Monday morning finds Our Hero, The Pouch, on a sidewalk, waiting patiently in line for his usual, a regular coffee and an onion bagel with butter. The air is cool and The Pouch briefly zones out while watching a falling leaf tumble about acrobatically in the brisk breeze. Too soon his revelry is interrupted by yelling.
"I didn't ask you for change!" screamed a relatively destitute man sitting atop a nearby newspaper box. "I don't have to grovel, if I want change, I have change." Leaping to his feet, still atop the newspaper box, he shouted, "I am the Coiner, now feel my wrath, you pretentious Yuppie!" With that the air became electric, buzzing with the familiar tinkle of pocket change. Bit by bit, each piece of coinage in the surrounding area leapt from purses and pockets and began a slow orbit of the Coiner. It was mere moments before the Coiner pointed down at the business man, the slowly rotating coins forming an aimed torrent!
The Pouch was swift, bounding away from the coffee and the bagel that were about to be his, such was the price of superherodom. Positioning himself before the about-to-be coin crushed Mergers and Acquisitions Vice-President, The Pouch opened each of his many compartments fully, absorbing and subdividing the stream of pocket change. As each pouch filled to completion, the overflow fell down to the next. The Pouch fell with a large clunk, unable to even move so full of the area's loose change had he become.
"The Pouch!?! What are you doing here? Why save this snobby jerk? He's the reason the rent is too damn high!"
"Mmmghrmml," said The Pouch, his mouth pouch also completely full of change, a flavor sensation he neither enjoyed nor felt he would ever forget.
"Can't you see? It's time for a change, and the Coiner is just the one who's going to bring it about!"
"Change?" an eerie voice said from above. Looking up, the Coiner and all of the other assorted pedestrians saw the hovering incubator of the Freemie, the small pinkish hands of this early born, market reform minded mutant working it's precise controls. "No real change will come until we get rid of all change, and paper bills, too!" Once more the air buzzed and then all of the coins filling The Pouch were sucked upwards into the sky, solely by the Freemie's powerful telekinetic capabilities. Once aloft, the change swirled and was suddenly cast into a large metal statue of a dollar sign with a slash through it. This impromptu anti-monetist monument was gently set down on the sidewalk before the Freemie's primary vehicle and temporary home flew off as quickly as it had arrived.
While everyone distractedly watched the retreat of the underdeveloped idealist, The Pouch regained his feet and delivered a haymaker to the Coiner that was technically a cheap shot but nobody was looking so what's the problem, right? The authorities were already close to the scene and upon their arrival, they stuffed the Coiner into a sack with a bunch of expired and thus worthless banknotes, his primary weakness.
Realizing that he was depending on a few quarters that now irrevocably constituted the cities latest work of plop art to cover the cost of coffee and bagel, The Pouch instead walked back to his shabby apartment, the emptiness of his stomach pouch only exasperated by its recent change fullness.
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