A/N: This story is a Wild West AU. Everybody is still the same age, and they all have the same powers. Thanks for reading! Please review, check out my other Fanfics, and enjoy this one!
Sheriff Caine Soren woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a very peculiar sort of racket. He rolled over onto his side, taking great care not make any noise or sudden movements. He opened his eyes and saw a shadowy figure climbing out of his window. Every move they made was followed by the clank, creak, and clatter of a strange metal contraption.
What kind of idiot bandit tries to steal from the sheriff's house? Caine wondered to himself.
He fumbled throughout the dark house until he found a candle and some matches. Once he'd gotten himself a light, the sheriff did a quick inventory check of every room in the house. He was surprised to find that absolutely nothing had been stolen. He didn't notice that anything was even slightly out of place until he got back to his bedroom.
The painting of Diana Ladris, the girl that the sheriff had once been able to call his own, was in shreds on the floor. Caine welled up with rage. He had paid top dollar for Roger, the greatest artist in all of Perdido Gulch, to paint that portrait. Caine had wanted to take it down when Diana had high-tailed it out of town because she didn't approve of the way that Caine dealt with lawbreakers. He hadn't had the heart to do it, though. If he couldn't see her lively smirk in real life, he could at least see it in a portrait. Well, he could've.
Caine was about to return to bed when he saw something on his nightstand sparkling in the warm glow of the candlelight. When he walked over to investigate it, he realized it was a shiny copper penny. When he looked down at the coin he couldn't help but notice the shred of canvas under it. One side depicted the black lace that had trimmed Diana's dress in the portrait, but on the other side, there were four little words that words that caused the sheriff to worry.
I'm gonna get you.
It was a simple threat. Caine shouldn't have been afraid at all. He wasn't afraid when a mysterious dome had appeared over the little mining town of Perdido Gulch about a year ago. He wasn't afraid when they discovered that all of the adults had disappeared. He wasn't afraid when his deputy, Drake Merwin, became Drake the Snake, the notorious whip-handed outlaw that lurked in the deserts that surrounded Perdido Gulch.
There was only one human being who had ever even come close to scaring the sheriff. She was known far and wide as Unlucky Penny. When the dome appeared over town, she'd been one of Sheriff Soren's strongest supporters. Eventually, he discovered that she wasn't as impressed with his outlaw wrangling skills as she was with his devilish good looks and charm. During this time, Caine and Diana's relationship was doing relatively well, so Penny's feelings obviously weren't returned. Fueled by jealousy and spite, Unlucky Penny attempted to use her powers of illusion to drive Diana insane. The sheriff discovered her plot and used his powers on her in revenge. By the time Caine was done with her, both her legs and heart were broken beyond repair. Supposedly, she'd used her arms to drag herself into an outhouse where she had attempted to recuperate. Nobody had believed this rumor at first until somebody found a boy named Cigar with two shiny pennies poked into his empty eye sockets. Lana Arwen Lazar had used her healing powers to save his life, but Cigar was never the same again. Caine wasn't going to let the same thing happen to him. When Penny came for him, he was going to fight back.
Caine doubted that Penny would come back that night, so he attempted to get some sleep. Unfortunately, he couldn't sleep for more than fifteen minutes at a time without being woken up by some sort of horrific nightmare about just what Unlucky Penny had in store for him.
The next morning, Caine wandered the streets of Perdido Gulch, prepared for a confrontation. Yet, hours passed by without any sign of the outlaw who'd threatened Caine the night before. Then, at high noon, Caine heard the same clank, creak, and clatter that he had heard the night before.
She had emerged from behind the saloon, standing on poorly crafted copper legs. She wore a tattered black dress beneath a beige leather vest. The boots on her shoddily crafted feet perfectly matched the hat perched atop her head. She carried a pistol in her left hand, but everybody in Perdido Gulch knew that her free hand was a much deadlier weapon.
"I'm gonna give you one chance to turn around and stumble back into the desert," Caine offered.
"No thanks," Penny replied.
"I was hoping you were gonna say that," Caine said, grinning wickedly.
Caine waved his hand and the outlaw went flying through the roof of the saloon that had once belonged to Albert Hillsborough, who was now residing in the town hall as the mayor.
"You're gonna have to do better than that if you wanna get me!" Penny shouted, hanging onto the edge of the hole she had created when Caine had tossed her through the rooftop.
"Don't you test me!" Caine yelled, aiming his palms at Penny.
Caine was about to send the outlaw hurtling through a storefront when his hands were suddenly engulfed in flames. Caine knew it was just an illusion, but he still frantically ran around the town searching for water. He would do anything to end the burning.
Penny cackled and then shouted, "Bring it out, Turk!"
A boy that Caine had never seen before stepped out of a dark alleyway, pushing a large barrel of water into the town square. The sheriff ran over to the barrel as fast as he could and plunged his hands into it. The illusions disappeared instantly, and Caine realized that he'd been tricked. His hands weren't soaking in water, they were slowly being encased in cement.
The sheriff pulled his hands out of what would soon become a barrel full of concrete. As Caine tried to brush the wet cement off of his hands, Penny hit him with another illusion. Caine's legs collapsed beneath him and felt pain like he'd never felt before.
"It hurts, don't it?" Penny called. She was sitting on the edge of the rooftop. When had she had time to get up there? Penny's illusions must have had Caine incapacitated for longer than he thought. She was swinging her copper legs back and forth, which sent a terrible creaking noise throughout the town. "Imagine feeling this way for a whole month!"
