by TR Cameron
In the far corner of the room, all the way across the space and a challenging shot from her position, she spotted another pair of dark-suited people. They were unloading large backpacks, and Morrigan was pretty sure the things they were pulling out were grenades and mines. Her brain screamed at the danger, and her hands acted without conscious thought, reaching back to select an explosive arrow, putting it to the string, and sending it soaring before she could reconsider.
As it flew, she had the slightest bit of remorse at the damage it might do to the casino, but absolutely none for the duo that was planning to use them against the mixture of combatants and innocents on the gaming floor. The arrow struck and exploded, triggering several of the munitions. The blast wave flew out, shattering glass and slamming people into nearby furniture, breaking some of it. She was sure she’d injured some noncombatants with her action and regretted the necessity. Better injured than dead from those bastards’ grenades, though.
Her fingers had already found a razor arrow and aimed it at another of the dark-suited attackers shooting into the crowd. She paused and drew a deep breath, thinking that despite being the cause of the explosion, they probably still had enough deniability not to bring the police down on them, especially if Demetrius was able to mess with the camera feeds as he’d once boasted he could. She shifted her aim slightly and set it loose, and the arrow flew to plunge into the forearm holding the pistol and stick there, the arrowhead jutting out the far side of the man’s broken arm. He fell to his knees with an expression of great pain and shock, and she grinned with satisfaction. See, I can shoot without killing. So there, doubters.
She drew another arrow and looked for a target.
Idryll thrived in the chaotic battle. The sheer number of bodies meant she could get close to her targets before engaging them, and in several cases, she had rendered opponents unconscious from behind before they had any idea they were in danger. Her claws stayed sheathed as she instead relied on speed and the power that momentum provided. While she’d been using her extra musculature quite a lot in the recent past, it wasn’t her preference. She was a tiger, and tigers were fast. They struck, faded, and struck again. They didn’t get into drawn-out punching battles with their enemies. It felt good to be fighting like herself again.
A bulky humanoid in a black uniform, slightly shorter than her, caught her attention because he was using fists and feet to beat anyone who came in range. She wasn’t sure why he’d opted to put away his pistol, but since no one else seemed to be targeting him and he was doing quite a bit of damage, she figured he was as good a project as any. She ran toward him, exploiting his current opponent as a sight blocker. Then the security man went down, and the enemy spotted her. He grinned, displaying bloody teeth, and shouted, “Bring it on.”
She obliged, running forward and throwing a fist at his face. He seemed to shrink in on himself, bringing his hands in defensively to protect himself from her first flurry of blows. She tried for a knee to his sternum, and he spun suddenly, wickedly fast, bringing his knee around to smash into the side of hers. The pain was intense, the move one she’d never seen before. He continued the spin into a backfist that slammed into her ribs, and Idryll stumbled sideways.
He hadn’t damaged her, but he had hurt her, which made her angry. She snarled, “Okay, twinkle toes, you have some good offensive moves. Let’s see how you are on defense.” She changed her style, darting in with a jab and sliding back, then slapping his hand aside when he tried to counter and going for a joint lock. He yanked hard before she could establish the hold and turned the move into another spin, leaping and bringing his foot around at her head. She cartwheeled to the side to evade it, her skull moving barely ahead of his foot. The moment her feet touched the ground, she lashed out in a front kick. It caught his advancing form right in the stomach and stopped his motion completely.
He coughed once and nodded. “You’re a worthy adversary. I’m sorry to have to do this.” His hand was a blur as it reached into his jacket in a move she recognized from films galore. Before he could bring the pistol in his shoulder holster to bear, she charged and tackled him, pinning the arm between their bodies. She snapped her head forward and slammed her forehead into his an instant before landing. His momentum plus the force of her strike drove the back of his head into the floor. The gun clattered from nerveless fingers, and she jumped up and searched for a new opponent, already feeling a well-earned headache growing.
Ruby had used subtle magics, mainly force blasts and ropes, to immobilize, daze, and otherwise render unconscious five or six attackers as she moved through the press of people. Demetrius finally spoke in her ear to deliver the information she’d been waiting for. “My algorithm has analyzed the crowd. There are distinct clusters around two individuals.”
Ruby nodded. “Those will be the leaders. Let’s see them.”
An overhead view of the casino floor appeared in a window in her vision, with herself marked in blue, Idryll in orange, and Morrigan in red. Green highlighted another figure, and the last indicator was in yellow. Green was closer to her, so it made the decision easy. “Mo, you’ve got yellow. Idryll and I will take green.”
