Violent Hostilities
The first sign of trouble that Amber noticed was the shouting. Her vision blurred as she woke up from her sleep, hand reaching to her hip for a pistol that was sitting near her feet alongside her pouch.
"You're overreacting Amber," she muttered as she leaned back down to continue sleeping.
"Bandits! Bandits in the camp!" a voice cried out a few moments later, causing the entire Bazaar to stir into a panic.
"Damn it," Amber growled and grabbed her equipment and started to make her way to an entrance, "Excuse me! Coming through!"
Stepping outside, she was temporarily blinded by the sunlight before hearing the sound of hooves hitting the sand. Looking at the source, she saw a bandit riding towards her with a battleaxe.
"Ack!" she yelped before dashing out of the way and shooting the bandit.
Shaking her head to clear the vertigo, she noticed more bandits running amok in the camp. Pillaging, burning, and killing played out in front of her. Her head cleared instantly when she saw two preparing to harm a child.
"Hey! Leave the kid alone you sons of bitches!" she dashed and slashed the offending bandits in half before glaring at the others who eyed her eagerly, "Get out of here kid! I'll handle this!"
She shifted her weight and glared at the bandits, not bothering to see where the child ran off to. In a heartbeat, the three bandits charged her with war cries. Despite them closing the distance rapidly, she was unconcerned. At best, their mannerisms reminded her of dirks back in the wilds of Central Town. In the blink of an eye, her sword flashed while her pistol barked its presence.
Edward had awakened at the first calls of warning and was instantly awake as adrenaline flooded his body. Reaching the edge of the camp, he saw that the guard had already formed a counter charge and that he would likely get trampled in the melee. Watching the combat, he was momentarily caught off guard from the sounds of violence behind him. Turning, he saw that a second group of bandits had begun attacking the camp.
"Oh this isn't good," he said anxiously before fixing his bayonet onto his shotgun and running back into the camp.
Edward ran through the camp as chaos unfolded around him. A bandit announced their presence with a battlecry, charging at him with a spear and a cruel, vicious grin on their face. Scowling, Edward parried the spear with his bayoneted shotgun before stabbing the offending bandit in the stomach followed by a quick bash to the face.
Being loud for the sake of being loud is asking to get killed, he thought dismissively at the dying bandit.
Seeing two bandits setting fire to a tent, he pumped the shotgun and blasted one in the legs. The second bandit turned in shock only to be swept off their feet as well. Both sat screaming in agony before he finished them off with the bayonet.
"You there! Are you with the clan?!" a guardsman archer asked as they ran up.
"Passenger, but I'm on your side in this matter," Edward replied as he topped off his ammunition, "Where can I help?"
"Oh no you don't!" Amber snarled as another bandit tried to kill a guardsman.
With her pistol cooling off, she dashed into the bandit and tackled them. The bandit dropped their club and stared at her in shock, mouth gaping wide open. Before either could react, a crossbow bolt skimmed her arm and distracted her. The bandit took the opportunity to punch her in the nose and drew a dagger, threatening to stab her.
"I'm going to have fun with you," the bandit hissed, leaning in to look her in the eye.
"Get off you mongrel!" the guardsman Amber had previously saved grabbed the bandit in a chokehold.
"Have fun with this!" Amber said before taking out her throwing knife and stabbing the bandit.
Both momentarily forgot the crossbow user who readied another bolt. The guardsman noticed first and attempted to cry out but was interrupted by a loud gunshot.
"Need help?" a familiar voice asked with another guardsman walking up.
"Thanks for the save," Amber said, "Any idea how many more?"
"Ran into a few on the way here," her former roommate said as he ejected a spent round from his rifle.
"Well hopefully you have enough bullets for that rifle," Amber got up and helped the guardsman up, "There's a small army of them."
"I'm aware and it's a shotgun," he said before reloading the firearm and turned to the guardsmen, "You guys have any suggestions?"
"No idea. They're everywhere," the first guardsman said.
"Place is going up like a wildfire. I might be fast but I'm not-woah… There's the headache," Amber stumbled as the headache from using her implants kicked in.
Edward helped steady the girl, "You all right?"
"I'll have one hell of a headache later but I can fight," she said as she shook to clear her head.
Now's not the time to get cynical Ed. We're on the same side here, he thought.
"Bandit riders!" one of the guardsmen warned as four horses came tearing through a tent.
Edward was too slow to completely dodge the unexpected charge and got thrown to the side. His breath was knocked out of him and he quickly found himself staring at the sky in a daze. The sounds of fighting reached his ears but he failed to process what he was hearing, only the massive shadow hovering over him.
