For a moment the markswoman stood watching the commotion unfold. The gentle night breeze swirled through her blonde hair and rocked the pocket chain hanging from her waistcoat. It was safe up there on the rooftops; the vision of Purples attempting to reach her and clumsily plummeting to their demise provided a grim yet comforting image.
But what was done was done: it was time to enter the fray, and get Ali’s guests out of this mess alive.
She turned to her bionic arm and grinned, the polished titanium reflecting the night’s aquatic hue, “Alright you, don’t let me down now.”
Pressing her thumb into the inbuilt ring on her index finger, an amber aura engulfed her hand, shifting like luminescent sand to form the shape of a handgun. Within seconds, the gun went from intangible to a solid, functioning firearm.
She caught sight of a street cable a short distance beneath her and readied herself to jump. On the other side of the street the other watcher had returned to glaring at her, silent and unmoving.
“Well don’t just stand there, love,” she called over with a smirk and leapt over the railing, hurtling towards the street cable. Using the curve of her handgun she hooked herself to it and rode along as though it were a zipwire.
The other watcher blinked, perplexed, and ran off into the shadows.
Crossing high above the ground, Cassian could see clearly now how the swarm of Purples had almost already engulfed the three men. She initially assumed that, similar to Ali, the two Outsiders would have poor self-defence skills and find themselves overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of attackers. It seemed, however, that they were somewhat holding their own.
Reaching the end of the wire, she leapt downwards onto a parallel window sill before kicking off the wall into a backflip. After a myriad more kicks and flips she stuck a two-footed landing on the street, narrowly missing a blow to the head as one of Ali’s electrical frisbees whizzed past.
“Bloody hell, mate watch where you’re throwin’!” She exclaimed.
“If you quit showin’ off your gymnastic skills and start shootin’, maybe I’ll apologise,” Ali responded, there was no denying he was pissed off.
“Aye-aye, Captain,” she rolled her eyes and raised her gun to the closest Purple.
Upon pulling the trigger, a streak of amber sparks flared out of the muzzle, hitting the Purple in the shoulder. The shock stunned them, sending them toppling backwards to the ground and knocking several others over on the way down. Cassian found they often fell like dominoes, which certainly made the job easier.
Further down the street the two Outsider men seemed to be making significant advancements against the horde. The tallest of the two appeared to be an eldrin man clad in elegant gothic attire, whose physicality seemed to phase in and out of reality through flashes of vivid green, quickly moving him from place to place. The shorter man was evidently a hybrid; his scaled red horns and tail indicated genes spliced with a creature of reptilian origin. He was built like a tank and seemed to fling people away from him with little to no resistance.
In her state of distraction, Cassian was a little late to react as a woman barrelled into her, two teenagers following behind. Staggering backwards, she accidentally tased the woman through the head and watched as she crumpled to the ground.
“Yowch, that’ll definitely tingle tomorrow mornin’,” she winced down at her as she more carefully stunned the teenagers. She was secretly glad her firearms, along with Ali’s other custom weapons, were non-lethal.
“Oh thank the gods, your gun still works,” Ali grumbled, watching her from over his shoulder as he electrified a further three Purples with his frisbees.
“Why wouldn’t it? You been buildin’ them to break?” She called back as she continued to fire. Ali shrugged, a grin creeping across his face.
“Maybe for this I’ll cut your warranty short.”
“Dickhead!” She spun round and shot a Purple directly behind him, narrowly missing on purpose. “You’ll do no such thing.”
In the fraction of a second she found herself standing still, a scruffy Purple with spiked hair and a torn shirt lurched at her, grabbing tightly to her bionic arm and tugging hard. With a crunch and a tear the prosthetic pulled away from her shoulder. The wires beneath her skin that travelled up the right side of her neck and head tingled uncomfortably as the connection severed.
“AGH, FUCK,” she clutched her head and stumbled sideways into yet another crowd of Purples, knocking them down as she fell atop of them, bewildered.
Forcing herself to regain composure, she began to wrestle against the force of the several other people she’d knocked over, who were now all frantically grappling at her in an effort to drag her to her doom: the nearest installation store.
“Oi, guys,” she called out to the others, frankly a little nervous now. “Might need a little help here!”
The two Outsiders turned to her attention, having sufficiently quelled the crowds on their end of the street. The hybrid man chuckled softly as he watched how she struggled.
