Lion's Den- Gauge

When the Sheriff was down for the count, I grudgingly moved forward and kicked him over so that he was face down. Then I slapped the cuffs on. I looked at Gwen while she spoke in between cuffing the Sheriff's feet. When, or if, I woke him up, he would have to make two incredible feats of strength before posing a threat. As Gwen finished I stood up and stretched, testing my own injury. It still sucked.

I put the pistol back in it's holster. "I'll wake him up when I feel like it." I bent down and picked up that sword of his. "And I sure as fuck ain't going to waste him on Erwin's merry Carthians. No offense, but I did this sans Carthians so I'm going to continue to do this sans Carthians." I cracked my neck and stood upright. I glanced at the fallen Sheriff to make sure he wasn't pulling a fast one and looked at Gwen seriously.

"No, Drag him into the office right here and search him down good. Then get those two guys, Biggs and Wedge who were just here and give them jobs. They were smart enough to not get themselves killed. That makes them more useful then normal security guards already." I put the sword under the my belt even though it didn't feel right at all. Until I was sure Gwen wasn't setting me up, I kept my hand on the flashbang. "Then get the Keeper of Elysium here. I expect whoever is controlling this Elysium to come checking on the Sheriff shortly. I don't know who it is, nor do I really care too. I want them to bear witness though, so they have to be more or less undead. Otherwise feel free to make as much violence as you need to be rightly intimidating and ensue cooperation."

I wiped my head and shrugged a little as my Southern roots started to seep through. I blinked again and crinkled my nose. Fuck it. "As for me, I gotta make a few calls."

All throughout the fight, the Sheriff moved with the finesse and reaction time of someone who could feel no pain or anger. When Gwen delivered the final blow however, he slammed into the floor with all the grace of a three-legged cat, splattering blood all over the marble. His sword left his hands, and spun just a couple feet away from him. But he could barely pick himself up, let alone the sword.

All at once, the seemingly invincible Sheriff looked like he was in as you'd expect from someone missing half their face. He barely managed to sit up to listen to your ultimatum, but when he opened his mouth to reply, the only thing that came out was more blood, and for an instant, a look of surprise. Finally he collapsed, unconscious. His Supernatural Stamina had depleted, and his wounds caught up with him. The Sheriff had spent the last half of the fight on borrowed time, and now his life was in your hands.

Gwen looked at you with a half-smirk and raised eyebrow. "What now? take him back to Erwin, and throw him in front of the Regent at the meeting? Or find someone who can wake him up and call a life boon?"

What the fuck? Now that's weird. I remember thinking that as I watched the first blast from the shotgun knock Tau off balance and to the right, blood and pieces of his suit splatting behind him. I remember thinking that as a smoking red shotgun shell ejected and flipped end over end on my right. I caught it with my peripheral. I know I remember thinking What the fuck? Now that's weird. when the second blast from the shotgun caught Tau dead center on his left knee, splattering bone and sinew and other fleshy particles I could only hope to one day identify across the ground behind him. He was supposed to fall flat on his face but somehow didn't.

My next thoughts were Fuck you Mister Murphy. Fuck You Very Much. The reason I was hating on Mr. Murphy of the infamous Murphy's Law who says that "if it can go wrong it will go wrong" was because he decided to literally ride shotgun with me. Tau's stagger step I was prepared for. I was even prepared for the silvery katana that came from a black scabbard on his hip. What I wasn't expecting was the target. I counter stepped backwards, reacting to the phantom blade swinging for my face. Unfortunately that was not the target. My poor shotgun was. I heard the clang. I felt the clang. I reacted to the clang. But I did not see the clang.

Instantly releasing the shotgun, I reacted in only the way someone who was prepared would react. I sidestepped to the left, putting some distance between Tau and myself and giving me the advantage of having his back. While doing so, I quickly pulled my hands across across my belt. My right hand move the jacket out of the way while the left hand slipped around the ergonomic grip of my chrome and ivory Colt 1911.

Sight.

Acquire.

Fire.

Looking like a cool Navy Seal Commando Guy, I fired the pistol. Bla-Blap! I saw the bullets hit their mark. It was a perfect double tap too. I was a damned homing missile, I was that badass. Tau took the first bullet right behind the ear. The second shot was a quarter inch higher, also behind the ear. I didn't see Tau's face, or what was left of it. However, I did see the nasty splat of blood, brain matter, and more importantly bone. Was that an eye? It might have been, but I didn't get the chance to gloat, because I heard a loud ka-blowww that I recognized all too well. Gwen had fired her shotgun. Instincts took over and I immediately turned towards Gwen. Mr. Murphy would have been 2 for 2 if she had turned on me (something I hadn't entirely disregarded).

