fic: Solar Winds (20/?), Part 1/2
~~~
“So, you think this scar’ll help me pick up chicks?” Puck pokes at the stitches that run along his forehead, above his right eye. Everyone tells him to stop poking at it, but it fucking itches, okay? How is he supposed to ignore that? Pain, fine, bring it on, he’ll fight through anything. But itching? Fuck that noise, no dice. He scratches his itches. All of them, if you catch his drift.
Santana refuses to even dignify that with a response. She continues precision eyebrow stenciling with her compact mirror as guide. The two of them are waiting for Lady Sylvester to finish taking over the universe or whatever the fuck she is doing so they can collect their pay and leave. They’re currently sitting in one of the many tents set up on the front lawn of the Condemned Building Formerly Known as the Royal Palace. “The money for my weave is coming out of your cut, by the way,” she says, wiggling her drawn-on brows to make sure they’re in roughly the right positions.
“The fuck?” Puck says, disbelieving. “Why do I have to pay when some twerp sets your face on fire because you’re flirting with him instead of killing him?”
“Because,” she says. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been up there to begin with.”
“You told me to throw you!”
“No, idiot! I mean,” she says, snapping her mirror shut and turning to berate Puck directly, “You had more chances to kill him than anyone! You’re little… fist… thing pretty much guarantees a bowl of chunky salsa ala Prince if you land one punch, and you couldn’t even do that. You suck.”
“Oh, like you were any better,” Puck scoffs.
“Hey! I was fighting the freakin’ Avatar. And I’m pretty sure my Fire Guy could’ve beat up your Fire Guy.”
“What, short, prissy and yellow? Pffft. The black guy was way tougher.”
“The black guy was a chickenshit who spent half his time running up walls to avoid you-a trick you fell for every single freaking time, I might add.”
“Look, whatever!” Puck shouts, standing out of sheer frustration and wincing a little when he stretches against his bandages. “We took care of them, we took care of the Royal Flamer, we survived the Avatarpocalypse, we won! Why are you so wound up about this?”
Santana stands as haughtily and prissily as she can with crutches and one leg in a cast. She doesn’t like to look up at people when she smacks them down. “We didn’t confirm the kill,” she hisses, not wanting any prying ears to hear. They’re ostensibly alone in this tent, but that doesn’t mean their words won’t travel.
“No fucking way he survived that,” Puck scoffs. “I know my dead people, okay? Guy was on a one-way express train to Corpseville. Punched his ticket myself,” he smirks.
The sheer awfulness of the pun threatens to topple her. “You did not just say that. You just… I… UGH. Why do we even work together? I don’t like you, you don’t like me-”
“We have smoking hot sex, though. Hate sex is the best kind of sex.” Asshole waggles his eyebrows at her. It’s supposed to be cute and endearing. It’s not. It just reminds her of the fact that hers are now made of make-up instead of hair. She smacks him in his bandaged knee with her crutch and tries not to smile too wide when he falls over, bug-eyed and wordless in agony.
“Are you all hot and bothered now?” she sneers.
Before he has a chance to answer, the entrance to the tent is suddenly tossed aside with incredible flair, revealing Smiling Sue Sylvester on the other side, complete with Serious Business Becky right beside her.
“All bow before the Fire Lord!” Becky announces.
Puck, already being on the ground, simply stops trying to get up. Santana rolls her eyes and stays where she is.
Becky scowls and walks over to her. “All bow before the Fire Lord!” she repeats pointedly.
“Look, little lady,” Santana says, jiggling her crutch. “I’m not exactly in bowing condition right now, so if you could just imagine me-”
Becky listens for about three seconds before unceremoniously kicking the crutch out from under her. Puck watches her fall with no small amount of satisfaction. Her funny language cursing is just music to his ears.
Sue practically floats into the room on a cloud of pure triumph. “Excellent work, Becky. It’s important that we drill proper etiquette into people’s heads, and your lesson plan was both memorable and entertaining for all involved.” As she strides past them, several Chi-Ryus suddenly hoist Puck and Santana from their positions on the ground, holding them upright and politely brushing them off. Sue sits down in an ornate and strangely uncomfortable-looking chair near the far end of the room.
