PROLOGUE, PART 2

The moment the personal anti-gravity transport landed at the headquarters of the DMHA, two military transports materialized right next to where they’d landed on the landing platform. The military transports were similar to the personal transports but were five times bigger, made for war, and only deployed to neutralize interdimensional threats. Hence their apt name, studs of the Interdimensional Security Corps.

They’d probably disagree with the terminology, but Vander figured studs or lackeys fit better that something ridiculous like “elite of the elite”. They all died the same as any other person. And compared to him, all of them looked like children.

“Well, my day’s fucked,” Vander said, shrugging. Through the clear window, he watched as the two squads all unloaded from the large mechanized flight ships. “How nice of them to bring so many people to greet me. Wish they wouldn’t point those pea shooters over here though.”

A headache formed, and his bubbling emotions twisted in his gut. The implications of their presence—well, there was no better way to say it.

“My day’s really fucked,” he repeated as he emptied the remaining balance of his Credits into the option for tipping the driver. “Use that to live your best life, bud,” Vander said, tapping the keypad to open the door. He took a step out before leaning his head back inside, one more thought occurring to him. “By the way, pass a message to Madison DiMaggio for me. Tell her ‘the Storm King has fallen’.”

The driver, a mundane man—probably working the transport service on the weekends to help pay for his attendance to the mage academy—stared back at Vander with wide eyes.

“If you don’t respond, they’re gonna have to drag me out of here.” Vander pointed towards the four cameras inside the Lyft. “I’ve given you my entire life’s savings and transferred some spicy documents you don’t want to get caught with. Do what I say. Got it?”

“Y-yes, s-sir!” the man said, nearly pissing himself. He blinked rapidly as Vander’s data packet internalized with the Lyft’s artificial intelligence. “Oh, shit. You just dropped a tactical nuke in my lap, man! Not cool!”

“Sure did,” Vander nodded with a shit-eating grin. He held up three fingers. “Live your best life, contact Madison DiMaggio, and, if I were you, I’d get out of here as fast as possible. Maybe get off Wanda, too. The nice people here have a tendency to make witnesses disappear.” Leaning forward, Vander rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Repeat it back to me.”

The driver’s skin paled like a ghost, and beads of sweat dripped down his face and neck. “P-please don’t kill me. I’m just a student!”

A spark of mana flicked in Vander’s eyes. “Repeat it. Back. To me. Now.”

“Y-you d-don’t have to do this, man!” Apparently, something in Vander’s eyes convinced the man that one more mistake would result in Something Bad happening. Like a good greenhorn, he repeated the instructions as if he were about to shit his pants. “Live my best life! Contact Madison DiMaggio! A-and get off Wanda!” He paused to think for a second. “Wait, sir, what happens if I don’t get off Wanda?”

“I’m sure you’re a bright guy. Figure it out.” Smiling softly, Vander patted the driver’s shoulder. “Be a good boy and take care of what I said. Now, toodles.”

Ready to see things through to the bitter end, he popped back outside the Lyft and hopped off the boarding stairs. Vander turned to watch his only hope of getting out of his current situation with an unexpected calm as the boarding stairs slid back into the underside of the Lyft and disappeared.

Humming softly, the Lyft rose off the ground. Rather than take off as fast as he could, the poor driver—who’d probably never forget today—turned the Lyft around and stared at Vander. He held up three fingers and nodded, giving a thumbs-up.

Nodding, Vander held a thumbs-up back towards the guy while muttering, “He already said he would do what I asked. Now he’s got all the hotheads here knowing something’s up.” He grinned, genuinely touched by the oddball of a guy. “How nice. Too bad he’ll probably die now.”

Just as he’d advised, the driver left as fast as he possibly could while not violating any air travel safety codes. Vander being Vander waved the entire time, blocking out the sunlight from his eyes with his other hand. Out of spite and pettiness, he’d make the DMHA asshats and ISC jerk-offs wait as long as he could get away with it.

Which, in his position, meant he could yank them around for a while if he wanted to. He’d yet to decide on what to do. He could “what if” himself to death all day, so when he could no longer see the Lyft, he turned towards the veritable army waiting for him.

Rather than cross his arms and mean mug the ISC lackeys with air for brains, Vander ignored their presence entirely. He calmly walked through the center of their formation. They didn’t try to stop him and followed behind, their fifty sets of steps tapping against the chrome path leading from the landing platform to the DMHA’s side door.

