The Magicians' Realm Chapter 118: Home Invasion, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Chapter 118, everybody! Right now we're good for a few more chapters but I'm still working hard on a handful of fics this month so something is going to get done. Other than that, there's been a lot of clipping and rewriting—we're up to thirty-five scrapped pieces and there'll probably be more as I keep going and realize that some of the upcoming pieces could be compacted. We'll see.

Anyway—this chapter was written this year but ahead of the previous couple of chapters. Don't know why, but this part hit me like a sack of bricks so I just went with it. Definitely punchier than the original confrontation between Idgy and Teana about the future-seeing—and shoot-ier too. Kineil's quoting Jungle-2-Jungle there and a little bit of Big Fish and We're Back! in addition to the Skulduggery Pleasant series—and I'm pretty sure the other thing she says comes from somewhere on the internet.

Now depending upon the shotgun, it can fire more than two rounds—the version most people are probably familiar with is the break-action shotgun, followed by the pump-action, although the one I personally am most familiar with is the bolt-action shotgun. Of these guns, the break-action is the only one that fires two rounds; the rest can hold more ammo and basically have a miniature magazine on the bottom. For visual goodness, Kineil is firing a pump-action—which required me doing a little touching up because apparently I waffled between the different versions. And I'm probably going to end up on a watch list somewhere again thanks to looking all this up to make sure I had my terminology right….

Also I've been up a flight of spiral steps trying to go up them with said shotgun would be a pain in the patoot. The Weather Pain is from Don't Starve, by the by.

Angiembabe, thanks for the review! Good question—but if he did that, would he solve the problem, or just create a split dimension?...

References:

Original characters, + setting © Kineil D. Wicks (myself, not the girl in the story)

Idgy found Teana throwing her clothes into her suitcase as fast as she could.

"I don't think it's that dire," Idgy said placatingly.

"It's that dire," Teana said, not pausing at all in her frantic packing, seeing all those threads breaking, all those potential futures where they all got out of this in one piece no longer viable. Best-case scenario right now was distancing herself before it all hit the fan—

"Teana," Idgy said, putting her hand on her arm and stilling her with that one word. "This isn't about the premonition thing, is it?"

Teana twitched at that. "I—what—no, where—"

"Skul figured it out," she said, guiding Teana to sitting down on her bed. "And he said you saw us dying too, not just Kineil. So tell me, how bad is it? I won't say the future's not set in stone, but our perception of it is—"

"We need to go," Teana blurted. "Now. Right now. Yami and Skulduggery would follow us if we left—"

"So it's that bad."

"Idgy, we're all going to die."

"Yes, someday—"

"All of us, by Halloween. This Halloween."

"Ah," Idgy noised, grimacing. "That bad."

"What's that bad?" Kineil asked, sticking her head in. "Why are we packing?"

"Also we shouldn't take the road west," Teana said.

Kineil squinted a moment—eyes widened a second later as she pieced it together. "Heph! Vul!" she yelled, running through the house. "We're going out for breakfast! A BIG breakfast! And bring a change of clothes."

Jack ran after her, holding up a note. "This was pinned on the fridge!"

"I swear if those idiots left when we needed a getaway car—"

"Also there's a car coming up the drive."

"Good, that'll be them," Kineil said, snatching the note away from Jack as she headed the other direction. "I'll knock their heads together and then—"

"It's not them," Teana said abruptly, dread filling her chest.

Everyone looked at her for a beat—Idgy reacted first.

"Jack, come here," she said, going to Jack and kneeling so she was on his level. "When I tell you, I want you to run like you've never run before, into the woods—"

"What's going on?" Jack asked.

"Hopefully nothing—this is just in case," Idgy said, shooting a glance at Teana that she didn't see, too busy sorting through the threads—a lot of them tangled in this moment, and she wasn't sure which one worked out—

"Wait, where's Kineil?" she asked.

Idgy looked around. "I don't know, but we need to go—forget the suitcase," she said, grabbing Jack and heading for the stairs. Teana debated briefly, ran after her—the seconds would make the difference here. "Maybe we can sneak out through the arboretum and—"

Teana grabbed her and yanked back right before she could run across the living room, all of them yelping at the glass breaking and the single shot of hot lead cutting through where they could have been moments before.

"Don't move!" someone yelled from outside. "Everyone in this house is under arrest!"

"On whose authority!?" Idgy demanded, appalled, turning her body to better shield Jack.

"On the authority of the Administrators!" the person outside said. "Surrender now or—"

They screamed again, Teana hugging Idgy and flinching away from the explosions and the door exploding—outward, she realized. Someone was shooting from inside the house.

She traced the source just as Kineil lowered the shotgun.

"Screw you, strongly worded letter to follow!" she barked—except she didn't say screw.

"Language," Jack said.

"Yeah we'll talk about that later," Idgy told him. "Can we go out the side?"

It took Teana a beat to figure out she was talking to her. "I-I don't know—" Cut off as Kineil fired at the door again before flipping the gun over and reloading it. "I wasn't expecting the shotgun."

"Most people don't," Kineil told her.

