Runaways:

War Machine

Chapter 3

Breakout

by Ri-kun

We were riding along in Kamegami silently. All eyes were on me, but I kept mine glued straight ahead on the road. O-Ren hadn't argued with me when I slid into her spot at the control board to drive. I really don't think anyone wanted to argue with me, probably for the rest of their lives. It would have bothered me, but my insides felt way too hollow. It wasn't like the time I figured out that Nicole and Gabriel were dating. That was light years away now, and besides felt completely different. It was like I'd gone to some peaceful, numb place inside. No one had told me this place even existed, but it felt nice. I could stay like this forever, but a voice buzzing in the back of my ear whispered that it would be gone way too soon for my own liking. That was always just the way it went; when you're feeling good, someone's gotta ruin it for you.

Up ahead was our target. I reduced speed and brought Kamegami to a stop outside at the edge of the parking lot. It looked like our big bad buddy hadn't stomped his way through this part of town yet, but the street was deserted. That made me think that things were about to get worse for some reason, so I made sure to check that everyone was prepared.

"This is it, I guess," I told everybody. "You know, no one has to come with me if they don't want to."

"I'm going," Gabriel said at once, getting to his feet. Scooby followed suite at once, panting happily. I had an odd sort of chill go through me then, but pushed it aside. Whatever ominous fortelling it meant, this just wasn't the time. I had to stay focused if this was going to get done.

"Okay," I sighed, resignedly. "The rest of you are headed after the Sentinel. Once we find the girl, I'll..."

It suddenly dawned on me that we really didn't have any kind of communications equipment. I could have used my cell phone if it were with me, but my gut said the Pride was keeping a close watch on all the transmission signals going in and out of town. This made me feel like a dunce, but I was determined not to get myself down over it.

"We'll catch up with you once we have her," I finished. "Anybody got something they'd like to add?"

"I do," O-Ren said at once, throwing her hand up. "Was it really necessary to bring Jeff along for the ride?"

She was pointing to the very back of the tank as she said this, where Jeff's body was still lying unconscious on the floor. It had been Nicole's idea to bring him along once everybody had gotten over their vomiting. I had thought at the time that cutting his two fingers off would be for nothing if everyone else got so freaked out, but he surprisingly complied. I guess Jeff was better at being a giver than a receiver.

"He knows more about that robot than any of us," Nicole answered. "There might be a way to shut it down without damaging it too badly."

She was still fixated on that thing. "You heard what she said," I said, resignedly. "Anyone else?"

"Me," said Miguel, who immediately turned to O-Ren. "Why didn't you tell us that gun of yours could fire energy ropes out like that? We could have used something like that ages ago!"

O-Ren blushed. "I didn't," she muttered quietly. "The gun went off by accident when my fingers hit a setting I'd never used before. I was as shocked as everybody else."

"Right. Well, if question and answer time is over, we need to skedaddle! Gabe, let's you and me get this bitch on the road."

Gabriel, being the limber little shit that he was, beat me out the top hole first. I came right after him, with Scooby clawing at my heels trying to follow. Gabriel reached in to help him out, and I heard several pops and cracks that finally got my stomach to twist. I really doubted that I'd ever get used to that! Once Scooby had been put back together again more or less and could walk, we leaped down off the tank and headed for the abandoned building in front of us. Kamegami roared to life behind us once we were a few feet away and took off down the road. I had forgotten how much noise those things made when we were outside them.

Up ahead of us was the old mall. Before the new one was built next to Bonita Lakes park, it had been the epicenter of town for a time. I was way too young to remember coming here, so it just looked like a rotted out building to me. I remembered my dad talking about how businesses kept saying they were going to tear it down and put something new there. Everytime somebody said words along those lines, a bad thing would happen.

I was suddenly getting the feeling that we shouldn't have done this without the tank.

`"We should've brought the tank," Gabriel said, echoing my own thoughts.

"Agreed, but it's too late now. You ready?"

"As I'll ever be!" he nodded, holding the Word of Mordo up. "What do you think we'll find in there?"

"With any luck," I said, taking point. "Nothing. Hopefully, this will just be your basic, abandoned shopping mall full of homeless people and drug dealing degenerates. Nothing more!"

I could feel Gabriel's eyes on me, even though I wasn't looking at him. They were about a subtle as hot coals at that moment. "Do you really believe that?" he pressed, walking up beside me.

