Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

Chapter 16: Dial M for Mooney.



"Mooney, how's it going?" I said.

There was a very long pause. "Who's this?"

I shifted around in the only working phonebox I'd been able to find. It was red and noticeable and surrounded with glass, and literally the least sensible place for me to be standing in right now. But hey, needs must, etc etc. It also stank of urine, and was pasted with the least subtle escort adverts I'd ever seen. At least if this call didn't work out the way I was hoping, I'd have lots of options for a relaxing massage.

"I've literally been away from London for at most forty-eight hours, mate. Don't tell me you already don't recognise my voice?" I might have been laying it on a bit thick. But, then again, I figure I was allowed. I'd just defeated an intergalactic snake-assassin.

"Is this Undershaft?" he said.

I should explain.

Mooney loved nicknames the way some men loved trains. No, he didn't merely love them. That doesn't quite go far enough. He designed them. He catalogued them. He produced substantial spreadsheets arguing about their provenance. Basically, if you gave him a surname and a pint, Mooney could produce three generations of bizarre and unusual sobriquets you'd have not known were remotely possible.

Given a choice, he very much favoured the obscure because, he had once explained to me, the obscure carried social credit. It was important to him that people had to ask twice. He liked to be the man who could drop a new name for someone and then watch the person have to bend to it.

Even his own name was a result of his own particular 'talent.' The name he'd had stuck on him at birth was Desmond Rowntree. 'Dessie 'stuck briefly to him at school, but that didn't really float his linguistic boat, which is when he learned of the power of taking the English language on a magical mystery tour.

As a fan of Irish Football – I mean, who isn't? - Dessie meant Desmond Armstrong who played for Derry City. And from Derry you could go, he said, to Londonderry, which in pub noise and said fast enough became London Derricks. Derricks are cranes, and he thus became Crane Boy for a week. Then, one of us informed him 'Crane Boy' sounded like the name of an effete Batman villain, and Mooney decided to engineer things further.

He discovered, with the fervour of a man who'd found a new shampoo, that cranes appeared in certain Chinese stories under the moon. He kept telling this part of the story and we kept pretending to be surprised. But we all resisted calling him 'Moon Crane,' which we all and he thus became Mooney.

When your name's a social instrument, everyone else's consent to play the game is a formality.

"Undershaft?" he said again. "Is that really you?"

His name for me came, unsurprisingly, from an even more complex series of twists and turns. He'd been on his fourth double whiskey, and we were outside the Queen's, waiting for a cab that never came, when he suddenly looked up at me – he's at best a foot shorter than me - and said, "You know what? Looking at the size of you, we're going to be calling you St Andrew Undershaft from now on."

Having seen him do this to the rest of our group, but having so far avoided the same fate, I quickly told him I had a normal name.

"Nope. Not anymore, you don't."

Which is when he'd started his lecture. You see, St Andrew Undershaft is a church in the centre of the City that used to have a maypole stored along its length which ran taller than most the surrounding houses. Once a year, they'd haul this massive pole out, and the whole street went mental around it. I'd heard they'd actually been banned from displaying it after an especially nasty riot.

"So, insanely tall thing, and trouble follows when it moves." He pointed at me. "That's you, that is."

I'd told him to do one, but he was never going to stop now he had the taste of it. "It's actually even more appropriate than that!" he'd said, and then Mooney had dragged rhyming slang into it, which is when I knew I was doomed. "Undershaft," he said, "goes to Half-and-Half." Which is a drink. Milk and stout, a particular favourite of his nan. "Half-and-Half becomes Half-Laugh. Half-Laugh pairs with Giraffe. And Giraffe, obviously, means tall."

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Then he reminded me of the old market chant, "Laugh and a half, mind the calf," which is what the butchers would yell in Smithfield Market when a slab fell off a hook. He said I had the ability to move a crowd in the same way the drovers cleared a lane.

So, to summarise, in the world of Mooney, Undershaft – the giant maypole - picks up Half-and-Half, picks up Half-Laugh, picks up Giraffe, picks up market noise, and somewhere in there he decided I was to forever become a one-man procession that made normal people run for cover.

