<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/4/45/Bigjake.png)(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/6/62/Scooter2.png)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Big Jake, Scooter<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Sioux Union<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 20th<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>After Midnight<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Behind the tracks, sneaking between buildings towards West Main, then running.<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Nell Robinson, Matthew Ford, CLOSED<br/><hr/><br/>Jake’s arm tightened around her neck for a moment, an attempt to bring her body up to shield herself from the shot he saw coming.  But then the bullet came out of the chamber, slicing so close to Nell’s cheek she could feel the tiny bit of lead nearly score her cheek.  There was a yank, and a jerk, from the body behind her, and for a moment the arm grasped tighter.   Another gunshot squeezed from his pistol, but it was a reflexive thing, unaimed and going wild in the throes of death.    Then it went slack, leaving her free to roll away.<br/><br/>There was a mess of blood and the shattered remains of a face - the bullet had passed through cheekbone and cheek before traveling through the skull.  He was dead - the gun finally coming down to the ground when the handle crashed against the stone walk of the small courtyard the Judge’s home shared with several others.<br/><br/>Scooter’s sawed off shotgun was leveled and pointed.  Even with his height, he didn’t have a clear shot at the fallen, and his jaw was tense.  Even with his height, he was all but invisible between the alleys which sheltered him, a moving darkness in a sea of shadow - but before him, the moonlight illuminated the scene clearly.<br/><br/>Jake, his only friend, dead.  The man who’d killed him, a clean shot obscured by the bodies of the pretty redhead and his deceased friend.  The only clear shot he had was on the woman kneeling over him.  Tending his wounds.  Love in her eyes.<br/><br/>The barrel wavered.  Blood for blood.  It was practically law in Gomorra.  It was a credo Jake lived by.  He could practically hear the ghost of his friend screaming in his ear.  Pull the trigger.  End her life.  Repay the man for his own loss.<br/><br/><em>But she didn’t do nothin’.</em>He argued with the ghost.  He knew he could kill her - it was a clean shot, and he’d never seen anyone live through taking one of the solid slugs in the sawed-off’s barrel through the chest.  More often it left fist sized holes in people, and there was a few seconds of choking on their own blood.  He squeezed, the trigger tense against his finger.<br/><br/>Then he lowered the gun, and ran through the darkness.  It was only three quick steps before he was out of sight.  As much as he sometimes wished it, he wasn’t the hardened murderer his friend was.  He’d killed before - crushed men's heads and tossed them to their graves, put holes in people with his gun.  He’d strangled and beaten, he’d tossed dynamite into the holes in the earth miners had dug.  He’d inflicted death and pain, but it wasn’t all he was.<br/><br/>Besides, why did the girl have to die?  Either of them?  To cover for the Whateleys and the Law Dogs?  That ship had already flown.  Sailed.  Maybe it was an airship.<br/><br/>Not so distantly, a wolf howled, and a shiver went down Scooter’s spine as he ran through the streets, the alleys.