Getting out of the Barrens wasn't easy. The place is a maze even in the day light and I stumbled onto hostile ganger territory more than once. They were gracious enough to give me a running start before they decided to run me down with their motorbikes. I guess they needed the target practice. I dodged through and empty apartment building and ran down the back alley. I emerged at the bottom of an old car park with barbed wire encircling the building and armed gangers guarding the entrances and exits. Apparently I had stumbled into another gang's fortress.
Two of the guards spotted me and alerted the others. It looked like I wasn't going to get out of there after all. Three of them came at me with cubs and knifes. I caught the first cub with my forearm, circled my arm around it and whipped it up into the owner's face. Then I chucked it at the ganger come from behind. I barely missed the knife that came in from the side but I grabbed the gangers arm and threw him to the ground. Then I took off running, the rest of the guards had guns and I didn't want to play "dodge the bullet." Since I couldn't get out of the car park from the bottom floor I decide to go up. I made the bottom ramp as the first guards started to shoot, then I heard the unmistakable sound of motorbikes but I put it out of my mind.
At the top of the ramp I found two elves with what looked to be homemade shotguns. I grabbed the barrels and wrenched the guns backwards, then I elbowed the elves in the back of the head as I ran between them. The rest of the levels were the roughly the same as I made my way to the top of the car park. There was a reason why this place was so well guarded, it was the ganger's base. As I came up the ramp to the top floor I found the barrel of a Ruger Superwarhawk up my nose and several weapons pointed at me.
"What gives you the right to intrude on our territory!?" shouted the elf with the Warhawk.
"Well...I didn't know this was your territory…I was just trying to get away from the bikers and I ran down the alley into this car park and…"
"Shut up!! You led the Infernos here!?!" The elf was female, as tall as I was, skinny but well muscled.
I was trying to figure a way to get out of my current situation when I heard gunshots and loud whoops echoing from the floor below.
"Shit!! IT'S THE INFERNOS!!" The female elf was shouting orders but she still hadn't taken the Warhawk out of my nose so I didn't have a chance to move. She was shouting at someone behind her and was looking in that direction when I heard a motorbike engine grow very loud. I reached out and grabbed the female, pulled her close to me, succeeded in shoving the Warhawk farther up my nose and fell backwards just as a motorbike flew through the air where my head had been and landed where the female elf had stood. It was then I realized that through all this mess I had held on to the Ares Crusader. We rolled partway down the ramp before I succeeded in stopping us. She gave me a very dirty look, yanked the Warhawk out of my nose and slammed the butt of the pistol against my cheekbone. My face broke out in lines of pain and I rolled away from her. The female elf made to kick me, missed, and turned to run back up the ramp.
I lay on my back for a second feeling the pain in my face subside, then I got to my feet and followed the elf back up the ramp. She stopped and I almost ran into her. Why she stopped was pretty simple, the scene looked pretty hopeless. Many of the gangers had crowded around some burnt out cars trying to defend them selves against the bikers, the Infernos, who were riding around firing their submachine guns into the crowds of gangers. The gangers didn't seem to have any automatic weapons or very many semi-auto weapons to boot and many of them were lying on the ground in pools of blood. Considering most of this was my fault, I wasn't surprised to find myself running at the nearest Inferno, he wasn't riding round the groups of gangers, he was laughing and he was surrounded by some pretty tough looking orks and trolls.
The bodyguards facing me took notice and began to fire their submachine guns. The Crusader spat six rounds and two trolls fell. I vaulted a wrecked bike and the crusader spoke again. An ork flew sideways as the bullets took him in the head. By this time the Inferno's leader had stopped laughing and was giving orders then he pulled out one of the biggest pistols I have ever seen. It must have been his own design because in only fired once but, man, what a bang! He missed of coarse, the Crusader had made sure that he didn't get a chance to aim. My shots had smashed into his chest and had spun him around, the cannon shell he loaded into that pistol had splattered the head of one of his guards all over the car park and detonated a motorbike. The rider of the bike learned to fly, but I'm sure the pavement down bellow made the trip a short one. I reloaded the Crusader.
Some of the Infernos were fleeing now, I had killed the leader and they wanted nothing to do with me. The gangers who had been pinned now began to fight back as they saw hope for victory. As I was helping remove the last of the Infernos from the car park I felt something cold and hard come to rest, roughly, at the back of my head. At least it wasn't up my nose.
"I should shoot you dead where you stand," came the cool voice of the female elf.
"I'm sensing a 'but' coming around here somewhere," I said staring straight ahead.
"BUT you helped us, you saved my people," I felt the barrel of her Warhawk ease off the back of my head. I relaxed. "Who are you? You look like some corper gun but if that where true you would have taken off first chance you not, not saved the day?"
"My name, I think, is Azriel," I said. "I don't know what I am, but I was trying to get to downtown when the Infernos cam chasing after me. I ended up here and since I brought the Infernos with me I figured it was my job to get rid of them."
"I'm Slash and we're the Builders. We're a group of people who believe that the Barrens should be a safer place and we accept anyone who is willing to help but most don't want to help, they just want their own little kingdom. Now what do you mean you think your name is Azriel?"