Arc VI: Party Crashing
Part 7: Situational Awareness
"That must be it right there," Miyu announced from the driver's seat of Felix's car.
At the end of the narrow alleyway sat the oversized truck used to haul the Landmaster. The mere sight of it sitting by itself without a soul around gave Miyu, Scarlet, and Cassie a collective feeling of unease. As they approached the vehicle, Miyu slowed down until she came to a stop thirty feet behind its rear bumper.
Crossing her arms in front of her chest while sitting in the shotgun seat, Cassie commented, "Something feels wrong about this. What happened to Fox and Slippy?"
In the back of the car, Scarlet narrowed her eyes and pointed towards the abandoned steel mill to the left of the truck. "They're in there."
At that moment, gunshots erupted from inside the building. The sound of a high-caliber Gatling gun rattled the airwaves before the repeated firing of an assault rifle entered the fray.
Miyu's heartbeat skyrocketed. "Shouldn't we help them? What if they die in there?"
Discomfort in her voice, Scarlet shook her head and replied, "Fox was adamant that I take the truck and have you follow me to Felix's storage yard. I don't know if he's trying to be a martyr or if he really thinks that he can win the fight in there, but that's what he wanted us to do. Besides, none of us are armed."
"I don't know, Scarlet," Miyu murmured, her ears pinned back in fear for her teammates' safety.
"I do," Scarlet declared. With that, she opened her door and climbed out of the car. The warm, tropical air swept through her bare fur, reminding her both of Eladard's equatorial climate and her own lack of clothing. Due to her need to escape from the Red Group building after Fox triggered the alarm, she had been unable to dress herself after performing her seductive dance routine with Cassie, who had been a bit more fortunate. As a result, Scarlet's only clothing amounted to a skimpy, metallic silver bra and thong. Although she would never admit to it, she felt bashful about her lack of clothing. Thankfully, no one would notice it once she climbed into the truck and started driving.
Looking over her shoulder at Miyu and Cassie in the car, Scarlet opened the truck's driver's side door and clambered inside. She situated herself on the flat, squishy bench seat and looked around the cabin for anything of interest. An intuition suggested that she check the glovebox. Upon opening it, a silver handgun dropped out and fell into the passenger side footwell.
She reached for the weapon and placed it on the seat next to her. Then, she clipped on her seatbelt, grabbed the keys—which were already in the ignition—and started the truck. The loud clattering of the diesel engine filled the cabin and rocked the vehicle's chassis.
"Great. I'm going to have to put up with this racket for the next twenty minutes," thought Scarlet.
She mused on the ridiculousness of her situation and rolled her eyes at the obvious attempt at squeezing even more fanservice out of the story. After all, a lingerie-clad vixen driving a military cargo truck through a downtown metropolis was not something that people saw every day—or ever, for that matter.
Looking in her mirror, Scarlet motioned for Miyu and Cassie to move out of the way. Then, she shifted the truck into reverse and eased the massive vehicle into an adjacent alleyway under construction. Multiple road signs prevented her from moving far into the alley, but she managed to use the limited space to turn around and head back up the road towards the city center. Once there, she knew how to find Felix's storage area. She recalled that the facility stood near the city's oceanside shipping port.
With Miyu following closely—too closely, perhaps—behind her rear bumper, Scarlet came to a stop at an intersection that allowed her to re-enter the city's main avenue and waited until the traffic light displayed a green arrow. Every muscle on edge for fear of making a wrong move and flattening a car, she eased the truck onto the avenue and looked towards the distant bay. Despite the sea of buildings blocking the way, she knew where to go.
She looked in her mirror again to make sure Miyu and Cassie were still following her. They were, but Scarlet still felt that Miyu was sticking too closely to the back of the truck.
"Damn it—back off, girl. If I have to hit the brakes, you're going to crash into me."
Scarlet considered calling Miyu and telling her to follow less closely, but she thought that trying to place a phone call while driving through chaotic city traffic in an oversized truck carrying a tank was more of a risk than it was worth. Besides, calling Miyu in the first place would require her to dig her phone out of her bra and take her attention off the road ahead. With a sneer, she kept driving while making sure to brake as gradually as possible to prevent Miyu from rear-ending her.
