GUN SALAD

The next morning, Morgan was ushered out into the arena pit to find a raucous crowd of spectators awaiting him. They damn near filled up the stands and, going by the volume and enthusiasm of their booing, they were none too happy to see him. The only smiling faces he saw were those of his posse; Mimi, Anua, Marka, and Beretta. The latter sat on her dad’s shoulders, waving around a scrap of pink cloth. Morgan judged it to be some kind of rally towel.

He gave them a wince and a little salute. Confident as he was in his abilities, even he wasn’t immune to the atmosphere produced by the crowd’s caterwauling. He stood still and crossed his arms, looking out across the pit. Great chunks of ruined stonework and half-destroyed pillars littered the field, obscuring Morgan’s view of his opponent. He supposed that was intentional; wouldn’t be much of a gunfight if they had a clear shot from the get-go, after all.

The debris stood on a bed of dirt–real dirt, not sand. That would go a long way toward helping him keep his footing and, thus, his aim. Huh. The organizers have really thought this through, he mused. Good to know I’ll be risking my life on such a well-prepared battlefield.

“Welcome, one and all, to the first–and possibly last–Gunslinger Games of the season!” the announcer shouted from his little balcony at the front of the stands. He sported dark glasses and a head of slicked-back, dirty-blond hair (dyed, no doubt, considering his complexion). It didn’t look good. “Just in case any of you have forgotten the rules, I will go over them now…”

Morgan waited patiently, watching the muscles in the MC’s neck straining as he screamed into the business end of his megaphone.

“Rule one,” he began. “Each round will continue until either a direct hit is achieved or ten minutes have elapsed. If the timer runs out before either fighter has been shot directly, I will call an end to the round and award victory to whichever participant appears to be most in control of the combat!”

The MC reached to his left, then, tugging a heavy red cloth from the giant hourglass at his side. It took up half the balcony by itself, mounted in a sturdy frame that enabled it to be spun about with ease. The sand within glittered in the sunlight, eminently visible to Morgan even from his current place at the far end of the pit.

“Rule two: Once a direct hit has been landed, the round is over! Participants who cause undue injury to their opponent will be immediately disqualified!”

Morgan nodded his head. Makes sense to me.

“Rule three,” the announcer continued. “Injury to myself or the audience, or causing the death of a challenger, will be treated as a crime. Not only will the perpetrator be disqualified, they will be handed over to the city watch. So behave yourselves, competitors!”

That rule inspired a wave of cheering assent from the crowd. All in all, Morgan was surprised by the level of civility expected from Sebastopol’s arena fighters. Back in Wesson, bloodsport was bloodsport–people shot each other, and the occasional death was taken as the cost of doing business. Things like that were forbidden in Trigger City, of course, but that was the exception, not the rule. In every enclave and backwater settlement across the range, shootouts were basically considered a national pastime.

“Everything else is fair game!” the MC cried. “Without further ado, allow me to introduce our competitors! On the eastern end of the arena pit we have a Gunslinger we all know and love–one of the Menagerie Three, the trio of defending champions so fearsome that nobody in all of Truvelo dares to challenge them anymore… Until today, that is! Please put your hands together for… Dugg!”

Morgan couldn’t see the guy, but he figured he was somewhere across the pit smiling and waving at his adoring fans. Somehow, he didn’t think his own introduction would garner the same reaction.

“And on the western end of the pit, we have a foreign challenger with an absolutely eye-popping get-up! Who knows why he is dressed like that? Who cares? Please welcome… Morgan!”

His shoulders slumped as a wave of boos assailed him, resounding throughout the stadium more loudly than they’d done when he first walked in. He shoved a hand in his pocket and scowled at the audience, brandishing Ricochet with the other. If they were determined to see him as a no-good outsider, so be it; he was going to win that prize pot one way or another.

“Competitors, I hope you are ready, because round one is upon us!” the announcer declared. He paused for dramatic effect before swinging his arm with aplomb.

“BEGIN!”

It was on. Morgan dashed across the pit, throwing his back against the first moderately tall pillar he came across. He took Ricochet in both hands and thrust the tip skyward, peering around the corner with every intention of putting it to use the moment he saw movement.

No such luck–not yet, at least. The pit looked just as deserted as it had a moment ago. If his opponent was on the move, he was probably being cautious.

Smart.

Morgan slinked from behind the pillar and continued in a crouch, trying his best to reduce Dugg’s chances of getting a bead on him by keeping his head lower than the surrounding debris. It worked out fine–he came up to the largest obstacle on the field in short order: a large, tumbledown structure with a wide-open doorway and a gashed, empty opening that had once housed a window.

He poked his head up over the edge of the opening and scanned the structure’s interior, quickly realizing that the wall he’d chosen as cover was by far the most intact. The northern and eastern walls were devastated, both of them half-crumbled; they had fallen apart on a diagonal, proceeding on a downward slope to meet the dirt in the northeastern corner. The southern wall was more intact, but just barely. The upper-left quarter of it had fallen away, but what remained was solid and free of apertures.

He smirked. Of all the hiding places in the pit, he’d lucked his way into one of the best. Unless Dugg was right behind that southern wall, he’d be hard-pressed to avoid Morgan’s gaze for long.

He crept toward that southern wall, mindful of the possibility of being flanked. If he could ensure that there was nobody lying in wait behind it, he’d have the run of the pit’s centermost region. Then, all he’d have to do is wait for the man to show himself. And when he did, the presence of so many hard surfaces and odd angles would all but guarantee a direct hit for Ricochet.

Still, peeking around the southern wall posed a danger. If he was behind it, Morgan might just get his head blown clean off. Rather than risking it, he took up a small chunk of fallen wall and hefted it beyond the corner, toward the half-destroyed pillar across the way.

No shots. No exclamations. Nothing.

He was good to go. He moved to approach the wall, fully confident in his strategy thus far… Until something disturbing happened:

The pillar began to shrink.

No, not shrink. Sink.

Dirt churned up from beneath it as it sunk into the earth. It started slowly at first, then picked up the pace until the pillar was completely devoured by the soil! Morgan could barely believe his eyes. What the hell is this?! What kind of Gunslinger could manage something like that before I even catch sight of them?

He crept toward the hole remaining after the pillar’s descent and looked inside. It was dark, but the sunlight was ample enough that he could see the bottom. The top of the pillar stuck out of the earth down there, angled toward a continuation of the hole that proceeded to the east. It looked like some kind of burrow or something… Morgan wasn’t exactly sure. But he did know one thing:

If his opponent was responsible for creating the hole, he’d probably be found on the other end of it.

He looked around himself before trying anything. After all, it could just be a trap–a distraction meant to get him out in the open. Morgan still didn’t see a single living soul down in the pit with him, though, and he hadn’t heard the sound of a gun going off either. Aside from the murmuring of the crowd, all was quiet. His instincts told him that he was safe enough for now.

Safe enough, at least, to see where this hole really led.

He directed the barrel of his gun at the hole and fired into the darkness, aiming at the slanted top of the sunken pillar. Ricochet’s projectiles worked their magic, bouncing off the angled patch of stone and streaking into the hole’s eastern passage. He didn’t hear them collide with anything right away, but a second later he heard something that brought a wide smile to his face:

The unmistakable sound of a man screaming in dismay.