[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/6bK49TU.jpg[/img][/center] [b]”The Ranchero of Miracle Mesa” - Riders on the Storm: Part Five[/b] [center][i]“The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.”[/i][/center] [center][indent]-Anonymous[/indent][/center] [hr] [indent][b]Warpath, Texas[/b][/indent] [hr] They were both jammed in the Saloon now, keeping them back from the windows as best as they could. Some part of the idea was make ‘em think that The Saloon was their last stand, like an old Eastwood picture; when in reality the thing was the biggest bomb Texas had ever seen. [quote=@Simple Unicycle] [b][color=black]"Cavalry's here."[/color][/b] I stood up, twisting around to the entrance of the old saloon. [color=black][b]"You got this place primed and ready to blow at a moment's notice?"[/b][/color] [/quote] [color=#f92a0e]“It’s fixin’ to blow like The Alamo!”[/color] Vig hollered. He was down to his last two pistols, and it seemed Frank was, too. Thankfully, they kept up a tight enough wall of lead that none of ‘em had breached. Yet. He wasn’t sure how many of ‘em were left. Between him and Frank, they’d dropped several dozen, but who knows how many were left? Maybe his initial assessment was wrong. Maybe there were untold legions of ‘em, and he only saw a hundred from the get-go. But no matter how many there were, they had to stand and fight ‘em to the last man. In the back of Vig’s mind The Spirit cowered, sequestered away behind whatever mental walls it found to hide behind, crying like a wounded animal. Vig would’ve thought that the thing would take pleasure in it. Unrelenting carnage and eradication of damned souls, no holds barred. Instead it hid from them. The role that The Spirit normally held in his mind had seemed to fade and be replaced by a primal animal made of fear. A mass of squealing souls reduced to a cat on a hot tin roof. Blaze had seemed afraid of them, too; but what was it? For all their darkness n’ the spirit-stuff they leaked, they were more or less ordinary folk with guns. A whole goddamn lot of ‘em, to be sure, but just men. Regardless of [i]what[/i] it was that kept it away, now would’ve been really goddamn good time for it to jump on outta the birthday cake. There wasn’t anything really human thing for it to hurt. Vig felt himself firing his guns on autopilot, but he reached into the back of his mind, clawing for The Spirit, trying to pull it out of its hiding place. [color=#3d045e]”No...”[/color] It whispered. For the first time it was like there was a great big wall between them. Any line in the sand Vig had tried to make The Spirit had gleefully crossed and played havoc with his mental defenses. But now it was obstinate, refusing to come out. It was like trying to drag an old racing horse out of the barn, when all the fight in him was gone. But for a moment there was a breach. As if a miniscule fragment of whatever The Spirit was floated across the breach to caress Vig’s face. [color=#3d045e]”Understand.”[/color] It begged. Vig felt his focus dragged back to reality, the rhythmic movement of his hands and his trigger pulls. Each Hunter that passed a window pulsed with arcane power. Wisps of purple and red weaved among the black, twisting together like thorns on a briar bush. They were ingrained up and down The Hunters arms and all up their bodies, even spiraling from their palms into their weapons themselves. They radiated an energy that Vig couldn’t place, it was neither Daemonic or Holy, but whatever it was, it burnt him to his very core. He felt it in every cell, pain stabbing through his sinuses and into the crevices of his brain. Whatever it was, it was engineered to kill him. Vig heaved out a cough and stumbled backwards, missing an easy headshot. He shook his head to clear his vision. Some of them had started to burst through now, shattering a window only to be put down by a bullet to the head. Whatever [i]that[/i] just was… Seemed The Spirit had a good enough excuse, time being. Now was time to focus on letting the place blow. Nothing fancy, the explosives were tied to the tripwire that lead out the backdoor. Once that got sprung, all the boxes of dynamite and all the molotvs and frag mines in between would blow the ol’ Crossroads sky high. But there was a snag they hadn’t considered. There were so many of ‘em that it’d be hard to make sure the explosion wiped ‘em all at once. They’d been expecting a together knit group, a team, and that charge into the Saloon in one burst. Instead, a straggler might burst through and inadvertently save the rest of his friends. Someone would need to stay behind and make sure the house and nice and packed before they happened. [color=#f92a0e]”Frank! End game time, compadre! Meet ‘cha out back!”[/color] Vig started taking his steps back as the horde started to pull in, inch by inch. It wasn’t much of a choice. Greg Saunders was more or less an old world cowboy with a demon camping in his soul and a head full of baggage. Frank Castle was a family man with a lot of pain in his heart. A pain that, whether he liked it or not, would let him save the whole goddamn world. And maybe Warpath along the way.