“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.
“Spots of time!” shouts Wordsworth triumphantly, leaping from a hole in the continuum.
“W-Wordsworth?” gasps Dylan Thomas, struggling up from his hospital bed. “Impossible!”
“Nay; just possible enough,” he replies grimly. “Enough to end your insipid little career before you can be named Laureate and ruin the office–my office–forever!” He grabs a pillow.
“I can’t fight you off in this condition,” manages Thomas. “But lest I go gentle–grant me one request?”
“Yes?”
“Promise,” he whispers, “you’ll go back and kill Aphra Behn next.”
“Sorry,” says Wordsworth, mashing pillow to face. “I need her to give Shakespeare syphillis.”
The first thing she figures out is that punching bags don’t work like that. You’re supposed to have someone to hold them for you, or they swing around and there’s no way to finish even a short combination.
Boxing trainers being in short supply at girls’ boarding schools, Proserpina begins to consider conspirators. Most of her classmates are plainly unsuitable, but there is one close-mouthed girl who watches everything with long dark eyes. Tall enough to hold a bag, and sure-footed in field hockey. A glint of rebellion. An ironic wit.
The other girl’s name, she learns, is Radiane.
Seven youths, seven maidens. Right.
Althaea feared the common fate of female prisoners when they arrived, but Minos had forbidden the guards to touch them, lest the beast be dissatisfied. An empty concern; there are secret tunnels from one set of cells to the other. Clever old maze-builder. Wouldn’t help them escape, but wouldn’t let them die lonely either.
Every twenty-six days their little company shrinks. Althaea is one of the last five. At least there’s wine here, and love, or something like it. It’s not that they don’t fear death: they just find distractions. Exactly like everyone else.
“Quite a selection,” says the man in the black suit.
“We maintain the finest merc stable on the continent.” Littleford gestures. “Black Eye. Recoil. Hidebound. The Vulpine Phalanger.” The men and women in their piecemeal armor nod in turn. “The one with the chainsaw is Slapjack; that’s Psyclown and his partner Scarnage. And this is Zach.”
The black suit takes him in: lanky, glasses, no armor, no gun. “The most lethal of all,” he breathes. “Yes. Give him the contract, no matter the cost!” He strides out.
“I just–I just run the website,” says Zach hesitantly.
“Not anymore,” Littleford snaps.
“You got nothing on me,” says John Michael Montgomery.
Point out that you have witnesses. You have the guns he doublefisted across the border, and the Mexican orphans with bellies full of balloons.
“What that is, is covered,” he says. “I’m a celebrity. We can’t legally be prosecuted.”
Wasn’t Mel? Wasn’t Martha? Wasn’t he himself tried for multiple charges in 2006?
“No no.” He’ll snap his handcuffs easily. “That was for underdoing it. We were punished for the sin of daring too little.” Then he’ll reach forward, and break your neck like a string.
“And I,” he’ll smile, “learned my lesson.”
“My suit,” gasps Peter in slow horror. “It’s somehow turned… black…”
Jameson squints at him. “Still looks like navy to me,” he says.
“I feel so powerful!” Peter flexes. “And I know what comes with great power.”
“Great responsi–”
“No responsibility at all.”
“We just did the corporate ethics seminar,” says Jameson. “And I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.”
“Really?” says Peter. “Why don’t we discuss it over lunch?”
On the way, he jerks the steering wheel and sends the car off a bridge. “To the rescue!” he cries, shoving the door open and leaping, mind’s eye thick with spiderwebs.
The Justin stands booted and ponchoed in the town’s dusty street, gently playing his own standoff music.
Doors down the strip burst open, and howling varmints blaze their guns. The Justin draws the Martin and assumes Defensive Southern Mantis, blade spinning and sparking; bullets make unlikely noises and bury themselves in facades. His opponents fall flat. They were only cardboard standups.
“Not bad,” says a chuckle behind him. “Ready to duel someone worth your time?”
The Justin turns slowly to look at his opponent. Oily mustaches outline a too-white grin, and the razor teeth of his monstrous accordion bellow wide.
“Let the Trial of the Pyx begin!” declares Bourse. Red-breasted guards march the defendant up the aisle to her bench. “Stole a double armful this time, eh? Gold twonies?”
The Pyx’s golden eyes saccade. “I claim sanctuary under the Exigencies Act of 1844!”
Bourse hits clerks with her gavel until they look that up. “‘Serving the interests of Queen and Motherland?'”
“Removing metal money from circulation! It’s archaic! An electronic credit-system would be far less problematic. I’m an agent du change! In a few years I could–”
“Be a billionaire?”
“Not,” says the Pyx nobly, “the kind who spends anything.”
“Am I the only one you love?” Diana asks him once.
“Hardly,” he says. “I mean, aside from my grandma and all that, I’m still pretty much hung up on Jane Delleon from middle school. And her friend Ruthie Ponce. Oh, and I’d sell them all to pirates for that girl from Mythbusters.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say those things.”
“Then let me out of the goddamn lasso!”
Eventually she throws all his stuff out of the house; newspapers will report its landing in Phoenix. Stomping away for the last time, he almost gives himself a concussion on her stupid jet.