35 - Black Hand of Desolation [Cherno]

Six shots. That was how many a typical Pattner had in one clip, and Shiva didn’t see the tumorous hump or widened magwell to suggest a lengthened or double-stack system. She was familiar with such details because Sir Damrus had a few blueprint-accurate Pattner reproductions in his collection and Semzar had a habit of playing with them, but one of the genuine articles eluded even Damrus’ considerable reach. If this woman had one of those guns, it alone was reason enough for her to be hunted down and killed… Or to get rich by selling it to the mafia, if she was smart. That was why Shiva had to kill her right here and now; if she were to get away, she might end up becoming valuable enough for Shiva to get punished for letting her go.

Out of ammo and still visibly Purging, the Krahe woman was vulnerable… But so was Shiva. Her Entropy was still up there, and nearly all of it was Hard Entropy to boot, so she couldn’t afford to raise her Barrier again for a bit. Purging would be obvious, and since Krahe had a Purgation Chimney on top of that gun it would be a disadvantageous bet to make. She decided to just play what cards she had as best as she could; her own Tolerance was high enough that she figured she could eat another of those heat-blasts if need be, since it clearly inflicted Energetic damage… But Krahe would just shoot her again to capitalize on the pressure.

No, she was overthinking. That pit fighter mentality was creeping in again, it was just a newbie anathemist with good combat instincts and a fancy gun, nothing more.

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Before Krahe knew it, she had a snake made of chains and razors rushing for her arm, clearly trying to grab her gun out of her hand. End of the day, it was a gun with no bullets in it… And her Purge was nearly over. She let it go and instead closed the distance again, directing a Deathsmoke Spray into her foe’s face. As before she tried to whip it away, mistaking it for smoke. It didn’t do any meat damage, and for all Krahe knew it might've been halted by the Barrier, but it didn’t matter. She knew how to win, it had become obvious. Shiva didn’t have shit for close-quarters skill. Her stance, her insistence on maintaining distance, everything about her screamed “I’ve relied on ranged weapons all my life”. Guns, magic, didn’t matter. Wannabe gunslingers always tattled on themselves.

Shiva stomped and four rows of bladed chains whipped up from the ground in a forward-marching wave, which Krahe jumped over, hissing at the damage they did to her trousers, more annoyed by that than what they did to her Wards.

Having closed the distance, she rolled forward on the landing and planted an overhead palm-heel strike into her foe’s sternum right as another bladed chain sailed right over her. The implants were gone, but the mental math wasn’t; it just took more effort to do the ranging estimates. Shiva crumpled onto her open hand like a wet paper bag before stumbling back in an effort to regain range. She raised her Barrier in a defensive reflex, but it was only the nail in her coffin. Krahe had already collapsed her own flame by the time she had landed, and her arm had taken on that accursed red glow by the time her palm-heel strike had landed.

“Who…” Shiva began, but didn’t get to finish.

EVIL-SCOURING KILLING LIGHT

BLACK HAND OF DESOLATION: CINDER FLASH

It sent her straight into Meltdown; her voice was choked by a cough of chainlinks and chips of metal slag. A half-second later the blood boiled inside her heart, a river of crimson-red running from her eyes, ears, and other facial orifices. She was dead on the spot, her brain ruptured from the inside by massive hemorrhages.

A nuclear shadow of her upper half had been burned into the wall right behind her, though her corpse remained mostly intact. After a brief breather Krahe gathered her gun, as well as any empty clips and shell casings. The glasses made this trivial. Afterwards, she turned her attention to Mohawk’s corpse. First came the rings which adorned her right hand. Krahe pulled the both of them off of her fallen foe’s fingers, scanning them once they were in her hand.

[PURPLE JADE RING, WARDED SOULDREG VESSEL]

[Status:]

Good

[Details:]

Anti-Scrying D1

Contents Concealment D2

[Contents:]

4864 DDs 

The second ring turned out to be a CRC ring with a DD value of 5000.

As she stripped the rings from her foe’s still-warm fingers, Krahe couldn’t help but notice the gangster’s boots.

They were gorgeous knee-high things, obviously custom-made, and their size seemed similar enough to her own. Their most striking feature had to be their aggressively-shaped armored toecaps. Krahe pulled them off the dead woman’s feet without an iota of shame.

“At least you had good taste in footwear, if nothing else…” she muttered. She had momentarily considered taking her leather pants, too, since they also looked to be of very good quality, but Mohawk’s legs were downright spindly compared to her own… And she didn’t feel like playing the coin toss that was disrobing a fresh corpse. Krahe had no use for those weird flintlocks, and as far as she knew, they were somehow ID-locked to their original user, making them worthless to her. Mohawk’s voidkey had partially emerged by this point, and Krahe pulled it before fleeing the scene, as she could hear others not too far off. Whether they were normal people drawn by the commotion or Mohawk’s allies, she didn’t want to be seen by them.

Voidkey in one hand and boots in the other, she made her way to a concealed nook in an out-of-the-way dead-end alleyway, hidden behind a mass of construction waste next to an abandoned half-finished building. There, she shamelessly donned Mohawk’s boots, placing her old pair in the Kenoma Sack. At first they felt a bit tight for comfort, only to widen well beyond what should have been possible as she tried to push her foot in. That was the point where she gave them a look with the Prospector’s Eyes and found that they were not just enchanted to self-adjust, but also to improve the wearer’s balance somewhat.