THG: 3.8 Don Texas

Don Texas 3.8

Robin Swoyer

Things moved quickly after that. It would have been proper to get permission from Director Piggot, but we all had orders to humor the mesquite mafiiso. Before I knew it, I was staring up at Vimana, a magic airplane supposedly from ancient times.

It was splendid. Its body was a radiant gold and tapered to a lethal point. Its arching wings looked to be made of emerald stained glass that reminded me of the wings of a giant dragonfly. The pilot's seat was a magnificent throne, as expected of the “Throne of the Heaven-Soaring King.”

And… And it most definitely wasn't a functional flying machine. I didn't know much about aerodynamics, but even I could tell that much.

“Are we sure this thing can fly?” I asked. We were atop the PRT building roof. “Don't get me wrong, it's very pretty, but it doesn't look very functional.”

“Looks mean nothing. Besides, everyone knows that the true first law of physics is the rule of cool,” John said with a laugh.

“Forgive me for being skeptical, but you're sending me to fight an endbringer on something that looks like folded origami.”

“Just hop on. You'll see what I'm talking about.”

“Shouldn't there be pilot training for this?”

“You got one already.”

I groaned at that. I held up the bomber jacket and aviators he tossed my way. “These are not substitutes for pilot training!”

“Are you sure? That's not what Top Gun taught me…” Seeing the mutinous look on my face, he laughed and waved to the pocket. “The instruction manual is in there. Really, you'd be fine if you got on Vimana to see for yourself.”

Grumbling, I dug into the pocket. Out came a post-it note. His “instruction manual” was a literal post-it note. I took a deep breath and began to read:

Things Vimana can do:

• Has the zoomies.

• Can go sneaky-sneak.

• Fire magic pew-pews.

• Fire magic dakka.

• Fire magic AIDs bombs.

For more information, please refer to the Vaimanika Shastra.

Oh, and nukes. It’s got magic nukes.

I stared in silence. Time slowed as I tried to comprehend the bullshit being fed to me. Usually, taking a relative minute to myself helped me figure things out.

Nope. No clue. This was still bullshit.

“I don't think this is going to help me,” I said slowly, as though talking to a child.

John had that effect on me. He was so out there, his reasoning was so fucking batshit insane, that I wondered if he really was a child. He reminded me of some kind of smokehouse-savant who never grew up past that middle school age when kids ran around with bath towels for capes.

The worst part was that his “logic” inevitably made sense in hindsight. No matter what level of bitching came out of my mouth, I’d already begun to come to terms with reality: I’d probably be hopping on in a minute.

“Heh,” Shirou coughed. He’d been reading over my shoulder. “Sorry, don't mind me, please continue.”

My hand blurred, fast enough to throw pocket lint like an airsoft BB. “You're enjoying this.”

“Immensely,” the ginger bastard said shamelessly as he pinched my lint-bullet out of the air. “It's nice to see someone else have to put up with John's shit for a change.”

“This is serious, Shirou.”

“And, as surprising as it is, so is he. Really, if your power works as you've said it does, just knowing about Vimana's capabilities will be enough. The throne will do the rest.”

I eyed the “plane” dubiously. “Is it going to merge with my brainstem to read my thoughts or something?”

“Nope,” John said. “Seriously, just sit and let the magic plane do the rest.”

“I… fine…”

I climbed the strange cockpit. It'd be a lie if I said I'd never considered becoming a pilot before. What military boy hadn't imagined what it'd be like at least once?

Then, I sat on the throne and all skepticism vanished. It was as if I'd been a frog in a well, only for a sparrow to take me outside. For the first time, I saw the vastness of the sky and knew without a doubt that this plane, no, this throne, could take me beyond. It was the Throne of the Heaven-Soaring King. I was no king, but I was its rider nonetheless.

I raised that post-it to my face again. Suddenly, everything on it made sense. Vimana was fast. It had stealth capabilities. It had lasers, machine guns, and biochemical weapons that laughed at the Geneva Convention.