She performed the mental gymnastics to match up the overhead view with the perspective of her current position. Then she spotted a female elf stalking through the crowd with a pistol in each hand, doing a significant amount of damage beyond what the cohort of guards or cronies around her was putting out. Her face was weird, somehow, and Ruby couldn’t make out her features. Doesn’t matter. “All right, lady. You’re contestant number one on tonight’s smackdown special.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Morrigan cringed involuntarily as the glass front doors of the Invention casino exploded inward, spreading a shower of shards over the gaming floor. Heavy drones swooped in from the opening, immediately recognizable. She announced, “Paranormal Defense Agency is in the house, going to have to deal with them before I can go after my target,” and received curses in response, even from Demetrius. She grinned inwardly. Now there’s a good use for my razor arrows. The drones were powerful at a distance, but when at short range, had several vulnerabilities. Most glaring were the horizontal propellers that kept them airborne. On the heavier models that used different kinds of engines for propulsion, the ones that helped steer them. Take one of those out, and suddenly whoever was piloting it had a major issue on their hands, assuming the thing didn’t instantly crash.
She dispatched an arrow at the nearest without conscious thought, and it buried itself in the armor plating to the side of the propeller. An annoyed growl accompanied the launching of the next, and that one flew true. The propeller snapped, and the drone slewed to the side to slam into another. She laughed at the impact, then cringed when they smashed to the ground near a foursome of fleeing tourists. Okay, gotta be more careful.
She selected the drone farthest from endangering any living beings and used an explosive arrow on it. It trailed smoke as it dropped like a rock to land on a pair of still-upright gaming tables. The sprinklers, which were an incredibly annoying feature of the battle, put out the flames immediately. Well, that’s something, anyway.
A whirr sounded as another approached from her left, apparently having spotted her attacking its comrade. She reflexively twisted and pointed her right arm at it, firing the grapnel the agents had given her. The harpoon flew out, and the line got wrapped in the propeller. It yanked her off her perch before she could detach the cable, and she hit the floor and rolled, coming up face-to-face with one of the black-suited attackers.
He looked as shocked as she felt, and she whipped her bow forward, smashing it into his nose and breaking it. She spun into a back kick and sent him flying, then used a blast of force to hurl herself into the air toward the next nearest slot machine pedestal. She landed and cast a veil over herself, then crouched with a razor arrow nocked, waiting to see if anyone had noticed her new position. Come on, send me another drone. I have a little present for it.
&n
bsp; Scimitar had provided Grentham with directions to the leadership of the invaders. He didn’t know how she’d figured it out, and he didn’t care. He trusted her implicitly, and once again she’d led him true. A cluster of four individuals fought around a fifth that stayed more or less in the center. They were dressed exactly like his people and used identical weapons, although a couple used two pistols at once, which wasn’t policy. If he hadn’t been able to recall the faces of each Aces guard, they might have fooled him. They did a good job of infiltrating, that’s for sure. I’m surprised they didn’t smuggle in anything heavier, though. Lucky for us, I guess.
He sent a force blast at the one facing in his direction, knocking the woman upward and back a dozen feet to crash into a nearby wall. He wasn’t worried about restraining his attacks. His people had the legal and moral high ground, and thus anything he did in response to the infiltration would be considered reasonable and legitimate. I love being legitimate. It happens so rarely. The imposter positioned behind his first target turned to face him and lifted a pair of pistols. He knocked one away with the force blast and threw up a shield to protect himself from the other. He’d drilled the attack and defend routine into his reflexes over countless battles.
The stupidity of that choice occurred to him an instant before the bullet burned into his shoulder outside the vest, twisting him around to the left with the impact’s force. Anti-magic rounds, of course. He growled and sent a lightning blast at his opponent. A shield flickered into being and withstood his magic for a moment before collapsing beneath his power. “Amateurs.” He grabbed a flask from the holder on his belt and downed the healing potion, grimacing as it pushed the bullet out of his body, and the wound knitted itself back together.
Scimitar said, “Interesting news. Someone else is in the system, and the cameras aren’t recording.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“I presume it’s so there’s no official record of what goes on here.”
“You’re recording, right?”
She laughed. “Of course. Also, you should note that the tall person ahead of you is using magic to conceal their features. My systems say it’s a woman, based on body measurements.”
The woman’s face was shifting subtly, meaning that whatever look she was wearing at a given moment in time wasn’t her real one. She dispatched blasts of magic at a pair of gnomes, sending them flying. I recognize that body language. He called, “Hey, wench. I hoped we’d find each other. Good to see you again.”
The woman turned, and a smile spread over her face. She replied, in a familiar voice, “I’ve been looking for you.”
Ruby dashed across the floor, following Demetrius’s directions toward the leader marked in green, and saw the tall figure turn to face a dwarf. It took her a second to realize it was Grentham, and she chided herself for not anticipating that. You’re reacting, not thinking, Ruby. Get it together. The tall person had two associates guarding them, and Ruby threw a line of force out at the one on her right, then yanked them forward. The move put them directly in the way of the other, who shifted his pistols out of line barely in time to avoid perforating his partner.
She used the instant of the rear one’s obscured vision to throw herself into the air, hurtling over the middle defender and kicking out her feet at the far one. The double-footed blow knocked them back toward the one in the center, who moved adroitly away without abandoning her focus on Grentham. Now that she was closer, Ruby could see that the tall person was a woman and was disappointed to find it wasn’t the Drow she’d thought it might be. Again, not a smart hope since this action is harming magicals, but you never know.
