Chapter 126: Then ONE NIGHT!

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Shaniqua had become very proficient by then with her new abilities, as were all of the Brown family, even the littlest. Her, and my, Q-Hives had merged and were cranking out Quintessence as fast as possible as were those of the Browns. It took a LONG time to make a tiny bit of Q. Shaniqua could control Q almost as well as I could.

Q came in handy the night we were in the ring dancing.

On certain nights the ring was converted to a dance floor..that night WAS that night.

Shaniqua couldn’t help herself. She drew male eyes like a magnet drew Iron filings. I think it was the fact that she was long waisted and relatively short legs. Like me. I look like a gorilla but she looks like a doll. The way she was built...she didn’t NEED high heels for the pelvic tilt or the arch. She couldn’t NOT do it.

The veil that she constantly wore just added to the effect. I , Roy and the other male browns looked like something out of the Arabian Nights by way of Bollywood mixed with SteamPunk, but no one was looking at me, at any of us. I could almost hear male eyeballs popping when ever we danced past. Women stared daggers at Shaniqua.

She was the dancer. I, however, didn’t know the first thing about dancing. When dancing with her I didn’t need to. I could just shuffle around and no one would pay me no ‘nevermind’. All eyes were on Shaniqua.

I didn’t need to learn to dance I told her. She disagreed.

“It’s about time you learned” she said.

“I concur” Jenny chimed in.

Two against one...I lost.

So I gave it my best shot. Oddly enough I learned very quickly. Jenny played a BIG part I suspect. In fact I know that she did. I just kind of put my body on auto-pilot, Jenny being the pilot, and settled back to watch people. Shaniqua was, in effect, dancing with Jenny. She was fine with that too. They liked each other.

At any rate, on that night, Jenny and Shaniqua were dancing, so to speak, and I was people watching. I noticed something not quite right about a swarthy looking fellow who had just walked in the door with a bunch of other guys. He was NOT a regular. I recognized all of the regulars by sight. (Dunbar’s number don’t you know...expanded and enhanced by cybernetic neural circuitry) Something was just wrong about them. It worried me and I looked more closely. Something was definitely off in the UV and IR portion of the spectra. I sent Shaniqua, Jenny and all the Browns a text. They were getting very good with their neural lace so I could do that.

“Heads up. I dunno if it means anything but something about that group of guys over there, just rung my chimes. Be prepared for anything.”

No one replied but I knew that I had everyone’s attention.

About then the guys who had spooked me pulled guns ...I ramped my sense of time up a notch and very carefully and as gently as I could spun my body so that I was shielding Shaniqua. I was facing the potential threat. She was behind me. She was so small that she was completely concealed but she could see them through MY eyes as could the Browns.

“This is a stick-up” one of them, perhaps the leader, shouted. "Everyone put your hands in the air or we’ll kill you.”

He and his buddies waved their guns around. They were amateurs who seemed to expect everyone to be afraid of them just because they had guns. Newsflash to them, almost everyone in the house had guns too. I’d be flabbergasted if any of the poor fools left the house alive, or even in one piece. They were dead men walking but they didn’t know it.

“Give us your money” one of them said. "Or we’ll kill you all.”

No one moved.

“I’d say that was a credible threat” I told Shaniqua.

“I’d have to agree” she replied.

“There is only one reasonable thing to do in this situation” I told her.

“There’s a problem though” I said

“Of course there is” she sighed "can nothing EVER be simple?”

“Nope.”I told her "Our friends. We don’t want any of them to be hurt. Hold off for a little bit. Perhaps we’ll catch a break.”

I was right, she knew that. A primary rule of shooting is to be aware of what is BEHIND your target. Collateral damage is a bitch. She, and I could certainly draw our guns and blow them all away. Nothing lived after being hit by the fifties in my Desert Eagle . Her .22s had a nasty surprise too. But even if we didn’t miss a shot, we might not, PROBABLY would not, kill them all soon enough to prevent them from hurting some of our friends.

We’d wait.

“We got this” Roy said by means of our private net. He conferred briefly with Sally and his kids. I understood what they were planning. It was going to be awesome.

Roy had been in the kitchen, washing dishes. He picked up a meat cleaver and then took a side of swinging beef off the meathooks in the walk in freezer. A side weighs in at about 300lbs. and it will stop, or at least significantly slow down a typical hand gun bullet. 300 lbs was nothing to LeRoy..he could curl THAT with one hand for hours.. He chopped a piece out of it, exposed a rib as a handle, and used the side of beef as a shield. Then he walked onto the floor and confronted the kiddy gang.

“What do we have here?” the leader sneered.

“Your doom.” Roy said. He was wearing a mask too and looked AWESOME.

“If you move any closer I’ll blow a hole through that chunk of meat and you too.” The leader didn’t sound all that confident.

I noticed that many of our customers, the men, and the women to, had slowly put their hands on their guns.

“Wait for it.” I silently pleaded. I had been teaching many of them the ‘art of the gun’ as Kitty had called it. Up close and personal. I prayed that they would remember their training.

I saw a few grins. No one seemed particularly frightened. Not even the kids.

“I have one of them in my sights” One of Roy’s boys said .

“Me too” said a daughter.

Those were the only two that spoke. All of the brown kids that were old enough to handle a gun had their .22 rifles complete with scopes, trained on a bad guy.

They had each found a spot in the balconies looking DOWN on the scene below. If they missed their bullets would go into the floor.

“Wait for it.” Sally said.” You all shoot at the same time when I tell you too, not before. If you can’t shoot, for fear of hitting a customer, don’t. One shot, that’s it, then find cover. Got it?”

They all said that they understood and would comply.

“Wait for it.” an orange text blinked in my vision...”Wait for it.”

One of the robbers walked over to where Sally was standing and screamed at her.”We know you have a lot of cash from all the betting. I want it. Gimme.”

He held out his hand. Poor boy.

Sally’s black snake, her whip, turned into a real snake before the startled robber’s eyes. It was composed of Q. Sally was controlling it, mentally. It reared back as if to strike, it opened it’s mouth. Yup..there were fangs init.

"WHAT’S THAT” he screamed. He might have been afraid of snakes. ”GET IT AWAY FROM ME.!”

That got everyone’s attention. All of the robbers looked at the snake and didn’t notice the wasps until too late. Dozens of Q-Wasps swarmed though the door and landed upon them. The Q-Wasps didn’t have stings or venom but they could bite.

“SHOOT!” The blinking text turned to red. "SHOOT NOW. ONE SHOT THEN TAKE COVER!”

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