Child of the Wasteland - Chapter 1
"Formation 4, Alpha move it!" The head guard was shouting orders, and everyone with a gun was running outside, while those without weaponry rushed to the nearest, most defensible building. As the men moved out, Nici put her hand on her .38 special, unlatching it for quick reveal, and clicking the hammer for a quick fire if need be, before turning to move outside, casually strolling along as she pushed open the doors and stepped outside, prepared to defend herself if needed, but would refuse to help any others unless she was paid... or if she liked the look in their eyes, but that came along only once in her life. She stood just outside the door frame and took in the spectacle that would become of the small, run-down town.
Terrified town-goers ran for their lives, children clutched tight by parents or wandering aimlessly, wailing for an absent caregiver. The guards ran past Nici as though she weren't there and formed two solid lines of five soldiers each, each armed with rifles and magnums. The first line crouched, the second stood as the ten soldiers took aim at something that looked as though it had jumped straight from a nightmare. Standing at a perfect eight feet tall with four jagged lines of fangs in its gnashing maw, bearing claws that looked sharp enough to rend through the armor of the fabled power suits of olden days, his eyes were nothing more than large red orbs seething with hatred and hunger as he grabbed hold of a screaming woman, silencing the sheep's bleating cries with a single squeeze of his hand, letting the body fall before he stepped on it, the body crunching as her head exploded in a shower of brains and gore that spattered a child scrabbling past. He looked at the dead sheep, and sniffed with disinterest, obviously it was beneath his notice as the call of "FIRE!" rang out, and ten guns rang loudly as the hollow point rounds struck the creature, and promptly fell to the ground. He let out a deep, guttural laugh as he started walking towards them, eyes burning with murderous intent and a sick sense of glee as he closed the distance in a few long strides. He lashed out to his side, catching a man as he tried to get into his house, the body falling in two pieces with his arm still clutching the door handle, the lower half landing with a thud and a sick squelch before the guns resumed fire, trying to stop the living nightmare as he looked at Nici and gave another guttural laugh, licking his lips slightly as a thought ran through his oblong head.
Nici returned the creature's gaze with amusement as she leaned against the wall next to the door frame, watching the frail gunmen try to take down the obviously demonic creature. She had no desired to fight it unless it decided to attack her, something easily read in her apathetic sense of nonchalance as she watched from behind the lines. She brushed her fur that laid across her eyes with her orange paw to watch the spectacle more easily. If caught at the right angle, one could see the underside of the left paw, which revealed a white pentagram tattoo on her otherwise black pad, something that provided a sense of personal pride for Nici. Despite the apathy in the style of passive observation, there was a sense of self-assurance, knowledge that she was the fastest draw for several states, able to draw, shoot and reholster faster than most beings would blink. She feared not the nightmare. She feared not the bull that the nightmare seemed to be after. She was there simply for her own amusement, and amusing it was to her.
The demon, noticing the apathetic sense the Tunderiskan carried about her, stared at her for a moment, glowering as the ineffective bullets of alpha squad peppered him before he returned to his bloody task, rending and tearing through the group like simple toilet paper. One scrabbling female tried to reach for Nici, sobbing and begging for help before the nightmare grabbed her leg, cracking the shin and throwing the screaming tabby into a wall, shattering her spine and dealing terrible damage to the wall, which promptly collapsed in on the woman and revealed a screaming father and son combo, also tabbies. A grim smirk came to Nici's lips. The creature turned then, tearing into a house with a snarl as horrified screams rang out. A spray of blood and a string of intestines flew out. Nici sort of felt a pang of sorrow. Not in the entire decimation of the town by the demon, but more of a somber resentment that she wasn't going to get paid. Content that the beast knew she was both not of this town and not out to harm the demon, she shrugged and turned back into the building to raid the coffers of the bull. She found the bull cowering on the inside of the building, hidden with a few sacks of loot at the room at the top of the stairs.
She drew her pistol and aimed it at the bull's head, "Money. Now. Or you get one of my modified explosive rounds straight into your skull. And let me tell you, it ain't a good feeling. Or you could try and run and take down that beast outside by yourself now that your troops are decimated. Doesn't matter to me as long as I get your caps." She shrugged, still aiming straight at the bull's head.
