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07/16/2004 Entry: "Thought Records of Abigail Taylor: The Deadwood Damsel"

We become the stories we tell about ourselves. - Johnathan Glover, A Home at the End of the World

My finger stopped as it reached the hand-bound spine of the first volume in that collection of books, one of the hundreds and hundreds that lined the shelves of my sanctum. My finger stopped, then trailed up the edge until I was able to grip and slide the book off the shelf, and as I opened it up I smiled.

There were only four copies like it in all the world; but then, there were probably only four people in all the world who would have ever been interested. Rose had made them for us, in celebration: hand-bound collections of all the player logs from the marvelous role-playing game the four of us had played together; the climax of the first grand campaign was what the book had opened up to....

The door to the roof was only fifty feet away. But it might as well be five thousand unless I did something about losing the goons in hot pursuit behind me...

All around were crates, boxes, odd bits of furniture, all kinds of antiques like those which packed the lower eight stories of the massive warehouse. This isolated platform the size of a tennis court had just two exits --the staircase we had just raced up and the roof exit we needed to use-- and all around the edges dropped many stories down. I could see the swiftly moving shapes of our pursuers scurrying along the gantryways and aisles below --there was utterly no question they knew where we were and would be here in moments. Time for Plan B.

Eyes swiftly sweeping the alcove, I quickly found what I was looking for. Off to one side, a big steel shipping container stood with the door ajar --walls more than thick enough to stop bullets, but ventilation grates to let the air flow in and out. Sticking my nose in, satisfied it didn't have any nasty surprises, I gently set the little girl I had been carrying in my arms down. She was very, very scared, but trying oh so very hard to be brave, and she looked at me with big brown liquid eyes full both of fear and trust. I smiled reassuringly.

"Min," I explained, "I want you to stay in this box and cover your ears, and don't move until I come back for you, okay?" She nodded, then curled up in the corner, her hands clamped over her ears, her eyes squeezed tightly shut. I carefully closed and latched the door, then hunting around, found one more thing I needed. Grunting, I pushed it into place just as I could hear the first of the thugs clattering their way up the wide staircase to the platform I was on...

It was true I couldn't read -- or bend -- minds like my elder sister The Rose Sorceress. It was true I couldn't throw bolts and sheets of mystical fire like my brother Ebony Lighting. Or smash down walls or fling cars with superpowered fists or telekinetic blasts like my younger sister The Tempest. But my own talents were more than enough to deal with a mob of trenchcoats and their bully boss. There was not a beast in the whole world who could shoot with the pistols like I could. And the bullet or blade that could harm me had never been made by mortal hands. Wild Bill, Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane --none of the old West gunfighters could hold a candle to me. That's why they called me The Deadwood Damsel. And so it was I stepped out as they came tumbling over each other onto the platform, a quick motion of my wrists, and suddenly my hands were no longer empty. I gave them a big, toothy smile.

"Hello boys," I purred. "Shall we dance?"

And the air was suddenly filled with the sound of gunfire and shattering glass...

Ragtime Fur was the name of the GURPS campaign Rose masterminded, set in the Roaring Twenties in the fictional city of Cape Suzette, in a time of bootleggers and Tommy guns, flapper girls and caberet singers --and Superheroes, like our team. It was also a city full of Furries, anthropomorphs, like my own golden retriever gunlady. And in this last chapter, while the rest of the team fought our demon-magicked arch-enemy The Magister, I was engaging in a last showdown of my own...

Even though I was literally bulletproof, I wasn't immune to the laws of physics. A bullet, while it couldn't hurt me, could still slap me around some; and getting shot a dozen times at once by shotguns and pistols and rifles could easily knock me clean off the platform. The fall wouldn't hurt me any more than the bullets would, but I'd never climb back up in time to stop them from getting the girl we had taken The Magister on to rescue. And there was no way --no way in Hell-- I was going to leave Min alone with the head of the goons, the sick bastard who simply called himself Mr. Knives.

It had been a stroke of luck to find the huge, full-length, stand-alone mirror amidst the antiques crowding the level; set just right in the aisleway, it cast a reflection of me that in the panic of the attackers and the darkness of the warehouse could be, with a little ventrilquism, mistaken by gunmen with itchy trigger fingers for me. And they had taken the bait hook, line and sinker, emptying a fusilade of bullets into my illusionary doppelanger. Which meant they were looking in the totally wrong direction when I sprung surprise number two on them.

Otto called them "dazzlers". Filled with a combination of flash powder and magnesium shavings, they made a lot of flash and even more bang when you pulled the pin and threw. Harmless, actually, all things considered, but anyone unfortunate to be caught in the blast would be deaf and dumb for a few critical seconds. From my position I lobbed two of the specially-made grenades Otto had added to our arsenal into the midst of the thugs, and then after the flash and bang I leaped into the fray, guns blazing...

I could take the fleas off a dog at a hundred yards. I could stick the Ace of Spades in my own hatband and bounce a bullet off multiple surfaces until it whistled dead-center right through the playing card on my own forehead. And any trick I could do with my right I could do with my left just as well. Knocking off all those goons would have been child's play. A dozen bodies sporting holes right between their eyes, however, would attract all kinds of the wrong attention; and I didn't have to kill the goons to succeed in my mission, just neutralize them. And so I chose my targets carefully, precisely, as I rolled, tumbled, leaped, dived --and fired, again and again.

