All the gold a shallow grave can promise

In retrospect, hopping away from Clayton while still retrained will go down as a mistake for Elaine. Her escape looked probable until her old acquaintanceship captured her with very little problems. If only other Cartel members could collect bounties already bound.

Three men stood before the girl; all of them wore smiles on their faces while they patted down their guns. "Not everyday we get an execution that feels this good." Heat poured down on the site of the execution. Sweat drenched the three men, while Elaine remained calm. "It's bad luck to kill a gunslinger with their own guns." Eyes from a gunslinger with a black bandanna covering his forehead spoke. He seemed like a man worn from battle in the streets. Perhaps Elaine wronged him in someway. That of course was the worst part of this whole mess; Elaine could not remember why she came to Mexico.

"I think you mean with his own guns." An aging man with a belly and residing hair line spoke. "This ain't no hombre." He wiped sweat down from his brow and flung it to the ground like a savage pig man.

"Hey, man, I don't even want to gun down a chica. Let alone one who ain't even got guns." Giving a retort to the situation, the youngest of the group held Elaine's holster in his hand. He looked over to the abrupt middle man.

"Fine. We'll give let her keep her guns and then bury her with them." Begrudgingly, he walked over to Elaine and strapped her holster around her waist. She grunted a little from her taped mouth, and moved her hands to allow him the room to fasten the belt. He patted Elaine on the cheek twice before walking away. "That good for you putas?" As he walked away Elaine moved her arms to see her full movement of rotation. Not the greatest, but she could reach her pistols. Two men put their hands on their pistols and took their stances. "Alright. Remember what color you're bullets are." Of course they gave her the pistols unloaded, she thought. "We're going for who shoots her first, and who gets the best kill shot on her." No one checks the reload compartment she put in her holster; she never fails to disappoint.

"Can we just do this and get back." The youngest member gave hesitations, but did not try all that hard to stop Elaine's execution. "It makes me sad that she's struggling and trying to get free." Elaine's brow hardened at the thought of them underestimating her so much.

"This girl killed a dozen of our guys without even batting an eye, and you're worried about 'ojos' from her?" Sounds like something from her past, but why could Elaine not remember any of it. She slipped a smoke round into the chamber.

"She's going for her gun!" The reserved member yelled. "Kill her." Dropping to the ground with a flip, Elaine discharged a round into the ground in front of the men. Bullets riddled the ground next to her, but cast her in a silhouette of gunfire. As the smoke filled the blistering wasteland, she moved an explosive round into the chamber and fired it towards the man in the middle. Shrapnel flew from his blood burst chest and flew over to the younger man. Blood splattered on the reserved man's face. He turned to see a metal bolt sticking out of the young man's temporal lobe. He strafed his gun to fire on the girl, but fired wildly into nothing. With a cold eruption of flame, the gunslinger fell forward, his back littered with metal.

Elaine walked over his back and looked down at the three men she gunned down with her hands tied behind her back. From her angle she could see the shallow grave they planned on throwing her into. Poor sap only has his head. She thought gazing over the skull in the grave. Where's the rest of him. No use in letting a skull go to waste; Elaine slid down into the three foot hole and grabbed the skull, hoping to saw through the ropes.

Bones had been angry since Los Angeles, a feat considering the very long drive between Mexico City and LA. But the dirty Loan Shark of a Landlord had decided that his run in with the Ángel de la muerte was not enough to give up his hard stolen cash. So, emptying his back account and running for one of the biggest cities on earth sounded like a good idea. Well, it wasn't. Bones had hunted the man down to his little home and had gone through every inch of it for clues, before he finally finding the address of a local bar. He went there and bought a couple of guys some drinks before finally getting wind about where the Shark had gone. When he heard Mexico City, most of the few days stress had gotten to him and had just jumped into his Buick '51 and drove straight for the border. When he got there, they stopped him and immediately asked him to hand over any guns he might have. He replied by reversing, parking up the car and simply walking his way across the border which was easier then he thought it would have been. The thermal imaging that most of the UAVs had didn't pick him up at all as he walked to the nearest Mexican village on the other side of the border. There, he found a Motorbike that he “borrowed,” actually intent on returning it when he came back.