"Is that what this is about?" Caine wondered.
"I wouldn't be talking back if I were you," Penny threatened. Waving her pistol for emphasis.
"I…wouldn't be talking back...if I were you," Caine growled through gritted teeth, "I'm…gonna lock you up in the hoosegow if it's the last…thing…I…do."
"Keep dreaming," Penny replied with an evil giggle, "I've gone through too much shit to end up rotting in jail."
"What…kind of shit?" Caine asked weakly. If he could distract Penny, she might just stop using her powers on him long enough for him to escape.
"Well, to start with, I had to live in an outhouse for a couple of months. If I hadn't bribed Taylor to bring me food, I'd probably be dead by now," Penny said.
"Well, now that would just be a crying shame," Caine interrupted sarcastically.
"Shut yer trap! I'm not done talking yet!" Penny snapped, "I lived in the outhouse for a month until I got the genius idea to make these babies."
Penny started swinging her legs again, sending that same terrible scraping sound echoing through the town square.
"I had my little minion, Howard, give me all the pennies he'd earned at his little whiskey still. I put the bag of pennies around my neck and drug myself down to Jack's blacksmith shop," Penny recalled, "All I had to do for me to get my lovely new legs was to give him a vision of your little girlfriend, Diana. After I got my new legs, I decided to test them out by walking over to my good friend Cigar's house. He was fun. I got him to lick the bottom of my boot, and I'm gonna make you do the same, Sheriff."
Penny grabbed her right leg and pulled it up at an unnatural angle so that her foot was only inches away from her face. She inhaled deeply, smelling her grubby boot.
"Hoo-wee! That's some fresh cow pie! Do you wanna a taste, sheriff?" Penny exclaimed.
When Penny had adjusted her leg position, she'd had to stop using her powers. The pain in Caine's legs was gone. Not only had he finished wiping most of the cement off of his hands, but he wasn't distracted by the phony pain in his legs anymore, either. Caine waved his hand and knocked Penny off of the roof and onto the ground.
Penny's body seemed fine, but her legs had crumpled beneath her. She had landed next to a large, black stallion that was tied up in front of the saloon. Caine strutted to Penny and leaned over her.
"Ready to give up now?" Caine asked.
"Not just yet," Penny teased.
"Actually, you're going to have to give up," Caine informed his rival, "Unless you can hop up on that there horse."
Caine chuckled as Penny tried to use her arms to climb onto the horse. At first, she struggled to get a hold on the horse, but once she was able to get a hold on the animal she was able to hoist herself onto it with ease. She steered the horse towards Caine, who levitated the stallion into the air. In return, made him feel like there were maggots eating him from the inside out. Caine dropped the terrified horse, which started rampaging through the town in a single horse stampede. Penny was thrown off of the horse and into a nearby cart full of hay. Penny's pistol went off and the bullet flew into the air. Caine used his powers to make the bullet speed towards Penny. Penny ducked out of the way and used her powers to make everyone in the crowd look like her. Consumed with rage, Caine started throwing kids around at random, trying to identify the real Penny by her shriek.
Suddenly, the bang of a gunshot got both Caine and Penny's attention. The outlaw and the sheriff turned to see Mayor Albert Hillsborough standing in the middle of the town square. He looked surprisingly calm for somebody who had just fired a double barrel shotgun.
"That's it! I've had enough!" Albert shouted, "I want you out of town, now!"
"Thank you!" Caine said graciously, "You don't know how much trouble this little b-"
"You too, Caine!" Albert shouted.
"Why? I was just doing my job!" Caine protested.
"Yeah, but you doing your job was causing more trouble than anything that Penny was doing today," Albert said.
"But who's gonna be the new sheriff?" Caine asked.
"I don't know!" Albert said. He looked around the town square wildly for somebody, anybody, who was qualified enough to take Caine's job. Eventually, he saw someone who might have been able to handle the responsibilities of being sheriff. It was a longshot, but it was better than not having a sheriff at all.
"Quinn! You're the sheriff now!" Howard decided.
"Yee-haw!" Quinn shouted. Almost instantly, Albert was sure that he had made a mistake.
"But…you can't!" Caine shouted, lifting Albert into the air.
"Actually, I can," Albert said, "I'm the mayor."
"Don't remind me," Caine growled. He had always wanted to be the mayor, but somebody else had always taken the position.
"Nobody actually wants you or Penny here," Albert said, "You'd both be doing the town a favor by getting out."
"You don't have to ask me, twice," Penny said, awkwardly shimmying onto a buckskin horse as she spoke.
"Well, I'd rather go to hell," Caine told Albert.
"That can be arranged," Albert said, holding his shotgun up to Caine's forehead. His tone of voice was calm and collected, but Caine could tell that he meant business from the angry gleam in his eyes.
Reluctantly, Caine got on the back of a horse and started riding away. He had no idea where to find, food, water, or shelter in the desert. So, he had to follow Penny. She had spent enough time in the desert to know how to survive out there. When they were a few miles away from town, Penny used her powers to stop the horse. She slid off the horse and onto to ground. She picked up a large rock and started trying to hammer her legs back into shape.
"You're not really gonna stay away, are you?" Caine asked.
"Of course not," Penny answered slyly, "I'll get my revenge on that no good hellhole if it's the last thing I do."
"Yeah, you'll definitely make them pay," Caine said. He paused for dramatic effect, then added, "If you accept my help."