As the light of dawn peeked across the arid Australian horizon, Police Chief Bastéon Warmback marched up and down the police parking lot inspecting his officers at parade rest. With his signature raven dagger letter opener in his hand, he poked and prodded at unbuttoned uniforms, zippers, loose straps, and flicked the messed strings of their frilly shoulder epaulets. “An officer needs to be presentable. Our uniform represents law and order and is at least twice as powerful as the guns we carry.”
Chief Warmback never liked guns, they were dishonorable things that represented a last resort when all else failed in the enforcement of the law. For a good officer, the respect and authority granted by their station and displayed by their uniforms should be more than enough to bring lawbreakers to heel. This was why he had installed 3 safety devices on each of their service weapons. First, a keyed lock on the safety, second a fingerprint scanner on the trigger, and finally a breathalyzer at the end of each barrel to prevent trigger happy recruits from shooting up the town. Many officers complained that all the safety features put their lives in danger. The only upside was that the long breathalyzers bolted to the ends of their guns looked very intimidating and cool, like silencers from the movies.
It was midmorning and the sun steadily rose along with the temperature before the Chief finally gave up trying to tidy up his officer’s uniforms. He could see it was a losing battle as starched collars became floppy from their sweat. A few of them were already starting to tilt back and forth standing at parade rest from the heat.
Without giving them a water break, Bastion ordered, “Atten hut! Forward march to the junkyard.”
The Chief checked his watch, the police arrived a fashionable 2 hours late, on par with their regular response time to crimes. More worrying was that he could see that a good quarter of his officers were being carried by their mates, everyone was suffering from heat exhaustion from the now midday sun.
The other parties were already loitering at the entrance to the dungeon with a few adventurers waving flags over their heads.
Bastion walked up to the Adventures’ guild master, “What the devil are your people doing Edwin?”
“Those are LFG flags, short for Looking for Group. A sacred guild ritual where we stand outside of dungeons for hours waiting for tanks or healers who are in short supply and almost never show up. But to be fair, we also blame them when anything bad happens.”
Chief Bastion raised a skeptical eyebrow in disbelief but before he could question Guildmaster Edwin further, they were interrupted by a lanky pale man.
“Greetings and well met, I am Kale Paleman, leader of the Vegans of Australia Group, VAG for short. Please allow me to introduce my entourage. A troop of equally pale and malnourished looking men and women waved from behind Kale.
“To my left is Tofu Soyboy on the hand drums, Broccoli Obama on base, and Carrot Top on the triangle. Together we form Nards Skywad, the greatest and best vegan warrior high fiber band ever. In addition to fighting monsters, we also do weddings, funerals, and bat mitzvahs.” Kale hands out business cards.
“To my right is my second in command, Consensual Farmer and his Animal Farm Party. Standing on his shoulder is Bu’Cocky Bob, a rooster who has mastered and fused the ancient Asian martial arts of bushido with cock fighting. He likes to be called Big B by the way. Clucking at their feet is Hen’Tai, master of the banned Peking style of Falun Gong.
Before Kale could finish introducing the rest of the animals, he was rudely interrupted in turn by the laughter of the crowd of police and adventurers that had gathered to gawk at the fowl flock.
An elderly drunk adventurer stumbles forward and points a wine bottle at Big B. “You smoking deep fried dick if you think I give a chicken fried fuck about partying with a cock.”
Edwin grabs the geriatric alcoholic by the shoulder and pulls him back into the crowd, “WinoZ, I will dock your pay if another word comes out of your mouth.”
Bob crows in challenge and hops down flaring his wings and feathers in anger at the disrespect shown. But before he could attack, Consensual Farmer strokes his cock to soothe his pet’s anger. He bends down and whispers into his rooster's wattles, “Patience my pet, we’ll show them, we’ll show them all. Soon my pet, soon.”
