The chaos from inside had spilled out into the garden, and as they ran right into this overflow of violence Stretch and Roman had to reassess the expected ease with which they could journey to the wedding altar.
The first problem: intersecting rounds of gunfire that mowed lawns and clipped shrubbery as well as any landscaper. Suited men and women dashed in groups of two or three, most of them bleeding or at least bruised up, engaging in impromptu engagements with only low bushes and vine-covered fences for cover. They knew none of these things would stop a bullet, but they crouched and crawled behind them anyway because they did break line of sight, and that seemed about as good as anyone could ask for.
The second problem constituted two very specific people: Yovanni and Emma, who even now surrounded themselves with a gaggle of bodyguards and did their best to overpower everyone else. The woman, handgun at level with her sole eye, popped one shot after another with practiced efficiency. The man stood behind her and tried to do the same, though judging by the look of his face each pull of the trigger seemed to shoot out a bit of his soul.
The third problem, dependent on the prior two, was in Stretch's opinion the worst: everyone there immediately took notice of him and Roman, and almost all proceeded to shift their ire to them.
Stretch cursed and tackled Roman to the ground before they could get riddled full of holes, both landing with a hard grunt on grass that looked softer than it was. Rolling off the other man, Stretch looked around to take account of the most pressing threats.
Roman dragged himself up, coughing all the way. "The ground and I have gotten too well acquainted today..."
"Yeah, well, we don't always choose our friends." Stretch saw a couple of goons come around a shrub and aim down at them, so he whipped his good hand forward and slapped them both away with one elongated swing. "I really hope Red and Kit are doing better than we are."
"We have our own problems right now."
"Boss!" Turning, they saw a few of Roman's crew run to them. "You're okay!"
Roman dusted himself off and opened his mouth to say something clever, but Stretch pulled him off his feet just as a string of bullets whizzed by. Standing still and cracking wise wasn't exactly the best idea during a gunfight. Instead two joined the passing crewmen, and all jogged around the perimeter of the garden as a unit, taking shots where they could.
"What do we do?" Stretch asked, shouting over all the noise. "Even if you did walk down the aisle, I don't think these guys'll just sit by and let you say your vows!"
"We have to wait for Kitty," Roman said, aiming across the garden at Emma. His gun clicked empty, and he frowned as he slowed to reload with one of the magazines he'd saved in his pocket. "I wasn't expecting Yovanni to make a big play too, but if I prove to his crew that I'm innocent without a doubt it might make them start thinking there's no point putting their lives on the line like this."
"So, what, just buy time?!"
Roman clapped the mag into place, pulled back the hammer, and blew a guy's head off in one fluid motion. Then, one of the crewmen beside him got his own head stamped with a bullet, body lurching back to slap on the ground. The glare on Roman's face sharpened then, a spike of anger that pulled his trigger a few more times to no avail.
"This was the plan," he seethed. "We decided on this. Nothing else we can do now but reap what we've sown."
A goon on their flank popped up from inside the garden's central gazebo, gun already aimed, but Stretch had seen him in time. His good arm had already shot across the couple of dozen yards and now wrapped itself like a snake around the man's own arms, down his torso and legs, rendering him immobile. With a heave Stretch pulled the man up, spun him around in the air, and tossed him at another group of goons nearby so that all of them collapsed in a pinball heap.
When he pulled his arm back, Stretch grimaced. His back really was killing him now, a searing soreness taking up a whole chunk of it. As much as he used his Trick to make up for it, Vincent's shot had just about collapsed any semblance of stability he had going on there, not to mention him being down one hand besides. "I don't know that I can keep this up for much longer," he admitted, the words tasting sour in his mouth.
"The bulk of the fighting's still inside," Roman said, glancing at the manor. "With Yovanni and I both out here that won't last long, but maybe it'll be enough time. Just as long as Agrivon doesn't join in."
