You find UA inspiration in the strangest places.

I used to know this duke whose thing was rats. He had hundreds of them, maybe a thousand or two. In typical creepy adept fashion, he called them his kids and himself their dad. He’d use them to spy on people and steal things. Had them trained better than you should be able to train a rat: they’d make him food, clean up after him, do his taxes, everything. They had their own bedroom with their own rat city built from what must have been a hundred thousand Legos. I don’t think “Dad” built it. He was too lazy.

So a few months back, this rat guy called me saying his girlfriend had dumped him and he wanted to end it all. (Yeah, I know. She wasn’t bad looking, either. I guess she thought the rats were cute.) I rushed over there, but he was way across town. His brains were already on the wall. It was a shock, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen it coming. He was never a happy guy. All the rats were gone. They even took the Legos.

(Sorry, sorry. I’m rambling again. I’ll get to the point.)

Anyway, so two weeks ago, another friend of mine committed suicide. This guy was one of my last mundane friends. (Other than you, of course.) Owned an upscale restaurant in some gourmet ghetto in the hills. Said some racketeer left a note in his mailbox threatening to ruin him if he didn’t start leaving ten percent of the gross from his restaurant in a paper bag in some alley every month. He called the cops, but they couldn’t find a lead. He held his ground, and on the day when his time was up, he found his walk-in fridge looking like a bomb built by Alfred Hitchcock had gone off. He had traps and poison, but what must have been a thousand rats had avoided it all. He couldn’t find one, but the gnawed-up food was enough to let the health inspector bend him over.

I was almost as clueless as the cops until that twitchy, red-headed kid moved into this house next door. Did you notice how he brought no furniture and way too many boxes marked “LEGOS”? (Yeah, it’s sad. I struck up a conversation with him and asked where he slept, but he just broke eye contact, stuttered and walked away.) So I’ve got home-made napalm, Molotovs, and two suicides to avenge. Gotta do it fast, so as few escape as possible.

No, it’s okay. See, I’ve torn up the grass next to my house to make a firewall. That’s actually why I’m here. Obviously, being their other neighbor, you’ll need a firewall too. You won’t have to do any– Hey, could you keep it down? They might hear you…