6
"Okay!" Kim overheard the goofy blond joking with the other blonde and the Asian who sat at the glass round table. The two had joined them for a quick breakfast, courtesy of room service, before the day's work ensued. "I'm telling you this is a conspiracy--a *real* conspiracy!
"Here's the deal: Phil Donahue and Sarah Jessie Raphael are both old; they wear glasses, and they both host a talk show. So logically speaking: Phil Donahue and Sarah Jessie Raphael are the same person!"
Hysterical laughter cried out from the table, blending together in a howling discord as she joined in from the couch. Hard and metallic objects clattered momentarily, and she glanced over to see a mat of wavy blonde hair had spilled onto the table, the girl's shoulders shaking uncontrollably as she laughed. The Korean's cheeks were puffed, and his amusement came out in lengthy, drawn out snorts as he sat back.
Ron looked hurt, which only fueled her amusement. "What?" he exclaimed. "It's true!"
"So all they have to do is switch wigs and glasses?" the blonde cocked her head up, her chin resting on the tabletop while her fingers worked the loose strands of hair out of her face. The girl sat up, her small back pressing into the chair and sliding down as she slouched. "You're crazy, Ron."
"It's up there with that oh-so 'edgy expose' you did on math, Ron." Kim grinned playfully as the blond shot her a broken look.
"But that was one of my best works!" the boy's mud eyes were wide as saucers.
"Pf--so *not* the drama!" her eyes rolled, her legs crossing as she shifted her body around. "I swear you take things too seriously!"
"I don't hear any choppers humming outside our windows, Ron." The Korean chimed in, a sarcastic smirk played across his thin lips. "So I guess we're safe."
"Oh--leave me alone!" there was a *thump* and short-lived clatter as the messy blond head fell onto the table.
"YEAH.!" that little rodent squeaked out from his pocket burrow. Her eyes took a trip around her sockets while a sigh escaped through her parted lips.
*BEEP--BEEP--BEEP--EEP. *
Her hands instantly darted for the bag that sat at the foot of the couch--seemingly instinctively prowling for the bulky PDA that laid somewhere within the darkness of the bag. Like pincers, her fingers latched onto the device the second a pad of a finger ran across its coarse surface. The bag ruffled as she relinquished her PDA into the chilled air, thumbing the oval, red button in the midst of another four-note bleat.
"Hey Wade." She said as the static snow dissipated around his flabby, brown face like thin smoke. "What's the stich?"
Another sigh escaped her mouth as the child let out a yawn. "Be grateful that I started the day at midnight." The words came at the end of his yawn, hollowing the volume out till the very end.
"That important?" she said.
"Yeah." The boy's head dropped, his double chin flattening out before he lifted his head back up. "As you can see.aw.ah! I've spent all night trying to get the Kimmunicator's satellite over Czech airspace without the local military launching an ASAT, clearing it through the necessary channels and such."
"Great." She nodded. "And?"
"Since the guys at the Czech intelligence services. or whatever they're called--"
"Whatever they're called?" she grinned. "That doesn't sound like what a genius should say."
The boy sleepily frowned. "*Anyway*. Since the 'BIS' guys have heard of you and are well impressed with your successful endeavors, they were happy to let the satellite in. And just in time too, since it caught an image of a certain someone I'd think you'd be interested in."
She cocked an eyebrow though her heart skipped a beat. Ten-to-one it was probably a case of mistaken identity. "Mr. Bonnet?" she said skeptically.
"The very same." She blinked as the boy blipped off the tiny screen, only to be replaced with a high-resolution, screen-in-screen image of a birds-eye-view of the Andel City complex. The smaller screen displayed a simple picture of a guy's head, capped with an oversized curly top. "The satellite followed him as he took a bus--the 167, I believe from the Andel station. The facial image your are seeing is when he got off of the bus at the Na Homolce hospital."
"So?" she kicked up her legs onto the couch, sliding down its length so her heels dangled over the edge of the armrest. Her free arm swooped underneath her head and swept out the stretched hair. "That could have been anyone."
"That's what I thought," the boy continued, a bit more energetically, "but something told to me watch him closely. But after an hour after he disappeared into the building, I was about to call it a night when something clicked in my mind."
"What's that?"
"Earlier that day, your mother and mine talked for a while on the phone, and I happened to walk downstairs when my mother mentioned something about an experimental computer system your mother was advising on."
"Huh?" she blinked, and then it hit her like a pie in the face. Since before she left for the STS, her mother had been droning on about her latest project involving some newly-grads from MIT. It had something to do with managing the body's production of necessary fluids through a microcomputer planted in the hindbrain. "Oh--! You mean that fluid management system?"
"Exactly!" the black child nodded. "Seems your mother and the MIT squad had finished working out the kinks, and shipped out the first one to Na Homolce a few days prior to your arrival. Kim, didn't you say that Uzi character suffered a head injury?"
"There's no way he could have survived that!" she shook her head furiously.
"Oh come on, Kim." The boy shook his head gently. "If you could survive the spinning whisks of a giant mixer, then there's no reason why he couldn't have taken a blade to the head."
"But--" she closed her eyes as that gory scene played out in her mind like it was on tape: the sheets of blood, the way the metal rang out as the giant blade smashed into his crown, and that severed limb went flying like she and Hershel did for the Osprey. "No! I saw the blood! He's dead!"
"I still think you and Mr. Head should check it out." The boy almost laughed as the words left his droopy mouth. A humored snort flared out her nostrils. "Most likely it'll pan out into nothing."
"But there's still a chance." She nodded. "But it doesn't make sense. What would he be doing here? Even if he somehow did survive, he should be in Israel, right?"
"Excuse me?" that thickly accented voice of Yune entered her ears. Her free hand cupped over the top of the sofa's back, and she hoisted herself up. The Korean had a kink on his brow. "I couldn't help but overhear."
"Well isn't Uzi Israeli?" she asked. "I mean--look at his name!"
"What are you talking about?" the legal adult asked. "He's Czech!"
Her back seemed to straighten out on its own, and she sat up fully. A cold chill ran down her back, starting from her neck down to her tailbone. "What did you say?"
"He's Czech." The Asian folded his arms across his chest. "A wizard with heavy arms and at Krav Maga as you probably saw."
"What the heck are you talking about, Yune?" the blond boy lifted his head off of the tabletop. "I heard the boy cuss after the Harrier crashed, it was Yiddish."
"That doesn't mean a whole lot, given he's Jewish like you." Yune said. There was a pregnant silence after those words; she could see it in Ron's eyes. "I heard him use that Germanic Hebrew too, typically when something under his control gets ugly."
"The only thing I know is that his parents' divorce was a 'purple' one." Tara had her chin resting on her weakly folded arms in front of her, the top half of her chest pressing onto the tabletop.
She could see every one had their eyebrows cocked except for the blonde's.
"What?" the girl's eyes darted between the faces.
"Purple Divorce?" Ron said rhetorically. "I knew people got a little blue and even green under the gills when a divorce happens, but not purple."
"Purple, Velvet!" the girl threw up her hands. "Do I really care that much?"
"Velvet Divorce?" the Asian said. "Oh--1993! The split happened just before Uzi joined his father's outfit. He spent a little time in Yugoslavia just before Col. Drazen found him, but he was only eight years old at the time. But boy did he become a piece of work under his father's wings."
