Apologize for my tardiness most beloved readers. Unfortunately my well of creative talents have been hit with the drought of(dare I say it) REALITY!

But, lucky for me, I have found the cure, better known as COMPLETE INSANITY...SANITY...ANITY...ITY...TY

Chapter II: Chase

Maybe early retirement wouldn't be such a bad idea. Alex though sarcastically as he clamped his arms around his rescuer and hung on for dear life. They had just exited the park and were now driving down the road at a speed that even Alex would have dubbed suicidal if it weren't for the fact that he was a bit preoccupied with things like ignoring their escort while trying not to fall or throw the bike off balance.

His driver had begun a series of swerves in and out of the traffic in order to dodge the bullets their pursuers continued to fire at them. Alex thanked whoever was listening up there that they were on the lower side of the Thames where the traffic was lighter and not in the main city or they would probably be dead by now.

As it was, he was having doubts about this lady's driving. If he had thought charging a horse through a tunnel with a train bearing down on him had been mental this had to be ten different kinds of insane. If he hadn't thought otherwise he would have believed her suicidal.

It was probably a good thing then that he had his head buried in her shoulder to keep his eyes from streaming in the wind or he would have noticed they were now driving against the traffic.

Although they had had a head start and were traveling at top speed the sound of their pursuers was still signing away in the not so distant background. A sharp crack announced that their escort had decided to add gunshots and bullets to Symphony El'Mania.

Chancing a peek behind them, Alex was quick to wish he hadn't. Five motorbikes were now nipping the dust of their tails and two SUVs broke laws that hadn't even been concocted yet in a bid to catch up.

"Are you insane?" Alex couldn't resist after nearly being flattened by a semi, although he had to yell right in her ear to be heard. His reply was an elbow to the ribs to get him back in the bike's center of gravity.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Her POV

I swung the bike down the center of the lane between cars and thought up a number of eloquent names for the nut job who had ordered this hit. What was it with men and their 'image' that they had to go all D-day with a friggen kid.

Personally a sniper on his way to school or a drive-by would have been just as easy but nooooo, they have to do the whole 'capture and torture' drama on account of the kid getting really fucking lucky. Honestly, it's a blasted miracle he's still breathing to be exact.

I growled in my throat as I was forced to duck around a truck to avoid a spray of bullets. The projectiles exploding against the cab flicking paint chips and bits of metal on the side of my head. Damn it, they were using hollow points, this day was not going well.

A sudden shout in my ear causes me to involuntarily jerk and almost guillotine myself on the side of the trailer. The kid thought I was insane! Oh purrrrleeeeeaaaase, he was the one who had to be all noble and actually buy Blunt's threats. Which reminds me, me and D' Gray Man were gonna have a 'leeeettle' chat when I got us out of here.

I shoved Alex back too balance the bike and took stock of where we were on the river, thankful that I had spent the better part of the last year learning the in and outs of the area. Less than two hundred feet ahead was the entrance to a shipyard next to a dock for cargo ships, if I was going to dispose of our escort that would be the place to do it.

Checking the traffic ahead, I weaved to the opposite side of the road and slowed marginally as I waited for the approaching trailerless cab I had chosen, when it was fifty feet away I pulled right into its path. The horn blaring was almost deafening and I wished I had worn earplugs but pushed the thought aside to concentrate.

3…2…1 I spun the bike to the left and through the narrow gap between gate and fence of the shipyard entrance to the pleasant sound of something going 'crunch-y' behind me. It's almost distressing the way these guys never seemed to learn that tailing someone down the wrong side of the road was a bad, bad, incredibly stupid idea.

My little stunt had bought us some time but I would have to hurry if this was going to work. Gunning the engine as much as I dared in these confined corridors I whipped through the yard like the Animaniacs on crack, choosing the narrowest openings, slowing to kick down piles of repair materials into the path, and when the opportunity presented itself, doubling back through the maze of small buildings.

After about four minutes of this we arrived at a hanger used for repairing private yachts. Excellent for dumping my cargo while I worked.

"Ok, off the bike bucko." I nudged him with my elbow but he didn't move. "Alex?" I questioned, hoping nothing was wrong; Greg would bitch me out for the next month for not calling him if anything happened to the boy.

"Alex!" I said more urgently. This time he seemed to have heard me and after several jerky motions managed to stand and fall off the bike. A shimmer of apprehension sparked in my gut, I quickly kicked down the stand and jumped off to check him.

He was kneeling on the floor breathing heavily and looking like a mini earthquake. "Alex?" the commanding tone I employed finally got his attention. "Are you hurt?"

