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“Yeah, uh-huh. Sounds good, Oz.” Natalie interrupted, sounding distracted for some reason.

“Hey, can you do me a favor and cover your ears real quick? Cool.” There was a series of LOUD explosions next to him, rocking the rooftop and sending up a cloud of dirty snow, despite the tarp he’d laid out.

“Or we could skip it all and just do that .”

Oz stumbled to the side and hit the ground, crawling closer to the edge to watch as the heavy rounds from Natalie’s huge weapon continued to tear the Agletarian base apart.

Natalie’s hand flew over the bolt, loading rounds and firing them into their targets faster than Oz would have expected anyone to be capable of doing.

An explosive round crashed into the guard house, tearing a hole in it the size of a dinner table and shooting a plume of fire out the back. Unfortunately, Traitor and Flannery were currently standing in front of the building, and they both dove out of the way as burning debris rained down on them.

Natalie started laughing, like it was the most hysterical and fun thing she’d ever done.

Oz pressed his hands over his ears harder, the noise from the weapon deafening.

Rounds began impacting the building below them and Oz moved closer, fully intending to shield Natalie.

“Relax, Oz. At this distance, they might as well be attacking us with a stapler.” She assured him over the sounds of battle.

A car tore down the street, firing at the roofline around them.

“An MP-5?” Natalie snorted in dismissal.

“Bitch, please.” She put a round straight through the car’s roof and into the driver, splattering him all over his companions and causing the car to crash into one of the security fences.

A moment later, she sent an incendiary round into the vehicle’s gas tank, making it explode, burning the surviving occupants.

The sound of an attack chopper still could somehow be heard over the din though, as the Agletarian craft lifted off from a hidden pad and hovered in the air for a moment, bristling with weapons.

“And you said that I wouldn’t need a cannon, Oz!” Natalie reminded him, shouting over the noise. “Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong!?!”

“ It’s a complicated issue! ” He yelled back, unsure if he could even be heard.

“Is it? Huh. Well, I find a good quality anti-materiel cannon makes things real simple for you.” She winked at him.

“Someone once asked the Red Baron how he was able to shoot down so many other planes and what his secret was. Do you know what he said?” She asked calmly, looking through the scope.

Oz nodded. “ ’Aim for the man …’”

She moved the bolt, loading another round.

“ ’…Don't miss him .’” Oz finished.

She fired and a moment later, the front of the helicopter exploded as Natalie shot the pilot. The helicopter started to spin out of control, smoke trailing from its flaming cockpit.

Natalie loaded another round. “Wait for it… wait for it… Bingo .” She fired again, and the huge round tore through the base of the rotors, causing the entire assembly to break free of the fuselage and then come crashing down like a spinning scythe, directly into the soldiers who were assembling in front of the building.

They were instantly cut to pieces. The body of the helicopter, along with all of its unfired ordinance, crashed through the front of the building and exploded, turning the lobby into a fireball and blowing out every window in the structure.

The noise echoed through the silence for a moment.

Oz just blinked in complete shock, trying to comprehend how his carefully planned covert mission could have ended in 60 seconds of gunfire and explosions.

Natalie jumped to her feet and pumped her fist in the air.

“ Yeah! What’d I say, huh? What’d I say?

Wrecked it. R-E-K-T.” She swatted her hand against his chest. “’Loop the security tape,’” she repeated, sounding deeply contemptuous of the idea, “what were you thinking?” She reached down to her bag, pulled out her machine pistols, then attached a couple of wicked looking swords to her back, letting out another excited laugh.

“Come on, let’s go finish off the survivors, Oz! ”

To his surprise, she simply leapt off the roof, jumping almost all the way to the building across from them. Apparently that was one of her powers today, in addition to her tendency to take offense at things.

Oz continued staring at her in disbelief, his ears still ringing.

He…

He’d never really met anyone in his life like Natalie Quentin before.

It was quite possible that she was insane. Or evil.

But he thought she was amazing .

Absolutely amazing.

And he was completely in love with her.

He hurried after her, taking the fire escape stairs three at a time and sprinting towards the Agletarian headquarters, which now looked like a war zone.

