News of a break in and shooting at a local South District Florist today precluded the Police’s statement on the Dumper and we’re here at the South Station where there are actually a few protesters demanding an explanation. And true, we’ve been waiting long and hard for answers, no doubt they have some now, having found a head and whole body, if not definite answers, how hard can it be to tell citizens not to panic? That the information is classified? All we can assume is that we should be worried, as the Dumper continues his rampage into the holiday season…

Icy wind whistled through those damned cracks in the walls. But past that, there was a much sharper sound, a wire ripping through the breeze. With the carpet of flowers brightened with untouched snow, he saw more than he had been able to any other night a thin white line cutting through the dark.

Ritz held up both arms, there was a flash as the wire struck him. Rather than a fleshy puff, the wire screeched against metal. He did not move as he was struck but stood like a statue, arms braced. “GET DOWN HERE!”

“Rudeness is unbecoming.”

He saw her. Up on the upper floor scaffold, as usual. Light, solid, having disposed of her oversized coat. Walking the boards, then feet pressing down onto the web of wires. Pulling them tighter against his skin.

“Fuck you for trying to talk to me from up there.”

Gritting his teeth into an awful smile, he wrenched his left arm. It slid free - mostly - caught at the wrist. Or was it? He twisted free, the wires left tangled between the tongs of a black gardening fork. Wrapped around the cold metal poles instead of digging into his arm, the wire were just an instrument. He could see them now. Thin as a hair, and transparent as the night. But sharp, and bright, and most definitely real. Someone could be hung on it. He could just - he saw Ran tip slightly. “I told you to come down and meet me.”

Ritz pulled once, experimentally, then let the fork slip from his fingers. The taut wires loosed, it sprang back like a slingshot into the darkness and he heard it launched through an old window. Good, fuck it. Ran’s perch dropped limp and she followed.

Ritz ran to greet her.

She raised her arm and he saw the claw was back. Only it wasn’t a claw. It was definitely a hand. When there was light he saw. Animals didn’t have hands. The fingers undulated like wheat and locked into a fist.

They collided with a vertical smash, thundering against the remaining windows and shuddering walls. The force of the steel-plated blow she dropped buckled his knees slightly, but what didn’t buckle was the adamantine face of the black toolbox that met it. Ran’s eye widened and Ritz’s unhappy grin did too. He let the impact slide off his shield and freed a hand to hold--

Ran’s feet swung to met the box next, and with that foothold she catapulted towards the back of the ground floor. Ritz hurried in pursuit but it wasn’t needed. He felt the wires once again dragging at his sides and raised the box, his legs were closed next.

He was yanked into the dark shade under the fallen column.

Wrapped against the toolbox nearly the length of his body, in the space between them he was able to slide a hand free, and with it he reached into the upper zipper of his jumpsuit---

He was yanked upward.

Ran climbed the diagonal pillar, dragging the wire like a fishing net with a heavy catch. The strings looped around hooks set in the metal plates of her glove that were wrapped into an armored fist, squealing and complaining musically with vibrations. Incoming, Ritz also looked ready poised to throw a punch, and his hand too glinted--

--with a blade--

or two. Braced around the non-slip patent design grip of his closed shears, he stabbed.

Ran let the ropes slack and skirted the blow. The blades hit the face of the pillar. Needle tip but against the cheap material there was a savory crunch. A spider of cracks appeared.

The blades themselves were fine. Ready for another. And loosed from the ropes, he took another. Ran floated just out of reach each time, still-faced but watching, she seemed to be wondering what tool he was using. She held the gloved hand out, following the swings- left, right, left - predictable.

She snapped the blades from the air, and looked past them at him.”

“I see picked your own tools again. Maybe you will fare better as a florist than as a student…”

“I not… That was-” Ritz panted as he struggled to free the shears. He bellowed he leant as far back far as he could. “That was f--”

Ran frowned. The weight was abnormal...

