Jocasta realized a moment too late that the crowd had melted back into the saloon the moment it was clear that Chalnarc had ordered his last drink. Partly that was because they were afraid of his killer, but mostly, she suspected, it was because people had their chance steal what they could, be it loot, influence, or position in whatever pecking order established itself after the outlawas corpse had cooled. Judging from the shouts of alarm and dismay, they had discovered her handy work with the directional mines. Accusatory shouts rang out inside, and her HUD flashed amber with several imminent gunshots, reports that flashed red as the owners pulled the trigger. From the snippets of conversation she was receiving as a text crawl, two factions were already squaring up, both blaming the other for this additional carnage.

Sighing she stood up and stepped out onto the dusty street. The clear high heels she was wearing sank a half inch into the dust and she was conscious of how out of place she must look, legs bare to the hem of the long jacket she had grabbed from the changing room. The heavy gauge plasma lance gripped in her left hand was horribly incongruous with the rest of her ensemble, the short boxy body and the long tapered probe that served as a barrel making it look more like a piece of dental equipment than a weapon. Plasma lances combined elements of traditional plasma weapons with the greater punch of cartridge based propellant weapons, taking the best of both worlds to cram as much punch as possible into a small package. The downside was that the capacity was low and the cost per shot was very high.

"I'm Jocasta Rayne," she called across the street to the stranger. Targeting solutions flashed into her HUD speculating on the best possible shots, measuring chances of a hit, vs probable penetration of armor, vs chance of death or incapacity. The best case, a 44 percent chance of death or incapacitation that would end the conflict, was a shot to the armor joint below the right shoulder, but those weren't odds that Jocasta was willing to play whilst talking remained an option.

"I'm here for the bounty on Chalnarc, though I guess the live capture bonus is off the table."