Confrontation (1x06)
by Jules Carson
Original Air Date: 19 September 2000
(COUNTRY ROAD)
(FOLLOWING "REGROUPING")
Hunter expertly piloted the vehicle swervingly down the dirt roadway far faster than the traction of the dusty surface could handle. It could only have been Hunter's deft automotive skills that kept the car in contact with the road at all, much less traveling in a singular direction at the same time she was busy dodging the frequent obstacle that found its way into her path.
Filling out the rest of the car rather tightly were The Inimitable Pooh_Bah riding shotgun and Fred, The Chaos Factor, Anthony J and Jules in the backseat, Jules seated on Anthony's lap to make enough room for the four of them. She was, though, angled slightly more onto his left leg to ensure that they didn't accidentally start creeping into the type of private activities that would warrant a higher rating.
Chaos kept flicking his eyes left to right to left again, keeping an eye on the now-latently-heated loathing brewing between Anthony and Fred. Chaos could understand both sides of the altercation; Anthony's fury toward the man who nearly rezzed his beloved, and Fred's quick reflexes that were undoubtedly a product of his environment.
He understood quite well, but between these two imposing men was not a place he wanted to be. Fortunately, their rabid snarling had long ago ceased and their dagger glares were beginning to subside as well. Anthony had now resorted to a silent defiance of Fred's intentions by wrapping his arms around Jules waist in a very sweet, very PG-rated sentiment.
Most of the trip had been spent in quiet, the only sounds heard being the rattling of gravel and roadway debris raking the undercarriage of Pooh_Bah's father's prized automobile. No doubt it had taken worse beatings, but the well-being of the car was not top priority to anyone inside it.
Their minds were collectively glued to their impending mission; the assassination of possibly the most powerful man in the entire digital universe of Harsh Realm, General Omar Santiago. Not an enviable mission by any stretch of the imagination, but rather one that would be branded a kamikaze mission by anyone who heard about it.
The silence was suddenly warped, though, as a male voice penetrated the air, "It's a lot roomier inside than you'd think..." Anthony mused aloud as his eyes wandered around the interior of the Chevelle, not really intending for his thoughts to come out on words. He was, perhaps, trying to divert himself from thinking about the suicide mission he was walking into.
"Yeah," Pooh_Bah answered, turning to face the man with the woman on his lap with a look most closely resembling mockery, "You'd almost think it was a GTO."
A dull chorus of snickers rose from Chaos, Fred and Hunter as Anthony turned to stare back out the chicken-wired window at the blurred landscape tearing by. His handsome face glowed a dull red as he tried rather successfully, but not infallibly, to hide his embarassment.
"Of all the canon," he muttered to himself, "I had to mess up the car..."
The snickers filling the car quickly evolved into a hearty laughter not at Anthony, but in tune with the laughter that they knew was hiding inside him, itching to break out and self-depricate for the error. Instead, he turned back into the car, letting out a question, "Anyone know who's writing the next episode?"
"You're an impatient one," Fred snorted, his previous laughs fading fast.
"I think Jules is," Pooh_Bah interrupted the clone, "it was originally going to cycle back to Chaos, but I opened the floor to the independents and she took the offer."
Anthony turned to Jules, his fate now truly and quite literally in her hands, "You know you have to top off at PG, right?"
Jules laughed, "Yeah;" she touched his nose with her fingertip, "I'm not the one with the smut problem."
"Hey," Anthony said psuedodefensively, "It was all implied in a stylishly sophisticated Frank-Capra-classic kinda way." He tilted his head down and his eyes up to meet Jules', "You didn't enjoy yourself?"
"I'm not saying that," Jules countered, trying not to admit that she most certainly had and inflate her lover's ego any further.
"Anyone notice," Pooh_Bah interjected, cutting off the schmaltzy display of affection these two were now notorious for, "that we only took one casualty in the last ep?" She looked around the car, waiting for the information to sink in to each occupant before continuing, "That's down from the previous two, which was down from the five before."
