West Coast Shuffle (Part Seven)

A healthy amount of paranoia kept you alive. Although, when there was actually someone out to get you, it wasn't paranoia, it was caution. Laura's caution manifested itself in the form of having me take a different crossing point at the border fence, about a mile away. She figured she was durable enough to deal with whatever may or may not have been waiting on the other side until I or Wolf could flank the enemy, and I wasn't exactly equipped to argue. Thus, the little lady with claws served as the scout/diversion.

As she approached the little divot down off of the side of the highway on the U.S. side of the border where she had stashed our ride, she stopped and let out her claws.

*SNIKT!*

Wolf had been directed to follow not far behind, but stay out of sight. He also had his phone on speaker so I could hear everything. I had headphones in to minimize the sound I was making. Never leave home without a pair of earbuds, everybody. You never know when you'll need 'em, and they came in handy here.

A spotlight situated on the top of a military vehicle came on, shining bright on Laura. She winced and covered her eyes.

In front of her, Kimura sat on the hood of the vehicle with lots of armed men standing in front of her, pointing guns at Laura, "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you, X?" She said. The smug coming off of that woman could have been seen from space.

It was a bad situation, but Laura remained completely calm. She had foreseen this, "For a moment, yes. I did. Then that moment passed, and I asked my friend to do something for me before he left me alone."

Kimura let out a laugh. I don't think I had ever heard a more infuriating sound in my life up to that point, "Oh that's rich. He's your friend, is he? And he ran away?" She stopped laughing and jumped off of the car, pulling out a handgun for her own personal use, "I wonder what kind of face you'll make after I catch him and kill him in front of you. That sounds like a nice side-project."

I heard every word, loud and clear. Now where was I during all of this, you may be asking? Not far. Remember, I didn't cross that far away. I just staggered my crossing to go after Laura, to the point where by the time I did, she had their full attention. That gave me plenty of time to set up and watch over where she was going.

I'd gotten a decent headcount of how many guns there were by the time the ambush was exposed. Then they'd turned their flashlights on to level all of their rifles on Laura, and boy, did I see everything. That was when the boy who had been raised on action flicks and first-person shooter games for the majority of his life came out of me with a vengeance.

One guy at the back got a freaking laser beam through his head. He was the first. Before his body hit the ground I got another. That was when they all realized things wouldn't be so simple.

"Sniper!" One of the gunmen yelled as others started looking around trying to see where my shots came from. It took way too long. I plugged another two of them before someone realized that there was only one piece of high ground nearby that could oversee the concealed little gully they were set up in. Things got nuts from then on out.

"I asked my friend not to hold back. That you would not do the same for him," Laura said as Kimura seethed at her, "He agreed without hesitating."

Of course. I told her already – fuck these people. One good turn deserved another.

"Well, I'm not squishy like the rest of these clowns," Kimura shot back, "I don't need to drag you back in one piece!"

That was when I shot her in the head. It didn't go through, which was annoying, but it knocked her down and gave Laura a chance to keep from being swarmed by bad guys.

Laura told Wolf to stay back until his assistance was needed, seeing as how he was damaged. Also, the shock and awe effect of seeing him jump into the fray of a battle the enemy could hardly deal with to begin with would break the back of their assault. He was our reserve force. They were close enough to get reinforcements quickly, so my aim was to shoot anyone who looked like they might have been trying to peel off from the fight to call something in.

Kimura pushed herself off of the ground, holding her head. She probably had a pretty good headache. I might not have been able to shoot through her head, but I probably rattled her brain around in her skull pretty good, "Turn off the fucking spotlight! Use your flashlights!" She ordered.

Too concerned about my distance attack, Kimura panicked and forgot about the very small, very fast Laura Kinney. When the light went out, Laura went to work. In the dark, with her claws, she ripped people to shreds. I was glad it was too dark for me to see every detail. There was just enough moonlight for me to keep track of her moving around. When she would go up to someone, I would see a glint of light from the moon off of her claws, and then they would go down in some horrible manner. I couldn't even imagine the degree of bloodshed that was being wrought, and I had watched Mister Logan tear through the soldiers on Breakworld like toilet paper.

It wasn't like I had much room to talk. I made two holes in someone the circumference of my fingertip every time I shot them, whether it was in the head or not. Those things bled. I was hurting people too. Badly.

Once the numbers thinned enough, I got up and started running down the hill I was on in a dead sprint. I had a half-mile to get into the fray, and gunners saw me before I could close the distance fully. Laura covered my ass like a champ. Anyone that so much as leveled a rifle my way, she rushed over to them and cut something valuable off of them. In turn, anyone who tried to take her out when she did so caught an explosive blast from yours truly. I couldn't laser snipe while running, but that didn't make me harmless from a distance.

