CHAPTER FOUR: A DAY ON THE TOWN
--

	Time went quickly for Hieronymous Smith. He soon fell into a
routine - getting up, eating one of Wilf's artery-clogging fried
breakfasts, then training for the rest of the day under the tutelage of
the other members of the house. Most of the time he ended up practicing
martial arts under Mrs. Maple, who would spend five hours a day hitting
him and flinging him around the dojo until her rheumatism kicked in and
she had to go have "a bit of a lie down". He spent the rest of his time
avoiding Louis's attempts at male bonding, Louis's other attempts to feed
him homemade anabolic steroids and growth hormones, and staring at the
Psychic Apostle trying to figure out what in the world he was supposed to
be doing.

	Sometimes Wilf would drag him down to the YMCA, where they would
post Satanic Messages on the YMCA community message boards. After that
they'd go have coffee at some small out of the way beanery, where Wilf
would regale Hieronymous with stories about... well, he wasn't sure what,
but he was fairly sure they were stories.

	Yes, life was interesting for Hieronymous Smith.

	Somewhere out of this world, Fate watched the proceedings. She
smiled as she watched Hieronymous's training, and sipped her drink -
usually a no-fat soy latte, for it is well known that Fate is a yuppie.
Her newest plaything was proving to be most amusing.

	She idly pondered what to do next. Fate, it should be known,
cannot control everybody's destiny, but she can exert a certain amount of
influence at key points to achieve the same general result if she wants
to. Right now she found herself wondering whether Wilf should do his
shopping in Bakersville next Saturday, like he always did, or whether he
should send Hieronymous in his place. She idly swirled the foam around in
her latte, and stared into its depths, trying to predict the future.

	"What the hell," she decided. "At least it'll get him out of the
house..."

--

	"You want me to what?" asked Hieronymous as he chewed on a piece
of fried eel.

	"Go shopping," replied Wilf. The two of them were sitting
at the breakfast table, attacking a pile of foodstuffs and other random
objects that Wilf had thrown into the frying pan that morning. "Somebody
has to go and get the household supplies, and you deserve a bit of time
off from all that hard training you've been doing." He chewed on his
kipper thoughtfully. "Besides," he continued, "it'll be good for you to
get out of the house and meet some new people."

	"I thought you said that all the people in Bakersville were
nutcases, though."
	
	"Oh ah," replied Wilf nonchalantly. He passed Hieronymous a sheet
of paper covered in writing. "Now here's a list of the stuff I need you to
pick up." He reached into one of his voluminous pockets, pulled out a
massive wad of hundred dollar bills, and passed them to Hieronymous who
accepted them with a slightly stunned look. "That should cover your
expenses."

	"Where did all this money come from?" asked Hieronymous.

	"You don't get to be a thousand year old, ancient organization
without making at least a few wise financial transactions," Wilf replied.
"Now go, take a car, explore, have a good time, and maybe even a decent
meal." He poked at something on Hieronymous's plate with his fork. "You
going to eat that?"

	"Er... no," replied Hieronymous, who wasn't even sure what that
was.

	"Good," said Wilf, and picked up the offending item with his fork.  
"I think that's one of my socks." Hieronymous suddenly decided that he'd
had enough to eat, and headed for the garage to try and find a car. Louis
had yet to finish repairing the Rabbit; his first attempt, hopped up on a
batch of recently prepared Jerry Garcia Memorial LSD, had left the car
slightly worse than he started but significantly more colourful.

	The garage was full of cars that were broken, abused, and covered
in rust. These cars had not had good lives, and had somehow ended up
paying for their sins by being driven around by Wilf.  Hieronymous stared
at the various cars, and parts of cars, and tried to find something that
(A) looked like it would run, and (B)  wouldn't embarass him in front of
the population of Bakersville. For all he knew, many of them probably had
much finer cars rusting in their front yards. He wandered around, staring
at automobiles, looking for something acceptable.

	"What's goin' on, man?" asked Louis, poking his head out from
underneath the chassis of an Ojibwe Military Surplus Army Jeep.

	"I'm looking for something that I can take to town," replied
Hieronymous. Louis hummed and hawwed, and extracted himself from
underneath the Jeep.

	"Tricky," he replied as he started searching through the ruined
automobiles. "What have you driven before?"
	
	"Nothing," Hieronymous admitted. "I don't even have a license."

	Hieronymous had discussed this with Wilf briefly at breakfast only
to be told, "Don't worry lad, it's easy. Nobody ever taught me to drive,
and I do it all the time. You put yer foot on the accelerator to drive,
use the wheel to turn, and you can even push on the brake to stop if you
want to, I guess."