“Today just keeps getting better and better!” she says with a grin, and it will never quite make sense to Santana how some people can make an honest smile look more disturbing than any scowl. “Here I thought I was gonna have to hunt you two down, and you just hobble right up to my doorstep! That kind of sheer dedication to customer service is all too rare in assassins these days, and very much deserving of recognition. So,” she says, snapping towards Becky, who pulls out a small scroll and a pen, “because I’m in such a good mood, I’ll let you decide how you want to die. You can either be dipped in boiling oil, put before a very literal Firing Squad, or we can tie you up and toss you into one of my fabulous Nation’s many active volcanoes. I hear Juku is lovely this time of year.”
The two assassins shoot worried glances at each other as the Chi-Ryus almost instantly go from ‘helping them stand’ to ‘holding them in place.’
“Die?” Puck says. “But why? We did what you wanted! We killed the punk!”
“Is that so?” Sue asks. “Well, show me a body.”
Santana fucking told him. And now she’s telling him again with her deadliest bitchface.
“Well, I mean, I kind of… dude… with the glowing-eyed rampage kind of… I don’t know where it is,” Puck finally admits.
Sue sits back, crossing her legs and placing her arms on the angry-looking dragons that make up the armrests of her chair. “My rule with assassins is always the same. ‘Corpse, or it didn’t happen.’ For all I know, he’s in the City right now buying obscene amounts of hair products to tame the wilderness on his scalp in preparation to address the Council. You have failed, and my own success was carried out in spite of your lack of such. I am now the Law in this Nation, and I have a couple of infamous career criminals right in front of me. I feel like using you to make a statement.”
“No way dude survived that,” Puck says. “It’s not possible.”
The New Fire Lord is unimpressed. “I accomplish ten impossible things before breakfast each morning. Who am I to say lesser mortals can’t accomplish at least one every once-in-a-while?”
“Look,” Santana says. “You want a body, we’ll get you a body.”
“Oh, dragon balls,” she waves them off. “The only reason I hired you at all was because I needed this done outside of official channels. Now that I’m in charge, I can do as I damn well please, and I’ve got someone much more competent to handle that little bit of dirty business. Hey, Q!” she shouts. “Hop on in here for a sec.”
The blonde bitch from last night walks primly into the room, a small smirk of satisfaction on her face at the sight of the restrained assassins. Santana feels like choking a bitch.
“Yes, Fire Lord?” she says, bowing low as she speaks.
“Never get tired of hearing that,” Sue remarks. “You got your squad all picked out for the Great Avatar Hunt?”
“Of course,” she says. “Only the most elite will be traveling with me.”
“Well, duh,” Sue scoffs. “That’s like saying the sun only rises in the morning. I’ve sent out a few messenger hawks through the official channels. Got you some nice rides waiting for you down at the military stables. In the meantime… oh, what the hey, I’m in such a good mood, I’ll let you decide.” She juts her chin at the two injured assassins. “Got any use for these two?”
Quinn rests a mock-thoughtful hand on her chin as she turns to survey Santana, who does little more than glare at her and try to look pissed (it’s a lot harder with cartoon-brows, especially since they aren’t quite even). She then turns to assess Puck, who smirks at her and puckers his lips (is that where he got his name? What a cowpig). A neatly-trimmed eyebrow is all she raises in response, but the armored idiot just nods to himself and smiles like she just signed a sex slave contract. Santana hates her, Puck wants to fuck her, but both of them seem to have some pretty unique skills. Plus, this will be the perfect opportunity to humiliate and degrade them in retaliation for them foiling her kill last night. “I can think of a few things they’d be good for,” she says. Laughs, mostly, she thinks.
“Well, they’re all yours,” she says, tossing her arms out. “Hear that, you miserable bags of moist fertilizer? As of today, Q here is your God. You’ll do exactly as she says, when she says it. If you don’t, she and anyone she pleases can kill you both with no legal ramifications at all. Shucks, I might even reward her for it if it’s particularly sneaky and gruesome.”
