Ninjas of Love

Screw You Shopping Centre, We're Going Home

"So, anything else y'all need, or are we done here?" Ruby said, the absurdly high pitches of her cute-sounding voice belying the heavy Oklahoman, redneck intonation and slang she liked to use so liberally. "I don't think so, unless anyone else has anywhere they need to go. Billy? Kerian?" Charlie started to roll-call his team, but was interrupted from about a foot below, when the girl in the wheelchair piped up. "Yeah, actually." Emily told the two sisters, who knew their way around the shopping centre more than four people who were just glorified tourists, "Does anywhere here have a chance of selling braces?"
"What, for your teeth?" Yang asked, trying to remember if the centre had a dodgy-looking Thai orthodontist or if that was the one out in Atlas. "Yes, yes, funny. I know my teeth are less straight than your sexual preference, but I meant for my legs."
"Oh! The floppy, jelly limbs."
"Yes, Yang." Emily said, disheartened, her sentence suffixed with a loud sigh packed to the proverbial rafters with angst and disappointment. "The floppy, jelly limbs."
"Well," Yang paused for a moment to think about the layout of the shopping centre she had memorised which- although, admittedly, from three years prior- did the job exceedingly well. "On the ground floor, just before we leave. So I guess we really outta just head toward the exit then you guys can grab your weapons from the creepy "right, guys" man." Her concise takedown of Dave Beckett did not mince words, and elicited Viking thunderclaps of laughter from all five of the others, even Emily and her "floppy, jelly limbs".

"So," Charlie asked his disabled teammate, "any idea as to the size of your legs?"
"Yes, actually." Emily repeated that reply phrase for the second time in this chapter (whoever writes this should be shot because they fucking suck), before looking at her team leader with great interest. "In the leg brace community, my size is called a Lamb. Larger than a turkey, smaller than a Susan Boyle. If you go in and tell them that, they'll know what to do." Charlie nodded and headed left. "No, that's the Iranian butchers. You'll get actual lamb there." Charlie nodded and headed right, into the nearly empty orthotist's shop-cum-office. Five minutes later, and not only had Billy already downloaded and installed Pissed Off Birbs on his scroll, but Charlie had strutted out of the shop, with a look on his face that suggested he was most proud of himself and his effort, clutching two vaguely leg-shaped contraptions of contorted metal and leather. He strung them around the back of the wheelchair, before grasping its handles so tight his knuckles nearly turned whiter than his untanned face. "These kinda unbalance the chair, so I feel more comfortable pushing you. I'm sorry." Charlie made sure to get in his daily practice in the traditional British sport of apologising. "It's absolutely fine, I'm more comfortable not grazing the entire side of my body. I'm not fucking Two-face." Emily reassured him, making sure to add on one of her (well, her girlfriend's) trademark nerdy quips to the end, just to be sure she didn't seem to be showing too much emotion to her teammate, as it is a well known fact that men, when faced with emotion and responsibilities therein, would rather self-destruct in a cloud of napalm and rat piss than actually step up to the plate.

After a ten-minute trek through heat that was dry and, well, hot enough to bake clay, the six-strong band of brothers, sisters, and Kerian got back to Dave Beckett's shack which, thanks to some holy miracle, had not burned down in a horrible smithing accident. "Hello? Beckett?" Billy called, making sure to employ his trademark lack of diplomacy or empathy. "Aye! I'm done with your wee weapons if you wanna take a peek." David called from inside his shack, which Charlie- and with him, Emily- took as an invitation to enter, with the other quartet taking a little longer to make their presence known to the hulking Glaswegian. "Right guys! I'll start with this one." He held aloft a pistol resembling a Walther PPK as he spoke, and laid it down on the table.