Cherry steeled herself. She readied herself, tightening her grip around the cool metal that now sat in her hands, and prepared to make the shot. A delicate undertaking, she knew, but she knew her craft. Hands steadied by her iron will, and long practiced routine, she took a breath, and began.
And shook the mixer.
Frame pilots always demanded the strangest drinks, with little to no actual direction, but she was no coward. Despite her job being a cover, to avoid awkwardly declaring immense income despite her “unemployed” status, she worked part time here. But she hadn’t made a name for herself by doing a sub-par job, and so she worked herself to prepare the drink.
“A Dead Man’s Heart” they had called it, and it was only when she had poured the gin had they set the bullet on the table. Not a purchased, unused round, but a scuffed and charred lead capsule, barely large enough to see. Weirder still, was that from the two pilots, drunken and dirt-stained, who both demanded the drink, had only provided the one bullet.
It was a novel challenge, splitting lead with steel, but she was nothing if not novel. Finishing the first half of the drink, she poured the shots to the two already drunken pilots. Now, she began the real challenge, and so she dug in the drawer for her sharpest knife, which she placed upon the shrapnel. Pulling her arm back, she slams it down upon the blade with well-trained strength.
With a startling spark, she succeeds in her endeavor, though both halves flew sideways with startling force. Grabbing the remains of the bullet, she tries to drop them in the drinks with as much sophistication as she can muster, before offering the drinks to the two.
It wasn’t the first time she’d put a bullet in someone’s stomach, and it certainly won’t be the last.