Her Gun to His Head

Chapter 4: The Renegade...

'Four, seven, three officers,' she counted, 'the purple one... No, the purple one mixed with the orange one,' her thought continued. 'Ugh, I gotta get Chuck to tell me the names of all those drinks...'

Her focus had been darting back and forth between what she was supposed to be doing, and her night's plans, for several exceedingly long hours. The correlation between either unhindered passage through the bridge blockade, or receiving a pat down before being able to pass, appeared to have something to do with the color of one's shoes, she decided, completely having given up trying to make sense of it all. It was surely just random, she thought. Twenty people each hour, or something — some arbitrary quota.

One moment of interest for her was when she managed to spy a couple of green glowing sky-trails below her, which she knew all too well to emanate from the hoverboards used by members of the Firelights. They were only visible to her for a moment, but they were almost certainly heading North — perhaps a clue to the location of their hideout. She was sure they had one, those do-good losers...

Her face scrunched up in frustration as she heard the pitter patter of rain begin to sound on the sheet metal above her. Now she really might die trying to make it back down from her lookout point.

She pointed her lips and blew a lock of hair from her face. She supposed it wasn't so bad — at least she was getting some missions lately that didn't have her working under Sevika's thumb. Though, she hoped the next one might involve some more action, or at least something to keep her more stimulated than merely sitting around.

Figuring her day's work to be done, she turned herself around, wondering what, if anything, could be seen through her spyglass if she faced in the opposite direction.

She supposed she recognized some places which resembled childhood hangouts from long ago, especially near the docks. Of course, the world with which she was most intimately acquainted lay below — the former deep mining sites which became the undercity her father referred to as Zaun.

She sighed and lowered the magnifying instrument away from her eye. She sometimes wondered what a better home might look like. Or, perhaps, what a different city altogether might look like. Maybe there were faraway places one could live that didn't resemble this place at all. Part of her wondered whether she would ever find answers to such questions...

She shivered a little, as the cold began to reach her — she wasn't exactly dressed for this type of weather. It made her increasingly reluctant to leave her shelter and begin her descent back down until the rain let up. She glanced down at a bundled up tarp laying beside her, wondering if she could maybe fashion it into some sort of poncho. If it kept her dry, it would have to do.

It kind of made her feel as though she were wearing a disguise, she thought as she tied the thread around her collar, affixing the thing over her body. She figured she would probably look a little silly to any onlookers, but at least now all she had to worry about were the water-slick surfaces she needed to navigate in order to return to the ground.

'Perhaps some arm-holes would help with that...' she figured, slipping her blade out of its sheath.

She really wished she had the ability to fly, sometimes. Surely there was a more elegant solution out there than trying to stay upright without puking on those dumb flying-boards. She'd dismantled for parts more of them than she could count, after failing somewhat miserably in such a pursuit.

'And yet he just keeps on makin' more... He really oughta give it up already...' she remarked to herself.

Her blood boiled a little at the thought of her former childhood friend. She was half-sure she'd managed to snag him earlier that week in the scuffle on the cargo ship, though much of her memory of it was still a blur. She doubted she would have gotten rid of him that easily, anyway...