GUN SALAD

“Beretta! Your gun…!”

Roulette hovered at the edge of consciousness, patiently awaiting the inevitable. Breathing was difficult; each inhale was wetter than the last, and her throat was filling rapidly with a strange, tangy froth.

Blood. The bullet grazed my lung, she realized.

“Tears! It was your tears that were topping it up all along!”

The words sounded distant, their meanings nonsensical. It was hard to think.

Suddenly, she heard a gasp. “Oh, my! It is almost full!”

“Well, go on then! Do it!”

“Do your thing, Berry! She needs you!”

Without warning, a concentrated jet of something flooded her chest cavity. Roulette gurgled in terror as her lungs filled with fluid. What is this…? What’s going on?

Someone’s trying to kill me!

Lacking the strength to lash out, she shuddered. Her oxygen-starved mind struggled to grasp what was happening, but fear and the tireless drive to survive seemed to dominate her every thought. It was only when the mysterious liquid began working its magic that she understood:

She was safe. The details were fuzzy, but there was no arguing with the results: the great, sucking hole in her chest knit back together, squeezing out the hunk of lead that had caused it. Her lung sealed itself up again, trapping a puddle’s worth of blood and water inside, but all it took was a lengthy coughing fit to put her back to rights.

By the time she’d finished hacking and gasping for air, everything had come clear again. Gunn. Ballistona. Her friends. Drizzle.

Beretta. Beretta!!

Grateful beyond words to be back among the living, Roulette rocked herself into a sitting position and threw her arms around the girl. She giggled and hugged her back, heedless of the soggy state of her blood-spattered top. Beyond, Roulette could see Morgan and Mimi’s smiling faces.

And, for a brief moment, everything was right with the world.

“Well, ain’t that heartwarmin’,” Gunn drawled, instantly shattering the illusion. “That’s quite a power you’ve got, little lady. You lookin’ for work? I got some vacancies what need fillin’ among the Nine, y’know...”

“No way,” the girl replied with a scowl. “I would rather die!”

“Suit yourself. I ain’t one for shootin’ young’uns–usually,” he said, pausing to shoot a smirk Roulette’s way, “but I’ll make an exception for you. Can’t have you undoin’ all of Big Iron’s hard work, after all. A feller should be able to gun someone down without havin’ to worry about ‘em gettin’ back up.”

“Why’s that, Gunn?” Roulette rasped. “Afraid I’ll get the better of you this time?”

At that, the Czar barked a laugh. “Not hardly! In case that slice o’ crow you just ate didn’t clue you in, let me be clear: I can kill every single one of you pissant rebels before you fire a single shot. Y’all are only still alive for one reason, and one reason only:

“My entertainment.”

Roulette scoffed and spit on the ground. “Bullshit.” But Morgan caught her eye and shook his head, looking grim as she’d ever seen him.

“He’s right, Roulette. You took the brunt of it, so maybe it wasn’t as clear for you as it was for me… But I saw everything. He pulled his gun and fired it faster than I could blink.” He heaved a frustrated sigh, looking to Gunn with a grudging kind of deference in his eyes. “I don’t doubt that he could waste us all at once if the mood took him.”

“Hear that, girl? That’s experience talkin’,” Gunn gloated. “Sarada knows the score. Now, which one of you is up fer the choppin’ block next?” He squinted around at them all in apparent confusion, then, as if searching for something–or someone. “Wait a minute. I was told there’d be one more of you. Some big, bald-headed Truvelan?”

“Father,” Beretta whispered, looking off wistfully toward the sky. A half-second later, though, her eyes widened in genuine recognition as she thrust a tiny finger in the arms factory’s direction. “Father!! He’s alive!”

Sure enough, Roulette lifted her gaze to find the distant figure of Marka Moukahla standing on the rooftop. He was holding someone over the edge, clearly intending to let them fall, but before he could, a struggle ensued, and he abruptly disappeared from view. Gunn’s curiosity got the better of him, compelling him to turn his head just long enough to witness the tail end of the spectacle…

…And, in doing so, he made the fatal mistake of taking his eyes off his captives.

Morgan didn’t miss a beat. He took Ricochet into his hands and leveled it at Gunn’s chest, finger primed to squeeze the trigger. But, somehow, in the fraction of an instant between aiming and firing, the Czar managed to sense the threat and get a shot off. The next thing anyone knew, the pistol was spinning from Morgan’s hands, leaving him helpless before Gunn’s imminent counterattack.

Fortunately, Beretta chose that moment to make a run for it.

“HEY! Get back here!” Gunn snapped, wheeling around to take aim at her unprotected back. He seemed to hesitate as she dashed on toward the factory, plainly wrestling with the prospect of killing someone so young.

