The Reaper Chronicles

Boomstick

    Samson paced the weapons wall in the garage. It was his prized possession. Rather, it was more a prized collection of his deadly possessions. Everything one could possibly imagine that was useful in the killing of a lifeform and could be carried in two hands lined the entire expanse of the starboard wall of the ASASN's lower deck. Almost everything. Samson thought, searching for a spot to hang a certain battle axe.

    "Anything in particular that you're looking for?" ASASN asked, his voice coming from a robotic arm that hung in a far corner of the room. At the proposition of the question the arm started sliding along the ceiling, moving diagonally across two planes of long, metallic, intersecting, pole-tracks toward the corner that Samson was standing in at the opposite end of the garage. It reminded Samson a great deal of an old earth claw machine, variations of which could be found at carnivals throughout the milky way. ASASN's however, was much quicker, and the arm thereof was roughly the size of a full grown man. It had a joint in the middle much like a human elbow, and a large, hollow, spherical socket on the end inside of which sat a spherical implement which had three, long, pointed digits that moved freely along the surface of the sphere and acted as fingers of a sort. Unlike claw arms in the carnival game however, ASASN's arm was actually strong enough to pick up and move objects, and operated with such precision that the AI could use it to cook gourmet meals as he had demonstrated on several occasions to ease Lee's mind over the appendage.

    Samson paced away from the end section of wall where hung differing melee weapons (of which he never got to use as much as he'd like), closer to the center of the wall, ASASN's arm keeping pace beside him. "I'm thinking maybe something kinetic based." Samson replied.

    "Oh?" the AI asked, genuinely surprised.

    "I'm getting so tired of these high profile, energy based assassinations where we blast the dude in the skull and it leaves this clean, glowing hole and he just drops dead. Also if they use light=based weaponry I'm assuming some of them will probably have LiteMail."

    "You could always put on some heavy armor and box them to death." ASASN said cheerfully, as if he hadn't just suggested a brutal form of manslaughter.

    "That seems a little cruel..." Samson said, actually giving the idea some thought. "I would prefer it to be quick and somewhat detached but not altogether boring."

    "Say no more." ASASN said dramatically as his large arm reached down to a lower section of the wall and pulled off a funny looking weapon that Samson wasn't entirely familiar with.

    "What's this?" Samson asked, surprised at the words coming out of his mouth. He prided himself on having a high degree of mastery and knowledge over every weapon at his disposal but he couldn't even remember purchasing this one.

    "I've been saving it for just such an occasion." ASASN said excitedly. "It's called a shotgun. I found the schematic for it while digging through some old earth files and thought I may as well put one together."

    That explains why I've never seen it before. The reaper thought. "Shot. Gun?" Samson mused, feeling the name in his mouth. "Isn't that name a little redundant? What's it do?" Samson asked as ASASN's arm lowered it into his hands. It had a long, pole-like metal protrusion with a little bump on top at the ending of the steel shaft. That part was roughly half as long as Samson was tall. At one of the ends of the metal tube was what Samson guessed must be the weapon's stock. It was made of carbon fiber and had a hole with a small, steel lever in it and some sort of sliding, action thingy on the side that revealed a hole when he pulled it back.

    "So get this," ASASN said. "You slide these tiny explosives into the bottom of that stock, which are then stored in that shorter metal tube on the bottom.

    "Uhhhh, okay." Samson said. "So it shoots explosives?"

    "You would think."ASASN said. "But on the ends of these explosives are little metal pellets--"

    "And because there's a hole on one end the force of the explosion propels them forward at a high velocity?"

    "Exactly!" ASASN exclaimed.

    "Okay," Samson said, starting to become a little excited himself. He couldn't help himself around new toys. "So how do I turn it on?"

    "That's just the thing." ASASN said. "No electronics! You just point the barrel at what you want to kill and pull that trigger with your index finger." ASASN's arm reached over and clinked its finger against the trigger a couple times.

    "Sooooo..." Samson said, a little lost as he moved the gun around in his hands. "There's no precision aiming?"

    "See that little knob on the end of the metal tube?" ASASN asked.

    "Yeah?"

    "You place that knob on your target and keep your vision flat with the barrel."

    "Huh." Samson said, and it just hits what's on that dot?"

    "Well no." ASASN replied. "Research shows aiming this weapon more or less defeats the purpose of using it."

    Samson furrowed his brow.

    "Those little metal pellets fly at completely random patterns. There is absolutely no way to tell exactly what it will hit. It launches this randomly dispersed wall of shrapnel in a rough funnel shape out the front of it, tearing through anything in its way thats softer than the pellets themselves. Completely randomized and haphazard destruction."

    "So I just point and pull the trigger?"

    "You just point and pull the trigger."

    "What kind of destructive force does it have?" Samson asked.

    "Well," ASASN started. "The model I based this off of was what they called a 12 gauge called the Montefeltro. My research shows that a round fired at the skull was more than enough to scatter a human's brain at medium range. Because you're a bit more sturdy than the average human I scaled the fire power up just a little bit."

    "It explodes heads?!" Samson said visibly excited. "I'm sold." With that the large bounty hunter tossed the gun back to ASASN. "I'm gonna suit up. Load it for me and set up the TrueVideo?"

"With pleasure." the ASASN said.

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