The door was unlocked, but Skipper still all but kicked it down as he entered the dark theatre, still under renovation, the temporary movie screen held up by a lattice of scaffolding. Amazingly, nobody so much as looked in his direction. Immediately his eyes, and his gun locked onto the target, but he didn't shoot. He continued running down the middle isle of the theatre, Kowalski walking at a brisk pace along the parallel row. Skipper cursed in a mixture of three different dead languages. The positions of the civilians relative to the target were such that it would be impossible to shoot; still, by the time he got to the front of the stage, cutting off the exit behind the screen, the team would have arrived and would cover the back exit. They had him, it would just take a little patience.
The film on the screen rippled as Kowalski stepped onto the stage obscuring the projection, inciting murmurs amongst the crowd; though it was obvious they all merely assumed it was one of their host's famous publicity stunts. They had no idea just how much danger they were really in.
"What are you doing…?" Skipper thought aloud. And how did he get there so fast? Skipper wasn't sure what to do. He knew he could shoot, but that was the most obvious course of action?
"Skippah!" Private shouted. Skipper looked back over his shoulder to see his team burst through the door. In the split second he was distracted, Kowalski's gun arm moved from his side, aiming at a middle aged woman in the front row. The uneasy murmurs from the crowd grew as doubts began to be raised as to whether this was a publicity stunt. Other people, old enough to recognise what had once been a well-known face remained frozen in their places. They knew better than to draw attention to themselves.
Private let out a nervous squeak as the gunshot rang out through the theatre, both of which were drowned out by the scream of the woman as she gaped at the bullet hole in the floor only inches from her foot. Immediately the rest of the room turned into a mad stampede towards the single door, and Skipper could only watch as behind him his team were barely saving themselves from being trampled without hurting the civilians. He was on his own. However Skipper wasn't given time to consider this, as he looked up from the from where he stood only a few feet from the edge of the stage, meters from his target, he noticed a metallic glint from the target's left hand.
The knife flew expertly from the target's hand, and Skipper expected to have it pulled from his chest during an autopsy, but saw the thin stiletto had embedded itself in the barrel of his gun.
Kowalski had thirty seconds before Skipper realised he wouldn't be able to get the knife out of the gun. His hand went to his pocket, where his last clip, which was concerning light, was retrieved. Without warning there was a crack and an inconvenient pain to his head as his mind went familiarly fuzzy and numb, both the gun and clip flying from his hands. He looked up to see his Private sprinting away from where he'd felled him with an infuriatingly predictable kick, and towards the weapon.
Kowalski was on his feet and probably would have gotten there first when when the shot missed him by an inch, causing him to take several steps back. He looked into the audience to see that his Private's weapons expert had managed to get this head and his hand above the crowd long enough to fire a single shot at him. Though Skipper had yet to reach the weapon, he knew he wouldn't beat him to it, despite the fact he was no longer being fired upon by the weapon's specialist who was slowly sinking beneath the stampede. However, another closer and equally important object caught his eye.
"Surrender, K'walski!" Skipper exclaimed, mentally cursing the remainder of his accent that his team's medic/scientist/engineer/strategy analyst/anything-too-boring-for-anyone-else-to-do- person had constantly teased him over on the way there. Still, thinking about that kept the fear from taking over as it had all too many times in the past. He had the gun, yet somehow he felt it was too easy, and too light.
"Missing something?" Kowalski asked tauntingly, holding up the missing clip.
For the next few seconds Skipper's world went red as he launched himself forward and fought viciously for the ammunition clip. At the end of this short time, Skipper stepped back, ending the encounter, grinning.
"How about now?" He smirked, holding up the aforesaid object, though received not even the smallest hint of defeat.
"Check your pocket." Kowalski stated in a tone, indistinguishable to someone who didn't know him so well from his familiar monotone, which Skipper recognised from his childhood. He didn't even bother to check if the weapon was still in his pocket.
"Stop toying with me!"
"I don't get it, sir." Private complained, picking himself up from what had been a relatively painless, if embarrassing fall.
"It's quite simple," Kowalski replied giving a less than pleased look at the time it took his young Private to regain his footing, "you are redirecting your opponents force in such a way that…"
"No I get that," the ten year old replied, "What I don't get is…" Private wasn't quite sure how to phrase this. He understood how he'd left himself open in his last strike, and he also understood that there were three possible counters Kowalski could have employed.
"Good observation, Private," Kowalski answered, reading the expression on the child's face, "you expected me to choose the most painful counter attack, however I chose the more painless of the three."
"Yes sir."
"Tell me, Private; had I chosen the more painful as previous patterns would dictate, basing your calculations on this month's statistics, what do you think the likelihood of your repeating the mistake would be?"
"Um…" Private struggled with the calculations, which had never been his strong point, "52.7%, sir?"
"52.81 but close enough. Now, do you think you will ever make that mistake again now that you have discovered that Jenkins is actually able to laugh?"
"No sir."
"Exactly. Lessons will be conducted in this manor in future."
