Liberty and Death, Chapter 76
Chapter 76
“H-how!?” Baldy McDeskFuck gasped, clutching the smoking wound in his shoulder. “That was a war rated Interdiction field, you–”
Cora blew his arm off at the elbow.
While he screamed about how frustrated he was with that, she called up Jocasta.
“Heal him up, okay? This guy might actually have info we need,” she asked, and Jocasta obliged with a gleeful cackle.
A few seconds later, he stared in mute horror at the smooth stump that now represented the end of his arm.
“You called for backup?” Cora asked.
“F-fuck y–”
Cora placed [Vector Driver]’s barrel against his knee.
“Shit, okay, y- yes!”
“Response time?”
“No fucking clue, the Addicts were supposed to kill everybody, the backup’s a formality!”
“Heh, well, that didn’t work out the way you hoped,” Cora laughed. She stood, and kicked him once hard in the stomach, just because. “Hawk, pick him up, and lets make tracks, see if we can’t catch up to Fern and the girls. Jocasta, you do enough to level?”
“Oh yes!” Jocasta said brightly, “I’ve added (Furtive Wandering) to {Secretive Nature}. It certainly should be enough for tomorrow, though I will have to be in the thick of things. Whoop!”
Hawk had Baldy slung over one shoulder, and did the same, albeit far more gently, with Jocasta on the other.
“Okay, everyone out the way Kyra came in!” Cora ordered, then flipped out the window to lead by example. Kyra did the same with considerably more grace, Tanya as well, then Lysander floated down on a cushion of air.
Hawk left a cartoon-ass her-shaped hole as she bust straight through the wall, shaking the ground with her landing.
Jocasta cackled excitedly on her shoulder, while Baldy threw up.
“Oh, fuck you, dickhead,” Hawk growled, twisting herself to see a trail of puke down her left side. Casually as scratching an itch, she reached up and snapped her captive’s shin like a twig. That did nothing to stop him from puking, but apparently it was enough for Hawk to count them as even.
C: Fern, we’ve got Kyra and a hostage, where are you at?
F: you gonna give him to the new girls like the Textillery guy?
F: could be a fun tradition
C: probably. Location?
Fern pinged herself, a tiny red outline in the distance giving Cora a heading.
“Y’all see that?” Cora asked.
“Yep,” answered Hawk and Kyra.
“No…” said Lysander, while Tanya just scowled.
Right.
“Okay! Follow me!”
Cora set off at a sprint, weaving through streets and alleys, counting on [End] to let her keep up the pace.
C: How we lookin’, T?
T: no contacts yet.
T: even with a good vantage, buildings block sightlines like a motherfucker though
C: do your best, just keep eyes on the rescues.
Trish clicked the chat twice in confirmation, and brought her focus back to wherever she was batmanning on a roof.
As Cora sprinted through the city, it struck her again just how empty the place was. It reminded her of a movie set, left up after wrap, just waiting to be recycled or scrapped.
She knew there must be people in most of these buildings. Either now, or at night, after the Bazaar closed.
But they weren’t going to be coming outside.
Not that Cora could blame them. All those people in those cages had to come from somewhere.
A crashing sound caught her ear.
For a second, she thought it was just Hawk's bounding leaps.
But no, those were behind her.
This was coming from the side, and getting louder each time.
Jane was screaming inside of her, and Cora listened.
She turned, skidding to a halt and facing the sound. Above the apartment block, cloud of dust and debris flew into the sky one street over.
C’mon motherfucker….
Another sharp crash, and the apartment block’s windows blew out in slow motion as Cora’s Reactimax activated.
A section of the wall followed the shattering glass, dust billowing out, only for a familiar, chain-masked visage to burst out of it.
And straight into the surging fist of Miss Fortune.
“Gah!” He roared, as a superhuman fist sent him crashing back the way he came. The air crackled with ozone, his shield snapping and sparking from the force of the blow.
His chain wrapped fist dug into the ground, tearing up the flooring of the building as he skidded to a halt, annoyingly composed.
