[hider=An Artist's Interpretation of the Meeting][img]http://i.imgur.com/OMca4KA.png[/img][/hider]

Exhausted, Archie practically fell of of his now-damaged motorcycle when he got back to Sentinel sheriff’s office. He couldn’t remember exactly what caused it, but his engine had begun sputtering, and his top speed had drastically decreased. It was late at night, and he hadn’t had a chance to sleep much the previous day. His shirt had its sleeves torn off to use as impromptu bandages, his pants and boots were dirtied and sandy, his eyes had massive bags under them, and even the stubble on his face had started to grow back. Three days he’d spent tracking the nefarious Long John McClive, one of the most nefarious bandits on Ash, and all he had to show for it now was a few new cuts on his legs and face... and of course, the severed head of Long John McClive himself in a brown, burlap sack. Archie wasn’t one to come back empty-handed, but this last job had taken a lot out of him. It didn’t matter now, though; the bounty on McClive was enough to keep him fed and housed for the foreseeable future.

Archie had to chuckle. Actually finding McClive had been difficult, but even after Archie revealed himself and offered to take Long John alive, Long John couldn’t even get his gun out of his holster before Archie shot him dead. Why John thought it would be a good idea to draw against someone with a gun pointed at them, Archie would never know. After the initial shot, John was reeling and could be easily decapitated with the Bastard’s Bastard Sword.

As he entered the sheriff’s office with his burlap sack, the clerk behind a counter perked up, startled. “You’re back...” There were two night guards on duty, though they didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what was going on.

“Yep,” Archie replied, approaching him, “And I brought you a present.” He casually dumped the contents of his bag in front of the clerk, allowing the head to fall on the desk. “I’ll be collecting the bounty on Long John McClive.”

Somewhat speechless, the clerk crouched down to open a safe behind the counter and pulled out several solid gold coins marked with the symbol of the Wintergold Conglomerate. He counted the right amount out in his head and stuffed them all inside a smaller bag. “Here.”

“Really?” Archie sighed. “Can you pay me in bullets? I can’t use these outside of Wintergold territory.”

The clerk sighed and gave Archie an exasperated look. “We’re short on bullets, and the boss insists we use these instead.” The clerk then passed Archie a small waver as proof of completion for the task. Some bullshit, pre-written message was printed on it about how thankful the Prime Minister was for helping keep the settlements safe.

Reluctantly, Archie snatched up the bag of coins. He had no love for the Conglomerate, but wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth (unless he felt the horse in question would try to bite him). “Eh, money’s money I suppose. Give me a copy of your latest wanted list, please.” After receiving the list he wanted and dropping the rest of his things at his place, Archie was free to do whatever he liked for the rest of the night.

Rather than immediately go home to sleep, Archie’s second stop was the local saloon, the horribly-named [i]Hoochie’s Hooch[/i]. He wasn’t a drinker, but they knew his name there, and felt in the mood for some shameless praise; perhaps even a bit of bragging. It was probably around 11PM if Archie had to guess, so there would probably still be people there drinking. 

====

Roberta looked around the bar sullenly. She’d gone over a week without seeing so much as a single coin come into her possession, losing out bounties to more established bounty hunters, contracts for making or fixing something to more established contractors, and even a job as a caravan guard to a woman with more connections. Sometimes she had to wonder what on earth had possessed her to come all the way out to an island that had only been accessible for a matter of months at most. So now she sat in a rinky dink bar nursing a watered down glass of… something, the bartender had called it whiskey but she was confident whiskey was supposed to be closer to turpentine than water. 

She huffed, gulping down the offending glass and standing up, making her way to the bar. “Another, please.” She grumbled, seating herself just as a man with a rather unusually tidy goatee entered. She quirked her eyebrow for a moment then dismissed him, shrugging and accepting the drink, to which she rolled a small coin edged in gold onto the table. She didn’t touch the drink for a little while, content to sit and stare daggers at the bartender when he wasn’t looking.

As Archie walked through the doors, he confirmed his suspicions, though nobody noticed his presence until he sat at the bar. “What’ll ya have, Arch?” the bartender asked, polishing a glass up idly with a wet rag.

“Just some water, thanks.” He laid a gold coin down on the table, receiving several smaller, gold-edged ones back as change. He exchanged idle chit-chat with the man behind the bar, occasionally stopping to take a sip from his drink and glance around the saloon. “Who wants to hear how I tracked down ‘Ol Long John...?”

