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legs were above its head and it was facing backwards.
    Astonished and over-alert at the best of times, the Gronk's eyes bugged outward in distress as a dozen of the bandit's return-fire bullets whooshed around it, safely over Alpha's head, but dangerously close to its hapless self.
    A guttural, throbbing, bass rumble shook every fibre of the Gronk's being, growing to a deafening roar, and then climbing still higher, drilling into the Gronk's eardrums, hammering the inside of its head in relentless pain. For the Gronk, the passing of the grenade was ancient history, but back in real time it had only just happened, the sonic boom it dragged behind it drowning the Gronk beneath its killer waves.
    The Gronk gritted its teeth and waited impatiently. In spectacular upside-down-o-vision, it saw the rocket-propelled grenade reach its target - the unprotected chest of one of the gunmen.
    It hit the one with the big long beard, the one that the Gronk almost liked because he had fur on his face, like Mister Wulf. The Gronk knew that its tormentors had been prepared to kill it, but even so, it liked to see good in everybody. The Beardy one had brought it food. He had told the Gronk to shut up marginally less often than the others. He had called it some names that the Gronk didn't really understand, but it figured they couldn't have been all that bad. The Beardy one, reasoned the Gronk, was the most likely to reform at some later date. If he made it through alive, perhaps after a little penal servitude, he might pay his debt to society and become a nice human being like Johnny Alpha.
    But there wasn't much chance of that now. Shrieking in horror, the Gronk plastered all four of its hands over its eyes, willing the sight to be gone.
    Then, in spite of itself, it peered out from behind a lattice of eight stubby fingers and watched the slow, savage moment of the pointed gyve of the grenade sinking into skin and bone. The gunman's sternum buckled before the metal spike as the grenade drilled furiously into his chest, whirling a swift corkscrew of blood out in its wake. The grenade wasn't designed for use against human targets. The gunman was too soft to crumple the spike and set off the explosives - it was going right through him and out the other side.
    Hellish as it was for the Gronk to watch, it managed to work itself into even more fretting merely by considering how it must have felt. There was a flash of sunlight on something the Gronk couldn't see in the distance, and then something exploded the skull of the man next to Beardy. Johnny Alpha's second bullet had hit home.
    The Gronk was impressed for a moment. Only a few seconds ago, it had been a prisoner of five gunmen. Three of them were now dead on their feet, their bodies creatively mangled, though the Gronk could no longer see them. Its somersault carried it back around again, right side up and facing away from the gunman. Out in the rocks, it could clearly see the white pelt of a deceased fellow Gronk - Wulf Sternhammer's treasured cape. The Gronk was pleased. It knew that Mister Wulf would never let it down. Unpleasant, achey, and downright painful as these moments were, they would end soon and the Gronk would be safe.
    The Gronk continued to tumble. As the form of Johnny Alpha, still shooting, hoved into view once more, the Gronk pondered. The Gronk didn't know all that much about guns and stuff, but a rocket-propelled grenade was not an everyday household item. Even the Gronk knew they were launched from bazooka-tubes. If Wulf Sternhammer had launched one at the gunmen, then right now the tube was still sitting on his shoulder. It was going to take him dozens of seconds to drop the spent tube, snatch up a more appropriate weapon, take aim and fire again. Considering the grenade's low altitude, Wulf must have been lying on the ground to launch. Merely getting to his feet and fumbling for another gun could take precious time. In the meantime, Johnny Alpha was without cover or