The duel began, and it became clear almost immediately that Schneider had no intention of finishing it quickly.
Her shots landed everywhere except where they should have, clipping the floor beside Vertin’s boots, tearing through the hem of her coat, close enough to draw gasps from the crowd but never once close enough to draw blood.
Between shots she talked, her voice pitched to carry, mocking and light, asking Vertin why she’d throw her life away for an institution that wouldn’t even tell the public the Storm existed,
An institution that turned families away at the door when they came begging for the one thing it could actually give them.
Vertin caught it partway through the exchange of fire, the faint trace of orange that clung to the woman across from her.
It was the same scent that had lingered in the mission capsule days before, and understood in one cold drop of certainty that Schneider had been inside the Foundation itself, close enough to leave that trace behind.
Schneider only smiled, wry and unbothered, when she saw the understanding land, and told her, almost gently, that she’d stop holding back now.
The crowd screamed louder at that, sensing a shift in the air before they could name it, though anyone watching closely could still see the restraint in every one of Schneider’s movements, a fight being fought at a fraction of what it could be.
At the edge of the room, Cormac worked his way through every glass he could get his hands on.
‘There’s no goddamn alcohol!
Oh right, prohibition…
I can’t wait to get out of this era,’ he thought, setting down yet another disappointing cup.
He settled instead for the sparkling grape juice being passed around in tall fluted glasses, followed by a thick, foamy root beer float that someone had clearly gone to some trouble to make properly, vanilla ice cream slowly dissolving into the dark syrup.
He worked through a tray of deviled eggs next, then a plate of oysters on ice that had no business being this good at what was ostensibly a criminal gathering, then a handful of cheese straws and a small stack of finger sandwiches cut into neat, uniform triangles.
He chased all of it down with a tall glass of egg cream, sweet and strange and better than it had any right to be, and found himself thoroughly and shamelessly pleased with the whole arrangement while the duel raged on behind him.
“Aha.
Nice!
Nice!
Ms.
Governor, you’re much better than I thought.
Not like the little punks in the Foundation.”
“Why did you go to the foundation?
Can’t the Manus give you what you want?”
“Heh heh, of course it’s because we, the ones sifted out by the ‘Storm,’ want … to live.
The ‘Storm’ is about to fall.
Who cares whether the shelter is the eave … or the rubble?”
Schneider’s hand snapped toward Vertin’s neck, fingers stiff and fast, only to be caught short mid-motion.
“What if I say, I can provide you with a shelter?”
Her hand halted in the air for a second.
Yet eventually, she decided to point the pistol towards Vertin.
“The person who said this to me last time is just sitting behind us watching the game.”
The crowd around them slowed, first one voice, then several, heads turning toward something none of it had to do with the duel at all.
“Huh?
The trend is falling by 31 points.
Is it me or …?”
‘Wait, what date is it today?
Isn’t the crash supposed to happen in October?’ Cormac thought, a cheese straw halfway to his mouth.
The panic spread through the room in a widening ring, faces turning toward the glowing stock exchange board mounted above the bar, the numbers on it sliding lower and lower in ugly, jerking increments while the duel continued, indifferent to all of it.
Schneider fired again, and again, each shot now barely grazing Vertin, just enough to draw blood.
“It’s too dangerous!
Why doesn’t Vertin use that blasting Bombard Ball!” APPLe said in a hushed voice.
“No, not yet!
We’re fighting up close here, can’t let the bomb give us away!” The slowly panicking team captain tried to rationalize as his nerves caught up to him.
A brilliant light cut through the room without warning, blinding for one long second, and when it faded Sonetto stood at the edge of the duel alongside a young woman in an elaborate green gown, an enormous hat shading her head, both of them already moving toward Vertin, who was bleeding freely now from somewhere along her sides.
Near the back wall, a man came barreling towards a wall clutching an empty glass, he hit Cormac as his final destination, knocking off Cormac’s drink from his hand.
