On the Trail

"Let me see," Stella Langley prodded quietly, reaching for the brass device held to the taller woman's eye as the pair crouched by the chilly glass of a darkened window on the third floor of a mostly abandoned office building.

"No," Valkyrie replied bluntly, adjusting the knob in her hand to bring the end of the alley across the way into sharper focus. Her breath puffed out into the near darkness. Without heat, the office was nearly as cold as the darkening streets outside. "Two of them, it looks like."

"You never let me see," Stella muttered sulkily.

"Any word from your demis?" Valkyrie ignored the girl and moved her head, the brass looking glass struggling to keep up with the changes in distance, causing Valkyrie to have to constantly adjust the lenses and sights to keep objects in focus.

"Senai is going around the other side while Sira's waiting for word to head in," Stella hmphed.

Valkyrie brought the device back to focus on the two girls leaning against the walls of the warehouse at the end of the dark alley some 200 yards away. One was a lanky blonde dressed in a heavy overcoat, while the other was stockier with darker hair and skin. Valkyrie couldn't identify either, which worried her.

"The others are in position. We might as well take the chance. Send in Sira," Valkyrie ordered.

"Fine." Stella sighed, reaching above the level of the window with her hand and flashing a rapid succession of hand signals through the glass. "Just keep in mind this is out of my range."

"We only need one to talk," the taller girl reminded her. "The others have their orders. You're on information only on this one."

"I'd rather be in the middle of the action!" Stella raised her hands in front of her like she was holding a gun. "BAM!" she exclaimed, pulling an imaginary trigger.

"This isn't a war zone." Valkyrie sighed.

"We could make it one." Stella grinned and winked at her.

"No." Valkyrie scowled. "When you have your own squad, you can do whatever you want and get a trip to the stocks for your trouble afterward. We do things my way."

"Yeah, yeah." Stella waved her hand dismissively. "You're no fun, Val."

"Killing people shouldn't be fun," Valkyrie replied evenly, keeping her gaze on the girls at the end of the alley. "If it ever gets that way, you should get out because you're a danger to everyone. Especially yourself."

"Preachy, aren't ya? You sure you're an Inquisitor and not a Priestess of the Way?" Stella smirked derisively. 

Valkyrie saw the fluffy grey cat appear at the end of the alley and make its way through the drifting snow toward the targets and handed the spyglass over to the girl beside her. Stella took the device in her hand gleefully and popped her head above the window ledge, focusing the lens on the girls.

While her partner observed what happened outside, Valkyrie closed her eyes for a fraction of a second and braced herself. The magic had become a part of her over the years. Natural. She had no idea where it had come from. The Magi claimed it was a mutation of some kind brought about by thousands of years of exposure to the silvery metal called Allicereum. She had no idea if it was true or not. Science and research were not her forte. All she knew is that she reached into herself, almost like a physical act, and the magic was ready at her beck and call.

The tips of Valkyrie's fingers tingled for a moment as something like a shock coursed through her. An image appeared in her head. An image of a weapon, long and sleek and deadly. A weapon with a powerful scope and a wicked, sleek barrel. A weapon whose sole purpose was to kill from a distance. Unseen, unfelt, unknown until it spoke in a whisper, beckoning its victim to the grave.

She opened her eyes, the weapon she'd envisioned cradled familiarly in her arms. The gun she'd named Letifer materialized from nothing, brought into the physical world from the magic coiled inside her body. Letifer weighed nothing and seemed to fade in and out of existence. As the magic within her quickly strengthened, the rifle took on a physical form, still weightless, but solid to the touch. The long barrel shimmered, wisps of smoke trailing upward from it, shrouding it in a dark mist.

Valkyrie stepped back from the window and raised the weapon to her shoulder. The end of the barrel pressed against and then through the glass without breaking it, as if one or the other simply didn't exist. She peered through the scope, the two figures at the end of the alley clear as day. The cat approached the pair, rubbing almost drunkenly against a pile of garbage lying against the wall of the warehouse. The taller girl eyed the animal dismissively, while the shorter girl smiled. Valkyrie sighed from somewhere in the center of her soul and adjusted Letifer to the target.

The dark-haired girl bent down, extending her hand toward the cat, beckoning it closer. Valkyrie's body tensed for a moment and then relaxed, her mind focused and sharp, everything around her grew dark and indistinct. There was only the target, the scope, the trigger, and her in the world. There was no past or future, there was only this one moment. Smoothly, like an infant's skin on satin sheets, Valkyrie's finger caressed the trigger, and with a faint hiss like an ash viper ready to strike, Letifer spoke.

The blonde girl was dead before she even knew it. The magical bullet caught her between the eyes and exited the back of her skull. She stared dumbly at the drifting snow for a moment, her muscles and tendons and ligaments still responsive and supple, keeping her upright and then, with a sigh, she was gone. Her body sagged to the snowy ground and pitched backward lifelessly.

"Go," Valkyrie said emotionlessly.

"Hup!" Stella grunted, leaping through the window in a shower of glass to the slanted roof on the floor below. She oriented herself and slid toward the edge before hopping to reposition her body. Her fingers found quick, momentary purchase on the eaves, slowing her descent. A moment later, she released her hold and dropped soundlessly to the ground, running toward the alley without missing a beat.

"Fuck," Valkyrie whispered in the darkness as Letifer burst apart and vanished back into the ether like it had never been. She ran one hand down her face, brushing away the tears which had sprung up from the corner of her eyes. Killing never gets any easier, she thought. She took another deep breath before following Stella through the shattered window.

She had just reached the end of the alley, when the first shots rang out from the warehouse. The clang of the powder exploding from contact with the hammer echoed through the alley like muted thunder. Of course it had been too easy, Valkyrie chastised herself, breaking into a sprint. She reached into her magical pool and drew forth a pair of ethereal pistols as she ran, one appearing in each of her hands.

The other girl in the alley lay gasping against the wall of the building opposite the warehouse, hands clutched at her belly, blood seeping from between her fingers, eyes unfocused through the pain. She was dying. Valkyrie pressed herself against the wall of the warehouse and shot a glare at Stella opposite the shattered doorway from her.

"It wasn't me!" Stella insisted, holding the hand not grasping her pistol up innocently. "Shot came from inside."

"It doesn't matter, get Sira to tend to her," Valkyrie snapped irritably. Stella glanced down at the cat licking its fur in the snow and nodded toward the dying girl. The cat stretched her hind legs languidly, the body elongating and shifting as the animal stretched forward. A moment later, a pale girl with long white hair hopped off the ground where the cat had once stood.

"See what you can do," Stella ordered.

"Oki," the girl chirped, raising her thumb jauntily before moving over to the injured woman.

"Four inside," Stella reported, the spyglass focused behind and above the end of the alley while she kept tight against the warehouse wall. "Males."

"No magic users, then," Valkyrie murmured. "Get the Seekers into position 9. Eyes on the main door. We go in two. No escapes. No unnecessary deaths. Got it?"

"Yep." Stella shrugged.

"That last was for you." Valkyrie scowled at her.

"Yeah, yeah. I got it." Stella rolled her eyes dramatically.