#b&tsm-judith

[empty-masks]

Book Five, Chapter Five (Epilogue)

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.

“My god. You really shouldn’t have.”

Blondie & The Smokestone March End.

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[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is   © 2020-2023 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.  

Thank you for reading, and have a good night!

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-gilroy #b&tsm-hickory #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Five, Chapter Two

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?”

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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!”

Chapter Two End.

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[ Table of Contents ] Blondie & The Smokestone March is   © 2020-2023 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-blondie #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Five, Chapter One

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.

Now, the fun part starts.

==============================================================

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.”

Chapter 1 End.

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[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is   © 2020-2023 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.  

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-blondie #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Five, Chapter Four

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

Honeysett isn’t the largest or most notable town in the world, far from it; if anything it’s something of a nowhere patch of suburb that just happens to exist on everyone’s map, nestled between the politically polarizing Pickman’s Hope and a more financially prolific series of towns that dot the Eternal Autumn up and out of the perpetual season’s territory. It exists, but it doesn’t necessarily exist in the same capacity as a place like Smokestone, Kiln, or Fusillade. It doesn’t have any great or notable exports, and by all means is something that Cherry has very recently started to appreciate— calm and uneventful, save for that lingering memory so long ago.

Its most prominent features are academic and domestic in nature; it has quite the library and a sizable museum, the latter of which in most towns in this day and age would roughly translate to “a great big box full of shiny things people are going to steal,” but nothing really goes missing from the Honeysett Museum for the same reason that Cherry knows it’s safest if they head straight there rather than stop for anything.

It takes a very particular set of characteristics to take up a line of work where your starting equipment, entirely self-funded, tends to be something like how Samson had described it, that being weaponry which was obviously in its second life, having abandoned something kind and clean like acting as a fencepost to take up the dirty, underappreciated but wildly overpaying process of fighting Monsters. Not that every adventurer in the world makes their name by punching up, of course, but that’s usually where they start. Someone, somewhere, has a bad night or a bad day and ends up smashing something creepy or crawly that had intended to eat them and it’s all history from there. In a night they’ve either solidified their need for the normal or a hunger for that dreadful master known as adventure.

Some go the extra mile and sign up with a larger association, such as the guild school, or simply tag along with other freelancers in a party, as Samson did, as Steiner and Baker did. Not all of this work trends toward the humanitarian, as inevitably a burgeoning class of warrior drifters willing to fight for cash tends to lend itself well to clandestine operations, especially in the corporate world and its sister, the criminal underworld, as Lucille and Jules each show. Being good with a gun and willing to use it for whoever pays best, that sort of work has two ways out— early retirement or death.

There aren’t a lot of adventurers who die of natural causes; those that do die in Honeysett, in a specific set of suburbs where those looking to ride out their days coasting on small fortunes from a few hard jobs make their place. Typically these people have a large stash of whatever loot they’ve gathered from trips into dangerous and mysterious climes, often strange and esoteric, beyond that of the normal person’s day-to-day life. Even the very sewers beneath the bustling cities could hold all kinds of creatures, all kinds of treasures, if one is noble, stupid, or desperate enough to pick up a sword and take them.

In Cherry’s neighborhood in Honeysett are the folks who made sure a place like Honeysett can exist, who every night toss themselves into the depths of cave systems like that beneath Pickman’s Hope to take on Cave Shadows and Skitterbears of their own volition, if not to protect others then to earn something to make the world just that much more bearable for those around them— if not to rid the world of something as dangerous and consuming as living, hungering entropy and its kin. Now tired and living out some sense of peace, they were the noble, stupid, and desperate, brave enough to walk into the darkest, most dangerous places in the world with little more to protect them than some sheet metal on their chests, a fencepost in one hand, and some good friends at their back.

If it doesn’t kill them, if they make it to retirement and have stuck it out, they’re like Samson— wavemakers in their own right, the movers and shakers whose names might cause shudders of starstruck awe or muted terror, depending upon the listener, and Samson’s just one.

Another man like this, another product of the bad day, wandering slayer of Monster and man alike, is unable to move his body. The heat fueling it is dying, along with the glow inside. Blondie is getting cold.

Piper, by this point, has run the corpse over six times, give or take a few where she just parked the car with its tire right on the damned thing’s neck. Still, despite her best efforts, it’s done little but turn the body and twist it, though it has managed to get it to stop moving. It almost looks dead for a solid minute as she gets out and grabs her recently acquired best friend, the Doorman crowbar, before he’s working his jaws trying to gurgle something out between globs of what she assumes must be some kind of life fluid. She’d call it blood, but it’s thicker, like dense bile or magma.

Sundae’s got both Jack and Nancy shoved into the back of the car, and that’s at least a slight improvement. It’s not great to think about, given as Jack’s joints are halfway to melted together where they aren’t just busted to hell and back, but he’s an Android, that can be fixed. Nancy might almost be in a state comparable, but all the same, a Vampire’s a Vampire. A few good cuts from a butcher shop or from some random civilian on the way and Piper’ll have her healing up in no time.

“He’s still not dead?” Sundae asks, walking over to stand side by side with Piper, a knife the length of her forearm in hand. “Nancy handed me this. Said you asked for it?”

Piper snatches the knife from the Elf, then looks down at the still gurgling, faintly glowing body of Blondie. “Still not dead. You’d think such a professional would at least do his replacement the courtesy of vacating the fucking premises,” she snarls, striking him in the neck with the heel of her boot, forcing the heavy form onto its back proper.

Sundae pulls the shotgun out of Blondie’s chest cavity, getting one hand on the gun itself and her boot against the bulk of burned muscle. Once it’s out, for good measure, she pulls out her revolver and pumps a few shots into the head. More glowing fluid oozes from the wounds, but the gurgling and the frothing doesn’t stop.

“I ever tell you what my daddy does for a living?” Piper asks, crouching beside Blondie’s head, eyes fixated on the slow, thick trickle running along his broken maw. Slowly, she runs the hook of her crowbar along the crisp, fractured, bony jaw.

Sundae shrugs. “I didn’t know you had parents. I guess it checks out, you seem about messed up enough…”

“Cute.” Piper rolls her eyes before tapping the top of Blondie’s head, earning a soft thudding sound. “He’s a butcher. He likes hunting and fishing in his personal time, but professionally he’s got a butcher shop. For a while he wanted me to take it over, then he let me get that job at Shepherd Gemstone to get some wanderlust out of my system. Now look at me…”

“Are you monologuing at me or at the dead guy?”

“Not… dead,” coughs and sputters Blondie. Each roll of his jaw and tilt of his head is twisting, wretched, and erratic. He can feel the muscles hardening as the flames go out, as the embers smoulder and the smoke begins to fade. “I’ll kill you. I’ll- kill- you- all.”

Sundae nearly doubles over as she laughs, but her cackling finds its end as a bronze tail slams into the back of her head, sending her to the stone floor in a small heap. When she’s back up, she locks eyes with Piper, whose jaw is tense, shut, and threatening to put a snarling set of fangs out from between her lips any second. “Humorless bitch,” is all she gets out before a hiss sends her straight back to the car, lightly wiping a bloody nose and a split lip.

Once alone, Piper turns to Blondie again, staying crouched, white-knuckling her fists around the handle of the hefty knife, the crowbar clattering to the rocks beneath them both. “You’ve got some nerve,” she says. “In the end, it wasn’t enough. Just die already, just die. I’m not going to let some flaming piece of shit get in the way of what I want. Nobody’s getting in my way, not those idiots in the car, not those miner fucks, and not you. I’m finally doing it, just like you told me back in Smokestone, remember? Take what you want, right?”

His dull, glowing eyes linger on her for a time, jaw still and voice silent, before he says, “Who… are you?”

Piper clenches her teeth and stabs Blondie in the throat, driving as far as she can and pressing on the deer antler handle until it threatens to snap under her lycanthropic power. Once it’s in too deep to handle, she picks up her crowbar and begins smashing the blade even further, like someone trying to split a log with an iron wedge.

Half-hearted and vain attempts to bite her as she did this came, but are all the same ignored as she continues to ram the knife deeper and deeper, only stopping once she hears the awkward scrape of knife point against bone, which tells her it’s about time to get to the good part.

Though she has to reach into the wound, she grips the handle tight in one hand and hooks his head with the crowbar using the opposite. Then, she rips them in opposite directions. The charred hide cracks and gives way, and as she slashes the knife free from its prison, she removes the head from the body, severing the spine.

Without a body to give it the strength of a voice, the werewolf’s jaws work themselves without any noise save for the wet sizzle of glowing, magically infused corpse-fluid on stone and jaw on jaw. She tosses the knife away, the blade ruined from the heat and warped beyond belief, before picking the head up with her gloved hands to look into his eyes.

She can see the glow fading, leaving him. The thing in her hands stopped being Blondie a long time ago, but it’s only just begun to stop moving. “Shepherd’s got a crap taste in officers,” she says with a sigh. “I should get Janet some flowers on the way back.”

Sundae flinches in the passenger seat when Piper finally sits in front of the wheel again, the head of the werewolf getting tossed into her lap during the process. A scowl crosses her elfin features, but not a word is uttered until Piper initiates the conversation, her voice rising with the struggling rev of the engine. “Have one of the others bag it on the way if either of them can use their fingers. We’re going to go pickup my car and then we’re heading for Honeysett— and keep your mouth shut, Sundae, or I’ll break it.”

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There’s a moment of silence when Cherry finally parks the truck, dusty and covered in bulletholes, out in front of a quaint, red-sided two-level at the edge of the surrounding forest. Nobody but him gets out of the car (leaving the keys inside the ignition, mostly out of sheer exhaustion but also in case they needed to get going again), and nobody but him approaches the house. The front door is left open, with a screen door helping to keep the bugs out, and the smell of sugary, roasting vegetables wafts into his headspace before he even rings the doorbell.

“You’re always on time, Celica,” a burly voice calls out from inside. “You brought the wine this time, right?”

A large, bearded man sticks his head around the corner of the kitchen, working with something hot on the other side of the wall. His hair, a few weeks post-shaving, looks like it could’ve been a deep, rich crimson earlier in his life— it has since turned lighter, more gray-toned, with his long, well-kept beard reflecting this even more so. It helps to hide the wicked, messy claw scar wrapping up and around his right ear and ending at the edge of his right cheek. The glasses, thick-rimmed and square on his head, are fogged up from the hot kitchen work, and it takes him a couple tries of identifying the face at his door to realize who it is. “Cherry?” he asks, rubbing the condensation from his lenses. “Or am I scrambled from stickin’ my head in the oven all mornin’?”

Though he nearly passes out as he pushes the screen door open, Cherry finds himself grinning like an idiot at the sound of his dad’s voice. “I think it could be a little bit of both.”

The sound of a pan being set down on the table is heard, and his dad comes walking around the corner, apron still messy and standing only a few inches taller than his son, to give him a hug that lifts him clear off the hardwood floors of the foyer.

“My god, it’s so good to see you,” he starts. “You got some time off from the ol’ job? Actually, don’t answer that, I’ve gotta call your father inside. He’ll wanna hear.”

Cherry puts his hands over his ears temporarily, as the threat of losing his eardrums to the sound of “ASH! GET YOUR MUDDY BUTT INSIDE, CHERRY’S HOME!”, alongside the response of “WHAT IN THE HELL IS HE DOIN’ HOME ALREADY?! RED, THIS IS THE THIRD SURPRISE VISIT THIS WEEK, YOU GOTTA WARN ME WHEN YOU’RE DOIN THIS STUFF!” from the back of the house, presumably through an open window nearest the kitchen.

“Hey, dad?” he asks, voice muffled on Red’s shoulder.

“What’s up?”

“I’m not on leave. I quit, actually.”

“What?! Why?” “And I’ve got a couple friends to introduce you to.”

“Don’t tell me you’re—” Red begins, before looking over Cherry’s shoulder and into the front yard. There stands everyone from the truck, unwashed and tired beyond belief, some waving hello to him, some leaning up against one another for various reasons, and some working on adjusting the bandages on the others.

“Yup,” Cherry mumbles, passing out onto the floor of the foyer, leaving his Dad to reckon with the nine strangers that now stand in front of him.

“Uh,” he stammers. “I’ll break out the drinks.”

There’s nothing quite like trying to pack twelve people into a relatively small living room and kitchen combo. Though couples like Azariah and Roxanne are more than willing to sit on one anothers’ laps, there’s still a lack of seating / standing room in a house where two large, old men consistently bump into one another when preparing dinner. Cherry, having been wafted back into consciousness by a mug of tea, sits on the back counter in the kitchen (definitely in the way of his parents, but at the moment they’d feel bad making him get down). Red and Ash, the latter of which dons a mane / beard combo of long, curly, grey hair and who stands a few inches taller than his husband, busy themselves settling everyone in, learning everyone’s names, and making room in the kitchen for the surprise party that’s just now beginning.

A cask of Painted Pumpkin wine is brought up from the cellar, and things begin to smooth themselves out. Azariah, Olive, and Cherry’s Dads get themselves into a conversation about adventuring. Jules, Lucille, and Meat hang back from the rest of the crowd, simply taking in the good vibes (and the third of which having to stand near the stone-lined fireplace, as Ash recognizes what sort of affliction they have and knew what it does to wooden flooring). Brie, Judith, Leon, and Cherry all have themselves a few sips of alcohol to reflect on the happenings of the day, and to unwind a little, seeing as how high tensions have been recently.

Olive fangirls out over the fact that Cherry’s parents are somewhat legendary in the area for their adventuring accomplishments, from their Dragon-slaying to their town defending, going so far as to say that they were part of the reason why she took up the axe to begin with. And when Cherry mentions that the whole neighborhood is filled with people just like them, and when Celica Dahlstad, the unkillable robin-hood repossession artist who’s wanted in thirty cities, walks through the front door with a pricey bottle of local bourbon? She looks as though she might explode with excitement.

Meat is eventually approached by Ash, who points them in the direction of a couple only a block away who are similarly undead, but who work with extremely fireproof material, and could, theoretically, get them some proper gear. As the conversation continues, they bond over their experiences on the road, and Ash sympathizes with the feeling of never feeling at peace with the way things are, and always feeling on edge. The only thing that helped him, as he puts it, was falling in love and wanting to keep it that way.

In an awkward, but extensive conversation about the state of Pickman’s Hope started between Brie, Azariah, and Roxanne, Brie asks about when it would be a good time to head back down, since she’d very much like to pick up her car so that she can visit her girlfriend up north, let her know what had happened and that they’re more than likely broke as a joke. Roxanne informs her that if she needs a place to stay, she’s more than welcome down at the old mining town, since there had been talk between her and Azariah about moving there later in the year, since Smokestone is no longer an option (and because they realized that they had missed Samson more than they remembered).

And eventually, things quiet down. Hours turn into days, and those days are spent on recovery, alongside familiarizing themselves with the neighborhood. Many folks drop by to say hello (and almost everyone being recognized by Olive, though she hardly ever mentioned it), each one wanting to talk, meet the new folks, check up on Cherry, or drop off some extra food. It becomes incredibly apparent to the runaways that most folks in this place, regardless of their general demeanor, are willing to help with anything and everything. Everyone grows their own food, everyone helps out with one anothers’ upkeep, everyone looks out for one anothers’ backs. There’s nothing like knowing just how awful the world can be to straighten out one’s sense of community. And there’s nothing like the strength gained from adventuring that turns these sorts of communities into some of the most well-protected on this side of the Dividends.

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Damn the calm and the quiet. Every minute since Blondie stopped making noise has been so silent that Piper’s largely left with her own thoughts for company, as even her own underlings have been hesitating to speak unless spoken to— a preferred change over Sundae blurting out whatever she pleases or Nancy giving her a migraine, but the sheer amount of nothing that goes on during information collection and paperwork processing is detestable.

When the three remaining of her squad are patched up, Jack’s joints are all fixed and moving again and Nancy’s up and about, Piper’s found the important stuff. Old admin records of addresses and letters of recommendation, all sent from a nice little suburb in Honeysett. She knew it had to be in Honeysett already, but Pickman’s Hope and Fusillade were each much easier to find anything in. Honeysett has this odd corporate-blackout to it that she doesn’t get, but that’s not as important anymore. If those fucks aren’t hanging around with Cherry’s family, then she can use them as bait.

Nobody’s gone anywhere yet. For all the talk of places to go and work to be done, they’ve spent a lot of time just recovering and discussing their plans without actually acting on them. Cherry’s dads are a fountain of hospitality, and the neighbors are all willing to give their own two cents every once in a while too, especially now that the neighborhood’s nephew, Cherry himself, has returned— even if it means there might be a lot more engine revving in the near future.

When the big, faded luxury vehicle comes to a halt just behind the truck in front of the house, most of the folks, if not all of them, are out on the front porch enjoying something or other. Some are locked in conversation, as Judith and Lucille are, over the tenable nature of a possible flower shop in Pickman’s Hope, with Leon and Jules offering small comments here or there as Lucille runs through some basics of entrepreneurial startups having at one point technically run a small mercenary band during her stint with Shepherd Gemstone. Others are a bit busy enjoying their time with their partners— needless to say Azariah and Roxanne are practically attached at the hip and half-dancing to nonexistent music in the yard, Leon’s practically spent the whole time acting as a glorified lawn chair for Judith (and he wouldn’t have it any other way), and Red and Ash themselves have been exchanging the occasional kiss between shifts handling the grill out front, much to the chagrin of their son Cherry.

Olive and Cherry were each the first to notice the driver, with Brie and Meat being close behind only because the two only just walked around the house to head out front again with arms full of disposable plates, paper cups, and some bottles of drinks both soft and hard.

Piper steps out, grinning near ear to ear, and offers a brief wave before stepping around the car itself to walk onto the lawn. Behind her, the three still living members of the unit exit as well. The general underlying hum of enjoyment halts altogether as the four step onto the grass, and the silence grabs more attention than the throng of life had; neighbors poke their heads out of their windows and stand in their doorways, suspicious looks on their faces, hesitation in their movements only due to a lack of understanding. Were Red and Ash expecting more?

Everyone drops what’s in their hands and puts them up not in surrender but in preparation as Sundae, Nancy, and Piper each draw their weapons.

“Y’all really are stupid, going and hiding here like we wouldn’t have this address on record.” Piper grows taller, meaner looking as her fangs poke out from between her lips and venom drips to the ground, sizzling in the grass as her tail rolls and coils behind her. “At least you’re all in one place. It’ll be hard to fit everybody into the one car, but I’m sure you can handle the luggage stacking, right, Jack?”

A soft, “Yes, ma’am,” exits the bot as he steps forward, raising his fists.

Azariah sighs. “Survived Blondie, got this far, and now…”

“And now nothing.” Red says bluntly, walking out from around the grill, a “Kiss the Cook” apron on and a very, very warm spatula in one heavy hand. “You put your weapons down or you’ll regret it.”

Piper laughs, but Jack complies, immediately setting his hands to his sides and stepping back. This, of course, causes Piper to go from laughing to hissing at him. “What are you doing? It’s an old man, beat the shit out of him.”

Sundae clears her throat and puts her gun away. “Boss, taking on miners is one thing. Care to look around?”

“Why? It’s just some fucking suburb—”

She stops when she actually does glance around, and behind her little group, on the sidewalk and on the street, a throng of neighbors have cropped up.

Cherry’s known just about all of these people his whole life, and a few for a little over half. He knows them as friends of the family, honorary aunts and uncles, but Olive, who’s having a hard time keeping it together beside him, knows them all from newspaper clippings and bar stories passed around in her old traveling merc circles.

In a wide semicircle around the back of the unit stand Cherry’s neighbors, including but not limited to, as Olive hastily describes to Brie, Meat, and anyone else willing to listen as her whispers rise and fall with her enthusiasm, the following: Celica Dahlstad, whose reputation for being nigh unkillable is only really beaten by the near fantastical knife gripped in one of her hands; the Hunter Brothers, a set of middle-aged men with pointed ears, graying slicked back hair, and revolvers that make even Sundae’s seem pale in comparison, with multiple barrels and other odd additions; Mountain Road, a craggled, rocky Golem taller than even Jack with a rifle that actually looks more like somebody put a stock on a medieval cannon, whose appearance is close to a statue of a lumberjack come to life; and of course the couple that Meat had gotten a pair of fireproof shoes from, a tall, strong looking, stern woman with white hair, grey skin, and electric blue eyes. A similar glow creeps up her arms and legs, her pointed ears and icy fangs snaggling slightly out from her cracked, mirthless smile. Beside her is a grinning skeleton in a polo and khaki shorts who only makes it up to her shoulder; they’re Bill and Renee Crawl.

Behind the lot of them is Ash, in whose hands is held something massive, like a log of wood made out of some kind of stone; Cherry knows it as “that damned piece of shit,” from what Red had called it once or twice due to it falling over and wrecking some of their nicer furniture in Cherry’s youth. Olive knows that to be a weapon of literally Dragon slaying proportions, a log of the same stuff Jules’ old stick had been made out of with holes bored into one end for easier gripping. To put it simply, Ash was swinging around about half a tree’s worth of wood strong enough to, even in walking-stick form, force a hard left turn from a careening, out-of-control motor vehicle.

And here he is, eyes blazing with unfiltered rage from under gray eyebrows, stepping from between his neighbors to lean in toward Piper and her cronies to say, “Get off my fucking lawn,” in a voice barely above a whisper.

Every neighbor there is clad in something casual, from jeans to shorts to polos to short sleeve dress shirts, the sort with floral patterns and exotic fruit plastered all over, but everyone is holding something that makes Sundae, Nancy, and Jack stand down. It all makes Piper angry, but more so, she’s deadly jealous of it all. The blatant, casual display of power— everyone here could whoop her ass one-on-one and make it back in time for a beer. It’s equal parts terrifying and maddening, seeing just how much further she has to go before she’s one of them.

She holds eye contact with Ash, having turned around, until behind her head there’s a soft click. She blinks; Brie has placed a semiautomatic pistol to the back of Piper’s head. With a surprising lack of malice, Brie says simply to her, “Leave.”

The set of four make their way back to the car without any pleasantries or goodbyes, tucking themselves inside with their proverbial tails between their legs, save for Piper. She’s marched to the car, personally, by Brie and Ash, the latter of whom has set his Dragon-smashing log down because, as Red shouts from across the yard, “I don’t want to have to pay the town for cleanup, you messy bastard,” with the phrase “messy bastard” somehow coming out very sweetly.

It’s only after getting in the driver’s seat that Piper rolls down the window and eyes Brie, scowling. “This isn’t over,” she hisses.

Brie lifts the gun again, “I would say it is.” The car takes off down the road again as everyone watches.

Ash raises a brow and asks, “I thought you ran out of bullets?”

“I did,” she replies. “But she did not know that.”

A smile presses its way out from beneath Ash’s beard, and as he lifts his club to go stash it away again, he gestures toward the yard. “Alright everyone, stick around! Red’s cooking ribs.”

The neighbors all walk in to mingle too, though most leave after a minute or so to pop back over to their own houses for a moment— it’s rude to not bring at least a side, after all.

Chapter Four End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is   © 2020-2023 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-blondie #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Four, Chapter Nine

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

Jules is still firmly and comfortably settled into a recliner, and nearby Lucille’s been looked at for at least long enough for Roxanne to essentially tape and bandage her nose into something resembling a proper position, operating on the assumption that it’ll heal right if the merc doesn’t go and headbutt somebody. Across from the two sits, Leon, arms crossed and head tilted up so that he can stare at the ceiling instead of at them.

    Olive left the room moments ago at the request of Jules, though only after Leon gave her a nod of a comforting, worry-not sort. The silence hasn’t stirred since the sound of her feet disappeared among the halls, at least not until, finally, Jules clears his throat and says, “I think we have something to talk about, Leon. It’s Leon, right?”

“Yup,” he replies, turning his golden eyes on the two. “I know you two aren’t dumb enough to go after someone you don’t know the name of. I bet you know what size shoe I wear.”

Lucille laughs nasally, then groans and rubs her forehead. “Pain meds aren’t worth shit for me, should’ve known better than to take them. Yeah, we know, but not your shoe size. Just the important parts.”

His good hand raised, Jules clears his throat. “Might as well talk about it now, while we’ve got the place to ourselves. Right, Lucille?”

The woman’s eyes dart from the Vampire to the Orc, and she sighs through her mouth. “You probably know I was the head of security for a couple mining sites belonging to Shepherd Gemstone, with Jules here as my number two. Some guys of ours did some horrid crap to you.”

“That’s a way to put it. I’m sure you got an earful, those pricks seemed like the types to brag,” Leon replies.

Jules offers an awkward, almost diplomatic smile. “Yeah, we did. Busting someone is something our bunch brags about. They didn’t spare any details, either. Now look—”

A gloved hand is raised, silencing Jules as Lucille shifts to sit directly across from Leon, all before she speaks. “Leon, I’m not going to pretend it hurt to know somebody working for us did that to you. I’m going to be clear about it, because as much as I expect this to be grounds for you killing us in our sleep, we didn’t blink. What happened to you did not so much as register on our radar beyond being some new thing some dumb assholes were going to use to try and pick up some vapid morons at a bar someplace when they get really drunk and think being mean to poor people’s a turn on. I laughed when I heard what happened.”

“Lucille, I don’t think he wants to hear about…” He trails off.

Leon is standing up. His lips are curling awkwardly, as though frowning, but the missing tusks are leaving space not meant to be empty. “I’m leaving if you just came here to gloat.”

Lucille shakes her head. “No. We came to tell you the truth, not to gloat. All things considered you’re better off than we are right now. Anyway, the point is that when it happened, we didn’t care. It was just another day. All that pain and suffering, and for us it was another nine-to-five. I was handling guard schedules and worrying about a date the next week. Jules was probably more intimately and emotionally affected by running low on mustache oil than he was by what those guys did to you.”

“Lucille, I love you to death, but I’d really like to not get killed in my sleep—”

“All that said,” Lucille continues, interrupting Jules again, “we’re sorry that happened to you.”

Leon’s eyebrow raises. He sits back down and settles his heavy arms across his knees. He takes a shallow, but effortful breath. “Sorry? Why the fuck would you be sorry? You didn’t even do it.”

“We were their bosses, so we might as well have. If anything you should hate us for not doing anything to the guys that did.” Lucille leans back against her seat.

“Actually, we did do something,” Jules points out. “They were the first round of layoffs. Always get rid of the trouble hires and the guys with an eye for upward momentum when cutting expenses, Leo, saves you a million headaches.”

“Leon. Point taken. But, the guys who took my teeth…”

“Were fired at some point, yes.” Lucille rubs the back of her neck. “I’ll be honest, I don’t even remember their names.”

“I do, but only because I was handing out the pink slips. Never be that guy, Leon. Never. People’ll hate you for something you’ve got no control over, rather than something you actually do. It’s the worst kind of shit to be hated for.” Jules is smiling stupidly again, warm. “Yeah, though, we’re sorry that happened and all. We’ve done a lot of bad stuff in the past ourselves, but uh… I can’t recall anything like that. Even we’ve got a limit, and we’re horrible.”

“Oh, the worst.” Lucille laughs again, though now it’s quieter in pursuit of some sound that won’t make her nose feel like clawing itself off of her head. “We eat people and we aren’t even that fucked up. You know, that bunch of idiots made me feel like a normal person.”

Jules is snickering, and then he says, looking toward Leon, “Oh God, you probably think we’re crazy.”

“You say that like we aren’t.” Lucille’s doubled over and doing her best to keep her laughter down. “We’re every kind of screwed up. At least we’re owning it!”

Leon blinks. By this point his face has returned to a deadpan, and more than anything he’s just surprised. No anger registers on his features, no hate or pain. And then, without a warning, he begins to laugh too. Jules and Lucille both begin to rise in volume with him, and then all three have to force themselves to stop, with Lucille clutching her face, Jules clutching his side, and Leon clutching his chest.

When the sudden sounds of wheezing and pain from the three die down again, Leon speaks, saying simply, “You two are seriously fucked up.”

“That shouldn’t be news to you, pal.” Jules tilts his head.

“It’s not,” Leon replies. “Not in the slightest. I’ll say it’s my first time laughing at it, though, I didn’t know the world had this kind of humor to it. All this shit happens to me, and when I finally meet someone that apologizes and shows some semblance of wanting to take responsibility, it’s the people who didn’t even have a hand in wronging me. Now that’s a joke. You two are braver than I’ve been lately. How do you do it?”

“Do what?” Lucille’s finally sitting up again, readjusting her bandages and dabbing at her nostrils with a tissue from a small box nearby, soaking up a small amount of blood.

“Apologize to somebody you know you hurt, when you know there’s a chance they might fuck off into the sunset. How do you say sorry to someone when it’s only going to hurt? I think that’s the bravest, dumbest thing I’ve seen someone do today.”

Jules chuckles. “Only because you didn’t watch that detective get her ass kicked.”

Lucille, however, gives the question some thought. “Lately, honesty’s been a big deal, at least for me. This world’s fucked up, and you’ve gotta talk to the people you’re working with if you want to get by without losing something important. You can get far if you’re willing to be honest with each other, even if the truth is going to hurt. Sometimes it’s for the better.” She turns to Jules, then.

His smile’s gone. It’s been supplanted by an awkward pursing of lips and a contemplative hum, at least until he speaks again, saying, “I’m never gonna live that down even if you do forgive me for it. Yeah, your best bet is to be honest. If a lie’s necessary to keep somebody in your life, it’s probably a bad idea. Take it from me, Leon— that shit won’t stay hidden forever, and all lies fall through the cracks. Question is, whether you want it to fall out on its own or if you want to be the one to bring it down yourself. The latter’s the safer option, even if it’s scary as shit. Which is why we’re saying sorry.”

Leon actually smiles then. It’s as awkward as most of his expressions, partially from disuse and partially from a quirk of mouth muscles anticipating more teeth than he has, but it’s endearing enough. “Makes sense to me. You two are mercenaries?”

“Sure are. Pays to be a decent talker when you’re a private contractor. Don’t get all those steady jobs like those tight-pantsed guild pricks.” Jules scoffs.

Lucille grumbles in turn. “It’s not like you need a degree to crack skulls. Goddamned frilly plate wearing—”

“And don’t get me started on their rates, fuck! Practically undercutting the whole business.” The Vampire hisses, then grins. Lucille turns to look at him, and both laugh softly, quietly, again to avoid hurting themselves.

“You two really are weird.” Leon sighs, brushing his hair back as he looks down to the floor, between his boots. “If that’s all, I should get going. I’ve got some folks I need to apologize to, if not now then… Soon. Before anything else happens, since there’s always something happening and it’s always happening to us.”

“You mind me asking who?” Jules chuckles. “I can’t lie worth shit, but I can keep a secret.”

“No, he can’t,” Lucille corrects, “but if you’re willing to spill, we’ll listen. We’re sure nobody’s going to be asking us much about anything given I think most of your pals are scared of us, except maybe Olive— maybe— anyway, the point is we won’t tell anyone.”

“...You mind giving me a percentage of success, here? One’s been getting shit on for something I did, which I think he thinks he did. The other’s somebody who actually likes me, who’s been hurt pretty bad. But, uh, I realized I really like.”

Lucille holds up a finger. “Define “really like.” That’ll affect things.”

He rolls his eyes. “Really like. Nine out of ten on a scale.”

“Love?” Jules poses the question, a single word, with a tilt of his head and an infectiously nosy tone.

Leon sighs again, standing back up. “Sure. I didn’t think I was going to have to deal with it until I was somewhere better, to put it in other words.”

“Oh, you’re fucked.” Lucille shakes her head.

Jules nods, eyes shut sagely. “Positively fucked, Leon. Good luck out there.”

All the energy is sapped from Leon then and there. “That’s not what I asked for.”

“Ten,” Lucille says, affecting a near professorial voice. “Ten percent chance, in my professional opinion.”

Jules shrugs one shoulder. “I’ll be generous, you’ve got a fifteen percent chance. That’s all just calculation, though. Percentages mean nothing in the face of skill and gumption. Just don’t screw up, and you’ll be all good.”

Leon’s eyes shut and he places his hand against his face, palming against his nose and cheek for a moment, rubbing at one of his eyes before placing both arms back at his sides. “Thanks for the pep talk, you two.”

“Let us know if you need anyone to ruin your good mood again,” Jules says with a smile.

“We’re not going anywhere soon,” Lucille adds, leaning further back in her seat.

Leon nods, then heads out of the room. “I get the feeling.”

==============================================================

With Brie all patched up and fast asleep in one of the guest rooms, the three old-timers find themselves in the kitchen post-makeshift medical accommodation conversion. Roxanne rinses off her hands for the last time, wipes her forehead, and sighs deeply.

“Good lord. You wouldn’t mind breaking out the bourbon, Sam, would you?” she says, walking over to Azariah and practically falling into his chest.

The Hound chuckles, and takes no time to open a high cabinet, pull out a bottle of dark brown liquor, and pour everyone a glass. “Cheers,” he says, “to old times.”

