NaNo 2010: Chapter 1
I am and I'm not working off my 2005 version of these characters. I'm checking back on a couple of facts, but more or less, I'm letting them find themselves. So, if you read the 2005 version after I linked it yesterday, you might find some inconsistencies.
On the other hand, this is NaNo we're talking about, so you'd be lucky if those were the only inconsistencies.
This Chapter: 2202
Chapter One: In Which there are Indignities
"What part of 'I'm handcuffed to the fucking oven' do you not understand?" Devin asked. He growled when Stanton howled with laughter in his ear. "I am going to-"
"How?" Stanton interrupted. "How the hell, man?"
"I was trying to arrest a ninja-"
"You looked away, didn’t you?"
"I was trying-"
"Admit you looked away," Stanton ordered. "I'm not going to let you finish a sentence if you don't admit it."
There was a pause, then Devin cursed. "You fucking asshole."
"Say it," Stanton sing-songed. "Saay it."
"You are a fucking child."
"And you're a cop handcuffed to an oven."
"Fine, I-"
"Wait."
"I swear to fuck, if you're recording this-"
"No, no, no. Just shut up a second." Stanton waited for Devin to stay silent for a full three seconds. "You're handcuffed to an oven?"
"Yes."
"Because you looked away from the ninja."
"Yes."
Stanton fought the urge to point out that Devin had admitted it. "All right. Then why don't you hang up the phone, get your handcuff keys out of your pocket, and unlock yourself, you mook?"
"Because they're not my handcuffs, you dumb bastard."
"What?"
Devin sighed in aggravation. "They're not my handcuffs. The fucking ninja-"
"Ninjas don't carry handcuffs."
"This one does."
"What?"
"You're recording me," Devin accused. "I know it. You're recording me and getting me to repeat things so that you can play all this back later and prove I said it."
"I swear I'm not recording you." Stanton held up a hand like he was being sworn in at court and put it down quickly when he remembered Devin couldn't see him but the rest of the squad room could. "I'm saying, by my use of the word 'what,' that I find it hard to believe that a ninja carries handcuffs, as the few we've managed to capture have never had them in their arsenal."
"And I'm telling you, with my fucking telling you, that this ninja did, and he or she or it used them, and I'm now handcuffed to a goddamned stove."
"But why would it carry handcuffs?"
"I don't know, Stanton. Maybe it's a fucking reform ninja, and it doesn't agree with all the old ways. Or maybe it doesn't fucking matter because I'm handcuffed to a goddamned oven."
"Reform ninja? Do they have those?"
"I swear to fuck, Stanton, I'm going to disembowel you."
"Should I ask Micah? Would he know? I mean, he's reform Jew, right?"
"Don't tell Micah! It's bad enough I'm never going to hear the end of it from you."
"And everyone I tell."
"Stanton-"
"Are you at the address you left with the desk?"
"Yes."
Stanton tapped his fingers on his knee waiting for Devin to catch on. "You realize," he said after Devin said nothing," that means I have to get it from Micah. Who works at the desk. And is still on shift."
"Get someone to distract him and snoop around."
"The last time anyone tried that, Micah put popcorn kernels in all his cigarettes."
"You don't smoke."
"Yeah, but imagine what else he could come up with."
"Stanton, if you don't get over here with a hacksaw or a skeleton key, I'm gonna do worse to you than anything Micah can dream up in his demented little mind."
"Does your boyfriend know you say such terrible things about him?"
"Yes. Now get here and don't tell him about this, okay?"
Stanton considered his options. He should already be on his way, in fairness. Technically, Devin was an officer down due to being unable to free himself from a situation that had left him in possible danger. On the other hand, it was kind of hysterical.
"I'll be there as quick as I can."
"Don't take the Hawthorne bridge. It's a mess."
"Yeah. Sure. Hawthorne."
"Stanton-"
Stanton hung up the phone and stood up from his desk, grabbing his suit jacket as he walked around his chair to Micah's desk. "Receptionist boy-"
"Oh, that never gets old," Micah said sarcastically. "You're a funny guy, Stanton."
