DocTachyon — Roleplayer Guild

”The Ranchero of Miracle Mesa” - Strings: Part Four

“The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.”

-Anonymous

Warpath, Texas

Vigilante could feel needles of bone piercing his shoulder, tearing more and more muscle as he reloaded his guns. The pain shot down his arm and up through his collarbone in white hot spikes. He just had to grit his teeth and take it. Wasn’t becoming of a cowboy to sit there, bitching and moaning while his enemies came up on the horizon, no sir. Vig set his jaw and rolled his shoulder, grunting as agony leaped through his nerves.

“Something wicked this way comes.” The voices in Vigilante’s head joined in unison. Vig shook his head, trying to rid himself of the noise and focus. Time to face center. Couldn’t do with Mephisto’s curse distracting him from the fight.

The dust cloud swelled in size, towering from its point of origin like the Groom Cross. It fanned out in a wide cone from an advancing black speck rumbling across the desert. Slowly, it resolved into a vehicle. It was a long, black plated limo. The desert sands it kicked up slid off of the paint job like water off a duck’s back. Vig couldn’t get a read on anything inside through the tinted windows. He’d have to wait for the fight to come to him.

Vigilante limped back to the wall as the billowing smoke encroached. With no way over, he started shoving aside the bodies of Fatboys with his feet and dug in amongst the copses for cover. He rested the butt of his weapons on the bodies. All that was left was to lie in wait. Any manner of things could be in that limo, most likely entities of Greed. Homunculi, Midans, Speed-Demons…

The limo stopped thirty yards out from the barrier. Vig tightened his grip on his pistols. His fingers found their way inside the trigger guard. The driver’s side window rolled down, and a pair of human hands shot out.

“Don’t shoot! Jesus gawd!” A voice shouted from inside. The hands were shaking. Vigilante could see cufflinks on the intruder’s wrists.

”Come on out now. Real slow like. Keep them hands where I can see ‘em.”

The man’s hands jerked to the door handle from the outside, awkwardly opening it and stumbling out of the vehicle. He was a tall, lanky man, stuffed into a poorly fitting suit. His hair was slicked back with cheap gel. The feller’s skin was sallow, but not in the usual way. Where Vig might have expected a pale over his skin, there was a sickly brown. He looked twenty, twenty-five. His hands were too knobby for his age. Most curious of all were raised spiral scars on both of his cheeks, like someone had gone in with a knife to try and make ‘em stand out. He held his hands over his head and dropped to his knees.

“Please man! My boss an’ I are just here to talk!” The man pleaded. Vig could make out the outline of a handgun against his waistband.

“Drop yer handcannon n’ we’ll see about that, boy.”

He nodded a dozen times more than he needed to and quivering hand went down to his waistband. His movements were jerky, uncertain. He pulled the glock from his pants, lifting the end of the handle with his thumb and pointer finger. He threw it away from him out into the sands.

“See? Unarmed! We just wanna talk!”

“Yer “Boss” wanna come outta that there car? Without no guns, neither?”

”I thought you might take more kindly to my associate there first.” The rear door of the limo opened. Vig adjusted his aim, keeping one squarely on the goon’s stomach, and the other on the door.

Vigilante could scarcely make out the figure’s head as he stepped out of the car. The man instantly dropped below the window as he stepped out; he was so short that Vig could only see the top of his bowler hat as he passed behind the car door.

The man that emerged was victim to what seemed a cruel kind of dwarfism. He was scarcely as tall as the car door, but had lanky, ill-fitting limbs that hung loosely at his sides. The worst was his face. He seemed carved out of wood by a drunken craftsman, his cheeks and jaw were out of proportion with a face that struggled to contain two bulging brown eyes. His pallor seemed like that of his lackey, but worse. His features were hard and almost wooden, there seemed to be horizontal lines running up and down his exposed skin.

”My name is Daniel Matthews.” He spoke in a subtle New Yorker accent, unlike his compadre’s brazen one. Matthews had an old school tommy gun slung over his shoulder. He made a show of undoing the strap with gloved hands. The gun clattered to the ground.

