The team exploded into action. Gadot yanked the door open. FingerNels stepped in front of her and selectively fired his rifle. Kitty crouched low and leaned around the corner. “Catch!” she shouted with glee as she threw the Molotov into the room. Kurt and Rouge sprinted to the counter, avoiding the flaming patch spreading from the middle of the room, sliding into cover and managing to stay out of each other’s ways. Kurt turned in time to see the door swing closed behind them and blinked with concern. The armed and armored NPC enemies in the room all wore black suits under their armor and had a variety of weaponry. Most of them opened fire with MP5 submachine guns, but at least two of them had shotguns of some sort, evident from the chunks of counter and tile that erupted above Kurt’s head. He flinched away from the edge of the counter and bumped into Rouge.

  “Spray ‘em down. I’ll flank.” Rouge shouted. She turned, waiting for her chance to relocate.

  Kurt switched his guns, drawing the Glock and making sure a stick magazine of +P was in place before checking around the corner. The kitchen had a counter set up along one wall, with a large round table in the center of the room, and a bar situated near the window. Kurt and Rouge were stuffed up against the counter, both crammed into a tiny space. He could see roughly five armed guards ducked behind cover throughout the rest of the room and could hear more encroaching from behind the counter. He blind fired the Glock and was immediately shot at from multiple angles. “Alright, screw this. Rouge, cover your ears!”

  The flashbang he tossed bounced against a table once before erupting in midair. He stood and drew his magnum again, firing at any guards he could see. Rouge scurried around the corner and took down three dazed guards with her Tokarev before repositioning behind a refrigerator at the end of the counter. As they moved, the doors behind them burst open again and their team entered in formation, Jimmy and Bonecrusher at the lead. Now flanked, the remainder of the NPC’s attempts to mount a half-hearted defense were quickly shut down. A concentrated eruption of gunfire had them turning to dust on the expensive-looking tiled floor.

  Kitty reloaded her Raider and began picking through the guard’s leavings as Jimmy found another fire extinguisher and went to work with it. She frowned at the lot but started tossing guns and the occasional vest over the balcony anyway. She paused midway through, adjusting her phone.

  “Right on time,” she said. Kitty paused, clearly listening to someone talking in her ear. “No, Les. I mean . . . yeah, she did kill you.” Another pause, this time with a frustrated look on her face. “Okay, shut up for a minute. Once you were down, she took out the remaining snipers in like two seconds. So no, I’m not kicking them out of the raid. She was right, and you were holding up shit like the asshole you are. Yes, you can rejoin if you can get to us, and no, we won’t wait for you, no matter how much you whine.” She paused again, openly scowling at this point. “You know what? Go help with the Company defense crew. I’m not listening to you cry all night.”

  Kitty turned back to face the team, a forced smile in place. “So Les is pretty pissed, Gadot. I’d warn you to watch out for him, but something tells me he’s not much of a threat to you.” She moved over to the next door. “Anybody can have a place in the Pirates, but we are primarily a meritocracy. I like how you guys get shit done.” She tried the handle and slumped with a fake cry of despair. “So who wants to open a locked door for me?”

  Kurt shook his head and stepped over to the door, producing his lock pick gun. Kitty gleefully clapped and sat down on a nearby stool, giving it a spin with one foot. Gadot moved over next to her and peered out the curtains at the chaos on deck below them.

  “So. Jimmy tells me you’re at MIT?” Gadot asked Kitty.

  “Ha! No. Well . . . I was.” Kitty grinned back at her new-found friend.

  Jimmy stepped over, concern on his features. “What happened?”

  “Well, you guys remember that totally minor explosion that was kind of all over the news a couple days ago for no good reason?” She scrunched up her face a little, looking at the floor.

  “Oh my God, you blew up MIT?” Kurt started laughing from his position in front of the door, waiting for the unusually long lock pick to finish.

  “No — and I’m more than a little offended, Kurtis. I blew up an off-site facility, thank you very much. It was totally unmanned, and nobody got hurt. It’s just like . . . owned by MIT.” Kitty spun her stool again. “Antimatter reaction research requires sacrifice, and my containment designs almost worked. It’s just too bad the stuffed shirts over there didn’t see it that way. Fortunately, I’ve had a ton of offers, and I’ll be going to work with a firm in China soon. It’s actually partly why I’m transferring to the Mirage server. This little war will be my going away party. I fly out in three days to start my training in Shanghai before transfer to a remote testing facility.”

