In the growing heat of mid-morning, Ryger and Fontaine slowly moseyed down the sidewalk, people instinctively clearing a path for them. It was only a quarter after ten, but already the stenches of horse shit and rank body odor were thickly filing the air. Not for the first time, Ryger questions his past judgment and wondered if he would have been better off to have joined the Army; at least those guys had gas masks and air filters built into their helmets. However, they also had all of that heavy body armor to wear, too, which wasn't a wise choice of attire in tropical regions like these. It seemed far better to live with the stink of the city tan to die from dehydration underneath all that armor. Ryger took a moment and looked down at himself, and then snorted. His jacket was already showing bleed-through sweat stains from his underarms, and his entire body felt like the suit he wore was a pressure cooker. Being any hotter than he was right now seemed impossible; but he knew all too well that in about three hours , he would kill to regain the temperature he was now so thoroughly disgusted with. Ryger pulled back his damp jacket and shirt sleeves, and checked the date on his watch; 28, it proclaimed. "Today's Tuesday, isn't it," he inquired of his partner. "Yup," Fontaine replied flatly, absorbed in the act of scanning the crowd before them. So today was another one of those days, Ryger thought to himself. More often than not he enjoyed days like today, days which were officially called Random Interrogation Days and, unofficially, Harassment Days. Ryger, Fontaine, and all of their comrades in arms city wide, ll devoted one day out of each week to pick people at random and treat them like armed and dangerous fugitives until they were proven to be otherwise. Harassment Days were scheduled rather simply; Monday one week, Tuesday the next week, and so on. Officially these Days were supposed to help facilitate the capture of criminals who otherwise would escape detection; but Ryger, Fontaine, and most of the city knew that the real reason for these Day was to put the fear of God into the average citizen, and keep the masses actively repressed. A man coming home after having had two men in black suits and sunglasses shove guns in his face and scream profanity at him would most likely thing two things; first, he would be happy to be alive; and second, he would realize the only reason that he was alive was because he hadn't done anything illegal. However, it was impossible to predict if the same thing would happen to him gain; so his best bet was to remain a law-abiding citizen to stay alive. Hence, Harassment Days served to both rid the population of whatever criminal elements were uncovered, and to keep the citizenry in line and under control Bur neither Ryger nor Fontaine enjoyed Harassment Days because they made the Empire a safer and better place to live; they liked them because it gave them the opportunity to vent their anger and frustrations on innocent civilians and get away with it. Lost in thought, Ryger was brought back into reality by a nudge on his arm. He looked over at Fontaine, to see him nodding up the street. See that rikshaw up there," his partner asked coyly. Ryger looked up the street, only to see about a dozen rikshaws scattered throughout the street and sidewalk. He hadn't a clue which one Fontaine was eyeing, but decided to acquiesce for the sake of conversation, giving a non-committal positive grunt. "They look suspicious to you," Fontaine questioned, only partly concealing his zeal to take out his frustrations on some poor unsuspecting bastard. "Brudda," Ryger responded jovially, "everybody looks suspicious to me." The two men exchanged a glance and a grin, and then hurried their pace. Fontaine stealthily unbuttoned his jacket and swept it open, revealing his standard issue 9mm thrust blatantly into his waist line. Ryger, while similarly opening his jacket, recalled one of the funniest and most truthful things he had ever heard. He couldn't exactly recall where he had been at the time, but he knew he'd been around a rookie and a lieutenant, although Ryger himself had been rather inexperienced and new to the job. Ryger had seen that the rookie kept his pistol down the front of his trousers; upon seeing that, Ryger had give the rookie the friendly advice that if he kept his pistol there, he was liable to shoot his jimmy off. The lieutenant had interjected that in this job, that was safer than shooting your mouth off. At the time both Ryger and the rookie had a hearty laugh at this, but now, only a few months later, Ryger could fully appreciate the lieutenant's comment. Speaking against the Empire was not tolerated, particularly not by those who where sworn to serve it. It took physical evidence for the Squads to pick up a civilian; but it scarcely took more some rumors and words to the right people for an Imperial servant to be Squaded. Rising out of his revelry, Ryger noticed