“I’m not going, Mom!!”  

“Honey, if you’re not sick, you have to go to school,”  she said through the door.  Beez curled up into a smaller ball under his blanket.  He hadn’t slept in days.  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw those images again.  

“Just go away…”

His mother walked off and began talking to his father down the hall, but the door muffled everything.  He hadn’t wanted to believe his friends.  His father was a good person.  He’d always been there for Christmas’ and birthdays, and theirs weren’t.  Not always.  He'd always been quick with a smile and advice.  Good people don’t work for bad companies.  He couldn’t have been a part of...of that.

“Brandon?”  His mother’s voice wasn’t muffled by the door anymore, although he hadn’t heard it open.  “Brandon, your father and I think you need to get out of bed.”  She knelt down beside him and pulled back the blanket a little.  The circles underneath his eyes made her recoil slightly, filling her eyes with worry… but then she reached out a finger and tapped his forehead.  “Hey.”

“Ow!  Stop!”

“Hey!"  Tap tap.  "Wake up!”

Roxie was squatting right in front of him, her furrow-browed face hovering a few inches from his.  Beez gasped at the gun barrel touching his forehead and flailed his limbs in an attempt to climb up the wall away from her, but the layers of paper and trash beneath him caused him to skitter like a spider on ice.  

“Excellent hiding job.  Next time, maybe close the door behind you?”  She popped up from her squat and started heading back down the hall.  The boy got up more carefully and trailed after her.

“Did you have to kill all those men?”

“Squibs.  And no I didn’t have to, but it was way more fun that I did.”

“How do you know who I am?”  The stairs were vacant like before, but the noise level from the bottom floor felt wrong.  

“I… ah… keep tabs on certain people.  One of them went to your house with several of his friends.  Sorry about your parents, kid.  It was all over before I got there...” 

“Wait,” he cried.  “Do you work for…” He couldn’t even say the name.

“Long Chemicals?”  She spun around.  “Fuck no!”  Even though she was a step below him, she was looking him directly in the eye.  For the first time, there was a serious and terrifying glint in her eyes.  “My family is dead because of them.  I’m looking for payback, and you’re gonna help me.”

“But...but how am I-”  Just as suddenly as it appeared, the seriousness was gone.  The gleefulness was less comforting than it should have been as she reached up and tapped his forehead again.  With just a finger this time.  

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.  Lets just get outta here.”  He was pretty sure he knew what she was gonna ask him to do, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to-

Roxie had come to a stop.  He nearly bumped into her, lost in his own thoughts as he was.  She peered over the railing.  After a second, Beez did the same.  On the bottom floor, he could just make out the arms of several people running into the lobby from the street towards the first flight of stairs.  Gray sleeves.  One of them stopped and looked up.

“I suppose I could have closed the door,” she mused.  The boy jumped back against the wall as guns were pointed, but Roxie just jerked her head to the side.   Spackling, flecks of paint, and drywall dust rained a cloud of debris over her as she returned fire.  “C’mon,” she said, as she wrapped an arm around his stomach and lifted him up into the air.  He was momentarily stunned as she hefted him up onto her shoulder and darted back up the stairs they’d just climbed down.  His breath was slow in returning as he faced behind her.  Men in gray uniforms and helmets came barrelling up the stairs just as she rounded the corner.

“BEHIND!”

Roxie shook her free arm as she ran down the hall, and a small greenish cube popped out of the end of her sleeve and sailed over the railing,  The boy’s fearful eyes followed the arc of the box as it sank out of his field of vision.  Several men began to scream, but they were cut off by an awful explosion.  Roxie continued up the next flight of stairs.

“Put me down!”

