74, Yup

“I’ve never smelled anything so awful, and that includes the infamous July fourth beans and brats debacle.”  Special agent Alexi Blacktide recoiled half in disgust, half impressed.  The stench was awful.

“Top of the line, Lex.  I know the fella who make these things, and he uses only the finest raw industrial products to create such an unpleasant odor.”  Demolitions expert Dale O’Connor put on a state of the art military issued gas mask and handed one to Blacktide.  “Take this, and click the button right here.”

Blacktide took the gas mask and put it on.  She clicked the button as instructed to turn on the microphone and spoke as easily if she were having coffee at a quiet cafe.  “Bless you Doc, you came prepared.”

“Well, duh!”  O’Connor was normally drunk, passionless and boring, but currently he was in a very good mood.  A minute earlier, he’d detonated forty fart bombs in the area around an apartment complex in Mexico City where over thirty Russian thugs were hanging out.  It was a small property that had four doors to different apartments, and as far as the American special agents knew the Russian thugs occupied all four of them.  “I’ve always wanted to do a fart explosion that rippled and lingered for hours.  Until now, I didn’t even know it was possible.”

Even with the gas mask, Blacktide could see O’Connor’s mischievous smile.   “You’re a pyscho, Doc.”

It was a rare moment where Dale O’Connor felt good.  “Yup.”  His eyes lit up with excitement.  “Here we go!” he exclaimed as he pointed to the front doors of the apartment complex.

A group full of Russian men came pouring out of the front door of one of the apartments, followed by other men pouring out of each of the other three doors.  They were all audibly angry and clearly blaming each other for the smell.  Some men were looking for the source of the stench as they covered their noses in disgust.  In the span of half a minute, thirty men had piled out of the doors, all of them with balled up fists, all of them yelling at each other.  

“This is fun,” O’Connor said.  “Check out the way this apartment complex is set up, Lex.  It’s brilliant.  It’s totally public, but the way it sits, literally no one from the surrounding streets can see into that open area.  This set up is totally private.  They knew what they were doing when they got this place.”

Blacktide took note that no other people were out and about.  The way the properties were lined up around the apartments, no one could see what was going on.  Not like it mattered.  The hot evening Mexican sun drove everyone inside to escape the heat, so these angry white men were all alone as they piled outside looking for the source of the stench.

O’Connor noted how the men stood.  Many of them swayed uneasily, clearly drunk.  “I’d say we’ve distracted these Russians from whatever they were gonna do, wouldn’t you?” O’Connor asked.

Blacktide was breathing fine with the gas mask and appreciated the reprieve from the awful smell.  “This may be a violation of every international war law ever written, but obviously it’s having an effect.”

Some of the Russian thugs started aggressively walking around the apartment complex.  Many had lifted the collar of their t-shirts over their noses to block the stench.  A few men naturally were barking orders to others, pointing in one direction and yelling obscenities into the open air.  Some men complied, other men pointed at those in charge and yelled back.  The stench was awful.

Blacktide and O’Connor were hunkered down over two blocks away in a van that wasn’t running, so they had no air conditioning to cool themselves.  The hot evening Mexican sun beat down on the vehicle and turned it into a blast oven, and even though the doors were closed, the awful stench had penetrated the inside of the van.  Without the gas masks, the situation would be totally unbearable.

O’Connor didn’t care as sweat dripped down his forehead.  He was as mature as a middle school boy, giggling to himself at the hilarity of setting off forty industrial grade fart bombs all at once in a perfectly timed sequence.  Blacktide saw her friend giggling to himself and couldn’t resist.  “Jesus Doc, you are seriously fucked up.”

“Yup.”  The demolitions expert shrugged.

Curiosity got the best of Blacktide.  “I’m afraid to ask.”

No clarification was needed to the question.  O’Connor was in too good of a mood.  “I’m an open book, Lex.  Fire away.”

“Where in the fuck did you even get a fart bomb, and what exactly is it?”

Dale O’Connor gave Blacktide a very devious smile.  “I bought them from a reputable inventor who thinks outside of the box when it comes to traditional military operational protocol.”  O’Connor shrugged.  “The guy is a mad scientist.”

“You and your fucked up friends,” Blacktide said.  Her voice was slightly distorted from the gas mask’s voice amplification and the electronic warping really resonated when she said the F word.

“You’re one to talk, Lex!  My friends are tax paying, God fearing men and women who are straight as an arrow compared to the crooked people I’ve seen you hang with.”

Blacktide laughed.  “Says the man who just detonated fart bombs.”

