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167 – Weeding out some cultists

  People screaming in terror and the st of burning flesh greeted me as I sed pces with my drone. With the other pow under trol, I could handle over-watch even while pying around with .

  I pulled the memories my dro into my mind and quickly ran through them, processing them all in a matter of half a sed. Then, I to speed ohing and my mask of a frightened damsel in distress slipped on.

  At least my drone didn't overpy it, even showing some petend some guts. That meant was less likely to lose his shit when I started opening the cultists up from balls to brains with butchering knives.

  I tightened my grip on the knife already in my hand, feeling its grip with both my fingers and aura. It was made to chop vegetables, not for poking people to death, but it would do. I wasn’t pnning on pying fair, after all, I just had to keep my cheating hidden enough that wouldn’t suspect it.

  “hrow,” the man iion said, his eyes not leaving the burning door frame as he kept careful watch of it. The moment a new cultist’s vague outline showed up behind the fmes, he fired at them and I heard the body sm into the ground a moment ter. “Five my manners, Miss. It seems in all this it has slipped my mind to introduce myself. I am Ciaphas .”

  His eyes narrowed in suspi and snapped over at me, searg for any hint nition or whatever else. I gave him none, giving only an uain smile.

  “E-“ I started, then coughed into my hand as if the thiing smoke was choking me. Let’s not give him my real name, as real as ‘Ea’ is, anyway. “Emilia.”

  gave me an encing look, likely taking my stutter for my sanity hanging on by a thread in all this. We had just killed three people, after all. A regur woman in my pce would have been close to fainting … or at least, the ‘me’ from Earth would have been. I had an inkling that the humans of this time had been fed into steruff by all the atrocities they’d weathered.

  “o meet you,” he said, shooting off another bolt and catg a sneaky cultist right in the eye as it tried to cmber over the broken windows. “Now let’s just hope we get out of here alive enough to tinue our versation. We will need help, and for that, we o destroy whatever it is they are using to jam our unications.”

  I gave a jerky nod, putting on my best ‘resolute’ expression as I poked my head out to watch the entrances. Holy, my ears worked better for trag them. These guys were stereotypical Saneshi cultists wearing eously idiotic clothes, and I retty sure they had more drugs flowing in their veins than blood.

  A dozen of them were still ambling out there, grabbing ons from the van and such while one of them on top, handling a pretty sizable sgun attached to it. For now, he was just leaning over it, but at any moment he could decide to start sending bullets into the cafe by the dozens every sed.

  Instead, six of them came rushing in through whichever hole they could find ier wall. They came through the still smouldering door, jumping over broken windows and making new holes on the few still intact windows.

  As they did, I ed the young couple huddling in one er and the waitress up in a ‘notice-me-not’ kinda psychic shield. That had the intended effect, and all the lunatics ighem to charge towards us in the back.

  mao bst awo of them into the afterlife, but then three grabbed pistols and started waving them around at us. The design was unfamiliar, but I could tell those firearms used the old school gunpowder and lead bullet bo, not some futuristiergy on.

  He ducked back, and a pair of bullets came thundering through the door just a heartbeat ter. I winced as they bounced off of metal cupboards and pans, making sure to deflect them off of the two of us in a way that wasn’t too suspicious.

  A woman came rushing towards them, having jumped over the lingering fmes and the fming remains of her fellow cultists. The other five stayed back, apparently happy to let the woman wearing a full tex bodysuit and moving like a feral dog try her luck against us.

  shifted back, putting a cutlery table between himself and the door as he kept his spistol aimed at the opening, ready to bst holes into the woman the moment she came through.

  Sadly for him, it would have been for naught as the ounced, practically flying through the door frame as her drug-empowered muscles had propelled her with almost supernatural strength.

  Sadly for her, my kit knife jammed into her stomach mid-flight, and by the time I pulled it out, she had a deep cut down to her navel. Her momentum carried her onto the table, but her guts were already spilling out, so she was in no state to actually tihrough with her attack.

  still shot her face off with a sbolt though, just to be sure before he sent a weird look my way. I stared at my bloody knife, my best horrified expression on my face as I put a little shake into my arms. I had just gutted a human, which mur people teo react badly to.

  There was no time for words, or panig though, as the other five cultists reacted to their rade’s death by throwing themselves at the two of us. Screams, ughs and giggles apahem as they came.

  Two ran by me quickly, poung on who wasted no time bsting them into smouldering corpses, but while he did that the other three followed through.

  The first came at me as I shuffled back, lunging with a machete poised to ruhrough but I swayed out of its way. Making sure was occupied, I gnced over, seeing him grappling with the st cultist. Good, he was distracted.

