We got the next two chapters of the epic Dengler and Butts miniseries hot off the chat! Chapter 4 comes to us from Tim J.:

MEANWHILE AT THE MOONBASE

A phone rings.  A gloved hand picks it up.

“Moonbase.  Go ahead.”

There was a delay as the voice was encrypted, sent, and then decrypted on the other end.

“One of our runners may have been compromised.  We’ll have to assume they have the map.”

“Do we know who was following them?”

“It appears they are two detectives, Dengler and Butts.”

There is swearing.  The gloved man curses Dengler and Butts and their mothers and their mothers’ mothers.

“Tell the other runners to watch their backs.  The Roscoe Project cannot afford to be delayed.  Make sure that does not happen.”

“By your command.”

“Moonbase out.”  He hung up the phone and and resumed his litany of curses.  He couldn’t afford to take chances.  He picked up the phone again and pressed the red button, and spoke the exact phrase he had rehearsed.

“The creepy dolls need new stuffing.”

—

Chapter 5 is from Trisha Lynn:

THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP
As Butts caught his ragged breath, he looked over at Dengler, whose hair was barely mussed and his hands barely shaking. Butts thought back to when it all began, when he was first introduced to the golden-haired rookie and was told that this newly minted detective was his new partner.
~~FLASHBACK NOISES~~
“New partner?! I don’t need a new partner!” Butts yelled at his captain. In the cramped office, Junior Grade Detective Steve Dengler had the guts to look stone-faced as the more hardened and grizzled Lt. Steve Butts pounded the desk with his meaty fist.
“Like bus you do!” roared the captain back in his face. “Ever since Det. Pitts went down in the line, your work has gotten sloppy. You need some shaking up. And Det. Dengler’s just the man to do it.”
Butts’s jaw clenched as he remembered the shameful incident which gave him his bars just as it brought down his former partner. From that moment on, he swore to aveng—er, that is bring to justice the hateful Themiston cartel which deprived him of one of the few men he’d grown to trust. How was this… shiny-faced rookie going to live up to his kind of standards?

~~FLASHFORWARD NOISES~~

“You ready, Butts?” Dengler passed a hand over his brow, surreptitiously checking the number of rounds left in his gun.

“Always, Dengler. Always.”

We’re all looking forward to Part 6 and beyond!