Ace returned home feeling like a ghost of himself. His backpack hung from one shoulder by a fraying strap, a dead weight of half-remembered algebra and the lingering echo of Mr. John's apoplectic rage. His eyes were gritty, his brain a flatline of staticky exhaustion. The walk home had been a blur of pavement and the distant, mocking sounds of a normal afternoon.
He pushed through the heavy, warded gate of the compound, the familiar groan a sound of both sanctuary and sentence. The first thing that cut through his fog wasn't a sound, but a sight.
To the right, in the patchy yard of Garath's house, two figures stood in the slanting afternoon light. Garath, a pillar of worn flannel, was crouched. In front of him, vibrating with barely-contained excitement, was Darren, Ace's eleven-year-old cousin. In Garath's large, steady hands was a revolver. It was a beautiful, terrible thing—polished steel with intricate markings etched along the barrel, and a handle of pure, luminous white that looked like it had been carved from a moonbeam. It looked less like a weapon and more like a holy artifact designed for a very specific kind of sin.
Garath's voice, a low, patient rumble, was explaining something about grip and sight alignment. Darren was nodding with frantic seriousness.
Ace's tired mind stuttered. The disconnect was violent. He'd just spent the day being scolded for a meth joke. Here, in his own backyard, a child was being given a celestial-looking cannon.
"Look!" Darren shrieked, spotting him. He waved, the gun in his other hand making the gesture dangerously celebratory. "Ace! Look what Garath got me!"
Ace forced a wave, his voice a dry croak he hoped carried across the distance. "Yeah. It's… bright."
He wanted to go over. To see the craftsmanship, to ask about the markings, to fall into the comfortable, technical language of tools and purpose. But his social battery wasn't just low; it was in the red, corroded terminals sparking. The effort of crossing the lawn felt Herculean. He gave a final, dismissive nod and turned towards his own house, craving the silent, predictable chaos of his own room.
He pushed the back door open and climbed the stairs, each step a minor victory. He reached his door, turned the knob, and stepped inside.
And froze.
His room—his ordered, neutral territory where everything had its place—looked like a tornado had mated with a pack of wolverines inside it.
Clothes were vomited out of his half-opened drawers. Textbooks were sprawled on the floor, pages bent. His wastebasket lay on its side, a sad corpse spewing candy wrappers. A fine layer of… was that road dust?… coated every surface. And underpinning it all was a faint, alien scent—leather oil, gun solvent, and the dry, mineral smell of distant clay.
What the fuck?
Ace wasn't a neat freak, but he was a person of controlled chaos. This was anarchy. This was violation.
His eyes, bleary with tiredness, finally tracked to the bed.
There, sprawled like a starfish claiming a new continent, was Axl. He'd shed his signature leather jacket and boots. Now he wore only a simple white t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, one leg hitched up. He was in a deep, defenseless sleep, mouth agape. A thin line of drool had traced a path from his lips to Ace's pillow. A low, guttural snore rattled in his chest.
The last fraying thread of Ace's patience snapped.
The tiredness evaporated, burned away by a pure, white-hot core of territorial rage. His room. His sanctuary. Defiled by this snoring, drooling, chaos-giant.
His mind went beautifully, perfectly numb. There was no plan, no witty retort. There was only the physics of outrage.
He took two silent steps back into the hall for a running start.
Ace charged.
He didn't yell. He didn't announce himself. He was just a blur of school uniform and righteous fury crossing the short space of his ruined room. He launched himself into the air, a furious, underweight missile aimed squarely at the center of Axl's unprotected torso.
The impact made a damp, heavy whumpf sound.
Axl's body absorbed the blow like a memory foam mattress absorbing a pebble. His eyes flew open a half-second after Ace's shoulder connected. The air exploded from his lungs in a loud, wet cough, spraying a fine mist of saliva. His massive frame barely shifted on the bed.
"THE FUCK, ACE?!" Axl roared, the sound more shocked indignation than pain. One huge hand came up instinctively, not to strike, but to shove the writhing weight off his solar plexus.
Ace scrambled back, landing in a crouch amidst his own scattered belongings, chest heaving. "Me? What the fuck are you doing in my room?!"
