As soon as we walk out of the restaurant I feel the air around us getting hotter. Maybe I’m just feeling a bit feverish or something, or maybe it’s being around so many people, but it’s warmer than it should be out here.

“Hey, Lysander… is it just me, or does it feel kind of hot out here right now?”

He’s not in plate armor anymore, so whatever change in temperature I’m feeling should be similar to whatever he’s feeling. “Ah… I do notice a slight heat.”

“Slight?!” It’s getting harder and harder to breathe, but all he can say is that it’s a little hot? “Man, what?”

“No, no, worry not, I can handle it… at present…”

“It’s getting hotter, isn’t it? Seriously, don’t act tough, just admit it!”

Lysander nods, brushing sweat from his forehead. “Fine, yes, it is. Let us go to a shadier spot —”

He stops mid-sentence to stare at the rooftop of a nearby restaurant. I follow his gaze to see what the hell he’s looking at. It’s a person, which isn’t too unusual to see on a rooftop these days, but…

This person’s holding something that looks a lot like a firearm. I squint, but I can't tell what it is exactly… whatever it is, they're pointing it at us.

"Lysander!" I shout. "Watch out!"

The temperature skyrockets — I swear I'm sweating out all the water in my body. At this point, if this keeps up, I'll end up being cooked alive…

Whatever that doohickey the rooftop shooter's pointing at us is, it's doing something real bad. It's gotta be linked, all this… this whatever! But why can't I see or hear any projectiles? It's almost like whatever they're shooting is invisible, inaudible, intangible… almost like it's not a projectile, but a disturbance of some kind.

Wait! A disturbance… like a wave. A wave gun — what kind of wave? It can't be light or sound, there's nothing to hear or see. If it was a microwave gun we'd be cooked to death already, and gravitational waves would be much more effective at close range. Why, then, is that person not getting closer? I don't want them to, but it would make sense, right? I mean, only a fucking idiot stands this far away from their target when they're using a close-range weapon. Right?

Shit! No! This makes no sense, but — these temperature fluctuations might be caused by a heat gun. A heat gun has a fan in it, though, and the heating element combined with the fan shouldn't be strong enough to heat something so far away… there's gotta be something else going on. Hot air rises, and we're closer to sea level than the person on the rooftop is, so how…

The heat spikes again. I look next to me and see the core column of the outdoor heater glowing white-hot. Damn it! There's no time to be thinking about the logic behind this, we have to act!

I push Lysander out of the way of the overheating brazier, just in time before it melts into sparkling rubble. We tumble onto the ground beneath our feet, me on top of him.

"Sir Chaikovsky!" he yelps. "Is everything all right?"

"No, dude, this shit's all left! We gotta get the hell out of here, fast!"

I hear a maniacal cackling — it's the person on the rooftop, who is no longer on the rooftop and is now standing in the middle of the footpath.

"A shame it didn't work, I was hoping to finish it quick," they say. "But, you have to admit that was a good effort, right?"

Lysander springs to his feet, letting me roll over without helping me up. "State thy name and motives at once, villain! Wherefore were thee attempting to kill us?!"

"Me?" they say. The gunner is a woman, dressed in an oil-stained lab coat with epaulettes on its shoulders and black patent-leather boots. On her waist, she sports a belt of glass vials containing solutions in different shades of red, and on her hands she wears a pair of gardener's gloves splattered with oil. Her hair is frizzy, unruly, with streaks of rusty red scattered haphazardly throughout. A pair of sturdy-looking goggles rests over her bloodshot eyes, and her mouth is twisted into a wide grin. "Well, I was trying to be nice, but it looks like I'll be dragging out your fate a bit longer."

"Thy name, now!"

"Okay, okay, don't be so pushy." She extracts a vial from the belt. "Dr. Espelette van Pasedrilla, PhD — if you need proof of my credentials, ask anyone at the Central District University who their favorite lecturer is."

"Madam van Pasedrilla—"

"It's 'Doctor'," says Espelette, pointing her heat gun at Lysander's face. "If you forget that, I'll make sure your pretty face will remember it."

"Away with thee!" Lysander shouts. Somehow, he's got his gauntlets and broadsword back, and now he's using them to defend himself against the crazy professor. Sorry, doctor.

Dr. van Pasedrilla guffaws, swinging her gun back and forth as Lysander tries in vain to disarm her. "You're wearing armor? Did nobody ever warn you not to bring a knife to a gunfight?"

Ha ha, very funny, a sword versus a gun. Lysander doesn't respond, instead continuing with his barrage to try and find a weak point. van Pasedrilla dodges every strike effortlessly — after all, Lysander's going to overheat a lot faster now that he's got some armor on. Don't even get me started on how the sword's probably conducting heat; he's not exactly thinking in optimal conditions.

“See, this is great," the doctor cackles. "You’re practically serving yourself to me on a silver platter! Looks like I get lunch and dinner for free!!" 

The hell? Is she gonna eat us? I'm not thinking straight either. What?

"Damn thee!" Lysander cries. His mouth moves, but I can't tell what he's saying. Immediately, the air around us grows colder — and I see water vapor condense then freeze onto his sword. At least, that's what I think is happening, because it happened so quickly I might be hallucinating extra steps to what is probably more of a deposition process than anything. The chill is a relief, though. Must be his water magic cooling down the air.

"Huh, interesting trick," van Pasedrilla says. "It's not going to work!"

She tosses her vial on the ground next to me, and it shatters into a million pieces, spilling its contents all over the floor. A bit of it gets on my leg — it hurts like hell. Unmyelinated, unencapsulated nociceptors start to scream, and I unintentionally hiss as I bear the great pain.

The liquid in the vial evaporates into a gas before my very eyes — it's opaque and leaves a burning hot sensation in my mouth. It's spicy… must be capsaicin…! This lunatic's gimmick is chili! Shit, I thought my spice tolerance was alright, but this is way too much! To make matters worse, the gas is less transparent than regular air, so it's almost like a smokescreen… Well played, doctor, now none of us can see shit. Damn high refractive index this is, huh?

"Let's see how your little popsicle cuts through this!" Espelette laughs.

Lysander's busy coughing all the mucus in his lungs out, and Dr. Pasedrilla is preoccupied with gloating over her victory to come. Now seems like a good moment to get to safety. Once I'm sure nobody is watching me, I crawl away from the fight and prop myself up on a table in the outdoor dining area of a nearby restaurant. How the hell am I supposed to help him fight back like this? 

From where I'm sitting, I can make out some snatches of whatever conversation they're having and the sounds of battle behind it.

"Word spreads quickly in my circles. I heard the bigwig merger target himself was in town, and you made no attempt to disguise yourself at the entrance. Ahaha!"

“Yes! Kill you and use you for fertilizer, of course! Who needs you, anyway, otherworlder — we’ve enough to take care of on our own!”

"The resistance, you fool, the resistance!"

Seems like Dr. van Pasedrilla is doing most of the talking; at least, all the talking that I can hear. Her voice is so loud, people the next city over could probably listen in.

"Why? My colleagues back in the resistance are all too sweet to do something like this, so I’ll be even sweeter and do all the dirty work for them! I hope they’re not too bitter over needing my help, or else I’d be very salty too. Ahahaha!"

"Of course, that weaver at the top is lying! Only a fool would believe anything he says!"

"What, show you mercy?! If you listened to that kakistocrat, you're no better than him! Moron, carpetbagger, outworlder!"

After a while, the sounds of fighting die down, replaced with a quiet shuffling. Still can't see shit, though; the capsaicin fog lingers still.

"You really… Let's talk, then."

Then, silence.