Chapter 7
As usual, Wizzit teleported us to a deserted location near where the Enclave monster was. In this case, we materialized beside a broad river lined with trees.
"Where's the monster, Wizzit?" Mike asked.
"Behind you. It is currently attacking the Guangzhou Opera House. Look for a large glass-and-steel structure surrounded by granite walkways and hundreds of screaming people."
"Is he always like that?" I heard Angie ask Trina as we began jogging through the trees.
"Is who always like what?"
"Wizzit. Is he always . . . weird?"
"I don't know how weird he is," Trina said with a shrug, "but he is always Wizzit. Do you know what you are supposed to do?"
"Uh huh. I am supposed to keep damn, pesky Zoinks away from you while you shoot monster."
I let out a chuckle at Angie's imitation of Trina's Russian accent, and I think everyone else did as well. "I like you, Pink," Trina said, laughing herself. "You learn fast. You are also supposed to warn the local citizens to stay away from us while we are working. I will tell you what to say, and you will translate into . . . which languages again?"
"Mandarin and Cantonese is what Wizzit said."
"Good girl. Now, here is what you say . . ."
With my sister safely under Trina's watchful eye, I signaled Toby, and the two of us sprinted forward together. "How many Zoinks are there, Wizzit?" he asked.
"A couple of dozen," Wizzit replied. "Angle a little more off to your right and you should see them."
"And where's Lily?" I asked.
"Same place, although . . . hmm . . . she doesn't seem to be directing them very much."
"What's she doing?"
"Not a whole lot . . ."
Toby and I looked at each other and shrugged. We were coming in sight now of the opera house, and I have to say, it was an outlandish-looking structure. All glass and steel and granite, as Wizzit said, and the walls were tilted at wild, strange angles. I liked it. I knew my parents were planning a trip back home to China sometime in the next year or two, and I decided then and there that I wanted to go with them and actually see an opera in this place. Or maybe I could arrange to meet them here . . .
"Hey, listen, Blue," Toby said Prime-to-Prime, breaking into my thoughts, "er, about that crack I made the other day. You know, about Robin? Look, I was out of line. I'm sorry; I shouldn't have said anything."
I glanced over at him. He sounded completely sincere. One of Shelley's rules is that, when you're wrong, you admit it and everyone moves on. And you know, it really does work well. "It's all right, Green. We all say things we regret."
"Good. I know Robin's death hit you pretty hard, and . . ."
"It's okay. We're cool."
"Good."
The monster was easy enough to spot. He was about ten feet tall, about average height for something from Enclave. He had the face and neck of a bull, and the low, curving, widely-spaced horns of a water buffalo. Right now, the only thing standing between him and a bunch of soon-to-be-smashed glass was a line of men in police uniforms, all aiming handguns right at him. In other words, nothing that would slow him down, much less stop him.
"I reckon we had better take care of business here first," Toby said. "After Red and the others arrive, we can go Zoink-shopping."
"Sounds good to me, Green."
About half the handguns swiveled towards us as we skidded to a stop between the monster and the line of police officers. One of the men, wearing a little more braid than the others, stepped forward. "Are you . . . the Primes?" he asked in halting English.
"We are," I replied in Mandarin. "We are here to fight this monster and to help you preserve your cultural treasure." I nodded toward the building behind us. "We would like it very much if you would stop pointing your guns at us." He hesitated, and I went on, "If you try to shoot us or arrest us, my friends and I will leave and will not come back to China. You would be left to deal with this monster on your own. All we ask is that you let us help you unhindered." The police officer thought it over for a moment, then turned and ordered his men to fall back.
As I breathed a sigh of relief, Toby said, "Watch it, Blue. He's charging."
The monster had lowered his head and was thundering towards us. Toby stepped forward and to the side; he hefted his huge hammer and swung it in a forward arc with all his strength, smashing the monster right between the eyes.
Now, if Toby had hit you with his hammer that same way (you being a non-Enclave-altered human, I assume) then it wouldn't have hurt you a bit. Well, okay, it might have stung a little, as if he had hit you with a whiffle bat, but nothing more than that.
The effect it had on Buffy the Water Buffalo, though, was much more dramatic. It stopped him as if . . . well, as if he had just been whalloped between the eyes with a hammer. It didn't knock him out -- that would be too much to hope for -- but it did stop his charge cold. He shook his head and looked around in confusion, which gave me enough time to dash forward and stab him with my sais in a very delicate place. (I'm referring to his nostrils, of course. What did you think I meant?)
