Bab 215: Buggin'
"Just so you know, this is all your fault!" Ori bluntly shouts as he and David sprint through the sand away from a narrow canyon passage.
"Tell me something I don't know! Does stating the obvious make you feel any better!?" the teen retorts, jumping over a line of thorny shrubs.
"Yeah, well, shut up!" Ori grouses, looking over his shoulder just as thirty or so people charge out of the canyon and start chasing them, bullets whizzing past the duo with some coming perilously close.
While it was technically David's fault, his knocking over something as they were sneaking into the San Peyote camp had gotten them both caught... Yet, no one had known that San Peyote would be meeting with a number of other Raffen clans for one reason or another, either way, they now had two or three Nomad groups on their asses.
At least they'd some precautions... Just as two dirty yet sleek vehicles are exiting the passageway, an explosion rings out, causing a rockslide that buries both cars and ten unfortunate men. Shocked and surprised, the Raffens pause their charge momentarily to look back at what'd happened, allowing Ori and David to dive into a ditch where they'd stashed a number of rifles.
"You two okay!?" Rebecca shouts from a further ditch, the rest of the crew had holed up there in case anything went wrong.
"We're good! Just start shooting!" Ori shouts, grabbing one of the many random guns and doing so himself.
The Raffens, not willing to go down so easily returned fire and continued to charge. Nineteen go down before they reach the duo, but those numbers were chump change compared to what they were used to dealing with.
One larger Raffen lunges into the ditch, but Ori instantly replies with an uppercut that explodes his skull, as if the guy had headbutted a landmine. The next guy stumbles into the ditch with bullets riddling his legs, despite that he was aiming his gun at Ori...
*SLIIIZNH!*
Only for him to be split in two, completely bisected by his Monowire. He stands and aims over the edge of the ditch again but is just in time to see David beheading the last guy, flicking the blood from his blade with an intense expression on his face.
"That all of 'em!?" Pilar loudly questions.
"Nah! There's like thirty more in the camp, they're probably trying to climb over the rockslide right now!"
"Let's finish em off then!" Maine states, hopping out of the trench and jogging over to the collapsed canyon entrance.
The others join him and just as they reach the base of it Rebecca nails one Raffen in the face as he peaks his head over causing the survivors behind it to flee back into their camp.
They pursued, following the runners back to the camp where they'd already started fortifying, blockading the camp with vehicles and scrap metal. Unfortunately for them, whatever they built couldn't hold up against Maine's cannon, blasting the defence apart and allowing the crew to run roughshod.
The Raffens fell apart rather easily after their leaders were killed, and the only person who had any real trouble was Christy, who'd emptied her stomach after getting a lucky shot in the initial firefight. This wasn't surprising given she'd not known how to hold a gun days prior.
---------------------------
An hour after the battle started a pyre stacked high with corpses released black smoke into the sky, making everything nearby smell of burnt human flesh, carbonized metal, and for some reason, hints of chicken...?
Ori, Lucy and Maine gather in what's left of the Raffen 'head caravan', sitting down next to a makeshift surveillance unit which had access to a badly cobbled-together satellite transmitter placed atop the vehicle's roof.
"Alright, we're in." Lucy reports, overlaying the Raffen ICE walls with her own to prevent anyone hitching a ride on the connection. The last thing they needed was Arasaka finding them again.
"Think you can get a connection to NC? I wanna update from Kiwi." Maine asks.
"I'll need to scramble and encrypt it, but yeah... Give me a second to link up."
...
[Kiwi, it's us.] - ???
[Right. I've never heard that before.] - Kiwi
[Your first name is Kylie and you lost your virginity to a 13 yearold at 20. Sound about right?] - ???
[Maine... Good to hear from you.] - Kiwi
[We can catch up when we're not being hunted. What's been happening since we left?] - ???
[The whole city's going mad. Everyone seems to think 'Zombie' got assassinated by Arasaka for removing the Tyger Claws, and protests are only getting bigger. Biotechnica shut down its Headquarters and handed control of its protein farms to Night Corp, tripling the price of gas. Me and Sasha joined up with Wakako to, y'know, not die, and the 'Dragon Claws' or whatever we're calling ourselves have taken control of everything in Japantown.] - Kiwi
"Huh, so we missed a bit." Ori dryly remarks.
"No shit sherlock." Maine grouses.
[What's the sitch look like? Any chance we can come back?] - ???
[No. Stay out wherever you are, Arasaka has undercover agents patrolling the streets. You'd have to hide the entire time if you did manage to sneak back in.] - Kiwi
[Look, I know this is a bad time to talk about this but, Dorio, she didn't make it.] - ???
...
[I'm sorry. Maybe if I was there I could have done something...] - Kiwi
[That is not on you. You might be dead if you were there, at least with this you aren't out here kicking sand... Listen, you got any intel on Vegas? Anything someone might need if they went there?] - ???
[Vegas huh, I'll see what I can do. Open the link again this time tomorrow and I'll send the detes.] - Kiwi
[Hey, is Sasha doing alright?] Ori leans in and shoots his own message.
[Good for now, likes to brag about her new apartment and Mizutani... She'll be happy to hear you're alright.] - Kiwi
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