"Y-you need to surrender!" someone outside yelled—Teana saw someone that looked recently deputized nervously peeking in, gun in hand, obviously unsure how to handle his newfound authority not being respected. "O-or we'll be forced to r-resort to lethal measures!"

Kineil grinned savagely, orange eyes burning as she ratcheted the gun. "This isn't how I die."

And with that she fired again, two shots out front before swinging around and firing down the length of the dining room. Judging by the crashes, whoever was trying to sneak in from the back wasn't having a good time of it.

Wait—

"In the arboretum," Teana ordered, pushing Idgy and Jack before her. "Kineil!"

Kineil followed, swiftly reloading the gun, glancing down the middle corridor of the house as they retreated to the glass room, reloading the gun again as Teana closed and blocked the door.

"We're surrounded by clear glass," Kineil pointed out. "I'm hoping you had a plan beyond this?"

"Give me a minute," she ordered, screwing her eyes shut and wishing this batch of threads were less tangled. Running for the woods was a fifty-fifty shot at this point…ah right, the reason she had picked this room. "Come on."

"Ah right, Yami's wonky plant experiments," Kineil said as Teana ran for a cluster of logs half-buried in dirt. "How is this going to help?"

"Give me a minute—" Yelp when Kineil shot through the window. "I don't work well under pressure!"

"Please fix that in the next five minutes."

She couldn't tell if the images of them all getting gunned down between here and the treeline were actual future events or just products of her panicked mind, but she had the deep-seated feeling that running across the open lawn wouldn't end well. Think—there was a reason she had felt that the arboretum was a good idea—

"There!" she barked, pointing at a long trestle table with an assortment of plant cuttings and wood bits buried in its soil. Run over, try to tip it—"Help me!"

Idgy ran over, Jack standing next to Kineil and clinging to her coattails—shoved at the table as Kineil blew out another window—

The table tipped over and hit the marble floor hard enough to crack it, spilling its contents and—

"We should go," Teana said, reversing course quickly as the vines started growing out of control.

"What about the tunnels?" Idgy asked, scooping Jack up.

Kineil looked at Teana questioningly. "Fifty-fifty," Teana admitted.

"Worth a shot," Kineil said, leading the charge and taking another shot at the door as they ran across the living room, Teana briefly pausing to slam the doors shut on the arboretum.

They had rattled down the basement steps about halfway when Teana grabbed Idgy's arm tightly. "Not this way."

Kineil leaned around them, squinting at the door across the basement that led to the limestone tunnels. "You three back upstairs."

"What are you going to do?"

Kineil put the gun back to her shoulder. "Answer the door."

The blast was deafening in the smaller enclosure—Teana barely heard panicked yelling as Kineil shoved her ahead—

"We're running out of options here," she observed once they were back in the living room, pausing to shoot out one of the kitchen windows. "And I'm running out of bullets."

Teana wrung her hands, unable to untangle those threads on the fly and not liking the options on the other ends of the ones they survived in—

"Teana!"

"I don't know!" she snapped back.

"Fine, we'll do it my way," Kineil said. "Come on, upstairs—I've got more bullets in my room, fewer ways in to worry about—"

Inspiration struck her, outside flashing as thunder rumbled the house. "Wait—Yami's room—the only way in and out of it is either that spiral staircase or the window, right?"

Kineil considered this. "Better than our current options. Let's go."

They ran up the stairs, Kineil taking up the rear and firing until the gun clicked—Teana led the way to the spiral stairs, cursing under her breath as she shoved it open—Kineil ran by them as they scurried up into Yami's room, heading for her own room and theoretically the bullets there.

"Come on come on," Teana muttered, hauling Jack in as Idgy shoved him ahead. Helped Idgy up, stuck her head back down—"Kineil, hurry up!"

"I'm coming I'm coming!" Kineil hollered—

Teana spotted men in suits coming up the stairs, silvery G-Men badges on their lapels—"Kineil!"

Idgy yanked her back right as the men started firing, bullets pinging off the spiral stairs and one rogue one ricocheting into the ceiling—knew from the much louder blasts that Kineil was firing back—

Looked when she heard her hissing a repeated litany of words that Jack shouldn't hear, saw her scurrying up the stairs, having to hug the shotgun close so it didn't get caught in the spiral—

Barely leaped in, rolling away as the gunfire started up again.

"Hold on hold on!" Kineil yelped, grabbing what looked like a fiery marble off of one of the nearby desks as Teana reached for the trapdoor. Shook it hard, dropping it through—"Arrivederci, goodbye!"

Teana heaved, slamming the trapdoor shut as an explosion sounded beneath them—scrabbled for the lock on it as Idgy and Kineil ran for the foot locker, Kineil continuing to employ colorful language as they dragged it across the floor and positioned it over the door, finally sagging against it as they realized no one beneath could force their way through.

"We need to talk…about your language usage," Idgy gasped.

Despite everything, Kineil apparently had enough energy to give Idgy a dumbfounded look. "There were extenuating circumstances. I'm allowed to swear in those instances."

"Not around Jack."

"Jack's fine. Aren't you Jack?"