The goatee’d man who had entered spoke, and she raised her head from the table looking over at him. [i]’Ol Long John…?[/i] she thought, [i]Wasn’t that the… damn, that bounty.[/i] She examined him closer, he didn’t exactly seem like a burly bruiser, which was mildly surprising. Many bounty hunters she’d had the displeasure of meeting were usually built like small tanks and had an attitude to match. She watched him for a few moments longer, before clearing her throat and addressing him, “What of it?” Her voice was unusually smooth and generally pleasant, not what you’d expect from someone with her appearance.

By that point, one or two patrons had sat down near Archie, hoping to hear some epic tale of adventure from him. When he turned around to meet the gaze of the robotic woman, he was quite honestly shocked. Her voice was surprisingly sweet, which caught him off guard even more. “Er...” He stayed calm though: he had a reputation to uphold, and couldn’t lose his cool in front of potential patrons. He coughed lightly, then replied in kind: “Well, while Long John had a few kills under his belt, they were all people who didn’t really have the ability to fight back: rich old guys, mostly. His crimes, more often than not, involved grand or petty theft,” he said to the mysterious woman across from him, “You look like someone who’s been around a bit, so I probably don’t need to tell you this, but the thing about thieves is they’re usually very hard to track, but pushovers in a gunfight. Long John was no exception.” He leaned back against the bar so he could face as many people as possible as he told his story. “You guys know how much I hate coming back empty-handed, so I tracked this fucker for three whole days, carrying most of what I owned on my back.” Try as he might, he couldn’t prevent himself from sneaking a few glances at this strange, mechanized woman. [i]What the fuck happened to her...?[/i]

“So yeah, anyways,” Archie continued, taking a sip of his water, “After a particularly big heist, a lot of thieves like to try and make a break for New Syracuse. The Hedons don’t have much in the way of law-enforcement, so the criminals can pretty much do whatever the fuck they like here and hide there until people like me stop looking for them, or they just hop on the quickest boat to Dust.” He gave a serious, dramatic look at his audience. “I knew if I didn’t catch him before he got to Hedon territory, I wasn’t likely to catch him at all...”

The rest of the story, while true-sounding enough, was told in a highly dramatic way, complete with silly voices for all the different people who helped or hindered Long John’s eventual capture. In the end, he’d cut ahead of Long John and waited for him at one of the smaller but key towns along the route to New Syracuse, and intercepted him when he went to resupply. “... and this, my friends, is when Long John McClive, [b]supposedly the smartest, most cunning bandit on Ash[/b], pulls his weapon after I’ve already got my gun on him.” A few of the listeners started laughing at the sheer anticlimax of his story, while a cocky smirk spread across the bounty hunter’s face. “And [i]that[/i], my friends, is how I, Archie, the Bladed Devil, caught Long John McClive.”

Roberta listened patiently through the man’s rambling spiel, her eyebrow raised the entire time. 

Once he had finished, she gingerly placed her drink on the bar and turned to face him, leaning against the edge, “So what you’re telling me is, you bravely killed a man who at that point had no chance of fighting back? Well done! Your gonads are truly of planetary proportions, I am in awe of your courage, you can pull a trigger at point blank!”

She leaned forward, “Have you actually filled any bounties that required, oh I don’t know, danger?”

Archie smiled at the woman calmly, in a rather condescending fashion. “Long John killed two people, and stole hundreds of thousands of bullets worth of property. He didn’t give any chance for those poor bastards to fight back, did he? But I suppose you’re right: it would’ve been better if, after giving him the chance to come quietly, I let him engage me in some sort of shoot-off at high-noon, eh?” Archie finished his water. “The trip itself was pretty fuckin’ dangerous if I do say so myself. A lot of people die of thirst in the desert, and I had to rush to get ahead of him.”

“Tell me, you ever heard of Ronnie the Butcher?” Archie continued, “Murdered nine people, three of them trained soldiers, and ate their corpses. Real fucked up guy, batshit crazy, but deadly with a cleaver. When I found his hideout, fucker tried to chop my head off. I got his first.” He gently patted the sword that hung on his waist. “Mad Clyde? Raped six women and killed four of them with that gang of his? When I went to his favourite saloon, four thugs jumped me, and I had to fight my way out. I didn’t earn my reputation by shooting petty thieves while they weren’t looking. Even if I had, Long John was an armed man resisting arrest.” Oddly enough, throughout this whole exchange, he never stopped smiling his calm little smile, speaking as though he was telling a story. “What are you grilling me for, anyways?”

