Interlude

Cobalt, Chalk, Carmine

“Tell me what happened.”

“I can’t.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because this entire bit is for a quote’s section in a book, and if you make those too long the reader just zones out. Bad idea all round.”

“… the fuck?”

Operative ‘Cobalt’ being debriefed by an ESP officer.

Fifth Avenue. Stormhall, Florida. April 7th, 2035.

No one ever tended to ask Cobalt what he was doing in places. He had come to accept this as a fact of his ‘condition’.

‘Condition’? Is that what the author’s calling it? Ugh. Well, at least it’s not lengthy exposition or backstory. That’s a real turnoff for any reader.

It was this same ‘condition’ that made Cobalt a highly sought-after individual.

Look, I know there’s a certain self-imposed word count limit here, but really, let’s show, not tell, hm? How about we start with a description.

Cobalt was a tall, dark-skinned man, clad in a blue combat bodysuit and carrying a pair of bladed revolvers. He had a long blue scarf trailing around his neck, and his face was covered by a reinforced domino mask and a wild-west style face scarf. One of his arms was a whirring mechanical prosthetic, the other was muscular and scarred.

He was currently huddling behind a car, bolts of green and red energy shooting past the vehicle and occasionally impacting it.

Of course, leaving the most important bit of the description for last. He stood up, taking a pot shot at his assailants. One of them fell; a spurt of blood came from the headshot. Cobalt ducked back into cover. The part where I get shot at. I suppose dumping me straight into the action works.

He brought a hand up to his earpiece.

“Chalk, Carmine, I don’t mean to be a negative Nancy,” he said, his voice surprisingly calm given his situation, “but where the hell are you both?”

“ETA sixty seconds,” came the clipped voice of another man. “Stand by, over.”

“Uh, yeah,” a chirpy woman’s voice added. “What he said. Over.”

Cobalt resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course. Well, hopefully whatever they were doing justifies them being late for our very first scene. Otherwise this is just embarrassing. I mean, we’re already in an interlude, rather than a full scene. What next? I get -

A spell hit the engine of the car he was sheltering behind. There was a flash of light, and then the car exploded – metal melted, glass shattered, and the debris of the car was thrown into the air. Cobalt, meanwhile, was thrown ten feet away from where he had been by the force of the explosion; his body skidded, and he slammed into the wall of a nearby shop.

“Bugger!” he yelled, grimacing in pain and forcing himself to sit up.

A quick survey of his wounds revealed his left leg was broken, his ribs were cracked, and there was a nasty bruise on his left temple.

Oh well, he thought. Be right as rain in -

A squad of Union Guardsmen were approaching him. He didn’t actually know if they were split into ‘squads’ – his knowledge of Union Guard organic was sadly lacking, somewhere below his knowledge of building working refrigerators and his knowledge of quantum physics.

That last one had been a sticking point for some time.

Hey, hey, don’t be giving away all my backstory in jokey one-sentence lines. He struggled to stand. Leave some enigma. Let’s go a little ‘Boba Fett’ about this.

The Union Guards were getting close now. They had their weapons raised, careful as they approached him.

“Hey lads,” Cobalt said, waving at them. “How are you enjoying Florida? Met an alligator yet? Or – ooh, have you met Florida Man at all?”

The Union Guards paused and exchanged nervous looks.

Ah, the classic ‘weird them out with a non-sequitur comment’ tactic. A staple of the ‘kooky oddball character’ trope. At least, I assume that’s a trope.

One of the guards raised his weapon a fraction higher and approached Cobalt. “You’re going to surrender.”

“I don’t think so.” Cobalt winced, something shifting under his chest and cracking, too soft for anyone but him to hear. Ah, is that the unmistakable sound of my natural cheat codes kicking in? “But if you’re lucky, I might let you surrender before my friends get here.”

“What?” the guard said, scowling at Cobalt. “But – we’ve beaten you.”