  I kicked, my boot crushing the idiotic cultist’s knee as his lunge went wide, then I pnted my knife in his kidearing it out, I pounced o cultist.

  This one had a gun, a pistol he had been trying to use on , but the man had used the cultist he was grappling with as a human shield. The indecisive cultist just kept his gun trained on him, not firing, but swung it about as the guy I’d stabbed in the back colpsed, groaning in pain.

  I grabbed one of his legs and telekiically ya out from under him, causing his shot to go wide as he fell on his ass while I ducked behind a cupboard in apparent terror.

  was doh the man he’d been grappling with, and pounced on his spistol, bringing it up before the guy I’d tripped over could recover. A sed ter, the man a fist-sized hole through the chest.

  heaved a deep sigh, and if not for the shaky hand he used to steady himself on a table, he would have colpsed. A brief iion with my aura told me he had gottey beat up in that brawl, with half a dozen bruises f all around his body. Thankfully, nothing broke or ruptured, so I wouldn’t have to sneak a heal on him.

  “Miss?” asked, and I poked my head up over the table while trying not to snort as I caught some of his thoughts. He fot my name already. “Are you injured?”

  “No,” I said, making myself sound a little absent, as if I was shell-shocked from the fight still.

  “Good,” he said, stumbling over to the door and taking a quick peek out. For now, no other cultists were following in, but there were still a dozen of them outside. “ you stand? I’m afraid I won’t be able to do this alone. I’ll need all the help I get if I am to help us escape these lunatics.”

  He snatched up a gun, winced as the bloody grip fell into his palm, then flipped it around to hold it by the barrel. I stood up, wary as I could make myself look, and looked between him and the gun befrabbing it gingerly at his encing nod. I let my aura flow over the gun, flow into it and feel every moving part iil I was intimately familiar with how exactly this little gadget worked.

  It wasn’t quite what I remembered firearms w like from earth, but even simple ‘slug-throwers’ — as they called firearms that shot solid projectiles and used chemical propelnts — had advanced some iime that had passed. Thankfully, whoever made these didn’t even have the dreadful ck of even a smidge of artistic talent every single Imperial gun manufacturer had. Meaning, it wasn’t just a damned brick with a grip on it and a hole at the end to spit bullets out of, but a proper, handgun-shaped pistol.

  “You know how to use it?” asked, his gaze flickering bae for a moment before he returo peering out the open door. The fmes were spreading and a thick smoke was clouding the air, obstrug both his view of the cultists outside and vice versa.

  “Y-yeah,” I said, removing some blood sptter that might have caused problems with them clogging up the trigger. I had five bullets left in the mag. That’d be enough if the rest didn’t e running back, which I retty sure they’d be doing the moment we shot up the ones outside.

  “Good,” he said, though I felt a hint of suspi in his tone. Paranoid fucker that he was, he was wary of everything and anything that didn’t perfectly fit the mould. “We have to strike before they do. … follow after me, and try to not shoot me in the back.”

  It seemed to physically pain him to have someone unknown with a gun behind him, but he still went on ahead, slipping over to the side and behind the ter with his spistol trained on the windows. He tugged up his shirt to cover his mouth and nose, eyes squinted as they reddened from the smoke.

  I went after, slipping to the right with my own gun held steady in my hand. I also mimicked the bodily reas to the smoke he showed, seeming unharmed by it would be an easy way to clue someone in that something was wrong with me.

  The three humans huddling around were still alive. The waitress fainted sometime ago, while the young couple was doing their best impression of a statue. A faial nudge came from one of my mind-cores and my attention snapped over to what my aura was feeling about a block away.

  One of the other vans filled with cultists arked right outside what I felt ined to call a tiny mall and while I had mao make most civies run and hide away, the lunatics stumbled upon some that had been too stubborn to be herded away by such faial nudges. Now, I could keep up the act, but that would make me a colossal hypocrite.

  I had told Val not to py with his prey when is could die as a result, and now I was close to repeating what he had done myself. Oh well, not quite. I could cheat.

  I teleported the numbskull who thought keeping watch over his cart of cabbages was more important than running away from a van full -addled lunatics armed to the teeth with ons away a few blocks, dumping his dumb butt down in the middle of ay park with his cabbages raining down on his head. Then I repeated the same with the few others who the cultists were likely to stumble across.

  Just as I was doh that, fired off a bolt through the smoke, his bolt of densed energy fshing through the obfuscation and snuffing out a life oher side. Not any life either, but the life of the cultist who’d been manning their gun empt atop the van. The rest only had regur ons.

  They would be easy prey.

  P3t1

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