Which, of course, is exactly what happened as soon as he said it. Stumbling through one of the many doors that spanned the manor's east wing, Agrivon and a good few of his men glanced around at the outdoor skirmish, all of them seemingly breathless and as ruffled as any of the other combatants. Then, eyes narrowing on Roman, they barked like a pack of wolves and got ready to shoot.
"Rule number one of Ranger work," Stretch muttered. "Never jinx yourself. Our luck's bad enough already."
- - - — MKII — - - -
In the library, whole troves of knowledge were in the process of being irrevocably destroyed. All of the León family's archived accounts—their financial records, their journals, the tomes of natural history many of its female members had contributed to—all of it had been reduced to shreds within seconds of the battle now being waged between the tall and despairingly full shelves that circled the room.
Red clapped his hands and thrust an open palm at Vincent from across the room. The invisible blow came at the same exact moment, and When Vincent dodged it the bookshelf behind him crumpled in on itself like a bent aluminum can, all its contents exploding out the other side in a cloud of pages.
The Enforcer returned the favor by shooting two beams from the gun set against his hip. Red dodged them too, but when both curved in the air to fly back the way they came like a pair of boomerang lasers he had to take more desperate measures.
Not hesitating even a second, the boy turned around and kicked a nearby table up, flipping it into the air like a pancake to block the beams. That done, he then grabbed the airborne table by one of its legs and tossed the whole thing at Hound, who'd been prowling around the windows.
The assassin saw the big mass of furniture coming just in time to dive out of the way, which was fine as far as Red was concerned. Though the windows were too high up for any normal person to reach without a ladder, Hound likely could scramble up to them easily enough, and if he'd been trusted to do anything here it was to prevent exactly that from happening. Any distance between Hound and those windows was good in Red's book.
Less good was the round of bullets Hound fired at him mid-dive. Yelping, Red clapped his hands and threw up his now trusty invisible shield, but though he managed to block most of the shots he wasn't fast enough to avoid the couple that grazed his leg.
Hound landed in a roll and onto a knee, his string of shots unbroken throughout the whole maneuver, and it was all done so efficiently that Red could almost forgive the guy for trying to kill him. Still, all these bullets required a rather singular focus to block, and Red could already feel Vincent setting up a shot at his now unprotected back.
The pinging sound came a moment later. Red had developed a good ear for it during this encounter: a sort of quick, flute-like note. Hard to notice with all the noise going on, but when your life depended on noticing these kinds of things you learned to do so quickly or literally died trying.
You also learned to trust your body, which Red now did even as his mind struggled to process why. In an instant he fell onto his back, the invisible shield before him disappearing, and he looked up as the passing bullets that followed got mixed up with matching beams of light heading in the opposite direction. Rolling to his feet, Red watched as those beams curved in the air again, this time heading not for him but for Hound, forcing the assassin to retreat into an adjoining aisle of bookshelves.
Grinning, Red decided he might as well join in the attack. He kept his ears open for Hound's heavy footsteps, gauged the assassin's intended direction, and proceeded to charge through the bookshelf that split them. When he broke through to the other side Red saw Hound not five feet away heading right for him, so without a second thought he twisted and threw out a spinning back kick at the guy's face.
But Hound's instincts were world-class. The assassin immediately dropped into a slide and slipped under the blow, then threw his arm out to trip Red's leg as he passed. The boy fell, Hound hopped back up to his feet, then turned around with guns already aimed down at a now vulnerable target.
Then another set of pings rang out, and Hound had to back off as several light beams turned into the aisle. He disappeared behind another set of shelves, the beams following him, and Red took that chance to glance at Vincent.
The man stared down from the other side of the aisle, chewing on a toothpick just about snapped in half. Though his face was drawn into a frown, something about it spoke more to consideration than anger.
"Thanks?" Red said. "So... Truce?"
The silver gun came up.
"... Figures."
With one hand, Red pushed himself off the ground just as Vincent pulled the trigger, doing so with enough force to throw himself high over the shelves. The beams followed him up into the air, but he'd been prepared for that. From behind his back came out one of the many books now littering the library's floor, and as he held it out before him each ray puffed harmlessly against its surface.
