CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Returning to Black Hill both a conquering hero and a failure of a hunter, Piper collected on Blondie’s bounty by tossing his severed head, which had long since cooled down to the appearance of a grisly, fur-covered amber statue, onto the desk of Penelope Hickory. Her achievement in taking out such a large liability earned her an audience with the board members, and subsequently a sizable raise. And though in that moment she was tempted to try and spark an all out war against the ten escapees, she simply couldn’t bring herself to admit to her superiors that the bounty was still technically active. Instead, through gritted teeth, she told a little white lie to save face— their quarry had fallen down into the old Gutter’s Glade Mine crevasse after they had fled into it. And, as it turns out, the way down had completely sunken in, rendering the bodies completely irretrievable. Unless they were to send a search and retrieve operation up into the equivalent of enemy territory, there was no chance in hell to bring those damned miners to corporate justice. And sure, this sentiment brings upon some disappointed sighs and annoyed grunts from her superiors, it’s nothing the money she makes didn’t almost immediately dampen. By that point, she earned equal to the amount of Blondie’s salary, which is enough to keep her and Janet afloat so long as she’s on the grind. So, in a way, she walked out of that board room with a little extra wisdom. Battles you can’t win now were battles you might as well not fight, especially if you could wrangle up some cash in the process.
Piper spends the rest of her days continuing Blondie’s deadly legacy. She worked directly for the board members of Shepherd Gemstone as their right hand (with her squad of mercenaries being their left, no matter how much she despised it), lived happily with Janet and her children, and generally speaking, made the most of her corporately-funded adventures. Even if it means becoming more familiar with death than she ever had been before.
Harry Gilroy, in a similar vein, moved up on the Shepherd Gemstone ladder for a period of time post-success of Blondie’s post-mortem execution, managing the operations of multiple mining outposts across a few square miles— Smokestone, of course, included. Thanks to a couple smart foreman hires and the corporate suppression of any and all magical incidents in his jurisdictions (his paper shredder was consistently the fullest “section” of his office), he kept profits high enough for long enough for his superiors to take notice. He even was held in higher esteem than Hickory at the peak of his internal glory, something he absolutely dragged her through the mud over. Eventually, however, Gilroy’s head becomes a bit too big for his shoulders. He’s fired directly from the Board after news of an unprecedented number of magical afflictions, alongside a sizable number of employee uprisings in his jurisdictions, breaks to the overhead. In a drunken stupor, he blames everyone but himself, storms out of the Shepherd Gemstone HQ and pisses on their front lawn, where he is then arrested for public indecency. He becomes a washed up, former high-roller in his neighborhood, rumoured to have taxidermied Blondie’s head and hung it up above a fireplace somewhere private. He spends his hoard of blood money on expensive booze, golfing trips, and renovating his home in an attempt to gather the attention of the single women in his community. Thus, he is cast out from the one thing he knows, rich and bitter.
Though Honeysett is idyllic as it is, everyones’ plans eventually send them out of the small town, with Pickman’s Hope being far and wide the most popular ending destination.
Azariah and Roxanne leave first, planning to aid with any reconstruction that needs doing (though there wouldn’t be much by the time they get there, seeing as how the town is known for its building expertise). They instead get involved with Samson’s doings around town, organizing the unions for work and acting as the occasional carrier of goodwill to neighboring towns. It ends up being a challenging occupation, especially since they have to compete diplomatically with corporations looking to take jobs from them and their people, but Azariah’s wit usually helps bring home the bacon, and Roxanne’s organizational skills helps make sure they can eat it, too. Pickman’s Hope sees a steady increase in cash flow, and it’s not long before the couple have their own home built, courtesy of the town, with their own garden and everything.
When they’re not working, they spend their time together indulging in the few, but substantial pleasures around the town; and, as everyone else trickles in, with them as well, acting as the guides they always have whenever something goes wrong. It’s not uncommon to find them filling the same role that Samson does, being everyone’s uncle or aunt and helping them paint fences, weed gardens, or settle minor disputes in bars. And though Azariah initially was tested by some of the rowdier locals about his capabilities (everyone knows Samson’s got it in him to stop scuffles, but this new Hare? and at his age?), but folks quickly realized that there’s to be no funny business with him around. What’s more, the rumour began floating around that Azariah liked the fighting— there was something about his eyes during the days when drunks would challenge him that burned those events into the memories of the sober. And, of course, if Roxanne was around in the case of these events, she was wicked accurate with her cane when she had it (and if she didn’t, you’d best believe she was going to pick up anything around and bludgeon your sorry ass with it), able to knock the buzz out of the most uppity of union workers.
Judith and Leon are next to leave, having decided that the best thing for them to do is just jump into a new life, leaving the adventuring business they’d been drafted into completely behind them. That means pursuing new business, the kind that would be calm, peaceful, and hopefully complimentary toward the skills that they’ve been building up. After a day or two of thinking while on the road, they decide to open a flower shop.
Judith runs the economic end of the store, taking back the person she once was from the grips of an angry, bitter, corporate version of herself, by indulging in the simple, sweet pleasures of accounting. And it doesn’t take long for her to take to the front desk as well, committing to memory prices and tax ratios, and developing pricing strategies for larger orders such as weddings, feasts, or public events. Every flower, down to the petal, she teaches herself how to price. As the days go by, she feels herself softening more naturally in the presence of customers. Sure, she has a very low tolerance for bullshit, and she’s none too happy when folks take a long time at the counter thanks to their own incompetence, but she absorbs that annoyance with ease, instead of letting it stew in her system. It’s amazing what not letting grudges overwhelm your emotional system can do for your mental well-being! At some point, she considers writing a book about her physical and emotional experiences having escaped from an exploitative mining company, but in a way, she figures that she should wait until she’s not busy with numbers before trying to work some words.
Leon ends up the gardener, and though he’s only blessed with a literally green thumb and not a metaphorical one, a little help from the locals helps him to blossom into quite the flower expert. Arranging, however, is where he ends up finding out his talent is. His touch with colours is subtle, yet when the final piece has been completed, results in patterns that seem to shine the same way a polished gemstone would. It doesn’t take long for him to experiment with complex fragrance combinations as well, though, it doesn’t take off the way that he’d hoped. Instead, he finds himself satisfied with the scent of a particular flower, known as the Cinnamon Cup Rose, as it lets him laugh without coughing up a lung.
Olive and Cherry move down simultaneously, and for a short period of time end up living together in a single-level on the outskirts of town. It doesn’t last long however, as Olive gets tired of the noise from his mechanical work at all hours of the day and moves closer into the town square, where she instead gets to listen to the sounds of the sidewalks.
Olive’s reasoning for leaving what is ostensibly a fangirl’s fantasy villa was that she felt as though the power she was given by the Mountain Thing wouldn’t quite get used to its fullest potential if all she did was sit around Honeysett, which was filled to the brim with folks who could more than handle themselves. The burning inside pushed her toward humanitarian work, and so, she decided to learn the art of field medic-work from Roxanne. She slowly worked her way through the skills presented to her, at first getting stuck on the hurdle of being covered with blood (as that sort of thing is terrible to get out of feathers), but working through anxiety after anxiety throughout the years. Roxanne wasn’t the easiest teacher to work with but she’s definitely a thorough one, and with the incredible diversity of Pickman’s Hope and beyond, there’s a lot for Olive to learn, all while keeping track of her own condition as best she could— with the occasional check-up on her old pals.
By the time she’s learned everything that Roxanne has to teach her, she’s already been working at the local emergency response team, and has more than a few encounters under her belt where her power, and her medical knowledge, has come in handy. There were more than a few times where she saved a life by means of skilled hands and focused eyes, be it removing a bullet or deflecting one, and in time she became well-known enough among such circles to be offered permanent positions in adventuring companies and collectives, parties of many sizes and skills asking if she’d become their in-house medic. The answer she gave them, of course, was a “no,” though she was more than happy to patch them up if she was nearby, and was more than eager to pass her knowledge onto others in the field.
Cherry, on the other hand, realized that it probably wouldn’t be good for him to stick around his dads’ place for much longer. Though they love him dearly, they don’t love the amount of noise that his work and main hobby brings, so he picks up a job at the local mechanics’ Union in Pickman’s Hope and gets his hands dirty. It doesn’t take long for him to be promoted from a shelf-stocker to someone who actually works on vehicles, and his propensity for understanding models that nobody else had seen before turns him into the “I don’t know, ask him” guy for anyone in the know about cars, a label he happily upholds. With the blessing of Samson, Cherry also gets to work on establishing a racing club there in town, working to create a new breed of backwood valley-folk racers that can compete with even the biggest sponsors further out west. It’s another feather in the town’s cap; it’s a new and fresh way for folks to compete among themselves, all while attracting eyes. Aside from that, it means yearly events, and that’s just plain good for local morale.
Brie, of course, leaves last, having to hitch a ride to Pickman’s Hope to pick up her car, to then drive back north of Honeysett to meet up with her girlfriend. After months of being gone and with hardly any money left to her name, she treats her to a fancy dinner to drop the news about how the quarry with Shepherd Gemstone fell through, that she’s realized things about the line of work she’s in that she doesn’t like, and that she’s nearly been killed multiple times over the time she’s been gone (and that she’d like to not repeat this experience ever again). And so, after much talk over a couple glasses of brandy, a sizeable bill for the pork chops they ordered, and a few days to mull everything over, they decide to move down to Pickman’s Hope, where Brie not only knows people, but also where she could get a job doing something less actively perilous. And a job she did get after a brief talk with Samson— she now works as a local detective slash investigator, helping to suss out corporate interests and potential moles from Shepherd from the town, as the discovery of Hieronymus T. Thistle’s treachery was something of a wake up call for the union head. Though it’s not entirely out of the line of fire, it puts her in a spot where she feels truly confident that the work she’s doing is for the greater good. And, of course, the constant reassurance from her peers helps quite a bit.
Jules, Lucille, and Meat all realize that there’s something binding the three of them together, and that thing is their lack of ability to settle down in the place they’ve come to be so fond of. Pickman’s Hope is a no-go for them, because as much as they’d like to go domestic, Jules and Meat are both being hunted by the Carnevale, and Lucille figures that someone like her would be better off sorting out her issues on the road, rather than cooped up in a house somewhere. So, they buy a car from Pickman’s Hope, say goodbye to everyone (with many tears being shed on behalf of Meat having to leave so soon from Brie and Roxanne), and they set out west for new horizons.
And though they’re not the newest of horizons, they certainly did find a new-er climate to work in. The three of them, collectively, set out as another independent contractor group, doing odd jobs here and there and taking advantage of Meat’s Notus powers to get them done quickly and efficiently. Their plans are to make as much money as they can so that way they can retire early and maybe set something similar to Honeysett up (or find someplace like it that already exists, build a place in the neighborhood, and live the good life). The process of getting there however, has only just begun.
It’s getting into the evening hours, and the first flakes of winter are beginning to collect on the lawn of Piper’s residence. Tanner is crowing about how much snow he thinks they’re going to get, Madrone has dug her nose into a book to avoid the walking annoyance that is her kid brother, and Janet has found a cozy spot right up against Piper on the sofa, their fireplace crackling softly.
After taking a sip of her tea, Janet stands up from her spot, walks around the couch, picks up a wrapped box, and places it on Piper’s lap. “Go on. Open it,” she coos.
“Aw, honey. You shouldn’t have.” Piper replies, ripping into the paper.
It’s a box. A box from the Quilting Club with her name on it, to be precise. And whatever’s in the box is heavy, heavier than the heaviest dumbbell Janet works out with for her calisthenics, anyways.
And when she opens it, it’s as though she’s cracking open a treasure chest of sparkling gold doubloons. It’s a replica of Blondie’s old pistol, the hand cannon that turns peoples’ heads into leaky cans of soup. In the glow of her awe, she nearly forgets to shoo away the kids, who are crowding around the “cool gun that Piper got” (as her children are still getting acclimated to calling her “mom”). Its weight, its design, its finish, all of it is pristine and new and exactly how she remembers it. And now it's hers. The final piece is hers.
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Azariah and Meat both stand a little straighter as a glowing claw knuckles its way through what stray rubble dared to stand in Blondie’s now much, much more open path; without skipping a beat the beast has stepped over the still collapsed android, and Meat barely processes the way that the other claw is moving before their own hand darts up to block a flaming rock before it can strike the Hare dead in the chest.
The fire dissipates with a low whine like a dog at heel, but the rock itself still stings Meat’s palm, causing them to drop it and direct their gaze again to Blondie, who’s closing the distance in hefty, thudding bounds.
“Runnin’ might be a pretty good idea, actually,” Azariah mumbles as he raises his arms, breath steadying in his throat. “Leave it to a friend of hers to talk me into somethin’ sensible when it’s too late.”
Meat swings low, ducking and moving in half-squatted to strike Blondie’s abdomen with both hands, and like back in Fusillade at the moment of contact there’s a small concussive blast— strong enough to blow Meat’s hands back and to halt Blondie’s advance for that brief second.
“That supposed to stop me?” Blondie grins all fire and brimstone until over Meat’s shoulder comes Azariah, striking him in the muzzle with a hard elbow.
The Hare practically flies through the air, moving just a smidge faster than Blondie’s eyes can follow, leading the Werewolf to spin and swing his arms in an attempt to grab him. What he grabs instead is a metal man, as Azariah had actually ducked between the now standing Jack’s legs and rolled to the side.
Meat turns their own attention to the tumbling ball of speed nearby and immediately sets to join them in what looks like a retreat, as Azariah hops back onto his own two feet, so by the time Blondie’s getting ready to deal with his new dance partner the other two are already hoofing it down the tunnel and away from the lot.
“You son of a bitch,” Blondie snarls before tensing his shoulders and headbutting Jack— receiving a solid thump to his own head in turn, a resounding sound of skull to steel, and nothing less than what might constitute several concussions’ worth of blunt force trauma right between the eyes.
Jack, however, blinks. “Huh, usually people knock themselves out when they try that.” Thick metal fingers dig into the burnt and glowing arms of the werewolf, and with a mechanical twist and the growl of some form of internal engine, Jack shoves Blondie hard against the nearby wall. There the two break, just in time for Jack to get into form, raising his arms with his fists up, tucking his head down and beginning to step closer, though he’s not stepping lightly. Jack’s not a dodger, he’s a blocker, a pulverizer. “Ready to get your bell rung, sir?”
“I’m gonna to melt your sorry metal ass to slag,” Blondie snarls back. Above and around them the ground shakes as Blondie tenses and then darts forward, slamming Jack with his forearm and dragging the robot with him as he powers through the tunnel, each step an earthquake, each bound of each leg a tremble in the ceiling.
Jack’s got weight and power but unfortunately he’s a bit top-heavy, and while his stance is grounded as it can get short of just lying on the floor his opponent’s able to half-lift him with velocity. The densely muscled forearm, brimming with heat and power, thrums and glows against the tin man’s throat. Above him, the glow grows more intense— as it begins growing inside of Blondie’s mouth.
Down the cave hall, down the tunnel, Azariah’s had to stop for another breather as Meat paces. “Don’t be so hasty,” he mumbles. “I’m sure that pup’s got his hands full for a minute.”
“We have to get going, now, or we might not be able to catch up.”
“You kids these days, always doin’ somethin’. Take a minute to breathe, if you have to. That count as offensive? Pardon if it is, didn’t mean anythin’ by it. Even if they get out before us, I’m sure we can—”
From the bend the two had just gone around some moments before bursts Blondie, one arm holding up Jack and the other batting at the robot’s arms, which were flailing in an attempt to close the now near blindingly bright glow lingering in his maw. Azariah doesn’t finish his sentence as he stands to move in, but Meat stops him short there too.
The two only barely manage to toss themselves out of the way and behind a rocky outcropping as Blondie and Jack fly like a missile into the wall where they had been standing just that second previous, sending a sickening crack up to the ceiling from where the android was slammed. It winds its way like a snake up from the point of contact and spider-webs from the rounded corner where wall becomes ceiling, tossing down rubble as the scuffle of their feet tosses up dust.
To their right, Meat and Azariah both see a dark shape hiding behind a similar set of jutting rocks, rapidly loading a weapon and mumbling to herself.
Nancy’s swapped between flechettes and buckshot and God knows what by this point but she’s more than half certain none of them are going to punch a hole in the beast’s hide, not when she’s been unable to even smell a drop of blood or exposed flesh that isn’t charred. “Lacking sufficient ordinance to handle larger quarry— should’ve requisitioned something back in town. Stupid backwater, lacks a proper armory. Need something bigger, stronger, can only knock him around with this…”
Unable to shake Blondie off again, Jack’s been staring down the steadily increasing glow that now threatens to blind him, a vivid red light so searing that it burns his mechanical retinas, but he can’t look away. His fingers can’t find purchase wherever they ply and his kicks are doing nothing; before him lies death, and it’s brighter than he ever imagined. Inside his body his mechanical organs scream past their proper limits, pushing harder, harder, heating up, even Blondie can hear them now.
He blinks, but it’s not enough of an opening for Jack. This is it; this is the part where he overclocks himself to critical just to make sure he isn’t going out alone. It’s going to be bright, furious, glorious—
A dark shape flies from behind the rocks and screams down between the two’s legs, and before either of them process what it is, a shotgun’s shadow blocks the intense red light bathing Jack as the barrel of Lieutenant Nancy’s weapon is wedged up against the lower jaw of the werewolf. Two combustions follow, the firing of her shotgun directly into Blondie’s lower jaw, shutting it hard, and then Blondie’s slow-build pressure cooker of pain popping like a highly explosive bubble inside of his mouth. From between his fangs and through his nostrils a monstrous blossom of red flame and black smoke bursts, knocking him backwards and onto his ass as it tosses Jack the opposite way— all while it punches Nancy into the ground, all the force coming vertically.
Azariah and Meat are a good way down the tunnel again, this time avoiding any stops so that they won’t be caught up to, when there’s a loud explosion down the way behind them.
“Poor guy,” Azariah mumbles. “Robot never stood a chance.”
Meat’s head tilts as they jog just beside him. “Why assume he lost? That could’ve been a… I don’t know, a second death explosion.”
“Then the poor guy’s still dead even if he won. Too bad, I’m sure he would’ve been fun to run from too.” A wheezy, raspy laugh escapes him to punctuate the joke, and though he’s keeping pace it’s becoming very evident to Meat that his bones are creaking and his voice is hoarse.
“We might not be able to catch up,” Meat says, rubbing the back of their neck. “Roxanne’s going to kill us if that robot doesn’t.”
Azariah cracks his knuckles, then his neck for good measure. “Don’t you worry about us catchin’ up. Much as I would like to turn back and finish up my round three, even with these powers I’m no spring coney. Ain’t that just a stick in the craw?”
“I can’t believe you both talk like this,” Meat mumbles. “Alright, so how’re we— hey— no!” It’s too late. Azariah’s already swept the Notus off their feet and into his arms, though he struggles to stay standing proper straight with the weight.
“Nowdon’tyouworrynoneaboutthisit’sgonnabefine,” is the near unintelligible string of words that hits Meat, right as it feels like the world starts vibrating and, despite the weight, Azariah’s blitzing down the tunnel.
Jack’s the first back up and he can feel some of his clothes have started burning, at least whatever’s not melting to his metal hide. “Nancy? Status report, Nancy, talk to me— I can’t see Blondie.” He rubs his eyes, then from his pocket withdraws a small glass cleaning rag to clear them off properly. When his vision sharpens, he spots her, a dark spot on the ground, crumpled and curled up.
Crouching beside her he moves to get at her helmet, but first he receives a smack on the wrist as she attempts to get up on her own, the arm beneath her still cradling the shotgun. Secondly, he takes a wolfy claw to the side of the head and he gets kicked out of the way by Blondie, who by this point has been covered in soot so black that the only vestiges of his formerly white fur are lingering around his legs and shoulders. A quick wipe with Jack’s rag cleans off a bit of his maw and face, but for the most part it’s like he’s been dunked in ink and then manhandled by a washcloth.
Blondie’s wide chest rises and falls as he takes breaths of his own volition, clearing out more smoke and ash from his throat before saying, “Still think this is a fine fight, copper cock? Where’s your boss, huh? What’re you getting paid?”
“Not enough, I’ll tell you that much.” Jack stands again, getting his fists ready and beginning to circle, taking an opposite direction to Blondie, who’s walking in a slow arc around. On the ground, Nancy’s coughing up smoke through her mask, and now that she’s raising her head, half of the helmet’s been blown clear off and the eye beneath looks partially blind. Jack continues, “But as much as I’d like to talk rates with you, I know it’s still better than what I’d get on a dead man’s payroll.”
Calling him a dead man earns nothing but fury from Blondie, garnering a loud and unenthusiastic growl before he tosses himself at Jack again, but this time the robot’s prepared. As The first big, furry arm lands a swinging blow, Jack shoots out both hands to snatch. The first clamps hard on Blondie’s wrist swinging toward him, the other darts to Blondie’s throat to preempt any would-be fireballs while he can still reach it. In the meanwhile, Blondie’s other, still free claw has begun its arc toward Jack's head— when another gunshot rings out and Blondie screams, half-choked, over a newfound pain in his elbow.
Suddenly, something else is against his throat too. Against his shoulder blades are knees, pressing hard as the pipe barrel of Nancy’s shotgun is being pulled back the opposite way; Nancy, glaring like a devil, is panting and snarling over the wolf’s head. “I am not dying to some backwoods forest hick fuck!” She screams, and as Blondie digs his claws into her back with an awkward twist of his body she bites clear through her mask, revealing her snaggled fangs just before she sinks them into the side of his head, thrashing like a wild animal.
