While sleeping off an alcoholic stupor on the couch Braxton had carried him to earlier, Jerry felt and heard his catcaller come alive. Its ringtone went off and vibrated in his pants pocket.

  Jerry attempted to ignore it despite knowing that doing so would probably get him yelled at by somebody later, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was the sweet, deathlike bliss of unconsciousness and nothing else, especially after today’s earlier events. But his catcaller kept ringing and ringing and ringing even after he tried to ignore it several times in a row. Once the catcaller started ringing a fifth time, he answered it with a mumbled string of invectives.

  “Sheesh! That’s no way to greet a good friend who will always have your best interests at hand,” Howard said. “Good morning and better blessings from the Twelve to you as well, I guess.”

  Jerry groaned. Of course it would be him of all twelvedamned people wanting attention for inscrutable reasons at fucking 0434.

  “Likewise,” he said. “Now what the Vullen do you want from me at this unholy hour?”

  “I have to tell you something important. Very important.”

  “Oh, it better be, Crazy Kamikan.”

  “The tables are crying out to me and he’s going to come back for you.”

  Jerry was quiet for a very annoyed beat before he said, “I'm hanging up. Right now. Bother me when—“

  “No!” Howard shouted. “You need to listen to me right now. You need to heed my warning.”

  “Go on then,” Jerry said. “But If you start talking out of your scrambled head like usual, I will hang up and turn my phone off, the consequences be damned.”

  “The tables are crying out to me and he’s going to come back for you,” Howard repeated. “It’s mostly the nice wooden tables, but sometimes the cheap plastic ones are joining in, and you simply won’t believe what the steel tables are telling me, too.”

  Jerry stared blankly at the ceiling and frowned. “I probably won’t either, but lay it on me.”

  “They’re telling me that Bradley Birdshit is coming back in a real bad way,” Howard insisted. “They're telling me—“

  “I'm gonna stop you right there and be as blunt as I can be with you,” Jerry said. “Bradley is one very dead son of a bitch. We all saw the mangled state of his body. Yeah, I’m aware the deceased can come back in the form of the Touched, but do you know how the medical examiners handle that rare possibility?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “They get the autopsy done as fast as possible, then stitch them up with silver threads to prevent supernatural contamination. Are you picking up what I'm putting down, Howard?”

  “Yes, but—“

  “Bradley is dead and gone because he caught himself a bad case of being blown to little sticky bits by Exorcist Division operators. No ifs, buts, or whatever about it,” Jerry said. “Now hang up, tell your wonderful wife I said, ‘hello,’ and get some damned sleep, Crazy Kamikan. Sleep does the body, and more importantly for you, the mind, real good.”

  “Yes, but—“

  “BUT NOTHING, MAN. NOTHING! TELL YOUR WIFE I SAID HELLO. GO TO SLEEP. THEN HAVE A GOODNIGHT.”

  Jerry hung up on Howard and turned his cell phone off for good measure. He grumbled in raw annoyance before somehow quickly returning to sleep minutes later.

  Jerry woke up only moments later to a shirtless Braxton standing over him. All things considered, that was quite the nice sight despite his anger towards him. But what wasn’t quite a nice sight was what he was holding—his catcaller with Howard’s caller ID on the screen.

  “Brax,” Jerry moaned, “why are you helping him bug the shit out of me?”

  “He was blowing up my phone like crazy,” he said. “And even though he has a bad habit of bugging people with the odd shit that comes out of his mouth more than you do, he usually says things we should listen to.”

  “Like what?”

  “Remember the time he gave us advance warning of that town full of black-eyed children nobody else saw coming? Like it or not, Howard has some kind of Touched insight into things no matter how many times you try to discredit him as ‘Crazy Kamikan.’”

  “Got me there, I guess.” Jerry took the catcaller from Braxton and answered it. “What is it now?”

