Disclaimer: I don't own RvB. Rooster Teeth does.
Episode 26: Bombs in the Sand
Back in the abandoned base O'Malley had found, they had 'cleaned up.' and were now inspecting the walls. Specifically, the gun turrets. Gun turrets that Lopez had just finished repairing. "Yees, this place is coming along nicely. Excellent work repairing the turrets, Lopez," O'Malley declared.
'Especially seeing as you have no hands and are, in fact, a disembodied head,' Doc drawled within his mental fortress.
"Thank you. I find manual labor stimulating," Lopez drawled in Spanish. It seemed he had once again gotten stuck on said setting. It was mildly annoying. For everyone. Though, Lopez was learning how to deal with it, and even have some fun mocking everyone without them understanding a word he said.
"I still say a flower box would have been a bit more neighborly," Doc verbally maintained. And really, he wasn't wrong. Flowers were more likely to get your neighbors to like you than gun turrets, which were more likely to have potential friends running for the hills.
"Oh shut up you fool!" O'Malley barked. Doc frowned, back in his little, though growing, mental fort.
'You're the fool,' he childishly thought, mentally sticking his tongue out. Then another thought came to him and he grinned, taking back control long enough to say, "Hey! We should start a neighborhood association. It's just like a government, but run by housewives and old people. So it's a lot more efficient at controlling your lives."
"Shut up! Get out of my head!" O'Malley wailed, grabbing his head. The sarcastic, snarky, caustic part of Doc that he had beat down and hidden in the depths of his mind, into which he had been forced to flee for some privacy and consequently woken up, cackled while the larger part of him said,
"Technically, it's my head. But I don't mind sharing," 'For now,' added the less friendly part of him, "Don't you remember the talk we had about sharing?"
"Shut up!" bellowed O'Malley, ignoring Doc's logic. With no convenient distraction, which had been happening quite a lot lately, O'Malley was left to Doc's mercy as the medic capitalized on the relative peace to turn the torment back on the A.I.
"Now now. It that any way to treat the one whose hosting you, willingly or not?" Doc retorted, the naturally darker side of the kind pacifist bleeding through. O'Malley froze for a moment, noticing the slight difference in the medic's tone.
"What?" he asked, which was honestly the only thing he could think to do in that moment. Doc laughed.
"Come on, I may not be a genius, or some special secret Agent, but I'm not stupid either, O'Malley. Taking me over like this... is the only way you can physically interact with the world. Without me, or a similar host, you'd never be able to fulfill your goals," he said.
"Something's different," O'Malley mused aloud. Doc just laughed again.
"Is it? Or did you merely miss something. Something lurking in the shadows," he asked before retreating and willingly letting O'Malley have control, though the A.I. could still feel the man's consciousness, crouching just out of 'sight.' It was... unnerving. 'You have a lot to learn about the human race, O'Malley. Just as Humans have a lot to learn about A.I,' Doc's mental voice called to the A.I. piloting his body. It was an eery experience for the A.I. Doc's voice seemed to echo ominously inside his head, much like a lurking enforcer making a threat in a darkened room, casting his voice to mask his position and sow fear into the hearts and minds of those who heard. To have Doc using the technique, in his head... it shouldn't have happened, but it did, and it creeped the Omega fragment out.
"You are inferior to us!" O'Malley yelled, making Lopez wonder if he'd finally crossed the thin line and gone from functioning insane to 'quick, get him to a padded room' insane.
"Am I? Truly? Who made you, O'Malley? Was it another program... or a programmer. A human, telling a computer what to do, what to make. I think you underestimate us, O'Malley. Can't really blame you. You've seen rather lack-luster examples of the human race so far, haven't you? Myself included, when being painfully honest. But what if you're wrong? What if all that anger, all that hate... were misplaced? The painful result of a massive misunderstanding?" Doc challenged.
"Shut up!" O'Malley snarled. Doc chuckled softly, barely even heard.