After waiting for another turn signal, Scarlet turned onto an adjacent avenue that led towards the bay area. Only five miles separated her from her destination, but the congested traffic, the bulky truck, and the sheer number of traffic lights that lined the route conspired to make that distance the longest five miles she had ever driven.
Then, she looked in her mirror, only to see a bar of flashing blue lights behind her. Her pulse spiked, but her heart sank at the exact same time. She fervently hoped that she was not the target of the police, especially now. However, as she saw no way of escaping from the authorities, Scarlet pulled to the right and began slowing down. Miyu followed suit, only for the police car to pull alongside her and order her to stop.
"Crap. I really should have made that call. Now Miyu isn't going to know where to go after she gets her ticket."
With Miyu and the police car shrinking in her rear view mirror, Scarlet shook her head and pressed on towards the bay. The city streets began running downhill towards the distant water's edge; and as the distance rolled past, the bustling city traffic thinned, replaced by industrial equipment and commercial vehicles. Thanks to it being close to midnight in Eladard, even the number of those vehicles waned to the point where she felt as if she had the road to herself. However, the narrow, cramped streets prevented her from driving any faster. Not as if she had any need to.
A flash of yellow to the right caught her eye. A split second later, an echoing, pounding sound 'clanged' through the entire truck. Scarlet glared into her right side mirror only to see a canine with dyed-yellow fur clinging to the side of the truck by a pair of magnetic grips. He wore a black hoodie and cargo pants, and his appearance immediately brought Rena to Scarlet's mind.
"Oh great—I thought one of her was enough."
To her dismay, when she looked in her other mirror, she saw three more yellow hooligans dart out from an alleyway behind the truck. Under any normal circumstance, the idea of being pursued on foot while in a vehicle would have provoked her to laughter, but in this case, she felt a sensation of dread and apprehension. She accelerated from 25 miles per hour to 30, but struggled to push beyond that due to the truck's tremendous weight and lack of maneuverability. The three pursuers fell back, but showed no signs of giving up. All the while, the one hanger-on continued shimmying his way up the side of the truck until his yellow face and dyed-white hair blocked Scarlet's right mirror.
Scarlet looked to her right and drew her handgun the instant the canine's face appeared in her window. Without hesitation, she pulled the trigger. An ear-splitting gun blast, a rain of broken glass, and a splatter of blood confirmed that the round had claimed its target.
Then, she returned her eyes to the road and gasped in panic. A ninety degree right turn was less than 100 meters away. Beyond the pavement lay a wiry mesh fence and an aluminum traffic barrier. Beyond that, the warm waters of the Western Eladard Bay lapped against the shoreline.
Scarlet slammed on the brakes and cranked the oversized steering wheel hard to the right. She felt the weighty cargo in the back of the truck propelling her towards the bay and threatening to tip the truck over when she pulled into the corner. Squealing brakes and smoking rubber filled the air as she clipped the corner's apex with two of the truck's wheels off the ground.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Foot still mashing the brake pedal, Scarlet cleared the corner and jerked the steering wheel to the left to bring all four wheels back to the pavement. The truck's suspension shook violently. The impact dislodged more broken glass from the shattered window and scattered it onto Scarlet and across the dashboard in front of her.
She allowed herself to take a deep breath as her panic wore off. Returning to the speed limit, she continued towards the storage facility, now only a mile away. However, as she passed an alleyway to her right, three more 'clangs' echoed through the right side of the truck.
"No! They must have found a shortcut around that corner!" she screamed internally.
Keeping one eye on the road and another on her right side mirror, she watched the three yellow bandits crawling along the side of the truck with the same variety of magnetic grips as the bandit she had shot. One of the three climbed along the side of the cargo box towards the cabin, while the other two swung their way onto the rear gate. In seconds, Scarlet realized their intentions—to pick the lock on the back and steal the cargo inside.
The instant the realization dawned on her, she frantically scanned the truck's footwells for her gun, which she had dropped while trying to avoid driving through the sharp corner and into the bay.
"Where is it? No! Dammit!"
