The Under-Bridge

action scene
cyberpunk
unpublished

for a year, hibiki ate plain ramen out of the sink…

…so he could put money away for good armor. Most Conveyors work nights only in the beginning; Day Conveyors get bicycles and little ringy bells and high tips. Day Conveyors have to die to make space, which happens in the fast port traffic of Black Bay with regularity. But Hibiki chose to be a Night Conveyor even after he built up his rep and day spots opened up. 

As the most famed Conveyor portside of the Gako Wall, his back is always a target. So he has the full breastplate with articulated plackart, spiky pauldrons, customized cuisse and greaves, and clawed sabatons, all made with the steel Gako is famous for by the best craftsman he could pay under the table. Anyone who swings a sword at him is gonna feel the twang in their own shoulders. But the port is a good place to acquire rebel tech you can’t get past the Wall, so he’s got night vision goggles and gauntlets with laser-bladed extensions. Late night incidents quieted down when he got those babies; the zz-zz sound of powering them up and their eerie eye-hurting glow deters most assailants. 

All of this will melt in seconds if he falls.

Nothing gets past the Wall, not even Conveyors. Dark market deliveries to Gako go first to a connection in the Wall itself. The Wall is surrounded by a moat of churning, boiling liquid metal. There’s only one drawbridge, but there are two ways to cross: over and under. If you have money, papers, a good name, and a damn good reason to be in Gako, the guards in the two waystations might let you pass if they feel like it. Hibiki has none of these things, and guards never feel like letting people in at night, so Hibiki goes under. This means swinging between hot metal construction rungs... if he’s lucky.

“Didja bring us a present, Fluffy?”

Tonight is not lucky.

Hibiki stops fast and the package, a rectangle wrapped in paper stamped by several different ports, knocks around inside his knapsack. He hoists himself up onto a rung by one underarm, hits a switch and his laser swords crackle to life. 

zz-zz.

Through his goggles the night is green. The Revolver Girls approach, spring-loaded clamps around their wrists and ankles allowing them to swing around the under-bridge with ease; four of them hang upside down, guns extended at him, pigtails dangling toward the bubbly molten death below. 

“Maybe you ladies could like, not be dicks about this?” Hibiki lifts up one leg, gripping another rung with his claws, slow, nothing sudden. 

“The under-bridge belongs to the Revolvers now,” says one with a worn out hand-me-down Gakon military jacket she wears as a dress. The original name on the patch, NINO, has been markered over with the word TRIGGER.  “Turn off the pretty lights and hand over the package, nice and eas...” 

“Nah.” Hibiki’s laser blade extends with a crack of metal joints slamming into place; it slides through Trigger’s leg, leaving her foot clamped onto the rung while the rest spurts blood and swings free. It takes three whole disturbing seconds for the chick to scream, plenty of time for Hibiki to flatten himself against the bridge and disappear into the dark. 

While the girls are registering it all, yelling loud enough to alert the guard dogs above, Hibiki snaps off the laser blades and crawls hand-foot-hand-foot across the rungs into a better position. Cracks explode from the revolver barrels eardrum-breaking loud, bullets pinging off the holds where Hibiki had just been. 

“Where’d he go?”

“Fire! Just fucking fire!”

“My leg’s gone!”

“I told you! He has invisibility!”

“Shut the fuck up, you cunts.” 

The under-bridge goes quiet, except for Trigger’s sniffy sobs. Hibiki tenses. He knows that voice, low and calm, belongs to the Revolver leader, Janky. She’s the biggest of them, strapped hip-to-toe in sheathed knives and, of course, revolvers. She snaps one ankle clamp around a rung and dangles.

One thing Hibiki has going for him, as an island immigrant from a land so far beyond the Wall that the giants of Gako can’t pronounce its name, is his size. He’s half the height and a fraction of the weight of the locals. His red, flyaway hair is the only big thing about him. They say he has disappearing magic but in truth, he just fits neatly into shadows and keeps his mouth shut. 

Janky snaps open a little bag at her belt and squints into the dark. 

Hibiki swallows. His breath fogs up the inside of his mask as he snuggles close to a hot metal floor beam. 

The big Revolver leader bends, twists, struggles like a floppy fish, then she’s spinning from her clamped ankle. Her hand comes out of the bag full of something glowing and green.

Shit.

Janky blows the handful of fairy powder through her fist; it twirls around her, lighter than the air and the heat coming off the molten metal below, swirling in a gorgeous glowing spiral. The powder dances on the hot breeze, settling all over the Revolvers, the rungs, and Hibiki.

“Aw f--”

“There!”

zz-zz.

blam-blam-blam-blam go the revolvers, this time with much better aim. Hibiki dodges, tucks, rolls, and slashes from rung to rung, serpentine, fast as fuck, glowing green, hoping the girls are shit shots and low on ammo. A girl’s fairy-green hand clamps onto his upper arm; he whip-extends the laser blade up and back and the girl falls, screaming, her disembodied hand still clamped on him and bleeding down his pauldron. There’s no time to watch her incinerate. 

He takes one big leap, skipping four rungs, plenty of time to imagine that metal lava rushing up to meet him before he grabs a rung and skitters off like a pretty green bug, leaving the Revolvers cursing and bleeding behind him.

Across the bridge, Hibiki jumps onto a landing by the back service door to a massage parlor. Getting back across the bridge and home is impossible now, but that’s a problem for after this delivery. He wipes a thin line of glowing green snot across one gauntlet and bangs the passcode onto the door with the side of his fist.