Chapter two: A field of jagged sorrows
Rover,
Wanderer,
Nomad,
Vagabond,
Call me what you will...
-"Wherever I may roam", Metallica
The outlands, an endless desert stretching out as far as the eye can see. An area of land so horrendous and so vicious that no human or cyborg could survive alone out amongst the sand and rock for long. A land that, once long ago was prosperous and filled with trees and greenery and hope, where humans lived, loved and died in conjunction with nature.
No one is quite sure what happened to ruin the lands, making everything so desolate, but a general consensus is that it must be man's fault. Man's greed and longing for power must have stripped the forests to the ground, and burned the life from the animals. But as all things, just because one can point the blame doesn't mean anything can be done about it. The remainder of man's selfish ambition can not undo what hath been wrought, and they cannot rebuild the world as penance. They must simply suffer as the world goes through its darkest era.
But the outlands are not completely desolate. Ancient cities dot the vast desert, even more lie buried beneath the unforgiving sand, giving a glimpse as to the way the world might have once been, and Factory Farms, small cities themselves, raise plants and animals that are all but extinct anywhere else. These Farms are a purer example of humanity, few cyborgs walk amongst the full-fleshed humans in these outposts of the olden-days. If this balance should ever be tipped, catastrophe, and the Factories cannot allow that.
The Farms do not exist merely to exist, however. They serve a far greater purpose than one might imagine. Each of these Farms grows the food and mines for the basic materials Tiphares needs to keep itself running. On a smaller, more indirect level, they provide food for the Scrapyards, food that, for the most part, the yards can never provide itself, its own lands covered in machinery and far greater desolation than outside. The Farms are necessary for the continued existence of all, and they are watched carefully by the Factories, never being allowed to govern themselves for fear of losing the resources Tiphares so desperately needs.
Linking each of these Factory Farms to the Scrapyards are a grouping of trains, each powered by a fully working nuclear power plant. Without these trains, the resources and food would take forever to reach Tiphares. Being so necessary to production, the Factories hire out Hunter-Warriors and money hungry lunatics to ride the trains as Rail Mercenaries, armed escorts for dangerous assignments.
These mercenaries are on rare occasion, put to use for assignments that have nothing to do with protecting the trains. Dirty jobs like halting Farm rebellions, tracking down supply bandits, or even hunting down the occasional bounty that has escaped the rabid hunters of the Scrapyards, looking for freedom in the outlands.
One such group of these mercenaries has been assigned to hunt down a vicious outlaw, one so dangerous that sixty-billion chips have been placed on his head. A man reputedly so dangerous that seven entire Farms have been destroyed at his hands. A man whose reputation for bloodlust has found no equal in the entire world. This man has no face. This man has no past. This man is merely known as Vash the Stampede.
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Victor Elizondo was getting annoyed.
Not the kind of annoyed other, more rational people feel when something doesn't go their way. The kind of annoyed where they groan and complain for a while and then give up. No, this annoyed was more like the kind someone gets when they don't get what they want and decide to hit someone for it. He had already done that several times to more than half of his men, and they were becoming rebellious because of it.
But Victor couldn't help it. For his entire life he had always had a bad temper, and it was that temper that had gotten him noticed when the Factory was calling out for volunteers to eliminate Vash the Stampede. He had beaten the elected team leader into unconsciousness and taken his position, threatening to do the same to anyone who wished to argue the matter. The Factory was impressed by this display of machismo and gave him the field leader position on the assault team.
But the Factory wasn't out there in the wastelands to back him up. He was alone with a group of armed and vicious men whose rage had been building for five days. For the five days they had been suffering under grueling conditions and empty promises that the man they were after would be over that next hill.
Victor turned and looked at Number Forty-three, the cylindrical Deckman they had to carry with them as per mission requirements. It was a hideous thing, with the ugly false face plastered against the side like the stretched out remains of a corpse and the pathetic attempt at an accent every one of them spoke with. It was an enormously heavy thing, and required three men to lift and carry its bulk, which slowed their traveling exponentially. He desperately wanted to leave it behind, but if they strayed any farther than fifty meters from it, the explosives built into their arsenal vests would explode, taking their heads with them.
"Haven't you found anything yet, Forty-three?" he demanded of the creature.
"No, ahm afwaid I haven't," Forty-three answered, its artificial accent making Victor's teeth grind.
"But the information that we acquired from Farm twenty-two said he had come this way. At the very least he had to have left a trail," one of the mercenaries argued. Victor didn't know his name, he didn't bother to learn any of their names, but this one he liked the least. He spoke too much, and used too many big words that the simple violent man didn't understand.
"That mah be," Fourty-three agreed, "But the outwands have a way of ewasing evedance."
"It don't matter!" Victor shouted loud enough for all twelve men to hear. "We keep walking till we find the bastard and then we blow his head off!"
"But, sir," that same man argued, "If we blow his head off we won't have any way to identify him and collect our chips."
Victor walked right up to the man and slugged him hard, sending him to the ground with a loud smack. Blood oozed from the man's mouth as he gripped the damaged jaw. Hopefully, for both men's sake, his jaw was broken and he could say no more to anger the savage. "You wanna argue more?" he demanded. When the man said nothing, he smiled, one of those smiles you would expect from an animal who had closed in on the kill, "Good."
The ten other mercenaries were at the end of their limits. They had endured five days of brutal treatment at the hands of their captain and they had had enough. One of them stepped forward, desperately trying to get his assault rifle to function, but it wouldn't. The safety lock imposed by Forty-three prevented them from firing.
