[sup][h1][center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019a6ef5-162f-775a-938d-bb40f6dfa48a.webp[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] G H O S T  R I D E R[/color]
[color=lightgray]G H O S T  R I D E R[/color][/center]
[/b][/h1][/sup][indent][sub][COLOR=#696969][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [color=white][I]The Desert[/I][/color][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#696969][b]1[/b][/COLOR][/right][/sup][/indent][center][COLOR=dimgray][SUP][sub]_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sub][/SUP][/COLOR][/center]
[indent][color=A9A9A9]Somewhere in the distance behind her, a column of smoke rose into the dry desert air, straight up and unbuffered by wind; the remains of her razing escape, not that she recalled much of it. In groggy waking she could catch only flashes at best, but was neither able nor willing to uncover anything further. 

Instead, she picked herself up out of the dirt, dust and sand pluming around her as she lifted her prone form off the ground and moved to unsteady feet. Carrion-picked car chassis ladened her immediate surroundings, some stacked atop each other, some leaning at precarious angles; amidst these, gaps were plugged with scrap metal, rusted debris, discarded bits of wood and sheets of plastic. Pipes and divots played dual homes to rodentia and invertebrate alike, and avian carcasses crawled with new corpus life. Automobile and animal alike shared a graveyard here, and Danielle shivered to behold it. A death-place, and she standing on scorched earth in the heart of it.

[color=#663399][i]'Or it's a junkyard and you're being melodramatic,'[/i][/color] she thought to herself. Abandoned in the dust only a metre or two away was a sorry sight for a motorbike, some skeleton motor that in better days might have been a passable bobber or cruiser, but now could only be described as a rickety collection of oxidised bolts and struts, with a whimpering motor and tyres with rubber thinner than a rubber. The engine block was still warm - unusually so, Dani thought, hovering her hand over the metal - and the grooves in the dirt suggested she'd crashed it here; how it hadn't crumpled beneath her the moment she'd apparently mounted it, or shaken itself to pieces as she'd ridden it, confounded her - and if that distant smoke really was her hometown, she'd come some distance on it too. 

Dani turned her attention inward. Her throat was painfully raw, lips dry and cracking, and she was thirstier than she'd ever been in her life. Water seemed fabled panacea to her in this moment, and she scrambled woozily past the scrap's perimeter toward the large hut adjoined to the junkyard. First and foremost she sought faucets, bottles, anything that might contain even ambiguously potable liquid; human life that might shed light on her circumstances was optional, a mere afterthought in the face of slaking her screaming thirst. The door hung lazy on its hinges and she burst through with frantic energy, only to take two steps in and immediately pivot on the balls of her feet and dart back out. The place reeked, the heat doing the stink no favours, and she dry-retched into the dirt, propping herself up on her knees as her shoulders heaved and back rippled in waves, failing to eject anything but the most acid-yellow bile. 

Once recovered, she found a dirty handkerchief amidst the discarded rubbish of the junkyard and dipped it lightly in a thick-tar puddle of motor oil, wrapping it around her face so that the only odor she could make out was that of petroleum and earth. Armed with her hasty mask, she crept back in, slowly at first but with increasing confidence as the oil-soaked rag proved an effective shield. The place was a goddamn mess. Trash thrown everywhere, metal struts bent and sheared in two, and the wood burnt and charred in strange places. The front door was simply [i]gone[/i], wooden splinters and ash the only indication of its fate, and a series of blackened footprints made their path from the entryway to a point in the middle of the cabin; although blackened wasn't quite the right word - it was as if someone had stood in place while black paint had been sprayed around it, using a boot like a stencil. The floor was scorched in a distinct pattern [i]around[/i] a series of footprints, and as she crept closer more bile rose in Dani's throat to realize that the shape and size fit her worn-out New Rocks. 

She followed the trail with her eyes, casting her gaze along the path laid out until its conclusion; against her better judgement, she stood in that same spot, trying to reason it out, pick apart her foggy head, memory recall by recreation. She looked straight ahead, and felt compelled to raise her arm and point, but found she couldn't move as the colour drained from her face and she rushed back outside once more, not even the oil-soaked rag able to stem the new nausea. 

Within the cabin against the wall was an impression much like the bootprints that had forced entry, but with the distinct outline of a person, some Hiroshima-shadow the only remains of a stranger she didn't remember murdering, but knew deep in her bones that she had; and with that realization, a single word intruded upon her inner monologue, hot and fiery and fierce, reverberating around her brain like an echo that impossibly magnified itself:
[H3][CENTER][COLOR=#FF8C00]𝐆 𝐔 𝐈 𝐋 𝐓 𝐘[/COLOR][/CENTER][/H3]


[hr]
[color=#2E8B57]"Well ain't this a fine goddamn fuckin' mess."[/color]
Sheriff Jim Corrigan sighed, hands on his hips as he stood in the Maynooth lockup, staring at the bars of the cell their suspect had been ensconced in not some twelve hours ago, and more pointedly staring at the still-warm slag that marked the exit that had apparently been [i]melted[/i] through the metal from the inside-out. He'd been called from the next town over, Bird's Creek, on account of the Maynooth sheriff department now being dead to but a single survivor, who was somewhere outside covered in a shock blanket and ranting to one of Jim's deputies about a walking talking skeleton-on-fire dressed head-to-toe in leather and murdering its way out of the station and off over the horizon. Jim hadn't even dignified the man's initial raving with a response; he'd merely flagged a deputy down and pointed at the survivor, and then when his attention was suitably distracted, walked away. Would a flaming skeleton be able to burn through the iron? Sure, why not, it made as much sense as any other part of the story; but so could a blowtorch or the right chemicals or a stick of fucking dynamite. And this was 'Dog-tooth' Maynooth, after all, the hemorrhoid on the Devil's asshole. Jim sighed.

He walked outside, removing his hat to fan himself while he held a hand over his brow. Hot one today, and dry last night; that hadn't done the fire any good, but at least they'd put it out now. Firemen picked over the hollow carcasses of burnt shop-fronts, water dripping from damp wood as the last of the smoke plumed up into the air. You could see it for miles. Jim turned, and followed the burnt-rubber tyre tracks with his eye, as far as he could until they disappeared into the heat-haze on the edge of town. Somewhere out there was their culprit; arsonist, murderer, fugitive, vagrant. Couple questions around town and he'd be able to get at least the beginnings of the story; nothing ever went on in Dogtooth - it was a ghost-town-to-be, a place where dreams and excitement came to die - so it would be very easy to get people to talk about the most noteworthy event in the town's history since founding. But first, some coffee, ideally served Irish, and then once he'd whet his whistle, he could get down to the business at hand: a good ol' fashioned hunt for a good ol' fashioned outlaw.

[hr]
Somewhere along the Iowa Corn Belt, a thin man in a worn suit stepped out from between stalks whistling jauntily and raising his head to survey the sky; the weather was fair, sunny and clear after a few day's rain, and crows circled overhead in unusually large numbers. He wore a battered fedora and a tie that frayed at its end, and his mouth was stitched over with string and his eyes replaced with buttons. He scooped a handful of damp hay from the ground and held it to his face, taking a deep breath of grassy musk and earthen aromas. 

[color=#A0522D]"ꁅꂦꂦꀸ ꓄ꂦ ꌃꍟ ꌃꍏꉓꀘ,"[/color] he mused, and then carried on his way.

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