She’s screaming, her wound is cauterizing as soon as it’s made, Jack’s trying to shake Blondie’s throat hard enough to snap the werewolf’s spine if he can, and here’s Blondie halfway having a test of strength with the robot and trying to pull the vampire off of his head. All are screaming, thrashing, a mass of hateful limbs and weaponry, torn and burnt and bleeding, and they’re moving, tumbling, they begin twirling and then start spinning and now they’re a ball of hate on the floor.
A particularly forceful kick from Blondie brings them back to the wall he’d slammed Jack into, hoping to bust him against it so he can get out of the hold and get at Nancy, but the robot doesn’t give— the wall, however, does, sending the three into a freefall.
Luckily for Nancy and not so luckily for Jack, they land on top of Jack, with Nancy still on top of Blondie. Especially lucky for Blondie, Jack loses his grip with the fall and in that moment of weakness, the Wolf breaks the embrace and hucks Jack against the far wall of the chamber, a good several meters, before doing the same to Nancy with a screaming roar.
The two Mercs stand and exchange quick glances, eyes darting to the walls, the ceiling, the strangely smooth and untested environment, before Nancy growls. “Let’s get this done, soldier.”
“One of those kitschy military types. You must be from a real shithole.” Blondie narrows his eyes at them, his glow growing more intense as he gathers a fireball in each hand.
Jack, out of all of them, hasn’t made any attempt to intimidate or even assert himself. Instead of some one-liner hoping to end the fight before it starts, he just points behind Blondie and asks, “Is he supposed to have two shadows? Why’s the other one a lot bigger than him?”
Though it’s taken him a while to get the position right, what with the driving skills of Piper being akin to that of a joy-riding teenager and Sundae’s revolver ringing off rounds loud enough to punch holes in his ear drums, Kranner has managed to wedge himself comfortably onto both the pseudo-middle seat, as well as the floor of the back half of the sedan. His rifle rests comfortably in his shoulder and pokes out between the two front seats, with his arms punched against the side cushions to keep himself stable as he lines up his first shot. And there’s plenty of targets to choose from in the bed of the truck they’re following.
There’s that black haired woman and an Orc. There’s that odd-looking lady with the scarf around her mouth. There’s a mousy-looking woman, one who keeps getting particularly nasty looks from Piper. And then, there’s the Owl, who is the only person standing up in the bed. She’s got a terribly anxious look on her face, and to be frank, Kranner thinks that it’d be lovely to try and hit someone behind her for effect. So, he lines up a lovely headshot on the one that his boss doesn’t seem to like. All it takes now is a light trigger pull—
“Kranner, would you take the fucking shot already? You’re burning time!” Piper yells, turning to face him briefly with a grimace.
“Gettin’ comfortable’s hard to do when you’re stuffed into a dead man’s vehicle!” he replies, setting his finger against the trigger guard. “You want them dead, Boss?! I’ve gotta take my damn time!”
“Yeah, sure. Sundae’s been shooting this entire goddamn time, old man. You better get your ass into gear.”
Sundae empties the revolver’s chamber, and sticks her body back in through the window. “I haven’t hit anything yet,” she comments. “But who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky in another six.”
Piper’s hands audibly squeak with sweat as she grips the steering wheel. “Where the FUCK have you been aiming?”
“At them, boss. I’ve never shot out the side of a car before. It’s taken some getting used to. I think I got close a couple times, though.”
“Are you telling me that NEITHER of you fucking imbeciles have done a SINGLE THING since Jack’s split off from us?!” she screams. Both of them notice the venom begin to sputter from the top of her mouth onto the padded car seat. It steams lightly as it corrodes the material. “FINE! Fine. Take your fucking time, just make sure that your shots count. We are not going back. I’ve come too fucking far.”
“Good idea, boss,” Sundae responds. She quickly reloads her revolver, sticks her body back out the car window, and continues to fire at almost absolutely nothing— albeit, with longer intervals between the shots.
Her lackadaisical ass had better be decent in a fight, ‘cause I don’t have the patience for a fucking slacker on my team right now, Piper thinks to herself. Rolling down her own window, she spits out a small mouthful of venom. And that old man had better take a shot soon, or I’m gonna be shoving his rifle down that fucked up eye socket of his.
Cherry’s focus is nigh unbreakable, even with the presence of consistent gunshots from behind him. There has never been a moment in his life where his driving has meant more to everyone else than it has to him, and so, not even the threat of being hit is deterring him from keeping his posture upright with both hands on the wheel.
Roxanne and Jules, on the other hand, have slumped down into their seats in the cabin, and are attempting to give rally-style navigation directions to Cherry from a map that’s about as long as the cabin, floor to ceiling. Roxanne has tasked herself with keeping an approximation of where they are on the map by tracing her finger along the route, while Jules has taken to calling out the upcoming corners and turns whenever appropriate. And, of course, this is all being done in the dimly lit cab of the truck, whose overhead lights have not been replaced in years.
“Medium right,” the Vampire says, jerking his thumb in that direction. “Then, light left. I think.”
“Got it,” Cherry responds, beginning to brake the take the turn, as told, before the shine from his headlights can even illuminate the back wall of the junction.
“Jules, could you tell me what that is on the map?” Roxanne asks, pointing at what looks to be an absolutely massive depression relatively far down the road.
He widens his eyes. “Kinda looks like a pit. Maybe. Why?” And though there’s plenty of other landmarks on the map of similarly massive size, this one puzzles him for but a moment before he solves it. He traces the path back to where Roxanne has kept track of their location, and realizes that the area in question cuts between where they are now, and where they want to head, which is an exit marked in red ink “Near Honeysett”. “Holy shit,” he says.
“What’s next?” Cherry asks, having clearly been too focused to realize what’s going on.
“Hard right, and a ravine crossing in the next twenty turns.”
“Wait, what?”
In the bed of the car, everyone is slightly surprised that the person leaning out the side window hasn’t hit anything, or anyone, other than the cavern walls yet. Even Olive, who has taken to standing up to make herself a target (for the sake of blocking it with her power, though there’s a massive doubt in her mind that she’ll be fast enough (again) to react to a bullet), is a little perplexed by this.
Though, as she gets bored of watching the Elf shoot everywhere but the truck, Olive turns to the cabin, where she sees an awfully mean looking blonde woman who seems to keep having to spit out the window (why would she be packing a lip at a time like this?), and, in the backseat, a glass man with a rifle.
Now, again, something strikes Olive as odd. She traces the sight of the woman driving, and finds it to bounce between the truck bed itself, her, and everyone else, but primarily Brie, who stares right back. This isn’t too odd, as having heard Brie’s story about getting brained by the woman, it would make sense that she’d have a vendetta. And that Brie would be rightfully afraid of her.
But, the glass man with the rifle. Why would he be aiming out the front windshield? And more importantly, where are his sightlines aimed? She peers at the front of the barrel, and realizes that it couldn’t be at herself. It’d be much more clear, then. No, he’s aiming at someone else. And it’s nobody behind her (Lucille), and nobody to the left (Judith and Leon).
The front windshield of the following car shatters inward with the thundercrack of the sniper’s rifle, and in a flash, there’s a metallic “tink”, followed by the crumble of rock. Olive opens her eyes to find that she’s got a feathered hand in front of Brie’s head. And her hand is unharmed, albeit a little sore.
That damned bird. That shot had been perfect. It would have been the cleanest kill this place would have ever seen. It’s an insult to the profession that something as absolutely absurd as a bullet-proof Owl would decide to poke her forsaken beak into the path of this art.
Kranner’s fuming. A series of complications flash through his mind as Olive in the truck bed far ahead continues to move and thrust out limbs, having taken up Meat’s former position near the edge so as to swat munitions fire from the air with overanxious precision. Kranner’s eyes focus a bit more, and he drinks in the details. There’s always a hole in the armor, assuredly. Everyone makes a mistake at a time like this, even the ones who live for it.
Each of Sundae’s bullets get blocked if they dare to soar nearby any of them, but there’s something particular about the way Olive’s moving. The glassy bristle of his jaw rubs up against the mask as it comes to him in small bits and pieces, as though every blocked bullet itself is a part of a puzzle: she’s blocking killshots, whether she intends to entirely or not. Tracing their trajectories might be difficult for someone of a lesser caliber, but Kranner’s on top of his game.
That’s it, then. Can’t shoot to kill or she’ll manage to take the bullet, no matter who it’s aimed at. It’s a laudable performance but ultimately Kranner’s not interested in giving applause to competition or quarry, so her award is going to be something very special indeed as, ignoring the sounds of Piper and Sundae hissing like serpents at one another, he lines up his shot through the windshield, focusing on the bird’s leg.
Olive’s managed to puff out her feathers and swing her arms with a combination of protective knowledge of any vaguely humanoid anatomy and pure instinct, owlish eyesight providing her with a near perfect passive tracking of each gun barrel in the car behind them. Behind her, Judith and Leon are huddled together, the Orc’s arms wrapped around the werewolf, and off to either side she’s flanked by Brie and Lucille— the former’s been shooting, but none of her shots have landed anywhere but the plating, and the latter’s already run out of throwing knives.
Another heavy revolver round bounces off of her arm, and for the briefest second she turns her head without turning her body to face Judith and Leon, saying, “I don’t think I can keep this up for much longer! I’m runnin’ out of steam, somebody think—”
CRACK. Olive tumbles to the floor of the truck bed, half slumping and flailing, only avoiding death by cave floor and car tires as Brie and Lucille both immediately grab her and pull her back toward themselves, right into Judith and Leon, whose eyes widen.
“Okay! Thinking of something, thinking, uh, Brie give me your gun,” Judith babbles out, retreating from Leon’s arms only to be handed the semi-automatic. Well, she snatches it from out of Brie’s hand after the woman reloads, but once she has it she hands it to Leon, whom she presses up against. “This is going to be rough.”
One hand holding the gun, the other arm around Judith again, Leon glances between his girlfriend and the two others in the bed of the truck with a sigh. “Azariah’s been a bad influence. What is this, Plan D? I know it’s low on the list.”
“Would you care to explain to the rest of us?” Brie’s eyes narrow, but she’s plenty busy trying to keep Olive steady as she struggles with the pain. Down by her leg, Lucille’s already bandaging up the wound, repeating small battlefield platitudes about strength and pain.
“Don’t need to,” he says. “If it fails, maybe the truck’ll start going faster with less weight. Jump.”
Kranner’s in the midst of getting a second shot lined up— he’s taking aim at that Orc’s shoulder, hoping to put a round right in the muscle, compromise the whole damned thing— when the target and his little friend disappear into thin air. It’s as much a surprise to the two women still up in the truck bed as it is to him, and his ears tell him that while Piper’s still getting mad and Sundae’s still having a time, neither actually notice it due to their focuses being primarily on the disabling of the truck itself.
The backseat bumps awkwardly and the car sinks a solid chunk, almost enough to scrape the undercarriage against the stone floor of the tunnel, and though it’s already a bumpy ride Kranner knows that such a sound isn’t supposed to come with the sound of the upholstery getting rubbed on by denim or skin. To most the proposition’s absurd, but he’s been in this business for far too long to take chances. His experience isn’t enough to make up for sheer, unaccounted for surprise, that secret weapon of many a victor.
He swivels and takes aim, but there’s nothing there except a depression in the seat, like somebody is there but they just can’t be seen. These briefest of seconds of searching are just long enough. A series of muzzle flares and gunshots go off, a full semi-automatic pistol magazine’s worth of bullets are sent through the air and straight into his face, neck, and chest, without any of his professional finesse or precision. Each bullet finds a home somewhere inside Kranner, singing through glass and blood, spraying this mysterious wraith— wraiths, the blood paints two figures— and revealing them in the back of the car.
Judith, a bout of anxiety and fear taking hold after having to just mentally calculate the trajectory of a jump like that going from a moving vehicle to another, far more enclosed moving vehicle, and having watched her boyfriend just pump something like eight to ten rounds into a man she’d never met, kicks a leg out and strikes Kranner hard in the head with wolfish strength, cracking the helmet and the man’s head. This also has the effect of busting the backdoor open, sending the corpse tumbling out behind the lot of them, rifle having fallen into the floorboards.
Leon lets out a rasping cough, before, bloodied and invisible, he awkwardly kisses the side of her head.
This is right about the time when Sundae’s turned her attention back from the quarry ahead and realizes Kranner’s gone, and that those gunshots were not, in fact, the man going wild with his rifle. It had all the wrong timbre for a sniper, and the wrong rhythm for a trained professional.
When she finds two bloody half-shapes in the back of the car she wastes not even a second leveling her revolver and attempting to empty the full set. However, by the time she’s pulled the hammer back twice the two shapes are gone again, with no sign of truly being there anymore. She almost puts a third into the seat for good measure before Piper raises one arm from the steering wheel to punch Sundae in the side of her head, screaming, “Get back to shooting those freaks you fucking idiot.”
Judith and Leon are back in the truck bed again, splattered with blood but, for the most part, almost entirely unharmed. All that said, Judith is halfway to transforming with the intensity of it all, fangs starting to get a little big for her mouth and eyes getting a bit greener than Leon knows them to be on a good night, so the semiauto is passed back to its owner to be reloaded and returned to proper, trained firing as Leon focuses on calming the werewolf back down, strong arms squeezing around her, lips to her temple.
Lucille and Olive would each be amused, as might be Brie in a less forthright fashion, but the other three are swiftly refocused. Olive isn’t on her feet anymore, but she is up on her knees, with Lucille acting as a support behind her, the two attempting to go back to a sort of less immediately effective version of the Owl’s methods moments ago now that the Sniper’s gone.
“Turning invisible and teleporting were not in the files,” Brie says simply, leveling a shot at Piper, though it banks off of the frame of the car. “I think I am very, very glad to be on your side now.”
“You should’ve seen her wolf out back in Kiln, knocked some former friends of mine clear to the horizon,” Lucille teases. “That rock stuff’s really doing a number on you guys, huh? At least it’s useful.”
Olive lets out something shrill like a battlecry, but the enthusiasm’s too pleasant for that. It’s more like an exclamation of happy surprise, the sort one might make when presented with that oft-requested puppy after coming home from school, or, in this instance, spotting something very, very good.
Leon lifts his head from the tangle of Judith’s hair to ask, in unison with her, “What is it?”
To which the response is, “Azariah! It’s Azariah!”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
The sound of the fuel depot exploding is absolutely deafening, and it sends shrapnel of all sizes like a shower of knives into everything in the blast radius. The biofuel that the entire western world runs on, while highly efficient and mostly clean-burning when processed by modern, western engines, is incredibly volatile when combusted while exposed to air. A smoke stack begins to reach high above the treeline, and as the fires begin to spread, Blondie stands for a moment to admire his work. The burning, tickling feeling in the back of his brain feeds him a steady stream of serotonin for every second he takes with his eyes on the fireball. The scene isn’t even particularly beautiful to him— it’s an explosion, and nobody he knows is even in it. Sunsets look better on the regular than this. That magnetizing, intoxicating feeling is the important bit, and the only way he’d be pulled away from it is if the fire brigade showed up unexpectedly, hooked up their hose, and shocked him out of it with a blast of water to the small of his back.
Of course, in that instance, his first instinct is to half-howl and begin sprinting away, the water sizzling to steam as he runs. It takes him a moment to readjust his brain out of feral-creature mode to remember his modus operandi. Find those fucking miners, drag them back to HQ, collect his reward, and get his job and shit back.
An explosion of THAT size has to draw them out, he thinks to himself, as he runs along the now-panicking streets of Pickman’s Hope. They’re like ducks. They think they’re safe on the river until a thunderclap hits their ears, and then they take off real slow, so you can take your time shooting. Just like hunting ducks.
For good measure, Blondie sets a few more buildings in the downtown area of Pickman’s Hope alight. Indiscriminate chaos should help to keep that fire brigade off his back, even if they aren’t actively chasing him. But, as he runs through the streets, he realizes that on occasion, the sound of gunshots follow him closely. And when he stops along a more suburban road to take a small breather (which he finds odd, as he’s recently gotten used to not breathing naturally), he finds himself picking small caliber rounds, only a half an inch or so deep, out of his charred hide. He feels a small amount of respect well up for the people of the town, mostly out of pity.
It’s like throwing rocks at a steamroller, he thinks, turning the bullets to liquid in his palm. It’s stupid, but not about the direct effect, is it. It’s about the psychological effect. Strength in the face of futility. Maybe I’ll go and show them what that really means, then, if they want to get uppity with me. Fusillade was much bigger than this, and he’d heard that they’d lost quite a few city streets as a result of him testing his powers. Imagine what he could do now, after having practiced some on wildlife during the trip up.
He doesn’t get to imagine for quite so long, as, preceded by the sound of a roaring pickup engine, a knife is planted firmly into the square of his back, nearly knocking him off his feet. He looks up at the truck, full of what he assumes to be passing-by refugees— and finds everyone he ever hated, either sitting in the bed of it or assumedly sitting in the cab. The horn is honked a few times for good measure, and even though Blondie’s human brain tells him that it’s bait, his burning-creature brain forces him into a sprint after the vehicle, the fire inside billowing up in licks of flame from his nose.
I can take my time with this, so long as I keep pace, he thinks. Just like ducks.
The force of the explosion causes Samson’s back porch light to flicker, and in a moment’s notice, he sets down dinner onto the picnic table, throws off his hot-gloves, and runs inside to get himself dressed.
“Sorry folks, looks like yer’ friend’s here now, gotta get to work!” he says, sprinting inside.
All ten people, either sitting in the designated seats or leaning up against the deck’s railing, look at one another in a moment of silence. Brie, of course, is the first to stand up and say something. “May I suggest that we try our plan?”
“What plan?” Meat asks, sitting on the railing and letting their flaming feet dangle.
“The plan to use the local system of mining tunnels to escape our chasers?”
“We have a plan?”
Azariah holds up a hand. “I apologize, I was supposed to take the initiative on that. The old mines actually let out pretty close to Honeysett, since it was quicker to cut through the mountains to get back on the roads. Figure we could try to lose ‘em in there, since hardly anyone knows their way anymore.”
“This is the plan,” Brie responds. “Are there any objections?”
“Yeah,” Judith starts, “those mines are abandoned for a reason. Cave-ins, structural integrity failures, monsters— what happens if the route’s blocked?”
“Do you know where we’d be going, Azariah?” Meat chimes in, turning toward Azariah.
This, in turn, causes Brie to frown, and turn to the Hare herself. “You did not mention anything about cave-ins.”
“And the Devils. You know, those things that tend to turn up in old caves?” Judith says, frowning deeply.
“This is looking like a bad plan. Azariah—”
“Hold your horses,” he responds, holding up his hands. “Sam’s got a survey map from the last time the mines were scoped out. He’ll let us borrow it, and if anythin’ gets in our way, well, we’re ten strong, aren’t we? And we’ve got a Notus with us,” he points to Meat. “Nothin’ down there is fond of fire.”
“And it wouldn’t be better to stay here?” Leon asks, raising a hand.
“You think it’d be good to lead Blondie, and whoever else’s chasin’ us, to Sam’s place? Personally, I think it’d be a little disrespectful, seeing as how we’re already benefitin’ off his hospitality and effectively burning down his town.”
“He does seem to like the action, though.” Roxanne chimes in.
Azariah snorts. “As true as that is, it wouldn’t feel right to just hole up. I’m of the opinion that we should lure them outta this place, and use the mines to our advantage. Who’s in?”
Cherry, Olive, Roxanne, Azariah, Jules, and Lucille all raise their hands.
Brie holds up a finger instead, “May I ask one more question before I agree?”
“Of course, Ms. Brie.”
“Are we certain that Blondie will be the only one chasing us? I have been having a recurring nightmare about Piper smashing my head like a watermelon, and I cannot help but feel as though my brain is trying to tell me something.”
“There’s no guarantee.” His fuzzy maw twists, threatening a smirk. “You want back at her?”
“Not particularly.”
“You wouldn’t mind her gettin’ hopelessly lost in an abandoned mine, where she might get eaten by a cave creature?”
Brie ponders this for a moment. “I am in.”
“And how about you three?” Azariah asks, motioning to Judith, Leon, and Meat.
“I’m in,” Meat says. “I think our host was getting tired of me anyways.”
“That leaves you two.”
Judith and Leon look at one another, then at those around them. Judith sighs, and Leon offers a thumbs up as she says, “We’re outnumbered.”
“Perfect. Now, that leaves the matter of getting the dog’s attention.”
Jules clears his throat, standing up from his seat at the table. “Leave that to us, gramps.” He turns to look at Lucille, who though she seems disappointed that Jules just volun-told her, is equally eager to get back at that burning wolf. “Anyone down for a drive-by?”
Piper, bored and agitated, drums her fingers on the sedan’s dash. They weren’t able to procure any weapons in the past five days that would fit on their vehicles, and people were starting to get suspicious with the amount of money they were throwing around, combined with their conspicuously “civilian” outfits and their very in-a-hurry attitudes. Hell, even the armour plating that they got their cars outfitted with wasn’t all that great. You probably couldn’t bust down a single wall without totalling the car, and in that case, why the hell would you have gotten the plating in the first place? At least their wheels were all-terrain now, instead of the civilian gravel-and-pavement type.
In the passenger seat, Sundae absentmindedly fiddles with her revolver, spinning the barrel every now and then just to hear the sound it makes. In the back seat, Kranner is trying terribly hard to not take a siesta on company time. And in the other car? Jack and Nancy were talking about something, at least as far as she could tell, as they were parked off the side of the road in some brush.
