Advent Of A Gunslinger

In a swift blur of black, Kora unsheathed her claws and tackled Gatto through the window of the shop. With a loud crash, glass went everywhere and before the tom could even vocalize a response, Kora had already begun her assault. She slashed her claws deep, and hard enough to cut through his suit and into his body.

“AGH! SHIT!” he yelled as he kicked Kora off of his body.

She flew backwards, and landed perfectly in front of the window. That’s when she picked up a shard of glass...

At the same time, Vido had finally descended to check on the situation. “What’s happ--?!”

SHING-SHING-SHING!

“RRRREEER!”

Gatto squealed as the shard of glass was hurled into the back of his neck.

Despite being shorter than the tom, Kora was still formidable beyond compare. She kicked him in his back which caused him to stumble forward and hit a wall. But she wasn’t done there. She grabbed the back of his head with a single paw, and slammed him against the empty countertop.

The result was that Gatto ended up so dazed by this that he could barely stand. This gave Kora another opening that she needed. She grabbed him up with her arms around his waist, and flipped him over her body!

With a loud, destructive crack!, the tom’s entire neckbone was destroyed from the suplex. The force was so great, that it caused not only Vido to flinch out of horror, but Mio as well.

“Ay...that’s…” the griffon couldn’t even form a proper statement.

Axel stared dead on for a moment. To him, it was akin to watching a stagecoach fly off a cliff. It was hard to look away.

Even Mio was freaked out. His fur stood on end, and he let out an audible purr mixed with a shudder. “...Yikes.”

Kora would continue to lay into Gatto with bits of fur and blood flying every which way every few seconds.

As that happened, Mio would address the hippogriff and griffon. “...Well this is awkward as all hell, isn’t it?”

“...You never intended to kill her?” Axel questioned, his gun still at the ready, “You really just wanted me, eh?”

“Rrrrr…” Mio flicked his tail, and pushed up his glasses. Ultimately, he knew that this scenario would reflect poorly upon him from all angles. “Shitty Gats and his shitty intervention. If he sought to make me look bad, then it was a good play of his hand.” He folded his arms as he replied. “That’s correct, yes. Gattille, however, has made things unnecessarily difficult for me. Now that our hostage is dead, I no longer have any--”

THUD!

All the sudden, Gatto’s frayed, bleeding body with all of its fur skinned completely down to the epidermis. He was a twitchy, almost alien mass of pink with no fur on his body. A sight that nearly caused Vido to throw up.

“Ah! I--what in the--?!” the griffon had to force himself to look away.

Kora would exit a few seconds later. There were a few cuts and scrapes on her body, as well as some blood from the carnage that she caused. She spit out a tuft of fur from Gatto’s body and stepped right over him in a casual manner to pick up her sister’s dead body, and turn to leave the scene.

Axel didn’t want to lose track of the conversation he was having. “You ain’t got no what now?”

“...Leverage over you. This entire situation was a shitshow,” Mio replied, “And I suggest you all turn tail and run before things get worse.”

“And why should we be doin’ that?” Axel questioned with a steeled set of eyes.

“Put an ear to the earth,” Mio suggested.

Axel didn’t break eye contact, and slowly put his head to the ground...then his eyes shot open once he found out what Mio meant. “...Stampede.” He stood upright once more.

“...Not just any stampede,” the tom went on, “An entire wave of abyssinians with their weapons ready to be drawn. If you don’t leave now, you’ll be trapped in an unwinnable scenario.”

Vido had flown into the air once more, and could see a group of swiftly moving bodies in the distance. “...The card gato is right. We need to fall back as soon as possible, Remy!”

Axel hovered in the air, ready to take off, but he still wanted an answer to a simple question. “...Why are you helpin’ us?”

Mio turned his back to them both. “As soon as Gatto played his hand, the balance of the game’s table became uneven. I want to face you on my own, equal terms. Player to player. There’s no fun in an unbalanced deck…” His tail reached into his pocket, retrieved, and showed them a card that depicted an abyssinian in a red and black jester costume: The Joker. “I intend to make this town my own, soon without the influence of my superiors. And if you want the information you seek in reference to your family, then come at me at a better time. But right now? The situation has been flushed, and the rest of my boss’s underlings are on their way to force you into slavery as well. That is not something I have planned for you.” He turned his head halfway to look back them. “Fall back while you still can...Rrrremington.”

With that, the tom flicked his tail, and tossed The Joker card on the ground.

POOF!

A thick smokescreen appeared, which would conceal their escape.

“...Dammit…let’s git while the gittin’s good,” Axel turned and flew back towards the entrance with Vido right beside him.

