Re: The Chain of Pursuit
Omar Vargas was a genius; but it was one of those geniuses you had to justify, like “in his own right”, or “in certain fields”, or “in some people’s eyes”. Really, it just meant that he was some insane guy with one redeeming quality—but it was a very redeeming quality. He made weapons (and jewelry, knickknacks, and keys, but that wasn’t talked about as much, for whatever reason,) and well…you just didn’t insult a guy who made weapons. He tended to know how to use them.
As Cadenza walked past a workbench with a chain necklace that closed by zipper resting on it, and a poker with a welded-on Bunsen burner laying against a steel leg, she shuddered to think what might have happened if Vargas had turned his…unique brand of genius towards something like plastic surgery.
“Eyes and fins everywhere, Seņora,” a voice somewhere behind her said.
“W-what?”
The woman whirled around to see the grease-stained figure of Omar Vargas wiping off a super-hot hammer by a stack of crates. The hammer singed holes through the cloth in his callused hands.
“The city of Sereia, you know, she has a great many fishermen,” he said conversationally, setting aside the tool for a tin of polish. “They work on Jueves, and bring in a loada fish—and there was a riot for da food. Fish were everywhere. Someone hit me in the back of da head with a gill!”
Ah, there was an explanation, Cadenza thought. Imagination, startled thoroughly for a moment there, could take a breather now while rational thought took over. Rational thought always enjoyed a little tussle with a loon like Vargas. Made it take stock of itself; reminded the mind what it would be like without the power of reason.
“…A gill’s an opening a fish breathes through, Omar. You can’t be hit with a hole.”
“But I a’ was.”
Technically, both of them were right; but no one in bone-dry Rubato is really all that knowledgeable about fish. Even in coastal Sereia. Thinking they should be was like expecting people in the tundra to know a lot about exotic jungle flowers. The fishermen of Sereia, sure, they knew, because they lived and breathed and slept on the sea, and didn’t come to land save for when they remembered they had families to see, or their boats became too full of the week’s haul; but to everyone else, a fish was a strange little anomaly in the animal kingdom that needed water to breathe. No matter how hard they tried, they just couldn’t wrap their heads around that.
So when the fishermen had explained to Omar that what he had been hit with was a mass of filaments and tissues used to extract oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide, he simplified it to the little opening some people vaguely remembered there being on fish, whenever it was they had last seen one.
And now, both of them stared at the chain on the workbench, pondering what being hit with a hole might be like.
Realizing that this train of thought was taking them nowhere, Cadenza moved onto business. The gunblade idea was just weird enough for Vargas, and she had high hopes for the final product. “So, ah…the sword, Omar?”
“Uwah?” he muttered. The name didn’t seem to have the desired ring to Omar’s ears.
Cadenza remembered then who she was dealing with; this was Omar Vargas, man who had forged her mom a bracelet with a bottle-opener on it, even though she never drank (smoked, yes, but never drank.) She knew she had to consider the possibility of there having been some other object Vargas knew as a “sword”; he tended to name his hybrids things that he forgot had already been taken for something normal. A sword therefore, for all she knew, could be a gourd and a switchblade to the blacksmith.
Really, the only constant was that as long as part of it was metal, it fell under the realm of potential Vargas inventions.
So, for his sake, she tried being a little more specific, “The, ah…gunblade, Omar?”
Sudden realization dawned upon the big, oil-stained face. “Ahhhh, the jack-in-the-box, Seņora? You just a’ reverse the polarity on da metal with those magics of yours, and out a’ comes the gun part, da mouth open and ready to shoot at the world! ‘Course…the gun doesn’t actually pop out, but…it’s a nice name, am I right?”
The big, squinting eyes twinkled, and the loud mouth finally shut to smile a big, lovable idiot kind of smile. It was a smile you couldn’t deny. The mind behind it was too unpredictable.
