NOTES:
Lots of fighting in this one .........
This fic is semi-tribute to all the HK gangster films I've seen. Bonus points if you can spot any direct film references. Also: Triad gangsters call members of their gangs "brothers;" this does not necessarily mean a biological relationship.
Faye gets to kick ass in this fic. I think she should have done a lot more so in the movie and the series, instead of always getting captured.
Please excuse my made-up characters! Read & review, I welcome all constructive criticism. It's the only way I'll get better.
LEGAL STUFF: I don't own COWBOY BEBOP or any characters, this is purely for entertainment, blahblah.
----------------------------------------------
Spike scanned the cityscape below. They hadn't come after him with drones -- - probably too much of a chance with the Army base so close. He wondered briefly how Faye was doing --- she'd probably gone back to the Bebop, she'd be okay. His main worry now was finding Ho Nam and whoever that girl was before Vicious' men did.
Swordfish II's usual sensors weren't much good in a city. Spike knew that Ho Nam would be going to ground, searching for one of the thousands of contacts he'd built up over the years on Mars. He'd always been lecturing the young dragons about the need to be righteous, not just for their own souls but to build bonds with people who wouldn't turn on you when you came knocking. Paying for the poor's Founding Day supper, kneecapping the muggers and rapists, forgiving debtors---that was what kept Red Dragon strong.
But what happened when you did all that for someone, and they still sold you out to the police, Spike had asked one night. Or even worse, the White Tigers?
Ho Nam had grinned in that cold winter air, Spike remembered. His smile had been like nothing human.
"That's what Mao has ME for," he had said.
Spike remembered Ho Nam's face when he'd spoken those words. That same face looked back at him now.
You'll pay, Vicious. You'll pay for all of it.
A crimson flare jarred him from his thoughts. It arced high above a block of dull plassteel-concrete apartments, dissipating in the morning sky. Spike remembered firing a flare like that once .
He hit the jets. The streets blurred beneath him and he saw them in the alley crosswise to a side street, five men and the girl Lornette, alone in their midst. Spike immediately braked and dropped Swordfish II down like a rock, overriding the safeties to pop the hatch just as the fighter hit pavement.
The syndicate gangster holding the flare gun gaped at him; this wasn't the help he'd been expecting. He was still getting his guard up as Spike kicked him in the temple.
Too close for guns. Spike closed in, watching Lornette weave between the four remaining gangsters, ducking and spinning away from their clumsy blows. Not bad, he thought.
Two men turned to face Spike, a thickset man with a pugnose and a slimmer boy with a shockwand. Spike lurched right to get the boy between himself and the other thug, waited for the high arcing swing. The slim kid was fast, but Spike had been raised in an older school. Spike's left knife hand stabbed into the boy's wrist, immobilizing it and sending the shockwand spinning; the follow-up right fist crunched into the boy's throat. The second gangster leaped over his collapsed friend. He dodged Spike's feinting kick and reached out to catch it his foot, missed as Spike spun in a full circle to come behind him. The man began to turn, too late; he squawked as Spike caved in his temple.
Lornette had been trained well, Spike saw immediately. Hung gar fundamentals, he thought, as he watched her slip a jab and respond with a straight-arm blow to the kidney. Two flashing jabs and an uppercut; the third man was down. The last gangster began backing away. Spike smirked at the sweating man as Lornette circled to get behind him. "Picking on little girls, now, eh?" Spike shook his head. "Our turn now."
Lornette hit him with a side kick that he barely got his arm in front of; he staggered back and Spike crushed his jaw with an elbow strike. The man bawled once, spilling teeth, and fell flat.
Lornette stepped back, rubbing her knuckles. She looked at the tall, lanky stranger with the odd little smile on his face, her memory racing. Heaven and earth, he's not even breathing hard, she thought. It really is him. Back from the dead ...
"Where's Ho Nam?" Spike asked.
