A few dozen targets had been painted on easels and set up across the workshop. Only a few members of Vell’s makeshift army would be getting hands-on training at a time, cycling out one by one to ensure everyone got a turn. Those who weren’t actively training would be observing, and having all eyes in the room on him did nothing to improve Vell’s confidence.
“Alright, uh...not sure where to begin here,” Vell mumbled.
“What was your first lesson like?”
“Well, my dad took me to a shooting range when I turned sixteen, handed me a revolver, and told me to try and hit a bullseye, and then I, uh...did it,” Vell said. Six times in a row, in fact, but he did not mention that for humility’s sake. “But I’ve been led to believe that’s not how it usually goes.”
All two hundred heads in the room shook “no” at once. Vell sighed.
“Yep. Alright then, let’s see...Uh, I think the first thing to focus on would be hand-eye coordination? Aim with your hand and your eye together.”
“I thought he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father?”
“This works better without any pop culture references, thank you,” Vell said flatly. The random student shut up. “The gun is in your hand. Obviously it’s a part of the equation too.”
A few of the trainees began to awkwardly adjust their aim, or squint at the targets, trying to align themselves according to Vell’s advice. He made some minor corrections for the most glaringly flawed trainees and then hit a roadblock.
“Let’s see, let’s see...what’s next,” Vell mumbled to himself.
“After aiming, you usually pull the trigger, dear,” Lee suggested.
“Oh, right, yes, I know this one,” Vell said. He’d actually gotten advice from his dad about this part. “When you pull the trigger, you want to keep the motion entirely in your trigger finger. Don’t jerk your wrist or try to squeeze with your whole hand. After that, uh...well, these are compressed air guns, so recoil compensation isn’t a huge factor. Hmm.”
Vell stopped to scratch his chin and ponder his next move. Gunslinging had come naturally to him, so he’d never really needed to have the basics drilled into him. It was hard to teach what he’d never technically learned. Eventually his thoughtful delay started to drag on.
“Vell, dear?”
“Oh, sorry, just, uh, thinking,” Vell said. “I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what my next move is.”
The judgmental stares of the students around him were perhaps not unwarranted, but they were unappreciated.
“Don’t look at me, this was her idea!”
Vell pointed at Harley, who pointed a middle finger right back at him. After that, Lee stepped in to mediate, more for the sake of the students than for her friends.
“Perhaps you can teach by example then, Vell? Just show all these people how you do it.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Vell said. “Alright, watch close.”
Everyone watched closely, and saw absolutely nothing. One second Vell’s gun was in the holster, and the next second it was drawn, with a splatter of paint already on the target.
“A little slower maybe, darling?”
“Oh, oops, my bad,” Vell said. His frankly superhuman speed with a gun was impressive, but useless for demonstration purposes. He re-holstered his gun, then drew it again, going through every motion with slow, thoughtful movements. He took extra care to slow even further as he took aim, drew in a deep breath, and pulled the trigger. His deliberately slow pace did nothing to change his fundamental skills, and the next splatter of paint landed right on top of the first.
“Alright, uh, any questions?”
“Does having a southern accent help at all?” Someone said. “Ryder does a fake accent and you’ve got one.”
“Not that I know of,” Vell said. The slight Texan twang to his voice was barely noticeable, so he didn’t imagine it was a major factor.
“Maybe you should use a different accent for a bit and then try shooting,” another student suggested. “For science.”
Vell squinted at that student for a second.
“What? It’s science.”
“Uh, no, just...focus on the actual technique,” Vell said. The focus on the technique didn’t go very well. Harley stepped away from the training area and pulled Lee aside.
“I know I kind of encouraged this at first, but this is turning out to be a big ol’ nothingburger with cheese,” Harley said. The trainees were hoping for some kind of magic secret technique that Vell simply couldn’t provide, and showed little interest in his actual training.
“I think it’s all we’ve got, Harley.”
“No, listen, I’ve got a plan,” Harley said. “What we need is a little psychosomatic action, yeah? We get the placebo effect going.”
“Are you suggesting we ‘Michael’s Secret Stuff’ our allies?”
Harley looked at Lee cross-eyed for a second.
“Did you just make a Space Jam reference?”
“Yes. Why is that so odd?”
“It just...it doesn’t really seem like your thing,” Harley said.