“She’s the one who started this?” He mused, turning to the eldrin, “Why am I not surprised?”
“Well it won’t do much good to just stand there, Felix!” The eldrin replied with a tut, and once again phased away in a flash of green.
“Yeah well I’m not the only one, where’s Lee?” Felix muttered to himself as though the eldrin man was still there, glancing up towards the rooftops.
Ali was similarly preoccupied with his other watcher’s whereabouts, as he threw his frisbees in rhythmic loops to keep back the oncoming attackers, his visor scanned his surroundings thoroughly, unable to track even her location tag. All the while, Cassian continued to scuffle with the Purples—and they didn’t seem to be letting up.
She raised her arm again, forgetting about her lack of prosthetic, and frantically waved around what little she had of her bicep, “Hello? Ali? Big-man over there? I’m armless here!”
Ali spun back, “How the hell’dya manage to lose your arm??”
Cassian furrowed her brow, punching the Purple to her right in the face before pointing aggressively at the spikey-haired Purple who was making off with her prosthetic, “Why don’t you ask that smarmy git over there?!”
“Oh don’t worry, I shall,” an almost ethereal sounding voice echoed past her face, she recognised it vaguely as the voice of the eldrin man.
Seconds later the thieving Purple became enveloped in green light. His body froze still, twitching and blurring as though he himself had become some sort of glitch in reality. Cassian swore for a moment she saw the eldrin man swish in and out of her vision, and in that split second he passed by the thief, Cassian’s prosthetic suddenly disappeared from his grimy hands. The Purple’s knees began to buckle, its body contorting crudely as though the green light was reshaping him. His skin puckered and sunk, losing its colour and his hair began to fall out of his head. He eventually collapsed to the floor in a pile, his face turned towards Cassian who could now see the damage that had been done. He’d become a critically elderly man - he’d been aged almost to death.
As she wrestled against the Purples, the markswoman gulped thickly, unable to break her startled stare, and right as she did the eldrin man reappeared just inches in front of her, her prosthetic arm hanging lifelessly from his hand.
“I believe this is yours,” he smirked momentarily, before realising she was still in a somewhat troublesome situation, “Oh… hang on, dear.”
He raised the arm and swung it at the surrounding Purples, skimming the top of Cassian’s head. In one fell swoop he managed to knock them all to the ground, seemingly for good this time.
“My apologies,” he straightened his cravat and handed the arm to her sheepishly, “It looked sturdy enough.”
“Thanks?” Cassian slowly stood up, taking the arm off of him and reattaching it to her shoulder socket, “You certainly made an interestin’ first impression.”
“Well, that’s Sylvester for you,” Felix, the hybrid, sauntered over nonchalantly, his face and arms covered in nicks and scrapes that seemed to glow a fluorescent blood red. “He does love to show off.”
Sylvester prodded him, “Well I didn’t see you doing anything to help the poor woman.”
Whilst the two Outsiders bickered, Cassian peered down the street and noticed how they’d somehow managed to subdue most of the Purples in the area for now. They’d, of course, reawaken in a number of hours.
Ali dashed down the road towards the three of them, “Guys, I’ve found Karalee.”
“Ka-who now?” Cassian raised an eyebrow. If the name she heard was correct, she knew there was only one Karalee in Novus, and that containing her excitement around her was going to be particularly difficult.
“The other watcher, pink girl, you know? Karalee!” Ali was assuming far too much of the woman for staying on top of these things, “Anyways, we gotta vamoose. The Shadow District’s under attack.”
“SORRY??” Cassian blinked in disbelief and instantly turned to begin running back, “And who’s there defending it?”
The others began to jog after her, Ali scratched his neck nervously, “Well that’s the thing-”
“Ali, don’t be an arse, spit it out,” she snapped, picking up the pace.
“Just Karalee,” he said, “Literally just her.”
Cassian sighed discontentedly, “Well, this is gonna be a dicey one, boys…”
Whilst this specific mess had been due to her own actions, she’d prepared for and even embraced the chaos that would follow. After all, it was just a rifle, some Purples and some street in Central Novus.
But she’d never do something as callous as draw the Purples towards the Shadow District. It was her domain: her professional responsibility.
And whoever it was who had chosen to put her profession on the line this evening certainly wasn’t going to get off easily…
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