Chapter 6-176: The Price of Fame

The airwaves had to be jammed right now, it wasn’t even a question. Sama called out, “ALL RIGHT, YOU SOUL-SELLING PURPLE-EYED FUCKS, I’M GOING TO TAKE THIS OUTSIDE. I’M GOING TO GUT ALL YOUR RIDES, KILL ALL YOUR DRIVERS, AND SEE HOW YOU FUCKING DEAL WITH HAVING NO PLACE TO RUN TO!” She didn’t tell them that Grik had already called the local police, bawling out into the phone that his sister and brother were at the Expo and taking fire from Sinbound and for them to get the fuck down there before even more innocent people died.

These maggots had no time, and right now, they couldn’t even shadow-jump and scatter, as she’d blown her Interdiction and the Veil wasn’t allowing such shenanigans. She was absolutely sure they’d realized it a little bit late, after they tried to bounce around to flank people shooting them and it didn’t work. Worse was when they were trying to do it to retreat to corridors and tunnels outside the main room as people were shooting back at them... and it didn’t work then, either.

Fall was ranging out ahead of her as she charged the nearest fire door, a couple of the attendees sending some cover fire down to make the two men there keep those Wards up and take cover behind them. They stared at the force bolts burying themselves in the purple fields, and then she and her Null crashed into the Wards, shattered them like glass, and they only managed to get a shot off each before they and their hardsuits were cut right through, venting their innards towards the sky through a long new opening.

Sama was out through the door, on her face as three different automatic weapons opened up, sliding sideways as if the asphalt lot out there was slick ice, pushing off the ground as the guns dipped to track her, the shooters spinning, and since they were nice enough to have no Ward defenses, she put a bolt through the visor of the one furthest away, which he didn’t appreciate. She spun through a side kick that delivered like an axe to the head of the one closest to her as she came down from above his shooting arc, and the last one jerked back as she threw Tremble and a bloody spear impaled his face and jutted out the back of his helmet.

Sama hit the ground, spun around in crouch as she slid another thirty feet, Fall snapping up into full autobow from hand-size again, and sighted down on the driver in the panel truck forty yards away, who was gawking at her in shock.

He should have been ducking for cover. Fall hummed, the incredible tension, delivered by a string that had been offset-cocked against the strength of her legs at a 30 Strength, sprang out waaaaay too fast to be anything but magically-aided, and drilled a One Shot hole through the windshield and ballistic vest of the driver, nailing him to his seat.

“ONE DRIVER DOWN,” she called back through the door, and as Tremble flipped back to her hand, she started booking for the closest side entrance, in front of which she could see two more vans popped up... and at least thirty bodies on the ground all around, and four cars riddled with bullet holes.

There were kids among those bodies...

Bolts were flying out ahead of her. They drew attention, but that was what she wanted. They also popped two tires on each of the vans, rendering the things useless for running away.

Hostile gunfire limned in purple-black came out to greet her. She slid left, right, letting them swear in disbelief as she juked so smoothly yet erratically. Seven Dragons lightfoot did ALL the stuff, after all.

They tried to block her with Ward Walls manifesting in front of her, and didn’t much like it when the things shattered like illusions and didn’t slow her down in the least. With a curse and an Oath, she let both her Weapons float in midair as she rammed the nearest van, reached up under it, tilted it up, and drove it back and around against the screaming men taking cover behind it, slamming it full into the other van and crushing them in between.

She could hear their pained cries, but they had no leverage to do anything, even if they had been strong enough to push it away.

Tremble beat two tones, and the four of them all looked up in horror as Sama glared down at them from on top of the van.

“Tremble...” she whispered to them, voice flat and cold as the northern plains, and there was one long cut through four separate screaming skulls; the blow only got faster as she pushed and slid the length of the top of the vehicle.

“THREE DOWN,” she announced to the world, and headed for the next entrance, clearing forty yards before she hit the ground, and picking up speed the whole way.

If they were smart, they’d be pulling out and sprinting for their way out. They might just make it before she got there.

If they delayed at all, or didn’t understand the situation they were in, they were hosed. She was extending the Interdiction around the place, extending the distance they couldn’t shadow-jump, which meant they had to run like normal people.

There were a lot of good shooters perfectly happy to run them down and shoot them if they had to leg it in there.

Was she hearing sirens already? That was either damn fast, or something was wrong. She was inclined to believe the latter.

She didn’t know if she was the primary reason they were here, that would be pretty stupid... unless someone with a lot of money paid for the hit, to idiots who thought they’d actually live to spend it.

Lots of Sinbound worked as mercs and assassins. Not completely unbelievable: independent, catspaws, keeping hands clean.

Lots of money needed to do this, regardless.

She glanced up at the faint stream of yellow coming off the dome of the expo center... it would become inert within two minutes of ultraviolet exposure, so it wasn’t intended much for outside use, at least during the day.

Then she saw the slaughter at the main gates to the expo center, two more vans there. She hardened her jaw, and was coming for them much, much faster than they wanted to see... and they couldn’t shadow-jump to split up and surround her from all directions...

----------

“You look like a mess,” she told Daedrig, her Transfer Amulet in her hand, as she began to pull his injuries out of him. They were only topical, and he wasn’t actually in much danger. His Soak was still fine, of course, as his chi could recover quickly outside of combat.

