Dragon's Progeny: Chapter 48

Kon's rifle clicked in his hands, and the man cursed as a bullet whizzed by his face, ducking back into cover as even more sought him out.

Ejecting his current magazine, he glanced over, holding a hand out urgently, “I'm dry! Give me another mag!”

A magazine was shoved into his hand without a word as he shoved it into his rifle, filling it with fresh brass. He held the weapon against his chest, listening to the cracks and pops of guns going off across the street, before moving out of cover as he heard a pause.

He flinched minutely as a bullet slammed into the concrete beside his head, spraying him with shrapnel. His finger squeezed the trigger as he let off a couple shots towards the skinheads peeking out of cover. He hit one who immediately went down in a twitching heap, and another who took his bullet in the shoulder and ducked back into cover. The others followed his example, getting out of sight and blind firing at him from cover. Kon ducked back down, putting his back against the wall as he listened to the pattering of bullets glancing off the side of his building.

He sighed, reaching up to rub sweat off of his forehead, “It just had to be eighty freaking degrees outside today.” He complained as sweat rolled down his neck, “First we get into a firefight, and now we’re stuffed into this tiny store that has the ventilation of a storage shed. If the bullets don’t get to us first, the heat is definitely gonna do it.”

Briefly, he wondered how things had managed to get so out of hand. This was supposed to be an easy target, a tiny little building that the Empire used to store some weapons. Given the size of the place, there probably wasn’t even thirty thousand worth of guns and ammo in there, so there shouldn’t have been any reason for it to be so heavily guarded. But it was and now they were pinned down in enemy territory with no hope of reinforcements. If they wanted to get out of this alive, then they’d need to fight their way out.

Which was easier said than done when most of them were on the verge of heatstroke.

An elbow in his side made Kon look over, and he smiled widely as a bottle of water was held in his direction. Snatching it out of his teammate’s hand, he gulped it down without any hesitation, relishing the cool liquid flowing down his throat and washing down all of the debris and gunsmoke he had been swallowing.

“Ah… That was good.” He said as he tossed the empty body into some random corner of the room, wiping his mouth. He smirked at the man who handed him the drink, “Now all I need is a new bulletproof vest and we’ll be in business.”

“That wound still bothering you, Kon?” Jamie asked as she did some field maintenance on her malfunctioning weapon. Kon told her not to trust that sketchy dealer and just get a real gun instead of that vintage piece of shit, but when did his team ever listen to him? It wasn’t like he was the leader or anything.

Kon reached up, rubbing the bloody hole in the shoulder of his bulletproof vest, “Of course it is, but it could be a helluva lot worse. If I didn’t have the vest, I’d probably be whining like Hiroki over there.” He jammed his thumb towards the man in question.

Hiroki flipped him off, clutching a bleeding wound in the right side of his abdomen, “Go fuck yourself, Kon.”

Kon smiled, “Ayy! That’s the first sentence I’ve heard you speak that didn’t make it sound like you’re gonna keel over. You must be getting better! Why don’t you take a peek out the window and tell us how many are still out there?”

“I think I’ll just keep laying right here to keep my guts together, thanks.” Hiroki responded, coughing lightly to get the blood out of his throat. He was extremely pale but apart from the bleeding which had mostly been stemmed by the shirt wrapped around his middle and the bloody coughs, he seemed pretty fine so Kon was still holding out hope that he’d make it.

Though if things didn’t change soon, that hope would die just as fast as the skinhead that he shot just a moment ago.

Kon sighed as the rancorous clamor of gunfire and pinging bullets ceased for a moment, before looking over and patting the man beside him on the shoulder, “Come on. We’re back to it.”

Miki nodded as Kon grabbed his rifle, and they hesitated for just a second before popping back out of cover and opening fire. Kon took out one skinhead standing in the open like an idiot. He was pretty sure the guy was trying to get to his friend lying in the street, but that ship had long since sailed and it looked like he had missed his boarding time as well. Switching to a different target, Kon’s rifle barked in his hands twice as he put two in the man’s middle, sending him down as well.

