Boon of My Existence Ch. 02 of 03

It was still dark when they arrived at a beat up travel trailer somewhere in the middle of another nowhere in Nevada, and parked the bike in the back between the trailer and a rather nice car. An unusually nice car, she thought, for someone living here.

They both walked around to the door of the trailer, and Stryker knocked followed by two more rapid knocks. She stood behind him, and a little to the side, so he did not see the slight curl of her lip. She thought the use of a secret knock was somewhat silly. Silly, but also a little cute... and a little fun.

It seemed like there were no lights on inside, but someone immediately separated the blinds and peeked through. The blinds were released, and then the door opened. Kira could see some candle light inside the trailer as a woman poked her head out and briefly looked around.

"Oh, thank you for coming, Mr. Goodman," the woman's tone was wary but relieved. "Come in."

Mr. Goodman is it, Kira thought to herself. She followed him inside and looked around the place. The light was dim, but she could easily see that this was obviously not anyone's permanent residence. It looked more like a storage shed with boxes and a variety of clutter shoved to three sides, and she smelled old dust in the stale air along with the invisible smoke from the candle's flame.

"This is Kira," Stryker said in a manner that suggested she had belonged there from the beginning of whatever he had going on.

"Hi," the blonde woman said politely, though looking curiously at Kira's revealing attire. She then extended her hand to Kira. "Dr. Mathis. Helen." Kira nodded and shook her hand, and then Dr. Mathis released and waved back towards a man sitting in a small chair on the other side of the makeshift table supporting the candle. "This is my husband, James."

The man stood and extended his hand as well. Kira shook it and they both quietly said hi to each other.

"Mr. Goodman," Dr. Mathis said, "You said that this close to dawn, we shouldn't go outside." She paused briefly. "I really have to use the bathroom."

"Oh. Absolutely," he said, almost apologetically, "Kira will stay with you." He saw Kira raise her eyebrows, obviously not sure what was going on, but also in acceptance of her appointed task.

"Thank you," Dr. Mathis said, and then squeezed passed them to the door.

Kira followed her outside then around to the back of the trailer, then about another fifteen feet to a medium sized boulder where the doctor proceeded to unfasten her pants, squat down, and relieve herself. It was dark, but it appeared to Kira that the boulder had been chiseled into a laying U shape. Presumably, it sat around a hole dug into the ground.

"Sorry about this," she said with a faint, uncomfortable laugh.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Kira reassured her. "So, what exactly is going on, here," she said, after a time.

"You don't know?" The doctor looked up at Kira, confused. "Mr. Goodman didn't tell you? I thought you were working with him."

"I was a bit of a last minute pick-up." She decided she'd probably better look a little more like she's supposed to be there. She stared out into the dark and began scanning the surroundings.

"Well, I'm a plastic surgeon. I work in Carson City and a month ago I did some reconstructive surgery for a man. It turns out that this man was a major loan shark in Vegas, and the police started catching on to him a little too much. I didn't know any of this. All I was doing was giving someone a new face. Nothing unusual."

The doctor paused, and Kira heard a slight grunting sound, then the doctor continued her tale.

"Apparently, the police were not the only people he had trouble with. A rival loan shark sent someone to sabotage the surgery. I was in the middle of the procedure, when one of the nurses assisting me grabbed a scalpel and sliced it deep into Mr. Tula's opened face a few times, then took off running."

"Let me guess," Kira interrupted. "Serious nerve damage and a permanently messed up face later, the loan shark wants revenge."

"Basically."

They were quiet a moment, then Kira spoke. "So, how did..." in a very brief pause, she thought better of using the name Stryker, but had not heard the woman or her husband call him by a first name. It was possible that he was not Mike to them either, but it was the only other name she had to work with, apart from Mr. Goodman, and she was not quite ready to say that one out loud. Too weird for her. "...Mike get involved in all of this?"

"About a week after the surgery, one of Mr. Tula's people attacked me, and tried to kill me, in my home while I was there alone. I managed to get away, and I went to James' office. We called the police, and they did what they could, but a few days later, we were attacked again. We called the police to tell them, but then we headed out of town, not telling anyone where we were going."

