[fiction] Damaged Goods Part 4

There were a number of horse drawn carts in the street that night.  Fog swelled up from the banks of the river, spillover over railings of the bridges and choking the torches that attempted to light the streets.

It was through this murky scene that a dark red kawasaki ninja 650 burst.  It flew along the ground at unbelievable speed, approaching carriages stuck in mud and careening off the path and onto the frozen river, which made for a much less crowded method of access.

The rider wheelied and slammed the vehicle down in anger.  There was fireglow on the horizon.

Many leagues away there was a castle under siege, its outer walls broken by hellish engines, its battered, starved, and tired knights bending under the blows of ugly, foul, and green skinned but humanoid monsters.  The inner keep, once unassailable, was decorated with assault ladders and potmarked from stone projectiles.  It was only a matter of time.

The captains rallied their troops, falling back, back, back from the hellish green tide.  But then something happened which they did not expect.

The previously mentioned sportbike shot through the outmost gates.  Something had upset the delicate two-wheeled vehicle, and both machine and rider were flung tumbling across the flagstones.  The rider, however, caught the upswing of a trebuchet and, by letting go at just the right instant, modulated the force propelling him in order to fly over the inner walls and land at just the right spot in the courtyard.  He landed, rolled, and skidded to a stop, ripping of the motorcycle helmet and bashing it into the face of a nearby monster.  The man underneath worth a strange, silly hat that looked like a money with white patches.  Pom-poms danced around as he whipped his head around, aiming a shotgun at the far wall.  The first blast leveled three of the invaders at once.

The rider ran up the steps to the inner keep, firing his gun three more times to clear orcs out of his path.  He reached the next level and saw an orc standing over a soldier in plate mail, about to strike a killing blow.  The rider blew that monster away and ran.

Above, he could hear the scream of a dragon.

The rider dove into the thick of the battle, engaging the enemy at point blank range, occasionally parrying a black axe with his shotgun.  Over and over again a pack of monsters would turn a corner and be leveled, one or two or three at a time, until the last remaining would  have hit skull blown apart less than a meter from the business end of the shotgun, body in the air and arm still swinging some melee weapon.  The rider fired again and a again, reloading on the run, until he was out of shells.  Moonlight gleamed off of his motorcycle armor as he pulled his sidearm out and began shooting with that.

The dragon flew around a tower and bathed combatants in flame, not really caring which side they were on.

"I'm coming for you," said Snow Monkey.

He ran, up, up, up, through the inner keep, to its roof, up more stairs through towers, more stairs, more towers, and then up to an impossibly high and long bridge.  His quarry was ahead, occasionally appearing out of the black smoke, only to disappear again with the beat of its wings.  He had it.

Snow Monkey reached the edge of the platform.  He readied his gun, sprinted, and prepared to leap, until--

An enormous bright glow ushered out of the clouds, accompanied with a ringtone--10 notes of a poorly synthesized flute.  It was a giant cell phone, and the screen said "Incoming Call ... Dave."

Snow Monkey slipped falling backwards, but he had too much momentum.  The gun flew out of his hand moments before he slid off the end of the ledge, falling face first into the black-

"Snow!"

Snow Monkey burst upright in bed, nearly colliding with Nika's head.  Outside, a storm raged and rain poured down the windows.

"Are you ok?" asked Snow.

"Me?  You were practically screaming in your sleep."

"I was just chasing a dragon."

Nika looked at Snow with that mixture of disbelief and ambivalence that he knew so well.

"If you're having trouble sleeping," he said, "we can cuddle, but you take big spoon."

Nika slapped him, hard.  Then she pointed in his face.  "Go the fuck back to sleep, and be ready tomorrow.  I want top five."

"Good night pumpkin," Snow Monkey called out as Nika left his hotel room via the adjoining door.

One day, he told himself, he would catch that fucker.