Lornette didn't waste time answering, sprinting down the alley with a wave: "C'mon!" She turned the corner with Spike on her heels, one eye watching behind them.
The door was small, gray, and open in front of them. Lornette dived through it. Spike followed, slamming it shut.
Ho Nam was kneeling in the center of the small basement room, holding an old black woman who was obviously dying. Somewhere along the way he'd been shot in the thigh. Two syndicate men lay against the wall, one with his head twisted grotesquely to the left, a 9mm Glock next to him.
The other one still held the knife that had stabbed the old woman through the heart. There were ragged, crimson holes where his eyes had been and his mouth was open in horrified agony. Ho Nam's hands were bloody, but Spike couldn't tell if it was the gangster's or the dying woman's.
Lornette was crying silently, two slow tears running down either side of her face. She knelt next to Ho Nam and put her arms around him. Spike, not knowing what else to do, went back to the door and edged it open, checking the alley. One of the syndicate men had dragged himself to the wall, coughing up blood.
"Spike!"
Ho Nam was standing. He'd draped his jacket over the dead woman's face. Somewhere along the way he'd been shot in the lower left leg, but it didn't look like it had slowed him down, at least not the way the dead men against the wall looked .
"Ho Nam," said Spike, stepping forward. He clasped hands with the older man, feeling things creeping in his gut, things he'd thought he'd never feel again. "It's been a long time."
"So Mao was right, all along." Ho Nam sighed. "I wish he could have seen you."
"Father." Lornette was wiping her tears. "We---we need to go."
Wordlessly, Ho Nam turned and knelt again before the dead woman. He folded his hands and closed his eyes, praying. Lornette looked at Spike through cloudy eyes. He seemed as sad as she felt.
Ho Nam stood again. "Let's go."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jet looked at Ein. Ein looked at Jet.
"Sit!"
Ein looked at Jet.
Jet crossed his arms. He furrowed his brow. "Sit!"
Ein scratched himself and padded off down the corridor.
Jet sighed. He closed his eyes and pondered his situation.
"Why doesn't anyone listen to me!" he shouted into the empty room. "This is MY ship! My rules!"
Silence.
"I cook for everyone! I've saved all of their lives, at least twice!"
Ed poked her head into the room. Ein was perched on top of it, looking nervous.
"Jet!"
She staggered into the room, swaying back and forth, trying to balance Ein atop her mop of unruly red hair. Ein growled in fright.
"Jet! Jet! Jet! No one listens to me!" Ed broke into giggly laughter as she twisted her neck to some invisible rhythm, Ein clinging on for dear life. "My ship!"
"Oy! Hey, stop it!" Jet stood up.
Ed giggled again and staggered down the hall. Jet poised himself to follow, then heard a THUMP! Ein's squeals of pain and Ed's whining told him all he needed to know.
"Those two down there better not be getting into any trouble," he grumbled to himself. "I'm not fixing any more ships today."
Jet checked the clock. It had been four hours. The flight to Orphis City took twenty minutes.
"Arrrrgh." He reached for his cellphone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faye took the cake from Tylor. "My card's inside the box," said the baker's assistant, with a bit more calm than Faye had expected from a kid who'd just been in the middle of a gunfight. "You know, you can give me a call, whenever, you know ..."
Faye chuckled. She patted him on the shoulder and was rewarded with a visible blush. "Hey kid, if I ever want a good birthday cake again, I'll be right here." She tapped his nameplate above his lapel. "Tylor. You be here waiting for me."
"Sure thing, Faye!" She could have sworn he was almost gleaming with joy. "Listen, don't worry about those little bullet holes, who knows what was going on out there, but you're safe in here."
"I'm---"
The box jumped in her hand. She looked down and saw a single hole in the cardboard. Funny, that hadn't been there before---
"I'm safe in here?!" Faye yelled as she fell back. More rifle shots popped through the shop window.
