- Joined
- Sep 10, 2021
- Location
- the crow's nest
A groan left him as he hauled himself out of the pile of trash he'd been dropped in. He looked around as he blinked a few times, tin cans clattering away from his feet as the sound of plastic rustling beneath him stabbed at his fragile nerves.
What the fuck happened?
Buck had been dropped on a planet that would closely resemble Earth by the most recent employer he'd managed to upset: some low tier mob boss that didn't want the heat for killing him. The muscle-for-hire had a peculiar way of doing things and oft his anger got the best of him, or even more often his ego, and jobs went south. The main goal would still end up accomplished, but along with that accomplishment came property damage, fines and in some cases civil court lawsuits where applicable.
He couldn't really remember when he'd been loaded into the don's car, but he remembered being given a job..
"Listen, meathead. I need you to go fetch my little sister from those idiots across the river, okay?" The gruff, grating voice shot out at him. It was deep and booming, as if no matter where the man was that sported that voice it would carry an echo.
Buck sat, wide-eyed and starstruck as he watched the large-statured man pace back and forth behind a wooden desk in front of him. He was sitting in a plain wooden chair, the room around him absolutely nothing to speak of other than four walls. It was dark, damp.. but in front of him? The desk was extravagant, finely crafted mahogany with a finish on it that was professionally looked after. A single lamp perched on it the only light in the room. The chain swung back and forth as he had only just turned it on. He could only make out the silhouette of who he presumed was the boss behind the desk, a goliath of a man pacing back and forth in the dusky shadows thrown by the lamp that struggled to light the room.
The two equally gargantuan fellows on either side of him he recognized. They were the two he dealt with more often than not when running jobs for.. whoever he was just now meeting. A stern elbow nudged his head forward, to which Buck grumbled and cursed, stamping his foot in defiance.
"Hey!" The larger man behind the desk snarled as he stopped and turned towards Buck, leaning forward and slamming his hands down onto it with such force that papers lifted from it and shifted away from his hands. "You look at me, dammit! You think this is a fucking game, guy?" The hulking man was losing his patience whatever short fuse he had was disappearing quickly with a dear family member's life at stake - but why Buck? In a display of rage and strength, he shifted, scaled hands grabbing the corner of one side of the desk and he heaved it aside. The sound of wooden desk feet scraping along stone floors, the hideous scratching and moaning of the two materials fighting each other as friction called them to a stop several feet away, made Buck recoil as the man stepped closer.
What are you?
Buck pondered as he studied the features of the man in front of him, not having to try very hard as the hulking humanoid-shark got uncomfortably close. "Onions for breakfast, huh? Bold choice.." Buck turned his head away and let out a deep breath, putting a boot-covered foot up to the man's knee and finding that it was more like a tree trunk to push off of. The chair he was sitting in made the same sound as the desk, and he winced as he slid back slowly away from the brute.
"You've always got jokes, Mr. Corsair." The moniker made Buck smile. He wasn't entirely sure if David Corsair was his real name, but he sure as hell told people it was. "Maybe that's why the boys like working with you so much." The two stoic, less-than-bright individuals that stood on either side of him nodded in agreement quite quickly. "Well, now's not the fucking time for jokes!" He drew an almost comically large pistol, a stylized revolver. The blued gunmetal shimmered, and Buck's eyes immediately followed. Engravings marked the surface, but he couldn't tell the caliber.. was it custom? The cylinder was huge. What did that thing fucking shoot?
Who's he pointing that at?
The question was a tad too late in his mind to be answered.
A gunshot in a closed room was one thing, but the manufactured cannon that was held in the boss man's scaly grasp in front of him.. that was a different story. Buck could swear that he felt a drop of blood trickling out from his ear as the report filled the room. The flash from the end of the barrel was massive, a bout of flame jetting from the barrel like a dragon had visited them from medieval times just to say 'hello' before disappearing into the aether. And the amount of smoke that came from that thing.. how much gunpowder was loaded into one of those cartridges?
The sweet smell of gunpowder. Oh~ fuck.. that's the stuff. Wait.. did he just?
