"The fuck?" Jo sat up straight in her chair as she watched Joker frantically but helplessly poke at the console.
"It... looks..." He frowned as if he couldn't believe what he was about to say. "Like an... EMP?"
"EMP?" Jo had to confess she had no freaking idea what that was.
"An electromagnetic pulse. It just killed all the electronics."
"That is so last millennium!" Jo shot out of her seat and opened the door leading to the Kodiak's main section. "Next you'll tell me people are using smoke signals and need wire to connect to the extranet? Don't we have protection against that?"
"A state of the art reconnaissance star vessel does. A tank doesn't!"
Jo had to admit defeat. He knew better about such things, and they were taking a nose dive.
"Come on, we need to strap ourselves into the seats with safety harnesses."
But Joker wouldn't listen. He kept poking and prodding the console, muttering:
"It'll come back online any minute, we can't be taken down by a fucking EMP!"
Jo knelt next to his seat, caught his face between her hands and forced him to look at her:
"My love, I think we've already established that I would die for you without hesitation. But do I have to? Again?"
He looked at her and the haze of confusion and pride in his flying skill cleared away. They'd been here before, he remembered it too well. Burning ship, screaming crew, and Jo trying to get him to leave the helm. Last time he killed her by not following her orders quickly enough, that was what he had apparently always believed and right now Jo would play at his guilt if she had to get him to move, she had no time to be fair.
"Okay. Okay," he nodded and let her tug him up to his feet. The treetops were coming dangerously close when Jo hauled Joker to one of the seats, strapped him in and took the seat next to him. Her harness barely clicked in place when the Kodiak plunged between the trees. This was an ancient forest growing on the mountains of Europe. The trees were thick and tall and didn't cushion the impact in the least. In fact, a huge branch burst through the cracked windshield and broke off inside the Kodiak. It was thicker than Jo's thigh and would have killed anyone sitting in the pilot's cabin. Jo held on to the harness with one hand and to Joker's hand with the other. His eyes were closed, he was pale and didn't breathe.
The shuttle broke many trees before finally connecting with the ground. Only it wasn't just earth they hit. It was a stone wall. The impact jarred them to the bone marrow and while Jo wasn't scared of a few scraps and bruises on herself - her body was tougher than any human's - she was concerned about Joker. The hit almost broke their seats off the wall. There was a little pause, then the weight of the tail section pulled the shuttle down and it dropped to the ground.
Jo looked at Joker, who slowly opened one eye, then another.
"Are we down?" He whispered. "Are we alive?"
"Yes and yes," Jo tried to unbuckle herself but the harness wasn't budging. She had to dig for the emergency lever over her head to release it. Once she was free, she got Joker out and patted him down:
"Anything broken?"
"Other than my pride..." he grumbled. "Not sure yet. Definitely a few contusions."
"Can you walk?"
"Give me a moment to catch my breath and I'll tell you. Adrenalin rush," he swayed a little. "That's actually... pretty unpleasant."
Jo let him be for the moment. She kicked the tree branch to the side and tried to open the door. It took her an almost inhuman effort to slide it open, but when she did, everything started to look better. They were on the ground and not even jammed between trees or hanging over the edge of an abyss. Jo looked at the warm, sunny forest in the mountains, at the greenery, at the tall trees, bushes and flowers, and sucked in the fresh air. It smelled delicious, like nature and not like civilisation.
"This is going to be fun!" She turned to her man, excited to the point of bouncing.
"Fun?" Joker rubbed his ribs and thighs. "How is this going to be fun? Are we near some town?"
"No. I suspect we're about a day's hike from any towns, maybe longer."
"Hike?!" He almost yelled. "Did you just say hike? In case you've forgotten who I am, I'm the guy with brittle bones! I've never hiked even for a minute in my life and there is a fucking good reason for that!"
"I'll make sure nothing happens to you. Don't you trust me?" Jo grabbed his shoulders and yanked him against herself for a kiss.
