Yup, I went to write all my peoples' review replies and bzzzzt. The site was downed like a crack addict in a rehab center. I don't know if I'll even be able to update this until tomorrow afternoon, so this update may be late. C'est la vie. (As it turns out, it is. Apologies and such.)
In other news, the Crocodile Guy just died to a stingray while filming an underwater documentary. No jokes here, he died doing what he loved and he will be missed by his family and his fans. May he rest in peace.
With somber proceedings out of the way, Chapter XX.
Makoto pounded up the stairway to the second floor, moved past his assembled gang members and their bikes, and ran to the largest window.
Outside he saw dozens of enemy gang members, all on their bikes, parked in encirclement formation around his headquarters, blocking every way in and out. In front of him, below, was the only car in sight: a convertible with a driver and two people in the back seat.
"REI!"
"Don't move, Mr. Makoto," the man sitting next to Rei said through the megaphone he held. "All it takes is for me to be unpleasantly surprised and Ms. Rei gets a bullet through her heart."
Makoto's lips pulled back from his teeth and he stared with unbridled malevolence at the man. "WHO ARE YOU?"
"My name is my own business, and not relevant to these negotiations. I am here to propose a civilized trade, Mr. Makoto."
"I'M LISTENING!"
"Certainly you recognize the value of this young woman's life. I offer her in exchange for the seditionist you are currently harboring in your subbasement. My employer's more uncouth allies will get their catharsis and you will receive your lover. Do these terms sound acceptable to you?"
"GO TO HELL!" Makoto roared, dropping into a ready stance, thumb pushing the habaki of the Kikuichi-monji out of its scabbard, readying it for a draw.
"I'd advise against this rather rash course of action, Mr. Makoto. I hold Ms. Rei's life and death in my hand, and if –"
The man didn't get a chance to finish his sentence, because that was when a monumental explosion sounded from behind him. Startled, he looked over his shoulder for the briefest moment.
Makoto didn't miss his opportunity. His eyes snapped open, his ki blossomed outwards, and he sprang from the two-story window, spirit energy cascading through him.
"SHIRANUI-RYU: SAYAKAZE!"
He drew the Kikuichi-monji in midair, releasing his hand from its scabbard at the same time, the enormous momentum of his leap and the power of the spirit energy combining to send the scabbard rocketing off of the blade into a collision course with the man holding Rei hostage.
The guy was good. His head snapped back around, his arm came up from where it had been nestling a nine-millimeter pistol against Rei's side, and he fired three times. The scabbard took all three bullets in the nose and had its course slanted sharply downwards. It punched straight through the hood of the convertible and into the coolant valve. Searing hot steam erupted in a cascading fountain, blowing right through the windshield and flash-frying the driver, not to mention filling him full of glass shrapnel.
Makoto landed heavily in a crouch on the the front two seats, slamming the convertible onto its forward wheels. Metal crunched as the suspension gave way and hydraulic fluid began pouring out of the car. Its tail end rose into the air before coming back down again with a thundering crash.
The espionage agent had been bringing his pistol back around to give Rei a radical facial when Makoto landed. He was thrown completely from the car in an arc that took him barely over the venting cloud of superheated steam roaring from the engine and then was deposited, roughly, on his back on the asphalt. A split second later he was on his feet again, pistol pointed at where Makoto had been a moment before.
Thinking quickly, the gang leader had grabbed Rei out of midair with one hand as she'd been thrown in an identical arc and then leaped up and over the tail end of the convertible, hitting the ground running, adrenaline pumping through him. Another leap took him over the outer ring of enemy bikers, who were just starting to get their asses in gear and pull their guns, and then he was relatively home free.
"SHINSENGUMI LAUNCH!" he screamed over his shoulder.
All the walls on the second floor of the Shinsengumi headquarters immediately slid down into hidden recesses beneath them, aided by gravity, clearing the way within a half-second for the Shinsengumi to rocket out and rain down on the enemy from the sky.
Dropping an entire story to hard tarmac was one hell of a feat, but every member had trained until they did it without error. Makoto ran a tight ship, and now it came lumbering out of the sky to deliver a full barrage to the unsuspecting enemy. As they flew, the Shinsengumi pulled guns and opened fire.
Before the foe could retaliate, they were on the ground, wheels screaming and then pushing them forward, and they broke through the encirclement and out into the streets, moving out to loop around and come in for more passes.
