The Reaping

[Luci]

Princess Hellstab lounges on a filthy couch with the equally filthy Weasel. The eight-year old princess is holding a rubber tourniquet tightly around Weasel's arm as the teenage witch readies a syringe full of green chems.

"I mean, what's to say?" Weasel asks rhetorically as she shoots up. "Dickface is dead, and Scab...Scab got cold...cold feet..." the gangster sighs as the drugs take hold. Princess Hellstab slaps a band aid with a happy face over the vein.

"You're still taking us to soccer practice later, right?" asks Hellstab, poking Weasel's slumped over form with her toe until she hears a grunt of affirmation.

Smiling, Princess Hellstab skips through the broken glass and sleeping bodies that litter the floor of the Westside hideout. She opens a door that should have led to a staircase, but now instead leads to a hallway. Unconcerned, the princess skips down the hallway, occasionally hopping over passed out junkies and sleeping gangsters. She opens the door at the end of the hallway and finds a spiral staircase she has never seen before. The Princess hops on the railing and slides down expertly, reflecting on the nature of reality.

Since Luci had started living with them, the abandoned house in Teir-5 had been slowly warping into a surreal Escher-like labyrinth of hallways and stairs. Doors lead mysterious places, stairways shifting when you aren't watching them. The Hufflepunks, a gang of former Hogwarts alumni, have adjusted easily. The Deathblades however, a gang of young children with an interest in anime, tend to get lost and scared. Princess Hellstab thinks of herself as a very brave warrior indeed, and so she tries not to cry when she gets lost, if nothing else than to set an example.

The princess opens a door at the bottom of the staircase and bumps into Yukki Kazuto.

"Sorry," he murmurs as he tries to push past her. The princess does not move, but glares up at the bounty-hunter.

"Oh, uh, pardon me, your Highness," he mumbles sleepily. The princess does not move, but glares up at the bounty hunter.

Yukki shrugs uncomfortably. "Uh, I'm just-"

"What were you doing?" asks the princess.

"What?" asks Yukki, despite having heard the young girl very well.

"Right now, what were you doing?" she repeats, despite her excellent annunciation.

"What were you doing?" asks Yukki, folding his arms and glaring back her highness. "Do you have a bedtime? Do you go to school? Are you barefoot right now? This house is disgusting, have you ever seen a doctor? Is that a plastic sword? Where are your parents?"

"I don't have parents," replies the princess flatly. "I go to the school of hard knocks, and we take night classes, that means no bedtime. And this sword might be plastic, but it kills orcs dead. Anyways, I'm on my way to a war council, wanna come?"

***

The war council is solemn as they sip fake tea from pink plastic cups. Gathered around Princess Hellstab's Royal War Table are eight representatives from two Westside gangs, and Yukki Kazuto.

At the head of the pink plastic table is Shadow Kill, the ten-year-old President of the Westside Deathblades. To his left is his sister, the elegant Princess Hellstab. They are flanked on either side by the first and second lieutenants of the Westside Deathblades.

At the foot of the table, her patched Hogwarts robe slipping with her eyelids, is Weasel, President of the Westside Hufflepunks. Her lieutenants, a trio of teenage punk rock wizards, struggle not to giggle as they sip the fake tea respectfully.

The topic of conversation is Voga, a Hutt pimp and sex trafficker. Apparently a small time Knife Ear gang have found him in Teir-4, but they don't have the muscle or the authorization for a hit. The issue is, as far as Yuki could see, that this council can't actually give authorization.

"Moss will literally kill me," Weasel reiterates. "Scab and Dick-Face, that's on me. That shit with Qor, that's on Koloth. Batgirl, that's on Shadow Kill. All those though, we got authorization from Luci for, and that's not the same as Moss, and we all know it. This is different. If we authorize this, behind everyone's back, Moss will call bullshit, and he's right. This needs council approval, and we won't get it from Moss, or the Ewoks, or the Klingons."

Shadow Kill confers quietly with Princess Hellstab. Weasel catches Yukki's eye and licks her lips grossly.