he had fallen a few steps behind Fontaine; but considering he didn't know which rikshaw they were bearing down on, it was for the best that Fontaine was in the lead. Ryger reached inside of his jacket, underneath his left underarm, and unfastened the aged leather strap which kept his Beretta 92 securely and snugly in place. The leather shoulder holster kept the pistol tightly in its grasp, having been specifically molded for the gun; but Ryger had learned long ago that three was no such thing as 'too safe," and therefore kept the straps fastened until he knew he'd be needing quick and unhindered unholstering of his weapon. Ryger looked up the street before Fontaine, hoping to figure out which rikshaw Fontaine had his eye on. Straight ahead, about ten meters away, Ryger saw the suspects. The driver looked like a native, although most of his face was masked by the giant-brimmed straw hat which he wore. His passenger was a Caucasian man in his early 30s, looking as uncomfortable in his suit as Ryger felt. His first impression of ht duo was that they appeared to be of no threat to those around them or the Empire's laws; but, as Ryger knew, appearances could be deceiving. Ryger's heart an pace quickened, and he was walking abreast with Fontaine. "Which one you want," Ryger quietly implored. "Doesn't matter," Fontaine said. "Driver, I guess." "Righteous." As they fast approached the unsuspecting two, Ryger reached inside of his jacket and Fontaine's hand went to his waist. Fontaine remained on the sidewalk while Ryger took a right into the street, walking between the rikshaw lane and one of the four principal traffic lanes. Ryger put on a little more speed and went ahead of his comrade to the left by about two meters, so that he would arrive alongside the passenger at the same time Fontaine would be getting next to the driver. Ryger's palms were sweating, his teeth were clenched, and he could hear and feel his heartbeat in his ears. This was just a simple harassment, nothing, but Ryger knew that somehow it could blow up into a volatile situation, and it was that feeling of danger and the unknown that got him going. He was slowing down, and then he was right next to the passenger; peripherally he saw Fontaine next to the driver, on the sidewalk. It was time to get it on. Ryger stopped walking, pivoted on his left heel to face the passenger, and whipped out his Beretta, thrusting the barrel onto the startled man's cheek. "Hands where I can see 'em," Ryger screamed at the man, dimly aware that his spittle flecked onto the man's face, making him shrink back both out of mortal terror and revulsion. Behind him, Ryger heard Fontaine bellow, "Hand in the air, mother fucker," with a hurried response from the driver in his native tongue. Before him, Ryger watched intently as the passenger raised his hands above his head, his eyes darting back and forth between him and Fontaine. "I said put your hands up or I'll shoot you in the face, god damn it," Fontaine exploded. The driver meekly mumbled some very basic words in English, which sounded like 'me no can.' Ryger didn't like the way this was going down. In his experience, someone who refused to do as told with a gun in his face, tended to be a dangerous customer. Nervous now, he pressed the barrel of his pistol more firmly into the passenger's cheek, hoping that the man wouldn't be inspired by the driver's belligerence. "I'm not telling you again, mother fucker. Put your hands up or I'll shoot you!" Ryger glanced over his shoulder and then returned his attention to the passenger. He'd seen a small and blood thirsty crowd gathering around Fontaine. These were the people who were willing to be ten minutes late to work if they had the opportunity to stop and watch a man get his brain blown out of the side of his head. A crowd of jackals, Ryger tough. He resisted the urge to turn his gun on them and open fire. Filled with disgust, he snared at the passenger, who looked more and more afraid as the seconds ticked by. "Me no can," the driver timidly ventured. "Me let go, rikshaw fall down." Ryger couldn't help rolling his eyes, and he suspected Fontaine was doing the same. The idiot was going to take a bullet rather than upset his customer. Extremely interested in find out what would happen next, Ryger turned his head and looked over his shoulder at the scene. "Last chance, asshole," Fontaine bellowed in the driver's face, eyes now narrow slits, his mouth snarling like a wild dog. "Put it down or I will shoot you in the face." The driver didn't look like he could appreciate the words for their value in English, per se, but he did look like he got the gist of what was being screamed in his face. He frantically nodded, and then his grip on the handles loosened, the rikshaw falling backward with all of the weight of the passenger suddenly not being supported. The driver quickly raised his hands in the air over his head, familiar with the drill from having seen it