HAGERSTOWN TECHNICAL BRIEFING

This briefing will serve to present the background and technical basis of the Hagerstown project underneath Project Vintage Snapshot (see D.D.E 53-61). 
	
Background: Due to the event known as the "Konvergence" (see A.UT.SIM) huge amounts of "Fankasians," (see M.G.I.C) such as elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, oni, and etc, were stranded all over the world. The United States government moved forward with many projects to integrate these fantasy races into modern society. Project Vintage Snapshot was one of the most successful projects. It settled stranded Fankasians in new cities of their own.

Technical Basis: By choosing ruined cities and restoring them to a "golden point" in their history, Project Vintage Snapshot was able to make entire cities available overnight for mass settlement. This was accomplished via the use of Artificial Mana Devices or AMDs (see P.Y.LON) to power time reversion spells (Pl.0T). These spells required the AMDs to have power outputs matching or exceeding that of nuclear power plants, therefore the construction of AMDs would often reuse infrastructure of existing but defunct reactors. 

Hagerstown Project: The "golden point" of Hagerstown was decided to be July 4th 1959. The area restored was a perfect circle around the Hagerstown nuclear plant. To avoid issues with necromancy only non-organic things were restored including but not limited to, cars, homes, factories, stores, clothes, and weapons. Hagerstown was selected for three reasons. One: a decommissioned but intact nuclear power plant in the area, two: it was located in the desert which helped to keep Fankasians from wandering, three: a nearby air base could be restored for use by the US Air Force.		


I set the document down on its folder and look out the window towards the rest of the airbase. A lot of things just started to make sense, outside a B-36 bomber flies down the runway, such as where the Air Force found a B-36. 
"H-Hey? You got a light?"
A very tall harpy girl looms over me like a willow tree. Her feathered wings are suspiciously hidden by a white button up shirt from which a black tie hangs off her lanky body like a parachute ripcord. If I didn't know any better I would have mistaken her for an elf, even her talon feet are hidden by magic shoes. Two bakelite buttons could show more emotion than her dead fish eyes. She puts on a fake smile to goad me into helping with her nicotine fix.
I sigh and rummage through my desk for a lighter, knocking an envelope out of the folder. The harpy girl's white hair flashes like chrome when she picks the envelope off the floor. She trades the envelope for the light. I'm transfixed by the big red CLASSIFIED stamped on the envelope but get distracted by the harpy girl's happy sigh. 
Her bakelite brown eyes flash with pure bliss behind her glasses as she takes the first drag of her fresh cigarette. The hot tobacco smoke melts her cold veneer but the instant it leaves her lungs her face freezes over again with silent contempt. The cloud of her sigh hangs above me as she looks at it with depressing nostalgia.
"Thanks, buddy." The harpy says with a monotone voice. She retreats to her desk. One eye twitching as she struggles to come to grips with feeling drained before even starting work, just another day in the life of a desk jockey. 
I peek at the envelope but a swell of haughty laughter bursts from the hallway. Harpies. I look back to see the timid harpy girl's eyes glaze over in a thousand yard stare from the noise. Most harpies have the same personality you would expect from a hot shot pilot. Loud, brash, self interested, and cocky. It's a cruel twist of fate harpies make superb pilots but then again who knows the air better than a harpy?
A swarm of harpies in flight suits descend upon the harpy girl. A black owl harpy kicks her desk.
"Hey Fairchair!" She teases.
"My name is Fairchild." The harpy girl speaks without looking away from her work. "We've been over this, Grumm." 
"Whatever, Fairchair." The other harpy pilots giggle at Grumm's bullying. "How's the desk life treating you?"
Suddenly Fairchild's eyes grow annoyed, burning like 30mm tracers. "Don't you have a spy plane to crash?"
Grumm's jaw drops and she whispers through grinding teeth, "you know that only happened because I was covering for Lockheed."
"Maybe next time look out for SAMs... or was it because Junkers was too busy looking at the map?"
The group looks towards a german eagle harpy who is gazing fondly at Germany on the wall's map. Fairchild smiles smugly at Grumm.
Grumm shouts angrily. "Do you want your lighter back or not?"
"You guys are the ones who took my lighter?" A twinge of worry can be heard in Fairchild's voice.
Grumm smiles now that Fairchild has stepped into her trap. "More like we found your lighter." She pulls out an egg cracked along the middle and flicks the top back to reveal a flame.
"Give it back." Fairchild's eyes follow the burning yolk desperately. 
"Only if you apologize."
Fairchild sighs, her eyes dead with defeat. "I'm sorry you crashed a U-2."
But as Grumm tries to decipher Fairchild's apology, Fairchild snatches the lighter out of her hands and flicks her the bird. Throwing cigarette ashes into her face.
"HEY! YOU ASSHOLE!" Grumm shrieks. 
Fairchild holds the lighter above Grumm's head. Grumm isn't short by any means but Fairchild is taller sitting than she is standing. It looks like an adult keeping candy away from a child.
Fairchild chides Grumm and the other harpies. "Don't tell me. You guys did this so I'd slip you extra fuel for your little airshows."
The harpies look away embarrassed that their secret has been discovered. 
"You do this again and you'll all be running on fumes before you even see the fucking runway."
Grumm and the other harpies stomp out angrily. "This isn't over, Fairchair." Grumm points at Fairchild's lanky arms. "Fuck you and your disgusting wings."
Fairchild puts on a fake smile as she waves. "Look out for SAMs!"
Once the harpies are all out of the room she sighs and slumps in her chair, defeated. Her dead, sad eyes catch me starring. 
"I-I don't have d-disgusting w-w-wings…" she clarifies hastily while she shivers ever so slightly. "T-They're lying okay?" She takes one final, tearful drag of her cigarette before matter of factly grinding it into her ashtray to end the conversation.
I nod as I look back at the CLASSIFIED envelope. Inside is a handwritten memo.
	
	Dear Hap,
	
	I know how difficult and time consuming the calculations are so the time spells don't bring back Hitler. This is just as a heads up about Hagerstown.
	The last RECORDED flight of a B-36 was in February 1959, but the last UNRECORDED flight was from the Hagerstown AFB to Davis--Monthan AFB on July 3rd 1959. The B-36 was scheduled to be scrapped there and because a nuclear bomb for one of the B-47s was found to be entirely defective. This B-36 carried with it a nuclear bomb, plutonium core and all. 
	It was just a sadistic rerun of the 1950 crash over British Columbia. The bomb was lost the night of July 3rd, located on the night of July 4th, and recovered on the morning of July 5th. 
	Needless to say the Air Force was able to keep this all hush hush. But good news is it fell 10 miles outside the effective radius of the time reversion spell, thus it will not be prone to accidental reversions. The most we could ever get the reactor to expand the time reversion spells' radius was a mile. 
	The economic benefit of Hagerstown far outweighs this non-existent danger. You and I will still be able to shoot skeet with Auto-5s built on real 1950s machinery. I personally look forward to it.

	From,
	Convair.


I look over the transparency of a map marking where the bomb had fallen. Convair had taken the liberty of also drawing out the radius of Hagerstown's city limits to show just how far away the bomb fell. I flip through more of the folder's documents to write my TL:DR report for the higher ups. I come across another interesting one.


HAGERSTOWN EXPANSION PROPOSAL

	There should be consideration to apply the reactor optimizations from engineers E. M. S and J. L. S to the Hagerstown reactor. It will extend the restored area's radius by 50 miles to include the aluminum and metal mines in the northern mountains and the fishing docks on the south side of the lake. Upon approval the reactor optimization will take place immediately and the new parts of Hagerstown will be flagged as vacant for Fankasian resettlement. 
	At the bottom is a big red stamp of APPROVED with a signature of my boss, General Hughes underneath it. Huh. That only happened two months ago. I looked over the transparency of the new map before foolishly tossing it back into the folder, somehow at the time I didn't realize the very big problem with that approval. I simply went along, business as usual, and once I had slipped the finished report into the folder I put my feet up and took a celebratory sip from my coffee mug. 
	Then it hit me. A nuclear kind of fear. Not the kind from pushing the big red button by accident rather the kind of fear from forgetting you left the stove on, but where this stove couldn't just burn your house down, but turn an entire city into ash in just a flash.
	My hand shakes as it pushes the transparency of where the nuke fell over the current city limits of Hagerstown. 50 is a much bigger number than 10. My coffee mug shatters against the floor. I called General Hughes about the loose nuclear bomb immediately. 

	The car rips down the sandy desert road followed by an entire army of jeeps and helicopters. From a distance it would look like a stampede of shooting stars. I'm smacked into the sides of the car from the G's as we rocket around corners. The driver's eyes are welded to the road in front of the Chrysler 300E. His eyes are more intense than the headlights. My stomach archives lift off for a moment when the Chrysler's wheel drifts along a ditch forcing the entire car into an uncomfortable tilt.
	In the moonlight and spotlights from the helicopters I stare down at the transparency marking where the nuke had fallen. I trace our path along the cursed black vein that is the road leading to the nuke. 
	"TURN HERE!" I yell to the driver.
	"WHAT? OFF ROAD?"
	"YES, NOW!" I glare at his hands fidgeting on the steering wheel. "BOMBS DON'T HAVE DRIVER'S LICENSES, THEY JUST KINDA FALL WHERE THEY WANT TO!"
	The driver curses as he jerks us off road. The Chrysler's suspension screams from pain as we bounce along the rough desert ground. Behind us the cavalry of vehicles turns to follow. I struggle to read the map with how much it shakes. 
	"HERE! STOP!"
	The brakes screech and the driver has to spin the Chrysler to keep it from flipping. We drift on top of the sand as moonlight blows over a cliff. We stop just at the edge. I run up to the crest of the cliff. I peek into the crater and fall to my knees in horror. The nightmare isn't over yet. I feel the blast of the helicopters soaring over me as they aim their spotlights at where the nuke should be. All that remains of the nuclear bomb is its shadow, a dustmark of where it had fallen. Someone stole it.







