FSE

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When the lucario opened his eyes once more, all he could hear was soft snores coming from the jolteon resting against his body. Carefully, he stroked her as she slept. He didn't want to wake her, not yet anyway. He knew that he would have to get up eventually, but there was no sense in disturbing her slumber just yet. As he stroked her fur, he began wondering what to do when they get to Shanghai. With the money he managed to get from pretty much all of his personal possessions, they could find a nice place to stay, maybe even buy the jolteon a new leg. He would have to leave his accounting job, but maybe he could go full time with his military career, although that was kind of a dangerous bet due to the recent boom in the private contractors. In simple terms, they were mercenaries, a very large group of mercenaries. At a moment's notice, he could lose his job to Belltower seeing as mercenaries were cheaper to use. Belltower was Belltower's headquarters were located in London, but they had offices in Afghanistan, Bahrain, China, Iraq, Kenya, India, Australia and United States. Cheng hated Belltower. He thought it was stupid to give up on building a traditional army and trust a group of people who were only loyal to the largest sack of money they could get their hands on.

"What are you thinking about?" Jiao asked him with a small smile on her face.

Cheng was quickly snapped out of his thoughts by the sound of her voice. "Just thinking about what jobs I should go for when we get to Shanghai."

Hearing that brought her a little more confidence. If he was thinking about jobs in Shanghai, then he must think that they had a good chance of surviving. "Are you going to go for another accounting job?" She curiously asked.

"If I can, yeah." Cheng simply replied, not wanting to bore her by going into any details. Thinking about jobs however did bring to mind one question he wanted to ask her. "Before all this, did you have a job?"

"I... didn't..." She let out a sigh, not really wanting to talk about this, but she guessed she had to at some point. He shared something about his past, and now it was her turn. "I was in university, doing a course in art. I was doing well at it too, teachers were dicks, but I was still doing well. Then... I get caught in the crossfire between belltower assholes and a bunch of mobsters. My legs got shredded up, broken, I couldn't even move. I thought I was going to die. When I woke up, I had new legs, New eyes, and a load of bills to pay. Because I was out of university for so long, I couldn't finish off any of the work... I had so many loans to pay back, and I didn't have the money for any of it. I had to put all my money towards new legs, eyes, and the drug to make sure my body doesn't reject them. I tried going in for so many different jobs, but no one wants an aug, unless they're working for in security, or for a L.I.M.B clinic. Or maybe they just didn't like the look of me, I don't know... All I know is that I went for a bunch of jobs, and they all rejected me. It was hard surviving out here, but when you start to know all the secret little places people forget about, like this place, it starts getting easier."

It sounded as if she had been on the streets for a while, it made him wonder just how long she has been homeless. "How long have you been living in the streets?" He asked her.

"About... Ffffffive years?" She thought to herself. "Could be six years."

"Six years on the street... Shit. That means you must've known the dangers when you tried to work with the harvesters." Cheng thought aloud.

"I did." Jiao knew it was foolish to try and work with them, but she was desperate, starving, she needed to survive. They probably tried to cut her up because she wasn't much use to them. She didn't like helping capture people in order to cut them up, and sell their parts. "They all creeped me out. Ripping off augmentations and putting them inside yourself... I don't know why they like it so much, but that's something I never wanted to do, and never did do. Cannibalizing someone for their augs... I didn't want to help them, but I had no other choice."

"When we get to Shanghai, you won't have to worry about money, or harvesters, or belltower asshole ever again." Cheng didn't want her to have to do something drastic just to survive when they get to Shanghai. The credits he had on him at the moment should be enough to pay for a good rented place for at least the next year. "We should should get moving, it's 1AM already. We slept through the entire day."

She was about to ask how he knew what time it was, but then she realized his eye augmentation was much newer than her's. It probably allowed him to see the time as well. Quickly, she hopped off him, and stretched her legs out. "How's your shoulder and chest?" She asked as she looked back to him. He has been shot twice and stabbed in the chest, yet he was still getting back up.

The lucario let out a grunt as he pushed himself out of the chair he has been sitting in for so long. He felt weak from all the blood loss, but considering what he has been through, it seemed as if he got lucky this time. "My shoulder is killing me, my chest feels like it's on fire, but I am still breathing, thanks to you." He then let out a yawn before looking back to the vent. "Do I have to crawl back through there?"

"You can either crawl again, or find some other way out of here. That might take a while though, most of the exits have been bricked up." She replied with a knowing smile.

"Then it looks like it's the vents again..." Cheng walked on over to the vent before getting on his hands and knees. The vent was coated in some sort of grease. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, but he was sure he didn't want to know.

"Forgetting something?" Jiao said as she looked back to his pile of clothes nearby.

The lucario grunted as he stood back up, and walked on over towards his clothes. At least maybe these clothes would stop the grease from getting into his fur if he wore them. He did also need them to conceal his handgun. "Our boat leaves at seven AM. As soon as they start letting people on, we go for it." He told her, having already booked them a place on the ferry when she was still sleeping.

"Seven AM? And we're leaving now? Why don't we wait here a few more hours?" She replied to him, before a smirk came to her face. "I know a few ways we can make the hours fly by..."

That got the lucario's attention very quickly. "Like?" He responded with a smirk of his own.

Five hours later...

Travelling on foot, through the dark and dangerous streets, they made their way towards the docks. The lucario stayed alert, as did the jolteon, but after a while, Cheng broke the silence. "That thing you did with your tongue, and those small shocks... Have you done that before?" He curiously asked.

"No, first time trying it out." The jolteon giggled lightly, before a question of her own popped into her mind. "Why did you get augmentations anyway?"

"Augmentations are cheap in the military, they consider the drastic price drop as an incentive to get more augmentated soldiers. You should've seen the look on everyone's faces when I walked into the office the next day. My boss was less than happy." Cheng replied to her with a chuckle.

"Cheng!" Someone shouted from behind them.

Cheng turned around, only to what looked like a Nidoking, heavily armoured. By the mismatching arms, he guessed it was a harvester. Was every harvester out on the streets looking for them? The Nidoking had what looked like a big triangular metal plate protecting its face. Cheng couldn't even see his eyes, but he could see two small circular wired cameras mounted and wired to the sides of his head. Both of the Nidoking's arms were big bulky and metal, but both were clearly different makes. One was dark red, the other was bright yellow and black. In his hands was an M404 heavy rifle. It was a multi-barrel machine gun. The barrels spun much like a gatling gun, but the other half of the gun was styled much like the classic M60. The nidokings's legs were covered up by what looked like some kind of navy blue padded pants with knee pads. Over the nidoking's chest, there seemed to be a large metal plated vest.

"Run!" Cheng yelled as he pulled out his handgun, and fired off a shot.

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Author's note: Straight back into a fight. Let's see how well an augmented lucario with two holes in his shoulder and a through and through stab wound can handle what is coming next. Again, I gotta thank BigBossSonic and Zarfy for editing all this stuff. :3 And thank you all for reading! Oh, also this story is almost at its end. Just two more chapters left!