	"But what about the rest of it?" Hieronymous had asked. "The
signals? The clutch? Shoulder checking?"

	"... signals?" Wilf had replied innocently. "Clutch?"
	
	Hieronymous was snapped back to the present by Louis muttering
under his breath. "Well, if you don't have a license, we'll have to see
what else we can find." He tromped around the garage for a few minutes,
looking at rusting bicycles and skateboards, only to suddenly jump up and
down. "I've got just the thing!"  he exclaimed. "Follow me!" Hieronymous
followed the aged hippie to the back yard, where he was greeted by an
astonishingly tall wooden tower that he could have sworn wasn't there
yesterday. It loomed up into the sky menacingly, like some sort of
modern-day Tower of Babel. As Louis started to ascend a ladder attached to
the side of the tower and Hieronymous followed, he hoped that it wasn't as
rickety.

	The climb up the tower seemed to last for hours, and Hieronymous's
arms and legs were both quite sore when he reached the top. Louis was
nonchalantly standing there, seemingly unaffected by the climb, and
holding a large black umbrella.

	"Now what?" asked Hieronymous. Wordlessly, Louis opened the
umbrella, handed it to Hieronymous, and shoved him off the tower.

	Hieronymous panicked. His life started flashing before his eyes -
a fairly common occurrence these days - only to stop when he discovered
that he was not actually falling. Somehow he was staying in the air. Not
only that, but his umbrella had somehow sprouted large fiberglass wings,
and the handle that he was holding onto for dear life had expanded into a
large bar, from which several controls and a seat dangled. He pulled
himself into his seat, grabbed onto the bar, and made a mental note to
thank Mrs. Maple for all those chin-ups she'd made him do.

	"Aim for a thermal if you're landing before you want to!" yelled
Louis as the tower faded from Hieronymous's sight. "I'll fix one of the
cars and pick you up this evening!"

	After he stopped throwing up over the countryside and got used to
the idea, Hieronymous decided that he actually quite enjoyed travelling by
flying umbrella glider. The ride was smooth, pleasant, and everything that
riding in the car with Wilf was not. The glider's controls were fairly
intuitive, and any time he felt that he was going to low he had only to
aim for a thermal - a patch of heated air coming off of the ground - and
the umbrella would miraculously rise up into the air again. As he started
to approach Bakersfield, he began his descent, and eventually landed in
the middle of the main street that ran through the tiny hamlet. Oddly
enough, nobody seemed to give him a second thought, as thought people
landing flying umbrellas in the middle of town was a perfectly normal
thing.

	Hieronymous folded up the umbrella and pulled out Wilf's shopping
list. It was written in a messy, jagged scrawl and was completely utterly
incomprehensible, although he could just barely make out the words
"grenade launcher". The rest of it could have been anything.

	First things first, Hieronymous thought to himself. He was sure
that the giant wad of hundred dollar bills could at least buy him coffee
and a decent meal, prepared by people who knew how to cook and that wasn't
full of the unholy trio of tofu, soy, and wheatgerm. He wandered around
the streets of Bakersville for a little while until he found what he was
looking for: a small building, made entirely out of a combination of two
by fours, wooden shingles, and aluminum. A large flourescent sign stood at
an angle above the building, proclaiming in large letters, some of which
still actually worked, that the name of the restaurant was
"Jinendousosetsu's House Of Oriental Foodstuffs".

	Hieronymous entered the restaurant and looked around. The
restaurant was dark, gloomy, and nearly empty. In one corner, a small,
wizened and generally prune-shaped elderly man of an unknown but
definitely oriental ethnicity - Mr. Jinendousosetsu himself, Hieronymous
supposed - was sitting behind a sushi bar, cutting fish with a very sharp
knife. From behind him emerged clouds of steam, emanating from several
large pots containing assorted noodle products. Next to the pots was an
assortment of woks and Chinese cooking equipment. Between the steam, the
dark lighting, and the occasional bursts of flames, the cooking area
looked like Dante's inferno.

	There were only two patrons besides Hieronymous. The first was a
sullen young man with black hair, wearing a black long-sleeved shirt, a
vest covered in pockets, and blue jeans. He was moodily picking at a bowl
of noodles. Propped against his table was a long, black walking stick with
a knob on the end. The second was a teenaged girl with long, black hair,
purple lipstick, black clothing, and far too much eyeshadow. She sat at
the sushi bar, apparently not eating anything.

	Mr. Jinendousosetsu waved at Hieronymous from behind the counter,
and indicated that he should sit at the sushi bar. Hieronymous did, and
Mr. Jinendousosetsu passed him a menu.

	"I haven't seen you here before," said the inscrutiable oriental
in perfect, British-accented English. "Are you new in town?"