So this is how I die… I always was afraid of the dark, he thought as the world slowed and the shadow began to envelope him.
Edward felt his chest clench in fear. It was irrational and part of him knew he was in shock, but the massive shadow dominated his entire world. It was only the flash of something pink and part of the shadow falling over that the crushing terror coursing through him ceased.
"Hey, you all right?" a different shadow walked up.
He blinked and realized it was the girl, holding a pistol in one hand and offering another to help him up.
"Thanks," he grabbed her wrist and helped pull himself up.
"Let's call it even and stop running into each other awkwardly," she replied as he grabbed his shotgun.
While checking his shotgun, he noticed her eyes were glowing faintly. On occasion, he did notice that her eyes were green but they never glowed before to his memory. It was a vibrant shade of green, very similar to the neon green of disposable glow sticks used back home in the Coalition. Somehow it felt unsettling, almost as if she was hiding something.
"If we survive this then we can figure that out," he said with a faint smile, keeping his observation to himself.
Jasah skewered another bandit and cursed himself for his shortsightedness. He knew desert bandits were crafty and he left the camp exposed to deal with the distraction. While this was not his first time getting duped by violent bandits and likely would not be the last, it was his responsibility to protect the clan and his mistakes would cost them dearly.
"Everyone back to the camp! Quickly!" he called out, wheeling his horse around.
Guards regrouped behind him and joined the charge back to the camp. From a distance the camp looked mostly fine, but Jasah was far more concerned about the Setseke. The giant insect was mostly calm and could be used as a living battering ram if needed, but when spooked very little could stop it. The Kasha Clan could ill afford its most important asset to go on a rampage and scuttle off into the desert, something that could easily happen should the bandits cause enough chaos.
"Spread out through the camp and drive the bandits back! Protect the Setseke and the merchants at all costs!" he ordered as he rode into the camp before riding up to a group of guardsmen, "Report!"
"Captain, we're dealing with an entire bloody clan of bandits. We've held them back for the most part but we're stretched thin with small skirmishes all across the camp," one of the guardsmen said.
"Where are they heading?"
"Everywhere, there is no order to their movements."
A mob of murderers and thieves then, "Reform the guard and evacuate those who can't fight. Abandon the camp if necessary but we are to hold a defensive line around the Setseke. Go!"
"Shotgun is dry!" Edward called as he reached for his revolver.
"Archers, get down!" the girl warned as arrows flew.
Edward ducked just in time to avoid the arrows from pelting him. The constant skirmishes quickly drained his limited supply of ammunition and he did not fancy the idea of a melee.
"I don't have enough bullets for this," Edward muttered, firing the revolver at the bandits.
"On your left!" one of the nearby guardsmen called.
Edward turned to see another bandit charging with a battleaxe. He reached his arm to the side and squeezed the trigger. He failed to notice the other bandit who was wielding a spear or that he had exposed himself to the bandit archers.
"Agh!" he screamed as an arrow into his left arm, causing him to drop his shotgun which he had been holding still.
"Crap!" the girl said before disappearing.
Edward blinked through the pain and saw that she had somehow reappeared behind the charging bandit, having decapitated them. In another moment, she disappeared again only to be in the middle of the archers. What followed that was nothing short of a whirlwind of flashes, pistol shots, and blood splatters.
What in the world are you?, Edward thought in awe as the girl stood over the corpses.
"Incredible… I've heard stories about drifters but to see one in the flesh…" one of the guardsmen exclaimed.
"Huh? Oh bad, there's the headache! Gah!" the girl fell to her knees and gripped her head in pain.
Edward noticed one final bandit in the shadows, slowly getting closer with a dagger. He lined up his revolver and pulled the trigger, it clicked empty.
"Hey!" he yelled at the bandit, throwing the revolver.
The bandit instinctively raised their arms as the revolver hit them. When they looked they saw Edward in striking distance with a stun baton.
"Ah piss," the bandit muttered before Edward cracked the baton over their head.
The shock baton was powered and the combination of the concussion and voltage sent them to the ground. Edward brought the baton back and struck again. A quick horizontal strike followed the second and was accompanied by the loud sound of bone snapping.
"You sure that one's dead?" a guardsman asked as Edward got up.
"Enough voltage to cause electrical burns, a concussion, broken nose, and a shattered jaw. If that didn't kill them, they'll be drowning in their own blood right about now," Edward picked up his revolver.
"Egh… What a way to go," the girl said as she looked at the body in a semi disoriented state.
"For the surface perhaps," Edward shrugged as more guardsmen rode up on their mounts.
"Captain, they're fleeing!" a guardsman cried out.
"Send a few riders to send them back into the desert. The rest are to put out the fires and get the wounded to the surgeons. Go!" Jasah ordered.