“I trust,” she says to the two of them, “that you will make yourselves useful to a degree where I won’t be tempted to do that. Won’t you?”
Santana cocks her head to the side, a challenge in body, if not in words. “Of course,” she says.
“Trust me, babe,” Puck says. “One night with Puckzilla, you’ll want me around forever.”
Quinn rolls her eyes and makes a mental note to have him collared and neutered if he keeps this up. She turns back to Sue. “I leave on your command, Fire Lord.”
“Hit the road,” she says. “Be sure to stop by and pick up those mounts. My Elites ride in style. I’ll expect regular progress reports with actual progress, and, of course, you should know that failure is the absolute worst fate a person can endure. If you have to choose between failure and death, choose death. And by that I mean ‘complete your mission at the cost of your life if necessary’ not ‘die like a loser.’” She waves them off. “Dismissed.”
Quinn bows again, and exits the room. “Come,” she calls behind her. Santana hobbles angrily along on her crutches, while Puck limps up beside her. “We leave immediately,” she says. “You two will carry my bags.”
“I don’t know if your eyes have gone bad because of all that smirky squinting you do,” Santana says, “but we ain’t exactly fighting fit right now.”
The Chi-Ryu captain turns to stare at her archly. “When I said ‘make yourself useful,’ I didn’t mean ‘when it pleases you.’ Do you want to sever our professional ties? Because if you’re going to be baggage, I’d rather not waste my time keeping you alive.” A small flame appears just outside of each hand as she speaks.
“Look,” Puck says, stepping between them, honestly shocked at himself for stopping an impending catfight. “I’ll carry all the shit you want me to, okay? If San snaps her leg in two because she’s carrying too much heavy shit, that’s not gonna be good for the mission, now is it?”
Both ladies stare at him with what is mostly skepticism, tempered with the tiniest amount of surprise. “Fine,” Quinn says, whistling at a nearby Royal Guard, who dutifully hobbles over with the blonde’s luggage and dumps it in Puck’s arms. “We’re wasting time,” she says, turning to walk towards the carriages that will carry them to the stables.
Ostensibly, she is hunting the Avatar to avenge the death of the Fire Lord. That is the official story she’ll be feeding anyone who asks. But of course, as is typical with Sue Sylvester, the true reasons are much more insidious.
“The Avatar is secondary,” Sue says, in a low voice. “I want him dead, if only because he’s one less goody-four-elements I’ll have to worry about during my reign of benevolent terror. But your job,” she continues, pointing a finger at Quinn, “is Prince Curly-cue. He’s still out there, I know it. I can practically smell his gay from here. You make good and damn sure that the Prince is capital D-E-D dead. Preferably in such a way that Swishy the Super-Bender doesn’t notice until the two of them are having tea in the Spirit World. Do this, and I’ll forgive your failure to kill him when you had the chance.”
Quinn is taken aback. “But… Fire Lord, that was not my fault. Those two imbeciles-”
“-wouldn’t have had a chance to steal the your opportunity if you. Hadn’t. Hesitated. You flinched, Q. You said yourself you had him on the ground. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have finished him right then and there.” The New Fire Lord regards her Chief Chi-Ryu with a cold air of assessment. “Now, you’re still the best I’ve got by a long shot. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be breathing. But you’re sitting on a volcano, Q. Every screw up brings her a little closer to blowing her top. And believe me, if she goes off, it won’t be pretty. So don’t screw up.”
The blonde didn’t really have much choice in the matter, so she steeled herself, crammed her emotions into a tiny pocket of her mind, and looked her Master in the eye. “I understand, Fire Lord. I will not fail you again.”
It is a blotch on her perfect record, a smear on the work of art she has been crafting since her acceptance into the Chi-Ryu Academy, a blot of ink that suspiciously resembles a mass of curly, black hair. It is a blight on her honor, and she intends to remedy it, swiftly and without hesitation. In her mind, this time, there are no ifs, ands, or buts.
Prince Blaine will die, and she will be the one to finish him.
