Billy Deploys An Attitude Adjustment: Part 19: Birth of a Supervillain

Billy sipped his beer and waited for the chaos to ebb. This was a time for patience; the weirder shit got, the shorter it would last.

Billy made a quick mental census. The two extreme greeters Billy had shot had regained their footing and decided to regroup. They were hunched near the Slurpee machine, pointedly ignoring helpless and pathetic Twitch, as they formed a plan to liberate Mike from the bear’s armpit (or at least what was left of Mike after the bear had done whatever unspeakable thing it was doing.)

The remaining extreme greeter was in shock. He wasn’t upset about shooting his colleague near the backdoor; fog of war and all that. But when he’d shot the other team member simply to eliminate a witness…

That was cold. He was probably going to hell. He pondered this for a split second and then broke into a huge grin. He had a deep dark secret! He was now haunted and complex… like Batman! Oh yeah!

He felt an inner need to celebrate his new dark and tortured psyche. What luck; some nitwit in traditional Pakistani garb was just standing there! Years of training made it impossible to use the words “Islamic” and “terrorist” in the same sentence, but as a violent, dangerous man who’d just shot a friend in cold blood… it was time to go rogue.

Achmed had seen eyes glint like that before. He didn’t run out the door so much as blasted through it. Hot on his heels, the newly minted supervillain was shouting obscenities:

“Come back here you Jihadist bastard.”

Was he skipping? Yes, he was skipping! Like a camo-clad, rifle toting, psychotic Pepe Le Pew in pursuit of a doomed housecat.

Billy shrugged. That meant the count was down to two. Secretly he was a bit disappointed. He’d already nailed both twice. True, their body armor had done its job, but in Billy’s mind they were inadequate adversaries. Also, focusing on the bear indicated they assumed he’d fled (possibly out the back door where someone had been waiting!). He had retreated but not fled. He grinned malevolently. Their miscalculation would be their undoing. Billy stretched his neck, flexed his fingers, handed his empty bottle to Doogie, did a tactical reload, and reached for the cooler door.

The two men circled a growling Bart. They had decided to attack together; from the same flank. That way Bart’s attention would be split between “protecting” Mike (who was nearly stifled by armpit hair) and the two of them approaching in tight formation. They inched forward, stepping out from the sprinkler shower and under the hole in the ceiling; hoping to gain better footing on the less wet tiles. Unseen, Billy inched the door open…

BOOM!

The two men were flattened like a gnat struck by a meteor, as their colleague completed his epic 400’ flying knife attack. Billy shrugged, holstered his pistol, grabbed another beer, and strode confidently through the wet bloody wreckage.

“C’mon buddy, it’s time to go.” Billy patted Bart on the back as if he were a friendly dog. Bart sighed. He finally found a non-racist human and now he had to leave? He reluctantly complied, leaving the terrified and shaking mercenary lying flat on his back.

“You ok?” Billy asked politely. He was leaning against the upended hotdog roller sipping his beer.

“Gak!” was all the man could manage.

Billy reached down and grabbed the man’s rifle. He ejected the magazine and tossed it aside. It bounced of Twitch’s head, reminding everyone that the moaning green blob was actually a person. Billy ignored him. He cleared the chamber, visually checked it was empty, and dropped the rifle on the floor next to the immobile soldier.

“Erk.” The soldier replied.

Billy decided that was close enough to a clean bill of health and a promise not to start shooting as they left.

“Walk it off.” Billy advised sagely. Then he tossed the empty beer bottle into the wreckage, grabbed his K-cups and left. A subdued Bart and a shell-shocked Doogie followed. It had been an interesting shopping trip.