It's a weird weird west

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Elbridge nodded painfully at Shi'Kara as she wrapped his bloody hand. He stood slowly his back cut deeply in several places but he should live. He's had far worse before and he imagined he would again.

"I'll be fine. Nothing a few nights rest and a few stitches can't fix," he grunts as he slowly and painfully pulls himself into a standing position with Shi'Kara's help. He nods to the sheriff, "I'll be fine" he repeats as he leans a little more on Shi'Kara than he thinks he is.

"But what the hell was that explosion?" pointing at the small crater in the sand and stone.
 
Picking himself up off the ground, where he had thrown himself to avoid 'debris' propelled by the explosive phial, he dusted himself off and looked at what his work had wrought. He had risen just in time to witness the showdown with the strange beast that moved through earth as easily as a fish would water. 'Hmm, perhaps this was not a case of banditry.' he thought to himself. As he took a closer look at the assorted beings collected around the crater left from his attack, he noticed what appeared to be an ebon-skinned woman angrily marching towards him. Now that he was watching, he could see her lips moving, and assumed that a litany of curses were being spouted off at him, but he couldn't quite make out what was being said over this dratted ringing in his ears. Seeing her pick up and chuck a few rocks at him, he ducked and dodged them as best he could. After barely avoiding another tumble to the ground, his balance still being quite off, he decided he'd like to get the full picture as to what was going on, and whether he'd need to employ another phial from his kit.
"OI," he shouted, "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" 'Odd', he thought, 'my voice doesn't usually sting like this 'less im yelling my head off'
 
Shi'Kara whistled and Captain strode up. She looked around for a moment, trying to find Elbridge's horse. It was loping back towards them, content now that the bullete was gone. After hearing the guy's shouted words, Shi'Kara ground her teeth slightly, feeling her temper rising.
"Sheriff, you wanna take care of that greenhorn?" She grabbed the reins on Elbridge's stallion's bridle and leveled a look at him. "You're going straight back to your room. I'll go get Doc and he'll see to your wounds." Her eyes caught a glimpse of some of the cuts on his back and her eyes narrowed. "Might as well have some ale in your system; I get the feeling this is going to hurt like a cactus up the ass for you."
 
Solomon left Elbridge to Shi'kara's care and rode off to have a friendly chat with...Karl? Curtis? Whatever his name was, he was easily the most recent arrival around these parts, having bought his land within the last few months. Truth be told, Solomon hadn't had much time to get acquainted with this fellow, which was a shame. Solomon liked to be at least familiar with everyone in Littlerook, so the fact that he couldn't even remember the guy's name was embarrassing.

"Beg pardon, sir," Solomon tipped his hat courteously. "I don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm Solomon Henstal, the Sheriff of Littlerook. Ya wouldn't happen to know what caused that explosion, would ya?"
 
At the sight of the Bullete digging its way back from the group and the town, Neil let out a sigh of relief and fell on top of his horse, exhausted. Without the adrenaline from the chase running his system at a million miles a minute, the strain of outrunning that thing for over a mile in near-panic had left its mark.

"Thank you kindly Elbridge, Cassy, everyone."

Neil managed to exhale out the words amidst his tired state, though his exhaustion was nothing compared to that of his horse. The poor beast had been at a full gallop for far too long just to stay a hair's breadth ahead of the monstrosity. The young man forced himself to a standing position, knees shaking. He almost felt like he might vomit from the sudden deterioration of his energy.

"Come on Mizu girl, we gotta get you back to town. You've more than earned it."

Neil helped coax the beast back up on all fours, though it seemed dazed and shaky from the explosion. Neil wouldn't be surprised if she had a ringing in her ears much worse than his own.
 
Cassidy turned her horse abreast with Neil and the injured equine as he helped it back to standing. "Looks like it was another lucky day for you Neil. I'll help you get your horse, uh, Mizu you said?" Cassidy stopped, inspecting the exhausted horse up and down as she did. "Anyhow, I'll help you get her back to at least the ranch. If you don't want too much more damage to the poor thing, we'll need to keep her checked on and probably off that leg as much as possible. I think I might be able to tinker around with something to help with that." Cassidy said, mulling over some ideas. "And maybe staying away from explosions might not be a bad call either." she chuckled to herself at the sight of Solomon talking with the new resident. "Seems we can't go but a few weeks without something different showing up."
 
Neil nodded slowly in response to Cassidy's comment. "Yes, that sounds like a grand idea . . ." The young man flopped against the side of Cassidy's horse, seemingly claimed by exhaustion. One hand reached up and grasped the edge of the woman's sleeve, weakly clawing at her.
"Do you . . . have any water? I threw my pack at the beast to by a few seconds."
For most people, thirst was unpleasant. To neil, it felt like a part of him was missing. He simply could not function when dehydrated.
"If I get some I'll be right as rain. Mizu will need some too--and some grain--and probably a pad to rest on . . ."
The young man had started drifting off into a half-sleep, mumbling out barely cohesive sentences as he continued. He also did not appear to have any way of blocking extraneous thoughts from his mind out of his speech as he did so.
 
