Pass The Ghost Story

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Sergio tasted his sweat after it skidded down to his flaky lips. It tasted salty. And a bit like oregano, a spice Serg enjoyed.

The ground was dusty and wind-blown; parched, like all life and land in these days. A solar panel reflected the sun directly into Serg's periph'. Crows cawed. Someone played Johnny Cash from one of the upper windows of a building at an almost painful volume. Serg kind of had to go to the bathroom. All these things would have made concentrating on locating the Burner and anticipating "its" motion difficult for any average guy. But Serg, he was no average guy.

"You think the sun is hot, Burner? I'll give you heat," Serg wielded the blade, turning it to reflect the sun with pizazz.

Up from under the fountain water Serg had once enjoyed, the Burner lunged at him. He would not add this detail when telling the story decades later, but it surprised him.

"AGGGGGH!"
The Burner clawed wildly at Serg and they rolled away from the fountain, until Serg, mid-turn, kicked the Burner up, poised the blade facing upward and sunk it deep into the guy's liver as he fell.
Serg gestured up at the crows with a nod, "eat up, boys."

[psychoDiablo]

He looked from the crows to the sun. Half-day-fucking-hot. Serg let out a sigh, "God damn it..." He lifted his bike, jumped on it and road off closer to OX House. He knew that he would find Ma, waiting for him. Serg smiled and then bit at his grin, to wipe it off his face. He burned rubber down the road, closing time on the gang.

Ma had actually pulled his gang over at the last stop. It was just some bar, his friends were gettin thirsty and restless. Ma was the first into the saloon and only smiled at the girl bartender. She tried to not make notice of it, but Ma was such a dick.
"Hey baby, my boys need a drink, you want to get filled up...baby?" He was so bad at picking up. He grinned at her thinking he got somewhere, but she just pulled out a bottle and served them. Ma thought he was hot shit. He grabbed the bottle, hollered to his gang and went outside. Started walking to his bike as the gang huddled around, a noise crackled in the distance. The gang and Ma thought nothing of it as he exclaimed his "pick up" to his gang. They cheered aloud, but it was cut short as Serg came ripping down the road. The gang jumped out of his way as Sergio drove right toward Ma. Ma saw this and his eyes grew big. Ma and his "winnings" jumped out of the way. He lost grip and all came slamming to the ground, shattering and spilling alcohol all over the place. Ma was pissed and lying on the ground.
Serg yelled as he drove by, "FAT FUCK MOTHER FUCK!!!!!!!" Serg laughed to himself, driving off into the distance.

[cstoll]

Two men drove off after Serg. A few others hung around to collect the remains of the liquor and to help Ma up. Ma furiously batted them away, cursing in English, Spanish, and languages he just made up.
"Sergio has to die," Dax said. "That d-bag is makin' us fools."
"That ain't no lie," Rufee replied. Rufee carried a shotgun, but he also had a trident strapped to his bike that he used for "jousting" purposes. "I'll kill him like I killed that one fool. Ram him with my trident. Cut him up with my trident. Then, set him on fire, stomp on him, and drag him around with my cycle. Then--"
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Ruf. You may be a psychopath."
Rufee laughed wildly and yelled at ants.

Sergio was closing in on OX House. He noticed two of Ma's men gaining on him. He accelerated.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Despite Serg's accelerating The Lone Flame, his trusted bike, to its max speed, Ma's two men steadily gained on him. They positioned themselves on either side of him, their headlights spearing out along the dark road. They glommed and readied their pistols.

"Ain't no time like the present," Serg said, unable to come up with something witty under all this pressure.

In a movement so deft and sudden that it almost surprised himself, Serg triggered his bike's front and back spikes, whipped his bike around 360 degrees, the spikes catching on the foot rests of both of Ma's men's bikes and flinging them off the road into the desert. Serg then sped off into the night, calling...

"Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeddddddddddooooooooooooommmmmmmm mm!"
...Ma, Dax, Rufee, and the rest heard echoing across the desert.
"Would you leave those ants alone, foo'!?" Ma quacked, "'s'bout time we put your psychosis to use...ON HIM!"
They mounted their bikes and roared after Serg.

