The truck slows to a stop.

"Alright running man, we're here." Miles said. 

I look around the location to gauge the surroundings. A sprawl of tricked-out cars and vehicles surrounding a mechanic garage. The area is lousy with loud rockabilly music and people drinking and hollering, its the kind of loud music you have to yell over to have a conversation with someone. The people themselves seem to be both young men and women dressed like a mix of greasers and biker types, all of them are notably attractive too, which I found odd.

“These are the guys we’re gonna be dealing with?” I said

“Yepper, this gang call themselves the “Tomcats.” Don’t let their silly name and mannerisms fool you, they might be apolitical and neutral but they’re still dangerous people, and for the right price, one of them will be our dangerous person.” Miles said.

"They're also one of the biggest arms dealers and illegal weapons manufacturers on this side of the region. Nobody ever fucks with them because of that."

I was enlightened to hear that, the throwback clothes was a bit of a red flag.

“C’mon, we should get a move on and meet the big man in charge.” Miles said.

We both climbed out of the pickup and proceeded towards the nearest of the buildings, pushing past cars and suffocating crowds of people. Some of the greaser types greeting us with a “Heya” and “what’s shakin’?” while the biker crowds were too piss drunk to say anything other than a mumble, which was nigh impossible to hear over the guitar shredding music.

It was tricky to navigate the party. A labyrinth of tightly knit groups of people you had to push yourself through to get by. The stench of alcohol and car fuel was also pungent, it was enough to make my head swim and the music blasting at full volume made that feeling even worse.

Finally getting inside the first garage foyer was a relief to the senses, the music was sufficiently left outside and there was enough space to move the body freely. I gave myself a much needed stretch after got a second to catch my bearings.

Miles steps into the building, just trailing behind me. He looked equally tantalized by the walk as I was

“Geez, couldn’t you shit birds pick a better time to do a party? I wasn’t planning on grinding my junk up against Italian dudes today, or like, ever.” Miles said rather defiantly.

I turned around to quiet him for his rudeness, but a huffish, tired voice from behind me spoke first

“I’m assuming you two are the ones who wanted to speak about some sort of business deal?”

I turn around again to see a young man rubbing his eyes, he had black, medium long hair and dressed in a dark T-shirt and black beanie. He also wore black leather wristbands and a white studded belt. Admittedly, he looked rather soft and effeminate which was compounded further by his goth style, one could possibly make the mistake of thinking he was a girl from afar.

“Name’s Lyle. Come with me.” he said in a resigned tone

Lyle leads us down a dark hallway illuminated with loose party lights of all colors. The architecture of the building matched the retro style of its inhabitants, glitzy and boisterous. Again, both sides were flanked with greaser partygoers, but thankfully, not enough to be cramped.

“Who are these guys again?” I said to Miles.

“In a minute. This way.” Lyle interjects and leads us outside to the back of the building.

Outside, there was a collection of dumpsters sitting beside the building and an office room attached to the main building just past them. The cleanest of the dumpsters had some pretty looking biker girls lounging on top, using it as a smoking area. Beyond the fence perimeter was a dark, vast desert, 

Once he noticed, Miles opens with a "Heyyy" and starts to slowly change his stride to be a little more cooler and slick, which was painfully obvious to everyone but him.

One of the girls distinguished herself from the others by not smoking and instead, lying down and side-eying us. She had a camo green army jacket with a beige fur lining and a blue ballcap that had long black hair underneath. Her gaze was dreary, yet sultry and aware, which was aided by her use of purple eyeshadow.

Her appearance was alluring, but once it became apparent I was looking, Lyle pushed me and Miles along to the office.

“Don’t.” Lyle uttered quietly.

We arrived inside to see two guys inside a small office, one dressed casually in a plain white T-shirt sitting at a big metal desk while the other stood next to him like a body guard. They both looked movie star levels of handsome as well, just like the guys outside.