The monster bellowed with pain and rage, but he backed away. That was all to the good, as far as I was concerned; I didn't want him anywhere near that opera house, especially after what I had said to the police captain. Toby stepped up and delivered another hammer blow, and I was about to dash forward for another nostril-strike when I heard Trina's voice call out, "Stay back, Blue!"
I knew better than to ignore a shout like that from Trina. I stayed where I was, and sure enough, I heard the sizzle of Trina's triple-blaster and saw not one, but two beams of energy strike the monster. I guessed that Trina and Angie had shot him at the same time. Mike ran up to us not two seconds later. "Everything all right so far?" he asked. "I saw you talking to those policemen, Blue. What's the story with them?"
"I told them we were the Primes and were here to help. They backed off to give us some room to work after I said we would try to protect their opera house over there."
Mike glanced over at the glass-and-granite-and-steel building I indicated. "Right. Good on you. And Green? I liked the way you stopped him." He paused to draw his blaster and take a shot at Buffy, who was eying the opera house again. "I want you and that hammer here with us. Blue, take Zoink duty. Can you handle them on your own or d'you need help?"
I looked over at the Zoinks, who were milling uncertainly towards us. Zoinks don't do well without someone driving them, and it looked like Lily had both hands off the wheel. "Let me go to work on them by myself. I'll call for help if I need it. I assume that Pink will take care of any that get too near Orange?"
"That's the plan. Off you go, then!"
"Right."
I ran over to take the battle to the Zoinks. I had three primary objectives in mind: first, to keep any bystanders from being hurt; second, to keep the Zoinks away from my teammates; and third, to find out what the heck was going on with Lily. My sister had been yelling out our standard everybody-please-move-away message for a couple of minutes, alternating between Mandarin and Cantonese, and I was pleased to see that people were taking the warnings to heart. Not that they needed any encouragement to flee the scene, but when you're running away, it's always nice to know that that's the right thing to do.
I started pounding on the Zoinks, trying to herd them together. There's an art to managing a crowd of Zoinks, one that I have been gradually getting better at over the past few years. If there's a small group, I'll just jump into the middle of them and start whaling away. With a largish group like this one, though, I tend to run around the periphery like a sheepdog, nipping at their heels in order to keep them bunched up. Couldn't do it without the force shield, of course; I'd be sucking wind after the first five minutes or so.
They were a bit unruly and hard to keep together; it would have been a lot easier if
there had been two of us. Still, I managed to get them moving (slowly) along toward the river, where there were fewer people.
"How's it going, Blue?" I heard Mike ask.
"Just peachy, Red. The crowds have mostly dispersed, which simplifies matters," I replied. I spotted a Zoink that was trying to separate from the others and sped over to slash at it with my sais. "Going to try to pin them against the river. Has anyone seen Lily? I haven't spotted her yet."
"Not a sign of her. Are you sure she's not with your Zoinks?"
"I'm not sure of anything at this point. I'll keep you appraised."
"Good enough. I think we'll try to herd Willy Water Buffalo here over to the river as well. He's not very smart; I think I can get him to chase me. Wizzit says we should be ready to dispose of him in five or ten minutes if we can use all eight of us to attack him."
Hmph. I preferred "Buffy the Water Buffalo", but Mike was team lead, and I suppose that gave him the right to create whatever nicknames he wanted for the monsters we fought. "I'll be around," I said. "Let me know when you're ready."
With my unruly Zoink sent sprawling back amidst his fellows, I took a step back to survey my handiwork. Hmm. A couple of them were starting to scatter over at that end of the group, and a few more at the other end. Time to get busy. I raced over to the larger of the two groups and began pounding the rebel Zoinks back into line.
As I fought, I heard the sound of voices behind me, two men conversing loudly in Cantonese. One of them said, "That Prime, he isn't so tough! I bet you could take him."
"Probably," the other replied confidently. "And look, he doesn't even know kung fu. He's doing that Korean crap with all the spinny kicks. What a load of garbage. Hey you! Your technique stinks!"
I suppose someone with a more competitive streak, like Padma, would have been upset hearing all this. Personally, I thought it was pretty funny, especially since they obviously didn't think I could understand them. And hey, I'm always willing to let somebody else put their money where their mouth is.
I finished off my current Zoink with one of the flashier "spinny" kicks in my repertoire, a jumping-spinning roundhouse. As it sank to the ground, I turned to look at my new-found friends. They were young guys, probably in their mid-twenties, and appeared to be in good fighting shape. "Greetings, honored sirs," I said with a bow. They jumped to their feet, startled that I was speaking their language back to them and probably afraid I was offended and wanted to fight. "I have heard your declarations of your skill," I said, "and I hope you would be willing to assist me."