  “Why did you hang up? I was just about to—“

  “Just tell me what you need to tell me so badly you felt the crippling need to bug Braxton about it”

  “Remember when you were talking about how the medical examiners stitched up the bodies given to them with silver threads?” Howard asked. “Various tables have told me they’re not doing that. They’re telling me that the medical examiners are using pewter thread instead of silver thread to steal it for sale later. Sometimes the normalized corruption of this nation makes me sick!”

  Jerry laughed despite himself. “That’s an amusing sentiment to hear from an allegedly reformed conman currently employed by the fucking Triple I Division.”

  “Like Rosa, our lovable anarcho-nihilist scamp, likes to tell us, if you want to get away with crime, just do crimes for the government.”

  “Whatever, Crazy Kamikan,” Jerry said. “Either way, what you’re saying is a very alarming accusation without much evidence beyond your own words on hand. If your accusations are grounded in our actual reality instead of the one you inhabit, that seems like something you should tell Mr. Moon or somebody higher up the food chain instead of just me…so why are you doing that?”

  “Two reasons,” Howard said. “The first reason is that you and the other Rangers take me more seriously than Mr. Moon, and I care about you, Jerry. I don’t want to see you hurt even if you tend to be a mean, sarcastic, and grouchy asshole to everybody around you.”

  “That’s real sweet of you to say to me” Jerry said. “What's the second reason?”

  “To convince you and the other Rangers to harass Mr. Moon into stopping the medical examiners from continuing their fraud as soon as possible,” Howard said. “I already have Mallory, Noura, and even Dr. Grebella onboard to say something. Now I just need you, Braxton, Rosa, and Anthony. What do you think?”

  “Sure thing,” said Jerry. “Now please go to sleep and don’t bother anybody until the morning. You'll have an easier time convincing people into this scheme when you don’t wake them up rambling about tables and pewter thread at 0500 in the morning.”

  Howard cackled with his weird jackal laughter. “It’s not a scheme. It's the truth. The truth! But you are right about not bothering people right now. I tried to talk to Rosie earlier, and she told me to—“

  “Fuck off?” Jerry said. “Yeah, she says that a lot, especially to me. I've known Rosie for a longer time than you. She doesn’t truly hate you or any of the other Rangers…well, save for me that is. She just has limited patience with anybody with a pulse.”

  “That’s good to know,” Howard said. “Goodnight and better blessings from the Twelve.”

  “Likewise, Crazy Kamikan. Likewise.”

  They hung up their catcallers at the same time. Jerry regarded Braxton with tired eyes. “Are you on his side or do you think he’s just talking out his head as usual?”

  “What do you think based on what I said earlier?” Braxton asked.

  “Fair enough. Then consider me on his side as well. All aboard the Crazy Kamikan Express. Our Destination? Certain Death and Devastation Avenue!”

  “You seem to struggle with maintaining a positive outlook on life, don’t you?”

  “Braxton,” Jerry said simply. “Do you think people like us, in any of the lines of work we have ever been in, in the world we both exist in, have ever been conducive to that?”

  Braxton opened his mouth as if to retort, but stopped to shrug instead. “Good point.”

  When Samedy arrived, Jerry and Braxton spent the day doing nothing of note. Despite the catastrophic failure of the barbeque, the tension between them was not as bad as the day following the vicious fight at the tangrella dancing event. Jerry supposed Braxton had more tolerance for an outburst and threats of violence compared to actual violence.

  They were able to walk together, talk to one another, feed the dogs, maintain their large collection of firearms, and do yard work that was more busywork than anything meaningful.

  When the late evening came, a time when Jerry knew Mr. Moon and the Rangers got off work, he sat at the kitchen table and called Mr. Moon to inform him about Howard’s dire warnings. Mr. Moon answered Jerry’s call after one ring.

  “Good evening and better blessings from the Twelve,” said Mr. Moon. “How may I assist you tonight, Mr. Genovesi?”

