Character · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

Louis and Firas

Two level-22 Americans found drunk in a brothel bar on the fifth floor: Louis Santiago 2, a Pest Exterminator from Miami who drove his mother's convertible van down a stairwell and got a legendary knockout spell for it, and Firas M., a Hammersmith with a level-10 Puddle Jumper. Sobered by force, they grow into a bombing crew, the party's pilots and, by the end, something like friends.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 3 — Quasar
• Chapter 7 — Whataburger
• Chapter 8 — The Night Wyrm's web
• Chapter 11 — The Recital
• Chapter 15 — The kids' menu
• Chapter 17 — The security checkpoint
• Chapter 21 — CrawlCon
• Chapter 22 — Samantha, open wide
• Chapter 23 — Congratulations, Murderer
• Chapter 24 — The rock chucker
• Chapter 35 — Ballroom Blitz
• Chapter 36 — Swole
• Chapter 50 — Uncle Morty's Insta Lawn-Kill
• Chapter 51 — The howdah
• Chapter 52 — Gehenna Bramble
• Chapter 56 — Zerzura
• Chapter 57 — I Take it All Back
• Chapter 59 — The sheriffs of the wild west
• Chapter 60 — The raids
• Chapter 61 — Marked for death
• Chapter 62 — A squirrel with antlers
• Chapter 64 — The attendant entrance
• Chapter 66 — The Sugar Cube
• Chapter 67 — Slate Butterflies
• Chapter 69 — The prize counter
• Chapter 70 — Anaconda
• Chapter 72 — Cat-nac the Magnificent
• Chapter 73 — Wonderwall, again
• Chapter 75 — Sic 'em
• Chapter 76 — Cage Fight Extreme
• Chapter 77 — The mask
• Epilogue — Epilogue

Arc

They have the Twister back from the changelings (ch. 3); Firas wants Whataburger fries and Firas's girlfriend is not his girlfriend (ch. 7). Louis is engaged to Juice Box (ch. 8) and is the Dream's only named target, circled until the pencil broke the paper over a Facebook photograph with dog ears (ch. 15, ch. 24). Louis has a Voltron plan and cried alone (ch. 36), mists Tent the House from the airship (ch. 50) and kills a level 173 whose thorns fly like ballista bolts, and does not know if he can stomach that again (ch. 51). At the party Louis is the pet-show announcer with a boombox of trap modules (ch. 70), reads the cat tunnels off the map (ch. 72) and loses the Twister to the Sledge's crash. Firas talks Britney into coming, hugs her in the ballroom, and dies in the pit beside an unconscious Louis when the last lightning finds the butterflies (ch. 76, ch. 77). He was going to be Louis's best man, in a tuxedo Katia was secretly sewing.