Stanton grinned at him. "I need the address where Devin was headed." He held up a hand when Micah's eyebrows shot up. "I promised not to tell."
"I'm dating him."
"Which makes you his not-cop partner, which makes it not your business from a professional perspective."
"Which makes you my sworn enemy." Micah lowered his eyebrows and pursed his mouth. "Which means you must die."
Stanton laughed. "Greatness. I'll keep an eye out. Right now, I have to go rescue Devin."
Micah reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a slip of paper. He bent over it so Stanton couldn't see what he was writing. "Because?"
"Because he called me in mild duress and asked me to rescue him."
"Because?"
"Because your boyfriend's kind of an idiot."
Micah looked up, hand still covering his paper. "If I don't give you an address, you won't know where to go, and he's going to call and be even madder." He gave Stanton a hard look. When Stanton said nothing, he sighed. "And I heard something about ninjas and handcuffs, so you may as well fill me in."
"He was trying to arrest a ninja, and he looked away, and the ninja was carrying handcuffs, and he handcuffed Devin to an oven."
Micah blinked. He looked down at his slip of paper, turned it over, and wrote something on it. "Since when do ninjas carry handcuffs?"
"I surely do not know." Stanton held out his hand for the slip of paper. Micah handed it to him. "I assume whatever you scrawled on the back is for Devin's eyes only."
"If you don't mind."
Stanton read the address, folded the slip of paper, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket. "I promise not to look."
"Like you promised not to tell me about Devin being handcuffed to a stove?"
"Not at all. I told you that as a fellow employee who could use a laugh. This," Stanton tapped his jacket over the inner pocket, "is a personal message from one half of a couple to another. A good lawyer could argue confidentiality."
Micah grinned. "I appreciate it."
"Sure." Stanton grabbed his coat from one of the hooks next to Micah's desk. He paused after slipping it on. "Are there reform ninjas?" he asked.
Micah's brow furrowed. "What?"
"Reform ninjas. Do they exist?"
"How the hell would I know?"
"You're Jewish."
Micah blinked. He cocked his head. He blinked again. "I don’t actually have an answer for that."
"I'm just saying-"
"There's not a 'reformed whatever you are' club, Detective. We don't compare notes."
"I didn't mean-"
"And I don't know every gay guy in the city, either."
"I hadn't-"
"And I don't know every Jew, for the record."
Stanton worked his chin back and forth. "You're fucking with me."
"Some. But I really don’t know if there are reformed ninjas."
Stanton nodded. "All right. I'll ask someone else."
"Let me know how that goes."
"Wiseass."
"There's a wreck on car lanes on the Hawthorne Bridge," Micah called as Stanton walked out the door. "You probably want to take the bus."
"Got it!" Stanton yelled in return as he clattered down the stairs. He clattered down the next flight as well, and on the third-deciding to change it up-he rattled his way down. He waved to the desk sergeant as he stepped outside and turned up his collar to keep the rain from running down his entire neck.
"Number six," he muttered to himself as he walked down the block, looking for the proper bus stop. The number six would take him over the Hawthorne Bridge and drop him near the address where Devin was handcuffed to an oven. He passed a bus stop for the number 13, then the 14, and finally came to one with a variety of numbers like a lotto machine, including the 6. The electronic read-out over it told him he had fifteen minutes before the bus got there.
"Where the fuck are you?" Devin snapped when he answered Stanton's call.
"At the bus stop. Micah mentioned there was a crash on Hawthorne Bridge."
"You have a siren."
Stanton rolled his eyes. "Which will completely not work if I'm using it to try to get around a fucking accident."
Devin sighed, the sound coming out with a bit of static on Stanton's end of the phone. "You didn't tell Micah, did you?"
"I told you I wouldn't."
"Goddamnit, I told you not to."
"He held your address hostage until I told him. He also sent a note along."
"What'd it say?"
