CHAPTER 7

Rebecca screamed a third time as the Siuol, who was now attached to her leg, began climbing up her body. The only thing preventing them both from a painful dragging death across the tracks was the sword, plunged deeply into the side of the car. Rebecca's battered hands gripped the hilt desperately, the added weight of the Siuol's body increasing her strain.

"Please, stop!" she cried. "You keep moving, it's making me slip. If I lose my grip, then we both die!"

The Siuol paid no attention to her warning; he continued pulling himself along with his good arm.

The Acuwaereas stuck the top half of her body out through the emergency exit. Funny thing was, none of this seemed strange anymore.

"Pardon me," she said. "Is there some manner of problem here?"

Rebecca screamed in response.

"I shall take that as a yes," replied the Acuwaereas, who promptly returned to the interior of the train. "Oh, Mr. Samurai Jack," she said wandering through the dark, trying not to step on him. "I believe I have found the source of that noise. It appears to be that girl who was in here with you earlier. I took her for your wife-"

"Rebecca!" Jack rose as quickly as he could, which under the circumstances was not very impressive. His head spun like the blades of a Cuisinart as he groped around blindly, trying to find his way out.

"Do be careful!" cried the Acuwaereas as she watched his silhouette stumble toward the coupler. "One of those filthy bounty hunters appears to be hanging from her leg."

With much difficulty, Jack reached the emergency exit and opened the door out to the coupler. He saw his sword jammed into the metal car. Odd, he thought. How did that get there? Looking at it for a while longer, he came to realize that Rebecca was hanging off of the hilt.

This was bad. He was blacking out. He clutched at the fresh bullet wound in his arm as if he could stop up the blood and magically be rejuvenated. He stared at the scene before him, trying to concentrate on what was going on, and more urgently, on not passing out.

"Jack!" Rebecca screamed, "Help me!"

The Samurai moved toward her. It felt as if the world was going in slow motion. His balance was suddenly thrown off, and he had to hold out his arms to keep from falling from the coupler. He watched in horror as Rebecca's bloodied hands fell away from the sword. As he leapt after her, hoping to catch her, he suddenly realized that the train was no longer moving. They had finally reached Pantin station.

Jack landed on his feet, though he was a bit too woozy to do so gracefully. The Siuol had by now released Rebecca, and she was standing between him and Samurai Jack. There was about 18 inches of space between the subway car and the wall. The platform was on the other side of the train.

Seeing that 100 pounds of female flesh was all that stood between him and two googolplex, the Siuol hit Rebecca in the face, knocking her down. She easily caught herself in the small space before hitting the floor. She started to get up again, but the Siuol stopped this by cruelly stepping on her back. Rebecca screamed. There wasn't enough room for her to move positions, and with her right arm still on the coupler, the force of her torso being pushed down caused her shoulder to dislocate. Now the Siuol was actually standing on top of her. Under his weight she was unable to breathe.

Jack was appalled by the scene, but there was little he could do. Even if there was room to fight, he was in such terrible shape that he wouldn't be capable. He tried to think of a solution, but several loud, rapid explosions pulled his attention elsewhere. The blood spraying all over his face didn't help either.

The Siuol fell over, thirty 5.56x45mm bullets having passed through his skull. He died very quickly.

Wow, Djinny thought. I actually hit something. She glanced downward at her gun and her smile vanished instantly.

"How can I be out of goddamn bullets after three seconds?" she shrieked aloud.

Samurai Jack observed the thin blue alien as she violently shoved an alternate STANAG cartridge which she had been hiding in the stuff on her head (hair would be entirely the wrong term) into the gun. He stumbled backward, concealing himself behind the car. He looked at the dead Siuol in front of him. Then he remembered Rebecca. Worried, he lunged forward. He found her pinned underneath the corpse. She was unable to get up.

"Jack," she sobbed, "I think my arm is broken!"

Another voice called to him from the left. "Hey! Samurai Jack! Your turn now!"

Jack threw himself to the ground as Djinny opened fire again. She stopped the instant he disappeared from view; she did not have another magazine and didn't want to waste her bullets.

Jack was now laying on top of the Siuol's body. Rebecca was underneath. The remains of bullets that had hit the concrete wall overhead rained down on them.

"You must get up," Jack coaxed. "We cannot stay here."

"I'm hurt," Rebecca cried. "I don't know if I can move."

Jack was too tired to become annoyed. "Rebecca," he said softly, "I am injured as well. But we must begin moving or else it is only like to become worse." His heart began to speed up as he heard Djinny's stiletto sandals clicking in their direction. "Please get up! We must hurry!"

"If we live through this, can we have sex?"