Buck's enjoyment for the smell of gunpowder was cut short by the sound of a body slumping into a heap. He had done exactly that, Buck. In a show of rage and a display of power, the Don had blatantly shot one of his own henchmen. Buck was not stranger to death, but.. that was a little morbid even for him. He looked at the body for a moment, watching the blood pool beneath it from the pomegranate sized hole that the fucking howitzer artillery cannon he'd decided to condense into a revolver had left in the dead man's chest.
"No games, then." Buck stated as he stood, quickly met with the barrel of that same revolver.
By Zyzz, I could put a fucking golf ball down that barrel.
"Relax, big man. I just don't want blood on my boots that I didn't spill." The gun didn't lower, though Buck hadn't exactly expected it to. He could see the man's hand shaking with anger at this point, fed up with Buck's antics.
"You listen to me, you no good sack of firepower." A fitting description for Buck in his current state. "You go get my little sister back from those fucking goons or I will personally see to it that you rot in the astral if it's the last thing I fucking do." As his voice got louder, the shaking grew in intensity. Buck, wondering if it might become an issue that his finger was still on the trigger of that matter remover in his hands, stepped to the side just a little bit.
"Yeah, I mean.. All you had to do was ask."
Oh, Buck.
He met the other end of that cannon, which felt everything how he remembered a baseball bat did as it found the side of his head. The room went dark, more so than it already was.
"Pick this sack of shit up." He heard shouting as consciousness faded. "No, the live one- forget about the body. We'll get him back in a few weeks when insurance kicks in. I'll have someone clean this mess up later. This warehouse is getting demolished soon anyway."
He groaned again and grabbed the side of his head, rubbing at the substantial knot just above his left ear. He sat there for a moment, contemplating a few things before finally hauling himself out of the pile of trash he'd been so gracefully placed on. He rolled his eyes as he brushed a banana peel off of his shoulder and kicked away an apple core. "Could have at least left me in the street." He scoffed and shook his head. He wore something akin to leather pants, though not exactly form fitting, they were more for blade protection that anything. The shirt was a tattered and frayed button-up that he covered up with a long black duster coat. Buck's hair was short and swept to one side, his hair crudely shaved close to his face with a knife's edge rather than a razor. He sported strong facial features dark eyes. He was broad-shouldered and chested, built to withstand punishment by all means. He had to walk a few alleyways before he found his bearings, finding his way back to what he called "home". He tapped on the digital pin-pad outside of the roll-up door in the alley a few times before he heard the telltale sign of several locks responding and slamming open. He bent down to grab the handle, throwing the door up and out of his way as he stepped in. It fell behind him slowly and the locks slammed shut just as loudly as they had opened. The small living space was just enough for him, and he treated it more like a live-in armory than anything. Granted he did not own as many weapons as he'd like to just yet, what he did own required regular service and cleaning here. This was also his only link to the framework where he could check credits and receive messages from certain sources that didn't want to be sent out in the world. People were paranoid more often than not in this world, it seemed.
He had several messages from an angry Don Grandiose, all just relevant details for rescuing the current damsel in distress sprawled out in large capital letters. He saved those to his phone so he'd have the information he needed. He hadn't managed to get himself a neural implant yet, so he was still stuck in the dumb days with an actual phone. His messages, calls and saved information weren't available in his mind like most folks nowadays.
He'd been sent a small pool of credits to spend on equipment for this job, which was good.. because looking at what he'd been sent.. his current ordinance would not be enough.
Body armor.
Ammunition, large caliber.
I ain't too sure about this one, hoss.
Buck was not feeling very at ease about this undertaking. It seemed a suicide mission at best, but if he succeeded.. the payoff was too good to be true. A don's favor and a boatload of credits. Enough to get off this planet and back into a crew somewhere. Back to chasing bounties.
His skin prickled with goosebumps, hair on the back of his neck raising at the thought of bounty hunting again. A passion of his, hunting the ne'er-do-wells of the system. He lived to see bandits and space pirates cower at his presence. It was sick to some, sure.. but others seemed to enjoy it. Some places he was a celebrity, others he was hated just as much as the bandits themselves. Go figure, when your path of destruction could sometimes be twice as wide.
