The Life Of Normal-Taro

"Well, you don't have to worry about the schedule since we've dealt with Francis. So… we're pretty free, you know? So, what's the plan? Where are we going?" Gibli asked.

"You see, WE are not going, I am going and I'll take Thankappan and Taro alongside me." Lonappan replied.

"Dude, why? Take us too!" Gibli cried.

Lonappan sighed. "Look, even if you're not coming with us, you have a pretty important job to do. So, there's that." He spoke.

"Hmm. So, what would that be?" Gibli asked.

"You and plankton have the task of distracting John till we come back. That guy's a top notch agent. So, if you fuck that up, he'll follow us for sure. We don't want that to happen now, do we?" He asked.

"Don't worry. We'll take care of that." Kunjan assured.

"However! We do have the right to know where you guys are heading to." Gibli replied.

"Fine. We're heading to Kunnamkulam." Lonappan answered.

"Oh, I see. Good choice." Gibli gave out a thumbs up.

"Well, it makes sense now! I've got to agree with the Arkian here." Kunjan nodded his head in approval as well.

As the rest of them nodded their heads silently, one confused person scratched his head in the midst. "Okay, is there something that I don't know about? Because the way you guys are nodding is just killing me!" Taro looked around and spoke.

"Fu~fu, you'll get it when you get there!" Gibli chuckled, which agitated Taro further. As he was about to pounce on the Arkian and grab his neck, John and Thankappan made their appearance.

"So, what's going on here?" John asked. Taro quickly took his hand away from Gibli's neck since he had no idea about which action would accidentally trigger his memory.

"Ah, John! Look, we gotta get to Snehatheeram base quickly. The commander is calling for Taro, so we gotta escort him there." Lonappan quickly grabbed John, turned to the other side and talked.

"Well, that's fine. Let's go!" John was already moving towards the door, when Lonappan stopped him.

"You see, when I said we, I meant myself and Thankappan. You gotta stay back and keep a check on these aliens." Lonappan replied.

Upon hearing this, John was slightly disappointed. However, being the agent that he is, he recovered from that phase pretty quickly. "I understand. I'll keep a check on them. Don't worry." John assured him.

"Cool. So, shall we go?" Lonappan looked towards Taro and Thankappan and asked.

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About half an hour later, the trio stepped out of the bus and reached Kunnamkulam bus stop. Taro looked around the place to check what's so special about this place. However, he couldn't find anything remotely unique about Kunnamkulam from Mundur, so he was confused. "Guys? I don't get it. What's so special about this place?" Taro decided to ask Lonappan about this.

"I believe you have doubts right now. Like, it doesn't make sense now, does it? So, let me discuss a fun fact about this place. There's a saying about Kunnamkulam that every Malayali believes. It says that Kunnamkulam has the counterfeit of literally everything in this world." Lonappan replied.

"For real?" Taro asked.

"Meh, not really though. I believe that this rumor came around when someone in Kunnamkulam started counterfeiting currency. Then someone else made fake toothpastes and soaps and stuff. They were lone incidents with no correlation. However, since two counterfeiting cases happened around the same place, people started joking about how Kunnamkulam has the counterfeit of literally everything in this world." Lonappan explained.

Taro sighed. "So, we came here due to a rumor that arose from a literal joke. Like, really dude? Aren't we wasting our time here?" He asked.

Thankappan clicked his tongue. "Listen to what he has to say first though. Then you'll understand." He replied.

Taro looked towards Thankappan and then shifted his attention back to Lonappan. "What does he mean by that?" He asked.

"Well, you see… It is indeed a joke among Malayalis. However, there were a few beings who actually believed this rumor, you know? I remember a few aliens under our supervision who protested about how we took their great translators and handed them pieces of shit kinda translators. So, they were really angry at us and wanted revenge. However more than the revenge itself, they needed proper translators for some reason; maybe they cherished it so much. Anyway, that's when they heard about this rumor about a certain place where they could get the fakes of literally everything. Although they knew that there's a fat chance of it being a fake rumour or it being applicable to only the Earth stuff, they still held a glimmer of hope and headed to that place. In the end, it was just a big old joke. However, they weren't ready to give up yet. So, they decided to build a base in the same place that gave them hope." Lonappan shared the lore, before taking a moment to breathe in the midst.

"Then? Then what happened?" Taro liked a good lore, so he asked for more.

"So, they set up a base out there. In there, they decided to make counterfeits of translators. However, they didn't have a good builder in their team, so they decided to be the people who sell translator parts. Yet again, there's a problem since they didn't have any parts. So, they decided to be scavengers. Somehow, they could notice an alien's arrival cum crash landings before MIB itself and reached those places and robbed the places entirely. So, after a few successful raids like that, they not only sold translator parts but alien junk materials generally." Lonappan explained.

"Surely, you guys caught the culprits and confiscated the properties in their hand, right?" Taro asked.

"Yea, we did catch them and confiscated it. However, if you don't know, we are scummy people. So, we found numerous advantages by leaving them be rather than keeping them on hold. So, we did just that. We got into a partnership with them for the junk stuff. The deal was like this- they would find the aliens for us, we would confiscate it and give them their share too and report them as missing from the blast or something. This way, we had something to report to our superiors and we get to keep hold of some stuff too, rather than the HQ entirely ransacking us. With this, our scientists had something research about other than the meager shit that the HQ gives us to research." Lonappan replied.

"Whoa, you guys are truly greedy bastards, huh? But why though? You guys don't have a past and you live in the shadows, so why'd you need these stuff? Why be this greedy?" Taro asked.

"Well, guys like myself don't have a past to remember, but sure do have a future to look forward to. Why are we sniping stuff away from the HQ, you ask? The same reason that a mad scientist does experiments- pure curiosity over these stuff. It's not like we're the only doing this, right? The HQ is surely hiding stuff from the Glomerans to quench their own thirst of curiosity. So, it's just a cycle of deception, I believe." Lonappan explained.

"Okay, makes sense. But there's something that doesn't. So, your boss is fine with joining hands with aliens to smuggle the tech, but he's against me taking a look at the translator and making one for myself?" Taro asked.

"Look, I can give you multiple reasons for that. First of all, he kinda hated you from the beginning. Even though the stance is a bit softer nowadays, the hatred still remains, I guess. Second of all, it's a strategic partnership between ourselves and the aliens, where we are mutually benefited. We help them smuggle these stuff, they lend the stuff to us for research purposes. And lastly, you have something frightening that they don't. You have the ability to make stuff out of these alien junks. You can make a translator if given the materials, right? Well, they can't. So, we don't have to worry about them making potentially dangerous stuff that could just blow up the entire planet. With you, that's isn't the case. You somehow seem like you have a deep understanding towards alien tech and it's seriously concerning if you're to build some stuff, because we don't know the functionality of it. It could literally be anything, you know? So, would you really give something that could make potentially explosive stuff to someone who has the capability of making it? Unless it's warring periods, the answer's no. So, there you go. That's the answer." Lonappan explained.

Surprisingly for the MIB agents, Taro didn't question them further. "Hmm, that makes sense. I really can't blame you guys for that. So, are we heading to the alien junk seller right now?" He asked.

"Yup, you're right!" Lonappan nodded his head.

"And then? What are we gonna do?" Taro asked.

"You really want me to spell it out, huh? Just this once, you're given special permission to build a translator for yourself." Lonappan replied, to which Taro gave out the brightest smile possible.

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