Without their guns to make things easier, they decided for the direct approach. They surrounded their captain, preparing to swamp him and beat him in the same way he had beaten them. They wanted to hear bone crunch and blood spray as he begged for mercy and received none.
This would never come to pass however, as Forty-three, who was oblivious to their intended actions, screamed out in alarm. "We have an intwudah in the awea! We have and intwudah!"
"Shut up!" Victor shouted, "I'm sick of you're stupid talking!"
The Deckman did not care about Victor's opinions. It merely did as it was intended to do. "At his estimated pace, the intwudah will come within visual wange in two minutes. Be awert!" it warned.
The men, although eager to introduce their captain to a whole new level of pain and suffering, had enough common sense to abandon their goals and prepare for the intruder. They hid behind the various rocks and outcroppings the desert land provided them with, waiting impatiently for potential action.
Two minutes came and went slowly, and eventually the intruder made himself visible. He was a strange sight, tall and lanky, most unsuited for one who lived in the wastelands, and his skin was light, almost pale, which was equally strange. He wore a red coat, buttoned so tightly that little above the waist could float free in the wind, while below it billowed and waved as if it were alive. His pants were black and tightly strapped together, right down to his boots, which seemed to merge seemlessly with the rest. One arm was completely covered by the red coat, while the other was uncovered, revealing more of the strange black strappings. Across his back was a seemingly normal brown rucksack, the kind people used to go camping in the olden days. In total, the man looked unlike anything they had expected.
Everyone was still, expecting everything and nothing from the strange looking man in red. Even Victor, who would normally be yelling and punching, was motionless, not knowing how to gauge the intruder in his midst. The only one who escaped this atmosphere of silence was Forty-three, whose remnants of a human brain had no recollection of how dramatic situations played out. He broke the silence in a most uncomfortable and screeching way:
"Please state youwah name and puhpose."
The man regarded the men through his yellow-tinted circular sunglasses, as if he were studying them intently. His jagged blonde hair blew wildly in the afternoon wind, creating a strangely imposing look to a man whose skinny appearance would be regarded as weak in the Scrapyards.
The men were eagerly anticipating his response, hoping he was friendly, and fearing he was enemy. His first words would decide if he was to be welcomed as a brother, or cut down as an enemy. They were ready for the best and they had thought of the worst. But all of their plans were as nothing when he opened his thin mouth and spoke:
"Hello Brothers, how are you doing today? Would you like a doughnut? They're very good," he said cheerfully. He dropped his large brown rucksack on the ground and opened it wide, removing varied objects of even more varied worth until he came upon a small, white box. His eyes lit up when he found the box, and he held it out to the mercenaries as if it were filled with diamonds or gold.
The mercenaries were floored by his actions. Never, in all their years of brutal experience and harsh situations had they come across someone, let alone a man, who had such cheerful innocence in his actions.
And yet, like before, the only one unaffected was Forty-three, who did not comprehend the man's actions. The entire time he was in range, the creature's computer systems were hard at work, matching and verifying against dozens of descriptions. When it had reached a concensus of fifty-five percent, which in its garbled mind was "good enough". It went into full alert mode, four feet extended from its base and locked in place on the uneven ground, while armor plates extended to protect its fragile, if bulky frame. It announced as loud as a klaxxon, "Alert, alert! Intruder identified as Vash the Stampede! Gun safeties disengaged! Attack and eliminate!" There were no traces of the annoying accent. All pretenses of familiarity were dropped as events escalated to the matter at hand.
The mercenaries were almost as surprised to find their assault rifles in hand and the targeting unit fitted across their right eye, as they were at their first introduction to the strange man. Each of their minds was filled with lingering doubt that the cheerful stranger couldn't possibly be the Factory's most wanted criminal.
Each of them, that is, except for Victor. He had doubts, but he really didn't care. He could use his rifle, and that meant he could shoot at people, and if the Deckman said that the stranger was Vash the Stampede, then so be it. He fired off a few quick bursts, hoping to fill his target with so many holes all his blood would evacuate at once. He didn't really worry that the man might not be Vash, that he might just be an unfortunate passerby who matched enough of the descriptions to be called Vash, he just wanted to let out his frustrations in the most violent way possible.
The bullets flew randomly, despite the targeting computer and eyepiece, and even a moderate soldier could have dodged easily enough, but this man was far more than a moderate soldier. He jumped, no, more like flew, through the air with the grace of a bird, and dropped behind a boulder and into safety. It was a feet no man should have been capable of, but the blonde did it without effort, as if he had done it a thousand times before.
The man's movements would have dumbfounded most humans, but not Victor and his men. The mercenaries did not bother with the confusion that laid heavily on their minds. They chalked his actions up to being a cyber, and quickly decided he needed to be eliminated quickly. Cybers were far more dangerous than humans, after all. That was the way of a professional soldier, and though these men were far from professionals, they thought of themselves as such.
As example of their absence of fighting skill, they hung back, away from the outcropping, unknowing of what the man might do. Even an average military tactician would know that surround and destroy would work, especially with the man lying low behind a few rocks. He was a single man, completely outnumbered and outgunned, and yet they halted in fear. Their guns shook visibly in their hands as they slowly moved forward.
An object flew through the air from behind the rocks, round and thick, with a hole in the center. The mercenaries' guns shot up in the general direction, releasing a stream of bullets that quickly reduced the objects to crumbs.
