Sky Masterson knows when luck is on his side.
He drills the
third Fade right through the heart with the gat in his right, and he
points the gun in his left at the spot in the room, perhaps behind
Christine, where he would go if he were an oriental Traveler, trusting
to his luck to guess the right spot.
SNAP! The third Fade jerks backward, shot in the heart.
Sky then (without looking to
see if his first shot against the third Fade lands) swings his
righthand gun toward the oriental traveler and shoots both guns.
The Traveler did not in fact Travel at this moment, but struck Christine across the brow with the wooden handle of his knife. She goes backward, miraculously falling between Sky's bullets.
The Traveler then slips an arm around Christine's waist, catching her as she falls. Before she can fall very far in any case, he Travels and is gone.
The two remaining Fades cannot seem to evade Shara's wings, so they dare not solidify. One looks toward Sky, sees Christine vanish, and whistles a short double sound.
(John, I have placed the character sheets under Useful Links on the right side of the page.)
Point of order - if the traveler did not travel at the moment when I shot the second gun, how did he avoid the shot from the first gun, which was pointed at his current location? That was the whole purpose of shooting at two places at once.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, Sky Masterson closes his eyes and listens carefully for Christine's voice, or, better yet, the snap of a Traveler reappearing in the next room, on the roof, or downstairs.
If he hears nothing immediately, visualizes Christine and the Jap as clearly as he can and Travels to their current whereabouts.
(It is not clear from the book how Travelers follow each other, and Traveling is not my main talent, but I try it anyway).
If he neither hears anything nor is able to travel to her current location by imagining her, Sky Masterson throws himself prone and Travels to the roof of the building where he is (unless there is another floor in the way, if this is within his limited range). If no small objects appear inside him, he looks every which way across the roof, looking for signs of commotion. He pay particular attention to the brand-new Nash with Texas tags, in case the Japs use the gang's buggy for a getaway.
1. Sorry, I didn't understand that you were firing at where he WAS as well as where he likely WOULD BE. In that case, well, things happen slightly differently. Stay tuned.
ReplyDelete2. Faye has a limited clairvoyant ability to "see" where she's going, right from the start. We never get a first-person POV from any other Traveler, so we don't know if they all have it. As she does not begin developing additional Powers until the third book, it seems reasonable to conclude that all Travelers, when jumping blind, can use their "head map" or "solid sense" to avoid collision. Although many Travelers die young, so this ability isn't perfect.
The teleporting battle on the airship at the end of Hard Magic clearly shows two expert Travelers chasing each other. So I will assert that, provided you were there when the teleport happened, you can try and follow. But it won't always work.
Any time the order is unclear, it is on me rather than on the moderator, so we can just go with this. Keeping in mind I shot the righthand automatic twice, once at the fade, and once at the traveler, he could have blinked away between shots.
ReplyDeleteSky has a limited Traveler range of ten feet, so his headmap should be limited as well. I assume that he has the follow a Traveler through Travel ability (which I also thought all Travelers had from the description in book three) but it is proportionally weak and uncertain, since most his points are in Acing, and having bullets miss him.