Faye held tightly onto the cake as she groped for her Glock. She rolled below the windowsill and watched pieces of glass flying. She risked one quick peep and ducked back down.
Two syndicate men were trying to open Redtail's cockpit. A sedan was facing the shop, with two men behind it firing assault rifles into the Bazooka Bakery. A third man had a light machine gun braced on the car's hood, pounding it in frustration. Jammed, she thought. Him first.
She waited until she heard the first "click" as one rifleman ran out of ammo. Faye braced herself, stood, shot the machine gunner and the rifleman next to him, and was back down before the bodies hit the pavement. Shouts of surprise and a man's dying gurgle reached her as a new barrage of fire blasted the bakery.
Another machine gun opened up, punching out all of the windows and lashing the countertops. Cakes blew apart in frilly pink-and-yellow bursts; Tylor was cursing loudly.
Running boots, coming at the door. At least four more of them. More rifle shots came in the window. She got on her knees and crawled below the window to the door. She stayed on her belly, her gun pointed straight at the doorway.
The syndicate did not disappoint. A blurring shape kicked open the door; Faye shot that man three times, shifted, and shot the man behind him twice as bullets sang above her. Gangsters lurched away from the door, there was a lot more shouting, and the door swung closed. Then a LOT more screaming; the grenade the first man had been trying to toss into the bakery exploded outside.
Faye sprang up and jumped the counter, flattening herself against the floor as machine-gun rounds chased her. Tylor was balled next to her, his hands punching the combination on a locked metal cabinet at the bottom of the counter.
Too many of them, Faye thought. She hadn't been in a situation this bad since that time in the church. Well, at least now she wasn't handcuffed, she thought grimly, looking at the corpses of the two men she'd just shot down. They must think Spike's in here, or they think that I know where to find him. She snorted. They really didn't know him at all, the idiots. Like he would tell me anything.
That bastard Spike. He'd saved her then, but now he'd started a gunfight and run off, leaving her to face men who wanted to kill HIM. Why had he tried to intervene? That little girl ... had that been Julia?
For some reason, the thought filled her with rage. She reloaded the Glock, racked the slide, and jumped up.
Machine-guns chattered. Sections of the back wall blew out all over her. Faye didn't blink. She fired twice; the first man fiddling with Redtail's lock slumped against its canopy, his head a bloody ruin; the second yelped and fell off, clutching for an ear that was no longer there..
She ducked back down as the machine-guns chewed futilely at the heavy marble counter. What she'd seen had chilled her. Two more vehicles had pulled up. At least four men were piling out of an airtruck, pulling long black rectangles from its trunk.
"What do you see?" asked Tylor.
"Trouble." She blinked dust out of her eyes. "They're coming with Kevlar shields."
"That's okay," said Tylor. The cabinet buzzed open and he went in. His hands came out with the ugliest gun barrel Faye had ever seen. He dragged more pieces of dark, greasy metal out of the cabinet and began snapping them together. She recognized it as he attached the tripod.
"That's a damn assault cannon!" Faye said. "Where the hell did you get that?!"
"FN 40mm Bulldog, light-infantry assault weapon. I used to be an armorer for the Army, on Titan. We're the ones who keep the guns working." He pulled a fat black cartridge from the cabinet's back shelf and seated it as the light machine-guns started chattering again. "I took home some souvenirs," he shouted over the roar.
"Shoot!" Faye shouted back.
"Here," he shoved the assault cannon at her. "I only work on them, I don't use them."
"What?!"
The machine-guns stopped. Faye could hear boots crunching gravel and glass; they were coming. Five seconds, she thought. That's all I have until they shoot us both.
The assault cannon was heavy, but Faye had it on the counter and was already sighting down when one of the advancing gangsters saw her. He fired first.
The hair on the left side of her head puffed. They were all no more than fifteen feet away when she squeezed the trigger.