And crumbs were all they really were, for the man had flung a donut into the air. It was a bizarre, almost whimsical thing to do, and yet it made sense. Gauge the enemy's mindset, strengths, weaknesses, and weaponry, the first job of a good warrior, and he had done just so with a single sacrificial pastry.
He reached into his blood red coat and extracted a long, sleek revolver, gleaming of silver and death. This was no ordinary gun, and from the way the man held it, he was no ordinary gunman.
He reached up with the gun, just out of the sight of the men, and fired off a round, seemingly in waste. But few things this man did were in waste, and the bullet struck the ground in such a way that sent dozens of rocks flying through the air.
This confused the group of mercs. The man was being completely random in his choice of actions, and that made no sense to the hardened murderers turned soldiers. They were used to direct violence or cowardice, the full out assault or the fearful fleeing for one's life. This half-hearted effort made no sense.
The strange man took this hesitation and used it to his advantage. With a howl he jumped from his hiding place and went into action, faster than they could possibly react in the state they were in. His gun fired blasts of silver death, and though each one hit their mark, none were fatal. This was the way of the strange man.
Victor continued to fire off his assault rifle the entire time, trying to dissolve his opponent into a puddle of flesh and blood. His shots were wild, however, unfocused and heedless toward the outcries of the targeting computer, and his crew was punished for it. Fellow after fellow were dropped as his mad firing ripped into their cybered or fleshed bodies, tearing them apart with the deadly power contained in each round.
And yet, despite the vicious carnage unleashed by Victor's weapon, not a one of his teammates was dead. Scratched up, banged up, shot up, but not a one dead or dying. Victor didn't bother to think about such things, the same way he did not bother with watching out for his comrades. All he could think about was killing his opponent.
"This is very inefficient," Forty-three's armored body said almost mournfully, "Alert units, target Vash's skill is greater than anticipated. Coordinate and eliminate." It said this mechanically, with only cold logic, yet logic was not going to win this battle. It had already been lost, yet no one could truly see this except perhaps the strangely flitting man.
"Damn it, stand still you piece of shit!" Victor shouted as another volley of ammunition tore the body of one of his men into bloody shreds as he attempted to kill his acrobatic opponent.
"You coward, is there anything more despicable than a loathsome slime like yourself to kill his own men? I think not," the dexterous stranger argued.
"I don't care about any of them! They're just street trash to me! If they die, I won't mind!" Victor growled. He fired off his last few rounds, each one striking nowhere near his target. His barrel clicked empty.
"Now it's my turn," the stranger's face became that of pure disgust as he aimed his gun with deadly accuracy. A single shot rang out, belching smoke from the barrel of the sleek silver weapon. The sound was like a thunderclap, or the voice of God shouting in anger. The bullet flew fast and true, silver and gold death all in one little cylinder.
And yet, death was not the result. The bullet struck Victor's rifle at the joint that connected it to his weapon's vest, severing servos and connectors, and leaving the snarling man with a broken toy.
"You bastard!" Victor screamed, and hurled his weapon with vicious intent. And yet again he missed his target by whole yards. "Fight me like a man!"
"After what you have done, you dare to ask for a fair fight? I cannot condone the slaughter of human lives," the stranger said solemnly, walking right up to Victor. With a single, fluid motion he back-handed the psychotic killer across the face, sending him crashing to the barren ground, "You are a man of no honor."
"You're a piece of shit!" Victor growled, wiping a hand across his now bloodied face. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a wickedly sharp knife, the weapon with which he planned to kill his humilliator. He lunged forward, putting all of his strength into the arm holding the knife, hoping to draw the blood of death from his opponent.
The stranger avoided the attack easily and gave him a swift knee to the stomach. More blood erupted from his mouth and he was brought coughing back to the ground. But Victor refused to let that stop him. He twisted as he fell and lashed out with the knife, coming within an inch of his opponent's throat.
But an inch is not nearly close enough when the enemy's skill is as high as this man's was. To the stranger, it might as well have been a mile. He reached out with his right hand and grasped the knife hand's wrist, wrenching it just enough to make Victor let go. "Sharp toys can hurt people, you know," he said with a smile.
"Ba... bastard!" Victor spat blood at the stranger, striking him across the cheek with the red liquid.
The stranger slapped him again, never missing a beat, "You have no right to call me or anyone else that. You are a murderer."
"Who cares?" Victor spat a tooth out, "They deserved to die anyway!"
The stranger gritted his teeth, "No one deserves to die like that, not even you! I..." He was about to say more, but was cut off as a hail of gunfire pelted the ground next to his foot. He jumped away, letting Victor drop to the ground like a sack of cement.
The man's eyes regarded the rail mercenary with a steady, piercing gaze, a gaze that could bore straight through a block of solid titanium. "Are you as much of a coward as he is? Would you actually serve such a man if you had a choice?" the threat of death had not phased the stranger at all.
"No! But it's my job!" the rail mercenary answered, "I don't like doing this work, but if I kill you then I'll never have to suffer again," the grip on his rifle was weakening, his aim was wavering. His uncertainty was obvious.
"Money will not solve your problems. It will only make things worse," the stranger said sadly, "It can't make everything better like you hope."
"Maybe not..." the mercenary admitted, "But at least I can suffer in piece," and he pulled the trigger.
The stranger reached down and grabbed Victor's body with one hand and shot up into the sky in a blinding flash so fast that the unnamed mercenary could barely take it all in. Bullets embedded themselves uselessly in the dirt, another waste of dwindling resources attributed to a foolish human.
