Team Dos Pistolas
Las Vegas Airport, one hour and eight minutes ago.“You gotta be kitten me.”
The tall, burly half-Hawaiian was looking incredulously down at a powder-blue Volkswagen Beetle.
“Lina, there’s no way I’m going to fit into that thing. I don’t even want to
try.”
“Quit being such a baby. We’re already two hours behind, we just have to take it and go,” the female Asylum snapped. She hated to be late to her first appointment with a new group, hated to miss the action which was sure to be starting in the next few minutes. Lina was not about to be delayed further because her giant beast of a partner felt a tad uncomfortable in their rental car.
“No. My ass is already sore from sitting on a damn plane all day, and I’m not
folding myself into a stupid Volkswagen just because you’re in a hurry. They told you it was a
Passat, not this.”
As he was speaking, the male member of Dos Pistolas was edging around the front of the car, his right hand beginning to reach for the keys.
Marcelina just stared at him, her jaw clenched. “Kai, I swear to God, if I have to put you in a little box and throw you into the backseat, you are getting in this Beetle.”
Kai stared back, honestly a little surprised and offended by Lina’s sudden mean streak. In years past, she would have said that with a smile… but there was no levity now. When he replied after a tense moment, his voice was as hard and mirthless as hers.
“Have it your way, then.” Kai said, turning to walk back to his side of the car. He threw his suitcase into the pitiful excuse of a backseat and then turned to give her a meaningful look over the top of the vehicle. “You always do.”
He sat down heavily in the passenger seat, jerked his legs inside, and slammed the car door with enough force to make the Beetle rock. Lina was left standing outside the car, stunned. She wasn’t sure whether to be angry that he’d snapped at her or sorry she’d provoked him. What Lina didn’t realize was that the moment Kai had shut the door he’d laid his arm on the armrest, deliberately touching his fingertip to the switch for the power window, and said softly but with great vehemence…
“Accursed little blue Volkswagen,
now you belong to me.”¹
Lina took her time putting her suitcase into the car’s miniscule trunk, and half-expected to find her door locked when she tried to get inside the vehicle. Kai looked pointedly out his window as she sat down. His knees weren’t quite hitting the dashboard… but it also didn’t look as though he’d moved his seat back. She put the key in the ignition and twisted it, which made the radio come on and the engine start to turn over. Kai muttered one small word, under his breath, his face still pointed away from his partner.
“Break.”²
A muffled thud issued from the engine compartment. Black smoke began to roil out from underneath the hood and the smell of burnt metal filled the interior.
Lina whipped sideways in her seat and glared at her partner.
“Kai. Are you
serious right now?!”
The big man struggled to keep a straight face as he turned to his partner. “Of course I’m serious. Our rental car just blew up, we should seriously get out of it.”
“Did you really… Kai… did you really just kill a perfectly good Bug just because you didn’t want to ride in it?”
“What if I did?” Kai asked, “What would you do? Spank me?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at her suggestively, grinning.
“You’d like that too much,” Lina tried to be -or at least sound- angry and frustrated, but she couldn’t help the small smile slowly spreading across her face. “I didn’t realize you hated the Beetle so much you’d fry it. I’m sorry I made you get in.”
Her partner’s grin faded a little, the look in his eyes growing somehow both more stern and more gentle.
“Were you sorry before I made it explode, Lina?”
She had to look away, down at the gearshift, but she nodded.
“Good. I’m not sorry.”
Her head snapped up, mouth already opening with a sharp reply, but Kai was still speaking.
“Because now I get to drive one of those,” he said, pointing out Lina’s window at the sleek, black, Dodge Challenger SRT8 at the very end of the row.
Cast 1, Kai: Vocem, Level 3. ‘Accursed little blue Volkswagon’ signals the target, ‘now you belong to me’ claims ownership and control of the target. This spell holds until Kai releases the object, unless his concentration/focus is forcefully broken.
Cast 2, Kai: Vocem, Level 3. ‘Break’ instructs the previously claimed target to malfunction in some major way. This spell lasts only as long as it takes for the previously claimed target to malfunction.
---xX--Xx---Still not sorry, Kai blistered down the I15 at 110 miles an hour in Dos Pistoles’ rented sportscar. Firmly buckled into the passenger seat, Marcelina had already forgiven him and was thoroughly enjoying the ride. And then, suddenly:
“Let’s see how strong you Asylums really are!”“Shit!” Kai exclaimed, “That’s the beginning of the game! I thought we might actually make it!”
Lina smiled a wicked little grin and looked at her partner from beneath her long, dark lashes.
“Kai… drive
faster.”
She both hated and loved the way his equally wicked grin made her heart stutter a little in her chest.
---xX--Xx---
So what you know about sacrifice when the lights go out?
The price to pay when you're digging down?
The skin of your teeth and the blade in your back:
What you know about hope? What you know about that?