Axl propped himself up on his elbows, blinking sleep from his eyes. He looked from Ace's furious face to the surrounding chaos as if seeing it for the first time. His expression cleared into one of infuriating nonchalance. "Your mom told me I could crash here. Said to make myself at home." He gestured vaguely at the disaster zone. "I got comfortable."
"Well you can't! This is my room! My space! Look at this!" Ace snatched up a textbook with a creased cover. "This is vandalism!"
"It's lived-in," Axl corrected, yawning widely. "If you got a problem, take it up with the landlord. Not me." He pointed a lazy thumb towards the door.
"Oh, I will," Ace snarled. He turned and sprinted from the room, taking the stairs two at a time, his anger a rocket fuel burning through the last of his fatigue.
"Mom?!"
Sophie's voice floated back from the direction of the backyard. "Out here, honey!"
Ace burst through the kitchen door onto the back porch. Sophie was there, seated at the patio table with Betsy, Garath and Darren's mother. They had glasses of iced tea, and the scene was one of calm, afternoon normality—a brutal contrast to the warzone upstairs.
"Mom, what the hell?" Ace demanded, skidding to a halt. "You let Axl stay in my room?"
Sophie took a slow sip of her tea, her expression one of placid reason. "Yes. What's wrong?"
Ace gaped. "What's wrong with it? Everything, Mom! Everything is wrong! It's my room! My private space! He's… he's a natural disaster in boxer shorts! He drooled on my pillow!"
"Language, Ace," Sophie said mildly. "Axl just got back from a very long, very tiring journey. He deserves a proper rest in a real bed."
"Then let him stay in the guest room! That's what it's for!"
"He asked if he could use yours. I said sure."
The sheer, unfathomable logic of it left Ace speechless. He was debating the principles of sovereignty, and his mother was discussing hospitality logistics.
The screen door creaked open. Axl shuffled out, now having pulled on a pair of loose sweatpants, still scratching his bedhead. He yawned, mid-sentence. "M'sorry, Ace. 'S my fault. The guest room bed's a kiddie size. You know I roll around. I'd end up on the floor."
Ace just stared, a vortex of impotent rage. He'd lost. The forces of chaotic good and maternal decree had aligned against him.
Axl let out a huge, performative sigh, as if carrying the weight of the world. Then he dug into the pocket of his sweats and tossed something small and gift-wrapped in a shimmering blue paper towards Ace.
"Here. Peace offering."
Ace caught it on reflex. It was heavy for its size, solid. He looked from the gift to Axl's expectant face, his anger now tangled with suspicion.
"Open it," Axl snorted. "Bought it for you. Consider it an apology for the, uh, interior redesign."
Slowly, never taking his eyes off Axl, Ace peeled back the paper. It fell away to reveal a gun case of brushed grey metal. He clicked the latches.
Inside, nestled in form-fitting black foam, was a Beretta 92FS. But it was unlike any factory model Ace had ever seen.
The slide and frame were a brushed stainless steel, blued to a deep. Etched along the slide weren't random patterns, but precise, interlocking Eldren clan sigils—wards for accuracy, durability, and binding. The handle grips were matte black, and inlaid into them was a single, stunning image in mother-of-pearl and silver wire: a fallen angel, one wing shattered, its face a mask of defiant sorrow. And at the very back of the slide, where a standard model would be blank, two small, stylized wings were forged as part of the metal itself, swept back as if in a dive.
It wasn't a weapon. It was a statement. A piece of art engineered for a single, violent purpose.
Ace's breath caught. All his anger, his fatigue, the entire miserable day, evaporated. His hunter's mind engaged on pure, aesthetic instinct. His fingers, without conscious thought, traced the cool, perfect rail of the slide. He lifted it from the foam. The weight was sublime—balanced, authoritative, an extension of a will that had not yet formed. He looked down the sights. They were a crisp, perfect alignment, framing the fallen angel on the grip.
He was, undeniably, completely in love.
He looked up at Axl, his eyes wide. Words failed him.
Axl's sharp grin returned, smug and knowing. "No need to say it. 'You're welcome' covers it."
