Two Bards: The Forum!

“FRIENDSHIP!”

Chad blinked; that wasn’t exactly what he’d said, but it was close enough and he was feeling so out of it right now. He felt like he’d overindulged at one of the family gatherings - man, the food coma was right there and so temptingly within reach. If it wouldn’t have been horribly rude to fall asleep in front of a whole roomful of potential datemates, he’d have already been under the table and curled up.

Oh, the woman was getting smaller. Still beautiful, though, he noted as he stared at her glassy-eyed. So beautiful, all shining and glowy, and he couldn’t look away even as she shrank to barely larger than his thumb. He wondered if she would consent to being his wife; it would solve an awful lot of problems and maybe his dad would stop harping on him to go out and find a real occupation.

Then it hit him.

Searing agony lanced through him, shooting out in white-hot spears from his forehead. He could feel something burrowing into his skull, forcing nerve connections where before he had none. He could feel power rushing through his nervous system, forcing open floodgates in him that he hadn’t even known he had. Chad knew, with a sudden, terrible certainty, that if he had been any more tense, if he hadn’t been completely stoned out of his skull on the drugs in the food, that if he wasn’t such a naturally relaxed guy, that this would have killed him. Magical Space Princes and Magical Space Princesses were cut from the same cloth, but Magical Space Princes were wired differently. Their powers were weak, and their bodies’ natural magical channels were narrow and reluctant to let magic flow.

The power from the stone - he could feel the shape of it now, feel it like a third eye or second nose, feel the air through it like it had always been a part of him - had blasted those channels wide open with the initial power rush. If he’d been even the slightest bit tense, if he’d been able to even muster a little bit of surprise, his magic channels would have tensed and the power surge would have burned his entire nervous system out.

If that’d happened, he’d’ve been lucky to die seizing while his nerves fired muscles randomly; if he’d’ve been unlucky, he’d’ve been left a drooling husk with the stone trapped on his forehead, keeping him alive until a better vessel was found.

Still, that hadn’t happened and even as he realized what had, in fact, happened - he was now Space Princess Chad of the Dominion of Chad, apparently - he could feel the aftershocks bouncing through him, changing him in nearly indefinable ways. He could feel magic much more strongly now - raw, unshaped magic just waiting to be given form - but he didn’t know what to do with that so he put it to the back of his mind. He suspected he could do a lot more magic now than he used to, but that wasn’t what Magical Space Princes did or were for.

He could feel the stone in his forehead. He reached up to tap it, just to verify what he could already feel down to the depths of his brain, and -

It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer, stars exploding across his vision as the tap sent shockwaves of pain from the roots of his hair all the way down to his toenails. He clapped one hand over the stone, protecting it instinctively. It hurt worse than being kicked in the family jewels, and that was saying something! He made a hurried mental note to never ever do that again. Like, ever.

Ow.

He did have to wonder if it was the same for all the space princesses, or if it was just because his physiology was different. Space princes were not, after all, supposed to get Keepstones; they weren’t designed to handle them, their skulls didn’t have the secondary socket thinning at the fore to facilitate bonding when the time came, they had differently shaped magical channels, and, well. Certain other morphological distinctions made them extremely ill-suited to receiving a Keepstone.

And yet here he was.

“What just happened?”

Scichael Mofield sat in a bar, sipping his drink.

Mofield wasn’t really his name, of course - who the hell names their kid Scichael? - but it was what the (extremely well-done) driver’s license in his pocket said and it was the name he’d given to the whispered rumors that someone wanted to hire him.

He sipped his drink and glanced up at the mirror over the sticky bar he was currently seated at. It’d been a bit of a surprise when his snitches had reported who was hiring; the guy hadn’t been seen for nearly eight months and the general assumption had been that he’d been picked up for “moving violations”. Still, it seemed either the rumors were wrong or the guy was very good at escaping; either way, he was back again and looking for Mofield’s services.

And Mofield was inclined to indulge him; his last payment had been…Unorthodox, to say the least, but oh so useful. Mofield glanced up at the mirror again, and let a muscle behind his eyes relax. Suddenly he was looking both at the mirror and through it, the rooms beyond making themselves known to his eyes in flashes of movement and light. The backroom had a mouse scurrying through it, and Scichael made a mental note not to eat any more of the pretzels. The upstairs rooms were all full, most of them with strangers seeking the short comfort that came from another’s embrace, but the room at the end had the mayor’s aide and what looked like the mayor’s wife.

Mofield smirked into his gin and let the vision fade. That was an interesting tidbit, and made coming here tonight worth it in and of itself even if the prospective client never showed. He was, after all, now almost - Scichael glanced at his watch - twenty minutes late. It wasn’t like the guy didn’t know where the place was; they’d met here the last time he’d hired Mofield, after all, and he’d been on time then.

Scichael figured it was some sort of protest about coming back to the place; the guy had looked supremely put out the last time they’d met, when he’d had great difficulty in getting his shoe off the floor thanks to a particularly venerable gum wad. Mofield had honestly called the meeting in the same place for that exact reason; he was just enough of a bastard that the petty humor amused him. Plus, of course, it was one of the few dive bars he rotated meetings between that had an intact mirror over the bar, and his contact was a creepy enough bastard when he couldn’t sneak up behind you. Mofield would probably shoot him if tried, just on reflex.

“You’re late. Thought they taught you batchies better than that,” Scichael drawled, enjoying the look of brief irritation that drifted across his contacts face as he sidled up behind Mofield. Z grimaced as he checked both the seat and the floor beneath it before deigning to sit down. Mofield hid a snicker in a sip of his drink as he enjoyed the vat-man’s discomfort; some people in the business would refuse to work for the tank-born, but Mofield contented himself with merely needling any that tried to employ him. Given his own dubious antecedents, he couldn’t really say he was in a position to throw stones about parents or the lack thereof.

“I had a few things that wanted doing before we met, and time got away from me,” Z responded as he sat, a creepy smile sliding onto his face as he glanced over at Mofield with an unsettling light in his eyes. Mofield raised one eyebrow, sharpening his gaze to look for oncoming police cruisers but Z merely shook his head. Mofield grunted and nodded to the bartender, who immediately refreshed his glass and set a frothing pint in front of Z. Mofield sipped politely at his glass, but Z ignored his completely in favor of staring at Mofield. Creepy batchy.

“So. I heard you were looking for me. Me, in particular,” Mofield tried the drawl again, ignoring the way the steady gaze was making his skin crawl. It was the price of doing business with the guy, and he’d never been one to shy away from a good score just because a client made him want to bathe in hand sanitizer.

“Indeed. I have need of your particular talents.” Z spoke crisply and clearly, which Scichael could appreciate in a client; it was probably a result of his batch processing. The batchy reached into a side pouch and pulled out a single sheet of lined paper that looked like it had been torn from a spiral bound. Mofield leaned over to look at it with a studied disinterest. He didn’t recognize the drawing, but he did recognize the logo and leaned back while whistling softly through his teeth.

“You’re aiming big. I don’t tend to hit developmental labs because corporate espionage isn’t really my thing, but I’ve seen their security set up.” He made it a point to keep up to date on various security initiatives and maintained no less than three clean covers to subscribe to the latest news in security both physical and cyber; the logo belonged to one of the foremost labs in the city, and he’d heard only some of the security features from a friend of a friend.

Z nodded, smile firmly fixed on his face as he leaned towards Mofield. “That’s why I need you. No-one else could even begin to attempt it.”

The admiration in the batch-born’s voice made Scichael simultaneously preen and want to go take a shower, but he concealed both reactions with the ease of long practice. No point in letting someone know when they’ve found a possible chink in your armor; they’d just slide a knife into it later when it was inconvenient. He leaned back and glanced away from Z to covertly check the room behind them in the mirror; no-one had been foolish enough to come to the bar for drinks while they’d been talking but a little extra caution never hurt anyone.

He leaned forward again to address Z. “Did you want this done fast or want this done quiet? If I need to find something similar to replace it with, I’ll need extra time for the forgery.” Swapping one item for another of considerably lesser value was an easy way to cover your tracks, but it tended to work better when he was heisting jewels than anything else; forgeries took time, especially technological ones. Paintings you could get away with some missing details, documents just needed to have the right seals, but tech forgeries needed to behave at least a little like their counterpart before they gave up or they weren’t worth using.

Z merely shook his head and patted the satchel at his side. “No need. I will provide a…replacement of sorts. I just need you to get in, get the original, leave the one I get you, and get out.” He paused for a beat. “In three days.”

“Three days!” Mofield only just stopped himself from yelling. Three days was barely enough time to case the place, let alone formulate a plan for a heist. Granted, he didn’t need to do any digging at City Hall for floor plans anymore thanks to Z’s last payment, but even considering that this was a bit much. Still, Z’s last payment had been good, had pushed him to the very top of his game, and he could admit to himself that his greedy, blackened soul was drooling over what else he could get from the batch-born.

He leaned back on his stool. “And what do I get in return?” He knew he sounded bored, but Z’s grin only widened, damn the batchy. Reaching into his satchel, Z brought out a small rod approximately eight inches long and two in diameter. Inset into the surface were symbols Mofield was somehow certain weren’t part of any human language, set on rings that rotated and shifted under Z’s clever fingers. Mofield feigned disinterest as best he could. “My niece has one of those. Does it make the pretty light show when you shine a flashlight through it too?” he sneered, but Z’s expression didn’t waver.

“This,” he said, enunciating clearly but quietly as he held the rod up to what little light was available in the dingy bar, “is a dimensional hopper. You set the rings to the dimension you want to go and press the button on the end.” Mofield’s eyebrows crawled towards his hairline. “That simple?” The other more…regulated travel facilitators were never that easy. “That simple,” Z confirmed, and banished the rod back to his satchel with a quick flick of clever fingers. “It is also, of course, enormously illegal to make or own one, but I don’t think you care very much about that, do you, Mr. Mofield?” Mofield snorted a mirthless laugh, and Z nodded genially.

“So, Mr. Mofield, what do you say?” Z held out his hand. Mofield hesitated; his instincts were screaming at him that something wasn’t right with the clone in front of him, but……He’d always been greedy, and he loved the thrill of a challenge.

Scichael reached out and took the extended hand. “A pleasure doing business with you, as always.”
———————————————————————————————————–

“You in, partner?”

“You know me, partner. I’m always in.”

———————————————————————————————————–
Sirens wailed as Scichael hauled his nearly-unconscious partner along the inside of the chain-link fence towards the hole he’d made in it earlier, cursing himself for going along with this and that bastard Z for putting him up to it.

Mofield’s long-time partner, Lyndon Burrnow, made a bubbly noise as more blood flowed down his chest. He’d taken a bullet meant for Mofield, and from the sound of it the damn thing had nicked a lung. He needed to get his partner to the hospital now or he wouldn’t have a partner much longer.

“Hang in there Lynd, I gotcha,” he chanted as he finally made it to the hole in the fence. The whole venture had been snake-bit from the start; he’d spent a day driving by in various cars casing the place with his extra vision and the sheer number of sensors, security points, and vaults in the place had made it clear subtlety wasn’t going to be an option. Any kind of covert infiltration would take at least two people on the inside, and a quick check of the application process made it clear that turning anyone already on payroll would take months he didn’t have, and getting someone on the payroll from outside would take even longer.

So he’d chosen a more direct route, paying a hacker out of his own funds to cut power and communication to the site so he and Lynd could come in through an industrial ventilation shaft without being cooked to death or alerting anyone and hitting a lab a floor away from the real target. They’d clean out that lab, he’d slip over and replace the bit Z wanted with the forged piece, and they’d be out through the maintenance tunnels after setting off a fire alarm.

That plan had lasted all the way up to actually getting to the lab they were going to clear out. Almost immediately they’d been set upon by a guard whose glowing, bulging veins were a big clue that he wasn’t the average no-neck goon. Scichael hated hitting places that employed pilots. Still, Lynd - who loved a good fight the way other men loved a good beer - had simply tackled the glowing bastard with a gleeful yell to Mofield to get on with it.

He’d taken off and left Lynd rolling on the floor with glowing-veins, switching the piece Z’d asked for and hurrying back. When he got back Lynd was sporting one hell of a shiner and the glowing bastard - who glowed quite a bit less now - was out cold on the floor. They’d gone in to their original target to start clearing it of anything that looked both valuable and portable, and found three more guards that were very clearly the result of some kind of experiments, plus another smug-looking pilot holding their less than metaphorical leashes.

Mofield had snatched some kind of blue, glowing device off a nearby table and they’d both legged it, but the alarm had been well and truly raised. Armies of guards had come boiling out of the woodwork - fortunately of the more typical gun-wielding variety - and had cut them off at every turn. Lynd had finally ended up tackling one to the ground taking his gun to cover Mofield as Scichael worked frantically to unlock a side door they’d managed to find. Lynd had been shot just as they got the door open, and Mofield was left to keep him mostly upright and going for their exit strategy.

Fortunately, the hole in the fence was still there - the hacker had been worth every penny Scichael’d spent on him and had thoughtfully disabled the perimeter alarms as well as communications - and he managed to manhandle his partner through. Less pleasing was the canned bastard leaning against their getaway car, the drive system of which had clearly been ruined beyond repair.

Mofield scowled at the smiling face of Z. “The hell are you doing here? I need to get Lynd to the hospital, he’s been shot,” a panicked glance told him that yes, Lynd was still with him though he was fading fast. Z didn’t move. “Did you get what I asked for?” Shouting was becoming audible in the distance and Mofield grimaced. “Yes, now get out of my way! I need to get another car, Lynd’s shot, do you hear me?”

“Let me see it,” Z said calmly, taking a step forward. The shouting behind them was getting louder and Scichael scrabbled madly for the satchel at his side before throwing the whole thing at Z. Z caught it, and looked inside for a long moment before smiling even wider. “Excellent! And as promised,” he tossed the rod that landed near Mofield’s feet. “The dimensional hopper. If you set it right, your friend might even live; there are a lot of technologically advanced alternate dimensions where you two aren’t fugitives from the law that could have him back on his feet in a matter of days.” So saying he began walking off, heedless of Mofield’s sudden scrabbled for the hopper.

“What’s the setting? YOU BASTARD! WHAT SETTINGS?” The batched bastard ignored Scichael’s screams as he disappeared around the corner. Mofield threw one panicked look over his shoulder at the guards now clearly visible through the fence and headed his way before grabbing Lyndon and pressing the button. With a soft pop, both he and Lyndon disappeared from reality just as the first wave of guards pushed through the hole in the fence and fetched up against the stationary vehicle that no longer sheltered two wanted felons.
———————————————————————————————————–

A man stands at the top of a hill covered in delicate aqua grass that slopes softly to a white-sand beach and a light periwinkle ocean. In front of him is a raised mound of ocher dirt topped by a rock that has a name carved deep into it: LYNDON BURRNOW.

The man looks up at the achingly blue sky for a long moment before speaking to the grave.

“I’ll get him for you, partner. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll kill Z.”

It’d been three days.

Chad looked at the counter before him, deep in thought. It’d been three days since he’d last felt Thomas. There was a hollow feeling behind his eyes now, like something had been scooped out and not replaced. It felt weirdly like the inverse of when he’d gotten his Keepstone, like someone’d pulled one of his eyes out of its socket.

And God did it hurt. He hadn’t told Brad or any of the others, but being a Space Prince was fundamentally different than being a Magical Space Princess (and it wasn’t just the boobs). He looked down at his shaking hands and clenched them into fists; he’d been lucky the first time he’d gotten his Keepstone, the drugs and general lassitude letting the magic that would turn him into Magical Space Prince Chad sear open his magical channels safely if not painlessly, but the second time had left him with fine tremors in his hands, a general clumsiness he just couldn’t shake, and migraines that left him feeling like his brain was going to boil out through the hole in his skull where his Keepstone resided.

Thomas had helped; he had been a stabilizing influence sitting behind Chad’s eyes since before the first time he’d gotten a Keepstone (though Chad himself hadn’t realized it at the time). Thomas had managed to ease some of the pain - brain and nerve damage, a part of Chad that sounded suspiciously like Ricci supplied - by just being there, and more when he actively called on Chad for help.

Chad liked to help, and though he wasn’t sure if Thomas was doing it on purpose or not, the fact that helping eased the pain was a great boon as well. Thomas had let him ground the shake in his hands, control his clumsiness, and keep his head up through even the worst of migraines.

But for three days now, Chad hadn’t been able to feel him. For three days, he’d had the worst migraine of his life. For three days, he’d been knocking things over and stumbling over nothing as tickles of pain ran up and down his spine.

For three days he hadn’t been able to cook anything but the simplest of dishes, hands too unsteady to hold a knife or stir a pot.