The man sat on the small cot in his makeshift one room apartment, elbows resting on his knees as he battled demons about whether he took his fight or ran, looking at the few guns he owned currently sprawled out on his workbench. If he didn't take the job, Don Grandiose would have his head.. and if he took the job.. well, whoever had Grandiose's sister would likely kill him and think nothing less of it. Between a rock and a hard place.. there was no real ways about it, was there? He sighed and got up, walking to his bench and looking over the three guns. One was a semi-automatic handgun, much like any other standard. He had lightly modified this one to his tastes, kept it clean and functional. He wanted to do more, but the credits weren't flowing well enough. He dismantled it on his bench and cleaned it before putting it back together meticulously, making sure it was in working order before holstering it behind his back.
The next gun was the Judge, the hybrid revolver shotgun that seemed to be a workhorse for him. It did most anything he asked and never seemed to fail to operate. Revolver style firearms just had less moving parts, so it made sense. Cumbersome to reload, however.. it was painful to miss. He checked for any debris in the barrel or the cylinder, making sure it spun freely before loading it. He loaded it with rounds he made himself, specialty shotgun rounds first. The shells were especially forward on the gunpowder, bringing much more bang to the party. The load they fired was a volatile mix of flatted buckshot pellets as well as round, and the gaps filled with shards of metal. It wasn't efficient past ten meters, but within ten meters he hadn't found much more that was as lethal against something without police grade body armor on. The standard cartridges were simple reloaded cartridges that he kept in two spare cylinders on his person for quick reloads. There wasn't much to them besides the bullets sporting hardened tips to punch through armor with a little more effectiveness than a normal round, though it still took an extra shot or two to get through the good stuff.
Once he was happy with the gun's operation, it found it's way to the holster on his hip. The electromagnets whirred to life and locked the firearm in, recognizing the firearm and who it belonged to before shutting down. Should anyone grab the gun that wasn't Buck, they would spring to life and keep the gun where it was, rendering it much more difficult to steal. Not impossible, but very difficult.
The last gun was.. something of a relic. Those that had been around it long enough to see it used when it was in it's prime would have called it a trench gun. Modern days termed it a shotgun in simpler terms. Now it was still called a shotgun, but with some extra love and care.. despite it's looks it could do pack a hell of a punch when it needed to. He loaded it with slugs, holding the gun up to his face and inhaling the sense-heightening aroma of gunpowder and blued metal. "Fuck, that's the good stuff.." He slung it over his shoulder and let it drop low enough that it would be able to hide under his long coat, starting to slide extra shells into the bandolier he sported across his chest. The slugs made for a heavy load, one solid hunk of metal instead of multiple projectiles like a typical shotgun. He found he preferred that for blunt force.. it made a heavier impact with a good shot.. and it certainly caught those big power armor-wearing fucks off guard when they caught one upside their head. He grinned at the thought as he slid the last shell into it's slot and then pulled his coat around himself. "Maybe I've got some plates laying around here.. I really don't have the time to go shopping.." He mused quietly, shuffling around his little workshop as it were and looking through a few stacks of spent trauma plates. As it would happen, there was one plate that didn't have.. several shells in it.. just one. Dead in the center. "She'll have to do." He held the plate up and turned it to the side so he could see how far the round actually affected the integrity of the plate, wincing a little bit as he could see just the beginning of an exit hole where the round had struck. "Just don't get shot, right?" He told himself as he stuffed the plate into the carrier below his coat before buttoning it up.
He didn't imagine he'd make it back to this little storage unit, but.. just on the off chance he did somehow survive this suicide mission, he shut his storage unit up and locked it before shuffling through the alleyway it was located in. This was the quiet time that he always seemed to get the most reflecting done in.. the most chance to think and reminisce as it were.. about everything he'd done. He'd done some good.. and he'd done some bad.. oh had he done some bad.. but maybe there was enough good to outweigh the bad. Like some sort of hallucinating addict, he held one hand up with the other beside it, weighing his goods and bads in an imaginary scale as one hand went up and the other down while he strolled down the sidewalk. Passing civilians stared like he was alien, foreign to them.. and he just smiled..