Both Roxanne and Azariah look at one another for a moment before downing their drinks. It wasn’t entirely unrelated what he had said, but it was a little unexpected.

“I don’t remember much of this happening back in the old days,” Azariah mentions. “My memory goin’ bad?”

“Sometimes I forget where I parked my car. Or when I’m shoppin’, I’ll forget my grocery list. Maybe your head’s goin’ all mushy like mine,” Samson laughs. “In all fairness, though, this whole fiasco’s just reminded me of how things used to be. The excitement of it all. I know we weren’t out there doin’ this kinda stuff, but it’s got the same tune. The same feelin’ in my chest, ya’ know?”

“I would say that’s appropriate. I don’t think anyone within half a mile didn’t feel it in their chest when you pulled the trigger on that snake,” Roxanne chuckles.

Samson points his glass toward her. “And you haven’t changed one bit, neither. Always so literal, even after stitchin’ someone back together.”

“You want literal, you wait until that girl wakes back up. She’ll be the one driving you crazy.” She adjusts herself to not be leaning up against the Hare anymore, and holds out her glass for a refill.  “It’s funny. She finds me nearly dead, and immediately thinks to patch me up. She saved my life, you know. And now, I’ve returned the favor.”

Azariah grabs the bottle and pours her another. “How’s the leg, by the way? Last time we met, you were just gettin’ used to walkin’ again.”

“Wait, you’re missin’ a leg, Roxanne?” Samson asks, raising his eyebrows.

She pulls up on a portion of her dress to reveal the prosthetic foot, all dusty and banged up from the adventure. “A foot, and it’s doing quite fine. I feel I might need to wash it soon, however. I don’t think it’s meant to do the things I’ve put it through.”

“I was more referrin’ to you,” Azariah wraps an arm around her. “Oh, honey. It doesn’t hurt anymore, though I do get some of those phantom pains every now and then. Mainly when I’m feeling a little down, but these days, there’s been very little time to wallow in it.”

“I agree.”

“And how about your back? You seem to be standing taller than usual.” Roxanne gives the Hare a pat on the chest. “Has all the frolicking in the countryside helped straighten you out?”

“‘Straighten’ is a strong word, I think,” he replies. Samson cough-laughs in the background. “I’d say it just ‘helped me realize some things about myself’. And it wasn’t the countryside either, it was a visit from the chiropractor.”

Roxanne frowns. “The last time I checked, there aren’t any of those whack-jobs for miles.”

“You’re right, the one I met recently just died in a fiery explosion.”

The Fox’s mouth opens in disbelief. “No.”

“Yes, honey. That’s exactly what happened.”

“Can ya’ put a friend into the loop with these things, folks?” Samson adds, pouring himself another glass.

“You tell him,” Roxanne says, downing her own.

“So, y’know that guy who’s been chasin’ us?”

“Yeah,” Samson replies.

“Well, right before he died, he found us. And though we tried to get him off our trail, it wasn’t workin’. So, I decided to go round two with him.”

“And?” “I lost pretty bad. And he decided to pick me up with both his hands and try breakin’ me over his knee for good measure. Send a message to the others, you know?”

Samson practically barks with how hard he laughs. “And ya’ got back up, didn’t ya?! Fresh as ever?!”

“Havin’ rocks in your bones seems to help when it comes to that kinda stuff. Put the spring back in my spine.”

“Did ya’ give’im the flyin’ knee? Tell me ya’ knocked his lights out, Azariah.”

“Oh I gave him the works, alright. You could call it a total power grid failure, but that’d assume he had anythin’ more complex than a lightbulb up there anyways.”

“God,” Samson says, smiling like a fool. “What I wouldn’tve given to’ve seen that. Seein’ ya’ get at a pup like that would’ve been better than barbeque. Would’ve been just like old times.”

“I feel better than old times, Sam! He really did me a favor.”

“Are ya’ sayin’ you’d make a comeback in the ring?” he suggests.

“No, no, no,” Roxanne cuts the two off. “No more of this macho crap.”

She turns back to Azariah, and holds a finger up to his face. “You’re lucky we weren’t in Fusillade at the same time, mister. I swear, I would’ve dumped your ass then and there. I can’t believe you’d be so reckless. And at your age too!”

The Hare takes her hand in his own. “I thought we weren’t on?”

“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.”

“It was life or death. And I made the decision to fight for the former. And I’m still here, at the end of it all, so it ain’t like things were all that bad to begin with.”

“You aren’t acting like the man I knew back at the mine,” she says.

“You’re right, I’m standin’ much straighter than I was before,” he replies, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “It’s fine, honey.”

“Don’t do it again, or I’ll cut you open myself to see if those rocky bones of yours are as tough as they sound.” She pours herself another glass. “Also, Blondie’s still alive, in case you haven’t heard.”

“What?” Azariah’s ears twitch, and there’s a long, uncomfortable silence as he glances between her and Samson.

“You know our friend, Meat? Blondie’s turned into one of those Notuses too.”

“The person who burnt a couple footprints onto my nice wood floors?” Samson mentions, frowning. “They were pretty aloof for someone who causes property damage by walkin’.”

“They’d just been unconscious in your lawn, Samson. Don’t be so hard on them.” “Fair enough. I expect them ta’ help out with the repairs, though.”

“Sam, they’d just burn the planks.”

This hits the Hound quite hard, and he decides to take a swig directly from the bottle to help soften the blow. “Don’t mind me.”

She turns back to Azariah. “Yes, Blondie’s alive. And he’s got the same sort of control over fire magic that Meat does, so long as there’s some consistency in how the Notuses abilities’ are given.”

“So that means…”

“Yes, that means that the guy whose ass you kicked has gotten as much, if not more, of a ‘fix’ than you did.”

“That’s a pickle,” Samson adds.

After another quiet moment, Azariah smiles and says, “So we’ve got a tiebreaker on our hands?”

Roxanne pinches his arm. “You’re not fighting him again, you old bastard! He nearly burnt down Fusillade!” she half-yells.

“The boys’ve been sent out to help with’em,” Samson says. “There ain’t no business like the business of cleanup.”

“It’s that bad?” Azariah asks.

“Ohhhh, yeah. Entire buildings need to be torn down with how much damage that sucker did. Some roads need rippin’ up too, since the heat’s got’em all cracked an’ unsafe. Didn’t realize that was your guy, though. Tiebreaker indeed.”

Roxanne points a finger at the Hound, who chuckles. “Don’t encourage him!”

“What, it ain’t like I won’t be there cheerin’ him on, Roxy. An’ if things go wrong, I’ll be there to kill the bastard anyways. You will too, right?”

“I don’t like the sound of gambling with our lives so that you can have a rematch,” she grumbles.

“Well,” Azariah starts, hugging her from the side. “It’s probably gonna happen anyway, so we should think about what we’re gonna do in that situation.”

“I’ve got a boxin’ bell in my shed we could bring,” Samson adds.

==============================================================

    There’s a nervous energy on the back porch as Judith and Cherry settle down to sit on the step and Leon stands opposite, hands folded in front of himself and his expression dour. The air’s cool and the sky, like his expression, is cloudy. Finally, he raises one of his hands to them both. “Hey. There’s something I’ve been meaning to say. Especially to you, Judith. I’m sorry.”

Judith crosses her arms, then nods. “What, for ditching me back at the bar? You should be, shit. But whatever, I forgive you. It was one time.”

Cherry glances between them both and says, “I don’t think he’d call me out here if it were just about that, Judith.”

“Like there’s anything else to be said about you?”

A cleared throat. Leon watches as the two look to him again, this time with added attention as he again says, “I’m sorry. This is— it’s hard to get out, but now’s the best time. Remember what happened back on-site, when that drill blew up.”

“Hard to forget what Cherry did to me.” A pointed glare is leveled at Cherry, who simply sighs and bows his head.

Cherry mumbles, “Sorry.”

“Cherry, it wasn’t your fault.”

Both Cherry and Judith show some dumbstruck faces before the former lapses into the confusion and the latter into rage, with Judith tersely stating, “He took my fucking hand.”

Leon shakes his head. “No, I did. I fumbled adding that slag to the water supply. Added the whole fucking thing on accident. I’m amazed you didn’t see it, Cherry— and if you did, I appreciate you keeping quiet. You don’t need to worry too much.”

“No, I didn’t. I was distracted,” Cherry says softly, “by the new model and by Judith yelling at me.”

“Well,” Leon begins before Judith can ask why this conversation’s happening, it seemed damn well clear cut to her what happened, “either way, I was the one who fucked it. The stupid machine blew up because my fingers slipped.” One heavy hand reaches up and smooths his hair back as his eyes move from their position staring at the ground to searching their expressions. “And, I let Cherry take the fall. Seemed like the better option at the time. Compared to sticking my neck out over it, at least. Especially after we started talking more, Judith.”

She’s silent, expression far away. No anger’s there, something unexpected on Leon’s side of things, but there’s something else in its place. Confusion. The wheels are turning without a direction; a conflict of interests, maybe. It’s a bit new to her. At least anger’s a simple thing, easily directed, but this isn’t. It refuses.

“I wanted to tell you back at the bar. Those locals started getting up in our shit and I—”

Judith raises her hand. “Leon, stop. Please stop.”

He frowns. “I know it’s bad. I disappeared on you when those idiots showed up, but—”

“I asked you to stop,” she interrupts again. Her hand goes to her face during the silence, rubbing at each eye individually as she keeps her other arm tucked neatly against her body. “Don’t open your mouth. Just be quiet. You too Cherry. Just— fucking—” Her tone’s faltering with each word now. The semi-malicious, self-righteous anger she could normally muster isn’t clicking. There’s no lengthening of fangs or intensifying of the green in her eyes as she finally opens them again, locking gazes with Leon. There are small tears, pinpricks in the corners of her eyes, but no more than that. “Both of you just stay quiet. I need to go take a breather.”

She stands and ignores both men as they make half-hearted, lackluster gestures to get her to stay. By the time actual words come out of Leon’s mouth, “Judith, wait,” she’s disappeared right in front of them both.

Leon puts his hands to his face and grumbles a few curses beneath his breath before he turns and allows himself to drop into a spot beside the still dumbstruck Cherry with a heavy thud. “I fucked that up pretty bad, didn’t I? Shit.”

Cherry sets a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Actually, all things considered, I think that went far better than I expected it to. You know, you’re right, too. I probably would’ve tried to cover for you if I’d known. You two seem happy together.”

“Really? You’d really endure her bullshit for the sake of keeping us close? You’re pulling my chain.”

After scratching his chin, Cherry shrugs. “She didn’t scream at us. She didn’t call either of us idiots, or start getting really, really verbal. She also didn’t turn into a big wolf and kill us, which is definitely something she can do, if you’ll remember.”

Leon shakes his head. “She only does that when she’s stressed. And she doesn’t kill anyone.”

“I’m surprised she didn’t kill me over that Skitterbat thing. Man, I miss Skippy. Hey, do you think I could find one of those things closer to home? I bet Olive would know.”

“How can you joke around right now? You saw her.” Leon’s brow furrows. “She looked like she was having a crisis. She probably fucking hates me now.”

Cherry shakes his head. “I can joke because it’s, uh, really the only thing I can think to do right now. It’s relieving to know that I didn’t actually do anything wrong, but it also kinda sucks. I guess I’m just trying to soften the blow, a little. Get you going again, to try and keep the conversation going when she’s ready. And yes, Leon, she likes you. She doesn’t just hate you less than the rest of us, she likes you. She doesn’t hate us, not anymore I think. And neither do you. You like us too.”

A shallow sigh escapes Leon, who rubs his jaw. “Yeah. The old Hare’s a good listener you’re a good head to have, and Olive’s supportive. Even if she gets the shakes.”

“And you want to sleep with Judith.”

“I never said that.”

Cherry smiles. “Didn’t have to. Nobody with half a brain would admit to what you just did if you didn’t feel something really deep. Or, you know, just really intense. Sometimes it’s shallow and just doesn’t get any deeper but it makes you do things like buy something stupidly expensive from an autoshop because you want to have a brief conversation with the register guy who’s got these magical looking eyes…”

“You’re losing me here.”

“Sorry, I think I was too. The point is, while it’s nice to come clean about this sort of thing, this is far and away the sort of stuff you admit to when you’ve got nothing to lose or a lot to gain, and based on how you two act it just makes sense. It’s like putting a matching pair of puzzle pieces right next to one another, and telling me to solve.” Cherry pats his shoulder again. “So what, though? She’s obviously into you too.”

“That doesn’t solve the problem of her hating me, though. I’m past that everyone and their fucking mom can tell I’m into her. I’m surprised you don’t hate me! She’s treated you like shit this whole time all because I didn’t own up.”

A sigh enters the open air before Cherry shakes his head. “I used to feel pretty bad about it, yeah, and I’m kinda angry that you didn’t own up when I was getting put down for it. All that said, I haven’t had much time to really stew in it. I nearly broke my nose trying to kill someone who I thought was about to kill all of us. Inside that house, right now, is at least two people who tried to kill us and a third who decided against hauling us to be cut up like lab animals only because Roxanne got through to her. Plus, if what Olive told me is true, that man who we saw die is not only still alive, but apparently now has flaming superpowers, plus another ex-foreman is chasing us too.”

Saying this, Cherry takes Leon’s head by either side of it to force the Orc to look him in the eyes. “Being called an idiot by someone whose vocabulary is half swears stopped being a big deal for me somewhere around when I thought Azariah died. Leon, I’m a little mad about all of this, but God— think for a second, man.”

“Point taken.” Leon pulls his head back, then rubs the back of his neck. “So… The Judith question?”

“Let her take her time,” Cherry says. “If she forgives you, she forgives you. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t. It was an accident and she likes you, my money’s on forgiving you. Don’t push her, though. She has every right to be mad over getting hurt, but she doesn’t seem like she is.”

“Okay. Maybe you’re right. Or maybe she’ll toss me to the curb when this is all over.”

“Over?”

Leon’s brows raise. “Yeah, Cherry. Once this is over. When we get out of range of the company? When we’ve got no more reason to stick together. We’re probably gonna split once it’s safe to, right. What, did you think we were gonna be a forever unit?”

“I mean, a little, yeah. Maybe not Azariah since he needs to stick with Roxanne, but at least you three. And where will you go, Leon?”

“Honestly?” He blinks. “I was hoping Judith might help me there. Doesn’t seem too likely anymore.”

“Nowhere to go?”

Slowly, the Orc shakes his head.

Cherry smiles slightly. “There’s a nice couple of guest rooms in my dads’ house. Consider it an offer, if we get there and you’ve still got nowhere.”

“Thanks, Cherry. I appreciate it.” Leon smiles for a moment, then leans up and glances toward the backdoor. “Hope she’s alright.”

“Someone’s got it bad.”

“You feel like telling me more about magic eyes?”

Cherry laughs. “Alright, fine. I’m rooting for you, man.”

Chapter End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Four, Chapter Eight

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.”

“I heard that, jackass!”

==============================================================

    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.”

“No,” Meat replies, crossing their arms.

“Aw.”

Chapter End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Four, Chapter Ten

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

It’s cold on the roof. The breeze has picked up significantly, but Judith hardly minds, as her head has been placed firmly in a meat grinder on the finest setting.

It makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense at all. Leon’s not a coward. He’s never been a coward. There’s plenty of times that Judith can recall where he’s actively been the aggressor in fights. But he just admitted to something that made him look like the most cowardly person on the planet. By saying nothing, he let Cherry take the fall for something he didn’t do, he let the blame of her having to re-learn how to write, how to eat, how to wipe her own ass, go to that idiot instead.

And she was instantaneously on-board with it. She was so quick to jump down Cherry’s throat, in retrospect, you’d think she’d lost the keys to her house in his trachea. Day in, day out, she’d find herself getting angry at him. Every time she sat down to do something with a hand that wasn’t there, she was reminded of the person she thought had taken her hand from her. And she was ruthless. To a point where even Leon would defend him. And it was all completely misguided. She had verbally shit on Cherry for the past couple months all because of the truth that the person she now feels deeply for had never told her.

But, she can’t muster the anger. Towards either of them, really. Sure, there’s a tiny flame in the back of her throat that’s telling her to scream into the night sky. But, it feels like something’s been uncorked recently. There’s been a release of some kind that’s made her less quick to go berserk.

Maybe it’s him. Though, kickboxing with a true admittance of love for someone isn’t to be taken lightly. A lot of her thoughts have been about him, especially since they got to Pickman’s Hope. With all the downtime, it’s felt nice to be around him. Not just good, or neutral, as though they were the traveling partners from before. It’s been a genuinely good time to just hang around and talk about things. Even if he has been treading into introspective territory recently.

That’s probably why this is happening, isn’t it. Why he decided to come out and say it to her face, right now. It’s because he’s been contemplating things again. Reflecting on things. Which, she must admit, is something she hasn’t been doing much unless it was necessary. Or, unless it was relevant to the grudge she nursed against Cherry. In the latter case, she would make multiple mental notes whenever Cherry had fucked something up, and she would keep them in colour-coded case files against him whenever he had an argument. It would almost be impressive, if it weren’t making her feel so weird.

Is this the person she’s ended up being? A ball-busting blood-feuder? Something that feeds off the misery of someone who’s wronged her (or at least, that she’s perceived as wronged her)? The werewolf overseer with anger issues.

It’s just as that recruiter back at Shepherd Gemstone had profiled her. She didn’t realize it at the time, but he was entirely right to have put her in that specific place with that specific job. He saw what was inside of her, how the position would twist her into exactly what she needed to be. And it worked. She became that person for a long time, and only recently has she had to seriously reckon with that fact.

In a moment of clarity, she vomits up her dinner all over Samson’s front porch canopy and the front of her shirt and some of her hair and she has to struggle to not fall over on her hands into it.

But she won’t be that person anymore. She can’t be. It tastes wrong now.

What Leon did— she’d do the same, especially with how things escalated. Anybody would. It makes sense why he’s admitting to it. There’s something between them now, something that wants to be built.

Judith wipes off her mouth with her sleeve. She needs to level out; she needs a game plan. Something going forward. An agenda. A schedule. She understands that. She can do that.

She’s going to forgive him and place the next brick. That’s the smart thing to do. The right thing. And she’s also going to say sorry to Cherry, since that little— guy, didn’t do anything wrong. Hell, she might as well clean out the whole storage unit of dog-eared memories she has on him. Hope for forgiveness and move on weight-free. The plan is simple, and though it takes her a moment to get her legs stable again, she turns around to peek over the back porch.

Both Cherry and Leon have clearly been staring up there since she cleared her stomach, with varying degrees of genuine concern on their faces. She comes down in the span of a blink and stands before the two of them, just looking.

“Leon,” she starts, slowly turning her head toward him. “Can you come here?”

Visibly confused, he stands up from his seat. “Did you just puke?”

“Yeah, come here.”

“Jesus Judith, we need to get you a clean change of—” but before he can finish his sentence, he’s dragged toward Judith by the shirt, receiving easily one of the sloppiest, foulest kisses one can receive from a romantic interest ever recorded.

“I love you. And I forgive you,” she says after pulling away from him. Ignoring as he instinctively runs to the bathroom to scrub his tongue dry, she turns to Cherry. “And you.”

He holds his arms up in a cross. “Oh, no. I don’t know you like that, Judith. And you’ve just—”

“No, Cherry. I’m just sorry with you.”

“Sorry?”

“Yeah. I think I’d have to say it a thousand times with all the shit I’ve put you through, but I’m starting today. I’m sorry.”

He takes a moment to process this. A long moment, the kind that you’d expect would come along with a dial-up noise or a bad, distorted track of on-hold jazz. And at the end of that moment, he stands up from his seat as well, only to hesitate once again.

“You know, I’d hug you right now if I thought it wouldn’t ruin my clothes,” Cherry says. Instead, he extends a hand. “So I’ll settle for this.”

Without thinking, Judith shakes it. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep saying it. It’s okay.”

“Deal.”

Leon comes back into the room, pointing at Judith. “You need a shower. Or a bath. Or a hose down. You look terrible, god, I’m gonna have to hose off Sam’s roof aren’t I?”

“Shut up or I’ll kiss you again.”

==============================================================

The next five days are uncomfortably calm; each one passes without event, so improbably serene that only Cherry doesn’t notice, and that’s wholly because this sort of pleasant nothing is strikingly familiar. This is what those in Honeysett, as well as those around him now, in Pickman’s Hope, call normalcy.

Five days pass in which the lot of them aren’t attacked, they aren’t given any strange new revelations, and they aren’t forced to endure any new interpersonal reckonings. An actual, factual breather. A moment of respite among the strange and intense events that had been imposing themselves upon their lives, and a span of time allowing for so many to do the normal things normal people do.

In that time, dates occur. Normal dates, the ones where one takes their lover to eat, drink, and dance, where they watch a musical performance— admittedly a local and, while entirely pleasant, not entirely memorable set of people with instruments and a dream— or perhaps even a play, if they’re that set on having some nothing happen around them as their world shrinks and twists to be occupied only by those they bring and themselves. Such is the case for Leon and Judith, who take three of the five days to go on various dates to different venues starring performances they aren’t going to remember, all paid for from a small offshoot of the emergency funds Judith had so long ago partitioned out from their main funding. She currently calls this their “entertainment” budget, and it’s almost exclusively spent on the two’s drinks and various other small affections.

A markedly smaller amount of time is spent complaining between the two of them than is typical of their time together, but one can chalk that up to the grace period after the beginning of a relationship where everything is right with the world and the two are so flagrantly attempting to make up for some strange semblance of lost time— filled with the assumed ungodly saccharine and unironic platitudes one can drum up in the average hormonal teen diary— that people leave them alone due to a mysterious force that bats any would-be facade shatterers far, far away. Again, such is the case with Leon and Judith as, for once, the rest of the group give them their time and space. When they’re not out and about, they’re inside, curled up together, making snarky but not entirely malicious remarks about the world or exchanging fluff— or sucking face, from time to time.

It would be endearing if it weren’t almost always on the couch beside the recliner Jules has been more or less trapped in for the week, and while Lucille’s happy to provide her best friend company she’s not interested in watching an Orc and a Werewolf eat each other’s heads. So, the first day he’s stuck, alone, enduring the fact that the space he’s occupying is the only area inside the house where the two lovebirds aren’t going to be bothered by anyone else and aren’t bothering anyone, with Jules and Lucille being ruled out of the category of “people we actually mind bothering” due to their incredibly off-base calculations. Essentially, Leon’s rubbing their noses in it, and nobody’s about to try and stop him.

However, by day two Jules is at least able to hobble with Lucille somewhere else, leaving that room entirely to Judith and Leon whenever they’re at Samson’s.

Without much else to do, Jules and Lucille simply bum around the house and seek out brief, awkward conversation; aside from Brie, Meat, Samson, and Olive, few are all that receptive to the idea of a prolonged conversation with the two and generally avoid them, especially when, around the third day, they begin worrying when not only Blondie would strike, but when Piper would make another move.

The opinions are split; Brie has every intention to prepare and set up strategies for the inevitable attack, which has actually been on her mind since the moment she woke up all bandaged after her one-sided altercation with Piper. She spends the five days poring over maps of the town, even the blueprints of Samson’s house, and even takes professional advice from the two. After all, they were in the same boat as her.

Meat’s not particularly interested in long, drawn out conversations with people who’ve tried to kill them for a second time, but there’s at least some bonding over the events in Fusillade, and between them and Jules there are a good few jokes on the matter of the Carnevale. They know how to handle a fight and, despite suggestions to the contrary, find no reason to take advice from Jules or Lucille, and only offer advice when prodded by Brie to explain the fire magic, not under the assumption she’d try to use any but as fuel for her developing strategy to fight Blondie.

But, nevertheless, the conversation usually goes something like this—

“Is he here yet?” Meat asks, adjusting the straps on their ramshackle, brick-based shoewear. Constructed, of course, to make sure that they don’t singe any more holes into Samson’s nice hardwood floorboards.

“Is anything on fire yet?” Lucille replies.

“I am.”

“I mean the town. Last time he was around, he burnt down half of Fusillade.”

Jules interjects, “And, people around us started dying. Dunno about anyone else in town. Best bet would be to wait for the fire sirens to start going off.”

“Uh huh. Brie,” Meat turns to the recovering Detective, “when do you think he’ll get here?”

“In theory, he could be here already,” Brie says. “Simply waiting for us to drop our guard, so that he could make a move. But, that theory is a bit flimsy, as Blondie doesn’t seem to be the kind of murderer who would wait for an opportunity. He seems more akin to an opportunity maker.”

“And speaking of making opportunities,” Lucille starts, holding up a hand, “when are you going to tell us what your deal is, Meat?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Their head tilts and their shoulders roll back.

“The more we know about you the more we can expect to understand about Blondie. Far as we know, you two have the same powers. Can you blow shit up?”

“Yeah.”

Lucille frowns. “Okay, how?”

“Magic. You wouldn’t get it.”

“That’s not helpful.”

Jules raises his hand as well. “Listen, we don’t need to know how. Is there anything you think he could pull out his sleeve to fuck us over?”

Meat thinks about this for a moment. “No. If I’m around, I can cancel anything he does.”

“And what if you’re not around?”

“Don’t get hit.”

Jules snorts. “God, I’m sure you were fun to run jobs with back in the gang.”

“I’m just telling it like it is.”

“You think that’s why Leslie had it out for you?”

“I can’t remember. But it might be.” Meat cracks a slight smile. “I’m done talking about this. Let me know if anything comes up, Brie.”

==============================================================

Samson has an actual life to live filled with awkward administration, walks through the neighborhood, and talks with his old pals, so Jules and Lucille get precious little time with the wolfhound, though in the brief moments they converse it’s plain to them both that he most certainly understood their position. Being a former adventurer and a freelancer himself, otherwise known as being a mercenary, he knows well enough the temptations of the open road and a good weapon, the joys and pains of riding after the wind and letting it feed him. It’s a little poetic and uncomfortably nostalgic for the two, but through this they manage to at least draw out some level of strategy, as at their suggestion he takes to getting the local volunteers in the fire department to be on high alert for the time being. If there are going to be fires, the town will be prepared.

It’s then that the two are left with Olive for company, and by proxy, due to Azariah’s preoccupation with Roxanne and Samson, Cherry too.

After everything, Cherry can’t help but be overly helpful as Olive prods them with professional questions. Cherry asks if they need anything to drink, Olive asks how the two go and select their gear, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. It’s like babysitting, except neither Jules nor Lucille are getting paid for this in anything except some decently cooked meals that fail to satisfy. 

One day, while Cherry was working on the truck, Lucille decided to snoop around on a whim— nearly scaring the Techie into cracking his forehead on the underside of the dash.

“Shit, sorry,” she says, holding out an assisting hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he replies. Cherry wipes his forehead clean, sitting upright in the driver’s seat. “Uh, what’s up… Lou, uh.”

“Lucille. Just being nosy, that’s all.”

“Oh, alright. Thought you might’ve had some bad news, or something.”

Lucille frowns underneath her face wrappings. “Not right now. This is the junker you used to get out of Fusillade before us?”

“Sure is,” Cherry beams, “old girl had more spring in her step than I imagined. Whoever had her last took pretty dang good care of her.”

“Reminds me of some stuff I’d see back up north. Fewer sharp edges, though.”

“Up north? You mean—”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Holy shit,” he mumbles. “Wow, that’s crazy. I bet some of the machines you saw could tear up dirt like nothing else. Tundra-based mechanics are off the wall.”

Lucille finds herself raising a brow. “You know that the biofuel they invented was originally an execution tool?” When Cherry’s jaw hits the floor, she laughs, and continues, “Yeah. Back when New Bird was first getting formed, one of the nomad groups had come up with a recipe for fuel that’d burn hotter and faster than anything else you could scavenge normally. They’d use it to roast people in seconds. Now that they’ve been united, folks found out that it could still be used for racing.”

“Hell yeah it can. I’ve seen some guys’ machines hit nearly two-hundred while juiced on that stuff. God, that’s pretty messed up, though.”

She pats the Techie on the arm. “Everything up there has a bad history. Especially the people.”

“Did the races used to be to the death or something, too?! I mean, not to make you dig back up some bad memories or anything,” Cherry holds up his hands, “but considering that, like you said, there’s some bad stuff up there. And you mentioned pointy bits. I know you can put spikes on car rims and stuff to shred other tires. But I bet there’s plenty of ways to make a car more lethal than it is.”

“I never got into any of that crap,” she replies, leaning up against the chassis. “Yeah, the races used to be a form of competitive goodwill between gangs that could tolerate one another. It wasn’t much of a circuit, and people would always die in the process, but the spirit was there. If you wanna call it spirit. More like bloodlust and adrenaline.”

“And then, it turned to just the normal races once New Bird was founded, right? Well, they’re not normal races at all from what I’ve heard. Have you heard the stories too? About the machines they’d build for those races? And how far they’d go out? How many people’d show up to the events?” Cherry asks, eyes full of stars.

“Makes the spots out here look like go-kart rinks.”

“What I’d give to go out there and see one.”

“Hey, maybe you will someday. When the roads are safer, hopefully. That’s not a fun trip.” Lucille stops, scratches the top of her head, and then turns her gaze to the truck again. “Is this thing prepped to handle combat? If you’re driving over rough terrain, can someone reasonably stand inside and use a weapon without worrying about getting knocked off?”

Cherry’s lips purse as his mind drifts, and after gently running his hand against the vehicle he nods. “I think it’ll be fine unless we hit top speed, or other unrelated potential problems.”

“I’d appreciate some confirmation on possible problems. Anything in mind?”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I know it better than my house at this point.”

“I’m sure it’s handy.”

==============================================================

Roxanne well and should be as anxious as Brie over the eventual, seemingly inevitable arrival of Blondie and Piper, but she finds herself meaningfully distracted by her jackrabbit. Azariah, ever the charmer, refuses to let her stew in her anxiety and, like a recently rejuvenated yet still much older version of Leon and Judith’s sophomoric dates, the two head out and about to enjoy themselves while they can and when they aren’t pestering Samson. Dancing’s awkward, but the two manage; Azariah can overcompensate for her loss of limb by simply sweeping her off of them, twirling her around with a sort of strength he hasn’t shown her since before that first fight with the big white wolf.

“The longer I keep goin’, the harder it gets to act like my best nights are behind me.”

“Hey, that’s a good sign.” Samson smiles, standing on the front lawn with the old Hare, and after his sentence ends the both of them go silent. With one eye shut and the other narrowed, the hound gently lobs a horseshoe into position. It spins almost lovingly around the iron peg that they jammed into the turf an hour ago. “Yer best nights are ahead of you. Means things are lookin’ up, pal.”

Azariah snorts, tossing a horseshoe and landing it just on top of Samson’s. “That so? I thought the best years were back closer to when we spawned.”

“Nah, don’t believe the nostalgia. Your knees might not bend as good and your hands might not grip as tight, but I’ll tell you what, I don’t mind it none. Look around and tell me what ya see.”

Running his eyes along the yard, across gardens and a beaten up but cared for street, across houses about as uniform as the folks who live in them, Azariah sighs. “I see a lot. My eyes aren’t goin’ yet, Sam.”

“Come on now, that ain’t the point. Look at them folks. This is peace and community, Azariah. I might miss knocking skulls with you, and I might miss slaying Monsters with my old pals who’ve all gone and wandered into their own lives, but I wouldn’t give this up for another night as some pup with a fencepost for a sword. I might’ve had more reliable fingers, but that can take a back seat to some pumpkin wine and sweet tea. ‘Sides, we weren’t very good men in our youth. No point in missing that.”

“You were better’n me, that’s for sure,” the Hare mumbles. “Don’t know how you and Roxanne stood me for so long.”

“Don’t know, then again, I don’t know a lotta things. You an’ Rox on right now?”

“Think so, maybe. I think we might be on for good now, all considered. After what happened, I don’t think I could bring myself to leave her again, barrin’ certain possibilities.”

Samson turns. His eyebrows, heavy as they are, still manage to raise themselves in some kind of concern. “God, you’re really gonna try it, aren’t ya?”

“I’ll win.”

“You don’t sound certain. Y’know, I bet y’all could run. Just take Roxanne and get out of here. I’ll keep the kids safe.”

“They ain’t my kids.”

“You act like they are. Both of you do. Roxanne’s come close to throttling me over me fat-fingering that crowbar the gal was stuck with. I’m sure you’d take a swing if I even came close to harming a hair on any of their heads.”

Azariah rolls his shoulders, and he smiles. “Keep throwin’ horseshoes, old timer.”

Another soft ring of metal on metal; the horseshoe comes to rest on top of the previous two. “You don’t have to fight. Took me a lifetime of it to realize you don’t have to.”

“I understand. I ain’t doin’ it to prove anythin’ to anybody. I don’t have anythin’ to prove anymore, just folks to protect. If they run, I run. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they all get out alright.”

Samson laughs loud and hard, grinning as he pulls his belt loops a bit higher, adjusting his pants. “Well, be careful. Do anything reckless and you’re liable to break my heart. Who’ll I get to play mandolin with the boys during parties?”

