Always You Part 13
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Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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Wind in my face, sword in hand, I charged for the hoarde, solely for the glory of our king.
Like hell.
Wind gently blowing across Jeanette’s stained windshield (when did all of those birds get the runs?), I pressed the pedal to the metal.
No, not even.
I pressed the pedal at a careful twenty-degree angle to keep up with the afternoon traffic congestion on the main streets. The sword in my hand was completely accurate. If my fists hadn’t gotten me out of enough situations to classify being named “Excaliber” and “Kingdom Key”, then I don’t know what would.
Well, one could argue that the latter technically isn’t a sword and the former technically never existed, but still in no greater capacity than the latter…You know what? Fuck this.
After the opening monologue in my mind’s eye crashed and burned (as witnessed above), I pulled Jeanette over into a steal of a parking space across from the Greyhound terminal. The alley looked utterly abandoned, just as it had when I first arrived. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody had come by that alley since I left it. Except for drug dealers and rapists, you know.
Doing that cool thing where you beep the car as you walk ominously into the wind, sans the hair blowing in my face, I crossed the street with Lucia’s Diner a few blocks down.
When Kenneth dropped me off, he gave me a pretty clear warning about this genius plan of mine.
“You mess this up by one fraction of a percent and you’ll get us all killed.”
To which I countered majestically with this little gem:
“If I don’t do this, we’ll all be dead this time tomorrow anyway, right?”
In my defense, the writers of JRPGs have downright Shakespearian ability.
He had dropped me off a few blocks down the road and ordered one of his personal mooks to move Jeanette further away from me. I had to bolt to reach her, but it’s not like I’ve had time to eat or go to the bathroom today, so running around like a drugged maniac is completely within my range of ability.
“Knowing Forest, he’ll probably monologue about how close he is to victory, and then wave the Carina flag in my face,” Kenneth went on. The Carina flag had better not be anything suggestive.
“It means you’ll probably be five minutes ahead of him once you get going. You know what this girl looks like, right?”
I’ll have to read the back-issues, but certainly.
“And what’s the plan if she makes a scene?”
Besides have my face pounded in by her fatass of a boss and Forest’s personal attack squad?
When he didn’t appreciate my sarcasm, I played it off. “I’ll just grab her and run. We’ll be like Ico.”
“Ico? The hell is that?”
“This old PS2 game. You’re this kid trying to save a princess, but she can’t move on anything but flat ground, and so you have to clear paths throughout the castle she’s hostage in. There’s a lot of hand-holding and yelling, but it’s adorable.”
Kenneth’s face screwed up like he’d just witnessed The Matrix Reloaded after being told it had more philosophy than the first film.
“Anyway,” I forced the subject away from myself just before getting out of the red vagina on wheels, “Don’t get the girls killed? Please?” And it’s not for some chivalrous act of herodom; it’s because one of them is our crewmate and definitely not my love interest, while the other is the MacGuffin to this whole misplanned adventure.
And that’s how I got here: throwing the door to the familiar diner open and running straight for the blond teenage girl working the counter. I dramatically slapped my hands on their polished marble.
Her expression beamed. “I remember you!” She said. “You came in a few days ago. Spilled a drink? Made a scene?”
Yeah, yeah. It’s all on the school blog.
“What blog?”
Did I say that out loud? I’ve got to be more careful with this first-person thing.
“Anyway,” moment of experimental post-modernism aside, “Yeah, it’s nice to see you again. Becky, right?”
“Yeah,” she started with the awkward tone that tells you ‘it’s nice to see you, but…why are you here? We don’t talk much, and the last time we did was because we lived on the same dorm floor and had to share a toilet.’
Maybe not all of that.
She nodded that shaky, aware nod. Smart kid. “Becky, what time do you get off work?”
A flush of red through her cheeks wasn’t what this situation needed right now, but I’ll take the compliment. “It’s not like that. You don’t understand; some bad people are coming for you right now. I need you to come with me.”
“…Come again?”
Did I stutter? “Some guys are after you, and I’m your Luke Skywalker. You need to come with me, but it has to be now.”
She put her hands on the table opposite mine and mimicked my exact posture. She must be used to this situation. “Look, Mister…”
“Henry Collins.” Look at me, giving out my first and last name.
“Henry, your methods of picking up young women are flawed at best. Furthermore, you look college-aged, and taking into account what the media has told me about the sexual habits of college-age women, you are probably only hitting on me because your attempts to pick up them, however in your favor the odds were, did not succeed.”