“Why, so you can run away and leave more doors open?  No.  We do this my way.”  She paused at the top of another staircase and looked around.  “Crap."  Each time she looked in one way, he was able to see in the opposite direction.  There didn’t appear to be any stairs going higher.  "I think this is where we get off.”  She shrugged, and he slid down from her shoulder to her forearm.  When she started running, he tried to look forward, but it looked like they were just heading toward a window…

“No, don’t-”

With significantly more strength than he thought she’d be capable of, Roxie threw him.  He screamed as he flew backwards through a massive glass pane.  For a split second, he could see hundreds of little clear triangles dangling in the air around him.  Roxie dove through the window after him a second later, spinning in the air to fire behind her.  A second after that, Beez hit another window.  A woman’s scream filled the void as he landed hard, his breath leaving him in a rush.  Roxie hit the ground right next to him, but rolled up onto her feet and kept firing.  

An elderly woman in a blue showercap, wrapped in a bath towel, was swinging her soap-on-a-string at him and shouting a language he didn’t understand.  

“Stop staring, Beez!  That’s someone’s grandmother!”  Beez threw open the bathroom door and scampered out of the apartment with Roxie in hot pursuit.  Two floors down, Roxie grabbed his hand and kicked down the door to another apartment.  Two men in leather swivelled around to look them.  “We were never here,” Roxie said.  The two made no move to stop what her, although they had stopped what they were doing.  This time, Roxie threw him over her shoulder and fired one round ahead of them as she charged and dove.  

They building-hopped from window to window three more times before she finally lead him down to street level.  She held his hand as they melted into a crowd at an open market.  The building-hopping had been in random directions, but now that they were out in the open, Roxie was definitely heading in just one.  

“Where are we going?” The boy was starting to feel the grumbling in his stomach again.  Fear is a powerful motivator, but it will only get one so far.

“A safe place.”  

***

“Roxie, I…”  She hadn’t looked backwards in a while, only dragged him forward through street after street, but his pause caused her to finally look over her shoulder at him.  

“Damnit.”  She abruptly changed directions.  “We’re going to a friends first.  Someone trusty.”

Beez felt himself being dragged more literally.  His feet became increasingly sluggish as they went.  After crossing a few more streets, Roxie picked him up and threw him over her shoulder again.  It was a little bit humiliating to be carried around by a girl, but…

***

“C’mon, drink up,” she urged.  The boy’s eyes fluttered for a moment, struggling to focus on the cup and straw in front of him.  His lips floundered awkwardly, knocking the straw away several times before successfully sucking up any fluids.  It wasn’t water, but he drank it down all the same.  

“Kinda scrawny, ain’t ‘e?”  Beez didn’t recognize the voice of the speaker, but his eyes just didn’t want to open right now thank you very much.  

“Eh, he’s got potential.  That is, if I can get him to stop wetting himself.”  

“Are you kidding me?  I nearly wet myself when you come through the door.”

“So you’re saying it’s my fault?”  There was a dangerous edge to her voice, and Beez didn’t think he was the only one that picked up on it.

“No, of course not.  That would be silly.” 

She stood up and walked across the room.  The boy opened his eyes a little, watching her boots.  “Listen, I saw something on the way over here that I wanted to ask you about.”

“Sure, anyth-”  HSST.

Beez couldn’t be sure, but he was fairly certain he’d just seen Roxie bend her hand back at the wrist like Spiderman and spray the man in the face with a fine mist.  His eyes lolled and drooped, and she caught him as he began to slump forward.  

“Why don’t we go in here and talk about it,” she said softly.  Fearing she would look over, Beez tucked his chin down against his chest until he was sure they were in the next room.  He heard a chair scrape across the floor followed by a heavy thud, but then a few seconds after that, he heard them both start talking.  He’d started to feel better almost as soon as the liquid hit his stomach, and he thought he was up to trying to stand.  It took him a few tries, and the spinning had almost completely stopped by the time he was fully upright.

“Oh Helen,” he heard before he got to the door.  “It’s been so long!”

“I’m sorry I’ve, mmmmm, been away, dear!”  

