Chapter 444 Standoff

Dave heard his bell ringing. At this late hour, it was most definitely the pizza delivery service he had called less than 30 minutes ago. He moved toward the door, with each step cursing the fact that he was still having severe cramps. The cold shower had apparently just been agonizingly cold with no other effects. He would have to have a talk with Desmond about this when he went back to the gym.

Dave opened the door and was instantly alerted that something was wrong. The pizza delivery man was not wearing a work uniform, and the way he was holding the pizza was awfully unprofessional. He was holding it by the edge making it bend, and his left hand was tucked suspiciously inside his pocket as if he was holding something.

"S’up, cunt," spat the ’pizza delivery guy’.

Immediately, Dave slammed the door shut and lunged to the side. Only to hear a loud explosive sound and notice a pervasive smell of gunpowder.

Dave didn’t panic, surprising even himself. The various events in Conquest had fried his nerves enough that he was used to pressure. Another loud gunshot sounded from outside his door and the door eerily swung open.

The "pizza guy" must have shot the door control panel shorting it out and causing the mechanism to unlock the door. If he should survive this, Dave swore to get himself a good old fashioned metal lock.

Dave quietly moved away from the door and slammed the light switches off. He moved upstairs. This was his home, so his only advantage would be that he knew it better than the assailant.

Dave’s assumption proved him correct as the shooter had no idea where the light switch was, and with time being of the essence he opted to walk in the dark, fumbling and stumbling on the furniture, and shooting more rounds at what he believed was Dave.

"Yo, fucker? Dead already?" The man yelled, but Dave opted not to say anything. This wasn’t a movie where he was a stupid teenager for the amusement of the audience. Making just one single mistake would lead to his early grave, so to give the asshole with a gun his location would be the epitome of stupidity.

Thinking under pressure had become an unconscious habit of Dave, his mind no longer worked as if he was a scared person, but opted for pragmatism over panic, as it had learned that anything else wouldn’t serve him any good.

The gunshots were loud, so the people in the building must have heard them. There was no way they would have confused them with anything but gunshot as the successive shots were clear and loud.

His in house phone was bound to ring, either security or someone else in the building trying to check up on him. This was a chance he could use. No, it was the only chance, so he HAD to make it count. Dave was in his bedroom, he didn’t have anything on him he could use to defend himself.

Next to his bed were two objects, a lamp and a small pot with a decorative cactus. The lamp was too light. Even if he used it to smack the assailant, it wouldn’t cause much damage, leaving more than enough time for the guy to use his pistol. The pot on the other hand, was heavy and hard to handle, but on contact, it could be brutal. Dave naturally opted for the pot. He picked it up and slowly made his way down.

He didn’t have much time. Eventually, the assailant would get used to the darkness, or worse he might find the light switch. Both were very bad scenarios for Dave as it would negate the advantage the darkness provided him.

Unlike in the game world, he didn’t have night vision. Still, he had a small edge and could recognize things in the dark better, especially since it was his home.

Dave knew where the assailant was immediately, as he heard him stumbling on one of the chairs of the counter.

Dave got closer, his heart was beating fast, threatening to burst out of his chest, he even feared that the guy with the pistol might hear it. While approaching, he miscalculated a step and ended up nudging the dining table.

The assailant turned and shot three consecutive times at where he believed Dave was. Only to end up missing, yet in those three shots, the room was lit up enough for the two to see each other. Dave had spotted a few things in those brief moments where his life almost ended.

The man was holding the gun rather terribly, with one hand, and unpoised to control the recoil. A rookie. He had his share of seeing people with guns and had gained enough knowledge about them from the chatter with Zoe and Dante about her father’s hobby.

He also recognized the type of the pistol. With today’s modern guns, recognizing a pistol made sixty years ago was not difficult. It was an old gun, a low caliber, he didn’t know the exact model, Zoe would have guessed it in a second he thought, but he remembered something she had told him.

