VII: On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Lilka drenched her face in a fountain of cool water escaping from a busted fire hydrant, trying to remove the last remaining bits of soot and blackened debris. The girl was back in normal attire, as all of them were, and looked into a cracked mirror that had fallen from a building, trying to get her complexion right again. The explosion left over from Liz's nasty trick had done a number of things, but the thing that brought tears to her green eyes was the fact that she now had blue bangs falling in front of her eyes. Note the reason why it's called the Blue Bug Bomb.
"C'mon Lilka, let's get going." Gallows tapped her shoulder, but found her unmoving. She stood in front of the mirror, quivering in silent tears. "Lilka?"
"I'M HIDEOUS!" Lilka shouted, bursting into tears.
"Wow! I feel great!" Marivel walked over to the two, flexing her tiny arms.
"Oh, it's not that bad." Gallows sighed, looking at the small blue bangs of hair.
"Of course it is, it's copying 003." Marivel laughed, pointing to Gallows white stripe. The look she received from the two shut her up instantly.
"I can't believe that meany, destroying the city (sniff), wrecking business (sniff), stealing the laser, (sniff) and TURNING MY HAIR BLUE!" Lilka shouted, grabbing Gallows black jacket and blowing into it.
Gallows was disgusted, but decided it best not to interfere. So he let her blow her nose into his jacket and patted her back, looking over his shoulder at Marivel, who was silently giggling.
"Good evenin' gents!" A voice came to them. Lilka stopped blowing her nose and looked over the hydrant to see a tall, built man (Though not as tall as Gallows) with long blonde hair and a long tanned coat with a black muscle shirt underneath. He tipped his black cowboy hat and placed his black boots upon the hydrant, so that he was leaning foreword to greet the three.
"Yo?" Gallows said, confused. Despite his own beliefs, he was never hip on the current lingo.
"Good evening sir." Lilka wiped her eyes and bowed before the man.
"What do ya want? Can't you see we're in a crime scene?" Marivel pushed foreword.
"The name is Jack. Jack VanBurace. Pleasure to meet you…?" Jack awaited introductions.
"…Aren't you going to finish your sentence?" Gallows asked.
"Hi! I'm Lilka Elenaik, Agent Crest Sorceress. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jack."
"Carradine. Gallows Carradine. Insert jazzy music here." Gallows replied.
"Wait a minute! What do you want!?" Marivel barked.
"Please, please. Calm yourselves. I have business to talk with you guys, so how about a little lunch at the café across the street? My treat!" Jack bowed.
"Will there be Ice Cream?!" Lilka clasped her hands together.
"Woot! Free food!" Gallows pumped his fist in the air.
Marivel crossed her arms and looked at the street. "All right. Marivel's the name."
Jack smiled. "Of course."
** *
The café was an outside one, sitting next to the street in the good side of town. Lilka happily licked her Vanilla and Strawberry ice cream cone as she watched about three floors collapse in the building across the street. The four sat around a small, black iron table on metal chairs in the streaming sunlight. Gallows sipped his root beer float, trying to make the flavor last, as Marivel feasted upon a bloody jackrabbit carcass someone had found in the road. Jack sat back in his chair, hands behind his head and boots resting upon the table. After Marivel has slipped the gastricnemius between her pale lips, she swallowed the bloody calf muscle and looked to the grinning Jack. "So what business do you have with us?"
"You are ARMS, correct?" Jack asked.
"Yes we are. Thank you very much, Mr. Jack." Lilka smiled.
Marivel grabbed her throat as she was choking on the meat. Gallows slapped her back with a hearty blow, pushing the food down her esophagus. She stuck her tongue out and glared at Lilka, who blushed with embarrassment.
"It's no problem." Jack waved it off. "But I carry a message from headquarters. They are incredibly angry."
"How angry?" Gallows asked.
"…Incredibly?" Jack shrugged.
"Oh…" 003 resumed sipping his root beer.
"P.R.O.P.H.E.T now has the upper hand, and Guild Galad has been pounded to rubble. The companies finances can't keep up with your rate of destruction." Jack explained.
"Wait. We have finances?" Gallows asked. "I thought License to Kill meant license to blow stuff up and not worry about it."
"You would think so. I mean, look at some of the explosions that 002 made!" Jack replied.
"Hey! We went an entire chapter without mentioning 002, so shush!" Gallows demanded.
"Who's 002?" Lilka asked.
"Yes!" Gallows smirked. "My quest has been fulfilled."
"So what does ARMS want us to do?" Marivel asked, keeping the conversation on track.
"Very good question. They would like you to…to…Oh MY GOD!" Jack suddenly leaped out of his chair and over the fence. "Would you look at those!"
Gallows stood up, following Jack's line of sight and grinned like an idiot. "Well hello!"
"What's going on?!" Lilka leaped up, preparing for an emergency. "What's everyone looking at."
"APORT X2!" Marivel shouted.
Two massive frying pans appeared out of the sky and fell atop both men's heads. The two fell to the sidewalk, brows bleeding badly. (Alliteration!)
"Why'd you do that Big-Si… I mean Marivel?" Lilka asked, confused as ever.
"You'll understand in a few years Lilka… Men are idiots." Marivel dusted off her hands.