[cstoll]

Serg felt near invincible. He also had a fierce need to pee. He stopped behind a boulder.

Ma's gang roared after him on their bikes. Ma was shaking with anger, shooting at rusted cars, abandoned shacks, small rodents--anything to release his hatred for Serg. If he had had any knowledge of cartoons, he would have felt somewhat like Wile E. Coyote in his constant inability to do anything right.
"Guy's like a scar, man," Rufee said, still complaining about Serg. "A wound, it goes away, but it keeps re-opening. Like this one on my leg. All purple and bruised and bloody. Goes away. Re-opens. That's Serg, man."
"Yeah, I've been meaning to tell you," Dax said. "I think you may have scurvy."
"Notafingah!" Ma cursed in some Ma-language, as he shot an old Geo Metro.

Serg was back on The Lone Flame, feeling free and relieved. As he got closer to OX House, he felt a sense of unease. (For others, it would be panic). He didn't see the "hidden" guards at their usual outposts. Had OX House been attacked?

[psychoDiablo]

Serg slowed as he passed by a burning car and then a truck. He cruised about 20 feet into the town and parked his vehicle. He felt something uneasy about the place as soon as he stepped his foot down. He got off his bike and stood up straight growing 3 strong inches. He didn't move. He peered his eyes left and right and forgot to breathe. He stood silent, not yet aware of the "so-much-for-living" city. He listened. He exhaled and cracked a grin.

"Hi, Hi doo! Wut doo doing wit-tat ting? R'd doo crazy?"
Serg stared at the man.
"I om speakging Inglesh to doo mang. R'dnt doo noht linglingling??" The man went ape shit with speech, yelling at Serg as he just stood there.
Serg took one step and was in the loon's face, his hand around it's throat. Serg flexed his muscle and the man's eyelids popped open.
"You tell me and you tell me now...WHERE--IS--GREEVES?!" Serg released the man with a push. Poor guy fell to his knees choking. He eventually was able to point in the direction to a shady hotel.
Serg nodded and got on his bike.
"P-ro-noun-c...c,c,c,c,c-ate....Yyyyour VOW-WELS."
He drove off. Some of the townspeople took notice, as he was the only one with any kind of machine in his possession.

[cstoll]

Serg pulled up to the shady hotel. This was all wrong. Guards dead. Greeves here.
"It's a good thing I'm a badass," Sergio said to himself, "or I'd be worried."

The hotel was falling apart. Holes in the wall, in the ceiling, in the floor. Before the violence and social unrest, a sign had been put up: "Excuse our mess. We're remodeling."
"Best Western. Never had a chance," Sergio muttered, and then wondered if a sidekick would find him humorous.

A change in the air, something bouncing against his foot. A grenade. He ran toward cover, to the check-in counter that was already half-crushed by a sofa that had fallen from the room above years ago.
He didn't hear the explosion, nor did he feel himself flying through the air--but both things happened. He found himself behind the counter, covered in debris, ears ringing, a stinging pain in his leg.
Sergio hobbled to his feet, Desert Eagles out and ready to kill the grenade-thrower a lot. No movement. To his left, the sofa was like a monolith sticking out of the counter. The hole in the ceiling was huge.

Within a few seconds, the following happened: the grenade-thrower broke cover ten feet ahead, ready with a grenade; a man with a shotgun came from a hallway to the left; two men came through the front door, one with an uzi , the other with a trident; a man with a pistol in the room above, carefully treading around the hole to aim at Sergio.
Sergio took it all in and said in slow motion, "A fffffuuuuccck-eeeng trident?"

Before shots blistered everything around Sergio, he took one shot: at the knee of the man above him. Howling in pain, he almost fell through the hole, legs dangling as he tried to pull himself up. Sergio jumped onto the counter as the grenade was thrown. He climbed up the near-vertical couch as uzi and shotgun blasts destroyed the counter and the couch. Sergio then jumped on the dangling, kneecap-bleeding man, kicking him down as he pushed himself into the room above.