I felt my stomach turn as we reached the door, and it had nothing to do with dead dogs or torturing futuristic child molestors. "Ask me again when we get out of here!"

"Right."

I hadn't come up with a brilliant way to break in, but Gabe was already one step ahead of me. Raising both hands, he let the Word of Mordo balance itself in mid-air as he chanted from an open page in front of him. I was expecting the door to explode inward, or some sort of mystic portal to appear that would shift us somewhere inside. All Gabriel did was open the darn lock and let the entrance swing open a little.

"Show off!" I grumbled, stepping inside first.

The inside was nothing to talk about. In fact, it was downright spooky! Whoever was here before had left the place in a wreck. I hadn't seen damage this bad since that party Morris Wrendell threw while his parents were out of town. At the very least, the cops wouldn't be showing up this time around!

Manniqueins had been left standing around here and there like statues at a wax museum. Assuming wax museums did inacurate viewing of nudity, anyway. My mind was reeling at this point. There was something definitely wrong about this whole place, from top to bottom. I could feel it rattling in my bones. Suddenly, I got this nagging suspicion that perhaps Jeff had teleported that innocent girl to this particular building for a reason.

More to the point, he might have given up the location a little too quickly, knowing we would go!

"This is a trap," I said flatly, stopping dead in my tracks. "I think Jeff set us up."

"Scooby doesn't like this place, either," he replied, looking down at him. "There's something here that shouldn't be. Several somethings, in fact! I can feel it all over the place."

Gabriel was looking around, searching the rafters up above us. For what, I didn't know.

"We could just leave her here," he admitted, after a moment. "I mean, nobody said we HAD to rescue her."

Then, his eyes met mine. "But you don't want that, do you?"

I swallowed for some reason, then nodded. "No, I don't."

He shrugged. "Okay! Then let's keep moving. I don't know about you, but the less time I spend here, the better!"

The smell of the place was starting to bother me. It was worse than an old closet. "Any idea which way we should go?" I pressed, getting nervous again.

"There's a lot of residual magick hanging in the air that shouldn't be," Gabriel said, scanning his book. "Scooby's having a hard time getting a clear scent in this place because of it. I think maybe the Pride used this place in the past as a testing ground, or something."

"That makes sense. What can we do about it, though?"

"Your jetboard," he said, looking up. "We could use it to get a clearer layout of the place. Plus, I want to take a closer look up at the ceiling. Something's been moving around up there."

I really hated the idea. "And why do we want to go up there?" I said, standing on it.

"I'm curious," he replied, getting behind me. "Besides, Scooby can keep patrolling here on the ground. If he finds anything, I'll know about it immedately."

I hated the idea even more now, but was about to kickstart the board anyway, when Gabriel stopped me. "By the way," he added. "Can this thing support both our weights?"

My eyes must've carried a lot of heat to them, because he actually looked surprised. "We're about to find out!"

The engines of the jetboard roared to life. Inside the building, they sounded about a million times louder than normal, which meant my teeth were rattling inside my mouth as we took to the air. I still wasn't too good at piloting this thing, and having an extra passenger just made it worse. I thought, as we twisted through the air near-helplessly, that it would've been much worse if he'd brought that stupid mutt with him. This was a little comfort, but not much, as I struggled to right us both so we wouldn't fall off onto what looked like several leftover boxes of ladies' underwear.

Sure enough, Gabriel was right. There had been something lurking up in the rafters of the mall after all, and the moment we got close enough, they moved in. I didn't know what they were, but these things looked like something that'd stepped out of a Wes Craven movie! The noise of the jetboard was apparently bothering them, however, because none of them were getting too close to it.

"They're animated gargoyles," Gabriel explained, holding his hand up high. "Keep the jetboard steady for a second. I'm gonna take care of these things with one shot!"

"How?" I wondered, bringing my bo staff out. "What are you going to..."

I couldn't hear what Gabriel was muttering over the noise that these things were making, plus the whine of the board's engines. Whatever it was, though, his hand started to glow a second later. There was this brilliant flash of green light that came out of it, and all the flying gargoyles just froze in mid-air. A second later, the same green glow spread out from them like they were cracking apart from the inside.

Then, they just exploded.

"Nice shot!" I called out.

