Unknownfate
patreon
Chapter 157
🕑 Added 2025-06-13 15:43:12 +0000 UTCThe nightclub throbbed with bass and strobing lights, a cathedral of noise and sweat where glittering sinners writhed beneath mock stained glass and fog machines. The air reeked of synth, smoke, and desperation.
We had barely made it ten steps past the entrance when trouble found us.
“Damn, girl,” a man slurred as he stepped into Mordred’s path. Shirt unbuttoned to his navel, gold chain swinging, he flashed what he probably thought was a charming grin. “You cosplaying as ‘my future mistake’ or what?”
Mordred’s eyes narrowed. “What.”
He leaned in, undeterred. “You and me. Holy fire on the dance floor. Wanna show me what that gun of yours can do—”
She punched him.
Not a slap. Not a shove.
A punch.
The man flew.
He arced like a poorly thrown ragdoll, limbs flailing, sailed over two tables, and crashed into a pile of empty chairs near the back wall. A DJ record screeched. A few dancers screamed. One guy fist-pumped and shouted, “YEAH!”
I sighed. “And there it is.”
“You saw him,” Mordred growled, shaking out her fist. “He was asking for it. That was restraint.”
“That was restraint?” Lancelot asked, eyebrows lifting slightly.
“He treated me like a woman!” She snapped.
I could only sigh in response, because yes, that was Mordred. She could act like that. The doorman had treated her like a woman, but Mordred could be somewhat selective about when it was a problem and when it was not.
Don’t treat Mordred like a girl.
Don’t treat Mordred like a guy.
Don’t talk about me near Mordred.
Don’t disrespect me near Mordred.
Those were good rules, but personally, I preferred just to assume that you never know what Mordred will do.
Mordred does what Mordred wants.
Keeping that in mind is the best way to deal with her for sure.
“At least she isn’t shooting them.” I said as I watched as Mordred was smacking around everyone inside the club.
Women, men, bartenders, dancers, and security. It didn’t matter who they were, if they just wanted to run, or fight, or whatever they were doing. They all met the same fate, getting smacked down by Mordred.
“Your Majesty, you really should stop Sir Mordred. This behavior is unacceptable for a knight of the Round Table.” Lancelot urged.
“I am fully aware,” I said, watching as a man in rhinestone pants was lifted bodily off the floor and hurled into a decorative ice sculpture. “But we are not members of the Round Table right now, so we shouldn’t act like them.”
Lancelot hesitated, then visibly reconsidered his answer. He knew I was right, but that didn’t mean he liked this. “But even still… isn’t this too much?”
The crowd was in disarray. Half of them thought this was performance art. The other half were filming it for social media. I saw at least two people in the corner trying to start a betting pool.
“WHO ELSE WANTS TO DANCE?!” Mordred roared, standing atop a table she’d already shattered in half with a previous victim. Clarent II was in her hand, but thankfully not firing — yet.
“Is this... helping?” Lancelot asked me under his breath.
“It’s certainly stirring up attention,” I replied, scanning the dark corners of the club for any signs of trouble, though mostly checking to see if someone was in real trouble.
Mordred held back, and other than a few days' worth of pain, I didn’t think anything was badly hurt.
“And attention is what we want, though preferably from cultists, mages, spies, and wherever else. This is mostly just going to get us civilian attention.”
“Mor—” I began, but paused as she suplexed a man into a beanbag chair.
“…dred!” I finished.
She looked up, breathless but gleeful. “What? He grabbed my cape!”
“You don’t have a cape.”
“He thought about it.”
I massaged my temple, resisting the urge to conjure a barrier just to muffle the music. “Are you at least having fun?”
Mordred grinned wide, practically glowing. “More than I have in weeks! France sucks, but beating up perverts to techno beats? Ten outta ten.”
Someone nearby screamed. Another tried to dive behind the bar only to be thrown out again — by the bartender himself, who wanted no part in this madness.
“Let’s give her a few more minutes, then we leave before she burns the place down, or law enforcement comes around, no need to deal with those unless we have to.” I still wanted us to be the good guys, so I at least wanted to avoid too much innocent blood.
Lancelot exhaled sharply through his nose. “I fear law enforcement will not wait a few minutes. The moment she hit that first man, the clock began ticking.”
“I believe you are greatly overestimating the efficiency of the French. I think we have plenty of time still.” It wasn’t like I took pleasure in talking down on the French, well maybe a little, but I honestly didn’t think the police would respond all that fast.
Even in normal times, a bar fight was hardly the biggest of priorities, most so since no one was really hurt, and in these chaotic times? Yeah, they had likely far more to do than a bar fight.
Of course, that’s when the back door burst open and six figures stepped in — plainclothes, all armed, all serious. Not bouncers. Not clubgoers.
Professionals.
They fanned out like they’d rehearsed it, forming a semicircle around the dance floor. One of them held up a badge I couldn’t quite see, but the words he barked were loud and clear:
“Police! Everybody down! Hands where I can see them!”
Half the crowd obeyed. The other half screamed and started filming.
“Never mind,” I muttered. “I may have slightly underestimated the French after all.”
“Only slightly,” Lancelot replied, already shifting subtly to cover our flank. “They’re not the gendarmerie.”
I gave them another look, I had mostly dismissed them, but now that I looked closer, I did see something out of the norm, their firepower was far too great for normal police. These were some kind of special force.
“Some kind of anti-mutant division, perhaps?”
Lancelot frowned. “No markings, no standard insignia. But their formation is tight. Not amateurs.”
“Definitely not here for the music,” I muttered.