“I’m not gettin’ the mandolin out ‘less you get the spoons.”

“Ain’t played spoons in years, Azariah. I graduated to washboard.”

Roxanne laughs behind them, and the two turn their heads to watch her settle into a chair on the front porch. “Are you two out here talking philosophy again?”

“Dog’s gotta howl,” Samson says. “Ain’t much to do but chew some fat and enjoy the taste. You two busy tomorrow?”

“Naw.” Azariah smiles at Roxanne, and she returns it tiredly. “I think she’s a mite danced out, so we’re probably just gonna spend tomorrow doin’ somethin’ low energy.”

She scoffs. “I’m not the magically infused one. If you’d like to drag him to something exhausting, go ahead, but he’s done a damn good job of running me ragged.” Still, despite the words, the tone is sweet.

Samson snuffles. “Aw hell, it’s just like the old days. I’m thinking I might be about to cry.”

“You’re about to lose at horseshoes,” Azariah points out. “Why’d you wanna know what we were doin’ tomorrow?”

“Billy wants to go fishing with some of the old heads. I think it’d be fun. You’re welcome to come, and so’s Roxanne, if you don’t think fishing is too intense for your bones?” Asking this, Samson’s gaze runs from Azariah to Roxanne, and his smile is too wide, too intense for either of them to watch for long without their own smiles threatening to split into grins.

“We’ll come,” Roxanne replies. “Of course, just make sure you buy an extra case of beer.”

==============================================================

On the final day, Piper and company are moving out of the deceased Mr. Thistle’s house, leaving it an empty hollow. They’re preparing to find a new base of operations, her and Kranner, with Sundae and Nancy in tow for negotiations, or “negotiations,” until Jack arrives, breathing heavy, from a long and winding recon patrol.

“I have new information, ma’am, but I don’t think you’re going to enjoy hearing it,” he says to her, standing straight again and dusting himself off.

“Give me the good news first.”

“On my way around town I found the place where Blondie’s been hiding.” With a heavy, metallic sigh he draws a finger to point out toward the southeast. “He was squatting in the woods just south of town.”

Piper’s eyebrows raise. “Was?”

Jack nods. “That’s where we get to what you don’t want to hear.”

It’s an hour or so until sundown on the fifth day, and everyone’s come back for dinner. That’s when the heavy freight truck fueling station down near the south end of town blows up.

Book 4 End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

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[empty-masks]

Book Four, Chapter Five

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

There’s no small amount of dedication needed to maintain a backyard the way that Samson Parrish does. Firstly, the yard has not been cleared of its trees. Normally, this would only be a seasonal problem, as the deciduous trees native to the Eternal Autumn usually only drop their leaves during certain periods of the year, but as the name might suggest, the Eternal Autumn has a unique environmental effect on the local forests that makes them drop leaves year-round, slowly but surely. Some say it’s the soil, some say it’s magic, but regardless of what it is— it’s a labour of love to keep a yard clear of leaf cover year-long. Sam’s yard is, as noted by Azariah as soon as they show up, almost completely clear of leaves and creeping underbrush in favour of some natural species of clover and moss that would normally make their home on the sides of rocks and trees. And while there is no lack of small boulders in the yard, there’s a sense that they’ve been moved to the edges of his property by the efforts of a couple large folks and a case of beer, rather than a backhoe.

    Nearest to his freshly painted split-level, Sam also keeps a rather impressive row of neatly trimmed perennial bushes and a well-loved vegetable garden, both marked off with simple iron fences. Heads of painted pumpkin and crimson cabbage poke their way through their thick foliage and vines, and the pink leaves of pigmentine carrots sprout feet above the soil they originate from, though the carrots haven’t been as good this season since he switched off his usual fertilizer, according to Sam.

This, with the well-washed grey brick, hickory wood porch, and the ambiance of a cool afternoon, sets quite an impression for the group as they gather around a picnic table to eat their first proper home cooked dinner in a good, long while. Charred painted pumpkin soup filled with veggies and a sprinkle of cured bacon— excepting in Azariah's serving—  alongside a fresh, local loaf of brown bread. Evening peeper toads have begun to sing in the distance, and during the course of the dinner, things almost feel normal between the six of them. It certainly feels normal for Sam.

“Now, I’m glad y’all are appreciative of the hospitality, but I believe it’s due time that you learn what Pickman’s Hope really all about,” he starts, raising his glass. “I’m gonna give y’all a little history lesson, so long as Azariah’s willin’ to let me venture forth uncensored.” He winks at the Hare, who gives him a brief nod. Then, he begins to weave his tale for everyone to hear. Everyone who’s willing to listen, anyways.

    In the beginning, when this place was still called Gutter’s Glade, it was about as peaceful as the town you see today. The bakery I got your bread from was there. The bar you showed up at was there too, just under a different name and management. Most importantly though, there were a lot more craftsmen around, see. Lots of jewelers, mystics, the kinds that’re attracted to shiny stuff that comes out of the ground. People like that would find Gutter’s Glade on their radar thanks to it being a mining town, but not a mining town as y’all know it— we were independent, and we cared for one another.

Everything was connected, and we all understood that so we looked out for one another’s backs. The artisans would teach the miners what to look for, how to crack geodes to damage the least amount of product. The miners would teach the artisans their methods of dowsing the ground for product, and would keep them updated on finds and prospects. Medical folk would work with the both of them to keep’em happy and healthy, and everyone else in town provided what they could to keep the gems flowin’. I remember days when guys would come up from the mine coughin’ up their lungs and full of soot and dust and completely empty-handed, no product to speak of. And even on those days when you could see how pathetic they felt, they were still taken care of by everyone around ‘em. In fact, one of my old friends who, well, passed away, had developed some kinda apothecarial gas that’d get into your lungs, clean ‘em out, and ‘bout thirty seconds later, it’d come right back out as black gunk. We’re still tryin’ to find out how she did it, but the point is, the town was dedicated to itself and we were dedicated to each other.

Now, while I spawned back in Kiln with Azariah and a few of our old buddies, I found myself makin’ a home in Gutter’s Glade soon after. I was never cut out to be anythin’ but a miner— I didn’t have any particularly useful technical skills, and my hands were too big for those tiny jeweler’s tools anyways. I took to it naturally, in a way. I swung picks around for a couple years, made myself known to the locals, and soon enough I was bein’ treated like family. It made me the man I am today to have had such dedicated people lookin’ out for me, and I don’t dare to think who I’d be without them.

Though, I didn’t stay with ‘em forever. Miners around this region know that there’s an untold number of caves sittin’ just below a certain footage in the stone, and that if you dig too deep, there’s a good chance you’ll wake up some beasties you didn’t know existed. Now, I’m gonna be frank here, this is somethin’ that happened pretty often. Guys would have to take their weapons down into the mines if they knew that they’d hit a deep vein. I was no exception to that rule! Back in the day I had a cheap sword that looked like it’d been a fence post in a former life, and I always took it with me on dives. 

And I did my fair share of Monster killin’. Skitterbears, a heap’a those mushroom things, a few of those boulder serpents, and near the end of my career, I had the displeasure of runnin’ into a Cave Shadow. If you’ve never heard of one, the first thing you should know is that they’re beasties basically made’a magic. They hide in the darkest spots of caves, and ambush ya’ when you’ve got yer’ hands busy. They barely even make sense’ta look at, all eyes and teeth and claws— and one decided to jump me while I was with an exploration party. Gave me a big nasty scar on my belly, but I killed the damn thing, and lemme tell ya’, the adrenaline kept me alive for days while the medics patched me together. I was ridin’ high on that and while I was bedridden, I decided that it was time to put down the pick and take up the sword for a living.

So, after I made a full recovery, I left to adventure on my own. I went beyond these mountains, headed west for fame and fortune. And though I found some of both, lookin’ back on it? I would say I had let my success go to my head. I was self-absorbed to a point where I’d given up on the people who’d saved my damn life, and all because I was obsessed with the idea of seein’ how far I could take my heroism. Maybe it’s the guilt talkin’ there, I dunno. I’ve yet to talk ‘bout that era of my life with my counselor.

But while I was gone, Gutter’s Glade was havin’ the life choked out of her. Somewhere along the line, one of the miners found themselves a plot of land near the foot of the mountains, called it the “big one”. Now, since we were a minin’ town, we attracted the attention of many mining conglomerates who wanted to move in and run shop in our stead. Most of them, we told to beat it. Emphasis on “most,” ‘cause this miner received a massive lump sum of cold, hard cash for the plot of land from, you guessed it, Shepherd Gemstone. And from there, things went downhill.

While I can’t give ya’ specifics since I wasn’t there while this was happening, I trust in my friends enough to give ya’ a summary. The company established itself by hiring off a bunch of our miners at a pretty penny, since they knew that the vein was going to pay back tenfold. From there, they installed foremen and company stores, which respectively completely alienated the rest of the miners from their pals, and began keepin’ the local businesses from their cash with their prices. It hardly took a year before the entire town was workin’ for Shepherd Gemstone, breakin’ their backs strippin’ those mountains of everything they were worth. Everyone, even those artisans who’d never been the blue collar types to begin with, had to grab a pick to survive. That company was fast, efficient, and real goddamn thorough in the way that it destroyed our lives and our land. It got to a point where even if we wanted to, tryin’ to go down into those mines again would cause cave-ins like we’d never seen the likes of prior. 

It was three years of adventuring before I came back to Gutter’s Glade. I had seen enough of my life flashin’ before my eyes, but as fate would have it, it wouldn’t be the last time it’d happen. I saw the life I once knew shattered into a thousand pieces, the people I loved stripped of their health, dignity, and freedom. And my old adventurin’ buddies, the people I’d suffered and strived for greatness with, saw it too.

It awoke somethin’ in me, somethin’ that I hadn’t even had while I was out there chasin’ the Dragon’s tail. I vowed that day to free that town from the company, even if it were to cost me my own life. And from then forth, I dedicated myself entirely to the organization and proliferation of the union that you saw runnin’ the town today.

Now, if you think I make it sound like a piece of cake, I don’t know what kinda cake you’ve been eatin’, cause I don’t think I’ve seen more misery in my entire life than that point there. I put my heart and soul into these people, and there were times where I was afraid that they didn’t have any left to give back. There were times where I had to put my body on the line just to relieve some of the fear that they had toward the foremen.

God, the first fight I got into with a foreman was a guy who they’d hired specifically ‘cause he was the unhinged type. A real sadist, the kind that you’d see and think that they picked up outta banditry work. He was beatin’ down one one of the miners real hard, and in response I knocked the everlovin’ shit outta him. I made that motherfucker eat his own goddamn teeth for breakfast, but I was lucky, since there weren’t any other foremen watching and I knew nobody present would speak a word about it. Not even him, since his pride was too hurt. Not long after the vindictive bastard tried to sneak a knife under my ribs while I was sleepin’, which didn’t work, and I ended up puttin’ him six feet under with the little number I carry on my hip.

Point is, whether by conversation, union pressure, or by force alone, we worked our way up the corporate ladder, dismantling each pawn on the way up. It took years, but by the time I was just startin’ to turn grey ‘round the chops we had forced the company to pull back entirely from the town. Their profit margins were in the red, and so they abandoned everything where it stood, movin’ on to wherever the fuck snakes like them move on to.

Buildings upon buildings of corporate supplies and spoils, ours for the takin’. Though they left a little product around, it wasn’t enough to sustain ourselves off— and so, we had to get creative with our reconstruction. We also abandoned those mountains, as we learned quickly that there was nothin’ left for us either. At first we tried to invest in breweries, since the valley tends toward cool, dark weather. But, brewin’ takes time, so we did everythin’ else we could to bring the town back on its feet.

Odd jobs for nearby towns, sellin’ and movin’ stuff made by the artisans who still knew how, doin’ a little protection work for passing-by caravans; we were the handymen of the ridges, and our plan B turned into our plan A by accident. After a certain point we were on-call anytime a neighboring town needed somethin’ built, somethin’ torn down, somethin’ reconstructed, designed, you name it. Money flowed in the direction of our blue-collar labor force, so we leaned into it and let it carry us wherever it led.

It led to us renaming the town; “Pickman’s Hope”, the name you know today, was what we agreed upon. We’ve helped Fusillade rebuild itself a dozen or so times since our independence, we’ve helped carve out the hills of Kiln for their expansion project, we’ve helped build the road from here to Honeysett and further. And while our brewin’ work’s only now startin’ to pick up some traction, we’ve got a nice, healthy community goin’ now, and that’s what matters the most.

And that’s how Pickman’s Hope came to be, folks. Don’t listen to the folks ‘round here who refer to me with these nice titles, they did this, all this, themselves. All it took was me showin’ them they could do it. The only reason I’m the head of anythin’ at the moment is ‘cause I’m old, and ‘cause I’m good at diplomacy, even though there’s plenty’a fresher spawns here who’re lookin’ like they’ll surpass me someday.

    “I’m surprised you didn’t tell ‘em more about your shotgun, Sam,” Azariah chuckles, having finished his soup. “Practically gnawed the rest of my ear off with that earlier.”

“It ain’t all THAT important to the story. But if you insist,” he says.

In one swift motion, the sawed-off shotgun is pulled out from its holster, and set gently on the picnic table. “She used to be a little longer in both directions, but I found that she was harder to carry ‘round. I’ve turned quite a few of those nasty foremen inside out with ‘er, and I’ve never found somethin’ I couldn’t handle with her in my hands.”

“She?” Judith asks, frowning.

“Don’t be disrespectful, now, Judith.”

“I was just making a comment.”

“You just ain’t human if you don’t attach a pet name to somethin’ you love. Ain’t that right, Charlene?”

“I guess I’m not human, then. I’ve never gendered my gear before.”

Sam lets out a hearty laugh. “Oh, I’m just pullin’ your chain, don’t you worry. ‘Sides I knew you weren’t human from the moment I saw you.” He points at his nose, sending a pang of realization toward Judith. “You got the werewolf smell whether you like it or not. Was worried too, since most of our werewolves don’t smell the same as anyone from Shepherd Gemstone.”

“Anyway,” he says, sliding his gun back into its holster. “I’m glad to have given y’all a little bit of history. I hope it means somethin’, considerin’ y’all are on the run from the same company we beat.” He stands up from his seat, bowl in hand. “If we did it, y’all can do it too. Remember that.”

==============================================================

“You’re a buzzkill, L. I think it would’ve been funny.”

“And I think the fact that I’m still awake is bad enough, Piper. Jules needs his rest, don’t aim for potholes.” Hypocritical, she knows, but Jules is really in a bad way even if he’s faster to recover than just about anyone when he’s had his fill. Lucille’s not in the mood to have to climb into the back of the car— again— to help fix the Vampire’s bandages after a particularly nasty bump or dip in the road just because Piper might get a kick out of jostling him.

Piper’s eyes roll, then settle back onto the road ahead, lit only by the now faint lamps at the head of her car. Her car, her car. It feels delightful to roll that around in her mind, settle on it for a while longer, and enjoy the smooth finish of the thought. She leans back a bit in her seat, easing on the gas. It’s long past being late and has breached into that strange territory where it’s beginning to become early, though the sunrise has some hours left before it claws its way over the horizon. It’s a long ride between Fusillade and Pickman’s Hope, but one somebody can make if they’re willing to take about most of their waking day to drive it, and Piper is nothing if not deeply and entirely dedicated to her work.

Lucille’s eyes, dark as the night itself, linger on Piper’s shoulders, drifting to her throat and then to the snake’s features. Her gaze narrows. Since the ride started, there’s been something eating at her, something about Piper she can’t place, and after a lengthy, engine-noise filled silence, she feels obligated to attempt to place it while she has the time.

This isn’t her Piper. Not the one she had spoken to uncomfortably often over the matter of stolen product back on site for some years during her tenure as head of security; no, this Piper is someone vastly different. It’s hard to notice, but this line of work leans heavy on information, and unless you’ve got someone to handle it, you either do it yourself or you die. She learned that lesson well enough on her way out of the frostbitten shithole she calls home, she learned it well during her traveling freelancer nights, her job as security head, and it seems she’s learning it all over again right now, in the passenger seat of this disgustingly lavish fuckmobile. Survival in a world of snap decisions and split second deaths depends upon power and honed senses, and if you don’t have one, pray you have the other.

Jules on his good nights is a powerhouse. Jules on his bad nights is a piece of cardboard recently soaked in rainwater. Lucille is always attentive, or at least believes herself to be. She’s attentive enough that, after a certain point, she begins to reach conclusions passively, without thinking, as the thoughts coalesce somewhere in the back of her skull, pooling close to where the base meets her spine, before they spring as fully formed ideas into the forefront. It’s a highly developed and effective collecting process that utilizes every scent; it’s that sixth sense that screams in the back of her mind when there’s enough external stimuli to tell her that, despite not seeing any direct signs of it, she is being followed by some monumentally skilled sneak. It’s what tells you you’re being watched. Her gut instinct, in time, has been honed to a razor’s edge. It’s what saved Jules when they first hauled up that corpse. It saved her on her way out of the frozen wastes. She thinks it might save her again, soon, but only if she’s right.

It’s rare she wants to be wrong. Much as she might complain about Piper, she’s not one to want to see her develop like this. The gloves would be a sign on anyone else, but she knows Piper to have been a mining foreman and a Weresnake, gloves with thick material leave little trace compared to bare hands but when one has claws and doesn’t wish to knick anybody, they’re practically a necessity unless you file often, a problem those with simple fingernails don’t run into. Largely it’s the coat, because she knows it.

She’d never really gotten all that chummy with the guy during his brief passes through, but she knows well enough that the coat belonged to Blondie at some point. Hard not to when she once had to endure the constant complaining Gilroy had in store when it comes to Blondie’s ideas regarding the structure of the whole operation top to bottom, especially when near the tail end of her time there many such ideas involved liquidating her own part of it. It’s not an easy coat to miss, it’s a custom job and it’s made to be wrapped around already large lycanthropes and hopefully survive a shift in the heat of battle. Aside from that, there’s an identifiable shape against the snake’s ribs— a weapon.

Piper’s tail shifts and runs against Lucille’s side before curling back behind the seat again. The driver smiles, offering a brief glance at her fangs alongside a sidelong look, the gold in her irises unsettlingly vivid amid the reflecting moonlight. Piper has some height on her, even sitting; she has to look up for her own dark eyes to drink in another change.

Posture, attitude, expression. Surprisingly, you learn to read people pretty well when you fight them for a living, just another set of information for her gut to digest. A person’s face can tell you when they’re about to punch you if you can really get it down pat, or it can tell a lot more. Piper reminds her, in this moment, of those idiots back north who wear their enthuse on their sleeve, or more aptly, on their faces.

The sun burned high in the sky behind cloud cover as Lucille wrapped her arms with rough leather straps, sitting in the back of a ramshackle pickup truck-sled monstrosity as it screamed across the ice. Half of her face was painted with vivid red, some crushed plant, as was what bits of her torso could be seen beneath patchwork leather and metal. Her feet were bare, but they were not cold.

Too recently had she stepped through the smoldering embers of burned tents, rendered to ash by the torches of crazed warriors, raiders and fiends. Those tents which were not crushed by the stampede of motor vehicle abominations were put to the flame by the wilder fighters on foot, those who’d leapt from their rides in pursuit of battle and plunder, taken by the throes of absolute and total war. Many of them wore less than her, painted from head to toe in a myriad of flaming colors, claiming that their flames would warm them so long as they were worn. She found no warmth in the paint, not like the fanatics did.

Across from her sat three other women and a couple men, all of whom also bore the paint and symbols of the gang, though unlike Lucille they were clawing at one another, screaming, laughing as they tossed around trophies from the latest excursion against a small sect of a larger rival gang. The trophies, when not stained by blood, were marked with blue smatterings and swirling symbols in contrast to her group’s sharper, geometric flame-based design ethic.

Between her feet sat a set of knives. Simple knives meant for tossing, they weren’t large or ornate, nor were they particularly expensive, but what drew her to them was the simple fact that they were still in a package marked with an actual brand. Like a cutlery set for throwing knives, though Lucille would not come to know what a cutlery set is until she headed down south.

Her hands balled into fists as she noticed the stares of her companions lingering dangerously on her prize, her lone and simple treasure. She had taken no trophies from her fights, taken no trinkets from the burnt tents, save for this single knife set. It was a set of six, marked with a title: “Crescent House — Daggerist Starter Kit.” A brand name. It did not confuse her, as some might think. It fascinated her. In this place if something had a name it was that of its creator, often in memoriam, so it was strange to see something named as such. After all, she’d never heard of anyone called “Crescent House.”

A man of chalky white skin and of wild hair, half-dyed with the red paint, grabbed the set from between Lucille’s legs. All the while he smiled, casting her only a passing glance, offering little but the derision one shows to someone unfortunate enough to be forced to give tithe. Though he was merely the single largest person on a single truck among a sea of such vehicles bearing the banner of their gang, a no-name like the rest of them, he held himself as the king of this tiny, metal realm, standing amidst his subjects as treads beneath them hauled it all alongside tens of similar machines, with many such similar men claiming many such familiar fantasies.

Lucille crushed his nose beneath the heel of her palm with a shout, pouncing upon him as she swung her leather-wrapped arms. The tall man went down, and she was on top, and the others were screaming with her, beating their sides, stomping their feet, the wind whipping around them as she continued to bring her hands down on him. They’re screaming words, but she heard none of them over those of her own, those of her normal mouth and the ungodly noises of that maw below her ribs as with every raising of her fists into the air it opened wide to let loose a battle yawp the likes of which none of her companions could have dared to match.

Her arms didn’t stop moving until she heard the whimpering admittance of submission, and the smug expression she so detested was ripped from his features by way of might, as all things were, as all things are.

Lucille blinks. Piper’s got that look, that “you owe this to me” look, the sort of entitled expression only backed up or put down by quick and decisive force. Her gut instinct is to strike her now, car crash be damned, but she’s been wrong about plenty lately. She had no clue Jules was working for the Carnevale, and even at this moment holds some reservations that he might start working for them again almost immediately after he recovers. Not to mention she hadn’t been able to predict any of what happened in Kiln, and Fusillade in near totality was an absolute shitshow. She’s been wrong a lot lately. She’s probably wrong right now.

“You’re staring, L.” Piper’s forked tongue slips between her fangs to extend the soft c in the shortening, a play to lighten the mood. It’s flagrant, as though taunting Lucille to question, to urge, to press and poke where she shouldn’t. It’s the rattle of a snake ready to bite, her guts scream. Kill her now, before she can take initiative.

Lucille settles with her head against the window, her arms wrapped around herself as though to shield her body from a chill far, far away. “The new coat looks good.”

“Thanks. It’s a Quilting Club custom piece, you know,” Piper replies.

Lucille’s head turns only slightly toward the dark, faintly moonlit dashboard. “Quilting Club? You can afford Quilting Club with this new job? Even Jules and I haven’t gotten a catalogue…”

“Hey, when you’re on the rise the major players take notice. Get on the ground level, invest in your big spenders. I didn’t buy it, instead just got it from the last guy, but that’s just being cost effective.” A laugh escapes the driver, but she calms herself quickly enough as her eyes drift along the road ahead. “Maybe sometime later on I can forward a letter of recommendation, but I don’t see you guys doing too many jobs that need this tier of gear in the near future.”

“I suppose you’re right, bounty hunting doesn’t need heavy ordnance. Usually just prep time and a decent execution.”

“Yeah.” Piper nods. “In my line of work we don’t only handle random miners, even if that’s my job right now.”

“Of course.” Lucille’s jaw refuses to settle. She needs to keep talking, but the words are awkward. Forcing her gut instinct down alone is enough to give her trouble, but the fact that it’s Piper doesn’t help. “Haircut?”

“Nope.” A grin is offered again. The smooth scales of Piper’s tail rub against Lucille’s hip once more, only to settle right back into position behind the driver’s seat as Jules turns over in the back, as if caught.

“This really isn’t the time to talk about this,” Lucille says, largely to herself.

“Just messing with you, L. Teasing.” Piper’s shoulders roll as she speaks, voice low. “I’m spoken for now anyway.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Seen the beautiful brunette on the big makeup signs down south?” Piper asks with raised brows, expectant.

“Yes,” Lucille admits. It’s hard not to considering they’ve been up for years. Makeup’s apparently big in cities as far as she can tell, but there are some things a bit of foundation really can’t make look nice. Aside from that, any man or woman interested in her, ignoring the snaggle of fangs she calls a mouth and the maw in her torso, probably isn’t the type to be enticed by the prettier, more human looking sorts. “Hard to miss, considering anytime you enter a big city around here they’re up everywhere. Really? What’s her name?”

“Janet Campbell, and she’s even better looking in person.” Piper nods in faux humility, her smile widening. “Nice place. Wonderful kids. Her boy’s really taken a shine to me, L. I might take him hunting one day, if she lets me, like my daddy used to take me out hunting. The driveway is great, and the backyard—”

Lucille clears her throat. “I didn’t ask about her kids or what she has, I asked about her. What’s she like?” There’s no hint of jealousy, really, it’s just curiosity. “Let’s talk, Piper. We haven’t talked in a long time.”

“What’s there to talk about?” The tail wraps a little more firmly around her seat. “She’s beautiful and caring, that’s fine enough. There’s nothing to talk about, L, that ship’s sailed, the offer’s off the table. I’m seeing somebody. A model.”

“I wasn’t trying my luck,” Lucille mumbles. “You don’t have to repeat yourself.”

“Look, Lucille, I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there looking to get into all of… That. Plenty. Lots of people who’d adore to sort out your icicle hellhole baggage. Just not me, of course, because I’m a bit busy getting all up in—”

“I said I get the point, Piper, I get it.” Lucille sits up, away from the window. “Don’t be an ass.”

“If I find any nice guys, any decent fighter types without the fear that they’re going to wake up bitten in half, I’ll send ‘em your way, promise. Well, if they’re pretty enough then Jules might get to them first. Women too, if I meet any good matches, I’ll send ‘em on over. If anything that might be the safer bet, what with how Jules—”

Lucille lightly but sharply punches Piper’s tail with a rumbling growl not from her mouth but from the maw beneath her clothes before saying, in no uncertain terms, “Do not finish that fucking sentence.”

The pain’s enough to cause Piper’s grip to jerk as she hisses, said jerk subsequently translating into a much larger, more dangerous jerk of the car’s trajectory, sending them dangerously close to the right edge of the road before she compensates and brings them back to the center of the right half as the soon to be conscious Jules tumbles into the floor of the car. “Alright, I won’t. Bitch,” she spits.

Jules raises himself with a groan, using only his left arm, as the two women lock eyes. He blinks, then points out ahead between the both of them. “Sign.”

It’s a big, well carved and well tended wooden sign off the side of the road, with large text lifted out of the carving and painted white for reflection’s sake: “PICKMAN’S HOPE.” Beneath it is the sweet and simple statement, “Welcome home.” On either side of these statements are carvings of wild roses, painted yellow, and plentiful local vegetables painted onto the flat space beside.

Piper and Lucille both collect themselves as Jules settles back into his spot behind them.

“They’re not gonna like us in there,” Jules mumbles from beneath his drooping mustache.

“Of course they aren’t, we’re pretty obviously not your run of the mill migrant workers. You’re too prissy, she looks like she’s ready to kill anybody in the room, and I like to dress for the job I want— which means I’m not going to bother with a disguise. It’s why we’re riding in now rather than later.” Piper straightens herself out, narrowing her eyes at the town far, far ahead. “There’s a Shepherd connection in here that’s been feeding information to us for years, apparently. I’ve got an address, that’s our new base for the time being. Don’t screw it up by starting any random fights in bars over that stupid hat of yours, Jules. Keep civvie casualties to a minimum, ‘kay?”

“You think we’re idiots.” Lucille scoffs.

“No, I know you’re idiots, but you’re my idiots. World of difference. Both of you get ready to get your shit out of the car when we get there, we have to get in fast.”

==============================================================

    AH, ONYX. I EXPECTED YOU TO REQUEST A VISIT EARLIER IN YOUR JOURNEY, BUT IT APPEARS AS THOUGH YOU HAVE BEEN DOING WELL FOR YOURSELF. HOW IS YOUR EGO?

Azariah, opening his eyes to the wall of fog before him, rubs his head and laughs. “Well, if I’m bein’ honest, on top of the world. What kinda question is that?”

ONE OF IMPORTANCE TO CITRINE, AS WE BOTH KNOW.

“You’re right.”

I KNOW. WHAT IS IT YOU NEED? the voice booms. The Hare can see something massive rotating into place from beyond the fog wall.

I’d like to know when I can expect this all to end, he thinks to himself. Things have been going a little too well for them recently, and while he’s enjoying himself, he can’t shake the feeling that it won’t last. They discovered both Judith and Leons’ powers, they got in and out of Fusillade without a hitch. Sam’s still alive and kicking, which is a great bonus, and the only person he’s worried about right now is Roxanne (even if she is one of the hardest people to kill he knows). As far as he can tell, he’s sleeping with the guy right now— things are sweet as candy, and as everyone knows, too much sugar causes problems.

I MUST APOLOGIZE, BUT I AM NOT A SEER, ONYX. I CANNOT TELL YOU YOUR FUTURE. the voice booms again, much to Azariah’s confusion. I UNDERSTAND YOUR SENSE OF DREAD, AS IT IS WHY I CHOSE YOU TO BEGIN WITH. BUT MAY I PROPOSE A QUESTION IN RETURN?

“Of course,” Azariah responds. “Ain’t like I’m gonna refuse you in your own… home?”

OFFICE. REGARDLESS. The shape shifts in the dark again. WHEN DO YOU WANT THIS HAPPINESS TO END, ONYX?

“Well, that’s easy. If I could, I’d want it to keep goin’ ‘til I drop.”

ARE YOU PREPARED TO FIGHT FOR THAT FUTURE?

“Depends.”

I MEAN WHAT I SAY. SO, I SHALL SAY IT AGAIN, IN THE CASE THAT YOU DID NOT UNDERSTAND— ARE YOU PREPARED TO FIGHT FOR YOUR HAPPINESS, ONYX? THERE IS ONE WAY FOR YOU TO SECURE IT, AND THAT IS FOR YOU TO ACT WHEN THE TIME COMES.

Azariah wants to answer right away, yes, of course yes, I’d do anything for it. But something stops him before his mouth can carry him away. It’s a feeling, an old, gripping feeling that had recently slipped away from his conscience. That fearful trap that he had built for himself, the idea that while he can’t stop things from getting worse, the best he can do is enjoy himself while he can in the now. It wants to pull his tongue back down his throat, wants to keep him close in its overwhelming feeling of resignation.

He knows it’s there, he knows it’s a demon of his own design. And for the first time in his life, he realizes just how pitiful it is. The fire inside him had been replaced with a skittering, cowering little beast of burden, willing to carry the weight of his sins so long as he didn’t dare light the flame again. And now that there’s fire once more in his belly, it begs with him, pleads him to just let the future go, as it’s out of his grasp anyways. Something he knows to not be true in the slightest.

The Hare looks back up at the fog wall. He can feel It staring at him, knowingly. It did this on purpose, didn’t It. It put these rocks in his bones for the sake of helping him kill this imp in his gut. All those cryptic messages, all that painful adventuring. It was out to test him, to see if he could make it through this. By god, he certainly did.

So, he folds his arms and looks back at It through the fog. “Yeah. I’m prepared to do anythin’.”

THAT IS GOOD TO HEAR, ONYX. I QUESTIONED WHETHER YOU’D BE ABLE TO OVERCOME YOUR CRACKS, IF I AM TO BE HONEST. BUT, YOU HAVE PROVEN YOURSELF ABLE TO FIX THEM YOURSELF, GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY.

“Opportunity is a pretty light term, considerin’ you single-handedly changed my life,” Azariah chuckles. “I’d say you handed me a one-way ticket to something new.”

THINK WHAT YOU PLEASE. KNOW THAT MY GIFT WAS SIMPLY THE NUDGE, AND NOT WHATEVER FOLLOWED.

“Landslides gotta start somewhere.”

It is silent for a moment. PERHAPS I SHOULD INVEST IN A BETTER ANALOGY. REALLY, IT WAS YOU WHO CRAFTED YOUR FUTURE, NOT I.

“I suppose so. Thank you, by the way. Is this somethin’ you do often?”

YOU ARE VERY WELCOME, ONYX. YES, THIS IS MY JOB. YOU WOULD BE SURPRISED AT HOW FEW BEINGS ON THIS PLANET GIVE EVEN A SIMPLE THANK-YOU FOR MY SERVICES. OF COURSE, DESPITE MY SERVICES NOT TECHNICALLY BEING FOR THEIR GAIN.

Is this thing like, an HR employee? he thinks to himself, without remembering who might be listening.