The others had noticed. He’d noticed them noticing; Zelania had refrained from being too sarcastic with him, Vega hadn’t punched him at all, Ricci had been dropping increasingly pointed hints about the benefits of advanced science and research and Elliana had redone his entire wardrobe. Brad hadn’t said anything; while Chad loved him more than his own brothers, and they were connected far more deeply than he was with the Sparkle Sisters, he wasn’t sure just how much Brad could feel of what he was feeling.

“You gonna make dinner, or should I get something out of the freezer?”

Brad’s voice interrupted Chad’s thoughts and he straightened, rubbing his shaking hands together like it would help. “I got this; go ahead and tell the others it’s macaroni and cheese for dinner again.”

“You got it, bro.” Brad hesitated before leaving. “You know I got your back, right?”

Chad didn’t look at him. “Yeah bro, I got it. You go ahead.”

“Alright bro.” Brad hopped to the floor and made his way out the door. It was a long moment after the sounds of him leaving faded before Chad started moving, mechanically grabbing a pot and the noodles - cursing quietly when he dropped the box and dried noodles spread themselves across the floor. He stared silently at his hands, at fingers jittery with misfired nerves, and sighed before beginning to clean up the mess.

It’d been three days. Thomas wasn’t coming back.

There is always a Joe’s.

Wherever there’s an open offshoot of the Metaverse, wherever there’s sentient life capable of hopping between metaversal branches, wherever someone needs a milkshake and a decent fry-up, there’s a Joe’s. It’s a constant, a diner done up with old neon in whatever language the locals speak proudly announcing that the diner is open and ready for business.

Of course, in an infinite metaverse of infinite combinations, some places are more hospitable for some folks than others. The door of Joe’s Diner will always take you where you need to go, but a door works both ways. Sometimes the door opens and the Diner is full of an oxygen-nitrogen mix, with red vinyl seats that have seen better days shining under fluorescent lamps.

Sometimes the door opens to a thick methane atmosphere, argon lights brilliant pinpoints above seats that glow with a helpful luminescence so patrons can find their seat. Sometimes the door opens to beautifully crystal-blue waters lit by schools of tiny bio-luminescent lifeforms that flitter about the ceiling and tables. Sometimes it opens to a completely gasless chamber where crystals glittering with strange and ineffable energies litter the walls and ceiling and everything is made of perfectly polished carbon formations.

And each patron is where they need to be. Humans and those who breathe oxygen chow down on carbon-based proteins under the humming fluorescents; gelatinous creatures with no discernible features slurp a stew of sulphur-based chemicals in the brilliant argon lights; strangely jolly-looking creatures with large eyes and even larger noselike protrusions crunch calcium-based delicacies as the lights dance to and fro; complex refracted waveforms of sentient energy integrate higher mathematics equations expressed in physical form as eleven-dimensional matrices of crystal made with the perfect amount of symmetry as the lights twist around them.

Cook and Hollywood - and Joe himself, of course - are as much a part of the diner as the seats or the flickering neon sign. Where there is a customer inside the Diner, Hollywood is there to take their order and Cook is there to make it. It’s not bad, most days; Hollywood’s had a lot of time to get used to things. The first few times he’d found himself as a shambling two-foot-tall monstrosity made of something akin to twigs and sphagnum moss had been……Disconcerting, to say the least.

But if there was one thing working at Joe’s gave him, it was time. Now Hollywood could turn around to find himself a complicated series of cellulite-walled tubes strung together by the carbonaceous goo equivalent to silly string that floated in a liquid oxygen environment and communicated by tapping itself together and not bat a proverbial eye. Cook, too, had learned to take changes to himself and his kitchen in stride.

It wasn’t like it was at all separate anyway; at a quantum level, all possible iterations of Joe’s existed at the same time on the same real estate. It didn’t tend to matter much except when a rush hit. When things got really exceptionally busy, Hollywood sometimes found himself turning with a d'kr'tgh of drrnl'th in his hand, only to watch them die as the oxygen-rich atmosphere he found himself in collapsed their tissues. It didn’t happen often but when it did he’d always have to go back to Cook for more, and he’d usually slide in an appetizer free of charge to make up for the wait.

Cook took the quantum-ness of it all as a personal challenge. He switched between the realities of Joe’s more often than Hollywood did, experimenting with dishes and cuisines that were indigestible, illegal, immoral, incoherent, and ineffable to the life he’d started with. Taste-testing his creations was one of the best ways he’d found to stave off boredom during slumps when the door opened less than once an hour, and served him well when the hinges never stopped creaking and customers of all walks wanted their food as soon as they could get it.

Joe himself knows how it all works. After all.

There is.

Always.

A Joe’s.

It had been 5 months, 2 weeks, 3 days, 14 hours, and 42 minutes since Chad had felt the comfortable assurance of Thomas’ presence in his head.

But who was counting, really.

The pain had been hard at first; he’d tried to continue like nothing was wrong, concealing how exhausting it was just to get through an average day, never mind those days where he was called upon to fight. The pain had gotten worse then, as he pushed himself beyond his new limits, making it even more of a chore to go through his day, until he just. Hadn’t been able to get out of bed.

For a week.

Ricci had confronted him about it, when he’d finally gotten himself enough together to feel like fire wasn’t scorching its way up and down his spine with every step he took and come out of his room. So he’d explained, as best he could. He wasn’t quite sure how much she realy understood his connection to Thomas, but she took to the challenge of helping him manage with a zest that suggested she very well might.

There’d been several days of exhausting tests that had left him feeling like his brain was going to slowly dribble out of his eyesockets before she’d come back to him with a guilty look around the eyes. She took her time explaining it to him and Brad, who’d come to offer moral support; turns out, he’d been right. Keepstones weren’t given to Space Princes for a reason, and doing it a second time had just made everything worse - especially without the drugs he’d ingested the first time.

There wasn’t really a cure; he’d known, deep down, but Ricci was very clever and he’d had some form of hope. Still, she was able to devise a cocktail to ease the bad days and had put together a number of aids to make the good ones better. She’d worked with Elliana to create a stylish harness-type garment that hid biofeedback sensors to let him know when his pain levels were about to spike; she’d upgraded most of his cooking utensils with handles that would compensate for the shakes in his hands; and finally, she’d given him a mobility aid.

Chad would never tell her, but he detested the cane. It was the perfect height and weight - Ricci was far too good to have let such important details get by her - but it represented a tangible, visible reminder of the way he’d used to be.

Of all the people he’d lost.

He hadn’t lost everyone; the Sparkle Sisters were still with him - for all the good he was to them. Vega wouldn’t be in the same room with him, Zelania would actually turn her music off whenever he entered a room with her in it and then pointedly not glare at him the entire time he was in there, and Elliana would chatter on and on about how everything would get better, that they’d fix him one day he’d see! It was enough to make the ever-present pain in his skull flare whenever he stayed in a room with her too long, and the relentless optimism wore at him.

Ricci and Brad were the only ones who didn’t walk on eggshells around him, for which he was profoundly grateful. He could still do things on his own, thank you very much, just…Not as fast. Or as well. Ricci knew when to be quiet, too, and how to be quiet without making him feel like the quiet was his fault. They’d sit in silence together for hours in the library, her working diligently at some research or another, and him enjoying the quiet with a silly novel or another.

Still, eventually the agony would gather in his hips and lower spine and he’d be obliged to get up and walk it out to a more even distribution. Brad would always come with him, rolling on the floor if it was a day to be slow or in Chad’s hand if the day was a good one. They’d chat quietly, talking about light topics like the weather and what Chad was going to make for dinner, and for a bit it would seem like nothing had changed.

But inevitably it would be time to stop walking, whether it was to begin meal preparation or simply because Chad couldn’t walk any further, and it would all fall down. Meal preparation was easier now that Ricci had upgraded most of the kitchen implements to accommodate the shake in his hands, but it was still a chore instead of the delight it had been before. Additionally, ever since the one unfortunate incident where he’d almost dropped a filleting knife through his foot all knives and other sharp implements had been removed from the kitchen and replaced with automatic slicers that never quite got the cuts he wanted right. Meals still tended to be simpler, and the drink-mixing had been reduced to simply what he could pour out of a bottle. Nobody complained where he could hear them, but Vega and Zelania would sigh loudly whenever dishes repeated themselves too often on the menu and dinner would be a very strained affair those nights.

Battles were the worst. He didn’t do much more than stand on the sidelines now and cheer the others on. When it became apparent that flashing lights exacerbated his migraines to the point where he couldn’t do anything beyond curl up on the ground and beg his brain not to leak out his ears, Ricci had given him a polarizing visor/headset combo that kept the worst of the attacks at bay, but more often then not he’d spend the entire fight doing nothing but using Brad on anyone that got too close and doing the transformation sequences whenever the others needed him to.

The first time he’d become Magical Space Prince Chad (the armored version) after Thomas had…Left him, he’d almost laughed out loud how easy everything had felt, the rush of endorphins at the cessation of pain making him almost giddy as he’d joined the others in the fight against the horrible Space Witch Escadrille and their hordes of semi-sentient squiplings. The rush had lasted all the way up to the end of the fight when they’d resumed their normal forms and everything came back with a vengeance. He’d collapsed and spent three days confined to his bed with the lights off.

The others tried to avoid transforming as much as possible after that, for which Chad was sincerely grateful. Every time they did it left him prostrated for days, taking grim measures of Ricci’s potion whenever we couldn’t bear it any longer.

And that had been his life for the last 5 months, 2 weeks, 3 days, 14 hours, and 44 minutes. Chad sighed as he closed his book; he could feel the fire beginning to streak from his sacrum to his kneecaps, and that was a surefire sign he’d been sitting too long. Nodding to Ricci - who absently nodded back - he headed out to take his customary turn around the garden. Today was a good day, so Brad was in his hand as he walked out into the artificial sunlight. Step, step, cane. Step, step, cane. Step, step -

“What did you want to make for dinner?” Brad’s voice interrupted his contemplation of his own footsteps and Chad paused to look up at the artificial sky. “Oh I don’t know Brad. What have we made so far this week?” He didn’t want to repeat a dish too often, made dinner awkward and all that.

“Well, on Monday you made spaghetti, and Tuesday was wedding soup. Wednesday was subs ‘cause it wasn’t such a great day. Thursday was chicken Parmesan. Friday-” Brad’s voice trailed off, replaced a strange ringing in Chad’s ears. He had to drop Brad to cover his ears it was so loud. A pressure built up in his sinuses, he could feel some of the delicate veins in his nose go as a metallic taste flooded his mouth and he leaned forward to try and keep the blood off his nice shirt. God, the pressure -

And then, with an almost-audible snap, it stopped. It all stopped. And a warm, familiar presence filled the gaping hole behind his eyes. “Thomas,” he breathed, a beatific smile lighting up his face even as Ricci came running into the garden with Brad in hand. He just had time to hear her shout his name before his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed.

When he woke up, he was alone in his room with the lights off and a gentle white noise generator making gurgling noises like a small stream. Chad sat up and flexed his hands. Not a tremor. He stood up and stretched, taking first one tentative step, then another. Nothing.

He laughed, a long joyous laugh and the presence behind his eyes pulsed in time to his happiness. He turned and for the sheer hell of it did a cartwheel, landing perfectly on two feet. Feeling particularly bold, he reached out and flipped the lights all the way on for the first time in months. His eyes watered briefly as they adjusted to the light, but no crippling migraine manifested itself. Chad turned to the mirror and, grinning like a loon, tears streaming down his face, looked himself right in the eyes.

“Welcome back, Thomas. I missed you so much, bro.”

Balthazar lowered his arms and sighed. A wave of his hands had the lights coming back up and the disco ball lowering to the ground on its mooring. It had been his grandest production yet, and the backup dancers were even now shooting him sympathetic glances as they filed out.

His magic had always worked best with a large show; the larger the show, the better it worked and so when his first attempts to scry Wyatt had failed, he’d been trying increasingly elaborate rituals designed to let him see his errant friend - despite his distaste for the spectacle. This latest attempt had taken place at the largest telescope in Sentinel City, where he’d arranged to re-purpose the huge optical-grade mirrors for a few hours; he’d had backup dancers covered in the shiniest glitter he could find dancing their hearts out to a pounding dubstep bassline while the lasers he’d borrowed from a friend bounced off all and sundry to scatter on the precisely-formed disco ball he’d spent two weeks making into a perfectly-tuned magical focusing apparatus.

But it hadn’t worked. The huge mirrors had remained stubbornly blank, and he was quite frankly at his wits end. As he watched a dark figure enter through the door, he couldn’t help but reach out to the empty space in his head where - until recently - his young friend Wyatt had rested. It was a little like the first time he’d lost a tooth to a hero’s punch, his tongue constantly going to the place where the tooth used to be and feeling the raw tenderness of the newly-exposed gum. Only this time he was worried about what had happened to his missing piece.

“No joy, then?” Ezekiel said as he came to a stop just behind Balthazar’s left shoulder and the sorcerer sighed. “No joy, Zeke. Wherever they are, it’s beyond where my magic can reach.” He hung his head and Ezekiel came close enough to put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Have you asked Hex? Or Butch? We are, the lot of us, in much the same kind of boat.”

Balthazar shook his head, still not looking at one of his most longstanding friends. “I did ask them - well, Hex came to me demanding to know what happened and both Butch and Abbi were with her, but she had no more idea than I. Wherever they are, they have passed beyond our sight.” A cloud passed over Ezekiel’s already-somber expression “Do you mean-”

“Ezekiel, I spent a great deal of my life as a necromancer. Simply because I have given up the profession doesn’t mean I don’t know where to find someone who is dead.” Balthazar said sharply - a little too sharply perhaps, because Ezekiel immediately dropped the hand that had rested on his shoulder. He missed the warmth as soon as it was gone.

“I’m sorry, old friend. This latest attempt has worn me out.” Balthazar kept his voice contrite and Ezekiel’s face eased a little, but he didn’t put his hand back. “Do you really think they’ll find what they’re looking for in space?” Ezekiel kept his voice quiet, even though they were the only ones left in the observatory, and Balthazar sighed.

“In all honesty, no. For all that there is a lot to space, I feel if it were that simple it would not be so important. Additionally,” he gestured helplessly to the room around them, lasers quiescent, disco ball still, mirrors dark, piles of glitter where the dancers had stood, “that is, just a little bit, why I decided to try it here. If what they were searching for could be reached through space, then I had rather hoped that using these space-attuned tools would let me see clearly. But I have seen nothing, Ezekiel. Nothing, just as I have seen for the last four months.”

Ezekiel came closer and put his arm around Balthazar’s shoulders. “I can’t say it’s terribly comforting prospect - you and I both know, better than most, that there are some things worse than death - but where there’s life there is hope.” Balthazar nodded mutely, and they stood in silence for several long seconds before he sighed.

“I suppose I should put this all to rights. Help me pack up? If you could get the disco ball, I’ll re-align the mirrors.” Ezekiel nodded and they set to work in a companionable silence. Balthazar magically restored the positioning systems to their original configurations and did his best to banish the glitter on the floor while Ezekiel put the disco ball carefully back in its carrying case and the lasers back into their high-tech self-propelling storage boxes. Setting the lasers to return to their owner, he picked up the carrying-case just as Balthazar gave up on trying to get rid of any more glitter (the floor still glimmered faintly, but at least now it was an even sheen) and came over to him.

Without speaking, they walked down the steps and out the doors together, keeping easy pace with each other until they got outside. Ezekiel stopped then, looking up at the moonless sky full of stars above them. Balthazar stopped too, content to wait until Ezekiel finished thinking about what he wanted to say. “Did you know Skinwalker contacted me the other day?” Balthazar blinked in surprise. Skinwalker wasn’t the most friendly of beings on a good day, but to actively reach out to Ezekiel…

“No, I hadn’t known.” He paused. “Were they also…attached?” Ezekiel nodded silently, not looking down, and Balthazar had to spend several more moments processing that. “I would hazard a guess they came to you because that is no longer the case. What did you tell them?” Ezekiel shrugged. “The same thing you told me, essentially. We don’t know why or how, but they’re gone and not likely to be coming back without some serious intervention.” Balthazar looked up at the sky as well, when his friend finished speaking and they both stood in silence.

“Wyatt was a good kid. Trying to do better anyway, and sometimes that is what counts the most.” Ezekiel didn’t seem confused by the apparent non-sequitur, but looked at him with something approaching sympathy. “Brony was too, though maybe in a different way.” They stood together in silence again, looking at the glimmering stars far above them.