"It's standard practice," Chaos started, "to hit hard from the get-go and then settle in as the storyline progresses. Modern audiences don't have the attention span they once did. You have grab them by the collar right away before giving them any expository plots or indepths characterizations. The high body-count was to stablize ratings so we could move into the story."
Pooh_Bah shrugged uncomfortably at the explanation, "I don't know," she paused, trying to find the source of her discontentment, "it just doesn't feel right."
"Your bloodthirst is unquenchable," Anthony snorted with a tiny laugh to indicate that it wasn't necessarily a negative trait.
"Must be her father's contribution to the gene pool," Hunter said absently, still focusing her attention on the road in front of her. Suddenly, she banked the car hard left, slamming on the breaks and skidding to a stop, creating a thick cloud of debris that enveloped the car and made it impossible to determine from inside what had caused their hasty desist.
The six occupants of the vehicle quickly pour out onto the road, hands and arms waving through coughs to clear the dust and catch a glimpse of what brought Hunter's velocity-binge to such a quick end. The tan hue that filled the air slowly dissipated, leaving the six individuals standing, stunned, before a towering fence topped with rolls of barbed wire.
"Anyone taking bets on the voltage?" Fred asked, his eyes stuck on the metal structure separating them from Santiago City.
"Enough to cook a clone," Anthony jabbed, a certain threatening edge to his voice that thickened the tension between them.
"Or a newbie," Fred countered, ready and willing to have it out with this kid who was only a few hundred messages into the Group. Who the hell was he to challenge Fred, a genetic replicant of a man without whom the HRfic would not even exist.
"You don't have your precious piercing gun now, you Pinocchio Xerox..." Anthony spat, about to start at Fred to finish this once and for all. Fortunately for them both, their verbal bout were quickly squelched,
"Enough, you two," Pooh_Bah barked, stepping between them on her way to the fence, "your machismo pissing contest'll have to wait. We have to get on the other side of this thing."
Silently, the two men glared at each other, a battle more vicious than anything they could physically manage exchanged in their firey eyes as they slowly turned their attention back to the situation at hand while still keeping an eye on each other.
Pooh_Bah and Hunter quickly gathered up as many of the nearby rocks that were laid strewn around their feet, handing them out and commencing the search for the glitch. Stone after stone was heaved, each with the same result; a burst of electricity, a shower of sparks, and a pile of burning fragments.
For nearly half-an-hour, the six people tossed every rock they could find until they had run out of both stones and the energy to keep finding them. They all stood silently now, each trying to devise the plan that would allow them access to the City, before Chaos piped up,
"You think they fixed the glitches?" he asked, meeting eyes with the rest of the group before returning his gaze to the imposing fence.
(SOMEWHERE IN THE WOODS)
Krycek pressed the tip of the peircing gun harder into the back of the neck of the man before him, dressed from top to enticing bottom in the standard military attire of the Republican Guard.
"What are you doing this far from the comforts of City life?" he asked with a taunting edge, not really expecting an answer, but annoyed all the same when he found none forthcoming.
"The woods are a dangerous place to play," he said more poisonously, before following up his vague intimidations with a more focused threat, "you could get killed." Still, he recieved no answer from the man before him. {Trying to fake courage}, Alex thought, as if the gun to the base of his skull wasn't frightening enough to make him say ~ or do ~ anything this most lethal Russian wanted.
"What's the matter, Mel?" Alex purred, leaning in until his lips a mere inch from Water's left ear. He expelled an unnecessarily heavy breath, feeling Water's shudder at the thought of being seduced by another man, before continuing, "I always figured, when the time came, you'd want it from behind."
"Not a good idea," Waters stammered, faking intimidation, but failing miserably.
Alex pulled away, leaving the gun in contact with his prey's skin. He gently eased back the pin, loading the stud into the chamber with an intentionally-audible click before speaking, "Why not?
"Kill me," Waters said, his words practically sweating, "and you won't find her."
