Ravensdagger_Kittypunk_Cyberpunk_Kitrpg

Chapter Fourteen — The City Knows Not of Fear

Chapter Fourteen — The City Knows Not of Fear From here on out, we're on foot," Derek said as he lifted himself off of his bike. He slid it forwards, locking the front wheel in place in one of those pay-by-the-hour bike locking stations."O-oh-hokay," Sharp said. She wobbled off the side of her bike, then gripped the handles to stay standing. Her legs shook like leaves on a windy day with the effort needed to keep her standing. With the amount of sweat drenching her shirt and plastering her hair to her face, she looked rather pathetic."Are you alright?" I asked."I'm fine," she said before reaching into the sidecar. There was only one package left to deliver in there. And myself, of course. I hopped up and managed to grip onto her shoulders as she stood with the last box we had to deliver.The Fenway deliveries went well enough. The area had some alright roads for pedestrians and we got away with slipping through those on our bikes. There was one moment where a guard yelled at us, but we didn't get into any real sort of trouble. The two delivered were dropped off where they were meant to go, and we then rode all the way back to the eastern end of the district.It was probably a solid twenty miles of biking with very few pauses. Not so much that a fit person would be out of sorts from it, but enough that..."You don't look so good," Derek said.I almost fell off of Sharp as she leaned forwards and rested her elbows on the bike's handles to catch her breath. "I'll be fine," she said. "No, really. Just... maybe I need a drink.""Alcohol?" he asked.She shook her head. "Water.""Good, because Mark isn't fond of any of us drinking on the job. After is fine, but don't show up to work drunk or high."Sharp gave him a thumb's up. "Okay," she said before making a supreme effort and pushing her bike into the same locking mechanism that Derek had just used. She had to lean over to fold the sidecar back up as well.Then Sharp stumbled over to a row of vending machines nearby. They were the usual. Convenience machine, drinks, guns, ammo, and gacha machine with various bits of merch. She fumbled a few dollars out of her pocket and soon enough we had a fresh, moderately chill bottle of water in hand.Sharp gulped it down, a few drops running down the side of her chin. "Ahhh!" she said as she lowered the bottle. "Here, want some?"I leaned forwards and when she tipped the bottle back, I licked a few drops out of the air. It was weird, but my cat tongue could kind of... cling to the water? It made drinking by licking much easier than it would have been as a human.Still hated getting water all over myself, but staying hydrated was important."That is one weird little cat you've got there," Derek said. "It's well-trained. Is it like one of those corpo-made pets?""Huh? Oh no, I met Countess Cotton-Cream in an alleyway a few days ago," Sharp said. "You could say that she changed my life for the better!""Huh," he said. "Well, whatever. A corp-made pet wouldn't be so ugly."I turned my head his way and glared. I wasn't ugly... well... dammit, kittens were always cute, even the ugly ones, no?"Don't mind him, I think that you're beautiful on the inside," Sharp said as she rubbed my head.I gave her hand a smack, though I chose to keep my claws to myself, this time.With Sharp no longer looking quite so drained, we started off towards South Boston. The area was rough enough that Derek didn't want to risk taking company bikes into it. Instead, we moved down into the Boston underground and grabbed a ride in the metro. The jacket's fancy floating logos on the shoulders actually charged the company directly when it came to metro tickets as long as we walked through the right kind of turn-stall.Armed guards stood waiting nearby, under a sign that read 'Ticket Skippers Will Be Shot.'I'd never had the misfortune of riding in the metro before. It was as bad as I imagined. Cars covered in graffiti except for the VIP ones at the very front. As 'business' people we got to ride in one of the central cars nearer the front of the train, which meant that it was only exceptionally tight within. The civilian cars had robots shoving people in so that the doors would close.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.Fortunately, we weren't going far. Fenway was three stops from South Boston including one line transfer from the Greygun Grey line to the CokaCola Red line which dropped us off in the north end of South Boston.Once we were back out in the open air, Derek stared at the sky for a moment, likely reading something off of an internal hud, then he pointed us in the right direction.From there, it was just a long walk across the city, moving further and further from the busier centre of the district and into the areas where I wouldn't want to be caught out in during the night.Surprisingly, the area felt... familiar."Hey, I was just around here a couple of days ago," Sharp said. She looked up and towards a familiar megabuilding. The same one we'd run out of after hearing... strange things over the building's PA."It's not a great spot, but it's not usually problematic during the day," Derek said. "Anyway, that's our drop-off." He pointed to a smaller mega building across the street. This one covered in the red and brown banners of the riveters.A few gangsters eyed us at the entrance, but we were let in without any fuss. The drop off was at a reception area on the first floor."And we're done," Derek said. "Now's the ride back to fetch our bikes. You've got time?""Uh, yeah, I should," Sharp said after glancing at a wall-mounted clock. "I need to be back in Fenway in about an hour.""A little tight, but we should make it, no problem," Derek said.Sharp seemed ready to agree when all three of us turned towards the entrance. One of the riveters, a man in his late thirties or so in a leather jacket covered in small rivets, flagged Derek down. "You the couriers?" he asked."Yeah," Derek said. "Can I help?""You should get out of here," the man said.I glanced around, noticing that there were more and more rivetters around. Men and women, often with guns or pipes or machetes. The elevator opened and a half-dozen more filed into the lobby."What's going on?" Sharp asked."None of our business," Derek said. "Thanks man, we're heading out. Can we leave out back?"The riveter shook his head. "You don't wanna go out that way. Trust me, pal. Out the front, then make a run south. That's your best bet."Derek nodded, then turned to touch Sharp on the shoulder. "Let's make a move, then."The riveter wasn't messing around. Something big was happening. The streets outside were clearing out. People were getting into their cars and driving off, traffic was speeding up faster than the usual crawl, and it looked like everyone with a lick of common sense was making themselves scarce.Sharp had to push her way through a growing crowd of riveters. We popped out near the exit and found Derek already outside."What do you think is happening?" Sharp asked."I don't know. My work rarely involved street-level gang work. At a guess, someone's started something and the riveters are about to respond. We should head back to Fenway, if it's a gangwar it won't spill out all the way-"It all happened at once. Sharp stepped outside into the street even as an alarm went off somewhere down the road. A man pushed his street vendor cart past us, even as automatic shutters started to come down across the shops lining the road.A car alarm started to honk, soon joined by another.And there was a crack.Sharp didn't recognize it, but I sure did. That was a gun going off. Not unheard of in this city, but still cause for some alarm.And then Derek stumbled to the side, his eyes going wide before he reached down towards his lower abdomen. His hand came back bloody."Sharp, run!" I shouted.She gasped, finally catching on that shit was hitting the fan.Down the street, I could see a small crowd gushing out onto the road. They were coming from the same direction as that cursed mega building. People in tattered, dirty clothes, with smudges on their faces who walked like they were drunk and carried guns like they were ready to start a revolution.Then a voice, the same one we'd heard over the PA, started to blare out of a dozen loudspeakers."This city doesn't know pain. Not real pain. They don't know the pain of serving under him, and his eternal, everlasting glory. We will show them the error of their ways!"