"Luci gave us a job," says President Shadow Kill in his young but confident voice. "That's all the approval I need."

The two gang leaders lock eyes from across the table. After a long while, Weasel lights a cigarette. She smokes in silence for a longer while.

"Moss will literally kill me," Weasel repeats. "I'm sorry. But I didn't sign up for the President Perky Tits Armed Forces."

The Deathblades lean in to whisper among themselves again.

Finally Princess Hellstab asks the table at large, "What if we send the Reaper?"

[Yukki Kazuto]

I sat on one of the many couches around the hideout, scrolling through different things on the dataverse. I found myself scrolling through the bounty list that had originally brought me to this building to find Luci. I scrolled through the list, looking at potential people to hunt down. The people on the list were not alike in any way. They jumped from a seven foot blond, to a man with golden scales for skin, to a pair of giant mice, to Luci herself.


I paused on the picture and description of Luci. This page had brought me to where I was today. I put the phone down next to me as Princess Hellstab walked up. “Don’t you have a job to be doing?” I suppressed the laugh that rose from this little girl asking me to do a job.


“I’m sorry if my pace is a little slow for you, your highness. Besides, I never said I would do it.” I said this with a smirk, already knowing I was going to do it anyway. Might as well have fun while I did.


The princess glares at me, folding her arms across her chest. “Please. We both know you’re going to do it.” Her arms drop, and she turns away from me.


I feel the heat rising to my face. “And what makes you so sure of that?” Princess Hellstab doesn’t bother to turn around as she responds.


“Because it’s what Luci wants.” She disappears through a doorway. I glare in that direction, and glance back at the phone that I had placed on the arm of the couch, specifically of the picture of Luci the Empire got while she was fleeing the scene of one of her crimes.


I picked up the phone, and turned it on silent. I tried to place her comments behind me. I checked that my pistol was loaded, and left the hideout.

I had a Hutt to kill.

[Luci]

Princess Hellstab skips helpfully behind Yukki, explaining the subtleties of inter-tier gang politics.

"They don't play for keeps in T4, not usually," says the princess in her adolescent voice. "I mean, people die, but not like it is back in T5. In T5 it's kill or be killed, and these T4 kids can't play at our level, so they're not really Westside, they're just affiliates. The Hutts are strongest in T4, but they aren't really violent, not like the orcs are, so the T4 affiliates never bothered them. Now that the orcs are moving into T4, shooting up the place, all the affiliates have to learn how to fight like us. They want to be Westside now too; they need the weapons and the protection. The thing is, when you're Westside, our enemies are your enemies. So we gave them a mission, to track down this Hutt."

Yukki nods as he flips through the handwritten notes detailing the mission. The pair are passing through a gift shop on the way to a Teir-4 elevator, surround by key-chains and mugs saying things like 'I survived Teir-5!'. Princess Hellstab talks Yukki into buying her and oversized pink T-Shirt with the words 'Princess of Teir-5' on it.

Yukki smiled politely as the guards inspected his massive weapons cache and ran a background check on the bounty hunter. After a tense few moments (tense for the stormtroopers, not Yukki) they handed his weapons back to him and waved him through.

"Following a bounty?" one of them asks, politely.

Yukki shakes his head. "Just taking my niece to see some family."

Princess Hellstab grins adorably.

***

"Luci says as long as I kill orcs I can stay up as late as I want," the princess explains patiently.

The pair are sitting down at a Chinese-Gazzorpazzorpian fusion restaurant, waiting for their T4 contacts to arrive.

"Is the kung-pao flom-jom any good?" she asks the waitress, who shakes her head. "Oh," says the dejected Princess. "Then I'll have the...Kl!rg Won-Tons."

"Very good," says the waitress drly. "And for the gentleman?"

"He'll have the kung-pao flom-jom," the princess interrupts. The waitress nods and scurries away.

Yukki glares at the princess. "You're a real pain in my highness, you know that?" he growls.

Princess Hellstab shrugs.

"Why do you want to be a gangster, Yukki?" she asks. "Are you so tired of life already?"