“Come on in, make yourselves comfortable” The man at the desk said, cozying up in his comfy looking office chair.

We sat down in the two chairs in front of the desk, they were short enough that I had to look upwards towards the two men, elevating their aura of superiority. Miles was tall enough to meet the desk sitter at eye level.

“My name is Brett, We call ourselves the “Tomcats,” I’m the acting head of this chapter.” The man at the desk said.

I scanned around the room from where I sat. There’s a tall glass of alcohol sitting on top of the desk as well as a small wet bar behind him with fancy bottles of liquor. The bodyguard was watching me intently and Lyle leaned himself against the doorframe overlooking the entire room. It lent to a very oppressive atmosphere that I did not like.

“What’s with all the people outside, are they your entire gang? And why are they all dressed like that?” I blurted out.

“Yea, it’s like the 50’s discovered cocaine for the first time.” Miles added.

Brett looked exclusively towards me with a quizzical look.

“You’re Ellison, correct? Don’t they got a Tomcats chapter where you’re from?” Brett said.

“Our whole gangs legacy is based on rebelling and living outside the laws that the big government sits the world under. Other chapters are different, but we put ourselves comfortably in a position of service providers. Guns and security work.”

He grabs the drinking glass full of liquor and takes big gulps of the booze, emptying it in seconds.

"As for the Greaser clothes and jive talking, hell, it's been our thing since the 50's since our gang was started in a mechanic garage. Felt that they wanted to keep the rebel charm thing going" He adds.

“It works for us though, people who know better than to fuck with us are usually our best customers. The people who still try to screw us over-”

An interrupting voice from outside the office cuts Brett off, its a woman’s voice.

“-They get keel hauled with a motorcycle!”

Everyone inside the room begins to stare towards the door. A woman enters the room, pushing Lyle aside.

I immediately recognize the woman to be the alluring girl in the blue ballcap just awhile ago.

“Pavement usually ends up scraping them to bits and I get all messy from it, then I have to go home, get myself all nice ‘n naked and take a hot shower.” She was groping herself teasingly as she described the whole shower bit. 

“Jesus sis, why would you say that?” Lyle said with mild shock in his voice.

Brett gives an annoyed sigh after her whole speech.

“Teresa, I told you not to bother us when we do these meetings.” Brett said, who then turns back to us.

“Don’t worry about all of that, my darling sister just likes to hyperbolize the details to get a rise out of people. She isn’t crazy.”

Teresa begins laughing after that

“I could tell these guys were getting excited when I started touching myself!”

“Tess, We don’t need to hear that!” Lyle yelps.

Me and miles looked to each other, he looked like he was about to start laughing and started to retreat himself into his hands. I was more confused than anything, but the circumstance helped levy the assertive atmosphere the others had in the room.

I looked towards Brett and his bodyguard again, the bodyguard gave a warm smile towards Teresa, her colorful tangent didn’t really dent his composure. Brett was rising from his deep facepalm.

“Anyways! I got word from Lyle that you two were interested in getting a weapons deal, enough to put together a militia of sorts.” Brett loudly proclaims, trying to salvage this meeting.

Teresa then adds herself to the room by sitting atop some filing cabinets over to the other side of the desk.

For what felt like eons, I finally got to speak again.

“Err, Yes. We need to get someone who knows how to get a hold of weapons and a guy who’s good in a shootout. Figured you guys could help on both fronts.”

Brett leans back in his chair looking upwards, he looks deep in thought about who could be good for the job.

“Best we can put you up with is a gun salvager named Ol’ Angus, he’s a bum who’s out of our network and owes us favors. You’ll still need to pay him for his goods but once he gets a good haul, you’ll survive.” Brett said, still looking towards the ceiling.

I winced at that proposal, mostly from hearing him say “gun salvager.” It seems like Brett might be offloading their crappy gunsmith onto us.