Violent shake of the head

I breathed easier. "Well in that case get your lazy hiny off the ground. I need you to hide so I can play Rambo."

He didn't seem capable of processing that last line because he peeled himself off the tarmac and stood doubled over using the bike as support. "You…you… you're insane."

I scratched my head mentally, trying to figure out what he could be referring too before I figured it out. "Oh you're one to talk," I sniped. "Do you wanna know the total cost of damage control for your little joy ride through Amsterdam?

"And he says I'm insane." I continued quietly muttering obscenities evolving around stupid little children as I grabbed his arm and hauled his whiney ass over to a ladder leading too a second floor storage. There where shelves of repair material up there, the perfect hiding spot providing he had the survival desire to stay out of trouble long enough for me to take care of our little problem.

"Get up there and hide. I'll come back for you when I finish with them." He gave me another 'you're loony' look and I rolled my eyes. "Here,' I pulled out a gun from my left hip-hostler, "I trust you know how to use it."

In his face the Beretta looked huge, but he swallowed, nodded, and took it without complaint. Evidently the gravity of his situation was finally getting to him. I watched him climb, noting the occasional wince as he used his left arm to reach for the next rung, little maniac better not try using that side to shoot or he'd probably simplify things for the enemy by misfiring on himself.

Once he was out of sight I returned to the bike and went back the way we came. I had, for obvious reasons, left the last few lanes unobstructed and I now drove back to the last corridor I messed up. My tricks seemed to have work; while the sound of the other team was alarmingly louder it had bought me enough time to stash the kid.

Now I took the time to fully dismount and hop behind the wheel of a nearby forklift. Hot-wiring the thing was a dream and I guided it behind a towering stack of pallets loaded with long metal piping I had first cut the restraining lines on.

It took another forty seconds for the baddies to show. Headed by a bike followed by on of the SUVs, the pattern repeated with the last bike bringing up the rear. Drat! All I could hope for was to crush the first set and hope by some miracle the next bike would be going too fast to stop, leaving one SUV and motorbike. Better odds at least than all of them.

I waited till the first bike slowed to avoid the nets I had dumped there earlier before hitting the lever for the forky part of the lift into 'up' mode. There was a slight creaking but happily, like all horror movie idiots (well, idiots in general), they never looked up till it was too late.

"Ooooh, she flattens that play, and the tailback has no time to stop… ho he goes doooowwwn. I don't think he's gettin' up from that hit. And the rest of the team takes a minute to regroup at the other end of the field." I happily commented from the sidelines, call me sadistic but a few too many attempts on my own cheerful personage had left yours truly with very little sympathy for the suckers.

Hey it's not like I made them go dark side.

Now to finish the rest of the home team before coach could call in back up. I wear cargo pants for the simple reason that you can stuff a lot of goodies in without creating monster protrusions that can get caught, unlike accessory pouches. Right now I dug through a pocket over my knee till I found what I wanted, a small devise that plugged into my phone which allowed it to act as a radio frequency surfer. It took a bit of fiddling before I picked up their ear-com conversation; they were heading around the opposite way from Alex's hidey-hole.

Eeeeexcelent! Note to self, get Harrison-my personal R2-D2 in human form- something nicer next Christmas other than the latest Ipad, maybe a planted connection in Apple's CEO office. Well back to business, they would be splitting up, the bike scouting ahead while the car would find a way back to search this road, oh Happy Day.

Christmas had just passed but I hadn't had a lot of time to celebrate so now I would take this as my own personal season to be jolly. A four liter jug of gasoline with a splash of motor oil(places like these are just filled with the funnest things), a pinch of something very illegal I carried in several small vials in a specially padded box, a rag stuffed down the top aaaaaaaaaaand…., as the Frenchies would say, Voila, twas time to make merry the Japanese way.

I have to say for all their blabbing these guys really needed a crash course on kidnapping spies, it took the car three whole minutes to reach the street I had blocked two lanes down. By that time I was already on another roof happily humming 'When You're Evil' by Voltaire.

What? it's a catchy tune.

Car drives up… "I, pledge, my allegiance too," light rag, "all things dark." Car slows… "And I, promise on my damned soul," swan dive my lil' present, "to, do as I am told."

KABOOOOOOOOOOM!

"Lord Beelzebub has never seen, a soldier quite like me," hm, could have done with a little more thermite but at least I got my boom and everything else was gonna resemble a mini mount Vesuvius by the time anyone got here. "Not, only does his job but does it hap-pi-ly!" now there was just the leeeettle matter of the ball brain on wheels and I would be home free.

