Phon Du, Oriental Manservant and Sidekick, was being inscrutable; however, it was a quiet moment down on the Wisdom City waterfront, so he didn’t think anyone would mind.

He felt it was important that he should be inscrutable on a regular basis, since this was the sort of thing that was expected of an Oriental Manservant, along with the ability to punch through solid chunks of timber, as well as running madly across open spaces yelling, “Aiiiiieeeee!”

The problem with all of this, as Phon Du had often privately acknowledged, was that he wasn’t Oriental by birth or even particularly by nature. His name wasn’t even really Phon Du – it was Bernie Smathers – but he’d answered a job ad asking specifically for an Oriental Manservant And Sidekick, and since he’d been the only one who had applied for the position, he’d won it by default.

He’d tried his best since then to learn how to be Oriental, with mixed results. He had, for example, ordered a book from a web site entitled, “Everything You Need To Know About Being Inscrutable,” but when it eventually arrived he’d discovered that all the pages were blank. He’d decided this was probably Zen, since as far as he could tell, when things were Zen you didn’t have to understand them, and he’d gone on to use the book as a sort of private journal.

In those pages he’d catalogued his attempts to become at least a little bit more Oriental. A whole section of the book, for example, had been dedicated to his martial arts lessons, which pretty much turned out to be a growing record of the number and nature of the injuries he’d sustained at Mister Miyaaarghi’s Dojo Of Learning How To Kill People While Doing Oddjobs Around My House.

In particular, there had been the infamous Breaking Logs With Your Bare Hands Because I Need More Firewood lesson, which had simply resulted in Phon Du breaking all his knuckles instead.

There had been much snickering about this in the Dojo, until Phon Du had returned the next day, hands heavily bandaged, carrying a small hatchett, a chainsaw and dragging an industrial woodchipper. What had followed was a session of woodchopping that had been so hideous that Phon Du had been given his Black Belt that very afternoon and pushed out of the grounds of Mister Miyaaarghi’s Dojo with a polite but firm explanation that there was nothing more that he could be taught, basically because everyone was now terrified of him [1].

Consequently, while he knew The Three Basic Forms Of Fixing The Guttering, and The Kneeling Style Of Repairing That Bloody Fence, not to mention The Seven Infamous Methods For Building A Small Pergola In The Backyard And Have It Done By This Afternoon If You Know What’s Good For You, he had no clue how to use any of this allegedly esoteric learning in an actual fight.

And it was as he sat crosslegged, perched on a small packing crate, pondering the relative merits of Terrified Student Raking The Leaves In A Category Four Hurricane versus Polish That Car Again By Grod I Can Still See Smudges On It that he felt a sharp blow to the back of his head. Had he not lost consciousness instantaneously, he might have been pleased to know that it had been delivered by a Blokeworthy Number 13 Shifting Spanner.

***

Max Damage, superhero, hurried across the Wisdom City docklands.

He had received a call from his Oriental Manservant to say that something nefarious was possibly (or possibly not) happening down at the waterfront, and since the waterfront was the kind of place where 48 nefarious things could take place between 3pm and 3:15pm on a quiet Sunday afternoon, he was reasonably certain his Manservant was onto something. Hell, he thought to himself as he jogged, even if Phon Du had got himself over-excited by being inscrutable again, he’d actually had to hurry past 6 nefarious things just in the time since he’d parked his car.

***

“What should we do with him?” Asked Clutch Badway.

“Forget about him,” Said Fondle Badway, eldest of the Badway Brothers. “He’s tied up and unconscious, he isn’t going to be bothering anyone.”

“Yeah,” said Clutch with some concern, “but he’s, like, Oriental, isn’t he? They’ve got devious methods, they do. Plus, if he ever gets free he’ll probably get all inscrutable at us. All that, ‘What is the hand of one sound while someone else is clapping,’ stuff. Gives me a right thumping headache.”

“Look,” snapped Fondle, “he’s not bloody Oriental, I already told you that. He’s got lines drawn in the corners of his eyes, see? So he’s about as bloody Oriental as wossname was in that show where he had to go around doing things.”

“David Carridine,” said Sheldon ‘Really, Really’ Badway, youngest of the brothers, who had remained silent up to that point.

“Yeah, him,” said Fondle. “So why don’t you just shut the hell up so we can-“

“And the show was called ‘Kung Fu’,” Sheldon added helpfully. “It was set in the Old West.”

“Right,” said Fondle, who had a feeling the conversation was getting away from him. “Like I was say-“

“Did you know that the role of Kwai Chang Caine was originally going to go to Bruce Lee, but the producers decided that audiences weren’t ready for a real Oriental actor, but that for some reason a really fake Oriental actor was fine.”

“Really?” interjected Drool Badway, the fourth of the brothers. “Wow, he’d have been so kickass in that show!” And then he and Clutch and Sheldon had spent several minutes waving their hands in the air and yelling, “Waaaah?!” and “Haiyah!” and “Grod, Sheldon, that really hurt! Show me how you did it?” and “You did it again! I only wanted you to show me how you did it! Come here you little bastYAAAARGH!”