Abandoning her brief search for the handgun, she looked in her right mirror and cringed. One of the bandits had inched her way to within five feet of the passenger's side window; and when Scarlet looked more closely at her, she saw a metallic implement held in her teeth.
"Is that...a pizza wheel? You've got to be kidding me!"
Scarlet could almost see Felix's storage yard up ahead, but she knew that the yellow bandits would commandeer the truck and steal the Landmaster before she could reach her destination. Miyu and Cassie had probably just finished receiving a ticket from the Eladard Police Department, and Fox may have been dead, for all she knew.
In other words, she could call for help all she wanted, but no one would help her.
She looked to her left and noticed a large construction site built along the edge of the bay. Multiple cranes, supply barrels, and a cement truck lay about the area, but it seemed devoid of people. Nevertheless, it would have to do.
As the bandit clinging to the right side of the truck reached for the door frame and tried to swing her way into the cabin, Scarlet jerked the wheel to the left and sped through the caution sawhorses blocking the entrance to the construction site. The force of the impact and the g-forces generated by the turn threw the interloper off the side of the truck, but crashing through the blockage also slowed the vehicle down.
Slamming on the brakes and coming to a full stop in the construction site, Scarlet once again visually raked the cabin for her handgun. As before, she saw nothing. Heart pounding and pulse racing, she snarled, turned off the engine, and yanked the keys out of the ignition. She looked for a place to stow them but realized that without pockets, she had only one real option. Regardless, she had to find a way to prevent the keys from falling into the bandits' hands.
"Wow. Of course it would come to this. Just my luck."
Scarlet shook her head, then dropped the keys down the front of her thong and climbed out of the truck. She backed up until she stood in front of the truck and looked around the area. Nearby, a pallet of I-beams dangled from the top of a crane parked in the center of the construction site. Thirty feet behind her, near the cement truck, Scarlet noticed a patch of wet cement, roughly twenty feet squared. On the other side of the construction site, a group of concrete cylinders lay stacked above the level of the asphalt under her bare feet.
As she collected herself, the three bandits emerged from behind the truck and slowly advanced on her. She took note of each of them. The first—a lean yet muscular raccoon—exuded an air of authority the other two lacked. This made Scarlet assume that he was the leader of the group. The second bandit possessed the physique and facial features of a koala, but the yellow tribal paint he had covered himself with gave him a bizarre appearance. The third bandit resembled Rena to a disturbing degree, from her white hair to the cutoff hoodie and short shorts that made up her outfit. All three of them covered themselves in yellow fur paint. Under normal circumstances, they would have looked like a group of lost cosplayers, but as they stepped towards Scarlet, they resembled something more sinister.
The leading raccoon put his hands on his hips, and upon noticing Scarlet's outfit, he taunted, "Of all the people to be driving that truck! Did you get lost on the way back from the strip club? You know, if you're looking for a good time, I and some of the boys back at our hideout could probably show you one."
Scarlet's fur bristled. Baring her teeth, she replied, "You'd better watch it, asshat. I know one of your friends, and she wouldn't take nicely to that comment."
"Oh, and which 'friend' would that be?" the raccoon spat.
"Her name's Rena."
The three bandits broke into a round of chuckles. "Funny you should say that," said the koala, "We kicked her out of the gang so long ago that most of us don't know she was ever one of us to start with!"
"Damn right," the raccoon added, "No loyalty, that one. She was good at fighting, but after she killed five of us for hitting on her, boss decided she had to go. If she ever shows her face around here again, well…" He flashed his teeth in a crooked grin. "…Let's just say it won't end well for her."
Scarlet stopped backing up and faced the trio in front of her. "Well, listen here. You are not getting away with that truck or the cargo in the back. I have no idea what you'd do with it anyway."
"If it's valuable, we'll find something to do with it," the raccoon sneered. "I hate the idea of killing a pretty lady like you, but if those keys aren't in my hands in ten seconds, that's what's going to happen… Although we might have a bit of fun with your corpse afterwards."
The anger radiating from Scarlet's persona flared up even more, to the point where her hate bordered on being tangible. "Mark my words—I'm going to make you regret saying that."
