It was an autumn Saturday evening and pouring rain in the downtown core of Neo-Vancouver.
Pizza Palace was a multi-leveled building constructed from brick walls and tall glass windows. Light exuded from within, creating a glowing visage of the whole. A red carpet led down a wide, torch-lined alley from Liberty Street, up a short flight of steps to the golden doors of the entrance. This was a classy establishment.
Inside was a network of tables ranging from booths hugging the walls to a series of wooden islands between them. A spiral staircase led to the second floor, where there was a Happicade arcade room and separate lounge and bar decorated with mirrors and paintings of mountains. It was a fantastic looking restaurant, inside and out. Unique; it wasn’t a chain. Clean, cozy and well lit, surpassing the reputation of any normal Italian restaurant.
The place was at peak business hours, packed with happy patrons. Soft jazz was playing. The servers were all beautiful women who were dressed very nicely. Dresses, jewelry, tactfully applied make-up, nylons and heels were rampant. Some of them had sneakers and socks on. The dress code was beyond casual, setting a high standard for the eclectic clientele populating the place. The weather accentuated the huddled comraderie between the customers and staff.
He was sitting in a booth with a gorgeous lady, her generous bosom floating on the rim of a blue dress top. He had short, slicked black hair with a highlighting white tuft, a white tuxedo jacket and neat mustache. He was sipping a glass of champagne.
A pizza arrived with the server on a circular wooden plank. It was a margherita drizzled with balsamic glaze over pesto-coated prawns and leaves of basil. The pretty server said, “enjoy,” and glided away.
“This looks marvelous, Voltaz,” the blue woman said.
“Sapphire, darling, that’s why I wanted to bring you here. Pizza Palace never fails to deliver the highest quality,” Voltaz said.
As he reached for a slice, an oval sapphire ring on his index finger caught the light and shone, iridescent. Sapphire’s attention couldn’t help but be drawn to its mesmerizing effect. He claimed the item was a display of devotion to her beauty, flattering her. However, there was something mysterious about it. She had never seen it before. The origins of where it came from were unknown to her. Politely, she left the topic untouched further than the slight information Voltaz had chosen to divulge. The conversational pleasantries took a hiatus there as they both ate, reveling in the glory of their meal and comfort of each other’s company. It was a nice moment; safe, warm, and shielded from the torrential downpour outside.
A man walked in from the front door, dark and wet, wearing a black trench coat. His chiseled, ghoulish face turned. Darkened, soulless eyes scanned the room seriously. He didn’t look like he was there for pizza and a pint.
Voltaz noticed this briefly and turned his attention back to his date. A glob of bocconcini fell off Sapphire’s food and into her cleavage as she was aiming for her mouth. She giggled.
“Oh my lord!” She said. She put down the half-eaten slice and began dabbing at herself with a napkin and fiddling with her breasts, trying to fish the piece of cheese out from its spelunking, “and here you thought you had a classy date on your hands!”
“Sapphire, it would take much more than a rogue piece of cheese to spoil your class,” Voltaz said. The ring shone again and the bocconcini rolled between her breasts out of the dress, easily popping onto the table with little help from her fingers.
Voltaz looked over at the entranceway again. The man in the trench coat was gone.
“Excuse me, I’m going to wash up,” Sapphire said. She stood and began walking towards the washroom, shifting through the formidable crowd. Her hips gyrated hypnotically as she moved on heels that flexed her legs and buttocks. Voltaz saw the awe she inspired in other people as she gracefully moved past.
The man in the trench coat was sitting at the bar now, nursing a pint, a pickleback present in shotglasses. He draped his coat over the back of the seat, wearing a red plaid flannel underneath. His head turned, glancing over at Voltaz, who looked away before their eyes could meet.
Voltaz looked down at his ring. He put down the piece of pizza, appetite suddenly diminished, and took a gulp of champagne.
Sapphire returned, looking more glamorous than ever.
“Sorry about that. How rude of me!” She said.
“Quite forgiven, my dear,” Voltaz said.
“Now, then. Where was I?”
She resumed her meal.
An ambulance approached with a droning siren and drove by, causing the cars on the street to struggle out of the way outside the window. The loudness rendered speech inaudible for the time it took to pass. As Voltaz turned back from looking out the window, his sweeping line of sight caught eye contact with the man at the bar for a long second. Then he faced Sapphire.
“Is something the matter?” She said, “you look a bit frazzled all of the sudden.”
“Judging by that ambulance, something is the matter, for someone,” Voltaz said, “everything is perfectly satisfactory with me.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want anything to spoil our lovely evening together,” Sapphire said.
“I’ll see to it that nothing does,” Voltaz said. He smiled.
Voltaz looked over at the bar again. The man had disappeared, but his coat was still there. Sapphire looked suspicious now.
“Is something over there bothering you?” She said.
“Not at all. I’m simply perusing the interesting clientele of the establishment. It’s such an exciting environment,” Voltaz said.
“It is very amusing.” Sapphire seemed placated. She started eating again. Their pizza was half devoured now. Her perfume was invigorating. The aroma was intensifying the overall impact of her presence. Even her eyes appeared to be sapphire colored.
The sapphire ring was cycling through rainbow shades.