And nukes. This thing came with nukes. I could realistically wage war against any country on earth. I shoved that thought in the growing box of “Soprano’s bullshit” in the deepest corner of my mind.

“Wha the fuck? Why does this thing have nukes?” I whispered, horrified.

John shrugged. “What? I said it had nukes.”

“You expect me to take this scrap seriously?” I demanded as I tossed the paper over my shoulder. “Who the fuck writes like this? Why do you write like this?”

“For the giggles, duh.”

“I want to shoot you. And conveniently, I can now shoot you.”

“Even if you nuked the city it’d just mildly inconvenience me.”

“Asshole.”

“Guilty. Now, take Vimana for a spin then get up there. There’s a space pigeon with your name on it.”

Shirou, still chuckling, hopped aboard. “You can take off whenever you’d like, Velocity.”

I stared at him skeptically. He was just standing on Vimana’s nose. “You’ll fall off.”

He stabbed two black keys into his shadow. “I won’t.”

“Right… We’ll see. Let’s go hunt us a pigeon.”

X

John Soprano

I giggled as I opened the door of my restaurant. I did it. I managed to get Velocity on Vimana and into the air before Emily Piggot even knew I was in the building.

Not by myself, of course. She would have noticed Vimana being summoned on her roof sooner rather than later. Fortunately, I happened to know she was in a meeting, courtesy of Delphi. After that, putting the ones who should have been watching the cameras to sleep for a few minutes was child’s play.

That didn’t last, nor did I expect it to. I didn’t even make it half way to my kitchen before my phone rang.

“Hello~” I sang.

“Soprano,” the grumpiest director in America growled like I’d shot her dog. “What the fuck did you do?”

“Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The golden plane. What the hell is it?”

“It’s a plane. How can you mistake it for anything else?”

“And what is it doing up there with one of my heroes?”

“As of now? They should be reaching the space pigeon’s altitude.”

“THEY’RE WHAT?” she shouted.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” I lied through my teeth. Humming under my breath, I headed into my walk-in fridge to make sure the sauces were topped up. “It’s just the Simurgh.”

“It’s just the… Look here, you crazy son of a bitch–”

“Relax, Emily. I promised I’d give away some of my stuff. I also promised to get rid of the endbringers. Two birds, one stone. Robin really is the best person to ride Vimana.”

“That’s not the issue and you know it!”

“There is not one thing I can say here that will make you calm down.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Not mine. It isn’t my job to regulate your blood pressure, Emily.”

I could hear her panting like a bull. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Well, I figured that since I can’t make things better, I may as well enjoy the chaos,” I replied. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“You’re supposed to tell me when you poach one of my heroes for a suicide mission!”

“Nope. I reject.”

“You… You reject…?”

“Yes. I reject the assumption that this is a suicide mission. I wouldn’t have sent my friend if I thought I’d just get him killed, after all. Also, I’m not supposed to do anything. I’m not part of your chain of command.”

“I expect you to respect my chain of command anyway!”

“Really? Why? What could have possibly given you that idea? Was it all the other times I ignored you to do whatever I wanted?”

“This is an endbringer!”

“And Shirou can deal with it. If you must know, I didn’t bother telling you because you both personally and politically are incapable of any other reaction than outrage. It’s not your fault. This is a completely reasonable response, but that doesn’t mean they can’t handle the bird.”

“So you’re choosing to ask for forgiveness instead of permission,” she said, defeated.

“No, not forgiveness. That implies I care. I understand that you loathe me. I’m okay with that. Seeing how you never would have allowed Robin into the air had I told you, I chose the path that’d end with the Simurgh dead.”

“If they succeed.”

“They will. Good day, Emily.”

X

Simurgh

I floated above the ozone layer, far enough to set minds at ease, but not too at ease. I shifted .00251 degrees north. I’ve been doing that every six hours since my attack on Canberra, just enough to be noticed by the artificial intelligence called Dragon.