"We're not out of the woods yet!" Gabriel cried. "Look up ahead."

Guns were dropping down from the ceiling. I mean, high-tech laser rifle guns like from the Terminator movies! They were decending from the rooftops ahead of us as we flew right in the line of their laser sights. Several red dots appeared all over my body just as the tips of the barrels began to glow.

Gabriel leaned forward. "We might be in trouble."

"Oh, yeah!"

The weight of his body caught me off-guard. The jetboard did this sort of plunge for a second, then flipped right back around. All of this happened just as the guns fired right at where we'd been flying. A few stray shots came at my torso, but instead ricocheted off my bo staff. I caught a few more of them as they came our way without thinking. Something just took over me for a second, and I was flicking hot plasma away like it was spitballs.

"Fly in close!" Gabriel shouted above the din.

"Roger." I had a pretty good idea as to what he wanted me to do. The moment the guns took aim again, I plowed forward at high speed and ducked in right between them. The guns fired just as we zoomed past, and blasted one another to smithereens.

I grinned, looking back at Gabe. "You only knew that because of the episode of Dirty Pair we watched together!"

"Actually, I was just going to throw up a shield around us," he said, sheepishly. "Good thinking, though."

"Hold on!" I had to swerve sharply to avoid another shot. There were more guns up ahead of us, but Gabriel had his spellbook up and was ready to go. A few mumbled words I couldn't make out sent fire out of his hands. He was really starting to get good at that! The guns melted before we got close to them, making it smooth sailing for our asses!

Which, of course, was the signal for this madhouse to throw something unexpected our way. Honestly, I really should have learned not to say things like that by now! Chains came sailing up from the ground. I mean, like something out of an old martial arts movie. They had hooks on them, which dug into my back a little as we were dragged off the jetboard to the ground. Gabriel's book fell from his hands, which meant he wasn't going to be much help.

And me?

I was tangled up in a mass of chain and rope, which probably looked real undignified. My ninja skills couldn't make up their mind! One minute, I could bat energy bolts away with a staff like I was born into it. The next, I couldn't untangle myself off the floor!

"We've got to get out of here!" I gasped. The ropes were somehow getting tighter. "Any ideas, Gabe?"

"Maybe we need the safe word?" Gabriel was reaching for his book, which naturally was several feet from either of us.

"Safe word?" The hook dug in a little more. "What?"

"Nothing. Forget I said anything. Can you pass me your bo staff?"

I saw it had fallen just a few inches from my feet. My hands were held down, but I managed to roll it his way with my left foot. Gabriel yanked one arm free somehow just in time to snag it as it rolled by. I watched as he held it up and extended the bo to it's full length. The sight was more than a little Freudian, which I attributed to the lack of oxygen at the moment. Gabriel raised up some, then began swatting at the Word of Mordo, pushing it back towards him. I heard something behind us over the noise, and gulped. Something in my gut told me I didn't want to look around.

And I did.

Boy, was I scared shitless!

Had there been a rational part of my brain left, I might have screamed something about copyright infringement. There were zombie dogs gathering around us from the shadows. The good news was that none of them came close to being as big as Scooby. The bad news was, they were still zombie dogs! All of them had taken an unhealthy interest in us. I opened my mouth to try and warn Gabe, but nothing came out but a few pathetic squeaks. He must have heard me anyway, which I knew was going to do nothing for my self esteem if we survived this, because he whirled around a second later.

"Dan, duck!"

I couldn't see what he was talking about, but crouched low regardless. Something huge came sailing over my head. It actually freaked me out more than the thought of being torn apart by undead rejects of the Pound Puppies! All I could think about was what else our parents had created to murder us with? As it turned out, I should've been cheering for joy.

It was Scooby, and he was having the time of his life ripping the little mongrels to bits. I guess the rotting mastiff must have taken our parents' plagarism badly, since before a minute had passed, he had made quick work of them. They were still alive, or unalive, as the case may have been. A few of the dogs were still trying to crawl away as he picked what was left of them up and tossed them aside. Scooby looked as if he were searching for something. It dawned on me right after that, as he yanked out what might have been the largest dog's stomach, which held a glowing emerald of some kind inside it.

"You knew that was controlling them?" I asked Gabe as he helped untangle me.