"I'm more of a big city guy. I love my elevators and sky cars and online shopping," he complained after the kiss, but the panic was gone from his voice.
"If you allow it, it could be a lot of fun," Jo teased him. "An adventure."
"An adventure, my ass," he grumbled again. "Did it occur to you that an EMP doesn't just appear, not at the strength that shuts down electronics? Not unless it's lightning, and there is no storm anywhere near us."
"Yes, it did occur to me," Jo nodded and turned around to inspect the inside of the shuttle. There were no food supplies, obviously. Hell, there were no weapons stored here, either. No tools, no clothes, nothing at all. And Jo had no weapons on her, not even a simple knife.
"Did it occur to you, then, that we took a nose dive into a fucking cliff wall and the whole front section is flat? We have no way to start this bird, no way to communicate with anyone and... FUCK!" He shouted. Jo looked at him as he inspected his omnitool. It was broken. Something had caught on it and almost ripped it off his wrist, leaving an angry bruise. They were really cut off from civilisation.
"I know all of that," Jo nodded and turned back to inspecting the shuttle. "And it's going to be okay."
"Oh, really?" Now Joker was back to sarcasm.
"Yes. Survival training, my love. It has always been my favourite part of any training. And we're in Europe in summer, not on an alien planet under level 5 cold hazard."
Joker shut up. It had finally occurred to him that even if he was out of his element, she wasn't. He did trust her to get him out of any mess and to make sure nothing would happen to him.
"Okay, so what's the plan?" He inquired.
"First we use whatever we can get from the shuttle, and then we hightail from here. Whoever shot us down will be here soon to check out the booty. It would be best if we met them with some advantage."
"They saw that this is a military grade tank, they'll be prepared for anything," Joker mused. "There's nothing in here, what can you possibly use?"
"We still have the walls," Jo said thoughtfully. She grabbed the edge of a long, slender metal plank and pried it off the wall. Once again she blessed Cerberus and the latest scientist group for making her stronger than any human. After some violent bending, hitting, hammering and scraping, which Joker observed with horrified fascination, Jo held a makeshift machete. She wrapped the handle with a scrap of fabric from the pilot's seat. The blade looked like a jagged saw after she forcefully scraped it against stone, but it would cut through thin branches and human flesh, which was all she needed.
"Oh, good, now you have a weapon," Joker grinned. "Earth, beware."
"Indeed!" Jo couldn't stop bouncing as she jumped out of the Kodiak and held a hand out to Joker. "Let's go!"
She never had a parameter like this: transport an asset who couldn't climb, jump or walk on unstable ground. It sure made things more interesting. Jo looked around and saw that the cliff wall they'd hit looked high enough to give her a good look around if she climbed it.
"Where are we exactly, geographically?" She asked Joker.
"I don't know. Alps, maybe? I know all about my star charts, planet surveys, mass relay network, gravitational shift, stellar classification and the event horizon of a black hole, but I have little to no knowledge about Earth."
"Okay," Jo tucked the machete under her belt and started climbing the cliff wall. She could only hold on by the tips of her fingers and toes and Joker watched her with open awe. "But you were the one flying, and you never miss details from your console readings. What were the last coordinates you remember?"
"47° N, 11° E, give or take."
"That still doesn't help us pinpoint whether we're in the German, Italian, Austrian, Swiss or Slovenian Alps," Jo grunted, climbing to the top of the cliff. "I see a lake," she declared. And what a beautiful lake it was, too! "No idea which one it is, as there are several in the area, but where there's a lake in this part of the world, there is bound to be at least one settlement. Maybe we'll have some luck there."
"And what if the people who shot us down are coming from that very settlement towards us as we speak?"
"Then they're already dead and just don't know it yet," Jo declared and climbed down the cliff. "Come on, my love, let's have us an adventure," she proclaimed and offered Joker a hand. She couldn't wipe a grin off her face.
"Glad you're enjoying yourself," Joker said with resignation, put his hand in hers and let her lead him.
