Guerrillero

Hanami
At twelve o’clock on the dot, the cab pulled into the driveway of the house on the hill. Pat closed the hood of his truck and stepped out of the garage to greet his visitor, attempting to wipe his hands free of grease. Oddly enough the portly cab driver was courteous enough step out and open the door for his passenger and then immediately scoot around to the trunk to retrieve several boxes stowed there.
From the cab stepped Pat’s better half. She briefly made eye contact with Pat before her eyes widened to take in the whole house. She covered her mouth and breathlessly said, “Oh Pat… this house, it’s absolutely lovely. It’s welcoming me home.” Pat smiled at her obvious excitement and allowed himself to take in the sight of her. His eyes drank in her waist-length black hair, dark brown almond eyes, her ever present smile with little neat teeth, the curve of the ball joint attaching neck to torso… Pat gave a guilty start once he realized his gaze had slid from Penny the Human to Penny the Fairytale. Despite the loveliness of her unmasked self, it often gives Pat cause for a minor internal crisis. One he deals with the same way every time.
Pat determined, for the umpteenth time, that he simply does not give a fuck what nightmarish twists on reality Penny brought with her when he met her; it was not too high a price to pay for her. Glancing at her luggage, he jokingly though, “Even if she does come with a lot of baggage.” Sheer stubbornness and humor dissolve Pat’s self-inflicted tension in a matter of moments. Striding forward he picks Penny up off of the ground. Her pleas of mercy to not touch her with his oily hands fall on deaf ears. “Welcome home from me too, Penny.”
Three weeks later Pat finished packing the picnic basket into the bed of the truck and blindfolded a giggling Penny. A short drive later and they arrived at an empty playground with a stout old Cherry Blossom tree in full bloom standing next to it. Pat spoke as he unloaded their lunch. “You are going to love this. My parents used to bring me here all the time.” Penny sat on the grass, arms wrapped around her knees. “Can I take off the blindfold yet?” she replied. Popping the cork to the wine, Pat poured them both a glass and set them on the checkered blanket next to the potatoes. “One second… and now!”
Penny’s reaction to the picnic went slightly different than he had expected. “This is the tree! This is the first real tree I saw when I escaped the Hedge! And there were children laughing in the playground!” Pat sat down and listened as she enthused about the feeling of coming into the real world for the first time. She had told him many things about many of her memories from her life before, and he was pleased to hear one that was a happy memory.
A little while later they lay on the grass and the conversation had lulled when Pat spoke up. “Would it be weird to name my gun Annie?” Penny, not missing a beat, stated, “Of course it would be. Its name is James. Calling it a girl’s name would be kind of insulting. It’s very macho.” Pat chewed on that for a moment, “How does it even have a gender? It’s an object.” Penny sat up and gave him a disappointed look. “We’re not exactly all that different from objects ourselves, and you wouldn’t dream of calling me Pat.” Pat, properly abashed, sighed, “Yeah… yeah… I suppose you’re right. That would be weird. Want some cobbler?”
==Fight and Flight==
It was while Pat was pushing Penny on the swing that their rather lovely day was ruined. Penny was insisting she could go higher when the gunshot rang out.
In the tree line stood, as far as Pat could tell, five anachronistic British Redcoats. To Penny, they simply looked like men with red coats and rifles. The soldier to the fore had a smoking pistol pointed in the air, while the other four had muskets leveled at Pat and Penny. The smoking pistol soldier yelled out to them, “On the authority of the Master, we insist you surrender posthaste and with as little fuss or muss as possible. If we see any sort of illicit Contracts, little lady, we will kill the fetch. Wounding you is also permitted.”
Pat scowled and placed his hands on his head, nudging Penny to do the same. The speaker, and likely leader, of the Redcoats holstered his pistol and drew another one, approaching his two new prisoners. “Well, that was easy enough. Now hop along that away, we’re to march you into the Hedge lickety-split. And don’t try nuffin’ funny, soldier, you’re the expendable one.” Pat shrugged. The two were unceremoniously pushed into the tree line. “I’ll be right back for you.” Pat whispered to Penny, and as soon as they entered the shadows cast by the trees he was gone.
The walrus mustached leader of the Redcoats seemed visibly annoyed by this turn of events. “Shite! Franklin, find him! Gag and bind him if you get the chance, kill him if it is convenient. Ross, go fetch the cannons and have the others begin searching!” The two soldiers nodded and disappeared in the same manner as Pat, simply ceasing to be there once covered in shadow. “Johns, let us find a nice open field with no overly large shadows while Franklin takes care of our escaped prisoner. We’ll not walk in a forest full of shadows with a programmed killer about. Andrew, stay by that red wagon. It doesn’t appear to need horses to move, so we don’t want to give him the chance to escape in it. If we have to, we wait for night; he’ll have no shadows to run through then.”
