Mandy twists the pitch

He looked at her, head cocked to the side, with a significantly unimpressed expression
as she continued her pitch, eyes bright with a bit too much glee for his liking…

“It looks just like a mechanical pencil, and with a click of the button, it’s like a micro pipette,
it exudes the tiniest glob of a fatal toxin, odourless, colourless, and extremely potent…

“I don’t want a fucking poison pen”, Ace Freely, Top agent of the Department of Population Survival,
the governments most secret, secret organization said again with a flat, monotone, steeped in a blended malt of irritation, disgust and frustration…

“Or, or, this one”, Mandy chirped brightly again, “It looks just like a marker…”
“It’s easier to use, its toxin isn’t fatal, but powerful, almost tasteless, and colourless…
“It’s in an alcohol base so volatilises easily and you can use it on more surfaces…door handles, buttons, lift buttons, train door handles…toilet flush buttons, taps…”
“After a few seconds the carrier alcohol vaporises and leaves a residue, its non-polar so it doesn’t easily wash off with water…”
“It’s very potent, they’d be …”

Ace Held up his hand in a stop gesture, both defiantly, and as a punctuation.
“I don’t want a fucking poison pen”, He said this time more irritatedly,
a space between each word to emphasise the point…

“I fucking hate poison…”

“Poisoning is for cowards and low life. For assassins…for insidious stalkers…
Following their victims and laying trials of poison traps for them…”

“Uncaring about the train of collateral damage they’re leaving behind…”

“Little Betty such and such who touched the handle instead… or the trail of sick and injured who randomly happened to be in the vicinity…ride the same carriage…use the wrong bathroom…whatever…”

“Look, everyone’s got one”, Mandy persisted brightly, “the CIA, MI5, everyone’s doing the poison pen now…”
“MI5’s does sticky little dots…with a kind of a non-water-soluble glue one them…a really potent toxin too…”
 

Ace continued to look unimpressed…

Look, what about…Mandy reached behind her and retrieved what looked like a tiny salt shaker…
“Sprinkles!” she said brightly…

It would be accurate to say, Ace disliked Mandy intensely…
He disliked her bubbly, Betty Crocker of lethal toxins attitude and demeanour, and, having come from the field, and having a lot of experience first hand, utterly despised her bright, frivolous enthusiasm about poisons, poisoning people or her fetish for the mechanisms or effects of such dispensation…

To Ace, Poisons were ugly, despicable…
They were coward’s weapons, the weapons of putrid wretches, and he hated both their use and
those who used him…he didn’t care whether his department had a resident expert or if they were dishing them out in showbags…

He’d lost mates, friends, loved ones to the insidious and horrible effects of the portable bioweapons and chemical arsenals of the espionage world…

It didn’t make him hunger for their equivalent…
It just proved that those who used them were beneath him, beneath human dignity, without care or consideration for the collateral damage they caused…who else might be harmed…or the mode or mechanism of death of their target…

He came from the field, where that ugly shit was actually happening…

Give him a fucking gun any day…
An honest bullet would do his job…
Lead, silver, kevlar tipped, hollow point…
Give him a crossbow, an arrow, or even a fucking axe…

Hand to hand, there was a brutal honesty of looking someone you were going to kill in the eyes…

A natural honesty in the naked truth of survivalism… of going hand to hand with someone attempting to kill you…

Poisoning was for cowards and wimps, and, he had noticed, seemed to be disgustingly addictive…
The power thrill that weak, cowardly minds got from being able to injure or harm or kill people bigger or stronger than them, more beautiful, richer, more powerful…to be able to have that effect…
and to do so anonymously, secretly, without being identified… held responsible…

So the foul and twisted reality was that the sad, twisted minds who justified such methods, usually became more twisted and sick, becoming fetishized and addicted to the practice, like a junky addicted to the process of shooting up….not for the rush, but for the process of injecting something…

Mandy brightly continued her annoying sales pitch…

The enthusiastic gleam in her eye for the technology she was describing considerably
added to Ace’s irk…

“Everyone is so into sprinkles right now, it’s way the popular thing…”  