"That does it--!" She nearly tripped when her socked feet slipped and slid dangerously atop her duffle bag, standing up with her feet planted firmly on the carpet after she kicked the bag away. "Thanks for the info, Wade. Get some sleep."
"Will do, Kim--" the youth was cut off in mid-sentence as she pressed her thumb on the button. She pocked the PDA, feeling it tug at her pink flares like a child aching for the attention of his mother.
"Ron, get ready to leave." She bent over the coffee table in front of her and scooped up the keys that sat at the opposite side. Her index finger quickly filed out the ignition key in the metal mess that lay on her palm. The clammy, greasy feeling of keys, she hated it.
"Right, KP." The chair screech on the tile as he pushed away from the glass top table.
"Oh--!" she smirked teasingly. "And Ron?"
"Yeah Kim?" the boy replied.
"I'm driving this time."
The dark irises moved in sync with the shifting of his whites as he let out an exasperated sigh. "Ugh. whatever." He said weakly.
***
Ron smirked inwardly as the small car eased to a stop behind a departing city bus. It took Kim a while to find the right street by herself, her direction suffering from the same mishmash of ill-named streets. The simple fact that she never set foot into a right-handed car didn't help her either. But it all came crystal clear to her when Wade pointed out that the boxy, chocolate colored building they saw out the corners from time to time was the Na Homolce, sitting parallel to a street that he couldn't begin to pronounce.
Kim worked the shifter into park on the steering column, and the car dared to jerk forward an inch the second she removed her shoe from the brake. There was a hollow click, and the seat belt whirred as it drew across her chest, the buckle clacking as it tapped on the wall.
"So this is it, huh?" she thought aloud, and he could see only her fluffy auburn mane when her head turned for the window. "Doesn't look too out of place, except that strange dark and white scheme the painter had going."
"Does everything have to be in season with you, Kim?" he chuckled briefly. "If it isn't on the Style File, than it shouldn't be allowed to live, right?"
"Pf--" the auburn whipped her mane around behind him, her face with a kink her brow and a sardonic glint in her emerald eyes. "Do you think I'm Monique all of the sudden? I'm *so* not anal about fashion like she is."
"Hey!" he threw up his hands in defense. "I'm riding shotgun with the fashion queen!"
"I'm--NOT--the--fashion queen!" she exclaimed. "Now focus, Mr. Head!"
As the word left her mouth, he shook the part in question. "I'll never understand that name." He dismissed.
The friend paid the quip no attention as she angled her back under the steering column for a moment. He noticed a simple, generic pair of binoculars pinched in an average grasp as she moved her body back out. Her other hand moved blindly for the door, her fingers working the window button, and the glass pane seemingly let out a deep hum as it gradually disappeared into the door.
--She gasped as that mane of full, dark orange hair greeted him again. From the sliver of mirror his eyes could catch, Kim's eyes were wide and full of terror.
His heart jumped, nearly stopping as he angled his body closer to her back. "What's wrong?" he asked seriously.
He caught a face full of that mane as it slapped him, as Kim worked the hair behind her for the second time, her eyes beaming nothing of what he caught a moment before. "Thought I saw a zit." She said flatly. "False alarm!"
The mane greeted him for the third time, and he nearly hacked as a few invisible strands worked their way into his nose. He pushed himself away from the driver's seat, and his fingers poked wildly on his tongue as they quested for those elusive threads.
"Hmm--hmm yuck!" his little buddy chimed from his pocket. He looked to see the little guy tug crazily at his pants, cringing slightly as his little claws threatened to puncture the meat of his legs. The rat stood upon its hind legs like a prairie dog on his lap, nodding quickly as it let out a few more squeaks.
"Yeah!" Ron said. "Get those claws of yours trimmed, will you?"
"Hmm.!" the pink brow wrinkled and his little gaze narrowed as his head sank between his shoulders.
"Apache. Longbow--I think!" the mane pressed against the squeaky seat. On her face, her eyes were closed and her full lips were pressed into a thin line. "Ron," she turned to him, "do you wonder why an Israeli gunship is here?"
"If I recall, KP," he cocked an eyebrow, "the Apache's an American design."
"True." She nodded. "But I don't recall seeing an American version boasting that paint job or that six-pointed star either. Someone important is definitely here, and we're going to find out."
The girl blindly operated the door handle, muscles tensing briefly as she pulled it all the way. The door popped, creaking open wide like an old rusty gate. She managed to swing a pink leg outside just as he cupped a hand onto her clothed shoulder.
"Where the heck do we begin?" Ron asked. "This place is huge! And I heard their neuroprogram makes up the bulk of the hospital."
"Uzi has a head serious head injury, Ron." She explained as she shrugged off his hand. "Their neurosurgery department has 61 beds in total, 20 of them devoted to intensive care. His body should be in one of them unless the staff moved it to the morgue already."
"Hmm--yuck! Morgue!" the rat squeaked out, across his loveable features played one of sheer disgust.
"Hopefully, it won't come down to that." He heard faintly as her body unfolded from the cabin. She turned on her heels, and he could see her waist bend before her head popped in through the door. "Ron, I'd like you and Rufus to watch the. the." her eyes looked away in fleeting thought, "what's this thing again?"
"Skoda." He nodded.
"Right." her emerald eyes rolled, and she dropped the binoculars onto the seat. They bounced once upon the warm seat, slowly sliding down the cushion to the back where it stopped. "You two watch the 'Skoda' while I check this out. Okay?"
"Will do, KP." He nodded again, so did Rufus. The rat looked rather cute as he smiled, a pure Stoppable trait if he didn't know different. "And hurry up! I heard it's about lunch time at the nearby Bueno Nacho!"
He and his son shared a laugh as her green eyes took a second lap around her sockets, shutting the door as they neared the finish point. His hands gave his son a gentle squeeze around where his waist would be, as Kim's lovely pink figure shrank in the distance only to disappear though the tinted doors. or were they simple glass in front of a darkened lobby. He couldn't be sure.
"That never gets old, does it buddy?" he felt his smile reach his ears.
"He--huh--yeah!" his son agreed.
***
Shia yawned as his eyes gazed upon the seemingly lifeless body of his friend. He simply laid there, flat upon the hospital bed with the closest hand pressed flat against the mattress. His glassy eye gazing blankly at the ceiling tiles, seemingly studding the surface spotted with tiny holes of various shapes and sizes. His mouth moved flawlessly as ever, only moving after he was spoken to.
Though the friend lay there like a lump on a dead piece of wood, he was grateful to see the guy's blanketed chest rise and fall as it did a few days ago... most of it anyway. If it weren't for the guy, he'd still be back in France and taking out the bitter aggression on the Muslim saps or the many faceless bigots that dared to even touch a synagogue the wrong way. Indifferently, the guy had cut him a deal just before the treacherous French government popped his violent bubble.
"As you can see, I brought you your stuff." his arm swept over the guy's personal affects as if they were on display. Two dangled carelessly by their slings, hooked on the back of the nearby swivel chair and the others depressed the gray cushion as they sat. "Even that disk you always carry around. It took like forever just to sneak them past the staff. Thank God for trench-coats, yeah?"
