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Written by Robyn Goodfellow My name's Robyn, not that it matters, I'm just somebody who works at Lucky's, a little bar and grille off 10th street, in a big town that matters even less. It's a nice place, and it's always full of interesting people. That's why I love it so much, it's never boring. All of my friends come to Lucky's, and we've hung out there forever. There's always weird stuff happening. People seem to keep mistaking my friends and I for something important, like spies, or a government strike team or something equally stupid. The only thing they get right is that we're all a bit strange, but we're not as important as they seem to think we are. We're just a bunch of wakkos who hang out at a little bar. We always wind up on top though. Just lucky I guess. I was on shift that night, I usually am. I live above the bar now, since the last group of stooges blew up my old apartment, so I don't have to deal with traffic anymore. The rest of the gang was already in the bar when I got there, as were a lot of people I didn't know. That's not unusual since a couple of my friends have keys. I hopped over the bar and went to work polishing glasses. I was just starting to think how annoying the canned music was when my favorite song came on the juke box; Pipe Dreamz by the Yakoo Boyz. As I listened I saw Talon work his way towards the bar from the pool tables near the back. As the song started he reached back behind himself and pulled out a pool cue, then he started pounding it on the floor in time to the beat. Three people I didn't recognize looked at him like he was crazy, but it's a tradition around here for someone to do that when the song comes on, so I just smiled. The bass beat of the song makes most people just want to tap their feet, but a few people started to dance. After a couple of hours of good dance music, I ran out of peanuts and headed for the back room to get some more. To get to the back room I have to go down a long hallway with one bend and three doors: the storage room, the bathroom, and the back way out. I was extremely startled to find three thugs waiting for me around the corner. Boy were they ugly, the biggest one had a shaved head (there's always one), there was a short gorilla with curly hair, and one that had had his nose broken so many times it didn't count as a nose anymore. I, in turn, had startled them, and we crashed into each other. Hard. Luckily for me, "Curly" broke my fall, I think breaking his wrist on the way down. Unfortunately that left two of them still standing. The big one grabbed me and put a cloth over my face. My last thought before I blacked out was oh shit. Chloroform. I came to in a James Bond film, the one with the big ugly Russians who've captured 'our hero.' I was in an old warehouse, strapped to a chair that looked like it had been obsolete during the Spanish Inquisition. My arms and legs were strapped in, and my head was pounding from the chloroform. I was pretty sure it was going to explode violently quite soon. There were only two of the thugs in the room, so I must have hurt the third pretty bad. Brownie points for me. Comrade Cue-Ball was standing right in front of me, and he'd noticed that my eyes were open. He was trying to look threatening, but I wasn't impressed. They decided to get personal right away. "Are you fucking nuts or what?" That was the smaller guy. His accent was so very Russian that I could hardly understand a word he said. "Watch your language ugly," personal could go both ways. "And whaddya mean nuts?" This could get interesting. "Why do you associate with those psychopaths?" "Psychopaths?" I tried to look cute, but it didn't work. "Don't play cute with us. We're talking about you're friends." "You chloroform me at work, kidnap me, insult me, and give me a pounding headache, just to ask me about my taste in friends? And you think I'm fucking nuts? Have you looked in a mirror lately?" Okay, so it was overkill, but as Anita says, it was my specialty. "Oh, we have better questions..." this was where Mr. Billiard Ball joined the conversation. His English was even worse than his friends', and I hadn't thought that possible. "How nice girl like you hook up with freak like them?" That was a better question? My day was starting to look up, 'cause when someone hands me a straight line like that I really can't help myself. "Just lucky I guess." They went on to ask me questions about spies and government secrets, but when I said I didn't know anything they got mad and stormed out. The smaller one was muttering something about sodium pentathol. Once I was sure they were gone for a while I tested the straps that were holding me. The idiots had left it pretty loose, and I got my hands free pretty quickly. I undid the leg straps and still had time to get myself hidden behind a stack of crates before they came back. I couldn't help but laugh at their expressions as they gaped at how easily I had gotten out of their escape-proof chair. It was right about then that all hell broke loose. No, to be honest it was right about then that Claymore blew a really big hole in the side of the building. The explosion ripped through the warehouse, a wave of heat that singed hair as the shock wave knocked over crates and boxes. The scents of fire and brimstone scorched my nostrils and I laughed. The Psycho Six came through the ruined remnants of the wall dressed to intimidate. Each one was dressed all in black and looked like avenging angels. Really pissed off avenging angels. The flickering red light coming from the burning rubble behind them made the silhouette all the more terrifying, unless you knew them. Walking purposefully in a flying-V Ęt, Tal, Keahi, Nikki, Riley, Claymore and Callen walked through the warehouse, each one armed to the teeth in their own particular way. The thugs started gibbering in Russian at the sight, and I thought they were praying until I heard three of the only five Russian words that I know, "Komitet Gosudarstvenno Bezopasnosti." To my immense delight, Cue-Ball stumbled past my hiding place. Quick as thought I darted around the crates and delivered a swift, powerful kick to his shiny white head. It didn't knock him out, and I hadn't thought it would since his head was too thick for that. It did however knock him to the floor. We were a few paces behind his friends, who were staring straight ahead and didn't know what I was doing. I put one knee on his chest and leaned in close to savor the fear in his eyes. "Hey Ruskie," I whispered. Like my friends I sometimes tend towards the theatrical. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. "Those psychopaths over there," I nodded towards the Six. "They're my friends, heck they're my family. Stay out of our lives, 'cause we're not into your stupid politics." I started to stand, stopped and leaned in again to slip a dollar into his suit pocket. "And by the way, get a haircut." I walked away from him and stepped up between his two friends. They stood paralyzed as I put an arm around their shoulders. "Bad luck fellas, you loose," I laughed, and walked past them to my friends, reaching out a hand as Riley tossed me my leather jacket. I slid on the jacket, and looked back over my shoulder. "Dos Vidanya." I turned back to my friends, "what are you guys doing here?" I asked innocently. "We came to rescue you," Callen said as we walked back through the still smoking hole in the wall. "Oh. Well I got tired of waiting, so I rescued myself," they looked crestfallen, so I added: "But you made a really nice entrance." "Yeah? Thanks," came the reply. We walked away from the warehouse, our conversation lighthearted, until we were back at Lucky's. That's when I told them what I had learned. "Guys." "Yeah?" "Those morons were KGB." "So?" |