Chapter 8: The Insidious War

As we walked inside Circus Baby's World, I immediately noticed it was quiet and dark. Way too dark. Way too quiet. The quiet that's so quiet, you can hear ringing in your ears. The dark that's so dark, you think that you're dead.

I motioned for Chichi and Springy to go to Ballora gallery, and for Alex and Red to go to Funtime auditorium. They split up into their groups, and went to their areas. I walked ahead, using the customer's entrance to a long hallway that led to Circus Gallery, on full alert.

I cocked back my handgun. Twenty bullet extended clip, a compensator, comfort grip, and about fourteen years of battle experience were at my fingertips.

As I reached the end of the hallway, I slid against one of the halls, my breathing slowing down, my senses, reacting to the slightest gust of wind. My ears, hearing every little creak of the building. My sight, adjusting to the darkness of the area to take in every little detail. I took a deep breath, letting the air oxygenate my mind, and stole a two second glance around the corner.

I saw four improved versions of the endo skeletons, with bodies that looked like synthetic muscle tissue, armed with M27 IAR's, with about six extra clips on their tactical vests they were wearing. They also had what looked like the Gerber mark II combat knife on a vertical chest holder, and two M67 fragmentation grenades beside the knife holster.

I also saw Freya and Fifi, armed with the exact same weaponry, their tactical vests over their clothing.

As I whipped back around, I immediately thought of a way to take these guys down. These guys meant serious fucking business. They were armed with lethal's. The only lethal's I was armed with was one clip of armor piercing rounds for my handgun, and my combat knife. But I was trained to work in the worst of situations with limited options, so this will be a cake walk.

I put my handgun back into my holster, pulled out two of the four shock grenades, or EMP grenades, and slowly looked back out from the wall.

Perfect. The four endo-synths were split off from each other, with Freya and Fifi in the middle. The endos were close enough in groups of two for both my shock grenades to take them down, but not enough to hurt Freya and Fifi.

I walked around the corner, and pulled the pins off of the grenades, and flung them in opposite directions of each other, one grenade going to one group of endo-synths, and the same with the other.

The element of my surprise caught them off guard, sending them into a state of shock. True soldiers would have started acting immediately. But since these guys aren't soldiers, they didn't know how to respond giving me the window of opportunity to close the gap between me and Fifi.

PSSHHHT

The grenades exploded, frying the circuits of all the endo-synths, surprising both Freya and Fifi, in which I used the element of that, and launched a flying scissor leg takedown against Fifi, and used the momentum to throw Fifi into Freya.

THUNK

Fifi slammed into Freya with a little more force then I wanted to do. I winced when I heard them smack into each other and almost rushed over to apologize, until Freya got up to one knee, and started to spray the room with her M27.

RAT TAT TAT TAT TAT

Bullets were flying everywhere, hitting everything. I dived behind one of the huge trapeze poles, and assessed the situation. Why didn't Freya go down like Fifi? Then it hit me. Freya grabbed Fifi, and went with Fifi's momentum, slamming Fifi down to protect her own self. The CPUO-chip made her hurt own sister even more then I already did, and for what? To have a small chance of killing me? When I find Ennard, I'm gonna rip his fucking head off.

KA-CHINK

I know that sound. That was the sound of the pin being pulled off of a grenade. I immediately scanned my area, and saw a frag grenade being rolled at me from my right side, two of its precious seconds already gone.

"OH SHIT!" I screamed, diving toward the grenade.

I grabbed the grenade, and flung ten yards to the gun toting side of Freya.

BA-BOOM

The impact of the grenade threw Freya off the ground and into the second trapeze pole at the speed of damn lighting. I winced, because I knew this was going to hurt like a bitch.

WHAM

Freya's body slammed-HARD-into the trapeze pole, causing her to lose her sense of pretty much everything, which in that split-second window, I closed the gap between me and Freya, and ripped the CPUO-chip out of the back of her neck.

"One down, one to go." I said, turning my back to Freya, and my attention to Fifi, who was sitting up, her left side facing me. She was picking her gun up, or at least attempted to, because I immediately nabbed Freya's gun off the ground, and aimed it at Fifi's gun.

BAM

I sent Fifi's gun flying with a hole through its side, destroying it. Fifi flinched, and turned her attention to me, with a look of surprise and madness. This was not the Fifi I knew, and will never be until I get that stupid-ass CPUO-chip out of her head.

Fifi stood up, pulling her knife out her knife sheathe on her tactical vest, which was positioned on her right side at a vertical angle. I sighed, and threw down the rifle.

"Giving up so easily?" Fifi asked me, positioning herself in a basic knife combat stance. She was grinning at me, flipping her knife to where the blade was on the bottom. I started to laugh to myself.

"Why are you laughing?" Fifi asked, her tension loosening up. I pulled my sniper standard mercworx knife out of my shoulder harness, and positioned myself into a systema defensive posture.

"Because this is going to be over in seven seconds." I said, keeping my posture.

Fifi smiled, and started to run toward me. I started counting.

"Seven, six…" I counted out loud, as Fifi tried to stab me with the knife using an icepick grip.

"Five, four…" I slapped the side of my knife against her blade, stopping her attack.

"Three, two, one…" I wrapped my left hand around her knife-wielding arm, knife facing away from both of us, and grabbed her shoulder, forcing her head down to the ground, exposing the back of her neck, along with her CPUO-chip.

"Zero." I side-stabbed the chip off Fifi's neck.

Fifi immediately fell to the ground as dead weight. Her systems would boot up in about ten seconds, so I slung her over my shoulder, and carried her over to her sister, who just came back.

"What happened?" Freya asked, looking around the room, seeing four fried endo-synths, three charred spots form the two EMP's and one frag grenade, and a clip's worth of shells on the ground.

"And what am I wearing? She said, looking down at herself. She looked up as I came to stand in front of her, putting her sister on her feet, who was just booting up.

"Delta?" She exclaimed, standing up. "What's going…"

"Never mind that now, OK?" I interrupted, grabbing all of Fifi's clips, and putting them in my pack. "Right now, I need to get you and your sister to safety. Do you trust me?"

"Of course, Delta, but will you please tell me what's going on?" she asked, handing me her M27.

"Yeah, but when everyone is safe, OK?" I said, slamming a fresh new clip in, and chambered a round.

"let's go." I said, both sister's behind me.

We went back through the way we came, surprisingly, with no resistance. When we got outside the rest of the gang was there… with the rest of the girls! Along with all of Red's friends!

"Delta!" Chichi yelled, jumping into me wrapping her legs around my waist, her pillows of heaven squishing against my face, making it hard to breathe, but I really didn't care at the moment. All I cared about was the fact that Chichi was safe… and I was in a very nice position.

Hmmmm…

"Hey, man." Alex said, tapping my shoulder. "Did it go smooth?"

"Yeah man." I said, carrying Chichi to my car, and sitting her on top of the trunk. "Real smooth"

"Tell us!" Red said, sitting down on the pavement, everyone else sitting down with her. I looked at them all, Alex with his Remington, Red with her sword, Chichi beside me, and everyone else safe and sound.

"All right." I said, wrapping my arm around Chichi waist.

So I told them.

I told them about the EMP's, the endo-synths, the flying-scissor kick, all of it. Afterword's, I got those of us who didn't know what was going on up to speed.

"Wow." Goldie said.

"All that happened to us?" Ballora said, leaning against Red.

"I'm gonna give you guys a minute to catch up." I said, motioning Springy and Alex to come talk to me.

"I told you my story." I said, crossing my arms. I looked at Alex. "You first."

Alex sighs, and begins.