Chapter One

Jerry Preacher... *guitar sting*

Mr. Valdez was a hard bastard. His father was a hard bastard, his grandfather was a hard bastard, his six brothers were hard bastards, and they all made each other hard bastards by beating the crap out of each other. He dropped out of school, because it was not filled with hard bastards, and with his lack of education he gravitated to where all hard bastards gravitated to: all the places where other hard bastards hung out at. There, he learned everything he needed to know. He learned who to punch, who not to punch, and who could give him a job standing in front of a door threatening people with punches if they didn't stop looking like they were hard bastards. But the one thing they never taught him was how to respond when the dumbest thing he'd ever seen in his short, angry life came walking up to the door he was guarding.

Mr. Valdez could only guess that the man was trying to pose as a tourist. That's what he would have assumed, going by the loud blue Hawaiian shirt, the board shorts, the "I'm someone's dumpy, unfuckable uncle on vacation" shades and the inexplicable smattering of zinc painting his nose white. He could only assume that, because the man stomping up to the door was otherwise a cyborg. Like, there wasn't any pussy footing around it, the man was a fucking cyborg. He was chromed up head to toe, covered in silvery artificial skin that was less about looking human and more to give the collection of muscle fibers that formed his body some kind of cohesive structure. The man had a chin like a villain out of a shitty secret agent movie or, like, the bastard lovechild of a bulldog and a backhoe. For fuck's sake, Mr. Valdez thought to himself, beneath his impassable hard bastard expression, this guy's packing claws on the end of his fingers! Who the fuck's he think he's fooling?

Still, Mr. Valdez was in a mood, and was half looking for an excuse to add "once punched out a cyborg" to his violence resume, so he decided to let the oddity come up and do its bit. The cyborg, clearly unfazed by Mr. Valdez's folded arms and "don't fuck with me" stance, gave him a wave and a smile that would have said "I am the exact opposite of a hard bastard" if it had been delivered by any other chin. "Why, hello there," the cyborg said, with what had to be the worst attempt at a Midwest accent that anybody would ever have to endure. "I was hopin' yoo could direct me to that there bathroom. I've been on a bus for the last coupla hours with nothin' but a bottle-a Moose Jaw Juice, and lemme tell ya, she makes for some needy company, if ya know what I mean."

"No bathroom here." Mr. Valdez responded, with the stony glare that all the hard bastards taught him. "Unless you wanna piss on a wall."

The cyborg seemed genuinely taken aback at being so thoroughly shut down, but he recovered quickly enough, back to goofy grins and bad accents. "Say, uh, I don't suppose you could tell me what yer guardin' over here, could ya?" He waved a hand at the building behind Mr. Valdez, nearly scraping a claw against his nose in the process. "Looks like a pretty happenin' party spot, don'tcha know."

"Private club," Mr. Valdez gruffed. "Members only."

The cyborg made an exaggerated "oh, pshaw" motion. "Members only? Now that sounds like a challenge if ever there was one. Lemme talk to your boss; I'm sure he'll let me in faster'n milk freezes on a Wisconsin winter night."

"Not gonna happen."

"Aw, now don't be like that..."

"Not." Mr Valdez puffed out his chest. "Gonna." He popped a kink out of his neck. "Happen."

"Well, why not?" the cyborg huffed, dropping his accent as he put on what could only be described as a childish cyborg pout.

Mr. Valdez reached into his pocket, slipped the brass knuckles around his fingers, and flexed them tight into a fist. "Because, sir, you are obviously a cyborg coming to kill the fiftieth top ranked assassin, and I'm under orders to make sure anybody who tries to pull that shit leaves with half their face missing."

The cyborg put one hand up in surrender (it was at this point Mr. Valdez's "hard bastard" training made him notice that the cyborg's other hand had been down at his side the whole time, for some reason). "Woah, now, there buddy," he said, suddenly back to his affected voice. "You're barking up the wrong tree, there, now, don't you know... um, there... you... y'all... umm..." There was a silence that hung in the air, thick and awkward as the closet six and a half minutes into a childhood game of seven minutes in heaven, which the cyborg eventually broke with two words:

"Thunder Strike."

Before Mr. Valdez could remove his knuckled fist from his pocket, a palm was practically touching his nose. The rest was kind of a chaotic blur. He remembered a concussive force, like a bomb had gone off in front of his face. He remembered his head smacking against the door. He remembered a bizarrely heeled foot in his solar plexus, being propelled by what looked like rockets as it pushed him through the door and into the club, where he finally came to rest against the bar. And he remembered the cyborg, hanging in mid air, suspended by his foot which was currently digging into Mr. Valdez's body. He thought he heard the cyborg say something before the pain finally overtook him, some bullshit like "I have to give you credit. Not everyone could see through my disguises. Only a professional could sniff out a master of infiltration like myself." Of course, then he stopped remembering things, because the bar gave out and he was blasted headlong into the wall, where he died.

The cyborg kicked off of Mr. Valdez's body just as the bar collapsed, pulling a backflip and landing with the sort of bullshit three point cat like grace that marks someone way too inclined to showing off. The collection of hard bastards that had been drinking and chatting in the room were not terribly impressed, or at least not impressed enough to forget to pick up their pipes, bats, and knives and surround the intruder.

"Guess there's no point in maintaining the act any longer," the cyborg said, his voice gaining the faintest hint of a "hard bastard" gravel. He removed his right hand from its place at his side, holding it up to the growing mob with his palm down and his fingers seemingly curled aorund something. At that point, the cloaking device disengaged, revealing the long, silver briefcase he'd been holding, which popped open from the bottom and dispensed an overly elaborate looking red bladed katana. With a kick to keep it up in the air, he grabbed it in his other hand, tossed the briefcase to land on Mr. Valdez's mangled corpse, and took an appropriately menacing looking stance. "It's game time!"