Author's Note

Alright, now I'm sure you've all been waiting for this my loyal fans, all five of you. Another excellent Disco Rising chapter, and it is gonna be sweet! There's gonna be a fight, and, well, I can't give away too much. So, here it is!

Disco Risng

Flaky, still refusing to move from Flippy's motionless body, waited for what seemed like an eternity for Disco to arrive, and the fact that he was making a pit stop to save someone else unnerved her even more. But, when he finally arrived with two more people she jumped out from beside her friend anxiously. "Disco, who are these two? Did you get the medicine, where is it?" She bombarded him.

"Hold on, cowgirl, we've got another patient here. I promised his girlfriend here you'd help him out, capiche?" Disco calmly replied, placing Frost on the couch beside Flippy and turning to the other girl "C'mon Flurry, you look like you need some rest, we'll go introduce you to the other survivors."

"I'm fine, I just want to stay with him until he's better. Okay?" Flurry said, sitting down in the chair in front of the monitors, spinning it to face her love. Flaky calmly and quickly disinfected the wound, applying gauze and medical wrap to Flippy's bullet wound, and turned to Frost. She was shocked by the deep gashes penetrating his body.

"Good god, what happened to you?"

"Clowns gone bad, but you can help me out, right?" Frost smiled at her.

"Yes, it doesn't look like anything's infected, we just need to bandage you up some more. Is this athletic tape?"

Frost chuckled and turned his eyes to Flurry, "Yeah, it is. My girl isn't the best, but she means well." And Flurry returned his kind words with a weak smile. Disco, still leaning in the entranceway, felt a hand on his shoulder. Mole stood behind him, and he spoke with a nervous look on his face,

"Disco, I hate to ask you this, but do you think you could maybe, uh"

Disco cut him off, smiling "Who is it and where?"

"Over in the northern plaza, Crislip's home supply. There's some big guy carrying a machete, he's doing a good job staying out of sight, I think he was trained in the military or something. Can you go check it out?"

"Let me get this straight, you want me to find a potentially dangerous and/or mentally deranged discharged soldier with machete?" Disco asked, and Mole responded simply with a nod. He gave a deep sigh and noticed a cup of coffee on the desk nearby. "Hey Flakes, is this fresh?"

"Oh, the coffee? Yes, I just made that pot a couple of minutes ago." She told him while bandaging Frost, and without another word, Disco scooped up the coffee cup and tilted his head back, inhaling the strong, black drink in seconds. He turned and headed towards the vents back into the mall, mumbling under his breath.

Disco was getting good at navigating the mall, and found himself at the northern plaza's water fountain (still under construction, of course), right in front of Crislip's Home Supply. It was a home and garden store, that carried tools and other construction materials. It was an average store, but something horrible had been going on inside of it, something inhuman, as anyone approaching the store could tell from at least thirty feet away. Blood had painted the floors, dying them a crimson red the likes of which had never been seen outside of a battlefield, Disco of course snapped a few pictures as he walked in. He clenched his handgun tightly, also keeping handy a small hunting knife Flippy had retrieved when he left to get supplies. What was most terrifying though, was the bodies, hog tied and strung from the ceiling, each decapitated neatly. Disco almost vomited when he realized that some of the bodies had not yet been zombified. He was only about half way into this house of horrors when a deep voice growled from behind him.

" Name and rank, soldier!" Disco snapped around to see a muscular bear, clad in a hunting jacket with its sleeves torn off. He had blood splattered over his body from head to toe, and was clenching a blood soaked machete as he glared at Disco with fiery red eyes.

"I said name a rank soldier!" He began walking towards Disco, his steps heavy and intimidating. "You can't tell me, can you? You wanna know why? Because you're Viet Cong! Yeah, and I'm gonna teach you a lesson!" He suddenly broke into a run down an aisle next to him, and his voice began to echo from all sides.

"Yeah, heh heh, I'm gonna make you tell me where the guerrilla base is, and by the time I'm finished beating information out of you, you're gonna be begging death to come and take your lifeless broken corpse away. NOW DIE!"

