Up in the atrium of the chapel, Tay dodges yet another attack from May, clutching her bleeding chest as she does. The whole place looks like a warzone. The beautiful stonework on the floor and walls have been reduced to near rubble. Craters from the meteor hammer are everywhere. If Ethan from chapter 3 was still alive, he’d be horrified to see that the organ that he used as a center piece for his gripping yet whimsical one man show was now a collection of bent metal and busted wood. The beauty that captivated Tay when she first entered Camp Trin is, at least in the building’s interior, completely gone. She’d lament the loss of such ancient beauty if she weren’t currently preoccupied with not getting turned into an animated bowling alley screen anthropomorphized pin right after a strike. Every fiber of her body has spent the last several minutes screaming out in pain and hatred in a frenzied attempt to kill her horrible, horrible little sister. She’s beyond exhausted. Exhausted with the fighting, exhausted with the running, and exhausted with having to listen to her sister taunt her.
She pushes through the fatigue and squirms her body out of the path of the meteor hammer for the umpteenth time. “Tayna, don’t tell me you’re getting tired already. We’ve barely even started.”
Tay can’t even respond at this point. She’d almost entirely drained, and not just because she’s been hemorrhaging blood for the past few minutes. Even if she did have something to say, she wouldn’t have time to get it out because May’s meteor hammer is already soaring through the air toward her once again. She fights through the heavy burning in her legs to jump out of the way. She sees an opening to attack, but the energy just isn’t there. Instead of diving in for a melee attack, she flings a few cards in May’s general direction.
It’s a pretty pathetic excuse for an attack. the cards all clatter lazily against the damaged wall far to May’s right. One card bounces off the wall and lands at May’s feet. She takes a second to pick it up and examine it, knowing that letting her guard down to such a degree is more of an insult than anything she could ever say. “Seriously, Tayna, how have you gone your entire life living in the same family as me and still be so weak?” She holds the card up, the sleek metal reflecting the soft torchlight of the chapel. “You really are an embarrassment.”
Tay stumbles backwards to put some space in between her and May, then lets rip another haphazard flurry of cards. The one card that actually does end up flying toward May does so with little velocity, and May easily slaps it away with her meteor hammer. “You’ve always been a big talker,” Tay says between bouts of coughs. “But you can’t put your money where your mouth is. You didn’t even have the stomach to kill me back outside the chapel, and you can’t do it now either. You can play with your food, sure, but you won’t eat it. Behind all the sadistic shit, you can’t get over the fact that I’m your sister. You won’t kill me. You can’t.”
In an instant, the playful smile that had been on May’s face almost the entire night is gone. Tay may not have been able to score any physical hits on her sister as of yet, but that little dig did some solid emotional damage. If there’s anything that May hates, Tay knows, it’s being called weak. May tilts her head slightly down, casting a shadow beneath the brow of her face. “I won’t be making that mistake again.”
May, who had only barely been showing signs of fatigue up until this point, leaps at Tay with a renewed vigor that Tay wasn’t prepared for. She tries to jump out of the way, but she’s slow to react and even slower to move. May’s meteor hammer grazes Tay right in the same spot that it had before. The pain of her broken ribs reverberates through her entire body as if she’d struck a concrete wall with a metal bat. When she finally returns to her fighting stance, she notices that the edges of her vision are starting to cloud over. It’s only a matter of time before she’s out completely.
Cannon isn’t faring much better in his battle against Daisy. They’ve been going more or less blow for blow for quite a while now, and the size difference is starting to take its toll. Daisy isn’t doing great, per se, but Cannon is barely even doing okay, and even saying that he’s doing okay is being pretty generous. He’s still vertical and he’s still hacking away with his lacrosse stick, but with much less gusto than when their fight started.
He goes in to smack Daisy with his stick, but his charge ends up resembling something of a drunken stagger. He nearly throws himself off balance just by running forwards, and as such his strike is miserably pathetic. Daisy retaliates by grabbing Cannon by the dreadlocks and swinging him around into the wooden pews behind him. Still holding onto him by his hair, she picks him up and brings her face right up against his.
