Always You Part 14
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Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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5.
So…have you ever had a knife thrust at you?
Please put your hand down if you’re currently dating Shannon Marie Hendricks of Los Angeles, California. That’s not a big deal, and really, it’s your own fault for getting in that situation in the first place. Sure, I’ll put my foot in that bear trap. What’s the worst that can happen?
Fuck’s sake.
Where was I? Oh, right back to being stabbed fatally by the surprisingly accurately-named Cutting Edge. I can see why he changed his name from Rodney. ‘Rodney’ doesn’t imply dodging dual serrated weapons as they sliced into your car’s paint job, sending sparks flying like something out of a Taylor Swift video.
Becky’s ‘scream’ was more like a wounded duck’s distress call put in a blender with Chewie from ‘Star Wars’ and then drank by that menacing scream sound from the 1978 ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’. A blade came down for her—
And of course she’s too busy crying her head off—
I kicked out at Rod’s kneecap, sending him buckling back but slowing him down by less than a fraction of a second. It was just enough; I pushed Becky around the side of Jeanette’s hood and slid across, beating the business end of a painful-looking slash by a hair.
Cue those large dudes coming for the two of us, as if one unbelievably ridiculous and still somehow genuinely threatening guy weren’t enough. Thankfully, the proverbial Bulk and Skull weren’t fast—are they ever?—as I socked one in the jaw and roundhouse-kick’d the other’s sunglasses off his fat, twenty-something head.
Rodney leapt over the hood and cut straight through my shirt as though it were made of butter. I felt the sharpened edges graze me with the finesse of a practiced executioner. It’s funny, because it looks more like he’s just cutting anywhere and everywhere.
“He’s trying to kill us!” Our resident blond damsel-in-distress called to me, as if I couldn’t have figured that out already. Man, those Familiars. They’re incredibly useful.
“I don’t have to kill you,” Rod—oops, Cutting Edge—twirled his knives around like something out of a Ninja Anime featuring ridiculously colorful characters and ambiguous homosexual overtones between its two main male leads. “You’ve got, what, seventeen hours until that happens, right?”
Don’t tell me. “You’re working with these oafs too? What, did Forest promise you something better than the planet going kaput?”
He looked genuinely disinterested. I don’t know; if someone told me that, I might be even the slightest bit interested. “That’s not what this is about, Collins. The Alchemists called me in. I owed them. They’re letting me cut you into ribbons. It’s mutual.”
“Bang-up job you’re doing, too.”
…In retrospect, I might have been able to say something a little nicer than ‘please hurt me’.
The first dagger whizzed across my ear, nicking me and sending blood between the two of us, while the other aimed itself for my torso at point-blank range.
The inevitable stabbing motion—
Those karate lessons from my ill-spent preteenhood proved themselves useful! I twisted out of the way and slammed my elbow into Rodney’s face. I never described his facial features, but really, what do you expect some guy named Rodney to look like? I’m personally imagining a cartoon rat a’la ‘Ratatouille’. Except with knives and really angry.
Becky screamed—
I turned a full one-eighty to find the big guys with hands on her arms and pulling her away, her heels dragging on the sidewalk.
“Henry!”
Hey, someone’s not using my last name. I don’t feel so special anymore. Again.
I bolted to her and—get this!—kicked onto Jeanette, kicked off, and roundhouse kicked one of the goons across the jaw to send him spiraling to the ground. Look at me, doing all of this kung-fu shit. The other guy went down with a simple uppercut to the stomach.
“Henry, watch out!”
Watch out for what—?
A searing pain spread through my back. Warm, calming, but feeling genuinely bad. Kind of like pissing yourself. Hard to enjoy, but enjoyable anyway.
I couldn’t feel my legs.
Fucking shit, I can’t feel my legs.
That red dripping to the ground isn’t me, is it?
The world began to fade as I went down like a tranquilized horse. The ground rushed up at me with breakneck speed, suddenly followed by a breakneck pain to my face. Is the concrete always that hard?