"You're welcome of course Neil... I'd like to stay and hear the story of how that beast ended up chasing you but," he looks over at Shi'Kara as she brings his horse round and he slides his right revolver into its holster, "but she's definitely right. I need to be seen to or I may," he winces as he climbs into his saddle of his dazed horse, "I may end up worse than I already am."

They start riding for town, Elbridge nursing his arm from the explosion and trying to stay up in proper riding form but his back gushes blood and forces him to lessen his posture. "Come by the Tiger sometime and tell me will ya?" he calls over his shoulder to Neil.

As they ride at an easy pace back towards town Elbridge runs his left hand through his hair and starts, "I... Hah, I seem to have lost my hat." He shakes his head a moment with a bit of a smile upon his lips that have lost some of their color.

"Shi'Kara... I don't mean to pry but.. I thought your folks couldn't use guns," Elbridge points to her rifle. "Is there something special about that one?"
 
"The dwarves made it special for me." Shi'Kara hmphed. "They said it was some new material that they had just discovered how to make. Looks like metal; but, it isn't. Something called...uh...started with a "K"...eh, I'll have to ask next time I write Brakan." A hint of a smile crossed her face; she missed living with the dwarves sometimes. "Was my going away present." She pondered on the missing hat. "I'm sure you can get another one. You go through hats faster than you do drinks sometimes. Now..." They rode into town and up to the Adamantine Tiger. "You head up to your room. That shirt is probably ruined from the blood so just toss it. Let me go grab Doc." She left him at the saloon and headed for the doctor's office.

The people in the streets parted rather quickly. No one knew much about the strange, black-skinned elf and most didn't want to chance something going wrong. Elves were odd folk, after all. Shi'Kara did know she had a friend in Doctor Alfred Simmons, affectionately known as Doc. She tied her horse in front of his home on the outskirts of town and stepped up and inside. She was greeted by pained shouting. One of the nurses walked towards her.
"Doc is in with a patient right now." The young woman stated.
"Elbridge got himself hurt while rescuing a whippersnapper from a bullete." Shi'Kara crossed her arms. "Need to speak with him about it."
"...well, that lady ain't going to have that baby any time soon..." The nurse shook her head, feeling sorry for the patient inside. "Let me go grab Doc." She opened the door and stepped in. A moment later, Doc ducked out of the door. The older man smiled warmly at her.
"Olivia told me about Elbridge." Doc grimaced. "Too many creatures keep getting close to town. We need to start posting a watch for those things, by golly. I can't leave, I'm afraid. I'll give you what you need to fix him up."
"But Doc-" Shi'Kara started to say.
"I know you know how to do this." He chuckled. "You're the one who fixed me up right as rain when that old horse of mine got spooked and threw me."
"Still don't like doing it..." She grumbled a bit as he handed her sterilized needles and silken threads.
"I know you have the alcohol to clean the wounds out nicely." Doc sighed. "I'll come check your work after I get done here." A sudden cry from the back broke the air. "Speaking of which, sounds like we've got a baby coming at last. You take care, you hear?" He dashed back through the door quickly.
As Shi'Kara walked back out with her supplies, she sighed. Human could be weird about things like this. Some considered it almost sacrilege to show off naked skin. Hopefully, Elbridge would not mind her being the one working on him.
 
As he stared at the motley group of people who fate had conspired to accumulate on his property, he noticed one walking towards him. "A CENTAUR, EH? HAVEN'T HAD THE PLEASURE OF MEETING ONE OF YOUR KIN BEFORE." completely ignoring any attempt by the centaur to speak, that dratted ringing in his ears being quite persistent. "OF COURSE, I GREW UP IN A CITY BUILT LONG BEFORE THE WARS, SO IT MOSTLY ACCOMMODATED TALLER BIPEDS. CAN'T BLAME A QUADRUPED FOR NOT WANTING TO NAVIGATE ALL THOSE NARROW STREETS AND STAIRS." Pausing a moment for breath, and speaking was really him out for some reason, he asked, "SO, NOW THAT EVERYONE IS DONE SHOOTING AND RIDING LIKE THE DEVIL ITSELF WAS GIVING CHASE, CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT WAS GOING ON?"
 
Elbridge watched as Shi'Kara left for a moment after he dismounted his horse. Then he slowly walked up the exterior stairs of the Adamantine Tiger. His steps were slow and laboured but deliberate. "Morgana take it you'd think I'd been shot..." He slumps against the door into the upstairs hall that overlooks the saloon and takes a deep breath before fixing his posture and stepping in.