There is nothing more absolutely boring than a stakeout. Absolutely nothing. Sitting around and waiting for something to happen is a great way to waste your goddamn life. If you can make shit happen, you should do it. Otherwise, you shouldn’t wait for something to happen to you— you should be doing other shit in the meantime. But, what could she be doing, exactly? It’s not like these idiots have anything else to do. And it’s not like she’s been bored these past five days. She’s been annoyed, sure, but not bored.
When she’s fully in charge of her next quarry, Piper thinks, she’s going to make sure there’s no waiting around. Downtime is for fucking clowns.
Right as she’s about to snap at Sundae for clicking the cylinder of her revolver, the rumbling of a truck engine suddenly passes them by, alongside what looked to be a flaming dog keeping a cool forty-five miles per hour jog. Both cars peel out from their hiding places, with Jack and Nancy in the front and Piper’s car in the back.
The cave system itself was nothing to take lightly even before the arrival of independent prospectors began turning the natural maze of its interior into a strange and tangled labyrinth. But, after the Shepherd Gemstone takeover and subsequent removal, it’s become one that runs dangerously deep. There are gorges and smaller sub-caverns which swallow any and all light, any wall might be far thinner than it actually appears to be, and that says nothing of the local fauna, much of which decided to move back in after the mine’s abandonment so long ago.
There’s a primary tunnel system that runs the length of the mine, sizable enough for large transport vehicles to pass through, developed when the digging got deep enough that it seemed sensible to just turn the level closest to the actual surface into a spaghetti-string roundabout for trucks carrying hefty loads of rock out. Subsequently, multiple entrances and exits had been carved too, allowing for Shepherd’s attempt to squeeze this stone bloodless to be on a larger scale.
A lot of external supports had to be erected to supplement the slowly eroding natural infrastructure of the caverns, however, and luckily enough the map in Roxanne’s hands has such things marked out, along with a great many various smaller details, such as where what had been mined and how bad it had been hit by the original takeover.
All that said, there is some level of hesitation to trust the map between Cherry and Jules, and most certainly Roxanne, as despite being the most up to date version it can be, they can see that it is, at minimum, more than five years old. Cherry’s a little too focused on making their truck go fast and avoiding potholes to really worry about it, but Jules and Roxanne lack a steering wheel and pedals to fret over so aside from the flaming beast following after their tails the next best thing to fuss about is this map— and the caves, specifically.
“Sure hope none of the exits have caved in since the last survey,” Jules says with an awkward laugh, shooting a fanged grin toward Roxanne. “It’d be just our luck to get away from this bastard and end up slamming into the rocks instead.”
“Jules, quit your jawing. Help with this damned thing, some of it’s getting on the floor,” she replies, trying her best to keep the paper settled in her lap.
An additional point to be made: the map itself sprawls out of their combined grip and into the floor, off to their side enough that Cherry needn’t worry about jamming the paper underneath the pedals. This is because the tunnel system itself runs far and wide beneath the valley itself, not every crack and crevice beneath the dirt’s been mapped out, but a great much of it has. Some think it might even reach all the way back to other Shepherd mining sites, but the tunnels that would connect them in that case would run so long and deep that nobody’s likely to survive, which is to say, anyone stupid enough to think that’s the case and try to run down those seemingly endless tunnels to get somewhere else far away are usually never seen again, and if they are it’s usually between something’s teeth.
So it is that after getting Blondie’s attention and, just as well, getting that of Piper and her crew, Cherry drives the truck hard across the stretch of abandoned road and straight into the wide, waiting mouth of derelict Shepherd Gemstone mining site five, otherwise known as the original Gutter’s Glade Claim, a winding, treacherous labyrinth that acts as the shallow end of a pool so dark, deep, and inhospitable to these surface dwellers that even the fiercest among them might have second thoughts when their minds drift to what lurks down below.
The drive there is tense but not particularly eventful compared to the initial arrival of their pursuer; he’s able to fire off a few shots from his mouth, sending screaming balls of fire toward the vehicle, but with Meat standing guard at the edge of the truck bed none are able to find any solid landing, knocked aside by their bare hands if not outright dissipated like so many embers against wet palms. It’s frustrating, even more so than the constant pelting of small arms fire slamming into his back from the two recently armored cars following hot in his wake.
Each one’s a pinprick of pain at the most, barely noticeable, probably someone trying to take potshots with something low accuracy. It’s a fair assessment; Nancy’s got herself halfway out of the second car’s passenger side window and has been pumping her shotgun nonstop, putting load after load of flechette shot into the werewolf’s hide to no avail.
The gunshots ring out, brief and thunderous amidst the already rolling rumble of the three vehicles and the constant, rhythmic thuds of Blondie’s feet pounding the dirt, gravel, and long uncared for asphalt into a loose, superheated sludge. By this point he’s gone on all fours to pick his pace up, dragging himself forward with each massive, clawed hand like he’s swimming, and by the point where the lot of them can see the entrance to the caverns he’s almost close enough to get a mouthful of Meat’s hand the next time they block his fireball.
In the truck bed, behind Meat, several folks try their own hands at attempting to slow him down as Brie and Lucille both begin pelting him, the former drawing her semiautomatic pistol and unloading a full magazine into Blondie’s face as Lucille greets him with a few cutlery sets’ worth of throwing knives and then a few of Samson’s actual kitchen knives, including but not limited to a chef’s knife he received only last year, a very unsatisfactory paring knife, and a cleaver that actually sticks in Blondie’s shoulder and causes him to lose pace for a brief, but welcome moment.
With that, and some huffing and panting, the lot of them are plunged into darkness— they’ve entered the caves.
Up above are long broken artificial lights which offer nothing, either broken or entirely unpowered; the only light of manufactured origin exists in the headlights of the truck and the two pursuing cars. As natural light goes, it’s impossible to not notice the glow coming off of both Meat and Blondie, a vivid red in contrast to the off-white yellow hue of the vehicular lamps and the soft, but unrelenting light emanating from mushrooms growing out of the corners, floors, and ceilings in small patches wherever a warm, moist corner might have been a prime bit of real estate for something to die in.
Such as it is, though it’s not sunlight, there’s enough of the various unnatural white, magical red, and residual blue to mix into some kind of ambient lavender, which paints Azariah’s features in the softest of violet as he turns toward the cab and knocks on the window. Once it’s opened by Jules, who’s still chuckling like a fool with minutes to live, the Hare pokes his head in.
“Roxanne,” he starts, “I’ve got an idea. It’s a great idea.” A grin crosses his muzzle, poking between the Fox and Cherry.
“If you’re thinking of doing something stupid, you had better stop now. Don’t you dare—”
“All ears here, old-timer.” Jules grins in turn.
Cherry shakes his head. “I don’t like the tone he just used. Roxanne, I can’t look, but is he—?”
“Jumpin’ out. Roxanne, you take good care of these kids for me. I got a tiebreaker to win.” Before another word comes there’s a steady vibration, a whirling, whistling sound, and Azariah’s already soaring through the air in a flying bound.
Blondie’s eyes go wide as from over Meat’s shoulder comes a screaming, stiff-eared bolt from the blue. The next thing that registers is pain in the form of Azariah’s knee getting deeply and intimately acquainted with his forehead, only barely missing the slavering jaws waiting to seize on anything. There’s a pinch too, as the old man digs his fingers into the burnt and broken fur atop Blondie’s head.
The two animals don’t lose much speed between them, even when Blondie’s been kneed in the face. Still running, now blinded by a face full of Hare, the werewolf attempts to keep pace with his legs and one arm as the other claws and swipes in an awkward, clumsy arc to seize at Azariah, who refuses to keep still and keeps shifting position like a jittering wind-up toy between fresh knees to the face.
In the cab Roxanne is raising hell so harshly that it’s overpowering the sound of the engine’s roar and causing everyone to look toward her. “You stupid old man, you get back here now! I did not walk weeks on a goddamn missing foot to lose you like this! Get back in this truck right now, or so help me!”
By the end of her sentence, Blondie’s got his claws in Azariah’s clothes and tosses him like a lump of garbage hurled up by a forceful drop in the trash can. Fortunately, the Hare rolls into the fall and immediately begins sprinting, darting to the right on the wide tunnel floor and actually holding pace with the truck itself, much to the surprise of those who’d only joined their group in Pickman’s Hope and to the fury of Blondie.
Up ahead, there’s a fork in the road; Azariah glances into the truck cab, locks eyes with Roxanne, and then darts down the path on the right with whooping mountain holler as Jules says, without thinking, “Exit’s to the left, kid.”
Cherry, of course, takes the left. It’s the pre-planned path, but now it’s also a good way to get both himself and Jules smacked in the backs of their heads by a wailing Roxanne. “Damn it!” She screams. “Damn it! Meat, do something!”
As Blondie peels off to follow the hooting Azariah, Meat takes a running start to jump after the both of them, heading diagonally across the truck bed from the back toward the front to keep pace with the wolf, saying only “I’ll bring him back,” to Roxanne before the three of them disappear down the actual split in the tunnel.
Jack and Nancy glance at one another before their car, Thistle’s old one with some shiny new armor plating, screams down the right path as well, picking up speed and blazing after the small contingency, leaving Piper, Sundae, and Kranner to follow after the main truck and leaving them in the dust.
“I hope those idiots know what they’re doing,” Piper snarls as Kranner starts lining up his rifle in the backseat, placing it right between the two women up front. Her eyes narrow and lock with Brie’s for a moment long, and she grins. “Leaves the fun bit to us.”
After the initial shock of sending his legs into overdrive has worn off (and his bones had creaked a little, causing him to regret not having stretched before enacting his plan of distraction), Azariah falls into a groove familiar to him from years of dancing in the ring with larger opponents. Fake-outs and false stops send Blondie skidding past him into walls, slow downs earn him a couple cheeky back elbows to the jaw, and sudden speed-ups help him avoid attacks that would otherwise send him off his feet. It’s a complicated dance of trying annoy the flaming dog into doing something radically stupid, while simultaneously trying to keep it behind him.
Meat, on the other hand, is finding themselves concerned by the presence of the car trailing the three of them. While it takes concentration to keep steady pace, as Blondie’s sheer size gives him a speed advantage over their non-lycanthropic body, it keeps getting temporarily broken by the ringing snaps and chugging pumps of Nancy’s shotgun. At the pace they’re moving, the shot is doing little more than shredding their clothing, something they’re certain that Roxanne will be upset by. But, after picking a few stray pellets out from behind their ears, they realize something. Azariah’s idea was better than the old man had probably intended, as now, they have two scapegoats to take the heat from Blondie off the two of them.
While there was an alright chance that they could lose the flaming dog in the tunnels, there was a less-than-alright chance of them actually beating him in a two versus one fight. They’d get tired before he did, and then that’d be the end of both them and Azariah. Now that there’s these two mercenaries, however. That means that if they can get Blondie to be preoccupied with shaking them off, they can book it down a side-tunnel and leave. Putting aside the mental planning for a moment, they look ahead to Blondie, who has taken to launching fireballs toward Azariah.
The hard part is going to be getting that old fart to listen to me, they think to themselves, throwing off what remains of the poncho as they run.
In the car, Jack has plugged up one of his ear-holes in an attempt to dampen the sound of Nancy’s combined war cries and semi-manic shotgun firing. And though driving with one hand isn’t something unfamiliar to him, driving with one hand while trying to follow a string of flaming individuals through tunnels where the clearance between his car seat and a cave wall is nigh unknown? It almost makes him a little annoyed. Which isn’t something he feels often, and it’s something that feels terrible. At the first opportunity he gets, he taps Nancy on the shoulder while she’s reloading.
“Nancy?”
“Not now, soldier! I’m getting my shells in!”
“Nancy, listen to me for a second.” She’s about to lean out the window again, when Jack takes his hand off his head to grab her by the shoulder and pull her back into her seat. “Nancy!”
“What in the WORLD is this insubordination?” she yells, slamming her shotgun into her lap. “Explain yourself!”
“Nancy, I think you’re being a little loud. I’m having a hard time concentrating.”
“It’s an intimidation tactic, soldier! Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of those before!”
“I don’t think anyone but us can hear you.”
“Then I’ll scream louder!” she says, starting to lean out the window again, only to be pulled back to her seat by Jack. “You had better drop the act, or as your superior, I’ll—”
“You’re not even hurting them! You’re using a shotgun, Nancy!”
“Do I need to repeat myself on the matter of war-time tactics, son?!”
The Android frowns. “I’m older than you.”
“And I’m your superior!”
“Listen,” he says, holding out his hand. “Save the rest of your ammo for later, when we’re out of the car. That way, you can guarantee that you’ll hit them. Okay?”
“And what if I don’t?!”
“You’ll be forced to fight two opponents with fire magic with nothing but your knife. And you’ll look like an idiot in front of your subordinate.”
That last line seemed to penetrate her battle-crazed skull. “Agreed. I shall stop screaming and shooting to conserve breath and bullets. Great idea, soldier.”
Jack sighs, and leans back into the seat of the old sedan. “Thank you, god.”
But, something makes him quickly lean forward again, peering into the darkness of the caves. The big flaming guy has stopped in his tracks, and distant thudding can be heard— the kind of thudding that can only occur when something hollow is being hit, banged, or punched.
Jack turns to Nancy and says, “Tuck and roll, soldier,” before flooring it.
Having just lost the Hare and the Skeleton through a thin crack in the wall, Blondie figures that the only way he’s going to catch up is to follow them through it one way or another. Gathering up flame from his belly, he belches fire into the stone in front of him, blackening it and turning it nice and loose for him to pick away at with his hands. Though, he hardly has time to actually do any of this, as quite soon after he’s finished heating up the rock, he hears the rev of an engine. Not a strong engine, mind you, but an engine that’s being pushed to its limit for the sake of one thing only. Even Blondie’s scorched mind can realize what that thing is.
He whips around from his position, watching as the passenger door is opened and a figure tumbles out onto the tunnel floor. He runs forward slightly, braces himself, and gets hit by the car.
Well, that’s a generous statement. As his feet dig trenches into the floor, and his hands sink into the plate that had been sautered onto the chassis of the vehicle quite recently, it’s far more like Blondie catches the car, causing it to skid with him back toward the crack. Once it’s come to a full stop, he looks up, finding himself face to face with a tin man, who is terribly surprised by the prospect that a car doing 75+ would be able to be stopped, bare-handed, by something like Blondie. In response, he smiles, and climbs onto the hood.
“Pick your battles better next time,” he growls, punching through the windshield and directly into the flat of the Android’s chest. Though, surprisingly, he doesn’t feel the crunch of bone. Hell, he doesn’t even feel the metal dent. What’s this guy made of, exactly?
“I think I’ve picked this one pretty—” Jack starts with his witty retort, before Blondie’s claws wrap around his torso, ripping him from his seat and through the cracked wall in a shower of stone.
“Azariah, listen to me.”
The Hare leans up against a pillar of stone, having brought the two of them into one of the natural caves that’d been checked for ore decades prior. “We’ve got time,” he pants. “What’s the need?”
“We need to keep running.”
“Lemme catch my breath first.”
“No, I mean—” Meat attempts to start, before a tin man comes crashing through the wall they had just entered, landing in a pile of his own rubble. “We’ll talk in a second.”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
What a bust. Not only was it a complete waste to extend an olive branch to someone in another division, she ends up quitting in her face, too. This has now become an issue of insubordination, of disrespect— so, she adds Brie’s name to the list. It’s not a literal list, of course, she’s not a compulsive note taker like that idiot she just wanted to help, but the names are engraved on a big plaque somewhere in her mind, no, on multiple plaques on the sort of hanging mounts you put taxidermy animal heads on. Each one’s empty at the moment, and she’s just added another wall mount with the following name etched into its shiny, entirely mental and metaphorical nameplate: Brie.
On the bright side, she still has the crowbar. It wasn’t hard to slink back over and snatch it up once those idiots had gone inside and the feel of her insides nearly getting pulped through sheer force had subsided. That uppity pencil pusher had it coming for abandoning ship, though. So what if she’d been rejected (again)? So what if that stupid, insignificant number cruncher practically spat in her face? She can spit back. She’s going to spit on every single one of them, and her spit is gonna feel much, much worse than theirs ever could. She’s going to score each and every single one of them like crispy skin on a holiday roast, just to drip her venom into their cuts, no matter how shallow.
Standing in front of Thistle’s house, she’s breathing heavy, she’s undoing and redoing her ponytail over and over, each time missing some hay-colored lock that refuses to obey her. After three times attempting to get it all in order she brushes her shoulders off and, finally, glances toward a new car in the driveway. It’s not Thistle’s well cared for beater, that’s where it’s been parked since she left. After all, when she and the others headed out initially the old man was in no condition to be going out and about. Alive, sure, but not in any state to be driving.
This car’s fresh off the lot, just expensive enough to show some displeasure with the lower end vehicles available but not opulent enough to draw attention— and there are no identifying brand markers, not even the manufacturer is visible. Whoever parked here isn’t interested in being looked at for longer than the second necessary for the average civilian brain to log and discard the thing in its totality.
She’s been dreading this. She knows it’s not local, it’s not beaten up or seen enough dirt roads to be local. This thing’s from the city, and if they’re here it can only mean one thing— the cavalry has arrived, because this is yet another issue she needs on her plate. Blondie didn’t need any damned peons, but poor little Piper, she obviously needs a squad of goons to help her get the job done. She didn’t, she doesn’t, but it’s just too late now isn’t it?
Hieronymus T. Thistle is barely conscious, heavily bandaged, and sitting at his own dining room table with four frightening-looking folks that didn’t even so much as tell him their names. Two of them have long guns, one a rifle and the other some kind of fancy, big city shotgun, and another has some absurd looking handcannon of a revolver hanging off her hip. The last fellow doesn’t appear to be carrying anything except for a month old issue of a cooking magazine.
Thistle’s eyes are glazed over. The idiot reading the magazine, “Jack” he thinks he heard at some point, overdid it with the pain meds. Not enough to kill, Thistle knows he’s not dying from this, but he’s gone straight from nearly passing out due to pain into nearly passing out because he’s high as a kite. High enough but still hurt enough that he won’t be having the food that was put out anytime soon.
“Mr. Thistle’s not looking too good,” Jack mumbles, having pulled down his mask. “Should we get him to an actual doctor?”
Between a small spoonful of food and a few comforting, albeit unsettling, spins of her revolver the gunslinger says, “Doesn’t really matter. We aren’t going to be here for long, after all.”
“Get with it. We ain’t here for pro bono work, boy.” To punctuate his sentence, and to get the point across, the Sniper leans his chair back and puts his dirty boots on the table. “Should’ve just killed him.”
The Shotgunner clears her throat before putting a fist against the table. “Flagrant inelegance and unprofessional! First and foremost— get your feet off the table! Nextly, how would we dispose of the body? He’s not only a local, but a coworker, in technicality.”
“Could probably mulch him.” Another spin of the revolver’s cylinder ends her statement. “He’s an organic.”
“Plant man becomes plant food.” The Sniper tilts his head, glancing toward the near catatonic Thistle over the twin mountains in his vision that are the tips of his boots. “Heh, I like the poetry of that. Kill him and gimme an hour. I can get rid of it.”
“Again I must ask how you actually plan to discard it!” The woman with the shotgun’s standing now. “That’s an order!”
Jack sets down his magazine, sighing. “Ms. Nancy, you’re not our boss, and there’s no pecking order until—”
“Until I show up,” hisses Piper, who has been standing in the doorway for the past three sentences. “What is this, a fucking sewing circle? Shape up if you’re going to be dragging me down.”
The four get out of their seats and stand across the table from her. She can gather a great amount from just the way they’re standing, the way they’re looking at her, the way they’re pointedly not looking at each other or at Thistle, whom she is surprised to see is out of bed.
In order stands the woman with her revolver, the Sniper, the one with the shotgun, and then their fourth, who appears to not actually have any real weapon on him. Jack’s the tallest, though largely because he’s one of the only two standing straight. The other’s Nancy, the woman with the shotgun, who’s shorter than him but makes up for it with her presence via some kind of salute and a hearty, abrasive, “YES, MA’AM.”
The shortest is the Sniper, since he’s old and stands all hunched. She can tell that if he stands straight he’d be on par with, if not looming over even Jack. Next shortest is the last of them, the one with the revolver, who if all were standing as straight as can be, would actually be somewhat taller than Nancy. She’s shorter due to her posture involving her lean back and her knees bend slightly, as though near perpetually pressed back by wind. It’s a relaxed, but disrespectful posture, the sort with her head tilted to the side as she eyes you up from down an alleyway.
Piper paces from one side of the room to the other, looking them all up and down before allowing the words “Helmets off,” to scrape out between her fangs. “Names, now. And you know what? Previous work experience.”
Smoothly, each one removes their respective helmets and masks, treating Piper to a small menagerie of oddities.
Beneath the Sniper’s helmet is a face of glass, fractured in places and restructured in others, lacking a nose and much of one cheek. What hasn’t been destroyed looks scraped and sanded with age, as one might expect the look of a scuffed lens left in the sand except everywhere on him, save for his eyes. His eyes are clear enough that were someone to stare deep enough with a good light they might be able to see right inside of his head. His old and shattered face contorts into a smile as he says, “Kranner. Several time marksmanship champion down south. I used to do hits, now I do this.”
Piper turns her nose up at him, letting her eyes drift to Nancy, who pulls off her helmet to reveal sharp, gray features and short cropped black hair. Her ears are pointed, though a bit bent, and her nose resembles that of a vampire bat. Her fangs are snaggly as she bares them in a smile, and with her usual gusto belts out, “Lieutenant Nancy, ma’am!”
Piper rubs her own jaw, considers her for a second, and rolls her shoulders. “A glass man and another fucking Vampire. Am I going to need to keep you two busy?”