Most of the older generation guns had a limited amount of rounds, all stacked up in a chamber. Depending on the caliber of the bullet and the size of the magazine one could guess how many bullets the cartridge could hold. Seeing that most of the handle was hidden within the assailant’s hand, he guessed that the weapon could at most hold seven to nine bullets.

In either case, that was still dangerous. The assailant had shot twice at the door, two more times when he was looking for Dave, and three more times just now. That’s seven bullets down. If he was lucky, he would be hearing the man reloading his gun right about now revealing that his clip was empty. If not, the man could have another one or two bullets in the chamber and that would spell doom for Dave if he ended up being shot. Another thing playing a big factor in this scenario, what if the gunner had no idea that he was already out of bullets or that he has no spare ammo?

This didn’t play in Dave’s favor, those were more reasons that he had no way to uncover. If by some awful luck, the man had more bullets, Dave would be risking his life if he were to charge in and attack back.

And if not, Dave would be wasting the only chance he has to take the upper hand.

Suddenly, the phone rang, surprising both of them. The assailant however was more surprised, his nerves on edge causing him to shoot two more rounds at the phone, killing it... and then a continuous clicking sound echoed through the room.

’This is it’, Dave thought. Almost mechanically, he rose, flipping the entire table toward the assailant, causing him to stumble and yelp. By that time, Dave’s eyes had gotten used to the darkness of the room and were able to discern the exact position of the man. He hurled the vase in his hand in that direction and with a loud sound it crashed, causing the assailant to mutter a pained groan.

The vase broke on contact and the cactus must have stuck itself to him. That thing would be quite a bitch to get rid of, as proven by the assailant. He had tried to remove it by hand, unaware what the thing stuck to him was, and cried out in pain as more of its needles got stuck to his hand. Dave saw this almost clearly. One of the assailant’s hands was now out of commission. His gun was unusable, even if he could reload it and had the spare magazines, he would not have the speed and dexterity to do it with a wounded hand.

The situation started to turn into his favor and Dave planned to keep it this way. He grabbed at one of the modern lean chairs of his living room like a club and he calmly started moving toward the assailant before he smashed it down on his wounded hand with as much strength as his aching muscles could offer.

The man dropped like a log, groaning. Dave took the chance and walked to the light switch. He lit it up and both of them got blinded for a moment by the new light source. Nevertheless, after a bit of blinking, he had a better look at the man. He was fat, looked pretty scruffy, and he was still young. Might even be the same age as him he guessed. His head was bleeding, the chair must have dealt more damage than intended, but his sympathy with his wannabe killer was limited.

Dave’s heart began slowing down, and the adrenalin rush began subduing. He went to a nearby drawer, pulled a gift from Zoe’s father, and went back to the living room to grab the same chair he struck the young man with and calmly placed it down and sat on it.

Dave didn’t speak for a while, waiting for the pained man to stop moaning from the agony.

After realizing that Dave wasn’t about to finish him off, the young man scurried to pull out a knife from his pocket.

Dave didn’t panic, the guy on the other hand nearly lost his bowels, immediately dropping his knife as he recognized what was in Dave’s hand. Another pistol. At first, he thought it was the same one he used, but on a second glance, the two were different, the one in Dave’s hand was a revolver.

"Sit down, but first kick the knife away! Also put your hands behind your head" Dave demanded while lazily pointing at the assailant and one of the chairs in the room.

The young man gulped hard and kicked it away with his foot while his one unhurt arm came behind his head.

"Do you smoke?" Dave asked.

The man shook his head.

"Whose idea was this?"

"T-the fuck are you talking about?" the young man asked.

"Just tell me who it was who sent you? Are you one of Warlord’s goons? Is he such a sore loser, that he wants to take me out IRL?"

"I don’t have anything to do with him. I’ve come here because of you, you piece of shit." The young man cursed, as he was becoming more agitated, his hand leaving the space behind his head, staring daggers at Dave.

"I would suggest you don’t piss off or curse at the guy with the gun now! Fine, then why’d you come here?"

