#Half&Half #demonslayer #supermariobros3 #flashfiction

Episode One: “Hot Lead, Cold Spirits”
Genre: Western / Action / Supernatural / Anime Fusion

The sun hung like a flaming coin over the cracked mesa horizon. A dry wind blew across the red dust fields of Ghostpost Gulch, stirring up tumble-hexes — cursed brush that howled softly as they rolled. The kind of place legends went to rot and bad spirits came to feed.

Two figures rode into town side-by-side, boots in stirrups, hex guns on hips, skin kissed dark and gleaming with sweat under the brim of low-set hats.

Dee Dee Thorne, older sister, ex-marshal turned bounty slinger, rode tall on a chocobird named Memphis, a golden-feathered beast with attitude to match. Slung across Dee Dee’s back was a massive, violet-barreled Magnum Arcanum — Void-type, known as Epitaph. Her gift: Annihilation Pulse — one shot, one erasure.

Mona Thorne, younger, sharper, with glitter dust on her cheeks and gum in her mouth, flicked her wind-type Arcanum Jinxfire, spinning it on one finger. Mona was a licensed Spirit Jinxer — half sorceress, half gunslinger, and full troublemaker.

They trotted past a rusted welcome sign that read:

WELCOME TO GHOSTPOST — Population: Variable

At the saloon, silence hit hard.

Spirits here didn’t whisper. They stared. The whole town had been possessed — not violently, not yet — but occupied like a home where the owner never noticed the locks had changed.

Dee Dee dismounted first. Her boots hit the dirt like thunder. Mona followed, blowing a bubble, then popping it loud just to annoy the spirits.

The bartender behind the warped counter was pale, too still. His eyes glowed a faint green, unnatural.

“Y’all serve cold milk?” Mona asked with a grin.

The bartender didn’t blink.

Dee Dee stepped in. “We’re lookin’ for a spirit wrangler named Hexwell Dodge. Tall, mean, used to ride with the Hallow Men.”

A scraping sound answered. Chairs dragging. Dozens of masked figures rose from booths, silent, twitching. They were draped in prairie rags and wearing hex-glass masks — each possessed by a different kind of ghost.

“They ain’t drinkin’, they waitin’,” Dee Dee muttered. “Town’s gone full haunt.”

Suddenly, a voice echoed from upstairs. Gravelly. Familiar. Mocking.

“Well, lookie here. Thorne girls done rode into town like they’re chapter one in some legend.”

Hexwell Dodge, former spirit marshal, now turncoat, stepped out onto the saloon’s upper balcony. His coat was stitched from captured spirits, writhing faces pressed against the fabric like trapped thunderclouds.

“Long time, Dee Dee,” he drawled. “You still wearin’ Daddy’s ghost gun?”

Dee Dee didn’t flinch. “Still shooting straighter than you ever could.”

He laughed and drew a pair of bone-white pistols — each one a Frost-type Arcanum, cursed to draw the warmth from a room.

“Let’s see if that’s true.”

The shootout began.

The saloon erupted in ghostlight.

Mona flung herself behind a piano, snapping her fingers. Jinxfire hummed and released a Time Fray, freezing three specter-masked outlaws mid-stride. She double-tapped them — the bullets disrupting the masks before the spirits could flee.

Dee Dee, crouched behind the bar, racked Epitaph and felt the gun speak in her head:

“Void thirsts. Grant erasure?”

She whispered, “Not yet, darlin’.”

She needed a straight line to Hexwell, but he kept vanishing into smoke and reappearing, dual-firing frost bullets that left rime on the floor and made the air crackle.

“Don’t get fancy!” Dee Dee shouted. “We clear the masks, then Hex!”

Mona somersaulted over a table, boots kicking up a whorl of sand. She blew another bubble mid-air, then fired six rounds in a spinning arc. Wind whistled behind each shot, flinging masks off like leaves in a hurricane.

