The empty packs of cigarettes fell down onto the floor as Apollo put his hand against the table and stood. He heard his bones pop. His hair was outgrown, as hair typically does for a Vicar at the precipice of death, with his healing factor desperate to keep up. His beard had appeared, almost a few inches worth across his chin.

It was only a week. Which might not appear long to you, reader, especially considering the wounds (a few broken ribs, hemorrhaging, perforated lungs) but was exceptionally long for a Vicar.

His legs wobbled as he stood. His calves were weak or at least felt weak.

“Come on, let me stand you.” Dion came up to him.

“You’re a little too late to help, buddy.” Apollo brought his face up. He had a dull annoyance across his face, made obvious by the frown. Or at least he hoped it was obvious. He wanted nothing, not a word from Dion, as they walked through the halls at a cripples pace, down the elevator and out to the garage.

He wanted just one thing. A promised thing. Something he had sent Dion to talk to Aenea about.

He wanted his sword back.

They drove with leisure through the swaths of hungry and stupid guests congesting at the front of the casino. People ran across the street with an almost psychopathic ecstasy. Groups of baby boomers people with their floral-pattern shirts and wide shades walked past them, their walking canes an afterthought in the wind above them as they rushed the doors with their quarter filled pockets.

“Well, if they’re not going to use it, they can hand it to me.” Apollo pointed to a particular old person, who waved his walking stick like propellers.

They gained traction on the road, especially after they cleared. Apollo dragged his face to the front of the casino, to a sign that read: ‘JackPot increase, 100 million up for grabs today. Someone. Will. Win.’

He couldn’t help but smoke.

“Are you still mad at me?” Dion asked. “I said I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

“No, I’m not mad anymore.”

“You sound mad.”

“You’re getting me mad.” He lit. He exhausted the smoke from a little gap he made from lowering the car window. “I’ve accepted that the low-brow sentience that is your existence is one of limited capacity. The gullibility of your instincts to the external world have lead you to be more of a cripple than even I, with this ruined body, could ever be. What has changed, after all? Between the man at Havenbrook who fought, because he could not help himself to the man now who freezes, because he can not help himself? Nothing. The truth is, you never had the constitution to circumvent trauma. You never had it in you to be more than your passions, however mild or severe. That was my misjudgment, not yours.”

Dion sighed. A bit annoyed, a bit depressed.

“Nothing has changed, and it was my mistake for expecting anything more. Your programming, recursive and adaptive, has merely taken to your new state. But you were always a hapless child.”

“Do you know how hard it is being your partner?” Dion swerved the wheel before they missed the turn.

“As difficult as it is being yours.” Apollo huffed. He tried to hold it in but coughed. His lungs, now broken, would not allow the toxic fumes. He could feel the residual scarring across his lungs burn. It felt like a fire in his throat.

“Why can’t you be helpful for once?” Dion turned again. Apollo felt his whole body push to the right. His face touched the glass, but he was not in any way, moved. He carried that dull expression into silence, a silence that lasted an hour. Dion tried talking to him throughout, but he just blew out smoke, as if the clouds and the breathing and the technique of his exhalations was another kind of language.

“Well?” Dion finished his third rant. “Just say it’s my fault, just say you hate me.”

“We’re here.” Apollo slapped the dashboard. The car screeched and stopped. The momentum jerked Apollo and Dion forward before they settled.

“Where is it?” Dion asked. They stood in an empty parking lot behind a Chinese restaurant or what remained of it. The tagging was across the walls, and cheap panels of wood covered the shattered holes across the glass windows. Across from them, a little white van waited. It had a termite at the top of the van, dead and upside down with X’s for eyes and a sign on the rear that read ‘Hermanos sin Paciencia: Fast Bug Relief Now.’

They looked at each.

"We’ll talk later," Apollo said.

Dion shook his head, and they both exited the vehicle.

"This looks stupid." looked into the bright sheen across the width of the van.

"Projection is a nasty trait for any kind of detective to have."

Dion mumbled a complaint. Apollo knocked on the van. Three times, on the third, making sure to delay it.

There was no movement for a while. For a while. Apollo readied his hand again for a fourth knock, but it moved. It shook and rattled. Someone walked within the front and then back of the van. Two eyes peered from within from the little windows by the side. His shadow dragged back and forth, to the end of the van, where finally, there was another pause.