  “How remote? I’m not sure I feel safe with you spearheading antimatter research,” Kurt scoffed, pocketing the lock pick gun once the door clicked.

  “Uh, pretty remote. It’s in high orbit.” Kitty grinned back at their incredulous stares. “So when all people, all countries, have unlimited energy and can do away with silly concepts like money or war, you’ll be able to thank me personally.”

  Jimmy stepped over to her. “Cat . . . that’s incredible!” He spread his arms for a hug, which Kitty was only too happy to accept, hopping down from her stool for the embrace. Jimmy’s expression became troubled. “I’m sorry we left things so shitty. I hope you know you can always call me.”

  She smiled at him, before shoving away and moving to check out the next room. “Oh hush.” Kitty paused, hand on the door handle. “My communications are going to be pretty tightly controlled, so I probably won’t be able to always call you. I do appreciate the sentiment, though.” Smiling widely, she clicked the door open and flinched back to avoid the storm of gunfire that immediately poured through. “Rude!” Kitty’s face scrunched in annoyance as she grabbed another bottle from inside her coat and lit it, then grabbed a second and lit it from the first.

  Kitty threw both Molotovs into the room blindly, tossing one after the other around the corner of the door. She drew a flintlock with a wicked grin, motioning for cover with her head. Jimmy stepped up with a sigh and took a low combat position, hunching over his shotgun. Deciding to be proactive, Kurt stepped up against the door with his Glock and clicked another extended magazine of +P in place. Kitty chuckled before tapping Jimmy on the shoulder.

  They charged into the room, trying to ignore the sounds of screams coming from NPCs on fire and taking down anyone left able to fight. It was a bedroom and had very little in the way of cover. The NPCs in suits and armor had shoved an armoire and vanity desk into the middle of the room to hide behind, but Kitty’s Molotovs had made their cover an inferno and the survivors had scattered around the room.

  Jimmy’s shotgun ran dry and he dropped it, letting the sling catch it while he drew his double-barreled sidearm and fired it from the hip into a heavily armored NPC hiding behind a king-sized bed with a ceiling-high backboard. The starburst round left a trail of colored smoke as the NPC dropped.

  Kurt went right as Jimmy went left, and Kitty walked casually into the center of the room, stepping around the flaming furniture pile. She grinned unapologetically as she fired her flintlock and dropped it, drawing another with her other hand in the same motion. Any NPCs who turned to face her received a blast from the flintlocks that knocked them off their feet and sent them to dust on the carpet.

  Jimmy used his shotgun to draw the attention of the main group of NPC defenders left in the room, blasting the three who were rolling on the ground, screaming while on fire. He absorbed a few rounds of return fire before raising his Super 90 towards the combatants with a glare. Kurt sprayed down the group and they finished them off together, a cacophony of gunfire drowning out any remaining screams.

  Stepping lightly over a pile of dust and moving towards the window, Kitty casually dropped her last empty flintlock and drew the blinds in a quick motion. She began the work of gathering up all the weapons and armor drops again and tipping them over the balcony. When she saw Kurt looking at her in confusion, she rolled her eyes. “Every bit helps. I have a lot of baby Pirates to feed, and these guys don’t tend to stay alive like one would hope.”

  The ship groaned, a long shudder passing through the massive vessel’s bulk, as all the windows blew inwards from an explosion. The lights flickered out as the group moved out onto the balcony to watch an expanding fireball roaring on the deck below them. After ducking to avoid the following wave of flame and heat, they leaned over to assess the damage. A huge chunk of the deck was simply gone, the inner mechanisms and below-decks exposed and mangled, flame licking at the edges of the hole. As they stood on the balcony, the deck beneath them started to move, listing to one side as the cruise ship began to slowly sink.

  “You wanted to know what would happen if he set off the bomb, right?” Rouge glanced over at Kurt, her eyebrows raised in concern as the group moved back into the room, away from the flames and smoke. Each member of the team flicked on their weapon’s flashlights. A series of sparks erupted from the roof above them in a large, square shape, roughly the size of a small door. Jimmy slammed into Kurt from the side and knocked him out of the way as the ceiling blew inward and a team of heavily armed police NPCs dropped in on lines. From his position on the floor beneath his friend, Kurt could see through the bay windows a few dozen police helicopters moving into various positions over the cruise ship. Almost all of them hosted police NPCS, who dropped to the deck from cables. There were several Coast Guard ships in the waters as well, all sending boarding parties.

