9 Falling Down: Suspend Your Disbelief

Give vodka to the one who is perishing, and white wine to soccer moms. Praise be to beer!

Neon Proverbs 31:6 (Unified Standard Edition)

- - -

"DOWN! On your KNEES!" a Latvian soldier yelled, his sun-machine gun braced against his inner arm as he marched forward.

His fellow compatriots swept their sightlines left and right, the muzzles of their guns quiet but poised to fire. They aimed across the street and square, the barrels still waving back and forth, pausing in nervous twitches whenever a soldier's eyes lingered too long on a body.

Hitomi dropped to her knees, still clutching her improvised melee weapon - Mr. Pipe - holding it up with her left arm while her right arm raised its hand in compliance.

Hailey huddled closer to Josh, yelling out: "He's wounded! I have to keep pressure on it!"

Another soldier relayed that back towards the embassy, and Hitomi could hear someone shout: "Medic!"

More soldiers were appearing on the sidewalk and street around Sheridan Circle - not just Latvian soldiers, but the embassy guards from other nations as well. She didn't know who they were, she didn't even know where Latvia was on a map.

The soldiers were armed far more heavily than the first two that had died protecting the entrance to the embassy. A small group of more embassy workers appeared and Hitomi thought they must be out of more soldiers. They were carefully lifting up the bodies of their deceased countrymen and bringing them inside.

Hailey was saying something to Josh in hushed tones but she couldn't hear them - they were behind her by two or three meters, or Josh was just grunting back his answers to her.

OW!

Hitomi's left arm, holding the pipe, was in incredible pain. It washed up and down her arm in waves of cold fire. Her bicep muscles felt torn, like they had just lifted a hundred kilos, and her fingers began twitching uncontrollably around the warm steel clamped in her hand.

Her arm drooped, exhausted and in agony - ah, it was spreading to her shoulder and chest. It was like she had just drawn a bow and fired an arrow a thousand times in a row!

It hurt so much! Her arm dropped lower.

"Don't MOVE! I said DO NOT MOVE!" a soldier yelled at her, specifically, pacing towards her angrily.

Fear must've been written all over her face because the soldier suddenly recoiled in confusion as he looked at her young face, and he stopped a half meter away from her, his gun pointed down and away from her. He seemed content to stand guard right there, looking at her and then over her at her friends.

A man jogged past the soldier, wearing a white shirt and red tie, and knelt next to Josh and opened up a first-aid bag. Her head was turned awkwardly, trying to watch, but one of the shoulders stepped up next to the other one, and said something in his ear. The man nodded and fell back, leaving the new soldier alone.

He bent down and came to her eye level.

"It's alright, miss. You can put it down now," he said soothingly. Hitomi stared at his face, trying to find any deception, but she was no expert on human behavior - she much preferred the logical order of computers (well, she made an exception for her favorite harem games...).

"I... um, can't?" she said, flushing.

He nodded, then reached up and pulled the strap of his gun up and over his shoulders, then placed his gun on the lengthwise ground in front of her, like a samurai offering his family blade as a token of negotiation.

"Is this enough? We mean you no harm." He smiled at her reassuringly, "You did a great thing, young lady, I saw what you did."

The pipe came down to the ground and she was finally able to let go of it. It thumped the last few centimeters from her fingers to the asphalt, letting out a soft clammer. Instantly she grabbed her damaged fingers and hand to her chest, holding it protectively with her good, right hand.

Don't cry. Don't cry, she commanded herself.

The soldier - maybe a captain? He seemed to be the ranking member of his squad - leaned back a bit, then spoke again, "We will treat your friend, he helped fight these dogs who attacked our embassy."

"T-thank you, can I -", she left the question open, and he nodded, gesturing behind her.

She flew off her feet, running over to Hailey and Josh, and hugged them both, "I'm so glad, I'm so glad! I thought were were going to die! And you saved us!" She was talking to Josh now, who had his head locked in one of her arms as she rocked Hailey and him back a bit with her excitement.

The doctor yelled out, "Watch it!" and, effectively scolded, Hitomi quickly let go, embarrassment once again sweeping over her. She looked down self-consciously, and realized there were splatters of blood all over her favorite cream-colored sweater.