Kneecap man fell into a hail of gunfire, an explosion, and a flying trident.
Sergio, leg bleeding from shrapnel, rolled away from the smoking hole and wielded his Desert Eagles.
"It's on," he grinned.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

"One at a time, boys!" Serg said cliché-ly through his clenched teeth as he fired below, incapacitating the shotgun guy with a round to each of his ankles. The Uzi constantly riddled the ceiling of the upper room with swiss-cheese-esque holes; Serg felt hungry.

At this, Rufee pole-vaulted on his trident against the corpse of the couch sending him soaring into the room above. He landed three feet away from Serg and crouched insanely and pointed his unusual weapon.

"You hurt my friend, I hurt you," Rufee explained, eyes crazily huge.
Serg sneered in disgust; the guy smelled overwhelmingly like old breakfast cereal and cheap gasoline.
"Funny," Serg nodded, breathing through his mouth, "just about to say the same thing to you...friend."
"What?"
Serg did a mid-air cartwheel over the 10-foot-wide hole, firing one, direct shot into Rufee's right wrist mid-flip, causing Rufee to drop his beautiful trident into the room below, along with the hand that once consciously held it. Serg landed next to the poor, writhing, stub-grasping fellow, pausing to let his coat waft majestically and tilt his head pseudo-curiously.
"Never much cared for friends," Serg's gaze twitched down as an Uzi round grazed his shoulder.

The firing suddenly stopped. Serg heard shuffling and muttering of "hide!" below, then silence. Serg hid, and squinted down through a small groove in the floor.

[psychoDiablo]

Serg was leaning up against the room wall, peering down through the cracks below him. Definitely hard to see, but he made out a shadow that the bad guys failed to notice. Serg wasn't quite sure how many men there were, so he had to get a better look. As he stepped his weight off the wall, it croaked, and a hail of bullets came flying up at him. He dodged them with his uncanny intuition. The wooden wall splintered in front of him as sounds of richoceting bullets rang off.
"Son of a--!" Serg slapped his cheek, feeling a slight cut. He looked at his fingers, hardly any blood, he was just grazed. He now stood opposite side of the room, still had a view on the shadow.
"If only I had a grenade..." He said to himself. Just then his prayer was answered and up came, not one and not two, but three grenades all at once. He was so shocked, but given his ability, his subconscience took over and had him shoot at the grenades as he ran toward the end of the room to the window. One of his bullets actually hit a grenade which knocked it through to the bottom floor.
Serg shot at the window, shattering it completely. He did a dive out the window and was stopped extremely short when he crashed into the fire escape railing.
"Arg! No time for pain!" Serg got up faster than he thought he could and started to climb up the ladder.
As Serg had jumped out the window, the grenade that fell to through the floor exploded first. Serg could hear the men's screams go from loud to faint as they were disintegrated by a burst of flame and concussion. A second later the second grenade exploded, causing the third grenade to explode. The blast was so hard it took out a hole in the wall where Serg had jumped through. Flames burst out of the wall and the inside of the room was set ablaze. The dinky ladder became even shakier as the wall crumbled. Serg couldn't climb fast enough and the ladder gave way. He clutched on, falling backwards. Just his luck he fell into a trash dumpster.
He was in an unknown alley now, but there was something very familiar about this place. A little too familiar. Like he had been there before.

[cstoll]

Serg sat in the dumpster, brushing pieces of the building off his body.
"It must be a Tuesday," he muttered to no one.
He had no time for pain, but a siesta sounded fantastic right about now.
Then, he heard a scream. A woman's scream. His sense of masculine duty took over, and he jumped out of the dumpster as if he were on a spring.

He rounded the corner behind the building and saw Alana on the ground, her .45 out of reach, and a very charred Rufee standing over her. He held the trident with his left hand, raising it above Alana, ready to strike.
Serg took a moment to notice that Rufee's detached right hand was--amazingly--still clutching the trident.
"Rufee!" Serg yelled with extra venom to overcome the ridiculous feeling of yelling such a name.
"Serrrrrrrrrrrrrg," Rufee growled, turning his attention.
"Serg!" Alana yelled, relieved.

