Heavy metal woman
The man stood leaning against a lightpost, cigarette in hand, and he sighed with boredom, twisting the gun hanging from the sling around his arm to pass the time. He kicked the dirt before raising the cigarette to his mouth, a cold metal cylinder pressed against the nape of his neck, and a woman's voice with a slight rasp said, “Hands off the gun.” He raised his hand off the weapon’s grip. The man tried to turn his head as the woman said, “No, no, look forward if you like keeping everything where it is right now.” He locked his head forward, looking at the other houses on the other side of the stone-paved roads. “What's the passcode to the house? I know your kind operates on passphrases.” The man said calmly, “Aint none go right up and knock.” The sound of a gun's hammer being locked backwards echoed behind his head, “Knock three times then wait two seconds before knocking again.” The woman said, “What's the boss's name?” The man said back, “Why do you need to know the boss’s name?” “Give up the name, or you get a bullet.” the man sighed and said, “Artie.” The woman said, “Was that so hard take the gun off and drop it on the floor? Also, how do you use it? I've never seen one like this.” The man pulled the gun off and tossed it to the floor “Pull the bolt back a rock in a new mag lever on the side is fire select semi auto safe, can i leave now?” she pondered for a second “Go ahead don't come back, if you do while im here it will likely be your end if you bring a weapon, go ahead and run off now.” the man scattered off like a rat.
Senarre pulled a small, grey colored crystal from the pocket in her shorts and placed it in a small port on the collar-like device around her neck. The music filled her ears with heavy guitars and distortion. She walked towards the house, placing the revolver back into her waistline and pulling up the rifle from the floor by its sling. “Short barrel and no stock, interesting little thing,” She pulled the bolt back, revealing the chamber and brass casing with a pointy bullet on the end of it. “Looks like a rifle round but smaller, this must be an import, never seen one like this.” She stopped talking to herself and began walking towards the house. She let the rifle sling rest against her chest as she pulled her hair out of its knot, messing it up to appear as frazzled as possible. She walked up to the door with the outline of a slit in it. She banged on the door three times before waiting and repeating. The slit opened a pair of eyes peeked through the slit. “What do you want?” she slurred her speech intentionally. “Hey mann i neeed a fihx” She scratched at her arms. “Artie said he could help me out,” the one behind the door said, “What's your name?” She put on a stutter and said “St-st-strawberry.” Behind the door closed the slit and shouted, “Yo artie they need you down here.” She raised the rifle to the doorslit, resting its barrel where the man's eyes peeked out from. The doorslit slid open, revealing a pair of eyes that went wide. They shouted “Wha-” she pulled the trigger, painting the doorslit crimson. She waved the rifle around, “Whooh, she kicks.” She pointed the rifle at the knob on the door and pulled the trigger again before raising her foot and kicking it open. The man who had previously opened the slit was holding the body of the one called Artie. She raised the rifle and fired off a short burst at him, turning towards the room to the right, a man sitting on a chair rushed to retrieve a weapon as she loosed another burst of fire. Two men appeared from a door on the far side of the room. She ducked out of the room as they fired shots, plinking on the wall. She waited a moment. “Damn amateurs don't even have trigger discipline,” she ran out of the cover, kicked over a dining room table, dropped behind it as she looked over the body of the man that was on the chair, she pulled his rifle closer by its sling, pressed the lever beneath the magwell, and rocked the magazine out forward she then set the rifle on the ground using and pulled back on the bolt with two fingers “One in the chamber nice she raised her weapon and fired a short burst before picking up the other weapon and raising it firing it into the wall. Around the two assailants, she tossed the gun without a magazine through the door and shouted, “I surrender.” The two men walked out from behind the door. She popped out and fired a series of shots in a wide arc, mowing them down. One of the men backed up to the wall, holding a wound. She walked over to him, gun trained on him.