At the apex of his jump, the stranger aimed his gun again, one last bullet left in the chamber, and fired, all of his hopes and dreams encased in that single bullet. It struck as it should, and yet death was not the result. Blood seeped from a shoulder wound on the right arm, the arm that carried the rifle. The Rail mercenary was neutralized with a single shot.
That was the last of them. The others had already been wounded or killed by each other's wild shots, while the intellectual mercenary Victor had slugged earlier never managed the strength to raise his weapon in assault. The stranger sighed, "So much waste. Why must we do this over and over?"
"Let me go, you bastard!" Victor shouted and struggled in the stranger's iron hold.
The blonde man relaxed his arm and Victor landed on the ground ungracefully, blood seeping from his mouth and nose. "I'm going to leave you with something you weren't willing to leave me with," he said solemnly.
"What's that?" Victor demanded, trying to muster the strength to attack again. There was none left, the stranger had sapped it all from him.
"Your life," he said, and the stranger walked off, disappearing into the deserted wastelands of the charred Earth.
"Come back here, you son of a bitch!" Victor shouted with all the strength he had left. It was far too late, however, for the man was long gone.
"Vash assassin squad twenty-three ineffective. Initiating survivor elimination," the Deckman announced. In a single instant forty-one explosive devices in eleven assault vests went off simultaneously, killing each and every surviving member of the assault squad in a gory display of ruthlessness. Even those that were already dead were annihilated for no apparent reason other than thoroughness.
Every member died quickly, yet it was a death of extreme pain, an instant of utter agony that seemed to stretch on into infinity in the last half-second of life. Every member's life was brought to an abrupt and unjust end; never would they have a chance to experience greatness, or to redeem themselves of their past sins. No, every one of them unfairly blinked out without ever making a real impact in the world.
But there was one... Victor Elizondo was still alive. Only one of his four explosives went off, and though the wound he acquired from the one charge would most likely kill him within hours, for now he was still breathing. He crawled as well as he could with a shattered shoulder and missing arm, desperately trying to survive, hoping beyond hope that he could make it to Farm twenty-two before death claimed his soul. He had to survive, he had to...
He had to get revenge on Vash the Stampede.
As he crawled he spared a short glance back at his executioner, the Deckman with the kill switch. He was surprised to see smoke rising from its body as it fired its own circuits. It had failed in its assignment, just like his men had, and now it had to pay the price for its failure. If it had a soul, it was most likely crying out in anguish as life, or half-life fled its metallic body.
He crawled on, but not much farther. The blood loss was too much, and his mind was quietly slipping away. As darkness enveloped him, he imagined his enemy one last time... Vash...
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"Now what have we here?" a harsh sounding voice rang out, "It appears this one is still fresh!"
Victor reawakened to confusion and pain. A volatile mixture if there ever was one. He heard voices all around him, but only two were real. He tried to see the owners of the voices, but his eyes refused to focus, and all he could picture were blurred images.
"But Doctor, he's so... hideous," a female voice, this one filled with malice and hatred, argued.
"Well, they can't all be as beautiful as you are, my dear Eelai. He has been through a great deal and yet he still lives. I cannot allow such a fantastic spirit like that to die!" the voice called "Doctor" answered.
"You're going to rebuild him? Like the others?" the female Eelai asked.
"No. I think I shall have some fun with this one," the "Doctor" replied. Victor's vision finally came into focus again and he saw the man behind the voice. He was tall, and dressed in threadbare clothes, that bared a similarity to the clothing of a stereotypical scientist, white lab-coat over a rumpled cheap business suit. Strange glasses adorned his face, with what looked like binocular lenses instead of glass, which obscured his face and covered his eyes completely. His forehead was wrinkled, as if he were in deep contemplation, but that was not the case. His mouth was wide in a hideous smile, one which caused Victor to shiver in fear.
"Who..." the dying man whispered, "Who are you?"
"I am the man who will make you a legend. I am the man who will make you whole again, and better than you've ever been before," the "Doctor" exclaimed, his face becoming even more insane-looking than ever before.
"Why?"
"Because I can, dear boy!" the "Doctor" replied. He walked past Victor's body, out of the wounded man's sight over by where the bodies of his men were lying around. Victor had not made it very far before his wounds had forced his collapse, his movement was slow and awkward, and so the bodies were too close for comfort. "Ah, what's this?"
"Did you find something, Doctor?" the female voice asked. Victor turned his head and focused on her. She was beautiful, to say the least, and her tattered black clothing left little to the imagination. The expression on her face, however, was far from beautiful. She had a wild, insane look in her eyes that dredged up old fears in Victor's soul. Fears of a girl with that same look in her eyes... The woman looked at him with pitiless eyes, and the arrow shape on her forehead almost seemed to gleam with vicious intent. "You should feel honored to participate in Doctor Nova's work."
Victor did not, could not answer. His throat was far too clogged with blood for a decent reply.
"Amazing. The explosions were centered around their heads and yet there are still pieces of brain intact, incredible, simply incredible. And over here we have a Deckman. I've been wanting to tinker with one of these for ages. Yes, we have so much to work with here," the mad Doctor Nova mused, "Eelai! Get Bazarld and get a few vats. We have work to do! And pick up the live one while you're at it!"
Victor blacked out for the second time as the strange madwoman lifted his mutilated body over her shoulder as if he were nothing. This time he was sure he would be dead before he woke a second time.
