This Was Supposed To Be Easy...

Part One

This was supposed to be easy… a quick job. Take out the target and go home… but now… some unknown enemy has us pinned down and outnumbered. My tea cart is gone, now a smoldering pile of ash I imagine. It has been many days… Jack, the bodyguard of… some technocrat is bleeding from the shoulder and my mask is dinged up pretty bad… hard to breath…

It was about a week ago, when Jack and his boss came to me in some unnamed tavern off the main road. They said they would pay me more than I could imagine if I got them safely to Gearford…

Gearford… I wonder if I will ever see it again… I never really got to tell Lucas I am sorry about his wife… she did die on my watch after all…

A dead branch behind me exploded…. Great, they have heavy rounds… no wonder my poor cart was destroyed so easily. My cart… my one companion through every adventure I have had… built alongside my mask… now lying in ruin, burning with my lifeblood… tea…

Jack coughs a bit. He can still shoot but his aim is way off… more offering cover fire than anything really… poor kid… I really must get him out of here… if I can, and that is a great, big if…

Suddenly all is quiet… my air tank is leaking… perfect time to not die of suffocation so I patch it up… looking up, the whole area is covered in patches of blood, charred earth where Jack’s grenades landed… gross, gooey bits and pieces of whatever kind of ass that tried to kill us are littered about everywhere…

I shrink back down to safety and see the corpses of the technocrat and the lady… Well, there goes my paycheck… damn it all…

“Jack,” I say as I give him another clip... nice weaponry they had… 15 shot pistols… very nice

He winces as he moves to collect my offering. We are both down to 15 each… 15 tries to save our necks from oblivion…

We look at each other, his face covered in the blood of his fallen employer, and my face covered by what is left of my mask… I wonder if he can see my eyes… not even I want to see my eyes… Bloodshot, scarred up looking things… not the best thing to look into when you are about to die… It bloody looks like I can barely see anything…

He nods… smiling slightly, through the pain… I sigh and slowly rise behind the rock we are using for cover. I reload my gun, hold my breath… and make a mad dash…

Gunshots fill the air… from all sides… My coat gets cut up pretty bad, but it is durable… some bullets graze me but I’ve had worse… Crack! Hit in the leg, I stumble. Crack! Hit in the shoulder , I fall…

I can feel someone dragging me… My eyes open, blurry, blinking. I can see Jack… dragging me… I look down… My leg is coated in blood… wrapped in torn… my torn coat… I can see we are leaving the battlefield. The enemy is dead… My head gets heavier and I pass out…

End of part one…