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Chapter Fifteen — Downrange

Chapter Fifteen — Downrange "Are you okay?" Sharp asked as she ran over to Derek's side."We should move. We're downrange of something nasty, Sharp."She nodded, but reached an arm around Derek's shoulder anyway. "Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?""I wasn't shot in the ears, I was shot in the gut. Fuck. Ah." Derek had an arm wrapped around his torso, almost as though he was trying to hold the blood in. There was quite a bit of it, but not nearly enough to kill him just yet.At a guess-an educated one-he had a while before blood loss took him out. More than long enough to get that wound packed. That was, as long as he didn't get shot a second time. "Sharp, I'm not joking, we need to get out of here."Sharp tsked, but she started to pull Derek to the side. Another hiss sounded as a round shot past. Not a snap though. They weren't aiming at us. Still, I found myself crouching against Sharp's shoulder, ears folded back as she guided Derek back towards the building we'd just left.Only now a group of Riveters were leaving, armed to the teeth and looking pissed. "Dang it," Sharp cursed before pulling Derek along towards the alley next to the building. It wasn't much quieter there. People were running out of the street by any means they could, and that meant the alleys.Sharp didn't go far. We paused only a few yards in and Derek leaned his back against the wall. "Ah, fuck fuck," he said as he looked at his hand."Sharp, if we're going to keep him alive, I need you to look at his wound.""Ew," she said."Do it," I snapped.Sharp swallowed, then crouched before Derek and pulled his jacket away from his side. The interior was clinging to his shirt. "What am I looking for?" she asked in a low whisper."An exit wound on the other side. See that hole? It's small, that's where the round went in. Something small by the looks of it. Handgun round, I'd guess."Derek tried to push Sharp away, but she batted his hands aside. "I'm trying to help," she said. Gingerly, she ran a hand on his other side, tapping and pressing along his torso. "I'm not finding anything.""Then the bullet's still in him," I said as I leaned forward to see better. The shot had slipped into his jacket. It looked like the inside of the coat was lined with small metal plates and the bullet had slipped in between two of them. That hit was about two inches below his short ribs, more or less going level. The fact that it hadn't come out the other side suggested that it wasn't all that potent of a round, or the coat had absorbed some of its energy. "He'll live," I decided.Probably. He had cybernetic legs, which was an issue that few people considered. Robotic legs meant less room for blood. Derek didn't need to bleed nearly as much as someone with biological legs would need to in order to die."We need to stop that bleeding. He needs a good first aid kit, and soon.""Okay, okay," Sharp said. She looked to her hands which were covered in blood. She wiped them on her pants. "Let's keep moving, okay? South, right? Is there a hospital or something that way?""Clinic, yeah," he said. "Mark pays out for okay emergency insurance. Fuck, I need to call him.""Okay," Sharp said."Call while moving, this is a danger zone," I said. "Once the BPD gets here, they'll cordon the area off and lock it down. He'll bleed out long before a paramedic sees him."Derek grunted, then ground his teeth while his eyes flashed. "M-Mark? Hey man. Bad news... yeah no, package got there safe. But I got shot... yeah, I'm with the kid. Uh-huh. By South Boston, northern end. Maybe twenty minutes from the metro? Uh... yeah. Okay? Right, yeah, I can make it there. I've got the kid, she's helping. Okay, okay. Cool." His eyes flashed again, and he leaned forwards a little. "We need to move. Mark's got someone that'll come pick me up." He rattled off an address and Sharp nodded."We can get there," she said. "Let's start walking, okay. Uh, keep pressure on the hole? Here?" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of napkins.Derek eyed them, then gingerly pressed them over the hole in his shirt. "Fuck, why couldn't they hit my leg?""I guess that would have been luckier," Sharp said."Eh.. maybe not. Legs are more expensive to fix than my insides, but at least it wouldn't hurt this bad." Sharp laughed, then got onto Derek's side and tried to get his arm over her shoulder, but he waved her off. "I've got robo-legs. The rest of me will fall apart before they give out, so don't worry about helping me walk.""Oh, okay," Sharp said.She looked down both ways of the alley, and so did I. It had cleared out almost entirely, with only a few people peeking out the near end onto the street where gunshots and shouts were becoming more common. Someone was blasting music over the ranting and raving of that... probably-a-cult. High BPM cowboy techno really messed with the mood.