"Oh? You want silence in 'your' head? Peace? You want the whispers, the taunts, the challenges and the doubts... to stop? To be silent? I think not. This is your life now, O'Malley. Welcome to madness," the medic said, though remaining in his fort, merely projecting his voice outside the walls. Just then, O'Malley noticed the figure on the outer wall, swiftly hiding behind a pillar. Thanking whoever was listening for the distraction, O'Malley focused on trying to figure out who, or what, the figure was.
"What was that?" he asked, scanning the wall as well he could from such a distance. Seeing nothing, he turned away, humming softly, before quickly jerking back around with an 'aha!' trying to catch the watcher. It didn't work. Nor did it work the other three times he tried it.
"Wow. You're amazing. Keep it up, I'm sure you'll catch it this time," Doc's mental voice muttered sarcastically, just barely heard by O'Malley.
"Oh forget it," the thoroughly put out A.I. huffed, turning around and walking into the base. Doc smirked. Once again, yay for passive aggression! It is a pacifist's best friend, outside of faith and trust.
/*/
Back in the desert, Dex and Rick were headed back toward where Red and the others where, passing a random skull on their way. "Grif, Simmons, where've you two been?" Red asked. Rick sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Patrol didn't go according to plan, Sir," he said. Red quirked an unseen eyebrow.
"Find something? Wait... where's the jeep?" he asked, hoping they'd say they'd just parked it out of sight.
"Yeeeaah... it's like this..." Dex began, and Sarge's lingering and unyielding dislike(read: hate) of Grif made him immediately assume the worst.
"Grif... I just built that jeep. You'd better not have blown it up like you had a habit of doing with the last one!" he growled.
"Now I think that's a bit of an exaggeration Sarge," Dex said, unperturbed by his CO's accusations.
"And it's not destroyed sir. It just won't start," Rick said, coming to his teammate's defense. Red, however, was as skeptical as always.
"And what exactly were you doing when the engine died?" he asked.
"Duh, getting it outta the ditch," Dex replied with a shrug. Rick sighed. Yeah, that was going to help their case.
"What was the jeep doing in a ditch?" Red asked, sounding more confused and curious that mad. Huh. Well what do ya know, miracles do happen.
"Well... that's where it gets interesting," Dex said, grinning under his helmet. Rick groaned.
"Here we go," he moaned to the dark interior of his helmet.
"See, it's really boring out there, so I decided to practice maneuvers while paroling, you know, to manage my time, when..."
"Grif!" Red barked, already feeling a vein throbbing in his forehead, "Just... show me to the jeep," he relented, trudging between the two Privates.
"Yes sir!" they barked, Dex soon jogging ahead while Rick kept pace. Soon enough, they had reached the ditch where the jeep had gotten wedged between the relatively soft dirt, and a large stone that, even with a significant portion of it buried, was tall and broad enough to cast a shadow that stretched a good four feet from the edge of the ditch.
"Wait a minute. The engine isn't dead, it's just out of gas," Red said, turning back to the Privates.
"Well, if it has no juice, the engine doesn't work. Therefore, the engine is effectively dead," Dex said, like it was the most obvious conclusion of all time. "And... it runs on gas?!"
"Of course not. Where are we going to get gasoline? I modified the fuel cells to utilize a form of cold fission, powered by solar energy," Red replied.
"So why is it dead?" Rick asked.
"You would have had to park it in the shade for at least two hours," Red told him, then turned slowly toward the two soldiers, "what were you doing parked in the shade for two hours?" he added, just a little suspicious.
"Well... ya see..." Dex began
"I don't want ta know!" Red yelled, waving the man down. Dex grinned even as he got behind the jeep.
"So we gonna push it into the sun?" he asked, already putting his hands on the fender.
"One, two, three!" Red yelled, him and Rick coming to help as well. Together, they managed to get it out of the ditch and into the sun.