The raccoon rolled his eyes. "Easy enough for you to say right now. You won't be so cocky in a few minutes." Looking at his comrades, he shouted, "Come on, you two—let's kill this bitch."
All three bandits drew their weapons—the raccoon, a long, cruel knife; the koala, a set of nunchuks; and the vixen, her pizza wheel. They charged at Scarlet, who turned and heroically ran away from the truck. She knew that she had no hope of outpacing them, but she needed a way to force them apart. Clustered together, they presented too much of a challenge for her, but if she could keep them from attacking her all at once, she figured she would have a chance at dealing with them.
Scarlet looked over her shoulder, then focused on the ground ahead of her. To her right, an abandoned utility pouch left by one of the construction workers sat on a pallet of plywood sheets. Not slowing down in the least, she grabbed it off the pallet and clipped it around her waist. Her hands dug through the various pockets, looking for tools that she could use as weapons.
She neared the back edge of the construction site, marked by a fence situated a matter of feet from the waters of the bay. As she considered where to run next, she heard footsteps closing in on her. In a flurry of panic, she reached into her utility pouch and grabbed the most easily accessible tool. This happened to be a pipe wrench. She turned halfway around and swung it at her pursuer. A solid impact followed by a feminine scream filled the air. The pizza wheel vixen dropped back and clutched at her wounded muzzle, only to trip up the koala behind her. Both bandits fell to the ground in a heap.
Scarlet intended to capitalize on her brief one-on-one with the raccoon. While he pursued her with his knife ready to strike, Scarlet turned left to avoid running into the fence at the back of the construction zone and doubled back towards the entrance. To her right lay numerous pallets of construction supplies, from pipes to electrical wire to bags of concrete. In particular, a red, cylindrical gasoline canister stood out to her. While continuing her sprint, she reached for the can and picked it up. Its considerable weight slowed her down, but knowing that it was full gave her reassurance at the same time.
Holding onto the can with her right hand, she dug through her pouch until her fingers closed on a plastic lighter. Then, she turned around, opened the mouth of the canister, and splashed as much gasoline as possible at her pursuer before she dropped the canister in front of her.
Just as she had hoped, the raccoon tripped over the gas can.
Scarlet gripped her lighter and flicked the metal wheel, prompting a tiny, orange flame to spew from the cartridge. For a moment, she looked back on her past and felt grateful that her former excursion into the world of "herbal supplements" had taught her how to effortlessly use a lighter. Then, she returned to the present and hurled the lighter at the gasoline-soaked raccoon.
He burst into flames and screamed at the top of his lungs. He ran away from Scarlet towards the back of the construction site, where he attempted to vault the fence. However, the barbed wire attached to the top of it prevented any such endeavor. In a blaze of agony, he dropped dead on the ground.
Scarlet had no time to reflect on his death, as the koala raced towards her with nunchucks spinning and flailing in an unblockable flurry of pain. At that moment, a vibrating sensation pulsed through her left breast.
"Crap, that's probably Miyu or Fox… Mmm…but that actually feels pretty good."
However, after the phone vibrated more than once, Scarlet's pleasure turned into an annoyance and a distraction. As the koala sprinted across the construction site towards her, she pulled the phone out of her bra and hurled it at the koala like a discus. The device caught the marsupial in the nose with its hard metal edge, then bounced off and hit the ground.
Although it was far from a lethal blow, it broke the koala's concentration and gave Scarlet a window of opportunity. While he grappled with the fact that he had just been attacked with a cell phone, Scarlet punched him in the muzzle hard enough to make him see stars. He tried swinging his nunchucks in retaliation, but in his uncoordinated state, he only managed to whack Scarlet in the chest before she wrenched the weapon out of his hands, punched him again, and proceeded to jump around to his backside and cross the nunchucks around his neck in a chokehold.
The koala gasped and reached for his neck, but Scarlet kicked him in the back and knocked him to the ground. In under a minute, the bandit choked out his last breath and lay still on the asphalt.
After briefly admiring her work, Scarlet looked around and saw the pizza wheel vixen near the construction site entry. She favored her muzzle after being hit by Scarlet's pipe wrench, and her face radiated an aura of fear for her life. While taking a step towards the truck carrying the Landmaster, she whimpered, "Please, don't kill me! I don't want to die!"