Kranner clears his throat, then rasps out, “I ain’t fragile. And she ain’t a bloodsucker.”
“I prefer raw meat, ma’am!” Again Nancy raises her voice, causing Piper to hiss.
“Alright, alright, just quiet down!” Her gaze drifts, then, to the revolver nearby— then up to its owner’s face.
White silver strands of straight hair hang to a perfectly even cut bob, whose lower edge is just against the lobes of her pointed ears. Her eyes are wide, and the cool gray, like morning ice, threatens to draw Piper out of her anger. Still, it takes more than a pretty pair of elfin eyes to quash this rage. Besides, Piper’s spoken for. An uncomfortably gentle smile and a soft voice draw her to reality.
“My name’s Sundae.” In time with the soft and sweet final syllable, her revolver’s cylinder clicks into place. “Shepherd hired me on after I got out of prison.”
“And what did you do?”
“To get into prison or to get hired?”
Piper scoffs. “Do I look like I care?”
Sundae’s smile spreads a bit. “Sorry, non-disclosure agreement.”
“The crime or your work history?”
“Yeah,” she says noncommittally, brushing silver locks back behind one ear. “Anyway, my name is Sundae. How do you feel about civilian casualties?”
Piper’s eyes roll. “Just don’t tell anyone who you work for and don’t overdo it. And who’re you?” Finally, her eyes settle on Jack.
His face is simple and metallic. His jaw is dented somewhat, which adds some character to his tin-man charm. “Jack, Ms. Piper,” he says, hands folded behind his back. He smiles afterward, which, with the dented, slightly skewed jaw, gives him the appearance of a child’s well loved posable action figure. “I once handled a contract dispute with some Gretchin closer to the mountains.”
She looks him up and down, then purses her lips for a moment. “You got a gun? You don’t seem to have one.”
“Didn’t need one then, don’t need one now.”
“Alright.” Piper looks them each over one more time, then lists off each name. “Kranner, Nancy, Sundae, and Jack. Alright. You four better tell me some good news.”
Nancy forces herself straighter than before. “We are here and fully prepared to handle the operation at your leisure! Tell us your plan and we’ll execute with extreme prejudice!”
“Also that guy Gilroy’s got an in-house bounty set up for that other guy, Blondie. So, if we nab him while we’re out you’ll get a really, really big bonus,” soothes Sundae.
Piper smiles. “Good. Okay, that’s all good. I don’t need to prep any of you and that just means more money for us. Great.”
“Hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Kranner interjects with a slightly raised hand, “but while we’ve got means to handle him, we still need to find him.”
For a moment, it’s as though the slowly rising good mood’s been crushed. Jack, Sundae, and Nancy all turn their faces toward Kranner, who doesn’t look any worried over the matter. Piper, of course, is the worst, with narrowed eyes and bared fangs and her forked tongue poking out to extend her softer syllables into small hisses as she says, “What do you MEAN we still have to find him? You idiots have no INTEL?”
“Well, ma’am,” begins Jack, awkwardly and anxiously patting his hands together as his softly glowing eyes scan the room, refusing to make contact with his superior’s, “thing is, we know he definitely headed up this way after an encounter with Mr. Gilroy, but we lost track of him a bit west of Fusillade. He— uh— went off-road. I know that’s not what you want to hear right now, but we know he’s definitely coming here. Definitely.”
“And why wouldn’t he just fuck off into the Dividends instead?” Piper’s pacing, her tail’s lashing itself about, she’s starting to get taller. All four step back from the table as the fangs press out from between Piper’s lips and the thrashing appendage behind her swipes a table leg, snapping it and sending the entire affair, with all their food, to the hardwood floor— alongside the still largely unresponsive Thistle, whose only sound is a groan.
Nancy clears her throat. “He was very adamant during his conversation with Mr. Gilroy that he has plans to return to work! I was there in the room while they spoke, ma’am.”
“Stands to reason that he’s plannin’ to hit when least expected,” Kranner says. “He could run, but he’d have nothin’ anywhere else. If what snaggleteeth over there heard is right, we don’t really need to find him. He’ll find us.”
Piper’s claws have busted through her gloves and she’s rubbing her face, feeling it grow harder, scalier. It itches, it itches so much. She wonders often if those who grow fur feel better than anybody whose body’s texture changes with this. Those damn dogs don’t know how good they have it. “You not only LOST a big, flaming corpse,” she spits, entire body contorting as she struggles to keep the transformation down, “but he’s somewhere nearby, getting ready to attack? How is this good news? You’re idiots! You’re all morons!”
Jack clears his throat. “He’s after the miners, right? We can probably handle them all at once if we just let him make the first move.”
Piper stops, turning her gaze on him. “And let him tire himself out dealing with them?”
“As I see it,” Sundae pokes in, “seems like a good way to handle it. Great idea, boss.”
“Yeah, yeah it is.” Piper smooths a claw through her hair, looking down. “Glad I thought of it. Whatever, Kranner and Sundae go get some more gear. Do either one of you know how to outfit a civilian vehicle for a fight?”
Sundae speaks again saying, “No, but I know how to convince someone to.”
Piper nods. “Good, get something high caliber on the car y’all rode in on. Don’t touch mine.”
“We’ll get ours and his set up,” Kranner rasps, gesturing toward Thistle on the ground. “He’s one foot in the grave, anyways. Won’t miss it.”
Piper laughs and crouches beside Thistle, looking him over, poking the side of his face with a claw deep enough to draw blood from beneath his thin, but tough hide. “Oh, Mr. Thistle, can we borrow your car? It’ll only get a lil’ dinged up, promise.”
The rest of them laugh too, until the old man on the floor turns his head. It’s a struggle; the command has to go through layers and layers of sediment, like trying to shove his hand through cotton, but eventually he does manage to cast his eyes up at Piper and work his mouth to say a simple, indignant, “No.”
Silence falls, and it looms heavy above them all until shortly, curtly, Piper tells him, “Wrong answer.”
She grabs Thistle by the leg with one large, clawed hand and tosses him into a cabinet nearby, where the finer plates and dining ware had been kept alongside various little knick knacks. The pain takes a second longer than it should for it to register in his body, but when it does he lets loose a croaking, scraping groan.
The only reason the cabinet falling on him doesn’t end it all there is because Piper smacks it out of her way with her tail before she’s on him again, driving the steel toe boot on her left foot hard into his already heavily bruised and somewhat shattered ribs. The sting and burn of fracturing bones and tearing flesh is muffled under the heavy medication, but it’s real, so viscerally real.
He can’t move. What the screwed dosage hasn’t rendered useless to him is occupied by pain and he’s staring to the side. Boots. Black, steel toe boots, all of them are wearing some. On his floor there are shattered plates and wood chips from the cabinet. Stupid little knick knacks and baubles are there too. A small figurine of a cow stares at him from its faux pasture, a little lump of green atop which the black and white ceramic bovine settles.
He can remember where he got each and every one of those insipid odds and ends, but as stupid as they are he can’t help but feel an extra jab in his gut. Surrounded by gifts and small, pointless treasures given to him by people he says he hates, Hieronymus T. Thistle is soaked not only with his own blood, but his tears as well.
After kicking his ribs until they cave, Piper grabs the cabinet again, shrieks, and crushes him with it.
“Stupid old bastard,” she sighs out, rubbing her face, claws receding and skin smoothing over again. She spits out a heavy glob of venom into the blood pooling on the floor, where it sizzles disgustingly. “Got what was coming to him.”
The four are still standing on the other side of the room, each one awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot. Piper’s head tilts. “What are you still doing here? Go gear up the cars. Nancy, weapon maintenance. Jack… Honestly I don’t know what you can do. Stand watch, I guess. Patrol, do something.”
They all mask up again and get their helmets back on, then head out.
Piper glances around, and something catches her eye, something glinting just a touch. A small ceramic cow on a pitifully small green lump made out to be a pasture. She picks it up, turns it around, and rubs off the blood with her coat sleeve. On the bottom of the green blob is something engraved, shallowly, as though with a pencil prior to the baking process: “To Mr. Thistle,” in the handwriting of someone young. “From Billy,” it reads after that.
She pockets it. “I can sand that off. Janet’s gonna love you.”
“So,” Olive says, breaking the silence in the living room. Jules and Lucille sit across Samson’s living room from her and Leon, and though it’s clear that Leon doesn’t have much to say to them, seeing as how they had attacked the both of them earlier last month, she feels it necessary to break the ice, especially since they’re being let inside and not being told to scram. “Fancy seein’ y’all here again.”
Lucille chuckles, not a trace of amusement in her voice. “Yeah.”
“So. What’s up…?”
“Waiting for your doctor to patch up that girl so I can get my arm and nose checked.”
Olive frowns. “Y’think it’s broken? Your nose, I mean.”
“I know it’s broken,” she replies, cradling her face. “We’re lucky it's not bleeding all over this nice couch.”
“Ah.” The Owl turns to Jules instead, who has slumped into quite the comfortable position in a recliner. He’s more focused in listening in to the conversations happening in the adjacent rooms, especially the one where Brie’s being operated on. “How ‘bout you, Jules?”
“Oh, you know.” He smiles as he faces her, motioning toward his casted-up body. “Peachy keen. I’ll be in decent shape in a couple days, though.”
“How’d all that happen?”
“That guy who’s been following you, Blondie,” Lucille interjects. “Since he couldn’t find you in Fusillade, he went on a rampage. Nearly got the better of us.”
“Shit,” she suddenly grumbles. She darts from the room, holding her good arm under her nose like a leaky ceiling.
The Vampire laughs a little. “By your faces, I’m guessing you didn’t know the bastard was alive.”
And their faces do tell it all. Leon and Olive look at one another with utter disbelief— the former looking as though he doesn’t actually believe the claim, and the latter looking as though she doesn’t want to believe it, but she can’t help her brain accepting it as true right out the gate.
“You know that fried-looking person who walked in with your doctor and the detective?” Jules probes, holding out his free hand. “They’re one of those Notus. Notuses? Notii? Ah, whatever. One of those folks that comes back to life after being killed with fire. Your boy Blondie? He’s one of them too, now.”
“That’s a load of shit,” Leon says.
“Hey, ask anyone else who just got here.”
“There’s no way. We heard an explosion. We saw. An explosion. How the hell could there have been anything left of that guy to reanimate?”
Jules shrugs.
“He got into a fistfight with a fucking Wyrm.”
“Hah!” he laughs, quickly clutching his side in pain. “Don’t make me laugh like that. God, that’s good, though. Did he really?”
“I didn’t catch most of it, but I think a couple of ours did. He wrestled the Fusillade Wyrm. Got it in a headlock and everything.”
“And it exploded.”
Leon laughs back. “You should’ve seen it. Full mushroom cloud, hundreds of feet into the sky. I thought the world was ending.”
“That was scary as hell! I dunno why you’re laughin’, you certainly weren’t laughin’ at the time,” Olive adds.
“It’s funny in retrospect, Olive,” he says. “We were all trying to ignore it at the time. Couldn’t waste any breath gawking.”
Jules scratches his head. “I think I was still on the road with Lucille by that point. I know we heard a boom, but I don’t remember thinking much of it. Speaking of Lucille.” He leans over in his recliner, and yells down the corridor to where the Maw is only just now getting a grip on her nosebleed. “Lucille! Do you need any help?!”
“Don’t try to walk alone!” she yells back. “I told you to stay put!”
“You want me to get the doctor or something?!”
“Are you listening to what I’m saying?”
Jules turns back to Olive and Leon, grinning like a court jester. “Thank goodness. I didn’t want to walk anywhere anyways.”
Judith, Cherry, and Meat find themselves outside on the back patio, after having been moved out of the makeshift operating room due to space reasons.
“Wait, if you know all there is to know about fire magic now,” Cherry asks, who is having the time of his life grilling Meat for their entire life story— or at least, everything they can remember about themselves up until this point. “Does that mean you could teach it?”
Judith holds up her hands in dissent. “Do NOT teach him any spells. Please. That would be a mistake.”
“Why?” Meat asks.
“Because he’s prone to screwing shit up. And giving someone like that the ability to burn down a house isn’t a good idea.”
Meat turns to Cherry as Judith scowls over at him. “She talk about you like this all the time?” He nods, reluctantly. “That’s kinda shitty, lady.”
“Well, it’s the truth. You think I find it fun?”
“You’re fine putting him down in front of a stranger,” Meat says. “That says a lot.”
“Says what, exactly?”
“You’re bitter. I don’t know about what, but you’re bitter.”
Judith scoffs. “I’ll admit that. I am a little bitter.”
“What happened, then?” Meat motions to the two of them. “What’s the problem?”
Neither Judith nor Cherry say a word for a moment. But, after being motioned to by the Werewolf, Cherry pipes up. “I caused an accident and made her lose her hand.”
Meat’s skull tilts just slightly. “How does that happen?”
“Mining machinery.”
“He made a water cutter go haywire. He lost control of it, and it took my hand right off. We couldn’t even put it back on if we wanted,” Judith adds. “That’s how bad it was.”
Meat doesn’t respond, instead looking the Werewolf in the eyes for a solid couple seconds. They give her ample time to realize that the kind of person she’s matching gazes with really isn’t the kind she’d like to challenge. Sure, she’s stressed out and sure, she’s got some very understandable beef with Cherry, but in looking into those burning sockets, she sees someone who really, really shouldn’t be messed with. Someone to whom first impressions are everything, someone whose sense of right and wrong is stronger than their capabilities in magic will ever be. Even though all they’ve got is a skull, she can see the experience written into their expression. And, if she’s honest, it’s a little sobering. It doesn’t stop her from narrowing her eyes at them, readying herself. It’s part frustrated and ventless anger, part cornered animal.
Meat sighs. Initially it seemed like a problem to be solved— that idea’s been corrected. “That’s something you two have to work out, then.”
“Agreed,” Cherry sighs, leaning forward on the picnic bench. “But…” he starts again. “About the magic thing.”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
The Bleeding Scab isn’t the best place to lie low and wait out a quarry, but it’s chaotic enough to cover up the fact that Piper, Jules, and Lucille are very obviously not from around there. Most of the workers busy themselves with their own pockets of enjoyment, so the three oddballs just fade into the corner of the room; especially since they don’t plan on renting a room, nor are they on payroll to be accompanying potential renters. Instead, as Lucille awkwardly sits in her section of the booth with Jules right beside her, picking away awkwardly at some local type of blood sausage— not the sort of blood he needed, but fangs are meant for meat— Piper simply presses heavy spoonfuls of a thick, sludgy soup into her mouth, watching the people move and talk, her tail wrapping around the center pole of the table between them.
They’re nestled into a far corner with easy visibility of the main bar and the front entrance. Anyone who seems to notice them is disquieted by a combination of Piper’s glare, Jules’s grin, and Lucille’s covered mouth, and anyone who doesn’t is too busy going about their business. In a sense, they stick out. But, sticking out just enough to discomfort is, in itself, a fairly good way to camouflage yourself. To lack the comfort of familiarity and the novelty of strangeness both is to convince the viewer not to view at all, and is thus a good way to hide in plain sight.
The fine details of this method, something Jules and Lucille have utilized time and time again to simply wait for their quarry in a populous gathering space and then pounce at the last second, are somewhat lost on Piper. Her shoulders shift and roll to ease the tension, she tilts her head to crack her neck, and after a time the spoon settles into the bottom of the solidifying muck she had called a meal some moments earlier as she’s taken to popping each knuckle on each hand individually, slowly and methodically. Her tail twitches. As though simply to elicit some response, the tip drifts against Lucille’s leg.
This whole time, Lucille’s been staring past her companions and into the sea of people also. She’s careful not to think too hard on the way the moving of boots and feet in this place reminds her painfully of the hustle and bustle of camps in the past, or how the roaring laughter of these people, likely celebrating a finished house or some other project, echoes against those she had once called her peers. The Snake’s touch against her leg is only registered after it gets firmer and runs up her calf, when Lucille nudges it away with her boot.
Piper smirks. “I’m bored,” she says, running a finger along the rim of her bowl. “How long does this usually take?”
“It isn’t always high octane chases or intense stakeouts. Sometimes it’s just sitting in some greasy spoon waiting for somebody to show up.” Lucille’s head tilts. Her eyes linger on Piper’s own golden pair as her jaw sets.
Jules chuckles. “We’re hunters, right. Which means, Pip, that you have to learn to treat the target like they’re animals. Complicated, complex animals, but animals. Shit, that analogy doesn’t really work, huh. Think brutal reality shit, you get me.”
A grin crosses its way over Piper’s features, but she doesn’t respond to him. She’s a bit busy breaking her gaze from the staredown to follow the familiar shapes of Brie and Roxanne, accompanied by the unfamiliar Meat as they plow through the entrance and straight to the front counter. Roxanne swiftly places down a bundle of cash, raises a small ruckus, and is handed a key by the bartender. Once the charade’s complete, the three dart up the stairs and into the hall where the rented rooms reside, just as two more shapes enter.
The two figures approach the bartender, and just from a cursory glance Piper has some idea that they aren’t locals, given as one of them— a tall man, made of literal stone with small streaks of metal throughout his face and bald head like tattoos— is wearing a black suit and a horrendously patterned tie that speaks to having been picked up either in the home of an insane clothier or a low-grade alchemical mentor. The swirling red, blue, green and electric cyan patterns are hard to look at.
The other, an orc, isn’t wearing a suit but his clothes are simple, crisp, and very obviously mass produced; he’s from a real city. On top of his head is a flat cap, chequered, black and white. Similarly, his t-shirt is a simple black, his jeans white, et cetera, over his green skin.
Combined they cut a fearsome silhouette, a mountain of a man made of rock and iron glaring, stone-faced, as an Orc of nearly equal stature cracks and rolls his knuckles as though preparing a weapon. On the Golem’s lapel is a pin, and even from a distance Jules knows the symbol it bears well; after all, Leslie Carnevale wears it all the time and so do the properly initiated members of the crew, as it’s the sign of the family. The Orc isn’t wearing one, but he probably has one, Jules thinks.
Based solely on looks, he can assume who they are. There isn’t any shortage of rocky muscle in the organization but rather few get to the point where they start buying expensive suits; shows this isn’t just some brick-headed associate out to crack skulls. This is a soldier, sure, not a capo like Leslie, but give him a few years and a few more busted heads and he’s going to get there.
The Orc, he knows. Normally the guy works an entirely different track; he’s an urban collector, a soldier who doesn’t work for Leslie and probably already misses the man-made mountains and jungles of concrete, wood, and steel back in the city. Wide at the shoulders and tight at the hips, he’s practically threatening to bust that shirt open during a fight. It’d be attractive if Jules didn’t know the moment the guy gets going things are only going to hurt.
Grant “The Slab” Slate and “Lucky” Luciano. Professionals, even a little above Jules’ paygrade. Leslie’s pulling out all the stops to deal with this Notus. Someone who might be fireproof and somebody willing to put hands on a campfire. Sensible, but it stings a little to know he’s been outmoded for the moment.
The bartender doesn’t tell them anything, and unfortunately for Grant and Lucky, this isn’t a place where they can bust out pieces and have the run of the joint; the moment either one of them pulls a gun on a local, the rest’ll tear them apart. They didn’t account for Jules being there, though.
Some part of him does feel a little bad for the brief wave and the vague gesture pointed toward the stairs up, as that Meat person didn’t seem all too bad when they weren’t trying to kill one another, but family’s family, even if he himself is taking a break from it to keep rolling with his best friend to get a job done. It’s all quick, professional, and mostly painless.
Frustrated, the two goons look around. They eventually spot someone who’s entirely willing to make eye contact with them— that being Jules— who quickly and vaguely points toward the stairs nearby with a slight nod of his head. Then comes another gesture, the slight tapping of his fingers, still only using his good hand, against his chest in the spot where, were he to wear one, he would place a Carnevale pin on his jacket, mirroring the placement of Grant’s on his suit.
Daylight gangsters, the sort with very public facing personas, get pretty good at interpreting that kind of message. It’s easy enough; the two’s quarry had gone upstairs and the gray-faced and messed up looking fellow in the far corner saw, and not only that but also has connections to the family. Had they a few more minutes they’d probably find out that this fellow is, in fact, the guy whose job they just took, but they’re too busy. Instead, there’s a brief nod in response before the two storm up the stairs and past some working men and women, off to start busting down doors.
As the two disappear upstairs, Lucille turns to Jules and lets out a sigh. “Was that needed?”
“Even if I’m off that job, it’s good to stay on people’s good sides. Also, hell, at least one of those guys is on the up and up, and it never hurts to be in with somebody like that.” A fanged smile greets her from beneath a thick and recently combed mustache.
“And who’re they?” Piper asks, eyes still lingering on the staircase, mind elsewhere.
“I think a word for it is “coworkers.” People who’ve dedicated much more to the- er- family than I have.”
“Mafia goons,” Lucille adds. “Doesn’t matter, we’ve got other people to wait for. It’s just a matter of time.”
Piper’s lips purse, and the three go silent and wait for a few minutes more before she finally rises from her seat saying, “I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Are you?” Lucille raises her gaze to Piper’s face again, narrowing her eyes.
“Does it matter?”
“Would you be lying to us if it didn’t?”
As Piper adjusts her coat collar and sets her jaw, she shrugs. “Suppose so. Either way— you two stay here and watch for those idiots, and don’t go starting any scenes.” And then she’s off, walking right past the sign directing those inside the bar toward the restrooms and she’s heading up, heading after the two she’d seen and the three runners.
Brie’s legs want to give out after so much running and the intensity of the standoff inside the room. Her hand’s on the semiautomatic in her bag, and her eyes are focused narrowly on those of the green skinned fellow in a flat cap who’s only just barely keeping his muscled frame from pouncing on Meat who is, at this very moment, literally butting heads with a golem that’s looming over them like a bent tower.