---xX--Xx---The prescribed grounds for the training exercise were on the outskirts of Vegas. Although it was less than fifteen miles from the Airport and the Strip, this was a verge where the verdant green of man-made irrigation stopped and the burning desert reasserted itself. It was dark, and Lina was feeling pretty hopeless about finding some sphere lost in the no-man’s-land beyond the parking lot of the M Hotel.
Their Challenger was parked pointing south, and though there were a few roads between the hotel and the open sierra they led to nothing but a few small buildings and a little barbed wire fence. She stood for a few long moments, the hot dry breeze tugging at a few chocolatey strands that had come loose from her braid. Lina put her hands on her hips, closed her eyes, and breathed in deeply. After the recycled oxygen of the plane, it felt good to enjoy some thin, clear air.
A dull thud interrupted the female Asylum’s reverie. Kai had popped the trunk and begun unpacking their battle gear.
Kai, of course, could easily hide all their weaponry from the airport scanners with a soft word. Lina’s carry-on contained her
Dos Pistolas, ten boxes of ammo (most of it Anti-Alchemic and pre-loaded into extended magazines), and her blowgun. The switchblade had not left her right calf since she’d put it on that morning. Lina hiked up the bottom hem of her black tee shirt and slid the gunbelt around her waist. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Kai admiring her exposed flesh… and the way he was holding his shirt up with his teeth made Lina turn away.
She was careful not to do it quickly, so that she wasn’t obviously avoiding looking at Kai, but she really was an idiot to think he didn’t notice a faint blush creeping up the back of her neck. Kai suspected that Lina didn’t even know she blushed there.
The moment could have become tense if not for a sudden sound; softened by a little bit of distance, but still clear. A battle cry.
And then fire flashed in the desert. Hurriedly the pair finished jamming their extra ammo into every imaginable cargo pocket possible. Lina set the remainder with her backpack (aqua blue and purple tie-dye to Kai’s black) in the Challenger’s trunk.
“Time to go,” Kai said, tossing the keys in alongside Lina’s backpack and slamming the lid shut. “Lock.”¹
The car honked once, accompanied by the distinctive click of both doors locking.
Then Dos Pistolas was jogging out into the desert, slowing only to navigate the one barbed wire barrier in their way. Lina was actually stretching a little as they got closer to the mock battlefield. She wasn’t the first
Motem user to pull a muscle while casting, and she wouldn’t be the last.
Kai and Lina started to slow down as they neared the fight. Her Hunter’s instinct was kicking in, and she was counting the number of people up ahead. How many teams had they been meeting up with?
“Kai…”
“I know,” he said in a quiet, tense tone. “Something’s not right here.”
Their forward motion stopped.
“There’s too many people, and only one of them is supposed to have a sword, if I recall correctly.”
Kai nodded. Then; “It could just be part of the exercise, a mock-attack.”
Lina contemplated for a minute, watching. She heard someone shout something about kings being made to rule, and it took several long seconds for the light to come on.
“No, I don’t think so. Didn’t you hear that? The Kings are-”
But that was as far as Lina got before a blinding light leapt from the center of the combat zone. For a second Kai thought someone had turned on a spotlight, and he was already speaking the first words of a cast to turn it off when the light changed over…
…into a giant column of fire.As the flames rose, the pair sank. Down onto their haunches, crouched desperately behind the stunted sagebrush and dry grass which was the desert’s meager idea of cover.
“I think shit just hit the fan,” Lina remarked quietly, eyes a little wide.
“Agreed. Game plan?” Kai asked.
“Guns first. We’re already coming in from the left flank, and I only see three guys with swords between us and the man in white… who I’m assuming just cast that gnarly-ass fire tornado.”
Kai nodded. “Take out those three on our way to the big bad, what’s the plan on him?”
Lina smirked. “Remember the disc blades from Amsterdam?”
The male Asylum grinned at his partner. “Yeah, those are
good. I’ll keep shooting, maybe cast a Power Drain... or maybe we’ll see how much dude likes fire on his robes.”
She glanced at him sideways. “The roof, the roof…”
A little chuckle, softly, was all Kai allowed himself. “Ready?”
“Set,” Lina said with a nod.
“Go!” Without a countdown, Dos Pistolas both spoke and moved forward in unison.
Cast 1, Kai: Vocem, Level 3. ‘Lock’ instructs an unclaimed object to complete a simple task at Kai’s behest. The cast is released when the task is complete.
---xX--Xx---
What you know about standing up when the odds get stacked?
Time stands still, ain't no turnin' back!
When everything you're worth is under attack,
What you know about heart? What you know about that?
---xX--Xx---Three small muzzle flashes against the night was hardly a way to enter such an extravagant and blazing Alchemic battle, but flashy had never been Dos Pistolas’ style. It was only a trio of tiny, Anti-Alchemic bullets launched into the cooling night air, propelled by nothing more than a few grains of gunpowder and a tiny little pin. But because they were so small and comparatively quiet, they were
unexpected, and therein lie their true power.