And so, a beautiful vixen of a nymph continued walking down the street, free from Jack and Gallows sights. Jack immediately picked himself and rested his boots back upon the table. "Right. As I was saying, there's urgent business to attend to! ARMS has sent me to tell you to head to the sea near Court Seim. It seems that P.R.O.P.H.E.T is up to it again, disguising the Riverboat Sweet Candy as a Sylvaland warship and preying upon Maria Boule's merchant ships. A threat of war looms between these two major powers, and if something isn't done soon, it will erupt into a conflict, drawing in every nation upon Filgaia!"
"There are only four nations. It wouldn't be hard…" Gallows counted on his fingers.
"So you want us to find the Sweet Candy, again, and stop it, again?" Marivel asked.
"I know the laser is important, but it can wait for now! Now we must make haste and cross the globe!" Jack stood up.
"You're coming with us, Mr. Jack?" Lilka asked.
"I am truly a diphead, and have been assigned to ARMS! Here, I have four bus tickets to Court Seim!" Jack produced four tickets.
"Bus tickets?! That'll take forever. By the time we get there, the nations will already be at war!" Marivel demanded.
"Do you have anything better in mind?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well…" Marivel licked her lips.
** *
"Bus tickets?! That will take forever. By the time we get there, the nations will be at war!" Gallows mocked in baby tongue as he stuck his thumb out along the train tracks.
"Shut Up! It is a good idea! We just have to wait for a train to come along." Marivel yelled.
"Um, do trains pick up hitch-hikers?" Lilka asked.
"If we were on the damn bus, we would have made it. Now we'll be lucky if we make it there at all." Jack sighed.
"All of you idiots just keep yapping, but when the train conductor sees our badges, we're a shoe in!" Marivel huffed.
"Do trains even run along this track?" Lilka asked.
"For Queen and Country. Just keep telling yourself that." Gallows repeated to himself.
A train blew its whistle as it appeared on the horizon. The four instantly turned to it.
"Go for it!" Marivel pushed Gallows onto the tracks. Gallows yelped and screamed in a higher-pitch then even Lilka could have produced as the train sped towards him. And before he knew it, the train had stopped right before his face.
"You can stop screaming now, 003." Marivel sighed.
"Hey, you fella's need a ride?" Tony asked the quartet.
Jack stepped foreword and whisked out his badge. "Sir, we need to commandeer this train for Queen and Country!"
Tony scratched his head and shrugged. "Okay! Just remember to fuel her back up when you're done."
"Uh right." Jack nodded.
"Uh, Mr. Gallows?" Lilka poked Gallows, but he was as frozen as a statue.
** *
Much later, the train emerged out of a tunnel, running along coastline. The only four on the train looked out to see flat dunes with bits of sea wheat and sea oats sticking out here and there before a vast line of sea blue. Sea gulls flitted in the air merrily as they… flitted…yea. But upon the horizon was the paddle wheeler riverboat Sweet Candy. The words Sweet Candy had been crossed out and rather sloppily a new name was painted along her sides, "Sylvaland War Ship Comin' To Attack You!"
"Hey! It's the Sweet Candy!" Lilka shouted.
"Where! I don't see anything, only a Sylvaland vessel." Gallows looked out the window.
Marivel and Jack glanced at each other, shaking their heads. This was team leader 003. Marivel stepped to the window and hopped up, trying to see. "Looks like they repaired her a bit."
"Oh. Hey, I wonder if that kid will be there." Gallows thought. "It just occurred to me that I've only killed one P.R.O.P.H.E.T agent since I began this crazy mission."
"My sworn enemy Tim and his freaky little pet Pooka…" Marivel reflected. "This time, I will kill you!"
There was a flash of lightning and thunder rolled across the blue sky. A cold wind blew within the train, flowing within Marivel's long blonde hair.
"Huh, looks like someone left a window open." Jack immediately closed the window.
"Quickly, we have to get to that ship! Mr. Jack, can you take us to it?!" Lilka looked to the man in the cowboy hat.
"Man in the Cowboy Hat… sounds like a mini-series." Jack thought.
"That's your code name isn't it?" Gallows asked.
"What. Oh yea. I always forget." Jack shrugged. "And besides, I couldn't take you there if I wanted to. For you see, trains must ride upon railways."
The other three's face froze in horror. Trains riding only upon railways?! Who ever imagined such a dreadful thing?!
Gallows crossed his arms across his massive, yet suave, chest. "What we need here is a boat. Or a haovercraft…"
"Hey I know!" Lilka announced. "We'll use this!" Lilka suddenly grabbed a white cloak with red triangle bordering and donned it. "And now I shall cast float and we will walk there!"
[SUED!]
"Or maybe not." Lilka laughed nervously.
"That's it! Gimme the wheel!" Gallows grabbed the steering wheel from Jack, turning it hard to starboard, forcing the train off the rails and plowing through the sea.
"Wow, maybe it does work…" Jack rubbed the back of his head.
"Captain Bart, here we come!" Gallows shouted as he drove the train onward through the sea. The Sweet Candy fired in return, sending the coastline ablaze with jazzy explosions!
-TO BE CONTINUED!-
[see you round, cowboy]