However, the ride had only filled his entire suit and skull with sand. It was everywhere. If he could feel, it would have driven him insane in a matter of hours. Instead, he just had to stop every now and then and empty his skull of sand. Unfortunately, when he finally found his way to Mexico City, the bike's wheel blew out which meant that he would have to get a new one fitted at some point on his way back. This scumbag was really, really costing him more time and effort then he should have.

As he tried to ask around the outside of the city for any direction possible to some disreputable spots in town, however, he began to get talked about. Especially after stopping a group of thugs from doing some rather unkind to a woman. However, Bones really didn't like Mexico. It seemed that law down here was something that could be bought, and while he didn't think that of every Cop, he definitely saw the type that in his past life he would “accidentally” slip $50 to. When he finally found himself in the darker parts of the city, he regretted it. Especially the late night show in one of the bars he wandered. The head liner turned out to be his head.

As he was sitting nursing a drink he'd never taste, someone came up behind him and took a crowbar to the back of his neck. It must have been a pretty strong yank, because one minute he was watching a woman dancing with a man and the next the room was spinning and his body was slumping in the chair. He clattered to a stop upside down and was glad that he can only imagine being dizzy these days, as thugs laughed it up when he began shouting for them to put him back on his property. They had, instead, called him a Gringo and stuffed him into a sack, the light of the bar going dim and dark and the sounds becoming distant.

So that's how he found himself rocking in the back-seat of a car and listening to a bunch of men speak a language he had no clue to speak.

And that's how he found himself being emptied into a hole in the ground, looking up as sand was piled on his face, fearing that for the rest of his life he would be trapped out there bound to a grinning skeleton caught in crushing darkness.

How he ended up being silent in a shallow grave was rather lucky actually. The same guys who must have made his hole decided that the scene was scenic; or that it needed more bodies. Because soon they were digging out his little grave again and giving the skull no serious thought; Frankie kept quiet and hoped, watching with a piercing gaze that unnerved one of the men. The chance that whoever was out there could lend a helping was slim to none, but at that moment they remained his only chance.

And like a saint, with her hat and hair caught by the light of the sun, a Cowgirl looked down with pity. She lifted him up in her hands, not questioning how his jaw still remained connected or how it stayed closed as she moved up. Then, with the softest of breaths that had been ingrained into the way he talked forever, he said softly, ”Okay, so I'm a talking skull, Princess. And I'd really like it if you didn't drop me.”

Shut up while I cut myself free. The words came out in a muttered mess of grunts. Something from behind her spoke in a most peculiar way. To avoid the danger of verbs and sentence structure, Elaine threw the skull across the grave and pulled out her pistol. Now if she waned her hands free she would need to walk five feet; what an inconvenience she brought upon herself. Dirt rustled up in the air under her feet during the four foot walk back to the skull. Shadows fell upon the disembodied calcium deposit. Under the gaze of the scrutiny friendship of necessity always looked the best.

Taking her gun by the handle, Elaine brought the barrel under the gun under the corner of the tape and began to roll it away from her cheeks. Peering down the barrel of a loaded gun did not even cross the mind of the girl who used her gun like a swiss army knife. Once enough of it peeled away she took knelt down and tried to catch the side of it on Bones' skull. With enough of a seal on his skull Elaine peeled the tape off of her mouth and laid back with her hands next to Bones' mouth. "Wanna help a girl out?"

The mumbling and grunting would have made Frankie lift an eyebrow if he had the muscles for it, but then suddenly off he was bouncing against one wall of the grave and skidding into the other, one of his eye sockets filling with sand and what seemed to be a Beetle that had been digging it's way into the grave for a meal. ”Ow. Thanks a whole bunch.” He grumbled, jaw working up and down frustratedly as she moved over, the dust kicking up over his teeth and into his nose. He sighed audibly watching her look down, finding that this site was less impressive than the first time. And then she pulled her gun out and shoved it in her face. He mentally made a note that she was either crazy, had unloaded the weapon or just had a death wish. Frankie knew plenty of guys who had accidentally shot themselves because they had about as much respect for the weapon as she was showing. ”God-damn.” He muttered in wonder as she leaned down, slapping the side of the tape on his jaw and pulling back until it was all gone.