"Whoopee.." The guy mumbled out. He could see his eyes rolling--err-- what was left of his eyes. The hazel-green eye on the right was still intact, but the left he wasn't sure was rolling at all. A simple orb of white gazed at him blindly, its shifting milky surface moving in sync with the right. "Forgive me if I don't jump for frigging joy. Head injury, you know."
"Um. yeah!" the words stumbled out of his mouth as if he had a bottle beforehand. "Come on now, sir. It's not as bad as you think! Really-- it's not!"
"Tell that to the surgery team.." The guy said flatly. Whether he was talking naturally or not, he couldn't be sure. In fact, no one in the VSA could be sure if he was happy or not, but surely the times when the guy lost his cool were discernable. "My--*barbers*, if you will."
"You'll be fine, sir!" he grinned. "Just like before! I don't know how that wench of yours caught on to us--"
"Maybe 'cause you blew up a plane, ass!" the friend moaned. "Did that little *something* cross your mind yet?"
He tore his gaze away quickly. "Oh.!"
"Oh--OH!?" the friend yelled. "I get a closer shave than what I ever wanted, and all you can say is 'oh'!? My sense of smell's gone! My sense of feeling's gone! Hell--we were lucky that damn Osprey didn't take my head clean off!"
"Sir I--"
"I just wanted to some parts for my brother!" The friend grumbled loudly, angrily. His head moved in slow circles on the pillow, the jagged chunks of raw metal jutting out scratching at the cloth. "Just parts, nothing special--nothing flamboyant! And the next thing I know, I find you causing havoc and mayhem with a damn rock-'em, sock-'em robot to show for it!"
"Sir, that was nothing more than a distraction." He said flatly. "No one got hurt! Surely, there were a few injuries but nothing mortal."
"*Oy*.!" Growled the friend.
"You wanted parts, and I got parts!" he threw up his hands. "Besides, I left the guys back at Middleton one of your father's old notes. It should have thrown them off for a while."
"I'm not even talking about your calling card, Shia!" the friend's "eyes" boggled. "What the heck are the guys back at the Organ Grinder going to do with that robot? I don't remember the VSA having a Robot Rumble team, do you?"
"Um--uh."
"I swear your nuts would be in a vice if Galil wasn't in critical condition!" the friend yelled.
"Yeah--and the Organ Grinder buddies can use pieces from that robot to patch him up!" he grinned nervously, and he moved his foot a step behind him for good measure. "I read it in a magazine a while back, sir. Ergonomics is the way of the future!"
"Pf--great!" those creepy eyes of his rolled again, and the pitch and the timbre of his flat voice changed dramatically like a stereotypical announcer. "The tale of my crazy brother: when he's not drenching himself in kerosene and playing the human torch, he's taken the art of prosthetics to where prosthetics have never gone before! Where man. and machine-- become one!! Give me a break!"
"Um." he snorted erratically, pushing a laugh back down his throat so persistently that he almost choked. "Is there any other business we can discuss--*hem*--sir?"
"Shia, Shia, Shia.." The twisted shards of metal crowning his shaved scalp bounced on the pillow, bobbing his head in sheer annoyance. He could have sworn he saw a little piece of fluff inch its way out of the pillow. "Where can I start? If the increasing amounts of kidnappings back home are not enough, soon that *putz* of a Prime Minister will turn over all legal control of the Temple Mount to the Palestinian Authority!"
"What??" he blinked, and a sudden rage flushed up within him. Through his gloves, he could feel his fingernails press against his palm. "That wasn't a part of the Road Map to Perdition--I--I mean Peace! What the hell's he thinking?"
"I just saw it on the news today!" the friend explained. "Mr. *Putz* thinks the age old scuffle will cease once the Muslims get their bloody little hands upon the mount--*our* mount! 'A good will gesture', he wholeheartedly dubbed it."
"Good will gesture?" he ground his teeth together. "Doesn't he mean 'good- will-hunting'?"
"And Mr. *Putz* wonders why his people formed this ragtag group." He could see that metal-capped head shake gently. "I swore his eyes boggled when the dumb ass learned that I was in charge. So we try to do our civic duty, to us. and to God. But when we try to carry it out, he sends in the wench and the Blondie to put us out of commission!"
"Uh.?" he blinked. "I thought the wench came in on her own?"
The head pulled itself up, and he could see a little flesh from his bare shoulders peek out from under the sheets. He could just barely see the kink of his eyebrow, or what was left of it through the many deep and twisted ravines that were scars.
"Pf--shut up!" he flopped his perverted head back onto the pillow. "She's probably in on the wet-work now!"
"Right--!" his teeth clenched tighter, and he felt his knees buckle and slam onto the tile on their own. His arms wrapped tightly around his gut as the pain burned its course, consuming the whole of his abdomen. "OH--!"
"It's happening again?" he could just barely hear the voice over the rattling of his medicine. He managed to relinquish a hand from his gut, and he stabbed it into his chest pocket. He ripped out the orange bottle and bit off the stubborn cap the second his fingers touched solid. The brim pushed against his lips, and he could faintly feel the small tablets pile onto his tongue.
"Yes. --ugh!" he swallowed the bunch, nearly choking on them as his body slowly--painfully worked them down. "Second time in a week! It's hard to be a chick magnet when you look like you're about to keel over! I could have sworn I had this cute German babe eating out of my palm in no time."
"Oh.!" for the first time since that accident, the friend actually chuckled. "But what about your African princess that your klezmer just can't keep their hands off of?"
"She's still mine." his fingers wrapped around the edge of the cap before he pushed himself back onto his feet. The digits easily refitted the cap, feeling it synch into place, and the pills rattled shortly while they dropped back into his chest pocket. "Regardless of what those brats down in Tel Aviv think! But when worse comes to worse, I'd like to have a back up plan."
"Shia Bonnet, big time hustler!" the guy laughed. "But have you been monitoring my Geneva account as of late? Like I asked?"
"Yes I have, good buddy." he nodded. "I gave the Senior coot the numbers, and the numbers started rolling in a moment after. As of now, you are the proud owner of 150 million Euros in gold bullion."
"Excellent!" the friend grinned. "Issue the order to the boys at Organ Grinder. After they get done fixing Galil, get them ordering the necessary equipment with the lists. The VSA is finally about to go online, and were starting with the Organ Grinder itself."
"Remodeling time--right." he nodded. "I'll get right on it. The second team is about to arrive for duty, so you don't have to worry about Ms. Wench. Isn't that right, good buddy?"
He spun on his booted heels, and he was ready to make his leave. He reached for the door, but as his fingers curled around the knob, that flat voice shattered the stillness of the hospital air; a true sign that indeed his boss has returned.
"Shia?" his boss said quietly.
He looked over his shoulder while his fingers continued to work the knob. "Yes sir?"
"Don't ever call me 'good buddy' again."
"Ugh." he sighed while he pushed the door ajar. "Yes sir!"
*He's back, all right. *
***
"Don't ever call me good buddy again." Kim's ears could just barely hear the voice as she rounded the corner, but she dragged her foot back around and pressed her back to the wall as she surely saw the door go ajar.
"Ugh." that goofy, americanized voice sighed through the parted portal. Her heart crawled its way up her throat, quickening its pace as the thought clicked in her mind. "Yes sir!"
Shia is here; she had no doubts sneaking aboard her speeding train of thought. The door shut rather quickly, not even a sound creaked out though she heard those light footsteps growing softer and softer till her ears couldn't pick them up. Her fists clenched tightly as she moved her head around the corner.