"People have been coming here to see the sights for centuries. This is one of the most beautiful spots on the planet and right now also one of the few barely touched by the Reapers. Enjoy this chance to see the most breathtaking landscape you'll probably ever see," Jo said almost reverently. These mountains had history and were truly beautiful.
They were quite high up the mountain, and even though they were nowhere near snow, the air was still chilly. Joker hadn't been kidding about being a big city person. He was used to coldness of a star ship ventilation, but he felt the fresh breeze acutely. He was worried that they had nothing save the clothes they wore and one wicked machete. No jackets, no water, no food, no sleeping bags, no heaters - nothing that would make survival possible in his estimation. But hell, what did he actually know about survival? Jo, on the other hand, knew all about it and she wasn't worried.
In truth, the moment she stepped out of the broken Kodiak, she transformed into a deliriously happy person, bouncing with energy, laughing, throwing him brilliant smiles and so ecstatic about their situation that she almost did cartwheels. She was a sight to behold right now. If Joker had known what a little survival challenge would do to her equilibrium, he would have dropped her off right here the day before the battle against the Reapers.
So, even though the solution to their problem didn't look him directly in the face, Joker decided not to sweat it. He had trusted Jo to get him and his ship out of far worse shitholes than this, so if she wasn't worried, he could breathe easily. Hell, just a few hours ago he saw her hug the child she helped deliver on a battlefield. She knew what she was doing.
Once Joker relaxed, he finally took a look around himself and allowed the beauty of the landscape sink in. She was right: the mountains were breathtaking. They were beyond stunning. The valleys, the peaks... The air itself seemed to sing.
Jo was true to her word. She made sure to pick a path he could easily walk on. With the help of her machete she cleared the shrubs out of his way, kicked away branches and tested stones for their steadiness before letting him step on them. Always she would offer her hand to secure him when they had to climb over a fallen log, and even wrapped her arm around his waist a time or two to get him off a rock so he wouldn't have to jump. It made him feel kind of like a girl being led by a strong, chivalrous man.
When did he end up being the girl in this relationship? Well, he supposed, from the very beginning. She was the tough warrior going off to battle day after day and he was the one who stayed home and provided a peaceful haven. That was how the roles were described back in the old Greek myths and instinctively people still applied that system to today's relationships, even in the age of military women.
He'd always known that she was physically stronger than him, and he even found it hot. He loved the idea of all that power at his disposal, he loved that he could poke at literally anyone and know that he could always hide behind her and she would protect him from any violent fallout. So yes, maybe being the girl in this relationship was a bit of a blow to his pride, but he was pretty sure about one thing: Jo wouldn't be happy with a man who would treat her like a girl. Vega could carry her down the mountain in his arms without breaking a sweat. Yet here she was, with Joker and thrilled about it.
Eventually Joker discarded those thoughts. He was rarely physically in the middle of a situation. Most of the time he watched others get into trouble on his screens. Getting out for a change, seeing the action from this angle, feeling the cold air and the uneven ground, smelling the pines and hearing the birds, squinting at the sun and admiring the brilliant greenery - all that was a nice change of pace for him. Being here in the company of the one person he knew could get him through anything unscathed, and whom he loved and trusted completely, made him giddy.
Jo seemed to enjoy every second of their hike. She made it feel like a walk in the park just like the day he took her to the Council's private gardens on the Citadel about two years ago. She pointed out trees and plants for him, named a few birds, warned him against some poisonous berries and led him to an ice-cold little creek with the purest water before he even realised he was thirsty. It was unfortunate that they were here in June and not October, she said. Apple trees just bloomed and there was no fruit to find anywhere. But she found some pine cones and gave Joker a few handfuls of pine nuts.
She barely ate a few of those little nuts herself and was obviously pleased that he didn't comment on that. But Joker knew the score. She was a survival specialist here and going without food or drink for days was her second nature. He, on the other hand, needed all the help he could get to stay strong enough just to keep up with her, no matter how starved she was. Once again he wasn't treating her like a damsel and she fucking loved him for that. The awestruck expression in her eyes as she watched him eat told him all he needed to know.