“The dude got himself in debt trouble with some other battlefield scavengers. Assuming he’s still alive, he’s in captivity at one of their scrapyards till they figure out how he’s gonna pay them back.” Lyle adds.

"So, if you want a weapons guy, he's it. As for the gunman, we'll have to look into that."

Hearing all this angered me. These guys are setting us up for a chore mission to get our weapons "salvager" and he floats what's essentially a "maybe" on us about the gunman.

"This is bullshit! Arms dealers and you're are making us run after a salvager?" I yelled out to Brett

I quickly try to stand up to leave, but the bodyguard plants me right down on my seat with one arm and minimal effort. Lyle had his hands firmly on his holstered handgun.

“You’re gonna want to hear the entirety of this deal before you doing anything stupid.” The bodyguard said (even his voice was rugged.)

“Yeah, mind you, we’re all strapped with guns and there’s still a ton of us outside.” Lyle chirped.

Teresa starts snickering and shaking her head.

“Lyle, you’re not scary. And Brett, you always sucked at negotiating stuff.” She balks.

“Stop interfering with our deal!” Brett snarls to Teresa.

“You suck colossal ass at making deals! Why do you think me and Lyle have to always set shit up for you?!” Teresa loudly retorts.

Teresa looks towards me and Miles. Miles found the situation slightly comical and snickered a bit. I was about ready to leave again. Threats or not.

“Look, these bozos are only telling half truths, Angus was sitting on a supply of gun parts meant for us and we need to get him and the parts back. As for the extra gunman, that was something they wanted to decline since Tomcats don’t get involved in other peoples politics.” Teresa said.

I leaned towards her in intrigue hearing what she has to say, everyone else stayed quiet. Teresa continued on.

“I know these assholes are trying to screw you with the weapons guy, but if you can pull this rescue mission off and get the gun parts back, I will personally recommend you the best mercenary that I know. Is that a good deal?”

For the first time since I arrived here, I began to smile 

“Yes.”

An abandoned depot sat lonely in a desert, all dark and blue from the moonlight. It was cold enough to see the chilly vapor leave our mouths as we breathed.

We were all scouting the building on giant perched rocks overlooking the desert. Miles was making conversation with the bodyguard over by the truck, which was hidden behind some rocks. Teresa was perched over to the side, watching over the building with binoculars. I was sitting down and getting our guns loaded and ready. One AKM and two Beretta handguns. Seemed like we were a gun short for our four man crew.

“Before you ask, My gun is sitting in the back of the pickup, Tommy is going to get it for me, after he decides to stop talking to stupid over there. I don’t trust you rent-a-thugs to touch my baby besides him.” Teresa explains.

Tommy.

I realized we hadn’t bothered to learn the bodyguard’s name, even after he’d been assigned to our little rescue mission and while we were in the car ride over. Me and Miles had seemed to accept him as is.

Miles and Tommy make their way over to us, just as I finished up with the gun magazines. They seemed to be getting along well enough, which was good enough to quell my feeling that tensions were still there.

“So what do you think?” Tommy asks to Teresa, walking over towards her.

“Intel from our boys say they're some scavenging crew that maraud battlefields and war torn towns to steal guns and valor and shit. It's been pretty quiet so I'm gonna assume there’s a ton of goons coming back from scavenging shit soon. So we want to go in and position ourselves to get an upper hand.” Teresa says, still observing through the binoculars.

This girl is pretty adept at what she does, more privy then she lets on. Its a shame she also loves defiance and being a nuisance to everyone around her.

Miles mischievously grinned once he makes sure he’s safe from Tommy’s line of sight, He looks to me and nods towards Teresa. I hadn’t noticed, but she was completely bent over a rock as she was scouting, giving a generous view of her butt.

I instinctively shot Miles a look and shook my head in disapproval. He is such a horny bastard.