Undershaft.

"Yeah, it's me," I said.

"What you calling me for?" It might have just been my paranoia, but I thought there was a more than usual trace of worry in his voice. "You're not on your mobile, are you?"

"Oh, absolutely. Because this is my first day as a real boy."

"Just checking. Because you know, they're always listening."

Wasn't that the truth? "I'm going to need a favour from you, Mooney."

"No, no, no," he said. "'Fraid not, Undershaft. Your name's on about every shit list that's kicking around right now. I could earn enough to redecorate my bathroom just by leaning out of my window and yelling I have you on the phone. I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but you're literally the definition of dead man walking."

This was not exactly 'new' news. I'd been a dead man walking at various intervals for the last few days. But having Mooney say it out loud still didn't exactly settle the worry in my stomach. The glass in the phonebox steamed a little from the humidity of some of the more explicit adverts.

"Look," I said, trying the civil tones. "I'm not asking you to smuggle me into Parliament. I just need a place to lie low for a night. A bed. Maybe your mum's sofa. I don't know what you've heard…"

"I don't need to have heard anything, Undershaft. You could have pissed off the Archbishop for all I care. But Griff has pretty much every triggerman in London either out looking for you or taking notes from the ones who are. There is no way I'm getting involved in this game of hide and shoot-in-the-face."

Mooney wasn't a coward. He was a trader in risk assessment. If he was saying helping me was too hot for him, then I needed to listen. On the other hand…

"Look, I can pay," I said. "I'm not just asking for moral support. I can pay in cash, or—" I rummaged in my inventory. I wasn't exactly sure what the exchange rate for Bayteran artefacts was likely to be around here, but I suspected I'd have something that he would go for.

There was a pause that suggested Mooney was calculating.

"I don't like charging my friends, Undershaft. But, you know, I also don't like being murdered in my sleep.

"You let me crash at yours, and you'll get full naming rights on any children I have. That is non-refundable."

There was a laugh. "You always did have a way with incentives," he said.

I had once, in better matchsticks of time, bribed him with less.

"All right," he said. "One night. No weapons in my flat. No blood in my lounge. You get one room and a duvet with a hole you have to pretend you don't notice. But if anyone comes calling, I'm absolutely selling you out before they get the thumbscrews out."

"Wouldn't expect anything else."

I held the receiver a little further from my ear to take in the surrounding street. The lights were honest and cheap. The queue outside the pub had thinned. Somewhere, a taxi creaked past. I didn't think anyone had eyes on me right now. Although, to be fair, even if they did, I thought I probably had the stats not to be too worried.

I figured the chances of anyone coming at me with a nuke were probably pretty low.

Never zero of course - especially not since London's gangs had imported some serious headbangers – but I was probably not going to need a Geiger counter anytime soon.

"But look," he said, "I don't want paying. At least," he said, dropping his voice, "not like that."

I started to get a bad feeling about that.

"What do you need, Mooney?"

"I've been asked to organise a little pick-up-and-go this morning over in Walthamstow, but I haven't got around to finding a likely lad for it yet. If you can swing by and collect the goods for me, my casa is your casa."

I was already shaking my head, then realised he couldn't see me down the phone line. The box gave its little pips, and I fed the last of the Earth coins in my pocket into the slot. I wondered when I'd started thinking of them as Earth coins.

"Mooney, mate. I'm not looking for work. I just need a place to lay my head for a few hours whilst I figure things out."

"And I have that for you. But first, you need to do me a solid."

"For crying out loud, Mooney! You said it yourself, I've got serious people looking for me!"

"Then it's a good job you're good at being inconspicuous, ain't it? Look, it's a quick meet and greet, pick up the package, then you come straight here. Two nights. Three. Hell, do this for me, and you can stay the week."

Every instinct I had, both new and old, told me this was going to be a disaster. But... what was the worst that could happen?

"Okay. Fine. Give me the details."

Somewhere out there, I thought I heard Aunt M shaking her head.


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