"You shouldn't have blown me up, Serg. My brother tried to blow me up once--but only once."
Serg said nothing.
"That means I killed him," Rufee sneered.
Serg looked at his watch.
"For trying to blow me up. He didn't get another chance."
Looking as bored as possible, Serg holstered his guns.
"What--?"
"You're not worth the bullets," Serg replied.

Rufee howled and threw the trident at Serg, who sidestepped it and caught it, and then spun his body around 360 degrees, using the momentum to hurl it back at Rufee. It sliced his right arm off, and Rufee slumped to the ground.

Serg helped Alana up. She hugged him and grabbed her .45.
"You didn't have to rescue me," she said. "I was about to make my move."
"Yeah."
"I was lulling him into a false sense of security," she grinned.
"Damn fine job you were doing of that," Serg replied.

[psychoDiablo]

Serg was happy to see Alana but didn't show it. He missed her after so long. She wondered, of course. They both turned their backs on Rufee, who lie on the ground delusional and muttering to himself. He coughed up some blood and lost conscience.

Right now though, Sergio really missed his bike. He looked back from where he came. Fire shot out of the building daring him to come back through. He looked back to the street and spotted Alana's bike. He thought of something quick.

"Ya know something..." Serg started talking, then stopped to take a breath to say it.
"Alana, it's been so long." Her attention was on him. He paused again. The suspense killed her and she gave in before he could actually think of the next line.
"What Serg? What is it?" She grabbed his hand and he squeezed it back.
Serg remembered the feel of a woman's skin. So soft. He pulled her close to him. The stubble on his face brushed against the side of her head, sticking to her hair like velcro.
"You're a nice girl." He whispered to her. She wrapped her arms around him and he slipped his hand onto her butt.
"Hey..." She smiled, grabbing after his hand.
"Heh heh." Serg snaked the bike keys right from her back pocket and did a spin to get away from her. Before she knew what happened he walked to her bike and started it up.
"Get on baby." Serg revved the bike and started to move. Alana ran a couple steps then jumped on and they drove into the deep part of the city.
...........

Rufee's eyes opened up to stare at the sun. He had an itch on his nose he couldn't scratch. He blinked and men stood over him. They picked his body up and took him away.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Ma and what was left of his gang carried Rufee out of the alley, around the corner, and set him on a porch swing that hung from rusty chains.

"It only flesh wound!" Rufee snarled, suddenly conscious, "why we no go after him?! I rip spine out through left nostril and strangle 'im with it! Trident?" The blood loss started to make Rufee increasingly incoherent.
"Oh, here," Dax, with his unwounded hand, offered Rufee a piece of gum and Ruf, missing his right arm and left hand, simply spat at it.
"We will go after him," Ma explained, looking maliciously into the distance, "or, rather, he will go after us."
"What...?" Fabio, the realist and Italian of the group, said with pure sarcasm.
Ma slapped him across the face.

Serg and Alana, upon reaching the heart of the city, pulled over at a coffee shop called Joe's. It looked among the least infected and broken down of the shops on the street.
They stepped inside. Serg immediately glimpsed some uncanny-looking, dirty figure lingering at a back table of the shop.
Alana ordered something that confused Serg, and Serg said, "Coffee. Black. Like Burner blood."
The barista looked a bit flustered, and nodded quickly.
The figure at the back of the shop stood and approached them: A young man on the verge of becoming a Burner. He panted and pulled a gun from his pocket, pointing it at Alana.

[psychoDiablo]

Alana was too busy paying for her order to notice the burner with it's gun. Serg kept eye on it and waited for it to make the first move.
"Sergio, here's your drink." Alana turned to Serg with cups in her hands. The burner hissed at her and Alana screamed, almost scared to death. The burner was surprised by her cry and shot the gun. The aim was off and as Alana screamed she let the cups go. The bullet hit one of the cups splashing liquid all over the place. The burner recalibrated it's aim and fired again. This time Serg was all over the scene. He leaped to his left. He pulled out his Desert Eagle with his left hand and grabbed Alana with his right, pulling her out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, Alana's shoulder was knicked and she let out a little yelp. Serg became infuriated and shot the burner down and to hell. The burner's body, tore up from bullets, fell on it's back, bleeding out black blood everywhere.

