Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter fifty

How impossibly dull. The least that the boss could have done was not send me after a complete fool.

But I knew that he never did anything that wasn't for his own enjoyment or benefit.

Staying still by the door, I listened quietly for any signs of life and was met with a quiet murmur of multiple vocoders from inside of the lit room. I could hear at least three, two of which were becoming increasingly louder with the passage of time, as a third tried to placate the pair. I didn't make a move, decided it to allow the dramatics to come to something of a natural conclusion on their own.

The boss has made it apparently clear to everyone in my unit and all those in the mafia who handle the distribution of deadly weapons, that I wasn't allowed to have so much as a child's pistol or anything remotely deadly without some kind of supervision- though he'd made it seem at the time that I was too lazy or perhaps arrogant to carry my own weapons, most likely hoping to shame me for one thing or another. It didn't work. That rule meant that I was walking into solo missions, such as this, only armed with my switchblade, my own mind, and a pen of all things that was beyond useless in Yokohama, nothing more.

Very counterproductive it would seem if his goal were to keep me alive.

My missing were cut short by the familiar bang of a gunshot ringing starkly through the air, drowning out all other noise as if it had never existed at all. That was until a pained cry made itself known only a moment later, followed by a flurry of more ferocious shots. I could just make out the sounds of dull thuds of bodies hitting the ground as the gunfire died down.

When I walked into the small room there were three bodies bleeding out on the dirty floor of the garnished home. The counterfeit notes sitting prettily upon the table at the center of the room like a ticking time bomb.

Mutually assured destruction. Humans really are quite predictable creatures.

I suppose I should have paid more attention to their reselance.

Moving deeper into the small room, I made my way to the notes and slipped them into my left hand. I was fully prepared to leave the bodies to rot where they were, hand over the notes to the mafia grunt that had taken over the counterfeits department in the wake of everything, and then either throw myself into oncoming traffic or call for a car- intending on deciding that on the way back to headquarters -but that wasn't what happened. Not at all.

Three shots rang out through the room, each one quickly following the other as the bullets embedded themselves into my body, tearing through my belly and back as if they were nothing more than something for the bullets to break. My hand pressed instinctively to the wounds, pressing down on the ones that I could easily cover together. I waited for a moment for the pain to arrive, for my throat to rasps in something akin to a painful scream of my own, the kind that haunts nightmares, but all there was inside of me was a dull annoyance at it all. Honestly I was more upset about my white button up being stained than anything else.

Right, andrelinle.

Pivoting slowly, I turned towards the exit and found the shooter, the body closest to the door, looking at me as their hand shook. Their fingers were still wrapped weirdly around the gun though I could see the strain that it was taking to retain the grasp. There was a pool of blood around the woman large enough that they really should already be passed out by now, if not dead, but the body is known to do strange things when faced with the threat of death.

Looking down at the young woman, I noticed how my own hands were growing wet from my blood staining them. A mild soreness was beginning to set in as the small dose of chemicals began to work their way out of my system faster than they normally would in a situation such as this.