He tried to imagine what this would look like if Vega was here with her instead of him. They would probably race each other down the slope, foregoing food and drink just to challenge each other, taking risks climbing stones and trees, leaping over ravines and rivers. It would have been another race to the finish, another chance to fight for dominance and another battle she would have to win because there was no way she would succumb to Vega.
There was none of that between the two of them right now. They weren't fighting. They were reconnecting after seven months of separation, after years of doom, gloom and bone-grinding stress. Hell, they were tasting the freedom they suddenly got, without obligations and expectations. They were falling in love with each other again, only this time there was nothing keeping them apart, nothing making them postpone their future. It was still the two of them against the whole world, but now there was peace and beauty around them, too.
"You doing okay?" Jo asked Joker when he was done with a handful of small nuts.
"Yeah, surprisingly well. Though I don't think these nuts will keep us for long."
"I will not let you die from hunger, if you work with me."
"In what way?"
"If I find a snake and kill it, you'll have to eat it."
Joker gulped and swiftly changed the topic:
"You know what I noticed? When you're stressed, you tend to say things like 'The fuck?' instead of 'What the fuck?' and 'The hell should I know?' instead of 'How the hell should I know?'. It almost sounds like you lose some of that educational gloss, forget words like inconceivable and quantum entanglement and revert to some sort of a... dialect."
"Gang speak," Jo corrected him. It was odd that he'd noticed because she'd been taught at the ICA to keep her speech in check and she was quite good at keeping herself in check at all times. At least she used to be. Having a speech pattern like that could get her killed in an undercover assignment. But then again she was not going on any undercover assignments anymore.
"That's right, you used to talk so funny when you were in a gang! I remember when your old buddy Captain Mbala visited you in Vancouver, I listened to you guys over your implant. You demonstrated. That was hilarious!"
"I'm so glad you are amused!"
"Jo," he took her hand and made her stop. "Be honest with me. How much shit are we in right now?"
"It's going to be a rough night, there is no way around that. We'll have to sleep on the ground and there's a good chance that we won't find anything to eat until we get to the lake and locate people there. But it's okay. As long as I'm with you, we're not going to die. Look," she made just a few more steps and tugged him from behind some trees to a smooth mountainside covered in grass and blue flowers. Joker looked up and around and gasped.
The Alps always did that to a person. They'd come down from the tree-covered mountain and stepped on the gentler hills. In front of them a cerulean lake stretched between breathtaking hills and cliffs, the shadow of the nightfall already creeping across the ground while the sky remained pristinely blue.
"This is..." Joker whispered. "I never even realised what I was missing when I grew up on a space station."
"Space has its own sights. I still maintain that nebulas are the most beautiful sight in the world. But this is quite something, isn't it?" They smiled at each other. In their entire relationship there hadn't been a more romantic moment than this.
Before Joker could complain about being tired, Jo led him to a smooth clearing next to another icy creek and told him to get some rest. The sun was down, but there was still some light. The lake still looked far away and they surely wouldn't get there until tomorrow. And then, provided there were any people down there, they'd be lucky to get to a computer to send a message about their whereabouts. Something told Joker that the chances of people at the lake being fiendlies were down to zero. He knew that someone from around here had used the EMP to bring them down in the first place.
"We have a choice right now," Jo said, sitting next to him. "We could hide for the night, spend it in the cold, then move ahead in the morning and check out if there is anyone down there who can help us."
"Or?"
"Or I can make a fire, make some dinner and we'll get at least some warmth before the hunters come to us and try to take us in."
"Will they kill us?"
"They would probably want to know who we are first and if we're valuable assets. Since our shuttle held nothing of interest, they'll try to find any value in us they can."
"Just out of curiosity: you said you'd make dinner. How do you plan on doing that?"
Jo pointed at a hill nearby:
"Look."
Joker looked, squinted, and finally realised that those tiny white dots on the hill were moving a little bit.
"What are those? Sheep?"