“Six down!” Mona hollered.

“Thirty to go!” Dee Dee answered.

From upstairs, Hexwell fired an icy blast — a special round. It shattered a chandelier and froze it mid-air, the falling glass suspended like a crystal deathtrap.

Dee Dee dodged, slid across the counter, aimed, and pulled Epitaph’s trigger.

The gun roared like a dying god.

A wave of black energy consumed the second floor, ripping away a whole corner of the building and sucking four ghost-masked outlaws into oblivion.

Hexwell flipped through the air and landed outside, now coated in a frost aura. “You just made this personal.”

The Town Turns

As the last ghost-masked outlaw fell, the town itself began to shift.

Buildings groaned. Earth cracked. A spirit sigil beneath the saloon ignited — a summoning circle designed to trap the town between realms. The real prize wasn’t Hexwell — it was the spirit rift beneath Ghostpost.

Mona cursed. “This was a setup!”

Dee Dee holstered Epitaph. “He’s trying to anchor a Blightwight Sovereign here — one of the old kings.”

Sure enough, the air split like paper.

From the crack crawled something massive — bone-thin, crowned in rusted iron, and glowing with ghostfire. It stood twenty feet tall and hissed like a cathedral full of broken violins.

Hexwell knelt, spiritblood dripping from his arms. “I offer this town. I offer my soul. I offer these Thorne girls.”

Mona gritted her teeth. “Rude.”

Dee Dee glanced at her. “You ready for a combo?”

Mona smirked. “Always.”

The Thorne Sister Signature Move: “Dust Requiem”

Dee Dee slammed Epitaph into the ground, initiating Void-channel. Mona spun Jinxfire, her wind Arcanum rising with an emerald glow. The two elements combined in the space between them, forming a micro vortex of compressed spirit energy.

“Now!” Mona shouted.

They each fired into the vortex — Epitaph’s black energy and Jinxfire’s emerald current met midair.

The result? A concentrated beam of wind-sliced void that exploded outward in a cyclone of annihilation and time distortion.

It hit the Blightwight Sovereign square in the chest.

The creature screamed — part rage, part history, part centuries of cursed memory. It collapsed in a burst of light and ash.

Hexwell tried to crawl away.

Dee Dee walked up slow, boots crunching over ruined sigils and ash-strewn dirt.

“You always were too clever and too scared,” she said, pointing Epitaph at his forehead.

Hexwell didn’t beg.

He just said, “You can kill me, but another Sovereign’s coming. They’re organizing. We’re just the opening credits.”

Dee Dee didn’t shoot.

Instead, Mona tagged him with a binding seal — her spirit energy wrapping him like a cocoon. “Let the Order deal with him.”

The Next Morning

Ghostpost was calm again. Spirits gone. The rift sealed.

The sisters stood outside the ruined saloon, watching the horizon bleed morning light.

“I hate haunt towns,” Mona muttered.

“Pays good,” Dee Dee replied.

Spencer appeared behind them, munching on a spirit apple like he’d been watching from a safe distance the whole time.

“Well damn, you two tore up a Sovereign and didn’t invite me?”

Dee Dee didn’t look back. “You weren’t on shift.”

Spencer grinned. “Gonna be now. Heard whispers from Cloudbridge. A war’s brewin’ between gun-saints and soul-pirates. Might need all the Thornes on deck.”

Mona glanced up. “You bring He-Said and She-Said?”

He patted his sides. “Loaded. And they’re gossiping.”

Dee Dee finally smiled. “Then let’s ride.”

Next Time on MAGNUM ARCANUM:

• The Thornes head to Cloudbridge — a floating city of outlaws and ex-priests.
• A soul-pirate with a Fire-type Arcanum starts burning down sky temples.
• Mona unlocks a new power hidden in Jinxfire.
• Dee Dee finally learns what her father sacrificed to bond Epitaph.
• And an ancient enemy returns… wearing Dee Dee’s face.