Freeing Sasha

As he stormed through the hole in the wall that had been the result of the explosion that Mr Michaels had set up, Brenan needed only a quick look at the set of legs sticking out from under a pile of rubble, the left one of which was twitching rather unfortunately, to decide that they couldn’t possible belong to Sasha, not unless she was in the habit of wearing mud-covered size 12 work boots, and that it was someone else who was buried underneath the scattered chunks of thick wooden beams.

Continuing to scan across the room that looked as though it made out nearly the whole of the small cabin even as he moved through the gap in the wall, Brenan first spotted a prone redheaded woman who looked dazed but otherwise all-damaged, all her limbs were right where they should be and blood wasn’t gushing out of her, and then noticed a pair of legs working frantically to work themselves through a small rabbit hole that led off towards the adjacent warehouse.

Recognizing that said legs must belong to the scrawny redheaded sociopath and that he had now deemed it prudent to try and escape, no doubt having been disturbed by the notion of getting into a fight with people who knew how to fight back, Brenan quickly raised his revolver and fitted in a two-handed grip before gently squeezing the trigger, the report of a round being fired nearly being deafening in such cramped quarters, and managed to hit Carrot Top’s right foot just as it was about to slip through the small passageway.

A roar of pain could be heard in the wake of the shot as Carrot Top reacted to having a sizeable chunk of his right heel being permanently removed from his body, and the foot tossed about for a few seconds before he finally succeeded in slipping it through the rabbit hole.

“Julien, move!” Brenan cried out to the young man, who had remained frozen after the shot, though the sound of Brenan’s voice managed to shake him out of his apathy and sent him running towards Sasha while Brenan moved across the room to make sure that there wasn’t anyone else in the cabin, even going so far as pushing aside the curtain and peeking through the doorway to check that a third man wasn’t hiding on the toilet, sword in hand and trousers round his ankles.

“Captain, is she…?” Julien asked as Brenan ducked down beside him, both men attending to the still groggy Sasha.

“She’s going to be fine,” Brenan determined after checking her pulse and pulling up one of her eyelids to ensure that she didn’t look like she’d suffered a concussion, “you look after her though.”

“Yes Captain,” Julien nodded, not needing to have it explained to him that it’d be a good thing if his was the first face that Sasha saw upon regaining her senses, so as to make it clear to her that she hadn’t simply been passed from one band of Veer bastards to another, “but what about him?”

“Well, he’s not dancing, that much’s for certain,” Brenan joked about the uncontrolled twitching of the dead man’s legs, though one look at Julien told him that the young man wasn’t hardened enough yet to find any humour in such remarks.

“Alright, let’s move,” Brenan began to move back towards the hole in the wall.

“What about the other guy?”

“I’m not creeping in after him through that,” Brenan said of the rabbit hole, “and he’s not likely to come running after us, at least not for a little while.”

“Right,” Julien looked like he couldn’t think of much else to say, and the two men hurried back out into the alleyway, Julien bringing Sasha with him while Brenan kept a lookout for any nasty surprises, one quick look up the narrow street telling him that Michaels and Tyler were still by the wagon and not looking like they’d gotten involved in a fight with anyone just yet.