By the time he pushed his way through the wreckage of the security fence, Natalie was already in a shouting match with Traitor and Flimflam, who were covered in ash and looked shell-shocked.

Flannery was so angry about the plan spontaneously changing and her almost being shot with a cannon, that she looked on the verge of stroke.

“Are you pure mental!?!” She challenged, pushing Natalie back.

“Ye coulda killed us!!!” She pointed at her and glared at Traitor and Oz.

“I will never work with this radge again, do ye understand me?”

“About every third word.” Natalie squinted in confusion as if trying to understand her. “I don’t know what a ‘radge’ is, but I don’t think it means anything.” She turned to Oz. “Oz, is that a word?”

“Umm…” Oz began. Flannery was second-in-command of the Public Relations Department, and also worked with the Undercover Department.

On an ordinary day, the woman was calm enough, and spoke without any trace of an accent.

But if you got her angry enough, it was sometimes difficult to decipher what she was saying.

“Don’t ye start with me!” Flannery shouted at him, cutting him off.

“ She’s off her head, pure skyrocket, man, but yer supposed to know better!

” She threw the cap of her military disguise uniform at Natalie, then went back to glaring at Oz.

“But no, you’re just willing to let her do whatever crazy shite she wants, ‘cause you’re pure gantin' fur sex.”

“I understood the words ‘sex’ and ‘shite.’” Natalie updated seriously. “The rest is in another language.”

Flannery let out a bellow of rage and charged at her.

Traitor caught her before she could reach Natalie, and had to physically carry the other woman away. And when even Arnold recognized that he needed to do something, you knew there was an issue.

“I’m sorry you were almost hurt.” Oz told Flannery calmly. “That must have been very hard for you.”

“ Go take a running fuck at a rolling doughnut, Oz! ” Flannery shouted back, still struggling to get free of Arnold’s grasp and attack Natalie. “Ya bastard!”

“’Doughtnuts’? What the fuck?” Natalie spread her arms out in mystification, like the other woman’s accent made her meaning indecipherable. “Are you trying to say something else and I just can’t understand it because you sound like ‘Groundskeeper Willie,’ or is that a slang w…”

Oz put his hand up to stop the argument.

“I think we understand what she meant, Nat.” He shook his head.

“She’s probably upset because you fired a 20mm explosive anti-tank round into a building she was two feet from.

” Given her personality today, he was trying to keep things as non-confrontational as possible. “Without… you know… even a warning.”

Natalie paused to consider that for a moment.

“Jesus. I can’t believe people are ruining a perfectly good day with negativity.

I mean, all I want to do is go shoot some people, but noo-ooooo .

I just… oh, hold on…” She bent down to pull a knife out of her high-heeled boot and pushed Oz out of the way.

In the distance, one of the soldiers was running towards the entrance of the building, somehow having survived her ambush.

“ From downtown…! ” Natalie threw the knife in an arc, the blade spinning round and round, high through the air, until it finally came back down to stick directly through the back of the man’s neck, one hundred feet away.

He collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

Natalie threw her arms out in celebration.

“Yeah! Nuthin’ but net, motherfuckers!” She looked over at Oz and nodded in satisfaction, obviously expecting him to join her in rejoicing in the carnage.

“Somebody set this shit to ‘Easy Mode’ difficulty, Oz!”

Oz simply stared at her. He’d been with the Consortium for months now, but he still wasn’t quite used to this kind of thing.

Oz lived a very orderly life. He didn’t typically take part in wars. Particularly ones where women dressed like Natalie. Or, for that matter, looked like Natalie. Or talked like Natalie.

Shocking violence, overt sexuality, explosions, death…

It was all very overstimulating.

It was messy. And loud. And there was blood and fire everywhere.

And Natalie was grinning from ear to ear, like some kind of demon, relishing the pain she was inflicting on her enemies.

Oz wanted her more than he ever had.

She was everything he’d always avoided in his life, wrapped up in one insane and messy package.

Sex and violence and a bouncing red ponytail.

She smiled at him… and she owned his soul.

Oz’s mouth quirked at the corner, utterly enchanted by his unstoppable partner. He found her so amazing. And completely charming. And sexy as all hell.

Flannery was right: Oz was wrapped around that woman’s finger.