"So where's the Canadian base?"
"It's… that's the island one, right?"
Yuma nodded. "Yeah. But what's it called?"
"Uh… shit," I racked my memory. "Biticho? Bestio?"
"Bistcho," he corrected with a grin.
"Yeah, that one. And then the island is Kirkness. That's where it is."
"But it's on a lake. How do you get to it?"
"It's frozen most of the year, right?"
He grinned. "Correct. China. Where is it?"
I sighed. The unfamiliar names always confused me. "It's… it's in the middle. The… uh, the something province."
"What province?" Yuma watched me with amusement.
I leaned back in my chair. "It starts with an H."
"Yes," he confirmed.
"It's like… Hoo, hoo-something," I concluded.
"Come on, dude. You know it."
"Hubei!" I yelled out. "And the mountains are the… the Wudang," I nodded proudly.
He chuckled at me. "Where in the mountains?"
Shit. "It's, like, right below the temple on the main mountain, right?"
"What's it called?"
"The Wudang."
He nodded. "You're getting better. Last one! UK. Where is it?"
I let out an exasperated sigh. That part of the world always confused me. In a continent with so many countries in near proximity, they didn't have a base in every country. They had multiple ones scattered throughout. "Gimmie a second."
"Take your time. You're just running for your life from an assassination gone wrong. You have plenty of time."
We were, in fact, sitting in the main room of our base, completely casual and relaxed. But Yuma found it important that I learn every country's base for that exact scenario.
I stared blankly at the wall. "It's in England. I know that."
"You're right. Where, though?"
"...Northern?"
"Yup."
"This is the one with that, like, super British-sounding name, right?"
Yuma laughed once again. "I guess so."
As I pondered the answer, Rin appeared in the hallway. "Len. Come on. We're leaving."
"What? Why?"
She had the car keys in her hand. "Flower drank too much last night and we need groceries. Nothing too exciting. Come on."
It had been a couple days since we had returned from China, but the celebrations were far from over. We repeated our activities every night since we returned. But, with Flower out for the day, I had a feeling last night was the final one.
"Then… then why do I have to go?"
"Because I'm scared you're going to go crazy from not being in public, considering you grew up in LA and all." It sounded like a joke but she looked dead serious. "And I'm gonna need help carrying all these bags.
Yuma's shoulders slumped. "Where's your sling?"
"I'm not wearing the fucking sling," she muttered grumpily.
"You really should-"
"Len. Let's go."
He sighed. I gave him a hopeless look and stood from the table.
"Kettlewell," he called as we ascended the stairs. "It's hidden in the hills east of Kettlewell."
I cursed under my breath. I knew that.
The hike to Flower's Hummer was like second-nature to me now. Every time we made the trip, it seemed shorter, though it was a good forty-five minutes before the giant car came into view.
"Where are we going?"
"There's a town not too far away with a grocery store," she answered, pulling open the door and jumping inside. I resisted the urge to laugh as her small form took control of this tank of a car.
Rin's definition of "not too far" was a little different from mine.
We finally arrived at our destination nearly an hour and a half later. We had driven west, which was unfamiliar to me. Every other time I had left the base, we had traveled to the airport on the eastern side. Despite this, Rin seemed to know exactly where she was going.
And exactly where to park the car. She stopped at the border to the city. Missoula.
We found ourselves walking quite a long distance to the supermarket. I suddenly understood why she wanted the help. To keep the car's license plates off camera, she was forced to park it a very long distance away. Long enough to turn an hour long grocery trip into a big ordeal.
"Why here?" I asked. It was a large city bordered by rolling mountains on all sides.
"It may not look like it," she began, walking closer to me as pedestrians began to stroll by. "But there's a surprisingly low amount of cameras in this city. It's a great place to be discreet."
I nodded. My gaze had wandered to the mountains around us. It was the middle of summer, and the green scenery of the town took my breath away. Pine trees, freshly cut grass, not to mention the gentle curve of the green hills around us. Even the air smelt fresh and green.
"This place is awesome," I observed.
"Yeah," she answered. "It's okay."
"Do you come here a lot?"
"Not really. It's Flower's job. Not mine." We had been walking down the sidewalk following the main street through the town. Broadway. "Let's turn here," she suggested, leading us to a side road. "I don't like being out in the open like this."
"You're the boss," I said, stepping after her.
She had ditched the sling barely twenty-four hours after Anon assigned it to her. She walked fine, though her arm did seem a little stiff. It worried me. "How's the arm?"
She scoffed. "You too? It's fine. There's nothing to worry about."
"It sucks not being able to spar," I told her honestly. "I never thought I'd miss it."
Hints of a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Yeah. It's pretty fun once you get good at it."