"Empty." she breathed quietly, and her body followed as she brought it around. She was in no immediate danger, but still she walked quietly for the door that she saw, touching one shoe down in front of the other by the heel and slowly letting it down at the edge. It was harder to pull off with the sheer thickness of the soles, but she quieted it down so that even a pin could be heard as if it touched the dark floor.
They let out a little screech as she shifted quickly against the wall, the steel knob less than an arm's length away. She could feel the blood rush to her face as her soft fingers wrapped around the solid handle, the hidden parts shifting and rattling quietly as she gave it a gentle twist. Her teeth pressed through her lips, and with a huff she managed to pull the heavy door open.
Her arms began a tug of war upon the door, just as she slipped through it. The knob hand tugging hard while the other pressed flat against the door, exerting a little less pressure into the action. The fire door closed quietly, her wrist working the knob so the curved bar could clear the frame with ease.
"Whew." she dragged the back of her hand across her brow, feeling the little drops spread unevenly across her crown. "That was easy." She breathed.
Denim brushed tightly upon her knees, pressing them together as she moved the right leg behind and to the left. The room spun smoothly on an axis while she spun on a heel and a ball.
*Whoa! * Her mind whispered, and her eyes grew bigger when she caught site of the nearby chair. The cushion was like a display case as a gun shop, its small pillow exhibiting weapons she had run across before: a simple, black Desert Eagle snuggled with its smaller "Baby" counterpart, partially blanketed by a lengthy curved blade: a kukri, she remembered seeing it with the Nepalese. Two UZI submachine guns hanged carelessly from their olive slings as if the chair's back was a coat rack. *Déjà vu on me. *
The blade let out a quiet *SHING* as its thin belly drew across the pistols' surface, her other hand scooping up the Desert Eagle's baby while she set the blade back down. How she remembered the gun as she gazed at its cramped shape; it was the same kind of gun she gave to Ron a month ago. back on Escutcheon.
*Uzi.* she quietly worked the slide back, taken slightly aback as she found that the barrel wasn't locked like its mother. A smear of brass caught her eyes, slowly disappearing into the chamber as she carefully worked the breach closed. Her hair patted onto her back and she locked eyes with the plastic partition.
For her target was just behind it.
***
"Ugh.!" Uzi carefully turned his neck on the severed pillow. He could feel the smooth-yet-rigid feathers brush against his cheeks, and he snuggled into the shredded texture. "When is my damn surgery?"
The surgery couldn't come soon enough; he wanted those damn pieces of scrap removed from his skull. Not there was much too look at after the blades have been removed, he could easily see his. *reflection* glinting upon the steel cart mere inches from his bed. Many girls back in Israel thought his body--his face was to die for, but surely they would turn their backs as their shallow gazes ran across the gnarled skin.
*And there's plenty of it--ugh! *
"Nurse?" he said tiredly. He was pretty sure he had heard someone come in not too long ago. In fact, a few seconds after Shia had left. It couldn't have been the American. Frenchman--or whatever the hell he was. The footsteps were too light, and the annoying squelch of the kid's combat boots was nowhere to be heard. "Nurse, is that you?"
He felt his odd lips pull into a smile, a shameless smile. "Is it time for my bath already?"
"Pf." his ears twitched, the vocal character was female but no where near mature. "So not!"
He lifted his head gently--
*Cl--cl--click. *
--Only to have something hard press into his crown, pushing harder as it forced his head back down onto the pillow awkwardly. His eyes batted open, and from the right he could see a shapely form of pink spill into his sight. what was left of it. A rather rounded head capped the form of pink like an Asian's, and from the blur filtered in the features: a button nose, luscious lips, and two deep green eyes dotting the face, enveloped by a puffy mane of auburn hair--
He never felt so angry before, and all it took was the wench holding a gun--his gun--to his mangled crown. The very same wench who had given him this mess of a body in the first place, and to think that it all started with a grapple to his throat.
"No--" she said sweetly, the kindly tone thick with venom. "Don't get up. You need your rest, especially after when I get done with you."
He lay silent, unmoving--unflinching as he stared the wench, his own personal grim reaper, down like it was nothing. A man tired of constantly being executed, and he was no exception to the unwritten rule.
"Why so silent?" she smirked. "Do you feel like Ron did when you had him just like this a month ago? It's not funny, is it?"
He rolled his eyes while his hand shifted ever so slowly for the nurse's button. A grunt moved out through his lips as the wench jammed the muzzle harder into his forehead.
"*Is it*" she grunted. His fingers angled for his hip, where he felt the little device sitting on his thigh. The pads could just brush against the plastic without the action being notice, the device mocking his advances with only little wiggles.
"Who blew up that plane, Uzi?" her lips curled into a toothy sneer, and his teeth pressed together when she laid her hand atop one of the shards. A headache wrapped tightly around his brain, a splitting headache as the girl pulled at the metal as if she wanted to pry his skull in two. "Was it you by chance? Or maybe that goofy hitman of yours, eh? Do you think I should pay him a visit, by chance?"
The wench pulled at the shard again, and he let out a long, throaty moan, arching his back. Her grip faltered and her leg moved back a step. In the mess, he managed to wrench the call button free of its nook. Out his mouth escaped another throaty moan, drowning out the click as he thumbed the switch.
"I'm asking you again, Uzi!" the auburn wench growled menacingly. "Don't expect another. Who blew that plane sky high?"
He shrugged. "I don't know what your talking about, Wench Possible!"
The auburn glared at him, and he felt the muzzle press harder into his crown, only to be lifted from his face completely.
"So we're playing fool-around, huh?" she smirked, and she touched the Jericho's muzzle to his chest, sliding it down his trunk. Her eyebrows kinked, and his teeth pressed together as the gun tapped the small shards that peppered his torso, hidden by thin layers of sheets.
Soon enough, that sadistic smile played across her lips again as she poked the muzzle a little below his groin. "I'm not!" she said. "Now tell me what I want to know, or your children will definitely feel this one!"
"Go ahead, shoot." He sighed. "No girl would want suck me off now. But I'll let you have a free sample, if you take the gun off me."
There was a little clack of metal, just as he saw her finger work back the trigger a little bit. With the little claw hammer cocked all the way back, the trigger was at its most extreme stop.
*Can't kick her off! Need a distraction! *
Brazenly, he gave the switch another push, its click hidden in his bored yawn.
"You're beginning to bore me, Possible." He said. "If you want to shoot me, then shoot me! Either way, I think Shia will have his fun with you."
His ears twitched when he heard the doorknob rattle; the wench's eyes grew big and that smug, menacing look instantly dropped.
"Mr. Drazen?" his distraction said in her native tongue. He could see that mature figure cast its shadow in the partition screen, walking for the passable corner. "Mr. Drazen, you called me?"
Predictably the wench took her eyes off of him just as the scrub-dressed woman angled her leg around the corner, the pistol (thankfully) lifted from his loins.
"Drazen, who brought you these weapons?" the mature eyes of the distraction locked with the swivel chair, lifting from it and her neck twisted the dark head towards him. The distraction's eyes grew as she caught site of the wench with the pistol in hand. "Oh my--!"
The time to act couldn't have come sooner.
