The exterior of Camp Trin’s chapel is as beautiful as it is imposing. White stone walls shoot up towards the sky. Stained glass windows, barely illuminated by the light of the moon outside, depict scenes and stories from a time long since forgotten. The atrium of the building lies just on the other side of a huge set of wooden doors, each one the size of a truck standing on its end. Inside those doors, half a dozen of the most ruthless killers in the whole of the American northeast prowl the pews. In their possession is Lex, the captive Prince of New England. On the other side of the massive doors, shirking off the night chill, stand Cannon, Tay, and Hoodie.

Tay reaches for the ornate copper doorknob, but stops herself. She doesn’t want the door to open. What lurks inside the chapel is more than just a brutal hand to hand fight. It’s the culmination of a lifetime of living in the shadow of a monster. She wants to save Lex, and she wants to fight alongside the unhinged pizza boy who she hopes to be able to call her friend, but when she reaches again for the knob, those thoughts are at the back of her mind. She wants payback. Revenge for being forced to live a life surrounded by the most despicable people she’s ever met. Revenge against May for having her exiled from the family based on the lie that Tay was trying to betray them. More than anything, though, Tay wants to silence that voice in her head that cares what the rest of the family thinks. She’s better off without the Marauders, and she wants to prove it to them by beating the hell out of them.

And yet, she’s terrified. Tay has always been an expert at stealth, and she’s always been strong, but she’s a black sheep among the Marauders. Killing isn’t something she ever took lightly. It was a means to an end, a means that was to be avoided at all costs unless there was no other way out. For May, it is a pleasure. Spilling blood is intoxicating for her. What’s worse, she’s good at it. Even from when she was a young child, May had always been unreasonably strong. The skill with which she slung around her meteor hammer (the proper name for her weapon, which, if you don’t recall, is a length of chain with a bowling ball welded to each end) allowed her to decimate any and everyone who she’s ever fought. Tay has seen her sister turn people into disassembled Mr. Potato Heads with just a few swings. She gulps and retracts her hand yet again.

“We gonna stand around heah all night?” Cannon yells. “What’s the mattah? You afraid of a couple of Maraudahs or you don’t know how to use a dooahknob?”

“I’m not afraid,” Tay says, very afraid.

“Good, cause me neithah. Gimme five seconds in theah with those jabronies callin’ for their mothah.”

“You don’t want that,” Tay quickly counters. “Trust me.” She thinks about what she’s seen Mother do. May’s strength, unnatural as it may seem, is generally the result of good genetics and an unquenchable desire to increase her own capacity for causing harm to those around her. Mother’s strength, on the other hand, isn’t physical. Tay hardly understands it herself. She thinks back to when she and May were children, when they were tasked with retrieving that hat for Mother. She’s sure that May knew more about it at the time than she herself did. If not, she certainly does now. Those were the kinds of secrets that Mother would divulge with May, but never with Tay. Tay wasn’t worthy. That was fine enough for her. The way that corpses looked after Mother was done with them, purple and black and swollen beyond recognition, Tay didn’t want any part in that.

“You don’t want that,” Tay says again.

“Yeah, okay, chill. It’s just an expression. Shyeesh. I don’t actually wanna hear ‘em call for their mothahs. Talk about sad.”

Hoodie says, “Can we do this?”

“Fuck yes, can we please? I’m really bankin’ on the wahden to give us a pahdon or somethin’, and that ain’t gonna happen if we don’t get rid of those Maraudahs, and that ain’t gonna happen if we spend all night heah playin’ tiddly winks. Also, that kid’s a good kid. Prince or not, he’s a good kid.” Tay nods in assent, then reaches for the knob.

The interior of Camp Trin’s chapel is as beautiful and imposing as its exterior. The huge doors open into a sprawling atrium, on the near side of which is an organ whose pipes stretch up to the high vaulted ceiling. On the far side of the atrium is a long walkway, flanked on both sides by three rows of pews that face the walkway. At the far end of the aisle, the room opens back up into a section with a pulpit on the right side, a lectern on the left side, and a well adorned stone altar in the middle. Tay thinks it’s the most beautiful place she’s ever seen. Cannon thinks it’s the most beautiful place he’s ever seen other than Fenway Pahk. Hoodie has seen prettier places than this (hell, she grew up in just about the prettiest place imaginable). All three of them, though, agree that it would be a whole lot prettier if it weren’t for the six figures stuffing gold and silver from the altar into their black cloaks.