“You got a basement in this here house?” The man nodded. “You got people down there?” the man nodded. “You got people upstairs?” the man nodded. “How many?” he raised his hand and lifted four fingers. “Wanna go with your guys in the basement?” The man nodded his head. She waved the barrel of the gun and said, “Go ahead.” The man forced himself up, clutching the wound, and walked unsteadily to the basement. She dragged a chair and set it under the handle before walking over to the kitchen stove on the far side of the room and turned all of the knobs, careful not let the stove light. She walked back out of the room to the front door where she came in from, and walked carefully up the stairs. She ducked beneath the stairwell and said, “The origin of all sound.” The sound in the area faded as her eyes began to glow gold. She concentrated and focused the mana to her throat, and she shouted, mimicking the man who opened the doors' voice, “We got er cornered in the basement, get down here now.” Four men ran down the stairs, weapons drawn as they walked past the stairs. She ran, muffling her footsteps up the stairs and into the master bedroom on the second floor. She scanned the room, and a large backpack-shaped apparatus connected to wires sat in the corner of the room. “This must be it,” she pulled off all the wires as the power in the house flicked and faded out. She walked over to the window and fired off a shot, shattering it as she kicked it outward and climbed out onto the roof before dropping into the bushes. She landed with a thump. She turned and fired through the window to where the kitchen would be. She raised her hands to cover her ears as the far side of the house exploded into a fireball. She walked off towards the street backpack on her back. The watchman stood there with a pistol. She raised the rifle and pulled the trigger, but only a click sounded. “Shit.”
A figure on the rooftop of the house adjacent, in a flowing longcoat, said, “Fix override, Reverberation.” The figure disappeared from the rooftop, closing the distance between the roof and the man with the pistol in an instant. The man seized with intense fear before the figure dashed past him in a fraction of a second, the instant in which she drew her sword went unseen with such speed the woman in the long coat raised a gloved hand and pushed a strand of hair out of her face as the man behind her fell to the ground a heap of crimson cubes perfectly portioned and sliced into 1cm intervals. Senarre let the rifle hang from its sling as she walked over to the woman. “Ms. Mortal Blade?” Yaren stepped forward, long coat fluttering in the gentle breeze. She raised her one hand and the other to hold it, rubbing on the palm and joints of the fingers. “Damn, didn't know I'd be drawing the sword today, should've taken some,” she let her hand fall to her side. And raised her finger, “Interesting strategy, I must say, I'm quite fond of your junkie impression, reminds me of my mother.” Senarre looked at her with shock. “Have you been following us all day?” Yaren plucked at a loose thread on one of her fingerless gloves. “More or less, except for when you went into the Jive turkey, I got distracted; someone was selling shawarma.” Senarre looked at her carefully. “What's wrong with your hands? I noticed you were wearing the gloves at the hotel last night.” Yaren smiled and said, “Decades of physical enhancement take its toll; gloves and the like alongside medication help to manage the drawbacks. I've tried to find fixes over the years, but there's no such luck, although I hear the elves have significantly fewer issues with it due to their long lifespans, don't know how that works, never met more than a few elves who are fighters, even fewer who are swordsmen or women.”
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Senarre frowned. “Carmilla can't help with that?” Yaren frowned. “No healing magic only helps what is already able to be fixed. I fear the wear and tear on my joints is not fixable by normal healing magic.” Senarre walked towards her and turned down the side of the street. Yaren began walking alongside her. “You said the junkie thing reminded you of your mother. Was she a user?” Yaren nodded, “Yes, clan Lorea is two things, mostly women and mostly intellectuals, the family fortune comes from Pharmaceutical manufacturing, my mother used to, as they say, get high off one's own supply.” Senarre looked at her, interested. “Is that why most of the clan heads are women?” Yaren nodded, “Yes, before Ryvr and Rosario, there hadn't been a male Lorea born into the family for almost 80 years. Even before that, the family has always had a disproportionate ratio.” Senarre looked, “Lorea said he had a sister, why didn’t she come to the summit or whatever it is you guys are doing here?” Yaren raised her hand, rubbing it again. “She didn't want to come; she works in the courts, not all nobility are required to be in attendance, only the family heads and anyone who desires to be in attendance.” Senarre nodded. “So why were you following me?” Yaren let her hands rest. “I needed to see what sort of woman my son associates with, plus I was bored at the casino. I already made back all of my travel expenses at the tables.” Senarre smiled, “You and your son are good gamblers then, back in serenissima I stepped into the ring at a fight club, and he kept betting on me, after that we got drunk, and I think ended up in a back alley casino, and the next thing I knew we woke up with a big bag full of money.” Yaren laughed, “it certainly seems like the past three months have been eventful for my son then, i will bid you adieu now as i think you have somewhere to be with that bag on your back.” Yaren strained and then disappeared like nothing, as if there was never anyone there to begin with. Senarre whispered to herself, “Damn, she's fast for her age.”