"The dogs had to be manipulated by a power source close by," he replied, yanking the hook out. "Knowing my stepdad, he would have hidden it somewhere gross and convenient in case the dogs needed to be summoned from this place."

"So, why does Scooby not have one of those?" I asked, as his heel smashed it to dust. The emerald gave a feeble cough before fading to nothing.

"Scooby was resurrected through different means," Gabriel explained, giving the dog a pat. "My life force keeps him sustained. And if he wanders away too far from me, there's a good chance he'll start to fall apart for real."

"You've had your nose in that book way too much lately," I said, warily. "Are you sure it's not going to make you... I don't know, turn over to the dark side, or grow flowers out of embarassing places."

Gabriel held the book up in front of him. "I don't know," he admitted. "But, can we really afford to get rid of it now?"

Sheesh, I hated questions like that! "Let's keep going," I said, resignedly. "We might wanna keep close to the ground for a while, though. There are too many things in the air we're vurnerable to." Not that walking was such a good idea, but Gabriel and I could fight better on the ground. Plus, we had Scooby for backup. Gabe seemed to be thinking ahead of me, and nodded at once.

I could give you a long, drawn-out, and fairly disgusting description of everything we went through after that point. Sufficed to say, there were plenty of trap doors and flying knives that'd been rigged up by the hand. I will never feel safe in a Victoria's Secret shop again! Not that I frequently visited one, of course...

Then, there were those stands that'd been abandoned and left in the main part of the mall. Seems either Jeff or O-Ren's parents had whipped up a bunch of different booby traps loaded to the brink with motion sensors. None of us could make a move without getting gunned down with glow-in-the-dark goop, sprayed with ice, or have about fifty arrows flung in our direction at once. After this, my mall rat days were going to be over for good. I would never be able to set foot in one without screaming, or desperately wanting a pizza.

Even the old food court was against us! Killer robots were on the menu, and a lot of them looked like they had walked right off the set of an old sci-fi movie. Something told me this was where Miguel's folks had kept all of their reject mercandise no one wanted to buy. Luckily for us, a lot of them were already looking pretty beat up before I had a chance to start in on them. It was past time I broke out the Shien Tekkon and let loose. This makes me sound a lot cooler than I actually was, just so you know. The Shien Tekkon were still behaving a little erractically. They would work one second, then cut out on me in the next. I kept having to stop long enough to beat them against a table, which was probably blatant disrespect for ancient ninja gear, but it always used to work on that old tv set we had! Gabriel had my back the whole time, and provided me with lots of cover fire until I could get them online again.

Scooby took care of the last two that wouldn't stay down. Ninja magick would up taking a back seat to a loyal dog's good old fashioned chompers. I would have been a little humbled by it, but he had kept my ass out of trouble so far. I wound up giving him a scratch behind the ears as a thank you that ended the moment his ear promptly fell off. Gabe refastened it while I looked around for some napkins to wipe my hands off with. I was never going to get used to that!

"Scooby thinks the girl is somewhere close by," Gabe said, petting him on the head again.

"Glad to know we haven't been wandering around risking our lives for nothing," I answered, grumpily. There were, of course, absolutely no napkins in the food court. Some things never would change! "Any idea which direction we go from here?"

Scooby turned, as if he'd understood me, and pointed his nose in the direction of an old Sear's. "I think we're supposed to go that way," Gabriel said. "Come on. At least it's not the video arcade."

"I wouldn't have gone near it anyway," I told him. "They don't have Dance Dance Revolution, remember?"

"Oh, right. That was why we stopped coming here, wasn't it?"

Questions started popping into my head then, the closer we got. I began to wonder about myself as we passed through the iron gates that had once closed off this part of the mall, before something had torn them loose. That did nothing to stop the flow of doubt towards my own sanity. In the past four hours or so, I had tortured a man for information without feeling remorse for it. Whether he deserved it or not, it still felt wrong now despite the lack of guilt on my part. I had gone off on what was shaping up to be a nice little suicide mission with my best friend just to rescue some complete strange none of us knew. Furthermore, a part of me was beginning to wonder if I hadn't engineered this whole fiasco in the hopes that something permanent would happen to Gabriel's face, if not the whole package.