Dr. Mathis used some of a roll of toilet paper, that was left by the rock, and cleaned herself, and then she stood, pulled up her pants, and fastened them as she continued to speak. "This trailer used to belong to James' uncle, but he died, and all his stuff was just packed in it and left. It's in the middle of nowhere and far from Carson City and Vegas, so we decided to hide out here for a while."

They started back towards the trailer. "It had been a long time since James had been out here, so we got a little lost and came across Mr. Goodman's bar. We were a little scared to go in, but we were also very hungry, and we knew there was not going to be any food waiting at the trailer, so we went in to see if we could get something to eat."

Kira stopped her from speaking and walking. "Wait. That rat trap actually serves food?"

"Yeah," the doctor replied, confused by the sudden change of topic.

"Is it any good?"

Having mentally caught up, and understanding Kira's point of view, Dr. Mathis smiled, "It's a lot better than you would expect."

Kira thought a moment, and then came to a conclusion. "I guess it would be. He does own the place after all. And he lives there. One would presume he would eat there, as well." After a short afterthought, she shook her head and returned to the original topic. "So you went in to eat and..." leaving it open for the doctor to complete.

"Mr. Goodman recognized my picture from a newspaper article about the attack during the surgery."

"He reads the newspaper," Kira asked loud enough for the doctor to hear, but quietly enough to indicate that she was talking to herself.

"Basically, he approached us about it and convinced us to let him help." They started walking, again. "It was a good thing, too. After a couple of days, he found out that Mr. Tula had somehow found out where we were staying, and that he was planning another attack for this morning, shortly after dawn."

"Then today should prove to be exciting," Kira said with light intentions, but the doctor did not find it quite as amusing.

They both entered the trailer quietly to find Stryker and James had exchanged clothes, and Stryker was finishing what seemed to be a conversation one or both of the women were not intended to hear. "I know it'll seem strange, but please trust me," he had said to James. Stryker turned quickly to look at Dr. Mathis and Kira and said, in an almost clumsy attempt to explain, "Some last minute planning." He looked at the doctor and spoke directly to her, "He'll fill you in later."

His little cover up was good enough to fool the doctor, but Kira had been around long enough to know better. There was something he did not want her to know. She initially wanted to say something about it, to tactfully probe further, because she generally does not like information being kept from her when it comes to battle, but she thought better of it. Any signs of dissension would not help these peoples' peace of mind, and to be honest, she was actually looking forward to the surprise, a little bit. She trusted Stryker, after all.

"James, you grab that box and help me set up outside," Stryker spoke now as a confident leader. "Doctor," he said then paused, "I'm afraid I will have to ask you to switch clothes with Kira."

Dr. Mathis looked at Kira's outfit again, and seemed a little apprehensive, but said, "Okay." Kira could understand the doctor's feelings. One would expect a late thirties, loafer wearing, plastic surgeon to be a bit hesitant to slip into the almost minimum amount of non-swimwear clothing that would be considered legal to wear in public in this country, and it be black leather to boot. But to be fair, Kira was not exactly eager to don this woman's tan slacks and pale yellow blouse. On the up side, at least they were close to the same size.

Stryker went out first, and then closed the door once James was out. "So, how do you know Mr. Goodman," Dr. Mathis asked to draw some attention from the fact that they were two strangers stripping in an old storage trailer to exchange outfits.

Naturally, Kira had to answer the question carefully. "We met in Venezuela, some years ago, at a cafe. We spent a couple days together, then we both left the country in different directions," she said while taking off the jacket and sat down to start on her boots.

Her shoes already off, the doctor asked, "Why?" as she unbuttoned the last button of her blouse and stopped.

"It's a long, complicated story, actually." Kira unzipped her second boot and pulled it off her otherwise bare foot. "We ran across each other once in a while in later years, mainly here in the states." She unzipped the front of her leather top.