	The atmosphere in the General Hughes' office is stifling. A hot fear that steams everyone from the inside out. No one dares make eye contact with each other. The most they will do is give a cursory look at General Hughes while General Hughes stares down at his desk in disbelief. The veins on his neck push out like the steel cables of a bridge. Sweat has soaked through his Air Force blues, turning it the same color as a mobster's slicked back hair, an oily black. The harpy man's eyes pan over the tense room. His eagle eyes slicing through the crowd of officers. 
	General Hughes breaks the silence with his angry yell. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN 'IT'S GONE?'" His rage hits a fever pitch. He slams the desk with his wings making all the officers flinch. 
	A brave officer tries to clarify, "when we got to the impact site, the bomb was gone."
	"IT COULDN'T HAVE JUST ROLLED AWAY!" The General's gravely voice tumbles into a furious cadence. "IT'S HEAVIER THAN YOUR MOTHER, IT'S BIGGER THAN A JEW'S NOSE, AND…. IT'S-IT'S… IT'S A NUKE." He grabs at his bald head. "THEY DON'T JUST SPROUT WINGS AND FLY AWAY! SOMEONE HAD TO HAVE TAKEN IT!"
	Suddenly his yellow eyes focus on someone walking in the hallway, confused who is still working so late at night. A pair of eyes hating their own existence tip me off to who it is. Fairchild shambles past like a wispy ghost. Her unfinished business in this world is to refill her cup of coffee.
	"FAIRCHILD!" The General throws a dummy grenade at the door frame. It almost knocks the head off a lower ranked general. "GET IN HERE!"
	Fairchild sleepily moonwalks back and peers through the doorframe drunk with the sleepiness of an all nighter. Her disinterested eyes suddenly turned starstruck by all the starry lapels of the officers in the room. The coffee cup shakes as Fairchild wonders if she had sleep walked outside to stargaze by accident. 
	"DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE NUKE?"
	She looks at General Hughes like he is a UFO coming down to deliver her reckoning. This is too much for her sleep addled brain to handle. Her jaw drops and her voice flutters as she stammers out her answer. 
	"W-What n-n-nuke… General?"
	"THE ONE THAT WENT MISSING."
	Her eyes look into her coffee cup hoping one of the harpy pilots had spiked it. Nope, only painful sobriety. This is really happening.
	Fairchild steels herself, "I don't know anything about a missing nuke, General."
	The bald eagle harpy refuses to ease his impromptu interrogation, "but you did hand a classified envelope about one to Anon, didn't you?" 
	Dial up noises could be heard as Fairchild's caffeine deprived brain processed the events of the past five minutes. She sighs and smiles relieved. 
	"Oh that?" Fairchild looks down at the ground and her grin grows bashful. "I didn't know what was in it. I just picked it up off the ground for him."
	"Alright, then we don't got nothing to worry about." General Hughes almost waves Fairchild out of his office, her lanky body leans forward desperately seeking freedom from whatever this is, but then the General's eyes narrow with suspicion.
	"But you know about it now, don't you?"
Fairchild weakly nods.
"Shut the door and sit down." The General takes a breath to collect himself. The officers all look worriedly at each other. Every single one of them itching to throw their starry ranks on the ground and hijack a plane to fly to Cabo, meanwhile Fairchild stares at me as if I am one of Hughes' alien minions.
General Hughes draws a bayonet and stabs the air with it as he speaks. "We need to find this bomb before anyone else finds out about it." With each word he stabs the bayonet towards a person in the room.
The General leans back in his chair and sighs, spinning the knife idly. Hughes is known for taking out weapons at the strangest times, once he had started to clean an M16 on the War Room table. His response when the Marines asked him to put it away?
"Go eat some fuckin crayons and suck start Chesty Puller's ghost."
An officer breaks silence, "how do we know whoever took it isn't in another country by now?"
I perk up to speak. "Two reasons." General Hughes stabs his bayonet into his desk and crosses his feathery arms. I regret opening my mouth. "One, all Fankasians in Hagerstown most anything they bring out of the city limits turns to dust. And two, everyone knows what a bomb looks like. They would bring it to their nearest shady arms dealer and combine that with Hagerstown's weapon based economy? It is guaranteed to be somewhere in Hagerstown."
General Hughes nods. "We need to arouse the absolute least amount of suspicion looking for the bomb. No door to door searches. No reconnaissance flights. Business as usual." He leans back and picks at his teeth with his bayonet. "If the thief knows we're looking for the bomb, they will make it even more impossible to find." 
The wood of the desk muffles the General's voice as he dips below to search for something. "Once we find this asshole, I will personally string them up and hang from them the bomb bay of a plane before doing more loop de loops than an orc's family tree."
A stupid officer interrupts him, "then are you going to turn them in?"
"WHAT?" General Hughes' head hits the desk from shock. It pops above the wooden surface like a shark's fin and it smells the young officer's blood in the water. "TO WHO? The FBI? OSI? CIA? The glowies absolutely do not need to know about this, especially considering how the Air Force covered up losing this same nuke in 1959." 
His entire body surfaces ready to carry out his duty. "No. I am to blame for the bureaucratic part of this fuck up." The General places a Colt .45 with ivory grips on the desk, "so I will personally burecratically depart this fuck myself."
Fairchild's eyes dart around to check if she's not the only one witnessing General Hughes devolve into madness. A bead of sweat runs down her temple.
"We need to send out the smallest, most inconspicuous team to search for the nuke… and if we have a rat in our midst?" The General's eyes prowl over every face in the room. Everyone averting eye contact and Fairchild flinching. "They have to be so unimportant that no one would even notice if they were gone."
General Hughes' eyes rescan the room looking for volunteers, they end up drafting me instead. 
He smiles smugly, "Anon… how would you feel about a promotion?"

The buzz of the AC-130 shakes my stomach like a milkshake and it doesn't need any more encouragement to act up. A pocket of turbulence bounces the plane up and down. I cover my mouth as I pray to God to bestow upon us calm winds and me an even calmer stomach. When it all passes the cold sweat drying on my skin leaves me with a gross, sticky feeling, made still worse by the queasiness inside of me. I feel like a cold bottle of soda that was shaken and left to boil in the summer sun. 
I distract myself with the mission details. I open my briefcase and stare inside in disbelief, expecting the red and yellow emergency lights of the cargo bay to magically fill the abysmally empty briefcase.The only thing inside is a dull manilla folder. 
It too is empty save for a tiny note from General Hughes. 
"FIND IT. NUMB NUTS." 
He has such a way with words.
A peek at my watch signals my drop time is approaching. According to the General's orders I am to parachute into the outskirts of Hagerstown so no one notices my arrival. Only one issue with that. I can't find my parachute. 
I climb up to the pilot's cockpit and knock.
"COME IN!"
I open the door and jump from surprise. A harpy girl with dead fish eyes stares back at me. It's Fairchild, the back of her head pressed up against the ceiling of the cockpit, looking miserable. It's jarring to see her in a flight suit and not office dress. In the other seat a black owl harpy fits perfectly in her pilot's seat.
"Really? They're sending him?" Grumm stifles her laughter. 
I ignore her, "I was wondering where my parachute was."
Grumm looks at Fairchild and then looks at me. Her laughter explodes into the cockpit. 
"Get out there Fairchair. Show him that... 'parachute.'"
Fairchild wordlessly stands, bumping her head against the cockpit ceiling. Grumm snickers, she pulls the nose of the plane up sending Fairchild stumbling downwards towards the door. Fairchild catches herself on the wall and stares daggers at Grumm until she levels the plane out.  
Outside the cockpit Fairchild looms over me like a pale specter. Her white hair now bloody from the red emergency light above the cockpit door. Her browline glasses turn her eyes dark, casting an intimidating shadow across her face. She sighs as she explains the parachute situation.
"I'm going to be your parachute, why? Because Command told me."
"What?"
Fairchild looks away, hints of embarrassment in the shadows of her monotone voice.
"One of the reasons why I was selected is because I can hold you during the drop."
"What? Why?"
Fairchild clears her throat to do her best laryngitis-y General Hughes voice.
"'No one will notice you're gone, you have little to no value.'" Fairchild sighs as she writhes uncomfortably in her badly fitting flight suit, "so now I'm here." Her arms rise and fall in defeat.
The buzz of the AC-130's engines helps to fill what would be an awkward silence, but then Fairchild's eyes flash with a glint of mischief.
"We're also going to be partners on the investigation."
"Really?"
Fairchild shrugs her shoulders. "So this pencil pusher gets to break out of her cage for a while, best part is I still get paid as usual too. Same goes for you."
"Well, that is good news."
"There's more."
I follow Fairchild's looming silhouette through the dark plane. In the cargo bay she pulls out a hidden box. The sound of it clicking open is even louder than the deafening engines. The echoing click lovingly taps against my brain, like a Santa knocking against your window on Christmas Eve. I feast my eyes on the treasure inside and can't help but grin.
A Colt Police Positive in .38 Special. Six bullets restlessly roll around in the box like excited golden retriever puppies. All of them swim around the revolver's gorgeous bluing. The grip is just big enough to get a hold of, but just small enough to make the gun light and agile. A sleek, slim, and simple revolver. It's like a rabbit, light and agile, not too strong, but can still punch above its weight with a well placed kick. 
Fairchild smiles, "you couldn't go six feet without tripping over one of those revolvers in a Noir movie. That or a Colt Detective."
"You like Noir movies?" I ask as I flip out the cylinder and spin it before sliding each .38 Special into a slick chamber.
Her voice picks up with a tiny bit of excitement. "Those, or gangster movies are my favorites. I used to have a crush on young Al Pacino."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously." Fairchild hands me a holster from the box to change the subject. She ogles the Colt Police Positive. "I always wanted one of those. I love its cylinder release. Pulling it back is more intuitive than pushing it forward, unlike on most Smith & Wessons." Her eyes glaze over as she starts to reminisce. "I have a S&W Model 29, I love it, but hate its cylinder release because of that."
"Are you a revolver nerd?" I ask as I holster my gun, keeping it nice and safe under my left shoulder.
"I didn't get it because of Dirty Harry if that's what you're asking." Fairchild's chest swells with slight annoyance, "I get that asked every time someone sees it." She calms down. "But… yeah, you could say I'm a revolver nut." 
"Then how come of all the guns, you couldn't get your hands on a Colt Police Positive?"
Fairchild looks away, slightly embarrassed. "I'm pretty big for a harpy, and I kinda have big hands which don't go well with its small grip." Fairchild's monotone voice and dead fish eyes ice over the budding warmth from her revolver passion. I regret asking now. 
"Also Hagerstown doesn't have factories that make Colt revolvers for some reason, only Smith and Wessons." She points to my holster. "If people see it's a Colt they might mark you as an out of towner, so be careful." 
"So picking up a Colt Python is out of the question?" I ask.
A tiny bit of smug buds on Fairchild's face, warming her cold visage an even tinier bit.
"If I find one, I'll let you know." She says just as the cargo bay door opens behind us.

	I cling to the side of the cargo bay and peek over the edge. Vertigo comes up and slaps me in the cheek. I recoil and press myself against the inside of the AC-130. Fairchild lights a cigarette. She takes a nice long drag as she peeks over the edge.
	Fairchild whistles, "quite a fall." Her eyes narrow from the hint of smug on her face. "You alright, Anon?"
	I stutter out a response. "Y-Yeah, never been better!"
	The smug grows stronger, "don't tell me, you're scared of heights?" I silently nod as Fairchild sighs, "and yet you're in the Air Force?"
	"I never wanted to be a pilot!!" I confess over the noisy wind. 
	She nods as she begins to stretch, her cigarette flame waving back and forth like a metronome. 
	"Why did Grumm even open the cargo bay door?" I ask.
	Fairchild removes her cigarette and taps it gently, the wind carries the ash away. 
	"General Hughes told her to keep it open for as long as she is near Hagerstown, that way she won't know the exact time we jump down."
	My chest strains from hyperventilating with such thin air. Fairchild's eyebrows raise with a modicum of concern.
	"We should probably jump before you get too scared." 
	Fairchild removes her boots to show her taloned feet.
	"Could you do me a favor and look away?"
	"Why?"
	"Just do it, alright?"
	I nod and stare off into the ocean of sand rushing past beneath us. If I were to fall and land in a sand dune, could I survive? Does the American Southwest even have sand dunes big enough for that?
	Suddenly a loud flapping of feathery wings can be heard, like the blades of a helicopter starting to spin. A set of talons choke my right shoulder and another set grabs my head to push it down so I can't see its owner. I grab my briefcase for dear life.
	"Ready?"
	"R-Ready!"
	A cigarette is tossed away in front of me. I follow the flare of its burning tip with my eyes. In no time at all the open skies consume it. I swallow nervously.
	I'm jerked around like a pilot when he guns the engines of his fighter jet. In a blink of an eye we're surrounded by darkness with the light of the AC-130 disappearing in the murky black behind us. The wind screaming around me. I flail and panic with all my might. I only tire myself out. Meekly hanging in a sleep paralysis stupor of a ceaseless hypnic jerk. 
	"How are you doing down there, Anon?"
	I instinctively turn my head to look, only to receive a crushing shove of my head back down. Fairchild really is sensitive about her wings.
	"Good…"
	The wind howls by as my eyes water from how fast Fairchild flies. In the distance the light from Hagerstown blooms up into the early morning sky. The glow is akin to that of a campfire. A soft jubilant one. Calm and dignified. As the sun rises behind us, the glow turns to a fiery one, less luminescent and more radiant, like the fire of a stove cooking an early morning breakfast. It boldly ignoring the oncoming daylight and strutting its light defiantly. 
"Hey, Fairchild?"
	"What?"
	"But you have seen Dirty Harry, haven't you? It's one of the most famous Noir movies."
	"Ask again and I'll drop you." 
	We fly in silence as the ground beneath us goes from empty desert, to farms, and eventually to quaint suburbia. Neighborhoods sprawling out lazily on the earthen couch they lie on. Relaxed and content. I wouldn't be surprised if one were to sigh happily in its dreamy stupor. The only sound is the flapping of Fairchild's wings. At this speed they don't sound anything like the chop of slowly spinning helicopter blades, the sound is more akin to a jet engine beating like a heart. Thrumming along in a deep, bassy rhythm. 
	Fairchild lands us in a baseball field. The grass blowing outwards like she's a chopper coming to land, just without the noise. Perfect for keeping a low profile in the wee hours of the morning. I hug the ground and kiss the grass. Grateful to be on solid ground again. I happily inhale the heavy, humid morning air. A welcome change from the icy, thin air of our flight in. I calmly lie on the ground letting the cool morning dew steep the aching stress from my body. The buzz of the field lights above us. A handful of young moths are still enjoying the last moments before daylight.
A flight suit lands on my head. I look back to see Fairchild fixing her white button up's sleeve around her wrist. She adjusts her browlines to focus her dead eyes on me. 
"Where to, chief?"
"Wanna get breakfast?"