"I didn't read it."
"What?"
Stanton rolled his eyes again. In the back of his mind, he heard his mother threatening him with his eyes sticking that way. "It's a note from your boyfriend, not the admin guy."
"Read it to me."
"I will not!" Stanton shouted, getting a look from a young woman sitting on one of the bus stop seats. "I swore to not look at it."
"I fucking hate you."
"See you in twenty-five minutes."
"I am handcuffed to a fucking oven."
"You've mentioned." Stanton heard a metal-on-metal rattle in the background. "Careful. If I bring you back bruised, Micah will leave a thumbtack on the seat of my chair."
"Have I mentioned that your amusement at my relationship is fucking annoying?"
"A few hundred times. I ignore you on purpose."
"Fucking hate you."
"Oh!" Stanton said with intentional fake cheerfulness. "The bus is here!"
"Bullshit," Devin replied. "If it's going to take you twenty-five minutes to get here, the bus won't show up-"
"I'm going into a tunnel."
"You're at the fucking-"
"Can't-" Stanton made a coughing sound that he hoped sound like static. "hear-" the same hopefully static sound again, "you-"
"You fucking faker."
Stanton hung up the phone rather than reply. It would be more realistic, he thought, if he didn’t reply. Five seconds later, his phone rang. Caller ID, Stanton decided, was the greatest invention man ever had:
DEVIN
"Yeah. No."
The woman on the seat gave him another look. "I'm not crazy," Stanton told her, smiling. "I'm a police officer."
"Facist," the woman muttered, and Stanton entertained himself for the next seven minutes by imagining exactly how pissed Devin would be when he showed up to rescue him.
*
It turned out Devin was even more pissed than Stanton had pictured. "I told you to bring a fucking hacksaw."
"It's not something I keep in my desk, asshole," Stanton replied, giving the cuff a shake. It was a strong cuff, higher-level than what they were issued by the department. "And I assumed you were being a jackass."
"As you can see, I clearly was not." Devein rattled the cuff himself. "So unless you have a magical set of keys or a hacksaw, I'm going to tell you to fuck off."
"I really thought-"
"Why would I make up the need for a hacksaw, Stan?"
Stanton pulled a face. "Don't call me Stan."
"Well, don't act like a dumbass, and I-"
"I fear, sometimes, that we sound like an old married couple," Stanton interrupted.
Devin thumped his head against the oven. "Do old married couples threaten to shoot one another? Because I'm about two seconds from shooting you. In the balls."
"Jesus Christ." Stanton kicked at Devin's ankle. "Give me five seconds to find a solution, would you?"
"One," Devin started. When Stanton pointed a finger at him, he flipped him off with his free hand. "Two. Three."
Stanton opened the drawers under the counter top. The first one held silverware. The second had cooking utensils. The third was a kitchen junk drawer with old bills and possibly dead batteries-
"Five. Six. Seven."
And a hacksaw. Stanton reached for it and held it above his head like Excalibur. "Say thank you," he ordered Devin.
"You laughed when I called you."
"Thank you, Stanton," Stanton mimicked in falsetto. "You're my goddamned hero."
"Thank you, Stan," Devin countered. "I promise not to shoot off your balls."
Stanton tapped his chin with the handle of the hacksaw. "Fair enough. Don't flinch." He pulled Devin's arm away from the oven and started sawing on the handcuff link closest to the oven handle and furthest from Devin's face. Two minutes later, as near as Stanton could figure it, the cuff broke off, and Devin dropped his arm to his side, rubbing it.
"Pins and needles," Devin muttered, punching himself in the arm lightly.
Stanton dropped the hacksaw and reached into his inside jacket pocket. He held out the folded slip of paper to Devin. "Here."
Devin took it with his not-numb hand and opened it. He read it, laughed, and held it up for Stanton to see:
YOU STUPID BASTARD -M
"Adorable," Stanton deadpanned, and he held out his hand to help Devin up.
