"Remember us you little assholes?"
"Who the hell are you?" Yomi said through her teeth as she rubbed her head.
"We're the 3... excuse me. 2 guys you left in the tree."
"Wait. There were 3 of you the when we took your shit." Nikolai said.
"Our friend Anikai got dragged off by a psuedodog. Looks like you called it you fucking prick. Now if there are no further objections. We will take your equipment and make for the plant after hanging you from that train bridge."
The second bandit stood up sporting a hideous scar across face revealing his teeth even while he closed his lips. "Yeah so all of you file into that house across the way so we can pack it all up."
The team silently stood up one by one and filed toward the red brick house.
Tomo leaded toward Nikolai's shoulder. "You got a plan?"
"You've got to know when fighting is just gonna get people killed Tomo. Just roll with it wait for a chance."
Their hands were tied with wire ties and were forced on the wall.
"Now I want you to tell me if there's anything sharp in here I might hurt my precious little hand on." The bandit said in massive arrogant sarcasm.
"I've got something for ya. Just drop the gun and untie me." Kagura challenged.
"Ha! You can stay right there and i'll take whatever I want whether you want me to or not. And yes I meant that in every sense of what can be taken."
"Just for comment that you are going to fucking pay." She growled back.
"We'll see." He said grabbing her hair.
"Let me go. Ah. Please!"
"Oh shut up."
At that moment everyones vision went blood red as their heads throbbed with unexpected impact.
"What was that?" The bandit asked.
Nikolai who had sat stoic, eyes once closed until now sat at attention.
"Yo sparrow. You feel that?" The second bandit asked.
"Yeah."
The throb hit again this time followed by a low ring that lasted from 2 to 4 seconds.
Suddenly a visible shock wave washed over the bandits at chest level.
Suddenly everyone was violently slammed against the south wall of the farm house.
Nikolai screamed silently meanwhile the bandits were tossed out the window.
The building rattled and creaked without a single sound. Everything was simply drowned out by deafening rumbling.
Darkness...
/\/\/\
Tomo sat up in her bed in a sweat. She looked around to see her bedroom flooded with the glorious golden light of a summer morning.
She flopped back o her bed and began to laugh hysterically.
But without warning her body assumed an awkward and contorted position and she felt out of breath. She tried to move and was met with crippling agony. In a blink her pleasant bedroom morphed and twisted into a maze of brick and rock with only a tiny speck of light in her eye.
She tried to move again and only more pain surged through her arms. She mustered her strength and strained her muscles to sit up. Pain hit again again, constantly firing in an attempt to keep her locked in the mysterious cell.
She emerged shrieking in tortured pain to find the brick farmhouse had collapsed on her and her friends.
Dazed she felt herself picked up into a blurry, weightless, shocked state. When she awoke Chiyo was speaking to her in what seemed like a foreign language. One that was made up of indistinguishable drones.
Outside Kagura, Osaka, and, Sakaki were sifting through the rubble in a frenzied search for Yomi and Nikolai.
"Yomi-chan!" Osaka called to the lifeless heap of bricks.
"Please Osaka, Dig!" Said Sakaki in a very out-of-character manner.
They found Nikolai first. Dead in puddle a thick blood pouring from a massive gash on the back of his head.
Without a word Sakaki and Osaka began to cry as Kagura stood stunned at the sight.
"There goes your knight in shining armor huh?!"
The three turned around.
A bloody figure stood. The bandit.
"This time you don't get a blowout to bail you out."
Sakaki pounced at her rifle.
The bandits weapon sounded and her rifle was no more.
"What now?"
He began to step towards them, his weapon menacing from his hip.
The three closed their eyes as gunfire sounded.
They realized they still lived. But Kagura was covered in blood, and not hers.
"Yomi!" Tomo screamed from the damaged APC.
Yomi had taken upwards of 6 rounds to her chest
The bandit laughed and clapped his gloved hands. "What a fucking hero!"
More gunfire, but this time it echoed from the right.
There Tomo stood with a soviet heavy machine gun.
The bandit noticed he was hit and turned his gun to her.
Before the maneuver was complete she released a volley of fire and metal. And another. And another.
The bandit twitched and tweaked as the bullets tore his flesh.
A final barrage was spat at the man as until the weapon was empty and he was missing noticeable and dramatic sections of his person.
She ran toward Yomi with tears filling her eyes. "Yomi! Yomi-chan! Don't die!"
She rolled her body onto her back. Met only with a cold, dead eyes she stood up and walked to the APC.
Halfway there she collapsed and began to weep and sob.
/\/\/\
The planes engine of the droned on as the only sound.
Chiyo, Tomo, Sakaki, Kagura, and Osaka sat without a word. Their minds entirely taken by thought they sat in contemplation at the death of their friend Yomi and their Savior Nikolai.
They arrived back home, payed off the mafia, and anonymously turned the weapons and armor into the police.
Yomi's body was buried by the remaining stalkers in the a forest far outside of town. The site is visited weekly by the surviors.
Nikolai's ashes were strewn from the air into the ocean. Officially no record of the man "Nikolai Kerenchki" ever existed. With no family, he was remembered as a hero to the survivors of the incident.
The authorities deny such an event could ever happen and have written it all up as a "hallucination caused by a powerful mind altering drug". They each failed a test for LSD due to the genetic anomalies brought on by the massive doses radiation they were exposed to.
Their lives have never fully returned to normal.
/\/\/\
About time right? Well i'm sure you're all fairly disappointed and all about the wait and the result of it all but you're all still welcome to critique me with the fury of any god you choose. Sorry Yomi.