Ex-boyfriends And The Attacks They Bring

And sometimes capers are determined for you.

I awoke this morning to a pounding on my door. Well, my door was pounded through is a more accurate description. I ran to the front door dressed in a black Jolly Roger t-shirt and underwear, but I was armed with my laser rifle. The anchor trap I had set up clanged to the ground and I heard a man cursing. The pure volume of the swear words told me who it was.

My ex-boyfriend, Johnny Mars, was standing there heaving the huge anchor off his body. At first I thought the anchor had nearly killed him but then I realized that all the blood and burnt clothes must have come from something else. I was a little taken back. Johnny was almost invulnerable but he was near death here.

"Who's that?" Angela asked. The girl was clutching another laser rifle and was aiming right at Johnny's head.

"An ex," I said. "Johnny, what in the seven seas are you doing in my lair? And you're paying for that door!"

"Help Scarlett," he groaned. "I'm being chased."

"Chased?" I screamed. "What the hell did you bring them here for?"

Johnny fell to one knee. "Cause they killed all my other friends tonight."

The smart thing would have been to throw him out. Curiosity and an urge to shoot something got the better of me.

"How far behind you are they?"

"Close," Johnny groaned.

"Bots! Rally around the entrance, Shoot first, identify target later!"

Angela looked at me. "I guess you want me somewhere safe where I won't get hurt?"

"What? Of course not. You got a gun, and you heard my orders. Shoot and we'll figure out what it is later!"

My Bots came running into position just in time for 1stMateBot to take a laser shot to the face. I dived for cover and dragged Angela with me. Johnny was still out in the open but the boy can fend for himself. The Bots returned fire and were greeted with a swarm of laser shots as payback. It was a freaking shout out for five minutes before I finally got to see what they were shooting at.

It was monkeys. I don't know the breed or the type as I don't watch those kinds of shows on the Discovery channel. They were a little over three feet tall and screeching their heads off. Cybernetic weapons bristled over their bodies from chest armor to missile launchers mounted on their shoulders. The front of my not terribly secret lair was illuminated in multiple laser targeting beams. Over half of them were flying on jets hooked to their backs.

"Monkeys?" I yelled at Johnny.

He just shrugged and stood up. A few laser shots glanced off him but he walked over to that anchor I had and picked it up. Cursing and yelling, he spun around and swung that anchor at a batch of the monkeys. They all scattered but he did catch a few. I guess even primates can be dumb founded by having something that heavy thrown at them.

It did piss off the monkeys as they came charging into the lair. I really wished I was wearing something more substantial than a t-shirt and underwear but you fight crazed cybernetic simians with the clothes you got, not the clothes you want. They poured into the lair by the dozens and one monkey actually threw some poop at me before firing a double pair of personal rockets at me.

I dodged all three missiles and gave the monkey a close range rifle blast to the groin. Little bastard.

Angela was doing fine though she was missing a lot and just resorting to rifle butting the monkeys when they got close. One tricked out chimp tried to shoot some sort of web at her, but the gal was smart enough to duck under the cover of a empty crate when she had to. Having a lair inside an old warehouse pays off in times like these.

My Bots were doing pretty damn good which filled me with pride. The monkey's weapons weren't hurting my Bots as much as I would assume after seeing Johnny's wounds. I can only guess that they must have been hunting him all night and just wore with down. The monkeys' small sizes made them hard to hit by humans but my Bots were shooting at an almost 90% accuracy rate. That's just one of the handy stats I get from my cybernetic eye.

The bulk of the monkeys were fighting Johnny and the punk was doing pretty good. Johnny's a mutant with super-testosterone, which means he will sleep with anything that moves, thinks he's the best there is at everything and can't back down from a fight even when he is at death's door. if anything, i think the fight was good for him. He was getting quicker by the second as he smashed monkey after monkey into the ground. I could have done with less of him smacking his chest like he was King Kong.

Ten minutes later, all the freaking monkeys were done. Three of them tried to fly away but me and the Bots shot those punks down. I didn't want any getting back to base and reporting my location. Hell, I was just hoping these things weren't remote controlled or something. I'd hate to move my lair at this stage.

The bad part was we had a lot of dead monkeys. I ordered BosunBot and Angela to start stripping the monkey carcasses of their cybernetic bits for salvage later. The rest of the Bots I ordered to rebuild and clean up the entrance. It was kind of hard to be a secret lair with blown doors.

"All right, Johnny," I said. "Why were Seek-and-Destroy George and his friends out to kill you?"

Johnny stopped punching the dead monkey he had in his hand. "Scarlett, you wouldn't believe the crazy people that live in this city. I was working for this one guy, and he got mad at me. So he sent all his commandoes after me. Since he was trying to kill me, I robbed his safe before I left. You're the only one who's been able to help me fight those dirty animals off me."

What the?

"Johnny, you're not making any sense. Who's trying to kill you? Why are they mad at you? And what did you steal from the-Oh that's just great."

Johnny Mars decided to pass out at that moment. I shouldn't be surprised. He always fell asleep when it was time to talk. Sure, he succumbed to his wounds, my butt.

This is going to be a crappy weekend.