Joel and Phil relaxed in the slaughterhouse supervisor's office. It had air-conditioning and didn't smell of blood and offal. The Fifth Street Gang had the night off. The two men watched the highlights from the football game. The other gang members had gone home or crashed in the factory bunkhouse after playing cards. The two had made it through the bottle of scotch that Pauli had dropped off earlier.

"I can see the appeal of bootlegging." Joel dropped the empty bottle in the trash can.

"It's classic old school and your tax dodging. Maybe not as fun as pimping, but less risky than drug dealing," Phil said.

"I sleep fine at night over what I do. But simpler work, I can see the appeal," Joel said.

With the Arc Duke gone, it left the Fifth Street Gang leaderless. None of the old-timers wanted the job; more had retired to Florida. The Underboss, Crusher Mike told the gang to choose a Capo or he would. Pauli declined and left the gang to be an independent bootlegger. He would be missed.

Joel stepped up and purged the Fifth Street Gang of the members Arc had brought. He convinced a few old members, like Phil, to stay on as he built a professional gang. He slowly added Vor war veterans to fill out the numbers. The bitterness of the war and the treatment after, had left many veterans, Joel included, to be morally flexible.

Regardless everyone was glad to be free of the Havington security detail. And the Gang was free of Billhook. Both had been annoying. Billhook had been a liability in Joel's eyes. More importantly, Billhook was day labor without Cartel membership. Crusher and Joel had a sit down with Powers about Billhook's death. No one wanted to be seen taking revenge on a little girl who was a powerless sidekick. The matter would be dropped.

Glass exploded. Joel dropped to the floor. He grabbed Phil to pull him down. More glass broke across the run of windows. "Our one night off," Joel said.

"A golf ball?" Phil held it up.

"Golf ball?" Joel said. That explained the lack of gunfire. A ping ping ping of balls hit the building.

"Kill the lights," Joel said. Phil crawled to the switch.

Joel looked outside. Lights popped around the building, and windows shattered. Sparks skipped down the parking lot with each ball. A shadow of a gorilla in the night swinging the driver. This golf sniper was long-range and accurate. The fire alarm started to wail over the whole factory. The pings stopped.

Then a ball punched through the tin wall. It bounced around the room. Joel picked one up, a half-inch steel ball-bearing.

"Shit," Joel said. As more glass exploded. He crawled over to a storage locker. Inside the China Lake and a bandoleer of ammo.

"Phil. I'm going to deal with this Golfer. You get the gang and search the building for more," Joel said.

"On it," Phil said.

Joel pulled the power switch to kill the lights in the warehouse. At the fire panel, he turned off the alarm. Everything became quiet. The emergency lights had activated to flood the warehouse with points of bright light by the doors. He crept to the edge of the warehouse. The China Lake at low ready.

At the loading dock doors, something crashed into the wall. Tin sheets buckled. Joel opened the man door to a steel gorilla wearing a winged skull cap and a curled wire mustache.

Joel stepped back, and with a kick, the door swung open. Two rounds of 40 millimeter buck shot blasted out the door. He waited for his ears to stop ringing and topped off the buckshot. Joel pied the door in a wide arc, the China Lake at low ready. Joel ran to the corner and looked around.

Is it on the roof? Joel thought.

He looked up as an AC unit fell off the roof. It crashed to the ground just behind him. He ran back inside.

He saw Phil across the warehouse. Phil ran bent over as golf balls hit the tin walls.

"Joel! Do you have any grenades?"

"No, buckshot and flash bangs," Joel said.

"Now we got one with wings," Phil said.

"I saw it. Let me make a phone call," Joel said.

"Please. I hate this themed super powered shit," Phil said, keeping low.

"Come on, answer," Joel said as the cell phone connected.

"C O D Help Desk. Please hold," the voice said.

"Oh come on!" Joel said.

"I'm kidding," the Help Desk said.

"Jackass, I got a sniper out here at Locust. He's driving high-power golf balls at us. And a winged gorilla is smashing up the building," Joel said.

"Chill out. What do you need me to do?" the Help Desk said.

"Who's on call?" Joel said.

"You are," the Help Desk said.

"What?." Joel said.

"Yeah."

"Call Piedmont Atlantic. Tell them to back off on this site. We have an ammonia refrigeration system. The gorillas are placing the town at risk," Joel said.

"I'll call you back," the Help Desk said. Joel pocketed the phone.

"Useless. Phil, go find the hitters," Joel said.

“They’re out fighting that flying gorilla and dodging golf balls," Phil said.

"Baselines and super soldiers can take a few golf ball hits," Joel said.

His phone rang. "Joel? P A H A said it's not them.

"Bullshit. I saw the robot gorillas a week ago with Powers," Joel said.

"Those girls are crazy," Phil said.

"I read that follow-up, The Mean Girls had a utility truck?" the Help Desk said.

"Yeah, a white box truck. Find it on the satellite," Joel said. He could hear the keyboard clicks in the background.

"Got it, the West Access road. Opposite of your sniper?" the Help Desk said.

"Yeah. Tell Piedmont Atlantic to call Powers to reign in his students," Joel said.

"On it."

"Don't you have his number?" Phil said.

"I want to break shit before Powers gets here," Joel said.

Joel, Phil, and the gang he could spare left the warehouse on the opposite side of the sniper. The group followed the drainage ditch to the access road and crept up on the box truck.

"Don't kill any kids. We break everything else," Joel said.

Two men blasted shotguns into the tires. It dropped to the road in lurches. Phil opened the driver's side cab; with a step in, Joel rushed the privacy curtain. The back doors were open. The motors of the loading gate whined. That girl and a small gorilla in a golf cart lowered out of view. Joel watched the golf cart squeal its tires to drive off into the darkness.

