It’s often times the blow you don’t see coming that hurts the most. As any victim of a sucker punch or broken heart could tell you, that stuff sucked, and it sucked hard.

  What people talked about a lot less, was the shot you didn’t see coming. Not because it happened less often, though that was most definitely the case back home, but simply because there were far fewer people left around as victims left to talk about it. Which Ozzy was happy to explain to the largest rat via a rapidly delivered object lesson.

  BANG

  Having taken his time to line up the perfect shot there was no way in hell the rat was getting off anything but the first bus straight to rat hell. Its death was marked by a spray of viscera, brain matter and blood spraying out in a cone and over the side of the wagon and another rat. Marking the arrival of a new predator in the grimy swamp.

  ***

  Emil had loathed the thought of getting assigned to guarding of all things fishermen in the bayou. No one in The Marsh would argue with the fact that they were important, sure the city needed the food and these guys were the backbone of the cities normal food supply. It didn’t mean the work was any less foul smelling or nasty, but a job was a job, and if he wanted to keep his license he needed to keep taking them.

  What he hadn’t expected was for anything of this scale to have happened, murk rats, raiding parties, even the occasional gator were normal. A pack of murkrats headed by a matriarch though? He needed to swing by the gambling house after this.

  The Murkrats had attacked and he’d fended most of them off. The fisherman had even helped him out and thrown a few harpoons at the pack. In the end his lack of power and the arrival of the matriarch proved to be too much. If only he’d had more power.

  Despite what most people thought about the hunters guild not all of them had full power sets. In fact most of them were in the exact same boat as Emil, living with only a few powers to their name, sometimes just one. Cores were expensive after all, there was no getting one without sacrificing.

  Someones first Core was always the hardest one to get, he’d been lucky to get an attack power awakened with his first core and he’d worked as a thug running enforcement for a local loanshark until he earned his next two cores. It was honestly amazing how cheaply they’d come, they’d totally been legal buys.

  After getting his final core however it had been off to the hunters guild, and with a little bit of elbow grease he’d gotten in. Unfortunately that had been right around the time he’d found a girl to get sweet on, and just like that, the life of adventure he’d dreamed of had just turned into another job.

  Instead of filling out his cores he bought a house, instead of investing in gear he bought a ring, and instead of keeping up with a true hunters quota he stayed with his love. Doing just enough to keep them afloat.

  Which was why when he found himself lying bloodied and beaten on top of a wagon surrounded by the biggest and meanest remaining murkrats, he could only sigh and ruminate on what could have been. He definitely should have bought an extra combat shard and gone with the smaller ring he chided himself. Though chances were this would have gone the same way, even with the extra power. Now it was just a waiting game until the matriarch came back. Oh well-.

  BANG

  The rat he had watched nearly crawl up into the wagons head exploded. The entire clearing going silent as rats and trapped fishermen looked around for the source of the explosion. It sounded like a lightning spell going off in a stone room, but the wound looked nothing like the results of a lighting attack. It was more in line with the kind of wounds high level stone casting abilities would leave, but those were silent spells, nothing like the thunderclap that’d just gone off.

  They might as well have been looking for a ghost and Emil couldn’t spot a thing, it wasn’t until a second explosion rang out he spotted a flash of fire in a thicket just outside of their clearing. Another rat went down, though there was no spray of gore this time and it got back up shrugging off the strike as it spotted its would be hunter.

  With a series of high pitched chitters it sprinted for the brush, the other two rats following moments later.

  ***

  Ozzy aimed his follow up shot at the charging rodent and fingered the trigger. He’d placed the shot well and it took the rat center mass. The rat bounced backwards like it’d hit a brick wall, all of its momentum ending abruptly as it dropped into a heap.

  The second rat stopped to stare dumbly at its fallen comrade while the third rushed on. Ozzy rested the gun against a low branch, taking his time on the shot as the monster charged at him. With the rat only a few meters away from his position in the brush Ozzy pulled the trigger. A quarter sized hole appeared on the rats head, the creature stumbled, rolled, and Ozzy panned the sights onto the last rat.

  In a turn of events that he could never have expected, Ozzy watched out of the corner of his eye as the rat he’d just shot in the head stood up and charged. It was already so close and Ozzy barely had time to swing back on it. It crashed through his makeshift blind as he attempted something he’d only ever seen in movies.

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  Pulling the trigger Ozzy fired from the hip at the rat as he dove backwards, as the recoil passed he slapped the hammer back with his left palm. CLICK, the hammer slapped uselessly back against the firing pin, he hadn’t hit it back far enough. He slapped the hammer in rapid succession, again and again, cycling the chamber until he was back at the final round. Then with a thoughtless prayer he slapped the hammer one final as his back began to hit the water.

  BOOM.

  Ozzy scrambled up out of the water, ready for the rat to be on him at any moment. Then he saw, it was halfway through the brush he’d been hiding it in when he’d started shooting. His wild shot had taken it low in the chest with his first having nailed it in the neck. He didn’t take the time to gawk however, as he heard the last rats snarling call.