I sit, feeling drained, grateful for the existence of cheap diner coffee. The nectar of the gods. I let the steam billow over my exhausted face and melt all my troubles away. The doo-wop music from the jukebox bounces off the checkerboard floors and softly into my ears. Fats Domino singing about New Orleans at a comfortable, leisurely pace, a meaningful one. I stare up at the brown ceiling fan slowly spinning around above our table. A contrast to the saturated red, whites, and blues of the rest of the diner. Such as the long bar, which is just a bleached lake whose shores are frozen over into a silvery bumper surrounded by red islands of fixed spinning stools.
The entire diner feels as maple syrup tastes. Sweet and charming, enticing you to just savour for a bit longer, you have the time especially here. The comfy, lethargic atmosphere disarms even time itself. Reducing it from a ceaseless flood to a fluffy pitter patter of thick pancake batter. To be fried on a pan for you to enjoy at your leisure, likely with maple syrup. In such a snug place from a simpler time, I can't help feel like walking, talking anachronism. I'm not really supposed to be here. It's too nice. It's an indulgent guilt, the same you get from just letting your maple syrup pour for just a second longer than you know is necessary. But you can't help it, there's something irresistible about the way it pools up, and I can't help but swim in the uncomplicated bubble of comfy this place oozes like syrup.
Fats Domino serenades leaving a greedy woman to go home to New Orleans. I softly hum along, pulling Fairchild's eyes away from the window. I swear I hear ice crack as her eyebrows furrow ever so slightly. I muffle myself by sipping some coffee, suddenly making a connection.
"Wait, if Hagerstown is supposed to be a 1950s town, why is it playing 60s music?"
Fairchild's returns to gazing through the window at passing cars.
"Is it?" she inquires, "it's a Fats Domino song. I'd assume it's a 50s song."
"'I'm Walkin'' is a 1950s song, 1957, but 'Walking to New Orleans,'" I point to the jukebox.  "'Walking to New Orleans' was recorded in 1960." I shrug and point to the new song playing from the jukebox. "How about Frank Sinatra, with 'Fly Me to the Moon?' 50s or 60s song?"
Fairchild mumbles through a drink of her coffee. "I'd say 50s again, just because it's Sinatra."
"The song itself was written in 1954, but Sinatra's cover was recorded in 1964."
She sighs in defeat but cracks a small grin. "Even if Hagerstown is from 1959, a couple years HAS passed since it was brought back. Hell… I wouldn't be surprised if we trip over an anachronism like with Fats Domino ever so often." Fairchild's bakelite eyes muse lackadaisically. "Fankasians aren't exactly the most 'informed' about what is 1950s and what is 1960s." She subtly points a thumb at a wood elf reading a newspaper at the long bar. A Deer gun lying next to his plate. "Those weren't made by the CIA until 1964. Another anachronism."
The wood elf looks back at us suspiciously just as Fairchild's eyes throw her gaze over him and onto our waitress.
	"She has helped that same dwarf with his steak and eggs, three times now." Fairchild huffs. "And she has come back to help our table, how many times now?" The harpy leans in, irritated. "Zero."
	I shrug and sip my coffee. Watching the wood elf leave. I hear a click of a lighter. Fairchild puts her egg lighter away and a cigarette between her lips. 
	I whisper my question to her, "can you even smoke in here?"
	Fairchild smirks. "It is 1959 isn't it?" She blows a puff that gets torn like cotton candy by the ceiling fan above us. "Best thing about the 50s? You can smoke WHEREVER you want."
	I laugh quietly, "I always wondered why Fankasians live in Hagerstown, in the 50s? It seems like an odd time period for them to settle into."
	The harpy girl lets her head hang to the side in smug, disbelief. "Anon, I live here, I fly to work every morning." Another puff, "and most everyone I've talked to loves it here."
	"Why?"
	Fairchild lets her tall frame recline on the booth as she speaks. "For starters, Fankasia isn't all one homogeneous place. Not every part is stuck in the Dark Ages with Kings and Queens. A place far up north has industrialized, there's another place stuck in 1914, barbwire, trenches, and all, I've heard about some woods harboring a Soviet era nuclear silo, and…" Fairchild stops her rambling. "Point is, every era of warfare is being practiced somewhere in Fankasia. Implying that the people live like in that same time period."
	I nod, slowly coming to understand her reasoning. 
	"If you really think about it, the 1950s is the perfect era." Fairchild casually gestures with her arm, keeping her burning cigarette static. "It's a 'one size fits all' time period. All the basics of modern day human life, but even simpler. No cell phones. No internet. So it's the best to ease Fankasians used to kings and queens, which happens to be most of them, into life in the human world." 
	We both jump from the waitress coming to our table. 
	"HEY! What can I get y'all?"
	Fairchild seizes on the waitress like an eagle on a mouse.
	"The number 14." She says with an authoritative drag of her cigarette.
	The waitress smiles nervously at the dead eyes watching her every movement.
	"What do you want in it?"
	"Turkey bacon and chicken sausage."
	"No veggies?"
	Fairchild frowns, looking at me astonished at the waitress' gall to question her.
	"Yeah." She says like she's talking to a moron.
	"Your side?"
	"Eggs."
	I raise an eyebrow.
	The waitress stops writing, confused. "Eggs? You want a side of eggs with your omelette?"
	"Just eggs." Fairchild leans on her elbow as she belts out another order with her monotone voice, "and two number 8s."
	"The sausage and biscuits? Two orders?"
	"Chicken sausage." Fairchild nods, expecting the waitress to write her cannibalistic order, is it cannibalism for a harpy to eat turkey, chicken, and eggs?
	"Y-You do know… those come with two eggs, right?"
	"Yes."
	Fairchild thinks before her bakelite eyes flash with a new idea.
	"Let me substitute two of those eggs and one order of the biscuits with more chicken sausage."
	The waitress freezes again and does a double take. 
	"All sausage?"
	"All the sausage." Fairchild smiles smugly, her towering harpy self teetering over the poor waitress.
	"Three orders? Just for you?"
	Fairchild's expression turns dark, sick of repeating herself. She taps her cigarette over the ashtray three times, before grinding the butt out on the ashtray. Much to the waitress' fearful chagrin.
	"Three. Orders." Suddenly Fairchild moves towards the waitress, diving low like a plane but peeling up at the last moment. Putting her face very close to the waitress who covers herself with her notepad, "and a vanilla milkshake."
	All the waitress does is nod before turning to me.
	"I'll just get a cheeseburger and fries."
	"What drink?"
	I look at the menu.
	"Let me get a co---" I look closer at the drink prices. "Are milkshakes really that cheap? They're even cheaper than a soda."
	"Yep!" The waitress says with a smile.
	"Let me get one of those."
	The waitress walks off with our menus but does a little sideways glance at Fairchild, who is in the process of lighting yet another cigarette.
	"Jesus, you're gonna get cancer if you keep smoking like that."
	The cannibal harpy smiles. She takes a long drag.
	"That's the idea," she says, pleased.
	I shrug and sigh. "Alright…" Fairchild takes another jubilant puff of tobacco. "You know, we should probably start brainstorming ideas on how to find the bomb."
	Fairchild bolts up with an idea. My jaw drops at the sudden, unbecoming interest she shows.
	"Anon!"
	"Yeah?"
	"I should have ordered a piece of cream pie too." She snaps her fingers. "It comes with milk, I could have subbed it for some nice, cool raw egg."
	I face palm and struggle for words to express my disgust.
	"But…" Fairchild smiles as she sips her coffee. "I mean you said the bomb has to be in town, right?" She draws her idea out in the air with tobacco smoke. "And that whoever found it would most likely bring it to their nearest jewi-- shady arms dealer?" 
	I nod, "but we can't just question every single arms dealer in town."
	We sit in silence, letting the jukebox and the ambience of the diner fill the vacuum of words.
	"What if we just question the waitress?"
	"We're not g---"
	"Hey y'all!" 
	The waitress places coasters down for our milkshakes just as the Coasters begin to sing about plans and sweethearts. They goad Fairchild on to ask the waitress where to sell a bomb with "sh-boom" after "sh-boom."
	Fairchild smiles, putting on a chummy act for the waitress.
	"Hey? I got a question."
	The waitress stops and her eyes quickly dart from egg to egg, counting them.
	"Yes?"
	Fairchild rolls her cigarette between her fingers as she looms over the waitress once again, this time like a buzzard hunting for a prize.
	"Let's say, my partner here and I had found a bomb," Fairchild takes a drag. "Who would we go to if we wanted to get rid of it?"
	"Like a nuclear bomb?" 
	I stop chewing and look up, at the same instant Fairchild does too. 
	Fairchild and I make eye contact, both drinking from our milkshakes. Fairchild swallows and nods with a smile, staying steadfast, daring the waitress to blow our cover.
	"Yeah, something like that."
	"You'd bring it to Bobby, Mr. MacDonald, and he was just here. He's a bomb dealer, all good bombs go up to him" 
	We breathe a sigh of silent relief. 
	"Where can we find him?"
	"He came inside this morning, his tip was just so big I was worried I wouldn't be able to take it." The waitress reminisces having been up in paradise up above.
	Over Fairchild's shoulder I see a dwarf mother cover the ears of her child. She stares at the waitress angrily.
	The waitress continues. "Bobby went to the bank across the street, but he always comes back for lunch. He's a wide tiefling with gray hair."
	I nod, "alright, thank you."
	Fairchild and I eat.
	"So, what? Do we just stay here until Bobby gets here?"
	Fairchild pays me no heed as she feasts on her chicken sausage. 
	"Sure," she mumbles through a mouthful of food.
	After I finish eating, I just gaze across the street at a tan Ford parked out in front of the bank. An awful bruise of exhaust coming out of the tailpipe. 
	Suddenly a guitar case is set against our table by a Red-shouldered hawk harpy, Fairchild nods towards him as he leaves the diner. 
	"Who was that?"
	"My cousin Vinnie. I asked him to pick some stuff up from my house." Fairchild gestures for my briefcase. "Do me a favor, let me use that real quick."
	I hand it to her, "I hate that thing, all empty and it beats against my side when I walk."
	"I could take it off your hands. I always wanted a bag of holding."
	"Bag of holding?"
	Fairchild raises an eyebrow.
	"Yeah?" She grazes the side with her hand, a blue rune flashes and she opens the briefcase. Inside is a void of space. "You didn't activate it?"
	"I didn't know it was a bag of holding."
	Fairchild sighs, "it's a pretty bad one to be honest. Bags of holding usually have a soft limit of only being able to put things in that fit through the opening." She struggles to fit the guitar case in, but somehow manages. I raise an eyebrow at the paradox of fitting a "bigger" bag in a "smaller" yet also bigger bag. "But usually, the smaller the opening, the less weight you feel when you carry it." 
	"I still don't want to carry it."
	The harpy girl shrugs, "I'll do it then. I like keeping my stuff close to me."
	"Do you play guitar?"
	Fairchild smiles smugly. "Yeah, you could say that."
	"Fairchild…" She looks away suddenly aware of her hubris. "What was in the guitar case?" Fairchild ignores me. "Fairchild…" I press harder. "Fairchild!"
	She wiggles like a willow tree blowing in the wind. 
	"It's not a guitar if that's what you're asking."
	I lean in and whisper, hissing through my teeth.
	"Don't tell me it's a machine gun or something." She turns pink and hides behind her hair. "Jesus, Fairchild!"
	"See, everyone knows a guitar case means a gun." Fairchild manages to make eye contact, her bakelite brown eyes behind long strands of white, "but what they don't expect is a briefcase to be holding a guitar case that's holding a gun."
	That logic actually does make sense. I relax in my seat. There's not much I can do now.
	Fairchild explains more, "plus the Air Force only gave us one gun, to share, with only six rounds." She points at my holster.
	"Oh, you have a tommy gun in there?"
	"Of course not!" Fairchild laughs nervously, "just because I have a cousin named Vinnie doesn't mean I'm related to the…" She stops on the M-word, she pulls her S&W Model 29 and its holster out of the briefcase.
	"Well, why didn't you say it was just your revolver?"
	"I wouldn't worry about it."
	She shuts the briefcase and reads the runes casually as she puts on her holster. 
	"Hey? Anon?" She smiles. "You want to see something cool?"
	"Sure?"
	Fairchild runs her hand over the briefcase runes, they flash and the briefcase morphs into a magazine pouch.
	"Ta dah!"
	"You can do that?" 
A pleased smile appears on Fairchild's face.
"Why do you think merchants are always changing how big the hole is on their bag of holding? That way you can only get things that fit through the hole out." She returns the magazine pouch back to being a briefcase.
"I guess General Hughes does care after all if he gave us such a nice one."
"These were standard issue up until ten years ago."
"Oh."
	Contrails of smoke drift over the table like summer clouds. We eat in peace, or at least I try to. Fairchild eats with surprising ferocity. I stop eating from astonishment, a french fry danling in limbo between plate and mouth, I watch Fairchild devour an entire egg in one bite. The fried edges not so much as grazing her lips. She enjoys circling her next bite of food before swooping down. 
	"Hey, Fairchild?"
	She nods with a mouthful of chicken sausage.
	"What kind of harpy are you?"
	"An Argentavis." I nod pretending to know what bird that is, looking off to the side. Fairchild sighs. "One of the largest flying birds to ever exist. It's related to the Condor." Her tired body slumps against the table. "It's part of why…" She gestures to her tall body.
That explains quite a bit.	
	Fairchild bites into a roll of chicken sausage held together by a fried egg, like it's a hot dog, suddenly from across the street we hear an alarm.
	"Awww, shit." I sit up in surprise. Dozens of Fankasians run out screaming as gunshots echo out of the bank. "Should we help?"
	Fairchild calmly looks out the window as she finishes her "hot dog." 
	"No, I don't think we need to." She chews leisurely, staring at the bank robbery with the same energy one does watching pigeons peck at bread crumbs. "We're supposed to be keeping a low profile." 
	"We can't question Bobby if he's dead, Fairchild."
	The mouthful of milkshake has turned sour on her tongue. Fairchild sits back, looking at the ceiling fan as she thinks. She sighs, the kind of sigh you only get when your boss drops a stack of paperwork on you that he "forgot" to give you an hour before you go home.
	"Fiiiine…" The towering harpy slaps our bill down on the table. The briefcase beats against her side as she jabs her finger angrily at me. "He better be in there."