Said idiot was making it way to easy for me with all this yammering. Eh, coming back this way? Well let's see how you like me now suck-ah.

A suitable building three blocks over provided a nice overlook, the dude was so far off I even had time to ensure he would be coming this way by blocking all the other roads closest to where the GPS on his phone said he was.

The stray finally had the decency to show, approaching at a cautious speed incase there were more booby traps. Sadly he still didn't have a clue about overhead dangers. I was so bored I was actually starting to feel bad for this guy; it had been one of Greg's first lessons, check all angles for possible hostilities and that most non professionals tended to ignore up for some strange reason.

Ah well, couldn't be helped, I could just make up for it by yelling a bit louder at Blunt later. I took my time aiming till he was just past halfway down the lane before putting a hole in his chest. I find when shooting bikers it's bad philosophy to aim at the head since the helmet can slow, and if they were very lucky redirect, the bullet.

Coast clear I dragged myself back to the hanger. "Alex," I called, 'you can come out now."

No response.

Okay so either he had been a complete bitch and played hooky or he was being smart and staying quite until he could identify me. One way to find out. "Alex, get your whiny little ass down here or I do I have to come up and drag you down."

Something clicked and my senses relaxed. "Alex put the damn gun down before you shoot yourself in the foot or something else equally stupid."

"How did you know it was me?" The muffled voice echoed hollowly somewhere close to my left on this level. Hm so he had come down and hidden on the other side, seems he still had some brain cells left in my department of the woods after all.

"Bad guys don't keep their gun's safety on and wouldn't have waited for me to stop before shooting." The boy emerged from behind some boards but continued to keep the gun trained on me.

"Who are you?"

I ignored the demanding tone and instead addressed a more obvious issue. "If you're planning to shoot me then you might want to bend your arm a bit or the recoil is gonna send you back into those cables." I almost wanted to laugh at the look on his face. "Beretta's have a strong back kick and it'll probably break something in your elbow since your muscles aren't strong enough to support it."

He blushed but didn't drop the weapon. "Who are you? Do you work for Blunt?"

"Do me a favor," I said dismounting and slowly approached him. 'Don't mention the hairless monkey-dick till I actually have to go see him, OK?"

I held out my hand for the gun and waited patiently, it would have been no sweat to disarm him but we hadn't gotten off on the greatest of foots and I didn't want him to get the wrong idea.

We stood for several seconds before he finally conceded and released his grip to offer me the handle. I wordlessly took the gun and reengaged the safety before returning it to it's hostler. It took him a bit more to finally climb on the bike behind me but I was in no hurry.

We were about a third of the way back to the entrance when my senses started tingling. I pulled over and retrieved the radio doodad to see if anyone had been genius enough to make that call for backup.

"Target two clicks north-west. Team one take left wing, team two right." Gah, nooooooooo how did they know where we were. I had checked all my gear just this morning so I knew it couldn't be me, which left Alex.

"Alex get off the bike." I ordered. Thankfully he didn't question as I pulled out a small scanner and checked him for possible bugs. Nothing blipped so that left… "Alex do you have your cell phone?"

He gave me a look and slapped the item into my extended hand. I nodded and dropped it on the pavement where I was about to introduce it to my boot sole but then thought better of it. If they were tracking the chip then I could pick the ground and they would follow.

My little radio surfer, which also GPSed the point of origin, indicated four separate vehicles, most likely cars. Alrighty then, let's play. There was a nice empty lot on the loading dock and I had some new toys I wanted to try out.

All my guns today were Beretta 98F semi-automatics since they are awesome for popping hanger-ons at longer distances, but the one under my left arm was a rare 93R Greg got me for my birthday last year and that one of my CIA friends had sent me something extra special for Christmas for.

"Why are you changing cartridges?" Finally Alex could ask something intelligent without whining. OK maybe not so much whining but I was too busy enjoying my bad mood to be nice. I smiled wickedly at him and replaced the gun. "You'll see."

This time I didn't bother with subtle but made for the waterline like the Reaper was after me, well he probably was anyway at this rate. The other side was slow to catch on which meant no adrenaline rush this time, bummer. I ditched the kid again just before I got out in the open.

The lot was roughly three thousand feet square and I managed to cover about two thirds of the distance before the first car got there. I put on a burst of speed for another five hundred feet before doing a 180 to face them. By now they had been joined by the second team and were fanning out to flank me. Well we couldn't have that.

