I aim to misbehave – Malcolm Reynolds
Van looked at me and must have seen it on my face. “No. Don’t say it. Don’t even go there. The last time you had a bad feeling…” Van started to wail.
“…You got shot in the ass.” Rorick and I said in unison. I shot him a grin, seeing the humor sparkle in his eyes but he kept his face serious. Right, I had to act like I had a huge stick up my ass on this planet.
“That’s right. I’m not going through this again!” Van whined.
“Can it.” I hissed, that bad feeling stalking me like a scorned prom date. Van seemed to realize that I had no patience for her usual shit right now. We were leaving the populated and slightly more cosmopolitan docks and starting to venture into the more carefully controlled areas. Auralis is a lovely city formatted off the once hugely popular Tokyo Japan on Old Earth. The buildings were hugely tall, impossible to see the ground from the higher floors. They loomed over the streets below, blocking out most of the ambient light, but the innumerable amount of neon signs everywhere outside the residential area made sure that there was always eye searingly bright light to go by. It’s awfully fun to try and pull off a stealthy ninja assault on one of their downtown strongholds while being on Technicolor display.
It wasn’t so bad where we were now; residential areas have the signs on time restrictions so that rest periods are actually restful. That gave us nearly two hours to get into the middle of the living district, meet up with the Family representative, then sneak over to the heavily patrolled side of the city and make our way in before the lights came back on and Plan A failed epically. Piece of cake. The really hard part was going to be sneaking back out again. Though by that time we should be Frankenstein free so the worse they can find on us is weapons, and that’ll just make them ask us to leave. Though they’ll use less polite language than normal just to help express their displeasure, I wasn’t too worried about that end.
It would probably be best to explain that Auralis was laid out in a Venn diagram like series of interconnecting circles. Just looking at the areas we needed to infiltrate, I had to land in the circle belonging to the Docks, then sneak into the residential circle because it was easier than sneaking into the business circle from the docks. Where all three circles overlapped was the ‘no-go zone’, where the richest women and their Families lived, and there were neigh constant patrols. So we were right now in the residential area, leaving behind the last traces of the Docks.
“This is a bad idea.” Van whispered under her breath. I didn’t mind, in fact I’m so used to it I often don’t realize she’s complaining. Van’s superstitious and because she’s not died yet, she’ll start every run off with the exact same sequence. Whining, then complaining, then muttering and when she finally goes quiet: WORRY. Van and quiet are not in a sentence together unless it involves: Van has her mouth full so she is for once quiet, Van is asleep so enjoy the quiet or something is about to go apocalyptically wrong, I can tell, because Van has gone quiet. Those are the only times she’s ever silent, I know because I have heard her remain her noisy self while killing, blowing things up or having a bedroom romp. Actually she’s even noisier during any of those three.
I was about to step out when I felt Rorick’s fingers curl over my shoulder and root me in place. He’s noticed that any time he touches me I tend to freeze, so now I know whenever he touches me, it’s so that I freeze. A half second later, the patrol I would have walked us right into stepped around the corner. As it was, I pressed back against Rorick and had Van squashed against my own chest in return. The three of us plus our bulky bags (including Frank) made for one tight squeeze into a space that would normally only accommodate one of us. Thankfully the patrol’s complacency added into the lack of regular lighting ensured that they didn’t look to see us hidden there. I just had to endure the exquisite torture that was being pressed up against Rorick’s chest. You may mock, but it’s harder to withstand than any kind of water boarding I’ve endured. I’m tall, he’s taller. I’m a big girl, he’s bigger. I’m ‘hell hath no fury’, he’s Goddess’ wrath. Now imagine being pressed up against a chest that has no excess body fat, that radiates heat about two degrees higher than your own and just sinks into the muscles of your back. I could feel Rorick’s heart just hammer in his chest, the beat increasing as I leaned against him, telling me in his own way that he was getting into gear, ready to handle whatever came our way. His leash looped over my shoulder, crushed into my chest by Van’s body, and truth be told, I’d forgotten about it until then. The moment we’d stepped from public view, I’d left it in Rorick’s hands, letting him take care of it himself. It was only because his arms ended up wrapped around my shoulders that it’d even fallen over my chest.
The patrol left and I grabbed my bag from the ground and hauled it back on, using it to cover my suddenly cold back. For a moment I’d felt Rorick resist letting me go, unwilling to let me step away. But the patrol had gone and Van had stepped out, so obviously the threat was passed and I really needed to focus. We stepped out into the ever swirling lights of Auralis and continued our skulking. With my kind of luck a Shuffle will come by mid sneak and suddenly I’ll find myself covered in bells and decked out like a Joker. Only fair, my life is a running joke to Murphy and her Laws anyways.
