< The Sahara is Fucking Bullshit > Skel had just torn his way out of the trans-continuum atop Highway Star onto the heat-blasted sands of whatever inhospitable shitstain of a planet this was supposed to be, and already he was sick of it. The horizon was unmarred by anything so much as a cactus, and the wind was so furious that it probably would have torn the flesh from his face if it were actual flesh. The drifter quickly ran through his usual routine whenever he entered a new locale; light cigarette, assess immediate surroundings, generate handgun, dispense handgun through panel in thigh, make sure it has a safety catch, put safety catch on, place handgun in waistband, double-check safety catch to make sure no accidental dick-shootings go down, extinguish mostly-spent cigarette, light another one, then check the VFT and find the nearest civilized area.

Pulling out his Variable-Form Timepiece, Skel watched with an accustomed disinterest as the Paradox-class personal supercomputer wrapped itself around his wrist and warped its shape from its default guise as an ornate pocket watch into an oblong digital pad, of sorts. This obviously indicated a world of not-insignificant technological advancement, which subsequently caused Skel to wonder why the inhabitants couldn't terraform this fucking god awful desert. If he'd had an ordinary human need for nourishment, he'd be halfway to dying of dehydration by now. As it stood, however, he was perfectly capable of suffering from boredom, which these seemingly endless dunes were giving him a WICKED case of. He wasted a few minutes tapping on the newly-formed “terminal” like the universe's most self-conscious percussionist only for it to confirm what he already knew; there wasn't jack shit for miles around.

After rummaging around in his pants pocket for one of the weird four-sided non-Euclidean coins from the last dimension he had been in, Skel flipped it to pick a direction and started riding in what the VFT told him was north. After what could have been several hundred hours or a week of constant travel, Highway Star careening across the dunes at a frankly ridiculous speed, sand spraying out behind it in a huge fan, he finally spotted a black dot on the horizon. Not knowing what it was besides “an object,” which was infinitely better than the “nothing” he'd been around for longer than he liked to be, ever, he zeroed in on it with his telescopic vision...only for his keen eye for detail to pick out an imposingly high outer wall and a series of turreted spires that stretched abnormally high into the cruel emptiness of the arid sky.

“Well that just seems like a jolly old shitpile.” Skel's thin face turned down into a dejected glower. His last few “adventures” had been completely goddamned asinine, and he was hoping for something a little more entertaining this time. He didn't know that a gigantic, inexplicably legged ship was rising from the terrain like a giant mechanical trapdoor spider a few hundred meters to his left until its shadow fell over him, "Maybe my being here caused it.." Almost everything reacted to the Radiant Gundriver; as he got off his motorcycle it seemed to disappear altogether, but the real magic was on his belt buckle- not the thing you hear every day; magic belt buckle kids! Chuckle at his own thoughts. "Wonder when Hel will be here.."<AND THE PROPHECY WAS FULFILLED.>

@Gundriver @Bladedriver @Bartimaeus @DJAtomika

Sometimes, we all have to do jobs we don't want to. That job, however, does not always consist of jumping dimensional borders like some kind of super mexican on steroids and dishing out a blind fist of justice that no one else seems to have quite the talent for as one Skelter Helter, only survivor of the remains of a machine that could put Gurren Lagann level mechs to absolute shame. However, after doing something for some time, people tend to develop a natural proclivity for it, a natural talent to do it, even if you don't like it. And that is to say that the Shining Bladedriver was probably the best there was.... save for one other gun-toting badass who shan't be named.

In any case, Hel found himself in a special flavor of crap when his Overwatch miscalculated his dimensional coordinates while chasing down an errant Rust Demon, and had him shot at extradimensional speeds into the heart of a ship..... A ship that was underground and tunneling through dirt like some Tremor from hell..... that happened to be full of space pirates seeking to harvest the energy of the core of, well, whatever planet his forsaken Overwatch landed him on.

Now Hel was usually a pacifist when it came to mortal affairs, and at first, it seemed all was going well. The pirates seemed, instead of bothered by a random intruder barging in on their highly secret, highly illegal act, but were intrigued. More than intrigued, and for all of the processing power that went into his hyperdimensional brainspace, Hel was just a little more than naive. But so were they.