“I happen to enjoy Looney Tunes in general,” Lee said.
“Huh. Learn something new every day,” Harley said. “Anyway, yeah, sort of. These guys don’t want technique. They want cowboy bullshit.”
“We can’t exactly manufacture the spirit of the west, Harley,” Lee said. “Especially not on such short notice.”
“We can’t,” Harley said. “But I think I know who can.”
----------------------------------------
“So the bamboo thing, that’s like a muzzle, right?”
Cane had his feet up on the couch, and his arm around his new lady, as she showcased her favorite anime to him. As one might expect, the cosplayer’s workshop had some room to sit down and watch TV.
“Yep.”
“Okay, I get it,” Cane said. “Why didn’t your costume have that?”
“Because it’s uncomfortable to walk around with a big stick of bamboo in your mouth.”
“Makes sense.”
“Knock knock,” Harley said, as she entered the room without knocking. She took a quick look around and was surprised to see Cane. “Oh. I didn’t think you’d still be here. No offense. I figured you’d be trying to go somewhere a little more ‘private’.”
“No, I was thinking the same thing,” Cane said, gesturing to the lady and then to the tv. “This shit’s good, though, I think I’m hooked. How many seasons did you say there were?”
“Man, everybody’s into cartoons around here, apparently,” Harley said. “Can we talk about this later? We’re in a bit of a time crunch and need help.”
“You want our help?” One of the other cosplayers snapped. He was still scrubbing some paint out of his cape.
“Yeah, I know it’s weird, but we kind of want to make some ponchos, bandoliers, big cowboy hats, that kind of thing, and you’re some of the only people who can do that on short notice.”
“You kick our asses and then come to us for help?”
“I mean, yeah, it’s a paintball game, not really worth holding a grudge over,” Harley said. Apparently Ryder disagreed, but that was beside the point. “Can you help? We got like forty minutes left.”
“Even if we wanted to help, what you’re asking for would eat up a lot of materials, and require us to work at a breakneck pace,” one of the cosplayers said. Lee started texting someone as he spoke. “I don’t really feel up to working my fingers to the bone for you guys.”
“Yeah, like, if you had worked something out in advance, maybe,” Cane’s new friend said. “But right now I don’t see how you think-”
“I’ll pay you forty thousand dollars,” Lee said, holding up her phone to show off the money transfer from her father. The cosplayers looked at the money, at each other, and then back at the money.
“How many ponchos we talking here?”
----------------------------------------
“Try to...uh, keep your torso pointed towards what you’re shooting at,” Vell said.
“Why?”
“Because it keeps you steadier, I guess?” Vell said. “It’s better for your stance if you turn with your body, not with your arm.”
“Hey, Vell, ten minute warning,” Luke said. “Just in case you’ve been saving the best -or anything good, at all- for last.”
“I’m doing my best out here, man,” Vell said.
“Your best is kind of shit,” someone at the back of the room said.
“Well, you know what, this was, uh, not my idea, so whatever,” Vell said, trying his best to act like his feelings weren’t hurt. “I know I’m not the best teacher, but this is all good advice, so, just follow it and do your best, I guess.”
“We’re all going to die.”
“It’s paintball, you dramatic bitch,” Luke snapped back.
“We’re all going to get paint all over us.”
“Better.”
They were still a few minutes away from the high noon showdown, but Harley slamming the door open still made people jump. Somebody even fired a shot at her, though it missed by about five feet.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
“Don’t know whether to be happy about that or not,” Harley said, looking at the spectacularly misfired paintball. “Anyway, huddle up everybody, the secret weapons are here!”
“Oh, did you get some brand new guns” Freddy asked.
“Uh, no,” Harley said. In retrospect, actual weapons would have made better secret weapons. “Nothing like that. But I do have this hat!”
A wide-brimmed stetson hat got flung in Freddy’s direction, and he struggled to fit it on his tangle of frizzled red hair before handing it off to someone else. Harley passed out a poncho, a vest, and a few bandoliers as Lee also started distributing western wear from her purse.
“Get yourself some inexplicable cowboy power,” Harley said. “It works for Ryder, make it work for you!”
What was left of the crowd watching Vell immediately ditched him in favor of a costume party. Even those who were unconvinced that wearing a cool hat could give them superpowers figured they’d at least get a cool hat. Vell, who didn’t like hats much, was skeptical of the entire affair.
