Chameleon's Corruption

4

                It was yet another late night and for cities like NuVenom that was precisely when the more degenerative of the society would have their fun. Gangs, thieves, junkies; the dark, cold evenings were reserved for them. But something about tonight was different, where one might normally hear the sounds of shouting or cars peeling out in the street, instead there was nothing. It was uncharacteristically quiet, only rushing winds and infrequent droplets of rain breaking up the otherwise deafening silence. For once everything seemed surprisingly peaceful, but there was one element that stood out among the rest. The orange-red cherry of a half-burned cigarette in the cabin of a vehicle that had been parked on the side of the road. To the untrained eye this was almost invisible but a more sharp-minded species might even have been able to go so far as to spot two visages residing in the front seats, carefully observing a building from a distance.

"You sure you wanna go through with this man? I dunno, I just dunno about this one. I got some kinda bad feeling, you know?" One spoke to the other. He was a squirrely looking canid, some kind of hyena with badly matted fur and loose clothing that was sitting on the driver's side. His hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel.

"Don't worry about me, that's my responsibility. The only thing you should be worried about is driving."

"Yeah but like, what if I don't WANT to do this? I mean, you know I respect you but I gotta be honest- you got lucky the last few times. There's no way they won't be expecting it this time. Those guys, they're probably all strapped now, yeah?" His energy levels were clearly too high. Perhaps that's just what you needed to make it as a driver.

"There's no such thing as 'luck' in this business, we make our own luck and the last thing I need right now is you doubting my abilities." He paused his sentence to take a drag on his cigarette. Tensions were high all around but one party seemed to be better at suppressing it than the other. "If you're going to tuck tail and run like a coward, at least do me a favor and get it over with now so I can come back tomorrow with a better driver. Because I swear if I find that you've bailed on me while I'm busy taking care of business in there, I'll personally see to it that your pretty little snout is clawed beyond all recognition." Harsh disobedience deserved equally harsh treatment but it was impossible to tell what shut the driver up more; the threat hurled at him or the fact that the angry stare he'd been receiving had the strength to bore a hole through a brick wall. For something like this to go on there had to be crystal clear understanding between everybody involved. "Are we on the same page now?" There was a subtle nod in reply.

"Look, I get you and I'm here - I'm not tryin' to step on your toes or nothin' but all I'm sayin' is that if you're not back here in ten minutes, I'm getting the hell out. I know we're both just tryin' to get paid but I gotta look out for myself too you know?"

"You think this'll take me ten minutes?" A shotgun was unceremoniously produced from underneath the passenger-side car seat, at the same time the glove box was dropped open and a half-empty box of shells rattled into view. There weren't many left but it was still more than enough to finish this job, a handful of them were snatched up and one-by-one they were loaded into the weapon's magazine. The shotgun itself was rather old looking but that was par for the course when it came to powder guns, they weren't popular so companies simply didn't make them. There were too many caveats to using one; they were less accurate than a laser or plasma gun, required that you purchase expensive and hard to come by ammunition, had to be manually reloaded, had to be cleaned and maintained but even with all that, the mechanical nature of them meant that it could still jam. Most modern weapons had fixed all of those problems, not only easier to use but cheaper too. But still, that didn't prevent a select few from favoring the old-school style of firearms because even despite all of those problems you might run into, the power that a bullet packed was still far greater than anything an energy-based gun could deliver.