The unexpected show of humanity, while appreciated, did little to arouse Roulette’s empathy. She hefted Lady Luck and prepared to fire, fighting her doubts every step of the way. What if it isn’t enough? she worried, the gun trembling in her hands. What if I shoot nothing but weak bullets and get us all killed?

It was a reasonable concern. She’d been humbled once already, and all he’d need was a split-second window to retaliate if her volley didn’t get the job done. It made her sick, to have her most hated enemy in her sights–to finally have the chance at revenge she’d been waiting for–only to freeze up in the eleventh hour. She’d breezed into the enclave with such swagger, such fearlessness…

…But getting shot in the lung had a way of shaking one’s confidence.

Then, in the midst of her despair, the girl’s eyes fell upon the tiny wheel on the side of Lady Luck’s stock. Now that she was looking at it in the meager daylight of Ballistona Enclave, she could see its details more clearly; each slice of the wheel bore an icon corresponding to one of her powers, and above it, a strange phrase had been engraved:

SPIN TO WIN

Spin? But how? She tapped at the glass that housed the wheel, but it seemed to do nothing at all. There were no buttons, cranks, or levers around it, either. She was completely at a loss, and time was running out. On a lark, she did the only remaining thing she could think of:

She ripped the gunstrap from her shoulders and spun the weapon around.

All of a sudden, Lady Luck lit up. Its edges, which she had long thought to be a glossy, enameled black, lit from within, displaying a host of blinking, multicolored lights. A merry tune trilled from somewhere within as the little wheel spun, its needle clicking noisily as it passed over the wheel’s various sectors. Naturally, the gaudy display drew Gunn’s attention away from Beretta; he stood there, bewildered and amused, as the gun’s song concluded, coinciding with the end of the wheel’s lengthy spin.

“Now, just what the hell was tha-”

Roulette pulled the trigger. She knew Gunn was fast, but during her brief time in his presence she’d learned a lot more–namely, that he was overconfident. Prone to distraction, craving stimulation… And, most importantly, he loved the sound of his own voice. Taken together, she figured those traits meant he wouldn’t blow her away just yet. Not until he saw where all this was going. Not until he’d had his say. Besides, she knew something he didn’t:

The needle had landed on the orange space.

Lady Luck launched a hot pepper into his sneering face, followed by several more. They pelted him, one after the other, then bounced to the ground, their flesh bursting open to emit a moist cloud of stinging pepper vapor. He screamed in agony as it curled up into his eyes and nostrils, rendering him next to helpless. It was a decisive blow–a devastating attack. There was just one problem:

The pepper-cloud was big enough to affect them too.

Roulette completely lost track of her surroundings, eyes watering and swelling shut as she fired blindly into the mist. She heard Gunn return fire, but from the sounds of it, most of his bullets were flying wide. The smoke eventually cleared to reveal that neither she nor the Czar had been injured. In spite of her desperate gambit, nothing had changed–they were back to square one!

At least, that was what she thought until she saw Morgan.

He lay bleeding on the ground a few feet away, hand clutching his gut. She gasped sharply and scrambled over to his side, reaching out to cradle his head in her hands. “No…! Morgan! I… How could this happen? I thought I’d turned it all around…!”

“Stray bullet,” he grunted, wincing up at her from between pepper-stung lids. “No hard feelings. It was a g-good try…”

To her left, she heard Gunn stalk toward them with his gun at the ready. “You’re goin’ to pay for that, girl,” he snarled. “And this time, I’ll make damn sure you stay down.”

She allowed her eyes to flutter shut. This was it. She’d done her best–pulled out every stop. And all it had done was leave them all worse off. Morgan was bleeding out. Mimi was still whimpering a few yards distant, rubbing frantically at her eyes.

Some leader she’d turned out to be. Inwardly, she resigned herself to her fate, secure in the knowledge that, at the very least, she’d go out the same way her Daddy did.

Maybe, in the afterlife, she’d get to see him again…

Maybe…

The sound of footsteps echoing from the darkness of the southern gate roused her from her reverie. She looked up to find a thin man with a thinner mustache emerging from its mouth, hands buried in the pockets of his dark suit. He took one look at the scene laid out before him and whistled long and low, looking to Gunn with an expression of utter, unshakable calm on his youthful face.

It was the man they’d met in Port Pistola–the one who’d come to their rescue after the brawl in Marka’s mansion.

“Who the hell’re you?” the Czar sneered.

The young man paused, one hand lifting to loosen his tie. “Nobody special,” he replied. “Just a guy trying to make up for past mistakes.

“And it just so happens you’re one of ‘em.”