Roxanne’s got the crossbow out, of course, but she’s not in a position for it to be terribly useful; fact is she’s not got a good shot on the Orc and the Golem is, again, made of rock. Even if it’d punch into him, he’d probably just pull it out. While the room had been something of a good bet to hide in, it’s the last place she wants to be in a real fight, especially when she can’t shoot worth a damn at this range and Meat can’t make any sparks fly for fear of lighting the whole town up. Only Brie’s got free range in this room, and even then, she’s not likely to pull the trigger.
“Mack.” The Golem’s voice is slow and heavy, deliberate like the placement of a statue. Every syllable is a perfectly placed brick. “You’re a real long way from home.”
Meat’s brow chafes somewhat from rubbing against stone and metal, as they press their neck and shoulders forward and they stand on the ball of their feet to shove their bony forehead against that of Grant. “I’m not Mack anymore. I’m not in the mood to be explaining this to people I might’ve once known, but I’m not Mack. I stopped being Mack a while ago, and if anybody calls me that again I am going to—”
“Meat,” Brie chimes in, “I do not think attempting to intimidate someone twice your size is going to do much. Sir, please do not call them Mack. They prefer Meat.”
“We come here to tussle or we come here to have tea?” Lucky spits, nose scrunching as he shoots a glare Brie’s way. “Meat, Mack, either way ends the same. Been waiting to take a swing at you for a while…”
Grant raises a hand, then stands back to his full height. “Don’t be a bitch, Lucky. Alright, Meat, I’ll call you that. Still, job’s a job.”
Meat’s arms cross, and their teeth clatter as they work their jaw wordlessly for a second. Then comes an idea, something quick and simple. “We can’t fight here. I don’t know either of you, or at least I don’t anymore, but I get a feeling you two don’t want to have too much… Collateral.”
“What, these two?” Lucky gives a quick glance over the two women before he laughs. “What’s it matter?”
Grant scowls over at him. “Shut your face, Lucky.” Afterward, he turns to look at Meat again. “You sound like you’re about to make a proposition. If it’s happening, out with it.”
“I… Uh…” Meat stops. They didn’t actually think they were going to get this far. Flying by the seat of your pants is good for a fight, but it’s not quite there as conversational tactics go.
Brie steps forward, putting up both hands in a supplicating gesture. “They are technically still working for the Carnevale. It would be in bad taste to kill a coworker before they finish their job, yes?”
“That’s it, I’m gonna shove my hand down this—” Lucky starts, stepping toward her before a large, suit-clad arm stops him.
Grant’s cold, stoic face turns to watch Brie as he says to her, “Explain.”
Meat steps back some, and Roxanne lowers her crossbow as Brie smooths out her pants and readjusts her collar. “Back in Fusillade, your employer tasked Meat with defeating the other Notus, the one known as “Blondie,” whom they— we— are currently pursuing. Blondie was not defeated in Fusillade and thus, the job is unfinished. Obviously Mr. Carnevale expects this to have been finished by the time you arrived, assuming that is who hired you in the first place.”
The Golem and the Orc exchange looks. A small, almost entirely insignificant smile pulls at the corners of Grant’s lips. “Convincing. Stupid, but very convincing. I need more than a technicality to make letting you three go worth it.”
“Unless you can beat a five-figure paycheck,” Lucky breaks in, “I don’t expect anything like this to be worth it. Let’s just kill ‘em.” Though he says this, his hands are already lowered, pressed into his pockets.
Meat rolls their shoulders. “I can’t beat five figures… Let me help them beat this Blondie guy, though. I’ll owe you one. From what I’ve gathered, that’s worth a lot. Apparently my death’s worth that paycheck.”
“And you already stood up again after that Dragon incident. No telling if you’ll stand back up after what we’d do to you, but I guess that can’t be helped. You should’ve stuck to the family life, Meat. You’re good at it. Dealing and all that. You too, sister.” Grant nods, first toward Meat and then toward Brie before he says to Lucky, “I think a favor might come in handy later on. Don’t be too sore over the check, it’ll make you look bad.”
“For a rock, you’re soft as shit.” Lucky snarls, but as everything settles, even his muscles relax.
All just in time for the door to open again and something long to swing out, lashing at the back of Grant’s knees. Unprepared, the giant of a man is sent to the ground, only catching himself by his hands on the floor. By this point another figure’s entered the room and, stepping neatly over the grounded Grant, closes the distance with Lucky.
He’s better prepared. When something bronze and long swings out, lashing toward his face, he catches it between his calloused hands as though clapping his palms to either side of a long blade. Only in the brief moment of calm after it’s stopped in his hands does he realize— it’s not a weapon, it’s a scaly tail. Before he can capitalize on this knowledge, as his soft, blue eyes dart up to gauge the enemy, his vision finds itself blotted out.
Brie, Meat, and Roxanne are dumbfounded as Piper, her tail trapped between the hands of the Orc, just having tripped up Grant, pulls out something strange, some abomination of a weapon derived from strains of crowbar, tonfa, and club. She already had it out by the time she entered, and by the point of her tail making contact with Lucky’s hands she’s spinning it. Now, as Lucky finally looks at her, looks her in the eyes, she’s carving a ragged arc from one side of his head to the other, the pointed, clawed crowbar end of the weapon digging in through one cheek and through his back teeth, through one of his tusk-like canines, and full through the other cheek.
Lucky expects a fight, something real and intense, life or death. He doesn’t expect to be absolutely stunned with cold, shooting pain as he attempts to hold his jaw where it should be on his skull. Blood sputters from his open cheeks and down his neck onto his black shirt and hands, and his attempts to speak only come out as muffled, muted gurgles. His nigh perfect stance from moments ago is ruined as he attempts to back away, tripping and falling as he continues to clutch at his face. He’s been stabbed, shot, clawed, bitten— but this is new. This is so horrifyingly new.
Roxanne’s breathing fast and awkward, partially out of an instinctive fear, secondarily out of a learned, familiar resentment. She’s realized by now that this isn’t Blondie, it’s just his coat being worn by that foreman, Piper. But that’s just enough to send her brain into panic mode, send phantom pains shooting through her missing foot. And that’s only the beginning of her troubles. It’s one thing to be used to seeing viscera in a medical context; it’s something else entirely to watch somebody lose bits and pieces of their face to a glorified pry bar.
Meat’s been unsure of what to do this entire time. Admittedly, not having to owe him anything would be really, really nice. However, if the guy was willing to let them actually talk it out then they weren’t that bad— and if they weren’t going to condemn themselves for having been a member of the Carnevale, it’d be real hypocritical to let this guy die just because of that. And furthermore, they remember Brie’s worries. Is Brie next?
Brie’s frozen. Inside herself, she’s shut down. The time has come. To struggle is pointless when in the face of this brutality. She hadn’t gotten to see Blondie do such things, only having seen the aftermath for the most part, save for that man that Blondie’d burned to death back in Fusillade at the start of the fight, but she’s seeing it now, in Piper. And God, it’s coming for her next.
As Meat moves to place themselves between Piper and Brie, Piper’s gaze, wild and absent of expression, like the glazed but attentive stare of a predator, passes them over in favor of Grant, who’s trying to struggle his way to his feet again. Being a big man means being hard to topple when he’s ready, but if he’s caught off guard then it’s going to be a while as he gets back up.
When he’s finally on his own two feet again, a strange whistling enters his ears, like something spinning faster and faster, metal clawing the air, leather on leather. His eyes run up in time for the already bloodied metal claw on the heavy end of the weapon to strike down on his bald head.
Now everything’s ringing, swimming, and there’s trickling. Like a stream descending a mountain cliff, blood trickles between the crags and crevices in his face from the place she’d struck him. He bellows deeply, but is silenced as the whistling twirl of the weapon collides with his head again, and then again, each strike pushing him down further and further.
Each song-like swing of hardened steel finds itself a sickening, climactic crunch to cap it off. Again and again she strikes, panting, grinning now. In Piper’s mind, she’s calculating the perfect position to strike to chip more and more away. It’s just mining. Instead of groundwater, though, it’s blood.
Meat calms down alongside Roxanne, who by this point is awkwardly clutching at them and saying, “Please stop her, Meat,” between her steadily calming breaths.
Before anything can be said in response, Brie pushes out from behind the both of them and shoves herself into Piper’s path, raising her arms to take the next blow meant for the Golem now on the ground. It doesn’t land, though; Piper stops her movements, and in that second her features contort grotesquely with rage and confusion.
“If you are here for me,” Brie says, a slight tremble in her voice, “then hurt me! Don’t hurt anyone else!”
Piper glances around the room. Lucky’s clutching at his face still, looking distant and pale, and Grant’s on the floor with a good chunk of rock missing from his head, bleeding profusely but obviously not dead. Hell, she was pretty sure she only gave him the Golemnic equivalent of a concussion, or maybe a bit of internal bleeding if she’s really fortunate. Meat and Roxanne are both gawking at her like idiots but obviously they’d try to take her on if she did anything.
A smile and an almost eerily serene posture take over Piper then, and though her black coat, her weapon, and a bit of her face are all splattered with blood, she looks like she hadn’t even exerted herself. “I’m not here to hurt you, Brie.”
Brie’s arms lower and, in her confusion, she blinks. “You’re not? Then why—”
“To protect you. We wouldn’t want anything happening to our number monkeys, right? Especially not one working directly for Ms. Hickory.” A bloody, gloved hand reaches up to grip Brie’s chin. “You should be careful. They don’t like folks like us around here. We have to stick together.”
Brie’s eyes are wide and her face is hot, hot with anger and dread and all things confusing to the logical mind. “How can you be so candid after hurting them like that?” She snaps, immediately. “Look at what you did! It is all so— so needlessly cruel!”
Piper chuckles, and that hand on Brie’s chin pats her cheek before the snake turns to walk out. “Shit, write it all down in your lil’ notebook and get along with your job. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to your rescue after all. There are better things to do than protect people that ain’t even going to give me so much as a thank you.” On her way out she snags one of the several extra blankets, and as she walks out she takes the time to wipe off the blood. Luckily enough for her, the coat’s been treated— blood doesn’t stick. Blondie thought of everything when ordering these things.
In the room Brie is huffing, face vividly darkened by a flush, face for once twisted heavily in some semblance of fury. She only comes out of some hidden, angry place in the back of her mind as Meat snaps in front of her face. “Hey, I know this isn’t a great time, but Roxanne needs our help moving the gangsters.”
“As in, I need you two to drag them downstairs so that the locals can handle the rest. We have to see Sam.”
Getting the two gangsters situated in the clinic was no easy task, but the working folk of the Bleeding Scab brought forth everything they could muster to help. Roxanne found herself impressed, and somewhat missing that kind of community with her fellow folk. There’s nothing quite like the feel of everyone dropping their beers when someone’s in dire need.
But, the job isn’t finished. As she exits the clinic to a rather overwhelmed Brie and a notably on-edge Meat, she says, “There’s someone we’ve got to see. Let’s get a move on before anything else happens, yes?” Brie attempts to raise a hand, but Roxanne just replies, “We can process what happened in a bit, Ms. Brie. Right now, we’ve got to get to my friend. He’ll know what to do about all this.”
“Where to?” Meat says, eyeing the streets suspiciously.
“Samson’s place. He’s the union head here, and he’ll know how to drive Piper out, now that she’s here.” The Medic starts to walk, taking Brie’s hand as she passes by. “Keep up now, you two. We’ll be safe, but I don’t want either of you getting lost.”
Covered in grease but satisfied with his inspection and installation of the Pounder nitrous canister into the truck, Cherry pushes himself out from underneath the vehicle, dragging his toolbelt along with him. Now, if he’s done everything correctly, the button on the side of the middle control panel should work for a last-ditch burst of speed.
Though, as if on-queue, Cherry had noticed something odd while working on the truck. Since he had become so familiar with the vehicle’s inner workings, he had slowly begun the process of trying out his power on it. Unscrewing and rescrewing nuts, lifting parts off the pavement for insertion into tight spaces, and other such activities that had tired him out after a while. In fact, after he had finished, he had a thought— since his power seems to consider the process of moving things as a function of building, could he, in theory, move more than one component at once?
To his surprise, he could see it happening in his mind when he closed his eyes. A wireframe map of the truck had been built in his headspace, and when he felt for a section, he could feel it begin to move slightly under his influence. Of course, this was about as strenuous as trying your hardest to lift a screwed-on piece of machinery from its frame, but nonetheless, all he had to do was wipe a bit of blood from his nose before heading inside.
That is, before Roxanne showed up in Samson’s yard with Brie and someone else.
Brie and Meat stand back from the scene, waiting on the front lawn of a rather well-kept house. They watch Roxanne embrace the Hare and the human covered in motor oil sitting out on the front porch, who Brie correctly assumes to be the ones she’s been hunting this entire time, and soon after, hug the massive Hound who walks out as well. There’s brief, but fervent conversation— something about being followed to town, something about a pair of gangsters, something about Shepherd Gemstone. That last bit perks up the Hound right away, and both Brie and Meat watch as his hand naturally gravitates toward his hip. The Owl standing next to them also becomes visibly nervous, and again, from what Brie can surmise by the instructions she was given at the beginning of her contract, she’s also one of the people she’s supposed to be hunting.
In fact, two more people come out of the house, and they both fit the description perfectly. A toothless Orc and a Werewolf, but one who didn’t like to turn. Her entire quarry, right there, right in front of her. If she were someone else, she’d be leaping at the opportunity to seize them and claim her bounty, complete her contract, and leave this whole thing behind. But, beyond the fact that they looked like tough customers, she doesn’t feel obligated to do that at all. In fact, she feels as though it would be wrong, if not completely morally red, to attempt to break up their panicked reunion with the announcement of her aiming to fulfill her contract.
As she briefly turns to look at Meat, she also realizes that she’s been traveling with someone who knows what it’s like to be hunted. Though they’ve only been alive a few weeks, there’s no denying that they’ve had to have been on-edge the entire trip. And they were right to feel that way, as they nearly got themselves, as well as Roxanne and her, in serious trouble just now. Being chased like that, it must not feel very nice. She can tell somewhat by looking at their face. And when looks back at the group of folks on the front porch, something terrible occurs to her.
She’s been an unknowing predator. She’s been the chaser, not the chase-ee, this entire time, and that fills her with a sense of something she feels is unprocessable. She looks at them, discussing what to do in this dire situation, and knows in her heart that she’s been in the wrong for even thinking that taking that job had been a good idea, much less to follow through on it.
And in that moment, she also realizes that Meat has been knocked on the skull with the flat side of a familiar crowbar, sending them into the dirt face-first and entirely unconscious.
“That’s all it takes? Really?” Piper says, stalking up besides Brie. She makes sure to give Meat’s body a hearty kick as she wraps an arm around the Detective’s shoulder. “You ready to do this thing, pal?”
Brie wants to scream, but not only will nothing come out, the others have already noticed the presence of the mercenaries and have hunkered down inside the house, with the exception of Samson, who stands firm on his front porch.
He yells, “I figured they’d send a dog, but they sent me a snake instead! You’d better make this easy, girlie.”
Piper spits out a bit of venom and smiles. “What do you think, you two?” she starts, turning to Jules and Lucille. “Should we make it easy on them?”
“No,” Lucille replies, “but I think this is fucking stupid. What the hell are we doing here, Piper?”
She ignores her comments, “Good. Then I guess it’s about time you two stop dragging me down.” She releases Brie from her grip, and starts to walk over to the two mercenaries, crowbar spinning like a weed whacker’s blade. “Understand that when I say this is nothing personal, I don’t actually mean it, L. It’s totally personal. I’ve been wanting to brain you since we last met. You’ve turned into a real bitch,” she finishes, raising her weapon in a flourish.
Survival instincts begin to fire in Lucille’s brain, but they aren’t enough to protect her from the blow that she attempts to block with a combination of her left arm and shoulder. She definitely hears something crack, and by the time she’s hit the dirt, she can’t even feel it anymore. And there’s hardly any time to scream either, as it’s lights out with a swift boot to the face.
Though her sadistic side tells her to keep going, Piper decides that she might feel bad if she kept wailing on one of her old colleagues after she’d been knocked stupid. So, instead, she turns to Jules, who has fallen on his ass in the process and is clearly in no shape to fight. Something tickles her brain when she starts to approach him like a slasher flick monster, spinning up the crowbar as he tries to scooch himself away in the grass. The only thing that would make it more perfect is if there was a dramatic score, one with shrill strings overlapping a sinister bassline— or, if he were begging. He’s surprisingly silent, just staring up at her in disbelief of what he’s seeing. And that makes it weird.
“If you get up,” she says, frowning. “I’m killing you. Understood, J?” Jules scowls at her, but nods. “Good. Now, Brie,” she starts, turning back to the Detective.
Through the calls from Samson for her to come to the porch, she doesn’t budge a single inch. In a sense, she’s stalled out. It’s all too much for her to handle at the moment, and to be frank, she feels as though she could sink into the center of the world, through the ground where she stands. She jumps a touch when the Snake touches her shoulder again, and feels like nothing but crying when she’s looked in the eyes by her.
“C’mon. You and me. Let’s get this job done so we can go grab some lunch,” Piper says. “You’re on the payroll too, so we’re in this together. Get your gun and let’s do this thing.”
In a moment of clarity, she gazes down at the pocket where her nametag is hidden. She picks it up, shows it to Piper, and throws it into the road. “I will not. I quit.”
Piper frowns, unsurprised and pitying. “I knew you were soft.”
The claw of the crowbar is hooked behind Brie’s ankle and her leg is pulled out from under her, flipping her into the dirt. The wind’s knocked from her lungs, and the Detective sees the claw rise again before it digs itself into her side and hooks around one of her ribs. She can feel the cold metal up against her insides, and when she tries to scream in shock, there’s no air left to fuel it. All that’s left is the pulling, the tugging of an animal trying to lever one of her ribs from its cage.
“Hickory always had a knack for hiring trash. What do you do to help with this shit? Run around and take notes. Follow the trail, but never to the source. Find the evidence, but never the killer. Who the fuck am I kidding, you hardly even did ANY of that,” Piper chides. “So, I think I’m gonna drop you off in a trash bag at her front door. Maybe that’ll teach her a lesson, huh?”
Before Piper can start the dismemberment process, she’s sent flying off her feet with a thundercrack.
“Never seen a more disgustin’ display in all my years,” Samson sighs, ejecting the spent shell from his shotgun. He quickly makes it over to Brie, who is just now catching her breath. “We’re gettin’ you inside. This is gonna hurt a lot, and yer’ gonna start bleedin’ bad, but we can fix ya’. Just don’t move, okay?”
“You fucking dog,” Piper hisses, clutching her still-steaming stomach. Though Blondie’s vest had taken the buckshot, the force alone was enough to make her want to puke up her breakfast. It was both a jabbing, sharp pain in all the areas where the individual pellets had pushed up against her skin, and a dull pain filling in the gaps.
She’s able to get back up, but as she does, she finds herself thrown into the street by another thundercrack, and the pain has multiplied by a magnitude of three. Her combat armour torn to shreds, she writhes on the cobbles of the road, trying to get a grip.
“Shut it, snake!” Samson yells, before turning back to Brie.
The sunlight has become quite hazy in her eyes, and she hardly notices when Samson manages to gently finagle the crowbar out from underneath her rib. From there, time becomes a blur— but she remembers hearing Roxanne’s voice, and she can’t shake the feeling that beyond the pain, she had made the right decision. It’s an oddly warm thing. Or, maybe it’s her own blood.
After getting the Detective inside, under Roxanne’s care and with his emergency kit, Samson realizes that there’s still two people out on his lawn, one of them entirely unconscious. Piper is nowhere to be found, and only moments after tossing it aside the crowbar’s missing too. Ejecting the other spent shell from his gun, he walks back out, and approaches the Vampire.
“You two workin’ with her?” he asks, arms crossed.
“Not anymore,” Jules responds, clutching his side. He offers the Hound a weak smile. “In hindsight, it wasn’t a good idea to begin with. Can I get a hand?”
“You with Shepherd?”
“No sir. We worked security for them before they liquidated that department for people like her.”
Samson frowns. “And now?”
Jules frowns back. “I don’t know.” He gestures over to Lucille, who’s in the process of waking back up. “Ask her. But if I had to bet, we’re done chasing this fuckin’ bounty.”
“You’d better be.”
“Look,” the Vampire says, “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. But I also know some of those people inside. Not on good terms, but I’d like to change that, since I’ve realized how stupid I’ve been.” He gestures with his head. “Can you please help me up?” It takes a moment, but the Hound does eventually offer Jules a hand, pulling him to his feet. “Thanks. I appreciate it. And I’m sorry for all this, even if I was being a dumb lackey in it.”
“Don’t mention it. Now, can she stand?” Samson points to Lucille, who is in the process of wiping turf off her face, while nursing a noticeably broken nose.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she says, wobbling as she gets up. “I think I’ve got a concussion.”
“You in the same boat as this guy?” he asks.
“Yeah. We’ve got some apologies to make.”
“Good. We can talk later over some coffee.”
“That sounds nice,” she groans, clutching her nose.
Samson snaps his fingers and gestures to Meat, who is also in the process of getting up. “You come too. Roxanne’s got some explaining to do.”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
The road to Pickman’s Hope from Fusillade is dull. There’s not much to see, as scenic views have yet to be shaved through the dense, forested mountains for in-transit nature porn. Not even the mountains themselves particularly are eye-catching, thanks to the roadside underbrush masking any idyllic uphill environments. In a way, the road had been made in such a way that would allow for two things— cars to get where they’re going, and people to follow in case they get lost.