“Did you want to go with them? The Bakers?” Ezekiel asked suddenly, sliding a sideways look at Balthazar, who didn’t answer for several long moments. “I was tempted; Hex asked as soon she heard what Butch was doing. But I don’t think they’ll find them out there. What they will find is a mystery, but not one I think I’ll have need of. I’m too old for that kind of nonsense.” Ezekiel snorted and Balthazar shot him a shallow grin. “Yes, yes, I know, speaking to the expert. Still, I don’t think what I need can be found out in space, though I’m sure they will take best advantage of the privacy it affords them.”

Ezekiel snickered and nodded, matching Balthazar smirk for smirk. “And who knows, maybe the kids’ll find their way back here before the Bakers do. Wouldn’t want them to find the homestead empty.”

They didn’t speak again, but Ezekiel put his arm around Balthazar’s shoulders as they walked slowly down the path from the Observatory.

The black bag came off his head, and Scicheal Mofield blinked against too-bright light as shadowy figures moved behind it.

He’d been having a quiet drink in an innocuous tavern many, many miles from where his latest heist had left three-quarters of a kingdom in shambles at the sudden loss of noble pedigree papers going back hundreds of years. Mofield wasn’t loyal to much beyond his next paycheck, but stealing from the rich upper classes always made his day just that little bit better.

He’d been paid for the heist and was stopping for dinner before moving out to meet the next potential employer - a high-stakes research company three symbols spinwise on his hopper - when someone had dropped a black bag over his head and injected with some kind of knockout cocktail.

Which had ended up with him tied to a chair in a concrete cell no larger than eight feet by seven. Still, he’d had worse starts to good jobs - for one thing, he hadn’t been roughed up on his way over. Not that an unknown pharmaceutical injection was much better, but it tended to result in fewer broken ribs (if possibly more liver damage).

Mofield leaned back as far as the ropes would let him and smirked coldly at the man in front of him. “So,” he drawled, making sure to draw the syllable out as obnoxiously as he could. “What can I do for you fine gentlemen today?” The enormous brute in an ill-fitting suit sitting across from him - cute, how they thought directional light was going to keep him from seeing them - was silent for a long moment before responding.

“You are Scichael Mofield, thief for hire. You had a partner named Lyndon Burrnow who was killed by Ronald Zenda, and you possess enhanced eyesight reputed to work in places where such things should not be able to do so.” The goon’s voice was monotone and Mofield took a brief moment to wonder what kind of brain damage did that.

Mofield lounged against his seat as best he could. “So you have my life story. Put it in a book, you’ll have the next New Bork Times bestseller. Still doesn’t tell me why I’m here.” The mention of Burrnow was enough to stoke the cold fury that lived in his chest, though he made certain not to let it show on his face. These idiots had just doubled the price for whatever they wanted, but he wasn’t going to let them know that this early in the game.

“Your specialty is breaking into high-security facilities and liberating targets from them.” The goon droned on, seemingly unaffected - or possibly just straight-up unaware - that Mofield had interrupted him. “There is a facility that we wish you to infiltrate, extract as much relevant data as possible, and then leave.”

“Seems right up my alley, which of course you knew or we wouldn’t be here. What’s the facility?” He sat up a little straighter as he spoke, interested despite himself. He could tell by the matching suits on the goon in the room, the two outside the door, and the considerably nicer suit on the guy standing behind the false wall on the left that these weren’t typically the kind of guys who contracted out their break-ins. Which meant somewhere very specialized indeed, which upped the price considerably.

The Meta-End prison.“ Mofield blinked. Surely the guy hadn’t just said - ? "Enforcer Rhodes has just executed one of the single largest mass arrests of pilots in recent history. Get in, find out everything you can about them and if possible facilitate their extraction from the facility.”

Mofield blinked. Pilots were rarer than honest bookies, and Rhodes - the Rhodes - had just netted enough of them to constitute a mass arrest? He himself made it a point to stay under Rhodes’ radar but there’d been a close call or two before he’d figured out how to avoid such unwelcome attention. Nowadays he just had some lesser Metaversal Oversight goons after him, and stayed ahead of them easily enough. Just what the hell had those pilots done to attract the big kahuna?

“Are you out of your mind? Nobody gets into the Meta-End without Rhodes knowing about it, and nobody gets out without seeing the Judge. Everyone with half a brain knows that.” Mofield watched Fancy Suit carefully out of the corner of his eye while keeping his attention fixed on the goon in front of him. The man raised a hand to touch his ear, and the goon in front of him spoke again. “There are always ways; getting you in would be…doable. We have agents inside who would help you, once you have arrived. Getting out…would be up to you.”

Mofield leaned back and scowled. “And how many pilots are we talking about here?” he asked, to cover his unease. Breaking out of prison wasn’t exactly new to him - hell, this wouldn’t even be his first time busting someone else out of prison if he could arrange it. But Meta-End was something else; not quite the bogeyman Rhodes himself was, but impressive all the same.

“Between eight and twenty.” Mofield blinked again. A score of pilots? Where had they all come from? He’d been travelling dimensionally for years and he hadn’t even seen that many, let alone met them. Additionally, it would make breaking them out that much harder - while it would pay more, he was leaning heavily toward simple in and out reconnaissance now.

“You do realize I specialize in thieving, correct? Not mass escape,” Scichael snarked, playing for time to see if he could get a better grasp on their angle. There was something about Fancy Suit that was ringing bells…

“You will receive bonuses for every pilot you bring to us alive; dead pilots are useless to us but you will not be held accountable for them.” Mofield nodded. It was reasonably standard, and also nice to know that he didn’t have to stick his neck out for anyone if he didn’t want to. Which, of course, lead to the most important part of the discussion.

“And what do I get out of all of this? I don’t do charity work.” Mofield kept his eyes forward even as all his attention focused on Fancy Suit. The man touched his ear again. “One of the pilots Rhodes acquired is Ronald Zenda.”

Scichael wheezed like he’d been punched in the chest. That bastard, alive after all these years, and in the big house under Rhodes’ thumb? He grinned, more a display of teeth than any friendlier gesture and looked directly at Fancy Suit. “Deal. Who do I say sent me when I meet your inside men?”

Fancy Suit stiffened, then made a gesture that had the false wall collapsing before him. He walked over and stood just out of the circle of light while Mofield regarded him steadily. For the first time, Fancy Suit addressed him directly. “Antonius Basileus.”

Oh you’ve heard of Captain Rackham

They hung him, they hung him!

Oh you’ve heard of Captain Rackham
Scourge of the Royal Navy
He sunk more than a hundred ships
To face him you’d be crazy

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

Captain Rackham was a pirate

They hung him, they hung him!

Captain Rackham was a pirate
The finest to sail the sea
He’d run merchants to cliffsides oh
And take shelter in the lee

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

Captain Rackham beat the Navy

They hung him, they hung him!

Captain Rackham beat the Navy
For more than a score of years
They gnashed their teeth and stamped their feet
and spoke quietly of their fears

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

It was a stormy day they found him

They hung him, they hung him!

It was a stormy day they found him
Edward Hawke and his royal crew
With an assembled fleet behind them
They knew what they had to do

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

For seven days and seven nights

They hung him, they hung him!

For seven days and seven nights
Hawke chased the Calico Jack
Until they closed the distance
And readied their guns to attack

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

On the eighth day they began a-firing

They hung, they hung him!

On the eighth day they began a-firing
And a shot brought the mainmast low!
The Captain tried his level best
But the Revenge, she began to slow

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

Captain Rackham led the fighting

They hung him, they hung him!

Captain Rackham led the fighting
Locking hilts with Hawke’s sword
The crews stopped their fighting about them
Their battle could not be ignored

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

They took him to Port Royal

They hung, they hung him!

They took him to Port Royal
And he hung by his lovers’ sides
For they’d sworn to always be with him
And together their fates were tied

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

Now Rackham sleeps in a gibbet

They hung him, they hung him!

Now Rackham sleeps in a gibbet
With the corpse of his lovely bride
And out on the decks of Revenge
The blood ran red with the tide

Yeah they hung the Calico Captain
They did, they hung him high

“Now, Mr. Hammer,”

Bruno grimaced as his nickname-come-callsign dripped from his captor’s lips like crude oil. He hated hearing it from his enemies - their disdain was always clear, though this guy also managed to fit in condescension and mockery; impressive for getting it all into one word - but he supposed it was just another reason to replace Lexington’s whiskey with piss when he got the chance since he’d known and had assigned it as his callsign anyway. Not like Lexington’d notice, given the quality of the stuff he seemed to prefer.

Still, it was a name he’d been trained to respond to for years. Ever since his last night of leave before graduating boot camp he’d been known as Hammer or Hammer-ton. One of the guys in his unit had thought it funny to bring a mule into the barracks before the rest of them got back and of course they’d spooked the damn thing by slamming the door open. Bruno had reacted on instinct and punched the mule in the head hard enough to drop it, breaking his hand in the process. Seven seconds of stunned silence had ended when Hendrickson had blurted that the last time he’d someone do something like that it was his paw using a hammer to drop sheep for butchering.

One trip to the infirmary later and the name had stuck. He’d been Hammer ever since.

“We know why you are here.” And this guy was still talking. Honestly, if they really knew why he’d been here, they wouldn’t be here. Round one in a dank concrete room had gotten them the locations of the explosives he’d planted around their base, and they’d gotten to most of them in time. The few they hadn’t found had compromised that base to the point where they’d had to fall back to this secondary location and had earned him a few hours with an inexperienced sadist putting needles under his fingernails.

“We know who you work for.” Maybe the public line, but if these guys had any actual idea who he worked for this conversation would be taking place in a much deeper hole. Even a cursory glance showed four immediate exit strategies with minimal harm to life and limb, with three more being viable if he didn’t love his fingers very much.

Maybe put those on the backburner.

“All we need from you is a location. Your team, their location.” Wow, these guys knew jack shit. Fuck, what a waste of his time. The colonel hadn’t been this wrong about possible info caches in a while, plus now Bruno had to break himself out of prison because damn if he was wasting another 72 hours on these losers.

He sighed, and his captor tensed, pleasant expression disappearing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hammer, am I boring you? Perhaps you might like to make the closer acquaintance of your namesake.”

Bruno waited until the slimeball had turned away to a tray of tools that gleamed in what would have been a sinister fashion if he’d had any faith that this nimrod knew how to use them. As it stood, the guy’s little charade of sliding his fingers carefully over the instruments as if he didn’t already know which one he was going for was all the opening Bruno needed to dislocate his thumb and slide out of the standard police cuffs they’d used to secure his arms to the chair. It was the work of a moment to pop the other set and then he was free - they hadn’t chained his ankles, more fool them.

The interrogator must have heard something, because even as Bruno stood the guy was turning back to face him with a look of surprise on his face. Bruno casually snapped his neck and the look of surprise became permanent - or at least it’d last until the guy’s face got rearranged, something Bruno wasn’t about to waste time on. The door opened out with hinges on the outside - probably the most professional part of this clown college operation - but the extremely obvious microphone and closed-circuit aftermarket camera blinking away in the corner told him that he wouldn’t have long to wait before it opened.

Sure enough, not two minutes after Bruno took up position beside the door - holding the hammer from the tray, he wasn’t about to break his knuckles on these guys if he didn’t have to - the pounding of feet echoed from the corridor outside the room. They don’t even check through the grill-covered window before kicking the door in and spraying bullets into the room on full auto.

If the guy on the floor hadn’t been dead already, he sure as hell was now. Bruno counted quietly in his head until the shooting stopped and stepped out into the doorway. Sure enough, they’d fired until the magazines were empty - common mistake, but it’d be their last. He didn’t give them a chance to reload; the first went down with one good swing to the head, while the second guy tried some ninja shit that looked like he’d been spending too much time watching d-list karate movies and not enough time in an actual dojo. Bruno broke the knee on the leg the guy had tried to snap-kick him with, then put the guy himself down with a punch.

It was the work of a moment to take their weapons - knock-off automatics clearly purchased in bulk - and pat them down for their spare magazines. The fact that they only carried a single spare clip each was just one more disappointment on a pile of them. Bruno sighed as he moved further into the base; the fact they’d had a fallback plan had brought his expectations maybe a little too high, but this was just pathetic. He could hear alarms going off and stampeding feet heading away from him; they’d made the logical assumption that now that he was out of his cell he’d immediately try and escape, rejoin his unit.

But that wasn’t Bruno’s mission.

A locked door stood in his way for all of five seconds before he kicked it in; behind it, a dusty storage closet full of boxes. Comparing the writing on the boxes to the picture the colonel had insisted he memorize before embarking on this stupid mission, he began pulling boxes open until -

Well.

Maybe the colonel hadn’t been full of shit after all.

And maybe he’d still kick the guy’s ass up and down a long hallway for sending him in counter-espionage style when an infiltration route would have worked just well for extraction and wouldn’t have made him endure eight and a half hours of amateur-hour torture. Grabbing the box and the contents of a few others he’d found, Bruno began making his way out of the base; the layout was a little nonstandard but more straightforward for it - clearly these people had never had any kind of education on how to harden a building against intruders.

Goons were beginning to fall back into the base now that it was apparent he hadn’t conformed to their preconceived notions and run straight for the nearest exit once he’d gotten loose, but they were doing that badly too - at least, the first few were. After that they learned from their predecessors’ mistakes and checked corners before coming around them; he’d be a little more impressed if their ammo discipline had improved along with their caution.

Still, it didn’t take him long to get to the exit; in fact, it took him longer to rig explosives around the exit and set a tripwire with a failsafe than it did to actually reach a door to the great outdoors. A cursory glance was enough to show him that these idiots were as shit with their vehicular security as they were at torture; the nearest jeep has a full tank of gas and the keys in the glove box. Well, Bruno wasn’t above teaching them an object lesson so he punctured the gas tanks on all the vehicles he could find, slashed the tires, and stole all the keys. It’d make the LT smirk if nothing else.

As Bruno drove away, he consoled himself with the thought that since he was heading back early he’d have a shot at the bottle of good scotch the colonel kept in his office where he thought no-one could find it; cute, especially given that Bruno swept the offices once a week if he was on-base and Lexington swept every other day. Damn spook.

Just before the base quite dropped out of sight, a rumbling explosion was accompanied by a bloom of yellow-red flames. Bruno pulled a pair of sunglasses from the glove box, set them carefully on the bridge of his nose, and set his sights for the rendezvous.

Damn, he loved FAE bombs.

It was the last night before he left for boot camp, and Robby was insistent it be a memorable one.

Bruno had never been what one might call the life of the party. He was just a little too serious, a little too aware of the consequences, to really give in to that party feeling. Still, he’d acquiesced when Robby - Robert Orman, who had lived two doors down from Bruno for most of their lives - had pointed out, not unreasonably, that he wouldn’t be having any kind of fun for the next six months and he needed to live a little while he was still young.

So here he and Robby were, standing just inside the doors to the gymnasium where the school was throwing one last dance to celebrate the end of the school year. The music was playing, couples danced on the open part of the floor, and the punch bowl was guarded by a fierce-looking Mr. Edwards. Bruno had to smile at Robby yanking at his arm enthusiastically as they headed across the floor, his friend waxing rhapsodic about the new girls from across town whom he’d heard would be making an appearance.

It didn’t take long for Robby to be thoroughly distracted by a pretty girl; as one of the better-looking boys in the class - and a reputation for being a pretty decent dancer - he rarely went without a partner for long. Bruno took the opportunity to go and loiter by the punch table, nursing a glass of sickeningly sweet fruit drink and earning ever more suspicious glances from Mr. Edwards. It wasn’t that he didn’t like dancing, but at a head taller than most of the class the girls tended to find him…..intimidating.

“Excuse me,”

Bruno looked around in surprise, it taking a hot second for him to look down….into the most heart-stoppingly gorgeous face he’d ever seen in his life. Delicate features almost ethereal in their elfin fineness were accentuated by shoulder-length hair that curled just a bit too much to be fashionable but suited her perfectly. She met his eyes squarely, not even the slightest bit daunted by his much-greater-than-her height. In fact, her chin was up and her face all but dared him to make a comment.

So he did.

“Bruno,” he said, and held out his hand. She blinked, but then gave him a warm smile. “Lori,” she responded, and put her hand in his. Obeying some strange impulse, he bent and brought the hand up delicately to his lips, giving it the lightest of kisses. “You sure? You look a bit more like an angel to me,” he said, and immediately felt foolish up until she blushed lightly and giggled.

“Such fine manners! You’re a real gentleman aren’t you?” She asked, laughter in her voice, and he ducked his head a little in embarrassment. “No, no, don’t hide. I…..I like it,” she said, voice soft. When he looked up her blush was stronger and on an impulse he tipped his head towards the dance floor, where the song playing had just ended. “Would you care to dance with me?” He asked quietly.

