Steam and Steel Options

[Elisabeth Hollow]

Betty strolled through the midday sun casually, glancing at passer-bys with little interest. She was off the clock, so to speak, and her charms were to be bought. No flirtatious glances were shot, and her face was kept smooth and uninterested as she bought her groceries. Red apples, a small jar of honey and preserves as well as mints and a bit of candy. She idly bit into one of the apples as she stopped in front of a dress shop, looking into the window. She watched the people in the reflection as she pretended to window shop.

A few men dressed in dark clothing, faded black jeans and dark denim shirts with dark hats or handkerchiefs on their heads, strolled by. Betty had counted eight before she saw one of them draw a gun and aim it her way. She ducked and rolled, screaming as she did so, the glass shattering into hundreds of small pieces. It clattered onto the stone ground, and she heard a cackle.

"You missed a whore! How did you-"

Another shot rang out, and Betty didn't look to see where it had come from. The square erupted into chaos, shots ringing out freely and screams of women and men alike were heard. A bullet ricocheted off the pavement near her feet, and Betty ran. She dove behind a building and leaned against the brick wall, panting heavily. She shrieked when someone grabbed her arm roughly. She swiveled her head to see a man in a similar dress as the bandits, grinning behind a black handkerchief over his mouth.

"Well well, lookie what we got here. You sure are perty." His hands roamed as he kept her pinned by her throat against the wall. Anger flashed in Betty's eyes.

"You could never afford me." She spat in his face, and received a slap in return. She gasped and held her face.

"I'll teach you some respect for your betters, bitch!" He slapped her again, this time knocking her to the ground. Betty cried out and held her face.

"I like it when they're on they're hands and knees." The bandit said before kicking Betty in the stomach. She grunted and rolled over, coughing. In a flash he was on top of her, pinning her down, trying to strip her. Betty fought, reaching for her purse. He suddenly reached beneath her skirt and tried to rip her underwear off, and Betty saw a flash of metal strapped to her thigh. She leaned up and grabbed it and sunk it between the bones in his ribcage, letting out a screech of rage. The bandit yelled in pain and punched her, hitting her left cheek. He pulled out the knife, panting.

"You cu...you cu..." He fell over with a groan, and Betty grabbed her knife from his hands and wiped it on his shirt. Shots continued to ring out and she smelled something burning. She held her stomah and walked cautiously along the back alleys, hoping to remain unseen.

[Rohirrim]

Jonah's face hardened. "We need to move. Now." He put on his hat and goggles, cocked his rifle, and leaned out of the saloon, sweeping the market square with his rifle.

He spotted the whore who had ministered to Algernon earlier. "You! Come on, we have to get out of here." He looked back at the saloon. "You too, fellas. I'm pretty sure some bandits are raiding the town as of now, and the smartest thing would be to leave the raiders to raiding, rather than become the raidees."

He turned to the woman. "What did you see?"

[Elisabeth Hollow]

Betty held her stomach and straightened as best as she could.

"Eight men strolled in and shot. They just shot. They're wearing dark clothing from head to toe. I killed one in that alley." She pointed behind her.

[Rohirrim]

Jonah nodded, his jaw tightening. "Good job. You live here, where's the quickest way outta this town? I think the tinker and myself have burners, so we can each take someone else. Care to join us?"

[Elisabeth Hollow]

Betty hesitated for only a half second. She had nothing here besides loyal clientele. Her Guildmates were nothing but coworkers and competition. Her only concern was for old Bill.

"Yeah. I'm comin'. The quickest way is-" She shrieked when a bullet hit the barrel she was standing near.

[Rohirrim]

"[censored]-a-doodle-doo!" Jonah turned the corner where a black-clad man was standing. He fired several rounds his way with a hiss. The clutched his leg as blood spurted from, it, and Jonah finished him off as he tried to jump behind a barrel.

"Do you have anyone here you need to make sure gets out? Family, friends, anything?", Jonah asked as he hastily reloaded.

[Elisabeth Hollow]

"None. Just me." Betty glanced around hastily.

[Callidus Thorn]

Percival followed Jonah, figuring that he did have a point. They'd barely got out of the saloon before he started tp regret that. They'd apparently met the whore that Algernon had been shouting about earlier, and Jonah seemed rather intent on presenting himself in a good light. Shaking his head, he turned to cover their backs while Jonah reloaded.

The turn saved his life.

