Six men sat in a tense, nervous silence, staring at a ringing telephone. Finally, the youngest of the six reached out with a trembling hand and picked it up.
"Hello?" JD listened carefully for a moment before hanging up. "Travis is in the elevator!"
JD leapt over his desk and rushed into Chris's office. "Travis is on his way," he announced.
"I heard you the first time," Chris replied grimly. A personal visit. Travis was more pissed off than he had anticipated. "Send him right in."
JD nodded sharply and bounded out again, like an over-enthusiastic puppy.
Chris sat quietly, waiting for Travis to arrive, trying not to let his nervousness show. His men could see him through the open office door, and any sign of weakness would play havoc with his reputation. Hearing a clink, he looked down at his hands, and was astonished to find himself playing with his keys. He firmly deposited them on the desk and folded his hands in his lap.
The door to the office of Team 7 of the ATF swung open, hitting the wall with a bang. The six men were suddenly extremely interested in the paperwork they had been ignoring for the past few hours, and were working diligently by the time Travis had a foot inside.
"Why, Judge Travis, what a pleasant surprise."
"Cut the crap, Standish, Chris isn't the only one I'm mad at."
Ezra lowered his head and pointed to Chris's office. "Go right in, sir," he said.
Travis entered the office and slammed the door shut, rattling the frame. "Agent Larabee," he said, his voice dangerously soft.
Chris shifted uneasily, refusing to meet the eyes of his superior. "Sir."
"A fine mess you've gotten everyone into this time."
"If I might have a moment to explain -"
"I mean really, of all the things you've done, this takes the cake."
"Sir-"
"Yes, I'd like you to explain. In detail. Tell me exactly how you and your team managed to kill Barney the Purple Dinosaur."
"He's not actually dead, sir, I mean, it wasn't the real Barney..."
"Tell that to the three and a half million kids that were watching on live television when you shot their hero!"
"At least it was off camera," Chris said weakly.
"My direct superior has a three-year-old grandson. He's not happy. The kid's going to need therapy."
"Nobody likes Barney anyway," Chris muttered sulkily, and shuddered. "I hate Barney."
"I'm waiting for that explanation, Larabee."
Chris sighed. "Let's go through to the main office, then. The team can help me out with this."
"Well, early this morning we got an anonymous tip about the whereabouts of the man who jumped bail for the Carson case." Chris glanced at Ezra for confirmation.
"That's correct," said Ezra. "The gentleman in question informed me that our suspect would be at Barney's birthday celebration, which, as you know, was broadcast live earlier this afternoon."
"Oh, believe me, I know," the Judge muttered sourly.
Ezra smiled nervously, then continued. "Apparently our suspect would be at a certain restaurant at a certain time, accompanying his children to the festival. Naturally, we all decided to go along and check it out, so to speak..."
" i just don't understand the need for the costume, is all," buck whined, tugging uncomfortably at the collar of his bunny rabbit costume with the hand that wasn't carrying a tog-bag.
JD gestured at the throngs of people, many of whom were in getups even more ridiculous than Buck's. "We're blending in," he explained. "Besides, Benson won't recognize us this way."
Josiah struggled to scratch his head with one furry paw, but was unsuccessful. "Do I make a good bear?" he asked hopefully. "I'd better. This is torture."
"Shut up," Chris growled, shaking a floppy puppy ear out of his face.
"How am I supposed to hold my gun with this stupid outfit on?" Vin whined. He was dressed as a mouse.
"Shut up," Chris repeated, wondering how JD had managed to talk him into letting the team dress up.
"My dear mother would roll over in her grave if she saw me in this attire," Ezra sighed, adding in response to the glares he received from his teammates, "Figuratively speaking, of course."
"This is the place," Nathan said idly.
They stopped in front of a rather dingy seafood restaurant.
"There he is!" JD pointed excitedly.
"Damn!" Vin shouted. "My gun is inside this stupid outfit!"