“I dolt you, little runt, I’m going to kill you for what you did to me.”
Cannon spits a wad of blood in Daisy’s face. “What, do you brush youah teeth with garlic powdah? I smelled a lotta bugs in my time, kid, and if I had my eyes and eahs plugged, I’d think you were one of ‘em. Besides, you’ah outta youah mind if you think you’ah winnin’. One moah good hit and I’ll have you unconscious.” He limply swings his limbs at her like an over-tired toddler protesting bedtime.
“One more good hit and I’ll have you six feet under,” Daisy says. She winds Cannon up like a softball and chucks him across the walkway. He hits the chapel wall hard, then tumbles down into the pews. He winces and tries to collect himself, untangling his limbs from the splintering woodwork all around him. He manages to get his butt on to one of the pews, where he sits hunched over for a second as he desperately tries to catch his breath. A shadow appears on the floor beneath him, and he looks up to see Daisy climbing on top of the pews, slowly making her way towards him.
“Poor little pizza boy. Guess you shouldn’t have picked a fight with me in the bar last night, huh? Bet you didn’t know that the last thing you’d ever see was me. That’ll show you to mess with Daisy Montego. I always win, pipsqueak. Not gonna give you the satisfaction of any last words. This is it. Nighty night, pizza bleauuhgghh.”
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Between the withering fatigue of the fight and the crushing boredom of her little soap box monologue, Cannon was kinda zoning out while she was talking. He snaps back to attention just in time to ponder on what kind of bizarre accent would cause her to pronounce “boy” as “bleauuhgghh,” but, hey, some people just have weird accents, I guess. About half a second later, he realizes that the source of Daisy’s fun new accent is not-so-erotic asphyxiation.
Daisy’s hands bolt to her neck as if they were magnets. She yanks at something around her neck, but Cannon can’t see what. All he sees is her face go through horrible palette swaps as the oxygen going to her brain gets thinner and thinner. Finally, arms thrashing and legs flailing, she loses her balance and topples over backwards into the central aisle.
The deafening crack of skull against stone echoes throughout the chapel like a ringing bell. Cannon finally gets the strength to stand up, allowing him to see beyond the rows of pews. Warden Morgan stands over Daisy, his lanyard wrapped around her neck. A shimmering pool of blood has already started to leak out the back of her head. Her eyes are barely open, but they’re open enough to see Morgan’s grimace.
“You,” she says, her face going pale, “You’re making a big mistake, Warden.”
“Funny, I think this is the first right decision I’ve made in a long time.”
Cannon stumbles over the pews and makes his way to the aisle, where Hoodie and Lex are waiting for him. “Guess you shoulda known,” he says, gesticulating so wildly that he starts to lose balance. Hoodie and Lex hold him upright. “You shoulda known bettah than the pick a fight with the best fuckin’ pizza guy in New England.” He jabs the butt of his lacrosse stick into Daisy’s sternum, using it to like a pole vaulting slide box to keep himself upright. “So, Wahden. What’s the big idea, eh? You with us again?”
Morgan looks at Lex, who offers him a smile. “Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far. But I can say for sure that I’m very against Daisy Montego.”
“Good enough for me. I’d realy fuckin’ love to put the lights out on this kid, but I figyah you might wanna do the honahs?”
“Gladly.”
“Be my guest.”
Cannon removes his lacrosse stick from Daisy’s chest, allowing Morgan to pin her to the floor with his knee. He cracks his knuckles. “Daisy Montego, I’m hereby placing you under arrest. You have the right to--”
She spits up at him. “My family’s gonna come after you, Morgan. Once they find out you--”
“--fuck it.” White hot knuckle shoots like a bullet across Daisy Montego’s face, leaving her unconscious on the chapel floor.
