“Another day, another helpful set of investors.” Victor Chalmers smiled to himself as he walked through the park, having just finished lunch, and was ready to get back to work. The forty-three year old man had recently moved to Willowbrook to promote his “offshore investments” to a new audience, under a new alias, after the investors in California had started looking at the numbers in his business a little too closely. The outcome in this town was looking much better; it hadn’t even been two months, and Victor had already made over two hundred grand. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought nobody in town had ever heard of a Ponzi scheme!
As he reached the park’s end, Victor heard a set of speakers playing a selection of children’s songs. Looking down the side of the road, he saw an ice cream truck, decorated with pictures of numerous cartoon animals eating ice cream. Victor had a bit of a sweet tooth, and he definitely had the money to spare, so he saw no harm in indulging himself in dessert.
A cheerful young man smiled at Victor from the other side of the window. “Hello there sir! What can I get you today?”
“I’ll take a Strawberry cone.”
“Sure thing!” The young man reached into the freezer, and placed a scoop of pink ice cream (Wilber thought for sure he saw a black outline around the ice cream, but shook his head. Must have been a trick of the light) onto a waffle cone, then handed it to Victor, who gave the young man a five dollar bill in return.
“Keep the change.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Victor took a bite off the scoop as he continued to his meeting with his next set of investors, not noticing his teeth sharpening as he did so, two poking out even when he closed his lips. He gave it a lick afterward, his tongue seeming to stretch long enough to wrap around the cone, before somehow slipping back into his mouth again. With the sound of a slide whistle, Victor’s mouth suddenly stretched out into a thin muzzle as he took his next bite, while the top half of his face grew orange fur, and his cheeks and chin gained white fur (though the bright cartoony look of it made it look almost painted on). A black outline appeared around his head, while his hair seemed to fade away into the orange mass.
As Victor’s ears stretched out into wide triangles, an idle thought crossed his mind. Sure, his current schemes were financially rewarding, but something about them just didn’t feel satisfying to him. His neck became a little longer and thinner, turning white in front and orange in the back. As that coloration spread down his torso, his black suit undid itself, weaving itself into a cape behind him, while his shirt and tie simply faded out of existence, his pants following soon after (not there was anything to expose on his new, toonish figure).
As the orange color spread down his thinning arms, a pair of white gloves seemed to appear from nothing and wrap around each hand, bearing the same black outlines the rest of his body had. His legs became thinner as well, as the orange color covered his thighs. In place of orange, black fur covered Victor’s legs from the knees down, while his shoes vanished as his feet stretched, and his toes curled into paws. A puffy orange tail, with a white tip wiggled it's way out of his back, brushing against his cape.
Lastly, a black top hat formed about the cartoon fox’s head, and a curling black mustache grew from the sides of his muzzle. Victor continued walking along the sidewalk toward his meeting, finishing off his cone without giving any indication that he had realized anything had changed. Inside his head, his memories and attitude were shifting and re-writing themselves. He was now, and always had been Victor Vulpes. His past life’s pathetic Ponzi schemes would have been laughable to the newly formed criminal mastermind! Robbing Peter to pay Paul was so blase compared to the truly EVIL schemes his brilliant mind could concoct; why he could…
Victor stopped for a moment as he passed a woman with a stroller. He couldn’t help but notice that the baby in the stroller appeared to have a lollipop in its mouth. The perfect opportunity for a display of wickedness had come! Striking quickly when the mother had turned her head, Victor yanked the candy from the child’s mouth, and twirled his mustache with a grin. The baby, naturally surprised and confused as to why her tasty treat had been taken, began to cry.
“Yes, my dear, this day will live on in your young mind as the day Victor Vulpes ruined-”
WHAP!
Victor’s head was literally spinning as the mother’s purse slapped him clean across the snout. When it finally ceased its twirling, the fox’s bruises were visible under his fur, a bandage had appeared on his nose, a couple of his teeth appeared chipped, and a quartet of birds were encircling his top hat. The mother took the lollipop back, placed it back in her baby’s mouth, and marched off in a huff.
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“You sure this Victor guy’s gonna show up?” A blonde haired young man asked the black-haired man sitting next to him in the coffee shop.
“I don’t know, maybe he got stuck in traffic?”
With a dramatic “whoosh,” the door to the coffee shop opened, and in stepped Victor Vupes, the bruises, bandage, birdies, and chipped teeth from minutes before nowhere to be seen. “Ah, hello, my promising young investors!” The fox took a seat at the end of the table. “I told you all that I would be offering you a deal on some offshore investments, but that was merely a ruse! No, what I wish to propose to you today is a FAR more lucrative endeavor!”
“Um… Okay…” the black haired main said. “Go on?”
“You must all surely know that this town’s beloved mayor has a beautiful daughter, yes?”
“I honestly haven’t been keeping up with local politics,” the blonde man said. “I couldn’t even tell you the mayor’s name. But what does-”
“Well, he does! And I have a brilliant scheme to capture her for ourselves!” The fox twirled his mustache, then pointed to a whiteboard that had not been in the coffee shop beforehand.
“You see, one of us will disguise ourselves as a perfume salesman!” Victor drew a stick figure on the whiteboard, then drew a suit over it. “When she comes to look at our wares, then we will spring our trap!” He drew a stick figure in a dress looking at the previous stick figure with interest, then drew a cage above both of them held by a string, followed by a drawing of the cage falling, then capturing both stick figures. “And once we have her, we sneak into the train yard on the other side of town!” He drew a picture of a stick figure with a top hat and fox ears driving a car with the cage from the previous pictures bulging out of the trunk. “And once we’re there, we tie her to the tracks, and let fate take its course!” He drew a picture of the cage being tied to railroad tracks, with both stick figures still inside.
The two men at the table stared in silence for a moment before the blonde one spoke up. “Um… I have several questions. One: isn’t every step of that plan illegal? Two: did you mean to imply that our perfume guy would get tied to the tracks too? And three: How would this result in literally any sort of profit?”
“Those are all very good questions,” Victor said, reaching into his cape, and pulling out a remote with a single large, red button on it. “I have a question for you. What do you think will happen when I press this button?”
“Well, I-” the blonde man was suddenly interrupted by his chair falling out from under him as a trap door opened below him, sending him plunging into a dark hole with a whistling noise, followed by a loud crash. “I’m okay!” He could be faintly heard to say.
Victor turned to the black haired man. “Well, does my offer interest you?”
“Not really.”
Victor sighed. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.” He pressed the button again… Only for a a trap door to open up under his own two paws. He remained in the air for a moment before glancing down, and promptly plummeting into the hole, the sound of whistling, followed by shattered glass, and a cat yelping, could be heard above. “Blasted Acme products!”