Devin grasped Stanton's hand and let himself be pulled up. "Fucking hate ninjas," he said as they walked out of the house.
"I know," Stanton agreed. "I totally know."
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3
On the other hand, this is NaNo we're talking about, so you'd be lucky if those were the only inconsistencies.
This Chapter: 2202
Chapter One: In Which there are Indignities
"What part of 'I'm handcuffed to the fucking oven' do you not understand?" Devin asked. He growled when Stanton howled with laughter in his ear. "I am going to-"
"How?" Stanton interrupted. "How the hell, man?"
"I was trying to arrest a ninja-"
"You looked away, didn’t you?"
"I was trying-"
"Admit you looked away," Stanton ordered. "I'm not going to let you finish a sentence if you don't admit it."
There was a pause, then Devin cursed. "You fucking asshole."
"Say it," Stanton sing-songed. "Saay it."
"You are a fucking child."
"And you're a cop handcuffed to an oven."
"Fine, I-"
"Wait."
"I swear to fuck, if you're recording this-"
"No, no, no. Just shut up a second." Stanton waited for Devin to stay silent for a full three seconds. "You're handcuffed to an oven?"
"Yes."
"Because you looked away from the ninja."
"Yes."
Stanton fought the urge to point out that Devin had admitted it. "All right. Then why don't you hang up the phone, get your handcuff keys out of your pocket, and unlock yourself, you mook?"
"Because they're not my handcuffs, you dumb bastard."
"What?"
Devin sighed in aggravation. "They're not my handcuffs. The fucking ninja-"
"Ninjas don't carry handcuffs."
"This one does."
"What?"
"You're recording me," Devin accused. "I know it. You're recording me and getting me to repeat things so that you can play all this back later and prove I said it."
"I swear I'm not recording you." Stanton held up a hand like he was being sworn in at court and put it down quickly when he remembered Devin couldn't see him but the rest of the squad room could. "I'm saying, by my use of the word 'what,' that I find it hard to believe that a ninja carries handcuffs, as the few we've managed to capture have never had them in their arsenal."
"And I'm telling you, with my fucking telling you, that this ninja did, and he or she or it used them, and I'm now handcuffed to a goddamned stove."
"But why would it carry handcuffs?"
"I don't know, Stanton. Maybe it's a fucking reform ninja, and it doesn't agree with all the old ways. Or maybe it doesn't fucking matter because I'm handcuffed to a goddamned oven."
"Reform ninja? Do they have those?"
"I swear to fuck, Stanton, I'm going to disembowel you."
"Should I ask Micah? Would he know? I mean, he's reform Jew, right?"
"Don't tell Micah! It's bad enough I'm never going to hear the end of it from you."
"And everyone I tell."
"Stanton-"
"Are you at the address you left with the desk?"
"Yes."
Stanton tapped his fingers on his knee waiting for Devin to catch on. "You realize," he said after Devin said nothing," that means I have to get it from Micah. Who works at the desk. And is still on shift."
"Get someone to distract him and snoop around."
"The last time anyone tried that, Micah put popcorn kernels in all his cigarettes."
"You don't smoke."
"Yeah, but imagine what else he could come up with."
"Stanton, if you don't get over here with a hacksaw or a skeleton key, I'm gonna do worse to you than anything Micah can dream up in his demented little mind."
"Does your boyfriend know you say such terrible things about him?"
"Yes. Now get here and don't tell him about this, okay?"
Stanton considered his options. He should already be on his way, in fairness. Technically, Devin was an officer down due to being unable to free himself from a situation that had left him in possible danger. On the other hand, it was kind of hysterical.
"I'll be there as quick as I can."
"Don't take the Hawthorne bridge. It's a mess."
"Yeah. Sure. Hawthorne."
"Stanton-"
Stanton hung up the phone and stood up from his desk, grabbing his suit jacket as he walked around his chair to Micah's desk. "Receptionist boy-"
"Oh, that never gets old," Micah said sarcastically. "You're a funny guy, Stanton."