Alex held steady, a mild bemusement prompting him to play Waters' game, "Who?"
He felt a slight relief in the words that found their way out of Waters throat next, words that immediately wiped the snide smirk off his face, "Carla Jane."
(SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THE WOODS)
"He only had a couple minutes headstart, he couldn't have gotten that far..." Pinocchio grumbled, knowing full well that in a couple minutes' time, the man they were searching for was more than capable of vanishing without a trace, never to be found again.
Florence just glanced around the trees at him, a look of patronization stretched across her stone-hard face. She trudged on, quickly replacing her gaze on the ground so as not to trip over anything in the thickly woven underbrush.
The group pressed forth, in search of a man who had trained most of his life in the art of not being found, in the vague hope that they could somehow track him down and reign him in. Unpredictable and highly dangerous, he was simultaneously one of the Unit's loosest canons and greatest assets.
What was to be expected, though, when she was the servant of the enshrouded Carla Jane, a character not so easily figured out in her own right. As Pinocchio wandered with his team deeper into the foliage, he considered the Russian his pursuit was centered around, fearing that perhaps his disappearance had been an orchestration intended to split up the Unit for the purposes of his accomplice.
Just then, a sudden click broke the silence, the crack of a hammer being snapped into position. Pinocchio's thoughts rushed back to the present, scorning him for letting them fall astray. He instinctively stopped moving, waiting either to be shot or ordered, though strangely, he recieved neither.
The rest of the group quickly stopped and turned to find their most knowledgable member held captive at the business end of a Browning Hi-Power Practical 40 S&W. And they recognized the woman holding it immediately.
"Second time here, you figure you'd be smarter about it," came the familiar female voice.
"You..." Pinocchio growled with a fiery hatred.
"Who else would you expect to pull a gun on her own comrades?"
"Carla Jane..." Megan said curiously, not understanding what would prompt their own compatriot into such an act.
"Don't be so surprised, Meg. You knew I was capable of murder. Betrayal was only a few short steps away."
"What the hell are you doing?" Pinocchio seethed, just before feeling the sharp pain of a gun barrel pinching against vertebra.
"Watch it, Pinocchio," the woman reprimanded, "you're treading real quick into PG13 terrain."
Pinocchio willed himself to calm down, knowing she was right and, for the sake of the younger readers, he should censor his language, "What are you up to, CJ?"
"Shouldn't have sent them to Santiago City..." she tisked with a slight laugh that implied she was more than pleased he had. She had banked on it. "Splitting your forces; splitting your strength. Not the best course of action."
"Why are you doing this, Carla?" Geppetto asked, straining to keep the low, level voice she had been trained to use in hostage crisis negotiations.
"Who are you, Kevin Spacey?" Carla Jane retorted, instantly aware of the routine, "You're not talking me down with that calm-and-collected-work-my-guard-down crap. I have a job to do here, and it's going to be done."
She turned her attention back to Pinocchio, anger boiling in her voice, "Azar was supposed to finish you off so I could move into the final phase of my plans. She couldn't take the guilt of what she had to do, so she committed literary suicide. But damned if she didn't take care of you. I would have thought shishkabobbing you on a rapier would do that trick."
"What can I say," Pinocchio hissed defiantly, "I'm tenacious."
"Well," she started succinctly with a tiny smack of her lips, "all your perserverance is for naught. I'm out here to meet someone with whom I'm going straight to Government House."
The shocked expressions her sudden confession had ellicited brought a devilish grin to her lips, thinking about how long she had been formulating these plans, and how perfectly she had kept them under wraps, winning the trust of the group she had soon intended to sell out, "I turn the Unit over to Santiago, he gives me access to the portal. I win, you die, and nobody else is left to tell any different."
"Making deals already, you traitorous turncoat..." The sentence was less an inquery than an insult, a strain on Pinocchio's vernacular as he tried with all his might to avoid slipping into the easy barrage of vulgar insults his mind was busily constructing at a hummingbird's pace.