Serg got up and stood over it. Disgusted by it, but interested in knowing more about this enemy. He stared it in the eyes and he could see life. He raised his gun again to his head and the burner slowly pulled itself up, it's head in line with the steel barrel. Serg didn't hesitate to pull the trigger, blasting it's brains all over the floor.

"What is that?" Asked Alana, who was more terrified than hurt.
"Are you okay Alana? That was close."
"I'm fine, but what is that thing?" She asked again.
"A burner. They are slaves for the man." Serg said.
"What man do you mean Serg?" Alana asked another question. Before Serg could answer he heard an all too familiar voice outside.

"Sllllllluuuuggggg!!!"

"Wait here Alana, I gotta deal with this asshole." Serg posted Alana where she was standing by pushing down on her shoulders. He then walked swiftly thru the bar's doors.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

Serg charged through the coffee shop doors, causing one to fall off its hinges and shatter. He jumped in surprise (on the inside).

"Got a problem, Ma?"
Serg looked left and right. No Ma.
"Come out, Ma. Quit hidin' like a little girl."
The wind seemed to flush along more loudly than usual across the vacant landscape.
Serg did jump when a hand clutched his shoulder; out of impulse, he jerked his fist back, hitting...Alana on the nose. She toppled over and steaming coffee from the two new cups she bought exploded all over her.
He let out some choice expletives and rushed to her.
"Unghhhh..." Alana said, holding her nose.
"I'm sorry, baby," Serg trotted--in the most masculine way possible--back into the shop. He trotted back, and set the bag of ice on her nose, handed her towels, and helped her sit up.
"Where's Ma?" Alana asked nasally.
"Don't know, baby," he looked around again, "I think he's setting up a trap, an ambush. We gotta be careful. I think we should go back to Ox House and look around inside; see what's really up."
Alana nodded and wiped her eyes, "after we get more coffee?"
Serg smiled, feeling unbelievably guilty, "after we get more coffee."

[psychoDiablo]

Serg and Alana left the shop, got on the bike and started driving. Serg pondered for a moment if he should go back to the outer city and retrieve his bike. After all, he missed the hell out of it.
"Serg...Isn't OX House that way?"
"Uhh..."
"Damn it!" He thought to himself. "You're right it is." He laughed it off and did a U-turn.

There was one last stop before OX House itself. A small gas station. Serg knew of this place as well as Ma did.

"Alright boys, set up around back. You two, go hassle the clerk inside the store. And get me some beer ya bastards!" Ma shouted out orders.
His gang did their work and did it well. Pushing the two customers in the store and beating up the clerk, all the while trashing up the store. Knocking over shelves of food and drink. They enjoyed their work, shouting at each other and wrestling about, having too much fun.
Fabio came out with a 12 pack box of beer and walked to Ma.
"Her' yo' go, Ma." He proceeded to hand the box to Ma. Ma stared at the box, then looked at Fabio.
"The hell am I supposed to do with a box? I said bring me beer." Ma slapped Fabio across the face causing him to drop the box and break some of the beers.
"I didn't ask for spilled beer either!" Ma kicked Fabio in the shin, who then limped away back to his comrades, who pushed him around for getting punked by Ma.
"Alright...You fucks done or what? Let's ride!" Most of the gang left. Four of them stayed behind.

"Alana, how's your nose?" Serg asked.
"It's okay, you're lucky I didn't get crazy back there." Alana snapped.
"Ha ha ha! You'll have your chance..." Serg was laughing then said seriously.
Alana gripped onto Serg and he yelled to her, "They are waiting for us...You do know that right?"
"Why you think I didn't pick that moment to get crazy!?"
Serg smiled. His kinda woman.

[cstoll]

Serg and Alana were getting closer to the gas station. Serg kept looking at the gas station, and the gas station didn't do anything gas stations didn't normally do.
Still, he knew Ma would've set a trap.
(Of course, he always assumed a trap. When he would turn out wrong, he was simply relieved.)
Serg pulled off the road, and that was when everything went to hell.