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it."Let's move," I said."Right," Sharp said. She moved a bit ahead of Derek, but constantly looked back to see if he was okay. He was walking just fine, but his eyes were closed and it looked like he might shatter his teeth from grinding them so hard.The alley had a T-junction right in the middle, and it was only common sense that we'd turn right at the middle and head southwards from here. That's the direction Sharp was cutting towards, and I felt like we had a decent chance to get out of this situation in good shape if we just kept moving.Mark would owe us one for helping save Derek, even if it wasn't that much effort to do so. This was a trial by fire, of sorts. More trouble than the average courier was ever expected to encounter.Then things went from awful to worse as two people rounded the corner in the middle of the alley, just a dozen feet ahead of Sharp. Two men, both looking like they were in their mid thirties or so, but they might have been younger. They were pale, sickly, with raggedy clothes and eyes that looked shellshocked. And they were carrying bats."Oh no," Sharp said.There was no dialogue, the man in the lead just raised his bat and ran without even a scream.I leapt.I don't think he was expecting half a pound of angry kitten to land on his face, because he screamed for real this time and bent his head back.I, in the meantime, got to work with my natural weapons. This fuck wanted to hurt Sharp? Well, she was my meal ticket, so he'd have to get through me first.I tried to scream, but it came out as a yowling hiss. All of my martial arts training amounted to very little as I clawed and scratched at his face, digging under his skin and drawing blood.He reached for me, so I let myself drop, then clung onto his shirt. He had a nipple ring. It... was admittedly a strange thing to notice, but it was right there and so I took the opportunity to bite it. When he grabbed me and tried to throw me off, I just bit harder.There was a rip, and the man's scream turned desperate.I'd barely touched the ground that I leapt back up and assaulted the back of his legs. Clawing swipes, and a hard bite at his exposed ankle, but he wore thick jeans.I bounced away when the moron with only one nipple ring's friend tried to kick me. "Queen Violence!" Sharp shouted before she rammed into the man with no form. It was such a badly made blow that I worried she might have broken her neck with that tackle, but instead she ended up on the alley ground.The morons were stepping back a little. I couldn't let them regroup, because if they did, they'd win. Two men, even drugged up morons, against a kitten and a scrawny teen? Yeah, I didn't like our odds.So I sprinted towards the one massaging his chest, ran up his entire body, and bit his nose. Then, while I was gripped onto him, I pressed both forepaws-claws out-into his eyes.Most animals didn't dig into eyelids. They'd just swipe and scratch. I knew better.He grabbed me and flung me off, and it was only the fact that I weighed nothing that saved me as I hit the ground hard and bounced.He'd gotten the worse of that exchange as he screamed and pressed his hands onto his bleeding face."His bat!" I shouted.Sharp lunged forwards while Blindy-McOneNipple's pal checked up on him. She grabbed his bat, then swung it with all of her weight and all of her enthusiasm right at the back of idiot two's head.It clunked. The bat flew out of her hands and clattered to the ground, but idiot two had definitely felt that.I ran over to him and bit into the back of his calf. This idiot was wearing shorts, and I wasn't about to let him forget that mistake as I used him like a living scratchpost.Sharp hissed, shook her hands from the shock, then picked up the bat again. This time she went for an overhead blow. He blocked it with an upraised arm, but there was still a bone jarring crunch when it hit."Fuck, run!" Derek snapped.That was... a good idea, actually.I let go of idiot two's leg, hopefully having done enough damage to make running more difficult, then I was picked up by Sharp. Derek was already halfway down the alley, which fortunately only had a few corpses in it, and no one to slow us down.Good, because I was quite exhausted.Reflex Has Levelled Up!Reflex 1 2Combat Has Levelled Up!Combat 0 1Well, that was something.

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