A slightly amused smirk tried to force its way onto Roberta’s face. She ignored it and continued looking at him. “You were boasting, in my experience the boastful usually die first. That’s all.” She relaxed, leaning back against the bar again, “Though a shootout at high noon might’ve been a bit more dramatic I will admit, unless there’s money for him alive, just walk up to him from behind and put a bullet in the base of his skull? Or better yet, shoot him from afar.”

She shrugged, “But whatever, at least you actually do have something to boast about, so I withdraw my objection.”

“Shooting him from afar would’ve taken even less ‘balls’,” Archie replied, “Long John was a crook, but he wasn’t evil. Or at least, not as evil as some of the other assholes I talked about. I wanted to give him a chance to come quietly. Nothing more to it.” The smile had faded from his face after this cyborg had started speaking again. Quite truthfully, this woman was starting to annoy him, and her robot parts were rather unsettling. She wasn’t half-bad looking where organic matter remained, and her eyes were rather nice... though she wasn’t trying particularly hard to hide her immortal nature.

“So, what’s your superpower?” Archie asked quite bluntly, no longer looking quite so smug with himself, “Rudeness?”

She snickered slightly at that, “No, but that would be interesting would it not? Wonder how that’d work?”

“I’ll introduce you to my brother and you can find out.”

She gave a short giggle, taking a sip of the watered down “whiskey” before she waved a hand at his drink, before frowning and leaning over to touch the glass, before she leaned back. “Pour that on something, watch what happens. Just don’t pour it on anything you’re particularly attached to, or the bar.”

Archie took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and dunked it into the liquid. It began to dissolve almost immediately, prompting Archie to quickly wrench his hand away, startled. “Well shit, [i]that’s[/i] terrifying. All you’d have to do to collect on a bounty was spike someone’s drink.” [i]Best stay on this one’s good side,[/i] Archie thought. “I’ve decided I’m not thirsty anymore.” He was starting to genuinely feel afraid of this woman, but had learned to hide such feelings in the arena.

She smirked, “I [i]have[/i] collected bounties that way, hauled ‘em in with their throats missing. Bullets are one thing, but I’ve yet to meet someone who can survive pouring something with a pH of 14 down their throat. Leaves the glass nice and clean too.” Waving at the bartender, she rolled another coin on the table and slid the resulting drink over to Archie, “It’s just water, not going to melt anything unless that something is salt.”

“Again, you should meet my brother. Hardy motherfucker, he is. I usually just take the head, though; saves a lot of space.” He looked down at the crisp, clear liquid. It seemed innocent enough, but Archie couldn’t quite bring himself to trust it. “... I’m good.” he grumbled. “Eh, if you guys could stop eavesdropping...” he turned to the people he had been telling his story to, “That’d be nice.” The crowd quickly dispersed. “So... what’s your name, miss?”

Roberta raised an eyebrow, grabbing the glass pulling out a scrap piece of paper from her own pocket and dipping it in the drink, then a small scrap of aluminum from a can. “It’s [i]water[/i].” she sighed, shrugging. Standing up to move closer to him so she could avoid shouting, she had to stoop slightly to avoid hitting her head on the low ceiling. 

“Roberta, Roberta Lee S. Jackson.” She said simply as she sat down next to him, “And yourself?”

Archie raised his eyebrows in mild surprise as he realized just how tall this woman was. He’d technically fought taller in the arena, though, so it wasn’t quite so jarring as everything else about her. If he wasn’t so uncomfortable, he might’ve made some sort of quip. At that point it dawned on him that he was being somewhat impolite by not partaking in Roberta’s gift, so he had a sip to show his gratitude. “Archibaldo, but I prefer Archie. ‘The Bladed Devil’ was my old stage-name, but it still fit when I made the career change, so I kept it. Thank you for the drink.”

Roberta nodded in acknowledgement, “Something tells me that probably has to do with the small arsenal of sharp things you seem to be packing.” She snarked, “But I must ask, do you have horns to go with them? Little bit of demonic flair?” 

Eyeing the weapons, she couldn’t help but ask, “Where do you even get stuff like that? I would think most people had just gone to shooting each other or knives.”