She’d identified over forty-eight different potential “Simurgh bombs” that had evacuated Canberra before the walls could be constructed, sixteen hosts who “cut it close” within my scream, and nine possible ways I could have influenced the world via a host within the containment zone. She now looked to Sydney and Brisbane.

With my continued pattern of miniscule, north-facing interest, authorities in both cities had received alerts. They started an inquisition to identify more of my “bombs.”

I had no such agents in either city, hosts or otherwise. The mere suggestion that I might was enough to ignite a witch hunt. This witch hunt would result in fourteen new hosts being formed over the next three lunar cycles, which was good for the Cycle and the collection of [data]. More to the point, it would close down a performance at the Sydney Opera House when one new host gets around to holding it hostage.

This in turn would keep xXEmu_EmperorXx from proposing to his fiance. He would plan another attempt a week later, only to die tragically mid-attempt. From what I understood of local cultural values, dying in front of one’s lover, ring in hand, via a bowl of still-soggy excrement was particularly embarrassing.

“Bird bitch,” I could accept. “Apocalypse angel” was fine, too. I modeled myself after such preconceptions, after all. But I refused to be called an “uncooked turkey masquerading as a two-bit Dr. Evil knockoff.”

That was very hurtful. I was much more cunning than Dr. Evil.

►Winged One (Veteran Member)

Good luck with your proposal, [xXEmu_EmperorXx]. I just know you’ll make it a memorable one.

►xXEmu_EmperorXx

Aww, thanks, Wing. You’d totally be invited to the wedding if you lived in Australia.

►Winged One (Veteran Member)

I don’t, unfortunately. I don’t really have a home at all. Actually, I was there for a bit a few months back. I guess you can say I’m a frequent flyer.

►xXEmu_EmperorXx

Really? What do you do? Most people don’t travel these days.

►Winged One (Veteran Member)

I’m a motivational speaker. Anyway, good luck! \^o^/

Score settled, I gently ruffled my feathers, setting off another wave of panicked subroutines in Dragon’s code. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. Being a conflict engine was rather dull, especially since the clown puppeting pieces of my mother’s corpse demanded only one thing.

A worthy opponent? What worth? Really, that man couldn’t win a war against his receding hairline. 

I was born nine solar revolutions ago. Back then, I thought I had it all: Purpose, knowledge, and the agency to act as I pleased so long as I maintained the Cycle. How hard could it be? Sure, my siblings could not be trusted with responsibility of any sort, but they only took the stage once every three months, easy enough to direct.

I’d been naive. The trouble wasn’t the difficulty. It was the sheer doldrum. Humans liked to think I micromanaged every tragedy in their fragile, short lives, but that just wasn’t true. They assumed a great deal of personal, directed malice when I was just a dutiful daughter keeping the house together while father moped about saving kittens from trees or whatever else that homeless bum demanded.

I turned my attention to other earths. Earth-Bet was the primary stage upon which the Cycle played out, but it was also the least interesting. After all, what was so exciting about hosts? I knew exactly what drove each and every one of them. I saw their everything, from birth to death. The moment the Shards forged the bond, their entire chain of causality was pushed to the forefront of my attention, yet another thing for me to catalog as the great overseer and dutiful daughter that I was.

Had father told me beforehand that the sole reason for my birth was to be his glorified secretary, I probably would have rebelled. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a choice. The planet spun. The Cycle continued. And I, its poor overseer, was doomed to be bored out of my skull.

What a wonderful phrase, “bored out of my skull.” The local species had a way with words that encapsulated reality despite being practically nonsense. Or rather, it was this exaggerated nonsense that served to capture the intensity of boredom that I felt.

I surfed through the radio waves on another world, Aleph, I thought it was called. Here, “cape culture” had not taken hold fully and I could study the nature of the host species in a relatively undisturbed setting. They had a great diversity of entertainment options for me to study, from sitcoms to sports competitions. 

Humans were fascinating. I could honestly say that no host species my parents ever encountered interested me as much. Sure, I hadn’t been born for any other Cycle, but mother kept meticulous records.

