Chapter 4: No death threats until after Chapter 5
Title: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sparklepire Chapter 4
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, Dresden Files/Twilight crossover
SPOILERS: Story takes place following The Dresden Files: Proven Guilty and the second Twilight book.
Summary: Harry and Thomas take a little road trip.
Author's note: Chapter 5 should be following sometime tonight
Here’s the thing about explosions. You know how in action movies there’s always this one scene where the hero walks towards the camera while behind him something explodes dramatically without making him even flinch? Well, having been in more than my fair share of explosions, a leading contributor to why my health insurance requests are routinely returned to me after having been set on fire, I can safely say that Hollywood’s handing of explosions is about as accurate as their treatment of CPR, computers, and other cultures; not very. Not only do most real explosions not have the jaw-dropping fireball of their Hollywood counterparts, but the concussive force from them would floor any hero attempting to make a dramatic exit.
I’d know, I’ve tried.
Of course, then there were the explosions that didn’t have much concussive force, like, and I’m just pulling an example out of the air, something blew in the wall of a bed and breakfast where I and my far more obnoxious brother were staying. Well, the other major problem with explosions is they tend to throw up a lot of debris at extremely high velocities that tend to remind humans that in the grand scheme of things we are rather soft and squishy. Even those of us in stylish and heavily enchanted leather dusters.
In the heartbeat between the outer wall of our room blowing in and the wave of plaster, glass, and assorted knickknacks hitting us, my highly tuned reflexes allowed me just enough time to think, ‘wha-’ and raise the hand with my bracelet of interlocked shields about half an inch. Luckily Thomas’s reflexes were decidedly higher tuned than mine, and in that blink of an eye he’d crossed the space between us and proceeded to rip the massive antique oak bed off the floor and move it between us and the little bits of death slicing through the air, then with one hand managed to pull me to the floor like my whole extra head of height made all the difference of a single balloon. He did this all in the time it took my brain to formulate three letters.
Sometimes, my brother can be really scary.
Rubble hit the bed’s mattress with a series of chorus of shredded fabric, but it wasn’t moving with enough force to punch through solid oak that was probably older than Thomas and I combined. The impacts barely had time to trickle off, and my head to stop ringing from Thomas suddenly introducing it to the lovingly crafted hardwood flooring, when the sound of boots crunching over broken glass reached us. Mouse, who somewhere in midst of everything that was going on had proceeded to throw his own rather considerable bulk into bracing the bed alongside Thomas, let out a low rumble from deep in his chest that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My dog might have been a canine of few words, but when he started making sounds like that it meant serious trouble.
“Foolish cousin, did you think we could not foresee your arrival?”
The words echoed through the trashed room, presumably spoken by whoever or whatever had just reduced the outer wall of the second story of a building to kindling. Yet, despite the fact that whatever had trashed the room obviously had plenty of power behind it, and the fact that its dialogue came straight out of the menacing villain handbook, the voice that spoke them somehow failed to live up to the image its entrance had created. There was an odd stuttering quality to it, like the speaker was trying to remember his lines. Still, intimidating voice or not, Understudy here was clearly not playing around.
“Foreseeing I expected,” Thomas sighed, somehow managing to sound completely relaxed even as he braced the bed with his body, like this whole situation was as bothersome as a waiter bringing him the wrong order. “I just didn’t think even you hicks were dumb enough to want a war.”
Diplomacy must run in the family.
Ignoring for the moment the fact that my brother apparently knew there were going to be people with the ability to smash through second story walls like they were tissue waiting for us, I started getting my mind in gear for whatever came next. Battles, especially battles with Things That Go Bump In the Night, were decided in seconds, and if you weren’t ready for them you were just another smear on the sidewalk.
Thomas’s barbs apparently found their mark, because about a second later a hand burst out of the bottom of the bed he was still holding up, the fingers attached to it curled like claws as they reached for my brother’s face. It was a good five or so steps from the outer wall of the building to where Thomas and I were, and the space between had to have been absolutely covered in rubble, but whatever was after us had crossed that distance without making a sound and put its hand through at least a half a foot of solid oak in the time it would take me to lift my foot. Thomas and Mouse let out matching grunts as the force of the blow shoved them back with enough power that I could hear Mouse’s nails tear rivets in the wood floor. This time, though, I was ready for our enemy’s speed, and as dramatic as it’s attack had been, it also happened to leave it stuck in place while giving me the perfect idea of where the rest of it was standing.
What can I say? Sometimes life is good to me.
With the mysterious hand busy grasping for Thomas, I had a nice good long three seconds to put my staff against the bottom of the bedframe right above where the room crasher was standing and put the finishing touches on the spell I’d already started, before growling out ‘The sign said Do Not Disturb! Forzare!.’