Brie felt as though she would prefer the latter, as her mind heats up in an oven of poor sleep and the concept of being sacked. Her hands grip the wheel a little harder than usual, as the thoughts bubble up in her head— she had never been sacked before, what would that even feel like? It sounds like it’s humiliating, or maybe it could be painful. But, it’s just a contract, it’s not like them ripping up a slip of paper could be that painful. Unless they’ve got something else in mind. But what would they have in mind? A company isn’t a single mind, they’re a bunch of minds who operate on the same field. But what if her boss, Hickory was her name, she recalls hazily, what if she doesn’t want her on the job anymore? Why had she taken the job in the first place?
Was the job even something she was interested in? She had taken it on short notice, after all. She didn’t even remember the job prerequisites. There was just a notice nearby, she had applied since she needed the work, and she got the job immediately. Maybe that should’ve been a turn-off. Jobs that accept you on the fly like that are probably a bad idea.
“Roxanne,” she asks, turning her head to the Medic, who is enjoying the cool weather through her open shotgun window.
“Yes, Ms. Brie?”
“Would you say that a job is shifty if they accept your application almost immediately after you apply?”
Roxanne turns to face her as well, pointing ahead of them. “Eyes on the road, please. Yes, I would say so.”
Brie turns her head back, and sighs. “I was foolish to have accepted this contract, then.”
“I would have to agree, Ms. Brie. This has been a clown show, if I’m being frank. A very deadly clown show. And you haven’t struck me as one for clowns.”
“Do you recall how much a contractor such as me would be paid, if I don’t end up being sacked?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you recall if I am to be paid at all if I’m sacked?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Ah,” she says.
The thoughts begin to bubble again. Wasn’t the reason she had accepted the job in the first place because she needed the cash, and that Shepherd Gemstone was offering quite the large payment upon completion of the contract? If she’s not going to be paid for all of her hard work, then this would mean she’s in the negative. Pretty hard, too. And that’s not something her girlfriend is going to be happy about, considering how her last contract up and voided her once they’d noticed Brie was going out of her way to investigate things outside the perimeters of their agreement. In fact, the only reason Brie was able to avoid proper legal persecution is because the city had backed her, as exposing an underground gambling ring run by her very same employers was something of a heroic deed back in those parts of the world. She was given compensation from the city— but she never saw a cent from the employer. Hell, in retrospect, she realizes that THAT job was probably too shifty for her own good, too. It would be a little funny if it weren’t so dangerous. How does she keep doing this to herself?
She opens her mouth to ask that to Roxanne, but closes it before any words come out, realizing how it would sound. Perhaps a different approach would be more appropriate.
“Roxanne,” she says.
“Yes, Ms. Brie?”
“Am I gullible?”
“Absolutely not,” the Medic responds. “You’re one of the least gullible people I know.”
Brie scrunches up her face. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No ma’am, I am not. I wouldn’t call you gullible, rather something like ‘very good at pursuing things you realize aren’t good for your health in hindsight’, if there’s a word for that. Would you agree with me?”
“Yes, I think I would.”
“The first step to getting better is realizing there’s a problem,” Roxanne says, holding up a finger. “There’s nothing worse than not knowing you have a problem.”
“I would have to agree there, too,” Brie frowns.
Shifting in her seat, Roxanne looks over her shoulder to check up on Meat. Their body, arms crossed and skull resting lightly on a headrest, appears to have shut down somewhat. They said they were going to try and sleep, partially to pass the time and partially to parse whether they could, but it looked more as though the two were transporting a corpse in Brie’s sedan. It’s especially hard to tell, since the flames burning in Meat’s eyes never quite go out. For all Roxanne knows, they could still be awake.
“Well, I suppose it’s as good a road conversation as anything else,” Roxanne says, returning to her normal position.
“Is there something—”
“Did you ever meet my boyfriend?” she asks, cutting Brie off.
A moment of silence falls between them.
“You have a boyfriend?” Brie asks.
“Yes and no. We’ve dated for decades on and off. Some days I would’ve liked to murder him, and some days I seriously considered marrying him. But right now, I would say we’re off again. Thanks to circumstance, mostly.”
“That’s unusual.”
“He’s one of the people you’re hunting for your job, Miss Brie,” she chuckles.
“Unusual doesn’t do it justice.”
The Detective’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head. “I have been hunting your boyfriend as a part of my investigation contract?! He’s one of the escaped miners?!”
Roxanne laughs again. “I should’ve introduced you two back in Kiln. I think you would’ve gotten along.”
“Roxanne, why didn’t you tell me this from the beginning? I would have…” she trails off, realizing that actually, there’s little she could’ve done. “It would have been useful to know.”
“Useful for what? It would’ve meant that you’d have had this epiphany about Shepherd Gemstone earlier in your contract, sure. But at the time, you were still quite adamant about seeing things through, and we didn’t know each other as well. If anything,” Roxanne says, “it probably would’ve put you in a nasty position— leave the little old crippled lady in Kiln as bait for her jackrabbit to come home, or keep her with you as bait for him wherever he may be.”
“I would never do that to you, Roxanne,” Brie says, her voice hitching a little.
“Now, you wouldn’t. But back then, I had to be more careful. Catching a ride with you meant keeping some things secret.”
“I… that is. Very upsetting.”
Roxanne smiles empathetically, and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, honey. I know it was a little mean, but I think it’ll help put things more into perspective for you. Shepherd Gemstone was known to hire folks who’d do that kind of stuff, so when I saw you on the site, I had to assume the same.”
“They do?”
“They absolutely do. How do you think they’re able to keep a decent profit margin despite all the damage they cause?”
Brie pats the notebook she keeps in her left-hand pocket. “Tens of thousands of Tilt’s worth. But they hire… bandit-types to handle it?” she frowns.
“Exactly that. Bandit-types is the appropriate term,” Roxanne says, patting her on the shoulder.
“I am not a bandit-type.”
“And I realized this only once we had left Kiln.”
“Thus, up until that point, you had to treat me as though I was.”
“Yes, Ms. Brie.”
As the silence fills the space between them again, Roxanne decides to break it with something a little more lighthearted. “Would you like to hear how I met him?”
Brie nods, maintaining her deep-thought frown.
“I popped his fingers back into place.”
“What?” Brie suddenly says, her face shifting back to something less pouty.
“He had just finished fighting at a local ring. Had a date to get to, and he wanted to show up with nothing dislocated for once. So, he visits me to pop a couple fingers back into place. Goodness, I remember how he howled like a dog at the moon every time I set one. But, we ended up bonding over it, since he dealt with pain by telling jokes and stories. He had some real good stories.”
“He had a date the same night he got into a fight?”
“A scheduled fight, mind you. From what I heard, though,” Roxanne says, leaning in close, “it never went anywhere. His opponent wasn’t happy about his loss, and so happened to be one of the friends of his date. The loser showed up to the date, got his tail kicked again, and had to run home crying. But, after being kicked to the curb, Azariah came to me. And the rest is history, I suppose. Goodness me, it’s been over forty years, hasn’t it.”
“That’s… a very long time.”
“Longer than you’ve been around?”
“Very much so, yes.”
The Medic smiles. “There’s a lot of history there, Ms. Brie. But,” she says, leaning over her seat again, “I would like to know if we have another listener in the car.”
Meat cracks their neck, sitting up and stretching their arms a little. “I don’t think I can sleep.”
“I had a hunch,” Roxanne replies.
“Is that car still following us?”
Both Brie and Roxanne look at one another briefly, then at Meat.
“There has been a car following us?” Brie asks.
“Yeah,” they say. “Ever since we left Fusillade. I think they noticed me looking at them. I haven’t seen them for a couple miles.”
“Well,” Roxanne pats Brie on the shoulder again. “I think I’ll save those stories for later, then.”
Hieronymus T. Thistle is, by no means, a man of wealth— nor is he one of taste or of staunch morals. As expected of his appearance, that being of a person crossed with a manner of tumbleweed, which has long resulted in him being closer in visage to a skeleton with small, thorny branches for hair and eyes that nearly pop out of his skull, he does have a spine physically, just not one in the less literal sense. A spine of that sort requires some kind of belief to cling to, some great motivation to use as a shield or armor, and to wield as a blade when the time comes. Mr. Thistle lacks these things in plenty, as while he gets to live with many of the older folks in the community and often tells stories of his involvement in the overthrow of Shepherd Gemstone— he’s still on the payroll.
Nobody thinks it even a bit weird that he’s never really had to put himself out there in a long time to keep his lifestyle afloat, that being of a curmudgeonly prick who’s also equal parts nosy neighbor and hermetic jerk. He goes to every single union meeting, sure, and he talks often with those old guard types who come by his rather unsettlingly well kept lawn, but this is all just resource gathering. He hasn’t really cared for these people in a long time, perhaps closer to ever, since he never was one of them in the first place. He’d been on the company payroll for longer than the town had been called “Pickman’s Hope,” and had, ever since drifting in, been a remarkable spy.
It was more difficult back in the day than it is right now, of course. Back then he had to actually pretend to like his neighbors and his companions, to show some investment in his community and hatred toward the over-corporatized hellscape that constituted the big cities. Over time, while many of those he had to fool into being his friends grew thick whiskers and their muzzles turned gray, he simply reverted to being himself. A quirk of being old, he supposes, is that nobody bothers questioning why you don’t like them anymore. They just assume you’re tired, or maybe that you’ve gotten to the point where you’ll be damned before you spend another minute of what you have left pretending to be nice.
His old friends don’t question his loyalty to the town and to the working folk from their time with him; the younger ones don’t question it because he’s always been around and always been like this, so to assume Old Man Thistle’s some kind of corporate spy and has been since before the town rebuilt itself is tantamount to accusing your own great uncle or grandpa of selling your secrets to a serial killer. It could certainly happen, yes, but if you’re not perfectly, one-hundred percent certain that that is what’s going on, there’s a perfectly sizable chance you’re just screaming at someone whose weirdness can still be ascribed to age.
With a combination of time and age, just the right amount of hospitality and curmudgeonly habits, Hieronymus T. Thistle has constructed the perfect cover to often and routinely send out packets of information to Shepherd Gemstone HQ for a very steady pay that, at this moment, he keeps shoved inside of his mattress. He knows better than to live beyond the means expected of a man supposedly making most of his money off of goodwill from the town and some decent investments around it. After all, behind closed doors he was one of the folks helping to bankroll the Bleeding Scab, among various other local haunts that raked in the bucks. Thistle is so perfectly set up that, upon their arrival, he had to convince Piper that this house is, in fact, that of the man she was told about and that, yes, he is the Shepherd informant.
That was irritating enough, and so was having to park his car out on the street like some kind of animal while she put her lavish vehicle in his garage, because if there’s anything worse than his car being out on the street it’d be her car attracting attention. Not to mention the two absolute mercenaries she’d dragged in, along with herself, out in this place looking like the worst of the worst. It’s more than he can handle, and for a moment while the three shove their things into the guest rooms of his house he has a small tantrum.
After the sun’s risen and after combing his bristles and thorns back on his head, readjusting his bedtime robe, he returns to the three of them and says, “Alright, welcome to Pickman’s Hope, best call it that. Second, you three need to be careful. I get it that none of you had anywhere else to go, but I’ve got a good thing goin’ here and I wouldn’t appreciate you blowin’ it.” His first mistake aside from being on the corporate payroll at all is to point even a single finger at Piper during this diatribe.
She’s amused when she thinks it’s directed at Jules and Lucille, and far less amused when she realizes the old man’s talking to her. This earns him a quick, almost businesslike punch in the throat, which sends him to the floor gasping and clutching at his neck. “You speak when I say you can speak, you tricksy lil’ fuck…”
By the time Lucille’s come over to grab Piper by the arms and back her off, Piper’s already kicked Thistle in the ribs for good measure. Jules, an arm still largely out of commission and a leg in a brace, busies himself trying to drag Thistle away, a concerned look on his gray face.
“Get out of my way.” Piper hisses, eyes locking with Lucille’s as the latter continues to hold her— though by the very second she can feel Piper getting stronger, harder to control. “I’m gonna shove my boot into that old rat’s craw! Let go!”
“Don’t make a scene!” Lucille grips harder, twisting Piper’s wrists awkwardly to leverage technique over brawn. “It’s barely morning you ass! We haven’t been here more than a few hours and you’re going to ruin it!”
The struggle continues for a second until Jules returns, clearing his throat and saying, “You two need to cut this shit out.” There’s no comedy in his voice, nor is there any authority. He’s tired.
Lucille lets go first, but Piper doesn’t storm away. Instead she spits some venom onto the floor and rubs at her wrists before telling them both, “Fine. Y’all act like I was gonna kill him or something. I’m not stupid.”
“If you weren’t trying to kill that old man,” Lucille begins, eyes narrowed, “then what were you doing?”
Without a hint of hesitation, the reply is thus, laced with a long hiss and no small amount of malice, “Reminding him of his place, something you two morons need to keep straight as well. Besides, it’s not like there’s any reason to feel bad for him.”
“What do you mean?” Jules tilts his head as he settles back onto his temporary bed. “Damn near snapped his neck with that punch, you’re lucky he can still breathe.”
Turning around to face away, Piper speaks as she stops in the exit to the rest of the house. “The man’s making a living selling the secrets of this town as an informant, J. Names, addresses, exchanging of goods and trade deals, all of it. And all the while, everyone around him thinks he’s just another neighbor.” She grins over her shoulder toward them. “Honestly it’s a little insulting that he’s been so successful and all he’s done is send letters. People have died because of his pen. Amazing, ain’t it?”
Lucille rolls her shoulders, then settles into a spot sitting beside Jules. “So?”
“So he’s a rat.” Piper snickers. “Snakes hate rats.”
Jules gives an attempt at a clap, but stops quickly as pain shoots up his arm and Lucille smacks the back of his head. “You’ve gotta admit that was a good one.”
“Glad to see somebody still has a sense of humor. ‘Sides, this idiot doesn’t work for my branch of the company so I don’t really care what happens to him.”
Lucille bristles. “Don’t kill him.”
“I wasn’t going to.” The tip of Piper’s tail brushes Lucille’s legs. “I’m just going to get every important piece of information out of him. I know he’d do it willingly, but… Well, it’s not like I care about anybody working for Gilroy anymore, and I still need some practice.” Saying this, she picks up a candlestick from the mantle as she heads out. “Whatever you hear, don’t open the door. You might ruin my focus.”
Lucille rubs her face for a moment, lowering her scarf-shawl before turning her tired gaze on Jules, who shrugs. Once she hears another door shut and the muffled sounds of somebody getting upset, she asks, “Why did you humor her?”
“Easy,” Jules nods, “the quickest way to cool someone off is to laugh at their joke. And, I didn’t feel like letting you two start fighting over some old fuck that… Look, she has a point.”
“I know she has a point. I don’t like it, but it’s fair, the guy’s a piece of crap. Still, I don’t like the idea of her doing it.”
An arm heavy with exhaustion wraps its way around Lucille’s shoulders and the hand capping it pats her shoulder as Jules says, “Agreed. She’s the boss, though. Orders are orders.”
“Yeah,” Lucille mumbles. “Guess so. We’ve come too far in this hunt to give up because the person signing our paycheck’s beating somebody up.”
“See, now you’re getting it.” Jules smiles. “If you would’ve gotten in on the Carnevale with me, you’d have fit in perfect.”
Lucille’s head settles into her hands, elbows against her knees with a soft and tired, “Oh, fuck this.”
In the hours of the morning where the crickets have stopped their chirping and the birds have taken their place, Azariah finds himself sitting out on the front porch of Samson’s home, eating a makeshift breakfast of leftover bread and some jam he knows won’t be missed. It’s odd— sleeping was never an issue when he was out in the woods, but as soon as he’s back in friendly civilization, it’s a real hit or miss. Sometimes he’ll wake up before the sun, still deathly tired and certain he never fell asleep to begin with. Other times, he’ll find himself sleeping like the dead until noon.
Olive opens the door behind him, peering out as though there might be something sinister on the rocking chair.
“Oh,” she says, stepping outside fully. “What’re you doin’ up this early?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I think I’ve got some issues to work out on that front, Olive.”
He offers her a piece from the loaf of bread. “How ‘bout yourself?”
“I always wake up at the crack of dawn.”
“You’re tellin’ me that it isn’t Judith or Cherry gettin’ us breakfast in the mornings?” he chuckles, pulling up a chair beside him.
Olive smiles, and rolls her eyes. “No use tryin’ to get Cherry up for nothin’. He’ll just be back in bed by the time he gets whatever you wanted done, done.” She sits down, and breathes out a deep sigh. “Feels weird, don’t it?”
“What, takin’ some stranger’s hospitality?”
“Yeah, kinda,” she nods, “but also not feelin’ like we’ve gotta book it somewhere, y’know? Feels like there’s been so much more time in the day, these last couple. Can you feel it too? Like, when you look back on what’s happened, it feels like before.”
Azariah takes some time to chew on this, both metaphorically and physically, via a chunk of particularly chewy bread. “I think you’ve got a point, there. I guess I ain’t as deeply introspective as you, Olive.”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” she says, leaning back in her porch chair. “I saw the way you were lookin’ at Mr. Samson while he was tellin’ that story. Couldn’t tell if it was playin’ back a movie in your head or if ya had somethin’ for him.”
“I’ve always had a thing for canines.”
“Don’t tell me!” Olive squawks, slapping her knee. “Don’t tell me that’s what was on your mind, Azariah. You got it for Samson Parrish?”
“I’m afraid I do, Olive. Or, did.” Azariah chuckles too, tapping the armrest of his rocking chair with a finger. “And maybe I did feel a little somethin’ last night. But again, I couldn’t tell you what it was, since I’m not that kinda person. Love is a weird thing.”
“You don’t need’ta tell me. My history with that sorta thing is embarrassin’ to say the least.”
“Really, now?”
“Really really. Findin’ someone who’s able to take the fact that I’m not into certain stuff makes it nigh impossible.” She rubs her forehead with a hand. “Not includin’ the fact that a lotta people just friggin’ suck.”
Azariah adjusts the position of his chair to face her. “I understand, kiddo. Even the embarrassment bit, it took me decades to get over some of those one-night stands. Some of ‘em still haunt me to this day.” He fake-shivers as he says, “Nothin’ that’ll burn into your memory quite like getting puked on.”
Olive scooches her chair back away from the Hare with an, “Aw shit, Azariah! You’re gonna make me hock up my dinner! That’s foul, no more talkin’ ‘bout that!” Through his cough-laughs, she manages to get in, “Almost makes me glad I don’t feel pulled toward that stuff. Can’t hear a single good story ‘bout it without hearin’ another where some bodily fluid’s involved. An’ not in an intentional way, neither.”
“That’s part of the fun,” he coughs, having calmed himself down substantially from his laughing fit. “There’s always the chance someone’ll screw it up royally, and by that point, you might as well put a mental bookmark on the memory with how many times you’re gonna be tellin’ it at parties. But, you were sayin’ something about not being into it?” he asks, holding out an arm. “Oh, but if you aren’t comfortable with talkin’ about it, I can ease back.”
“No, it’s okay. I ain’t like, disgusted by the concept,” she replies. “I’m just… I don’t want it like other people want it, I guess.”
“What, throwin’ up? Or bein’ thrown up on?” Azariah teases.
“Ha. Sex in general’s what I mean. And like I said, it ain’t somethin’ a lotta people are alright with. Can’t tell you the number’a people I thought I’d fallen for who’ve taken that as a dealbreaker.”
The Hare frowns, and preemptively spreads a little jam on his bread for later consumption. “That certainly is an uncommon problem.”
“An’ it ain’t like I’m leadin’em on,” she says, motioning with her hands. “I’m usually pretty up-front with everythin’ about me, since, well, y’know. But I’ve even had some guys go a couple dates in before askin’ whether I was bein’ serious or not ‘bout it.”
“Did you feel like you loved them?” he asks.
“Some of them. Others, maybe. I dunno.”
“But they weren’t what you were lookin’ for?”
“They were enough of what I was lookin’ for, at the time. Guess not enough, though.”
Azariah offers her the piece of jellied bread. “Can I give you some advice, Olive?”
She eyes up the bread for a moment, before nodding and taking it.
“If those people weren’t willin’ to give you a shot after learning they couldn’t take you for a ride?” The Hare motions with an open hand. “They weren’t the kinda people you’d wanna settle for anyways. Findin’ someone who fits all your needs and wants isn’t something that most young people do anyways. They’ve got their top three wants, one of them is usually sex, and it’s assumed that everyone else feels the same way. You, though, you think a lot about those needs and wants. It makes sense that it’d be hard to find someone who fits them right.”
“I saw a lot of young people settle for folks they didn’t realize they hated,” he continues, sighing. “I was nearly one of ‘em back in the day. And to be frank with you, I still don’t know how Roxanne settled for me, ‘cause I feel like I won the jackpot.” He holds out a hand to her. “The point I’m tryin’ to make here’s that there’s so many people out in the world, and you’ve got so much time. Those chumps will come to regret not givin’ you a chance when they’re older, when you’ve got someone who fits you like a glove.”
Olive stares out the front porch, chewing her bread slowly. “Thanks, Azariah. That… helps.”
“Won’t help the heartbreak,” he says, scooching his chair to face forward again. “But it’ll help the mindset goin’ forward. Heartbreak is best dealt with when you aren’t constantly inflicting it on yourself. Trust me.”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Jules sips his cup of blood, stale and tasting of IV bag. Though it wouldn’t be enough to fix him up immediately, keeping himself juiced would be imperative to a speedy recovery if he and Lucille plan to get back on the road. He had gotten all his bones set and splinted, his cuts stitched shut, and his eyes checked for any concussions. All they had to do now was wait for the magic to happen. Which would take up to a week for him to walk, not run, without a cane. He sets down the cup, and adjusts himself in bed.
