Just Another Day on the Job Part 2

Great, thought Nakagawa, as the number of vehicles chasing him climbed to a total of over a dozen. I hope the EMP will be all warmed up and ready when I get there.

Any other sardonic thought he might have had was curtailed abruptly by the complete and all-encompassing traffic jam blocking the road ahead of him. Thinking quickly and swearing while he did so, he jerked the steering wheel to one side. The squad car jolted as it turned and began to hurtle down the mouth of an alley only barely wider than the car itself.

The alley, which had been filled with pedestrians, dumpsters, and other detritus, proved incapable of stopping Nakagawa's squad car. Any obstacle to the car's headlong rush was shunted to the side or promptly run over. With only minimal collateral damage, Nakagawa broke through to the other side and kept driving.

Now on an open and unobstructed road, he could drive freely towards sub-sector epsilon. Flooring the accelerator, the squad car trundled and rattled towards its maximum speed. To Nakagawa's dismay, he could see through the rear-view mirror that an unfortunate number of his pursuers had made it through the alley too. The gang convoy, now led by a trio of motorcycles began speeding after him. The motorcycles, primarily due to their light-weight construction, began to gain on him.

As the distance continued to close, Nakagawa could see that the thugs on the motorcycles began to draw their weapons. Even over the sound of the roaring motors, he could hear the gunshots as they began to ring out. Fortunately, the armor plating of the squad car continued to hold, with most bullets merely pinging off, but one bullet hit the rear windscreen, causing another small web of cracks to appear.

For a brief moment, Nakagawa took his eyes off the road to check his progress on the screen. He was quickly closing in on where the EMP would arrive, but he wasn't there yet. As if to emphasize that, another shot struck the back of the squad car, adding a new set of cracks to the rear window.

As he turned his attention back to the road, he saw it. An object streaked across the sky and landed heavily in what Nakagawa presumed and hoped was an abandoned building. The thunderclap of the EMP's arrival made the suspension of the squad car shake, even at this distance. Heartened by the arrival of reinforcements, Nakagawa floored the accelerator and pushed the squad car as much as he dared.

Now arriving at the building, Nakagawa quickly parked and made a break for the building he saw the pod land in. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw that the Royal Dragons were still close behind. He resolved to hurry up and liaise with the EMP.

Inside the abandoned warehouse, it became clear from the hole in the ceiling and the junk strewn about the ground that the pod had crashed all the way down to the ground level. After wading through a veritable ocean of broken crates and shipping containers, he caught sight of the pod. Running up to it, he saw that the hull was inscribed with the familiar designation of Seven-Gamma.

A hatch on the pod opened with a pneumatic hiss and its occupant emerged. In a flash of platinum blonde from her hair and black from her leather jacket, Seven-Gamma sprang forth, firearm in hand, immediately ready to slaughter. She was derailed from her mission only by the sight of Nakagawa. Like one would expect from an ordinary house cat, she approached the officer and nuzzled against his shoulder. Gently, Nakagawa pushed her away.

“Now's not the time,” he said. Seven-Gamma looked disappointed, her cat-like ears drooping slightly.

“Hey cop!” called a new voice. “Come on out, little piggy!” Nakagawa ducked, pulling Seven-Gamma down with him and scuttled around to the far side of the pod.

“Listen,” Nakagawa whispered. “There's a bunch of gangsters from the Royal Dragons here. You job is to kill them all.” Seven-Gamma's eyes lit up in a way that Nakagawa had become quite familiar with. The more he had worked with the EMP, the more he became familiar with all of her quirks, not least of which was a healthy enjoyment for the more grisly parts of her job. The EMP gathered her legs under her as she prepared to pounce as soon as she received the order.

“Come on out, you little coward!” called one of the thugs again. To punctuate the statement, someone fired an automatic gun upwards, punching several small holes in the ceiling.

“Kill them,” commanded Nakagawa. Seven-Gamma sprang forward and leaped. As she sailed through the air towards the gang from her cover, she raised her machine pistol and fired it in controlled bursts. As quickly as they could, the thugs began to scatter and prepare to return fire, but five had already been struck fatally by the time Seven-Gamma touched back down on the ground.

The EMP rushed at the nearest gangster, seizing the man by the throat while shooting at another thug. As the three bullets from the burst struck the criminal in the torso, she tore out the first gangsters throat with her claws. The man sputtered as he collapsed into a rapidly bleeding heap on the ground. Several more gunshots rang out and the associated bullets struck the ground near Seven-Gamma's left foot. She turned just in time to see her would be attacker trying to clear a jam.

Before the jam could be cleared or Seven-Gamma could render the problem moot, there was another gunshot, this time striking the thug in the head. Seven-Gamma followed where the shot had come from and saw that it was Nakagawa, providing covering fire for her. She smiled as she scanned the warehouse for a new target.

The more she butchered and slaughtered the Royal Dragons, the more sparse potential targets became, as they assumed their chances of survival would be greater if the EMP was busy slaughtering their erstwhile comrades.

More fool them, thought Officer Nakagawa. A cat and mouse game of hunting prey in a jam-packed warehouse was right up Seven-Gamma’s alley. Such was the relish that Seven-Gamma displayed at the opportunity that she stowed her machine pistol for the time being, opting instead to stalk along quietly, killing only with her own natural weapons. As she stalked along the aisles formed by the shelves, her ears stood alert, listening intently for any sign of her prey.