As Deman Jobs watched, his force was crumbling.
But that was what he expected.
Breathing hard, Makoto stumbled into a relatively secluded alleyway and set Rei down on her feet. A flick of the Kikuichi-monji severed the bindings on her wrists.
"Did he hurt you?" Makoto growled. "Name any one injury and I'll give him ten."
He almost dropped his sword when Rei pulled him into a fierce hug and covered his mouth with her own. Half of his mind kept an ear out for the sound of enemy approach while the other half was lost in her fiery taste.
It was a good thing only half his mind was preoccupied, because it enabled him to hear the oncoming motorcycle. Makoto disengaged from Rei, pushing her against the alleyway wall, turned, and cut the enemy off of his bike as he tried to run him over.
"I'm fine," Rei said, somewhat breathlessly. "What about you?"
"No worries, here."
"Good. What about Reno? He's the one that Jobs is here for."
Makoto's brow creased. "Jobs?"
"The man said his name was Deman Jobs. Do you recognize it?"
The gang leader replied with a shake of his head. "No, it doesn't ring any bells. It might for Reno, though… But he's supposed to be staying in the subbasement. I have a unit still on the ground floor to make sure nobody gets in."
Too late, he heard pounding footfalls on the buildings which made up the walls of the alleyway. They were only one story tall, so it was easy enough for a biker to jump off of each of them at Makoto, booted feet first. He could only cut one of them out of the air before the other got him, and he couldn't move fast enough to evade both.
At the same moment, Rei's startled cry was drowned out by the sound of tires squealing on pavement as something skidded to a halt outside of the alleyway, then all sound was eclipsed by the report of two N17B assault rifles opening up, full blast.
The bikers jumping down at Makoto didn't even have time to be surprised. They were chopped into hash by the bullets and thrown violently down the alleyway before they could look shocked. In the aftermath, Makoto and Rei both stared at the machine – more like the beast – parked facing down the alley.
It was five feet tall and seven feet long, made entirely of gleaming titanium so finely polished it seemed to be chrome. Smooth curves predominated the body, while the two wheels, each with contact pads the size of a man's head, thrust out from the silvery mass like obsidian eclipses. Protruding from two side slots in the main chassis were the barrels of the assault rifles that had killed the bikers – they were built into the frame of the machine itself, capable of being extended, aimed via a joystick on the dashboard, and fired. The ammunition chambers were two bulges in the back, parallel to the lines of the rest of the vehicle, and something that Makoto couldn't quite make out hung beneath the bottom of the bike, amidst the suspension.
Astride the beast was Rude, a third N17B slung across his back, umbrella nestled in an alcove in the side of the bike designed for a sword. He stared over the tops of his glasses at Makoto and Rei for a moment and then said, his voice very loud in the quiet following the storm, "Quit making out and get a move on."
Karsk took up position on a roof from where the Shinsengumi headquarters and the surrounding streets were easily visible. He pulled out his radio transmitter and said, "Arcturus, Ayaro, do you copy?" A pair of "roger"s squawked from the device. "Arcturus, get to the Shinsengumi roof and set up your heavy chaingun there. I've had Doysdov abandon his position and move closer to give you sniping cover. Ayaro, set up remote mines ringing the headquarters every fifteen meters. If it comes in and it's unfriendly, we need it blown up."
Instinctively, Karsk ducked when the sound of gunfire swelled nearby, and unsurprisingly Grandpa Souta did the same. The two men looked down at the street some four stories below and saw two Shattered Hand bikers roaring down it back towards the Shinsengumi headquarters, looking to catch a pair of Shinsengumi bikers in a flanking maneuver.
Rude had other thoughts. Like a silver bullet, he dropped in behind them from a side alleyway and opened up with his N17Bs. They stood about a snowball's chance in hell.
"Hopefully Reno appreciates his bike half as much as his partner," Grandpa Souta observed. He scanned the streets and said, "Rude has three incoming enemies – they've gotten a bead on him."
"Rude, three incoming," Karsk relayed.
"Roger."
Rude twisted the bike around and gunned the engine, sending it rocketing down another side street to close even with his would-be attackers. One of them swerved out of the way of his collision threat and ended up eating pavement, as well as leaving a nice red streak for at least twelve meters. Dropping in behind the second, Rude gave him a taste of the N17Bs.
