Mischievous Function

...Okay, Maybe It Is

Bubble flinched away and nearly collapsed to the ground, only managing to cover her ears after the second or third gunshot. Her eyes were glued shut and she turned away from Fanny in surprise, crouching on the ground and waiting for whatever was happening to be over already.

After a few more seconds that each felt like an eternity, she felt a soft hand tap her shoulder twice. With a moment's reluctance, she hesitantly lifted her hands off her ears and looked up to find Fanny looking down at her with a gentle expression. "Hey," she softly whispered. "You can get up now."

Bubble turned back around and slowly got up before looking down the alleyway. All five strangers were lying on the ground with a bullet hole in the middle of each of their heads. She gasped and brought her hands up to her mouth, trying her best to keep from throwing up. "Oh...oh, my goodness..." she breathed. "Y...you killed them. You killed them all."

"Well, it was them or us," Fanny huffed back, slightly annoyed as she twirled her pistol on her finger before holstering it. "Actually, scratch that—it was them or me. They would have kept you alive, you know. You heard them."

"No, I-I...I—no, I-I know," Bubble quickly clarified. "I-I meant—I meant thank you."

Fanny nodded in understanding and placed her hand on Bubble's shoulder comfortingly. "Come on. Let's just get out of..."

She paused and stared at the ground. Bubble felt worry rising up in her system again at Fanny's sudden stop. "Fanny?" she hesitantly asked. "Are you okay?"

Fanny flicked her head up and looked around the alleyway before spotting a dumpster up ahead. She bent down to grab one of the strangers' guns and handed it to Bubble before turning around toward the way they had come. "Go," she said, pointing back to the dumpster ahead of Bubble. "Hide behind that. If anything happens to me, you run like hell back to the hotel. I'll catch up with you."

"W-wait, what are you doing?!" Bubble frantically asked, fumbling around with the new weapon in her hands.

Fanny shook her head and sighed. "I have a feeling we're not done here yet. Go! I'll take care of this!"

She turned back toward the way they had come as Bubble scrambled to hide behind the dumpster she was talking about. Whipping out her pistol again, she hid behind a pile of full, sturdy cardboard boxes and exhaled, focusing on her surroundings and blocking out any extraneous noise out.

And then, she heard it.

"It came from down here!"

Fanny's eyes flew open and she furrowed her eyebrows. She focused on the distant sets of footsteps rapidly approaching her location and counted what must have been six or seven more people coming her way. She nodded to herself and narrowed her eyes as she leaned back and pressed her head on the boxes, focusing on where she thought each target would be. Her breathing slowed and her hands stopped their ever-so-slight quivering as she calmed her nerves.

Then, right as the closest set of footsteps came within twenty feet of her, she darted out of cover. It took the strangers barely over a split-second to react and aim their guns at her—but a split-second was all Fanny needed to confirm her targets.

BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!

BANG!

"Ah—fuck!"

All seven of the strangers fell to the ground almost at the exact same time, meeting the same fate as the five before them. Fanny quickly slipped her gun back into its holster and clutched her left shoulder in pain, cursing again when she lifted her hand off the wound to find it soaked in blood. "Good thing these idiots seem to use .22 cal..." she thought, her breathing hastening back to normal speed—or as normal as breathing could get after being shot in the shoulder, anyway.