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There were screams of panic as the grenade clinked back against the floor, but Doug didn’t look back as he followed his friends in a mad dash for one of the trucks. Charlene quickly took the lead, shooting one of the Amazons and grabbing her rifle without even stopping. Just as they reached the nearest vehicle, the grenade exploded. Doug could hear it pelting the surrounding with shrapnel, but he didn’t feel any hit him as he scrambled into the truck.
The truck lurched upwards as the vehicle began to come under fire. Doug turned to see that Bryce was in the driver’s seat while Lulu was in the passenger seat ducking and covering her head. Charlene was in back among the metal crates with Doug, and she returned fire out the loading hatch as she hit the button to close it. The chorus of metallic ricochets against the vehicle’s hull died down as it rose into the air.
Lulu finally uncovered her head and looked out the windshield. “Looks like my plan worked! Yay me! I saved us all! Go Team Hellbender!”
“Throwing a grenade in the air is not a plan!” Charlene yelled.
“You’re not a plan!”
Charlene growled. “What now?”
Bryce jerked the truck around and accelerated it forward. “We take a leisurely drive through a war zone where everyone is far too busy to bother with us. Then we’re headed to Theed where we have a buyer for whatever it is we have in here.”
A voice came over the vehicle’s radio. “You do not have permission to take off.”
Lulu grabbed the receiver. “Guess what? You have permission to suck it!”
Bryce laughed. “This sure got a bit bumpy when Lulu was discovered and those crazy girls got involved, but overall the plan worked out pretty well.”
“Where was this plan you people keep referring to?” Charlene demanded.
“The plan was to get into the armory and grab a vehicle full of military weaponry,” Bryce explained. “Which we did.”
“That’s not a plan! That’s a statement of what you want a plan to do!”
“Well… it worked.”
Lulu took off her uniform jacket under which she had a pink t-shirt a couple sizes too small. “Really, who made you queen of what constitutes a plan, Charlene?”
“Right now we’re heading for a foreign country in an opposing military vehicle with three of us in uniforms of a nation their at war with,” Charlene said. “If this is a plan, it’s a crappy one.”
“Well I had the foresight to wear something under mine.” Lulu pulled off her pants under which was a skirt that if were any shorter would be a frilly belt. “Bet little miss prepared for anything didn’t think of that one.”
“I hate all of you! I really do!”
“Hey, you got to kill someone today, Charlene; you should be elated.”
Doug finally took off his helmet since they seemed to be in the clear and looked out a gun port on the side of the truck. The whole city was now in flames. He hoped everyone got out okay… except for the job-stealing monkeys. “I guess it’s just good we’re not stuck back there.” He saw something the size of a small city floating in the air. It seemed to pull in darkness around it, and Doug could not see it clear enough other than to know it was intimidating and evil looking. “That is awesome.”
Bryce looked around out the windshield. “What? What’s awesome?”
“This thing floating behind us.”
Charlene pushed Doug out of the way and took a look and turned white. “It’s Loch’s flagship.”
“That’s trouble.” Doug found another gun port and looked at the giant, flying craft. For a moment, it was like his vision zoomed in until he saw something clearly standing on the craft staring back at him. He couldn’t even see anything that he could identify as eyes, but he knew something was looking right at him. Doug stumbled back and fell against a crate. “Dude!”
“I’m sure Loch has more important things on his divine mind than one meager truck,” Bryce said, his voice cracking slightly. “Anyway, if he wanted us, he could just pull us out of the sky. Not like there’s anything we could do about it. If there’s no objections, I’m going to take us near the wasteland to limit the chance of running into anyway else.”
“I don’t like going near the wasteland.” Doug tried to shake his previous experience from his head. “It’s weird and scary.”
“As usual, your objection doesn’t count, Doug.”
Charlene continued to watch out the gun port. “The really destroyed the whole city, didn’t they.”
“Just be thankful we got you out of there, Charlene,” Lulu said. “It wasn’t a unanimous vote.”