Riot shields, the men behind them, the wall and door and windows, they all exploded as Faye swept the assault cannon across everything in front of her. The Bulldog roared and kicked, but Faye kept the barrel down and her trigger finger tight. She went for the cars lined up outside the shop, tearing apart anything that could hide a gunman. Shells burst, men screamed, metal shrieked and whirred. Keep it up, keep on until they're all gone ...
The airtruck that had brought the shields began to lift off, trying to escape. Faye ripped the driver's cab and watched it fall back to earth in two pieces, burning. And then it was over. The Bulldog clicked empty, and Faye snatched her Glock out of its holster. But there was nothing moving in front of the store, not anymore. She let a small gasp of pain escape; the Bulldog's recoil had left a bruise on her shoulder.
"Faye, are you okay?!" Tylor was standing next to her. He looked at the destruction in front of the store, the shattered debris of building, cars, and men, his mouth open. "God!"
Faye rubbed her shoulder, then slid her Glock into its holster. She coughed once to clear her throat. "Not bad, kid," she said. "You like big guns?"
Tylor didn't say anything, just handed her something. She looked down. Jet's cake box, with two more bullet holes in it.
Well, you had to salvage something ...
"Hey, you think you can give me a ride home?" Tylor tried to smile, failing. His eyes didn't seem to be able to leave the carnage outside. "I-I don't think a cab is going to come here, in the middle of---of all that."
Faye looked at the front of the store. She didn't know when, didn't know where, but ... she'd seen worse. Once.
She'd felt worse. She knew that.
But Faye gave him a smile anyway. The kid deserved that much. "You going to bring that cannon?"
Tylor tore his eyes away and looked at her instead. His eyes belonged to a man dying of thirst, glimpsing an oasis. "Uh ... sure!"
"C'mon, kid. Careful not to slip in the blood."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wanted to get a quick update in ... Was going to make this longer. Hope this one isn't too violent for folks. Don't worry, more character development to come in chapter 3! If folks want more.
Please R&R! I need feedback and suggestions if I'm going to get better!
Lots of fighting in this one .........
This fic is semi-tribute to all the HK gangster films I've seen. Bonus points if you can spot any direct film references. Also: Triad gangsters call members of their gangs "brothers;" this does not necessarily mean a biological relationship.
Faye gets to kick ass in this fic. I think she should have done a lot more so in the movie and the series, instead of always getting captured.
Please excuse my made-up characters! Read & review, I welcome all constructive criticism. It's the only way I'll get better.
LEGAL STUFF: I don't own COWBOY BEBOP or any characters, this is purely for entertainment, blahblah.
----------------------------------------------
Spike scanned the cityscape below. They hadn't come after him with drones -- - probably too much of a chance with the Army base so close. He wondered briefly how Faye was doing --- she'd probably gone back to the Bebop, she'd be okay. His main worry now was finding Ho Nam and whoever that girl was before Vicious' men did.
Swordfish II's usual sensors weren't much good in a city. Spike knew that Ho Nam would be going to ground, searching for one of the thousands of contacts he'd built up over the years on Mars. He'd always been lecturing the young dragons about the need to be righteous, not just for their own souls but to build bonds with people who wouldn't turn on you when you came knocking. Paying for the poor's Founding Day supper, kneecapping the muggers and rapists, forgiving debtors---that was what kept Red Dragon strong.
But what happened when you did all that for someone, and they still sold you out to the police, Spike had asked one night. Or even worse, the White Tigers?
Ho Nam had grinned in that cold winter air, Spike remembered. His smile had been like nothing human.
"That's what Mao has ME for," he had said.
Spike remembered Ho Nam's face when he'd spoken those words. That same face looked back at him now.
You'll pay, Vicious. You'll pay for all of it.
A crimson flare jarred him from his thoughts. It arced high above a block of dull plassteel-concrete apartments, dissipating in the morning sky. Spike remembered firing a flare like that once .