"Wh-what do you want?" one of them asked.
I pointed to the far end of the crowd of Zoinks. "I have to take care of some of the drones over there," I said. "Would you be so kind as to watch the ones here to make certain they do not escape? I will be gone for only a minute or two."
They looked at each other and grinned. "Sure, we'd be happy to help!"
"That's great," I said. "If any of them give you any trouble, just use your kung fu and beat them up."
I ran off to deal with the mischief-makers. Something must have been in the air, because they gave me a lot more trouble than I expected. I was gone for probably five minutes; when I returned, my new friends were in the middle of a full-scale Zoink battle. A well-trained human ought to be more than a match for a single Zoink, but these two were being attacked by three apiece. I have to say, they were handling themselves pretty well, but they also looked pretty relieved when I waded in to help. It was tough going -- something had riled up these Zoinks but good -- but the three of us finally managed to beat them back.
"Thanks!" one of them said. "I thought we were in real trouble there for a minute."
"Nonsense!" I cried. "You were doing very well; your kung fu is quite good. But why did they suddenly start attacking you?"
"I don't know," the other one said. "We saw a beautiful girl standing among them, and we asked her to come out so we could protect her, but she yelled something in English and covered her ears with her hands, and then she started sending those things to attack us."
"A girl? A Chinese girl?" It sounded as though they had found Lily.
"Yes. She spoke English, but she looked Chinese and was very pretty." He grinned and made an hourglass movement with his hands.
"Quickly, where is she now?"
One of them pointed. "Over there. But watch out; she's tricky!"
I bowed. "Thank you, my friends. You have done me a great favor; I have been looking all over for that girl."
The two of them began jogging away, laughing and punching each other's shoulders. I shook my head and grinned. No doubt they would soon be telling all their friends how they had heroically rescued a hapless Prime from the clutches of the evil Zoinks, and maybe even getting free beers from the story. I wished them all the luck in the world with that.
I turned and began scanning the crowd of Zoinks for Lily. It was difficult, because she is only a little over five feet tall and therefore shorter that your average Zoink. I eventually spotted her mane of black hair, though, in almost the exact center of the sea of bodies. Whatever funk she had been in, she seemed to have snapped out of it; she was ordering her Zoinks forward with all her accustomed energy.
I zipped around to intercept the crowd, and almost right away I could tell the difference between this group and the mass of undirected Zoinks I had been fighting earlier. Much harder to control now, and if it continued, I was going to have to call for some backup. I hated to do that. I had been listening to Mike and the others trying to keep Buffy the Water Buffalo away from the opera house, and it sounded like they were having more trouble than he had anticipated.
I bashed a Zoink four or five times with my sais to take the fight out of it, then picked it up and began using it as a bludgeon to force my way through the crowd of Zoinks. If I could get to Lily, I reasoned, then I could eliminate the problem at the source and this gaggle of Zoinks would go back to being passive and easily controllable.
Lily is kind of a scaredy-cat, I have discovered. In her commander mode, she's awfully good at harassing us Primes (and any bystanders) with her Zoinks, but she is easily frightened, especially when confronted with a physical threat. Kind of the opposite of the way she is in attacker mode as Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick, in fact. So I naturally expected her to start cringing as soon as I approached her. Not exactly what you would want a pretty girl to do when she sees you, I'll admit. Still, I didn't expect quite the reaction I got.
I threw away my Zoink when I reached the little clearing that Lily had set up around herself. As soon as she caught sight of me, her tan face grew pale and her eyes went wide.
"Please, no more!" she cried out in an anguished tone before I had a chance to do or say anything to her. She slowly sank to her knees, her hands clasped before her as if she were begging me to help her. "Everyone has been shouting the magic words at me, and I can't think straight. Please, don't say any more magic words!"
I stopped short as the penny dropped. Before we arrived, Lily had been sending out Zoinks to attack anyone in the area. People had run away yelling and screaming, and I would have bet a whole nickel that a lot of that screaming had been in Cantonese. If my saying a few words to her in that language had caused her mental turmoil in Florida, I couldn't imagine what it was like here, being surrounded by dozens of people all screaming "Gau mehng a!" at her. She probably thought she was in a nightmare.