"Thanks Red," Dex said, leaning against the driver's side, "we couldn't get it out ourselves, thing weighs more than our armor."
"Grif... what happened to this fender?" Red asked, noticing that the front was mildly busted.
"What about it?" Dex asked, moving to the front. "Oh. It was like that when we took it out," he said, Rick rolling his eyes under his helmet.
"Un-huh. And the hubcap?" Red asked, crossing his arms and glaring at the orange soldier.
"Man, this neighborhood's really going down the drain," Dex said easily, shaking his head. Red growled.
"I gotta buy those in sets of four, numbnuts," he snarled. Dex shrugged while behind him, the jeep powered up and the usual Mexican polka music started up. "Turn that off," Red barked at Rick. Nodding, the IT expert hopped in and changed the channel, but then something else started.
"Come in, does anyone hear me? Over," came Tex's voice.
"Is that Tex?" Dex asked, hopping up into the driver's seat.
"This is Freelancer Tex, looking for anyone from the Blood Gulch Outposts, do you read? Over," the radio responded.
"Yep. It's her. Can you find out where she is?" Dex said dryly.
"Did you forget who's the Sargent around here, Private?" Red asked lowly.
"I have found O'Malley's base. I repeat, I have found O'Malley's base," Tex said.
"O'Malley?" Red said, the rest of his exclamation cut off by Rick saying,
"Working on tracking her signal."
"They seem to be holed up in some kind of a fortress. I'm not sure how I got here, or how they built it, but if you can read this, I need you to get to me as fast as you can," Tex's transmission continued.
"Yeah, working on it lady," Rick snarled, fingers flying across buttons and flicking switches and trying to get a lock on her signal.
"So, any ideas on what to do when we get there, Sargent?" Dex asked, loading the word Sargent with so much sarcasm, it oozed.
"Insubordination," Sarge grumbled. Dex grinned.
"Is it? Don't forget, I'm Orange and you're Red. Do we even have ranks?" he asked snidely. Red growled.
"I can still beat you," he snarled. Dex chuckled, leaning easily against the side of the Warthog, arms crossed in casual indifference.
"Sure you can, Red. Sure you can," he drawled. Red quivered.
"Don't patronize me soldier," he said as evenly as he could, though his voice still quivered with rage.
"Aw~! But you're so fun to rile up~!" Dex sang back, grinning like the madman he was.
"My coordinates are two two niner delta by one point three seven gamma," Tex transmitted. The sound of a solid titanium helmet hitting the similarly solid dashboard caused both Red and Dex to turn to the moaning Rick.
"Sure. Why not. Just go right ahead and make me obsolete by telling us your position. How very kind of you. Freelancer," the man muttered darkly. Dex winced. Rick didn't often get mad, but when he did, it wasn't pretty. And not just for the one who'd ticked him off.
"Sarge... get on the gun. We're leaving. Now," he said, hopping back into the driver's seat and kicking the jeep into drive. The moment Red's boots touched the gunner's platform, Dex was shooting across the desert toward where Eagle, Tucker, and Caboose were.
"I need you guys to come right away. Or better yet, send someone who can fight," Tex's transmission said. Dex growled and pushed the jeep harder.
"No need to patronize us, Freelancer. We're coming, and you'll get your fighters, you smug daughter of a fallen star," he bit out. Rick chuckled, pulling out a knife and testing the edge.
/*/
When they arrived at camp, Eagle jumped to his feet at the sight of the jeep... or maybe it was the deathly silent crew and knife in Rick's hand. Those were usually indicators of a bad attitude or a big fight. "Problem?" he asked, swinging Betty, the sniper rifle Marley had kindly left for him when dropping them off, up into a firing positon.
"Tex. O'Malley. Patronizing. Scumbags. Fight. O'Malley," Rick bit out. Tucker recoiled from the venom in Rick's voice. And the implications of the words he spit out.
"Fudging sweet," Eagle said, then he quirked his head. "Sure we don't have another jeep?" he asked.
