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Taako wakes up at the beginning of Loop A Million-and-Fuckity-Something, and strongly considers just staying there, sprawled out on the ground.
“Well, that was weird,” says Magnus, somewhere to his left.
This doesn’t normally happen; usually, when he tries to do something badass to end whatever encounter they’re in, life sort of gives him a little extra luck to get it done, so they don’t have to waste a bunch of time going again and again until he finally gets it right. Taako had been really fucking excited to win this one. He’d even had a nice irreverent one-liner thought up for when he used Bigby’s Hand to hurl the Chance Lance dramatically at June’s bubble.
But apparently Istus is better at giving out fun mystery bags than she is at cutting him some slack and letting him do something narratively satisfying. Isaak had caught onto him before he could even cast, and lightning’d them all to hell. That has to be one of the worst deaths they’ve done. His teeth are still buzzing a little.
“So, what now?” asks Magnus, starting to get up. “Do we do something different this time?”
“I don’t know,” says Merle, dusting dry red clay off the butt of his jortpers. “It was going pretty good until we all died.”
“Yeah, that’s what you like to hear,” says Taako, still having a great time chilling on the ground.
“Well, do you have any bright ideas?” asks Magnus, nudging Taako with the toe of his boot. “Some way to get an edge on him?”
Taako pulls the brim of his hat down over his eyes and breathes deeply. It’s easier to key into stuff when he’s in his hat. That fight didn’t seem like a puzzle to solve or a chance to use their creative thinking skills. It felt familiar, like something he’s read or seen before. Maybe they could try to resist it, but he feels like if that was supposed to happen, the plastic sheriff’s badge gimmick would’ve worked.
So, they should lean into it.
“We do it again,” Taako informs the inside of his hat, “but we do better this time.”
“What do you-“
He feels it when the bolt of lightning shoot over their heads and reluctantly puts his hat on right. Sitting up straight, he squints into the distance to see the shape of Sheriff Isaak running towards them, kicking up a dramatic dust trail at his heels. Magnus rears back with the Chance Lance, but Taako just gives him an irritated, “No,” and Magnus actually listens. Which is cool.
Like Taako thought, the lighting was just a warning shot. Isaak doesn’t fire again as he approaches, pulling up a few feet away with his wand at the ready and his breathing heavy. “Looks like this’ll take a while,” he says.
“It doesn’t have to,” says Magnus. “Seriously, if you’ll just take a second and listen to us-“
“I’m done listening,” Isaak sneers. “I know the score. I know what my future is, now. I’m gonna spend the rest of these days keeping you away from that cup.”
Magnus starts to make another impassioned plea, but Takko cuts him off with a loud sigh and uses Merle’s head to leverage himself up. “You’re not wrong,” he says. He tried to add ‘partner’ to the end, but he loves himself too much to do that. “And if that’s the way it’s gotta be, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have some dignity about it.”
“What do you mean?” Isaak, Merle, and Magnus all ask, and then sort of glare at each other.
“You know what I mean,” Taako replies, getting into character a little more. “A shootout.”
Isaak’s eyes narrow. Magnus frowns. Merle chuckles eagerly.
“If we’re just gonna spend the rest of our time trying to kill each other,” Taako continues, “I say we try to die well. You and me. You win, these two wait around to get swallowed up by the worm. I win, we go after the cup. Rinse and repeat.”
Shit, he’s good at this. Charismatic as hell.
Isaak is clearly loving it. “I see your point, Sheriff Taako,” he says. “Be nice to know there’s still a scrap of honor in this world. But how do I know your friends won’t come after me when you’re dead?”
Okay, rude, but Taako rolls with it. He points at Magnus. “He’s lawful good,” says Taako. “And he…” He looks at Merle for a few seconds. “He’ll probably just try to come up with a pun that doesn’t make sense and spend the rest of the hour laughing about it.”
Merle nods. “I think it’s what you’d want.”
“It’s not.”
Isaak scratches his stubble, thoughtfully. “Alright. Alright. Ten paces and we draw. No barriers, no shields, no dodging, no nothing; a good, clean fight. We understand each other?”