	"Yes," replied Hieronymous. "I'm staying with Wilf - you know
him?" All of a sudden he heard a whooshing sound, and just barely avoided
the chopstick that whizzed by his left shoulder and embedded itself two
inches deep in the sushi bar's countertop. He turned around to see the
young man at the table glowering at him with undisguised animosity.

	"I'm not impressed," said the man.

	Mr. Jinendousosetsu leaned over the sushi bar and whispered into
Hieronymous's ear. "Be careful of that one, valued customer," he muttered.  
"He is one of those men who... how you say?" He reflected for a moment.
"Not only does he always hear his own soundtrack in his mind, but he
carries around a small orchestra at all times to play it for him."

	"Oh," Hieronymous whispered back. He pulled the chopstick out of
the sushi bar and looked at it for a moment, then turned around and
addressed his adversary. "That wasn't nice," he said, not really knowing
what else to say but instantly regretting saying it.

	"Humour me," said the man. "Please elucidate a little more on what
your name is, and what exactly your relationship is with Mr. Wilf."

	"My name is Hieronymous Smith," Hieronymous said, "and as for my
relationship with Wilf, I'm... well, not entirely sure.  I'm supposedly
training to defeat evil, but so far all that's happened is that a little
old lady has thrown me into walls several times, and an aged hippie keeps
trying to feed me anabolic steroids."

	"So, for some unknown, spectacularily unobvious reason, those
senile delinquents have chosen you as their successor as opposed to yours
truly." The man stood up from the table, pushed his noodles away, and
grabbed his other chopstick. "This thing, to whit the thing that they have
done, has been done despite my superior genetic background, years of
training, proprietaritous upbringing, and superior techniques. It appears
that the thing has ALSO been done despite the fact that you are a complete
and total idiot."

	"Well," said Hieronymous, "at least we have something in common."  
This only infuriated the man, who threw his other chopstick at Hieronymous
with blinding speed. Hieronymous hurriedly rolled out of the way; the
chopstick flew through where was sitting a minute ago, through the sushi
bar's glass panes, out the other side, through several pieces of cooking
equipment, and out through the back wall of the restauraunt.

	"Oh shit," said Mr. Jinendousosetsu, who could see where this was
going and hurriedly put the catfish back into the refrigerator. The goth
girl at the sushi bar simply rolled her eyes, and turned to watch the
proceedings.

	"That spurious remark," the verbose young man screamed, "you will
pay for with your most valued possession, to whit your life!" Hieronymous
attempted to wrap his head around that sentence, failed miserably, and
decided to try and figure out what to do next. He scrambled to remember
something, anything, from his martial arts training, but all that he could
remember was how to properly crash into walls, floors, furniture, and the
ceiling.  Mrs. Maple had only started showing him blocks last week, and he
still wasn't sure how to punch somebody. He tried to position himself into
a kung fu stance that looked reasonably authentic, as his adversary picked
up a table and charged him, screaming at the top of his lungs. Just before
it hit him, Hieronymous noted that he could have spent much better use of
his time trying to get the hell out of the way.
	
	The table hit Hieronymous head-on, and his body was sent flying
across the restaurant. He landed with a crash in a pile of cooking
equipment on the other side of the room. He was slightly surprised to find
that it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. In fact, it hardly
hurt at all. He pulled himself up, adjusted the position of his neck, and
glared at his attacker.

	"Not bad," the man conceded grudgingly. "Unfortunately for you,
there are a lot more tables in this restaurant." He picked up a chair in
each hand, and ran at Hieronymous screaming again, swinging his chairs
around as if they weren't very heavy and made of metal. One of the chairs
connected with Hieronymous's ribs; the other hit him in a vicious uppercut
that sent him flying into the air, smacked him against the roof, and ended
up with him landing in the cooking equipment again.

	"That's odd," Hieronymous thought to himself, "that didn't hurt
either." He pulled himself out of the cooking equipment and idly threw a
wok at his opponent, who swatted it out of the air with one of his chairs.

	"I see," the man replied cagily. "It seems you have no small skill
in the art of being-thrown-against-walls-and-not-hurting. Fortunately, I
too have some skill in this area!" With a sudden cry, he hurled himself
into one of the walls of the restaurant at high speed, yelled "Hyaah!",
then flung himself at the floor. He landed with a thump and Hieronymous
heard the sound of things cracking and breaking.

	"What was that for?" asked Hieronymous.

	"I'M NOT DONE YET!" the man screamed. He pulled himself off of the
floor, joints popping and blood oozing out of his nostril, and flung
himself at another wall with a running charge. He impacted it at high
velocity, then slowly slid down the wall and onto the ground again.