For two hours Pat had played cat and mouse with this Franklin fellow.  Now, finally, Pat found himself in a position to quickly and cleanly take out his opponent. After leaving fake tracks for the first three quarters, Pat switched to no tracks at all, sufficiently confusing the Redcoat long enough. In a burst of movement Pat grabbed the soldier from behind with a chokehold. The oxygen starved soldier desperately elbowed Pat in the ribs, but failed to force him to release his grip before finally passing out. Pat slumped down, gingerly poking at his bruised ribs. After a quick breather, he gathered up the fallen musket and the knife on the man's belt. Noticing the Redcoat’s canteen he took an experimental sip. It was some sort of sweet juice unfamiliar to Pat. After a few swallows his body, and more importantly his ribs, began to feel in fine form. “Yep, definitely keeping this.”
                After a few minutes of fiddling with it, Pat realized he didn’t really have much an idea of how to use the musket. The basic principles made sense, but he was reasonably sure he would be shot and killed before he had it down. On the other hand, affixing the bayonet seemed remarkably easy, which he did as he left. This chase had led Pat well away from the playground, which judging from the sun was East. It was after half an hour of hiking in that direction when Pat was completely surprised by an unfamiliar Redcoat. The Redcoat, a red haired fellow with a bulbous nose, seemed equally surprised and fumbled for a whistle at his belt, which he dropped.
            Intent on silencing the man immediately, Pat charged the soldier, bayonet leveled. The man backpedaled into a tree and the bayonet sunk into his chest, through the lungs. As he gasped for oxygen his skin flickered and faded, becoming tin before Pat’s eyes. Pat dropped the bayonet, marginally horrified at the ramifications of having killed a tin soldier. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that he felt guilt, but the knowledge that he had so much in common with these mysterious time-lost soldiers was immensely unsettling.  But Pat dealt with this the same as always, it was well worth the price. Swiping a looking glass in a leather case from the body, Pat ran on.
            Pat reached the tree line another half hour later, stopping periodically to listen for more of the soldiers, and staying silent and still for several minutes when a group of three ran past him at one point. Peeking out of the shadows he could see Penny and two soldiers in the middle of a field. Pulling out his purloined telescope, Pat could see that Penny and the soldiers were having tea of all things. Penny looked fine, still smiling of course, except for the manacle linking her to the Redcoat who had been giving orders so far. Abandoning that position, Pat rounded the hill and found his truck on the other side, guarded by a single soldier. Pat was going to need the truck to get Penny out of the park swiftly, and he hoped it could stop musket balls. The sun was starting to get low, but still had plenty of light for Pat’s needs.
            Pat dropped down to the ground and belly crawled into a nearby shadow, coming out underneath the truck. He stifled a pained grunt as he accidentally banged his head into the undercarriage. His apprehension at being heard was relieved when the booted feet next to his head did not stir. Pat ever so silently slid out from underneath the truck, up the side, and into the bed. The soldier had his back to Pat, looking towards the tree line. Grabbing a roll of duct tape from an open box in the bed of his truck, Pat then put his knife to the man’s throat, and slapped a hand full of tape over his mouth. “Drop your gun and put your hands on your head.” Pat whispered.
            It took a while, and all of Pat’s tape, but the man was fully bound. Although cocooned seemed more accurate to Pat. Satisfied the soldier was going nowhere; Pat revved up the truck and sped off towards the field with Penny. As he rounded the hill Pat honked his horn, hoping that trucks were intimidating to men who still used muskets. Figuring cavalry charges probably scared them plenty, he aimed the vehicle right for their tea party. The two soldiers leapt to their feet and both managed a shot at him with their muskets. One cracked ball cracked the windshield and Pat was unsure where the other went. Still quite a distance away the soldiers had enough time to pull out pistols and fire again. Pat swerved at the last second, clipping one of the soldiers, before slamming on the breaks and throwing open the door for Penny. Looking out, he saw the other soldier wrestling with the end of the manacle that was moments ago attached to Penny.
