified that Ballyhoo’s office was going to be refurbished to put in a new reception area with a built in ironing station. Stiffupperlip almost quit on account of the insensitivity.
Sitting at his mentor’s old desk made him reconsider. It wasn’t about the department, the tailor, the nice hangers. It wasn’t about the power of carrying a piece under a three-piece. It was about the job. The job was all that mattered to Ballyhoo, and so, it would be all that mattered to Stiffupperlip.
Amidst the rather lengthy and admittedly forceshadowed expositional flashback, Agent Stiffupperlip found the crate for which he was looking. Crate A119. With the very tips of his fingers, he pried the lid off, opting for the Band-Aid® method of removal. A solitary squeak sounded through the muffled din of the Fantasy Factory like that of a strategically placed dog’s chew toy preventing many a teens attempt at sneaking out for some midnight mischief. Much like that normally-such-a-good high schooler, Stiffupperlip bargained that no one heard him. Digging through the box, it didn’t take long to find what he wanted.
Strewn about Ballyhoo’s desk were files upon files—not the look of a man a day away from retirement. Stiffupperlip shrugged, thinking Ballyhoo probably was dead set on closing every single one of his open cases on the last day. At the back of a drawer, Stiffupperlip found a small nondescript box (as nondescript as the box was, it was nondescript enough to be worthy of the descript of being nondescript, thus making it non-nondescript). Stiffupperlip held the box in his hand as though he were holding the Blue Marble of Andromeda. Stuck to the bottom of the box, was a small business card. It read:
Renfriers Magic, Ltd.
pi/2 Yeardle Circle
Make Believe, FTW 12345
“Where Magic Comes Alive.”
He flipped the card over, and in faded blue cursive letters was the phrase, “To P, Love CB.” In his hand was the only evidence that Constable Ballyhoo led a normal life at one point. Stiffupperlip omitted the box from the itemized list and spent the better part of the next few years trying to figure out just who ‘P’ was. He never had any luck, but he did find out about the precious roll right stones that were housed in that small box.
About a decade later the department was on the verge of having going out of business sale, and the only course of action left was to hire the fashionistas to do an overhaul of the entire wardrobe. They came in with their high cheekbones, declaring everyone and everything a faux pas. Stiffupperlip—along with half of the department—had no idea why they kept demanding that all their stuff belonged to their father. Even more so, they didn’t understand they reason for the southern drawl when they declared their gift-giving intentions. Horrible and far-reaching puns aside, the fashionistas swiped the roll right stones right off of Stiffupperlip’s desk when he was out on assignment. Eventually, he discovered that the confiscated things were not even given over to the progenitors of the fashionistas, but that instead they were all crated up in crate A119 and shipped to the abandoned fantasy factory.
Stiffupperlip put the stone in his pocket and held it tight with deep reverence. It was no ordinary stone. In his hand he held a fabled roll-right stone. Stiffupperlip wasn’t one for magic—the last time he believed in something referred to as magical, it came at the end of 4 easy payments of Y19.95 and came with a free travel-size kit and let’s just say that his results were far from what the enthusiastic pitchman claimed—but his faith in the roll-right stone was different.
Agent Stiffupperlip flitted out of his flashback to find that a ton of time had passed. Still clutching the roll right stones, he was surrounded by a band of tommy gun wielding henchmen. “Huckadoo,” Stiffupperlip lamented, resigning to his fate. He couldn’t believe he reminisced. A rookie mistake. And it was going to cost him.
He scanned the warehouse to see how Agent Rackensack had fared against the balrog. There were only signs of a struggle and nothing else. He had no idea whether Rackensack was dead, captured or escaped.
Covered with fur and smelling worse than doo-doo, Agent Rackensack pulled himself out of the oil slick covered water. Desperate for a clothes-line, he squelched through the streets, wanting nothing more than to get back to the Fantasy Factory to save Stiffupperlip, so he could throw him in the dryer himself—on the highest heat setting. “Just scratch it under the chin,” he mocked.
Scratching the balrog under it’s chin prompted the beast to an impromptu giggle-fest, to which Rackensack was an unwitting participant. Before his gloves even broached the chin of the giant, it rolled into a ball not unlike one Samus Aran and crashed through the streets. Stuck in the middle of this ball of rog was Agent Rackensack, both holding on for dear life and desperately struggling to break loose. He was unsuccessful at both when either option would have been fortuitous for him.
Careening through the nigh-abandoned streets of the warehouse district, Agent Rackensack rolled around inside the ball-rog like he was stuck on a trampoline with a half a dozen fat kids. Putting his thumb to his mouth, he inflated himself to nearly twice his size (tearing the seams of his new suit in the process), forcing the ball-rog back into a balrog and sending Rackensack—now lighter than air from the combination of his size and the heat from the innards of the ball-rog—flying out over Pirate’s Cove.
Not wanting to spend the next 80 freakin’ days circumventing the globe, Agent Rackensack had to find a way to stop his ascent. He thought hard about how to get down. And then because he was thinking so hard, he poofed. What a great way to lose hot air, he thought, poofing again. He continued to poof, toot and bust arse until he splashed into the bay. Swimming to the shore, he convinced himself that the moistness he felt in his drawers came directly after hitting the water and not before.
His best suit ruined—heck, his only suit—thanks to that danged balrog—thanks to ‘Fupper. If they made it out of this, he was going to make his partner buy him a new suit. He was going to tell the Tuxedos about how Agent Stiffupperlip forced him to break protocol to investigate the static charge coming from the Fantasy Factory without backup. He was going to—
A luminescent blue flash of light exploded from the windows of the Fantasy Factory. Rackensack made double time, hoping to save his partner.
Clenching the roll right stone tight in his fist, Agent Stiffupperlip knew it best to bide his time until the opportunity arose. And right now, staring down the barrel of a dozen henchmen guns…was perfect! He rolled the stone across the floor, anticipating the fantastic. The stone would create a whirlwind and knock all the henchmen down, following his every order on the streams of a mind tether. It would burst into a brilliant bal of blue light, incapacitating all his foes. It would burst open like a Poke Ball and a bee with butterfly wings would sting all of his foes, following his orders on the streams of a tether from his mind. Or something like that.
The stone rolled right between two of the henchmen who eyed it with unease, thinking it to be the source of their demise in a fashion similar to one Stiffupperlip was thinking, until it struck a crate off at the opposite end of the factory floor. Like a sleepy old dog trying to find the best configuration on his lump-ridden bedding, the stone spun in a few circles before coming to a anticlimactic stop. Nothing happened.
“Dingleberries!” Stiffupperlip exclaimed, distraught and dejected. The Roll Right stones were as worthless as that AbMachine he bought for the wife a few years back. She was fatter than ever, darn it. He had already resigned himself to be taken captive by whomever was piloting this sinister scheme, when he noticed that the henchmen were still captivated by the stone on the floor.
Sensing the opportunity, Agent Stiffupperlip drew his gun and fired. Bang! the banner read. With a the capitalization and punctuation, he expected a cavalcade of dropping henchmen. Except—once again—nothing happened.
“Huh?” One of the nameless guns for hire spoke up. “What’s that say?”
They can’t read. Agent Stiffupperlip realized, whoever was running this gig was no stranger to the villainy business.
Before he could think to make his next move, a blinding flash of bright blue light—uh—blinded him and everyone else on the factory floor. Stiffupperlip grinned, thinking the roll right stone had finally kicked into gear.
The epicenter of the flash happened not far from where the stone came to a stop, except there wasn’t a stone there anymore. Sitting on the floor was a tiny, innocuous pile of dingleberries.