Disco finally realized where the sound was, and leaped to the side just in time to dodge the psychotic bear attacking from behind. But his attacker was a trained fighter as well, and soon followed up with another swing Disco just barely managed to avoid. But right when he steadied the gun to fire, his adversary ran off and jumped downward into a heating vent. Disco walked towards the vent, he seemed calm, but was in all honesty shaking from the attack. He had just reached the floor mounted vent, when a metallic clank startled him, and he turned to find a signal flare, spewing out a thick smoke screen. The gaseous fumes choked Disco, leaving him doubled over gasping for breath, when he heard a beastly roar. Ducking, he saw the bear's muscular arm thrust out with the machete with so much force it cracked the wall and wedged itself deep in the wooden walls of the store. The bear struggled to pull out his weapon, and Disco, seeing this as his only opportunity, pulled the hunting knife from his pocket and dug it deep inside the belly of the beast. The bear choked on his own blood, and Disco landed the killing blow by ripping the knife across the bear's abdomen. The smoke had just cleared, and Disco watched in disgust as the bear's entrails began falling out, but in one last dying rage, the bear pulled his machete from the wall and backed up, swinging it wildly before falling backwards onto the crimson-stained floor. Disco, still shaken up over barely winning the fight, snapped a picture and turned to walk away when the "dead man" called out to him.

"Hey you, come here mister. I gotta give you something." He reached slowly into his pants pocket, pulling out a small wallet. His movements were careful and deliberate, as if to save whatever life he had left in him. He flipped it open to show a picture of him and another bear, very similar in appearance in military uniforms. "My name is Rad, and this is my brother Chad. We both served in the military, and were able to defend ourselves quite well when we were attacked. But then we stumbled upon that stupid girl. She was freaking out, lost her sister or something, and I started getting stressed out. She was hurt, and the sight of her practically dying just caused me to, snap. The war, it wasn't over, at least for me it wasn't. I want to give you this, and please if you find them, my brother or those troublesome girls, keep them safe. And give my machete to Chad, he'd want it back." And then he collapsed, blood pouring from his mouth.

Disco took the two items from the bear, in his mind determined to find this man's brother, and whatever girls he had been talking about. Stepping out of the supply store, he realized there was a glass door with a heavy lock placed over it nearby the home supply store. He opened the wallet and found a small silver key shining in it, next to the picture Rad had showed him. He flicked the key into the latch and with a clank, the heavy tumblers unlocked and the door swung open. Sitting motionless in the white storage room where two other bears, one clad in military fatigues, the other a girl in black shinobi robes. When he approached, the male bear stood and approached him.

"My brother, what happened to him?" his tone was melancholy.

"He attacked me, and I had no choice, I'm sorry."

"It's fine, war has casualties, and I'm sure he understood that. You killing him was probably for the best, he was set on adding us to the numerous body count he had racked up before you had arrived."

"He also wanted you to have this," And Disco handed him the blood stained machete and the small leather wallet.

"Heh, funny, I always carried this after the war just to be safe. I'm sorry he used it to attack you."

"It's fine, now let's go, your brother also wanted me to keep you both safe, and I know of a safe room." He began to lead the way, but realized the girl wasn't moving. "Is she alright?" The girl sat staring at a wall, he knees pulled closed to her body and her arms wrapped around her legs.

"Her name's Light Shadow," Chad said "Her and her sister had quite a rivalry with us, but we put that aside when we found her. We still don't know where her sister is." Chad then walked over, and without a word took the girl's hand and walked behind Disco to safety.

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Alrighty! I AM TIRED! WHOO! Now for some thanks and some apologies. I'd like to thank Bloodshed Gal for letting me use her OCs Chad, Rad, Light Shadow, and later on Dark Shadow in this chapter. I'd also like to beg for her forgiveness for not asking before I made some slight changes to her characters. You see, the twin girls, not the twin boys are the ones with PTSD. It just seemed strange to have a girl play the part of a muscular Vietnam Veteran, sorry if that's sexist. And just a side note, this fight with Cliff(The character Rad plays) is another part of what inspired me to write this story. A Vietnam Veteran, who "flips"out and thinks he's back in the war, attacking anyone nearby. Kinda reminds you of someone, eh?

Oh, and one last thing before you go, I'd just like to reiterate my earlier statement and say that every character submitted so far will be used in the story in some way.

This has been Phoenix Reece, stay classy San Diego!