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WendyCooldown

garden of sinners

Jun 16th, 2013
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  1. The California heat beat down on our backs for what felt like the third or fourth eternity in a row, now. It had been the same thing every day, lately: get up before dawn and head out to the Garden of Sinners (or, if we weren’t already there when dawn broke, get yanked out of bed and dragged there by our thumbs). Then, work under the blazing hot sun in a humid jungle of vibrant, colorful hate, breaking up and hauling compost and carting buckets of water around the field until it was too dark to see our hands in front of our faces. At the end, we’d drag our burnt, bleeding asses home and lick our wounds. Maybe try and get some sleep before doing it all over again. We were all pretty much in agreement – we fucking hated that garden.
  2.  
  3. Garden didn’t like us much either, though. It liked to fight back, even while we were feeding it. Lashed out at us from every direction, without warning and nearly without pause, from sunup to well past sundown. Never figured out whether that was some kind of training, or some kind of test, or if Miss Marigold was just that crazy, but it was probably a mixture of the three. …If you ask me, it was mostly because we were better, fresher meat than the compost, made mostly of what was left of the poor sons of bitches that crossed the Eighth over the past month or so, left to rot out in the sun. The sinners, Miss Marigold called them.
  4.  
  5. We were once again freeing Annie from a tulip or fuck-knows-what that had decided she looked like an insect, a scorpion, or a corpse, and Mary and I shared a silent understanding that this was probably going to be the one where she cracked and started to cry. Her body was already covered in burns from the sun and digestive juices – so were ours – and she had, even before the most recent acid bath, reached a level of sheer, constant bitching that was usually reserved for five-year-olds on cross-country car trips. …We were both surprised to find instead, though, that she was completely silent as she came out. At first we were worried that it had managed to snag her soul gem, somehow, but that notion went pretty quickly as she transformed.
  6.  
  7. Gone were the acid-stained work clothes that she hadn’t had time to wash in a week, and gone was any trace of playfulness in her demeanor. Didn’t even bother to grab onto her sister and start their little transformation chant – Mary looked even more confused than I was, at that. I’d seen her insist on it in the middle of a firefight before, and seeing one lacy black and white outfit without the other was sort of disconcerting.
  8.  
  9. “Fuck this. Fuck it. Fuck flowers. Fuck the sun. Fuck the Warmaster. Ah’m gonna go kill ‘er.” A vine lashed out at her from behind, and she drew her sword instinctively and cut it. Didn’t even turn …It was the most serious I’d ever seen her.
  10.  
  11. …What? I couldn’t even formulate a response to that. We couldn’t even scratch her when we tried to kill her together. With a plan. And not on her home turf. It was literally the dumbest thing I’d ever heard Annie say. Probably the dumbest thing I’d ever heard anyone say.
  12.  
  13. “…Yeah. Annie’s right.” Mary had to think it over for a second, but she changed, too, into a frilled-out witch’s outfit that must have been way too hot for the weather, complete with big, doofy hat. “We can’t jes’ do this ferever. It’s a waste of our goddamn time. Bet she’s just tryin’ ta see how much bullshit we’ll put up with ‘fore we die’r go crazy, ‘n try’n eat each other or somethin’.” Her eyes flicked toward Annie – she looked worried. There wasn’t even a small, half-assed laugh at her dumb little cannibalism joke. ...In any other situation, we would have both been happy to see Annie stop screwing around for two seconds, but…it was really creepy.
  14.  
  15. With a sigh, I transformed, too. Didn’t know where the gazebo at the center of the garden was from here, and somebody had to pop up and take a look.
  16.  
  17. The flowers didn’t like it when you flew here. I’d seem then lash at the birds that went overhead, and whenever I tried to lift off with my broom, they all pitched a fit at once. Only needed to be up there for a second, though-
  18.  
  19. “It’s this way,” Annie mumbled, decisively. “…Sinners here ain’t too fond of bein’ plant food. They started pointin’ soon as we started talkin’.” …That was cool too. I just…put the broom away. …Not that I was looking forward to trying to pull off that flight. I thought for a second that she was going to toss her other sword to Mary and start bushwhacking, but the two of them shared a meaningful look, and I knew what was coming.
