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“So I had a weird dream last night–”
“I’m going to stop you right there, Doug.” Bryce was busying flying the vehicle and making sure they took a path near the least explosions. “That doesn’t sound like the beginning of a statement either of us are going to care about.”
“But it wasn’t like a dream. It was just the Devil talking to me and he said–”
“The Devil?” Lulu asked. “Like with horns and a pitchfork?”
“No, he looked like a regular person.”
“So how did you know he was the Devil?” Bryce said.
“Did you ask for ID?” Lulu added.
Bryce scoffed. “Doug wouldn’t know what proper ID would look like.”
“Yeah,” Lulu admitted, “and I bet IDs are very easy to forge in dreams.”
“Lucky for us, they’re also easy to forge in real life.”
“You guys are making fun of me, aren’t you?” Doug said. “You know, I was perfectly happy not committing treason today.”
“Calm down. We’re just about there.” Bryce slowed the vehicle and began a descent. “It going to mainly be on you, Tri-Lu, since you have the real ID.”
She held up Chen’s badge with photo. “I really don’t think I look too much like her; I’m much cuter. Hopefully they’ll just be looking at my chest.”
“I never look at anything else.”
A bit panicked, Doug raised and waived his hand. “What am I supposed to do again?”
“Follow us. Not talk.” The vehicle came to a rest, and Protectors — presumably real ones with guns — converged on it.
Lulu got out and flashed her ID. “As you can see by my close resemblance to this photo, I’m Major Chen. We have business here and we need to be quick about it.”
“The base is being evacuated soon,” one of the Protectors warned.
“We know,” Bryce said. He got out of the vehicle as well, and Doug decide to follow and stay behind him. “That’s why we need to a quick inventory of the armory.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m with the government.” Bryce flashed some ID quickly. “As you can tell from the gunfire, we don’t have a lot of time for stupid questions. We’re heading to the armory; you can follow if you want.”
“But…” one of the Protectors started to say, but Bryce and Lulu were already walking away with Doug quickly following. The Protectors stood back watching for a moment, but soon went back to more pressing matters as gunshot and explosions grew near.
“So far so good,” Bryce remarked.
Lulu giggled. “I like ordering people around. I’m going to do that more to the next people we encounter. How do I tell if I outrank them?”
“We can ask Charlene when we find her.” They were outside in the main part of the base, and most people were running around quite purposely. Bryce kept scanning the people around them. “I forget where the armory is anyway, so we probably need her. Think she has her phone on her?”
Doug spotted a petite young woman walking nearby in fatigues and carrying a tray of coffee. He was about to shout out, but then he remembered his no talking directives. Instead, he tapped Bryce on the shoulder and pointed towards her.
“Good work, my mute manservant.” They headed towards her, Lulu reaching her first.
“Give me my half-caf, puke!” Lulu shouted.
Charlene turned around to do a quick salute, but her face changed to shock when she saw Bryce and Lulu. “What the hell are you doing here? Where did you get that uniform, Lulu?” Doug stumbled a bit as he caught up to them. “Is that Doug?”
Bryce laughed. “They have you doing coffee runs while the city is about to be burned to the ground? I guess sucking up to the Hollow ones really got you the respect you wanted.”
Lulu looked over Charlene’s uniform. “They make you wear that baggy thing? And do you even have a gun?”
“They’ve trained me with one and I will be issuing me one today so I can be a part of this defense.”
“They are already evacuating, you nitwit,” Bryce said. “Asmod’s forces are going to arm some of the Last who are dumb enough to stay fighting to give them more time to escape.”
“Won’t it be fun being one of them?” Lulu exclaimed. “Yay dying for people who hate and despise you!”
Charlene’s expression was a mix of anger and hesitancy. “You don’t know that.”
“Come on, Charlene, you’ve been training to be the tiniest soldier for how long now?” Bryce asked. “And what do they have you doing?” He knocked the coffee from her hands. “Stop working so hard to be a pawn, okay? This place is going down, and it’s best we find our own way out.”
“So I’m better off with you losers? Is that my choice?”
“You don’t have a choice; that’s the point.” Bryce said. “We don’t like each other–”
“I like all of you,” Doug interrupted.
“…and we all especially hate Doug,” Bryce continued, “but there’s no use pretending we have anyone else to turn to. We’re earth’s Last Children; the world hates us.”
“They say we can all be no more than liars and thieves, so we respond by being liars and thieves?” Charlene asked.
Bryce smiled. “Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle; what are you going to do?”
“Anyway, we just brutally murdered Major Chen and left your DNA all over the crime scene,” Lulu told Charlene. “So you don’t have any choice but to go with us.”
Bryce gave Lulu a look.
“I’m just trying to speed things up. This uniform is itchy.”
“You really a part of this, Doug?” Charlene inquired.
He shrugged. “I just found out about this like an hour ago and I’m still not quite sure what’s happening. I really think you should come with us, though, because it is looking pretty bad. I don’t want to die here if that’s what’s happening. I especially don’t want to get tortured by Loch… I don’t want that happening to you either.”
Charlene looked in pain pushing down so much anger. “If things go wrong, I’ll kill you before they can. So what are we doing?”
“Just take us to the armory and act like everything is fine,” Bryce said. There was an explosion nearby. “Well… not fine, but no worse or no better than everyone else thinks it is.”
Charlene motioned them to follow. “Go team Hellbender!” Lulu yelled, getting an audible sigh from Charlene.
“Stop right there!”
They spun around to see five Protectors running towards them. One of them pointed at Lulu. “You’re not Major Chen.”
“But I have an ID an everything,” she whined.
“Which Chen just reported was stolen.”
Bryce rolled his eyes. “There goes that plan.” The Protectors were quick with their guns, but Bryce was quicker, pulling out his revolver and putting it to Lulu’s head. “Hands up!”
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