The American Spirit

The plaza was filled with thousands of silent citizens.

Leo stood on a raised platform, chained to a pillar of obsidian. The Seven Elders stood before him, their porcelain masks gleaming.

"Behold the agent of Chaos," the Head Elder intoned. "See how he ends."

Leo looked at the crowd. He saw the fear. But he also saw the faint, lingering traces of his "Freedom" tag on the gates. They hadn't been able to scrub it completely.

"Hey!" Leo shouted. His voice was hoarse. "You want to know why they hate color?"

"Silence him!" the Elder screeched.

Vesper moved.

She had been standing guard at the flank. She spun, her glass sword severing the chains binding Leo’s hands.

"Now, Sketch!" she screamed.

Leo didn't hesitate. He dropped to his knees on the white marble platform.

He didn't have his cans. He didn't have his neon. He had blood, charcoal, and twenty-eight years of repressed American rage.

He slammed the charcoal onto the ground.

He drew with violence. He didn't draw a delicate portrait. He drew an engine.

He sketched the jagged lines of a V8 engine block. He sketched wheels wreathed in smoke. He sketched the screaming beak of an eagle, not as a noble bird, but as a predator.

* Intention is fuel.*

He poured his frustration into the lines. The frustration of every "No." Every unpaid bill. Every sneer.

"Wake up!" Leo roared, slapping his bloody hand onto the drawing.

The magic didn't hiss this time. It exploded.

The charcoal lines tore themselves off the ground, expanding into three-dimensional reality. They didn't fill in with color; they filled in with *fire*.

A construct of black soot and red neon fire materialized around Leo. It took the form of a monstrous, spectral muscle car—a amalgamation of a Mustang and a tank, with the wings of a thunderbird.

The engine roared. It was the sound of a Detroit assembly line amplified by magic.

The Elders screamed as the sound wave hit them, cracking their porcelain masks.

"Get in!" Leo yelled to Vesper.

Vesper vaulted into the passenger seat of the construct. The car hovered on wheels of spinning fire.

The masks fell away from the Elders. Beneath, they were voids—gaping maws of static and teeth.

"Kill them!" the Lead Beast shrieked.

The shadows of the city rose up to fight.

Leo slammed his foot on the spectral gas pedal. "Eat road, you monochrome freaks!"

The car surged forward. It plowed through the shadow-guards, the burning wheels leaving trails of permanent, un-erasable red fire on the marble.

Vesper stood up in the seat, swinging her sword. But as she swung, Leo reached out and touched her armor.

* Transfer.*

He pushed his imagination into her. Her silver armor turned "Candy Apple Red." Her glass sword turned into a blade of "Electric Blue" lightning.

She laughed. It was a jagged, rusty sound, but it was a laugh. She cleaved a shadow-beast in two, and it exploded into confetti.

"To the Spire!" Vesper yelled, pointing at the central tower that sustained the gray dome over the city.

"Hold on!" Leo cranked the wheel.

The car drifted, tires screaming, and launched off a ramp of rubble. They flew over the plaza, over the heads of the stunned citizens.

Leo aimed the car directly at the Spire of Silence.

"This is for the student loans!" Leo screamed.

They collided with the tower.