Chapter 16 - Dragon's Teeth
By FurionTassadar
“Yes, that was impressive work. It works quite well into our scenario. In fact, the rabble that gathered afterward furthered our ends even more so. It is in chaotic times like these that the people will be looking for someone they can trust to rise up and take command of the situation. I am on my way to recruit one such person as we speak. In the meantime, I want you to stay on call. If it all goes accordingly, you’ll be hearing from me again very soon. Once more, very nice work with our pirate friend, Mr. Bluesummers.”
Goda closed his cell-phone and slipped it into his pocket. He then stepped into a menagerie of sights and sounds. The room was cavernous and filled with all manner of whirring machinery. And ever single machine had some kind of tentacle, tendril, or octopi-like appendage coming out of it.
“Is there anyone around?” Goda called, “I’m looking for Major Taredan. I was told he came in here recently.”
From the very back of the room, a crazy-haired man popped his head up. His face was covered in machine grease and he sported a ridiculously large pair of goggles.
“Whoizit?!” the man yelled over the clank and whine of his machines. He lifted the grease-stained goggles from his face and finally spotted Goda.
“Tall, Dark, and Crispy!” Matrix exclaimed jovially, “I’ll be with ya in a minute!”
Matrix had plenty of reason to be happy with Goda. Time and time again, Ozzal had threatened to shut his perverted experiments down, but Goda had interceded on his behalf. Goda claimed that Matrix’s inventions might someday be useful….
“So, what can I help you with?” Matrix asked as he strode purposefully over, his white lab coat billowing as he walked. He extended his arm as if to shake hands….
Goda looked down at the outstretched (and greasy) hand disdainfully and kept his arms folded behind his back. “I’m afraid I don’t shake hands….”
“Eh? Oh, no. I was just going to warn you about Amy.” Matrix pointed behind Goda.
“What are you- ack!!” Goda suddenly felt a heavy weight come down on his shoulders.
“You’re head looks funny! Lolz!!” Amy giggled from atop her perch on Goda’s head. She reached downed and nibbled on his cone-shaped head. “Blech…and it tastes funny, too! Like a burnt macaroon crayon!” She jumped off of him and scampered away, spitting.
Goda tried to compose himself. “What the hell was that thing?!” he asked breathlessly, while readjusting his tie.
“Oh, that’s my assistant.” Matrix declared proudly.
“Assistant?!” Goda did a double-take in the direction Amy had run off to. “What happened to your other one?! The one we abducted for you from Actionia University?!”
“Oh, Larry.” Matrix shrugged, “He tried to run away again. So I sent Emeri after him.” He grinned maliciously.
Goda sighed. Well, at least he was still alive. Though, probably not for long. He’d have to call up Kira and have him make sure Emeri didn’t kill Larry when she caught up to him. What was this…the sixth time Larry had tried to escape? And Matrix always let him go…but then, he always found a way to bring the poor young man back….
Goda cleared his throat. “Anyway, do you think you could find Major Taredan for me?”
“Major I’m-too-good-for-this-bull**bleep**?” Matrix shrugged and nodded his head in the direction of one of the backrooms of the lab, “He’s back talking with Goose,” Matrix continued, referring to their newly created super-spy. “I think he’s almost done.”
“Very well, I’ll wait.”
And then, there was silence. Well, as silent as it can get in a lab full of perverted, buzzing machines. Goda stood stiffly while Matrix tapped his foot and looked around his lab, his eyes drawn to those machines that he considered particularly beautiful in their perverted nature….
“You know,” Matrix suddenly spoke up after a little bit, “I recently acquired myself a laser-shooting cyber **bleep**…you wanna see?”
For the first time his life, Goda was actually taken aback. He leaned away from the crazed professor. “That’s…not necessary….” he managed to stammer out.
“Psh, you’re just jealous.” Matrix said in a bored tone. “Well, back to my filthy evil, I guess….” He then wandered away, back to whatever he had been working on before.
At right about that time, Major Taredan came wandering out. With a sigh, he approached Goda. “Something I can help you with?”
“Yes…why is Professor Matrix still on our payroll?” Goda asked as he watched the mad scientist walk away.
Taredan frowned. “Because you keep telling everyone that he’ll eventually come up with something that will benefit the Actionia Military.”
Goda lifted his cell-phone back to his face. He pressed the button that activated the voice-record function. “Memo to me: When the monetary review for the Actionia Military comes up again next year…fire Professor M. Matrix.” Goda then closed the phone and pocketed it again.
“Why not fire him now?” Major Taredan asked, eager to get the crazy man out of the Comdot Estate as soon as possible.
“Because, until Larry is found again, he’s the only scientist in the Comdot Estate who has worked on the Goose Maverick project.” Goda said, making a point of forgetting his encounter with Matrix’s other “assistant”. “Speaking of which, how is our little spy?”
“Ready to begin his operation. I’ve already given him the last known location of Landon Blaken. His job will be to infiltrate the Syndicate’s upper levels and to assassinate Landon when he gets the chance.”
Goda cocked an eyebrow. “Are we really sure he’s up to the challenge?”
“Finding Landon will be the hard part. Infiltrating the Syndicate will be easy enough, I mean…just try talking to the guy sometime. He’s really easy to get along with. He literally likes everything….”
“Everything?” Goda echoed, not entirely convinced.
“Well, everything but something called “HachiKuro”….”
“Ah! Honey and Clover!” Goda nodded, “A fine series. Not as visually pleasing as Ouran High Host Club, but, nonetheless….”
Goda trailed off when he realized that Major Taredan was staring at him with his mouth agape.
Goda coughed. “Ahem. Moving along…the real reason why I wished to talk with you concerns our little resistance problem as well.”
Taredan shook his head and tried to forget the previous conversation. “Um…okay….”
“The recent actions of the Syndicate members and the people of Actionia in general have not only been atrocious, but have gone on relatively unpunished as well. Ozzal sits in the Comdot Estate playing general, while the resistance in this country continues to grow, eating away at it’s foundations. I say, it’s time we show the people of Actionia the true power of the dark side…er, I mean, the Echelon.”
Taredan didn’t like where this was going. And he knew Ozzal wouldn’t either. “The Echelon is Ozzal’s trump card, though. She doesn’t want you guys revealed to the public unless absolutely necessary. Hell, she doesn’t even keep your actions in official records.” Which was fortunate, considering the break in at the Comdot archives a week ago….
“That’s why we need a front man. A “hero” we can show to the people as the face of our efforts to crush the dangerous terrorist and criminal elements that threaten their safety.” Goda gave his trademark hideous grin.
“Let me guess…you want that person to be me?” Taredan asked rhetorically, with a glare in Goda’s direction. “You can forget it. I’m not going to be your puppet.”
“You have little choice, I’m afraid.” Goda stated simply, having already expected Taredan’s response to his plan. “As we speak, our public relations officer is forming a press conference announcing the crackdown on the Syndicate and all other subversive elements in the city…and that crackdown will have your name attached to it. Whether you like it or not, you are going to be our puppet….”
****
Keith Douglas sighed. “It’s going to be one of those days….”
Just as he finished saying this, the door to his office exploded off it’s hinges.
Fortunately, over the years, he had a developed an almost sixth sense when it came to danger. In his line of profession, it was almost a necessity. Thus, he had managed to dive underneath his desk right as the door to his office spun through the air and crashed into his desk.
Keith tried to peek over his desk to look at the cause of the explosion…only to be forced back under his desk as a jet of flame came shooting into his office.
“Crap.” Keith muttered under his breath.
When the flames had died down, he slowly reached a hand up and felt along his desk. He felt a large metallic mass…his gun.
“Well, that’s where that is….” Keith continued feeling around on the desk, until….
Quickly, Keith grabbed the pastry he had been munching on before the explosion. He was about to happily continue snacking on it, while he waited for the fireworks to die down, but…
…he found that the last jet of flame had turned it into an unrecognizable black briquette. In fact, it was still on fire in some places, forcing Keith to hastily drop it. **bleep**!
That was it! In one smooth motion, Keith reached up and grabbed his gun, stood, and aimed it at the head of the man he assumed was responsible for all of the commotion.
“You better have a **bleep** good reason why you just barbecued my breakfast!!”
“My apologies, but I had do something to get your attention.” Out of the swirling dust and smoke, Keith was able to make out a dark-haired man wearing a brown trench-coat over a faded blue uniform. The man held out a white-gloved hand and was rubbing his thumb and middle-finger together which, strangely, was causing little red sparks to shoot out.
Keith tightened his grip on the gun. “You certainly have it now.”
From behind the dark-haired man, another man wearing a blue uniform stepped out of the smoke, coughing. This one had dirty blonde hair and a cigarette stuck lazily in his mouth.
“Jeez, Colonel!” the second man complained, “I know you’re pissed, but was all of that really necessary?”
“Quit your whining, Havoc.” The Colonel said without a glance back at his companion. “You’re the one who volunteered to come with me on this wild goose chase. You’re more than welcome to leave whenever you want.”
“I only came so I could stop you from doing anything crazy. Looks like I’m falling down on the job.” Havoc grabbed a still burning piece of paper from the ground and used it to light up his cigarette.
Keith sighed and slumped in defeat. He holstered his gun. “It’s going to be one of those days….”
***
Moments later, Keith Douglas and his ’guests’ had adjourned to the nearby office of Keith’s partner, Allen Black. Keith had brought in a pot of the drek that was laughingly referred to as ’coffee’ and poured a cup for himself.
“The captain is going to kill you.” Allen warned as he leaned out his office door and stared at the ruin of Keith’s office.
“She can try. It‘s not like it‘s really my fault, anyway” Keith muttered disinterestedly as he sat in Allen’s chair. “Okay…let’s take things from the top.” He pointed at the Colonel, who had taken a seat across from him. Havoc, in the meantime, leaned against a nearby wall and took drags on his cigarette in silence.
The Colonel reached into his trench coat and pulled out a picture. He flipped it onto the table and slid to a stop, upside-down, near Keith. Keith took it and flipped it over.
Keith sighed for the third time that day. But this was a more tired sigh than the previous two. “The Heero and Riza case….”
The picture the Colonel had handed to him appeared to have been taken on Heero and Riza’s wedding. Keith suddenly felt his stomach churn. As he looked at Heero, looking quite dapper in his tuxedo, he suddenly had a flash of Heero the night of his death, with his guts strewn into a hideous message….
Keith dropped the picture. “What’s your connection to them?”
“The woman in the picture, Riza Hawkeye, she was…my fiancé.” The Colonel’s voiced cracked slightly as he said this.
Keith looked up sharply. He looked back and forth between the Colonel and the picture. “But, in this photo….”
It was the Colonel’s turn to sigh, “Maybe I really should take things from the top….” He took a deep breath, “My name is Colonel Roy Mustang. I am…or I was a high ranking member of the Actionia State Army, Alchemy Division.” That explains the pyrotechnics, thought Keith, “Hawkeye was apart of the unit assigned to me. Originally, we were a reserve unit stationed at the border of Babblstan….”
Keith leaned back in his chair. “And then the war with Babblstan broke out.”
Mustang nodded. “Right. This was back when Ozzal was still just a general in the Actionia military. My unit was called out of reserve and sent to the front lines.”
At this point, Havoc had stopped smoking and was staring at the ceiling. Both he and Mustang had haunted expressions on their face.
“I’d say that war was a slaughter,” Mustang said in a hushed tone, “but that doesn’t quite do it justice. There were incredible atrocities on both sides. Every time Ozzal pushed things too far, the Babblstonian’s pushed back just as hard. They lacked our technology, but they made up for it with numbers and the sheer ferocity in which they fought.”
“After while,” Mustang continued, “my unit began to get down to only a handful of my closest soldiers.” He sank back in his chair, “Hawkeye…Riza and I had always been close. More than just soldiers-in-arms. But it got to a point where I realized that I didn’t know what I’d do with myself if she died…so, after a particularly grueling skirmish…I proposed to her.”
Keith nearly snorted his coffee out of his nose. “Proposed to her? Right on the battlefield?”
Mustang smiled sadly. “You have to understand, our relationship had always been a wild one. And I’m not your average guy, as you could probably tell. I told her, right as we were back to back, fighting off Babblstonian guerillas, that if we made it out of the war alive, I was going to marry her. She told me that she’d hold me to that. A little while later, the battle was over and our side had emerged victorious.” Mustang then gave a bitter smile, “I guess we were still trying to hold on to that playful innocence we had back when we were still in the reserve….”
“All of this is tragic,” Allen said, fighting to sound sympathetic, “but I still don’t get where Heero enters into things.”
Mustang continued as though he hadn’t heard Allen, “Immediately after the battle, the Babblstonian’s counterattacked. Viciously. We were almost completely overrun. Riza and I got separated and I…thought I had lost her forever.” Mustang clenched his hands together, “The Babblstonians had used bombs laced with a powerful and corrosive chemical that had burned our casualties beyond recognition. We found what we thought was Riza’s corpse, but we could never have been sure….”
“I retired from the military without honors after that and spent the next 8 years a broken man. But then, I began to hear rumors from some of my old military buddies. They said that they had seen someone matching Riza’s description traveling with a Babblstonian sniper. Immediately, I scrounged up some funds and snuck into Babblstan. Havoc, who is one of the few surviving officers from my unit, agreed to help me search. We’ve been looking for over 4 years, with little to show of it save for that picture I have of their wedding. And then, we received word that she had come back to Actionia.”
Suddenly, there was a loud tapping sound. “Sorry,” Keith apologized with an embarrassed grin, “my foot fell asleep. So, uh, you came back here to look for her then, I take it?”
Initially, Mustang just sat and looked annoyed. But then he sighed and continued, “Yes, but as soon as we got here, we heard rumors that Heero had been killed…and almost nothing about Riza.”
“Well, Heero was indeed killed. I’ve got the disgusting autopsy pictures and constant nightmares to prove it.” Keith scratched his head, “But you’re right…there has been no word on his companion. My ’informants’” Mustang raised an eyebrow at the quotation marks used when Keith mentioned his ‘informants’, “tell me that she was very distraught upon Heero’s death and sought sanctuary inside a local Syndicate hideout.”
This caught Havoc’s attention. “The Syndicate?” Havoc said as he looked over, “I guess the rumor that they had hired them out as mercenaries was true.”
The comment had been directed at Mustang, but the former-state alchemist had shut his eyes and crossed his arms, deep in thought.
“Uh, Colonel? Penny for your thoughts?”
Suddenly, Mustang stood and slammed his hands onto the desk, “I need to know if she’s still alive, detective.” he said firmly to Keith, “Is there anyway I can question someone from the Syndicate directly?”
Just then, Keith’s stomach rumbled…and he had an idea. “I think I may know the member of the Syndicate who actually hired their services. He moonlights as a baker at the Luna Café. I don’t have enough evidence to charge the guy with anything, but it couldn’t hurt to have you run him through the stringer…unofficially, of course.” Keith added with a small grin.
“Let’s not waste time. Havoc! Let’s go.” Mustang was up and out of the office faster than you could say ’man-on-a-mission’.
“Right behind ya, Colonel.” Mustang’s chain-smoking friend was quick to follow.
Allen stared out the door at them. He then glanced back at his partner. “You’re evil, you know that?”
Keith stood up and stretched. “The way I see it, he gets to question someone who might know the whereabouts of his missing fiancé while I get to have breakfast and a show. And maybe enough information on our little French revolutionist to get these Syndicate psychos in the end.” Keith grinned and shrugged, “Equivalent exchange.”
***
Captain Q, ‘Q’ being short for a long a complicated name that the Captain preferred not to be referred by, might have heard the explosion in her detective’s office, had it not been for the enormous work load piling up on her desk, consuming the bulk of her attention.
She groaned as she looked at the stack of papers on either side of her. The recent riot in Lower Actionia that had started after the rampage of the rogue armed suit had created an enormous mess. She had police reports to sign, civilian complaints to look into, businesses heckling her about payment for the damages they had suffered during the riot, not to mention the whole matter of finding those responsible for the vandalism, theft, and assault on Actionia property and personnel.
She knew nothing was going to get down if she simply sat and moped about it, she was studiously going from paper to paper, trying to get things done as fast as possible….
…until there was a knock at her down.
“I told you!” she called through the door, “if you’re going to bug me at all, it had better **bleep** be a good reason! I’ve got a pile of paperwork here that would choke an accountant and the only thing that’s going to stop me from finishing it all, short of another crisis, is some idiot who’s just asking for me to plug a new hole into them!” Q took a deep breath, “So which is it? A crisis…or an idiot?”
“I’m sorry, Captain!” her secretary said as he poked his head through the door to her office, “but it is urgent! There’s a representative from the Comdot Estate out here to see you!”
“The Comdot Estate?” Q’s stomach squirmed. They had enough problems already…they didn’t need the top brass breathing down their shoulders, too! She cursed under her breath and then said, “Fine. Send whoever it is in.”
A few moments later, a man wearing a green business suit and a tan overcoat stepped into her office. He had a strange, yellow pallor to his skin and he had short black hair that was receding slightly in the front. The most noticeable part about him, however, was his small black eyes…Q couldn’t help but think about a snake she had seen once at the Actionia Zoo….
Great…not only is he from the Comdot Estate, but he’s probably some psycho, too…the Estate is full of them, I swear to God….
“How can I help you, Mr…?”
“Lunge. Inspector Lunge.” The Inspector smiled slightly…humorlessly. He dug into his coat pocket and took out his wallet. He flipped it open to reveal his badge. “Actionia Internal Affairs.”
Internal Affairs…this just keeps getting better and better….
Q reached up and rubbed her temples. “How can I help you, Inspector….”
“I am looking for one of your detectives.” Lunge said as he pocketed his wallet. “A Mr. Keith Douglas. I have some questions for him concerning his relationship with the Blaken Syndicate.”
Q bristled. “Are you accusing one of my detectives of working with those bunch of terrorists?!”
“No one here has made that claim yet, Captain.” Lunge said, smiling a bit once more, “However, I find your reaction to be quite interesting.”
Breathe, Q, just breathe….
She sat and breathed in and out until she was sure she was calm enough to continue. You’ve faced down bloodthirsty serial killers and ruthless criminals of every kind. Don’t let this guy get to you. “My apologies, Inspector. Things around here have been kind of tense, what with the recent riot and everything else…and…um, are you going to be okay?” Now that she was calm, Q finally noticed that the Inspector’s right hand was twitching almost violently.
“Ah, so you’ve finally noticed.” Lunge didn’t take his attention away from Q for a second and his hand continued to twitch as he spoke, “Right now, I am recording everything being said in my own personal computer. I understand it unnerves some people.”
Q blinked a couple of times. Yup…he’s a psycho alright. “What exactly do you want with my detective, Inspector?”
“Did you know that your detective has been in contact with a certain member of the Syndicate?” Lunge’s hands stopped briefly and then twitched again. “A man named Wyatt Matthews?”
Q crossed her arms. “I don’t suppose you happen to have proof of this.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Lunge used his left hand to reach into his coat pocket and retrieved a floppy disk. “This contains a recording of a phone conversation between your detective and Mr. Matthews. In fact, this conversation occurred right before the Mobile Armor suit began it’s rampage the other day.”
Q’s eyes widened. She had just been hit with two revelations. One: That Keith had indeed had inside knowledge that she hadn’t been privy to. And two: Internal Affairs was tapping their phone lines…and somehow, that included her detectives’ personal phones.
Q realized that she had to deal with those revelations one at a time. She decided to deal with Keith first…and hopefully figure out what Internal Affairs was up to after that.
Q pushed her chair away from her desk and stood, “Inspector, follow me. I suspect that Mr. Douglas has a lot of explaining to do…to the both of us.”
***
“That’s it. Seriously, I’m going to kill him this time, like, whoa.”
Q stared in at the charred remains of her detective’s office. She could just feel Inspector Lunge’s gloating presence behind her….
“Mr. Black!” Q exclaimed as, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of her errant detective’s partner trying to sneak away. “Front and center…now!”
Reluctantly, Allen Black approached the police captain. “Y-yes, ma’am?”
“You have five seconds to tell me where Keith is before I make your head a permanent fixture on my office wall!”
“Problems with your own ship, Captain?” Inspector Lunge said with another cold smile as he walked into Keith’s burnt office. “This isn’t going to look well on my report.”
Q felt her own fingers begin to twitch. She glared over at Allen. She couldn’t strangle Lunge without repercussions, but if she killed one of her own….
Allen seemed to get the hint from her murderous glare. “Christ, don’t give me that look. It’s not like it was my idea to have Keith go running off to the Luna Café with some soldier looking for his long lost girlfriend….”
All Q heard was ‘Keith’ and ‘the Luna Café‘. “C’mon, Allen. We’re going to go retrieve your dead partner….”
Allen gulped as Q ran back toward her office to retrieve her coat….
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Lunge spoke up, “but I will handle this matter alone.”
Q spun around. If looks could kill, Lunge’s head would have exploded right then. “Excuse me?!”
Lunge, however, wasn’t looking in Q’s direction. He was crouched on the floor of Keith’s office, poking at the debris. “I realize he is your detective, but this is my jurisdiction now. To me, it looks as though Keith was trying to destroy something…incriminating in his office.”
This time, Allen bristled at the slander of his partner’s good name. “What?! Keith would never do something like that! That soldier did all this! He said he was an alchemist!”
“Your Keith’s partner, right?” Lunge stood. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “Of course you would lie for him, wouldn’t you?”
“…what?!
“An alchemist, looking for an old flame,” Lunge continued talking without realizing the pun, “shows up here, blows apart Keith’s office, and then drags him off to the Luna Café? While it is possible, you have to admit that such a chain of events is highly improbable. Why come to Keith, of all people? An even bigger question: Why would he blow up Keith’s office?”
“Well…he probably heard that Keith was assigned the Heero-Riza case. And, as for the second question…hey, grief can make people do crazy things….” Even to Allen’s ears, though, his defense sounded pretty weak.
“Hm. Desperation can make people do crazy things, as well.” Lunge said with a frown. Then, he shrugged ever so slightly. “If you have a problem with my investigation, you’re more than welcome to take it up with my superiors at the Comdot Estate. In the meantime, I have a rogue detective to catch.” And with that, Lunge walked out of Actionia Police headquarters.
For awhile, Q could only stand there fuming. But then, she finally slumped and headed back for her office, still on a mission to retrieve her coat, but for a different reason. “I’m going to take the rest of the day off, Allen. See about getting Keith’s office fixed up. If it’s not fixed by the time I get back here tomorrow…I’ll think of some sort of gruesome fate to visit upon you.”
Even though he knew she couldn’t see it, Allen just nodded. He didn’t think he had ever seen her so worn out….
***
“Can you hear me now? Good.”
Kirara Amour weaved through the crowd as she adjusted her earpiece. All around her, the citizens of Actionia were abuzz with idle chatter, mostly concerning the riot that had occurred only days ago, as they waited for the Comdot representative to appear.
“Hey…don’t you think we should tell the Syndicate about this press conference, too?” Kirara asked into the nearly microscopic microphone affixed to the collar of her jacket.
“It depends upon what is said. At any rate, they’ll find out eventually, anyway.” the Voice said to her from the earpiece.
Kirara realized that a hush had gone over the crowd. “Things must be getting started….” She looked up at the podium that had been erected in front of the Comdot Estate. Sure enough, a white-haired man, clad in a blue and white uniform and complete with a tall hat and flowing cape, had stepped out and taken center stage.
“Citizens of Actionia! Lend me your ears!” the man called out in a booming, charismatic voice, “I know that, to many of you, Michelle Ozzal may not always seem to be the ideal leader, but nor is she the heartless tyrant that the Syndicate propaganda makes her out to be! She has heard the plight of her citizens and she now seeks to right a grave wrong in this city!”
“The truth is,” he continued, “we have discovered a link between the Syndicate and, not only the criminal riots, but the rampaging Mobile Suit as well! It is believed that it was all a Syndicate plot to stir up further resentment in it’s citizens, make them feel as though Ozzal no longer has the ability to keep them safe. But Ozzal will not stand for this injustice!!”
“The time has come for the dragon to bear it’s teeth! The Syndicate must be crushed once and for all, before they can continue their deplorable terrorists acts on our fair city and our innocent citizens! Thus, a team of Actiona’s finest, led by our war hero, Major Tom Taredan, has been dispatched to capture what are believed to be the leaders and other important personnel thought to be central to the inner workings of the Syndicate! And, to show you how dedicated Ozzal is to the idea of justice in this country, these prisoners will not be summarily executed, but be held accountable for their actions by a trial and jury held by their peers. We will do our part and,” the man stretched his hands out over the crowd, “I trust that you will do your part to ensure our streets are safe from terror…forever!!”
During the entire speech, Kirara could only shake her head and wonder who could possibly take the whole thing seriously…but then, as the man finished speaking, the crowd went into an uproar. Every single person there was clapping until their hands were red. Many people had determined expressions on their face, and several others were calling out, “Yes, we’ll bring justice back to Actionia!” or similar sentiments. It was always surprising how a few well chosen and pleasant sounding words could sway people….
“Did you hear all of that?” Kirara asked in a defeated tone.
“The whole thing. It’s just as I feared. As it stands now, there’s no way the Syndicate, unorganized as it is, can possibly hope to stand up to Actionia’s might….”
Kirara sighed, “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Yes. It’s time for us to leave, for now. Once the dust clears…things will really get started.”
“Are you sure about this? Leaving everyone behind?” Kirara bit her lip. “It almost feels like…a betrayal….”
“It can’t be helped.” the Voice said with an audible sigh, “Even with the rest of the Order standing with the Syndicate, there’s no hope of stopping the tide of violence that will come next. Our best hope is to do what we’ve always done: wait things out, and then strike from the shadows. The Syndicate has left themselves too open…too many egos running against each other. Had they been more organized, this might have not happened.”
“In a way,” the Voice continued, “this works out for us anyway. We needed a smokescreen of some sort. And you and I both needed an opportunity to disappear from the Syndicate.” There was a snort on the other side, “I’d call it divine intervention, but….”
For awhile, there was silence between Kirara and the mysterious voice on the other side of the earpiece. All around her, people were still either cheering or were gathering in small groups, excitedly discussing Actionia’s supposedly “brighter” future.
“So, that’s it then?”
“I suppose so. I have one last thing I need to do before I leave. Your actions within the Syndicate have been far less than mine, so you should be able to leave now, without raising suspicion. Tell everyone else to report to their assigned stakeout locations. They can finish their observations for today and then it will be time for them to disappear, too.”
Kirara frowned. “Won’t they run the risk of drawing attention to themselves?”
“Not really. Both the Syndicate and the Actionia military will be too concerned with each other to notice. And it is important that we are witness to the military’s methods of capture as well as those people that they successfully capture…in case, at some future point, we have a chance of rescuing our former comrades.”
This lightened Kirara’s mood somewhat. So…he wasn’t going to leave their friends hanging after all….
“One last thing, Kirara. It’s time to put ‘it’ on.”
“Right.” Kirara reached into her pocket and pulled out a black necklace. On the necklace, there was a glass cross. She slipped it over her head and hung it around her neck.
“Okay,” Kirara said, both to herself and to the Voice over the earpiece, “let’s get things started….”
***
“Goda?”
“Mr. Novak. I saw your performance on the Actionia News. Brought me to tears.”
“Amusing. Just make your calls.”
“They are already standing by. Blue Team?”
“Ready.”
“Green Team?”
“Waiting on you.”
“Excellent. Yellow team?”
“Here.”
“White?”
“Give the word already.”
“In a moment. Red team…?”
***
“I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place….”
Emeri sighed. Chasing around the mad scientist’s assistant had been fun for awhile…she had been surprised at how fast the little guy could run. But she knew the twisted streets like the back of her blood-stained blade, and soon, both she and Jake had cornered the little man.
She found that she didn’t have it in her to kill him (she had completely forgotten the fact that she was technically supposed to capture him alive). As entertaining as she found the sheer act of killing, she couldn’t shake her growing sense of melancholy.
“Gah…everything is so **bleep** boring!” She exclaimed, kicking her feet into the air. She then fell back onto the pavement…and continued poking Larry with a stick.
Larry, in the meantime, was curled up in a fetal position on the street corner, murmuring to himself. “I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place….”
Meanwhile, nearby, Jake was sitting slumped over, the drugs in his system having long worn off. Emeri looked over at him and then rolled her eyes. He was probably having an emo moment….
Suddenly, Emeri’s reverie was broken by the beeping of her phone. Lazily she reached into the folds of her dress and pulled it out.
“Red team…? Emeri…?” It was that annoying Goda-person….
Without any enthusiasm in her voice, Emeri sighed and said, “Who the hell do you think I am….”
