03:07
Episode 3: Dog Days Mechanix
Part 7
Laurel was amused to discover the Croix de Mort, the heavily armed drug gang with the crosses tattooed on their foreheads were nick-named cross-heads. She read the Wikipedia entry describing their terrifying, brutal, and unrestrained attacks on rival drug gangs, law enforcement, and more than once a hero with powers. She scanned it while cartwheeling through a storm of bullets fired by four of them behind a wall. Laurel was stronger, faster and smarter, and their weapons could only damage her skin and tear at nano-fiber muscles. Her repair ‘bots patched the damage as soon as it happened. She only wished they would shut up about it.
“Jesus girl,” the lead ‘bot shouted to her, “At least duck when they fire at you.”
“It’s bad-ass if I just walk into their bullets. Scares the shit out of them.”
“Well it’s making a fuck-ton of work in here. Knock it off.”
“No! It makes me look like Terminator.”
“Christ on a crutch, that’s messed up. Do you remember how all of the terminator’s skin fell off?”
“Yes.”
“I have it on good authority his ‘bots got fed up and quit, capice?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Laurel told the ‘bot.
She heard a chorus of disgruntled voices in her internal com-link.
“Watch us. Oh, and you’re denting your skeleton. That titanium nano-fiber whatits takes forever to fix. You break it, it wasn’t us that done it.”
Laurel dodged a bullet.
“Fine. I’ll duck. Happy.”
“We’d feel better if you went and sat in a chair some place.”
“Do your job,” she shouted at them.
The robot somersaulted up to the only cross head remaining in the front yard. She did so without being hit by his bullets which annoyed Laurel and amazed the boney, gun-wielding gangster. Laurel snatched the forty five from his hand and beat him over the head with it before he had time to be surprised by that, too. When he was out and laying in the snow she tucked the pistol into her jeans and stalked off around the back of the house.
Laurel stopped at the rear corner and looked to see who what was there. She growled. There were three cross heads she could see.
Lame, she thought.
Then she saw him, a figure dressed in loose black clothing. He had a cowl over his head and a sword strapped to his backs. Laurel’s anger faded. A smile spread across her face. She did not run to the group. Instead she walked to them, giving them plenty of time to for some sort of plan, to call for back up, to do anything. To Laurel’s lasting disappointment the cross-heads simply drew their weapons and emptied their pistols. True to her word, Laurel dodged the bullets as well as she could. She back-flipped across the frozen yard in spirals only a super-computer could follow and ended next to a gas grill. The cross-heads kept firing as she reached under the black cover and disconnected the propane tank. The ninja watched her and, as she lifted the tank over her head and prepared to throw it at the group, ran off.
Laurel smiled and heaved the big, white tank in an arc towards the amazed cross-heads. They watched as the projectile came towards them. With machine reflexes Laurel pulled the pistol from her jeans, aimed and fired at the tank, hitting it as it dropped behind the men.
The explosion shattered all the windows on the back side of the house. Car alarms went off in front of the house and at the neighbor’s houses two hundred yards away. The cross heads landed in the snow twenty feet away. All of them were still alive. At the very least Laurel made sure they still had heart beats. This left her with the ninja. She scanned the back yard for the black figure. The ninja reappeared, a sword strapped across his back and holding a Glock eighteen. Laurel fired at him — and missed.
“The Hell?” she said.
The ninja had moved. Laurel had watched him, but his movement did not seem related to the bullet. She fired again, this time aiming at his leg. Again she missed. The ninja raised his weapon and fired. Laurel moved to dodge the bullet but as she did the ninja fired twice more. The last two bullets caught Laurel in her shoulder, surprising her.
“Duck, you dumb bitch,” shouted her ‘bots.
She ignored them and fired four times but the ninja twisted as if his spine had been pulled from his body. He launched himself into the air and answered Laurel’s shots with two more and then another four. Laurel threw herself to the ground And spun, firing an arc of bullets above her. The ninja dove down beneath the shots and fired twice more, forcing Laurel to push herself upside-down with one hand. She dropped her pistol and, as the ninja crossed her path, reached out and snatched his sword from his back.
With a handspring Laurel righted herself. She grinned at the ninja who fired again and again at the the robot. Laurel dodged, and when she couldn’t dodge she took the bullet. All the while she walked towards the ninja holding his own sword over her head to attack and grinning. Bullets tore through her chest, her belly and her thighs but still she advanced. She grinned manically as the last bullet sailed past her and the ninja dropped the gun. She swung the sword down across his body, slicing with and edge as keen and as hard as a straight-razor.
The ninja was naked in the snow. His black clothing lay in a heap at his feet – underwear and all. Laurel giggled, pointing at his naked manhood with the tip of the sword.
“Wow, I guess average penis size on the internet really does tends to run a little large, huh sparky?”
The ninja remained silent.
“You’d better cover up. I don’t think the cold’s doing you any favors.”
Laurel laughed. She turned and began walking to the house. As she did the ninja picked up her pistol and fired it at her head.
Laurel pivoted to dodge the bullet, and as she did, brought the sword across the naked man’s throat. He dropped to his knees in the snow, clutching at his windpipe, his blood pouring out between his fingers. Once more laurel turned her back on the man and walked to the house leaving him to die in the rose-red snow.
