24
"Are you serious!?" Her man demanded strongly, his good hand clenched into a fist while his sling trembled the faintest of hot incredulity. "Are you fucking with us, Hershel!? ARE YOU!? Oh--you'd better be fucking with us!"
Hershel had already arrived. Tara could easily tell by the heated altercation, a lopsided shouting match on who could lift their voice the highest. It was landslide for her man. The tanned Barbie didn't bother to compete. It was ironic, to say the least.
"No..." that accent had forced itself off the walls; it was so faint. Her bowed face hidden by the blonde tresses, her arms loose behind her back, and hands in a weak grip like a child scolded. "I'm not yanking your chain, Mr. Bin-Mok. Everything I told you is true. I figured it would be better if it came from me first, before you found it out yourself."
Interesting how the dyad worked, it was. Regardless of what the team had done, whether good or bad, she came around seemingly with nothing but bad news, more or less. Truth really does hurt, it sure did. But whom it unnerved exactly always came into question.
It wasn't going to be her, which was for sure. She kneeled on the floor in Robin's room, where her man shooed her away the second Hershel's legs carried her inside the apartment. The carpet was burning her knees though she didn't move. She dared not move. A sudden shift, a twist at the waist could send her toppling, stretching that little sliver between the door and its frame too wide.
"What difference does it make, Hershel?" Yune asked. "Regardless who it came from, it doesn't change the fact it happened and your guys did nothing. In fact, you helped it!"
"We didn't foresee this, obviously!" The Barbie propped her head back up on her neck. "We thought it would help us, insure our survival for a few more years--a decade at most. By fighting fire with fire, it should have curved terrorism to nonexistence!"
"This is war!" Yune exclaimed. "Not an oil fire! With his tenacity, you'll be lucky the whole east hemisphere doesn't come down on all you!"
"Then what the hell are we supposed to do?" the Barbie folded her arms hastily. "No one listens to us! They condemn us for every initiative we take, malignant and benign. We were lucky to get out of this whole fence situation unscathed. And if they're not going to listen to what we have to say, then by God--we're going to give them someone they are going to listen to!"
"Even if it means the lives of innocent people!?" Yune demanded. "Tell me!"
"A couple lives lost maybe acceptable by IDF standards," she growled, "but make no mistake, Bin-Mok..."
"What?"
"There are no levels of bloodshed we cannot cope with." She sneered. "Not just for me, but for this country's way of life. We will sacrifice anyone to protect this country, even if it means hiring a bloodthirsty banshee like--!"
"Of course," Yune said lightly, ironically, "till this banshee went AWOL, kept everything you've ever given to himself and his gang of thugs!"
"I know...!" she frowned. "I should have--"
"You should have trusted him as much as the PLO!" Yune said strongly. "-That's- what you should have done!"
"Yeah...."
"Tara...?" Ron called quieted--and a dark body slipped into her view, right in front of that crack--
She yipped, the solid door banging into her knees. Her center of gravity jolted, her waist thrown into a crook at the right, and the ceiling swept down before her. It rattled as she felt the carpet scrape at her backside.
"Ah---oomph-!"
"Tara?" Ron loomed over her, tall just like her man as he bent at the knees. He looked down upon her with a kink in one of his dark brows. "What are you doing on the floor?"
"Oh--Ron!" she rolled onto her belly, pushing her self off the scratchy carpet. One of her knees scraped the carpet back, her weight forced through her leg as she swept her other leg past it. Her foot flexed under duress from her pump, but she managed to push herself to her angled feet, wobbling a bit.
"What?" he blinked.
"You--Ron!" she huffed, resorting to the backs of her hands for the sake of her black skirt. "I got lint all over my skirt!"
"Hey--I'm not the one who told you to sit on the floor!" Ron flashed her his palms. "I actually use furniture, like a chair--or even that bed! And it's a heck of a lot more comfortable than this Stain-Master carpet!"
"Yeah!" his furless-ball seconded.
"Point taken." She dismissed. "Now, you wanted to say something?"
