Liberty and Death, Chapter 49
“Tania, you can feel me, right?” Cora asked, as the girl pranced alongside her into the Tyrinnan night. “My aura?”
Tania nodded, looking at the dark streets like they were more interesting than the exhibits in an art galley. Two of Kara’s karambits hung limply from her hands, looking about as dangerous as fidget spinners in conjunction with the absent expression on Tania’s face.
“Tania, I need you to hear me on this, stay in that aura,” Cora commanded, gently squeezing the girl’s cheeks and making her meet her eyes. “I understand there’s more going on with you than it looks like, and that something in you can take care of itself, but the Tania I know and love could get turned to ash by a strong breeze. You need the extra stats this aura gives you, kay?”
Tania nodded sleepily, then went back to watching the streets.
The big upside to having an aura, it turned out, was that you could tell when someone entered it. Kind of. Cora imagined it was similar to what spidey sense was like, albeit far less specific. Which made it all the more galling that when Cora had turned around to lead her combat team out on another harvesting run, she’d had absolutely no fucking clue that she’d find Tania, decked out in tactical gear, standing maybe 3 inches behind her. After it became clear the girl was going out with or without them to watch her back, Cora relented, on the condition that Tania stay on her tight.
Fortunately, once in Cora’s aura, and perceived, it became much easier to keep track of Tania. Plus, Hawk, Kyra, Trish and Fern were all just as worried about Tania as Cora was, and were keeping a close eye on her. At least as close an eye as could be kept on a girl whose very existence abhorred observation.
This was very much a cautionary test run. While Kyra and Cora had gotten massive upgrades with the addition of their class, the loss of Iain’s experience was a big one, and they didn’t fancy running into the Chains or a sub-boss again. Nope, they were looking for small fry, to help Fern, Trish, and Tania get a few levels, and with some luck bag a Shimcore or two alongside whatever other bits and bobs they could get.
“See that?” Hawk whispered, coming up behind Cora, wrapping an unnecessary hand around her waist as the other indicated a small lumpy section of wall on a building ahead.
“Damn, thought Hawk meant the hair, but might be the eyes too,” Cora said, giving the big girl an appreciative pat on the ass. She probably shouldn’t have. It had been a hell of a kiss, but it’d broken a boundary. Physical affection only reinforced that. However, Hawk had a very nice ass, and Cora wanted to touch it, both of which were almost unbeatable arguments, especially when combined with the way Hawk’s wink made her tummy tickle. Out here, in the dark, those beast-yellow eyes were reflective, and Cora wondered if Hawk really even needed the streetlights to see.
“Trish,” Cora hissed, then pointed out the camouflaged Alphound. This had been exactly what they’d hoped for, a good chance to figure out whether or not Trish’s marksman rifle had the firepower to punch through one of these things' hides, before they had to find out in the middle of a firefight.
The professional soldier immediately locked onto the lump in question, and lined it up in her sights, taking a moment to scan the street for any more. Satisfied there weren’t any more, visible at least, she looked to Cora for final confirmation. She got it.
The rifle cracked once, and the Alphound fell limp to the street.
Cora made a mental note to make sure any guards were equipped with something that shot at least 7.62, since that got through high [End] a hell of a lot better than 9mil.
What happened next made Cora wonder if whatever the System was doing in the streets here worked on some kind of ‘Encounter’ basis, because as soon as the first Alphound fell dead, the alleys came alive with hissing.
A chucked rock cracked off of Cora’s forcefield, and her return snapshot took a roof goblin in the forehead. A fervent hiss next to her grabbed her attention, and she looked back down to see an Alphound already coiled to leap at her a few feet away.
Cora smirked at it, leveling the barrel of her gun to try out a new skill.
“Shoulda run the other way, Rango,” she said, and the slide glowed green as she pulled the trigger.
MID +250%
Eh, good enough, Cora thought as the Alphound slumped to the ground before it could even begin its leap.
Movement in her peripheral activated her Reactimax, and she turned, already drawing [Rib Cutter] to intercept the Alphound pouncing off a nearby wall. She would have too, if the monster hadn’t been slammed out of the air by a little ball of unbelievable fury, moving pretty quick even in bullet time.
The thing was probably stabbed a hundred times before it and it’s passenger had even stopped rolling, and Cora seized the opportunity.
[Tanya] [Level 2]
[Str:8(1)]
[Dex:12(1)]
[End:12(1)]
[Vit:12(1)
[Agi:14(1)
[Int:4(4)]
[Will:28(1)]
[Cha:10(1)]
[Skills:{Knife Proficiency}, {Karambit Mastery I}, {Favored Enemy-(Slave Owner)}]
[Titles: [387.44 MILLION MILES]]
[Stat Points:0]
[Skill Points:0]
It was dead by the time Tanya slipped off of it, and she was off like a shot, scrambling up the side of a building towards a goblin that didn’t look anywhere near scared enough.
Thought so, Cora sang in her head, before a gleam in the corner of her eye set off enough alarm bells to make her duck and roll.