"Just. Get. On," Dex bit out, dropping his arms.
"You?" Eagle asked.
"Me, Rick, or Red. Pick your poison," Dex shot back.
"Point," Eagle said, and got on Dex's lap. "Watch your hands." Dex snorted.
"Watch your legs," he countered while Tucker got on Rick and Caboose shared the gunner's platform with Red. "Alright everyone, hold on as best you can and no bickering or I will fling you off, no matter how hard you cling to the jeep. You fall off, you stay off. Please keep hands and feet inside the ride at all times," Dex said, preparing to gun it.
"Just go already!" Red barked. Grinning his daredevil grin, Dex floored it, yelling,
"We're off!" as they rocketed across the sand.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Tucker yelled, flung backwards into Rick and scrambling to grab onto what might have been called a roll bar.
"HA HA! I told you to hold on tight!" Dex laughed, flying around a pillar of stone at well over eighty miles an hour.
"You're insane!" Tucker yelled.
"No I'm not!" Dex countered, jerking around another pillar, rocking the jeep onto two wheels, "I'm just doing my job!"
"You're job's insane!" Tucker yelled back.
"Blame Sarge!" Dex redirected, jumping a ditch. "Speaking of, that's what I was trying when we got stuck Red!"
"Shut up and drive idiot!" Red yelled back, thanking his lucky stars when he didn't bite his tongue. Dex laughed and turned the rest of his attention to driving and getting them to Tex's coordinates on time.
/*/
When they finally got to the beach where Tex was waiting, all of them were ready to get out of the jeep and away from each other. "What took you guys so lo..." Tex began, but stopped quickly as a sniper round bit into the sand at her feet.
"There's six of us, and three seats. What do you think?" Dex grumbled, Eagle still aiming at the black armored Freelancer.
"You're still mad?" she asked the, now pink she noted, soldier.
"Yes," he said curtly, not shifting at all. Red decided now was the time to intervene.
"What did you find, Tex?" he asked.
"Well, O'Malley's holed up in his fortress. He's been fortifying his defenses for a few days now. Luckily, it's just him and a rather determined head," Tex answered, turning to the red Simulation Trooper.
"A determined head? What good is a determined head?" asked Tucker. Tex turned to him, making him take an unconscious step backwards.
"Well, he fixed the gun turrets. How many heads do you know that can do that?" she asked drily.
"Oh. That is determined. I stand corrected," Tucker said with a nod. The Reds shared a look, then turned to Tex.
"It didn't happen to be brown, did it?" Dex asked. He had a feeling he already knew the answer to that, but he also wanted to make sure.
"Yeah, it was," Tex said with a nod. Dex mimicked her then said, quite firmly,
"I need it." Tex, had she been able, would have blinked at the man.
"Well, if you can sang it before my bomb blows up the compound, you can have it. If not... well maybe you can dig it out of the rubble," she said. Dex frowned.
"Bomb?" Tex stepped to the side to show a rather large ball. "Ah. Bomb. Got it. How do you plan to plant it? I'm guessing if you could plant the bomb by yourself, you'd have done it already," Dex said, crossing his arms.
"Well, first, we have to breach the outer wall," Tex said, motioning to the large wall behind her.
"Oh. I love breaching!" Caboose called. The others skillfully ignored him and Tex continued as though he hadn't spoken.
"Then, we have to get past another wall." Rick snorted, but refrained from speaking. "The second wall has a guard tower, and an enormous razor-sharp spinning blade." Again, Rick refrained from speaking,even though he really wanted to comment on how the blade wasn't going to be a problem at all, not with how slow the thing was turning. "After that, we have to get past the gun turrets, and break into the building."
"And then we attack O'Malley," Red said with savage glee, pumping his shotgun.
"No. That's when we plant that," Tex corrected, motioning to the bomb. Caboose, of course, didn't remember it.
"We're planting... a volleyball," he said.