Buck was never more alive than when he knocked on death's door.
What the fuck happened?
Buck had been dropped on a planet that would closely resemble Earth by the most recent employer he'd managed to upset: some low tier mob boss that didn't want the heat for killing him. The muscle-for-hire had a peculiar way of doing things and oft his anger got the best of him, or even more often his ego, and jobs went south. The main goal would still end up accomplished, but along with that accomplishment came property damage, fines and in some cases civil court lawsuits where applicable.
He couldn't really remember when he'd been loaded into the don's car, but he remembered being given a job..
"Listen, meathead. I need you to go fetch my little sister from those idiots across the river, okay?" The gruff, grating voice shot out at him. It was deep and booming, as if no matter where the man was that sported that voice it would carry an echo.
Buck sat, wide-eyed and starstruck as he watched the large-statured man pace back and forth behind a wooden desk in front of him. He was sitting in a plain wooden chair, the room around him absolutely nothing to speak of other than four walls. It was dark, damp.. but in front of him? The desk was extravagant, finely crafted mahogany with a finish on it that was professionally looked after. A single lamp perched on it the only light in the room. The chain swung back and forth as he had only just turned it on. He could only make out the silhouette of who he presumed was the boss behind the desk, a goliath of a man pacing back and forth in the dusky shadows thrown by the lamp that struggled to light the room.
The two equally gargantuan fellows on either side of him he recognized. They were the two he dealt with more often than not when running jobs for.. whoever he was just now meeting. A stern elbow nudged his head forward, to which Buck grumbled and cursed, stamping his foot in defiance.
"Hey!" The larger man behind the desk snarled as he stopped and turned towards Buck, leaning forward and slamming his hands down onto it with such force that papers lifted from it and shifted away from his hands. "You look at me, dammit! You think this is a fucking game, guy?" The hulking man was losing his patience whatever short fuse he had was disappearing quickly with a dear family member's life at stake - but why Buck? In a display of rage and strength, he shifted, scaled hands grabbing the corner of one side of the desk and he heaved it aside. The sound of wooden desk feet scraping along stone floors, the hideous scratching and moaning of the two materials fighting each other as friction called them to a stop several feet away, made Buck recoil as the man stepped closer.
What are you?
Buck pondered as he studied the features of the man in front of him, not having to try very hard as the hulking humanoid-shark got uncomfortably close. "Onions for breakfast, huh? Bold choice.." Buck turned his head away and let out a deep breath, putting a boot-covered foot up to the man's knee and finding that it was more like a tree trunk to push off of. The chair he was sitting in made the same sound as the desk, and he winced as he slid back slowly away from the brute.
"You've always got jokes, Mr. Corsair." The moniker made Buck smile. He wasn't entirely sure if David Corsair was his real name, but he sure as hell told people it was. "Maybe that's why the boys like working with you so much." The two stoic, less-than-bright individuals that stood on either side of him nodded in agreement quite quickly. "Well, now's not the fucking time for jokes!" He drew an almost comically large pistol, a stylized revolver. The blued gunmetal shimmered, and Buck's eyes immediately followed. Engravings marked the surface, but he couldn't tell the caliber.. was it custom? The cylinder was huge. What did that thing fucking shoot?
Who's he pointing that at?
The question was a tad too late in his mind to be answered.
A gunshot in a closed room was one thing, but the manufactured cannon that was held in the boss man's scaly grasp in front of him.. that was a different story. Buck could swear that he felt a drop of blood trickling out from his ear as the report filled the room. The flash from the end of the barrel was massive, a bout of flame jetting from the barrel like a dragon had visited them from medieval times just to say 'hello' before disappearing into the aether. And the amount of smoke that came from that thing.. how much gunpowder was loaded into one of those cartridges?
The sweet smell of gunpowder. Oh~ fuck.. that's the stuff. Wait.. did he just?