I AM NOT ENTIRELY CERTAIN WHAT “HR” MEANS, BUT I BELIEVE I HAVE ALREADY OVERSTEPPED MY BOUNDS IN THIS CONVERSATION. IT HAS BEEN GOOD TALKING WITH YOU, ONYX. I WISH YOU THE BEST IN YOUR CONTINUED JOURNEY.

“It’s been good talkin’ with you too, uh. What should I call you? I don’t think I ever got your name.”

THAT IS INFORMATION I SADLY CANNOT SHARE— BUT IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ANY BETTER, KNOW THAT YOU WOULD NOT BE CAPABLE OF HEARING IT WITHOUT SUFFERING A PARTICULARLY PAINFUL HEADACHE. OR, SO I HAVE HEARD.

Chapter End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Four, Chapter Two

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

“As your first act as hero of Fusillade,” Roxanne starts, guiding Meat toward the heavily burned but still intact Clothier’s shop. “We should get you something fireproof to wear.”

“My clothes were fireproof,” they respond.

“Not fireproof enough, clearly. Let’s ask whether there’s a specialist around. We can’t have you running around in nothing but a poncho, honey.”

Meat looks down at their body. Fit, but flat, mostly. Features don’t tend to stick around after being badly charred. “Why not?”

“Society, Meat. Clothing invites civility, familiarity. People will think you’re a Devil if you’re not wearing clothes.” She opens the door to the Clothier’s for them. “And don’t say that they’re right. You saved an entire town yesterday, and Monsters only do that on accident. Get your butt inside, please.”

    The shop itself had been mostly unharmed by the skirmish, with only the front windows suffering from some melted draft sealant and the brick looking a little more charred than usual. Most of the valuable product in the store was semi-fireproof anyways, so the main issue became apparent as soon as the pair walked in; staffing. Getting people to come to work a day after a disaster is hard enough, but when it’s a disaster that has a good chance of directly affecting the families and homes of everyone you employ, you had better be ready to do everything yourself.

And that’s exactly what the Clothier is having to do. His legs bound from station to station, mostly from the cash register to the fitting rooms, as people of all walks come to restock on cheap, temporary wear. It could be called a madhouse, if it weren’t for the fact that nobody’s mad or even particularly annoyed, just concerned for the health of the Clothier, who’s cherry-red in the face and significantly winded by the time Meat and Roxanne walk in.

When they walk in, too, the seas part for them. People gawk at Meat, which is something they were only just getting used to. But this time, it wasn’t for their appearance, no. It was for their accomplishments. They were the person that kept the other thing from burning down the town. They were the person that helped out the fire brigade once the other thing had left, they cleared the flames with a wave of their hands! And the other one, that fox lady with the peg leg, she was there too with the paramedics!

Meat is no longer something that goes thud in the night, they’re a town mascot! And though the positive light is encouraging, they can’t help but feel a little condescended toward when the Clothier, upon seeing them at the front door, shoos away his current customer and invites them over.

“Is there something you need, anything at all?” he pants, holding up a finger to the waiting customer. “You look like you could use something new, something fresh, all on the house of course, you saved my life and my livelihood, gosh it’s hot in here!” Roxanne cuts to the chase. “We’re flattered, but may you point us in the direction of some stronger fireproofing? Your poncho held up, but as you can see the rest didn’t.”

“Oh, well, you win some you lose some, of course, but let’s see, I know of a handful of fabric-makers in town who specialize in such a thing, I shall have their addresses and a recommendation for you in a moment, do not fret,” the Clothier says.

In a panicked motion, he stuffs the prior customer’s change into the paper bag containing their order, throws it over Meat and Roxannes’ heads, and ducks under the counter, scrambling for something to write with, and write on.

 For a few moments, light cursing can be heard as things are knocked over, dropped onto the floor, and whipped around before the Clothier shows his head again. Now that the components are in his hands, he starts, “Okay, here you are, wonderful, beautiful. The first of my colleagues is a spinner named Kinsley, she runs a beautiful, fantastic studio on Curio Road, so long as it’s still there, and she should have some finished pieces for you to choose from, and the second is named Merrick, who I love very dearly as one of my closest friends and business associates, as he supplies many of the fabrics you see here today, excepting his more specialty fabrics, which you can find in his wonderful studio off Warbler Boulevard, again, assuming those streets still exist after the destruction.”

He hands the slip of paper to Meat, continuing, “Send them my regards, and my apologies for not being able to aid with potential cleanup, as my shop has swamped me with work thanks to the extraneous situations my employees are in, and that once this is all over, we shall get lunch together sometime to catch up. Thank you for visiting, next customer please!”

 As the bell of the Clothier shop’s door rings behind them, they stop to look at one another.

“Poor guy,” Meat says.

“Oh, it’s just one day of busywork. I feel worse for his customers, to be frank. Can you imagine what he’s like when he’s not overworked to hell and back?”

“He seemed pretty scared when we last saw him.”

“Well, that’s because he was quite practically a hostage.”

“We were the ones captured.”

“Good point,” Roxanne chuckles, “Perhaps he didn’t want blood on the nice velvet floors back there.”

“I don’t think I have blood,” Meat responds.

“Well I do, and I say that we start on getting you some proper clothes.”

Roxanne looks down at the slip of paper, which shows the two addresses written in handwriting that could’ve been quite pretty, had it not been for the speed at which the pen was moving. Some of the points at which there would be decorative lines seem to have blended together with the main body of the text, which reminds Roxanne of when she’d make those bundles of sticky egg noodles back in way-back-when. “Is there someone you’d like to see first?”

“Is there one that’s closer?”

“There certainly is.”

Meat shrugs. “Let’s do that one, then.”

“Merrick’s shop it is, then.”

    After the complete bust that was Merrick’s store left them feeling worse for wear and slightly violated by the man’s voracious, desperate, all-consuming need to sell them something, anything at all, the pair find themselves in the dressing room of Kinsley’s studio. The owner of which, revealed to not be named Kinsely but rather Samantha by birth in a brief conversation, is much more lax. When the pair had first walked in, she had set up a chair next to a hole that had been burnt through the building, and was drinking a glass of some yellow, crushed-fruit juice lazily.

Most of the windows in the shop have been blown out, including those in the dressing room that Meat and Roxanne now stood in, but Kinsley had graciously taken the time to sweep up the broken glass into a remote corner before they entered.

And now that they were able to take in their options, Meat realizes that this is an incredibly different store from the Clothier’s outlet.

Everything was fit to be loose and flowing, with bright, contrasting colours and floral patterns galore. Neutral colours hardly seemed to exist unless they were melded into a piece’s palette, and the colour grey in particular didn’t seem to exist at all in the pieces they were presented with. And they were presented with a lot.

Roxanne couldn’t help but laugh as Meat rejected piece after piece. No shawls, since they restricted vision slightly, because Meat didn’t like the patterns, and because there’s an approximately zero percent chance of their skull-head getting sunburnt. No skirts or dresses, since they have a tendency to balloon up in the presence of hot air, which defeats the purpose of wearing anything to begin with. No scarves, no hats, no long-sleeve shirts, no long-sleeve pants. In fact, after about half an hour straight of trying on clothes, Kinsely knocks on the door to check in, asking whether they need anything in particular.

Exasperated, Meat says, “Yeah, do you have anything plain?”

After a few moments of silence, the Weaver responds, “I’ll be right back.”

Roxanne and Meat wait five minutes for another knock at the door, after which a pair of black canvas pants, red stripes down the sides of the legs, are held out for them to take.

“I found these in my apartment. I think I used to wear them before I owned this place. Still plenty fireproof,” Kinsley says.

Meat slips them on. Comfortable, waist-banded at the bottom, and matches with their poncho. “We’ll take them.”

    As the pair walks out into the open again, Roxanne asks, “Are you sure you didn’t want that sunflower-patterned dress? I think it would’ve paired great with your dragon-scale top. You would’ve looked absolutely adorable.”

“Dresses don’t work for me,” they respond, shaking out their legs.

“Whatever suits your tastes, dear.” She stretches out her arms, cracks her knuckles, and pulls her wallet out of her pocket. “How many crossbow bolts do you suppose a few hundred Tilt will get me?”

Meat cocks their head. “Why do you need them?”

“We are hunting a wolf, Meat.” “Oh.” They scratch their skull. “I’d say a dozen, maybe. I don’t remember the prices around here.”

“Any suppliers come to mind?”

“Mostly Carnevale-owned. Unless things have changed.” “Then I’ll go with Brie later today. Let’s get some food in us in the meantime.”

“I don’t eat, Roxanne.”

“More for me, then,” she says, leading them down the road.

==============================================================

“Azariah’s taking a while.”

“He’ll be fine, Leon. This place is practically his back yard, or some sentimental crap like that. What was it that he called it before?” Judith, her arms folded against the diner table, lets out a low huff.

“Gutter’s Glade. Before our time, back before it kicked Shepherd to the curb.” Leon rubs the back of his neck, directing his eyes down to the plates between the two of them. Upon his is a small bowl of soup, a local affair floating chunks of some kind of white meat in a disquietingly thick and almost syrupy broth, alongside bits of vegetable which were cut small enough that only color could hint at their true identity. Each spoonful takes effort to separate from the rest of the near gelatinous meal, which is only getting harder to spoon out as it cools.

Judith, meanwhile, has been picking at a local delicacy also; upon her plate is a small mountain of fried honey-potato peels, heavily spiced. Where most around her are taking to such food with their fingers, Judith is occasionally skewering a peel or three on a rather dull looking fork and sometimes popping them into her mouth. More often she’s simply poking at them to give an air of actual hunger, but she isn’t hungry, she’s nervous.

They’re both sitting together in a booth at a local diner and saloon that looks like it’s seen shinier, more active days, but that would be hard to believe considering that it’s actually rather bustling in there at the moment. Not twenty minutes ago many of the local businesses in Pickman’s Hope have gone either on break or have let their workers out for the day, and while there are several other places in town to get a heavy drink and a heavier meal, the Bleeding Scab also has several table-games to play, an area for gambling off to the side, and upstairs there were rooms to rent— by the hour— that just so happened to have folks that would come in and make sure you enjoyed that hour.

So, they’re surrounded by a large contingent of blue collars from different occupations, all of whom enjoyed the following pastimes: drinking, gambling, and sex. Being loud is a good number four, and Judith and Leon are counting on that to keep their conversations quiet while they wait for Azariah to return with the friend he’d claimed would help them.

Leon leans back in his seat, allowing his spoon to settle in the soup-gel. “You think that guy is even still here? For all he knows, his pal could be dead. We should be getting ready to lie low again.”

“Look,” Judith starts, setting her fork down to set her hand on top of one of Leon’s, “I’m happy to complain about this, from how shit that soup looks to how crap these potato peels taste, but let’s not start worrying yet.” It’s a lie, she’s already worrying, but it’d be worse if he starts too. At least if one of them isn’t nervous about everything happening there’s potential for the other to calm down, if they’re both freaking out they might as well just run.

“Ok.” Leon sighs. “Then let’s talk about the food, since I need something to distract myself. I think I could use my soup to grout bricks together.”

“Hah.” Judith smiles slightly. “Seems to me like they went and decided to give you a bowl of fertilizer with some old white meat tossed in.”

“It doesn’t taste bad, though. It’s nice once you get past the first couple bites.”

“You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they smack a couple packets of gelatin into the pot before serving. I’ve never seen a soup do that in my life.” She laughs.

Leon laughs too as he glances around. “Considering where we are,” he starts, testing to see if he can tip his bowl without the soup moving. “I’d say the gravity-defying food is normal. I think I hear somebody getting conceived upstairs.”

Judith snorts. “You said he joked about sleeping around?”

“Yeah. I didn’t believe him until he took us here. It’d be funnier if I didn’t know already.”

“Guess so. There’s something about that concept that fucks me up, though. Imagining Azariah as a young person now is like painting a swashbuckler over a cracked, wrinkled old canvas. He talks all this big shit about fighting assholes, sticking it to the man, and now? Hooking up with the folks he beats up. There’s gotta be some pathology there, right.” Judith’s tone turns to one of genuine musing. “Something something prey instinct, something something crossing wires. It’d be easier if he were just into feet.”

The Orc nearly chokes on his spoon. “Christ, warn me next time you’re gonna make a joke like that. If I died here I’d be put in the soup.”

Judith’s smile grows just enough that it reaches her eyes, adding a slight scrunch at each corner. “Not once they find out you’ve got rocks in your bones.”

Leon chuckles. “You sure? Meat’s meat, I bet I’d taste alright once you’ve given me a wash.”

The world’s a little quieter, at least in this booth. Her hand on his, her eyes on him, that smile, he’s obligated. It’s time to break the news, before this gets any worse for him. It needs to happen before anything can happen to them.

“Hey Judith,” he starts, the effort necessary to keep his voice level plain in his tone, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Judith blinks, and very suddenly she feels as though there’s an animal in a cage screaming in the back of her head. Her heart rate’s rising, she can feel the beat in her ears, and everything’s feeling a lot warmer around her. Nervous is bad. She doesn’t want to turn into a wolf monster right now, not when it seems so close. Or maybe it wasn’t that, there could be a million different things Leon might want to say to her, that he’s waited to tell her while they’re alone, eating together, without the others nearby. There are so many options for what that could be.

“I don’t know how to say this, but I’ll try anyway. You dealt with a lot of shit before we left. After that, we spent a lot of time together, and well…” His mouth opens and shuts without words for a brief time, and it refuses to come out. The drill exploded because of my fuckup, he wants to say, but it refuses.

She can feel her fangs getting a little too sharp for comfort, and she has to stop herself from biting her lip. They’re fangs now, her eyes are very, very green and she can feel every muscle in her body tensing like if he says one more goddamned thing she is going to start howling and tossing tables out of sheer adrenaline. “Leon—”

“‘Scuse me, you two, but uh,” interrupts a fellow in a heavy jumpsuit, the top tied around his waist, leaving him in a tank top. He’s a big man, some kind of avian like Olive but his feathers are white and his eyes are so black they might as well be all pupils. “Me and my pals were wondering if we might ask y’all a question?”

Behind the barn owl are several similarly built people, some Golems, a couple Anthros, and even some Orcs. One of them, a woman made of stone, leans over. “Bill, look, she’s missin’ a hand.”

One of the orc men behind them also speaks up, saying, “And he’s got no tusks! They match the description, Bill, holy cow, these’re them!”

Leon is anxious now. Bad enough someone recognizes Judith, but now they’re recognizing him. “Plenty of orcs lose their tusks,” he says, defensively. “We’re just trying to have something to eat.” His gaze travels to Judith.

She’s not having a good time, not in the slightest. He can feel that her nails have become claws because her hand is still on one of his and it feels like she’s starting to dig in. The group surrounding doesn’t step back, in fact Bill, the barn owl, actually steps closer.

“You match. A one-handed woman and a tuskless orc, and if what we’ve heard is to be believed, y’all came in with a hare. Which makes you Leon, and that makes her Judith. You know, it takes a lot of nerve to kill a foreman with an easily traceable weapon.”

“What?” Judith blinks, snapping out of her spiral. She’d heard the news, but there’s something about someone laying it out for her that’s exceedingly odd to hear.

“Yeah. Not to mention it was a big guy like they talked about in the reports. Looked him in the eye, put the barrel against his wolfy snout and blew him away like he was nothing.” Bill rises to an inordinate height, chest puffed out, before he raises a wing and turns to the entire diner. “A round for everybody, on me! We’ve got heroes in the house tonight, folks!”

Judith and Leon blink and let their jaws hang open just slightly, one as though he had something to say and the other out of simple shock. Without hesitation the entire place roared as the servers began carrying out large glasses of beer to each table. Several of the people behind Bill, a couple of the orcs and one of the golems, actually began singing some local drinking song and stomping their feet as though in celebration.

“Wait, who—” Judith starts, but is again interrupted as Bill picks her up alongside several of the other workers.

“AND THE BITCH DID IT WITH ONE HAND!” Screams the stone woman.

“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT SHE DID IT WITH ONE HAND!” Calls Bill.

Judith’s in the air, and now she’s not entirely scared but somewhat nervous at least, though she understands now she isn’t in any danger. She looks back toward the table, a look of pleading on her features for Leon to do something, but as her eyes find his seat she realizes— Leon’s not there.

She frowns, then looks toward the ceiling with a resigned sigh. Of course he’d run off. Of course.

She suffers through about another minute of being hoisted into the air by a platform of rough, calloused hands before the door to the diner opened, shut, and some deep baritone calls out, “And this is how you young’uns treat a lady when she arrives in our town?”

Not a moment sooner is Judith placed back on her feet and brushed off by that same set of hands that had been carrying her around barely seconds ago. As she settles onto her feet again, she realizes she’s been placed not back in her booth but directly in front of the voice, or at least its owner.

Beside him is Azariah, who’s grinning like an idiot with his hands in his pockets. The man himself is nearly as wide as he is tall, built like a brick fortress; he’s strong looking not in the way that someone with washboard abs is strong looking but a functional strong, like a bear or a bull, where it’s not cut. He’s a wolfhound, tall with a long, blunted muzzle and ears that flop to either side, all covered in graying fur that, at one point, had likely been a much darker gray, but had always been gray regardless. Around the end of his maw the fur’s longer, closer to silver, and almost styled into something that might be considered a small beard.

His upper body’s clad in a dress shirt with fine embroidery at the shoulders and cuffs, the imagery of animal skulls and yellow roses. The shirt itself, of course, is a light blue. Around his neck is a bolo tie, into which is set a smoothed out quartz stone, simple and white.

The man’s got a pair of denim shorts on, made to accommodate his digitigrade legs that terminate in dully clawed paws covered in the same fur as his head and hands. On his belt are two details that stand out to Judith. A belt buckle large enough to cover a normal man’s fist and then some in shining steel, with the words “STRAY DOG” emblazoned upon it— and between the two words, a wolf’s skull engraving, and then attached to his belt is a holster, in which resides what appears to her is one deeply cared for sawed-off shotgun.

“Your kid know it’s impolite to stare?” He asks with a chuckle, turning toward Azariah.

“She’s not my kid, Sam.”

“She might as well be, all the effort y’all put in to getting these young’uns up here.” The wolfhound turns to Judith again, then, and offers a toothy smile before getting one large arm around her shoulders. “Welcome to Pickman’s Hope, Judith. Now, Billy…”

The barn owl nods, and bows his head. “Sorry, Uncle Parrish. We were just happy to see ‘em.”

“Uncle?” Azariah laughs. “Sam, you don’t have any siblings!”

“I’m everybody’s uncle in this town, just like you’re everybody’s grandpa. Just remember, Bill, that folks gone through a lot by the time they get here— let ‘em rest before you go and start chanting about how they went and killed some corpo.”

“Sorry, Uncle Parrish.”

“Don’t be, y’all are good people. The round’s on me, send the check over to my place.”

Judith shifts uncomfortably as the people surrounding return to their merriment, her green eyes scanning the room in hopes of finding Leon again. When she still doesn’t see him, she lets out a low sigh, which prompts the man to pat her on the shoulder.

After that the three walk out, and Azariah says, “This is the man I was goin’ to see, Judith. Though, back in my day he was skinnier and didn’t wear any fancy embroidered shirts.”

“Name’s Sam, Samson Parrish, most pleased to meet you Judith. Now, don’t let them spoil you on this fine town. Pickman’s Hope’s a good place filled with good people, they’re just a little rough around the edges and a bit enthusiastic. Billy’s a good kid, just comes on strong. Hasn’t been in an actual fight with the corporate types before, thinks it’s all fun and games and guts and glory. We know different though, ain’t that right Azariah? Ain’t easy killing somebody.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask about that. You really believe that shit up here? I didn’t kill anyone that night.” Judith looks up to Samson, who by this point has pulled his hands back to fold them behind himself, occasionally raising them to wave to passers by who typically return the greeting with one of their own.

“Really now? Well, I wouldn’t put Shepherd past makin’ somethin’ up and pinnin’ it on some poor runaways to drive up the bounty. Know we’re here for you if you want to talk about it, though. This’s the place to help dispel those kinds’a rumours. Why, I remember the first time I pulled the trigger on somebody trying to kill me—”

“Sam, this ain’t the time.” Azariah nudges him with an elbow. “Judith, where’s Leon? Didn’t I explicitly tell you both not to leave the Bleedin’ Scab?”

“Oh, Leon.” She crosses her arms. “When the crowd picked me up and started chanting he disappeared. How reliable.”

Samson’s nose twitches and he licks his chops. “He get the goop?”

“Yeah?”

“Right behind us.”

With that, Azariah and Judith both turn on a dime, and behind them they see Leon, expression having sunk down some. “Sorry.”

Judith throws her arms up and lets out a frustrated snarl before turning and starting to walk again, only to stop a few steps away. “Where are we going? I want to stomp there.”

“I’m bringing y’all to my place, Ms. Judith, once we pick up your lil’ friends. Where’d you say those two were?”

Azariah straightens a bit. “Olive and Cherry are down at the mechanics’ guild or union or whatever the hell it’s called, gettin’ some stuff for the truck or somethin’ like that— and I’m quickly realizin’ that might’ve been a bad idea. We should go get them now.”

“You think?” Judith and Leon both snap, but rather than look at Azariah, Judith looks at Leon, who looks at the ground.

Samson laughs heartily, walking behind the three. “You’ve got a great eye for pals, Azariah. You know, on the way this reminds me of somethin’ from back when this place was called Gutter’s Glade…”

Chapter End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat

[empty-masks]

Book Five, Chapter Three

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

After getting himself aboard and slumping over against one of the truck bed’s walls, Azariah opens his mouth to try and quip about the situation, but the words come out three times fastforwarded, like what happens when you skip through a song to find a funny lyric you’d noticed. “Iwould’vebeenhereearlierbutadogchasedmeontheway back— oopsholdononesecond,” he says. He cracks his neck, runs his fingers along his lips, smacks them a couple times, then finally, turns back to the other folks in the truck bed. “Did someone fall out? Me an’ Meat nearly tripped over somebody’s body on the way past.”

Brie points to the happy couple in the corner adjacent. “They had taken care of someone particularly frightening behind us. I believe they shot him.”

“Looked like someone’d thrown him through a couple sheets of glass.”

“He was glass, Azariah,” Judith rolls her eyes.

“That’d explain it,” he says, yawning. “Now, if y’all excuse me, I need to pass out. My legs feel like they’re ‘bout to disconnect from my hips, and my heart feels like an overfilled water balloon.”

He attempts to put his feet up on Meat’s lap, as a little joke, but they have none of it, pushing him away and standing up behind Olive, who is still in the process of blocking bullets from her knees, albeit slowly, as though Sundae’s firing pattern hasn’t gotten any more accurate, it’s certainly gotten more cautious about the random angles she chooses to fire at.

“Do you need help?” they ask, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“That’d be nice, but I ain’t sure what you’d be able to do,” Olive starts, but upon seeing Meat’s hand conjuring a magical fireball like a toilet flushing in reverse, she decides to just say, “Okay, that looks like it’ll do the trick.”

Piper, half-transformed and having to keep her frustration at a simmer, lest she go berserk and crash the car, grows increasingly worried at the prospect of being hit back by their targets, especially since the flaming corpse and the Hare had passed them in the tunnels, hopped on to the back of the truck, and the former decided to set their hands on fire.

Sundae, on the other hand, is still having a time just firing off her revolver. She’s having such a time, in fact, that her hammer-pulling thumb has gotten quite tired, and she’s physically slowing down, even though her heart tells her to keep firing.

Or, it might not be her heart at all— there’s a part of her that knew instinctively that when she met Piper, it was going to be in her best interest to do the things she says, but only to the degree of a lackey. From the way that she addressed the four of them, to the way that she kicked an old man while he was down, instead of finishing the job then and there. She’s cruel, overconfident, and most importantly, cowardly. The last of which meaning she’ll take any opportunity to put herself over others to ensure they can’t hurt her.

So, the plan had been simple. The others can bust their asses for the jobs, but Sundae was going to have her cake and eat it too. She was going to do her job to the minimum, so that she could revel in the presence of someone like Piper getting absolutely livid beside her. And boy, is Sundae feeling the revelry at this point in time. What’s the bet that Piper ends up getting her pay docked for all this? Ends up getting chewed out by one of her superiors? The last guy didn’t think he had any superiors, but at least he had the balls to act the way he thought. Maybe she’ll even get demoted. Getting her fired would be bad, but having her as a lackey? Sundae’s very own evil, cynical, violent, and insecure lackey? A couple hits every now and then would be worth the trouble in the end.

As she reloads her revolver, grinning from the state of her headspace, she takes another punch to the shoulder, causing her to spill a full handful of revolver slugs onto the floor.

Piper slams the dashboard in frustration, causing it to shatter like the windshield did earlier. “Fuck! Fuck, god damnit, shit,” she says, her defilement of the car’s interior taking the wind out of whatever she was going to berate Sundae for.

“Pick it up, quick. Get back to shooting, idiot.”

“Of course, boss,” Sundae responds, leaning over in her chair. She takes her time sorting out shards of the windshield from the bits of brittle dashboard from the shiny brass casings of her rounds, and time is exactly what she needed to take, as a hand-sized fireball hits her car seat headrest, showering the cabin with flaming dust and cushioning.

She has to muffle a snicker as Piper hiss-screams in surprise, rapidly trying to staunch the setting fires with a free hand. Quickly, she gathers up the rest of her bullets (she knew where they were all along, the effect was to keep the pressure up on the snake) and helps her boss put out all the fire, even if it means leaning up against a seat that’s missing its headrest.

“It looks like you made somethin’ explode in there, Meat,” Olive comments, still bracing herself for any stray shots that their chasers could muster. “But I don’t think you hit the person who was shootin’ us.”

“Fine by me,” they say. With a glance, they notice that the Owl’s leg has been bandaged with one of Lucille’s sleeves. “You should take a break. I’ve got it from here.”

She looks up at them, narrowing her eyes. “I’m not movin’ until we’ve lost’em.”

“Couldn’t Brie just shoot them?”

“My last magazine was spent on Judith and Leon’s plan, Meat,” she comments, holding her semi-auto out for them to see. “And it’s quite difficult to hit anything when the platform we’re on is moving at such a speed, much less in the dark, and of course, when you’re afraid for your life.”

“And nobody else can help?”

Everyone else in the truck bed shrugs.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” they sigh. “I’m gonna end this, then.”

They take their position behind Olive, and begin to charge up a fireball with the intent of hitting the driver square in the jaw. If the one that had missed had caused so much pandemonium in the passenger seat, then who can tell what one in the driver seat can do.

But, the plan is interrupted by Roxanne knocking on the sliding glass door between the bed and the cab, opening it quickly, and calling out, “Everyone grab onto the hand-holds, please. Cherry’s about to speed up, and we don’t want anyone falling out. This includes you, Meat,” she says before sticking her head back in the cab, after seeing that the Notus hadn’t done what she had asked.

==============================================================

It’s a hectic moment inside of the truck’s cab, somehow more hectic than the mess outside with bullets still flying by between Sundae’s reloads and the number of people having to get good handholds in the wood and metal bed of the vehicle. Meat, for added measure out there, has to make sure they’re holding metal, and only the thick parts they can find, avoiding anything delicate as though the truck itself might have some parts mysteriously made from tissue paper.

In front, Cherry’s hands are gripping the steering wheel tight enough to make his forearms ache and both Jules and Roxanne are staring straight ahead of them. On the map’s a chasm crossing, one of the largest in the tunnels and one of the most efficient vehicular shortcuts made during the heyday of the Shepherd operation here; in its original construction it ramped up to a higher ledge on the other side and should lead right outside, which while it means the chase would then be on open road, a place where Cherry assures himself he could definitely beat the car behind him, there’s a new problem. Whatever bridge was there prior had collapsed.

There is, however, a solid meter or so of bridge jutting up and out from their side of the chasm, terminating there in ragged, jagged edges as though ruined by great claws— or perhaps just time, but that’s something Cherry doesn’t have to waste on something frivolous like the why or how of an old, old bridge having fallen in the past five years. What he has to worry about is the logistical danger of trying to make that jump.

As Jules searches Cherry’s features, a fear pools in the hollow of his stomach, right on top of the lackluster meal he’d had of the last of Davey’s mushrooms. “You’re actually going to jump it? Kid. Look, we’re beat, sometimes that’s that.”

“We are not beat,” Roxanne snarls back at the Vampire, but when she sees the ramp getting closer she frowns and glances toward the driver also. “Perhaps we could just stop and overpower them with the truck?”

Cherry shakes his head. It’s hard to feel their voices in the thrum and thrill of the metal around him, the way the frame’s rattling and the engine’s roaring, the give and take of the wheel his fingers are curled around. His eyes don’t leave the ramp, but his mouth moves to offer, “We might lose people that way. We can do this.”

“We’re gonna lose all of us this way.” Jules’ frown grows deeper set in his face. “And here I go dying. I should—”

“We can do this,” Cherry cuts him off. “Everyone’s holding on. I was going to save this for any open road chase we might have, but we’ve got this. Besides, it’s like everyone’s forgot I’ve got magic.”

“Magic that allows you to take things apart, Cherry,” Roxanne points out, but pats his shoulder anyway with a resigned sigh. “You aren’t going to take the car apart, are you?”

Cherry’s right hand leaves the steering wheel to pick an object up off the dashboard; in his hand and against the wheel he holds a simple switch wired into the truck, which he rigged himself during the installation of that little gift he’d gotten in Pickman’s Hope. It’s a handle with a button on top, and from the bottom runs a simple wire into the machine, connected to the payload, the can of Pounder Nitrous.

He’s direly hoping that after all the checks and re-checks, after all the mechanical considerations, alterations, and nights spent poring over this engine like a surgeon, that he hasn’t forgotten something. Every single inch of this truck is rendered perfectly inside of his skull, vibrant and beautiful in its dirty, rust-bait junkheap way. The pedal beneath him is pressed near flat to the metal floor and the truck’s screaming to its top speed, setting the vehicle to rattle and screech between its joints, scraping metal on metal with the speed and shrill tones of a vengeful spirit.

Jules and Roxanne hold onto their seats in a literal sense. In the back everyone else does the same, but it’s only once an overly cautious Lucille looks ahead of the truck that she realizes what’s going to happen. “Hold on even tighter,” she says to the rest of them. “I think we’re about to jump the gap.”

Azariah’s still half-wheezing when he holds up a hand and tries to shout, “Kick it, Cherry!” And it does get out, at least a little, though he’s left sputtering and clutching not only the side of the truck bed but also his literal side.

As the truck beneath them accelerates to its top speed, they’re all shaking hard and watching as Piper’s car is losing ground, falling behind.

Sundae scowls and takes a few shots lower, attempting to hit the truck’s tires before she’s smacked with a bronze tail. “What the fuck was that for?” She screams. “I’m trying to win!”

“And have that truck kill us at the same time? Wreck while we’re both gunning it inside a cave?” One of Piper’s hands slams against the dashboard, balled into a fist. “Fucking useless trash— the plating’s slowing us down!”

“Do you expect me to do something about it? Crap, they’re still speeding up, they’re gonna crash in the gorge ahead at this rate.”

Piper scoffs. “Let ‘em. Anything worth keeping’ll survive the crash.”

“But that’s gonna kill them—”

“We can dig their bones out of the wreckage afterward. We can go find Jack and Nancy, those morons.”

Cherry’s thumb rubs the button, a nice, shiny red one, as his fingers curl around both the right side of the steering wheel and the switch handle. His brain feeds him images of straightaways and tight corners, an open road and a cloudy sky, somewhere to go, to drive, to fly. The world is silent around him as even the rattling and roaring of the truck goes quiet and all he can hear is his own heartbeat and the soft click as he pushes his thumb down on the switch.

A click and a soft hiss, something new being fed into the beast’s organs, life itself. Nothing so pure has touched this engine in a long, long time and it’s almost forgotten the taste of this special flame, burning bright and furious in the dark, longing to abandon the road and chase the sky. The old monster gives its all as it powers beyond itself, rumbling like thunder and speeding like lightning toward the ramp and then off of it, sending itself upward, angling like a shark breaching the water, pointing its blocky nose and roaring maw toward the higher peak.

The animal’s done its part, now comes the driver’s. Cherry hasn’t done it for something this big before, and all his practice hasn’t explicitly been about lifting, mostly figuring and reconfiguring and, even more so, deconstruction. His brow furrows and every muscle in his body tenses at once as, in his mind, he focuses on the whole of the truck, grasping with his mind at every dip and curve of the metal, more familiar to him now than even his own fathers’ faces, because it has to be. If it isn’t the most detailed thing in his mind he’ll lose his grip and they’ll fly into the chasm below.

His body wants to rip apart inch by inch, bone by bone and muscle by muscle. Every tendon wants to snap and his brain itself wants to become a ball of lightning. Luckily enough, his bones are made of rock now. They couldn’t come apart now even if he wanted them to. It’s an anchor of sorts as he feels, physically, like the amount of force he’s exerting is going to make him explode.

