The Bleeding Tower

Chapter Thirty Two, Part Three: Cat Out of the Bag

Tanya Brautigan was not at all surprised with how her husband made his entry. "I'm coming darling!"

The giant landed like a runaway scud missile onto the ground in front of her, and it took a few moments for him to look at her frowning at him in annoyance. Initially, he beamed up at her as if he thought he looked rather cool. That quickly faded under her look. "I'm fine, Stanley."

He pouted and craned his neck, popping it like a string of firecrackers. "Well I thought you were under attack."

"Emphasis on 'were', chrome dome."

She gestured absently towards the bodies at their feet. When Stanley looked at them, he noticed a glaring key difference in what they were and what he thought they were. Instead of humanoid wolves, they were men and women in dinner suits that he knew very well. "The Black Hats."

"Were you expecting something else?"

"The island's mainly populated by werewolves. Twenty of them came to the house after you and Tee climbed up here."

"Vall told me about that first part. Said they wouldn't give us much trouble. But why would they attack now?"

Stanley was silent, his moustache drooping in a frown. Tanya didn't like that. "Stanley? Answer me."

"Orchid," he conceded.

"The vampire at the landing strip?" She sighed and pinched her nose. "Jesus fucking Christ."

"Well what was I supposed to do?"

"Slay her. If she attacked you, then you wouldn't have any real reason to do anything else."

"But she's my friend."

"And I'm sure that relationship was very fruitful, but we're not in Ogden anymore. This is real shit now, which might I add that you tangled us into this, and not me?"

"Tanya she could help us!" he pleaded.

"Which is neutralized by the fact that she's pretty much the chum in the water, drawing werewolves upon your *actual* friends. And you made it clear that you didn't even suspect these guys for attacking me, but you thought said werewolves fell upon myself and a defenseless Tanner."

He was silent now, but she finished up. "Do you see my problem here?"

"There! The little one and her giant! There!" a bestial voice howled.

"Actually," Stanley brandished his father's poleaxe, "I sped over here because they were on their way."

Tanya smirked up at him, reaching for the silver cylinder at her hip. "See, that's how to earn some brownie points with me, pinhead."

The official name for Tanya's weapon is a buzz sword, denoting the sound it makes when the blade is activated. That term is Pominkoan and since neither of them hail from such a place, they just call it a lightsaber. Except lightsabers, in the movies at least, were colored in their outermost corona: red, blue, purple even. Where lightsabers in the actual universe of George Lucas's imagination were powered by mystic crystals, real world stuff such as this was atomically powered.

Tanya slid the switch and activated her weapon with a thumb, the blade ignited. The fact that her weapon was a full-blown red lightsaber just made for even more bragging rights, because she was the only person in the world to actually make something from Star Wars into a real life weapon. She grinned at their foes with the sort of deadly glee that made for a powerful reminder that she was indeed the sister of Tee Ray Lewis, the gunslinger. "Let's boogie."

Where the wolves ran, and Stanley broke into a sprinting charge, Tanya full-on leapt into the air and practically flew over into the cluster of wolves to slash one through the heart with her lightsaber. There were six of them, well, five now. The one Tanya slew broke out into flames all across its body before she pulled back and slashed into another, and Stanley promptly smashed it with his axe. The remaining four decided that it'd be better to dogpile the smaller one, and so they pounced at the same time to do just that. Tanya smirked and deactivated her lightsaber, crossing her arms over her chest as her body became a statue of solid steel. The wolves landed on her, and no matter how much they clawed or bit or pounded at her, no damage was done to her. "Get off of my wife, mongrels," Stanley demanded bitterly, as the Imperialists' Purple did its work.