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Brood of a New Age
31.
The large sheet with the human silhouette printed on it lay rolled up in Katana's lap. Dante had given it to her, beaming with joy like a child. Her beloved had really set his weapon to the lowest strength, and the shot holes were even smaller than those bullets would have made. But it was all the more frightening to see that every shot had been a hit. Ten flawless shots to the head so close together that you had to look very closely not to think it was really only two or three hits. Then the shots in the chest at heart level. Even Katana found it hard to keep her gentle, unconcerned tone when she asked Dante to shoot at each hand - for her. Without thinking that by doing so he would be reinforcing the suspicions to which he was subjected, he had obeyed. And mastered the gruesome task with ease. Dante outshone every master marksman.
Brooklyn's and Goliath's looks had been serious and reserved towards the end of the shooting session. It was a good thing Grace had been given a tour of the rest of the building during this time. It seemed as if Grace was the driving and controlling force in this small Italian clan of two gargoyles and one human, and although the girl seemed amiable and genuinely eager to fit in and didn't display any authority, Dante just acted differently around her. She admonished him only by gestures and looks. Seeing them separated more often would help to clarify their true origins and motivations, and even though this approach to the two new gargoyles did not directly contradict any of the Bushido principles, and Katana knew it would be necessary, she did not like it.
Briefly, they had considered whether they should also let Grace onto the firing range below the Eyrie building's underground garage. But it was too likely that she would not show her skills on purpose. So maybe this challenge now was more revealing.
The whole clan was gathered in the large training hall, most of them sitting on the benches at the edge of the training area, thickly padded with blue mats, which Fox usually used to keep her martial arts skills from getting rusty. Training equipment like balance beams stood against the walls, and gymnastic rings hung under the ceiling so they wouldn't get in the way. Grace and Luca perched together at the very front, and Brooklyn saw from his vantage point in the middle of the gym how nervous they both looked. Nervous that Dante might screw something up right away during practice? Maybe show something that wasn't to their liking? Perhaps he was just imagining it.
Hudson and Coldfire - like referees watching the field from different angles - stood on opposite sides of the gym. Lexington on the bench looked tiny next to Grace and Luca tiny next to Coldstone. Broadway was far from being thrilled with Dante, even after two nights. But Brooklyn had the impression that the grumpy gray gargoyle had already banished from his mind the purple female he had tried to impress two nights ago, first with sparkling charm and then with saucy behavior. He had nodded to her and the others as he entered the gym but had shown no excessive interest in Angela. Even without hiting on her, no one was really fond of Dante, although he had been calm and mostly well-behaved the last few nights, but that could have been due to a lack of opportunity. They had reduced the patrols since the arrival of the Italians so that Hudson, Goliath or Katana were always with them, keeping them entertained with stories and conversation while the others went about their duties. But now the gentle wash was over and most of the stories had been told. The two Italians were visibly getting more restless by the hour, needed physical activity and had to fly out. But not without proving themselves here first.
Nash and Katana sat with Broadway and Angela in the second row. As Luca and Grace whispered to each other, Brooklyn saw Nashville's eyes rest on Grace. When she turned her head and he ran the risk of being caught gawking at the beautiful Gargoyle woman, he instantly turned to Broadway and asked with certainty something completely irrelevant. Brooklyn was a little insecure about how to handle Nashville's obvious interest in Grace. Nashville was too young for Grace and generally too young to be interested in girls. On the other hand. He remembered his own childhood ( incredibly long ago and that was not because of the thousand years of stone sleep). Some of his rookery brothers and sisters had started to notice early that there were clear differences between males and females. And Grace was the first female Nashville was not "related" to. Then their first meeting where she had hugged him, pressed him to her bosom and kissed him. Brooklyn gritted his teeth and frowned at the thought of how he was supposed to talk to Nashville about SUCH THINGS when the boy often treated him with cold aloofness since his last telling off (for which he was still sorry). He would have to discuss the matter with Goliath first.
Dante bounced around a bit on the blue sturdy mats to get a feel for their influence on his balance as Goliath and Brooklyn beside him demanded his attention. The clan leader's deep calm voice resounded in the spacious room.