Her eyes lit up like stars and she nodded. Still holding her hand, he led her out to the dance floor and put one arm behind her back as she laid hers on his shoulder. As the music started playing, they started gently swaying to the beat.

Wise men say only fools rush in
But I can’t help falling in love with you

He closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of having her tucked up against him in the shelter of his arms, then opened them almost immediately because he couldn’t stand missing even a second of seeing her.

Shall I stay?
Would it be a sin

She looked up at him and grinned, expression lighting up her face. “Say, you’re not a bad dancer.” Bruno couldn’t think of anything to say to that except “My friend Robby is better.” She gave him a wicked glance from under her eyelashes and the grin became a smirk. “Maybe, but he’s not the one I’m dancing with, is he?

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes

It seemed like she was the only other person in the world, like they were the only couple on the dance floor. It wasn’t much of a dance - more like swaying gently to the music with the arms in approximately the right positions - but he was enjoying it and she made no objection, not even when he laid his cheek on her head and probably messed her hair up.

Some things are meant to be

It felt like they’d been dancing for hours when he reluctantly pulled away. "I’m not keeping you from anything am I?” He asked, and she shook her head. “Baby, we got all night. My mother won’t be expecting me home.” He grinned and pulled her close again, taking no notice of the way the lights were slowly coming up in the room, the way that the rest of the people had faded out in a the same fashion the walls were doing. He only noticed when suddenly his arms were empty and he was very cold.

“But you said we’d have all night…”

Take my hand, take my whole life too

Bruno woke with a start, blanket half off and leaving his arms freezing. “For I can’t help falling in love with you,” crooned the radio beside his bed, and he turned it off before putting his head in his hands.

No matter how many times he heard it - from Rhodes, from his teammates, from his enemies - Bruno Hamilton wasn’t a “pilot.”

At least, he didn’t feel like one. He could fly any sort of aircraft built after the second World War, of course, and had a variety of aircraft and naval licenses he maintained under clean pseudonyms in half a dozen countries. Hell, he’d even sailed out of Jiediaosha Bay on an authentic recreation of a 19th century Chinese junk for reasons still not disclosable to the general public.

But these people his granddaughter had fallen in with, these pilots with their superhuman abilities….he couldn’t say he felt like one of them. While he was well-used to pushing through pain, the memory of going out into what they called the Metaverse was somewhat hazy. Perhaps it’d been the gut shot, or the damage the person he’d jumped in to - Blue? Someone had yelled that when he’d called out to Andi but he couldn’t quite remember - had taken before his arrival, but that trip hadn’t felt real somehow. Like he’d wake up and it would have been a dream no matter what had happened in Nevada.

This, however, was no dream. This time, Bruno Hamilton had stepped into a metapod with the full knowledge of what was supposed to happen when he did. This time, Bruno Hamilton had a clear-cut mission and a team to do it with.

This time, Bruno Hamilton had his granddaughter with him.

With that disquieting thought, Bruno Hamilton had been launched into the Metaverse.

Arriving in the body of Michael O'Connor was…..an experience. Bruno was no stranger to the PTSD rattling around in the kid’s skull - god he was young - but it wasn’t his trauma. A tidal wave of desperate worry, anger, and panic flooded over Bruno until he was drowning in it, forcibly a passenger in the avatar he’d been sent to. Visions of burned-out buildings kept trying to overwhelm Michael, sirens turning into the whistle of incoming fire and then back into sirens; above it all, burning with the passion of a younger man was anger at what Aunt Mary had done to their family.

Michael looked over his siblings; Faye was drinking again - she never seemed to stop, these days, eyes desperate for more until they grew vacant in stupor - while Danny was looking at his gun like the thing was about to bite him. The first kill was never easy, and Danny was young even among the kids Michael’d been sent to war with. The ones who hadn’t come home.

Bruno, meanwhile, saw Aquamarine taking a healthy slug of whiskey, not that he could blame her after nine weeks in solitary; the last person he’d rescued from less than a week in solitary had been a raving mess, psyche so damaged he’d been invalided out. Bruno’s deep concern for Aquamarine’s mental state blended so well with Michael’s worry for his sister that Bruno himself couldn’t say where one began and the other ended. Brushing off the thought as a concern for later, Bruno evaluated Thomas through Michael’s eyes as the man checked on his brother. Thomas seemed more alert than the rest of them, his extremely characteristic speech pattern breaking the rolling brogue Michael knew his brother to speak in like rocks in a field.

Bruno considered that as Thomas broke and ran like a rabbit; Thomas clearly wasn’t overwhelmed by his avatar, Bruno recognizing the calculation in his gaze before he’d taken off. Michael lurched off into pursuit, caught flat-footed by his brother’s sudden movement and another wave of deep concern for his youngest sibling - what if Danny had broken like so many of the others had? - washed Bruno back into the depths of the skull they shared. Visions of blackened, stinking mud coming in and out of focus through bilious gases overcame Bruno for several moments until the familiar weight of a gun in Michael’s hand gave him something to hold on to while he dragged himself out of it.

Bruno watched as Thomas faked several slugs of whiskey - good plan, the kid he was in probably weighed 100 lbs soaking wet, didn’t need to be drunk on job - while Michael bickered with Mary. He could feel Michael’s anger at Mary, at the situation, at the mobsters who ran Atlantic City with an iron fist, and his resolve stiffened. If Thomas could control his avatar without being overwhelmed he, Bruno Hamilton, could do no less.

Bruno gathered himself and surged forward, ruthlessly compartmentalizing the feelings coursing through their shared veins. After everything, he was very good at it; visions of death and destruction, the lingering odor of mustard gas, and the whistle of mortar fire were all shoved down into a deep, dark hole that also contained burning yellow sands and a toxic, chokingly green jungle. The panic got shoved in a box to be dealt with later, if the kid ever got one; all it would do now is distract from the mission and ruin his aim.

The frazzling worry and pulsing anger about Michael’s family and their situation was taken and shoved into a priorities matrix; highest priority was Andi, Bruno’s granddaughter. Her health and safety, especially after her behavior during the long weeks in prison, was his number one priority. Next highest was the mission; Bruno had never had cause to put the mission second, but he couldn’t bring himself to commit to any plan that might end up with Andi dead or incarcerated again.

Third was Aquamarine; Bruno would help her as best he could, largely for Andi’s sake, but if she snapped like others he’d encountered in similar circumstances he’d neutralize her without hesitation. If nonlethal methods failed, he’d put her down if he had to. Solitary did strange things to a person’s mind, and he’d not tolerate any threats to Andi or their overriding mission objective.

Fourth was Thomas; the guy seemed like he could take care of himself reasonably well and if he was a little strange, Bruno’d worked with stranger both in and out of the army. That Zenda, though - the man was a snake, through and through, and his first priority was himself. Not to be relied on, but he was their only source of food, material, and information. A secondary objective to keep safe, rather than a teammate to be relied upon.

As Bruno’s years of training imposed order on the mind around him, he could feel Michael be swept to the back of their shared mind. The whole exercise hadn’t taken long; a few seconds at most had restored the clear, razor-edged focus Bruno made sure to bring to every mission. Taking the opportunity to roll the kinks out of his neck, he did a quick sweep of the burned-out distillery they’d found themselves in. “Alright people, I need answers. Where do we get Zenda’s device and how do we get to the target?”

Being in control felt good.

There’s something off in Joe’s Diner today.

Hollywood couldn’t rightly say what it was, but there was a persistent something that was putting everyone on edge. Longtime patrons with whom he’d never had a problem before were snappish and rude, and Hollywood’d walked more plates of food back to Cook in the kitchen today than he had in literal centuries. People were quibbling over their bills - no, the exchange rate for S'mlith shells wasn’t steady but prices were as marked and there was no senior discount.

The franchises that stood empty were almost worse. Without the chatter of people, the silence itself turned oppressive and reproachful. The buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights didn’t fill the silence, merely enhanced it and grated at his nerves today and Hollywood couldn’t figure out why. In a fit of pique he’d gone through and replaced all the bulbs with Cook’s help. Well, he’d mostly supervised Cook replacing the bulbs, truth to tell, but the new ones had hummed in just the same wrong frequency as the old ones did.

The foreboding didn’t make any sense; Milkshake’s lot were off doing things for Rhodes with their associated tagalongs, and there was nothing more apocalyptic than usual in the works. Still, there was something lingering. Something that spoke of terrible things that could not, should not be in whispers just beyond the range of hearing. What made it even more maddening was that no matter where Hollywood was, what branch and basic shape, he couldn’t hear anything clearly. Switching to a franchise that existed entirely as a line clarified nothing, and switching to a storefront that existed in six dimensions and whose normal clientele could detect the entire electromagnetic spectrum and some besides didn’t help either.

Still, he couldn’t spend the entire (relative) day tracking down what was going on. Especially not with whole houses of people waiting just around the corner for their food and drinks. Especially because it looked like one of the rowdier tables had started a food fight. “Alright, that is enough!” Hollywood roared as he turned to the table, a french fry slathered in secret sauce flying past his nose. Dealing with the idiots didn’t take long, but left a sour taste in his mouth. People generally were better behaved than this, what the hell was going on?

Something brushed his face.

Hollywood slapped himself out of reflex, startling a laugh from the table he’d been passing. After mentally making a note to upcharge that group, he looked at his hand. The tiny, tiny body of a fruit fly met his eyes, and he realized that the noise he’d been hearing had faded almost completely. He stared hard at it for a second or two, then wiped his hand on his pants before going to wash.

“Dammit, Cook, what’d I say about taking out the garbage!”

Bruno pulled off the ragged suit jacket he’d put on and tossed it onto his cot before settling down beside it with a sigh. There was a certain timelessness to this place, where the sun never rose and it was daylight all the time anyway, but it still felt like the day had taken months. He felt every single one of his years weighing on him like he hadn’t for several months, mission after mission written in red ink and covered by black making him feel older than his joints ever had.

It should have been easy. It was the mission, after all, and it wasn’t like it would have been the first time Bruno had double-tapped a civilian in the service of the mission. Hell, it wouldn’t have even been the first time it’d been a clergyman. Would have been the first time it was a Protestant, though, a morbidly humorous part of him suggested and he dismissed the thought as irrelevant. What was relevant was the look in Andi’s eyes when he’d made the suggestion.

She’d been deep in her avatar, near as he could tell, but he had always been able to see a pilot in their avatar - so far - and Andi’s reaction had mirrored Mary’s discomfort. It was that pinched, unhappy expression she’d worn for too long in the prison that had kept his gun in its holster, for all that forty and more years of operations were clamoring for him to achieve mission parameters as swiftly and efficiently as possible.

Bruno had always gotten the job done. Didn’t matter what the job was, though wetwork requiring stealth and honeypot missions had always been more the LT’s wheelhouse than Bruno’s, he’d see the job through as economically as possible. He’d executed targets, framed innocents, sabotaged facilities, interrogated prisoners, lied, cheated, and done anything and everything to see each mission completed; cold-blooded murder wasn’t even a blip on his radar anymore. It shouldn’t have mattered.

And yet.

He was used to being the most dependable person in the room. The Colonel was the real brains of the operation no matter whom he was working with and handed down clear and concise objectives, Krieger had never not in charge of the missions he chose, Lexington worked a different arena, Tunstall had been a gifted tactician in his own somewhat limited scope and had always known exactly what to do when things went to hell, and while Cole had been more software than hardware when it came right down to it (a shot to center mass at that distance, with the target distracted? Bruno would have been embarrassed to die at that kind of sloppy shot if he hadn’t had more important things to worry about at the time) he knew how to put a plan together. If there was a mission, Bruno was there to handle it.

And that’s how he’d been treating this whole situation. Andi was a mission, with her happiness as an objective. He’d ensured her safety in the prison, he’d swept Joe’s and Arena first before she went in, and he’d made sure to taste-test all the (so far uniformly horrible) canned food Zenda’d gotten from places he didn’t like to contemplate. Even now, as he rested his head in his hands he was keeping a covert eye on her; he was pretty sure Zenda had noticed, but was also equally sure no-one else had.

That was the problem at the root of it all, really. He’d been treating Andi as a mission, and not as a grand-daughter. The problem was, “grand daughter” wasn’t a label that came with any parameters. Bruno had never known his grandparents; they’d not approved of his mother’s choice to marry a handsome young soldier - and then had refused to take Bruno in when both his parents had died when Bruno himself was in high school, instead letting the system take him until he looked old enough to sign on with the Marines.

Being a grandfather didn’t come with objectives or a mission statement, and Bruno found himself at sea. He was used to being the person who knew exactly what to do next; whom to shoot and where, what the exit strategy was and what the contingencies were, why people broke under interrogation and what to do to expedite the process, how long it would take reinforcements for either side to arrive or if they were even coming. These were things Bruno knew, deep down in the marrow of him, forty years having carved the knowledge into his bones.

Being a grandfather involved very little of that. In fact, Bruno had his doubts whether the pilots - he still had difficulty believing he was one himself - needed him at all. Going to crazy places with powers you could see and still not believe, pulling maniacal computer programs out of peoples’ heads with magic boxes that fell from somewhere further away than the sky…..against all of that a thorough knowledge of how to strip, clean, and reassemble nearly every firearm under the sun seemed less than useful.

He glanced over at Andi again, where she was sitting against the wall of the bunker humming something under her breath with her eyes unfocused, and something in him solidified. Grandfather may not have mission parameters or an objective, and he might be nothing more than an old dog with older tricks, but he’d be damned if let go of one of the only good things to come out of his life. Until she told him to go, he’d stay and help.

With that thought Bruno stood up and stretched, and went looking for Thomas. He needed to research, and the man had been described as a walking encyclopedic knowledge of everything; Bruno couldn’t think of a better place to start.

Where do all the stories go
Where the green grass grows
And the sun shines bright
And the wild winds blow

Where the wild Kid Bill
Walks over the hills
And Richard Gatling
Turns tubes to his will

Where Calico Jack
Flew his flag so black
And his two merry wives
Faced the world at his back

And Slough-Foot Sue
And her catfish too
Ride out with King Teddy
And his motley crew

Where Miss Emily
Walks with Johnny Appleseed
And Hardin himself
Rides with Doc and James Jesse

Where Annie Oakley
Rides fearless and free
And Wilbur Orville Wright
Crashes his plane in a tree

These folks walk along Yosemite’s shore
And many many other further lands more
They step straight out of legend
And wage a very strange war

Where do all the stories go
Where the green grass grows
And the sun shines bright
And the wild winds blow

Bruno looked down at Sgt. Baxter’s hands as Thomas expertly guided the plane up off the tarmac and into the deep indigo sky.

Sergeant Baxter Wazacowski. It’d been more than a decade since he’d been a sergeant, yet the rank fit like a glove. Unlike the turbulent Michael, Wazacowski was focused, his world centering on the mission and the objectives. Bruno could appreciate the clarity of purpose so very like his own. Granted, in this case it was tempered by an almost overwhelming urge to smite the unnatural beings inhabiting the cargo hold around him, but Bruno’d done plenty of missions with guys he didn’t like and knew exactly how to redirect the feeling into something productive.

Still, the sense of satisfaction at a job well done was a warmth in his heart that he hadn’t felt since the Diner fell in. Not only had they thoroughly torched the lab and fulfilled Wazacowski ’s primary objective, they’d also managed to collar - literally - TOM and satisfy Bruno’s primary mission objective. And they’d gotten to kill Nazis, always a plus; nothing quite like unambiguous evil to instill a clarity of purpose in the pull of a trigger.

Rubbing the warding-marks on his wrists - those scars went all the way down to the bone, damn - Bruno studiously avoided looking at Dr. Clarkson and instead looked over at his granddaughter, laughing with the weirdly horned face of a demon. She’d surprised him in more ways than one, on this mission. First, she’d pulled herself completely to the fore of her avatar’s mind; he’d done it to Michael, and largely to Wazacowski , but the others seemed much more comfortable letting their avatars have the reins. Andi especially, or so it had seemed from his limited experience in the 20s where she had only stepped even a little forward in the last few minutes of the mission.

The second, even more surprising fact was that she’d come to the fore in her avatar to consult with him about their strategy for infiltrating the chateau. Bruno had never really been the one making the plans. Oh he’d been in charge of making the plans work for thirty and more years, but making the plan? Not his department. There were always other, better men who co-ordinated the strategy, who would set the objectives and the priorities, men who had the rank to make people listen to them no matter how left-field their plan had turned out to be.