Tossing the book away, Red clapped his hands and wound back a fist, but when he punched it down at Vincent the man didn't even have to get out of the way. The remote impact crashed into the ground beside Vincent, cracking the wood floor and forming a sizable hole that nevertheless did no damage to the man himself.
Humming, Red landed on top of one of the bookshelves and began jumping from one to the other, looking down at the rest of the room. He saw Hound and Vincent start shooting back and forth at each other, trashed books following in their wake all the while, and though both made sure to aim some shots up at Red too it was clear their attention was off him for the moment.
And good, because awesome as all this was he needed some time to think.
Red hadn't been able to get a solid hit in a while. Vincent and Hound both seemed to have gotten the hang of how his Trick worked, at least enough to dodge effectively. At first it had been mostly reacting by instinct—their Spirit Sense letting them pick up on the vague intent of his attacks, Red supposed—but eventually both had started paying close attention to how his body moved. They seemed to have figured out that whatever he did from a distance correlated exactly with what he mimed from up close.
Plus, aiming punches was hard. That wasn't something Red had to worry about when it came to flesh meeting flesh, but if he tried hitting anything more than a few dozen feet away then things got spotty. He'd have to practice more later, though later wouldn't help him any now. Red needed some way to make his ranged moves more reliable if he really wanted to put these guys down.
Maybe he could try stealing one of Hound's guns? No, that'd just be giving up, he had no idea how those worked anyway. But looking down at the two gunslingers dueling beneath him, Red couldn't help feeling like they had something of an unfair advantage. Their weapons had sights, could be brought up to eye level, and didn't really have any wind-up. That sure would help in the aiming department.
Except... Well, why not? Red stopped atop one of the bookshelves and stared at Vincent below. Thankfully, the man had his hands full with Hound and couldn't take the time to shoot up at the boy, though Red wasn't dumb enough to think he was being entirely ignored. More like, until he made himself a bigger problem he'd be best left alone, at least for now.
Slowly, Red held a hand out in a classic finger gun. Something like this? Closing an eye, he could look down his index finger well enough with the other. But this wouldn't really work with his Trick, would it? Not unless he wanted to lightly poke people to death.
No, he'd need something with a bit more kick to it. Something that would hurt, even if not as much as a solid punch. Frowning, Red bent his middle finger, trapping it with his thumb. With his index out he could still aim...
Ah, screw it. Red clapped his hands, and the sound caught the full attention of both Vincent and Hound. Clearly they'd both been waiting for it; along with the other mechanics of his Trick, they'd learned he was still in the novice stage of activation.
Bullets and beams came for him, but Red was ready for them. He leaped into the air and held his hand out, looked down the barrel of his finger with one eye closed, and picked his target once he passed directly above them.
Then, with a short breath, he flicked his finger.
Vincent collapsed head-first, his cheek suddenly bending inward and bringing his whole body down with it. The man hit the floor hard enough to crack it, bouncing with a hard smack of wood before simply laying there, dazed, hand coming up to clasp the smarting side of his face in seeming disbelief.
Hound, to his credit, did not let any of this shock him into indecision. The assassin aimed his right at the downed Vincent and would've turned him into swiss cheese if Red hadn't clapped again overhead. Glancing up at the boy, Hound chose to tactically retreat just as another finger flick of doom slammed into the floor where he'd been standing, creating a small yet visible crater.
Red watched Hound dip back into the rows of shelves as he landed. Slippery bastard.
But even that couldn't quite kill his mood. Remote Control was something Red made because it felt right, not because he'd really put much thought into it. Still, looking down at his hand, he felt suddenly overwhelmed by the possibilities. What else could he make happen, once he put his mind to it?
Next to him, Vincent slowly got back up, a huge purple welt massed on his cheek and his signature toothpick apparently blown clean off his lips. "That's an... interestin' Trick you got there, kid."