Rover,
Wanderer,
Nomad,
Vagabond,
Call me what you will...
-"Wherever I may roam", Metallica
The outlands, an endless desert stretching out as far as the eye can see. An area of land so horrendous and so vicious that no human or cyborg could survive alone out amongst the sand and rock for long. A land that, once long ago was prosperous and filled with trees and greenery and hope, where humans lived, loved and died in conjunction with nature.
No one is quite sure what happened to ruin the lands, making everything so desolate, but a general consensus is that it must be man's fault. Man's greed and longing for power must have stripped the forests to the ground, and burned the life from the animals. But as all things, just because one can point the blame doesn't mean anything can be done about it. The remainder of man's selfish ambition can not undo what hath been wrought, and they cannot rebuild the world as penance. They must simply suffer as the world goes through its darkest era.
But the outlands are not completely desolate. Ancient cities dot the vast desert, even more lie buried beneath the unforgiving sand, giving a glimpse as to the way the world might have once been, and Factory Farms, small cities themselves, raise plants and animals that are all but extinct anywhere else. These Farms are a purer example of humanity, few cyborgs walk amongst the full-fleshed humans in these outposts of the olden-days. If this balance should ever be tipped, catastrophe, and the Factories cannot allow that.
The Farms do not exist merely to exist, however. They serve a far greater purpose than one might imagine. Each of these Farms grows the food and mines for the basic materials Tiphares needs to keep itself running. On a smaller, more indirect level, they provide food for the Scrapyards, food that, for the most part, the yards can never provide itself, its own lands covered in machinery and far greater desolation than outside. The Farms are necessary for the continued existence of all, and they are watched carefully by the Factories, never being allowed to govern themselves for fear of losing the resources Tiphares so desperately needs.
Linking each of these Factory Farms to the Scrapyards are a grouping of trains, each powered by a fully working nuclear power plant. Without these trains, the resources and food would take forever to reach Tiphares. Being so necessary to production, the Factories hire out Hunter-Warriors and money hungry lunatics to ride the trains as Rail Mercenaries, armed escorts for dangerous assignments.
These mercenaries are on rare occasion, put to use for assignments that have nothing to do with protecting the trains. Dirty jobs like halting Farm rebellions, tracking down supply bandits, or even hunting down the occasional bounty that has escaped the rabid hunters of the Scrapyards, looking for freedom in the outlands.
One such group of these mercenaries has been assigned to hunt down a vicious outlaw, one so dangerous that sixty-billion chips have been placed on his head. A man reputedly so dangerous that seven entire Farms have been destroyed at his hands. A man whose reputation for bloodlust has found no equal in the entire world. This man has no face. This man has no past. This man is merely known as Vash the Stampede.
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Victor Elizondo was getting annoyed.
Not the kind of annoyed other, more rational people feel when something doesn't go their way. The kind of annoyed where they groan and complain for a while and then give up. No, this annoyed was more like the kind someone gets when they don't get what they want and decide to hit someone for it. He had already done that several times to more than half of his men, and they were becoming rebellious because of it.
But Victor couldn't help it. For his entire life he had always had a bad temper, and it was that temper that had gotten him noticed when the Factory was calling out for volunteers to eliminate Vash the Stampede. He had beaten the elected team leader into unconsciousness and taken his position, threatening to do the same to anyone who wished to argue the matter. The Factory was impressed by this display of machismo and gave him the field leader position on the assault team.
But the Factory wasn't out there in the wastelands to back him up. He was alone with a group of armed and vicious men whose rage had been building for five days. For the five days they had been suffering under grueling conditions and empty promises that the man they were after would be over that next hill.
Victor turned and looked at Number Forty-three, the cylindrical Deckman they had to carry with them as per mission requirements. It was a hideous thing, with the ugly false face plastered against the side like the stretched out remains of a corpse and the pathetic attempt at an accent every one of them spoke with. It was an enormously heavy thing, and required three men to lift and carry its bulk, which slowed their traveling exponentially. He desperately wanted to leave it behind, but if they strayed any farther than fifty meters from it, the explosives built into their arsenal vests would explode, taking their heads with them.
"Haven't you found anything yet, Forty-three?" he demanded of the creature.
"No, ahm afwaid I haven't," Forty-three answered, its artificial accent making Victor's teeth grind.
"But the information that we acquired from Farm twenty-two said he had come this way. At the very least he had to have left a trail," one of the mercenaries argued. Victor didn't know his name, he didn't bother to learn any of their names, but this one he liked the least. He spoke too much, and used too many big words that the simple violent man didn't understand.
"That mah be," Fourty-three agreed, "But the outwands have a way of ewasing evedance."
"It don't matter!" Victor shouted loud enough for all twelve men to hear. "We keep walking till we find the bastard and then we blow his head off!"
"But, sir," that same man argued, "If we blow his head off we won't have any way to identify him and collect our chips."
Victor walked right up to the man and slugged him hard, sending him to the ground with a loud smack. Blood oozed from the man's mouth as he gripped the damaged jaw. Hopefully, for both men's sake, his jaw was broken and he could say no more to anger the savage. "You wanna argue more?" he demanded. When the man said nothing, he smiled, one of those smiles you would expect from an animal who had closed in on the kill, "Good."
The ten other mercenaries were at the end of their limits. They had endured five days of brutal treatment at the hands of their captain and they had had enough. One of them stepped forward, desperately trying to get his assault rifle to function, but it wouldn't. The safety lock imposed by Forty-three prevented them from firing.