”You know, Dolls tend to not wanna get their mouths that close to me these days.” He said dryly as she moved tied hands to his face, asking him help. ”Oh, yeah, sure. Lemme just get my tools.” He sighed sarcastically, opening his jaw and bringing it down onto the knot. If he didn't have any magic, this might have been more difficult, but with a little bit of focus his teeth began to glow blue and cut through the rope. When it was gone, he made a brief spitting sound simply out of habit. ”So, come out to the middle of the desert often, Princess?” He idly spoke, as the beetle finally got sick of it's home in his skull and crawled away.

Grainy teeth brushing against her wrists. "Be careful back there." She kept the rope taut, not knowing the strength that the skull could exert. Maybe she should just take the skull and saw the ropes away. "This is taking too long, I'm just going to use you to saw the ropes." She placed a freed hand on the ground and lifted herself up. Forgetting what she needed to do, she grabbed the skull of the ground and lifted it up. Purpose drove her eyes from side to side. "I picked you up for a reason. Now what was it?"

"I'm pretty sure my name isn't princess." She tried to remember her name for a moment. All of her personal documents rested in the glove compartment of her rented Rio. Calcium and sand mixed together in the curvatures of the skulls features. He probably needed a good cleaning. "I don't know how I got out here. Or who those guys are, or if they would come back." She could barely tell him her name, and he wanted to know what she was doing? The audacity of purpose this guy showed. "Oh wow, I sawed myself free with you and completely forgot I did it. I'm just that good at everything I guess."

The situation looked a little too convenient for Elaine. "Why are you out here in a hole in the ground. And how are you talking." Elaine turned the skull over and placed her hand inside of the skull. She spun it around her hand once, and then placed her thumb against the bottom of the mandible. With a motion of her hand she began to abduct and adduct the mandible from the skull in a mock talking gesture. "Did those guys shoot you and then skin you in acid, and then take all of your bones and gnaw them down into fine grainy shafts?"

”Yeah, Yeah...” He muttered, wishing that he had a hand to pluck the rope from his mouth. He seriously thought he had Phantom Flesh syndrome or something, where the nerves that no longer existed still begged to feel what they knew. And then she was leaning forward, turning to pick up and stair blankly into his eye sockets. The face on the girl was puzzling him a little; if she just killed a bunch of people she didn't really have that steel glint behind the gaze that many of them had. He laughed, a little awkwardly when she told him that she couldn't remember what she picked him up for. ”I think you were about to recite Shakespeare, Princess.”

He tried to bite his tongue a little when she said she pretty sure her name wasn't Princess. These days women tended to be a little touchy about that subject, like with the word Doll. They thought it was a word that tied them down, when Bones simply used it as a general term of endearment. He never had better friends then a broad. But when she continued on to say she pretty much had no idea what so ever whom she was, Frankie mad a small and interested “Hrrrrm.” However, any growing sympathy was quickly replaced by her discussing how awesome she seemed to be. ”Yeah, you're a right Houdini.” He muttered, laughing gently and lowly in the back of his throat.

The laughing stopped as he started spinning on her hand, and then his jaw was wiggled up and down as she talked. He never liked that. It really was disconcerting to have parts of your body doing things you were not intending for them to do. Like a hand that randomly decided to punch you in the gut each time you said a single word. ”I'd like it a lot, Princess, if you didn't do any more of that.” He snapped his jaw up and down tightly, working it from side to side in discomfort. ”And no, my tale doesn't involve acid or cannibalism sadly. I'm just your regular New Orleans Voodoo Skeleton. Some of the thugs who probably brought you out here thought it'd be funny to play hide and go seek with my body. Sadly, old long and thin hasn't shown up yet. Would you mind giving a poor skull a hand?”

