“So, Lee, I assume we’re in a different ‘phase’ now, right?”

Vell took a quick peek around the corner and saw that the coast was clear. He gestured for Lee to move forward and they cautiously made their way to the next piece of cover while Lee explained their situation.

“Well, yes, but after the warlords, things get a touch more unclear,” Lee said. “Lone wolves might try to build themselves fortified positions, or else roving groups may join together into nomadic gangs to prowl the campus looking for stragglers to pick off.”

“Man, people on this campus just go full lunatic under the slightest bit of pressure, don’t they?”

“College is stressful,” Lee said. “When there’s a lot of straws, any one of them might be the straw that breaks the camels back.”

“I hear that,” Vell said. “Do you want to fortify, or try and join a roving gang?”

“I fear we may be the stragglers in this scenario, dear. We don’t have many options as far as joining a gang,” Lee said. “Most of our social circle went down with Leanne’s warband.”

“True,” Vell said. Vell’s social circle began and ended within a few doors of his dorm, on top of the other loopers. “Man, we, uh, really don’t know a lot of people between us, do we?”

“I am rather more guilty of that than you, I think,” Lee said. She then paused, as if out of regret. “Sorry. I’m being a bit of a downer here, aren’t I?”

“Eh, it’s fine,” Vell said. “We all got problems. If anything, it’s nice that you talk about yours so openly.”

Vell took out one of his revolvers and began checking the mechanisms, giving the barrel a quick once over as well before he put it back in the holster and repeated the process with other one. Lee knew better than to think he had gun maintenance on his mind. She’d used “pretending to be too occupied to talk” as an excuse to avoid her parents more than once.

“Do you have something you’d like to get off your chest, Vell?”

“Uhm. One thing, I guess,” Vell said. “I know you and Harley mean well when you talk me up, but I just, you know, never really take a compliment well. I don’t really like the, uh, spotlight.”

“I see. It’s well deserved, in any case.”

“Maybe. Attention just makes me nervous, though,” Vell said. “Mostly thanks to this thing.”

Vell pointed at his lower back, and the mystery rune inscribed upon it. That was all it took for Lee to understand perfectly. For someone who actually had something to hide, any attention came with the risk of getting “caught”.

“Well, if attention makes you uncomfortable, I shall endeavor to ignore you.”

Vell sighed heavily, though the smile on his face made it clear he understood Lee’s joke.

“Not what I meant,” Vell said. Lee looked away from him and offered no response. It was meant to be part of the gag, but the attempted silence ended up alerting them to a potential danger. The murmuring motion of a nearby crowd, coming around the far side of the building. Lee abandoned the gag and scooted closer to Vell to whisper.

“One of the gangs,” she said. “We should move.”

Vell nodded in silent agreement and gestured towards the other end of the dorm building, away from the noise. The two of them crept carefully along the building’s edge, trying to strike the perfect balance between speed and stealth, and failing on both counts.

“I hear something,” someone shouted. “This way!”

With their cover blown, Vell and Lee abandoned their failed stealth to lean on speed, which hadn’t failed them yet. Vell made it round the corner and readied his weapons, with Lee close behind. She reached the edge of the building and nearly tripped as she made her way around, but managed to catch herself before she fell. She felt a very brief moment of triumph at finally overcoming her clumsiness, which was instantly muted by the feeling of a paintball striking her in the back.

“Of course,” she sighed. The one time she didn’t fall. “Good luck, Vell!”

“Right, okay, sorry, I’ll, uh-”

Vell cut himself off when he realized he actually had nothing to say. He kept running while Lee resigned herself to her defeat, and did one more thing to help out Vell.

“I count fourteen of them, Vell! Be careful!”

Once again, the twelve-bullet dilemma of Vell’s revolvers reared its ugly head. Fourteen was a slightly more manageable number then horde back at the stadium, at least. Vell spun the chambers of his revolvers once and calculated his odds. The worst case scenario was he lost a chance at a gold star, and since Vell had never and would never care about gold stars, that suited him just fine.

Vell stopped spinning the chambers and cocked the hammers on both revolvers. A gunslinger, alone, with nothing to lose. It felt right.

The first would-be hunter caught up to Vell, and took a paintball in the chest for his trouble. With two quick flicks of his wrist and two equally quick pulls of the trigger, the next two around the corner met a similar fate. Vell backed up, giving himself more breathing room for the next wave. Those that came after learned from the fate of their brothers, and came around the corner low to the ground, forcing Vell to adjust his aim and costing him precious seconds. One even did a combat roll, and while Vell caught him just as he finished his rolling dive, it still took his eye and his guns away from the main group of hunters.