And that had been fine with Bruno. He was the blunt instrument, the boots on the ground that made sure everything happened the way it needed to, to finish the mission - though rarely the way it was supposed to. ‘According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans’ after all, and Bruno knew through bitter experience what exactly it took to salvage even the most FUBAR of missions.

But then Andi had asked him. Andi, not her avatar, and him, Bruno Hamilton, not Sgt. Wazacowski . It wasn’t his area of expertise, he’d never been asked about such things before, and he was already overwhelmed with trying to keep track of all this piloting business. But. She’d asked him. Not Thomas, not Dr. Clarkson. Him.

She was his granddaughter, and he would have been damned if he’d started off by failing her as he had so abysmally failed her grandmother.

So he’d stepped up as best he knew how, drawing on the men he’d worked for and with in the past - Jaxun, Krieger, Thornton, and others - to try and cobble together some semblance of a plan. He’d started by categorizing their priorities, then their assets, and what had emerged had been…..a plan. A ramshackle Hail Mary of a plan - but a plan nonetheless. Papers and Thomas’ Austrian avatar to get them through the gate and grounds, bluff through the door, contain casualties to the house to avoid witnesses, destroy the lab, grab TOM.

The look of warm gratitude on Andi’s face as she’d faded back to let her avatar do the necessary deeds had been….something. Another surprise, certainly. Bruno wasn’t sure what, yet, it was, but the memory of it redoubled the feeling of warm satisfaction in his chest from a job well done and he had to smile as the lady demon and Andi nearly fell off their seat laughing at Aquamarine’s attempts to get Dr. Clarkson to put the lab coat back on.

In the end, the plan had gone off almost to a T. Neither gate guards nor the doormen looked closely enough at the forged papers or those wielding them to hinder their progress, and Thomas’ timely silence spell had allowed them to end the inner guards before they’d had a chance to set off any alarms. Bruno’d been on supply runs that had gone worse than this.

Their luck couldn’t hold forever, of course, and the demon had been a nasty surprise. Bruno had felt his avatar surging to the front with the absolute confidence of someone who knew exactly how to deal with the situation in front of him, and Bruno had taken his cue from Andi and…let him. Sgt. Wazacowski had known exactly what to do to overload the summoning circle and blow the Nazi protection and control runes all to Hell, and the following chase to catch TOM had been as confusing as it was anti-climatic.

Bruno shivered and rubbed his arms. The warding-marks were weird, but the feeling of fur and distinctly inhuman bone structures were somehow worse. Not to mention the wild abandon he’d felt while chasing the car; for one almost sickening second the chase was more important than the mission, than the capture, than Andi. He shook his head to dislodge the memory, quietly thanking every single one of his lucky stars not to have been put in that avatar full-time. The heightened senses and strength were not worth the loss of control he’d felt, the complete upset to his objectives hierarchy.

Finding himself back in Sgt. Wazacowski standing less than seven feet from the truck had been disorienting, but the return of the other man’s more familiar way of thinking was a comfort Bruno didn’t have words for. It was like sobering up without the hangover, a fact for which he could only be grateful.

And now here they were. TOM was in custody, Dr. Clarkson was indulging her avatar’s mischievous tendencies, Thomas was patching up the more obviously gaping holes in Yannic, and Aquamarine and the demon were egging on Dr. Clarkson. A job well done, by any definition.

As the brilliant white light gathered, Bruno closed his eyes and surrendered to the pull willingly. It was time to see what had happened in their absence.

“How did it go?”

Zenda’s innocent question was met with an almost unbearable silence. Even Thomas seemed disinclined to answer, where usually the man would take the slightest opportunity to ramble - especially when he wasn’t the subject of the question. Zenda seemed surprised at their cumulative lack of response and opened his mouth as if to ask another question, but Bruno couldn’t stand the thought of a thorough debriefing. Not now.

“Mission objectives accomplished, no friendly casualties,” he stated brusquely, ignoring the little voice in his head that said not for lack of trying. He turned away from the group and headed for the door to the bunker, grabbing a canteen on his way. “I’m going to go scout the perimeter.”

Zenda looked perturbed. “That is not a wise idea, what if-” Bruno rounded on him with a glare and Zenda wisely shut his mouth. “I’m going. To scout. The perimeter.” The one-armed man still looked deeply unhappy but didn’t try to stop him again and Bruno walked out the door into the indeterminate and interminable sunlight.

It wasn’t as hot here, in this place, as some of the deserts he’d been to over the years, but it still wasn’t exactly what you’d call balmy. As Bruno tromped over the sand, always keeping the base within 50 yards of his left side he could feel the sweat begin trickling down his neck and he glared out over the odd ruins and ever opening and closing gates.

He could still feel the shadow of Kaldegga in his mind, like an oil slick. A man whose not inconsiderable talents had been focused almost entirely on a mission that made Bruno want to retch, whose mind had been filled with hate and an empty sort of pleasure in the death and destruction his actions caused because there was nothing else left - if that was the kind of person Bruno was sent into, what did that say about Bruno?

And the way Kaldegga had looked at his granddaughter…Bruno kicked at the sand, scowling ferociously at the serene golden dunes around him. He’d done his best to suppress Kaldegga for the good of the mission, but the man had had the wherewithal to whisper to him anyway. It was the most acutely he’d ever been aware of the dividing line between him and an avatar; Kaldegga had pressed hard to take control, growing angrier and more spitefully malicious every time Bruno had ruthlessly shut him down.

Even slapping himself hadn’t made Kaldegga retreat, the man instead treating the pain as a goad to thinking even more explicitly uncomfortable thoughts - and not just of what he’d do to Andi. Thoughts of burning the death-seeker alive as Aquamarine screamed, of shutting down all the electronics inside Thomas’ avatar and watching as the man choked to death on fleshy bits that no longer functioned on their own - of having his way with Andi’s avatar and dragging her with him on the path to his inevitable victory. Of hanging the corpses somewhere highly visible to illustrate what would happen to those who opposed his vision.

All that and more had run through Kaldegga’s head as he homed in on the thoughts that made Bruno uncomfortable, the ones that made him want to take an ice pick to the brain he was in. And, what was worse, was the methodical way Kaldegga set up the fantasies; each one unfolded in the kind of exacting detail Bruno used to adapt to circumstances on the fly to achieve mission objectives. Each thought in Kaldegga’s mind was made with the same ruthless calculation that Bruno himself used when he was out on a mission.

It had distracted Bruno for a crucial second, and Kaldegga had clawed his way back into some semblance of control. The sexual rejoinders traded with both Dr. Clarkson’s and Andi’s avatars had covered up the far more vicious struggle inside his head as Kaldegga fought for complete control and Bruno had opposed him with equal determination. That stalemate had lasted them most of the way through the ensuing fight on the capital ship until Kaldegga had mentally flinched away from a lightning strike that Bruno knew with his many years of experience dodging projectiles wouldn’t hit them; he’d exploited Kaldegga’s flinch to shove him all the way back down to the depths of their shared existence where he belonged.

He hadn’t been able to make him stay down for long, however, and Kaldegga had again clawed his way to almost complete equilibrium between them. The man’s smug satisfaction at killing the 400 and more other people on the capital ship - of the message that would send to the galaxy - left a foul taste in Bruno’s mouth, and the memory of the smirk that had twisted Kaldegga’s face when Thomas had overridden Bruno’s concerns about possible avatars on the ship made Bruno wipe his own mouth now in disgust, grimacing at the feel of several days worth of stubble.

Bruno felt foul, like he’d been wading through hip-deep sewage instead of merely climbing in and out of a pod. There wasn’t enough water for more than a shower every few weeks in the bunker - Zenda’d done what he could and there was a filtration/recycling unit to reclaim as much as humanly possible - but Bruno couldn’t wait until it was his turn again. And while it had been a long time since last he’d had to do it, he knew a few tricks on getting relatively clean in the desert.

Kneeling, he shucked his shirt and pulled out his canteen. Brushing away the topmost layer of sand, he took a handful of the deeper layer and wetted it a bit before beginning to scrub his head and chest down thoroughly. The feeling of Lothar Kaldegga slowly faded down the back of his throat, like bile. It had been - overwhelming. Suffocating. When he’d willingly surrendered control to Kaldegga, it had been like diving into crude oil. He’d watched Kaldegga attack Thomas, unable to move a muscle or even speak out against it. Screaming inside his own head, helpless, was an experience that had him scrubbing sand through his hair more vigorously than he should’ve done, but the scrapes would heal quickly enough.

And then Thomas - Thomas’ wispy, pilot form, not the body he’d been inhabiting - had reached out and pulled Bruno to the fore of his avatar. He’d seen Thomas do it to the others, but to have it done to him was…weird. For the briefest instant it was almost like Thomas had joined him in the body of Kaldegga and the welter of thoughts and emotions not his own - distinctly unlike him, in a way that Kaldegga’s thoughts disturbingly weren’t - had only lasted the space of a hairsbreadth and then it was gone and Bruno had been mostly in control of himself.

As he finished his ablutions, Bruno felt a little calmer. Cleaning off with the gritty, abrasive sand had helped ground him, reminded him that he wasn’t Kaldegga and that Kaldegga had no place here - though he might have. Bruno was self-aware enough to realize that he might very well have become the angry, bitter shadow that had comprised the sum of his avatar. If it hadn’t been for his team and his officers - well. Bruno had seen the outcome in Kaldegga, and he would not let himself slide that far.

Brushing off as best he could, he started trudging back towards the bunker. He had to face Andi and the rest of them at some point; no reason to put it off any longer.

Conference Room 1A, Capital Ship Rod-7

Lieutenant Commander Tyra Powell strode confidently into the room and looked at the rather disreputable figure slouched at the table before her. Captain Grace Lyonns, bounty hunter and registered owner of a small civilian ship called The Queen of Spades, had been taken from the bridge of the Capital Ship Prism-5 claiming to have captured the notorious terrorist Lothar Kaldegga. It was up to Powell to acquire the real story for UL records, not the highly sensationalized version already racing along the Inter-Stellar Communications System thanks to Lyonns’ own allcall broadcast from the aforementioned bridge.

“Look, is this going to take long? I have a hot date.” Lyonns’ drawl interrupted Powell’s thoughts and the Lt. hid her irritation in a short shuffle of the datapads she carried. Settling herself into the chair opposite Lyonns, Powell brought out the dedicated datacorder and triggered the comprehensive recording function on it before deigning to address the woman in front of her.

“Please state your name for the record.” Something in Powell’s tone seemed to amuse Lyonns as she leaned back even more precariously in her chair.

“Grace Lyonns.”

“What is your current occupation?”

“Civilian ship captain and sometimes-bounty hunter.”

“Current associates?”

“Skinny and Kitty.”

Powell consulted her notes. “That would be one Mr. Hank Herbert and a Kae’La, registered Deathseeker of the Kala’Kah?”

Lyonns waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I said.”

Powell pursed her lips and made a note on her datapad before looking up at Lyonns and folding her hands in front of her. “Please state for the record a true and accurate account of events as they occurred on the bridge of the Prism-5. Please note that this statement is for the official record and is not intended for use as material for prosecution.”

Lyonns seemed piqued by the last note, but leaned forward anyway to rest her arms on the table.

“Look, it went down like this….”

———————————————————————————–

Bridge of the Prism-5, 36 hours ago

“Hah! I have done it! I have blown up a planet!” Lothar crowed, the sweet sunglasses he wore doing nothing to detract from his expression of maniacal glee. Grace pulled her weapon from its holster and pointed it at him, finger on the trigger.

“Alright Kaldegga, put your hands up! You might’ve gotten this far, but you sure as hell ain’t getting away from me! You’ll pay for trying to fry Skinny!” Kaldegga turned and sneered. “Hah! You’ll never get me, not even with your super-hot body! We could’ve been so good together, you ruling the world at my side!” He raised his hands and fired off a spear of ice, which Grace deftly rolled to avoid. He certainly wasn’t to get her with that old trick!

“Sorry honey, you’re good but not that good. It’d take a real man to lay me out flat, and you don’t even measure up.” Grace took the opportunity to fire and got a clean through-and-through shot on his shoulder that left him howling in pain and clutching his arm. Two shots rang out from behind her in quick succession, and Lothar’s gauntlets sparked and popped as their channeling circuits were comprehensively destroyed.

“Glad you’ve got my back, Skinny!” She called. “Yep, Gracie!” She snorted. “What’d I tell you about calling me Gracie!” she shouted as she ran forward, pulling a suppression collar out and snapping it around Lothar’s neck even as she yelled. His scream of rage was almost as satisfying as the scream she’d gotten from that sweet barmaid back on Campinodia 7, in the little dive bar. It had been a very satisfying night, and the screaming had just been the start.

“You sinfully beautiful witch! Why could you not acknowledge my obvious superiority and our sexual connection!” Lothar raised a fist to punch her, and she managed to snap a cuff on it before he could lay one on her. “Skinny! Any time!” she yelled as she struggled to keep a hold on his arm so he couldn’t bash her brains in. Skinny ran in and jumped on Lothar’s back; the sudden weight was enough to send Kaldegga staggering and Grace used the opportunity to cuff his other wrist before activating the stun function in them and sending Lothar to dreamland.

Skinny pulled himself out from under the guy and brushed himself down a bit before Grace punched him on the shoulder. “What were you thinking, Skinny! You’ve got pistols, you could’ve just, I don’t know, shot out his knee or something.” Skinny ducked his head.

“Sorry, Grace. Wasn’t thinking.” He looked so despondent she couldn’t stay mad at him - not that she could ever stay mad at Skinny. “It’s alright. Hey, look at the bright side! We’ve got our meal ticket for the rest of our lives if we play our cards right, and neither of us is dead! I’d say we came out on top,” she said with a laugh, and Skinny brightened. “Guess we sure did, Gracie. Guess we sure did.”

———————————————————————————–

Conference Room 1A, Capital Ship Rod-7

Powell blinked for several seconds before shaking her head. “Well. Do you so affirm that what you have stated here is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” Lyonns leaned back, amused smirk firmly in place on her face. “My hand to whatever deity you choose, that’s what happened.”

Powell stopped the comprehensive recording with a flick of her wrist and made one more note before she stood and gathered her devices. “Thank you for your co-operation. Processing will be completed within the next four hours and your monetary compensation determined at that point. If you need refreshment or to use the facilities before that point, please let the complimentary honor guard know and they will fulfill the requests as required. Good day, Miss Lyonns.”

She turned and headed for the door, pretending not to hear the grumbled “It’s Captain Lyonns, dammit.” behind her as she left the conference room.

———————————————————————————–

Conference Room 2B, Capital Ship Rod-7

Lt. Cmdr. Powell strode confidently into the room, the twitchy figure sitting at the table obsessively shuffling a pack of cards so worn you couldn’t read the faces anymore a studied contrast to her last interview. Hank Herbert, registered cyborg and unofficial pistolero. One of Grace Lyonns’ known associates and picked up at the same time from the bridge of the Prism-5, he had been deeply unhappy to have his pistols confiscated as the illegal weapons they were.

He didn’t speak as Powell walked over and took the seat opposite him, merely kept on shuffling his cards. Powell took her time in setting up her equipment, but even at the end of several minutes Herbert hadn’t even looked at her. Reaching the end of her patience, she cleared her throat loudly and brought her datapad down with a snap. He twitched, cybernetics making almost-inaudible whining noises as they reset themselves, before stopping his shuffle and looking up at her.

“Please state your named for the record,” she said clearly, slightly over-enunciating her syllables; nonmilitary cyborg enhancements tended to be hit or miss on audio input quality, and she suspected his were more miss than hit.

“Oh. Uh. Are you recording this? Yeah? Huh. My name is Hank, but my friends call me Skinny.”

“To confirm, you are Hank Herbert, registered cyborg?”

He pulled as much of a face as he could around his augments. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“What is your occupation?”

“Uh, odd jobs mostly. Whatever the Captain finds.”

“That would be one Grace Lyonns, correct?”

“Yeah. Captain Grace Lyonns.”

Powell made a note on her datapad before folding her hands in front of her. “Please state for the record a true and accurate account of events as they occurred on the bridge of the Prism-5. Please note that this statement is for the official record and is not intended for use as material for prosecution.”

Hank looked a little green in the organic parts, but put away his cards and leaned forward gamely.

“Okay, so, here’s how it went…”

———————————————————————————–

Bridge of the Prism-5, 37 hours ago

“Finally, my evil plan is complete! I have destroyed a planet! Ha hahahaha!” Lothar shouted, still elbows-deep in his connection to the weapons system. Skinny reacted on instinct, pulling both his pistols and putting a round in the floor on each side of the maniac’s feet.

