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The dying world

"This way," he says, a granola bar in his left hand. The nuts and berries crunch between his rotten teeth. "We'll find a good vantage point."

He's little more than a dog on a chain, leading me through the less colonized areas of the canyons. Currently armed with a sawed off shotgun, and an empty .357 revolver. Empty 1911. Runt tried to bargain with an empty weapon. Searched, no extra bullets. Such a commodity to waste so frivolously in exchange for your pathetic life when you'll lose it anyway.
Resistance is futile.
Sun is long since down and far from up. The creature only gets as much sleep as it needs - nothing more, nothing less. The harsh desert wind blowing through the cool of the night would be harsh to a lesser being. And so it is for the skinny bald man in the assless chaps and the collar, nothing more.

"Fruh-from up here we c-can see a good vantage point," an advantage I don't need, but welcome nonetheless. "K-keep vigilant, fuh-friend." How naive.

The precautions of something so puny don't apply to a creature, a creation such as I.
The past considered. My titanium hand cracking human and mobian bone alike. The skull crushing, the bleeding, the screaming. Everything flashes before my eyes in an instant. Physical and emotional loss.
I've been here before - and I'll be here again.

The sound of boots crunching against the sand and rock.
Colin's heavy panting. Signs of weakness.
Around the side of a firmly perched peak rock on the canyon and there's his beloved vantage point. Encampment below. Bonfire. Thirteen or more, the exact number to me would come in an instant if I thought it was worth bothering.
"Nuh-not too far away," he squeaks out. "Nuh-not far away from Muh-Mobotropolis. Man Town."

Terrified.
Not even an advanced being such as I could put the coward to rest. I can tell he tries to find comfort in me, but he is mistaken.
He is not my friend - regardless of what may or may not have occurred in our past lives. Merely a job.
An objective.
It doesn't matter. None of this matters.

"A penny saved is a penny earned."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't eat cheese before noon. A picture is worth a thousand words. Never eat cheese before noon."

"Slow down a bit, eh? Stop and sniff at the dandelions with your nasal cavities."

"I'd say that about captures it in a bag and beats it over a dead horse until all its bones break and it bleeds to death. Just make sure your nuggets are in order, taken care of. I don't like picking your worthless ass up after you've collapsed."

"I need the scratch."

"No." Examine my own hand. A disconnect. Nothing means anything - the realm of a fantasy without the benefits. A dream without meaning.
"C-c-come on," Snively says, tugging at the chain in my hand. What will all of this accomplish? "Thuh-they could spot us with their buh. Buh. Binoculars. I-if you have to stop, stuh-stay behind the rocks."

Somehow this works.

Almost crash into the boulder, planting my shoulder against it, not bothering to look his way. Circuits strain and wires overheat. Functions searching for an unattainable clarity. Not seeing the full picture, not sure if the clouds shrouding it can or will disperse.

Fantasy without pleasantries.
"What brings you out here, Snively?" That name again. Where did it come from? His back against the wall. Whimpers that can't be helped. Pebbles imprisoned by gravity, dragged downwards by their very shackles. Clicks echoing their journey down the canyon. "More importantly, how do I know you?"

Panicked, he looks around. Trying to contain himself.
"Sh-shhhh-sh," the distance closes, he whispers. "L-like I said, sir. I was kuh-kidnapped, stolen from master. C-c-c-c-c-can we tuh-talk about this later?"

Sole grinds against sand. They're coming.

"The other thing. The important one," drunk isn't something I ever recall being, but I think it would be an appropriate way to describe how I feel. "How do I know you?"

He frantically scoots backwards towards me, his chain quietly rattling, stopping just short of me and cowering.
"P-please," I wonder what he's more afraid of. Them or me. Why? "Wuh-we have to get out of h-here. Th-they'll kill us. Asking qu-questions at a time like this is suh-suh-suicide, sir." More pebbles follow their fallen comrade's path down the canyon. "Guh-guh-get us out of h-here and b-b-back to Man T-Town."

Drunk. Disconnected. Like I've been on a bender. Where have I heard this word.
"Fool. If you don't tell me I'll kill you myself."

