I didn't write the original KFC email, but the author is unknown, and the content itself is part of internet folklore.
This urban legend has floated across the net for centuries, seemly never ready to die. Perhaps it was just because it's really amusing, or perhaps someone out there wanted others to wonder if it were true. Whatever motivation kept it going, Tanya Lopez thought it something to share with Heero:
"KFC has been a part of our American traditions for many years. Many people, day in and day out, eat at KFC religiously. Do they really know what they are eating? During a recent study of KFC done at the University of New Hampshire, they found some very upsetting facts.
First of all, has anybody noticed that just recently, the company has changed their name? Kentucky Fried Chicken has become KFC. Does anybody know why? We thought the real reason was because of the "FRIED" food issue. It's not. The reason why they call it KFC is because they cannot use the word chicken anymore. Why? KFC does not use real chickens. They actually use genetically manipulated organisms. These so called "chickens" are kept alive by tubes inserted into their bodies to pump blood and nutrients throughout their structure. They have no beaks, no feathers, and no feet. Their bone structure is dramatically shrunk to get more meat out of them. This is great for KFC because they do not have to pay so much for their production costs. There is no more plucking of the feathers or the removal of the beaks and feet. The government has told them to change all of their menus so they do not say chicken anywhere. If you look closely you will notice this.
Listen to their commercials, I guarantee you will never or see or hear the word chicken. I find this matter to be very disturbing. I hope people will start to realize this and let other people know. Please forward this message to as many people as you can. Together we can make KFC start using real chicken again."
The University of New Hampshire conducted the study, or so they deny every time a flood of these Emails resurface, but a resurgence of belief has returned since the Winner family became a major stockholder. That's been a while, so maybe Heero had never seen this.
Tanya printed out a page, and entered Heero's room.
Is he still asleep? No, but the bed is unmade. The bathroom is empty, too. Tanya's heart quickens as she probes about the house. Janice is sleeping in the basement beside the Dorothy, who is still restrained.
The only man in the house can't be found.
The man Heero Yuy has his first hit lined up. Patience is the virtue he relies on. The sun is up, but most of Heero's mission he conducted at night. In a full Ghillie suit, a sniper's attire for breaking the shape of one's body to the human eye, the G-pilot clutches that trademark lugar pistol, this time lengthened out with a barrel longer than those once issued to German Artillerists. This one came with a butt-stock and a carbine-length barrel, for some relatively concealed distance shooting.
He's in a hedgerow, some 200 meters from the first target's window. The target isn't a big fish, just a media distributor for some electronic vice, but his phone rang, and the evidence gleaned from that cell punched his time card. Please expire now.
All the windows are drawn, meaning lighting is provided electrically. Heero's bomb detonated seconds before the distributor pulled his window shade.
In two seconds, Heero emptied the eight round magazine, training all eight within two minutes of angle (MOA), meaning his 200 meter shots fell within a four inch circle of his aiming point. With eight 9mm shots, that's good enough for a kill.
"You distributed the wrong kind of smut for the wrong people. Sorry, fellow." Heero slowly back-peddled in the shallow trench he'd prepared over the night, cutting down his gun as he retreated.
The assassin escaped without incident.
Kurdistan
Job Khalid overlooked the ruined warehouse one last time before vacating the grassy hill perched distant enough for the Kurdish Police to not notice. A meat wagon hauled the bodies out, and Kurds in blue uniforms taped off the crime scene.
He'd been extremely lucky to have been in contact with Al Asad(The Lion), while Turkish SWAT carried out what they euphemistically called "the takedown." So Al Asad has twice blessed him on this mission, first, by offering to activate their only martyr to conduct the simple attack he'd discussed, and they also saved his life.
Al Asad, despite the Arabian name, was actually a Chinese group from the Xinjiang province, a group barely larger than two brothers and three sons, though they'd be down to two soon. Why is only one son a martyr, you ask? Well, someone has to carry on the business.
Khalid had their sympathies and support because both fought against assimilating into ESUN-drawn borders. The Moslem province of Xinjiang felt foreign to the rest of what people commonly call China, and wants autonomy. While Khalid, son of a Moslem father and a Christian mother, battled the Moslem Turks for the people of Armenia.
He felt severe disappointment that his close-knit bunch of skilled fighters had been dropped by a Turkish raid, but accepted the token loss in favor of protecting his high-level Kurdish informant. Still, those guys could have become as good as those he chose to save, given more training and extra time. But time is short.
"Noah, have I lost faith with the spared?"
Noah replied in the negative.
"The guys understand those drivers were only dupes never fully included into our plans, by choice, we remember."
Job stubbed his fallen cigarette.
"Yeah, I remember. Just drivers. They remained sheltered during the fighting, and were going to drift back home anyway. Do the guys suspect my motives?"
Another negative.