“I told you to stay on call! Why I even put up with you is beyond me-”
Emeri had stopped listening at that point. She was wondering how far she could chuck her phone…better yet, maybe she could throw her phone, and then try and catch it with her chainblade….
“…at any rate, it doesn’t matter anymore. You now have the full permission of the Echelon to pursue, and subdue, your designated target.”
Now that caught her attention. “What did you say?”
“So you’re hard of hearing, now, too?” Goda sighed, “The Echelon has decided to crush the Syndicate once and for all. Your designated target, Father John Sadar, is now open game.”
Now, Emeri really did chuck her phone…but not out of boredom.
“Squeeeeee!!!” Emeri squealed as she jumped up, “Finally, permission!” Usually, the word left a bad taste in her mouth. In fact, she and Jake had originally been out attempting to hunt down Father Sadar anyway…before Larry had run off and Professor Wacko had forced her to chased him.
But now…there was nothing standing in her way…and she knew exactly what to do….
“Jake!” she called over, “Get your emo butt up! We’re going after that priest, finally!”
“Leave me alone….” Jake grumbled.
Emeri growled and marched over to him. “I’m sick and tired of your attitude!” she declared. She reached into her dress and withdrew a needle….
Jake glanced back at her. “No…wait…please, not again-!”
Before he could stop her, though, she jammed it into his shoulder. Jake let out a bestial howl…that became even more gruesome as she emptied out the contents of the syringe….
“Now, you’re ready.” Emeri said with a feral grin. “C’mon…let’s head for St. Maria’s Cathedral. Kira prepared a little something for me that should stop that **bleep** nun’s powers….”
Meanwhile, as they left, Larry continued to rock back and forth on the ground. “I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place….”
***
Goda face-palmed. Gawd, I hope she’s actually doing what she’s supposed to.
“Ah, well…if necessary, we’ll take down the priest ourselves.” Goda then continued his check-in with the rest of the teams.
“Alpha Team?”
“Here.”
“Beta?”
“I read you loud and clear.”
“Gamma?”
“Say the word, boss.”
“Stevie?”
“Here. Wait…what?”
“Excellent. All teams, head to your positions and begin Operation Dragon’s Teeth!”
***
“I’m glad to see you made it out in one piece…relatively speaking, anyway.”
Samson spun in his wheel chair. “Father Sadar!”
Father Sadar grinned down at the young man. “I’m so glad you made it out of there alive, Sammy. No thanks to me.”
“I’m glad to see you too. I got worried when Emeri returned so quickly that she had actually….”
“Killed me? Fortunately, I had a little divine intervention….” Father Sadar trailed off suddenly and frowned as if he had just eaten something funny.
“Uh…everything alright, Father?”
Sadar shook his head. “It’s nothing. I had a weird sense of déjà vu. Anyway, “ Sadar’s smile returned, “how have you been doing?”
Samson sighed. “I’ve been better. Bruce and the others treated me to a barbecue the other day, but, well…then the whole thing with the Mobile Suit happened….”
Father Sadar nodded, “I heard about that. Fortunately, I was unconscious during all of it. I would have made it over here sooner, to check up on you, but then I got word that the Syndicate was meeting with a member of Actionia’s underground and I headed over to see what he had to say.”
“Yeah, Hikki told me about that.” Samson said, frowning and scratching at his cast. “The Penguin is trying to recruit people to go and rescue Jake.”
“Yes. You and I both found out that Jake hasn’t always been a bloodthirsty monster, and the Penguin is convinced we can turn him over to our side if we can got him out of the Comdot Estate.”
“Are you going to be going on that mission? To save Jake?”
Father Sadar shook his head, “No, I‘m not.”
“I see….” Samson trailed off.
For awhile, there was mostly silence in the backroom of the Luna Café. In the distance, there was the usual clatter and buzz of cooking chefs and hungry customers. There was the occasional muted cuss in French as Hikki worked on a particularly difficult cake he was in the process of baking.
“Hey…Father?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think…you’ll fight Emeri again?”
Father Sadar stared out the backroom window for awhile before answering, “It’s a possibility, I suppose. She does seem to have a twisted fascination with me…but don’t worry,” he turned and gave Samson a sympathetic smile, “I won’t be bringing you along with me if I think she’ll show up again.”
“Actually…that’s not what I’m worried about….” Samson stared at the floor of the Café.
“What is troubling you, Sammy?”
“Could you…” Samson paused briefly, “could you promise me something?”
Father Sadar frowned. “Samson, what is it?”
Samson finally looked up, “Could you promise me that you won’t kill Emeri?”
Sadar’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Father…it wasn’t the Syndicate that saved me. It was Emeri. I don’t know why but…she let me go.”
Father Sadar was speechless. That psychopath?!
“I know that she’s killed lots of people and she seems to be insane, but…I get this weird feeling that she might have been a good person once. I think she may be another one of the victims of Ozzal’s stupid ambitions…like Jake is.”
Father Sadar thought about this. He scratched at the stubble on his chin, as he was prone to do when he was deep in thought.
Suddenly, Samson shook his head. “Aw, forgot it. We’re in the middle of war…we have no room for sympathy. It was a stupid thing to ask-”
Father Sadar leaned down and grabbed Samson’s shoulders. “No…it wasn’t.” He smiled, “In fact, I promise to you that I will do everything in my power to stop Emeri without killing her.”
“You will? Really?” Samson’s face lit up.
“Yes. Thou shalt not kill, after all.” Father Sadar said with a small chuckle as he straightened. He grinned down at Samson. “You know…you may be the most human person I’ve ever met. Never lose that spark of innocence, Sammy…it makes this world seem a little less bleak.”
Samson didn’t know what to say, so he simply beamed widely.
“Ahem!”
Samson and Father Sadar turned and saw Hikki standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen.
“Well! Ee zee you two are getting along udoku in ere.” Hikki said with a small pout.
“That reminds me,” Father Sadar said with a mischievous grin and sidelong glance at Samson. “I heard that Hikki invited you and Clarice to stay here for the time being…how have things been working out?”
“Wonderfully! <3” Hikki said, smiling broadly.
“Okay….” Samson said, eyeing Hikki warily, “Hikki actually only invited me…fortunately, Clarice insisted upon coming along, too.”
“Aw, now don’t be leek zat, Samson.” Hikki said walking over, “You would have been very zafe een my handz, without zhat humorlezz weetch.” He stroked Samson’s head affectionately. “Weethout her around, E’m sure thingz would have been a lot more…fun….” He smiled like a Cheshire cat.
Suddenly, Samson grabbed Father Sadar’s cane, which had been leaning against the wall. He pulled the cane sword out halfway. “I’ll cut you!”
“You break my heart, Samson.” Hikki said with another pout, “Ee think Ee I might need zomeone to console me….” He leaned closer to Samson.
“I’LL CUT YOU!!” Samson repeated with emphasis.
From out of nowhere, a book flew through the air and nailed Hikki right in the middle of his forehead.
“Gack!” Hikki fell to the ground with a small thump.
“How many times do I have to tell you?!” Clarice exclaimed as she marched into the backroom. “HANDS OFF, YOU PERVERT!”
“Not you, again….” Hikki bemoaned as he lay on the floor, a large book-shaped red mark starting to appear on his head.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Clarice said, grabbing hold of one of Hikki’s feet, “Sorry for the intrusion….” she then dragged Hikki back into the kitchen with her.
“Unhand me, you harpy!” was the last thing they heard from Hikki before he disappeared.
And, for awhile, Samson and Sadar just stared after them in shock.
“She’s scary.” Father Sadar finally commented.
“…and a lifesaver.” Samson added with a relieved sigh. He then handed Sadar’s cane back to him.
Sadar stared down at his cane for a moment before saying, “Samson…I’ve got something I need to do. I probably won’t be around for awhile….”
Samson raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Another Syndicate mission?”
“Not exactly….” Sadar said softly. Suddenly, he knelt down and grabbed Samson’s hand. Samson felt Father Sadar hand him something small and attached to string….
“If you are ever feeling lost…” Father Sadar said, closing Samson’s hand around the object, “come and find us.”
Then, Father Sadar stood and walked purposefully toward the backdoor. Samson darted back and forth between looking at his hand, still clutching the mysterious object, and Father Sadar’s retreating form.
“Wait…Father, I don’t understand….”
Father Sadar opened the door, but didn’t step out yet. The outside wind ruffled his white hair.
“A storm is coming.” Father Sadar said without turning. Then, he did turn and gave Samson one last sad smile. “Do me this one favor, in exchange for my own promise to you. Survive, Samson. Survive, no matter what.”
And then, he was gone.
For awhile, Samson could only stare at the backdoor, a look of bewilderment on his face. Eventually though, he thought to look at the object that he still held in his hand. He unclenched his fist…and saw a necklace with a glass cross….
***
Angel Sarcasta slumped in her seat in the car, her head lolled to the side as she stared lazily out the car window. Next to her, Spice continued her mumbling about how “Actionia was now such a drag without her Spam factory” and “why on earth did I sign up for this glame Syndicate thing, anyway?” Riding shotgun was the Penguin, who was remarkably silent through the whole trip. Meanwhile, one of his cronies did the actual driving. They were supposed to be on their way to rescue Jake Thompson from the clutches of the Comdot Estate, but the Penguin had insisted upon taking a roundabout route to the Estate’s back entrance, in order to make sure they hadn’t been followed.
“Why the hell am I even on this mission?” Angel groused silently to herself.
Then, she found her thoughts drifting back to a certain night she had spent with a certain blonde sniper. As she was prone to do when she was really bored. She didn’t let it show, but Riza’s death had really affected her. Heero she hadn’t really know but Riza…well, Angel had always though that they had shared a special bond that night…among other things.
After Angel had helped Riza remove her wet clothes, she had taken them down to a local laundry next to Trunk’s Pub. When she had returned, she found a still naked Riza was lying on the bed, curled up in a ball and crying.
Angel had frowned. She knew that Riza was a strong woman. It was one of the things that Angel had distantly admired about the female sniper. To have something like those effect her so badly….
“Look at yourself,” Angel snapped, “you’re falling to pieces! I know you’re better than this! Heero may be gone, but there’s no reason why you can’t keep on going! When Professor Matrix killed my father and I realized our whole relationship was merely built upon a perverted lie, do you think I curled up into a ball and cried? Hell, no! I started to plot revenge on that little pecker…and Professor Matrix, too!”
Suddenly, Angel had realized that she was being insensitive. Well…more insensitive than usual. She clapped a hand over her mouth and muttered an apology through her fingers.
Riza looked up. “No, it’s okay…you’re right.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, “This isn’t like me. I guess you could say I’ve been through a lot in these past few years….”
Angel sat on the bed next to her and placed a comforting hand on her bare shoulder. She was surprised at her warm she felt, even though she was still slightly wet….
“It’s okay,” Angel said with what she hoped was a comforting smile, “Things can only get better. And you don’t have to be alone while you deal with all this. We’re all here for you.” She grabbed Riza’s hand. “I’m here for you.”
Riza smiled and looked right into Angel’s eyes. Angel couldn’t help but notice how beautiful those blue orbs were…. “That means a lot to me.”
They sat there for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes. Angel could feel something happening between them…some sort of connection. She was suddenly painfully aware of Riza’s warm and naked body seated merely inches from here. She suddenly found herself leaning closer…closer to that warmth….
And she was surprised to see that Riza was leaning closer too. But then, Angel realized, with a lazy after-thought, that maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Riza needed someone to be close to right now…needed it badly.
And, eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, their lips had met part way and….
The car jerked to a stop, shaking Angel out of her pleasant reverie. They had arrived.
**bleep**. This always happens. Right when I get to the best part….
Angel sighed. There was no helping it. Might as well get this over with. She climbed out of the car. Spice, the Penguin, and his henchman were quick to follow suit.
After a quick stop at the trunk of the car to load up- with weapons generously provided by the Penguin himself –their small group crept towards the backdoor of the Comdot Estate.
“Let me enter first,” the Penguin said, waddling ahead of them. “There shouldn’t be any guards around at this time of day, but, just in case, I want to go on ahead before you. I have a way of dealing with hostile elements without the need for violence.” He patted his suit coat’s pocket, where his wallet presumably resided. “Horace, watch the car.” he called back at his crony.
“Yesss, boss.” Horace complied.
Angel and Spice pressed themselves against the walls of the Comdot Estate, looking around warily. Meanwhile, the Penguin went in through the small gray door that led to the generator room of the Comdot Estate.
“Alright, it’s safe. Come, quickly!” The Penguin hissed out at them after a few minutes.
With one final glance around, Angel and Spice ran in through the open door….
…and emerged in complete darkness.
Angel blinked her eyes repeatedly, trying to adjust them to the darkness.
“Hey, Penguin guy! Where the hell did you waddle off too?!” she heard Spice call out quietly.
Suddenly, bright lights snapped on and the light filled the cavernous room.
And Angel realized they had stepped into a trap.
All around them, on the catwalks that went between the large generators that provided power to the entire Estate, soldiers stood with their weapons aimed directly at Angel and Spice’s heads. The soldiers wore black body armor with glistening helmets. Stamped on their helmets and in the center of their armored vests was the symbol of the Actionia military: [as]. Which stood for “Actionia Supreme.”
“I do hope you understand,” The Penguin said, stepping out from behind one of the Actionia soldiers. “I bear no ill will against you or the rest of the Syndicate. In fact, I despise Ozzal as much as you do. I’m afraid all of this is simply business.” The Penguin shrugged.
“You lying sonuvabitch.” Angel snarled, “So, the whole song and dance you gave to us earlier was nothing but a lie?”
“Not completely,” the Penguin said, “It’s true that Jake Thompson is being held against his will here as one of Ozzal’s secret weapons. And it’s also true that Ozzal had been limiting my underworld transactions significantly. But you already knew the former, thanks to the raid on the Comdot archives, and, as for the latter…well, we worked things out. If I help Ozzal crush the Syndicate, she’s promised to let my operations continue on as usual.” The Penguin said coldly. He didn’t smile. He wasn’t taunting them. This literally was just business to him.
Spice snorted. “And you trusted that psycho betch?”
The Penguin nodded. “Indeed. In fact, for just bringing you two ladies hear, Ozzal has already begun removing the blockades over my usual shipping routes and released some of my personnel from prison. And, so long as she gets her cut of the profit, she’s willing to allow my future activities to continue unimpeded.”
Spice shook her head. “I still have a hard time believing that that heartless wench would personally agree to anything like that.”
The Penguin frowned. “Well…she didn’t personally agree to it…she’s been working out our arrangement with me through one of her Economic Advisers, a Mr. Solomon.” The Penguin shrugged again. “At any rate, the particulars of our deal won’t matter to you shortly.” The Penguin clapped his hands…and the soldiers began to advance on the Syndicate heroines. “Ozzal apparently wants you two alive, so I’d be very appreciative if you would surrender without a fight.”
“Fat chance, birdbrain.” Angel replied with a wicked smirk. She then pumped her shotgun, pointed at the nearest soldier and….
Click.
Angel’s eyes widened. No ammo!
Then, she face-palmed. Of course there was no ammo! They got their weapons from the back of the Penguin’s car, instead of bringing their own. The Penguin must have been planning that far ahead!
The sound of rapid clicking next to her told Angel that Spice had figured this out as well.
“Well, this whole situation has gone from being ghey to gheyer.” Spice said as she threw her useless shotgun to the ground in disgust. “I don’t suppose we have a plan B?”
Fortunately, Angel really went anywhere without a small supply of her own customized daggers, in addition to whatever weapons happened to be on hand.
“Plan B?” Angel repeated, as she reached into her blouse and withdrew one of her hidden daggers. “Run like hell!” She then tossed the dagger at the throat of a nearby soldier.
Without even waiting to see if she had hit, Angel ran for the door. “C’mon!” She shouted back at Spice.
But, just as Spice turned to follow her, one of the soldiers caught up with her and nailed her over the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.
Angel stopped, mere centimeters from the door and freedom. “Spice!!” She called back.
Even though she had been hit pretty hard, Spice struggled against the soldiers that were trying to pin her down and handcuff her. “Run, you idiot!” she screeched.
Angel didn’t need to be told twice. She ran out the door right as the soldiers opened fire, the shots pinging off the pavement behind her.
She knew that the Penguin’s henchman would be waiting for her if she headed back for the car, so, instead, she ran around the curve of the Comdot Estate, aiming for the open streets. She had no particular destination in mind. She just knew she had to get away…and fast.
However, her blind run left her unaware of the tall man in the pinstripe suit that suddenly appeared in front of her….
She nearly ran into him, but managed to stop just in time. She looked up to see who the hell had gotten in her way (and had realized that it was, thankfully, not a soldier) when….
She found herself staring down the long barrel of a pistol. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her attacker smile with big buck-teeth….
BANG!
Angel collapsed to the ground, her arm automatically going to her wounded shoulder. She felt her blood slowly oozing out of the wound and she gritted her teeth in pain.
Her attacker giggled. “Hee hee hee! Where are you running off to, doll? Stay awhile, the party is just getting started!”
Angel glared up at the…monster. Yes…that was the word. She realized he wasn’t quite human. He stood a foot taller than average and he was impossibly thin. He seemed to have white paint on the lower half of his face, red lipstick, and some kind of black mask covered his eyes. She also saw that the hand holding the gun was metallic….
The creature noted that she was staring at his robotic arm. He pocketed his gun and knelt down in front of her, holding out his metallic appendage.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” He said, giving another buck-tooth grin. “And just wait till you see what I can do with it!” He snapped his arm and his fingers suddenly formed a rigid blade. He traced her cheekbone with the blade, “So many beautiful things that I can cut with this hand….”
“You sick **bleep**….” she managed to gasp out. She found that she was having trouble maintaining consciousness. She had lost too much blood.
“Oh, don’t worry your pretty little head.” the thing said as he stroked her hair with his other hand, “I’ve been told by a mutual friend to not hurt a hair on your head!”
“A…mutual…friend?”
“Yes.” He gave the widest grin of all. “A wonderful little man that goes by the name of Professor Matrix.”
Angel’s eyes widened in abject horror. “No…!” she called out hoarsely….
But then, the monster grabbed her hair…and slammed her head into the ground.
“Oopsie.” Angel heard as the jaws of darkness started to claim her, “Looks like the Professor will simply have to settle with ‘mostly intact‘….” The creature’s giggles echoed into her nightmares….
***
Jacob the Liar watched as the cyborg carried off the red-haired woman. After awhile, he stopped watching and climbed onto his motorcycle.
“Two down.” Jacob said in a flat tone as he revved his motorcycle. “I wonder how the rest of the Syndicate is fairing.”
Then, he sped off, the glass cross around his neck whipping in the wind….
***
“Master Cowboy! Master Coolman! Mistress Gaurdsmen! Master…mistress? Um, April!”
Cowboy lazily turned his head. “Yikes, what’s with all the screaming, Norman?”
“Soldiers have gathered outside and-” He was cut off as a he was shredded to pieces by bullet fire.
“Norman!” Elizabeth called.
“Wow…the old guy wasn’t kidding.” Cowboy said grimly.
Cowboy, Elizabeth Saurie St. Gaurdsmen, Real Coolman, and April had been holed out in the Gunsmoke Inc. Bar for some time now. They were doing their best to relax as they waited for the word from the rest of the Syndicate about new missions. However, they didn’t expect a new mission to come to them….
Elizabeth instantly sprang to her feet and pulled out her dual pistols. “Looks like it’s time to eat my fill!” She exclaimed with her trademark feral grin.
“Yeah, Elizabeth!” Real called out encouragingly. “You be mad blackin’!”
Cowboy glared over at the German. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Shut up.” Real snapped back with a snort. “At least I’m being encouraging! What the hell are you going to do?”
“I am going to head to the back of the room and stay out of the way.” Cowboy said, lifting up Hagi’s cello and walking towards the back of the bar, “I’m a lover, not a fighter, after all….”
“Yeah, I’m with the opera singer.” April said, following.
“What about you, little man,” Elizabeth asked in Real’s direction, “you up for a fight?”
“Hellz yeah.” Real pulled a sawed-off shotgun from a duffle bag full of guns at his feet. He pumped it and grinned.
“Great….” Elizabeth then turned her attention to the fight soon to come. There were three entrances to the Gunsmoke Inc. Bar: The main door, a side door, and the backroom door behind the actual bar. She knew (or at least she hoped) that Cowboy and April would warn her if soldiers entered from the backdoor, so she decided to concentrate on the main door and side door.
No sooner had Elizabeth finished planning things out when the first soldiers began to stream through both doors at once.
“You’re making this too easy!” Elizabeth cried out with a laugh. She aimed one pistol at the main entrance and the other pistol at the side entrance, and then…the fun really got started.
Real found that he didn’t actually get to do much of anything. Elizabeth stood in the center of the room, plugging holes in any soldier that dared to enter the bar before they could even return fire. Soon, there were a pile of bodies littering the bar.
He shuddered when he saw the intense expression on Elizabeth’s face…the look of sheer feral pleasure….
“Hey, watch out!” He called when he realized that one of the soldiers had actually managed to squeeze off a few rounds.
Elizabeth deftly stepped to the side at the last moment, and the bullets whizzed by.
“Heh, are lucky shots the only thing they can manage?” Elizabeth taunted.
“I hate to interrupt, E double-S G,” she suddenly heard Cowboy call, “but they’re coming through from this end, too!”
Without missing a beat, Elizabeth swung around the pistol she had aimed at the side door and began shooting the soldiers that were swarming in through the back door. Meanwhile, April and Cowboy ducked down behind the bar on either side of the door.
A clattering sound at the front door suddenly caught Elizabeth’s attention. Her eyes widened. “Grenade!!” she called. She then kicked over a table and dove behind it.
Sure enough, a small explosion rocked the front of the Gunsmoke Inc. bar a second later, showering the whole room in debris. Covered by the explosion, several Actionia soldiers managed to make their way through the front door and began chewing up the place with gunfire.
Elizabeth peered out from behind her makeshift shield and fired off as many shots as she could before ducking back behind it as the table was riddled with the soldier’s bullets. Even though she had been firing blindly, she was satisfied to hear the sound of several of the soldiers gasping and falling over in pain.
“Real!” she yelled over the sound of the gunfire, “Cover me!”
“Gotcha!” Real then poked his head out from behind the table he had tipped over when Elizabeth had called to him about the grenade. He managed to get off a few buckshot bursts before he was forced back behind his shield.
However, Real had managed to accomplish what Elizabeth wanted: a distraction. She jumped up and stood on the lip of the sideways table. She then pushed off of it…and flew through the air.
Yes…here was the moment!
Everything had slowed down for her, as she went flying through the air, in the direction of the enemy soldiers. She saw, in slow motion, the soldiers desperately turning their weapons away from Real and trying to get a bead on her.
You’re too slow!
Elizabeth grinned from ear to ear. She brought her pistols up…and dropped them one by one….
***
However, in her mad dash to kill the soldiers invading from the front, Elizabeth had forgotten the soldiers coming from the side and the back.
The first soldier poked his head through the back door to look around…as Cowboy brought his cello down on the creep’s head. The wooden instrument shattered into a thousand wooden pieces, but it managed to floor his attacker.
Cowboy held up the broken handle of the cello, looking at it forlornly. “Crap…my chelleaux!”
“It’s pronounced ’cello’, you idiot-” However, Real couldn’t finish rant, as soldiers had also begun to march through the side door. Since his table-shield had been aimed at the front door, it didn’t save him from the hail of bullets that came at him from the side….
“Crap…the annoying German guy!”
“I’m sorry about this, Cowboy.”
Cowboy spun around…and found that April had stripped the soldier he had knocked out and was now wearing the soldier’s armor and helmet. April aimed his/her borrowed gun at Cowboy’s head.
“Crap…the sneaky transvestite!”
April then brought the gun around and punched Cowboy in the face with the butt of his/her rifle, knocking Cowboy out cold.
“Don’t worry,” April whispered as he/she lifted Cowboy and hefted him over his/her shoulder. “I’ll figure out how to get us out of this….”
He/she then headed for the exit, making sure to salute the officer located outside directing things. “Sir, I have captured a prisoner….”
***
Elizabeth rolled as she hit the ground and spun around.
Crap.
She could only watch as the enemy soldier carried Cowboy’s limp body out the back door…meanwhile, more soldiers came running in from the side door. She glanced over and saw Real’s bullet-ridden corpse.
“Just me now, eh?” Elizabeth grinned as she reloaded both pistols using the ammo belt around her waist. She assumed that April had been taken down as well…. “Fine…I guess I work better alone, anyway.”
She then sprinted towards the soldiers that were similarly charging toward her, unleashing a barrage of gunfire as she ran. The soldiers returned fire, but found it difficult to properly aim at a target that was bearing down on them so quickly. The most they managed to do was cut her cheek with a stray bullet…and she didn’t even seem to notice that, either.
It soon became apparent to Elizabeth that the enemy was retreating. The soldiers actually tripped over each other as they tried to escape from her relentless assault. Elizabeth continued firing at them as they ran out the side door, killing a lot of them even as they finally reached the streets.
“That’s what you get for messing with the Syndicate!” Elizabeth screamed out at them. Still holding her pistol, she even flipped them the bird, though she knew they couldn’t see her at this point.
Despite everything- Real’s death, Cowboy’s capture, and April’s unknown fate –Elizabeth couldn’t help the feeling of joy that overcame her. It had been awhile since she had felt so alive!
And so, Elizabeth had a wide grin affixed to her face as she holstered her pistols and-
-found that she could no longer move.
Elizabeth would have widened her eyes in shock…if she had any control over her body left.
What the **bleep** is happening to me?
Suddenly, she found herself bending over backwards, until she was practically crab-walking. She fought the mysterious force that had overcome her muscles…fought it with every fiber of her being. But her body refused all of her commands….
“W-what…the Devil…?” she did manage to stammer out.
“The Devil indeed.” she heard from the side entrance. A silky smooth voice that sent involuntary chills down her spine….
The man finally stepped into her view. He wore an all white coat with what seemed like a skull and barbed wiring serving as a shoulder pad. He had dark blue hair that hung over his- in any other circumstance –handsome face. He had sickly yellows eyes…and an even sicker smile on his face.
He knelt down near her and peered at her with intense curiosity. He reached out a hand and gently stroked her arm.
“Such beautiful muscles…trained to be perfect killing machines. Able to instinctively react to any danger.” The man’s smile widened. “Too bad they are but playthings to my mind.”
“I can see by the confusion in your eyes,” the blue-haired man continued, “that you are probably wondering what manner of creature I am. The truth is, I am as loathsomely human as you are. My name is Legato. Legato Bluesummers. And I am humanity‘s greatest nightmare.”
Elizabeth tried to stammer out a response, tried to spit at him, tried to do something to rebel against the control he had over her, but all she could do was grit her teeth and glare. For his part, Legato seemed to not notice her struggle at all…his control over her never wavered.
“Ah, but what is this? You seem to have injured yourself.” Legato reached a hand up to her face and turned it so he could see the still bleeding cut on her cheek. She flinched (or tried to, anyway) as he leaned over and licked the blood that had spilt onto her face from the wound. “There…much better.” He smiled again…clearly enjoying her discomfort.
“I’m afraid our playtime must be short today,” he then said with a sigh, “I do have orders to bring you back to the Echelon. So, for now, I must say goodnight….” He reached over and closed her eyelids…and the darkness claimed Elizabeth….
***
Kaia Namek watched as the soldiers lifted the last captive from the Gunsmoke Inc. bar into the back of an armored APC.
Kaia lowered her binoculars. “That one must be Elizabeth…Furion’s going to be glad that they at least captured her alive.”
Then, Kaia shoved the binoculars into her coat pocket. She turned toward the edge of the roof…and leapt onto the roof next to her.
My job here is done…time to disappear….
Kaia continued hopping from rooftop to rooftop, the glass cross around her neck whipping around wildly in the wind….
***
Bruce Herman had no time to think as he heard the whistling sound coming closer. He grabbed Sarah’s hand and ran towards the screen door that led out to his patio.
“Bruce, what’s wrong?!” Sarah exclaimed in alarm as he pulled her along with him.
“No time…just run!”
He slid open the screen door as fast he could and ran out into his backyard. Outside, his friends were gathered around another makeshift barbecue that Surool had managed to put together with the food they had stolen from various stores, along with the remaining meat from Bruce’s own freezer. All of them looked up in alarm as he came running out.
And then, Bruce’s house exploded.
Bruce dived to the ground and did his best to cover Sarah from the falling shrapnel. Within moments, though, the shrapnel had stopped falling and all that remained of his house was a burning crater.
Bruce looked up and saw his friends come running over.
“Yo…you okay, boss?” Grant asked, the hookah still in his mouth.
Shatter gave both Sarah and Bruce a hand as they got up. He glanced past them at the smoking crater that was formerly Bruce’s house. “WTF was that?!”
