Rifles and Rapiers: An expansion of America Stranded

As me and the cat-, I mean, Aris, reached the edge of the compound, the gunshots continued to ring out. However, we could now hear the shouts and yells of the guards nearby. I switched out my ring for a new one to listen in.

. . .

“You! Bato!” The captain whispered. “Go run back to get a caster and additional reinforcements. Karno, Noxo, keep firing those crossbows! Be sure to not emerge from the same place twice, otherwise he will predict where you are! Everyone else, stay here and wait for the mage’s arrival! When he gets here, we will push the attacker with magical support, and hopefully shields!”

Captain Norean wiped the sweat off of his forehead as he continued to cower behind the large stone wall that was blocking the view of the strange raider that assailed them. Norean had been on patrol when he heard calls for help coming from the north side of the mine. He went there, and found several bodies and a group of soldiers being attacked by what seemed to be a bowman. However, he merely had what looked to be a metal crossbow that spat fire and an invisible projectile instead of arrows.

The captain had at first ordered them to the flanks, but when the shooter proved to have excellent aim and the lack of a need to reload, he changed his plan and instead opted to wait for reinforcements while trying to do what he could with the few ranged weapons his men had on them.

For now, it was mostly silent. The bowman had stopped shooting due to a lack of target, but he refused to move up. It was silent.

Then, when Karno finished loading another bolt into his crossbow, he peeked up over the low rock, and the silence was broken by yet another loud boom. The captain closed his eyes in solemn anger, then crawled over to pick up the crossbow.

As he looked at Karno’s body, he saw the large, round hole in the middle of his forehead. Norean blinked in surprise. He had thought the weapon was enchanted, and killed its targets from some sort of invisible force. No, this device instead fired a normal projectile as fast as a northern serpent, it seemed. Faster than, possibly.

As the captain grabbed the crossbow from Karno’s dead hands and reloaded it, he heard a small, almost completely silent noise. Shuffling.

“Attack!” He roared, knowing the sound was the raider advancing from his position. He heard the cries of the men as they leapt into battle, and he followed suit. He jumped up over the rock and fired off a bolt, then quickly drew his military saber and leaped forwards. However, his saber simply made a not-so-deadly cut through… air.

Where had the bowman gone?

“Search the area! He must be around here somewhere.” He walked towards the open gate that the raider had forced the watchman to open before executing him. Karno grimaced. Those NRA bastards…

He peered both ways after exiting the gate, keeping a lookout for the raider. He was nowhere in sight. Or at least, that’s what Norean thought before he felt a knife on his throat.

“Shhhhhh. Humans like their lives. Think that maybe this time you should keep quiet if you want to keep it.” The voice purred. Norean’s breath stopped as he was yanked away by whoever the person holding him hostage was, and saw before him, the raider.

As soon as he saw the raider, or at least someone who looked like him, he resolved to not end up like the watchman at the gate.

“INTRUDER!” He yelled as loud as he could before the knife on his throat cut it open with a spray of blood.

. . .

“Why did you kill him!?” I whined, dropping two of the guards that rushed us in an instant.

“Because he alerted the rest of his little friends to our location? Why else would I kill him!?” Aris snarled, throwing a dart at another guard, who collapsed a moment later.

“That's… a damn good reason.” I conceded, noting that the guards were advancing too fast for me to shoot, and seeing as we didn’t have enough time to fall back and keep shooting, I decided to switch to the cooler, albeit less efficient method of killing. I shot another before grabbing the saber off of the dead guy we had executed.

“Sorry not sorry, pal.” I apologized to the rotting corpse as I hefted the sword. “Alrighty, high school fencing class rule number one: stab the other dude before he stabs you.” I shifted into a fighting stance that probably spoke volumes about my inexperience with a sword. I would say that was all part of the plan, but it really wasn’t.

“FOR KOLECHIA!” I cried as I took a clumsy swing with the saber and used all of my might. Surprisingly, I opened a gash across the approaching guard's stomach, which was probably little more than luck, seeing as a bug had just landed on his nose and distracted him.

“Huh.” I exclaimed, before stabbing the next guard to approach, who was trying to sneak up from behind. I stabbed up through his open mouth, piercing the roof of mouth and into his brain. Also luck, seeing as he was mid-battle cry when he was charging me, and I also conveniently stumbled on a rock, which propelled me forward and allowed me to kill him.

For the next minute, I fell, stumbled, tripped, karaoke’d, and oops-my-bad’ed my way to fending off the small horde of guards. One dude I killed by accident, after I sneezed and my sword jerked up, impaling him.

Another I killed by accident as well. I swung at one dude, who I missed, and instead hit his buddy, who wasn’t paying attention.

In the end, only we stood, but we clearly didn’t have much time to spare. Ryan had disappeared, and we could hear the shouts of more guards drawing closer.

“Which way do we go?” Aris yelled.

I made a show of looking all around me before pointing in the direction of an extremely tall building. “Thataway!”

. . .

We dispatched the next group of soldiers that we encountered. This time, I managed to shoot the ones that Aris hadn’t sniped with her throwing knives. I switched out my empty mag for a full one, noting that I was already down one magazine. We were skirting around the edge of the massive hole in the ground that I couldn’t even see the bottom off. Too dark.