The more Dave appeared to be calm, the more dangerous he seemed to the man. This was not going well, he thought, his eyes shifting to his dropped weapons.

"Now, it’s okay if you don’t answer me. But know this, you’ve committed breaking and entering, attempted first-degree murder in my house, and the simple fact that you stink of sweat is enough to put you for a long time in prison, so be more courteous to the man who could make you skip all those procedures..."

In that brief moment when Dave stopped talking, the man honestly believed that Dave would forgive him and let him go, but Dave’s next words painted the man’s world in dark gray.

"And make you meet your maker."

The man began sweating at the scary threat, only further increasing the acidic smell of his body.

"Let’s be reasonable about this. Now, who are you?" Dave asked while wiggling his gun.

"I’m Josh,"

"Okay Josh, I’m Dave, not so good to meet you. So Josh, tell me, why did you do this?"

"It’s all because of you," Josh answered in a sullen mood. "You took everything from me you bast-" before Josh could finish his cursing Dave’s fist which hit the table and the revolver pointing at him reminded him of his situation so he quieted down.

"Good Josh, now tell me what did I do to you, that is so bad that you’ll break into my home with a gun?"

"The Legacy."

Dave frowned then understood everything, "You’re... one of the guys who wanted my help with the Legacy? Bone Breaker?"

"Yeah, so you DO remember?!."

"Right, let’s make this straight once and for all. I didn’t take anything from you! In case you didn’t realize it. You two were playing me. You and your friend Stainless something. From the first time we met you tried to use me to your agenda. Heck, I wouldn’t have minded if you had told me to fuck off the moment you started fighting the Boss. Let’s be real, he was way above my league and the stuff you gave me would have been enough for me. But instead, you decided to backstab me. Kill me there in the game. I’m not cool with people trying to kill me, not even in-game, but even less in real life. as you see right now." Dave grinned, and his smile reminded Bone Breaker a lot of the infamous Draugr and his exploits.

"I could easily kill you. Right here, right now and no one would complain. Hell I’d probably be branded a hero. Imagine the headlines. ’Skelly, assaulted in his own home! Manages to kill his assailant!’ Heck I’m even tempted to thank you for the propaganda. But I really hate it when people pull guns in my face you know?"

"What are you gonna do to me?" Bone Breaker asked, shaking.

"Right now, as long as you’re calm and collected, I have little need to kill you. I’d rather not dirty my hands." Dave’s provocative words caused Josh to shrink on himself even further.

"Now I’ll be calling the police. I would rather you do not do any sudden moves or try to go for that knife, with your dominant hand. In that case, you won’t be able to use it right, and you’ll only give me more reasons to shoot you. So be a good boy and stay put!"

Dave called 911 and was immediately connected to an operator.

"911 here, what is your emergency?"

"An attempted murder happened in my home, I have the assailant in custody. And I need a few policemen to come here."

"Please do know we do record these phone calls. If this is a prank we’ll be charging you with Obstruction of Justice.���

"My name is David Ruster. And this is my address," Dave told them the address, by now many people would have reported that gunshots were heard coming from this location.

"Oh my... You’re Mr. Skeletal, right?" The officer immediately changed the way he spoke to him.

"Yup, that’s me. Now, could you please hurry up?"

"Yes sir, we already sent police officers your way since we got reports of gunshots. Please give me more details on what is going on." The officer asked.

Dave told her everything he could on the phone, and Josh, apparently having resigned himself to his fate, had calmly stayed put waiting for the officers to come.

Soon, the police arrived at Dave’s doors, and they found the two seated in front of each other, having been told that Dave was the homeowner and currently holding a gun on his assailant. As soon as the police entered they asked him to drop it, so they could take care of everything from then on.

Dave smiled and squeezed the trigger. Bone Breaker and the police officers twitched as it clicked.

A tiny flame popped out.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

"I never thought this would work," Dave smiled and stood up.

The shock was apparent, on both Bone Breaker and the cops’ faces. He had been holding an armed criminal with a gun-shaped lighter.

Dante would be proud Dave thought to himself.