“Okay, so what I'm thinking is, once everyone is settled in. Me and Tess will sneak around through the front and take out the perimeter guards and anyone who steps out. You guys sneak around back and take out people from the inside, once they catch on that something is happening, we take out the rest with the big guns.” Tommy explains.

“Once we got them all covered, we grab what we can and take Angus with us, if he’s still up and running.” Teresa adds.

This doesn’t seem to be a good plan. We’re banking on them not spotting us as they arrive, we're left with two to a team and they might just decided to kill Angus if they realize we're after him. This has way too many stray variables for my liking.

I put the guns out onto the sand and let the others take their pick. Miles quickly swipes the AKM which left me and Tommy with the two Berettas.

“I set it to Semi-auto, make sure to hit your shots.” I said, warning Miles.

“Trained a lot with this baby, I know what I'm doing.” Miles responds

He clicks it to full auto anyways

“So are we bothering to keep them alive or we going full murderfest on them once that hat drops?” Miles asks

Teresa goes to stand up and Tommy hands her gun over to her. A Remington 870, hunting shotgun meant for shooting big game. It was almost as big as Teresa herself.

“I think I'm holding the answer to your question.” Teresa says with a happy tone.

“Jesus, they keeping a battle elephant in there? Why do you need that gun?” I ask with concern.

Tommy and Teresa start to climb down the rocks.

“What can I say? Girls just wanna have fun!” Teresa said, climbing downward.

“I think she likes you.” Miles said while we’re walking around back of the depot.

“Or, more to the point, you like her.”

I think I might concede that there is some truth to that. Teresa is playful and factitious, but she seems to have a good handle on things when the situation calls for it, like with the recon and Brett low-balling the negotiations. Our plan is a bit questionable, but that seems more like Tommy’s doing than her, and we are more than capable of holding our own if shit hits the fan.

Of course, I can’t hold a sincere conversation about that. Miles is just fishing for an excuse to guy talk about her sexual demeanor, which I don’t find professional.

“She’s distracting, I think what she wants is us to have people paying attention to her and she uses her looks to do that.” I respond. Hoping to get us on a productive train of thought.

“A-ha! So you have been paying attention to her body!” Miles exclaims, 

I had to shush him, we were getting close to the building and I didn’t want to have him blow our cover, much less because of a conversation about a woman.

“Be honest, man to man, what is it you find so “distracting” about her? Is it her big boobs, or is it that ass? You can’t lie and say you didn’t notice either cause you just called her distracting.” Miles whispers. 

Jesus Christ, I'm working with a child.

We get up to the two large garage doors with a regular windowed door beside it. Me and Miles placed on the opposite sides. Tactical positioning.

I give a peek inside before we enter. There were large industrial shelves holding crates packed on pallets, a warehouse. The lighting was only on the main aisle, leaving dark blind spots for anything to hide in. Not an ideal arrangement.

We quietly opened the door and snuck in and proceeded to look around. Further in, There were tables and chairs adorning the aisle with beer bottles and bags of chips sitting on top. A fair few of the bottles were broken on the ground, leaving haphazard patches of broken glass and booze puddles, eagerly waiting for an accident to happen.

"Booze bottles everywhere." I whispered

"Broken glass everywhere." Miles quietly added

"Watch your step." He continued

Suddenly, from somewhere, we hear a hard knock.

I nabbed one of the broken bottles to use as an extra weapon. Miles looked puzzled and checks around to see where it came from. A second knock happens

Before we could assess, we hear hollering drunkards outside, imminently arriving through the doors, Me and Miles quickly hide in an empty bit of shelving that was covered by darkness.

Around six or seven people rolled in through the front door, laughing and singing to the music, slurring their words from the intoxication. They sat themselves at one of the tables and continued to yell words over each other.

“Who the hell broke all deez bottles?”

“That wuz Ricky. That dumbass is hammered! Ha ha ha ha”

“This song fucks! Gah ha ha ha!”