"It's not a ball. It's a bomb," Tex corrected, with far more patience than the others would have given her credit for. Eh, learn something new every day.
"We're planting a volleybomb?" Caboose asked after a beat. Tex decided that, for once, the other Blood Gulchers had the right idea and so ignored the blue soldier boy and turned to the, at least semi, serious troopers.
"I've scouted a location inside the base where we can set it off and take the whole place down. I marked the spot with a big X," she told them.
"You scouted it," Tucker said, sounding mildly disbelieving. Tex once again gave off the feeling of having blinked in confusion.
"Yeah," she stated slowly.
"If you got past the two walls, the huge spinning blade, the gun turrets, and made it all the way into the fortress, why didn't you just plant the bomb then instead of putting a big X on the floor?" Tucker asked. Dex shook his head and walked forward, placing a hand on Tucker's shoulder.
"Some badasses are badasses because of skill more than physical strength, Tucker," he said lowly before looking toward Tex. "It's super heavy, isn't it?" he asked. She nodded and Dex sighed before walking forward and attempting to lift it. "Whoa! Yeah. No wonder you called us. This thing... it weighs more than a Warthog!" he exclaimed.
"I can carry it," Caboose said, trotting toward the bomb.
"I guarantee you'll need two people," Tex said, clearly doubting what the childish soldier could do. Tucker chuckled.
"No, it's true. He's got crazy strength. Church and I think it's God's way of compensating," he said, watching as Caboose more or less easily lifted the bomb.
"See," the soldier said, voice barely strained.
"Great Paul's Bunyan, he's like an ox," Red said, staring at the Blue in shock.
"But I have no horns... or lumberjack friends," Caboose grunted out, still holding the bomb. Dex shook his head at him.
"We know buddy. Go ahead and set it down until it's time to move out. Save your arms," he said, motioning the Blue down. Caboose gratefully set the bomb down.
"Okay. So... you're going to blow up the building, killing the innocent that's being manipulated by your old A.I. that you brought into the canyon and burying the robotic head that holds our orders from command... and you expect us to help you?" Dex asked, then shook his head. "If the bomb is too heavy for us, then whats to say the rubble won't be? No. If that thing's going down, we're getting Lopez and Doc out of there first."
"Wait... let me get this straight. The biggest threat we know of is in that building... and you want to get him out before I blow it up?" Tex asked, disbelieving.
"Pretty much, yeah," Dex said, then jerked a thumb at Rick. "I've already asked our resident geek if there's a way to get O'Malley out of Doc's head while still allowing us to know exactly where he is. If we can convince Doc to bully O'Malley into a storage unit, all we have to do is pull it and leave it in the building while we blow it up. Either it gets melted, crushed, or buried. No matter what, it's unusable by anyone else."
"Yeah, sorry, but I'm not too sure you can convince this Doc person to bully O'Malley into storage. Not even I could do that. I'm blowing it up," Tex said.
"There's a high possibility that a modified storage unit could be used to pull O'Malley directly from the armor. It'll cause Doc extreme pain, but it's theoretically doable, and I can make the modifications," Rick informed her. "I'll just need an hour or two."
"Sorry, but there is no way I'm letting O'Malley get away this time," Tex said. Dex groaned, Rick made strangling motions, Red growled, and Eagle shot an annoying seagull.
/*/
While watching the Reds talk with Tex was fun and all, and they were being amazingly scary for Blood Gulchers, it was getting kinda boring. And the Reds were acting stupid. Scary, but stupid. "Just hire her," Tucker said from inside the jeep, shrugging. They all turned to him. The fact that they did so in perfect lockstep was a little creepy, but Tucker did his best not to show it. The full body armor helped. A lot. They can't see the fear on your face if they can't see past your visor after all.
"What?" the orange one, Grif, asked. Tucker shrugged, firmly telling himself these were still the same idiots he 'fought' for three years.