Without their guns to make things easier, they decided for the direct approach. They surrounded their captain, preparing to swamp him and beat him in the same way he had beaten them. They wanted to hear bone crunch and blood spray as he begged for mercy and received none.
This would never come to pass however, as Forty-three, who was oblivious to their intended actions, screamed out in alarm. "We have an intwudah in the awea! We have and intwudah!"
"Shut up!" Victor shouted, "I'm sick of you're stupid talking!"
The Deckman did not care about Victor's opinions. It merely did as it was intended to do. "At his estimated pace, the intwudah will come within visual wange in two minutes. Be awert!" it warned.
The men, although eager to introduce their captain to a whole new level of pain and suffering, had enough common sense to abandon their goals and prepare for the intruder. They hid behind the various rocks and outcroppings the desert land provided them with, waiting impatiently for potential action.
Two minutes came and went slowly, and eventually the intruder made himself visible. He was a strange sight, tall and lanky, most unsuited for one who lived in the wastelands, and his skin was light, almost pale, which was equally strange. He wore a red coat, buttoned so tightly that little above the waist could float free in the wind, while below it billowed and waved as if it were alive. His pants were black and tightly strapped together, right down to his boots, which seemed to merge seemlessly with the rest. One arm was completely covered by the red coat, while the other was uncovered, revealing more of the strange black strappings. Across his back was a seemingly normal brown rucksack, the kind people used to go camping in the olden days. In total, the man looked unlike anything they had expected.
Everyone was still, expecting everything and nothing from the strange looking man in red. Even Victor, who would normally be yelling and punching, was motionless, not knowing how to gauge the intruder in his midst. The only one who escaped this atmosphere of silence was Forty-three, whose remnants of a human brain had no recollection of how dramatic situations played out. He broke the silence in a most uncomfortable and screeching way:
"Please state youwah name and puhpose."
The man regarded the men through his yellow-tinted circular sunglasses, as if he were studying them intently. His jagged blonde hair blew wildly in the afternoon wind, creating a strangely imposing look to a man whose skinny appearance would be regarded as weak in the Scrapyards.
The men were eagerly anticipating his response, hoping he was friendly, and fearing he was enemy. His first words would decide if he was to be welcomed as a brother, or cut down as an enemy. They were ready for the best and they had thought of the worst. But all of their plans were as nothing when he opened his thin mouth and spoke:
"Hello Brothers, how are you doing today? Would you like a doughnut? They're very good," he said cheerfully. He dropped his large brown rucksack on the ground and opened it wide, removing varied objects of even more varied worth until he came upon a small, white box. His eyes lit up when he found the box, and he held it out to the mercenaries as if it were filled with diamonds or gold.
The mercenaries were floored by his actions. Never, in all their years of brutal experience and harsh situations had they come across someone, let alone a man, who had such cheerful innocence in his actions.
And yet, like before, the only one unaffected was Forty-three, who did not comprehend the man's actions. The entire time he was in range, the creature's computer systems were hard at work, matching and verifying against dozens of descriptions. When it had reached a concensus of fifty-five percent, which in its garbled mind was "good enough". It went into full alert mode, four feet extended from its base and locked in place on the uneven ground, while armor plates extended to protect its fragile, if bulky frame. It announced as loud as a klaxxon, "Alert, alert! Intruder identified as Vash the Stampede! Gun safeties disengaged! Attack and eliminate!" There were no traces of the annoying accent. All pretenses of familiarity were dropped as events escalated to the matter at hand.
The mercenaries were almost as surprised to find their assault rifles in hand and the targeting unit fitted across their right eye, as they were at their first introduction to the strange man. Each of their minds was filled with lingering doubt that the cheerful stranger couldn't possibly be the Factory's most wanted criminal.
Each of them, that is, except for Victor. He had doubts, but he really didn't care. He could use his rifle, and that meant he could shoot at people, and if the Deckman said that the stranger was Vash the Stampede, then so be it. He fired off a few quick bursts, hoping to fill his target with so many holes all his blood would evacuate at once. He didn't really worry that the man might not be Vash, that he might just be an unfortunate passerby who matched enough of the descriptions to be called Vash, he just wanted to let out his frustrations in the most violent way possible.
The bullets flew randomly, despite the targeting computer and eyepiece, and even a moderate soldier could have dodged easily enough, but this man was far more than a moderate soldier. He jumped, no, more like flew, through the air with the grace of a bird, and dropped behind a boulder and into safety. It was a feet no man should have been capable of, but the blonde did it without effort, as if he had done it a thousand times before.
The man's movements would have dumbfounded most humans, but not Victor and his men. The mercenaries did not bother with the confusion that laid heavily on their minds. They chalked his actions up to being a cyber, and quickly decided he needed to be eliminated quickly. Cybers were far more dangerous than humans, after all. That was the way of a professional soldier, and though these men were far from professionals, they thought of themselves as such.
As example of their absence of fighting skill, they hung back, away from the outcropping, unknowing of what the man might do. Even an average military tactician would know that surround and destroy would work, especially with the man lying low behind a few rocks. He was a single man, completely outnumbered and outgunned, and yet they halted in fear. Their guns shook visibly in their hands as they slowly moved forward.
An object flew through the air from behind the rocks, round and thick, with a hole in the center. The mercenaries' guns shot up in the general direction, releasing a stream of bullets that quickly reduced the objects to crumbs.
