The Life Of Normal-Taro

"Ah, wait. Hold my sunglasses, will ya?" John handed the glasses to Lonappan before he took his smartphone. "Okay, look. I'm gonna call my superiors back in MIB headquarters and report that there aren't any calamity-levels here." He replied, still staring towards Taro.

"Really?" Everyone was overly excited once they heard it.

"Hey, hey! Don't get too excited. I just said I will give my report based on what I saw. That means I have to report everything that I saw. Hence, the felony will automatically be reported as well." John basically crushed the atmosphere.

"What do you think is gonna happen once you report it to them?" Kunjan was the one who asked. Seemed like the question was in everyone's mind as well. They looked concerned—they looked as if they knew what was gonna happen.

"Ah, for God's sake! This is why I don't like cheesy, emotional moments! I can clearly see that you guys care a lot about each other. Seems like you care about the aliens too, alongside the alien scum." John was about to continue his talk when Taro interrupted him.

"I am not alien scum!" It looked like he took a particular offense against that terminology.

John sighed. "Sure, you aren't."

"Then don't call me that!" He pouted.

"Nah, if you take offense to that, I'm just gonna continue calling you that! And you did hit a civilian. So, you're alien scum!" John replied.

"Fine, do whatever you want." Taro finally conceited.

Since that was done, John finally came back to the topic of discussion. "Anyway, what was I talking about? Yes, I can see how you guys care about each other. I'm not stupid, you know? I knew you wanted me to get delayed and that's why you asked me to use the train. However, it worked in my favor since an abnormal amount of traffic was seen today in Thrissur-Trivandrum path or so my smartphone says. Anyhow, I'll try to do the best that I could do." He assured.

"So, what would that be?" Lonappan asked.

"Well, in Taro's case, he will have to head to the detention zone anyway. For your junior over there, he will be demoted to a meager desk job for negligence of duty. For the same offense, you might be relieved of your position though. And your boss will be on probation for a certain amount of months or a straight up suspension or dismissal based on his hand on this event. And for the aliens, the security will be tightened and they'll have to relieve their freedom for quite some time. We'll provide them the things required, of course!" John explained.

"Ha, this will be perfectly fine by me!" Lonappan laughed before looking around his peers who looked sad. "However, I don't think they'd be happy with this decision at all!" He replied.

"Well, there's nothing I could do but to provide moral support now. I hope you guys will stay strong even while all this stuff happens." John offered words of consolation even though he meant none of them anyway.

"Nothing you could do, huh? I guess I'll have to do it by myself!" Lonappan mumbled as he reached out to his pockets.

"What are you!" Before John could finish his sentence, Lonappan took out the thing from his pocket. It was a second neuralyzer. The MIB: Sneehatheeram certified one! Without wasting a moment, he flashed it on John. Thankfully, the ones required to wear the sunglasses in the pack were wearing one and since John stood opposite the crowd in the arena, Lonappan didn't have to worry about them as well. It was a flash of sublime timing.

Lonappan was relieved once he saw that John was in a trance just like the ones in the crowd. "Whew. Let's begin then!"

"When did you?" The squad was surprised. They didn't expect Ponnappan to foresee this far ahead and give Lonappan a neuralyzer.

"Silence! Let me begin! Look, you might be wondering why we're here. Well, we were searching for an alien terrorist who had been destroying places for weeks now under Ponnappan's orders. And you asked us to let you in on that because you didn't want to babysit the aliens. Since you didn't want to, we had to bring the aliens as well. Anyway, as you can see the terrorist attacked this place, however they slipped away from us. Ah, about Taro being a possible calamity threat, we haven't seen much from Taro anyway, so it's difficult to judge anyway." Lonappan sighed after he completed.

Just as he finished up the lore, Taro jumped in. "By the way, I'm no alien scum. Remember that! Instead, you like me! You really like me!" He added in.

Lonappan looked at Taro in shock. "What the hell did you do right now?" He asked.

"Well, he seemed like he hated me a bit. I didn't want him to hate me anymore." Taro replied.

"Oh, man… That was stupid! Look, let me explain how this procedure works. Neuralyzer induces a state of trance in a person. In this state of trance, one could replace an event in someone's mind with something else. However, the catch is that you have to tell it in a lore form." Lonappan explained.

"You didn't explain it in a lore back then with the policeman, did you?" Thankappan asked, reminding him of the drug scandal. For him, it was a practical session on how to use the neuralyzer, hence he was taking notes.

"Ah, that time! I woke him from the trance, remember? That's a different technique. It's called forceful awakening. In that state, the one in trance's mind will be in a state of confusion. If we are to make use of this confusion, we can carve up a story as a conversation as a lore." Lonappan answered.

"Then, what did Taro do wrong?" Thankappan asked.

"Well, in both the cases I explained before, the events unfold as a story. The first thing Taro did wrong was that he ordered rather than conjuring up a story. We never order because humans aren't machines. They don't react to orders. They react according to the events they remember. Secondly, we never tamper with one's emotions. Even if we are to order someone, we'll always order them about the event. However, Taro placed a direct order to replace one of John's emotions with something else. Emotions are unstable unlike memories of an event. So, tampering them might be detrimental." Lonappan explained.

Thankappan was still taking careful notes of what he said. "Hmm, I see. I get what you mean by that. However, why didn't you specify that Taro isn't a calamity-level threat?" He asked.

"Well, that's for averting the suspicions of his higher ups." Lonappan replied.

"What?"

"Look. If we just said that he isn't a calamity-level without any valid proof, his higher ups would definitely be suspicious when he says that to them with conviction. And they might investigate further and might find out how his memories are tampered and we'll be fucked. Rather than that, giving him a neutral stance would be much better—since that would let his mind think that Taro has no involvement with the incident right here since he doesn't remember seeing him use his powers. So, naturally he'd say that he doesn't have enough proof yet and he needs more time. Then, we just have to survive his snooping around and no one will doubt us." Lonappan explained.

"Hmm, smart." Thankappan commented. They were a bit further away from John so that he doesn't hear this conversation in his trance and somehow ends up memorizing them. However, suddenly Gibli walked away from the pack towards him.

"Hey! You're cool about aliens working in construction sites and stuff—well, aliens working outdoors in general. You don't think that it's a big deal that should be reported to the higher ups." Gibli ordered. Hearing this, Lonappan was shocked for a second time that day as he pulled Gibli aside.

"Didn't you hear anything I just said? Don't order him stuff! Even if he's an MIB agent, I don't think his mental strength is enough to carry out such orders. It might get imbalanced now unless this guy's mental power is superior—which means we're fucked because if he has that sort of mental power, he might remember the actual events sooner or later." Lonappan blabbered.

"Well, since he might be snooping around for quite some time, wouldn't it be weird if he saw us going to work? Since, MIB doesn't the aliens to work outdoors most of the times—well, except for our sector, if I had to say. So, if I place that in his mind, wouldn't he be chill about it and not report the senior officials about it?" Gibli asked.

Lonappan sighed. He understood the intention behind what Gibli did, however he wasn't very fond of the pattern he used. "Well, let's see if he receives the order or not. I certainly hope he doesn't though!" He replied. "Ha, anyway, get your acts together. I'm gonna wake him up from the trance."

"Okay. We're ready!" Everyone nodded.

Lonappan took a deep breath and then vigorously shook John. "Hey, John! What's your opinion on that?"

John was confused once he regained his composure and saw Lonappan rigorously shaking him. "Huh? What are you doing? What happened?" He asked.

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