The two of them sat in a small, out of the way, diner somewhere in New York City. Technically they were working, but the job they were on had hit a sort of dead end, and instead of heading back to HQ to report on it, they decided to have a bite to eat first. It was, after all, a little after 2pm. The perfect time for a sit down meal and some of that tar the waitress called coffee.
One of them, the elder one, had a sour face and perpetually squinting eyes, like everything he saw was suspicious. His skin was wrinkled and looked as if it would feel like leather. Right now, while he nursed what he suspected was dyed glue, he read a tabloid that he had taken from a newsstand just out the front of the diner. The proprietor, a long time associate, didnt seem to mind.
The younger, sat with his untouched meal and quickly setting ‘drink,’ and watched the other. He had been cynical of the training he had been given so far and was quickly reconsidering his options about whether to stay on or not. So far, the promised adventure had amounted to a drive – yes, a drive – from Lower Manhattan to somewhere in Queens. Then, after a fruitless search of what was clearly an abandoned building, they dropped into this shitty little restaurant and now his so called mentor was reading one of those awful little gossip magazines.
“Do you know how out of place we look here?” the younger one, who went by P, said.
The other, a man only known as Q, looked up from the magazine and looked around the restaurant. Despite the two of them wearing the crispest suits – black jacket and tie on a starched and pressed white button shirt – no one else in the establishment was paying them the least of attention. Q looked back over at P with tired eyes and sighed.
“There is nobody here who will even remember the two of us were here,” he said, took a sip of his drink, or tried to at least, and then let the mug fall back on the table with a dense thud, before turning his attention back to the magazine. “Besides which, what do you suggest we do?”
“We go after this son of a bitch. We know where he went, we hunt him down and,” at this the young man made a rather unambiguous gesture with his hands and this did get some attention from the waitress who took the mugs with the now solid substance in them and replaced them with a fresh cup. Q immediately picked his up and drunk it without acknowledging the waitress.
“Say things like that, though,” he said, “and shell kick us out. And I like this place, understand? And we dont know where he went. I said theres only a few places he could go. We do this properly, alright?”
“Yeah,” P said, sheepishly, but then immediately returned to his previous energy. “So, what, we just go home and report to Z that we failed?”
“We havent failed,” Q said, throwing the tabloid over, folded open at page seven. “We just didnt have the right leads.”
On the open page was a full page article detailing one womans many complaints about being abducted by aliens, returned, and then some time later, being abducted again. A huge headline read ‘THEY ARE OBSESSED WITH ME!’ and supporting the article was the face of the woman the two of them had seen near the abandoned building not three hours earlier.
The so-called Men in Black are our planets first, last and only line of defence against the many hordes of species that live, relatively, on our back door step. To many, this sounds like the ideal career. Travel the stars, meet new species, be a diplomat on the forefront of this new society, recover stolen alien technology and get into incredible fights with huge creatures while wielding gigantic guns.
The truth couldnt be further away. Most of the MIBs – a colloquial term – were administrative assistants. Filing, paperwork, data entry and scheduling. A good 200 were responsible for organising communications – when you have more than 700 different species on one planet, each of which with their own language, you need a lot of talented translators. But there are some specially trained operatives who go through rigorous training, a suite of mental acuity tests, nearly a years worth of therapy, and come out of it at the end with a single letter name, a stylish suit and a partner they wish they could shoot immediately. These are who the stories are about. These prized specimens of human ability. The best of the best of the best.
Two of whom were currently arguing with a dog.
“I dont know nothin’” the dog said, hiding behind a pallet of bricks at the back of a construction site. “You guys keep coming at me, but I keep tellin’ ya, I dont know nothin!’”
“Oh I know what you said, pal,” Q said, switching a setting on a small device in his hand. “I know that you say that every time,” he aimed the device at the bricks. “But I cant help but remember that each time you said that,” he pushed a button on the device, it emitted a small warble of noise and the bricks shimmered and disappeared, allowing P to rush in from his unseen position off to the side and grab the dog.
“That you lied to us,” P said, finishing what Q had been saying.
“You lied to us, Frank,” Q reiterated, replacing the device in his pocket and walking over to where P held the little pug under his front legs, holding him up, belly out, towards Q.
“Ok, listen,” the pug said, worried. “I wouldnta lied to you if I knew it was important.”
“P?” Q asked as he stopped in front of his partner and the dog.
“Yeah, Q?” P replied, looking over the animal at him.
“Shake.”
“Shake?” P asked innocently.
“Shake?” the dog asked confused.
P shook the dog maybe a little too violently until the two humans heard a very clear agreement from the creature that he would never lie to them again and if they would please stop shaking him he would tell them everything he knew right now.