"In order to carry out our duties within Manhattan, we are training more and more among ourselves in hand-to-hand combat. We can no longer just rely on people being sent running by our war roar and a swipe of our claws. Hand-to-hand combat without inflicting serious injury to the opposing parties must always be our primary goal. Claws should be the means of last resort. Short glides are allowed in the following practice fights if you make it into the air. If you land outside the mat area or are thrown, you lose. If you are so injured that you need your stone sleep before you can fight again, you lose. Whoever gives up has lost. I trust that no one will hurt the other too much. Dante," he said, striving for equanimity because the gray slob was still bouncing on the edge of the mat area instead of understanding that he had been asked to come closer. "You will now fight with Lexington."
"WHAT!" the web-wing yelled shrilly from his perch, and Dante hadn't known the little guy could get even bigger eyes.
Brooklyn waved him over and Lex crawled on all fours to the group of three but then rose to his full (also not impressive) height in front of Brooklyn and Goliath, grabbed them both by the elbows, forcing them to lean down to him, and then whispered in near panic.
"You can't be serious. Why me? Why not Broadway?"
"Broadway is too angry at Dante because of what happened with Angela. You can be cooler in a fight with him. It's just a practice fight to evaluate his skills and how well he can hold back.
"Didn't we see with the Quarrymen how well he can hold back? And what makes you think that I'm not angry? He humiliated me in front of the entire clan!"
"But not intentionally," Goliath mumbled.
Lexington lowered his head and gritted his teeth. This was EXACTLY the kind of situation he had wanted to avoid.
Brooklyn patted him on the shoulder. "Look at it this way, Lex. Dante fights like a human. You automatically have the advantage. You can give him a taste of what we can do. You can really go to town on him and also pay him back a little for what he did to you."
"Payback?" Lexington looked up. First to Brooklyn, then to Goliath. "I get to pay him back?"
"'Exceptionally,'" Goliath whispered. "As well as you can. We wouldn't appoint you as his opponent if we didn't think you could stand up to him. We know he's stronger and more brutal than you, and we all know he can hurt you."
Brooklyn raised a finger with a smile. "But we allow you to use everything for this fight. Don't hold back. Blow off some steam on him. That'll clear the air between you two, too."
"Blow off steam," Lexington repeated. Then a foxish smirk crept onto his lips.
"Okay. I'll blow off some steam, then."
All three gargoyles straightened up and Brooklyn called Dante over.
"You understand the rules?"
"Sure," Dante said without looking at him, glancing instead at his sister. Brooklyn snapped his fingers in front of his face and Dante stared at him glowering. As if he didn't know that look from Nash.
"NO broken bones, no injuries that haven't healed after a day's stone sleep," the red gargoyle said in a serious father tone. The gray likewise beaked fellow with the gangster aura smiled smarmily. "Sure- boss."
"Don't call me that. If I see an unnecessarily brutal attitude there will be restrictions."
"So- I get grounded in the rookery then?" crooned Dante, and Brooklyn looked at him sourly. He would NEVER leave this guy alone with their egg.
"I'm sure Goliath and I can find other restrictions," the former Timedancer muttered, and like Goliath, cleared the fighting area.
Dante looked down at his opponent and was more than disappointed. He was sent into combat against the diminutive tree frog. How low could the former heir of the Della Marra Empire fall? Did these other gargoyles think so little of him, or so unreasonably much of the little one? Hadn't his "crash course" with the Quarrymen proven that he was a force to be reckoned with?
By now recovered from his own dissatisfaction with his combat partner, Lexington had not really taken an upright stance but was hopping from one leg to the other as if he had springs in his limbs. His tail swished from left to right at that as if there wasn't a single bone in it.
"Do you have to piss first, or why are you jumping around like that?"
Lexington didn't answer, but smiled at him mischievously. What did he have to be happy about? He would ram the pipsqueak into the ground unpointed. On the other hand ... Dante cringed as he thought of the scene on the first evening. As much as he wanted to flatten the shorty to prove himself to the others - staying at a distance was also an option in this case. He looked around to make sure everyone was standing far enough away, then lowered his voice.
"Okay- buddy, listen."
"Don't call me that!"
