It Was Hard Living Without A Face For Awhile

    The more the same birds flock together the more those same birds change together, or whatever. As we all know Boston had been wiped off the face of the planet during the peace wars. Only structures of reinforced concrete or businesses of suitably oily constitution survived. Penguin Pizza was among the standing. You know that. I know that. The first man to time travel knows that, but why does it matter? It matters because it’s not enough to just live. There are still goals worth achieving. There are still mountains worth leveling. And there are still wings worth reviewing.

BLAMO!

A stun grenade flew through the open doorway of Penguin Pizza exploding in mid-air. The Wait-staff was immediately blinded. Those who were already blind from the war were suitably startled. Those who had lost all sensation due to the enormous pressure of life itself didn’t care to respond in any noticeable way, and were for all intents and purposes, permanently unconscious.
    “30 WINGS IN THE TOWER OF POWER STAT” bellowed Secret Agent Razzle Dazzle as they descended from their motorized horse, carrying a well worn security safe on their shoulder.
    “PLAIN, BUFFALO, AND I HEARD YOU GUYS GOT BARBEQUE NOW. LET’S SEE SOME HUSTLE HERE YOU WORMS!” thundered Secret Agent Manpower, squeezing his way out of a trap-door in the abdominal section of the aforementioned horse.
    “THIS IS A WING NIGHT REVIEW!” concussed the fabulous duo, who glimmered gloriously in the lazy waning sunlight.

    A pizza monger scurried haphazardly into a stack of dishes, lacerating their body in several places. Another tried defending themselves with Jiu-Jitsu, but that’s a wimpy martial art. They were thrown back through the same hole the stun-grenade came in. Their body likewise, exploded before ever touching the ground.
    “Mmhh uhhh ghu, right this way your blogspottednesses.” whimpered one pathetically fragile Penguin peon. “We’ve missed you greatly. Is it true what is foretold in Wing Night prophecy, that you will release this land from its unending suffering, and bring justice back once more to the meager with your forthcoming review?”
    “No!” confirmed Manpower. “Prophecies are unexciting narrative gimmicks. This is the real world where nothing ever comes true.”

    Secret Agent Razzle Dazzle swung their 5-pound throwing stein around like they were trying out for Cirque du Soleil. It flew to the nearest beer tap, which dispensed some Mango Cart, and thereafter flew back to their lips like some sort of booze obsessed Australian frisbee. “Hmm. I’d give it two circles so close together that they resemble an eight.”
    The well lacerated pizza chef meagerly managed to gasp out “Is that good?” in between spurts of blood.
    “If you gotta ask, you’ll never know” bemused Razzle Dazzle, hoping that nobody had heard that Louis Armstrong quote before.
    “Isn’t that what Louis Armstrong said about jazz?” said the pizza chef. Suffice to say, he spent the night in the hospital. And suffice to say the hospital was never heard from again.

    The agents sat down in their favorite seats, tucked safely back amongst the yellow brick walls, which had certainly always been yellow and no other color. Nobody had dared ask about the large red safe they’d dragged in with them. But YOU wonder don’t you! It was a First Alert safe covered with ancient runes and demonic City Feed stickers. It was an object of wonder that cast an aura of thrilling intrigue over the entire evening.

But first, the grub.

    It was half-off appetizers until 5pm, and arriving two minutes before the dawn of 5’clock was the ticket to more nachos than we bargained for. Half-Price for about double the nachos any normal person could stand. Certainly a plot from some devilish pizza prick. The plate was stacked to the point of absurdity, like a tri-layered enchilada of cheese, chips, and guacamole. A deal to be sure, but our heroes were here for wings. On the subject of wings, it was a new era, one that Secret Agent Man Power missed the transition for. The wings were no longer 10 cents apiece, but rather, in alignment with the rent, goods, and general utilities, the wings had quintupled in cost. Were they worth the hike? That was the question. Long gone were the days of Bishop Jughead's war waged against everyone's Sweetest Baby. Now, Ray was King, and the BBQ flowed like rivers. Tangy BBQ is on the menu permanently, and had been (alongside a wet and mediocre Teriyaki) since about halfway through the blackout that spanned from late 2019 to mid 2022. Sometimes they even gave you free Celery. Not tonight, though. No. Not tonight.

