by Al K. Line
"Maybe, but it has to be done. And I'm afraid you three aren't welcome. Believe me when I say I didn't expect it to go down like this. The soldiers should have taken care of Robin here, and Blue was meant to deal with Swift. As for you, Pumi, well, I'm afraid I hadn't counted on you being involved but there we have it. Such a disappointment."
"What is?" I asked, despite myself.
"Blue, for failing to do as she was told." Yuki reached out to her with a smile on his face, and Blue took his hand without thinking. Like a child desperate for a cuddle after being scolded.
I saw it coming, but apparently she didn't. Yuki gripped her hand tight and his arms glowed a deep, fierce black, strong with magic honed over countless centuries, if not millennia. She screamed as the corruption passed from him in a chaotic scramble of wispy darkness that shot up her arm and blackened her skin, clawed at her neck, and enveloped her head.
Her screams were cut off in less than a second as magic she had no chance of defeating seared her from the inside out. She dropped as Yuki released her, her life extinguished just like that.
"She failed to keep control, to stick to the plan. No matter, we shall emerge triumphant."
"This is nuts. You used her to get to me, to take out anyone you thought would stand against you?" Yuki nodded. "Old man, you know you'll never survive this, right?"
"Maybe. I have to admit, I'd expected our magic to help avoid such an intimate get-together as this, but such is our world, Swift. Full of surprises."
"You! You caused this damn violence after the Shift came?" I should have seen it, should have realized there was someone behind the emotional unrest that erupted.
"Of course. I knew dealing with the Rift would have serious consequences, that the Pool couldn't cope and there'd be spillover. We just used our collective power to direct the Shift enough to cause emotional states to warp a little, so we could set things right."
"Enough! Time to die, old man," shouted Pumi.
The co-conspirators looked to Yuki, many rather desperately, as Pumi spoke. They knew what he was capable of, and none of them had expected to deal with him up close. Probably assuming he'd have been eradicated as he'd be one of the first to run rampant with the violence making him uncontrollable.
But we were together, and our bond had allowed him to fight the monster and come out victorious.
"You blew it, Yuki. All of you," I said.
I took Robin's hand, tugged at Pumi until he gave me his, too, and we stared down Yuki and his nervous group of Strange.
For a beautiful moment there was silence, then I sighed, and whispered, "Let's kill them all."
No Remorse
This life, this Strange life, it's nothing like the world most people live in. It's beautiful, it's magical, it's wondrous, and it's hard. Oh, so hard. With untold power available to those willing to sacrifice—or made to sacrifice—there is always danger. Volatile magic has killed more Strange than saved, and you play with primordial elements at your peril.
Our underworld changes you, and the longer you live the more you change. Death is constant in our world as there are always those out to use what the Pool has to offer for less than benevolent means. I'm under no illusions about the risk they pose not only to Strange but the world as a whole.
There's no two ways about it, they have to be dealt with. Some will see it as extreme, the job I do, others as a necessary precaution to ensure humanity doesn't lose the plot completely, and we all know how close we are to that already.
So when it calls for what Mack would describe as, "Taking them out with extreme prejudice," well, I may not like it but I don't balk at it either. It has to be done, and much as it hurt my soul to think Yuki was involved in something that would threaten the tenuous truce we have with the world at large, try to change the balance of power and force our kind back into the shadows where we would be shunned, feared, and whispered about, well, it couldn't happen.
He had betrayed his own kind. Exactly why, I still wasn't sure, and knew I never would be, but there you have it. The minds of men are not easily understood and their actions seldom make sense. We each of us have our own personal belief system and that's fine, but when Strange act on those beliefs, dragging the rest of us down, too, that's their choice, and they know the consequences if they fail to complete their objective.
Only one thing—okay, three—seemingly stood between Yuki and his goal of changing all we'd fought so hard to achieve, and that was my boyfriend, my sister, and this Justice.
So the moment I spoke, I was already acting, and as I released Robin's hand I felt power amass in the room like lightning had struck us all. The air crackled, hairs on my arms stood on end, and I gave everything I had to save us, and thus, everyone else.
