Kitty’s position on the map was tiny, a small circle surrounded by brownish grey fog and various western themed artwork. The line she had developed while on the train was also rather small, but she could see the desert detailed in the areas she had uncovered. Her position was quite low on the map, and the train seemed to be running along the very southern edge of it. Kitty had disembarked west of the map’s center and had been heading north east since then. She decided to continue in that direction, as she could see a mountain range just over the shimmering horizon.
Kitty had turned in a quick circle, trying to see anything nearby, but her ability to actually see was severely limited by the heat baking the hardpack around her. Everything shimmered and warped, and the only thing nearby seemed to be looming cacti. Those would offer little comfort, so the mountains seemed the best course available. Kitty hoped she would find a town or settlement well before that though, as she watched her thirst bar draining.
Plodding through the desert was actually a bit boring, but her perk quests kept her going, along with a stubborn streak she felt she should be famous for. Thinking about that brought to mind her Senate hearing, and she groaned at the very thought, before pushing it away. Who needed sleep for those clowns anyway?
An hour passed in relative peace and quiet, giving Kitty plenty of time to think and plan. Her Cowboy Medicine quest was quite impossible out here, unless a stroke of luck hit her with a traveling doctor or something, so she focused on crafting. That was something she had sorely missed in The Life of Crime, as Brescia had featured a robust system for crafting professions, and she had delighted in it during her tenure in that game. She sighed wistfully, remembering the good old days with Kurt and Jimmy at her side. “I was a queen dammit! What am I doing dragging my sorry ass through a desert?!”
A sharp dry rattle interrupted her thoughts and she froze, immediately recognizing the sound. Moving her eyes towards the noisy creature, she found a coiled rattlesnake in the shade of a scrub bush a few feet to her right. Her hand crept to the revolver at her hip, and the snake raised into a threat position, its rattle shaking violently behind it. Kitty froze again, hand gripping the revolver as she tried not to breathe too heavily. After a moment of this, the snake seemed to relax a bit, uncoiling as it decided to leave.
She drew the gun and aimed carefully, thumbing back the hammer and trying to line up her reticule. The damned thing swayed and danced as she moved her hand to try and match the snake’s movement. Firing a shot that splashed against the hardpack a foot in front of it just made things worse, as the threatened reptile increased its speed. Kitty found herself chasing it across the desert, firing again and again as she became more and more frustrated.
Her first gun clicked empty, so she holstered it and hauled the other one out of its holster on her other hip. This time she held it at her hip and fanned the hammer, sending all six shots at the beast while it slithered desperately. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber with the snake still alive, and Kitty shrieked in frustration, throwing down the heavy gun. Slithering silently away, the rattlesnake emerged victorious and Kitty sighed.
“Fine, run away!” She picked up her revolver and began the laborious process of reloading it, reaching for shells from her stolen gun belts. “Probably disgusting anyway . . .” Her reload was interrupted by the low quiet thunder of hoofbeats on the hardpack and she whirled around looking for the source. A small dust cloud raised up behind her, coming from the direction of the train tracks. She squeezed her eyes shut in anger. Of course they were out looking for her, why would the game give her a free pass from that mess? And the shots she fired at the damned snake led them straight to her.
Gauging the size of the dust cloud and the increasing volume of the hoofbeats, Kitty decided she had a tiny amount of time before they were on her, so she started working on getting her other revolver reloaded. Once that was done, she moved behind a nearby cactus and crouched while holding both guns, waiting for the posse to find her.
“This is awesome,” Kitty griped. Her sarcasm seemed lost on the towering cactus.
The posse arrived in short order, five men on horseback drawing up near the cactus as one of them dismounted. “Here! Shells, she can’t have gone far on foot. Spread out and look around, she might be hiding somewhere.” After a brief pause and the shuffling sounds of men drawing weapons and dismounting horses, he spoke up again. “Check that cactus. Have to be a right idiot to hide there, but then again . . .”
Kitty winced and gripped her guns harder, stepping out from behind the cactus and rushing forward to the man who had spoken. She lifted her weapon to his surprised face and fired, looking away as the gun discharged in a thick cloud of black powder smoke. She turned and fanned the hammer at the nearest man, who held a double barreled shotgun, putting three heavy slugs into his belly and chest at close range. Then the return fire started, and she was scrambling for cover between the horses, who didn’t seem to care much for her plan. They spooked and rushed off, avoiding the gun smoke and bullets, and leaving Kitty to her well-deserved fate.
A look of consternation on her face, Kitty raised her left hand and fired the revolver, dropping the man closest to her with a pained grunt. The two men left both had repeaters, but were backpedaling as they fired, cursing and missing as they went. Kitty growled and lunged after them, sprinting into close range and giving each of them a shot from her guns. The fighting done, she glanced at her HuD, relieved to confirm that she hadn’t been hit, and suffered no more damage to her already delicate health bar.
A low groan caught her attention and she turned back to the man she had shot as the horses fled. He was flat on his back, clutching at his stomach and trying to stem the bleeding there. A pained whisper escaped his lips. “H . . . help me . . .” His repeater was at his side, and he feebly shoved at it with one hand as Kitty slowly approached, her guns still in her hands. The gun slipped further away from him, and Kitty realized he was trying to push it away, so she didn’t think he would use it. She stepped up and kicked at it, sending the heavy weapon skittering against a nearby stone. He rolled back, clutching at his wound. “Please . . . please don’t.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
A look of horror on her face, Kitty raised her gun and made sure the reticule was firmly on his forehead before looking away. He raised enough strength to shout “NO!” only once before she pulled the trigger and began retching again. She surprised herself by vomiting into the desert, bile splattering against the sand. Her food bar nearly emptied itself, and Kitty sighed as she wiped her mouth, trying not to look at the corpse she had just created.