A series of whimpers escaped his lips, sweat dripping from his snout as he nodded rapidly, practically shoving bags of caps at her as the demon raged. In all, she would have earned around 9462 caps this way as more roars reached their ears. Roars of pain and rage --like something was attacking the demon like he had attacked the townspeople -- crawls their way up to the bull's room, reaching the ears of the bull.
The monster exited the decimated house moments later, a she-wolf and her daughter, still a pup, clutched in his claws. With a move like snapping his fingers he broke the screaming mother's neck, tearing her open and drinking from her broken body like a fountain. Tossing her drained body aside, he raised up the terrified she-pup, but, before he had a chance to harm her, a vicious 'crack!' split the air and his arm dropped to the ground with the girl in its lifeless hold.
Nici came down after collecting her 'dues' to watch the monster with grim amusement, but a new creature stood there, the large demon on its back and bleeding profusely. It tried to rise but was immediately knocked back down with a solid strike to its nose. The creature standing on top was obscured by ten whipping tails, all as dark as the midnight sky, leading to a well muscled body with fur of the same shade, his claws digging into the creature's skull now before he ripped off its jaw, tossing it aside as the demon died and the little she-pup whimpered, cowering in the hold of a tigress standing nearby, a sad look in her eyes. Nici smirked at the apparent ease that the new creature was able to take the demon down with. She wondered at what the new creature could be, but barely cared enough to let it cross her mind. She took her previous position next to the doorway and took in the damage of the town. It seemed to be utterly destroyed, and she had no intention of helping them rebuild. She may have seemed cold and callous at this point, with her indifference to the town's future, but she had gone through too much and had been betrayed too many times by towns such as these in times of crisis, that she has learned to either ignore small towns entirely, or to help them only after they prove their worth to her -- or even had gained her trust, something she didn't give out easily. The tigress looked at Nici, as did the turning figure, revealed to be a pitch black wolf, his eyes burned a vicious shade of gold before fading, turning to silver instead as he sighed and cracked his spine, stretching himself out as he walked up to the tigress, taking the pup from her who immediately buried her face into his chest.
"Funny how things work out isn't it?" He muttered and the tigress nodded. "I thought she'd be terrified of you. Guess saving people's lives usually helps with their relationship towards you." He said to the tigress. Their conversation was brief, they had come in through a gaping hole in the wall that surrounded the town and a rifle was set against the wall, the same rifle that destroyed the demon's arm. He turned to Nici with a bored, tired look. "What're you here for? To find her?" He asked, flicking a tail at the tigress.
"Find who?" She almost seems to snarl. "I was simply called here by the little coward up in the building to find someone in the forest. We were just negotiating price when that reckless creature showed up. I knew only two things: One. The girl I was looking for was his 'wife'. Two. I was getting paid. I knew nothing of where this 'wife' was, nor what she looked like. Nor did I care. I am merely a merc. And a damn good one at that." She laid her hand on her pistol, ready to draw, unsure of the black wolf's intentions toward her. "So if that's the bull's 'wife' that he wanted back, I don't care anymore. I have my caps and as soon as you're done here I'd like to be on my way."
She turned and started to walk past the wolf and out of the town, senses tuned into any sort of noise that she could deem as hostile. She stopped just behind the wolf. "Unless you happen to have a job for me." Her tone was inquiring and somewhat callous, as if she cared only for time to kill and caps, a tone that sharply contrasted to light and airy voice that accompanied it. He listened quietly, his tails flicking or lashing softly, he found himself smiling despite her hostility, watching her hand dip to her weapon though he didn't move, he didn't have to. He knew she'd draw if he moved, and no one would win then. So instead he quietly listened as she offered her job he just smirked.
"Nope. I can handle myself, so I don't need some second-rate merc trying to handle my jobs for me." He responded, almost goadingly.
"A second rate merc..." That hit home. She sighed. "Obviously you haven't seen me in action. Nor have you heard of my name." She was, without a doubt, the most well-known and sought out merc in the region. She did her jobs in the manner she stated and, even among merc guilds, held high authority in the larger towns. He smiled a little, he knew he struck a nerve and planned on playing that nerve like a violin from the old world.
"Oh I've seen you in action, too afraid to engage the demon head-on, even as it was three seconds from laying into you... terrorizing cowardly bulls..."