I took hold of Lily's joined hands and gently pulled her to her feet. She looked up at me, trembling, and I could see that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Traces of old tears showed on her cheeks. "Call off your drones, Lily," I told her quietly. "Tell them to simply stand by without attacking anyone. If you do that, then I will take you far away from here, to a place where no one speaks the magic language."
For a moment, I thought she was going to do it. Then she shook her head and p
ulled her hands away from me. "No. I have to help Uncle Oswald. They'll . . . they'll kill him if I don't." She raised her voice. "Drones, move forward!"
I caught her shoulder and turned her back to face me. "Who's going to kill him?" I demanded.
She shied away from me, suddenly panic-stricken. Then, when she saw that I wasn't about to punch her, she said, "The . . . the people he works for. They're very angry with him because his monsters always get destroyed, and if I don't help him win the battle here, then --"
"Hey there, friend Prime!" came a loud voice from behind me. "Remember us? We thought we would come back to see whether you needed any more help."
I whirled about to see my two Cantonese-speaking kung fu friends grinning at me across a crowd of Zoinks. Their expressions quickly changed to alarm, however, as Lily screamed, clapped her hands over her ears, and ordered her Zoinks to attack them. I let go of her shoulder and dove into the pile of Zoinks that separated them from me.
I didn't pay any attention to Lily for the next several minutes. There were Zoinks -- active, driven Zoinks -- on my left, right, front, and back, and I have to admit that I kind of lost track of time. Prime objective now was to keep the Zoinks from hurting my new-found friends, and I concentrated on that. Anything else was secondary, including keeping an eye on my favorite lady minder. The next I saw of her was when one of the kung fu guys said, "H-hey, lady, get away from me!"
I looked up from bashing a Zoink's face into the ground to see one of the guys rapidly backing away from Lily. Only it wasn't really Lily any more; her face had lost all its expression, which told me that her body was currently being inhabited by Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick.
I quickly looked around, trying in vain to spot JB Swift. See, Lily never turns into CKFZC spontaneously; JB Swift must have used his remote control on her. That's a little box he carries, sort of like a TV remote, that sends infrared signals to Lily's earrings and controls her behavior.
Now, it's one thing to invite a couple of my new buds out to play patty-cake with some Zoinks; tangling with CKFZC is quite another. "Get out of here!" I shouted at them. "She's very dangerous when she is like this!" At my words, CKFZC's head snapped around to look at me; she immediately turned away from the guy she was currently attacking and launched herself at me, fingers outstretched like claws.
I took a step back and quickly found myself wrapped up by Zoink arms, suddenly unable to move. I managed to get a knee raised, which struck Lily's shoulder and blunted her attack a bit. She staggered back, recovered her balance, and aimed a roundhouse kick straight to my temple.
I saw the kick coming, and although the Zoinks gripping my arms prevented me from blocking it, I did manage to twist my head so as to take the brunt of the blow on my forehead, the hardest part of the skull. My force shield shielded me from most of it. With an ordinary, untrained human, I would have hardly felt a thing. Let me tell you, though, those roundhouse kicks of Lily's are something else. This one came close to knocking me silly.
"Hey you! Leave our friend alone!"
"Yeah, what did he do to you?"
Lily's head jerked around at the sound of my new friends' voices. She immediately left off her attack of me and started back toward them. I shook the stars from my vision and set to work freeing myself from the Zoinks. "Come over here!" I shouted at CKFZC in Cantonese when I had gotten one arm free. "I'm the one you want to fight!"
Lily spun about, did that "look right, look left, look up" thing she does to orient herself, and leaped at me, feet outstretched in a jumping sidekick. I twisted my body, sending the Zoink still holding my left arm directly into her path.
My two companions seemed to realize what was up with CKFZC, although I doubt they realized that it wasn't so much what they said; it was the language they said it in. They separated and began taking turns calling her to them. As soon as she came close to one, the other would start taunting her and she would immediately turn and start approaching him. They played this little game with her while I pounded any Zoinks I could reach into submission.
When I finally had a spare moment, I ran over to check on how they were doing. Something was definitely wrong with Lily. Their taunts were alternating more quickly now, first one and then the other. Lily's head moved jerkily back and forth from one to the other as they called to her, but otherwise she appeared frozen in a stiff, awkward parody of a fighting stance. I had never seen CKFZC look confused before, and it didn't look comfortable for her.
Then they started both yelling at her at the same time, telling her to come after them. Lily's head swiveled so that she was staring directly at me, probably because I was more-or-less between her two tormentors. I could practically see the smoke pouring out of her ears as her brain shut down. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell to the ground in a dead faint.