	We run across the street pushing aside the elves and dwarves running past us. At the recommendation of a gunshot blowing out a window we take cover behind a car. I peek over the trunk of a very nice Bel Air Convertible and draw my Colt Police Positive.
	"What's the pla--" I hear a snappy click from behind. I spin around to see Fairchild with the briefcase at her feet and her arm deep inside it. "What are you doing?"
	"Nothing…" 
	"Okay?" I turn back to peek over the car, "so I'm going to run across the parking lot and sneak up to the door, you cover me and when then I'll do the sa--"
	I hear metal bang against the side of the briefcase. I look back and Fairchild stares at me like she's a little kid who's been caught with their hand in the cookie jar
	A black cookie. A smooth cookie. A slick cookie. A very long cookie. A cookie that's much girthier around where you should grab onto. 
	"Fairchild?"
	"Yes?"
	"Where did you get an M16?"
	She eases the front sight base around the edge of the briefcase and pulls the rest of the barrel out. 
The harpy girl shrugs. "It fell off a truck…"
	"I asked if you had an assault rifle and you said no!"
	"NUH UH! You asked if I had a machine gun and this isn't a machine gun." 
	"AND?"
Fairchild hugs her "puppy" of an M16. "You also asked if it was a tommy gun, AND this isn't a tommy gun either." She softly runs her hands along the handguards like they're the legs of a supermodel and moans "it's so much better."  
I nod, confused,  as Fairchild clips the briefcase, now transformed into the magazine pouch, onto her waist. She pulls out a waffle magazine and expertly loads it into the magwell of her M16.
The harpy girl lovingly looks at her rifle like God himself had given it to her. "It's Eugene Stoner's masterpiece. The sleek, space age pièce de résistance of the 1950s." Fairchild declares. "The rifle that shed wood and steel for aluminum and polymer, the rifle that shed fat and heavy bullets for light and fast ones," Fairchild charges her rifle with the passion of a swordsman drawing his sword, "and the only rifle that truly learned from the past to become 'Tomorrow's Rifle Today!'"
The hard chromed parts wink at me from the bright sun as Fairchild snaps a pair of clip-on sunglasses on top of her browline glasses. Her head turns to me with a cocky smile, it almost looks out of place on her, but she wears it with the confidence of James Dean. She stares into the bank as she walks around me, ignoring the gunshots echoing inside the bank. 
A clicking off of the safety is heard before she declares, "let's rock n roll."
Fairchild promptly takes a nosedive into the parking lot from tripping in a pothole. She was too focused on the bank. I slowly walk up behind her.
"Are you okay?"
She continues to lie face down in response. I pick her up and her clip-ons shattered much like the James Dean confidence. There are tears welling up her eyes. 
"Come on, let's go." I wave with my pistol, gesturing towards the bank like I'm treating her to ice cream, but no one points to an ice cream store with their pistol. We run with me pulling her by the hand. It's soft.
I motion for Fairchild to stand on the other side of the doorway. Just before I peek through the glass I get a genius idea.
"Hey, Fairchild. You should really be using your .44 Magnum."
"What? Why?"
"Because in Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood was eating in a diner before stopping a bank robbery across the street with one." I say smugly.
"I will shoot you." 
There's a pause before I push even more, like a punk who's feeling lucky.
"He even shot a guy backing out the front door of the bank with his revolver."
"Look, no one is just going to back out of a bank like an idiot."
A guy backs out the bank, like an idiot. He doesn't notice us. I can't help but crack the biggest shit eating grin and look around his side at Fairchild, both to rub it in and to goad her to use her .44 Magnum. She is not entertained, while she doesn't "shoot me" she does make me eat shit from a bloody hole made with her M16 in the guy's side. 
I'm covered in blood as the guy falls to the ground screaming. I wipe my eyes and am even more surprised to find Fairchild is surprised too. 
She gestures angrily at the guy.
"Why didn't he die?"
I do a double take, "people don't always die in one shot, it has to hit something critical."
We both jump from more gunshots inside the bank. I sincerely hope Bobby is a durable tiefling.
The guy rolls on the ground screaming.
"Should we leave him?" Fairchild asks.
"I think we should put him out of his misery."
The guy has stopped rolling and has gone into shock. 
Fairchild steps up, "I'll do it."
She walks up to the guy and plants the flash hider of her M16 in his forehead. Three straight roots like a rack sowing the skin of his forehead. I have no time to brace for the gunshot that grows to fill the air. A silence takes root in the parking lot. I stand next to Fairchild. Her face is looking down at the guy. His soul has surely departed through the .22 caliber hole in his head by now. Lacking a reaction is what worries me most about Fairchild. I begin to rest my hand on Fairchild's shoulder to offer some consultation for the storm of emotions she is surely feeling right now, but hesitate. 
The harpy girl had already been ragged and hated life, not that there seemed to be much left in her. The moral dilemma she has pulled herself into with that trigger must be crushing whatever soul she has left. I stand terrified that the fragments of it are leaving through her silent heavy breathing. Her weeping willow body hangs softly, only moved by the noise of the bank alarm. Perhaps it's best to give the pencil pusher some time to neatly file her thoughts away first.
But suddenly she begins to turn, the first thing I notice are her eyes. Full of red, maniac fire that tries to fight off the brown in her bakelite eyes. Her mouth open hangs in astonishment. Fairchild breathes slowly, but deeply, like she has been freed from years of slavery and these are her first moments as a free harpy. 
Fairchild smiles, full of wonder and asks with big doey eyes.
"Can I do that again?"
"What?" I respond, confused. "What do you mean?"
	"D-Don't worry about it."
	Fairchild takes a few steps back before dumping her rifle into the windows of the bank. 
	"FAIRCHILD! THERE ARE PEOPLE INSIDE!"
	She looks at me, confused. "Yeah, that's the idea…" She drops the mag to prove a point.
	"INNOCENT PEOPLE!"
	"Oh…" Fairchild looks down, beginning to feel guilt but then her shoulders perk up. "We don't know that." 
	The shattered glass crunches beneath our feet. The lobby is empty. A chandelier barely hangs from the ceiling. 
	Suddenly an orc gets out from beneath a table and runs up to us, "oh thank go-"
	Fairchild flinches and shoots him.
	"He was coming right at me!"
	I point, "he's not even black."
	"There's gasoline in the cars outside."
	"YOU CAN'T JUST KILL CIVILIANS!"
	"But we're feds…"
	I huff in frustration and we begin to search the bank for Bobby. Everything from checking the offices, to the bathrooms, to the janitor's closets, ceiling tiles, and even the vents. Anywhere a tiefling could be.

-== to delete ==-
	A muffled noise echoes from the vent. 
	Fairchild pulls her head back out.
	"Do these vents have rats?" 
	" Probably not" I say. She pokes her head back into the vent. "It's 1959, the asbestos would kill them within days."
	"The what?" 
	"The what?"
	Suddenly her leg kicks me in the chest, it sends me flying to the ground.
	"JESUS CHRIST THERE IS SOMETHING IN HERE!"
	Fairchild jumps and lands on her back, crushing a desk as she empties her gun into the vent. 
	"D-Did you get it?"
	"I don't know! You check it!"
	I take a breath and cock the hammer on my revolver.
	I peek into the dark vent. "Hello? Anyone there?" I turn my ear to listen. "I won't hur--"
	Something begins to scuttle frantically towards me. Two beady white eyes floating in the murky black of the air duct.
	"NO NO! THAT WAS A LIE! I LIED!"
	The Colt Police Special comes up. In between the sight blades the pinpricks of demon eyes sway side to side madly. 
	The cylinder spins all the way around and I press up against the wall. Fairchild yells when a head pokes its way out of the vent. I look and see a white mass. At first I think it's a ghost, but no it's just an elf who had a very hard time making bread.
	He slides out further like Danny Devito out of a couch. Grinding can be heard as he presses his body against the metal frame of the vent, a powdery grinding. The elf flops to the ground with a bullet in his chest. 
	Fairchild and I make eye contact. She jumps to shoot the floured elf but I block her shot as the elf tries to speak. I kneel down to listen to his final words. A puff of white powder blows out from his mouth. I cover my face as it settles.
	"I wiz hangry."
	"What?"
	"I smelted food."
	"Food?" I look around the room. It's a shit hole office. "Fairchild do you have food?"
	"Yeah? What, you don't store food for later?" She unbuttons the top button on her white shirt and reaches down to grab a chicken sausage. 
	"Not in my chest, no…"
	"Flightless fuck." She bites the sausage without a care. The elf reaches his white hand up towards her.
	I ask, "why are you covered in flour?"
	"It's not flour. "Ez crack."
	"Crack?" I ask the crack elf.
	The tweaker mutters, "yous tellin me diz ain't crack?"
	"No?"
	"But et macks me fell funny."
	"That's the mesothelioma." 
The crack head elf looks up at me, his eyes full of hope.
	"Dat a kind a high?"
	"I mean… it can you go higher than this mortal plane."
	"Coooooooooooooooool."
	Fairchild points with her M16 at the vent.
	"How did you even get in there?"
	"I climbs in for sum azbez-toes."
	"Asbestos?"
	"Yeaah man, like azbez-toes? I hears bank man talkin how derz azbez-toes in da vents. I don't know whats an azbez, but I like toes."
	Fairchild's dead eyes have returned with her boredom.
	She whispers, "I think he's going to die."
	"Don't shoot him!" I hiss back.
	"Okay, I won't."
	Fairchild removes a chicken sausage from her shirt and puts it in the tweaker elf's mouth. She lovingly picks him up, asbestos and all, and punts him back into the vent. He bounces around like a rock, on the way down I think I hear a crack of a neck.
	"There, no one will know." Fairchild smiles, pleased with her athleticism that has been displayed by her kick. "
	"They're going to smell it. It's an air duct."
Fairchild ignores me and points to the door. "Can we fucking go now?" 
	In the hallway I flip out the cylinder of my pistol. The spent casings clatter at my feet. Six sad reminders I am out of ammunition. Fairchild marches on shouting for Bobby in every recess of the bank. The only place we haven't checked is the vault.