“Hnhnhnhnnnnnng,” it sounded like.
“Alright,” Q said, motioning for P to stop.
“Ready to talk now?” P said.
“Yes!” Frank yelled, struggling, and failing to escape the hold he was in.
“Then talk,” Q said. “This woman, who is she?”
“Dunno her name,” Frank said after being shown the tabloid photo. “But she comes around these parts sometimes. Mad as a hatter. Says she sees things, you know? Creepy things.”
“Something that looks like this?” Q asked, showing the pug another photo, which made him redouble – and fail again – his attempt at escape.
“God, no, what? Why would you show me that? No, Jesus, Q. Also, how do I know what she sees? Shes mad. Its all in her head. Aint nothing like that around here. If I, or anyone else, saw that, we would in the front lobby of your place looking for a boat off this rock, ya understand?”
“You know where she goes, when shes not here?” P asked, tilting the dog so he could look at him in the eyes. “We would like to have words with her.”
“Christ, so long as youll be done having words with me, Ill show you anything.”
“See, that wasnt so bad now, was it?” Q asked as P dropped the dog to the ground and the pug ran across the construction site.
“Whatever, you fascists, follow me,” he said bitterly.
Q and P had been assigned a murder case. An alien, legal, had turned up dead one night. It was obvious straight away that this was no ordinary killer. Residue left on the scene – on and in the body – and a destruction pattern that Q hadnt seen in many years led them to a conclusion that no one within MIB liked – that an unregistered alien, a big one, had arrived on Earth without anyone knowing and was now stalking through the streets of New York – somehow – and picking off other aliens.
The only leads they had was a photo of something that Q had had since the first time he saw something like this and the woman who they were now following an angry little pug dog to. Neither of them were at all confident of success here, especially if, as Frank had said, the woman was mad. After about an hour of following the dog around, hoping that no one saw them with a talking pug, Frank stopped in front of an apartment building that looked like every other in this part of the city.
“Here, you ingrates,” Frank said. “She lives in here. I say lives, its not very nice.”
“Appreciate the commentary,” P said and pushed the door open. It swung in and the two MIBs stepped through.
“Notice that?” Q said.
“Yeah, its like it dropped ten degrees. Must be good aircon.”
“Doubt it,” Q said, kicking a clearly broken AC unit on the floor, complete with unattached ducting and a corresponding hole in the ceiling.
“Know any kinda alien that could do that?”
“Not off the top of my head,” Q replied. He unbuttoned his jacket, allowing him quicker access to the small hand weapon attached to his belt.
Seeing the motion and realising what this meant, P mirrored the action as the two of them walked towards the elevator banks.
“Stairs,” Q said, pointing to the nearby door. “Head up, stick your head in on each floor, meet me on five.”
“You get to take the elevator? Hell nah, man, come on.”
“Im going up to ten and working down. Go.”
“Whatever man,” P grumbled as he made his way to the stairs and started up. “Going down is easier than going up.”
He pushed the door on the first floor open and looked either way, his gun ready against his hip. Nothing. He pushed the door on two open: Nothing. Three, nothing. And on four, he stepped out and swept his gun down both hallways. Still nothing.
He arrived on five expecting the same, but instead he got the weirdest scene he had ever seen. Q arrived behind him and could only look on in awe and wonder at what was happening.
To the left of the stairway entrance, at the far end of the hall, the creature that was the subject of the photo that Q had been carrying around with him. A member of a species that was not welcome in the civilised parts of the world. Their prime suspect in the murder they had been sent to solve.
In front of it, unconscious on the floor, was the woman they had been following to this building. It was unclear what had happened to her, and it was also unclear whos side she had been on before ending up where she was.
But both of those things were nothing compared to the four men in beige coveralls, with large backpacks with hoses and wires and all manner lights and switches all over it. They were shouting at each other in the din of their machines, each of them holding what looked like a gun attached to the backpacks. These guns were pointing directly at the creature and, somehow, they had it bound, or otherwise captured.
“Egon,” one of them called.
Another of the men took a device from off the side of the backpack and slid it across the floor towards the creature. The top of it opened and a soft blue light came out.
“Now!” the man who Q and P assumed was this Egon called and the four men directed the beams of energy from their weapons, bringing the creature with them, towards the light were the entire thing was sucked up and the device on the floor closed with a hiss.
“Another job well done,” one of them said as they reholstered their weapons and hooked the device back to the backpack.
“Ah, look,” another said as he turned around to leave. “The local Five-Oh. Nice of you to join us, boys, but we took care of this one. You can thank us later.”