  20.  
  21. The best way to announce our intent, I guess. The Springfield Sisters’ way of doing things. Flashy. Violent. Direct. Silver glinted in the sunlight as she slipped her signature weapon - a huge, sleek revolver – from the inside of her hat. …Two huge chambers, one on each side of the cylinder, each suited more to holding a small egg than a bullet. One was already preloaded, and it left a soft blue trail as she gave the cylinder a spin, a grin erasing some of the exhaustion on her face as Annie formed up behind her.
  22.  
  23. “Hold onta yer hats!” She was the only one with a hat. “Shut th’hell up, Cooldown!” It spun faster and faster, and she took aim in the direction Annie’d pointed us. …The flowers around us all seemed to rustle, then, as a small beam of light pierced the entire garden from the barrel of that little silver gun, they started to raise all hell. Didn’t have much time for it, though, before the laser swelled out, burning us a huge path through the flowers in one glorious, ozone-scented blast of America.
  24.  
  25. We didn’t miss a beat – didn’t have time. Annie quit bracing her sister before the beam even dissipated, bolting out in front of us to cover the distance between us and the Warmaster, now a small figure at the very end of the new path. At the same time, I pulled a broom into creation, and Mary snagged it without a second thought, half-dragging me into the front to drive while she…
  26.  
  27. Oh shit. Oh no no no. It was the second-worst idea I’d heard all day. She screamed something about buckling up into my ear and aimed her gun backwards. There was no way I could control it if she did that, I tried to tell her in the frantic second before we shifted into Super Turbo Crash Into The Ground And Fucking Die mode.
  28.  
  29. Didn’t work.
  30.  
  31. I heard Annie cackle as we passed by her, just barely, over the wind in my ears, the loud hum of the laser, and Mary’s whooping behind me. I had about two seconds to think of a plan as we raced toward the Warmaster, who stood resolutely with her parasol out. …She wasn’t going to move. She had no intention of trying to avoid us, or maybe she was protecting her private place behind her, the gazebo in the center of the garden. It wasn’t ideal, but it gave me yet another retarded idea, just in time.
  32.  
  33. I screamed for Mary to bail, though she must have read my mind. I heard her shift behind me, then fall off of the broom at the last second before I dismissed it, mid-air, just a few feet from Miss Marigold. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as I rocketed toward her, knife recalled and directed toward her ribcage. I could get her. Because of Mary’s stupid stunt, we could get her right here, before things got-
  34.  
  35. CRACK. The world flipped and spun as something connected with the side of my head, sending me careening off course into the grass next to the gazebo. I thought for a second my neck might have broken, and I was pretty sure I now had a goddamn dent in my head, but rolling through the grass would have probably killed me in either case. ...Figured out it was a roundhouse, once my thoughts weren’t a starry jumble in my head. The Warmaster wasn’t that quick, so she’d probably been waiting for one of us to pull something. I could hear Annie’s swords clashing against her parasol behind me as I pulled myself to my feet. Then, I felt a tug on my sleeve.
  36.  
  37. “…We were reading.” Lily gave me a sour look, clutching a book to her chest with her other hand. …Poor kid. I ruffled her hair and apologized. Told her to stand back, because things were going to get messy. …She asked if we were going to kill Miss Marigold, but I ignored her. …Visualized cold. Death. Nothingness. A new trick I’d been toying with, and an excuse to use it.
  38.  
  39. Not just to escape an inquisitive ten-year-old. Probably.
  40.  
  41. My body lost all substance, all weight, and I pushed my hand against the side of the gazebo. …Went right through. Good. Then I felt my body start to fall, and I forced myself not to think about how I was still standing on solid ground. Just needed to hold this up for a minute, or so I figured. Long enough to slip behind Miss Marigold and figure out a plan.
  42.  
  43. Annie, in a straight fight, outsped just about anyone I knew, especially the Warmaster. She wasn’t, though, not as well as she should have been – it was something about Miss Marigold. She controlled the pace of any situation she was in. She wasn’t even bothering to defend more than halfheartedly as Annie slashed at her, most of her swings barely breaking skin as each idle movement the Warmaster made threatened to cave a part of Annie’s skeleton in.