“Harley, are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Good is a strong word, but it’s better than nothing,” Harley said. “We’re down to like five minutes now, Vell, anything your training was going to do is already done. Might as well throw on some cowboy costumes and see what looks good.”
She dug out a few more outfits and then grabbed a poncho and hat for herself.
“Oh, and check this out,” she said, with a beaming smile. She put the outfit on and then snapped her fingers. “Ta-da!”
Botley appeared in a puff of smoke, wearing a cowboy hat and poncho tailored to fit his diminutive body, and he and Harley struck matching poses to go with their matching outfits. Vell stared at the duo for a second before pulling out his phone to take a picture.
“Alright, you’re adorable,” Vell said.
“We’re adorable,” Lee insisted, as she slid into view, wearing her own matching hat and poncho -and holding out another set for Vell. He examined the costume western wear with a skeptical eye.
“Come on, Vell, it’s like a team jersey,” Harley said, pointing to the matching sets she, Lee, and Botley wore. “We can be like the three point two amigos.”
Botley tapped Harley insistently in the leg, then pointed to himself.
“You only count as point two because you’re very small, buddy.”
That answer seemed to satisfy Botley, and he went back to miming shooting pistols. With some lingering reluctance, Vell took the hat and tried it on. It fit, at least.
“There we go,” Harley said.
“What, don’t we get matching sets?” Kanya said, unable to hide her disappointment.
“Sorry guys, when I got the idea to make the three of these there was only time for one more,” Harley said. “And obviously Botley’s tiny costume took priority.”
Kanya nodded in understanding. She would’ve chosen the little hat and poncho too.
“Okay, Vell, dear, finish putting on the poncho,” Lee said. She’d checked the time and saw it was 11:59 exactly. “I want to take a group photo before-”
The sound of wafting western tunes started to ring out over every speaker in the area. Apparently Ryder had hacked the PA system.
“Before that,” Lee sighed. She switched from photography mode to command mode. “You know what to do, everyone! Stand your ground and...let the power of the west flow through you, or something.”
“Giddyup, you sons of bitches,” Harley said, in an almost cartoonish western drawl. Vell looked up at the brim of his cowboy hat and wondered, not for the first time this year, what the hell he was doing. Then the first paintball flew, and he focused on combat.
Freddy was plugged in to a network of “borrowed” security cameras, giving him eyes on the outside of their fortified lab. The hi-tech monitor array he’d set up for himself was heavily at odds with the dusty vest and bandolier he was wearing.
“They’re surrounding us,” Freddy said, pointing out the obvious. “This is just a first wave, there’s still more waiting.”
“They’re testing our defenses,” Luke said. “All of y’all -excuse me- you all in the ponchos on the east side, hold your fire. Create a fake weakness and then hammer them when they try to exploit it.”
“Excellent plan,” Lee said. “Some of you, reinforce the northern entrance. That’s our actual weakpoint, and we don’t want them to know that. On that note, Vell?”
“Yeah, I’ll shore up the defenses,” Vell said. He took his place at a window, drew both guns, and took a quick look at the chaos. Hundreds of people were rushing the fortified lab, all for some petty cowboy fetishist’s feud. He let out a small sigh as he started to open fire.
“I am really not worth all this trouble,” he mumbled.
He tried to put the weirdness of all this out of his mind and focus on the shooting. Luke’s tactical ploy was working, and the bulk of Ryder’s forces were now shifting towards the eastern flank.
“Time to switch back,” Lee said. She had more to say, but the sound of grinding metal cut her short. Vell hit the deck on instinct. Most of his makeshift army didn’t have the same instinct.
A hailstorm of paintballs rained down on their fortifications from every side, wiping out the first wave of defenders before they had time to react. The barrage of rapid fire even managed to catch Harley unawares, much to her chagrin.
“Hey! I thought we were doing a cowboy thing,” she said. “What’s this machine gun bullshit?”
“Gatling guns were invented in 1861, it’s period appropriate,” Vell shouted back.
“That sucks dick,” Harley said. “Good luck though.”
“Any handy trivia about gatling guns in that head of yours, Vell?” Lee asked.
“They don’t have a glowing weakpoint or anything,” Vell said. “But they’ll have to load a new belt eventually. Probably.”