I lunged to the side, taking out two older guys before they had the chance to react. Knowing if they weren't dealt with soon they had a good chance of pushing the odds way too far in Yuki's favor. With two jolts of supercharged magic, they dropped like stones as their hearts simply stopped.
Robin performed her own unique brand of magic, and the air whipped up, sending bottles and glasses flying. Smashing the mirror behind the bar, littering the floor with deadly shards and generally causing chaos.
The wizards among the Strange reacted in kind, using their individual skills to combat forces that tugged at their bodies and sent glass careening for weak spots, cutting and slicing at them in a thousand different ways.
Some fell, others wrapped themselves in cocoons of magic that saw the glass bounce off. They fought back, arcs of wild magic directed our way, trying to fry us to crispy bacon. Robin and I negated it easily. Combined our magic in a way far superior to their uncoordinated attack.
And then I heard the cracking and the moaning from my right. I glanced at Pumi, who was no longer Pumi, but a naked thing, clothes stripped away as his body morphed into something despicable and utterly wild.
I'd seen him in the throes of battle before and I knew what was to come, but the animal ferocity still came as a shock. Once transformed, the monster unleashed his fury on all that would harm us.
They blasted him and used subtle magic to whisper terrible things in his elongated and hairy ears, but all it did was enrage the beast.
Feed it.
He grew larger and more violent the more they tried to stop him. He tore through them all in less than a minute. Robin and I doing what we could to eliminate those attacking him, both aware he could be uncontrollable if he absorbed too much magic.
Yuki was in the center of the fray, a man in miniature when compared to Pumi. Yet he wasn't afraid, was more interested than anything. Studying Pumi as if he were a specimen in a jar, rather than a monster that would destroy him.
Something was off, I could feel it, but Pumi ignored my shouts, just kept on killing until all were dead or so mangled that they wished they were.
And then he was done. He turned to Yuki, arms hanging limp by his sides, forearms pumped and almost bursting with the blood pounding through his veins. He roared, eyes lost to the madness of battle and blood and death.
The monster charged.
It wasn't even a blur it was so fast. One moment Yuki was there, the next he wasn't. He was at Pumi's side, jabbing him hard in the kidneys as the monster sailed past. Momentum of the densely muscled creature—aided a little by Yuki's punch—sending him careening into the wall, knocking the one remaining picture to the floor.
Pumi turned and crouched low, protruding jaw clenched tight, emitting a rumble of anger and frustration.
As he readied to attack, I wasted no time and called on the wild energies eddying around me to focus like a sniper's rifle on Yuki, the man I had believed a friend. It slammed into his body with a force that would have crushed the chest of a lesser adept, but he was thrown to the floor nonetheless, his bare torso a mass of bruises from the impact.
Robin followed up with a clap of thunder from her delicate hands, controlling the pressure in the room. The air weighed heavy, all m
agic compressed under terrible forces, centered around Yuki. But the spillover made it hard for us to remain standing even at a distance and I wasn't sure how much longer I could hold it together.
Pumi attacked again, unaffected by the weight. He sprang on all fours, teeth bared, thick neck muscles taut and veins throbbing as he snapped at Yuki's face, missing by a hair's breadth, tugging off half a white eyebrow from the old man.
A fist like a troll's slammed into Yuki's face, nose breaking with a sickening crack as blood spurted over them both. Pumi slammed a fist into him again, the nose now utterly smashed beyond repair, teeth falling to the floor, a few stuck in already disfigured knuckles.
I screamed at him but he was lost. He grabbed hold of Yuki's head between two ridiculously oversized and calloused hands and pulled the man forward. He readied to slam the traitorous wizard's head into the floor and the mess of glass shining under the glare of volatile magic.
Then he stopped.
Yuki's head was almost impaled on the base of a glass that would have no doubt pierced his skull, but Pumi brushed it aside with one hand and gently placed Yuki's head down.
He turned to us, and I think he tried to speak, but it came out as a low growl of frustration.
"It's okay, we understand. Right, Robin?" I turned to my sister, realizing we were holding hands again.