He hit the jets. The streets blurred beneath him and he saw them in the alley crosswise to a side street, five men and the girl Lornette, alone in their midst. Spike immediately braked and dropped Swordfish II down like a rock, overriding the safeties to pop the hatch just as the fighter hit pavement.
The syndicate gangster holding the flare gun gaped at him; this wasn't the help he'd been expecting. He was still getting his guard up as Spike kicked him in the temple.
Too close for guns. Spike closed in, watching Lornette weave between the four remaining gangsters, ducking and spinning away from their clumsy blows. Not bad, he thought.
Two men turned to face Spike, a thickset man with a pugnose and a slimmer boy with a shockwand. Spike lurched right to get the boy between himself and the other thug, waited for the high arcing swing. The slim kid was fast, but Spike had been raised in an older school. Spike's left knife hand stabbed into the boy's wrist, immobilizing it and sending the shockwand spinning; the follow-up right fist crunched into the boy's throat. The second gangster leaped over his collapsed friend. He dodged Spike's feinting kick and reached out to catch it his foot, missed as Spike spun in a full circle to come behind him. The man began to turn, too late; he squawked as Spike caved in his temple.
Lornette had been trained well, Spike saw immediately. Hung gar fundamentals, he thought, as he watched her slip a jab and respond with a straight-arm blow to the kidney. Two flashing jabs and an uppercut; the third man was down. The last gangster began backing away. Spike smirked at the sweating man as Lornette circled to get behind him. "Picking on little girls, now, eh?" Spike shook his head. "Our turn now."
Lornette hit him with a side kick that he barely got his arm in front of; he staggered back and Spike crushed his jaw with an elbow strike. The man bawled once, spilling teeth, and fell flat.
Lornette stepped back, rubbing her knuckles. She looked at the tall, lanky stranger with the odd little smile on his face, her memory racing. Heaven and earth, he's not even breathing hard, she thought. It really is him. Back from the dead ...
"Where's Ho Nam?" Spike asked.
Lornette didn't waste time answering, sprinting down the alley with a wave: "C'mon!" She turned the corner with Spike on her heels, one eye watching behind them.
The door was small, gray, and open in front of them. Lornette dived through it. Spike followed, slamming it shut.
Ho Nam was kneeling in the center of the small basement room, holding an old black woman who was obviously dying. Somewhere along the way he'd been shot in the thigh. Two syndicate men lay against the wall, one with his head twisted grotesquely to the left, a 9mm Glock next to him.
The other one still held the knife that had stabbed the old woman through the heart. There were ragged, crimson holes where his eyes had been and his mouth was open in horrified agony. Ho Nam's hands were bloody, but Spike couldn't tell if it was the gangster's or the dying woman's.
Lornette was crying silently, two slow tears running down either side of her face. She knelt next to Ho Nam and put her arms around him. Spike, not knowing what else to do, went back to the door and edged it open, checking the alley. One of the syndicate men had dragged himself to the wall, coughing up blood.
"Spike!"
Ho Nam was standing. He'd draped his jacket over the dead woman's face. Somewhere along the way he'd been shot in the lower left leg, but it didn't look like it had slowed him down, at least not the way the dead men against the wall looked .
"Ho Nam," said Spike, stepping forward. He clasped hands with the older man, feeling things creeping in his gut, things he'd thought he'd never feel again. "It's been a long time."
"So Mao was right, all along." Ho Nam sighed. "I wish he could have seen you."
"Father." Lornette was wiping her tears. "We---we need to go."
Wordlessly, Ho Nam turned and knelt again before the dead woman. He folded his hands and closed his eyes, praying. Lornette looked at Spike through cloudy eyes. He seemed as sad as she felt.
Ho Nam stood again. "Let's go."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Jet looked at Ein. Ein looked at Jet.
"Sit!"
Ein looked at Jet.
Jet crossed his arms. He furrowed his brow. "Sit!"
Ein scratched himself and padded off down the corridor.