“Understood, boss! Kora is likely already there,” Vido replied.

Once the smoke disappeared…

The rest of the gang members approached Mio for an answer.

“What happened?” one of them asked, “Was Remington here?”

“Yes,” Mio pointed to Gatto’s twitching, limp body, “But Gatto killed our hostage, and they escaped before I could properly fight back. The mission was a bust...somewhat.”

“Not entirely,” a crocodile Klugetowner commented from a nearby stand, “We took care’a that ship, didn’t we, bud?”

Mio practically hissed. “You WHAT?!”

A porcupine next to him would let out a wheezy snicker. “Heeheehee! You got that right. Get ready for some firewoooooooorks!”

“...” Mio was stunned into silence, and simply took off his glasses. He then started to clean the lenses with a purple handkerchief he kept in the pocket of his suit. This was his way of calming himself down to avoid losing his mind with a violent outburst. “...I hate working with these trigger-happy megalomaniacs.” After a few seconds, he gave his fellow abyssinians an order. “...Get Gatto’s body to the infirmary underground.”

Nearby, from within one of the nearby buildings…

Tony had watched the entire scene from the confines of his home. As soon as everything had concluded, he immediately ducked down to avoid being spotted. “...Gotta git a letter out to Stella.”

Meanwhile…

Axel and Vido flew as fast as they could and hurried out of Klugetown before anyone else spotted them. About halfway towards the airship, they spotted Kora who sat alone in the sand, patiently waiting.

However, her sister’s corpse was nowhere to be seen.

Axel was the first to point this out. “...Where’s yer…?”

Kora replied slowly. “...I buried her...where I promised I’d put her to rest.”

“Alright, well that’s good and all,” Vido urged them to keep going, “But we have to--”

BLAM!

A fiery explosion occurred just over the other side of the nearest sand dune! Chunks of metal and other scrap were flung far and wide another half-mile away with a small, but hefty mushroom-cloud left behind.

The force of it was felt all the way beneath the trio’s feet where they stood.

“What in tarnation--?!” Axel took off and flew into the air.

Vido noted just how much scrap metal and where the origin of the explosion was located. Immediately, he was thrown into a frenzied panic with a set of fearful eyes and a stuttering reaction. “No...nononono…” he flew directly towards the blast.

Kora remained silent, but followed on foot…

“...nonono...n...NO!!” And when the griffon found just what had blown up, he let out a horrified screech. “....AWWWWWK! SON OF--GILLIPOLlAS BASTARDO, MAN!” He fell to his knees with his claws in the sand.

His airship was blown to smithereens. Almost nothing was left but bits of wire that made up the frame of the blimp itself. The final prized possession that he and his deceased father shared together. Gone. Reduced to atomic dust. To make matters worse, that was their only mode of transportation, which meant that they were essentially stranded near a hostile Klugetown.

Axel landed nearby, and sat down in the sand to process what had just happened. “...Who in the...how…?”

Kora stopped to observe the wreckage, but was utterly stunted in regards to what to think or say at that moment. “...”

Vido balled some sand in his claws and started to speak to himself. “Todo por lo que trabajé tan duro se ha ido. Eso fue lo último que tuve para recordarme a mi padre. Ahora no queda nada. Pero...tal vez todavía quede algo...solo necesito buscar…”

While he didn’t understand everything Vido had said, Axel’s knowledge of the language spoken in Barncelona and Mexicolt City was decent enough to where he realized what Vido was about to do.

“Hey, hey!” the hippogriff flew down in front of him, “Don’t lose your head now. We can’t afford to--”

“Now?! Now?!” Vido screamed, “Where are we gonna go, amigo?! There’s nowhere for us to run and Klugetown is likely gonna be swarming with folks who are after our asses! What can we even do at this point?”

Axel looked into the sky. The evening was upon them, and the sun would set soon. At the very least, they weren’t going to be high and dry in the middle of the desert with a potential for heat stroke...for the time being.

“...We need to keep movin’,” he said as he looked into the sky which was now clear, “If I can just find us a rain cloud or two right around nightfall…”

The griffon was persistent, and decided to rummage through what was left of his airship on his own. “...No tengo tiempo para esto...no seas idiota…”

All the while, Kora said nothing. She simply sat motionless within the sand, and waited for either of them to give her a command as to what to do next. The she-cat was an empty husk for the time being. Overwhelmed with the death of her sister as well as the destruction of their only form of transportation in the middle of the Bone Dry Desert. It essentially caused her to shut down outside of motor function.

They needed to hurry and get as far away from Klugetown as possible, lest they get caught and captured again.