~~~
To the Next Part...
“So, you think this scar’ll help me pick up chicks?” Puck pokes at the stitches that run along his forehead, above his right eye. Everyone tells him to stop poking at it, but it fucking itches, okay? How is he supposed to ignore that? Pain, fine, bring it on, he’ll fight through anything. But itching? Fuck that noise, no dice. He scratches his itches. All of them, if you catch his drift.
Santana refuses to even dignify that with a response. She continues precision eyebrow stenciling with her compact mirror as guide. The two of them are waiting for Lady Sylvester to finish taking over the universe or whatever the fuck she is doing so they can collect their pay and leave. They’re currently sitting in one of the many tents set up on the front lawn of the Condemned Building Formerly Known as the Royal Palace. “The money for my weave is coming out of your cut, by the way,” she says, wiggling her drawn-on brows to make sure they’re in roughly the right positions.
“The fuck?” Puck says, disbelieving. “Why do I have to pay when some twerp sets your face on fire because you’re flirting with him instead of killing him?”
“Because,” she says. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been up there to begin with.”
“You told me to throw you!”
“No, idiot! I mean,” she says, snapping her mirror shut and turning to berate Puck directly, “You had more chances to kill him than anyone! You’re little… fist… thing pretty much guarantees a bowl of chunky salsa ala Prince if you land one punch, and you couldn’t even do that. You suck.”
“Oh, like you were any better,” Puck scoffs.
“Hey! I was fighting the freakin’ Avatar. And I’m pretty sure my Fire Guy could’ve beat up your Fire Guy.”
“What, short, prissy and yellow? Pffft. The black guy was way tougher.”
“The black guy was a chickenshit who spent half his time running up walls to avoid you-a trick you fell for every single freaking time, I might add.”
“Look, whatever!” Puck shouts, standing out of sheer frustration and wincing a little when he stretches against his bandages. “We took care of them, we took care of the Royal Flamer, we survived the Avatarpocalypse, we won! Why are you so wound up about this?”
Santana stands as haughtily and prissily as she can with crutches and one leg in a cast. She doesn’t like to look up at people when she smacks them down. “We didn’t confirm the kill,” she hisses, not wanting any prying ears to hear. They’re ostensibly alone in this tent, but that doesn’t mean their words won’t travel.
“No fucking way he survived that,” Puck scoffs. “I know my dead people, okay? Guy was on a one-way express train to Corpseville. Punched his ticket myself,” he smirks.
The sheer awfulness of the pun threatens to topple her. “You did not just say that. You just… I… UGH. Why do we even work together? I don’t like you, you don’t like me-”
“We have smoking hot sex, though. Hate sex is the best kind of sex.” Asshole waggles his eyebrows at her. It’s supposed to be cute and endearing. It’s not. It just reminds her of the fact that hers are now made of make-up instead of hair. She smacks him in his bandaged knee with her crutch and tries not to smile too wide when he falls over, bug-eyed and wordless in agony.
“Are you all hot and bothered now?” she sneers.
Before he has a chance to answer, the entrance to the tent is suddenly tossed aside with incredible flair, revealing Smiling Sue Sylvester on the other side, complete with Serious Business Becky right beside her.
“All bow before the Fire Lord!” Becky announces.
Puck, already being on the ground, simply stops trying to get up. Santana rolls her eyes and stays where she is.
Becky scowls and walks over to her. “All bow before the Fire Lord!” she repeats pointedly.
“Look, little lady,” Santana says, jiggling her crutch. “I’m not exactly in bowing condition right now, so if you could just imagine me-”
Becky listens for about three seconds before unceremoniously kicking the crutch out from under her. Puck watches her fall with no small amount of satisfaction. Her funny language cursing is just music to his ears.
Sue practically floats into the room on a cloud of pure triumph. “Excellent work, Becky. It’s important that we drill proper etiquette into people’s heads, and your lesson plan was both memorable and entertaining for all involved.” As she strides past them, several Chi-Ryus suddenly hoist Puck and Santana from their positions on the ground, holding them upright and politely brushing them off. Sue sits down in an ornate and strangely uncomfortable-looking chair near the far end of the room.