Jet sighed. He closed his eyes and pondered his situation.
"Why doesn't anyone listen to me!" he shouted into the empty room. "This is MY ship! My rules!"
Silence.
"I cook for everyone! I've saved all of their lives, at least twice!"
Ed poked her head into the room. Ein was perched on top of it, looking nervous.
"Jet!"
She staggered into the room, swaying back and forth, trying to balance Ein atop her mop of unruly red hair. Ein growled in fright.
"Jet! Jet! Jet! No one listens to me!" Ed broke into giggly laughter as she twisted her neck to some invisible rhythm, Ein clinging on for dear life. "My ship!"
"Oy! Hey, stop it!" Jet stood up.
Ed giggled again and staggered down the hall. Jet poised himself to follow, then heard a THUMP! Ein's squeals of pain and Ed's whining told him all he needed to know.
"Those two down there better not be getting into any trouble," he grumbled to himself. "I'm not fixing any more ships today."
Jet checked the clock. It had been four hours. The flight to Orphis City took twenty minutes.
"Arrrrgh." He reached for his cellphone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faye took the cake from Tylor. "My card's inside the box," said the baker's assistant, with a bit more calm than Faye had expected from a kid who'd just been in the middle of a gunfight. "You know, you can give me a call, whenever, you know ..."
Faye chuckled. She patted him on the shoulder and was rewarded with a visible blush. "Hey kid, if I ever want a good birthday cake again, I'll be right here." She tapped his nameplate above his lapel. "Tylor. You be here waiting for me."
"Sure thing, Faye!" She could have sworn he was almost gleaming with joy. "Listen, don't worry about those little bullet holes, who knows what was going on out there, but you're safe in here."
"I'm---"
The box jumped in her hand. She looked down and saw a single hole in the cardboard. Funny, that hadn't been there before---
"I'm safe in here?!" Faye yelled as she fell back. More rifle shots popped through the shop window.
Faye held tightly onto the cake as she groped for her Glock. She rolled below the windowsill and watched pieces of glass flying. She risked one quick peep and ducked back down.
Two syndicate men were trying to open Redtail's cockpit. A sedan was facing the shop, with two men behind it firing assault rifles into the Bazooka Bakery. A third man had a light machine gun braced on the car's hood, pounding it in frustration. Jammed, she thought. Him first.
She waited until she heard the first "click" as one rifleman ran out of ammo. Faye braced herself, stood, shot the machine gunner and the rifleman next to him, and was back down before the bodies hit the pavement. Shouts of surprise and a man's dying gurgle reached her as a new barrage of fire blasted the bakery.
Another machine gun opened up, punching out all of the windows and lashing the countertops. Cakes blew apart in frilly pink-and-yellow bursts; Tylor was cursing loudly.
Running boots, coming at the door. At least four more of them. More rifle shots came in the window. She got on her knees and crawled below the window to the door. She stayed on her belly, her gun pointed straight at the doorway.
The syndicate did not disappoint. A blurring shape kicked open the door; Faye shot that man three times, shifted, and shot the man behind him twice as bullets sang above her. Gangsters lurched away from the door, there was a lot more shouting, and the door swung closed. Then a LOT more screaming; the grenade the first man had been trying to toss into the bakery exploded outside.
Faye sprang up and jumped the counter, flattening herself against the floor as machine-gun rounds chased her. Tylor was balled next to her, his hands punching the combination on a locked metal cabinet at the bottom of the counter.
Too many of them, Faye thought. She hadn't been in a situation this bad since that time in the church. Well, at least now she wasn't handcuffed, she thought grimly, looking at the corpses of the two men she'd just shot down. They must think Spike's in here, or they think that I know where to find him. She snorted. They really didn't know him at all, the idiots. Like he would tell me anything.
That bastard Spike. He'd saved her then, but now he'd started a gunfight and run off, leaving her to face men who wanted to kill HIM. Why had he tried to intervene? That little girl ... had that been Julia?