	We peek around the corner into the open vault. There is only one person inside. A tiefling.
	"Well, Bobby isn't here." Fairchild says, she bonks me on the head with the handguards of her rifle. "What a shame."
	"How do you know that's not Bobby?"
	"The waitress said he was an arms dealer not a bank robber."
	I ignore her. "HEY! ARE YOU Bobby MACDONALD?"
	The tiefling jumps and pulls a P38 out of a duffle bag full of money.
	"WHAT?"
	I scream again, "ARE YOU Bobby?"
	"NO?" 
	Fairchild rolls her eyes.
	"ARE YOU Bobby NOW?"
	"NO." The tiefling hesitates. "ARE YOU COPS?"
	"NO?"
	"THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE?"
	"WE'RE LOOKING FOR Bobby."
	The tiefling shoots down the corridor. Fairchild shoots into the vault. Bullets bounce off like little firecrackers off the deposit boxes.
	The tiefling and harpy exchange fire as I take cover behind a nearby desk.
	"Anon, what are you doing on the floor?" Fairchild doesn't skip a beat as she fires.
	"AVOIDING GETTING SHOT!" I squirm as more bullets fly over my head, blood from the guy at the front door smearing onto the ground.
	"But the bullets are up here…"
	Something lands next to Fairchild.
	"THAT'S A GRENADE!" I yell.
	"This?" She holds it up like it's a baseball. "This isn't even from the 1950s."
	"IT'S STILL A GRENADE!"
	She tosses it over her shoulder, looking betrayed.
	The tiefling pops around the vault door and empties his pistol. Fairchild stands freely and without fear. Her rifle in one hand and her other daring him to hit her. The tiefling flinches. He misses every shot. Fairchild smiles almost a little saddened. Maybe empathetic?
	"DROP THE GUN!" Fairchild yells.
	The P38 hits the tile floor. Fairchild walks over and picks it up, admiring the bluing.
	"What is this? German?"
	The tiefling stands confused.
	"Uhhh… yeah?"
"Oh, must be expensive. What is this? 9mm?" She takes a mag from his pocket.	"Y-Yeah?"
	"This shoot low or to the right?"
	"A little high."
	"Thank you." Fairchild says gratefully.
She loads the pistol, racks the slide, and shoots him. Getting blood all over her face.
"FAIRCHILD WHAT THE FUCK!" I get up and look around the vault. "HE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A GUN!"
"Yeah? He HAD one." She grumbles. "Look do you want a P38 or not?"
I accept and recoils in repulsion when she hands me more magazines. I see gray where I expect yellow.
"Who runs steel in a gun as nice as this, especially a P38?"
Fairchild shrugs and changes the subject. "So… Bobby obviously isn't here. We should probably get going now." 
A realization pours over me.
"Yeah… where are the police?"
Her eyes drift over the money, "and what about the money?"
"Low profile, remember?"
We sneak out to the parking lot behind the bank. A beautiful jet black Chrysler 300E is idling on the curb. They probably came in the tan Ford and probably wanted a different getaway car. Smart.
Fairchild flashes a "spell of revealing" over the car for bugs and tracking devices. 
"Nothing." She says
She puts her M16 and the bag of holding now reverted back to a briefcase into the back seat. The harpy casually sits in the driver's seat as if it were her own car. The adrenaline has begun to run out. Her bakelite eyes have lost their dominating red fire and returned more to their tepid, calm brown. Bored and dead. 
"What happened to keeping a low profile? I ask.
A glint of excitement shows on her face. I sigh and sit in the passenger's seat. Two robbers burst from the back door of the bank.
"HEY! THAT'S OUR CAR!"
Fairchild guns it out of the parking lot and down the road with an exhilarated smile.


We drive out of Hagerstown to make sure the robbers didn't follow us. It's just Fairchild and I alone with the car bouncing on a dusty road. I lean on the passenger seat door, bored. 
I reach for the radio, "do you know any good stations, Fairchild?"
"CRM-114 is pretty cool. I think the host Doc. S. Love sounds a lot like Robert De Niro."
I nod and turn the dial to let forth the sweet singing of Little Richard swell to fill the car. He tells the entire car to keep a knockin. I didn't know someone actually would start a knockin. Suddenly I hear a noise from behind us, as I turn to listen Fairchild turns the radio up louder behind me.
"Did you hear that?"
"Just the music, Anon," Fairchild says without even batting an eye. "It's the drums."
"You sure?"
"Positive as your Colt Police."
A minute later I hear yelling from behind us, it's coming from the trunk.
"Do you hear yelling?"
"That's just how Little Richard sings." Fairchild turns the radio up even more. "I wouldn't worry about it."
I try to distinguish between if the knocking and yelling is coming from the music or the trunk. When there is a second of static between the song ending and the radio host speaking, the knocking and yelling doesn't stop.
"You listenin' to me? You listenin' to me? Ayyy, it's Doc. S. Love here on CR---" 
I mute Doc. S. Love and glare at Fairchild. Drops of sweat run down her forehead. A combination of the desert heat and being found out.
"Fairchild?" She ignores the knocking and yelling. "I think there's someone in the trunk."
Fairchild turns the radio back on and punches the accelerator. Tony Bennett sings to us about going from rags to riches as I'm pushed against the leather of my seat. Whoever is in the trunk hits the back of it and swears loudly.
"Did you know there was someone in the trunk?" I yell over the engine and music.
"..." 
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"It's a nice car," but then she turns it into the badlands." I could never afford anything like this on my salary," she admits.
"Well…" I hesitate. I understand her plight, I'm sure Tony Bennet does too. No one wants to forever be a beggar. That must be why Fairchild wanted to take the money at the bank. "What do we do?"
"Why do you think I'm driving off the road?"


