The beeps of Jakob’s tracker were getting faster and faster as he got closer to his destiny. He started to slow up, and pay more attention to what was going on around him, rather than just looking to dodge whatever was momentarily in front of him. He saw a fine patch of cars making their way up the I-5, and kept an eye out for Opal’s All Black Escapade. A harder task than he thought it was going to be, seeing as there was a fuckton of car art enthusiasts on the road with him. It was a clique that he was a proud member of, and he had to remind himself not to flip his own lights on. He’d been recognized by them before, and if past experience was anything to go by, getting recognized now would be cataclysmic. It might even get him killed, which he was definitely not planning on doing that day, and his death would absolutely ruin the night ahead that he had for himself. He kept the lights off and slid into the pocket of traffic, beads of sweat scraping his forehead as he scanned the cars up and down. He couldn’t see a thing, and the time in between the beeps of his tracker slowly began to increase again.

  Varin, having felt a little weird about the situation, decided to ditch the highway altogether, and take the rest of the way through the city streets. He knew that their enemies would be tracking them. He knew that they knew that Opal was getting married, and informing the archbishop was priority numero uno. Which meant that whoever was expecting to interrupt them was probably not expecting them to get off the highway this early and twiddle their thumbs in traffic.

  Opal leaned forward her hand resting on Varin’s seat, “What are we doing?”

  Varin turned his head, only slightly, “Staying alive. We’re gonna reroute.”

  Opal nodded, unsure if it was the right move to make, but she trusted Varin’s judgment. He had never let her down before, though this will be changing soon, but at the moment Opal was perfectly happy leaving things in Varin’s hands. He’s at the wheel anyway, and Opal didn’t want to waste time trying to stop the car and take over the helm, and besides. She was good and happy right where she was. She could see that Dante was taking more and more of the sights in, and she could swear she could see his eyes pop and guffaw with wonder as he took in the sights around him. She tried to catch a glimpse of what he was seeing from her own respective window, and looked up, towards the sky.

  In Jaxon City, at least when you’re really in the heart of it like they were now, the sky was something that might as well have been some shitty pipedream that some poor schmuck named Andy would have a hell of a time crawling his way towards. The upper layers of that lower stratosphere had all of their real estate stolen in a corporate take over. When one is staying in Jaxon City, when looking up at the sky you’re just as likely to find yourself looking up at a skyscraper instead. At least they made them pretty.

  Dante was looking on, in horror, unbeknownst to Opal, up at a building that seemed to give up on itself about three fourths of the way up. For most of its length, it seemed to be a rather standard skyscraper, filled with lights of the poor fuckers who were still working, but towards the top that cookie cutter building gave way to a split in the concrete and steel and lights. A split that began only as a splinter, before it grew into something much greater, and it looked like the one, singular building had suddenly become two. In the middle, in that now vacant space, they went and filled it with what might as well have been Christmas lights.

  Dante couldn’t tell from this distance, but at the beginning of that split began a long interconnected series of laser configurations. Each of them, shooting out a single point of light to a receptor, one by one. All together though, these series of lights grew together to form an image. And Dante looked on as he saw a gigantic E, representing E-Corp. A corporation that was headquartered in Jaxon City that Dante hated. He hated them because he banked with them, but he hated them all the same. And here he was, looking at this monument to a business that’s prime directive was to fuck him, fuck his friends, and fuck everyone on this side of the hemisphere that they can get their hands on. They were making good work of it too. No vaseline.

  Opal scrunched her nose and pinched her lips as she tried not to notice how Dante’s ass started squirming in his seat. Which was a surprisingly easy task, as she peeled her eyes on the Hello Kitty truck that was still driving like a dick. The asshole she had simply written off as a nuisance earlier was recently promoted to a full blown suspect and was unknowingly laying an exquisite assault upon Opal’s mental defenses, and the agents of which clacked beers when they’d finally broken through. To Opal’s credit, hell had frozen over by the time they’d burrowed through what they had reported back to HQ as “one substantially dense skull” and proceeded to hijack the pink hot lump of nerves that was currently firing on all pistons. First, they scanned her memory. She had to be absolutely positive that she had never seen this truck before, and she steeled her eyes, not just on the Hello Kitty sign, but on every dent and scratch on the thing. It was pretty beat up actually. Opal wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good sign. Whenever she’d seen the Syndicate’s vehicles out on the streets they usually tried to keep with looking pristine, but also, given the circumstances…she could understand if some of the vehicles were looking pretty roughed up. Jose had made sure to tell her that her brother fucked a few of their cars up before they eventually got him.

  Even at the moment of his telling her, she didn’t take much consolation in the fact. Her little brother was still incredibly dead, and now there’s this banged up truck acting like an asshole that was sending her mind spiraling. Her paranoia now at its crescendo, Opal spoke up, “Varin, have you been watching this truck? With the Hello Kitty?”

  Varin scrunched his eyebrows, “With the what?”

  “With the lights.”

  Varin nodded, “Yeah, don’t recognize it though. Think it might be trouble?”

  Opal shrugged, not wanting to potentially set her handler off the deep end, “Not sure. Just keep an eye on it.”

  Varin, as dutiful in his tasking as ever, kept both eyes on the truck in all its sinister anime horror. He watched how the design was made to look like the kitty was waving its big, dumb stupid paws at whoever might be looking at it. He licked at his fangs, pleased to see she had none. He took note of the healthy splashes of pink that were cast throughout, and he watched every turn of the truck’s tires. He found reason a plenty to hate, but none worth starting a shootout for.

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  And that’s when the front of Jakob’s mustang rammed straight into the back of Opal’s All Black Escapade.