"Let's be honest with each other. Neither of us wants a repeat of the day before yesterday. You know what I'm talking about."
The little bald guy let his eyes light up and revealed a bestial snarl.
"That wasn't my fault!"
"Calm down. My suggestion - nobody goes into total hand-to-hand combat. I'll let you have the first punch as a gesture of goodwill. And then I'll send you to the mat - so - figuratively speaking. Not really - oh never mind. Do we have a deal?"
"Goodwill! For fighting like a human, you're pretty arrogant."
"Ask the Quarrymen how badly I fight," Dante hissed.
"Not doing my best goes against my pride as a gargoyle."
"But it's consistent with your pride that everyone in your clan would see if the same thing happened to you again?"
"They ... wouldn't reject me for that. For the way I am. Most suspect it anyway."
"And how do you explain that to the kid? Or to the old man who wants to set you up with my sister?"
Lexington's face froze into a block of ice. Then his nose twitched up and he showed a lot of fang.
"Deal," he hissed, leaping toward Dante, level with his face, yanking his fist back and thundering it into the scarred gargoyle's face. He staggered back, jerked up both hands with which he had instinctively wanted to pluck the snarling fellow from him, and was already swinging them to smash them against Lexington's eardrums left and right. Something that would have sent any human instantly to the ground in pain and dizziness for minutes, but by then the green web-wing had already jumped away from him.
"You little rat!"
"No insults among conspecifics!" shouted Hudson from the edge of the training hall.
Lexington laughed spitefully. Dante rubbed his cheekbone where the little guy had hit him. No claws. But a decent blow, almost equal to Rocco's though Giuliano's Henchman had been twice as big and three times as massive. Only one good thing was that he had to fight the runt of the litter first. He could warm up for real challenges.
Dante fell into a fighting stance and started to get serious WITHOUT breaking the tiny bones of the half-pint.
"Dante doesn't open his wings," Angela noted.
"Why would he?" asked Grace. "The fight is just on the ground."
"The way Dante is standing there - OH! and that punch just! Like UFC fights on pay TV", Nash said excitedly, glad he got to be here today and none of the adults said he "wasn't ready." His mother next to him watched in stern silence as one minute Dante was wiping the floor with Lexington and the next minute Lexington was wiping the floor with Dante.
"He should spread his wings and use his tail for defense and attack instead of just balance. That's actually how a gargoyle would do it," Coldstone commented
"Oh," Grace said, rubbing her hands together tensely. Why were her hands so wet?
"Dante shouldn't have treated Lex like that the first night, then my brother wouldn't be so eager to kick his tail. But Dante is obviously dogged now. Most of the moves and punches are boxing style and pretty professional at that. Odd that a huntsman would teach his kids to box," Broadway muttered with sleuth-like observational skill.
"Dad used to do a little boxing back in the day," Grace assured simultaneously with Luca, who hastily claimed, "He got the boxing moves from me. I used to do a lot of boxing." Both Italians looked at each other in despair. They were sweating blood here and both wished to be somewhere else. Suddenly, the prospect of an unquestioned lonely life in Italy wasn't so terrifying.
Elisa thought about the injuries of the Quarrymen. Injuries that someone who ONLY boxed could not have done at all. It really looked more like WWM. And a man who supposedly found Gargoyle toddlers in his forties would not have been physically able to train them at full power by the time those children were old enough to actually practice those techniques. Not if he hadn't had support.
Meanwhile, the combat partners had inflicted some decent kicks and punches on each other. Dante had been able to inflict some bruises on his opponent, mainly on the rib cage, which would probably have broken a human's bones and left him breathless several times. In addition, Lex could hardly feel his wings because Dante had battered the membranes between his arms and legs. By the end of the night, he would not only be green, but blue and black. Lexington had aimed a lot at the known weak points of a gargoyle. He had been able to deliver a blow to Dante's tail that he would feel fiercely until sundown. That had been too easy because the scarred gargoyle used his seventh limb only for balance, even in combat. He didn't whip with it, try not to get his tail under Lexington or wrap it around one of his legs to pull him off his feet. Strangely human.