acted out in the streets before him countless times before. Ryger smirked, and remembered that he needed to be focusing his attention on the passenger. Just as the man's face raced through his mind, he felt something slam into his chest, knocking him backwards. As Ryger landed on his rear in the street, he turned his head around to see the passenger fleeing down the crowded lane of traffic, weaving in and out between rikshaws and carriages. The man had shoved Ryger, and made a run for it. Ryger could hardly believe it; the timid looking little man was a runner. He tried to draw a bead on the man's back, but he was darting this way and that too quickly, and there was too much traffic to see through. As the man was fast becoming just another back in the crowd down the street, Ryger was able to discern him jumping up onto the sidewalk. "Damn it," Ryger exclaimed to the world in general, hurriedly getting to his feet with a considerable groan of effort. He looked back over his shoulder curtly, to see the driver going to his knees and Fontaine with his pistol to the man's head; at least his partner had his situation under control. Ryger again focused his attention up the street and took off like a gazelle, his body pumping madly with adrenaline and the determination to not let this runner get away. Although his heartbeat was throbbing in his ears, he heard Fontaine wryly remark, "Go get 'em, tiger." Ryger couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or not; he put his emotions on the back burner and just focused all of his energy into running as fast as he could. He could see where people had parted to make way for the dashing man, and was close enough behind that he met with little resistance in his pursuit. His feet already ached from slamming his entire weight into the hard pavement time and time again; his head felt like it was on fire, sweat pouring off of him; his lungs were pumping as fast as they could, but already his chest hurt and he just couldn't get deep enough breaths. Regardless, he made himself keep going, pushing his body beyond the limits that the pain would have restricted him to; he couldn't afford to let a runner get away. Not only would he lose Fontaine's respect, but he'd be the joke of the city. The son of the institution's leader not being able to detain a simple civilian for questioning on a Random Interrogation Day would be all over the news before he even got home. Without seeing any obstacles in his path, Ryger suddenly found himself falling face-first into the sidewalk. He swiftly brought his arms up before his face, letting them take the brunt of the force of his fall. The air rushed out of his lungs in a giant explosion of intensity, his mind throbbing now more than ever. He got up onto his hands and knees, his pistol still tightly in his grasp and seemingly unscathed, and looked back behind himself. He didn't see any cracks or holes in the sidewalk; he had just been running too fast, and his feet had gotten caught up. Angry with himself, he got to his feet again and charged once more down the sidewalk, just as fast as before, all the more desperate now to catch his prey, for he'd lost whatever distance he'd managed to narrow between himself and the passenger. Ryger ran on for what seemed like an hour, and then came to an intersection; the light was green, and the traffic was so thick that he couldn't possibly hope to make his way through it. Carriage was proceeded by carriage, with hardly any room at all between them. Ryger took the moment of waiting impatiently, but put his hands on his knees and bent over, taking deep breaths and wondering just how long this light would stay green. He knew that the longer he wasn't running, the harder it would be to start again. The heat was unbearable, and his muscles were not only panging from the exertion he'd put himself through, but his knees and forearms were skinned as well from his nasty spill. Every second that he remained inactive was a second that his adrenaline rush died down and the pain and reality of what he'd done to his body seeped into his mind. As he turned his gaze onto the light, it turned red. Finally. He straightened himself into standing, albeit with considerable effort. He glanced to his left, and made sure that traffic had stopped; it had. He stuck his foot out from the curb to enter into the street and hurry across, ready to break into another city-sprint, when a whip-crack tore through the air. Ryger's head snapped up, and he found himself looking across the intersection at the passenger, who was holding a small and, more importantly, smoking pocket pistol. The man cursed, then turned on his heels and dashed off into the crowd. Ryger, alarmed, looked down at himself to see if he'd been hit; thankfully, he saw no bullet holes in his shirt or trousers. Then he looked over his shoulder to see a large man in a suit lying face-down on the sidewalk, a tiny hole in the center of his suit jacket. People