“Today just keeps getting better and better!” she says with a grin, and it will never quite make sense to Santana how some people can make an honest smile look more disturbing than any scowl. “Here I thought I was gonna have to hunt you two down, and you just hobble right up to my doorstep! That kind of sheer dedication to customer service is all too rare in assassins these days, and very much deserving of recognition. So,” she says, snapping towards Becky, who pulls out a small scroll and a pen, “because I’m in such a good mood, I’ll let you decide how you want to die. You can either be dipped in boiling oil, put before a very literal Firing Squad, or we can tie you up and toss you into one of my fabulous Nation’s many active volcanoes. I hear Juku is lovely this time of year.”
The two assassins shoot worried glances at each other as the Chi-Ryus almost instantly go from ‘helping them stand’ to ‘holding them in place.’
“Die?” Puck says. “But why? We did what you wanted! We killed the punk!”
“Is that so?” Sue asks. “Well, show me a body.”
Santana fucking told him. And now she’s telling him again with her deadliest bitchface.
“Well, I mean, I kind of… dude… with the glowing-eyed rampage kind of… I don’t know where it is,” Puck finally admits.
Sue sits back, crossing her legs and placing her arms on the angry-looking dragons that make up the armrests of her chair. “My rule with assassins is always the same. ‘Corpse, or it didn’t happen.’ For all I know, he’s in the City right now buying obscene amounts of hair products to tame the wilderness on his scalp in preparation to address the Council. You have failed, and my own success was carried out in spite of your lack of such. I am now the Law in this Nation, and I have a couple of infamous career criminals right in front of me. I feel like using you to make a statement.”
“No way dude survived that,” Puck says. “It’s not possible.”
The New Fire Lord is unimpressed. “I accomplish ten impossible things before breakfast each morning. Who am I to say lesser mortals can’t accomplish at least one every once-in-a-while?”
“Look,” Santana says. “You want a body, we’ll get you a body.”
“Oh, dragon balls,” she waves them off. “The only reason I hired you at all was because I needed this done outside of official channels. Now that I’m in charge, I can do as I damn well please, and I’ve got someone much more competent to handle that little bit of dirty business. Hey, Q!” she shouts. “Hop on in here for a sec.”
The blonde bitch from last night walks primly into the room, a small smirk of satisfaction on her face at the sight of the restrained assassins. Santana feels like choking a bitch.
“Yes, Fire Lord?” she says, bowing low as she speaks.
“Never get tired of hearing that,” Sue remarks. “You got your squad all picked out for the Great Avatar Hunt?”
“Of course,” she says. “Only the most elite will be traveling with me.”
“Well, duh,” Sue scoffs. “That’s like saying the sun only rises in the morning. I’ve sent out a few messenger hawks through the official channels. Got you some nice rides waiting for you down at the military stables. In the meantime… oh, what the hey, I’m in such a good mood, I’ll let you decide.” She juts her chin at the two injured assassins. “Got any use for these two?”
Quinn rests a mock-thoughtful hand on her chin as she turns to survey Santana, who does little more than glare at her and try to look pissed (it’s a lot harder with cartoon-brows, especially since they aren’t quite even). She then turns to assess Puck, who smirks at her and puckers his lips (is that where he got his name? What a cowpig). A neatly-trimmed eyebrow is all she raises in response, but the armored idiot just nods to himself and smiles like she just signed a sex slave contract. Santana hates her, Puck wants to fuck her, but both of them seem to have some pretty unique skills. Plus, this will be the perfect opportunity to humiliate and degrade them in retaliation for them foiling her kill last night. “I can think of a few things they’d be good for,” she says. Laughs, mostly, she thinks.
“Well, they’re all yours,” she says, tossing her arms out. “Hear that, you miserable bags of moist fertilizer? As of today, Q here is your God. You’ll do exactly as she says, when she says it. If you don’t, she and anyone she pleases can kill you both with no legal ramifications at all. Shucks, I might even reward her for it if it’s particularly sneaky and gruesome.”
