Snippet #2646943

Forth

He sighed and frowned.

"There's so little civility to murder these days."

He stepped back and watched her try and fail to get at him. Like a wild dog she kept on him, not at all considering King was also on the attack. Forth had always thought little of him but he still had his uses. He was mechanically faster and trained for fighting simple enemies. For ten percent of the job he was superior in performance. For the rest the Magician's Alliance had put their faith in the queen. He didn't care what they wanted of him though. They thought they could control him and in some senses they were right. Their control was only good as far as their commands could foresee.

He knew she was the queen of the vampires, that much was made known. Who she was though was what he wanted to know. Corpses weren't the easiest sources of information after all. After a brief trade of attacks between the vampire queen and King the target smashed open the surprisingly expensive ground to reveal a secret tunnel. It seemed she was bringing in reinforcements to help her enforce the 'trap' part of the actual trap. What interested him however was the fact that she bothered to grab Rina's body. This action alone was more interesting than the entirety of the confrontation had been.


Forth had not been completely idle throughout the fight however. He had reached into his suitcase and retrieved three specialized grenades along with a couple regular ones just in case. The specialized grenades were designed to release a cloud of his Vampiric Retribution Powder when they exploded, covering everything in a wide radius with this dust which would burn continuously upon coming into contact with a vampire. In addition he had also loaded his shotgun with a special round, buckshot mixed with VR* Powder. When fired these rounds would do the same damage as regular buckshot with the added bonus of coating every shot with VR Powder for extra damage. If that wasn't enough the shots also put out a lot of excess VR Powder as well, covering targets in a slightly narrow cone in front of him with it.

Now it was time to put his plan into effect. He took one of the specialized grenades in his hand and pocketed the rest. Pulling the pin on the VR Powder grenade he tossed it right at the entrance of the coffin near where the vampire queen stood. Standing in position he then aimed his shotgun down the length of the staircase, timing his shot to go off with the explosion. His plan was simply enough to deny the woman a direction to dodge that wouldn't place her in direct danger.

If she stood still she'd get hit with the grenade's blast and set ablaze with a fire that would only burn hotter in proportion to the power of the vampiric essence. If she dodged into the stairway she'd take a direct blast from his shotgun which would put buckshot coated in VR Powder directly under her skin, the perfect place for an endlessly burning powder to stay in. If she dodged away from the coffin altogether then it would put her much closer to Zero, setting her up in an excellent position for a continued attack from him.


While he had no reservation towards shooting the queen of vampires dead right then, especially given her dim and especially childish behavior, the purpose of this maneuver of his was not specifically to kill her. What he was trying to do was to force her to drop Rina's body. If he could separate the body from her then his next shot was going right into Rina's head. There had to be a reason she wanted to retreat with the body in tow and he was determined to force her hand, giving him and King an advantage which he definitely wanted. After all, there was another coming up from the stairs and he was not keen on the possibility of having to reveal more of his powers than he wanted anyone to know.

Secrets were valuable after all. He wanted to find them, not reveal them to others.

(*-Vampiric Retribution Powder)