Kowalski was no longer standing in front of him but ascending the small ladder to the scaffolding above the unfinished stage, Skipper not far behind. However it wasn't until he was half way up the ladder that he realised why Kowalski had stayed so long examining where it joined the scaffolding. Skipper's eyes searched the room as one part of his brain screamed at the next for options, the ladder swaying dangerously without several of the bolts that secured it. Meanwhile he could see Kowalski walking along the scaffolding towards the side of the stage, only a few meters away, at a leisurely pace of all things.
Inevitably, the ladder tore itself from the scaffolding above. As the ladder fell, Skipper launched himself off, grabbing one of the supports at the side of the stage, and climbing up this until he finally grabbed the metal railing and began to pull himself onto the catwalk.
"Hold 'ill," Rico growled with undisguised annoyance. The target wasn't exactly ducking for cover, but was carefully keeping all non-lethal and not completely pointless targets out of the way. Apparently the target had to be alive for 'questioning'. He was pretty sure Jones had just gone soft. Finally the target stopped, and he was just about to take the shot when the rifle was knocked from his hands, "'ey!"
"Seaborgium, Rico, you'll hit Skipper!" the scientist exclaimed. Fortunately Rico also saw the close proximity between their colleague and the target, and did not attempt to shoot again. Apparently, he wasn't the only strategy analyst to have done the calculations concerning the probability of the bullet ricocheting off the dense scaffolding and hitting Skipper, else so bold a move as to walk directly in Rico's line of sight would not have been attempted. Of course, this also brought up the question as to how the information that they had been instructed not to use lethal force had been leaked, which in turn raised the questions of…
"Predictable as ever, Private." Kowalski commented, removing the gun from Skipper's pocket as the younger man pulled himself up.
"What?" Skipper exclaimed, realising he'd been tricked, though there was little he could do without losing his grip and falling to the stage below.
"All warfare is based on deception," Kowalski quoted effortlessly, "Do you recognise that?"
"Sun Tzu, The Art of War." Skipper replied, now on the catwalk, immediately making a clumsy grab for the gun. Kowalski merely stepped backwards and out of the attack's range.
"Hence when able to attack, we must seem unable," he continued to quote as he effortlessly blocked what Skipper had considered a signature move. It was clear now that the brief fisticuffs earlier had been no victory on his part. It infuriated Skipper to think this was another 'lesson', though at least now, he was finally getting his opponent's real abilities, "when using our forces we must seem inactive; when we are near we must make the enemy believe we are far away… I don't think he meant that far away," Kowalski commented as Skipper missed by a humiliating distance, "when far away we must make him believe we are near."
"You were saying." Skipper countered, using one of the lose cables as a whip, snatching the still empty gun, that and it's clip, the key to life or death. The sarcastic remark might have been a small victory against the unusually talkative Kowalski, but this was all Skipper needed to resume his confidence in his abilities.
Despite the fact he now had the weapon, he was still too drunk on his victory to do little more than continue to attack with that same cable. However, though the first attack might have caught his opponent off guard, the second was easily evaded, and as Skipper went for a third attack Kowalski grabbed a spanner left behind by one of the workmen and held it up so the second strike knotted the whip around it, tugging it so that it was snatched from Skipper's hand.
But Skipper hadn't been beaten yet. He used the force of the counter, throwing it all into the punch that came forward with the cables rebound. However, at the last minute his opponent stepped out of the way, and Skipper found himself thrown over the low railing and off the catwalk.
"Good recovery, Private," Kowalski complemented genuinely, "But you left yourself open," As the gun was snatched from Skipper's hand his only grip on the railing was lost and he instinctively grabbed one of the many ropes hanging from the scaffolding to prevent a painful fall. He felt the knot securing it to the belaying pin release, and he was lowered down to the ground.
"Alright, Rico, Skipper's clear!" Skipper heard his lieutenant shout, and a few seconds later, by either luck or skill, Kowalski was narrowly avoiding being shot.
"What was it you were saying about leaving yourself open?" Skipper taunted. He released the rope, though a satisfied look on Kowalski's part immediately told him he probably shouldn't have done. The rope swiftly disappeared up into the darkness, at the same time one of the sets on the other end of the rope hit the stage. There was a cry of pain he recognised as his private's as it landed on the boy's hand.
"Indeed, Private, you've blocked your own cavalry," Kowalski commented as he grabbed a rope parallel to Skipper. The moment his feet touched the ground, Skipper was on the attack, however as his crippling strike was blocked, he was suddenly afraid. Though nothing was said, something had changed as was proven when instead of waiting for another attack, Kowalski instead twisted his injured arm painfully behind his back, and Skipper felt several stitches reopen. Skipper tried to react but a kick to the back of the leg brought him to his knees.
Barely a second later, Skipper was on the ground, listening as the clip taken from his pocket was loaded into the gun.
"Skippah?!" Private shouted as the team charged onto the stage having freed Private's hand.
"He's good," Rico muttered under his breath as he stared at the empty stage before him. Kowalski, the team's Kowalski of course, was already on the other side of the stage.
"There was only one way they could have gone out," He barked, "We'll cut them off." However the slight red smear left on the stage shook his confidence.