"Hey Elbridge what happened out there?" the passer through that Elbridge had been talking to before all the commotion called from below. The wounded gun-knight turned to the saloon and leaned against the railing and put on a smile.

"Just Neil being chased by a landshark nothin I couldn't handle.." he grimaces as he brings his right hand up to point down into the saloon and bring it back up like a recoiling gun.

"Hah, yeah sure. Are you coming down for a drink? You need to finish that 'happy' story."

"Not tonight turns out bullette's bite... but I must taste worse than rocks cause it spit me back up," Elbridge winks and a few people chuckle as he turns to the room Shi'Kara lets him use when he doesn't want to make the trip to his house between shifts. He waves over his shoulder with his left hand before he closes the door.

He stands for a second.

Then slumps down to the ground, "Mordred's Spear what..." he reaches his left hand up and tears away the shirt covering his right shoulder and reveals a curtain of blood that covered his arm under his heavy dark colored shirt.

He grabs the shard of bullette hide poking out of his shoulder at a low angle and slowly pulls the several inch shard out and tosses it to the wooden floor.

"Well... that would explain it..." he says as he blinks rapidly, his face white. He grabs a bottle of whiskey he keeps on the bedside table as he leans against the bed. He bites the cork and pulls it out and spits it to the floor with contempt.

"Where's that doctor.."
 
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Wincing a bit as the stranger yelled at him, Solomon sighed and shook his head. "Yer ears not workin' from the blast, huh...?" He said, mostly to himself. "I GOTTA GIT BACK TO TOWN, SO STOP BY THE ADAMANTINE TIGER LATER TONIGHT, ALRIGHT? WE CAN TALK THEN," he said, trying to project his voice loudly enough to be understood by this guy.

He turned away with a wave and headed over to Neil and Cassidy. "Hangin' in there, kid?" he patted Neil on the shoulder, then reached behind him to the pouches he had strapped across his equine body. Finding a waterskin, he offered it to the drowsy young lad. He was familiar at this point with Neil's tendency to dehydrate, though he didn't quite believe in any of the superstitious reasonings that Neil had offered for his condition. "Drink up. We ain't back home yet."

"Y'alright, Miss Henderson?" He addressed the shotgun-toting woman.
 
"Better than this morning started I reckon." Cassidy started with a small smirk. "It always gets my blood going whenever something interesting happens. Though a bullette is prob'ly as worrying as it was angry." Cassidy paused after the statement, clearing turning the gears of an idea over in her mind. "So Solomon, what would make a bullette go after poor Neil here, and more important to the case, get this close to a settlement? Landshark ain't much privy to hunting down folk lest they bug it while it's hunting or it feels threatened. It warrants a bit of concern." Cassidy blinked for a moment before turning back to Neil. "Has this been happening a minute or is this all new? I figure, you spend more time out here than the likes of most, you'd have the best experience."
 
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Shi'Kara put Captain back into the small stable behind the Tiger and went in through the back. She could hear her waitresses doing a good job with the customers. They were a good bunch, if a bit naive at times. She walked up the stairs quietly to not create a stir and opened the door to Elbridge's room unceremoniously. The whole human obsession with privacy eluded her and she chose to ignore it most of the time.
"Doc is stuck delivering a baby." Shi'Kara rolled up her sleeves as she spoke. "I'll sew you up and try to clean out the wounds so infection isn't a problem." She turned to look at him and stopped speaking. "...you did not tell me how bad you actually are." She observed the piece of hide and noted the corresponding wound. In her earlier life before the disaster that destroyed her clan, she had been training in low level healing techniques. After thinking for a moment, she turned back to the door. "I'm going to grab something."
Shi"Kara flipped upstairs to her room and pulled out a set of herbs that she had found in the surrounding forest. She was not super knowledgeable of these; however, she knew that capsaicin was a good pain killer and Elbridge was going to need it. After grabbing a couple of leaves, she went back down to the room.
"Chew on these. You're going to need it." Shi"Kara sighed. "Where do you want me to start?"
 
The question posed by Cassidy was an echo in Neil's mind. His foggy head tried to piece together her concern with what he knew of the wild beasts. "Needs food . . . territory . . . humans not worth eating . . . not large enough . . ." Neil, usually an internal thinker, was saying pieces of his thought process out loud in his current haze. He put a hand on his head and shook it as if to clear the fog. He gratefully took the drink from Solomon, and took a large gulp before blinking his eyes a few time and continuing. "Animals chase relentlessly . . . family . . . no, Bullettes don't maintain unless . . . " Neil's eyes suddenly burst open as wide as dinner plates, clear of the haze that had been within them earlier. "NEST!" Whether it was attempting to find a mate, had a mate already, or had young ones that needed protecting, a nest was the only reason for such rampant hostility. Heedless of his current condition, Neil immediately walked over to his horse and tried to mount her . . . only to fall flat on his face. He was in no condition to ride, and Mizu was in no condition to be ridden. "Help . . ." Neil's muffled voice came from the dirt, where he had face-planted.
 