“This whole attack was such a pointless display of power,” Bryce stated with disgust. “I’m sure Asmod will eventually respond in kind. It looks like none of the Trans ever get a real advantage over the others. That’s while we’ll always have plenty of opportunity as mercenaries.”
“We’re going to be mercenaries?” That sounded cool, but Doug really didn’t like getting shot at.
Lulu pulled a piece of paper out of the waistband of her skirt. “I have the form to make us official, self-employed criminals.”
Satisfied they were far enough away from Loch, Charlene stopped watching outside and turned her disbelief to Lulu. “Official criminals?”
“There’s criminal and there is criminal, Charlene.” Bryce put the vehicle on autopilot and turned to face everyone. “Don’t worry, though; I’m well versed in the criminal underworld to get us started. We’ll sell whatever we have here and use it as seed money to establish our base of operations for our very own mercenary group. No longer will we be unappreciated tools of corrupt governments and gods. We will now work only to benefit ourselves.”
Doug thought it did sound a bit exciting. “We’re going to call our mercenary group Hellbender, right?” He was always proud of that name since he thought of it himself back when they were kids.
“Better to fail together than fail alone!” Lulu shouted.
Charlene sighed. “I made up that slogan to make fun of our stupid group. Just because we played together as kids, I don’t know why you think that means I still want to be a part of your idiotic plans.”
“If you’re going to be a bitch as usual, we don’t need you,” Lulu said.
“I’m the only one of you who actually has any combat skill!” Charlene shouted.
“Yeah, we’ll get killed pretty quick without Charlene,” Doug said. “Maybe she should be in charge.”
“Charlene is not going to be in charge; she’s mean.” Lulu stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I’m in charge.”
Charlene laughed. “Says who?”
“It really is best that Lulu is in charge,” Bryce said. “Asian women are very underrepresented in crime, so having her as our leader will be a big hiring advantage. In fact, we really have a great group as is for government contracts. We’re at least half-female, which is a must. We have a token white male–” He pointed to himself. “–which they’re actually starting to crack down on if you’re missing. And then Doug… well… who know what the hell he is? We can just list him as whatever minority is particularly ‘in’ at the moment. Right now, I think we’ll put him down as half-black, half-Hispanic.”
“I really think I am Hispanic,” Doug said. “I really really like nachos.”
Charlene once again looked dumbfounded “People hiring criminals really care about all that?”
“Again, just because it’s the criminal underworld doesn’t mean it lacks all civility,” Bryce explained. “And espionage jobs for the various governments are the most lucrative, and they’ll always make sure to follow quotas.”
“And you really think people are going to be dumb enough hire us?”
“We’re the Last Children — we’re unaffiliated. When two governments have a cold war going between them, we’re the sort they’ll hire for deniability.”
“It going to be a lot of fun,” Lulu said, “and it should involve violence, so even you should like it, Charlene.”
Charlene sighed and seemed to resign herself to her fate. “So do these grand plans involve a place for us to sleep tonight?”
Bryce turned back to the vehicle controls. “You worry too much.”
“How about a TV for playing videogames?” Doug asked. “I was planning on playing videogames today… before everything got blown up.”
“Soon, we’ll have whatever we want.” Bryce tossed Doug a pen and notebook. “For now, why don’t you see if you can inventory what’s in here so we can idea what kind of haul we have to sell.”
Doug wasn’t much of a weapons expert, so he hoped everything was labeled. He pried open one crate which had what looked like grenade launchers inside. “Cool.” He wrote down “3 probably grenade launchers” in the notebook and noticed something else inside with them. It was a small cloth sack with an object about the size of an apple inside. Doug reached in to grab it, but immediately pulled back his hand in shock as what was inside was colder than ice. The object fell to the ground and rolled out of the sack. It was a smooth metal cube and it scared Doug worse than anything he had ever seen. He rubbed his hand and tried to regain his composure, but he was become overwhelmed with feeling that they were doomed. “Bryce, you know that important artifact you told the Protectors you had to secure?”
“Of course. I never forget my lies; that’s an important part of lying.”
“I think I found it.”
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