“Whoa there now, don’t go making a mess we ain’t got the time to clean up! In fact, why dontcha just give up and make this real easy on yourself?” Skinny called back, cycling the chambers on his pistols with a flick of his thumb. Grace appeared stunned by the comprehensive destruction of even so minor a planetoid, and it was up to him to make sure this terrorist asshole didn’t barbecue them both.

“You think you can defeat me? Me? Lothar Kaldegga?? I have the power of a capital warship on my side! I am unstoppable!” And the guy had gone full megalomania. Neat. Skinny took two more neat shots and suddenly Lothar had a few more things on his mind besides universal domination. Namely, the two holes Skinny’d just shot in his knees.

“You son of a bitch!” Lothar howled, dropping from the console to clutch at his legs. Skinny frowned. “You kiss your mother with that mouth? Captain, get the collar ‘n stuff on him, I got you covered.”

Grace finally blinked out of the stupor she’d been standing in and went to go grab one of the suppression collars and a set of stun-cuffs from the nearest storage point. Kaldegga glared hatefully after her for a long moment, before turning his eyes on Skinny.

“You’ll never take me in, you know. I have powers far beyond your pathetic machinery!” Skinny pretended to consider it for a moment before shrugging, gun muzzles never losing their train on Lothar. “And I have guns. Which one of us is sitting on the floor bleeding, again?”

Kaldegga didn’t have time to retort as Grace chose that moment to stride back on the bridge with collar and cuffs in hand. “Put 'em on 'im,” Skinny said and gestured to Kaldegga with one pistol.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Grace replied breezily as she walked over to Lothar….right through Skinny’s line of fire. “Grace -!”

With a roar, Kaldegga came up off the floor and grabbed Grace, spinning her around and putting an arm around her neck. “Drop your weapon or I’ll snap her like a twig!” he shouted, and visibly twisted her neck until she whimpered when Skinny hesitated.

“Woah, woah! I’m putting them down, I’m putting them down slowly…” Skinny crouched slowly and brought his guns down like he was going to put them down on the deck, before whipping them up lightning-quick and shooting Lothar in the shoulder. Kaldegga dropped Grace with a scream of pain, and she spun around and kicked him in the junk before snapping the collar on his neck and the cuffs on his wrists.

When she finished, she turned back to Skinny. “Damn it, Skinny - ” “You stepped in front of my shot! What was I supposed to do!” He rebuffed before she could finish, and she shook her head. “Well, we got the guy. Guess that counts as a win.”

———————————————————————————–

Conference Room 2B, Capital Ship Rod-7

Powell made a few notes on her datapad before she sat back in her seat and regarded the cyborg sitting in front of her with a level stare. He fidgeted under her gaze, and she waited until he went for his pack of cards before speaking. “Do you so affirm that what you have stated here is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

He started, nearly dropping his cards. “Uh, yeah. Definitely. Word for word, exactly what happened.”

Powell stopped the comprehensive recorder with a practiced motion, and made a few more notes in her datapad before standing up. “Very well. The United League thanks you for your co-operation. The data processing will be completed within the next three hours and your monetary compensation will be determined and transferred at that point in time. If you need refreshment or to use the facilities before processing is complete, please let the complimentary honor guard posted outside the door know and they will acquire it as required. Good day, Mr. Herbert.”

He was shuffling his cards again before she’d even left the room.

———————————————————————————–

Containment Unit 311144, Capital Ship Rod-7

Powell walked briskly into the interrogator chamber, separated from the containment unit by thick plates of duracrystal layered with force fields. Inside the containment chamber, the Kala’Kah continued to stretch languidly into poses no human could ever hope to achieve, paying no attention to the chime Powell had sounded before entry. Frowning, Powell took out her datapad before prodding the intercom system.

“This is Lieutenant Commander Powell of the United League. Please state your designation and occupation, now, for the official record. This conversation will be recorded for later review.” The Kala’Kah took one last impossible stretch before leaping lightly to her feet.

“I am Kae’la, Deathseeker. Grace Lyonns holds my contract; my will is her will. My actions are her actions. My job is her job.”

Powell made a note on her datapad before turning back to the intercom. “Please state for the record a true and accurate account of events as they occurred on the bridge of the Prism-5.”

The Kala’kah leaned toward the duracrystal viewport. “The way it happened was thusly…”

———————————————————————————–

Bridge of the Prism-5, 39 hours ago

“It is the inevitable end produced by my will; look upon what is no more, and despair at my power,” Lothar Kaldegga stated forcefully, has hands clasped tight to the weapons system that had, mere moments earlier, reduced a planetoid to its base components. His dream of catastrophe realized, he turned to face the three arrayed behind him. “You cannot hope to defeat me. I have triumphed, and all who oppose me shall find themselves condemned to the same fate. Join me, and know what true power is.”

Grace Lyonns stepped forward. “You are as mistaken as you are cruel, sir. After your vile and calamitous attack upon my comrade, there is no avenue for you to pursue that ends in victory. I was not in time to stop you from destroying that planet, but you will not find me so slow on a second try.” Her speech as aggressive as her movements, she brought her gun to bear on Lothar Kaldegga, Skinny Herbert’s guns already there.

“Kae’La, go and retrieve a suppression collar and stun cuffs for his wrists; we would not wish to be found wanting when this vile villain finds himself victim of our combined wit, and given over to those who would rewards us for such actions in the United League.” Grace Lyonns’ body was as wary as Skinny Herbert’s was still; neither his guns nor his eyes left Lothar Kaldegga’s form even as Kae’la pulled the requested items from their storage.

It was only as she approached to clasp them in their proper places that Lothar Kaldegga made his move. Fire flew from his hands as he made to move around Kae’la and out the bridge door, and Skinny Herbert screamed as the flames licked what was left of his skin. Grace Lyonns, however, remained undaunted and fired a single round into Lothar Kaldegga’s shoulder. Kae’la, in her turn, tore his gauntlets off with two arms while the other two secured the collar around his neck.

Apparently, putting on a suppression collar while magic was in active use was an extremely painful experience; Lothar Kaldegga’s screaming ceased only when the stun cuffs were also applied, and activated in the proper fashion. As he slumped unconscious to the floor, Grace Lyonns assessed Skinny Herbert’s condition and pronounced him to be both fine and a large, immature form of the species.

“And to think, with the bounty we shall receive from turning this miscreant in to the proper authorities, you may yet get an upgrade to what burned.”

———————————————————————————–

Containment Unit 311144, Capital Ship Rod-7

Powell waited a few seconds more, but the Kala’Kah seemed to have finished its story. “Do you so affirm that what you have stated here is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” she asked; the form was required even if the testimony would likely be stricken from the record as irrelevant. Still, nothing was ever lost by being thorough.

“I do so affirm,” was the Kala’Kah’s calm response, and Powell deactivated the intercom system before walking out. She had an hour to compile all this into some kind of coherent report for the record, and she wanted a stiff drink before she buckled down to it.

———————————————————————————–

The Queen of Spades, 2 hours later

“Think they bought it, Gracie?” Skinny asked as he pulled the disassembled pieces of a power-armor gauntlet out of his pockets and dumped them on a nearby table that also housed a bowl of dried, unidentifiable sludge and six shot glasses stacked into a pyramid. The topmost glass fell and shattered, and Skinny cursed.

“I mean, even if they didn’t buy it it’s not like they can charge us with anything. They can’t prove it didn’t happen like we said, and that’s the important bit. You remembered to sic Sweet Pea on those camera feeds, right?” Grace asked as she flopped into her favorite chair on the Queen.

“Yeah, yeah, Sweet Pea went in and deleted the last day from all feeds, smooth as Sakissian silk.” Kae’La padded silently to a corner and curled up on the heap of fabric and pillows she’d carefully constructed there while Skinny talked, earning her a raised eyeridge from the man.

“Good. Long as they don’t know what actually happened, it’s smooth sailing from here on out…”

———————————————————————————–

What Actually Happened

Bridge of the Prism-5, 41 hours ago

“Skinny, what the hell happened?” Grace’s voice sounded unusually annoyed and Skinny brought a hand to his head to massage away the ringing ache. Clonking himself in the head with the gun already in his hand didn’t help that ache any, and he swore.

“I don’t know, Captain. One minute I’m shooting the shit out of some damned UL goons and next I remember, I’m here and he’s there. Everything between’s a blur.” He glanced over to where he’d gestured towards 'he’ and almost had a heart attack at the sight of Lothar Kaldegga, cuffed and collared and looking ready for murder. “Holy shit, Grace, how the hell’d we catch him?”

“Don’t call me Grace in front of the captive,” she responded absently, eyes darting around the bridge and taking in the relatively undamaged state of it….except for the scorchmarks around Skinny’s feet. Her gaze focused on those with an almost laser intensity before snapping to Lothar. “What did you do?”

Lothar sneered and shrugged as best he could in the cuffs. “He was in my way. Removing him was step one to taking complete control of this ship and crushing my enemies.” He seemed unperturbed by the relatively petite captain marching towards him as he spoke, and merely let his eyes wander suggestively up and down as she got closer. “You know - ”

Grace pulled out her gun and shot him in the shoulder. He dropped with a hoarse cry, and she planted a toe-kick in his crotch. “That’s for trying to kill Skinny, you bastard, and that’s for thinking I’d pick you over him for some dick.” She stalked back over to where Skinny stood in appreciative silence and glared at Lothar some more before looking around again.

“Okay, we’re on the bridge of what looks like a Capital Ship - ugh - with a wanted mass murderer who apparently just blew up the planet for which I was promised some pretty damn magnificent beard. How far up the creek are we?” She cut a glance over at Skinny. “And why are you wearing power armor?”

Skinny looked down at himself. Huh, he’d wondered why his pants were so tight. “I don’t know, Captain.” “Well, take it off, then, you look ridiculous. Get Kitty to help you.” She looked back out over the bridge and he turned and nearly jumped out of his skin at the enormous Kala’Kah standing right behind him.

Swallowing down a curse, he held out one power-armored hand. “Careful with the gauntlets, I think the Captain will be wanting them later.” Kitty merely nodded and tore the arm from the armor without apparent effort. In fact, it didn’t take her long at all to reduce the armor to so much scrap and two arm-pieces; Skinny, in his turn, wasted no time starting to disassemble the gauntlets.

Grace spoke up suddenly, nearly causing Skinny to drop the wrench he’d been using to pry the casing off. “I think I’ve got a plan,” she said with confidence, and Skinny and Kitty shared a Look before Kitty shrugged and Skinny sighed. “Well, I got nothing, Captain, so I’d be glad to hear it.”

She turned to them with a manic gleam in her eyes. “We turn Kaldegga in.”

Skinny waited several seconds but there was nothing else forthcoming. “We turn him in, we get arrested for conspiring so the UL doesn’t gotta pay his bounty, and they shoot us. I don’t see how that helps,” he said finally, setting his wrench on the floor to grab the screwdriver Kitten helpfully held out for him.

“Not if we tell everyone else at the same time,” she responded smugly and he dropped the screwdriver. It would’ve gone right through his foot if Kitty hadn’t caught it, but he was too busy staring at Grace to notice. “You mean - ”

“Broadcast it to the ISCS that we caught Lothar Kaldegga just as he was testing a capital ship he stole, yep.” When the other two didn’t immediately jump for joy, she made an impatient noise. “Think about it. All capital ships are equipped with direct-line ISCS access, we wouldn’t even have to hop a node. All we need is Sweet Pea to set up the broadcast and then we’re whatever we wanna broadcast we are. Big damn heroes, even.”

Skinny had slowly warmed up to the idea as Grace talked, and now he was nodding enthusiastically. “Right. What should we say happened?” Grace paused for a second, frowning. “Well, we didn’t get here in time to stop Lothar from blowing up that planet - does anyone remember what was on the planet?” Her question was met with shaking heads and she shrugged. “So we didn’t get here in time to stop him, but we get here and he’s doing the whole evil villain thing, we stopped him, we saved the ship and probably half the galaxy. Sound good?”

Skinny thought for a second, then pulled out one of his pistols and shot Lothar in the leg. “Authenticity, captain. If that’s what you want to do, then I’m with you.”

Grace grinned. “Let’s do it.”

Sergeant Bruno Hamilton checked the few bushes he’d tethered together to cover the mouth of the cave, and waited for the rain to stop.

He and three other men - Cpl Ben Willkins, PFC Kyle McKlevin, and PFC Werner van Kemseke - had been dispatched to this particular piece of godforsaken jungle with a very simple mission; locate the Pathet Lao base, extract the high-value target, and fall back to the handoff point where a detachment from the Royal Lao Army would take the target from there. No witnesses.

Simple enough on paper, but they’d been delayed in transit and now the area was under heavy bombardment from the Air Force.

The base itself was unlikely to be hit; Bruno had to admit that whoever had chosen the location had chosen well, a small slot canyon leading into a narrow valley sheltered on three sides by sharply angled cliffs. It’d take an extremely lucky bombardier to plant a bomb in there, and of course the Air Force was going for quantity over actually aiming. But he and his men had barely been in the area a day when the first whistle dropped and they’d been forced to take cover themselves.

Fortunately, the same geography that sheltered the base also lent itself to protecting himself and his team; they’d managed to find a small overhang just deep enough to maybe be called a cave on a good day, and had concealed it and themselves from prying eyes as best they could. That had been four days ago, and there hadn’t been a long enough gap between bombings since to make infiltration of the base feasible.

PFC McKlevin wasn’t taking it well; it wasn’t his first mission, not with Bruno and not with IMAF, but you wouldn’t know it from the obsessive way he cleaned his weapons. And then Willkins’ weapons. And van Kamseke’s weapons. He’d tried to do Bruno’s as well but Bruno wasn’t about to let someone else disassemble his weapons in a combat zone so McKlevin had cleaned his weapons again. And again.

Bruno understood, to a point, but the cave was only keeping the bombs off their heads and if they had been discovered a gun stripped for cleaning would do nobody any good; an idea he’d driven home as hard as he could when yelling was Not An Option. The kid had stopped cleaning his guns anyway, and started sharpening his knife.

That had been a day and three bombing runs ago, and the only thing keeping the others from strangling McKlevin was the fact that the bombings had started moving off; the flyboys had finally gotten orders to move to a new sector, nearest any of them could tell, and this latest bombing was the furthest away yet. It was time.

Bruno let the bushes go and turned to the others several long minutes after the last rumble had stopped. They had to move fast, to take advantage of any gaps in perimeter defenses the bombs might have made. In less than ten minutes their gear was stowed and the traces of their time spent here in the cave minimized; they moved out silently, the quiet stillness of the landscape after the bombs had fallen engendering the necessity of hand signals in place of the spoken word.

Their chosen route was, miraculously, still passable - though almost unrecognizable, the fallen bombs having created a scene that looked more like the surface of the moon than any kind of terrestrial habitat. They crept through craters that still stank of the explosives that had created them - though the wind had whipped away most of the chemical stink from the older ones. The grass rustled in the wind, but none of whatever animals were left were stirring. Dirt crumbled away at the edge of the impacts, and made footing tricky; for all that, they moved with practiced swiftness.

“Sarge.”

McKlevin’s voice wasn’t particularly loud, but the absence of sound turned it almost into a shout. Bruno looked around, a reprimand at the ready, but didn’t see the guy. Willkins and van Kemseke he marked mentally, both having frozen at the unexpected noise, but McKlevin was nowhere to be seen. Frowning, Bruno gestured for the others to move up to the shelter offered by a meager treeline a hundred yards in front of them, while he himself began making his way over to where McKlevin’s voice had come from.

As he reached the lip of one of the impact craters, he froze. The crater was deeper than it had first appeared, and McKLevin was laid out flat along the bottom. A crumbled edge told the story of uncertain footing, and the UXO pressed up against McKlevin’s side was enough to make Bruno’s blood run cold.

“Can you move?” He asked quietly, and McKlevin nodded. “I’m not hurt, sir. But…” he trailed off and Bruno’s mouth set in a grim line. If he moved and the bomb exploded, that would give away their position and potentially wipe out the team. If he didn’t move….Bruno thought rapidly and all the scenarios he could imagine were bad. He looked down, and noticed distantly that the kid’s hands were clenched so tightly to his gun they were shaking.

Making up his mind, Bruno slipped off his pack and set his weapon down before scooting carefully into the crater with McKlevin. “Sarge!” he hissed, dismay written on his face even with the whites showing all the way around his eyes. Bruno cut him off with a glare before puling out his knife and gently teasing the casing open on the bomb.

Ignoring the full-body tremors now running down McKlevin’s back, he very, very gently began moving the wires around inside the casing. Fortunately for Bruno, he was at least passingly familiar with most American-made explosives and this bomb was no exception. A brief inspection was enough to tell him the triggers had been jarred loose by the impact with the ground instead of striking true, and a few cuts of his knife later had both the triggers and the backups set on the ground next to him.