Nodding, Red closed his hand. In a battle of Magicians, it doesn't matter who's stronger or faster, Stretch had said. In a battle of Magicians, Red finally realized, what mattered most was instinct and creativity, but creativity most of all. This... He could work with this. It was a different sort of game than he was used to, but something about it just... fit.
Red had just found his new favorite toy, and he was looking forward to seeing how hard he could play with it before it broke. But first...
He looked at Vincent, grinning menacingly. Blinking, the man took a step back.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
"I... ah..." Vincent swallowed. "Funnily enough, I've been rethinkin' that truce..."
"No thanks," Red said, smile widening. "But if you wanna help me out, I could really use a test dummy."
- - - — MKII — - - -
Owl's first thrust came like a film skipping frames. Everything did—the blink of lights that encompassed the whole room made it a visual inevitability. Kitty brought a hand up to swipe away the knife, and as she did she saw her own body appear and disappear in a continuous flash, one moment iridescent and the next consumed by darkness.
Their exchanges went on like that. In one flash, Owl got judo thrown to the floor. In another flash, Kitty buckled as her knee got bent by a kick. In a third, the two girls grappled in a deadlock.
Even enough as they were, Kitty had put herself in a bit of a disadvantage, unarmed as she was against Owl's knife. It had been a conscious choice, to drop hers. She didn't want to hurt Owl, didn't want to beat the other girl with the same methods she wanted them both to escape from. Dropping that knife had been a proclamation: Kitty was not who she once had been.
Still, each time she got nicked by Owl's blade a new doubt penetrated her focus. Was she really different now? Had these years really changed her, or had Mouse only been slumbering in hibernation, ready to come out when all those comforts—friends, freedom, purpose—were taken from her?
Kitty didn't know for certain, but she at least needed to try and find the proper words for what she felt. Unfortunately, Owl's earplugs made any attempt to talk fruitless. If she wanted to get anywhere here, she'd need to start with getting rid of those.
But she wasn't the only one strategizing. When Kitty next dodged a swipe of Owl's knife, leaning away from the glinting steel, the other girl kicked her away and then retreated. Recovering from the blow, Kitty went after her, hoping Roman's people had barricaded the doors well enough to hold for at least a few seconds.
Then Owl went for the spotlights instead. They lined the room's walls, all blaring up at the disco ball hanging from the center, and Kitty recognized what Owl surely must have: take those out and her shadow Tricks would come back into play.
Owl reached one of them, and Kitty got ready to tackle her, but rather than immediately try to break its bulb the girl plucked it from the floor and swung it around like a mace. Surprised and too committed to her dash to swerve out of the way, Kitty could only raise her hands to catch it. She stopped the mass of metal from bludgeoning her head, but with her hands as full as her attention she couldn't stop the slice Owl now aimed at her ankle.
Kitty fell to a knee with a gasp. She watched Owl glance at her, a moment to ascertain victory, before moving onto the next spotlight along the line. No hesitation, no mercy, and no pride, only a narrow focus on the mission.
Except that wasn't quite true. If Owl wanted to escape, she could have found a way, especially now. This trap—the lights, the locked room, the one-on-one battle—wasn't ever meant to hold her forever because it wasn't capable of it. Kitty had just wanted some time, however brief, to make her case. And if Owl really was uninterested, really was committed to the House and Father above everything, she wouldn't be fighting. She'd be doing whatever it took to get out of here and find Roman. Even beyond the locked doors, the windows were right there.
Which meant there must be some part of Owl, however small, that wanted to be here with her. Letting the thought give her hope, Kitty sent the spotlight in her hands tumbling away. It crashed to the floor some distance from her, broken and dark, but that didn't make it useless. Unable to stand properly with her ankle cut, Kitty grabbed the spotlight's cable and, with a heave, started spinning it around in the air above her. This probably wouldn't work more than once, and the knowledge gave her focus.
Just as Owl broke the second spotlight by the wall, Kitty threw her own, sending it flying like a lasso. Owl turned back just in time to have the flying cable wrap around her legs, the attached spotlight serving as a sort of rotating anchor that excised excess slack. Her quarry caught, Kitty then pulled hard with both hands and Owl came the short distance to her, half flying and half sliding roughly along the floor.