Pleading. Begging. More useless nonsense from the creature.
"Wuh-we m-made you what y-you are today - yuh-your corpse was b-beginning to rot and we tried to make a sluh-slave out of you. Th-things didn't quite exactly go as pl-planned. B-bigger, fuh-faster, struh-stronger, you were built, yes. A last d-ditch effort t-to hold off the destruction of the w-world sir," an anxious whine. Futile attempts at brevity. "Muh-mind control, brute power, c-c-conditioned with sk-k-kill. T-tampering with p-perfection," anguish, the death rattle of heartbreak ringing in my ears. Another memory like a shattered mirror. Traces of emotions from the parts of me that don't exist anymore. "H-however, you c-cannot add to what is already perfect."

Sinister laughter of children invades my ears. Circus music and the like.
Gravity retrieves the slugloaded double barrel shotgun from my fingertips and rakes it to the ground. The weight of my body joins the weapon. His terrified face comes in and out of focus above me as my body gradually slides down the abrasive rockface and into the dirt.
Eyes widen in panic, his. Desperate attempts to pull me from the darkness. Exercises in futility.

"Are you okay?"

"A dream I had. A nightmare. I'm shaken, you see? Shook."

"What did you dream about? It could be important."

"The world lost its life to a frivolous attempt at a last ditch effort to reclaim glory. A witch was summoned, a witch what erased any semblance of civilization we had left. A bloodthirsty wrath upon your enemy that went horribly wrong. And I. I was destroyed. Rebuilt. A former shell of myself, wandering the wastelands for scraps of myself that I couldn't understand. Something familiar lost. We all were, in our own way."

"Hey now. Listen to me. That thing I said about how your bad dream could be important? That was all bullshit. That's meaningless. That means nothing. I'm kind of ashamed of myself for thinking that you could have any sort of meaningful dream after hearing the details of that."

"You were the first I killed. I destroyed what was left of you, not because you deserved it, but out of a subconscious desire for me to find purpose. To go on doing the only thing I was designed for. The only thing I remembered from my past life. Death. Destruction. War. Victory. Defeat."

"There is absolutely no way that shit is ever going to happen, buddy. Not on my watch."

"How could you possibly be sure of something like this? Dream or no, you have to confront your own weaknesses to make them strengths."

"Buddy. I'd swim through a whole lake full of lava for a chilidog. I'd eat my own feces out of a used taco bell wrapper if it meant victory in the hand and a chilidog in the bush. I'll punch and I'll kick until I don't have limbs. I'll munch my way to the pearly gates and use my ass as a rocket ship to get to the barrier of fire and brimstone. Aint nobody gonna finger this butthole when it has this kinda diarrhea, no sir. I'm a survivor. I'm not going to give up. I will survive. Keep on survivin'. I'll kill god for a chilidog."

Pearly gates? Barrier of fire and brimstone? Chilidog? What.

Snively grinds his cuffed hands against his groin while the man chokes him. Pick up the double barrel shotgun. Examine it.
He didn't even try. The creature's face is turning blue and purple. His codpiece is in the way. After a struggle to release himself, it's full on masturbation. An act of human and mobian kind I have no recollection of, despite feeling a personal connection to it buried under the fog of an enigma.
"Ggrrrggggghhhh!" he gurgles out, kicking and screaming in the air, his face growing purple. "Rrrrrgggghhhllll! HHHHHHHHHHHHH." A joke.

Titanium hand flattens itself out and jabs the thumb and the ringfinger directly into the bridge of his nose. Bone cracks. Skin tears. My fingers curl around the backside of his nose as he drops my ejaculating companion, spraying and staining his knees with crusted white splotches.
Stuff I know vs. stuff I was programmed to know.
"Thanks," he wheezes, more calm than he's ever been surrounded by idiots that want to kill him. "Just in time. Now, get the others." I can't help myself.

Tear out the center of his face to reveal eyes, his brain sloshing out of where his face used to be along his slack lower jaw. Taking his eyes with it.
Drop the filth. Consider my drenched, gory hand.
So meaningless.

"H-help!" his cries mean nothing. Six of them unload automatic weapons into what's supposed to pass as my body. Lead bounces off or gets pushed out by the enhanced human made genetics of my self-sustaining flesh. Slugs tinkling against sand and rocks. I'd laugh if I had the emotion to.

Cock my head to the side, grab my sawed-off shotgun.

Take aim. Fire.
Take aim. Fire.