Senarre pushed open the door to the warehouse. Rosario sat studying the model of the house. She shouted out, “Yo,” he turned to look at her, “Oh, you're back, and in a better mood i see.” She walked over, smiling, and dropped the backpack on the table. “I got tired of waiting for a plan, so I walked over there and took it, and picked up a new gun I've never seen too.” She raised the gun from its sling around her chest and showed it to Rosario. Just then, Jameson rolled out from the backroom. “Ooh, you found a Vintovka?” Senarre nodded, “Yea i took it off of one of the guys at the trafficker house. Are these common here?” Jameson rolled over to a toolbox and pulled a rifle out. Its wooden furniture featured a full stock that was cracked and intricately carved; its handguard was replaced with Bakelite. A small wire snaked past the receiver to a small cylinder near the handguard on the stock. A small pouch wrapped with leather. The barrel of the weapon was longer than the one Senarre held. She shouted out, “You have one too?” Jameson laughed, “Hell yeah, the otherside is ghetto as shit, i wouldnt be caught dead without a gun here, realistically any small gun would work, but I mean when you’re me, and you build a big fucking gun for a big fucking robot i think 7.62s are good enough for small interlopers.” Senarre rubbed her chin. “7.62 is that what this thing is chambered in?” Jameson pulled the magazine out of his customized rifle and tossed it to Senarre. “See the little bullets, they look like a rifle round but smaller. The Vintovka series rifles are all chambered in it; call it a regional delicacy of Riviera, the majority of the guns came from a crashed frigate on the other side of the island crashed here bout 20 years ago. The ones like yours have seen better days, all cut up and modified over the years, but they all still feed 7.62x39s. Most of the cartridges are recycled, though I do the reloading of the cartridges for the Jive turkey’s crew. I can get yours cleaned up if you want it to go back to a normal form,” Senarre thought for a moment. “I like the short barrel; she kicks a bit, so a stock would be nice, but I also like its concealibility”
Jameson smiled, “I can work something out. Have you ever heard of a wire frame stock?” She smiled in response. He rolled over to the table and picked up the backpack, and then rolled to the back of the humanoid machine. He fiddled with the bag before rolling back out to the front. He pulled a small control from a toolbox and pressed a button. In an instant, the Red eyes faded off, and the machine went dark for a moment. The eyes reignited an emerald green. Jameson raised his hands in the air. “She fucking works she works, she didn't blow up lets fucking go.” Rosario looked at him, “There was a chance she'd explode?” Jameson raised a hand and waved it. “Only maybe 37 percent, but it didn't happen, so it fucking works, let's go test her tomorrow, wyvern nest on the other side of the island near the crashed frigate should provide adequate soft targets for a test run.” Senarre smiled, “If you consider a wyvern a soft target, I wanna see what she can do.” Jameson pulled himself out of the wheelchair and up the leg into the machine's torso. He lifted his legs into the cabin and placed his hands on the control sticks. He tapped on some gauges. “She works, thanks. I'll be sure to put a word in with Ma and Pa for you guys, but tomorrow morning, we are testing her out. I hope you guys will come with.” Rosario and Senarre smiled and, in unison, said, “I gotta see this.”