THG: 3.7 Don Texas

Don Texas 3.7

Noelle Meinhardt

“That… That was humiliating,” I groaned, forehead slumped against John’s bathroom mirror. The glass felt nice and cool. That was good, because my face was burning, probably hot enough to match that Laeva-whatsit that John used to roast his chickens.

John gave me a new body. Though I understood intellectually how involved that process would be, I hadn’t fully processed it until we began. When he said I should have a clear vision of what I wanted before coming to him, he meant it.

He magicked up a hairless mannequin, then proceeded to ask me all sorts of questions that made me want to crawl into a hole and die: How tall did I want to be? What eye color did I want? Was I happy with my previous brown hair, or did I want something a little lighter or darker? How big should my breasts be? How much hair did I want down there?

After what seemed like an entire life sentence worth of interrogation, John knew more about my body than anyone else alive, myself included. But it was over now. The overly intimate interview was done and I could lock this chapter of my life in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind.

In the end, I’d settled for “Noelle Meinhardt, but better.” I couldn’t resist ironing out a few of the imperfections that bothered me when I attended school, but I was still recognizably myself. I had to be. I considered becoming a bombshell like Glory Girl, or maybe a smoking hot redhead, but… but my friends stuck with “Noelle,” not some idealized cover model.

Francis… I knew he wasn’t perfect; I wasn’t blind to his faults. He could be a huge jerk. He wasn’t very good with people so he always came off as demanding and abrasive. He’d clashed with the others more than once.

But despite all that, he’d held the team together when I couldn’t. For more than a year, he took us across the country in another earth. He stole. He fought. He threatened and bargained, all to chase the faintest hope that there might be a cure for me, that someday, we’d all get to go home and put this behind us.

And not once had he ever brought up cutting things off between us. He could have left. He was the one with the mover power. He could have moved on when he realized his girlfriend ate people.

I looked into the mirror and smiled. He’d stayed. Not for a cover model, but for Noelle. Plain, scrawny, formerly bulimic Noelle.

Maybe I was making a mistake. Maybe I’d regret not changing more about myself one day. I’d had body image issues even before I drank that damned vial. But if I ever did, I knew I’d be fine anyway. I had awesome friends, the most loyal in two worlds.

I straightened up and dressed myself. That alone was a novelty. It felt so amazing to have thumbs again, to have clothes that fit me.

“This is the first day of the rest of your life, Noelle,” I told myself. “A better life.”

X

John Soprano

I smiled to myself as I loaded more hickory chips into the smoker. I sprayed the interior down with water so that the meat wouldn’t cook too quickly and closed the lid. It was just me at the shop right now.

After Noelle’s big reveal, I gave my minions the rest of the day off so they could celebrate. There was talk about going home to play video games, something about reliving old memories. I was invited along, but I declined. Games weren’t just relaxation to these kids. It wouldn’t have felt right to butt in on that.

At the very least, I did get them a house before all this. It was one of the first things I did after the cooking contest. That had been a somewhat amusing experience.

Being 2011 and Earth-Bet, many residential real estate companies had yet to discover the wonders of a website like Zillow. I had to open up an actual phonebook and pick out random real estate firms until one was able to arrange a showing for a large house on Captain’s Hill.

The house had a bit of “history.” The realtor told me over the phone that it used to belong to the Marquis, back when he ruled Brockton’s underworld. Then, his story changed when I showed up for the tour and he realized who I was. Suddenly, it was just a “rumor” and an “interesting anecdote.”

I had no idea what he was going for. Did he think I wouldn’t want to buy a house that belonged to a Birdcaged villain? Or maybe it was the opposite and he’d lied at first to talk up the property value but now realized that Don Texas might be interested enough to check?

I found it all amusing so didn’t bother to call him on it. The house had six rooms, one for each Traveler, and four baths. It came already furnished with a nice yard, pool, and a decent-sized garage. Of course, I’d foot the bill if they wanted to renovate anything, as I’d promised Mars.

That was everything I was looking for so I bought the house and decided the Travelers could decide for themselves whether they wanted to look into that rumor or not. At this point, the Travelers were all but settled. They had jobs. They had money. No one who liked breathing was going to bother questioning their legitimacy. Now, there wasn’t much I could do for them short of sending them home to Earth-Aleph.