"Of course," she smiled, proud of her own deviousness, "I've been undermining this operation since Episode 3."
A moment of silence followed her sentence, convincing Pinocchio that his return from the dead was destined to be a short stint that would soon be over, when another female voice drifted from behind Carla Jane,
"Good to know." The mercenary breathed a much-needed sigh of relief when he heard the commanding voice, "Put the gun down."
Carla Jane suddenly tensed up, a sharp sting pinching the back of her own neck. She knew it could only be one person, "You died in Episode 3, the battle with the Guard. You were shot. I saw you rez out," she rationalized, almost on the verge of complaining.
"Over-assuming humans" Ladyhawke shook her head at the simplicity of these creatures, "You forget I'm immortal."
Carla Jane closed her eyes heavily, defeated, slowly lowering the gun from the base of Pinocchio's neck. The tip of the broadsword pressed firmly against the top of her spine ensured that any move she made to end Pinocchio's life would quickly result in the end of hers as well.
In that instant, though, Carla Jane opened her eyes in a flash, turning on Ladyhawke to attack, spinning to her left to remove the threat the sword bore. She swung her gun hand around her side, about to squeeze the trigger when she felt a sudden disembodiment she vaguely remembered feeling the day she was born.
The sword swung laterally with fatal efficiency, piercing through the flesh and finding a home in the heart of the assassin. Carla Jane's mouth dropped open as if to let out a cry of pain, but no sound found its way out. Her eyes fell slowly, finding the origin of the white-hot searing pain that coarsed through her veins like the ice-cold blood she was used to.
In the second before her digital form rezzed from existence, Carla Jane looked up at her killer, a fear of not death, but the eternal void that followed it flashing quickly in her eyes before it, along with its owner, was gone.
The Browning that had formerly found residence in Carla Jane's hand was now subject only to the will of gravity, which quickly drew the weapon toward the ground. And it was at just that moment that Chance Harper was suddenly flooded with the strongest bad feeling he had ever felt.
"Oh..." he started, but the obsenity that would have followed wasn't given the opportunity. The gun made contact with the ground, striking an exposed rock in precisely the right spot to cause a discharge.
The thunder of gunfire sent shockwaves through the six people standing in the forest, each of whom froze under the assumption that they would rather already be in the path of the bullet, instead of moving into it.
The airborn projectile chipped off the blade of Ladyhawke's sword and ricocheted away, sending the immortal sprawling in surprise. She looked up just in time to see Florence dive to the dirt floor of the forest, her rifle yards away with a scratch where the bullet had impact it as well.
Chance didn't know what to do. If he moved, would he step into the final position where he was meant to fade from life? If he stayed, would he be giving up the chance to step to safety?
He wasn't given the chance to think, though, as the bullet rocketed within inches of his right ear, leaving a deafening thunder in its wake. He breathed a huge sigh of relief, just before he heard the hollow crack of metal against wood and turned to see an already rotted-through tree falling toward him.
In that moment, Chance decided to move. He dove like a madman to his right, rolling out of the path of the falling tinder as it crashed to the ground. He forward-flipped out of his dive, landing on his knee in front of another tree in time to glance up and see the very top of the rotted tree hit the ground. In precisely the spot where Florence's rifle had landed.
The M16 flipped from the ground, spinning viciously through the air like a throwing knife with its destination chosen as the unwitting Chance. There was a split-second of absolute silence, the harbinger of all things terrible that Chance feared more than anything, before his entire world went black, the dull thudding pain in his right temple instantly crushing, and then gone.
Ladyhawke composed herself quickly, finding her way back to her feet just in time to see the crumpled form of Chance Harper, blood leaking from the right side of his head, digitize on the forest floor with Florence's M16 in the dirt nearby.
Her eyes traveled the group, finding the silent sullen eyes of five helpless bystanders who could do nothing to reverse the dark luck of that cursed man. She eventually made her way to Pinocchio, looking blankly at the spot where his doppleganger had met with death, the vaguest look of sorrow buried deep within his posture.