Cormac’s fist met his jaw before the man could even get up, sending him sliding across a table in a crash of broken glassware.
‘I think that completes the main cast?
Sothe-something,’ Cormac thought, already reaching for another cheese straw and root beer as most of the room dissolved into fighting or fleeing around him, ignoring the man that he threw who looked at him with absolute fury.
Figures in elegant black and blue stepped into place behind Forget Me Not, arranged with the practiced stillness of people who had rehearsed exactly this entrance.
He began to speak of the end of the era, the end of the roaring twenties that the people around them live in, his voice carrying easily over the chaos.
Someone near the front tried to object.
Forget Me Not raised one hand and spoke a short, precise incantation, and the man came open at the chest in a single clean line.
The room fell into a silence broken only by the sound of the man Cormac had punched earlier flying across it this time, propelled by someone’s fist none of the fleeing crowd cared to look at directly.
A telephone rang somewhere near the stage.
Forget Me Not answered it, unhurried.
“Hello?
Oh, the Dow closed at …
230.07.
I see.
That’s it, my friends.
Wall Street has collapsed.
And the ‘Storm’ …
has finally come.”
He set the receiver down and let his voice carry back out over the room, into the shape of a lesson he had clearly given before.
“In the 60s, it crashed people into absurd cartoons.
In the 90s, it turned our veins into cables.
At last, all the absurdities will transform into a ‘Storm,’ and eventually ‘cleanse’ the world.
Only the people who weren’t sifted out have the right to …’Reverse,’ with us.”
He turned his gaze fully onto Vertin.
“These are the details that couldn’t be revealed to the public.
Our official— Ms.
Vertin, you must be familiar with it, right?
You know this better than anyone else …
the countdown to the sifting has already begun.”
“Correct.
I finally got the answer.
You are using history to expedite the ‘Storm.’ Community conflicts, turbulent history, new technology …
all of these may lead to the ‘Storm.’ Since the last day of 1999, the world has started to get reversed by the ‘Storm,’ one after another.
Which past do you want to return?
Fifty years ago?
A century ago?
Or …”
Forget Me Not turned back to the crowd, his voice warming into something closer to a promise, describing the Manus Vindictae as the ones who would enlighten them.
The one who would protect them and their families, and raise a new order out of whatever the Storm left behind, holding up a black mask shaped like a pair of clasped hands and calling it a guarantee of safety for every member who joined.
A number of faces in the crowd shifted at that, fear rearranging itself into something closer to belief, while a shadow moved along the edges of the room where the light didn’t quite reach.
Vertin’s team fell into formation, bracing for what was coming, and when the newly converted surged forward they met the attack head-on while retreating steadily toward the stairs leading down and away from the building.
Once the last of them had gone, Forget Me Not turned toward a sound he was certain he’d heard, and found nothing behind him to explain it.
Although the floor near the abandoned tables held noticeably fewer valuables than it had an hour before, it seemed as if there were fewer new members as well, not defeated, simply disappeared.
The woman standing at the center of the Manus Vindictae’s gathered ranks watched the shadow of someone with a faint glimmer of gold while carrying a person in each arm slip toward the same stairwell the others had fled through, she smiled faintly without a word to anyone beside her.
‘That was a good harvest, I should go to more of these’ he thought and slightly burped while taking out a whistle.
Sir knight was waiting just outside the building, prepared to help if needed.
He was always following Cormac until he blended into Vertin’s team, in which case, sir knight immediately went into hiding without being told to do so, this has almost become routine at this point.
Cormac didn’t use it yet, he just held it as he could feel the tension in the air.
‘I should probably start the experiment, I hope it allows me to take sir knight at least’
He continued to walk but didn’t truly follow Vertin’s crew, instead moving closer to where sir knight was.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I have decided on who the love interest will be, let’s just say Regulus might soon say “So you have a father too?” iykyk the romance might not end well though, I do love tragic love stories more than happy endings