"Okay!" Kim overheard the goofy blond joking with the other blonde and the Asian who sat at the glass round table. The two had joined them for a quick breakfast, courtesy of room service, before the day's work ensued. "I'm telling you this is a conspiracy--a *real* conspiracy!
"Here's the deal: Phil Donahue and Sarah Jessie Raphael are both old; they wear glasses, and they both host a talk show. So logically speaking: Phil Donahue and Sarah Jessie Raphael are the same person!"
Hysterical laughter cried out from the table, blending together in a howling discord as she joined in from the couch. Hard and metallic objects clattered momentarily, and she glanced over to see a mat of wavy blonde hair had spilled onto the table, the girl's shoulders shaking uncontrollably as she laughed. The Korean's cheeks were puffed, and his amusement came out in lengthy, drawn out snorts as he sat back.
Ron looked hurt, which only fueled her amusement. "What?" he exclaimed. "It's true!"
"So all they have to do is switch wigs and glasses?" the blonde cocked her head up, her chin resting on the tabletop while her fingers worked the loose strands of hair out of her face. The girl sat up, her small back pressing into the chair and sliding down as she slouched. "You're crazy, Ron."
"It's up there with that oh-so 'edgy expose' you did on math, Ron." Kim grinned playfully as the blond shot her a broken look.
"But that was one of my best works!" the boy's mud eyes were wide as saucers.
"Pf--so *not* the drama!" her eyes rolled, her legs crossing as she shifted her body around. "I swear you take things too seriously!"
"I don't hear any choppers humming outside our windows, Ron." The Korean chimed in, a sarcastic smirk played across his thin lips. "So I guess we're safe."
"Oh--leave me alone!" there was a *thump* and short-lived clatter as the messy blond head fell onto the table.
"YEAH.!" that little rodent squeaked out from his pocket burrow. Her eyes took a trip around her sockets while a sigh escaped through her parted lips.
*BEEP--BEEP--BEEP--EEP. *
Her hands instantly darted for the bag that sat at the foot of the couch--seemingly instinctively prowling for the bulky PDA that laid somewhere within the darkness of the bag. Like pincers, her fingers latched onto the device the second a pad of a finger ran across its coarse surface. The bag ruffled as she relinquished her PDA into the chilled air, thumbing the oval, red button in the midst of another four-note bleat.
"Hey Wade." She said as the static snow dissipated around his flabby, brown face like thin smoke. "What's the stich?"
Another sigh escaped her mouth as the child let out a yawn. "Be grateful that I started the day at midnight." The words came at the end of his yawn, hollowing the volume out till the very end.
"That important?" she said.
"Yeah." The boy's head dropped, his double chin flattening out before he lifted his head back up. "As you can see.aw.ah! I've spent all night trying to get the Kimmunicator's satellite over Czech airspace without the local military launching an ASAT, clearing it through the necessary channels and such."
"Great." She nodded. "And?"
"Since the guys at the Czech intelligence services. or whatever they're called--"
"Whatever they're called?" she grinned. "That doesn't sound like what a genius should say."
The boy sleepily frowned. "*Anyway*. Since the 'BIS' guys have heard of you and are well impressed with your successful endeavors, they were happy to let the satellite in. And just in time too, since it caught an image of a certain someone I'd think you'd be interested in."
She cocked an eyebrow though her heart skipped a beat. Ten-to-one it was probably a case of mistaken identity. "Mr. Bonnet?" she said skeptically.
"The very same." She blinked as the boy blipped off the tiny screen, only to be replaced with a high-resolution, screen-in-screen image of a birds-eye-view of the Andel City complex. The smaller screen displayed a simple picture of a guy's head, capped with an oversized curly top. "The satellite followed him as he took a bus--the 167, I believe from the Andel station. The facial image your are seeing is when he got off of the bus at the Na Homolce hospital."
"So?" she kicked up her legs onto the couch, sliding down its length so her heels dangled over the edge of the armrest. Her free arm swooped underneath her head and swept out the stretched hair. "That could have been anyone."
"That's what I thought," the boy continued, a bit more energetically, "but something told to me watch him closely. But after an hour after he disappeared into the building, I was about to call it a night when something clicked in my mind."
"What's that?"
"Earlier that day, your mother and mine talked for a while on the phone, and I happened to walk downstairs when my mother mentioned something about an experimental computer system your mother was advising on."
"Huh?" she blinked, and then it hit her like a pie in the face. Since before she left for the STS, her mother had been droning on about her latest project involving some newly-grads from MIT. It had something to do with managing the body's production of necessary fluids through a microcomputer planted in the hindbrain. "Oh--! You mean that fluid management system?"
"Exactly!" the black child nodded. "Seems your mother and the MIT squad had finished working out the kinks, and shipped out the first one to Na Homolce a few days prior to your arrival. Kim, didn't you say that Uzi character suffered a head injury?"
"There's no way he could have survived that!" she shook her head furiously.
"Oh come on, Kim." The boy shook his head gently. "If you could survive the spinning whisks of a giant mixer, then there's no reason why he couldn't have taken a blade to the head."
"But--" she closed her eyes as that gory scene played out in her mind like it was on tape: the sheets of blood, the way the metal rang out as the giant blade smashed into his crown, and that severed limb went flying like she and Hershel did for the Osprey. "No! I saw the blood! He's dead!"
"I still think you and Mr. Head should check it out." The boy almost laughed as the words left his droopy mouth. A humored snort flared out her nostrils. "Most likely it'll pan out into nothing."
"But there's still a chance." She nodded. "But it doesn't make sense. What would he be doing here? Even if he somehow did survive, he should be in Israel, right?"
"Excuse me?" that thickly accented voice of Yune entered her ears. Her free hand cupped over the top of the sofa's back, and she hoisted herself up. The Korean had a kink on his brow. "I couldn't help but overhear."
"Well isn't Uzi Israeli?" she asked. "I mean--look at his name!"
"What are you talking about?" the legal adult asked. "He's Czech!"
Her back seemed to straighten out on its own, and she sat up fully. A cold chill ran down her back, starting from her neck down to her tailbone. "What did you say?"
"He's Czech." The Asian folded his arms across his chest. "A wizard with heavy arms and at Krav Maga as you probably saw."
"What the heck are you talking about, Yune?" the blond boy lifted his head off of the tabletop. "I heard the boy cuss after the Harrier crashed, it was Yiddish."
"That doesn't mean a whole lot, given he's Jewish like you." Yune said. There was a pregnant silence after those words; she could see it in Ron's eyes. "I heard him use that Germanic Hebrew too, typically when something under his control gets ugly."
"The only thing I know is that his parents' divorce was a 'purple' one." Tara had her chin resting on her weakly folded arms in front of her, the top half of her chest pressing onto the tabletop.
She could see every one had their eyebrows cocked except for the blonde's.
"What?" the girl's eyes darted between the faces.
"Purple Divorce?" Ron said rhetorically. "I knew people got a little blue and even green under the gills when a divorce happens, but not purple."
"Purple, Velvet!" the girl threw up her hands. "Do I really care that much?"
"Velvet Divorce?" the Asian said. "Oh--1993! The split happened just before Uzi joined his father's outfit. He spent a little time in Yugoslavia just before Col. Drazen found him, but he was only eight years old at the time. But boy did he become a piece of work under his father's wings."
