Wild Arms: The Dee Legacy

By Robin "JChance" MacLachlan

Prologue 2: Child of Crime

Young Connie Flynn leapt to the side, the swirling air of her Turbulence spell carrying her far out of the way of the fire directed her way. Four bullets raised dust from the barren ground where she had been standing, and a much larger dust cloud erupted where a sonic blast touched down. A sonic blast?! Pegucci had spared no expense equipping his henchmen, all right--that one had to be an ancient ARM and not one of the modern ones, to pack so much power into what looked like a simple microphone. For the first time, Flynn thought as she ran, she knew why people were afraid of the “simple announcer” Judy. Then she went back to cursing the way that Filgaia's restoration had seemed to miss the part of Immoral Island surrounding the Devil's Playground. No cover for what looked easily to be a mile, and it would be more had the paranoid Count not grudgingly allowed a town to be built at a “safe distance” from his arena. Once she made it there, she could hide, and stow away on a ship to Milama. But right now, she couldn't trust to a last-second dodge like that again.

Half expecting to be cut down in the meantime, she tightly grasped the stone bead on the necklace her Baskar mother had given her before her father had taken her off, at the age of twelve, to “learn the Wanderer's life”, and prayed to Gurdjieff to shield her from her pursuers' weapons, the words of the ritual coming to her as if she had been born knowing them. She almost had--her mother had been one of the tribe's foremost practitioners of the Guardians' arcana, adding to them what she had learned as a Curan nun before “going native.” The comforting bubble of force rumbled into existence not a moment too soon, and a new volley of fire bounced off it as Flynn started running again. For Luceid's sake, why had she had to yank off Pegucci's wig after she'd cut his betting money from his belt with him none the wiser?

This answered itself, though. She'd been plotting to humiliate him however she could for the better part of a year, ever since her father had died in the Arena. The Wanderer's life, Kevin Flynn style, had been mostly a series of swindles and thefts, until, two years after leaving the Baskar Colony, he and his daughter had Wandered into the Devil's Playground, and Kevin had rapidly accumulated a gambling debt to Pegucci's organisation that the old freak despaired of collecting except in blood. Her father may have been an expert fast-talker and an even better sneak-thief, but the Bad News brothers had dropped him in a single blow. No, Connie thought as she pelted on, hearing four more cracks and a whine behind her, the wig wasn't enough. She'd be back for the head under it, but she'd have to get a lot stronger first. Hell, she'd have to get a lot stronger before she could even face the Milama branch of his Immoral Knights--which meant that she'd have to keep running even after she reached the town of water. She'd hop the train to Adlehyde, she decided--only there had that criminal empire failed to take root. Connie then stumbled over a rock, rolling head-over-heels just as more ARMs fire streaked overhead. Thinking too much...or perhaps not. She grasped the golden bead consecrated to Chapapanga and offered a prayer of thanks, then picked herself up and made the last dash, legs aching, into the alleyways of Immoral Town.