And crumbs were all they really were, for the man had flung a donut into the air. It was a bizarre, almost whimsical thing to do, and yet it made sense. Gauge the enemy's mindset, strengths, weaknesses, and weaponry, the first job of a good warrior, and he had done just so with a single sacrificial pastry.
He reached into his blood red coat and extracted a long, sleek revolver, gleaming of silver and death. This was no ordinary gun, and from the way the man held it, he was no ordinary gunman.
He reached up with the gun, just out of the sight of the men, and fired off a round, seemingly in waste. But few things this man did were in waste, and the bullet struck the ground in such a way that sent dozens of rocks flying through the air.
This confused the group of mercs. The man was being completely random in his choice of actions, and that made no sense to the hardened murderers turned soldiers. They were used to direct violence or cowardice, the full out assault or the fearful fleeing for one's life. This half-hearted effort made no sense.
The strange man took this hesitation and used it to his advantage. With a howl he jumped from his hiding place and went into action, faster than they could possibly react in the state they were in. His gun fired blasts of silver death, and though each one hit their mark, none were fatal. This was the way of the strange man.
Victor continued to fire off his assault rifle the entire time, trying to dissolve his opponent into a puddle of flesh and blood. His shots were wild, however, unfocused and heedless toward the outcries of the targeting computer, and his crew was punished for it. Fellow after fellow were dropped as his mad firing ripped into their cybered or fleshed bodies, tearing them apart with the deadly power contained in each round.
And yet, despite the vicious carnage unleashed by Victor's weapon, not a one of his teammates was dead. Scratched up, banged up, shot up, but not a one dead or dying. Victor didn't bother to think about such things, the same way he did not bother with watching out for his comrades. All he could think about was killing his opponent.
"This is very inefficient," Forty-three's armored body said almost mournfully, "Alert units, target Vash's skill is greater than anticipated. Coordinate and eliminate." It said this mechanically, with only cold logic, yet logic was not going to win this battle. It had already been lost, yet no one could truly see this except perhaps the strangely flitting man.
"Damn it, stand still you piece of shit!" Victor shouted as another volley of ammunition tore the body of one of his men into bloody shreds as he attempted to kill his acrobatic opponent.
"You coward, is there anything more despicable than a loathsome slime like yourself to kill his own men? I think not," the dexterous stranger argued.
"I don't care about any of them! They're just street trash to me! If they die, I won't mind!" Victor growled. He fired off his last few rounds, each one striking nowhere near his target. His barrel clicked empty.
"Now it's my turn," the stranger's face became that of pure disgust as he aimed his gun with deadly accuracy. A single shot rang out, belching smoke from the barrel of the sleek silver weapon. The sound was like a thunderclap, or the voice of God shouting in anger. The bullet flew fast and true, silver and gold death all in one little cylinder.
And yet, death was not the result. The bullet struck Victor's rifle at the joint that connected it to his weapon's vest, severing servos and connectors, and leaving the snarling man with a broken toy.
"You bastard!" Victor screamed, and hurled his weapon with vicious intent. And yet again he missed his target by whole yards. "Fight me like a man!"
"After what you have done, you dare to ask for a fair fight? I cannot condone the slaughter of human lives," the stranger said solemnly, walking right up to Victor. With a single, fluid motion he back-handed the psychotic killer across the face, sending him crashing to the barren ground, "You are a man of no honor."
"You're a piece of shit!" Victor growled, wiping a hand across his now bloodied face. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a wickedly sharp knife, the weapon with which he planned to kill his humilliator. He lunged forward, putting all of his strength into the arm holding the knife, hoping to draw the blood of death from his opponent.
The stranger avoided the attack easily and gave him a swift knee to the stomach. More blood erupted from his mouth and he was brought coughing back to the ground. But Victor refused to let that stop him. He twisted as he fell and lashed out with the knife, coming within an inch of his opponent's throat.
But an inch is not nearly close enough when the enemy's skill is as high as this man's was. To the stranger, it might as well have been a mile. He reached out with his right hand and grasped the knife hand's wrist, wrenching it just enough to make Victor let go. "Sharp toys can hurt people, you know," he said with a smile.
"Ba... bastard!" Victor spat blood at the stranger, striking him across the cheek with the red liquid.
The stranger slapped him again, never missing a beat, "You have no right to call me or anyone else that. You are a murderer."
"Who cares?" Victor spat a tooth out, "They deserved to die anyway!"
The stranger gritted his teeth, "No one deserves to die like that, not even you! I..." He was about to say more, but was cut off as a hail of gunfire pelted the ground next to his foot. He jumped away, letting Victor drop to the ground like a sack of cement.
The man's eyes regarded the rail mercenary with a steady, piercing gaze, a gaze that could bore straight through a block of solid titanium. "Are you as much of a coward as he is? Would you actually serve such a man if you had a choice?" the threat of death had not phased the stranger at all.
"No! But it's my job!" the rail mercenary answered, "I don't like doing this work, but if I kill you then I'll never have to suffer again," the grip on his rifle was weakening, his aim was wavering. His uncertainty was obvious.
"Money will not solve your problems. It will only make things worse," the stranger said sadly, "It can't make everything better like you hope."
"Maybe not..." the mercenary admitted, "But at least I can suffer in piece," and he pulled the trigger.
The stranger reached down and grabbed Victor's body with one hand and shot up into the sky in a blinding flash so fast that the unnamed mercenary could barely take it all in. Bullets embedded themselves uselessly in the dirt, another waste of dwindling resources attributed to a foolish human.
