From: aalberdk@ucunix.san.uc.edu (The Wyrm Ouroboros)
Subject: Walker's Nightfall
Date: 3 Sep 1993 09:11:11 -0400


In lands of Man, he stood.

He was not quite sure which to follow; the woman, or the man.  She
smelled of steel and, strangely, ice; when he'd watched her work out,
with speed and grace unparalleled in the normal world, he knew her to be
one of those who trades a portion of their humanity for an Edge, Power
of their own.  Ice should have nothing to do with it, and yet there it
was.  He was curious, and studied her further, as he had studied the man
and his male forefather an hour before.

The man seemed just that; he smelled of juniper and spruce, of rice
just-eaten.  He was a follower of his grandfather's path, that was quite
obvious.  A fair walk down that path, too, if the Void had accepted him
while he performed his bladedance.  Unlike his grandfather, who walked
hand-in-hand with that Unity, he did not yet know how to be in the Void
and yet aware of that which went on about him.

Grandfather did; grandfather knew that he, Walker, was watching.

Walker was not sure if the old kensai particularly cared; neither were
interested in the other except, perhaps, as a curiousity and as a
learning experience; the old man had power of his own, that of knowledge
and experience, age and Self.  It was a power not unlike Walker's own,
but of a more mundane and spiritual type.  Neither was a threat; and
both knew that Walker could easily be a test to the old man's students.

Tests, Walker knew, were life.

And so he stood, considering, standing in the filth-choked streets of
backtown Chiba, knowing only a little of his two prey, and wondering
which to discover more of first.

* * * * *

Graymalkin leaned over the half-unconscious drunk.  _Drunk is kind,_ he
thought. _He's got no bottle, but one of those chip-reader things._
"Hey!  Chatsubo!  Where?"  He stood up in frustration, looking about the
alley at the scattering of other drunkards, chip-heads, and drug abusers
that perched or sprawled on sections of refuse like so many vultures
above dying buffalo.  He shook his head, and kicked the last one in the
ribs, just because.  "Useless...." he spat, then turned back into the
street on his seemingly endless search.

His japanese had no accent, he was sure of that; he was a linguist by
profession, after all.  Profession didn't always help, though, and the
world today.... well, it seemed absolutely crackers.  With nuclear bombs
to blow everyone sky-high.... he shook his head again, peering into
several shops and trying to get one oriental's attention or another.

The japanese don't take well to westerners, just as a matter of course;
he could never explain the fact that he wasn't from the States, he was a
Welshman.  He sighed, stopping by another alley and moving into it,
peering into shadows for somebody sober enough to tell him how to get to
the Chatsubo Bar.  Or whatever it was called -- he still had to meet a
contact there.

"Hey, can yoiiiiii!!"  He didn't care to explain to the bullets that he
was Celtic, and so could use the Celtic pronunciation for 'waaah'; he
didn't think they'd really mind, one way or another.  The chipper he'd
been questioning, a 'Westerner' like himself, scrambled to his feet,
babbling something about 'Slade the Sniper' and a gorgeou*thunk*thunk*
*thunk*thunk* and he slammed into the ground, blood gushing from three
bullet holes walking up his chest.

Graymalkin didn't want to think about what the fourth impact meant, and
did his best to shield himself from the rather real bullets and the
sight of blood and death a meter away.  More bullets spanged into the
dumpster he cowered behind, as though challenging him to come out and
fight like a real man.

Real men loose versus real bullets.  Graymalkin's no dummy.

The firing stopped for an elongated pause; long enough for Graymalkin
to timidly check in the direction of the hail of lead in the hopes that
the Jolly Old St. Nick of low caliber automatic weapons fire was no
longer bloody there.  Apparently, Gray's guardian angel had decided to
go out for a cup of tea, because the wall across the way began spitting
chips of old brick and mortar as though it'd just discovered what
spittoons were, and had a field of them to practice aiming at.  Gray
ducked back behind his cover as a few bullets went wild into the
street, then whined off the high-density plastic of the trash bin.

Just for the record, the Celtic linguist was never much into religion;
however, as the saying goes, 'There are no athiests in foxholes.'  God
had never really been part of his life, but damn if he didn't suddenly
remember the 'Our Father' in its entirety.  He'd just gotten to 'and
deliver us from evil', which is at the very end, when the mad gunner
suddenly went off his aim with a rather audible *CRACK*.

After a few moments of hushed silence, Gray leaned his head out with, it
can be said, a certain amount of tentativeness.  He was not used to
having his prayers answered, and particularly not with such immediacy.
He was rather surprised to see a bronzed -- no, almost blackened -- man
walking down the alleyway with a certain amount of fastidiousness.
Looking beyond his savior, he saw the man who'd been firing the SMG, all
but folded in half backwards with a broken spine.

Right now would be a good time to give a physical description of the
short, dusky-skinned man that saved Gray's butt.  We don't have to worry
about either the wirehead that bought a nice tract of concrete with four
bullets, or the other hyped-out maniac who thought he was God's gift to
high-speed lead; they're both dead, they don't count.  The other, now...

The man only must have been five-foot-six; shorter, maybe.  He looked
like a marathoner, all skin, bones, and wiry muscle.  Short hair,
tightly wound and coarse, and a facial structure that made him look as
though he was pondering something.  He wore, surprisingly, little; Gray
was under a very strong impression that he'd be removed from most
establishments with any dress code at all, because of the fact that only
a long knife, a pair of .something.-skin breeches bordering on a
breechcloth, and a brace of honest-to-God .boomerangs. were all he wore.
Well, besides the odd piece of string and stone on his hip, which looked
to serve no purpose whatsoever....

Gray began to speak, offering his thanks, but the words died on his lips
as the aborigine walked past him, stepping again over the dead body of
the chipper with preciseness that avoided pool of blood and clump of
trash equally.  He had the look of one who knew where they were going,
exactly how to get there, and would brook no interference on his way.
Gray sighed, and let him go.  Back to the old grind.

"Hey, chummer, Chatsubo.  Understand?"

* * * * *

The one with the slugthrower was a minor inconvenience; he did not want
to be injured, in whatever way, by such a mundane weapon.  The wielder
of the weapon, oblivious to much of what happened about him, was as
unknowledgable about his approach as to the true nature of his demise.
A strong thrust of a limb, a minor touch of Power -- whichever it was,
the man's death was rendered complete.  He was but a shell already, his
mind devoured by the hideous images rendered within it.

He arrived within a few minutes outside of a drinking establishment --
broken down, the neon half-broken and swaying dangerously.  He paused,
then settled down right next to the door, evicting the previous tenant
from his spot through his presence.  The stoned woman tottered off,
mumbling about feathered flying snakes and men who changed into tigers.
He ignored her, and settled down, listening carefully to the
conversations within.

Ah, yes; she was here.  Information is power, and power calls to Power.

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The aborigine, 'Walker', is copyright 1993 by Scott Crain.
The Celt, 'Graymalkin', is copyright 1993 by Scott Crain as well.

Feel free to ask me for permission to use Graymalkin; he's a filler
character anyways.  Walker, on the other hand, is there for interaction
with Liralen Li's 'Hasaki' and Kevin Flynn's 'Ryousho', so don't play too
drastically with him.
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Ouroboros
The (Dead) Wyrm of the .Net