"Hire her to help you get Lopez back. She'll do anything for money," he said, as nonchalant as he could manage. Which was pretty laid back, if he did say so himself.
"That's not true," Tex defended easily, as though stating a fact and only mildly offended that he'd suggest otherwise. He quirked an eyebrow at the Freelancer from his comfortable position.
"It's not?" he asked, incredulous, then decided to prove his point by offering, "I'll give you ten bucks to tear off Grif's arm." He skillfully ignored the visor staring at him. And the 'I-will-kill-you-slowly-and-painfully' vibes the orange soldier was putting out.
"Which one's Grif?" Tex asked, turning toward the Reds. Tucker nodded slightly as she proved his point perfectly with those three words.
"See, she's not even really on Blue Team. She was just paid to come help us," Tucker explained, snickering slightly as Grif pointed at Simmons and said, 'he's Grif.' Simmons apparently ignored the threat to his limbs and asked,
"How do we pay her? We don't have any money. We don't even know what money is in this future."
"Yeah, they could have shells, or laser beams for currency," Grif added. Simmons jerked slightly before weaving on the spot to look at his teammate.
"Laser beams? Really Grif?" he asked.
"Hyeah! That would be the coolest wallet ever," Grif responded, and Tucker could hear his grin. Deciding he really didn't want another lover's spat, no matter how hard they denied it, Tucker put forth a rather logical idea. Especially for a Blue from Blood Gulch.
"Why don't you trade her a favor?" he suggested. This got all the Reds to turn to him. Again. The cyan soldier could imagine they were all quirking unimpressed eyebrows at him.
"A favor?" Grif asked.
"Yeah. Have her do this for you, and then you guys owe her a favor. That's how these Freelancers get stuff done, right?" Tucker responded, though he addressed the last sentence to Tex, who nodded.
"That'll work. I'll help you, and then the two of you have to do something for me," she said.
"Alright, let's do that," Simmons said, but Grif held up a hand.
"Hold on! I like knowing at least something of what I'm getting myself into before I agree," he told the maroon soldier, before turning to the Freelancer. "So, what kind of favor might you have in mind," he asked her, openly suspicious.
"It all depends," Tex said with a shrug. Grif wasn't going to let it go with that.
"On what?" he demanded.
"Onnn what I need. To do some future job," Tex said.
"But it could be just about anything, right?" Grif challenged. Tucker was glad they weren't too far from each other, otherwise it would be rather tiring watching them and would likely give him a crick in the neck from how much rapid twisting he was doing.
"That's right. Anything."
"I draw the line at seduction. Any kind of seduction," Grif said firmly, crossing his arms and leaning back on his left leg. Tucker thought it was kind of a girly pose, but from how Simmons was edging backwards, he got the feeling there was more to it than just posing.
"Fine. I can agree to that," Tex said and Grif nodded before shifting his weight back onto both feet and holding out his right hand, his left falling limply by his side, palm facing her.
"Then we have a deal. You help us get Lopez's head, I help you on some future job," he said.
"Eh, I was hoping for..." Tex began before Simmons stepped up, in the exact same pose. Again, Tucker was getting the feeling there was more to it than what he was seeing. "You have a deal," Tex said, shaking first Simmons' hand and then Grif's.
"Thing is... you're going to have to actually, ya know, call us when you need help," Grif said, not releasing her hand.
"Wha..." Tex began, then looked down for a moment.
"Just so you know," the orange soldier said cryptically, causing Tex to bring her head back up with a snap, before walking toward Sarge and Caboose.
"What just happened?" Tucker asked, walking up to Tex.
"Let me get back to you on that," Tex said, tucking something into a pocket in her armor, before striding after Grif. "Okay, we're ready to go!" she yelled. Caboose sighed and picked the bomb back up before following the Freelancer.
"Man. When did my life go all sideways?" Tucker asked as he jogged after the others.
