Free Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening by Hunter Wiseman, Hayden Wiseman

shorter after this
prolonged encounter of physical aggression.”
    Mu smirks and steps into a fighting
stance, his hands resting on his sword.
    Alfonzo looks to his son and his grip
loosens. His guns don’t feel quite right.
    “Son, maybe we’d be better off trying
diplomacy this time.”
    “What? After all that tough talk
earlier? After you so aptly demonstrated such a kill-em-all mentality? You’re
backing down? No! We can’t let some little man with an over-sized butter knife
get in our way, dad! We’re B. Nanas, dammit. We’re the master of this tower!”
    Armando pulls both his shotguns over
his shoulder and pulls the triggers. Nothing happens. His rage subsides and
confusion takes its place. When he looks at the barrels of his guns an orange
line shimmers across both and the weapons slide neatly apart and fall to the
floor.
    “W-what the h-hell just h-happened?”
He asks. “You never even drew your blade!”
    “The light from earlier.” Mu
responds. “While you and your father were blinded I came down behind you and
sabotaged your weapons. I know your father well. I know his short temper often
leads him to make rash decisions. He surprised me this time. I hadn’t thought
he’d be the first of the two of you to stand down.”
    Mu gestures towards a set of the
couches.
    “Shall we sit and discuss this like
the noble tower rulers I know us all to be?”
    “It would appear that we have little
choice in the matter,” Alfonzo grumbles as he walks over to the nearest couch
and struggles to find a way to comfortably seat his awkwardly shaped body.
Because he’s a banana. Do you get it yet? It’s funny. He’s a banana and he
can’t sit on the couch because fruit don’t got no waist or ass for sitting
with.
    His son cautiously joins him. They
both stare across the oddly angled furniture at their host, who is sitting with
his elbows resting on his knees.
    “So, you believe information is being
leaked,” he says. “I don’t understand what oddly shaped green onions have to do
with anything.”
    Crickets.
    “And you’re in a position where you
can’t really prove to me that it actually is being leaked,” Mu continues. “We
both have problems then. Your problem is obvious. My problem, then, would be
that if one of my men is stealing and leaking information, they’re doing it
without my consent. Nothing slips past me in this city. Nothing. Transparency
and honesty go hand in hand with honor. If those values are being ignored then
we have a rogue Ronin.”
    “A… Ronin… Ronin?” asks Alfonzo.
    “You don’t get to not laugh at the
onion joke and then make an even worse joke.”
    “See, this is why I proposed you guys
change the name of your department at the last division meeting,” Armando says.
“You could avoid title conflicts like this one if only you’d listen to me.”
    “I believe that is beside the point,
young one. The point is that dishonesty has brought about issues like this in
the past and continues to do so. I’ve maintained that belief since my arrival
on this planet and still the majority of you find it more beneficial to lie and
keep secrets. Beneficial to whom, I ask? None but yourselves. Lying benefits
the greater good for a time, but then you get into situations such as this and
everything gets muddled and truth and lie become nearly one and the same.”
    “We’re not just the police, Mu. You
know that,” says Armando. “We’re the government. The government lies. There are
some things that most people are too weak minded and too weak hearted to
comprehend. That’s why we keep secrets. That’s why we lie.”
    “But aren’t most of the problems you
lie to cover up generated and perpetuated by the secrets you’ve kept? Perhaps
giving the people the opportunity to view the truth would strengthen their
minds. In this world, there is no reason to keep the minds of your flock weak.”
    “There is a lot that even you don’t
know, Mu,” Alfonzo says. “If the people