Brash, intimidating, stupid, and certainly unaccommodating. It’s clear to me Velvet hasn’t sent her best to this pce.

  “Step away from the fucking mic!” One of them repeats.

  I give this overworked puppy of Velvet’s a soft smile, “Hey, hey~ Did you hear what I said, though?”

  “This dy’s crazy,” the other says, “let’s just get her out of here, right?”

  Love this part—always do. Before those two oafs’ eyes can even register the fact that my body’s left their sight, their nerves each fire off red, bring sirens. “Alert!” They cry, “Alert!” They weep, “This woman’s got her arm on our shoulder!”

  And then I say, “I took her for discourteous, but she won’t even take you out to get your ears cleaned? Seems like you really need it, too.”

  Rather than whipping around and attempting to slug me with everything they’ve got, both of ‘em just freeze up. Harsh as I was on them, it looks like they might actually be some of the brighter Sheets’ members.

  “Alls below,” one worriedly sighs, “what do you want?”

  Yeah, nevermind. Seems like sometimes it’s better to avoid jumping to conclusions, I guess. “I want you to get out of here, you and all of your buddies.” I restate. “It’d be a big help if you called for backup, actually! Make a nice, big scene about it—get your master!”

  It takes them a few fearful moments to finally step away from me, before looking back as if to make sure I won’t just kill them while their backs are turned. After shooing them again, they run off like the good little strays that they are.

  With the “security detail” dealt with, there’s only one small, eensy, teeny problem left. Looks like most of the customers got the memo to ‘fuck off,’ but there are a few stragglers left. My fault, really—should’ve started with the big guns right off the bat.

  “Oh, beloved Puck?~” I call, a hand on my chest for dramatic fir. A gentle gust of wind—something like the seabreeze in a coastal town—whirls around me. The ccking of wooden clogs on the ground behind me and then… Her voice.

  “Yes, summoner mine?” She coos, her tone just as dramatic, theatrical as mine—if not more. My gorgeous sea-sprite always appreciates an opportunity to make mischief. I do too, honestly, but there’s been less of that since I started doing things with King.

  “Would you be so kind as to shepherd these lost souls home?”

  With a flourish, she steps around me, patchwork hanbok flowing behind her like the waters she came from. Hair like thin sheets of kelp, almond-colored skin and ram’s horns the same color and texture as pearls—one time I asked her if they were the same material, and she just about throttled me out of offense. Guess she thought I might’ve taken ‘em off her.

  “In words befitting your station, my dear Fool?”

  “Send these idiots packing.”

  She bows toward me, giggling like a child might, “At your Whims, summoner.”

  The nymph saunters over to the DJ’s equipment (that DJ, by the way, disappeared without a trace sometime after those guards first showed up) and takes ahold of that formation-microphone as if she’d spent her whole damn life doing it. There’s the click of a switch, and then momentary feedback. And I, giddy as if I just had a gift box tossed down in front of me, sit there and wait to see what she’ll do next.

  “Gosh,” she yawns, hand held up to her open mouth, chock-full of razor-sharp teeth. Alls below, she’s good—she nearly had me yawning! “I’m tired… I think I wanna go home.”

  It’s a lot easier than you’d think to make someone else believe that your desire’s no different from theirs. That’s more or less the idea behind Puck’s little trick. That small crowd stirs a bit, and then they all lift up their heads at once—which is, frankly speaking, fucking creepy. Can’t quite hear ‘em, but it looks to me that they’re just mirroring Puck’s Whims. Monkey see, monkey do, I guess.

  Before long they’ll all be heading back to wherever they came from—whatever they think is home.

  With a silent smile on her face, Puck turns back to me. Clearly she’s pretty happy with herself, and honestly? I’m happy with her, too!

  “Thanks, Puck.”

  She says, “it was nothing” just as that smile widens into a full-blown grin that betrays her humility, patting me on the shoulder with an excited hand. With her work all done and dusted, she withdraws back into my spirit, tucked in nice and cozy in my muscuture. Puck really doesn’t like being out much when King’s around—something about him sucking all the fun out of the room.

  That’s all the easy stuff out of the way, I guess—now I actually gotta pull my weight. King put me in charge of this next bit, after all.