The first thing Kitty had to do was grab the other girl by the wrists and knock the knife out of her hands. Then, struggling to keep her down, Kitty reached up and plucked plugs out her ears, suffering a strike to her abdomen and another to her chin for all her trouble.
"There!" Kitty shouted, speaking over her own pounding heart. "Now you can't pretend like you can't hear me!"
Owl, for the first time, showed some anger. A slight tilt of the brow, a minute narrowing of her grey eyes. "I don't want to hear anything from you!"
"I'll make sure you do anyway!"
Owl managed to get her legs unbounded and immediately tried to kick Kitty away, but when she did she felt her own arm going along with the hit. Blinking, she looked down and saw something wrapping around her wrist, a sleek disk that, now that she noticed it, seemed to almost... suck at her Spirit?
Yes, it was sucking. Not too much, but enough to make her feel weaker, enough to dampen that fire inside she'd gotten so used to fueling in combat. And at the other end of that disk, just as weakened and dampened, was Kitty's hand. During their brief struggle, the girl had handcuffed them together with a Spirit-nulling Talisman.
Both girls clambered to stand, though Kitty did so with a clear limp—with her Spirit nullified, the cut on her ankle was becoming a bigger problem. Still, she reveled in her momentary success; Owl was well and truly caught. All she had to do now was make the other girl happy about that fact.
"Back then, you said we can't change. That we're monsters." Kitty wiped at her chin, finding a trickle of blood spilling down from her lips. That last blow had made her bite her tongue. "Maybe you're right. I don't know that people like us really deserve anything good..."
Huffing, Owl bent for her fallen knife. Kitty reached out with her bad foot and, powering through the pain, used it to kick the knife skating across the room.
"But it doesn't matter!" Kitty said. "Before I knew it, I had friends. A family. They were good enough to hold out a hand even when I couldn't do the same. Love and trust, those things happen even when you don't think you deserve them! You can't control them, but you can be open to them when they come!"
Owl looked at her, and Kitty tried to find anything in her eyes, hope, curiosity, even resignation. All she found was dead color. Then Owl reached up and started choking her.
A guttural gasp made its way out of Kitty's throat before Owl's grip tightened around it, closing the windpipe. She stepped back once, twice, almost falling on her bad foot, but Owl followed her, fingers solid on her neck. She tried pulling away, but her own failing body and the cuff binding them together made it impossible.
"That's all very nice, Mouse," Owl said. "Very interesting. Would you like to hear what I learned since you and Fox left? Would you like to hear what Father did when you two abandoned me, when I came back alone after we failed our mission?"
Kitty tried to speak, but no air came through one way or the other as Owl pushed them toward the curtained wall.
Owl gazed into Kitty's paling face. "He did more than beat me, Mouse. He did more than embarrass me in front of the others. He did more than train me to the ground, more than starve me, more than lock me up by myself for weeks. He did all that too, but he did more. You can't even imagine the things I suffered because of you, sister."
They reached the curtains, Kitty crashing hard against them and the glass they covered, and Owl drove her further in, hand almost reaching for that glass even if it had to go through Kitty's throat to get there. Colors dulled, the still-flashing lights around the room like a rapid passing of endless days, each night growing longer and longer.
"And I learned that trust is stupid. I learned that words like love are just that: words. They're not worth a damn." Owl pressed deeper, enough that Kitty could almost not even hear her voice anymore over the sound of her own failing brain. "That's what I learned, and I learned it from you. You said you'd be fine even if all we had was each other, and I did trust you, but the moment you got a chance to leave you didn't look back once for me. So sure, maybe you found people willing to hold out a hand, and maybe they'll stick around for a while if they find it convenient. But when it really matters they'll leave, because in the end all anyone cares about is themselves."
