Gun Girl from Another World

Slip

*Remmi*

Staying at the Lord Mayor's estate has been ... cloying. I've long since decided it was a mistake. Lord Oshu has been micromanaging my every day. Ensuring I see the best of his city, he claims. In practice, I've seen enough of noble life to make me want to go back to my farm in Dabun and never take my hands back out of the dirt.

And then there's the meetings. He insists I come along to meet the businessmen that run Giri Village, quickly followed by insistences that it won't be a mere village for much longer. And, of course, they all want to sell me something, and the Lord Mayor insists I pick what catches my eye on his dime.

I put up enough resistance that I seem humbly unwilling, but I'm terribly tempted to let him spend it all on me, since I already got the message out to Yorin of what they're up to here. But I can't. That money no doubt comes from the town, not his own pocket, and I don't want to hurt the people.

Speaking of the town, I haven't been able to get back out into it since my first day. I haven't gotten to see Leuke again, or Captain Anara, or that nice man whose wife hit upon dehydrating milk and eggs. I really want to see if he fixed up his booth. There was that guardsman trainer Leuke mentioned, too, Geold.

So much that I want to see, and the Lord Mayor has kept me in a gilded cage. Some part of me suspects that's no figure of speech, either. Surely, he wouldn't have the balls to actually attempt to contain a Hero, would he?

Well, no matter. He actually can't contain me very well. When I relay my plans to Ayre, he opts to remain just in case they really are trying to keep me here, but I veto that. With us separated, the guards could overpower the archer and take Ayre captive, then use my friend to manipulate me. No, if we're slipping out, we're doing it together.

We would try the front door just to be thorough. What are they going to do, tell us no? But every time over the better part of a week we've been here that we've tried to leave that way, we were intercepted by Lord Mayor Oshu with some urgent affair that never seems to be quite ... Heroically urgent.

Things like his cousin, Lady Regent Noya, having planned a girls-only shopping trip. To the most expensive stores in town, of course. And, yes, she took Ayre. At least that confirmed that the two nobles didn't know any better, and Ayre begged me not to spoil the opportunity for fashion.

I, for one, no longer have a lacking of outfits by my metric, with something to wear even if I'm called upon to attend a formal ball. Something I'd rather fight a dozen Hearts of Corruption than deal with. ... That being said, none of the new outfits are suitable for casual wear, either.

Anyway, to avoid another spontaneous tea party or something equally draining to my sanity, we're taking a more conventional exit: We're going out the window. No need for chains of knotted sheets here, though. After all, my storage has my custom-made grappling hook and plenty of rope. We can exit stage left good and properly.

Ayre goes out the window first. I don't tell him it's because I'm paranoid of triggering a trope of him getting abducted again the moment I can't get to him quickly. I just know that as soon as I go first, guards are going to burst in and grab him. I mean, they probably won't and it would be just fine, but I can't shake the worry.

Nope, as if to reinforce my paranoia, Ayre is halfway down the rope when I hear knocking at the door.

"Guards, ma'am," they announce loudly. "We're coming in!"

Did we do something to alert them? Are we being monitored? I don't know, but they can tell what's going on with one glance at me looking down out of the window the moment they come through the door.

"Halt!" one shouts, but I wheel around and draw as I come down in a crouch. The Paralysis rounds come out with a soft, pew, pew, that barely leaves the room courtesy of the new power I bought for my handgun.

SUPPRESSOR

----------------------------------

Tired of the entire neighborhood

knowing where you are from the

loud clapping of your gunpowder

glutes? Want to spare your allies

the trials of early hearing loss?

This active power greatly reduces

the volume of shots fired from

the augmented firearm, allowing

stealth operations and safe

discharge in enclosed areas.

While active, the following

effects apply to your shots:

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

* 20% Penalty to Range

* 20% Penalty to Damage

* Significant reduction to volume

* Preserves property values in an

HOA

Casting Cost: 20 MP

Twenty mana per shot is pretty steep, honestly, at twice what Spiral Shot costs, but with my reductions, it's an easily affordable five points per use. I still want to get Ayre actual hearing protection, though, as using it constantly would get to be a pain even on my supplies.

Not to mention its penalties. A fifth of my range and damage, that's a lot in a fight where distance is key or the enemy is tanky. Fortunately, the range here is basically nothing, and the Heavenly ThunderTM rounds don't care about damage.

I could do without the insinuation of cheeks clapping being what gives me away, and I'm pretty sure HOAs don't exist here, but my firearm skills were clearly created just for me, and by the same hand that manages my marketplace, so I shrug it off. Suppressor is far too useful a skill to turn my nose up at over something petty like that.

