Arc V: Party Crashing

Part 6: Here Comes Chaos

Chapter 23

Adrenaline kicking in, Pond floored the gas pedal and darted to the right, disregarding the red traffic light ahead. He aimed for the apex of the turn, but the speed at which he took the corner caused him to overshoot it and careen into oncoming traffic. Despite said traffic being light, he found himself face to face with a city bus within seconds. Face devoid of emotion, Pond tapped the brakes and weaved to the right, just enough to avoid the bus's front bumper.

At the same time, Fox stared into the Vulcain's side mirror. One of the two pursuing green sports cars carried too much speed through the corner and was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid the bus, but the other car clipped the apex of the intersection flawlessly and began bearing down on him and Pond. More gunshots rang out, but this time, none of them landed anywhere near the Vulcain's cabin.

A realization struck Fox. "They're aiming for the tires."

Pond began swerving, using the mostly open road ahead to avoid the small arms fire behind him. However, this allowed the green car to move even closer to his back bumper, allowing for an easier shot at the Vulcain's vulnerable rear tires.

"Dammit, who are these guys?! What do they want?" Fox screamed internally. He reached into the footwell in front of him to grab his assault rifle while Pond continued darting back and forth to evade the gunfire. Disengaging the weapon's safety, he released his seat belt and rolled down his window. He leaned out the window and took aim at the car behind him, but his unfortunate position in the right side passenger's seat forced him to shoot left-handed in order to have a chance at slowing down his pursuers. None of his shots hit anything other than pavement, and it had the effect of causing the pursuing car's driver to move to his left and block Fox's entire line of fire behind the back of the Vulcain. However, his brief window of attack allowed Fox to see the two assailants in the car behind him.

The gunman in the passenger's seat was none other than Wolf O'Donnell.

Suddenly, Pond shouted, "Hold onto shomething!"

Fox had precious little time to react before Pond cut a hard left and barreled into a narrow side street lined with trash bags and litter. Styrofoam cups and discarded napkins flew through the air as the Vulcain roared through the alley at over 70 miles per hour. To Fox's shock and horror, Wolf's car managed to make the turn after them, barely losing any speed in the process. "Whoever's driving that car knows what he's doing. Is my life really in Slippy's hands right now? No—let me rephrase that: is my life really in the hands of Slippy's asinine alter ego who thinks he's a secret agent?"

Fox was too terrified to answer that question, mostly because he knew what the answer was.

Pond zipped out of the alley, which ended with a red traffic light at a four-way intersection. Unable to stop and with no intention of doing so, he entered the intersection at speed, ignoring the cars and trucks that had the right of way. At that moment, an 18-wheeler carrying a load of concrete pipes entered the intersection opposite him and began turning in front of him. While the nearby cars slammed on their brakes and honked their horns, Pond tapped the brake pedal and turned the wheel slightly to the right to slip past the front of the truck. The semi attempted a panic stop, but the sudden rapid movement caused it to roll onto its side. The load of concrete pipes rolled off the back of the truck into traffic.

Glancing in his mirror, Fox watched as Wolf's car avoided the spilled pipes. At the same time, the second green car rounded the corner behind Wolf and fell in line behind him. All the while, Pond kept his foot glued to the accelerator pedal. The speedometer needle rotated right at a rapid pace, passing 100, 110, 120, 130, 140…

The long, non-divided avenue featured four lanes heading in both directions, allowing Pond to dart through the minimal traffic without slowing down. Fox hazarded a glance in his side mirror and was rewarded with the ever-present visual of the two green Tipo F's trailing him and Pond by an unnervingly close margin. All three cars featured nearly identical acceleration and top speed figures, meaning that no matter how much open road existed, outrunning Wolf and his cronies without interference would be impossible.