"Aw, did you just call me good?"
"Don't push it, jackass."
This new road led us away from the crowded highway and bordered and neighborhood. We turned right. The quaint houses stood on one side and an empty field stood to our left. The lots were occasionally occupied with buildings of all types, from auto shops to general stores.
"What about shooting?" I asked.
"What about it?"
"Are you okay to do it?"
The answer was no, and we both knew it, but she hesitated. "I… I don't know."
I frowned. She loved doing that, too.
The next building to come up looking like a huge warehouse, in much better shape than the one I had previously interacted with, clean yellow point adorning the walls, bordered by the silver shine of sheet metal forming the angled roof. There was a parking lot in front of it with only a few cars.
"I should be fine," she continued, trying to convince herself more than me. "It's not like it was broken or anything. And it doesn't even hurt."
The building had a sign in front of it. The Hub. There was smaller print below it but we were still too far away to read it clearly. "You should still be careful with it," I warned her. "Don't want to hurt it permanently."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm already getting the whole speech from everyone else. I don't need it from you, too."
A few steps later, the letters became clearer. Underneath the billboard for The Hub read the words Go-Karts, Arcade, Laser Tag, Food.
A grin formed on my face. "How about this," I said, stepping in front of her.
She paused her steps, furrowing her eyebrows at me.
"I don't think those games at the fair in Canada were… accurate enough to determine the better shooter."
She put her hands on her hips. "What the hell does that have to do with-"
"-That place," I interrupted her, pointing behind me to The Hub. "Let's go play some laser tag."
And then the girl uttered three words that I never expected to hear in the same sentence in my entire life.
"What's laser tag?"
My mouth dropped open, and my arm lowered to my side. "What," I asked in complete awe. "Did you just say?"
She crossed her arms, turning her face away from me. A blush rose to her cheeks. "Don't look at me like I'm an idiot, Len! I don't know these things!"
"Okay," I said, still staring at her with wide eyes. "Now we have to go."
"We don't have time for your stupid games," she muttered, still refusing to look at me. I'd clearly struck a nerve.
"Don't you wanna shoot a gun?"
She didn't say anything.
Without waiting for her approval, I wrapped my fingers around her slender wrist (being extra sure to grab her good arm) and pulled her after me. "Come on. We're going."
She didn't say anything as I dragged her across the street, through the parking lot, and into the doors.
Despite the small number of cars in the parking lot, there were many little kids in there. Some running around the arcade games, some yelling in delight as they passed their friends on the Go-Kart track. There seemed to be a birthday party going on. There was the occasional parent, plus a fair amount of people in their teenage years or their early twenties, but kids predominately ruled the place.
"What is this place?" Rin asked in a small voice I had never heard before. Her usual confidence and authority wavered as her eyes scanned the walls. I was still holding her wrist.
"Come on," I said. "Laser tag is this way."
"Len, I really don't think-" I pulled her after me, cutting her off.
We arrived at the line just in time. Along with a few other people, mostly kids, we entered the prep room. The walls were black with small splatters of neon-colored paint, the carpet below us looking much the same. There was a TV hanging in the corner of the room. Red jackets hung on one side, green on the other.
"I don't know what I'm doing, Len," her eyes were low and her voice was almost pleading. Like she was begging me to leave.
"Just watch the TV," I reassured her over the roar of excitement around us. "They're gonna play a clip that'll tell you everything you need to know." I finally let go of her wrist. She gazed shyly around the room.
A young guy in a red shirt was running the game. After silencing the room, he turned the lights off and hit the play button on the TV.
Thus began the video.
While most of the kids paid no attention to it, snickering and whispering under the eyes of the host, Rin watched the video intently. I had to suppress a laugh when I caught a glimpse of her thoughtful stare, watching the TV like it was another target she was supposed to plot against. The video itself didn't last any longer than three minutes. It seemed to me that Rin could recite the whole thing word-for-word after she finally tore her eyes from the screen.
"Go ahead and form your teams!"
We were standing right next to the green wall, so Rin lifted a vest from the wall and handed it to me.
I held my hands up in defense. "No, no, no. You're green. I'm red."
Her shoulders slumped. "What? Why? Shouldn't we be on the same team?"
I stepped away from her, grabbing a red vest from the wall. "Where's the fun in that?" I asked with a grin.
After fitting my vest, I walked back over to her. She did not look happy at all.
"Rin," I said in a low voice. "It's a game. It's okay to relax."
She looked up at me with those big puppy dog eyes and I almost felt guilty enough to leave. Then, her expression cleared, and she grabbed her toy gun and aimed it at me. "These aren't made for lefties," she joked.