  Scrambling into a crouching run as Jimmy rolled off from him, Kurt dove under the bed. The rest of the team began to fire their weapons at the police NPCs as they desperately sought cover of their own. The room was sporadically lit by muzzle flashes and persistent beams from weapon-mounted flashlights. Jimmy, Bonecrusher, and Kitty slid into place behind Kurt, hiding behind the partial cover of the bed while aiming over it and taking down combatants with carefully aimed or sporadic, wild shots. Kurt shoved and scrambled his way to the other side of the bed, aiming from his prone position with the magnum and starting to do his share of the work.

  “Nobody noticed the nine bar heat creep up on us?” Kitty shouted. She was not happy, firing her Raider over the bedsheets before dropping out the empty magazine. She slapped a fresh one in and flung an unlit Molotov at a group of police clustered near the door. It shattered against a helmet and dowsed them all, and she took careful aim, firing once at the clustered group. One police NPC ran screaming towards another approaching group, his soaked armor covered in flames. Kitty was quick to capitalize, another unlit Molotov smashing into the wall behind them and setting the new group ablaze as well.

  “All Pirates, all crew — abandon ship, abandon ship. Repeat, all crew abandon ship,” Kitty ordered. “We sunk her again, gang! Get to your turn ins, safehouses, and hubs. Officers report your takes to Jerome once all crew is safe and sound. Good game, all, and good luck with your escapes.” She scowled after finishing, turning to squint at the aft of the ship. “Oh, will somebody please unhook the tug? Do not want to replace that thing again.”

  With most of the NPCs down or rolling in agony on the floor, Kurt slid out from beneath the bed and took stock of the room while reloading. Three police NPCs were left alive, but not for long, as Jimmy moved to put them down and stop their screams. “I’d actually managed to forget what it was like to run with you, Kitty,” Kurt said, his eyes wide as he took in the scorched and blackened room, fires still licking at the walls.

  “Naw, you just repressed traumatic memories. Happens all the time.” Kitty reloaded her Raider again, a fresh magazine of incendiary ammunition clicking into place. “Also, were you just hiding under the bed?”

  Scowling slightly, Kurt shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it hiding, but . . . kind of. I took cover under the bed. Different thing.”

  Jimmy spoke up from across the room, covering the door they had come through. “If you practiced shooting a bit more, you probably wouldn’t need to use so much fire, Kitty.”

  She shrugged, hefting another Molotov as she nodded towards the other door, which had begun sparking like the ceiling. “Oh, who has time for practice?” The door blew in and another squad of police NPCs started swarming into the room, only to be splashed by Kitty’s throw. She hip fired her Raider into them, catching the heavily armed NPCs on fire and turning away with a shrug. “Fire beats armor, so I don’t have to be a good shot.” The ship shuddered and they experienced the gut wrenching feeling of it shifting beneath their feet as it continued to take on water at a frightening rate.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  This time Kurt staggered against the movement to the flaming NPCs and put them down with a quick headshot each. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, before dropping out his magnum’s magazine and loading a fresh one from his supply of armor piercing rounds.

  Jimmy approached, tossing an arm over his friend's shoulders. “You doin’ alright there buddy?”

  Kurt waved him away, blinking a few times. “Yeah. Just . . . a lot of fire and screaming.” He holstered his magnum, swapping to the Glock to allow for magazine recharging. “Pretty sure this is, like, mentally unhealthy. I’m not gonna stop or anything, I just feel like I should probably should be aware of that, you know?”

  Raising an eyebrow, Jimmy looked at Kurt sideways. “Did you mean to repeat that word?”

  Glancing around the room, Kurt shook his head and looked at Jimmy with mild confusion. “What?”

  His eyes going a little wide, Jimmy backed up a step and nodded towards the newly blown-open doorway. “We should probably . . . should get moving.” He shook his head at himself as he said it.

  Kitty moved past them, shoving at Bonecrusher and FingerNels. “Yeah, we should. I just got notification that our target is attempting to escape via chopper in all this mess. We took too long, obviously. His bolt-hole is this way.” She moved towards the door hurriedly, her long coattails swishing behind her. Gunfire erupted from the darkened hallway and struck her in the chest plate a few times. She grunted and dropped behind the door with an irritated expression. “I do not have time for these damn Company men!”

  The rest of the crew had been following behind her, but Jimmy skidded to a stop and thrust out an arm when he saw the weapon she drew from a rig under her coat at the small of her back. “Oh shit, get down!”

