Distributed Denial, Clash of Conspicuous Chests, Dangers of Disabling

Kirei is still groggy when he regains consciousness. I laugh heartily at the plight of the poor sea-scurvy as he vomits all over his restraining rope, thin strands of it hanging from his nose and mouth.

“Perhaps you’re wondering how I managed to DDoS you so effectively,” I taunt, my voice a low rasp. “It was pretty simple: after losing Death’s Daughter in the explosion, I replaced my cannon with another of the low-orbital ion variety.”

He stares at me with cold eyes, never losing contact with mine. I adjust the brim of my hat.

“Perhaps you’re wondering who your fellow captives are,” I continue, with a flourish. “They’re other players I decided to kidnap because, well, they’re from TR, so Riot couldn’t give a razorfish sludge about them.”

Kirei started silently up at me, gaze unwavering, face slick with vomit. I am almost bothered.

“Ahh, I see. You’ve already figured it out,” my smile is broad, appreciating the cleverness of my opponent. “Perhaps you’re wondering how much the dangerous Dignitas crew paid me to abduct you and dispose of you, kind of like that movie with the time travel. They paid me a shipload of ‘arr-pee,’ or whatever this blasted currency is called. Now I can buy the spooky ghost costume I’ve always wanted since I was a kid.

“They also sent me some sort of fabric for mice.”

Kirei slumps forward, a dull thud as his head meets the floor. Craning over him, it occurs to me that habitually knocking people unconscious may have dangerous short and long-term effects that are not accurately captured by fiction.

Suddenly, my left arm takes a powerful blast, knocking me to my knees. Briefly stunned, partly due to shock and partly due to the pain of the splinters lacerating my abdomen, chest, and upper arm, I instinctively manage to throw my sword towards my attacker, lodging deep in his chest…

Her chest!

Miss Fortune hobbles out of the shadows, bent over wheezing and wiping a mixture of blood and spittle from her jaw. She attempts to raise her gun again, but it drops to skitter across the floor, coming to rest near my feet.

“This arm is fake,” I taunt.

“… same,” she replies.

The silence deepens as the tension grows, like the calm before a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean, known as a typhoon. Miss Fortune’s voice breaks the lull.

“You killed my mother, a master gunsmith. You wanted those amazingly crafted guns, and you never intended to pay in gold. Your price… was blood. You killed her, even though a simple exchange of currency for guns makes more sense, as it would ensure you could get more and better guns on demand.”

She took off her hat, letting fiery locks flow to her shoulders like rivers of lava. “My hair was not always red. It was dyed permanently with the blood of my parents.”

“For me, it was Tuesday,” I reply.

We blink, briefly confused by the pointless exchange. Tugging the sword free, she suddenly tries a more pointful approach.

I dive for her discarded gun as she closes in on me with my own cutlass. My eyes widen as I lift the flintlock, only to hear a hollow click and a tiny shower of sparks.

She smiles as she raises the cutlass: “That gun isn’t loaded.”

“Neither is that sword.”

Rage, as red and flowing as her hair, fills her face, moulding and creasing it into a terrifying rictus. “It will be loaded … with the FUEL of REVENGE.”

“See, not only are you mixing metaphors, but you also clearly misunderstand the mechanism of swor–”

The downward swing of my repurposed sword is deflected by my quick parry using the barrel of the handcannon. Shifting quickly, I land a concrete kick straight at her abdomen. The forward fall of her unnaturally top-heavy bosom combined with the extra stress on her midsection causes Miss Fortune to literally snap in half, her bisected body spewing entrails across the floor.

Inspecting the corpse of my would-be assassin, I notice that the blood, bile, and entrails have spilled across her body and now cover her alpine chest, ensuring that my gory narrative won’t lose its T-for-Teen rating for impure sexuality.

I still have company. The bearded cowboy fellow and Tobias “Twisted Fate” Fünke are back to finish me off, in the hopes I won’t pursue them.

“Gangplank, your time in Bilgewater is done,” declares the zoot suit clad card sharp. “A lot of fans are getting confused as to whether Bilgewater is a pirate cove or the Louisiana bayou. I mean, why do half of the champions from Bilgewater talk like Pirates of the Caribbean, and the other half like True Detective?”

“Literally dozens of fans care,” he added.

Noticing they are standing next to a domino of powder kegs, I start whacking the nearest one to me. The vaguely American South duo looks at me with confusion.

“Now, why in tarnation is he stabbing a barrel–” asks angry gunman before being ripped apart by a massive explosion. I guffawed into the night. Being disabled had its benefits.