The Vulcain's speedometer passed 170 with no signs of the acceleration tapering off. The car traveling at such a terrifying clip had an unforeseen perk, however: Wolf found himself unable to lean out his window to shoot at Fox and Pond. To Fox's right, a wide shipping canal attached to the Eladard Bay raced by, its waves a blur. After a mile of open road, however, another traffic light appeared, indicating a return to the urbanity, replete with worn-down office buildings and warehouses. Wasting no time, Pond turned the Vulcain hard to the left and hit the brakes at the last possible moment to keep himself from being rear-ended by Wolf. Tires howling in protest, he skidded through the intersection sideways, but kept his foot on the accelerator enough to steady the drift. He straightened out the car on the adjacent road, which sloped sharply upwards.

At this point, Fox had come to expect just about anything from the driver of Wolf's car, but seeing the green menace behind him filled him with stunned dread. The second green car rounded the corner behind the other two, its distance behind Wolf allowing it more time to make the turn with no drama.

Fox gritted his teeth and looked at his assault rifle. He glanced at Pond. "Sorry—you're going to wish you had earplugs."

Not waiting for Pond to offer a response, Fox rotated to his left and aimed his rifle through the Vulcain's back window. The already-cracked glass made lining up his sights difficult, but with the green car under a hundred feet behind him, he felt that he could make the shot. "Sorry, Wolf—it's nothing personal. Actually, no, it is personal now. You shouldn't have gotten involved with this."

He took aim at the driver of Wolf's car and moved his finger to the trigger. The driver noticed and pulled wildly to the left into the oncoming lane just as Fox pulled the trigger. The shot obliterated the Vulcain's back window, spiderwebbing it completely and reducing rear visibility to zero. Unable to see anything behind him, he yelled, "Slippy! Is he still back there?"

Pond looked into his left side mirror in time to see Wolf's car stop in the oncoming lane, his right front tire blown out. "He'sh out of commisshion."

Fox did an internal fist pump. However, the next time he glanced in his mirror, he noticed the second green car gaining on him and Pond. To his horror, when he looked more closely in his mirror, he noticed twin machineguns mounted to the hood of the second car.

"Shit. This is going to be trouble. I need to let the others know what's going on."


- § -


"Aren't you concerned that Fox hasn't called you again?" asked Lucas, leaning against Foxfire's van's second row of seats with his arms folded in front of him.

Rena glared at him out of the corner of her eye. "Shut up, I'm trying to focus! This remote control isn't as easy as it looks, dumbass!"

On her computer monitor, Zippy's front camera displayed Desmond's fleeing truck in the foreground as it motored through Eladard's industrial district. The camera wobbled violently, changing angles every time Rena inputted a new flight command. Watching the video feed, Lucas realized that Rena did not exaggerate when she claimed to be struggling with the controls.

Seconds later, a phone icon with a small picture of Fox appeared in the top right corner of Rena's screen. Gritting her teeth, she pressed the command key to accept the call. "This had better be farking important, Senpai."

"It is!" Fox snapped, "We're being chased by one of Wolf's goons and can't do anything until we shake him off! Rena, I need you to take the van and go after that truck."

"Are you stupid?" the yellow vixen exclaimed, "I can barely keep Zippy flying in a straight line as it is, and in case you forgot, I can't drive!"¹

Fox became eerily silent. Only the sounds of the Vulcain's roaring engine and the intermittent noise of machinegun fire filtered through Rena's speaker setup.

Lucas spoke up, raising his voice enough to be heard by Fox. "Fox, I'll take care of this. You can trust me."

Fox breathed a deep, anxious sigh. "Don't screw this up. Please. I've tried calling the others, and no one's responding."

"I'll do what I can," Lucas replied. Without any further response, Fox hung up.

Lucas eyed the driver's seat and noticed the keys in the ignition. He crawled over the van's center console and dropped into the left side seat. He turned the key and started the engine. However, his attention moved towards the Red Group office complex's main entry door. Two blue-furred foxes stumbled into the parking lot, looking disheveled and panicked. One of the two looked barely clothed. Lucas thought about reversing out of the van's parking spot, but he stayed put when he saw the two blue foxes sprinting towards him and recalled Rena mentioning that Krystal had joined Fox's operation.