The world was ending. Kitty could see it disappearing with each flicker of light, each second without breath. But she still had some strength, and she couldn't let it end here. Not because she feared death, not because she wanted to win the fight, but because in her fading consciousness she'd finally come up with the right words and she'd be damned if Owl didn't get to hear them.
So Kitty grit her teeth, wound her free arm forward, and rammed her elbow back into the curtain. Her ears had long given up on letting her hear anything beyond a constant ringing buzz, but she felt the crack behind her enough to know she had to try again, so she did. Elbow after elbow struck the curtain, each one weaker than the last, until with one final push of energy she felt the wall fall out from her back.
Owl, having pressed Kitty up against the curtain, now felt herself pulled forward as the two tumbled through cloth and out the broken window.
- - - — MKII — - - -
Red was having plenty of fun trying out his new move, but unfortunately Vincent and Hound both soon saw the danger of letting him run wild. Now he ran away from both, diving under tables and dashing through aisles of bookshelves. As he did, Hound grazed him in the torso and Vincent got him in the arm, at once killing his momentum and his ability to cast his Trick.
Fine, he supposed it made sense for them to get tired of the now multiple bruises that riddled their bodies thanks to him. But what else was he supposed to do, not hit back when they were trying to kill him?
Still, this was a problem. Red could fix his arm up just fine now that he knew the technique to it, but it would take some time to do, and the two coming after him weren't exactly giving him much of it. What he needed was some space, a moment to breathe and recalibrate.
That's what Red was thinking as he passed by the shelves that circled the library's center. The tables in the middle had long been shattered into a million pieces, but the shelves themselves were still stable, if a bit weathered, and rose up one or two stories.
They'd all mostly avoided this part of the room because it was too open, but as Vincent and Hound each came up down the aisle behind him Red got an idea. Grinning, he broke into a full sprint that soon had him run out of one aisle, cross the center, and enter another. Then, without turning back, he let out a loud "Ha!" and reached over with his good arm to push the closest bookshelf over.
The whole long structure toppled onto its side, and as it did it hit the one next to it, making it topple as well. Another fell, then another, until soon the entire circle of shelves fell like dominoes, spilling countless books and producing the single largest cloud of dust and broken debris Red had seen since getting into this business.
Of course, Red found himself buried under it all, but that had been part of the point, and the impact of a whole tsunami of bound pages crashing down on him had only hurt a little. Pressed down by it against the floor, his vision consumed by the darkness of piled rubble, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
The dam rose up in his imagination without much effort, an old friend welcoming him back. He pushed wave after wave of Spirit against it until—pop—his arm got back to its senses. Grinning, Red flexed it experimentally, making sure it worked.
Now to get back into the thick of things.
With a grunt, Red clawed his way up to the surface of all the fallen books. Eventually he reached the now hollow skeleton of the shelves that those books once resided in, and it didn't take much to break his way through that too. Breathing out, he rose out of the pile, kicking with his feet and pushing with his hands until he dragged himself up.
Red coughed, then sneezed, and looking down at himself saw he was covered in a layer of dust. If the tux wasn't ruined before, it certainly was now. Looking around, he saw that the circular shelves had become a circular mound of broken things. The whole library was a mess, really, and even now the soft light from the high windows illuminated all the dust still hanging around.
Some movement along the mound. Red saw a hand pop out of it from across the central space, clawing at the air like a zombie before pushing down against the surface and pulling the rest of the body up. Vincent crawled out, his own coughing much harsher than Red's, one hand gripping his silver gun tightly and the other waving at the air around him.
Vincent saw him looking. "Kid, you really don't do things by half, do ya?"
Grinning, Red clapped his hands. "Guess I never really saw the point."
"And your arm works again. Great. Y'know, shrugging off my Moonshooter like that's supposed to be impossible."
"I've been told a lot of stuff I do is impossible."
"Well, at least you're humble about it."
Another hand, this time close to Vincent, except this one held a gun. Seeing it, the Enforcer instinctively jumped and landed on the mound a distance away, watching expectantly with his own gun at the ready.