"Come on," the soldier said almost too quietly to be heard, starting away ahead of the group, "we gotta find Krycek."
(SANTIAGO CITY PERIMETER FENCE)
The six stranded people stood contemplating their predicament, still stuck on the ragged side of the tall electrified ediface blocking their progress.
"So how do we get in?" Fred positted, as if the question hadn't already been considered.
They looked along the fence in both directions; any tree within ten yards of the obstacle had been removed, giving no immediately accessible means of getting over it.
"Can we dig under it?" Hunter asked, turning toward Jules who was already shaking her head lightly as Chaos spoke.
"No," he stated dryly , "the fence goes seven feet underground."
Hunter, Jules, Pooh_Bah and Anthony simultaneously cast their stares in Chaos' direction, "how do you?" came the inevitable question on each of their minds.
Chaos' brow slowly furrowed, confusion spelled clearly on his face, "I don't know," he paused, thinking, "but it does."
And so they stood, mulling over their percocious situation for what felt like long hours of circular contemplation that kept bringing them back to their initial point of departure; the insurmountable electrical ediface separating them from their mission objective.
Suddenly, after approximately three and a half minutes, inspiration caught Pooh_Bah, who snapped her fingers loudly to procure the attention of the group, "Can we overload it??" Silence befell the group, as none of the members could conceive of a reason why not.
"With what?" Anthony asked.
Pooh_Bah spun around quickly, eyeing the vehicle in which they had arrived.
"Whoa, whoa, slow down McGyver," Hunter interrupted, remembering what Pinocchio had so adamantly assigned her, "we permanently injure that machine and it's my ass."
"Nothing permanent," Pooh_Bah said as she popped the trunk, routing through the mess of random equipment to find the item she needed, "we just draw off the electricity in the battery to blow a segment of the fence." After a few more moments of digging, the girl found the object she needed, slamming the hatch closed.
"Jumper cables?" Fred asked, "He's constantly looking for gas, but he's got a set of jumper cables?" Jules only shrugged, watching as Pooh_Bah grabbed the keys from Hunter, started the car and pulled it within a few feet of the fence, leaving it running as she exitted and lifted the hood.
Inside, she located the car's battery, snapping the aligator clamps over the positive and negative terminals and turning to the group.
"Who wants to do the honors?" Every gaze found someone else as none of the individuals standing there wanted to risk frying themselves, even for the good of the group. Pooh_Bah looked at each person in turn, eventually finding Hunter.
"It was your idea, cyber-goddess" the older woman said sarcastically with a shrug that implied there was no way she was risking her life on this half-bet.
Pooh_Bah turned to Chaos, the free ends of the jumper cables extended toward him with a pleading grin on her face, "You created this series. If there's anyone Jules wouldn't dare kill, I think it's you."
Chaos tentatively took the cables from Pooh_Bah, looking toward Jules for some reaction that would give an indication of her intentions. All he found was a disinterested gaze with no hint of his fate.
"Just remember," he started, turning toward the fence, "just because I'm dead here doesn't mean I can't write another episode. And I'd be a very vengeaful ghost."
Chaos caught the glimmer of worry that shined in Jules' eyes, as well as the flash of rage that quickly passed through Anthony before he let himself act on it, and was sure that his point was well-received.
He stepped cautiously toward the fence, reaching the clamps of the jumper cable toward the metal grid with ever-so-slightly shaking hands. He was fairly certain that he wouldn't be killed off by a newbie, but in HRfic, one never knew.
Squeezing the clamps to open them, he carefully slid the widened mouths around the strands of wire, feeling their electrical buzz pulsing through his digital body. With one last quick glance over his shoulder at Jules, he turned back to the fence, letting go of the clamps.
At first, he didn't know if the stinging eletronic hum meant that they had succeeded or failed, but the eruption of sparks that followed instantly after convinced him that neither really mattered. He was about to take a step back from the fence when suddenly, a massive explosion sent the group reeling, hurtling Chaos' limp frame over the hood of the car and onto the roof of the vehicle.