  Velvet Alto, boss of the Red Sheets and defacto ruler of the first yer of Ouranofalus, is staring down at me like she just found her childhood puppy tearing her mom’s arm off.

  “You gotta be kidding me.” She mutters, “Luce?”

  The st drunk to leave stumbles past me, mumbling something about his kids. I’m sat on the edge of the sidewalk, just outside of the club—where I’ve been for at least ten minutes waiting on her. “Yup-yup. What’s up, Velv?”

  She’s in that outfit I like—a bck coat that goes a bit past her waist, worn from the years she’s spent wearing it in this pce. She never buttons the thing up, but I prefer it that way. Underneath, a dress-shirt with little sky-blue stripes, so thin that they almost blend right in with the white. Her hair’s gotten longer, too—an uncontrolled mess of red that almost seems hell-bent on eating her pale-skinned face.

  There’s a few barely-restrained summoners behind her, a posse of underlings looking to turn this into a bloodbath. She keeps these ones in particur on a tight leash, though. Wouldn’t do to have your strongest running rampant without you being able to keep an eye on ‘em, and most of Velvet’s underlings are pretty rowdy to begin with.

  Well, maybe not so rowdy compared to another’s.

  “Fucks’ sake.” A thumb and index finger work at the bridge of her nose, as if she’ll suddenly get healing hands capable of fixing up whatever migraine is tearing at her tonight. “Don’t tell me you’re actually running with Pussy now.”

  My smile is all she needs for an answer. Her hand whips down, eyes sharpening into a nasty gre. Then, she softens, all that frustration exhaled out with an annoyed breath. She doesn’t want to fight—she wants to talk. Maybe it’d be more accurate to say that she’s forcing herself to make that decision.

  “Do you still have my good sweater?” She asks.

  “Err…” Yeah, that thing’s been ripped to shreds—can’t even remember what fight I got into that led to it getting destroyed. “I’ll pay you back for it..?”

  She sighs, “You’re shit at writing phonemes.” Then, after an uncomfortable silence hangs there for what feels like an hour—so less than a minute—she asks, “Did you kill my guys in Old Vegas?”

  “Not all of ‘em.” I say, “Just uh… Most of ‘em.”

  “So you know that I gotta take you out?” Makes me feel bad how much concern’s in that tone of hers. She’s worried for me, practically telling me that I should skip town. It’s kinda annoying—do I look that weak? Damn.

  “Yup.” I say.

  “I’m at Earl, Luce. And you’re a Vi-”

  “An Earl.” I gloat.

  “Don’t bullshit me, you’ve been stuck at Viscount for years.”

  “Earl’s a tough nut to crack, you should know that.”

  She pivots back to her crew, back to me, and then back to them. There’s a moment of hesitation, and then resignation— she barks out a command, “Ready an evacuation order for the yer. Now.”

  “W-which districts?” One asks. Oooh, they really don’t know what’s about to go down, do they?

  “Everything within ten miles, dumbass—go!” She snaps, and they run off. The two of us are left alone with no one else to disturb what’s coming next.

  This is my favorite part—this anticipation. It’s like you can feel every nerve in your body, like they’re shivering. Is she gonna start us off, or am I gonna have to? If she does go first, is she just gonna test me, or will she give it everything she’s got? The fighting part is a royal pain in the ass, but this is something else.

  Her hand darts to her side, drawing a revolver faster than any regur old human eye could process. No wasted movements, no errors or fws, just a fsh of conceptual gunfire from the hip in well under a second from her neutral stance. She might be the best there is in the world at using that weapon of hers. Even if she isn’t, she won’t miss.

  Nah, she can’t miss. She’s Mastery, the Unerring Sharpshooter.

  My teeth cmp down on a bullet meant for my heart, stopping it with a small sizzle. I spit it back, trying to ignore that disgusting taste of metal and smoke, and it whizzes past her neck only a little slower than it was on its first firing. She looks, well… A little spooked.

  The only reason I know about her Unerring Sharpshooter-ness, of course, is because I’m a real heartbreaker. And, to be totally clear with you right now, it’s not my fault she spilled all of her secrets to someone she fell in love with, you know? I didn’t even ask—and besides: it’s common sense that you don’t bb to someone about your gnosis shards until you’ve put a ring on their finger. Even King doesn’t know about mine.