My arms still worked. I crawled up and rolled over, trying to avoid slipping over my own leaking fluids. Rodney shook my blood off of his knife with an absurdly happy, sadistic grin on his face.
“Feels lovely, doesn’t it?”
Feels fucking peachy, Rod. Not at all like there’s a flaming sensation on the lower half of my body. This felt like Professor X and the Towering Inferno put into one movie. I don’t know, ‘The Towering Bald X-Men Guy’ or something. Something painful.
My vision started going. Becky’s shouting for help, followed by some grunting by the bigger dudes, didn’t help the situation. If I didn’t do something soon, this would be done and done. I had to do something.
I had to do something…
Two bodies flew forward and into the road, tumbling like the 2008 economy. Rodney armed himself again, taking yet another stance resembling a bad student version of ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’.
“Leave it to Henry to fuck things up again. Jeez, kid. Weren’t you supposed to be the team leader? ” Kenneth sounding as happy as ever.
He stepped in front of me, knees bent slightly and fists balled. Another pair of boots stood beside him, more viscious and more ready to fight than the former.
Light hands coming to my back.
“Christ, Henry, what did you do?”
The soothing sounds of Carina Guerrin as she cradled my bleeding and battered body made things ever so slightly better. The other pair helping me to my feet, ever silent, had to have been Paloma.
Meaning the second pair of feet by Kenneth belonged to none other than the Jack of All Trades.
“You expected otherwise?” Jack looked back at me with a trademark grin. He went back to the Cutting Edge with what I can only imagine as a badass boast of a glare. “Carina, Paloma, get him out of here.”
Get me out of here? Aren’t I, like, dying?
“Let us take care of that,” Carina said.
“It’s your lucky day, Henry Collins,” Kenneth used my full name.
I stood up, shaky and probably at death’s doorstep, if not at least at death’s front porch. When I lurched over, Paloma held on extra tight to my severed remnants of t-shirt as Carina made sure I didn’t meet up with the street for a second run.
“You’re going to be okay. I promise.” Brave words coming from Paloma. I’d be heartwarmed if I weren’t, you know, running out of that stuff that keeps your heart warm in the first place.
Cue Zack Forest himself walking out behind Rodney, his goon squad looking ready for combat.
I could hear our epic theme song playing now. You know, the opening theme to ‘Highschool of the Dead’? That thing with the zombies and the jiggly woman parts that somehow belong to teenage and preteen girls? Oh, Japan. You silly kids.
Forest eyed us with an amused scowl across his face. “So,” he started.
“So.” Even looking like a piece of swiss cheese, I can still have a back-and-forth dialogue.
“This is the fully-assembled Animal House, I trust?”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said before anybody could deny that. Sure, Jack might have been my ally for less time than it takes to make a decent batch of sushi and sure, Kenneth might have his own crew to look out for. Sure, Paloma’s just a sundered part of a teenage girl and sure, Carina might have been pursuing alternatives to being part of Miranda Cove’s bizzarely-serious Crew system.
And sure, I might be in school six hours up north for eight months out of the year.
But you know what?
Right here and now, in the middle of a busted-up street with on-lookers and a few hours left to affect change, we are here. We are Animal House.
“You’re outmatched, you realize,” Forest cooly boasted. “My men can tear Kenneth and the Jack apart. Then we’ll take our Familiar, Carina will never see the outside of a computer lab again, and you’ll be dead.”
“Tough talk coming from a guy named after a bunch of trees,” Kenneth said before I could second-guess myself. “We’re getting out of here.”
“And trust me, Forest,” Jack added, “I have no intention of letting your grimy Alchemist hands touch my sister.”
I tried balancing again, but the girls held me back. I couldn’t imagine what Becky made of this whole thing. What was Forest doing staring down a group of teenagers?
Eh. If she watched anywhere near the recommended amount of anime, she’d know we’re on a quest to save the world.
Obviously.
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Read the next installment here.