The door, which is so massive and old that even Tay couldn’t open it quietly, moans and whines as old things are wont to do. The Marauders all turn to see the source of the noise, then turn back to their looting and pillaging as soon as they see who it is. Tay and some of her weird new friends, they snicker to each other. Only May keeps her eyes on them.

“Dear sister. I didn’t expect to see you again. I didn’t really want to, either, if I’m being honest. But I guess you knew that. Want to introduce me to your friends?”

“Where’s Lex?” Tay says.

“Come to play hero, have you? Please, Tayna, it doesn’t suit you.”

“Where’s. Lex.”

“Oh my, spare me the act.” She lazily gestures to the lectern. Lex, his arms and legs both bound behind him by ropes, wriggles like a worm into view from behind the small podium.

“Let him go,” Cannon yells.

May chuckles. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Cannon from Old Boston, nice to meet ya. You’ve probably heard of me ‘cause I’m a goddamned legend.”

“Tayna, is this really the class of person you associate with? Were you all planning on running away to la la land together? Singing songs and holding hands? How sweet. I’m so sorry that it isn’t going to work out that way. Family? The ransacking can wait. It looks we’ll have to squish the worm after all.”

She snaps her fingers and the other five Marauders, who had all been hunched over various parts of the altar, slowly stand up straight. They turn towards Cannon, Tay, and Hoodie, their faces expressionless. They stalk towards May, arranging themselves in a line on either side of her. Drawing their weapons, they look like a plateau of grim reapers, and May knows that that isn’t very far from the truth.

“Three against six,” Hoodie says. “Not good odds.”

“Gotta be honest, kid, I’ve nevah felt bettah about any odds in my entiyah life than I feel right now.” He nudges Tay. “I got fah left, you got fah right?”

“Deal.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

As if the starting pistol had been shot, the line of Marauders all race towards the front end of the chapel. They sprint down the walkway that separates the two groups, howling like hyenas with their weapons raised above their heads. The Marauder on the far right of the line is immediately impaled by three razor sharp credit cards in various vital spots along her torso. To make things worse for her, a lacrosse ball craters into her face and knocks her to the floor.

“Cannon, what the hell?” Tay yells, grabbing another fistful of cards.

“The hell you mean, what the hell?”

“You said you got left, the one on the right was mine!”

“I know, but what I don’t know is why you’ah throwin’ youah cahds at the kid on the left.”

“I hit the one on the right! Do you not know your lefts and rights?”

“Ah, I think I see the problem heah, I was talkin’ about my left and right.”

“We’re facing the same direction, we have the same left and right!”

Hoodie says, “Can we focus?”

Cannon and Tay both grumble, but they agree. The advancing V shape of Marauders, with May taking the lead position in the center of the V, is all but upon them. They collapse on Cannon, Tay, and Hoodie, and an all out melee erupts. Tay weaves in and out of the other Marauders’ strikes, retaliating back when she can with card-clawed swipes. Cannon parries blows with his lacrosse stick while at the same time angling his body so that his armor can properly absorb whatever strikes his stick can’t. Hoodie leaps around, jumping from pew to pew while peppering the Marauders with all manner of chops and kicks.

Tay and Cannon are pretty preoccupied with not getting sliced and bludgeoned to death, but they can’t help but be very happy that Hoodie is on their side. They’ve both borne witness to Hoodie’s incredible strength and dexterity, and neither of them wants to be on the receiving end. Not only that, but they don’t want to have to deal with her touching them. They’ve both felt it before, and they both see it on the faces of the Marauders as she strikes them. A deep feeling of unease accompanies each one of her attacks, it’s written on the disgusted twists of the Marauders faces. Cannon and Tay still have no idea who this bitch is or why she happens to be fighting alongside them instead of against them, and they both independently whisper a quick prayer that she doesn’t change her mind.