Just then Lexington had landed a blow to Dante's wingbar that must have also hurt VERY much, and any other gargoyle would have flung him across the hall with a powerful flap of his wings. Instead, Dante had thrown himself backwards and tried to bury Lexington underneath him. He had only had to poke him in the butt with a claw for the gray one to leap up with a yelp. Darkly discolored hematomas were now developing from the punches to his beak. Lexingtons small stature and naturally crouching posture had helped him dodge time and time again. Dante couldn't get a good grip on him because he mostly stayed below the reach of his fists. So much for the deal.
He hadn't kicked the spot between the wings just then even though he could have hit it well. But he didn't want to beat Dante in that dirty way. Even though the gray one had humiliated him, Lexington felt he was the morally superior one and wanted to keep feeling that way. You didn't intentionally hurt a gargoyle with dorsal wings between the shoulder blades. That was worse than a kick in the balls. Lexington had been able to gauge Dante's fighting style - now that the Italian was taking him a little more seriously - enough to not come off too badly despite the big difference in strength. Dante was fast and agile, though not as agile as Lexington. And Dante was ... Lex had to admit that, though brutal somehow elegant at it. Although he only fought like a human. He was somehow aesthetic. And at the same time purposeful like a machine- which appealed to Lexington. And earlier his yelp had been kind of cute. Briefly startled by his wandering thoughts, he hadn't noticed that Dante had been able to jump to the side and grab his swinging tail, but instead of yanking him away, he pulled Lexington toward himself and right into his fist. The cry of the web-wing was stifled and he saw stars as he fell backward and crawled away with violent vertigo. From the spectator stands he heard startled, affected or indignant sounds and grimly he forestalled the question of "referee" or clan leader.
"I can fight on!" he shouted, ignoring the warm liquid he felt running down his forehead and concentrating on the quiet approach of Dante. He noticed that even though the gray seemed so rough, he could move almost as silently as Katana or Nashville, and that was frightening. Dante's voice sounded excited and joyful.
"You are a challenge after all, hobbit. Sorry, but there was so much head - I just couldn't miss."
When he felt the gray violator looming over him - and his bare skin at his back tingling with strange excitement, he whipped his tail out and caught Dante behind the knees. Before he knew what was happening his legs buckled, he fell back and then saw Lexington towering over him. A wicked grin on his face and the huge glowing eyes not so ridiculous now as he narrowed them.
"Not bad for a hobbit, huh?"
"Now don't get a hard-on," he whispered shooting back a spiteful sneer. The grin disappeared from Lexington's face the second Dante reached for his belt buckle, using it to lift the wiry smaller gargoyle. He jumped up in the blink of an eye and threw Lexington in a high arc across the hall. He landed far outside the padded area against the wall. Before he slammed into it, he was able to spin catlike in the air and dig his foot and hand claws into the wooden paneling there. He hissed at Dante one last time and then crept along the wall to the bleachers where he dropped onto the bench next to Katana and now crossed his arms again, pouting in a very human manner. Nashville handed him some bandages from the first aid kit, which his uncle used to wipe away the blood that ran down his brow bone and into his eye.
"Dante won!" announced Goliath solemnly, calling across the hall to the sulking clan technician. "Lexington!- Too much confidence even in the face of a downed opponent is fatal. Remember that, everyone!"
Then he turned to the winner.
"Would you like another fight?" the purple leader asked, and Dante just didn't grin widely because the skin over his beak hurt so much.
"Sure," he said smugly. "Put what you've got into the fight."
Goliath puffed, scanned the audience stand. And then pointed at Coldstone. Who nodded and made his way to the center of the hall.
Dante's jaw dropped open.
"Are you guys kidding me? I don't want to fight with that one."
"I have a name. Coldstone," the gargoyle-machine mix said monotonously.
Dante raised his voice and looked from Goliath to Brooklyn who were now both standing outside the padded area again. "Yes- delightful. But I- you can't be serious. You take away my knives but you send your robot Hulk into the arena."
"I'm not theirs. And I would have adapted my fighting style to your possible inferiority in order not to injure you in a life-threatening way."
"Possible inferiority. Thanks for that."
"That's not fair!" exclaimed Grace indignantly - hitherto unseen upset. She had jumped up from her seat.
