Invasion of Indifference

The greatest irony in life is how we spend our lives struggling in vain to escape the one thing that defines our existence - imperfection.

Chapter 1 Bounty Hunters:

At the end of the Reunification War, a smoking armistice forged by the mysterious Rune Midgard Committee for the countries of Payon, Prontera, Geffen, and Morroc was all that was preventing Midgard from being set ablaze again by the resumption of war.

What followed was a period of uneasy peace, but it was peace nonetheless. And for all the citizens who couldn't care any less of which nation was mightier than the other, it was all they were asking for.

Normal life couldn't be any more normal.

At least, that was what everybody was hoping for. Trouble is never far away from peace. With the loss of so many of the security forces of the nations because of the war, all manner of dangers came forth the woodwork - bandits, fiends previously suppressed by constant hunting, and other threatening forces never before seen started appearing in distant towns and sowed terror where they could.

The strong call for protection gave new life to a long dead profession - mercenarial work or bounty hunting. Suddenly, warriors coming home from the war found themselves doing for money to survive what they once did for patriotism. It wasn't much of a livelihood, but when your hands are stained with blood, being a chooser will just make your stomach grumble.

Our story starts with two such hunters in the remote forest village of Chrimville slightly outside the borders of Prontera as they searched for a target that they specialised in killing -

"Is that him?" A rash voice of an adolescent male echoed from the darkness of the forest.

"He fits the description," replied a much more reserved feminine voice.

The thick canopy of the trees barely allowed any moonlight to highlight their target from the shrubberies. A faint figure of a man with a sword in hand walking slowly along a barely visible path between the tree lines could be seen from the faint glow of the night.

"I don't think Caucasian swordsman with a medium built is a very good description for a target. He could be anybody."

"It's past midnight. Who would be walking in these woods without any company?"

"We need to take a closer look. There's only one way to tell if he's one of them. We can't keep on screwing up if we want to keep our jobs."

"You do it then. I'll take point."

A kid no older than seventeen with hair barely standing out of the viridian grown of moss beside the tree he was pressing his cloaked body into slipped sideways and peered at his target.

"Why do I have to always do the dirty work?" he spoke to a nearby shrub.

A pony-tailed lass moved out of the shrubbery, her carmine hair firmly rested on one of her shoulders . Her eyes gleamed with what little light that came through from the leaf openings above. On the other shoulder rested a queer-looking crossbow no wider than a double-handed sword but almost as long as a war pike.

"It's in your job description, Adrian. You're the bait; I'm the trap. Don't worry, Engelmacht never misses," replied the woman who appeared to be clothed in the usual huntress attire of skimpily cut leather cladding.

"That's what worries me, how it never misses but half-guesses its targets. I think I'll just pretend you didn't say anything." Adrian pulled out two daggers from his coat. Each one, attached to chains twined in his arms. "Here we go."

The huntress peered into the sight glass attached at the end of her weapon and trained her weapon towards the slow-moving target. "Sights are hot."

Adrian moved out of the tree groove and rushed towards the outline of the figure. His controlled breathing fogged the air. After fifteen paces, the figure stopped walking and turned at the aggressor.

A shard of moonlight painted the face of the target as Adrian closed in. He was indeed Caucasian, and the sparkle from his infantry sword proved his warrior class. But it was his eyes that gave away his identity; each eye had a concentric iris of yellow and green.

At a moment's notice, the swordsman started running away from its assassin. Adrian kept up pursuit as they disappeared into the woods.

Meanwhile, the huntress found herself losing the target from her scope. He was running too fast in a direction being blocked by more trees.

"Shit," she cursed to herself, "this is why I hate working in forests!"

"Come back here!" said Adrian as he struggled to keep up with the almost inhuman speed of the swordsman.

A few hundred paces across the woods later, they ended up in an opening in the woods that was probably a camping ground of hunters in the glory days. The swordsman stopped and turned towards Adrian.

The assassin stooped a bit and caught three mouthfuls of air. "You're making this hard for me."

The swordsman spent no time to reply. It raised its sword and ran towards the assassin. Adrian saw this in less than an eye's blink and ran towards the swordsman as well. The chains around his arms loosened as he twirled the daggers around his arms. "Let's make this quick and painless, not that you'd really care, right?"

The swordsman swung the sword down just as the assassin reached its range. The assassin threw his body in a sideway spin and avoided the swing by an inch. He planted his left foot into the grassy soil of the forest and used it to leverage his entire body for a strike as he flew beside the target.