    Secret Agent Razzle Dazzle, was still partial to the no-sauce wings, or "regular" wings, as was now the parlance after many years of forcing it. At first, some of the waitstaff were so accustomed to buffalo that, to them, the buffalo was regular, and the un-sauced was simply as off-kilter as a plain donut. That said, the English language is an ever-evolving chaos, wherein enough popular insistence can reinforce new paradigms; regular was regular, dammit, and buffalo already had a name. Regular can be all sorts of things, it's a substrate. You add what you want, when you want it, and when you don't, you don't. You're free to utilize the whole landscape of the table to your liking- a little lemon squeeze from your water, a little ketchup from the table next door, maybe a sprinkling of salt or even Parmesan, perhaps a dip in someone else's saucevoir if one is feeling homesick. It can be a bit drier, but it's a small price to pay for freedom, and after the blackout, the most razzly-dazzly Secret Agent will take all the freedom they can get. 

    Do the math, if one wants unadulterated chicken on any salad, pasta, or nacho dish they usually get it by having chicken added for +$5 or so, but you get more chicken out of a plate of ten Regs if you're willing to put in the elbow grease. It's a no-brainer. Tragically, by the end of his mountain of nachos, Razz was stuffed to the brim, and with a mug-club stein's worth of Mango Cart ale in their core, it was only a matter of time before the chip-expansion would get the upper hand. Only but a pittance of the wings were ingested on sight, but the quick witted Manpower had a plan.
    After ordering one large Margherita pizza for a charitable cause, the unconsumed wings were spirited away within the pizza box. Secret Agent Manpower had manpowered his way through all 20 wings, building a nice little bone fort for imaginary chicken-themed battles to play out. The wings were above average. Tender and juicy. Not too overwhelmed by sauce, but enough so that several napkins were necessary. It was a two coke evening for old MP, which is irregular, but not entirely unwarranted. The outside world being mostly desert these days, perhaps it is yet another new normal.

    The two agents of wings clamored back aboard the mechanical, and hitherto unexplained, stead and blasted off just close enough to the speed of sound to shatter all nearby windows. The staff sighed a sigh of sighness. Somebody cried. They were a baby, but a literal baby. Like only a few months old. So it wasn’t awkward, but it was annoying. Nobody should have babies anymore.

    Forgoing the usual ice cream or yesterday's cakes escapades, they had another post-wing mission in mind: to bring a heaping helping of pizza to the mass of art that lay down the street. The post-war landscape had hardened people and they no longer found art useful. To be honest, it had never been useful, and maybe now people were just catching on. So they threw their landscape paintings, ceramic bowls, and tinsel wrapped mannequin bodies that had once been part of some sort mixed media installation into a giant moldering pile and dubbed it the Art Mass.
    Several young agents in training had been stationed as sort of a “practical joke”, since the word “hazing” had fallen out of favor.
    “Why am I here?”
    “Is this a good use of my time?”
    “What does contrapposto mean?” were all common refrains among these guideless newbies. However when they saw the well-weathered Manpower and Razzle Dazzle rocket across the sky they yelled “Hooray!” In return they were showered with pizza and spare wings to feed their budding appetite for weekly food reviews.
    “Appetizing!” said Cadet Creedence Clearwater Revival, a little obviously.
    “Dish-licious!” un-originally bemused Cadet Supermoon.
    “Pretty good” signaled Cadet All Play No Talk.

    Though their wing review was in need of much honing, their get up and go attitude was well developed. The long ago mentioned safe became an object of much consternation.
    “Where did it come from?” they questioned. 

    “What’s inside it?” they clamored. 

    “How do we open it?” they cried. 

    But within the hour they had scrounged around and found many a tool of destruction and the rendered the contents of the safe unsafe. Several batteries, stacks of pay stubs, and character bios for an obviously abandoned student film were their prize. What glee. What celebration. And with that the agents of wing were off again into the great unknown sunset from which they had come. Will they return? Will the new generation take up arms against unreviewed wings? Just like it is your sole responsibility to prevent forest fires, it is now, and forever, your burden to check back often to find out!