Sam

  "Well, now that we're all good and warmed up," Mags said, "I think it's about time for me to start giving back a little."

  She fished her own revolver out of its holster and let it dangle off one finger by the trigger guard, eyeing the loaded weapon as though not quite sure what to make of it. Flipping the revolver with a flick of the wrist, she caught the grip in a firm hold. "This thing got a safety or something I should worry about?" she asked, turning the weapon every which way to inspect it. "Wait, no. Revolvers don't have those, do they? Is that right?"

  No one gave her an answer. That didn't seem to bother her.

  Tawney was drooping, stance sprawled to keep him upright, the sheriff laid low by his own heavy skill use. He aimed another shot, fired. It went bouncing across the fighting area, but veered wrong at some point and struck the platform several feet short of Mags's shield, throwing up chips of dense hardwood.

  "This game looks fun," Mags said. She aimed her gun at one of the floating metal bubbles above and to her right. "You mind if I try, sheriff?"

  She didn't wait for an answer.

  Face scrunched and one eye squeezed shut, Mags pulled the trigger, flinching at the kickback and loud gunpowder bark. The ball she'd aimed at, however, did not budge, and it let out a single sour note as the bullet shattered against it in a small shower of metal shards.

  "That's got some kick to it," Mags said with a laugh, hefting the revolver appreciatively, "but it didn't quite do the trick, it seems. Maybe your semblance isn't symmetrical after all, sheriff. Maybe only projectiles you send out benefit from the ricochet effect. Or, maybe…" She let her gun hand drop. "Maybe, more specifically, it's bullets fired from your gun that get the benefit. Why don't we put that to the test, shall we?"

  She looked around at the slow-moving cloud of metal spheres around her, plotting out a path. Then she raised her free hand and gently flicked at one of the bullets lodged in her shield. The little bit of metal streaked off, hit a bubble, ricocheted with a resonant tone that was quickly followed by others, bubbles sent knocking around all over the place. The projectile grew until it was a raging superheated fist, big enough that even Sam could make it out as it sketched a crazy zig-zag path across the fighting area.

  Tawney staggered back, tripped over his feet, and fell on his back. A split second later, the 'bullet'—appearing closer to something fired out of a tank, long as a man's forearm—bounced one last time off the inside dome above the sheriff's head and plunged directly downward with a dragon's roar. It tore an enormous hole through the floating platform where the sheriff had just been standing before finally shattering against the bottom surface of the semblance field with a brilliant fireworks shower of red-hot metal.

  [Ten bounces]

  The impact with the platform was so powerful that the whole thing went careening, tilted sharply to one side. Scholars shouted at one another as they struggled to regain control of the fighters' only footing.

  Mags leaned into the gradual incline and put a hand on the sloping floor to support herself, while the sheriff scrambled on all fours to get up before he could start sliding toward the bottom. He caught the edge of the ragged hole that Mags's attack had punched through the platform and used that as a handhold to hang onto.

  Mags gradually straightened out until she was standing perfectly straight off the platform even though it was tilting at more than a 45 degree angle, leaving her looking like her feet were magnetized to the floor. She wandered up the side of the acutely veering platform until she reached its edge, where she stood balanced with her arms outstretched like an acrobat waiting for applause.

  Juxtapositioned against her supreme disregard for the laws of nature, the sheriff's struggles appeared almost comical. The platform hung perfectly vertical for one long moment, then tipped over toward the other end, like a coin flipping in ultra-slow motion.

  Tawney hung off the bottom side of the platform with one hand, pistol in the other. His grip slipping, he aimed Justice down, fired, sent metal bubbles in a billiards cascade below him. One came to a stop right at his feet, and he stepped onto it just as his grip was about to give away. The bubble stayed in place, holding his weight without sinking. It appeared only bullets fired from his gun could coax them into moving.

  The bullet he'd fired went bouncing, hit off the semblance's inside surface, looped back around, and would have hit Mags in the back of the head if her shield hadn't stopped it less than a foot off its mark.

  [Eight bounces]

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  An inspired shot, it seemed to Sam—securing his footing and attacking his enemy all in one stroke. Of course, compared to whatever power Mags wielded, it looked just about as ineffectual as the rest.

  As the platform began to even out again, Tawney kicked off his spherical foothold and became a streak of rapid movement, coming up through the large hole in the wood and coming down on its surface. He landed badly, rolling his ankle as he touched down, and went staggering until he could catch himself with one hand. He straightened slowly with a long groan of exertion, the strain evident on his tight features.