This went on for awhile,

Miles nudges me and points up, indicating that he wants to get a vantage point. he begins to climb up the shelves from behind, out of sight from any of the drunk scavengers.

I looked around from the comfort of my hiding spot and noticed that a few frowny guards were standing around the entrances with guns, automatics and shotguns. They were all sober too and it looked like the antics of their comrades seem to wear on their nerves.

"Just make sure to drink some water! we got a new place to check out and I don't wanna hear you guys bitching all day about the headaches you guys got." The sober scavenger barks.

Some shadowed figures were sneaking around far out beside the gates and headed inwards, unnoticed.

Teresa and Tommy.

One of the drunkards revealed to have had a revolver. Pleased with his find, he started to twirl it around and wave it in the air.

“Hey guys, check me out, I'm Clint Eastwood!”

Everyone present at the table begins to laugh. One of the sober guards notices this and hurries his way over to him.

“Stop playing with that, you dumb fuck!” The guard barks.

“Make me, bitch!” The drunkard responds.

I’m starting to wonder how this Angus guy got caught by these people.

The two start wrestling over the gun, with the others were hollering and cheering on. Suddenly, The gun shoots into the air, erupting the drunk scavengers into laughter and getting the other sober guards involved.

“What the hell are you people-”

A guards words were cut short after a second shot sound from outside. The bullet caught the man hard in the neck and he dropped to the ground, holding his bleeding neck wound and choking.

Everyone present looks towards the door, Tommy and Teresa have made their way inside and made cover behind some crates and started blind firing over them, Shooting one of the drunks dead. The guards quickly start take cover, flipping over the tables and fire back. None the wiser that that me and Miles are behind them.

The drunk with the revolver joins the fray and brazenly fires back towards the door, shouting “It’s a showdown, mother fuckas.” His shots don’t hit anything important.

Teresa fires her shotgun towards them, leaving their table cover riddled with bullets. One guy checks the damage and tries to fire back, but the unfortunate man gets his face blown off by Teresa's shotgun in the process.

Miles tries to fire from his hidden perch in the shelves, but his gun fired only once and missed. I could only hear his gun clicking afterwards. His gun must’ve jammed.

Before I could get a handle on what’s going on, Miles starts to desperately re-cock his rifle, some more knocks happened above me, sounding like the crates. One of the armed scavengers finally notices him, then me.

“Oh shit! Look behind us!”

They signal to each other about this and quickly take aim. “Clint Eastwood” giving me an insidious, toothy grin as he points his revolver towards me.

The blood in my body runs cold. I had to act fast before Miles and I were shot, but I’m massively lacking in manpower. All I have to take to the fray is a handgun and a broken bottle. And the guys in front of me, drunk as they are, still have more manpower.

Everything felt like it was going in slow motion, the only thing going fast were my thoughts and the beats inside my chest.

In order to survive in this place, in order to not die, I have to be daring.

I have to be the spitting image of defiance. To the angry demons that are going to try and take me to hell. 

I have to kill these guys.

I have to...

I heard the sound of a gunshot.

Everything, for a brief moment, was a haze, Blurry colors melted together. The universe around me looked like mosaic art piece. 

I couldn’t make sense of any of it, yellow abstract shapes fell from the sky. The whole world looked like an enormous void of beige, with colors floating around.

But in that chaos, I vaguely made out dark red figures in my vision. They rested on a grey mass sitting in front of me.

Suddenly, loud, banging sounds made echoes in my head, and the figures twisted into a small mass onto the grey mass.

Two of the red figures were getting bigger, making garbled, stretched noises as they did. It was a discomforting collection of sounds.

The figures were getting bigger, and then bigger, the sounds getting louder, and angrier.

Until I realized, they aren’t getting bigger or louder.

I was getting closer.

I awoke from my stupor to realize that I was about five feet from where I originally was, where the scavengers were. Looking around, the ground was covered with dead bodies and blood, the bodies being in different states of mutilated.