Buck's enjoyment for the smell of gunpowder was cut short by the sound of a body slumping into a heap. He had done exactly that, Buck. In a show of rage and a display of power, the Don had blatantly shot one of his own henchmen. Buck was not stranger to death, but.. that was a little morbid even for him. He looked at the body for a moment, watching the blood pool beneath it from the pomegranate sized hole that the fucking howitzer artillery cannon he'd decided to condense into a revolver had left in the dead man's chest.
"No games, then." Buck stated as he stood, quickly met with the barrel of that same revolver.
By Zyzz, I could put a fucking golf ball down that barrel.
"Relax, big man. I just don't want blood on my boots that I didn't spill." The gun didn't lower, though Buck hadn't exactly expected it to. He could see the man's hand shaking with anger at this point, fed up with Buck's antics.
"You listen to me, you no good sack of firepower." A fitting description for Buck in his current state. "You go get my little sister back from those fucking goons or I will personally see to it that you rot in the astral if it's the last thing I fucking do." As his voice got louder, the shaking grew in intensity. Buck, wondering if it might become an issue that his finger was still on the trigger of that matter remover in his hands, stepped to the side just a little bit.
"Yeah, I mean.. All you had to do was ask."
Oh, Buck.
He met the other end of that cannon, which felt everything how he remembered a baseball bat did as it found the side of his head. The room went dark, more so than it already was.
"Pick this sack of shit up." He heard shouting as consciousness faded. "No, the live one- forget about the body. We'll get him back in a few weeks when insurance kicks in. I'll have someone clean this mess up later. This warehouse is getting demolished soon anyway."
He groaned again and grabbed the side of his head, rubbing at the substantial knot just above his left ear. He sat there for a moment, contemplating a few things before finally hauling himself out of the pile of trash he'd been so gracefully placed on. He rolled his eyes as he brushed a banana peel off of his shoulder and kicked away an apple core. "Could have at least left me in the street." He scoffed and shook his head. He wore something akin to leather pants, though not exactly form fitting, they were more for blade protection that anything. The shirt was a tattered and frayed button-up that he covered up with a long black duster coat. Buck's hair was short and swept to one side, his hair crudely shaved close to his face with a knife's edge rather than a razor. He sported strong facial features dark eyes. He was broad-shouldered and chested, built to withstand punishment by all means. He had to walk a few alleyways before he found his bearings, finding his way back to what he called "home". He tapped on the digital pin-pad outside of the roll-up door in the alley a few times before he heard the telltale sign of several locks responding and slamming open. He bent down to grab the handle, throwing the door up and out of his way as he stepped in. It fell behind him slowly and the locks slammed shut just as loudly as they had opened. The small living space was just enough for him, and he treated it more like a live-in armory than anything. Granted he did not own as many weapons as he'd like to just yet, what he did own required regular service and cleaning here. This was also his only link to the framework where he could check credits and receive messages from certain sources that didn't want to be sent out in the world. People were paranoid more often than not in this world, it seemed.
He had several messages from an angry Don Grandiose, all just relevant details for rescuing the current damsel in distress sprawled out in large capital letters. He saved those to his phone so he'd have the information he needed. He hadn't managed to get himself a neural implant yet, so he was still stuck in the dumb days with an actual phone. His messages, calls and saved information weren't available in his mind like most folks nowadays.
He'd been sent a small pool of credits to spend on equipment for this job, which was good.. because looking at what he'd been sent.. his current ordinance would not be enough.
Body armor.
Ammunition, large caliber.
I ain't too sure about this one, hoss.
Buck was not feeling very at ease about this undertaking. It seemed a suicide mission at best, but if he succeeded.. the payoff was too good to be true. A don's favor and a boatload of credits. Enough to get off this planet and back into a crew somewhere. Back to chasing bounties.
His skin prickled with goosebumps, hair on the back of his neck raising at the thought of bounty hunting again. A passion of his, hunting the ne'er-do-wells of the system. He lived to see bandits and space pirates cower at his presence. It was sick to some, sure.. but others seemed to enjoy it. Some places he was a celebrity, others he was hated just as much as the bandits themselves. Go figure, when your path of destruction could sometimes be twice as wide.