            Penny hopped into the truck, accompanied by her radiant smile. “You’re late.” Pat peeled off away from the field, orienting himself towards home and more importantly his guns. “Why didn’t you just take control of their guns and get out of there?” he asked, noticeably agitated. Penny turned to him, “Several reasons. One, they had quite a few guns and there is only one of me. Two, I am no good at hiding in woods, and they seemed awfully good at tracking. Three, I wanted to make sure you were fine. Fourth, and this didn’t come up until later, they had tea. But most importantly, I had something far more interesting in mind.” Pat just stared at her, “I’m not sure how to respond to that, so let’s go.”
                They had almost reached the main park road when they saw the two cannons. Pat was equal parts angry and baffled; Penny seemed to take it in stride. The first cannonade forced Pat to swerve wildly. He immediately began twisting the wheel hard to turn the truck around when Penny grabbed his hand and shook her head, “We don’t need to run, something interesting is almost here.”
                Pat felt more than heard the shudder rumbling through the ground. He saw one of the cannon loaders drop his equipment and gesture wildly at the way Pat and Penny had just come. The cannons swiveled their aim away from Pat and Penny and fired behind them. Pat twisted around to follow the arc of fire to see the cannon balls strike the playground, one hitting the slide and the other breaking a few bars of the jungle gym. Providing a bit of much needed context to Pat for this confusing scene was that the playground was galloping towards the cannons at high speed. To the cannoneers credit they managed to load and fire another salvo before the playground crashed into them with a horrible metallic wrenching sound, throwing itself and the cannons free of the road into a massive pile where it shivered and heaved. Pat quickly gunned the truck past the wreckage while Penny shouted out sincere thanks to the uprooted playground.
                Pat was more than a bit peeved when he glanced in the rearview mirror and realized his chance for a breather was ruined. Behind them, leaping great distances in single bounds, were several bizarre five legged spiders. They had little to no details on them, suggesting spider more due to their many limbs and skittering nature than any clear spider like parts. Pat wasn’t sure whether no face at all was creepier than a spider face or not.
                The lead spider leapt for the truck and Pat swerved away in response. To his surprise, and anger, the spider jerked to the side in midair and landed true on the side of the truck. Its metal shod legs punched holes in the side as it latched on and skittered to the driver’s side window. Steadying itself with three legs the spider began pounding on the window with the other two. Three more spiders joined the first, denting the roof as they landed, and skittering to respective windows to force entry.
                Penny traced the cracks in the glass that appeared near her, sealing them soon after they formed, but with Pat’s window out of reach to her it soon shattered. Pat grabbed his stolen knife and looked to Penny, “Grab the wheel.” Then he leaned out and stabbed the spider trying to crawl in through his window. Penny simply nodded and looked to the wheel: “Wheel, take the wheel,” promptly returning to her self-appointed duty of repairing the windows.
                Pat was disappointed to learn that the spider was made of wood and therefore not much bothered by being stabbed. He was more disappointed by the gash he took across the face for his troubles. The spider latched onto him with two legs and almost yanked him out of the window, Pat’s only saving grace being his seatbelt wrapping itself around his waist and dragging him back in. Face to face with the spider, Pat noticed that each leg had a nearly invisible string leading up into the sky. Where to, Pat had no idea, the sky was blue and cloudless.
                Pat swung the knife at the nearest thread and was overjoyed when the string snapped and the associated leg immediately went limp. The spider scrabbled to keep purchase minus one leg and with a little help from Pat, it failed to do so. Despite falling off of a speeding truck with one leg less than it was used to, the spider landed neatly and gently on the road, practically floating down.
                Pulling himself fully back into the car with the help of the seatbelt, Pat regained control of the wheel, his first act being to jerk it hard to the left at the first crossroads. Another one of the spiders abandoned its attempt to destroy faster than Penny could repair and moved to the open window. It was attempting to crawl in upside down when it was rudely interrupted by the truck passing underneath a bridge. All three spiders were violently torn from the truck as their strings caught on the bridge, even leaving behind a few legs.
                Stopping in the middle of the tunnel, Pat and Penny cleaned up the gash on his face and the scrapes on his stomach from leaning out of a broken window. Pat pulled out his stolen juice and put it to his lips before deciding that he should save as much of it as possible for later, Penny glancing at the canteen quizzically. Once assured he wasn’t bleeding out, Pat started moving again, not wanting to find out if there were more soldiers searching for them. What was waiting for them at the end of the tunnel, however, were all four spiders. One seemed mostly fine except for its limp and the other three were in varying degrees of mangled.