"That does it--!" She nearly tripped when her socked feet slipped and slid dangerously atop her duffle bag, standing up with her feet planted firmly on the carpet after she kicked the bag away. "Thanks for the info, Wade. Get some sleep."
"Will do, Kim--" the youth was cut off in mid-sentence as she pressed her thumb on the button. She pocked the PDA, feeling it tug at her pink flares like a child aching for the attention of his mother.
"Ron, get ready to leave." She bent over the coffee table in front of her and scooped up the keys that sat at the opposite side. Her index finger quickly filed out the ignition key in the metal mess that lay on her palm. The clammy, greasy feeling of keys, she hated it.
"Right, KP." The chair screech on the tile as he pushed away from the glass top table.
"Oh--!" she smirked teasingly. "And Ron?"
"Yeah Kim?" the boy replied.
"I'm driving this time."
The dark irises moved in sync with the shifting of his whites as he let out an exasperated sigh. "Ugh. whatever." He said weakly.
***
Ron smirked inwardly as the small car eased to a stop behind a departing city bus. It took Kim a while to find the right street by herself, her direction suffering from the same mishmash of ill-named streets. The simple fact that she never set foot into a right-handed car didn't help her either. But it all came crystal clear to her when Wade pointed out that the boxy, chocolate colored building they saw out the corners from time to time was the Na Homolce, sitting parallel to a street that he couldn't begin to pronounce.
Kim worked the shifter into park on the steering column, and the car dared to jerk forward an inch the second she removed her shoe from the brake. There was a hollow click, and the seat belt whirred as it drew across her chest, the buckle clacking as it tapped on the wall.
"So this is it, huh?" she thought aloud, and he could see only her fluffy auburn mane when her head turned for the window. "Doesn't look too out of place, except that strange dark and white scheme the painter had going."
"Does everything have to be in season with you, Kim?" he chuckled briefly. "If it isn't on the Style File, than it shouldn't be allowed to live, right?"
"Pf--" the auburn whipped her mane around behind him, her face with a kink her brow and a sardonic glint in her emerald eyes. "Do you think I'm Monique all of the sudden? I'm *so* not anal about fashion like she is."
"Hey!" he threw up his hands in defense. "I'm riding shotgun with the fashion queen!"
"I'm--NOT--the--fashion queen!" she exclaimed. "Now focus, Mr. Head!"
As the word left her mouth, he shook the part in question. "I'll never understand that name." He dismissed.
The friend paid the quip no attention as she angled her back under the steering column for a moment. He noticed a simple, generic pair of binoculars pinched in an average grasp as she moved her body back out. Her other hand moved blindly for the door, her fingers working the window button, and the glass pane seemingly let out a deep hum as it gradually disappeared into the door.
--She gasped as that mane of full, dark orange hair greeted him again. From the sliver of mirror his eyes could catch, Kim's eyes were wide and full of terror.
His heart jumped, nearly stopping as he angled his body closer to her back. "What's wrong?" he asked seriously.
He caught a face full of that mane as it slapped him, as Kim worked the hair behind her for the second time, her eyes beaming nothing of what he caught a moment before. "Thought I saw a zit." She said flatly. "False alarm!"
The mane greeted him for the third time, and he nearly hacked as a few invisible strands worked their way into his nose. He pushed himself away from the driver's seat, and his fingers poked wildly on his tongue as they quested for those elusive threads.
"Hmm--hmm yuck!" his little buddy chimed from his pocket. He looked to see the little guy tug crazily at his pants, cringing slightly as his little claws threatened to puncture the meat of his legs. The rat stood upon its hind legs like a prairie dog on his lap, nodding quickly as it let out a few more squeaks.
"Yeah!" Ron said. "Get those claws of yours trimmed, will you?"
"Hmm.!" the pink brow wrinkled and his little gaze narrowed as his head sank between his shoulders.
"Apache. Longbow--I think!" the mane pressed against the squeaky seat. On her face, her eyes were closed and her full lips were pressed into a thin line. "Ron," she turned to him, "do you wonder why an Israeli gunship is here?"
"If I recall, KP," he cocked an eyebrow, "the Apache's an American design."
"True." She nodded. "But I don't recall seeing an American version boasting that paint job or that six-pointed star either. Someone important is definitely here, and we're going to find out."
The girl blindly operated the door handle, muscles tensing briefly as she pulled it all the way. The door popped, creaking open wide like an old rusty gate. She managed to swing a pink leg outside just as he cupped a hand onto her clothed shoulder.
"Where the heck do we begin?" Ron asked. "This place is huge! And I heard their neuroprogram makes up the bulk of the hospital."
"Uzi has a head serious head injury, Ron." She explained as she shrugged off his hand. "Their neurosurgery department has 61 beds in total, 20 of them devoted to intensive care. His body should be in one of them unless the staff moved it to the morgue already."
"Hmm--yuck! Morgue!" the rat squeaked out, across his loveable features played one of sheer disgust.
"Hopefully, it won't come down to that." He heard faintly as her body unfolded from the cabin. She turned on her heels, and he could see her waist bend before her head popped in through the door. "Ron, I'd like you and Rufus to watch the. the." her eyes looked away in fleeting thought, "what's this thing again?"
"Skoda." He nodded.
"Right." her emerald eyes rolled, and she dropped the binoculars onto the seat. They bounced once upon the warm seat, slowly sliding down the cushion to the back where it stopped. "You two watch the 'Skoda' while I check this out. Okay?"
"Will do, KP." He nodded again, so did Rufus. The rat looked rather cute as he smiled, a pure Stoppable trait if he didn't know different. "And hurry up! I heard it's about lunch time at the nearby Bueno Nacho!"
He and his son shared a laugh as her green eyes took a second lap around her sockets, shutting the door as they neared the finish point. His hands gave his son a gentle squeeze around where his waist would be, as Kim's lovely pink figure shrank in the distance only to disappear though the tinted doors. or were they simple glass in front of a darkened lobby. He couldn't be sure.
"That never gets old, does it buddy?" he felt his smile reach his ears.
"He--huh--yeah!" his son agreed.
***
Shia yawned as his eyes gazed upon the seemingly lifeless body of his friend. He simply laid there, flat upon the hospital bed with the closest hand pressed flat against the mattress. His glassy eye gazing blankly at the ceiling tiles, seemingly studding the surface spotted with tiny holes of various shapes and sizes. His mouth moved flawlessly as ever, only moving after he was spoken to.
Though the friend lay there like a lump on a dead piece of wood, he was grateful to see the guy's blanketed chest rise and fall as it did a few days ago... most of it anyway. If it weren't for the guy, he'd still be back in France and taking out the bitter aggression on the Muslim saps or the many faceless bigots that dared to even touch a synagogue the wrong way. Indifferently, the guy had cut him a deal just before the treacherous French government popped his violent bubble.
"As you can see, I brought you your stuff." his arm swept over the guy's personal affects as if they were on display. Two dangled carelessly by their slings, hooked on the back of the nearby swivel chair and the others depressed the gray cushion as they sat. "Even that disk you always carry around. It took like forever just to sneak them past the staff. Thank God for trench-coats, yeah?"
