Jim smiled, then frowned. Twelve, maybe thirteen shots... assuming that the anomaly, whatever it was, kept up. And then what? He could face a fight, sure, but not to the death. And this desert landscape meant a lot of trouble when he was eventually going to feel thirsty, if something didn't get him from the back first...
The two orks did not pack any supplies in them, but did not look undernourished. That meant there had to be more of them... or something... in the vicinity. Jim yanked the ork's spear off his body, looked back, and got out of the building.
Jim had walked barely half a block in the direction opposite to the desert, when he saw some sort of armored carriage coming -- strangely enough, despite the steam engine in poor repair that was pushing it along, he did not hear the huffing and puffing machine until he had a good view of it. What Jim could hear just fine was the mutants grunting among themselves and pointing at his direction. They had recognized the armor, and either seen or smelled that it was not being occupied by their friend...
Jim did the smart thing, turned and ran. There were six or seven creatures on the vehicle, and maybe if he made into a building...
A dart swished past him, barely a foot from his shoulder. Panicked, Jim stopped for a moment - and then resumed running as fast as he could, zig-zagging across the heavily littered road. At the first narrow alley, he darted in. "Grak! Vai prendere!" he heard somebody shout in a throaty voice.
Jim looked for a door or any other opening but the alley was cut off by a crumbled outer wall after maybe twenty yeards. The one door that was left to hide in was shut and looked heavy. "Eccoti qui!" a slightly higher pitched voice said behind him, concluding with a contented laugh.
Only then Jim became aware of the vehicle being parked right outside of the alley, the other orks -- surprisingly -- laughing hard at the scene. The fallen ork gunner twitched his peg leg, showing he was still alive. From the vehicle, two other orks loaded what looked like heavy-duty crossbows and aimed straight at Jim's head. "Palla di luce no funziona con noi! Hahahaha!" the leader, a larger man-beast sitting at what was probably the pilot's seat, bellowed.
To his credit, it was only when a high-pitched scream came from one of the adjacent buildings that Jim wet his pants. Something fell, almost in slow motion, from the very building Jim was trying to hide into. It broke its fall in midair, and glided right in front of Jim. The silhouette, covered in a green-and-brown cape, spun around and grabbed the fallen ork's shotgun.
Mexican stand-off. Then, the fallen gunner tried to grab the newcomer's ankle, and Jim fired. The fireball flew past its intended target and hit one of the carriage's wheels, a piece of metal that probably used to be a sewer accessway lid. Sparks flew all over the carriage, and as the caped figure hit the gunner with the butt of his gun, the other mutants scurried away from the vehicle. "Via, via!"
The caped figure jumped impossibly high, past the carriage. Jim was surprised to see the orcs scurrying past him into the alley, and not knowing what to do ran the other way. What of the carriage could have caught fire at this point had, but even then it looked better than a facing a bunch of mutants...
Jim closed his eyes ran for his life, over the carriage and right into where the sand bagan to cut into the city...
Shapnell flew everywhere, some of hit bouncing off Jim's tyre-rubber armor. He took cover behind the last ruin, realized how fast he managed to run, and then his legs gave up on him and he collapsed leaning on the wall.
"Grazie per il diversivo." a strangely familiar voice said. The caped figure was crouching over him, and took off her hood revealing a face Jim knew impossibly well...
Wed Nov 7 23:46:01 2001
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