"Who's that?" The mention of the name Shakespeare went past her. "He a friend of yours?" Heeding the skulls words about not spinning his head, Elaine began bouncing it on her wrist. The sudden spring of her wrist sending him into the air. Gravity closed the gap in a matter of seconds, but it still appeased the girl. "I'd like it if you didn't do that anymore." Mandibles flapped against their will, as Elaine used Bones like a puppet, with a low voice with a hint of humor in it. "Is New Orleans close to here? I guess we could look for your body there." Before she let Bones finish, she started pulling herself out of the grave.

Walking felt nice, but the weight of the skull on her arms grew tiresome. "Can I just kick your head until we get to New Orleans?" An idea popped in Elaine's head. She threw Bones' skull back into the grave, and jumped back into the hole. Why carry the skull in your hand when you can use rope. Luckily the amount of rope used to tie up a small statured girl could find use even after a few cuts severed it. She took a long strand of rope and ran in through Bones' eye sockets and then tethered that to her belt. "Does that work for you, Princess?" Elaine now took the word 'princess' as a term of friendship. "We should get moving before those dolls show back up." With a skull bouncing off her hamstrings, she started walking west.

”Shakespeare? He's only a friend to the written word.” The spinning ended, thankful, but was now replaced with something quite as annoying. The world was being jerked up and down with the snap of the cowgirls wrist, his eyes being able to see over the edge of the shallow grave with a spin before he landed back down in her palm. And then she decided it was funny to stick her hand in his mouth and wiggle his jaw, murmuring in his own voice and parroting his phrase; that was something he could never stand. Games like that use to wind him up to no end. ”New Orleans?” He begin, jaw opening slightly in surprise before he was suddenly carried up and out of the grave. The little jolts as she walked was not something he ever noticed when he was on his own body, but it was probably just an exaggerated thing. ”New Orleans might be a little too far-Oh god-damn it!”

Back he went tumbling into the grave, spinning on the cap of his skull and groaning from the simple momentum. ”If you don't stop this I am going to bite you when I get close. I swear it.” There was still a hint of good humour under his voice, but it was slowly being replaced by a seriousness of tone. As she moved the rope towards his eye socket he began babbling; ”Now, Princess, I don't think you're thinking this through and it won't be pleasant at all for me-” It got him, as he guessed, absolutely nowhere. This was a girl who when she wanted to do something was going to do it, no matter what.

And then he was swinging upside down in a strange world. This one seemed to have a never ending shallow ocean running on forever. Above it, hanging like the sands of a broken hourglass was a blood splattered desert, with a collection of bodies, cactuses and shrubs that shone. The light source seemed to be a great big ball of fire burning beneath the smooth glass like waves. Feathered fish looped lazily around, some moving closer to the surface.

And then a leg hit him and he was staring at the thigh and rear of a cowgirl. And then he was back to the mysterious new world. Then cowgirl ass. ”You know, if I had a stomach I would be puking like a sprinkler.” He said dryly, a step sending him bouncing him. ”I like the idea of going to New Orleans and all, but, well, we should probably find my body. I have sentimental value attached to it. It's also where I keep my guns and cigars.”

"Are you sure this is the right way." A never ending sea of sand stretched out as far as she could see. If they walked the other way, they would run into the van the cartel members drove her here in, but let's not ruin the fun of this story with the easy way out. "Looks like you got us lost. Good job, princess. And I'm saying princess sarcastically, because you're not really my princess." Heat rose quicker than her objections to carrying both of their weight this whole time. Feet peddled them slowly towards a road. Asphalt peeled up from the blistering pavement, oozing along the decaying carcass of a dog.

"I'm tired." She lamented in a long winded complaint. Either way the road went on forever. She looked to the sun and discerned east from west. "I think we should go east. Going west is making me tired, so if we go East I won't be tired, understand." She shook her head. "What am I talking about, you don't have a brain, how could you understand." Sweat dripped from her brow. Her body became soaked with the non stop moisture pouring from every pore she contained.

Beacons of sheet metal called out to Elaine. Cuidad de Mexico. "I carried us from New Orleans all the way to Mexico. Great, I overshot our destination with my persistence and hardworking ethic. And, going east was just as hard as going west. I thought it would be like walking down stairs; gravity is hard." Elaine plumped herself down, landing squarely on Bones' head. Pricking her butt brought her back to remembering she traveled with a partner. "What do we do now?" The three suns of Mexico tore through the skies right before Elaine's very eyes. Either that, or the single sun took its toll on the poor girl.

