3. An Unexpected Companion

1

"Johnny!" the little girl screamed, but not unhappily.

If there was one thing that Elmyra thought she'd hear coming out of Marlene's mouth after the girl had been picked up by a complete stranger, it was not this.

"Hello there, Marlene," the stranger said as he lowered the child back to the cottage's floor.

Elmyra, still naively clutching at her sore throat, felt a wave of dizziness wash over her, somewhat because of stunned surprise, and somewhat because of unforeseen elation. The man in front of her had bright red hair that was a bit spiked in the middle, and wore a tattered leather jacket and an even more tattered pair of black jeans.

As she opened her mouth to thank him a tremendous boom sounded out from the front of the house.

She turned around and saw four men walking slowly through the presently-broken doorway of her once-secluded cottage.

"Marlene," Johnny said, a controlled pleasantness in his nasally voice. "Take this lady and stay in the back room."

The little girl nodded her head and without responding grabbed Elmyra's hand and jogged behind Johnny.

2

Johnny took a quick breath as he watched the four men slowly approach him, all of them gazing around at the house's immaculate interior.

"This don't hafta go down like this," one of the men in front of him said, although his balled fists told a different story.

"How do you think it's going to go down, chum?" Johnny asked.

"Well," the man said, "it seems that you've got some attachment to the little girl . . ."

"He's probably sleepin' with her," another one of the men grunted, his crude statement followed by a string of low laughter.

The first man continued, "So we'll let you walk on out of here with all of your limbs still intact . . . along with the girl . . . if you leave us the house and the woman."

Johnny slowly shook his head. "Sorry, can't do that, boys."

"Oh, really?" the man farthest to the back of the approaching group said. "That's too bad."

The first man shrugged. "Yeah, definitely . . . that's too . . ."

Before he could finish Johnny dashed forward, tackling the man, and sent him sprawling into the trio behind him.

One of the men was quickly back on his feet and took a heavy swing at Johnny, missing far above the ducking head, and then received a jab in the stomach for his efforts.

Johnny swiftly pushed the man aside and then raced towards the broken window. He grabbed a chunk of broken glass just as the four men began to run at him.

Raising his arm over his head Johnny flung the shard of glass in their direction. The shining, spinning weapon caught the man in front just below his left eye, and as the injured man screeched and reached for his anguished face Johnny jumped forward and sent a healthy punch into his bleeding face.

The scream that followed was so great that the other three men actually stopped their attack to look at their comrade.

What they saw churned each of their stomachs, for when Johnny had punched their friend the man had also been reaching for the stinging cut on his face. Johnny's fist had connected with one of the man's fingers and had crushed it, forcing it into the open wound below the man's eye. As the man fell to the ground, still screaming uncontrollably, each of them could have swore that they saw the end of the man's chubby finger protruding out of the corner of his left eye socket.

While the men were watching their comrade fall, Johnny whirled around and grabbed another chunk of glass. Waving it back and forth in front of him he said, "Come and get it."

The statement forced the three men to look back and forth from Johnny to the injured man writhing on the ground, who was slowly becoming covered with his own dark blood that was mixing with the colorless puss gently ejecting itself from his finger-stuck eye socket.

After a few cartoonish double takes, the trio of goons ran for the open doorway, leaving behind Johnny and the screaming man.

Johnny suddenly heard a voice calling from the back of the house. "Johnny!" It was Marlene. "Are you okay, Johnny?"

He sighed, happy to hear that she was all right. "I'm fine, Marlene." He looked around at the mess and then focused back on the man in front of him. "Stay where you are . . . don't come in here."

With that said he bent to one knee beside the writhing man and whispered, "When you wake up, I suggest you get yourself to a doctor . . . and that you never come back here again."

Johnny couldn't tell whether or not the man understood what he was saying. He was still shrieking loudly while at the same time trying to gingerly extract his finger from his eye socket.

Well, Johnny thought, no time like the present . . .

With his left arm he took hold of the man's wrist and violently tugged, forcing the man's finger from out of his eye and then finally out of the widening wound.

Before the man could scream any louder – Because the pain must be quite intense at this point, he thought – Johnny used his right fist to smash the man in the forehead.

The hoarse screaming swiftly died off.

3

"I can't thank you enough," Elmyra said for the twelfth time.

"Really, lady, it's okay," Johnny replied. Marlene was sitting on his lap and was starting to fall asleep, her eyes drooping more and more as the seconds passed.

