“I won’t tell you anything! You can torture me all you want, but I’ll never talk!”
Jojo shrugged, before releasing her arms and opening her eyes as wide as they could go. If she was gonna let this freak’s legs break, she was gonna do it right. Besides, the hospital had fixed up a bullet wound just fine; they couldn’t mess it up that bad. Suddenly, a loud bang came from behind, the sound of a door hitting a wall, and heavy panting from somebody that sounded like they hadn’t run since 1st grade when they got chased home by a dog that lived next door after school every day.
“The floozy was holding the dame from earlier now, could be a scorned lover, but more likely something about money. It usually is in these circumstances, but motives be damned. The dame was about to fall, and the bimbo holding her was about to turn around and get me next if I wasn’t careful. If I didn’t do something soon, the dame would be vulture food on the pavement, and I’d be down a client.” This was a woman’s voice, transatlantic accent in full swing.
“WHOA, IS THAT BITCH GONNA DROP THAT EXTREMELY KIND AND ATTRACTIVE REPTILE OWNER?! NOT TO WORRY LADY, I’LL SAVE YOU!” A much younger voice now, probably 17, that sounded eerily familiar.
“Whoever you are, I swear to God, I’m going to go over there and throw you off this roof after I take care of this bitch if you don’t shut the fuck up and go back through the door!” Jojo could’ve sworn that she’d already dropped this woman, but she couldn’t really do it now with a witness, so she’d just wait and let TPAB pick up the slack when she had to blink. It was pretty tiring to leave it open for long stretches, but she could just pop it open every now and again just fine.
The woman started back, “The floozy was just standing there, a good sign for negotiations, but I still had to put in the leg work if I wanted everyone to be alive come the next dawn.”
“It’s like noon, why are you talking about the next dawn like it’s going to be here soon? Also not hearing a whole lot of leaving.” This was getting everybody nowhere, so Jojo spun the woman in the air, grabbing her by the ankles and shaking her above the 2-story drop. “Tell me what you want.”
“The bullet!”
“Dumb question, that ones on me. Why do you want the bullet?”
“I’ll never tell you!”
“Hey, could you come over here with your mom or whatever and punch this bitch in the face if you’re not gonna leave?”
A fist whizzed past Jojo’s head into the woman’s face, rocking her as she hung over the drop. “YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, FUCK YOU YOU PIECE OF SHIT I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HOPE YOU GET INTO A HORRIBLE CAR ACCIDENT AND THEY HAVE TO IDENTIFY THE BODY BY THE FUCKING DENTAL RECORDS YOU GODDAMN WHORE!”
“Alright, calm down man, how do you have this much beef with her already? Who are you anyway?”
“Ah right, forgot to introduce myself. I’m THE GUY THAT’S GONNA RIP YOUR INTESTINES OUT THROUGH YOUR FUCKING THROAT IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP WITH ALL THE GODDAMN QUESTIONS!”
This dude is tweaking, someone should really do something about that. “So, you wanna punch her some more while we try to get her to tell us shit?”
He barely even needed prompting before trying to make the woman’s face look like a plate of spaghetti. *BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM* “Chill dude, we need to ask questions first.”
“Why do you want the bullet?” *BAM* “We have to wait for her to answer man.”
“Fuck off,” came the answer from the woman. *BAM BAM* She spat out blood. “You’ll have to pantomime the words with my cold dead corpse.” *BAM BAM BAM*
“You’re making this a lot harder than it has to be.” *BAM BAM BAM BAM* “We can go all day, but you’re not looking so hot. Just tell us already and get it over with.” *BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM*
The woman wasn’t speaking anymore, just breathing pretty heavy. “Dude, I think you fucked her up too bad.”
“Oh jeez, I really didn’t mean to, they just get so worked up sometimes.”
Jojo spun her head around, looking at the new voice. “Hermes? When the fuck did you get here?”
“Sorry, the other ones might be more useful for what you’re trying to do. This lady looks pretty messed up already though.”
“Yeah, I honestly just need someone chill right now. Do the other ones have names by the way? Feels a little weird to just call them the freak and the geeked one.”
“My mom says I shouldn’t indulge them by giving them names.”
“The name’s Sam Spade, and my less eloquent colleague is just called number 3. I hate to see his outbursts, but it’s necessary for the job at hand.” The woman over Hermes’ shoulder was speaking now, crimson lipstick, curly hair blown back by the wind, but her face still obscured by a shadow, even from an angle where she should have been able to make out features. This is some stand bullshit, I already know. The woman was also wearing a pink fur coat and a sleeveless red dress with a slit on the leg exposing silver high heels. She had black gloves extending to her elbow, and round ball joints where her hands should have been.
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Just as Jojo turned back to the unconscious woman in her hands, she saw a glint from a nearby rooftop. Which was a little strange tbh, bc she didn’t think that she had seen any skylights or solar panels on any houses while she was shaking the woman around.
A bullet ripped through the air, embedding itself in Jojo’s leg after blowing apart the woman’s head, coating the wall in blood and brain, Jojo fell to the floor, dropping the body, and dragging Hermes with her.
“Shit! We gotta do something about that. Do you have anything you can use to get them from here? My only thing would be throwing shit at him, and I can’t really get it that far. It’s at least 100 feet from here and running there wouldn’t really work. You got any bullshit you can pull out of your ass?”