The others were all having similar problems. Finally, Buck wrenched off his bunny rabbit head and shouted, "Benson! You're under arrest!"
"Buck!" Chris yelled, as Benson looked up at them, his eyes widening in horror.
"You idiot!" Benson leapt up and high-tailed it out of there, the seven men following as best they could.
Travis gave Buck an annoyed glance. " not the cleverest thing to do, under the circumstances," he observed dryly. "you're lucky he didn't have a gun."
Buck grinned sheepishly. "He did. I guess he just thought we all had ours in hand."
Travis sighed heavily. "Then what?"
JD eagerly picked up the thread. "We lost him in this theatre, so we decided we should probably take off our costumes before we tried to find him again, since they were getting in the way more'n anything else. There were lots of other people there too, in the coolest costumes, so we kicked three of them out of a room so we could get changed in peace."
Ezra gave his badger costume a vicious kick as he adjusted his tie. " i cannot describe how much better i feel," he said, smiling.
"I think you looked a lot better in that thing, Ez."
Ezra eyed Vin distastefully. "That was not kind. That was not kind at all."
Nathan nudged his Donald Duck outfit with his toe. "If you ever make a dumbass suggestion like this again, JD, I'll kill ya."
"You're the one that said we should boost his self-confidence by listening to him, Nate," Buck pointed out.
Nathan pulled a face.
Chris tucked in his shirt, re-holstered his gun, and ran a hand over his hair in a failed attempt to smooth it. "We'll leave the stuff here," he said. "The costume rental store will understand."
"When you show them your gun," Buck added.
Chris grinned dangerously. "Let's go."
They moved rapidly through the theatre, checking changing rooms as they went.
"Sorry," Buck said, smirking as he closed the door on yet another girlish scream.
Ezra pulled open the door nearest to him, stuck his head inside, and held up a hand. "Gentlemen," he said, "We may have a problem."
Chris looked into the room, and groaned at the sight of a man in his underwear, firmly trussed up and gagged. "Where do people find rope in places like this, anyway?" he complained.
"So we untied him and he told us that he was due in the parade, he was the star attraction-"
Travis rubbed a weary hand over his face. "Barney?"
"Barney," JD confirmed with a nod.
Chris shivered. "I hate Barney."
"Anyway," JD continued, "apparently some madman with a gun had come in and tied him up and stolen his Barney outfit."
"This is unreal," murmured Travis.
"So now we were on the lookout for Barney." Josiah picked up the story. "And he wasn't as easy to find as he seemed, 'cause although there was only supposed to be one purple Barney, there were lots of others in all sorts of colours, and some of them were damn close to purple."
"There!" jd pointed for the fourth time in as many minutes, sounding not the least bit less enthusiastic than he had the first time, as they pushed through the throng of people.
"I'd say that's more magenta than purple," Josiah said thoughtfully.
JD sagged. "Right. Where's Ezra?"
Ezra was standing just behind them, staring at something. "There," he said, pointing.
The others turned to follow his finger, and saw two men hustling a definitely purple dinosaur up onto a portable-type stage.
"And now, the star of the day, the birthday boy, Barney!" announced an overly cheerful chap in front of a microphone, clapping wildly. The crowd followed suit, the parents slightly less into it than the children. One of the two men escorting Barney shoved him to the microphone, where he stood uncomfortably, frantically trying to remember what had happened in the one minute he'd managed to watch of the stupid dinosaur show.
"Uh... hey, kids," he said, weakly.
"That's Benson!" Chris shouted over the chorus of "Hey, Barney!" coming from the children. "Come on!"
Team 7 started jogging through the crowd, wantonly pushing people aside and chanting: "ATF, out of the way, ATF, out of the way."
"Um, I'm a man - uh, dinosaur of few words," said the Barney imposter, his voice shaking. He'd never liked crowds. "So, I'd just like to thank everyone for, uh, coming to wish me merry Christmas - I mean, happy birthday..."