Surool looked the two of them up and down. “Are you guys hurt anywhere?”
“No,” Sarah said shakily, “I don’t think so…Bruce?”
Bruce looked back at the remains of dream house with tears in his eyes. “Who would do something like this?”
“Guys…we’ve got company….” Jean Pierrot, who was standing a small distance away with his hands shoved in his pockets, stared intently at the forms that were beginning to take shape in the smoke that billowed from the crater of Bruce’s house.
The rest of them peered though the smoke as well…and sure enough, something was moving in there….
Suddenly, out stepped an entire battalion of Armed Suits and a full contingent of soldiers. At the head of this army was a stern looking man with a brown trenchcoat, sunglasses, a red beret, and a large mustache.
“It can’t be….” Shatter muttered incredulously, “…could it?”
Sarah clung tightly to Bruce as the column of soldiers and mecha drew closer. “Shatter…who is it?”
“I know who it is.” Surool said with a frown. “It’s the Umbrolos.”
“What…like the sea monster?” Grant asked with his typical expression.
“No…much worse.”
“I have come to arrest the criminals responsible for the vandalism on several Actionia shops as well as the assault on Actionia police personnel!” The Commander at the head of the column called in an authoritive voice. “Cooperate, or else!” Right on cue, the soldiers and Armed Suits stopped and aimed their weapons at them.
Suddenly, a jagged cut appeared on one of the Armed Suits. The top half of the Armed Suit slid part way off the rest of the machine before falling over.
Jean Pierrot pulled the scythe end of his kusarigama back toward him. He then spun it on it’s chain in the air while grinning maniacally. “I don’t **bleep** think so, Mr. Mustache.” He turned to Grant. “Quick, grab the firebombs we have stashed! We’re gonna need them!”
With an expression that almost looked happy, Grant ran back toward the barbecue, where they had kept the bulk of the items they had ‘appropriated’ from various Actionia stores.
However, the Commander appeared to be unimpressed, glancing over in seeming disinterest at his fallen Armed Suit. But then, he turned back toward Jean and, in a low voice, said, “You’re going to pay for that, you filthy punk.”
The Commander raised his wristwatch, which actually seemed to be a communicator as well. “Bring down the thunder.” he said into it.
Suddenly, there was another whistling noise.
Surool spun around, his eyes wide with fear. “For the love of God, run Jean!”
Slowly, a sense of peril dawned on Jean Pierrot. He swung the chain around and clicked his kusarigama back into place. He then returned it to the position on his back as he turned and began to run as fast his legs could carry him….
…but it was too late. From out of the sky, a 800-pound bomb dropped on his head…and all that remained was a smoking crater.
“Jean!!!” Shatter called out, his mouth agape at the sight he had just seen…his friend consumed in a fireball….
Sarah let out a small whimper and buried her face in Bruce’s chest. Bruce clutched her closer and hung his head.
Surool’s eyes were closed, and his shoulders were slumped. After a moment of silence, his eyes suddenly flashed open. “Grant! Freeze…now!” He called out.
Grant Orochi had heard the explosion behind him, but had been too focused on getting the firebombs to care. Now, though, he did turn…and saw what remained of his friend. He sank to the ground and began cussing up a storm.
“Those bastards…those **bleep** bastards….” was all they could make out of Grant’s tirade.
Surool, however, turned toward the Commander and glared at him. But then, sighed and raised his arms. “We surrender.”
“Excellent.” The Commander said, the same stern face he had when he had first shown up still affixed to his face. The Commander then looked at the rest of the people there.
But none of them had anything else to add. Shatter just slumped and angrily kicked at the debris near his feat. Bruce held tightly to Sarah. In the background, Grant continued his ranting and raving.
The Commander snapped his fingers. “Take them into custody.”
***
“Awww…poor guy.” Cid said, staring at the crater where the man with the chain-scythe had been standing.
“Have…you…seen…enough…yet?” Proof asked breathlessly, trying to support Cid’s weight on his shoulders.
“Yeah,” Cid said, a sad expression on her face, “the big guys are carting off everyone.” Cid climbed down, jostling the glass cross on Proof’s necklace.
“Okay, then.” Proof said, adjusting his sunglasses. “It’s time to hit the road and meet up with Furion.”
***
“OMAGOSH!! HAVOC?!”
The blonde man’s face turned bone white. “Not this **bleep** again!”
Suddenly, from the back of the Luna Café, Luna Monegossde ran up and tackled Havoc. “I’VE MISSED UUUUU!!!!”
“Havoc what the hell is-” Mustang could only watch as the insane proprietress of the Café then dragged the poor soldier into the kitchen with her.
“I’m sorry, Colonel!” Havoc called out, “Dammit, Keith! Why didn’t you tell me it was this Luna who owned the Café…!?”
Keith blinked once. And then he averted his eyes from the whole thing. “And now for breakfast!” He walked in and sat down at an available table, as if he hadn’t just seen Havoc abducted by n psychotic fangirl.
Mustang looked back and forth between the kitchen that Havoc had been dragged off to (where he could still hear Havoc screaming) and Keith, who had picked up a menu and was flipping through it. He gritted his teeth and slapped a palm to his forehead.
Fine, I guess I take matters into my own hands!
“Alright!” Mustang yelled, using his anger and frustration to amplify his voice, “I’m looking for the chef that works with the Syndicate! If I don’t seem him out here in five minutes, this place is getting torched!!”
Keith glanced up at Mustang briefly…and then returned to looking at the menu. “Hmm…maybe I’ll try the scones today….”
However, a few seconds later, a blonde man with a beret did poke his head out of the backroom. Mustang couldn’t help noticing the large welt in the middle of his forehead….
“Goodnez! What iz all ze ruckus?”
“You.” Mustang held out his hand, thumb and forefinger lightly sliding against each other. “Are you the person who hired the freelance snipers Heero and Riza?”
Hikki glanced at the man’s outstretched hand. He then smiled weakly, “Well…who wantz to know?”
Mustang growled. “Just answer the **bleep** question!” His thumb and forefinger had begun to produce sparks again….
Keith, who had finally gotten some decent coffee and his scones, peered over at the two of them as he sipped his coffee. Well, here comes the moment of truth….
And, for the second time that day, Keith’s world exploded.
Well, okay, so the front of the Café exploded.
Keith used his leg to kick over the table he had been sitting at, dived behind it, and pulled out his pistol. He would have been feeling a tremendous sense of déjà vu about the whole thing if it hadn’t been for the fact he had actually managed to save his pastry this time. In fact, as the smoke begin to clear at the front of the Café, Keith continued munching on one of the scones he had saved.
In the meantime, Mustang had jumped in front of Hikki and used his heavy trenchcoat to shield his face from the blast. After the explosion was over, Mustang quickly brought his alchemy hand up…and prepared for what awaited on the other side of the smoke.
He was greatly surprised when all that stood behind the smoke was silver-haired man in a white business suit.
“My word! Did zey really have to blow up ze whole front of ze Café?!” The man complained with a cough. “Ee do come here sometimez, people!”
Hikki peered out from behind Mustang. “Mizter Argeno…?”
Mustang glanced back at the chef. “You know him?”
Argeno’s face lit up when he saw the blonde Frenchman. “If it izn’t the pretty young baker! Juzt who Ee was looking for!” Absentmindedly, Argeno had reached into his pocket and withdrew what looked like a piece of candy….
Mustang smiled determinedly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to get in line. I have business to discuss with this “pretty young baker”, first….”
Argeno seemed to ignore him…at first. He lifted the piece of candy and wiggled it in Mustang’s direction. “Would you like some? It’s wild razpberry.”
Mustang gritted his teeth. I’m surrounded by crazy people! “Look, pal, I’m sure what game you’re playing here-”
“Ah, well. More for me.” Argeno then unwrapped the candy and popped it into his mouth. He closed his eyes and savored the flavor for a second…but when he opened his eyes, Mustang noticed a slight change in expression….
Argeno’s eyes were narrowed and he wore a wicked smile. “Ee’m afraid you will have to postpone your biznezz with my baker, Mizter State Alchemizt. He haz far more prezzing concernz.” After he said all this, Argeno snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, a pair of Actionia Soldiers came rushing out…and in between them, they carried two people who were tied up and gagged; a young man and a woman.
“Samson!” Hikki cried out. “And….”
Clarice glared at him and bit at her gag.
“Samson!” Hikki repeated.
Clarice began to kick and squirm and tried to shout at Hikki through her gag. But, of course, it came out as simply muffled ranting and raving. In the meantime, Samson looked with concern from Argeno to Hikki. He too tried to say something, but, again, it didn’t come out.
“Ee am sure you understand ze picture, Mizter Hikki.” Argeno said as he reached a hand out and patted Samson’s head. “Surrender or will we have no choice but to perform ze unpleasant duty of killing zese rats we found in your backroom.”
“Hikki, don’t listen to him!” Mustang pleaded, without taking his attention away from Argeno or the two soldiers and their prisoners. “You can’t negotiate with someone like him-”
“Alright, I’ll surrender!” Hikki called out, pushing past Mustang. “Juzt don’t hurt my Samson!”
“Nuph, Hiffi, dof’t doph ipht!” Samson trying to yell through his gag.
“You’re making a mistake….” Mustang similarly warned as Hikki walked out of the hole in the front of the café and toward Argeno, his shoulders slumped.
“What other choice do Ee have?” Hikki asked forlornly, both to himself and Mustang.
Hikki came to a stop right in front of Argeno. He held out his hands. “You can have me….”
Argeno reached down and stroked Hikki’s hair. “Zere’s a good boy. Don’t worry…we will take good care of you.” He snapped his fingers again, and another pair of soldiers came running and cuffed Hikki.
Next, an armored APC with the symbol “[as] “ stamped on the side came rolling out. Argeno and his prisoners entered the APC and the APC drove off.
“**bleep** it!” Mustang cursed. “That little fool!”
“You can’t really blame the guy.” Keith said, sidling up next to Mustang, sipping at his coffee. “What else could have he done?”
Mustang glared at him. “I suppose you were just sitting there drinking your coffee this whole time.”
Keith nodded. “While I find this whole thing as deplorable as you do, my hands are tied as well. Those guys were from the Actionia military. We’re technically on the same side….”
“You may be, but I left all of that behind a long time ago. And I am not going to stand here and let Ozzal ruin anyone else’s life!” Nor am I going to give up my one chance at finding out what happened to Riza!
Keith could only shrug. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’m probably going to need it.” Mustang then turned in the direction of the kitchen, “Havoc! Get your butt out here!”
Keith was surprised when Havoc did indeed show up…but he was even more surprised when he realized that Havoc was standing there almost completely naked, save for a fraspberry thong and a turtle-shaped hat.
Havoc, seemingly oblivious to his current state of appearance, held a gun in his hands and a determined expression on his face. “Colonel! I heard an explosion! Are you alright?”
Keith choked on his coffee while Mustang face-palmed for the second time in the past few minutes.
“Get your **bleep** clothes on, Havoc! We’ve got a baker to rescue!”
***
Meanwhile, in the back of the café, no one noticed the man with feathery white hair and a brown coat get up from his table, pay his tab, and then head out the backdoor.
“So, Ozzal even came here, too?” The man said to himself as he reached the back-alley. If anyone had seen him say this, they would have immediately noted that he had done so without moving his lips. “Furion’s fears appear to have been justified if she no longer fears operating in the open like this….”
The man stepped out of the alley, as a stray wind through the streets jostled the glass cross around his neck….
***
“Cillie, get up! We’ve got trouble!”
“It’s Cille….” Lucille Compton groaned as she rolled over in bed. Where am I? Cille wondered to herself as she realized she wasn’t in her own bed….
Suddenly, it all came back to her. Straight Cougar. The Syndicate. Ozzal. And she was in a hotel room in Lower Actionia, since it had become apparent that her own house in Orly was no longer safe….
Cille sat straight up in bed. “**bleep** it, I must have fallen asleep. I’m sorry-” She ducked as her suitcase came flying at her. It crashed into the hotel wall behind her. “OMQWTFBBQ, Cougar!! Are you trying to kill me?!”
“No, but you will most certainly be dead if you don’t get moving!” Cougar exclaimed as he pressed himself up against the wall next to the window. He peered through the blinds out at the streets of Lower Actionia. “Good…no one yet….”
Fortunately, Cille had only arrived at the hotel last night, and didn’t have much to pack. She only had to grab her toothbrush from the adjoining bathroom and the chainmaille inlay she had been working on to pass the time the other night from the nightstand next to the bed. The rest of the stuff she had taken from her house was still in her suitcase.
“Where’s the fire?” Cille asked in a somewhat annoyed tone as she hefted her suitcase.
Cougar flipped his signature purple shades on and whipped open the door to the outside streets. “I just found out that things are stirring inside the Comdot Estate…things even beyond Ozzal’s control!”
“’Things beyond Ozzal’s control?’” Cille asked breathlessly as she chased after Cougar’s fleeting form. “Is Ozzal in charge of Actionia or not?!”
“She is! But some of her…associates have gotten impatient with her handling of the Syndicate issue!” Cougar suddenly stopped in the middle of the street. “Now where the hell did I put my car?!”
Cille glanced around. Sure enough, Cougar’s flamboyantly purple car was nowhere to be seen. And it was hard to miss something like that. “Maybe it finally exploded.” Cille stated derisively, having witnessed, first hand, Cougar’s constant mistreatment of all manner of wheeled vehicle.
“No…that’s not-” Cougar suddenly spun around and faced Cille, “Run, Cille! Quickly!”
Cille had recently learned never to doubt Cougar, even though she had only know him for a short period of time. He had always come through for her in the end…in fact, the only reason why she was probably still alive was thanks to the eccentric Alter-user. So, when Cougar told her to run, Cille was willing to turn and do so without a moment’s hesitation…or at least she would have, had it not been for someone standing in her way….
No…not someone. Something. She glanced up at it and quickly realized it wasn’t human. It was humanoid in form, though. It was all white and it looked like it’s arms were being restrained by a straight jacket. Half of it’s face was dominated by a blue sheet of metal, while the other side was primarily dominated by a large red eye. From the back of it, two elongated strips of purple metal floated freely behind it.
Cille quickly reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small pistol. She started to aim it at the metallic creature before her….
“I wouldn’t, Ms. Compton.” A calm and somewhat arrogant voice said from behind her.
She turned and saw a young man walking down the street toward her and Cougar. He had clean-cut, shoulder-length green hair that hung over his eyes slightly. He wore a black and purple uniform with an unknown insignia pinned on the collar. The insignia looked like a stylized version of the letter ’E’….
Despite the situation, she saw Cougar give a wry smile as he noticed the young man striding purposefully toward them. “Well…this must be fate! Or, at least an unpleasant coincidence. Long time no see…Ryuho.”
Ryuho only spared a momentary glance in Cougar’s direction. “I’ll deal with you in a moment, traitor.”
He then walked up to Cille and stood stiffly. “Ms. Compton. By the authority of the Actionia Military, I demand your immediate and unconditional surrender. Any resistance and you’ll simply make things harder for yourself in the long run.”
Cille just stared at him. Finally, she said, “Um…thank you, but I don’t really find the idea of spending time in the Comdot Estate prisons all that appealing.”
Cille shifted her feet slightly and caught Cougar’s eye. Cougar seemed to understand what she was planning and nodded….
“Okay then…k, thx, bai!” Cille yelled over her shoulder as she took off running down the street, away from both Ryuho and the white-robot thing.
At the same time, there was a flash of rainbow light around Cougar’s feet, which coalesced into what looked like purple skates. He was a blur as he charged toward Ryuho….
Ryuho closed his eyes and smiled ever so slightly. “Big mistake….”
Suddenly, the white-robot’s purple tendrils lashed out in opposite directions….
One tendril snared the feet of the blurred form of Cougar, forcing him to the ground with a yelp. And the other one snaked around Cille’s waist, halting her in her steps.
The metallic monster then lifted the two of them up in the air. Cougar was held upside down by his feet. Meanwhile, Cille struggled to wriggle out of the thing’s hold around her stomach.
“If you had only cooperated,” Ryuho remarked with a sigh, “I wouldn’t have had to resort to this. But people like you never really think about your actions, do you? After all, if you had, I wouldn’t have been given the order for your arrest. Society’s laws exist for a reason, Ms. Compton, and when they are broken,” Ryuho glared over at Cougar, who was also attempting to squirm free, unsuccessfully, “people get hurt!”
The white-robot swung Cougar around and slammed him into the pavement, causing Cougar to gasp in pain. Cille then watched in horror as the tendril brought Cougar up…and slammed him into the street again.
“Stop it!” Cille cried. “You’re going to kill him!!”
“This man betrayed his comrades and his government.” Ryuho said coldly, “He deserves to be punished.”
The tendril slammed Cougar into the ground once more.
“Please, stop it!!” Cille cried out once more, on the verge of tears, “I promise to cooperate! Just, please, don‘t kill him…!”
With a flick of the tendril, the white monster sent Cougar flying through the air…and crashing into the street.
“Very well.” Ryuho said, turning back to her, “I’m going to let you down now. You shall accompany me back to the Comdot Estate…without incident. Understand?”
Cille glared at him through tear-filled eyes. “Yeah, I understand, you cold **bleep**….”
Ryuho took no offense at all. “Good. Let us go, then.”
***
“Hey, you okay there, buddy?”
Cougar stared up blearily at the strange man that was leaning over him. He had a green-and-white striped hat that matched the loose green kimono he wore. On the man’s bare chest he noticed something sparkling…a glass cross….
Cougar found that he could no longer keep his head up and he fell back against the pavement, consciousness filtering out of him….
“Cille…I’m sorry….”
“Ah, what does it matter,” the strange man said, as he scratched at his bleach blonde hair and picked up his cane, “My work here is done anyway….”
***
“That’s it…a little to the left…perfect! Okay, let’s set it down….”
Trunks and Gottel carefully set the brand new DDR machine down in the corner of the Pub where the original DDR machine had been. The old machine, having been shredded by gunfire in an Actionia raid on the pub a few weeks back, had taken up permanent residence in the back alley, where it was waiting to be taken to the city trash heap.
Trunks wiped his brow. “Shew! Thanks for your help with this, Gottel.”
“Not a problem.” Gottel said, as he reached down and plugged the machine in. “Too bad you can’t get your high score back as well….”
“Heh, I’ve actually come to terms with that. Now, I can work on an even higher score than before!” Trunks exclaimed with a wild look in his eye.
Out of the corner of his eye, Trunks noticed the door to the pub open and saw a man with long white hair step in.
“Sorry, pal. The pub is closed today.” Trunks’ eyes narrowed. “Say…you’re not one of my regulars….”
The white-haired man stared intently at the two of them with wolfish eyes. “No…I’m not.” The man’s voice was as cold as frost….
Trunks suddenly noticed that the man had a katana at his belt…and, with a click, the man had unsheathed it partially with his thumb.
This guy means business….
Trunks frowned. He didn’t like this situation at all. Next to him, he noticed Gottel tense as well.
Before he could do anything else, the man spoke again, with his voice laced with venom. “I only need one of you.”
It took a few seconds for Trunks to register what happened next. His eyes wide, he glanced over and saw Gottel…impaled on the man’s sword.
The man with the white hair gave a vicious grin.
Then, he used his foot to slide to Gottel off the end of his sword. Gottel’s eyes were as wide as saucers with shock. Gottel’s limp body fell to the floor of the pub with a sickening thud.
Vicious wiped his katana on the back of his sleeve and sheathed his sword. He then walked partway toward the door leading out of the pub. He stopped and turned back in Trunk’s direction.
“Coming?”
Trunks’ face contorted in fury. That murderous **bleep**-!
“Trunks…don’t.”
Trunks glanced down in shock. Gottel was still alive…just barely. Blood was slowly fountaining out of the hole in his chest. He was using one hand to try and stop the bleeding, while he tugged at Trunk’s pant leg with the other bloody hand.
“Don’t do it. You can’t take this guy.”
Trunks clenched his fists tightly together…but then he nodded reluctantly. “I don’t really like the idea of tucking my tail between my legs and walking out of here obediently…but you may be right. I either leave here with this guy…or I don’t leave here at all.”
“Yeah, and I need you alive.” Gottel said with a weak smile. “Someone has to avenge my ass.”
“You have five seconds.” Vicious stated emotionlessly.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Trunks walked toward the door, sparing one last glance at Gottel, “Hang in there…I’m sure someone will be by here eventually.”
But either Gottel was reserving his strength by not speaking or he was already….
Trunks shook his head at the thought. He then stepped through the door to his Pub, wondering if he would ever get to see it again….
Trunks suddenly realized that it had gotten cloudy out, as he finally reached the streets of Orly, Vicious walking slightly ahead of him with his hands in his pockets. It irked him at how relaxed the white-haired assassin seemed. Relaxed…and yet, Trunks knew the man could kill him in the blink of an eye….
Up ahead, a young man in priestly vestments suddenly came whipping around the corner, the glass cross around his neck whipping wildly about as he ran.
“Excuse me!” The young priest called out as he nearly bowled over Vicious.
Vicious’s face flared with irritation as he watched the young man run away. Should I kill him for that…?
No…he only had permission to kill or subdue Syndicate targets. Unwarranted civilian deaths would cause problems for the Echelon in the long run.
Thinking about his Syndicate target, Vicious quickly glanced back….
Only to find that Trunks had disappeared from sight.
***
Trunks ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Fortunately, the long nights with the DDR machine hadn’t been for nothing. He had a well of stamina to tap into and he used that to put as much distance as possible between himself and the white-haired sword-wielder.
When he heard another set of feet following behind him, Trunks nearly gave himself whiplash as he spun his head to look behind him while he continued to run.
But it wasn’t Vicious, thankfully. It was, instead, the young priest that had provided him the distraction.
“Hey, there!” The young man said with wide smile, as he ran alongside Trunks.
“Hey…thanks for the distraction back there!”
“Well, actually that was more of an accident, really.” The priest admitted with a sheepish grin. “I was just passing through, you could say.”
“Yeah…I don’t recognize you from around here. You get lost on your way to church?” Trunks was surprised to find himself joking at a time like this. In fact…the whole situation was surreal. Here he was, running for his life from an insane swordsman, and he was making small talk with a lost priest….
“Something like that.” The young man said with a laugh. “The name’s Band, by the way. I was glad I could finally meet your Trunks.” Band suddenly turned and went running in the opposite direction. “Hopefully you’ll actually live through all of this! I’d love to challenge you to a DDR match on your new machine, sometime!” he called back.
“Hold on a second!” Trunks called after the young priest, “Just who the hell are you exactly and how do you know me?! And what makes you even think you could match me at DDR?!”
But, at this point, Band had disappeared around the corner of a building.
“What the hell was that about?!” Trunks muttered under his breath as he continued running.
For awhile, Trunks ran without a destination in mind. But then, he realized that he couldn’t keep running blindly. Especially considering that even his considerable stamina was slowly being sapped….
Then, a thought dawned on him. “I’ve got to get in touch with Hill…there’s no safer place in the world to stay than a weaponsmith’s store!”
And with that thought spoken aloud, Trunks took off in the direction that would lead him into the seedier parts of Lower Actionia….
***
“Aoi, it’s almost time to close down the place for tonight!”
Gently, almost reverently, Aoi placed his banana-colored fish bookmark in the copy of Franny and Zoey and closed the book. “Alright, Ms. Libra.”
Aoi walked leisurely to the front of Ghost’s Book Shop, the book carefully tucked into the crook of his arm.
“Thanks for volunteering to help out here, Istari.” Ms. Libra said, as she began to pull down the curtains to the front windows of her store. “Q’s been so busy with all her police work that she hasn’t even had time to stop in here and say hi.”
“Not a problem, Libra.” Istari said with a smile, as she went along the bookshelves and making sure everything was in order. “My art store wasn’t hit as bad as the other places that got vandalized during the riot, but it still needed some work done. And I’m afraid that I don’t take well to simply sitting around and waiting for my store to get fixed up again.”
Istari and Libra had only recently become friends, but already they talked as if they were old acquaintances. When Istari had shown up at the Book Store for something- anything –to take her mind off the riots and her store, Libra had quickly acquiesced to Istari staying and helping her out around the bookstore.
Aoi walked by the two chattering women as he found the place on one of the bookshelves where his borrowed book belonged. Istari quirked an eyebrow as she watched him place it back on the shelf.
“Wouldn’t it make sense to just buy the book?” Istari asked.
“I suppose so,” Aoi said without looking at her, “but I’ve always found it a somewhat romantic experience to sit and read a book in an old bookstore like this. I’ve actually read Franny and Zoey several times now. I tend to fall back on Salinger’s works if Libra doesn’t get anything new in for awhile.”
Istari snorted. “Well, you’re certainly one interesting kid….”
“Don’t mind him,” Libra said with a laugh, “Aoi is another one of my unofficial helpers around here. As long as I don’t bug him too often while he’s reading, he’s generally happy to run errands for me on occasion.”
“With you around Ms. Erangua,” Aoi said with a small smile, “I might actually get the whole day to read, for once.”
This time, even Istari couldn’t help but smile. “And a cheeky brat, to boot.” She patted him on the head, “It’s a good thing Libra puts up with you.”
Aoi grinned up at her…and then, suddenly, glanced sharply at the door to Libra’s store. “I think we may have company.”
“What…?”
Sure enough, there was the sound of pounding from the other side of the door a few seconds later.
Libra and Istari gave each other worried glances and then tentatively approached the door….
“Please, you’ve got to help us!!” They heard someone yell from the other side of the door.
Her maternal instincts taking over, Libra ran toward the door and opened it….
Outside, shivering in the light rain, were two young women in lab coats.
“Please,” Roxie repeated in a wavering voice, “we don’t know who else to turn to….”
***
A few minutes later, the young woman were sitting with blankets- that Istari had found in the back of the store –wrapped around them. Libra handed both of them a cup of water. Meanwhile, Aoi sat backwards in a nearby chair, staring at them with mild interest.
“Thank you.” Roxie said as she took the cup of water from Libra.
“What happened to you girls?” Istari asked, concern in her voice.
“It was that damn Ozzal!”
“Winry….”
“No!” the blonde girl snapped, “It’s the truth, and we’ve got to accept that! You heard what that soldier said!”
Roxie just stared blankly into her water cup.
“What soldier? Accept what?” Libra echoed.
“Ozzal, she….” Winry’s voice strained, “she had soldiers break into our coroner’s office.”
“What?! Why?” Libra and Istari exclaimed almost simultaneously.
“Because,” Roxie said in small voice, without raising her head. “She wanted the corpses of the Syndicate members who had died.”
Roxie then told them about how she and Winry had gotten into a shootout with the soldiers and barely escaped with their lives. And what Ozzal had been planning to do with the corpses she had been intent on stealing….
Libra’s mouth fell open in shock and Istari gritted her teeth. “She’s a monster….”
“And now we don’t know what to do.” Roxie said forlornly, “We’re pretty sure that Ozzal will have us arrested for interfering with her soldier’s orders…and once we’re arrested, it will mean a one way trip to the dungeons of the Comdot Estate.” Roxie shuddered.
Winry placed a comforting hand on her boss’s shoulder. “We’ll figure out a way out of this.”
“You are all going to have to figure out something.” Aoi suddenly spoke up.
Libra and Istari looked back at him, almost having forgotten he was there. “And by all of us…you mean Libra and I, too?” Istari asked in a somewhat annoyed tone, “And what about you?”
“I’m leaving as well.” Aoi said, standing up, as if in emphasis. “But it is even more important that you four leave Orly.”
Libra frowned. “Aoi, what are you talking about…?”
For a second, Aoi didn’t respond. Instead, he reached into his pocket and withdraw a necklace with a glass cross on it. He placed it around his neck.
“I am almost certain that an Actionia assault squad will soon trace Roxie and her assistant to this bookstore.” Aoi finally continued, “And then, you will all be placed under arrest as co-conspirators with the Syndicate.”
Libra’s face turned a few shades lighter. “They couldn’t…they have no proof!”
“That’s true. However, I doubt that will matter much to them.” Aoi shrugged, “At any rate, the final choice is up to you. In the meantime, I’m afraid I am going to have to leave you now.”
All four women watched him as he casually walked to the front of the store and opened the door leading out.
“Thank you, Ms. Libra,” Aoi said before he left, “for putting up with me like you did. I really appreciated it. Maybe one day, I can come back to your bookstore and help out once again. Someday.”
And with that, he finally left….
***
The sound of the front doors of the cathedral being slammed opened abruptly ended Priestess Nahaf’s piano practice. She glanced up sharply from the instrument….
…and found herself staring at the very demons she had banished from her church only days ago.
“Hi there!” Emeri greeted the priestess cheerfully as she marched down the center aisle. “We’re back!”