At the last moment, he extended his blade and gaped a wound by the right side loin of the swordie. A spatter of fluid followed by scraping sound of metal against metal filled the forest floor.

"Crap, an armor-type!" shouted the assassin as he landed half crouched behind the swordsman.
Almost having felt nothing, the swordsman retaliated with a low roundhouse against the defenseless assassin. Adrian couldn't do so much to evade the kick. The sheer power threw him off towards the surrounding trees, which almost cheered on the fight with their rustling branches and screaming leaves.

"This is going to be tougher than I expected," said Adrian as he wiped hints of blood from his mouth, "much tougher."

He got up and let the daggers drop halfway to the ground by holding the chains that were attached to them. Soon enough he was spinning them in a double whirlwind of blades.

The swordsman charged for a second strike. Adrian flashed a bloodstained smile and waited for the attack. "I'll show you Catena Flamenco in its first movement."

And then, the surprise of his life.

The swordsman picked up the pace and sped up twice its normal speed, catching the assassin off guard. Adrian's eyes widened as the raised blade approached him at a new rate.

Having broken his estimation, the assassin went for broke and threw his daggers at the enemy. The swordsman sidestepped with god-like prowess and caught both chains with his freed left hand.

Unable to move away because of the chain around his arms, Adrian braced for on last attempt at evasion. A second later he save the gleaming eyes of the swordsman staring at him from let than half an arms length, cold as death and not too far from its acquaintance.

In the end, he couldn't even move away from the death stare of his opponent. Too strong, too smart, too fast - it couldn't even have been possible for somebody to be like that, like a nightmare of the worst sort. The assassin closed his eyes as he prepared for his end.

A whip crackle sound filled the damp midnight air. A splash of warm fluid bathed Adrian's face. He opened his eyes shortly after and found the swordsman still staring at him point-blanc. He could even smell its pungent skin from the distance. He felt a cold brush of night wind sweep up his wet face.

Or perhaps it was what was on his face that he could smell. He felt his bodily parts with his hands - he wasn't bleeding yet. Five seconds later and the swordsman still didn't move.

Adrian finally got to breath easier.

"That was close, Primera! Too close in fact!"

The assassin pushed the motionless swordsman away from him. Life fluids gushed forth from the back of his torso from an opening the size of a small coin as the target fell to the ground lifeless. Adrian wiped his face with the cloak and kicked the swordsman.

"Damn you! You could've killed me, you know?" he mocked the target.

Primera the hunter placed rested her weapon by her shoulders. With more light shed into the weapon, it resembled a deformed crossbow with a dangerously short bowstring attached to a narrow frame. Two small canisters were attached the very end of the crossbow, each of them still smoking.

"I told you, Engelmacht never misses."

Adrian got up and combed his hair with his fingers. "I thought you'd take point. Had you been later by a second, mister roboto over here would have given me a splitting headache I would never forget."

"Ain't you just the bonnie partner?" replied Primera with a slightly higher intonation, "I'm a sniper, Adrian. I'm supposed to shoot people or things from a stationary position. You made me run three hundred yards and gave me two seconds worth of time to align my sights. F.Y.I., I saved your ass even if it was out of my job description!"

Adrian twirled the blades for them to coil around his arms again. "Fine, thank you for saving my life! Why does it always have to have something to do with job descriptions anyway?"

Primera didn't reply. She stooped down to further observe the fallen swordsman. She seriously examined the hole her bolt punched through the swordie. "This one's different from our other previous jobs, don't you think so?"

Adrian touched his left rib and with a hint of pain he replied yes.

The huntress pressed her finger into the fatal wound without any sign of disgust. "I used a depleted emperium bolt at thirty percent tension on this guy. Even if it is an armor-type
we faced, the bolt would have gone through his body without much trouble. And his movement that he showed earlier was quite surprising too, don't you think? I suggest that we go back to the foundation, get our bounties and try to get more information about this."

"Right we should... WAIT! You mean to say you fired that shot even if it could have gone through that thing and killed me?"

"I figured you wouldn't have died from it anyway. I've seen you take worse."

"Why do I think that you did that to get the money for this?"

"Apart from that possibility, I have faith in bad grass living longer that the rest."

The job was done, leaving a bounty left unclaimed. For Primera Griffenrove and Adrian Cathersade, it was just another night job as the few Biomechanical Organoid Tactical Slave hunters of Rune Midgard.

B.O.T.S. Hunters.

End of Chapter.