	"Curse you, Hieronymous Smith," he mumbled from the floor.  
"Revenge will be mine!" With that, he pulled himself off the floor again
and fled the restaurant. Hieronymous briefly thought about asking the
fleeing, bruised and bloodied man if he knew where he could get his hands
on a grenade launcher, but decided not to bother.

	"That was interesting," he said as he sat down at the sushi bar
again.

	"Oh yes," said Mr. Jinendousosetsu, idly fishing things out of the
sushi bar and hacking them into tiny pieces. "Never a dull day around
here."

--

	Hieronymous wandered out of the House of Oriental Foodstuffs an
hour later, full of noodles. Mr. Jinendousosetsu stared at his retreating
form for a little while. He had kindly pointed Hieronymous in the general
direction of the Ojibwe Military Surplus Depot's local branch, where
grenade launchers could be obtained for a reasonable price.

	Now he poked around the restauraunt with a dustpan and broom,
sweeping up pieces of broken furniture, but his mind was elsewhere.

	"What do you think, Petunia?" he asked the solemn goth at the
sushi bar, who was now lost in idle contemplation of a cup of tea.

	"About what?" she replied. "Hieronymous Smith?"

	"No, idiot girl," he snapped back, "the wisdom of the Sixth Zen
Patriarch. Of COURSE Hieronymous Smith!"

	Petunia stared off into space for a minute. "He's kind of cute,"  
she said after a moment's thought. Mr. Jinendousosetsu hung his head in
shame.

	"Granddaughter, I had hoped that you would have been able to come
up with something slightly more insightful than that."

--

	The Ojibwe Military Surplus Depot was a monstrous warehouse on the
outskirts of town. Upon entering the building, Hieronymous was greeted by
another skinny little old man - this one, however, was sitting at a small
clerk's desk, circa 1850, and was wearing a very elderly suit and a pair
of pince-nez. His hair was white and was combed over his obviously balding
head as part of an attempt to look young and virile, although Hieronymous
wasn't entirely sure who he was fooling. Good grief, he thought to
himself, is every business in this town run by elderly relics?

	"Can I help you, sir?" the clerk asked upon seeing Hieronymous
enter.

	"I'd like to buy a grenade launcher," Hieronymous replied.

	"Ah," said the little old man. "Do you have an account here, or
would you like to open one?"

	"Well," replied Hieronymous, "I'm staying with Wilf and he asked
me to pick up a grenade launcher for him when I came into town today." The
little clerk smiled.

	"One of our best customers," he said. "I'm not sure if we have any
grenade launchers in stock today... somebody keeps buying them up. What
they want with grenade launchers, I couldn't say. Ho hum." He got up from
his desk and stretched his legs. "Come with me, sir," he said, and walked
very slowly through a door behind his desk. Hieronymous followed him.

	The main warehouse area was quite a sight. Very large shelves
stretched off in every direction, complete with attached wooden ladders of
the sort found in elderly bookstores. Random objects, some military, some
not, were stacked haphazardly on the shelves, and in little piles around
the warehouse like rabbit droppings. The clerk and Hieronymous wandered
through the warehouse at a snail's pace, giving Hieronymous a great deal
of time to stare at the sights: kevlar vests, lock picks, assault rifles,
rocket launchers, shuriken, cruise missiles, caltrops, and a selection of
medieval polearms.

	"If you don't mind me asking," Hieronymous said as they navigated
around an overflowing pile of kayaks, "where is Ojibwe?"

	The clerk thought for a moment. "I don't really know," he replied.  
"They keep sending me stuff, and I keep stacking it up in the warehouse
and selling it to interested parties."

	"How do they send you stuff then?" asked Hieronymous, slightly
intrigued.

	"FedEx," replied the clerk. "It's a bit of a nuisance trying to
get the tanks out of those little boxes, let me tell you."

	They finally stopped in front of a shelf. "There's one," said the
clerk. He shakily ascended a rickety ladder, yanked the grenade launcher
off of the shelf, and promptly lost his balance and fell down on the
floor.

	Oh gods, thought Hieronymous, I've killed him. "Are you alright?"  
he asked.

	"Don't mind me, sir," replied the clerk. "I've had worse." He
shakily lifted the grenade launcher off his chest and handed it to
Hieronymous, who was fairly sure he heard the sound of the clerk's
twig-like bones snapping in half.  "Shall I charge it to the account, or
will you be paying by cash or credit?"

	"Cash," replied Hieronymous.

	"That'll be three thousand, two hundred, and fifty six dollars,"  
replied the clerk. Hieronymous pulled out the wad of hundred dollar bills
and started peeling them off. "Keep the change," he said, "and I'll see
myself out."

	"Take one of our catalogues as you go," said the clerk, and passed
out.