The hovercraft came close to the last spot Dwight's group had signaled from before the attack. Mario jumped from the Hovercraft as it was still moving, in true bad boy fashion, as soon as he saw the dead bodies littering the desert ground.
"No!" he outran the hovercraft to the first body. He recognized it as Chad.
There was a hole literally drilled through Chad's stomach and both of his arms were missing. Tad was going to be emotionally unstable after hearing about this.
Mario looked at the other bodies forlorn. "How could 78 do this? These guys never did anything to you!"
"Mario!" Yuki called to her boyfriend. "Dwight isn't here! I think he is the prisoner!"
Mario breathed a sigh of relief. This was both good and bad. Dwight was still alive and able to be saved. However, Dwight also knew the most about the Vickstralia Resistance out of all of the rebels that were in this recon party. "We have to find him!" He stood and made his way to the others. "Where do you think 78 could have taken him?"
Lawrence looked about the desert for any clues. "here." He pointed to a set of tire tracks. "You always said 78 never really thought things through..."
"Let's go."
Tim looked out the window as his wife stealthily made her way down the street.
"Daddy," Tommy asked from his room, "where is Mommy going?"
"She is going to find a friend." Tim replied kind of saddened. He really wanted to go on the mission with her. He had known A. J. for how long? And they were just going to cut them out of this right? He sighed. "Go back to bed, Tommy." He couldn't help but wondering about his children. Even though they were not related to him through blood, they looked like spitting images of him and his wife.
"Alright, Daddy." Then Tommy was gone. Back to bed. And he would wake up the next day to his normal life. Oh, how much Tim wished he could sleep then wake up ten-years-old again back in Dimmsdale. "I always wanted to have an action-packed life. Hell, I even wished for one once. But now that it is real..." He wondered about a lot of things from his alternate life. He wondered how Cosmo and Wanda were, he wondered how Trixie was, how his friends were doing. Was he still there or was he missing. And if he was missing... then did anyone even notice?
kristen looked around to make certain that no one was following her then pulled the last part of her suit over her face. It was a simple helmet void of any sort of detail or feature. But on the inside, read-outs and information are plastered all over the HUD. She quickly sorts through the information through a practiced pattern of blinks and eye movements. Then she continues her search for the lost genius.
"Oh, A. J... Whatever you got captured researching better be worth it!" She leapt into the air and the anti-gravity boots activated, propelling her upward and forward. Wherever A. J. was being kept, her new boots would be the key to finding him. After all, mercs seemed to like hiding Resistance members in rooms higher up now.
Kristen activated the thermal eyes on her helmet. "This aught to help me out," She said to herself.
In the distance drones buzzed over her head. Below her, she saw to worn-out streets of Vicksdale. As she approached the limits of West Vickstralia, she could quickly tell that no one lived or even wanted to be there. The war had really taken a toll on the world. Was it really all worth the pain? She heard the sound of a laser being charged and decided to continue her musings another time.
Below her a man dressed in a long trench coat and holding a portable laser cannon was looking straight at her.
"Crap. Why would he even be here? Besides, aren't those cannons illegal?"
The man fired twice more.
"Oh yeah," She remembered. "He's a merc. Everything they do is illegal..." She pointed her left arm at the man and a rocket fired from her wrist.
The merc turned to un, "He he, good luck, Merc." Kristen giggled. "What is a heat-seeking missile. It wont miss."
Sure enough, no matter where the man ran, the missile followed like a puppy dog. Soon it truck true and the man was covered in a sticky web-like structure. Trixie landed in front of the man. "Heat seeking sticky missiles; gotta love them." She planted a punch to the man's face. "That is for shooting first."
The man spat back, "I'll keep that in mind the next time we meet, hero."
"There might not be a next time, freak. Now where is my friend?"
The merc just laughed. "I can take you to him. All you have to do is free me."
Kristen almost laughed. "Not a chance, scum. You just give me his location and I will be on my.. way?"
The merc phased from out of the web and laughed. "Intangibly. Gotta love it."
"What the heck?" Kristen was only able to utter those three words before a barrage of laser fire streamed her way. She ducked to one side then rolled behind some crates. "I need a plan..."
"C'mon out, hero!" The Merc taunted as he waited for his weapon to recharge. "I know that you want so find your friend, because he is very anxious to see you!"
"What have you done, merc?" Kristen shouted back as she tried to think of a plan.
"nothing yet. It is all a timed operation." The Merc laughed back.
Kristen jumped from her perch to attack the Merc, but he revealed another gun and blasted her back.
Duh! He is a hardened bounty hunter! There was no way he only had the cannon. Kristen checked her suits vitals. The suits energy projector had absorbed most of the energy blast and even converted some of it into power, but the physical impact was too powerful to have been completely dissipated. Her communication system was fried. She was alone in the dark."Damn."