His mind is undergoing a similar duress as he takes it upon himself to perform a telekinetic deadlift, doing his best to make sure that the truck goes beyond the peak of the typical arc, having to essentially cancel out the factor gravity plays in this vehicle’s movement. In a single instance it’s like he’s trying to drag the car up with his bare hands, at the same time pressing his shoulders against a ceiling he cannot see pushing him down.

Gravity, wind resistance, friction, these are all just hands attempting to push the truck away from the further ledge. They’re arms of enemies, locking with him as he raises it, canceling them out. He’s taking the hits and suffering their forces as the truck does not.

Piper’s car screeches to a fast stop a meter or so away from the bridge-ramp itself and the two women inside stare, wide eyed and infuriated, confused, as they watch a Stallion Q “Mountain Screamer” model truck, half a step from the grave, fly. Every person in the truck bed is holding on for their lives, screaming, some laughing, some crying. The two watch as it flies in a perfect upward arc up to the higher ledge and over it, where it lands and continues on a beeline for the exit.

Roxanne and Jules are laughing wildly inside the cab, everyone is in the back too save for Brie, Meat, and Judith, the first two simply glad they're alive and the third halfway to transforming in Leon’s arms from the stress while he goes straight from laughing into a coughing fit.

The Fox slaps Cherry on the shoulder and grins over at him, shouting, “You’re incredible, Cherry. Even if you did quite nearly kill us all.” Her smile doesn’t last long, though, as they make their way down the tunnels and toward what appears to be natural light.

Cherry, glancing at her, smiles. Both of his eyes are bloodshot, and when he opens his mouth to speak he has to clear his nose, from which discolored blood punches out. “You really think so?”

Jules blinks. “Just to let you know, Rox, I don’t know how to drive. Just saying.”

“I’m fine, I’ve still got it. Why? Something wrong?”

Jules and Roxanne both shake their heads before she says, softly, “Eyes on the road, Cherry. We’ll worry about you when we’re safe.”

Brie looks down behind the truck behind them, then sighs. “Do you think we really escaped?”

“We didn’t escape, we’re lucky. They screwed up.” Meat’s settled beside her, rubbing their neck to crack it. “Not sure if we’ve seen the last of that asshole, though.”

Brie shrugs. “All things considered, I am sure that we at least have some time, or a head start. Besides, I am out of bullets.”

“Miffed you don’t get to put one between Piper’s eyes?”

“No. I do not like her, but I am not inclined to mourn not getting to shoot her. I am nervous about something else entirely.”

“Blondie somehow coming back again?” Meat’s head tilts.

Brie shakes her head. “We left my car in Pickman’s Hope.”

“Oh.”

==============================================================

So many eyes. So many arms, so many claws, all reaching and ripping and clawing. And they go where they please, too— Blondie would rip one of them off, only for them to reappear somewhere on the Cave Shadow’s body a few seconds later, fending off one of the other two idiots who’re chasing him. It was all far too much to focus on. After getting pummeled and clawed and scraped from every angle imaginable, turning his brain into mush as he waited for his turn to fight back, he realized that he just had to muscle through the pain to hit it while it’s hitting him. And so, that’s what he did.

But as he fought, he began to feel a pulling. As though the thing was sinking hooks into his mind and slowly but surely tugging them in different directions. It would get worse with every slice taken out of him, and every time he’d try to conjure up some kind of flame to make some space, the fire in brain would start to get stomped out. And it was tiring. More tiring than anything he had ever imagined a fight could be. He was fighting infinitely regenerating sawblades, a box of mental fishhooks, and a magic-quelling, fire-retardant boot at once, and it wore him down better than his coat ever did, back when he wore it.

And the thing looked at him. Though the Cave Shadow isn’t a Monster known for its relative intelligence, this one, towering in comparison to even Blondie, had a devilish focus to its eyes that made him want to tuck his tail between his legs (the burnt stub it is), and hunker down into an emotional cage. It would look at the three of them simultaneously, sliding its eyes up and down its body instead of moving its pupils, collecting them and scattering them where appropriate. They were nearly impossible to hit, but when Blondie managed to get a hold of one, it simply closed a shadowy lid, and dissipated back into the black cloud that the Monster calls a body.

But, it had a weakness. Everything has a weakness, and Blondie knew that he’d find it eventually. Even though the assault the thing was harboring on him was brutal and aggressive, he saw that it only ever liked to keep a certain distance, pressuring its prey into corners to be chopped apart. And out of him, the tin man, and the crazy person with the shotgun, he was the one it focused on the most. So, in a half-enraged effort to stop himself from being sliced to pieces, he leaped forward into its body.

It was as though he had entered a dimension of death. The floor underneath him was a swirling shadowy purple, and in the center of the room, there was a spine running up the length of the Monster. And though he didn’t have much time to take in the scenery, as he could feel it writhing and screeching and turning its eyes and claws inward to locate the infection, he knew that as he began to tear chalky chunks out of its one internal weakness, that it was too familiar for comfort.

Cave Shadows do not stop growing in their lifetime, and they do not die of old age. The Magic that holds them together is unknowable to most, and entirely foreign to those Monster Folk who understand their own magical attunements. They chop and they slice and they will kill entire groups of unprepared adventurers without remorse, but they have never once been observed as feeding, as their eyes are capable of uncovering even the most well-hidden of investigations. 

But, the bodies always go missing. Only shredded rags (that were once clothing or armour), chipped, bent, or cracked weapons, and ruined equipment remain at the sites of attack. And of course, the Cave Shadow is always lurking right around the corner from these sites, as they appear to understand their prey’s natural curiosity.

They get bigger with every kill, the bodies go missing, and there’s no telling what Magic makes them whole.

As Blondie ripped another chunk out of the Cave Shadow’s spine, he crushed it in his paws, noting the presence of a Humanoid Skull. Another chunk, this time he noted a handful of ribs, leg-bones and arm-bones and hints of finger-bones, all calcified together into a grisly, limestone-like substance. He didn’t have time to classify everything he saw, or really even consider it— he saw a structure that he could grasp, that he could work at, and so, he did.

But the Monster fought back from the inside. As it screeched in pain from Blondie’s efforts to survive, it pulled more and more of its limbs into its body to hack at him. It shrieked and shook with every corpse liberated from its structure, and its attempts to stop him grew more frantic, more desperate.

He could feel the hooks in his mind begin to loosen, he could feel the fire begin to scorch the boot that stomped it. Even though he was certain it wasn’t the same, he felt something like a burning adrenaline surge through his body. It was hurting. The same way that the Wyrm, the one who was so confident, so sure of itself up until the moment where he had found a gap in its armour, hurt. It was crying in pain, screaming for the pain to stop as it flailed at him while he ripped its support out from under it, chunk by dusty chunk.

But it didn’t beg. And it didn’t ask for forgiveness. It was more like an animal, by the time he had torn through the bone and reached its sight-warping core. He could feel it wanting to run as he wrapped his claws around the center of the spine, wanting to hide from him as he began to pull at its abyssal power source. And in its dying moments, Blondie heard it release one last shriek of intense pain before he felt its core explode in his hands, and the spine that reached so tall into the darkness began to fall, like a beautiful, twisted house of cards.

And in that moment, he began to laugh. The veil of darkness dissipated around him, the hooks released his mind, and back in the real world, he was left in the blue brightness of the grotto, standing in a pile of stony death and wispy, purple remnants of his prey floating through the air. He laughed at the world’s attempt to put him down again, he laughed at the pain that the Monster felt before having lost its pitiful life. He laughed because he was stronger, because he was tougher than anything else in this world. No Dragon, no abomination, nobody could stop him.

His high was interrupted by buckshot hitting the back of his head. The other two were still alive. And they wanted him dead. And when he began to walk towards them, corpses cracking and turning to dust beneath his feet, he realizes that his arm, the one that had dealt the killing blow to the Cave Shadow, had been turned to a blackened, purplish twig from the shoulder down— and that it was nothing but a stump from the elbow down. In its last stand, it had taken one of Blondie’s tools for itself, understanding its power.

It was like being spit on by someone you were holding at gunpoint. And that made him angry. It made him very, very angry.

It takes them a while of frustrated driving through the silence that hangs in the cave system, but when they find the grotto, it’s not hard to tell that it’s the right spot. There’s only one thing left standing in the bioluminescence, and when Sundae is ordered out of the sedan to investigate, she wonders whether it’s going to be something that kills her. After all, the things that lurk in these caves are known to be vicious.

But, she bumps into something on the floor. And when she takes a closer look, she finds it to be Nancy. Scorched, bleeding, broken, and unconscious, but still breathing. She’s missing her shotgun, her clothes have been torn to shreds, and it looks as though she’s knocking on death’s door.

“What’s the holdup, Sundae?!” Piper calls out from the car.

“Can you see Jack?” she asks, hoisting the mercenary up onto her shoulder and working her way back toward the vehicle.

“What are you talking about? I want you to shoot that thing,” Piper yells, motioning violently toward the shape in the center of the room, “so we can go home already!” “Boss, these two aren’t going to live if we don’t—”

Piper blares the horn of the sedan, causing the thing to rear what appears to be its head toward the two of them. “Get on it, you fucking idiot!”

In a moment of horror, Sundae is forced to set Nancy’s body down on the stone, pull out her revolver, and begin firing at the beast, who though is attempting to make its way toward them, appears to be limping, using one of its arms to keep itself from falling over. The bullets don’t seem to do too much, only causing it to flinch here and there where they manage to hit. And Sundae herself is actually a crack shot with her cannon, it was taking effort back when they were actively chasing the fugitives to miss as much as she did.

But it didn’t stop. And as it got closer, the two of them began to realize what a state it was in. 

Starting from the top, its face brings to mind what happens when someone gets their skin peeled off, but what’s left underneath is a bright orange mass of glowing, pulsating magic. Even its maw, missing teeth and slightly broken in one direction, remind the onlookers of looking into a miniature sun, contained within the beast’s mouth.

Its body, if one could call it that, is disfigured beyond use. Deep cuts crisscross its chest, legs, and remaining arm, revealing more of the glowing, oozing orange substance to open air. The twig that’s left of its right arm seems still able to be moved, and the purple shadows that consumed it have begun to work its way up its shoulder, intent with taking over the entire torso. 

Except, of course, for the shotgun in its chest. A hole has been carved out where its breastbone should be, by unknown means, and Nancy’s shotgun, barrel angled up toward the thing’s spine, is wedged firmly into the cavity. That wound instead drips slowly with the same bright orange substance found elsewhere, leaving a trail of glowing material as it drags itself toward Piper and Sundae.

It looks dangerous, sure. Monsters always look dangerous, even when they’re hurt. The fact that it looks like it has a sun inside its body contributes heavily to that feeling. It also looks like it can’t feel a thing with the way it’s determined to cross the room, no matter how long it takes to drag itself. But, Piper knows better. It’s been beaten. It just doesn’t know it yet.

And in the cab of the car, Piper considers to herself what to do. Those miners escaped, but she can catch them later (hopefully without the intervention of these absolutely useless mercenaries). And speaking of the mercenaries, one of them died. At which point she decides that she’s going to leave the old fucker’s corpse where it lies, since heading back home with a body in the trunk would not be a fun thing to report. Especially since it’d have to be HER car, too. But, showing up at HQ empty-handed would be horrible for business. No bounty to claim, no bodies to show, no updates but “They escaped again Boss, so sorry Boss, I’ll have them to you by next week, Boss.” Nothing but a dead Sniper and a fucked up trio of mercenaries, assuming Jack’s still alive.

There’s the bounty on this thing, though. That’d keep Janet and her afloat for a long, long time, since Gilroy’s put out quite the sum on its head. So, that’s what she decides to do. She’s going to take its head, and claim what’s hers.

“What a waste of talent,” Piper says, before flooring it into what remains of Blondie.

Chapter Three End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is   © 2020-2023 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #oc #writing #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-blondie #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Three, Chapter Nine

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

There’s little conversation between the two mercenaries as they eat their lunch. Morning had been preoccupied with scouring Fusillade for supplies— at the top of their list was something to combat the literal firepower of that walking corpse, Meat. They eventually found someone who was able to procure a small amount of burn salve, as well as their medical supplies for the foreseeable future. Jules caught a severely odd look from the clerk when he asked whether they had any blood bags lying around, especially when he bore his fangs as an example for why.

    He now sits across from Lucille on a painted park bench, the seating for a local outdoor bistro, lightly cradling his side while sipping the blood he’d bought (placed into a glass from the bistro) through a straw. He hadn’t taken the time to preen this morning, and when his moustache tickles the rim of his class, it adds to an already overwhelming feeling of dirtiness. At this rate, he figures that he’s going to have to scrub pretty hard to get himself back to where he was.

    “Look,” he says, in an attempt to break the silence. “I’m sorry.”

    “You already said that,” Lucille responds. She takes a bite of her roast pork sandwich, not breaking eye contact. “And I already said that it’ll take more than that, Jules.”

    “Okay, shoot. Let’s talk about what that entails, then. Communication is key, right?”

    Lucille takes a long sip of her drink. “When I figure out what that is, I’ll tell you. Eat your lunch.”

    “I will in a second, just,” Jules looks down at his plate. It’s a pork sandwich as well, but when he checked the contents of it earlier, he found that she had ordered it with extra greens. There’s a handful of foods that vampire teeth don’t agree with, and leafy lettuces are up there with the best of them. “How about this. I’ll answer questions about the Carnevale thing. You want transparency, that’s transparency.”

    “Jules, shut up.”

    “Here’s one. I’ve been with them since before we left for Kiln. I had to keep it a secret from Piper mainly, ‘cause she was with Shepherd Gemstone,” he starts, motioning with his arms. “Here’s another. Remember Davey? Yeah, I’ve known him for years now. I knew he’d been living near Kiln, but I completely didn’t expect to run into him. I thought I was going to have to send you to la-la land when we walked in, since he’s one of ours. Thank god you didn’t clock him.”

Seeing no interruption from Lucille, Jules continues, “And, god, the reason we’re hunting that corpse? The capo wants them dead. They were one of our best, but they started to get insubordinate, so they got sent off on the Dragon hunt to go die for sure. But, the capo wanted some of us to go and check to see if they were actually dead.”

    Lucille leans over the table, slapping one of her hands over his mouth. She hisses, “I said shut up, Jules! Look around you!”

    What he finds is a group of well-dressed, broad-daylight gangsters a few tables adjacent at the venue, unknowing of their presence but definitely keen-eared, and definitely armed. Jules widens his eyes, and gently removes her hand from his face.  “Yeah, I know those guys! They’re with the capo, actually. Must be out on their lunch break.”

    “They don’t know me, though, and I don’t think I want to know them. Just be quiet. We can talk about this shit later.”

    At that moment, a voice calls out from that corner of the venue, “‘Eyy, Jules!” Lucille sits back down in her seat in a huff, and takes another angry bite of her sandwich. Her eyes read “You’re fucking this up again,” to the Vampire. Jules starts to sweat as he turns around on the bench, waving his free hand to the gangsters and giving them a greeting.

    A masculine figure, all slicked-back hair and expensive finger rings and surrounded by tough-looking folk in dark sunglasses, puts a hand to his forehead to confirm his suspicions. He wears an obnoxiously loud green and yellow, diagonally-patterned sports coat over a loose black blouse, and when he realizes it’s Jules, he beckons for the Vampire to come over proper. Jules holds up a finger in response, and turns back to his companion. “Lucille, they want to see us.”

    “They want to see you, Jules, not me,” she says.

    Jules points toward Lucille with a finger, and raises an eyebrow. The capo shakes his head “sure,” and beckons them over again.

    “He’s fine with it, don’t worry! Come on,” he says, standing up. “It’ll be weird if you don’t.”

    Lucille says nothing, but stands up from her meal and follows him over to the table, where she finds the group of gangsters to be all male, already a pitcher of fruity summer mixed drink in, and all annoyingly young. It’s impressive, really, how young some of them are, as usually it would take a couple years of existence for those who’d been Spawned to lose their innocence fully. When she looks at two in particular, she figures that they could have a couple decades before their Body Ages catch up with them. There’s a certain vigor behind their eyes that tips her off, puts her on edge. These are the kind of folk who wouldn’t know danger if they had a sword in their gut, and that’s not a quality you look for with long-term positions as gangsters.

    She finds herself clenching as Jules converses with them, trying to not look as upset as she is with him. He’s had all these friends, all this business going on this entire goddamn time, she thinks to herself. And his empty-headed ass didn’t think to key me in to any of it. Any of it at all.

“So, J,” the Capo starts, having sat back down on his bench. “You gonna introduce us to your pal here?” 

It’s not hard to tell what the gangsters might be thinking, and by the expression on Jules’ face, he doesn’t like one bit of it. Though, the capo seems to be looking at her a little differently, perhaps with a little more respect. Fuck it. Reap what you sow, she thinks again. “I’m Lucille, and we’re getting married,” she says, as confidently as she can.

Everyone at the table goes silent, and she shoots Jules a look so sharp that it could be considered telepathy in certain circles, saying directly into his mind, “If you don’t shut the fuck up right now, you’re going to regret it.”

She puts an arm around the Vampire, and continues to weave her lie.

“It’s been three years, but he finally popped the question,” Lucille says, pulling his cheek. “Feels like just yesterday we were on that security job, and he helped me sharpen my knives.”

    Jules is then flooded with cheers and congratulations from the gangsters, including the Capo, who though is clearly suspicious, decides to go along with what’s going on for now. The Capo stands up from his seat, walks over to where Jules is standing, and gives him a hearty pat on the back, looking him in the eye when he says,

    “So when’s the wedding?”

    “I don’t know,” he responds, looking to Lucille. “When is it?”

    “Oh, we haven’t worked it all out just yet. We were waiting for him to finish this last job before deciding,” she says.

    The Capo narrows his eyes. “Which job would that happen to be?”

    “The—” Jules starts.

    Lucille cuts him off, “I think he said something about cleaning up after a Dragon? It seemed pretty dangerous, if you ask me. Nothing he couldn’t handle, though.”

    “Yeah, that one.”

    “Right, and what’s the news on that? You were on that party from what I heard,” the Capo responds.

    “Well, the news is that they’re not dead,” Jules says, pointing to his side. “Turns out they know some kind of fire magic. Learned that the hard way, ‘cause they burned me pretty bad.” He frowns. “Sorry, boss.”

    The Capo’s face scrunches up in a mixture of concern, confusion, and disappointment. “Okay, you’re gonna have to rewind the tape on that one, pal,” he says. When he notices Lucille glancing back over toward their food, he pats Jules on the back again. “Later, though. Don’t wanna spoil the occasion with business, you know?”

    “Whenever you need me, boss,” Jules responds.

    “‘Course. It was nice meeting you,” the Capo says, waving the two of them off.

    The Vampire visibly deflates and follows Lucille back to the table, where she looks as though she wants to slap him with his sandwich instead of letting him eat it.

He moves to talk, but she holds up a hand, takes a bite, chews, swallows, and then finally lowers it.

    “Have fun explaining this to your boss. And how I don’t have a ring on,” she says. “He noticed, and he was about to drill you for it, Jules.”

    “Fuck.”

    “Yeah.”

==============================================================

The truck jolts Judith awake on a warm afternoon that would’ve been better spent in bed with the curtains drawn. She reaches up and rubs her face as another jolt comes, the heavy vehicle barreling down the road and Fusillade fading away, disappearing as the trees become less and less decrepit, returning to a more typical, rusty-hued canopy as they gain distance. Beside her in the truck’s cab is Cherry, who’s too busy focusing on the road to notice her, and on her other side is Olive, who hadn’t fallen asleep once during the entirety of their ride so far.

    She could kill for a decent conversation to eat the time, with how hard it is for her to stay asleep in this roaring monster. Glancing over her shoulder, she shoots a look toward the two in the bed of the truck, Leon and Azariah. They, too, are too focused to spare her a glance at the moment— Leon on the disappearing Fusillade, Azariah on the road itself as it stretched out behind them.

    “Next stop maybe you can sit in back with them,” Olive says quietly, only barely audible over the bubbling thrum of the engine. “I get it, it’s kinda cramped with the three of us in here.”

    “It’s not that, Olive. Don’t act like that.”

    The Owl looks past Judith toward Cherry, then focuses her large eyes on Judith. It’s a strange feeling to stare deep into eyes multiple times the size of your own, especially those of a large, potentially magic suffused avian. And then those eyes turn toward the folks in the back, her entire head turning to get a look, and then they’re back on Judith. “Maybe next stop Azariah’ll switch seats.”

    Judith blinks. “Why?”

    “Because you want to sit with Leon.” Delivery is flat. A matter of fact, not of opinion or surprise, just left her face.

    Judith shifts awkwardly in her seat, directing her own eyes down to her shorts rather than keep eye contact with Olive. “I don’t know what would make you say that. We’d just complain all the way to the next town.”

    “You two like complainin’,” she says. “More importantly, y’all like complainin’ together. It’s just about all you do. You did it even before we left and you’ve been doin’ it even more now that we’re on the run. When we have to split up, you complain, but you complain especially when you’re not saddled with Leon. I might be dumb, but I’m not that dumb, Judith.”

    “Never said you were. You just don’t give me a lot of faith with your whole anxiety schtick.”

    “It’s not a schtick. I’m attentive all the time, nervous as all hell, tryin’ to survive. That means, though, that I see a lot, hear a lot, and I connect dots. I don’t always connect ‘em right, of course, because sometimes I connect dots that shouldn’t be connected. Sometimes I screw up and connect dots that are entirely unrelated just because somethin’ vaguely implies they might be connected. Understand?”

    Judith’s lips purse, and then she shrugs. “I guess.”

    “No you don’t.” Olive leans in. “You don’t understand. You’re not used to survival situations, Judith. You ain’t trained for this. And that trainin’ has made me realize you and Leon—”

    “Whatever,” Judith interrupts. “Doesn’t matter, shut up. You can see whatever you want to see, I don’t care. I’ve got more important things to worry about, like whether or not Cherry’s going to crash this junkheap into a tree or if I’m going to be cut open by people I used to consider coworkers.”

        Azariah scratches the underside of his jaw and watches as the trees begin forming into a woody, orange blur on either side of the road. “Already told you Leon, Gutter’s Glade is our best bet short of headin’ to Cherry’s hometown.”

    “Right. Just checking. That was the plan from the beginning, right?” Leon asks, leaning back against the side of the truck bed, his vest taking most of the roughness from the wood. “And it’s not called Gutter’s Glade anymore, hasn’t been for years. They renamed it ‘Pickman’s Hope’ a while back for the optics.”

    Azariah’s head tilts to the side as he rubs a temple. “I suppose that’d be best, considerin’ the first name wasn’t exactly the cleanest sounding, regardless of whether you took gutter to mean garbage trench or somebody with a knife. I like the old name better, still. Tough name, tough town.”

    “It threw Shepherd out on his ass, allegedly. Back when I first tried to run, Pickman’s Hope was our goal, too. We thought it’d be our win condition.”

    “A fair assumption.” The Hare’s muzzle pulls into a smile. “Just about one of the safest places we could go, I think, but we run into a different problem there. While I know some folks up around the place, even some who’ve moved up in the world, we can’t really stay. Don’t think any of us really know a trade, and as tough as the town is, those folk followin’ us aren’t gonna try to set out for all-out war. They’re hunters, not strikebreakers, and while Gutters— Pickman’s Hope can handle a line of strikebreakers, it ain’t a place built to protect against anyone who’s only after a couple people. From what I’ve gathered, we’re safer from them with Cherry’s family further along.”

    “Agreed.” Leon rubs his jaw, fingers lingering on either side. “Family can be reliable. Sometimes.”

    “You even have a family to base that on or are you just basin’ that on Cherry?”

    “Do you, Azariah?”

    The old man laughs. “I slept around a lot before I met Roxanne, so maybe. We’ll call it a non-zero percent chance of me bein’ somebody’s papa. I think if I had any kids, though, they would’ve already come knockin’ at my door by this point. So, no, no family.”

    “No family here, either. Friends did, and it was useful. Never had anybody to rely on.”

    “What about yourself, Leon?”

    “If I could rely on myself, I would’ve gotten out the first time.”

    Again, the Hare laughs. “I suppose so! That’d be real unfortunate for us, I think. You’ve been a big help.”

    “If you get caught, I get caught. Can’t let that happen.” He shifts to sit forward a bit, heavy arms on strong knees. “Don’t oversell me, though. I’m not the one fistfighting men twice my size.”

    “You had the routes set up that got us out of there— and Judith’s more tolerable around your grouchy ass than she ever was on the job.”

    Leon’s face twists some as he brings one of his hands up to rub the back of his neck. “Let’s not talk about that.”

    “It’s not like she can hear us, Leon, truck’s too loud. Watch— Judith, Judith, Judith!”

    The both of them turn their eyes toward the cabin window, which was shut, and watch those inside.

    “Cherry, we asked you something.” Judith’s voice takes on a slight growl as the words slip between her teeth, which are looking very sharp today. “What’s the deal with all this truck shit? I thought you were a heavy tools sort of mechanic.”

    He opens his mouth, considers what was about to exit it, and then shuts his mouth again to give the thoughts a few extra moments to cook. Only when the alarm rings somewhere in the back of his head does he finally give them an answer. “Well, maybe I used to, uh, really enjoy driving. Before I came to work at Shepherd, anyways.”

    “Maybe? That’s not an answer. I want something good so I can justify the giant fucking hole you put in our finances for a piece of garbage on wheels.”

    Olive clears her throat. “Come on, Judith, what do you expect to hear? He probably just worked as a mechanic or somethin’ before comin’ to Shepherd. I mean, it’s not like they’d hire someone whose only merits are street mods.” As she finishes speaking, a look of utter fear washes over her. “Oh God. Cherry please tell me—”

    “I knew he was far too young to be a properly trained mechanic, I knew it, I knew…”

    “Hey!” Cherry raises his voice, taking a single hand off the steering wheel to get the two’s attention. “I also had letters of recommendation from my neighbors. That has to count for something, right?”

    Olive, shocked with terror to the point of resignation, sighs. “We should’ve walked.”

    Judith nods. “Agreed.”

    Azariah’s been knocking on the window and calling names for a solid half minute and none of them have noticed. So, he shrugs and returns to lounging in the truck bed, moving to settle on his back to look up at the sky. “Be open, Leon. You could admit to murderin’ somebody right here and I’d be the only person that hears.”

    “I’ll pass. I’m not in the mood for a heart to heart right now, old man.” The Orc’s eyes drift toward the window, following the movements of Judith’s wild hair as she and Olive gesticulate wildly. He puts a hand in his pocket. He can still feel it, the dust particulate bag. “...I don’t know. Maybe I feel like what happened to her’s my fault.”

    Azariah yawns. “What, like you’re the one who chopped off her hand? Don’t be too hard on yourself, the thing was probably gonna blow no matter what we did. ‘Sides, she blames Cherry anyway. Really tears into the poor kid. I mean, I get it, but still— he did all he could.”

    “Yeah.” Leon rubs his face. “I guess so. So, how long to Pickman’s Hope?”

    “No clue, only ever walked there. Never went by truck, this is a new one.”

    Far behind them, Fusillade fades into the trees, the blackened wood and cold ash mingling beyond the warm colors of the autumnal forests. With every moment, they get further and further away.

==============================================================

Meat finds themselves assaulted with the fragment of a memory as they walk into a clothier’s shop with Brie and Roxanne. Their eyes begin to dart around the place in an attempt to find anything they feel an attachment to. Racks of shirts and jerkins, made from plain, rough-spun, neutral-coloured fabric? Nope. Gaudy shauls and robes, hung up high so that shoplifters could be identified through the sound of a jump? Not those. A young apprentice, who is clearly having a hard time processing what she is looking at, but is still trying her hardest to maintain her sense of customer-decorum? Close.

    There’s something else, something that makes them tap Roxanne on the shoulder and say, “I know this place, but I don’t know why.”

    “There’s a chance you’ve been here before, Meat,” she responds. “Anything in particular tip you off?”

    “I’m trying to figure that out. Nothing I can see is making me remember.”

    Brie interjects, asking, “Are you seeing these textures? I would not have thought residue from Dragon’s breath would have this effect on fabric. It’s fascinating.”

    Roxanne smiles. She puts a hand on Meat’s shoulder, leads them down an aisle. “Let’s get you clothed before we start chasing memories. How about that?”

    Meat nods, not realizing what they had just gotten themselves into.

    “Is it to your liking?” Brie asks, knocking on the door of the changing room.

    Meat looked at themselves in the mirror. Loose canvas pants, ash grey. Loose canvas shirt, sleeveless, light grey. Black and red poncho, chest-length, dragon-scale patterned. It left their fiery orange limbs exposed to the ground and air, as well as abstained from covering their head, just in case there were any sort of hidden fire-breathing capabilities they hadn’t manifested yet. It was plain but efficient, and Roxanne had absolutely no part in putting the outfit together. Brie had done it all by herself, after much thought and consideration, and she was quite proud of it.

    “I have another poncho picked out, in the case that you find this one to hit an emotional nerve,” she says, knocking once again. “Are you alright in there, Meat?”

    “This is good. Don’t people usually wear shoes?”

    “Your feet would burn through them, yes?”

    Meat thinks about this for a moment. “Good point. I’m coming out now.”

    “Wonderful. I look forward to seeing it for myself!”

    They find themselves under the intense scrutiny of Brie, and the amused interest of Roxanne as they walk out of the changing room. The Fox holds a hand over her mouth, lightly masking a smile. The Detective holds her fist up to her chin, re-analysing the three pieces, individually, of the outfit that Meat was to wear.

    Brie is the first to say anything. “I struggled to choose between a more red-toned off-white, and the grey-toned off-white you wear now. I am second-second guessing myself on this decision.”

    Meat shrugs. “It feels like I’m wearing a sack.”

    “It’ll get softer as you wear it, don’t worry,” Roxanne responds. “You look cute, Meat.”

    “Cute? They look like they are dressed accordingly,” says Brie. “I didn’t choose these pieces for their supposed ‘cute’ traits. Have I missed something crucial?”

    “No, no. I just think they look very old-fashioned. And that’s cute, to me.”

    “Ponchos are old-fashioned?” Brie asks, scrunching up her face.

    “They haven’t been in vogue for a few decades or so, Ms. Brie.”

    “Oh. Shall I choose something different, then?”

    “I like it,” Roxanne says. She motions to Meat. “Do you like it?”

    Again, Meat shrugs. “It’s like a sack, but it’s nice. I like black, I think.”

    “See, Ms. Brie? They like it too, and you helped them find another piece to their brain puzzle.”

    The Detective beams. “I’m glad I could be of service.”

    After more shopping that results in Brie choosing a single scarf, coloured and patterned in a similar way to Meat’s poncho, they exit the clothier’s store, and park themselves on a bench outside. Though now clothed, Meat still finds their head unsatisfied, as the fragment of a memory that plagued them earlier yet lingered. It paced around their skull as they listened to Brie and Roxanne talk about where to go next, what to do. It danced around their vision, taunting them this way and that, toward pathways that they know they’ve treaded before, but can’t seem to take the first step down.

    Then, something happens that pulls a rip-cord in Meat’s head. A pair of men, both wearing tucked-in dress shirts and a pair of dress pants, walk past their bench. They’re clearly missing their coats, but that didn’t seem to bother them one bit. They talk loudly and proudly, walking into the clothier’s store to announce themselves to the owner, and move down the main aisle, past the dressing area, through a heavy door into a back room.

    “Can we go back inside?” Meat asks quickly. “I think I remember something.”

Chapter End.

============================================================== 

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Three, Chapter Eight

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

Occupied by only nightcrawlers and drunks at this point in the evening, Roxanne, Brie, and Meat manage to get a surprised yelp out of a few tables as they walk into the inn. And as they approach the bar, the owner can’t seem to peel his eyes away from Meat in particular.

    “What?” they ask, politely.

    There’s little conversation to be had between them, and they quickly rent out a room to stay the night in. Meat finds themselves a chair to sit down in while Brie falls face-first onto her bed.

    Roxanne keeps herself standing, using this quiet opportunity to more thoroughly inspect the walking corpse before her. She frowns as she asks, “Meat, did anything happen to ring any bells? Any stray memories hit you, perchance?”

    “No,” they respond. “Is this where I’m from?”

    “This is Fusillade, yes. Your dog tag appeared to point here.”

    “Nobody knows me, though. Everyone walked out of our way.”

    “Oh, honey,” she chuckles. “If I had to guess, I don’t think it’s your reputation. If I didn’t know any better, running into you in the middle of the night would make me double-take on a good day. Plus, if anyone’s going to recognize you, it won’t be for your face, as it’s no longer there.”

    “That’s good to know.”

    Brie tries to say something through the mattress.

    “Speak up, Ms. Brie,” Roxanne replies.

    “Those bounty hunters that attempted to attack us— they seemed to be familiar with you, Meat. Did you recognize either of them?”

    “No. I’m on their list, though,” they say, narrowing their glowing eyes.

    “Correct. Would it also be correct to assume that there are crime families operating in this particular town?”