Except she had shot the Sheriff. I distinctly remembered wanting to comment on that, only to get kicked right in the balls by my best friend, Mr. Murphy. Do you know what getting kicked in the balls by Mr. Murphy feels like? It hurt. It hurt a lot. It was pain, but not just pain. It was GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING PAIN. The closest thing to it I could think of to describe it would be taking a ball-pin hammer and smashing it against your hurts like hell bone just for fun and then... no, that's not quite enough pain. To be honest, it's a lot like stubbing your pinky toe on a concrete slab while having to scrub with a brillo pad sort of pain. So yea. It hurt.

I looked down in time to see what had caused this thing called pain. Motherfucker stabbed me, that's what happened. I was stabbed on the left, right under the side of the vest. The blade was a good seven or eight inches deep and I was pretty sure even more then that was stuck out the other side. I was still looking at the sword when I seen the result of the shotgun of doom. It was hot how Gwen marched forward with the shotgun and fired. The second shot, the one I seen, had picked Tau up off the ground and rather unceremoniously dumped him on his ass against the wall.

In spite of Mr. Murphy's lovetap seeing that Tau was missing the right half of his face from the eye socket up made me smile. It made me smile enough to center my sights right in the middle of his nose. As my right hand found the flashbang, I made whatever passed as eye contact. "Give up now and I'll let you live through this. Do anything stupid and you get this." To get my point across, I waved the flashbang menacingly. It didn't really matter if he knew what it was or not. To an Invictus prick like him, a grenade is probably just a grenade.

Gauge:
I pulled these details from the message archives of our IM conversation. I'll list everything off OC for now, and we can decide how to RP it later. I also realized that Resilience only downgrades Aggravated damage, meaning it's ineffective against guns, and Iron Skin would not have been able to absorb one of the subsequent Bashing points. So the Sheriff's actually a little more beat up than we thought... and I need to tweak his sheet after this fight scene.

Moving on!

Prior to entering combat, you spent 2BP to activate two of your physical disciplines.
Tau spent 1 on Resilience
Preemptive actions included Gwen leveling a shotgun at the guards and the Sheriff motioning for the guards to merely standby.

Round 1)
Gauge- 1BP on the last physical discipline. Shot the Sheriff, and did a total of 7L
Shotgun Guard- With Gwen aiming at them, since he's only Mortal, he backs off.
Alarm Guard- With Gwen aiming at them, since he's only Mortal, he backs off.
Gwen- Holds her action for when the Guards do something.
Sheriff- Spends 1WP on Nidan Waza, 1BP to heal, enters The Wave is the Man, Quickdraws a Katana, and splits your shotgun in half.

Round 2)
Gauge- 1BP on Dex, Quickdraws and fires a Colt 45 and deals a total of 6L
(Since you have Tactical Reload, we don't need to bother keeping track of the Colt's ammo.)
Shotgun Guard- Runs away.
Alarm Guard- Runs away.
Gwen- Shoots the Sheriff, dealing 3L
Sheriff- Spends 1BP on Dex and 1WP on Nidan Waza, dealing 11L. Since the damage in a single attack exceeds your Size, you're stunned for the next turn.

Round 3)
Gauge- Stunned
Shotgun Guard- Getting Coffee.
Alarm Guard- Jacking off.
Gwen- Shoots the Sheriff, dealing 3L
Sheriff- Surrendering. 1WP to buff his pool to end Frenzy, 1BP to heal.

Recap:

Gauge:
Health- *XXXXXXXxx
BP- 9
WP- 5

Sheriff:
Health: *******xxo
BP- 9
WP- 3

Gwen:
Health: OOOOOOOOoo
BP- 10
WP- 5


Now that he's done riding the wave, Gauge can, for the first time, clearly see that he's in extremely bad shape.

His Resilience will last till the end of the scene, but it'll take 3 turns worth of healing to keep him from falling into Torpor as soon as it wares off. Now that combat's over, I don't know if that's possible. And spending blood on Stamina would just delay the inevitable, while adding hunger to his problems. So you could very well have an unconscious Knight to parade in front of the Regent, followed by waking him up to the tune of your Vinculum. Because you do in fact have a high enough Potency to do it.

Josh nodded gravely at the Regent's condition and felt a certain amount of surprise that the Kindred ruler was actually willing to trust him.