Taako sticks his hand out. “We do,” he says, trying to add some huskiness to his voice. It just comes out like he has fantasy laryngitis, but still. It adds to the ambiance, he thinks.
He and Isaak shake on it.
Manus and Merle are being surprisingly quick to play along; it’s almost like they trust him. Merle pulls out a harmonica (which he insists he’s had over the course of the entire adventure, and has simply never been mentioned), and Magnus volunteers to count paces.
He and Isaak stand back-to-back. “I can’t say I’ve changed my mind about you three,” says Isaak, “but it’s good to know you have some respect for the bigger things in life.”
“The law,” Taako replies, with just a hint of wistfulness. Isaak doesn’t say anything back, so he starts worrying he overdid it, but Magnus starts counting off paces before they can really settle into an awkward moment.
“One!”
Taako takes a lunging step, the biggest he can take. His butt muscles protest. He ignores them.
“Two!”
He takes another. Has he ever done a squat? Or a lunge? Or a half-lunge? Surely he’s done one of them once, but it doesn’t feel like it. Steps three through six are pure gluteal agony, but all he focuses on is getting as far away from Isaak as possible. On step seven, he kinda starts to dig the burn. On step eight, he kinda starts to not dig it so much.
“Nine!”
He gives himself a break and takes a normal, Taako-sized step, but when he sees how little ground he covers, he knows his but is going to have to make it one more lunge.
There’s palpable excitement in Magnus’s voice. “Ten!”
Taako does the last lower body exercise of his entire life.
“Draw!”
Taako whirls around, and for just a second, it’s like being in the Temple of Istus again. He can see sweat frozen on Isaak’s face, the long shadows they’re casting onto the red earth, the elegant line of Isaak’s arm reaching for his holster. The wind has blown the brim of Taako’s hat up, and caught his skirt in a swoosh. He can feel the desperate sturdiness radiating out of Refuge, the blind hope that someday the good guys will win, and they can all survive without trying so hard.
He thinks he even understands Isaak right now. The whole tragic story of Isaak and Jack and June, the lost love in Isaak’s face, the all-consuming obsession with keeping mirrors of his own sins away from the Temporal Chalice. It’s not quite enough to make you forgive him, maybe, but it’s enough to be confusing.
It’s a stunning moment of clarity.
And then Taako absolutely casts Blink.
A greyscale version of Isaak lets out a disappointed yell as his lightning arcs through the space where Taako used to be. Taako gives him an invisible shrug and saunters over while Isaak calls out that he’s a liar and a cheat, opening up his Umbrastaff and twirling it over his head.
“I know you’re still kind of a mystery or whatever,” he says to the umbrella canopy over his head. “But you got any spells in there to end on a cool note?”
It kind of quivers in his hand, so he lets Blink wear off, and then lets the staff do his thing.
It’s a spell he’s never seen before; it sends liquid flames pouring out, creeping towards Isaak. He yelps and stumbles away from the lava stream creeping towards him. The flames pour faster and faster, making the clay burn beneath them, and then it’s like the fire evaporates. The air around them is exploding, snapping and popping, but the Umbrastaff is kind enough to shield Taako, Merle, and Magnus.
When it’s over, Isaak is smoking on the ground.
Taako takes a moment to stay in the vibe, blowing smoke away from the Umbrastaff and giving it a cool twirl before he tucks it under his arm, murmuring, “Thanks, old buddy.”
He turns to Merle and Magnus, who are staring at him without any expression. Merle breaks it first, his face splitting into a big grin as he throws his arms up and says, “Awesome!”
“Yeah,” says Taako.
Magnus’s face, on the other hand, splits into a frown. “You cheated,” he says.
“Oh, don’t get all high and mighty with me, Ruff Boi,” Taako replies, rolling his eyes. “Besides, I didn’t cheat. I just let myself win.”
They let the moral difference hang in the air for a second before they realize that time is a-wastin’. As they walk over to Roswell, Merle says, “So we’re really just doing it again?”
“Yeah,” says Taako. “I took care of the ‘better’ part for you.”