“Ah,” Cobalt chuckled. “Yeah, no, I see why you’ve come to that conclusion. I would have, too, in your position. But y’see -”

A loud gunshot rang out, and one of the guards dropped to the floor, a hole in his head. The guard talking to Cobalt turned – at which point, Cobalt stood on his now perfectly functioning leg and stabbed him in the back with his bladed pistol.

“You can’t beat me quite that easily,” Cobalt said in the man’s ear. “Sorry.”

I mean, I’m not sorry, really. Function of our respective plot roles. Can’t imagine he’d accept that answer, though.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

A pair of figures dashed into the fray. One was a man in a grey combat suit covered in pouches, a full-face mask covering his features. He carried a pair of heavy pistols, which he used to shoot his way through the group of Union Guards with cold efficiency, every shot hitting one of the mediaeval-armoured soldiers somewhere lethal. Behind him was a woman in a long red trenchcoat with pasty skin and dyed turquoise hair in an asymmetrical pixie cut with long bangs. One red eye glared out next to a milky-white damaged eye, and she held a machine pistol in one hand and a katana in the other, both currently being used to devastating effect on any guards unfortunate enough to be in slashing range.

A moment later it was all over. Cobalt let out a sigh as the last Union Guard fell to the floor, blood splattered across his armour from the gash in his throat.

“What took you two so long?” he asked the other two.

The woman spoke first. “Hey, it was a dramatic entrance. They want a dramatic entrance, right? Shows us off. Isn’t that right, Chalk?”

The man in the grey outfit – Chalk – grunted noncommittally.

“There’s making an entrance, Carmine, and then there’s letting me get blown up,” Cobalt said evenly. “I happen to not like getting my ribs cracked or my leg broken.”

“Take it up with the author,” the woman – Carmine – said. “If they pick breaking you up like a biscuit as a way of showing how indestructible you are -”

A bolt of crackling blue energy hit her square in the back before she could finish her sentence. Her entire body lit up, her skeleton briefly visible, and then she dropped to the floor like a stone.

“Huh,” Cobalt said. “Karma?”

Chalk was already moving, aiming his guns at the group of Union Guards who were moving down the street. One of them wore a mage’s robe over her armour – clearly the source of the spell that had struck Carmine. Cobalt let Chalk do his thing; he walked over to Carmine’s fallen form and knelt next to her.

“You were saying?” he asked.

A moment passed, and then Carmine let out a shuddering breath and sat up.

“Son of a bitch!” she swore. “That fucking hurt!”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Cobalt asked sympathetically.

“Oh fuck off, Cobalt, you enjoyed that,” Carmine snapped. She stood up and he followed. “Bet the fucking author just enjoys making us suffer.”

“I mean, we were just talking about demonstrating how indestructible we are,” Cobalt pointed out.

Carmine ignored him, instead putting a hand up to her earpiece. “Chalk, leave that mage bitch for me.”

“Acknowledged,” Chalk replied.

Cobalt shook his head. “You know that he could -”

“Don’t,” Carmine said, jabbing a finger in his face. She raised her katana. “Excuse me – I got to stab a bitch.”

And then she was off, already halfway down the street as she raced for the mage. Cobalt raised his pistols and followed; he aimed carefully, each shot taking down a Union Guard that was just out of either Carmine’s cutting range or Chalk’s line of vision. Bullets whizzed through the air, and the Union Guards, caught between enemies closing in on them and enemies firing from a distance, were unable to mount an effective counter.

Almost makes one feel sorry for the buggers, really, Cobalt thought. But then again, if feeling sorry for them was the point of this exchange, we would have seen this entire scene from their POV, not mine. So I suppose that’s alright.

In moments, only the mage was left alive. She had been backed against a wall; Chalk aimed his guns at her, ready to fire the moment she twitched. Cobalt came up to watch her other side, and Carmine approached her, the katana she carried now covered in the blood of at least five guards.