[Yukki Kazuto]

I pick the fork up off of the table, and begin playing with it restlessly as I tell my story. “It’s not that I’m tired of life. In fact… I would say it’s because i’m grateful to be able to live it.” Princess Hellstab looks at me patiently, obviously not pleased with my attempt to dodge the question. I let out a small sigh.  


“Years ago, when I was a little younger than you are now, I was living out on the streets. Finding food by digging through trashcans and dumpsters, relying on handouts and scraps. I was puny, and everyone thought that it was certain that I was going to die.” I notice that I’m no longer looking at her highness, and glance up to see if she’s still paying attention. She is.


“It was during that time that I learned certain skills that the average person doesn’t. I learned how to pickpocket people walking on the streets. I learned how to pick locks using a set of lockpicks I had stolen from a store. I spent a year living that way. Until one day, when I made a mistake.” I let go of the fork, and it clangs as it hits the table.


“One afternoon, I was sifting through a crowd of people, taking what I could. A wallet here, a watch there, until finally, someone caught me…” I pick the fork back up, and resume playing with it. “I had tried to take a ring from her, and she stopped me. She quickly noticed that I had the makings of a great thief, and her being one herself, took me in.”


I think back to how it had felt to be taken to her skyscraper, to be introduced to her partner Reuben, and to go through extensive training from the both of them. “She and her partner trained me themselves, her training me how to steal, him training me how to kill. I became excellent at both. It didn’t take long until we were all working together on jobs, stealing from and eliminating some of the biggest companies and corporations in the world.”


I pause here momentarily, unsure of exactly how much I want to tell. “It was around that time that I was brought here, to the Omniverse. Once here, I found her partner, and we had a falling out. I spent some time looking, but I never found Her…” Princess Hellstab notices that I have begun subconsciously rubbing a gold ring on my left hand.


I’m about to continue when the waitress comes back with our food. Anxious to take my mind off of my past, I bite into the food. I gag momentarily, and force myself to swallow.


“She wasn’t lying. That really is terrible.”

[Luci]

The princess listens respectfully, slurping her Pepsi loudly through a silly straw. It sounds to her like Yukki has a handle on his psychosis, and who is she to judge anyways? Still, Yukki should know what he's signing up for.

"Luci loves the Westside, and we're lucky she does," says Princess Hellstab carefully. "But she holds no illusions about the reality of a gang war. There are times when we die, and it's on a mission she gave us. And we know the risk, and she knows the risk, but she makes the call and we follow through. She might love us, but we know it's business first. Speaking of which, get the file," she says, kicking Yukki's seat with her tiny foot.

Yukki sighs and lays the file down between them. Most of it is a thick docket detailing the Hutt Mafia smuggler Voras the Hutt. Voras the Hutt is perhaps the best smuggler in Coruscant, and certainly the richest. He imports and exports truck loads of sex slaves and narcotics everyday throughout Coruscant, and all from his luxurious mansion on Teir-1. Last year the Westside Council convened and voted three to one not to mark Voras for death, despite the fact that he violated Westside law by trafficking sex workers into and out of Teir-5. Now, an elf gang in Teir-4 says that he's coming to down to get his hands dirty a little and talk business with his subordinates.

The rest of the folder is a series of handwritten notes, photographs, and floor plans detailing the Narshada Luxury Hotel in Teir-4. Voras is expected to arrive there in a few hours and meet up with his cousin and owner of the hotel, Harko the Hutt, who stays permanently on the top floor. According to the notes, the top floor is locked up like a bank vault. The five floors below it are empty, and only one elevator reaches it, that must be accessed from six floors below, with special key cards. There are no windows, the walls are thick steel, and the hotel is guarded by a private army of mercenaries and thugs. It seems pretty straight forward.

"This mission is stupid," comments Princess idly, sipping her Pepsi.

"Has Luci actually read this?" Yukki asks as he flips through the security details of the Narshada Luxury Hotel. The princess nods gravely.

"She must have a lot of confidence in you," says the Princess, grinning coyly as she watches for Yukki's reaction.