"No, I didn't say this was the right way. You should have gone back to get the Van. The dead people you killed probably had keys on them." Bones had resigned himself to 'Luggage' rather from travelling companion now. She was going to to do what was in her head and what was in her head turned out to be crazy. "I didn't get us lost, I said go back and get the damn Van." He mumbled, looking out over a new part of the sky; bright yellow lines were painted across this one and deep, deep down in the calm ocean a silver finned creature left an angry streak in it's wake. Bones wondered what kind of bottom feeders were inside. As he was carried from side to side, bouncing off leg and regretting that he was ever taken from the hole in the first place, he began to wonder how this thin Cowgirl was doing in the heat of the sun without a water canister. Her brain might have been filled up with a warm buzzing heat, but that was pretty unlike; the Girl was just a few cards full of a deck. As the sky gave him a dirty rotting dog corpse, it's stomach burst by a tire track, Frankie began to hum a low Sinatra tune. My Way.

"Yes, the lack of a brain has made your gibberish sound more like gobbledegook." She wasn't listening, but the Abnormal liked wedging in last words where he could, especially in situations like these. As he continued to swing in a fashion that was nothing like when he was 20 years old, he caught the glittering sheet roofs of Mexico City only a distance away. And then she gave in; before he knew it was crushed under a butt that he had a passing interest in and was being beseeched for information on a plan. "Well, we should have gone back to the Van, but now we've got two choices, Cowgirl; Choice number Uno, which means One in Spanish is that we stay out here and you die of Heat stroke. This one is becoming more and more likier the longer you decide that hot Asphalt is a good place to sit. The second is you can stand up and keep walking, hoping to god you get lucky and hitch hike a ride from a kindly Water truck driver. Now the last part is unlikely, but you gotta keep moving. Isn't there anything you really want now? Apart from breaking the laws of physics like a cheap window in a door."

Words buzzed about her like vultures coming to swoop in on her thoughts. Literally she saw that. "Looks like those vultures are coming a little early for this hombre."

"Those aren't vultures; you're not an hombre; I feel betrayed that you are seeing other spirit animals." Summoned from the bowels of heat exhaustion strode a small corgi. "Albeit, they are probably imaginary, but I came from your brain, and that too is imaginary."

"So what do I do now?" Sweltering tar began to stick to the fabric of her jeans.

"You could start by standing up, and walking towards that lovely city of reflective poverty." The small canine walked over to sniff the skull. "My, my the smog looks lovely today; hopefully a nuke will go off near here, and we could garner a lovely shade of fallout over the horizon."

"Do you want a bone?" Elaine held Bones out as a token of appreciation to her incorporeal companion.

"Don't patronize me with such..." He stuttered off. "...you know I do. But alas, now is not the time for that, there will be time later, but now you must head to the city."

"Why?"

"Because you'll become a permanent fixture of this pavement if you sit on it for five more minutes."

Confidence drove Elaine to her feet. "I have a plan." The hands holding Bones dropped to her hips, sending the skull to the ground. "I will not..." She placed an exuberant emphasis on the word 'not.' "...become a permanent fixture of this highway." Her small companion left sometime during her motion of resolve. "Okay princess lets get moving towards the city."

After a few miles Elaine finally garnered the support of a vehicle to pull over. The sweat laden man took pity on the poor girl. "You look tired; need a lift?"

"Are you going to New Orleans." She looked the man over. "My friend here needs to go to New Orleans to get his body back; also do you know who I am?"

The car kept going. "Walking is good for us. You should ask me questions about stuff, so I can get my memory back. Like in that movie." Feeling pity for the delusional girl holding a skull, the man did impart her with a bottle of water that she promptly swallowed up and tossed on the ground. No preservation of water, and no thought about littering, things look bright for this girl in one of the world's most violent and polluted cities.

