Lainey and the Magicians (First Draft)

Chapter 40

 Lainey played a few more songs and had gotten all the money she needed to get to Mars. After her last song, she went backstage. A tall dark-eyed man with a blindfold and a gag was backstage. He punched her! "Lainey, use me! You can take this man down," her Rider nature said into her mind. He had an anti-magic pistol and his body was lined with salt. Could she still fight him? Lainey coughed. Lainey said the magic words to her Rider powers. She had been limping on the ground! She transformed into a Rider! Her arm was dangling on her body on the ground. It wasn't broken. She had magically healed from her injures.

 The man was running away from off the stage of her bag with all the money in it! Lainey shapeshifted into Karma from earlier and she went a different way to beat the man at his own game. "Lainey's a Rider," the man yelled. People gasped. Some people pulled out guns.

 "Where's Lainey?" Someone asked.

 "She's shapeshifted into one of us. Look at every corner," the dark-eyed man answered.

 Lainey came across the dark-eyed man and was pretending to mind her own business. "Rider or not, give Lainey her bag back. It's not right to steal thousands of dollars," Lainey said as Karma.

 The dark-eyed man's face suddenly shifted for a second into a pumpkin head of eyes glowing with lightning. It faded just as quickly as it had come. He clutched the bag tighter. The salt ripped through Lainey. She couldn't hold together her shapeshifting much longer. Someone would see her in her Rider form soon enough. Nathan, Marco, and his friends raced over to help Lainey against the man. "The gang's come together, huh. Nevada Vigilante, his band/friends, and Stinger," he motioned to Nathan.

 Wait, Nathan was a musician like her? That made life even better. Lainey's heart sped up.

 "I have a magic license and I'm not afraid to use it," Nathan said. His voice was modulated.

 "Magic? That explains it! They're all magicians! Why aren't you using your powers to save the world?" The dark-eyed man screamed.

 "I'm afraid of Pumpkin," Nathan answered. He must have been trying to keep his cover.

 "Afraid, you shouldn't be! This is all on security cameras! You know Lainey's a Rider?" The dark-eyed man rhetorically questioned. The dark-eyed man pulled out an anti-magic pistol and pointed it at everyone in the group. His gun was set to chain reaction. The salt was piercing through Lainey! She tried to stand her ground and not run. She shut her eyes. She needed an anti-salt barrier. She cast a spell inside her mind as a shield. Some salt would still get through the invisible shield, but it was better than nothing at all. She wasn't willing to take risks to defeat the dark-eyed man and get her bag back from him. He had a safety on his gun.

 No one who didn't have magic would be killed. She could turn someone into a lookalike of herself and bring them to the dark-eyed man to shoot. What if he turned the safety off?

 "Don't mess with Lainey," a man in the crowd came. He had a tattoo of Lainey and her full body on her arm. It was Koplis Asher. He was the teenager with the gun in the erased past. A mob followed behind him. Everyone still wondered where Lainey was. Where had she gone?

 The dark-eyed man fired at Lainey. She jumped and dodged. The shot came back around! She needed it to hit her on a spot where it wouldn't break her shapeshifting. What if salt was inside the bullet? Massive amounts of salt could dispel her from this place and have her head somewhere else? Earlier, Lainey had a taken a pill in her bag so she could pass the Rider and Magician detectors at the front of the club. Life was that dangerous. Sometimes, the Magicians had to use common thugs and non-magical criminals to accomplish their goals of domination. 

 Lainey swung by the back of the club and had the bullet chase her into the woods! A tree collapsed onto another tree far away! She ran back into the club! The Rider powers kept her energetic. She came back in as herself from the backstage and she pretended to be caught in a ball of pain, clutching her chest with her limping arms. A bouncer found her.

 "I found Lainey. She's limping!" The bouncer called to a medic.

 Lainey had been patched up. Thankfully, she still had marks on her body from the punch. When she came back out, Nathan or as his music name is called, Stinger, handed her the bag back. Marco and his friends asked if she was okay. She told them the story. Nathan had already assumed that she was the one who had shapeshifted into Karma. What were the Time Representatives thinking about right now? What if the real Karma found out? Well, Riders shapeshifted into people sometimes so it wouldn't be a surprise for him to hear.

 Lainey said farewell to everyone at the club.