    “This is Carnevale territory, if my memory’s straight. Brie, those were the same guns who went after Azariah in Kiln, though,” Roxanne responds. “Former Shepherd Gemstone security folks, as I recall.”

    “That does not rule them out, however. Meat, does the name Carnevale spur any memories?”

    “Carnevale. A gang?” Meat asks.

    “Precisely. One of a few operating within this slice of the mountains.”

    Meat flips the name over in their head a few times and, surprisingly, it begins to stick in a few places. “Leslie?”

    Both Roxanne and Brie look at one another. Brie beams, then stuffs her face into a pillow. “My job is complete. I am going to pass out now,” she says.

    “You deserve it, don’t you worry,” Roxanne responds, turning back to Meat. “Now, what was this about a Leslie?”

    Meat scratches their skull. “That’s it. Leslie is what came up when you said Carnevale. Maybe they’re a capo or something. Why would I remember something like that?”

    “If they’ve got a public presence, we’ve yet to notice in the days Ms. Brie and I have been here,” Roxanne muses. “I have yet to see any family pins, and there was a distinct lack of tacky suit jackets on the young men.”

    “Wait,” Meat tilts their head. “What’s a capo?”

    “Oh, you don’t know?”

    “It said itself. I’m not sure what it means. It’s faint,” Meat says, leaning back in their seat. “I’ve got a lot of words in my head like that. Like they’re waiting to be said, or something. You ever forget a particular word for something even though you know the definition of it? Think that but reversed, somehow.”

��   Roxanne kneels down beside Meat, taking advantage of the moonlight to look a little closer into their eyes. They glow with the distinct fuzzy, plasma-like texture of magic fire, two orange balls of flame within their skull. “Oh, try not to trouble yourself too much about it, Meat. We’ll sort you out soon enough.” She pats them on the shoulder, and quickly realizes something upon touching what was left of their skin. “In the morning we’ll get you something to eat and some clothes to wear. Try to get some shut-eye for me, yes? I’m sure you need it.”

    “I don’t feel tired, though,” Meat says. “I think I should be. We walked for a while.”

    “Well, do whatever feels right for you,” she replies, walking over to her own bed. “If anything starts to hurt, just scream.”

    And thus, Meat is left alone in their chair, accompanied only by the light snores of Brie as she sleeps face-down, above her sheets, and still in a majority of her clothes. Roxanne on the other hand is nestled comfortably underneath her covers, cradling a bundle of the fabric to rest her head against. 

    There is a distinct lack of insects chirping, canines howling, foxes yelping, or any other kind of sound that would make up the rural nighttime orchestra. Meat finds themselves listening in closely to the muffled silence, the kind that comes during only the coldest of winter storms. Occasionally, they’ll hear someone shuffling through what remains of the ashen snowfall, their footsteps crunching the material against the cobbles of the roads. 

    In the quiet of the night, Meat finds themselves alone with their own head for the first time in their second-life, and they’re completely unsure what to do with themselves. As definition-deficient words bounce off the interior of their skull, fragments of memories point inward like nails in a baseball bat. They remember Leslie. They remember that they like whiskey, and that they prefer it to most other spirits. They remember a party, but they can’t remember what kind. They remember... They remember fighting with those mercenaries and landing a solid punch to that Vampire’s side, but that’s new.

    They also remember how to use their abilities. It’s all as clear as day; how to snap their fingers, what words to write, what symbols to create to spark a flame in their palm. They clump together in their frontal lobe; methods, commands, and techniques of all kinds that all aim to turn the world to ash. Meat finds themselves a little terrified at the sheer amount of knowledge they have on the matter, especially when compared to the lack of knowledge they have in regards to, well, anything else. It was as though they were created for the sake of setting things aflame first and foremost, but they were left purposefully unfinished, so they could ponder on their continued existence endlessly.

    Meat grimaces. They weren’t created. They were someone before this, and that someone is still present. They feel unfinished because there’s been a hole blown in that person, and they’re determined to fill it. 

    Part of them feels comfort in the fire, knowing it’ll give them the drive they need to find themselves again. And, on looking closer at the mass of killing intent in their head, they find not only the ability to burn, but the ability to extinguish. Full control over the destructive power of fire, only at the cost of your entire livelihood. 

    Meat finds themselves a nice spot in their head to settle down, zone out, and relax through the night in, their burning eyes not once growing dimmer in the process.

==============================================================

    “I promise you, truly, I promise you that this here Stallion Q “Ammo Mule” is the vehicle of your dreams, yes sir, yes sir, I assure you of that.”

    Judith’s nose scrunches up as she frowns to the side of her face, green eyes narrowing at the elf attempting, in vain, to sell the three of them— Judith, Olive, and Cherry— what appears to be an armored car, sans the armor, with the added bonus of numerous replaced metal plates. It’s as if someone tried to quilt the thing with sheets of steel.

    “You should pay me to touch that damned thing,” Judith snarls. “Otherwise you’re going to be paying my medical bills. I’ll get a disease if I run my hand along the door.”

    The elf, a man with oily, slicked back hair and a face that’s maybe a little too handsome in all the wrong ways, offers a vibrantly white smile. His disquietingly dull looking yellow and black checkered suit bears but one marker of his identity beyond an uncomfortably patterned tie, and it’s a nametag: Jim Jamble. Despite his youthful vivacity, freshly dyed green hair, and tight, tanned skin, the crows’ feet in his face and the slight wrinkle in his brow point toward this elf being somewhere up there in years.

    “Now, now ma’am,” he says, bringing both hands up, palms down, as though to calm her. “Let’s not be hasty about insulting our new and beautiful potential additions to any loving family, but I understand what you mean, I get what you’re putting down, I am in with it, so to say. You’re not into this one, understandable, I getcha, I getcha, it’s not what you’re looking for and not what you need in your life at the moment! Like I said, I get you and I get what’s going on, gotta have something reliable right now. Just let me say,” it all comes out as a blur, a torrent of verbosity as he leads the three down the yard. Whatever he says next, it moves too fast for any of the three to notice it as their eyes scan the lot.

    It’s actually hardly a lot so much as it is a sort of animal pen that holds various flavors of car rather than a couple of hogs. A retrofitted stockyard, purpose ever-changing with each shift in ownership. A stray swing set here from when it was a public park, the tramped and level ground from its time as livestock land, and now a series of preowned and heavily loved vehicles under the watchful eye of their owner, Jim.

    “You know what I’m saying?” Jim asks, returning to a sub-lightspeed timbre as Judith continues frowning, Cherry’s head tilts, and Olive rubs the back of her own head, the four of them coming to a halt in front of a large, long since used pickup truck. “Who’m I kidding, of course you do, I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t. You’re all swell and perfectly well educated buyers and I’m just the salesman! The customer’s always right and I didn’t mean to imply anything but. Anyhow, now that I’ve got you on the horn— honk honk— here’s this beauty of engineering.”

    The truck itself isn’t anything notable. It’s another thought child of some engineer working for Stallion Q, big and tough and mean and unrelenting. Its specialty lies in heavy lifting, whether that’s carrying armor for you or on the chassis itself, though this model in particular seems to be meant for civilian purchase. It’s a rarity, since unlike its nearby cousin, the aging and decrepit “Ammo Mule,” it looks like whoever formerly took to replacing its parts took care to replace them properly.

    “Stallion Q, finest in heavy innovation since— well, since ever! I promise you, with this bad mother you’d be able to hit fifty, minimum, on an uphill dirt road on a snowy day!”

    Cherry clears his throat before Judith can start on everything she finds detestable about the vehicle, starting in descending order from the worst to the least horrid: not only is the hood an entirely different color from its main shell, being as the main chassis itself is painted a dull brown but its hood is a lovely forest green, each door is also a different color, with the driver’s side being white and the passenger side door being a light and fading blue, not to mention the bed in the back itself looked, though lovingly built, made out of wood and hand-bent metal all bolted together.

    “It’s got four wheel drive, right?” Cherry asks, raising a hand. 

    Jim’s eyes spark with inspiration. “With the engine inside this bad boy, with a bit of tuning and some extra axle-work you could give it six-wheel drive, young man. Now, y’all strike me as fine folks, very fine, wonderful, stunning, absolutely phenomenal, so I have to let you know that beneath the hood this lovely number boasts one of the meanest wildcat runner engines you can find. You need to get something somewhere fast? This good sister’s got anything but Wyrms beat in the speed department, I promise you that. Frame’s reinforced, too!”

    Cherry smiles. Now this is interesting. He figures he’d better speak again before Judith can stop him. “I’ve never heard of that brand. What kind of fuel can, uh, wildcat, take? Normal bio only, or can it handle…?”

    Olive blinks. Cherry’s fishing for an answer. He wants something specific.

    “Oh, sir, we here at Jim’s Trafficular Jam don’t support the extralegal modification of civilian vehicles for the sake of high velocity racing and vehicular combat…” He clears his throat, then leans in close to Cherry. “…But if we did, we would tell you that the engine inside of this fine Stallion Q “Workhorse” Truck is anything but factory standard, able to handle not only more typical biofuel but also the densest speed-bio from here to New Bird. I wouldn’t say it’s of factory quality, but sometimes there’s a benefit to second-hand arrivals.”

    Cherry whistles, then looks to his companions.

    Judith’s busy now. She’s got the price tag in her hand and in her head she’s got a series of calculations ongoing, starting with their overall finances, what they needed to reserve in case of emergencies, their food fund, their backup emergency fund, and the like. She’s a bit caught up in the numbers to notice Olive questingly prodding bits of the exposed metal with a long feather, testing its roughness.

    “It’s got a lotta exposed bits underneath,” the Owl says. “This safe?”

    “Don’t you worry about that, in the best case scenario you shouldn’t be getting anywhere near that.” Jim smiles over Cherry’s shoulder.

    Olive’s eyes go wide. “What about the worst case scenario, though?”

    “What?”

    “The worst case scenario! There’s always the worst case scenario! What if it tips over? What if it explodes while we’re drivin’, what if something goes wrong with the steerin’ wheel and we hurt someone?!” Her feathers ruffle, her voice rises.

    “Now now, let’s slow our roll,” Jim attempts to say soothingly, though a chuckle or two slips out near the end as his hands mimic the same gesture he’d made with Judith not too long ago. “Let’s not focus on what could be dangerous and instead look at the positives, the good things. With a reinforced frame this thing isn’t wrapping around trees, the trees are wrapping around it, and the same goes for its insides. I assure you, ma’am, that this is a feat of engineering yet to be topped by any of the frontline vehicle manufacturers of this day and age— why, it’s a shame the Workhorse went out of style, it’s practically a lost art.”

    Cherry’s hand comes to rest on the hood of the truck, and he turns toward Judith. “Can we afford it?”

    “Can you drive it?” She snaps, returning from her calculatory trance.

    “Probably. This is probably our best option on the lot, though,” he whispers to her.

    “It can fit maybe three of us in the front and two in the trunk. Are you sure we wouldn’t be better off with something more civilian? This looks like a death trap.”

    Olive butts her head into the small huddle, and speaks in a whisper bordering on regular speech, saying, “I think we’d be better off if we just kept walkin’. It’s probably noisy as all hell and that’s just trouble.”

    “That can be fixed with a bit of work, don’t worry. I’ve got this, trust me.” Cherry says to them both, his expression hardening for a moment. “We’re best off with something that can head off-road if we need to. I can drive it no problem, and if you give me a few hours and I’ll know every part inside it no problem.”

    “You’re exaggerating. It’ll take a day at least to get a look at everything inside of this hunk of trash.” Judith’s eyes narrow at him in turn.

    “Okay, half a day. Trust me on this, please.”

    “Cherry…” Olive clears her throat.

    “The last time I trusted you with something heavy you got my fucking hand blown off. Do not ask me to trust you. Ever.”

    Cherry’s expression softens, Olive clears her throat again. “Mr. Jamble’s been starin’ at us for the entirety of this conversation,” Olive says. “Are we buyin’ it or not?”

    Judith breaks from the two of them and makes her way over to the elf again, Cherry following just behind with Olive in tow.

    “Well, I’m never one to break up a healthy conversation on the matter of business, have we come to a conclusion on the matter of this delightful Stallion Q Workhorse? I know it isn’t the prettiest—”

    “Quiet, clown. Cut the price down a few hundred tilt for the “extralegal” modifications and the absolute trashfire that this paint job is or I’ll have my louder friend here start screaming about how dangerous this entire lot is,” Judith interrupts, gesturing with her thumb toward Olive.

    “I’ve got a lot to say about the workplace safety I see around here,” the Owl confirms.

    Cherry smiles as money changes hands and a key plus a complimentary empty fuel canister— “On the house, I insist, I would never dare make you good folks head on out there without some way to refuel during your travel, always best to stay safe,”— are handed over.

    The price tag is removed and placed into Judith’s gear, placed with a variety of other receipts, as the three get into the truck. Cherry settles neatly into the driver’s side, the entire seat closer to being a small couch than an actual segmented set of seats. The old, worn leather of the steering wheel feels good beneath his fingers as they curl around it.

    After everyone’s comfortable in the cloth seats, the rearview mirror’s adjusted, their seatbelts are on, and Jim offers a customary farewell wave, it exits the lot with a deep roar.

    “Ho-oly cow. That’s what I like to hear,” Cherry mumbles.

    With that the ramshackle Stallion Q Workhorse rumbles onto the road again for the first time in years, headlamps burning away the darkness. The rough hum of the beast is out of practice, but Cherry knows soon that he’ll have it roaring like its brighter nights. As if to comfort it in its return to life, he takes a single hand off of the wheel to rub its wooden dashboard.

    “Hey, hey. Don’t push too hard, you’re fresh off the lot…” He keeps speaking under his breath, whispering to it, listening.

    “Freak,” Judith grumbles.

    The road back is dark and rocky, all dirt with no asphalt, cared for only by the trees whose roots have made a game of seeing who can break up the monotony of smooth ground the harshest. It’s not a comforting path to take back into practice, but Cherry’s a good rider. Out of tune sputtering and blustering of its innards give way to the harmonious growl of effort in no time at all.

    To Cherry, it’s a process. He can feel it, or he feels something like it, inside. Out of practice and left to stagnate, he hasn’t had this sort of power beneath his hands since he left home. He’s been out of the saddle longer than his ride has, but being out of it at all’s a shame. In the thick rumble of the engine and the dull thud of the suspension with each root and pothole they drive over, he can hear it. It wants to roar. It wants to scream and make the road turn into a fine guiding rail for something more than just a vehicle.

    Beneath the pumping metal and rubber, beneath the heat and fire and the biofuel, Cherry knows the soul of this beast and it is eager to hunt the horizon again, to chase the thin line at the end of the world until the ground beneath it is air and dust. It wants to fly.

    Judith and Olive are asleep by the time he realizes. He’s the lone person awake, in the dark, on the way back to the abandoned houses. “I’ll get you there,” he says. “We’ll fly together.”

==============================================================

    It’s the right address. The house is just as it appears in the photos he’d shown her and well cared for, as always. In the front yard sits a bike meant for a young boy, training wheels still attached to the back axle— but it’s not even locked up. It’s just sitting there, fully confident that nobody steals anything in this neighborhood, because if they did, everyone would know who did it almost immediately. Odds are that if she spends too much longer deliberating over this place in the front seat of her company car, Piper’s going to get the local law called on her for suspicious loitering. So, she steps out and walks up to the front porch.

    Janet’s the woman’s name, she recalls. Blondie’s wife, mother of his children and all that. She should be the one doing this, right? Breaking the bad news, dropping the bomb, or whatever other terrible metaphors there are for ruining a perfectly good evening. The soft off-white of the house’s paint reflects the dull, orange glow of the streetlamps behind her, as the cool blue of night has already settled in. The windows of the house glow faintly, the light inside largely dimmed by the blinds. Life is present in the house; there’s still a second car in the driveway, which is meant for multiple passengers. Must be Janet’s.

    Piper raises a fist to knock on the door until she notices the small button set up beside the door frame, which she presses gingerly instead. Inside is the muffled sound of the doorbell, a chiming, lilting thing like something between a bird’s warble and a child shaking a sleigh bell. It’s not long afterward that the door opens, courtesy of Janet herself.

    She’s still wearing what she’d come home in; atop her brown, bobbed hair is a white golf visor, and to go with it is a simple white polo and a washed blue, high waisted, and well-fitting pair of jeans. Piper has to blink away the thought that holy shit, it’s the lady from all of the fancy cosmetic billboards, alongside a series of what might be considered the mental equivalents of nonsense verbalizations, the type you babble when you didn’t expect to get very far in a conversation and actually don’t know what to do. Such is the position Piper’s in, standing in some drab, dusty grey jumpsuit with her blonde hair a mess, haphazardly tied into a ponytail, standing and staring silently at the Janet Campbell, former model and wife to one of the most dangerous men Piper had ever even known about. Her mouth opens, she shuts it again, she swallows.

Words only come after Janet tilts her head and offers a blisteringly white smile from between lips immaculately painted red. That’s when Piper says, “Hello, Mrs. Campbell,” with all the grace of a diver having tripped over shoelaces— no clue where those shoes came from.

“Hello,” Janet replies. “It’s a little late for a company call, especially one in person.”

“Company call?”

The woman nods toward Piper’s jumpsuit before stepping back from the door. “You’re wearing a jumpsuit, just like out of the Shepherd ads. I did a few of those, wore a couple jumpsuits. They’re not very comfy, but I guess the grey ones aren’t meant for humans like me.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, but Piper steps across the doorway and into the house, where for the second time she’s struck silent by the sheer domesticity of family homes in Black Hill. The hardwood floor, the smooth and blemishless walls, the overhead lights that were not only electric but have a consistently working switch! She clears her throat and adjusts her collar, burying her fascination with Blondie’s home. She doesn’t want to look like some backwoods type now of all times, Janet might see it as some kind of insult that she’s the one here to break the news.

“Mrs. Campbell—”

The woman laughs. “Janet’s fine,” she says.

“Janet,” Piper corrects, the name rolling awkwardly between her fangs, “I’m Piper, and yes, I work for Shepherd Gemstone, but at this moment I am not here to act on call for your husband.” How does anyone do this? She’s never done this. Anyone who dies on her watch back in Smokestone usually doesn’t have anyone to inform of the death. “In fact, it’s with regards to your husband that I’ve come to speak to you tonight. Are— are y’all’s children here?”

Janet’s head shakes and she says, “No, they’re both out at their friends’ houses right now. Blondie agrees to just about everything they ask right before he leaves, and I’ll tell you it’s so much easier to just let them have their fun than go through the hassle of explaining…” She trails off, as Piper’s eyes haven’t drifted anywhere but to stare into her own gaze, a certain gravity behind them. A seriousness. “What is it?”

Piper clears her throat, wrapping her tail around one of her legs to avoid touching any furniture with it. “On his last assignment he’d reportedly gone and engaged in combat with the Fusillade Wyrm. There’s yet to be anything recovered, but there are no traces of him.” Her tone dips further, and she continues, “He is assumed killed in action, ma’am. For the first day it was just MIA, but the company’s been quick to move that rating forward thanks to the fact that the Dragon— er— it exploded.”

The stare she receives is focused and clear, though Piper can’t entirely piece together what the woman’s feeling. A frown does appear, as does a slight wrinkle at the corner of each of Janet’s eyes, but no tears. “Oh,” she says. After that, the woman turns and walks into the kitchen. Piper follows, but is stopped short by Janet holding out a hand and then pointing toward her boots, which prompts Piper to back off and remove them closer to the front door before then joining Janet’s side.

“Are you alright?” Piper asks. “I know it’s a lot to drop on you, I do, but I—”

“Piper, right?” Janet turns, pulling a couple glasses out from a cabinet above the kitchen counter. “I’m going to get a drink. You’re welcome to stay. No, I think I’d actually really like it if you could stay.”

Piper nods without a thought. She can probably just hoof it to a nearby inn if she gets too into it to drive. “I— right. Okay. I can do that.”

The kitchen itself has a door to the back porch and its insides are made up of a set of various kitchen machinery, like a legitimate refrigerator and a washer for dishes, but otherwise still has a gas oven and stove, and something that looks to Piper like a gnarled, twisted conglomeration of pipes and valves with the big label “COFFEE MAKER” smacked on the side. In the center of the kitchen is an island, a sort of table countertop over top of some cabinets down below, surrounded on all sides by stools— not to be confused with the actual dining room, which was back the other way and toward the western side of the house not too far away. Piper spends a long enough time surveying the kitchen, its tile flooring and the lovely granite countertops, that by the time she realizes she should be worrying over how Janet’s reacting the woman has already poured them each a glass of wine and is seated at the island counter.

Piper takes a seat beside her and a sip from her own glass, and though the deep red drink holds no real enjoyment for her, she doesn’t want Janet to feel lonely now of all times. “He was a great guy,” Piper says. “I didn’t know him for the longest time, only a few weeks or so, but he’s helped me to really turn my life around. Gave me advice and clued me into work nobody else’d ever bother to give me. I owe him a lot.”

“He was, wasn’t he?” Janet sighs, then takes a long few swigs from her glass. Her visor is removed, then set on the countertop, letting her hair rest more naturally.

“Yeah.” Piper glances around, then at Janet’s face once more. The corners of her lips twitch. “You’re taking this…”

Janet nods. “Easily, at least compared to what you expect. I get that a lot.” She rolls her shoulders, then turns on her seat to face Piper properly. “I am upset, don’t think I’m not. I’m just not in a position to break down bawling over him.” This causes Piper’s eyebrows to rise, and the look of surprise does earn something of a smile from Janet, who continues, “I care for him, but I’ll be up front with you, Piper. We met at work, he was a bodyguard and I was still doing a lot of model work and we hit it off. Not really romantically, but we were great friends. And he was really— really good.”

So then Piper nods, mostly understanding. “Okay, good friends with benefits, if I’m reading this right.”

Janet smiles a touch wider. “I guess that’s a way to put it. And we never found any real love at first sight type stuff, so we decided to get hitched and have some kids. We were the best either of us were ever going to find, y’know? A man at the top of his industry and the territory-wide face of cosmetics.”

“I guess that’s a kind of love,” Piper mumbles.

“Believe what you want to believe,” says Janet. “Regardless, I’ve lost a close friend and the kids have lost their father. And, well, I guess we’ve lost a lot else.”

A long silence falls between them, then Piper asks, “What else?” A jumpsuited elbow props itself against the stone countertop as she leans in, concern etching into her features. “Is it something I can help with?”

“Income. He brought in a lot of income. I make a lot out of the companies still using my face on their advertisements and for a few logos, but we’re used to a certain lifestyle, Piper.” Her smile fades. “Vacations, gifts around holidays, good schooling, all of that takes money that Blondie was raking in while I was able to make sure we had other luxuries. Our son, Tanner, wants to grow up to be like his father. We’ve been saving up a nice fund for his eventual entry into the Guild Academy, and for a proper higher education for Madrone.”

“Your daughter wants to go to a university and your son wants to go into the adventuring industry?”

Once more Janet nods, then says, “Yes, and I’m afraid I might not be able to afford the best of the best without Blondie. Besides, his connections would’ve meant the world for Tanner’s options once he graduates.”

“Wow.” Piper blinks. She looks to her hand, to Janet’s hand, set on the table with its bright, gemstone-studded ring. It’s set on the countertop as Janet’s other hand is occupied with the wine glass. So, Piper hesitantly reaches out and sets her own hand over top of Janet’s. The difference is plain first and foremost in that she’s wearing a glove, but her hand is a good chunk larger than the human’s even without shifting, large enough that she could close her fingers around the woman’s and cover just about all of it. “I’m sorry. That’s a lot.”

“What sort of work did he clue you into, Piper?” Janet turns her gaze up, locking it with the other’s.

“The industry. He told me a lot of things before he left to come back here before this last job. I’m currently in the process of getting approved for a, er, Security and Acquisitions Initiative that he himself started, though he wasn’t going to be doing much other than approving contracts—”

Janet smiles again. “Oh, that? I remember him telling me about it. If it’s what I think it is, it’s going to be quite the move up from— from whatever this grey jumpsuit job is.”

“Yeah,” Piper says with a tilt of her head. No wonder this lady’s on the billboards, it’s hard not to stare at her. She hasn’t even had anything beyond a sip of wine and she’s a lycan, a barrel of high proof moonshine’s barely enough to get her anything close to a buzz. No, this is all Janet. It’s all Janet. “If you need anything, anything at all, just let me know. I know Blondie’s passing is so sudden, but if you need help with anything I can figure out something.”

“Do you really mean that, Piper?”

She blinks again. There’s a weight to those words that’s hard to describe, hard to qualify beyond the gravity they hold and the intensity of something underneath, like holding a grenade. At rest, unused, she knows it’s not actually dangerous. The danger comes when the pin drops, or perhaps it’s comparable to the coiling and tensing of muscle. Janet has something in mind.

She’s not going to hand it to you, Piper. Answer.

“Yes,” she says. “Of course I mean it, Janet. Blondie’s done a lot for me in just these past few weeks and if I don’t get to repay him, I’ll repay you.”

Janet stands from her seat, and that hand underneath Piper’s takes the snake’s in turn. “Alright. I have something to show you.”

Chapter End.

==============================================================

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat

[empty-masks]

Book Three, Chapter Seven

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

Lucille hasn’t looked at Jules since the car started moving. It’s only as it comes to a halt beside the dirt road that she even spares a glance his way, and even then it’s in the rearview mirror. As she opens the driver side door to head into the trunk, however, she is forced to listen to his tired, but amused voice.

    “Extra tank’s in the floor underneath the passenger seat,” he says. His charcoal black whiskers twist, still frayed, into a fangy smile.

    “Oh, so you’re telling me about this?”

    Awkward chuckles escape the vampire as he sits up from his position in the back seats, where for the duration of the ride he’d been lying back and keeping a hand pressed to his bandaged side. Without his hat, without his hood, and without his daily grooming, one would’ve mistaken him for a vagrant. It’s immensely pitiable to see even someone like him in such a state, but Lucille’s expression isn’t changing, nor is her tone as the door beside him opens and she leans in to pull out the extra tank of fuel from beneath the passenger seat.

    “Look,” Jules starts again, raising his free hand in a sort of placating gesture, “I didn’t think it was important, okay? We’ve got a lot of much more important stuff going on and this was just supposed to be— ugh, god. It’s just a side gig, no more and no less, I promise. I wouldn’t hold it against you if you had a little something on the side. I’m not looking to become a career gangster. I promise.”

    She slams the door in his face and steps to the side to begin filling the car’s tank, all the while keeping her gaze focused squarely on a corner of the trunk. He, however, rolls down the window on that side.

    “Lucille, talk to me. If I knew you’d be upset, I would’ve told you, but I didn’t think—”

    “Yeah, you didn’t, because if you did you would’ve told me,” she snaps. The only sound around them is the wind between old, drying branches of trees up above. It’s complemented by the anger in her voice and the sound of her boots pressing scattered ash and dried leaves underfoot. “This life requires communication, Jules, and you fucked up. That prick could’ve killed you.”

    “But they didn’t, because we’re a good team.” Jules shifts in his seat, leaning out the window.

    “No, they didn’t because I panicked and I decided getting out of there was better than leaving you to die because you tried to pick a fight with a flaming corpse, all apparently under secret orders from those clown shoes assholes.” When the tank’s full Lucille stops pouring and moves to put the extra fuel away again, though this time she puts it in the trunk.

    His smile fades, soon replaced by a scowl. “It was just this one thing! Seriously! I’ll admit, I screwed up in the execution and underestimated how much some corpse pumped full of magic can do. It happens, Lucille.”

    “No, it doesn’t. We don’t succeed by fucking up, we succeed by watching other people fuck up and then changing our plans. We do recon, we scope things out, we plan, we hunt, we do our work well and we do it professionally. We talk to each other, because if we don’t then there’s a solid chance one or both of us will die. Which was what almost happened there, Jules.” Lucille stomps back to the driver’s seat, where she settles in and starts the car again. “I’m not letting you die on my watch, know that, but I won’t be lied to by someone I rely on and get pulled into a death trap because you wanted to make a little extra with your tie wearing friends.”

    “And I won’t let you die either,” he mumbles. “I’ll bounce back, they just got me bad with that punch.”

    “Don’t change the subject, Jules. You lied to me.”

    “Not technically.” His jaw rolls, his expression twitches between uncertainty and confusion. “Well, I didn’t tell you about it. That’s all I did, I never lied about anything.”

    As the car pulls onto the road again, Lucille scoffs. “Yeah, you didn’t lie, you just lied by omission. That’s so different. Still almost got us killed.”

    “I didn’t lie! It was supposed to be a kind of… happy surprise! When we got back from the trip and everyone was confirmed dead, I was gonna go to the capo and grab us a wad of cash!  It wasn’t even supposed to be a hunt or anything, just a quick check around and then maybe a small report, potentially acquiring somebody alive if there was anyone around. They were supposed to be all screwed up by the Dragon, not like…”

    As he moves to lie back down, he catches her glare in the rearview mirror again. Over years of traveling with her, he’d learned to read her at least a little well. He frowns, noting the offense taken in her face.

    She looks to the road and shakes her head. “Imagine if we went someplace and we ended up starting something with some guys who turn out to be Carnevale. You think I’d know? You think I’d know who to swing on and who to avoid if you didn’t tell me? Information and communication are more important to this job than being able to react fast. It sure helps being one of the best, but it doesn’t make us immortal.” Beneath her scarf, clothes, her jaw sets. “Idiot.”

    “Fuck, okay. I fucked up, I’m sorry. It was supposed to be easy.”

    “You should know by now that it never is.”

    A few minutes of silent driving come and go before Jules speaks up again, exhausted. “What now?”

    Lucille adjusts her rearview mirror. “We’re going back to Fusillade, kitting out, and resting. After that, we’re back on the hunt for those idiots with our girl Olive and maybe that corpse. Maybe. The fireproof gear we’re getting is coming out of your pocket, not mine.”

    “The pay’s gonna make up for it, you don’t even know.”

    “It better. I’m taking half of your cut from it for emotional damages.”

    Jules laughs until he realizes it’s not a joke. “Hey, I’ll bounce back, like I said. I just need a drink. You’d be better off having something to eat too. At least the Carnevale will be busy with their walking dead problem.”

    “Guess so,” Lucille mumbles. Then came a sigh, something relieved. “We can take our time with this hunt now. Back to business as usual. I can appreciate that.”

    “So… what’s the word? Do you forgive me?”

    As though in answer, Lucille drives purposefully over a pothole in the road, which causes Jules to clutch his side and hiss softly as he’s jostled. Then, in a lighter, happier tone, she says, “No.”

==============================================================

AH, YOU TWO. DISCOVERING YOUR GIFTS IN TANDEM— YOU HAVE TAKEN TO ONE ANOTHER QUITE NICELY. TOURMALINE, YOUR GIFT IS NAMED “THE FAITH”. AND MOONSTONE, YOURS IS NAMED “THE LIBERTY”. TAKE CARE, AND USE YOUR GIFTS WISELY.

“How much can these get us?” Leon asks, after placing a few of the cut gemstones on the counter.

    Like a shaken bottle of soda, the shopkeep nearly blows his lid. The stones are captivating to him, but not for the usual reasons— quality, weight, lustre, they’re all irrelevant to the feeling he’s taken by at the moment. Their sheer existence, lying there on his storefront counter, is what has him by the metaphorical balls. People only have access to this kind of stuff if they’re in managerial positions at the local mining colonies, and even then, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to assume that administration pays them in tender rather than product. In a moment of frenzied curiosity, he turns away from Leon’s gaze and inspects the rest of the customers in his shop.

    A few wanderers near the reclaimed adventuring apparel, a few mercenary types browsing the exotic weaponry cases. A handful of locals looking to spend some of their weekly paycheck on some pawn shop knick-knacks, and a single old woman browsing the fur pelts like she does every week. Then there’s this guy, with a bagful of precious gems and a suspiciously neutral attitude. Probably a thief. More than likely a thief, but this wouldn’t be the first time the shopkeep would’ve taken product for one.

That last time, though, wasn’t very profitable. In fact, he figures that he made a loss on that little interaction, since the local authority came to retrieve the stolen product he’d bought. Though he wasn’t reprimanded, he also didn’t get a slice of the bounty on the head of the thief, either. Oh, baby. He can feel the opportunity creeping its way onto his face, and he has to work to stifle it from showing to the Orc. The gemstones are cool, sure, but someone with this kind of stolen material would be better worth calling the local authority to have them hauled away for a hefty reward. And, if he’s lucky, he can get them to ignore whatever bits of product he keeps for himself altogether. He meets Leon’s gaze again.

“Well, there’s certainly something here. I’d say they’re worth a lot. But, I’m wondering to myself whether it’d be more worth it to turn you in for your bounty instead?” he says, crossing his arms. First step to working them over, complete. He looks around the shop, and that statement caught the ears of the mercenaries. Another set of eyes to put on the pressure. Perfect.

