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Title: Between II - The Long Walk 10/10
Author: ebonbird (ebonbird@hotmail.com)
Rating: PG
Summary: This is the sequel to "Between" which is
available @ http://ebonbird.tripod.com/stories.htm.
Though based upon episodes 89-104 of Gatchaman I this
story only loosely follows those events.
Contributing tunes: Time Has Come Today - The Chambers
Brothers; Pusher Man - Curtis Mayfield; Spanish Eyes - Back
Street Boys; Never Can Say Goodbye - Jackson Five; All I
Want - Angel Moon; Plenty - Sarah McLachlan; Mighty Love -
The Spinners; Gymnopedie 1, 2 and 3 - Eric Satie; Could I Be
Your Girl - Jann Arden; Ooh Child - The 5 Stairsteps; Paint It
Black - The Rolling Stones.
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me. They
are used without permission. Tatsunuko, Co. Leave me
be, this is flattery.
Comments & Criticism: yes, please.
Thanks to BeckyD, Lori McDonald, Naa Dei-Nikoi, John
Duffin, Sal, Stephanie Wilson, Wildcat & Kim Wylie
for beta-reading and encouragement.
******************
****************
10.
"Where'd you get that?" Ken asked, eyeing the unfamiliar key
Jun held between her fingers.
Jun closed her fist around it. Moved her hand and held it point
out between her knuckles. "Joe's trailer."
At his questioning look she continued, "Nambu had it brought in
from the race track. Galactor'd already got to it, but this key was
in there. I thought I should hold onto it."
It looked like a safety deposit box key.
"Nambu know?"
Jun nodded.
"Nambu's calling us off the search for Joe."
Her eyes closed. When she opened them they looked black.
"We're are we going?"
"The Himalayas. Cross Karacorum."
"What's in Ne -- Galactor Headquarters?"
Involuntarily, a small smile came to Ken's face. "We got a
bird scramble."
Jun clasped her hands together in pained excitement. Joe did it.
He succeeded.
"That big plot Dr. Nambu thought the monster mech in R-city
was a cover-up for? Katse's been dropping bombs into the
earth's core. He wants to collapse the planet."
One of Jun's eyes closed and she winced, touching her index
and middle fingers to her temple.
"Katse won't succeed." Ken assured her.
"Galactor scientists have accomplished some amazing,
frightening things."
"We will stop Katse. Once and for all." Ken crossed his arms over
his chest,
Jun made a few quick mental calculations. "...thousands." She
cocked her head, "tens of thousands could die from the
earthquakes, tsunamis."
"We'll save them."
"All of them?" she asked.
Ken looked so disappointed she added hastily, "I know, I know,
we do our best." But she had to ask, "And Joe?"
At that Ken looked away.
* * *
The ground was shaking. His fingers burned numbly. His jaw
hurt. His neck, too. His forehead felt mushy and a spiky spider-
web shaped lattice of pain radiated from the back of his skull
across his face and below. His eyes were caked shut. He didn't
have to look at the wrist of his pulped hand to know that some of
the ceramics of the shattered wristband had fused to his skin.
The mattress beneath him shook. It wasn't his mattress. It was a
floor. A stone floor. A stone floor that smelled like Nepal.
He groaned. Tasted vomit in the back of his throat and rolled to
the edge of his bed, so he could spit on the floor. The bed
wobbled so hard he couldn't peer over. He flopped his hand on
the mattress to steady himself, screamed as the fractured bones
of his left hand pinched his flesh and remembered.
He wasn't in bed. He was on Everest. Cross Karacorum. Katse's
lair. Galactor headquarters. Joe spat in his hand and slimed the
blood sealing his eye shut away and he knew he wasn't
dreaming anymore. He'd been beaten up too badly. Was
shivering so hard, had been shot too many times for this to be
anything but his life.
He remembered now. He'd been captured, beaten, brought
before Katse and shot, and the stupid assholes had still
managed to let him get away.
He was missing time, though.
>From the ache in his face and shoulders the goons must have
pounded on him after he lost consciousness. His chest felt like
it'd been catching riflebutts and his ribs were numb. The
wobbling thing beneath him was the ground, not his mattress. He
heard the crump of explosives. It sounded like it was two
chambers away. The floor sank beneath him and the room tilted.
He slid fast and hard toward an open door. He was going to hit
the door, probably catch one of his broken ribs on it. He
prepared for the impact, his body sluggish. There was another
crump, closer now, and the chamber tilted level, stopping his
momentum. Everything went quiet. Joe couldn't even hear his
heart.
Joe lay his cheek against the cool floor and started counting. He
reached ten and nothing had happened. His clear eye narrowed.
He started counting again, marking time with his thumb.
Like a sudden cramp, voices sounded in the hall. Low and
tense, they belonged to Galactor. Joe reached around him,
feeling for feather shuriken on his person. They were always on
his person. It was slightly bent. His only one just in time, because
it was in his gut that a teammate was nearby. Being so close to
death, he knew it hadn't taken him because it was also waiting
for her.
His limbs wouldn't move.
"No, no, no."
Joe wished his thigh up. It only twitched. He took a deep breath.
The pain sprang deep and evil within him. His mouth jerked
open. Bright blood and mucous spattered the ground in front of
him. His vision grayed.
The goons outside were very quiet, expectation perked in the air.
He could smell them, excitement and satisfaction. His bowels
turned to water, his tensed thigh jittered. Jun was gonna die if
he didn't do something. She was gonna be as bad as him if he
didn't do something. Anything. "Please, God," Joe breathed.
"Our Mary," he gasped. "Mama, Papa, please."
Nothing worked, and his eyes were sliding shut. That wicked
pain in gut, the trickle of, ohgod itwaspiss, down his leg and
nothing worked.
"Fucking help me, please," he wheezed and wedged his
shattered hand beneath him and lifted, light as a feather, out
of his brokeness. There was something warm on his lip. He
brushed it off, blood, with the back of his bad hand.
"Get up," Joe told himself.
Alarms rang. He heard the useless running of useless Galactors
as they tried to make sense of the mayhem his people, his team,
was making in their headquarters. Joe smiled through his broken
jaw. Spit into his good hand, and rubbed at the blood and
vitreous humour sealing his other eye shut. He could not have
smiled wider if he was pissing on Berg Katse's grave.
He flitted to the doorway, through the doorway, trailing piss and
shit and blood as he sprinted to join Jun.
His angel, the Swan, bodies to the left of her, bodies to the right,
her chin high and imperious as she waited for the knife to fall and
for her life to end among the mainframes of the cavern floor.
The shuriken caught the goon cleanly and it hit the ground
quickly, right after Joe did.
"Joji!" Jun screamed, her small gloved hands slapping his
cheeks. "Joji, please, wake up. Please don't do this."
It was warm and he was dry and he was tired.
"Joji, please. Joji, open your eyes."
His eyes weren't working anymore, but he heard Jun speak into
her wristcom, telling Ken and the others to quick come join them,
and he wanted to wait, he did. But he smelled vetiver, rose water
and jasmine, and felt his father's shoulder under his chin.
******************
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end 10/10
"I hate women who say pretty=stupid. They're really misogynistic
men in drag." ~~~BeckyD
ebonbird's fan fic cache http://ebonbird.tripod.com
the storm archive http://ebonbird.tripod.com/stormarchive.html