Best Served Cold but Some Like it Hot
A girl wearing chain mail scrutinized the Gemini Lounge from its side entrance. The place was a two-story social club whose side hustle excelled in human disappearances. Anytime the Gambino Crime Family needed competition or a witness to “speak no evil,” they simply arranged for an invitation into this side door. For some, it proved a one-way thoroughfare.
The property’s main entrance faced an intersection, while a new intersection was manifesting and converging on this alternate entrance. After hearing a tragic tale about a woman and her daughter succumbing to the property’s side hustle, a case of ‘wrong place, wrong time,’ a bereft Dominick Ragucci made final preparations before breaching. He checked and reseated magazines into his pair of Colt 1911s, tucked them into the back of his pants, then hoisted and ratcheted the slide on a Tommy gun. He was distraught, still struggling to process the reality of being both a widower and a grieving father.
This place, the girl thought, it is vile, filled with deceit and murder. A treacherous place to be on most days. But not today. She strolled up to the door as Dominick pressed his back against the white-brick exterior and waited to hear the screams.
A round shield fastened to one of the girl’s arms as she seated a Gjermundbu helmet over her head, then drew an Ulfbert sword. Today, the Gemini Club is a fine place to die. A good place for a warrior. A good place to choose the worthy.
Muffled screams radiated through the door. Inhabitants were discovering the fire that barricaded the front entrance. By now, it would be a curtain of flames that draped the building’s front facing wall. As commotion encroached on the side door, Dominick’s hand twitched over the door’s knob. Then, he yanked it open.
She lunged down the corridor, the daylight scouring the darkness. Forms fell away from her as her strikes spun those she reached. A hail of thrusts radiated out of her trajectory, the fleshy forms folding like felled wheat.
The main room was in turmoil. The flame curtain shed flailing forms like embers, those failing to force free a safe passage scorned by scorch and suffocation. One such figure fell into the central lounging area—aflame. The recessed flooring soon turned the red carpet and couches into a hearth. The fire reached an adjacent bar, where bottled liquor formed mini-explosions that radiated leaping liquid conflagration, while onlookers viewed from a banister that cordoned a second floor overlook.
Flitting reflections danced across the girl’s helmet as gunman began pointing her direction and readying arms. She rushed forward as heat wafted swan feathers up around her. She became a blur, her wake converting terrified expressions into corpse stares.
More gunmen posted along the overlook and rained gunfire.
She juked, then vaulted, ascending before the guard railing to riddle everything before her with puncture wounds. The wooden rail erupted, her onslaught proving it a poor cover as tender flesh beyond spilled blossoming rivulets of red.
A section of the upper floor collapsed. Slanted flooring formed a slide where figures with denial-stricken expressions slid down, their gazes fixed on the red coloring that matched their torsos to their saturated hands.
Smoke permeated the upper floor as the girl swooped to one of the few places still devoid of the flame’s grasp. As she set down, Roy DeMeo and his crew exited from a door behind the bar. He waved his gunmen forward but his signals faltered as his strangled coordination led to a coughing fit.
The girl was about to lunge, but hesitated. She looked back to Dominick, who stumbled back into a wall, one of his Colt 1911’s pointed in Roy’s direction, its slide locked back as he vainly continued pulling the trigger. Blood ran down his chin while he folded his other arm across his torso and slid to the floor. He soon lost the ability to hold the pistol aloft, his breathing growing ragged.
She observed the side door’s corridor had collapsed and peered around the room. Roy’s crew were fighting to find their way out, but all paths had become a single direction. She sheathed her blade and nodded to Dominick as his head sagged. You avenged your kin and traveled well the warrior’s path.
She knelt alongside him, then scooped him up. “Come. We will drink to your victory.”
As he roused, the flame curtain parted and the two traversed into a hall filled with merriment and tales of battle.
Writing Constraints
Trope: Ice Queen
Genre: Gangsterland
WC: 750/750