Within seconds, the two vixens reached the van. The taller of the two—Scarlet—yanked open the right side door, and both she and Krystal crashed onto the second row of seats. Krystal wore the same flirtatious dress clothes that she had entered the building with, but all that covered Scarlet was a chrome bra and thong.

Lucas glanced over his shoulder and locked eyes with Krystal, who let out a quiet shriek and briefly considered bolting from the van. "What are you doing here?!"

"I'm driving this van," the jackal replied in a flat voice. "I was just about to leave." He shifted the van into reverse and pulled out of his parking spot before accelerating onto the road that ran in front of the Red Group complex.

Briefly taking her attention away from Zippy's hair-trigger controls, Rena posed a question. "Not that I care, but what happened to Katt and Miyu?"

Scarlet sat up on the second row bench seat and waved her arms back in forth in front of her. "They're still in the party room, or whatever's left of it."

Rena glanced to her left momentarily, unable to completely take her eyes off her computer screen. "What do you mean by that?"

"All right, you asked for it," said Scarlet, shaking her head. "It's a dumpster fire in there. The food was tainted. Everyone who ate it got incredibly sick. People had it coming out both ends, and for whatever reason, the men's bathroom was locked.² Everyone made a beeline for the ladies' room, which went as well as you'd imagine. Miyu and Katt ate the food too, so you can do the math on that one."

Lucas cringed, although no one noticed it. In the back of the van, Rena betrayed no noticeable change in expression. Instead, she simply commented, "Well, that's shitty."

The van's interior became quiet until Rena began providing route hints to Lucas from the back of the van, using Zippy's location as a technological north star for him to follow. Desmond's truck had a five minute head start, requiring Lucas to drive as quickly as possible whilst avoiding drawing undue attention to the van. He figured that point would not be a major issue for him, however, since Fox and Pond's chaotic pursuit would no doubt draw any heat away from him if it came to that. The light traffic in the warehouse district did little to slow him down, and the traffic lights along the major avenue favored his route. Meanwhile, Rena kept Desmond's truck in her drone camera's crosshairs.

However, when she momentarily shifted the camera upwards, she saw the Eladard Bay looming large. They were running out of time to catch the truck before it traversed the undersea tunnel leading to the city center, and more importantly, the Eladard International Airport where Desmond no doubt intended to load the truck into a plane and slip out of the city-state.

A moment later, however, Lucas spotted the truck up ahead. He accelerated, rapidly closing the gap between the two vehicles. As the two came within a mile of the undersea tunnel, traffic increased as the slow-moving chase entered the more populated portion of Eladard's industrial district. After running a close yellow light, Lucas pulled in behind the truck just in time for the next traffic light to turn red.

Everyone in the van waited with bated breath to see what would happen next.

Unseen by all behind him, Lucas pondered his strategy. "If that truck stops at the light, I could throw the driver out and take the wheel. But it would be too obvious. Everyone would see it. It would make it nearly impossible to make a clean getaway. The driver knows he's being followed, too. There's no way he hasn't noticed Rena's drone yet. He's probably going to run that red light, and then what? I can't run him off the road. Again, it would be too obvious, and that truck is huge. There's nothing I can do that wouldn't draw massive amounts of attention to me. Unless…"

Gripping the wheel, he floored the throttle and swerved to the right, cutting off a sedan that had previously been beside him. Instead of slowing for the red light ahead, he increased his speed and pulled alongside the massive truck. As he predicted, the truck did not stop for the light, even though cross traffic had began moving. In spite of every instinct telling him to stop, Lucas accelerated even more. Numerous cars coming from the adjacent street to the right blasted their horns at him as they screeched to a halt, but he paid them no mind.

"What are you doing?!" Krystal screamed.

Lucas gave no response. Instead, he hit the brakes and turned left—in front of the cargo truck. The truck's driver furiously honked his horn.

"He can only do one of two things," Lucas observed, "He's either going to hit me, or he's going to turn left into that narrow side street. It would be nothing for him to plow over me with that truck, but I bet he doesn't want to. He needs to keep moving, and anything that would stop him or draw the police out would be bad for him."