“THAT WAS FIVE YEARS AGO!” His other arm looped around and smashed the flat end of his the black metal toolbox against her head like a battering ram. There was an audible CRUNCH and he saw one of her eyes shoved into an unnatural tilt, one of her ears, shift just an inch closer to the other skin wrinkling, compressed in between, a face compacted. A small spurt of blood blinded him for a moment.

Her skull had caved. Ritz didn’t know that in such terms but he saw the collapse, the distortion. He reeled in shock only long enough to pull his arms free and then contorted with rage and wound his arm back again, because he knew what was coming up and it was nothing like relief.

Ran staggered, and with the impact, some of her face miraculously - fell - back into place. In that place she contorted into an expression of rage Ritz had never been treated to before. And definitely not in such light.

His bold second swing fell short. Ran clenched her gauntlet again and drew back - back - and backward over the curve of the fallen pillar they stood on. With a final sweep of her hand, she dropped.

There was a twang like a guitar as a particular string caught on a particular hold.

And on the other end of the demented seesaw, Ritz was catapulted feet-first into the air. He lost grip on his toolbox handle (small fucking impractical designer shit) and it rolled off the round face of the pillar to the cushion of snow and flowers in the shadow below. Not content with missing its mark, it rattled proudly on impact.

And sat upright in the snow, lock not even broken. Half-witted, Ritz commended Magnus on his designs but for that useless handle. His remaining wits went to the wire around his foot. The end of it disappeared into the black fragmented shape of the roof above. Wouldn’t want to drop from there.

Ritz reached up. His shears still in hand, he had no time to try the obvious, but pressed the handles against the wire, and twisted, entangling them. His side stung, but not as much as they should have (we would have noticed, but it was no time to go de-clothe) and he managed to swing his trajectory to the floorboards of an upper floor.

SNAP

The flimsy boards cracked at he shot against them feet-first, but caught in a further mess of wires and the weight of their own wreckage, his skyward path was stopped. The double bar of the shears held the wires taught in the disaster, leaving him hanging prone below.

Prone was fine. He was no longer in flying trap. He kicked himself free and swung onto the maze of floorboards that was the remain of the fifth floor. No longer weighed down, the shears slipped free of the snagged floorboards and shot up into the sky.

Great.

Ritz had just enough time to check what he had left to arm himself with then there was an all-too-familiar scraping from below. It was something like a screech and something like a crunch. The friction of metal against dirt… then cement.. then stone.

And then the resonance of the massive network of strings casting a heavy load his way.

Ritz took the best footing he could find. The best, so to speak, was a shitty outcropping where some fallen floorboards had caught on a shitty cast-iron window frame jutting out from below. Not a window that was supposed to be opened. What kind of window was that? It wasn’t even impressive looking like the shit the Big Church had, what was that called - shit, shit, shit--

Ritz let out a guttural yell, half dedicated to his poor memory and half forcibly slugged out of his lungs by Ran’s shovel blade driving headfirst into the center of his significantly smaller handheld gardening spade. The comparison of the two, poised there right in front of him, was so absurd he wanted to laugh if only he could breathe.

Apparently thinking the same, Ran was baring teeth like a devil. He saw a shortened tooth where one had been chipped. Or was it growing back?

Modern design wasn’t perfect. His spade caved slightly, but one slight shift was all before it caught its giant counterpart in an immutable block.

It was so perfect he was afraid to move.

Obviously, Ran was not so impressed. She landed. The shovel’s weight lifted. Catching his breath again, Ritz drew his arm back and ran.

He parried two more rushed swings as he scaled along the edge of the wall. The metal rang in protest and the impact went straight through the bones of his arm. Every other second he was desperately searched for the nearest foothold. And there--

There was an oblong shape of black fabric stretched over the bent window frame and a piece of scaffolding, right in the corner. A small platform. A step to the upper level. Intentionally set.