"Hold on please," the voice from within said. "I'm putting on a shirt."

So it went on, the van shaking and rattling and the suspension rising and falling.

The doors opened. A low creak, only an inch.

"Hello?" The man behind said. A youth, with glasses crooked on his face and stains of uneven colored skin on him. Some bleached, some dark.

Apollo stuck his hands into the door and nearly pried them open. He walked into the van. The suspension fell halfway to the floor. Dion came in next. The car touched the floor.

"Oh, no," the man said. "You’re both too fat. Too fat."

The youth waved both hands to wave them away. Apollo found a carton to sit on.

"We’re here for our gear."

“You can get it outside. Outside, please!” the youth said, lips sucked in.

"Hello, I’m Dion."

He gave up trying to talk sense to them after that. He sighed and closed the doors.

“You must be Apollo then if he’s Dion.”

They were both hunched over inside the van, Dion sat on a waterbed sprawled in the corner of the van. It barely fit. Apollo looked across, to the gear, the lighting, the waterbed and the paraphilia of 80’s monuments. A few action figures, a lava lamp, some posters of old bands long dead. A fetishism, reminiscent of a porn set. He rubbed his feet below. It was a pink fur carpet, below his feet.

"They sent me immediately." the youth drank from a small thermos. It smelled like coffee. “They never send me immediately, unless its bad.”

"Yeah, we ran into a lot of fucking trouble." Apollo lifted his shirt (only the one, he left his coat at home). There was a scar, like a smile, across his ribs. It seemed barely together, like one finger would be all it took to pry it open. The youth, however, did not seem fazed, or even disgusted. More so, was curious at the wound, staring intently like a surgeon before the nip-and-tuck, and swirled his coffee in the lid-cup of the thermos before Apollo put down his shirt. He looked up to face Apollo.

"You sure did, didn't you?" Thaddeus said.

Dion was surprisingly quiet. He rubbed his hands together and did not look at anyone in the face. He kept to the floor.

"The Leper told me as much. Didn’t believe it. Now I do." He said. "You know, we’re breaking tradition doing this whole thing this way. You should be getting your stuff through a sanctioned church, through the procedure -"

“Fuck procedure.” He said. “The bureaucracy of a corrupt state is of little relevance to me. Especially when it is the same state wishing for my death. Let me have my weapons so I may fight for my life.”

“He told me you’d say something like that too.”

Apollo flexed his hand. The bones popped.

“Do you have it or not?”

“Of course I do, I’m Thaddeus.” He said. “Lead armament engineer of the Hospitallers.”

"Lead? Who sanctioned that?" Dion asked.

"No one did, or rather, no one wanted to,” Thaddeus said. He seemed eager. “But genius, especially mine, inspires. I earned my keep.”

"I don’t mind a little elitism. I might even like it, in a way.” Apollo said. “But where’s our shit?”

"Don't be so hasty, please,"

There was an air of authority by this person. Also one of fear. He didn't look like a Vicar, instead, he seemed remarkably human. And his eyes were not changed, and he did not carry that stench of the guilty and violent that Vicars did. The air of death.

"You’ve got a pair, especially when you’re a civilian.”

"Yes, I am a hundred percent, untainted."

"Untainted," Dion repeated. “Untainted…”

“And I’m supposed to believe you found your way into Soloman’s Keep?” He asked. “You don’t got the make of an adventurer. I’m guessing you didn’t choose to join them. What’s your story?”

"A long one. A long history of mistakes that I don’t feel like remembering right now," Thaddeus looked underneath the bed to a suitcase, one as half as large as the bed itself that took some obvious effort for him to move. “And you’re in a rush anyway, so I won’t waste the thoughts on you.”

“Well, alright.” Apollo looked at the case. “I appreciate curtness too.”

A smaller case got pulled out afterward. Thaddeus looked at them both, his hands rested above the dials and locked.

"I hope you two realize how out of bounds this whole thing is. We're really breaking the rules,"

"Our existence is a game as is, that aims to swallow both players and prize whole. What're a couple more broken rules going to do to worsen this state?" Apollo knelt over and kicked the lid open of the more prominent case. Two things were there, both behind a layer of black foam.