were already gathering around the fallen man, and a few women had cried out when it had happened. No wonder the passenger had cursed; he'd missed his shot. Disinterested with the plight of others at the moment, Ryger turned his head back around just in time to watch the light turn green again and vehicles again begin to move out. He figured the man had lain in wait on the other side of the intersection for his chance to smoke Ryger; otherwise he would have been a full block further away. And Ryger also knew that the man wouldn't make the same mistake twice, and would be making tracks just as fast as he could from here on out. Armed with this knowledge, and a severely bad attitude over having been shot at, Ryger charged into the street, drivers yanking on their horses' reigns, hooves braying practically directly in front of Ryger's face. He knew if he thought about being run over, he would be; so he just concentrated on the curb on the other side of the street, and what he'd do after he got there. Finally, after abundant dodging of traffic, he reached the other side and triumphantly bounded over the curb and onto the sidewalk. He paused for but a moment, catching his breath, and then once more pushed his legs and lungs beyond their limits and sped through the crowd of empty faces which flowed all around him. Ryger hadn't been running long when he saw a man step suspiciously out from a recessed doorway of a shop about 10 meters in front of him. It only took Ryger a moment to recognize that the suit on the man before him was the same one the passenger had been wearing. There were startled screams from women in the proximity, and then two shots reported, reverberating from the concrete jungle all around. Ryger at first hunched his shoulders and ducked his head slightly, instinctively trying to make himself as small as possible and therefore all the harder to hit, but then he realized that this wouldn't be ended by him shrinking away from this confrontation that the man so obviously wanted. After the first two shots, there was only a slight pause, in which time the handful of people that had been between Ryger and the passenger quickly dispersed. Ryger saw one of them, a pretty woman in her mid twenties, was clutching her chest, shot, but none of the others had caught any of the passenger's bullets. Ryger straightened himself in the eerily calm pause while the people scattered like quail, turning his right side to face up the street at the man, at least nominally decreasing the area he could be shot in. He slowly steadied his Beretta at shoulder height and sighted along its length at the man down the street, who was standing in a nervous crouch and using both hands to point his quivering gun at Ryger. Ryger popped off a round, which seemed to bring the passenger back to the reality of the situation. He fired thrice more at Ryger, people now running and screaming all about, and then Ryger returned five more shots, rapid fire. The fear was very apparent in the passenger's eyes, and he let two more rounds loose, one slamming into Ryger's side just above his hip. Ryger grit his teeth and grimaced, not allowing himself to look and see how bad he'd been hit. Instead he channeled all of the pain bombarding his mind into leveling his pistol, keeping it steady, and making a good clean shot. He fired four rounds at the man, but none hit home. The passenger returned a single shot, this time, somehow, inexplicably, hitting Ryger in his left shoulder, which he'd thought he'd had safely tucked away behind himself. Letting out a tremendous and bestial roar, Ryger snarled and emptied the six remaining rounds in his clip. One of them, although he couldn't tell which, hit the passenger dead center in the gut. The man made a startled "oomf," and looked down at his mid-section with a cold sweat on his forehead. When his face turned back up to Ryger, there was nothing but shock and anger in his eyes. He cracked one last shot at Ryger, and then fled into the heavy traffic in the street. Calmly, Ryger let his spent clip slide smoothly out of the Beretta's grip, and effortlessly produced a new one from within the depths hidden by his coat. He slammed the clip home, and pressed the slide rack, chambering a round and having 15 more rounds ready to go. As an afterthought, he looked around at his surroundings. During the exchange of gunfire, he'd lost interest in and knowledge of anything but himself and the man he'd been trying to take down. Behind him, three people laid on the sidewalk motionless, having caught the passenger's stray bullets intended for him. A woman in the later years of her life and two middle-aged men. Ryger jogged briskly a few paces up the street, toward the tiny pool of blood his gut-shot had produced from the passenger, and surveyed the damage his own stray bullets had wreaked. Two women lay dead, one with a bullet wound at the base of her skull and the other with one through her left