Rally Vincent's home was a treasure trove of firearms of all sorts, legal and illegal, and wired up with all manner of security devices to make it difficult to break in without tripping at least one.
There weren't any booby traps as such, or loud alarms to scare off intruders. In fact, most of the security devices produced the same effect when tripped.
They turned on a little red light in Rally Vincent's room at the side of her bed.
Rally Vincent herself was the house's most effective crime deterrent. At one time, Rally would have commented that the pyro mad bomber she lived with was worse, but that had been eight years ago. May had her own place now, occasionally shared with her boyfriend Ken.
Now, as the light came on, Rally's eyes snapped open and she reached for the gun under her pillow. A slugthrower as adverse the PPGs more popular in the last few decades.
Moving quietly as ever, Rally tipped through her house eyes and ears searching for signs of the intruder. It was in the kitchen that she heard the sounds of motion and breathing.
Setting against the wall, she listened carefully. She heard the creak of her chairs and the distinct breaths of at least two individuals who sounded almost like they were sleeping. A third, even and controlled breath punctuated the other two.
Her own breath held to a mere flutter to keep unheard, Rally stepped lightly into the kitchen, slipping her gun toward the back of the sitting intruder's head and called out.
"Lights."
The brown-haired, slender woman in front of her was easily recognizeable, and it was only spotting the child in the woman's arms, and a second sitting in the other table, that kept Rally from pulling the trigger instantly.
"Goldie," she said coldly.
"You haven't slowed down at all, Rally," the woman said, and Rally knew that she was smiling. "I didn't hear you coming at all."
"What the hell are you doing in my house," Rally wondered, keeping her gun out and watching for any twitch of movement from the woman in front of her.
The bounty hunter's eyes flicked to the two children briefly, wondering what part they had in whatever scheme Goldie had set up now. They were about the same age, she saw, with somewhat dark skin and brown hair. Two girls, about five years old, twins by the look.
"I've come with a request," Goldie said.
"Well you can stuff it," Rally responded firmly, not relaxing a bit. "All I want from you is to put the kid down while I call the cops to come pick you up."
"I'm sure," Goldie said, setting down the girl she held in her arms. "But I'd rather no one knew my children where ever in your home, Rally. Most certainly nobody in any government body as prone to leaks as the police."
"Your..." Rally blinked despite herself. "What?"
"Children, Rally," Goldie explained. "Given life from my womb. Incidentally, while we're speaking of children, I was so distressed when I heard about Misty. I had so hoped to eventually have a close relationship with her."
Rally growled, hand slipping back as she prepared to club the intruder over the head with her pistol butt.
In that moment, the little girl laid quietly in another chair already, Goldie twisted about, knocking the weapon from Rally's hand before pushing the younger woman back.
Caught off-guard as she was, Rally didn't let Goldie keep the advantage. She twisted as her gun was knocked away, and slammed her knee up into Goldie's stomach before rolling aside to retrieve her weapon. She came up on her knees with the weapon aimed dead center at Goldie's body.
The mob-boss was getting a bit old it seemed. Either that or she hadn't really been serious.
"I think you're even faster than you used to be, Rally," Goldie noted with a cough as she stood up. "Then, you're not thirty yet, are you."
Rally's eyes didn't move, but the question flickered in the back of her mind as she considered that the two children hadn't yet woken up.
"Don't mind the children," Goldie said. "I gave them something to keep them out of our hair. I'll provide the counteragent, of course, when we're finished with our negotiation."
Rally held back the bile in her throat as she stood up, gun at the ready and lips curling in a disgusted snarl.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"I want you to take custody of my children," Goldie said with a smile that contained no hint of concern or love. "They are...a project that I do not wish to see in danger at the moment."
"They're not a project," Rally noted. "They're children."
"You want to ask the question," Goldie said. "Don't you. Go on, I know its in there."
"Who's the father?" Rally asked.
"Ah, there it is," Goldie said with a small clap that provoked Rally into almost pulling her trigger. "Artificial insemination. I had a genetic sample on hand and I thought I might try and...see what the appeal was. I must say, the long term uses I've considered in the interim are very...interesting."