Cannon shrugs off a blow from a Marauder wielding a golf putter. He returns the favor with a wind cracking thwack of his net, which staggers the Marauder enough for Hoodie to finish the deal with a heavy strike to the temple. Cannon dusts off his shoulder. “Hey, ah, kid with the Hoodie, what did you say youah name was?”

“Heads up!,” she cries.

“Heads Up? What kinda name-- oh fuck!” Too late. Out of the corner of his eye he sees one end of May’s meteor hammer speeding down at him. He doesn’t have time to dodge, and he isn’t able to raise his stick up to block in time. Just before the bowling ball makes impact with his fragile little body, Hoodie interjects, shoving her left arm in the path of the hammer head.

Cannon starts to thank her for saving him from having a bloody pancake for a noggin, but he doesn’t. He can’t, because, after what he sees next, his heart has leapt up into his throat, where it is currently doing somersaults and an Irish jig. Not only did Hoodie not react in the slightest to blocking May’s attack - no wince, no cry of distress, seemingly no pain whatsoever - but now her left arm seems to be wrapping itself around the bowling ball like a snake slithering up a tree. Cannon saw this before when they were fighting bugs in the apartment building, but he chalked that up to hallucinating from breathing in the probably-toxic fumes of a burning old ass building. Now, though, seeing it again up close and personal, he feels the sudden urge to throw up.

By the look on May’s face, she’s just as perplexed and disgusted. She yanks the meteor hammer back over to herself like a yo-yo. “What are you?” she asks. Instead of waiting for an answer, though, she slings the meteor hammer back at Hoodie, striking rapidly with both of its bowling ball ends. Cannon can’t help but watch in amazement. His limbs are becoming frustratingly sluggish. He fought plenty of guards back in the prison, and he fought doubleplus plenty of bugs in the apartment building. He’s feeling it. He’d never admit it, but he’s tired. Hoodie, on the other hand, looks as fresh as a spring chicken.

Her punches and kicks are unnaturally fast. She takes hits from May’s meteor hammer without breaking a sweat. Then, of course, there’s that arm. Her left arm. It just isn’t right -- pun intended. Her right arm seems normal enough. Looks like it bends at the elbow and rotates at the shoulder. But there’s something seriously wrong with her. Cannon figures that its no wonder that she opts to keep her entire body entirely covered entirely all the time. Who knows what kind of person is hiding underneath all of that clothing and bandages. He can’t help but watch in a combination of horror, confusion, and awe.

Tay is under no such trance. She’s had more time than Cannon to wrestle with the questions and queasiness that Hoodie inspires. Ever since the two of them fought last night, Tay wondered what on earth Hoodie’s deal was. Right now, though, she couldn’t care less. She’s not just fighting for survival, she’s not just fighting to help Lex, she’s not just fighting to protect Camp Trin, and she’s not just fighting to earn Warden Morgan’s good graces. In all honesty, at this point, she’s not fighting for any of those reasons. She’s got a grudge like Ju-On, itching to fight like Pluton, fighting with force even stronger than a gluon (feel free to throw on a drum machine and reread that line).

Seriously, though, she’s fighting with so much anger that there isn’t any room in her head for anything other than the desire to hurt these Marauders and to hurt them bad. Her claw-like strikes are typically very precise, calculated in such a way that they maximize the chance of injury to pressure points and vital organs. Now, though, she swings around like a wild animal. Like an animal spotting prey, she sets her sights on May, who is currently focused herself on dealing with Hoodie. Tay runs up behind her sister and lunges at her, claws out and extended.

May whips around and sees Tay coming. She cracks a wide, wicked, toothy grin. She sidesteps out of the way. Tay roars in anger and tries again, but May again dodges. May continues this little dance, keeping herself just out of reach of her rage-blind sister. “Come now, sister,” she says, “I knew you were dead weight in a fight, but this is just hard to watch.” Tay snarls and pounces, hacking and slashing at May but finding no purchase. “So brave of you to try to play with the big kids. So big, so strong.”