The skinheads seemed to finally realize that standing out in the open wasn’t doing them any favors and got back into cover. Miki put one of them down before they could get all the way back inside, and Kon nearly got two of them, but just barely missed his chance with the second one as his gun clicked empty again.

“Fucking tiny mags.” The man cursed as he sat back down, “Yo MikI! You got anything bigger than a fifteen?”

“Not anymore. We’re down to the pistol mags.” The man said, handing Kon another magazine while ejecting his own. Miki was pretty much the team’s walking ammo station, always carrying a duffle bag full of ammo on any op they happened to go on. “We need to finish this and get out of here before reinforcements show up or we’re screwed.”

Nods all around and Kon sighed, “Right. I might have a plan. But first, how many grenades do we have, not counting mine?”

A small count was made and it was discovered that, barring Kon’s tinkertech grenade that he was saving in case of an emergency, they had three between all five of them. It was less than ideal, but Kon was sure that they could still make it work. The grenades were mostly for distraction anyway.

“Alright, here’s what I'm thinking.” Kon looked around at his teammates, “Muto’s expecting us to come back with the weapons in that depot and that’s what we’re going to do. We already know they keep them in a room in the back, so that means that everything out front is fair game. We’re gonna get some of these frags in the windows across the street and flush them out or force them deeper.”

He turned to look at the only woman of the group, “Jamie, I need you to head out the side doors and wait for my signal. You’re gonna flank them while Miki and I rush them head on. We’ve got the thickest body armor so we’ll take the lead while you slip in behind them. Once we give the signal, you take them from behind and deal with whichever ones we manage to miss.”

Jamie nodded seriously, racking the slide on her pistol with malicious intent, before crouch-walking towards the side entrance of the building to avoid the line of fire. As she passed him by, Nomura spoke up as he noticed he had been left out of the equation, “What should I do?”

“Just keep an eye on Hiroki and take care of anyone who tries to come in here.” Kon said as he picked up a grenade, “We don’t want the poor bastard bleeding out all alone in this oven.”

Nomura glanced at Hiroki who was looking slightly worse than he did earlier. His face hardened, “Got it. Give them hell out there, Kon.”

“I always do.”

As Jamie left out the side, Kon glanced at Miki, holding up a grenade for view, “You up for this?”

Miki nodded as he squeezed the handle on his own grenade, grabbing the pin, “This isn't the stupidest plan you've ever come up with. Probably not even top three.”

“True.”

There was a break in the gunshots once again and that's when they made their lives. In unison, both Kon and Miki pulled the pins on their grenades, waited a moment or two, before standing and hurling them into the window of the store across the street.

It was a perfect throw, and the skinheads screamed as they realized that they had just thrown explosives into their midst. Kon tossed the last one as well, before slipping down the visor of his helmet and vaulting out of the window, weapon held aloft.

The neo-nazis came rushing out of the building, trying to escape the explosion and in their panic, didn't notice con in Miki. The two of them gunned them down in an instant, continuing to move forward as the grenades detonated, blowing the building's face outwards with a loud boom. Glass and stone flew in every direction, accompanied by the blood of whoever was unfortunate enough to still be inside, and Kon just barely caught the shadow of Jamie sneaking inside the side of the building just as she had instructed.

From there, it was just a matter of cleaning up. They took care of the skinheads near the blast, putting them out of their misery, before moving inside to help Jamie deal with the rest of them.

When everything was said and done, the four of them were left standing in the blood of over a dozen neo-nazis. Kon looked around, taking in the blood and dust scattered around the room, “We should have done that earlier. That went super well.”

“Yeah. If we started with that, we might still have some ammo left.” Jamie observed, ejecting her weapon’s magazine, taking stock of the bullets she had left and scowling as she saw that she was at less than half with no spare magazine.

Kon looked around the room and his eyes immediately locked onto a closed door leading further into the building. Shouldering his rifle, he made his way over to it, trying the handle at first and scowling as he realized it was locked. Turning back to his team, he waved them over, “Hey, help me with this. I think this might be what we came for.”