"I guess both of you traveled quite a bit," the doctor slipped her blouse off her shoulders as Kira did the same with her top. "Do you need my bra," the doctor asked as a side note.

"Yeah, probably better."

Dr. Mathis reached behind her to unhook her bra and continued the original topic with the question, "Yet the both of you just happened to come across each other so many times?"

They exchanged tops and began to put the other's on. "Well," Kira began to confess, "the second meeting was by chance, but I do admit that with the others, I did seek him out."

"I take it you found him to be something special."

"Yeah, you could say that," Kira agreed. "I knew there was something about him the first time we met, but it was that second chance meeting that gave me the impression that he was going to be someone significant to me. There was something I had to find out, but certain circumstances kept getting in the way." She finished buttoning the blouse.

"Circumstances?" The doctor had started unfastening her pants.

"We each had different things going on in our lives." Kira unzipped the generally rectangular piece of material that passed for a skirt, but she left it just hanging open at the side, waiting for the doctor to finish taking her pants off. Kira had no problem with showing all of her nude body, but she was not sure exactly how the doctor felt about seeing it, so she decided to extend her the courtesy.

"Like what?" The doctor stepped out of her pants.

There's another one to be careful with, Kira thought. She took the pants and covered her crotch as she raised her buttocks off the chair to slip the leather out from under her. She used that time to think of an appropriate, yet still honest, response. "Well, he has been helping people out for a while, actually, so there was that." And she was busy seeking out others of their kind to challenge.

"You mean he helps a lot of people, just out of the blue?" She took the skirt.

"Yes, he does." She stared towards the far clutter-lined wall, in contemplation of her own words as she spoke them. "Little stuff and big stuff like this."

"Wow," the doctor said, struggling with feeding one half of the zipper into the other. "Then he's definitely something special."

Kira bent down and held the pants open, ready to put her foot in. "Yeah," she said quietly, almost to herself. She slipped her right foot in, "Yeah, he is."

As they both finished dressing, they said nothing, and Kira had found herself in a genuinely new situation. For the first time in a long time, she felt uncertainty. When she was a child, she knew she was different from other people, though she had not yet known about her kind. She could not identify the source, but she just felt apart from other people. She was not without some friends, and she was happy, but thoughts of emotional relationships never really crossed her mind.

When she did find out a little more about what she was and the rest of her kind, she had made the challenges her main objective in life. They were tangible, definable, and under her control. Sometimes she even indulged in sex when she found a guy who could handle her, which was not often, and it certainly never occurred to her to fuck one of her own. They're not there for fucking. They're there for killing.

Then she came across Stryker. He was, at first, just another challenge to her, but he was not as responsive as others of their kind. He didn't seem to have the drive, but still, she saw that he was not without the strength.

He knew what she was from the start. They always know. But he didn't seem to care. He didn't really care, but at the same time, neither did he deny what he was, by any means. This was strange to her, and she was curious.

For the first time in her life, she sat down with one of her own kind and actually had a conversation. It was, however, little more than a novel experience, since she did still have every intention of destroying him. Strangely enough, though, when they were in the street and about to begin, she found herself holding back. Not holding back her skill or her strength, but holding back her strategy.

She was never a back-stabber, but she had always enjoyed a dirty trick or two. Sometimes, with some challenges, she took a little pleasure in literally kicking them while they were down. With Stryker, though, she felt respect for him. He never tried to make any power plays. No posturing. No big talk about what he was going to do to her. He just said, okay, and faced her with quiet confidence.

She admired him, and it moved her that there was someone like that in the world. But still, he was one of their kind. In order to give her two desires a fair chance, she decided to fight him with as much honor as she could.

In retrospect, she realized that she was subconsciously giving him a way out. She would have never had allowed herself to be defeated, not that she'd ever thought he could defeat her, but at the same time, part of her did not want him to be gone from the world.

During the course of their first battle, he did not pull the punches, but he never kicked her while she was down, figuratively or literally. She did the same for him.

