Pub Quizzes

Captain Cripton here. None of the G-52s ever had and ever will drink; it’s against policy. Yet in England, a common thing to do while our people who do drink should be drinking responsibly is participating in pub quizzes for prizes. They’re the standard type where you write down your answers after the moderator asks the questions, and one point is awarded for correct answers. All areas of academic and pop culture knowledge are covered, and usually they’re divided into categories. In today’s case, it was.

A place my friends and I like to go to when they visit me in Leeds only serves soft drinks but in a similar type of setting. They also serve hot dogs, pretzels, and the standard fish and chips, amongst others. So it’s family-friendly even though it’s supposed to look like a pub otherwise; therefore, it’s a restaurant by definition. There’s quite a few of these popping up all around the United Kingdom, possibly in response to a time shortly before I adopted Alex when the Glaswegian Devils tried to get me drunk so they could make up some hoax about me murdering someone serving in the House of Lords and going to prison for life for it. Considering how lame they’ve become although they don’t compare to Bendraqi, nobody believed it. Not even the targeted politician believed it.

“I knew they were stupid, but that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I know everybody in Scotland is possibly complaining about what a bad reputation the world may be giving them all because of these imbecile animals mocking about, in their horribly lame attempts to bring back the British Empire to rule over the world with them in charge. Even Her Majesty, the Queen, is praying for the day they come to their deserved justice once and for all. But it probably isn’t happening anytime soon.”

This popped up in one of the pub quizzes my friends and I were participating in one day. The question was asking, “Contrary to popular belief, the city wasn’t Leeds in which this murder was supposed to happen. What was the location?” The answer was Essex. “Why Essex?” Warwolf asked me afterwards.

“I will defer to Firefox on that,” I said.

“It was the spot they chosen because Glasgow at the time had shut down all possible hideouts for them. They managed to take it back without anyone looking, of course. But security has tightened up, especially with Leo the Patriotic Lion’s influence.”

“Knowing him,” I said, “I figure he’d be angry and would have bellowed about this if he hadn’t learned to control it; thank the heavens he did.”

Later on, after our team learned we finished in second place behind a team whose captain had been on a quiz show on ITV2 and won big money, the name of which I’ve forgotten, sorry, the host of the quiz (who also happened to own the restaurant, which is named after him, so the name of it is Dave’s Place) talked to us at our table. “Do you think you can help me with a mystery?” he asked.

“Of course we can,” I said. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I have reason to believe the Devils may possibly use this very restaurant of mine.”

“How so?”

“Customers have been complaining about the noise from underneath, but I have to keep telling them we don’t have a basement. ‘Of course you don’t,’ they reply, ‘but you can’t lie to us; there’s somebody under there.’ I believe them. I just don’t know what to do.”

I took this as my prompt to look under the floor with my X-ray vision. “I see it,” I said. “The Devils aren’t there at the moment. But it’s obvious that they’ve been underground. Thanks to them, you will have a basement now, which will come in handy in the event it must be used as a storm shelter.”

“Do you see any money?”

“Not yet. Why?”

“They’ve allegedly been robbing me of my cash in the register.” Dave opened the register so we could see it.

“They have?” Super Claw exclaimed as he got up and looked in the register, seeing it was full of today’s customer’s payments but nothing else. “But that’s almost £2,000!”

“All by myself I owed you about £2.25 plus tax,” I said.

“Well, luckily today, you and the other teams have been my only customers, and you’ve only been here an hour because of the quiz. I haven’t had anybody order anything on the menu because that starts at 11 a.m., and I started the quiz at 10 a.m. because I didn’t want the forces of evil to get any suspicion of anything. The Glaswegian Devils never strike in the daytime. If they do, they’ve haven’t here. Anyways, being the superheroes that you are, you have my permission to explore any place you must.”

“We’ll start by showing you the door that has the staircase leading to your new basement thanks to the Devils,” I said, pointing to the door. Dave opened it and we walked down. Each of us carried a torch (flashlight to you Americans) so we could see around. “Well, you don’t have lighting in here yet, it looks like,” I observed, “and if you do, I can’t find the switch to turn it on.”