Jake Thompson slowly stomped behind Emeri, a look of barely contained primal rage clouding his face.
“Unholy monsters!” the priestess exclaimed as she stood, “Depart now, lest I give you a second taste of the divine wrath I visited upon you before!”
A wicked grin spread on Emeri’s face. “Oh, divine wrath you say? Actually, that’s exactly what I came here for! Go on, just try it. Call down your holy thunder!”
Nafah frowned. Could they really be that addled in the head? Nonetheless, Nafah had no compunction against giving them what they not only deserved, but had asked for.
“Very well. But I will not hold back this time!”
Soon, bright light flooded the entire cathedral, centered around Nafah’s robed form. It was even brighter than when she had summoned her divine power the last time she had ejected Emeri and Jake from her church.
“DEPART!” She commanded, and….
…nothing happened.
Nafah watched in stunned silence as the light around her faded to nothing…with Emeri and Jake still very much intact.
Emeri gave a triumphant laugh. “It seems God is not in a listening mood today, hm?”
“I…I don’t understand…!”
“Actually, it’s not you, my dear priestess. It’s me.” Emeri held out her left arm. Dangling around her wrist was a small charm with Japanese kanji written on it. “An adorable little man named Kira made this for me. It drains all spiritual power within a wide radius. And that includes your own “divine” powers.” Emeri had used her fingers to indicate the quotation marks around ’divine’.
“I’m not afraid of you.” Priestess Nafah said with a determined glare. “I may not be able to call on his power directly, but God still serves as my source of strength-”
Priestess Nafah interrupted her with a loud yawn. “I’m growing tired of all your ‘holier-than-thou’ crap. I’d kill you myself, but I’m saving my strength for a special someone I’ve been hoping to meet here. Hey Jake!”
Jake’s head perked up at the mention of his name.
Emeri jerked a thumb in Nafah’s direction. “Gut her like a fish.”
For a brief moment, a look of hesitation broke through the cloud of rage on Jake’s face. But the moment past…and Jake let out a bestial howl.
“JAKE SMASH!!!” He then ran down the aisle towards Nafah, waving his bat and sword high over his head.
Having nothing on hand to stop Jake’s rampage, Priestess Nafah had no choice but to retreat deeper into the church. She hurriedly ran up the flight of stairs that led to the uppermost levels of the church, all too aware that Jake was crashing behind her the entire time.
Watching Jake chase the priestess entertained Emeri briefly. She even giggled when Nafah slipped on the stairs at one point, and Jake nearly smashed her head in with his bat. But Nafah managed to leap out of the way just in time and keep running.
Now…I wonder if dear Father Sadar will actually show up…?
“EMERI!!!”
Emeri spun around…and her face lit up.
Almost as if on cue, there was Father Sadar, standing in the doorway to cathedral.
He had the most intense expression on his face. His blue eyes seemed ablaze with fury. He had already drawn his cane sword, and held the blade in his right hand, while keeping the actual cane in his left.
Emeri smiled…a satisfied smile. A smile that one usually only wore upon finding out one’s closest love was actually still alive This was it. The moment she had been waiting for. “Let’s do this.”
“No,” Father Sadar corrected her. “Let’s finish this….”
***
Must kill…must kill….
The voice in his head echoed over and over again. All he saw was his prey. All he knew was his endless rage….
In front of him, the puny creature had actually managed to push over a bookcase. He smashed right through it. The creature kept running.
This only made Jake angrier. I must kill her…I must kill her. The sooner I do…the sooner I kill her….
What?
Jake hesitated for the briefest moment. Why…why did he want to kill her? Why was he so filled with anger?
But then, the voice came back in greater strength. NO! KILL! KILL! KILLKILLKILLKILLKILL!!!
Jake howled and clutched his head. Yes, that’s why he had to kill her. To make the voice go away.
Soon, the woman had run out of places to run. She looked even smaller and more vulnerable with her back against the wall. But even though she was clearly backed into a corner, she still had a determined expression on her face, as she glared up at Jake.
Jake raised his sword over his head. Yes! DO IT! KILL HER!
As he brought it down, she finally flinched….
And Jake dropped his sword.
He looked over at the hand that had previously held the sword. It was shaking. Uncontrollably.
Why? Why didn’t you kill her? WHY DIDN’T YOU KILL HER?!
But there was another voice there…a softer voice….
Why did you kill them, Jake…?
A splinter of memory…another place in time…he saw his hand shaking in front of him, covered in blood.
And the lifeless bodies of his teammates strewn all over the ground.
Why did you kill them?
I had no choice!
Why did you kill them?
Leave me alone!
Why? Why? Why? Whywhywhywhywhywhy…?
WHY IS SHE STILL ALIVE?!
Jake brought his hand up his head and ripped a chunk of his hair out. “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!” Jake screamed.
KILL HER!!! KILL HER!!!
Why? Why?
Through eyes filled with tears, Jake looked down at the woman he had been chasing. And she looked back at him.
But no longer did she stare at him in anger. She looked at him in concern. As a parent might look at a crying child.
Why?
KILL HER!!!
This time, the voice was overpowering in it’s homicidal strength. He could feel the arm holding the bat raise up almost against his will.
KILL HER!!!
Tears streamed down Jake’s face. “I’m…sorry!” he managed to cry out, through the haze of rage that was consuming him.
“I…forgive you.”
The bat never came down.
Jake dropped to his knees, sobbing.
Kill her…kill her….
Already, the voice had begun to taper off.
Jake saw Priestess Nafah approach him cautiously. “Why?” he asked her.
“Because,” She said, reaching over and touching his wet cheek, “everyone can be forgiven…if they want to be.”
***
Emeri’s chainblade sliced through the air, towards Father’s Sadar’s head.
Father Sadar brought his blade up and pushed foreword as the two blades met. This caused the links of Emeri’s chainblade to wrap around his sword. He then jerked his blade backward, forcing Emeri to stumble foreword.
“Oh no you don’t…not again!”
Emeri brought her right arm out from behind her…the arm that had her wristblade. She then ran toward Sadar, the wristblade held out in front of her.
CLANG!
Sadar had brought his cane up to block the thrust of Emeri’s blade.
Father Sadar gave a wry smile. “This thing isn’t just for show, you know.” He then brought his knee up into Emeri’s stomach.
Emeri stumbled back, the wind knocked out of her. She felt an old scar along her abdomen begin to throb….
“Heh….” Emeri began…and then she threw back her head and laughed heartily. “YES! HURT ME MORE!”
Emeri pressed the button on the pommel of her chainblade that made the weapon go rigid. Then, she charged toward Sadar, with the weapon held high.
Father Sadar sheathed his sword and brought the full cane up to block Emeri’s attack.
Which was exactly what she wanted.
As soon as the two weapons connected in air, Emeri pressed the button on the pommel again…causing the chainblade to uncoil around Sadar‘s cane and the hands holding it.
Then, before Father Sadar could realize the trap she was laying, she pressed the button on the pommel a third time, tightening the weapon around Sadar’s hands.
“Gah….” Sadar gasped as the barbed edges of the chainblade bit into his hands.
“I’ve got you now!!” Emeri squealed. She held onto the end of the chainblade with one hand, as she brought the hand with the wristblade back, preparing to plunge it into Father Sadar’s heart….
“I don’t think so!” Despite the barbs, Father Sadar grabbed onto the chainblade holding him and then yanked with all his might. He managed to lift Emeri’s slight form into the air. He spun her around….
And she disengaged the pommel once more, causing her to go flying through the cathedral….
Rather than smashing into the ground, Emeri managed to right herself in air, and she slid to stop near the church podium, using friction to slow her momentum.
Father Sadar found himself breathing heavily…but grinning in spite of the situation. “Impressive!”
“A cat always lands on it’s feet.” Emeri commented…and then, for emphasis, she licked her hand. There was some of Sadar’s blood there. It had spilled onto her when he had swung her around.
“Come on, Father.” Emeri said, uncoiling her chainblade, “Don’t hold anything back!” She then slashed at the front-most pews in the cathedral, sending splinters flying through the air.
Father Sadar unsheathed his sword and calmly walked through the falling splinters, the intense expression returning to his face.
Father Sadar and Emeri now stood right where the sun was casting it’s light through the main stained-glass window of the church. The sun was setting, so it cast an orangish-red glow throughout the entire cathedral.
Sadar and Emeri circled each other…each one an animal waiting to pounce.
“You know what it is about you that drives me crazy?” Emeri asked, a twisted smile on her face.
“I had always assumed it was because I was the only one who ever wounded you and lived to tell about it.”
“There’s that.” Emeri agreed with a nod, “But, more than anything…it’s that look. The one you are giving me right now. A look filled with righteous fury. I hate it!”
“Perhaps because it is something that could never hope to have, yourself?”
“I could care less about anything like that! No…the reason why I hate that look is because…I know I can never break you.”
Father Sadar stopped in his tracks. “Break me?”
Emeri stopped too. Her face had grown distant. “All of my life, I have survived by breaking everything around me. It was the only way I could live with myself. It was the only way I felt control on my life.”
“But,” she continued, looking up at Sadar, “you were different. I can see in you the same thing that drives me. No…the exact opposite. You don’t want to break things…you are determined to make them right! So determined, you’d break yourself to do it! That’s why, I know, I could never posess you…your will to stop what you see as unjust will always consume your heart. Even if I killed you, you would most likely die with your own blade buried deep in me.”
Father Sadar stared at Emeri, a soft expression on his face. “So…what’s the point of fighting? I mean, if the outcome is already determined?”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Emeri said, shaking her head, “I understand you, but you still don’t understand me. I have no choice but to keep fighting. It is the only thing I have ever held as my own. Even people, people dear to me like Kira, will eventually die…and so, I fight to hold back my own fear of the mortality of this universe. I kill in the belief that, by killing, I stave off my own death.”
“And, if, in the course of our battle, I should realize my own death, so be it.” Emeri hefted her chainblade, “At least I die knowing that I have killed the only man who could have possibly undone my life’s work.”
Father Sadar lifted his sword as well. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Yes. It does.”
And then, Emeri launched herself at Father Sadar. And the dance began.
Father Sadar would parry with his cane, and then strike with his sword. Emeri would lash out with her chainblade and counter with her wristblade. And so, it went on, for what seemed like an eternity. Both of them, Father Sadar and Emeri, determined to defeat the other. They were two opposing forces in the universe. One of creation. The other of destruction. Father Sadar fought with coldly calculated strikes, while Emeri fought back with harsh slashes and cuts that made the very air sizzle in their ferocity.
“No!” Emeri finally screamed. “You’re holding yourself back! Why?!”
“So, you noticed?” Sadar remarked with another small smile, “The truth is, you don’t understand me it all, either. And, for a time, even I had forgotten myself. Then, a young man, the very man whose life you spared, reminded me why I fought.”
Their blades met once more. Sadar pushed foreword and leaned in close to Emeri, so that they faces were mere inches apart. “I’m not going to kill you, Emeri.”
Emeri pushed back. “You must! If you don’t kill me, I will kill you! And then I will destroy everything you have ever fought for!”
Sadar pushed against her blade once more. “No, I won’t die either. Neither of us will die today.”
“You’re wrong! You’re wrong!” Emeri hissed. “One of us must die! That is how it must happen!”
“Why? Simply because it suits your view of the world? Poor Emeri,“ Father Sadar taunted, “you have had a hard life, so now everyone must suffer, is that it?”
“SHUT UP!!!”
“Or maybe you’re just afraid to find out that you are wrong? Are you really willing to throw your life away to satisfy your pride?”
“YOU DARE BELITTLE ME?? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!”
“Ah, there it is. Your catchphrase. I think a better question is…who the hell do you think you are?!”
“I’M EMERI, BITCH!!”
And with that, Emeri brought her chainsword around, wrapped it around Sadar’s sword, and ripped it from his hands.
Then, she tackled him, forcing him to the ground. She then sat straddling him, her wristblade to his throat.
“Where are your brave words now, Father?” Emeri asked with a sneer.
Father Sadar merely smiled up at her. “I touched a nerve, didn’t I?”
However, his continued taunts didn’t have the effect he expected. Emeri instead grinned back at him. “So, that was your game the whole time, hm? See what you could do to shake the great Emeri?”
“But I wonder,” Emeri mused, licking her lips, “what would it take to shake the great John Sadar?”
She then moved the wristblade away from his throat and leaned in close. She pressed her body tightly against him….
***
This isn’t good, Father Sadar thought to himself. I’m losing.
He felt Emeri on top of him, pressing against him in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. In fact, he found it difficult to muster the strength to move her, even though the wristblade was no longer at his throat.
“I know something else about you, Father.” Emeri whispered into his ear. “You have never let anyone this close to you, have you? After all, to a man like you, such closeness is dangerous, isn’t it? Yes…that’s it. I’ve found the chink in your armor. Your weakness is that which you found find most abhorrent if misused by others. That weakness is,” she licked his ear, “earthly pleasures.”
Get up, Sadar! She’s a raving psychopath!
“You know, you actually might have been right about something” Emeri shifted so that she could look directly into Sadar’s eyes, her nose brushing against his. “Maybe we could both leave here alive. Come with me. Succumb to the desires that you’ve locked away for so long. Help me fill the loneliness in my heart. I’m sure even Kira wouldn’t mind having you around. Someone else to abuse…to give the poor little guy a break every once and while. We could have so much fun together….”
For the first time in his life, Father Sadar felt himself wavering. He actually thought about Emeri’s offer…thought about how the Syndicate and any other rebellion against Ozzal would more than likely be destroyed soon…how he realized that, like Emeri, he had a hole in his heart that he knew he could never fill….
Never loose that innocence Samson. It makes this world seem a lot less bleak….
It came to him then. He saw all of the faces of his friends in the Syndicate. Samson, Hikki, Elizabeth…all of them. He saw his comrades in the Order. Kirara, Cid, Kuze…all of them. And finally, he saw, in his mind’s eye, the glass cross he had given to Samson. The very glass cross that he himself had worn when he had first joined the order….
The Order of Glass…the vanishing mediators….
Yes…that is why he had, and always would have, a hole in his heart. Why he would never be able to give into earthly pleasures. Why he would never falter in his righteous determination.
He had a higher calling. And it was calling him now.
He realized, through all of his musings, he and Emeri had locked lips and were currently in the middle of kissing passionately.
Which was as good enough distraction as any. As he continued kissing her, he reached a hand out…and grabbed his fallen sword.
He then slid it underneath Emeri…and impaled her.
It was a shallow wound in her side. It wasn’t meant to be a fatal blow. In fact, Emeri actually seemed to groan more with pleasure than pain. “So, that’s how you like things?” Emeri said with a feral grin, “Are you going to penetrate me again, hm?”
Father Sadar smiled back at her…but with the look of virtuous fire back in his eyes. “Sorry, Emeri, but I’m afraid I won’t be providing you with any further satisfaction today.”
Emeri saw the look in his eyes…and growled. “You have no idea what you are throwing away….”
“Actually, I do. Which is why I am a stronger man than you believed.” Sadar than kicked his foot up and slid Emeri off the blade.
Despite her wound, Emeri got back up quickly. She spun around and brought her chainblade up. Sadar was forced to roll to the side as she lashed out at him with her chainblade. As he rolled, he grabbed his cane and stood.
Father Sadar than quickly shoved his sword back into the rest of the cane and twisted the sword inside the cane. There was a small crackling sound, like glass breaking. Then, Father Sadar withdrew the sword….
“What are you up to now?” Emeri demanded to know, her eyes narrowing.
Sadar’s sword was now completely covered in dripping black ink.
“The ink represents the sins of my past and the sins that could tempt me in the future.” Father Sadar said, brandishing the now black blade in front of him, “I shall use my sin, not for myself, but as a weapon to right the sins of others.”
“ENOUGH OF YOUR NONSENSE!!” Emeri screeched and lunged at him.
And the dance began anew. But with a twist. As Father Sadar parried Emeri’s slashes and strikes, ink began to cover the floor of the cathedral. Soon, an almost coherent pattern had begun to take shape….
Suddenly, Father Sadar stopped, sheathed his sword, and stood with the cane in front of him, touching one of the black marks on the cathedral floor. Behind him, the light of the main stained-glass window illuminated him….
Emeri was about to lunge at him again, now that he was standing there defenseless, but she suddenly got the sense that something was terribly wrong…the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end….
For the first time in her life, Emeri felt genuine fear. Her eyes widened. “What have you done?!”
“Ancient power.” Father Sadar said, his face a stone mask. “The power of blood and ink. You are no longer welcome here, Emeri. Begone.”
Then, everything became silent. It was as if Emeri had gone deaf. She saw Father Sadar mouth words of some sort, but she couldn’t make them out….
And then, it was if the earth itself had rejected her. There was blinding flash of light and she found herself flying through the air once again…flying out through the cathedral….
But it didn’t end there. It was as if she had become a ghost. She flew through buildings…through people…she didn’t think she would ever stop….
Finally, the familiar structure that was the Comdot Estate swam into view…she flew through the walls…past Kira…and into her own bed…and then….
Darkness.
***
“Father Sadar!”
Sadar turned…and let out a deep sigh of relief. “Priestess! It’s good to see you alive! What happened to Jake?”
“Believe it or not, he’s upstairs sleeping.” Nafah said, with a somewhat bewildered look on her face. “He was finally able to break through whatever hold Ozzal had on him…what’s so funny?”
Father Sadar couldn’t help chuckling. “Nothing. It’s just that I told Samson that I wouldn’t be going on the Syndicate mission to rescue Jake…and yet here I am, with a reformed Jake Thompson sleeping upstairs. It’s mildly ironic.”
“Speaking of irony and coincidence, it’s pretty convenient that you showed up when you did….”
“Yeah,” Father Sadar admitted, “but I was actually on my way over here anyway.”
Priestess Nafah stared out of the doors to the cathedral. “So…is she dead?”
“Ah, so you caught all of that at the end. No, she’s not dead. She’ll probably need a lot of time to recover. Less, with Kira taking care of her….”
Priestess Nafah walked over to the black symbol that Father Sadar had drawn on the ground and stared down at it. “What did you do to her, anyway?”
“Old magic. A symbol of power combined with words of power. It wouldn’t have worked without her blood.”
The priestess raised an eyebrow. “And just how did you learn something like this?”
“Well, I did tell you I was a thief….” Father Sadar said, scratching his head and grinning sheepishly, “but the truth is that not all thieves go after shiny baubles and golden trinkets. Not when there are far more valuable things to steal.”
“So…you stole this power?”
“More like I stole the book that contained the knowledge to wield this power. Just one of the many things I’ve gotten my hands on in my travels.”
Nafah smiled and shook her head. “You continue to be an enigma, Father Sadar.”
“One that I am afraid you won’t get the chance to figure out.” Father Sadar said, leaning his cane against his shoulder. “I actually came to say goodbye.”
Nafah glanced over at him sharply. “What?!”
“Oh, and this symbol is actually a little going away present for you,” Father Sadar continued, despite her outburst. He used his cane to tap at the black mark on the ground. “It will prevent anyone with ill will in their heart from entering this church, including, and especially, Miss Emeri. So, it should even keep you, and anyone else who comes here, safe from the anymore of Ozzal‘s twisted henchmen.”
“Hold on! You’re leaving? But…why?”
Father Sadar said nothing for a moment. Then, he walked over to Priestess Nafah…and kissed her on the forehead.
“Take care of yourself, Priestess.” Father Sadar said, taking hold of her hand, “Thank you for having mercy on a sinful soul such as mine and accepting me into your church.”
Then, he let go of her hand…and walked away.
Priestess wanted to say something. To demand an answer. But would he have given one, even if she had asked?
So, instead, she could only watch as Father Sadar walked out of the cathedral, his cane propped up on his shoulder, and a determined stride in his steps….
***
“The target is Father John Sadar. The Echelon has approved his termination. Are you ready?”
Caine the Longshot adjusted his scope. He saw the doomed priest walking out of the cathedral and adjusted his sights. The man walked with his cane propped up on his shoulders and a sad but resolute expression on his face.
If only the little fool knew what awaited him….
“Hurry it up. Being up here is making me nervous…” Goda added with a gulp, staring over the side of the building.
He, Caine, a small contingent of Actionia soldiers, and an [as] helicopter all sat atop the roof of a building close to the St. Maria’s Cathedral. When Emeri hadn’t reported in with a successful termination/capture report, especially after the rest of the Echelon agents had already reported success with their targets, Goda had gotten worried. So, he had taken Caine and the rest of the soldiers with him to look for Father Sadar and Emeri.
They had arrived just in time to see Emeri and Jake enter the cathedral, followed by Father Sadar himself soon after. Goda had Caine set up his sniper rifle anyway…just in case. Goda’s fears had recently been confirmed when, after the bright flash of light, Father Sadar had emerged with Emeri nowhere to be seen….
“Time to finish what Emeri never could. Are we ready, finally?”
Caine lined up his crosshairs on Father Sadar’s white-haired head. He turned and nodded at Goda.
“Very well. Execute.”
***
If Father Sadar hadn’t had all the adrenaline in his system left over from his fight with Emeri, he might not have made it past that moment.
Sadar’s eyes widened as he realized the imminent danger he was in. He spun around just as the shot was fired….
The bullet that sped towards him was a blur…and yet, Father Sadar saw it as if it was moving through molasses. The problem was, if the bullet was moving like molasses, than the rest of his body moved like it was made of stone.
Desperately, Father Sadar brought his cane sword up in an attempt to block the bullet, knowing that he could never move his legs fast enough to avoid the fatal shot. The bullet sliced through the air towards his head…and Father Sadar managed to bring his cane sword up in front of his face, turning his head away from what he knew would come next….
The sniper’s bullet completely shattered his cane sword. Meanwhile, the bullet was split in two upon the sword’s blade, and it‘s trajectory was redirected. The shattered pieces of the cane sword embedded themselves in the left side of Father Sadar’s face…while the two pieces of the bullet shot into his shoulder.
Father Sadar fell backward onto the ground, blood beginning to gush from his wound….
The sun went down.
***
Caine reloaded the rifle and took aim again…but Goda stopped him with a hand to Caine’s shoulder.
“Hold it. This works out even better. Father Sadar can be another prisoner we parade in front of the people as one of the dangerous members of the Syndicate that brave Major Taredan captured.” Goda snapped his fingers in the direction of the Actionia soldiers. “Get down and take him into custody as soon as possible….”
***
“No…this won’t do…it won’t do at all….”
The man wrapped covered in bandages walked foreword and stared down at the fallen priest in the approaching darkness of night.
Father Sadar just laid there and smiled up at him. “I suppose you’re going to say that all of this is my arrogance’s doing.” he said hoarsely
Schwarzwald crouched down next to him…and slapped him across the face. “You little fool…save your strength! You’re lucky to be alive!”
Father Sadar grimaced as a red mark began to form on his cheek, adding to the already considerable pain he was in. Thankfully, it was the cheek opposite of the one hit with shrapnel from his sword. “Yeah, like slapping me is any better!”
“Hush!” Schwarzwald commanded. He then began to unravel some of his bandages, and rapidly cover Father Sadar’s wound with them. It was almost as if he had an endless supply of the mummy-like clothe….
“There.” Schwarzwald said as he finished. He then grabbed Father Sadar and lifted him onto his back….
Father Sadar groaned in pain. The blood from his wound had already begun to soak through the bandages Schwarzwald had given him.
“Yes…remember this pain.” Schwarzwald said as he walked back into the alley he had come from, Father Sadar over his back. “It is the pain of someone who has taken too much burden onto himself.”
Father Sadar sighed weakly. “I’m in for another lecture, aren’t I?”
“Oh, you had better believe it!” Schwarzwald snapped, “How could you let yourself get so close to the people in the Syndicate? And the priestess in that church? Sheer carelessness! What happened to “No connections, no regrets”? Hm? And don’t even get me started on that whole business with that Emeri girl…!”
The mummy in the trenchcoat continued to ramble on as he carried Father Sadar, the night winds jostling the glass cross around his neck….
***
“Where are my taquitos?!”
Dewey Novak froze in his tracks. Carefully, he hid the plate of taquitos he had been carrying behind his cape and swallowed the one he had been chewing in his mouth.
Michelle Ozzal stomped over to him anyway.
“Why does this always happen to me?! I am the friggin leader of this whole country…AND I CAN’T EVEN FIND MYSELF SOME FREAKIN’ TAQUITOS!!!”
Dewey Novak tried to buy himself some time. “Well, um, you see, we seem to have run out of taquitos….”
Suddenly, Professor Matrix walked by with a plate full of the small burritos, munching happily.
Ozzal pointed angrily over at the mad scientist. “LIKE HELL WE ARE!!”
Dewey Novak sighed. “All this fuss over a simple snack food. It’s no wonder this country is spiraling out of control.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?!”
“While you have been running around the Comdot Estate looking for your taquitos, the rest of us have been getting actual work done. Even as we speak, the Echelon has gone out and captured everyone who is considered to be a major player within the Syndicate network, as well as any of those suspected to be sympathetic to the terrorist group, effectively ending that threat to this country’s stability once and for all.” Dewey turned away haughtily, “And what have you done for Actionia lately?”
“Why would I care about a country I am going to crush in the end?”
Dewey’s eyes widened in shock as he spun back around. Was that really Ozzal who just spoke…?!
The demented gleam in Ozzal’s eyes had been replaced with something far more…sinister. Her mouth spread into a crooked grin and she observed Dewey callously.
“So the Echelon has destroyed the Syndicate. If you had told me that you had been swatting flies all day, I probably would have been as equally as unimpressed. In fact….”
Ozzal suddenly leaned foreword and grabbed Dewey’s uniform. She pulled him close toward her, her eyes, filled with malevolence, bore into his soul….
“I’m a bit peeved that you would do all of this without my permission. It seems that you have all forgotten who it is that really runs this place.”
Dewey gulped, as a twinge of murderous intent flashed across Ozzal’s eyes…but then, she suddenly released him.
“Ah, well…you’ll see soon enough. I have a little plan I’m cooking up with Comedia that should put things in perspective. And, bring me one step closer to crushing this country under my boot…and using it’s remains to climb closer to my eventual goal….”
And then, the façade was back. Her calm, but twisted face melted back into it’s usual demented appearance. She then turned and ran after Matrix, screaming about taquitos.
For the longest time, Dewey could only stand there in the hallway with his eyes wide, realizing that had just survived an encounter with the true dragon of the Comdot Estate….
To Be Continued….
Cast
Recurring (in order of appearance)
Kazunoto Goda – Himself
Professor M. Matrix – matrixman
Goose Maverick – Top_Gun
Major Tom Taredan – Metatronda
Amy – Amalgam
Keith Douglas – k_dawg
Allen Black – Alastourblaque
Captain Q – Q_chan
Kirara Amour – kiraralove
Larry Zorin – LAZY17
Emeri - _Boxers_
Jake Thompson – SportsMaster
Father John Sadar – Furion Tassadar
Samson – Master Samson
Hikki Follet – Kohikki
Clarice – QueenoftheDorks
Angel Sarcasta – mgangel
Spice – spiceweasel
The Penguin – PenguinBoss
Norman Burg – Himself
Cowboy – CowboyCadenza
Elizabeth Saurie St. Gaurdsmen – EdSpikeSesshyGrl
Real Coolman – RealAirCooledMan (or however you say it )
April – Lirpa
Bruce Herman – bherman
Sarah – Um…is she based on Bruce’s actual girlfriend?
Grant Orochi – the_great_orochi
Shatter – shatter
Surool – eppel
Jean Pierott – pie-chan
Luna Monegossde – MoonGoddess
Van Argeno – Himself
Lucille Compton – Cille
Straight Cougar – Himself
Trunks – Trunks
Gottel – lgott
Libra – Ghost_of_the_Librarian
Istari Erangua – Istari Erangua
Roxie – anime_godesss
Winry – Herself
Priestess Nafah – inufan
Michelle Ozzal – Mike Lazzo
New (in order of appearance)
Colonel Roy Mustang – Himself
Jean Havoc – Himself
Inspector Lunge – Himself
Dewey Novak – Himself
Horace – I have no idea where he came from. Just a generic underworld henchman for Penguin, I guess.
The creepy cyborg that took down Angel – Alan Gabriel
Jacob the Liar – jakobtheliar
Legato Bluesummers – Himself
Kaia Namek – namek_kaia
The Commander of the Umbrolos – The Commander of the Umbrolos from the first season of GitS
Cid – cidthekittyisfun
Proof – NoProof
Man with feathery white hair – Hideo Kuze
Ryuho – Himself
Man with bucket hat and green kimono – Uruhara Kisuke
Vicious – Himself
Band – bandnerdswimfan
Hill – fool_on_the_hill
Aoi – Himself
Caine the Longshot – Himself
Schwarzwald – Himself
“Yes, that was impressive work. It works quite well into our scenario. In fact, the rabble that gathered afterward furthered our ends even more so. It is in chaotic times like these that the people will be looking for someone they can trust to rise up and take command of the situation. I am on my way to recruit one such person as we speak. In the meantime, I want you to stay on call. If it all goes accordingly, you’ll be hearing from me again very soon. Once more, very nice work with our pirate friend, Mr. Bluesummers.”
