Chapter 2
He just hoped that the OZ soldier was too drunk to read.
Heero took out his identification card and handed it to the man, all the while studying his face closely to hopefully decipher a reaction. The drunken soldier squinted at the ID in the light and pretended to analyze it in the finest detail while he held it nearly two inches away from his face.
After scrutinizing it for what seemed like a few minutes, he looked back at Heero and smirked as he handed the card back to him. "Okay, Heero," he pronounced the name like it was an obscenity, "I'm gonna escort ya to a place where we can talk…outta dis here rain." (The deluge of rain was harshly coming down at this point.)
With a menacing leer, the man reached out to take Heero by the arm, but Heero was faster. Quickly grabbing the man's arm first, he stepped forward and swept the drunk off his feet. The captain's loud cry of alarmed disbelief was quickly cut short after his feet left the ground. He landed flat on his back, the wind harshly knocked from him. Spluttering in senseless shock, the soldier looked as to where the punk responsible for his bruised tailbone was. But Heero was already running.
"STOP!" the man screamed, taking out his gun in a drunken rage and firing a shot.
For a drunk, his aim was extraordinarily accurate...or incredibly lucky. Heero felt fire in his side where the bullet hit. Crying out in pained surprise, he fell to the ground in a cradled position, clutching his wound. Although his side was bleeding freely, he could tell the bullet wasn't lodged all too deep. Still, it hurt like purgatory.
"Lucky shot," Heero groaned to himself, his teeth tightly clenched together as he laboriously struggled to his feet. Agony blazed in steady throbs throughout his left side and sent burning waves straight up his back. But ignoring the searing pain above his hip, he glanced back at that ridiculous-looking man who shot him. His eyes narrowed slightly. The one soldier was now accompanied by four others.
"Stop 'em!" Heero heard the drunken captain roar.
"That boy, Captain?" One of the four soldiers frowned as he looked at the young man who was purposefully injured, then back at his leader. 'What did this kid do to make Captain Walker so angry?'
The captain waved an inebriated arm in Heero's direction. He was still holding his beer, however, and not only did he get more on himself, but also on his companions. "He assaulted me when I tried to arrest 'em!"
With one hand clasping his bleeding side, Heero looked at the other soldiers to hear how they would respond. After all, in their eyes he was supposedly just a kid who missed his curfew (if he had the chance to explain himself, that is). Judging by the way they looked, Heero couldn't tell how drunk they were, or if they were drunk at all. Maybe they'd tell their leader to back off because he's just a stupid kid. Then again, most soldiers held a certain loyalty towards one another and, above all, immense loyalty to their leader ('Especially if they drank together,' Heero thought disgustedly). No…he couldn't rely on kindness in this situation.
After getting an approving nod from his leader, one of the more malicious-looking soldiers turned towards Heero. "Okay, kid," he began, "Kid – I gotta be frank with ya, kid – if you don't turn yourself in now, you're gonna find yourself either in jail or dead. We OZ troops, we're not your average friendly neighborhood cops. We don't have to take prisoners if we don't wanna. But, I'm in a pretty good mood right now ('I wonder why…' Heero dryly noted to himself), and I'll give ya one more chance. You can apologize to Captain Walker, here, and den come wit us, or ya can come wit us forcefully and wish ya apologized on your knees!"
He then began to approach Heero slowly. Two others followed suit.
"Come on, kid, give it up," another Special stated. His voice possessed the pretense of goodwill, but his blue eyes gleamed dangerously. "You'll just make it easier on yas."
Ignoring the faulty grammar, Heero faced a few choices. For one, he could simply continue running and hope that they couldn't catch him. If they did…God would only know what they'd do to him. OZ soldiers were noted for their cruelty almost as well as their drunkenness. If they caught him, and then found out he was a member of the Rebel Alliance…most likely he would never be seen again…alive, that is.
There was one other choice he could think of at the moment – he could take down a couple of these guys right there and get a small head start.
To Heero, the choice was obvious.
He grabbed for his gun which was lodged in the back of his blue jeans.
"He's got a gun!" a soldier shrieked. "After 'em! He's probably from a gang!"
"I knew it, I knew it!" babbled the captain named Walker. "No little kid could knock me down."
'An infant could knock you down,' Heero thought satirically, determinedly clenching his gun tightly with both hands. This was it. If he fired at even one of them now, there was no turning back.
"Don't worry, sir," said a soldier who appeared to be quite sober. "I'll get 'em."
He reached into his coat pocket, but by the time his hand appeared, a shot rang out from Heero's gun. A scream ripped from the man's body as he dropped to the ground, a bullet now embedded in the dead man's chest.
"J…Johnson!" cried a nearby OZ trooper, his eyes widening from the shock of a mere boy killing his fellow soldier.
With an angry scream he reached for his own gun, but Heero was again faster. Another shot rang out in the darkness; another soldier collapsed, a bullet implanted in his brain.
Satisfied with only three left, Heero took off into the night.