	Her ominous words echo in the maddening silence left when she kills the engine in the middle of the desert. The greenery of civilization far behind us. Only quiet, rocky plains of orange sand surrounding us now. Fairchild and I stare at the trunk of the Chrysler. Neither of us are really sure what to do now. Fairchild sighs, goes to the back of the car, and pulls her M16 out by the sling. She grimaces angrily at the noise coming from the trunk. I motion for her to lower her rifle.
	"We already look scary enough."
	I point to my face covered in blood and her shirt still damp with it. The office jockey stares at me in haughty disbelief but then she drags a finger across her shirt collar. She inspects the damp redness on her skin and sighs in defeat. The clicking of her safety back on ends the conversation. 
"Hey buddy?" I gently open the trunk. "You need some he--"
	A license plate knocks me to the ground, wielded by a tiefling. I hear the trunk tiefling scream as he seizes on Fairchild, swinging the license plate wildy. She blocks the license plate apathetically, it bends against her arm. She smiles, ever so slightly entertained, as she jabs the M16 into his stomach with her free hand. 
	"Drop it, Tieffy." She says with her monotone voice.
The tiefling drops the license plate. It stabs itself into the ground inches away from my face. 
	"Tieffy?" The tiefling asks with his arms shaking.
"Fairchild, come on." I wirth on the ground in pain. I hold my stinging cheek. "He was just scared is all."
Fairchild rolls her eyes. She jabs the rifle in deeper, the prongs of her flash hider gouging his gut. 
"Out of the car and onto the ground."
A face lands right next to me, his eyes pleading with me to talk sense into the harpy. 
I mumble in pain, "are you Bobby MacDonald by any chance?"
He nods carefully. "you're not with the Resuam family are you?"
I look up at Fairchild in the glaring sun. She grins with a clever idea in mind. She rummages through the trunk and throws Bobby a shovel.
"What do you think?"
The poor tiefling looks at the shovel like it's the guillotine blade that will chop off his head. Fairchild kicks him until he is in front of the car.
"Now dig."
Fairchild and I whisper while sitting on the hood on the Chrysler 300E. The M16 lying on the behind us with a pack of cigarettes next to it.
"Resuam family?"
Fairchild lights another cigarette and smiles blissfully before answering my question.
"Yeah?" She lets the cig hang from her mouth. "They're a mob family."
"The mafia is in Hagerstown?"
Fairchild raises a confused eyebrow before nodding. Bobby stops digging and turns back towards us. Sweating and panting hopelessly.
"Gentlemen? I'm sure you k-know I was going to pay!" He wipes his brow and declares. "The money was already on its way to Don Resuam!"
Fairchild angrily throws a cigarette butt at him. I can see she's having the time of her life. 
"DID I SAY YOU COULD STOP DIGGING, TIEFFY?"
The tiefling dodges the cigarette butt and shakes in his suit. Fairchild takes a drag and smiles happily. I hope it's from fun and not her getting off to this.
I ask her, "is this really necessary?"
Fairchild exhales and watches the cloud of smoke quickly disappear in the dry desert air.
"He's seen our faces. If we let him live he'll go to the police or worse, Don Resuam." She kicks some sand over Bobby to bury him early out of spite. "Why not have a little fun before we kill him?" The harpy girl takes an authoritative drag of her cigarette. 
"Fun?"
"A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes. Except you gotta do it right, I mean you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about half an hour or 45 minutes of diggin.'" 
"Who are you? Joe Pesci? How do you even know that?" I shake my head. "What, did your cousin Vinnie teach you?"
Fairchild sighs, "we're just gonna be here a while is all, so why not make the most of it?"
We watch Bobby frantically dig his grave in the rocky ground until Fairchild is close to finishing her fifth cig. Every so often his eyes turn back to look at us. He refuses to make eye contact with Fairchild and so only makes his case with me. Praying I save him. 
"Alright, good enough, Tieffy" Fairchild declares as she stamps out her cigarette against the pack. 
	The tiefling shivers as he wishes he could spend his final moments on earth in another way.
"Hey, Tieffy, pick a number: 22 or 44?"
He takes a nervous breath. "44?"
Fairchild draws her S&W Model 29 and approaches Bobby. 
"WAIT, WAIT, WAIT" he waves his arms frantically and kneels. "NO PLEASE!"
She presses the .44 Magnum against his forehead. He grabs the barrel trying to push it away with all the might of his existential terror but Fairchild is too strong. As the harpy circles around the tiefling, I can see how the Argentavis is related to the Condor.
"You're going to answer a couple questions for us."
"I told Don Resuam all he had to know." The tiefling begs as he keeps trying to push her revolver away.
"I'm the one asking the questions." Fairchild cocks the hammer. "What were you doing in the bank?"
The tiefling shakes as he stammers out, "I was withdrawing money, but I paid you back! I sent it in the mail!"
Fairchild shouts back to me. "See? He's a liar." Bobby's eyes grow big. "The waitress said he went in to deposit money. If he was going to withdraw money, why would he leave such a big tip beforehand?"
I nod nervously as she turns back to the tiefling.
"What do you know about the Bomb?"
"Bomb? W-What bomb?
Fairchild raises her revolver and fires it into the sky.
"L-LOOK LADY! You gotta be more specific!"
"A NUCLEAR bomb."
"A nuclear bomb?"
"Yes, now we're getting somewhere!"
Fairchild turns to me with a thumbs up. I can only respond with a look of shock at what she's doing. 
She rubs the tiefling's head gently but then suddenly wrenches his hair upwards.
"Do you remember how I said, 'I ask the questions?'"
The tiefling has no time to react before she pistol whips him in the jaw.
"Jesus christ." I protest as the tiefling writhes on the ground.
She hands me her revolver and casually stretches. 
"Take over." I look at the heavy frame revolver in my hands. She made it look so light. "I'm gonna check if the radio has any good music."
The devilish harpy leans through the driver's window and fiddles with the radio. I walk over to Bobby and pull him to his feet.
"Sorry about my partner." I apologize. 
He pants and huffs as blood dribbles down his chin from loosened teeth.
"If you guys work for the Resuam family, how come I've never seen you before? Or her?" The tiefling looks fearfully at the harpy smirking smugly back at us.
"Her name is… uhh… Dirty Harry."
"Dirty Harry" starts staring daggers at me. 
He spits out a mouthful of blood, "isn't Clint Eastwood a guy though?"
"She can look like a guy from far away." I fib.
The daggers twist in my back, "oh yeah? His name is Harry Lyme!" Fairchild shouts and points at me.
I watch as tears begin to well up in the tiefling's eyes. He turns to me desperately.
"I don't know anything about a nuke. I swear."
"Bullshit!" Fairchild yells back at him.
Fairchild turns the radio back to CRM-114.
"Doc S. Love. here, personally I'm gettin' real tired of this sh-- stuff. How about something with a little more class? How about a song from an opera? But without the fat viking broads, ugh. Reminds me of this good fella I used to know, Tommy, but his mother? Now she was a fat fu--- fool… fool…" he sighs. "Paulie told me if I swear during a broadcast again he'll have me whacked."
Fairchild leaves the car and stalks her way back to Bobby as she lights a fresh cigarette. Someone is getting whacked.
"How about a song with a ton of mac but no cheese? A ton of knife but no fork? All sung by a little 'ol Bobby Darin." 
The harpy girl smiles deviously, a real toothy shark grin. She reaches into the briefcase and pulls out a switchblade.
Doc. S. Love encourages her. "That's right, that's right. The 1959 hit… Mack the Knife!"
Fairchild lets the knife hang by her side. The opening notes of the music signaling the start of Bobby's torture.
She begins to sing, "~Oh the shark, babe. Has such teeth, dear." The tiefling jumps when Fairchild extends the blade. "~And he shows them pearly white. Just a jackknife has old Macheath, babe." He stares at the alien harpy beginning to slowly dance around him.
The tiefling pleads with me to stop her. I just stand there, watching.
"~And he keeps it out of sight. You know when that shark bites, with his teeth, babe." The tiefling prepares. "~Scarlet billows start to spread!" Fairchild spreads a billow of scarlet through the air. "~Fancy gloves, though, wears old Macheath, babe. So there's never, never a trace of red," sings Fairchild as she wipes the wet shark's teeth of the blade on the tiefling's shivering chin. Right above his Adam's apple. 
	"~Now on the sidewalk, a-huh, huh, ooo sunny morning, uh-huh" Fairchild shimmies behind the tiefling. "~Lies a body just oozin' life! EEK," The tiefling twists as his blood oozes out around the switchblade. Fairchild sneaks it out, "and someone sneakin' round the corner." The dripping blade grazes the corner of his jaw. "~Could that someone be Mack the knife?" She sings less than an inch from his face, daring the tiefling to fight back.
"PLEASE!" The tiefling screams in pain. "I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT A NUKE!" He presses his hands against his wound, and gasps from the stinging. He's on the verge of tipping over like a bag of cement. "JUST LET ME GO!"
"Bullshit." A swift kick breaks the five or ten of the tiefling's teeth. "~Five'll get ya ten, ol' Mackie's back in town!" Fairchild pistol whips the back of his head, forcing him to bite down on his broken teeth. Crunch. 
I wonder if this is what happened to Louie Miller.
Fairchild smiles. "~He disappeared, babe!" Mack the Knife disappears in Bobby's side, making him scream. "After drawin' out all his hard-earned cash," Fairchild draws out her  knife with a long pull.
She closes the switchblade and dances away. The tiefling sighs in relief. "~Could it be our boy's done something rash?" Fairchild forces her revolver's barrel into his ear canal in response, cracking the bone. "Come on, Tieffy, think! The song is almost over!" 
"I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOUR FUCKING NUKE! Bobby Darin sings names over the tiefling's screams as if to show just how many people DO know about the nuke
"~And ol' Lucy Brown." Fairchild laughs. "~Oh, the line forms on the right, babe." Teasing him for the blood running down the right of his face as she ceaselessly dances around him. "~Now that Macky's back in town." 
The trumpets swell louder and louder as the song nears its end. Fairchild motions for me to turn up the volume, even over the deafening trumpets I can still hear her cock the hammer of her gun. The contrast between the violence of a harpy torturing a helpless tiefling and the cheery music makes me sick, but I can't stop watching with morbid curiosity.
"WAIT! WAIT!" The tiefling screams over the trumpets and Bobby Darin wailing without a care for his plight. "Some of your guys, Resuam's guys, were reading this commie shit and were talking about how to make radiation free nukes!" He desperately pleads. "The ones at the bank!"
Fairchild smirks at me, eyes full of life, knowing her technique worked. She looks at the tiefling, pleased, "is that all, Tieffy?"
"Y-Yeah?"
At the final crescendo of the trumpets and drums, the tiefling's eyes open wider as he realizes his mistake. He could have avoided his death for a minute or two longer if he had said otherwise, but would that have been worth it? Fairchild takes one final stance and aims her revolver at his head.
"~Look out ol' Mackie is back!" 
The final surge of trumpets does nothing to quiet the lightning crack of Fairchild's Model 29. 
Mack the Knife didn't get Bobby like he got Louie Miller. Mozambique the Failure Drill is what did. I run to turn off the radio and the full blast of two more gunshots chase away Bobby's soul like rabid dogs.
Without skipping a beat Fairchild reholsters her gun and grabs the shovel. I stand in utter silence, too baffled to do anything, as Fairchild nonchalantly buries the body with the same interest she would shred papers with.
"F-Fairchild?"
"What?" She asks, the excitement of torture lost already, as she throws another heap of sand over the tiefling.
"What the fuck was that?" I point to the dead tiefling. 
Fairchild turns to me with the cigarette still hanging from her lips. Her brain processes my question. I jump back when she pulls out her .44 Magnum again, but she doesn't pay me any worry as she turns away. Instead she fires the last two rounds shots into each of Bobby's knees, and showers him in spent brass casings. She takes a drag of her cig and turns back to me. 
"There, now the fairies will carry his soul to heaven, in a wheelchair, but to heaven nevertheless."
I retreat to the driver's seat of the car as Fairchild finishes burying him. The inside of the car is so calm and cool, especially compared to the hot madness of just a moment ago. Fairchild throws the shovel in the blood stained trunk and sits in the passenger seat next to me. I push myself as far away from her as possible, staring at the pencil pusher, part time psychopath.
The murderous harpy girl finishes her cigarette and tosses it out the window. 
"Now we know the communists working for the Resuam family might know where the nuke is. That's a decent lead."
The harpy girl catches me staring at her.
"What? We got good information out of him that way." She explains herself. "If we had just executed him out there then the harpies would have gotten to him." 
"Harpies eat people?"
"Uhhh depending on who you ask… you do know what the Emu harpies did to ALL of Australia right?" Fairchild smirks smugly. "And besides," she pulls up her lips to show her canines. "We can if we want to, harpies have strong jaws."
I get out of the car and throw up onto the sand. 