“Yeah, but I got three kills,” he said in satisfaction, flicking some blood off the butt of his shotgun. “My bodyguard went legging it to kill whole bunches of them, so I had to go find my own excitement.”

It didn’t clean off the blood that had leaked out from his skin, but the burning and burst small veins closed up, the clots forced away. He needed a good shower, scrubbing, and new clothes, like everybody else that was still alive here, but he’d be fine.

“You went for the ventilation room?”

“Security room,” he corrected her. “They were doing shit to the tapes.”

“Par for the course. Someone mobilized the local SWAT team almost as they were hitting the place. They got here a good two minutes faster than was possible even if someone got a 1041 off instantly.”

He glanced at her black hair, green eyes, and no Curse over half her face, which suddenly looked rather stunning. “That got something to do with someone I know?”

“I think they were trying to collect a bounty on me, among other things.” She took another breath. “There are confirmed kill shots on every non-human, too.”

Daedrig’s dark eyes went flat and cold. “Is that a fact?” he asked, so calmly it was scary.

“I didn’t see them all, of course, but they weren’t bothering with second shots on the humans who were down,” Sama went on.

“Someone’s getting bonus pay, even when they are all dead. And they’re going to try to frame you as being a part of this?”

“There’s a couple shills among the attendees who are already issuing stories. I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you behind again, brother dear... and you might be a person of interest to certain parties, after hiring me.”

“Well, right now I don’t look like my normal dapper self,” he grinned. “But, I admit I’d be happy to see more of them coming.”

“I expect something more like a bomb in our vehicle.”

He made a knowing face. “So unsporting. I want to crush a few more skulls.”

“After today, I bet a whole lot of people are...”

=======================================

Back in the present...

“And their bodies fucking burned away, taking all proof of who they were with them.” I grimaced for her. “The shills? The planted tapes?”

“Didn’t fool the Harsites at all. They had an Inquisitor on-site almost as fast as SWAT. The shills actually had memory implants to try to hide the fact they were lying; they actually believed they were telling the truth, completely innocent of the fact, the implants kicking in after everything started. They actually doctored the tapes ahead of time, but the tapes didn’t match the evidence from the eye-witnesses, especially the part where I spoke to everyone inside and spotted the poison gas. They were expecting the gas to murder everyone promptly, taking care of that tedious stuff.” Sama inhaled through her nose, long and low. “No way to follow any money, any evidence. Mercs out of Mexico, smuggled into the states with magic. No way to track even their gear, as there’s so much floating around in Mexico anyone could have gotten it to them.”

“But the Church still has the bounty on you, even after it’s basically being chased out of North America.” Still plenty of elitist, wealthy arseholes among the Powered in other nations who would support it... and here, too, but not openly anymore. Patron of Powered Prejudice and Privilege was the new mocking title given them here, and there wasn’t a surviving church to them left anywhere in the country by now. Being known as an Imprusar devotee was now an excellent way to clear your social calendar forever in North America.

“Well, it isn’t like they can just let the fact I’ve butchered so many of their people go, now, can they? A whole religion folding to one individual?”

“Religions do tend to be like that,” I sighed, although the wealthy and powerful themselves usually were not all that zealous, they were proud, arrogant... and wealthy, the latter being the most important. If others died for their cause, that was definitely the best way to go about things. Risking their own lives to deal with threats to them was definitely not on the agenda. “You are such a social person, getting such a good reputation among such a wide variety of organizations.”

She Cackled quietly, so as not to scare the others around, although I’d Sound Bubbled us some privacy. “Adrenalin junkie of the worst sort. If I don’t have people hunting me to help generate Karma, I’ll get stone bored.”

That sounded like Sama back on Terra-Luna, who got magnificently bored in peacetime, and only solved it by obsessively pounding magic into stuff. Briggs had quietly noted that Sama forging was more like Sama making war on the steel, and the steel quivering and giving up in the face of the beating she was administering as she pounded it into shape.

“Well, I don’t know what the reward for a Shroudzone is going to be here,” I had to admit. “The pure numbers of undead aren’t as bad as Terra-Luna had it, and they are spread out in more places. If the Curse of the Sun wasn’t keeping them contained, however, this planet would probably already be dead, and you never would have been born.”

Her eyes glittered at the fact. “And you said this Curse is spreading across Creation?”

“We aren’t sure of the total scope, but the dead moon Shoul is the heart of it all. More to the point, we aren’t big enough to stop it. It’s expanding faster than we can stop it. We’ll have to scale up immensely to have any chance at fighting such a thing, and that literally means multiple massive armies of Tens more optimized against Undead.”

Sama frowned. “My head says that I’d love to be part of an infinite leveling grind. My heart says I’m a Rantha, and this is my world. Even if you break the Shroud here, I don’t think I can leave to go fight on another one.”

I nodded, having the feeling that was the case. If someone was truly replicating Sama Rantha’s template across Creation using the Hag Curse (seriously, WTF thought up that bit of damn crazyass stuff?), there would have to be some restrictions.

“But, you could, in the end, take over this world, and send people on to fight the battles, right?”

Sama gave me an odd look. “You want me to conquer the planet?” she asked, as if I was crazy.