Helen?  he thought.  Who’s Helen?  Carefully, he leaned farther and farther until one eye could peek around the door frame.  Roxie’s body suit was down around her knees, and the man for whom he had no name had bent her over a table.  He was completely naked too, with his hands on her hips.  Beez had never seen anyone having sex in real life before…

Roxie’s entire left shoulder, part of her arm, and as much of her back as he could see, were covered in pink scars, like a burn.  Her arms obstructed her breasts, although that wouldn’t have been hard.  Her body suit seemed to map her figure tightly, and she hadn’t looked very busty.  He thought he might be making out just the slightest hint of underboob... Her hair was down and out of the pony tail she’d had it in so he couldn’t see her face, but her moaning wasn’t dampened by it.

“My sweet Tay, I’ve missed you!  AHH!”  Beez had almost missed that Tay had a small tail hanging down between his butt cheeks, but that only held his gaze for a moment.  His real attention was on Tay’s… er… well… Beez had never really called it anything.  Penis is probably the best word for it.  “Yes!  YES!  Give it to me!!”  At her urging, Tay spread his feet a little and began really giving it to her.  “Yeeeees!  Oh Fuck Yes!”  Beez had watched some porn, so he knew a little about where things should be, but he felt like he was seeing a lot of Roxie’s... vagina?... from behind.  Wasn't that supposed to be kind of flush? 

Beez found himself putting his hand down his pants.  His own… penis… was halfway awake just from watching them.  After a minute though, he was fully erect and his pants were just in the way.  He quietly loosened his belt and let his pants fall down to his knees.  

While he was distracted, they had switched positions.  Roxie was now laying on the table with her legs splayed.  Her right leg was pointed at him in such a way as to block his view of her… vagina... but he could clearly see her breasts now.  They were little, just like he’d thought, but her nipples mesmerized him as they jumped up every time Tay pushed himself inside her.  Now that he could see more of her chest, Beez could see that the scars were only on one side.  The other side seemed to have a purple and green tattoo covering roughly the mirror of the scars.  It might have been in the shape of a flower and vine, but he couldn’t get a good look and he was far too interested in just watching her breasts bounce to really care.  

“Helen, I’m gonna-”

“I know!  Cum inside me!”  

Beez felt his… climax?... coming, and panicked.  With no other options he could think of, he reached down and grabbed his pants just in time to squirt two jets of… cum?... into the crotch of his pants.  He frowned when he realized it’d be impossible to pick out that stain against the other ones he’d put there today.  

By the time he looked back, Tay was flopped down in a chair, looking completely lost while Roxie was facing away and fixing her body suit.  Beez quickly slipped back over to the wall he’d been propped up against before, slurped down almost all of the remaining liquid, and pretended to still be asleep.  A few seconds after that Roxie came striding out.

“Beez!  Wake up!”

“Wha-wha… What?”  He thought he’d done a pretty good acting job, and Roxie seemed none the wiser, although her grin deepened just a hair.  

“C’mon!  We’ve gotta get moving, and that should tide you over until we get back.”  The boy didn’t need to fake wobbly legs as he stood, and he couldn’t stop from checking out his pants to see how noticeable the stain was.  “Don’t worry about that.  I’ll have The Motherfucker whip something up for you when we get there.”

“The… who?”

“Don’t worry about it.  Lets just get mo-”

“Helen!!?”  Tay shouted from the other room a second before he burst out, still naked.  “Helen, I…oh...”

“Helen’s dead, Tavius.”  Roxie looked extremely sympathetic as she put a hand on his shoulder.  “Four years now.”

“I’m… I’m so sorry.”  He looked crestfallen.  “I just had the most vivid dream that she was here…”

“Nope, just us.  We’re gonna get going, ok?”

“Yeah…yeah.  I'm sorry I couldn't do more, but... Feel better, kid.”  Tay waved weakly before turning around and heading back the way he came. 

“You gonna be ok?” The sincerity in her voice was thick, but Tay merely waved again.  Roxie nodded at the door, and they left.