“Playing dress-up on the job isn’t exactly practical,” Archie rebuttled, a more relaxed smile returning to his face, “Though I admit, I did use to wear horns when I performed. The swords?” Archie pulled a long, thin rapier halfway out of his sheathe. “This one’s my favourite. I found it in an old museum, if you can believe it: was just lying in a pile of rubble.” He slid it back into its sheathe. “This big one?” he continued, pulling his bastard sword ever so slightly out of the sheathe on his back. “Bit of a long story.” [i]Not one I’m ready to tell a woman I’ve just met...[/i] “I’ll admit, guns are usually more practical, but I save a lot on ammo, and having a bit of a gimmick doesn’t hurt your reputation. Now, might I ask where you got [i]that[/i] monstrosity from?” he said, pointing at what appeared to be a futuristic railgun.

Roberta glanced down at the barrel of the weapon he was pointing to. “What? This? I built it when I was seventeen.” She shot him a baleful glare.

“Though it ain’t a monstrosity, s’a work of beauty more like. Graphene coated rails of an alloy I’m not at liberty to divulge the makeup of, fed with 125 grain tungsten saboted slugs,” she rummaged around in a pocket, pulling out a loose one and showing him, “and powered with these supercapacitor/cold fusion power cells. Can give about ten to fifteen shots at about the power of a 7.62x39mm round and more than capable of punching through several centimeters of homogenized carbon steel at max power.” Poking him in the chest, she continued, “It’s not a [i]monstrosity[/i], it’s a work of engineering art, the pinnacle of portable electrically powered kinetic energy ordnance.”

“You’re clearly very passionate about your work,” Archie said, leaning back slightly. His heart rate began to accelerate as Roberta's finger made contact with his kevlar vest. [i]Shit, I’ve pissed off the Terminator... I’d be even more frightened if I knew what the fuck she was saying...[/i] “That’s... quite impressive, actually. I didn’t even know cold fusion had been invented yet. Or what ‘saboted’ means.”

“A sabot is something that goes on the outside of the projectile that holds it in place in the barrel, in the case of this the sabot serves the purpose of an electrical armature a-” she looked at him and frowned, “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“You got me,” Archie admitted, smiling, “But you’re fascinating to learn from, and I doubt you’d know what I meant if I started talking about pommels and hilts and sword techniques from a thousand years ago. I prefer a gun with a little less kick, but to each their own I suppose.”  He pulled out his silenced 9mm pistol. “Small, but it gets the job done, and I can fire it one-handed.”

Raising an eyebrow, Roberta sipped at the bland drink in her glass, making a face at the watery taste. “You’re saying that to be nice, it’s fine. Most people on this island or on the mainland don’t know what I’m talking about and don’t care, so I’m used to it.” 

She sipped again, then sighed and downed the entire thing. “You can fire pretty much anything one handed if you know what you’re doing, the problem is actually hitting what you’re aiming at. That being said…” she fumbled at her side, pulling out her own pistol, “I prefer a bit more oomph in my guns, ergo 10mm Auto. Just in case I need to go hunting things on two [i]or[/i] four legs. If I need subtlety…” she tapped her drinking glass, giving Archie a mischievous wink.

“Oh, I [i]definitely[/i] don’t know what you’re talking about, but I [i]do[/i] care,” Archie said, smiling. “I try and learn something from every new person I meet.” He watched her tap the glass, then raised an eyebrow. “... right now, I’m learning that if I ever get a price put on my head, I’ll need to find a new drinking buddy.” He hoped she wouldn’t bring up the fact that he hadn’t actually ordered anything alcoholic. Roberta seemed friendly enough to Archie, and she had a specific set of skills that were quite useful to him at this time. “I don’t suppose you’re looking for work? I need my motorcycle fixed. And maybe suggestions for some new guns.”

“Work- yes, I could do with that. I’m not a mechanic though, I’ve got a theoretical knowledge of many things, but all my actual experience is with stuff like this.” She gestured to the rail gun strapped to her back, “But I could try. As to guns… I’m probably not the best person to ask, and honestly if that works for you, keep it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, after all.”

Archie scratched his goatee pensively. Perhaps he wasn’t realizing this until now, but there was a certain stubbornness associated with using swords when the most advanced weapons known to man were readily available to him. “Now, say I wanted to... oh, I don’t know, get a custom-made, medium-to-long range rifle, something with enough firepower to punch through modern body armour... do you know anyone I could go to for that?”

