The Defective Detective

The creature stood at a whopping thirteen heads tall. Its white fur already drenched and soaked in the red of what must have been two or so dozen injured or dead villagers as the corpses littering the ground had caused a knot in Fall’s stomach. At the foot of the podium were the bloodied and beaten armored peacekeepers, their plated wear caved in by what could only have been the deadly force of the creature’s overbearing physical prowess. It craned its head around, deciding on which of the multitude of fleeing townsfolk to launch its assault on next as it stood atop the corpses of what were once the peacekeepers

“The mayor?” Fall asked.

“He fell victim to the same unfortunate circumstances that you did. I was to choose between saving the two of you when the gusts came flying.”

He may have been dead too then, Fall thought with an exhale. He reached into the right of his trench coat and removed his revolver, holding it at his left side as he began his steady approach.

“Don’t do anything risky,” Bell said.

“It’s too late for that, Bell. I’m all in.”

She shrugged. “Never mind then. Happy gambling, Fall.”

She had casted three mana-hungry spells in succession on what was to her a giant of a companion, so there was no more helping him for the time being. Ordinarily, the tapping of his rubber soles might have alerted the shifter of his approach. Today’s battle did not require Fall to be careful, however, as the shrieks and running of others had drowned out his own comparatively quiet footsteps.

The blind creature primarily relied on sound to locate his opponents. That’s why, despite the fact that what had occurred in Rotteson that day was a travesty, the panicked state of the battlefield was the ideal situation for defeating it. Fall recognized that he would have to be careful regardless though. A shifter’s movements were difficult to follow when they’d absorbed a large amount of mana from human corpses. The silent strides they were capable of with those massive legs, coupled with the scaly grips at the base of their hands and feet that halted its momentum made it a difficult target to follow. This would have only proven to be an issue if Fall hadn’t spent years of his life hunting shifters.

The creature closed in on a small boy carrying a large bunch of apples, frantically attempting to escape with his loot from the shifter. Fall aimed the gun and fired, predicting his angle to strike at the creature’s abdomen mid-leap.

The sharp, roar of the weapon was a celebration of the fantastic shot, one that even the greatest marksmen of The Baening would have been impressed by. And, were it not for the shifter’s second method of sensing its surroundings, the magic barrier that existed within a five-head radius around its body, it might have found its mark. The shifter reacted with unreal reflexes once it noticed the bullet’s speed and trajectory by drawing its arm over to its intended path and deflecting it using its rough hair.

It halted in place, giving up on the child it had been tailing in search of the source of the attack. Ordinarily, Fall might have engaged in a careful battle of attrition with a shifter this powerful, where he avoided detection and lured it about until his chances of victory were higher. But the issue with this battle was that too many lives had already been lost, and should he play it safely, the death count would in all likeliness tally up beyond a point where his presence in this town had made any sort of positive difference.

That was why he decided to stroll forward before that titanic thing with an unwarranted confidence and engage it in a battle to the death.

“Let’s gamble, monster.”

He replaced the bullet quickly in his revolver then fired off another round, one the creature had deflected with ease. It seemed mostly assured of Fall’s location now, as the explosive sounds and the bullet’s angle had been a dead giveaway now that it was ready. The onlookers had gathered enough distance from the large shifter for Fall to feel at ease.

The detective shot a third. This time, the creature evaded it by leaning to its left, then rushed Fall with a silence that betrayed the force of its leap. Its tail pierced the ground where the detective had been standing just moments ago, puncturing a hole into the barren dirt as Fall twisted to his right and let loose his fourth at the creature’s abdomen. Even at such a close range, it managed to lower its body so that the hair of its torso could catch the bullet, before swiping at Fall’s head. He ducked the blow, lifting himself back up and immediately firing at the creature’s flower-shaped head.

The bullet bounced off the blue liquids coating its flesh like a pebble against a sponge, and the creature whipped its tail out of the ground and spun it around back at Fall. Almost as if anticipating the attack, he leapt backwards over the appendage and fired two more rounds in quick succession: one at its right leg, and the other at its shoulder blade. This time, the creature only bothered deflecting the latter blow with its arm, keeping its legs grounded due to the momentum of its tail still holding it down.

Fall landed a couple heads away, masking the sound of his impact with the screaming crowds. He was out of shots and needed the moment to load his revolver with six new bullets. So far, his attacks had been ineffective. Anyone who had been glancing at the battle might have considered it a lost cause. He had avoided the creature’s blows somehow, but there was no need for it to avoid his own. If they continued to battle, his defeat was but an inevitability.