Ritz hopped on it and Ran followed. It collapsed under her weight, compounded as it was by the shovel. Ritz watched the piece of canvas fall to the floor in confusion. At the same time he heard a voice not his own or Ran’s go, “Hey” - and that was when he forgot to block.

His stumble moved him just enough. The shovel slammed into the wall by his face, shearing off a chunk not large but certainly not an attractive amount. He didn’t look at himself, of course.

He looked at the wall.

The shovel dislodged and the crack broadened. The wall shook. And as a void opened Ritz saw at about waist level a face in it. Eyes caked closed, mouth clogged with dust and cement, every inch uniform dusty gray and lifeless. Beside it, the fossil of a hand - not a skeleton, having been solidly encased so long - but dead. Nothing would live being in a wall.

In the wall. Someone was looking for-

Ritz turned. Val was posed like a miner in a cartoon, balanced on some rocky incline, sledgehammer raised over his head. Just another day on the job. At his feet were a human hand and foot. And an assortment of fingers.

“YOU-”

Ran was staring past Ritz now, eyes flaming on a face cast in shadow. Ritz looked back and forth from his unsteady foothold. “Val-”

“I’m not done yet.”

The three of them stood there, waiting for the punchline.

“But I think I’m getting close.”

“Look somewhere else,” Ritz said.

”Yeah, yeah. Attic, right? Excuse me, madam!” He swung the sledgehammer in a grandiose gesture and hooked onto an upper floorboard and disappeared. Ritz and Ran boggled at his flat footed slaps overhead.

“No,” Ran said simply and curled her metal fist around the shovel. And jumped. She was stopped with a clang.

Ritz winced and heaved her back down mid-jump. Her eyes widened. It was not a happy look. It was as if something she’d assumed dead had managed - dared - to crawled back up.

“Do you know what he is doing?”

“Is that a trick question? He told me. He’s looking for a body.”

Her venomous glare turned to him.

“He helped me. I will make sure he finds it.”

“Weren’t you the one who spoke of respecting the dead?” She swung. It made all the previous hits look like they were just for show. Ritz nearly collapsed again. Another came down. He was standing out on the loose floorboards now.

The boards splintered, smashed clean through. He fell. She leaped after him. They landed on the tip of the half-fallen pillar, him with an impotent flump and her with a tap followed by a toothy CRUNCH of the shovel tip against the concrete.

The pillar tip ground against the wall painfully.

Ritz was hurried into an unsteady parry yet again.

“You do us all a dishonor by involving this criminal,” Ran was saying. “I expected at least a fair performance.”

“Fuck honor!” Ritz was screaming, “Fuck the fight! Fuck these people! They want to see- you know what they wanted to see and you hated it! They’re dead! Why are we trying to show them anything?

And fair? Fair? What are you thinking is fair? Fair to you is if I can’t move for a week. I can’t go to work and I can’t pay for anything. I need to pay for my house! I need to pay to eat and live! But I haven’t been able to think about anything for more than month at a time because of your fucking challenges! It’s not even a challenge, every time this happens I just fall into hospital again! I’m weak! I can't explain anything to anyone even if they care about me! I can't help myself and I can't help them! Do you know how they look at me out there? I'm a fucking retard! I'm can't do anything right! All I can do is get hurt and talk garbage that makes everyone hate me, hate us. And you want me to try harder for you? After how clear you, more than anyone, have wanted me to know that I'm useless? That’s fair? I’d rather die than in live in your fair world!”

Ran paused, shovel straining against him, with a face he often knew he sported when he couldn’t parse some excess of words.

Like him, she chose to ignore it. That’s right. He was never a good speaker.

Ritz dug in his heels. It could be that Ran was a bad listener. The elders always did what they pleased. Won arguments with seniority, Ran said. By the time the massacre and trial were over, they were too weak to win otherwise.

She was going that way too.

You said it yourself, it had to end.

