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What If . . .
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04-01-2020, 10:44 PM
LowTech
Crimson Guard
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Canada
Posts: 1,018
Well these are weird days. I recently found myself killing time by watching old music videos. Saw one that, well, let's just say they don't make 'em like that anymore. The song was "Boy in the box." It inspired this one-shot story.
***
I crouched, trying fill my lungs with oxygen while not gagging on the stench of raw sewage mingled with rotting vegetables. My hands trembled from the adrenaline overload, but I could still feel the strange smoothness as I rubbed by upper lip. What the hell. They shaved off my mustache?! My scoped-pistol was gone. Worse, so was my hat. I loved that crumpled flying hat.
Even through the din of humanity, all moving at max chaos through the narrow streets, I could hear the shouts. They're looking for me. Hunting me. I broke for an alleyway, almost garroting myself on a low-hanging string of red paper lanterns, ducked past a wooden cart piled high with - hell, I don't want to know what that was. I called it an alley, but how can you tell the difference? Every street here is so narrow I can touch the walls on either side. Yet half of Asia seems hell-bent on turning this into the main market. I squeezed through the hustle, trying not to wretch at the smell of a hundred people digesting cabbage, or slip on the slick streets. I took a quick look at the sky, hoping to see the sun to get my bearings. All I saw were banners covered in dragons, lanterns, strings of colored pennants, and above those, laundry hanging to dry from every tiny window.
A fight broke out behind me. Two sumo dudes struggled. Light flashed off steel, grunts echoed, a body went down, and everyone casually stepped over it. I backed away, bumped into someone who . . . well, I'll assume that was a curse. I can't make out the language.
Where the hell am I?!
My last memory was in the cockpit, every instrument going haywire while the conditions outside were clear and calm. Didn't make any sense.
This makes even less sense.
I ducked into another alley, and two massive Polynesians in grass skirts slammed into me. They slid right off, dancing and backflipping in the tiny street, leaving a smear of sweat on my leather flight jacket.
I take it back. THIS makes even less sense.
"It's a routine flight," they said, thinking back to the mission brief. "Fly Ninja Force from Okinawa to some flyspeck island south of Tokyo," they said.
'Cause until now I thought the guys who brought knives to gun fights were the weirdest thing I'd ever seen.
I looked around. Where the heck are they? The pajama brigade is normally so loudly dressed they make Chuckles look discreet. A guy with a snake tattoo on his bald head stared at me and jerked his head towards a girl, her face a mask of white makeup with black character written on one cheek.
Actually, those chop suey weirdos would fit in so well here I might have run right past them.
I pushed into a tiny shop, only a couple of feet deep. The proprietor grinned at me from behind a rough board, covered with incense holders. He grinned, his mouth full of alternating black and gold teeth.
"You speak English?" I asked.
His grin widened and he held up sticks of incense.
"Swell," I muttered, as the dude says in the movies.
Shouts rang echoed, and I swear I saw straight razors. I knocked over the board with incense, pushed past the owner, and dived through the curtain behind him. I thought it was a maze outside. It's a maze in here - and dark. I stepped over sleeping bodies and pushed through another door, and another. Is this a frickin' opium den? I almost kicked over a metal bucket (now there's foreshadowing), and a woman hissed at me, dunking a naked child into it. A staccato clatter spun me left - an old man typed furiously at an old typewriter. To my right, men with shaved heads played some kind of domino game.
I pushed on another door and stepped into gray light. I blinked. It was daylight just moments ago.
I climbed crumbling concrete steps and stood on some kind of roof, looking around. A wire cage hung from a beam. A dirty kid wrapped his fingers through the wire and examined me. Ahead, a man dressed all in black beckoned, his hand making some kind of martial arts move. His face was mostly wrapped, but what skin was visible looked paper-thin and covered in fine wrinkles. His crooked fingers waved again.
A flash of light caught my eye, and his. T'J Bang shuffled forward, his sword at the ready. With a yell, Banzai leaped from, well, I don't know from where. The old dude spun, smoke and light bursting around him as though his hands were flash bangs. I kicked over an old oil drum, rolling it towards him. T'J Bang's sword blurred through the air and the old dude just laughed. With some kind of Jedi trick he knocked T'J Bang on his ass with a blast of air, spun, and drove a heel into Banzai's gut. Banzai collapsed, dropping his nunchucks. In a blur of blue and gold, Dojo cartwheeled past the fallen Banzai and snapped his wrist, flicking a metal ball on a chain to the man. The old man leaped in the air, driving his foot down at Banzai's head, who rolled aside at the last moment. The man caught the ball, spun, dragging Dojo in an arc towards T'J Bang.
I saw hunk of concrete on the ground and picked it up. Visions of Alabama fairs filled my mind as I heaved it, nailing that dude right behind the ear. He dropped to the ground, hard. T'J Bang pounced, driving his sward through the body. Dojo walked over and nudged the body. He frowned, bent down, and picked up a pile of black cloth.
"Where's the body?!" I asked.
"Happens sometimes," muttered Banzai with a shrug. "Weird things happen in the vile vortices."
He walked to the cage and started picking the heavy lock. It fell open and he pulled out the kid.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Mission accomplished," said Dojo, slapping my shoulder. "We were here to get the boy in the box."
"Where are we?" I asked.
Dojo looked around and shrugged.
"Somewhere in the Dragon's Triangle," he said. "Oh," he added, reaching into a pocket. He handed me my hat. "We found this on the way in. Thought you'd want it."
I put it on, already feeling better.
"So," Dojo went on, looking around. "Where'd you land the plane?"
LowTech
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