The current situation suited him just well, however. His goal during their first exchange was not to defeat the creature, but to condition it.

“Hey hey, you gettin’ tired already?!”

He let a fresh bullet go once he was done reloading.

The shifter allowed the projectile to bounce off its red flesh and turned back to face Fall. With a blood-curdling roar, it cut through the distance at a speed previously unseen and poured a flurry of stabbing motions from its straightened hands down at the detective. He bobbed and weaved through the hailstorm as if predicting every movement with ease, retreating slowly while using any free opportunity to fire a shot through the barrage. The creature no longer cared to defend against the pathetic bullets that appeared to have no effect. It continued chasing down the detective with its relentless attacks.

Five shots had been loosed. Fall would need to reload soon.

“Do it now Fall!” Bell screamed from afar.

The detective spun through the last barrage of blows, twisting his body and masking himself behind his trench coat. Then, he fired the final shot.

“AAAUUURRRRRRGHHHH!!”

As if suddenly growing weak, the gargantuan creature who seemed to be overwhelming the detective moments earlier had suddenly recoiled in pain.

But why? None of the other shots had caused it any harm, so what was different this time? As blue liquids poured from the gaping hole in the right shoulder of the shifter, a location he had chosen by following the orc-slaying methods taught at Dawn’s Rock, Fall grinned and blew against the tip of the second revolver he had drawn from his coat, the one that Bell had blessed to carry the properties of the magic crystals known as amethysts.

His second gun was loaded with five circuit breaker bullets now that one of them had been shot. Since she no longer had the mana to cast such a powerful spell, this meant that he’d only have five more chances to close the battle out.

The good news was, he had disabled one of its main weapons. With his regular revolver, he emptied the cylinder and loaded it with another one of the moon clips he’d kept stored in his coat, then slid the cylinder back in place. He lined the sights up with the head of the creature, and pulled the trigger.

The shifter deflected the blow with its hairy left arm. It was on guard again. That suited him fine. The surprise shot had already gifted him a huge advantage. The creature once again lunged his way, offering a series of kicks this time. Its right arm hanging limply, it appeared to be keeping its left for defensive purposes now, he thought.

The new attack method of ferocious horizontal kicks that Fall found himself facing caused him to lean back, using the momentum to flip backwards by pushing off the ground using his gun-touting hands and back onto his feet, then firing another shot at its lower right abdomen. The creature blocked it with its arm, but in that second another shot came barreling towards its left shoulder, pulverizing it just as he had the right from before. Both arms were now hanging limply.

It was impossible for the shifter to tell which gun was which. And now, with no arms to guard against the attacks, avoiding fatal blows would prove a difficult challenge for that thing. Even the shifter seemed to realize as much, as it was now hesitating to push forward with its assault against Fall. Within its low growl was a certain patience. It must have been coming up with a method of dealing with the guns.

Fall, refusing to give it a chance, shot at the creature twice, causing it to block one with its abdomen while leaning to its left to avoid the other. He rushed the creature down as it had run him down earlier. He needed to make it harder for the creature to react, and closing the distance was the only surefire way to accomplish that. He had two shots left in his unblessed gun. He would have to end it now, as he was running low on regular bullets.

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The creature roared. It wasn’t planning on retreating, Fall thought.

He fired four rounds once he came within six heads of the creature.

“AURGGHH!”

One avoided, two to the creature’s hairy torso, but a large hole had opened in its left abdomen. Victory was in sight.

“Urgh!”

The issue for Fall even after accounting for the powerful blow he had dealt the creature, however, lay in the fact that he had only barely avoided the vertical whipping of its scorpion tail that followed his shots. An attack from below at that range wasn’t something he had anticipated despite his years of battling shifters.

Despite avoiding the attack, the stinger clipped the body of the revolvers, and they were both ripped from his hands by the force of the blow and tossed up into the air, indifferent to the strong grip he’d had on them. His signature weapons had now gone their separate ways, with one landing diagonally back to his left, and the other in a similar trajectory to his right.

Fall was now a toothless predator. What made matters worse was that he was fatigued, and his heavy breathing had given as much away to the shifter. Avoiding all of those blows had put a strain on his mind and body, and there was no telling how much more of it he could take. This was in comparison to the creature that, despite the powerful blows dealt to its body, still appeared to be as energized as it had been moments earlier.

The shifter, having felt the advantageous position it had found itself in, whipped and stabbed at Fall with everything in its power. The detective, whose hands were still recovering from the pain of having the guns torn from his grasp, carefully avoided the assault while leading it back towards his left. He was slowly drawing in on one of the guns.