shoulder-blade; both had seemingly been shot while trying to escape the fury of the gun battle. They both looked to be rather young and attractive, but Ryger's wild shots had cut their lives short. He shrugged, and dashed into the street, still in pursuit of the man he now felt like he was hunting. Looking down briefly, he saw tiny drops of blood; there was no question that he was still on the trail, and that the man was far from being in peak health at this point. However, with that thought in mind, Ryger recalled that he himself had caught two bullets. At the mere thought of it, his body seemed to ache all over with renewed vigor, worse than before, and his bullet wounds began to throb in sync with his heartbeat, which was of course astronomical, making the throbbing all the more unendurable. His head began to spin, and the monotonous grays, whites, and blacks of all the horses he was stumbling through blended into a tapestry of confusion and disorientation, with Ryger blindly lurching in the general direction which he hoped was toward the other side of the street. When he tried to look down to the street for an indication of which way the runner was headed, he found no blood drops, but only greater perplexity at the sight of his feet wildly flailing about, with only a vague similarity to true walking. Feeling the vomit and blood come up in his throat, he quickly looked up and saw the curb only a lane away. Although he was once again nearly run down, he made it past the traffic and was now only a few paces from gaining the sidewalk. The question was, he knew, whether or not he had the strength left to travel those few paces. His right foot drunkenly planted itself on the curb, and he was greeted with a small whip-crack from up the street. He knew it was a gunshot; and as he fell down, he wondered if it was the force of impact from a bullet that was driving him down or just his complete lack of coordination. There were startled screams and exclamations from the bustling crowd, but Ryger only faintly heard them. He aimed his Beretta indistinctly up the street toward where he thought the shooter was, and pealed off a round, which only added to the symphony of shrieks. About to let off a few more, Ryger found himself slamming into the gutter, the stench enveloping him, but the shock of it invigorating him somewhat. He found the strength to lift his eyelids above the near slits they had been, and could clearly see down the length of sidewalk before him, albeit from ground-level. He could see people scrambling away from one particular area amongst all of the activity of mass exodus going on; and yet, in that one concentrated area, one man stood still. Either that was the shooter getting ready for another shot, or some idiot with a death wish. Ryger figured if he shot the man, either way it was a win-win situation. He closed his left eye, sighted along the Beretta until the front sight was in the center of the man's chest and aligned with the rear sights, trying to hold his hand as steady as he could under the circumstances. Already he could feel his second wind leaving him, and the world was starting to blur again. He was already on borrowed time in the land of the living, and wanted to make it count for something. Fourteen rapid fire shots rang out, with screams reaching a cacophony and dull thuds being barely audible in the background of the frightened chorus. Ryger looked through the clearing smoke from the end of his pistol to see three bodies lying in the middle of the sidewalk, and five more behind those either kneeling or hunched over, holding themselves in various places. Ryger's perception of the events unfolding before him was quickly leaving him, and he wasn't even certain if he'd gotten the shooter or not. Not that he could do anything about it now anyway. He ejected the empty clip from his Beretta out of pure instinct, but couldn't move his left arm to reach for a new clip to put home. His right arm felt like dough, and fell onto the curb, the Beretta making a metallic clink as it came to rest on the pavement. He still had a tight grip on it, to make sure no one with sticky fingers could come along and liberate it from him; his head fell back into the filth, and he didn't even bother to try to lift it again, knowing that it would only be an exercise in futility. He closed his eyes, feeling the cold sweat all over his body, but the warmth seeping out of him in the right side above his hip, his left shoulder, and how his right collarbone, too. That answered the question of whether or not he'd been hit. Feeling an odd happiness at having sorted that matter out, Ryger stopped trying to hang on to consciousness, and soon slipped away from cognizance. He woke up, staring at a bland white ceiling, with an annoying and steady beeping noise bombarding his ears. Just as he was about to start looking around to see where he was and why, the pain rushed into his mind like a guerrilla strike. His right