Sable's brain caught up to her eyes about three seconds after Baxter finished speaking.
Baxter. Baxter Rudd. Standing in the middle of a destroyed cafe in the magji district of Brimton with two masked strangers, one of whom was currently holding her off the ground by the back of her neck with a boxing glove that felt alive. Baxter, who she hadn't thought about in months. Baxter, who she'd last seen crawling away from Reid and Greer with blood in his teeth and tears in his eyes. Baxter, who was supposed to be gone.
The confusion passed fast. Faster than she expected. What replaced it was sothing hot and sharp and familiar.
"Are you fucking serious right now?" Sable's voice ca out hoarse from the grip on her neck, but the venom was unmistakable. "You fucking hired people to co after
just because I cheated on you?"
Baxter's smile didn't waver.
"You couldn't even handle your own shit when we were together, and now you're paying strangers to do your dirty work?!" Her lip curled. "You're pathetic, Baxter. You've always been pathetic. You talk and talk and talk but when it cos down to actually doing sothing, you can’t ever back your shit up!"
Baxter’s smile thinned.
"Is that why you're hiding behind a girl in a panda mask? Because you can't face
yourself?" Sable forced a laugh that sounded more like a bark. "God, you really haven't changed at all. Still the sa loud, useless, pathetic little shit who couldn't keep his mouth shut or his woman satisfied."
The flicker in Baxter's eyes turned into a tremor.
"You want to know why I cheated on you? You really want to know?" Sable's voice rose, fueled by the adrenaline and pain and the desperate hope that every second she kept talking was a second closer to the Peacekeepers arriving. "Because Reid is twice the man you'll ever be. He didn't have to brag about how strong he was or how talented he was or how everyone should recognize his greatness. He just was. And you? You were just noise. Constant, endless, insufferable noise that I had to smile through every single day until I couldn't take it anymore."
Baxter slapped her. An open-handed slap across the face that snapped her head to the side. The crack echoed through the empty cafe. From anyone else, the slap would have been nothing. Sable had taken hits from daemons that rattled her skull. But this one landed differently. Not because of the force but because of who threw it. Because Baxter Rudd, the man she'd stepped on and discarded like old clothes, had just struck her across the face with his bare hand. And the look on his face when she turned back to him wasn't rage or hurt.
It was satisfaction.
"Hurt her." Baxter's voice cracked as the composure he'd been barely holding together collapsed. "Cripple her! Beat her until she wants to die but can't! Do it! DO IT NOW!"
Cody's jaws tightened around Sable's throat, pinning her against the wall. The hound head's teeth didn't break skin but pressed in just enough that she could feel each point of pressure against her windpipe. Sable's hands flew to her throat, clawing at sothing that wasn't a hand or a glove but a living thing with a mouth and hunger behind its grip. Her legs kicked against the wall, heels scraping plaster, but there was nowhere to go.
Max lunged.
The first hit was a straight shot to the ribs. Sable heard the crack before she felt it. A harsh snapping sound that seed too loud to co from inside a human body. Then the pain arrived, a white-hot spike that radiated from her right side and swallowed everything else. Her mouth opened in a scream that Cody's grip choked into a wheeze.
Max pulled back and hit her again. Sa side. The second rib went with a sound like a stick breaking underfoot. Sable's vision went white at the edges. Her body tried to curl inward to protect itself but Cody held her flat against the wall, arms and legs dangling, ribs exposed.
The third hit landed lower. Her hip. The impact sent a shockwave through her pelvis that made her legs stop kicking instantly, not from obedience but from the signals between her brain and legs being temporarily severed by pure agony. Sothing in her hip dislocated.
"That's it! This is what you deserve!" Baxter was pacing behind Zoey, his fists clenched at his sides, his eyes wide and wet. "Do you feel that, Sable?! Do you feel what it's like?! That's what I felt every single day after what you and those scumbags did to !"
Sable tried to speak. Tried to form words around the pain and the grip on her throat and the black spots crowding her vision. What ca out was sothing between a sob and a gurgle.
Max hit her left arm at the elbow. The joint snapped with a pop that made Tiffany giggle from her position by the shattered window. Sable scread, really scread this ti, because Cody had loosened just enough to let the sound out. It tore through the ruined cafe and out into the street.