It was his sword. Somewhat. It was leaner, sharper, uncracked. It had a clean sheen of silver.

"Do you like it?"

Apollo felt the weight of the handle, but could not lift it entirely without puncturing the car. He looked down the side, inspecting the bevel.

"This used to be my friend's sword," he tried with his other hand now. “You changed it.”

"Is that a problem?"

He felt the blade. He looked, particularly, to three holes near the hilt of the sword, along the base. They looked like exhausts and pressing his hand tighter along the grip, focusing that arcana through the network of his arms, he saw the fire rise and expunge itself from all three holes and wrap around, for a moment, around the blade.

"This isn't a problem at all." He said.

"No, no, no, no," Thaddeus said. “Don’t do that. There’s still a couple of kinks left un-fixed.”

The flames ceased.

“Like what?”

“The kinds of mistakes that could light us all on fire, those kinds.” He said. “You need to be careful that you’re pointing, far, far away from yourself when you light that sucker. Oh, and that the wind isn’t blowing back towards you, okay?”

“The fire doesn’t stay on the sword?”

“And it doesn’t get snuffed out either. So make sure, if it gets blown off, that it doesn’t get blown off on you.”

Apollo extinguished it with another focus of arcana. He played with the handle and flicked a switch.

"How many different ways can I say it? Don’t. Fucking. Kill. Us." Thaddeus said.

"Hmm?"

"Don’t play with this button." He backed away from the blade. "It'll disengage the lock on the shell. It’ll late you release the blade. You know, the hot rod inside."

"The harmonic blade."

“That’s what you call it?” Thaddeus said. “Hot rod is a better name. A-Anyways. Please, don’t test that out in here. Please.”

Apollo looked to Dion who had his body slumped down, staring at his case.

"What do you have for him?” Apollo asked.

Dion’s hands shook.

"Look" Thaddeus opened the box. In it, both revolvers, gleaming, shining with a kind of lust. Above them, samples of rounds. Three different bullets, all like tiny meteors. "You've got standard ammunition, hollow points and my favorite..."

He lifted the last bullet, which had a strange red coloration to it.

"Explosive rounds. Very dangerous, very big. This isn't a canon on your hand anymore, it's a damn nuke. Here, feel it. I messed around with the balance of the gun, tell me how it is."

He lifted the gun and handed it to Dion. His hand fumbled with the handle, and it slipped out. The ringing of metal was hollow, a lava lamp off in the corner of the room blubbed.

Thaddeus put the gun back in his hand. Again it slipped.

“Did I mess something up?” Thaddeus asked.

"That's all we needed, thanks," Apollo said.

"Is he alright?" Thaddeus asked.

"Yeah, you can leave now."

"Leave? You’re talking to the greatest genius this half of the planet. Where’s my thanks? Appreciation?"

Apollo grabbed him on the shoulder.

"Thanks, you can leave now."

His eyes said it all, their low and beady glare, the stillness of his stare, the concentrated intensity of it. Thaddeus stood from his seat, opened the door and found a cool spot in the shade of the girth of the van.

“We’ve withheld the talk long enough. You had a lot of enthusiasm in the car, too.” Apollo said. “One look at the gun has got you all fucked up, though. Well, shit.”

Dion exhaled.

"He asked a good question, you know that?” Apollo looked across to Dion. “Are you going to be alright?"

"Yeah." Dion's head was low, almost at knee length. His voice was somehow, even lower.

"Why don't I believe you then?" Apollo asked.

"Who do you believe in?"

"Good point," They sat cramped and leaning close to each other, necks bent. "I’m not good with sympathy. And I won’t be the man to tell you how to live your life, I’ve lectured you enough and know enough that it does nothing. All I can do is tell you the causal chain of your cowardice. If you continue like this, moping and dreadful, you will certainly die. And if you don’t expect change within yourself, do us a favor, just leave the damn game. Let me do this on my own, I can save your ass and mine just as well by myself."

Dion made no protest. He stared down at his guns. Apollo sighed and stood, he felt the back of his head tap the ceiling of the van.

He jumped out.

“How long is he going to stay in there?” Thaddeus asked. “That’s my house, you know?”

But Dion would not leave, not from his little seat atop the waterbed, staring down at the guns with his shaking hands.