“Hey, thanks again,” he says.
“Don’t mention it,” Lucille grumbles. She sits on a rickety old chair, nursing her own cup of something with both hands. There are bags under her eyes from having spent the night keeping Jules stable.
“I’m sorry for this.”
She looks up at him. “For what?”
He motions to his body. “This. Having to do something stupid to save us, ‘cause I fucked up.” He also motions to her. “And for that. You look terrible, Lucille.”
For a moment she looks as though she wants to argue with him, but with a tired sigh, she just replies, “It happens.”
“They happened ‘cause I was an idiot. I didn’t think ahead, I didn’t consider the you factor, and it got us both burnt.”
“Don’t tell me you had anything to do with that monster.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the gang thing. You know, the mafia I didn’t tell you about?”
“That barely matters to this,” she says, motioning to him, “right now. That thing did this to you, not the gang.”
The Vampire frowns. “I know, but you were mad at me earlier for it, and we wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t fucked up in the first place. I want to make amends. Somehow.” He looks at her, all sad eyes and untamed facial hair. “For real.”
She looks back at him, eyebrow raised and cup of joe in hand. “You’re out of commission, Jules. What can you do?”
“I can quit the Carnevale,” he replies.
“They don’t let people quit.”
“Then I’ll leave. Stop taking calls, stop doing their work.”
“Really?”
“Leslie will want me dead, but if it means being honest from here on out to my partner? I’ll leave today, I don’t give a fuck.”
“Really.”
“Really really,” Jules says, grabbing his cup of blood. “When I can visit to break the news, anyways.”
“Which will be?”
He begins to sit up in bed. “Let’s see.”
She stands up from her chair, and quickly moves to his side. “I get your point,” she chuckles. “But don’t fuck around like that, you’re still too screwed up. Idiot.”
“I’m serious! You think I’m not committed, Lucille?”
“Committed to getting yourself hurt.”
“To this,” he motions to her with his cup. “And to this,” he motions to himself, before finishing the rest in a single swig. “Because I don’t think there’s anything I love more than us. Maybe I was taking it for granted, but mashing my bones to paste and hurting my friend has taught me better.”
Lucille finds herself struggling to respond for a moment. Never, not once in their entire partnership, have they ever had a heart-to-heart about the nature of their job. Appreciation was always in the form of banter, gifts, medical care. Money. It was easy for her to grow a little cold toward him, because in her head, she had also taken him for granted in a way. He would always be around, and so, it was impossible to imagine what it’d be like without him. But now that he’s in this state, having nearly turned himself to jelly to save them both, she realizes just how mortal he is. And how mortal she’d be without him. She sets her cup down, then leans over the bed to hug him.
“I’m sorry too, Jules.”
He accepts the hug lightly with his good arm, not particularly sure what to think, seeing as how she has a maw on her stomach. “Uh, for?”
“Being a dick and not understanding what this meant.”
“This being?”
She pulls away from the hug, and motions to the both of them. “This, prick.”
“Oh!” The Vampire beams. “That means a lot, pal.”
Lucille walks back over to her seat, and wipes her eyes free of any errant tears.
“I know.”
“Wait, are you crying?” he asks, leaning forward in bed.
She shakes her head no— but as she does so, she also leans forward in her seat, and holds her eyes with one hand.
“Aww, Lucille! It’s okay!”
It takes her a while to recompose herself, as the last time she’d cried was during the funeral of one of her closest enemies— the kind that gives you purpose in the same way a good friend does. And when the waterworks start to flow, it’s difficult to get them to stop if the pipes haven’t been used in a while. Jules finds himself comforting her to the best his body can muster, even if it means that she has to kneel next to the bed so that he can put his non-splinted arm around her.
Eventually, she looks up at the ceiling, gives herself a good slap, and dries up her eyes with her sleeve. “God, that was embarrassing,” Lucille says with a sniff.
“My lips are sealed,” he responds. “No shame from me. Most people do it all the time.”
“We’re not most people.”
“You’re right on that front.”
She stands up, shaking out her legs. “Well. I gave Piper a ring while you were out.”
Jules bunches up his face in light disgust, “Piper? Why her?”
“I thought we could use a little assistance. Since you’re all fucked up, and all.”
“Piper…” his voice trails off.
“Yeah. I had to leave a message, though. Hopefully she gets it. I know it's a few days drive up from Shepherd HQ,” she says, sitting back down in her chair.
“She knows about the quarry, right? About how we’ve got no idea where they’re at?”
“Everyone in that company knows. I figured we’re out of the game, but I didn’t want to stay here. Not where the Carnevale can keep on our asses.”
“So you called her, a Shepherd Gemstone foreman, to take us to Pickman’s Hope. AKA, the only place in the valley where she can’t go.”
“She won’t want to stay. What’s there for her? Those bounties never stay put anyway. She’ll be on their trail.”
“Good point,” Jules says, not entirely believing himself.
Piper’s lips purse as she runs her fingers over a fabric that she would have feared to tear mere weeks ago, her fingertips gliding across the soft, handwoven dress. It’s blue, and about the right size for the girl. All things considered it might be enough to smooth over their talk, given some time.
She’d already gotten something for the boy. Luckily, while many of the shops in Fusillade had been more or less decimated by whatever hell had come calling, the one toy shop had not. She’s standing in the middle of it now, still feeling over the dress. The work that goes into making dresses for dolls can also go into making dresses for girls, and much the same for the clothes of the good soldier toys and much of boys’ clothing. Besides, if you’re buying toys for kids, you might as well undercut the obvious front shop’s rates for children’s clothing.
She brings the dress to the owner of the shop, a frazzled looking old bird in a bandanna and a simple overall dress, and places down the dress before setting a wooden pop pistol— the sort with the cork on a string you place in the barrel before pulling some mechanism to make it ‘pop’ and, as such, shoot— atop it.
“Got kids?” The old woman squawks, beak clacking and black feathers ruffling.
“I do now.”
“Ah, okay. Want these packaged and labeled?”
“It’d be appreciated. Pistol’s for Tanner, the dress is for… It’s for…” Her eyes are trailing after someone just outside the window, a human woman with brown hair and an unbearably boring style of dress. “Brie?”
“Tanner and Brie, gotcha.”
“No, Tanner and Madrone, actually. There’s somebody outside—”
The toymaker nods. “Tanner and Madrone, got it.” And with that, she’s crossing out the already written “BRIE” on the packaging, placing some entirely opaque tape over it, and writing “MADRONE.”
Piper doesn’t need to head outside to cut off the investigator, because she actually walks inside, notebook in one hand and a well used pen in the other. “You,” she says, clicking her pen in anticipation of noteworthy material. “You are one of the foremen from the Smokestone location down beyond Kiln. Piper, yes? I remember you.”
“That situation’s a little complicated at the moment.” Piper, smiling, places a small wad of cash in front of the toymaker and is given a bag with her two packages inside. “And you’re Brie. I remember you plenty, too. Surprised to find you here of all places, considering as you’re playing lackey for that parasite Hickory. It safe to assume those runaways have come through? They what did all this?”
Brie shakes her head, then walks over to the owner of the shop, with whom she begins asking basic questions, if anything had been destroyed and the like. Meanwhile, Piper goes and stands outside, opting instead to wait for the end of that incredibly boring bit of work on the insurance department’s end so that she could continue prodding Brie for information. Jules and Lucille can wait a little longer for this.
A few minutes later Brie’s exiting, eyes trained on her notebook, and Piper falls into step alongside her. “You didn’t give me an answer on the whole thing going on around here, B. So, it wasn’t the runaways?”
“No, Ms. Piper, it was not.”
“Huh. Weird, so far, utter destruction has followed in their path. What the hell happened, then? Looks like somebody tried to grill the town.”
Brie frowns, but taps her notebook with her pen. “I am still processing it myself, but there’s quite a lot to catalogue at the moment.”
The two come to a halt at an intersection, or at least a crossroad that could generally be considered the dirt expy of one. The fires were put out a long, long while ago, so now all that’s left is for the wood and stone to crumble or be rebuilt. In some of them folks are working on patching up what’s there, in others there are tough looking types with hammers clearing away the ruin to make room for something new. Either way, Fusillade’s quick to recover.
Brie gestures around with her pen. “It is all necessary to write down because, technically, it has happened in part due to Shepherd Gemstone. If not entirely due to Shepherd Gemstone, because a great deal of it has been destroyed by one of their own employees.” She stops, then squints at the coat Piper’s wearing.
“How unfortunate. Well, I’m sure that Ms. Hickory’ll be real happy to hear about how this investigative endeavor of yours has gone from finding murderous runaways to letting her know how much all of these people are owed by the company because of some wild arsonist. Bless your heart, I could never do this sorta thing myself.” Piper laughs, looking around. “Yeah, damage control just seems like a good way to get walked all over, since it looks to be all about you tallying up the shit other people get done while your work gets away from you.”
Piper slings the bags over her shoulder and begins walking back toward her car, adjusting the weight of the presents against her back as her tail sways and curls against the ground behind her. “That’s why I’ve decided to move branches, I’m done with mining— and write that down for your stupid little report, too. I couldn’t be the culprit, I was a bit too busy getting a position in acquisitions down at HQ whenever this happened.”
Brie clears her throat. “I do not need evidence as to who did it. The identity of the perpetrator is not an unknown factor here, Ms. Piper, as it is none other than Blondie… Whose coat you appear to be wearing.”
Piper lets out a rattling laugh as she turns around to face the woman, fangs bared by her grin. “Good one, B, good one. And here I thought you didn’t know how to tell any jokes— right, corpses stand back up and start setting fires.” She pantomimes wiping a tear from one eye, then laughs again. “Don’t be disrespectful of the dead. Back at HQ they were pretty sure he’d bit it trying to save a local party of concerned civilians from that nasty Wyrm they had flying around. Bless the fool’s heart, he went out a hero.”
“Corpses actually can do that, as I learned earlier, under the right circumstances. Have you heard of a Notus before?”
Piper shrugs. “I dunno, daddy once told me about ‘em as a reason not to play with fire. Never met one, pretty sure they’re fake.”
Meat clears their throat as they approach, and Piper has neither the time or the restraint to keep herself from making a face at the sight of them as they walk over to Brie, saying, “I’m getting tired.”
“No you are not,” Brie replies, “I remember that you do not actually get tired like someone still living.”
“Okay, I’m getting tired of this. We should be heading out to Pickman’s Hope to go kick that wolf’s ass.” Their jaw clacks as they shut it hard, and then both their and Brie’s heads turn toward Piper.
She’s smiling now, at least. Not on the inside, but she’s smiling outwardly. “Real nice to meet you, uh, guy.”
“Meat.”
Piper’s smile twitches, threatening to fall. “Yeah, I said that, nice to meet you.”
“No, my name’s Meat and I’m not a guy.”
Brie turns to look toward Meat. “I thought you were still undecided?”
They shrug. “I’ve settled into it again. I think I was like this before the fire anyways. Memories are still fuzzy, though. Who was your pal?”
“Was?” Brie turns to look toward Piper again— and she’s not there. “Oh. I had questions for her.”
Meat rubs the top of their skull. “And you didn’t answer mine. You got a girlfriend you aren’t telling us about?”
“One, I would not date her if she were the last eligible bachelorette on the planet. Two, not one either of you two would know; she lives north of Honeysett.”
“The blonde woman in the tac-jacket or your girlfriend?”
“My girlfriend, Meat. The blonde woman in the tactical coat is not my girlfriend and she does not live north of Honeysett. That woman is or was a foreman at the same site that I met Roxanne at, the one where she got attacked by Blondie. The big wolf monster?” Brie clicks her pen rhythmically, following the tune of their footsteps.
“You didn’t mention anything about a girlfriend, Ms. Brie,” comes a new old voice, who falls into step beside the other two. Roxanne grins. “Color me impressed, dear. Enough about the dog we’re hunting though, you should catch us up to speed about why you were conversing with that Shepherd employee.”
Piper gently places the presents into the trunk of the car just beside the Quilting Club box before locking said trunk and settling into the driver’s seat again. An entire second of silence passes after she’s shut the door when she begins screaming and throwing her fists against the dashboard.
It’s a harsh, visceral sound escaping her throat that rolls into a high hiss as claws begin to poke dangerously at the tips of her gloves’ fingers, warning her to stop her tantrum before she ruins her clothes with an unwilling transformation. It gets bad enough that she can feel her hate dripping from her fangs in a literal, liquid form, and the soft sound of a single droplet of venom touching her coat is enough to force her to calm back down.
She grips the wheel as though she could wring its neck as the changes subside again, and after a moment she leans out the window to spit the remaining venom out into the dirt. This is a problem, she realizes. This is most definitely a problem.
He’s supposed to be dead. He’s supposed to be dead because if he isn’t, then a lot of things are going to pretty quickly go from being great to being problems too. The car’s one thing, the weapon, the job, the wife, everything’s about to go sideways at best. What was it that the square had said, though?
He’s a Notus. Stupid old stories about corpses coming back to life and lighting things on fire. Right, of course, okay— she can work with this.
That means she’s at least keeping the job. If he died, as one needs to in order to become a Notus, then from a contract standpoint his is null, he’d have to be reinstated by top brass and the amount of time that’d take would give her at least a week to figure out how to kill him again. As for Janet, the problem’s less with Janet and more with Blondie.
“She traded in for the new model,” she says to herself. “Not going to ditch me for a flaming corpse. Okay. Okay.” She rolls her shoulders, snaps her jaws, looks herself over in the mirror. No tears this time. She’s getting better.
Another name added to the list. Jules, Lucille, and now Blondie. She can handle them.
Time to go pick up those two numbskulls and hope they can at least act competently enough to lead her to the five before that awkward weirdo and her corpse.
A steady stream of cash has always flowed through the center of Pickman’s Hope. Before the Shepherd Gemstone takeover, the mining and spelunking business gave the town sufficient funds to build up its city centre into something great— one with multi-level, affordable apartment buildings, an outdoor venue for performers to earn a little extra cash, and a bustling plaza where traveling vendors could come to peddle whatever wares they might be selling. The money traveled up and down the streets, too, with especially successful shops decorating their roads and the neighboring buildings to match what they were selling.
Gutter’s Glade, as it was known, was never large enough to become a city, and it never seemed to want to be. Outside the town center, buildings were mostly residential and built with local materials, each one a labour of love for the inhabitant in question. Construction was done around trees of particular size and age, and the shade was much appreciated on those warmer autumn days.
But, while the money did not stop flowing while Shepherd Gemstone was in control, the people certainly did. Shops that once thrived were forced to shut down, as their product was now in corporate hands. Certain roads in the town center became desolate as shopfronts, carts, and residential buildings were abandoned outright. The surrounding residences began the slow strangling process of being taken over by nature once again, since there were no longer folks to help balance things out. Sure, the cash was still there, product was being moved out of the hills at an incredible rate— but only drops of it went to the town.
Nowadays, the town of Pickman’s Hope, in all its autumnal glory, is in the process of waking up from its dormancy. The money is back in the hands of the people, and reconstruction has begun. Those abandoned streets have been cleaned and fixed, buildings being repurposed and sold to those wanting to start their own businesses. The venue in the center of town occasionally gets a band or a play again, which many of the citizens mark their calendars for. And while their population isn’t what it used to be, the sense of neighborly love more than makes up for the distance between homes. It may be a shadow of what it once was, but Pickman’s Hope is recovering steadily, and it wears its history like a badge of honour.
After driving around town for a minute, Olive and Cherry eventually walk into the Mechanic’s Guild Storefront. The only door they can find is a sheet of corrugated metal controlled by a chain— and though it’s marked as “ENTRANCE” in big, welded letters, it can be hard to tell whether it’s a door for cars or a door for people, with these places.
Once inside, Cherry realizes very quickly that this place is a trap designed to keep him there for as long as humanly possible. The building itself is an old storehouse, which means that they’ll have a surplus of the parts he wants, and it’ll have been stacked all the way to the roof. Parts of all kinds; performance pieces from the manufacturers in the Great Bayou across the Dividends, legally-questionable parts from New Bird, the new racing capital of the world. Custom parts too; Cherry could tell by the sound of saws, soldering irons, flying sparks, and metallic hissing echoing through the building. It smells intensely like grease, motor oil, biofuel, and ozone. To him, like his favourite version of home.
It’s a trap that pertained directly toward his main interest, no, his fixation (he fondly remembers his fathers having to pull him away from his car to have a talk about getting a real job), and it’s almost too much for him to take in again.
While Cherry stands there ogling, Olive waves a feathered hand in front of his face. “Yoohoo, Cherry. You gonna answer me or what?”
He blinks. “Oh, sorry. What, uh, was the question again?”
“Are you sure they sell bio at these places? Looks like they just keep metal bits on the shelves.”
“It’s illegal to stock it in a customer self-serve section,” Cherry replies, “since it’s so dangerous. Well, most of the time it’ll be illegal. I’ve been told it’s illegal, but I don’t know who could stop them if they did anyways. They probably keep it behind the desk, though. Don’t worry.”
“Oh. It burn easy?”
“Very. It’s genius, really. I’ve seen high-quality bio combust when someone stomped on a puddle of it in the asphalt.”
“Oh,” Olive rubs her head. “Yeah, I’d see why they’d put it in the back, then.”
“Makes sense, right? Now,” he starts, explicitly moving away from the front counter. “Before we do that, I’ve got something I wanna look for. I bet a town like this would have it stocked, but I don’t wanna be the guy who walks up to the counter asking for something before looking, you know?”
The Owl raises an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. What’re you lookin’ for?”
Earlier in the day, after they had arrived at Pickman’s Hope and parked the truck, Cherry was getting into learning how it was put together. And boy, was it a glorious patch-job. Hardly anything was stock anymore, and anything that was had been recently replaced. Some very, very big replacements, too. Nearly brand-new stock transmission, which explained how butter-smooth it felt shifting gears. The suspension was the oldest thing in it, and though it was Blizzard Blitz-brand, which was known for its good dirt-and-stone performance, it had seen a little too much love over the years and could use a nice retirement. Cherry made a mental note at the time to mention to Judith that he’d found the reason why some bumps in the road felt worse than others.
But, one of the most enticing things Cherry found while exploring was the presence of a compartment, accessible by the driver’s side of the interior, which looked as though it would perfectly cradle a can of nitrous oxide. Now, while he had never gotten the chance to use the stuff himself, since it was banned at many of the meets he would attend for its tendency to send racers flying off the tracks and into trees, just the thought of being able to use the boost juice was far too tempting to let up. There was a brand he had in mind, too—
“Look for the word ‘Pounder,’ Olive,” Cherry says, as they come to a section in Isle 6.
Her face scrunches up. “Pounder?”
“The name’s a little weird, I know. Trust me.”
The Owl turns the name over in her head one more time, then gets to browsing the shelves. Momentarily, of course, since the shelves are quite big and any given selection of nitrous oxide canisters is bound to be small. She picks up one of the metal canisters, painted off-white and labeled with a sticker. “Pounder Nitrous,” it says, underneath a stylized icon of a tall canister between two tires. “Lasts longer than any other brand, or your money back!”
“Why the cock an’ balls?” she chuckles.
“I think it has something to do with the owner’s name. Maybe they figured it’d be funny to lean into it. Or something. Maybe,” Cherry replies, scouring his section of the shelf.
“You stick it in your car and it makes it go faster. C’mon, we’ve gotta get to checkout!”
“Next you’re gonna tell me the paint job could make it go faster. Cock and balls makes it quicker?” she asks, genuinely confused.
“No, no! It’s just a branding thing, the stuff gets gassed into the engine and it makes it burn fuel quicker, making the car go faster!”
“How in the world’s that work?”
“I’ll show you if you want, but later! When we’re back with the others!”
“If you say so, Cherry.”
They approach an empty front counter to the sound of an angle grinder around the corner. And despite there being a bell for them to ring for that exact scenario, it takes a couple before someone pokes their welding masked-head out, slaps their greasy gloves onto a table, and begins to jog over.
“Sorry about that, folks! What can I do ya’ for?” the employee says, slicking back a sweaty head of black hair.
Cherry hesitates for a moment despite his excitement, as the man behind the counter has turned out to be far more attractive than he was prepared to deal with. He’s taller than both him and Olive, clocking in around 6’2”. He’s toned underneath his work shirt and apron. And his face, though hardened and pocked with scars from flying sparks, is young and sharp, with a cheekbone-jawline combo you could cut gemstones with. If one were to guess, he wasn’t Spawned, rather the baby of a Basic Human and some sort of Orc. And to Cherry, he might’ve been even more attractive than the nitrous in his hands. Maybe.
In the silence that broke between the three of them, Olive clears her throat to break Cherry’s trance.
“Yeah, uh, sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re buying this. And a few gallons of bio, too.”
“Sounds good!” the clerk responds, cracking the Mechanic a smile. “Ahh, the ol’ can of cock and balls,” he comments upon seeing the canister.
“That’s what I said!” Olive chimes in.
“We usually don’t get people lookin’ for this stuff. You got something that can take it?”
Cherry nods. “Uh, yeah. We kinda, uh, stumbled into a truck. Has all these mods, bought it from a guy down in Fusillade. Turned out to have nitrous compatibility built in, who would’ve guessed.”
“You might wanna consider installing some handlebars in the back then, if you’re plannin’ on using it for transport!,” the clerk laughs. “Wouldn’t want your pals flying out when you hit the gas!”