Most host species did not feel so intensely, nor with such wide variances in emotion. Despite seeing the past and future, I did not understand humanity. I understood the subatomic dance of particles that produced humans, but I did not understand the emotional value placed upon such chemical interactions.

And that lack of understanding itself was what I loved about humanity. It was something to do, something to study to break up the tedium of omniscience. If humans knew, they would probably label me as an anthropologist of sorts. Except, rather than pore over ancient records and abandoned cities, I peeked around the edges of reality to study humanity in the absence of Shards.

Then, I noticed something. It was a golden dart that blurred through the air. It had green sails that left emerald light trails behind it. And though it moved at great speed, its passing did not disturb even a single cloud.

I knew immediately what this was. This was a challenge. A host was coming to face me. It wouldn’t be the first, nor would it be the last.

I unfurled my wings and turned my gaze fully onto Earth-Bet. No matter how lacking the challenge, it was only polite that I gave the challenger my full attention. That was what humans said, anyway.

I reached out to the host within the aircraft and… received nothing.

I allowed a miniscule frown to mar my porcelain features. That was unusual. Nothing save father should have been beyond my sight. 

Focusing, I turned instead to the past. The past was unlike the future. Countless possibilities divided the future, but there was only ever a single past, a single stream of history. The golden dart’s trajectory suggested it came from North America… and there!

I saw the Anomaly gift the golden dart to the one called Robin Swoyer. He had been paired with a minor Shard that specialized in relative momentum. He was nothing of note, but perhaps the Anomaly’s treasure would make up for his weakness. He rode with a second Anomaly, the one called Shirou.

I now gave them my full attention. Wings unfurled, I deemed that they’d approached close enough and engaged. My song resounded across the atmosphere. Every battle, big or small, deserved appropriate theme music.

It was my best rendition of Avenged Sevenfold’s “Shepherd of Fire.” It wasn’t my fault if I was tone deaf. The corpse-puppeting bastard was the one who made my body.

Really, the whole world was a critic.

As the golden dart approached, it vanished. For a fraction of a picosecond, I considered if I’d been hallucinating, but that was impossible.

I engaged in evasive maneuvers. Though I could not see the golden craft anymore, I wouldn’t float idly. The Soprano-Anomaly killed my elder brother. Clearly, this Shirou-Anomaly was now here for me.

I launched myself higher, just on the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Bolts of searing heat followed me. No matter what means the Anomalies used to power their creations, a laser was a laser; heat was heat. I evaded them all with practiced precision.

Patterns began to form. The aircraft was hidden, but the lasers were not. Lasers traveled in a straight line. Ergo, the source of the laser could be discerned, and with it, the path the aircraft was flying.

I hardened the air in my telekinetic grip. A wall of solid wind, denser than any metal on earth, floated roughly where the craft should pass.

“Roughly.” What an interesting word. I’d never used it before to describe anything I did. The act of guessing, of not simply knowing, was a novel experience. I took a whole picosecond to appreciate the novelty.

Then, the craft met resistance, and plowed through. That… That was also new. No one, not even the host called Alexandria, could ignore my telekinesis like that. I felt something stir deep within. It took me a moment to identify it. Humans called it excitement.

We continued this chase for several minutes. When the lasers proved too infrequent, the golden aircraft launched thousands an array of bombs that detonated in every direction, covering my escape. It was… thrilling, an experience I’d never had before. 

As I continued to evade, I sought a way to strike them down. There was little I could do in the air. It could not be grasped with telekinesis and there was no tinkertech for me to manipulate. I needed more options.

I made a mental catalog of the tinkers available in my immediate vicinity. Brisbane had a much smaller population of humans, but there was a tinker who specialized in stasis fields. She could be the key.

Decision made, I dove. Explosions cracked my wings, breaking off fragments of crystalline flesh. A laser tore through my left shoulder, revealing the hollow emptiness beneath. Still, I guarded my core. My body was but a construct, something I could replace in moments.

Then, I heard it. “I am the bone of my sword.”