Luca rose. and put a hand on her shoulder. "Grace. Stay calm. Dante wanted a challenge, and Coldstone said he wouldn't hurt Dante in a threatening way."
"But this - how is Dante supposed to defeat a machine?"
"Among our opponents have been robots or cyborgs, and we're all still here. Coldstone will be a lot nicer to Dante than the Coyote robots or The Pack ever were to us," Lexington groaned, holding a cold pack against his skull that had already been prepared for such cases.
Grace let Luca pull her back to her seat and bit her full lips so hard that Luca feared she was about to bleed.
Nashville watched the red female thoughtfully, then looked at Dante, who suddenly appeared very lost in the hall and eyed Coldstone as if he didn't know where to start with him.
The young Gargoyle rose, trotted along the mat area and endured all eyes following him. Close to Hudson, he gestured for Dante to come to him. He felt pretty composed and grown up but also in the right as Dante stood in front of him.
" What? Uhh."
"Nashville."
"Yeah, Nashville. What do you want? Take another look at that foreigner before I end up in the scrap press?"
"No. Actually, I want to give you a tip."
"A tip on how to beat the toaster?"
"Please don't call him a toaster," Nashville said admonishingly, and Dante rolled his eyes. "I'm not above getting serious advice. Fire away."
"You may have misunderstood Goliath's rules."
"What was there not to understand?"
"You didn't use your claws once."
"Big Boss said we can't."
"No," Nash corrected seriously. "He said claws are the means of last resort. By that he meant no big flesh wounds. But Uncle Lex poked you with his claws earlier that you jump off of him."
Nash saw Dante blush. "Man, don't remind me," he hissed, and Nashville grinned as Hudson did.
"You can use your claws. You can use your tail."
"And that's supposed to help me against the toast-I mean Coldstone?"
Nashville shrugged, suddenly looking a lot like his father with the sarcastic expression that followed. "I didn't say THAT. I'm very sure you don't stand a chance against Uncle Coldstone. But you shouldn't be at THAT much of a disadvantage, I think. Gargoyles have a lot of pride, and without at least reminding you that you can use your gargoyle characteristics, I can't let you start this fight. It goes against meiyo - sense of honor."
Dante didn't know what Mayo had to do with this. And he wondered why none of the adults had told him that he had interpreted the rule about claws too strictly. But he nodded before Nashville turned away again and went back to his seat. He gave Hudson another look, who regarded him, arms folded with his indecipherably serious grumpy old man expression, then went back to Coldstone and assumed one of the fighting positions as taught to him by the private instructors his father had arranged for him at the time. The wheels in his head were turning as he considered how to win against a machine.
The fight was opened by Goliath as Nashville sat back down in his seat next to his mother.
"What did you say to Dante?" asked Elisa, and Nashville smiled at her.
"Meiyo - he still won't win - but he now knows he has claws."
Katana casually stroked his hair and exchanged an apologetic look with Elisa. The kid had meant well and followed one of the Bushido virtues. He didn't know they were intentionally letting Dante fight without tips.
Three, for all parties, agonizing minutes later, Grace couldn't take it anymore and jumped up, snarling. Broadway and Angela held her back. Hudson joined them.
"Calm down, kiddo," he said.
"My brother is bleeding and you want me to calm down? Why isn't the fight stopped!" She grudgingly looked at the two competitors. Dante had been able to land a few blows that had sent the tinny sounds of dented metal throughout the hall, and Coldstone had even stumbled back at times, once even falling to the ground when the gray agitated gargoyle had for the first time used his tail to bring down a fellow gargoyle. But even though the cyborg didn't use any of his laser weapons that could be extended from his arms, he was still an opponent that a mere fleshly adversary could hardly deal with. Goliath had had his problems with his Demona-misguided rookery brother, and now Dante had similar problems.
He was now green and blue as if a insolent youngster had turned him into a living piece of graffiti art without waiting for him to turn to stone. Blood was running from his mouth and he was having trouble breathing from a blow to his ribs. Just now he was lifted up again by one arm, his other taloned hand repeatedly scratching ineffectually across Coldstone's steel breastplate. He couldn't even scratch his paint! With what really looked like a smile, Coldstone hurled the gray fellow onto the mat at full force, making him howl. The crack of his dislocated shoulder made everyone present wince.