Gunman after gunman yelped in pain as his weapon was shot out of his hand. Thug after thug fell whimpering as pain shot through their gun paws. Nothing lethal --nothing that would even leave a scar, frankly, after the shaman healers in the Quarter were done. But more than enough to take them out of the game. The others tried to shoot back, and I felt the familiar sting of bullets and the jerk as they knocked me around. But my shots fell straight and true, smashing triggers, jamming barrels, numbing limbs, until after a few frenzied moments I stood there, in their midst, smoking pistols in my hands, daring them to make a move, any move. None did.

The Deadwood Damsel strikes again!

Amidst the whimpering hatchet men I picked out, near the back, at the head of the stairwell, the one in particular I sought. The chief of the goons, The Magister's lead strongman, a bully and a coward, a sick pig-headed pervert who called himself Mr. Knives and got his rocks off doing unspeakable things. Even to little girls. One I had crossed paths with for years, each time he slipping away, just out of my grasp, to live another day and add more strikes against his black and putrid soul. And as I saw him nursing his shot-up right hand my rage turned icy-hot and I brought my left hand gunsights level with his head. His eyes went dinner-plate wide as I pulled back the hammer with a loud click.

"Give me *one*, just *one* reason I shouldn't blow your worthless head off," I growled.

His mouth said nothing. It was his eyes that gave him away. They darted to my left --out the corner of my eye I saw a blur of motion --my left gun hand came up as one of Ferris' thugs made the mistake of diving for a fallen gun --a scream as a bullet ripped through both his kneecaps-- a thunder of footsteps as Mr. Knives charged straight at me -- too close to turn and shoot, no time to act -- like my brother had taught me, using Ferris' momentum against him -- a perfectly executed martial arts throw -- Mr. Knives' huge body tumbling over -- right into the chain railing of the platform -- the bolts of the posts ripping clear of the floor -- a scream as it gave way and he missed his last chance to grab onto anything -- screaming as he fell, fell, fell, until it cut off like a switch with a heavy thud, then another, farther down.

Maybe I could have shot him down like a dog and not had nightmares about it afterwards. Maybe. He might have been unarmed, but he was just that evil. Luckily I never had to. Burn in Hell, Ferris Claverton!




Swiftly I swung my attention --and my guns-- to the surviving gangsters. "I'm going to count to three," I said in a voice like the wind off a frozen lake, "and then I'm going to start shooting. Anybody I see, I'm going to send to join Ferris. Got it?"

They ran, of course. Ran as fast as their legs could carry them, down the staircases and along the catwalks, trying to get the heck away. I helped encourage them, by shooting bullets through their hats and nicking cheeks and ears with carefully placed bullets, blasting away at them until they were all the way down, and fleeing like pigs out the warehouses' front door.

I'd done it. I'd beaten Ferris, and drove off his henchmen. Now all that was left was to get away.

I swiftly scouted the platform to make sure we were truly alone. Ran to the rooftop door and poked my muzzle out to make sure the coast was clear, and then raced back to the container in which Min was hiding. As soon as the door opened, she looked up, and seeing me, opened her little arms wide. I scooped her up and carried her away, out the roof door and into the starry night...

With Minuet safely strapped into the front seat of the two man gyrocopter that had earlier been used to insert my sister The Tempest and I into this compound, I buckled myself into the back. Lights came up yellow, then green, as I threw the switches to bring the flyer to life. If the gunmen had still been pursuing us, we would have never been able to lift off in time before they filled the copter with holes, and while I was immune to bullets neither the copter nor little Min were. The goons however were running away, hoping like hell they never met the grinning gold-furred gunlady ever again. And a code signal sent on my ear bug -- shave-and-a-haircut, six-bits -- told me the other members of my team had finished their part of the mission, no casulties, no problems. I grinned, pulled back on the control-stick, and as Min stared over the edge of the open-air cockpit, eyes wide with wonder, we lifted off into the sky, high above the thousand lights of Cape Suzette, with the first colors of dawn peeking over the horizon.

I smiled, set the book back on the shelf. For years, in many different game systems -- White Wolf, GURPS, Shadowrun, many others -- I had played variations on the same character; the gunlady with a heart of gold, the private eye with a soft spot, swift with the pistols and gentle with the kids. And now, I knew, as part of the still incomprehensible transformations that had turned me into the Noble I was now, those special talents which I had role played so often were now an inherent part of me.

I crossed my inner Sanctum to the cabinet set into the wall. With a soft series of clicks drawers came open. Packed carefully in form-fitting foam were a vast array of sidearms and ammunition, everything from crossbows and tasers to special-ops pistols and single-hand grenade launchers. An arsenal that Darren would be familiar with from his mortal life, of extremely advanced and specialized weapons mostly not even available on the open market, made made from ballistic plastics that were invisible to metal detectors, machined so perfectly a skilled gunman take down a man at two hundred yards. And I knew I knew how to use them all.

I carefully strapped on a matching pair of small special-operations concealable hold-out pistols with their custom wrist holsters. Stepped back from the alcove. And with a quick motion of my wrists, suddenly my hands were no longer empty.

I grinned. Different sisters, different brother, different battles, different stakes. But the Deadwood Damsel would ride again.