We were moving to the tall tower in the center of the compound, which meant it was right on the edge of the crater. Our area was mostly silent, the enemy not able to pin down our exact location. However, the loud gunshots I was causing made it a little easier for groups of guards to find us.

“Is there any way to make that thing more silent?” Aris seethed as she yanked a knife out of a guard’s throat. He gurgled as she did, and she finished him off by ramming the dagger up to the hilt in his brain. He still gurgled though, and Aris growled in exasperation.

“Yeah.”

“Wait, really?”

“They don’t give silencers to grunts, though. So, the answer is really no.”

I nailed a charging guard in the head. He had just shown up behind us, probably expecting to take us by surprise. Well, he didn’t, I guess. Fuck that guy.

We continued weaving through barracks and other random buildings I didn’t know the name of until, as we were passing through an alleyway, a flash of blue light hit the corner of the wall behind me, and the smell of ozone filled the air. Aris looked back at me with widened eyes.

“Mage!” She shouted. “Keep running! We don’t have a chance!”

“Mage? Oh shit!”

I resolved to follow her advice and continued to move through the alleys, ducking my head whenever a bolt of magical lightning zipped over my head. Making our way ever closer to the central building, the mage and his small entourage of soldiers pursued us relentlessly. Then I had an idea.

“Wait… that’s right! Ha ha, I’m whi- I mean, I have a grenade!” I yanked a frag out from where it was sitting on me, undid the pin, and threw it at the wall, where it bounced off and went sailing into the alleyway where the mage was chasing us.

“Hey Aris?”

“What!?”

“Run faster.”

“WHY?”

“Too late! Duck!”

I shoved her to the ground and dove to the floor next to her, covering my ears. Just as I did, a loud BANG sounded behind me from where I threw it. The cries of the guards sounded out and I knew that I had made a good decision.

“That’ll slow em’ down,” I said, grinning. “I would’ve said, ‘Frag out!’ but that would’ve been too obvious.”

Aris hit me with a deadpan expression. She was NOT happy.

However, just as we rounded a corner, a trio of crossbowmen popped out from around the corner, fingers on the trigger. Me and Aris ducked under the bolts just as they were unleashed from their sources with a THWACK. I returned fire, quickly drawing my pistol and pulling the trigger as fast as I could while Aris threw two daggers in quick succession, both of them landing firmly into their target's chest.

More guards ran over the crossbowmen’s dead bodies, overwhelming us. We retreated down the other way, but when we turned a corner, all we found were some boxes and a large wall blocking our path. We were trapped.

“This looks like a… *GULP* dead end… LITERALLY!” I trembled in fear. Then snapped out of it and crouched behind a crate, propping my gun up on the surface of it to aim at the open alleyway.

“Got any special tricks cat lady? Or are we more cooked than Ryan is in a ranked match?”

“Yeah, I’ve got an idea. It’s called saving myself.” Aris then tried to cleverly make an escape by scaling the wall, but the wall was too smooth, and she fell to the ground.

She got back up and dusted herself off. “I mean, hold them off while I stack these boxes so we can jump the wall.” Then, she began doing just that.

Suddenly, armed guards rounded the corner, charging us with swords raised high. I dropped them, but men with crossbows quickly rounded the corner and loosed a volley of bolts at me. I ducked behind the crate, but one of the arrows punched through the feeble, non-HOA approved wood plank and skittered across the floor, missing me by an inch. I returned fire, but the bowmen had already hid behind the corner of the wall, so my shots hit a whole lotta nothing.

“Do me a favor and stack faster. Underpaid Amazon workers stack faster than you.”

“I JUST started stacking them!”

I tossed my second-to-last grenade to flush out the bowmen, giving Aris a yell of warning to let her know to cover her ears, before I threw it down the alley, bouncing it off the wall at the end to make sure it landed behind a corner and that the shrapnel wouldn’t hit us. I was satisfied to see one of the bowmen collapse to the ground. The other one jumped out again, but I hit him with the average-Detroit-resident treatment and filled him with lead.

Once his body hit the dirt, or cobblestone, I guess, I rushed forward and began dragging the bodies of all the people I had shot dead.

‘What’re you doing?” Aris said, disgusted.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it and just keep stacking.” I shrugged off my pack to make it easier to drag the bodies and slowly began making a stack of them in front of my crate.

I was making a shield of bodies so that the arrows wouldn’t be able to hit me behind my barricade. Pretty effective I would say too, seeing as soon as I got back behind my crate, more bow dudes appeared and let fly another volley. I fired back, but I only managed to drop one of them before they hid. I heard whispering, and they seemed to be forming a strategy. Seeing as I didn’t want to waste another grenade, I had no choice but to sit and wait for their next move. It was like a chess game, really. Boring as shit.

“What did I say about stacking those boxes faster?”

“Shut up and let me work.”

“Now THAT’S the attitude a good worker should have.”

I turned back to the alleyway, waiting for the guards to make a move. And waited. And waited. And waited. Man, this was like chess.