Elbridge took what Shi'Kara offered, and started chewing on the leaves, grimaced and ran another pull of whiskey from his bottle. "I'm thinking we start with the spigot in my arm. But punctures are tricky I'm not sure its all out.." he grimaced again "I've seen men lost to bullets that weren't all taken out..." he chuckles half-heartedly "I mean this bullette is different but the same idea should hold."

As Shi'Kara began to work Elbridge kept talking. "Did I ever tell you about the Lt. Silvermaine? He was an absolute hardass. Gave everyone in the platoon a hard time; button up your uniform, step in time, keep those rifles up, heads down you sorry excuse for an army... things like that. He rode everyone hard... through training, during drills, but most of all on the field. On the field, he'd bark orders like a friend had possessed him. Always yelling. Always making sure we were doing it right..." he takes a deep drink from his bottle.

"He was the man I saw die that way... it was slower a lot slower than the others that went in the war." He drinks again. "I think i've picked a horrible topic to lift my spirits and keep my mind off surgery."
 
Shi'Kara half-smiled at him. "He reminds me of Selma, my healer instructor. She was a stickler on all details; she also tended to go easier on the pain killing herbs than probably was good for some of the patients." A soft chuckle escaped her lips as she worked. There were a few pieces of hide still left that she was slowly pulling out. Talking was a good distraction. "I've never completely understood you warriors and your war stories. I was supposed to be heal and teach when I finished my training..." A far away look crossed through her eyes as she finished up on the arm.

"...so, I'm going to have to work on your back..." Shi"Kara sighed. "We'll clean up the blood later. I need you to lay down and keep chewing those leaves." She crossed her arms. "And I'll probably have to sit lightly on top of you to get the angle right. I know how you humans are about this type of thing so I'm giving you the warning."
 
As the ragtag band of people rode off towards town, karst wondered to himself why the centaur had felt the need to shout at him. "Perhaps he was a bit too close to the detonation", he pondered to himself as he walked back inside his home. As he made his way to his lab, he dropped off his 'self-defense' kit on a small table near the door. As he picked up a collection of different bottles and stashed them in bag, he looked at one labeled 'Combat Hearing Remedy'. With a shrug, he popped the cork out, and with a dropper carefully applied three drops into each ear. Replacing the cork plug, he placed the phial in the bag along with the other various bottles already there. Bracing himself for the side-effect, he waited for all of ten seconds.
"SON OF DRAGON HUMPING, MEXICAN WHORE!!!" The side-effect, a bout of incredibly intense burning and itching that lasted about five minutes, had kicked in, and though he had nade use of this alchemical remedy in the past, it never got any less unpleasant. After the burning and itching subsided, and he confirmed that he was no longer hearing nothing but a high pitched ringing in his ears, he took his bag and saddled his horse to make the trip into town. He was awfully curious as to just what had actually been going on earlier, and he meant to find out.
 
Elbridge nodded, "shouldn't be a problem." He slowly climbed up into the bed. His shoulder no longer draining onto the floor gave him more confidence than a release from pain. The flush hadn't quite returned to his skin but it rushed away at a far slower rate.

"Do whatever ya need to boss," he drank another swig from his bottle and continued chewing. "The stories.. they're about... remembrance, about learning lessons. Everything I tell has a purpose. Like Lt. Silvermaine was a hardass and we all hated him. But he kept us in line so that we'd stay alive. As many of us as he could assure anyway. Doing what is needed even though it is unpopular or will lessen your own name is the correct course of action. He saved lives. And I'll be taken by Morgana before I let his name fall from my memory."
 
"It is good that he had such a loyal friend to keep his memory alive." Shi'Kara took the bottle out of his hand and gently laid him face down on the bed. "Not all of the dead are remembered so fondly as you do him." She then carefully straddled his lower back, trying not to put too much weight on him. She absentmindedly touched the tattoo on the back on her neck that was always hidden by her hair. It was her clan's mark, a dragon's head. That was her reminder of the people she had lost. She fell silent, remembering her mother and father's faces the day she had been accepted as Selma's student, her brother's face when she had carved him a small wooden horse for his name day, Selma's face the first time she had allowed Shi'Kara to work on a warrior who had had a hunting accident. And she could remember all their faces the day they died, the screams as the life was sucked out of each of them. It was like she was sewing the wounds on autopilot as her mind flashed back to that day. A single tear rolled from her right eye and fell down, splashing down on Elbridge's skin before she realized it was there.
 
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