“Not that one, Fall! The other one! Other one!”

Fall ignored Bell’s calls and continued towards the gun. He was all-in on his decision, and no outside bickering could tear him from his destination as the blows narrowly avoided grazing him thanks to his astute movements. Sweat trickled down his face as he struggled to maintain his breathing. He was almost out of energy, it seemed. The creature roared once more, appearing more desperate to finish him off. He dodged to the left, avoiding fatal blows by jumping, ducking, and bobbing to the side in a display of athleticism that betrayed the studious professions he had dedicated himself to throughout his life. Whatever work he had put in to grant himself these abilities had paid off in any case, as he had finally arrived at the gun after expending most of the energy he had left.

“Fall!” Bell screamed.

It was all or nothing now.

He dove for the gun and scooped it up into his left.

With the best aim he could muster up in such a tense situation, he rolled onto his back and pulled the trigger.

The click of the hammer smashing into the percussion cap had become their entire world.

The creature froze, and as did Fall.

Nothing.

He blinked twice.

His enemy roared, then took another brisk step forward while thrusting his tail at the downed man laying just a few heads away.

Fall, his heart pounding out of his chest, opened the cylinder.

“Of all the luck…”

After a quick rotation, he slid the cylinder back in place and squeezed the trigger again.

This time, blue liquids came spurting out of the head of the creature.

The tail stopped a hair’s breadth away from Fall’s forehead, a translucent secretion oozing from the tip of the stinger and onto his coat. His eyes were wide open. Was he prepared to die, or was he certain of his victory? Either way, the shifter’s fall backwards was a signal that the battle had ended, and it took Fall a moment to finally rest his arm after he’d fired the gun.

“You did it,” Bell said, drifting into the man’s space.

“Never tell me how to fight again,” he said, scratching his head.

“In my defense, I truly did think that the Circuit Breaker bullets went flying off to the right. You were carrying it in your right hand, were you not?”

“That’s right, but one shouldn’t rely on conventional logic when it comes to gambling.”

“Yeah, right. Gambling, gambling. Why do you continue to insist on fighting like this? Just about everything concerning the success of this encounter was merely a series of guesses that, through the grace of some deity, happened to work in your favor. How on earth did you come out of that mess of a battle unscathed?”

“Extraordinary circumstances beget extraordinary luck,” he said.

Bell sighed. “Well in any case, you’ve saved the town from utter devastation, so I suppose some congratulations are in order once you’re done.”

People were beginning to return to the center of the town once they’d heard the sound of the large thud. They looked on at the sight of the downed creature in awe, and the man who picked himself up before it.

“Though, with that being said, why did the gun not fire just then?”

At the question, Fall glanced at his revolver then opened the cylinder once more. “Spring probably got done in when the shifter knocked it over. I had to switch chambers manually.

“So the gun’s broken…”

It was a miracle that he had survived, let alone gotten out as unscathed as he did. Despite his age, having already made it into his thirties, Fall seemed to only get better at fighting shifters in close combat. It was his first time engaging such a large one without the precautions of masquerading his location from a distance, and he had outdone himself despite the closeness of the battle.

“We’re still not done though,” Fall said, rotating the final chamber into place and locking it in.

“Right…” Bell muttered.

Though the large creature had been defeated, its death was not confirmed until the final blow was dealt. While the bullet to its head had pulverized most of the nervous system of its large body, the parasitic core of the creature existed somewhere further south, within an organ beneath the thick white fur of its torso. Without dealing the final blow, the creature would simply centralize its remaining energy into a smaller form until it found a new vessel to latch itself onto.

Once Fall had approached the Fallen creature’s battered head, he plunged his arm down into its mouth and through its esophagus. He felt around using the tip of his gun until he was certain that he had a good shot of the creature’s stomach.

“Fall, it’s moving,” Bell said.

He felt the movement in the corner of his eye, and he glanced over to find it desperately scraping at the ground with its tail with no more of the vigor its body once carried. Falls eyed followed the stinger to find that it had been clawing at the knife from earlier that Jill had worn on her hip.

He looked on for a moment with a hardness in his eyes, then returned his focus to his goal, pulling the trigger for the final time. The sharp sound of the gunpowder exploding within the gun had barely been masked by the creature’s insides, as blue liquids spurted out onto his arms.

“Gross.” Bell pinched her nose.

“I keep telling you, you should learn some clean up magic for after I’m done.”

“I’m not learning such a redundant spell for the sake of a man who fights as if he isn’t concerned with waking up the next day.”