"No, at least out loud. They think you were just being more cautious toward the true soldiers."
"Well, I was, if you think about it."
"Yes."
Job pocketed his cigarette pack.
"Did the shooter call back?"
"Yes, his flight landed in Nicosia, and he's all ready to go."
Khalid no longer craved a smoke.
"Excellent. I only wish I could lead the rescue myself."
Cyprus
The sub's divers mysteriously fell into view of a lifeguard on wakeboards off shore of sandy beaches of a Larnaca resort. The men walk their boards across the beach, jabbering on about how awesome wakeboarding can be before work. They left the beach to the docks, giving the lifeguard every reason to assume they worked over there. They didn't bother correcting her.
Basil Jacobs and Mikhail Amos, the two operatives these six men came to rescue, had mailed copies of the keys for a church van, so the men avoided the need to (a.) walk to and from their objective, (b.) go through the obtrusive difficulty of renting transportation, or (c.) borrow a car from anyone in the cell's support structure, thus avoiding contact with a possibly compromised agent.
Remarkably, the church didn't change the locks after the boys were caught, an oversight they expected and counted on.
Inside the van, the guys unpacked the contents of their hollowed out wake boards, six cut-down SMG versions of Austria's picturesque Steyr assault rifle, complements of, well, people in Austria.
Through very subtle and lengthy manipulations by Amos and Jacobs, it just so happened the Orthodox Church had a goodwill visit scheduled for the United Nations teal berets on duty in Dekéleia.
Before driving up to the base gate, the van made a stop at the hardware store, and bought six sheets of steel, and twelve bungee cords. The steel sheets were of the dimensions of the cavities in their wakeboards.
After that, the six Armenians drove their white church van to the entrance near the stockade, where a sentry in a teal beret flagged them down.
"Peace be upon you, sir," said the driver, taking special care to get all the blessings right.
"And unto you, mister. My, there are many of you!" He did a little poking around with his head. The other five waved and shouted their greetings.
"Okay, circle around the stockade there, and drive up to that theater over that way."
He motioned them along, warmly told them to have a nice day, and seemed extremely warm and sincere, but the driver noticed with suspicion as the guard tugged his lapel radio.
"Suit up, my brothers, for they've been forewarned."
Indeed, as soon as the men slide open the van's side door, the automatic sentry guns cut tens of thousands of rounds through the vehicle.
They leaped from the vehicle, running awkwardly with strange turtle shells on their backs. Bullets plinked all portions of their armor, bullets designed to penetrate all body armor projected to exist into the coming decades, but these bullets flattened against the crystalline structure of the inflexible wakeboards.
They stormed through the stockade door, even as death plinked them feebly in the backs. Their Austrian weapons terminated those waiting for them, and the team successfully retrieved to comrades who'd humbly been waiting in these stockade pins.
"To arms, brothers, we've come to retrieve you!"
The guys sacrificed a second to wipe off splinters kicked up from the thoroughly murdered stockade door.
Two Armies (Armenians) unhooked their armored boards, moved them to their fore, and fired suppression bursts at approaching teal berets.
The van's body looked terribly worn, but the LT figured it still worked, unless the confused enemy had the foresight to disable the engine block.
"Follow me!"
He stormed through the open van door, even while the board shielding him absorbed more pummeling. The Sarge kicked in last, and slid the hatch.
"Let's go, L-Tee!"
Tension released from his gut as the van rolled in reverse.
"We have power."
The boards shielded their backs, while the men relied on the dash, engine block, et cetera, to shield from the storming UN soldiers, while they fended UN troops off with SMG suppression.
An S-turn in a high gravity crate like a van is dangerous, but the LT pulled one upon passing through the gate. Then he floored the pedal.
"Welcome back, comrades. Now I hope you guys are ready to swim, 'cause this wasn't a well thought out extraction."
Seconds after the Lieutenant's warning, the van splashed off the dock at high speed.
Constantine Alexander Pushkin saw the commotion through the corner of his eye, and wondered if his warning had been properly heeded. He lay sprawled in the amber grass under his ghillie, a suit that is basically a whole lot of rags and netting worn to break up any patterns in shape and color that would normally reveal a person's location to others. It can be thought of as a duck blind worn as a suit.
The target known as Auda cannot be seen in his office. CAP has alternately watched through his Brushnel binoculars, and the formidable Leupold Series M scope atop his Model 650 RAMO anti-material long rifle, a gun fitted for firing 14.5x115 Russian armor piercing ammunition from a seven round detachable box magazine.
This is a very large caliber rifle, but CAP is comfortable with most guns ranging all the way up to Russia's proud 15cm rifled cannon. The gun size won't be a problem, and neither will patience.