Josh let out a hiss because the doctor was pouring something over his wound, but he still managed to say, "Nope, URGHHH, nah that was you! You went to TOWN on those nutjobs! Straight outta a movie: some Shao Lin Monastery shit. Honest-to-god real-life Pipe-fu! Never seen anything like it, am I right?" He was looking for confirmation at Hailey.

"Hitomi, how did you even do that?" the woman asked, "No, wait, never mind. Magic pipe. End of the world. I get it."

"Whoa," Josh said, "What if she's... the Chosen One?" He said, doing his best impression of the action star from The Matrix. Ah, a movie quote she actually knew! Hitomi smiled through the pain.

Hailey cocked back an arm on instinct, ready to throw a trademark punch at Josh's shoulder, then must've decided it was better not to punch the man who had just taken a bullet for her.

Hitomi was about to open her mouth and say something when Hailey gasped, grabbing at Hitomi's left arm, "Oh my god, Hitomi! What did you do to your arm? It's completely torn up!"

Sure enough Hitomi looked down at her inflamed arm and saw a patchwork of bruises tracing blotchy patches above her muscle groups. The were deep red and fringed with blue, visibly darkening as they watched.

The doctor was still looking at Josh's wound, and distracted her from the ugly marks on her own arm by saying, "It's an in and out, I can wrap you up and then repack you inside, I need you to come with me."

Hailey, instinctively, asked, "You can bring us inside?" She wasn't used to being invited into a foreign embassy.

"Absolutely. Today we make an exception for the heroes of Sheridan Circle, OK?" He grabbed Josh by an arm and helped pull him up, limping on one foot, and braced his shoulder. "Grab my bag?" he asked Hailey, who snatched it up.

Hitomi looked around, clutching her arm with her right hand, not even thinking about it, rubbing it up and down, trying to sooth her muscles with massage-like grips and glides up and down her bicep.

Where was her satchel? Oh! There it was! She grabbed it out and slung it over her shoulder across her neck, so that the strap passed between her breasts: this way she couldn't drop it easily.

"But, wait, whattabout Hitomi!" Hailey called, and she turned to she that Hailey had stopped, tugging on Josh's sleeve and pointing over to her. "We can't just leave her out here, and she has to get to her embassy!"

The soldier who had been so kind to her before stepped up - Hitomi noted he had fetched back up his gun from the ground, and said, "Miss, we're happy to host you here until it's safe."

She wanted to say yes.

"Besides," he glanced at her arm, "You should get that looked at."

So she did.

"Thank you so much, I'm sorry to be a bother."

He laughed warmly, turning her away from the field of the dead she'd left in her destructive wake, and asked, as they walked towards the embassy, "Any idea why they attacked us? We hadn't realized they had killed those police until they went after our guards, or we would've done something sooner."

Hailey and Josh were moving down into the embassy proper now.

"No, I mean, maybe - they said they had to... cleanse the unbelievers. They said you were, uh- Muslims, I think."

His eyes stared straight ahead, and he pondered out loud in disgust, "Latvia is a Christian nation, what ignorant swine. But the madness, it is everywhere right now, no?"

She nodded, agreeing.

"And what were they saying to you? Before you, hmm, well, before -?"

Josh must've heard the question, because he hung back, slowing down as they walked forward into him. "Hey, thank you, for your hospitality, but Hitomi's overwhelmed I'd say."

"Ah, Hitomi, a name to go with the heroic tale."

She felt incredibly rude not having introduced herself, and quickly spoke up, "Yes, my name is Hitomi Hisakawa, and this is Josh... um, Josh?" she looked to him helplessly.

"Josh Sanderson," he answered, then pointed at Hailey, "And this is Hailey Marshall."

"Arpa, Captain Arpa," the soldier introduced himself, waving them all forward and into the building, "You will have to forgive us the cramped quarters, it was a small miracle we had so many soldiers on hand in the first place. Latvia is a small diplomatic mission, you see."

They had just entered the inner hallway of the beautifully renovated building - it had obviously been a home at some point, and must have been built in the early 20th century.