She rattled off a list of items like it was a Dick Smith catalogue…

"MI5 and 6 are doing a really really nasty, ricin sprinkle… tiny hairs with a sticky surface , coated in ricin…with a kind of water resistant glue , the hairs give it a greater surface area so it’s more sticky and more likely to come into contact…”

“And the CIA went old school”, she said, with a surprised tone, like she was commenting on the seasons latest fashion…
“They pimped Lewisite and have made a very nasty crystalline, cyanide compound; I think it’s a mixture of cyanide salts and an acetate of cyanide… with some kind of coating which makes it
dermally absorbent…”
“Either than or it’s the sharp edges of the crystal shapes of the physical crystals, which puncture the skin microscopically and dig in…”
“Like toxic sharp little diamonds…”
“It’s quite clever, and really, very nasty. Were still working that one out…how it does its dermal thing…”

“Ours gives them a run for their money though”, she said proudly, “ it’s a mixture of vapour deposited arsenic on nanostructures…”

He continued to stare blankly obviously unmoved and unimpressed by her pitch or product…

“It’s like, you know, those burrs, that stick to your socks or shoes when you walk through grass…”
“It’s like microscopic versions of those, vapour deposited with arsenic compounds…”
“We used molecular gastronomy techniques… it’s not usually fatal, but it packs a hell of a punch…”

“You sprinkle it into the carpet, or the fabric of chairs…mouse pads…anything with a hairy or a porous surface…”

Ace had had enough…

He picked up one of the show models of mechanical pencils she had laid out in front of him…

“I don’t want a fucking poisoned pen…”

“I don’t want any toxic cologne…

“I don’t want any lighters that spray carbon monoxide, or BZ derivatives…”

“And I don’t want this disgusting espionage seasoning you are waving in front of me…”

“Because,” he opened his eyes for emphasis, the whites showing, “when there are three muscly bearded guys called Farook, hefting P90s and pointing them my way…”

He lifted the pen sarcastically and limp wristedly, pointing it at her, and pushed the button on the mechanical pencil dispenser three times in rapid succession…

“eh, eh, eh… isn’t going to cut the fucking mustard.”

Mandy blew out her cheeks and gave a look like he was a tough customer and a hard sell…

Ace stood and put the pencil down…

“I’ve got stuff to do…”

He turned half way back toward her, turned his head and continued…

“What I WANT, is a fucking nine iron...A nice light rod I can put a silencer on… “
“9 shells in the cartridge…blap, blap, blap, thanks for coming…”

He made the gestures of cartridge loading and firing an automatic pistol as  he spoke…

“Get me something like that… I don’t know…maybe in a nice high tech polycarb or ceramic…
so I can take it through customs…”
“Maybe a knurled silencer, disguised as a torch… you love shit like that…”

"But this shit…he gestured toward the miniaturised high tech chemical arsenal on the table in from them…
“Eeah’’, he made a face showing his disgust to go with the disgusted and dismissive sound…

“What about a spring loaded needle gun, that fires poisoned needles…”, Mandy called after him, with hopeful optimism…

“That fires fucking bullets Mandy…”

“Bullets…”

“Not poison, Mr calibres little metal messengers…”

“Anywhere from 4 to 9 mm will be fine…”

“’I’d prefer ammo I can get at a regular gun shop, on the black market, whatever…”
“Something standard would be great…”

Mandy angled her body awkwardly, clearly deflated, like a bored teenager at the request…
“I’ll see what I can do…”

Ace had no energy to coddle or even pretend to fluff Mandy who he considered to be
a career change short of being a sick sociopath anyway…

“That would be great…” he muttered over his shoulder as he left the room…

He always disliked seeing Mandy. He thought she spent far too much time fetishizing over poisons and not enough time coming up with useful honest to god weapons that agents could actually use in the field with some pride or dignity…

He also knew she’d find him what he needed and he just needed to make it through her latest
Bettie Crocker cake stall of flavour of the month lethal shit…

At least he had a better idea of what to watch out for in the field…

He shuddered involuntarily about the sprinkles…

Time to invest in some gloves...