Abigail was getting used to the wretched, clunking monstrosity that was their only form of transportation. The stench of stale cigarettes, body odour, food and Christ knows what else had become a background irritation that she'd gotten used to. She also claimed her seats - plural. The back left corner of the bus was her domain and she had bled all over it, which was a handy deterrent for any potential seat-stealers. She strode to the back of the bus and settled into her spot with anxious laziness, both trying to relax and straining for the gunshots.

Angeline had returned to the van once the plan was in motion, opting not to watch whatever may happen. She had spent much more of her energy steeling herself for the worst, she glanced over at the greasy kid, somehow looking relaxed sprawled out across the litany of blood-stained seats. “Um… How’s the hand?” She proposed. It wasn’t exactly a good atmosphere for chit-chat but she’d rather that than to listen to the fight going on outside.

"Itchy," Abigail muttered. She twitched her fingers. "I'm gonna have to get somebody who knows what they're doing to take these bandages off, I dunno what happened last time but I stuck to 'em." 

“Um, you mean like the blood or something stuck to the bandages?” Angie was no professional so she wasn’t about to offer her services, whatever what weeping out of that ugly wound would eventually dry up and stick to the bandages regardless. “Well let’s hope you’re the only person here I have to patch up, I suppose…” she eyed the girl, she was hardly the most easiest person to get along with in the group… “Oh, I heard about what happened, with the girl? I mean… Putting a random group of people together will always result in some unsavoury clashes I suppose.”

Abigail sighed through her nostrils in a big wheeze. "I melted those things into my hand, she grabbed my wrist, I told her to get off me n' she didn't like that I called her a gyppo." She scratched her wrist just under the bandages, where the skin was irritated and flakey from the heat. "Then I went to...get help for my hand, get out of the shed, whatever, n' she cornered me, and threatened the shit outta me in the back of the bus." 

Angie flinched a bit “Oh yikes that wasn’t very nice.” she paused “From both of you.” she then added. “It’s not very polite to call people names like that, though I don’t suppose she handled being insulted very well either.” she sort of danced around the topic, she didn’t want to set the kid off but it wasn’t exactly acceptable. From either parties. And it didn’t seem like anyone else wanted to take on the role of disciplining her.

Abigail lifted her head a little to take a good look at Angie's face. "Lady," she started slowly, "we're in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. In a couple minutes, about five people are getting shot to death - for gunnin' down people just like us earlier today." She paused for a moment, looking confused. "I ain't sure any of us are havin' the best of days...weeks...but Jesus [I]Christ[/I]. If I had t'pick between snappin' at a stranger who was blockin' the only exit and grabbin' me or sticking around t'see what crazy shit she was gonna do to my hand, I'd have called her something way worse n' given a good kick to the shin to boot!" She flopped back onto the seats. "I'll apologize when I'm fuckin' positive she ain't gonna stalk to my sleeping bag n' smother me to death," she decided.

Angeline allowed the kid to go off on her, taking it relatively calm. Her instructors have said worse things about her ten times over. “My name’s Angeline.” She corrected, firstly. “I support you’re right in some sense.” She adjusted her sitting position and smoothed down her hair, noting the blood still under her fingernails grimly. “It’s a… [i]Unique[/i] situation we find ourselves in. But we’re all in the same situation and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather find myself surrounded with friends than enemies.” she eyed the kid slowly, she looked tense and uncomfortable. “Even if that lady made you uncomfortable your choice of words was gyppo, specifically. You understand? You didn’t decide to call her...” she snorted a laugh “I dunno… A creep or a pervert or whatever for ‘trapping’ a young girl in a shed, so I wonder why your mind went to ‘gyppo’ first. I don’t want to sound condescending but do you know what that means?”

"Yeah it's like…" Abi wafted a hand. "The brown fellas who don't have a home and go 'round taking all your copper, right?" 

Angie takes a good, hot second to let that sink in, both for Abigail and for Angeline. “Um, not-... Quite accurate, the ‘brown fellas’ are Romanian, which I suppose are the people you’re referring to, there’s also Irish Travellers, who are also subject to being called ‘gypsies’ but they’re white, like you. Oh, and they do have homes… What kind of house did you live in? If that’s not too prying a question, I suppose? I can go first and say that I lived in a flat?” She offered.

"What kinda weird ass question…" Abigail trailed off, looking away from Angeline and at a crusty stain in one of the seat cushions. "Ain't never had a house," she mumbled.

“Oh, okay, where did you stay then? Because travellers often live in caravan parks and trailer parks, so they have homes, and they don’t like to be called gypsies because it’s synonymous with the stereotype you brought up. The wrong doings of the few should not represent the many, right?” Angeline had no idea if she was getting anywhere as Abi entertained herself with a crusty seat. “Otherwise… Every white American teen is a school shooter, and every underprivileged youth is a drug dealer, or swept up in gang activities. I can’t imagine either of those things represent you, right? So calling someone a ‘gyppo’ would be just as insulting as me calling you like… A drug addled school shooter or something.”

"Is it worth threatening to kill someone over?" Abi asked, pulling a face as she gingerly rolled onto her belly to peer up at Angie. "How bad can it really be, huh? I been called worse before. Ain't so sure what's got everyone all riled up - in the middle of a mission, no less." 