I quickly ran over to her and gathered her up in my arms. "Hey, is she all right?" one of my new friends asked. Great, I thought, now he was worried about her.
I looked down at her. A faint froth of spittle was on her lips, but she didn't appear to be convulsing or anything. "I hope so," I replied.
In my arms, Lily stirred feebly and murmured something that was almost too soft to hear. It sounded like she said, "Help me, friend Prime Indigo."
"I am trying, pretty one," I said softly. I had been Prime Indigo when I first met Li Lin-fa; that was the only name she knew me by. Prime-to-Prime, I said, "Wizzit, I've got Lily. Let's take her away from here."
"Roger-dodger, Blue." I felt the familiar tingling at the base of my skull that told me that I was about to be teleported. When the haze cleared from my vision, I was standing in a snow-covered valley; steep hills rose above me on all sides. There was no sign of human habitation anywhere. "Where are we?" I asked, even though I had a pretty good idea.
"Iceland, in the caldera of the Katla volcano," Wizzit replied. "This is the same spot where you saw JB Swift last time. Since you have promised not to kill her and we have nowhere safe to keep her, I presume you will teleport back to Guangzhou and tell him where he can pick her up?"
I thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. I can't think of anything else to do with her." I laid Lily gently down on the snow, then stepped back. "Okay, send me back."
I reappeared in the same spot I had been; my two companions stared at me. "How did you do that?" one of the asked.
I grinned, although they couldn't see it beneath the swirling mist of my force shield. "Hi-tech."
"Blue, if you're quite ready to join us," I heard Mike say Prime-to-Prime, "Wizzit says we're getting close."
"On my way, Red," I replied the same way. To my companions, I said, "The show is about to get interesting. You two had better watch from a safe distance." I shook both their hands, and the pair of them began jogging away. I ran an eye over the Zoinks. With Lily gone and no obvious targets to attack, they seemed directionless once again. Satisfied, I started trotting back toward my teammates.
There was a sound like a rushing wind, and something suddenly blasted my left knee. I yelled with pain, and as I tumbled to the ground, I caught a glimpse of something red as it flashed by.
"Blue! What's going on?" Mike demanded.
"Not sure," I gasped. I reached down to grab my knee; it felt like an elephant had kicked it. "I think JB Swift is attacking me."
"Damn! Just what we needed."
"I think I can get him away from here if I can talk to him for a minute."
Trina said, "I see him." I heard the sizzle of her triple-blaster. "Damn, I can't hit him. He's moving too fast."
Yeah, that was JB Swift's main weapon -- speed. He was only about a foot or two tall, but he could run the forty-yard dash in probably less than a second. Put an iron pipe in his hands, and he could pound your knees into pulp before you had time to say "Ouch!" Which was what he appeared to be trying to do to me.
I felt the ru
sh of wind again, and I brought up my left arm to try to protect myself. Bad move. Given the momentum he had built up, JB Swift's blow would probably have torn my arm completely off had I not been protected by my force shield. As it was, I "merely" felt the bone shatter as he hit it.
"Damn it, Oswald!" I shouted when the pain let me speak again. "What do you want from me!"
Another rush of wind, and this time his pipe bounced off my skull. If I thought Lily's kick had hurt, this was ten times worse. I might have even blacked out for a few seconds, because when I could see straight again, he was standing in front of me, hefting his pipe as if he were ready for another go-round.
"What did you do to her?" he demanded savagely. "Where did you take her?"
I looked behind him. Trina and my sister were running towards me, but they wouldn't get here in time to stop him if he decided to attack; the rest of the team were still preoccupied with Buffy. "I didn't do anything to her!" I retorted, and pain made my voice as savage as his. "You were an idiot to bring her here! Don't you know better than to take her someplace where they speak Cantonese? She's probably in the middle of a nervous breakdown about now!"
The puzzled look on his face told me that he honestly didn't understand what I was talking about. I made a disgusted sound. "It looks like I know your precious attack doll better than you do!" I snarled. "She's waiting for you in the caldera of the Katla volcano, the same place you picked her up from before." Then I added, "You're welcome!" He stared at me for a moment more, then vanished at super-speed.
"Blue, are you all right?" Trina asked anxiously and she and Angie ran up to me.
"No," I said sulkily. I was mad at myself. Knowing how protective JB Swift was of Lily, I should have expected an attack. "I think my arm's broken, I've probably got a cracked skull, and I don't think my knee will support me. But let's try it. Here, help me up."
