A piano softly tapped away in the corner of the room, playing some melancholic tune. On the green felted table were piles of playing chips and cards strewn about. The man across from me smiled a yellow smile between his cheap cigar. “I’m all in. How about that there?”
I brought a cigarette to my lips and flipped open my lighter. The flames reflected against the bluish iron of my robotic arm. One long puff and I had my thinking done. “I’ll call that.”
My gambling pal snickered as he overturned his hand. Straight flush. He grabbed his glass and took a sip, then gloated some more. “Hey now, maybe we’ll play another round and I can take that arm of yours.”
The piano player in the back played his jazz all the same.
I flipped my hand over and muttered out a simple word. “Royal.”
Instantly the light in the man’s eyes dimmed. His sickly smile turned to a sour frown as the cigar between his ugly teeth fell into his lap. “What the hell?”
My cigarette smeared against the ashtray. “Poker aint your game, I suppose.”
The man’s disbelief quickly turned to fury as I took his hat from the table and began to shovel chips into it. Did he mean to bet his hat? Oh well, it was on his betting pile.
He shot up from his seat with his hand hovering his hip. “You think I’m stupid!? You’re a cheat!”
He wasn’t gonna take that shot, so I kept putting my chips away. “Have to disagree. I’m an honest man, and a damn lucky one at that.” One thing did bother me, though. It wasn’t the big man in front of me, but past the window. People were running in a panic, and I had yet to figure out from what.
The big man was too busy making a fuss to notice something was up. In fact, he only got angrier as I didn’t pay him attention. “Bullshit! If you don’t put my money down I’ll blow a-“
In that very moment, a line of pure blue light sliced through the side of the building. I felt like I dunked my head into a furnace as the beam passed over me and burned straight through the man across the table. Only a few feet lower and I was dead, same as him.
Guess my luck was still going strong.
I pinched the hat closed and ducked beneath the table with the money. My thoughts would have been on first aid but seeing as the fella across from me was in two pieces, I thought it safe to assume he was dead.
Screaming filled my ears instead of music as I scrambled to the window. The shot came from down the street, but judging by the people running, whoever this was had to be getting nearer.
One thing I knew about lasers is that they were exceptionally rare and completely unreliable. The government retired them years ago, which meant whoever was out there had to be some jackass trying to prove he was on top of the food chain. Even then, somebody who had access to tech like that on the outer ring matched one description, and if it was who I thought, he had a handsome bounty on his head.
I had a few seconds before he’d be ready to fire again, so I took my opportunity to vault over the broken glass with my metal arm and run. The square was fortunately just outside the saloon, and in the very center was a large fountain that made for good cover.
While I was running, I got a good look at the man responsible for the destruction. He wore a full body suit made out of canvas with a glass pane to see through. Most likely trying to not die from whatever toxic fumes his machine was pumping out. The weapon itself was a large metal box on wheels with something resembling a canon on the top.
That was my bounty, alright.
The machine whirred to life once more as I dived behind the fountain. The beam followed me for a split second then swerved into the sky, avoiding the fountain entirely. For whatever reason he was reluctant to hit it. Not something I could make use of in that exact moment, but I took note.
Unfortunately, the majority of my playing chips had scattered across the square. I let go of the crumpled hat to find only a few tokens inside.
As I caught my breath, I heard footsteps quickly approaching. It didn’t come from where the bounty was, but from one of the random shops nearby. To my delight, I saw my older brother sprinting towards the fountain.
He ducked into cover before the machine was ready to fire again, forgoing having to jump to safety like I did. He spoke between shallow breaths. “Jesse, what the hell is going on?”
“A payday, Logan. That’s what’s going on.” I moved closer to him. “This is that scientist from Framheim that went AWOL. Hans Baumgarten. Three hundred dollar bounty if I recall correctly.”
Logan sighed and rested the back of his head against the wall of the fountain. “And how do you suppose we claim this bounty?”
I reached to my hip and pulled out my revolver. With my other hand, I went to the holster across my waist and grasped my second gun. It was usually meant as a spare so I didn’t have to reload in a fight, but in this special instance I held it out to Logan. He had his own gun of course, but I didn’t trust that old iron in a situation like the one we found ourselves in. “Simple. We both pop up and he’ll be down before he can get a bead on either of us.”
“Absolutely not.” My brother ordered, not bothering to give me any details as to why he objected.
I pushed open the chamber of my revolver and checked it to make sure everything was in order, then asked for the reason not to end it nice and quick. “Why not? With the things he’s done, death is more than justified, not to mention we’re kinda in a sticky wicket if he stays alive.”
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Logan pushed my spare revolver back into its holster and reached into the crumpled hat with his other hand. “I’m not saying we should spare him, only that he’s going to kill us before we can look him in the eyes.”
“He can’t be that good a shot. File said he was in his seventies.”
My brother picked up a playing chip and placed it over his thumb and forefinger. “He isn’t, but he’s not the one aiming.” He flipped the coin high into the air. As soon as the piece passed the cover of the fountain, the bright blue light shot through the air. My chip fell back to the ground in two clean parts. “He’s got some sort of aiming system. Whatever moves gets shot I’m guessing.”
I picked up the half-melted coin and responded. “Well I’ll be damned… Then why didn’t he kill me as I ran to cover?”
“Best bet is that the barrel was pointed too far away to reach you in time, unfortunately now it’s trained right on our location."
With a sigh, I holstered my gun. The whole ordeal was starting to become a lot more trouble than I initially bargained for. “Well, we can make another distraction in the opposite direction. It won’t be enough time for us to take a shot, but we’d be able to run to those shops over there. Get straight to the bayou and head to port. Take our ships and say goodbye to Long Soir city.”