Stanton grinned at him. "I need the address where Devin was headed." He held up a hand when Micah's eyebrows shot up. "I promised not to tell."
"I'm dating him."
"Which makes you his not-cop partner, which makes it not your business from a professional perspective."
"Which makes you my sworn enemy." Micah lowered his eyebrows and pursed his mouth. "Which means you must die."
Stanton laughed. "Greatness. I'll keep an eye out. Right now, I have to go rescue Devin."
Micah reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a slip of paper. He bent over it so Stanton couldn't see what he was writing. "Because?"
"Because he called me in mild duress and asked me to rescue him."
"Because?"
"Because your boyfriend's kind of an idiot."
Micah looked up, hand still covering his paper. "If I don't give you an address, you won't know where to go, and he's going to call and be even madder." He gave Stanton a hard look. When Stanton said nothing, he sighed. "And I heard something about ninjas and handcuffs, so you may as well fill me in."
"He was trying to arrest a ninja, and he looked away, and the ninja was carrying handcuffs, and he handcuffed Devin to an oven."
Micah blinked. He looked down at his slip of paper, turned it over, and wrote something on it. "Since when do ninjas carry handcuffs?"
"I surely do not know." Stanton held out his hand for the slip of paper. Micah handed it to him. "I assume whatever you scrawled on the back is for Devin's eyes only."
"If you don't mind."
Stanton read the address, folded the slip of paper, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket. "I promise not to look."
"Like you promised not to tell me about Devin being handcuffed to a stove?"
"Not at all. I told you that as a fellow employee who could use a laugh. This," Stanton tapped his jacket over the inner pocket, "is a personal message from one half of a couple to another. A good lawyer could argue confidentiality."
Micah grinned. "I appreciate it."
"Sure." Stanton grabbed his coat from one of the hooks next to Micah's desk. He paused after slipping it on. "Are there reform ninjas?" he asked.
Micah's brow furrowed. "What?"
"Reform ninjas. Do they exist?"
"How the hell would I know?"
"You're Jewish."
Micah blinked. He cocked his head. He blinked again. "I don’t actually have an answer for that."
"I'm just saying-"
"There's not a 'reformed whatever you are' club, Detective. We don't compare notes."
"I didn't mean-"
"And I don't know every gay guy in the city, either."
"I hadn't-"
"And I don't know every Jew, for the record."
Stanton worked his chin back and forth. "You're fucking with me."
"Some. But I really don’t know if there are reformed ninjas."
Stanton nodded. "All right. I'll ask someone else."
"Let me know how that goes."
"Wiseass."
"There's a wreck on car lanes on the Hawthorne Bridge," Micah called as Stanton walked out the door. "You probably want to take the bus."
"Got it!" Stanton yelled in return as he clattered down the stairs. He clattered down the next flight as well, and on the third-deciding to change it up-he rattled his way down. He waved to the desk sergeant as he stepped outside and turned up his collar to keep the rain from running down his entire neck.
"Number six," he muttered to himself as he walked down the block, looking for the proper bus stop. The number six would take him over the Hawthorne Bridge and drop him near the address where Devin was handcuffed to an oven. He passed a bus stop for the number 13, then the 14, and finally came to one with a variety of numbers like a lotto machine, including the 6. The electronic read-out over it told him he had fifteen minutes before the bus got there.
"Where the fuck are you?" Devin snapped when he answered Stanton's call.
"At the bus stop. Micah mentioned there was a crash on Hawthorne Bridge."
"You have a siren."
Stanton rolled his eyes. "Which will completely not work if I'm using it to try to get around a fucking accident."
Devin sighed, the sound coming out with a bit of static on Stanton's end of the phone. "You didn't tell Micah, did you?"
"I told you I wouldn't."
"Goddamnit, I told you not to."
"He held your address hostage until I told him. He also sent a note along."
"What'd it say?"
"I didn't read it."
"What?"
Stanton rolled his eyes again. In the back of his mind, he heard his mother threatening him with his eyes sticking that way. "It's a note from your boyfriend, not the admin guy."