    Moving her way up next to Leon, Judith puts her hand on the counter and leans in close to the shopkeep. “Oh, you really wanna bet? I just ran an appraisal earlier today and Shepherd Gemstone is cheap as shit when it comes to bounties. I can’t be sure that you even know what our bounties are. Don’t bluff.”

    “They should cover the company bounty, and give you extra hush money.” Leon says. “That first question was rhetorical, kinda.”

The Orc looks the shopkeep up and down, who is visibly taken aback by how quickly his work-over has been turned on its head. He’s a sweaty man, late thirties, probably been running the shop after buying it from someone else. The store seems to reflect only a modicum of his own personality in the form of what he displays in the front case (gold, jewelry, etcetera), still being heavily accessorized with local fancies and gaudy accoutrements. A network of ash-glass beads weave loosely above the heads of shoppers, while bleached and intricately carved animal horn and bone adorns spaces between shelves, as well as act as shelves themselves on occasion. Red, grey, and black rugs hang from walls or wind up tightly on tree-like racks. A medium would be more at home in this shop than the man in front of them, and he reflected that with his posture. Though, he isn’t going to give up on the haggle, Leon notices, unless he’s been fully cracked open.

    “I’d get a crack at that pouch if I turned you in, though.” the shopkeep mentions. He motions toward the sack on Leon’s hip. “That’s a lot of dough, potentially.”

    “You’re saying you’d steal from us.” Leon asks, flatly.

    “I don’t think it’d be considered stealing if you take from thieves. I’d be adding to my stock as a circumstance of the situation, when faced with the five runaway fugitives that Shepherd Gemstone so desperately wants back.”

    “That’s not the way Shepherd would look at it, you clown,” Judith growls. “They’d come for the gems, too. You’d be another thief.”

    The shopkeep smirks a little. There’s no risk there. Just play dumb, keep the product for a few months, then sell it if nobody comes around to reclaim it. “I’m sure they’d understand.”

    “And you’d sleep fine?” Leon attempts to look the shopkeep in his eyes, but he’s in his own world. “You could go to bed at night knowing you robbed us in your own store?”

    The shopkeep laughs. “A transaction is only a robbery if one of the parties regrets it.” He picks up one of the gemstones off the counter. “And from the way I see things, it wouldn’t matter whether you regretted it, since there’d be nothing you could do once you were in the arms of the local police.”

    “You’re a real slimeball.” Leon scowls, and swipes the stone back from him. “Lucky, too.”

    “Luck only plays a tiny part in it. Good business is what it is.” The shopkeep leans over behind the counter, and returns with a corded telephone. “I’d call it great business, to be frank.”

    “Except, you’ll be marked,” Judith interjects, right as the shopkeep is about to put his fingers on the dial. “For the rest of your life, just like us, asshole.” The shopkeep doesn’t say anything, but turns to look at her. “You turn us in, you get a reward, sure. But if you think you’ll get to keep those stones, you’re wrong. They’ve been looking for them ever since Leon here tried to get out years ago, and they’ve got agents everywhere. One wrong customer walks into your shop, and boom, you lose out on everything you schemed for.”

“Repossession agents have been lenient with me in the past, and I will bet on them being lenient again,” the shopkeep starts to say.

“You don’t know how Shepherd works. I do, because I was one of their foremen. You know, the one that fucking killed one of her co-workers to escape?” She lets that sink in, noting the eyes of the mercenaries beginning to look away. She then motions to the shop surrounding, “You’ll lose this, too. Another thing you probably stole.” 

Oh god, he thinks. He worked so hard to swindle this place off its former owner. He’d clawed his way up the pawning world’s ladder, slipping himself some cash after every transaction and mastering the art of undercutting overenthusiastic sellers. To lose this would set him squarely below where he started. But that can’t happen. It won’t happen. Right? “That’s illegal. They can’t do that.”

“What the fuck makes you think they care about legality? We’ve had bounty hunters on our asses for over a month now. The kind of people who burn down the whole town when looking for a rat. And if you decide you’re taking these gems, they’ll be after you, next.” She presses a finger straight down onto the counter. “Or, you could forget this conversation happened, and hope a less intelligent group of idiots walks in next time. If you want to get on our good side, you could give us a little cash in exchange for our product.”

    Leon motions to Judith. “How’s that for business. Take it or leave it, we’re out of here.”

    Just like that, the shopkeep’s face twists its way through the seven stages of grief before asking, “How much?”

 ==============================================================

    As Cherry attempts to light a cigarette, a couple of recently licked feathery fingers swiftly place themselves over the small flame and the tip of it, snuffing both out in one fell swoop. Olive, without moving her body, shakes her head in either direction before focusing her eyes on the young man. “Don’t do that here,” she says. “It’s dangerous.”

    Before Cherry can say anything, Azariah’s amused voice comes out from behind him and a wiry paw finds his shoulder. “Wouldn’t want Leon havin’ to deal with residual smoke, of course. You’d have him coughin’ up a lung.”

    “Actually I was meanin’ the place around us, but that’s another reason. We don’t know how flammable this old buildin’ is. It could just light the hell up the moment he tries to stomp it out…” As though her eyes might be able to detect some hidden factor in the flammability of their newest haunt, Olive starts looking around with a jitter in her step, separating herself from the hare and his ward in her hunt.

    Cherry’s eyes roll and he sits down atop a small, but still usable cot, one of three. “I guess. I really could’ve used a smoke, and I can’t do it outside because— well, I don’t know, I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately. Maybe it’s not as safe to just smoke as I thought it was.”

    A sigh escapes the rabbit, who sits down beside Cherry and sets an arm around his shoulders. “Hey, hey now, don’t go gettin’ down on yourself. You were still right about this power business, or at least that it’s happenin’, and I think you did your best. Can’t ask any more of you than that, can we?” His graying muzzle pulls into a concerned smile, the sort a father might wear when they’ve quickly reached the end of their toolkit and are hoping for a miraculous thing called a switch of topic.

    This miracle comes about by lieu of Cherry staring exhaustedly out a nearby window, toward a series of abandoned buildings in near mirror image to the one they’re sitting in now. “How’d you know about this place?” He turns his gaze toward the other man. “You found it pretty fast once we made it to town.”

    Vaguely gesturing around with his free hand, Azariah says, “Shepherd Gemstone has another mining facility not too far from here, one of the old ones from before anybody bothered with things like “safety laws.” If you thought the violations back home were bad…” He trails off, seeming to fade for a moment before snapping back. “Well, needless to say, eventually nobody much liked bein’ exploited like that. It shut down because of some folks in the union at that time.”

    Cherry nods. “Okay, but what’s that got to do with an abandoned part of town? Fusillade’s pretty busy these days, right? Except here, I mean. But why?”

    “I’m gettin’ there, son, I’m gettin’ there. Probably ought to tell you this before we get there, but if we keep headin’ the direction we’re goin’ we’re gonna be goin’ through a real union town. It’s the closest one to the dead mining sight, as towns go. And then even further beyond that is your hometown, right?”

    Again, Cherry nods.

    “So there’s Fusillade, the union town, and your home. Imagine ‘em in a line, and then in the middle of those three and to the right you’d put the old mine. And between those three and the mine— you remember how crap and ramshackle the old places were back at our site? Those are semi-mass produced and supposedly temporary housin’ for workers. These are the more permanent options.”

    “These are supposed to be the good houses? They all remind me of Smokestone.” Cherry looks around, narrowing his eyes.

    “That’s because there ain’t any, ‘cept that these places are supposed to have furnaces that double as cooktops.” As Azariah points Cherry toward what he knew to be the spot where such a furnace might rest, they’re both greeted by the sight of Olive jumping as something that looks like it’s supposed to pretend to be a furnace falls over and cracks open.

    After some hearty laughing and foot-thumping, Azariah speaks again, saying, “Anyway, each town in that line has a section of houses like this, and after the whole thing with the union they ended up bein’ abandoned.”

    “Seems like a waste of some bad shelter,” Olive mumbles, walking over, “but it’s still housin’. Shouldn’t we be findin’ plenty of poor folks around?”

    Azariah shakes his head. “It was one of the best paid jobs around for a while, so even skilled laborers and craftsmen got in on it at least part time. When the mine shut down, sure, they could stick around and get jobs that still paid close to that, keep their own places, but then you’ve got folks like me.”

    “Like you?” Cherry muses.

    “I know how to do two things, Cherry. I mine and I fight, and by the time that union kerfuffle started up I was already on the back end of my fightin’ nights, or so I thought. I ain’t got a trade and I was too far past my prime to start runnin’ jobs like Olive here was. Only choice I had was to move to the nearest available minin’ job that’d take me, even if it meant leavin’ the folks I knew could back me up.” He shrugs. “Which is how we met, more or less. The next available place was back at that heap we left.”

    “So… There’s a union nearby?” Olive sits down on the other side of Cherry, taking the remaining space on the cot. “Think they’d help us?”

    “Depends,” Azariah answers, rubbing his chin. “There’s a solid chance they’ll think we’re some kind of corporate espionage ploy, pretendin’ to be runaway workers in need. Or they might legitimately want to help us. Luckily I know somebody there, so plan on the latter. He’ll vouch for us.”

    “That’s all well and good, but now we have another issue. How’re we gonna get there faster than Jules and Lucille? They must know that’s basically a guaranteed destination! It’s not hard to piece together that we’re tryin’ to get someplace where Shepherd isn’t and the union town sounds like the place to be.” Olive’s feathers ruffle; she’s going from one problem to another.

    “Oh, that’s easy,” Cherry says with a shrug. “With the money Judith and Leon get for those stones, we can get a car.”

    Azariah’s ears twitch. “You know how to drive one? ‘Cause I don’t, and I don’t trust anyone else around here to do so, bein’ as one of us is down a hand, Leon’s got his condition, and uh— no offense meant Olive, but you don’t seem the drivin’ type.”

    “None taken, cars are basically big rattlin’ death-traps on wheels, waitin’ to explode at any moment.”

    Cherry smiles. “Oh, I know something better. I know how to race.”

Chapter End.

============================================================== 

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-cherry #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-olive #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Three, Chapter One

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

YOUR POWER’S NAME, ONYX, IS “THE IMPACT.” YOUR USE OF IT WAS IMPRESSIVE, DESPITE YOUR UNFAMILIARITY— I HOPE IT IS NOT PRESUMPTUOUS TO SAY THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO IMPRESS.

Azariah’s eyes creak open to the early-morning sun. He looks around the camp— everyone is present and sleeping but Judith, who’s sitting up against a tree with everyone’s backpacks strewn about her. She has a stubby pencil between gritted fangs and a clipboard in her hand. Each passing second, she bites a little deeper into wood, and she taps a nervous rhythm into the board with her fingers.

Azariah yawns loudly to get her attention, sitting up from his makeshift bed and stretching. “Mornin’, Judith,” he says, scratching his back.

She scowls, dropping the pencil from her mouth and catching it with some free fingers. “I thought you were dead. Cherry thought you were dead. Why’d you have to do that?”

He returns the frown, albeit softer. “There’re just some things you gotta do.”

“You’re the only thing keeping us together, asshole! If you had died fighting that thing, we would’ve been fucked!” 

“That’s awfully kind of you, Judith,” he says. “If I’m the heart of this group, though, I’m surprised we haven’t keeled over yet. You know better than that.” The sincerity in his voice takes Judith off guard, and she puts down her clipboard in a huff. “Well you made a dumb fucking call, Azariah. And I don’t know what we would’ve done without you.” Afterward, she tugs on the mask around her neck.

“Y’all would’ve survived. I don’t doubt it.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I most certainly am not.” The Hare stands up and searches for his jumpsuit. “You would’ve taken charge, and I trust you enough to put everyone on the right track after so much. Only person I worry ‘bout is Leon, but that’s ‘cause I think a lotta things scare him. Besides, Cherry cares too much for any of y’all to bite it and Olive knows better than to scatter the group.”

“Just don’t do it again.” Judith’s lips purse for a moment, but only until she speaks again, saying, “Please.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t plannin’ on it.”

“Good.”

“In the meantime, have you seen my uniform? It’s gettin’ chilly out here,” he asks, beginning to sort through the pile of clothes that Judith had been taking inventory of.

“Yeah, it’s in there somewhere. I don’t remember.” Something else crosses her mind as he leans down, and she snaps her fingers to get his attention. “How didn’t you die, though? How didn’t he snap you in half?”

“You know how Olive and Cherry were talkin’ ‘bout what kind of superpower I had?”

“Having more shit to kick out of you isn’t a superpower, Azariah. You were moving so fast it hurt to watch. I’m pretty sure that’s your power.”

“Hey, you never know! Maybe Blondie hit a nerve and turned my clock back forty years?” He laughs. Judith’s eyes widen. “He realigned your back! You lucky old shitbag, he fixed your back!” Azariah bends forward to touch the ground, then leans back far enough to create a right angle. “He definitely did somethin’ to me. I’m feelin’ better than I have in a few decades.”

“And if we’ve got rocks in our bones— he could’ve cracked a brick in his hands like… like, god. I can’t even think of anything.”

“Funny how things work out.”

“Go play the lottery, dick,” she says, shooing him away. “Get us some food, will you? Olive’s not awake, and I’m not done sorting through our shit yet.”

He picks up, steps into, and zips up his jumpsuit, then slips on his mask to avoid breathing in any further ash or wayward smoke. A thought crosses his mind, and before heading out into the nearby woods he mentions to Judith, “I had a meetin’ with that thing last night. Figured I’d let you know.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really. My power’s named ‘The Impact,’ an’ the thing told me it was impressed with what I did with it,” Azariah says, thumping his chest in jest. “It’s nice to hear that someone appreciates the work I do ‘round here.”

“I don’t think getting praise from something that names its superpowers shit like “The Impact” is something to jerk yourself off over.”

“If it’s powerful enough to give us all somethin’ special, I’d say it's justified.” He pauses for a moment. “You tried findin’ yours yet? It might come in real handy in the future. You know, right beside turnin’ into a wolfy hulk and tossin’ bad guys around.”

Judith sighs, and aggressively slides her pencil into the clipboard’s head. “I don’t want to think about it. That shit stresses me out, Azariah. I don’t want to fight, I just want to crunch numbers.”

“Well, if you start doin’ something weird, make sure to take note of how you did it. I’m still figurin’ how I turned mine on in the first place.”

“Yeah. Can you go get breakfast now?”

“Already on my way.”

==============================================================

    He had tried very, very hard to manifest a visit with It. He could feel it straining his brain before he went to bed that night, a pulsing, dull pain that would interrupt his intermittent sobbing. He had to talk to it again. There were so many things he needed to ask It, so many questions that were being left completely unanswered. And just as he began to drift off into dreamland, he could feel one of those glassy tendrils wrap around his waist, dragging him down, down to the smoky abyss once more.

As he feels himself come to on the floor of the thing’s room, he stands up and stares at the wall of fog. Tears want to spill from his eyes, but he puts in an effort to keep them from coming.

“Uh, hi. Mountain, thing,” he says.

Something rotates from beyond the fog wall, eventually settling in to face him. GREETINGS, CITRINE. YOU ARE THE FIRST TO REQUEST A VISIT.

“Yeah, well, I really wanted to ask you about some stuff that’s been bothering me. Like, uh, how my life has gotten substantially worse since you gave me these powers?”

YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE WORSE OFF WITH YOUR GIFT? It responds. He can feel It lean in from beyond the fog wall. CITRINE, WHAT IS THE MATTER?

“Things just… haven’t been good for me, or for anyone else, since that first accident. Yeah, it’s been kinda fun in some places, and it’s super cool to have the power to take things apart with my mind—”

THAT IS THE WAY YOU HAVE BEEN APPLYING IT? INTERESTING.

“Yeah, I have, I guess. But, what I was saying was, uh, things have been cool, sometimes. But other times… things have really,” Cherry finds himself beginning to choke on the words, “really, sucked. I saw my best friend nearly die. I’ve nearly died at least three times now in the past couple weeks.”

It doesn’t respond.

“And, uh, that hasn’t been great. I’ve felt really bad about it.”

It still doesn’t respond.

“So, I guess what I’m trying to ask is… why?”

WHY?

“Yeah. Why us?”

RANDOM CHANCE.

This time, it’s Cherry’s turn to be silent.

I GUIDED YOU TO MY DOMAIN, OF COURSE. I EXAMINED YOU FOR THE PROPER TRAITS. AND I RELEASED YOU UNTO THE WORLD, GIFTS ABOUND. BUT, INITIALLY, IT WAS RANDOM CHANCE THAT BROUGHT YOU TO MY ATTENTION.

As the words ring true through his head, Cherry feels himself beginning to lose his grip. There is no reason, then. There’s no reason for it beyond the whim of something beyond his control. Their suffering, his suffering, is the product of a higher being’s random-chance fascination with him and his life. The realization starts the sobbing again, and it doesn’t take long for him to be down on his knees, crying into his hands.

CITRINE— CITRINE, PLEASE DO NOT CRY, It pleads. CITRINE, I AM NOT THE CAUSE OF YOUR PAIN, NOR HAVE I ENABLED IT. THE SOURCE OF YOUR PAIN IS IN THOSE SEEKING YOUR DOWNFALL.

“How do I know you’re not trying to screw us over, though?! We wouldn’t have everyone trying to kill us for our bones if you hadn’t put fucking gemstones there in the first place!”

CITRINE, I— 

“See?! See,” Cherry interrupts, holding up a hand. “You call me by the rocks you put inside me! You said you searched us for what you wanted, but do you even know my fucking name?! Was my name part of those requirements?!”

CHERRY. Its voice booms, resounding off the inside of his skull until he can’t hear his own thoughts. CHERRY. YOU MUST CALM YOURSELF.

He stands up, wiping the tears from his cheeks.

MY MEDDLING WAS INITIALLY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. I FOUND YOU WORTHY BECAUSE OF YOUR FLAWS, AND BECAUSE I SAW IN YOUR FUTURE A GREAT CONFLICT. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEEDS OF YOUR ENEMIES, I ONLY GRANT YOU THE TOOLS TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THEM.

Cherry moves to speak, but a tendril wraps around his waist.

I EXIST TO NUDGE THE STORIES OF MORTALS TOWARD POINTS OF INTEREST. IF YOU WOULD LIKE YOUR STORY TO END HAPPILY, I SUGGEST YOU START TAKING THE PEN FOR YOURSELF. 

 “I don’t know what that means…” He mumbles.

WE SHALL SPEAK AGAIN. FOR NOW, YOU HAVE BREAKFAST TO CONSUME.

    Cherry stopped bleeding a while ago but there’s still some dried blood clinging to the underside of his nose, as his attention is held on other matters. Somewhere deep down, Leon wants to be the man that tells him the world’s not full of easily changed enemies of circumstance, but even he knows there’s a point where it’s just mean spirited. After all, plenty of stomping had already been done courtesy of that wolf bastard.

When Leon walks over and sits down with a thick huff, behind his mask his face attempts to twist into a concerned or even consoling smile, but the best he gets is something only a touch more positive than a deadpan. And then comes a heavy hand to rest on Cherry’s shoulder. “Sorry about everything,” the Orc says. “How’s your face?”

“Sore,” Cherry mumbles. “I wasn’t holding that gun right. Lucky it didn’t just explode in my hands.”

“You’re also lucky it didn’t push your nose through your skull. Not as lucky as Azariah, but lucky enough. Get your mask on, smoke’s bad for the chest.”

Cherry turns his head to run his eyes over Leon’s expression. The concern is noticeable in that same way a person can notice when somebody’s very out of practice when trying something for the first time in years. “I thought there was a better way. I really did.” He shakes his head. “He gave us a head start and everything. I figured that maybe he was just a decent man with a bad job. Everyone can change. Anyone could be a good person with a little elbow grease.” On come the straps, hooking his diving mask into place. It rests weird against the bridge of his nose, but it doesn’t start bleeding again— it just throbs dully with some soreness.

“Anyone can, but not everyone will,” Leon replies. Normally his tone had a cold matter-of-factness, but it’s softer at the moment. Not soft, not by a longshot, but he’s lowering his voice into something that might be some level of warm concern. “Some people just don’t want to. That guy wasn’t working for a family, or some friends, or whatever higher moral reason you can think of. He was working to hurt other people.”

Before Cherry can muster up a response, a whole heap of Owl nervously tumbles into a spot sitting on the other side of the young man, laughing awkwardly. Ash has collected on her hard hat and mask, making it an adventure to find her eyes underneath. “You don’t get to be like that if you ain’t doin’ it by choice, Cherry,” Olive says. “So strong, I mean. If my ribs weren’t fillin’ up with bits of rock I’m pretty sure I would’ve been crushed. Really, he could’ve shoved his entire boot through your chest cavity if it weren’t for Azariah.”

“Olive,” the Orc grumbles, “that’s not helping. I’m saying, there’s a cut-off point for decency, and Blondie’s been long past it. Think about who he’s working for, how he does his job, what he does…”

Cherry looks down, and Olive nods quickly. “Yeah, Cherry, there’s a point where you have to know they’re probably not nice. I could assume a couple of the foremen back at the site were decent people, even if they were rough around the edges. They’re not saints, but they’re not devils. Mr. Gilroy, the guy that basically owns the site? Probably a huge prick.”

Again Cherry tries to talk, saying, “I don’t like assuming—”

“Agreed. He routinely made choices that fucked us over. Case and point, the entire situation with the security team.” Leon mentions. She nods. “Yeah! My entire section got liquidated without any explanation and anyone who didn’t just walk got conned into minin’! Highway robbery!”

“Let’s not forget his top security choices,” he grumbles. “Jules and Lucille.”

“I’ll admit to a little attachment.” Olive rubs the back of her neck, laughing nervously. “They used to be pretty good bosses, everythin’ considered. You start to reevaluate things after they take you hostage, though.”

“What does any of this have to do with that big guy that almost killed us? Blondie? I’m talking about him.” Cherry asks, looking between the two bulkier forms on either side of him. “I’m not talking about some admin or those bounty hunters.”

Olive shrugs. “Oh, I just wanted to get in on the conversation. I’m still runnin’ high on adrenaline after nearly dyin’ just about five different times in the span of a day or two.”

“Okay, look. Imagine if Mr. Gilroy were combined with Jules and Lucille.” Leon’s hands raise slightly, gesturing as though to mix something. “Imagine that fucker, who took pleasure in working his employees to the grave. Put that personality and baggage into one really big guy, and make him more dangerous than all those idiots that tried to kill us earlier.”

Cherry frowns. “I don’t like that.”

“You shouldn’t, he could’ve killed us all without thinking twice,” Olive followed up.

A soft sigh escapes cherry as he rubs his face with his hands, leaning forward slightly and shutting his eyes. And then he sits back up, straightening out as he looks toward Leon.

The Orc could almost be described as relaxed in that moment, though relaxation isn’t something that settles easily on him. It’s a lot like seeing a bulldozer powered off and sitting without a purpose; sure, you know it’s actually good that it’s not operating all the time, but it still feels weird to not see it moving something or other.

“How do you know so much about what Gilroy chose to do?” Cherry asks, and what thin amount of relaxation rolls off of the other man.

“Judith.”

“Oh. Yeah, that scans,” Cherry continues. “Back on site it seemed like you two hated one another. She told you about the terrible decisions her boss made, willingly?”

Leon rolls somewhat in his seat, then moves to stand with a heavy and uncomfortable breath. “Cherry. Not everybody's kind, but you don’t need to like somebody to be stuck with them. We didn’t like each other, but she wasn’t about to complain to the other foremen, and I wasn’t about to bother with anybody who didn’t have access to my contract. We had nobody else. End of story.”

“You’ve got us now, though,” Cherry says without hesitation, his features pulling up somewhat. “I think at least Azariah and I have your back. I’ll say Olive does too. Right Ol—” as he turns his head, Cherry and Leon both see the Owl passed out on the ground. Cherry laughs. “Guess she didn’t sleep a whole lot after everything.”

“Yeah, guess so.” His face twitches. It settles back into a deadpan as the man’s heavy form walks off toward a pair of long, brown ears nearby. “I’m going to go help with breakfast.”

Cherry sits there for a minute looking up at the falling ash, then very gently mumbles, “I need a smoke.”

==============================================================

    “What are the breakfast offerings, innkeep?” Brie asks, cupping her hands around a steaming cup of herbal-smelling brew.

The keep, cursing softly and frequently under his breath as he brushes another pile of blueish-grey ash out the front door, looks up at the two women. “I think it’s sausages today. Some kind of sage gravy, something like pickled greens on the side.”

“What sort of sausages?” Roxanne’s brow raises and her lips pull back into something of a faintly amused smile. “I’m rather picky with my mystery meat.”

“I dunno, ask my mom. I gotta get this ash outta here before the brunch rush.”

Brie sighs and turns back to Roxanne, who’s now busying herself blowing on her own cup of brew. “Do you think they could have arrived by now?”

“Considering,” the Medic replies, “that they more than likely traveled through Dragon territory, I doubt it. Good lord, this is strong.”

“Dragon territory?”

“Yes, Ms. Brie. This town is under the watchful eye of a Dragon, and everyone here knows it.”

The innkeep lifts his head up from his broom and adds, “I heard the Wyrm finally bit it, actually.  You know, all the ash? There aren’t any volcanoes around here, and we sent out some badasses yesterday to finally take care of it.”

Both Roxanne and Brie seem shocked, the latter more than the former. They look outside the window of their booth, and find the town busy at work getting the ash, which is still flaking from the sky like light snow, into big piles outside their houses. 

Every building in town no taller than three floors, has a foundation made from a large-cut, brownish-grey stone, and is packed close to one another along the thin roads, for ease of firefighting. To counteract its gloomy building palette, Fusillade puts on a town-wide festival every month that encourages citizens to decorate their property with all manner of tacky, ridiculous accoutrements. This month’s theme is the Harvest, and boy howdy, is it not hard to tell. Painted Pumpkin stems poke up from the tops of ash-covered gourds that inhabit every street corner. Leafy vines are strung up every lamppost, folks selling apples and other various produce have set up temporary stalls under buildings’ awnings. Even some of the Dragon-themed shops around town have taken to the theme, setting up mock dragons of orange, gold, and white.

The inn they sit in is decorated to theme as well— strings of vines lining the doorways and booths, apples being sold for fifty cents at the entrance, and a large, chalkboard advertisement for Painted Pumpkin wine being half-off all month. Outside of the theme, an attempt has been made to make the place more welcoming than its brown brick foundation might imply. Three massive, ornate rugs, imported from some place less under threat from a fire-breathing snake monster, help break up the chromatic monotony. Though, their quality has faded over the years thanks to repeated drunken dancing sessions as a result of pint night, and the general wear and tear adventuring boots apply to everything they come into contact with like some kind of rash. Roxanne and Brie sit in a booth, observing the town’s lack of jubilation for the supposed ending of their oppressor.

Brie in particular feels the urge to pull out her notebook and begin jotting down details, but the arrival of breakfast makes her hesitate. Before even picking up her utensils, she holds up a hand to the innkeep and asks, “Innkeep, did your hires ever come back from the job?”

“Nope. Haven’t seen ‘em at all. Have you?”

She scrunches up her face. “No sir. That will be all.” Turning to Roxanne, who is in the process of removing the casing from the mystery sausage. She opens her mouth to speak, but the Fox is already putting words in it.

“I don’t know how long it’ll take them to get here, Brie. It took us the good part of a day, and we were in a car. They’re on foot, and it sounds to me like they might’ve got caught up in a fire or two.” She puts a forkful of sausage into her mouth. “It’s deer, by the way.”

“Perfect. We will help with the cleanup, then. I feel as though I could use a distraction.” Brie takes a sip of her brew, and twists her face as though it was made of bagel dough. 

“I said it was strong!” Roxanne laughs.

“Actually, pardon me for assuming—” she starts, shaking her head and putting down the mug. “Would you want to help out on the job? You do not have to, if you would rather stay on watch.”

Roxanne chews thoughtfully. “I suppose a search party could use a medic, couldn’t they? Perhaps we’ll run into them out there, Ms. Brie. It’s not as though you’re escaping your quarry by embarking on this side-gig.”

Just about to put a forkful of sauerkraut into her mouth, she drops her fork back onto the table. “That’s right. Darn.”

“I wouldn’t waste that food if I were you. We used to go on week-long trips for Fusillade’s pickled cabbage, it’s something of a staple around these parts.”

“My apologies.”

“Either way, you should still consider it. It could end up being more fun than this,” Roxanne scowls. “This trail of bodies we seem to be leaving in our path.”

Brie thinks about this for a moment. This job has easily tested her limits in ways that most haven’t— she doesn’t think she’s thrown up more in a single day than she did in Kiln, much less on a job. There could be some use in helping some townsfolk find their own. Perhaps it could be a temporary return to form, something that could help counteract the ridiculousness of her current situation. She sighs, and forks a portion of sauerkraut into her mouth.

“I agree. If there is a call, I will participate.”

“Good girl. Now, let’s eat.”

    Breakfast is quiet. Though thoughts run like rivers through each of their minds, neither wishes to speak as there’s a decent meal to be eaten, which is a rarity in their respective fields of work. Roxanne finishes before Brie, and before she’s done chewing, she holds up a finger to indicate she wants to say something. Brie looks up from a slice of sausage, mid-bite.

“Ms. Brie, do you mind lending me your detecting skills? I’ve got a worry I’d like stomped,” Roxanne asks.

“Is something the matter?”

She motions out the window. “Why the ash?”

“The innkeep said there is a sizable chance the Dragon died.”

“Yes, I recall. But I can also assume that Dragons don’t explode in a puff of confetti when they die.”

“Are you attempting to imply something?” Brie sits up straighter, glancing toward the window.

“I’m wondering something. And what I’m wondering is that if the Dragon is dead then why did it snow ash last night? How much of the forest has to burn for it to get like this?”

“I can think of few things capable of stopping a fire-breathing Dragon from burning down a forest if it wants.”

“But, usually they don’t, Ms. Brie. Dragons aren’t wanton agents of destruction. They tend to their territory.”

“Wood ash is good fertilizer according to some of my friends who garden.”

Roxanne nigh hits herself in the forehead. “Let me just cut to the chase, Miss Brie. There’s a chance that, well, some of the people we’ve been following got caught up in this Dragon battle. And even if they didn’t, there’s an even better chance that the forest around them caught fire. I want your professional opinion on whether they could be in danger, at this moment, or not.”

“Oh,” Brie says. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “There is always a chance that they could be. But, then again, I don’t think there’s enough data to assume anything for certain. My professional opinion is that we should wait and see.” She ends the statement by chewing her last bit of sausage. “Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s fine, Miss Brie. I suppose I’m being unreasonable asking that of you.”

Something about the sentiment of that sentence hits her like a tractor trailer, but before she has time to comment, a crier comes in through the front doors of the inn, asking for the innkeep. The two converse for a moment, having some chatter about the weather and the ash, but eventually the crier turns back to the now-bustling brunch hour crowd, and announces, “On request of the Mayor of Fusillade, the esteemed Mr. Poolish, a commission is being put out for a search party! As you may know, two days previous we sent out hunters to take care of the Fusillade Wyrm. They have since not returned, and we wish to retrieve what is left of them whether living, dead, or otherwise! The quarry will take place as soon as the group has been formed, and it will be paid on arrival with evidence of the adventuring party’s fate.”

“Ain’t it clear where they went?! They went boom with the Dragon, ya’ idiot!” a particularly snide brunch-goer yells.

The crier ignores the heckler, and continues in long and throaty tones, “Inquiries about the job should be brought to the town hall, where Mr. Poolish will be organizing the required paperwork and payment. If you are interested, don’t hesitate to show up! Thank you kindly for your time.”

“Except that bastard,” someone else yells. “I hope you choke on your sausage.”

“Oh, I’ve got a sausage for ya’ to choke on, buddy!”

As the late morning argument descends into playground jeering between hungover adventurers, Roxanne and Brie look at one another and say near simultaneously, “Let’s go.”

Brie stands up from her seat, and Roxanne does the same, propping herself up with her cane. The Medic has to duck under a handful of sauerkraut pitched at high speed toward a man wielding a venison sausage in reverse grip as she leaves the inn.

“Good things come to those who wait, I suppose.”

“I hope they have got room for a medic and a detective,” Brie says.

“A medic, for sure. And you’re in luck, a detective might just get considered for a job that requires some detective work.” Roxanne laughs.

Chapter End.

============================================================== 

[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

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[empty-masks]

Book Three, Chapter Six

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

Brie jolts awake to the sound of ripping canvas, shouting, and sickening cracks— and so does Roxanne. The two look at one another, then at the empty space where Meat is supposed to be, and then they both exit the tent, the older woman brandishing her walking stick as best she can as Brie draws her pistol from her bag.

    Outside, there’s already a flurry of ash kicked up by the force of each of the combatants, the wind, and some actual nightly rain. However, while that does well to at least attempt to obscure the features of the fighters, those in the fray are unmistakable; that’s partially because Jules and Lucille, though not entirely strange to look upon if you don’t know them, are fairly easy to make out if you do, and Meat outright glows in the dark. The locals are up too, but a couple of them are already on the ground and the other two are hiding behind the tent, behind Meat, whose stance is rigid, unwavering.