Logan nodded and picked up the hat I won. “Seems like our best bet. You throw this on three, then we run.” I nodded as he placed the hat in my lap. So much for my winnings. “One. Two. Three!”
I grabbed the hat by the brim and sent it spinning back towards the bar. The laser followed it just as expected, and at that point we’d have just enough time to book it.
Both of us quickly rose to our feet and hightailed it to safety. The weapon beeped and began moving, but between the time it took to move and the time it took to recharge, we were safe the whole sprint.
We burst through a glass door that was already half destroyed from the carnage and moved through whatever little antique shop used to be there. Almost everything from the shelves was reduced shards on the floor. There were no bodies, and the back door was left wide open, meaning whoever was there at the time got out safe.
What caught my attention, though, was a singular object that stood out from the rest. Among all the destroyed knick knacks was an old mirror, still intact. A large portion of it was melted, but the fact that it wasn’t sliced clean in half got me to thinking…
Said thinking left me with an extremely risky plan, and an unwise decision to make. Fortunately, unwise decisions were my forte.
I ran towards the mirror and started to shimmy it around, seeing if I could pick it up easily. “H-Hey Logan… I’ve got a new plan.”
Logan slowed down and looked at me, then his head drooped to the floor. “Jesus Christ…”
It was uncomfortable, but I could certainly carry the mirror by myself. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be great.” Turning the mirror to face in front of me, I hoisted it up and began moving.
My ideas may not be the most conventional, but I was quite the clever man. My strategy didn’t just revolve around running towards the mad scientist with a mirror in front of me, but something even better.
The laser automatically avoided the fountain, and why? Well, lasers are real hot things, and what happens when water gets real hot? Steam, and a lot of it. Lasers are also based on light, which means that they can be reflected by mirrors, at least enough to boil the fountain before it killed me. Another thing about travelling through light is that it and thick clouds of rolling steam don’t work well.
With all the confidence of someone with far too little to lose, I rushed through the door. Brass bells jingled as more glass was thrown onto the street. I tried to keep the mirror as far away from my body as possible while still aiming for the fountain, and just as planned, the machine hissed once I revealed myself. The electronic hiss echoed throughout the square as a blinding beam of blue light shot out.
First it chewed through the wooden frame, then it hit the mirror. The beam instantly bounced to the fountain, and in a fraction of a second the square started to become engulfed in steam. I didn’t get off Scott free though; There wasn’t enough time to stop the condensed light from finally burning through the imperfect mirror and hitting my hand. Luckily it was the metal one, and the military grade titanium faired well enough. Next it hit my torso, which was not armored in the same way. I was mostly hidden behind the thick brick wall between the shops and the fountain, but that didn’t stop a tiny part of my side from getting hit.
Another neat fact about lasers is that they had a nasty little side effect. Aside from the small bit of my torso that was vaporized, a lot of the heat transferred to all the nearby flesh. Same reason why hitting one little spot on the fountain boiled the whole thing, the heat transfer made most of my entire right side feeling well-done.
To my benefit, the mirror bounced a majority of it off, and the brick cover took most the rest. A fully concentrated blast from that and my blood would have been fully boiled.
Despite my best efforts, I lived. My cloud cover had arrived, and with that the tracking system would be defunct as well as the laser diffused. It was my chance to get in real nice and close.
Of course, making a mad dash while half-baked didn’t feel too good, but the thought of spending all that money on a beach vacation made it all worth it… On second thought, a snowy winter vacation sounded a bit nicer at that moment.
No matter the nature of my future getaway, I had to focus on moving up the best I could. It may have been closer to a stumble than a sprint, but I waded through the moggy cloud and got to the point where I saw the outline of that scroungy old man and his weapon. Whatever happened to my metal arm made it so it didn’t respond, but that was alright. My shooting arm just so happened to be my fleshy one, and I had no care to wrestle with this man.
I unholstered and sent four good shots at his center. The steam dissipated as our target dropped flat on his face. My two last shots were spent on the little camera in the center of his laser device, just to be sure it wouldn’t keep going after he went down.
After that, I dropped to my knees and took a few deep breaths. Logan came running up and saying something, but I didn’t really care to listen. We had our target, and I was sure I’d be fine after a glass of cold, cold, water. Maybe an icy pool to jump in, too.
We bio-tagged the scientist, and he was indeed our man. Didn’t feel too right leaving his body and machine in the middle of the street, but cleanup wasn’t our job. More importantly than that, I felt like I could barely carry myself, let alone some old coot in a hazmat suit.
Logan gave me a hand up, to which I promptly fell back to my knees when trying to support my own weight. My brother squatted beside me. “Alright. Let’s take a look.”
Logan helped drag me off the street and near the brick wall by the shops. I leaned back as I unbuttoned my purple, gold, and green striped vest. I opened up my shirt, which was more charred brown than white, and looked at the damage. The tiny part of me that actually met the laser was nice and bubbly red, while the entire rest of my side was a bright and glistening pink, like the worst sunburn known to man. “Well… Shit. That isn’t too good.”
Logan grimaced at the sight of me. I was going to be fine, surely, but fear glistened behind his eyes. “We need to get into orbit and call Doc.”
“I’ll be fine.” I tried to wave my hand dismissively, but I forgot that my prosthetic arm was no longer working. I tried to sit up, but the burning sting in my side made it nearly intolerable to. Between grunts of pain, I muttered out. “Alright… Yeah… We should probably get Doc.”