Some parents were laughing, others were bored. Most of the children were staring suspiciously.
"How about we sing a song?" he suggested suddenly, as inspiration struck. "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me..."
The children reluctantly started to sing along. "Happy birthday, dear (gag) Barney..."
This gave the ATF team enough time to reach the stage, storming up the stairs just as Barney was singing, "...birthday... to.... meeeeeee.... yikes!" Barney emitted a tiny scream and bolted.
"Hold it!" Chris shouted. "ATF! You're under arrest!"
Many of the kids were giggling gleefully at the men racing across the stage after Barney. The camera crew that had been broadcasting the event struggled to follow them.
"Hold it!" Chris repeated, in unison with Buck, Vin and Nathan. Ezra had long ago decided not to waste his breath shouting when his teammates were there to do it for him, and Josiah was of the opinion that his friends were making quite enough noise as it was, so they just followed along, weapons drawn. Finally reaching a dead end, Benson/Barney fumbled inside the suit for a moment and withdrew a gun.
"Stop right there!" he shrieked, obviously panicking. "Drop your weapon!"
"You drop yours!"
"There are seven of us and one of you! Who do you think is going to drop their gun first?" Chris shouted irritably, thinking about how much he hated Barney.
Benson looked frantically from side to side, vision severely hampered by his huge annoying purple nose. "The hell with it," he said, "Drop 'em or I start shooting!"
Chris rolled his eyes. "You're kidding me."
"And?" travis said impatiently as josiah trailed off.
"Well, he was about to start shooting," Nathan said.
"Duh," JD added.
"So we shot him first."
"Shot him? That's an understatement. Every one of you emptied your clips into him!"
"So, we all hate Barney."
"And then you reloaded and did it again!"
"We really hate Barney. Anyway..." Chris continued.
Vin cautiously crossed over to the still purple form, his teammates covering him, as the camera crew rounded the corner and started filming. Vin knelt and felt around inside the costume until he found the neck, and shook his head.
" dead," he said, getting to his feet, and froze as he saw the camera, which was zooming in on the corpse.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," a previously bored reporter said brightly, stepping in front of the camera, "Are you saying you just killed Barney?"
Vin licked his lips. "Uh..."
Chris dropped his head into his hands. "Travis is gonna kill us."
"So here we are," Chris finished. "You gonna kill us?"
Travis sighed heavily. "Tell you the truth, I'm not that fond of Barney myself."
"Point," Chris muttered.
"Excuse me?" Travis raised his eyebrows.
"I said, that's my point. Nobody is. We did the world a favour. And we didn't actually kill Barney, we killed Benson."
"Well, you may as well have killed Barney."
"It was a good shoot," said Vin, mildly. "Well, except for the reloading part."
Travis considered this, then nodded. "Call it a necessary evil. Just as long as you know, if it had been any other team, you'd be going through hell right now."
The team nodded, batting innocent eyelashes.
"You're just lucky that Chris is seeing my daughter," he added.
Chris blushed as the team laughed and nudged him.
"See you out, Judge?" Chris said pointedly, through gritted teeth.
The Judge inclined his head in acknowledgment, allowing Chris to kick him out - politely, of course - and closed the door behind him, slumping against it in relief.
"Think he bought it?"
"Not a chance." Ezra shrank back from the stares he received from his friends. "What? Okay, fine, he bought it."
JD said, "What's to buy? It was the truth."
"Pretty implausible truth," Buck pointed out, patting JD on the head.
"Whatever. Can we go for ice cream?"
Everyone looked at Chris, who nodded reluctantly.
Everyone trooped out, amid shouts of, "I'm having triple fudge!" and, "I believe I shall have chocolate and coffee," and that sort of thing.
Chris came last, closing the door gently. He paused for a second, shook his head, shuddered. "I hate Barney," he muttered, with what was quite possibly a self-satisfied smile, and followed his friends.
The End