  Like a disheveled, mud washed, Clint Eastwood he swung the revolvers cylinder out and conjured a set of bullets to shove into the weapon. Flicking the revolver sideways he slapped the cylinder back in place right in time for the final rat to come into view, unfortunately for it, he was ready this time. With his sights firmly locked onto the monster he fired rapidly, putting six shots into it as fast as he could shoot accurately.

  Lowering his weapon Ozzy released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He walked past the rats and out of the brush towards a wagon of incredulous, yet grateful people. After sticking his pistol in his now dirty pants he waved at them.

  “Y’all okay?”

  The men in the wagon looked at him like he’d asked them if the sky were bright pink.

  “Oh absolutely, were practically golden up here, no rat problem at all! Not like we were about to be rat chow or anything crazy like that” The least injured man yelled out from behind one of the fishermen. He was large and flabby, like looking oddly similar to that one fat Scottish guy from Austin Powers.

  From a puddle of blood at the bottom of the wagon a man Ozzy hadn’t seen until now spoke up.

  “They’re all fine. Couple of the boys got scratched up but nothing serous. I’ll be back up and swinging in a few hours but there was a matriarch with the pack and she put me through my paces. I took a healing potion already though, I’m just waiting to heal up.” The man spoke surprisingly easily despite what seemed to be three peoples worth of blood covering him.

  “Alright then…” Ozzy did his best to move past what had to be delirious nonsense. “Sorry about your guys wagon though, I’d have been here a little sooner if one of the rats hadn’t jumped me on my way over.”

  The fisherman the first one had hid behind spoke up. “Don’t worry about it hunter. It did its job, took the punches for us,” He paused, a brief frown passing over his face as he assessed the ma on the floor in front of him. “Most of the punches at least.”

  An awkward silence fell over the clearing. For his part Ozzy was normally happy to enjoy a bit of silence, though as the moment it just seemed to make things more awkward. He hadn’t even really thought about the guy calling him a hunter. Lots of strange things going on for sure.

  Chances were someone would have to fill out all sorts of paperwork for this debacle, he was just glad it wouldn’t have to be him. He had enough to wonder about between the giant wagon and the rat monsters. Let alone the guy who should be dead in the bottom of the wagon.

  “What’s your name friend?” The bloody mess of a man asked him, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen you around the guild, granted I’m not around much myself but I’ve been a member for a few years now. Name’s Emil by the way” He nodded at Ozzy.

  “Well I couldn’t imagine why you don’t take many jobs.” The flabby man from before said sharply, cutting Ozzy off before he could respond.

  He sneered as he slowly stepped over Emil as he motioned for the rest of the men on board to get back to work

  “You and your rotting fish would’ve been just fine Colber, I only needed another minute to get back into it. Besides if you wanted to roll through matriarch territory that’s something you should have told the guild, they’d have sent you with someone who had a full shard set instead of me.” Emil shouted up at Colber as he stopped over him.

  “And don’t think that the guard won’t be hearing about your negligence! You knew the risks of coming through here and I didn’t hear a peep about it. The only reason that matriarch didn’t kill me and the rest of you morons is because of that potion I used. Which I will be billing you for after all of this is over!” Emil continued, raging at the back of the flabby captain.

  Growling to himself, Emil made a couple strained grunts before with what looked like monumental effort he stood and with the help of one of the wagon men who’d stayed he made his way towards Ozzy.

  “I’d like to thank our mysterious stranger though.” He stretched a shaky hand out towards Ozzy "I swear I won’t get any blood on you. You’ll just have to tell me how you ended up out here. I’m curious about who the guild sent and honestly why they sent someone in the first place, did they figure out what Colber was doing and send you? Not that I’m ungrateful of course, just curious.” He put his hands up in a no offense kinda way.

  While Emil was perfectly vocal and even able to gesture fine Ozzy had the distinct impression that he should have at least passed out and more likely than not been on his merry way to the afterlife. That was the least of it if the massive puddle of blood he was trailing footsteps out of had anything to say about it. It was just too much blood, and he’d seen his fair share of blood hunting and cleaning animals. Emil looked like he’d bled enough for himself and a grizzly bear.

  “Not gonna lie to you man, I just got here. I have no idea where I am.” Ozzy said as he started towards the wagon.

  A single eyebrow rose as Emil regarded Ozzy, “You don’t know where you are?” He said, doubt bubbling up under his question.

  “I uh, woke up about 5 minutes that way.” He pointed the way he’d come, “About 10 minutes ago…”

  “…Right. Well there are healers at the guild, why don’t we get headed that way?” Emil said, talking to Ozzy like he was a kid with a scraped knee and not someone who’d just killed a bunch of rats with the worlds biggest revolver.

  “I’m not crazy man, I’m just having a bad day.” Ozzy responded.

  “Oh you’re having a bad day are you?” Said one of the men bustling about the wagon, his voice laced with sarcasm though he had a well meaning grin plastered across his face. “That’s too bad, mine’s goin’ just perfect.”

  Despite himself Ozzy grinned at the fisherman, and did his best to think comforting thoughts. Even if he had gone insane, or was just trapped in some random magical world, at least he wasn’t alone anymore.