Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 6: The Head and the Tail
Part 4: The School Invasions (Revision 3)
Part 4: The School Invasions (Revision 3)
3 september 2014.
waterfront. Shira gets off at the ferry terminal so she can enjoy the walk up the promenade as the sun sets. She looks from atop the bluff down at people walking the boardwalk, powerboats and sailboats plying the waters of Sinclair Inlet.
Once she passes the Harborside Steps that descend from Burwell Street, she notices people running in the other direction. One man in a panic grabs her and stutters, “D-don’t go u-up there. Th-th-they’ll kill you!”
Shira grabs his hands and gently takes them off her. She looks north and sees the klownz from the other night, just past the Fourth Street end of the promenade, sulking angrily. “Excuse me, sir, but this is my business. I have to deal with it. And don’t try to dissuade me. Please go.”
The man steps away from her reluctantly. “Miss, if I read about you getting killed in tomorrow’s paper, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He runs as fast as he can down the promenade, toward the ferry terminal.
Shira surveys the klownz from half a block’s distance. They don’t know what they’re in for. She smirks, and walks to meet them. Once she reaches Fourth Street, six Killen Jokerz surround her.
The biggest of them says, “We been lookin’ for you, bitch.”
Behind her, another klown says, “Yeah! Big Baddd wants you dead!”
“We gonna rape you, then we gonna kill you, then rape your pretty corpse, then eat you and take your head to Big Baddd. Then we gonna do the same to your blond girlfriend.”
“Get ready to die!”
Shira flashes them a contemptuous smirk. “Ha! Figures. Big Bad-d-d-d got more shit than brains in his head. I guess I know what to do now.” She quickly reaches back to unzip her backpack and extract a spray can.
The klownz laugh. The one behind her says, “She gonna paint us?”
The big one says, “Fuck that. Let’s fuck the bitch up.”
Shira sighs. “Oh, well. Your funeral.”
The klownz unsheathe their evil-looking Special Forces survival knives and rush her. She dodges them and smokebombs their faces. They cough and flail and cut each other. “Bitch!” roars the big klown. “We gonna cut you up!”
“And eat you!” shrieks his second. They rush her again; she sprays a fog that blinds them, effortlessly dodges their knives, directs their blows into each other, then sprays smoke into their faces again.
“I’d like you to know,” she says, “that this can contains fifty-percent AntiMeth™ at high pressure. Does really, really bad things to boosters who tweak. Sucks to be y’all.”
The klownz’ muscles start to twitch violently. They start to panic. The big leader blurts, “Oh, fuck—”
Shira runs up the hill, away from the klownz. “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!” They try to give chase, but their muscles are spasming so violently they can no longer move. She slips around the corner and disappears. Their muscles start to burst open. One by one, the Killen Jokerz gruesomely explode.
Shira watches the carnage fly past. She holds the AntiMeth spray can in front of her and stares at it in disbelief. “Oh. my. gawd—”
She hears screams from near their direction. The screams are soon joined by the wails of sirens.
COPCO Bremerton. “I never expected them to explode,” Shira protests. “AntiMeth is supposed to make tweakers puke, not boosters splorch.”
“No,” growls Shockley. “You were targeting them.”
“They were targeting me. Clearly you don’t know street gangsters, Princess. They’re all obsessed with their manhood. Uppity women like you and me insult their manhood. And if you insult their sacred manhood, they make you die. So you always gotta be prepared, and expect the unexpected.”
Sparks says, “Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If, of course, your vendetta hasn’t gotten in the way of your reason.”
Shockley glares back at him. “Who’s lost his reason?” She directs her glare down to his crotch, then back to his face. FBI agent and COPCO detective stare each other down for what seems an eternity.
4 september 2014.
school cafeteria. Shira stares open-mouthed through the big window at the crowd gathering outside just for her. “Holy Poe’s Law, Batman!”
Now it seems all the Shepherds of the Church of America, half of them named AMERICA!, have congregated outside Bremerton High, completely surrounding it in hordes, to pray in unison for Jesus America to strike Shira Thomas dead and her “liberal commie traitor” friends along with her.
Christian Fleer complains to her bitterly, “I bet you think this is funny.”
“Bet, Christie darlin’? It is.”
Her sister Charmian is clearly disturbed by Shira’s blithe nonresponse to the Shepherds’ mass death prayer. “Shira, yesterday morning you killed that terrorist just by looking at him. How can you not be affected by millions of prayers for your death?”
“Wanna know my secret? There’s no such thing as the ‘evil eye’ — unless you believe in it. Those Caliphate suicide agents? They’re superstitious in the extreme. They believe in the ‘evil eye’ with the blindest faith. That’s why I can kill ’em with a silly look I learned out of a comic book. They can’t do the same thing to me ’cuz I’ve got no faith whatsoever.”
“Just don’t do anything like that to them, Shira. Please don’t.”
“They don’t even need me, Charms. They can do it all by themselves.” Charmian looks at her in horror.
Satisfied that Jesus America’s work will be done and blissfully ignorant of their powerlessness, the army of Shepherds dissipates by the time the bell rings to signal lunch.
hallway. During the lunch hour, trouble of a more mundane kind comes when several huge Samoan gangsters invade the school. They home in on one black kid, Trey Phelan, in order to beat him up in retaliation for his gambler father’s inability to pay off his debts to their mob. Shira maneuvers Trey into a corner of the lunchroom and stands in front of him, blocking the gangsters.
Their leader, Antwaan Rockamora, gets in Shira’s face and barks, “Get the fuck out of our way, bitch! We gotta teach this worthless nigger’s daddy a lesson!”
Shira shrugs. “Sorry, Rockhead. I’m afraid Deuce Phelan’s too brain-damaged to learn any more lessons. You’re doing this for absolutely nothing. Just ask all my friends. They’re behind you.”
The gangsters look behind them and find themselves surrounded by three pretty boys (Connor, Cory, and Rob), one big guy (Kio), and two scary-looking girls (Jennifer and Leila). “Yo dawgz,” says Cory.
“Looks like all you Mokes are surrounded, massa.”
Rockamora snarls, “Fuckin’ bitch! Your pretty boys ain’t nothin’, and you is just a stupid-ass girl!”
“Sure, we’re way prettier than you ugly mugs. But any one of us is ten times the fighter as all o’ y’all combined. All’s you got’s big and mean. Big and mean don’t beat MMA.” Shira smiles.
Team Bremelo’s pretty boys hit their left palms with their right fists and smile. Jennifer and Leila glare menacingly at the big men; Jennifer punches the palm of her hand. Gangsters and fighters stare each other down for a minute that feels like hours. Silently, Rockamora gestures for his gang to leave. They walk away, stopping at the front door to glare back threateningly. Then they leave. Trey puts his arms around Shira, collapses onto her back, and lets out a massive sigh of relief. They hear applause and cheers from the student crowd that has gathered around them.
Jennifer walks up to Shira and looks back at the gangsters. “Looks like Team Bremelo have passed our first test.”
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[Revision 2, 7/6/11: Added “exploding klownz” scene from the later Project Notebooks, corrected text and continuity errors.]
[Revision 2.1, 7/7/11: Scene correction (Shira’s reaction to the exploding klownz).]
[Revision 3, 10/1/11: Corrected text and continuity errors.]
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