Yukki does not reward her for a full minute, after which he says firmly, "Luci did not ask me to do this, you did."

Hellstab shrugs. "She asked me, it might have occurred to her I would ask you."

"How the hell," says Yukki, changing the subject. "Are we supposed to get in here?"

"Iunno," says Hellstab. "Those T4 amateurs say they can get us in. Luci seems to believe them. Oh shit, speak of the devil."

[Dawnika Snow]

The duo walks into the restaurant, a bit suspicious of they're slightly dirty appearance. In their defense, it was difficult to find a decent shower when you had no running water and it's socially frowned upon to take sink showers in a gas station bathroom. Jun was dressed in usual jacket, forever scuffed by dirt and much other substances including dried blood, and sweatpants. Yuki was dressed a bit better wearing a red-plaid skirt and a tank top with some boots. Most her outfit was made of their newly bought clothes. As they walked in, the stormtroopers gave them a rough time, but after some convincing they were finally allowed through.

“Do you know who we're looking for? What do they look like?” Jun asked leaning over to Yuki’s height in a hushed tone. He was slightly nervous as he'd never done a job with anyone but just Yuki.

“I only got their names. Yukki Kazuto and a girl named…” She had to look back at the paper she was given to remember her name. “Princess...Hellstab.” She said with minimal enthusiasm.

“Well that’s colorful.” He commented leaning back up and surveying the room. Not a very busy restaurant for this time of day. Guess no one likes Asain food. “Let's just do our job and get paid.”

Yuki nodded in agreement and saw the two figures eating in a corner. She groaned at the sigh of the girl.

“She’s a fucking child.” Yuki said turning to her partner.

“And you cut a dudes finger off to steal his wallet when you were twelve.” Jun responded walking past her.

“But I'm a psychopath!” She whisper-yelled to him as they approached the table taking their seats on the opposite side of booth from their allies.

“Fill us in on the in-depth detail. We're supposed to get you two in somewhere?” Jun says pointing at the others from across the table. Yuki let's him do the talking, he was always better with words.

[Luci]

Yukki and Princess Hellstab share a look that professional killers tend to share on occasion.

The T-4 con-artists are what they expect; young, pretty, and arrogant. Her Highness Princess Hellstab has dealt with many thieves in her career as a gangster, and finds them distasteful. They are insubordinate, reckless, and cocky to a T. She grins, and proceeds to lay out the maps and files, and explain the raid in excruciating detail.

"Wow," says Jun when they finish. "That is...just the absolute stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life."

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to co-sign that," says Yukki. "Is this why we went on this scavenger hunt? They had me running around picking pockets, I have like, three access cards, and a watch." The pretty teenager empties her pockets, and holds up one red, one yellow, and one blue keycard, and a vintage Jar-Jar Binks wristwatch.

"And look here," says Jun, pointing to a hastily scribbled note next to a drawing of two buildings. "'Zipline into window 7 on floor 50'. Is that why I had to steal this?" he asks, hefting a large metal speargun and dropping it on the table. Yukki hurriedly tosses a napkin over it, to little effect, and tucks it away under the table.

"This is suicide," says Yuki firmly, crossing her arms.

"This is the plan," says Hellstab. Her eyes are neutral. "It will work. We'll be in and out in an hour."

"Or we'll be dead," replies Jun fairly. Hellstab shrugs.

"Without Westside protection, you'll be dead pretty soon anyway," the Princess replies.

"This is what you consider protection?" asks Jun incredulously. "We asked for firepower, and you send one square and a five year old girl?"

The table is silent except for the sound Princess Hellstab slurping Pepsi through her silly straw. A tension fills the air. Princess Hellstab calmly draws her sword and lays in on the table.

At first glance, the sword is not impressive, it's just a pink, plastic katana with a bunch of stickers on it. On closer examination, however, one might notice the vintage '94 limited edition Powerpuff Girls stickers on the handle, or the lightning bolts from the '03 per-release Harry Potter promotional Nimbus 2000 all along the blade, or an original first edition Fossil Set Zapados glued haphazardly onto the pommel. The amount of time, energy, and OM that has gone into the sword is incredible.