The truck turned left into the alleyway. Lucas grinned. He slowed the van and turned into the side street after his target. Meanwhile, Rena hovered Zippy over the Foxfire van, then quickly dropped altitude and activated a magnet which latched the drone to the roof.

The two vehicles thundered down the narrow, dingy alleyway that was occupied by only a tiny number of cars, mostly ones parked on the sides of the street.

A quarter mile down the road, the truck's driver slammed on the brakes and turned towards another narrow alley to the right, only to come to a complete stop. A garbage truck blocked the adjacent road while waiting to back into a loading bay. With the waste disposal unit unable or unwilling to move, the truck driver lacked the room to slip past. Looking in his rearview mirror, he accelerated once again and looked for another road to turn into.

To his dismay—and Lucas's delight, it seemed that every adjacent road was either a dead end or under construction. Lucas could palpably feel the driver's panic increase the farther he drove. As if to match his fearful thoughts, the alleyway seemed to become darker, more turgid, and even more lifeless the farther he went. Then, with all options exhausted, the road ended in a cement wall covered in graffiti. Not a single soul stirred nearby. Even the noise from the Eladardian traffic on the main roads seemed muted.

At the end of the alleyway, the driver stopped the truck, turned off the engine, and leaped out. The ursine barreled across the pavement towards a large, abandoned building on the left side of the street before he disappeared inside. Notably, Krystal drew a sharp breath upon seeing the driver.

Lucas put the van in park, took a deep breath, and looked at the building. Above the weathered, moss-covered entrance, a sign read 'Sakamura Steel Company.' It resembled a factory of some sort, and Lucas considered that it seemed like an ideal place to hide from the authorities or one's enemies. Either that, or an ideal place for a gang hideout.

Seconds later, Rena clambered over the second row of seats and leaned forward into Lucas's personal space. "Well, aren't we supposed to do something?"

Lucas turned to face the yellow vixen. "I'm thinking."

From behind the two, Krystal raised her voice, "The man driving that truck was Desmond Moon. He's Rafa's right hand man—the mastermind behind East Fortuna's experimental weapons and R&D department. We can't let him escape."

Scarlet looked less than convinced. "Really? Look, the tank we're trying to keep East Fortuna from getting is literally right in front of us. It's ours for the taking." She pointed at the truck parked in front of them.

"You don't understand," said Krystal, "Taking him out would be a massive blow to Rafa. How about we deal with him, and then we come back for the truck?"

Lucas and Scarlet locked eyes. The latter spoke. "No way. There's way too much of a risk of that truck somehow getting stolen while we go after Moonbear³ or whatever you call him. I'll bet you anything that he went in there to try to get us to come after him. He's probably either setting an ambush in that building, or he's calling for backup to get the truck back. We need to get that truck and get out of here fast. I guarantee that thing has a GPS tracker in the back, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is that more goons are going to start showing up." When no one spoke up, she huffed, "Well, I'm going for it. Who's with me?"

Rena raised her hand.

"Good!" said Scarlet, unbuckling her seatbelt and reaching for the van's side door. As she stepped out of the vehicle and set foot on the warm asphalt, the rest of the crew climbed out of the van after her. She looked over her shoulder at Rena. "I'm going to hop in that truck and hotwire the starter."

The yellow vixen nodded and pulled a small set of needlenose pliers out of her short shorts pocket. She handed them to Scarlet and commented, "You're going to need these."

Scarlet accepted the tool and walked towards the truck, but quickly took stock of her own situation, specifically as it related to her attire. Due to her needing to escape from the Red Group's office complex as rapidly as possible, her semi-presentable clothes were still back in the party room. She stopped in her tracks and paused for thought. While she stood in place, Krystal climbed out of the van and asked, "What are you doing?"