A. J. looked around the confines of his cell. A standard room size with only one window and one door. The door was locked from the outside and bare on the inside. The window as barred and the glass was no doubt some sort of synthesized transparent material. A. J. then checked the floor. Solid concrete at least haft a foot thick. Then the ceiling. It was thin but something was on top of it to keep it down. That was the weak point. Now how to push whatever was on top was the difficult part. Then he checked himself. He had nothing. All of his gadgets were taken when he was captured. The only thing outside of his clothing that he had was the Time Chip. A green chip that had the power to travel anywhere and any-when in time. It was the reason he was in this entire mess in the first place. All he needed was a means of powering it stably and he had heard about a new belt Victoria's R &D had in place. That was how he was caught and ended up down the same routine over and over for the past few days.
"This is a royal mess you have gotten yourself into now, A. J." He berated himself. "If you had just told Shade about your plan, you could have had support!" He sighed and sat own for the first time. "Oh well... At least you got this nifty palm glove thing." He looked into his hand; around his palm was a glove thing with a green center. he wasn't sure what it was an dwithout his tools, he would never be sure.
Suddenly there was an explosion and he was thrown from his seat into the wall. "Someone is trying to get me outta here!"Instinctively he thrusted his hands into the air and waved them around. A green beam blasted a hole through the roof and whatever was on top of it. "The hell?" he looked at his palm. The palm thing was a cannon.
Kristen dodged another searing hot stream of energy. I cannot keep this up forever! she thought, I am bound to screw up sooner or later... She dodged another blast. And let's hope that it is later! She returned fire as the merc waited for his weapon to recharge. Her blasts were nowhere near as powerful as his, but they were just as effective. The Merc had to scurry behind a large crate to avoid being hit. With the merc hiding for awhile, Trixie turned her attention to where the green plasma bolt had fired from. A small concrete bunker with a large trailer holding down the thin top was smouldering and A. J. was feebly crawling out.
"A. J.!" Kristen threw a grenade to the crate the marc was hiding behind to keep him temporarily occupied and she made her way to her friend.
A. J. looked to the person who had shouted his name, but already knew who it was. "Trixie! Thank god!" He waited for her to pull him from the hole of his cell.
"How did you even blow a hole in this thing?" She inquired. "It is at least 10 feet thick!"
A. J. looked back the the story-thick trailer that had kept the ceiling down and chuckled. "Well, I had a few tricks up my sleeve."
Kristen pushed him down playfully, "Wow okay, why didn't you use that before I was called to this deathtrap?"
A. J. didn't have a chance to respond; a laser whizzed just between the two and A. J.'s former prison exploded into bits. "Holy crap!"
Acting fast, Kristen grabbed her friend and flew into the air, narrowly missing another laser. "Remember those tricks you said you have?"
A. J. nodded
"Well, now would be a great time for one!" Just as she finished her sentence, a laser severed her hold on A. J. It did not strike either one, but was close enough for them both to instinctivly release each other in a flinch. "Shit!"
A. J. plummeted fast and hit the dirt. He was unconscious, but obviously unharmed otherwise.
The merc smiled. "Looks like I win, hero." he readied the cannon and fired without warning, knocking Kristen from the sky with one shot.
"Once again Denger Dinkleberg gets his man." He dropped the cannon and reached for his side arm.
"Hey Dorkleberg!"
The merc turned and laughed. A. J. was kneeling weakly with his hand outstretched, palm open. "Let me guess; stop?" He fired once at Kristen, who rolled to the side to avoid the laser. "you will have to do better than that, fool."
A. J. smirked. "I plan to." He fired the green bolt at the merc. The beam took the enemy off of his feet, through two crates and then against a brick wall. The reocoil of the blast sent A. J. flying back, too.
"A. J.!" Kristen fired another sticky missile at the Merc and then rushed to her crumpled friend's side. "How'd you wake up?"
"I have trianed myself to recognize the reality from the dream."
Kristen skeptically looked at him. "Whatever that means, it worked!"
The two looked back at the place where the merc should have been, but he was gone.
"...and his name is what, now?"
"Dinkleburg."
"Hm." Even though they couldn't see anything other than Shade's masked face, they knew he was researching the unknown assailant. "Seems to be a bounty hunter with a thing for being meticulous to a 'T' leaving no loose ends. You might want to proceed carefully, this man may come for you again. You have injured his reputation as the best."
Tim hugged Kristen close with one hand. "Well I will make certain that you are never put in danger by that fellow."
"What are ya gonna do? Go find him and tell him to stay away?" Kristen shook her head. "He is a bounty hunter, that means if there is still a bounty on our heads then he is definitely going after it. As is every other bounty hunter out there."