"You think you can just ruin soone's life and walk away?!" Baxter was no longer pacing. He was standing directly in front of Sable, looking up into her swollen, tear-streaked face. "You think you can cheat and lie and laugh about it and there won't be any consequences?!"
Max hit her other arm. Sa spot. Sa angle. Sa pop. Sable's scream was weaker this ti. Her body was starting to shut down. Like when the pain exceeds what the nervous system was designed to process. Her eyes were glazing over but she was still conscious. Still present. Still hearing every word.
"This isn't just about you either," Baxter told her, and his voice had dropped to sothing quieter. Sothing almost calm, which was worse than the screaming. "You're the first. Reid is last. And everyone in between is going to feel exactly what I felt. Every single one of you."
Sable's head lolled to the side. Through the tears and the swelling and the haze of pain, she could see the panda-masked woman standing perfectly still.
There was sothing wrong about that. Sothing worse than the violence itself. The complete detachnt. Like breaking a person's body was no different from any other task on a list.
Max hit her right kneecap. The sound it made was awful.
Sable stopped screaming.
"We got coppers coming!" Tiffany called from the window, her polar bear head turning to track sothing in the street.
Zoey pulled Cody back. The hound head released Sable's throat reluctantly, its jaws parting with saliva dripping. Sable slid down the wall and crumpled to the floor in a heap. Both arms snapped. One knee swollen to twice its size. Ribs caved on one side. She was breathing, but each breath ca with a hitching sound that told of internal injury and/or bleeding.
Baxter stood over her cackling like a madman. He was ecstatic that he had five more to go.
"Baxter." Zoey's voice was muffled by the panda mask. "Ti to go."
He didn't move imdiately. He was staring down at Sable's broken form with that unreadable expression. Then he crouched, leaned close to her ear, and whispered sothing that Zoey couldn't hear. Sable didn't respond. Maybe she couldn't.
Baxter stood up and walked toward the door without looking back.
"Peacekeepers. A lot of them." Tiffany reported from the entrance, her hand resting on the hilt of her greatsword.
Zoey stepped through the ruined cafe entrance and into the sunlight. Brimton's magji district looked different from here than it did on their drive through. From the car, it had seed like a quieter, cleaner version of Luminaurora. From the front of a destroyed cafe with Peacekeepers closing in from multiple directions, it looked like a place that wasn't ready for what just walked into it.
There were six of them. Full uniform. Magji tools and daemonic weapons drawn. They ford a loose semicircle at the end of the block, and more were arriving from side streets. A barrier was being set up behind them, the faint shimr of barrier magji sealing off the block from civilian foot traffic.
"HALT! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR ASSAULT AND DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY WITHIN THE MAGJI DISTRICT! SURRENDER YOUR WEAPONS AND SUBMIT TO DETAINNT!"
Zoey looked at them. Then at Tiffany. Then back at the Peacekeepers.
'This is going to be fun,' Inner Zoey grinned.
'We need to test where we're at anyway.' Zoey rolled her shoulders.
The first Peacekeeper fired. A bolt of compressed mahna that scread through the air with enough force to put a hole in a concrete wall. Zoey swayed without a change in her breathing. The bolt sailed past her ear and exploded against the cafe's already ruined facade, sending another shower of debris into the street.
The second and third fired together. Coordinated shots from different angles made to cut off her paths of movent. She ducked under the first, letting it pass over her head close enough to feel the heat, then moved into the gap between the second shot's trajectory and the building to her right. Two spells wasted on empty air.
'Just like magjistars in Luminaurora,' Zoey thought. 'They keep their distance and throw magji.'
She closed the gap.
The Peacekeepers weren't ready for soone to suddenly teleport at them. Their training was built around maintaining range, cycling through spells, and letting the accumulated magical firepower do the work. Magjistars who charged head-first into a line of Peacekeepers were either suicidal or powerful enough that the standard approach wouldn't work on them. The smart assumption was the first one.
Zoey was not the first one.
