Mission Eight

Mr. Bennet relaxes in his comfort zone selling crap to idiots....

Ah, finally! A challenge tailored to my strengths. Everyone knows I'm the best salesman here. For more than 15 years I've made a living selling paper and kidnapping evolved humans. Selling paper has taught me how to dazzle the masses out of their lifesavings over mundane and inexpensive merchandise. And the kidnapping taught me....well, I don't think those skills will come in handy here. But let's start the sales!

First step....employees! Every good middle-management flunky knows that you need mindless drones to do the work you're too lazy to do. But where could I find a team of no-brainers with the charisma, spunk and general good-looks to do well in sales?

I called my Claire Bear. "I need your cheerleading buddies over here pronto!"

"Oh, my God, Dad! Don't ever say pronto again. That's so 1990."

"Were you alive then?" I asked, "Wait! Forget it. Just get your team down here."

Finally, the girls arrived. I had two help me in the concession stand and the rest I sent out to canvas the area.

Rather than selling lame bobbleheads or pornographic material, I decided to stick to chips, drinks and hot dogs. Everyone needs hot dogs, especially at a sporting event.

The girls and I got to work selling food stuffs. We had several customers, apparently the cheerleaders were doing a good job canvasing and sending them our way. But when compared to the amount of people at Henchman's stand, mine looked like the library at the Jedi Temple. Other than a few kids and some old lady, there weren't many patrons. We had to up our game!

I quickly ran to the nearby Horizon Costume Shop and bought a hot dog costume.

"Hey, you!" I called out to one of the cheerleaders.

"Yeah?"

"I need you to wear this and stand over by the booth."

She looked the suit up and down and stared at me with her jaw open. "Like, no way! I wouldn't be caught dead in that wiener costume."

Darn! My plan was falling apart. I needed someone to wear this costume, and it wasn't going to be me. I was nerdy, but not that nerdy. Where would I find a big enough schlub to don the outfit?

Then it hit me like a lonely professor hits his monkeyboy doll. Godfrey Zebulon! I just needed to persuade him into wearing this outside our stand.

"Hey, Geoffrey," I said.

He took a break from bobbling his bobbleheads to correct me, "My name's Godfrey."

"Listen, Gadfly. You see those young ladies at my stand?"

"Um...." he squinted. "No?"

"Here," I handed him my glasses, "Try these. They're horn-rimmed."

He put them on and looked over at my stand, "Oh, yeah. I see 'em."

I snatched the glasses off his face and placed them back on mine. "They're a bit young for me, and I'm married, so I thought I'd pass the 411 onto you. You know, we four-eyed nerds have to stick together. The one on the right has a thing for men in hot dog costumes. In fact, I heard her telling the other one that she'd love to meet a guy who would hang out in front of our concession stand in a hot dog suit waving his lightsaber to attract costumers."

"Really?" I could see him thinking it over in his mind. I just had to seal the deal.

"And as luck would have it, I just found this hot dog costume lying around. Too bad I don't know anyone with a lightsaber in the vicinity."

"Hmmm...."

"Oh, well. Here, you can have this." I set the costume down on his counter, "Maybe you can sell it." I turned and headed back to my booth. But on the way, I noticed The Professor! That vile paraplegic with his no-good shenanigans! What was he up to now?

It seemed he was removing the cash from Henchman's cash register. Normally, I would have said something, but Henchman wasn't on my team anymore. But I did fear for the safety of my booth. I knew Charles would be plotting to sabotage my efforts next.

I got back to my booth and quickly began working on a mutant-trap. All I had was some duct tape, a self-squeezing ketchup bottle and a mechanism to trigger the self-squeezing ketchup bottle when a mutant is detected nearby. It was clear that I had two options. I could lay the duct tape around the stand so that when he rolled over it, it'd wad up all over his wheels causing him to fall onto the ketchup bottle where I would proceed to beat him with the triggering mechanism. Or I could duct tape the ketchup bottle up so that it would spray him when he got near.

We were running out of time. I quickly set up my trap and got back to fixing hot dogs for the masses. Then, I saw The Professor rolling over. "Quick, Claire!" I hollered. "Go get the camera." Then, I saw Godfrey coming over in the hot dog outfit.

Everything was working perfectly!

This was going to be good....

Wait for it....

I could barely contain my excitement!

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Now!



I know I won this challenge!