“Yup.”  O’Connor giggled to himself and his laugh sounded bizarre as the small speaker in the gas mask sounded distorted.  “Fart bombs.  I mean, actual fart bombs!  Not just some stinky fluid that dissipates after a few minutes, but an industrial mix of chemicals that stinks for a day or two, as bad as a dozen skunks.  Think about that!  What an unreal thing to invent.”

More and more Russians were piling out of the apartment complex, and all of them were drunk and angry.  The smell was so bad that it was actually confusing.  It interrupted their brains from normal consciousness and put the men into an angered frenzy.  O’Connor noted their mental state as he said, “These guys are in rough shape.  Maybe I should’ve only detonated half?”

Years of military training had hardened Blacktide’s mind into a sharp weapon.  She wasn’t weak spirited, but the idea of having to smell that stench gave her goosebumps.  Blacktide had no problem killing bad men.  None at all.  However, the smell was so awful that she actually felt bad for the Russians.  “It’s a torture unlike any I’ve ever thought of.  That smell is so offensive, dude.  It really doesn’t compute in my mind.”

A few of the Russians were pointing at each other and yelling loudly in each other’s faces.  The hot Mexican sun made them sweat and the smell was disorienting them in a way that none of them had ever experienced.  A few other men jumped in between the lads fighting.  It looked like the start of a bar fight where people try to break up the potential conflict.

O’Connor and Blacktide had video recording set up in their van, and they had been rolling tape the whole time.  Using a small control pad, O’Connor looked at a small video screen to zoom in on the group of men who were looking like a street brawl.  He marveled at their anger.  “Humans never cease to amaze me, Lex.  We think we’re individually so important, but when we think that someone has pushed us, instead of forgiving them and walking away, we just have to push back.”

Alexi Blacktide knew the beginning of a sermon when she heard one.  “Are you seriously wearing a gas mask trying to tell me to forgive my neighbor?”

“I aint saying you should do shit.  I’m just fascinated by humans.  We should be nice to each other and turn the other cheek, but instead we just treat each other like shit.  It fascinates me.”

Her friend wasn’t drunk, or at least she couldn’t tell if he was, but this wasn’t a conversation she was used to having with O’Connor, ever.  “Did you find the Lord lately, Doc?  Am I gonna have to listen to you preach about Jesus now?”

“I deserve that, I guess,” O’Connor admitted as he adjusted the video zoom.  “This is fascinating to witness.”

The Russians were at the height of their anger and one of the angriest men pushed a few of his friends hard.  They went down to the ground.  It instantly agitated the rest of the group as other men started pushing each other.  Some men tried to be peace keepers while others became very aggressive.  The smell had affected these men’s drunk brains and the scene wasn’t good.

Special agent Alexi Blacktide was a well trained, hardened killer of men.  She had no problem ridding the world of scum bags, and she slept just fine at night.  The human race was better off with her doing what she did.  Currently, her normal mental persona was gone as she processed how bad the stench really was.  “This is chaos, Doc.  It may have been more humane to simply blow them up and let that apartment complex come raining down on their dead carcasses.  That smell is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.  Like, it doesn’t compute.”

As she finished the word “compute,” a Russian man had pulled out a hand gun and pointed it at another man.  The yelling in the crowd hit an all time high as other men pulled out their hand guns and waved them at each other.  A few more pointed firearms at each other.  If they were bees, one could say that the hive was clearly in a frenzy.

“Well I didn’t anticipate this, to be honest,” O’Connor confessed.  He made sure the camera could get as much of the action as he could film.  O’Connor froze.  He saw a man walk out of the apartment complex, and the man was very angry.  “Shit, I didn’t know he was here,” O’Connor said.  His eyes got big with fear as he looked at Blacktide.  “It’s Gosavich.”

Blacktide rolled her eyes.  She said patronizingly, “You’re fine, Doc.”  She knew that O’Connor was superstitious.  He thought that magic was real and that Gosavich was a dark wizard.  His fear of the Russian was real.

“He’s gonna use some sort of sensing spell and feel my presence.  I shouldn’t have come here.  I’ve ruined the whole mission.”  O’Connor’s distorted voice sounded pathetic through the gas mask.

“You’re not Luke Skywalker and this isn’t Return of the Jedi, asshole.”  Blacktide was normally patient with O’Connor’s conspiracy theories or other bullshit, but the stench, the heat and the situation had fried her patience.

“I wish I had the force.  It’s the only way someone can defeat Gosavich.”  O’Connor was completely sincere as he spoke, and the defeat in his voice was pathetic.

“Gosavich is not Darth Vader, you fucking idiot, and we are not in a Star Wars movie!  This is fucking Mexico, it’s hot as fuck and we have a bunch of angry white men who are losing their minds.  Get your shit together!”

Someone in the crowd pulled a trigger.  In the span of a millisecond, a gun fight broke out.  No one ran, no one flinched, no one took cover.  The Russians gunned each other down in the hot open daylight with no regard for each other.