The last one, knowing that trying for a ranged battle was suicide, pulled a broadsword and swerved in close.
Immediately the umbrella was in Rude's hand. He took the slash of the broadsword on the umbrella's point, spun it away so it didn't damage the implement, and riposted, catching the biker square in the chest and throwing him from his bike.
"Good show," Grandpa Souta laughed.
Deman Jobs had elbow-crawled his way to the front entrance of the Shinsengumi headquarters. He saw the bald Turk spin his way into the street around the headquarters, do a one-eighty, and blast his way back down the street he'd came from, assault rifles blazing, and decided to move.
Rising, he shot the lock off of the door and kicked it open, then immediately stepped back and reloaded as a hail of gunfire spewed out of the open doorway. A second after it quieted he whipped a flashbang out of his sleeve, pulled the pin, and tossed it inside.
It gave a loud whump and Jobs stepped inside, pistol raised. There were eleven bikers, all with weapons pointed at the door, all crouching behind various upended tables or the bar, and all of them blinded by the light from the flashbang.
Jobs shot them all in rapid succession.
Karsk saw the white flash appear through the doorway into the Shinsengumi headquarters. He didn't take much note of it until he realized that the doorway shouldn't be open at all.
"Problem," Grandpa Souta immediately said.
"I see it too." The Sub-General snapped up his binoculars and peered into the doorway, managing to discern a figure standing inside. He snapped into his radio transmitter, "Doysdov! Shinsengumi headquarters, front door, person inside! Take him!"
No response.
Karsk stared at the radio transmitter. "Doysdov!"
A pained look passing over his face, Grandpa Souta took the transmitter and binoculars from Karsk. "Go see what's happened. I'll direct Mr. Arcturus and Mr. Ayaro."
With a hasty nod of thanks, Karsk dredged up the map of the area in his mind, pinpointed where he'd had Doysdov set up, and started heading from roof to roof.
In the distance, sirens wailed.
The ammunition gauge on Rude's dashboard told him that his dual-mounted N17B rifles only had 132 rounds left to split between them – and these fired full-auto, three bullets a second, not three-round bursts. Forty-four seconds of sustained fire left.
He also had the one on his back, of course, but he only had two clips for it, and it had been modified to fire three-round bursts – not the kind of setup you wanted in a high-speed firefight on wheels. You needed to spray bullets, not ration them.
Some distance down the street he was on, Rude could see an oncoming group of bikers. All of them were armed with swords and looked intent on running him down, regardless of the cost to themselves. He could easily take them all out with his N17Bs, but he felt like doing something else.
Wheelie time.
Rude hauled his beast up onto its hind wheel, its fore wheel spinning in the air, and the module on the bottom of his bike dropped down into position. With nothing more than a small grunt of satisfaction and a faint thought that this had better not screw up, Rude hit the big red button.
The rocket-propelled grenade launcher that Grandpa Souta had grafted into the underside of Rude's motorcycle belched flame and sent an explosive warhead screaming at the group of bikers rushing at him.
Boom.
Karsk landed on the roof that Doysdov had taken position on to find a bloody mess.
His late sniping expert lay dead, blood pooling out from beneath him from multiple stab wounds to his back. Standing over him were two bikers, armed with shortswords, who were bickering over who would get the dead man's impressive high-powered sniper rifle.
Seeing red, Karsk screamed a battle cry and charged without thinking about drawing his sidearm. Of course casualties were to be expected in war, and of course he was resigned to losing soldiers, but…
He was stabbed in the back by worthless punks who are now arguing over who gets to loot his body.
Both bikers whirled and tried to defend themselves. The base of Karsk's flattened palm smashed in the first one's nose, snapping his head back and rolling his eyes up until only the whites showed. The second one tried a thrust at Karsk's head, which failed miserably. Acting on instinct, the Sub-General ducked beneath the blade even as he was withdrawing his hand from the first biker's face, twisted around beneath it, and came up, slapping the side of the blade with his firearm. The biker, riding on momentum, stumbled to the side, opening himself up to the crushing kick to his spine that Karsk delivered a moment later.
A building away, another biker, who'd been assigned roof duty by his superiors and not allowed to ride his bike, took a bead on Karsk's head. He was ripped apart before he could fire as Arcturus, stationed on the roof of the Shinsengumi headquarters, opened up with his heavy chaingun.