Ritz forced their parry towards her. He knew she would give up because - she was fast - but also in fact - he was stronger than her. This was an insane revelation that went against everything he had believed for over two decades because it could only recently have come true. Standing straight, he was taller. He was likely heavier. She was smaller than Sal, she had no gun like Len. She was older and slower. Ritz knew he should be more-

The pillar began to crack.

Ran swung and Ritz let his handheld spade catch and clatter for the last time. Then he forced it forward. Ran fell back. And when she did, he lunged, let his crumpled tool go and grasped the larger, rustier grip of the old shovel.

A shovel that had only appeared in the last few weeks. Around the time he met Val, therefore around the time of the Dumper. To bury the dumped parts she retrieved. A fucking bane of his existence.

Time for it to go.

Ritz didn’t expect her grip to fail with just a tug. It would take something unsightly, so he closed his eyes and caught her face with a swing of his forehead. There were so close, he heard her grunt. Good. The shovel was ripped from her grasp. Dazed but satisfied, he cast it off the side of the pillar where it landed with an ugly grassy thump.

From the corner of his eye, he saw chunks of rock, and for all he knew, body, falling from Val’s project above.

Ran was up again, blood running down the lower half of her face, streaming from her mouth and nose. A layer of red began to cloud the left side of Ritz’s vision too. A bubble of blood burst at the corner of Ran’s mouth when she opend it. But she spoke without a hitch.

“What makes tonight so different? Did those two really mean so much to you? And that- thing up there?”

“Shut up. I thought you wanted me to do this.”

“No. Not this.” She lurched forward and he instinctively stepped back. “Even resorting to ugliness, you’re still failing. You can’t do it. And that… is fine.”

Ritz went for his last weapon. Right after his hand felt that semi-rubber grip his backstep was caught and fell - nearly - onto his back. The filaments against Ran’s armored glove screamed. Wire caught his feet and the hand he put out for (failed) balance. Now here was a familiar feeling. He was being suspended by the web of wires. But this time -the one hand that had been searching inside his jumpsuit was spared. But he kept it withdrawn.

Ran drew closer. She could drop him any moment, but it was too much like the last time. Time to get battered, hand to hand. She’d swing that armored glove and smash his decidedly less immortal face that was still marked with a wide cut from his headbutt. He’d be utterly overpowered in a fist fight. There it was now. He felt the wires tighten with the windup.

Fuck a fist fight.

From his jumpsuit, Ritz yanked out the sickle. He whacked the edge against the wires, pulled diamond-hard and unwilling to be cut. He swung helplessly, the wire digging into his other hand, losing his legs from their sockets--

Ran was close. Ritz scraped the sickle along the edge of the wire one last time, as if curling ribbons - and turned, and sank the edge into Ran’s gloved fist with a cry. For a second, she seemed unconcerned, but when she tried to straighten her fingers- they both realized.

The crescent-shaped blade was wedged between the metal plates. Naturally, they had been space out to allow finger movement - there were soft spaces at the joints. And that was right where the blade was positioned now.

Ritz set one foot against Ran’s shin and tensed to spring.

“The Leader doesn’t need this to live,” he said, and pushed off. The blade ripped through the glove fabric and through flesh and muscle and the lean little joins between bone with a rough scrape and them through it all again and out.

Ran made a noise. It wasn’t a scream but it wasn’t a happy sound, and it was unsettlingly vocal.

Three gloved and armored fingers clattered off the edge of the pillar and to the ground. A thin, messy trail of blood soon followed.

Ritz reared back with the sickle again and went in for another. Unfortunately, he didn’t imagine fists didn’t require fingers.

Ran’s ungloved hand met his jaw. She didn’t even look at him. Here eyes were on her mutilated hand. Only the thumb and smallest finger remained, wriggling like trapped worms. He thought she was afraid. Until she pulled what looked like a two handed fist, and flashed her eyes back on him.

The coils around his hand loosed and once again, he went swinging back, feet in the air. She made a monumental hoist and he felt himself rise again. But flying diagonally. What was-

SHHHF.