To the yellow vixen's horror, Scarlet marched towards her, anger in her eyes. Out of all the emotions in her body, sympathy was not one of them. "You had your chance to run," she growled.
"Please, don't do this!" the yellow vixen pleaded, "I didn't want to say it in front of the others, but Rena is my little sister, and she would be crushed if I died!"
Scarlet continued advancing and crossed her arms. "Sympathy isn't going to work on me. And you know, if I'm honest, I don't like Rena. She always has her stripy socks in a wad over something, she whines up a blue streak if she doesn't get her way in everything, and she practically worships my boyfriend as a god. Plus, that asexual thing she's got going on is weird." She paused and then added, "Also, I've learned from experience that when you have a run-in with part of a gang, you have to kill all of them. Otherwise, word gets back to the bosses; and then they dedicate the rest of their lives to ending yours. So, nothing personal, but you've got to die."
Eyes wide and fur standing on end, the bandit yelped, "No! I won't tell anyone! I'll just say it was an accident!"
"No, you'll spill everything. I know your kind all too well. You should have known what you were getting into before you decided to run with people like them." She pointed to the strangled koala and the charred remains of the raccoon to illustrate her point.
The yellow vixen looked at her with a fearful grimace. Then, she kicked up her heels and raced away from her. She thought about running out of the construction site through the main entrance, but then she noticed a square of particularly clean concrete to her left. It appeared to lead towards a complex of mobile offices. She looked over her shoulder, saw Scarlet barreling after her, and decided to chance her luck evading her in the makeshift offices.
However, when her feet reached the edge of the concrete pad, she realized what she had unwittingly run into. Thanks to the lack of light in the area, she failed to realize that the concrete had not yet dried. The instant her feet touched the concrete, her shoes sank into the hardening stone and caused her to fall face first into the soupy material. Her breaths came out in panicked gasps as she pushed herself up and tried to wipe the cement off her face.
Only for Scarlet to leap onto her back and slam her back down into the concrete.
The yellow vixen thrashed about, but Scarlet's weight on her back and the morass around her made her movements a moot point. All the while, Scarlet kept her hand on the back of her head and plunged her muzzle into the wet cement until her body forced her to take a final, fatal breath.
When all became still, Scarlet pushed herself up and flicked as much cement out of her hands as she could. She thought about how ridiculous she must have looked and felt thankful that no one was around to see her. Her breathing returned to normal as she stepped out of the ruined cement and set foot on the asphalt again.
"Boy, the construction workers are going to have a lot to clean up tomorrow."
She checked to make sure that the keys to the truck were still in place; and after ascertaining that they were, she walked over to where her discarded phone lay. She reached down to pick it up but cringed when she inadvertently slathered concrete on the screen.
"I really need to wash this off," she thought.
She looked for a low point in the construction zone fence in hopes of jumping over it and taking a quick dip in the warm waters of the Western Eladard Bay, but the barbed wire attached to the top of the fence gave her second thoughts.
"Crap. I guess I'll have to walk around the outside of the fence, then."
Scarlet turned to walk back towards the truck, but froze when she saw someone standing next to it. The person had a woman's figure, and her gray-over-red fur and her bushy tail identified her as an island fox. Her outfit struck Scarlet as strange. For starters, she wore a large black hat with a lace veil that complemented her dress, which looked like it had been pulled out of another era entirely. The garment featured numerous frills and fit just loosely enough to still showcase her figure while still appearing somewhat modest. Most intriguingly for Scarlet, the vixen's dress sported a corset woven into its chest and abdominal area. Black leggings, copious amounts of black eye shadow, elbow-length leather gloves, and stiletto heels completed her outfit.
Everything about her apparel and demeanor screamed "black widow," which caused Scarlet to look at her warily. Something about the vixen reminded Scarlet of someone else she knew, but she could not remember whom in particular.
Scarlet took a step towards her, intending to ask who she was and what she was doing, but the stranger spoke first. Her tone of voice possessed a rich, romantic quality that sounded polished and vaguely aristocratic.
"Madre Maria! I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified."