"I'm seven," corrects the Princess. She seems to stare off into the distance. "I'm seven years old. I've killed nine orcs. I've killed three Hutts. I've killed two Wookies, one Twi'lek, and a stormtroooper. I did it with this sword right here. Believe me, I've seen what happens when orcs move into your neighborhood, and it's not pretty. We don't want it to happen to you folks here, but the only way the Westside will work is if we're unified. That's what this is about. We get this done, and I swear, we will put a weapon like this into the hands of every Westsider in T4."

Yuki and Jun share a look that good people tend to share on occasion.

Jun sighs. "Go over it again."

[Luci]

Yukki Kazuto gazes out a window on floor 60 of Drumpf Hotel and Casino. Across the street is the Narshada Luxury Hotel, it's darkly tinted windows reflecting the artificial afternoon sun strongly.

Crouched beside him, bolting a hydraulic powered zipline gun to the floor, is Jun. Yukki considers, not for the first time, how useful this teenage thug could be.

The bounty hunter turns his attention back to the window. On the ground, he thinks he can see Hellstab and Yuki.

***

Princess Hellstab emerges from the back of an unmarked white van along with several other girls, including her blonde teenage co-conspirator. The girls are all dressed in matching short cut kimonos, but the Princess has her pink plastic sword hidden on her back.

A Wookie in a tuxedo and black sunglasses eyes the crowd of nervous young girls, walking past them silently as they each turn their eyes away one by one. He stops when he sees the seven-year-old Princess Hellstab, taking only a single second to observe the youngest member of the group, then continuing down the line.

He presses an earpiece and speaks very softly, then waves the girls into the first floor of the Narshada Luxury Hotel.

***

An Imperial Gunship hovers quietly a few blocks south.

***

Yukki Kazuto breathes in. The Reaper breathes out.

He calmly kicks the window of the 60th floor of the Drumpf Hotel and Casino and shatters it.

***

Princess Hellstab rides in a cramped elevator with the shivering, nervous young girls.

She can understand their nerves; few things scare Princess Hellstab, but ending up in harem for a Hutt crime boss is definitely one of them.

The elevator dings, and the group steps out into the 40th floor of the Narshada Luxury hotel. Here, the security is blatant.

Wookies in tuxedos armed with blasters blanket the sparse room. On the other side, is a very special red elevator.

Only through this elevator could you get through the next ten levels of reinforced steel to the suite on floor 50.

The girls march through the line of Wookies to the very special red elevator, where one of them swipes a blue keycard in the elevator, and they cram themselves in.

The princess counts as the elevator rises.

It took twenty seconds. Which was was lucky, because she couldn't count much higher.

***

On the bottom floor of the Drumf Hotel and Casino, bits of shattered glass rain down on a fat, red-headed security guard.

***

The crowd of girls wander nervously into the posh upper suite of the Narshada Luxury Hotel. It is excessively, gluttonously rich. Twil'eks hung suspended in sparkling clear cages that double as chandeliers. Prostitutes lay stretched out on red velvet couches sipping champagne from crystal fluted glasses. Bulbous Hutts reclined and smoked strange hookas, blowing clouds of smoke over their entourages. In one corner of the vast suite several Hutts and human businessmen drank and roared at a pokemon fight; two Mankys with knives cutting each other viciously. At the back of the room, among the shadows, Voras the Hutt is nonetheless easily recognizable.

The ebony skinned Hutt is not smiling, though his his two smaller Hutt companions are. They are surrounded by a myriad of prostitutes and sex slaves of all different species, but Voras's squinty eyes convey the same serious tone they always do.

The elevator closes behind them.

***

Jun fires a harpoon with a long steel wire protruding from the back. It shatters through the 40th floor window of the Narshada Luxury Hotel and sticks fast in the floor. A long steel line now trails back to the Drumpf Hotel and Casino. He looks nervously at the Reaper.

The Reaper stares back coldly. "You got three minutes. Don't screw this up."

