World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - Odd Job [Complete]

[z-Amber Wren]

[OOC: This is a quick fiction to detail how Amber has been making her money since losing her job. Most of her nights aren't quite this exciting, either to write or read.]

It had all seemed so simple and above board. Show up. Watch a building. Call a number if someone approached it.

But Amber had known what it was – she was playing look out for some nefarious activity. She didn’t know what it was, didn’t want to know – though the fact that it was a jeweler’s shop limited what it could be. She hadn’t wanted to do the job, either, but she needed the money, badly. If she did well here, she would have enough to finish what she owed for rent for last month and pay off half of this month’s.

She sighed softly and shifted her lean against the wall, aware of the soft scraping noise her jeans made against the painted brick. The cell phone her contact – who hadn’t given or asked for a name – had given her hung in her hand, loosely clasped in disinterested fingers. Stake-outs, regardless of their nature, were damned boring.

Steel touched the side of her neck as a hand grabbed her hair. “No-no,” a male voice said. “Don’t move, don’t scream. You want to live, right?”

Amber felt irritation as she realized that someone had gotten the drop on her. Next time, pay more attention! she chided herself as she tensed her muscles and prepared to fight. She had to be careful; the pistol or whatever gun was pointed at her throat probably wouldn’t kill her, but it would make it hard to keep the Oath. A dark-skinned hand – Hispanic, perhaps, though in the dark mouth of the alley, it was hard to tell – grabbed her phone.

Across the street, at the building she was supposed to be watching, she saw forms skulking toward it. This was her job – she had to do something.

She spun into the man’s arm, getting inside the reach of his gun. He tried to get her back in his sights when he should have leapt away, and she punched him in the sternum as hard as she could. With a scream that was swallowed by his pained gasp, her opponent went down, his gun going off as his hand spasmed. He further fucked up by dropping the gun and her phone. Amber snatched up the phone and hit three on the speed-dial. She heard it ring just as a gunshot went off.

He’d had a buddy further up the alley. The bullet slammed into her shoulder and Amber sprawled on the concrete. Screaming at herself to get up, her eyes fell on the gun that Thug Number One had dropped. She grabbed it and rolled onto her back as another shot cut into the concrete near her. The gun felt natural and the shot practiced; she hadn’t fired a pistol in a few years, but her uncles had drilled her well. The shot caught the second guy in his chest and he went down with a wail of pain.

Her job was done with the phone call; no one had told her to remain and get shot at. She stripped off her shirt and pressed it to her shoulder, stopping the drip of blood. Kicking over a garbage can, she scattered the trash over what little blood she’d left; hopefully, it would contaminate her spoor. Last, she quickly wiped down the gun and put it back in the collapsed man’s hands. He wheezed but didn’t fight her, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Then she ran, first as a woman; when she was far enough away, she shifted into a wolf in another dark alley. The rest of the run home was fast enough, even with her injured shoulder.

She had to get a better job.