Author note: So it's been a while. I had a lot of fun writing this chapter and actually I have a lot of fun reading it too. Probably one of the best so far, in my opinion. Anyway, to anyone who might be still following this somehow, or any new readers, I'm still not able to update anywhere near as frequently as I would like... but probably I'll manage a new chapter every... two months or so? If I'm lucky. It's pretty time-consuming because I like to really work on making it a good-quality chapter and not just a half-hearted update, plus I have a bunch of other projects that all call for attention. There's a 100% guarantee though that this story is still going (unless I die). I just can't guarantee updates will be too often. Chapter 11 will be sometime this year, hopefully! Whether you love it or hate it, please leave a review and let me know why so I can make sure I keep making this story better.
...
Nathan Drake looked like a peculiarly large and well-armed wallaby, hanging precariously from the underside of a sleek attack helicopter. The desert floor swept by below, dotted with military trucks streaming across it.
In the lead car of the convoy, Gabriel Roman's hired driver was listening to his boss ramble about his imminent victory.
"Er... Roman?" the driver began. "Are we worrying about how we're now in a- a desert? When we were in- you know- a jungle a second ago?"
Roman looked bewildered for a second. "Ah... yes," he responded in his silky British accent, reclaiming an air of superiority. "Well, naturally... we have of course, been experiencing changes of time zone recently: dinosaurs in modern France specifically... so clearly whatever phenomena is taking place is affecting both time and location, um, causing both geography and history to... mix together."
"...So you don't know."
Roman glared at his henchman. "I know how to drive, you know... So be quiet or you'll soon be ruining the scenery with a hideous red smear across the ground."
The driver thought he'd heard more eloquent threats from his friend after a heavy night's drinking, but since that friend had most likely perished by now in an explosion or hail of gunfire behind him, he wisely closed his mouth and continued driving.
...
Meanwhile, thirty metres behind, Victor Sullivan was having a far less enjoyable time driving. His truck was hemmed in by enemy vehicles on all sides, and judging by how frequently people had been leaping around between trucks like it was nothing special, it was surely a matter of time before they were boarded. Ellie was beside him in the passenger seat, completely ignoring his advice by firing shots at the attacking trucks, though her pistol was almost useless against the abundance of high-powered machine guns that the mercenaries were toting. Regardless, Ellie fired on relentlessly, even as streams of bullets pounded into the truck so persistently that it was a miracle she and Sullivan were both unscathed. Unfortunately, the vehicle wouldn't last much longer.
Joel gritted his teeth as he lay in the back of the truck. Bullets whizzed by above his head and he wished he had found somewhere better to take cover. With his extensive injuries, he was barely capable of keeping himself out of the line of fire.
A mercenary from the next truck over landed in front of him, followed by another two from various directions. They were taken aback to see Joel there, and in their split second of hesitation, a thunderous roar sounded nearby, and a continuous burst of rapid fire obliterated them.
Chloe Frazer, who had commandeered a rapid-fire turret mounted on the most irritating of the nearby vehicles, turned her attention to the hostiles that were closing in on her group.
"That's for Charlie, you bastards!"
She threw a thumbs-up in Joel's direction as she swivelled around, unleashing a perpetual stream of destruction in her wake. Truck after truck exploded in what seemed to her like a beautiful symphony, mercenaries flying in various directions as the bullet-riddled husks of their vehicles ploughed into sand dunes. Before Chloe knew what had happened, she had reduced almost the entire convoy to smithereens. She turned her attention to the fleet of helicopters, tearing them apart with barrages of artillery fire. She stopped when she saw Nathan Drake.
"What the hell is he doing?" she wondered incredulously.
...
"What the hell am I doing?" cried Nate, clutching in his hand the makeshift grappling hook he'd crafted back at the chateau. He'd neglected to use one in his recent adventures, but teenage memories reminded him of how useful they could be. After a dozen attempts, he had seemingly succeeded in hooking the implement onto something inside the helicopter, albeit an object of dubious reliability. With all the limited reassurance of a few reasonably secure-seeming safety tugs on the rope, Nate let go of the helicopter.
The wind took him instantly, buffeting him around wildly. After a stomach-churning drop that became a controlled arc, he hung suspended from the rope, dangling beneath the low-flying helicopter. "This is a lot harder than I thought it'd be," Drake reflected.
As the gusts of wind threw him around, he noticed his proximity both to the desert floor sweeping below, and to Gabriel Roman's astonished and astonishingly hideous face behind a windscreen. It became an astonishingly hideous face with a glint of pleasure as he gestured to his driver, spouting words that the wind swept away from Nathan's ears.
"That doesn't look good," he muttered to nobody in particular, (a recurring habit of his) and he began to try and scale the rope. As he struggled to ascend even one foot up the grappling hook, he noticed with alarm that Gabriel's truck had somehow picked up even more speed, gradually closing the distance between them. The man himself was pointing a pistol out of the passenger-side door, firing ineptly.
"Why does this kind of shit always happen?!"
Nate began to swing as best he could from side to side, gradually building up momentum. As the truck reached him, he swung past the side of it, the vehicle now passing by beside him. "You lose again, pal," Drake called, kicking Roman's pistol from his hands. "For the second time in a row, you've been- no, no, no, no, no, not cool!"
Roman, reaching from the truck to try and catch hold of Drake, had himself been wrenched out of the window.