Bones rocked from side to side behind the cowgirl, opening his jaw and closing it with a tiny but firm clack. When the girl started to speak about vultures, his eyes went down (or up, depending on which side of the world you were on) and searched the sky for the pesky dark feathered vermin. He fortunately didn't spot a single word, but the idea that the girl was having the engine under the hat overheat was becoming more and more likely. ”I don't see any birds, but I wonder if those Amigo's we left are looking like me yet.” The macabre thought danced through his mind, before suddenly his attention was back on the girl. ”I told you what we do-” He began with a sigh, eyes rolling up before he suddenly gave a small cry of surprise. Out he was held to thin air as the cowgirl asked the wobbling lines of heat whether they would like him or not. Huh. When she asked the empty highway why it did not take the offered Skull, Frankie opened his jaw and sighed hard and loud.

He was a little bit upset it didn't work.

A plan was put into action, apparently. Out of the air he fell and off he went spinning again, the desire to empty a stomach that hadn't been full since the year 1930 strong again. ”A plan, huh? Well, moving towards the city is a good plan.” He swung back and forth as they kept moving. To fill the time he began to mutter, ”I use to be a part of the Geographical Landscape, at least I was in New Orleans. Graves count as Geography, right?” Frankie sighed as they kept up the steady persistent pace. And before he could even tell, he was singing 'That's Life' under his breath.

”Oh thank god someone else.” Bones called out as the car moved along the asphalt towards them. As the window rolled down, Frankie hoped to god that what ever she said made sense. It did not. As they kept going in the dead heat, he didn't even bother to try and tell her how to drink the water, zoning out slightly and just staring out into the distance without a care. His interest was spiked back up when the girl asked him for questions. ”Well, sure...” Frankie sighed as bounced back and forth. ”Do you, er... remember what happened yesterday?”

The soft pitter patter of the hard skull on her leg caused vibrations within the voice pattern of the diembodied skull. "Yesterday?" Sun beams fought valiantly to break through the overcast of smog and pollution. "Isn't nature pretty? Sometimes I wish I could be a pretty sunset illuminating the skyline, showing us all the futility of life against an ever present threat of the violence of nature, predicting the demise of mankind by and the insignificance of existence in the face of extra planetary extinction." Elaine cocked her head to the side, as she continued blindly down the blistering road. Tar stuck to the soles of her boots; once her feet came back down from the hundred degree heat, she would tell just how many blisters she picked up. Until then she and her friend continued down the road of life.

"I came to New Orleans yesterday, and then I just walked to Mexico City to find something..." A feeling came over her, like when someone walks into a room and forgets their purpose. But, in this case Elaine walked into Mexico City, and she really never had a good purpose. "So you don't have a brain. That means you don't think, right? Or remember things..." A stroke of genius rang out like a taut string of a harp. "Yesterday, I shot three cartel members and then escaped and found a skull that talked!"

"Oh..." She stopped. "...wait." The mixture of idle chatter and reminiscing over stupid things brought them to the door of Mexico City. Poor structures reflected the gleaming light of the polluted sky. The cemetery march of the girl brought children from the surrounding buildings to her. Laughter illuminated the poor area, making the overshadowing pollution and smog alleviate by the comparison that they brought.

"La Vaquera!" A small girl with pigtails cried out. Elaine looked down at the girl and smiled. "La Vaquera!"

"Vavamos! Los niños me siguen y le dirigiré a una mejor mañana!" Elaine cried out to the small crowd of children. "I think I came here to be a saint. Do you think I may be a saint or something?" Pulling children from around the slums brought the parade to around twenty children. Elaine and her talking skull found themselves at the edge of the slums; Mexico City and the towering splendor of its spire towers rose above the polluted smog before them. Maybe some day Elaine would right that wrong, but now she needed to descend into the seedy underbelly of the city. "Usted allí, pequeño niño con colas de puerco que se parece a mí, yo debo saber donde los criminales de esta ciudad son."

Giving a toothy smile, the small girl grabbed Elaine's legs and pointed the way that she should head.