Fabio and Ma were miles away, yelling over the engines and the wind.
Fabio: "Do you think Serg'll see the trap?"
Ma: "Yah. But he won't see the ring of fire!" And he cackled the cackle of the mad.

Serg saw one of Ma's men break cover behind the gas station with an M-16. Bullets ripped the ground around them. Serg turned away and Alana took aim.
From the front of the gas station, a man popped out from behind a rusted car. He had a flamethrower. He lit the ground.
Serg then saw three gasoline trails ignite and erupt in their direction.
The M-16 was driving them toward the trails, which cut off easy escape.
"Ohshit," Serg said, this time with feeling.
Alana saw where one flametrail led--to poorly covered dynamite in a pool of gasoline by a bunch of empty yet frustratingly flammable oil drums. She saw the guy with the M-16 joined from another angle by a guy with an uzi, both firing to either kill or drive them to a fiery doom. Bottlenecked.
Serg: "You pissed?"
Alana: "Yeah."
Serg: "This'll add to it." Speeding along, he tilted the bike, shoving her off, away from the trailing fires.
Alana tumbled and rolled, gracefully springing into a breakneck run at the flamethrower, squeezing off round after round.

Serg felt bullets striking the bike, could see the fire trails building behind and around him. He headed straight for the oil barrels, full speed.

Fire raging behind her, Alana, running but arm steady, put a bullet in each of flamethrower's knees. He crumpled. Another in his head. She wanted that flamethrower off his back. She wanted to start some fires of her own. She wanted to burn this whole place down.

Serg drove straight into the barrels, knocking them on their sides, a poor man's ramp, just enough to give him some lift as the fires converged on the dynamite and the gasoline. He was airborne as the world behind him exploded.

Alana, dragging the flamethrower, went behind the gas station. Uzi and M-16 guys were still in awe of the explosion, talking about whether Serg was dead.
Alana placed the flamethrower apparatus by one of their backpacks a few feet away. When she was a safe distance from them, she whistled.
"What the hell?" Uzi-man muttered, as he and M-16 man took cover.
"I killed your pyro," Alana said. Before they could raise their guns, she shot the apparatus, and it exploded.
"Not close enough," M-16 man, laughed. He broke cover and took aim.
"You guys didn't use all your dynamite, did you?"
The flames reached the dynamite-filled backpack, and the world around the two men exploded.

Fabio: "What if the ring of fire doesn't stop them?"
Ma: "The fourth guy. Erno. He's hiding. And waiting." Once again, he cackled. And swallowed several different bug species.

[psychoDiablo]

Flames lit up the place. The store was catching fire and the beat up clerk made it out and began running away on down the highway.
Serg U-turned out into the front of the store, watching the clerk scamper away. He looked for Alana. She came out from the side of the building.
"You're elbow is bleeding..." Serg told her. Immediately she touched her elbow, irritating the cut, sending a sting of pain through her arm.
"Owwww!"
"Ha ha ha! What did you think was going to happen?" Serg laughed at her.
"It's not funny!" She punched him back in the arm.
"Ahh! Not cool..." He tried to hit her back aiming for her wound.
"Stop it Sergio!" He kept playfully bugging her.

Just then the store caught fire and the front room ceiling caved in. The noise caught there attention and Serg felt something eery. Off to the side of the store, there was a big enough garage to store all kinds of vehicles and supplies. The two giant garage doors exploded right off and a gust of black cloud followed.
"What the hell is that?!"
From the smoke stepped out Erno. All 7 feet and 8 inches of him; carrying a big ass machine gun on his right arm, extra ammo across his chest, and a rocket launcher with extra rockets in a backpack on his back.
"RRRRRAHHH!" Erno growled.
Alana wasted no time to start shooting at him. She unloaded a full clip before Serg did anything. He was amazed to see the creature.
"We need to leave NOW!" She jumped on the bike with Serg, slapping his face and shooting the monster.
Her bullets ricocheted off Erno. His armor was impenetrable. He growled out loud again before he pulled his trigger. One hundred bullets a second hailed down at them. Serg was in gear a second sooner, driving to the highway, going to the wrong way away from OX House. Bullets flew by them, some rang off the metal engine. An intense moment for the two, but they were finally out of range.