Goda closed his cell-phone and slipped it into his pocket. He then stepped into a menagerie of sights and sounds. The room was cavernous and filled with all manner of whirring machinery. And ever single machine had some kind of tentacle, tendril, or octopi-like appendage coming out of it.
“Is there anyone around?” Goda called, “I’m looking for Major Taredan. I was told he came in here recently.”
From the very back of the room, a crazy-haired man popped his head up. His face was covered in machine grease and he sported a ridiculously large pair of goggles.
“Whoizit?!” the man yelled over the clank and whine of his machines. He lifted the grease-stained goggles from his face and finally spotted Goda.
“Tall, Dark, and Crispy!” Matrix exclaimed jovially, “I’ll be with ya in a minute!”
Matrix had plenty of reason to be happy with Goda. Time and time again, Ozzal had threatened to shut his perverted experiments down, but Goda had interceded on his behalf. Goda claimed that Matrix’s inventions might someday be useful….
“So, what can I help you with?” Matrix asked as he strode purposefully over, his white lab coat billowing as he walked. He extended his arm as if to shake hands….
Goda looked down at the outstretched (and greasy) hand disdainfully and kept his arms folded behind his back. “I’m afraid I don’t shake hands….”
“Eh? Oh, no. I was just going to warn you about Amy.” Matrix pointed behind Goda.
“What are you- ack!!” Goda suddenly felt a heavy weight come down on his shoulders.
“You’re head looks funny! Lolz!!” Amy giggled from atop her perch on Goda’s head. She reached downed and nibbled on his cone-shaped head. “Blech…and it tastes funny, too! Like a burnt macaroon crayon!” She jumped off of him and scampered away, spitting.
Goda tried to compose himself. “What the hell was that thing?!” he asked breathlessly, while readjusting his tie.
“Oh, that’s my assistant.” Matrix declared proudly.
“Assistant?!” Goda did a double-take in the direction Amy had run off to. “What happened to your other one?! The one we abducted for you from Actionia University?!”
“Oh, Larry.” Matrix shrugged, “He tried to run away again. So I sent Emeri after him.” He grinned maliciously.
Goda sighed. Well, at least he was still alive. Though, probably not for long. He’d have to call up Kira and have him make sure Emeri didn’t kill Larry when she caught up to him. What was this…the sixth time Larry had tried to escape? And Matrix always let him go…but then, he always found a way to bring the poor young man back….
Goda cleared his throat. “Anyway, do you think you could find Major Taredan for me?”
“Major I’m-too-good-for-this-bull**bleep**?” Matrix shrugged and nodded his head in the direction of one of the backrooms of the lab, “He’s back talking with Goose,” Matrix continued, referring to their newly created super-spy. “I think he’s almost done.”
“Very well, I’ll wait.”
And then, there was silence. Well, as silent as it can get in a lab full of perverted, buzzing machines. Goda stood stiffly while Matrix tapped his foot and looked around his lab, his eyes drawn to those machines that he considered particularly beautiful in their perverted nature….
“You know,” Matrix suddenly spoke up after a little bit, “I recently acquired myself a laser-shooting cyber **bleep**…you wanna see?”
For the first time his life, Goda was actually taken aback. He leaned away from the crazed professor. “That’s…not necessary….” he managed to stammer out.
“Psh, you’re just jealous.” Matrix said in a bored tone. “Well, back to my filthy evil, I guess….” He then wandered away, back to whatever he had been working on before.
At right about that time, Major Taredan came wandering out. With a sigh, he approached Goda. “Something I can help you with?”
“Yes…why is Professor Matrix still on our payroll?” Goda asked as he watched the mad scientist walk away.
Taredan frowned. “Because you keep telling everyone that he’ll eventually come up with something that will benefit the Actionia Military.”
Goda lifted his cell-phone back to his face. He pressed the button that activated the voice-record function. “Memo to me: When the monetary review for the Actionia Military comes up again next year…fire Professor M. Matrix.” Goda then closed the phone and pocketed it again.
“Why not fire him now?” Major Taredan asked, eager to get the crazy man out of the Comdot Estate as soon as possible.
“Because, until Larry is found again, he’s the only scientist in the Comdot Estate who has worked on the Goose Maverick project.” Goda said, making a point of forgetting his encounter with Matrix’s other “assistant”. “Speaking of which, how is our little spy?”
“Ready to begin his operation. I’ve already given him the last known location of Landon Blaken. His job will be to infiltrate the Syndicate’s upper levels and to assassinate Landon when he gets the chance.”
Goda cocked an eyebrow. “Are we really sure he’s up to the challenge?”
“Finding Landon will be the hard part. Infiltrating the Syndicate will be easy enough, I mean…just try talking to the guy sometime. He’s really easy to get along with. He literally likes everything….”
“Everything?” Goda echoed, not entirely convinced.
“Well, everything but something called “HachiKuro”….”
“Ah! Honey and Clover!” Goda nodded, “A fine series. Not as visually pleasing as Ouran High Host Club, but, nonetheless….”
Goda trailed off when he realized that Major Taredan was staring at him with his mouth agape.
Goda coughed. “Ahem. Moving along…the real reason why I wished to talk with you concerns our little resistance problem as well.”
Taredan shook his head and tried to forget the previous conversation. “Um…okay….”
“The recent actions of the Syndicate members and the people of Actionia in general have not only been atrocious, but have gone on relatively unpunished as well. Ozzal sits in the Comdot Estate playing general, while the resistance in this country continues to grow, eating away at it’s foundations. I say, it’s time we show the people of Actionia the true power of the dark side…er, I mean, the Echelon.”
Taredan didn’t like where this was going. And he knew Ozzal wouldn’t either. “The Echelon is Ozzal’s trump card, though. She doesn’t want you guys revealed to the public unless absolutely necessary. Hell, she doesn’t even keep your actions in official records.” Which was fortunate, considering the break in at the Comdot archives a week ago….
“That’s why we need a front man. A “hero” we can show to the people as the face of our efforts to crush the dangerous terrorist and criminal elements that threaten their safety.” Goda gave his trademark hideous grin.
“Let me guess…you want that person to be me?” Taredan asked rhetorically, with a glare in Goda’s direction. “You can forget it. I’m not going to be your puppet.”
“You have little choice, I’m afraid.” Goda stated simply, having already expected Taredan’s response to his plan. “As we speak, our public relations officer is forming a press conference announcing the crackdown on the Syndicate and all other subversive elements in the city…and that crackdown will have your name attached to it. Whether you like it or not, you are going to be our puppet….”
****
Keith Douglas sighed. “It’s going to be one of those days….”
Just as he finished saying this, the door to his office exploded off it’s hinges.
Fortunately, over the years, he had a developed an almost sixth sense when it came to danger. In his line of profession, it was almost a necessity. Thus, he had managed to dive underneath his desk right as the door to his office spun through the air and crashed into his desk.
Keith tried to peek over his desk to look at the cause of the explosion…only to be forced back under his desk as a jet of flame came shooting into his office.
“Crap.” Keith muttered under his breath.
When the flames had died down, he slowly reached a hand up and felt along his desk. He felt a large metallic mass…his gun.
“Well, that’s where that is….” Keith continued feeling around on the desk, until….
Quickly, Keith grabbed the pastry he had been munching on before the explosion. He was about to happily continue snacking on it, while he waited for the fireworks to die down, but…
…he found that the last jet of flame had turned it into an unrecognizable black briquette. In fact, it was still on fire in some places, forcing Keith to hastily drop it. **bleep**!
That was it! In one smooth motion, Keith reached up and grabbed his gun, stood, and aimed it at the head of the man he assumed was responsible for all of the commotion.
“You better have a **bleep** good reason why you just barbecued my breakfast!!”
“My apologies, but I had do something to get your attention.” Out of the swirling dust and smoke, Keith was able to make out a dark-haired man wearing a brown trench-coat over a faded blue uniform. The man held out a white-gloved hand and was rubbing his thumb and middle-finger together which, strangely, was causing little red sparks to shoot out.
Keith tightened his grip on the gun. “You certainly have it now.”
From behind the dark-haired man, another man wearing a blue uniform stepped out of the smoke, coughing. This one had dirty blonde hair and a cigarette stuck lazily in his mouth.
“Jeez, Colonel!” the second man complained, “I know you’re pissed, but was all of that really necessary?”
“Quit your whining, Havoc.” The Colonel said without a glance back at his companion. “You’re the one who volunteered to come with me on this wild goose chase. You’re more than welcome to leave whenever you want.”
“I only came so I could stop you from doing anything crazy. Looks like I’m falling down on the job.” Havoc grabbed a still burning piece of paper from the ground and used it to light up his cigarette.
Keith sighed and slumped in defeat. He holstered his gun. “It’s going to be one of those days….”
***
Moments later, Keith Douglas and his ’guests’ had adjourned to the nearby office of Keith’s partner, Allen Black. Keith had brought in a pot of the drek that was laughingly referred to as ’coffee’ and poured a cup for himself.
“The captain is going to kill you.” Allen warned as he leaned out his office door and stared at the ruin of Keith’s office.
“She can try. It‘s not like it‘s really my fault, anyway” Keith muttered disinterestedly as he sat in Allen’s chair. “Okay…let’s take things from the top.” He pointed at the Colonel, who had taken a seat across from him. Havoc, in the meantime, leaned against a nearby wall and took drags on his cigarette in silence.
The Colonel reached into his trench coat and pulled out a picture. He flipped it onto the table and slid to a stop, upside-down, near Keith. Keith took it and flipped it over.
Keith sighed for the third time that day. But this was a more tired sigh than the previous two. “The Heero and Riza case….”
The picture the Colonel had handed to him appeared to have been taken on Heero and Riza’s wedding. Keith suddenly felt his stomach churn. As he looked at Heero, looking quite dapper in his tuxedo, he suddenly had a flash of Heero the night of his death, with his guts strewn into a hideous message….
Keith dropped the picture. “What’s your connection to them?”
“The woman in the picture, Riza Hawkeye, she was…my fiancé.” The Colonel’s voiced cracked slightly as he said this.
Keith looked up sharply. He looked back and forth between the Colonel and the picture. “But, in this photo….”
It was the Colonel’s turn to sigh, “Maybe I really should take things from the top….” He took a deep breath, “My name is Colonel Roy Mustang. I am…or I was a high ranking member of the Actionia State Army, Alchemy Division.” That explains the pyrotechnics, thought Keith, “Hawkeye was apart of the unit assigned to me. Originally, we were a reserve unit stationed at the border of Babblstan….”
Keith leaned back in his chair. “And then the war with Babblstan broke out.”
Mustang nodded. “Right. This was back when Ozzal was still just a general in the Actionia military. My unit was called out of reserve and sent to the front lines.”
At this point, Havoc had stopped smoking and was staring at the ceiling. Both he and Mustang had haunted expressions on their face.
“I’d say that war was a slaughter,” Mustang said in a hushed tone, “but that doesn’t quite do it justice. There were incredible atrocities on both sides. Every time Ozzal pushed things too far, the Babblstonian’s pushed back just as hard. They lacked our technology, but they made up for it with numbers and the sheer ferocity in which they fought.”
“After while,” Mustang continued, “my unit began to get down to only a handful of my closest soldiers.” He sank back in his chair, “Hawkeye…Riza and I had always been close. More than just soldiers-in-arms. But it got to a point where I realized that I didn’t know what I’d do with myself if she died…so, after a particularly grueling skirmish…I proposed to her.”
Keith nearly snorted his coffee out of his nose. “Proposed to her? Right on the battlefield?”
Mustang smiled sadly. “You have to understand, our relationship had always been a wild one. And I’m not your average guy, as you could probably tell. I told her, right as we were back to back, fighting off Babblstonian guerillas, that if we made it out of the war alive, I was going to marry her. She told me that she’d hold me to that. A little while later, the battle was over and our side had emerged victorious.” Mustang then gave a bitter smile, “I guess we were still trying to hold on to that playful innocence we had back when we were still in the reserve….”
“All of this is tragic,” Allen said, fighting to sound sympathetic, “but I still don’t get where Heero enters into things.”
Mustang continued as though he hadn’t heard Allen, “Immediately after the battle, the Babblstonian’s counterattacked. Viciously. We were almost completely overrun. Riza and I got separated and I…thought I had lost her forever.” Mustang clenched his hands together, “The Babblstonians had used bombs laced with a powerful and corrosive chemical that had burned our casualties beyond recognition. We found what we thought was Riza’s corpse, but we could never have been sure….”
“I retired from the military without honors after that and spent the next 8 years a broken man. But then, I began to hear rumors from some of my old military buddies. They said that they had seen someone matching Riza’s description traveling with a Babblstonian sniper. Immediately, I scrounged up some funds and snuck into Babblstan. Havoc, who is one of the few surviving officers from my unit, agreed to help me search. We’ve been looking for over 4 years, with little to show of it save for that picture I have of their wedding. And then, we received word that she had come back to Actionia.”
Suddenly, there was a loud tapping sound. “Sorry,” Keith apologized with an embarrassed grin, “my foot fell asleep. So, uh, you came back here to look for her then, I take it?”
Initially, Mustang just sat and looked annoyed. But then he sighed and continued, “Yes, but as soon as we got here, we heard rumors that Heero had been killed…and almost nothing about Riza.”
“Well, Heero was indeed killed. I’ve got the disgusting autopsy pictures and constant nightmares to prove it.” Keith scratched his head, “But you’re right…there has been no word on his companion. My ’informants’” Mustang raised an eyebrow at the quotation marks used when Keith mentioned his ‘informants’, “tell me that she was very distraught upon Heero’s death and sought sanctuary inside a local Syndicate hideout.”
This caught Havoc’s attention. “The Syndicate?” Havoc said as he looked over, “I guess the rumor that they had hired them out as mercenaries was true.”
The comment had been directed at Mustang, but the former-state alchemist had shut his eyes and crossed his arms, deep in thought.
“Uh, Colonel? Penny for your thoughts?”
Suddenly, Mustang stood and slammed his hands onto the desk, “I need to know if she’s still alive, detective.” he said firmly to Keith, “Is there anyway I can question someone from the Syndicate directly?”
Just then, Keith’s stomach rumbled…and he had an idea. “I think I may know the member of the Syndicate who actually hired their services. He moonlights as a baker at the Luna Café. I don’t have enough evidence to charge the guy with anything, but it couldn’t hurt to have you run him through the stringer…unofficially, of course.” Keith added with a small grin.
“Let’s not waste time. Havoc! Let’s go.” Mustang was up and out of the office faster than you could say ’man-on-a-mission’.
“Right behind ya, Colonel.” Mustang’s chain-smoking friend was quick to follow.
Allen stared out the door at them. He then glanced back at his partner. “You’re evil, you know that?”
Keith stood up and stretched. “The way I see it, he gets to question someone who might know the whereabouts of his missing fiancé while I get to have breakfast and a show. And maybe enough information on our little French revolutionist to get these Syndicate psychos in the end.” Keith grinned and shrugged, “Equivalent exchange.”
***
Captain Q, ‘Q’ being short for a long a complicated name that the Captain preferred not to be referred by, might have heard the explosion in her detective’s office, had it not been for the enormous work load piling up on her desk, consuming the bulk of her attention.
She groaned as she looked at the stack of papers on either side of her. The recent riot in Lower Actionia that had started after the rampage of the rogue armed suit had created an enormous mess. She had police reports to sign, civilian complaints to look into, businesses heckling her about payment for the damages they had suffered during the riot, not to mention the whole matter of finding those responsible for the vandalism, theft, and assault on Actionia property and personnel.
She knew nothing was going to get down if she simply sat and moped about it, she was studiously going from paper to paper, trying to get things done as fast as possible….
…until there was a knock at her down.
“I told you!” she called through the door, “if you’re going to bug me at all, it had better **bleep** be a good reason! I’ve got a pile of paperwork here that would choke an accountant and the only thing that’s going to stop me from finishing it all, short of another crisis, is some idiot who’s just asking for me to plug a new hole into them!” Q took a deep breath, “So which is it? A crisis…or an idiot?”
“I’m sorry, Captain!” her secretary said as he poked his head through the door to her office, “but it is urgent! There’s a representative from the Comdot Estate out here to see you!”
“The Comdot Estate?” Q’s stomach squirmed. They had enough problems already…they didn’t need the top brass breathing down their shoulders, too! She cursed under her breath and then said, “Fine. Send whoever it is in.”
A few moments later, a man wearing a green business suit and a tan overcoat stepped into her office. He had a strange, yellow pallor to his skin and he had short black hair that was receding slightly in the front. The most noticeable part about him, however, was his small black eyes…Q couldn’t help but think about a snake she had seen once at the Actionia Zoo….
Great…not only is he from the Comdot Estate, but he’s probably some psycho, too…the Estate is full of them, I swear to God….
“How can I help you, Mr…?”
“Lunge. Inspector Lunge.” The Inspector smiled slightly…humorlessly. He dug into his coat pocket and took out his wallet. He flipped it open to reveal his badge. “Actionia Internal Affairs.”
Internal Affairs…this just keeps getting better and better….
Q reached up and rubbed her temples. “How can I help you, Inspector….”
“I am looking for one of your detectives.” Lunge said as he pocketed his wallet. “A Mr. Keith Douglas. I have some questions for him concerning his relationship with the Blaken Syndicate.”
Q bristled. “Are you accusing one of my detectives of working with those bunch of terrorists?!”
“No one here has made that claim yet, Captain.” Lunge said, smiling a bit once more, “However, I find your reaction to be quite interesting.”
Breathe, Q, just breathe….
She sat and breathed in and out until she was sure she was calm enough to continue. You’ve faced down bloodthirsty serial killers and ruthless criminals of every kind. Don’t let this guy get to you. “My apologies, Inspector. Things around here have been kind of tense, what with the recent riot and everything else…and…um, are you going to be okay?” Now that she was calm, Q finally noticed that the Inspector’s right hand was twitching almost violently.
“Ah, so you’ve finally noticed.” Lunge didn’t take his attention away from Q for a second and his hand continued to twitch as he spoke, “Right now, I am recording everything being said in my own personal computer. I understand it unnerves some people.”
Q blinked a couple of times. Yup…he’s a psycho alright. “What exactly do you want with my detective, Inspector?”
“Did you know that your detective has been in contact with a certain member of the Syndicate?” Lunge’s hands stopped briefly and then twitched again. “A man named Wyatt Matthews?”
Q crossed her arms. “I don’t suppose you happen to have proof of this.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Lunge used his left hand to reach into his coat pocket and retrieved a floppy disk. “This contains a recording of a phone conversation between your detective and Mr. Matthews. In fact, this conversation occurred right before the Mobile Armor suit began it’s rampage the other day.”
Q’s eyes widened. She had just been hit with two revelations. One: That Keith had indeed had inside knowledge that she hadn’t been privy to. And two: Internal Affairs was tapping their phone lines…and somehow, that included her detectives’ personal phones.
Q realized that she had to deal with those revelations one at a time. She decided to deal with Keith first…and hopefully figure out what Internal Affairs was up to after that.
Q pushed her chair away from her desk and stood, “Inspector, follow me. I suspect that Mr. Douglas has a lot of explaining to do…to the both of us.”
***
“That’s it. Seriously, I’m going to kill him this time, like, whoa.”
Q stared in at the charred remains of her detective’s office. She could just feel Inspector Lunge’s gloating presence behind her….
“Mr. Black!” Q exclaimed as, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of her errant detective’s partner trying to sneak away. “Front and center…now!”
Reluctantly, Allen Black approached the police captain. “Y-yes, ma’am?”
“You have five seconds to tell me where Keith is before I make your head a permanent fixture on my office wall!”
“Problems with your own ship, Captain?” Inspector Lunge said with another cold smile as he walked into Keith’s burnt office. “This isn’t going to look well on my report.”
Q felt her own fingers begin to twitch. She glared over at Allen. She couldn’t strangle Lunge without repercussions, but if she killed one of her own….
Allen seemed to get the hint from her murderous glare. “Christ, don’t give me that look. It’s not like it was my idea to have Keith go running off to the Luna Café with some soldier looking for his long lost girlfriend….”
All Q heard was ‘Keith’ and ‘the Luna Café‘. “C’mon, Allen. We’re going to go retrieve your dead partner….”
Allen gulped as Q ran back toward her office to retrieve her coat….
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Lunge spoke up, “but I will handle this matter alone.”
Q spun around. If looks could kill, Lunge’s head would have exploded right then. “Excuse me?!”
Lunge, however, wasn’t looking in Q’s direction. He was crouched on the floor of Keith’s office, poking at the debris. “I realize he is your detective, but this is my jurisdiction now. To me, it looks as though Keith was trying to destroy something…incriminating in his office.”
This time, Allen bristled at the slander of his partner’s good name. “What?! Keith would never do something like that! That soldier did all this! He said he was an alchemist!”
“Your Keith’s partner, right?” Lunge stood. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “Of course you would lie for him, wouldn’t you?”
“…what?!
“An alchemist, looking for an old flame,” Lunge continued talking without realizing the pun, “shows up here, blows apart Keith’s office, and then drags him off to the Luna Café? While it is possible, you have to admit that such a chain of events is highly improbable. Why come to Keith, of all people? An even bigger question: Why would he blow up Keith’s office?”
“Well…he probably heard that Keith was assigned the Heero-Riza case. And, as for the second question…hey, grief can make people do crazy things….” Even to Allen’s ears, though, his defense sounded pretty weak.
“Hm. Desperation can make people do crazy things, as well.” Lunge said with a frown. Then, he shrugged ever so slightly. “If you have a problem with my investigation, you’re more than welcome to take it up with my superiors at the Comdot Estate. In the meantime, I have a rogue detective to catch.” And with that, Lunge walked out of Actionia Police headquarters.
For awhile, Q could only stand there fuming. But then, she finally slumped and headed back for her office, still on a mission to retrieve her coat, but for a different reason. “I’m going to take the rest of the day off, Allen. See about getting Keith’s office fixed up. If it’s not fixed by the time I get back here tomorrow…I’ll think of some sort of gruesome fate to visit upon you.”
Even though he knew she couldn’t see it, Allen just nodded. He didn’t think he had ever seen her so worn out….
***
“Can you hear me now? Good.”
Kirara Amour weaved through the crowd as she adjusted her earpiece. All around her, the citizens of Actionia were abuzz with idle chatter, mostly concerning the riot that had occurred only days ago, as they waited for the Comdot representative to appear.
“Hey…don’t you think we should tell the Syndicate about this press conference, too?” Kirara asked into the nearly microscopic microphone affixed to the collar of her jacket.
“It depends upon what is said. At any rate, they’ll find out eventually, anyway.” the Voice said to her from the earpiece.
Kirara realized that a hush had gone over the crowd. “Things must be getting started….” She looked up at the podium that had been erected in front of the Comdot Estate. Sure enough, a white-haired man, clad in a blue and white uniform and complete with a tall hat and flowing cape, had stepped out and taken center stage.
“Citizens of Actionia! Lend me your ears!” the man called out in a booming, charismatic voice, “I know that, to many of you, Michelle Ozzal may not always seem to be the ideal leader, but nor is she the heartless tyrant that the Syndicate propaganda makes her out to be! She has heard the plight of her citizens and she now seeks to right a grave wrong in this city!”
“The truth is,” he continued, “we have discovered a link between the Syndicate and, not only the criminal riots, but the rampaging Mobile Suit as well! It is believed that it was all a Syndicate plot to stir up further resentment in it’s citizens, make them feel as though Ozzal no longer has the ability to keep them safe. But Ozzal will not stand for this injustice!!”
“The time has come for the dragon to bear it’s teeth! The Syndicate must be crushed once and for all, before they can continue their deplorable terrorists acts on our fair city and our innocent citizens! Thus, a team of Actiona’s finest, led by our war hero, Major Tom Taredan, has been dispatched to capture what are believed to be the leaders and other important personnel thought to be central to the inner workings of the Syndicate! And, to show you how dedicated Ozzal is to the idea of justice in this country, these prisoners will not be summarily executed, but be held accountable for their actions by a trial and jury held by their peers. We will do our part and,” the man stretched his hands out over the crowd, “I trust that you will do your part to ensure our streets are safe from terror…forever!!”
During the entire speech, Kirara could only shake her head and wonder who could possibly take the whole thing seriously…but then, as the man finished speaking, the crowd went into an uproar. Every single person there was clapping until their hands were red. Many people had determined expressions on their face, and several others were calling out, “Yes, we’ll bring justice back to Actionia!” or similar sentiments. It was always surprising how a few well chosen and pleasant sounding words could sway people….
“Did you hear all of that?” Kirara asked in a defeated tone.
“The whole thing. It’s just as I feared. As it stands now, there’s no way the Syndicate, unorganized as it is, can possibly hope to stand up to Actionia’s might….”
Kirara sighed, “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Yes. It’s time for us to leave, for now. Once the dust clears…things will really get started.”
“Are you sure about this? Leaving everyone behind?” Kirara bit her lip. “It almost feels like…a betrayal….”
“It can’t be helped.” the Voice said with an audible sigh, “Even with the rest of the Order standing with the Syndicate, there’s no hope of stopping the tide of violence that will come next. Our best hope is to do what we’ve always done: wait things out, and then strike from the shadows. The Syndicate has left themselves too open…too many egos running against each other. Had they been more organized, this might have not happened.”
“In a way,” the Voice continued, “this works out for us anyway. We needed a smokescreen of some sort. And you and I both needed an opportunity to disappear from the Syndicate.” There was a snort on the other side, “I’d call it divine intervention, but….”
For awhile, there was silence between Kirara and the mysterious voice on the other side of the earpiece. All around her, people were still either cheering or were gathering in small groups, excitedly discussing Actionia’s supposedly “brighter” future.
“So, that’s it then?”
“I suppose so. I have one last thing I need to do before I leave. Your actions within the Syndicate have been far less than mine, so you should be able to leave now, without raising suspicion. Tell everyone else to report to their assigned stakeout locations. They can finish their observations for today and then it will be time for them to disappear, too.”
Kirara frowned. “Won’t they run the risk of drawing attention to themselves?”
“Not really. Both the Syndicate and the Actionia military will be too concerned with each other to notice. And it is important that we are witness to the military’s methods of capture as well as those people that they successfully capture…in case, at some future point, we have a chance of rescuing our former comrades.”
This lightened Kirara’s mood somewhat. So…he wasn’t going to leave their friends hanging after all….
“One last thing, Kirara. It’s time to put ‘it’ on.”
“Right.” Kirara reached into her pocket and pulled out a black necklace. On the necklace, there was a glass cross. She slipped it over her head and hung it around her neck.
“Okay,” Kirara said, both to herself and to the Voice over the earpiece, “let’s get things started….”
***
“Goda?”
“Mr. Novak. I saw your performance on the Actionia News. Brought me to tears.”
“Amusing. Just make your calls.”
“They are already standing by. Blue Team?”
“Ready.”
“Green Team?”
“Waiting on you.”
“Excellent. Yellow team?”
“Here.”
“White?”
“Give the word already.”
“In a moment. Red team…?”
***
“I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place….”
Emeri sighed. Chasing around the mad scientist’s assistant had been fun for awhile…she had been surprised at how fast the little guy could run. But she knew the twisted streets like the back of her blood-stained blade, and soon, both she and Jake had cornered the little man.
She found that she didn’t have it in her to kill him (she had completely forgotten the fact that she was technically supposed to capture him alive). As entertaining as she found the sheer act of killing, she couldn’t shake her growing sense of melancholy.
“Gah…everything is so **bleep** boring!” She exclaimed, kicking her feet into the air. She then fell back onto the pavement…and continued poking Larry with a stick.
Larry, in the meantime, was curled up in a fetal position on the street corner, murmuring to himself. “I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place….”
Meanwhile, nearby, Jake was sitting slumped over, the drugs in his system having long worn off. Emeri looked over at him and then rolled her eyes. He was probably having an emo moment….
Suddenly, Emeri’s reverie was broken by the beeping of her phone. Lazily she reached into the folds of her dress and pulled it out.
“Red team…? Emeri…?” It was that annoying Goda-person….
Without any enthusiasm in her voice, Emeri sighed and said, “Who the hell do you think I am….”
“I told you to stay on call! Why I even put up with you is beyond me-”
Emeri had stopped listening at that point. She was wondering how far she could chuck her phone…better yet, maybe she could throw her phone, and then try and catch it with her chainblade….