His ribs began to burn. He had been stabbed. Cautiously, he felt the tip of some sharp metallic object poking through his gut. It was one of the the broken and bent window frames. One of those fucking eyesores had pointed middle bar pointed inward and that point had gone straight through him.

Ritz attempted to struggle upright and off his impalement but only tore the gash wider, a rain of blood falling onto the carpet of white below. (It wasn’t looking all that white anymore, really.) He howled. Ran gave him one last dark look then turned to the wall. She jumped to the next floor, trailing red. He saw her tear off the remaining fingers of the glove - and perhaps her hand. Soon she passed under him, not sparing so much as a glance, heading upward again--

He heard Val chipping away, out of sight, none the wiser-

Ritz spat the metallic-tasting foam that had been building in his mouth and shouted into the night, “VAL, HURRY THE FUCK UP!”

The cheerful chipping stopped. Knowing Val, he could get away-

That unkempt mass of dark hair surfaced on the top floor, nowhere to go from there. Ran saw it too and broke into a sprint.

Twice broken face, no fingers, and there she was, running like a hunter. Ritz was pissed. Fair. Fucking fairness. Who was she to talk-

The structure was again rattled. This time by the sound of enraged epithets and a fist and sickle beating at a metal windowframe. Unwanted, dismembered bodies from the voids Val had managed to crack open in the given time bent forth as if to see what the racket was.

Ritz landed with a splat. His vision was cloudy. Good, no point looking at the damage then. He charged after Ran.

The upper floors were mess. There was virtually no central standing room, only the edges of floorboards that only stuck out near the walls. How Val had made it up there was a mystery. Even Ran navigated cautiously. There were no wires on this level - she did not travel that high often.

And Ritz was aided by the fact that Val was heading for him. It wasn’t aid that filled him with positivity. As Val passed he only delivered a nod. Val did not seem too concerned with his injury. He took that as a good sign.

“Just a while longer.”

Ran was hot on his heels. Ritz dragged himself up, one hand on a rather precarious looking wall rock. “Stop.”

She did, but did not look pressed for time. “Ritz. I know you are upset. These are not the conditions I would have liked for this lesson, but I have a pressing matter to attend to. You know you are aiding the Dumper-”

“Shut up.”

“We will have other times to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Then fall. I have other business today, can you not allow me this-”

“I have another mission too. I have to win. Not just for you, this time.”

“Do you think I enjoy this? You have lost for today. Go home. God only know, I wish you had won now or years before. But since you cannot, I must deal with this… Dumper character.”

“That’s my friend.”

Ran looked upon him with eyes reflecting stars. “Go to sleep.”

Ritz raised the sickle but in a single, nightmare blow, the back of Ran’s armored glove smashed through it. Ritz reeled in shock, his hand suddenly feeling weightless. Unlike the priest’s shattering blow to his old sword, this match didn’t stop. Ran swung another, with her good hand, then with her armored stumps. That one met his cheek, and it hurt, as it must have hurt her, the end of bone and severed muscle ground directly into his face.

With her good hand she hooked him by the damp hole in his jumpsuit and suit where he had been impaled and let her nail dig into the open wound below. As he recoiled, she coiled a single spare thread around him with her fingerless hand, gently bringing the loop back to her teeth to tighten it and wrap it once again around what was left of the glove’s protection. “Ready to listen?”

The loop closed and rose around his neck.

Ritz spat. Then he swung the broken edge of the sickle across Ran’s throat.

A failure, he knew. But lord, the spray. He had hit something. Ran gurgled and brought her good hand up to her neck, freeing him. It didn’t help much, there was nowhere to go. They both teetered and tottered and then at the same time they realized it.