"Oh! It's beautiful in here," Hailey said, distracted from Josh's suffering by the interior design of the old Spanish Colonial Revival architecture.

Josh just grunted, being set down in side room on a bench, where the doctor began to fuss over the bullet wound again while snapping at a young man - not a soldier, Hitomi noted - in a foreign sounding language. The young man dashed off, and Captain Arpa sat them all down on a couch across from Josh and the doctor, choosing to sit himself in a settee.

It was strange, but his pose exuded confidence and power. He seemed relaxed, but his posture was perfect, and his legs were slightly spread apart to dominate the area of the settee he sat in, which was one and a half times as long as he was wide.

Hitomi felt strange sitting on such a nice couch - it had beautiful red and gold thread embroidery - with a dirty pipe. Wait.

No way.

She looked down into her right hand, where, sure enough, she found it holding onto the pipe that she now REMEMBERED picking back up from the ground before they had come inside.

They heard a scream form upstairs, the voice of a man, yelling and pounding on the door. Footsteps rushed up a set of unseen stairs and Captain Arpa shook his head apologetically.

"You must forgive the ambassador, he... did not take the Event well, no, not at all. I fear he has lost his mind."

Hailey was on edge but Josh was pale and looked on the edge of falling asleep, barely reacting to the shocking sounds from the home's second level. The doctor placed a wet rag on his forehead, then began pumping a blood pressure cuff. Hitomi clenched her pipe in her lap.

"We quarantined two members of the embassy staff, you see," he pointed to the ceiling, "I know, it seems barbaric, but given what just happened outside our very doors, we are not taking chances, I hope you understand."

"No, that's seems smart," said Hitomi, agreeing with his course of action. "This whole... thing, it's all illogical. It doesn't make sense."

"On that we agree, my dear. But I must ask, what sort of martial arts did you use out there? I've never seen anything like it."

Hitomi looked down at her thin, heavy, long and hooked weapon of plumbing prowess. She recognized that giving up too much information, especially to another government, was possibly very irresponsible. On the other hand, these Latvians seemed to be in the same boat she was in, given the xenophobic attacks she'd suffered already since the Voice ruined everything.

"I don't know what it is called in English..." she demurred, making it up as she went along, "Stick fighting? That's as close as I know."

"Ah, I see, and you are... Korean? Japanese?"

"Japanese," she confirmed.

"Ah, a pity," he said, and her face down-turned into confused frown. He held his hands out, shaking them, "No no, I'm sorry, my English is also, I feel, inadequate. I only meant that the Korean Consulate is next door. If you had been - no, never mind, I embarrass us both. Still, the Japanese embassy is not too far down the road and I - ah!"

Just then the young man returned, holding onto a tray of steaming tea cups and an ornate porcelain teapot. He put a small saucer tray in front of Hitomi, and then served Captain Arpa as well. Hailey was preoccupied in the corner with Josh and the doctor, talking and keeping Josh awake.

She looked down at her proffered tea. There were cubes of sugar next to it, and it smelled rich and full.

"Ah, yes, St. John's Wart tea, it is good for your arm, I think, to help thin the blood."

She took a sip and her mouth filled with a bitter, earthy taste. She drank deeper, surprised at how, despite the bitterness, how easily she could drink the warmth down deep into her body - ah, there was a light sweetness as she pulled the cup away from her lips, and she placed it back down with her free hand.

She winced, feeling the pain of having moved her damaged arm only after having enjoyed the tea, such was her desire to drink something up to that point.

Captain Arpa nodded thoughtfully, placing his own cup back down.

"Now, Ms. Hitomi, you have done us a great service, and we wish to repay you. Let us plan how we will get you to your embassy, shall we?"

She almost collapsed in relief into the back of the couch. For a moment she was worried they were going to kidnap her, or lock her up with the crazy ones upstairs.

He snapped his fingers and the doctor turned away from Josh, whose leg wound was now packed with gauze and wrapped in a large, white bandage. A set of discarded sutures, scissors, and bloodied fragments of metal were on a small metal tray on the ground.

"But first, let's get that arm looked at, shall we?"