"I will do whatever if you wish if you get up immediately!" Jack could barely believe what he was saying. Then again, it was a big if, and furthermore it worked. She forced herself to crawl out from under the Siuol. Jack began to lead the way. He was injured far worse than Rebecca, and his limp showed it.

Djinny was about to jump from the platform onto the train's coupler when she heard the labored shuffling of two bodies behind the car. They were trying to escape. Figuring they intended to come around to the platform, she decided that instead of chasing after them she would wait till they came to her. She began walking toward the front end of the train, trying her best to soften the clacking of her shoes. She had taken about three steps when a small voice came from behind her.

"Pardon me, miss? I was just wondering something."

Djinny turned angrily and found an Acuwaereas staring back at her. God, she hated 'wareys.

"I am just slightly confused," the little turquoise creature continued. "A moment ago I happened to see you get rid of that dreadful bounty hunter who was troubling Mr. Samurai Jack. Quite logically I presumed then that you were on our side. However, Mr. Samurai Jack's reaction to seeing you was less than sparkling, and so I was wondering-"

There was a sound like somebody blowing a very loud raspberry. The Acuwaereas was blasted into a quivering mound of blue jelly by eight rounds from Djinny's gun. With that taken care of, she returned to the task at hand.

Just as expected, Jack and Rebecca had come around to the platform, just in time to witness the demise of the little alien who had helped them. Jack was hoping that Djinny would have followed them behind the train and given chase. Now not only was Djinny standing right in front of them with her assault rifle, but she had killed a perfectly innocent bystander. Jack was too weak to get angry. He was really too weak to even think straight, and he knew it.

Djinny raised her gun toward him. "I can kill you now, or I can let Aku do it later. The only reason I ask is I think he'd appreciate doing it himself, but I'll let you decide. Don't move or I'll fire."

Neither Jack nor Rebecca made any effort to move.

"Good," Djinny said, moving closer to them. "In that case I'm going to take you with me to a phone booth. I got some calls to make. Once Aku sends someone over with the two googolplex-"

Rebecca snickered bitterly. "God, Djinny. You are so naive."

Djinny moved closer, not lowering her gun. "What'd you say?" She was now standing directly in front of Rebecca, the barrel only a few inches from her chest.

"There is no way Aku is going to pay you two googolplex if you capture Samurai Jack," Rebecca murmured. There was a slightly amused tone to her voice. It annoyed Djinny even further.

"Damn straight he will! It would be pretty stupid of him not to."

"Djinny, you said before that two googolplex is two with a googol zeros after it. There is no way Aku has that much money. There is no way that anyone has that much money. If you took all the molecules in the entire universe and counted them there would not be that many."

"So? Nobody uses real money anymore! He'll probably just give me a credit card or something. He's Aku: If he says there's two googolplex on the card, everybody else better respect that. And how the hell do you know how many molecules are in the universe? You can't even do math."

"My husband told me. But that doesn't matter! Think. Why would Aku give you more money than even he has?"

"Well, Rebecca. If Aku's offering a bounty that high for Samurai Jack then obviously he can't capture the man by himself, and Aku's supposedly the most powerful thing in the entire universe. If Samurai Jack's a threat, then that would make him even more powerful than Aku. And if I can catch Samurai Jack, then I am more powerful than both of them. So Aku had better do something to keep me on his side. He's just evil, not stupid."

"He's just offering that bounty so people will capture Jack for him! He doesn't really have that much money!"

Djinny seethed. There's nothing worse than debating with someone who conveniently ignores every point you just made. Except maybe being punched in the stomach. The force of Jack's fist toppled her thin, precarious frame easily.

It had taken the Samurai nearly a full minute to work up the energy for that blow. He could not keep this up much longer. He and Rebecca needed either to escape from Djinny or kill her. He chose what was looking like the more practical option and reached for his sword. It wasn't there. He suddenly realized that it was still in the side of the train.

Rebecca seemed to read his mind and began limping off toward the car where she had left it. Meanwhile, Djinny tried to maneuver her sixty pound frame into an upright position without releasing her eight pound gun. Her extra set of arms proved gainful, and this sort of thing was precisely why evolution had provided them to her species.

What evolution had not taken into account were stiletto heels and a long trailing skirt. As she rose, the stake-like heel of her left shoe landed on the gold fabric near her hem. She was a bit more than halfway up when it suddenly seemed as if she was being jerked downward at the hip. She collapsed once again.

As Djinny groveled on the floor, trying to untangle herself still without releasing the gun, Rebecca located Jack's katana and was faced with the daunting task of pulling it out again. Her right arm and hand were dislocated while her left was torn and mangled. She flexed her injured fingers, flinching at the pain.