Their tactics were clever, but Vell was quicker. His guns never missed the mark in spite of their evasive motions. He only really started to sweat as he began to empty the chamber in his second gun. He had three hunters left, and only one bullet. Vell fired off his last bullet, striking a hunter in the thigh, and then retreated. He ran and dove for cover, quickly shoving a single paintball into the chamber before turning and firing it at the hunter that pursued him. He grabbed another paintball and loaded it just as the last of the hunters rounded the corner.

The soft “puff” of paintball fire echoed between the two. Vell watched a quick burst of purple explode on the hunter’s chest. He was still halfway through chambering his next round. The hunter looked over Vell’s shoulder.

“Come on, man,” he whined.

“Hunting a man who’s reloading ain’t sporting,” Ryder said. He shouldered his lever-action paintball gun and took another drag of his cigarette as he stepped closer to the fray.

“This is still a non-smoking campus,” Vell reminded him.

“I still don’t care,” Ryder said. He nodded at the paint-stained hunter. “You get out of here. I want to have a talk with Mr. Harlan.”

The hunter obliged, trudging off to help the remnants of his gang clean up. Ryder stepped up to Vell and gave him a nod in greeting.

“Thanks for the assist,” Vell said.

“My pleasure. Like I said, just giving you the courtesy of some time to reload.”

“Right. So. Now what?”

“Now, I believe-”

A siren went off on campus. Overhead, a swarm of drones took flight, arranging themselves into the shape of the number ten as they floated high above campus.

“Well look at that,” Ryder said. “Looks like I just won you a spot in the top ten.”

As they watched the skies, a paintball shot rang out across campus, and the drone swarm rearranged itself into a nine.

“Make that top nine,” Ryder corrected. “This is where it gets real interesting. Lone gunslingers like ourselves face off man to man.”

“Okay,” Vell said. “Is that what’s going to happen? You want to have some high noon duel?”

“It’s three forty-five, son, we’re a bit late,” Ryder said. “A duel don’t sound so bad, though. But you’re going to earn it.”

Ryder put his gun on his back, and Vell holstered the revolver he held, in a sign of peace -for now.

“We’ll call it a gentleman’s agreement,” Ryder said. “I’m going to be the last man standing, of that there is no doubt. If you manage to be the second to last man standing, meet me in front of the clocktower. We’ll settle this the old fashioned way.”

“Okay. Cool, I guess,” Vell said. “See you then!”

Vell waved before turning around to walk away. Ryder bit down his cigarette. Vell had absolutely no ability to banter. He was starting to reconsider this “rivalry”, but there were only so many inhumanly talented cowboy-themed paintball gunslingers with which to compete. Ryder could not be picky.

“Come out and play, little gunslinger,” the ironclad student shouted. His voice rang off the heavy metal helmet he wore. “See how your little peashooters handle Frank the Tank.”

Frank (Vell refused to refer to him as “the Tank”, and so does the narrative) scanned the area, searching for where Vell had run off to. The thick metal suit he wore acted as a mobile platform for a dozen automated turrets, each one scanning a different direction. It made him theoretically impossible to approach, but it also made him very slow. Vell walked with a brisk pace and managed to keep abreast of the Frank who will decidedly not be referred to as “the Tank”. He even had enough distance to make a phone call.

“Hey Luke,” Vell said.

“Hey Vell. Heard you were still at it.”

“Yeah I’m up to-” Vell looked at the floating drone swarm in the sky. “Top five now.”

“Hey, lucky you,” Luke said. “I pretty much got shot like five minutes after I left the dorm. I’m not cut out for this stuff.”

“Oh yeah? How are Cane and Renard doing?”

“Oh some guy in Cane’s neurology class double crossed them when Cane let him into the dorm,” Luke said. “Cane’s still mad.”

“He should be, dick move,” Vell said. “Anyway, you got some time to help me out with a physics problem?”

“Weird timing, but I’ll assume you know what you’re doing. What do you need to know?”

“Let’s start with the terminal velocity of a paintball,” Vell said.

Calculations were made, mostly based on rough estimations, since Vell didn’t know jack and/or shit about physics. Luke’s coaching -and the fact that Vell had plenty bullet’s- meant he could fire as many times as he wanted and hope for the best. He emptied a revolver upwards and waited for a splat.

Splat.

The drone swarm shifted into the shape of the number four.

“What the fuck?” The non-Tank Frank shouted. “Hey! What’d you do?”

“I shot a bullet up and it fell on you. Still counts,” Vell said.

Frank mumbled something to himself and then stormed off, dragging his heavy metal armor along with him.

“Hmmph, I’m out here in armor covered in auto-turrets and he’s doing physics homework,” Frank grumbled. “This is supposed to be hectic and fun.”

“Uh, sorry,” Vell called out. “I’m just going with what works here.”

Frank flipped Vell off before vanishing around a corner.