“What an exorbitant jewel that is,” Sapphire said, noticing, “I’ve never seen anything like it. The way it plays with the light like that.”
“It’s a very rare sapphire. I had to go to great lengths to get it.”
“Are you going to tell me what those great lengths were?”
“No.”
Sapphire grunted, cutely.
A low rumbling sound enveloped the room and the table began to shake. The cacophony of glasses clamoring and plates and silverware clinking together in unison spawned in a slow auditory ascent. Then it faded away.
“What was that?” Sapphire said.
“That, was an earthquake, I believe,” Voltaz said.
There was a shocked hush in the room as everyone realized what had happened.
“Just a minor tremor, nothing to worry about,” Voltaz said.
“That scared me,” Sapphire said.
The server came over. Their glasses were nearly empty.
“Whoa! That was a little scary!” She said “no harm done though, it looks like. Can I get you two some more champagne?”
Voltaz gazed at Sapphire, gauging what she wanted. He decided.
“Yes, please. That would be lovely,” Voltaz said. They weren’t finished their pizza yet and he had promised nothing was going to ruin the evening. He made certain to deliver.
“Sounds good,” the server said and walked away.
Voltaz’s hands were on the table. Sapphire could see that his ring had lost some of its blue color. It was clearer now. She thought she could see something embedded inside the jewel. Voltaz moved his hands off the table.
The rumbling began again. Voltaz saw the look of sinking desperation in Sapphire’s eyes. This time the quake didn’t fade away. It got worse. Within seconds the entire room was shaking violently. People were screaming. The tables were rattling. Glasses were smashing. Bottles were falling off the bar shelves, burying the bartender in an onslaught of blunt hits and shattering glass. An extravagant chandelier high above was swinging wildly. The chain holding it snapped off. It plummeted, landing on the server who was frozen standing on the way to bring the champagne, squashing the poor girl in a kaleidoscopic spectacle of glimmering glass and blood. The thunderous sound of the earthquake had drowned out all else. TVs were falling from their perches. People were diving for cover and hiding underneath the tables, grasping on and trying to hold them steady for protection, praying for it to end.
It didn’t end. It intensified. The roof imploded. An avalanche of broken wood, asbestos, concrete and metal fell to the bottom floor, crushing many of the horrified patrons scrambling for protection. A bolt of lightning struck across the newly opened sky.
Sapphire was alive. She was protected beneath the debris covered table, a look of distraught confusion on her face. Voltaz was under there too. He looked up.
The man in plaid was standing in a dust cloud rising from the rubble as thunder erupted. Everyone else in the place was hurt, dead or hiding. The landscape had become a jagged rock precipice strewn with destruction. The quake had stopped. The music was over. A chorus of aghast sobbing and rain were the only sounds.
Voltaz got out from under the table. The plaid shirt man unbuttoned his flannel and tossed it down a chasm. He faced Voltaz across the decorated distance of bodies and wreckage.
“You know what I’m here for,” the man said.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Voltaz said.
“You wouldn’t have given it to me if I asked nicely.”
“I’m still not going to give it to you, Chronus.”
“I expect to take it.”
Chronus had a machete in a sheath strapped to his chest. His skin was deathly pale, dark eyes flaming, a flicker of evil from inside. The costly use of his incantation had visibly drained him. Voltaz was still fresh.
“That particular microchip you’re carrying is the property of the Ochot Spacecruiser Rhinoceros!” Chronus snarled, “my Ochot employersarepissed, Voltaz! They need those launch codes for the Axial Ordinance!”
Ambulance sirens whined out in the distance.
Chronus leapt over the chasm and unleashed a flurry of flying punches on Voltaz, but the blows were deflected with a mystic pulse shield, blasting Chronus off the attack in an expulsion of wild blue energy, sending him flailing down the chasm. He landed far beneath on a plateau of protruding earth suspended above a dark abyss.
“You stole that chip! You have no right to it!” Chronus yelled upwards, voice reverberating in the echo chamber.
Chronus’s eyes gleamed red, expending his final flair. His feet were smoking as he pounced an uncanny distance upwards towards the opening of the pit, intent on escape. Voltaz couldn’t let him do that. He countered with a descending dropkick to the face, colliding in midair, dropping them both down on the plateau.The rumble returned. The chasm walls began closing.
Chronus pulled the machete out from the sheath. Voltaz lunged to grab it, but Chronus savagely swiped. Voltaz groaned.
His hand was slashed off at the wrist and fell to the dirt. The hand with the sapphire. Blood leaked copiously from the open-veined stump.
The walls stopped moving.
Chronus bent to snatch the sapphire. Voltaz kicked his own hand aside before he could and uppercut Chronus in the face, crunching his nose cartilage, knocking him to his knees. Crackling blue electricity spiraled around Voltaz’s leg as he followed with a superkick to Chronus’s temple, decapitating him. A geyser of blood squirted from between the shoulders as the body flew over the edge and disappeared into the blackness. So did the head.
Voltaz picked up his hand, put it in his pocket and began climbing out. When he reached the top, Sapphire helped him over the ledge.
“You said nothing would ruin our night!” Sapphire said.
He laughed, took off his tuxedo jacket and bandaged his wound with it.