"Ah, I've heard there's some commotion 'round town."
You'd barely been a block away from the saloon when people started gossiping.
"What's going on?" A passerby had chirped, clueless as to the conversation. She'd been talking with a friend of hers a moment earlier. You remembered her-- the one with the red bonnet.
"I heard it started o'er there!" A redhead murmured, scratching his sideburns and staring in the direction you were already looking.
You hoped the man was kidding. His guess as to where it was coming from had made your hairs start standing on end.
"Nnnosy one, ain't he? Not got anythin' be'er t' do than run aft'r some sshtupid rumor? Aaay'm sure it's nothin'," some rosy-cheeked clerk had slurred.
Whatever followed next fell on deaf ears, as your pair had already run much too far away to listen in. You knew exactly where they were talking about, after all.
The direction that everyone had been looking and hinting towards only had one populated place at this time of day.
When the sun was halfway set and the moon was just beginning to rise... only the saloon drew anyone's eyes.
A small crowd had already congested the narrow street you'd taken to get there. You found people parting to let you through, making comments on your neofauna as you passed, keeping to the walls or shying away to reveal...
Chaos.
Men in armor beating other men. Throwing things, dragging arms, violently forcing people to the ground and falling out of sight as more and more fighting obscured your view.
It was almost impossible to make anything out-- there was so much fighting, so much blood, that all you could see were fists and legs flailing every which way. The cracking of bones, the snapping of cuffs-- wait, cuffs--
<span class="mu-r">CR-FWOOSH</span>
A giant pillar of flame shot up from someplace nearby you, in the middle of the sea of unknowns--
Startled shouts erupted all around you! All around the flame, men stumbled over men to get away or shout retreat, or lunge forward. Some dropped to the ground, rolling back and forth to put out stray embers, while--
One unfortunate soul who'd decided to attack what lay within the dissipating pillar soon found himself flying backwards, somehow being kicked...
...by an oversized, almost child-like avian <span class="mu-i">beast</span> of some kind.
The beast let out a shrill cry, loud enough to make the crowd behind you audibly flinch. The sound of it made your skin crawl. It was like someone had stuck an eagle's screech into a hen's throat.
A second man attempted to attack the creature. He wore full plate armor and charged at it with a rifle, almost opening fire--
--before finding his gun thrown aside by three massive claws, and his person thrown to the ground by an incredibly bulky leg.
From behind the beast charged <span class="mu-i">Andrew</span>, revolver in hand, pointing it behind--