The new revolvers Vell was using eschewed conventional reloading thanks to some handily applied magic. It was possible that the gatling guns were doing the same.
“Even if they’ve got magic bullshit there’s, you know, a finite number of paintballs in the world,” Vell said. “They have to stop eventually.”
“Fantastic,” Lee said. “Keep your heads down, and wait to pull back when the firing stops.”
At her order, they waited. And waited. And continued waiting.
“So. Uh. Everyone’s poncho’s fit alright?”
“It’s a poncho, dear, so long as your head fits through the hole, it fits,” Lee said.
“I don’t think mine is working,” someone shouted. “I’m still bad at shooting!”
“Me too!”
“The gatling gun is making the situation a bit difficult,” Lee said. “Stay the course and have faith.”
Even as Lee spoke, the rattle of the paintball gatling guns began to die down, and the doors and windows cleared of their persistent hail of paintballs. Pinned paintballers dove for cover and tried to get behind more suitable fortifications further in, away from the doors and windows.
“Well, this isn’t all bad,” Lee said. “A desperate last stand is just what a proper cowboy needs, yes?”
“Yeah, it’ll be just like the Alamo,” Luke added.
“Yeah, the Alamo!”
“Our very own Alamo.”
The crowd of mostly non-American students quickly took to the prospect. Vell couldn’t stop himself from cringing.
“Uh, guys, you should know, everyone at the Alamo died,” Vell said. He got several seconds of blank stares in return.
“Why would you tell us that?”
“Well, somebody was going to google it, I figured it’d be better if you, you know, heard it from me,” Vell said.
“Well, this’ll be a different last stand, then, there’s plenty of great Western last stands,” Lee said. “Uh...Charge of the Light Brigade?”
“First of all, not a western thing, and secondly, lots of people also died in that one,” Vell said.
“The Magnificent Seven?”
“Movie.”
“The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral?”
“Real thing, western, less fatal,” Vell said. “Let’s go with that!”
“O.K. it is,” Lee said.
A paintball whizzed past their fortifications and struck Lee right in the back of the head.
“Ow! That’s not okay,” she said. The campus-provided paintball guns had relatively low velocity, but an impact still stung. “Who aims for the head?”
A large portion of Ryder’s army, apparently, because a few more headshots took out even more of Vell’s remaining army.
“Would you people duck already?” Luke snapped. He’d had his head down the whole time, watching his “fellow soldiers” get sniped.
“These giant hats make it hard to duck,” someone shouted, as they discarded their oversized stetson to take cover.
“Then ditch the hats and return fire,” Luke said. The hats started to fly as students discarded their headgear and prepared to fire on the enemy.
In spite of having their opponents funneled into narrow chokepoints, the initial salvo barely eliminated anyone. Weighed down by awkward ponchos and pointless bandoliers, no one could aim accurately, and their shots went wide. After a few waves of attackers, and a very small number of eliminated enemies, people began to realize the placebo effect wasn’t working and discard their pointless western wear. Vell, who was not in any way handicapped by his outfit, kept his on for the moment, as he was too busy shooting to do a costume change.
“Not exactly how the west was won, is it bud?” Luke asked, just after a paintball hit him in the shoulder.
“Could be worse,” Vell said. While the odds were against them, they had still managed to take out a large chunk of Ryder’s forces. “And hey, the only stakes are a gold star and, uh, denying Ryder’s weird cowboy fetish.”
“Still, would’ve been nice,” Luke said. “Good luck, Vell.”
One more soldier lost, and one less gun on the field, but Vell’s army fought on. It was the kind of last stand people would’ve written songs about, but for the fact that no one really wrote songs about last stands anymore, and even if they did, they didn’t write them about college students having a paintball game.
In a matter of minutes, the last stand got laster and laster, as Vell’s remaining forces were whittled down to nothing. Even Freddy, sitting in the backlines at the cameras, was soon eliminated. Vell watched him go as his paintball revolvers started to click empty, and he ducked behind cover to reload them. He refilled the enchanted bag Lee had given him with all two-hundred shots, and found he had nothing left.
“Anyone got some ammo?” Vell asked.
No one answered. No one was there to answer.
“Uh oh,” Vell said, as the sound of relentless paintball fire stopped. He stayed behind cover and listened quietly as muffled footsteps shuffled all around him -and then the distinctive jangle of spurs rang through the silent room.