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  “Likewise,” Jerry said. “Earlier, I got a call from—”

  “Mr. Kamikan, I assume?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “While I do understand that you put more trust into what your teammate says than I do, it would serve you better to seldom do that. Do you happen to remember the time a curious mood overtook Mr. Kamikan with so much vigor, he alleged that his work vehicle was bugged? But rather than come to the Triple I Division for an inspection, he took it upon himself, causing thousands of drancs in damage?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Or better yet, do you remember the time Mr. Kamikan once layered the inside of his suit with tin foil because he wanted to ward off the psychic heart attacks of a Feylian Wise One called Bodogambi?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Mr. Genovesi, I know what I am going to tell you next will be deeply unprofessional, but I think it is something you should hear,” Mr. Moon said. “If I had a higher station in the Triple I Division that granted me much more authority, I would not trust Mr. Kamikan with a dull bread knife, much less a service pistol and a secret level security clearance. Goodnight.”

  Mr. Moon hung up on Jerry. Jerry attempted to keep his head on straight for a few quiet moments, but eventually lost it. He bolted up and screamed like somebody had driven a red hot poker into the base of his neck.

  “To Vullen with that six-fingered fuck, Brax! I hate him, man! I really hate that twelvedamned cat!”

  “I understand what you’re saying and why you’re saying it,” Braxton said. “But there’s no need to throw around slurs like that.”

  “Fine! I’ll keep the naughty, no no words out of my mouth,” Jerry said. “But could you believe the way he not only talked to me, but how he talked about Howard?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Braxton asked. “You’re upset that Mr. Moon says Howard can act like a total crazy person, but when you call him the ‘Crazy Kamikan,’ that’s okay?”

  “It’s different when I do it,” Jerry insisted. “When I call Howard ‘Crazy Kamikan,’ it’s just me busting his balls a little. But when somebody like Mr. Moon calls Howard ‘Crazy Kamikan,’ it’s gross and dehumanizing.”

  Braxton scoffed. “If you say so.”

  “Well, what now?” Jerry asked, throwing his hands up in defeat.

  “I’m not sure,” Braxton said. “We have no chores left. The dogs are well fed and watered. The guns are clean. And Mr. Moon blew us off. I’m at a loss here.”

  “I got an idea.” Jerry shot Braxton with one of his seductive grins. “You wanna fool around to blow some stress off?”

  “This early in the evening? That feels scandalous.”

  “Then let’s be so scandalous, we end up in the New Chemeketa Examiner, big man.”

  “Sometimes I forget to appreciate it when you drive me mad with your mouth in a good way for once.”

  Jerry got close enough to Braxton to smell the warm skin on his neck and grab him possessively by the hips. “Well, I certainly won't forget, but enough of this talking. Let’s get to what we both need, huh?”

  On the early morning of Dimanchy, sometime near 0700, a naked Jerry woke up to the sound of somebody knocking insistently on the front door. Despite the vigorous, tiring events of last night, he was alert and combat-ready within seconds. He woke up Braxton by slapping his broad, bare chest.

  “Ow!” Braxton shouted. “What was that for?”

  “We got a visitor,” Jerry whispered. “An unannounced one.”

  “Okay? Stop freaking out over your own shadows for once.” Braxton yawned and scratched his broad, muscular chest. “Either go check it out or wait until they go away. Simple as that.”

  “Watch my back.”

  “Sure thing, even if you’re worrying about ghosts.”

  Jerry dressed himself with the pile of casual clothing left by the bed, then got one of the handguns stashed underneath it to place behind his back. He crept towards the window and twitched the curtains to see who was outside the front door.

  In the gravel driveway was the car that belonged to Mr. Moon and Mr. Kirigami while the two stood outside the door. For the strangest reason, Mr. Moon had a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. Jerry calmed down immediately, then opened the door.

  “Good morning and better blessings from the Twelve,” Jerry said.

  “Likewise,” Mr. Moon and Mr. Kirigami said at nearly the same time.

