“You want to know something interesting?” Jack asked. “It is surprisingly easy to sabotage a panzer.”

  Jack laughed, and tossed the monkey wrench behind his back. It struck a nearby police officer in the head. The police officer fell to the ground unconscious and would wake up reminded of how much he missed the times he’d spent with his daughter and reunite with her after a long period of anger and separation. He would also have a nasty bruise.

  “Vile perpetrator of the deception to my friends and delayer of our quest!” Gore challenged, baring his sword.

   “Ah-ah, Gore,” Jack said, and flew into the air, wings catapulting him far out of the reach of Gore’s sword.

   “Coward!”

   “You can bark all ya want, little hell hound. Just make sure ya keep your bite down there. Just nine hours till that deal Steve made with the devil goes sour. Then our little Damien stays glued to his game and you go south. Just do what’s best and stay put for a while, kay?”

   Jack laughed down at the four demons. Then he turned his attention back toward the police officers. “Hey! Pizza’s here. Watch me get out of paying the tab,” he said.

   Jack flew toward one of the pizza delivery cars that had arrived at the hotel. A moment later, he was headed once more skyward, carrying the pizza delivery driver by his underwear. “Angelic wedgie!” Jack cheered over the driver’s screams of rash-inducing pain.

   “Gore shall obliterate this angel and his pizza pie purveyor hostage as well!” Gore declared, preparing to summon the forces of darkness to turn the air around Jack into mustard gas.

   “Let him go, Gore,” Steve said, and put a hand on Gore’s shoulder. “He’s not worth it.”

   “He is very much worth it, he’s an angel!”

   “It’s not going to help us get out of Arkansas, so don’t do it.”

   “Your parameters for the justification of whether or not to shatter someone’s being from the inside out are questionable at best.”

   Steve began his comment on what would be yet another episode of him talking Gore down from killing an innocent person, but the exchange was cut off when a ferocious voice interrupted them with a shout of “Stevey!”

   Steve turned back toward the hotel doors, the source of the scream. There he saw Evy. She stood panting for breath and rage, eyes pinning Steve to the ground. Her hair was a tangled explosion of ruined color. Her dress was torn, her skirt cut off. Her stockings were nearly flayed. And all over her body was the blood of the hundreds of bunnies she had slain with the two bunny-fluids-dripping angel wings she wielded with a white knuckled grip.

   “This was the best Cutiecon I’ve ever been to,” Evy said with a snake-like grin of delight.

   Steve took a step back.

   “What’s with the cops?” Evy asked.

   “Step back! I have more bunnies!” Dawn challenged, holding two bunnies by their ears as a defensive shield between her and Evy.

   “How come she gets to slaughter bunnies but when I do that you get mad?” Gore asked.

   “Shut up, Gore.”

   “This is everyone gets to do what Gore wants to do day.” Gore crossed his arms and sulked.

   “Okay-okay,” Steve said, stepping between Evy and Dawn. “Evy, I’m sorry about ruining your convention, but I needed Dawn’s help. We have eight hours to get to New Orleans and find the best sandwich ever made, and now we have cops blocking our path so we can’t use a car and I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t pommel me or my friends with two strangely durable weaponized costume wings.”

   Evy frowned. “You need to get to New Orleans?” she asked.

   “Yes.”

   “Want a ride?”

   “If you fix our tank, I insist you reload it as well,” Gore demanded.

   “The roads are blocked for a mile in either direction,” Steve said, pointing out the police cars and roadblocks Jack had placed. Jack had also placed spike strips, but by the sound of so many cars squealing out of control in the distance, he had also not told this to anyone.

   “I don’t need roads. I can fly, remember?” Evy said.

   “Right.”

   “A plane, Steve, I have a plane. I’m ex-Marine Corp. Saved up enough to buy my own plane so I can go to every CutieCon. Want a ride?”

   “You… you’d do that?”

   “Sure. Sounds fun!”

   “Why?”

   “Don’t question things, Steve, just trust the blood-drenched pilot,” Dawn insisted.

   “You look like you have something worth fighting for,” Evy said. She smiled, and poked Steve’s nose with a blood-tipped angel wing.

   Burney screamed.

   “Shut up, Burney,” Steve replied.

   “What did he say about me?” Evy asked.

   “Don’t worry about it. Where’s your plane?” Dawn asked, putting her arm around Evy and walking away from the hotel. “Love your hair, by the way.”

   “Thanks. Hold on a second.” Evy yelled as loud as she could and hurled the weaponized angel wings. They struck the same police officer Jack had knocked unconscious, knocking him off his feet once more. But since Evy was not an angel forced to make every action have a positive outcome, nor a Judge forced to ensure her actions didn’t affect the world’s balance of good and evil, nothing good came from this unlicensed assault. It just hurt really bad.

