“I’m getting a terrible blister on my heel,” Giuseppe said. “Why did someone have to program real blisters into the simulation? It seems petty to me. I want to write a complaint to someone. I don’t think I should have to put up with—”

Wyatt grew tired of it. She raised her pistol and shot him in the back of the head.

Tom couldn’t help it. He busted up laughing so hard, his grip loosened and he dropped prematurely from under the wagon, his gun knocked out of his holster. He rolled out quickly to dodge the wheels about to run over him and the shots Wyatt fired his way.

“That was AWESOME!” he yelled over his shoulder as he escaped her.

“He’s so annoying!” Wyatt yelled back, then sent a Molotov cocktail sailing past Tom’s shoulder. It ignited the wooden postmaster’s office beyond him, which unfortunately flushed Vik out of his hiding place with a startled shriek. A few dozen simulated townsfolk began running around frantically, trying to put out the fire.

Wyatt and Vik shot furiously at each other for several seconds, then they ran out of bullets. Black smoke curled up from the guns, and it cleared to reveal the fact that no bullets had connected with flesh. Since Wyatt was also out of Molotov cocktails, and Tom’s gun had slid off somewhere when he’d fallen from the wagon, they found themselves standing there in the middle of Tombstone, dust and smoke swirling around them, the post office burning behind them, sort of looking awkwardly at each other.

“Now what?” Tom asked. “None of the townsfolk have guns. They’re banned in town.”

“I suppose we can go the fistfight route. Maybe.” Vik swiped off his cowboy hat, then wiped his forehead, his character’s voluminous mustache flapping in the wind.

Wyatt began scratching at her own mustache. “I don’t like having facial hair. I keep getting crumbs in my beard.”

Tom leaned in to see, and discovered that Wyatt, indeed, had crumbs in her beard.

“I have a proposal.” Vik raised a finger. “I believe we should call this duel a draw and pretend we never had this battle. We part ways, then if we run into each other again, we resume our shoot-out.”

It sounded reasonable to Tom. Wyatt nodded, too, busy picking at her beard.

“Next time, there will be blood,” Vik promised cheerfully, aiming a finger gun at her.

Wyatt aimed a real gun back. “Death and mayhem will certainly ensue.”

They parted ways. Tom and Vik rode out of town together. Desert stretched out around them.

“You gonna find Lyla?” Tom asked. Vik had been trying to seek her out in sims a lot lately and impress her with his fighting skills. So far it hadn’t worked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Tom squinted at him in the sunlight. “This might’ve been our last fight together, man.”