Auda is furious. The base had received a credible tip that the Armenians were coming to spring the prisoners, and they'd squandered the opportunity to trap the rescuers. He reviewed the tapes from a secure windowless conference room, but once the smoke cleared, he stormed to the stockade to see things firsthand.
The target was clearly trotting violently, with arms flailing at his flanks. He had every reason to be angry, the Russian judged, but that couldn't keep the sniper from making his day even worse.
He manually latched the bolt, leaned the gun toward the aiming point, triggered the decoy primacord charge, and depressed the trigger as Auda ducked. The projectile traversed over a kilometer, arced in a terminal dive, punctured the Arab's forearm, brutally severing bone and tissue. The bullet sliced through and followed Auda's hip, a vulnerable place unshielded by multi layered body armor.
The bullet passed through that, too, and out the buttocks.
Constantine Alexander Pushkin, satisfied his shot wouldn't soil his reputation as an elite shooter, commando-crawled into an impossibly cramped spider hole, and shuffled about until his hiding place felt tolerable.
He could stay there for nearly a week, if he had to, but the search would probably blow over before it came to that.
In the meantime, he'd occupy himself by writing a thank you note to the gunsmiths in Jacksonville, Arkansas.
Columbia
Heero Yuy's next target probably held more importance than the last one. She was a brunette of perhaps fifty, who led Bartista's Youth Movement for girls. She's sort of like the Girl Scout chairperson for Nazis, one could say.
Through the network of phone calls, she'd received orders to mobilize the girl troops to assist in setting up checkpoints, but Heero wasn't about to let that happen.
A working jeep arrived, one of the few unaffected by Heero's EMP bomb, drove to pick her up as the gundam pilot progressed down the sidewalk with hands behind his head. About eighty meters away, too distant for a clean pistol shot. He stoically ripped the lugar taped to his head, and dropped the target with half the magazine, then ducked around a corner. He sprinted, hurdled a fence, and finally broke down his pistol. He removed the absurdly long carbine barrel, and returned it to normal pistol length, before concealing it under his waistband.
That hit will probably generate more phone calls, once the fried circuits are replaced.
The Japanese jack-of-all-things-that-ends-in-the-death-of-bad-guys seamlessly integrated into a crew of roofers on a high rise building, and perched over the side as a bicycle convoy of the male youth group made sure the same fate didn't overcome the male counterpart of Heero's last target. If only a hand-thrown bomb didn't cascade from a roof, they'd have succeeded.
Yes, Bartista had someone in charge of a senior citizens auxiliary, and he'd also been called up. Heero sneaked up close and personal to the geriatric general, and lodged a silent shell in his brain. From only twenty meters, the assassin didn't bother with the silencer, instead firing the communist bloc "silent ammo," a conventional bullet with a sound-dampening piston inside. The gun only made a soft click, and no one ever saw the lugar, for he'd wrapped it with his hand cast.
President McKinley was killed this way.
Heero dipped a detonation charge into the gas tank of the next target's car. The K9 unit's leader exploded while turning the ignition.
The adult supervisor for the called-up crosswalk guard died the same way the senior citizens auxiliary leader did, while running a checkpoint at a crosswalk.
Heero scratched several others off the list before reentering the home that afternoon.
Switzerland
Director Une and President Murphy arrived at the helicopter pad of Preventer Headquarters in Geneva on a Whitehawk executive helicopter several hours after the doctors released Une from the hospital.
Trowa, Cathy, Quatre, Dorothy, Louis Noin, and Mariemea stood by the sidewalk to welcome her back to the proper home of the Preventer Director. Hard helmeted Swiss cops held the press and ragtag protestors at a riot parameter within shouting distance from the chopper.
Hyperbole enriched slogans of dubious merit chased them inside the cavernous office structure, but nobody in the troop felt that they were in retreat. They'd faced true enemies, and most were either dead or in jail, awaiting sentencing. Confetti littered the halls the moment Une walked through. More joyous signs demanded reading. This demonstration seemed more a gala, and for good reason.
Auda compared wounds with Une, and showed everyone else the sources of his purple hearts. This reminded most of the staff to pipe down and return to work.
Columbia's upsurge in violence announced media attention from the hall TV. They watched.
"I almost feel robbed of my victory, not having Somalia's success aired, but if Heero succeeds over there, than it's worth it," mused Quatre, generating a tide of agreements.
"I never thought we'd change the world so fast, that we'd have our achievements competing for airtime," Une commented.
"We may consider this our month of miracles, but we won't see it that way if things go wrong this Christmas," opined Trowa, "what did I say?"
Cuba
Zechs washed off all the massage oils, the lotions, every other crazy thing Noin had entreated for him to bestow over her physique. The pleasure provoked by these items seemed proportional to the lush capital required of those bottles, but the auditors will burst veins at seeing the expense. The Count didn't care. The time here left him with the vigor to slay a ream of Gemini's. Miser had Epyon set for daring deeds, and Talgeese up for outlandish escapades.
