FOUR

HOME IMPROVEMENT IDEAS

The trio returned to their home safely, they marched up to the gate and The Ranger had yelled for The Sniper, “Hey we’re back open up!”. He had failed to answer. He repeated the same shout still not hearing a reply. The Healer glanced over and spotted a piece of paper a little further down the gate. She broke off from the group to check it out, at this point The Ranger had noticed it as well. The Healer had brought it back and they read it together.

    “Heard 32 seconds of distress signal from an unknown distance to the North West, went to check it out, hope you don’t get back before me, gates still locked…

    Sniper”

    “Well it looks like we’re locked out” The Gatherer sighed. “No we’re not...” The Ranger said in a low tone voice as if he were distracted by something. He now was the one breaking off from the group, he vanished into the darkness that was easing into the city, both The Healer and Gatherer were confused. It was getting dark, they were locked out and the best fighter of them had just wandered into the shadowy darkness that was infecting the light of day.

    The Ranger, on the other hand, had gone around to the back of the store and to the back gate, he pulled on it, ‘locked’ he thought. He started to climb the spike tipped gate being very wary of the spikes. He finally reached the top and hurled himself over the gate and clearing the spikes, he was now at the back of the building and was making his way towards the front hoping the door wasn’t locked as well.

    He made it to the front where The Healer and Gatherer were still waiting on the other side of the gate, “How’d you get over there?” one of them asked, “I climbed” he responded while pulling at the front door which was locked as well, “Shit” He spat out under his breath. “Stay here, I’m gonna have to climb some more”, “Okay” The Healer said with a sigh.

    He started climbing the pipes and air conditioners on the side of the building somewhat gracefully and with significant flow, he made it to the top where he had two options: Break skylight glass and repair later or go in through the vents with the chance of being cooked being turned into the stores worst air freshener. He chose the glass. He took one swift punch at one of the glass windows, shattering it into a million pieces. He dropped down to some rafters on the ceiling, he now had to find a way down without snapping his legs like toothpicks.

    He decided to make his way to the appliances section of the store which had high shelves for him to climb down on. He slowly crept his way down the rafters being mindful of his balance, he finally made it to his destination and gracefully dropped down to the shelves and then to the floor. He sprinted to the front door grabbing the spare key and unlocked both the door and gate as quickly as possible. He shuffled the two into the door locking it up behind them. They all let out a sigh of relief.

“Hand me that walkie talkie” The Ranger demanded, The Healer handed it to him and he immediately radioed The Sniper and said with a commanding voice “You better have a really good reason for locking us out”,

“Did you not get my note?” He said back.

“Oh no I did but you could’ve waited for us to get here, or at least radioed and told us!”.

“I knew you'd say no! Besides it doesn’t matter now, it was nothing, I’m coming up to the front door now”.

“So you left for nothing?!”.

“No I found something that you may be interested in”.

But The Ranger didn’t hear him and as soon as The Sniper walked through the door he tackled him to the ground and started punching him in the face repeatedly, “You could’ve gotten us killed!” He was screaming. The Sniper kicked him off threw a couple punches of his own but The Ranger had eventually countered one bringing him back down to the ground and continued pounding on him.

    Eventually The Healer and The Gatherer were able to restrain The Ranger for a moment giving The Sniper time to explain things a bit, “I said I found something!” The Sniper shouted, his face was beaten to a pulp, his nose was broken and cuts covered most of his face. The Ranger started to relax a little, his fists unclenched and he removed his blood covered gloves and he began to clean off the blood that made it onto his fingers. “Well it damn well better be worth it” The Ranger commanded. "I'm sure you'll think so" The Sniper smiled through his busted lips and slid over to his backpack, that had fallen off a minute ago, and unzipped the main pouch and lifted a few raw chunks of steel and a hammer. The Healer and The Gatherer stared at him with puzzled expressions, The Ranger however turned from the sink, saw the objects and immediately knew what they were.

   "How soon can we
start moving things?" The Ranger asked with some excitement, "Well we can start tomorrow but it will take days to move everything and set it up, weeks if we still take shifts" The Sniper replied fiddling with the metal chunks. "Wait wait wait, what's going on?" The Gatherer blurted. The Ranger just looked at her and smiled and said "We're getting a forge".