“Well, no it’s not worth threatening to kill someone over. That’s why I said that both you and her had handled the situation poorly. It is, I suppose, accentuated by the fact that she was an ethnic minority and probably has to deal with insults and harassment and stereotypes just like what you’d said for all her life. Consider, perhaps, if it were merely the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ instead of it just being related to your one insult.” She leaned back in her seat, exhaling as she did so, trying to get somewhat comfortable. “Plus I would imagine a mission is where it’s most likely to get people riled up. Everyone’s tense, we’re being relied on by many people right now and it’s lot’s of pressure. All it takes is one crack for it all to blow up so I can see why it got such a reaction.” Angeline looked out the window past Abigail. “I can’t understand how, in this kind of situation that we’re in, surrounded by confusion and negativity, it would be beneficial to anyone to bring up more negativity like discrimination on top of everything we’ve got to deal with…” She sat up and looked at Abigail again “After all, what’s a “gyppo” to a white person when we’re all mages now?” She eyed Abigail carefully “Aren’t we all going to be discriminated against now? May as well try and get along with the one’s on ‘our side’ right?”

Angeline watched as Abigail went blank, then nervous, then angry in the scope of her speech. “Don’t think that using fancy words makes you right,” she muttered. Humiliation crept into her voice. She immediately went on the defensive, starting to push herself up onto her elbows. “You sound like the goddamn counsellors. I don’t need my life picked apart by some-”

Then the gunshots rang out.

They were much louder and more jarring at close range, punching through the conversation and letting the light and air in. Abigail’s initial reaction was a flinch so hard it looked like a spasm - she fell off the bench in the process, losing all her bravado in an instant as she covered her head with the back of her hands and huddled on the floor. 

Angeline sighed a little to herself as Abigail reverted to defensiveness. As the gunshots came she paled and instinctively covered her ears, a large wave of nausea hitting her like a greasy, smelly, combi-bus thing. They were over before she knew it with a final, single shot and when she opened her eyes she saw the kid curled up on the floor. A weird mix of sympathy and discomfort hit her. “You can get up now, I think it’s over. You alright?” She tried to pretend she wasn’t as affected as she was, for the sake of the girl.

Abigail looked up and saw Angie largely unaffected by the gunshots. She went red with embarrassment, making her even more ashamed as she miserably picked herself up off the floor. "It's uh. Louder up close, ain't it?" She huffed, trying to save face. The facade was pointless; she was frightened, and angry with herself for getting frightened.

Angeline nodded “Yeah. I don’t like guns. I thought with you being American you’d be a little more accustomed?” She tried to draw away the subject so Abi would feel less embarrassed “Never been to a shooting range or something with your family?” She got up and dusted her butt down of whatever grossness had stuck to it and opened the door and stepped out. Eventually, she would have to face the facts and see if there were any injuries to take care of.

About a second after she stepped out, Angie heard footsteps, rushing at her from behind.

“Who the fuck do you work [i]for?![/i]” screamed a man as he barreled into her and brought her to the ground on the last word, hands scrambling for her throat.

Angeline coughed as her back hit the floor too winded to say much except a wheezed “Help…”

“You fucking bitch! Who the fuck do you work for? Who’s fuckin’ payin’ you!?”

After a moment's hesitation that went on for what felt like an eternity, something hot and bright and tinged purple shot out of the open bus door, aiming indiscriminately above Angie and the final bandit in a searing burst of magic.

The bandit jerked backwards and off of Angie, jumping reflexively away from the burning heat as it struck him in the space of the joint between his neck and shoulder. 

“Fuck!” he yelped, before realising in more conscious detail what had happened, and where the fire had come from, as he reached to start patting the fire out and it just disappeared. He gave a low, tense scream through his clenched teeth, and looked up at Abi.

“What the fuck?” the man, tall and slim, thought aloud, as he reached behind himself for something in the waist of his jeans.

Angeline coughed roughly as the crispy man got off her, though as she saw him reach for the gun she instinctively ran at him and hunkered low, jumping with her shoulder and arm extended for his chest to try and knock him down. 

As her body - smaller than his, but strong from years of ballet, and graced with deceptively powerful control of her balance - made its impact, he budged, and his shoes left a little streak behind in the sand as he slid for a bit before adjusting his own balance to counter Angie’s, leaving them in a deadly stalemate - as he produced the pistol.

It wasn’t a small thing, but not as big in his hand as Abi imagined it would have been in hers, as the top slide of the weapon gave a dull glint, catching the warmth and light of the sun as the criminal in front of her adjusted his footing once again - and delivered a swift, brutal kick straight to Angie’s chest, knocking her back to the floor, winded.

The bandit backed up from them both as he released the safety and pulled the slide on the pistol, a faint click inside the weapon registering the chambering of a round, like a long-dreaded knock on the door. He glanced between the two of them - ballerina and teenager - his eyes alive with an unpleasant mixture of fury, triumph, and intelligence, even as the flesh on his shoulder still smouldered and the patchwork of his jacket began to fell away in ashes around it.

“I won’t fuckin’ ask again.” He held the pistol up, taking his time to line up a shot. “Who, the [i]fuck[/i], do you [i]fuckin’ bastards, fuckin’ work f-”[/i]

Just as he began to bring the gun down, while it was still aimed up and above them both, a shot rang out. He jerked like a puppet being struck abruptly with a stick, tiny dots of blood suddenly colouring the air behind him, and the gun went off in his hand as his fist clenched reflexively.

Another shot. Identifiably from just at the top of the little gully they’d left the van in. Again, the man jerked, his eyes widening as the pain hit him properly and he realised what was happening. His own gun didn’t go off again - it had been too fast for him to have released the trigger, and both shots had hit him in the center of his chest.
Probably right in the heart.

A pause, just long enough for him to groan, and start the long lurch backwards into the dirt, when the third and final gunshot rang out like a clarion bell, and every sin he’d ever committed was blown clean out of the right side of his temple. 

When he hit the dirt the gun went off again, sending his last mistake flying off well away from his two hostages, far out into the outback.

At the top of the hill, still aiming his own weapon down at the recently neutralised hostile as he made his way down towards the van, calm as ever, was Brooks.

After that, it really was all over.