"Read it to me."
"I will not!" Stanton shouted, getting a look from a young woman sitting on one of the bus stop seats. "I swore to not look at it."
"I fucking hate you."
"See you in twenty-five minutes."
"I am handcuffed to a fucking oven."
"You've mentioned." Stanton heard a metal-on-metal rattle in the background. "Careful. If I bring you back bruised, Micah will leave a thumbtack on the seat of my chair."
"Have I mentioned that your amusement at my relationship is fucking annoying?"
"A few hundred times. I ignore you on purpose."
"Fucking hate you."
"Oh!" Stanton said with intentional fake cheerfulness. "The bus is here!"
"Bullshit," Devin replied. "If it's going to take you twenty-five minutes to get here, the bus won't show up-"
"I'm going into a tunnel."
"You're at the fucking-"
"Can't-" Stanton made a coughing sound that he hoped sound like static. "hear-" the same hopefully static sound again, "you-"
"You fucking faker."
Stanton hung up the phone rather than reply. It would be more realistic, he thought, if he didn’t reply. Five seconds later, his phone rang. Caller ID, Stanton decided, was the greatest invention man ever had:
DEVIN
"Yeah. No."
The woman on the seat gave him another look. "I'm not crazy," Stanton told her, smiling. "I'm a police officer."
"Facist," the woman muttered, and Stanton entertained himself for the next seven minutes by imagining exactly how pissed Devin would be when he showed up to rescue him.
*
It turned out Devin was even more pissed than Stanton had pictured. "I told you to bring a fucking hacksaw."
"It's not something I keep in my desk, asshole," Stanton replied, giving the cuff a shake. It was a strong cuff, higher-level than what they were issued by the department. "And I assumed you were being a jackass."
"As you can see, I clearly was not." Devein rattled the cuff himself. "So unless you have a magical set of keys or a hacksaw, I'm going to tell you to fuck off."
"I really thought-"
"Why would I make up the need for a hacksaw, Stan?"
Stanton pulled a face. "Don't call me Stan."
"Well, don't act like a dumbass, and I-"
"I fear, sometimes, that we sound like an old married couple," Stanton interrupted.
Devin thumped his head against the oven. "Do old married couples threaten to shoot one another? Because I'm about two seconds from shooting you. In the balls."
"Jesus Christ." Stanton kicked at Devin's ankle. "Give me five seconds to find a solution, would you?"
"One," Devin started. When Stanton pointed a finger at him, he flipped him off with his free hand. "Two. Three."
Stanton opened the drawers under the counter top. The first one held silverware. The second had cooking utensils. The third was a kitchen junk drawer with old bills and possibly dead batteries-
"Five. Six. Seven."
And a hacksaw. Stanton reached for it and held it above his head like Excalibur. "Say thank you," he ordered Devin.
"You laughed when I called you."
"Thank you, Stanton," Stanton mimicked in falsetto. "You're my goddamned hero."
"Thank you, Stan," Devin countered. "I promise not to shoot off your balls."
Stanton tapped his chin with the handle of the hacksaw. "Fair enough. Don't flinch." He pulled Devin's arm away from the oven and started sawing on the handcuff link closest to the oven handle and furthest from Devin's face. Two minutes later, as near as Stanton could figure it, the cuff broke off, and Devin dropped his arm to his side, rubbing it.
"Pins and needles," Devin muttered, punching himself in the arm lightly.
Stanton dropped the hacksaw and reached into his inside jacket pocket. He held out the folded slip of paper to Devin. "Here."
Devin took it with his not-numb hand and opened it. He read it, laughed, and held it up for Stanton to see:
YOU STUPID BASTARD -M
"Adorable," Stanton deadpanned, and he held out his hand to help Devin up.
Devin grasped Stanton's hand and let himself be pulled up. "Fucking hate ninjas," he said as they walked out of the house.
"I know," Stanton agreed. "I totally know."
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3