Olive laughs as well— but Cherry, in his anxiety, just smiles and nods.
After punching a few numbers into the cash register, the clerk holds up a finger. “I’ll be right back with your bio. Don’t go anywhere, ok?”
Olive grunts as she adjusts the jug of bio they’d bought on her shoulder.
“So,” she starts, “you liked what you saw?”
“Yeah,” Cherry responds, holding his arms out to the sky. “God, I missed this.”
“The cock an’ balls an’ the hot clerks? Or the clouds?”
“The former. I missed it so much.”
“Hah!” she squawks more than laughs. “There’s no way that you got around thanks to cars. No way.”
“You’re right, I didn’t. But there’s something about them that just… attracts hot people. You know?”
“I always thought that people who’d work on cars’d be all gross. Workin’ with all that grime an’ grease all the time.”
“That’s the look, though,” he replies. “It’s great, right?”
She motions to her feathers. “You think I’d wanna get down with someone all nasty like that? Have you seen what happens to birds who get muddy, Cherry?”
“Fair point. It’s not for everyone.” He turns to her, pointing a finger as they walk. “But it’s hard to see why not! You saw that guy, right?”
“I did.”
“And you didn’t feel some butterflies?”
“No sir.”
Cherry squints.
“Nope!” Olive replies, throwing up her free arm. “I didn’t find him attractive, Cherry.”
“You’re not screwing with me?”
“You were the only one wantin’ to hop his nitrous in the room, buddy.”
“Okay. Fine, okay,” he says, giving up. “The cock and balls jokes end once we’re at the car, okay?”
She squawks again, nearly dropping the jug of biofuel. “No promises!”
CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror
Having convinced Judith to move to the bed of the truck with Leon and Azariah, Olive spreads out her feet on the dashboard of the truck’s cabin, finally finding some small sense of comfort in the room gained. She lets out a squawking yawn, shuffling about in the dusty seat. If it weren’t for the roaring of the engine, the whirring of the wind in the drafty cabin, and the occasional bump in the road, Olive would’ve had it in her to pass out right then and there. They’ve been driving for a good eight hours now, and that alone is enough to tire anyone out. Except Cherry, who seems a little too keen on the road in front of him despite having had his hands on the wheel the entire time. Olive bunches up her face, noting that he’s got his “If I weren’t trying to be polite, I would be talking with you about my thoughts right now” expression on.
“You doin’ okay there, Cherry?” she asks, breaking the silence. “You look like you’re steamin’ in something.”
Cherry blinks, gives himself a light pat on the cheek, and faces her briefly. “Yeah, yeah. Well, you’re right, but I’m alright, I guess. I could be worse. You?”
“Finally think I’m gettin’ used to ridin’ in this thing.” She adjusts her feet on the dash, making an uncomfortably loud scratching noise. “How long, you think?”
“Maybe an hour, maybe less,” he estimates. He taps the fuel counter on the dash. “Good thing too, we’re just about running on empty.”
The Owl raises her eyebrows. “Did he not give us enough fuel?”
“Just enough. Even after with the spare tank.”
“Gosh.”
Few words are exchanged between the two of them as they continue to travel. Occasionally, Olive will mention something about the sunrise, or voice some concern about the truck, or prod Cherry to see whether he was doing okay. Eventually, the last of the three start to build up, and he asks, “Olive, you don’t have to keep asking me that. Could you stop?” and shoots her a distressed look.
“Well, you don’t seem super okay. But you keep tellin’ me you are. And I’m wonderin’ whether that’s a good idea. For you, I mean.”
Cherry leans back in his seat. “Well. No. It’s probably not, since I’m not. I’m just… really, really tired. And I think it’s finally hit me.”
“You’re tellin’ me.”
“It feels like we haven’t had a break, ever. Not one. No time to stop and see the places we’ve visited, no time to really let the scenery soak in. And… and you know I’ve had this sentiment for a while. And I know that like, you can’t trust nature to be your friend. I learned that. But even when we’d make camp, it’d be rough sometimes. When it wasn’t rough, it was only kind of peaceful. Even if you don’t factor the latent stress.”
“I don’t think you get breaks if you’re runnin’ for your life.”
“I know, I know. I, god,” he starts, bringing a hand to his forehead. “I’d just like to get a chance to process everything. Or, maybe to reckon with it? Maybe? I dunno.”
Olive thinks on this for a moment. “You still beat up over the Azariah thing?”
“Well, not really that anymore, but there’s still Judith’s hand, and how we nearly died in Kiln, and the part where we have superpowers, and how we’re STILL being chased by people who aren’t even part of the company we ran from, plus all the other times we’ve nearly been killed wandering around in the woods,” Cherry says, looking over at her. “It’s so much. So goddamn much. And I’m so tired, Olive.”
The Owl matches his gaze, notices that he’s about to start sobbing, and leans over in her seat to give him a hug. The kind of hug that’s not very comfortable, but rather saved for when it’s really needed. The two of them stay like that for a while, driving down the dawn-lit road, until Cherry manages to say to her, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, pal,” Olive responds, sitting up. “Gotta get it out sometime.”
“Yeah,” he sniffs. “Have you been okay? Like, really okay?”
“No, but I’ll be alright. Think I’ve just gotta have some time, too.”
“Are you sure?”
Olive sighs, “I ain’t sure of nothin’ these days. But I try to not think ‘bout it, ‘cause if I do, I tend to spiral— and that’s not good for keepin’ yourself alive.”
One gloved hand is on the steering wheel, its opposite is holding the main body of a sizable insulated bottle, the sort that comes with a cap that doubles as a cup, complete with a little handle. However, the cap-cup is currently sitting dejected in the empty passenger seat as Piper directly swigs from the bottle, taking heavy swallows of a warm, thickly caffeinated black coffee to stave off the morning chill. As delicious as the lattes from the machine at the house were, and despite Janet’s protests, she had requested that the coffee have some kick.
It’s warm enough to burn a little as it hits the back of her throat, but that’s not the point. The point is the quality of the coffee itself, the taste of it. With all the additions and mixings it had been hard to tell, but now that she’s got a plain old bottle of it, she can taste the rich, bitter tones of the Eastern Continent in all their deliciousness. It’s just as good as the old man had claimed. It’s another thing to thank his corpse for, next to the black fatigue pants, her nifty new boots, and so much more.
It’d feel wrong, maybe, if it didn’t feel so delightfully right— like things are finally starting to click into place. She’s got the coffee, she’s got the pants, she’s even got some light bruises on her neck and shoulders from Janet. And, in about a day’s drive if she doesn’t stop, she’ll have her only two competitors in her sights again. Ten percent. Jules and Lucille can go fuck themselves if they think she’s settling for ten percent anymore.
With the driver window rolled down her blonde ponytail whips in the wind behind her. Her forked tongue slips out to run across her lips as the now empty bottle is tossed into the passenger seat, and her thoughts continue to wander.
It’s still somewhat hard to believe he’s dead without a body. A guy like that feels too big to die, as though if he fell he’d just stand up and spit out some teeth before killing anything that thought it could get the drop on him. All it took was one tiny mistake, and boom, he’s out of the game. Well, that’s not true. He tried to fight the fucking Fusillade Wyrm alone, she chuckles to herself. Just goes to show that getting a big head’s a one way ticket to the big hole in the ground, really. She’s not like that. She’s smart. Smart enough to land this opportunity, after all. Blondie was great, but in the end he wasn’t going to last. For all his talk he worked harder, not smarter, but Piper learns from the best. His mistakes aren’t going to be hers.
Jules and Lucille are hard to deal with, of course, but not impossible. If they were that strong, they wouldn’t have been fired in the first place. It’s a difficult process, figuring out how to get a couple of old acquaintances out of the picture. In theory, anyway. Friends don’t give friends a ten percent cut.
Stepping stones, Piper, stepping stones. It’s a hunt, a puzzle, just like daddy taught her. You don’t just use one trap for every animal, you plan for what you want to catch. Everybody’s just an animal, and every animal’s a puzzle to be solved— the prize is meat. Usually the puzzle’s solution is to break it with a blunt instrument of some kind, or shoot it, or sometimes use an actual trap, but people are a bit more complicated as puzzles go, which is what occupies her thoughts for so long as the warm hues of the autumnal forest around her fade into bare, black wood and white ash, like she’s driving out of fall and into a post-infernal winter.
She’s prepared to fight them, certainly, but no need to brute force the problem unless it’s the quickest and easiest solution. It’s Jules and Lucille, she knows them, knows what they’re like as coworkers. Lucille’s not as built, but that mouth in her gut’s something to look out for, and while Jules is the far less skilled of the two, if he’s fed recently or if he draws blood during a fight he can keep it going until he bleeds you dry. Jules excels in wars of attrition, Lucille in pure skill, and Piper’s able to handle either but isn’t better than either in their specific niches. She can outlast Lucille, but not Jules, but she’s more skilled than Jules, though not as skilled as Lucille. She needs to find the high ground, first. An advantage, a distraction.
It’s a big ask. After all, getting the drop on Lucille isn’t easy and if Jules has fed in the last few days he’ll be just as attentive, even if he might not necessarily have the same technique. She’ll need their trust, first and foremost, and to drop Jules first if she can. After that it’s just a matter of surviving Lucille, something she can do easily. Break them down, take them off guard, take them out of their elements.
She’ll need a similar plan for the other five, but they’re not proper combatants. The Hare’s far too old to be a hassle, the Orc’s got a breathing problem, the Owl’s trained but not necessarily well, the Techie’s just some guy, and then there’s Judith. She’s going to really, really enjoy taking on Judith. Beneath her gloves she’s starting to white-knuckle the steering wheel at the thought, the anticipation. It might be fun to pick them all apart, if only to prove that she can.
Does anything really compare to this feeling? The wind in her hair, the thrum of the engine, the knowledge of a beautiful woman waiting on her return and hot, black coffee settling into her gut? Can anything compare?
One thing, maybe, and it’s rapidly approaching on the road. In reality it’s staying still at the side of the road, covered in ash, but it’s approaching in a sense since she’s blitzing down said road with the impunity of someone who’d run over any animal daring to cross her path out of apathy. It’s big, the most unnatural shape she’s seen since she left headquarters, and it makes her ease off the gas and roll to a stop a few yards behind it.
She’s out and jogging over to it, tail whipping behind her, and she’s thinking a mile a minute. At a distance she thought it might be someone pulled over, but somewhere inside there’s a hunch that yearns to be confirmed. A few miles back, she’d passed the sign indicating that the road passes by Wyrm Territory, and that made her very, very curious. She knows who parked this here, and she can recall the vehicle’s silhouette from half a mile out. The bulky, tasteful frame speaks to a luxury automobile designed by people who specialize in cars that can go toe-to-toe with a Dragon and come out sparkling. An import from across the Dividends, a refined vehicle for the well off and wealthy alike with a reinforced chassis and seats made with leather tanned from the piglets of captive silverback boars.
Her black gloves brush the coat of ash off with ease, uncovering the roof, even getting it off of the fine hood ornament. Beneath the ash the glossy paint is looking faded, but that can be fixed. This car, no, this high performance vehicle, its frame alone without any of the additions or modifications would cost more to purchase than has ever been in her hands, or that she’s earned in her entire lifetime. This car costs more than her childhood home.
Blondie’s car is just sitting here on the side of the road, the front door’s been opened and it’s blanketed with wood ash snowfall. And nobody passing by has thought to investigate it in the time he’s been dead. A cursory glance inside reveals nothing, nothing except that fine, fine silverback leather. She shudders. She can feel its price dropping as her fingers drift across the driver’s seat. No, not that. She can feel her worth going up. It’s not Blondie’s car, not anymore.
The key’s even still in the ignition. After brushing off the windshield and settling into the front seat, she pulls the key out to unlock the glovebox, which opens with some jostling.
From inside falls a wad of paper money tied together with a simple string, as well as a heavy leather wallet and some manner of non-monetary paper brick. The money’s pocketed without a thought before she opens the wallet.
It’s the very same he showed her back on the site, complete with the long accordion of family photos. Each one’s the exact same she remembers. A picture of the boy and the girl swimming. A picture of the wife in a bathing suit. A picture of the family having a picnic, a picture of the boy holding his father’s gun, a picture of the wife lounging in some high mountain snow resort, et cetera. She folds the photos back up, and after looking through his small collection of business cards, contacts, and various other small and unimportant papers— receipts for meals at restaurants. Obviously going to put them on a company tab— she pockets the wallet too.
“Jan’ll like to have these back,” she mumbles to herself, picking up, finally, the brick of paper. It’s not actually a brick, it’s actually a very small paperback book, some kind of catalogue at first glance. She’s never seen the logo on the front before, she thinks, but it’s familiar in the strangest way. Then it hits her.
This catalogue is quite possibly the most expensive thing she’s ever touched in her entire life, people included. It isn’t just some catalogue.
Once upon a time, somebody very dumb had a very bright idea. Rather than simply buy your average brand-name piece of weaponry, say, something along the lines of a Stallion Q battle axe or a Sulfur Solutions hunting rifle, he would like something that was suited to his particular combat needs. He wanted a shotgun that he could beat things with— not the most original or clever of ideas, but a golden one nonetheless.
A shotgun that, in a pinch, could be used to bludgeon monsters (or people— mostly people) to death without fear of snapping it in half. It should be noted that at this time what he had to his name was a lot of money and a shotgun he’d bought at the start of his escapades. He wasn’t a rich man by any stretch of the word, it’s just that if adventuring doesn’t kill you it tends to leave very poor people with a lot of money on very short notice.
Back then, most of these people would almost immediately invest in local businesses or start one of their own with that kind of money, the responsible way to go about things, but this unnamed fellow who wanted his so called “Beatin’ Shotty” was the first of a new breed of adventurer who, rather than invest in building up some homely hamlet to settle down in, invested in themselves. He went to his local smiths, got his “Beatin’ Shotty”, and promptly attempted single combat with a Wyvern to test out the weapon of his dreams. The man’s ashes had to be scrubbed out of some nearby buildings, and the local town’s water supply had to be filtered for a few weeks after.
His close friend and former adventuring partner, however, was not so stupid. It hadn’t occurred to him to get something unique from an artisanal smith until his idiot friend had died horribly, but now that it had, his mind had begun blueprinting. No, this fellow had a clever sensibility, as he ended up patenting what some might call the first legitimate instance of proper harpoon usage on dry land. It was an overcomplicated mess to look at in its first variation, but in time (and after a lot of money had been spent on several weapon smiths, armor smiths, gunsmiths, and even locksmiths) he had it: his signature.
The first piece— a street luge adorned with all-terrain wheels on the back. The second piece— a harpoon gun, one with a heavy air-pump tank to help propel the harpoon which was on a chain attached to the harness. The modus operandi of this adventurer, for some time, had essentially to be to stab whatever beast he was hunting, chase it down, then repeat. After his pal ate it using the stupid shotgun club he felt he needed something better than just a sword.
He died when he shot the same Wyvern in the side, luge-ing himself at mach one off a mountaintop.
It might’ve been a bad sign that these first attempts ended in bloodshed, but as badly as those guys ate it, none of the smiths particularly cared. Those folks were mercenary scum, the kind with issues that drive you to think using a street luge in a combat scenario would be a good plan of action. However, one has to note that as insane as those things are, they just kept attracting adventurers, the insane weirdos with death wishes who wanted something special, and this was quite lucrative.
Their first real success came in the form of an axe. All the lady wanted was for the blade on the end to spin like an industrial saw if she pulled a trigger, and by all that’s good in the world it took some time but they had it. She had to wear a backpack with a damn heavy engine inside of it, and if she wanted it to really go she had to pull a cord, but the smiths and several mechanics had what was probably one of the stupidest, yet most dangerously unique weapons out there. Other insane requests from her peers followed after she used this feature to kill a great many creatures pretending to be trees, as well as a few mafiosos.
Shields with bear traps built into the front, gauntlets with whip compartments and hidden knives, retracting pins inside bootheels, hats with rotating saw blades in them! Most of the time it was gear that could hide a sharp edge or two, but the big name projects began to pile up and eventually the artisans that took these requests banded together to create their own association of gear makers. Specifically, gear makers for a burgeoning generation of insane people with a lot of money and things to kill.
While they have since begun offering previous designs of former customers as made to order options to keep the lights on, their bread and butter remains the custom order artisanal weapons and armor market, wherein they create adventuring gear to the specifications of their eccentric and murderous patrons to the best of their abilities, which are near as absurd if not more absurd than their clientele’s demands.
Though, over time their general consumer base shifted from the average wannabe hero to largely established adventuring types who already had several apex predators under their belt by the time they were extended the card— which brings this to the salient point that’s rocking around in Piper’s brain. This isn’t something you can just buy. You have to be offered this by someone in a shady outfit on a shady day and you have to buy it just so that you can have the book that tells you what they sell and where to send the inquiry.
The Quilting Club; so named for when the first few smiths were still just getting involved and having idea sessions at each other’s houses, which their partners comically accused of being a sewing circle or quilting club— is quite possibly one of the most exclusive associations with a public facing title, as they not only allow themselves to be bought from by the best, they only hire the best. It’s many a gearhead or tinkerers’ dream to get in, and many a bloodthirsty maniac’s fantasy to have an official Quilting Club weapon or gadget.
The catalogue itself is covered in a checkered pattern of many different colors, with no text on the back and nothing on the front save for, in a simple, black serif font, “QC,” and in smaller, but similar text just underneath that, “for your consideration.” Piper feels like the weight in her hands is gold or platinum, something heavy and expensive and so much more than she ever, ever expected to hold in her lifetime.
She opens to the first page, table of contents. The text is absurdly small and well organized, it’s a brick made of extremely thin, but durable pages, and on each page is a sizable number of inventions ranging from the practical to the inane, but every single one is some level of impressive. Some are even circled or highlighted, largely new and more dangerous guns, save for one thing which Piper realizes is the same coffee machine Janet used to make their postcoitus lattes.
She had heard of the Quilting Club, plenty did in the same way plenty of people heard of things like the Heroes’ Guild or the mob, something always supposedly close yet very, very far away from someone like her. It feels like sacrilege to be opening this up now, like she’s a child being shown how to drive in third gear before being taught what a car is. Still, it’s too fascinating not to look and see what Blondie had on his mind to buy, what he had planned. Dog-eared pages are checked, of course, followed by whatever other highlights she can find and eventually her eyes settle onto the back page. There she sees notes, checkmarks, a list. It’s a gift list, a sort of incentive.
The Quilting Club Gift Initiative is a way to incentivize buying full sets of gear, and to this end they have a checklist in the back of their catalogue where there is a full body illustration and a series of lines indicating pieces of gear, which consist of the head, the body, the legs, and then accessories as a separate function which then attach to more specific parts, such as individual arms or hands, the neck, or the top of the head or at the knees. At the bottom of the page is a single line of text: “Fill out a whole gear set and receive a custom order weapon FREE!*”
The fine print: “*Shipping not free, materials not free. Consultation and designing sessions, however, are.”
Blondie has the full page. He’s bought everything— it makes sense, the man was loaded and liked his work. But what did he get?
She shuts the catalogue and pockets it too before putting the key back in and starting the ignition. Unsurprisingly the hulking frame could handle a little ash and heat, even if it’s done a number on the paint job. After shutting it back off she walks around to her car and takes everything she has before hucking it all into the backseat of Blondie’s, including her extra tank of bio and the insulated bottle Janet had given her before she left.
Passing the trunk of Blondie’s car, she stops and stares. What could be inside? More? The man’s practical, he must have something in his trunk at all times.
With a click of the key, it pops open, hissing as the trunk glides up and out of her way to reveal a perfectly pristine leather lining. Absolutely decadent. Further, she found a sort of large, folded pile of black leather something, as well as a long box marked only by an embossed, golden “QC.”
Letting out a soft and reverent gasp, she picks up the black leather first— it’s a coat, one of Blondie’s tactical trench coats, with the armor padded lining and the extra reinforced bits near the vitals. She tosses off her own coat, allowing it to fall into the ash nearby as she pulls on Blondie’s. It doesn’t fit like a glove, but she’s used to her clothes being a bit loose; it’d give her some room when she snakes out, and she had planned to roll up the sleeves anyway. With the added height from the boots, the length of the coat didn’t reach the ground entirely. She isn’t as tall as Blondie was, but she’s damned close to his unshifted form.
After that, after some adjusting of the belt around the waist, she looks to the box. The Quilting Club package, opened a few times but not too many. She can see it, a sort of reverence. Even Blondie knew better than to mistreat something from the QC. So, keeping in line with her imagined Blondie’s ritual, she lifts the top of the box.
“Heavens,” she mumbles. “B, you spoil me.”
Inside is some unholy hate-child between a crowbar, a war club, and a tonfa. It’s a long, immaculately designed metal rod with bends at either end that end in hooks resembling the claw end of a hammer head. The part resembling the war club is the specificity of the curve, the weight put at the obviously thicker top-end. Coming off perpendicular is a short and ergonomic handle designed to be gripped firmly as the entire piece spins just beyond the forearm, perhaps in defense or perhaps as a means of adding even more force to a blow, while at the thin end there’s also a small spot that could be considered a hand hold, in case one needs to put extra weight into cracking open a crate or door.
“The Doorman,” she mumbles, reading a small slip of paper just beneath it. “Damn.” She pulls it out and shuts the box, not bothering to read its maker’s mark before she settles into the driver’s seat again, hiding the crowbar inside her coat, where there’s a series of straps meant for holstering Blondie’s absurd armory.
The engine starts up and the car’s plunking down the road soon enough, ash falling away into the wind behind her as she offers a fanged grin to the open air.
