The recoil of the heavy pistol pushed back and again into the palm until the weapon racked dry with a distinctive snap. The venting gas from the chamber filling a bit of the immediate view, the hunter knew that retaliation was on the way. Granted not all of his shots had surely hit and even those that did were likely to do little but slow the mark down, now was not the time to assess just how effective the firing had been. A step back into cover again between the crusted bricks and more than ample graffiti, thumb depressing the magazine release and sending yet another piece of scrap plastic to the ground, a strange, momentary impulse called out to the back of mind that something was off. The noise, the stimulus of it, was behind the jacketed hunter, and before his hand could even slip for another magazine, the storm of falling projectiles clattered against his partial cover.

Showered with more than a sprinkling of brick dust and pulverized mortar, the man fell to a knee and laid against the wall, shaking himself off. Oversized handgun still resting vertically in palm, its shiny obsidian exterior powdered now with grey, the man peered around the corner. Not towards the gunfight, but the [i]other[/i] gunfight. The new one that had just spontaneously made itself. In all honesty, that was expected. Some poor scrub defending their home against what was clearly another gang problem in the heart of a Combat Zone. Granted seeing anything would have been just about impossible regularly between the haze, the dust, the ambient glow, but some eyes were just inherently better than others, especially when it came to picking out shapes that didn't belong.

Pulling back in between the walls, having seen enough to know someone was there, holding something - something gun shaped, maybe not, close enough - in their direction, the answer was straightforward; shoot back. First things first came as the new magazine was slammed into place with enough force the slide snapped forward on its own. The second came with looking himself over, to note there were no added holes of course, but plenty of cosmetic damage that would be a real pain in the ass to get out thanks to the dust. So it came down now to whoever it was getting their rebuttal, deserved or not. And naturally so, the contracted recovery agent steadied his pulse again, moved finger to trigger, stood and depressed it back as many times as he could in the span of maybe a second.

Now, the shooting was assisted by the user and sight alike - the target crystal clear - but the rapid fire wasn't meant to do more than put their head down and if lucky, punch through the concrete near them and perhaps into them, but that was a gamble. After all, recoil still existed and without chromed up arms and a fancy retool of the entire nervous system, the shots were going to go where the barrel went, which was a rough approximation of aim. Even if it all missed maybe the retaliating armor penetrating rounds punching chip sized holes through walls around them would tell them to back off. Maybe it wouldn't, who cared. The psycho rolling with a machine gun and tweaked up on some new drugs was the real focus; after all, the guy was pelted by a few shots and had the goons from some gang not been rolling on him too, the hunter would have been outgunned and now outnumbered. So the only option now post shooting was to move and move he did.

The dash was maybe five feet across, to another alleyway, but it felt like an eternity of crossing open space. Perhaps it was just being on and in the moment, being ambushed tended to do that, but once he cleared into the cover there was a long breath. Then a lot more yelling down the alley, not him of course. Instead the gunfire dipped and the sounds of a few people moving, sprinting and splashing through the seedy, trashy corridors was making bad things worse. The positive was, to the keen ears that clearly it was multiple people, not just one running anywhere near him... the downside being that now more potential enemies were here; it wasn't like the boosters cared for the help. So that sent the man packing, wiping his brow with the cuff of his jacket, and now moving closer toward the other shooter from above.

For now he'd let the crazies slug it out and deal with whoever was trying to pick them off from behind. After all, being shot in the back tended to slow down the acquisition of payment, and having less enemies was better than more.

[@Terminal]