“Of course he’s wearing spurs,” Vell mumbled to himself. He checked his guns one more time and stood up. He found himself alone, in the middle of the art lab, surrounded by eliminated spectators -and what was left of Ryder’s army.
“You know, I was kind of hoping for a good duel to wrap this up,” Ryder said. He was smoking again. “But you couldn’t even get us down to that.”
“Want to do one anyway?” Vell asked. He didn’t like his odds right now. He counted exactly one-hundred ninety-nine of Ryder’s soldiers, plus Ryder himself, for an even two-hundred. “You can borrow one of my pistols, and we can-”
“I don’t think so, Harlan,” Ryder said, as he took out his lever-action paintball rifle. “I’ll keep your gear and you keep yours. Including that idiotic poncho.”
“Hey, I designed that,” Harley snapped, from the spectator’s crowd. In spite of Ryder’s request, Vell started to remove his cowboy hat.
“And you did a shit job of it,” Ryder snapped back. “What kind of idiot plan was this, all that cowboy gear and what good did it do you?”
Vell froze midway through removing his hat. It hung in the air as he stared in Ryder’s direction.
“Really, you think you can just put on a hat and play cowboy? Get real, you moron-”
“Shut the fuck up.”
The sudden aggression caught Ryder off guard, and he froze mid-sentence. Vell lowered his cowboy hat back onto his head, tilting the brim to hide his eyes.
“It’s a game. We put our effort into having fun,” Vell said. “Only thing you’ve put any effort into is your own ego.”
Some of Ryder’s remaining army cast nervous glances at him. Ryder himself did nothing but stare at the wide brim of Vell’s hat.
“Yeah. I let you win last year, and maybe that was a little condescending,” Vell said. “And also a mistake I won’t make again.”
Vell raised his head. His eyes had narrowed into a razor-sharp glare aimed directly at Ryder. In any other circumstance, Ryder’s hand would’ve snapped to his gun in an instant, but that steely-eyed stare made even him freeze. It was a narrow, intense glare, thew kind of look the world had seen only once before.
“The Clint Squint,” Ryder gasped.
“You want a real gunfight,” Vell said. “You got it.”
Ryder blinked. And the blink of an eye was all it took.
No one knew what happened next, not for sure. Even Freddy’s quantum camera failed to capture any meaningful images of the final flurry of paintball fire. The only thing anyone knew for sure was that at the end of it all, Vell stood tall, untouched, with two empty pistols and two-hundred eliminated soldiers around him.
“Man, I shouldn’t have bought a new coat for this,” Eric sighed. He’d spent a lot of money to look fresh for this showdown, and Vell had gone and beat him in a ratty hat and a dusty poncho anyway.
“Should’ve seen this coming,” Vell said. “Or just not bothered me in the first place and avoided it completely.”
Vell holstered his guns and stepped up past a baffled group of students.
“No, hold on,”someone said. “That was like three seconds, even if you could pull the trigger that fast, air friction alone-”
“Shh, shh shh shh shh shh,” Luke said, rapidly shushing a fellow physics students. “Don’t even bother. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
While Luke struggled to console a student whose understanding of physics was rapidly falling apart around him, Vell stepped up to Eric “Ryder” Storm.
“Look, Eric-”
“Ryder.”
“Eric,” Vell insisted. “I really don’t have the patience for this. I get that I pissed you off, but can we just drop it? I don’t want to deal with this all over again next year.”
Eric took a quick look around. Now that the paintball war was officially over, people were starting to mill about, clean up the mess, or just chat about the game. He shrugged.
“Yeah, no problem,” Ryder said. “Won’t bother you at all next year. You have my word.”
“Thank you.”
Eric tipped his hat to Vell and then backed away slowly, making room for Harley to sidle up to Vell’s side and lean on his shoulder.
“You know that wouldn’t be able to get you next year either way, right? He’s graduating.”
“Of course he is,” Vell sighed. “Whatever. I’ll take what I can get.”
“What you can get is your ass in gear,” Harley said. “As soon as we finish cleaning up this mess we’re throwing your victory party.”
“I have to help clean up for my own party?”
“You don’t have to, but you’d do it anyway, you helpful bitch,” Harley said.
“Okay, yeah, I would.”