Their first battle ended with a barn collapsing on him, breaking his arm and pinning him to the ground. She could have easily killed him, and in the case of anyone else, she may have done so, especially if they were pissing her off, but she did not. She pulled him out of the rubble, set his arm, then left town. It would be about a week before he was good as new, and she didn't want to wait around.

"What about you," Kira finally said, once they were finished. "How did you and your husband meet?"

The doctor sat in one of the other chairs and smiled as she spoke. "James works for an insurance company, and we met because a mutual client was trying to pull a scam. He had intended to play us against each other, but he didn't count on us being attracted to each other. One day we met for dinner to go over some information, and we wound up discovering the guy's con. It was the end of his plan, and the beginning of our life together."

"That's nice," Kira smiled. "I hear stories like that, but it's hard to imagine one for myself."

"Why is that," the doctor asked, looking across the small makeshift table to see Kira's eyes.

Kira looked down. "People like, uh, Mike and I.... Stuff like that just doesn't happen for us."

The doctor furrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean people like you? What makes you so different."

Kira felt on the spot again. She could not answer right away. For the first time since her childhood, she felt somewhat vulnerable. "We. We have different drives than normal people, and relationships just aren't a part of them. I...."

"Kira." The doctor interrupted with her voice lower and more intent. Kira looked up to meet her eyes. "No matter what urges you may feel, no one controls your life but you." Kira was silent during the brief pause, thinking about the doctor's profound words. "Do you love him?"

It was not a word Kira ever really had in her vocabulary. Love had always been irrelevant. Love was for normal humans who lived safe lives with partners... in houses or whatever. Also, Kira knew she was good, but she was not foolish enough to not accept the possibility that her next challenge could be her last.

The door opening startled her. Kira and the doctor's eyes shot towards James entering the trailer. Stryker stuck his head in and spoke. "One of Tula's men should be arriving soon." He looked at Kira. "We need to get ready." She stood up and started to the door, and Stryker extended his hand, holding a blonde wig. "Put this on."

He must be in work mode, she thought to herself, because she'd never heard him be so commanding. She didn't like being told what to do, but she let it slide. He was trying to save these people's lives, and she knew that, to him, it was serious business. She also knew a thing or two about war, so she stowed her pride. It was his show, after all, and she didn't know all the details.

She adopted her professional attitude and quietly took the wig before stepping out and down from the doorway. She wound her hair up and put on the wig as he spoke to the two inside.

"Okay, you two stay inside until I personally come tell you it's okay to come out. Don't even look through the blinds." He paused. "No matter what you hear." He looked at the both once more to let them know he was serious, and then he shut the door firmly.

She followed him to a large rock a few paces from the door. They both sat and were quiet. She watched him long enough to figure out that, for now, he was watching and listening. She followed his lead and looked out towards the unseen horizon, scanned the darkness, and listened for any sounds of a vehicle.

A couple of minutes passed, then she heard the faint sound of tires on the hard and rocky earth. "I hear them," she said.

"Yeah, me too. Look over there." He pointed off to the side of them.

She saw a pair of headlights, but they were not normal. The lights had been modified to emit tight beams to an area on the ground just in front of the vehicle. She realized that the driver could not very well drive up with the lights shining bright, but at the same time, some light would be needed to safely navigate the desert. The car was moving slowly, probably because of the limited range the driver could see in front of the car. If the car were heading for a boulder or tree, then the driver would need time to stop or turn away.

Stryker put the back of his finger of one hand to the side of her arm. "Let's move to the end of the trailer." They both got up and walked quickly.

They looked around the corner to see the lights drawing closer. "Okay," he said, "When the guy gets out, we move around to the back of the trailer, but make sure he hears us."

She said nothing, and knew she did not need to. In moments, the vehicle's lights went out, and then it pulled to a stop about one hundred feet from the trailer, and the engine went quiet. Both doors opened as quietly as could be, and two men stepped out. They began walking towards the trailer, leaving their doors open, and they both pulled guns from their coats.

Stryker heard the clicks as the two men readied their weapons, then he whispered to Kira, "Let's go."