The Outcome
"What do you think you're doing?"
What goes through your head when the enemy standing right in front of you throws down their weapon?
Confusion, first. In a fight, whether you have a weapon or not is everything. Just as a blade beats a fist, a single piece of steel has decided more battles than anyone cares to count. And when the weapons in question are firearms, that difference becomes something you simply cannot ignore.
She had even discarded her only ranged option—her pistol. It was as good as asking me to kill her. A handgun might be inferior to a rifle, but it was still better than empty hands.
The reason I had thrown mine away was simple. I was confident I could beat her without it.
She seemed to feel that, too. Her face twisted as she glared at me.
"Pick up your weapon."
"I'm fine."
"Well, I'm not. Pick it up."
Her tone had turned coercive before I knew it. She must have sensed, on some level, that I was looking down on her—that this was why I was acting this way.
People like her were predictable. Their pride sat so high they would rather die than swallow a slight. Anger shuts down reason and simplifies every movement, which made it the most effective approach there was against someone who fought on raw Physical. Nothing is easier to put down than an enemy who has started moving simply.
Someone might call it cheap. But that is what a fight is. You dig into the other person's weakness and you take the opening. This was not a sport that started on a three-two-one count. Psychological warfare is the basics, isn't it? You see the same thing in sports all the time. The one who falls for it is the fool.
I looked at Bernie, her face crumpled in a glare, and picked the Glock 17 up off the ground. I was still sure I could win without a pistol, but she did not look like she intended to start unless I took it. She probably did not want the stain of beating someone who had only a knife.
When I lifted the pistol, some of the tension left her expression. She still looked thoroughly unimpressed, as if something about the whole situation continued to sit wrong with her.
"Then let's begin."
With those words, from the far side of the field dyed in red light, Bernie broke into a sprint. Maybe she was getting careless because I only had a pistol. She came at me in a straight line, without any real movement to speak of. I really should have fought without the gun.
I ran to meet her.
Perhaps she decided the distance had closed enough. She ducked behind a nearby boulder and threw out a few suppressing shots. Her stance was sloppy beyond belief, but her base Physical was such that the rounds themselves were frighteningly accurate. How she was landing shots like that from a posture like that, I had no idea. Unless she had done something unholy to the gun, it did not make sense.
I twisted my body and slipped the incoming fire. Accurate or not, her grouping was nowhere near perfect. The rounds sprayed out in every direction like a shotgun blast; dodging them was child's play. The moment she tucked in to reload, I drove forward.
She must have decided the situation was turning against her. Mid-reload, Bernie tossed a smoke grenade at the ground. With a hiss, the cloud bloomed and swallowed my vision.
Stay calm.
If I could not see her, the odds were good she could not see me either. The main reason she had thrown the smoke was almost certainly to buy herself time to reset. Once she finished that reset, her next move was not hard to guess.
Tat-tat-tat-tat!
Sure enough, indiscriminate fire tore through the unseen smoke. A rifle is a different animal from a pistol. If this turned into a spray-and-pray, I had almost no chance.
"A little risky, but..."
Through the haze, I caught the faint shape of her moving. Once I had the position, there was no reason to hesitate. The Sprint trait I had selected kicked in, and I poured on the speed.
Someone who had just finished firing should have been wide open. But the moment I burst through the smoke, what I saw was Bernie, already sighted in on me. I supposed that was what a high tier was worth. She had not dumped the whole magazine. She had kept a few rounds back, just in case.
If I kept charging like this, I would be turned into a honeycomb before I could even resist. I thrust the pistol out in a clumsy approximation of a firing stance. I was going to shoot. It was not a play with much of a chance. A pistol will kill you just as dead as a rifle if it hits, but the gap in baseline performance is what it is.
She knew it, too. A thin smile had already crept onto her face—the look of someone who had already decided she had won. But there is a saying for that. It is not over until it is over. Do not let your guard down until the bullet is in the other person's skull.
An ordinary person would have given up here. No cover worth mentioning, nothing in my hands but a pistol—beating her from this position was supposed to be impossible. But that was no different from the cowards who surrender the win the moment they imagine losing. The second you picture defeat, even a winnable fight is already lost. Someone once said what matters is a heart that will not break.
This was exactly when you had to lock onto the other person's movement. The moment someone is sure they have won is when the openings appear, surprisingly easy.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Gunpowder cracked and the rounds came. If I fired the pistol I could at least suppress her. For some reason, though, I did not want to use it. I had the feeling I could win without it.
The poorly formed grouping sent bullets flying at me. She had aimed at the same spot, and yet some rounds came for my head and some for my legs. Shooting like that was a talent in its own right.
I charged the moment she finished firing, without a second of hesitation. After that last burst, she could not have had much left in the magazine. Holding rounds in reserve had been a surprise, but she had not put more than ten shots downrange. I slipped the fire with a light twist of the body. Given how the rounds were spraying in every direction, a perfect dodge was impossible. One bullet grazed my shoulder. Fortunately the damage was light enough that it would not affect the fight.
"No way..."
She clearly had not expected me to dodge. Her panic was written all over her. She must have realized the distance was too close for a reload to matter. She threw the rifle aside and drew the knife at her hip.
A karambit—curved like an animal's claw. The inner edge was built for thrusting, the outer for slashing: a design that would inflict a lethal wound no matter which way you cut. Did the shop even sell things like that? If I got the chance, I ought to look one up.
She must have taken the Sprint trait as well; her closing speed was fast. She swung in time with my movement. She had clearly never been taught close-quarters work. The blade she threw at me was full of holes. Then again, if she had learned anywhere, she would not have been shooting with a stance that sloppy.
I caught her incoming wrist. With my other hand I locked her elbow, shoved my left foot into the empty space, and turned my body—a position that let me attack the wrist, the elbow, and the shoulder all at once. Then I dropped to a knee and dragged her down by the captured wrist. Caught completely off guard, Bernie even lost the knife. Her center of gravity collapsed and she went sprawling.
I set the blade against her throat and smiled, almost cheerfully.
"I win, don't I?"
"...Yes. I lost."
Bernie was doing her best to hold a smile, but the corner of her mouth twitched as if it had gone into spasm. Getting beaten by someone she had been looking down on—of course she was furious.
"Want to go again right now?"
It felt electric. This was a completely different sensation from the Bronze-tier kids. Having an opponent worth engaging with seemed to put more life into a person than I would have expected.
I had won, but in the end it had been a difference of experience. If she had thought a little more and shown me stable shooting, the result might have gone the other way. And I was not sure she had even been fighting at full strength.
"Could we take about ten minutes?"
I had expected her to demand we go again with no break. People like her usually could not swallow a loss and wanted to keep fighting immediately. That was a surprise. She said it, then sat down where she was, chin in her hand, muttering to herself as if she were working something through.
"Fine by me."
I went along with her without argument. Whether she even heard me, I was not sure.
Hmm...
Next round, I might try the M16. If I forced it into close quarters I could lock down a sure win—but that would not solve the actual problem.