Scarlet glanced at her and raised her smartphone to chest level. "Calling in a supply drop. I can't go gallivanting around town with a piece of chrome dental floss wedged in my ass. Also, this supply drop will reset my fur color."⁴

"That's a good idea—the supply drop, I mean," Krystal replied, trying not to giggle at the red vixen's clothing misfortune. She unlocked her phone and navigated to a special app indicated by a stylized "G" referencing Felix's Gaia Corporation. "Good thing I put my Kursed loadout into the app before we left for the party."

With a series of quick taps, she confirmed the drop location. Scarlet completed her own drop request seconds later.

The two vixens looked up into the night sky. A moment later, a pair of small twinkles appeared among the stars. As the seconds passed, two small boxes equipped with parachutes descended from the heavens, aimed directly at the pavement in front of Krystal and Scarlet. Thanks to her having confirmed her delivery first, Krystal's supply drop landed at her feet. She wasted no time in pushing aside the parachute and opening the crate, which revealed her black and purple Kursed jumpsuit with matching black mask, along with a bullpup .308 rifle. While she gathered up the contents of her supply drop and ran behind the van to change out of her stripper clothes, Scarlet looked up at her falling crate.

However, as it descended, a heavy industrial crane based in a nearby construction site rotated its enormous boom in her direction. Scarlet watched in horror as the parachute clipped the edge of the crane and tore it off the box, which careened wildly to the right before coming to rest on the rooftop of the building to her right with a loud crash.

Scarlet looked forlornly at the supply crate, balanced precariously on the edge of the building's flat roof—but not precariously enough for it to drop. She looked at herself and clenched her fists in rage. Looking at the sky, she screamed, "Why do you do this to me?!"

The thought occurred to her to try the airdrop again. So, she opened the Gaia app and navigated to the supply drop screen, only to see her loadout grayed out with a timer indicating that it could not be selected again for another half hour. She bared her teeth and stomped towards the massive cargo truck. Fortunately, she managed to avoid stepping on any nails with her bare pads and taking the situation from bad to worse.

Meanwhile, Krystal pulled her mask on, zipped up her bodysuit, and walked towards Lucas, who stood near the front of the van, eyeing the entrance to the abandoned mill. He raised an eyebrow at Kursed's appearance before asking, "Are you ready for this?"

In the heat of the moment, Kursed forgot to apply her "tough badass" persona and nervously replied, "Um, I was hoping that you were going to help take the truck."

The jackal crossed his arms. "Sorry, wish denied. I could care less about the truck. If that man is who you say he is, he is of prime importance to my mission. Tragically, it looks as though you're stuck with me."

Kursed shuddered. Lucas noticed. He always notices.⁵

"Why are you so afraid of me? I wish you no harm. The only reason you would ever have to fear me is if you were hiding something from me—some deep, dark secret of your past that would destroy your life as you know it if others learned about it. It is fortunate that you don't have any secrets like that, hmm?"⁶

The subtly condemning tone of voice he used to finish his phrase and the stoic yet subliminally disturbed way he looked at her sent icicles of terror up her spine. "Oh no—he knows. But how? I've been shielding my thoughts all this time! How can this be?"

To distract herself from her own terror, Kursed pointed to the abandoned mill and suggested, "Let's go."

Lucas took a step towards the building. He kept his arms crossed. "I hope you realize this will not be as easy as you assume it will."

"I don't care. He needs to be dealt with," replied Kursed, checking her assault rifle. "Say, where are your weapons?"

"I have no need for them."

A different kind of terror gripped Kursed. "Bloody hell—this really is going to be a disaster. But what if he's right? What if he really doesn't need a weapon? Is he an...Opuckot? Could it be true? The High Priestess of Cerinia is supposed to be the only one of them in existence."

Fear and dread in her heart from both the black and blue jackal beside her and the anticipation of the uncertainly of what lay inside the building, Kursed walked towards the abandoned mill with a quiver in her step. In contrast, Lucas showed no signs of fear, or of any emotion, for that matter. With that in mind, however, his control over his own emotions far surpassed that of most individuals, so his external visage was not the most accurate representation of how he truly felt.