"Whoopee.." The guy mumbled out. He could see his eyes rolling--err-- what was left of his eyes. The hazel-green eye on the right was still intact, but the left he wasn't sure was rolling at all. A simple orb of white gazed at him blindly, its shifting milky surface moving in sync with the right. "Forgive me if I don't jump for frigging joy. Head injury, you know."
"Um. yeah!" the words stumbled out of his mouth as if he had a bottle beforehand. "Come on now, sir. It's not as bad as you think! Really-- it's not!"
"Tell that to the surgery team.." The guy said flatly. Whether he was talking naturally or not, he couldn't be sure. In fact, no one in the VSA could be sure if he was happy or not, but surely the times when the guy lost his cool were discernable. "My--*barbers*, if you will."
"You'll be fine, sir!" he grinned. "Just like before! I don't know how that wench of yours caught on to us--"
"Maybe 'cause you blew up a plane, ass!" the friend moaned. "Did that little *something* cross your mind yet?"
He tore his gaze away quickly. "Oh.!"
"Oh--OH!?" the friend yelled. "I get a closer shave than what I ever wanted, and all you can say is 'oh'!? My sense of smell's gone! My sense of feeling's gone! Hell--we were lucky that damn Osprey didn't take my head clean off!"
"Sir I--"
"I just wanted to some parts for my brother!" The friend grumbled loudly, angrily. His head moved in slow circles on the pillow, the jagged chunks of raw metal jutting out scratching at the cloth. "Just parts, nothing special--nothing flamboyant! And the next thing I know, I find you causing havoc and mayhem with a damn rock-'em, sock-'em robot to show for it!"
"Sir, that was nothing more than a distraction." He said flatly. "No one got hurt! Surely, there were a few injuries but nothing mortal."
"*Oy*.!" Growled the friend.
"You wanted parts, and I got parts!" he threw up his hands. "Besides, I left the guys back at Middleton one of your father's old notes. It should have thrown them off for a while."
"I'm not even talking about your calling card, Shia!" the friend's "eyes" boggled. "What the heck are the guys back at the Organ Grinder going to do with that robot? I don't remember the VSA having a Robot Rumble team, do you?"
"Um--uh."
"I swear your nuts would be in a vice if Galil wasn't in critical condition!" the friend yelled.
"Yeah--and the Organ Grinder buddies can use pieces from that robot to patch him up!" he grinned nervously, and he moved his foot a step behind him for good measure. "I read it in a magazine a while back, sir. Ergonomics is the way of the future!"
"Pf--great!" those creepy eyes of his rolled again, and the pitch and the timbre of his flat voice changed dramatically like a stereotypical announcer. "The tale of my crazy brother: when he's not drenching himself in kerosene and playing the human torch, he's taken the art of prosthetics to where prosthetics have never gone before! Where man. and machine-- become one!! Give me a break!"
"Um." he snorted erratically, pushing a laugh back down his throat so persistently that he almost choked. "Is there any other business we can discuss--*hem*--sir?"
"Shia, Shia, Shia.." The twisted shards of metal crowning his shaved scalp bounced on the pillow, bobbing his head in sheer annoyance. He could have sworn he saw a little piece of fluff inch its way out of the pillow. "Where can I start? If the increasing amounts of kidnappings back home are not enough, soon that *putz* of a Prime Minister will turn over all legal control of the Temple Mount to the Palestinian Authority!"
"What??" he blinked, and a sudden rage flushed up within him. Through his gloves, he could feel his fingernails press against his palm. "That wasn't a part of the Road Map to Perdition--I--I mean Peace! What the hell's he thinking?"
"I just saw it on the news today!" the friend explained. "Mr. *Putz* thinks the age old scuffle will cease once the Muslims get their bloody little hands upon the mount--*our* mount! 'A good will gesture', he wholeheartedly dubbed it."
"Good will gesture?" he ground his teeth together. "Doesn't he mean 'good- will-hunting'?"
"And Mr. *Putz* wonders why his people formed this ragtag group." He could see that metal-capped head shake gently. "I swore his eyes boggled when the dumb ass learned that I was in charge. So we try to do our civic duty, to us. and to God. But when we try to carry it out, he sends in the wench and the Blondie to put us out of commission!"
"Uh.?" he blinked. "I thought the wench came in on her own?"
The head pulled itself up, and he could see a little flesh from his bare shoulders peek out from under the sheets. He could just barely see the kink of his eyebrow, or what was left of it through the many deep and twisted ravines that were scars.
"Pf--shut up!" he flopped his perverted head back onto the pillow. "She's probably in on the wet-work now!"
"Right--!" his teeth clenched tighter, and he felt his knees buckle and slam onto the tile on their own. His arms wrapped tightly around his gut as the pain burned its course, consuming the whole of his abdomen. "OH--!"
"It's happening again?" he could just barely hear the voice over the rattling of his medicine. He managed to relinquish a hand from his gut, and he stabbed it into his chest pocket. He ripped out the orange bottle and bit off the stubborn cap the second his fingers touched solid. The brim pushed against his lips, and he could faintly feel the small tablets pile onto his tongue.
"Yes. --ugh!" he swallowed the bunch, nearly choking on them as his body slowly--painfully worked them down. "Second time in a week! It's hard to be a chick magnet when you look like you're about to keel over! I could have sworn I had this cute German babe eating out of my palm in no time."
"Oh.!" for the first time since that accident, the friend actually chuckled. "But what about your African princess that your klezmer just can't keep their hands off of?"
"She's still mine." his fingers wrapped around the edge of the cap before he pushed himself back onto his feet. The digits easily refitted the cap, feeling it synch into place, and the pills rattled shortly while they dropped back into his chest pocket. "Regardless of what those brats down in Tel Aviv think! But when worse comes to worse, I'd like to have a back up plan."
"Shia Bonnet, big time hustler!" the guy laughed. "But have you been monitoring my Geneva account as of late? Like I asked?"
"Yes I have, good buddy." he nodded. "I gave the Senior coot the numbers, and the numbers started rolling in a moment after. As of now, you are the proud owner of 150 million Euros in gold bullion."
"Excellent!" the friend grinned. "Issue the order to the boys at Organ Grinder. After they get done fixing Galil, get them ordering the necessary equipment with the lists. The VSA is finally about to go online, and were starting with the Organ Grinder itself."
"Remodeling time--right." he nodded. "I'll get right on it. The second team is about to arrive for duty, so you don't have to worry about Ms. Wench. Isn't that right, good buddy?"
He spun on his booted heels, and he was ready to make his leave. He reached for the door, but as his fingers curled around the knob, that flat voice shattered the stillness of the hospital air; a true sign that indeed his boss has returned.
"Shia?" his boss said quietly.
He looked over his shoulder while his fingers continued to work the knob. "Yes sir?"
"Don't ever call me 'good buddy' again."
"Ugh." he sighed while he pushed the door ajar. "Yes sir!"
*He's back, all right. *
***
"Don't ever call me good buddy again." Kim's ears could just barely hear the voice as she rounded the corner, but she dragged her foot back around and pressed her back to the wall as she surely saw the door go ajar.
"Ugh." that goofy, americanized voice sighed through the parted portal. Her heart crawled its way up her throat, quickening its pace as the thought clicked in her mind. "Yes sir!"
Shia is here; she had no doubts sneaking aboard her speeding train of thought. The door shut rather quickly, not even a sound creaked out though she heard those light footsteps growing softer and softer till her ears couldn't pick them up. Her fists clenched tightly as she moved her head around the corner.
