Never As It Seems

He Strikes Again

They had all gotten out of the car and began to huddle around near the back, where they had carefully stashed away the guns they were not going to use. Nicholas, who had had the keys, unlocked it to reveal them, and they all quickly grabbed a gun.

"All right," he said. "Are we all ready?"

They all more or less nodded.

"I'll take that as a yes. Remember our plan, everyone. Hopefully we can get all done with this pretty soon, and then we'll be back in no time and it'll all be peachy."

"I sure do love the word peachy," Flames muttered.

"Now, as we all know these guns aren't too harmful, but we still need to remember not to use them unless in extreme cases. We don't want a riot on our hands, believe it or not. We're going to make this as nice as possible, right?" He smiled.

"I'm sick of being nice to the Fuzzy Guy," said Flames quietly to Annmarie as they started heading towards the hotel. "He doesn't deserve it at this point. I mean, why can't we use these stupid things if the worst they can do is knock him out for a few hours?"

"Because, like he said, we don't want a riot on our hands," said Annmarie. "You have to remember that it's most likely not just going to be him in the entire hotel. He's bound to have guards or minions or whoever he uses as his tools these days. If they're hanging around like that waiting for intruders they're probably not going to be too happy with us anyway, and if we shoot their boss it will just make things worse."

"Might make it easier," he said.

"Well then, you can get blamed for it like you did with the other mission."

Flames sighed and ignored her.

Their surroundings were just as bad as earlier when Flames had been walking to the jail. There were still piles of trash everywhere, as well as shops blaring loud and obnoxious music and people hanging around the various dilapidated tables and benches as if they owned the place. Luckily, they paid no attention to the group of agents as they strode on.

Flames saw that Adam was looking at him, and he quickly caught up to him. "What is it?"

"Nothing, really. I'm just wondering. You had to pass through this horrible place when you were coming to get me and Rick and Annmarie out of jail, right?"

He nodded and said, "Yeah."

"...Was it this bad? All the trash and trashy buildings and trashy people?"

Flames laughed for a moment and said. "Yep. Practically identical to all this right here. Why?"

Adam shrugged. "Just wondering."

Flames gave him a scrutinizing look. "There's something behind this, isn't there?"

He stared up ahead, deliberately avoiding Flames' gaze. "Nothing big. Oh look, here we are. The Fuzzy Guy Supreme Hotel, isn't that just magnificent?"

Flames gazed up at the hotel. In contrast to the grungy area around it, it shone like a building in Las Vegas, and was decorated with advertisements for basically everything to do with the Fuzzy Guy - flashing pictures, large posters, even a small ticket booth where one could order tickets to watch a private showing of a homemade movie all about his life. There were also signs advertising reservations, not for the hotel but for other things, like yoga classes and cliff diving excursions.

"If I had my own private hell, this is what it would look like," said Flames.

"I definitely agree," said Adam. "Cliff diving excursions? Heck, I would just push him off and enjoy the view all alone."