"Yes I do, actually." He nodded.
"And?"
Ron's expression was typical; a perplexing bewilderment as though it had came falling out of the wild, blue yonder. He shrugged at her, brown eyes darting aimlessly.
"And what?" he threw it back.
"What did you want to tell me?" His shins ached for a swift, snap kick, square on the bone.
He shrugged again. "Well--I don't know!"
"That's it!?" she frowned.
"Yeah...!" he threw his hands in the air, flustered. "I forgot!"
"Ron!" she sighed. "Next time, think it through! Now, I'd like to know what's going on out there!"
"Oh those two?" he said. "They're just talking over something really loudly!"
"I suspected as much." She crossed her arms. "Do you know what though?"
"Nope." He shrugged. "I just walked in a minute ago. Apparently, someone has annoyed someone else. That much, I know. Other than that...."
"Great...."
"Tara." Yune called. "You can come out now. The shouting match is over. It's safe."
"I should hope so!" she let her arms drop to her sides. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Ron."
She brushed past Ron, through that space between his trunk and the doorframe, and out the room. Yune and the agent stood before her in the large, spacious room, their arms folded tightly, angled away from each other, off in their own trains of thought on the bumpy rails of their minds. Her man stood firm, his resolve set in stone as much as his tight face. Hershel wobbled on the carpet, her legs quivering more than what the heels on her feet did to them.
"Yune." She nodded. "Ms. Hershel.... So what going on? Did you guys figure something out? Do we have a next move?"
"No, T." Yune shook his head. "We don't. Besides, this... and everything we've been though, it's nothing you should have been concerned about. I'm sorry, Tara."
"Sorry for what, Yune?" the soft cushion of Robin's couch was a welcome sensation to her buns.
"For dragging you into this." He said. "If I didn't break my arm, if I didn't speed that day--!"
"Then you would have been mowed down by that 'copter, because I didn't drive." She finished. "Don't relieve the past, Yune. It's said and done. Sadie's on her last wheels, Kim's been captured, and we're up the creek without a paddle. Life sucks! But is that going to make us quit, or do we keep paddling?"
"Keep paddling, of course!" Ron answer came without solicitation.
"Yep-yep!" Rufus squeaked.
"That's what I like to hear." Hershel said weakly. "Before our little shouting match, I came to bear some gifts. I hope you're grateful for these, because it took some doing to get these from our cache. And with the US Ambassador breathing down my neck, it took an act of the Knesset for me to get here."
"New stuff?" Ron said jovially. "Groovy!"
"He--huh!" His buddy snorted. "Wait!"
"I don't know where you got that mole rat, or how you got it to talk, Ron." Hershel's cocky strength flowed generously once again, that strong timbre stilled the quivering of her legs instantly. Her arms dropped to their sides, and her firmed legs carried her to a couple of suitcases by the grand window. "Irrelevant as it is, but I do suggest you take its advice."
"Rufus is not a pet, or an -it- for that matter!" Ron rebuffed. "-He's- family!"
Rufus crowned his "dad's" rebuttal with a wet raspberry, the droplets of saliva shinning in the natural light.
"As you wish, Mr. Stoppable." The blonde dismissed. The dark pumps went pidgin-toed slightly as Hershel bent at the waist, scooping the handle of the smaller case into her palm. The case swooped to her side smoothly as her back unrolled. "And given how this little team's running low on morale and supplies, I figured you could use a shot in the arm."
"Or a kick in the ass." Yune shrugged.
"That too." Hershel carried the case over to the couch, the fabric enveloping its bottom the second the woman laid it flat on the cushion. The latches snapped flatly, the hinges creaking as tanned fingers hoisted the lid away from the latches, about 90-or-so degrees.
She blinked. The grand ceiling trained upon by the large, brass stalagmites fixed in the case, unmoved by their copper tips glinting at it pointedly. Behind them, stuck in the same foamy ground were boxes, quite a few boxes, each no bigger than a stack of several Hershey chocolate bars. Close to a hinge, right above the boxes in a hollowed, fashioned pit, sat a pistol. It looked like a strange mix between the handguns she saw back in Prague, and that huge cannon of a pistol Mr. Barkin used on Escutcheon.