side felt like it was one giant lump of paste, lumpy and sore. His left shoulder was nothing more than a dull ache; but the entire right side of his chest, from his gut to his neck, felt like someone had rubbed it raw and bloody with a steel brush. He let out a languid moan and then the events leading up to this point began to come back to him. At the recollection, he moaned once more. He was glad to be alive, but not too fond of the price tag it carried. "Decide to wake up, candy ass," a voice inquired out of nowhere. He rolled his head slowly to the side to see Fontaine slumped in a rather uncomfortable looking seat, a television control in his hand. Upon seeing Ryger look over, Fontaine turned the TV off, set the control on the bedside stand, and sat up in his seat, wearing his standard-issue suit and a cocky grin. "Did I get him," Ryger listlessly asked. Now that he spoke, he realized that his throat felt dry and as if it were coated with sandpaper. He hadn't been awake five minutes and already he wondered if he could somehow nod back off, and soon. Fontaine let out a hearty belly-laugh, making Ryger wince just at the thought of it would feel like if he were to try to do the same. "That's my partner," Fontaine said happily, making a move to pat Ryger on the shoulder congratulatorily and then drawing back cautiously. "Are you even remotely concerned about how messed up you are?" He laughed again, shaking his head with comic disbelief. Ryger groaned. "I'm alive. That's the important thing. But next most important is whether or not that runner is." He looked over at the stand he'd seen Fontaine lay the control down on, hoping to find a tall pitcher of ice water and a generous size cup along with it; instead all he found was the remote and some medical equipment. He turned his head again and lay looking up at the faded white ceiling, hoping to doze off again as soon as he heard whether or not the perp was dead. "Yeah, you got him," Fontaine eventually responded, in a considerably serious tone. "Along with two other people; a thirty-four year old journalist ... a woman ... and a nineteen year old university student ... male." There was a pause, but Ryger just tried to go to sleep, secure and happy knowing that he'd shot the man that had shot him, and been the only of the two to make it out of the confrontation alive. "When you first engaged him, on the north side of the street, you felled two. A twenty year old unemployed woman and her sister, seventeen." Another pause. "The perp claimed four. A--" "DC," Ryger whispered, just loud enough for Fontaine to hear it and stop talking. "As long as I got him. As long as I got him." Ryger knew Fontaine was a bit touchy when it came to shooting women; and considering a majority of Ryger's unwitting victims had been of the female persuasion, this explained Fontaine's somber mood. Fontaine's personal values and ethics dictated to him that it was morally wrong to shoot women and children; he'd told Ryger that not long after they'd been assigned each other as partners. Ryger had let him know that anything below ten years old was off-limits in his book, but it was open season on anyone older than that, regardless of gender, in Ryger's book. They'd spent nights arguing the points, but Fontaine hadn't made too much of a big deal to sell his world view to Ryger at first; then he found out what a glutton for violence Ryger was. But by then he knew that Ryger's views couldn't be swayed, and tried not to let on whenever Ryger's actions upset him. Trigger happy or not, Ryger did make a good back-up man, and everyone knew it. Only because he'd empty a clip at anyone looking sideways at his partner, but that was a moot point. After another lengthy and somewhat awkward pause, Fontaine spoke again, hiding any semblance of feeling. Both he and Ryger were generally apathetic to the plight of others and the world in general; the major difference being that Ryger was much further gone than Fontaine from any feelings or emotions. "I called your tat artist ... had him come in after you'd stabled out and put them on you." Ryger rolled his head to the right and looked at his arm; sure enough, he saw five new 9 millimeter tattoos on his arm, each with the names of his victims inside of them. It was getting to the point where Ryger would have to make an effort to shoot southpaw more often or decide where to put the new tats after he ran out of room on his right arm, which was a situation fast approaching. He squinted at the names, as they had to be done in laser to fit within the tattoo shell's body ... he knew they were the right names, not just some scribblings like some tat guys put in there for dipshits that would be dead in a few months or who didn't really care about the names. He focused on the name in the last one, as it looked masculine; how he deduced that, he would have been hard-pressed to explain. "What was the runner's name? John ... James ... " He squinted harder, but