"Really though . . ." Elmyra began.

Johnny shook his head and smiled. "If you thank me one more time I'll scream."

Johnny had already dragged the unconscious man – along with three other dazed men that had been lying in the front yard - a fair distance away from the cottage and then had tried his best to clear away the blood and shattered glass from the living room floor. When he'd come back inside Elmyra and Marlene had thanked him over and over again. Elmyra had then gone on to explain why Marlene was here with her, and why the girl's father was up on the plate.

"I will," Johnny said, watching as Elmyra began to open her mouth once again. "I'll scream."

Elmyra blushed and smiled. "Okay, fine. Then how did you end up over here at just the right time?" she asked.

He shrugged, looking from her bruised and swelling neck to her old eyes. "Just at the right place at the right time I guess. I don't know if that's the right way to say it, since I don't really have any place to be right now."

The old woman rubbed at her neck. "What do you mean?"

He took a breath. "About a week ago I finally decided to get out of the slums. I was gonna leave my parents house, leave Midgar, and just go see the Planet again." He paused. "You see . . . I had a setback some time ago – something I don't wanna get into right now – and in the end I ended up be nothing but another slum bum, just gettin' by."

"I don't understand," Elmyra said.

Johnny shrugged. "I've never been the best at explaining shit . . ." He stopped and looked down at Marlene who was still fast asleep. "Explaining stuff . . . but what I'm trying to say is that I left home before it was destroyed . . . before the plate collapse."

"Oh, no!" Elmyra said. "You lived in Sector 7?"

He nodded.

"Oh, John, that's terrible!"

He shook his head again. "It's Johnny . . ."

Elmyra put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry."

He waved his hand as if to say that it wasn't really a big deal. "I'd been having second thoughts about leaving. I guess . . . well . . ." He paused. "I guess at first you should know that I'm not a good person . . . or at least, I haven't been a good person."

"Johnny . . ." Elmyra said.

He held a hand up to silence her. "No, I may have helped you out an' all but you don't really know me, lady." He was silent again for some time. Finally he said, "But I'm not saying I was a bad person either. It's just that you live your whole life for this one dream, and then you fail at it . . . or rather, it fails you . . . well then what do you do then?"

When it seemed he was actually waiting for a response, Elmyra said, "I don't know . . ."

"Exactly," he said. "And I didn't know either. So I ended up gettin' into stuff that I shouldn't have, seein' stuff that I shouldn't have, doin' stuff that I shouldn't have . . . I just got lost in the loneliness of the slums or something." He shrugged again. "You see, I really use to wanna be something . . . and recently I thought that even after all this time – wow, it's been almost five years now – that I still wanted something more outta my life." He looked around the room. "I don't know why I'm tellin' you all this . . . I guess I just needed to hear it myself."

"You've done a good thing for me, Johnny," Elmyra said, "listening is the least that I can do."

He nodded. "I lost my family and my friends, or at least I had to figure that they'd all died. But I had to check the other sectors before I left on my journey . . . I had to see if there was anyone I knew left."

"You heard Marlene, didn't you?"

"Not at first," he answered. "At first I heard the men in front of your house." He stopped and focused on her. "By the way, this is something you'll have to explain to me . . . I've been through every inch of the slums and I ain't never seen no house like this before." He paused to look around the room again. "Anyways, I saw this jewel of a house, and then saw the men fighting in front of it. It was when they started trying to get inside that I heard a scream." He took a breath. "And while I can't say that I was positive that it was little Marlene, something in my heart told me that it was her." He glanced down at the sleeping child. "I quickly ran around one of the piles of garbage and snuck into your backyard and then into the house." He looked back up at Elmyra. "The rest you know, I guess . . ."

Elmyra was positive that there were certainly parts of this man's story that she did not know, but she wasn't going to ask for the missing pieces at this time.

"Johnny, you've done so much for me," she said. "How could I ever repay you?"

As he slowly stroked Marlene's thick, brown hair, he replied, "Come with me . . ."

"On your journey?"

He nodded. "I need to get away from this city . . . and from what you've told me Barret wants you to leave as well."

Elmyra stared at the red-haired man in front of her, ideas racing through her head. Finally, knowing that thinking too hard on it would only confuse her more, she said, "When should we leave?"

Johnny slowly stood up and out of the chair, Marlene still sleeping in his arms. After a short shrug he said, "I'm thinkin' . . . now."