"We have to go back that way..." Serg's dry throat tried to gulp.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

"RRRRAHHHHHHHHHHHH! Rrrrraaaaaaaaaaah! raaa--!" Erno's roaring faded, then, at its faintest, inexplicably cut off, as Sergio and Alana gunned further and further in the wrong direction.

The wind flicked a little drop onto Alana's cheek.
"Serg, don't cry. We'll find a way back."
"I only cried once in my life, Alana. And for a very good reason."
The rain picked up; the drops grew in size and speed.
Serg sighed.
He muttered to himself, "I won't even say it or something else will--"
He dug his boot into the brakes, skidding off the road and away from the nearly kamikaze Burner.

Fabio ran a comb through his tire-black hair. He watched as Ma exploded at Erno.

"I NEED MEN WHO CAN COMPLETE THE TASKS ASSIGNED TO THEM! And yet I am surrounded by fools. QUETEFAH!" Ma broke off again, muttering in his strange and indecipherable Ma language, interspersed with familiar and decipherable curses.

Erno let out a small tear, still in his stiff, back-leaning pose. As Ma moved away to scheme in muttered Ma to himself, Erno relaxed. All Ern wanted was to please Ma and complete his assigned tasks well. He looked down in shame.
Fabio frowned at him.
"For such a big guy, you really are kind of sensitive."
Erno looked at him. With very little effort, he picked Fabio up by the collar of his overpriced, Italian shirt and tossed him thirty or forty feet into a heap of increasingly mud-like sand.

"PWAHA!" Ma turned towards Erno, whose eyes were a little sorry.
"He must come back this way, no?" Ma said in English.
"Yeah...." Erno swept some rain off his hair.
"We will be ready for him this time. Won't we? Aha. AHAHA. AHAHAHAHA! MUHAHAHAHA! Halach...!" Ma coughed, trying to dislodge the horsefly from his windpipe.
As Erno began the Heimlich Maneuver (as best he recalled it from PE), Fabio crawled out of the mud pile, snorted, and limped over to watch the show.

[cstoll]

Rufee was having quite the week. With his right arm and left hand cut off, the crew had taken to calling him "Stumpy." Not exactly the kind of name to strike fear into people's hearts, he thought. No one ever says, "Aww shit. Here comes Stumpy. Look out, he might bleed on you."
Rufee sighed and looked at his trident, which just sat like an inanimate object.

Erno had successfully Heimliched Ma, cracking only one rib in the process. Ma was getting his color back, and he smacked Fabio across the face just because he could. A few feet away, Dax strapped the trident around Rufee's right arm, with Rufee muttering, "Serg will meet with justice. Pointy justice. Three-pronged justice, baby. Dangerous justice. Danger with a capital dang."
Fabio looked at the sorry excuses for villains around him, felt creeping despair, and took a moment--a Fabio moment--to smooth an imaginary mustache and say in an imaginary mirror: "Fabio, you have the mustache of a titan."

Ma yelled something strange and indecipherable. Fabio heard a motorcycle heading their way.

[Zanahoria_Picante]

The motorcycle zipped by at 100+ MPH.

"What about the--?" Fabio raised his index finger to object; by the time he did, the bike was nowhere in sight.
"Eh, Ma?" Rufee frowned with an inquisitive wave of his trident-hand.
Ma's eyes grew wide with confusion and fury. He stomped over to the road and stood in the middle of it on the dotted yellow line. He ferociously jump-stomped--jomped--once, the road then collapsing beneath him, toppling him helplessly into the pool of sharks, as was meant to be Sergio's predicament seconds ago.
"Pwahahahaha!" Fabio wiped the tears from his eyes, pointing and laughing at Ma.
Erno sighed and calmly went over to pull Ma out of the shark pit.

Alana and Serg now had a good head start to Ox House.