Havana had done him rapture, and a hankering for a return voyage on the following Thanksgiving, or an alternate a nearer date.
Wasn't this supposed to be disastrous? Catastrophe isn't the way of cunning men. Chew on those words, and rekindle to mind the Zechs Marquise of legend, and the exploits of his still young career. Does he ever walk through fire even singed? No, place your faith where Treize placed his, imbecile.
Columbia
"The power's been out all day, but then, when you walk around the house, everything comes back on!"
Two girls worshiped at Heero Yuy's feet, both "tens" to his judgmental eyes.
"I can do anything, or so people tell me. Actually, I constructed a Faraday Cage around the house, thus shielding the appliances from an EMP bomb I detonated today. For the shielding to work, I had to cut everything off from external cables. Once I arrived, I plugged the items in, and activated the generator in the basement. You didn't spot me down there?"
Their eyes read blank. He'd arranged every strange phenomenon by himself? He really can do anything!
He entered the home, and viewed news feeds from around the world. Bartista fighters held on to redoubts of piled earth against the Republic's determined entrance into the suburban cityscape of Bogotá. Caballero's forces exploited full spectrum obscurants, painting gothic scenes through the television. Tracers, willey-petes, laser illumination, muzzle flashpoints, and epigrammatic combustions lit a dark hamlet, strewn by the shaping of a joint exercise called war.
Like plowed fields, smoke trails transposed cirrus grids over an armada of apparition colored helicopters with knight-clad infantry fast-roping down. Armored cars and tanks raced along the flanks of IFVs, LAVs, APCs, and Armored Reconnaissance Wagons, for battened down hard targets already immolated by jellied flames doused on them from airborne gunships, themselves braving sudden and common death.
"In Bartista's quest to prevent Caballero from joining with ESUN in Panama, he'd committed too many assets to Medillin, and left Bogota in a skeletal state. Now, if he attempts recouping Bogota, a city vital for his vie for legitimacy, he risks interdicting that link with Panama. I sense we're knocking on the end game."
Kenya
WuFei's hunch had proven true. The remaining African forces did indeed rest in barracks nestled deep within the Cliffside of this parched arroyo. They'd fought to the last man, the last crate of shoulder-fired rocket, Molotov, the other high gauge futility, but the gundanium tanks plowed on. Some of the heaviest man-portable rockets, actually meant as individually fired artillery rockets, rattled the lead tank significantly.
WuFei descended into the bowls of his vehicle just as one of these stranded the minigun turret from the parent. Another destructive tool orphaned the infrared sensor. They buggered the mortar. They dipped nearly to the floor as holes in the rubber skirt gaped wider. The filtration unit scrubbed out smoke, and moving parts gradually bit together, increasing mechanical noise.
WuFei ascended right back up, mounted a Belgian MAG chaingun, and seeded the enemy generously. The main gun swathed at them with HE ammunition, and bored kinetic rounds deep inside the cliff face structures. RPGs and LAWs lanced about at the highest possible frequency.
They hassled the tanks to the brink of exhaustion, but the tank squad didn't bend. Neither did the Africans, they just ran out of stock.
"Duo, our tanks are trashed. Yeah, we met the enemy, and they perished where we met. We need EVAC, right now, and the LZ will be hotter than Dante's finale."
The ambush in depth had redeployed in a ring around the tank squadron, biting in. Eight-ton trucks cradled 105mm Leo machine guns, full sized rocket artillery pitted their position, and rifled artillery guns punctuated the hellfire. WuFei ordered his infantry to dismount and meet the enemy on higher ground, while the tank elevated their main guns for a measure of support.
As much as he loathed admitting it, he'd gotten stuck in the lion's den.
Major Sally landed with an international force of tenderfoot Djibouti and Somali militia, all itching to make the show of force the doctor had asked of them.
The helicopter skids touched down behind those exposed improvised artillery pieces, mistakenly unescorted by protective infantry. Clearly, they didn't count on a heliborne force to outmaneuver them. Salvos of 2.75 inch hydra rockets backed up SAW door gunners hanging from the helicopters. Guns and feeding wagons billowed combustive flames to the level of oaks, and the militiamen stuck to the bargain, lining up no farther than 200 meters from the enemy, and volleying drum barrels of Kalishnikov ammunition at the enemy's rear, thoroughly routing them.
The helicopters overhead risks strafing runs, promoting the tumult. Then, once their assault rifles dryly clicked empty, the men took Sally at her pledge that she'd "only ask of you to eject your magazines at the enemy, then I'll take you into town for a night of carousing!"
Carolina's Daniel Morgan (remember Mel Gibson's The Patriot?) couldn't have cut a better bargain with militia.
WuFei expressed his gratitude by casting an expression of reticent appreciation.