“You were warned, Light,” he growled.
“How has anything I’ve done made you think I was going to listen?” Cora snarled back, lining [Vector Driver] up with his chest.
The chain wrapping one hand flashed out, and Cora’s shot glanced off of impossibly hard steel, tracing a tiny line through the upper floors of the building.
Powerful legs tensed beneath him, and he was on her.
With Jane’s reactions, she could track him, barely.
The shockwave from his fist as she ducked under it still managed to give her a headache.
If she was fighting Hawk, she might have had an opening. But while the [Class Traitor] had the build and brawn to be a brawler, his skill made him something far more dangerous.
It was Jane’s reactions, not Cora’s that let her bunny hop over his follow up leg sweep.
It was Cora’s recent experience that had taught her midair was a bad place to be.
“Fuck…” Cadey said as she took a hit that turned her face to bloody mush, but her unwilling sacrifice wasn’t in vain.
Cora drove [Rib Cutter] into her opponents back, his shield working poorly against a slow moving blade.
He let out a roar that was half wheeze, a promising sign of a collapsed lung, but wrenched himself around, yanking Cora’s blade, still stuck into his back, out of her hand.
His momentum didn’t stop, pulling an unwrapped chain around with him that would definitely cut Cora in half.
Sorry, Lacey, Cora grimaced, summoning her roll to take that hit.
Lacey laughed as she died, just like she did the first time.
Cora was behind him once more, firing a shot into the back of his knee. It wasn’t enough to break his shield, but it was enough to drive him to a knee.
Cora wrenched [Rib Cutter] up and through his shoulder, his shield sparking out as the blade pierced its membrane.
She angled her knife to come back down through his neck, when he threw himself forwards, leg snapping out into Cora’s knee.
Pain whited out her vision as her limb went digitigrade, and she fell backwards.
Her opponet was already up, uninjured arm swinging one of its chains in an arc down towards her.
Sorry–
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Angela said, taking Cora’s place as the chain split her in two.
Cora appeared behind the [Class Traitor] one last time, on her back, but [Vector Driver] lined up with the back of his head.
“We’re both outta lives, bi–”
“KNEEL!” he roared, and while it didn’t dominate Cora, the force still stunned her. Behind him, though, Hawk faceplanted in her charge, Kyra right behind her, both sliding to a halt at the back of his boots.
“Heh, didn’t think I’d notice your friends?” He laughed, each breath misting his lips with blood.
He lifted his boot, lining its crown up with the back of Hawk’s skull.
“Still not supposed to kill you, but h–”
A tiny ball of hate, fury, and spite hit him like a meteor.
He screamed, actually screamed, as talons tore chunks from his flesh like it was attached to him no more firmly than well cooked meat.
Tanya latched to his shoulders, the claws on her feet tearing at his belly like a predatory cat, before he ripped her off, one hand around her neck the other holding in thick strands of intestine.
He glared at the very embodiment of hate for a moment, before his gaze shifted to Cora.
The light in them was far too sly for her to be comfortable with.
It was a look she’d been given before.
He let his intestines splatter against the ground, reached into his pocket, and faded to smoke.
Along with Tanya.
“No!” Cora shrieked, rushing for the already dissipating smoke.
But there was nothing she could do.
“Fuck!” She roared, kicking one of the bricks littering the street through one of the few intact windows.
“Cora, we gotta get back to Luxholme, take care of those women, and see if we can find her,” Kyra said, laying a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Be mad, but be active. Let’a go.”
Cora turned to growl at her, ask how she was staying calm, when she met Kyra’s eyes.
There didn’t need to be actual fire for those hazel eyes to burn, and they held so much heat that it hurt.
“Right,” Cora snarled, the calmest form of speech she could manage. “Let’s get to Fern.”
Hawk sheepishly rose from her knees, while Lysander was only just getting to the scene. Her weird little walking trick could only take her so quick, apparently.
Cool emerald eyes took in the situation with alacrity, and locked onto the point where Tanya had been held.
Perfect, plump Elven lips parted into a smile that was nothing but smug.