“Jeez, okay, fine,” Vell said. He looked up at the sky and saw that the counter had ticked down to three. He bit his tongue. That still gave him a little wiggle room to maneuver around Ryder and his strange vendetta.

No sooner had Vell finished thinking that than a puff of paintball fire rang out, and the counter ticked down to two. He sighed and started heading for the clock tower.

Overhead, a swarm of drones started to follow Vell’s every move. To ensure that paintball duels never dragged on too long, the last competitors always had their motions tagged and tracked. Vell could see a second drone swarm, presumably following Ryder, also heading to the clocktower. The next thing Vell noticed was that the quad was once again flooding with students, all of them tracking one drone swarm or another. Spectators, all of them, come to view the final duel between two paintball titans.

Vell started to sweat as soon as the first hanger-on started following him. He did not like attention, and now he had half the campus tailing his every move. Vell picked up the pace a little, hoping to get to the clock tower, and get this over with, as soon as possible.

Predictably, Ryder Storm had beat him there, dragging his own posse of spectators along with him. As Vell stepped up to his opponent, the gathered students naturally formed a large ring around them. Paint-stained and battered former combatants surrounded them on all sides, and Vell spotted familiar faces like Harley, Lee, Luke, and Freddy all watching him from the sidelines. He nodded in recognition before focusing his attention solely on Ryder.

“So you made it,” Ryder said with a smile. “Good on you.”

Ryder stopped leaning against the wall and put his cigarette firmly between his lips. Vell offered no commentary this time.

“But there can only be one, as the saying goes.”

“That is the Highlander reference, yeah,” Vell said. Ryder nodded.

“So how about we do this completely square. Let me borrow one of those pistols of yours and we’ll do it old school. Back to back, walk ten paces, then fire.”

“Sounds good,” Vell said. He held out both of his revolvers, handle first, towards Ryder. “Take your pick.”

Ryder grabbed the gun on the left, double-checked it for any signs of sabotage or malfunction, and nodded to Vell once it passed muster. The two of them proceeded to the center of the student circle, and stood back to back. Ryder got himself psyched up by humming the bars of The Ecstasy of Gold to himself. Vell, meanwhile, was trying not to think of anything at all. All this attention was getting to his head.

They took the first step away from one another, then the second, in perfect synchronicity. Revolvers clenched tight in sweaty hands, the two proceeded to their places, as the clock above ticked down to a dramatically inappropriate four-seventeen in the afternoon. Vell counted his eighth step, then his ninth, then his tenth.

He turned. Shots of paintball fire rang out so fast they were nearly simultaneous.

Ryder and Vell both stared down at paint stains on their shirt, then back up at one another.

“So-”

“Yeah, I don’t know either,” Vell said.

“I brought a quantum camera!” Freddy shouted. The circle of students rearranged itself to be surrounding Freddy as he held up his camera and started flickering through the images he’d taken. With slow, careful button presses, he narrowed it down to the second the paintballs had made impact, then the half-seconds, then quarter-seconds, until he was analyzing the footage from picosecond to picosecond.

“I may have changed the outcome by observing it, but it looks like the winner is…”

“Fuck off with the dramatic pause, Frizzle, spit it out!” Harley demanded.

“It’s Ryder!” Freddy snapped.

The circling crowd circled anew, this time around Ryder Storm. He basked in the cheering and the adulation of the crowd. For a moment, every student on campus was cheering him on -except for Vell and his friends, naturally. Freddy went over his footage once more while the others gathered around Vell.

“Sorry, dear,” Lee said. “It was an incredible showing, though.”

“Eh, it’s fine,” Vell said. “Like I said, I’m not much for attention.”

Looking at the crowd that had swarmed over Ryder, Vell didn’t feel any regret about not winning. That was far more attention than he wanted to deal with right now, or ever. Freddy’s attention focused solely on the footage he was reviewing, and behind the thick glasses he wore, his eyes narrowed.

“Hold on…Did you-?”

“Hey, Freddo, they already gave him the gold star, don’t worry about the footage,” Vell said. At Vell’s continued insistence, Freddy put the camera away. Vell turned to face the crowd, and Ryder, and decided to put in one more word.

“Hey Ryder,” he called out. “Just a reminder for next year.”

“What’s that, Harlan?” Ryder said, with a cocksure smile on his face. Vell stared right back with a confident grin of his own.

“This is a non-smoking campus,” Vell said. He saluted once and turned to walk away. Ryder took a drag of his cigarette -and found he was inhaling nothing but ash. For a moment, he pulled the cigarette away from his lips. The lit end of the cigarette had been sheared off, leaving behind nothing but a cold ashen stump, and a few flecks of paint on the very end. Ryder stared at it, dumbstruck, before realizing what must have happened. It hit him harder than a paintball in the chest.

“Vell Harlan,” he said, watching the gunslinger’s back as he left. “You son of a bitch.”