He breathed a sigh of relief and felt McKlevin go boneless beneath him. Shuflling back on his knees, he offered the younger man a hand up to a sitting position. Keeping hold of the PFC’s hand just a moment longer than necessary, Bruno stared deep into his eyes.

“Watch your goddam step, McKlevin.”

It took twenty minutes for the plan to go straight to hell.

Bruno cursed under his breath as sirens blared in the camp and yet another explosion rocked the shallow depression in the land that was only a valley by virtue of the hills to either side. The camp itself was heavily netted to disguise it from the air, and the bushes dragged to ring the camp had razor-wire hidden in their branches; now it started to more resemble a kicked anthill, men in several different kinds of uniforms shouting in seemed to be mostly Cantonese.

Bruno had been dubious about the premise from the start, but it hadn’t been his place to speak out. A couple of spooks had put a bug in Colonel Earnest Sandhever’s ear about the place, and nothing would do but a covert infiltration of it to get all the goodies the spooks’d promised would be there. Its tactically unsound position, added to reports of a lot of Chinese involvement and the possibility that more serious construction would likely be underway soon had the colonel hopping and Bruno had been sent with two fireteams less than 48 hours after the spooks had arrived with the initial report.

By luck or by providence there’d been a sheltered drop point less than 10 miles out from their target, at the base of some cliffs. They’d dropped in quick and quiet, and had spent the next twelve hours getting into position. One team would approach from the West, the other from the North-East, and both would ex-filtrate South. Primary objective was intelligence gathering; secondary objectives included removing any identified Chinese officers or other key personnel, sabotaging any research or defenses they could get their hands on, and - if determined to be necessary - destroying the encampment.

Bruno had elected to lead team two, approaching from the Northeast, and had given Cpl Yancy Watkins command of team one and their westerly approach; team two would have to come up and over the hill so if anyone was likely to be spotted on approach, it would be them. Team one would have a more sheltered approach between two hills and would likely have made entry into the compound first, if not for -

Another explosion sounded and Bruno scowled. Either team one was still trying to push forward through the minefield - unlikely, they knew better - or the minefield had been done by a piss-poor excuse for a demolitions expert and the mines were too close together and debris was setting them off. Either way, this action had just gone very loud.

A quick gesture had his team scrambling down the side of the hill as quietly as they could, and into the shadow of the bushes around the perimeter. Cutting the wire took time, long seconds dragging by as PFC Cook clipped and bent the evilly glimmering wire away from a thin spot in the bush itself. The alarms had thankfully stopped, but the shouting continued and while Bruno wasn’t exactly what you’d call fluent in the language, he picked up enough words here and there amidst the hubbub to know not to expect a rendezvous with team one.

For all that Bruno might have wished otherwise, team one’s mistake afforded them an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. With all the attention firmly fixed on the opposite side of camp, and a silent thanks to whatever was left of team one, Bruno and the rest of team two slipped through the makeshift bush fencing virtually unnoticed. One unfortunate young man in the uniform of the local military had caught sight of them, but LCpl Wayne’s knife caught him in the throat before he could compromise their position, and PFC Higgs dragged the body under the cover of a nearby tarp before they moved on.

A few more bodies dropped as they moved through the compound, and Bruno could feel his nerves stretching like piano wire. His men were good, but with the base on high alert they should not have been able to get this close to what appeared to be the central command tent; that feeling solidified when, cutting through the canvas back of the tent, they found the thing empty. Papers were strewn about like snow, like someone had left in a hurry with whatever they could carry and had dropped the rest.

Bruno didn’t like it, but the primary mission objective was intelligence so with a series of hand gestures he set the others to gathering up the papers as he took a look around. The hubbub in the compound was starting to die down - not good - but nobody was approaching the command tent from outside. Yet.

A quiet exclamation from PFC Cook had him back to the room with the others in the space of a heartbeat. There, only half-covered in obvious haste, was the entrance to what appeared to be some kind of tunnel and Bruno’s resolve sharpened.

“Rig it.”

The command was delivered quietly but PFC Cook wasted no time in getting out what explosives he had, the others handing over their munitions as well. In the space of about twenty minutes the tunnel mouth was wired with small blocks of C4 and a timer, while grenades with tripwires were placed at every entrance. One last sweep for any papers or valuables they might have missed, and they were back out the slit in the back of the tent.

Ex-filtrating south proved much harder than infiltrating from the north had been. As the alarm had died down, internal sentries had resumed their patrols and anyone who had been off-duty had gone back to their preferred off-duty activities. More than once, Bruno and his men wasted precious minutes frozen in the shadows while two sentries chatted with each other less than ten steps away. It took them three-quarters of an hour to finally reach the south-facing bushes, and another ten minutes to cut through enough of the wire for all of them to be able to slip through.

The original ex-filtration route beyond the perimeter had called for both teams to follow the landscape down between two hills; given what had happened to team one, Bruno elected to go up and over the nearer hill. Team two was halfway to the crown when a muffled thud slammed through the ground beneath their feet and the alarms that fallen silent in the compound began blaring again. A series of smaller explosion follow shortly, and a tell-tale red flickering light begins painting the hillside.

At the top of the hill Bruno looked back just once. A third of the camp was on fire, while a surprisingly large crater marked where the command tent used to be. It didn’t make up for the loss of team one - Watkins, Smith, Freeman, and Jones, may they rest in peace - but an accomplishment of stated mission objectives would have to be enough.

Bruno didn’t look back again.

It was a dark and stormy night.

The rain wasn’t surprising, just the timing of it. Here in the jungle-y marsh they were trudging through, the rain tended to come in the afternoon. When it rained it poured, of course, heavy drops falling so thick and fast you’d swear you were underwater and the drips from the trees above continuing for hours after the rain itself finished, but the pouring tended to happen earlier than this.

Bruno couldn’t say for certain what was causing it, but at 2200 local the rain was still going strong and he couldn’t justify going any further when conditions were this bad - even if those same conditions would make it nearly impossible to sleep. Finding a patch of ground tall enough that it likely wouldn’t flood took longer than he’d like, and creating a temporary shelter over it ate up even more time, but with two injured - Cpl Owen Daniels had fallen down a previously hidden cliff and broken his arm, and PFC Trey Wynters had gotten himself stabbed by a sentry who’d turned at just the wrong moment - Bruno thought the benefits of a shelter outweighed the risks of someone finding evidence of their passage.

PFC Wynters concerned him. They’d done the best they could, but none of them were a specifically trained medic and nobody carried more than the basic medical kit. Here and now, after four days of hiking and still two more from the extraction point, those supplies were running low. Cpl Daniels was splinted with strips of Bruno’s undershirt and tied up in an awkward sling of his own shirt, and wouldn’t need any further supplies until they hit base and an actual doctor, but Wynters’ bandages had been changed twice and the last unwrap had revealed red and puffy flesh around the wound.

The man was sitting now in the middle of what was rapidly becoming camp. Bruno couldn’t be sure if he was sweating or not - they were all, to a man, soaked to the bone and looking more like drowned rats than marines - but his face was red and his eyes were glassy. Bruno directed Daniels over to keep an eye on Wynters with a jerk of his head; being down an arm hadn’t stopped Daniels from trying to help pitch camp, but it had lessened his efficiency and there were enough of them that he could be spared.

Daniels went and Bruno directed his attention to helping build the shelter. It was quiet, save for he rain; a long day of hiking through claggy mud was enough to dampen any enthusiasm for talking, and tying some branches together with leaves strung over them was something any marine could do in their sleep. In fact, Bruno half-suspected a few of them were actually asleep on their feet and just going through the motions on autopilot. It didn’t take long, any which way, for them to cobble together something that kept most of the rain off and Bruno moved on the confirming the night’s watch rota with his SIC, Cpl Wilford Trask, when a voice interrupted him.

“Sarge.”

He looked, and saw Daniels motioning for him. With a last nod at Trask, he walked over to where the two walking injured sat - or rather, where Daniels sat and Wynters slumped in a daze.

“He doesn’t look good, Sarge,” Daniels said, voice pitched not to carry. Wynters did not look look good at all; still red-faced and glassy-eyed, he now seemed unable to hold himself upright and while none of them smelled particularly nice after more than ten days on mission, there was an edge to Wynters that had the hair on the back of Bruno’s neck standing up.

Bruno grimaced and waved over two PFCs - Cook and Higgs - who’d graduated from stuffing their faces to making themselves as comfortable as possible in the mud. Higgs pulled a face but both of them came over in short enough order. “We need bandage substitutes. Go and find what you can in half an hour and bring it here.”

Higgs looked like he wanted to object, but Cook elbowed him smartly and said “Yes sir.”

Higgs opened his mouth but Cook dragged him away and Bruno watched them go. Higgs was a motormouth, but he usually had better sense than that.

Turning back to Daniels, he was met with a questioning look. “Drain and clean it and hope to Christ it works,” Bruno said quietly and Daniels nodded grimly.

“Think he’ll lose the arm?” he asked, matching Bruno’s tone, and Bruno shrugged.

“I figured he’s got even chances on keeping it if we do something, but no chance if we don’t try.”

“Christ,” Daniels muttered with feeling and Bruno could only nod.

They managed to force some water down Wynters’ throat before Higgs and Cook returned. None of the leaves or moss-like greenery they’d gathered was dry, but then almost nothing was in the pounding rain. Bruno set Daniels to cleaning them as best he could while Higgs and Cook went to lay down alongside everyone else not on watch and Bruno himself went to take the old bandages off. When tugging didn’t budge them, he wetted them down with what water he had left and tried again.

Wynters began babbling as the fabric of the bandages slowly peeled away from the injury underneath. Something about oranges and sailors; Bruno ignored him to keep slowly but surely peeling the bandage away from the injury underneath. The smell hit him in the face and Bruno had to pause and breathe through the nausea as his stomach turned. The wound itself was clearly infected; thick white-green ooze trailed sluggishly from the lower end and the skin to both sides was a dark and angry red where it wasn’t stretched to a shiny off-white.

Daniels made a desperate noise in the back of his throat and thrust the now-cleaned-and-mostly-dried moss toward Bruno, Bruno shook his head grimly and pulled out his knife. Drawing the knife perpendicular to the wound brought a gush of stinking green-yellow goo and an increase in the volume of Wynters’ babble - he was nearly screaming, now, incoherent words that echoed far too loudly for Bruno’s peace of mind and brought everyone who’d been trying to sleep to adrenaline-fueled wakefulness.

“Keep him quiet,” he gritted out to the nearest form in the darkness that resolved itself into LCpl Thomas Yates, looking paler than Bruno had ever remembered seeing him in the light of the small flashlight Bruno held in his off hand. Yates gulped and pulled what might generously have been referred to as a handkerchief from his pocket and muffled Wynters with it as best he could, taking care to keep his nose free. Bruno grunted in approval and pressed on the puffy sides of the wound to a fresh gush of ick and renewed - if now muffled - screaming.

When pressing finally only yielded clear-ish ooze and the swelling had reduced somewhat, Bruno grabbed the cleaned leaves from Daniels - who looked distinctly green around the gills - and did the best he could to improvise a bandage. Sitting back on his heels, he looked over Wynters to Trask, who’d remained awake even after the screaming had stopped. Trask met his eyes squarely and shrugged, and Bruno looked down at the stinking mess at his feet. He’d done all he could for Wynters; now it was down to dumb luck.

Bruno stood and went to go refill his canteen in the rain.

Bruno waited patiently for his opening.

Breaking into the facility had been surprisingly easy. The captain’s intelligence about the location and composition of the convoy had been right on the money, and it had been a simple enough matter for Bruno to hitch a lift as the convoy had slowed to a checkpoint. Tunstall and Weber - Lt. Jack “Pick” Tunstall and Cpl Frederic “Chisel” Weber - had similar luck, and had secreted themselves into the truck behind him, a fact for which Bruno could only be grateful. Several uncomfortably bumpy and dusty hours later had seen him undetected into a small facility tucked into the mountains near Pha Nang.

Their teammate, one Cpl Amos “Tongs” Graves, had already been inside for several days; captured alone with incriminating evidence, he’d been taken to this facility precisely as planned and had spent the last few days alternating torture with recon sweeps of the place. Now, 72 hours later, Bruno and the others were here to extract him and the information Captain Jaxun had wanted, and blow the place sky-high behind them.

Well, maybe not entirely behind them.

Bruno’s internal counter hit zero and a heavy thump preceded a screeching alarm. Nothing quite like a plastique explosive padded with some gasoline bottles to really ruin a person’s night. All the main lights in the hallway outside the office he was lurking in went out and for a long minute all was darkness until emergency lighting flickered into existence.

Time to move.

Bruno unfolded himself and pulled out a peculiarly bulbous flashlight, sweeping its nearly invisible beams over the room once more before heading out into the hallway. This part of the building was largely unpopulated at this time of night, according to the report-marks done in UV paint by Graves, and Bruno met no-one on his way toward the detention areas even as a rising hubbub could be heard from other parts of the base; Tunstall and Weber had their own light, and a slightly different target.

Bruno pointed the odd flashlight at the upper corners of the hallways as he went, following the marks Graves had left over the preceding days and nights. The new paint they’d been issued was invisible to the naked eye - or nearly so - and technically a considerable improvement over the more obvious chalk marks they’d used previously, but old habits died hard so the marks were still left in the same out of the way spots the chalk marks had been put in. The downside was the need for the flashlight - much bulkier than a standard issue light, it weighed more than twice as much as one and somehow managed to only hold a twenty-minute charge in its batteries.

He crossed paths once with Tunstall and Weber on track to their own target. Their mission was at once simpler and more difficult; find and secure the actionable intelligence marked by Graves. Once done, they were to rendezvous outside with Bruno and, if Bruno was successful, Graves.

A quick nod was all they had time for, and then the other two men were on their way to the offices marked by the UV paint, while Bruno continued to make his way along the trail left for him that would - hopefully - lead him to Graves.

Running feet echoed down the empty hall, and Bruno ducked into a nearby room, grimacing at the smell of harsh chemical cleaning agents and old blood; not an office, then. The flashlight in his hand flickered alarmingly, and he scowled at it; hopefully the thing wouldn’t die before he got where he was going.

A quick glance through the small window in the door showed one man an assault rifle skid around the corner, then slow to start checking the doors to either side. Bruno cursed internally, but stowed the odd flashlight in favor of pulling out his knife. Bruno readied himself as the man drew near, and when the guy pushed the door to the room open grabbed him, spun him inside, and stabbed him in the neck with a quick in-and-out that had the man dropping his gun as he uselessly tried to staunch the arterial spray. Bruno reversed the knife and brought the hilt down hard and the guard dropped to bleed out in unconsciousness. Bruno paused, listening for more footsteps - if the guy’d been smart, he’d’ve brought back-up - but heard nothing. Not a smart guy, then.

As he left the now thoroughly-redecorated room, he could hear gunfire in the distance, the higher sounds of Chinese knock-offs mixing with the deeper staccato of American weapons; apparently their outside team had moved in to engage and distract, which meant Bruno had less time than he’d previously thought.

Leaping forward, he started running as full-out as the maze of corridors would let him, the strange flashlight now flickering wildly in his hands. Not as fast as his top speed, but decent enough for all the damned corners that he had to both round and check for paint with a light that spent half the time dead and the other half on dim.

The guards he encountered singly and in pairs - slipshod work, really, but he did set half their base on fire and from the sound of it the second team under Boots was really going to town, so they could possibly be forgiven - went down almost without slowing him. The Ka-Bar in his dominant hand was glistening red in the dim emergency lightning, but Bruno couldn’t stop to wipe it down properly. It was now almost twenty minutes after the first explosion, and if he didn’t get to Graves before thirty he’d have to find him in the dark as the secondary explosives Tunstall and Weber had planted earlier took out the backup generators.

The trinary explosives would raze the building.

The walls of the corridors around Bruno were now a flat and dingy sort of white - the color white became when it had been washed too many times with the same bucket of water - and he knew he had to be close. Pulling his Beretta out of its holster he slowed, taking the time to check the corners before he turned them. Better careful than dead, after all. It took him a few minutes more before shouting from around the corner told him he’d hit pay dirt; none of the guards had cursed in English.

Checking the next corner revealed four guards struggling with a very familiar - and very battered - figure. Bruno took careful aim and managed to shoot two of them before they noticed him and brought their own weapons to bear. He got one more shot off before the last man standing grabbed Graves and put a gun to his head, pulling them both around to face Bruno. Graves grinned.

“What took you so long, Hammer?”

Bruno snorted. “Damn flashlight went out.”

