[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/6bK49TU.jpg[/img][/center] [b]”The Ranchero of Miracle Mesa” - Something Wicked This Way Comes[/b] [i]Now retconned, True Believers! Check out the upcoming "Strings: Part Three" for the situation with Vig![/i] [indent][b]Warpath, Texas[/b][/indent] [hr] [color=#f92a0e]”How’s the news treatin ya?”[/color] Vig asked. Jonah Hex sat with his feet up on the porch of the Crossroads Saloon, L-Pad in hand. For an old world cowboy, he’d caught on to the new technology quick. He didn’t much prefer it to newspapers, but those had stopped coming a long time ago. “That Punisher boy in New York just blew through the last o’ the Italians, n’ the Spider lady took out some rough n’ tough goons. Usual. No word from Frank or the others.” Hex said. Vigilante nodded slow and pulled his hat off his head. He ran a hand through his sweat slicked hair. The sun was high in the sky, he and Hex and just spent the last six hours using horse teams to drag in old car husks from the nearest junkyard to bolster the outer lines. Gunn was down by the Town Square, trying to teach the townsfolk what he could about gunplay. Much like The Crossroads, Vig reckoned that Warpath was damn near impossible to kill. Three years real-time with only Gunn and and handful of other gunslingers to protect it and the town held out like it was the Alamo. In Hell, it was impossible to defend a single location. If you tried to lock down any one spot, the demons would be itchin’ to bumrush you before you could proper take your boots off. Maybe it had something to do with the magic of the spot. Or maybe Gunn was a better sharpshooter than anyone realized. [color=#f92a0e]”Well, they better git back soon. More and more Fatboys coming to knock every day. Saw three or four fixin’ to breach while you were just readin’.”[/color] Vig said. Fatboys were entities of plague. Demons wearing human skin, gone turgid with puss and disease. They were low level scum, but usually packs of Fatboys meant somethin’ a whole lot bigger and meaner was around the corner. Hex gave a slow nod and set the L-Pad down on the porch railing. He leaned back into his rocker. “Yknow boy, there’s some things you never consider missing. Like that lucky ol’ sun.” Jonah Hex’s eyes lingered on the sky, following the clouds. Vig joined him, gazing up into the great blue expanse. There was a kind of possibility there. Here was a place of infinite rolling plains, giving way to the heavens themselves, dominated only by the great yellow jewel of the universe. Maybe that was why the monsters clawed their way to the surface. To gaze unto it and wonder where it all went wrong. [color=#f92a0e]”Mhm. First time in a long time we got somethin’ to protect.”[/color] Vig said. He leaned on the railing and stretched his arms, willing the ache in his shoulders to go away. The voices had quieted, now. They usually did around this time of day. Vig figured it was something about the sky, maybe they were the souls of the damned and the light let them reminisce about what they had instead of screaming about what they lost. Way on the edge of the horizon, there was a brief wisp of light. Almost like a shooting star in the day, a little blue-silver trail almost blotted out by the blue of the sky. Just on the edge of human register, if you were looking. [color=#3d045e]“HIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!”[/color] It was like a bomb had gone off in his brain. Souls sreeched across his mind, vomiting blood and sin and fear into every crevice of his head, bellowing out for retribution in one voice. Greg dropped to his knees and spasmed, choking on the air. “Greg?” Hex stumbled to his feet and vaulted the railing. A shaky hand reached for him, while blackness swallowed Vigilante’s consciousness. [color=#f92a0e]”Hex?”[/color] Vigilante’s voice felt small in his throat. The darkness closed around his vision, and all that was left was the fiery head of death itself. [color=#3d045e]“The bringer of the end calls, Greg Saunders. A being more powerful than any mortal can imagine trembles on the edge of our being. The Herald alone drags trillions of wailing souls behind him. Destruction of untold magnitude lies in his wake. Vengeance Must Be Done.”[/color] [hr] To Jonah Hex, Vigilante had stopped moving. The Cowboy lay flat across the ground, eyes rolled back into his head. He was lost in some kind of sleep. Or maybe the Good Lord had come from on high and struck ‘im down for bargaining with The Devil. Hex was on his knee, shaking the boy. They’d come too far to have this be the end. Fallen dead in the street of a brain aneurysm while hellspawn waited just outside the perimeter to slaughter countless innocents. Hex pressed the back of his hand to Vig’s head, looking for any sign of life. He was hot. Too hot, boiling. Hex grunted and pulled his hand away, rubbing the back of it. Vigilante’s flesh began to drift away from him in chunks, floating into the air before dissolving in an orange light. It revealed stark white bone underneath, that blazed with unholy fire. Hex drew to his feet. His hand went to his pistol. Skeletal fingers shot out of his friend’s body and locked around his wrist. His flesh burned and he screamed, trying to yank his gun from its holster. A skeleton pulled itself from the hunk of flesh. The last bits of Vigilante’s skin and sinew clung to the bones and the monster’s tattered clothes. The skeleton’s other hand came around and snagged Jonah Hex under the chin, hoisting him into the sky. [color=#3d045e]“Everyone. Central City. [i]Now.[/i]”[/color] The words gurgled from the skeleton’s jaw. An inferno broiled in its eyesockets, it seemed to stare into Hex’s very soul. It dropped the old man in a pile of dust and turned on its heel. It made for Vigilante’s bike, The Silver. Hex fumbled for his gun. He snatched it out of the sands and drew it to his eye. He pulled back the hammer and fired. The round entered the skeleton’s shoulder blade and exited out the front; it didn’t flinch. Long finger bones caressed the bike’s fuel tank and a shade spread over the bike, enveloping it in a dark metal. Wicked edges and lines of bone grew from the bike’s chassis as the skeleton sat astride it. The beast wrapped it’s hands around the handle and fire flashed across it. The engine didn’t rev as much as it howled. A cacophony of souls begged for blood, bellowing from the engine. The rider shot out of Warpath, leaving a trail of hellfire in his wake as he headed for Central City.