The bounty hunter then leaps out the window, using a hook to slide down the cable and into the 40th floor of the Narshada Luxury Hotel.

***

The Imperial Gunship receives a call, and its engine starts to hum.

***

The reaper breathes calmly as the Wookie guards on floor 40 fire red bolts of light form their blasters, dodging the beams effortlessly as he slides down the zipline. He lands in the 40th floor in a roll, dodging the wild blasts of the surprised wookies.

When he comes up, he is grinning.

***

Yuki slips behind a Wookie guard casually, a red keycard hidden behind her back. The blonde teenager deftly swipes it at the control panel for the very special red elevator. The ding of the elevator alerts the Wookie, who turns around grumpily. He cocks his head as he sees Yuki operating the controls. His eyes narrow, and he levels his blaster at her. He screams in his native Wookie as Princess Hellstab slices through his hands with her pink plastic katana.

The party stops.

Hellstab lowers her sword in front of her and counts to twenty.

***

The Reper swipes a blue keycard at the elevator. the doors open and he steps inside. As they close, he deftly observes the ten dead or dying dying wookies he left behind him.

***

Jun hurriedly retracts the cable on the zipline gun, then starts to unbolt it form the floor. He hefts the clunky machine and starts to run on wobbly legs down twenty flights of stairs.

About halfway through, he slams into a fat, red haired security guard and is sent sprawling.

***

Princess Hellstab screams her warcry as she guts a wookie guard with her flaming katana. Wookies and their hutt masters scramble to find their blasters and fire them at the elevator controls. Hellstab twists the sword, but doesn't let the wookie off, using his body as a shield against the incoming blaster fire.

She has counted to fourteen when the wookie has all but disintegrated, forcing her to abandon the corpse and try to use her katana to deflect the plasma.

She deflects two shots, dodges one, and a fourth singes her hair.

Twelve seconds.

***

The Reaper hums as the elevator rises.

***

Jun scrambles on the floor with the fat red haired security guard. He manages to kick the guards face as he rises to his feet, grabs the heavy zipline gun, and starts to hobble down the stairs again. The fat security guard lurches after him and manages to tackle the teenage boy on the stairs, causing the zipline gun to bounce out of his hands and down the staircase. Jun notices it lands at the feet of an equally fat middle aged Wookie guard.

Jun kicks his way free and stumbles down a few steps, but the fat wookie at the bottom of the stairs pulls out a nightstick. Jun looks behind him, and sees the red haired security guard has done the same. Both the guards are inching cautiously towards Jun.

The teenage brawler cracks his neck, and assumes a fighting stance.

As soon as Jun turns towards the Wookie, the red haired guard swings his baton at Juns head from behind. Jun ducks deftly and lets the fat mans weight carry him past, tripping over Jun and tumbling into his Wookie companion. Jun jumps over them and tries to grab the zipline gun, but the Wookie swings his club wildly form the ground, catching Jun in the shin and throwing him off balance, causing him to fall down the next flight of stairs. The two guards hustle down after him.

Jun is bruised but in a fighting stance as the guards come down the stair swinging their batons. He duck a swing from the redhead and returns a left uppercut that landed clumsily on his jaw. The Wookie strikes true however, the baton cracking one of Jun's ribs. Jun groans but delivers a solid right cross that sends the Wookie crashing through the wooden railing and onto the staircase below, where he lay still.

The red haired security guards roars swings his baton savagely, but Jun confidently leans back and avoids it, then connects with a one-two combo on the guards temple. The recently crowned employee of the month has a bloody nose, but bullrushes Jun, who deftly sidesteps him and watches security guard slam into the wall, go limp, and rolls down the stairs.

Jun grabs his zipline gun, and steps over the bodies of the security guards as he hobbles down to the 30th floor.

***

Hellstab cries out soundlessly as a blaster bolt hits her calf and makes her slump to one knee. A Klingon guard rushes forward with a Bat'leth, but Hellstab's flaming katana reaches up to meet it. She skewers the Klingon, and he sinks to the floor as the elevator doors open.