Removing my dooshed up gun, I released the safety and set it to full automatic. The beauty of the 93R is it fires in three round burst per pull of the trigger and has a twenty round magazine, five more than its politically correct modern cousins.

"Note to the audience," I said in my best 'The Mask' toothy voice impersonation, "the stunts here are performed by trained professionals. Don't even think of trying this at home if you don't want your parents to send you to North Korea for your prep school years like they've been threatening since you were seven.

"Awwww ain't that just adorable." All the cars had a shooter in each window except the driver's. "Well, duty calls."

One downside of the Beretta was its effective range was only about fifty meters. Even with the extra fun it still would be close. Huh, guess I'll get my kicks after all. Happily they had spaced themselves only about forty feet apart which was nice of them, meaning I didn't have to be a genius to do this.

I gunned my bike and waited till someone got itchy fingers then pulled a hard left away from them. This way there would be only one person to aim at me per car for about five seconds and they would have to be careful not to hit their own guys.

The one thing I hate about this country's transportation system is that besides their city traffic sucking majorly, they drove on the left side, making it difficult to aim and drive the bike at the same time since I would have to stick the throttle on cruise control because aiming across my body with my left hand was most definitely not in the 'brilliant ideas' section. Ah well, can't be helped.

I made it to the last car without too much trouble, aimed for its engine and fired. The pat, pat, pat of the little automatic was a thing of beauty as I zipped past and banked right. A blast of hot air accompanied a bang and a fireball going up behind me, weeeeeeeeha!

The fireball, smoke, and raining car bits hid me as I puttered back to circle around behind them. And while they all were busy recovering from the confusion the shockwave provided I took the liberty of another spin down their front, spreading the love.

My background couldn't be any better if Hollywood was sponsoring it. "Ssssssmoke'n!" To bad I was the only one who thought so.

"Hello again, annoying child," I XXXL grinned at Alex who was still watching the fireworks when I pulled up. "How do you like my artwork?"

"You! Are! MENTAL!" was all he could manage as something in one of the automobiles went skyward.

"Hm, let me think," I assumed the 'think' position as I continued. "Ninety miles an hour divided by sixty equals 1.5 miles a minute. Which comes out to eighty-two hundred fifty feet divided again by sixty, roughly averaging a-hundred forty feet per second give or take a few inches. So on average about six seconds is what it would require to run a lasso around the stronzo's (1) and be back in time for a siesta.

"Any questions? Genius." Ok I'll be honest, it would take more than that since I hadn't really included dodging Dr Evil's henchies and having to recalculate to get back in front, but I have found over the years that BS-ing is an awesome way of avoiding pointless blabbing.

And my computation wasn't all that far off. The guys on the other side of the vehicles would, on average, take about three-to-five seconds to crawl up to shoot over the car roofs, giving me a small reprieve. And they really couldn't shoot me through their own guys or my smokey treeeeeeaaaaaat.

Hee hee, common logic, and lots of explosives, still wins out in the end. This is why I have Hephaestus as my personal saint.

"Yeah," arrrrrg. "What was that you used to blow them up? Regular bullet wouldn't do that."

Oops, time to get back to labor mill, bummer. "They're incendiary rounds. A friend made them and don't bother asking what he put in them cuz he won't tell me." At least I said it seriously so he believed me. Even if he did not I really didn't know what Pix shoved in there, he was like a bartender from hell who enjoyed keeping his babies a mystery till the customers had too many complaints.

"Anything else," Ok no more bad guys, pwease be nice Mr Demon side.

"What's your name?"

AH, I thought he'd never ask. "Nikola, you can call me Niki.

"Are you gettin' on or do you want me to strap you on?" That friend of his must really work overtime if he was this inoculated too insanity because he said nothing more but silently joined my on the bike. And I for one was happy enough not to look for teeth in the horse's mouth.

(1) Look it up in your Spanish handbook(yes I know you must have one sitting somewhere in that room of yours) since I somehow get the feeling the editors aren't gonna like it.

Okay maybe I should have waited till tomorrow to write this. But I just couldn't help it. Me years of never-ending search has finally been rewarded, I found my beloved The Mask cartoons. Oh those were the days of television glory; it doesn't get any better than this. My brain was gone long enough my plot bunny listened for once and squealed what it was holding out on me all this time.

Well enough reminiscing. Evil's a foot and duty calls. So until we again meet, I bid you all 'adieu' and goodnight.

But if you're really serious about hearin' from me again, then hit that glowing blue button down there that says 'Review' and let me feel the loooooove.

See ya!