For some reason, the thought filled her with rage. She reloaded the Glock, racked the slide, and jumped up.
Machine-guns chattered. Sections of the back wall blew out all over her. Faye didn't blink. She fired twice; the first man fiddling with Redtail's lock slumped against its canopy, his head a bloody ruin; the second yelped and fell off, clutching for an ear that was no longer there..
She ducked back down as the machine-guns chewed futilely at the heavy marble counter. What she'd seen had chilled her. Two more vehicles had pulled up. At least four men were piling out of an airtruck, pulling long black rectangles from its trunk.
"What do you see?" asked Tylor.
"Trouble." She blinked dust out of her eyes. "They're coming with Kevlar shields."
"That's okay," said Tylor. The cabinet buzzed open and he went in. His hands came out with the ugliest gun barrel Faye had ever seen. He dragged more pieces of dark, greasy metal out of the cabinet and began snapping them together. She recognized it as he attached the tripod.
"That's a damn assault cannon!" Faye said. "Where the hell did you get that?!"
"FN 40mm Bulldog, light-infantry assault weapon. I used to be an armorer for the Army, on Titan. We're the ones who keep the guns working." He pulled a fat black cartridge from the cabinet's back shelf and seated it as the light machine-guns started chattering again. "I took home some souvenirs," he shouted over the roar.
"Shoot!" Faye shouted back.
"Here," he shoved the assault cannon at her. "I only work on them, I don't use them."
"What?!"
The machine-guns stopped. Faye could hear boots crunching gravel and glass; they were coming. Five seconds, she thought. That's all I have until they shoot us both.
The assault cannon was heavy, but Faye had it on the counter and was already sighting down when one of the advancing gangsters saw her. He fired first.
The hair on the left side of her head puffed. They were all no more than fifteen feet away when she squeezed the trigger.
Riot shields, the men behind them, the wall and door and windows, they all exploded as Faye swept the assault cannon across everything in front of her. The Bulldog roared and kicked, but Faye kept the barrel down and her trigger finger tight. She went for the cars lined up outside the shop, tearing apart anything that could hide a gunman. Shells burst, men screamed, metal shrieked and whirred. Keep it up, keep on until they're all gone ...
The airtruck that had brought the shields began to lift off, trying to escape. Faye ripped the driver's cab and watched it fall back to earth in two pieces, burning. And then it was over. The Bulldog clicked empty, and Faye snatched her Glock out of its holster. But there was nothing moving in front of the store, not anymore. She let a small gasp of pain escape; the Bulldog's recoil had left a bruise on her shoulder.
"Faye, are you okay?!" Tylor was standing next to her. He looked at the destruction in front of the store, the shattered debris of building, cars, and men, his mouth open. "God!"
Faye rubbed her shoulder, then slid her Glock into its holster. She coughed once to clear her throat. "Not bad, kid," she said. "You like big guns?"
Tylor didn't say anything, just handed her something. She looked down. Jet's cake box, with two more bullet holes in it.
Well, you had to salvage something ...
"Hey, you think you can give me a ride home?" Tylor tried to smile, failing. His eyes didn't seem to be able to leave the carnage outside. "I-I don't think a cab is going to come here, in the middle of---of all that."
Faye looked at the front of the store. She didn't know when, didn't know where, but ... she'd seen worse. Once.
She'd felt worse. She knew that.
But Faye gave him a smile anyway. The kid deserved that much. "You going to bring that cannon?"
Tylor tore his eyes away and looked at her instead. His eyes belonged to a man dying of thirst, glimpsing an oasis. "Uh ... sure!"
"C'mon, kid. Careful not to slip in the blood."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wanted to get a quick update in ... Was going to make this longer. Hope this one isn't too violent for folks. Don't worry, more character development to come in chapter 3! If folks want more.
Please R&R! I need feedback and suggestions if I'm going to get better!