With a hand on the door, the slick metal feeling oddly grainy beneath his fingers, he looked over his shoulder at the two squads and furrowed his brows at all of them. “Do any of you perhaps know what I’m being summoned for?”

Only silence answered him.

“Ah, just a bunch of lackeys. Got it.” He blew out a resigned sigh. “I was hoping to talk shit to your commander and at least a captain or two before going into such suit and tie bullshit. Lame.”

Since the lackeys wouldn’t provide any amusement for him, he stepped inside the DMHA headquarters. An attendant with a white Magitek mask and an equally white gown to obscure their features began walking.

Vander followed. He didn’t pay attention to the labyrinthian corridors they traversed. Rather, he kept his steps calm and steady as he trailed behind the attendant. Each time they turned from one hall down another, they passed through two security arches that scanned each of them.

The first time they turned down a hallway, the arch lit up all hectic and shit, raising hell and shrieking with an alarm. Meaning the DMHA already considered him a hostile force and wouldn’t hesitate to put him down if he stepped a single foot out of line.

“Huh. This place is quiet today. Something special going on?” he asked as they passed another empty corridor full of empty offices.

“Patience is a virtue, Mr. Braxton. Time is the ultimate equalizer and will reveal everything you need to know.” Vander swore he saw the attendant’s mask shift as if they were grinning. “Luckily for you, fate will reveal its hand sooner rather than later.”

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Vander huffed and jammed a thumb towards the squads behind him. “You’re not a lackey like those airheads, are you?” At that moment, he wished he’d taken more time to figure out how to break magitek while he’d been supplying the materials and various resources to develop new stuff. “That makes things more interesting. If you’re here, does that mean the DMHA thinks you’re strong enough to handle me?”

“Certainly not. Every person present would die but you, however, you won’t escape this building alive. No matter how hard you try, what happens next is inevitable.” The matter-of-fact way the attendant spoke pissed Vander off, and sparks buzzed at his fingertips. “Kill us, don’t kill us. We’ve all signed our lives away, just as you have. We’re all numbers, resources costs, data points on someone’s asset ledger.”

“You’re depressing. Go back to being quiet,” Vander commanded, rolling his eyes.

The entire trip from the landing platform to his destination took a whole two hours. The DMHA was a lot of things, but a small facility was not one of them. The floor they’d entered on was one of the highest used specifically for navigating air traffic control—across all of Wanda.

And for some god forsaken reason, they only had two elevators in the whole damn place. Why they wouldn’t use short range warp gates, he’d never know. The conversation was one he had with Madison back in their early days.

But once he got to the right floor for his surprise meeting and the elevator doors opened, he grinned knowingly.

“Hey, just the people I was looking for!” Vander looked at the commander of the ISC, Devan Elarno, and his sidekick, Big-Boobed Betty. He winked at her. “Looking good as ever, triple-B.”

“Quit screwing around and conduct yourself with honor, Braxton,” Captain Tight Ass ordered. “This isn’t the time or place to fuck around and find out. You’ve already done the first part, so let’s all go find out what your sentencing will be.”

Enlightenment, like a flick of a switch.

Vander held up a fist, raising a finger for each thing he mentioned. “Interdimensional threat, otherwise known as me, check. ISC lackeys, check. Evacuated aerial control floor, check. The most boring tour of my life from Moaning Myrtle over there, check. And a nice meet and greet with my old friends, check!”

Commander Elarno met Vander’s gaze for only a brief second before looking away and sighing. “You know how things are, Braxton.”

Deigning to give the hypocritical, defeatist commander a response was below Vander. Instead, he ignored everything around him and ran his hands over a golden medallion hanging from his neck—a memento from Madison.

I should’ve listened to you, Mads. I really am an idiot, and you’ve been telling me all along. He didn’t know how long he stood there, making everyone wait with an alert attentiveness. Looking up from the medallion, he held up a hand. If he counted correctly, more than a hundred weapons were raised and trained on him, and he sensed at least two Mages roaming about, preparing spells. One for defense, one for control? Best guess I’ve got. Means it’s probably little Linda and Derrick. Damn.

“Tell me honestly, tight ass. This isn’t a trial, is it?” Vander asked, his eyes pinning the ancient commander in place.

“It’s a trial,” Betty chimed in with her two-cents.