  44.  
  45. After a hundred tiny scratches and about ten seconds of what looked like total futility, Annie threw her offhand-sword aside, though, and started to two-hand. As if she could read her sister’s mind, Mary took her cue – the muzzle of her gun flashed as she snuck shots in under her sister’s arms, over her shoulder, just past her ear, anywhere she could hit to throw Miss Marigold’s rhythm off. Anywhere she could do even a little damage.
  46.  
  47. The Warmaster grasped Annie’s sword and began to squeeze, and the whole world seemed to stop for a moment. We could all hear it cracking in her grip, even as a trickle of blood ran down her wrist. …There was a tension in her voice as Miss Marigold started to speak - a hint of real, genuine anger, for the first time since I’d met her. …I could barely bring myself to move, and Mary’d stopped firing, nearly dropping her gun.
  48.  
  49. “Ah have grown terribly bo’uhed of yo’uh-“
  50.  
  51. “Shut the FUCK up!” Electricity ran through my body, shocking it awake again as Annie screamed out days and days of pouting in four words, delivering a punch wrapped in lightless, blood-red lightning directly to Miss Marigold’s face. She wasn’t thrown off for long – just a split second, but more than enough time. My hand wrapped under her chin as her head snapped back, and I drove my knife into her throat as hard as I could. …It was like trying to stab a tree, but Annie followed up immediately, jamming her fist into it and driving it pretty much all the way through.
  52.  
  53. I ducked low and swept the Warmaster’s legs as Annie dove on top of her, sending her to the ground. She ripped the ruby brooch off of her chest and hurled it toward Mary, and I rolled away and grabbed for her discarded sword, tossing it to her in the same instant. Mary’s gun began to hum, now loaded with the soul gems of both Springfield Sisters, and with one strong thrust made mostly in desperation, Annie shoved her sword through Miss Marigold’s stomach, pinning her down just in time for a thin laser to split the air.
  54.  
  55. We all watched in silence as Mary fired an enormous beam of stars, fireworks, and fuck yourself at the fallen Warmaster, ripping through the earth under her, destroying the gazebo and a massive chunk of the garden behind her. Lily, at least, managed to slip over to us, and had latched onto my hand, staring expectantly at the laser, then at the pit.
  56.  
  57. “Puh’haps Ah was remiss in unduhestimatin’ y’all.” The Warmaster’s slow drawl gurgled out amidst all the smoke …What stood in the huge pit that used to be the gazebo was more monster than magical girl. There were remnants of a simple, red-checked skirt, sure, but most of her body was scorched nearly to the bone, and what wasn’t seemed to be covered in colorful blossoms. Wherever Annie had cut her. Where I’d stabbed her. All blooming beautifully. Tiny vines spread out from them across her body, forming new muscle tissue, then draining any excess blood. Turning slowly into a pale, creamy skintone, as she regenerated before our eyes. …Even the fried wireframe of her parasol started to grow another radiant bloom.
  58.  
  59. “Considuh mah mercih exhauwsted.”
  60.  
  61. …Fuck.
  62.  
  63. ---
  64.  
  65. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Could barely see the others through the fresh hell of the Warmaster’s garden. I was dimly aware of the sharp vines sticking through me, though I could tell by how conscious I was and how much I could breathe that she’d avoided my vitals. …Wanted to set an example. Hurt our bodies. Hurt our pride. Make sure we’re still here to crawl back tomorrow. It was Miss Marigold’s special kind of sadism, though she wasn’t usually so…enthusiastic about it.
  66.  
  67. Mary was no better off, not ten feet away, though she hadn’t given up as easy. Kept finding new ways to take shots, even after she was down. Marigold crushed her ribcage for it, though it was probably just as much to piss Annie off. Always was her ‘favorite’. Tried to push her the hardest, and out of the three of us she, she usually pushed back the hardest, too.
  68.  
  69. …Never as hard as she did today, though. …
  70.  