They weren't. The line attaching the gun to the jacket ran across my entire body at a diagonal, threatening to completely entangle me. "I'll still win," I joked.
"Red team on this side, Green team on this side!"
Rin smiled, the heat of the competition finally reaching her. "I'll believe it when I see it," she yelled at me as I walked backwards to my line.
"Green team in first!" The host called, opening one of the double doors leading to the course. "We won't start until everyone is at their bases. Head on in."
With one last glance, Rin disappeared into the room, her gun positioned expertly in her hand.
This time, I didn't suppress my laugh.
My team was almost exclusively made up of little kids. They definitely had the upper hand. It didn't matter to me, though. I only had one target on that team, and, between the two of us, we were pretty evenly matched.
"Red team, in!" The host called. He sounded like a drill sergeant, the way he shouted orders like that.
I followed a bunch of ten-year-olds into the course.
The walls were all painted black. Purple neon lights hung from the ceiling, illuminating the room in a deep purple hue. Green Team's base sat against the wall directly to our right, with Red Team's being on the opposite. Between us was a maze of black walls, bordered in differently colored neon paint. There was a ramp from our base leading up to a small loft area, where there were even more obstacles to hide behind. Some of the walls had holes in them for sneak attacks, others were solid.
"Are both teams ready?" The host called over the intercom. I jumped a bit as my vest suddenly vibrated, like I had been shot, but only hinted that it was being activated. It glowed with a sudden green light.
There was a roar across the room of a bunch of kids and I cringed a bit at my own team's response.
"Go!" The voice called. It lacked the enthusiasm to match my excitement at facing Rin. Despite this, I shot off the wall, entering the game.
My first interaction with a member of the green team was a guy, so I turned away from him. The second was a little kid, and the third was a girl who was way too tall to be Rin. A little disappointed I was unable to find her on the main floor, I retreated back to my base to check the loft.
Just as I turned my back, I jumped as my vest vibrated. Looking over my shoulder, I caught sight of her grinning face before she disappeared behind cover.
I shook my head, a grin spreading across my face, and waited for my gun to reactivate before running after her.
There were other people, but I ignored them, catching only glimpses of her light flannel jacket rushing after her as she dodged through the corners. With a flash of excitement, I realized she had trapped herself in a corner. She didn't seem to have figured it out yet. Instead of following her, I sidestepped to the left.
She ran straight into me. She stumbled a bit at the impact, her eyes widening as she backed into the wall behind her.
I pressed my laser gun into her stomach and pulled the trigger. "Payback," I said, before running off.
"Dammit!" She laughed behind me, her footsteps beginning to echo after mine.
I managed to turn around at the perfect moment to get her again, eliciting another groan of frustration as I dodged off again. For a few seconds, I lost sight of her. Then she appeared out of nowhere with her gun to my back. 2-2. Throughout the match, the host called out a countdown. Seven minutes. Five minutes. Three. We battled it out in the loft, ignoring every other person we came across, dodging both screaming kids, adults, and each other.
I lost track of our score after a while.
"Thirty seconds!" The intercom called.
We had found ourselves on the ground floor once again. She was hiding behind a circular wall, pressed too closely against the wall for me to sneak around. With only a few seconds left, I felt a bout of confidence, suddenly surging forward to catch her by surprise. I paused once I wrapped around her cover, confused to see her not there.
Suddenly, my vest vibrated once again. To my left was Rin. The space between the cover and the wall was much too small for me to squeeze through, but not her.
She laughed, the sweet sound echoing through the room. "Get fucked, Len!"
I hoped any kids weren't nearby and grinned in response. That was our last gunfight before exiting the room.
My eyes took a moment to adjust to the light of the room. I followed everyone else's eyes to the TV screen, which had changed from the DVD to a scoreboard. Red Team was on the left, Green on the right. I looked down at my gun. 12 was etched into the side.
"I'm three," Rin said, looking up at the screen. Another victorious smile adorned her face. "Most shots on my team. Get wrecked."
"I'm twelve," I said, looking up at the screen. On the green side, the number Twelve was on top. "Me too," I gloated, looking down at her. Next to our numbers were more stats, like our total kills, total deaths, and our "Nemesis." Rin was, obviously, my nemesis. But, through all the extra kills and deaths we each received from other members of the teams, there was no way to decipher who actually won and who lost.
"I definitely won," I said after I took off my vest and crossed the room to stand with her.
"Psh. You wish."
"You ready to go?"
She lifted the vest over her head, staring down at it.
"If you're playing the next game, you can stay in here!" The host called, opening the door to the lobby and revealing no line. Some kids exited through the door. No one entered.
She looked up at me expectantly.
"Can we play again?"
My little assassins are so cute.
Thanks for reading! :)
