Bullettime Blues

[Rocton]

The heat. Unbearable. The stress. Immeasurable. Yet there he was, sitting on the dunes, as comfortable as a gecko baking in the sun.

This was home, to Rocton. The hot sun pounding the white cloak that covered his black tux and now shaggy unkempt hair, the pistol, resting in his palm, silent, ready, for nothing, for everything, and the nice cold soda bottle, now empty after being chugged in less than three seconds, balanced on his bent knee.

Some would call anyone who liked spending time out in the desert alone staring out at sand for any lenght of time mad, and yeah, perhaps it was, but the peacefulness of it all. Irrefutable.

Here there was no noisy teachers, no children running up and down the streets, no class. Only a timeless view and sounds of sand riding the occasional winds with the tumbleweeds following as closely behind as possible, and the sun laughing.

Here Rocton sat and remembered, he remembered it all, and he wondered why he liked spending times in such places, even if it almost killed him in more than one occasion. The only way he could explain it was much the same as a sea captain once explained his love of the sea to Rocton.

"The sea is like one of them highborn Spanish ladies: ye love her but ye can't trust her. One minute she's as placid as a sea-cow and yer sailin along as easy as kiss-my-hand, evory leaning on the rail and spitting to leeward; the next she throws a hurricane at ye, and yer running as if all the hounds of hell was on your trail swearing that if ye gets out of this alive ye'll never set foot on a boat again.

But ye always do go back to her, see? Because, despite her bein an untrustworthy, ungrateful, murderous wench and all, ye bloody well do love her, more than ye love life itself."

In this brief moment, as Rocton laughed a bit at his memory of the wise captain, the bottle on his knee caught a passing wind and fell. Rolling down the dune, it hit a rock, or what Rocton thought was a rock, which actually turned out to be a sleeping snake, not too happy at the early wake up call it had received.

It hissed angrily at Rocton, who immediately stopped smiling and raised Sally slowly. The snake moved first, a bullet was shot, heads of small reptiles were asploded, and Rocton, he pulled out another soda from his bag as the laughing sun began to set.

"To every Spanish lady that's ever tried to kill me" he said as he pulled the bottle up towards the view of the cheerful sun and drank.

[Rick Fader]

The sun was setting on the Mojave. It was at this point that one blue-haired teen traversed the dunes surrounding Death City, towards seemingly nothing. As with all desert endeavors, Rick had dressed for the occasion. A white, long-sleeved button-up shirt covered his upper body, while his usual fingerless gloves covered his hands. A pair of khaki slacks protected his legs from the desert, while he wore his usual boots to tread through the sands. A black duffel bag was slung around the blue-haired teen's shoulders.

Once the Demon Chair deemed himself in a good position, the boy removed the duffel bag from his shoulder, the bag kicking up a small cloud of dust as it landed onto the seemingly infinite sands. With an excited grin, the Demon Chair opened the bag, containing a few homemade bombs, a remote control, and a heavier jacket for when night fell upon the desert.

Predictably, Rick's first move was to take the bombs from the bag. He would then space them out through the desert, ultimately forming the three into a widely spaced out triangular formation. After setting the bombs up, the blue-haired teenager grabbed his duffel bag by its handle haphazardly, and ran to a safe distance, diving and rolling into place recklessly. Rick took the remote control, and flipped three switches, the three red lights turning green. The boy then hit the big red button, simultaneously setting off the explosives, and kicking up three massive clouds of sand in their wake.

"FUCK YEAH, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!", shouted Rick gleefully as he celebrated the successful detonation of the bombs, and the remote hookup's successful result.

[Rocton]

Noise. Loud and out of place.

The worst kind.

Peace and tranquility wasn't a commodity that Rocton had enjoyed much in his early years and it wasn't so crudely wasted by the guy. He tried to take advantage of it every time he could.

And now, explosions going off in the desert and some random douchebag yelling not far off where the meister had previously been enjoying a relaxing nearly dreamlike state in the desert. He half contemplated to shoot the guys head off, if he wasn't so far off that even taking a well aimed shot with Sally wouldn't be reliable enough to yield a good chance of impact.

No, murder was a resource best left for the crudest of criminals, and not something Rocton wished to resort to unless pushed to, lest he fall back into old habits. Still he would prefer that this random lunatic find another more civilized form of enjoyment, coming from a guy who had just shoot a rattlesnake in "self defense".

"What a drag" he though as he stared with one eye into the empty bottle of his last soda for the evening. He then proceeded to stand up slowly, with a strain as he had been sitting for awhile now, and tossing the empty bottle into the air and shooting it into shards, in an attempt to get the guys attention, or scare him off, either would be an acceptable result.

[Rick Fader]

Rick's celebration of his successful bomb was cut short by the sound of gunfire, followed up by a nearby rain of glass shards. Rick looked up at the hill, and could see someone in a light cloak. "Shit, didn't know someone else was here. . .", he thought to himself. Rick slung his bag over his shoulder. He then started up the hill towards the stranger.

Eventually, Rick was met with a closer look at the person who had fired off his gun. The gun itself was in his hand, along with a collection of empty soda bottles. He didn't immediately recognize the cloaked student. However, he looked young enough to be a fellow of Shibusen.

"Nice shot?", he addressed the boy. At this point, he was willing to watch what he said. Despite having been confronted with several Kishin Eggs alone, one with a Tommy Gun, and having endured being shot several times, Rick didn't want to fuck with this guy. For one, he was in range to get one put in his chest or face. Then, this guy seemed like a pretty damn good shot. "Er, didn't expect anyone else to be here right now. . .", he explained. But then, this was probably the first time he had at least been near someone on one of his testing sessions.

[Rocton]

"You ever hear of the miner who thought he was a genius?"

The meister was completely serious in his question although it sounded like a tale told in a bar among drunken friends. This blue haired kid fit Rocton's idea of the miner. A bit headstrong, and eager to have "fun".

He holstered his pistol inside his coat as he continued without waiting for a response.

"It goes like this. A miner was talking to his friends when they got to the topic about the camp being overrun with snakes. So this one miner thinks, "Dude we have plenty of dynamite lets just blow them all up in their holes." He sounded so confident that the others quickly followed suit gathering dynamite and dumping it in every hole in the desert they could find. The next day, they blew up half the desert and it rained snakes for 3 days."

As he finished up, he realized the point of his story might be misconstrued, but it mattered little. It was a tale that had been relayed to him as child soldier on a cold night in the shack when everyone was complaining about bugs and one of the more educated kids from Texas started talking about his visit to a museum theatre.

It was weird to remember it now, there were so many things that Rocton easily forgot about those days because they were just so ... hard but that story had always stuck with him.