The Hinomoto Rebellion (19 page)
Andrea stopped dead in her tracks. Kanjou, D, and Aki looked back and forth between her and Hisao.
Dammit, I knew it could be this easy,
thought the silver-haired girl nervously. Andrea turned to look over her shoulder.
Hisao took a deep breath and threw out his chest, trying to make himself look bigger. “We were all warned about you! You’ll never get away with what you did to Tony’s Place!”
Andrea’s eyes widened and she froze. Hisao continued, “They told us that you’d probably be coming around to steal our money and destroy our bars too! Well you won’t get away with it this time!”
Andrea’s teeth ground together, her blue pupils fixed with a look of shock. It was just then that she noticed the reflection of the underside of the bar in the mirror on the wall behind it. Somewhere under the counter, a small red light was blinking faintly. Andrea’s mouth dropped open. “Hisao... what have you done..?” she breathed in horror.
The bartender was still trying to look fierce. “The one who reports you gets left alone for a year by the police. Not a bad deal to put a mass murderer away,” Hisao tried to smirk but it did little to make him look more confident.
The Aka Ryuu turned slowly toward the door, which Andrea was standing a few feet in front of. “Go ahead, Tiger,” jeered Hisao, “Open it and see what’s waiting for you.”
Andrea swiftly reached up and grabbed the doorknob but hesitated to open it, her eyes wide and her jaw clenched. Sweat was dripping down her face as her heart pounded.
“ No.. Andrea, don’t.” breathed Kanjou. The tension in the air was nearly palpable. D and Aki watched intently, neither one saying a word.
Andrea turned the knob slowly and opened the door a crack. She leaned forward and peered out, giving a gasp and slamming the door shut again as the sounds of readying guns came from outside. She turned and smashed her back against the door. “Hisao! You bastard!” she screamed.
Roni rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she entered the dining hall, her hair spilling down over her shoulders and sticking up at strange angles. She eyed 26 and Fushi, who were kneeling at opposite sides of the table and looking serious. “Where is everyone?” Roni asked through a yawn.
“ No,” 26 said, “They said that we were to stay here. If something happened to them, they’d want us to continue on with the mission. We have to stay.”
26 and Fushicho did not share her optimism, but one glance exchanged between them and they know that they would probably be better to go along with the hope that the others were alright. If it came down to it, they could go and look for them later if they hadn’t returned. In the meantime, all they could do was wait and hope.
Andrea heard a muffled whine from outside the Shark’s Den. Her eyes widened, “TK!” she screamed as she dove for the floor. Kanjou let out a gasp and grabbed Aki and D, shoving them to the ground under him just as a bolt of blue light shot through the door.
A ray of late morning sunlight shone through the hole in the door right where Andrea’s head had been before she had dropped to the ground. The wood around the edges of the hole were singed and smoking.
The bartender had disappeared behind the bar and made no indication that he would be standing up any time soon. Kanjou and D were staring at Andrea from their positions on the floor; Aki was whipping her head around to try to find an escape route.
The silver-haired fighter glared at him. “They use TK-52 Enforcer pistols, moron!
LASERS!
They’re much worse than bullets!” she snarled.
The silver-haired girl glared at Kanjou, then threw the bag of money at him. He caught it and looked down at it with confusion. “You have to go get the food,” she said. “There’s a hallway back there,” she pointed with a trembling finger to a doorway directly behind them on the far wall. “Run out that way and make a right into the alley. Keep running until you can’t run any more. Don’t look back and don’t stop for anything until you’re sure they’re not following you. Then find a store and get the food.”
D and Andrea nodded affirmatively.
“One!”
Kanjou stared straight at Andrea. “Don’t get yourselves killed.”
The Tiger smirked back at him. “I don’t know about Wakame, but I can dodge bullets,” she boasted. After she turned her head to look back at the door though she muttered, “It’s the TKs I’m worried about...”
D made his way over to the door where Andrea was while Aki moved closer to Kanjou, the four fighters getting ready to bolt in their respective directions. Outside, the police stood with guns at the ready, bodies behind their vehicles for protection. Ryoku stood next to the policeman in charge– the one that had been yelling at the bar and was now counting to five. Ryoku smirked, his one visible green eye sparkling with malicious glee.
We have you now, Tiger,
he thought as his smirk widened.
There’s no escape for you.