    As the light drizzle touches their shoulders, their throat, and their head, steam drifts up. With their shoulders squared and their fists raised, they growl out a question. “Why?”

    “Good damn question,” says Lucille, standing side by side with Jules. “I’d like an answer as much as you, but how about you stay down first?”

“It’s a side gig,” is all Jules says. He makes a soft click with his fangs and the both of them launch across the campsite toward Meat, each taking one side around the bonfire in the dead center, which had yet to go out even beneath the rain.

    Lucille goes low, crossing close to the tent itself as Brie raises her pistol to fire. However, just as she’s squeezing the trigger the merc kicks particularly hard in her mad dash, tossing up a mix of wet and dry ash into the investigator’s face as she ducks the swing of Roxanne’s cane. With a throwing knife borne in each hand, the distance between her and Meat shrinks in the same span of time as Jules’ journey.

    The walking stick twirls between his hands en route like a circus performer’s baton until it comes to crash hard against Meat’s shoulder, the cudgel of a head used to crushing muscle and bone all the same— but tonight its foe doesn’t buckle in the slightest, even with the full brunt of Jules’ half-famished, desperate power behind it. It’s at the same time as this blow that Lucille shoves a knife into Meat’s side, tucking it below their arm and between their ribs, but the walking corpse no-sells the puncture wound entirely.

    A burning hand, blazing red with angry, disastrous light turns on Lucille, lashing out in a wild punch that in the moment, she wonders whether it would’ve exploded if it had contacted her head. But, she doesn’t have time to discover what that’d be like, as Jules takes the hit to the side instead, a localized burst of fire and force pushing Lucille far back through the ash, and shoving the Vampire into the mud. While reeling, she manages to throw a couple more knives into Meat’s center mass, but the result is much the same. She then opts to get an arm around Jules and kick them both away from the corpse, who takes a couple more wild, apocalyptic swings that fail to land.

    The two mercenaries tumble across the ground on the opposite side of the fire from the tent, on the path Jules had taken to get to Meat. At this point Brie and Roxanne are both out and half-running to Meat’s side, taking up a position on either flank of the glowing figure.

    This time, Brie does manage to get a shot off, though it doesn’t strike either of the mercenaries as they both stand and bolt away. It’s not more than a moment and a couple gunshots later before the two have disappeared between the dark trees, the both of them already dressed in dark clothing and the cloudy night sky offering no help with regards to light. Brie scowls.

    Meat sighs, then looks down at themselves. Glowing hands drift across the spots where they’d been hit, and when no blood came they shake their head. “This is weird,” Meat says.

    “Weird, but unsurprising.” Roxanne chuckles, turning to poke them herself. “I’d imagine that you don’t have much to bleed anymore, and it takes quite a lot to make somebody bleed magic. I’d offer to stitch you up, but you’d just burn the stitches out.”

    Brie clears her throat. “I think they were referring to being attacked so early in the morning.”

    “I didn’t.” Meat shakes their head. “Those two looked like scumbags from the moment I saw them. Wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I guess I was wrong. I guess they’re going to be running for a while.”

    It’s at this point that Roxanne turns to the locals and moves to help the two men that had been tossed aside in the fight, leaving Brie and Meat alone for a brief, somewhat peaceful moment. The two sit down, and Brie puts her gun away again.

    “You didn’t hit either of them,” Meat points out.

    She nods. “I did not want to kill either of them, and if the fight actually escalated I fear I would not have been much help. Though, it didn’t seem like you needed much help anyhow.”

    Meat’s head tilts. “You did it to scare them off?”

    “Correct.” Brie nods. “The threat of you, alongside myself and Roxanne, was obviously enough to send them running.”

    Their jaw clacks as they shut it for a moment, then open again to ask, “Run where?”

    Brie considers that for a second, then turns her eyes in the direction they ran— and then to the locals currently being treated by Roxanne. “Ms. Roxanne,” she starts, “does he have his keys?”

    “Hmm?” The Fox’s head turns toward Brie. “Keys— ah.”

    The realization is sudden and abrupt in everyone but Meat, who has no clue what just about any of this means until Brie puts her head in her hands and says, simply, “The van.”

    The dots connect. Meat lets out an understanding sigh of realization too. “Well,” they say. “I guess we’re walking.”

    Brie nods, then raises her head. “Yes, we are.”

    Lucille shuts the driver’s side door of the van hard, slamming it and nearly snapping the key off in the ignition as Jules slumps into the passenger seat with a panting rasp. “You dumb son of a bitch,” she says, pulling back onto the road as the engine chugs to life. “We could’ve died back there fighting that thing and you still haven’t given me a fucking clear answer about why you started that fight.”

    Jules opens his mouth to deny the accusation, only to rasp and wheeze and clutch at his side. “Fuck,” he grumbles. “I think I’m gonna get blood on the seats. You’d think a punch from a magical fire corpse would at least seal the wound. Christ, that was like getting stabbed with brass knuckles…”

    “Answer me!” She growls, gripping the wheel tightly enough to begin bending it. “ANSWER ME.”

    “God, okay! Alright!” He looks down at his hand, then to Lucille, whose eyes are on the road but are glaring death. “It’s a side gig I got from a Carnevale higher up, delivered by Davey back in Kiln.”

    Lucille’s fury is tempered only slightly by her astonishment. “The mob? You’re doing work for the mob and you didn’t even tell me?”

    “It wasn’t important at the time, and this job was supposed to be easy! They were supposed to be dead! The job was to confirm their death!”

    “Well, they fucking weren’t, Jules, and we almost were. I don’t want to think about what that freak could’ve done to us if we didn’t get out of there because you didn’t want to bother telling me that apparently our main gig isn’t enough.”

    “Hey, I never said that. We were going to head toward Fusillade anyway and I thought it might net us a nice bonus. Ugh, when we get back to your car—”

    Lucille glares over at him, shutting the Vampire up. “We get back to my car, you explain yourself and I don’t finish the job myself, asshole. First we need to get back to the damn thing and get rid of this shitwagon.”

==============================================================

    As Piper walks through the halls of the Smokestone Location HQ (for what she hopes to be the last time, seeing how her performance has been recently), she finds herself overcome by the smell of freshly cooked meat pies. And not just any meat pie, oh no. It’s a particular kind of meat pie, the kind that she remembers having on the streets of Black Hill the last time she visited. Gilroy had said to try them out, she remembers. The scent wafts out from under every door, through every vent— and she hears the distinct sound of inebriated, on-the-clock celebration. Beer bottles clinking, drinking games being won and lost, and foundation-vibrating snoring coming from a particular few dormitories.

    On her way to Gilroy’s office, she grabs an unopened beer to drink. Usually, this kind of universal revelry isn’t tolerated in Shepherd Gemstone, even when a big deal is landed. Schedules aren’t designed to have room for parties, and if you don’t stick to the schedule, you usually get sacked. Usually, she wonders, ducking under a streamer of paper towel that’d been strung low across the hall.

    Not that she minds any of this. It’s a refreshing change from all the serious work she’s been doing recently. Watching people get hopelessly drunk on company time is always entertaining, and she figures that she might as well join them once her business is taken care of. If she closes her eyes and pretends real hard, she can almost see her name hung up in a balloon arch, with everyone congratulating her for intimidating a middle-aged dad in a suburb by threatening to turn his insides to soup. She laughs to herself. She could use a little REAL me-time. Not the kind that’s cut short by jobs.

    When she finally arrives at Gilroy’s office, she peers in through the wide-open door. There, she finds him ballroom dancing with what she assumes is a drunken apparition only he can see, to a waltz record not quite set all the way onto the player, causing it to hiccup every second beat (not unlike the dancer himself). He hums terribly to the tune, spinning and twirling his imaginary partner with sloppy finesse. It takes him a moment to notice Piper standing in the door, but when he does, he abandons the dance entirely, running over to his desk and whipping out a now-stained piece of paper, holding it up to the heavens.

    “It’s finally happened! Piper, it’s finally happened!” he gleefully shouts.

    “Gilroy, I think you’ve had a few too many.”

    “I know when I’m fucking drunk, thank you very much.” Gilroy sits on his desk, kicking his feet. “You’d be drunk too if you knew. He’s dead. He’s dead, Piper!”

    She steps into the room, trying hard to avoid what looks like a fresh spill on the hardwood. “Who’s dead?”

    “Blondie! Blondie’s dead, Blondie’s dead,” he repeats, nearly tipping over the backside of his desk. “Blondie’s fucking dead, Piper! He’s finally dead!”

    “What?”

    “Didn’t you fucking hear me?! He’s dead! Gone! Turned to ash and dust! When he went out on that fucking job for the company, his stupid ass decided that he’d fight— fight a goddamn Dragon! The Dragon up north! And it exploded, and he hasn’t been around since! Blondie fucking exploded with the Dragon, Piper! He’s finally dead, oh my God!”

    Alongside some ice, a cup of frozen fruit, and a cup of milk, her brain is put into a blender on high-speed and poured back into her skull. Blondie’s dead? There’s no way that’s true. It can’t be true. Guys like him don’t make decisions like that. That’s gotta be a cover-up of some kind. There’s just no way.

    But maybe it is true. Maybe he’s actually dead because he made a stupid decision. One wrong move can get you put in a body bag pretty swiftly in this line of work. It can happen to anyone. She had learned that quick on her first job. Even though he seemed invincible, maybe he slipped up somewhere. Maybe all it took to take down a mountain was one loose stone.

    And what does this mean for her, exactly? Wasn’t Blondie heading that program she wanted in on? No, she remembers, he was just recruiting for it, and if she recalls correctly, he was at this particular spot because he wanted to annoy Gilroy. With Blondie dead, what happens to her job?

    “Mr. Gilroy?” she asks, setting down her beer bottle. “What about my job?”

    Having manifested a meat pie from the deepest recess of his suit pocket, he takes a bite that sends flakes of pastry careening back down into the cushions of his armchair. “Ah! Ah, your money. I’ve got your money, Piper. It’s in my desk. Don’t worry about your money, I’ve got it.”

    “I’m talking about the program. What happens now that Blondie’s gone?”

    “Oh, that! That should be fine. You should get in quicker now, too, since their fucking golden boy is dead, dead, dead. I can’t think of anything else they’d do to replace him other than make the program go faster. Accelerate it, or something,” he replies. “Grab a beer, Piper! Have fun, for fuck’s sake! Stop talking about business! That’s an executive order!”

    But she doesn’t grab her beer at first. The feeling grows on her as she thinks, the feeling of glee in knowing that despite having just been broken the news about her mentor biting it in a frankly stupid incident, she’s still moving up in the world. In fact, she’s going to move up much quicker with him being gone. So, when she gets her hand on the bottle and moves to uncap it, she does so with a happy confidence in mind. She deserves this. It’s only a matter of time, anyway.

    “That’s the spirit!” Gilroy cheers, taking another bite of his pie. “When you were in Black Hill, you tried the pies, right? I got them custom ordered. Ordered for this very special occasion. And I’ve given everyone on staff PTO for the whole day. And— and I got everyone booze.”

    “I’ve never seen you this generous before, G,” she laughs. Even though it’s about the alcoholic equivalent of foamy piss, the beer goes down smoothly knowing that she didn’t have to pay for it.

    “Listen, girlie, if you had someone you fucking despised, and your whole company despised them too, and all of a sudden your boss gives you a call telling you they blew the fuck up? All of a sudden they were dead? You’d be howling at the goddamn moon,” he says, slurring his words together.

    “I guess I would be, huh.”

    “And don’t you fucking worry about me or anyone. Me? This shit’s all going on the company docket, I’ve already done all the paperwork before getting shitfaced. I have planned this party.”

    She had a feeling that was the case. “Did you plan for the hangover, though?”

    A look of realization flashes across his eyes. “I’ll take it off, everyone can take it off. No work tomorrow too. PTO,” he says, waving his hand. “And his family. Blondie’s family, oh my god, I fucking hate them. But I don’t have to deal with them. That’s fucking Penny’s job. Hickory. She’s going down in a few days to break the news.”

    His family. That’s right, Blondie has— had a family. And they live in Black Hill. Just the thought of it completely ruins any buzz she had been attempting to nurse. His family ought to know sooner. And they ought to be told by someone who isn’t a corporate bastard like Hickory or Gilroy. It’s not like he had any friends he mentioned, Piper thinks to herself. As far as she can tell, she’s the closest thing he had to an apprentice, even though it had only been a handful of weeks.

    But, that’s better than nothing. She’s the closest thing to a friend he had. So it would only be appropriate for her to go down and see them. Tell it to them straight, unlike what someone more formally from the company would do. Piper sets her beer back down, and walks over to Gilroy’s desk.

    “Can I have my paycheck? I’m gonna take a trip.”

    “Why the hell can’t you people ever relax properly,” Gilroy whines. “You’re gonna visit his fucking family.”

    “Yeah, I am,” she states.

    “Have fun. His wife’s got one of the biggest asses you’ve ever seen. Tell her I said “hi.”” He hands her the check, and waves her off. “Don’t do anything dumb, though. I don’t wanna hear about how you fucking crashed your car or something while driving down there.”

    Piper walks out of the room, back through the halls of the Smokestone Location, the scent of pie now undercut by the occasional sharp smell of vomit, out the front door and back to her company-issued vehicle. As she gets behind the wheel and grips it, she finds herself beginning to feel a little melancholy.

    Her emotions have been on a rollercoaster from the moment she got back to Smokestone. First she’s been sad, then she’s been glad, then she’s been uncertain, and now she’s fucking sad again. And now that she’s thought about it, all that feeling has got her annoyed.

    “What a fucking pig,” she hisses aloud. With a rev of the car’s engine, she takes off out of the parking lot and down the road for Black Hill never to return to Smokestone.

==============================================================

    It’s not that he’s worried about something going wrong, or that he’s got some ulterior motive of menacing origin. It’s just that Leon feels the need to cushion himself—  in the case they end up separated, they end up hurt, or they end up betrayed, he’d like to have something shiny and expensive to pave the way forward.  Is it a dark prospect? Absolutely, but nobody survives by thinking only on the bright side. He’s got a healthy amount of worry inside of him, just not as much as Olive does and far more than Cherry has ever had. His old crew would’ve called it a “pragmatic application of his anxiety,” which to him, is a compliment. No point in shitting his pants over bloodthirsty Monsters around every corner, but there’s truth to keeping a level and cautious head even in a place like Fusillade.

    This is the only span of time he can do this. Judith took his word for it when it came time to count out the number of gems in the stash, as it was his initially and she had no intention to spend a night counting rocks again. Even if she ends up finding out, she’d get over it soon enough. She understands. Hopefully. He silently pushes down the thought that she may have lied to him about having not counted the loot in the first place. 

    There’s more than enough in the bag to set a group of four or five up for a while, as even the unrefined, mine-fresh material is valuable around this neck of the woods. It could be transported to any number of places for more intricate cutting and weighing. Artisans, jewelers, collectors, even those crazy-ass magical scholars. Hell, that last case might even be the best case. If these stones have something those mages find useful in them, they’ll bid one another broke over who gets to touch them first.

The gemstones clink and clatter as he digs through the bag, selecting some smaller pieces to hide on himself. You know, he thinks to himself, the idea of being out on his own, at this stage of having escaped? That doesn’t taste so good. Even past his “pragmatic application of anxiety”.  Maybe at the start of the trip, the idea of leaving these folks behind would’ve gone down smoother. But at this given moment, he can’t help but feel that it’d haunt him. They’ve spent all their time making sure nothing shitty has happened to him so far, and he’s found himself doing the same. He even threw himself at that Monster so they’d all have a chance to live. Would he have done that the day they left? Even the second day?

His golden gaze drifts over the rocks again, counting a variety of hues below the dust still clinging to their rough, natural facets. What would he use the money for, anyways? Food? Shelter? Bribery? Food and shelter are cheap, and if he has to bribe someone then he’s already been caught. Would the cash be worth the pain, if he found himself choosing between that and his friends? Even while handling them, if he isn’t careful there’s a chance he’d cut himself on the occasional sharp edge. Rolling them over in his palm, a thought comes to mind— what good is the money if he isn’t making it work for everyone? This shit’s no better than a pocketful of broken glass. Shiny, expensive broken glass that he’d pawn off, so that he can have a fancy bed to lay in while wallowing in self-pity and regret.

His consideration on the nature of garbage that rich people obsess over is interrupted by footsteps approaching from around the corner of a dilapidated wall. Thankfully these empty buildings on the outskirts of Fusillade are about as tall as those back in Smokestone, and just as good at hiding things. Not quite as fortunately, that goes both ways; from around the corner walks Judith, arms crossed and features slack with boredom. The bag shuts tightly, the opening drawn taut by Leon’s free hand, and his other hand balls into a fist around the stones to cover them entirely with his dark green fingers. Leon smiles crookedly at her, and she returns the expression faintly, tiredly.

“Counting the stash again,” he says, moving to sit on a creaking bench outside of the prefab shack, settling the bag itself into his lap and keeping his fist against its side. “Whenever you’re ready, we can get some cash for it.”

Judith sighs as she comes to sit beside him. “Yeah, just give me a minute. We’ve been walking all day and I’d like to take a second to sit in peace without Azariah playing his mandolin or Olive and Cherry babbling my fucking head off with random trivia related to whatever their obsession is this hour. Just shut up and look pretty for a little bit, alright, Leon?”

That does earn a silent, assenting nod from the Orc, and a few minutes pass by without event between the both of them. The air’s as cool as ever, despite a nervous energy that pervades it. This is the most unnatural way to hold a bag in the world and he knows it; even worse, he knows that she probably knows that too, and in a moment or two she’s probably going to grill him on why it is that he’s for some reason holding this bag of rocks with one hand around the top and the other balled into a fist against its side. It looks stupid, that’s what it is. She’s going to see it and she’s going to prod him on it and they’re going to fight, and it’s going to be a problem. There’s got to be at least one car lot in this town, he can still get out on his own. No need to push himself, just play it cool.

“Leon?” Judith’s voice perks up, rising over the sound of the wind between the decaying shacks. “Your hand.”

He clears his throat. “Something wrong?” Oh, here it comes. Here comes the problem, the start, the issue. If he’s lucky she’ll just wolf out and eat him, he thinks. That’s the quickest option, getting his head lopped off by a massive lycanthropic claw.

She taps at his knuckles with a finger, then lifts his fist up. A barely noticeable trickle of blood is running to the heel of his palm and to his wrist, but it’s so insignificant that it isn’t even dripping. “You’ve got a cut, dumbass. Open up your hand. Is that why you’ve been keeping it closed like that? You know you shouldn’t hide crap, not now of all times.”

“Shit, I didn’t even notice,” he says, resignation bubbling up in his tone. He frowns and turns his head to the side before opening his hand, turning it to face his palm and its contents toward the sky. His eyes squeeze shut before his fingers spread open, preparing for a yell or a roar or even a punch, but nothing comes.

Judith stares at his hand for a long moment, seeing only a small cut, and says, “Oh, that’s not even worth a bandage.” She stands from the bench, letting go of his wrist and dusting herself off. “Don’t get any dirt in that and tell me if you use anything to clean or treat it, okay? I need to keep the supply log up to date, especially if we’re going to be getting anything in town. You should probably get that blood off before we head to the pawn. We want to put forward the image of proper citizens.”

“Good call.” Leon’s eyes snap open. The stones aren’t in his palm anymore, according to both his and Judith’s eyes. There’s a catch, though— he can definitely still feel them in his palm, as sharp as ever, sitting right where he had, apparently, cut himself from squeezing them inside his fist. “Uh, sure, I can get this cleaned up,” is all he says afterward and all that Judith hears before she’s off behind the corner of the shack again, disappearing to go hang out elsewhere while he gets his shit together.

His stare lingers on his palm for a minute longer before the gemstones flicker back into existence. Each one fades in as though a veil were pulled from them and Leon smiles again. So this is his power, holy shit.

It’s not some kind of strange telekinesis or becoming bullet-proof or super-speed or even teleportation, but invisibility is certainly a step in the right direction. With the right applications, it’s got loads of promise. What had been the catalyst for this? Olive discovered hers in the heat of battle, Azariah had done the same. Judith figured hers out through sheer stress, and Cherry’s wasn’t necessarily a battle sort of thing so much as it had been the natural progression of his horribly curious nature.

Switches. Azariah had compared it to a switch, hadn’t he? Something turned on and off. What had turned on? He didn’t want her to see the stones, he supposes. Is it really that simple? He doesn’t want somebody to see something, so it doesn’t let itself be seen?

His brow furrows and he focuses on that feeling, taking it between two great, mental hands and wringing it. It cannot be seen, nobody can know, nobody can know! The moment they start seeing that he’s keeping things from them is the moment they start questioning everything, and if they question everything then it might get out that he was the reason that stupid water-jet-thing blew up in their faces. If they see these rocks, they find out he fucked up. Judith finds out that he fucked up.

The stones disappear again, dematerializing before his very eyes though their weight was still plainly evident on his palm. In addition, the bag full of stolen product is also gone. A test is in order. So, he turns his hand over, still channeling the power and, the moment the stones lose contact with his hands and fall into the open air, they reappear. However, the bag is still invisible.

He lets go, allowing the bag to reappear and gathering the fallen stones up to tuck them into a pants pocket, fixing them in a position so as to avoid cutting himself or his dark jeans on the gems. So, it needs to stay in contact with him to be invisible, simple enough. He has to focus to make it happen, also simple, and apparently it can happen without him thinking so long as it’s something intense, so at least he can rely on his self preservation to kick in and make things go right. Just another additional tool to survive with.

“Hey, before you go, Leon, I wanna have a quick chat with you…” Comes the drawl of the old Hare as he turns the corner, idly plucking at his mandolin strings. “I was wonderin’ about your opinion on this shack; I know it ain’t the nicest but— ah, hell.” Azariah raises his head and turns around, searching for the shadow he had followed toward the bench to no avail. There’s a long, silent moment, the twitching of a lopped ear, and a sigh before he turns back around to walk back again. “Guess he must’ve gotten a head start.”

Chapter End.

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[ Table of Contents ]

Blondie & The Smokestone March is © 2020-2022 Empty Mask. All Rights Reserved.

#empty-mask #b&tsm #writing #oc #fantasy #adventure #serialized fiction #b&tsm-leon #b&tsm-judith #b&tsm-azariah #b&tsm-gilroy #b&tsm-piper #b&tsm-brie #b&tsm-roxanne #b&tsm-meat #b&tsm-jules #b&tsm-lucille

[empty-masks]

Book Three, Chapter Five

CW: Strong Language, Sexual References, Graphic Violence, Fantasy Bigotry, Smoking, Alcohol Use, Light Body Horror

Evening had come quickly for the escapees, as the ashy particulate in the air blocks out the sunset for the third night in a row. Though it’s getting notably thinner— Leon pointed out that he’s had an easier time breathing when compared to earlier in the week—  it’s still enough to bring about a modicum of grey darkness to the scorched forest.

Olive and Azariah are out; they helped set up camp, then the former went out to catch some dinner, and the latter went out to catch some firewood. The streams they normally follow have been contaminated by the ash, so their traps have seen little use. According to Olive, however, this hasn’t been much of a problem. She described it thusly;

“Huntin’s an interestin’ thing. Some of the folk down south’ll burn bits of plains where they know rabbits an’ such are hidin’ to flush ‘em out. When forests like this burn down, everythin’ scatters to greener pastures. I’ve already had a couple game birds practically walk into my arms earlier this mornin’,” she said, while taking a bite out of a roasted game fowl leg. “The woods’ll be crawlin’ with meat for a couple weeks until their original territory recovers. So, no more hair fish for a while folks, sorry.”

But, with alternative kinds of meat comes a greater need for preparation. Gutting a rabbit is a little like gutting a fish, except you can’t just scrape everything out from the bottom and call it a day. Leon and Cherry had been voluntold by a combination of Azariah and Judith to get the deed done, but as time went on and Judith finished her cataloguing duty, she offered to help out on the job, so long as she was given instructions on how everything worked.

“You sure this is a good idea, Judith?” Leon asks, handing her a freshly-skinned rabbit carcass.

“No, I’m not. But I want to learn. Knowing how to handle a knife with this hand will be useful.” She leans the meat up against her leg, and reaches over to where her survival knife is kept. “So come over here and help me with this.”

Cherry opens his mouth to comment, but quickly chooses against it. He decides that focusing on his own work, rather than any work that Judith might be doing, would be best for his health at the moment. If she has anything to say, or has anything she needs help with, Leon’s there. Pissing her off while she’s handling a survival knife isn’t on his list of to-dos, anyways.

Leon scooches over in the leaves to assist. And “assist” is the appropriate word here, as he soon finds out that Judith does actually understand how to use a knife. She knows quite a bit about how to hold it, what bits to cut with, etcetera. A couple questions like “why the hell are you babying me?” and “do you think I don’t know what the tip of the blade does?” help to snap him out of that mindset. All she needs is help holding up the carcass, and pointers on where she should cut to do her job correctly.

It soon becomes apparent to her that one-handed butchery, however, isn’t much her forte. Sure, it takes her a moment to orient her hand to correctly make cuts. Sure, her hand is a little shaky from trying to concentrate and because she’s gripping the blade a little hard (and because it’s fatigued, having finished some writing earlier in the evening). But the real signifier for her is when she gets to the gutting. Having to reach into the carcass of something isn’t quite as grotesque as she’d imagine it’d be, and the blood and bodily fluids that slick her fingers are annoying at best, dangerous at worst.

She and Leon attempt to wash it off in the stream, but her hands are still wet by the time they’re clean. With no towel to speak of, as she returns to her duty, she goes to make one of the final cuts that’ll have fully prepared the rabbit for roasting. That’s when her knife slips out from under her grip, causing her to knock the rabbit into the ashen leaves. In the moment, her brain believes that it’d be a good idea to try and catch the airborne knife. As a result, she just barely cuts deep enough into her palm to draw blood, and yells out in pain as Leon is trying to get himself situated back in his seat.

“Fuck!”

Both Leon and Cherry drop what they’re doing to come and help.

“What happened?” The Orc asks first.

“The knife slipped!”

“How bad is it?” Cherry asks next.

“Bad enough! I’m bleeding, get the medkit from my bag.”

Cherry nods, and runs back to begin rifling through her stuff.

Judith looks down at her hand, blood dripping from either end of her palm. It’s impossible to tell just quite how big the wound is, but it’s enough to freak her out. If it’s enough to disable her hand for a couple days, she thinks she’d rather put a bullet in her head. Just the thought is enough to make her want to fall to her knees, lean her head back, and curse her creator for such a cruel and unjust life. Looking out to the forest, she squeezes her hand shut in an attempt to staunch the blood flow.

And in doing so, she suddenly finds herself alone in the grey darkness, surrounded by nothing but ashen trees.

It takes her a few moments to register that she’s not at camp. There’s no campfire, no stream, no Cherry, no Leon. Just her, her bleeding hand, and the quiet wilderness right before sunset. She can hardly see her palm when she opens her hand again, but she can feel its sting clear as day.

“Leon? Cherry?” she calls out. No response, only a handful of chirps from the nocturnal peeper frogs.

She tries again, this time louder. 

    There is no answer, and even the echo one might expect from such a place is muffled by the ashfall, and so not even the sound of her own voice between the trees comes to her. What happened? There one moment and gone the next, abandoned in the woods. Had something else done this to her, or had it been her, somehow?

    Her breathing rasps through her throat, and without thinking she slaps her still bloody hand against it, feeling the muscles and straining. The stress, the pain, she’s turning again, shifting. It’s starting with her throat this time, working its way through her inside and to her limbs. It’s not long before the sting of her cut hand forces her to pull it away from her straining neck, just in time to avoid gouging herself on developing claws or rubbing against wild, thickening hair and fur.

    She stumbles forward, eyes darting from side to side. If she could do anything but grunt in frustration and slight pain, she’d be thanking herself for opting for clothes more accommodating to her lycanthropic tendencies. However, right now all she’s focused on is getting back to camp. The glass of her mask fogs up with heavy, heaving breaths, and as she moves she unthinkingly rests her hand against the bark of a tree.

    Scraping the wound, she lets out a beastly whine and backs up only to ball her hand into a fist and swing it at the tree. However, she doesn’t strike the tree. She swings at open air, nearly tossing herself over as she stumbles over tree roots and down a small hill, tumbling through the ash until she comes to a halt against the base of yet another burnt and ruined tree.

    Words try to crawl up and out of her throat, but what comes out are no more than snarls and growls, inarticulate and frustrated. This prompts Judith, as it would prompt any sensible being with a bit of self-respect, to ball her hand into a painful fist and strike the ground in a fit. This causes her a whole new problem to deal with, because the moment her fist is closed and she’s shut her eyes in tearful rage, there’s that strange feeling again alongside a whole new one, the weightless sensation one feels when falling asleep and it’s as though reality’s disappeared out from underneath them, which results in a sudden and entirely false feeling of falling from a great height.

    When her eyes open, it’s not false. Below her the trees grow up out of the ground like charcoal spikes, and she’s only just cognizant enough to tilt herself so that instead of becoming a wolf kebab she’s tangled between the crooked and cracking branches of a very tall tree. “Shit,” is all that escapes her. At least she’s shifted for this one; that sort of fall probably would’ve broken her good arm if she had been in her human form.

    As she looks down to the ground, though, yet another issue makes itself known: there’s not a way in hell that she’s going to be able to make it down to the ground. She’s fairly large in her shifted form, but with luck she landed at a junction where her weight is supported by several branches. The lower to the base they go, however, the more branches have already snapped off or are more distant, and as such they’re not worth much in the way of climbing down, and this tree’s more times taller than herself than she’s got the space of mind to count. It looks that way, at least.

    It’s maybe a half an hour of screaming like a monster later that the other four finally appear in her vision, and it’s getting dark enough that she can barely make them out against the grey ash, even with their various colors. They, however, have a very easy time seeing the wolfed out ex-foreman, who’s screaming into the dusk sky and clutching at a series of branches at the top of a tree that is tall, of course, but not something the local survivalists would have an issue descending.

    Azariah’s the first to raise his voice, calling after her, “We heard you the last few times, Judith! You can calm down, and I’m sure you can climb down too. Just use your claws, pup!”

    “She’s only got the one hand, Azariah.” Olive points out, adjusting her hatchet on her hip. “I don’t think it’d be safe to chop down the tree, though. Don’t know how we’re gonna get her down.”

    Cherry clears his throat to grab their attention. “How did she get up there, anyways? You’ve gotta be a pretty good climber to go that high with just one hand. Maybe something put her up there? Or, uh. Something.” So saying, he turns to the tree and up toward Judith and calls up, “Hey Judith, how did you get up there?!”

    The response received is something along the lines of if one were to simultaneously try to speak and howl, with the added bonus of being practiced in neither such sound in this capacity. However, they do notice that with the one hand— now no longer clutching at the branches, as she’s got her other arm hooked over and her legs hooked by the knees around them too, for support— she makes a vague, grabby motion, as one might expect a child to when spotting a particularly interesting toy.

    Leon’s about to make a joke when he gasps, coughs, and rasps: “We’ve got to move!”

    Above the four of them is Judith, as in the blink of an eye with one of the closings of her hand she’s suddenly occupying the space where the air above their heads had just been, and while Azariah’s quick enough to be out of the way, none of the others are able to stop a few hundred pounds of wolf from pinning them in the ash. It prompts Olive to protect herself, of course, and Cherry’s fine but squished, but Leon— Leon starts wheezing and coughing after the fact.

    Judith’s up and off of the three quickly, backing off awkwardly and, ignoring Olive and Cherry, immediately grabs Leon to haul him up and check his chest with her injured hand. He holds up a hand to stop her, however, and after a few more long, tense seconds of coughing he offers the lot of them a smile. Not too long after, the wolf is replaced by the woman again, who even under her mask appears to not know whether to apologize for slamming them like she did or accusing them of causing it all in the first place.

    She’s not given the opportunity, as Leon dusts himself off and says, “You can teleport. That’s a pretty useful power.”

    “It’s not,” she snaps. “It put me up a damn tree.”

    Cherry nods. “I mean, if you figure out how to control it, you might even be able to use it in a fight, right? Teleporting behind people—”

    “Shut the fuck up. I’m not using it to fight.” Judith scowls, and soon a heavy green hand is placed on her shoulder.

    Azariah snickers, then gestures for the others to follow as he begins on his way back to camp. “It was real damn funny to see you up in that tree, though. You gotta admit that.”

    As Olive, Cherry, and Leon pick up their respective paces to follow after Azariah, Judith falls into step just behind them. If she can figure out how to use it and not put herself back up into a tree, then maybe it could be worthwhile. It’s about as useful as turning into some shaggy monster is, and she’s not happy with that either.

    Silently, however, she did concede— it was a little funny, getting stuck in the tree. Just a little.

Chapter End.

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