She turned and used force blasts to knock the guns out of the other guard’s hands, then skipped close and snapped a punch into his face. He swung back at her, and she blocked hard enough to fracture his forearm, then spun and cut his legs out from underneath him. He slammed onto the ground, and she reached out with her force magic to grab a fallen Taser, probably one of the real security guards’ weapons. She shot the downed man and discharged the voltage into him, taking him from dazed to unconscious. She let the weapon drop and turned to deal with the person in charge.
The woman’s face was morphing, a clever disguise that would wreak havoc on facial recognition software. I need to figure out how to do that and keep it going while I do other stuff. That’s clever. She had abandoned any pretense of being human and was firing magic at the dwarf, who had wrapped himself in a force shield that kept him safe but also prevented him from attacking. The woman said something about being able to last longer than him this time. Fortunately, nothing was holding Ruby back from engaging her.
She dashed in and planted a pair of quick punches into the figure’s lower back. Her opponent straightened with a howl and spun faster than Ruby would’ve expected, smashing a forearm in at her head. Ruby blocked it, and it knocked her stumbling to the side from the sheer force. Okay, she’s pumping her muscles. Two can play at that game. Ruby threaded magic into her body as she found her balance and called to the dwarf, “Maybe do something other than cowering under your shield? Sometime today, perhaps?”
He replied, “Yeah, whatever. Why the hell did you punch her instead of blasting her to pieces?” However, his protection fell, and he threw a blast of fire at their common foe.
Ruby charged in again, the woman now using one hand to alternately shield and throw magic at the dwarf to keep him pinned down and the other to hurl shadow blasts at Ruby. She ducked and dodged on her way in, deflecting some of them with a buckler of force on her left arm. With a burst of speed, she went in for a kick, only to have to veer off when her foe created a pillar of flame right in her path. The evasion took her near the dwarf. “You’re not doing a great job of protecting the place, I’ve gotta say. Your Yelp! reviews are going to be terrible.”
The snarl in his voice was evident, despite the cacophony around them. “Not all of us can choose our battles so we look good. I bet you stand in front of the mirror admiring yourself daily, fancy-ass dragon head.”
Not daily. Weekly, maybe. Ruby had to dive and roll away from a particularly vicious blast of shadow aimed at both of them, and when she came up, the woman had summoned force blades in both hands and was backing away to keep both her and Grentham in sight. Ruby drew her sword, opening her mind to let its inhabitants in, and charged at the woman. She noted in her peripheral vision that Grentham was circling, trying to get behind their opponent, and shook her head. Sure, let me be the bait. Bastard.
Idryll finished taking down one of the invaders and looked up to see a flood of PDA agents coming through the door. She was positive she and her friends were targets as much as anyone else in the place, so she crouched and moved away under cover of the few gaming tables that still stood. A pair of elves in dark suits suddenly blocked her path. They attacked immediately upon noticing her. Each carried a pair of batons, probably liberated from fallen guards, that sparked at the ends. Stun weapons. Smart.
She circled to the left to prevent simultaneous attacks from both and said into the comm, “We have PDA agents here now in addition to the drones. I doubt they’ll make distinctions between the good guys and the bad guys. Not to mention the fact that they’re seriously confused about which ones we are.” Then she had to focus on the fight, and everything else faded into the background.
The nearer elf swept the baton around at head height, displaying absolutely no realization of how fast she was. To be fair, she’d not been moving at top speed. She did now, whipping out a hand to grab his wrist and pivoting to slam her other fist into his tricep. His arm offered less resistance as it went numb, and she spun underneath it, wrenching it up behind him. He stood on his tiptoes, and she pushed forward with all her substantial strength, sending him tripping toward his partner.
The other elf danced out of the way in a quick spin, and Idryll nodded in appreciation of his show of agility. She’d come out of the previous exchange with the baton in her hand, having grabbed it unconsciously as
she made her move, and she threw it at her foe. He brought his across to block it, then advanced cautiously. He flicked the baton out at her, and she leaned back the minimum distance to avoid it. She needed to stay near, as the weapons gave him the advantage of a longer reach. He was wisely keeping one close to his body, and she couldn’t risk having him block a punch with it because the shock might slow her enough to give him an opportunity.
She feinted inward, and he shifted the baton in a short block, refusing to over commit. She stutter-stepped to the side, and he lunged forward, almost catching her. He extended far enough that she was able to snap a foot up into his ribs, and while he lurched away sufficiently quickly to avoid having anything broken, she saw in his eyes that the blow had hurt him. Then she dove aside as a PDA drone strafed across their fight, stitching the other man and his partner with bullets and narrowly missing her. She ran from the drone, shouting, “Watch out, they’re shooting to kill.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As she deflected a strike from the woman’s sword, Ruby said to the dwarf, “The damn stupid scumbag PDA is here. I hate those guys.” She and he were side by side, harrying their shared enemy.
Grentham replied, “You know, they’ve jacked into the self-driving cars.” He blocked an attack from the woman and countered with a stuttering line of fire bolts, but she easily intercepted it with her force blade.