I could have had Doormaker do that at any time, but had held off because I was cautious of the Simurgh’s machinations. Seeing how I had no intention of killing the Simurgh myself, that sounded like way too much work, it was time for me to offload the job onto someone else.

Which was why after making sure my smokers were good for the next four hours, I made a quick call to check something, then stepped out of the store. There was a lull period between lunch and dinner so I wasn’t bothering anyone.

Well, no one except the people who’d been parked outside my restaurant.

That had to be the most boring job in the city, to just sit there and wait until I left so they could report to their higher-ups that “Soprano is up to something!” It wasn’t just the PRT, either. Cops. Empire. A few of the minor gangs that had swelled to fill the vacuum left behind by the ABB.

I snorted with amusement before making a beeline to the PRT van. White and featureless, like the kind that offered candy to little girls. If they insisted on crashing my street, I figured I may as well scare the piss out of them for the giggles.

I pulled open the front passenger side door like I owned the damn thing. “PRT office. Drive.”

The man inside looked at me like I was an endbringer sitting down for a burger. “H-Huh?”

I waved at the man in the back. He was surrounded by professional listening equipment, no doubt aimed at my restaurant. “You’ve been here for over a week. I know for a fact you can’t listen through my bounded fields, so you may as well make yourselves useful and be my chauffeur. Now, drive.”

“Y-Yes, sir!”

X

Robin Swoyer

Shirou Emiya was a pretty cool guy. He’d been running around all over the city ever since the cooking contest, both with and without Vista. The whole city has had the time to take his measure and he was… He was a hero, full stop. That came as an immense relief for us all.

Initially, there had been a lot of worry about the kind of man he’d be, and what his qualifications were exactly. Sure, the director had received a letter from Don Texas singing his praises, but he also called him “Possibly Satan.” The same letter all but admitted to identity fraud and claimed he had extensive experience with decapitation strikes and “the acquisition and deployment of various weapons of mass destruction.”

Back before I triggered, I used to be a military man, a not-so-proud, OOH-RAH shouting, Crayola-connoisseur marine. Strictly speaking, I had the most formal training in that regard out of all my Protectorate colleagues. So understandably, the contents of that letter worried me a great deal and lingered in my mind.

I was willing to tentatively admit that my worries were largely unfounded. Shirou was the ideal of a hero. He was kind, compassionate, and ridiculously competent. Whether mentoring Vista on her swordsmanship or rescuing hostages from a robbery gone wrong, he had a reassuring presence that came off as genuine rather than condescending.

It was a rarity, especially for heroes of his power. People with good powers often let it go to their heads, or hyper-fixated on their own troubles. It wasn’t anything malicious, just human nature. But with Shirou, it was easy to see that he genuinely cared. For the victims, the cops, and even for the criminals.

“Good work out there,” I told him, clapping him on the shoulder. I found him in the breakroom eating a late lunch. It was one of those bento boxes, with rice, several slices of a rolled omelet, seaweed salad, and what was either chicken nuggets or fried croquettes.

“Ah, Velocity,” Shirou greeted with a warm smile. That was another thing. The man was unfailingly polite. Even while speaking fluent English, he used to call everyone “-san” before we told him he could drop the honorifics. “Good afternoon.”

“Heard you were running around since dawn, Shirou. I know you’re good, but don’t overwork yourself. We all need rest.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m used to a demanding schedule.”

“If you say so.” I said skeptically.

That was another thing about him: Shirou Emiya was not a normal man. He claimed he came from Fuyuki City, but no such place existed according to Armsmaster, not even pre-Kyushu. None of us wanted to pry, but he’d sometimes say or do things that alluded to a colorful past, the kind that got classified to hell and back. 

There was that time he conversed with Miss Militia in halting Kurdish. Not fluently, but just knowing that relatively obscure language spoke volumes. Or that time he defused a bomb in two seconds. He stared at it for a moment, then picked a seemingly random wire that detached the fuse. Or the time he identified every possible point of entry in a building before Assault even finished reporting to console.

At this point, we were half-convinced that he was Japanese James Bond. Or maybe the leader of a super-secret task force within the Sentai Elite. There was a sizable betting pool on the subject. Was it any wonder people were on edge?

I looked for a conversation topic. Great guy, but he was a bit too reserved, content to go with the flow, even if the flow was just silence. “Did you make that yourself?”

