The sun had just set, and the dark red it painted on the horizon disappeared into a night sky dotted by stars. The sound of the surf that hit the beach far below the spot was a welcomed change to the city's noise and its crowds of people.
Buggy, drop-out, aspiring machine tech, claimant to the crown of player of players, stood up and caressed the automatic rifle in his hands before he rested its sling over his shoulder and took one final look at the view before he turned.
He looked around as he walked past a house that faced a small cul-de-sac, which led up to a larger road, with a pair of similarly designed wooden houses that flanked both sides of the street that led up to the larger road.
A line of cars greeted him as he approached the larger road. He slowed and eyed each vehicle and its driver as he headed to the roadblock that was causing the row of cars. He continued to tap on his favorite weapon in hand as he checked out each driver. A familiar voice broke his focus, and he turned his attention and walked toward it.
“See anything interesting, Bug boy?” A taller, scruffy man called out to him.
He shook his head, then nodded slowly while a grin slipped onto his lips as he approached the taller man.
“There’s a sweet-looking blud in one of the cars ahead. Sweet car, too. Wait til she gets here, yoh.”
The taller man chuckled, his metal ribbed hand ruffling Buggy’s combed-back bright honey-yellow hair. “Well, you’re good on the score for sweet bluds, so let’s see what we have then, shall we?”
Buggy lit a cigarette and took a deep inhale as he watched the cars slow down to a stop. The guys by the road checked out the drivers before they let each car pass.
“You know, I was just thinking, if someone wanted to hit us, we’d probably be zeroed pretty easily out in the open like this.”
The taller man chuckled and shook his head.
“Can’t agree more yoh, but Big got Shark to run this lil’ op we have ‘ere, so, what Shark says goes.”
He faced Buggy and smirked. “Besides, we got overwatches to keep us safe. Gotta ask you, though, why are you here anyway? I thought you dropped out of the pack and wanted to go full-time vocay student?”
Buggy scoffed and shook his head dejectedly. “Yea, but well, you know the parental units can’t afford it, and Education Services said they will only foot the bill, well, a third of the bill, when I can present results from the school…” He looked at the taller man, who turned to him with a puzzled face
“Wait… how are you going to give them results from a school you aren’t in because you can’t pay for it and they are supposed to?”
He chuckled in reply and nodded knowingly. “Yep, right? So… I'm gonna be taking what jobs I can from you Hyenas, save up, and then re-apply.”
The taller man nodded sagely. “Sounds like a plan. This gig should be sweet for you, then. Most of the fighting is in-city, and what cars do drive by on this road are usually headed for the airport or coming back from it.”
“Is that so? Is that why all the cars we’ve seen have been real vogue ones?”
The taller man nodded again, this time with a soft smile. “You got it. Can you imagine someone like me flying off from that airport?” He chuckled sardonically.
Buggy scoffed and shrugged, nodding knowingly at the taller man. “You got that right”.
His attention turned to the road, three cars remained in line now, with the one he spotted earlier pulling up to the roadblock.
“Hey yohs, I got this, I got this.” he broke into a quick run and raised a hand, immediately going to the driver’s side of the car that had just stopped.
His hand slowly ran on the gentle slope of the car’s roof, and his eyes studied the sleek lines of the car in appreciation before he turned his attention to the driver.
“What seems to be the issue?” The girl driving it looked at him with her bright eyes trained on him, each iris glistening in the lights from the roadblock.
His eyes slowly roamed over her silver hair, mentally noting in approval of an intricate design of ink on her shaved left temple. He ignored the question momentarily as his eyes continued down her neck. They lingered on the cleavage she had shown under the dark trench coat she was wearing as he leaned down so he could look at her at face level and smiled sweetly.
“Oh, nothing for you to worry about. We’re just working for the city here; the word is there might be some violent gang activity in the area.”
“Oh, really? Well, I don’t think they’d come around this area,” she replied and smiled back. Her face turned a slight worry as she tilted her head at him and looked over the two men who flanked the front of her car, their weapons in hand.
She slowly turned her eyes back to him and smiled. “So, everything dazz? I need to get going.”
Buggy looked back at the taller man, who gave him a thumbs-up, eliciting a chuckle from him before he turned back to the silver-haired girl.
“Hold on, lemme check.”