Reload, removing the conversion cylinders. Stuff it full of shells and holster the weapon. Looks like it's my turn, as this coward has already gotten his rocks off and these chumps are already regretting thinking they could kill a creature as advanced as I.
Admire the damage done on the boulder behind me. Slugs stuck in holes, peppered in an arbitrary lateral line. No skill. No precision. The same marks left on me, only permanent.
Magazines drop. Magazines are loaded.
They try again.

"Puh-please!" he begs, hoping I destroy them before they destroy him. I stand here thinking about things. "Please kill them!"
For a moment, I'm as useless as he is.

The word glory is both foreign and anticipated. A meager salary. Scraps elude me - echoes of laughter and screams. The new flesh - the flesh I don't remember, recall, clamor for.

Slow motion. Time is convoluted. Lights blur and actions are perceived objectively. Uselessness.
Smack a bullet from the air, as slowly as the world moves around me. A grimace takes hold of my lower lip. Sparks of emotion leave their traces on what's left of my soul as fur and flesh is removed from my face to reveal the true mechanisms keeping me alive.

Rock and roll.

A familiar song.

Snively's desperate screams behind me echo throughout the canyon. My hand grabs the enemy's neck, digs into the flesh, rips the spine loose.
Trying to think back on the kind of violence I inflicted before this all took place.
Using the spinal cord to swing the almost severed head into his companion's face, cracking the skull of its forehead open and sending him limp to the ground.
Grab the spinal cord just under the neck, wielding it almost like a halberd.

Force the bottom end of the spinal cord into someone's chest, just under the breastbone. Piercing their heart.
I can do lots of crazy shit.
Retrieve the rifle from the fallen idiot's hand with my right hand, freshly reloaded. Colin is a coward enough to already be sniveling on the ground - perhaps where he got his nickname. Probably.

Open fire. Kneecaps busting, spleens splitting and nuggets ruptured - enemies dropping in every direction. Writing a skill or a stats sheet on me would be a futile endeavor, for my actions and words and situational awareness seems to heighten with every obstacle. Holster the double barrel and snatch a glock from a common enemy. One arm snags headshots with the glock nine millimeter while the other arm uses the snagged assault rifle to puncture hearts.
The speed at which my robotic hand pulls the trigger on the glock is indistinguishable from the fully automatic setting of the rifle - if only a millisecond faster.

Anyone who could potentially notice such a feat is dead before they touch the ground.

Staring at the pathetic creature huddled up against the rock. The job. The objective.
The creature behind me overestimates its advantage.

Roundhouse kick his head clean off his body as I turn to face him. Put a couple slugs in it from my double barreled sawed of shotgun just to be sure.
Bodyparts suspended in the sky fall to the ground almost as if in the wind I send through them as I turn to look around. Another worthless opposition removed from my existence - a small war I don't exactly remember happening.
Every bullet accounted for. The rifle empty. The glock has three rounds. Drop the former and holster the latter in my belt. Three shots means three targets, less foes I have to punch to death.

I can't blame myself for having fun.

"Thuh-thank you!" Snively mumbles almost incoherently. "All you needed was a good push, I wuh-wager! A buh-bit of inspiration!"

Wheezing, whines. All from the worthless creature that ejaculated on his enemy's boots instead of fighting.
Examine his face, his body. Scanning.
Bullet shattered his left elbow, splitting the joint. He's crying, of course. The gushing blood down his forearm and onto his dark leather chaps reminds me of something beautiful that was once destroyed. Not him, something else, something from a past life. Maybe something destroyed by my own hand. I can't remember. The feelings are recalled, the details are not.

"What's wrong with me?! Is my dick still out?!" he checks his codpiece to make sure it's in place and it is. His one talent - zipping up. "Don't mind me none. My arm is wrecked but we still need to get out of this desert. Reload, smoke 'em if you got 'em."

Words calling him out on the moron he is caught in my throat. Could be an asset, a metal detector for the shrapnel what's left of my exploded headgum.
"Begrudge," the little man in my throat says, with full permission from my lips and gums and tongue. "I can only hope you know where to go from here, Snivvy-poo."
Search the corpses for gold and bullets abound. Magazines deposited into my leather fanny pack and the discarded weapon picked up and reloaded. Cocked. Ready to kill.

"Ah, ye-yes," it squeaks, handing me the other end of its chain. "I am a masterplanner."

ÆdS - 2016