"Goats. Probably gone wild since nobody's been looking after them for months."
"You know how to milk a goat?" Joker turned sharply to look at Jo.
"No, I don't," she shrugged. "When I said dinner, I wasn't talking about goat milk."
"Oh," he chuckled. "Too bad."
"Why?"
"Because, shockingly, I actually know how to milk a goat."
Now Jo turned to look at him sharply:
"Were the hell did you learn that?"
"My dad taught me a few years back, when he and mum separated and he took Gunny to Tiptree to run a farm. They have all the proper machinery for that, but dad said that his kids would learn that basic skill even if it was the last thing he did. It wasn't exactly an experience I'm comfortable with, but I could do it in a pinch."
"Well, I was talking more like goat meat. It would be rough food because we don't have any utensils or salt, but it would keep up our strength."
"How are you going to kill a goat?" Joker looked at the hill and saw food walking on four legs. Yes, they were definitely taking the option where they made fire and ate some meat.
"Easy. Wanna come?" Jo offered her hand to help him up. He joined her gladly. She led him to the other hill slowly and carefully. Just when he thought the goats would see them and bolt she stopped, picked up a fist-sized rock, fondled it a little to get a good grip and threw it. That was all there was to it. One goat collapsed, half of its skull missing, while the rest of the little herd ran.
If possible, Joker fell in love with his woman a little deeper. He loved watching her do stuff like that. She was such an efficient killing machine! She didn't even have to work herself up to a kill, whether it was an animal or a sentient being.
"I'm going to have to skin and gut it," she said, heading towards the white animal in a pool of its own blood. "If you don't want to watch that, I could go a little further down the stream."
"Don't be an idiot," Joker grinned. "Why would I want to miss the show?"
A little while later they sat on a clear patch of grass flanked by the creek on the one side and by trees and bushes on the other three sides. Jo was wielding her gigantic hand-made weapon to skin the animal, while Joker simply observed her. She managed to cut some strips of good meat off the bones before deeming it enough to survive until they'd got to the lake. Then she sat down to make a fire. Joker had heard of various ways to make fire if you had no lighter, but he had no idea that rubbing wood on wood actually worked. Or at least it had looked like she tried to drill a hole with a thin stick through a flat piece of wood. She kind of rubbed her hands together while holding the stick between them so fast that it started smoking within minutes. When she finally got a real fire started, it had looked so easy that Joker almost didn't believe it. Another few minutes later meat strips were being roasted over a nice fire and Joker allowed himself to move in closer to the warmth. The night was almost on them and the mountains became a chilly host.
While the meat was roasting and Joker kept an eye on it, Jo took her machete and started cutting down the soft, knee-high grass on the clearing. She quickly gathered a small haystack, pushed it closer to the fire and sat down to painstakingly sort it. She removed all twigs and branches and anything that didn't look soft.
"What are you doing?" Joker had watched her activities silently, but the grass surprised him.
"Making your sleeping bag," she said matter-of-factly. "Can't have you sleep on the hard ground, now, can I?"
With that one phrase Joker's eyes started stinging so hard that he had to wipe them. There was so much love in that gesture - in everything she'd done today! Of course he'd always known that Jo would do anything for him, but catching a bullet was one thing. Picking through a haystack, one blade of grass after another, just so he could sleep softly, was a whole new world. Oh, gods. A wave of dizzying warmth washed over him, a knowledge that he was truly loved, cherished and protected. Nothing would happen to him as long as she was near: no bandits, no flu, no stiff back. Love like that... Life wasn't about grand gestures like dying for him. Life was a long series of small gestures, of devotion, of care and affection, and Joker knew that even if Jo had lost her fight after her second death, she hadn't lost her love. And now she was turning all of her loving on him.
He had no idea how he'd ever gotten so lucky to have such an amazing experience in his life. A painful thought stabbed him in the heart: his little sister hadn't lived long enough to feel something like this.
"Please, don't cry," Jo said softly, shaking him out of his musings. "It's just grass."