From the ground, Jules' breath caught in her chest as she wondered if she had grossly miscalculated her literary power, pinning her stare on the smoking body strewn atop Pinocchio's car.
"Chaos!" one of the females shouted, not in the clichéd-B-horror-movie-damsel way, but more like Ripley from Alien or Sarah Connor from Terminator 2; strong yet worried.
Everyone was up in a flash, hurrying to surround the car and heave the soot-blackened form back to the ground. Pooh_Bah quickly pressed her fingers to the side of the man's neck, snapping her eyes back to Jules when it became clear that there was no pulse.
"He can't be dead," Jules said, though she wasn't entirely sure if she was stating or hoping, "he didn't rez out."
"You better hope he doesn't die;" Pooh_Bah said, leaning in to begin administering CPR, "he's unconscious."
Jules bit her lip, in that moment realizing that if Pooh_Bah was successful in reviving Chaos, she would have precious little time left in Harsh Realm. She watched as Pooh_Bah breathed for him, intermittently stopping to deliver a series of 15 depressions on his diaphragm before returning to his respiration. Anthony's hand found its way to Jules', squeezing gently to reassure her that everything was alright.
Suddenly, Chaos coughed hard, opening his eyes and staring at the sky. After a tense moment, he sat up to look around, clear confusion spilled across his expression as if the shock of the explosion had temporarily wiped his short term memory clean. He found his way to Jules', suddenly remembering what had caused his blackout. A slow grin crept onto his face as he spoke, "What a rush."
(BACK IN THE WOODS)
Pinocchio's search party still consisted of five members, but because of their short interlude with the until-recently-missing Carla Jane, those members were now slightly different. Instead of Chance Harper, whose own luck had finally done him in, returning him to his beloved Azar, they were now joined by the also-until-recently-missing Ladyhawke, who had prevented Carla Jane from killing the until-recently-already-dead Pinocchio. Again.
So now they trudged on, a tired silence draining them as they continued to search the ever-expanding forest for a man they were, in all likelihood, not going to find.
Geppetto stared at the ground, watching her step as her AR17 long-range deep-sight assault rifle hung loosely over her shoulder. She was wondering how her clones were doing back in the Real World. Mayhem was undoubtedly causing some of his namesake, while Markus was probably just sitting around the house watching Animaniacs with a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, waiting for her to come back and reel his pseudosibling in.
Megan contemplated her own clone and his vicious demise as the hands of the uncontrollable Mayhem, whose antics had earned the lot of them a quick passport home. Michael was probably on the outside somewhere, plotting some incursion to rescue his madre-figure.
Ladyhawke, sensing the overwhelming sentiments toward these copy's of Pinocchio's DNA, was quickly reminded of Miquel, and the untimely death he endured in the same incident that had relieved Megan of her aid.
Pinocchio himself was busying himself with memories of the men who looked exactly as he did, and how each of them had in turn fallen to death's door. It was both comforting and disconcerting, these men who mirror his own image dying so easily. Did it mean he was stronger than they? Or that he was next?
It was only Florence whose thoughts were unoccupied, and it was at that moment that a man came crashing to the ground before her, pushed into her path by some unseen force. The mute mercenary was, at the moment, less interested in where he had come from than in who he was.
She stared down the sight of her rifle at the head of Lieutenant Melvin Waters.
"What the hell..." the sentence could only have come from Pinocchio, but was cut off at the midpoint as Florence sensed another form quickly off to her right. She froze, keeping Waters at gunpoint, but cautious not to provoke an attack from her unseen surveyor.
"Krycek," She heard Megan say, accepting the information without looking for fear of giving Waters the upper hand.
"Frollicing through the forest, Krasvyj? That's not gonna win the game," Alex leaned against the tree he'd pushed Waters out from behind, his arms crossed nonchalantly as a gun and a sword found their aim on his forehead.
