Rhapsody of Dragon Fire

Hands flying across the shoulder straps like she was trying to play Mozart along the spines of two touch-starved street kittens, panic in her chest as the frozen ground drew closer and closer, speed far from under control, Kira narrowly avoided becoming a stain on the sidewalk.

To think: Arata was capable of designing a device straight from a science fiction novel but hadn’t the wisdom to install brakes for literal sigildry-powered rockets.

When she came to, Kira found herself damp in a snowdrift, having ambled her way into the softest landing she could locate in the few seconds between loop-de-loops and sudden hairpin turns, buildings, light poles, and errant branches nearly splattering, bisecting, or impaling her, respectively, before she’d returned to solid ground.

Hobbling away from the crash site, she left the smoking device to be found by another.

Kira was close now, the elderly neighborhood where Allie had taken up residence only a brief walk away, but more important matters wore on the wielder than proper storage or disposal. That was someone else’s problem now, and such paled in comparison to the ruddy glow smearing gradients of orange-red in the night sky.

A crowd was already forming at a safe distance. They parted as sirens pealed so the squat crimson trucks could roll through, masked volunteers in flame-retardant gear shouting thanks through bullhorn systems already beginning to crackle as magic wormed into their circuits. The berth allowed Kira passage as well. A willing accomplice in the breakdown of the engines – she had to pass so close alongside to avoid others – guilt gnawed at the frayed linen of her stomach.

However, the wildfires were outstripping her destructive potential by a wide margin.

They bathed the neighborhood in light. Crowned every home as far as the eye could see in a westerly direction. Already one engine had been claimed, left abandoned in the road for buzzards to pick at. Firefighters were escorting elderly citizens as best they could against the inferno, but were rapidly losing ground, as the limp hoses trailing from the open holes in the road told, manholes discarded to get at precious water.

Kira slipped behind a car and out of sight to watch as one confident soul took the hose up again and attempted to douse the flames marching down a two-story home. He let fly a powerful stream to the grand result of… nothing. The fires were unperturbed; they weren’t even stalled by the water, only scoffed at the futile effort, moseying over the liquid to boil away the evidence of ever trying.

He ran, then. Kira did as well. The heart of the chaos was her target, not these fringe battles being fought. She pressed the neck of her sweater to her face and pushed on, scent of stale ash preferable to the stuff above.

Not just smoke and embers polluted the air, but magic as well, so thick it settled on her skin like lubricant grease. A wielder lay at the head of this destruction. Kira had a good idea who.

She made decent progress before being noticed.

“Halt!” someone shouted. Two shadows peeled away from a low wall, rose from relaxed positions, as if shooting the breeze over a shared beer on this warm summer night while they lauded the trails of lazy fireflies. From the jumble of pipes in their arms, shooting of an altogether different kind had definitely been on the agenda.

“Please! My grandmother’s in danger here! I need to get to her!” Kira raised her hands as anyone would when facing down a loaded barrel, voice the lowest tone she could muster. “Are you to here to help?” she added as innocently as she could.

All suits, masks, and mirrored sunglasses – Don’s men. The only help on offer from them would be a quick escort to the afterlife. The clean shaven of the two relaxed his weapon towards the ground with his finger off the trigger. From his back pocket he produced a sheaf of folded papers for his mustachioed partner, who also wore a ruggedly handsome broken lip.

“Who’s your grandmother, son?”

They don’t recognize who I am, Kira realized. If the Don had been telling the truth about his men having orders to kill, then they should have done so. Maybe they’re on the lookout for a longer haired me.

“Tsubone, sir.” She gave the address too for good measure. It was only a single digit off from Allie’s, so it was easy enough to recall.

Licking a finger, the one with the facial hair flipped through a number of the sheets until finding one he wanted, and began to run a finger down a list of names in five narrow columns. All the while the neighborhood continued burning around them. Clearly there was no rush, given whose territory they occupied. Kira waited, debating if she could shuffle her feet little by little forward to gain as much ground as possible before the pair noticed. It would get her mind off the timbers snapping like dry femurs around her.

Of the violence soon to come, she had few reservations. Any fate brought upon his men was of the Don’s doing through his admonishment by Confucius’ golden rule.

“She’s one of ours,” she heard. The two men exchanged a glance and a nod, gesturing for Kira to approach.

Elated, Kira jogged up to meet them. For a moment she humored their speech about Don’s supporters being rescued, how they can be picked up here, we’d never harm our own, blah blah blah the Don of Dragons is good, before engorging herself on that elation when she seized the men by their wrists.