In a split second of preparation, Ritz went bug eyed as he often did in confusion and quickly brought his hands to the wire. Ran stared daggers into him and gave him a one last kick. And they both fell.

twang

---

They hung like weights at opposite ends of a grisly scale, dangling by a near-invisible thread. But of course the thread would not be so generous as to break, it had not before and it would not be starting now. It was caught in the middle on yet another protruding iron window frame.

Ritz supposed he should be glad he was not impaled on that one. But here, hanging from his neck, he wasn’t doing much with that luck. His hands at the ready and his ever-reliable scarf had saved him from instantly breaking his neck or getting his head lopped off, or sliced down to the bone. Small comfort. His legs dangled nervously beneath him.

Across from him a few meters, Ran was hanging by the gloved wrist of her fingerless hand, but that glove seemed to be wearing out its usefulness. The slit on her neck was streaming. But she was not dead.

No, those weren’t the eyes of someone or something that was going to rest in the earth or a wall or even a fire.

She rasped, air escaping from the gash in her neck, “Was it worth it?”

From above, someone who was far more comfortable than they were replied, “Looks good to me.”

They both turned towards the roof. Standing on a platform above them, totally obscured by shadow and the dark cloud that was the sky, was Val. At least, the head was him. Presumably, so were the legs.At his arms was a long, irregular shape. When he leaned down to inspect their strange predicament, Ritz saw a hand roll out from the shape he held.

“Val,” he choked, “You found it?”

“Yep. Looks like I win.”

Ritz was speechless.

“And for the first time, I actually got to see you fight. And you know, I’ve been thinking from the start - you could have done it.”

“Thanks, but - I…” His arms began to liquify.

“But what the lady said. She didn’t want it to happen. And I think you didn’t want it to either. You’re not killing anything. You’re maiming and hurting - sometimes yourself, but you ain’t killing. She’s still alive, right? The leader doesn’t have their body give up on some incidental damage. They choose how they die. She needs to be killed.”

The way he enunciated the word pricked the hairs on Ritz’s neck.

“This isn’t your business,” Ran said with surprising calm.

“Do you even remember your duty? Kill your old teach. And give her a last performance. You’re the only one who can do it. As the audience I’ll just say, I think the performance part has gone on long enough. By the way, I always hated revenge plays.”

“This isn’t a play.”

Val hopped down to the window frame on which their connecting wire was held. “Ah, but you just seem to be playing around. Quit wasting time. Don’t you remember what you said? You want it to end?”

“Time, time time. Fuck! I just want it to end. Of course I do! I’m tired- I just... w-”

“...want? You’d best not say die.”

“I want to win.”

“Alright then. Show me the finisher!”

“What-” Ran and Ritz both scream in unison as Val kicked the windowframe free and they continued their drop. At the same time Val tossed down the body of the Leader, one armed and lifeless, and the three rolled roughly to their own points.

Ritz crashed through two floorboards and hit the stone. His side felt like it had exploded. His leg may have been broken too, but he reached the ground first. A lay near a nest of fallen arms and legs and the occasional torso and heads sitting amongst the flowers, white as the snow. The only things not white in this picture were the toolbox, lying some distance away. And the shovel, which had landed handle-up against the chipped staircase leading to where the pillars had fallen.

Near the fully collapsed pillar was where Ran fell. She hit the pillar’s surface after breaking through several storeys of weak wooden panel, like Ritz, and rolled down the side, landing softly but shakily on her feet.

The Leader fell between. He did not fall as far. He flapped limply, hit the wall, and bounced, impacting his long-dried stomach on the top tip of the half-collapsed pillar. And from that perforated stomach - through the ravaged throat - between teeth and out the dry remains of a mouth rose the end then the blade of a sword he had been given to kill himself.

From the dead man’s gullet the sword spawned the then fell, rolling down the pillar and landing, blade down, upright, at a pleasing, jaunty angle in the center of the snowfield below.

Ritz was openmouthed. Ran was already on her feet.