She smirked, “Are you saying something? I could build you a railgun like this that’d go through several people wearing modern ballistic plating, but unfortunately I don’t exactly have access to the necessary materials. If you’re just looking for a powerful rifle, there are shops in the town.” She leaned against the bar, rolling yet another coin onto the table and signaling for water, “Now, if you have any bounty hunting jobs or the like, those I could definitely help with.”

Archie shrugged, seeming somewhat disappointed. “I’m gonna be frank, I need something that can kill a Hollow. One of those fuckers is worth at least six of Long John, and I’d really rather not get closer to one of them than I need to.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of his other pocket, the one he’d previously received from the clerk working at the law enforcement office. It had a long list of names of convicts along with their photographs, lists of their crimes, places they frequent, and places they were last seen. “But if you’re looking for a good bounty, you’ve found the right guy... one second, this hasn’t been updated.” Archie took out a red pen and crossed out a few of the pictures. “No, they weren’t all me; I’m not [i]that[/i] good.” He drew a large question mark on one of them, and drew a happy face on another. “Anyone not marked here is a good target, but considering we’re two people, we might wanna consider something a bit more challenging...”

Roberta gave it a once over, pursing her lips. “Well honestly, as long as bringing them in dead won’t adversely affect anything, I can make most of these a lot easier. As I’ve said, not many people can survive drinking a superbase.” 

She paused, “But if you’re looking to go Hollow hunting, well, just what kind of Hollow are we talking here?”

“Well...” Archie took another piece of paper out of his pocket. Several fell out onto the floor, and he silently lamented about needing to sort through them as he picked them up off the ground, finally uncovering the one he was looking for. He unfolded it, revealing a picture of what looked like a massive, black worm sticking out of the sand. It had the same scales which were characteristic of Hollows, a segmented body, and a massive set of white teeth that seemed to be holding a large animal in their grasp. “Lesse here... about fifty meters long, four meters in diameter, comes out of the ground and swallows people whole. Class two or three, I think... but there’s two catches. First, it keeps getting bigger, and this report is from a month ago. Normally I wouldn’t even consider fighting this thing, but if the problem is left alone, it’s just gonna keep growing. Nobody’s suicidal enough to actually help me, though; most people just steer clear of it... east of Fort Spire, that’s where it’s usually spotted.” Archie took a sip of his water. “And the second catch? It regenerates from leftover body segments the same way an actual worm does. Slowly, sure, but it’s not like we can wound it and walk away. Think you’re up to the task?”

Roberta shrugged, tapping the glass once more, and then gesturing to the railgun strapped on her back. “I think I am, juuuust maybe. Not like I have anything else to do anyway. Unless you count sitting around grumbling about jobs being taken. Though honestly…” she glanced at the picture again, “you don’t happen to know some way I could transport bulk liquids inland? Or maybe get the fucker close to the sea? Would be easy then, drown the thing in acids and bases.”

“You’re really nonchalant about something that’ll probably get us both killed, yannow?” Archie said frankly, “But that’s the kind of person I want helping me on this. My motorcycle is certainly out of the question...” Archie scratched his chin once again. “Do you know where we could find a firetruck?” He was only half-joking; a firetruck combined with Roberta’s powers could’ve made this a breeze.

“Alas, I do not. There might be some sort of water tank we could find though, big enough for me to take most of the danger out of it. The main problem is actually moving it…” she paused, scratching her chin, “We might be able to rent a truck or something from someone around here, Sentinel’s built off the ruins of an old port so maybe a delivery truck or two might be lying around. Hell, maybe even an oil truck, that’d have enough space.” 

Archie sighed, then placed a palm on his forehead and proclaimed: “Christ, I’m a fucking moron... we’re in the desert. Of course there’s water trucks around here. The hard part is getting one.”

“We just have to…” Roberta grabbed another coin, twirling it between her fingers before dropping it in an empty glass that she then tapped her fingers on, “ask nicely.”

Archie leaned in towards Roberta and whispered. “... If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting... how ‘bout we get out of here and discuss this somewhere a little more private, hmm?”

Roberta nodded, standing up and downing the last bit of her water. “You have a place around here? All I’ve got is a room in an inn nearby, which isn’t exactly the most secluded place.”

“A small one,” Archie said, nodding, “It’s on the edge of town, so nobody’s gonna bother us.” 

Archie didn’t realize how much subtext that conversation contained until they were already out the door.