“Hmm? My bento? Yes. Cooking is a hobby of mine. Would you like some?”

I filed “professional chef” under his long list of talents. “No, I’m good. I guess that’s how you met Soprano, then.”

“Ahaha… Something like that. He prefers Texas barbeque and I like to cook traditional Japanese dishes, though we do sometimes experiment.”

“That’s pretty cool. Say, where are you living right now? You’re an outed cape and you just came to the city so finding a place to rent can’t be easy.”

“For now, I’m sleeping on John’s couch, but it’s not as if I can’t find a hotel,” he said with an unbothered smile. “It just feels a little premature to find a more permanent location when I’m planning on leaving the city eventually.”

“Leave? Where to?”

“The Slaughterhouse Nine. I will take them down.” The way he said that made me pause. There was no arrogance, no hubris. It was a statement of fact. The sun rose in the east. Soprano liked brisket. The Slaughterhouse was going to die.

“That… Alone?”

“Alone.”

“You can’t… Shirou, that’s a bit much, even for you. If you coordinate with the PRT, then–”

“Then more people will die. John gave me more than enough informaiton and he has reason to believe involving more heroes would be a bad idea. Thank you for your concern, but I won’t need additional support.”

“Did Soprano give you any of his tech?”

“He gave me myself, and a set of blueblood circuits, so I suppose you can say that.”

“I… I don’t follow.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t be leaving right away. I would like to clean up the Empire at the very least.”

Before I could comment further, the breakroom door opened and the scariest son of a bitch alive walked through without a care in the world.

“Yo,” John Soprano said with a casual wave. “Oh, good, you’re both here.”

Shirou happily took another bite of an omelet slice. “Hello, John. Did you need something?”

“Yup. You. Wanna go kill the Simurgh?”

“The Simurgh? I thought you were going to leave her alone until she descended next year.”

“I was, but then I realized that I’d done pretty much everything I could for the Travelers. All that’s left is to go murder the space pigeon. I’ve come this far. At this point, I may as well butcher the chicken and be done with it, you know?”

“Did you fix Noelle?”

“I did. They’re also not Simurgh bombs anymore. I smacked them a few times with Pain Breaker when they were sleeping.”

“I see. I suppose they will soon be leaving for Earth-Aleph then,” Shirou said, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation topic. “Didn’t you just get them a house here though?”

“Yes, it’s a bit of a shame, but there’s no reason they can’t come and go. They’re not high schoolers anymore. Maybe they have family worth going back to, maybe they don’t. In the end, I didn’t buy them a house because I needed more workers in my restaurant; I bought them a house because I made a promise.”

“That is true. In that case, let’s talk about how you plan to kill the Simurgh.”

That was as much as I could handle. I held out a hand before each of them. “Woah, hold on. You just said a lot of dangerous words there. Simurgh? The Travelers were Simurgh bombs?”

The Texan dipped his hat like an old-timey cowboy. “That’s right. They’re not anymore.”

“A-Are you sure? You can fix Simurgh bombs?”

“Me? No, of course not. Medea Lily though? Yeah, I reckon she can fix just about anything.”

“Who?”

“Don’t worry about it. Anyway, you in, Shirou?”

The Japanese ginger nodded, like he’d been asked to go grocery shopping, not hunt down a fucking endbringer. “Of course. You know I am. But you said ‘both’ earlier. I take it Velocity is included in your plan?”

“Yes. The plan is simple: You,” he pointed at his friend, “will go stab her with Gae Bolg. Her core qualifies as a heart, yes?”

“It should, and Gae Bolg’s curse is indeed absolute, she has no way of surviving that. But that raises several questions. First, how am I going to get to her? I would need to be within thrusting range. Second, there is her precognitive ability to consider. Though she cannot avoid Gae Bolg once the Noble Phantasm is invoked, that does not mean that I am immune to her precognition otherwise. Unless you did something to my body?”

“I didn’t, not besides giving your circuits a big upgrade. Speaking of, you should be able to use your Noble Phantasms without much strain now, right?”

“Right, and I appreciate it. That still leaves us the problems I mentioned.”

“That’s where this guy comes in.” Don Texas placed a hand on my shoulder.