“Better be good.” Jamie said and Miki grunted in agreement as the two of them joined Kon at the door. Together, the three of them managed to bypass the lock by forcing the door itself off of its hinges, breaking into the room inside. Rubbing his shoulder, Kon smiled as he took in the lime green crates stacked neatly in the back of the storage closet. Bingo.

“Someone bring the van around.” Kon said, eying the fruits of their labors, “We got some gifts to take back to base.”

~~~

“Come on! Hurry up and get everything loaded up! We’ve been here too long already!” Kon shouted as he carried a large crate of ammunition into the back of the van with Miki’s help. The thing was really freaking heavy, and Kon had already taken back his estimates of how much this place was worth. He hadn’t taken a peek inside of the crates yet, but whatever wa sin here must have been pretty heavy duty stuff.

Stepping over a corpse, he and Miki loaded the crate into the back of the van, laying it right behind Hiroki’s chair as the man panted and clutched his wound in the passenger’s seat. Kon stood, wiping the sweat off of his forehead, before patting the man’s chair, “Keep an eye on that for me.”

“Oh screw you.” Hiroki gave him a dirty look.

Kon laughed as he turned around to bark orders at the others walking his way, “Come on! Reinforcements could be here any second!”

“We're going as fast as we can, asshole!” Jamie yelled right back, carrying a military green crate with the help of Nomura. Both of them looked like they were struggling quite a bit, stumbling as they tried to lift it up higher than a foot off the ground, “What the hell's in these things? I thought this was just ammo and small arms!”

“So did I, but I don't think they'd defend a bunch of pea shooters like that. We must’ve gotten bad intel or they moved some stuff around.” Kon said as he hopped down to help her out. With his assistance, they managed to haul it into the back of the van.

“Fucking hell.” Jamie cracked her back, “Whatever's in here better make Yosei happy. And you owe me a fucking drink after all this trouble. You told me this would be easy.”

Kon laughed, hopping out of the van and following her back towards the building to get more crates. “Tell you what, when we get done with all of this Empire business, I'll buy you as many drinks as you want.”

“I'm holding you to that.” Jamie said, giving him a sharp grin.

The shrill screech of tires on pavement cut Kon off before he could start his next sentence. The team looked to the end of the street to find a car zooming towards them like it had hell on its heels, and just as Kon began to wonder if they were about to run them over, the car jerked to the side and came to a sudden stop.

“Oh fuck!” Jamie said as several gun toting skinheads climbed out and aimed in their direction.

And with that, just as quickly as the fighting had stopped, it started once again. The skinheads got out of their car and ducked behind it, using it as cover as they fired at Kon and his team in hopes of taking them down and putting an end to their plan.

Soon enough, they were pinned down again with no hope of actually escaping. The car the skinheads were hiding behind was blocking the end of the road and there wasn’t another way out unless they wanted to abandon the van. Maybe even then. They needed to deal with these assholes before they could even think about escaping.

Which was easier said than done. Kon cursed as his bullet missed its target and then cursed even louder as his rifle clicked empty yet again, “Miki! Mag!”

“We’re out!” The man boomed back.

“Goddamnit!” Kon sat his rifle on the ground and pulled out his sidearm, beginning to use that instead. He had to be much more conservative with his shot placement, knowing that he only carried a single spare magazine for guns chambered in nine millimeter.

There was the distinctive click of an empty weapon beside him, and Kon glance over to find that Miki had also run out of ammo. Miki noticed his look and shook his head, putting his rifle on the ground to show that he was dry. A few feet away, Jamie cursed loudly, indicating she had the same problem. Now the only one of them with rifle ammo was Nomura, and he was a shit shot. They were screwed. If only they had more ammo-

Kon’s eyes widened as an idea shot through his head like a lightning bolt. He turned to Miki, pressing his pistol into the man’s chest, “Take this and cover me! I have an idea!”

Miki looked at him like he was crazy but nodded anyway, taking up his position as Kon moved towards the van, testing his friend to cover his back. There were a few close calls, but he managed to climb without getting shot and made his way towards the crates that they had stacked in the back.