Officer Nakagawa followed behind her at a distance, holding his sidearm at the ready for anyone that might want to get the drop on the EMP or – more importantly – him. He need not have bothered, as Seven-Gamma’s enhanced senses allowed her to outmaneuver even the cleverest gangsters who sought to ambush her.

The rookie noticed only too late that one particularly brave gangster had climbed high up on one of the warehouse shelves so as to set up an ambush. As the EMP passed underneath him, treading carefully and looking around for more victims, he jumped, favoring a serrated combat knife instead of a fire arm.

Officer Nakagawa felt a spike of panic and shouted a warning, but in actuality, he needn’t have bothered. Before the man could strike her, even with his sneak attack from his hidden perch, Seven-Gamma rolled onto her back. She trapped the man’s knife arm harmlessly under one of hers and propped the man’s body up with her legs, suspending him off the ground. Incongruously, Officer Nakagawa was reminded of a cat playing with a ball of yarn. However, instead of playing, Seven-Gamma grabbed the man’s chin with her free hand. As she wrenched his head upwards, her claws bit into the man’s face causing trickles of blood to drip down her hand.

Overcome with surprise and before he could cry for help, Seven-Gamma lunged forward and bit out the man’s throat with her fangs, tearing flesh and muscle with a prolonged spray of arterial blood. The man offered only a strangled gurgle as his viscera splattered the bio-weapon's face. Once dead, Seven-Gamma shunted the body to one side and acrobatically hopped to her feet, turning to Officer Nakagawa and smiling in feral fashion. There was something incongruous and downright disturbing about the combination of her smile and the gore that spattered her face and body.

Nakagawa looked to the remains of Seven Gamma’s most recent victim. He was primarily glad that such a fate had not befallen him, but on a more pragmatic level, he believed the man represented the sixteenth gangster brutally slaughtered thus far. By his count, that meant only a handful of combatants remained. While it was true enough they were no match for the EMP, Officer Nakagawa didn’t want to become complacent, as any one of them could surely prove to be a match for him, especially if they had the element of surprise on their side.

Down an alley between two rows of shelves, a clumsy gangster bumped into a box, knocking it over. Seven-Gamma took notice, turning in the man’s direction and dropping into a crouch. Her tail swished, betraying the delight she no doubt felt at the prospect of hunting fleeing prey. The thug squealed and ran off, hoping – perhaps vainly – to preserve his miserable existence. Seven-Gamma slowly began to creep in the man’s direction.

The man’s panic worked against him, as in his haste to escape the inevitable, he only continued to make noise, leaving a veritable trail for Seven-Gamma to follow. The man seemed to bump into things with suspiciously regularity, almost as if he was leaving a trail and doing so deliberately. Officer Nakagawa felt a twinge of uncertainty, but resolved to keep a keen eye out for anything else that might be amiss.

The man stumbled into a clearing of sorts. It was an area that, during business hours, would have been traversed by forklifts and various forms of heavy machinery, but for whatever reason, at this time of day, all the heavy machinery remained stowed along one wall.

As the man tried to run through the clearing, he tried to look over his shoulder, stumbling and tripping in the process. Now flat on his face, Seven-Gamma’s muscles tensed. Every instinct she had told her to pounce and rend the man’s flesh from his bones, and after a moment, she listened. As she bounded forward, intent of flaying her latest victim, Officer Nakagawa saw a flicker of movement off to the bio weapon's flanks.

Other gang members emerged from their hiding places, weapons already drawn and at the ready to catch Seven-Gamma in a withering crossfire. Officer Nakagawa raised his own weapons, shouting wordlessly as he opened fire. Many of his shots missed, but a few hit home, winging one gangster and striking another in the head.

Seven-Gamma took notice of the ambush and pivoted, moving to draw her own weapon again. The gangsters, now themselves caught in the sights of two aggressors, split their fire, with some continuing with their plan of killing the EMP, while others, perhaps the less disciplined among them, turned their guns on Officer Nakagawa himself.

Seeing discretion as being the better part of valor as he always did, the rookie cop ceased fire and dove for cover, lest he end up riddled with bullets like some of the gang members had. As it turned out, he had leapt at just the right time, as a dozen rounds ricocheted off the ground where he had been standing not one moment before.

Seven-Gamma, for all her killer instincts, seemed to have been unnerved by nearly blundering right into an ambush. She wielded her machine pistol, but any accuracy to her shots was negligible at best. Nevertheless, the sheer volume of fire told in the end, and the gangsters fell to the ground, stone dead.

All that remained now of the ambush was the bait, who had crawled for whatever cover he could find from the storm of bullets. Seven-Gamma turned on the man, growling ferociously as she did, with her ears pressed flat against her head. She fell upon the man with a level of violence even Officer Nakagawa had scarcely seen from her. The man’s screams of terror escalated to shrieks of hideous pain, which harmonized disgustingly with the sounds of rending flesh and breaking bones. By the time Officer Nakagawa had emerged from cover, what remained of the bait could hardly be identified as human remains.