“I may have to get that installed since this is now permanent,” Dave replied. “What I can guarantee is if the Devils want an ambush attack on us, that’s why it’s dark. Ouch.” He tripped over a bag he hadn’t spotted yet. “What’s this?”

“My X-ray vision confirms it’s the £2,000 you lost,” said Warwolf. “The Devils left it here by mistake instead of taking it back. Or, they deliberately left it here and are going to come back for it.”

“Whatever’s the case, we’re ready for them,” I added. “You had best go back upstairs and wait until we give the all clear, but take the cash.”

“Will do.” Dave took the money sack and headed back upstairs to place back in the registers, since there were several of them. “I’ve been robbed before but the police always give it back to me. Somehow nobody’s ever gotten away with robbing this place, not since 2005, anyway.” (I began to wonder if that was a freak accident of Cripto’s superpowers since he first got them in 2005, and they were doing things without him telling them to do so.)

About half an hour later, those infamous voices kept on grumbling that they lost their cash but were blaming it on one another. We waited until just the right moment to say, “All right, that will do. Your scheme is kaput.” Because there was no light, the Devils couldn’t see us. The ringleader knew it was us, though, because he was the one Devils that recognized us by our voices. “You imbeciles again?!” he exclaimed.

“Isn’t it almost always?” Super Claw replied. “Now tell us what you want with the owner’s £2,000 that’s rightfully his!”

“And why it’s only £2,000 and not £20,000, or something bigger,” Firefox added. “It’s you idiots that give me and all me fellow Scots a bad name.”

“That’s the whole point, stupid!” the ringleader replied. “If you dorks didn’t shrill those pipes every day, we’d be able to think!” (The Glaswegian Devils always have hated the shrill sound of the bagpipes; it hurts their ears if they’re up close to it.)

“Me country’s national pride have nothing to do with you snobs’ inability to do something unpredictable; you’re just stupid!” Firefox shot back, defending his Scottish heritage and pride. “So confess it!”

A fight broke out, and while we couldn’t see who was fighting where at what point, what we knew was that the Devils made it obvious where they were at, so we split up. Each of us took one corner since it was a 4-on-12 fight, with the ringleader being the 13th Devil in the room. He didn’t go by a number, remember; he went by the letter “L.” “I haven’t been so humiliated since the day that insolent bulldog kicked us out of the banked oval track,” he said.

“He’s been wanting to do that all along,” I shot back. “He only let you in because it evened the number out.”

“Can we come back? We’ll be good.”

“That will be the day! Ha! You’ve been replaced! You tried to make a show out of a legitimate sport! A sport that isn’t mainstream here either but it does exist. Just not in that way.” (The UK has several WFTDA all-women’s flat track teams. We just let the Americans do all the traditional banked track skating of roller derby.)

“Drat!”

“You deserve it!”

“That may be, but we will be back! Just you wait! But for now…oh, dear me. I think we’re out of breath now.” By now we had won the battle, and the police had arrived. We turned our torches back on so the cops could get a bit more light from their own, although we could hear the Sheriff of Leeds yelling, “All of you are under arrest! No monkey business now! We got you covered!”

“Relax, officers,” I called. “There’s no need for anything hasty. There’s no more fight left in them.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Thank goodness it’s you, Captain. You and your friends.” All of us by now had walked up the stairs, and the Devils were in custody of the police. “How did you know they were down here.”

“You can thank Dave for that.” Dave told the police the whole story and how we helped them get his £2,000 back. Within the restaurant’s budget, he’d have lighting installed as well, so that when came time for the use of it to be a storm shelter, people would be able to see in the basement. “I must show concern for safety,” he concluded.

“Best of luck with that, and we hope this is the last time you get robbed,” said the bobby as he walked outside and prepared to return to the station.

“Thank you, sir, and keep up the good work with all you do,” Dave smiled as he waved goodbye. Then he took our orders for our luncheon as another employee turned on the telly (television) so we could watch the football (soccer) match between Manchester United and Fulham FC, the former of which I’ve been known to be a big supporter of in all their games, home and away. Fulham FC had home field advantage this time, though. “And thank you again,” Dave said to us as he prepared to get our soft drink orders. “I don’t know what Britain would do without you.”

“No problem,” I smiled. “That’s what we are here for.”

THE END