umm my random blog

The chassis of the car creaked: from afar, it looked as though it was riding on the slightly dipped kerb, but in fact it was just an unseen and unsteady load that tipped it.

The traffic phase came and went, then came again. An Iguana in an apron finished their smoke break outside the corner store, and stepped inside.

"Is that our man?" Vector said quietly, raising his head up from the back seat with a smooth motion like disturbing swamp waters - just his brow and eyes, mouth slightly agape.

Espio materialised with a jolt behind the steering wheel, his breath-patch puffing into relief on the glass with him.

"Sh!"

"Couldn't have been quieter…" Vector grumbled. His spine was bent in a press-up pose without arm support, since those were occupied with a clipboard and pen. Espio could see his abdominal muscles flexing and settling in for a long workout.

"Not our person. No case, ears exposed and no phone." Espio whispered.

"Corner of Grover, head in to the KEX…"

"I hadn't forgotten, Vector. Patience."

"Yeah yeah, I got patience for weeks. This isn't the grimy sort of street I had in mind, though."

"It's grimy enough."

"This right here is grubby, not grimy. You can tell from all the grub and the lack of grime."

"Sh."

Espio's eyes narrowed, and his view narrowed too, into a line at eye level, checking the gaze of everyone who's toes touched tarmac on their street corner. Espio could read intention in eyes as clearly as the weather from clouds, and dismissed each pair as they ambled past them: bored, tired, hungover, brain-dead, sunglasses… Sunglasses? On a grey day? Perhaps they were hiding their guilty conscience… or they were also using a roller-cane - fair enough, now he felt bad as they headed the other way out of view.

A goat woman had a deep frown line as she checked her watch, standing at the bus shelter - could have been normal, or a very good cover of a spot to be drumming your fingers and shuffling your shopping bags. She glanced up at the sign three times in ten seconds, darting back and forth from the junction nearby to the digital sign at speeds-

"FINISHED! Now what do I do?" Charmy shouted in his ear suddenly, causing Espio to re-materialise in a huff to shove him away. Once Charmy was gone, the bus had come and so had the woman - he didn't see her get on it and scanned the windows for her.

"You finished? All hundred of them?" Vector gasped, also too loud for Espio's liking.

"Yep, all hundred numbers to a hundred!"

"I thought I heard you miss 58?"

"I didn't miss it! It was right there after 57!"

"I didn't hear you say it,"

"They were in my HEAD like you SAID!"

"Hmmm, are you sure you didn't miss any?"

Charmy growled and bonked his helmet on Vector's side, causing him to lose his reflex angle plank and shake the 'empty' car. Espio spun around and glared at the two of them, as Vector shoved Charmy back in his seat.

"Alright that's great. Now do it in French. Gotta check they're all still there."

Charmy groaned, slumped down behind the dashboard, and started mumbling:

"Une, Duh, Threur, Foueur,"

"In your head, Charmy!"

Espio pinched the space above his horn, and tried to imagine slowing his breathing down to that of a corpse or perhaps a rock.

"We could economise on his tutor:" Vector muttered, resuming plank with a strong tail to stabilise him "I think she's taught him everything she knows about french."

Espio absorbed himself back into the world around him, becoming one with the window shield in his mind. He was a security camera, no - he was heat-seeking missile for whoever his target ended up being. His beady eyes darted across the grimy and grubby street-

"Finished!"

He didn't jump this time; he slumped, in a grump.

"No way you finished that fast Charmy!"

"I did! I remembered that everyone uses the same numbers so I just thought of a picture of number One-Two-Five-Six-Up-To-Nine, and then the other numbers are all just them lot again matched together!"

"Ah well, good problem solving."

"Almost." Espio said through gritted teeth: "You also need a Zero."

"… And now I'm finished! What's my next job?"

Vector disguised a sigh as a yawn, and tapped the side window with his tail.

"Count all the pavement tiles."

"What? No way that's gonna catch the bad guy!"

"But french numbers were?" Espio groaned to himself, and tried to cover his internal ears.

"We gotta know how far the shop is based on the size of the tile. Use triangle angles?" Vector summoned an impressive enthusiasm for entertaining Charmy, but Espio pleas with him in the mirror with his eyes.

"What's an angle?"

"Okay, just - never mind. What about all the signs you can see out the window, in alphabetical order."

"That's helpful." Espio mouthed to Vector as he disappeared again, and Vector snarled a tooth back at him.

Espio had of course, been aligned that they were absolutely not abandoning Charmy when he bumbled in through the metaphorical window in their life, the walls of which he had buzzed up against ever since. And of course, he supposed, he had to come to their office during the day when they weren't upstairs in the flat, even though he broke the lamp and accidentally stung a client on his first day rampaging around the desk. Bringing him on dangerous missions seemed stupid, but since they purchased his helmet Espio had relented that nothing was harder than Charmy's head was thick, and he'd probably put a dent in an incoming asteroid with his own force of will.

But this was where he drew the line: stakeouts, intelligence gathering, covert operations - these were Espio's domain. Vector himself was more of a distracting hindrance than a helpful second set of eyes. A child? This child specifically? This wasn't fair on any of them.

"Okay ready:" Charmy shouted again.

"Go ahead Charmy, quietly though - Espio's being a jumpy Joe today."

And of course Vector was enjoying this. Did he even care about illegal incendiaries?

"Okay so there's No A's, 'Bish Bash Wash Laundrette', 'Bus Stop D', No c's, No d's except the bus stop, 'Emergency Exit', another 'Emergency Exit'-"

"Two of them, great good to know."

"Yeah two of them. Okay so no F's… No wait: 'Fire Marshall Point', 'Grower Court' Road sign, 'Handlebars Bike repair and Moustache Trimming'"

"It's 'Grover', Charmy." Espio sighed. He gave up being invisible; since Charmy had his face pressed to the window it seemed less alerting to onlookers to see Espio also sat in the drivers seat than a child on their own in a car.

"Oh, is it one of those funny W's that's actually a V?"

"No. Just a V that's actually a V."

Charmy was eerily quiet for a moment, squinting out the window.

"Okay… then it's Grover spelled with to Vs."

"Charmy, it's not-"

Espio turned his head to chide him, ever so focussed as ever- and spotted the sign.

Grower Court.

here is a link to my general pay what you want commissions guidelines. it's always pay what you want because we're all broke here.

here's my substack for my novel btaf (even if you can't pay you should still subscribe because i post funny bits of writing advice there)