                Pat took their posturing as a challenge and ran them over. The truck spun out as two of the tires popped. Stepping out of the truck Pat could see that the two most wrecked spiders had sacrificed themselves to tear his tires to pieces, being crushed under the rims they had exposed. The other two scuttled closer, cautious of Pat’s knife. “Out of the truck, Penny, I need it.” Penny nodded and hopped out. Pat placed his hands on the truck and strips of its frame began peeling off and circling Pat. As he continued to tear apart more of his truck to form his whirling armor, one of the spiders ran up to him and stabbed him in the leg. Sadly for the spider, it had chosen the wrong leg, the blow glancing off.
                Spinning around Pat grabbed the offending spider limb, sparks striking where his armor glanced off of the metal clad end. A simple wave of his other arm over the spider’s body severed all of its strings, causing it to fall into a pile of kindling. The final spider, with the single severed string, warily circled Pat. After a few back and forth feints, Pat grew impatient and decided to become the aggressor. He leapt forward and grabbed the spider by the leg, quickly whittling it down with his protective spinning blades. The spider in turn leapt far up into the air, taking Pat with it.
                Reasonably fearful of falling, Pat struggled to pull himself on the back of the spider to have more surface area to hold onto for dear life. To his horror, his armor severed the strings of the spider, causing it to immediately begin dropping. Pat hit the ground quite hard.
                A few blurry moments later, he swam into consciousness to find Penny pouring his pilfered juice down his throat. He could only sputter, “How’d you know the juice was magic?” to which she easily replied, “I asked the bottle, silly.”
==To Smell a Rat==
Magical healing juice apparently has limits to what it can do and Pat was forced to limp the rest of the way back home, with a lot of help from Penny. At this point the sunset had painted the sky a brilliant red punctuated by fat orange leechlike clouds. Once inside their house Pat told Penny to begin packing what they needed while he soaked away his pain in the tub. It wouldn’t be difficult for these soldiers to track Pat and Penny from the park to their home, so it seemed time to make preparations to leave.
Not even bothering to remove his leg, Pat laid in the tub. After the first rinse he drained and then refilled the tub, just soaking in the heat. He finally had his chance for a breather and was even dozing off when the sound of baying cut through the air and woke him. Pat leapt out of the tub and skidded across the floor, slamming into the bathroom door. Yanking himself up by the towel rack he ripped it right out of the brackets and flung open the door. Pat hopped across the bedroom as he slid into his jeans and made his way to the gun vault. He cocked his ears as he dealt with the infuriating trivialities of alpha-numeric codes and the loading of guns. Outside the baying was silenced and a chorus of voices spoke out at once,
“Penny, that is the name you've chosen, yes? My dear, do me a favor and come outside. And leave that nasty knife inside.” Pat cursed quietly when he heard the door open and close. Either someone had come in or Penny had gone out, neither a situation that appealed to him. Crouch-running past the stairs leading to the ground floor, Pat made it to the second floor drawing room and peeked out the window.
Framed by the setting sun was the disturbing figure of some man-beast with four heads, each head having large ears and a long snout. It had a long wormlike tail whipping back and forth. Its hands held onto lengthy leashes pulled taut by the four piranha headed hounds tied to the ends of them. Walking down the porch and to this monstrous figure and its science-experiment gone wrong pets was Penny. Pat was very much not pleased by this and only slightly relieved to see she was at least carrying his old baseball bat. All four heads tracked her movement across the yard before she stopped a good twenty feet away from him and spoke.
“Good evening, Philippe. That is two favors. Would you like to use anymore?” One of the heads spit to the side as the other three spoke.
“Oh, you wound me my little ballerina. Why would you bring a club with you? You have nothing to fear from me, after all, I did track down those fetches that were hunting you and set the fishdogs on the ones that had almost made it here.” Penny shrugged.
 “I’m going back inside,” she plainly stated and turned to leave. The rat heads argued amongst themselves for only a few seconds before they spoke as one again. 
“Another favor. Stay here until we are done speaking. I detest using force on your sensitive skin.” Penny stopped, and turned back around, anger visible in her stance if not her face. 
“And what would you like to speak about? The weather? How your fishdog breeding fares?” The rat heads shook their heads, amazingly keeping from knocking them together, and replied. 
“Not at all. I wish to convince you to come to Arcadia with me. I am a Baron, as you can see now, and I have the power to hide you. More importantly, I know where another Baron is. He looks delectable and once I have eaten him, you will find that a Count offering friendship is nothing to be spurned.”
“No Philippe. I am done speaking with you, and therefore will be going back inside.” Atta girl, Pat thought. The Rat did not agree.
