Cali had reached the final point of her analysis and preparations. She knew who Adam was, where he tended to be, and the type of person who protected him from enterprising bounty hunters like herself. Her final score on him was very low. Unless Adam was secretly a talented warrior, it was highly unlikely that he would pose much of a threat to her and Tahar. His men were a group of untrained thugs who wasted away their days drinking and brawling on other people's coin.
The most tedious part of the task was yet to be done. Cali needed to locate Adam and drag him out of his hiding place. With no plans for another fight meet until a few days later, Cali was forced to face the unfortunate reality that it would require a long and boring stakeout in his home district. She found a nice spot down the main avenue of the area and sat her butt down on the nearest free surface.
Tahar looked down at her diminutive companion, "I do not understand criminals. Why would they do this?"
"Ren is a criminal too," Cali snapped back. "It is hard to understand another's motives when you have never been in their position. I tell myself that I would never stoop so low, but I could throw my halberd away tomorrow and go back home – none the worse for wear. Ren cannot do the same."
"So, for Ren… crime is like hunting?"
A blunt comparison, but a correct one. "Yes. He hunts for money, earned by breaking the law. If he doesn't he will starve."
"There seems to be a big number of criminals."
"When you become a number – it's easier to slip away after committing a misdeed. And when you grow up hearing tales of the wealthy getting away with murder, it's hard to restrain yourself or feel bad about it. This city is a boiling mass of the haves and the have-nots."
"Not like this at home. Maybe big number of people causing problems?"
Cali considered the question carefully. Was it really as simple as that? If life were simpler, less of a jungle of interpersonal relationships, opinions and experiences – would 'crime' disappear overnight? Would people feel more connected to their communities? Or would things stay the same as they always were? You could never discount a mortal's ability to screw something up. There would be people who couldn't stop themselves.
Much like how Cali found herself with little regard for her own safety, Ren had the same lack of courtesy for the law. An attitude shaped by a lifetime of moments and conflicts that neither woman knew the full extent of. In Ren's eyes, he was getting 'what he deserved' from a system that had tried to abandon him and so many others. What he deserved was the bare minimum needed to survive.
"Perhaps," was the only thing she could say.
Cali refocused on the task at hand. She needed to keep her eyes peeled for Adam and his gang. While several individual gang members had passed by in a short span of time, none of them were escorting the target. Cali's unique mind didn't quite comprehend that her clothing and spear were liable to attract all kinds of undue attention. For her – simply not being seen was the beginning and end of the art of espionage. But eventually her patience was rewarded…
Nobody had seen fit to tell Adam about the Ashmorn loitering on the main avenue of his territory.
There he was, marching down the line like a good little soldier. Surrounded on four sides by burly men with arms like cannon-balls and overly shaggy beards. Adam looked tiny next to them. He wasn't a man concerned with improving his body. Cali felt her pulse speed up as the first shot of adrenaline ran through her system.
"Stay back Tahar – I can handle this."
Tahar and Cali emerged from their hiding spot and followed the group a short distance down the street. They laughed and joked with each other like nothing was amiss. They would soon learn that Adam's actions had serious consequences. Cali spoke. She couldn't hold on any longer.
"Adam Briar."
The gang leader's confident stride stuttered for a moment as Cali's stern voice cut through the noise. He swivelled around to face her with a sneer – only for his face to drop as he came to recognize the woman who had come for him. He knew her, he knew her very well. She was the mage responsible for putting some of his best mates behind bars or onto the gallows. Her disinterested expression only served to anger him even further.
"I am here to claim the bounty on your head. We can do it the easy way, or the hard way."
Cali was sincerely hoping for the hard way.
Adam's face hardened, "Get her!"
They reached into cloaks and pockets and withdrew a variety of crude weapons. The first man charged at her - dagger drawn with killing intent. Cali braced herself, kicking the bottom of her halberd forward with her foot and thrusting it with a sudden and violent acceleration. Before he could even make his first attack he ran gut first into the tip of the spear, puncturing his internal organs and forcing him to a dead stop. The street turned silent, every eye was looking at the now injured thug with fear.
"F-Fuck!"
He collapsed back, clutching the bleeding wound and howling in pain. Some of his compatriots dived down to their knees to try and attend to the wound. There was little prospect of the man surviving, though he had sealed his own fate by attempting to attack first. Tahar was stunned. Cali had dispatched the man with no remorse and no hesitation!
Cali maintained her pose, "The bounty does not demand that I kill your men. This can be ended here and now if you simply surrender yourself into my custody."
Adam spat in a furore, "Stupid bounty hunting whore! I'm going to fuck you up, and then my boys are gonna' have some fun with you!"