Jack couldn't decide what to do. He was useless; he could barely move and it felt as if his brain had been turned into soup. He glanced down at Djinny wriggling about on the concrete. Her attention seemed focused on her own little problem.

It was debatable as to whether or not his next action was intentional. He did not so much leap on top of Djinny as collapse onto her. Either way, it was effective: despite the massive amount of blood he had lost he still outweighed the alien.

Some whimpers and grunts could be heard echoing around Pantin's near-empty platform. Then there was a sound like metal scraping against metal as Rebecca yanked the sword free from the side of the subway car. Tears streamed down her face. It felt as if someone had broken her arms then tied them into knots and impaled them on flaming skewers. Now that she had the magic weapon in her grip, she stumbled like a drunk back to where she had left the Samurai.

This occurred as Djinny kicked and squirmed in a frantic effort to get out from under Samurai Jack. She had begun yelling insults at him but she somewhat doubted that the man was even conscious at this point. It seemed like he should be easy to fight off, but the trouble was that he was nothing but dead weight pinning her to the floor. She had to think of some way to make him move. She considered shooting him in the hope that the pain might cause him to squirm off, but her gun was too large and she couldn't turn it at enough of an angle to hit him. Another idea struck. She lifted the gun as high as she could then swiftly brought it down across his back. Maybe a sound beating would inspire him to move.

Jack grimaced as a sensation like his lungs were being jolted passed over him. His back stung from the blow. Djinny brought the huge assault rifle down on him again, the metal scraping his skin. His thoughts were fuzzy, but it wasn't hard to tell what she was trying to do.

Jack admittedly found the situation rather amusing. Djinny was wasting her energy; even if he intended to move he was no longer able. Still, it dawned on him that he could not stay like that forever. He had to get up sometime, and when he did, he had to be sure that Djinny would pose no further problems. Other than the fact that she had not been fighting continuously for the last half-hour while severely injured, she had a huge advantage due to that equally huge firearm.

No sooner had Jack thought the term than he heard it go off. Rebecca had been standing a few feet behind Djinny, trying to decide what she should do with the sword when the blue alien had spotted her and began firing in her direction. Though Djinny had not been able to take careful aim, with twenty bullets she was bound to hit something. It happened to be Rebecca's ankle. A splatter of blood shaped like a Japanese folding-fan became visible on the concrete. Rebecca collapsed, screaming.

A crowd began to gather around to watch the scene. Not one of the three recumbent figures was able to do anything about it.

Djinny, Rebecca and Samurai Jack had remained motionless on the platform for twenty minutes. Djinny had given up on trying to make Jack move. Rebecca was now sitting in a fair sized puddle of blood and looking pale. Jack was doing everything in his power not to pass out, but nonetheless kept shifting in and out of reality. Clusters of humans, aliens and robots stared down at them in awe, not one of them daring to offer assistance. Nobody spoke. Several people even tried to hold their breath.

At last a voice rang through the room. "This is fucking stupid," said Djinny. "Are we going to stay like this forever?" She raised her head slightly to get a better look at the Samurai who was still on top of her. "Hey! Jack! You realize you're still bleeding? At this rate you're going to die either way. Let me just shoot you and get it over with. Some of us got lives to be getting on with."

Though Jack made no response, something in those words caused Rebecca to experience an epiphany. She suddenly turned her head toward the crowd and called out.

"Does anyone here have a cellular phone?"

There was a silence. A chubby pink alien finally came forward.

"I got one."

"May I borrow it? It's important."

The pink alien dug through her purse for a moment till she at last retrieved a shiny gold-colored phone. Rebecca had trouble holding it due to her injuries. Using the thumb of her right hand, she dialed the number.

In the Technical Support Center of AkuComp, Donald DuMont was notified of a personal call. He left his station and went to answer it.

"Hello?" he asked, raising the phone to his ear.

"Donald?"

He recognized the voice as his wife's. From the tone it sounded like she was in trouble for the ninth time that month.

"Rebecca? What's going on?"

"It's terrible!" she cried. "My friend Djinny's trying to kill us!"

"'Us?' Who are you with?"

"Samurai Jack. I met him yesterday. We're both injured, we've both been shot!"

"Okay, okay, calm down. Where are you?"

"Pantin Station, on the platform."

"Is Djinny there?"

"Yes. She has a gun. Jack's got her now, but he doesn't look too good..."

"Okay. I'll call my friends from the RPG. We'll be there in about fifteen minutes. Can you wait that long?"

"I think so."

"We'll try to hurry," he added before hanging up.