Solomon's Crucible 75. The Exit Survey (2) (Patreon)

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Solomon looked up from butchering the last of the armed guards to find that the overall situation was under control. Or, if it was in chaos, it was a generally favorable sort of chaos.

Todd and Alan had taken care of the two ushers. Whatever kind of benefits were handed out with the white armband, it wasn't enough to fend off a surprise attack from close range.

Tiffany had stabbed the clerk in the box office straight through the gap at the bottom of the window. Security that had been designed to prevent drunken fans from jumping the counter had come up short in the face of a sword. She was grimly holding on as the clerk tried to pull himself off the blade. His struggles weakened noticeably as Solomon watched.

The two students who had been lining up to exit after recently receiving their white armbands had put their hands up and backed away to put their backs up against the wall. The other students who had been waiting in line, seven or eight of them, were just starting to react to the sudden burst of violence. They looked like they were on the verge of breaking into all out panic.

The original plan had Solomon booked up fighting the guards for the next little while. With his schedule suddenly clear, Solomon decided that it was time to improvise.

"Hey," he called out, stepping back towards the crowd. That got the attention of some of the students, but not all. He hung his bloody hatchet on his belt and drew his second pistol, waving it in the air and raising his voice. "Hey!"

That did it. The shock of seeing gunfire reintroduced to the world had a way of grabbing people's eyes.

"You guys have a choice," Solomon said. "You want to leave right now, the door's open! The police are still holding downtown, if you want to give them a try."

Several of the students looked toward the door with longing in their eyes. None of them moved just yet.

"You want to stay here, see if you get any brownie points for good behavior," Solomon continued, then shrugged. "Well, nobody's gonna kill you over it right now. Or..."

He held the pistol out in front of him, letting everybody get a good look at it.

"If you want to get your hands on a gun and shoot these assholes," Solomon said, "come with us and you might just get the chance."

There was a silence after he finished talking that stretched on for longer than Solomon had expected. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Julie depart, heading to carry out her task of announcing that the exit was open. Finally a single student stepped up.

"I'll come with you."

"Good. Great. You're with us," Solomon said, then swept his gaze over the rest of the crowd. "Everybody else... good luck."

He'd have to remember that the Powder Charge boosted his physical abilities but didn't seem to do much to help his public speaking. Well, that was fine. They had a hard road ahead of them. They could use more hands to help out, but they didn't need any lukewarm volunteers.

Solomon headed over to the exit to clean up. If they were going to encourage everybody to leave, they'd get more takers if they didn't have to climb over a pile of dead bodies on the way out.

The purple tint to his vision faded as he walked. He felt a slight headache, but nothing like as bad as it had been last time. His HP and MP, similarly, were both in the middling range instead of completely wiped out. It seemed that starting a Powder Charge from a position of full health helped to mitigate the backlash afterwards.

He took the gadget that the green armband wearer had been using to scan people and tucked it into his inventory. He didn't know what it was, but it looked complicated and expensive. After that, he gave the body a quick frisk to see if he had been carrying anything valuable outside of his inventory before he used Disassembly. The body vanished, leaving a modestly sized core behind that Solomon pocketed.

He worked the protective gear off of one of the red armbanded guards and was about to disassemble the body when his sister put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up and then took a step back at her request.

Tiffany had a dagger in her hands that she used to attack the body's shoulder joint. After about half a minute of work she huffed in frustration and looked to Solomon.

He sighed, then pulled the axe off his belt. Two good chops had the arm off. He eyed Tiffany warily, wondering exactly what she was going to do with it.

For her part, Tiffany was practically skipping as she headed over to pick up the discarded spear. A moment later she had the arm impaled, red armband on prominent display. Then she headed back towards the bleachers.

Solomon shook his head and turned back to disassembling bodies. They were already spitting in the face of the invaders. Adding a bit more insult on top of injury wouldn't make that much of a difference. It might also encourage some of the fence sitters to get out while the getting was good.

The armor and weapons from the other guards went into his inventory. While he was eager to get other people wielding firearms as soon as possible, quality melee weapons were going to be in high demand for a while. It was nice of the invaders to shoulder the cost, though he had a feeling that reaping a harvest like this one wouldn't be so easy next time.

He finished his cleanup and stood with Julie's brothers and their new recruit. It wasn't long before Julie and Tiffany returned at the head of a long line of students looking to escape. Solomon smiled at the sight. Each escapee was one less person who might join the alien cause. Even if they weren't going to fight for him directly, they could at least now act as the enemy of his enemy.

He gave Tiffany a congratulatory pat on the shoulder and moved to take the lead as their group headed outside.

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