“I trust,” she says to the two of them, “that you will make yourselves useful to a degree where I won’t be tempted to do that. Won’t you?”
Santana cocks her head to the side, a challenge in body, if not in words. “Of course,” she says.
“Trust me, babe,” Puck says. “One night with Puckzilla, you’ll want me around forever.”
Quinn rolls her eyes and makes a mental note to have him collared and neutered if he keeps this up. She turns back to Sue. “I leave on your command, Fire Lord.”
“Hit the road,” she says. “Be sure to stop by and pick up those mounts. My Elites ride in style. I’ll expect regular progress reports with actual progress, and, of course, you should know that failure is the absolute worst fate a person can endure. If you have to choose between failure and death, choose death. And by that I mean ‘complete your mission at the cost of your life if necessary’ not ‘die like a loser.’” She waves them off. “Dismissed.”
Quinn bows again, and exits the room. “Come,” she calls behind her. Santana hobbles angrily along on her crutches, while Puck limps up beside her. “We leave immediately,” she says. “You two will carry my bags.”
“I don’t know if your eyes have gone bad because of all that smirky squinting you do,” Santana says, “but we ain’t exactly fighting fit right now.”
The Chi-Ryu captain turns to stare at her archly. “When I said ‘make yourself useful,’ I didn’t mean ‘when it pleases you.’ Do you want to sever our professional ties? Because if you’re going to be baggage, I’d rather not waste my time keeping you alive.” A small flame appears just outside of each hand as she speaks.
“Look,” Puck says, stepping between them, honestly shocked at himself for stopping an impending catfight. “I’ll carry all the shit you want me to, okay? If San snaps her leg in two because she’s carrying too much heavy shit, that’s not gonna be good for the mission, now is it?”
Both ladies stare at him with what is mostly skepticism, tempered with the tiniest amount of surprise. “Fine,” Quinn says, whistling at a nearby Royal Guard, who dutifully hobbles over with the blonde’s luggage and dumps it in Puck’s arms. “We’re wasting time,” she says, turning to walk towards the carriages that will carry them to the stables.
Ostensibly, she is hunting the Avatar to avenge the death of the Fire Lord. That is the official story she’ll be feeding anyone who asks. But of course, as is typical with Sue Sylvester, the true reasons are much more insidious.
“The Avatar is secondary,” Sue says, in a low voice. “I want him dead, if only because he’s one less goody-four-elements I’ll have to worry about during my reign of benevolent terror. But your job,” she continues, pointing a finger at Quinn, “is Prince Curly-cue. He’s still out there, I know it. I can practically smell his gay from here. You make good and damn sure that the Prince is capital D-E-D dead. Preferably in such a way that Swishy the Super-Bender doesn’t notice until the two of them are having tea in the Spirit World. Do this, and I’ll forgive your failure to kill him when you had the chance.”
Quinn is taken aback. “But… Fire Lord, that was not my fault. Those two imbeciles-”
“-wouldn’t have had a chance to steal the your opportunity if you. Hadn’t. Hesitated. You flinched, Q. You said yourself you had him on the ground. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have finished him right then and there.” The New Fire Lord regards her Chief Chi-Ryu with a cold air of assessment. “Now, you’re still the best I’ve got by a long shot. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be breathing. But you’re sitting on a volcano, Q. Every screw up brings her a little closer to blowing her top. And believe me, if she goes off, it won’t be pretty. So don’t screw up.”
The blonde didn’t really have much choice in the matter, so she steeled herself, crammed her emotions into a tiny pocket of her mind, and looked her Master in the eye. “I understand, Fire Lord. I will not fail you again.”
It is a blotch on her perfect record, a smear on the work of art she has been crafting since her acceptance into the Chi-Ryu Academy, a blot of ink that suspiciously resembles a mass of curly, black hair. It is a blight on her honor, and she intends to remedy it, swiftly and without hesitation. In her mind, this time, there are no ifs, ands, or buts.
Prince Blaine will die, and she will be the one to finish him.
~~~
To the Next Part...