  Kitty lifted a side-by-side, double-barreled shotgun with comically large barrels that had been sawn off close to the trigger. The very tip of the long shells inside were peeking out, brightly painted in crimson. She stepped into the doorway again with a swirl of her coat and braced her feet in a solid stance, taking a smattering of gunfire to the body again. She snarled, squinted, shoved the butt into her shoulder hard, and fired the monster shotgun. The windows in the bedroom blew out as bright sparks flew from the barrel to the sound of a rocking explosion. Kitty staggered a step backwards, losing her grip on the shotgun and letting it fly over her head.

  She moved to pick it up with a small giggle. “I get ‘em?”

  Kurt looked down the hallway around Jimmy, already hearing screams and smelling fresh fire. “Uh. Yeah.”

  Moving to cover Kitty, Jimmy shook his head. “Sane people don’t use four-gauge sawed offs with dragon’s breath, Kitty.”

  “Nonsense! If nobody used them but crazy people, why did they exist?” Kitty brushed off her coat and popped a couple of new flare-sized shells into the monster sawn-off, shoving it back into its holster at the small of her back.

  “That kind of gun was for duck hunting. Mounted on a boat — on a large boat — like a turret.” Jimmy sighed and motioned for the crew to follow him. “And I’m pretty sure nobody nice or good ever used dragon’s breath on a person.”

  He used his Super 90 to casually finish off the NPCs still screaming as he led the team down the pockmarked and scorched hallway. At the end, a door with a wheel handle opened onto the ship’s exterior. Jimmy sighed and shook his head as he heaved against the wheel and swung the door open. “This is the kind of stuff that made me leave,” he muttered.

  The crew clustered outside on a small balcony overlooking the starboard side of the cruise ship. Below them was a modest helipad, a rounded abutment connected to the ship’s side by a covered walkway. Dark, glittering water was encroaching fast as the ship listed further to the side, a fresh geyser of ocean water rising in a spray from below decks. With the main deck already underwater, their target was seeking a quick escape. The squat black and gold helicopter on the pad already had its rotors winding up, and a man in a suit carrying a briefcase was being ushered into the vehicle by several armed guards. Kitty leaned over the edge, lifting a rope and plank emergency ladder with one hand before dropping it with an exaggerated sigh.

  “Well? You did kill my sniper.” Kitty pursed her lips, looking at their only remaining long-range specialist.

  Gadot set the barrel of her gun on the ledge, edged forward a bit to get the angle correct, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly as she gently squeezed the trigger. Everyone leaned over the lip of the balcony as Gadot stepped back, working the action of her rifle and slipping a fresh shell in. Kitty let out a cheer as she saw the cracked glass of the cockpit’s windshield, directly over the now slumped pilot. She shoved Gadot in the shoulder, an approving look on her face as return fire from the last of the VIP’s bodyguards began to pepper the balcony around them.

  A small smile on her face, Gadot stepped back up to the ledge alongside Jimmy and FingerNels. The three rifle-armed players fired back at the two dozen armed bodyguards on the helipad, while Kitty pointed at the ladder. “Over we go, people — and for the love of everything good and shiny, please be careful on the frigging ladder.” She shrugged at Kurt. “Ladders kill more players in this game than heat, I swear.”

  BoneCrusher stepped up, pushing past Kurt as he mounted the ladder and moved down a few rungs. “It’s not that hard, you just have to pay attention — AAAAAAAAH!” Kurt leaned over the railing in alarm as BoneCrusher slipped off the ladder and plummeted to the main deck. He struck a railing and instantly puffed into a cloud of dust, his scream of terror cut short.

  Kitty rubbed at her forehead, eyes squeezed shut in frustration. “Shut up, Wesley,” she breathed out in a sigh, turning to look at the ladder again while shaking her head.

  Rouge stepped up and mounted the ladder, taking her time and ignoring the bullets spattering the wall around her. She skipped down the rungs in a practiced but cautious hurry, dropping the last few feet and rolling into a crouch. Kurt went next, slow and careful the entire way down, in spite of Kitty being directly above him. Gadot stayed up on the balcony until last, as the rest of the crew descended the ladder, providing covering fire. Once they were all tucked into cover beside the walkway, Kitty did a quick headcount and nodded to herself.

