Feathers and Firearms P1 Ch5

“Dip these documents in resin, check the date kids, it's a lesson.
Deadlier then seven sins, though this talent is a blessing.
Swagger so impressive, we're the answer to the question.
Reckon rapping is your hobby, but to me it's a profession.
Check it, from Texas we bring the escapades
Rapping battle raids bursting through doors and barricades
Stack enough tokens and tickets to buyout all these arcades
Your bubbling blisters break under our heat never to escape
... Does that make any sense?”

Dave sighed and slumped down, careful not to touch the back of the chair. His muscles felt a lot better now that he’d had Bro’s secret recipe on them for an hour or so. Unfortunately, he was getting frustrated with this rap, and he wished that the damn base were a normal base or that the keyboard were a normal keyboard – pick one.

The time alone should have made him feel more like himself – that was, less like he’d been sent through a storm and then fallen into Wonderland. But in fact he felt more topsy turvy than ever.

He missed Bro, for starters. They’d been separated before, but never by an ocean. Secondly, this island was so strange and unfamiliar and alien. There was a dead guy in the living room and the house wasn’t even house-shaped, for fuck’s sake.

Lastly, there was Jade herself. His instinct to trust her was far too strong, even considering she had saved his life. She seemed so innocent and sweet. Dave had never described anyone with those two words before, not even separately. The thing was, she also wasn’t stupid. Sooner or later she would ask him where he had been flying to to begin with, and then there would be trouble. At the same time, she also seemed to be a little bit crazy. He hoped there was a reasonable explanation for the dog-teleport thing because every time he started thinking Oh, I can get to like this girl, he remembered that little unfortunate detail.

He could still her fingers softly smoothing down his back, and that wasn’t making things any better either.

Speaking of things he should be doing, he needed to find two or three mirrors to make sure he wasn’t missing any important feathers. Otherwise the next time he tried to take off would be an unqualified disaster. Dave really hated having wings sometimes. Well, all the time, except for when they were being complimented by Jade, or saving his ass from shit they had gotten him into in the first place.

It would, of course, be easier to just get Jade to check them out for him as Bro had suggested, but he was sure she wouldn’t be thrilled about having to fuck around with his damn wings again. Besides, he didn’t want her to have to help him again, because he was already embarrassingly dependent on her help as it was. Bro had tried his best to teach Dave to be self-sufficient without isolating himself and to accept help when he needed it, but without being able to go into the real world and practice that it was only a theory to him.

Deciding that it was better to ask Jade for a mirror or two than to look for them himself (trying to navigate an unfamiliar house without being able to go through doorways the right way would be incredibly rage-inducing), Dave went to the doorway and called out her name a few times. When she didn’t reply, he wondered if she was even in the house at all and went right back to the kitchen window.

Outside, he could see the lagoon he had landed in last night. There was a big ugly statue of a frog in the middle of it, which looked really old. He wondered if her globe-collected grandpa had pilfered the hideous thing from some sacred temple, not that he really cared.

Just as he had thought, Jade was outside on the grass with her dog, who was standing watchfully beside her. She had her rifle and appeared to be preparing to fire it in the direction of the mountain, which he couldn’t really see but knew was there. That was pretty badass, he had to admit. He was surprised that the walls were soundproof enough that he hadn’t heard her fire it earlier, which he knew she had done because there were a few empty bullet casings by her feet. Yes, his eyesight was that good; he was part bird, for fuck’s sake.

As he watched, she fired the rifle, and it wasn’t as quiet as he had expected, but he must have been lost in his rap before. Bec started running forward, then, crackling with green energy, vanished. He reappeared a second later about thirty feet away from Jade, facing her, directly in the path of the bullet.

Dave didn’t immediately understand what had happened, especially because Bec didn’t seem to have been shot. The dog ran back to Jade and she held out her hand, which he dropped a bullet into.

It took Dave a full five seconds to understand what had happened, and even when he had, he didn’t believe it.

There was no fucking way in the world that dumb-looking dog could have caught a bullet in its mouth. And, just like Jade said, it had teleported. Holy shit!

Well, at least he didn’t have to worry that Jade was nuts anymore.

Deciding that he didn’t want to interrupt the playtime of the really freaky space dog in case it suddenly grew an extra head full of poisonous fangs, Dave backed away from the window. He could get a mirror later, feathers be damned.

“Yea, the dynamic duo with Grade-A shades
Bringing forth the rap game to a new golden age
Swift decisions, leave me ascended
The story’s fiction but I never pretended.”