Mordred, meanwhile, hopped down from her table-perch with the casual swagger of someone who had just started to have fun. “Ooooh,” she sang. “Fancy hats and big guns? Well, I have one too!” She waved around Clarent II and made them all tense.
“Don’t antagonize them,” I said automatically, knowing it was pointless.
Too late. One of the agents stepped forward, his weapon raised but not yet aimed. “On the ground. Now. All of you.”
“Hard pass,” Mordred replied, cracking her knuckles. “Unless the ground’s where you want me to send you.”
“Mordred,” I said warningly.
“I’m just saying,” she added with an exaggerated shrug. “They interrupted my playlist.”
With a sigh, I moved. Secace Morgan swinging through the air like a club, smashing into the back of the head of one of the agents. “At least try not to kill them.” I said as a fight instantly broke out and the rest of the men opened fire.
Lancelot was already in motion, stepping in front of me and sweeping one of the agents’ legs out from under him with surgical precision. The man hit the ground hard, his weapon clattering away as Lancelot disarmed him in a single, fluid movement.
“Non-lethal,” Lancelot reminded himself aloud, then slammed the man’s head into the floor hard enough to knock him out cold. “Mostly.”
Gunfire filled the air, but most of it missed. Whether due to the strobe lights, the smoke machines, or the sheer disbelief of what was happening, they hadn’t expected resistance like this.
Mordred cackled with joy as she dove behind a shattered table, firing Clarent II one-handed without even aiming. The gun roared with thunder, the recoil kicking up sparks from the tile floor as a spray of return fire shattered a neon-lit pillar just behind her.
“Did you see that!?” she shouted, blowing smoke from the barrel. “I shot that guy’s confidence into the stratosphere!”
I ducked behind a fallen speaker as another round whizzed past. “You didn’t even hit him!”
“He dove for cover! That counts!” Mordred yelled, leaning over and blind-firing two more rounds into the chaos. One of the agents screamed as his rifle exploded in his hands, the sheer concussive force of Clarent II’s blast having hit too close for comfort.
Lancelot was the only one still fighting clean — ducking, weaving, disarming without a wasted motion. He flowed through the chaos like water in steel form, taking down two agents with open-palm strikes and a knee to the chest.
“This is escalating,” he called to me over the din.
“That’s the idea!” Mordred crowed.
“No, it’s escalating poorly.” He kicked another agent’s weapon away and ducked a punch. “Your Majesty?”
“Just knock them down.” I repeated flatly as I cracked an agent’s jaw with a backhand that sent him spinning across the dance floor like a skipping stone. “Any plan we make will fail, so don’t plan, Sir Lancelot, just follow Mordred into the heart of chaos.”
“Heck yeah! Follow me! Your future king!” She yelled and fired Clarent II a few dozen times. She didn’t shoot to kill, but to cause chaos.
Things exploded. She hit liquor bottles that burst into flames as the pure energy from her gun ignited the alcohol. She hit the lights in the ceiling causing rains of sparks to shower the now quickly emptying club as people fled through the doors.
She caused walls to explode behind the officers, resulting in them being struck by debris of brick and mortar.
It was pure chaos, but it didn’t last long.
She fired again — not at a person, but at the DJ booth. The console exploded in a shower of sparks and dubstep died with a pitiful electronic wail.
With the music dead, there was only the roar of flames, the howl of fire alarms, and groans of officers who no doubt wished they were unconscious to avoid the pain.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the wreckage.
Burning alcohol puddled across the dance floor. Lights sparked like dying stars from the rafters. Agents lay groaning in a mess of twisted tables and foam furniture.
The crowd had long since evacuated — if they were smart, they’d be halfway across the city by now, probably tweeting about some cosplay squad blowing up a rave.
And we still didn’t have a single cultist.
“Alright,” I said, voice firm, final. “We’re leaving.”
Mordred lowered Clarent II, panting, grinning, coated in smoke and self-satisfaction. “Already? But I still have like forty rounds left!”
“That is an energy gun, it has no rounds, and infinite ammo, so we won’t stick around until it's out, because then we will never leave.” I said, not willing to humor her too much.
I was already doing plenty of that with the whole premise for the mission.
Mordred pouted. Actually pouted. “That’s not fair. I was just starting to really get into it.”
“You turned a nightclub into a live combat zone,” Lancelot said dryly, stepping over a smoldering pile of what used to be a speaker stack. “I think we’ve all had enough fun for one evening.”
Mordred crossed her arms but didn’t argue further — which, for her, was equivalent to full agreement.
We moved for the front exit, stepping over unconscious agents and debris as fire alarms wailed around us. A single sprinkler finally activated with a pitiful wheeze, sputtering brown water in an uneven rhythm that failed to dampen anything but Lancelot’s dignity.
“This was a mess, first a nightclub, then a fight like that… this was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance stop.” He muttered.
“And you expected that to go well with Mordred in charge?” I asked.
“…Fair point.”
As we emerged into the cool night air, smoke rolling out behind us like a curtain call, a handful of terrified civilians ducked around the corner and bolted in the opposite direction. At least one of them dropped a phone mid-recording.
“Great,” I muttered. “Now we’ll be on the internet by sunrise.”
“Already trending,” Mordred said, glancing at her phone with a wicked grin. “#HotGirlsBlowUpTheCathedral is climbing fast. Oh! Someone made a GIF of me flipping that guy into the bar.”
“I’m not sure if I should be impressed or horrified.”
“Both,” Lancelot muttered. “Definitely both.”
I admit, I felt bad for him, he wasn’t the right choice for this… in fact I don’t think any of my knights would have been able to handle this.
This random chaos was just against everything they stood for: justice, peace, and fairness.
Yet, he would have his role to play, because this was just the beginning.
(End of chapter)