  Opal, still focusing on the truck, flipped through her mental compendium, reading selections A-Z, in a tragically futile attempt to reveal how the fuck Hello Kitty just did that as her head slammed into the back of the front passenger seat. Dante, having been on the side that received most of the damage, and he had received it so unexpectedly while his fortifications were down as well, and he slumped over in his chair, fighting an invisible war against himself, trying not to let his Lesser Half take the reigns.

  And that Lesser Half most certainly wanted to, it was waking up out of a slumber that it had been in for way too long. The previous night was nice, when it got to run free, but it was nothing close to coming into existence. This is what Dante had been depriving it, on a strict schedule too. Like clockwork, and Jakob’s attack gave it the perfect opportunity to try and break free.

  It thought that it was doing a pretty good thing too. As it grew stronger in its influence, and Dante’s memories of all that had been happening flooded it, it felt like Dante had done a real good job of getting himself into a pretty shitty situation, and he would need her to help get him out of this mess.

  And so, Opal looking at what she could only assume was an unconscious Dante, hopefully not dead, as Varin swerved the steering wheel, this way and that, trying to reclaim control over the vehicle. He failed, and the car slammed into a barrier off the side of the road, and only then did it allow itself to be righted, and continued flying down the lane.

  The Hello Kitty driver, having nothing to do with what was going on, but being a staunch Hello Kitty influencer, pulled out his phone and started recording as much as they could, hoping the craziness would help pay the rest of that month’s rent.

  Jakob, his teeth bare and spit flying as he yelled his way through the collision, felt an immediate catharsis with the blow, but he knew that probably wasn’t enough. They were still moving, and if he wanted his current nightmare to be anywhere close to over, he would have to finish what he just started, and so he balanced out his wheel, and pressed his foot down on the accelerator, determined to get a pit maneuver in and flip the Escalade entirely, before cleaning up whatever was left crawling from the wreckage.

  Varin, pulled his gun out, he still wasn’t entirely sure who all was attacking them, but he knew that at least one person in the traffic was in dire need of a bullet. Unfortunately, our resident master shotsmith wasn’t all that used to cars yet. Sure, he could get from point A to B without killing himself, and usually without killing anyone else, but in all the practice time that he dedicated to improving his driving skills, he was far too focused on mastering the responsible handling of a 1 and a half ton metal death trap, to train himself on how to efficiently operate the metal death trap that was currently sitting at the ready in his hands. All that to say this guy ain’t shootin’ straight.

  Jakob, who was no master shotsmith, was dumb enough to have found himself in similar situations before. In fact, if I remember correctly, this would be the 6th time that he’d aim guns with murderous intent while behind the wheel, and though no master shot, he could still reliably do some damage.

  And so, with a simple 2 squeezes on his glock 19, Jakob fired with insipid hatred at his enemies, sending two bullet holes straight through Hello Kitty’s face, and into the interior of that vehicle. The Hello Kitty truck appeared to right itself. Driving the straightest it had been since Jakob’s actual targets first took notice of it, before veering to the right, and smashing into Opal’s car entirely, which then collided with all the other cars.

  Metal twisted. Bits of glass and chunks of plastic skittered across the streets. Jakob’s car screeched to a stop as he watched the scene unfold around them.

  Varin, Opal, and a semi-conscious Dante rested on the other side of the massive pileup on the I-5. They could no longer see the car that had started this attack on them, because it was on the other side of this mass of cars and oozing viscera.

  Varin took two seconds, and two seconds only, to rub any and all exhaustion from his eyes before stepping out of the car, and opening the door to Opal’s side. Opal was busy still trying to shake Dante awake, his current state putting her in an absolute panic until she lifted a finger to his nose, and felt shallow, quick breaths fluffing themselves against her pointer.

  To Dante, Opal’s shaking manifested as this kind of vibration that only hinted at shaking the walls of the mental fort he currently found himself in. The walls were a brisk grey, and each room he entered was in more disarray than the last, as he looked for the presence of his Lesser Half as it attempted to escape the fortress. He walked past shunted memories, vibrant vistas of scenes he catalogued years prior, all of them littered about the place like common trash. He tried to avoid looking at those too as he continued his search. He eventually found His Lesser Half, clawing at a stone window that was too small for it to squeeze through.

  Dante crossed his arms and let out a sigh, “You can’t escape through there. I’m sorry, but you can’t escape at all. We’re in the middle of the road right now. With cars. You know cars?”

  The beast he looked up at looked down at him, its head tilted to the right, as though it were trying to understand what it was saying. Nowadays, the conversations between Dante and his Lesser Half, he never even named the poor thing, were quite scarce, but enough of them had happened that Dante knew perfectly well that his dark passenger heard every word he had said.

  “You can’t leave. Especially not now. Maybe once all this blows over, I can take you back to the mountains? And I’ll even make a special meal, just for you, but right now I need to maintain the helm. This shit out here is too complex. We need to keep our wits about us.”

  The beast let out a sharp whine in complaint, and sulked towards the ground, before wagging out one massive paw in futile attempt to initiate play. Dante didn’t.

  Instead, Dante opened his eyes to an absolute shitshow. The car, what parts of it he could see through the smoke from the engine, looked to be in complete disarray. Opal’s hands were firmly clasped around his jaw, trying to shake him awake.

  Opal, having noticed Dante’s return to the land of the living, grabbed and fled from the car. All around them was carnage. People. Some were getting up out of the cars and out into the road, looking for someone to start screaming out. Other people didn’t get up at all. There were screams abounding from all around, and some of them sounded like they came from kids.

  Varin kept his hand on his pistol, but kept the pistol within the wreath of his coat, and stepped closer to Opal and Dante, “We need to move. Now.”

  And so they did.

  Chapter Fourteen: Cosmos' Coffee