< Destroy the Copies/Targets >

< Earn/Become the position > 

Okay. She can do this. Probably.

Taking aim feels as natural as breathing. More. As natural as having a heartbeat. She focuses, lines up her shot, squeezes the trigger and has a split second right after it's too late to stop when she remembers what's in her real living hand and wonders if she's just killed herself with carelessness—

The cylinder rotates and a puff of dust kicks up from the glassy rock at the figures' feet, and she can see a little break in the smooth golden curve at the base of the barrel, and she can feel, like it's a part of her own body, the way the pieces of the gun are spread out hovering tense and ready to fire at her command, the arc of that—ammo indicator or whatever it is, those slivers of rock aren't nearly big enough to be bullets—clicking down to show how much of it she's spent. She shoots again. Nicks a creature's elbow, this time, which isn't quite enough to take it out. Again. She's never held a gun before in her life and at some point she's going to take a moment to freak out about suddenly being so attuned to this one but now is not that moment. Again.

The final shot hits it in the chest, and it shatters into dust and rubble, falling to the ground in a pile of rock and small blue dots. The rocks and dust dissipate soon after, but the blue dots remain. The other figure does not seem to react at all to the death of his companion, pacing back and forth as though doing so will help it find a way to get closer to Jesse so it can attack her. 

She shoots at the second one. Misses, tries again. Hits it once, twice, feels the ammo indicator spinning into the empty space left behind by each shot. How many of these does she have left? It's hard to count them. Plenty more to take down one rock-thing with, anyway. She hits it for the third time and watches it crumble. Wonders what those little blue specks of light are supposed to be.

When the second figure falls into rock and rubble and dust and nothing but glowing blue dots, another bridge forms up out of white mist, leading her to the platform where she just cleared away the figures -- though it's a bit of a drop to get there. Moving near the blue dots laying on the ground does nothing, and touching them (if she chooses to) is like touching a warm bit of ground. 

When she moves past the blue dots, four more figures come out from behind various pillars, one at a time, to move towards her with menace and ill-intent. 

The other interesting thing that happens is that once the gun has been dormant for a couple of seconds, the ammo indicator starts clicking back toward full. If she concentrates, she can feel the little slivers of rock sliding back into existence at the end of the arc as it rotates back to make room.

It turns out it's harder to hit things under time pressure. She misses her first several shots and has to back away and regroup. But then they're coming in plenty close, close enough that she manages to get one in the head for the first time.

A headshot is sufficient to make the figure crack, and break, shattering almost instantly from the impact, leaving nothing but blue dots behind like all the rest. 

The other three continue to shamble towards her. 

She takes a deep breath that doesn't quite feel like breathing and keeps backing away slowly. Wings the second one in the shoulder, then the other shoulder, then gets it solidly in the chest and turns toward the next—but it doesn't go down and she has to turn back and hit it again. Two more misses. She's getting a little frantic, putting shot after shot into the air around the thing which doesn't help at all—and finally she nicks it again and it goes down. So, assuming they're consistent: one headshot, or two solid hits and one glancing, or one solid hit and three glancing.

The third one is getting really uncomfortably close now, but uncomfortably close also means a nice big target, and rather than fucking around with headshots she just steadies her aim and hits it three times in the chest.

It goes down like all the rest in yet another pile of rubble which quickly dissolves into dust, and for a moment, there's nothing but the sound of her own breathing. 

And then another figure steps out from behind a pillar and aims a gun-shaped object at her, and starts shooting. 

"Ow! Fuck!"

She ducks behind the nearest obstacle, a low stone block. Her hand lands on one of those mysterious blue lights.

When she moves near enough to the little blue lights now, they fly up towards her, specifically the wound in her shoulder. They move into the wound, press against it, glow brighter, warm and gentle and lessening the pain from where she was shot. 

If she looks at the wound, she'll realize that the pain is less because the wound is smaller, and starting to heal/scab over. 

There's still several more blue dots scattered nearby, not within range of whatever made them jump towards her, though she can move a little closer if she wants to see what will happen. 

She leans toward the nearest one and holds out her hand, hoping that that'll be enough and she won't have to shove her injured shoulder directly at it.

It flies towards her shoulder once her hand gets near enough, moves into her shoulder, glows in a warm and gently numbing sensation, and now her wound is almost entirely healed. 

This place is weird. But I guess I'm not complaining.

Okay, time to handle the last one. She peeks up over her stone block to look for it.

It's slowly shambling towards her, weapon ready to fire. It turns towards her when her head pokes out, but slow enough for her to duck back if she needs to before it takes another shot. 

She fires off a shot and then ducks back down without waiting to see if it hit. Thinks for a second, considering where exactly it was standing when she saw it, and then rolls out from behind the stone block and aims in its direction and just keeps shooting, tracking it as best she can but not counting shots carefully the way she did with the ones that couldn't shoot back.

The figure takes a moment to get oriented properly when Jesse starts shooting, and only gets off a couple shots (one of which manages to graze her) in her general direction before crumbling into dust and more healing blue dots. 

She collects dots until her shoulder feels all better, and the arm it hit on the other side. Once they're done with her body they fix up her jacket too, which she appreciates.

If she looks around she'll find a... column of white light, barely the width of a pencil, in the middle of the platform, reaching down from far above her stopping a foot or two above the platform. Or more accurately it's rising slowly out of the point a little above the platform, sending bits of broken light and very small cubes of dark stone floating gently upwards. 

She waits a moment, to see if she'll get a hint, but she guesses she doesn't really need one. And she's not sure Polaris can even hear her right now.

She touches the light.

< You/We wield the Gun/You > 

< The board appoints you > 

< Congratulations, Director > 

There's a squeal as though hearing audio interference patterns, which solidifies into a voice and a shadowy face, a face she might recognize from where she saw it lying sideways on the floor leaking blood a few moments ago. The voice and face speaks a few words understandable through the interference, and then shifts back to fuzz and incoherence before becoming intelligible again, several times in a row: 

"...something's coming...."

"...this threat....."

"....an attack..."

".....duty as Director..."

".....keep the Bureau safe...."

And then she's standing in the Director's office, leaning over, having just picked up the Gun. 

But wait—wasn't she just—and that—but then—what??????

Did you hear that? It's the dead man. Right after the pyramid spoke to me and it was just noise and I understood every word. And this gun's... alive.

And the chair she remembers sitting in is lying on the floor, right where the dead man left it. She doesn't remember picking it up. She definitely doesn't remember putting it back down. But she was there, she was in it, holding the gun at her temple and staring straight ahead into nothing. And then she was in the mist world fighting the rock people, and... now she's back.

Well. That last bit seems like the most important part.