  71. …As soon as the light in Mary’s eyes went out, the world went cold. The color seemed to pour out of it, and the dark smile on the Warmaster’s face grew. Then fell. Then…I wasn’t sure what I was looking at anymore, as everything went monochrome. The life surrounding us hadn’t disappeared, but something inside it seemed to crumble, each flower wilting silently, no longer dancing to Miss Marigold’s call. Not even the ones that had oh-so-happily dug into various parts of my body moved – if I tried, I could probably cut myself free. …If my body was anything but dead weight right then, anyway.
  72.  
  73. In place of the plants, something else moved. …People. Hundreds of people in the flower-jungle, each barely-visible, shades among the stark gray of the plants. Staring. Staring at us. At Annie. At the Warmaster. Whispers I couldn’t quite make out passed through them, and a sickening scent filled the air.
  74.  
  75. Reminded me of Lily, a distinct, cloying smell of sugar and death. …Wonderland in a nutshell. Trying to follow either of the fighters’ movements made me feel sick in the pit of my stomach; both moved unnaturally, like no human could, interposed with their bodies a moment earlier, and a moment later, all stretched and distorted. Annie’s voice…I thought it was hers, anyway…echoed through the air, with another laid on top of it – one higher, teeth-rottingly sweet and cackling.
  76.  
  77. Someone crouched over Mary – I couldn’t tell who right away thanks to the special distortions or whatever the hell it was Annie’s magic was causing, but it must have been Lily. She didn’t seem…right. She started to giggle along with Annie’s voice and the other, and…And it was kind of catchy. Heh. Some words appeared faintly in my mind, but I couldn’t quite place them. I caught myself moving my lips, trying to parse them out, trying to figure out what they could be.
  78.  
  79. The black and gray sky split as Annie and the Warmaster fought, though it was barely a fight – even with her new home field advantage, Annie was down strength, and experience, and…something. Something tugging at the tip of my tongue. …Without those. The things the sky split for, two golden pillars in a dreary wasteland, twin scythes, sharp enough to cut a hole into reality itself. Hee. That’s what it was. That’s what this place was.
  80.  
  81. They were important, those words. The scythes told me so, as I stared up at them. As Annie took them, and as she cut into Miss Marigold, again and again.
  82.  
  83. They were clawing at my mind. At the deepest parts of my soul. I needed to know them.
  84.  
  85. They were more important than Lily, even as her teeth dug into Mary’s body.
  86.  
  87. More important than my life, draining out as the vines in me withered and died.
  88.  
  89. More important than the new patch of color that had appeared – a girl in pink, the source of the other voice. Scenery. Distracting.
  90.  
  91. Annie wasn’t herself anymore. Her eyes had gone. The pink thing had taken them, but she smiled a wide, cracked smile. A caricature of a broken doll’s face. The words repeated in my mind, over and over, and as the last bit of my life left me, I finally understood. Finally knew what they were.
  92.  
  93. The flesh of fallen angels.
  94.  
  95. ---
  96.  
  97. Woke up feeling like a sack of lead shit. Wright said that the Warmaster had dragged all of us back in one of the carts – three corpses and a petrified little girl, one that wouldn’t say a word about what happened. I was in the best shape, of the three of us. Seemed like Miss Marigold had torn the other two pretty much to shreds. Guess I lucked out. Or she didn’t care about teaching me that lesson.
  98.  
  99. Whatever. I’ll take it.
  100.  
  101. Nakajima was already patching the other two up – more like putting them back together, it looked like, and Wright was left to take care of Lily and me. Kid looked like hell, and that wasn’t easy, given the kind of things Lily…usually did. There was no trace of her usual energy, and she jumped whenever Wright would talk to her. Ended up just hugging the poor kid and stroking her hair, telling her it was okay now. Telling her she was fine. We were fine. Miss Marigold was fine. Just went to her office to rest.
  102.  
  103. …Apparently I was supposed to go talk to her, when I was up and about. But I wasn’t ready to get my stomach pierced again. …Was that what happened? Didn’t matter. Whatever she had to chew me out about, I could deal with it later. Wright promised she’d cover me until I was feeling better. I told her it might be a few days, though.
  104.  
  105. My head hurt like a motherfucker, and for the first time in a while, all I wanted to do was sleep.
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