A couple of bullets struck showers of sparks from his breastplate in quick succession, making Pecival stagger backwards a step. The bandit watched on, stunned, as his victim failed to die. "Hahah!! It is bulletproof!!" Percival shouted triumphantly, bringing his rifle to bear and fired a round from both barrels, punching the bandit off his feet. As he watched the bandit spin slightly as he fell, Percival glanced down at his rifle and frowned. "Hmm, pulls a little to the left, I'll have to do something about that."

"Might I suggest we run now and talk later? This is neither the time nor place for a conversation." He shouted over his shoulder at Jonah and the whore.

[Colonel Mustard]

They ran into the damn whore not long after they bolted from the tavern, but Lucius' finely-honed survival instincts told him to leave that issue for later and instead make sure that they made it out of this sudden attack. Bandits appeared, and the others were much quicker on the draw than he was, dealing with them even as he fumbled for his revolver, where it was tucked into his jacket.

Another figure appeared in his field of vision, the long, straight shadow of a rifle in hands, and Lucius managed to yank his revolver from its holster with his left hand and aim it at the figure. There was a distant bang.

His attempt to squeeze the trigger failed. For some reason, his arm had stopped responding to the mental commands sent across his nervous system. Fingers turned limp, as did the rest of the limb, dropping like rope slack.

There was something hot and damp clogging and spreading around his neck, and he realised that he couldn't breath properly.

"Well, [censored]," he muttered, as his knees buckled beneath him. He collapsed to the ground, bionic arm twitching sporadically, a pool of red spreadng from the clean, neatly-punched bullet hole in his throat.

[Callidus Thorn]

Percival flinched as something wet and warm splashed across the right side of his face, turning to see Algernon swear as he crumpled to the ground. "Holy [censored]! They killed him! They killed Algernon" He shreiked, turning towards the rifleman, switching his own rifle over to single barrel firing. He fired every shot left in it, ten shots ringing out, the clockwork mechansim screaming as it fought to match the firing rate as Percival unleashed a hail of lead. On the eighth shot the mechanism broke, springs and cogs unable to handle such vigorous use, and Percival's final two shots went wild. The rifleman went down, and Percival slung the broken rifle over his shoulder and drew his revolver from the bandoleer across his chest.

"They're everywhere! Run!" He shouted, a wild gleam in his eyes.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Nov 19 2013, 12:28 PM

[Rohirrim]

Jonah saw another bandit kill Algernon. He was an asshole anyway. "Percy! We've got to get to our horses!" Jonah quickly dashed down a back alley in the direction of the stables.

[Callidus Thorn]

Despite Percival's somewhat precarious mental state, he still sighed heavily at hearing Jonah call him "Percy".

It didn't stop him following though, he just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.

[Colonel Mustard]

Gunshots, screams, the smell of smoke. Trouble was afoot.

The church was empty of congregation, and the only person in it other than Zachary was his brother under Christ, Father Jones. The elderly priest looked up from where he was sweeping the aisles of Dodge's modest chapel as the noise came to them, a look of concern in his eyes. By that time, Zachary had already grabbed Mercy and loaded the shotgun, slinging a pouch of shells over his shoulder.

"Stay here, Father Jones," he said, clicking the weapon shut. "There are wolves afoot."

"But w-what about-"

By the time Father Jones manages to stammer that out, Zachary was already gone, bursting through the door of the chapel and into the town.

"THREATEN MY FLOCK, WOULD YOU?!"

Baffled, a bandit who was helping himself to the contents of strongbox he had hurled into the middle of the street looked up. Confusion flared across his features for a moment, and he grabbed for his gun. In that moment, Mercy fired.

A cone of flame and buckshot belched from the shotgun's barrel, knocking the man from his feet and setting his clothes ablaze. Striding forwards, a snarl on his features, he stalked through the town like an avenging angel sent from the Lord Himself. Another bandit was knocked from his feet by fire and lead, and Zachary growled as he rounded a corner.

He was near Dodge's stable, and Mercy's barrel swept up as he saw three figures down an alley. He lowered it as he saw them in more detail; two men and a woman, one of them with a mechanical arm, the woman made up like some harlot, but none of them looked like bandits.

"Good day there!" he called, waving a hand. "Are you in need of help?"

[Elisabeth Hollow]

"Bandits," Betty said breathlessly. "We're runnin'." She recognized the man as one of the local preachers, but not one that required her services. She didn't have time to scoff at his ironic greeting of 'Good day,' and instead motioned to one of the horses.