“So,” Carmine said, her voice dripping with venom. “You’re the sort of gal who likes shooting a woman when her back’s turned.”

The mage looked… well, absolutely terrified out of her wits, truth be told. She was shaking, her eyes wide in terror, and isolated syllables escaped her mouth unintelligibly.

“Alright, alright, shut up,” Carmine said. She raised her katana. “Got any preference for where I stab you?”

The mage continued to stammer unintelligible words. Carmine sighed.

“Fine,” she said.

She brought her katana up, then slashed the mage across the chest in a single motion. The mage’s eyes bulged, her armour spurted blood, and then she dropped to the floor with a wet gurgle.

“I do believe you enjoyed that a bit much,” Cobalt said quietly.

“I do believe go fuck yourself,” Carmine retorted, wiping her katana. “That bitch fucking cheap-shotted me when my back was turned.”

“They do say ‘all is fair in love and war’,” Cobalt said sagely. “Even if that is an awful cliche and the writer should be ashamed for employing it.”

“By that same token, then, it’s perfectly fair for me to enjoy myself cutting that bitch from shoulder to spleen,” Carmine rejoined.

“Ah, a fair point.” Cobalt scratched his chin. “Alright, I’ll accept that one. Though I must admit, it’s disconcerting to see how many of these Union Guards there actually are attacking us.”

“What do you mean ‘disconcerting’?!” Carmine yelled. “This is fucking legit! I have been waiting for an opportunity to go nuts on this scale since we got these stupid abilities!” She laughed. “I mean, I get this is the first time anyone’s ever fucking seen us out there, but I have five years of backstory that say that I fucking hate not getting to let loose!”

“Yes,” Cobalt said patiently, “but there’s no point letting loose if the world ends, is there?”

“Pfft, as if,” Carmine said, waving a hand dismissively. “This might be a gritty superhero high fantasy war story with loads of death and shit in it, but the good guys have gotta win out in the end. Right?” She paused for a moment at Cobalt’s expression. “Right?”

“Quiet,” Chalk said before Cobalt could speak. He tapped his earpiece. “Comms.”

Cobalt sighed. Well, that’s one way to skip an awkward conversation, I suppose.

He put his own ear to his comms. A voice crackled on the other end.

“... say again, this is Esper-One to ESP-Actual, requesting update on reinforcements, over!”

“Esper-One, ESP-Actual. We are dispatching Team Omega to your location on a separate mission. ETA seventeen hours. Hold positions until then, over.”

“Hold position?! Team Omega?! Seventeen fucking hours?! Actual, we are fucked here! Send more troops today!”

Cobalt tapped his comms. “Esper-One, sorry to butt in. My name’s Cobalt. Where do you need support?”

“Cobalt? Who the fuck is -”

“How about you spend less time swearing at me and more time telling me where you need me, eh?” Cobalt snapped. “I have myself and two other enhanced operatives with me here. Where do you need support?”

There was a moment before Esper-One spoke. “We need support in sector four, that’s near Main Street. The enemy are making a lot of moves near SIN HQ.”

“SIN HQ?” Carmine repeated. “The fuck are these high-fantasy pricks doing attacking SIN HQ?”

“Copy that, Esper-One, we are en route to that location now, out,” Cobalt said, shutting off his comms. He turned to Carmine. “I don’t know why they’re attacking there, but if I had to guess, probably because they want something SIN’s cooking up.”

“Ugh, fucking SIN,” Carmine said. She sheathed her katana. “Come on then – if we’re going, we’d better go.”

She walked off without another word. Chalk looked at Cobalt, shrugged, and then followed her. Cobalt sighed.

“Well, as far as introductory scenes go, that could have gone worse,” he said out loud. “But I have a sneaking suspicion we’re not done with our extended cameo yet. Just as well, really.” He chuckled. “I doubt the poor sods actually starring in this thing can deal with all of this by themselves.”

***