“Shut up,” Vander said, flicking a miniscule speck of mana towards her. She yelped in pain and rubbed her breastplate, glowering back at him. “Tight ass, what’s your answer? And I’ll know if you lie. I feel like I shouldn’t even need to tell you that. You know my reputation well enough to know I’m not fucking around here.”

The longer Commander Elarno went without responding, the more pissed Vander started getting. Sparks leapt across his jacket as his restless hands urged him to draw Azazel and Yugmuswa.

Tension you could slice with a knife melted away when Commander Elarno shook his head. “All I know is that the trial is a PR stunt. Whatever the decision is, it’s already decided.”

Vander nodded. “Thanks for being honest. Let’s go.”

All the mana disappeared from around him as he stepped past the two ISC big wigs and down the single path towards the one big ass door leading into something more akin to a coliseum than courtroom.

When he stepped inside, that might as well have been the case. The simplest way to describe what he walked into was just that, an arena for entertainment. And to make things even better, there were countless recorder bots to get all his good angles broadcasting the hearing live.

An execution, then. Do they think I’ll go down quietly, or have they prepared in advance?

All of the seats were full, almost as if Vander were the only one who didn’t know about the hearing in advance. And seeing the scale of everything made him think this wasn’t just because of the failure of the night before but something the DMHA planned far in advance. No other way to explain the massive amount of people, news network bots, and pre-evacuated landing floor.

“Vander Braxton, please take the stand,” a monotone attendant called out.

Vander took a deep breath and walked forward.

“All statements made in this trial will be noted and kept in record, in adherence to DMHA doctrine and governed by the Wandan law of governance.”

Vander took the stand and looked around. Every person in attendance wore various magitek masks, hiding their identities en masse. The triumvirate that headed his execution looked down at him from atop their highchairs. He wouldn’t be surprised if they also wore diapers.

If they pissed him off enough, they’d sure hope so.

The eyes that looked back at him lacked any friendliness. The bozos in the DMHA big leagues were more magitek than human these days, either way, so he didn’t expect much from them. But the open hostility towards him—that, he didn’t expect.

More details trickled in, revealing the farce that this hearing was easily. However, who would stand against the DMHA? They’d wish for death by the time they received their own trial for treason, or whatever the fuck they were pinning on him. Their mutilated corpses wouldn’t be recognizable down in the subterranean depths of the DMHA’s nasty business.

Vander was a lot of things. A fool wasn’t one of them. Seeing the preparation involved, they probably had iron clad “proof” of whatever transgressions they’d claimed, and if not, the not so subtle threat of all of his loved ones had been beaten into him for the entirety of his life.

Truthfully, the fact they hadn’t hung him naked and upside down out in some common grounds years ago was a mystery. He’d admit as much. He’d kept away from Madison for good reason. A good man, he was not.

Again, he looked around to see more and more foul looks in the eyes of all those that viewed him. He wondered why. His clothes were clean. His HomeSense had done a good job while he’d slept and made sure to tidy up. Sure, he could’ve spent a bit more time showering off the grit and grime, but that was neither here nor there.

If anything, he thought his appearance was ruggedly charming. Thinking as much, he flashed a bright smile towards the triumvirate and crowd as he took the stand. “What’s going on, everyone? Seems like there’s a surprise party someone forgot to mention. What’s the deal?”

Middle judge man, Mr. Daddy Anonymous Number Two, gestured towards the attendant. To spare some time, the rap sheet was a lengthy one. Ninety-nine percent of the things on there were minor, petty crimes, but the one percent that weren’t—pretty damning.

Vander nodded along the whole time. When the attendant finished, he spoke. “Oh, Great Triumvirate, magisters of the Court of Justice,” he faux bowed, wiggling his ass towards the crowd, “Oh, corrupt ass- kissers and boot lickers. Oh, you Great Ones of Judging how to be as corrupt as possible. I humbly ask one favor of you all today.” He flipped them off. “Just one.”

A little bit of buzzing passed between the three before the monkey in the middle waved a hand.

“I respectfully ask all of you…” he said, bowing respectfully towards them with his hands clasped. He waited a moment, letting the silence linger. “To, with the utmost respect possible, please… go fuck yourselves.”

The crowd exploded in an uproar, ranting and raving at him for his disrespect. Vander didn’t care. His time in this world wouldn’t be long now. He wasn’t happy about how things played out, but this had always been a possibility, always on the back of his mind.