The duo crept towards the abandoned steel mill's entrance as if it was the lair of an ancient dragon. Looking behind her for a moment, Kursed glanced at the cargo truck just as Scarlet started it. She refocused her attention on the entrance of the building while Scarlet began turning around.

Kursed and Lucas stepped through the mill's silent front entrance, being careful to make as little noise as possible. The majority of this effort fell upon her, since Lucas did not wear shoes and moved with an uncanny lack of noise. The two expected the mill to be as dark as the grave, but to their surprise, a faint, dark red light bathed the area with a rusty glow that illuminated the long-dormant rollers, smelting mechanisms, and machinery that lay scattered about the abandoned structure.

The light told them something else, though.

Desmond had fled the truck for the purpose of luring them into the mill, just as they suspected.

As she walked through the abandoned steel mill, Kursed felt a growing feeling of unease in the pit of her stomach. The grim red ambience served as the building's only lighting; and the mere fact that it was on suggested that Desmond had powered it up.

Finger resting on her assault rifle's trigger, she crept across the floor. To her left stood a long row of smelting pots mounted on a long track. The machines lay silent, not having been used in years. To her right was the structure's exterior wall, and above her, a series of steel catwalks that crisscrossed the entirety of the factory floor. Scores of barrels, crates, and dilapidated pieces of equipment lay scattered across the concrete. The way she saw it, they almost looked to have been laid out as cover for a firefight.

She glanced from side to side in the massive atrium, looking for any signs of movement. Lucas nearly disappeared in the darkness. She barely saw him. She looked over his shoulder at the entrance, now seemingly far behind her. The farther she walked, the more she wished she had not been so impulsive about going after Desmond. But there was no turning back now. Up ahead, she saw an array of heavy duty supply pipes leading from the floor to the ceiling. The second level catwalks ran in front of the wall of pipes, and in the center of it, Kursed saw something.

"Cover!" Lucas shouted.

Kursed leaped into action, diving for the nearest available cover. In her case, this meant crouching behind a rusty forklift.

No sooner had Lucas spoken than a stream of .50 caliber bullets ripped the concrete floor into chunks directly underneath where the two had been standing. The bullets stopped a second later.

Then, a deep, bassy voice echoed through the warehouse. "You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? You chose to go after me instead of taking the truck when I left it unattended with the keys in the ignition? Really? I must say, I'm flattered that I'm that important to you."

Kursed poked her head up, but only far enough to allow himself to look at Desmond, who stood in the center of a section of the catwalk that ran perpendicular to the long, rectangular shape of the atrium. The massive ursine wore a suit of heavy power armor and carried a minigun, which seemed strange, considering that it would have been impossible to hide on his person earlier. On his back was a peculiar looking protrusion that looked suspiciously like a jetpack.

"Listen, you prick," the vixen shouted, trying to use her Kursed voice in spite of her fear. "You should have kept running."

"Oh, is that so?" Desmond chuckled, although it sounded more like a rumble. Grabbing his minigun with one arm, he curled it with the ease of a bodybuilder moving a twenty pound dumbbell. "In case you were too stupid to realize it, I would never abandon my precious cargo without a contingency plan. You see, no matter what happens to me, you lose." He pointed to Kursed, a wicked smirk on his lips.

"What do you mean by that?" Kursed demanded.

Desmond chuckled. "Rafa and I have our best men on the job of tracking that truck. Looking at my HUD that I built into my state-of-the-art power armor, your foolish friends chose to drive off with the tracker still active instead of trying to disable it. Obviously, they did not want to have the end of the GPS trail lead back to this building. Very cute, but sadly, also catastrophically misguided. Wolf and his team will be all over that truck in minutes, and in the unlikely event that they fail, well…" He chortled. "Your friends will find out what happens when you take on a man of my intellect."

"Typical of you, Desmond. I should have expected nothing less."

