Fin
Part Two, Chapter Five


At last, Aerrow.

Sweaty hands clamp over her fleshy wrist and drag her down from the metal doors of the transport vehicle. A break-out. As their feet skid across the dusty road, she thinks of the tooth-paste spotted mirror over her sink. She is out of breath. Luxuries intended to fatten her like a dull-witted turkey before the harvest moon. It worked.

He wears the red cape like a general; tall and severe. Two-thirds hero and one-part unrepentant murderer. Absorbed the essence of the Dark Ace when he stuck his sapphire energy blades into his gut. Cross his arms at the elbows and ripped him open at the seams with a darkened spray of steaming blood. A swipe of the wrist and Aerrow smears his visage like a cannibalistic warrior. Crimson drops mimic sweat and dribble into his ears.

Her time is come.

Cyclonis faces the colourful graffiti with relief. Vandalism of the young on brick walls. Her deathbed between the respectable logos of the laundromat and the butcher's, and swallows her breath. Presses the insides of her naked wrists together in visualized bondage and leans forward. There are no sympathetic mourners, no black robes to adorn the last royal. Only a man.

The grease-smeared coat of a dead hobo will be her funeral shroud. Brown and stinking, carrying the dead flecks of flattened flies, the crusted scatter of charitable fast-foot. Leather. Likely pilfered.

The front of his groin meets her rear, dangerous and inviting, and together they gyrate a hula-hoop of sparking hatred. Aerrow will get all that he wants, his victory, her death, and her champion's Piper - and through the undignified murder of a cover story, so will she. Fingers curl into the softness of her hip as the thrum of a welcome blade touches the column of her fluttering neck. A beautiful sword, held in the hands of three warriors, passed down through execution. She wants it to hurt.

"Last words?"

She cackles outwardly, inwardly she is crying with laughter.

"You win."