Chapter Fifteen - Downrange

"Are you okay?" Sharp asked as she ran over to Derek's side.

"We should move. We're downrange of something nasty, Sharp."

She nodded, but reached an arm around Derek's shoulder anyway. "Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?"

"I wasn't shot in the ears, I was shot in the gut. Fuck. Ah." Derek had an arm wrapped around his torso, almost as though he was trying to hold the blood in. There was quite a bit of it, but not nearly enough to kill him just yet.

At a guess--an educated one--he had a while before blood loss took him out. More than long enough to get that wound packed. That was, as long as he didn't get shot a second time. "Sharp, I'm not joking, we need to get out of here."

Sharp tsked, but she started to pull Derek to the side. Another hiss sounded as a round shot past. Not a snap though. They weren't aiming at us. Still, I found myself crouching against Sharp's shoulder, ears folded back as she guided Derek back towards the building we'd just left.

Only now a group of Riveters were leaving, armed to the teeth and looking pissed. "Dang it," Sharp cursed before pulling Derek along towards the alley next to the building. It wasn't much quieter there. People were running out of the street by any means they could, and that meant the alleys.

Sharp didn't go far. We paused only a few yards in and Derek leaned his back against the wall. "Ah, fuck fuck," he said as he looked at his hand.

"Sharp, if we're going to keep him alive, I need you to look at his wound."

"Ew," she said.

"Do it," I snapped.

Sharp swallowed, then crouched before Derek and pulled his jacket away from his side. The interior was clinging to his shirt. "What am I looking for?" she asked in a low whisper.

"An exit wound on the other side. See that hole? It's small, that's where the round went in. Something small by the looks of it. Handgun round, I'd guess."

Derek tried to push Sharp away, but she batted his hands aside. "I'm trying to help," she said. Gingerly, she ran a hand on his other side, tapping and pressing along his torso. "I'm not finding anything."

"Then the bullet's still in him," I said as I leaned forward to see better. The shot had slipped into his jacket. It looked like the inside of the coat was lined with small metal plates and the bullet had slipped in between two of them. That hit was about two inches below his short ribs, more or less going level. The fact that it hadn't come out the other side suggested that it wasn't all that potent of a round, or the coat had absorbed some of its energy. "He'll live," I decided.

Probably. He had cybernetic legs, which was an issue that few people considered. Robotic legs meant less room for blood. Derek didn't need to bleed nearly as much as someone with biological legs would need to in order to die.

"We need to stop that bleeding. He needs a good first aid kit, and soon."

"Okay, okay," Sharp said. She looked to her hands which were covered in blood. She wiped them on her pants. "Let's keep moving, okay? South, right? Is there a hospital or something that way?"

"Clinic, yeah," he said. "Mark pays out for okay emergency insurance. Fuck, I need to call him."

"Okay," Sharp said.

"Call while moving, this is a danger zone," I said. "Once the BPD gets here, they'll cordon the area off and lock it down. He'll bleed out long before a paramedic sees him."

Derek grunted, then ground his teeth while his eyes flashed. "M-Mark? Hey man. Bad news... yeah no, package got there safe. But I got shot... yeah, I'm with the kid. Uh-huh. By South Boston, northern end. Maybe twenty minutes from the metro? Uh... yeah. Okay? Right, yeah, I can make it there. I've got the kid, she's helping. Okay, okay. Cool." His eyes flashed again, and he leaned forwards a little. "We need to move. Mark's got someone that'll come pick me up." He rattled off an address and Sharp nodded.

"We can get there," she said. "Let's start walking, okay. Uh, keep pressure on the hole? Here?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of napkins.

Derek eyed them, then gingerly pressed them over the hole in his shirt. "Fuck, why couldn't they hit my leg?"

"I guess that would have been luckier," Sharp said.

"Eh.. maybe not. Legs are more expensive to fix than my insides, but at least it wouldn't hurt this bad." Sharp laughed, then got onto Derek's side and tried to get his arm over her shoulder, but he waved her off. "I've got robo-legs. The rest of me will fall apart before they give out, so don't worry about helping me walk."

"Oh, okay," Sharp said.