Deman Jobs rammed open the door into the subbasement and immediately brought his niner up to press the muzzle against Reno's temple.
Too slow. Reno had pulled his Derringer and was pointing it between Jobs' eyes, and Yuffie had produced throwing stars in both hands and was ready to throw.
"So, nice to see you again," Reno laughed. "Never got your name."
"Deman Jobs," the agent replied easily. "Ex-Turk."
"No wonder you're good. You knew Veld?"
"Knew him? He's the one who expelled me from the unit. Apparently extorting extra money from Shin-Ra clients after doing jobs for them wasn't 'professional.'"
"Shame on you, really."
Jobs struck. He let his knees fall out from under him, bringing him to the floor. Reno instinctively fired and shot nothing but air, while Jobs pulled his pistol around to get a bead on Yuffie and fired.
She saw it coming and was twisting away, but blood flew from her side before she managed to dive behind the couch. In his head, Jobs cursed; it was just a cosmetic wound, painful but not life-threatening or even incapacitating.
Reno was swearing aloud and slipping his riot prod from his sleeve as Jobs continued his fall. He rolled onto his back, bringing up and straightening his previously limp legs to deliver a solid kick to Reno's jaw. The redhead stumbled and slammed into the wall, stunned for a moment, while Jobs took the opportunity to level his niner at the couch Yuffie was hiding behind and empty his clip into it. Midway through there was a yelp of pain.
Turquoise eyes blazed with fury and Reno lashed out in a kick that was supposed to take Jobs in the side, but the ex-Turk continued his backwards motion, going into a reverse roll that brought him up to his feet back through the doorway. He reversed his momentum and ran forward, expecting the riot prod strike at his face.
He expected wrong. Reno broadsided him right in the gut with it, though Jobs twisted away too fast for the redhead to apply any juice. He let his movement continue, pulling away from Reno, giving himself room to pull a fast reload on his niner –
The prod came shooting at him and blew the gun out of his hands. Reno was following it in a grand kick that Jobs managed to catch under his arm, twist –
Obviously this had happened before to Reno, in another fight, he responded almost automatically, letting the twist pull him into a midair spiraling kick that took Jobs in the side of his head –
Jobs dropped the leg pinioned between his arm and torso, stumbling to the side, ear ringing –
Reno reached around as he fell and grabbed his prod from the floor, came up with the rod extended in a thrust for Jobs' torso, the ex-Turk went for a full-on, closed-fist swing at the redhead's face, whoever connected would win it –
All the hair on Deman Jobs' body stood straight up and he spasmed dramatically for one long moment before dropping unconscious to the floor.
Not even bothering to gloat, Reno rushed to the couch, dreading what he would find behind it.
The radio transmitter in Grandpa Souta's grip crackled and Rude's voice came on. "The bikers are in full retreat, Karsk."
"Grandpa Souta here," the old mechanic said quickly. "Karsk went to investigate the loss of contact with one of his men. Are the police here yet?"
"No. Two minutes, I'd say. Lousy response time."
"Good." Switching gears, Grandpa Souta quickly ordered, "Mr. Ayaro, please disarm your remote mines. The enemy is retreating and the police are inbound. We don't want any accidents happening here."
"Roger that," the explosives expert replied. "What's Sarge's status?"
Not bothering to arrest the tears in his eyes, Karsk knelt beside Doysdov's body and cradled the man's head, closing his eyes, before returning him to the concrete of the roof.
"Rest in peace, soldier," Karsk murmured. "Rest in peace."
Yuffie hissed as she hauled herself up from behind the couch. There were two long, bleeding swaths across her right side and a bullet in her left shoulder.
"We need to get you to a hospital," Reno observed as he helped her up. "We can't use any Cure materia on you until that bullet's removed."
Waving a hand dismissively and instantly regretting the movement, Yuffie replied, "Not now. We gotta make sure everyone else is okay first. I can manage." She smiled bravely at him, trying not to wince.
Reno smiled back and then looked at Jobs. "He's gonna regret shooting you, Yuffie. I doubt there'll be anything he'll regret more."
"Save the macho-ism for later, sugar. We gotta interrogate him, get what he knows. Then you can cut his balls off."
Eyes lighting up at that particular prospect, Reno rested his hand on Yuffie's unhurt shoulder and kissed her. "I love you, Yuffie."
"I love you, too, Reno."