"Why? Why would you even do that?!" yelled Nate incredulously.
Roman responded with a series of shouts and groans as he hung from Nate's ankles, lifting his legs desperately as his own feet threatened to scrape across the floor below.
The driver shrugged. "My work here is done," he surmised, peeling the truck away and heading off in a different direction, deciding that probable death was not particularly appealing to him without a payment at the end of it. "No, where are you- come back!" cried Roman.
"First Navarro took El Dorado for himself, and now this," Nathan pointed out. "Seems to me like you're a terrible boss."
"We're about to die, you fool!"
"Looks like you'll die a good half-second before me though, right? Ha ha ha h- ugh, why am I even laughing?"
Roman ignored him, choosing instead to point behind them, yelling "Look!" Nate craned his head back to see another truck accelerating towards them. "Christ, are you kidding me?! When this is over, I don't ever even want to look at one more stupid, stupid truck- Oh hi, Sully."
Ellie and Victor waved from behind the shattered windshield.
...
Charlie Cutter's legs gave way and he collapsed onto the sand, aching and bloody.
After being thrown into a sand dune by the explosion, he had quickly discovered that his own feet were not capable of carrying him at speeds of sixty miles per hour. His bruises throbbed painfully as he lay there, weary and spent.
"First it's Jurassic Park... now it's Mad shitting Max," he complained. "Whatever's next... I hope it's bloody Toy Story at least."
He lay there for a while, lost in exhaustion-fuelled reflection. Mostly he wondered whether his friends (even Joel and Ellie, the latter of which he had come to like particularly well) were alive; though a healthy introspection on the nature and quality of movie sequels was a natural accompaniment.
"Of course," he mumbled, "Toy Story 3 is the unequivocal champion of the series: a shining beacon of innovation and heart in an industry of increasingly clinical, cash-motivated-"
Cutter frowned as his unbridled nugget of cultural and societal wisdom was interrupted by the faint roar of an engine. He clambered strenuously to his feet, turning around to spot the black dot on the horizon behind him. As it grew closer and larger in turn, he identified the shape of a motorcycle shooting towards him at a perilously high speed. When its rider identified Charlie, they let loose a wicked cackle.
"Didn't I say it? Don't mess with Eddy goddamn Raja!" he crowed, whooping raucously. He levelled a small shotgun at Cutter as he approached. "Eat my sand!"
He swerved wildly past Cutter, who rolled for dear life. Shotgun pellets peppered the earth around him. Eddy wheeled round in a circle and came roaring back. This time he was heading directly towards Cutter, who chose to stand his ground. Once again, Eddy brandished his shotgun, but didn't anticipate his foe rolling towards him instead. Charlie slid beneath the shotgun barrel, ears ringing with the discharge as he snatched the weapon. Eddy was forced to relinquish it to avoid being pulled from his bike, and Charlie claimed the firearm for his own.
"Thanks, mate," he called.
Eddy's eyes narrowed in fury, motorcycle swerving around for a third charge. "You'll pay for that one!"
"Taking the shotgun?" inquired Cutter. "Or the incredibly witty quip?"
Eddy revved the engine. "I'm sorry, did you say: 'incredibly shitty quip'?"
"Wow, that- that's really mature."
"Oh, please forgive me for my provoketion, dead man!" Eddy accelerated towards him.
"Are you kidding me right now? It's provocation, you illiterate-"
Cutter aimed the shotgun, prepared to dodge if need be, but determined to get a shot off. Eddy roared towards him on a direct collision course, grinning wickedly. Cutter had chalked the constant semi-suicidal behaviour down to a reckless disposition, but even Eddy knew that he had no chance of surviving a shotgun burst, and as soon as he had aligned the motorcycle, he leapt off, tumbling across the sand.
"Oh, bollocks," exclaimed Cutter, darting to the left. He avoided the tyres but the handlebar clipped his shoulder. As he lost his balance and staggered sideways, Eddy swooped in and snatched the shotgun. After reclaiming his weapon, he lashed out brutally, delivering a solid strike to Charlie's head that sent him crashing onto his back. He pointed the gun downwards.
"Bye-bye, p-"
Cutter swiped upwards, his foot connecting with the shotgun barrel and sweeping it higher. Sprays of sand burst up just above his head where the pellets impacted. Eddy cursed and recovered his grip, but when he pulled the trigger, his adversary had already rolled aside. Cutter sprang to his feet. Eddy brought the gun round to face him, finger tightening on the trigger. As he fired, the gun was propelled sideways. He was much skinnier and leaner than Cutter, whose broad, muscular build enabled him to wrench the weapon away in seconds.
Eddy raised his hands in mock surrender, Charlie holding him at gunpoint. "Go ahead," he sneered. "You won't- agh!"
Cutter's powerful right-hook struck him full in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground and entering a rare silence. Eddy spluttered in pain and indignation as Cutter walked away. He sauntered nonchalantly over to where the motorbike had come to rest (as if he wasn't dead on his feet), wasting no time propping it up and climbing on to sit astride it.
He wheeled away and halted beside the still-grounded Eddy. "By the way, just for posterity... which Toy Story's better?"
"Will you just go already!" exclaimed Eddy in exasperation.
"Roger that," Cutter responded, shooting a salute behind him as he sped away in pursuit of the convoy.
" "Eat my sand," " he chuckled as he drove. "What a tosser."