I could still shoot a fool from 50 yards out without batting an eye, and did. Several fools, in fact. It was in the process of doing this that I noticed my new favoritest person in the world slipping away from the fray.

Kimura could be the nastiest person on the planet for all I knew, but in the grand scheme of things, she was just like everyone else. First she tried to bully and terrorize whoever she could get away with it on. Then when you bared your teeth, she tried to fight. And when it all went south, and there was no visible path to victory, she would cut her losses and run.

And run did she ever. To hell with the guys fighting a losing battle against a boy and a girl with freaky superpowers. She fled right for one of the tactical vehicles that brought her.

Kimura yanked the door open and grabbed a radio in the dash, "Send it! Send the goddamn-!" She never got anything else out. I leapt in and dropkicked the door shut, sending her flying into the hummer and banging off of the door on the passenger's side. I punched a hole in the window and started shooting into the car at her, keeping her stuck upside-down in the floor, "You little fuck!"

She couldn't even push herself out, because I kept blasting her back down whenever she tried, "Laura, get the van!" I shouted.

She went to do so at first, but stopped. A sound from the north caught her notice, "Something is coming," She warned me.

It took a moment, but it soon got within my earshot as well. The sound of propeller blades. In the night sky, a helicopter came our way, lights underneath it scanning the ground trying to get a bead on us.

I shot out one before it got close enough to find the scene, but that was all I could get before it spotted us. It started opening up with machine gun fire, and I took cover underneath the hummer I'd gotten Kimura stuck inside of.

"Wolf!" I shouted. My earbuds were still in, and my phone was still in the middle of a call, "If you're in a decent enough spot and have any ideas, I'm listening!"

There wasn't a moment of thinking or hesitation on his part, "I have an idea. For myself. Exterminate."

What happened next would be burned into my brain as the marquee example of why messing with Saberwolf was a terrible idea for just about anyone.

If ever you saw an A.I. fly. Wolf absolutely launched himself at a fucking attack helicopter with a chainsaw, and cut its tail off.

I saw this. With my own two eyes, I watched this happen, move-by-move. He ran up a steep part of the gully, used it to jump one-hundred feet in the air, and corkscrewed himself into position to lop off a chunk of the thing.

It was amazing. I was catching flies, my mouth was so wide open. What a sight. It all happened in a matter of six seconds. The helicopter crashing took fourteen seconds longer than it took for Wolf to actually take it down.

Speaking of the helicopter crashing, it came down in my direction, because I was lucky like that. I started clawing my way from underneath the hummer just as Laura got over to me to help yank me out. We both made it out safely just as the helicopter smashed into the ground vehicle, dragging it through the dirt and rocks with terrible groans and screeches of metal and earth.

An eerie silence fell over the area as Laura and I stared at the scene. Wolf softly padded up to the two of us to take in his handiwork. And for good reason. It was a job well done, "Did you mean to do that?"

I meant drop the helicopter right on top of where Kimura was. Wolf nodded, "Yes."

I almost fell over in shock. Yes, he was a machine, but that kind of precision was beyond anything I could think of. There was just too much to account for to intentionally make that work the way it did, "Really?"

"No," Wolf quickly admitted, bringing my opinion of him down. Granted, that still left it several notches higher than it had been before the fight, "It was... as you humans would say, 'a happy accident'."

Happy? I gave Wolf a certain look and pointed at the vehicular carnage before us, "...I was almost in that," I made sure he knew.

Wolf was unapologetic, "That is why it is a happy accident, and not a tragic one," He said, giving me a snippy reply.

Touche. It had, in fact, worked out. I wasn't hurt. The chopper was down. No one was shooting at us anymore. All was right with the world, except for one thing.

"Kimura is not dead," Laura made sure I knew. I couldn't see her, but she would know better than I would. Wolf didn't dispute her either, so I took their word as gospel, "Even that much is not enough to kill her."

Idly, I raised my hand and fired an explosive blast at the helicopter/hummer wreckage. It blew up in a ball of flames. We all just stood there and stared, "There. How about that?"

"I... do not think so," Laura asked, tilting her head as if she were trying to get a different angle of the inferno, "I have blown her up before. She did not die then either."

Well, maybe she would die of asphyxiation. We could only be so lucky, "Fuck it, let's go before more show up," I grabbed Laura's hand and we all took off for the van.

I didn't realize it at the time, what with my heart still going a mile a minute after the fight we'd been in, but later when I stopped and looked back on everything, something caught the mind's eye of my memory. Something next to insignificant.

It was the first time I had ever touched Laura that she didn't freeze up or react negatively.