Scarlet cursed under her breath. "How much of that did you see?"
The stranger sighed, a faint smile on her face. "All of it. Your situational awareness is quite remarkable, I must say. Most people I know wouldn't have stood a chance against those bandits."
"Well, I'm not 'most people,'" Scarlet muttered, moving to within twenty feet of the stranger. "Now, if you don't mind, get out of my way unless you want to end up like those three freaks. I've got important stuff to take care of."
Upon hearing this, the stranger sighed. "Que lástima. You make this so much harder than it needs to be." Then, she reached for a holster on her hip and pulled out a matte gray revolver, which she pointed at Scarlet. "Detena!"
Of course it would come to this, Scarlet figured. The only thing more annoying than the stranger's gratuitous accent and bilingual speech patterns was the fact that she had the power to render all of Fox's plans to steal the Landmaster null and void. Even though she would have preferred to give the vixen the finger, Scarlet put her hands up and stared into the stranger's eyes. "What are you trying to pull here? Who are you?"
"Pardon me for not introducing myself," the stranger replied. "My name is Christina Orteg…ACHOO!"
At the end of her sentence, she unleashed a violent sneeze that had the effect of spraying saliva and olfactory fluids onto her gun. "¡Maldito sea! I hate these allergies!"
Scarlet's eyes widened. "So, you're the one bankrolling Rafa's operation. If you don't mind, why don't you tell me why you decided to help that little turd."
"Mujer insolente," Ortega snapped. "I would shut your mouth before you make me decide not to do you a huge favor."
Scarlet became deathly silent and stared at Christina in wary anticipation.
"Good," said Miss Ortega. "Now, stay right where you are. No sudden movements, comprende?"
"Uh, yeah, comprende," Scarlet mumbled, lowering her hands and placing them on her hips. She watched as Miss Ortega crouched beneath the truck's enclosed cargo area and reached into the exposed chassis. After a few seconds, she let out a quiet grunt and emerged from underneath the truck, holding a black metal box. She waved it at Scarlet, then wound up and hurled it over the construction site fence. After watching it splash into the bay, she explained, "That was the device Rafa was using to track the truck. It's how I was able to find you so easily. I'm amazed you didn't consider that there might have been a tracker before now."
Mentally punching herself for not thinking about the possibility of the truck being tracked by Rafa, Scarlet narrowed her eyes and asked, "Why are you trying to help me?"
In response, Ortega shook her head and answered, "Up until a few weeks ago, I trusted Rafa to help put my plans in place, but as time went on, I realized he was trying to use me for my money. Es una tragedia—it was I who convinced him to lead the rebellion against West Fortuna to begin with. Now, my plans are in his hands, and it looks as though he wants me dead. I'm related to him, you see. If I die, my wealth goes to him. I can't trust him anymore. Just last week, he tried to kill me by sending me on a suicide mission to Titania, where I was supposed to assassinate President Iris Vinca. Your friends almost finished me off. I barely escaped with my life."
She sighed and then finished, "That's why I'm helping you. Don't think that it's because I like you—I despise Corneria and the weak-minded idiotas who worship her. But now, Rafa must be stopped first and foremost."
Trying to digest the information she had been handed, Scarlet balked and then asked, "Where are you going after this? If you really want to take down Rafa, we could use your help."
"No," Miss Ortega whispered. "After this, I will go back into hiding until the time is right. I'm used to it. I've grown to enjoy the solitude. I have only my own agenda now." She turned and looked at the cargo truck. Then, she glanced over her shoulder at Scarlet and added, "I know what's in this truck, and I know what you want next. The Arwing air superiority fighter is in the hands of the Affirmed Security group in northern Titania near the Venom Wastelands. You only have five days to stop them from delivering it to East Fortuna."
Scarlet nodded. "Anything else you'd like to say?"
"Sí," Ortega replied, "Fox y Krystal es el OTP."
For a moment, Scarlet raised a finger to her lips and tried to translate her comment. Then, it dawned on her. "Hey!"
She looked around, ready to respond with an angry remark, but Miss Ortega was gone.
With an angry growl, Scarlet shook her head and walked towards the bay.