A few minutes passed before something happened. I heard the clomping of heavy boots and armor, and suddenly, a large barrier appeared in the alley. I

It was a shield.

I giggled and shot at it, but the metal simply shook and a greenish light reflected off of it. I stopped giggling. I shot it again. Once again, the bullet didn’t penetrate.

Oh shit, I thought. Is this the special armor that Helmet Motherfucker told me about?

Another shieldman shuffled in next to him, and they began to advance forwards while a bunch of guards crouch-walked behind them.

I analyzed my options. I could toss my last grenade, but I didn’t want to risk the shrapnel ricocheting off of the walls and hitting me, and I guess Aris too. I could probe for weak spots on the shield, but that just seemed like a long shot to me. I couldn’t shoot out their feet because the shield’s were pressed to the floor. In all respects, I was more cooked than Ryan in a ranked match. Or me in a ranked match. Or both of us in a team in a ranked match.

Suddenly, I remembered a certain object that I held in my bag. I opened up the zipper and fished around in the big pocket, looking for it.

“What’re you doing!? Hit them with your boomstick!” Aris whined. I fucking hated Aris.

“Nah, I’ve got a better idea. Go-go-gadget grappling hook!” I triumphantly pulled out the motor-operated grapple gun from my pack, aimed it high in the sky, and pulled the trigger.

The hook at the end flailed high up, spooling out as it came back down fast. It hit the edge of the wall with a CLANG. I flicked on the test mode for a second, to ensure that the hook was properly, uh, hooked in. It was, in case you were worried.

I reached out a hand to Aris from behind my crate. “Come with me if you want to live,” I said in a horrible accent.

“Why should I- AH!” She yelped as I didn’t wait for an answer and simply grabbed her arm, then activated the grappling hook. My arm was almost tugged out of its socket as I skyrocketed up with Aris dangling from my grip. Arrows hit the wall as we raced up, but none of them hit due to what I assumed to be surprise at my maneuver. I’m so smart.

We reached the top with so much force that I was forced to let go of the handle (and Aris, but that wasn’t really an accident) and let myself get some sweet air time. Then it wasn’t so sweet once I crashed onto the roof of the stone brick building. Aris landed a few feet away from me with a THUD. Looks like cats don't always land on their feet.

“What the-” Aris pushed herself to her feet, grunting angrily. “-hell!? No warning? Nothing? Fuck you!”

“I did warn you. You just didn’t keep an open mind and listened to all options.” I smugly replied, then respooled the grapple gun. “You’re lucky that I won that bet with that Marine.”

“What’s a Marine?”

“Someone dumb enough to bet a grapple gun. Come on.” I tucked it away in my backpack and picked up my rifle, which was miraculously undamaged, before making a mental image of our route to the tower and setting off.

. . .

Aris grumbled as she followed Alan along the rooftops. Occasionally they would be spotted by some patrol, but they always passed too quickly for any reinforcements with ranged weapons to arrive. They were surely being chased by an ever-growing crowd, but that wasn’t present in Aris’s mind.

No, she was more concerned about what defenses were present at the tower.

Alan’s plan, while having been successfully executed so far (minus the stealth part) was flawed. It didn’t include a backup plan should they be greeted by soldiers with those shields that could withstand the boomstick. They had been able to make it through the facility so far with a mixture of insane amounts of luck and some quick-thinking by Alan, which also rankled her, but it wasn’t a concern.

“Listen, we need to talk.” Aris began. Alan turned towards her while still running backwards. Aris FUCKING hated him.

“Oh shit. Uh, listen, I’m not paying any child support.”

Aris recoiled. “What the fuck? No! Not that!” I mean about your shitty plan that has more leaks in it than a Commonwealth ship!”

Alan breathed a sigh of relief. “Phew. I wasn’t prepared to go through THAT again. Also, fuck you! My plan is foolproof!”

“If it was foolproof then you wouldn’t be able to mess it up.”

Alan scratched his head. “Huh? Big words.”

Aris groaned. “Whatever. Listen, we need to make a plan in case those goons with that special metal show up again. You know, the ones that resisted your boomstick?”

“Well it’s not a boomstick, it’s a rifle. I wouldn’t expect a backwater like you to understand,” Alan sniffed haughtily. “Second, I DEFINITELY have a plan. It’s called, ‘use my last grenade to make a daring escape!’, and it’s foolproof.”

Aris frowned. “Didn’t you have a mission to complete?”

Alan froze, then grinned. “Oh yeah!”

Aris let out a long groan. She fucking hated this fucker. FUCK.

. . .

After a while of silence, they finally reached the base of the tower. They had descended from the rooftops a little while back to lose their pursuers tail. It seemed to have worked, but Aris assumed that they would eventually regroup at the tower as well.

“According to the intel I received from my top-secret Agent 47 contacts, this should be the place!” Alan chirped. “And according to this map as well-”

“I get it. We’re here.” Aris looked at the bland front door suspiciously. “The place is probably teeming with guards. Do you really have a plan?”

“Yup. You could call it the greatest plan. Lemme just read this book called, ‘Sword Fighting For Dummies.’”