Chapter 11: Monkey See, Monkey Shoot

The heroes chase the villains to Las Vegas, but must figure out a way past the mystery assassin guarding the hotel.

Las Vegas truly was a sight to behold. From the streets lined with flashy signs that were an epileptic's worst nightmare; to the many towering hotels with personalities that were somehow more larger-than-life than the celebrities residing one state over; to the lively atmosphere that made the city look and feel like a giant outdoor nightclub. Over the course of my life, I'd already been here numerous times, including once for the purpose of attending one of my late mother's campaign rallies from almost two decades ago.

Xavier, Tequila, and I had managed to beat the traffic and make it here well before the alleged criminal assembly was supposed to occur, and right now, we were busying ourselves driving along the main strip cloaked in neon that many people know Vegas for.

"Okay, so the MGM Grand has to be around here somewhere," Xavier commented, looking around as much as he could without ignoring the road. The streets were as packed as ever, so he didn't want to take any chances.

"You'd think the place would be piss easy to spot, given how distinctive each individual building is here," Tequila replied, looking as well before her eyes zeroed in on something. "Hey, I think I just spotted Simmons Tower."

"As much as I hated the previous owner, I'll admit: 'Simmons Tower' just doesn't have quite the same ring to it," I said.

Without warning, the radio broadcast cut off as a two-second jingle that made usage of rather harsh instruments started to play.

"Q987.6 interrupts this playlist for some breaking news coming from the Las Vegas area!" the announcer began.

"Seriously? He still listens to local radio stations?" Tequila muttered to me.

"A band of notorious criminals from throughout the country has recently broken into the MGM Grand hotel and forced every single guest out of the building," the announcer explained. "In addition, one of the police choppers that arrived on the scene has been shot down by an unseen marksman, with no survivors to be found."

Right as he was speaking, Xavier brought the car to a halt as crowds of people ran towards us in a panic, preventing us or any of the other traffic from moving for a short while.

"I don't suppose that gunman may have been intended to keep the authorities from interfering with this meeting," Xavier commented.

"Looks like we'll have a lot more to deal with than just GG," Tequila sighed, rolling her eyes. "Even when we're keeping a low profile, there always has to be something to interrupt us."

"Ain't that the truth," I replied.

Within the next few minutes, the crowds cleared out, allowing us to pull into the nearest public parking lot. After taking turns changing into our armor in the car, we immediately made a beeline for the hotel, where several cops had already been stationed.

"What's the holdup, officer?" I asked.

"That blasted sharpshooter took out one of our choppers!" the cop replied. "And what's worse is that this guy's impossible to spot! We've sent a few of our men around the perimeter to try and find 'em, but no one's reported back."

"Well whoever he is, he's obviously defending the crooks inside the hotel. Speaking of which, have all the guests been safely evacuated?" Xavier asked.

"Some of them managed to escape unharmed, but for all we know, the others could be held hostage in there, or even murdered by now," the cop explained. "Now if you three are interested in staking the place out, I'd suggest you exercise caution and go after that sharpshooter first before you try anything else."

"Understood," I replied as I led my crew closer to the hotel.

Just as we approached the front door, a series of gunshots rang out from the nearest alleyway, accompanied by blood-curdling screams and the sounds of bodies collapsing on the hard ground. Peculiarly, they were also accompanied by various splatting sounds.

"Well gee, I don't suppose we could find some crucial information over there," Xavier said sardonically.

---

Right away, we hurried into the alleyway, from which the perpetrator had already vanished, scanning the area both figuratively and literally as we slowly trekked through it. Peculiarly, I noticed a lot of bullet-dents in the surrounding walls and ground, suggesting that maybe some bullets had missed, or even ricocheted off of the flat surfaces.

"Blecch! What is that awful scent?! It smells like a mixture blood and crop fertilizer!" Tequila pinched her nose tightly. "I mean the blood's pretty obvious, seeing how we're on the scene of a homicide and all, but what about the- Augh! S**t!"