There are lots of heavy hitters in the supernatural world, things that can snap the strongest human in half with their pinkies, but 99.9% still have to obey my old pal Physics, and that meant that when I released the wave of magical force down through my staff with enough power to snap what was left of the bed in two as it barreled right on through and into Understudy’s chest, it didn’t matter if he bench-pressed cars every day. Once that amount of force hit an average human level of mass, Understudy found himself on a one-way flight back through the entrance he’d made. There was the sound similar to a car hitting a brick wall followed by an unholy shriek, and through the cloud of wood chips, snapped springs, and torn sheets, I was just able to catch a glimpse of a designer men’s shoe passing beyond the edge of the jagged gap in the wall before it vanished into the air. About two or three heartbeats after that the dwindling scream of rage was cut off by a profoundly satisfying, if rather muted, thud as whatever I’d blasted met the roof of the building across the street.
I glanced to one side at Thomas, perhaps hoping for a shared moment of brotherly banter, only to find he wasn’t where I had left him. Jerking my head back around I found him standing by our room’s new emergency exit, staring intently in the direction I’d blasted Understudy. Quickly I hurried to join him, my boots crunching over broken wood and plaster as I stepped up to where floor met sky, my eyes trying to track whatever it was Thomas was looking at.
Now, I have seen a lot of weird things in my life, and I don’t mean odd coincidences or random street performers weird, I mean weird weird. In the course of one particularly eventful week I watched a Jinn get eaten by the Scarecrow of ‘The Harvest,’ fame, was almost sold in e-bay, party crashed the court of the Fairy Queen Mab herself, and wound up with my friend’s teenage daughter as an apprentice. That was also not the strangest week I’ve ever had. Therefore, when I say something is weird, I like to think I know what I’m talking about.
On the surface, watching a pale man in absurdly fashionable, and now rather damaged, clothing leap from rooftop to rooftop as if he was hooked up to an invisible harness was not really enough to qualify him as notably odd by my standards. Even his ability to do so after being hit with a mystical wrecking ball off the second story of a building into a rather study looking roof wasn’t totally surprising. The fact that he was honest to god sparkling, and not like he needed a shower or was sweating a lot sparkling, but rather full on I’ve met fairies who would tell him to tone it down shimmering on the other hand?
Yeah, that was definitely weird.
“Thomas,” I asked my brother in my best ‘I’m trying to be patient’ tone.
“Yes Harry?”
“Did we almost just get murdered by an escaped extra from Labyrinth?”
“It would seem so.”
“Are you going to tell me why we almost got killed by an escaped extra from Labyrinth?”
The indulgent sigh I got by way of answer sorely tempted me to find out just how high my brother would bounce if I gave him a push.
“Right after we finish explaining this to the police Harry.”
Oh, right, that’s what those sirens were.
[Chapter 1, Chapter 2,
Chapter 3]
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen, Dresden Files/Twilight crossover
SPOILERS: Story takes place following The Dresden Files: Proven Guilty and the second Twilight book.
Summary: Harry and Thomas take a little road trip.
Author's note: Chapter 5 should be following sometime tonight
Here’s the thing about explosions. You know how in action movies there’s always this one scene where the hero walks towards the camera while behind him something explodes dramatically without making him even flinch? Well, having been in more than my fair share of explosions, a leading contributor to why my health insurance requests are routinely returned to me after having been set on fire, I can safely say that Hollywood’s handing of explosions is about as accurate as their treatment of CPR, computers, and other cultures; not very. Not only do most real explosions not have the jaw-dropping fireball of their Hollywood counterparts, but the concussive force from them would floor any hero attempting to make a dramatic exit.
I’d know, I’ve tried.
Of course, then there were the explosions that didn’t have much concussive force, like, and I’m just pulling an example out of the air, something blew in the wall of a bed and breakfast where I and my far more obnoxious brother were staying. Well, the other major problem with explosions is they tend to throw up a lot of debris at extremely high velocities that tend to remind humans that in the grand scheme of things we are rather soft and squishy. Even those of us in stylish and heavily enchanted leather dusters.
In the heartbeat between the outer wall of our room blowing in and the wave of plaster, glass, and assorted knickknacks hitting us, my highly tuned reflexes allowed me just enough time to think, ‘wha-’ and raise the hand with my bracelet of interlocked shields about half an inch. Luckily Thomas’s reflexes were decidedly higher tuned than mine, and in that blink of an eye he’d crossed the space between us and proceeded to rip the massive antique oak bed off the floor and move it between us and the little bits of death slicing through the air, then with one hand managed to pull me to the floor like my whole extra head of height made all the difference of a single balloon. He did this all in the time it took my brain to formulate three letters.
Sometimes, my brother can be really scary.
Rubble hit the bed’s mattress with a series of chorus of shredded fabric, but it wasn’t moving with enough force to punch through solid oak that was probably older than Thomas and I combined. The impacts barely had time to trickle off, and my head to stop ringing from Thomas suddenly introducing it to the lovingly crafted hardwood flooring, when the sound of boots crunching over broken glass reached us. Mouse, who somewhere in midst of everything that was going on had proceeded to throw his own rather considerable bulk into bracing the bed alongside Thomas, let out a low rumble from deep in his chest that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My dog might have been a canine of few words, but when he started making sounds like that it meant serious trouble.
