by Chewy Walrus
Chewy had been at the airport one full hour waiting for the contact to arrive. He had grown impatient, as he often tended to do. He looked at his watch. The plane took off in a little less than five minutes.
Chewy took a sip from his mocha and kept his eyes peeled for a large envoy of people. A tap on his shoulder changed all that.
"Excuse me... are you the Chewy Walrus?" Chewy whirled around to see a short, balding man with a tight mustache and excessive ear hair.
"What's it to you?" Chewy said, scratching at his ear as he tended to do when he was bored out of his skull.
"I'm Fausk Tremel, President-Prime Minister of Mandelovia," the short man replied. It was all Chewy could do to keep from laughing.
"What?" he snickered. "No envoy? No militia? No bodyguards?" The Walrus suddenly turned serious. "Are you stupid or something? Do you realize that you could be killed for what you have?"
"Yes... and that is the point of it all, really." The man gestured toward his clothing, which Chewy hadn't noticed before. The man wore a nylon running suit, colored in taupe and navy blue, with a Shnike emblem on the breast pocket. His scuffed Shnike tennis shoes and thick-rimmed glasses made him look nothing like he had in the pictures Chewy has seen.
"It's still dangerous, little man," Chewy said, taking another swig of his coffee.
"Yes, well, we ought to board now, shouldn't we?"
"One second," Chewy reached out to stop the man as he walked toward the entrance gate. "What's so important about this chip? Why does it need to go to Australia?"
"Oh," the PPM pulled out a file, handing it to Chewy. "This man wants to take it from me. He's a big terrorist leader in Australia."
Chewy looked at the picture of a teenager smiling at him.
"Doesn't look all that dangerous..."
"Appearances can be deceiving, Chewy."
"Mr. Walrus."
"Sorry... Mr. Walrus."
"What do they call him anyway?" Chewy said, shoving the file back at the PPM.
"His name is Daniel Elwyn O'Boyle, a.k.a. Rhyme Guardian."