  “Before I let you fine gentleman and gentle Hissianman into my humble abode and offer you black tea and cruelty-free biscuits, may I ask why I wasn’t given an advance warning before this visit?”

  “You know as well as I do that Triple I Division Internal Affairs officers aren’t required to do that,” Mr. Moon said. “Now, are you going to let us in or will we have to let ourselves in?”

  “Come on in, I suppose.”

  When Mr. Kirigami and Mr. Moon entered the house, Jerry took their windbreakers and fedoras to hang on the wall. Mr. Kirigami looked around Jerry’s and Braxton’s dwelling. He seemed utterly fascinated by its warm, cozy innards, like he had never seen the inside of a house before.

  “This is a nice little place you and your husband have here,” he said. “Do you mind me asking how much it cost?”

  “Hundreds of hours, dozens of heat strokes, and an average of one blowout fight a week,” Jerry said as he sat down at the kitchen’s table. “Building your own house is a very rewarding experience in the same way one could find peeling the skin off of their chest with a rusty knife rewarding.”

  “I see, I see.” Mr. Kirigami sat down at the table followed by Mr. Moon. “You know, if you’re looking for some good extra money on the side, I have this leaky faucet at my house that—“

  “No,” Jerry said simply. “Plumbing and I don’t get along real well.”

  “Alrighty then.”

  Braxton entered the kitchen and sat down with Mr. Moon, Kirigami, and Jerry at the table.

  Mr. Moon cleared his throat. “Now that we are all gathered here, I have some news to share.”

  “Most of it isn’t good and the rest of it mixed,” Mr. Kirigami said. “You know, the usual when it comes to Triple I Division developments.”

  Mr. Moon opened the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist and flipped through a couple of different papers. “The Carber Carpentry workshop mysteriously burned down several days earlier before it could be fully investigated.”

  “We initially suspected it to be faulty wiring,” Mr. Kirigami said. “But according to the preliminary investigation by the New Chemeketa fire department, they suggested foul play by a skilled arsonist.”

  Jerry groaned. “Fantastic. Any other bad news?”

  “As expected,” Mr. Moon said. “Mr. Kamikan and a team of Triple I Division cryptologists were able to decipher Mr. Carber’s notes, allowing us to discover the location of several caches around New Chemeketa. However, when the Rangers, I, and gendarme explosive ordnance disposal teams sought these caches out, they were either destroyed, expertly booby-trapped, or left empty of anything worthwhile.”

  “Sounds like somebody is one step ahead of us,” Braxton said. “Or might even be luring us towards a trap of some kind.”

  “Seems like it,” Mr. Kirigami said while slowly folding a piece of paper into the shape of a crane. “Now tell these two worst news, Mr. Moon.”

  “Five individuals with suspected connections to Bradley Sandaux have been found dead from various violent means such as vicious stab wounds, slit throats, or in some cases, defenestration. In addition to this information—” Mr. Moon paused, as if the next words he planned to say had become trapped in his throat.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Mr. Kirigami laughed while he admired his paper crane. He handed it to Braxton, who seemed at a loss at what to do with the paper creation. “Seriously, though. Speak up, Mr. Moon. It’s just a report.”

  “In addition to this information…it was reported two nights ago by the New Chemeketa Medical Examiner’s Office that Bradley Sandaux’s body was nowhere to be found.”

  Jerry felt like the room went sideways. His blood pressure spiked with such rapid, unexpected intensity, ringing filled his ears. About a thousand different questions came to his mind, but he kept it as simple as he could with a dull and lifeless: “What?”

  “Nobody knows where Bradley Sandaux’s body is,” Mr. Moon said, “and despite a review of the security cameras, local birdeye bots, and potential witnesses, nothing of him was seen either. It seems he has simply vanished.”

  “With all due respect,” Jerry hissed, “I can’t fucking believe you managed to pull this off, Mr. Moon!”