At the apex of his jump, the stranger aimed his gun again, one last bullet left in the chamber, and fired, all of his hopes and dreams encased in that single bullet. It struck as it should, and yet death was not the result. Blood seeped from a shoulder wound on the right arm, the arm that carried the rifle. The Rail mercenary was neutralized with a single shot.
That was the last of them. The others had already been wounded or killed by each other's wild shots, while the intellectual mercenary Victor had slugged earlier never managed the strength to raise his weapon in assault. The stranger sighed, "So much waste. Why must we do this over and over?"
"Let me go, you bastard!" Victor shouted and struggled in the stranger's iron hold.
The blonde man relaxed his arm and Victor landed on the ground ungracefully, blood seeping from his mouth and nose. "I'm going to leave you with something you weren't willing to leave me with," he said solemnly.
"What's that?" Victor demanded, trying to muster the strength to attack again. There was none left, the stranger had sapped it all from him.
"Your life," he said, and the stranger walked off, disappearing into the deserted wastelands of the charred Earth.
"Come back here, you son of a bitch!" Victor shouted with all the strength he had left. It was far too late, however, for the man was long gone.
"Vash assassin squad twenty-three ineffective. Initiating survivor elimination," the Deckman announced. In a single instant forty-one explosive devices in eleven assault vests went off simultaneously, killing each and every surviving member of the assault squad in a gory display of ruthlessness. Even those that were already dead were annihilated for no apparent reason other than thoroughness.
Every member died quickly, yet it was a death of extreme pain, an instant of utter agony that seemed to stretch on into infinity in the last half-second of life. Every member's life was brought to an abrupt and unjust end; never would they have a chance to experience greatness, or to redeem themselves of their past sins. No, every one of them unfairly blinked out without ever making a real impact in the world.
But there was one... Victor Elizondo was still alive. Only one of his four explosives went off, and though the wound he acquired from the one charge would most likely kill him within hours, for now he was still breathing. He crawled as well as he could with a shattered shoulder and missing arm, desperately trying to survive, hoping beyond hope that he could make it to Farm twenty-two before death claimed his soul. He had to survive, he had to...
He had to get revenge on Vash the Stampede.
As he crawled he spared a short glance back at his executioner, the Deckman with the kill switch. He was surprised to see smoke rising from its body as it fired its own circuits. It had failed in its assignment, just like his men had, and now it had to pay the price for its failure. If it had a soul, it was most likely crying out in anguish as life, or half-life fled its metallic body.
He crawled on, but not much farther. The blood loss was too much, and his mind was quietly slipping away. As darkness enveloped him, he imagined his enemy one last time... Vash...
--------------
"Now what have we here?" a harsh sounding voice rang out, "It appears this one is still fresh!"
Victor reawakened to confusion and pain. A volatile mixture if there ever was one. He heard voices all around him, but only two were real. He tried to see the owners of the voices, but his eyes refused to focus, and all he could picture were blurred images.
"But Doctor, he's so... hideous," a female voice, this one filled with malice and hatred, argued.
"Well, they can't all be as beautiful as you are, my dear Eelai. He has been through a great deal and yet he still lives. I cannot allow such a fantastic spirit like that to die!" the voice called "Doctor" answered.
"You're going to rebuild him? Like the others?" the female Eelai asked.
"No. I think I shall have some fun with this one," the "Doctor" replied. Victor's vision finally came into focus again and he saw the man behind the voice. He was tall, and dressed in threadbare clothes, that bared a similarity to the clothing of a stereotypical scientist, white lab-coat over a rumpled cheap business suit. Strange glasses adorned his face, with what looked like binocular lenses instead of glass, which obscured his face and covered his eyes completely. His forehead was wrinkled, as if he were in deep contemplation, but that was not the case. His mouth was wide in a hideous smile, one which caused Victor to shiver in fear.
"Who..." the dying man whispered, "Who are you?"
"I am the man who will make you a legend. I am the man who will make you whole again, and better than you've ever been before," the "Doctor" exclaimed, his face becoming even more insane-looking than ever before.
"Why?"
"Because I can, dear boy!" the "Doctor" replied. He walked past Victor's body, out of the wounded man's sight over by where the bodies of his men were lying around. Victor had not made it very far before his wounds had forced his collapse, his movement was slow and awkward, and so the bodies were too close for comfort. "Ah, what's this?"
"Did you find something, Doctor?" the female voice asked. Victor turned his head and focused on her. She was beautiful, to say the least, and her tattered black clothing left little to the imagination. The expression on her face, however, was far from beautiful. She had a wild, insane look in her eyes that dredged up old fears in Victor's soul. Fears of a girl with that same look in her eyes... The woman looked at him with pitiless eyes, and the arrow shape on her forehead almost seemed to gleam with vicious intent. "You should feel honored to participate in Doctor Nova's work."
Victor did not, could not answer. His throat was far too clogged with blood for a decent reply.
"Amazing. The explosions were centered around their heads and yet there are still pieces of brain intact, incredible, simply incredible. And over here we have a Deckman. I've been wanting to tinker with one of these for ages. Yes, we have so much to work with here," the mad Doctor Nova mused, "Eelai! Get Bazarld and get a few vats. We have work to do! And pick up the live one while you're at it!"
Victor blacked out for the second time as the strange madwoman lifted his mutilated body over her shoulder as if he were nothing. This time he was sure he would be dead before he woke a second time.