"No, lie still," Trina ordered me. "Wizzit, send him back to HQ to heal up."
"Any time you're ready, Blue," Mike said impatiently. "Orange and Pink, we could really use your help about now as well."
"Blue is badly hurt," Trina responded. "I am sending him back to HQ."
"We're having a hard time keeping Willy from smashing the big pile of glass over here," Mike said. "Wizzit, how long would it take to destroy him with only seven of us."
"Estimate another ten minutes. With eight weapons, you could do it right now."
I don't pretend to know just what it is Wizzit does with our weapons to destroy Enclave monsters. Nicolai does, I'm sure, and Padma has at least an inkling. All I know is that he performs some sort of complex calculations as we attack the monster, and that he tunes various frequencies of our weapons in response to those calculations. When the calculations are right, we get a final strike and the monster goes bye-bye.
Or maybe it's our force shields that he tunes, since we occasionally swap weapons and that doesn't seem to interfere with anything. But the more Primes we have, the easier his calculations become and the faster we can destroy the monster. Right now, I was the difference between an immediate final strike and one sometime in the next ten minutes.
I started struggling to my feet. "Help me up, Pink," I said. Angie reached down and took hold of my arm. I hissed with pain. "Not that one! That's the bad arm."
"S-sorry, big-- I mean, Blue!"
"It's okay. Just . . . use the other one, please!" Courtesy, everywhere and always, even if it is your sister and she just drove a thousand white-hot daggers into your poor, broken arm.
"Blue, no!" Trina insisted. "You can barely stand up. You have to go back for healing coma. That's an order!"
"Sorry, I'm going to countermand that, Orange," Mike said. "We need to take care of Willy here soonest. If Blue feels he can continue, then we need him."
Trina made a disgusted sound. "Fine," she said. "Pink, follow me!" With that, she scooped me up in her arms and began running toward the monster.
Now, I'm not exactly a heavyweight. After all, I have to keep myself in fighting trim at all times. Still, I seriously doubt that under normal circumstances Trina could have sprinted with me the hundred yards or so that separated us from Buffy the Water Buffalo. Chalk it up to adrenaline, I guess, and the enhanced strength and endurance that comes from a force shield.
She set me down with surprising gentleness about ten yards from the monster. Holding out her blaster, she said, "Give me those daggers of yours."
I hesitated. Trina doesn't usually use the close-up weapons. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen her use anything but her triple-blaster. "Orange, I don't --"
"Take my blaster and give me your daggers!" she ordered sharply. "One of us has to go in close for final attack, and it cannot be you. I won't break if I am hit, you know; I am not porcelain doll!"
I knew this was a sore point with Trina, that no one on the team thought she had any toughness to her. And I certainly couldn't argue with her logic; ain't no way I was going to be able to dash up to Buffy for another nostril strike or anything else. "You're absolutely right, Orange," I conceded, offering her my sais. "It's just that . . . you know I'm the worst shot on the team, and . . ."
Her voice softened. "Not any more, you aren't." She took my sais and I accepted the blaster from her. "You have improved a lot over the past several weeks. I told you, practice was all you needed. Just be careful. It has a tendency to kick the shot higher than a normal blaster, and you will not be able to brace it with your broken arm."
"Thanks, Orange. I'll try to compensate."
I could see that Buffy was gearing up for another run at the opera house. I don't know, maybe he liked the shininess of it or something. At any rate, Toby and Bill stepped up and began driving him back, Bill with his bo and Toby with his hammer. I got the impression that they and the others had been doing this same thing over and over again in different combinations all throughout the battle.
Trina glanced over at my sister. "Do you have your stick ready, Pink?"
My sister nodded. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again. It was probably an effect of getting my head pounded by JB Swift, but for some reason, their orange-pink color combination looked especially jarring to me. Trina looked over at me, and I said, "I'm ready, Orange."
"We are ready over here for final strike, Red." Her dropping of the "the" was the only sign Trina gave that she was keyed up.
"Right. On my mark, then. Three, two, one, go!"
I felt a cold sweat break out all over me, and I struggled to focus on the target. Shock was probably starting to set in, but my hand was shaking only a little as I raised Trina's triple blaster. I lined up my shot, then took a breath and held it as the others charged the monster. As they raised their weapons to strike, I squeezed the trigger. Trina was right, it did kick up higher than I was used to. Expecting that, I had aimed lower than I normally would have. My shot hit him square in the back of the head just as the other weapons struck home, and he disappeared in a shower of sparks.
Attack Doll 4: Primes Emeriti Page 7