  “Jerry!” Braxton shouted. “We do not need any of that again.”

  Mr. Kirigami lost his lackadaisical demeanor as he said, “Mr. Genovesi, I suggest you choose your next words carefully when speaking to my subordinate.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Jerry said. “We tried to warn Mr. Moon about this. This is all his fault!”

  Mr. Kirigami looked at Mr. Moon. “Is that true? You were given actionable intelligence by several of your subordinates, and you simply…brushed them off?”

  Mr. Moon said nothing, which did little to help Jerry’s building rage.

  “Look at how quiet he is compared to him cutting me off last night,” he said to Braxton. “What a good little soldier he is! Kissing ass upwards and pissing on head downwards.”

  Braxton frowned but said nothing. He looked like he wanted no part in this mess even if he was sitting at the table with everybody else.

  “Return to the car, Mr. Moon,” Mr. Kirigami said. “But keep in mind that we’re going to have a very serious conversation later on.”

  Mr. Moon did so without complaint, exiting the house without another word.

  Mr. Kirigami rubbed the greying hair on his temples. “There’s not a lot I can do to fix the failure on my subordinate’s end, but I promise I will try to do whatever I can to make sure the mysterious disappearance of Bradley Sandaux’s corpse is handled to the best of my abilities.”

  “Thank you,” Braxton said. “But I have a feeling even if you try to do whatever you can within your power, the next few weeks are going to be…interesting.”

  “I suppose ‘interesting’ is one way to describe being employed by the Triple I Division,” Mr. Kirigami said. “Would you two like the little good news our visit was supposed to bring?”

  “Sure thing, Mr, Kirigami,” said Jerry.

  “The first good bit of news is that you and Mr. Olumana are in the clear in regards to the Bradley Sandaux shooting,” Mr. Kirigami said. “If it wasn’t, Mr. Moon and I would not have been here in the first place. However, there were some negligible discrepancies between your account and Braxton’s account of how the shooting initially started. Negligible enough to be notable, but not enough to truly raise any red flags, so keep it all above board next time, huh?”

  “I promise to keep proper standard operating procedure running through my head when somebody else is trying to blow it off next time,” Jerry said. “What’s the other good bit of news?”

  “The second and last good bit of news is that it appears that the Rangers have accidentally foiled the bombings of several federal buildings in New Chemeketa.”

  Jerry and Braxton stared at Mr. Kirigami like a second face was growing on his forehead.

  “Excuse me?” Jerry asked.

  “I am not at liberty to give full details in such an unsecured space,” Mr. Kirigami said, “but just keep in mind that Rustio’s Rangers are more or less heroes who saved dozens, if not hundreds of lives by ending the life of one madman. And for that, I would like to congratulate you two in particular.”

  Mr. Kirigami stood up and offered his hand to Braxton and Jerry. They shook in turn, more confused than celebratory. It was not every day Jerry was hailed as a good person, much less the savior of hundreds before he had breakfast.

  “And with that said, I must make my leave,” Mr. Kirigami said. “Have a wonderful day, you two, and please don’t forget my plumbing offer, Mr. Genovesi. I pay well and very quickly.”

  He left the kitchen and exited through the front door. Braxton unfolded the paper crane Mr. Kirigami had given to him earlier. Inside of it were mysteriously smaller paper cranes and Mr. Kirigami’s phone number.

  “What a fascinating morning this has been,” Braxton said.

  “And a scary as Vullen one, too,” Jerry added. “We might be big damn heroes now, but that Birdshit bastard is definitely out there, plotting on both of us, Brax. I’m calling some of the Triple I Division approved locksmiths and security experts right now.”

  “Good idea,” Braxton said. “Now, what do you want me to cook for breakfast?”

  “Breakfast?” Jerry laughed. “I got no appetite right now, I’m afraid. How do you expect me to eat anything when there’s a new man on the list of people who want me dead out there?”