"Stop! We are done speaking when I will it!" The Rat Baron's form seemed to ripple under his ornate clothing. "You owe me many favors Penny, and you will do me the favor of returning to Arcadia with me. Penny paused on the first step of the porch. Pat held his breath. Without turning back around, Penny spoke.
"I don't owe you any singular favor, or any combination of favors worth that. I hope you have a nice evening Philippe. Goodbye." The door slammed behind her. There was a moment of silence broken by the whine of the fishdogs. Then came the yowl of rage from four maws gnashing the air with needle-like teeth. The rat-thing dropped the leashes of his piscine hounds and they bolted towards the house. The Rat pulled an old worn axe from his belt, stained white from use, and advanced on Pat and Penny's home. 
Pat unlatched the window and swung it open. At the squeeze of the trigger Pat felt the tension unwind from his shoulders. A single eye on a single head on the overly broad shoulders of the Baron To Vermin exploded. Despite the sound of breaking glass as the hounds broke in through the windows, it seemed overly quiet to Pat. Two of the living heads swiveled to glare at Pat while the third began devouring the limp fourth head.
"Your fetch has forfeited its existence Penny!" One head screamed as the second continued to glare murderously at Pat and the third continued gorging on the fourth. Pat pulled the trigger again. As the bullet raced towards the Rat his clothes bulged then tore violently apart. His form fell apart into a plague of rats, the bullet striking relatively harmlessly into expendable bodies. The rats promptly began clawing their way over each other and up the wall, towards the window. Pat promptly began backpedaling from the window. 
Running towards the stairs, he was intercepted by a fish-hound stalking up them. The wolf sized beast with the piranha maw was not something Pat wished to tangle with. Backing up, Pat tossed his gun and then leapt over the hound and down the stairs. He did, however, wish that he had enough magic pixie dust or whatever it was called to make him land softly. Pat rolled on the landing to ensure he didn't snap his ankle or rip his prosthetic off, but he certainly made whatever small fractures he had from his last fall worse. Laying on the ground, on his back, Pat could see the fishdog turning around the follow him. That is when the swarm of rats reached the stairs and came pouring down them. 
Pat grabbed the gun and ran as the voracious rats tore apart the hound, its howls chasing him through the halls. Quickly checking the rifle for damage he ran into the living room where Penny was cornered by two of the dogs. A third lay dead in the middle of the floor, its face slashed to ribbons. Each lunge at Penny's ankles by the fish-headed beasts was met by her glimmering knife, it seemingly guiding her hand precisely where it needed to be.
Pat shot the two dogs dead and grabbed Penny by the wrist, almost getting a cut on his hand as her knife swung at him, his only saving grace being Penny jerking the knife back just in time. The two ran out the front door, taking care to avoid a small pile of dead rats, each one with an open raw wound where its left eye should be. Pat guided Penny to the shed and slammed the door behind them. He immediately began stuffing rags and blocks of wood into gaps in the structure.
"I won't be able to shoot that many rats. We've got to burn them out, everything should be in here. Grab those coke bottles and start filling them with gasoline." Penny grabbed the gas tank and began meticulously pouring gas into the bottles, nary a drop spilled. Pat tossed her oily rags and then began tearing apart the shed looking for the grill lighter. Pushing one box off of the shelf to get behind it, the box burst open on the ground revealing two of the lighters. The first was dry of butane but the second lit true. Skittering sounds came from the walls.
Pat wet a couple of disposable masks he used when sawing and handed one to Penny, nodding at her. She lit the bottles and ran to the door, throwing it open. Pat, torches in hand, ran out into a sea of glittering red eyes and worm tails. He tossed the bottles and the flames splashed and spread across the ground, burning his bare foot and chest. Pat and Penny ran out past the inferno, both looking back at their pursuers, then slowing, and finally stopping. The rats were gone. 
Pat spun around looking for an attack from some other direction. A soldier in the trees, a spider from the air, rats at his feet, or a hound at his throat. But the night was silent except for the crackle of flames. He ran to the porch and looked in through the open front door. All still silent Pat went and grabbed the hose to put out the fire. Then he sat down in exhaustion as Penny smoothed his hair.
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Fishdogs are spawn of, or possibly parasites, or maybe symbiotes to the Terrible Dogfish. They have canine bodies and the heads of piranhas. They seem to work fine on water and land, providing the Terrible Dogfish with grooming in the water and tracking any of its prey that has gone to land. The Rat makes a hobby of breeding these beasts and using them to track down his obsessions.
Characters involved in this Chronicle: Penny, Pat Takahashi
Category:Fiction