Brooklyn and Goliath stood together, not taking their eyes off the two combatants.
"This is so dishonorable," Brooklyn said, knowing he sounded like Katana right now.
"It torments me too, Brooklyn. To have to treat a fellow species like that. But Dante just needs to give up. He needs to realize and show that he is allowed to be weak in front of the clan. Then we know we can work and live with him. He and his sister won't have to be lone wolves anymore. It will teach him humility. In a clan, you have to be able to fit in and be subordinate. To someone like Dante - who has experienced violence for so long but who can only respond with violence - the best way to make that clear is to dominate him." Goliath grumbled unhappily and Brooklyn made a very similar noise.
"Never seen anyone look so undominated despite such a whipping. Tough he is...at least now he's tasting his own medicine for once, the one he infused into the Quarrymen."
The three eyes of the two co-clan leaders noticed Grace struggling in Broadway's and Angela's grip, cursing something in Italian.
"Next time he's down, I'm breaking up the fight. I don't want to wantonly tear a rift between our new potential clan members that we won't be able to close."
"Good assessment," Brooklyn whispered.
"Are you giving up?" asked Coldstone as he bent down to help Dante up, but the latter gasped and grinned viciously at him. "You can kiss my ass - RoboCop."
Then he pulled up his blood-tasting snot and spat a load in the cyborg's face like only a beaked gargoyle could muster. Coldstone stumbled back, grunting in annoyance, and wiped red-stained sputum from his metal before some of it ran into his artificial eye. His displays clearly indicated that his opponent was as good as incapacitated. His sensors showed a hairline fracture of the wing bar and a mild concussion from the previous fight, massive disabling bruises to the arm and tail muscles, a torn pleura and three broken ribs, and at the latest his dislocated shoulder should have paralyzed the gray miscreant with pain. Instead, if that was possible, he became even bolder. And more stubborn. Hardly ideal impulse control. The problem of many younger Gargoyles. His own former problem.
He saw the Italian gargoyle get to his feet. His arm hung lifelessly from him and one had the impression it could fall off any second. He didn't lose his eerily confident smile, but his eyes lit up with determination.
"You think I'm going to back down?" he said loud enough for everyone to hear. "That's a pretty lax assessment of the school I had to go through. Nothing you can do Giuliano didn't do to me years ago!" The gray gargoyle grabbed his dislocated shoulder. And with a groan and an even louder crack, he popped it back into place himself. The brief expression of intense pain gave way to a grim spiteful smirk from Dante.
"Damn," Lexington murmured, stunned, and all the other Gargoyles showed disgust but were also quite impressed.
"Cool," Nash whispered, and a growl very rarely heard from her escaped Katana.
"That's cruel." Grace whirled around, eyes glowing red. "You are cruel. You take my brother's most important tools and drive him through the hall with steel andandand circuits!"
"Don't think his sweet knives would help him against Coldstone," Broadway opined, and the fiery Italian gave him a look that made him take his hands off her arm.
"Cruelty follows a purpose, lass," Hudson said quietly. "It teaches him important lessons. He's a gargoyle. You both are. Learning to fight like gargoyles means using his claws and other limbs. But more than that, it means fighting with brains and honor. And to rely on your clan. And to give up or even leave the place of battle when his own life or the lives of his clan members are in danger and there is no other solution. To drive knives into anything that disturbs him is not honorable. That's how gangsters act - not gargoyles."
"YOU have a sword, Signor Hudson!"
"My sword is compensation for this," he pointed a pointed claw at his blind eye. "And I haven't wielded it with killing intent in years. It is deterrence."
"But-"
"These exercises are hardly about fighting. They're about character building," Katana said. "None of us really want to hurt Dante. But wouldn't you admit he needs a lecture in humility and self-knowledge?"
"From what I've heard, you get the impression that it's the knives that lead your brother, my child. It should ALWAYS be the other way around with weapons," Hudson said sternly, and the look out of his healthy eye was probing as if he had driven the sword into her.