   Thankfully with all the confusion of evacuating cuties and still-rabid bunnies, no one witnessed this crime, and Evy and Dawn were able to skip freely toward the airport.

   Burney screamed as they boys paused before following.

   “I don’t care, Burney, she’s got a plane. And I kind of like that about her,” Steve answered. With that, Steve followed, unsure about whether this was a good idea or not, but one hundred percent sure no good would come of just sitting around doing nothing.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

   What Steve did not factor in, however, was the tenacity of a certain angel. While it was likely plausible that Steve and his friends could have escaped the area unnoticed, Jack had been counting on them at least trying to leave. That was why Jack had planted four hundred land mines in the vicinity of the hotel. They weren’t dangerous, not really, and were low explosive enough that they just kind of made a loud banging noise and knocked a victim off their feet.

   Jack had been entertaining himself by making wagers with himself over which emergency respondent or evacuated and already post-traumatic-stress-syndrome-suffering cutie would step on the next landmine. Then he noticed Steve and his friends running the opposite direction.

   “Wait…” Jack said, hovering above the hotel on his angel wings. There was a fence that bisected the two hundred meter or so gap that separated the hotel and the airport. Jack saw Dawn do a cartwheel over the fence. Steve climbed over while making sure to adjust his hat upon reaching the other side. Burney got stuck trying to climb over and ended up melting his way through, and Gore cut his way through with his sword.

   Jack made the connection with where they were heading when Evy pointed to a small plane tied down near the airport’s lone hangar. “Hey! What gives?” Jack shouted. “I go through all the trouble to place booby traps and you don’t even have the courtesy to go through ‘em!”

   Before Jack could swoop down and throw a land mine at Steve’s fedora-covered head, a cutie who had already had his pony costume completely devoured by man-flesh-craving bunny rabbits came running out of the hotel screaming in terror. A dozen bunnies chased after the bleeding, naked cutie. While Jack’s landmines would only daze a human, they were perfectly capable of exploding a small rabbit. And this is exactly what happened when the cutie stepped on three of Jack’s mines.

   While the killing of the pursuing bunnies was the silver lining of Jack’s torturing of this person, when the cutie fell over screaming in a terror that only years of psychological counseling could undue, Jack found it absolutely hilarious. Jack laughing at this man’s literal explosive psychic breakdown allowed Steve and his friends to make it to Evy’s plane unhindered.

   Steve and his friends had only heard a mild blast in the background, and chose to ignore Jack laughing from the sky.

“Is this it?” Steve asked, stopping in front of Evy’s plane.

   “This is my baby. I call her Jasmine!” Evy said, patting her little airplane on its white, aluminum wing.

   “Why Jasmine?”

   “Because the first time I got her I named her Phillip. But I had to change her name after I crashed.”

   “You crashed?” Steve asked.

   “That was before I named her Jasmine, Steve.”

   “And why is that important?”

   “Because I haven’t crashed since,” Evy said, and opened the door to enter the cockpit. She climbed aboard and began flipping on the plane’s instruments.

   “But why Jasmine?” Dawn asked.

   “That was the name of the restaurant I crashed into. Good cashew chicken. All clear!” Evy shouted, and turned on the engine. With a spit of exhaust and a rumbling that went from the propeller to the fuselage to the tarmac, the engine roared to life.

   “Are you coming or what?” Evy shouted from the cockpit.

   Steve, having second thoughts about this, hesitated. He initially doubted if this was actually Evy’s plane. But then he saw the bit of green paint scratched into the wings and that a menu for a place called The Jasmine was jammed into the side of the landing gear. This did not, however, make it any easier to get inside the plane.

   What did make it easier was Jack the angel shouting at Steve that he was going to put him in a wheel barrel full of firecrackers and excitable snapping turtles. This likely being the least of the tortures he would receive if he went back to hell, Steve climbed into the copilot’s seat.

   “Wait,” Steve said, as Dawn got into one of the two remaining seats in the back of the single-engine plane. “There’s only four seats. What about Burney?”

   “Way ahead of you,” Gore said, shoving past Steve and patting him on his head. Gore tossed a handful of chains onto the tarmac and shut the door. “Let’s go!”

   “We can’t leave without Burney.”

   “Burney’s fine. Now fly!” Dawn shouted, and pointed out the window.

  Jack was flying toward them. He’d finished watching cuties pass out from fear of tiny mammals and landmines, and tiny mammals exploding on landmines, and, on a few occasions, tiny mammals using landmines in suicide missions against cuties who’d thought they’d escaped.

