Kickback
Wow thought Eve as she watched the cartoon; Starscream is such a fascinating character. She had never seen the show before but at once the young blonde girl knew she liked Starscream. She loved his devious yet hilarious attempts at mutiny. Too soon however, the show was over, and Eve wanted to see more. Unfortunately, Sven chose that moment to call her to dinner. She unwillingly left the television set to go eat. When she got to the table, the young gentleman with green hair and an eyepatch over his right eye served her their meal. The other man with whom Eve lived was already at the table.
"So that's what we are having for dinner tonight?" asked the young black – haired sweeper, "Fish and riceballs?" "These were what had been placed in front of Eve and himself, so he added happily, "Great! These are my favorite!"
But as he took a bite, he realized the food didn't taste quite right. The other sweeper informed him that he had been doing some experimenting trying to combine Eve's and Train's favorite foods, ice cream and riceball. Having learned this, Train pushed his still full plate away. He had just expected riceballs, not this riceball/ice cream/fish disaster. As he looked at Eve to see if she agreed, he finally noticed that she was already halfway through her dinner, scarfing what he thought was an abomination down with her nanotechnologically transformed fingers, which now formed a fork and knife. Realizing he wasn't going to get any support from her, he decided to ask about their next target.
"So who we goin' after this time, Sven?" inquired Train. The young man always had one of two things on his mind: his next meal, or his next target. Since his next meal was right in front of him, his one-track mind was on his next bounty.
"We are going after a small-time serial killer known as --". The ringing of the phone cut him off. He leaned over to pick it up from the counter, and pressed "Talk," answering the caller in his usual calm, collected manner. After a few minutes of mumbling and "Uh-Huh's" he put the down the phone, not so calm as he was before apparent in the fact that he practically slammed the phone down into its charging station.
"Forget the serial killer, Train. Our priorities have just been reset for us."
"What do you mean, Sven? What makes you say that our priorities have been made for us?" inquired the bemused former assassin. "That must have been one important phone call to be dictating our flight patterns."
"Do you remember what I told you about the night I lost my right eye? The night Lloyd Goldwynne died?" responded the now worried looking sweeper.
"Yes. Didn't you get your Vision Eye from him?" replied Train. He was still not sure how Sven's long dead partner tied into this, but if there was one thing he knew, it was that it would be worth listening to. So he did. He and Eve both listened as Sven recounted the calamity of that dreadful, fateful night. He told of how him and Lloyd had arrested a drug cartel's hired gun, then had a drink at the local pub to unwind. He apprised them of how he had been accosted by a crime family's strong-arms, and had his right eye knocked out of its socket by the force of the wrench hitting his skull. He informed them of how he woke up a while later, and how Lloyd burst into the warehouse of a prison shortly thereafter. Finally, he finished illustrating and told them what the phone call was about. It was Lloyd's widow calling for help form her former husband's best friend. Apparently, her daughter had disappeared, leaving the police and the distraught mother with nothing but an empty bedroom and tears. Train knew that there was little that the local authorities could do without evidence.
"So, she wants us to help find her daughter, and discover who did this to them, and why, " concluded Sven.
"So basically what you are saying is that we should go help find her, with little chance of success, and very little compensation? " Train queried after pondering the situation awhile.
"Yup, that's intrinsically it. " answered the troubled sweeper.
"Let's do it!" ejaculated the carefree sweeper, not to great surprise from either Sven or Eve, both knowing what to expect from their ally. They had been around Train long enough to predict that he would most likely do something utterly for the fun and thrill of it.
"Thanks a lot, Train. This really means a bunch." Admitted the normally detached man. He was no longer detached though. In fact, he seemed fore involved in this case than Eve had ever seen him, besides hers, of course.
"So where do we start?" asked the all-too-well understanding young girl.
"You know the answer to that question, Princess. " replied Train.
"Of course, " she said, dumbstruck by the mere simplicity of it, smacking herself in the head with her now fully five-fingered hand. Then they all said, in unison, "The local pub!"
The scene at the local pub was short. The trio of sweepers walked in and then briskly walked back out with just the information they needed to continue their investigation. They then proceeded to the next destination: Lloyd's former home.
What they found there was equally as fruitful. They knew now who was behind the disappearance: the Bernado family.
"Isn't that the family of gangsters that you put away members of?" asked Train.
Sven replied by saying that he thought the Bernado family was no longer in power in that area. Apparently, they still had some friends of influence.
Then Sven's phone rang, with the caller ID giving only the name "Unknown Caller" as its owner. Sven answered, and when he hung up, he told his friends exactly where they needed to go: the warehouse where he himself had been held prisoner and where he had taken down the next generation of crime bosses, at the unfortunate expense of his partner, Lloyd's, life.
When they got there, what they saw on the outside was a condemned, unused, abandoned building. What gave away the fact that it was still in use was the odd presence of a small limousine. This was made even stranger by the presence of a seemingly unmanned helicopter on the roof. Obviously, ambiguity was not a major pretense.
"Well, let's go! You ready, Princess?" inquired Train. He knew the answer before he even asked the question, but he figured, why the heck not?
"I am always ready, Train. You should know that by now, " retorted the young girl as she transformed her hands into iron gloves, preparing for the upcoming battle.
As she did this, both Train and Sven were loading their respective weapons. Train with his rail-gun, Hades, and Sven with his Attaché gun case.
They walked in to find a rather pretty young girl, tied to the very pole to which Sven himself had been handcuffed when he lost his eye. She looked up at the sound of the entering saviors.
She was gagged, but obviously was trying to warn her rescuers to leave lest they get caught in a totally expected trap. Her struggle was in vain, however. The trap sprung unto action as men, armed with what Train identified as fully loaded sub-machine guns, leapt from their hiding places among the storage containers. Fortunately, just as quickly as the trap had been sprung, the sweepers' plan blasted into procession.
Sven and Eve ducked behind the nearest boxes of cargo as Train began dodging machine-gun bullets to distract the girl's captors. As he did this, which he did very effectively, as he disarmed one attacker after another with extreme speed and ease, not even using his most deadly skills, his two allies sneaked around, flanking the remaining guards to set Lloyd's daughter free.
Once they had done this, and removed her gag, she quickly admonished them of the presence of a bomb set to be remotely detonated from the helicopter on the roof. Eve instantly began searching for the explosive. At the same time, Sven, while trapping some thugs in a net with his weapon case, called over to his partner, as he finished disabling the final guard, telling him that there was someone on the roof who was about to cause the whole structure to be obliterated.
Once Train heard this, he dashed to the roof, followed by Sven, finding the chopper already taking off. So he did what he did best. He drew his weapon, cocked the hammer, aimed, and fired right into the fuel tank of the airborne vehicle, causing it to explode in mid-air. By the time Sven and Eve had reached the top, Train was leaning against a pole reloading his weapon, as if they had not just defeated a practical army of sorts.
"That was it?" asked the bored sweeper, "I thought there would have been more to it."
"Well, there was a bomb, Train, " answered the equally pacified bounty hunter.
"That was nothing! They didn't even get a chance to use it!"
"Hey!" They heard a voice coming from the stairwell, realizing that they had forgotten their reason for being here.
"Sorry! I apologize deeply on behalf of both my partner and myself, because I know he would not apologize himself, " he said.
This ensued what Eve had learned to be a common occurrence between her friends: a good trivial brawl. Realizing it was merely this; she turned to the former abducted girl to say: "Don't mind them. They are always like that."
At this they both laughed and laughed even harder when Train and Sven stopped fighting and asked what was so funny.