  He tried to aim his gun once more, but his arm shook, then wavered. A second later, the reflective bubbles around the two fighters began to shake. They produced an odd sound like metal groaning under stress, then began vibrating themselves to pieces. Shards scattered and faded into nothing in a reaction that spread outward from the center, spheres breaking apart everywhere at an increasingly frantic pace. At last there were only a few floating about at the edges. Then they too shattered, and the inside dome of the semblance collapsed inward, leaving no visible sign that it had ever existed.

  [Death by Disco ends.]

  "Good job! That was fun!" Mags said in a patronizingly sweet tone, like an adult giving encouragement to a small child. "You hung in there for quite a while, huh? But I think it's about to wrap this up, don't you?"

  Tawney had nothing to say. He looked like he had enough on his mind just trying to stay upright, swaying on his heels.

  "It's all right, sheriff. I'll let you live if you just say you give up."

  Silence. Tawney glared at her, lips peeled back in a twitchy snarl.

  "How about it, sheriff? 'I give up'—that's all you gotta say." She folded her ear toward him with the barrel of her gun. "C'mon, let's hear it."

  Tawney raised his weapon.

  Mags sighed. She shot her revolver at him off the hip, not really bothering to take aim. The sheriff blurred as he slid unnaturally out of the way, ending up on his knees when he came to a stop.

  "Oh, come on," Mags said with another dramatic sigh. "I'm trying to be nice here, but you're making this very annoying. I get you want to preserve your pride, so just let me kneecap you or something and then we can both part happily."

  She fired off a second shot. Again, Tawney evaded, rolled clumsily to a stop, struggled to get up; supporting himself with one hand while trying to raise his gun in the other.

  "For fuck's sake," Mags said, her jovial tone replaced with one that was cold and dull. "Fine—if that's how you want it, suit your fucking self." With that, she tossed the revolver over her shoulder, let it clatter and fall off the end of the platform. Then she made a gun with two fingers instead, tongue tenting her cheek as she took aim at the sheriff.

  "Bang," she said calmly.

  There was a brief flicker in the air, a whooshing as of the world sucking in a breath.

  Then Sheriff Tawney exploded, and his limbs flew in all directions amid a rain of wet gore.

  The ripple that spread through the air following the explosion sent the platform careening again, tore through the Barrier and shattered it into a thousand pieces, then reached the peopled platforms with a shrill howl and a violent rattling in the floor. The branches shook overhead, a confetti of great leaves coming down. At least one man fell off his treetop perch, tumbling until he caught himself on a suspended rope at the last moment and swung to safety.

  Mags kept her footing on the ragged platform as it tipped and began to fall, the Scholars responsible for holding it up mostly sprawled on the floor and unable to pay it any mind even if they had wanted to. Mags turned her head to follow the arc of Tawney's right arm as it soared through the air, Justice still clutched in one stiff fist. Holding out her hand, the big chunky revolver tore itself free from its master's dead grasp and came spinning until it landed snugly in hers.

  "Suppose you'll need a new sheriff," she said absent-mindedly. "Sorry about that." She held up the blood-spotted gun, turning it over for folk to see. "Anyone mind if I take this as a souvenir?"

  No one objected.

  Satisfied, Mags kicked off the platform as gravity began to pull it toward the earth in earnest. She soared effortlessly in a wide, lazy arc, easily crossing the twenty or so feet between her and the town square platform and landing with a sharp click clack of her clogs. Her newly pilfered revolver was too big to fit the old holster, so she had simply stuck it through her belt instead.

  The platform hit the ground way below with a dull boom.

  Folk scrambled away from Mags as soon as their legs would carry, hurrying across bridges and into buildings and even clambering up onto rooftops to get as far as possible from that woman. If she was aware of the effect she produced, she did not show it.

  Stunned, Sam found herself fixed in place, not a single coherent thought entering her head. All she could think about was the fact that fifteen gems still shone bright on Mags's arm. She hadn't spent a single AP throughout that whole fight.

  Who was she?

  Looking around, Sam found that her two minders had abandoned her and melted into the throng with all the left, which left her standing there like an idiot in the middle of the rapidly emptying square.

  "Hello again, little Darling," Mags said with a lazy grin, hands in the pockets of her ragged cutoff trousers as she came swaggering over. "Let's get that nasty thing off you, shall we?" She took out a hand to wave one finger in the air, before sticking it back in her pocket.

  With a loud clang and a whoosh of air, the collar around Sam's neck broke open and fell apart, clattering to the floor. She stood blinking at the scrap metal around her feet until the other woman had closed the distance and placed a clammy hand on Sam's shoulder.

  "Now, with that out of the way, we're all confident that me and my buddy here are innocent of all charges, aren't we?" she announced to the town, even though it was clear that no one was in much of a mood to listen. "And no one is going to give us any trouble moving forward, isn't that right?"

  She seemed to take the panicked yells of the retreating crowds as confirmation, giving a satisfied nod.