She looked down both ways of the alley, and so did I. It had cleared out almost entirely, with only a few people peeking out the near end onto the street where gunshots and shouts were becoming more common. Someone was blasting music over the ranting and raving of that... probably-a-cult. High BPM cowboy techno really messed with the mood.

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"Let's move," I said.

"Right," Sharp said. She moved a bit ahead of Derek, but constantly looked back to see if he was okay. He was walking just fine, but his eyes were closed and it looked like he might shatter his teeth from grinding them so hard.

The alley had a T-junction right in the middle, and it was only common sense that we'd turn right at the middle and head southwards from here. That's the direction Sharp was cutting towards, and I felt like we had a decent chance to get out of this situation in good shape if we just kept moving.

Mark would owe us one for helping save Derek, even if it wasn't that much effort to do so. This was a trial by fire, of sorts. More trouble than the average courier was ever expected to encounter.

Then things went from awful to worse as two people rounded the corner in the middle of the alley, just a dozen feet ahead of Sharp. Two men, both looking like they were in their mid thirties or so, but they might have been younger. They were pale, sickly, with raggedy clothes and eyes that looked shellshocked. And they were carrying bats.

"Oh no," Sharp said.

There was no dialogue, the man in the lead just raised his bat and ran without even a scream.

I leapt.

I don't think he was expecting half a pound of angry kitten to land on his face, because he screamed for real this time and bent his head back.

I, in the meantime, got to work with my natural weapons. This fuck wanted to hurt Sharp? Well, she was my meal ticket, so he'd have to get through me first.

I tried to scream, but it came out as a yowling hiss. All of my martial arts training amounted to very little as I clawed and scratched at his face, digging under his skin and drawing blood.

He reached for me, so I let myself drop, then clung onto his shirt. He had a nipple ring. It... was admittedly a strange thing to notice, but it was right there and so I took the opportunity to bite it. When he grabbed me and tried to throw me off, I just bit harder.

There was a rip, and the man's scream turned desperate.

I'd barely touched the ground that I leapt back up and assaulted the back of his legs. Clawing swipes, and a hard bite at his exposed ankle, but he wore thick jeans.

I bounced away when the moron with only one nipple ring's friend tried to kick me. "Queen Violence!" Sharp shouted before she rammed into the man with no form. It was such a badly made blow that I worried she might have broken her neck with that tackle, but instead she ended up on the alley ground.

The morons were stepping back a little. I couldn't let them regroup, because if they did, they'd win. Two men, even drugged up morons, against a kitten and a scrawny teen? Yeah, I didn't like our odds.

So I sprinted towards the one massaging his chest, ran up his entire body, and bit his nose. Then, while I was gripped onto him, I pressed both forepaws--claws out--into his eyes.

Most animals didn't dig into eyelids. They'd just swipe and scratch. I knew better.

He grabbed me and flung me off, and it was only the fact that I weighed nothing that saved me as I hit the ground hard and bounced.

He'd gotten the worse of that exchange as he screamed and pressed his hands onto his bleeding face.

"His bat!" I shouted.

Sharp lunged forwards while Blindy-McOneNipple's pal checked up on him. She grabbed his bat, then swung it with all of her weight and all of her enthusiasm right at the back of idiot two's head.

It clunked. The bat flew out of her hands and clattered to the ground, but idiot two had definitely felt that.

I ran over to him and bit into the back of his calf. This idiot was wearing shorts, and I wasn't about to let him forget that mistake as I used him like a living scratchpost.

Sharp hissed, shook her hands from the shock, then picked up the bat again. This time she went for an overhead blow. He blocked it with an upraised arm, but there was still a bone jarring crunch when it hit.

"Fuck, run!" Derek snapped.

That was... a good idea, actually.

I let go of idiot two's leg, hopefully having done enough damage to make running more difficult, then I was picked up by Sharp. Derek was already halfway down the alley, which fortunately only had a few corpses in it, and no one to slow us down.

Good, because I was quite exhausted.

Reflex Has Levelled Up!

Reflex 1 > 2

Combat Has Levelled Up!

Combat 0 > 1

Well, that was something.

***