Hugh whirled around and down onto his knees, coming to rest behind a ticket counter as bullets flew by. Apparently, they had teleported right into the middle of some sort of gang fire fight. On one side of the fight were a group of very well armed and well dressed Asian men, and on the other side, oddly, seemed to be the rest of the gangs of Chicago teaming up. Usually, Hugh would have liked to have sat back and tried to get an accurate picture of what was going on, but in this case he was already in the middle of it, and as he had just realized, Xero was nowhere to be seen.
Ami directed Chloe to try to find Xero, and Hugh watched with no small amount of admiration as she sprinted fearlessly toward a flight of stairs. Hugh laid down suppressing fire growling as he did so because he was using clips full of silver bullets, and each shot cost several hundred dollars. He ran out of ammo; Hugh turned to see a hoodlum wielding a crowbar leveled at his head. He caught the man’s wrist in one hand, grabbed his throat in the other, and threw the man over the counter he was using for cover. To his chagrin, he heard the hoodlum land hard on the concrete floor, but he felt a little better when he saw the bodies of several civilians and police officers lying on the ground. They were very still. Hugh was not sure if they were dead, but he knew anyone lying that still was in serious trouble. Ami caught his attention then.
She was gesturing towards his feet at her luggage. “I need my suitcase.” “I don’t think now’s a good time to layer…” “Don’t screw around! Throw me the other one!” Hugh threw her the suitcase, and when she opened it Hugh saw that it was full of weapons. Ami belted a katana across her side, the grabbed to small hatchets, almost as an afterthought. “We need to get through those stairs. Unfortunately, that means Sam Tsui and his yakuza triad buddies are right in the way”, she explained to him as she whipped the axes around in her hands. She beckoned to Hugh and said, “Follow my lead.” With that she was off.
Ami dropped the first man she crossed with a double axe chop that completely removed his head from his body. The next gangster took one of Hugh’s hollow point rounds point blank in his three hundred dollar sunglasses, causing him to harmlessly spray the ceiling with bullets from his AK-47. Ami buried one of her axes into the expensive salon haircut of a yakuza who was reaching for his own katana, as Hugh shot a punk who was trying to aim his silence pistol at her. A split second later Ami’s other hand axe spun over Hugh’s shoulder, coming to rest in the throat of the knife wielding thug who was sneaking up behind him. All of this happened within thirty seconds, and they came to rest behind a pillar outside of the terminal restrooms.
Hugh peeked out from behind the pillar to see one of the Asian gang bangers trying to load a rocket propelled grenade while wearing an Armani suit. He knew what kind of damage a rocket would do in the flimsy cover this place offered. He had seen it before. He unceremoniously flung Ami into the restroom. “Hey what the hell”, she bitch after him, but he just shook his head and growled “Stay in there” as he raced toward the man with the RPG. He growled again as a bullet grazed his fore arm, but the adrenaline rush he had helped him ignore the worst of the pain. He reached the Armani suit just as it finished loading its high explosive payload.
He grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him in hard while simultaneously punching in the chest with his other hand. The maneuver pulled the man’s shoulder from his socket, broke his ribs, and probably stopped his heart. In all honesty, Hugh did not care if he had (in any event he was definitely down, and that was the important thing) because there were too many gun wielding thugs behind him for him to stop there. He grabbed the rocket launcher, set it to fire, and threw it as high as he could into the air. In the split second Hugh knew he had, he dived into the trench made for the train tracks. Then the rocket fired, and three quarters of a kilo of high explosives slammed straight into the ground.
The thugs who were not behind cover were thrown through the air, most of them killed. The thugs who were behind cover were knocked unconscious as the boards, bricks, and mortar that had shielded them flattened them, the structures that they had once been smashed like tinker toys. None of them were getting back up for awhile. Most of the blast wave passed harmlessly over Hugh, but even he felt like he had just been through a particularly brutal, and loud, mosh pit. Hugh climbed back out of the trench and stepped over the bodies. Ami raised an eyebrow and said, “I think I understand what you meant by ‘not quiet’ now.” Hugh laughed and they met Xero and Chloe at the stairs.
Twenty thugs lay unconscious, but none of them had a mark. Hugh had to admit it seemed that somehow the little guy had handled himself without weapons. As Ami made a well intentioned, if pointless, nine one one call, Chloe addressed the group. “It’s no good being caught by either the authorities or the gangs at this point, so here’s what we’re going to do.” She gave each of them a piece of paper. “These are all different street directions to the same hotel. We will meet there, and then debrief.”
To be continued…
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