/*/
Marley sighed, watching two of her old teammates step aboard her home sweet ship. "Well. I suppose I should say 'thank you,'" she drawled, winding bandages around her leg, "but honestly," she said, tying it off at last and sitting back in her seat, "I had hoped to leave you out of this." Mich sighed, running a hand through his short cropped, platinum blond hair, dark brown eyes wearily taking in her form.
"You look like you've been run through an ancient clothes press and then used as a soccer ball. I don't think you'd have survived if Flowers hadn't called us in," Louie said bluntly, dark auburn bangs falling loosely into his dark blue eyes. Marley sighed, but nodded.
"I see that now. I was... being foolish. I should have paced myself and focused on the fight in front of me and not how my boys were faring," she said. Mich and Louie shared a look.
"Your boys?" Mich asked tentatively, turning back to the downed Agent.
/*/
Tex pulled the paper out of her pocket as she lead the Reds and Blues closer to the fort. 'Agent Texas, I know who and what you are.' Had she still had lungs, her breath would have caught at that, but she shook her head and pressed on. 'If you are reading this, you've entered a deal with one of us. I hope you make the most of this, Tex.
Project Red:
Founder: Agent Black – SG-1-77-27-B1AC7 – specialty: doctor, pilot
Senior Agent: Agent Orange – GC-2-44-19-O4AN1 – specialty: weapons expert, transport. Makes a decent leader, can pass as a medic if needed
Agent Maroon – AO-9-47-O7HS7 – specialty: tech of just about any kind, knives, and pistols. Decent scout
Agent Red – PI-3-76-A4OS2 – specialty: unarmed combat, shotguns
Agent Burgundy – EX-8-37-C2UF4 – specialty: sniper, grenades
Agent Hippie – AE-2-59-R8TY5 – specialty: mid range weapons, pilot, planner
Don't hesitate to call,
Oregon.'
/*/
"Wait wait, let me get this straight," Mich said, waving his hands in a 'stop!' motion, "you stole a whole team of Sim Troopers off of Freelancer and turned them into that shadow organization that's got half the galaxy on the fritz... and then wrote your contact information and specialties on a piece of paper!? Just so you could eventually get it to Tex, who you somehow knew would make a deal with one or more of your guys?"
"Yep, that about sums it up," Marley said brightly. Mich shook his head while Louie whistled.
"You're one crazy soldier, Marley," he said, chuckling. She shrugged, unperturbed by their reactions.
"What can I say, I like to keep the world guessing," she said with a grin.
"Heh, just the world?" Mich asked. Marley gave him a flat look.
"That was all encompassing, Michigan, and you know it," she stated.
/*/
Tex nearly stopped to stare at the state name written neatly under the list of names, numbers, and specialties. 'Oregon...' she thought as she tucked the note back into her pocket. 'I should have known it was you behind the Reds.'
/*/
"You do realize that was a stupid, risky, move, right?" Louie asked.
"Hey! I know what I'm doing alright? And if she calls me first, which I have a feeling she will, I'll be able to get York out. Get him off the streets and off the Freelancer 'Active' roster. Convincingly," Marley countered. The pair shared a look, remembering how she got them out, then sighed, dropping their heads at the same time.
"Fine. But the next time you feel like laying siege to an entire army, call us!" Louie relented. Marley grinned and gave them a nod before shooing them off.
"You're in for quite some recovery time. Maybe we should let them hang around. Just for a few days," Flowdie said softly, taking her uninjured hand in his and softly stoking it with his rough thumb. She sighed, flopping her head over toward him.
"I don't think I can argue this one with you, Flowers," she said muzzily before falling asleep. Unwillingly. Flowdie sighed and carried her to her bed. This... was not going to be fun.
/?/
A/N: Eh, didn't work so well without the Red Zealot, but I couldn't really work him in without Simmons bringing the Battle Creek guys in to fight O'Malley. It's kind of like the Spanish!Lopez jokes. It doesn't work without context!
A/N 2: More continuity and spelling edits. 8/20/16