***

The Reaper explodes into the top story of the Narshada Luxury Hotel in a whirlwind of glittering steel knives and cacophonous gunshots. For many of the gathered Hutt crime bosses and their Wookie bodyguards, the rapid-fire explosions of the Reapers M4A1 Carbine would be the last thing they would ever hear.

Prostitutes scream as the chandeliers crash to the floor and the various hookahs and and champagne bottles around the room shatter. The Reaper calmly aims and fire his assault rifle, burying bullets deep into the organs of his enemies. His shoulder doesn't even hurt.

After a few tense moments of silence, the Reaper rose from his crouch, waiting for the smoke to settle. The only sound that could be heard were the groans of the dying and the soft, scared whimpers of the sex workers. At the back of the room, Voras the Hutt is dying.

The Reaper strolls casually over to the Hutt, noting the three bullet wounds in his bulbous gut. The obese alien wheezes as green blood trickles down his abdomen.

"My people," he gasps. "Will descend upon you like Armageddon."

The Reaper shrugs. "The more the merrier," he says dispassionately and he raises the gun and empties a clip into Voras.

***

On floor 30 of the Drumpf hotel and Casino, Jun swipes a yellow security card at a door. He walks through the asian themed suite casually and bolts his zipline gun to he floor.

***

The Reaper hears a whistle, and then a fiery explosion blasts him back twenty feet. Coughing through the cloud of smoke and dust, he gets to his feet, and sees Hellstab and Yuki do the same. Ahead of him, hovering in a massive hole blown in the wall, is an Imperial Gunship.

"Drop your weapons!" demands a crackly, electronic voice from the gunship.

***

Jun screams his sisters name as he sees the gunship blow a hole in the top story of the Rashada Luxury Hotel. He grits his teeth, and fires the harpoon upwards into the hole in the top story. The harpoon sticks, and the long steel cable leads back to Jun. He begins to pray.

***

Princess Hellstab leans on her sword, breathing raggedly, blood and sweat pooling into her eyes. She glances at Yuki. The teenagers eyes are filled with fear and pain. The grappling hook appears at the end of the hotel. The Princess sighs, and starts to run.

"No!" the Reaper screams, but it is too late. Two streams of 50 caliber bullet fire explode form the gunship. The Princess feels the world begin to slow down, and she slips through the streams of bullets with an uncanny quickness. Perhaps she has been spending too much time around Luci.

The seven year old Princess of the Westside Deathblades screams her last war cry as she leaps out the window, her flaming katana held over her head, and crashes into the cockpit of the gunship, driving her sword through it and deep into the pilots skull.

***

Jun watches the gunship lurch sharply downward, smashing into the bottom floor of the Narshada Luxury Hotel, and crashing into the ground in a fiery explosion.

***

Yuki is crying as she holds onto the Reaper's waist. The Reaper stares straight ahead as he ziplines down to the the Drumpf Hotel and Casino.

***

Later, at the abandoned strip club in T4 known as the Nasty Deeps, the Reaper, and Jun and Yuki meet with the other members of the T4 Knife Ear Warriors. The motley collection of teeange elves, dwarfs, humans, and gnomes watch in awe as the bloodspattered trio trudge into their gang hideout.

The President of the gang walks forward slowly, a towering wood elf named Cedar, and locks eyes with the Reaper.

The Reaper fishes around in his pocket for an arrowhead. "Hellstab should have done this," he says as grabs Cedar's hand and turn it palm-up. "But I'll have to do."

He then slices into Cedars palm, drawing blood. He dips two fingers in the blood, and wipes two lines of bloody warpaint under the elf's eyes. Cedar blinks, the President of the Westside T4 Knife Ear Warriors.

"Welcome to the neighborhood."

***

In an alley in T4, the Reaper breathes in deeply.

Yukki Kazuto exhales.

***

I am sorry, this thread was some sort of organizational nightmare, so I wrapped it up. If you guys want our characters to hang out more sometime, I am down, we can try agaaaaaaain. IIIIIIII still had fun