Anonymity is your name. Silence your native tongue. You're no longer part of the System. You're above the System. Over it. Beyond it. We're "them." We're "they." We are the Men in Black.
-- Men in Black (1997)
*****
"Hey, Frank!" the man screamed as everyone got up as the disguised alien shook himself dry, soaking everyone. To the regular human. Frank appeared no different from any other Canis lupus familiaris, or dog, more specifically, a pug.
"What? Still sitting shiva? Want my advice?"
"No." James Darrell Edwards III, better known (or rather, unknown) as Agent J, quickly got his black jacket on, completing the MiB token appearance. "No advice." He turned to his old mentor and newly reinstated partner, Agent K, formerly known as Kevin Brown and before that, Kevin Cunningham. "No talkin'." J turned to Zed, director of the super secret agency. His tongue became tied at the mental image of middle aged man entwined with a partner in the positions of the Kamasutra. J's face twisted in disgust. "...Hell no." Zed looked a bit disappointed.
"Fellas," J reassured his friends, "So Laura had to leave me to save Zartha. It's fine. I understand, I'm not sulking, I'm not crying. Seriously, I'm not some backstreet teenager dealin' with his first break up." J place his hand on his locker's handle. "I swear, I'm fine." He proceeded to open the locker and was met with a loud chorus.
"All hail J! All hail J! All hail J! All ha-"
Slamming his locker shut, J turned to his partner with a questioning look.
"I brought them from Grand Central Terminal," K said with a shrug.
"Why'd you put them rats in my locker, man?" J crossed his arms. "Now where am I suppose to put my sneakers?"
The surly older man shrugged again. "I thought it would put things in perspective for you." K examined his partner's shoes. J was positive that if it were anyone else, they would have made a face or at least grimaced slightly at the sight of the smelly sneakers. However, years of being a part of the Men in Black builds an immunity for such mundane things. In the same serious tone with the same serious expression, K asked, "Why do you carry those around anyway?"
Frank the Pug looked up at the old running shoes. Many a criminal had been caught by the NYPD thanks to this pair of footwear. "I can take 'em off your hands," the Remoolian said, drool dripping from his flabby dog lips. J ignored him.
"No, K, it's actually kind of sad, really." J followed the older agent as he turned to leave the locker room. MiB was still a giant mess and there was plenty of work to be done but J was not one to give something up with ease. His tenacity was one trait trait caught the agency's eye, after all. "We need to let them out of there. I mean, they need to know that the world is bigger than that."
K stopped in front of a giant door labeled 'danger' and 'not an exit' and shook his head. Perhaps it truly was impossible to replace him. So much for retirement the veteran thought with a tired and frustrated sigh.
"Still a rookie," and with a kick, K flung open the door.
Frank the Pug stood between the two agents. With a single phrase, a single word, the alien expressed every emotion J felt.
"Whoa."
*****
Pinkie Pie looked frantically through the shelves, yanking scrolls off and scanning through them before tossing them in a neat pile. She figured finding the time-stopping spell would have been easy but as her furious search prolonged, this notion proved false. Spike and Twilight fared no better.
"Somepony needs to do a better job at organizing this place," the pink Earth pony said to herself. "Where is the 'T' section anyways?"
Pinkie Pie reached for another scroll before her tail began to twitch violently. "Twitchy twitch!" she said as she jumped to the side to avoid being assaulted by a fallen scroll.
"Huh? What's this?" The little pony picked up the scroll and began to read slowly. "Back...in...time...huh, I wonder where this came from."
Pinkie Pie looked up just in time to see what appeared to be a tiny doorway between books and ancient texts. Two miniature black figures stood at the threshold. She closed her eyes and opened them just in time to see the door shut close. Rubbing her eyes, Pinkie tried to locate the door or at least where she thought it was but to no avail. There were just way too many books in the way.
Was it just her wild imagination at work? If so, then what had knocked the scroll down? Pinkie Pie sat on her rump and thought for a good seven seconds before losing interest. With a careless shrug, Pinkie Pie quickly headed back to her friends. She could hear them right now.
"Does that mean there won't be any more late night pacing?"
"No more late night pacing. If only I had learned this lesson a week ago, we wouldn't have had to go through all this."
"Twilight, Twilight, I found something!" Pinkie Pie cried, handing the magical manuscript to the purple Unicorn. "It doesn't stop time, but it lets you go back in time. It says you can go back once, and it only lasts for a few moments. Does that help?"
Twilight rolled the parchment up and grinned. "Pinkie, you're a genius!"
"Woohoo!" Pinkie Pie began to hop excitedly. As she hopped, Pinkie looked toward the section she had searched through and silently thanked the little library fairies for their help.
Twilight jumped into position. "Now I can go back and tell past Twilight that she doesn't need to go berserk with worry about a disaster that's never gonna come!" Lights burst through her horn and wind picked up loose papers. And with a flash, Twilight disappeared into the past..
*****
"You're going to send me back to 1969."
The burly man in the red shirt shrugged as he took out a small brown suitcase and presented an alien device to the agent, strange even by MiB standards. J had certainly never seen anything like it and despite Agent K's demoting nicknames, he wasn't exactly a green rookie. The agent shook his head, clearing his mind of distracting thoughts. Focus on saving K he said to himself as the man began to speak.
"First, we gotta get high."
Agent J gave him a doubting look before giving him a nervous smile. "My man, for real?"