"I do my best," said the bear, shrugging. "But it sounds as if you know me. How is that? Your voice…it sounds familiar. It's reminiscent of…"

Suddenly, his eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. "I should have known it was you. I'm here to tell you, no matter how hard you try to interfere with our plans, you will not be able to stop us. Your usefulness ended long before you abandoned us. You've made your last mistake in coming here. Get ready to die, traitor."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Kursed retorted. While Desmond had been monologuing, the vixen had flipped her rifle's selector switch to full auto. Before Desmond had to the opportunity to lift his minigun, she took aim at him and opened fire. Multiple bullets tore into his chest, but the onslaught barely even caused him to flinch.

"You'll have to try harder than that," Desmond chuckled. "Now it's my turn."

Kursed grimaced under her mask as the hulking ursine raised his minigun to hip level and gripped the two triggers. The barrel spooled up rapidly, sending a dizzying hail of bullets in her direction. Mass numbers of rounds shredded through the derelict forklift that functioned as her only cover, and she knew that if she did not move immediately, the fight would be over as soon as it had begun. She looked around in panic for something more substantial to take cover behind. One of the heavy concrete pillars holding up the catwalk above her stood twenty feet away along with a trio of metal crates, but even twenty feet was too great a distance to traverse while being exposed to Desmond's minigun fire.

"This was a terrible idea. I'm dead."

Regardless of the danger, she forced herself to act and pushed herself off the forklift's frame. She fully expected to be ripped to pieces in the blink of an eye, but to her shock, the hail of bullets stopped. She hazarded a glance out of the corner of her eye and noticed Desmond take his eyes off her for a moment. The momentary lapse in fire allowed her to slide behind one of the crates which stood behind the concrete support column. Still, she knew that if Desmond emptied enough bullets into her new cover, it would disintegrate in short order.

Peeking out from behind the pillar, she fired at Desmond again while the bear scanned the opposite side of the room for something he could not see. More bullets struck Desmond, this time in his right shoulder. The ursine snarled in rage and refocused his attention on her. More bullets raced her way, peppering the support column in front of her and the floor near her feet.

"There's nowhere in this room where you're safe!" Desmond shouted. "You should have thought harder before you chose to hide near a load-bearing support."

Kursed immediately realized what he meant. "Oh no."

She looked up in terror as Desmond emptied another volley of minigun fire into the concrete support pillar. Within seconds, the concrete evaporated into dust. The large metal catwalk above her head creaked and groaned, then plummeted towards the floor. Kursed screamed and went prone behind the nearest crate just in time for the mass of metal to collapse around and on top of her. Breathing heavily, she rolled over and checked herself for any injuries. To her immediate senses, she felt no pain that did not exist before. The metal crates around her absorbed most of the damage from the falling catwalk, but on the negative side, it effectively entombed her in a vault of twisted metal and concrete. She spotted a gap in the wreckage that looked large enough to slip out of, but no sooner had she seen it than Desmond opened fire on her location again—this time, with no cover and nowhere for her to run.

Kursed screamed and covered her head as the bullets tore into the wreckage—as if that would do anything. However, the barrage came to an abrupt end. Opening her eyes, she peered through the shredded metal in front of her, and through the ruins of the catwalk, she saw Lucas jump onto Desmond's back and lock his arms around his neck. The much larger bear stumbled on the raised catwalk, trying to elbow the smaller jackal and force him off. Furious grunts spewed from his lips, his breathing becoming more taxed and uneven with every second that Lucas kept him in a headlock.

"GAAAH!" Desmond roared. "Get…off…me!"

Kursed used the opportunity to extricate herself from the wreckage of the catwalk. Skirting the supply crates on the floor, she raised her rifle and took aim at Desmond. However, she held her fire, not wanting to hit Lucas. The two continued sparring, with Desmond unable to dislodge the limber jackal who held onto his neck with a veritable death grip. The longer Kursed watched, the more she saw Desmond weaken.

"I don't believe it! He's actually going to take him down! Come on—you can do it!"

With a pained, furious snarl, Desmond reached with his right hand and smashed a button embedded in armor suit's left arm. The jetpack on his back ignited at full thrust, rocketing him upwards with Lucas still clutching at his neck. Eyes wide, Kursed watched as Desmond launched upwards, gaining speed at an alarming rate.