Wisps of smoke fill the windshield of the Chrysler. It looks like the skyline of Hagerstown is laced with smog. I wave my hand to cut through it so I can see the highway.
"Do you have to smoke in the car?"
Fairchild only responds with a tired, offended look. She's calmed down from her psychopathy and is back to being a lifeless husk of an office worker. She sighs and stamps her cig out against the dashboard. The butt is tossed through the crack in her window. It hits a red Cadillac Coupe DeVille smack dab in the windshield, exploding. The goblin driver honks angrily. Fairchild smiles like a mischievous child. Okay, maybe there are a couple traces of psychopath still running through her blood.
I sigh as the Coupe DeVille tailgates me. In the rear view mirror I can see the driver glaring at me. Behind him are a smattering of other cars, a green Chevy, a blue Lincoln, and a tan Ford blowing a cloud of exhaust behind it. Fairchild turns on the radio. Doc. S. Love is arguing with someone.
"Ayyy, ohhh, Tommy… calm down."
"YOU MUTHAFUCKA YOU, INSULTING MY MOTHER LIKE THAT. I'LL SHOVE THAT LITTLE MICROPHONE OF YOUR'S UP YOUR ASS. YOU, YOU FUCK!"
"Cool it with the profanity, this is a family friendly station."
"FAMILY FRIENDLY? YOU INSULTED MY FAMILY YOU PRICK! I'M TELLIN' JIMMY ABOUT THIS AND THEN YOU'LL BE SORRY YOU PANSY MANSY SHIT!"
"Come on, Jimmy... Jimmy… look... Conway doesn't need to know about this."
"SHUT UP, WISE GUY, LIKE HELL HE DOESN'T. YOU ARE FUCKED MY FRIEND. I'M GETTING ALL THE OTHER GUYS DOWN THERE THIS WEEKEND, AND TONY? TONY iS GONNA MAKE YOU SOPRANO TO THE WHOLE CUNT DRINKING TOWN. YOU'RE DEAD!"
Tommy's line goes dead and Doc. S. Love sighs.
"That, look, here's… here's Santo & Johnny with Sleepwalk. I gotta make a couple phone calls. If we're lucky I'll whack him at Umbertos Clam House with two S&W .32 revolvers." 
I steer the car off the road into a gas station and the red Cadlliac honks as the goblin flips me off. Fairchild gets out and points to the gas station store. 
"I'm gonna get us some food, is that alright?"
"Yeah su--"
I stop and look at her bloody shirt. 
"What?" She asks knowingly.
"N-Nothing… go ahead."
On the way into the store I see her jump with joy at the sight of a deli, like a willow tree lifted by a strong wind. She bonks her head on the doorframe. I smirk and start to fill up the Chrysler. It takes no time at all for me to feel the eyes of the Oni at the pump next to us. He keeps staring at the blood all over my face. I look away to see that there's blood spattered on the grille of the car like flecks of red paint, from Fairchild's torture session with Bobby MacDonald. The Oni and I make eye contact. 
I'm tired. I don't have time for this. I turn my chest towards him and lean against the pump with my left arm to show my holstered revolver.
The Oni backs away. He drives off in his car. I get back in the Chrysler and sigh. My eyes wander up to the rear view mirror. In an adjacent parking lot sits a familiar tan yellow Ford. It's parked like it wanted to be hidden, but the smoke signals of exhaust blowing out from behind it doesn't help its case. 
Fairchild hops in the car with a big grin on her face. She holds a paper bag full of food in her lap. 
"What did you get?"
The harpy girl pops open a glass bottle of Coca-Cola before speaking.
"Ten sandwiches, some candy bars, and a couple bottles of soda."
"What kind of sandwiches?"
"Chicken salad…" she rummages through the bag, "and egg salad."
"You didn't get anything else?"
"Like what?"
"Like tuna salad?"
"The fuck is a tuna?"
I start the engine and pull the Chrysler 300E back onto the road. That same tan Ford follows us.
"Hey, Fairchild? I think we're being followed."
She speaks through a mouthful of sandwiches, she's stacked an egg salad sandwich on top of a tuna salad sandwich.
"What?" Fairchild looks behind us. "By who?"
"I think I saw that tan Ford outside the bank, it was watching us at the gas station, and got back on the highway with us."
Fairchild swallows nervously.
"Do you think it's just a coincidence?"
"Not when all three Fords have the same exhaust problem."
"Shit, did the bank robbers follow us?" Her eyes grow wide. "Do you think they saw what I did to Bobby MacDonald?" Fairchild pulls her S&W out and braces her hand against the headrest.
"Why, do you feel guilty now?" 
"I mean… it felt good… but… maybe a little."
"It felt good?"
Fairchild laughs nervously.
"That's not the problem right now, the problem is us being followed." The harpy waves her revolver towards a green highway sign. "Take the next exit and a couple turns, if they still follow that's how we know."
I take the next exit and a couple turns. The tan Ford follows us like a bloodhound. It gets closer with each turn I take. 
Up ahead is a red light. I stop the car. My heart beats fast. Even the Chrysler shakes with dread. I begin to sweat.
I look ahead while Fairchild turns on the radio. Chuck Berry sings about a chasing V8 Ford. I wonder if we're Maybellene. 
The tan Ford approaches. Taking its time. It pulls up right next to us. On Fairchild's side. She tries to play it cool. She drinks from her soda. She sneaks a glance. I do the same.
Fairchild looks back at me. She is drinking her soda faster now. Her brain is jammed with panic. It can't lower her arm. It can't unpurse her lips. 
We both recognize the driver.
"Should I try to lose him?" I whisper.
It's the wood elf from the diner. 
Fairchild thinks. She drains her soda. The bottle is empty now. Just like her patience. Her arm lowers itself. She smiles. 
Quick as a flash she throws the bottle at the tan Ford. "SCATTER!" She yells. 
I floor it. Our Chrysler is out in the intersection before the glass even falls to the street. Cars screech to a halt but are left honking at our exhaust trail.
Their Ford's wheels spin in place, kicking up an even bigger plume of smoke out behind it, but then it rockets after us. A blurry kaleidoscope of storefronts circles  us. Fairchild's bakelite eyes lose their stoicism in the flurry of color and speed.
She voices her change of mind, "I DON'T THINK THIS IS LOW PROFILE!" 
I honk at an elf using a crosswalk. We barrel through her afternoon groceries. 
"What?" I sneak a peek at Fairchild's anxiety. "You enjoy torture but not car chases? You even threw a bottle at them!"
We hit a bump. She squeals as she bounces in her seat. Fairchild grabs her head and tucks her legs in. 
"I DON'T LIKE GOING THIS FAST!"
"You flew pretty fast in the air" I say as I drift around a corner.
Fairchild turns paler than her hair.
"YEAH, IN THE AIR! HARPIES ARE MEANT TO FLY!"
In an alleyway sits a cop car. The black comet of our Chrysler wakes him up. The tan streak of the Ford makes him turn on his siren. 
"Oh shit…" Fairchild stammers. She looks back at the red and blue lights that have joined the chase.
She hunches down from the abrupt eruption of gunfire. 
"ARE THEY SHOOTING AT US?"
	A goblin has popped out the back seat of the Ford and is shooting at the police car. The barrel of his Tommy Gun flashes like fireworks. Brass explodes out the side. Each gunshot booms, cracks, and echoes off the buildings.
	"No, they're not shooting at US." I explain.
The cop car swerves as a bloody firecracker explodes in the driver's chest. It slams into a store.
"FUCK!" I hear Fairchild scream. "PULL OVER!"
"What?"
"PULL OVER!" She punches my shoulder and demands again. "PULL. OVER."
I slam the brakes and the car begins to veer towards the sidewalk. I spin it into the opposite lane. It stops. Fairchild jumps out of the car. She slams her door shut.
Fairchild stomps out into the crosswalk and stares down the Ford as it barrels towards her. She stands with confidence that would make a matador blush with admiration. I watch as she holds her revolver as a samurai does their sword, it is an extension of their body.
I gasp as the goblin aims his Tommy Gun at the overconfident cowboy in front of him. He leans out of an unstoppable steaming locomotive that is the Ford. Fairchild is going to be flattened. 
My hands grope for my P38 in the cupholder. I swear loudly. I look down to rummage through the sandwich wrappers Fairchild had left behind. I find the gun. I throw myself out the window. The goblin's head is a vague green blocked by the sight post. The same color as the plants in a nearby flower stand. 
My gunshot blasts my sleeves back. They wave goodbye to the 9mm bullet. Wishing it luck on its journey.
The goblin brings up his Tommy Gun. He eases his finger over the trigger. 
My bullet twists through the air, Chubby Checker would be proud, it's really hummin' as it flies over Fairchild's head. Blessed by the lead comet, Fairchild aims her own gun at the rampaging Ford.
The comet lands in a field of green. It doesn't care where it plants itself. It digs into whatever is in front of it. But then, it strikes oil. Red explodes from the goblin's head. He goes limp. The Tommy Gun falls to the road.
Fairchild fires three shots at the Ford. The first goes high. The second flies through the windshield. The third follows the second. 
The Ford veers off. It crashes through a flower stand and fire hydrant before tipping onto its side. Fairchild turns back to me with a grin. 
I get out of the Chrysler and smile too at the rampant chaos. A ruined cop car not too far off down the road. Screaming, scattering people. A dead goblin still reaching for his Tommy Gun in the middle of the street. The noise of the fire hydrant's ceaseless geyser of water. Water rainings down in a rainbow sprinkle.
We both walk over to the Ford. Everyone is dead inside.
"Hey, Fairchild?"
"What?"
"Are REALLY sure, you haven't seen Dirty Harry?" Fairchild holsters her revolver angrily. "Because Clint Eastwood shot at a tan Ford three times, it even crashed into a flower stand and a fire hydrant" She glares at me. "The car even tipped over on its side." She kicks down the Ford almost squashing me.
I shrug my shoulders and pull the diner elf out of the driver's seat. I pull out his wallet to look inside.
"Oh shit…" I look up. "Fairchild? You're going to want to see this."
Fairchild looks over my shoulder.
"Do you remember what the General said about not getting involved with any Federal agencies?" 
Fairchild gives an uneasy nod.
I show her what was inside the elf's wallet, flashing the elf's ID.
"Like the CIA?"