“Val?” Ritz asked to the sky, but there was nothing by a heavy, black cloud descending upon them. He struggled to get up, but it seemed one leg was indeed broken or twisted. Ritz stumbled onto one leg and looked out at the only untouched patch of snow. The sword.

Ran headed for it, and there was a sad, hazy smile taking form on her face. “How appropriate.”

She didn’t need it, but he couldn’t have it. Appropriate indeed. Ritz was still flailing wildly behind her.

“You do have some good friends, Ritz. I never thought about it. But what he said… maybe it is true. I gave you a mission that, somehow, I knew would not be achievable. Not yet. But what I saw… it is all right. You have good people who will cushion your fall, each time. They are unfortunate weaknesses, but caring always creates weakness.”

There was a moment of silence when she reached the sword.

“I’ll admit. I am a bit jealous that you have so much now. But if I have you, I am not alone. It was good, seeing how you live, but you understand… the Troupe had to be stopped. And the Troupe starts with the leader. I can’t join you, I can’t go out there… I have to...” She lifted the blade by its handle. It was far sharper, stronger, less appallingly rusted than any of the artifacts she had uncovered. “You’ll have to do it eventually. Because you know. I have to die here.”

“I know,” Ritz rasped.

Ran swiveled, held up the sword.

And Ritz swung the shovel with the full rotation of his shoulders, of his burning abdomen and leg. The metal handle and blade smashed clean through that last, perfect sword that had been hidden so long, and he aimed at her throat. He missed. It wasn’t pretty. There was an audible wet rip of tearing into skin and splitting upending bone, gouging a chunk from Ran’s neck and tore all the way down the chest before flying free. Blood and skin and metal fragments went flying, sparkling like confetti. Her eyes clouded, a late frown took shape.

She had most definitely not recovered by the time he swung again, home run for the big game. This one fractured her neck, and, body bent at a jarring angle, she dropped like a leaf as he took another swing, sweeping only the clouds that had sunk to just above his head.

Eager to let his leg rest, he dropped to his good knee and set the full dead weight of his bum leg on her hip. He raised the shovel in both hands. He stabbed. It wasn’t an elegant movement, didn’t break nearly enough, either. He closed his eyes and stabbed again. She may have been moving but his dead leg wasn’t feeling a thing. Again, the swish of metal. A body sliced like a juicy trunk. He raised it again and again and dropped it again and again. Over each dash of metal on bones there was an undulating scream, but it wasn’t coming from her. This throat hurt. He thought he might have vomited or wet himself in the process, because everything was soaking hot and then cold.

Finally, he felt the right thing crack. Something small but tough. He drive the shovel point home, through skin and blood and into the roots and dirt and then, slowly, removed his numbed, shredded fingers from the rusty handle and rolled over onto his side. He felt his disrupted insides attempting to squeeze out of against the tear in his stomach.

A flower poked him in the eye and snow began to soak into the length of his body. It was cold. He could have fallen into a deep sleep then and there. But someone wanted an update.

He cracked an eye open. Was it Val? A head cloaked in clouds. Beside him, a head decidedly not. Ran’s head. She had managed to close her eyes sometime during the mauling. He knew she wouldn’t be opening them again. Somehow.

“Well that’s that.” Val had dragged over the toolbox and sat down on it loudly. “How are you feeling?”

“I think I need to got to hospital.”

“That much I can see. But how about what i can’t see. You won! You feeling good? Happy? Sad? Got rid of all that anger? If it even was that. No regrets? I mean… maybe there’s still time.”

“I don’t want more time.”

Through the smoky canopy, he saw tiny gleams - not snow, but string - falling down around him harmless as tinsel. Ritz’s eyelid drooped. Through his tired haze, Ran’s head fit right in amongst the. The Troupe didn’t lie to her, then. She didn’t reach the end alone. But the end is here, so...

"What's the time?"

Val looked at the sky and replied, "Not too late. What are you thinking about?"

Ritz pulled his scarf over his head. “What am I going to do tomorrow?”