Wolfe Bite Chapter 6
By Captain Gaul
Gaul was halfway to Magus’s Castle when the scout caught up with him. The rider looked panicked. “Sir, could you come with me? It’s an emergency.”
“Sure.” Gaul got on the horse, and the rider quickly turned his steed around and charged it in the opposite direction. “What’s the deal?”
The scout pointed ahead towards the horizon, where a cloud of white smoke was pluming. “I’m not really sure how to describe it, sir. A gunman’s attacking the nuns, and evidently he also set fire to Fiona’s Forest. We’ve got patrolmen waiting outside of his gun’s range of accuracy, but anybody gets much closer, he gets himself shot. We’ve lost eight men already, and Deus only knows how many civilians.”
Gaul uttered a loud oath and pulled a large gun from his journey pack. Only now did he realize that his favorite sidearm also had the markings that Taban had called a ‘serial number’. He recognized several of the characters from the other gun, and he knew that the city of starless night would be the first place he needed to investigate. As the forest came into view, and he could see not only smoke but flames too, he refocused his thoughts on the present and loaded his gun.
The rider looked back and noticed the gun. “What kind of pistol is that, sir?”
The horse bumped a bit, and suddenly a glass cylinder popped out of the gun. Gaul peered through the cylinder and realized that this pistol had a sight scope, like many high quality crossbows and some of Lucca’s designs. He lifted the gun up to fire and tried to aim, from horseback, at the gunman in the forest.
The rider repeated his question. “Sir, what kind of gun is that?”
“The kind we need.” The captain pulled the trigger, and immediately after the gun fired, the horse reared up and screeched. A few hundred yards away, the gunman also screamed as the shot tore through his shoulder and his right arm fell to the ground. As the patrolmen surrounding the perimeter realized the gunman was now unarmed (sorry), they rushed in to apprehend him.
A few minutes later, the gunman was pinned to the ground by the force of the captain’s foot. One of the other patrolmen handed Gaul the man’s pistol. It didn’t resemble the other one in the slightest. Gaul looked down to stare the gunman in the eyes—he was a short young man, an older boy really, blonde, with a crew cut and a dirty face.
“Now son, what the hell’s this all about?”
The boy spat. “None of your goddamn business.”
“No, no. Let’s not talk that way, shall we? Because when you start shooting personal friends, torching natural wonders, pillaging temples, and killing women of the cloth, it BECOMES my business.” Gaul pressed down with his foot a little harder, and the boy coughed a response.
“I didn’t shoot Crono.”
“I don’t think you did. And I also don’t think these two events are unrelated. Now, we can make this relatively painless, or—” Gaul paused for dramatic effect. “—I can have some fun with it. Which do you prefer?”
The boy sneered. “Have a party, you sick freak.”
Gaul pointed the boy’s gun down, and shot him in the shin. The boy screamed. “You wouldn’t think that after getting your arm blown off, stuff like that would still hurt, would you? Feel like talking yet, punk?” The boy remained defiant. “I didn’t think so. Now, this here’s Cadet Frank”—Frank was a towering man of six foot seven, and almost as broad as he was tall—and it wasn’t fat—“and it turns out that one of the nuns you shot today also happened to be Frank’s baby sister. Now, I’m going to turn my back, and I won’t face you two again until you start saying something that’s going to help us.”
The gunman never said anything. After a solid half-hour of beating, Gaul called Frank to a halt. Though battered and bruised, the boy remained defiant and stubborn. Gaul held him up by the shirt and stared into his hard eyes. “I don’t know who you’re reporting to boy, but he, she, or it must have you on some powerful mind-altering substances.” He turned to face Lieutenant Ye, who had just arrived recently. “We got a dungeon yet?”
“Nope. Hasn’t been a priority, as we haven’t arrested anybody since Guardia was destroyed….”
“Of course. Well, find a place for this scumbag, and make sure someone keeps an eye on him. I doubt he’ll talk, but….” Gaul shrugged his shoulders. Ye nodded his understanding, and gave the young man a Manatetan nerve pinch. He dragged the crumbled figure over to a cart, and made ready to head off to Truce.
Shortly afterward, Gaul resumed his journey to Magus’s castle. The officers left at the scene were more than prepared to deal with what there was left to do, so Gaul returned to resolving the issue at hand. After some time, he stopped for a minute. All the sounds of flora and fauna had ceased (keep in mind, flora tends to make noise in this world). In his experience, he could only associate that with three things. Lavos didn’t exist anymore, which ruled out two possibilities, and no large frogs were looming behind him either. So he didn’t know quite what to make of it. Suddenly, one sound of nature returned—the rushing of wind. Though it was sunny and quite warm, the wind blew very hard, and very cold, like ice crystals breaking over him. A flash of light—no, it was darkness, hit him, and when his vision cleared as much as it was going to, six shadowed figures stood before him. He didn’t have time to draw his weapon before they were on him. And a few minutes following, he was airborne.
A patrol found him in the woods, a few hours later.
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