As he reached them, Hiroki gave him a dazed look, clearly becoming delirious from blood loss, “Kon? What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it man. Just need to… there!” After a bit of fiddling, he managed to unlatch the crates, “Please be something good.” He begged as he lifted it up, taking a peek inside.

As he saw what was inside, Kon's eyes widened massively, before a equally massive smile spread oer his face at what he saw, “Oh hell yeah!” He said reaching inside.

“What do we have, Kon!?” Miki yelled, cursing as his pistol ran out of ammo.

“Hopefully fucking ammo!” Jamie retired, flinching away from the bullet spray making its way into her cover.

“Better!” Kon jumped kneeled on the edge of the van, holding the toy he had found just above his shoulder “Watch out, I've never used one of these before!”

The two of them looked over, “Holy shit! Is that a fucking rocket launcher!?”

“You tell me!” Kon pressed the trigger with absolute relish. The weapon boomed in his arms, like holding a living lightning bolt, and the blast rocked the entire van, rocking it back and forth. Kon watched with eager eyes as the rocket surged across the street in an instant and slammed into the ground right in front of the car. Looked like his aim was a little bit off.

It didn’t matter, because of course it didn't. This was a freaking rocket launcher we were talking about. It blew up and practically flipped the car over with the force of the blast. Metal crunched and crumpled like used tissue paper as smoke and fire bloomed like a burning flower of death and destruction.

“Hell yeah!” Kon cheered over the sound of the explosion and the ringing in his ears, “That's what I'm fucking talking about man! Woo!”

“Cheer later! Let's get the fuck out of here!” James shoved him out of the way and jumped into the van, quickly followed by Miki. Kon didn't follow immediately, instead hopping out and making his way over to where he had discarded his rifle, taking his sweet time so that he could look at the destruction his rocket had wrought.

“Damn that's so cool.” Kon said as he grabbed his rifle and headed back towards the van, “I'm definitely gonna ask for one of those when we get back. I don't even care if I can't carry it, I just want one!”

“You won't get the chance, I'm afraid.”

A fist to the side of his helmet was accompanied by the sound of crunching bone, and Kon stumbled back as his world was rocked by the sheer force held within the strike.

Looking at his attacker, Kon froze at who he was met with. It was a man with white skin, though not white in the racial way. As a matter of fact, this man was so white that he could probably be used as a frame of reference for what a sheet of paper was supposed to look like.

His outfit was charred like it had been on recently, and as a matter of fact, Kon could still see parts of it smoldering. The hand that the mN had used to punch him was clearly broken, with fingers flattened and bones sticking out of the smooth skin, and yet a second later, they were back to normal

“Kon!” Miki shouted from the front seat of the van. Nomura and Jamie were standing at the back, staring at the scene in shock and horror.

Kon glared at them all, realizing how bad this was, “What are you waiting for!? Get the hell out of here, assholes! Don't wait for me! You know the protocol!”

“But-'”

“Go idiots! He can't do shit if you just get out of her-oof!!”

Alabaster punched him in the jaw, cutting him off and sending him to the ground with a grunt of pain. His words had their intended effect however, and with the screech of tires and the roar of an engine trying far too hard to move the frame surrounding it, Kon's team zoomed down the road, leaving him behind.

Ignoring that, Alabaster reached down to the revolver holstered at his side, tilting his head as he stared down at the man like he was an ant beneath his notice, “You told them to leave? You do realize you are going to die here by yourself now, right?”

Kon smirked, “As opposed to dying with them? Yeah, no thanks. Protocol when dealing with one of you freaks is to avoid confrontation at all costs. I'm fucked since you decided to go after me first, but they didn't have to die.”

“How noble.” Alabaster said in a tone that suggested he thought it was anything but. He held his revolver out, pointing it right between Kons eyes, “When I got the order to reinforce one of our store houses, I didn't expect this. You vermin have made a fine mess of things, haven't you?”

As the van carrying his team and their cargo zoomed away, Kon stared his death in the face without any fear, “So what does that make you? Are you the cleanup crew?”

Alabaster smirked, “No.” The hammer of his revolver clicked, the sound akin to the tolling of a bell in the silence that had fallen over the street, “I'm afraid that what I'm best at is a little too messy for that.”