He straightened up and slowly walked around the sleek coupe; his eyes continued to study the mix of gentle and sharp curves of the car’s wide and low-set chassis before he knocked on the passenger side of the window.
It slowly descended as he stuck his head in and smiled. His eyes registered her exposed legs where the trench coat had slipped off her thighs. His left eye slowly roaming, his eye HUD registering the video and images as he ignored whatever she was trying to say, before he looked back at her.
“Everything seems to be in order,.. say, can I call you sometime?”
She smirked, her eyes sparkling as she bit her lip, pausing before she replied, “Gimme your comms; maybe we can meet sometime.”
He smiled, one hand curtly waved toward her as her left eye lit up a soft blue. “There’s my number.”
She smiled at him and nodded. “Got it, see you” before she turned to face forward, guiding her car past the two men who flanked her car and drove away.
He turned back to the taller man in a hurried walk and chuckled, “Damn, that was a real sweet blud; I think she’s a toy too.”
The taller man scoffed as he looked at him. ‘You think? That car she was driving? That’s way too pricey for just any regular Lowbie… gotta be… special...” The last word hung heavily.
Buggy nodded slowly, his eyes still trained on the girl’s matt-black car that drove off. “Fuck yoh, not just the car, every inch of her looks vogue as fuck. If I didn’t know better, she might as well have been from High-Rise.”
At the last sentence, Buggy looked at the taller man, their faces contorted, trying to hold back the laughter that finally broke out aloud; as one more car drove away from the roadblock.
—-----------------------------------------------------------------------
“I swear, Anya would have just plain puked on him that time,” Noa muttered as she turned into a junction. She turned the car lights off while guiding it off the road, killing the engine that winded down in a soft descending whirr.
Bug Bunny chuckled on the communicator. “Hyenas must be desperate putting people like that into their crew.”
“Perhaps, heard that the Brotherhood and Apostles are really doing a number on their people.”
“That’s what I heard, too, and the smaller gangs are rising up as well. My take is that they’re smelling opportunity.”
Noa scoffed. “Heh, well, that’s how it goes in their world, I guess.”
A soft beep suddenly interrupted their chatter; an icon of a crown with a rifle across it blinked under Bug Bunny’s icon on her communicator.
“Okay, that’s Duke; adding him to call.”
“Hey ladies, glad to be here,” He enthusiastically chimed in
“Hey, Duke, you got your rigs set up?” Noa exited the car. She paused to inhale the air, and a smile etched her lips as she let the fresh night air—tinged with the scent of the sea—wash over her.
Her eye-HUD switched to a low-light setting, which enhanced everything around her in the darkness of the side road she had pulled off from. She proceeded to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and leaned in to gather up the gear she had set aside for this job.
“Yep, spaced out in intervals as per your plan. Did you get a gauge on the guys we’re up against?”
Reflective Mode On. Confirm? Yes.
Noa’s bodysuit switched color from nude to one that made her suited body transparent. She slipped off her trench coat and neatly folded it into a corner of the trunk space before she clipped on a couple of bandoliers, each carrying four steel balls to her belt, and checked the number of magazines for her pistol and automatic weapon.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Yep, from what I gather, more new bloods than old. They probably have most of their vets in-city, which is good for us.”
“Tech?”
“Minimal, pretty standard Hyena hardware. A few immediately in front of the houses have more advanced tech, but nothing we can’t sort out.”
“Thermal Nights?”
“Nope. Scan didn't pick up any. Bunbuns, how about you?”
“Previous fly-overs, including tonight’s, by the gargoyle checked out their tech levels; that’s a neg on the Thermal nights.”
“Dazz. Duke, gimme a run-through of what you understood, please.”
“Wait til they pack up; from Bunny’s scouting, I verified the four viks they have for the transpo. I’ve hitched the mother drone onto Bunny…”
“Yep, green on my side on the mother drone,” Bug Bunny interjected.
“...the gargoyle will overwatch the beach path, in case of anything. My rigs are set on taking out the last and first viks first, then proceeding to the other two once both viks are out, and if rounds are still available, the soft will pick off targets accordingly. Noa’s marbles will blow ‘em when they exit. Then we pick off the rest…”
“You have a question?” Noa noticed the long pause from Duke.