"We were looking for you," Pinocchio stated, not diverting his attention from the ground-bound Waters.
"That's sweet," Alex smirked, with not quite enough sarcasm to completely cover the statement's slashy edge.
"We thought you defected;" the soldier snapped, "sold out like your dom." Needless to say, Pinocchio was still a little perterbed at having a gun pointed at his skull.
"Not quite," Krycek said wryly, a stain of embarassment evident in his voice as he thought about the plans of his creator. It was, though, the fact that she had gotten hrself caught, been unsuccessful in her plot, that most embarassed the Russian. Alex had expected more.
"So what's he doing out here?" Geppetto asked, nodding the barrel of her AR17 toward Waters.
"I was here to meet Carla Jane," Waters spat.
"Trying to save your own skin," Pinocchio laughed, "you never change, Mel. Ever footing the bill for your own cowardice."
"She was meeting with Santiago," Waters said, wiping the laugh off Pinocchio's face.
"Well she's dead," Ladyhawke informed him, accenting the final word of the sentence to emphasize to Waters that she had no qualms about sending him to join her, "and if you don't spill everything you know, you won't be too far removed from her."
"All I know is they had a deal," Waters said in his customary not-quite-whining fashion, "You for escape."
"Aren't you glad I caught this smarmy little bug?" Alex asked, not really caring either way. He was more annoyed at the moment, with Megan and Ladyhawke, who were still pointing their weapons at him. He curtly nodded toward Waters with a patronized look, "wanna point those things elsewhere?"
Ladyhawke slowly dropped her sword to her side, as it wasn't a very effective weapon over long distances, but Megan was less cooperative, "Where'd you find him?"
"I was worried about Carla Jane," he answered as if they were lucky he had, annoyed almost as much at being interrogated as he was by the prospect of a gun pointed at his head, "I found this maggot waiting to meet her."
Pinocchio looked away from Waters for a moment, trying to get a read on the Russian. He seemed sincere enough at the moment, though he was a gifted liar. Pinocchio considered him for a second before turning back to Waters, dealing with the more pressing issue of the Unit's mole and her sabotage plans.
"How?" he asked, pointing his gun more forcefully toward the soldier.
"I don't know..." Waters started, but was quickly cut off by his ex-compatriot's boot on his shoulder. Pinocchio gave him a hard kick, pushing him over onto his back to face the sky. The mercenary was quickly looking straight down the barrel of his gun, which was point at Waters' forehead only a few inches away from the skin.
"The hell you don't," he said before pulling the hammer back as a final gesture of patience, "so you have three seconds to tell me, or I kill you."
Waters stared up at Pinocchio, instantly knowing his former comrade-in-arms was deathly serious about his threat. There would be no hesitation in this man between the end of the third second and the pull of the trigger.
"Okay," Waters said, buckling like a belt under the life-and-death pressure, "okay. Santiago has an ambush waiting inside the City. He's going to pick you off when you come in for the kill."
To those words, Pinocchio's eyes snapped to his mute partners, going wide in realization, "We sent them into a death trap." A gunshot went off, and a moment later, only six people were left in the clearing, none of them wearing a Republican Guard uniform.
Pinocchio instantly took off, sprinting through the uneven terrain of the forrest landscape with his five Unit members in hot pursuit.
(SANTIAGO CITY)
"Couldn't wait for nightfall," Hunter muttered as she crested another fire-escape towards another rooftop, "had to do it in broad daylight."
The team had resorted to a backalley-rooftop incursion route, trying to avoid the over-exposure of the streets as they slowly progressed toward the heart of the city. Toward Government House, where they would find their final target; General Omar Santaigo.
They managed quickly through the City, dropping from another second story rooftop into a dumpster that afforded barely enough cushioning for the fall before heading out toward the street.
"How'd we make that trip so fast?" Chaos asked, surprised by the speed with which they had covered the miles between the fence and their present location.