In addition to the deceased policemen and dark puddles of blood lying around, there was also what appeared to be several fresh clumps of fecal matter splattered all over the area. Never before had I seen nor heard of a criminal doing something so bizarre to their enemies.

"Yecch, I wonder who would've done this," Tequila commented.

"Clearly someone who's deranged beyond belief," I replied, before kneeling down and scanning the corpses. "Hmm, so apparently the bullets in these bodies were of the armor-piercing variety. Illegal for obvious reasons."

"Wait a minute, didn't Roxanne tell us that one of the killers competing for the bounty possesses those?" Tequila had an epiphany. "If so, then that's probably the same person who murdered these cops."

"Sure seems that way," Xavier replied, surveying the scene himself. "...Say what? Look at these clumps of hair on the ground."

I watched as he pulled a couple strands of short, dense black hair out of one of the many nearby blood puddles, before placing them on a dry spot on the ground and entering scan mode. The rest of us couldn't tell what Xavier was seeing, but soon enough he quickly widened his eyes and looked back up at us.

"What the hell? These hairs aren't human hair. They're animal hair! A common chimpanzee and a silverback gorilla, to be exact," he said.

"Well that explains the crap all over the place," I said matter-of-factly.

"And what's more, the DNA is exactly the same as two of my animal subjects from several years ago," Xavier continued. "See, during the ten-year gap after we graduated from college-"

"Of course it was during that time," Tequila snarked.

"Do you mind? Anyways, a good portion of that decade was spent researching ways to use animals to assist us. These projects ranged from using tiger sharks and goats as living trash bins, to training elephants and giraffes to assist with harvesting fruits, to training various primates to serve in the military. For the latter experiment, I took in a chimp and a gorilla named Gerald and Patrick respectively, both named after my favorite surnames, Fitzgerald and Fitzpatrick.

They were both trained to walk on two legs, cook, play video games, operate cars and planes, and even use various weapons ranging from guns to grenades. The studies were largely successful, but one night, the two eventually broke out of my lab and ran off without a trace. Nobody's been able to track them ever since they left. I, uh, I don't know how to say this, but... I-I think I may have created some criminals," Xavier explained.

"Uh-huh. And you're not gonna have any trouble putting them in their place, are you? Y'know, like most scientists when they're forced to stop their own rogue projects?" I asked, somewhat cautiously.

"Oh no, there's no need to worry about that," Xavier assured us. "That's just a stereotype."

"Sure hope so," I replied. "Because we'll definitely need to pitch in to take these guys out. Judging by how fresh the blood and poop are, there's no way they could've gone very-" I was cut off as I was abruptly shot from behind.

The impact of the bullet was strong enough to send me reeling forwards, tumbling along the ground for a spell. Peculiarly, I couldn't feel the bullet injuring me at all, much less penetrating my armor. Xavier sure wasn't kidding about how bulletproof our suits were.

"Are you okay, Jasper?" Tequila helped me up.

"I'm fine... but it looks like we've got some company," I replied, pointing at my shooter.

There, standing right before us was the same silverback gorilla that Xavier had previously described, carrying a double-barreled shotgun. His chimp partner in crime was riding piggyback on top of him, armed with a pair of pistols. Both of them sported brass knuckles and bulletproof vests as they stared us down aggressively, seemingly showing no signs of recognizing the man who had trained them way back when.

"Huh, and here I thought only humans had constitutional rights." Tequila sneered.

"Well guys, so far we've managed to take out four assassins with brute force alone. But this time around, I suppose we have no choice but to fight fire with fire," I declared, cocking my own gun as my friends did the same.

"Right behind you," Xavier replied.

"Alright, primates! You've found us! So why don't you show us how closely related we really are?!" I taunted our new opponents. "...Sorry, I'm not the best at one-liners."