“Yeaaa…. I was thinking... Why can’t we just blow all of them up? It's a seek-and-destroy gig, right?”
“We need to verify all of them to get paid, and blowing them up into pieces will complicate the identification, although some missing parts should be fine.”
“Verify?”
“Yes, verification and confirmation will get us the bonus for the gig.”
“Noa will always try to go for bonus parameters for a gig, Duke,” Bug Bunny piped in.
Noa smirked at Bug Bunny’s words, “Bunbuns, I brought eight marbles with me, prepped for soft bags; you good with keeping two for the path to the sea? Just in case?”
“Yep, green on that, Noa. Six is fine; the gargoyle is set on auto-overwatch on the path.”
“Okay, activating AR modules then.”
AR targeting module Activated. A message flickered onto the lower center of Noa’s HUD. Small red chevrons appeared where the Hyenas were.
“Hmm, quite a number of them,” Noa mused as she started back to the main road, away from her parked car,
“Yep, and those are the ones that I’ve picked up. I’m betting more in the house.”
“Well, four viks, each can take about… six? Eight?” Duke piped in
“Let’s say eight… doable.” Noa paused as she looked in the direction of the roadblock, which was now a couple of hundred meters away, noting the moving chevrons before she crossed the road in a quick sprint.
“Oh, and Duke”
“Yea?”
“Don’t take them all out. I’m still testing this com-suit in combat, so I wanna take some up-close.”
An extended silence came back before he responded, “Ok, Noa, I’ll try.”
Bug Bunny can't help but comment, “‘I’m thinking there’ll be more than enough to test on Noa.”
Noa just smirked, peeled the spherical steel spheres from the bandoliers on her belt, and tossed them into the air one by one. Each started spinning at a high speed and floated upward and ahead of her toward the cluster of houses she was now heading to. Satisfied, she continued to make her way closer to the small cluster of houses. Her mind and body already anticipated the feeling when the suit’s appendages would sink into their targets.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“So, are we set on the CTs to take us to the safe-house loc?” The well-built man insistently asked again on his communicator.
“Yes, Shark, I personally got the CTs to take you guys there. Cost quite a lot to get the pilots to play ball.”
Shark chuckled and grinned ironically as he shook his head. “Well, everything is pricey except for lives, it seems.”
“You guys all set there?”
“Yep, Me and my lady, Sam and her man, Rhino and his lady are all set.”
“Okay, comm me when you guys get to the safe house. Then, once I know all ya’ll are safe, we can plan for our next move. Gonna be payback on those muthafuckin’ Brotherhood and those Machine God simps.”
Shark nodded. “See you on the other side, miyoh”
The communicator icon disappeared in his HUD as he stood up and looked around.
“Honey, where’d you put my shotgun?”
A woman peeked through a doorway. Raven, bright steel rows of plate arching on her otherwise shaven scalp glinted in the bright light of the house.
“It's with me, big boy; it needed cleaning.”
He smiled and walked over to the adjoining hall. The large dining table was covered in an equally large off-white cloth. Weapons of various ilk lay on top of it, and the strong smell of oil lingered in the air.
He eyed the two other persons at the table: Sam, in her favorite cream-colored trench coat and deep green combat suit, and Miles, who seemed to be busy on a small screen propped up on the table.
“You guys good?” He asked, a hint of concern in his voice
Sam looked up at him, and her lips formed into a cocky smirk as she saw him. She leaned back in her chair and placed two heeled boots on the table while she cradled a shotgun in her lap.
Her hands gently tapped the weapon while she nodded. “I got my baby…” then she turned to Miles sitting next to her and tapped his shoulder. “...and my other baby, with me, so I’m good.”
“What do you have there, Miles?” Shark proceeded to pull a chair and sat down next to him
Miles looked up from his screen and smiled at Shark.
“Our AR modules aren’t working, so I was trying to look up ways to get it fixed without having to go back to the dumb rag Tech-Doc that sold it to us.”
Shark scoffed as he leaned back and folded his large steel-covered arms across his chest.
“Yoh, AR modules aren’t as reliable as good old heavy-duty chrome unless you're swimming in stacks.”
Miles dismissed the comment as he turned his attention back to the screen he was scrolling on
“Well, If we can’t improvise on the tech and chrome that we get in Lowbie-town, we’ll never be able to get through this. Those guys in the Brotherhood have too many toys to take us out.”