  With all that out of the way, dear audience, we’ve learned one thing about Velv—and I didn’t even have to stand up! Here’s how I see it: “Unerring” seemed pretty content with nding in my teeth, but I know that thing was on a track faster than Every Train’s straight for my heart. I’m sure a Baron would’ve been hit down to the correct valve. But what about a Viscount? An Earl?

  Far as I can tell, hitting any part of my body is a win when we’re equal on the chain. Maybe it helps if I let it hit a different part of me instead of its actual target? Man, this is why I hate banced fights.

  “Son of a bitch…” She says under her breath. Is she starting to get it? Ah, no—looks like she wants to test a few more volleys to make sure she’s right. Why’s she so hesitant to pull out her territory?

  King’s gonna get mad at me, but, I wanna be a little selfish—just a little—and get rid of all the pity in her eyes before we get down to the real fight. Even if it means it stays banced all the way through.

  Wanna py defense, Puck?

  Against this poor girl? She ughs in my mind, Of course, summoner mine.

  Three bullets strike against my body, only for some phantasmal grease to send them looping around my torso and then rocketing back into the air around us. Think one of ‘em hit a window, because I hear some gss shatter loudly nearby. Each of them were gncing blows, less painful than getting grazed.

  Velvet leaps back, like the distance is some kind of safety bnket. She knows it doesn’t matter at this level, same as I do—it’s just some mental trick. She yells, “Luce! What in the fuck are you pying at here?” And then her gun fires again.

  Bullets whip around me, disappearing after a few orbits. This time I could barely feel the impacts—think Puck is getting pretty good at this one. I think about her question for a second, and then say, “I’m just helping King out, Velv. Sorry.”

  “Do you know what you’re even doing?!” She shouts, forgetting herself, forgetting what’s happening and where she is, “The Lodgemaster—no, the fucking Tenken-bumon! You’re going to bring a shitstorm on yourself that you can’t ever take back if you keep at this!” Four bullets she’s sent to my heart, and she’s still going on about my damn safety—what’s wrong with her?

  A low drone—that sounds a lot like what I’d imagine a whale’s call to sound like—disrupts the quiet after what she says, almost loud enough to shake the ground. It’s a sound meant to bring unease, to tell you “Get the fuck out of here!” For their sake, I hope the people here listen. And if that isn’t enough for some of ‘em, the stars in the sky blink out, twisting in the inky bck only to return as a blood red. They cast a scarlet gloom on everything in the city—and if you ask me, it’s pretty fucking evil-looking.

  I put my hands up to my face, covering my eyes like a mom pying peekaboo with her kid. Then I ask, “Do you believe me now?”

  “Do I—” She gasps in exasperation, almost inaudible under that droning, “What does it matter? Of course I believe you, you idiot! Now, will you stop this crazy shit?!“

  My teeth fsh like rubies, catching and reflecting the light from the sky as a smile takes hold of me. She believes me! Finally, fuck! All of this ranting and raving about the powers-that-be… And even now, it’s like she thinks this fight’ll just come to an end because she says so. Why can’t she just get down to it and accept how things are?

  Even if it’s tough, even if it sucks a little bit, I follow my heart! That’s how it goes—but this sweet, pretty, simple little dummy thinks I’m gonna cut a Whim short just to avoid causing some trouble?

  Yeah fucking right.

  Like a house’s window opening up, my hands fold outward. Infinite potential, infinite possibilities—a shift in you and reality itself, guided by your heart, your passions. The Underside and the Real smashed and sandwiched here into one sublime existence—a territory of Whimsy.

  The cityscape around us adapts and distorts, that awful red banished from my bubble in favor of bright sunlight. Those wide streets begin to fill up with water to inevitably become rivers, and the sidewalks their stone embankments—lined with strange and beautiful wooden fences. Roots and trees sprout slowly from the sides of buildings, ciming parts of them even as their architecture becomes more complex and fanciful.

  The sun beams down on Velvet, its teeth and eyes both glowing brilliantly; swaying and rotating pyramids forming a circle all around it. And I ask her, now nearing the end of the thin rope that is my patience, “You gonna use yours?”