Grace swallowed. She sat down and grabbed Luca's shirt sleeve because she feared if she had grabbed his hand she would have broken his human bones. Luca put an arm around her quivering shoulders. Her hands were in her lap, fingers intertwined in what appeared to be a praying gesture. But he noticed the tiny twitch in her index finger. Good thing they'd taken her gun away, too. He wished Dante wasn't so willful and stone-headed. But he had known the scarred killer for some time- and knew he would never back down. In an open-air fight - a fight he couldn't win - he might run. But this was too much about proving himself. And unfortunately, Dante wanted to prove exactly the opposite of what the other gargoyles here considered necessary. He was thinking in completely different directions than this American clan.
He just hoped the fight would be stopped right there.
Meanwhile, Dante had made it to Coldstone's back, who was bucking like a mechanical bull, beating his stiff iron wings together to get the gargoyle off his back. Dante's ears were ringing from the repeated blows, but his legs wrapped around Coldstone's midsection prevented him from slipping. Coldstone was visibly annoyed himself by now as he tried to pick the Italian off his back but couldn't quite manage it.
"You're a fiercely fighting opponent," Coldstone admitted as he painlessly rotated his own shoulders 180 degrees but Dante ducked away from the claws grabbing at him. "If I were just flesh, you might have a chance. But you can't beat me like this. There is no shame in allowing a superior opponent to win."
Dante allowed himself to topple back without disengaging his legs, escaping the claws that were now striking at nothing even as the pain from his unnaturally intense bent spine made him groan. But since he had lain on the ground, the cyborg towering over him, fixing him with his red eerie eye, an idea had formed in his head. And now that he was so stuck in the back of the creation of science and witchcraft, he could try out his idea. It would be his last chance. In a moment his body would break down.
He laughed darkly and ominously. "Superior you may be. But not invincible. And although my sister has usually outdone me in everything, I have always been the best at one thing. At breaking things!"
With that, he rammed his claws into Coldstone's back armor between his wings. Metal bent, squeaked, cracked open.
"I am NOT a thing!" shouted Coldstone, electrifying himself. The hall was suddenly filled by Dante's screams and with a artificial cold light that took away the sight of all the gargoyles. Grace jumped up, but was so blinded that she stumbled over the edge of the mat and fell lengthwise.
Then the light went out. Instantly. Groaning and blinking, Elisa and the gargoyles struggled to get their eyesight back. And gradually saw that Dante was still sitting in Coldstone's back. He had ripped out a cover plate between his wings and was toppling off the cyborg's back, landing lifeless on the mat. His body was smoking and the smell of barbecue filled the hall. In Dante's cramped spastic twitching hand was a pile of colorful cables. Coldstone was no longer moving.
"NO!" screeched Lexington, jumping to his feet. Goliath, Brooklyn, Coldfire, Broadway and he were instantly with the fighters. Broadway yanked Dante away without him fighting back as Coldstone's body slowly toppled backward, landing stiff and rigid on the mats where Dante had just lain. Broadway himself lost the gray as he received a loud zapping electric shock and jerked his hands back in dismay. The gray gargoyle no longer landed on the mats but its lifeless body skidded across the polished subfloor to directly in front of the bleachers. Grace and Luca were with him immediately.
"OW!" hissed the human, jerking his hand back as he touched Dante and a final electrical charge jumped from the unconscious guy to him. But then it was safe for Grace to touch him. She turned him over on his back. He smelled of burned flesh and singed hair but was only burned where his bare skin had touched the robot. It was nowhere near as bad as after the Quarrymen attack. Grace pressed her ear to her brother's chest and was relieved to find that his heart was beating steadily.
Katana, who had been keeping Nashville with her, looked from the Italian group to her own clansmen. Angela, too, held back. She would be no help, and it was too crowded around Coldstone right now.
"What about him, Lexington?" asked Goliath with concern.
Lexington was now crouched in Goldstone's back, looking at the tangled mess of cables that Dante had made.
"Ahhhh," croaked the clan technician. "Nothing I can't fix with a soldering iron and a reboot. What do you think, Coldfire?"