"Maybe the name of Tunderiska rings a bell, then?" She smiled, knowing that even in the backwater towns her name was well known, but instead of showing some sign of recognition or respect, he just laughed a little at the mention of her name.
"Sounds like a mountain. Too bad, good name to a crummy person. I've heard of you, but nothing good that'd make me impressed." She took a step back and glared at him, her gray eyes screaming death.
"Then you obviously haven't heard about me from people who have earned my trust or my respect. I've been screwed over too many times in the east by towns like this, back when I was the 'good guy'. I don't help those that either don't pay me or have my trust because of these little towns. They like to screw over the first person they can to get a few caps. I'd say watch your back about the little one and the tigress, but I don't care enough. If you knew the troubles I've been through, you'd be the same way. I've lost trust in the species that walk this wasted planet."
Her eyes lost a bit of their harshness. "The one person that I've trusted the most was the first to turn on me when it came down to it." She went back to her glare. "So don't say you think you know me, or even hint at it, if you have neither my trust or my respect. Kill or be killed. It's become the only law in the cursed place." He watched her with cold eyes, it wasn't the reaction he'd expected but it was an interesting one nonetheless. As she stopped talking he found himself smiling a little.
"Wrong, the one law is watch your own back. Don't trust others...we don't trust each other in the slightest, I'm only helping her because she didn't want to watch the people die, and I had business here involving this pup. Other than that we don't exactly any sort of relationship. You don't know what trouble is child, you've never been in a war, you've never been hunted down and forced to go from town to town until you finally let yourself get lost in some godforsaken shithole." He motioned to the forest with his thumb as the child returned to the Tigress, and they both just turned and moved out the way, however the pup soon returned to his side and the tigress sat by the hole in the town's wall. "You can't waste your time trying to gain the trust of people, or showing them that you're to be trusted. The only one you should trust is yourself." He folded his arms over his chest, watching her and waiting as his tails lazily gouged holes in the ground. Nici chuckled, shaking her head at the comment that she knew not what war was.
"Child. Something I'm not. War. Something I'm well-versed in. I have seen more than you could ever imagine. More than your nightmares bring you. As for trust. Trust is painful, but worth it. Being hunted down." She cannot help but place her hand on her face and chuckle. "You are young. Age a few decades and come back to me and tell me about trust and war then." He started laughing at that, shaking his head as his tails wagged lazily, clearly this was amusing to him but for what reason.
"A few decades huh? Funny how I was bred for war, and been alive longer than you have, and yet you tell me to age... It's the only reason my kind came to be! I was born and raised to be a soldier, and a soldier I was until the Shining Wars ended, and I'm sure you know what they are."
The Shining wars were the bloodiest and most savage in a series of long-standing wars held by major factions in the East and West. She shook her head, pitying the shadow wolf as she immediately realized what he was. She knew well of the Shining Wars. She was a soldier in it for a brief period before figuring that her time was better spent somewhere else. She had fought both sides, as part of the third-party peacekeepers, and knew well of the biologically enhanced creatures.
"So you're a Shadow Wolf. Interesting to find one that can communicate outside of the simple mindset of barks and yips." She smiled. That struck a nerve, his eyes narrowed and his tails bristled up, raising slightly like snakes ready to strike and sink their teeth into her.
"You've obviously only met our pups." He had spent the entire war fighting for one reason or another, until the last few months of the war when he was on the run, even then he would fight. "Shadow Wolves have as much skill at communicating as any other species, so don't try and talk about us like you've spent time living in our packs. You'll find them on somewhat even terms in mentality if you had."
She chuckled, now she was ready to throw him off balance entirely.
"So... Now that the banter is out of the way, time for formal introductions." She held out an orange paw. "I'm Nici. You are?" She knew this would at least cause him to question her motives after banter like that. She often only brings out her civil side to do so, giving her the upper edge on possible hostiles. But this time, she truly was interested in this Shadow Wolf. Her plan worked, but barely. He was caught off guard for all of two seconds before he clasped her paw, his paws and the lower parts of his limbs near his paws, and the tips of his tails were the only parts not completely black, instead they were a soft red, like blood was perpetually stained on his paws. He shook her hand slowly as a smile tugged at the corners of his lips.
"Call me Jax."