Andrea and D crouched on the floor, D’s hand poised on the doorknob. Forty feet behind them, Kanjou and Aki were making their way to the back hallway.
will
fire! Surrender and make it easy on yourself,
ochiudo
!” the policeman outside screamed.
Every muscle in Andrea’s body tensed, her eyes fixed on D’s hand.
This is suicide,
she thought,
but I’m going to do it anyway
.
If someone is going to die today, it may as well be me.
Aki and Kanjou were halfway down the hall, Kanjou glancing over his shoulder every few feet at Andrea and D. He had never been one for prayer, but he found himself saying one right now in the hopes it would protect them from this hopeless situation.
D turned the knob and started to open the door. Just as Andrea started to leap forward, Hisao leaped up from behind the bar holding a shotgun. He leveled it at Andrea, aiming down the barrel at her. She turned her head, looking horrified but unable to do anything since all of her momentum was going forward to jump out through the opening door.
“ You’ll never get away, Tiger!” Hisao screamed. He pulled the trigger and the gun roared, splintering the wood on the wall behind Andrea as she threw herself through the space between the wall and the door, twisting through just barely.
The smell of ozone was momentarily preceded by the whine of five TK guns powering up. Wood and glass exploded all around the fleeing martial artists as the police opened fire with bullets and hot blasts of lasers.
Andrea leaped down the steps, time seeming to run much slower than normal to the
ronin
. She could hear each bullet whizzing through the air, each expulsion of the Enforcer guns, each piece of wood snapping, each bottle inside the Shark’s Den breaking as steel met with glass. She heard the bullets and scorching light that struck Hisao, and heard his cry as he thudded to the floor. The smell of scalding wood, metal, glass, and flesh seemed to fill Andrea’s head until her world was nothing but a fury of dissonant destruction. Somewhere behind her she heard D’s heart racing and his breath coming in short gasps. Her leap from the bottom stair to the sidewalk seemed to last half an hour, though she knew in her mind it was only a split second.
From behind Andrea, D saw Ryoku standing behind the lead police car, his hands over his ears as he shouted. He couldn’t make out the words over the cacophony going on all around them. D couldn’t even tell if Ryoku was shouting at himself and Andrea, or if he was trying to shout orders to the police.
As soon as Andrea’s shoes hit the concrete, she leaped to her right, determined to get down the street and around the corner before anyone could pursue them. It seemed like the world was crumbling down all around her. In agonizingly slow motion, they headed down the sidewalk with bullets flying through the air around them.
She felt a laser blast tear through her pants leg and another go through her tank top. Both blasts were so close that she could feel the skin burn at their passing. She leaned forward and attempted to put on more speed, knowing full well that they could get away if they just kept from getting injured.
The two
ronin
’s shoes pounded the pavement as the bullets fell like hail all around them, peppering the front wall of the Shark’s Den with shards of hot lead. Andrea thought she heard D let out a shout, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t dare look back and continued running down the sidewalk.
The next thing that Andrea knew, she was sitting with her back to a wall, gasping for air while sweat made her clothes stick to her flesh. She was vaguely aware of D sitting next to her on the hard asphalt, also trying to draw breath. She wasn’t sure how far from the Shark’s Den they were since the race to the alley was a complete blank in her mind.
I wouldn’t have stopped unless I was sure we were safe...
Sirens far in the distance confirmed her thought, but they seemed to be getting closer- probably in a search pattern for them.
After a few minutes, Andrea finally caught her breath enough to open her eyes and look over at D. He still had his eyes closed and his head back against the wall. Andrea noticed his right arm was across his chest, and she followed where it led to with her eyes.
D gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on his left biceps, which was smoking slightly from around his hand. Andrea noted a wound under the singed edges of his shirt. “Well, that’s just a graze. At least you got hit with the TK, instead of a bullet that would’ve made you bleed to death. The heat of a TK will seal the wound, but a solid hit would take your arm off,” she gibed.
Andrea got to her feet and looked around. Then she looked down at her clothes, which were riddled with bullet holes and black burns. “Come on, Wakame,” she said, reaching down and dragging him to his feet. “I need clothes, you need bandages. There’s only one place to go for both.”
She dragged D over to a manhole cover, shoved it open, and tossed him into the hole. Once he was down in the sewer, Andrea climbed down and slid the cover back into place.
Good-bye