"Good thing there aren't many hunters then."
"True..." added A. J. "And we could always... you know... even the playing field...?"
Tim and Kristen looked at the bald young man. "Huh?"
"The easiest way to catch a bounty hunter is to hire him. We can't do that because the price on our head is something that he cannot resist. So the second best thing is to hire the same kind of person who thinks like him to actually go after him. We have to hire a Hunter to go after Dinkleberg."
"Right..." Countered Tim. "And what do we have to barter with? Victoria and Crocker have limitless funds because of the little fact that they rule the world. We are basically dirt poor."
"Not really. Give me a day. I can hack into any computer system. I'm sure I can... scrounge up something."
"i concur." Shade said. "It is a good plan. And A. J."
A. J. stopped walking, "Yes?"
"Send that palm cannon over to R &D asap. I wish to see if we can mass produce them for our cause."
A. J. smiled, "Of course."
Jax shook his head. He was down on his luck yet again. He had been fired from five jobs in less than four months, his lang-term lover left him for another man, and to top it off he was now homeless. "It's a good day to die..." he sighed.
"Hey, Jax!" Fred called to him. "How is the life?"
Fred was his suck-up perfectionist of a former neighbor. Fred's life was perfect, or as close to perfect as a life could get. Jax didn't respond to Fred.
"Hey come on, now. It can't be all that bad. After all, you have that side job."
Jax had never actually told anyone about his side job; bounty hunting. He had started bounty hunting after losing his third job to help pay off debts. Those he owed money to never questioned how he got the money and frankly didn't care. All they cared about was getting their cold, hard cash back. His lover asked once or twice but he always called himself an investor. Of course she didn't like that mystery so that was another notch on the why-she-left-me list.
"Yes I do, thank you, Fred." Jax replied matter-of-factly.
But Fred persisted. "What you need," he said swinging up to Jax, "is a drink. Here, hows about I buy you a drink, Jax?"
A free drink? How could he say no? And he was sure that he wouldn't have to pay back Fred. And if he does ask, I'll kill him.
"...so I said to my boss 'well I;m just happy to be of service to you.' And he replied back 'you mean to Victoria!' Isn't that a killer?" Fred finished the story via gasps between laughs.
Jax chuckled in sympathy. "He he, yeah..." he stared into the bowels of his drink but dared not sip. From Fred's actions, there was something in the water. Then there was a hush. Fred and Jax turned.
Walking into the bar were two men, both overweight and obviously officers higher up into the government. But it wasn't who they were that silenced the tavern, it was their conversation.
"Who'da thunk it, eh? The Resistance is paying money to get a bounty hunter off of their tail end!"
"I can't believe it. They are pretty desperate."
"Not really, you know who we hired, right?"
"No, I don't."
"Dangar Dinkleberg! It has been only a week and he is already causing those rebel scum to sweat!"
"We sure are getting our monies worth!"
Jax turned from their conversation. "Wow, a bounty on a bounty hunter's head. How ironic..." He pulled out his cell phone to check the local bounty listings. Sure enough, there was a bounty for 1.2 million dollars and a 'special extra reward' for the person who brought in Dangar Dinkleberg to the Resistance. "With that kind of money... That is enough to get back my house plus so much more!"
"Did you say something, Jax?"
Jax genuinely smiled. "Nope, but I have just realized something that has really pepped me up. Thanks, Fred!"
Fred smiled and gurgled a laugh in his complacency. "All it takes is a little ale and a talk from Fred to make it all better, huh?"
Jax just beelined out of the place before Fred had the chance to asked what exactly about the talk had lifted his spirits. Or at least before Fred asked to be reimbursed for the drink.
Jax rushed to his car, his base of operations, and began checking his equipment. he had a job He had a calling. Dinkleberg was as perfect a bounty hunter as Fred was a neighbor. This meant there would be little to no competition to taking on the bounty. Only those as desperate and crazy as Jax would even think about tackling the best.Then again what have I got to lose?
A/N: BOUNTY HUNTERS! Ok now that I have that out of my system I have an announcement! The end is near! (kinda) I have looked at my timeline of events and predict that there are only about 10 more chapters after this! (that's a ton!) But still These chapter I am hoping will be more powerful than the previous arc (the previous arc being chapters 1-10). So just a little something to whet your appetite for the next chapter.
1. Dwight as a prisoner
2. Bounty Hunter recruitment (im hoping for an ESB-isk scene lol)!
3. What about TIm's secret mission?
4. WHERE IS MOLLY?
ps: Oh have you noticed some items from Channel Chasers in the story yet? A tie-in is coming BOUNTY HUNTERS!
