His eyes are shot; his arm is broken; the magic has left them all. But Alex takes a stance from eidetic memory and snarls:
“I know kung fu.”
Quan-Ti, immortal, hesitates.
Behind Alex, Amadeus Faust steps out from nothing and opens his femoral arteries with a circular blade. In the cage, the Chosen Ones scream.
A snap of the cloak; the sorcerers vanish. Alex, on his elbows, crawls toward the lever that opens the door. His face is white-green, his blood an empty bucket. He gets a grip with one hand. Then the other.
His body pulls it down.
“This is Dylan we’re talking about,” says Daniel. “Dylan. The girl Dylan. You know? Our friend Dylan?”
“I saw what I saw,” says Philip. “She was hurting them after they gave up. Not for practice, or to test herself. For fun.”
“I’m with Daniel,” says Tyler. “It’s not like she’s suddenly turned evil.”
“Did I mention she started smoking?”
“Oh shit she’s turned evil,” says Tyler.
“I used to smoke,” Toe scowls.
Everybody takes the tiniest hint of a step back from him.
“Jesus–”
“What are you guys talking about?” says Dylan, ambling up.
The silence hums, taut as a violin.
Monday, September 13, 2010
“I liked it!” says Alex, as they push out the back exit.
“Everyone liked it, nobody’s saying they didn’t like it,” says Tyler.
“IT WAS A 112-MINUTE STROBE-LIT CINEMATIC ORGASM,” Daniel announces to the parking lot. Behind them, someone whoops.
“Are you getting orgasms confused with epilepsy?” says Phillip.
“Are you not?”
“It was really, really a lot of fun,” says Tyler. “Particularly considering that nothing was at stake and the girls didn’t get enough screen time.”
“I just can’t believe they gave Toe’s part to Michael Cera,” says Dylan.
“I’m not Michael Cera!” says Toe. “I’m Michael Cera?”
The Chosen Ones are bruised and dull-eyed: their knuckles are blood-blackened and their nostrils are white. Their muscles slide over each other like great rusting cables, smooth but shrieking. Their battle is joyless. This is the cost of the death of a friend.
Only Dylan still moves with their old pinwheeling grace, but if there’s joy in her movements then that joy is savage. She flickers, and blood blooms from the bodies of nameless men (her knuckles are smooth; red ribbons chase her knives). She’s fire and the means of walking amid fire. She is the temptation of revenge.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
“A nameless kill is without glory,” hisses the tattooed man, “and rest assured that today you die. So this I tell you: I am Amadeus Faust.”
“Really?” says Alex.
“That’s kinda semiotically loaded, man,” says Tyler.
“Tyler,” says Toe. “Gross.”
“You don’t even know what semiotics is.”
“I know I don’t want to see you two load each other with it.”
“Is your surname really Faust?” asks Daniel curiously. “I thought the preferred transliteration–”
“I chose it myself,” snaps Faust.
Alex smirks. “If we’re picking our own names, I want Einstein Tyrannosaur.”
“Dude!” says Toe. “You know that one was mine!”
The guards hover an inch from the surface of the lake, but as soon as they touch it they’re doggy-paddling, hapless. Tyler doesn’t even body-check them. He just skates around, tripping.
On the shore, Daniel’s eating popcorn. Toe kicks an irritated rock.
“I don’t get it,” he mutters. “I bet we could do that too if we could–I mean, where’s his weight distributed? What’s holding him up?”
“Tension,” says Dylan, too close to his ear.
Tyler leans down to brush wave-tips with one finger, and his sandals slice a glittering wave from the arc of his turn.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
“But when I’m fighting,” says Alex quietly, “it’s like–”
“Don’t say a dance,” groans Phillip.
Alex laughs. “No. It’s like walking on one of those things at the museum, where it lights up and plays a tone where you tread, except each move subtly changes the chord.”
“Seriously?” says Tyler. “I get wireframes and countdown timers, pick a path, hit the targets…”
“What about you, Daniel?” says Phillip.
Daniel smiles. “Pachinko,” he says. “Pachinko forever, and I always win.”
“Toe?”
“Huh?”
“What do you see when you fight?”
Toe blinks. “A bunch of people,” he says, “trying to–like–hit me?”
Thursday, October 4, 2007
“Do I have to keep pointing out that they are not ninja?” grates Phillip. “Ninja were populist, silent, invisible assassins from Japan. These hapless fucks are from China and they work for a megalomaniac sorcerer.”
“Let me explain the Tobias M. Dagobert Ninja Discrimination Test.” Toe grabs one of the charging mooks and thrusts him toward Phillip. “Did this man attack me with a single-edged sword?”
“…Yes.”
“Is he wearing black?”
“Yes!”
“Most importantly, does the Inverse Ninja Law apply?”
“The what?”
“This test has too many questions,” complains Daniel, and uses a ninja to knock down six other ninjas.
Midnight in the park and he’s lost his damn gun. “No,” he whispers, fumbling in the tall grass. “No!”
They step out from the trees. He’s surrounded. “First blood,” Tyler sighs.
Silently and without surprise, Toe realizes it worked. Options rise to his mind like bubbles: aikido, varma kalai, banshay, systema. Systems. A hidden layer of the world, glyphs of potential and force. But most importantly–
“I know kung fu,” he murmurs.
“Prove it,” grins Alex.
Their NERF revolvers rise, not in slow motion, but with the fat predictability of fastballs over the plate.
Toe unclips the lightsaber at his belt.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