“Then you have the Apostles with their crazy rigs,” Sam piped in as she tapped her hand on Miles’ thigh.
Shark shook his head, unconvinced, “I have been in this for years, and I’ve always been able to rely on my chrome yoh, you just gotta put more time into it, is all.”
Just then, another man walked in. He was not that tall or short, built like a battering ram. His arms were just as big as Shark’s, with an equal covering of steel instead of flesh on them.
“Shark, I was just comm’ed on the vik for the overwatches. It's on the way and close now.”
Shark looked up at him and nodded. “Thanks, Rhino. I’d rather have them watching over us while we set out to the pick-up point.”
Rhino leaned against the hallway entrance, his arms crossed while he nodded knowingly.
“Good call, Shark. Their transpo should be here real soon.”
Shark nodded and clapped his hands, “Alright, as soon as their vik get here. We go. Make sure Mira is ready for the move, where is she anyway?”
Rhino smirked and shrugged. “Where do you think? Sleeping upstairs, I swear, if she doesn’t slow down, her age is really going to show.”
He looked at Shark again, and his face failed to hide his thoughts,
“I know that look. Spit it out, Rhino.”
“I just keep thinking, why does Big want us out there? We can do better by his side.”
“He needs us safe; we are gonna get back at them, but he was caught wrong-footed when he found out Pixie and Mosh got nulled in that raid at Thing’s place. I think it kinda rattled him some, and I’d say that raid he did on the Brotherhood casino after that was messy and showed how rattled he was.”
Rhino nodded slowly, his voice changing as he responded, “Did you hear? It was just one guy who did the raid on Thing’s place, and our tech boys can’t seem to get a clean image of him from the cam feeds.”
Raven looked up from what she was doing. “I heard it was a girl.”
“Yea, a sister took out the whole place,” Sam piped up.
Shark shrugged. “Guy, girl, don't matter. Thing was sloppy; he din’ have enough soft bags to keep watch on his own place, and that kinda tech? I’ll bet you both my vogue-chrome arms, that it was the Brotherhood. Who else uses that kinda tech?”
Rhino sighed dejectedly and shook his head. “Well, I can’t wait to get my hands on those kerbs... The things I’ll do to ‘em… Anyway…I’m gonna go check on Mira and get ready.”
Shark nodded at him. “Make sure you remind her to check and double-check her stuff. She’s always leaving stuff behind,” he said before turning his attention to Raven.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bug Bunny’s communicator icon lit up,” Noa, I have a single vik approaching, will verify.”
Noa could hear the conversations from the Hyenas now. She looked up at the single red chevron on the roof of the house she was closest to, then turned to check on the other chevron on the adjacent house. Both were unmoving and displayed a short distance from her to them.
“Ok, it's a Hyena vik,” Bug Bunny’s voice trailed off and then came back: “Single driver and one guard.”
“Probably for the overwatches,” Duke interjected
“Probably… does not change things, though,” Noa replied. Her HUD scrolled with messages as she verified the new settings for the com-suit she was wearing.
“Ok, Buns buns, allocate one of the marbles for the single Overwatcher on the other side; I’ll take care of the ones on my side.”
“Will do.”
A few minutes passed by before Noa heard the new vehicle approaching. The occupants climbed out of the vehicle, and a couple of the Hyenas came up to them and welcomed them with loud hellos and high-fives.
“Any more incoming Bunbuns?” Noa peeked around the corner of a house she was now leaning against as two new red chevrons appeared on her HUD
“None. The only reason these guys are here is that they are part of the Hyena crew. I’ve already put out a road closure notice for this road, and gave an alternative route to nav systems nearing it. So we won’t have any more surprise visits, especially from civis.”
Squatting down by the house’s rear wall, Noa did a final run-through of the ammo count in her pistol as her hand gently grasped its handle. Then, she proceeded to examine her automatic weapon; both registered full levels. Her right hand then slid down to check on her favorite dagger, tapping its hilt and drawing a sense of assurance from it.
“Main house lights just turned off; get ready for the party, ladies…” Bug Bunny’s voice paused before continuing, “... and gent.”
Noa curtly nodded, looked up, and inhaled deeply as she checked the red chevron above her. Anya’s blood-curdling scream rang in her head.