Brescia had blood, but everything had been a lot neater than this. Death was dramatic and overstated, hard to take seriously. Blood on different creatures was oddly colored, and too bright a red on humans. The Life of Crime had no gore at all, merely turning anyone who died to silver dust. The more gruesome their death, the more quickly they vanished in a puff. This though . . . this was not acting much like a game.
After a few moments, Kitty managed to shake off the gruesome deaths and get her head back in the gameplay mindset. She decided to skip taking their clothing this time, as none of it was fit for wear or sale anymore, what with all the blood. Revolvers and shells went into the bag, as did any money or small treasures she could find. One of them had a simple pendant that opened to show a homely woman and an even more homely child, causing Kitty to wince and leave it on his body. Her funding had jumped up to two dollars and forty-three cents, which felt a bit underwhelming for the amount of work she had to go through for it. The real prize had been the double barreled shotgun, and Kitty took a moment to pull out its weapon pamphlet.
Colt 1878 Double Barrel
This staple of the Wild West is a simple but effective weapon. A workhorse of law enforcement and bandits both, a more iconic and trustworthy companion would be difficult to find. Chambered for 12 gauge shotshells.
Kitty skimmed the rest again, not particularly interested in manufacturing numbers or historic lore. This was a gun she could wrap her head around. Easy to use, and she was practiced at the reload mechanism. She raised it to her shoulder but failed to see any reticule, so she turned it towards the nearby cactus and began to walk closer. At about fifty yards out, the reticule became visible; a large open circle on the cactus. She nodded and slid the weapon’s leather strap around her shoulders, letting it rest against her back.
“Horses again . . .” Deciding she needed one to survive the desert, Kitty started turning in a small circle looking for their dust cloud but was disappointed. Her eyebrow raised as one of them walked out of a nearby heat shimmer towards her. She stayed still and quiet as it approached, softly nuzzling one of the dead men on the ground before grunting and starting to walk off towards the train tracks. The animal seemed to have a fairly advanced AI, as it shied away from Kitty when she approached, but didn’t make any threatening movements or try to run.
“Easy girl . . . easy.” Kitty made soothing noises as she reached for the reins. The animal allowed her to take control of it and followed her in a small circle easily. Nice and tame. Kitty tried mounting the horse next, and that went smoothly as well. The horse responded to her knees and the reins quite naturally, and the time Kitty had spent learning to ride horses in Brescia seemed well spent, making her an immediate expert for this new game. That was something she suspected would come in handy in a western.
“Well this certainly makes life easier.” Kitty guided the horse away from the bodies, heading northeast toward the mountains again. When she glanced at her own hunger and thirst bars, she now saw her new horse’s bars directly beneath them. The horse was in much better shape than she was, and actual hunger and thirst were starting to set in. A gulp of whiskey did nothing for her, as she suspected would be the case. Seemed worth a try anyway, Kitty figured with a shrug.
The expanse of desert seemed unending, but a glance at her map showed a little progress half an hour of riding later. Kitty stopped to think about things. Her horse was still cantering without issue, but she didn’t seem to be finding much of anything she needed. Bailing out in the middle of a desert was starting to feel like it had been a bad idea. That thought got her thinking about the train, and how men on horses had come for her so quickly. There had to be a town on the trains’ route, so she wheeled her horse around and put the gentle mare to an easy gallop, heading directly south. Within five minutes, green scrub brush began to dot the landscape, and the shadowy form of a distant town entered the horizon.
“Figures.” Kitty grumbled as she rode, patting the dappled mare’s neck to comfort the animal as it spooked. The town became more visible as she came close to the tracks again, the heat shimmer calming enough to reveal a row of rooftops in the distance. Her mare became unhappy, skittering to one side as it picked up its pace. Kitty scowled and glanced around, leaning down against the horse and trying to calm the animal. A thunder of hoofbeats behind her made clear the source of the animal’s distress, and she could suddenly smell the coppery stink of fresh blood in the air. She glanced behind herself, just in time to hear the excited grunt of her pursuer.
He was a huge man, at least six and a half feet in height, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest that stretched the heavy stitching of his olive green vest. Oddly enough, he wore nothing on his chest beneath the heavily stained vest but had a matching set of chaps over plain jeans. His hat was similarly colored, and sported a bloody hole in it, right above the forehead. A broad sunburned face was adorned with a jet black beard, streaked with red along his chin. Most frightening for Kitty was the fact that he was armed with a length of rope, which he enthusiastically swung in a circle over his head before hurling it towards her.
Unable to dodge from her position, the lasso went right over her head and fell to rest on the tops of her wrists. Kitty’s eyes went wide an instant before the rope went taught and she was yanked hard from her horse, to flop gasping to the dirt. Her hands were bound tightly to her sides, and she flailed roughly against the hard pack as she attempted to escape. He was on her before she could wiggle even a single hand free.
The man grabbed her wrists and twisted them hard, dragging her hands behind her back where he tied them together, before stretching the rope down to her ankles and fully hogtying her. Kitty bucked and thrashed wildly, but only tightened her bindings. Resisting his efforts seemed to produce no results at all, his grip was iron.
“Let me go right now, or I promise you’ll regret this.” She growled at him as she strained against the bindings. This time she felt just the slightest amount of give, before he raised a meaty fist and slammed it down against her temple. Her vision went dark and blurry, and she found that when she tried to move her limbs, it felt like they were weighted. The one thing that was clear was a new debuff outlined in red in the direct center of her HuD. A skull with a crack in the side and stars slowly drifting up made her situation clear.
The man hauled her up over his shoulder and then flopped her against the back of his horse, hooking her in place by her hogtie and a pair of stained meat hooks he had attached to his saddle. Then they were jouncing on their way, with the town fading back into the heat shimmer on the horizon.
