Night Time (victorious)

Chapter 14

Rosie opened the door to the master bedroom, then stopped and stared. Tori stared at her, mortified, and quickly pulled her hands out of Jade's hair. A second later, Jade removed her face from Tori's crotch and turned to look at Rosie, who hadn't moved a muscle. Jade opened her mouth angrily, then closed it and stood up, looking closer at Rosie. She snapped her fingers, and two robes floated out of the closet, with one going to Tori and the other to her. "You're covered in bruises and cuts." Jade said, walking up to Rosie while fastening the belt around the robe. "Why?"

"They won." Rosie said simply, looking and sounding exhausted.

"What?" Jade exclaimed.

"The Hunters won." Rosie told her.

"How?" Jade demanded.

"They had Excalibur and Clarent." Rosie told her. "The two swords of Arthur. We didn't stand a chance. The archmages were able to destroy the swords, but at the cost of their lives. The magical discharge from the destruction of the great swords caused an earthquake that leveled a good part of Los Angeles as well."

"Wait, I'm confused." Tori said, frowning. "What's so special about these swords? I mean, I know about Excalibur being special and all, but why was it able to make the Hunters win the battle?"

"Excalibur and Clarent are both Heavenly weapons." Jade told her. "We don't know what made them, but something...divine did. Excalibur is the sword of King Arthur, and Clarent is the sword he drew from the stone. They were second only in power to Mjolnir, hammer of Thor, and were equal in strength to the Hellblade. The bright side is that now that they're destroyed, they're out of magic tricks. The Hellblade is lost, and I doubt the last owner of it would hand it over even if they did find him and it. And as for Mjolnir...well, I kind of doubt Thor would lend them his weapon, even if any of them were capable of lifting it." Rosie nodded.

"The majority of the survivors headed to Las Vegas or San Francisco, but I thought you'd want to know, so I teleported here." She said, collapsing. Jade quickly caught her before she hit the ground.

"Here, let's get you cleaned up and in bed." She told Rosie, picking her up and walking out of the room, leaving Tori to get dressed.

One hour later

"How bad is it?" Tori asked Jade. The two girls were sitting in the kitchen, Tori eating a steak and Jade drinking a cup of blood.

"It's moderately bad." Jade admitted, looking up from her cup. "The loss of the swords takes a weapon out of our hands, even if it also takes one out of theirs. And the death of the archmages of Southern California isn't good either. On the other hand though, the vast majority of Los Angeles' magical community got out of Dodge before the battle started, and I'm sure that the wizards dealt a major blow to the Hunters. Besides, like I said, Los Angeles was never a stronghold. There were a lot of magic users there, sure, but there are even more in our strongholds, and the strongholds have magical protections around them as well. The swords were in all likelihood their ace in the hole, and now that they're gone they've got nothing left. They're going to break themselves against San Francisco, and then the war'll be over until another group of idiots gets the same idea in their heads."

"Are you sure?" Tori asked. Jade nodded.

"Of course I'm sure Vega. And besides, even if they did manage to take down San Francisco, they'd still have to deal with Las Vegas. And that's not going to be easy. You see, we made Las Vegas. The other strongholds existed before we came around, but we built Las Vegas from the ground up, just like London. It's young, but it's still one of the strongest cities out there."

"Are you sure about that?" Rosie asked, walking downstairs. "I doubt the Hunters wouldn't have some kind of contingency plans."

"We're not fighting the Order of Van Helsing here. Hell, the Vatican is smarter than these idiots, even they know better than to start an extinction war." Jade told her. "In all likelihood, they never planned what to do if you guys destroyed the swords." Tori nodded, but Rosie didn't look so sure.

"I don't know, there's a lot of Hunters in this White Court of theirs, I'm sure they've got some intelligent people in it." She said. Jade shrugged.

"Intelligent or not, they're not going to fulfill their little plans." She said, gulping down the last of the blood. "Worst case scenario, they clean out San Francisco and are too exhausted to continue on the war."

"And the best case scenario?" Tori asked curiously. Jade grinned.

"We kill every last one of them and the Hunters have to start over from scratch in a few generations." She said, tossing the cup in the sink. Rosie grinned, conjuring up a glass of wine and raising it in the air.

"I'll drink to that." She said with a chuckle, taking a sip. "It'll be nice to have them out of our hair for a while." Tori frowned, a little uncomfortable with all this talk of death, but said nothing. Suddenly, the phone rang. "You've still got a landline?" Rosie asked, raising an eyebrow. Jade ignored her and picked up the phone.

"Yeah?" She asked.

"Turn on the TV to a news station." Lori said, her voice hoarse, before hanging up. Jade frowned, then reached over and turned the TV by the sink on.

"Breaking news!" A female reporter said. "San Francisco has been hit with three nuclear missiles. I repeat, the city of San Francisco has been hit with three nuclear missiles." Jade, Rosie, and Tori all stared at each other, horrified. "So far, nobody has stepped forward to claim responsibility for this atrocity, and the government has not yet discovered the culprits."

"They didn't." Rosie said quietly. "They wouldn't..."

"What, the Hunters wouldn't go for a total destruction policy?" Jade growled. "Why not, it's not like they've ever cared about collateral damage before."

"But still..." Rosie said. "They wouldn't launch a nuclear strike on a city full of vanilla mortals." Suddenly, a beam of light filled the room.

"I'm afraid they did." A young woman said as the light disappeared. Jade's eyes widened at the girl's plate armor and French accent.

"Joan?" She asked in disbelief.