Cali didn't think any of that was going to happen; "Charming."
"Kill her!"
Adam turned tail and ran away like the coward he was, leaving behind a wall of muscle to try and keep Cali occupied. The fear was written into their expressions. None of them wanted to meet the fate of their now unconscious friend. The shock and the pain had put him under and it was unlikely that he would ever awaken again. Why did they die so willingly for a man like him? What inspired them so?
Another, wielding a wooden club with iron spikes embedded into it. Cali danced back with the grace of a ballerina, wrapping her other hand around the underside of the Halberd and tucking it under her arm. An open invitation for the guard to attack her. But Cali had done so intentionally, as he entered her range she reversed her momentum suddenly and swiped upwards with the curved edge. There was little for him to do as the shimmering blade sliced through his gut and out of his chest. He fell down to his knees as a gush of blood, and some of his internal organs, slipped out through the newly cut gap.
"Get everyone down here! They're after Adam!"
The two remaining goons didn't want to join their dead compatriots, so they scrambled away and ran as fast as their legs could carry them. The streets were cleared as civilians ran for cover and hid inside of their homes. Cali smiled internally – that meant she could use her magic with collateral damage. She unbraced her arms and strode down the avenue with little fear or hesitation. Tahar followed, disbelieving in Cali's extreme savagery and skill. She didn't even take a second glance at her gore covered victims as she stepped over their muddied bodies.
"Are you sure this is okay?" Tahar asked. She had started an extremely violent battle in a public area, something which Ren had stressed to Tahar was a bad idea.
Cali laughed under her breath as a sense of combat delirium started to take hold, "It was merely an act of self-defence." The dull colours of the poor district were so much more vibrant and alive now. Her entire body quaked with each shuddering breath, the biting cold settling deep into her bones. She could hear the commotions a few streets over as they tried to gather as many men as possible to stop her.
They'd need a lot more.
There they were, tumbling outwards from a narrow side street in a tidal wave of bile and anger. Having already loaded the chamber of her catalyst, Cali needed to do little more than point the sharp end of her weapon at them and speak the magic words.
"[Ignite!]"
Cali wasn't keeping count of how many came to stop her – the fireball wasn't stopping for the weak flesh of a human body. It passed through five or six of them, engulfing them into a magical scorch that charred skin and melted hair. They stumbled and clawed at the ground in a vain attempt to put out the fires. In the end all that remained was a set of burning corpses, scattered across the road like discarded fliers.
Unflappable and stoic, Cali reached down into her pouch and retrieved a small disposable bag of catalyst power. Her other hand reached out and pulled back on the launcher's action, opening the smoking chamber for another round to enter. The bag was stuffed inside and the bolt pushed back into position, ready to shoot again.
Cali shouted to the hidden Adam, "You can keep sending them, but they'll all die in vain. Do them a favour and turn yourself in." She received no response. Her display of pyrotechnics did wonders to scare away the weak-willed amongst their number. She continued walking her path of destruction, taking a left down the same alleyway that her previous victims had emerged from. It didn't matter how long it took, or how many people she had to kill to get there, she was going to find Adam and claim the bounty. As was her duty.
An enterprising young man leapt down from a second story window and attempted to slice at her with a short sword. Cali was not going to be felled by such cheap tactics. She stepped back and allowed him to wear his attack thin. She tucked the wooden shaft under her armpit and advanced on him, forcing him to fall back into the muddy water below and run for safety. Confronting a polearm user in a narrow alleyway was a tremendously bad idea – and even worse if Cali was behind the pointed end of it.
She broke back out from under cover and into a large square plaza. Adam stood behind two dozen armed men, atop a small step that allowed him to survey the prospective battlefield. "You're a dead woman!" he cried, "Nobody fucks with the Well's Street Boys and lives to talk about it!"
"Your previous hunters must have done a poor job. As I am now, I find your ability to fight severely lacking." Cali hadn't intended to rile Adam up any further – but her blunt dismissal of his slain allies had the same effect all the same. His face turned bright red as an outpouring of rage escaped from between pursed lips.
"I again extend an offer of surrender to you. Nobody else needs to die here."
"Screw off, you crazy broad! Bootlicking cunt! Where do you get off, coming down here and slaughtering the needy?" Cali was 'getting off' at the point where her life was being placed into extreme danger. The numbers Adam had gathered were a good start.
"Very well. I hope that all of you provide me with some entertainment. Otherwise this will have been an odious waste of time."
"Kill the bitch! Tear her limb from limb!"
"Aye!"
Cali's finger pressed against the trigger…