He hopped to the side and the golden robotic female bent over her mate's rigid body. Everyone heard it buzzing inside her as if a CD had been inserted into her. Yet she was only performing a system check on her mate. Then she nodded: "No microchips were damaged that would affect his software. Only the motor control center was crashed by ripping out the cables."
"How did he manage that? He-he shouldn't have even known how-" Broadway began.
"Dumb luck," Brooklyn muttered.
Lexington nodded.
"Yes - it was a coincidence. Like a kid hitting all the buttons on the remote and turning off the child lock."
Coldfire maneuvered Coldstone into a sitting position with her characteristic strength. "And Dante really pushed all the buttons on my mate. He never wanted his electricity to flow so freely again," she commented, turning Coldstone's now stubborn limbs so he ended up cross-legged so Lexington could work on him well later. His legs cracked like a Barbie's with the forced movement, Elisa noted.
"Yeah. Dante is good at pushing buttons on others," she said unsatisfied with the outcome of the fight.
They all looked to the other end of the hall where Grace, Luca and Katana were bending over the unconscious body.
"How do we get a guy like this on track to fit in with the clan?" asked Broadway, and Brooklyn felt miserable at not having a clue yet again. Goliath had more guts on that front. "We'll see what time brings, And until then, we all have to pull ourselves together."
He turned and headed for the others.
"How is he?" he asked, sounding neither pitiful nor callous.
"He's ... alive," Grace said, looking up at Goliath reproachfully while the gray's head rested in her lap.
"Is that enough practice in humility?" asked Luca coldly, brushing wild hair from the gray's battered face.
"I think that was practice in that for all of us," Katana said, then looked back at Dante because he groaned and grabbed his head.
"Brother! Are you okay?" asked Grace and Dante's eyes snapped open to show her a bloody tortured smile.
"Did I win?" he asked, his breath rattling.
This strange gargoyle had harmed one of their own. He hadn't known what he was doing but he could have severely damaged her brother (assuming Katana's adoption into the Manhattan clan had made them all brothers and sisters). But now he also smiled at Katana as he saw her looming over him, and his gaze was so warm and genuine and so hungry for acceptance that Katana couldn't help but smile back.
"It was most likely a draw."
"That's good enough for me for the time being," Dante grumbled, straightening up with a groan. He smacked his lips a few times and scrunched up his face as if he had some other disgusting taste on his tongue besides blood. "Why does it always have to be electricity?"
Luca patted him companionably on the shoulder (ignoring the shock he got) and tried to sound light-hearted. "Like a little zap like that is going to knock you out, tough guy."
"'Exactly, Super Detective," Dante grunted, pulling his out-of-shape braid into his field of vision presumably to fathom if that's where the burnt-hair smell was coming from. "I want a smoke. And a bath," he said then and it was more command than request.
"I'm not sure water is a good idea after so much ele-," Luca began, and Dante's don't-you-dare stare tempted him to do an about-face.
"My room includes a bathroom with a tub," the human said nevertheless with relief because it was clear that if the mobster could make demands, he wasn't doing badly. He and Grace (more Grace though) helped their friend and brother to his wobbly legs.
"Signor Goliath," said Grace without seeking eye contact. "I beg you to excuse us for an hour."
"Please-no signor. You are excused. We will continue at the end of the night. After dinner."
Grace turned around again with Dante's arm over her shoulders. Now she was looking at him. Her expression was tired and resigned.
"If my brother gets hurt again. Or Luca ... just to prove something ... then I won't tolerate it."
The expression Grace had often shown so far, and which had actually made Goliath uncomfortable from the start, was gone now. No submissive gratitude, no childlike joy at being here, or even awe at speaking to another gargoyle. That glow was gone from her eyes. This pained the leader of the clan because he had to assume that his decision to let it get this far in this fight had killed a piece in Grace that would have actually been very important. He had robbed her of a piece of innocence in relation to other gargoyles and now felt ... strangely dirty.
"It shouldn't have gone that way," he assured her sensitively. Grace took a deep breath, then forced a mirthless smile.
"I want us all to understand each other, Goliath. I respect you. All of you. But when you corner a beaten animal, no one has to be surprised when it bites you. Even I know that's NOT education."
The Italians left the American clan behind without a word.
Thanks for reading, Q.T.