Between a drop and a sharp place

The ledge was close, that much Arin could tell. It's not like him to lose his sense of geography. Whoever created this smoke screen knew what components were needed to make the condensing vapor block his vision. He couldn't even see the smoke rising from the barrel of is gun at arm's length. His assailant also knew to time it the moment before Arin emptied all three chambers. The view of his targets downrange were completely obscured, but he has already locked away the coordinates and calculated the trajectories into his RAM. Barring any unforeseen interactions, the last shot would impact in just under 1.04 seconds. Arin's objective was all but complete. The smoke canister at his feet hissed and sputtered its last puffs out just as three PANGs rang out indicating the successful impact on each target, exactly on time. The chemical reaction inside ceased inside the canister just as a gust of wind rose up from below, quickly sweeping the smoke away. Arin was now perfectly aware just how perilously close his footing was to the abyssal drop below. Behind him he heard the faintest scuff of a footstep. The phenomenon occurred that had been described to Arin as "instinct." The word's definition bothered him, but he had long accepted its presence. His body felt like it moved on its own. A thousand commands were issued in sequence, with Arin barely aware of each execution. His body spun in coordination with hundreds of systems. Actions overlapped and compounded creating a smooth action -- the revolver in his right hand thumbed the release switch on his revolver, the empty shells flying from their chambers as the barrel levered forward -- his left hand flew over his belt, coming away with a fresh shell held between his knuckles. Arin's vision scanned over his shoulder, tracing out the possible trajectories the canister could have taken, quickly narrowing down the probable origins to find his new target or targets. Arin didn't need to wait for the predictions to finish. He made visual contact with the lone figure standing much closer had expected. The noise he had heard sounded much further back. Had it been anyone else, Arin would have thought it impossible for a human to move that fast and that quiet in full armor. There he was, silent, less than 6 meters from where Arin's position. Kabuto. His helm and armor obscured the identity of the man beneath but Arin still knew it was him. The stars, Abe, were to Kabuto's back, hovering down towards the horizon as they set quickly against the red sky. As like last time, Kabuto had strategically cut off Arin's escape route, however this time Kabuto had the added advantage of nearly blinding him at the same time. In spite of this, Arin could make out that Kabuto wielded a halberd with a massive blade, just waiting to cleave him in two. Across his waist also sat twin katanas in their scabbards. Edged weapons were his gift and of that he had no equal, and experience already informed Arin he carried many more than what Arin could see. This wasn't their first confrontation, rather, their fourth. Each encounter was more harrowing than the previous. The last time he had experienced Kabuto's blade, Arin never been closer to termination. The idea of "luck" had been explained to him many times, but that encounter was the first time he understood the concept. He had been lucky to survive. Now here they stood once again, masked face to masked face. On one side, the possibly most inhuman human on Halyard, and the other, the most human inhuman. Even with Arin's speed and reflexes, Kabuto could strike him down before he finished reloading. This time, Arin had no backup, no escape route, and an empirically questionable amount of luck. He felt something begin to rise up inside him. A sensation to which he was, by this point, very familiar with -- fear.

Process

Here we have another sorta mixed-media piece from a couple years back. The foreground was done in Procreate and then I imported the file into After Effects and added the background. I used a Red Giant's plugin to create the ocean and horizon. Kabuto's design is always sort of in flux since his gear is dictated by the encounters he plans out. The more he knows about his opponent, the more he can get in their head.

This was a fun pic to work on and it gave me a lot of ideas for the world of rEvolver. Also, revolvers are way more complicated than you might think.