My right arm was raised, gun in hand. It was pointed towards the drunk pretending to be Clint Eastwood, except he was quivering in fear where he was standing. He was scared and confused. If it weren’t for the liquor flowing through his liver right now, I'd be convinced this man was scared sober.

I then took noticed to something that was pulling on my left arm, which I then realized what might’ve been scaring our cowboy drunk

It was one of the scavengers, and the broken bottle that I was holding was lodged in his neck. 

He was violently trying to breath, nothing but blood bubbles pooled from his wound.

The sight of this horrified me. It was enough to make me recoil, leaving the man to drop to the ground, face first into broken glass. Oops.

The scared man perked up, he must’ve figured I was distracted enough to make a move.

He clamored to pick up the revolver on the ground next to him, but one gunshot popped from my left, and a bullet whizzed right past me, into the cowboy’s head.

It was Teresa, her and Tommy approach from their cover. Miles climbs down with his AKM slung to his back.

“Damn! Nice hustle there, crazy man! Too bad about Clint Eastwood!” Teresa yells out as she approaches.

“Except the real Clint Eastwood was the good, this guy was both bad and ugly!” Miles laughs as he finishes his climb.

I was speechless, there was a lot of confusion going on in my head with the haze and the figures.

The man sitting in the broken glass was just starting to die from blood loss. Everyone gathered around.

“Yikes. A lot of blood and bodies. The poor janitor is gonna have to break out the purple stuff.” Miles snarks.

“I’m gonna have a look around to see where Angus is.” Tommy said

He takes off to search, leaving me, Teresa, and Miles to look at the aftermath

"Ellison, bro, you really went hard on these guys." Teresa said

She looks over to the poor guy with the broken bottle in his neck. His face all messed up from the broken glass

"Bottle neck here, especially." She adds, pointing to him.

"Yeah, He's scary good when the chips are down. I'm not half bad either" Miles gloats

"The face you made though when you did it, you looked so... cold, stoic, normal. Not the kind of expression someone does when they stick glass in someone's neck." Teresa said,

She had a hint of fear in her voice when she had to emphasis her point, before realizing how she might have sounded and corrects herself.

"I mean, that's cool. I'm cool. I just don't like working alongside psychos. Gets way too messy for my liking" She said

Odd, for someone who introduced themselves with a conversation about goring someone across pavement, she even has her limits. Maybe Brett was honestly telling the truth about her exaggerations.

"Don't worry, if you think I am, It won't matter. We won't really be seeing much of each other after this." I responded

Teresa looked like she was about to say something, but stopped herself and took a step back.

Really hope I didn't upset her too much.

I eventually looked towards Miles and his gun, wondering if it jammed. Miles took notice of me staring.

“I don’t know what happened with this thing. It shot once and fucked up.” Miles explained, looking at me to see if I might have an explanation

“I test fired it, worked fine then.” I responded.

Teresa sighs.

“That must’ve been Angus’s handiwork. These are his guns. Left his whole supply in our care if he ever kicked it” she said.

The pit in my stomach was too deep to process Angus’s mediocre work properly, I was still wearing off what had just happened. But I powered over it to warn to Miles.

“Just make sure to not make so much noise when you try to fix the damn thing! You almost got us killed.” I barked

“What? That wasn’t me!” Miles retorted.

Tommy comes back from looking around.

“Where is that dope? They take him somewhere else?”

Suddenly, the knocking perks up again, the noise that I thought miles was making when he was fumbling with his gun.

We all looked upwards to the shelves where we were hiding, nothing but crates were up there.

Crates

“Wait, is he in there?”

Cigarette smoke filled my lungs. The big party scene was winding down with everyone wearing off their intoxication and getting ready to leave. Me and Miles was leaning by the door watching it all happen.

“So, you saw a haze and, like, figures?” Miles asks.