“…at any rate, it doesn’t matter anymore. You now have the full permission of the Echelon to pursue, and subdue, your designated target.”
Now that caught her attention. “What did you say?”
“So you’re hard of hearing, now, too?” Goda sighed, “The Echelon has decided to crush the Syndicate once and for all. Your designated target, Father John Sadar, is now open game.”
Now, Emeri really did chuck her phone…but not out of boredom.
“Squeeeeee!!!” Emeri squealed as she jumped up, “Finally, permission!” Usually, the word left a bad taste in her mouth. In fact, she and Jake had originally been out attempting to hunt down Father Sadar anyway…before Larry had run off and Professor Wacko had forced her to chased him.
But now…there was nothing standing in her way…and she knew exactly what to do….
“Jake!” she called over, “Get your emo butt up! We’re going after that priest, finally!”
“Leave me alone….” Jake grumbled.
Emeri growled and marched over to him. “I’m sick and tired of your attitude!” she declared. She reached into her dress and withdrew a needle….
Jake glanced back at her. “No…wait…please, not again-!”
Before he could stop her, though, she jammed it into his shoulder. Jake let out a bestial howl…that became even more gruesome as she emptied out the contents of the syringe….
“Now, you’re ready.” Emeri said with a feral grin. “C’mon…let’s head for St. Maria’s Cathedral. Kira prepared a little something for me that should stop that **bleep** nun’s powers….”
Meanwhile, as they left, Larry continued to rock back and forth on the ground. “I’m in my happy place…I’m in my happy place….”
***
Goda face-palmed. Gawd, I hope she’s actually doing what she’s supposed to.
“Ah, well…if necessary, we’ll take down the priest ourselves.” Goda then continued his check-in with the rest of the teams.
“Alpha Team?”
“Here.”
“Beta?”
“I read you loud and clear.”
“Gamma?”
“Say the word, boss.”
“Stevie?”
“Here. Wait…what?”
“Excellent. All teams, head to your positions and begin Operation Dragon’s Teeth!”
***
“I’m glad to see you made it out in one piece…relatively speaking, anyway.”
Samson spun in his wheel chair. “Father Sadar!”
Father Sadar grinned down at the young man. “I’m so glad you made it out of there alive, Sammy. No thanks to me.”
“I’m glad to see you too. I got worried when Emeri returned so quickly that she had actually….”
“Killed me? Fortunately, I had a little divine intervention….” Father Sadar trailed off suddenly and frowned as if he had just eaten something funny.
“Uh…everything alright, Father?”
Sadar shook his head. “It’s nothing. I had a weird sense of déjà vu. Anyway, “ Sadar’s smile returned, “how have you been doing?”
Samson sighed. “I’ve been better. Bruce and the others treated me to a barbecue the other day, but, well…then the whole thing with the Mobile Suit happened….”
Father Sadar nodded, “I heard about that. Fortunately, I was unconscious during all of it. I would have made it over here sooner, to check up on you, but then I got word that the Syndicate was meeting with a member of Actionia’s underground and I headed over to see what he had to say.”
“Yeah, Hikki told me about that.” Samson said, frowning and scratching at his cast. “The Penguin is trying to recruit people to go and rescue Jake.”
“Yes. You and I both found out that Jake hasn’t always been a bloodthirsty monster, and the Penguin is convinced we can turn him over to our side if we can got him out of the Comdot Estate.”
“Are you going to be going on that mission? To save Jake?”
Father Sadar shook his head, “No, I‘m not.”
“I see….” Samson trailed off.
For awhile, there was mostly silence in the backroom of the Luna Café. In the distance, there was the usual clatter and buzz of cooking chefs and hungry customers. There was the occasional muted cuss in French as Hikki worked on a particularly difficult cake he was in the process of baking.
“Hey…Father?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think…you’ll fight Emeri again?”
Father Sadar stared out the backroom window for awhile before answering, “It’s a possibility, I suppose. She does seem to have a twisted fascination with me…but don’t worry,” he turned and gave Samson a sympathetic smile, “I won’t be bringing you along with me if I think she’ll show up again.”
“Actually…that’s not what I’m worried about….” Samson stared at the floor of the Café.
“What is troubling you, Sammy?”
“Could you…” Samson paused briefly, “could you promise me something?”
Father Sadar frowned. “Samson, what is it?”
Samson finally looked up, “Could you promise me that you won’t kill Emeri?”
Sadar’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Father…it wasn’t the Syndicate that saved me. It was Emeri. I don’t know why but…she let me go.”
Father Sadar was speechless. That psychopath?!
“I know that she’s killed lots of people and she seems to be insane, but…I get this weird feeling that she might have been a good person once. I think she may be another one of the victims of Ozzal’s stupid ambitions…like Jake is.”
Father Sadar thought about this. He scratched at the stubble on his chin, as he was prone to do when he was deep in thought.
Suddenly, Samson shook his head. “Aw, forgot it. We’re in the middle of war…we have no room for sympathy. It was a stupid thing to ask-”
Father Sadar leaned down and grabbed Samson’s shoulders. “No…it wasn’t.” He smiled, “In fact, I promise to you that I will do everything in my power to stop Emeri without killing her.”
“You will? Really?” Samson’s face lit up.
“Yes. Thou shalt not kill, after all.” Father Sadar said with a small chuckle as he straightened. He grinned down at Samson. “You know…you may be the most human person I’ve ever met. Never lose that spark of innocence, Sammy…it makes this world seem a little less bleak.”
Samson didn’t know what to say, so he simply beamed widely.
“Ahem!”
Samson and Father Sadar turned and saw Hikki standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen.
“Well! Ee zee you two are getting along udoku in ere.” Hikki said with a small pout.
“That reminds me,” Father Sadar said with a mischievous grin and sidelong glance at Samson. “I heard that Hikki invited you and Clarice to stay here for the time being…how have things been working out?”
“Wonderfully! <3” Hikki said, smiling broadly.
“Okay….” Samson said, eyeing Hikki warily, “Hikki actually only invited me…fortunately, Clarice insisted upon coming along, too.”
“Aw, now don’t be leek zat, Samson.” Hikki said walking over, “You would have been very zafe een my handz, without zhat humorlezz weetch.” He stroked Samson’s head affectionately. “Weethout her around, E’m sure thingz would have been a lot more…fun….” He smiled like a Cheshire cat.
Suddenly, Samson grabbed Father Sadar’s cane, which had been leaning against the wall. He pulled the cane sword out halfway. “I’ll cut you!”
“You break my heart, Samson.” Hikki said with another pout, “Ee think Ee I might need zomeone to console me….” He leaned closer to Samson.
“I’LL CUT YOU!!” Samson repeated with emphasis.
From out of nowhere, a book flew through the air and nailed Hikki right in the middle of his forehead.
“Gack!” Hikki fell to the ground with a small thump.
“How many times do I have to tell you?!” Clarice exclaimed as she marched into the backroom. “HANDS OFF, YOU PERVERT!”
“Not you, again….” Hikki bemoaned as he lay on the floor, a large book-shaped red mark starting to appear on his head.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Clarice said, grabbing hold of one of Hikki’s feet, “Sorry for the intrusion….” she then dragged Hikki back into the kitchen with her.
“Unhand me, you harpy!” was the last thing they heard from Hikki before he disappeared.
And, for awhile, Samson and Sadar just stared after them in shock.
“She’s scary.” Father Sadar finally commented.
“…and a lifesaver.” Samson added with a relieved sigh. He then handed Sadar’s cane back to him.
Sadar stared down at his cane for a moment before saying, “Samson…I’ve got something I need to do. I probably won’t be around for awhile….”
Samson raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Another Syndicate mission?”
“Not exactly….” Sadar said softly. Suddenly, he knelt down and grabbed Samson’s hand. Samson felt Father Sadar hand him something small and attached to string….
“If you are ever feeling lost…” Father Sadar said, closing Samson’s hand around the object, “come and find us.”
Then, Father Sadar stood and walked purposefully toward the backdoor. Samson darted back and forth between looking at his hand, still clutching the mysterious object, and Father Sadar’s retreating form.
“Wait…Father, I don’t understand….”
Father Sadar opened the door, but didn’t step out yet. The outside wind ruffled his white hair.
“A storm is coming.” Father Sadar said without turning. Then, he did turn and gave Samson one last sad smile. “Do me this one favor, in exchange for my own promise to you. Survive, Samson. Survive, no matter what.”
And then, he was gone.
For awhile, Samson could only stare at the backdoor, a look of bewilderment on his face. Eventually though, he thought to look at the object that he still held in his hand. He unclenched his fist…and saw a necklace with a glass cross….
***
Angel Sarcasta slumped in her seat in the car, her head lolled to the side as she stared lazily out the car window. Next to her, Spice continued her mumbling about how “Actionia was now such a drag without her Spam factory” and “why on earth did I sign up for this glame Syndicate thing, anyway?” Riding shotgun was the Penguin, who was remarkably silent through the whole trip. Meanwhile, one of his cronies did the actual driving. They were supposed to be on their way to rescue Jake Thompson from the clutches of the Comdot Estate, but the Penguin had insisted upon taking a roundabout route to the Estate’s back entrance, in order to make sure they hadn’t been followed.
“Why the hell am I even on this mission?” Angel groused silently to herself.
Then, she found her thoughts drifting back to a certain night she had spent with a certain blonde sniper. As she was prone to do when she was really bored. She didn’t let it show, but Riza’s death had really affected her. Heero she hadn’t really know but Riza…well, Angel had always though that they had shared a special bond that night…among other things.
After Angel had helped Riza remove her wet clothes, she had taken them down to a local laundry next to Trunk’s Pub. When she had returned, she found a still naked Riza was lying on the bed, curled up in a ball and crying.
Angel had frowned. She knew that Riza was a strong woman. It was one of the things that Angel had distantly admired about the female sniper. To have something like those effect her so badly….
“Look at yourself,” Angel snapped, “you’re falling to pieces! I know you’re better than this! Heero may be gone, but there’s no reason why you can’t keep on going! When Professor Matrix killed my father and I realized our whole relationship was merely built upon a perverted lie, do you think I curled up into a ball and cried? Hell, no! I started to plot revenge on that little pecker…and Professor Matrix, too!”
Suddenly, Angel had realized that she was being insensitive. Well…more insensitive than usual. She clapped a hand over her mouth and muttered an apology through her fingers.
Riza looked up. “No, it’s okay…you’re right.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, “This isn’t like me. I guess you could say I’ve been through a lot in these past few years….”
Angel sat on the bed next to her and placed a comforting hand on her bare shoulder. She was surprised at her warm she felt, even though she was still slightly wet….
“It’s okay,” Angel said with what she hoped was a comforting smile, “Things can only get better. And you don’t have to be alone while you deal with all this. We’re all here for you.” She grabbed Riza’s hand. “I’m here for you.”
Riza smiled and looked right into Angel’s eyes. Angel couldn’t help but notice how beautiful those blue orbs were…. “That means a lot to me.”
They sat there for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes. Angel could feel something happening between them…some sort of connection. She was suddenly painfully aware of Riza’s warm and naked body seated merely inches from here. She suddenly found herself leaning closer…closer to that warmth….
And she was surprised to see that Riza was leaning closer too. But then, Angel realized, with a lazy after-thought, that maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Riza needed someone to be close to right now…needed it badly.
And, eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, their lips had met part way and….
The car jerked to a stop, shaking Angel out of her pleasant reverie. They had arrived.
**bleep**. This always happens. Right when I get to the best part….
Angel sighed. There was no helping it. Might as well get this over with. She climbed out of the car. Spice, the Penguin, and his henchman were quick to follow suit.
After a quick stop at the trunk of the car to load up- with weapons generously provided by the Penguin himself –their small group crept towards the backdoor of the Comdot Estate.
“Let me enter first,” the Penguin said, waddling ahead of them. “There shouldn’t be any guards around at this time of day, but, just in case, I want to go on ahead before you. I have a way of dealing with hostile elements without the need for violence.” He patted his suit coat’s pocket, where his wallet presumably resided. “Horace, watch the car.” he called back at his crony.
“Yesss, boss.” Horace complied.
Angel and Spice pressed themselves against the walls of the Comdot Estate, looking around warily. Meanwhile, the Penguin went in through the small gray door that led to the generator room of the Comdot Estate.
“Alright, it’s safe. Come, quickly!” The Penguin hissed out at them after a few minutes.
With one final glance around, Angel and Spice ran in through the open door….
…and emerged in complete darkness.
Angel blinked her eyes repeatedly, trying to adjust them to the darkness.
“Hey, Penguin guy! Where the hell did you waddle off too?!” she heard Spice call out quietly.
Suddenly, bright lights snapped on and the light filled the cavernous room.
And Angel realized they had stepped into a trap.
All around them, on the catwalks that went between the large generators that provided power to the entire Estate, soldiers stood with their weapons aimed directly at Angel and Spice’s heads. The soldiers wore black body armor with glistening helmets. Stamped on their helmets and in the center of their armored vests was the symbol of the Actionia military: [as]. Which stood for “Actionia Supreme.”
“I do hope you understand,” The Penguin said, stepping out from behind one of the Actionia soldiers. “I bear no ill will against you or the rest of the Syndicate. In fact, I despise Ozzal as much as you do. I’m afraid all of this is simply business.” The Penguin shrugged.
“You lying sonuvabitch.” Angel snarled, “So, the whole song and dance you gave to us earlier was nothing but a lie?”
“Not completely,” the Penguin said, “It’s true that Jake Thompson is being held against his will here as one of Ozzal’s secret weapons. And it’s also true that Ozzal had been limiting my underworld transactions significantly. But you already knew the former, thanks to the raid on the Comdot archives, and, as for the latter…well, we worked things out. If I help Ozzal crush the Syndicate, she’s promised to let my operations continue on as usual.” The Penguin said coldly. He didn’t smile. He wasn’t taunting them. This literally was just business to him.
Spice snorted. “And you trusted that psycho betch?”
The Penguin nodded. “Indeed. In fact, for just bringing you two ladies hear, Ozzal has already begun removing the blockades over my usual shipping routes and released some of my personnel from prison. And, so long as she gets her cut of the profit, she’s willing to allow my future activities to continue unimpeded.”
Spice shook her head. “I still have a hard time believing that that heartless wench would personally agree to anything like that.”
The Penguin frowned. “Well…she didn’t personally agree to it…she’s been working out our arrangement with me through one of her Economic Advisers, a Mr. Solomon.” The Penguin shrugged again. “At any rate, the particulars of our deal won’t matter to you shortly.” The Penguin clapped his hands…and the soldiers began to advance on the Syndicate heroines. “Ozzal apparently wants you two alive, so I’d be very appreciative if you would surrender without a fight.”
“Fat chance, birdbrain.” Angel replied with a wicked smirk. She then pumped her shotgun, pointed at the nearest soldier and….
Click.
Angel’s eyes widened. No ammo!
Then, she face-palmed. Of course there was no ammo! They got their weapons from the back of the Penguin’s car, instead of bringing their own. The Penguin must have been planning that far ahead!
The sound of rapid clicking next to her told Angel that Spice had figured this out as well.
“Well, this whole situation has gone from being ghey to gheyer.” Spice said as she threw her useless shotgun to the ground in disgust. “I don’t suppose we have a plan B?”
Fortunately, Angel really went anywhere without a small supply of her own customized daggers, in addition to whatever weapons happened to be on hand.
“Plan B?” Angel repeated, as she reached into her blouse and withdrew one of her hidden daggers. “Run like hell!” She then tossed the dagger at the throat of a nearby soldier.
Without even waiting to see if she had hit, Angel ran for the door. “C’mon!” She shouted back at Spice.
But, just as Spice turned to follow her, one of the soldiers caught up with her and nailed her over the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.
Angel stopped, mere centimeters from the door and freedom. “Spice!!” She called back.
Even though she had been hit pretty hard, Spice struggled against the soldiers that were trying to pin her down and handcuff her. “Run, you idiot!” she screeched.
Angel didn’t need to be told twice. She ran out the door right as the soldiers opened fire, the shots pinging off the pavement behind her.
She knew that the Penguin’s henchman would be waiting for her if she headed back for the car, so, instead, she ran around the curve of the Comdot Estate, aiming for the open streets. She had no particular destination in mind. She just knew she had to get away…and fast.
However, her blind run left her unaware of the tall man in the pinstripe suit that suddenly appeared in front of her….
She nearly ran into him, but managed to stop just in time. She looked up to see who the hell had gotten in her way (and had realized that it was, thankfully, not a soldier) when….
She found herself staring down the long barrel of a pistol. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her attacker smile with big buck-teeth….
BANG!
Angel collapsed to the ground, her arm automatically going to her wounded shoulder. She felt her blood slowly oozing out of the wound and she gritted her teeth in pain.
Her attacker giggled. “Hee hee hee! Where are you running off to, doll? Stay awhile, the party is just getting started!”
Angel glared up at the…monster. Yes…that was the word. She realized he wasn’t quite human. He stood a foot taller than average and he was impossibly thin. He seemed to have white paint on the lower half of his face, red lipstick, and some kind of black mask covered his eyes. She also saw that the hand holding the gun was metallic….
The creature noted that she was staring at his robotic arm. He pocketed his gun and knelt down in front of her, holding out his metallic appendage.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” He said, giving another buck-tooth grin. “And just wait till you see what I can do with it!” He snapped his arm and his fingers suddenly formed a rigid blade. He traced her cheekbone with the blade, “So many beautiful things that I can cut with this hand….”
“You sick **bleep**….” she managed to gasp out. She found that she was having trouble maintaining consciousness. She had lost too much blood.
“Oh, don’t worry your pretty little head.” the thing said as he stroked her hair with his other hand, “I’ve been told by a mutual friend to not hurt a hair on your head!”
“A…mutual…friend?”
“Yes.” He gave the widest grin of all. “A wonderful little man that goes by the name of Professor Matrix.”
Angel’s eyes widened in abject horror. “No…!” she called out hoarsely….
But then, the monster grabbed her hair…and slammed her head into the ground.
“Oopsie.” Angel heard as the jaws of darkness started to claim her, “Looks like the Professor will simply have to settle with ‘mostly intact‘….” The creature’s giggles echoed into her nightmares….
***
Jacob the Liar watched as the cyborg carried off the red-haired woman. After awhile, he stopped watching and climbed onto his motorcycle.
“Two down.” Jacob said in a flat tone as he revved his motorcycle. “I wonder how the rest of the Syndicate is fairing.”
Then, he sped off, the glass cross around his neck whipping in the wind….
***
“Master Cowboy! Master Coolman! Mistress Gaurdsmen! Master…mistress? Um, April!”
Cowboy lazily turned his head. “Yikes, what’s with all the screaming, Norman?”
“Soldiers have gathered outside and-” He was cut off as a he was shredded to pieces by bullet fire.
“Norman!” Elizabeth called.
“Wow…the old guy wasn’t kidding.” Cowboy said grimly.
Cowboy, Elizabeth Saurie St. Gaurdsmen, Real Coolman, and April had been holed out in the Gunsmoke Inc. Bar for some time now. They were doing their best to relax as they waited for the word from the rest of the Syndicate about new missions. However, they didn’t expect a new mission to come to them….
Elizabeth instantly sprang to her feet and pulled out her dual pistols. “Looks like it’s time to eat my fill!” She exclaimed with her trademark feral grin.
“Yeah, Elizabeth!” Real called out encouragingly. “You be mad blackin’!”
Cowboy glared over at the German. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Shut up.” Real snapped back with a snort. “At least I’m being encouraging! What the hell are you going to do?”
“I am going to head to the back of the room and stay out of the way.” Cowboy said, lifting up Hagi’s cello and walking towards the back of the bar, “I’m a lover, not a fighter, after all….”
“Yeah, I’m with the opera singer.” April said, following.
“What about you, little man,” Elizabeth asked in Real’s direction, “you up for a fight?”
“Hellz yeah.” Real pulled a sawed-off shotgun from a duffle bag full of guns at his feet. He pumped it and grinned.
“Great….” Elizabeth then turned her attention to the fight soon to come. There were three entrances to the Gunsmoke Inc. Bar: The main door, a side door, and the backroom door behind the actual bar. She knew (or at least she hoped) that Cowboy and April would warn her if soldiers entered from the backdoor, so she decided to concentrate on the main door and side door.
No sooner had Elizabeth finished planning things out when the first soldiers began to stream through both doors at once.
“You’re making this too easy!” Elizabeth cried out with a laugh. She aimed one pistol at the main entrance and the other pistol at the side entrance, and then…the fun really got started.
Real found that he didn’t actually get to do much of anything. Elizabeth stood in the center of the room, plugging holes in any soldier that dared to enter the bar before they could even return fire. Soon, there were a pile of bodies littering the bar.
He shuddered when he saw the intense expression on Elizabeth’s face…the look of sheer feral pleasure….
“Hey, watch out!” He called when he realized that one of the soldiers had actually managed to squeeze off a few rounds.
Elizabeth deftly stepped to the side at the last moment, and the bullets whizzed by.
“Heh, are lucky shots the only thing they can manage?” Elizabeth taunted.
“I hate to interrupt, E double-S G,” she suddenly heard Cowboy call, “but they’re coming through from this end, too!”
Without missing a beat, Elizabeth swung around the pistol she had aimed at the side door and began shooting the soldiers that were swarming in through the back door. Meanwhile, April and Cowboy ducked down behind the bar on either side of the door.
A clattering sound at the front door suddenly caught Elizabeth’s attention. Her eyes widened. “Grenade!!” she called. She then kicked over a table and dove behind it.
Sure enough, a small explosion rocked the front of the Gunsmoke Inc. bar a second later, showering the whole room in debris. Covered by the explosion, several Actionia soldiers managed to make their way through the front door and began chewing up the place with gunfire.
Elizabeth peered out from behind her makeshift shield and fired off as many shots as she could before ducking back behind it as the table was riddled with the soldier’s bullets. Even though she had been firing blindly, she was satisfied to hear the sound of several of the soldiers gasping and falling over in pain.
“Real!” she yelled over the sound of the gunfire, “Cover me!”
“Gotcha!” Real then poked his head out from behind the table he had tipped over when Elizabeth had called to him about the grenade. He managed to get off a few buckshot bursts before he was forced back behind his shield.
However, Real had managed to accomplish what Elizabeth wanted: a distraction. She jumped up and stood on the lip of the sideways table. She then pushed off of it…and flew through the air.
Yes…here was the moment!
Everything had slowed down for her, as she went flying through the air, in the direction of the enemy soldiers. She saw, in slow motion, the soldiers desperately turning their weapons away from Real and trying to get a bead on her.
You’re too slow!
Elizabeth grinned from ear to ear. She brought her pistols up…and dropped them one by one….
***
However, in her mad dash to kill the soldiers invading from the front, Elizabeth had forgotten the soldiers coming from the side and the back.
The first soldier poked his head through the back door to look around…as Cowboy brought his cello down on the creep’s head. The wooden instrument shattered into a thousand wooden pieces, but it managed to floor his attacker.
Cowboy held up the broken handle of the cello, looking at it forlornly. “Crap…my chelleaux!”
“It’s pronounced ’cello’, you idiot-” However, Real couldn’t finish rant, as soldiers had also begun to march through the side door. Since his table-shield had been aimed at the front door, it didn’t save him from the hail of bullets that came at him from the side….
“Crap…the annoying German guy!”
“I’m sorry about this, Cowboy.”
Cowboy spun around…and found that April had stripped the soldier he had knocked out and was now wearing the soldier’s armor and helmet. April aimed his/her borrowed gun at Cowboy’s head.
“Crap…the sneaky transvestite!”
April then brought the gun around and punched Cowboy in the face with the butt of his/her rifle, knocking Cowboy out cold.
“Don’t worry,” April whispered as he/she lifted Cowboy and hefted him over his/her shoulder. “I’ll figure out how to get us out of this….”
He/she then headed for the exit, making sure to salute the officer located outside directing things. “Sir, I have captured a prisoner….”
***
Elizabeth rolled as she hit the ground and spun around.
Crap.
She could only watch as the enemy soldier carried Cowboy’s limp body out the back door…meanwhile, more soldiers came running in from the side door. She glanced over and saw Real’s bullet-ridden corpse.
“Just me now, eh?” Elizabeth grinned as she reloaded both pistols using the ammo belt around her waist. She assumed that April had been taken down as well…. “Fine…I guess I work better alone, anyway.”
She then sprinted towards the soldiers that were similarly charging toward her, unleashing a barrage of gunfire as she ran. The soldiers returned fire, but found it difficult to properly aim at a target that was bearing down on them so quickly. The most they managed to do was cut her cheek with a stray bullet…and she didn’t even seem to notice that, either.
It soon became apparent to Elizabeth that the enemy was retreating. The soldiers actually tripped over each other as they tried to escape from her relentless assault. Elizabeth continued firing at them as they ran out the side door, killing a lot of them even as they finally reached the streets.
“That’s what you get for messing with the Syndicate!” Elizabeth screamed out at them. Still holding her pistol, she even flipped them the bird, though she knew they couldn’t see her at this point.
Despite everything- Real’s death, Cowboy’s capture, and April’s unknown fate –Elizabeth couldn’t help the feeling of joy that overcame her. It had been awhile since she had felt so alive!
And so, Elizabeth had a wide grin affixed to her face as she holstered her pistols and-
-found that she could no longer move.
Elizabeth would have widened her eyes in shock…if she had any control over her body left.
What the **bleep** is happening to me?
Suddenly, she found herself bending over backwards, until she was practically crab-walking. She fought the mysterious force that had overcome her muscles…fought it with every fiber of her being. But her body refused all of her commands….
“W-what…the Devil…?” she did manage to stammer out.
“The Devil indeed.” she heard from the side entrance. A silky smooth voice that sent involuntary chills down her spine….
The man finally stepped into her view. He wore an all white coat with what seemed like a skull and barbed wiring serving as a shoulder pad. He had dark blue hair that hung over his- in any other circumstance –handsome face. He had sickly yellows eyes…and an even sicker smile on his face.
He knelt down near her and peered at her with intense curiosity. He reached out a hand and gently stroked her arm.
“Such beautiful muscles…trained to be perfect killing machines. Able to instinctively react to any danger.” The man’s smile widened. “Too bad they are but playthings to my mind.”
“I can see by the confusion in your eyes,” the blue-haired man continued, “that you are probably wondering what manner of creature I am. The truth is, I am as loathsomely human as you are. My name is Legato. Legato Bluesummers. And I am humanity‘s greatest nightmare.”
Elizabeth tried to stammer out a response, tried to spit at him, tried to do something to rebel against the control he had over her, but all she could do was grit her teeth and glare. For his part, Legato seemed to not notice her struggle at all…his control over her never wavered.
“Ah, but what is this? You seem to have injured yourself.” Legato reached a hand up to her face and turned it so he could see the still bleeding cut on her cheek. She flinched (or tried to, anyway) as he leaned over and licked the blood that had spilt onto her face from the wound. “There…much better.” He smiled again…clearly enjoying her discomfort.
“I’m afraid our playtime must be short today,” he then said with a sigh, “I do have orders to bring you back to the Echelon. So, for now, I must say goodnight….” He reached over and closed her eyelids…and the darkness claimed Elizabeth….
***
Kaia Namek watched as the soldiers lifted the last captive from the Gunsmoke Inc. bar into the back of an armored APC.
Kaia lowered her binoculars. “That one must be Elizabeth…Furion’s going to be glad that they at least captured her alive.”
Then, Kaia shoved the binoculars into her coat pocket. She turned toward the edge of the roof…and leapt onto the roof next to her.
My job here is done…time to disappear….
Kaia continued hopping from rooftop to rooftop, the glass cross around her neck whipping around wildly in the wind….
***
Bruce Herman had no time to think as he heard the whistling sound coming closer. He grabbed Sarah’s hand and ran towards the screen door that led out to his patio.
“Bruce, what’s wrong?!” Sarah exclaimed in alarm as he pulled her along with him.
“No time…just run!”
He slid open the screen door as fast he could and ran out into his backyard. Outside, his friends were gathered around another makeshift barbecue that Surool had managed to put together with the food they had stolen from various stores, along with the remaining meat from Bruce’s own freezer. All of them looked up in alarm as he came running out.
And then, Bruce’s house exploded.
Bruce dived to the ground and did his best to cover Sarah from the falling shrapnel. Within moments, though, the shrapnel had stopped falling and all that remained of his house was a burning crater.
Bruce looked up and saw his friends come running over.
“Yo…you okay, boss?” Grant asked, the hookah still in his mouth.
Shatter gave both Sarah and Bruce a hand as they got up. He glanced past them at the smoking crater that was formerly Bruce’s house. “WTF was that?!”