"Is that a glass ceiling?"

Her answer came in a fraction of a moment. Desmond smashed through the portion of the abandoned mill's glass skylight roof directly above him, carrying Lucas off with him. Shards of glass rained down on the factory floor. Then, all became silent. Hearing nothing but the ringing in her ears caused by gunfire, Kursed sprinted towards the center of the floor and looked up. Apart from the newly created hole in the roof, she saw nothing except the microscopic distant flame of Desmond's booster pack. Then, his trajectory changed, and she lost sight of him.

She sighed. "What am I supposed to do now? Lucas had the keys to the van."

The thought occurred to her to pull out her phone and select Fox from her contacts list. Not knowing what kind of situation the vulpine was in, she hoped for the best and pressed call. Several seconds passed, but the only sounds that reached her ear were the phone line's repeated dialing noise followed by Fox's voicemail prompt. Hanging her head, she ended the call and shuffled outside, where the abandoned Foxfire van sat motionless in the alleyway. Unsure of what to do next, she sat with her back against the side of the van, lowered her head, and pulled her legs to her chest.


- § -


His jetpack at maximum thrust, Desmond ascended into the night sky, gaining fifty feet in altitude ever second. In less than a quarter of a minute, he found himself level with the pinnacle of Eladard's tallest building. Or rather, he would have been cognizant of this detail if not for the persistent pest clutching his neck for dear life. Even as he reached 2,000 feet, his breathing became haggard, and his vision began fading out.

"Let go, you maniac!"

Lucas's hands remained as tight around his throat as ever, until suddenly, Desmond felt his enemy's grip weaken—likely from his own dizzying ascent. Seizing the opportunity, Desmond wildly reached for his own neck, seizing a hold of the jackal's right hand. His strength and consciousness fading fast, Desmond pulled as hard as he could. Lucas's chokehold failed, and he lost his grip. Flailing wildly, the jackal managed to latch onto the top point of Desmond's jetpack as its owner reached 2,700 feet. The way Lucas gripped it pulled Desmond to the left and rotated the jetpack's thrust in the same direction, which moved him to a position above the waters of the Eladard Bay. Snarling, Desmond shoved his left arm backwards with the point of his elbow protruding. The strike caught Lucas square in the ribs. With a canine squeak, he relinquished his grip and plummeted towards the distant ground.

Desmond halted his ascent and hovered in midair. While catching his breath, he watched his defeated enemy speed towards his inevitable demise. Seconds later, Lucas crashed into the Eladard Bay at terminal velocity, creating an enormous splash and a series of waves that splashed over the dock edges nearby.

"Good riddance," thought Desmond. His vanquished enemy no longer a threat, he scrolled through his power armor's HUD system until he reached a window related to the Landmaster truck's GPS position. He smiled, noticing that the signal was transmitting from a stationary position less than two miles away. "You thought you were rid of me, but you're in for a very unpleasant surprise. You'd be smart to run while you still have a chance—but intelligence doesn't seem like your strong suit."

Unfettered by the two blue-furred pests who tried and failed to hold him back, he set a waypoint for the Landmaster truck's location and boosted through the night air towards it.


FOOTNOTES:

1 No, you did not miss this detail before. This is the first time Rena mentions that she has never learned to drive a roadgoing vehicle.

2 In case you forgot, that reason is because Fox locked it to buy him and Pond more time to snoop around the Red Group facility before someone found the hole in the wall in the last bathroom stall.

3 Desmond is a rather obvious reference to Desmond the Moonbear from the asdfmovie video series.

4 Willing suspension of disbelief? What's that? Also, remember that Scarlet is still dyed blue.

5 Lucario knows what you did.

6 This footnote is an unfortunate case of telling instead of showing, but it should be mentioned that Lucas cannot read Krystal's mind beyond a surface level and does not, in fact, "know." He's making an informed guess as to why Krystal/Kursed fears him so much and is using her response to gauge how likely it is that he's correct. Remember, he interrogated her in Arc II, and he suspects that he did not get the whole story from her.