Fondle stared up at the ceiling of the warehouse and counted to 10. Then he did some long division, and rounded out the exercise by calculating Pi to 112 significant digits.

“Right!” he said brightly, once the seething red tide of hostility that often washed over him while dealing with his brothers [2] had finally receded. “That’s excellent! Do we all think we know enough about the show with the guy?! Great! Now, how about we do some actual fucking work?! Anyway,” he added with scorn, “Jean-Claude Van Damme could take Bruce Lee with one arm tied behind his back.”

***

Max Damage was one with the night.

This had nothing to do with his ability to move stealthily, since he carried so much weaponry with him wherever he went that he sounded very much like an entire orchestral brass section being pushed down a steep crevasse followed by a small avalanche of rocks. It did, however, have a lot to do with the fact that his superhero costume had been made of an experimental fibre that absorbed every bit of stray light that was unfortunate enough to shine in his vicinity.

This made him effectively invisible during dark nights such as that particular night, but had the opposite effect at any other time of the day. Essentially, it was hard to miss a moving patch of blacky-black-blackness moving at a scurry across a well-lit space of ground. Particularly one that jangled and clanked and tinkled with every step.

Still, Damage had a way of approaching a heavily armed position with so much noise and obviousness that most guards were still going, “Wow, he’s like… I mean, who does he think he’s kidding? Look, he dropped one of his bandoliers and he’s… he’s really going back to get it. See? He’s standing right out there in the open, putting it back on. You could shoot him from here. Seriously, that’s just so-“, so that by the time he reached them he had plenty of time to basically blow them off the face of the earth with his personal arsenal of weapons of localised destruction.

***

Phon Du gradually regained consciousness.

He was vaguely aware that a group of men were nearby, and that they were having a heated argument about who would win a fair fight between Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Judge Judy.

Currently it appeared that the Judge Judy contingent was carrying the debate, but a spirited counter-attempt was being made by the Jean-Claude camp, with the observation that he would just do one those horrible, horrible splits of his whenever Judge Judy came in close with her gavel, and that Jean-Claude would show her who was really out of order.

“Don’t be daft,” said another voice. “Jackie Chan would just…,” there was the scuffling sound of movement, “and then he’d…,” more scuffling, “and then he’d grab this chair, right, and he’d… like this… and then he’d do this! You telling me Jean-Claude’s got an answer for that?! Hah!”

The argument descended into indistinguishable bickering, leaving Phon Du to begin working at the ropes that were binding him to the packing crate.

It’s time, he thought to himself, to get inscrutable. And then he thought, What is the sound of one hand getting free of some ropes? And then he thought, It is probably the sound of one man whimpering softly as he loses most of the skin on his fucking wrists…

***

Max Damage crept closer to the warehouse, with only a little bit of tinkling. He was going to need the element of surprise when he launched himself through the doors, and he briefly considered removing some of his more noisy weapons to assist in this endeavour.

Then he discarded this notion, particularly since he realised it would probably take him two hours just to divest himself of the 3 different grappling hooks that were attached to his costume, let alone any of the rocket launchers, grenades, pump-action shotguns and / or ritual disembowelling spoons.

He paused. There were voices coming from within, and it appeared that they were arguing about something.

Good, he thought to himself with a sneer, so much the better to take you by surprise! Aha ahahahahah!

And then he swore softly under his breath, because he was certain he’d accidentally said that last bit out loud.

***

It had been a quiet night on the docks for the lads who worked in Warehouse 9C. Technically they were supposed to be busy shifting crates and shipping containers back and forth, but the boss was never there for the night shift, so who was to know if the lads took a break every now and then to indulge in the favourite past-time of every burly, masculine dock worker.

“Are you sure,” Legless Dave said with a suspicious tone, “that you don’t have a 9? I think you do have a fucking 9!”

“I do not have a fucking 9,” said Spiteful Warren, “or any other type of 9, for that matter. This is why, when you asked me if I had a fucking 9, I said, and I quote, ‘You can go fucking fish’.” [3]

“Listen, Spiteful,” said Legless, “if I come over there and find out that you’ve got a fucking 9, I am going to beat you into such a bloody pulp such as what your wife and kiddies will be able to keep your remains in a small mayonnaise jar. Without, I might add, taking out much mayonnaise first.”

“You are welcome,” said Spiteful, “to come over here and check whether or not I have a fucking 9, Legless, and while you are at it how about you bring some buddies, for the purposes of dragging your mutilated body to a funeral home wherein they will be forced to employ many and subtle funereal arts simply to identify your corpse.”

“I think I will come over there, Spiteful, to check whether or not you have a fucking 9, and then what I will do with your genitals afterwards, will be written about in medical journals with accompanying high definition photos to establish the true horror-“, but he didn’t get to finish this thought as one of the other players held up a hand for silence.

“Shhhh!” said Hearing Things Trevor. “Did any of you hear that? It sounded like someone said, ‘Aha ahahaha!’, and there was also some tinkling.”

Everyone else at the table sighed.