The man sat on the small cot in his makeshift one room apartment, elbows resting on his knees as he battled demons about whether he took his fight or ran, looking at the few guns he owned currently sprawled out on his workbench. If he didn't take the job, Don Grandiose would have his head.. and if he took the job.. well, whoever had Grandiose's sister would likely kill him and think nothing less of it. Between a rock and a hard place.. there was no real ways about it, was there? He sighed and got up, walking to his bench and looking over the three guns. One was a semi-automatic handgun, much like any other standard. He had lightly modified this one to his tastes, kept it clean and functional. He wanted to do more, but the credits weren't flowing well enough. He dismantled it on his bench and cleaned it before putting it back together meticulously, making sure it was in working order before holstering it behind his back.
The next gun was the Judge, the hybrid revolver shotgun that seemed to be a workhorse for him. It did most anything he asked and never seemed to fail to operate. Revolver style firearms just had less moving parts, so it made sense. Cumbersome to reload, however.. it was painful to miss. He checked for any debris in the barrel or the cylinder, making sure it spun freely before loading it. He loaded it with rounds he made himself, specialty shotgun rounds first. The shells were especially forward on the gunpowder, bringing much more bang to the party. The load they fired was a volatile mix of flatted buckshot pellets as well as round, and the gaps filled with shards of metal. It wasn't efficient past ten meters, but within ten meters he hadn't found much more that was as lethal against something without police grade body armor on. The standard cartridges were simple reloaded cartridges that he kept in two spare cylinders on his person for quick reloads. There wasn't much to them besides the bullets sporting hardened tips to punch through armor with a little more effectiveness than a normal round, though it still took an extra shot or two to get through the good stuff.
Once he was happy with the gun's operation, it found it's way to the holster on his hip. The electromagnets whirred to life and locked the firearm in, recognizing the firearm and who it belonged to before shutting down. Should anyone grab the gun that wasn't Buck, they would spring to life and keep the gun where it was, rendering it much more difficult to steal. Not impossible, but very difficult.
The last gun was.. something of a relic. Those that had been around it long enough to see it used when it was in it's prime would have called it a trench gun. Modern days termed it a shotgun in simpler terms. Now it was still called a shotgun, but with some extra love and care.. despite it's looks it could do pack a hell of a punch when it needed to. He loaded it with slugs, holding the gun up to his face and inhaling the sense-heightening aroma of gunpowder and blued metal. "Fuck, that's the good stuff.." He slung it over his shoulder and let it drop low enough that it would be able to hide under his long coat, starting to slide extra shells into the bandolier he sported across his chest. The slugs made for a heavy load, one solid hunk of metal instead of multiple projectiles like a typical shotgun. He found he preferred that for blunt force.. it made a heavier impact with a good shot.. and it certainly caught those big power armor-wearing fucks off guard when they caught one upside their head. He grinned at the thought as he slid the last shell into it's slot and then pulled his coat around himself. "Maybe I've got some plates laying around here.. I really don't have the time to go shopping.." He mused quietly, shuffling around his little workshop as it were and looking through a few stacks of spent trauma plates. As it would happen, there was one plate that didn't have.. several shells in it.. just one. Dead in the center. "She'll have to do." He held the plate up and turned it to the side so he could see how far the round actually affected the integrity of the plate, wincing a little bit as he could see just the beginning of an exit hole where the round had struck. "Just don't get shot, right?" He told himself as he stuffed the plate into the carrier below his coat before buttoning it up.
He didn't imagine he'd make it back to this little storage unit, but.. just on the off chance he did somehow survive this suicide mission, he shut his storage unit up and locked it before shuffling through the alleyway it was located in. This was the quiet time that he always seemed to get the most reflecting done in.. the most chance to think and reminisce as it were.. about everything he'd done. He'd done some good.. and he'd done some bad.. oh had he done some bad.. but maybe there was enough good to outweigh the bad. Like some sort of hallucinating addict, he held one hand up with the other beside it, weighing his goods and bads in an imaginary scale as one hand went up and the other down while he strolled down the sidewalk. Passing civilians stared like he was alien, foreign to them.. and he just smiled..
Buck was never more alive than when he knocked on death's door.
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