Graves grinned. “Never could trust those tech monkeys. Too damn complicated for their own good.”

The guard shouted something nearly indecipherable in the general echoing clamor going on in the building and tightened his grip, causing Graves to gurgle and Bruno to tighten his own grip.

“Hey Hammer.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t miss.”

Bruno fired.

Bruno was having what might politely be called a bad day.

But, since there was no-one around worth being polite to, he was having an absolute shit day. A day where the high point was the coffee machine joining the goddamn choir invisible because at least that meant they’d get a new one or the spooks would revolt en masse.

It was the kind of day that started with all off-duty enlisted men getting rousted at o-dark-thirty to attend the two-hour monologue of a brigadier with a bee in his bonnet and more stars than sense. Bruno and his team had only gotten back to their respective bunks a few hours before the shitshow started, and he had basically slept while standing up through most of it. It was only near the end, when the general started handing down orders that Bruno really woke up.

Apparently, whatever had gotten the general going had something to do with the state of the place, because Bruno found himself in possession of a squad of damned FNGs with mops, buckets, and bad attitudes. The base was full of spooks and there was no way in hell they could clean all of that off, but the general sure as hell wasn’t going to listen to a sergeant on the matter - for all Bruno wasn’t technically under his command.

But orders were orders, and Bruno’s job was to implement them, so he went at it with a will.

His general mood deteriorated rapidly in the face of the general truculence displayed by his pro-tem squad, but also by another feeling. A tiny, niggling feeling that crawled up and down his spine in a too familiar fashion. Someone was watching him, specifically; someone good enough that couldn’t catch more than a glimpse here and there.

It made no sense. He was in the middle of a damned army base, doing one of the most scut jobs he’d ever been ordered to do with a squad of FNGs, and someone was watching him. He’d thought it was a new spook, at first, but it didn’t fit; spooks liked you to know when they were watching, and this guy was staying out of sight. It could be an enemy infiltrator, but Bruno wasn’t the brains of the operation for all Jaxun had hand-picked him for the so-called “Alpha Squad” so there was no way he was a higher-value target than half the officers on base.

Bruno couldn’t out his finger on it, and as the surveillance continued into the early evening hours he’d finally had enough. Ordering the FNGs back to barracks, he approached the corner of a nearby garage where he’d last seen movement and loosened his Ka-Bar as he went. He wasn’t stupid, for all he was tired of this game, and came around the corner hard with his knife out and ready to be greeted by……

Nothing.

Keeping his knife out, he began a slow seep of the alley between the two buildings when a very familiar click from next to his ear made him freeze. “So this is Sergeant Hammer. I gotta say, I’m kind of disappointed. I thought you were better than taking a corner all by your lonesome when you know someone is waiting on the other side.” The voice was light, teasing, and totally unfamiliar, but the gun didn’t waver an inch and it was just far enough back that Bruno couldn’t see the trigger.

Bruno grunted. “That’s because,” he said, and twisted to plant a hard elbow into the man behind him’s gut. The guy wheezed but didn’t drop the gun - not bad, guy clearly knew what was important - and Bruno turned to follow up the elbow with a knee. The guy dropped, and Bruno was on him in an instant, laying him out on his front while simultaneously twisting the gun out of his hand and pointing it at the back of his head.

“Who sent you?” He growled, keeping his finger on the guard of a weapon he could clearly see had the safety engaged.

“Jebediah Lexington.”

The response, somewhat muffled by the fact the guy’s face was pressed into the dirt, wasn’t surprising and Bruno snorted before taking his knee out of the guy’s back and putting his knife away. The guy coughed a bit while standing and brushed himself off a bit before he caught Bruno’s distinctly Not Amused look and grinned sheepishly. “Lexington might’ve talked you up a bit while he was giving me this assignment. He said you didn’t respect anyone who couldn’t get the drop on you, and that you were the backbone of the operation; when’d you notice me?”

Bruno simply gave him a look that made the Sahara look like a tropical paradise and didn’t answer his question. “Jaxun told us we were getting a new guy. You Tongs?”

The other man nodded. “Corporal Amos Graves, callsign Tongs.”

Bruno nodded, and looked steadily at the younger man. “Did Lexington assign your handle?” The younger man shrugged. “Could be worse. I guess he thinks he’s being clever,” Graves noted, and Bruno shrugged in return.

“Don’t try that stupid shit on anyone else. Tunstall’d shoot you before asking questions, and Weber can get……creative. I’m the nice one. That being said,” he deadpanned before lashing out with one huge fist.

Graves went down in a heap, blood beginning to trickle from a new split in his lips.

“Don’t point a gun at me.”

Crunch, crunch, ssssshhhhf. Crunch, crunch ssssssshf.

Bruno paused, and squinted up into the remote, relentless sunlight. He’d been walking for hours and the sun was high overhead, beating down on the waves of golden grass for miles in every direction. Tunstall and Weber were nowhere to be seen; he’d missed the rendezvous hours ago but he couldn’t stop now.

The compound is silent in the dark hours after midnight, sitting quietly in the deep stillness between floodlight beams. Dogs and men walk the fence as the swiveling lights make lazy arcs from high towers. Four men crouch in wait just beyond the furthest arc, their only sign of life the breaths that stir the grass in front of their faces. More men lurk on the further side of the base, waiting for a signal, bodies taught with tension stretched like a piano wire. The men with dogs turn the corner for another section of the fence; the floodlights flash away in relaxed silence.

The four men move.

Bruno dropped the end of the tarp and shook out his hands, grimacing against their stiffness. He wiped his face and took a sip from his canteen.

The four men move silently, in sync as they cross the last open field to the base of the fence. It is not electrified, and a few quick snips open a careful tear to admit first the smaller men, then the larger ones. A few precious seconds are sacrificed to minimizing the visible damage, and the four are on their way across the compound. A barracks is passed, an infirmary, a mess hall. The four split silently into two groups as the headquarters appears at last; the taller men veers left towards the main building, and the shorter pair to the low-lying outbuilding that has two bored and sleepy guards standing at the door.

The blood glistens where it falls silently on dirt, and the door is open.

Bruno turned and propped up Graves’ head as he tipped some water down his throat. “Guess I finally found a way to make you shut the hell up,” he mutters to the unconscious man.

The first group makes their way through the headquarters building, the taller one’s knife shining in the light of the passing floodlights. Four charges have been placed, and the fifth is resting comfortably in his hand. The door swings open as they approaches, and the knife of his shorter companion - no less red - flashes as another guard fails in his duty. The larger man places the fifth charge with some delicacy in a room full of desks, and takes three specific folders from a nearby cabinet before leaving the room.

The second team places their explosives with care as menacing chemicals shine dully in the light that passes sightlessly through dirty windows, floodlights uncaring in the night. Their steps are light and quick, their way unhindered by guards, and seven charges are placed before the sky begins to dim with approaching dawn. They slip from the stooped building and out into the dimming night; the appointed place of meeting is not far as the crow flies, but they must reach it before full dawn.

A dog begins to bark.

Bruno grunted as he checked the bandages on Graves’ arm. The bite hadn’t been too bad, and the dog was unlikely to be rabid. Still, the guy was in for some painful shots when they got back to base.

The first team is running now; the man whose dog had sounded the alarm releases it and others join it in leaping toward the two figures. The floodlights no longer follow their meandering arcs, and are now sweeping the ground with dangerous purpose, each definitive line traced closing the distance on the two remaining men.

The dogs do not require the light from above, and launch themselves at the two fleeing men. They find no purchase on the larger man; he bats them away as gnats with the butt of his gun. The shorter man is borne to the ground; his compatriot kicks the dog off him and hauls him to his feet and towards the slit made earlier in the fence. The shorter man’s cursing is audible only to the man who has hold of his arm, who has heard it all before. A light finds them ten steps shy of the fence, and bullets follow it immediately in a harsh stutter.

The shorter man stumbles.

Bruno re-wrapped the bandage on the bite - he’d been in a hurry and had tightened it too much the first time - before turning to the bandage on Graves’ calf. A through and through shot, which was something to be grateful for later but for right now just made wrapping it tightly a priority.

The larger man takes the shorter man under one arm and drags him bodily through the wire; he can only hope the other team made it out before the shitshow started. The lights are following them beyond the fence and more shots ring out. A rising alarm is beginning to wake the base, and more hounds can be heard baying into the night. The larger man shifts to make a continued half-carry easier, and reaches into one of the many pouches on the shorter man’s belt. The shorter man makes no objection, and the larger man pulls out a small box with an antenna and a button on the side, and presses the button.

The world explodes in light.

Bruno tied a new bandage over the bullet holes and stood with a groan. Gathering the end of the tarp, he turned and re-oriented himself against the sun; they had a long to go for the rendevzous, and Tunstall was probably fretting himself to flinders in his own, stoic way.

Crunch, crunch, ssssshhhhf. Crunch, crunch ssssssshf.

Breathe in.

It was a surprisingly cold day, in late November, and the grass bent before the wind in rolling waves interrupted only by unseen wildlife. The smell of frost rolled down the mountain, but the earth was still soft beneath Bruno where he lay motionless. Waiting.

Graves would have made some inane comment on the weather, probably at length as he was slowly driven mad by the inaction, but he had still been recovering from both his rabies boosters and the stitchwork on his leg when the call had come down from the captain and the usual suspects were dispatched out to the ass end of nowhere with a new mission.

Breathe out.

The orders were reasonably straightforward; in a week’s time there would be a convoy along the road that wound down through Viang Xai with a VIP riding on the third truck from the rear. It was up to the teams to make sure that VIP never reached his destination. Or if he did, that he wasn’t in any fit state to do anything once he got there.

The two teams would be airdropped into the area from one of the planes on the run scheduled for the area the next night; they had only just enough time to grab the kit he’d need before Jaxun packed them into a jeep and off for the nearby airbase. With any luck, the drop would put them no more than four days away from the target area and they could be in position well before the convoy that particular stretch of road.

Breathe in.

The trip to the airfield hadn’t been bad, but the reception was…frosty. The flyboys very loudly did not appreciate the extra hour it would take them to drop “some bullet-soaked jarheads” on the target co-ordinates, but there was an undercurrent of something more virulent that spoke of a deeper reason. They made a pointed effort to snub the team as a whole and Bruno in particular, mocking IMAF audibly when he was in range and refusing to speak to him directly when they could at all avoid it.

Their problem, however, was not Bruno’s problem. He knew better than to rise to their distinctly juvenile attempts to rile him - though he did save some of the choicer comments about his division to pass on later to those who would very much care and were in a better position to do something about it. For now, Bruno had a mission and a team and if the clowns in the air force wanted to nurse a stupid grudge they could find another sucker; as long as they delivered them where they needed to be.

Breathe out.

Whatever their personal feelings, the flyboys were good at their jobs and managed to drop them all almost half a day’s walk closer to the destination than he’d thought they’d manage in between all the snide remarks and cold shoulders. Of course, it helped that none of the team had been able to hear the parting shots over the howl of the wind as they dropped from the open door into freefall.

Bruno enjoyed aerial drops. The feeling of the wind his face, the blood in his ears, and the vistas expanding out below him - it was a silent enjoyment he knew few shared. Most of the rest of the men he’d deployed with over the years were either terrified and watching their altimeters like hawks (Graves) or whooping and hollering in excitement, screwing around - as much as mission parameters allowed - with their trajectories by moving their arms and legs and playing with the air currents that battered them (Weber).

Breathe in.

After landing safely, it had taken both teams three and a half days to reach the co-ordinates they’d been given. It was a hilly area, with the road cutting through several low points and open to wide grain fields on one side. The heavily forested hills offered good cover but reduced sightlines, and while pursuers would be hampered by brush it wasn’t the kind of protection offered by even a small cliff face.

The road itself wasn’t the most well-traveled, and in the days before the convoy was due to arrive Bruno saw maybe two cars driving along it. Still, the reduction in visibility from the trees meant they would have to find a way to get the convoy to stop or risk missing - and that was entirely unacceptable. Tunstall had worked through a dozen different strategies before metaphorically tossing in the towel and ordering the felling of a number of young trees the night before the designated day and winding them together to form a crude but resilient and natural-looking barrier across the roadway.

Breathe out.

And then there was no time. Everyone was in position. The noise of the convoy echoed up the road long before the trucks themselves hove into sight. A lead jeep, followed immediately by two cargo trucks that were likely packing rations, given the way the canvas on them was tied in the cross-ties favored by civilians, followed by one of probable munitions, one with the canvas bulging in odd places, another of munitions, another two of food, and a trailing jeep that would occasionally range out to the side of the convoy if the ground wasn’t too torn up.

As the convoy came into sight, Bruno didn’t tense. His finger rested easily along the trigger guard and the scope rested comfortably in front of his face. The sun was behind him, and he’d taken the time to arrange enough shade to prevent any tell-tale winks. The rest of his team had taken up defensive positions, with Hurley’s team further down the road ready with the fallback plan just in case. The butt of the rifle rested easily against his shoulder and the rhythm of his breathing didn’t change. His focus narrowed, the world dropping away as his eyes found a hawk-faced man in plain clothes sitting in the passenger seat of the second to last food truck. The convoy slowed as the leading jeep saw the obstruction. Bruno’s finger drifted to the trigger.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Squeeze.

Bruno snorted forcefully as he fumbled with the hem of his shirt.

Half a day’s hike from extraction, and they just had to run across a patrol right where they shouldn’t be. The only bridge for nearly twenty miles over a jagged scar of a gorge, and the patrol right on top of it and looking in no hurry to move any time soon.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Tunstall had given them the order to engage.

Weber managed to get one of them before they knew he was there, but the other six wasted no time in leaping into the fray when their comrade took the final tumble. The first man unwisely chose to try and grapple with Bruno head-on, and received a kick to the diaphragm for his troubles. He dropped, wheezing, and the second guy tried his luck by jumping on Bruno’s back and clinging around his neck while guy number three went low with a knife; apparently they thought the biggest guy equaled the biggest threat, and while they weren’t entirely wrong Bruno was far from the only one they had to worry about. Bruno kicked guy number three in the face and a nasty crunch signaled the end of number three’s participation in life.

Numbers four, five, and six had their own troubles to deal with. Mindful of how sound carried, nobody on the team was using a gun - not that it materially affected their prowess. Graves had guy number four by the shirt and was apparently engaged in punching the guy until he couldn’t stand up straight anymore; Tunstall already had guy number five on the ground in a spreading pool of what probably wasn’t strawberry syrup, while Weber was playing a weird cat and mouse knife game with guy six.

Man number two was dedicated to trying to strangle Bruno to death, and Bruno was starting to get light-headed. Still, he was almost a foot taller and had almost a hundred pounds on the guy, so he did what seemed like the most logical thing to do at the time, and threw himself over backward. Taken by surprise, the smaller man had no chance to escape and Bruno landed on him very heavily. A gasping wheeze was followed by the arms around his neck loosening and Bruno rolled out of the now-slack grip and back to his feet.

Graves had dropped his guy - there wasn’t much face left, and Bruno suspected there wasn’t any breath either - and as Bruno rose he ambled over to kick number two in the head hard enough to leave said head at a funny angle, and Bruno nodded at him. Tunstall had apparently gotten tired of waiting for Weber and had stabbed guy six in the neck; a blood-covered Weber was complaining about either the mess or the fact that Tunstall had taken all the fun out of it, it was hard to tell.

Bruno sighed as he wiped his blade on the uniform of one of the dead men. Weber was a weird one in close combat, but in a firefight his aim was steady and he never shirked a dirty job. Bruno had straightened and hissed as pain streaked up and down his side, and the fingers he’d gingerly patted the area with had come away bloody. Seems the fucker with the knife had been faster than Bruno had originally given him credit for.

Which lead to his current predicament.

Bruno finally managed to get the shirt off, and just above his hip was a gash nearly three inches long. Graves hissed in sympathy, but Tunstall and Weber were too preoccupied with their argument to notice. It bled sluggishly, and Bruno cursed fluently in Cantonese to Graves’ raised eyebrows. He’d have to stitch the damn thing now or risk bleeding out before he could reach professional help; he was the only one in the squad who could sew worth a damn in skin.

With fingers that only trembled slightly, he yanked the medical kit from his pack and flicked it open to the needle and thread he’d taken to adding to the standard issue kit. Gritting his teeth, he flushed the wound as best he could and pulled one of the pre-threaded needles from the pack. The feeling of the needle sliding through flesh was as unpleasant as he remembered, and the thread that followed it moreso, but the prospect of bleeding out was even less appealing. A gentle tug pulled the edges of the wound shut and he tied off the first stitch.

Only five more to go.

Lucky him.