Once we were moving again, I found it easier to let the useless thoughts fall away, the thrill of another Run helping me hone my focus. I could do other jobs, lead another life entirely and be another woman. Instead I live for this, love this. The rush of adrenaline that floods my body as I run with my two cohorts, our feet wrapped in a layer of muffling fabric to keep the sound muted as we bolted. There are moments when I can feel my pupils dilate from pure endorphin rush and my heart beat goes from thump-thump to rat-at-at-at. I was going to get to that stage in a few moments, if I could just be patient enough to survive the steps in between.
Here’s where the lack of cluttering details in my plan played to our strengths. We’d gone over the layout of Auralis and highlighted the likeliest routes in, but of course, none of them were 100% confirmed before we landed. Just because an access shaft should be unlocked, doesn’t mean it is unlocked. And just because it is unlocked, doesn’t mean we can fit Rorick into it. The first entry point from Docks to residential was supposed to have been one of those access shafts. A grid that was loosened for our purposes wasn’t actually loose when we reached it, so instead we kept moving, unfortunately being forced ever closer to the barricade that was the no-go zone.
They were beyond paranoid here, worried that the lowly, poor and generally normal population might suddenly develop a backbone and try to steal the riches in the center of the city. Of course, you’d have to convince those poor and lowly that facing a howitzer is worth the shiny objects. Somehow I doubt you’d do that terribly well. From what I gathered of all the planets I’ve been on, the poor and destitute don’t want to take over and keep the money for themselves so much as they want a chance to not be so poor that food sometimes has to be caught before it can be cooked.
Of course, me being all kind and generous to the lower class in my head might have been premature if I’d known what was about to happen. Van, Rorick and I were actually using the decorative foot wide ledge of cement around one of the no-go zone watch towers to sneak across the chasm between Dock circle and Residential circle. Although the watch tower was very similar to the guard towers of a prison, we were too close to the tower for that spot light to look down and see us. And because the tower was basically a room at the top on a stick, the guards couldn’t even look out and down to see us. It was risky, getting this close, but none of the other entryways had been working. Worrisome but not unheard of. This is me remember, if it can go wrong, it will.
So here the three of us are, skirting our way across a 70 foot drop to a very splattery end, hanging onto a ledge that fat pigeons fall off of when the first bomb goes off. That tower at the top? WHABOOM. We were half the length of the tower away and we still almost got caught up in the fire cloud that blossomed out. As it was, I was pressed into the wall when Rorick suddenly pressed against my back, using his own body mass and strength to help keep me on the wall as everything we were gripping suddenly started to shake and buck as the tower above us collapsed from the minute explosion. You don’t need a rocket propelled grenade to take out a tower that has that much incendiaries in it. Van was the closest to being across to the other side, so she made a mad dash to get to safer grounds. Even though I wasn’t all that far away, I knew the distance between here and there was long enough to kill me. So I stayed put, holding onto Rorick as much as I held onto the wall. He and I were both going to make it across, or neither of us would. From deeper in the no-go zone, we heard another bomb detonate and realized that the tower had stopped collapsing. Looking up, the 100 foot tower now ended a measly ten feet above my head. If we’d taken the higher ledge, none of us would have survived. Thank you gut feeling, you told me to go lower.
Wasting no more time on my silent thank you, I squeezed Rorick’s hand and felt him slid away from me. He managed to get ahead of me, impossibly agile for a man his size, and kept one of my hands gripped tightly in his. I had this ridiculous urge to let myself fall to see how he’d manage to save my ass, keep himself on the wall, and get us across. Thankfully I’m very used to ignoring the stupid to the point of suicidal urges my brain throws out for fun, and kept my ass on the ledge where it belonged. Rorick made it onto firmer ground and all but yanked me the rest of the distance so he could set me down on a safe spot himself. I tried to ignore the fluttery girl feeling in my gut and instead huddled with my two crew.
“What in the flaming green monkey balls is going on?” Van hissed, eyes wide. She was watching the remnants of the tower we scalded being claimed by hungry, greedy flames. This is one of those moments where I’m reminded that she’s a pyromaniac and can often get turned on by an explosion faster than by porn.
Since neither Rorick nor I had any hidden knowledge of why things were being fire bombed, we kept our mouths shut and just shrugged at each other. Another explosion echoed in the night air, and we could hear the sounds of sirens, screaming and flames from inside the no-go zone. As bad as we all felt for the innocent people inside, as long as it stayed inside, this was to our benefit. From the streets we were supposed to skulk along, the patrols were abandoning their posts and running towards the interior. All we had to do was find a place to lay low in while the streets cleared and we should have a straight run to the Business circle and our rendezvous with a Family representative. That plan would have worked to. Except that the moment we started to make a run for what we hoped was a safe hide out, I felt the unmistakable burn flare up that meant I had just been shot. Fantastic.