   Evy took the red metal throttle and shoved it forward. With a roar of the engine and a noticeable aroma of gasoline, Jasmine shot across the runway.

   Jack had been distracted by the latest wave of suicide landmine bunnies, but he now raced to get to Steve and his friends. Burney stood on the runway screaming up at Jack, and spread his arms wide, hoping to possibly hug the angel.

   Had Jack realized that Steve was in the plane, he wouldn’t have tried to tackle Burney. And Burney’s attempts to hug the angel would have been successful, had his leg not been attached to the now-airborne plane by a long chain that went taught just before Jack crashed into him.

   Burney screamed, flying into the sky in the wake of the quickly climbing airplane.

   Jack, having missed Burney, nearly fell to the ground and tumbled against the tarmac. But he was able to flap his angelic wings and maintain his balance, coming to a stop where Burney had been standing.

   “You think you can just run!” Jack called after the rapidly fading plane. “I’m not done with you!” Jack was about to take to the sky in pursuit, when he saw a large explosion, and what looked like a mushroom cloud of bunny blood and confetti. “Hmm. Probably should have kept the landmines and the confetti cannons further apart.”

   “You okay, Burney!” Steve screamed from the open door of the airplane.

   Burney, dangling below, his flame brighter and larger than it had ever been before, screamed a blood-curdling reply.

   “Good to hear! Just a little further till we’re in New Orleans!”

   Steve shut the door and cut off Burney’s reply.

   “He okay out there?” Evy asked.

   “He’s fine. Where are we landing?” Steve asked.

  They flew for several hours. For the first three hours, no one really said much, save to occasionally remind Evy that she had dried blood covering her face, and for Evy to remind everyone that she liked the color rust brown. She said it accented her eyes. This was both odd and disturbing to hear from the person controlling a vehicle traveling two hundred miles per hour at an altitude of ten thousand feet. Also, rust brown very much clashed with her blue eyes.

  The next hour or so was spent convincing Gore to not drop objects out of the plane. He was getting bored. Steve and Dawn alternated between stopping Gore from trying to bullseye turtles from ten thousand feet, to keeping him from using Burney as a high-flying yo-yo.

  Only once did Dawn question why they were doing what they were doing. This was to ensure that Steve knew the full implications of his actions. Steve, resolute and looking toward the city quickly approaching, assured everyone that he was fully aware of what would happen in New Orleans. He was not aware, however, that Jack and his angels were currently in the city, awaiting his arrival.

  Steve checked the level of the sun as Evy fiddled with the radio. Sunset, and it would be all over. He had perhaps three hours to find the greatest sandwich in the world. Plenty of time, so he thought.

  “We shall scour this city of its sandwiches!” Gore declared.

  “Just hold the scouring part until we get closer to the deadline,” Steve noted.

  “When would that be?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Nowish?”

  “No.”

  “How about in an hour?”

  “No.”

  “Two hours, then I burn the city and everyone in it to ashes!”

   “That wouldn’t really help me get a sandwich, Gore.”

  “I thought we were just going on a rampage while we have the chance. We’re still doing the sandwich thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so. And you have my permission to go on a rampage and destroy as much property as you want after I get my sandwich.”

  “Yes!”

  “But only on property. Not people.”

  “Ah.”

  “That’s a very mature gesture, Steve,” Dawn noted.

  “What can I say, I’m a compromiser,” Steve said.

  “Don’t forget I can use your spine as a nun-chuck,” Gore said.

  “Right.”

  “When did you agree to that?” Dawn asked.

  “It was another time, don’t worry about it,” Steve said. “What’s with the radio?”

   “Just a sec,” Evy said, hearing nothing but static. She twisted the little plastic knob that controlled the channels and volume. She heard only varying levels of static, and the sound of two badgers stepping on a microphone they’d stolen from an air traffic controller who had not been getting enough sleep because his pet badgers kept getting out of their cages.

   “Hello. Hello?” Evy asked the unresponsive radio.

   “We’re near New Orleans,” Steve said, seeing the city fast approaching from the cockpit window. “Shouldn’t someone be telling us where we can land?”

   “Hello! Hooray for the sunshine and the bottles of grape soda that we whistle away on in a happy little song,” Evy sang. The radio didn’t respond. Singing was no more likely to get a response from the badgers at the air traffic control station than talking. Although making sounds like a field mouse might have made them growl a bit.

   “What was that supposed to accomplish?”

   “Making me feel better for landing illegally on a runway that hasn’t given me clearance.”

   “Oh.”

   “You could probably panic now.”

   “I’ll take that into consideration.”