Yeah, I was still pissed about the whole him being with Nicole situation. No amount of psychotic breakdown or near-death experience with a giant robot will aleviate that this quickly. It was still hurting me, much as I'd tried not to let it. Something inside of me burned each time the memory of them together, of the graphic sounds they'd made each night and several times throughout the day. I'd made myself not wonder whether Gabriel was a better fuck than me, if that hadn't been the reason why she'd picked him instead. Yeah, it sounded pretty stupid, but I was starting to wonder if girls couldn't sense that sort of thing.

O-Ren would've told me yes, just so it would get under my skin some more. Sometimes, I really hated that girl!

I thought we'd spend the next hour or so looking for our target. For some reason, I was calling her 'target' since I didn't know her name yet. My gut kept telling me I would get over that once we found her, despite the growing doubts towards my sanity. As it happened, Jeff had teleported her right in the middle of the store. What more, he'd made it even easier for us to locate by putting up some kind of funky blue force field around her that glowed brightly in the dark. I had to remind myself that the force field was still an obstacle, that we still needed to get past it before this mission was over and done with, but a part of me was too overjoyed at the idea that we wouldn't be spending much longer in this deathtrap.

I look several calming breaths while Gabriel set about examining it. The girl inside was unconscious, but I thought I saw the rise and fall of her chest through the bright glow. Looking straight at the thing made colored spots pop out in front of me. I had to blink a few times to make them go away, and by then, Gabriel was done checking it out.

"So, what's the story?" I pressed. "How does it work?"

"Honestly," he sighed. "I have no clue. This thing has nothing to do with magick whatsoever. It looks like Jeff completely designed it on his own. If O-Ren or Nicole were here, one of them could probably figure it out. I don't even know where to begin!"

Yes, I bristled a little at him saying her name. "And I guess blowing it up straight out is not an option, since that would just kill the whole reason we came here." My head wasn't on straight. I stood there for a moment, thinking hard. There had to be a solutiont to this.

I had a radical thought, and let it gestate in my brain for a minute while I took a walk around the force field block. This thing had been built by Jeff; it was owned by him, if not outright built. The location seemed random at first, but the more I thought about it, it looked to me like she'd been sent here on purpose. If the Pride were using this place as storage to dump all their failed experiments, then Jeff had a specific reason for putting her here. I was starting to wonder if this girl was just another random victim after all! It really didn't matter in the long run, so I pushed it aside and kept working on the problem of getting her out of there.

Jeff was an asshole. He was also vain and presumptious; his idea of fun was not exactly a match for wikipedia! He might have given us the information because he didn't think we'd be able to figure anything out. He might have been hoping all the stuff in-between would off us first. But assuming we did make it here, which we had, the way to shut this thing off would be right in front of us. He loved being clever, and would've stuck the off switch right in front of us!

And just as that occured to me, I noticed something on the floor. As many times as I'd paced around this thing, how could I have missed the panel directly in front of the force field that was shaded a completely different color. It stood out so well now that I was looking down at it. I glanced over towards Gabriel and grinned.

Unfortunately, I had neglected to calculate Jeff's tendancy to booby trap things! Nothing happened for about two seconds after my foot landed hard on the square. It didn't even sink in a little like on all those Indiana Jones movies, but I felt something beneath my shoe click and start buzzing. Like I said, a total of two seconds to worry whether I'd done the right thing. I could do a lot of worrying in a very short period of time, but this time, I really had thought I was right.

And then, the ground exploded out from under us. Gabriel and I both went falling down about ten feet or so alongside the glowing force field box with the girl still snoozing inside of it. I was starting to feel envious of her, because a second after that, the roof came crashing down on top of us. Gabriel reached for his book, which did something kinda strange; it sent out all these wailing ghosts at the debris coming for us. I might have wondered what ghosts stood a chance against solid mass, but it all started slowing down a bit. Then it was like this huge web formed over us, catching the falling roof before it could bury us in. I was seriously going to have to reevaluate my standards on the usefulness of the dead.

None of that changed the fact that we were buried alive, and that none of the others would know about it until it was too late, most likely. The girl, whoever she'd been, was somewhere outside the dome Gabriel had secured for us. She had the blue box to keep her from being crushed, but we'd gone from being the rescuers to needing rescuing ourselves. If this was the life of a superhero, then I was seriously lost on what the appeal was for Miguel.

"Dude," I wheezed, moving over closer to him. "This mall sucks!"