"I think she got lazy," Pooh_Bah mumbled as she crept toward the end of the alley, from which she could see the heavily fortified Government House.
"Hey, this is the longest episode by far. You think it's easy creating all this plot?" Jules asked defensively. Pooh_Bah turned around from her perch and was undoubtedly about to scold the girl for her insolance, when a suddenly hail of bullets drowned out any words that might have made their way out of her.
Every member of the group went sprawling. Fred dove across the sidewalk to come up behind a Cadillac, Pooh_Bah dropped back into the alley where she found herself next to Anthony and Jules ducked against the wall, while Hunter and Chaos had poised themselves in a safe position from which they could make an escape when the coast cleared.
Anthony reached behind his back, pulling a Sig Sauer P220 45ACP from the back band of his cargo pants, whipping the slide back to chamber the first round of ammunition. He stopped to look at his hands and their contents, surprised by the quickness of his own actions, turning to Jules for an explanation.
"You wanted more gunplay," she offered with a shrug before producing her own Glock, dropping the clip to ensure she was well-enough armed, slamming the magazine back into place and chambering the first bullet.
"What the hell is that???" Fred called from the street. Everyone looked at Jules, but she averted her eyes, staring at the ground instead.
"What did you get us into???" Pooh_Bah shouted into the girl's face, forcing her to answer.
"It's an ambush, Lisa!" Jules returned petulantly, not wanting to bear all of the responsibility. It wasn't her fault that Carla Jane had turned them all over to Santiago for the chance to escape the Realm.
Well, maybe technically it was.
"Jesus..." Hunter growled, turning toward the end of the alleyway to return some gunfire, put up something of a fight, "Are we gonna make it out??"
"Mostofus..." Jules mumbled under her breath as she eased away from Pooh_Bah.
"What was that??" Pooh_Bah barked, grabbing her arm and stopping her withdraw.
"I said most of us!" Jules snapped back.
"Who dies?" Chaos asked, "I'm guessing it's not me; you already had a chance at that."
"What the hell are you having a conference about??" Fred screamed from the street, popping back down from a short stint of gunfire.
"Jules is icing one of us!" Hunter called back, receiving a suddenly terrified look from Fred before his eyes shifted to the author. She didn't look up immediately, but when she did, he knew his fate was sealed.
"I shoulda pierced you when I had the..." the final word of the sentence would never come to fruition as a grenade fell a few feet to the right of the Cadillac, turning the car into a blazing fireball along with the man seeking cover behind it.
"That wasn't very nice," Anthony said dryly, not really believing his words.
"He shot at me," Jules said in disbelief, incredulous that her lover would say such a thing.
"But he didn't kill you. I mean, you coulda just had him bite a bullet."
Jules shook her head, "I'm not getting into this right now..."
"Knock it off!!" Pooh_Bah ordered, finally too tired of their exchange to bear it any longer, "Have your little lover's quarrels when we're not about to DIE!"
"We're not about to die," Jules said matter-of-factly, "I didn't really want to kill anyone, but Megan worked that angle in her story. I needed something original, so I built up the story."
"So what do we do now??" Hunter demanded, the rain of bullets still threatening to annihilate all of them.
"Well there's no way the four of us can defeat all those guards," Jules rationalized
"Could have in my story..." Pooh_Bah mumbled, glad that she was at least still alive.
"Well we can't in this one," Jules countered, "so we might as well escape."
"How?" Anthony asked, to which Jules gestured back down the alleyway. Where used to be a wall that ended the alley, a long stretch of continuing alleyway extended far down the corridor.
"Where'd that come from?" Chaos asked.
"Continuity error," she explained, starting down the alley, "Happens all the time in television."
"This isn't television," Pooh_Bah corrected, "it's just a script."
"Well that's not my fault..." Jules insisted, heading down the alley toward their escape route with the others in tote. They quickly made their way to the farthest end, transcending the City once more and heading back to the fence, the car, and the Unit.
[ END EPISODE 6 ]