It didn't take long before one of the asshats realized that their new shipmate was sitting on theoretical technology that for all intents and purposes should have never worked, that seemed to defy the laws of the universe itself, and was probably worth trillions more than some dying planets core. Needless to say things got messy. Fast.

Just as the monolothic ship emerged from its subterrainean bed, a conical beam of pure force jettisoned from the forefront of its helm, splitting the air and discharging ionized oxygen in lightning-esque streaks around the flight path for potentially thousands of miles. From the gaping wound, Rider and steed vaulted, travelling on a highway of metagravitational influence until touching down on the endless dunes, landing(coincientally) just beside his 'brother', if the word could even apply to ageless machines. With a single moment of locked eyes, rolled on Hel's part, he knew immediately that the Overwatch had never misfired, but he had instead been called, and now he knew by who.

Dismounting charlemagne, the undying lord of swords looked out into the horizon.

"So. You called?"

He flipped a coin across the distance between them.

[OOC: Sorry for shit quality. First post in literal ages. This rust is baked on.]

The sands were quiet, calm, save for the two machine men currently present and the smouldering husk of the ship one of them had recently emerged from. A gentle breeze blew ripples in the dunes. The sky: cloudless. The sun? Bearing down with unnatural heat upon the desert. Such was the place that these two machine men had been called to.

And such was the place that the shadows had been called to as well. From under the feet of one of the machine men, a mass of darkness slithered forth across the sand and stopped a few feet away. Then emerged, from the shadow, a man, or more accurately, a spirit in the form of a man. What emerged first was the long barrel of a rifle unlike normality; its barrel was thorned and etched, carved of obsidian and bone. Next was its scope, fashioned of a dark metal, and then the man's head; haloed in black smoke that seeped from his eyes, or what used to be eyes. The man's orbits were full of the smoke, and it seemed to pour liberally, albeit slowly, from them, slithering around his form as if it were alive. The rest of him soon followed; ballistic armour plating similar in form to those worn by modern soldiers, military fatigues and combat boots, the rest of the unearthly rifle that was slung on his back and the other armaments this soldier carried; a very triangular looking submachine gun, a pistol in its holster, and a knife in its sheath.

Cho stepped forth from the dissipating shadows, idly staring at the phone attached to his wrist rigging. A stark white pair of earbuds was attached to it, the other ends plugged in his ears. Upon noticing that he had emerged somewhere with...life, he pulled the buds from his ears and stuffed the whole shebang into his pocket.

Ever since...that fight, he'd become a wanderer, neither here nor there, a traveller between dimensions and realms. He'd seen much and fought little, but what little conflict he was in ended in his triumph. So far.

He could tell the two beings ahead of him were not normal at all, neither were they alive in the typical sense. He could see their souls, but they were...weird, angular, very distinct as compared to the formless souls typical to organic beings. They were also immensely powerful, and he didn't need special vision to see that.

Something had called him to this lifeless desert. He didn't know what, but perhaps these two beings knew.

Without fear he took a few steps forward and gestured plainly to the desert around them.

"Hey, uh, guys? You all here for something?"

The room was dark. Cold, too. It was unsettling, really. Dmitri was having none of that. He opened a hole darker than the dark itself, and stepped through.

He stepped out and was immediately blimded by a blazing sun. "Ah, wow." His vision began to clear and he saw where he was, looking ahead. A barren desert? Not possible. He couldnt have teleported that far.

"Hey, uh, guys? You all here for something?"

He turned suddenly at the voice, facing right. He was to the left and slighty behind a man that seemed well prepared for a fight. Dmitri had seen gear like his before, onn rare occasions, but he had seen them. They were very powerful at a distance. Loud though. These looked different however.

Then he turned his attention to the other two. Peculiar. Something seemed off about these two.
He had seen many-a-creature in his days but...

"Woah. Where am I? So hot out here."
Dmitri currently had no weapons weilded at the moment, but DragonWhisker was still at his belt, at the ready. But he had no intentions of violence for the time being, as nothing seemed very out of the ordinary, other than his unusually distanced teleportation moments before.