My options are few.

Corralling the remainder of my motor control, I stretch out a feeble hand to the Rat Burglar and administer a few impotent swats. I try to smite his balls but don’t have the angle. Then I perceive a patch of warm liquid on his clothes. Blood. Following the trail, I blindly claw upward on the arm until I detect a radiant, fecund wetness. I make two fingers go hard and straight and then, as I feel my body going faint and starry and buoyant, I ramrod the open wound.

The Rat Burglar shrieks and the chokehold releases lickety-split.

When we separate something clatters to rest at my feet. It’s the dart gun. Amazed, I pick it up.

One hundred milligrams of Nix.

It’s too good to be true.

Sucking down a luxuriant mouthful of oxygen, I straighten up in a way meant to convey authority and say, “All right, pal, let’s try that again....”

I don’t mean it as an invitation. In fact, I mean it as a threat whose object is to dissuade him from trying again, but alas, the Rat Burglar seems immune to irony. He takes it literally. As I stand there, endeavoring to lord it over him, a leg pistons toward my hand. It comes from another unpredictable angle— where do these kicks come from?—and there is the same blur of color and shadow. This time, though, I don’t yank my hand away.

This time I fire.

As I pull the trigger I feel a sharp pain in my wrist and shortly thereafter something else knocks me powerfully backwards. My sternum registers a shattering pain and my skull makes a concretinous crack on the floor. The only consolation is that I heard the dart gun go off. It made a noise remarkably like Charlie’s pop-tops.

Pfffft.

When I pry myself up on one elbow, I see the Rat Burglar is bent over, absolutely frozen. He is staring at me, immobilized with the same intensity with which he spied on the mannequin. That’s some fast-acting Nix.

“Not so quick after all, are you, tough guy?”

The spectacle of the Nixed Rat Burglar is obscured by something hot and sticky in my eyes. I wipe at it and my hand comes away covered in red syrup. All of a sudden I want dearly to vomit. Sleeping also presents itself as an appealing option. But I’m not done gloating yet. I try to writhe myself upright but cannot. My neck and shoulders are awash in warm liquid. I can feel it seeping down my spine and into my trousers. The Rat Burglar moves toward me, his gloved hands outstretched.

It is then that I realize, with distress, that his body is tuftless.

Mine is not.

My leg is sporting a red-tufted dart. It is planted midthigh, firm and proud and erect as a conqueror’s flag.