  “Okay, Ladder Boss only claims one. It’s not ideal, but I’ll take it.” She reached for two flintlocks, crouching by the walkway as the deck shifted again, the ocean coming uncomfortably close to their level. “Let’s go get this sumbitch!” With that, she rose and rushed down the walkway, drawing enemy fire and soaking up a few rounds to her armor. The crew leapt up and followed her, Jimmy running and firing his BAR from the shoulder in an attempt to cover the Pirates’ queen. She charged forward, recklessly firing her flintlocks point blank at guards, sending them spiraling over the edge of the helipad.

  Their rush had the intended effect, as the remaining bodyguards fell to dust and left them in control of the VIP and helicopter. The VIP was an older man with a bald head and round face. As the last of his guards died, he tried to unbuckle himself from the helicopter seat. Kitty stepped up to the door and slapped his hand away from the belt. “No!” He froze, looking at her with a startled expression for a moment, before his hand moved towards the belt again.

  She pointed a finger at him. “I said no.” Her eyebrows were raised in a serious expression, and the NPC shrank back in his seat, hands clutching his briefcase to his chest. Satisfied, Kitty turned to look at her crew. “Okay, who’s flying? ‘Cause we need to leave.” To reinforce her statement, the ravenous ocean spilled over the lip of the helipad, swirling around their feet.

  Jimmy fired his BAR back the way they had come as police NPCs began to encroach again. Gadot took a splashing step away from the cockpit, shaking her head. “I’m more of a winged flight kind of gal, sorry. Choppers don’t make sense to me.”

  Rouge stepped forward and got into the pilot’s seat, firing up the engine and getting the rotors moving again. “All good. I got this,” the older woman said.

  Kitty hopped into the seat next to Rouge as the rest of them climbed into the passenger compartment. Jimmy continued firing at the police as the helicopter took off, banking sharply out over the water and turning away from the sinking cruise ship. “You guys are definitely going to want to strap in for this,” Kitty announced.

  Kurt’s eyes went wide, his hands moving to buckle himself in next to the VIP. The helicopter had seating for four, with two small bench seats facing each other. Jimmy and Gadot each strapped in before resuming fire on the surrounding police helicopters. Nels had crammed himself in on the other side of the VIP and looked around for a belt, before shrugging at Kurt and shouldering his rifle to help fend off the police on all sides of them. Rouge started climbing, and a dozen of the helicopters around them followed. She guided the helicopter straight up, rising at a rapid pace until the cruise ship was just a faintly gleaming blur receding below the waves, and they were surrounded by choking clouds and angry police helicopters.

  Jimmy and Gadot did their best to fend off the NPC police force, shattering windshields and punching holes in the engines of their helicopters, but the nine bar heat meant constant reinforcements. Each time a helicopter would fall away, Kurt noticed a fresh one taking its place on his map.

  “Umm, what are we doing?” Kurt leaned forward, sliding the door on his side partially shut to cover himself from police sniper fire.

  Kitty glanced back, her predatory smile in place. “Company has rules, Kurtis. We don’t.” She glanced at her wrist, flicking the map up onto the cracked windshield before gripping the armrests of her seat.

  Nels briefly raised a hand from his position, gripping at a handrail attached to the roof and bracing his feet while clutching at his rifle. “Miss Kitty? No belt for Nels.”

  Rouge shook her head. “Sorry about your luck, Nels.” She shoved the stick forward, beginning a steep dive and angling their approach over the barely visible city below them. Nels immediately bounced against the ceiling, let go of his strap, and tumbled from the open doorway as his rifle fired once into the cabin, causing Kurt to flinch away. Nels made a terrifying but mercifully brief grinding sound as he hit the rotors, and Kurt purposely looked away as silver dust puffed out around the top of the helicopter and trailed behind them, a glittering tail to their falling comet.

  Kurt and Gadot shared a look of abject terror, each gripping their armrests as the vehicle plummeted from the sky. Jimmy hooted his approval. Mechanical alarms were barely audible over the scream of the wind past the open doors, and Kurt struggled to look at his map. Each helicopter dot behind them had an upward pointing arrow, indicating the altitude difference. Airborne police pursuit was falling far away, the extreme descent beyond their ability to follow.

  Rouge began to pull up again, dramatically swinging over the city’s busy streets as she maneuvered the helicopter toward a large freeway overpass. Gritting her teeth in concentration, she eased the vehicle underneath the overpass, earning angry shouts from civilian NPCs below them. The rotors screamed and spat sparks as she came a little too close to a traffic signal, before the light box spun off the pole and terrified a nearby civilian.