"No, it's not," he scuttled closer, pushed the heap of sorted grass aside and tugged her head against his shoulder. "It's so much more than that. It's us, here and now. We're perfect."
"Yes, we are," she nuzzled his neck. There was no need to remember that someone around these parts had tried to kill them and would try again very soon. No need to remember that their dinner had no salt in it, their bathroom was behind a bush and their mattress was grass. That was irrelevant. Right now they were perfect.
The moon hung high in the sky, bathing the scenery in a phantasmagorical silver light and reflecting in the lake. The fire cracked and the sounds of night animals around them rose and fell in waves.
"We never talked about our dreams," Jo said, still resting against his shoulder. "There was no point until now. We knew we had no future. But now we do. The whole world is open to us. From the day we met until the day I died, everything we did together was pretty much about me. That hardly seems fair. What are your dreams?"
Joker took a deep breath. It was one of the hardest questions he ever had to answer. People in his life were rarely interested in what he actually wanted. When he was a kid, his parents always knew what he needed better than he did. He had to fight battle after battle to get into the Flight Academy against everyone's expectations and advice. Then he had to fight countless more battles to get what he wanted: he had to steal the Normandy to become her pilot, for fuck's sake! But it was different now. Jo wasn't asking about his dreams to break them apart. On the contrary, he knew exactly that she had the ability to present his every dream on a silver platter. So, knowing that he could have anything at all, what was he going to wish for?
"I don't want to be saving the world anymore," he said. "It was fun, sure, but the glory and fame are just the tip of the iceberg. I had to twist my heart and soul to watch you walk into potentially deadly situations time and time again and I don't want that anymore. I don't want to watch you crumble, I can't stand witnessing that kind of pain. What hurts you hurts me. I don't want to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. But that's what I don't want." He paused. "I want us out of the military and away from everything that has to do with it. I know you won't be able to help yourself and soon enough we'll be neck deep in politics, charity and life saving business of some sort. That's fine. I just want to fly you. Not fly a ship, that's not enough. I want to fly you. I want to know that without me you're not going anywhere. If that makes me your personal driver, then that's perfect. I want you to tell people that you're not going anywhere without me, too."
"Are you open to having a permanent address? Living in a house on a planet's surface somewhere?" She asked carefully.
"Yeah. I actually am. Of course I will always feel the call of the stars, always vibrate with excitement at the moment when the clamps release the ship and I'm floating in space, ready to go anywhere, but we've been around the world together. I've seen more than my fair share of adventures. I could use some peaceful, stable, boring routine." Joker raked his fingers through Jo's open hair: "What about you? What do you dream about?"
"Pretty much the same. I want to live on a beautiful planet, have a house with a garden where I can finally practise my yet nonexistent gardening skills, maybe extend my fish tank to a pond. I want to have sunrises and sunsets, summer and winter. I want to go to work and come back home, leaving all business at the office. I want to have the luxury of separating work from private life, where my dreams are not haunted by the horrors I've seen. I want to learn to cook more than ten different dishes, and I want to have a place to put that wooden sewing chest I took from your mum's house on Benning."
"So," Joker smiled. "We're getting married, buying a house and settling down?"
"I'd love that. Not on Earth, though!" Jo quickly added. "Anywhere but here. This planet is a dump, let's be honest. We can do better."
Joker had no objections to that. Not being born on Earth, he had no sentimental feelings towards humanity's home planet.
Their dinner was a coarse deal, like Jo promised. The goat meat was more like jerky without any spices, but it did fill their stomachs. Joker thought he wouldn't be able to fall asleep, knowing that they were waiting for some unknown, ill-wishing people to find them within the next few hours, but as soon as Jo wrapped her arms around him from behind to keep him warm, he dozed off.
And woke up with a start. Not sure what had roused him, Joker slowly took in his surroundings. The fire was still strong, illuminating the small clearing. Jo was gone along with her machete.
Five men stood around him. Four of them were pointing guns at him, the fifth one was doing something on his omnitool.