"More ammo?" Ron said welcomingly, nodding approvingly as he strolled toward the other case. "And an extra gun? Boo-yah!"
"More GLASER rounds for that revolver, Ron." Hershel continued. "And Yune, I got some 9x19 rounds for your Daewoo. Since you probably need it, I packed you this pistol. Tuvia would have went with this new '-Barak-' design from IMI, but it's too new to tell really. Beneath the ammo boxes, you should find some extra magazines and speed loaders, if Tuvia ever got around to packing them."
Tanned fingers uncurled straightly, and they stabbed into the case, prying that odd little pistol out from its pit. The thumb pressed onto the grip, and she pulled the gun from the pit with ease. Tara's heart upped the pace, quickening as the woman looked at her, flipping the short slide into the palm by a twirl of the index.
"Ms. Stark." The words rang in her ears, and she swallowed. "I trust you know how to use one of these?"
"Yes." She nodded. "Yune's been teaching me."
"This is what you Americans would call a 'Baby Eagle', or even an 'Uzi Eagle'," Hershel continued, "but in Israel, we call it a Jericho. This is a Jericho 941, and this particular pistol uses .40-caliber Smith-and-Wesson ammunition. It can hold 12 rounds in the magazine, and one in the chamber. And it reloads just like any other semi-automatic pistol."
"Don't you think this .40-caliber's a little big for me?" She asked timidly. "I like the 9-milimeter myself, like Yune's gun."
"In my field experience, Ms. Stark," Hershel smirked, and she pulled a flap of business jacket away from her body, flashing the holster while the pistol mooned her, "those caliber guns may hold more, but I found the 9x19 is a really underpowered cartridge. In fact, my Beretta takes .40-caliber rounds."
"Then why do you carry one, Yune?" she asked.
"Higher capacity for the most part." He shrugged. "And I can handle myself fine when I finally run dry."
"But what about me?"
"You're too green, from what I can pick up." Hershel comment fell upon her like condescension, though she could only guess what the tanned Barbie had in mind. "Yune's belt may be black in the second-degree, but he's been tutoring you for only a few weeks now. A man like Bonnet can take you out easily, and his superior almost did -Yom Shishi-."
"Yom--what??" she quipped suspiciously, defensively.
"Friday, Tara." Ron said. "-Yom Shishi- is like Friday in Hebrew."
"Oh." She blinked. "Right."
"Guys like Bin-Mok, Stoppable, and myself can handle ourselves in CQB." The woman folded her arms. "But you're still new to it, and lack combat experience. So you'll need more stopping power than close confrontation."
"You... never seen Ron in action much," Yune's remark came out like a question, simply by that tag line, "have you?"
"HEY!" The blond and the baldy exclaimed predictably. She sniggered under her breath.
"What?" The Korean kinked his brow.
"Anyway!" the woman dismissed loudly, turning away from the couch. "I have one more gift for you guys. Do be careful with this one, please? These things are hard to get, and we don't need another one lost in the field. I haven't even told my superiors you lost the other one, and I don't want to know what they'll do."
"How do you mean, Ms. Hershel?" She asked.
The woman was at the lengthier case, her pumps pigeon-toed already as she bent at the waist, scooping that thick handle into her grip. An end of the case nearly nicked the coffee table as it swooped to her side, but the solid feet clacked on the glass top lightly at her whim.
"Let's just say that shitting bricks would be a real understatement." Hershel said over the clatter of the latches. "And the fact I got another one out of storage would pass through them like a 40-pound watermelon in the colon."
"Ouch..."
"Indeed." The woman nodded, and the case parted slowly by careful hands. Motes of dust and whatnot circled through the air, yet caught perfectly in the thick ray of the natural light. The case's half came to rest on the glass, pressing against the smoothed pane concurrently. "And that watermelon's coming out of my ass!"