"Okay, I can accept that. However, remember that BRI is in the middle of dealing with this Brain Spider thing, so don't let anybody touch you with bare flesh," Josh warned him. "Once we're there, I can probably prevail on them to give you a conferance room or office complete with some kind of communications suite. That way if it comes down to it, you could probably run your war from there. And you have to admit that you doing this is probably going to confuse your enemies, to say the least."

Josh brightened up as another thought occurred to him. "Maybe after these crises' die down, we can combine the Orbs' power to recover the one lost in Shadow and perhaps even to locate the other lost ones. You know, get everything together and complete the set."

Josh then dialed BRI and told them what he'd done, specifically mentioning that the Orb would be coming, but that it was the Regent's property and that the Regent would be coming to look after his property. He also suggested using the cell-phone's GPS signal to allow for a stable gate to BRI.

As he was speaking, Josh heard a muffled roar of man-made thunder and felt a tickle of fear in his chest.

"Ah, guys, best we move this along. I think we're about to run out of time..."

OOC: I'll again use a Persuasion roll to convince the BRI folks to play along if I need to, but I wouldn't think it would be necessary given how desperately eager they were to get the various Orbs on their own territory.

IC:

I completely ignored the two guards, one with a shotgun and the other by a mysterious button I can't see but naturally assume is there anyway. You know, it's the button that calls for backup or activates the security. Every action movie has one. Every bank has one. Every museum has one, and every airport I've been through had one. A lot of other places have them. Why can't an Invictus Elysium have a concealed button too? My brain cells would all put guns to their heads and simultaneously pull the trigger if I went back there and didn't find a mysteriously concealed button. It might even be red.

"Boy I just spent the last three years figuring out how to take a city from you Invictus pricks without some asshole pulling my choke chain, and you got the nerve to what are your terms me?" I took three steps forward. The red dot on Tou's balls moved up his torso. That's right, dead center in the middle of the chest. A blast from a shotgun at this range is still going to knock anyone on their ass - including an Invictus Sheriff.

"I got a wreck waiting to happen on the bridge to prevent any backup from getting here any way except the boats. Your water sprinklers have been toxified with kerosene gas, because it smells different then the easily detectable gasoline, and the napalm that clogs in the spouts. There's a fuel truck ready to start a high priority fire six blocks away, and another rigged and loaded with fertilizer!"

I closed the distance to now be point blank range. "Motherfucker we haven't even gotten to weapons and tactics, like the two Obfuscated snipers with fucking sweet PSG-1s and their thermal scopes, capable of, you guessed it, detecting the difference in human and kindred body temperatures! And just to keep you Invictus twits from having any real chance, Crow's club is about to be exploded. So Fuck You Very Much cockbreath!"

I glared, dropped the barrel of the shotgun about two inches and tipped it slightly to the left. "If I was a wrath Daeva - you know, the Daeva's whose fatal flaw seems to be Anger Management, I'd blow your fucking nuts off and make you eat them for insulting me. Thinkin' I'm just some shit off the street with no thought into this! Assclown I want your Regent to come back through those doors so I can make this even faster." Nope. I was a pride Daeva. Pride comes before the fall, or so they say.

...

I pulled the trigger.


OOC:

Of my Experience, I spent 10 on the final part of Combat Marksmanship, 32 on Blood Potency 4, and 4 more, 2 points a piece to represent new Retainers. They're only 1 point merits because they're not very good and not especially loyal. I'm being all plot pointy and making those two retainers these, Biggs, the one with the Shotgun, and Wedge, the one with the button. They're smart enough to do what the Sheriff says and to realize that Gauge is a badass so they're going to avoid fighting. After all, the definition of a Hero is someone who gets other people killed. If you need more inspiration, think of the movie Scarface, and the scene where Tony kills the cop and his boss. The bartender witnesses the whole thing, standing right there. One of Tony's henchmen asks about the bartender. Tony looks him over (he's sweating and looking really nervous now) and then asks, "You want a job?"

OC: Good roll


Kilpatrick eyed you suspiciously when you asked to see the orb. Your Sight allowed you to see he was using some kind of non-invasive magic on you as he stared into you. Finally he reached into his pocket and produced one of the orbs. "My guards will be furious with me for doing this alone. But I see no deceit in you. I can't allow that out of my sight though." Then he reached into his pocked for a notepad, and scribbled something down, walking back to the top of the room to lay it on a table by the door. You couldn't get a good look at it, but it looked like another language. "If you must take it with you, I'm going to have to insist on following."