"If you aim to live, you might as well borrow a horse. These ones ain't ran off yet." She dropped the pretense of being grammatically correct, given the situation. Her drawl was thicker in the heat of the moment as she tightened a few belts on the horse she was working on. She lifted her skirt up and mounted the horse, uncaring of the view she gave the men. Her bits were covered, and they were protected from the rough leather of the saddle.

She waited to crack the reigns until everyone who was going to ride was mounted.

[Rohirrim]

Betty, surprisingly, took the lead at this point. Jonah didn't feel inclined to argue, especially after a bullet whizzed by. He straddled the burner, pulling two levers on either side of the chest. Steam escaped with a high horselike whistle. "Comeonbabycomeonbabycomeonbaby!" Jonah frantically adjusted the valves and gauges, until the burner stood up with a loud hiss. "Yee-hah!" Jonah continued to check the psi until everyone else mounted up.

[Callidus Thorn]

Percival stumbled over to his burner, fumbling at his breatplate before he was able to remove it and clip it to a specially designed bracket. Now his breastplate would prevent him being shot in the back as they rode away from Dodge, as well as give him something to lean back against if he felt the need. He hopped astride the bronze plated burner, and fired it up, noting absently that it reached optimal pressure faster than Jonah's did. He smiled at the recollection of the hours he'd spent tinkering with her, then snapped himself forcefully back to the present. He stayed quiet, uncertain as to what would happen next. Sticking together had made sense while fleeing through the streets, but it might be every man, or woman, for themselves from here on.

[Colonel Mustard]

For a moment, Zachary was torn; these three new arrivals were clearly making a break out of town, a reasonable move to make considering the circumstances. As a priest of the Lord, he was bound to not only protect the helpless but to also punish the wicked, and the wicked were still at large in the town. On the other hand, these three didn't seem to be well armed; one of them had a rifle of impressive intricacy, but while Zachary was no expert on machines he was fairly sure that it shouldn't have springs sticking out of its chamber like it currently did, and aside from that all he had was a revolver. The woman looked unarmed, and the last man had a carbine. He could hardly allow them to go out into the dangerous wilderness with just one decent gun and a pistol between them.

He strode to one of the stalls and pulled the door open, leading out his trusty mule, Mark, from within. The animal seemed to survey the party with disinterest as he was lead out into the open, and quickly Zachary strapped his saddle on and climbed onto his back while the two gentlemen with the burners raised the pressure. He slung his shotgun across his shoulder, allowing him to reach the reins but still grab the weapon quickly if the need arose.

"If there is nothing else keeping us, I say we should be going," he said. "Unless I'm mistaken, those bandits came from the south; our best chance would be going northwards."

This post has been edited by Colonel Mustard: Dec 1 2013, 10:02 PM

[Rohirrim]

"I concur. I think sooner rather than later would be the time to flee."

Jonah checked the gauges once more and finally pressed his feet on the rigid stirrup-pedals. The burner began trotting off northward, and after a hundred yards or so, Jonah checked to see that everyone was behind him.

"Onward, then."

[Elisabeth Hollow]

Betty followed close behind the boy in the bowler hat, checking behind her once in a while to see if the other two were behind her.

"There should be another town about three miles ahead," she said, adjusting herself on the saddle. "It's not the best place to be, but it's better than what we left behind. It's not on fire, for one. And if you give me an hour up there, I can make us enough money to last us a week."

She didn't have to tell them how.

"Point is, there's beds, clean water, and food. And I didn't grab anything for the horse." She patted its neck. "I'm sure.." she leaned over and glanced at its underbelly. "She would appreciate being fed and watered."

[Callidus Thorn]

Percival was relieved the general consensus seemed to be to stick together. So as the others decided on which direction to travel, he drew his broken rifle from over his shoulder, pried off the mechanism, and began taking a closer look. He glanced up as he heard Jonah's burner start moving off, and followed behind him and the whore. He barely heard her talking about the town, and nodded vaguely as she spoke, his mind mostly on how to fix his rifle.

Despite having escaped Dodge, Percival didn't feel any safer than he had in the town. He was now riding with three people he'd only met that day, he only knew the name of one of them, Jonah, and he didn't trust him. He didn't trust any of them.

He had to get his rifle fixed. Soon.