Ace could only nod, his gaze dragged back to the beautiful, deadly thing in his hands. The embarrassment for his earlier attack bloomed hot and sudden in his chest. He'd body-slammed a man who'd brought him a fallen angel forged in steel.
"Why?" Ace finally managed, his voice hushed.
Axl's smile softened, just a fraction. "You always complained your old piece kicked like a mule and jammed if you looked at it funny. Figured you deserved a tool that matches your… potential. Besides," he winked, "got it off a guy in a poker game. Practically free."
Ace nodded again, the apology stuck in his throat, rendered meaningless by the sheer magnitude of the gift. He cradled the Beretta, already feeling its imagined weight on his hip, a new and terrifying certainty in his grip.
The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was charged, like the air before a lightning strike. Ace cradled the Beretta, its cool weight a new axis his world could spin around. The fallen angel on the grip seemed to stare back at him with its silver-wire eyes, a silent question.
Axl watched him, the smug grin still on his face, but it had changed. The edges hardened. The mirth in his eyes drained away, replaced by a flat, operational focus that made the sunny backyard suddenly feel several degrees colder.
He took a single, casual step closer to Ace, closing the distance. To Sophie and Betsy, sipping their tea, it would look like a friendly huddle. But his movement blocked their view of his face.
The grin vanished completely.
All the lazy charm, the theatrical annoyance, the big-brother bravado—it sloughed off him like a shed skin. What was left was the man beneath: a hunter. His voice dropped to a low, liquid whisper that didn't carry past Ace's ear. It was a sound devoid of all humor, a direct line to the marrow of their real life.
"Get ready."
The two words were not a suggestion. They were a soft-voiced command, a priming order. Ace's fingers tightened instinctively around the Beretta's grip.
Axl's eyes, now sharp as chipped flint, held his. "The gift isn't free. It's a tool. Tools get field-tested." He leaned in the last fraction of an inch. His breath smelled of coffee and something metallic. "Tonight. We go to work. Be dressed, be geared, and be at the RV at ten. Don't be late."
He pulled back, and just as swiftly as it had disappeared, the easy-going mask snapped back into place. He clapped Ace on the shoulder with a force that was just shy of painful, his voice returning to its normal, carrying volume. "Looks good on you, kid! Don't shoot your foot off!"
He turned, gave a lazy wave to Sophie and Betsy. "Thanks for the crash space, Aunt Sophie! Gonna go help Garath change the Rv's tire and oil."
And just like that, he ambled away, heading towards Neal's dark, silent house, his transformation from lethal professional back to harmless slob seamless and complete.
Ace stood frozen on the porch, the weight of the Beretta in his hand now feeling profoundly different. It was no longer just a beautiful object, a bribe, a symbol. It was an invoice. And payment was due at ten o'clock.
The fallen angel seemed heavier. We go to work. The words were generic, but in Axl's mouth, they were anything but. Work meant hunt. Hunt meant something had crossed the line, something that needed to be reminded—with violence—where that line was drawn.
Sophie's voice cut through his reverie. "That was very thoughtful of him, Ace. A very… specific gift." Her tone was light, but her eyes were on his face, reading the shift in him, the sudden stillness. She knew. Not the details, but the currency. She knew a hunter's gift always came with a hunt attached.
"Yeah," Ace said, his own voice sounding distant to his ears. "Specific."
He turned and walked back into the house, leaving the calm afternoon tea party behind. He climbed the stairs, stepping over the remnants of Axl's invasion without seeing them.
In his room, he went straight to his bed. He didn't clean up. He didn't change. He sat on the edge of the ruined mattress, the Beretta resting on his knees. With meticulous, almost reverent care, he began to field-strip it, his hands moving on autopilot, checking the barrel, the spring, the action. Each component was flawless. It was a predator's instrument, perfect and waiting.
As he worked, reassembling the pieces with a series of satisfying, precise clicks, the last of the school-day static in his mind cleared. The exhaustion was gone, burned away by a cold, clarifying focus. The algebra, the detention, the chemistry test—it all faded into a distant, gray hum.
There was only the weight of the gun in his hands, the image of the fallen angel, and the echoing, unspecific command: We go to work.
The waiting was over. The test was tonight.