A half hour of fighting against eighty bandits… Jasah knew that even if he stalled the main raiding party there would have been losses, there simply would have been too many bandits to face. The Karsha Clan had suffered today and Jasah knew he was going to face a great deal of scrutiny.
At least the losses were small this time, he thought bitterly.
"Gah! Are you sure this is the best way to do this?" Amber overheard her unusual companion complain.
"Yes, now hold still," Illegra ordered as she used a Dust crystal to heal the arrow wound.
Amber was laying on her back staring at a canvas. She was in a makeshift hospital and waiting for her arm to be tended to. Her head felt like it was filled with heated shrapnel that was being tossed about and her vision flickered.
"I don't suppose that magic can do anything for an implant overuse induced headache can it?" she asked.
"A what?" the man asked, still struggling.
"The people of Central Town are unique. Something about being born with fantastic abilities," Illegra explained.
"Wait… You're not born with implants?" Amber asked, turning her head to look.
"Uh… No?" the man said awkwardly and looked at her as if she grew a second head.
"No dashing? No darkvision? No carbide layering your bones? Nothing?!"
"And here I thought the surface couldn't get any stranger."
"As I said, the people of Central Town are unique," Illegra finished with the man and walked over to Amber, "Amber, did you get poisoned?"
"No… At least I don't think so. Though that could also be tied in with this damn headache."
"Your blood is tinged green," Illegra said in alarm.
Amber raised her head and looked at her arm. For a moment, it shimmered and looked like it had become pixelated. Blinking, the image faded and all she saw was the fuzzy image of her blood. The memory of a crossbow bolt grazing her came back to her which explained the red-green cut.
"It's always been like that. Just disinfect it and it should be healed by tomorrow," Amber laid back down.
"By tomorrow? I might have missed half of the thing's you were talking about but that right there needs stitches, a roll of plastiseal gauze, and a month to heal completely," the man exclaimed.
"Fine, a week at the most. And don't try arguing about how my body heals when you just got your arm healed by magic wiseguy," Amber retorted.
"Will you two please stop? I have more than just you two to deal with," Illegra snapped before she grabbed another Dust crystal and started to work on the cut.
Edward rolled his eyes and remained on the stool he was provided. His jacket was on the side and would require another hole to be fixed, something he was unenthusiastic about.
At least bloodstains can be washed out with ethanol, he thought.
His mind turned back to the girl. The things she said were ridiculous, even by surface standards. Being born with implants that give one superpowers, what nonsense. It sounded like something straight from the Church of the Husk and its clinically insane followers. Still...he had no answers as to how she moved so fast earlier.
Or why her eyes were glowing...or why her blood was partially green...or why it suddenly looked like it was made out of pixels on a damaged sonar screen…
Forget about it Ed. You're tired and seeing things. She just has some weird magic powers or something like that, Edward thought to himself and dismissed the weird things he had seen within the past hour.
"Excuse me," a voice behind him said, "May I speak with you?"
Edward turned to see a man he briefly recalled meeting once standing over him. The man was wearing a guards uniform while carrying a bow and quiver.
"Can I help you?" Edward asked, eyeing the man suspiciously while trying to remember where he met the man.
"Some of my men claimed an individual of your description defending the camp alongside a rather...spirited drifter," the man eyed the girl laying nearby.
"I can hear you, Jasah," she stuck an arm in the air and gave a brief wave, "Me and mister paranoid did help with the defense."
"While I would prefer to speak on my own behalf, what she says is true," Edward said, feeling less confronted now that he remembered the man.
"You both have my thanks and the thanks of the clan. Your actions today have saved many lives," Jasah replied, "From what Illegra has told me, you two have had an interesting relationship. While I do not mean to pressure either of you, would you care to meet with the rest of the guard in the near future? They would no doubt wish to offer their thanks to you as well."
Where are you going with this? Meh, think of it as networking. "I have no objections," Edward said after some thinking.
"Sure, why not? Just not when it's hotter than hell and let me deal with this headache first," the girl said.
"I'll take that into consideration Amber," Jasah laughed, "Now then, if you may excuse me… Illegra! Do you have a moment to spare?"
"Sure, just immediately agree to meeting with the guard Amber. Run your mouth while your implants are turning your brain to goo. You really thought this one through Amber," Amber groaned, feeling anxious about the meeting she agreed to join.
"Is talking to yourself another result of your implants?" the man asked, sounding less amused than mildly curious.
This is hell. I am literally in hell right now. I hate the desert so much, Amber let out another groan and closed her eyes in the vain hopes that her embarrassed anxiety and headache would go away.