Maria doesn\u2019t bother charging the gun. She just fires it, again and again. The red light blinks infra-red, then ultra-red, then finally a furious gun-wroth carmine. Her umbrella fumes with its agonies. A beeping sound arises from it, escalating ever higher in pitch until it is an unholy shriek to counterbalance the spiritual glory of the holy setting of the gun.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo!\u201d cries Maria. \u201cNo! I will not! I will not be the space princess assassin that never killed anybody! Die! Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, why. won\u2019t. anybody. Ever. Just. Die?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were all those people in the other houses in our neighborhood!\u201d says Tom.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all your fault, Jane!\u201d cries Maria. \u201cThey will come for you. They will kill you. They will raze your world<\/i>, Jane! The Fan Hoeng will destroy you. You, you, you. This world, all to end you!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
She is howling. She is broken. She sinks to her knees. She holds her umbrella up above her head. Then, even though it is indoors, she opens it.<\/p>\n
The gun explodes.<\/p>\n
There is dust, and there is rubble, and the ceiling falls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maria doesn\u2019t bother charging the gun. She just fires it, again and again. The red light blinks infra-red, then ultra-red, then finally a furious gun-wroth carmine. Her umbrella fumes with its agonies. A beeping sound arises from it, escalating ever higher in pitch until it is an unholy shriek to counterbalance the spiritual glory of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-4011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-4","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Maria8.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4011"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6325,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions\/6325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4011"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=4011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}