And it's toggled at will, so I don't even have to stop and screw on or remove an attachment. Like magic, it just modifies my gun on the fly, just like with the expanded magazine and power increases.

I don't know if Hedge Witch modifies penalties, and there's certainly no way to know if it's increasing the reduction in volume, since that's not enumerated at all, but the resulting sound is barely louder than a crossbow bolt.

On the other hand, if we still had any doubt that they are keeping us here under duress, the guards' reaction now completely dissolves it.

I drag their seizing bodies into the room and briefly consider pulling out more rope to bind and gag them. But no, there's no point in doing so. Such restraints are only good for delaying the discovery of our disappearance. With the paralysis lasting over an hour, we have more than enough time to make our escape. It'd just be a waste of good rope.

Instead, I pull them into the middle of the room so they won't knock anything over and head back to the window. Ayre is down by now, but he's looking back up worriedly.

"Remmi?" he asks, trying to be quiet while also being loud enough for me to hear him. "Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," I insist. "I'm coming down now." I put first one leg, then the other over the windowsill ... and then I kick my boots off.

Ayre barely dodges them. "Remmi?!" he demands explanation.

I just hold up a finger to my lips for him to be quiet, then grab the rope and begin rappelling down the side of the guest house. It's not a long trip, and we could probably have just jumped, but we didn't want to risk our legs on probably.

My toes barely make a sound against the wood as I make my way down, and I'm soon on the ground with no new guards coming to check on us.

"What was with the boots?" the elf demands again as I'm slipping them back on.

"Guards must have heard you coming down," I explain. "They barged into the room while you were descending. I paralyzed them and dragged them into the room, but I wanted to make sure more didn't come on my trip."

I glance back up and grab the rope again. "Seems to have worked."

I flick the rope to unhook the grapple and pull it free, making sure it doesn't rattle down the side of the house, then quickly spool the rope back up and stuff it all back into storage.

This next part is the most difficult. We have to get to the outer wall of the estate and scale it, too. Actually, it's low enough that we might be able to jump and grab the edge, rather than using the rope, which will be faster. The difficulty comes from the fact that we'll need to do that without running into or being spotted by any patrols.

Or, rather, that would be difficult, if not for another skill I picked up, this one from the Shadowstalker list, Tassim's class. Frankly, it's scary to know that she can do things like this.

LIFESENSE

----------------------------------

Open your mind's eye and become

aware of the life essences around

you.

Reveals the presence of living

beings within a radius of your

position determined by your

proficiency in the skill.

Higher levels of proficiency

reveal the relative strength of

individual living beings with

greater accuracy and detail.

And to think that this is the weakest rank in a tree of detection skills. Of course, there are also skills to conceal one's life essence specifically to counter such detection, so it can't be trusted absolutely, but for the most part, I've basically got eyes in the back of my head. And they see through walls.

Except ... they don't actually "see" anything. It's more like how I know how many rounds I have in my magazine. Once someone enters my radius, I just know where they are. It also doesn't tell me anything more than that, at least not at the base level. I can't tell who individual blips are, and I can't tell what they are doing. I can't tell the difference between someone in a hurry and someone charging at my back with a knife.

... I don't think I care for the implied glimpse into what Tassim's world must be like. I just hope an ability like this doesn't make me paranoid. Or at least that it'll stack with that sixth sense for danger that Ayre still swears must be some sort of skill, even though it sounded like utter nonsense when I tried to describe it to him.

In any case, for now, this new skill will easily pick out approaching patrols, even if they're on the other side of the wall. And, sure enough, when we find a segment ideal for climbing over, one's passing by.

Careful not to make a sound, we wait for them to pass, then Ayre goes over first again, this time for practical reasons. Ayre may have higher Strength than I do, but it's not enough to make a difference when scaling over a wall, it turns out. So I give Ayre a hand-lift, and once he drops out of sight, I activate Empower and jump up to vault over the wall, myself.

It's a short trip from there into the city proper, and we meet no further resistance. Still, we don't let our guard down until we're back in the shopping district, lest any of Lord Mayor Oshu's personal guards happen to be out and about the wealthier section of town.

Finally, however, we're free, and Ayre and I celebrate with a quick splurge of junk food. I tell you, cheap fried food never tasted so good as it does when you've been eating like a noble for a week.

"We're out," Ayre observes around a mouthful of baked potato, then swallows. "What now?"

"I want to check in with Leuke," I confess from behind a skewer of unidentifiable grilled meat chunks. "I want to make sure nothing has changed dramatically while we've been boxed up. I've got a bad feeling about it."

Ayre scowls. "You and your bad feelings. Why do you always have to have them right when things are improving?"

I give a short laugh and shrug. "Believe me, I'd love to be wrong more often than not."