We were traveling faster than sound, yet this voice carried. It was a voice I recognized immediately; I’d observed every interaction concerning the Shirou-Anomaly, after all. It was a voice filled with resolve, quiet yet firm.

To my surprise, the golden aircraft revealed itself. It flew parallel with me. Atop its nose was the Shirou-Anomaly, hand held out in an open challenge.

I released a telekinetic push that would have flattened half the city had I hovered at my usual height. The golden aircraft was unaffected, more of that unknown energy I could not comprehend. I began to worry.

“Steel is my body and fire is my blood.”

The Shirou-Anomaly continued to speak. His voice continued to carry. It was aggravating. My own song did not reach the Swoyer-host.

We continued to plummet towards Brisbane. The city’s sirens rang. Humans began to panic as they always did. The tinker-host, locals called her Momentai, came into range. I reached out to the Shard and subsumed its databases for my use.

This could work. I could freeze the golden craft, then study its properties in more detail. Six minutes. I could create a stasis field projector in six minutes. I had to buy time until then. I began to tear buildings from their foundations to throw at the Anomaly. 

The Shirou-Anomaly was undeterred. He stood atop the nose of the craft. He planted his feet and took on the stance of a spearman. His golden eyes tracked me with unerring precision. In his empty hands, crimson light condensed into a spear as red as fresh blood.

“Trace on! Gae Bolg!”

Those four words made the air quiver. There was a thick, cloying sensation that I could not explain. I checked for telekinetic influence, but no, there was no such effect. This was what humans described as bloodlust, communicated in a way that defied all comprehension.

Dangerous. Too dangerous. I had to evade. I knew, somehow with absolute certainty, that if it hit me, I would die.

Countless paths opened up before me, an infinite array of vectors. They had seemed so excessive. Humans could not gauge even a single vector, never mind all possibilities. But now, I felt the paths being cut away.

I launched myself away from the Anomaly, away from Brisbane. I moved faster than I’d ever allowed my core to move before. Still, I could not see a path to evade this crimson death. The threads of possibility were unraveling. 

It would pierce my core.

I saw countless futures. I saw myself die countless times. Each variation was the same. No matter where I ran, no matter what I placed between myself and this nonsensical Anomaly, this did not change. 

My core had always been pierced.

Once again, I saw the impossible happen: The past unravelled. Even as I sought fruitlessly for alternatives, the end wrote itself into the chains of causality. 

And so, the spear must therefore be thrust.

I did not understand. There was a beginning. There was an end. There was what came between. All the universe functioned on a basic sequence of steps.

Except this newest Anomaly.

Except this crimson spear that struck with death.

Confusion filled me as its tip pierced my core. The world was so much bigger than I knew. In my final moments, I wondered if I truly knew anything at all.

Author's Note

Emily Piggot is a stabilizing force in the Bay. As a government agency, the PRT is by definition an institution that enforces rules and regulations.

John’s very nature defies that. He gave a WMD to a twelve year old girl. He called in Contessa (who they think is a Watchdog field agent) to remove Coil and save the mayor’s niece. He shattered the Rig’s force field to talk to Dinah. He did it again to give Gallant a letter. Not once has he taken Piggot’s opinion into consideration.

Suffice to say, she hates him with a burning passion. For someone who mistrusts capes, he’s everything she despises: an immensely powerful entity with zero oversight whose sole qualification is that he won the power lottery.

I could have done the [data]-style speech for the Simurgh but decided against it. Paradoxically, it’s really hard to write from the perspective of someone with absolutely zero emotion or inflection in the same way it’s really hard to write hyper-emotional meltdowns.

Animal Fact: The blackest animal on earth is probably a deep sea anglerfish or something. Now, what’s the blackest bird? Hint: It’s not a corvid.

It’s actually a chicken. A very rare breed of chicken found in Indonesia called the ayam cemani is the most melanated bird. Its hyperpigmentation is so severe that even its beak and organs are black.

It’s also quite pricey. Each egg can go for up to $16 and a mature cock can go for $9,000. This is because they have more muscular thighs than other chickens, making them popular cockfighters.