The avenging duo stood at the entrance of the mansion. The doors were a charred ruin. They appeared to have been blasted apart.

Tasìa turned to Annebél.

"This looks insane."

"Doesn't it though?"

One of the foyer walls, the one to the east that led deeper into the mansion, was blown to smithereens. An exposed broken pipe dripped black, oozing liquid on the surface of the cracked tile. The strange-smelling tar bubbled in pools connected by the cracks.

Beneath severely cracked marble faux columns, a small mortar cannon - Val's PA identified it as an L16 81mm when Tasìa swept over it with the camera - lay broken with a sevéred arm dangling from it.

Annebél laughed.

"Can you imagine the idiocy that went into making that happen?

Tasìa nodded and gave her own interpretive assessment. "Alright, what do we have here? So, they blew up the door, then brought the cannon inside where someone mishandles it. Can't wait to tell the dagga chicas about this one."

"Come on, I'll give you a lift."

The duo had to climb over the wall that had fallen in on itself. The top half collapsed on the bottom half, leaving a haphazard inclined ramp. They carefully climbed across it and jumped down into the next room.

It happened to be a very large one built to impress guests with its ballroom-style oppulance. A fountain stood in the middle of the room. Four more faux columns squared up on each corner of the Meso-American tile design that comprised the floor.

The fountain was nearly dry with barely a trickle mustering forth, but the flowers that surrounded it were bountiful. As if nature herself was being defied.

The fountain could barely be seen from beneath the scarlet, purple, and yellow petals that splayed relentlessly across its surface.

A similar pattern of wild growth occurred in an alcove in the ballroom's far wall.

To the right, the entrance led to a hallway.

Before Tasìa turned to observe the left side, Annebél placed a hand on her shoulder to steady herself as the brawler gasped.

"Will you look at that?"

It was a shrine to Santa la Muerte. Two statues stood side by side. A robed, skeletal man bearing a scythe stood six feet in height, to the right of them. On the left was a nine-foot-tall dragon that reared up, but writhed in anguish with its claws nailed to a cross.

A circumscribed legend was written above it in all capital letters.

EL REY DE GLORIA ES MI VENGANZA.

The King of Glory is my vengeance.

That wasn't even the most abhorrent aspect of their surroundings. For that, the duo had to get closer to make greater sense of its purpose.

Several entwined glass tubes led to a beating heart encapsulated in the glass inside the dragon's chest. Another tube, slightly larger than the others, fed down past the bottom of the shrine foundation.

Annebél squinted as she studied the liquid that flowed in the tubes as it met further downstream with a white particulate. The powdered substance dissolved in the liquid before reaching the finely stitched assembly of artificial muscle that formed the mass of the scarlet heart.

In a voice staggered with revulsion, Annebél asked, "Is that cocaine?"

Tasìa traced the film of powder to the source. To a set of urns that rose along a mantle just beneath the legend above.

She examined the powder that fell on the cement statuary beneath them.

Tasìa took a finger and wiped it across the eyes of a small, devilishly grinning cherub. With one nostril pushed in and shut in place with her left hand, she snorted the cocaine up in the other nostril.

It wasn't much to go on. Barely enough to cause a back sinus drip, but it was enough to identify the product.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Yep, it is."

Annebél seethed.

"This is a mockery of all that is holy."

She shouldered her carbine and shot into the heart of the dragon.

The glass burst. They had to quickly back up to avoid getting drenched by a cascade of liquid.

Annebél clenched and unclenched her grip upon the fixed position magazine of the carbine as if she was looking for something else to destroy.

"Can you believe those Javierra fuckers?"

Tasìa cleared her throat. Neither she nor Annebél was the most conventional adherents to the Old Church, but even they had limits.

Though Tasìa recognized every element before them as updated versions of medieval symbology, she was not pleased to find something this close to a Hieronymus Bosch painting displayed within an altar to a venerated folk saint.

Finally, Tasìa broke the silence.

"Where to next?"

Annebél loaded a clip and turned toward the hallway entrance.

On the hallway walls hung the scorched portraits of Javierra patriarchs and their wives, sons, and daughters.

Someone took delight in their destruction.

"For nearly one hundred years, the premier mafioso family in all the Quadra region. Now look at them. Kings of Nothing."

Tasìa shrugged, "to dust."

They reached the end of the line of portraits.

Three paths were before them. Upstairs, downstairs to the basement, and an extension to the hallway that turned to the left. Rubble and ripped carpet was strung about the extension.

