The Plan

We been plannin this raid on the 99 cent store for about a week now, but we keep runnin into problems. First, we don't want to cause a big scene and risk gettin the sheriff involved because then we'd have to go down to his office and sit there uncomfortable and answer all sorts of questions about what we were doin there and then the whole thing with us fightin ninjas sellin meth would likely come up and then I'd have to explain the whole history of the thing and we would be there for hours and hours and, in the end, he prolly wouldn't believe me anyway and then I'd have to make somethin up that actually sounds plausible like gettin my extra pennies back that they stole from me by chargin me a dollar when they're the 99 cent store, but I couldn't use that one because then it'd look like I was stealin and I'd have to be in jail for a bit and prolly have to do community service and, in the meantime, McClawenstein would know that we'd discovered his distribution point and we'd have to find another one and stake that out and then I'd read more in the newspaper and get angrier and angrier until my blood pressure shot way up and made my body all big and strong and I'd rip right out of the car and go on a giant smashing spree through the town which I would later regret and try to repair, but then, when I was rebuilding the storefront of the Yummy Cafe down on Main, the nails would keep bending when I tried to pound them in and then I'd hit my thumb and that would be the last straw and I'd grow into Angry Pat again and destroy even more and the guilt would lead me to flee the town I grew up in, change my name and wander the world trying to find a cure for my anger, studying yoga or some such thing, and I would keep getting angry and destroyin things until I was sent to Japan where they would put me on some sorta psycho game show where they covered me in pudding and threw feathers at me or something until I got angry enough to grow to 300 feet and then they'd make me wrestle the monsters and giant robots and other things that are always attacking Tokyo and, sure, I'd be a sensation in Japan for awhile and they'd put me in all sortsa commercials with flashing lights and things, but then, the Japanese citizenry would tire of me and they'd eventually demote me to washed up Japanese star has-been and I'd end up getting shipped off to some backwater little nation that is getting attacked by lesser monsters like a really tall hairy guy or an abnormally large Kimodo Dragon which is not really of monstrous proportions, just, say, 25% larger than a regular Kimodo Dragon, but it wears pants, so it must be some sorta monster, they tell me, and by them, I'll be all outta anger and my joints will hurt from all them time wrestling robot aliens in Japan that I gotta cover myself with Icy-Hot before every battle and, just before wrestling the Kimodo Dragon, I won't wash my hands as well as I should have and I'll scratch my eye and get a little icy hot in there and I'll be all teary when I'm wrestlin that dragon and so I won't see its trained army of banana slugs coming up behind me and, in the end, I'll be devoured by banana slugs and my own guilt. Now, I gotta tell ya, that doesn't sound like a good ending for me, and I said so to the squimonk. Of course, I left out most of the middle part so the conversation went something like this:

Alistair: OK, how's this thing going to go down?

Me: We gotta keep it secret because I don't wanna be eaten alive by an army of banana slugs.

Alistair: Yeah, secret...wha...I...WHAT?!

Me: Banana slugs.

Alistair: Ooooooo-kaaaaaay.

And, with that, we decided on a sneak attack. Now, we knew that we'd have to go in while they were open. It's real hard to get into a store when they're closed, unless, of course, you've got a brick. There's a thousand and one uses for a good brick, but usin it to break into a store at night isn't exactly low key, so that'd put me right back at bein eaten by banana slugs. So, somehow, we're gonna have to get in there, act like customers and then get into the back room so we can knock out and capture the meth dealers back there, without knowin how many there are or if they're ninjas or not.

Fortunately, the squimonk have been working on a couple of things in the back of the shop to help us out. First, they've done some wonders on my original donut gun design. They've added springs and a sight and smoothed down the wood. This means I can fold it up and hide it in my overalls, so I won't look suspicious carrying a big ol' donut gun around the 99 cent store because we all know how that would end; that's right, banana slugs. They've also taken some of the old jelly filled donuts, taken the jelly out, which was sorta like one of them hard candies grandma always kept on her coffee table in a glass dish, and replaced that jelly with knockout gas. Of course, they didn't tell me about this beforehand and, for some reason, they was storin the new donuts in my personal day-old donut stash, which I like to take a snack from every once in awhile to keep my energy up for all this plannin of ninja fights I been doin. So I reach my hand into my stash, take out what I think is going to be a delicious raspberry filled donut, take a big old bite and get a mouthful of knockout gas. To top it off, that donut had to be at least a couple of weeks old and I broke my tooth on the thing just before I fell to the ground for a 3 hour nap. When I woke up, I was groggy as all get out and covered in post-it notes, but at least they'd fixed my tooth. I mean, sure, they put in a gold cap with my name carved in it, and they say they put in a tiny canister of knock out gas so the next time I bite too hard with that tooth, I'll fall asleep wherever I am, but at least they didn't leave the root exposed. I wouldn't want to be walking around with a tooth root just hangin outta my mouth like some sorta shriveled up worm, tryin not to breathe too fast so the wind didn't go over it too much and make me feel like I was tryin to drill into my own brain with ice, which, by the way, is not something I recommend to anyone. I heard old man Peterson went all nutty after ice fishin for three straight days and think that he had been infested in the head with ice worms so he tried makin a drill out of an icicle and drillin into his own head. He didn't get too deep, though, just enough to give himself a headache and make himself sleepy, so he fell asleep right there on the ice. He darn near froze to death before his wife came out lookin for him because she needed him to fix a drippin sink and move some furniture around. He got frostbite somethin fierce and lost three fingers. He had the doctors preserve one in a bag so he could, I'm quotin him here, "Give his wife the finger one last time."

Them squimonk also made themselves a costume so they can look like a person. They got Lindbergh's help with it so it looks kinda realistic. They didn't want to make the body too tough, though, so they could burst out at the right time and flood the room with furry little balls of fightin. They say they're gonna cover the body up with a trench coat when it comes time for the raid, but I just been seein their trial runs without the trench coat and, I'll tell ya, it looks like a full grown man has eaten a whole mess of giant jumpin beans and they're not sittin right. One time, I saw a whole litter of puppies fightin under a sheet, and this looks a lot like that, except the sheet looks like skin and the puppies are actually squirrel monkey thingies.

The only problem left to us is how I'm gonna act like a customer in the 99 cent store. Every time I think about their lies, my bile gets all up and I start rantin and ravin about how they're penny stealers. We're runnin some simulations in this room the squimonk have built in the back, but it always turns out with me yellin somethin about their theivin ways. Thank goodness for that trainin because I'm gettin better at not yellin at 'em. Last time, I made it a whole minute and thirty seconds, which is 9 times my first attempt. Alistair says, with patience, we should be ready to do this run by Saturday. I'll let y'all know.