Lodged in a pit of egg-carton foam, fashioned in shape not unlike its own, sat a rifle... a -big- rifle, like the one Kim huffed around that fateful Saturday. From molten steel, stamped in that same shape, lock, stock, barrel, and even that blocky thing at the muzzle. Its large magazine sat in a carved bed of foam, just below the thick barrel.
"Another Barret?" Yune asked.
"You bet!" Hershel uncurled from her hunch. "M82A3. Caught the Channel 2 news, saw how Kim took out that Apache, and thought you could use it again somehow--or somewhere, preferably. Just don't lose it. This in the wrong hands could cause us some serious problems down the road."
"Don't worry, Hershel." Ron said proudly. "The Ron Factor won't let you down! You have our word."
"Good." Hershel nodded. "If you do, this 'Ron Factor' will be a real -non-factor-!"
"Goody!" Tara quipped cheekily. "We're re-supplied! Woo-woo--yippee for us! But we need a plan. A good plan!"
"What kind of plan, Tara?" Yune challenged benignly. "Any thoughts? Anything you're kind enough to share?"
"Well...!"
"Well what?" Her man pushed. "Do you or do you not? It's not that hard a question, T."
"Well--no...!" She shook her head. "Not at all. But if Kimberly was here, she'd cook up a plan!"
"Sorry, Ms. Stark." Hershel shrugged. "But Ms. Possible isn't here."
"But--!"
"Sorry, T." Yune went along. "But Hershel's right. Kim will have to find a way to signal us, if Drazen hasn't killed her yet. Other than that, there's nothing we can do... except pray maybe."
"Talk about hurry-up-and-wait...." Ron note came deflated, crestfallen as it was in a shallow sigh.
"Indeed...."
"Well," Hershel perked her brows, "that raps up what I've came to do. If you people need anything at all, call me. I might as well apologize now for any busy signals you might receive. The United States and their whinny ambassadors are really losing their patience. Come November, I'll be very surprised if the support for Israel continues."
"What the hell do they want?" Ron asked. "Our government, I mean."
"Started with a murder of some tight-e-whitey's friend." Hershel replied. "But now I'm beginning to think that they want more than just a culprit. Maybe they want more. Maybe they took a hint from our neighbors, and they just want everything."
"Who can really say for sure?" Yune said. "It's a big schizophrenia every four years, either looking forward to the next war, looking for ways around it, or reeling back at its sight."
"Yeah." The blonde noted, her feet turning for the door, toes pointing the way as her body twisted around. "Whatever's going on overseas, we'll find out soon enough. Either way, I got to get back to the office. Take care you guys."
"Later, Hershel!" said Ron.
"I do have a first name, you know." The blonde said.
"Really?" Ron blinked. "What?"
The clacking of the blonde's heels followed her as she walked out of the door in disgust. Tara couldn't hold her sniggers in any longer.
"What??" Ron big eyes beamed a hint of fluster, darting around in those shallow pits on his face. "What'd I say?"
---
"Well--!" Kimberly twisted her face in a tight cringe, the pain swelling in her shoulder. It felt like someone planted a small tangerine straight between the bones that made up the shoulder while the very bones burned with protest. "-OH-...!"
She clasped her shoulder firmly, her teeth clenched tightly, and her knees felt wet, raw as the cement scraped them after they buckled.
"That was easy...!" she groaned. "Kind of!"
Her escape had gone as smooth as Swiss clockwork. The tension of the rope at her wrists was enough to yank her away, out from under that falling blade, when her feet slipped free. The sword had clanged harshly in the hollow room, its thin belly sinking halfway into the cement. The dark knots on the stick man had nearly popped out of his wooden face in bewilderment. That stench of an avatar had growled angrily at the blade's unsoiled clang, its roar consumed quickly by the droning of its tracks.
She had folded her legs, rearing her knees to her chest as she was supine, and she sprung to her feet. Her legs had leaped her toward one of the blade's towering rails, her hands clutching at it at the last possible moment as she flew by, and she had let her momentum carry her around. Her delight at the freak's utter surprise had been fleeting, completely gone when she had felt her locked legs recoil back into her hips, when her heels smashed into that strange, thick flesh.