Surool looked the two of them up and down. “Are you guys hurt anywhere?”
“No,” Sarah said shakily, “I don’t think so…Bruce?”
Bruce looked back at the remains of dream house with tears in his eyes. “Who would do something like this?”
“Guys…we’ve got company….” Jean Pierrot, who was standing a small distance away with his hands shoved in his pockets, stared intently at the forms that were beginning to take shape in the smoke that billowed from the crater of Bruce’s house.
The rest of them peered though the smoke as well…and sure enough, something was moving in there….
Suddenly, out stepped an entire battalion of Armed Suits and a full contingent of soldiers. At the head of this army was a stern looking man with a brown trenchcoat, sunglasses, a red beret, and a large mustache.
“It can’t be….” Shatter muttered incredulously, “…could it?”
Sarah clung tightly to Bruce as the column of soldiers and mecha drew closer. “Shatter…who is it?”
“I know who it is.” Surool said with a frown. “It’s the Umbrolos.”
“What…like the sea monster?” Grant asked with his typical expression.
“No…much worse.”
“I have come to arrest the criminals responsible for the vandalism on several Actionia shops as well as the assault on Actionia police personnel!” The Commander at the head of the column called in an authoritive voice. “Cooperate, or else!” Right on cue, the soldiers and Armed Suits stopped and aimed their weapons at them.
Suddenly, a jagged cut appeared on one of the Armed Suits. The top half of the Armed Suit slid part way off the rest of the machine before falling over.
Jean Pierrot pulled the scythe end of his kusarigama back toward him. He then spun it on it’s chain in the air while grinning maniacally. “I don’t **bleep** think so, Mr. Mustache.” He turned to Grant. “Quick, grab the firebombs we have stashed! We’re gonna need them!”
With an expression that almost looked happy, Grant ran back toward the barbecue, where they had kept the bulk of the items they had ‘appropriated’ from various Actionia stores.
However, the Commander appeared to be unimpressed, glancing over in seeming disinterest at his fallen Armed Suit. But then, he turned back toward Jean and, in a low voice, said, “You’re going to pay for that, you filthy punk.”
The Commander raised his wristwatch, which actually seemed to be a communicator as well. “Bring down the thunder.” he said into it.
Suddenly, there was another whistling noise.
Surool spun around, his eyes wide with fear. “For the love of God, run Jean!”
Slowly, a sense of peril dawned on Jean Pierrot. He swung the chain around and clicked his kusarigama back into place. He then returned it to the position on his back as he turned and began to run as fast his legs could carry him….
…but it was too late. From out of the sky, a 800-pound bomb dropped on his head…and all that remained was a smoking crater.
“Jean!!!” Shatter called out, his mouth agape at the sight he had just seen…his friend consumed in a fireball….
Sarah let out a small whimper and buried her face in Bruce’s chest. Bruce clutched her closer and hung his head.
Surool’s eyes were closed, and his shoulders were slumped. After a moment of silence, his eyes suddenly flashed open. “Grant! Freeze…now!” He called out.
Grant Orochi had heard the explosion behind him, but had been too focused on getting the firebombs to care. Now, though, he did turn…and saw what remained of his friend. He sank to the ground and began cussing up a storm.
“Those bastards…those **bleep** bastards….” was all they could make out of Grant’s tirade.
Surool, however, turned toward the Commander and glared at him. But then, sighed and raised his arms. “We surrender.”
“Excellent.” The Commander said, the same stern face he had when he had first shown up still affixed to his face. The Commander then looked at the rest of the people there.
But none of them had anything else to add. Shatter just slumped and angrily kicked at the debris near his feat. Bruce held tightly to Sarah. In the background, Grant continued his ranting and raving.
The Commander snapped his fingers. “Take them into custody.”
***
“Awww…poor guy.” Cid said, staring at the crater where the man with the chain-scythe had been standing.
“Have…you…seen…enough…yet?” Proof asked breathlessly, trying to support Cid’s weight on his shoulders.
“Yeah,” Cid said, a sad expression on her face, “the big guys are carting off everyone.” Cid climbed down, jostling the glass cross on Proof’s necklace.
“Okay, then.” Proof said, adjusting his sunglasses. “It’s time to hit the road and meet up with Furion.”
***
“OMAGOSH!! HAVOC?!”
The blonde man’s face turned bone white. “Not this **bleep** again!”
Suddenly, from the back of the Luna Café, Luna Monegossde ran up and tackled Havoc. “I’VE MISSED UUUUU!!!!”
“Havoc what the hell is-” Mustang could only watch as the insane proprietress of the Café then dragged the poor soldier into the kitchen with her.
“I’m sorry, Colonel!” Havoc called out, “Dammit, Keith! Why didn’t you tell me it was this Luna who owned the Café…!?”
Keith blinked once. And then he averted his eyes from the whole thing. “And now for breakfast!” He walked in and sat down at an available table, as if he hadn’t just seen Havoc abducted by n psychotic fangirl.
Mustang looked back and forth between the kitchen that Havoc had been dragged off to (where he could still hear Havoc screaming) and Keith, who had picked up a menu and was flipping through it. He gritted his teeth and slapped a palm to his forehead.
Fine, I guess I take matters into my own hands!
“Alright!” Mustang yelled, using his anger and frustration to amplify his voice, “I’m looking for the chef that works with the Syndicate! If I don’t seem him out here in five minutes, this place is getting torched!!”
Keith glanced up at Mustang briefly…and then returned to looking at the menu. “Hmm…maybe I’ll try the scones today….”
However, a few seconds later, a blonde man with a beret did poke his head out of the backroom. Mustang couldn’t help noticing the large welt in the middle of his forehead….
“Goodnez! What iz all ze ruckus?”
“You.” Mustang held out his hand, thumb and forefinger lightly sliding against each other. “Are you the person who hired the freelance snipers Heero and Riza?”
Hikki glanced at the man’s outstretched hand. He then smiled weakly, “Well…who wantz to know?”
Mustang growled. “Just answer the **bleep** question!” His thumb and forefinger had begun to produce sparks again….
Keith, who had finally gotten some decent coffee and his scones, peered over at the two of them as he sipped his coffee. Well, here comes the moment of truth….
And, for the second time that day, Keith’s world exploded.
Well, okay, so the front of the Café exploded.
Keith used his leg to kick over the table he had been sitting at, dived behind it, and pulled out his pistol. He would have been feeling a tremendous sense of déjà vu about the whole thing if it hadn’t been for the fact he had actually managed to save his pastry this time. In fact, as the smoke begin to clear at the front of the Café, Keith continued munching on one of the scones he had saved.
In the meantime, Mustang had jumped in front of Hikki and used his heavy trenchcoat to shield his face from the blast. After the explosion was over, Mustang quickly brought his alchemy hand up…and prepared for what awaited on the other side of the smoke.
He was greatly surprised when all that stood behind the smoke was silver-haired man in a white business suit.
“My word! Did zey really have to blow up ze whole front of ze Café?!” The man complained with a cough. “Ee do come here sometimez, people!”
Hikki peered out from behind Mustang. “Mizter Argeno…?”
Mustang glanced back at the chef. “You know him?”
Argeno’s face lit up when he saw the blonde Frenchman. “If it izn’t the pretty young baker! Juzt who Ee was looking for!” Absentmindedly, Argeno had reached into his pocket and withdrew what looked like a piece of candy….
Mustang smiled determinedly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to get in line. I have business to discuss with this “pretty young baker”, first….”
Argeno seemed to ignore him…at first. He lifted the piece of candy and wiggled it in Mustang’s direction. “Would you like some? It’s wild razpberry.”
Mustang gritted his teeth. I’m surrounded by crazy people! “Look, pal, I’m sure what game you’re playing here-”
“Ah, well. More for me.” Argeno then unwrapped the candy and popped it into his mouth. He closed his eyes and savored the flavor for a second…but when he opened his eyes, Mustang noticed a slight change in expression….
Argeno’s eyes were narrowed and he wore a wicked smile. “Ee’m afraid you will have to postpone your biznezz with my baker, Mizter State Alchemizt. He haz far more prezzing concernz.” After he said all this, Argeno snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, a pair of Actionia Soldiers came rushing out…and in between them, they carried two people who were tied up and gagged; a young man and a woman.
“Samson!” Hikki cried out. “And….”
Clarice glared at him and bit at her gag.
“Samson!” Hikki repeated.
Clarice began to kick and squirm and tried to shout at Hikki through her gag. But, of course, it came out as simply muffled ranting and raving. In the meantime, Samson looked with concern from Argeno to Hikki. He too tried to say something, but, again, it didn’t come out.
“Ee am sure you understand ze picture, Mizter Hikki.” Argeno said as he reached a hand out and patted Samson’s head. “Surrender or will we have no choice but to perform ze unpleasant duty of killing zese rats we found in your backroom.”
“Hikki, don’t listen to him!” Mustang pleaded, without taking his attention away from Argeno or the two soldiers and their prisoners. “You can’t negotiate with someone like him-”
“Alright, I’ll surrender!” Hikki called out, pushing past Mustang. “Juzt don’t hurt my Samson!”
“Nuph, Hiffi, dof’t doph ipht!” Samson trying to yell through his gag.
“You’re making a mistake….” Mustang similarly warned as Hikki walked out of the hole in the front of the café and toward Argeno, his shoulders slumped.
“What other choice do Ee have?” Hikki asked forlornly, both to himself and Mustang.
Hikki came to a stop right in front of Argeno. He held out his hands. “You can have me….”
Argeno reached down and stroked Hikki’s hair. “Zere’s a good boy. Don’t worry…we will take good care of you.” He snapped his fingers again, and another pair of soldiers came running and cuffed Hikki.
Next, an armored APC with the symbol “[as] “ stamped on the side came rolling out. Argeno and his prisoners entered the APC and the APC drove off.
“**bleep** it!” Mustang cursed. “That little fool!”
“You can’t really blame the guy.” Keith said, sidling up next to Mustang, sipping at his coffee. “What else could have he done?”
Mustang glared at him. “I suppose you were just sitting there drinking your coffee this whole time.”
Keith nodded. “While I find this whole thing as deplorable as you do, my hands are tied as well. Those guys were from the Actionia military. We’re technically on the same side….”
“You may be, but I left all of that behind a long time ago. And I am not going to stand here and let Ozzal ruin anyone else’s life!” Nor am I going to give up my one chance at finding out what happened to Riza!
Keith could only shrug. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’m probably going to need it.” Mustang then turned in the direction of the kitchen, “Havoc! Get your butt out here!”
Keith was surprised when Havoc did indeed show up…but he was even more surprised when he realized that Havoc was standing there almost completely naked, save for a fraspberry thong and a turtle-shaped hat.
Havoc, seemingly oblivious to his current state of appearance, held a gun in his hands and a determined expression on his face. “Colonel! I heard an explosion! Are you alright?”
Keith choked on his coffee while Mustang face-palmed for the second time in the past few minutes.
“Get your **bleep** clothes on, Havoc! We’ve got a baker to rescue!”
***
Meanwhile, in the back of the café, no one noticed the man with feathery white hair and a brown coat get up from his table, pay his tab, and then head out the backdoor.
“So, Ozzal even came here, too?” The man said to himself as he reached the back-alley. If anyone had seen him say this, they would have immediately noted that he had done so without moving his lips. “Furion’s fears appear to have been justified if she no longer fears operating in the open like this….”
The man stepped out of the alley, as a stray wind through the streets jostled the glass cross around his neck….
***
“Cillie, get up! We’ve got trouble!”
“It’s Cille….” Lucille Compton groaned as she rolled over in bed. Where am I? Cille wondered to herself as she realized she wasn’t in her own bed….
Suddenly, it all came back to her. Straight Cougar. The Syndicate. Ozzal. And she was in a hotel room in Lower Actionia, since it had become apparent that her own house in Orly was no longer safe….
Cille sat straight up in bed. “**bleep** it, I must have fallen asleep. I’m sorry-” She ducked as her suitcase came flying at her. It crashed into the hotel wall behind her. “OMQWTFBBQ, Cougar!! Are you trying to kill me?!”
“No, but you will most certainly be dead if you don’t get moving!” Cougar exclaimed as he pressed himself up against the wall next to the window. He peered through the blinds out at the streets of Lower Actionia. “Good…no one yet….”
Fortunately, Cille had only arrived at the hotel last night, and didn’t have much to pack. She only had to grab her toothbrush from the adjoining bathroom and the chainmaille inlay she had been working on to pass the time the other night from the nightstand next to the bed. The rest of the stuff she had taken from her house was still in her suitcase.
“Where’s the fire?” Cille asked in a somewhat annoyed tone as she hefted her suitcase.
Cougar flipped his signature purple shades on and whipped open the door to the outside streets. “I just found out that things are stirring inside the Comdot Estate…things even beyond Ozzal’s control!”
“’Things beyond Ozzal’s control?’” Cille asked breathlessly as she chased after Cougar’s fleeting form. “Is Ozzal in charge of Actionia or not?!”
“She is! But some of her…associates have gotten impatient with her handling of the Syndicate issue!” Cougar suddenly stopped in the middle of the street. “Now where the hell did I put my car?!”
Cille glanced around. Sure enough, Cougar’s flamboyantly purple car was nowhere to be seen. And it was hard to miss something like that. “Maybe it finally exploded.” Cille stated derisively, having witnessed, first hand, Cougar’s constant mistreatment of all manner of wheeled vehicle.
“No…that’s not-” Cougar suddenly spun around and faced Cille, “Run, Cille! Quickly!”
Cille had recently learned never to doubt Cougar, even though she had only know him for a short period of time. He had always come through for her in the end…in fact, the only reason why she was probably still alive was thanks to the eccentric Alter-user. So, when Cougar told her to run, Cille was willing to turn and do so without a moment’s hesitation…or at least she would have, had it not been for someone standing in her way….
No…not someone. Something. She glanced up at it and quickly realized it wasn’t human. It was humanoid in form, though. It was all white and it looked like it’s arms were being restrained by a straight jacket. Half of it’s face was dominated by a blue sheet of metal, while the other side was primarily dominated by a large red eye. From the back of it, two elongated strips of purple metal floated freely behind it.
Cille quickly reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small pistol. She started to aim it at the metallic creature before her….
“I wouldn’t, Ms. Compton.” A calm and somewhat arrogant voice said from behind her.
She turned and saw a young man walking down the street toward her and Cougar. He had clean-cut, shoulder-length green hair that hung over his eyes slightly. He wore a black and purple uniform with an unknown insignia pinned on the collar. The insignia looked like a stylized version of the letter ’E’….
Despite the situation, she saw Cougar give a wry smile as he noticed the young man striding purposefully toward them. “Well…this must be fate! Or, at least an unpleasant coincidence. Long time no see…Ryuho.”
Ryuho only spared a momentary glance in Cougar’s direction. “I’ll deal with you in a moment, traitor.”
He then walked up to Cille and stood stiffly. “Ms. Compton. By the authority of the Actionia Military, I demand your immediate and unconditional surrender. Any resistance and you’ll simply make things harder for yourself in the long run.”
Cille just stared at him. Finally, she said, “Um…thank you, but I don’t really find the idea of spending time in the Comdot Estate prisons all that appealing.”
Cille shifted her feet slightly and caught Cougar’s eye. Cougar seemed to understand what she was planning and nodded….
“Okay then…k, thx, bai!” Cille yelled over her shoulder as she took off running down the street, away from both Ryuho and the white-robot thing.
At the same time, there was a flash of rainbow light around Cougar’s feet, which coalesced into what looked like purple skates. He was a blur as he charged toward Ryuho….
Ryuho closed his eyes and smiled ever so slightly. “Big mistake….”
Suddenly, the white-robot’s purple tendrils lashed out in opposite directions….
One tendril snared the feet of the blurred form of Cougar, forcing him to the ground with a yelp. And the other one snaked around Cille’s waist, halting her in her steps.
The metallic monster then lifted the two of them up in the air. Cougar was held upside down by his feet. Meanwhile, Cille struggled to wriggle out of the thing’s hold around her stomach.
“If you had only cooperated,” Ryuho remarked with a sigh, “I wouldn’t have had to resort to this. But people like you never really think about your actions, do you? After all, if you had, I wouldn’t have been given the order for your arrest. Society’s laws exist for a reason, Ms. Compton, and when they are broken,” Ryuho glared over at Cougar, who was also attempting to squirm free, unsuccessfully, “people get hurt!”
The white-robot swung Cougar around and slammed him into the pavement, causing Cougar to gasp in pain. Cille then watched in horror as the tendril brought Cougar up…and slammed him into the street again.
“Stop it!” Cille cried. “You’re going to kill him!!”
“This man betrayed his comrades and his government.” Ryuho said coldly, “He deserves to be punished.”
The tendril slammed Cougar into the ground once more.
“Please, stop it!!” Cille cried out once more, on the verge of tears, “I promise to cooperate! Just, please, don‘t kill him…!”
With a flick of the tendril, the white monster sent Cougar flying through the air…and crashing into the street.
“Very well.” Ryuho said, turning back to her, “I’m going to let you down now. You shall accompany me back to the Comdot Estate…without incident. Understand?”
Cille glared at him through tear-filled eyes. “Yeah, I understand, you cold **bleep**….”
Ryuho took no offense at all. “Good. Let us go, then.”
***
“Hey, you okay there, buddy?”
Cougar stared up blearily at the strange man that was leaning over him. He had a green-and-white striped hat that matched the loose green kimono he wore. On the man’s bare chest he noticed something sparkling…a glass cross….
Cougar found that he could no longer keep his head up and he fell back against the pavement, consciousness filtering out of him….
“Cille…I’m sorry….”
“Ah, what does it matter,” the strange man said, as he scratched at his bleach blonde hair and picked up his cane, “My work here is done anyway….”
***
“That’s it…a little to the left…perfect! Okay, let’s set it down….”
Trunks and Gottel carefully set the brand new DDR machine down in the corner of the Pub where the original DDR machine had been. The old machine, having been shredded by gunfire in an Actionia raid on the pub a few weeks back, had taken up permanent residence in the back alley, where it was waiting to be taken to the city trash heap.
Trunks wiped his brow. “Shew! Thanks for your help with this, Gottel.”
“Not a problem.” Gottel said, as he reached down and plugged the machine in. “Too bad you can’t get your high score back as well….”
“Heh, I’ve actually come to terms with that. Now, I can work on an even higher score than before!” Trunks exclaimed with a wild look in his eye.
Out of the corner of his eye, Trunks noticed the door to the pub open and saw a man with long white hair step in.
“Sorry, pal. The pub is closed today.” Trunks’ eyes narrowed. “Say…you’re not one of my regulars….”
The white-haired man stared intently at the two of them with wolfish eyes. “No…I’m not.” The man’s voice was as cold as frost….
Trunks suddenly noticed that the man had a katana at his belt…and, with a click, the man had unsheathed it partially with his thumb.
This guy means business….
Trunks frowned. He didn’t like this situation at all. Next to him, he noticed Gottel tense as well.
Before he could do anything else, the man spoke again, with his voice laced with venom. “I only need one of you.”
It took a few seconds for Trunks to register what happened next. His eyes wide, he glanced over and saw Gottel…impaled on the man’s sword.
The man with the white hair gave a vicious grin.
Then, he used his foot to slide to Gottel off the end of his sword. Gottel’s eyes were as wide as saucers with shock. Gottel’s limp body fell to the floor of the pub with a sickening thud.
Vicious wiped his katana on the back of his sleeve and sheathed his sword. He then walked partway toward the door leading out of the pub. He stopped and turned back in Trunk’s direction.
“Coming?”
Trunks’ face contorted in fury. That murderous **bleep**-!
“Trunks…don’t.”
Trunks glanced down in shock. Gottel was still alive…just barely. Blood was slowly fountaining out of the hole in his chest. He was using one hand to try and stop the bleeding, while he tugged at Trunk’s pant leg with the other bloody hand.
“Don’t do it. You can’t take this guy.”
Trunks clenched his fists tightly together…but then he nodded reluctantly. “I don’t really like the idea of tucking my tail between my legs and walking out of here obediently…but you may be right. I either leave here with this guy…or I don’t leave here at all.”
“Yeah, and I need you alive.” Gottel said with a weak smile. “Someone has to avenge my ass.”
“You have five seconds.” Vicious stated emotionlessly.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Trunks walked toward the door, sparing one last glance at Gottel, “Hang in there…I’m sure someone will be by here eventually.”
But either Gottel was reserving his strength by not speaking or he was already….
Trunks shook his head at the thought. He then stepped through the door to his Pub, wondering if he would ever get to see it again….
Trunks suddenly realized that it had gotten cloudy out, as he finally reached the streets of Orly, Vicious walking slightly ahead of him with his hands in his pockets. It irked him at how relaxed the white-haired assassin seemed. Relaxed…and yet, Trunks knew the man could kill him in the blink of an eye….
Up ahead, a young man in priestly vestments suddenly came whipping around the corner, the glass cross around his neck whipping wildly about as he ran.
“Excuse me!” The young priest called out as he nearly bowled over Vicious.
Vicious’s face flared with irritation as he watched the young man run away. Should I kill him for that…?
No…he only had permission to kill or subdue Syndicate targets. Unwarranted civilian deaths would cause problems for the Echelon in the long run.
Thinking about his Syndicate target, Vicious quickly glanced back….
Only to find that Trunks had disappeared from sight.
***
Trunks ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Fortunately, the long nights with the DDR machine hadn’t been for nothing. He had a well of stamina to tap into and he used that to put as much distance as possible between himself and the white-haired sword-wielder.
When he heard another set of feet following behind him, Trunks nearly gave himself whiplash as he spun his head to look behind him while he continued to run.
But it wasn’t Vicious, thankfully. It was, instead, the young priest that had provided him the distraction.
“Hey, there!” The young man said with wide smile, as he ran alongside Trunks.
“Hey…thanks for the distraction back there!”
“Well, actually that was more of an accident, really.” The priest admitted with a sheepish grin. “I was just passing through, you could say.”
“Yeah…I don’t recognize you from around here. You get lost on your way to church?” Trunks was surprised to find himself joking at a time like this. In fact…the whole situation was surreal. Here he was, running for his life from an insane swordsman, and he was making small talk with a lost priest….
“Something like that.” The young man said with a laugh. “The name’s Band, by the way. I was glad I could finally meet your Trunks.” Band suddenly turned and went running in the opposite direction. “Hopefully you’ll actually live through all of this! I’d love to challenge you to a DDR match on your new machine, sometime!” he called back.
“Hold on a second!” Trunks called after the young priest, “Just who the hell are you exactly and how do you know me?! And what makes you even think you could match me at DDR?!”
But, at this point, Band had disappeared around the corner of a building.
“What the hell was that about?!” Trunks muttered under his breath as he continued running.
For awhile, Trunks ran without a destination in mind. But then, he realized that he couldn’t keep running blindly. Especially considering that even his considerable stamina was slowly being sapped….
Then, a thought dawned on him. “I’ve got to get in touch with Hill…there’s no safer place in the world to stay than a weaponsmith’s store!”
And with that thought spoken aloud, Trunks took off in the direction that would lead him into the seedier parts of Lower Actionia….
***
“Aoi, it’s almost time to close down the place for tonight!”
Gently, almost reverently, Aoi placed his banana-colored fish bookmark in the copy of Franny and Zoey and closed the book. “Alright, Ms. Libra.”
Aoi walked leisurely to the front of Ghost’s Book Shop, the book carefully tucked into the crook of his arm.
“Thanks for volunteering to help out here, Istari.” Ms. Libra said, as she began to pull down the curtains to the front windows of her store. “Q’s been so busy with all her police work that she hasn’t even had time to stop in here and say hi.”
“Not a problem, Libra.” Istari said with a smile, as she went along the bookshelves and making sure everything was in order. “My art store wasn’t hit as bad as the other places that got vandalized during the riot, but it still needed some work done. And I’m afraid that I don’t take well to simply sitting around and waiting for my store to get fixed up again.”
Istari and Libra had only recently become friends, but already they talked as if they were old acquaintances. When Istari had shown up at the Book Store for something- anything –to take her mind off the riots and her store, Libra had quickly acquiesced to Istari staying and helping her out around the bookstore.
Aoi walked by the two chattering women as he found the place on one of the bookshelves where his borrowed book belonged. Istari quirked an eyebrow as she watched him place it back on the shelf.
“Wouldn’t it make sense to just buy the book?” Istari asked.
“I suppose so,” Aoi said without looking at her, “but I’ve always found it a somewhat romantic experience to sit and read a book in an old bookstore like this. I’ve actually read Franny and Zoey several times now. I tend to fall back on Salinger’s works if Libra doesn’t get anything new in for awhile.”
Istari snorted. “Well, you’re certainly one interesting kid….”
“Don’t mind him,” Libra said with a laugh, “Aoi is another one of my unofficial helpers around here. As long as I don’t bug him too often while he’s reading, he’s generally happy to run errands for me on occasion.”
“With you around Ms. Erangua,” Aoi said with a small smile, “I might actually get the whole day to read, for once.”
This time, even Istari couldn’t help but smile. “And a cheeky brat, to boot.” She patted him on the head, “It’s a good thing Libra puts up with you.”
Aoi grinned up at her…and then, suddenly, glanced sharply at the door to Libra’s store. “I think we may have company.”
“What…?”
Sure enough, there was the sound of pounding from the other side of the door a few seconds later.
Libra and Istari gave each other worried glances and then tentatively approached the door….
“Please, you’ve got to help us!!” They heard someone yell from the other side of the door.
Her maternal instincts taking over, Libra ran toward the door and opened it….
Outside, shivering in the light rain, were two young women in lab coats.
“Please,” Roxie repeated in a wavering voice, “we don’t know who else to turn to….”
***
A few minutes later, the young woman were sitting with blankets- that Istari had found in the back of the store –wrapped around them. Libra handed both of them a cup of water. Meanwhile, Aoi sat backwards in a nearby chair, staring at them with mild interest.
“Thank you.” Roxie said as she took the cup of water from Libra.
“What happened to you girls?” Istari asked, concern in her voice.
“It was that damn Ozzal!”
“Winry….”
“No!” the blonde girl snapped, “It’s the truth, and we’ve got to accept that! You heard what that soldier said!”
Roxie just stared blankly into her water cup.
“What soldier? Accept what?” Libra echoed.
“Ozzal, she….” Winry’s voice strained, “she had soldiers break into our coroner’s office.”
“What?! Why?” Libra and Istari exclaimed almost simultaneously.
“Because,” Roxie said in small voice, without raising her head. “She wanted the corpses of the Syndicate members who had died.”
Roxie then told them about how she and Winry had gotten into a shootout with the soldiers and barely escaped with their lives. And what Ozzal had been planning to do with the corpses she had been intent on stealing….
Libra’s mouth fell open in shock and Istari gritted her teeth. “She’s a monster….”
“And now we don’t know what to do.” Roxie said forlornly, “We’re pretty sure that Ozzal will have us arrested for interfering with her soldier’s orders…and once we’re arrested, it will mean a one way trip to the dungeons of the Comdot Estate.” Roxie shuddered.
Winry placed a comforting hand on her boss’s shoulder. “We’ll figure out a way out of this.”
“You are all going to have to figure out something.” Aoi suddenly spoke up.
Libra and Istari looked back at him, almost having forgotten he was there. “And by all of us…you mean Libra and I, too?” Istari asked in a somewhat annoyed tone, “And what about you?”
“I’m leaving as well.” Aoi said, standing up, as if in emphasis. “But it is even more important that you four leave Orly.”
Libra frowned. “Aoi, what are you talking about…?”
For a second, Aoi didn’t respond. Instead, he reached into his pocket and withdraw a necklace with a glass cross on it. He placed it around his neck.
“I am almost certain that an Actionia assault squad will soon trace Roxie and her assistant to this bookstore.” Aoi finally continued, “And then, you will all be placed under arrest as co-conspirators with the Syndicate.”
Libra’s face turned a few shades lighter. “They couldn’t…they have no proof!”
“That’s true. However, I doubt that will matter much to them.” Aoi shrugged, “At any rate, the final choice is up to you. In the meantime, I’m afraid I am going to have to leave you now.”
All four women watched him as he casually walked to the front of the store and opened the door leading out.
“Thank you, Ms. Libra,” Aoi said before he left, “for putting up with me like you did. I really appreciated it. Maybe one day, I can come back to your bookstore and help out once again. Someday.”
And with that, he finally left….
***
The sound of the front doors of the cathedral being slammed opened abruptly ended Priestess Nahaf’s piano practice. She glanced up sharply from the instrument….
…and found herself staring at the very demons she had banished from her church only days ago.
“Hi there!” Emeri greeted the priestess cheerfully as she marched down the center aisle. “We’re back!”