With a loud, animalistic screech, Gerald leapt off of Patrick's back and front-flipped behind us, before attempting to shoot at me. I quickly knocked one of his guns away with a shot from my own, but he kept flipping and cartwheeling away from the other bullets I fired. As I was reloading my gun, I was taken by surprise as Patrick punched me hard in the back, toppling me over like a domino.

In retaliation, Tequila rushed up to him and decked him with a series of electrified punches. This was enough to send him toppling over, prompting her to climb on top and continue to attack his face, only to be grabbed tightly by the neck. In a desperate bid to avoid passing out from the lack of oxygen, she switched her gloves to heat mode and gripped his wrists. With a howl of pain, Patrick let go of her, examining his now hairless wrists before he glared at her, roaring all the while. Tequila let out a girly squeal and scrambled away from him, only to be tackled to the ground. Immediately, Patrick pinned her down and sank his teeth into her arm, only to quickly withdraw as every last tooth within his mouth fell out, no thanks to the incredibly strong armor that covered his opponent's body. This distracted him long enough for Tequila to escape. She fired at him, managing to miss his vest, but the bullet hardly did any damage to his bulky frame.

While those two duked it out, I turned my attention back to Gerald, who had managed to sneak up on me with his gun readied. I quickly knocked him over with a leg-sweep and got up, before grabbing his relatively small body and slamming him into the nearest wall. I nailed him with a few more punches before he raised his remaining gun. I quickly smacked it out of his hand and held an electrified hand up to his throat for a bit, stunning him as I dropped him to the ground. As soon as he came to soon after, I quickly slashed his throat with a spin-kick after quickly switching my boots to skate mode, effectively killing him off for good.

The final shriek he let out was enough to alert his partner, who quickly charged at me with intense anger in his eyes. Keeping my cool, I switched my boots back to normal and leapt into the air, attempting to backflip over my foe. However, he snatched me out of the air and slammed me onto the ground, nailing my face and torso with several punches. I quickly thrust both feet into his stomach, making him back off just enough so I could get away. Tequila caught up with me and the two of us ran off as he continued his rage-fueled pursuit, leaving a trail of bloody paw-prints behind him as he ran on all fours.

It was then that he abruptly stopped and got onto his hind legs, proceeding to fire off his rifle. Tequila and I were caught off guard as we were both knocked down by the bullets, which once again didn't harm us due to our armor.

"Holy f**k, he's got a semiautomatic?!" she screamed in alarm.

Patrick roared once again and continued to run towards us, shooting all the while. My wife and I managed to evade every round of bullets as we hurried off, simultaneously noticing that Xavier had been completely ignored during the whole fight. We managed to hop onto a dumpster we passed and started to climb up the gutter right behind it, though this ultimately resulted in us being cornered by the armed beast.

"Yo, X! A little help over here?!" I called out, pressing a finger to my earpiece.

"Yeah! These guys clearly won't attack you!" Tequila pressed her own earpiece as she chimed in.

"What are you even doing anyway?!" I added.

"I was just trying to formulate a strategy to take them down as safely as possible, but now that you mention it..." Xavier hung up.

Before long, he managed to reach the spot where Tequila and I were trapped as Patrick growled repeatedly, trying in vain to reach us.

"Oh, Patrick!" Xavier called out, prompting him to look to his left. However, he ended up leaping onto the dumpster from his right instead. "Now what is the meaning of all this?"

At this, Patrick started to slowly and nervously back off, obviously not willing to hurt his former owner. Xavier leapt off the dumpster and slowly creeped after him until he was backed against the wall. All the poor gorilla could do was drop his weapon and raise his hands.

"You know, I must commend you on your little ceasefire," Xavier commented, slowly opening his opponent's vest and pressing his pistol directly against his chest. "...But sadly, that's not enough to make me forgive you for your insubordination."

With that, he pulled the trigger and brought his former lab subject down to his knees as the life left him instantaneously. His massive frame ended up collapsing onto him, forcing Tequila and I to rush over and pull him out.