I kick a large metal table over and throw Jackson behind it before I rush at the man. He’s still getting his gun up when I swing the racket at his head and question why exactly I chose to swap out the crowbar for the Racket of Reckoning. I honestly reckon it’s not going to damage this guy’s face as much as a crowbar would have, and am proven right when he acts like I gently patted his cheek with it. Four more men rush in as I flip the racket on its side and try to use the hard edge to hit him, but it’s really such a shitty weapon when we get down to it, so I flip it around and instead try to ram the edge of the handle into the man’s eye. Now that? That one works quite well. He yells out a curse while he falls back into one of his buddies, blocking his ability to attack. If I keep them jammed at the door, not too many can come in at once.
“My fucking eye! My fucking eye!” he cries.
“You don’t deserve to look upon my husband’s beautiful body with two eyes,” I snarl.
A glass goes whizzing on by me, but I don’t notice this until I’ve stepped into the path of Jackson’s second glass as it smashes into the back of my head. Thankfully, I have the helmet on or it might have hurt.
“Ow! Honey! Attack them, not me!”
“I’m so sorry!” he calls.
“Better yet, hide behind that table your husband lovingly set out for you.”
“I’d rather not,” he says as a man uses my distraction from Jackson’s assault on my head to slam into me. He drives me back and tries stabbing me with his knife. I slide the racket up and hisknife gets caught in its strings. I twist it up and it pulls the knife out of his hands.
I try to gain the knife for myself with the intent of stabbing them or cutting open my clothes so I can get my gun out, but a third man makes the racket and knife go flying.
“Babe, get these clothes off me. That’s your new mission.”
“Why?” Jackson asks as he throws what looks like a VHS tape in the air and hits it with the bat. I watch while it smashes a man in the face and my love for him explodes all over again.
“Thatwas the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” I whisper.
“Stay focused, please.”
“I’m the master at being focused. Like I’m focused on this guy trying to murder me,” I say as I back up and grab the crowbar off the wall.
They seem to think that’s a bit more menacing than the Racket of Reckoning, which I reckon I also wouldn’t have been as concerned over.
I smash one man in the side with the crowbar as I shove them back, hoping to get Jackson and myself away from the room that has no other way out. And when I see that five people weren’t all they sent, I reconfirm why I didn’t want to be backed into a room with no other exit. Another man pulls a gun out, so I dive for the one that ended up on the floor, but a woman, seeing what I’m doing, kicks it back. The gun slides out of reach while one of the men swings a knife at me. He quickly finds out the difference between a short weapon and a weapon with a longer range when the crowbar gets him in the face and he hits the ground, knocking someone behind him back.
I get three more down before Jackson makes it out of the room and hits one away from me with a baseball bat. He helps me take down three more as they’re forced to realize that using guns in a hallway this narrow with as many people as they have is not going to turn out well for them.
A man shoves me back against a door while I tilt the crowbar with the plan of smashing him in the side of the face just as the space behind me disappears.
The last thing I was expecting was for the door to open, and it wouldn’t have been the biggest deal if not for the men pushing against me so hard I go flying into the room. Immediately, I trip over the woman who’d opened the door, and she hits the ground hard with a cry.
“Shit,” I hiss as I hook her, grab a plate that’s sitting on a desk by the door, and ram it into the side of the guy’s head. When it breaks, I hold the shattered ceramic and drive the piece into his thigh. He howls and draws back.
“Jackson, get my suit off. Cut it off if you need to,” I say while I flip a table and guide the woman and her friend behind it. I try to get out of the room, but the remaining men are simply following me, leaving the two women inside terrified and vulnerable.
“Stay behind the table and don’t move. Heads down and protected,” I urge them.
I grab a man in a choke hold, using his body to cover my vitals as I grab the zipper on my jumpsuit. It’s like the damn thing refuses to let go of me.
“Police! Get on the ground and put your hands up!” a woman shouts.
“I would love to,” I say as I throw the man back and put my hands up enough that she knows I’m not a part of this. Jackson mimics me, but the guys who are left seem to think she’s of no concern and that this is an opportune moment to come after us.
“Drop your weapons and get on the ground!” she orders, but when one of the men turns on her, she doesn’t have time to react before I hear his gun go off.
I hold my hand out and Jackson throws something at me. I grab it and wonder why exactly he threw me a VCR, but I rollwith it. The moment the man in front of me tries to punch me, I whip the VCR around by its cord before smashing it right in the side of his face. Not ready to let my VCR go, I pull it back to me by the cord and ram it at another man’s face hard enough that he falls back, and Jackson knocks him to the ground with The Bat of Bludgeoning.
There are only two left standing, and all I have to do is get them down, but the last one is quite trigger-happy. He shoots again and I throw his buddy in front of me. The man I’m holding on to screams when he takes a bullet to the side. He tilts away from me as the guy tries shooting again and nearly gets his buddy a second time before I throw the wounded man to the side and grab the final man. I tear his gun out of his hand, smash it into the side of his head, and throw him on the ground before I look around at the carnage.
Really, not too shabby for being unable to pull out my gun.
“Officer, are you alright?” I ask while I grab the guns our attackers had held and unload them before sliding the unloaded guns her way. “Where’s your partner?”