Fall shrugged, then retrieved his arm from the insides of the creature. The thick, blue liquids drooped down from his arm like goo as he gently shook it off. “I’ll need to find a gunsmith to get this fixed.”

“Hmm, is there one in this town?” Bell asked.

“Not that I could tell. We may have to head up to Paradise Town.”

“Umm…”

Fall and Bell turned back to the new voice and found that the mayor had made his way back over to them with a feeble expression, his back hunched forward in pain from his hard landing.

“Oh, you’re alive,” Fall said.”

“Yes, well… I suppose I should count my lucky stars then! Ha… haha…” He scratched the back of his head anxiously then sighed. “I… I wish I knew how to express my gratitude for what you’ve done… you’ve saved us…”

Fall glanced at his surroundings, and though everyone seemed relieved that the shifter had been defeated, the air of mourning that had taken hold of the town was unmistakably not one of celebration.

“Is there anything we can do for you to thank you for what you’ve done for us?” the mayor asked.

Fall soaked in the silence for a moment. He hadn’t wanted to reveal the existence of shifters to the common people. Now that they were aware, the paranoia would no doubt make it difficult for them to return to a normal life.

Politics are complicated, Even Fall recognized as much. For the mayor, the option that roused short-term anger out of his constituents, namely, dispersing the crowd and arranging a private meeting between Fall and Jill, would have served the town far better in the long term, as at least then they would not have lost so many. But the mayor was not a strong enough leader to take the hit to his popularity. He clung to power and sought to please the masses for every second that he could, even at their own expense. As it turns out, those who cling to power are often the least deserving of it.

“That the man was engaging in flattery even after such a catastrophic blunder disturbs me. The truth of it is, while I do blame myself for the death and destruction that has gripped this town, the mayor’s lack of compliance was what had truly doomed Rotteson to what was almost certainly its greatest mass casualty event in living memory. Forget the elections, it would be a miracle if he was even allowed to maintain his residence after this.

“Fall, he can hear you,” Bell said, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion and disappointment.

“Oh, apologies.” Fall said.

“N-no… it’s fine.” The mayor studied his surroundings anxiously.

The detective slipped his small notebook and pen back into his coat then picked himself up. He made his way over to the creature’s now still stinger where he found the sheathed dagger, whose guard he could tell was decorated with a large amethyst, still attached to the leather strap from earlier. He picked it off the ground and slid the blade halfway out of the sheath.

His eyes widened at the make. It wasn’t just that the amethyst seemed genuine, but the make of the steel is what had truly impressed him, He recognized the almost unnoticeable threads of the crystal coursing through the center like a river breaking off into the sea that was the blade’s edge. It had been almost a decade since he’d last seen one, but he realized that it might have just been a genuine Circuit Breaker blade. Why was the creature carrying such a thing at its hip? Now that it was dead, he would never have the chance to ask it. But at the very least, perhaps he could pawn it off somewhere for gambling money.

“All right,” Fall said, turning back to the mayor. “Tonight, I’d like you to take me to a table.”

“A… a table, detective?”

He tucked the blade into one of his inner coat pockets. “Fort Raid. A table with a one gold coin minimum buy-in. I’d like to play.”

“U-uhm…. I can take you to someone who might know where to find a game like that, but…”

“That’s fine. Come fetch me at the White Lily once the sun has set.”

“R-right…”

With just those words, Fall, who was fatigued and drenched in both his own sweat the shifter’s blue innards, went over to retrieve the other revolver he had lost in the battle, then headed back over to the inn from whence he came.

The battle was a foolhardy one.

He hadn’t the reflexes or the agility to avoid every single attack of a creature that nimble.

He hadn’t the marksmanship to perfectly land the shots that he’d needed to win on a target that swift.

And he hadn’t known which gun was the one Bell had blessed with the amethyst bullets once they had left his grasp.

Every single action he had taken during that battle was a gamble based on previous experiences with the shifters.

He utilized his knowledge and his own self-confidence to overcome the insurmountable challenge before him.

But to give too much of his success to those factors would be sugarcoating it.

The truth is, his victory could be attributed to nothing but blind luck.

Why had he moved with such conviction despite his lack of ability?

Was it that he was truly so certain of his victory?

No.

It was because he had nothing to lose.

He gambled…

…as if…

…he was already dead.

The legendary detective Fall, an infamous man who members of The Baening’s underground parlors had given the nickname of “Dead Gambler”, would now retire to the White Lily after defeating one of the most powerful monsters alive on the continent. He had dispatched it handily as if playing another round at a Fort Raid table.