	Fairchild stumbles back like she's been punched.
	"No… NO! NO! NO!" She repeats as she shakes her head. "NO! THERE IS NO WAY!"
	She searches the pockets of the CIA agent she pulled from the passenger's seat. I hear a frustrated yell and see her run to the goblin to check him too. Suddenly a shimmer from the backseat of the Ford catches my eye, it's probably just ammo for the goblin's tommy gun. I peek inside. I gasp. A box of spyware filled to the brim with glittering gadgets. I look down. I gasp again. The box of spyware was but a star on top of a Christmas tree of other boxes. Intel boxes. Intel boxes filled to the brim with papers. Intel boxes that are no doubt related to the Bomb. Intel boxes the CIA won't be needing anymore.
	"MOTHERFUCKER!" I hear Fairchild scream. She stumbles towards me and leans against the Ford, defeated. "We are so dead." 
	"Fairchild." I protest.
	"The Feds are going to kill us."
	"Fairchild."
	"The Feds, no, the CIA is going to find out what I did to Bobby MacDonald."
	"Fairchild?"
	"They're going to find out how I tortured them. OH GOD, THEY'RE GOING TO TORTURE ME!"
	I angrily yell to stop her rambling.
	"FAIRCHILD!"
	Her dead fish eyes turn their muddy voids towards me. 
	"Look." I point to the backseat of the Ford.
	Her gaze lazily glances over the window, but then she gasps just like me. Fairchild smushes her face up against the glass. I hear her gasp just like I did again. 
	"Anon, is that?" She asks with regained hope.
	"Yes."
	"Intel?" Fairchild says the word as if it's synonymous with God.
	I speak with a smile. "Yes."
	We waste no time in moving the boxes from the backseat of the CIA's Ford to the backseat of our Chrysler. I start the engine just as police sirens can be heard. Adrenaline pumps through us like gas through the engine.  The final rumble of the engine starting brings a smile to both Fairchild and me. I hear her yelp when I punch the accelerator, but it quickly turns into an elated laugh of fearful excitement. The only evidence of us at the crime scene is the sound of our Chrysler 300E in the distance by the time the police arrive.
	"Slow down." I hear Fairchild say. "I think we can stop now."
	"Can we?" I look in the rear view mirror for any red and blue lights.
	Fairchild nods. "Yeah."
	I slowly pull the Chrysler into an empty parking lot overlooking the lake. When I kill the engine, the car sighs and shudders to a stop. Grateful for a moment of respite. I am too. Out the corner of my eye I see Fairchild loosening her tie.
	"Do you think they'll catch us?"
	"They'll probably think it was just the tan car and the police, so we should be fine."
	The trees around the lot lethargically wave in the calm winds, looking more blue than green in the slowly darkening evening. They box us in from all sides. I nod and close my eyes for a moment. Slumping back in my seat. My almost slumber is interrupted by the familiar click of a lighter. Fairchild is about to start another cigarette with her egg shaped lighter. The soft flame emphasizes the bags under her eyes. They look up at me and she sighs, closing the lighter. The car goes dark again. 
	"I can smoke outside if it bugs you that much." Fairchild opens her door.
I grab her wrist.
	"Wait, I'll at least sit with you."
	An odd expression appears on Fairchild's face. She's not sure what to do, she gives one nervous chuckle and steps out of the car.
	We sit together on the hood of the Chrysler. The lake softly lapping at the craggy edge of the parking lot. The burning tip of Fairchild's cigarette is the same color as the setting sun. An alluring orange glow. The wind blows off the lake, ruffling my hair. It's cool now that evening has arrived. It's one of those oddly long evenings you get only in the summer. The sun slowly sinking down in the sky like it's been dropped in molasses. Sweet colors ranging from the warm red to the West and the cool blue of the East mixing together with stars slowly being sprinkled along like crystals of sugar. It's wonderful the way it all mixes together. The air is cool and charming. The smoke from Fairchild's cigarette is hot and sweet. 
	From the direction we face the sky turns dark behind us but stays illuminated before us. The entire parking lot is shrouded in an odd bluish darkness. It blankets you and whispers in your ear to slow your mind and calm your nerves. You lose yourself in the moment. The only conception of time I have is Fairchild's passive smoking, a gentle heartbeat of rhythm. Each puff is like barbeque smoke that stays together for just a little too long. Saturated bluish gray clouds. Fairchild breaks the silent dream when she speaks.
	"You know, I miss the office a little bit."
	I turn to her and crack a smile, it's hard to remember the office still exists after all we've been through today.
	"Seriously?"
	Fairchild smiles as well, "just a little bit though." She takes a grateful puff of her stubby cigarette. "Honestly…" she hesitates for a moment, watching ash fall to the ground. "This is the most fun I've had in a long time."
"What, you like shooting at people?"
"Y-Yeah, it's the adrenaline. It's the most alive I've felt in a long time too." She quickly buries her burgeoning embarrassment in another drag. "Look, I'm not much of a people person. Sometimes I'd actually rather they shoot at me instead of talk to me." Fairchild sighs and flicks her cigarette butt into the water. "At least I'd maybe enjoy it then," she mumbles.
My eyes follow the butt as it's swept by the current. Bopping along until the lit end sinks under the surface. The dark water extinguishing the orange flame. I look up and see it's starting to do the same to the sun.
"We should probably find a place to stay the night." I say, "maybe get a motel room." 
"That's gonna be pretty hard this time of year." Fairchild responds as she absentmindedly lights another cigarette. "The 4th of July is coming up. It's tourist season." She stares out at the lake. Her mind is ramblin' about something.
"What if we stay at your place?"
Her eyes widen and she chokes on a lungful of smoke.
"N-No! We are… we are not doing that. At all." She backpedals.
"Why not?"
Fairchild clears her throat. "For starters, I have this neighbor, Miss… Miss… Miss Horth. An old gnome lady, real gossipy, nosy bitch." Fairchild gestures to our clothes and car. "If I showed up with a new car and some guy, all bloody? Whole town would know overnight." The harpy girl smirks. "She's always in her garden and trying to peek through my curtains. One of these days I'm worried she's gonna catch me ma-- ma-- making… making handloads."
"You handload?"
"Y-Y-Yeah… every night… sometimes twice." Fairchild calms herself with more nicotine. "I make my own loading of .223. IMR powder and and original Sierra/Stoner bullet.
"Do you think you could handload me some .38 Special?"
Fairchild backpedals again.
"I d-don't handload any .38 Special. I don't have any guns that can fire it." 
I look at her quizzically, Fairchild is visibly uncomfortable. 
	"LOOK! WE'RE NOT GOING TO MY HOUSE, OKAY?"
	I throw my hands up in defeat, "alright we'll find a motel room." 
I look back at the Chrysler. Red spots of blood still on the front of the car. A bruised bloody human looks back at me in the dim reflection of the windshield. I pull at my white shirt and recoil from how much blood is still soaked into it. It makes me sick. Fairchild doesn't fare much better but wears the red stains with pride. She loosens her tie further. Her bakelite eyes burn with the same orange glow of the sunset, staring vindictively over the lake. I think she might be loosing it. 
	"Hey, Fairchild? You okay?"
	Fairchild tosses her head towards me, nodding slowly. Her tired, dead eyes wander downwards towards the cracked parking lot, suddenly they brighten with fear.
	"Shit! The plates!"
	"What?"
	"License plates. We have to change the license plates." Fairchild inhales sharply, the tip of her cigarette burning brighter. "With all those witnesses? The cops must have them by now."
	"Where are we going to get new plates to put on the car?"
	She smiles smugly, "they're already IN the car."
	Fairchild kicks open the trunk and points.
	"Where do you think Bobby MacDonald got that license plate he hit you on the cheek with?"
	Inside the trunk are two brown paper bags full of license plates. I leaf through one like it's a box of records. This bag is marked CLEAN while the other is marked USED. I pull out a pair of clean plates.
	"These bank robbers were pretty smart for a bunch of communists."
	Fairchild smirks, "that's all communists are good at, stealing."
	With a fresh pair of plates we drive off in search of a motel, but by that time the sunset had vanished and bright neon signs had took its place. Burning truimphantly, signaling that night had finally arrived. I'd enjoy the beautiful spectacle of so many neon lights lining the streets with their hypnotic glow, but most every motel we pass by has their neon torch branded with NO VACANCY, making the neon bloom tauntingly in the black vacuum of night. Fairchild; however, cherishes the glitter of every neon sign we pass by. Their intense lumisence burns me everytime I go into a motel but get turned away for whatever reason. Likely from looking like a serial killer with the blood on my shirt and bruise on my face, but compared to Fairchild? I look like a spring chicken who just got a little bit roughed up.
	I park the car and look up at this motel's sign. THE HARPY'S NEST it proudly declares with a flourish of red. The neon radiance singes the edges of the blood soaked into Fairchild's shirt, the light reflecting off the still wet business tie, it bathes the entire Chrysler in a violent scarlet. I peek inside the motel's lobby to see an old harpy man working the front desk.
	"Fairchild, how about you go in this time?"
	She takes a break from her smoke break. 
	"What? Why? You're the more presentable one."
	"And you're a harpy, he'd be more willing to rent to a fellow harpy." I say as I point to the man inside the lobby. "Come on, trust me on this."
	"I really don't want to…"
	"Fairchild, come on. Trust. Me." I'm so sick of being the one who has to leave the car. "Look!" I jab my index finger towards a cigarette machine in the lobby next to the desk. "I'll even buy you a pack of cigs if it works out."
	Fairchild's eyes inspect the cigarette burn on the dashboard. "Fine," she says quietly. Fairchild stumbles into the lobby and looks back at me through an open window. I give her a thumbs up. She turns towards the counter, waiting awkwardly for the old harpy man to finish whatever he's doing underneath it. His head pops back up and his eyes narrow suspiciously at the bloody harpy girl towering above him. I can just barely hear their conversation.
	"Can I…" his glare sweeps over Fairchild's dishevled tie. "Help you?" He spits out each word caustically.
	Her confidence is blown apart in an instant.
"I-I was hoping to get a r-r-room for two people."
	"Sure… how many nights?" The old harpy man leans back, disgusted.
	"I d-don't quite know." The man rolls his eyes and scoffs, "B-B-BUT!" Fairchild tries to bring back his interest. "WE'LL PAY AHEAD OF TIME!"
	"Ahead of time?" The man asks in taunting disbelief. He sighs and smirks. "Sure, why not?"
	He begins to fill out a slip of paper. Fairchild peeks back at me, scared and looking for support. I give her two thumbs up in response. She speaks once more, emboldened. 
"Do you h-have a laundry service?"
"Laundry service?" The old man echos. He looks Fairchild up and down, throwing a quick peek at the laundry machines running down the hallway. "No. No, we do not."
Fairchild protests nervously, "but you have machines running in there."
The old man looks angrily at her, like she had spit in his face.
"We do," he jabs his pen at Fairchild, "but not for you."
She nods in silent, shivering defeat. The old man pushes the paper towards Fairchild. Red light from the neon sign wiping the blue tinge away. 
"Sign here." 
Fairchild sighs happily. This will all be over soon. She did it. There are cigarettes in her future. She could probably ask me to buy her an expensive kind, maybe with a novelty flavor.
But when she takes his pen and begins to sign her name, a drop of blood from her business tie crashes onto the contract. The red neon light from the parking lot turns it into a hideous black stain on the paper. Her eyes look up at the old man. He shows no reaction. She begins to lower her pen, placing it on the paper.
Suddenly the old man pulls the slip away, "on second thought. We don't have any rooms available." He hits a button under the desk. An insulting white brand of NO VACANCY appears on the parking lot sign. 
"B-But," Fairchild stammers, "yo---"
"Not for you." He points to the door. "Get out of my lobby."
Fairchild freezes. Her brain has crashed and struggles to reboot.
"Didn't you hear me? Get the fuck out of my lobby."
Her eyes stay affixed to where the old man used to stand even after he dips under the desk for something. She slowly begins to turn towards the door. I catch a glimpse of her dead eyes on the verge of tears.
But when she takes a step and begins to walk out, a shotgun from the old man's hands explodes into the lobby. The red neon light from the parking lot floods in drawn by the murderous Winchester. Her eyes look down at the Model 12. She shows no reaction. She begins to raise her gaze, placing it on the old man.
I blink. Fairchild is behind the desk. The old man is on the floor. The shotgun is inside the cigarette machine. Sparks fly and the lobby is dark. The neon sign in the parking lot laughs, spitting its murky red light into the room. 
I sprint into the lobby and hear Fairchild yelling from behind the desk.
"NOT FOR YOU! NOT FOR YOU!" She taunts. 
Black liquid geysers over the edge of the desk like oil. I gingerly peek over around the side.
"A ROOM. A ROOM FOR TWO!"
Fairchild mauls the poor man with her fists. Relentlessly pummeling him.
"A CLEAN OUTFIT. A PACK OF CIGARETTES! THAT'S IT. THAT'S ALL I WANTED! YOU FUCKING, STUPID BASTARD!"
The man tries to scream. Fairchild silences him with a punch to the throat. He gurgles desperately.
"I WAS NICE. I WAS POLITE. I WAS READY TO PAY. LOOK WHO'S PAYING NOW YOU PIECE OF SHIT!"
"FAIRCHILD!"
She stares back at me. Murder in her eyes. Adrenaline in her blood. Red light cuts diagonally across her face. A waterfall down her cheeks.
I jump back, I'm certain she has some kind of grudge against me too, I put my hands up to avoid her wrath. The old man spasms from death throes. He chokes on his shattered trachea. 
Fairchild smiles at the shotgun stuck in the cigarette machine. Sparks flying violently out of it. She lunges.
"FAIRCHILD NO!" I shield the machine.
She throws me to the floor with one arm. Ripping the gun out. Cigarettes fall to the floor. Black drops rain down from her shirt's arm. Soaking into the paper packs. Fairchild kneels over the old man. He has begun to convulse from panic.
I throw myself onto her back. Desperate to stop the violence.
"FAIRCHILD. STOP!"
"I'm going to make him look like a clay pigeon after shooting skeet." Time slows as Fairchild eases her finger over the trigger. Sparks fly above us. Lighting up the red darkness like fireworks. Sweat beads down my face. Fairchild breathes happily. I can see a devious smile in the murky reflection on the shotgun. 
Click.
Safety's still on.
The noise silences the room. Fairchild steps back. Snapped out of her violent hysteria.
"Oh my god…" She stammers and drops the shotgun. "I'm so sorry." The harpy girl walks back and slips on the cigarettes littering the floor. She scurries away from the pulp of an old man she's made with her fists. I help her to her feet and keep the shotgun away from her. "I'm so, so sorry," she repeats. 
"Fairchild, we need to go."
"I'm sorry…" 
I tug at her sleeve to pull her into the car.


We sit in awkward silence. Back at the empty parking lot overlooking the lake. It's much sadder and lonelier at night. Black. Dead. Rejected. The Chrysler lights up from Fairchild's egg lighter. The glow illuminates the Model 12 lying on the dashboard. She searches through her empty pack of cigarettes. Fairchild shuts her lighter and throws the pack out the window, into the lake.
I nudge her shoulder. She refuses to look at me. I nudge her again. She refuses to look again. 
"Here," I say to draw her out of her shell. "Look." I shake the pack of cigarettes I had swiped from the chaos at the motel. "Wasabi flavor."
Her bakelite brown eyes can still be seen even in the darkness. She takes the pack and stares at it. Flecks of blood are on the outside.
"You said you'd only buy me one if I got us a room." She says with monotone distraught.
"We didn't get a room and I didn't buy it."
Fairchild lights one. She inhales once and coughs out the window.
"Ugh. These are horrible." She spits onto the concrete. "Who would pick wasabi?"
"I did." I pretend to take offense.
A dumb smile grows on her face but pops when she remembers what she did.
Fairchild whispers, "am I a monster?" 
To be honest I never expected a desk jockey to be capable of such impressive violence. Fairchild was too quiet and too dead inside, but I guess that can be the start of a psychopath.
"No," I sigh. "You just got a lot pent up."
Tears begin to run down her cheeks.
"I didn't mean to do it. Fairchild shivers, "but it… it felt good."
"What did?"
"Shooting the bank robbers, torturing Bobby MacDonald, and especially beating up the motel owner… all the violence." Fairchild rambles. "It all felt so good." Fairchild breaks down crying. "It's not supposed to feel good, is it?"
"It can be a guilty pleasure but not one to…" I have to admit Fairchild looked happiest cracking skulls instead of stapling papers. She has a talent for both. "O-Over indulge in."
"You feel so free," she continues, her eyes wet with confusion. "You just get to go crazy. You feel so powerful, so in control, so… so… so good!" Fairchild's hands shiver with throes of ecstasy from the memory.
I try to talk her mania down a little. 
"I mean, everyone needs a way to let loose a little, for you it's just---"
"Violent catharsis." Fairchild blurts out. Once again she hides her embarrassment in a lungful of smoke, she braves the horrible flavor of wasabi for a calming nic high. 
"There's only so much, 'Fairchild where's the fuel manifest?' Or, 'Fairchild where's your cover sheet? Or, 'Fairchild why don't you smile more?' That I can take, you know?"
I feel a twinge of pity towards Fairchild's stunted sarcastic and tired personality. There is no deeper level, aside from the hidden blood lust, just this husk.
"Don't fake smiles." Fairchild finishes her cigarette and I hand her another, "just smile more when you're happy." 
"You think I should smile more?" She asks, she wipes her tears away.
"Of course," I nod. 
Fairchild smiles bashfully. She even holds her cigarette out the window when she sees my nose wrinkle.
"Did you see the way I got him in the throat?" Fairchild giggles softly, she imitates the motel owner's choking with disturbing accuracy. "We even got this sweet Model 12 out of it." She points to the Winchester with her cigarette. 
I don't think she entirely understood what I meant but, "I always wanted a Trench Gun." I say. 	
"You can have it." Fairchild says quietly. "My way of saying sorry." She slumps in her seat, relaxed. "It's... not for me." 
	We sit in tranquil silence. Back to normal. I look out my window. A decrepit sign peeks out of the nearby trees. Pointing to a dock that is no longer there. An old gnome lady pointing to "Horth's Harbor." I begin to narrow my eyes at the familiar name. But stop when in my side mirror the NO brand on a motel's sign disappears, the blossom of neon now proudly declaring VACANCY instead. We're able to find a room after all.