Chapter 58: 56 – Anima/Animus

“Long arm,” Zef answered. 

“D’ye have any particular gun you’ve used frequently? A service weapon?” Collier continued the line of questioning. Zef answered with a simple nod.

“Bring it to me. I will stabilize it, seal the unliving soul in a particular part of the weapon, that it might be transferred to a new form,” the gunsmith explained, crossing her arms. “If there’s any arcane features you’d want out of the thing, bring ‘em up sooner rather than later, an’ keep in mind that though a gun with a soul ain’t alive per se, but it’s bound to habit even more than a livin’ thing. It’ll take time ‘fore it comes into its own an’ performs for you to the fullest, no matter how good my work on it. As for extra bells n’ whistles, odds are you’ll have to either supply the materials yourself or pay through the nose for procurement, but you already knew that.”

Zel reached behind her back, pulled out the Tablet, and held it up with a grin, “What if we have the materials right here?”

“Show me, then,” said the gunsmith with the slightest underlying current of haughtiness, before she walked back behind the counter and leaned on it in anticipation.

The one-armed beast-slayer readily delivered, willing the Tablet to open the vortex and eject the Fulgur-burned Type-2 Shell out of storage. It clattered onto the old wood, the lightning-etched patterns of its surface still seething the dull-red of dying embers and crackling with small white sparks, as if it had been fired only minutes prior. 

Collier looked down at the thing, furrowed her brow, looked up at Zelsys, and half-seriously asked, “What kind of situation would lead to you using a loaded shell as the tip of a lightning rod? Please don’t say you tried to blow up the Man of Stone.”

Zel stared at the old gunsmith, and the old gunsmith stared back. After a few seconds that felt like minutes, the old woman gave a knowing nod. 

“I won’t ask what really happened,” she conceded. “Something tells me even the short version would take more time than I have. I will need to examine it more thoroughly, but I’d wager that this’ll do… About as well as any post-war material can be expected to. It won’t do anythin’ spectacular, but we’ll see how things work out.”

In the end, they left empty-handed. Zel asked Collier about reloading some shells, to which the gunsmith agreed. She drew a pair of simple diagrams on a piece of cardboard, each depicting a cross-section of a loaded shell, what went into it, and specifics about reloading, telling her to try doing her own reloading. Still, the gunsmith agreed to take half of her remaining empty casings, stating that she would take her payment once the work was done, as she could not promise a timely delivery. 

On their way out of the store, Zel caught sight of a strange woman. Diminutive, tan-skinned, dressed in an equally outlandish and provocative manner, with a plain sword at her hip and a smoking long pipe in her hand. The woman caught her eye and wouldn’t let go, for all three seconds that she was in eyeshot - then, she was gone. Vanished like a ghost into the crowd, despite the screamingly-bright colours of her clothing. 

“What is it?” Zef asked, having noticed Zel fall behind.

Zel shook her head and rejoined her partner, “Just another Kargarian.”

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They walked for a little while, weaving their way through the city’s many side alleys until they arrived at the same narrow bridge they had crossed before. The five men and their boat were still there, the eldest now sitting at the edge of the promenade drinking from a seal-bottle. His mustachioed countenance brought a memory to mind.

“Want to have lunch at that place with the muscle-man on the sign?” she asked.

“Sure,” Zef smiled, wrapping her arms around Zel’s. 

The old man took notice of them as they approached the bridge, called out to them just before they could step onto it, with his voice like old leather and his intonation of a sailor from the two centuries past. 

“Oy, lasses! Y’e’er ‘ear ‘bout fightin’ pits?” he grumbled. His younger compatriots said something vaguely reluctant, and he silenced them with a stormy yell along the lines of: “Y’wouldn’t know a fight’r were she to strut ‘er ass five cubits in front of yer fuckin’ nose, y’brine-suckin’ cockmongler! Now get back to work ‘fore default on yer leviathan-damned bet.”

Once more he returned his attention to the two women, and his demeanor simmered down. “So what’ye say?” he beckoned. “Fixin’ t’make some safe n’ fun coin?”

“Safe? How’s a fight-pit safe?” Zel grinned at him mockingly. Fist-fights weren’t meant to be lethal, sure, but safe? When the local champion was probably some psycho martial artist? Far from safe.

“Safer than whatever beast that butcher’s tool on yer back is for, that’s damn sure,” the old man laughed before chugging from his drink. “Or that steel cock ‘neath yer girlfriend’s skirt fer that matter!”

That one got her to let out a genuine chuckle, and a forceful exhalation from Zef besides. Always with the crude humor.

“Give us a time and a place,” exclaimed the gunwoman before her towering counterpart could, holding on yet tighter to her arm in an exaggerated display. And indeed, the old man did. The time was that day’s very evening at sundown, the place being less a specific destination and more a series of directions based entirely on environmental context clues and landmarks. It would doubtlessly be somewhere in the city’s deeper reaches. The man’s last words - bring a gun and whatever you wish to bet.

And so they went on their way without the event giving them pause, traversing the bridge and making their way to the fateful restaurant with its colorful wooden sign with its hypermasculine illustration of the mustachioed blonde-haired owner, holding a sword-sized metal skewer with many pieces of meat and vegetable. 

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