”Certain… Unwise former associates had taken to calling me ‘The Dummy’. I advise you to not make the same mistake.” He stepped a few paces forward. Vig raised his pistol. Matthews stopped, showing open palms. ”My associate and I merely wish to parley with the vigilante known as... Well, Vigilante.”

“You got ‘im, pardner.” Vigilante stepped out of cover, mounting the pile of Fatboys. He kept his weapons trained on the newcomers. “What I’m innarested in knowing is what a city slicker packin’ all sortsa popguns wants with a little town like mine. ‘Specially someone who ain’t bothered by a pile of corpses.”

Matthews shrugged. ”I’ve seen worse, in my line of work. My employer wishes to provide aid given the… Situation here in Warpath. We can provide weapons, ammo, men. All we ask for in exchange is one little artifact we believe to be in your possession.”

“Look, mister. By the look of ya, you ain’t with SHIELD, and I’m eck-stra confused about how the de-tails of our little predicament found their way into your ears.” Vig stepped down of the corpse pile. “But… You ain’t tried to kill me yet, and that’s a damn sight better that mosta the folks I’ve met over the past few years.”

“Kill him! Kill him good kill him dead kill him good kill him dead kill him kill him kill him kill kill kill...” The voices in his head hissed. The closer Vig got to Matthews the more ferociously it burned. It felt like the taint of Mephisto in his mind, trying to drag him back to Hell again, screaming to keep him away from this man -- or put a bullet in his head. He thought that was a good sign. Anybody Mephisto didn’t like was a pal to Vigilante.

”Glad you see it my way.” Matthews extended a hand. ”Do you have a real name, or just Vigilante?”

“Vig for short’s fine.” Vigilante reached out to shake his hand. As he neared, every nerve in his body erupted into fire, the voices trying to hijack his system, screaming for him not to broker with this man. They pushed on his brain, his muscles trying to drive him back.

Vig put his hand into Matthews’ and a sick smile crossed the Dummy’s face. It went from ear to ear, a perversion of human anatomy. ”You cowfucking idiots are even easier to trick than I thought.” Instantaneously a shiver shot up Vigilante’s arm, squeezing his muscles and locking his joints, flushing away any of the burning from moments ago. Vig went for his guns but he found his joints locked. He looked down. Fine wood was spreading across his body, turning complex ball and joint sockets and ligaments into carpentry and screws.

“Motherfu-” Vigilante’s legs gave out and he slammed into the sand, cracking his head on the ground. At the edge of his swimming vision he could see The Dummy’s lackey, reduced to a similar state. He had crumbled to the ground, like a lifeless doll. His skin was all the more wooden now, as if all the life had been sucked from him in an instant.

The wood crept across his chest and Vigilante could feel his organs seizing mid operating in the cage of his chest, heart stopping mid-pump, unable to deliver blood to a body that no longer needed it. The dummification spread up to his neck and stopped just short on consuming his head.

“I’m gonna tie you to a horse and drag you across the goddamn-” The Dummy’s elbow smashed into Vigilante’s face. His nose shattered on impact.

”Not fun, is it? I don’t like being made of fucking wood either.” The Dummy clasped a hand over Vigilante’s mouth. ”So you and everyone in your shithole town are going to help me get out of my… Illness. Unfortunately for you, there are two ways out, and both of them end with you dead.” The Dummy’s free hand fished in his coat pocket, and produced a bloodstained polaroid. It was a picture of a picture, but through the levels of abstraction Vig could make out what appeared to be some kind of trident. ”You give me this trident right now, then I kill you and I’m on my way. Or...” The Dummy got up, walking over to his tommy gun. He hefted the weapon in both hands. ”I kill everyone in your shitty little town, one by one, until you tell me.”

Vigilante spat out a mouthful of blood. “I don’t have no Trident! If you touch a hair on anyone’s head...”

The Dummy made a tut-tut-tut noise with his tongue. ”You’re not in any position to make threats. Tell you what, I’ll give you some time to think about it.” The Dummy put his tommy gun over his shoulder, and pressed his hand into Vigilante’s dummified chest. The power started spreading up his neck and over his ears.

”I’ll wake you in a few hours. That’s when the real fun starts.”
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