Tank Man nearly fell off its little tank, but the thick, soiled tubes held fast to its decaying form at the waist. That giant, menacing talon had done the work for her, lifting the tracks off the cement by sheer impetus, hoisting the freak into the little folding table behind it. The head had snapped at her with a -crack- as its bulbous back met the table's edge, swallowed by the resounding -CLANG- of metal on the hard cement. Tank Man had let out a little groan, quieting to a soft buzzing sigh...
The stick man wasn't much of a threat. She had swerved away barely from a punch, just as she had turned around. A quick x-block had sent his next arcing up and out of the way. A thick grunt, and the bulging of his dark knots rewarded her snap kick to the groin. And a sturdy thrust kick to the reeling belly sent the stick tumbling backwards, at the foot of the wall.
Then... the adrenaline seeped out of her like her crimson from out that large, wet semi-circle at her side. The pain clawed its way back into her shoulder, burning in the joint. But she paid it only the clenching of her teeth as she hobbled to the stick.
Slick with that gel, her fingers clenched through that slicked back mat of hair, and she lifted his head with a swift yank. The stick's knots rolled in a boggle, but it was nothing that a swift slap to that bony cheek couldn't stop.
"-Ugh...! -" The stick groaned. "Shit...!"
"You're going to feel like shit in a minute!" she growled.
Out of an eye's corner, the stick's branch writhed slowly, yet deliberately and purposefully. The extremities worming towards his waist, flowing with the same purpose, towards his hip where that piece of thick, fashioned metal gleamed in the light.
"No you don't!" she exclaimed.
But the stick let out a strangled groan, as her other hand seized the branch by the wrist. It was already pierced in her mind, while her thumb tried to follow through. The switches twitched, and they folded in on themselves like a dying spider.
Velcro ripped as yanked the strap free of the holster. Stick man groaned as she simply let gravity relinquish his head from her grasp; it made a hard thump on the cement. A sweep of her hand whisked the lifeless branch away, and with a twist of the wrist, the great eagle's baby slipped free of its nest easily, into her palm.
"My gun...!" the stick groaned through the floor.
"Mine now!" She retook that mangled tuff of slicked brush. Dark knots blinked, batting in the light as she tilted his head back. "My, how quickly the tables turned! Right, stick-face?"
"-Shtup! -" He cursed bitterly.
"Don't you curse at me!" Her thumb twiddled with the gun's claw hammer. The steady clicks were rewarding, like music to her ears, and relief to her sore thumb. The muzzle and his eye got acquainted nicely a moment after.
"All right--all right!" his wooden face broke, -splintered- into a mask of pain, all at the pressure, feathering through a firm hand. "OW--! Stop! Don't kill me--OW...!"
"Why?" Her brow kinked, and she let her target's buoyancy push the muzzle away.
"You're WKD4496!" he said anxiously. "You can do anything!"
"My name is Kimberly!" she sneered.
"Kimberly Possible--right," he stuttered, "of course. You can do anything, Kim Possible. Even let scum like me live! We make deal, yes?"
"A deal!?" she growled, and she overcame the buoyancy of his skin easily. Strangled was the stick's yelp, lodged in the back of his throat, which she could easily see. "How about I cap you, quick and painless!? How do you like that for a deal!?"
"NO--NO!" the stick cried. "No, not that!"
"Here's an idea." She said. "You tell me where I can find my stuff, and maybe--just maybe--I'll let you live! How's that for a deal, stick-face?"
The stick was silent, but it wasn't anything a tad more pressure on the eyeball couldn't motivate. Another yelp lodged itself in the back of his throat.
"AH--!" He cried. "All--right, all--right! I'll tell you!"
"There's a good boy!"
"Locker room!" the stick grunted. "This floor--at the other side of the complex! Your stuff should be there--if it hasn't been moved to laundry."