I nod to him

“Cause, from where I was, you totally kicked ass.” Miles said

“Clapped a couple of them with the gun before you planted the bottle in that guy’s neck, then you shot the gun out of that cowboy’s hand. He was scared shitless at how fast you were.”

He lets out a hearty laugh.

“His drunk ass still tried to reach for his broken gun though, had a better chance at running off.” Miles laughs.

I didn’t bother to join him and laugh or say anything back, No memory of what he had described existed within me. It felt like I lost control of myself and came out on top, was that just adrenaline taking over or was that something else?

That last thought didn’t settle my nerves.

"Hey, that thing about being in a trance. seeing shapes..." Miles hesitates his words

"Are things going okay with you? I didn't get a good look, but it sounded like you left quite the impression on Teresa back there." Miles continues.

I had to reassure him, wouldn't want him to worry too much about me

"I'll be fine for now, the plan just went a little wrong and it overwhelmed me." I said to him

"Okay, well... lets hope that doesn't happen anymore!" Miles says with an ineffective laugh.

We slowly watch as the last few partygoers leave. leaving just me and Miles, I finish off this cigarette and toss it away and listen to the ambience of the low howl of the desert wind. It was very pleasant.

With someone like Miles with me however, it gets quiet, uncomfortably quiet.

Miles looked around to save the conversation from awkward silence

“So, what do you think they’re talking about in there? Hopefully about what a good job we did.” Miles said

“All the gun parts were accounted for, like they asked for, and Angus looks like he could be easy to work with, once he gets his shit together.” He adds.

Teresa walks outside, carrying bags and her shotgun

“Angus will be good to go once he’s fed and hydrated, The gun thing was a slip up and he’ll pinky promise not to do it again, or we’ll cut off all his pinkies!” Teresa explained, half-laughing at her own lame joke.

Miles looked relieved, I wasn’t so convinced, But I felt I had to bring up the small amount of luggage Teresa had with her.

“So what’s with the bags? That can’t be all the shit he's with him?” I asked.

Teresa smiled again.

“Nope, this is all my stuff. I'm going with you guys!”

“Wh-what?” I stuttered.

“Yeah, remember me recommending the mercenary I know?” Teresa said, walking forward a bit.

Uh oh

She does a small twirl and flourishes.

“I'm the best mercenary I know!” She exclaims

Miles looked like he was about ready to celebrate, leaving me at the side to stew in thought. I don't really want to put up with Teresa,

“Welcome to the team! You’ll love getting to work with us!” Miles proclaims.

He reaches in to hug her with open arms, but she promptly kicks him in the groin, leaving him to keel over in pain.

“AAAHH FUCK!”

“Wait! What about Brett or Lyle, they’re not gonna like their sister rolling out with mercenaries!” I cried out,

“Fuck Brett and Lyle! I’m allowed to do things without their permission.” Teresa happily responds.

Teresa puts her stuff in the back of the pick up.

This was all happening too fast. I had to say something to get her to leave us alone.

“Wait! A-are you sure you want to do this? It’s gonna be even more dangerous than what you’re used to.” I said to her.

“Don’t worry, I think I know how to hold my own. Its kind of you I'm more worried for, crazy man.” Teresa said.

“But if you ever feel overwhelmed...”

She goes to climb into the passenger seat of the truck, looking back at us with svelte eyes and shaking her butt.

“...Just try staring at my ass again! Like when I was scouting the building!” Teresa laughs and plops down on her seat.

I tried to explain that I wasn’t doing that, Miles was the one that did, but all I could do was stammer out “Ums” and “Uhhs” while looking extremely guilty. I eventually had to just sit there in confusion and embarrassment.

This woman is a weakness. MY weakness.

Miles was still on the ground, clutching himself in pain, but he still makes an effort to look up at me.

“Isn’t sh-she perfect, Ellison?” Miles struggles out a smile before tending to his pain again.

I let out one last sigh for the day. I’m resigned to my fate.

“God dammit.”