"Finally awake, princess?" One of the men asked. Joker looked from one nightly visitor to another.
They were all bigger, bulkier than him and looked like guys who knew how to brawl. Not fight the military way like Jo and Garrus did, but fight in a bar. They wore a mishmash of clothes, mostly too big or too small, clearly taken from people who hadn't donated their belongings willingly. Their weapons were the same mismatched collection of military and civilian pieces, sloppily cleaned. Vega would have had a conniption if the guns on his rack ever looked like that.
Bandits. The kind Vega told Jo about. Cowards, who had hid during the war but came out to prey on the innocent and wounded once the fighting was over. The scum of the human race.
"If I'm a princess, are you my fairy godmother?" Joker raised an eyebrow. The one who spoke looked like the leader. He carried the biggest rifle and a collection of medallions on a chain around his neck.
"Shut up," the guy spat. "You alone here?"
"I thought you told me to shut up."
The guy snarled and raised his rifle to his shoulder:
"Are you alone here?"
Joker made a point to look around.
"I don't know," he shrugged. "Why, do you see anyone else?"
It certainly looked like he was alone, but Joker knew that Jo would never abandon him. All of these guys were already dead, they just didn't know it yet. No matter how nasty they looked, no matter how twitchy their fingers were on their triggers, nothing would ever happen to him. Joker felt it in every fibre of his being: his guardian angel was very close, she was watching, listening, she had a plan and she would protect him against anything.
So why not help her? The very least he could do was pull some intel out of these idiots.
"Was kinda stupid of you to make a fire so big that we could see it." Another man spoke up, looking around the campsite with a slight confusion. There was nothing for them to pilfer, not a single bag or an item, other than the uneaten goat's meat.
"Where'd you get an Alliance Kodiak?" The guy with the omnitool asked.
"In my garage," Joker said honestly. "How far could you see my fire from?"
"All the way from Kochel," another guy said. He pronounced the name like 'co-hell', only a little softer, which told Joker that they had to be in Germany, or maybe Austria.
"Shut up, idiot," the leader snapped and spat on the ground.
"So what, it's not like he's gonna tell anyone about us."
"Is there anything interesting about you to tell?" Joker perked up. The guys lapped up the attention.
"We're with Armin," the guy preened, jerking his chin at the leader.
"Armin? What are you famous for, Armin?"
"For killing guys who annoy me," the leader snapped again. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Everyone calls me Joker."
"Yeah, I can see why. The Kodiak was yours, Joker?"
"It was, and my favourite one, too. You owe me big for it."
"I'm so sorry, let me make it up to you," Armin stepped closer and kicked Joker in the ribs. Joker hissed in pain and all traces of a smirk left his face. He could only imagine what Jo would do to him for that.
"Let's kill him, boss," the omnitool guy nagged.
"Not until I know if he's important to anyone out there," Armin spat on the ground again. Joker nursed his ribs and shot him an evil glare.
"You seriously don't know me?" He shook his head in disbelief. "It'll take a hell of a lot more than you five clowns to take me down."
"Don't worry about that, princess. Who are you and why do you fly a Kodiak?"
"I'm the second most important person in the galaxy. I'm serious, you have to call backup if you want to take me in. If there is twenty of you, then you might have a smidge of a chance."
"Oh, I think we'll manage," another guy smirked.
"You don't have twenty guys, do you?"
"Oh, we have plenty of guys!" The third bandit sputtered in a way that told Joker clearly: the gang was not that big. There were maybe ten of them in total.
"I dare you. Call your twenty guys, because I swear to you, you're gonna need them."
"Against you?" Armin spat one more time. "I think not." He waved his rifle and two of the bandits grabbed Joker under his arms and got him up to his feet. "Are you an Alliance officer?"
"I was, but not anymore. I told you, I'm the second most important person in the galaxy."
"Yeah, right," Armin sneered. "If so, maybe someone out there cares about you, then?"
"Someone definitely does," Joker nodded. "Someone who would do anything for me."