Jake Thompson slowly stomped behind Emeri, a look of barely contained primal rage clouding his face.
“Unholy monsters!” the priestess exclaimed as she stood, “Depart now, lest I give you a second taste of the divine wrath I visited upon you before!”
A wicked grin spread on Emeri’s face. “Oh, divine wrath you say? Actually, that’s exactly what I came here for! Go on, just try it. Call down your holy thunder!”
Nafah frowned. Could they really be that addled in the head? Nonetheless, Nafah had no compunction against giving them what they not only deserved, but had asked for.
“Very well. But I will not hold back this time!”
Soon, bright light flooded the entire cathedral, centered around Nafah’s robed form. It was even brighter than when she had summoned her divine power the last time she had ejected Emeri and Jake from her church.
“DEPART!” She commanded, and….
…nothing happened.
Nafah watched in stunned silence as the light around her faded to nothing…with Emeri and Jake still very much intact.
Emeri gave a triumphant laugh. “It seems God is not in a listening mood today, hm?”
“I…I don’t understand…!”
“Actually, it’s not you, my dear priestess. It’s me.” Emeri held out her left arm. Dangling around her wrist was a small charm with Japanese kanji written on it. “An adorable little man named Kira made this for me. It drains all spiritual power within a wide radius. And that includes your own “divine” powers.” Emeri had used her fingers to indicate the quotation marks around ’divine’.
“I’m not afraid of you.” Priestess Nafah said with a determined glare. “I may not be able to call on his power directly, but God still serves as my source of strength-”
Priestess Nafah interrupted her with a loud yawn. “I’m growing tired of all your ‘holier-than-thou’ crap. I’d kill you myself, but I’m saving my strength for a special someone I’ve been hoping to meet here. Hey Jake!”
Jake’s head perked up at the mention of his name.
Emeri jerked a thumb in Nafah’s direction. “Gut her like a fish.”
For a brief moment, a look of hesitation broke through the cloud of rage on Jake’s face. But the moment past…and Jake let out a bestial howl.
“JAKE SMASH!!!” He then ran down the aisle towards Nafah, waving his bat and sword high over his head.
Having nothing on hand to stop Jake’s rampage, Priestess Nafah had no choice but to retreat deeper into the church. She hurriedly ran up the flight of stairs that led to the uppermost levels of the church, all too aware that Jake was crashing behind her the entire time.
Watching Jake chase the priestess entertained Emeri briefly. She even giggled when Nafah slipped on the stairs at one point, and Jake nearly smashed her head in with his bat. But Nafah managed to leap out of the way just in time and keep running.
Now…I wonder if dear Father Sadar will actually show up…?
“EMERI!!!”
Emeri spun around…and her face lit up.
Almost as if on cue, there was Father Sadar, standing in the doorway to cathedral.
He had the most intense expression on his face. His blue eyes seemed ablaze with fury. He had already drawn his cane sword, and held the blade in his right hand, while keeping the actual cane in his left.
Emeri smiled…a satisfied smile. A smile that one usually only wore upon finding out one’s closest love was actually still alive This was it. The moment she had been waiting for. “Let’s do this.”
“No,” Father Sadar corrected her. “Let’s finish this….”
***
Must kill…must kill….
The voice in his head echoed over and over again. All he saw was his prey. All he knew was his endless rage….
In front of him, the puny creature had actually managed to push over a bookcase. He smashed right through it. The creature kept running.
This only made Jake angrier. I must kill her…I must kill her. The sooner I do…the sooner I kill her….
What?
Jake hesitated for the briefest moment. Why…why did he want to kill her? Why was he so filled with anger?
But then, the voice came back in greater strength. NO! KILL! KILL! KILLKILLKILLKILLKILL!!!
Jake howled and clutched his head. Yes, that’s why he had to kill her. To make the voice go away.
Soon, the woman had run out of places to run. She looked even smaller and more vulnerable with her back against the wall. But even though she was clearly backed into a corner, she still had a determined expression on her face, as she glared up at Jake.
Jake raised his sword over his head. Yes! DO IT! KILL HER!
As he brought it down, she finally flinched….
And Jake dropped his sword.
He looked over at the hand that had previously held the sword. It was shaking. Uncontrollably.
Why? Why didn’t you kill her? WHY DIDN’T YOU KILL HER?!
But there was another voice there…a softer voice….
Why did you kill them, Jake…?
A splinter of memory…another place in time…he saw his hand shaking in front of him, covered in blood.
And the lifeless bodies of his teammates strewn all over the ground.
Why did you kill them?
I had no choice!
Why did you kill them?
Leave me alone!
Why? Why? Why? Whywhywhywhywhywhy…?
WHY IS SHE STILL ALIVE?!
Jake brought his hand up his head and ripped a chunk of his hair out. “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!” Jake screamed.
KILL HER!!! KILL HER!!!
Why? Why?
Through eyes filled with tears, Jake looked down at the woman he had been chasing. And she looked back at him.
But no longer did she stare at him in anger. She looked at him in concern. As a parent might look at a crying child.
Why?
KILL HER!!!
This time, the voice was overpowering in it’s homicidal strength. He could feel the arm holding the bat raise up almost against his will.
KILL HER!!!
Tears streamed down Jake’s face. “I’m…sorry!” he managed to cry out, through the haze of rage that was consuming him.
“I…forgive you.”
The bat never came down.
Jake dropped to his knees, sobbing.
Kill her…kill her….
Already, the voice had begun to taper off.
Jake saw Priestess Nafah approach him cautiously. “Why?” he asked her.
“Because,” She said, reaching over and touching his wet cheek, “everyone can be forgiven…if they want to be.”
***
Emeri’s chainblade sliced through the air, towards Father’s Sadar’s head.
Father Sadar brought his blade up and pushed foreword as the two blades met. This caused the links of Emeri’s chainblade to wrap around his sword. He then jerked his blade backward, forcing Emeri to stumble foreword.
“Oh no you don’t…not again!”
Emeri brought her right arm out from behind her…the arm that had her wristblade. She then ran toward Sadar, the wristblade held out in front of her.
CLANG!
Sadar had brought his cane up to block the thrust of Emeri’s blade.
Father Sadar gave a wry smile. “This thing isn’t just for show, you know.” He then brought his knee up into Emeri’s stomach.
Emeri stumbled back, the wind knocked out of her. She felt an old scar along her abdomen begin to throb….
“Heh….” Emeri began…and then she threw back her head and laughed heartily. “YES! HURT ME MORE!”
Emeri pressed the button on the pommel of her chainblade that made the weapon go rigid. Then, she charged toward Sadar, with the weapon held high.
Father Sadar sheathed his sword and brought the full cane up to block Emeri’s attack.
Which was exactly what she wanted.
As soon as the two weapons connected in air, Emeri pressed the button on the pommel again…causing the chainblade to uncoil around Sadar‘s cane and the hands holding it.
Then, before Father Sadar could realize the trap she was laying, she pressed the button on the pommel a third time, tightening the weapon around Sadar’s hands.
“Gah….” Sadar gasped as the barbed edges of the chainblade bit into his hands.
“I’ve got you now!!” Emeri squealed. She held onto the end of the chainblade with one hand, as she brought the hand with the wristblade back, preparing to plunge it into Father Sadar’s heart….
“I don’t think so!” Despite the barbs, Father Sadar grabbed onto the chainblade holding him and then yanked with all his might. He managed to lift Emeri’s slight form into the air. He spun her around….
And she disengaged the pommel once more, causing her to go flying through the cathedral….
Rather than smashing into the ground, Emeri managed to right herself in air, and she slid to stop near the church podium, using friction to slow her momentum.
Father Sadar found himself breathing heavily…but grinning in spite of the situation. “Impressive!”
“A cat always lands on it’s feet.” Emeri commented…and then, for emphasis, she licked her hand. There was some of Sadar’s blood there. It had spilled onto her when he had swung her around.
“Come on, Father.” Emeri said, uncoiling her chainblade, “Don’t hold anything back!” She then slashed at the front-most pews in the cathedral, sending splinters flying through the air.
Father Sadar unsheathed his sword and calmly walked through the falling splinters, the intense expression returning to his face.
Father Sadar and Emeri now stood right where the sun was casting it’s light through the main stained-glass window of the church. The sun was setting, so it cast an orangish-red glow throughout the entire cathedral.
Sadar and Emeri circled each other…each one an animal waiting to pounce.
“You know what it is about you that drives me crazy?” Emeri asked, a twisted smile on her face.
“I had always assumed it was because I was the only one who ever wounded you and lived to tell about it.”
“There’s that.” Emeri agreed with a nod, “But, more than anything…it’s that look. The one you are giving me right now. A look filled with righteous fury. I hate it!”
“Perhaps because it is something that could never hope to have, yourself?”
“I could care less about anything like that! No…the reason why I hate that look is because…I know I can never break you.”
Father Sadar stopped in his tracks. “Break me?”
Emeri stopped too. Her face had grown distant. “All of my life, I have survived by breaking everything around me. It was the only way I could live with myself. It was the only way I felt control on my life.”
“But,” she continued, looking up at Sadar, “you were different. I can see in you the same thing that drives me. No…the exact opposite. You don’t want to break things…you are determined to make them right! So determined, you’d break yourself to do it! That’s why, I know, I could never posess you…your will to stop what you see as unjust will always consume your heart. Even if I killed you, you would most likely die with your own blade buried deep in me.”
Father Sadar stared at Emeri, a soft expression on his face. “So…what’s the point of fighting? I mean, if the outcome is already determined?”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Emeri said, shaking her head, “I understand you, but you still don’t understand me. I have no choice but to keep fighting. It is the only thing I have ever held as my own. Even people, people dear to me like Kira, will eventually die…and so, I fight to hold back my own fear of the mortality of this universe. I kill in the belief that, by killing, I stave off my own death.”
“And, if, in the course of our battle, I should realize my own death, so be it.” Emeri hefted her chainblade, “At least I die knowing that I have killed the only man who could have possibly undone my life’s work.”
Father Sadar lifted his sword as well. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Yes. It does.”
And then, Emeri launched herself at Father Sadar. And the dance began.
Father Sadar would parry with his cane, and then strike with his sword. Emeri would lash out with her chainblade and counter with her wristblade. And so, it went on, for what seemed like an eternity. Both of them, Father Sadar and Emeri, determined to defeat the other. They were two opposing forces in the universe. One of creation. The other of destruction. Father Sadar fought with coldly calculated strikes, while Emeri fought back with harsh slashes and cuts that made the very air sizzle in their ferocity.
“No!” Emeri finally screamed. “You’re holding yourself back! Why?!”
“So, you noticed?” Sadar remarked with another small smile, “The truth is, you don’t understand me it all, either. And, for a time, even I had forgotten myself. Then, a young man, the very man whose life you spared, reminded me why I fought.”
Their blades met once more. Sadar pushed foreword and leaned in close to Emeri, so that they faces were mere inches apart. “I’m not going to kill you, Emeri.”
Emeri pushed back. “You must! If you don’t kill me, I will kill you! And then I will destroy everything you have ever fought for!”
Sadar pushed against her blade once more. “No, I won’t die either. Neither of us will die today.”
“You’re wrong! You’re wrong!” Emeri hissed. “One of us must die! That is how it must happen!”
“Why? Simply because it suits your view of the world? Poor Emeri,“ Father Sadar taunted, “you have had a hard life, so now everyone must suffer, is that it?”
“SHUT UP!!!”
“Or maybe you’re just afraid to find out that you are wrong? Are you really willing to throw your life away to satisfy your pride?”
“YOU DARE BELITTLE ME?? WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!”
“Ah, there it is. Your catchphrase. I think a better question is…who the hell do you think you are?!”
“I’M EMERI, BITCH!!”
And with that, Emeri brought her chainsword around, wrapped it around Sadar’s sword, and ripped it from his hands.
Then, she tackled him, forcing him to the ground. She then sat straddling him, her wristblade to his throat.
“Where are your brave words now, Father?” Emeri asked with a sneer.
Father Sadar merely smiled up at her. “I touched a nerve, didn’t I?”
However, his continued taunts didn’t have the effect he expected. Emeri instead grinned back at him. “So, that was your game the whole time, hm? See what you could do to shake the great Emeri?”
“But I wonder,” Emeri mused, licking her lips, “what would it take to shake the great John Sadar?”
She then moved the wristblade away from his throat and leaned in close. She pressed her body tightly against him….
***
This isn’t good, Father Sadar thought to himself. I’m losing.
He felt Emeri on top of him, pressing against him in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. In fact, he found it difficult to muster the strength to move her, even though the wristblade was no longer at his throat.
“I know something else about you, Father.” Emeri whispered into his ear. “You have never let anyone this close to you, have you? After all, to a man like you, such closeness is dangerous, isn’t it? Yes…that’s it. I’ve found the chink in your armor. Your weakness is that which you found find most abhorrent if misused by others. That weakness is,” she licked his ear, “earthly pleasures.”
Get up, Sadar! She’s a raving psychopath!
“You know, you actually might have been right about something” Emeri shifted so that she could look directly into Sadar’s eyes, her nose brushing against his. “Maybe we could both leave here alive. Come with me. Succumb to the desires that you’ve locked away for so long. Help me fill the loneliness in my heart. I’m sure even Kira wouldn’t mind having you around. Someone else to abuse…to give the poor little guy a break every once and while. We could have so much fun together….”
For the first time in his life, Father Sadar felt himself wavering. He actually thought about Emeri’s offer…thought about how the Syndicate and any other rebellion against Ozzal would more than likely be destroyed soon…how he realized that, like Emeri, he had a hole in his heart that he knew he could never fill….
Never loose that innocence Samson. It makes this world seem a lot less bleak….
It came to him then. He saw all of the faces of his friends in the Syndicate. Samson, Hikki, Elizabeth…all of them. He saw his comrades in the Order. Kirara, Cid, Kuze…all of them. And finally, he saw, in his mind’s eye, the glass cross he had given to Samson. The very glass cross that he himself had worn when he had first joined the order….
The Order of Glass…the vanishing mediators….
Yes…that is why he had, and always would have, a hole in his heart. Why he would never be able to give into earthly pleasures. Why he would never falter in his righteous determination.
He had a higher calling. And it was calling him now.
He realized, through all of his musings, he and Emeri had locked lips and were currently in the middle of kissing passionately.
Which was as good enough distraction as any. As he continued kissing her, he reached a hand out…and grabbed his fallen sword.
He then slid it underneath Emeri…and impaled her.
It was a shallow wound in her side. It wasn’t meant to be a fatal blow. In fact, Emeri actually seemed to groan more with pleasure than pain. “So, that’s how you like things?” Emeri said with a feral grin, “Are you going to penetrate me again, hm?”
Father Sadar smiled back at her…but with the look of virtuous fire back in his eyes. “Sorry, Emeri, but I’m afraid I won’t be providing you with any further satisfaction today.”
Emeri saw the look in his eyes…and growled. “You have no idea what you are throwing away….”
“Actually, I do. Which is why I am a stronger man than you believed.” Sadar than kicked his foot up and slid Emeri off the blade.
Despite her wound, Emeri got back up quickly. She spun around and brought her chainblade up. Sadar was forced to roll to the side as she lashed out at him with her chainblade. As he rolled, he grabbed his cane and stood.
Father Sadar than quickly shoved his sword back into the rest of the cane and twisted the sword inside the cane. There was a small crackling sound, like glass breaking. Then, Father Sadar withdrew the sword….
“What are you up to now?” Emeri demanded to know, her eyes narrowing.
Sadar’s sword was now completely covered in dripping black ink.
“The ink represents the sins of my past and the sins that could tempt me in the future.” Father Sadar said, brandishing the now black blade in front of him, “I shall use my sin, not for myself, but as a weapon to right the sins of others.”
“ENOUGH OF YOUR NONSENSE!!” Emeri screeched and lunged at him.
And the dance began anew. But with a twist. As Father Sadar parried Emeri’s slashes and strikes, ink began to cover the floor of the cathedral. Soon, an almost coherent pattern had begun to take shape….
Suddenly, Father Sadar stopped, sheathed his sword, and stood with the cane in front of him, touching one of the black marks on the cathedral floor. Behind him, the light of the main stained-glass window illuminated him….
Emeri was about to lunge at him again, now that he was standing there defenseless, but she suddenly got the sense that something was terribly wrong…the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end….
For the first time in her life, Emeri felt genuine fear. Her eyes widened. “What have you done?!”
“Ancient power.” Father Sadar said, his face a stone mask. “The power of blood and ink. You are no longer welcome here, Emeri. Begone.”
Then, everything became silent. It was as if Emeri had gone deaf. She saw Father Sadar mouth words of some sort, but she couldn’t make them out….
And then, it was if the earth itself had rejected her. There was blinding flash of light and she found herself flying through the air once again…flying out through the cathedral….
But it didn’t end there. It was as if she had become a ghost. She flew through buildings…through people…she didn’t think she would ever stop….
Finally, the familiar structure that was the Comdot Estate swam into view…she flew through the walls…past Kira…and into her own bed…and then….
Darkness.
***
“Father Sadar!”
Sadar turned…and let out a deep sigh of relief. “Priestess! It’s good to see you alive! What happened to Jake?”
“Believe it or not, he’s upstairs sleeping.” Nafah said, with a somewhat bewildered look on her face. “He was finally able to break through whatever hold Ozzal had on him…what’s so funny?”
Father Sadar couldn’t help chuckling. “Nothing. It’s just that I told Samson that I wouldn’t be going on the Syndicate mission to rescue Jake…and yet here I am, with a reformed Jake Thompson sleeping upstairs. It’s mildly ironic.”
“Speaking of irony and coincidence, it’s pretty convenient that you showed up when you did….”
“Yeah,” Father Sadar admitted, “but I was actually on my way over here anyway.”
Priestess Nafah stared out of the doors to the cathedral. “So…is she dead?”
“Ah, so you caught all of that at the end. No, she’s not dead. She’ll probably need a lot of time to recover. Less, with Kira taking care of her….”
Priestess Nafah walked over to the black symbol that Father Sadar had drawn on the ground and stared down at it. “What did you do to her, anyway?”
“Old magic. A symbol of power combined with words of power. It wouldn’t have worked without her blood.”
The priestess raised an eyebrow. “And just how did you learn something like this?”
“Well, I did tell you I was a thief….” Father Sadar said, scratching his head and grinning sheepishly, “but the truth is that not all thieves go after shiny baubles and golden trinkets. Not when there are far more valuable things to steal.”
“So…you stole this power?”
“More like I stole the book that contained the knowledge to wield this power. Just one of the many things I’ve gotten my hands on in my travels.”
Nafah smiled and shook her head. “You continue to be an enigma, Father Sadar.”
“One that I am afraid you won’t get the chance to figure out.” Father Sadar said, leaning his cane against his shoulder. “I actually came to say goodbye.”
Nafah glanced over at him sharply. “What?!”
“Oh, and this symbol is actually a little going away present for you,” Father Sadar continued, despite her outburst. He used his cane to tap at the black mark on the ground. “It will prevent anyone with ill will in their heart from entering this church, including, and especially, Miss Emeri. So, it should even keep you, and anyone else who comes here, safe from the anymore of Ozzal‘s twisted henchmen.”
“Hold on! You’re leaving? But…why?”
Father Sadar said nothing for a moment. Then, he walked over to Priestess Nafah…and kissed her on the forehead.
“Take care of yourself, Priestess.” Father Sadar said, taking hold of her hand, “Thank you for having mercy on a sinful soul such as mine and accepting me into your church.”
Then, he let go of her hand…and walked away.
Priestess wanted to say something. To demand an answer. But would he have given one, even if she had asked?
So, instead, she could only watch as Father Sadar walked out of the cathedral, his cane propped up on his shoulder, and a determined stride in his steps….
***
“The target is Father John Sadar. The Echelon has approved his termination. Are you ready?”
Caine the Longshot adjusted his scope. He saw the doomed priest walking out of the cathedral and adjusted his sights. The man walked with his cane propped up on his shoulders and a sad but resolute expression on his face.
If only the little fool knew what awaited him….
“Hurry it up. Being up here is making me nervous…” Goda added with a gulp, staring over the side of the building.
He, Caine, a small contingent of Actionia soldiers, and an [as] helicopter all sat atop the roof of a building close to the St. Maria’s Cathedral. When Emeri hadn’t reported in with a successful termination/capture report, especially after the rest of the Echelon agents had already reported success with their targets, Goda had gotten worried. So, he had taken Caine and the rest of the soldiers with him to look for Father Sadar and Emeri.
They had arrived just in time to see Emeri and Jake enter the cathedral, followed by Father Sadar himself soon after. Goda had Caine set up his sniper rifle anyway…just in case. Goda’s fears had recently been confirmed when, after the bright flash of light, Father Sadar had emerged with Emeri nowhere to be seen….
“Time to finish what Emeri never could. Are we ready, finally?”
Caine lined up his crosshairs on Father Sadar’s white-haired head. He turned and nodded at Goda.
“Very well. Execute.”
***
If Father Sadar hadn’t had all the adrenaline in his system left over from his fight with Emeri, he might not have made it past that moment.
Sadar’s eyes widened as he realized the imminent danger he was in. He spun around just as the shot was fired….
The bullet that sped towards him was a blur…and yet, Father Sadar saw it as if it was moving through molasses. The problem was, if the bullet was moving like molasses, than the rest of his body moved like it was made of stone.
Desperately, Father Sadar brought his cane sword up in an attempt to block the bullet, knowing that he could never move his legs fast enough to avoid the fatal shot. The bullet sliced through the air towards his head…and Father Sadar managed to bring his cane sword up in front of his face, turning his head away from what he knew would come next….
The sniper’s bullet completely shattered his cane sword. Meanwhile, the bullet was split in two upon the sword’s blade, and it‘s trajectory was redirected. The shattered pieces of the cane sword embedded themselves in the left side of Father Sadar’s face…while the two pieces of the bullet shot into his shoulder.
Father Sadar fell backward onto the ground, blood beginning to gush from his wound….
The sun went down.
***
Caine reloaded the rifle and took aim again…but Goda stopped him with a hand to Caine’s shoulder.
“Hold it. This works out even better. Father Sadar can be another prisoner we parade in front of the people as one of the dangerous members of the Syndicate that brave Major Taredan captured.” Goda snapped his fingers in the direction of the Actionia soldiers. “Get down and take him into custody as soon as possible….”
***
“No…this won’t do…it won’t do at all….”
The man wrapped covered in bandages walked foreword and stared down at the fallen priest in the approaching darkness of night.
Father Sadar just laid there and smiled up at him. “I suppose you’re going to say that all of this is my arrogance’s doing.” he said hoarsely
Schwarzwald crouched down next to him…and slapped him across the face. “You little fool…save your strength! You’re lucky to be alive!”
Father Sadar grimaced as a red mark began to form on his cheek, adding to the already considerable pain he was in. Thankfully, it was the cheek opposite of the one hit with shrapnel from his sword. “Yeah, like slapping me is any better!”
“Hush!” Schwarzwald commanded. He then began to unravel some of his bandages, and rapidly cover Father Sadar’s wound with them. It was almost as if he had an endless supply of the mummy-like clothe….
“There.” Schwarzwald said as he finished. He then grabbed Father Sadar and lifted him onto his back….
Father Sadar groaned in pain. The blood from his wound had already begun to soak through the bandages Schwarzwald had given him.
“Yes…remember this pain.” Schwarzwald said as he walked back into the alley he had come from, Father Sadar over his back. “It is the pain of someone who has taken too much burden onto himself.”
Father Sadar sighed weakly. “I’m in for another lecture, aren’t I?”
“Oh, you had better believe it!” Schwarzwald snapped, “How could you let yourself get so close to the people in the Syndicate? And the priestess in that church? Sheer carelessness! What happened to “No connections, no regrets”? Hm? And don’t even get me started on that whole business with that Emeri girl…!”
The mummy in the trenchcoat continued to ramble on as he carried Father Sadar, the night winds jostling the glass cross around his neck….
***
“Where are my taquitos?!”
Dewey Novak froze in his tracks. Carefully, he hid the plate of taquitos he had been carrying behind his cape and swallowed the one he had been chewing in his mouth.
Michelle Ozzal stomped over to him anyway.
“Why does this always happen to me?! I am the friggin leader of this whole country…AND I CAN’T EVEN FIND MYSELF SOME FREAKIN’ TAQUITOS!!!”
Dewey Novak tried to buy himself some time. “Well, um, you see, we seem to have run out of taquitos….”
Suddenly, Professor Matrix walked by with a plate full of the small burritos, munching happily.
Ozzal pointed angrily over at the mad scientist. “LIKE HELL WE ARE!!”
Dewey Novak sighed. “All this fuss over a simple snack food. It’s no wonder this country is spiraling out of control.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?!”
“While you have been running around the Comdot Estate looking for your taquitos, the rest of us have been getting actual work done. Even as we speak, the Echelon has gone out and captured everyone who is considered to be a major player within the Syndicate network, as well as any of those suspected to be sympathetic to the terrorist group, effectively ending that threat to this country’s stability once and for all.” Dewey turned away haughtily, “And what have you done for Actionia lately?”
“Why would I care about a country I am going to crush in the end?”
Dewey’s eyes widened in shock as he spun back around. Was that really Ozzal who just spoke…?!
The demented gleam in Ozzal’s eyes had been replaced with something far more…sinister. Her mouth spread into a crooked grin and she observed Dewey callously.
“So the Echelon has destroyed the Syndicate. If you had told me that you had been swatting flies all day, I probably would have been as equally as unimpressed. In fact….”
Ozzal suddenly leaned foreword and grabbed Dewey’s uniform. She pulled him close toward her, her eyes, filled with malevolence, bore into his soul….
“I’m a bit peeved that you would do all of this without my permission. It seems that you have all forgotten who it is that really runs this place.”
Dewey gulped, as a twinge of murderous intent flashed across Ozzal’s eyes…but then, she suddenly released him.
“Ah, well…you’ll see soon enough. I have a little plan I’m cooking up with Comedia that should put things in perspective. And, bring me one step closer to crushing this country under my boot…and using it’s remains to climb closer to my eventual goal….”
And then, the façade was back. Her calm, but twisted face melted back into it’s usual demented appearance. She then turned and ran after Matrix, screaming about taquitos.
For the longest time, Dewey could only stand there in the hallway with his eyes wide, realizing that had just survived an encounter with the true dragon of the Comdot Estate….
To Be Continued….
Cast
Recurring (in order of appearance)
Kazunoto Goda – Himself
Professor M. Matrix – matrixman
Goose Maverick – Top_Gun
Major Tom Taredan – Metatronda
Amy – Amalgam
Keith Douglas – k_dawg
Allen Black – Alastourblaque
Captain Q – Q_chan
Kirara Amour – kiraralove
Larry Zorin – LAZY17
Emeri - _Boxers_
Jake Thompson – SportsMaster
Father John Sadar – Furion Tassadar
Samson – Master Samson
Hikki Follet – Kohikki
Clarice – QueenoftheDorks
Angel Sarcasta – mgangel
Spice – spiceweasel
The Penguin – PenguinBoss
Norman Burg – Himself
Cowboy – CowboyCadenza
Elizabeth Saurie St. Gaurdsmen – EdSpikeSesshyGrl
Real Coolman – RealAirCooledMan (or however you say it )
April – Lirpa
Bruce Herman – bherman
Sarah – Um…is she based on Bruce’s actual girlfriend?
Grant Orochi – the_great_orochi
Shatter – shatter
Surool – eppel
Jean Pierott – pie-chan
Luna Monegossde – MoonGoddess
Van Argeno – Himself
Lucille Compton – Cille
Straight Cougar – Himself
Trunks – Trunks
Gottel – lgott
Libra – Ghost_of_the_Librarian
Istari Erangua – Istari Erangua
Roxie – anime_godesss
Winry – Herself
Priestess Nafah – inufan
Michelle Ozzal – Mike Lazzo
New (in order of appearance)
Colonel Roy Mustang – Himself
Jean Havoc – Himself
Inspector Lunge – Himself
Dewey Novak – Himself
Horace – I have no idea where he came from. Just a generic underworld henchman for Penguin, I guess.
The creepy cyborg that took down Angel – Alan Gabriel
Jacob the Liar – jakobtheliar
Legato Bluesummers – Himself
Kaia Namek – namek_kaia
The Commander of the Umbrolos – The Commander of the Umbrolos from the first season of GitS
Cid – cidthekittyisfun
Proof – NoProof
Man with feathery white hair – Hideo Kuze
Ryuho – Himself
Man with bucket hat and green kimono – Uruhara Kisuke
Vicious – Himself
Band – bandnerdswimfan
Hill – fool_on_the_hill
Aoi – Himself
Caine the Longshot – Himself
Schwarzwald – Himself