“Shut up, shut up shut up!” Tay flings a flurry of cards at May, but she blocks every one of them with the chain of her hammer.

“Really, it’s a good thing you’ve found these cute little friends of yours. You need someone strong to look after you. You always have. It’s all that me and the other Marauders could talk about when you’d leave the room.” She puts a finger to her chin and looks up in exaggerated thought, all while sidestepping and ducking out of the way of Tay’s attacks. “Speaking of which, the other Marauders should be back here soon. Once Sofi and them are done slurping up anything good this town has, they’ll come back here and we can all watch me finish you off once and for all.”

Tay’s mind goes blank. She’s so honed in on May that she doesn’t even realize that, outside of her little rage bubble, the fight is actually going pretty well. Of the six Marauders (not including Tay) who were in the chapel to start with, one was taken out before the fight even started by a misunderstanding of right and left. One, May, has also stopped paying attention to the fight at large, as she’s mostly interested in terrorizing her big sister, so she’s more or less out of the fight. That leaves Cannon and Hoodie to take on the other four Marauders.

With the exception of Daisy the day prior, Cannon has never fought anyone as strong as these four, and he really only got the better of Daisy because he had the chance to make a surprise pizza attack. There are no pizzas in sight here in the chapel, which unfortunately means that Cannon is no longer on his home turf. Even still, he’s holding his own, especially with Hoodie’s help. While his opponents are distracted by trying to intercept Hoodie as she leaps from pew to pew, Cannon is able to drill them all with lacrosse balls, flinching them and knocking them off balance. Hoodie capitalizes on the openings, kicking and throwing the Marauders into each other. After just a few minutes of fighting, the only people still standing are Cannon, Tay, Hoodie, and May.

Tay finally notices that the chaos around her has quieted down. As if waking from a dream, she looks around and sees that the floor is littered with slumped bodies in black cloaks. She doubles over, bracing herself against her knees as she chokes down hard and heavy breathes. “It’s over, Maya. Give us Lex and leave.”

May frowns at the downed bodies of her compatriots. “Oh, Tayna. You know I’ll never do that.”

“It’s ovah, kid. All youah little friends ah outta commission. It’s three on one. Just save us all a load of trouble and get outta heah.”

May chuckles. “Even if I wasn’t completely certain that I could take all three of you without breaking a sweat, I’d sooner die than run away from a fight. Especially if that fight is with my dear big sister.”

Hoodie says, “We can make that happen.”

May’s eyes narrow. “I’d like to see you try.” She leans back into a fighting stance and beckons the three of them to get a piece of her, Morpheus style. They all run at her, but when she starts swinging her meteor hammer around in a figure 8, they all back off. They try to find ways in, but the hammer is flying faster than any of them have seen it fly before. Even if they did manage to find an opening to attack, mistiming it by a fraction of a second would result in one or both of the bowling balls crushing their limbs into a fine powder. Even Hoodie, who has thus far seemed pretty ignorant to the whole idea of pain, hesitates.

May pushes towards them, not dropping her figure 8 pattern for an instant. Every step she takes to advance on them, they take a step back. They look at each other, hoping that one of them will have some kind of idea for what to do. Before anyone thinks of anything, though, they find themselves cornered back against the huge doors that they originally entered through. Just as soon as they bump up against the doors, they feel them open behind them.

Cannon, Tay, and Hoodie all whip around to see who could be interrupting their very climactic fight against the big bad. To their immediate surprise and pleasure, they see Warden Morgan, keyring flail in hand. They all know that Morgan isn’t exactly their bestie, but surely he’d rather align himself with our heroes than with May. Surely he’ll be the tour de force they need to break through May’s defenses. Surely this will ensure a swift and decisive victory for the good guys.

It won’t, and stop calling me Shirley.

A shadow looms behind Morgan. The figure casting the shadow steps into view, her hulking frame nearly big enough to clog up the entire doorway. Morgan is a huge person, but even he is dwarfed by the massive woman standing behind him. Daisy Montego cracks her knuckles and grins.

“Happy to see me, pizza boy?”