"Empty." she breathed quietly, and her body followed as she brought it around. She was in no immediate danger, but still she walked quietly for the door that she saw, touching one shoe down in front of the other by the heel and slowly letting it down at the edge. It was harder to pull off with the sheer thickness of the soles, but she quieted it down so that even a pin could be heard as if it touched the dark floor.
They let out a little screech as she shifted quickly against the wall, the steel knob less than an arm's length away. She could feel the blood rush to her face as her soft fingers wrapped around the solid handle, the hidden parts shifting and rattling quietly as she gave it a gentle twist. Her teeth pressed through her lips, and with a huff she managed to pull the heavy door open.
Her arms began a tug of war upon the door, just as she slipped through it. The knob hand tugging hard while the other pressed flat against the door, exerting a little less pressure into the action. The fire door closed quietly, her wrist working the knob so the curved bar could clear the frame with ease.
"Whew." she dragged the back of her hand across her brow, feeling the little drops spread unevenly across her crown. "That was easy." She breathed.
Denim brushed tightly upon her knees, pressing them together as she moved the right leg behind and to the left. The room spun smoothly on an axis while she spun on a heel and a ball.
*Whoa! * Her mind whispered, and her eyes grew bigger when she caught site of the nearby chair. The cushion was like a display case as a gun shop, its small pillow exhibiting weapons she had run across before: a simple, black Desert Eagle snuggled with its smaller "Baby" counterpart, partially blanketed by a lengthy curved blade: a kukri, she remembered seeing it with the Nepalese. Two UZI submachine guns hanged carelessly from their olive slings as if the chair's back was a coat rack. *Déjà vu on me. *
The blade let out a quiet *SHING* as its thin belly drew across the pistols' surface, her other hand scooping up the Desert Eagle's baby while she set the blade back down. How she remembered the gun as she gazed at its cramped shape; it was the same kind of gun she gave to Ron a month ago. back on Escutcheon.
*Uzi.* she quietly worked the slide back, taken slightly aback as she found that the barrel wasn't locked like its mother. A smear of brass caught her eyes, slowly disappearing into the chamber as she carefully worked the breach closed. Her hair patted onto her back and she locked eyes with the plastic partition.
For her target was just behind it.
***
"Ugh.!" Uzi carefully turned his neck on the severed pillow. He could feel the smooth-yet-rigid feathers brush against his cheeks, and he snuggled into the shredded texture. "When is my damn surgery?"
The surgery couldn't come soon enough; he wanted those damn pieces of scrap removed from his skull. Not there was much too look at after the blades have been removed, he could easily see his. *reflection* glinting upon the steel cart mere inches from his bed. Many girls back in Israel thought his body--his face was to die for, but surely they would turn their backs as their shallow gazes ran across the gnarled skin.
*And there's plenty of it--ugh! *
"Nurse?" he said tiredly. He was pretty sure he had heard someone come in not too long ago. In fact, a few seconds after Shia had left. It couldn't have been the American. Frenchman--or whatever the hell he was. The footsteps were too light, and the annoying squelch of the kid's combat boots was nowhere to be heard. "Nurse, is that you?"
He felt his odd lips pull into a smile, a shameless smile. "Is it time for my bath already?"
"Pf." his ears twitched, the vocal character was female but no where near mature. "So not!"
He lifted his head gently--
*Cl--cl--click. *
--Only to have something hard press into his crown, pushing harder as it forced his head back down onto the pillow awkwardly. His eyes batted open, and from the right he could see a shapely form of pink spill into his sight. what was left of it. A rather rounded head capped the form of pink like an Asian's, and from the blur filtered in the features: a button nose, luscious lips, and two deep green eyes dotting the face, enveloped by a puffy mane of auburn hair--
He never felt so angry before, and all it took was the wench holding a gun--his gun--to his mangled crown. The very same wench who had given him this mess of a body in the first place, and to think that it all started with a grapple to his throat.
"No--" she said sweetly, the kindly tone thick with venom. "Don't get up. You need your rest, especially after when I get done with you."
He lay silent, unmoving--unflinching as he stared the wench, his own personal grim reaper, down like it was nothing. A man tired of constantly being executed, and he was no exception to the unwritten rule.
"Why so silent?" she smirked. "Do you feel like Ron did when you had him just like this a month ago? It's not funny, is it?"
He rolled his eyes while his hand shifted ever so slowly for the nurse's button. A grunt moved out through his lips as the wench jammed the muzzle harder into his forehead.
"*Is it*" she grunted. His fingers angled for his hip, where he felt the little device sitting on his thigh. The pads could just brush against the plastic without the action being notice, the device mocking his advances with only little wiggles.
"Who blew up that plane, Uzi?" her lips curled into a toothy sneer, and his teeth pressed together when she laid her hand atop one of the shards. A headache wrapped tightly around his brain, a splitting headache as the girl pulled at the metal as if she wanted to pry his skull in two. "Was it you by chance? Or maybe that goofy hitman of yours, eh? Do you think I should pay him a visit, by chance?"
The wench pulled at the shard again, and he let out a long, throaty moan, arching his back. Her grip faltered and her leg moved back a step. In the mess, he managed to wrench the call button free of its nook. Out his mouth escaped another throaty moan, drowning out the click as he thumbed the switch.
"I'm asking you again, Uzi!" the auburn wench growled menacingly. "Don't expect another. Who blew that plane sky high?"
He shrugged. "I don't know what your talking about, Wench Possible!"
The auburn glared at him, and he felt the muzzle press harder into his crown, only to be lifted from his face completely.
"So we're playing fool-around, huh?" she smirked, and she touched the Jericho's muzzle to his chest, sliding it down his trunk. Her eyebrows kinked, and his teeth pressed together as the gun tapped the small shards that peppered his torso, hidden by thin layers of sheets.
Soon enough, that sadistic smile played across her lips again as she poked the muzzle a little below his groin. "I'm not!" she said. "Now tell me what I want to know, or your children will definitely feel this one!"
"Go ahead, shoot." He sighed. "No girl would want suck me off now. But I'll let you have a free sample, if you take the gun off me."
There was a little clack of metal, just as he saw her finger work back the trigger a little bit. With the little claw hammer cocked all the way back, the trigger was at its most extreme stop.
*Can't kick her off! Need a distraction! *
Brazenly, he gave the switch another push, its click hidden in his bored yawn.
"You're beginning to bore me, Possible." He said. "If you want to shoot me, then shoot me! Either way, I think Shia will have his fun with you."
His ears twitched when he heard the doorknob rattle; the wench's eyes grew big and that smug, menacing look instantly dropped.
"Mr. Drazen?" his distraction said in her native tongue. He could see that mature figure cast its shadow in the partition screen, walking for the passable corner. "Mr. Drazen, you called me?"
Predictably the wench took her eyes off of him just as the scrub-dressed woman angled her leg around the corner, the pistol (thankfully) lifted from his loins.
"Drazen, who brought you these weapons?" the mature eyes of the distraction locked with the swivel chair, lifting from it and her neck twisted the dark head towards him. The distraction's eyes grew as she caught site of the wench with the pistol in hand. "Oh my--!"
The time to act couldn't have come sooner.