Quote:"It is an emergency and I have come for my sons a few days early. Would you be so kind as to give them their graduation certificates and expiration of term-served papers."
"Go to hell. No exceptions. Get out of here," he suggested.
I smiled at the unswerving gun and decided that explanation would be more fruitful than violence.
"This is a bit of an emergency. My wife, the boys' mother, was arrested this morning and taken away."
"It was due to happen. You lead undisciplined lives. Now get out."
"Listen, you dough-faced, moron-brained, military dinosaur, I came here for neither your sympathy nor malice. If this was an ordinary arrest the arrestees would have been unconscious soon after opening the door. Detectives, cops, military police, customs agents, none of those could stand before the wrath of my sweet Angelina."
"Well?" he said, puzzled, but gun barrel still ready.
"She went along quietly in order to give me time. Time that I will need. Because I checked the license plate numbers and these thugs were agents for..." I took a deep breath, agents for Interstellar Internal and External Revenue."
"The income tax men," be breathed and his eyes glowed redly. The gun vanished. "James diGriz, Bolivar diGriz, step forward. Accept these graduation certificates as token of your reluctant completion of all courses and of time served here. You are now alumni of Dorsky Military Boarding School and Penitentiary and I hope you will, like the other graduates, remember us with a little curse before retiring each night. I would shake your hands except my bones are getting brittle and I am laying off the hand-to-hand combat. Go forth with your father and join him in the battle against evil and strike a blow for me as well."
The Stainless Steel Wants You
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.