Hound rose in a clatter of books and broken wood, gun held out all the while as if to ward off a curse, and when he found his footing it didn't take long for him to find Red or Vincent too. "You both can survive much."
Surprised to hear him speak, Vincent arched a brow. "That a compliment?"
"No. It's extremely irritating."
"I see."
The three stood there, gauging each other. Vincent kept his silver gun at his hip, finger clearly itching to pull the trigger, though he seemed to wait for the others to make a move first. Hound waited much more patiently for the same thing, eyes passing from Red to Vincent with deadly calm, and though he seemed to have lost one of his guns in the mess of falling shelves he still kept the other one at the ready.
Red prepared his flick slowly to not scare the others into action before he was ready to respond to it. He looked at Vincent, noting the sag of the man's shoulders—the Enforcer handled it well, but this battle seemed to be straining his endurance more than he let on. Looking at Hound, Red found no ounce of exhaustion, no sign of strain, but the assassin had to be on his last legs. After all, Red was starting to get tired too, and he had just about the biggest stamina out of anyone he'd ever met.
Looking between Vincent and Hound, he figured they'd both probably realized the same thing he had: this fight was coming to a close. All that was left to do was decide the winner.
One moment would do it. The three of them waited for that moment, waited for some twitch or preemptive move, all with their weapons at the ready. Sweat trickled down Vincent's nose. Hound's nose flared to breathe more deeply. Red gulped to clear his dry throat.
Then they all acted at once. Hound threw his gun up, bullet firing. Vincent slapped the hammer of his and shot right after. Red held his arm out, stabilizing it with the other, and flicked his finger.
And Hound got hit twice.
Red and Vincent watched, stunned, as the assassin got shot both with a beam to his chest and an invisible blow to his gut. The body armor he'd worn throughout the battle, already dented and ripped, now broke and fell in pieces as he got thrown back into the pile of books, crashing limply onto his back.
Breathing hard, Red and Vincent looked at each other from across the short space. A strange feeling passed between them, some vague combination of humor and respect, though neither could quite place it. Then Red looked further down and, noticing the boy's eyes widen, Vincent followed his gaze.
His gut spilled blood freely, Hound's bullet having found its mark. Shocked, Vincent put a hand against it, feeling its sticky wetness, and after a moment fell to his knees.
Red surged forth, leaping across the distance and then running to catch the man before he could fall to his face. "Hey, dude, you alright?"
Vincent coughed up a wad of blood. "D-Do I... look alright?"
"Right, dumb question." Red looked around the room, pulling Vincent up. "Okay. That was fun, but I think that about does it. Let's get you some help."
"We're... not on the same side, k-kid."
"Yeah, yeah, like I haven't already heard that before."
Red wrapped Vincent's arm around his shoulder, half carrying the man to walk down the pile of debris. He'd need to find Stretch and Roman. There likely wasn't a doctor anywhere around here, and seeing as the whole mansion was wrapped up in a giant fight it probably wasn't the best place to look for first aid, but if anything could be done those two would know what it was.
Before he could think any more about it, Red snapped his head around, having seen something from the corner of his eye. Hound struggling up to rest on his arm, his other hand opening up a now exposed vest to reveal... a little box with a bunch of wires? What the hell was that?
Oh. Wait. Red had seen this one before. Not personally, but he'd sure as hell seen enough movies to know it was the absolute last thing you wanted to be anywhere near.
"Shit," he said, running for the doors and practically carrying a now disoriented Vincent over his shoulder. Except, he remembered mid-step, the doors were barricaded. He could break through, but how long would that take? "Shit!"
Where to go, where to go... Red swerved around, searching for increasing panic until his eyes found the windows across the room. Every second counted so he didn't bother thinking more on it, instead just pumping his legs as hard as he could and then jumping all the way up there, clearing two dozen feet and praying he hadn't messed up the trajectory, a nearly unconscious Vincent in tow.
Red reached the windows with a foot already kicking out, screaming in a mix of fright and thrill, breaking through just as the explosion boomed out behind him.