Maarg's smile softened, the teasing completely melting away as he let the pop-culture debate drop. He turned his attention away from Gabby and looked back toward the heavy steel wall on the opposite side of the vault, the one lined with racks of firearms.
"Well, I guess it's about time we get to it, wouldn't you agree, Gabs?" Maarg said, his tone shifting from playful to purposeful.
What he meant was simple, it was time for her to step up. He completely trusted her tactical judgment, knowing she was the only one among them with a real eye for firepower except for maybe Henry.
Stepping close, Maarg placed a reassuring hand on her back and gave it a light, grounding pat before turning to walk toward the other side of the room. "Come on now, you're the only one with an eye for guns. Go easy on us rookies a bit."
By "rookies," he meant himself, Jack, and Sammy, survivors who didn't even know how to handle even a paintball gun and lacked the refined expertise that Gabby brought to the table when it came to choosing gear that wouldn't jam in the middle of a fire fight.
Gabby walked over to the towering wall of firearms, her eyes immediately narrowing into a focused, analytical squint as she scanned the racks of various calibers, finishes, and conditions.
Without turning around, she flicked a glance back at him. "So? What's your preference?" she asked bluntly.
Maarg blinked, caught completely off guard. "What?" he blurted out, his brain short-circuiting for a split second as he completely misunderstood the question.
For a terrifying, surreal beat, a stray thought flashed across his mind: Why is he asking about my type in women right now, in the middle of the Viper armory?! His eyes widened slightly as mild panic set in, was this a sudden test? A bizarre interrogation technique?
Catching the vacant, deer-in-the-headlights look on his face, Gabby let out an exasperated sigh, raising her voice just a fraction.
"The guns, Maarg," she said, deadpan, tapping the cold steel of a rifle rack with her knuckle. "What's your preference in guns?"
The blood rushed back to Maarg's face as the sheer absurdity of his own internal panic hit him. He coughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck again. "Right. Right, of course. Guns. Obviously."
---
"Desert Eagle," Maarg blurted out without missing a beat.
Gabby's eye twitched, and her expression instantly hardened into a deep, unimpressed frown. She let out a long, slow sigh and dropped her hand right onto the flap of her holster, her fingers drumming against the leather.
"You're still salty about that?" she asked, her voice dropping into a dangerous, dry tone.
The memory flashed back instantly, the humid night near the waterfall when He had nearly stumbled upon her while she was bathing, and then, with unbelievable nerve, he had swiped her family heirloom. It wasn't even that she desperately wanted to cling to the painful memories of her past life, but that piece belonged to her.
Why should she let some smug Kid walk off with it unless...
A sharp, cunning smirk spread across her face. "Fine. I'll make you a deal: I'll give you my precious "Sakazuki" if you can find me a better gun in this armory."
Maarg's eyes raises, "Sakazuki?" he chuckles. "And here I call myself a weeb"
gabby sighs, "it was the name its maker gave it, I just continue to call it so out of respect of its crafter"
Maarg's eyes lit up, a matching competitive smirk cutting across his face. "you have got yourself a Deal. You continue to select guns for jack and Sammy, I'll look around keeping my eyes peeled for the coolest-looking piece in this entire place."
Chuckling with pure, unadulterated gamer energy, Maarg practically bounced on his heels, spinning around and darting straight toward a stack of wooden supply crates tucked into the shadowy corner of the basement.
The guard didn't even bother to stand up from his chair, but he raised his voice, shouting across the room. "Hey! You!"
Maarg didn't stop running. "What?"
"You won't find anything over there," the guard yelled, sounding mildly amused and deeply exhausted. "Those are the surplus crates for loose ammo and old gun components, not any proper guns."
"You wish!" Maarg laughed manically,
tearing open the lid of a heavy wooden box and immediately rifling through the contents with his little gremlin hands. "I've played enough RPGs to know the legendary loot is always hidden in the obscure side-crates at the back of the dungeons!"
Gabby stood back by the main firearm rack, shaking her head as she watched him practically dive headfirst into a crate of rusted metal parts. Despite the absurdity of it all, she couldn't help the small, fond smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
---
Maarg emerged from the shadowy corner, pulling his hands out of a grime-caked crate. He was holding something small, definitely not a gun.
At first glance, it didn't look like anything familiar, just a clump of rusted scrap someone had tossed aside. But once he wiped the thick muck away on his sleeve, its true form revealed itself: a crude, blackened crossbar meant to wedge snugly inside a closed fist.
Two small finger rings jutted out from the sides, crusty with old oxidation, designed to lock securely around the index and pinky so it couldn't slip loose during a struggle. And curving outward from where the knuckles would rest were four jagged, hooked steel blades, narrow, wicked little things shaped like predatory claws, stained with something dark and unwashed along the edges.
It was small enough to vanish entirely inside a clenched palm. It was undoubtedly a "Bagh Nakh", a traditional weapon historically used by the legendary Maratha warriors.
"What's that?" Gabby asked, stepping away from the gun racks and tilting her head in curiosity.
"It's called a 'Bagh Nakh', or 'Tiger's Claw' in English," Maarg said, carefully testing the weight and build as he slid it onto his right hand. The rings slipped onto his fingers with a tight, reassuring fit.
"Back when I used to read up on history online, I found out this was one of the deadliest assassination weapons of the ancient india," Maarg continued, his voice dropping into an excited, geeky lore-dump. "Even Chhatrapati Shivaji, one of the greatest Maratha emperors, used one to counter an assassin and killed him with it. The best part? It can stay completely hidden and almost impossible to keep track of in a grapple."
Gabby watched him open and close his fist, the wicked little blades disappearing and reappearing with the movement of his fingers. For a guy who had just been searching for legendary RPG loot in a junk crate, he looked entirely too dangerous with a tiger's claw strapped to his hand.
"Well," Gabby murmured, raising an eyebrow. "Looks like your gremlin search strategy actually paid off for you but too bad...."
Maarg looked up toward the tall, industrial shelving units lining the back wall, the kind meant for heavy warehouse storage and grinned. "I guess the only way now is up."
Before Gabby could even get a word out, Maarg bent his knees and launched himself upward with a sudden, explosive surge of power. It wasn't normal human athleticism; it was fueled by a sharp jolt of his latent "Activator" powers.