In front of their path, leading out of the fountain room, the back wall was scorched and heavily damaged, as well.

Where they stood in the hallway, they could hear the whimpering of the gunman coming from up the stairs.

Annebél chuckled.

"You fucked him up good and hard, baby."

Tasìa nodded and shrugged.

"I had help, but that I did."

Annebél grinned with a tilt of her head. Tasìa could tell that she had something to say.

"Yeah. Go on," she encouraged.

"Hey, I'm curious. Low caliber weapon. Trick shots. Special soft heads on your rounds. You went out of your way to spare their lives, why?"

Welp, now she had to explain herself and her current internal monolog of drama. Tasìa leaned against the corner of the wall beside Annebél to prep for it.

"I don't know if it's my destiny to lay waste through everything in my path. There was a time, not all that long ago, that I consoled myself with the words, 'Though I might be a thief at least I am not a killer.' What happened, you ask? I saw someone get mercilessly, ruthlessly murdered. Something woke up inside of me, then and there and made it crystal clear that it wasn't enough to passively skulk around the crueler aspects of the world around us."

Tasìa showed Annebél the Liberty coin she kept on a necklace.

"I made a vow to St Columbia that I would never let myself be put in a vulnerable situation like that pathetic woman back at the IMCQ. I've shot my way out of nearly every situation I have found myself in ever since then.

"Now, what has changed, once again? I'm on the pathway to saving my Aunt Tatiana. I feel like I need to be more cautious. That I straddle a very balanced thread of a line that could falter if I go in guns a blazing. But after last night, I heard a message she left for a friend. I'm not even certain she is in any danger at all."

Annebél nodded that she found Tasìa's excuse acceptable. She turned her head down the damaged hall, and she took note of a vaulted door near the end of the hallway.

"What is this we have here?"

The hall ceiling above the vaulted door was exposed as if the Black Brigade had used their ply tools to rip into the ceiling.

Tasìa approached and studied the vaulted door.

"Pneumatically sealed compartment. Probably what that mortar cannon was brought in for. It's a safe room.

"So to revise the story of the canon. They blew down the patio doors. Searching for someone, Don Javierra, I presume. He locks himself up in the safe room when his home is invaded.

"They roll the cannon down here, take some shots at the door. The mortar rounds obviously do not succeed. So, they roll it back out. It misfires."

Tasìa patted down the wall that was exposed beneath the wooden panels and wallpaper. It was an impressive matted material that felt like solid iron. Carbon fiber synced and twined with a heavy metal alloy.

"Expensive stuff. They make carrier fleets out of this shit," Tasìa said as she turned her attention to the exposed ceiling. She pointed to a jumble of pipes.

"Hey, somebody in the Night Brigade had the right idea. They rigged the valve up there so it wouldn't move. In essence, jamming the door. and trapping whoever is in the safe room inside.

"Lift me up. I can probably reverse it."

Annebél grimaced with a confused expression tightened on her face.

"Why didn't those assholes just reverse it, themselves?"

Tasìa shook her head.

"It couldn't be done until the occupant had released the locking mechanism from inside. The occupant didn't try to do so until he knew via a well-hidden close circuit camera that the Brigade cleared out, at least far enough away to allow him to attempt an escape.

"You see that piston there in the separate group? It's pulled back, meaning the door release has been attempted. I bet old Don shat himself when nothing happened and he realized just how truly fucked he was.

"Okay. Sweet sister. If you could give me a boost..."

Annebél offered Tasìa her hands clasped together at thigh level to give her a lift.

Tasìa, once boosted, climbed the rest of the way. She hung by her left elbow along a pipe for support as she got a closer view.

A well-placed wrench had been inserted to hinder the release valve.

It took three Sony Chiba-inspired kicks to pop the tool out. The valve sizzled for a few seconds before it wound around and around at a high-speed spin as the pressure buildup behind it released.

With a mighty clang that shook Tasìa nearly off the pipe, the valve head flew off in a volatile ricochet up the hallway.

Soon after followed a zip-zip-zip sound and the sweetly nauseous smell of death invading the ceiling creche where Tasìa crouched.

Annebél turned to face the now open security door. A small security drone darted out of the entrance and into the space in front of the redhead.

Before Tasìa could yell a warning, a telescopic arm with four mandibles reached out from the drone and grabbed Annebél on the chest. Four blue sparks popped and sizzled loud as the brawler dropped to the floor.