  “Oops! I got this, it’s fine,” Rouge said while glancing at her rear rotor nervously. “Yeah, we’re good.”

  “You fill me with confidence as ever, Rouge, my darling.” Kitty was still gripping her belt with her eyes squeezed shut. The helicopter’s engines belched thick, black smoke and cut out briefly. They slammed onto the pavement, and the windshield shattered and fell around their feet in shards.

  Kurt lunged for the open door but was restrained by his belt. He fumbled at it for a moment, looking up in confusion to see Jimmy calm in his seat. “Should . . . should we run, maybe?”

  Jimmy barked a quick laugh at the ceiling. “Ha! Naw, man, this isn’t even bad yet. Chopper is still in one piece, we’re fine. It’s just a little shot up. It’s still good.” The engines came back online, and the helicopter lifted a few feet off the ground, though it shuddered and made a metallic screaming sound as it did. They hovered in the underpass, hiding from the police helicopters that swarmed past overhead.

  Each player watched the nine bar heat blinking on their phones. It dropped and Kitty gave a cheer. “Easy as can be! Well done, crew. Let’s get this a-hole turned in.”

  Jimmy nodded, a grim expression on his face. “Yeah, just like old times.” He sat back, one eyebrow raised as he looked at his phone. “Did that heat drop seem fast to anybody else?”

  Before any of them could answer, Kitty groaned and stamped her feet in a petulant display. She had looked back to check on the VIP. “He’s dead! There goes our bonus.” She arbitrarily glared at Kurt over her shoulder. “Thanks Kurtis!”

  He ignored her, rolling his eyes.

  The VIP was slumped over, clutching at the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. It appeared that when Nels had tumbled from the doorway, he had accidentally discharged his rifle into the hapless NPC.

  “I hate escort ops.” Kitty was still fuming.

  “We still have the case. That’s most of the take right there,” Rouge attempted to placate her.

  “Yeah, and it’s a huge take, but we just lost two hundred million because Nels couldn’t hold his fire.” Kitty scowled. She gestured at the briefcase, pointing out the handcuff for Kurt to pick the lock. As soon as it was completed, the case came free and the NPC’s body fell to dust.

  “I mean, the guy was getting killed. By the rotors, no less, that’s pretty harsh.” Jimmy shrugged, changing out the magazine on his rifle.

  Kitty glared at him. He calmly held her gaze until she huffed and got back into the passenger seat, grumbling to herself. “Acts like he never got killed by rotors before. I’ve been killed by rotors three times this week!” Her continued grumbles were cut off by the engine choking into life, a cloud of black smoke erupting from the exhaust above them.

  “Maybe we should drive,” Gadot said to no one in particular as she leaned out the doorway to look at their engine. It coughed fire as the rotors kicked back up to speed and they took off, hovering sideways out from underneath the freeway overpass. She grimaced and gripped her harness. “I will happily drive us!”

  They rose and swung out over the city, approaching a series of warehouses on the northern coast. Wind whipped through the cabin and forced Rouge to squint. “There!” she shouted, pointing to an abandoned drive-in theater. As they made their approach, the engines gave a final shuddering scream, belched another gout of flame, and forever stilled. Kurt gripped his harness as they began to plummet from the sky.

  “I’ve got this, we’re fine!” Rouge hauled back on the stick, slowing their descent as she attempted to auto rotate them down. The helicopter slammed onto the pavement, bouncing once and smashing their struts into the parking lot as they slid to a less than gentle stop against a nearby light pole. Rouge undid her harness and hopped out, turning and performing an elaborate bow.

  Kurt stumbled from the cabin, falling to his knees on the pavement and shaking his head clear. “This game is really not good for my nerves.”

  Jimmy slapped him on the shoulder. “Sure it is buddy! It’s, uh . . . yeah, it’s pretty rough at first. You’ll get there.”

  Swiping at her wrist, Gadot turned in a circle before walking towards the edge of the drive-in theater’s parking lot. “I’m getting us a car. No more flying for tonight, thank you.” She glanced back at Jimmy. “Back me up?”

  He shouldered his rifle and nodded once, his customary smile firmly in place.

  Kitty watched them leave, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed. Once they were out of earshot, she turned and gave Kurt a significant glance. “Well then. Shall we go turn this stupid case in?” Without waiting for a reply, she sashayed towards the nearby building, humming along with a song only she could hear.