Where did that come from? Did she write that beforehand?
“While my phenotype betrays me and indeed, I was taken by pleasant surprise at your request, I have no choice but to deny it on grounds that you are unacceptable as a male suitor.”
Now I had to ask. “Really? Did you just make that up?”
“I’ve had something like it planned out. I just channel Maggie Gyllenhaal, and it seems to work out okay—“
“You know what? We do not have time for this.”
Speak of the devil. Probably literally, devil. Look at the four black trucks and matching limousine parked outside Lucia’s, blocking the main street of downtown of a major city. Only one guy had the balls to do that, excluding Mel Gibson.
She turned her head, golden hair falling out of the light bun to follow her motions. “What are those people…?”
The four large men getting out of the limo, followed by one optimistic Big Bad shut her up. Becky’s eyes went wide as plates.
“Becky? Becky, look at me.” She was going into hysterics before my eyes. “I can get you out of here, and I can explain everything, but right now, we have to move.”
“…Okay. I believe you.” It came out hurried and script-like all the same. Petite hands fought the back knot to her apron, triggering some kind of telepathic alarm from her boss. You remember, the bumbling, grotesque husk of a formerly-human-sized human-being?
“Hey, whadda you think you’re doin’? Put that apron back on!”
I just got a 99% stranger to cooperate; like hell am I going to let her hesitate. I took her hand à la Spirited Away and led her out of the counter and to the back door, by an alley.
Hey, it’s a grimy alley or the bright, open street.
“Hey, girl! You leave, don’t come back!”
I pushed the glass door open. Two doorbells rang.
“Get him!” Was the deep, masculine command from one of the Alchemist goons.
We ran through the trash-piled and racid-smelling alley, my hand clutching and probably crushing hers, out onto a residential side-street. Having big guys on your team meant having loud footsteps; they crashed on the cement sidewalk like waterfalls.
“What do they want from me? I didn’t do anything! If this is about that PSP game I downloaded, I can pay for—“
“They’re from a crew called the Alchemists. I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty sure they want something from you.”
“Crews? Alchemists? I don’t have anything?”
I ran out into the street and nearly headlong into a blue Jetta. A cursing mother and two frightened kids in the back seat didn’t cost me my adrenaline. “I can’t tell you about that now,” I called back to her, trying to mapquest in my head the best way back to Jeanette, “If I did, you wouldn’t believe me.”
We passed the next block, leapt over a misplaced child’s bike, and turned out onto the main road, with Jeanette parked right where I left her, and with no goons in sight.
The street-crossing sign gave the bright red hand of death.
“We’re not crossing, are we?!”
Well, it’s either that or get hurt really badly. Deep breath, count to three.
One, two, two and a half…Ah, to hell with it.
I ran into oncoming traffic, BMWs and 1980s Volvo station wagons honking at me in classless unison. Becky’s hair danced with the beat of smog-inducing technology, muffling her ear-piercing scream and my own swears as I played a poorly conducted game of Frogger. We made it to the other side in one piece. Or is that two pieces? Since there’s two of us, but if we made it together whole, then there’s two separate pieces, despite them being unchanged.
Inner monologue, you need to get some rest.
Besides, it’s not like my car has the tires punctured.
Wait.
Oh, fuck me.
The driver’s-side window had been smashed in, with my baby’s glass scattered across the unforgiving black asphalt. The ignition had been completely ripped out, and the aforementioned tires wouldn’t see tomorrow.
For that matter, I might not see tomorrow.
“Hey there…Collins, right?”
I turned around to find Rodney, aka. The Cutting Edge, crossing the street on a ridiculously ill-timed walk sign. Dual serrated knives in hand, big guys behind him, and the whole group walking cool as cucumbers directed by the Wachowski brothers.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Coming up the sidewalk, Zack Forest and friends.
“Hey, you’re that Rodney guy, right?” My mouth moved itself while I ran damage control simulations in my head (all of which ended in the same horrible, horrible way). “How’s life since I last smashed your teeth in?”
“Depends. I’ll ask you that again when I have knives in your thorat.”
“Touchy. And banter-less. Come on, you know how to banter. Right? I say a joke, you say a joke, we look threatening…”
He wasn’t biting. Becky, on the other hand, bit her lip and clenched my hand so hard, I could have sworn she was giving birth.
Well, folks? Is this the end of Henry Collins? Stay tuned!
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Read the next installment here.