“There is a reason why we call you Hearing Things Trevor,” said Legless Dave, “and this is because you are always, not to put too fine a point on it, hearing things. Now, how about you shut up while I sort out if I need to go over there and tear Spiteful Warren’s head off his still living body for hiding a fucking 9 on me.”

“I am rampant with expectation at the prospect of you coming over here, Legless,” said Spiteful Warren, “for I am looking forward to the opportunity to push your face into an industrial shredder, after which I plan to-“ but he also didn’t get a chance to finish this thought, because it was at that moment that the warehouse erupted in hellfire.

Amidst all the noise and screaming and the subtle sounds of four dock workers simultaneously soiling themselves, there was also the sound of someone yelling, “Aha ahahahaha!” accompanied by a lot of tinkling.

***

Phon Du had freed himself from the ropes.

I wish the Boss was here, he thought to himself as he hid behind the packing crate, he’d know what to do. Then he gave this observation some careful scrutiny, and decided that what the Boss would probably do was blow everything up, and that maybe it was best all round if he wasn’t there, after all.

He slipped his trusty Number 13 Spanner out of his flowing robes. It appeared that the four villains were still engaged in their squabble, with one having sunk into a splits that had obviously sprained his groin, another hovering on the periphery with a small hammer and yelling, “You’re out of order!”, a third hopping around madly while frothing, “I’m going to enter the dragon! So help me Grod, I’m going to enter the dragon!”, while the fourth was doing complicated and possibly illegal things to a chair.

Okay, thought Phon Du with a little bemusement, maybe this is going to be easier than I thought.

He hefted his spanner aloft and then, because he was trying to be the best Oriental Manservant he could be, he issued the obligatory blood-curdling, “Aiiiiieeeee!” before rushing across the open space of the warehouse.

***

“Look,” called out Max Damage as he stood in the middle of the blazing warehouse, “I did say I was awfully sorry!”

“Thank you,”  Legless Dave yelled back from where the four workers had managed to hole themselves up in the warehouse’s pay office. “We accept your apology and we would like it very much if you left!”

“I’m sure you can clean up the place!” Yelled Damage. “I’d be happy to come back later and help, if you like! It’ll be as good as new!” He added doubtfully, looking around at the bullet-ridden carnage.

“No, that’s okay!” Came Legless Dave’s voice. “We’re happy to do it ourselves!” There was the sound of several voices having a hushed but passionate conversation. “And we’d also like it if you promised to not ever come back, ever!”

Damage scuffed a mildly embarrassed foot back and forth. “Well…! I’d have to come back if you were doing anything illegal! It’s a sort of professional thing!”

“What the hell would you do if we were?!” Yelled back Legless Dave. “Nuke the entire fucking city?!”

There was a short pause, and then, “Actually, there is one thing you could do! Can you check to see if there’s a 9 in the hand of cards closest to the door?!”

Then another voice yelled, “Are you still going on about that fucking 9?! Sweet Merciless Grod, Legless, I swear I’ll push you out to deal with him if you don’t fucking drop it!”

However, Max Damage was no longer there to help with that particular request. He had heard a familiar “Aiiiiieeeee!” from a neighbouring warehouse and had legged it into the night, tinkling and clanking as he went.

***

There was nothing left for Damage to blow up when he eventually arrived at the right warehouse, by way of levelling two other warehouses along the way, just to be sure.

There was his Oriental Manservant, squatting on the concrete floor in the middle of a circle of tightly bound Badway Brothers.

Every now and then he deftly clubbed one or another of them with his spanner, just to maintain a sense of status quo.

“What happened here?” Damage demanded, finding it hard to hide his disappointment at having missed the real action. He was holding what appeared to be a gently smoking flamethrower, which was also gently setting fire to the warehouse ceiling.

“Well,” said Phon Du, “first I employed The Three Hidden Forms Of Operating The Weed Wacker, and then I went straight into You Don’t Get To Use The Ride-on Mower Again Until You Learn How To Make Straight Lines. And then,” he added, because he was essentially an honest Oriental Manservant, “I hit them with my spanner.”

“Right,” said Damage decisively, but that was as far as he got before several tons of burning ceiling beams collapsed on top of him.

Phon Du shook his head and sighed, and then got busy dragging his Boss out from under the burning beams and into the cold night air. After a few minutes he returned to perform a similar operation on the unconscious Badway Brothers.

***

Later, once he had got everyone out of the warehouse, Phon Du had squatted next to his gently smouldering Boss and had looked out over the waterfront.

Most of the warehouses were ablaze, and the sound of sirens were beginning to fill the night air. [4]

In the foreground a fistfight had broken out amongst a group of dock workers, and occasionally the sounds of one or the other of them yelling about a fish had wafted over to him above the sirens.

You know what? He had thought wisely to himself. Something very fucking Zen must have happened here tonight.

At that moment Max Damage began to gurgle as he surfaced closer to consciousness, and Phon Du reached over and very tenderly thumped him in the head with his spanner. “Yaargh,” said Damage, and sank bank down into the depths of unconsciousness.

Phon Du smiled an inscrutable smile, and looked out over the flames. He had earned a little break, and, he had thought, Wisdom City always looked its prettiest when it was burning down at night.