The other side of the complex... the other side of the network of winding, twisting corridors to nowhere; so vast and so many it put the Escutcheon to shame. There was the direct route, which was for certain, the same ones she was hoisted along on the rotisserie stick. Nothing more than entertainment for the myriad of guards that bobbed past.
"You honestly think you can escape, 96?" the stick chuckled weakly.
The muzzle sank into that dark knot a little further.
"Possible--!" the stick grunted. "Do you...?"
"I'd have to say," she rolled her eyes, "hello...! Yeah--!"
"That's what they always said!" The stick laughed. "Every last one of them! They thought... they could actually escape!"
"What...?"
"No one ever escapes the Organ Grinder!" The stick said. "No one can outrun the Major's bullets, or his brother! No one ever does! Where do you think this mess came from?"
"Always a first time for everything." She shrugged it off. "Let me be the first to set a precedent around here."
"First Irish to get creamed?" He smirked. "I'll drink to that--!"
The stick's head snapped; her hand recoiled after she smashed the butt into his temple. Stick man was out like a light, colder than shallow breath of quieted sigh. Her knees were tender, cracking gently as she stood back up, burning sorely almost as much as her shoulder.
The heap of mangled flesh and metal let out a buzzing groan. It wouldn't be long till the freak came to, righting itself back onto its tracks, its thirst for thick crimson lusting for hers. She needed to escape, and fast.
"I need out!" her lips dragged into a smirk, her eyes rolling over the curves, the creases, and folds of olive. "And guess what, stick-face! You're going to help to me!"
---
"Come now, Mr. Drazen." Uzi sighed as the Spanish coot persisted his sugarcoated banter, pressing the issue so much that what little nerve he had felt warm and sticky, as though he fell into a cotton candy machine. "I can clearly see that you have put my merry bond to very much good use, constructing and managing this behemoth of a lair, underneath the desert's veiling sands, without an eye's blink."
"And it isn't anywhere near complete, Senor Senior." He noted. "The only thing you can truly call complete is my quarters. Even then, the plumbing's less than stellar."
"You've even captured Kim Possible." the coot remarked, awestruck still, though he couldn't have forgotten already--not this early, not after the little show in Galil's fun house. "The bane of evil's old existence, unlike her own. As tiresome as she is, I have to say that she has done more in her short time than I have done in my own. So many missed opportunities; so many a time where I could have made a dent in this world, so many times I didn't...."
"What of it?" he frowned.
"A dying wish." The Spaniard continued. "As much as she vexed me so, in the golden tradition of villainy, I must tip my hat to her."
"Dying wish?" he kinked his brow. "You're not terminally-ill, are you?"
The mat of salt-and-pepper slipped back further than what it should have, when the coot tilted his back his head, his mouth open wide as out came a laugh from the depths of his belly. What that erroneous Book of Evil taught, no less.
"Me?" the coot laughed. "Ridden to my own demise, am I? No--no, my boy! Who ever said that I would wish for that on my deathbed? I'm talking about dearly departing Kimberly Possible. And as much as the Book of Evil and I disagree with your rationale, I shouldn't deny an Irish Catholic her last rights, should I?"
"I didn't think she was a religious American." He thought briefly, passively. "Then again, there are no atheists in a foxhole... or a G's fun house, while I'm at it."
"Who am I to surmise?" the coot shrugged. "I am just--"
"A simple multibillionaire, trying to find his true path no matter what walk of life he takes." His finish came out in a deflating sigh.
"Exactly!" the geezer nodded. "Is as you say, the nail on the head! But before Junior and I take our leave, back to our fantasy island--"
His face nearly broke in laughter, his amusement blowing out his nose in a powerful snort.
Those dried orbs of blue blinked. "What?"
"Oh nothing..." His kinking brows took turns peaking, working the amusement out for all its worth. "As you were saying, back on your island... where fantasies come true...."
"You young people and your jokes!" The coot dismissed. "But as I was saying, before Junior and I go home, I must know what else you are planning to buy or upgrade. After all, it is my euros that are going to work for you, Major Drazen."