The first Peacekeeper tried to fire point-blank. Zoey's left glove, Max, caught his wrist before the spell left his magji tool and twisted. The Peacekeeper scread as his wrist was broken. Zoey's right fist caught him in the gut. He folded over her fist and she tossed his collapsing body into the Peacekeeper beside him, tangling both of them to the ground.
The third swung a mahna-coated staff at her head. Zoey slipped it. The staff passed over her right shoulder as she stepped inside his reach. From this distance, the staff was useless. Her fist was not. She hit him twice in the liver, quick sharp shots empowered with mahna coating her fists. His body seized and his legs buckled as the pain hit.
'Haha! These fuckers are just as useless as the peacekeeper in our city!' Inner Zoey noticed. 'Maybe they only sent small fries because nothing ever happens here or sothing.'
The fourth ca at her with a short sword radiating frost. Ice magji channeled through the blade. It was the most dangerous approach so far because a sword doesn't need technique to cut you. But the person holding it swung it like they’ve never held a sword before. She punched the side of the blade, shattering it to pieces and drove Max into his gut. Cody ca up under his chin in the sa motion. The Peacekeeper went soaring through the air.
The fifth had backed up and was charging a larger spell. Zoey didn't give him the chance. She teleported with her ring and hit him with a right cross that turned off his internal lights.
The sixth had already turned and started running.
Zoey let him go.
Behind her, Tiffany was cleaning up the reinforcents that had been arriving from the side streets. "Cleaning up" was a generous description. Polar Bear Tiffany moved through the additional Peacekeepers with her greatsword like a force of nature. She used the flat of the blade to send bodies flying, to smashed people into the concrete, and hurt people. Non-lethal, of course, or Zoey might hate her! Tiffany's definition of non-lethal involved a concerning amount of blood and a very loose interpretation of "they'll survive."
"Polar! Let's go!" Zoey called out.
"One second!" Tiffany's sword connected with a Peacekeeper's magji robes and launched him into a fruit stand across the street. "Okay, done!"
The three of them ran. Baxter was slower than both of them. Zoey grabbed his arm and hauled him along while Tiffany covered their retreat, deflecting the occasional long-range spell that ca whizzing after them. They cut through alleyways, vaulted fences, and within four minutes had cleared the magji district's central area and made it to the outskirts where the magji barriers thinned and blended into the non-magji city.
Zoey pulled off her panda mask once they were in the clear. Tiffany did the sa with her polar bear. Baxter leaned against a wall, gasping for air, his face flushed and his legs shaking.
"You're out of shape," Zoey told him.
"I live... in a shack... in the woods..." Baxter managed between breaths. "When would I... work out..."
"Every day. That's when." Zoey wasn't even winded.
"Are we wanted criminals now?" Tiffany asked, tying her hair back up with a band she pulled from her wrist.
"In Brimton, probably."
"Cool. Another one to the list. If I get five more, I might get another badge." Tiffany seed genuinely pleased about this.
“Badge? You’re not still working as an assassin are you?” Zoey’s eyes narrowed at her.
“No! I just ant, if I was still working as an assassin!” Her voice got softer. “Then maybe I would have earned a badge…”
“Tiffany. If I find out you’re still killing people for money, our friendship is over.” Zoey told her.
“I’m not! I’m really not! Please don’t break up with !!!” Tiffany clutched Zoey’s legs begging and pleading.
“First off, we’re not together. Second off, I believe you. Just don’t say things that I might misunderstand.” Zoey told her.
“I won’t… I’m sorry…” She sobbed with tears in her eyes.
“Quite eccentric for rogue magjistars but no matter. How are we going to get to the others now?” Baxter interrupted their mont.
“Oh! Oh! I have an idea!” Tiffany sprung up like she was never crying in the first place, wiping her tears away. “We could stake out that girl’s hospital room and if any of the people on the list show up, we can ambush them there before making a quick getaway!” Tiffany suggested.
“That could work…” Zoey wasn’t much of a thinker herself. “If they really are good friends, they’d definitely check up on one that was just recently hospitalized.”
“Brilliant! We may be able to take out several in one go!” Baxter grinned.
“Let’s go find out where she’s hospitalized!” Tiffany led the charge.
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