The older man from the bus was standing next to her, completely ignoring the bullet that had just pierced through someone’s head moments ago. He had managed to come up with 2 pieces of rebar somehow and was looking around for something.
“I saw the glint coming from that house-”
Sam Spade interrupted, “Judging by the angle of the blood spread, the trajectory of the bullet, and the time traveled, I can deduce that the bullet came from that building over there!” He pointed at a building with a wide flat roof and a large sign, ‘The Garden’s Assisted Living.’
“No, I saw the sniper-” but sure enough, there was now a glint coming from the assisted living center rather than the closer building. She was sure that she had seen it coming from the first building and not the other one though. Fucking stand bullshit.
The woman was gone, now leaving a black and white bird with numbers adorning its feathers, an acorn for an eye, a silver horseshoe in one foot and a jade 4-leaf clover in the other, and a rabbit’s foot in its beak. It was flying up and down in diagonal lines over and over, clacking its beak in a rhythmic manner.
A shot rang out again, the wind from the bullet throwing back his hair, revealing a wide manic grin and tiny cracks spiderwebbing throughout his eyes. He was bouncing the rebar on the concrete of the roof, somehow always making it back up to his waiting hand as he watched the opposite roof for something to happen. A third shot went by his head as the bird behind him flew faster and faster, fast enough that it almost seemed like a shape was being drawn in the air, weaving in and out of itself, seeming to have no end.
Number 3 stopped bouncing the rebar, turning his head to listen as a bullet appeared in the spot his head was moments ago. He nodded, before turning his body to throw the rebar as a bullet pierced the air that had held his center mass, throwing the piece of rebar towards the building about 600 feet away. He turned around, leaning in close to Jojo.
“You got any cigarettes? This fuck I’m sitting in keeps whining about “lung cancer” and some bullshit about his “mommy” finding out. I swear, I would RIP THAT SCUM FROM JAW TO WAIST if we weren’t in the same stupid body.”
“I, uh, I don’t have any cigarettes on me, no. Are you going to do anything about that guy shooting at us?”
“What, did you miss the chunk of rebar that’s gonna kill him?”
She looked over at the bar sitting on the road, very much not killing the guy. Not to be a Debbie Downer or anything, but I’m not sure this is going to go well. I dunno, maybe he’s got some crazy rebar-based power, and the other guy is already dead or something, and I’m gonna go, wow, thank you, that was so cool type shit.
The rebar was very much not being cool type shit. In fact, it was barely even moving. Just sort of rolling from being thrown from the second floor. She couldn't even see what should be happening, it was just mild traffic, and a couple people walking around, there was some crying lady with an urn and a guy chatting with some nurse near the door. Oh, and the guy sitting on the roof shooting at her. Oh my God, I’m gonna die. This is it. I’m gonna die because this fucking idiot decided to throw a piece of rebar instead of being useful.
Just then, a car drove by, rolling over the rebar. Unfortunately, as the rebar was impacted, it drove itself through the drive shaft at a perfect 45 degree angle at 2,700 feet per second, rendering the car completely useless forever, sending the owner into crippling debt for the rest of their life after becoming unable to travel to their job multiple miles away in a larger city. The rebar was unaware of this, just as it was unaware the metal object in a crying woman leaving the assisted living center’s hands it knocked over as it flew farther away was an urn, inside the final remains of a mother with the instructions to travel as far away as possible before spreading the ashes. It only made it like 30 feet, but I’m sure she’d understand. The rebar continued to be unaware of all of this as it continued upward, hitting a streetlamp overlooked in the latest safety inspection, carrying both into the window of the assisted living center, smashing the life support of a proud Purple Heart recipient, sending him into shock before he succumbed to the chronic illness that had plagued him all of his life. (He was in extreme pain as he died btw, want to make that clear) The glass from the lightbulb exploding traveled through the ventilation duct, impacting a fan, placing it slightly off rhythm, causing the sniper perched on the roof to become slightly distracted, angling his next shot slightly too high, missing his 6th shot, the last one in his magazine. He dropped his gun and began pacing, yelling at the top of his lungs how he can’t do anything right and is going to get fired. At that moment, a pedestrian walking by saw what they assumed to be some sort of tool on the ground, saw the man on a roof lamenting his life, and saw the fallen lamppost sticking through a window. What the man did not see was the corpse inside, the sniper on the roof, or the 2 people behind him coming to terms with the fact that their lives have fallen apart. He was an upbeat kind of guy, and decided to help out the guy that obviously dropped his tool. So, he tossed up the piece of rebar and moved on to his next thing, which in this case was a car swerving off the road after a woman threw herself into the road with an empty urn. The kind man will leave behind his wife and 14 children adopted from a monastery in the Himalayas. Unable to support all of her children with one salary, his wife will be forced to begin a life of crime, before she will inevitably get caught at the age of 84, where she would die of pneumonia inside a prison van. The driver of the car would forever be plagued by guilt, becoming an alcoholic, where he would die at the age of 46 after a bar fight ended up rupturing his appendix and he never received medical care for it. As the rebar hit the roof, it impacted against his sniper, making a noise almost like a bullet impacting the shingles of the roof he was on. The sniper made a split second decision and popped a cyanide pill inside his tooth, only after seeing the rebar leaned up against his sniper, his last conscious thought wondering what his aging mother would do after his bank account dried up.