At this point, with two of the three fights wrapped up, the chapel has gotten pretty quiet. Morgan gets back up to his feet and nods at Cannon. Cannon nods back, then nods at Hoodie and Lex. They all just stand there nodding for a little while, proud of all of them being not dead. Once they’ve all acknowledged what special little boys and girls they are, they set their sights on May and Tay. May swings again and again at Tay, who only has the strength to dodge backwards. May forces her back and back until she only has about five yards of real estate between her and the huge wooden chapel door.
“Maya, look around you. It’s over.” May does so, frowning when she sees Daisy on the ground and the rest of the gang still basking in the glow of their victorious nodding. “Give it a rest and maybe they’ll let you off easy.”
“I’m they,” Morgan grunts, “And you can bet your ass that I won’t be letting you off easy.”
“No,” May says, continuing to back Tay toward the door. “I won’t lose to you, Tayna.”
“You already have,” Cannon calls out. “Make anothah move and it’ll be your ass.” He loads a lacrosse ball and cradles his stick, ready to fire.
May stops swinging. She steps back and laughs. She cackles, long irregular bouts of hair swishing in and out of her. “You really think you’ve beaten me? You and your little ragtag team? All of you together couldn’t beat me, and half of you can’t even fight. And maybe you forgot that I came here with an army of over 20 Marauders. You’re all already on the brink of exhaustion. How are you going to fight them?”
Cannon, Lex, Hoodie, and Morgan all look at each other uneasily. They know that she’s right. Tay is effectively out of the fight, and Cannon is, too. Lex was never really in the fight, which just leaves Morgan and Hoodie. From what they’ve seen, they’re likely no match for May. Morgan steps forward. “If you leave right now and bring all your Marauders with you, I won’t chase you. We got a deal?”
“A deal?” May laughs. “Some lawman you are. And to think you just said that you wouldn’t be letting me off easy. You’re a joke. All of you are. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll play your little game. You let me and all of my family leave here without any struggle and we’ll go. On one condition. We get to take our prize with us.” She smiles and points at Lex, who has only just gotten used to the feeling of not being tied up. Morgan looks at the boy, who returns his glare with the most pitiable look the Warden had ever seen in his life. “Your town stays safe and sound. We won’t touch a hair on the softest child’s head. All we want is the prince.”
“Morgan,” Lex says, “You’re not really considering--”
“Shut up,” Morgan yells. He takes a long moment to consider before continuing. “Do I have your word that you’ll leave here without causing any more damage?”
“Of course.”
“Wahden, what the hell? You really gonna believe her? She’s a lyin’ sack of shit! I mean, just look at her sistah! This one’s like a worse version of ouah Marauder girl, and ours is the nice one! You’ah a fuckin’ sellout, man. A sellout!”
Warden Morgan waits for a very long time before he says anything. “Sellout?” he says, the word coming out almost comically slowly. “I’m not selling anything. I’m buying.”
“Buyin’? The hell ah you buyin’? You ain’t buyin’ nothin’, you’re a lousy, no good, good foah nothin’...” Cannon goes on rambling for a little while. Lex, feeling pretty resigned to his fate at this point, tunes him out. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, he might have been slightly wrong when he judged all these people as being good. Maybe, just maybe, he--
--Wait.
What’s that noise? Footsteps? Slowly, a smile dawns on his face. “Time,” he says, punctuating Cannon’s rant.
Cannon looks at Lex as if he spoke in tongues. “Time?”
“Buying time.”
Suddenly, the door of the chapel swings open. The smell of cheap beer wafts into the building. Nearly 50 people stand just beyond the door, about half of them wearing signature Marauder cloaks. At first, May grins. Reinforcements have arrived. On second glance, though, she realizes that every last Marauder has their hands tied behind their backs, each of them being led by this or that ruffian. The Marauder closest to her, Sofi, can do nothing more than frown and shake her head. In front of Sofi, a blonde with two long braids steps forward. In one hand, she holds a tankard with a set of brass knuckles affixed to one side.
Rach smiles at May. “Welcome to Camp Trin.”