Back in my marine days, when I’d just gotten out of boot camp, I met a lieutenant general. The entire battalion had scrambled to welcome him. The battalion commander had us wake up at five in the morning and run drills so he could demonstrate our readiness to the senior officer.

Except, the lieutenant general was a thoroughly unimpressive man. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but he wasn’t it. He was short and visibly out of shape. The only war he’d been waging was against his receding hairline. All that pomp and circumstance for so much disappointment.

Don Texas was the exact opposite of that. This was a guy who absolutely could back up every word he said. He didn’t try to put on any airs, but I felt as if the weight of the world had settled on my shoulders.

“I… I run fast. My power isn’t that useful,” I told him nervously. “I can’t carry Shirou to an endbringer. And I’m definitely not immune to her precog, if that’s even possible.”

“You’re not, but Vimana is.”

“Vima-what?

“Vimana, the Throne of the Heaven-Soaring King.”

“Oh, yes, that makes sense. I now know what a Vimana is,” I said, nodding sarcastically.

“Actually, that might work,” Shirou chimed in. “Vimana… It should have significant stealth capabilities.”

The don nodded. “It does, the kind even Gilgamesh considered worthy. It’s also as fast as thought.”

“Ah, I see where you’re going with this. Velocity, when you speed up, does the world slow down in your eyes? Your perception, it scales alongside your power, right?”

“It… does…” I admitted. “I do sometimes use it to think if I need a moment.”

“And do you need to be actively running?”

“No, it’s a breaker state that I can enter or exit at will. I won’t be able to interact with the world meaningfully at my max speed though.”

“That doesn’t matter. Vimana is more interaction than you’ll ever need,” Soprano said. “Do this for me and you get to keep Vimana.”

“I… I don’t even know what a Vimana is.”

“Magic airplane that responds to your thoughts. You don’t even need to know how to fly it. You’ll see. You’ve always wanted to travel, right? This is perfect for you.”

“How did you know that?”

“You joined the military becasue you wanted to see the world, only to find the military is kind of a joke now.”

“You…” I took a deep breath. This was John Soprano. He knew things. I didn’t know if that was because of “hat lady” and whatever Watchdog connections he had, but he did. “You’re a very scary man, John.”

“I know. Anyway, I’m giving you a magic airplane. Fly Shirou to the Simurgh and he’ll take care of the rest.”

“You make it sound so easy. You’re still asking me to play tag with an endbringer.”

“I am,” he agreed, “which is why the reward is so great, too. Vimana isn’t a joke. It’s one of the few things even Gil valued. I can guarantee that this is the single easiest way you heroes will ever kill the Simurgh. And, assuming you can stick to her, Shirou will not fail.”

I studied him closely. He… He wasn’t wrong. I’d wanted to see the world and I thought the marines could be my ticket out of small town Indiana, only to find myself stuck in a dead-end job at a base no one gave a damn about. When I got my power, I’d been thrilled. Not because I wanted to be a hero, but because it was an honorable discharge out of the military. 

I’d pretty much given up my dream of traveling. The world was kind of a shithole everywhere, anyway. But… But here was the most overpowered bastard alive, promising me everything I’d ever wanted. All I had to do was trust that he wasn’t trying to kill us off, trust that his estimation of the Simurgh was correct. All I had to do was fly Shirou to the Simurgh, something any sane man would have called suicide.

I looked at Shirou and all I saw was calm acceptance and quiet encouragement. It was the look of a man who was absolutely assured in his success. Given the task at hand, I realized that there might be more truth to that ridiculous letter than any of us gave it credit for.

And yet, I believed them. I found myself nodding almost before I knew what I was doing.

“Okay,” I said, voice cracking with possibilities. “Let’s go kill an endbringer.”

Author’s Note

We don’t know which branch of the military Velocity joined, only that he joined and was disappointed. I randomly picked the marines, I guess because my cousin joined lol.

Vimana’s wiki description reads like a fucking fever dream. It’s got lasers, nukes, and apparently, “ancient biological weapons,” whatever that means for ancient India.

Animal Fact: Dolphins are yellow-gold. No, not that kind of dolphin. Mahi mahi are sometimes called dolphins or dolphinfish.

No one's quite sure why, but it's thought that this is because they tend to swim alongside ships like dolphins do and might have been mistaken for the psycho rapist druggies. Also, their more common name is Hawai'ian and means "strong strong."