Something moved next to Joel. King stepped out of his bay. His eyes flickering to life with a red glow.

"Run!" Joel pumped three rounds into King. Buckshot scattered off the robot's chest.

The men jumped out of the cab into a pile. Joel reloaded on the move. As he ran out, he dropped a flash bang hand grenade in the cab. Windows blew out with glass dotting the area. King jumped out the back as the flash lit the night. The truck rocked with the weight change. Joel back peddled to the ditch. Phil tossed a lit road flair into the cab. The men ran in all directions.

Joel, on the move, loaded a flash bang into the launcher, the last one. He stopped to look King in the face. He closed his eyes. The crack of light and blast staggered the Gorilla.

"Get back to the slaughterhouse." Joel said.

A ball zipped past Joel's head. Police sirens whined in the distance. Something fast with flood headlights could be seen off in the distance. Joel dropped down into the ditch. He topped off the China Lake as he ran.

The ditch brought Joel back to the slaughterhouse. He could see a winged Gorilla jump from roof to roof. It ripped the AC units off. The big one on the ground had run down the road to the parking lot. It started to flip cars. Sparks skipped off the pavement from the far parking lot with the ping of golf balls.

"This is gonna stop," Joel said.

He crept along the parking lot to a tool shed in the far corner. Joel unlocked the door. Inside he lifted a floorboard. Three tubes of black steel pipe lay hidden. Each, four feet long and six inches wide. The tubes had one of the ends capped. Inside was a shaped charge of plastic explosive topped with a disk of copper. These were for Powers or a tank. But should work on a steel gorilla. Joel lifted the pipes and dropped the China Lake and ammunition in the concealed compartment.

He supported a tube on his shoulder, carrying the other two by the rope straps. He ran the fence line the long way around to the sparks coming from the pavement. Ball bearings flew with a twang of steel on steel.

If I can get behind him, Joel thought.

Joel knelt with the tube over his shoulder, he lined up the Golfer in the notch and post sites and pulled the trigger. The plastic explosive detonated. A blast wave formed a cone as it pushed on the copper plate. Heat and momentum pushed the near-jellied copper into a ball that moved at three thousand feet per second. It hit the Golfer. Joel did not wait. He dropped the spent tube and ran off with the remaining two, a habit from ten years of fighting on alien worlds.

Two gorillas left. I want to get at least one more. Two shots, should go for the big one, Joel thought. He ran off into the dark.

The Lambo stopped at the burning Box truck. Rudy held his breath to walk into the fire; the truck was empty. In the distance, the slaughterhouse roof glowed with yellow flames.

"Susan's gone full supervillain," Rudy said.

He walked through the gate to the main parking lot. More fire burned with flipped-over cars. Black smoke climbed into the air over the slaughterhouse. Cattle ran by the fence line to escape the fire.

King lumbered out of the smoke into the parking lot. The robot roared as steel fists beat its chest with solid clangs. Rudy started to walk over to the robot gorilla. If the safeties were active, Rudy knew the shutdown commands. He heard the sharp crack and saw a flash somewhere behind King. The left side of King's body had a flash of light then buckled and ripped apart. The Gorilla toppled over as smoke poured from the side. Rudy waited for the night blindness to fade. He walked over to the robot. It reached a hand out to him, and the eyes blinked off.

"Shit," Rudy said.

"Hey Powers."

He looked up to see Joel walk out of the fire and smoke of the slaughterhouse.

"Who's paying for this mess?" Joel said.

"What was that?" Rudy said. He saw the steel tubes.

Those would work on me, Rudy thought.

"Fireworks for the summer picnic," Joel said.

"We'll talk about this later. I'm missing a student," Rudy said.

"She's in the back parking lot crying over a wrecked gorilla," Joel said. He slung the pipe over his back and walked away.

Rudy found Susan with a smaller gorilla at the wreckage of a much larger one. A set of golf clubs and a bucket of steel ball bearings. On the ground a few yards away lay a steel driver. She tried to rebuild the robot. The girl struggled with a hand wrench to attach the shoulder. He knelt next to her. When she looked up, Susan grabbed Rudy.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"What happened?" Rudy said.

"They hurt Colby. Everything went wrong.”

"Let's go back to school," Rudy said.

"I don't want to get expelled," Susan said.

"You won't," Rudy said. The school would never turn this girl loose on the world.

Gyaru had taken Colby down to medical on the second day. The three talked with the nurse for two hours. Colby agreed to sleep it off for another day. She felt better and less impulsive. Less prone to run wild. On the third day, Puddles helped Colby out of bed to the kitchen table.

"What do you want to eat?" Puddles said.

"If any is left, warm up the lasagna," Colby said.

"O.K," Puddles said. Colby picked up the TV remote to click on the news. Puddles came back with the food. A news story played about a new pet shop that had opened up.

"We should see if we can have a cat," Puddles said.

"School policy, no pets," Colby said.

"Misty has a cat in her room," Puddles said.

"Mrs. Mittens is her sole surviving family member," Colby said between bites.

The two girls turned to the television as a story ran about a mysterious robot gorilla interrupting crime around the city. Colby stopped eating.

"In breaking news, a battle on the outskirts of Locust at the Beef Rectum factory. Channel 99 Charlotte News Drone footage spotted Robot Gorillas at the Locust factory," The News Anchor said. An overhead video of King throwing cars played behind the Anchor.

"Becca? Who's watching Susan?"

"Oh shit," Puddles said.