That bile rose in Rally's throat again.
"You're a sick and depraved psychopath, you realize that, don't you?" Rally asked.
"I tend to find its my most charming trait," Goldie said with a cold smile. "But it doesn't change my request. I want you to watch my children while I deal with an....issue."
"An issue?" Rally asked.
"There is some disagreement on the ownership of the project," Goldie said carefully. "Certain...organizations that...must be dealt with. I may be, as you say, a psychopath, but I'm hardly the only claw in a black and leather glove around here."
"You're having telepath issues," Rally said dangerously. "What's to say they don't crack open your skull and come right for me?"
"Crack open my..." Goldie smiled. "Rally, Rally, there are benefits to a deviant mental framework. One of the chief of which is that poking around in my skull is far more dangerous for the telepath involved than it is for me. As for you...you've survived me..."
This was said with a combined trace of admiration and frustration.
"I sincerely doubt that, after that, you'd have trouble with anything the Corps can send after you," Goldie noted. "Even if they do, eventually, think to look and see if you are indeed keeping the girls."
"So, the choice is this, my lovely girl," Goldie said. "You can protect my children while I take care of this...minor situation. Or you can let them remain in danger. After all, this really isn't about me and you. It's about a pair of innocent children and the fact that I would owe you a favor."
"Sounds more like you'd have a hook in me," Rally said.
"Perhaps," Goldie responded. "But are you willing to risk it?"
"And what makes you think I'll let you take any kid back after you let me get them away from you?" Rally asked.
"Really, my dear," Goldie said. "You speak as if you'd have a choice in the matter. After all, eventually, I will come for All of my girls."
A shiver worked down Rally's back as the woman spoke.
*****
That worry, at least, was put to rest the next day.
The two girls, Vivian and Shanti according to Goldie, were still asleep even after the counter-agent had been provided, but it was an even and natural sleep as far as Rally could tell. Rally was looking for cereal or anything else that could be fed to a five-year old when the news came on.
"An unknown band of assailants attacked the Psi Corps headquarters today," the reporter said. "Several high-ranking members of the Corps are rumored to have been injured in the attack."
"Fortunately," a Psi Corps representative was saying as bodies were wheeled out of the building behind him. "The extent of the fatalities has been exaggerated. We've determined that the attackers were operating under the influence of an extremely mind-altering substance which Earth Gov has been trying to eliminate for some time. Most likely, this was a more or less random attack by a gang of degenerates."
As Rally watched, a blanket fell off one of the bodies being carted away and she recognized the smooth, psychotic grin frozen permanently on the face of the woman revealed.
Quickly, she walked to her phone and dialed the first of several numbers.
"Becky," she said. "Can you come over to my house, please. I need to talk about something."
*****
"Any clue what she was here for?" an old man asked the short black-garbed figure in front of him.
"Not a clue," the man said with a shrug, his left hand clenched into a fist. "She managed to do whatever it is she came to do. Several files were wiped clean while her 'pets' kept us busy. And I suspect that anybody in the corps who had the information were among the ones killed."
"If only we could have taken her alive," the older man said. "We could be prying it out of her mind right now."
"Oh, I doubt that," Bester noted. "In the end, we had to settle for frying her synapses because she wasn't going down to weapons fire. No one could really hit her with anything. The telepaths that tried anything more subtle are...well, let's just say they're not feeling too happy at the moment. The woman was truly a grade A psychopath, hardly a human thought in the whole of her being."
"Well, most likely she felt we were a threat to her monoply on mind control," the older man said. "As to her minions, they were all operating under the influence of this...kerasine."
"And most of them as permanently bent or broken as anything we could do," the younger noted.
"We'll have to encourage stamping out the drug then," the older noted.
"After, of course," the other noted, left hand still clenched in a fist. "We find the formula, purely for investigative purposes, of course."
"Of course, Alfred," the older man said. "Of course."
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:44)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.