"Well, that's good, then. We'll keep you alive for the time being, but if no ransom comes, you're dead."
Joker didn't protest when the guys put shackles on his wrists. He asked:
"Do you have some sort of transportation? Because I'm not much of a walker. You'll have to carry me."
"Well, then I guess we'll have to make you walk," another guy said, poking him painfully in the back with his shotgun.
"I'm guessing you and Armin will be the first to go," Joker observed. "He - because he's the leader, you - because you're trigger-happy." He ignored the armed bandits trying to get him to move and sat down on the ground again, getting his head out of the line of Jo's fire.
"What the fuck are you tal..." Armin began getting angry, when suddenly a fist-sized rock hit him in the head. Joker watched him crumble and fall, but not die. Apparently Jo still had plans for him. The trigger-happy guy, however, fell over with a huge gap in his skull from another rock only a second later.
"Fuck!" The other guys quickly turned towards the trees where the rocks came from. "Who's there? Come out or we'll shoot him!" One of the bandits put his gun to Joker's head, the other two nervously tried to see anything in the darkness behind the trees. The sounds of the night insects were interrupted by broken twigs and whispers of grass here and there, making the bandits jump and Joker smile. Two more rocks flew in, disabling the two guys holding weapons, then Jo finally stepped out from behind the trees. The omnitool guy's knees shook and he tried to grab a rifle from one of his dead friends, but immediately found himself on his knees, facing Jo's machete at his throat.
"Don't bother," she said coldly. The look in her face made the guy tremble even harder.
"I didn't do anything!" He stammered. "They made me!"
"They made you do what?"
"Activate the EMP! They would have killed my mother and father and little brother otherwise!"
"Did you come here on foot from Kochel or do you have transportation?"
"We have one car left," the guy was happy to offer information in exchange for his life. "Armin hoped we'd get fuel for other cars from the Kodiak, but it leaked out by the time we got there."
"Where is your car?"
"Half a kilometer that way," the guy shook when he pointed towards the hills.
"How many of you are still at Kochel?"
"Four."
"And the population?"
"There are only fifty or so, mostly old people and kids," the guy confessed but when Jo's face darkened with fury, he whimpered: "I'm sorry! They made me do it!"
"How do you control the population?"
"They're no fighters, they don't do anything. When Armin came, they just hid in their houses and let him move in."
"What kind of weapons do you have at the base?"
"Armin buys some Alliance stuff now and then. He has a full basement in his house."
"How big a territory did he control?"
"There's Benjamin at Tutzing, but nobody else closer to the mountains. Benjamin's got a crew fifteen men strong."
"Okay. Most important question: where the fuck are we anyway?"
"Walchensee?" The guy offered. "Bavaria, Germany?"
"Thank you," she nodded calmly and beheaded the guy.
As his head rolled towards the creek, Joker smiled at Jo:
"I take it he was lying about his family?"
"Totally." She freed Joker from the handcuffs and put them on Armin after she manoeuvred him to sit with his back against a tree and bent his arms back. Strapped like that, he wasn't going anywhere when he woke up. "So, my love," Jo turned to Joker, cheerful once more. "How do you feel about using dead men's clothes to soften your bed for tonight?"
"As long as I don't have to take them off the corpses, I'm fine," Joker kneaded his wrists and checked his ribs for bruising from the kick.
"I would never make you do something like that," Jo nodded and started working. A little while later she dragged almost naked bodies of four men towards the trees and piled their possessions near the fire. The clothes were not worth mentioning, other than a little extra padding against the cold and hard ground, but there were four guns and one omnitool in the pile now as well.
"Should we send someone a message with our coordinates?" Joker asked.
"Nah," Jo grinned mischievously. "I'm curious to see how long it'll take people to realise we're missing and to find us."
"Then I'm guessing we're going to Kochel to free the population, and then maybe even to Tutzing to pay a visit to Benjamin?"
"It's going to be an adventure!" Jo beamed and Joker beamed back. He was starting to kind of like this.