Dumb grins spread across their faces like melting butter, a giggle slipping from Broken Lip as Kira relieved him of his weapon and visualized the moment of her and Arata’s heist when she’d been shot at. Guns, by design, were easy to understand: pull the trigger and a projectile comes out. Wielder-made weapons operated off the same principles.

Broken Lip continued to giggle even after his partner’s face was replaced with a cavernous hole belching violet smoke, and no desire of self-preservation surfaced when Kira next turned the weapon on him, pulling the trigger again. Teeth grit, she braced herself for a second blast to ring her eardrums.

Only this time to no result.

Sighing, Kira tugged the elastic cord on her necklace, useless weapon tossed aside for a free hand. Mental note – these weapons only get one shot, apparently. Leaving him to feast on his own limbs, she sallied forth once more into the inferno, second gun clutched tight in her hands. One finger rested lightly on the trigger.

What magic hadn’t melted here had been dealt a finishing blow by intense heat. Kira skirted the innards of eviscerated trucks, glass shards scattered like jacks from light posts, metal softened, until their ruined heads bowed guiltily to the scalding ground. Stealth became impossible. Heat funneled her away from those threadbare shadows that remained too close to the flames for sheltering, forcing her run in the road against all the ministrations of childhood that had demanded otherwise.

Soon enough Kira came upon the first body draped over a car, reeking of pork. Wrapped in fabric, she’d thought it was a rug at first all rolled up, the way the Falcon’s knees ended flat and swirled together. His sword was undrawn, and burned Kira’s hand when she tried to take it.

She tried not to think of how many family members the group had here. How many were cooking inside their homes. Crimes upon crimes numbering tens of lifetimes were his to answer for, and the thought drove her forward – second to the well-being of the friend he intended to add to his list.

Luckily, he was just outside Allie’s home; unfortunately, the Don hadn’t come alone.

He stood in the center of the road with arms aloft, waving limbs as though he were conducting a grand symphony of destruction, face a mask of pleasure.

In a way, he was. Kira watched as flames eating away at the neighborhood pulled this way and that, mirroring his movements against wind and logical paths the fires should have been traveling in search of fuel to consume. Flames cozied up near him and his men, but refused to leap an invisible threshold in a wide circular field around them – a barrier of raw heat.

She counted nearly two dozen men at his side alone, approximately twenty-four times the number she’d feel confident in taking the fight to on a good day. Each was armed, weapons ranging from a variety of ranged armaments to clubs, cudgels, katanas, and even some twisted mixture of sword and bow held in two hands.

Closer to the edge was the Lieutenant, exposed shoulders gleaming with sweat. How the men withstood that torturous heat without complaint wearing their suits was a mystery for the ages.

One leg was raised, its boot planted firmly atop a shaking mass of clothing and hair, tail tucked into itself.

Her pilfered weapon had no iron sight by which to aim by, but Kira used one thick ring of a welded exhaust pipe to center up the weapon’s barrel with the Lieutenant’s golden mass of hair. It was up before she realized her finger was skirting the trigger. Instinct screamed at her to pull. This was the right choice. Future Kira was alive, happy and, above all, a person worthy of love.

Any choice fate pushed her towards was the correct choice, else that glimpse of the future wouldn’t have been possible.

Arata’s bloodlust – hers now – demanded this. Kira held her gaze despite roiling flames tearing their image into her retinas.

But it’s not a future you want.

Her arms stung with the weight of the weapon, shaking now from the strain of supporting the heavy mishmash of metal filling her muscles with lactic acid. Only one shot meant her aim had to be perfect. Flames cut off every angle where a more experienced gunslinger might have lined up both Don and Lieutenant together for a single, devastating shot.

Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you.

We’ll get it when the Don isn’t surrounded by his men. Two people aren’t gonna do shit there.

Heartbeats thundered within her chest in parallel with each crashing footstep on the concrete in her mad dash to the fire’s edge.

What would killing the Lieutenant do other than piss off the Don? What would killing the Don of Dragons accomplish at this point other than drawing every eye to her location? Without his diamond in her hands, this endeavor only ended in pointless tragedy.

Screaming, Kira aimed the gun skyward and fired, painting a trail of violet smoke onto the greasy, black clouds choking out the night with the explosive sound of an overpacked firework.

Every head snapped in unison to face the new arrival.