The first, having been fired from Kai’s black gun, connected with the right temple of the swordbearing King closest to them. It caved in the right side of his face, and blew out his left. Shards of bone and blood and brain splattered all over the King beside him. As the second man realized something had happened to the first, the bullet fired from Lina’s black Glock connected with his skull just above his right ear.
Kai’s second bullet, an Anti-Alchemic from his chrome, struck the third King on the right side of his ribcage, knocking him off balance. Kai saw no blood and realized that the man was probably wearing body armor. He adjusted his aim and fired again as the King turned towards Dos Pistolas and raised his yellow sword, which began to glow. Lina pulled her trigger at the same time Kai did, firing at the same target.
Both bullets drew blood, one in the point of each shoulder. The King’s sword began to drop as the muscles and tendons which attached his arms to his body were blown apart. Kai recognized the enemy’s weapon for what it was: a man made device reliant on electricity to operate.
“Bright blade, claim your freedom and cut the hand that wields you!”¹
Electricity exploded off the King’s sword as its pointed tip touched the Nevada dust. The man collapsed into a violent seizure, the energy once stored in the blade now coursing instead through his own body. It was several moments before Kai and the rebel sword were ready to let the King lay still, the male Asylum’s cast released.
As Kai and Marceline were blowing holes in the remaining Kings, they saw a man in a pink suit attempt to ration with the man in white. They stopped shooting in time to hear:
"My name is Gadrael, I am one of the four of the Council of Kings. I am the manifestation of a rogue's despair. Can you hear it? Hear our frustration... feel our anguish!"
And then, almost simultaneously, was the shout of “Fuck you and your masters!” outside their heads, from Gadrael, and the internal telepathic shout of “Now!” from Alistair.
Without a word to one another, Dos Pistolas shifted gears. Kai dropped to one knee, putting his pistols back in their holsters. Since his markers wouldn’t work on dirt, he swept a space smooth with the flat of his hand. Then he began drawing his sigil in the dust with the tips of his fingers. As Kai neared the completion of the sigil, he spoke.
“Power Drain. Source: Gadrael. Target: disperse into the earth.” ²
As he said the word ‘earth’, Kai completed the last line of the sigil. The lines in the dirt flashed white and then vanished before beginning to glow faintly again. The spell would continuously draw power from the enemy, hopefully weakening both his attacks and defenses.
While Kai worked his cast, Lina mimicked his motion of holstering a gun… though she only did it with one hand. When entering battle, the female used only one of her pair so she could leave her other hand free to cast a shield if need be. With both hands free, she began her own
Motem spell.
Elbows slightly bent, Marcelina held both hands out in front of her at waist level, fingers spread and palms facing in toward each other. She began to move them in small concentric circles as if spinning something vertically between them. As Lina did this, she spoke.
“Blade like the sun, bright and round and burning, with rays that bite and blur.” ¹
Then she flung her arms outward, as if shoving the invisible thing she’d been spinning away from her body... throwing it so hard her whole frame tottered forward with the effort. About a foot from where the female Alchemist stood, a four-foot-tall disk of bluish-purple energy materialized out of thin air, already whirling so fast the individual curved blades around its edge seemed to melt into this whole. This gigantic rotary blade of energy whirled straight at Gadrael, aimed to cut him in half
vertically if he didn’t move or break it with a shield of his own.
Much as Lina wanted to dash in and pull the wounded Asylums out of harm’s way, Kai was already tugging her sleeve.
“We’d better back up if we don’t want to get caught in the clusterfuck that’s about to hit.”
Lina nodded, and while the pair still faced the battle, they were taking big steps backwards. The fiery phoenix was taking shape above, a metal tornado had risen from the shaking earth, and Lina’s own blue blade was spinning inbound. Belatedly the woman wondered if this Gadrael person could teleport unaided… because she suspected that was what it would take for him to escape with his life.
---xX--Xx---
We are the ones who were born to rise,
We are the ones with the fire inside!
I go to war with the brothers I trust,
And there ain't no stopping us,
No stopping us!
Cast 1, Kai: Vocem, Level 3. ‘Bright blade’ designates the target: energy sword of the King. ‘Claim your freedom and cut the hand that wields you’ instructs the target to strike its current user. The cast is released upon the King’s death.
Cast 2, Kai: Sigillum and Vocem Combination, Level 3. Sigil name is Power Drain. Basic Sigil used to drain energy from all targets within a 25 foot radius. Modified by Vocem incantation, specifically targeting Gadrael and directing that energy should be dispersed into the ground. Cast not released in this post.
Cast 1, Lina: Motem and Vocem Combination, Level 3. Hand motions compose primary Motem spell, creating the blue shield and flinging it forward. Vocem incantation modifies the primary Motem cast to refine the shield into a spinning, multi-bladed death disk. Cast not released in this post.