Cadenza was always a little unsettled by the smile. She gave the only answer you could give: “…Right, Omar. It’s a lovely name.”
Good blacksmiths were hard to come by, she thought. No sense in getting in a fight with one because you couldn’t humor his insanity and compliment a name.
Omar was pleased with the answer; he put away the demanding smile like a man puts away a loaded gun, locking it up for later if it’s ever needed, and went to fetch the gunblade. “It came out beautifully, Seņora,” he called as he rummaged around behind the crates, “Da special metal you provided is an amazing thing, and came out bluer than my mãe’s sapphire ring. Now, ‘course, you a’ say, ‘Omar, the sapphire on your mãe’s ring is fake!’ but I say, ‘It’s a’ still the bluest stone this side of the Minas Gerais mines!’ ”
“Bluer than blue, I’m sure, Omar.”
There was more rustling, and a few clangs of metal upon stone. While working on a piece, Vargas would treat it as gently as a baby; but once it was finished, he tended to lose interest and heaped it up with all the other finished products. Wait a few days to get your item, and well…you were lucky if it was still all in one piece. But on the bright side—if it did get broken, Vargas became wildly interested in fixing it again (for a fee, of course.)
“Ah, here she is, Seņora. Still as shiny as when I finished her this morning.”
Vargas stepped out from behind the boxes, holding a straight-bladed, adamantine sword that was the very vision of craftsmanship. It was strong and double-edged, but light, and looked somewhat similar to some of the arming swords he had laying about, save for the little sliver of a divide between the top portion of the blade and the bottom portion of the blade, where it would swing open to reveal the mouth of a gun.
He held the weapon out to Cadenza with the air of a reluctant parent entrusting the keys to an expensive car to their child for the first (and hopefully not last) time.
“It’s yours now, Seņora.”
Cadenza took the gleaming sword from his hand, and, her eyes aglitter with excitement, she cut a little flourish in the air with the kind of showiness the old swordmasters in Zhenghe would have frowned upon. The old swordmasters, she thought as she cut another little swath, were not watching how the light played off this brilliant piece of weaponry. And they were old. They had no flair.
“…It’s bloody beautiful, Vargas. You really outdid yourself.”
The craftsman in Omar beamed; but, as a weapons-smith, there was always that little shadow of concern weighing on his mind as to the end his works would be put towards. “I, ah…wouldn’t entrust such a weapon to anyone but you, minha amiga. You a’ know that…right?”
There was the unspoken worry there; Cadenza knew Omar well enough to tell. With an earnest face, she put it to rest: “I’ll be careful, Omar. You have my word. And you know that means something when I give it to you.”
Now the blacksmith’s entire mind was put at ease. The Madrigals may have lied and cheated countless other souls, he knew—but they had always been completely loyal to him. He had known the family since before their reign of crime, and had stuck by them all throughout it. And he was a friend of Galliard. That counted for a lot.
“Take care then, Seņora. Sereia, she is a dangerous town. Many a’ gangs hang around these streets, and they are not like da ones you meet in da deserts. More like pirates, these chicos.”
Cadenza nodded; she saw no need to explain to Omar that some grunts that ran around playing pirate would hardly be any trouble for a teacher of the Dome, but she appreciated his concern anyway. It was true that she didn’t know Sereia well; but that just meant that the city was lucky. It meant most of their population survived week-to-week, and it meant that their cops didn’t have nightmares about gypsy magic whenever they closed their eyes to sleep. In fact, the best thing a Rubatoian city could be was a place that the Madrigals weren't well-acquainted with.
Unfortunately for Sereia though, the city’s luck was about to change. The gypsy had a single address in her pocket, and not the slightest inkling of an idea where Delfin Street was; and that meant she was about to get acquainted with the city real fast as she searched.
The woman nodded a farewell to Vargas, and then, whistling, leapt into the air and onto the back of a dragon.
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Last edited by Altamira; 12-23-2007 at 02:28 PM..