“Foolish cousin, did you think we could not foresee your arrival?”
The words echoed through the trashed room, presumably spoken by whoever or whatever had just reduced the outer wall of the second story of a building to kindling. Yet, despite the fact that whatever had trashed the room obviously had plenty of power behind it, and the fact that its dialogue came straight out of the menacing villain handbook, the voice that spoke them somehow failed to live up to the image its entrance had created. There was an odd stuttering quality to it, like the speaker was trying to remember his lines. Still, intimidating voice or not, Understudy here was clearly not playing around.
“Foreseeing I expected,” Thomas sighed, somehow managing to sound completely relaxed even as he braced the bed with his body, like this whole situation was as bothersome as a waiter bringing him the wrong order. “I just didn’t think even you hicks were dumb enough to want a war.”
Diplomacy must run in the family.
Ignoring for the moment the fact that my brother apparently knew there were going to be people with the ability to smash through second story walls like they were tissue waiting for us, I started getting my mind in gear for whatever came next. Battles, especially battles with Things That Go Bump In the Night, were decided in seconds, and if you weren’t ready for them you were just another smear on the sidewalk.
Thomas’s barbs apparently found their mark, because about a second later a hand burst out of the bottom of the bed he was still holding up, the fingers attached to it curled like claws as they reached for my brother’s face. It was a good five or so steps from the outer wall of the building to where Thomas and I were, and the space between had to have been absolutely covered in rubble, but whatever was after us had crossed that distance without making a sound and put its hand through at least a half a foot of solid oak in the time it would take me to lift my foot. Thomas and Mouse let out matching grunts as the force of the blow shoved them back with enough power that I could hear Mouse’s nails tear rivets in the wood floor. This time, though, I was ready for our enemy’s speed, and as dramatic as it’s attack had been, it also happened to leave it stuck in place while giving me the perfect idea of where the rest of it was standing.
What can I say? Sometimes life is good to me.
With the mysterious hand busy grasping for Thomas, I had a nice good long three seconds to put my staff against the bottom of the bedframe right above where the room crasher was standing and put the finishing touches on the spell I’d already started, before growling out ‘The sign said Do Not Disturb! Forzare!.’
There are lots of heavy hitters in the supernatural world, things that can snap the strongest human in half with their pinkies, but 99.9% still have to obey my old pal Physics, and that meant that when I released the wave of magical force down through my staff with enough power to snap what was left of the bed in two as it barreled right on through and into Understudy’s chest, it didn’t matter if he bench-pressed cars every day. Once that amount of force hit an average human level of mass, Understudy found himself on a one-way flight back through the entrance he’d made. There was the sound similar to a car hitting a brick wall followed by an unholy shriek, and through the cloud of wood chips, snapped springs, and torn sheets, I was just able to catch a glimpse of a designer men’s shoe passing beyond the edge of the jagged gap in the wall before it vanished into the air. About two or three heartbeats after that the dwindling scream of rage was cut off by a profoundly satisfying, if rather muted, thud as whatever I’d blasted met the roof of the building across the street.
I glanced to one side at Thomas, perhaps hoping for a shared moment of brotherly banter, only to find he wasn’t where I had left him. Jerking my head back around I found him standing by our room’s new emergency exit, staring intently in the direction I’d blasted Understudy. Quickly I hurried to join him, my boots crunching over broken wood and plaster as I stepped up to where floor met sky, my eyes trying to track whatever it was Thomas was looking at.
Now, I have seen a lot of weird things in my life, and I don’t mean odd coincidences or random street performers weird, I mean weird weird. In the course of one particularly eventful week I watched a Jinn get eaten by the Scarecrow of ‘The Harvest,’ fame, was almost sold in e-bay, party crashed the court of the Fairy Queen Mab herself, and wound up with my friend’s teenage daughter as an apprentice. That was also not the strangest week I’ve ever had. Therefore, when I say something is weird, I like to think I know what I’m talking about.
On the surface, watching a pale man in absurdly fashionable, and now rather damaged, clothing leap from rooftop to rooftop as if he was hooked up to an invisible harness was not really enough to qualify him as notably odd by my standards. Even his ability to do so after being hit with a mystical wrecking ball off the second story of a building into a rather study looking roof wasn’t totally surprising. The fact that he was honest to god sparkling, and not like he needed a shower or was sweating a lot sparkling, but rather full on I’ve met fairies who would tell him to tone it down shimmering on the other hand?
Yeah, that was definitely weird.
“Thomas,” I asked my brother in my best ‘I’m trying to be patient’ tone.
“Yes Harry?”
“Did we almost just get murdered by an escaped extra from Labyrinth?”
“It would seem so.”
“Are you going to tell me why we almost got killed by an escaped extra from Labyrinth?”
The indulgent sigh I got by way of answer sorely tempted me to find out just how high my brother would bounce if I gave him a push.
“Right after we finish explaining this to the police Harry.”
Oh, right, that’s what those sirens were.
[Chapter 1, Chapter 2,
Chapter 3]