"Euros over there," he cleared his throat, "shekels over here."
"Of course." The geezer nodded, that mat slipping down that loose scalp a little too much. "How forgetful am I today. But no matter what shape money takes, its master--i.e. Me--needs to know what use it's making of itself in all its forms. It's how it is said, how a fool and money are soon parted. As I have also told my son, a proper villain always follows up on his investments. Now my good Major, would you be so kind as to share what else you've been putting my money--or my -shekels-, as you Israelis say--to work?"
Uzi put his only index to his gnarled chin, rubbing at the tight folds of flesh that clung to his jaw. His only good eye took in the bright corridor purposelessly, the fluorescents reflecting of the steelwork brilliantly as though the cleaning crew had over done it with turtle wax. Not a shadow in sight; everything was out in the open.
"It's a rather long walk to the docking bay from here." He noted. "Do you truly with to know?"
The Spaniard's slack lips some how pulled into a toothy grin, slipping over the teeth with ease.
"Ah-ha!" The corridor rattled fleetingly with a sturdy tap of the cane. "I knew it! You are working on something else!"
"You got me...!" His brow perked while the corners of his lips dropped.
"Come now, Mr. Pie-man!" The coot said. "Woo me with your wares. Show this investor what else you have in store."
"Of course, Senor Senior." He nodded. "But you must promise that whatever you may see in the dock, you cannot--absolutely CANNOT--tell anyone. Not even your own son."
"Not even Junior?" the coot blinked.
"Not even him--!" He shook his head--and felt gravity suddenly take hold of the razors stuck in his skull. It seized control of his combat load, and wanted to steal it away for itself. The hinge of his peg creaked, its clang ringing harshly through out the room as he was forced to take a knee. "OH!"
"Major Drazen!" the coot gasped. "My word, are you alright?"
"I'm fine...!" he groaned, his hand going for the pocket on his chest. The olive button fell to the ground, rolling on its side in a small semi-circle just before it toppled. "For the most part, anyway--! I just need my shot!"
"Young man," Senior said sternly, "you are in no need of some mysterious magic tab."
"Yes--!" he grunted. His favorite giant of Gath slipped smoothly out the pocket, its thin cap sliding between his lips. The giant's ominous spear glinted menacingly in the light as its sheath joined with the button on the floor. "I--am!"
He took in a quick breath, keeping it from his lungs as it swelled within his tightening throat. With a mighty grunt, Goliath drove his mighty spear deep within the meat of his good leg. The giant's mighty strength trickled into his body; he could feel it flow all the way throughout. The weight just... floated away into nothing.
He kept the air from his lungs no longer, and he gently wiggled the thin spear out of him as if it were a stinger. He let out a sigh and let the hinge of his peg lock as he pushed himself to his feet.
"Feel better?" the geezer said formally. "Must you put yourself through this drama everyday? Believe me, young Major, your s-curve will be the bane for the rest of your days if you keep hauling that machine gun everywhere you go."
"I feel so much better...!" his quip tasted bittersweet. "Thank you so much for asking."
"Does this happen often?"
"Yeah..." he rubbed at his leg, "at least a few times a day. But now it's becoming more frequent."
"Drug tolerance will do that." Senior noted.
"Predictable, yes, but not without its share of sudden surprise." He replied. "I should really see the Doc sometime. But if you want to see my latest project, I suggest we hurry. Your private jet leaves in a short while, yes?"
"It just landed in Elat." The coot nodded--and Uzi felt his lungs work a little easier just at the words. "I hope you have someone to take us the airport."
"I'll put you on our fastest transport." He said. "But come now. The wise king waits for no stragglers."
"King?"
"You'll see." He said. "I heard he's almost finished too. Consider this an honor, Senor Senior. No civilian has ever been able to the king before. You should feel proud."
The Spaniard blinked incredulously, the loose face twisted in perplexity as though he had lost his mind. He paid it no mind, and he swept his hand gracefully away, toward the impending junction. He smirked.
"Come...."