“Yeah, Extinction.” He muttered softly, simply echoing the last word as if it was an acknowledgement of anything the Crazy woman said. He'd seen plenty of documentaries and films talking about how random and pointless life was, which Frankie could probably relate to. His life was pretty empty and pointless, simply about money, booze and the “Princesses” with the forgettable faces. Then he met his own Extinction, which was pretty painful. Funnily death wasn't the end, but Frankie didn't know if that was only a personal thing or if that was something everyone went through. Maybe a certain type of person got to choose Oblivion over the afterlife. Maybe Frankie didn't get it because there was some reason he had to stay, some thing he had to do to earn redemption and pass through the ante room of life into whatever room lay beyond. The thoughts were pushed out of his empty skull when Miss Crazy Cowgirl kept talking.

”Sorry, Princess, I don't think you walked here from New Orleans. It's a little too far for that. I'd say you're from somewhere around Montana or you're Canadian, judging from your accent.” He twisted in the breeze on a rope, wondering if this was how it felt to be hanged. ”Actually, you'll be funny how bones have a deep enough memory. And I can think when I'm not being treated like a soap on a rope.” He grumbled the last sentence gently. However, he stopped feeling as put out when she mistook the days events for the ones before. This girl was really in trouble it seemed. And she seemed to be working that out too. ”We'll work it out, Kiddo.” Bones mumbled. ”When I've got a body or something.”

The desert was replaced with buildings as they moved into Mexico City. Finally, they could probably get in contact with some kind of human beings that might help the both of them. Oh wait a minute, Crazy Girl who killed Cartel members. There was probably already a warrant out for her or something. When the kids began shouting out some word beginning with V and flooded the woman, some small hands suddenly grabbed him and began lifting him up, babbling something in Spanish as a ten year old boy with a bruised eye looked down at him. Soon, it felt like he was being passed around.

”Yeah, a Saint. Listen, could you, I dunno, tell these kids to put me down or something? I'm thinking one of them's going to take too much a liking to me.”

"I got a finger telling me what direction to go, but it seems inappropriate to take small children to fight cartel members, even though they could probably be used as shields..." Elaine thought longer than any other human would about that. "...No the bullets would go through them, and the they would haunt us long after their deaths. We need to be realistic about this, Skull." In all fairness Elaine needed to use tact and the perfect use of words to explain to the children that they could not accompany her. "si usted no se va el chupacabra comerá su alma, porque es una desilusión y el desaguadero sobre el mundo." Tact goes a long way when dealing with children.

Dissatisfied children ran away from duo, scurrying back into their impoverished surroundings. "We should buy them all something on the way back. What do frightened Latino children like?" Blocks faded into the backdrop of Mexico City. The air remained heavy with the misdeeds of evil men. Rancid activity came over Elaine and her senses sat accosted by the loud booming of wretched music that competed with the ill screaming of domestic violence that permeated through the streets.

Music acted as the cover for the streets that ran thick with violence. Elaine turned to see two men standing over a downed old man. By connecting the clues of human nature, Elaine discerned that this store belonged to the old man who struggled to get back to his feet. With their backs foolishly turned to Elaine, a man dressed in loose khaki pants and a white shirt kicked out the arm of the old man. Gears clicked back in the chamber of the pistol. Even with the loud drowning of music, the chamber rang out to the men.

"¿Quién el carajo es usted?" The man with no problem attacking a downed old man spoke in a ribald fashion.

"No importante." Her eyes diverted to the man, telling him to get inside the store. The two thugs obliged to let him leave the fight. Bravado filled them with laughter and cocky movement. They found something funny enough about Elaine to laugh, while allowing their limbs to move about as though a puppeteer with Parkinson's disease controlled them.

"Escuche, perra..." A bullet flew into the man's chest sending him back into he arms of his partner in crime. Elaine moved her thumb up the handle of her gun and pressed a small red button. Explosives burst from his chest cavity, and send scraps of metal into his friend. Elaine walked over and spun the chamber of the gun. After firing a round that left one chamber empty. With no fear Elaine took the pistol to her head and pulled the trigger.

Click.

Her arm moved from its position next to her head, and directed the barrel to the man's forehead. Blood poured from his lacerated skin, mixing with sweat for a gushing cocktail of failure and defeat. "¿Sentirse afortunado?" She cocked the pistol. "¿Bien hágale punk? "