"I'd like to go home now," Jack said in a small voice, curled up under one of the desks.

Idgy went over, tugging him out and hugging him close, rocking him as she assured him "We're okay sweetie—we can wait it out up here. They can't shoot through the floor, can they?" she asked Kineil.

Kineil shook her head. "Yami's got this room reinforced in case some spell he's testing goes wonky—a chunk of lead isn't going to make it through."

Teana hoped so—the rain had started, and right now it was difficult to tell if the drumming noise was from the rain above or the bullets below. Lightning flashed again, thunder shaking the room—

"Are we safe here?" she had to ask, still shaking after the thunder ceased.

"There's a lightning rod, we're fine," Kineil said, getting up and mincing over to one of the windows, gun in hand. "At least those losers are getting soaked—hogeez!"

She reeled back as several shots shattered the window, blindly aimed back out and fired before scurrying back over.

"Bad news," she announced. "These idiots don't know to get in out of the rain. We're surrounded."

"How long until the boys get back?" Idgy asked.

"If you mean Heph and Vul, they're not going to be much help here, and if they're smart they saw this and kept driving. If you mean Yami and Skul…." Kineil considered this. "These goons arrived right after they left…they timed this. Why?"

Idgy looked at Teana, who was now imitating Jack's earlier pose, hugging her knees to her chest, back to Yami's bed. Intent wasn't exactly on the list of things she could see.

"Those files Skul brought back from the Capitol," Idgy said, looking like something occurred to her. "He said that they were a bunch of cases where the Administrators overstepped their bounds."

"Hence why those two went to the Administration Building," Kineil said.

Idgy gave her a don't interrupt me if you're going to be dense look. "We came over because someone broke into our house and stole them. If they waited until the boys were gone, that means they're after us specifically. Probably to make them behave."

"Dad behaves," Jack said quietly, still clinging tightly to Idgy.

"Different kind of behave, honey," she said, patting his back.

Kineil considered this…nodded, grabbed her shotgun and the bag she had brought up. "Alright then. Let's make them work for a living then."

"You can't take them all on," Teana told her as she reloaded the gun.

"I," Kineil said, ratcheting the gun. "Do not die up here, remember? I die in an orchard off yonder. Now if you'll excuse me."

Teana grabbed her arm, stopping her from getting up. "I will not excuse you, there's got to be a smarter plan than this!"

"I'm not hearing any suggestions."

Teana looked around at the desks frantically, not seeing anything through her panic and the general clutter. "There's got to be something up here that can help! What about that thing you threw down the stairs?"

Kineil looked around, more considering. "Hold on."

Idgy watched her dig around for a moment before going over to Teana and holding her wrist. "Teana—Teana honey you need to breathe."

Teana shook her head—breathing wasn't helping right now they were going to die up here and she was so panicked that she couldn't tell if that was a potential future or not—this was the closest she had ever allowed herself to such a bad future she had been so stupid—

"Aha," Kineil said, pulling out what looked like a weathervane on a crooked pole. "Now to see if Yami worked the kinks out of this thing."

"What is it?" Jack asked.

"It's called a Weather Pain—hopefully it lives up to its name."

"Okay why would he call something that?" Idgy asked, sounding as nonplussed as Teana felt.

"Let's just say it came by the name honestly. Moving on," Kineil said, heading for the balcony.

"No wait—Kineil," Teana said, putting her hand out like she could stop her from several feet away. "Kineil you'll get shot—"

"So what?" Kineil asked, glancing back with a sharp grin on her face. "I don't die here."

"That's not how it works."

"It's how it does today."

And with that, Kineil kicked the balcony doors open and stepped out into the lashing rain.

"Come on then!" she bellowed, swinging the pole around as she half-climbed the ladder leading up to the roof—Teana was surprised to see swirls building around it, like wind given form. "You goons think you can take me? Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"

"Teana wait—" Idgy squawked, reaching for her as she went for the doors—Teana dodged her, reached the opening and looked up to see Kineil perched precariously on the roof, long hair whipping in the wind and orange eyes burning as she swung the pole around—dodged back when it did actually fire something that kicked up high spumes of dirt and water from the lawn.

"So apparently he didn't work on aim," Kineil muttered, barely audible over the wind and rain.

"Kineil—" Teana hollered—flinched, both from the lightning cracking above their heads and a split-second warning that had her flinching away from a bullet zinging her way. Both were way too close for comfort. "Kineil get down here before you fall down!"

"Not yet!" Kineil hollered back, swinging again and nearly slipping this time.

Teana couldn't handle it—started climbing the ladder, reached for Kineil's ankle as the rain lessened but the lightning and wind increased—glanced out to see that yes, there were dozens of people down there on the lawn and aiming for them, with the rain gone they had perfect shots—

And then the clouds split and something massive and coiling sank down under the cloud cover, palpable rage radiating off of it as lightning crackled along its red and black scales, two mouths opening to reveal razor-sharp teeth as tall as she was—

And then it bellowed, directing its ire towards the G-Men with such force that it actually flattened them out on the soggy grass.

"GET OFF MY LAWN!"