“Holy shit!” Blacktide yelled, but her distorted voice through the gas mask couldn’t be heard over the gun shots.  She froze as she watched the scene unfold on the video monitor screen.

In a few seconds, half of the Russian men had killed each other.  In the midst of the bullet filled shootout, Gosavich had raced up to the crowd.  He pushed out his open palmed hands as if he were pushing against something.  Some sort of energy field came blasting out of his palms and a visible wave of distorted air emanated quickly from him to the crowd.  As the shock wave hit people, they went flying backwards up into the air, as if a large giant had given them all a huge uppercut punch and sent them into the sky.

The agents saw all this on the video screen, then a moment later heard a sonic “BOOM!” hit their van.  It had taken a moment for the sound to travel from the fight to their location a few blocks away.  Blacktide yelled out in shock, “What in the fuck was that!?”

As calmly as if he were telling her the weather forecast, O’Connor said, “Magic.  We’re fucked.”

The gun fight was over as soon as it had started.  The bodies came crashing to the ground and the place was silent.  Gosavich was the only person left standing.  He looked around at the carnage and shook his head, then lifted the collar of his t-shirt up and over his nose to try and block the stench. 

Blacktide and O’Connor couldn’t appreciate the incredible camera technology that they were using.  It was super high definition, and it picked up every little facial tick, every bead of sweat, up to the most intimate detail of the situation.  That technological impressiveness was ignored.  All they could do was sit in shock at the insanity they’d just witnessed.

A handful of the Russian men sat up, dazed and confused.  The stench was still ever present, and it was awful, but the shock wave they’d just absorbed had ended their angry fight.  Gosavich noted the survivors and started barking orders in Russian.  He pointed to some dead bodies and was clearly giving instructions to the survivors to grab the bodies and haul them back inside of the small apartment complex.

“I did not expect that,” Blacktide said.

“I’ve tried to tell you that Gosavich is magic, but no one listens.  Do you believe me now?”  O’Connor ignored the heat.  He ignored how tightly the gas mask clung to his face.  All he felt was fear.  “Magic.  We can’t compete.”

Even though Blacktide didn’t believe in magic, she couldn’t process what she’d just witnessed.  She’d seen plenty of violent shootouts, and she’d killed many a bad guy in her day.  However, she’d never seen someone use their hands to create a shock wave through the air that sent grown men flying all over.  Her instincts knew there was something more going on to the scene but her intellect was coming up black.  “Magic?” she said to herself, ignoring O’Connor.

“Yup,” O’Connor answered, even though he wasn’t being spoken to.

Half of the Russians lay dead, blood everywhere.  The other half were all dazed and confused from the shock wave they’d just received.  Gosavich was clearly in charge.  He barked orders for the survivors to pick up their dead comrades and drag them inside.  Despite the oppressive heat, the thugs did as they were instructed.

After a couple of minutes, the place had been cleared of corpses.  All that remained was the blood soaked lawn.  Any passerby on the surrounding streets would not be able to see into the small apartment complex, but no one would care.  The shootout didn’t last five seconds, but the sounds of gun shots would be heard for many blocks, and the sonic boom created by Gosavich would be heard for the better part of a mile in all directions.  However, the oppressive stench combined with the heat seemed to keep people inside.  The streets were completely empty.

Gosavich was the last person to walk back inside of one of the doors, and he he slammed it closed behind him.  As crazy as the scene had been just a few minutes earlier, now it was completely silent and serene.

“Now what?” Blacktide asked.

O’Connor was still frozen as he exhaled a long drawn out breath pursed through his lips.  The sound had a strange mechanical wheeze to it as the gas mask speakers broadcast the audio.  When he finally spoke, he sounded like a computer.  “I don’t know.”  He crawled up the front of the van and fired it up.  It took half a minute for the engine to warm up, but as it did, air conditioning came pouring out of the dash board.  “This is fucked.”

“Yup,” Blacktide answered simply. 

O’Connor thought about their situation for a moment, then said, “I’m calling Bradley.  He’s the only person I know with enough magic to stand up to Gosavich.”  He looked at Blacktide through their gas masks and his eyes seemed bigger than usual.  “We have to kill that dark Russian wizard or the world will never be safe.”

Blacktide was internally incredulous.  How could O’Connor be so fucking stupid and superstitious?  “Doc!  Why are you such a fucking dumbass?”

Without hesitating, he answered, “My mom was a drunk and didn’t hug me as a child.”

In the distance, local Mexican citizens were worried since they’d heard what they thought might be gun shots, but no one was willing to leave their homes because the stench was so bad that people wondered if the sewers had exploded.