A fireball, not a big one, but still a fireball, slammed into the cobblestone where she’d just stood.
She tracked it back to whence it had come, and found a goblin, still diminutive, but wearing ragged robes, a big funny hat, and waving a staff whose tip glowed an angry, incandescent red.
[Level 3 Gerblin Shaman (IV)]
Right, why wouldn’t some of the little green bastards be able to do magic, Cora thought, ending her roll in a shooting crouch and plugging two rounds into its skull.
Or she would have, if the bullets hadn’t pinged off a wobbly shield around the tiny shaman. It squealed, and dove into a nearby alcove.
“Keep an eye out for gerblin’s with glowing sticks!” Cora roared, sighting in on a couple more gerblins, which proved to have a much more conventional relationship with bullets to the dome. “Just had a fireball tossed at me and my bullets bounced off the air in front of it!”
“On it!” Kyra shouted back. It was very weird. The ‘On’ came from somewhere behind Cora, and the ‘It’ came from the alcove the shaman had jumped into. It was followed quickly by the shaman’s head, neck burning at the stump.
“Bad-fuckin’-ass, short stuff!” Hawk yelled over the roar of [Bertha]. Unfortunately, this kind of engagement wasn’t what the gun was designed for, and she wasn’t hitting much, but she was also making everything around them think twice about leaving cover.
Kyra appeared behind her, slashing down a gerblin approaching Hawk. The wound flared with angry cinders as it died.
“Bad ass is what I fuckin’ do, big girl,” Kyra said, and faded into the earth once more.
An instant later, and the street was quiet, save for a steady, sickly, and very wet noise from the rooftop Tanya had scurried up.
“Tanya??” Cora called, “you good up there? We got the rest of ‘em!”
The noise stopped, and after a beat, a devastated little corpse sailed over the walls edge, Tanya’s tiny form following it down, scurrying like a spider along the wall.
She reached the ground on all fours, but by the time she’d regained her feet, her eyes had lost their burning rage, and Tania skipped back over to Cora, nonchalantly interlacing their fingers, lubricated with a lot of blood.
“Do you… know what just happened?” Cora asked her, and Tania shook her head.
“Don’t remember," she said, pleasant and airy, “not my problem!”
Hmmm…. Cora thought, not really wanting to look the gift of a stealth berserker like Tanya in the mouth, but also pretty sure whatever her existence did to Tania wasn’t healthy. That said, Tania did technically seem happy, if you ignored the bone-deep sadness that seemed to permeate her every up-beat movement.
“Right, uh, anyway,” Cora continued, “Harvest up everybody! Fern, I’d like you to heavily consider taking a {Harvester} skill. If you’re game, I’m thinking about having you be a leader of a squad where this is the main job, once we get more girls integrated.”
“Roger roger, bosslady,” Fern replied with a jaunty salute, and her eyes took on the faint glow of the skill. She beckoned Trish over, and began to show her the valuable bits of an Alphound.
Cora did the same to the Gerblin Shaman, grinning to herself as she used [Rib Cutter] for its named purpose, plucking a Shimcore out of the monster’s heart. Its staff also glowed in her vision, and she tried focusing in on it.
[Pyroteckstick (I)]- drains stamina to allow for minor pyrokinesis. Cost lowered with increasing [Will].
Well that’s fucking dope. I mean, I’d still rather have a gun, personally, but I’m sending this back home. Maybe we can get somebody interested in magic.
She slotted the staff through her pocket space, and did the same with everything else they’d harvested. That came to another 7 Alphound’s worth of materials, and one more slightly enchanted Gerblin cudgel.
That last was in Fern’s hand, and she almost shoved it through the aperture, then stopped. She pulled it back, then twirled the heavy stick through some of the mace forms Cora had seen her working on with Iain. She grinned.
“Cool if I keep this?” She asked Cora, “kinda like the way it feels. Was leanin’ towards smashing shit when shit gets close enough anyway.”
“Hell yeah, sister!” Hawk said, giving Fern a clap on the back she barely even stumbled from.
“Like Hawk said, ‘Hell yeah sister’bb,” Cora echoed with a laugh, “Whatever’s gonna help you stay alive and make everything that tries to change that dead.”
The [Gerblin Cudgel] was a minor loss, [Big Sys] thought they’d sell for about 1k at market with their modest [Str] and [End] boosts, along with being usable by the general public. Still, Cora made a mental vow to always let her girls take pick of anything useful (and that they’d actually use), that could help increase Luxholme’s military might.
“Whew!” She said, not tired, but feeling like she should be. “Okay, lets head back, point wasn’t to press out lu–”
Gunfire a few blocks over, and she grimaced. Hawk growled, a sound Tania echoed with surprising accuracy.
“No, guys, plan was not to engage the Chains tonight, we–”
A plaintive, feminine scream.
“Ah fuck,” Cora sighed, Kyra and Tania already sprinting fill tilt towards the sound. At first, Cora thought they were moving slow, then she realized that was just because she was following fast as she could herself.