"Sure. You want to stop. That's okay, Pumi, you've done enough." Robin squeezed my hand tight. She's a good sister really, the best.
"You don't want him to make you something you'd rather not be, right?" I said, and Pumi nodded almost imperceptibly, his muscles still bunched and his body engorged with wild energy I was amazed he could control.
"So don't. He's beaten, broken. Don't let him break you, too."
I smiled at him, then at my sister, and we walked over to Pumi and held out our hands. He took them almost gently and we hauled him to his feet.
I let go of them both and removed the shattered teeth from Pumi's knuckles, making soothing sounds like you would to a distraught child. He whimpered, not with the pain, but with the internal fight between violence and peace.
Peace won out, and he became a man again. He cracked, he groaned, and he split and he tore. And he was Pumi.
My Pumi.
My man.
"Blimey, I can see why you like him," said Robin, nodding at the other side effect to Pumi's transformation, some of the hardness taking longer to subside than others.
"Idiot!" I pinched her playfully on the arm, smiling at my annoying sister.
"If you gals don't mind, maybe some clothes would be a good idea about now," Pumi panted, examining his knuckles more from embarrassment than pain.
"Sorry, sorry. Um..." I scanned the room, but nothing looked suitable. Then I saw a long overcoat on the coat hook by the door and grabbed it.
Once covered up, Pumi sank onto a stool at the bar. It was mine, the one I always used. I guess I'd never sit there again.
Ugh
The vibration in my left shoulder became an insistent, rapid pulsing, signaling that other Justices had answered the alert and would arrive any moment.
Yuki was still out of it, thanks in part to a few well-placed nerve manipulations, and thanks in greater part to being punched twice in the face by a monster and the weight of so much magic weighing down on him. His entire torso was one big blue bruise thanks to yours truly.
I couldn't help but think what a good team we made, before the utter futility of the whole situation sank me deep into a depression I knew I had to pull out from quickly or I'd be dangerous to be around and certainly no fun.
"You okay?" asked Pumi, reaching for my hand then taking it lightly.
"Yeah, I guess. What were they thinking? What was Yuki thinking? I know the Queen's a bitch, but our system works, right?"
"Works? Maybe, maybe not. There's a lot of things wrong with it, but violence isn't the answer. I know that much from long experience."
"So why did he do it, then?"
"Because he could. Or at least he thought he could. No reason beyond that. He's lived a long life, Swift, and it's hard to accept how the modern world works when you've seen so many systems of government, of policing, of armies and all that come and go. Life is so different now, and he's from another time, another age."
"And they did things differently back then, right?"
"Right." Pumi nodded.
"You took your time," said the Queen as she barged through the door with half a dozen Justices in tow.
"Great, this is just what I need," I said under my breath, loud enough to be heard.
"Let me guess," said Robin. "You knew about him from the beginning and were just seeing how long it would take us to get up-to-speed and deal with him?"
"Of course," the Queen snapped. "I'm not the Queen for nothing. I—"
"We know," we chorused. "You know everything that's going on and if we can't deal with it ourselves then we're no daughters of yours." Robin and I smiled at each other. What else could we do? We'd heard it a million times before, and I got the feeling this wouldn't be the last.
"Come on," I said to Robin and Pumi.
"Where do you think you're going?" demanded the Queen, poking Yuki with a foot. Taking in the scene of battle with a blank face while Justices dragged bodies away.
"Home," I said. "With my friends, and my family. Oh, we have to get Mack first," I said, turning to Robin and Pumi.
There was a noise like a sonic boom and the front of the building imploded. Brick and dust billowed in, leaving us half blinded and sighing and spluttering.
"Did somebody call my name?" came the chipper, and very loud, voice of Mack as his demonic face appeared through the dust.
"Hell, Mack, why don't you... Ah, forget it, let's go home."
And that's exactly what we did.
The End
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Author's Note
Thanks for reading. I can't tell you how much your support means. Can you do me a favor? Reviews are so important on Amazon to help maintain sales and spread the word. I'd be honored if you could leave a short review for books 1 and 2 if you possibly can.
Click here to review book 1, and here for book 2.
Thank you very much.
Stay jiggy,
Al