only managed to get his eyes teared. "Roger Wilson," Fontaine blandly answered. "So why'd he run?" "No one at the Building was going to look into it," Fontaine said, "but I knew you'd be interested, so I checked him out. He left behind a wife and a kid, ten years old. He sold computer systems to corporations." "He was giving them bad shit for top-quality prices," Ryger ventured. "No," Fontaine said, and then let out a tiny chuckle. "He was clean, through and through. The only crime he'd ever committed in his life was the one you got him for a few days ago." A few days ago? Ryger began to wonder just how long he'd been out of it. He'd thought that it was evening of the very same day of the shooting. He decided to push the thought from his mind, not needing to feel freaked out as well as shot up. He concentrated on what crime the man had been in violation of ... then he realized it. "Civilian possession of a firearm," he droned out with a monotone, having cited it countless times in the past just before holing some poor bastard. "Yup," Fontaine said with a disinterested yawn. Ryger had himself a small snort, the closest thing to a laugh he was willing to venture at this point, considering he wasn't even sure how much of his body was still his and how much was replacement parts. Crime in the city got worse every day, and the policing that Ryger and his comrades were supposed to be doing got more and more half-assed every day as well. Those two factors together added up to an unstable place to live, and yet millions had nowhere else to go, due to either lack of funds or having fought long and hard to get the job they'd finally found. And yet it was a capital offense for a civilian to own a firearm, in order to keep the balance of power well on the side of the Empire, for whenever riots or altercations went down, both of which were daily occurrences. Ryger contemplated the fact that if he and his colleagues had adequately done their jobs in the first place, he wouldn't have had to shoot Wilson for carrying a pistol because Wilson wouldn't have been so afraid for his life in the first place. But this was the way the world worked, and Ryger could choose to either play the game or not; and if not, then he'd be dead inside of a week. He played along with the insanity and idiocy that surrounded him every day just to survive. "So ... you're pretty lucky, Karl, my boy," Fontaine said, once he saw that far-away look of deep thought leave Ryger's eyes. Ryger rolled his head over and gave Fontaine a dirty look, which earned him a chuckle from his partner. "Wilson was only packing a .380 Auto. Anything bigger and you'd be another suit through the grinder, partner. The one in your right side only went in a few millimeters and then stopped in your intestines; the one in your right shoulder ripped clean through. The only trouble was from that last one he got you with, there in your right collar-bone. Splintered that sucker something fierce. Took 'em almost a whole day, working in six hour shifts, to get all of the chips out of you, they told me." Ryger groaned with renewed vigor at the thought of all that damage done to his body. Fontaine only chuckled once more, and then stood up. "Just wanted to check in on you and make sure you're still alive and kicking. I should have known better to doubt it, you tough shit." Ryger did his best to grin. Fontaine was to the door before Ryger remembered there was one last thing he wanted to say. "Hey," he called after his partner, who had to open the door back up and peer back inside the room, looking a bit eager to go get on with his life. "Thanks for getting my tat guy in here like that; I appreciate it." "No problem," Fontaine replied nonchalantly, again closing the door. "I'll pay you back for it when I get out of here," Ryger remarked. "Damned right you will," Fontaine answered, and then shut the door, leaving Ryger alone in the room with the dull beeping his only companion. Ryger was only mildly suprised at Fontaine's response; he'd only said he'd pay him back to be polite, and had both hoped and anticipated that Fontaine would say that it was what any good partner would do, and would feel like a heel taking Ryger's money. Now Ryger was stuck with the bill for five tattoos, plus whatever he'd have to pay for his hospital coverage which his insurance wouldn't cover. He figured Fontaine wasn't willing to take money out of his own pocket for the tattoos because so many of them were females this time. With the promise of financial woes in his near future, and the pain in his body feeling like it would go away just as soon as the sun stopped coming up in the morning, Ryger laid his head back into the lumpy and uncomfortable pillow and shut his eyes tight, trying to ignore the annoying pings driving through his skull from his heart monitor. After what seemed like hours of lying there in pain, frustration, and concern for his future, he managed to slip off into slumber.