Bount 2 - Part 2 & 3

Isaac continues his quest to dig up Mettal, but is he all he's made out to be? or worse.

Bounty II. – Part 2

West Metro, this city stank, but that’s how it’s always been, filthy to the core, just like its founders. It was built by crooks, criminals, and the kind of people who’d steal candy from a baby. You see, Metro City itself was good days walk from here. Metro City is clean, neat, and full of fat rich cats. There was a time ago when Metro City was infested with crime, murder, rape, sick stuff. You couldn’t find any place worse than Metro. Well the people got fed up, and staged a coup, kicking out the man in charge, and put their own Mayor on the throne. Strong hardliner, and he came out swingin, instead of jail time, crooks got to choose, capitol punishment, or exile. Well it didn’t take long before two of the exiles roamin the sands got together and started to latch some logs together. More crooks caught on to the act, and started making some productivity out of themselves, and West Metro was born. A population started to fill out the small town, more buildings sprung up, businesses were created, and even a police force was adopted. Go figure, the crooks policing their own, but they didn’t know what they were doin, no one in that crap hole did. How many exiles does it take to screw in a light bulb eh? Well when the big boys from afar come and start creating more trouble than they used to, their group of minute men just can’t do much about it. So the crooks come to us, the Hunters, we set the terms, although sometimes we do it out of the goodwill of our hearts. I hate West Metro.

I was told my friend was living in some cave around here. I always figured monkeys liked cages more, but a cave’ll do just fine. To be honest, I don’t even feel like shootin up the place tonight. It wasn’t a bad night, the air was clear enough to see the bloom of white light way in the distance. Everything about this night was perfectly normal, but a jobs a job, a hits a hit.

Something was lying in the road coming ahead.
“We’ll what 'ave we got here…” Slowing the hopper down.

She lay disfigured, left for dad on the side of the road. I left the hoper on idle and took a closer look. Everything about here was perfectly normal, except how her arms were where her legs should have been, and how her legs were where her arms were supposed to be. I drew a pistol.

“Honey, I can end it all for you right now,”
Tears began to drip from her battered face. Deep, blue eyes…
“But first…I’m going to ask you some questions. Did Mettal do this, Randall Chin?”
She nodded as best she could, her muscles strained against the broken bones in her neck.
“Which direction is he?”

She shifted her leg, connected to her shoulder, and pointed its toes to the side. I gazed, squinted…a light, a pinprick in the night, that’s the cave.

"Does he have any friends out there? Anyone else?"

She tried to move, I think, her stare was blank, her mind too far gone to be of any real use.

I wonder if Mettal heard the shot from all the way out there. I knelt down next to her, running my hand across the sand, grabbing some into my palm.



“Rest in peace sweet friend of only a second. May the lord care for you now?” Carefully, I allowed the sand to stream onto her forehead, one line, and another; the wind did would not touch this cross. Her eyes were still staring up… blue…bluer than clear water… Maria… my sweet Maria… I cleared my own eyes… a handkerchief, with flowers on it was hanging out her shirt… I took it… to ease my pain.
A shadow rose behind me.
“Ha ha ha, well, what do we have here?” A voice rumbled.
* * *

Isaac rose, the leather rubbing against his fingers.

“Are you this ones lover? I thought I told all you runts to stay in town, or else. I guess you just don’t like listen, kind of like this one here.”
The moon didn’t do Randall Chin the justice he deserved. You could call this bionic freak a work of art, kinda like a Da Vinci painting, except a Mona Lisa with two sets of arms and plates of shear metal attached in pieces to her body.

Isaac sneered.
“What, you, not like Mettal?” Randall waved all four arms around in circles,”But look what I’ve done. I perfected the art of human construction. I can connect any part of any body, and make it work with any another, science and study this takes! But nobody likes it, no one appreciates it like I do, so they must understand! I make them understand, she, she learned how perfect my body is, so I made her body perfect too! Do you like my work?”

“I think I’ll enjoy your artwork more when it becomes mainstream.” Isaac tried to fumble a round into the hole in the revolver, but it fell out of his hands…Isaac spat in defiance…so they want him alive, I need to bring him back alive…1000 tin…no…I’ll demand 2000.
“You make fun of me, you think my ideas are phony. You laugh at me with everybody else!”
“Need a hug? I can give you one, just come here and wrap your arms around me.” Isaac spat to his side.
“Really? You want me to give you hug?” He charged forward extremely fast, catching Isaac completely off guard. Randall wrapped all four limbs around Isaac, and lifted.
“Not too rough now, Uncle Isaac needs his back.”
“I’m sorry, so you really are not here to try to kill me? Why are you here…what are you doing out of town? I told you to say in town!” He tossed Isaac down like a rag doll.
“I’ve…got a surprise for you,” rubbing his side, “a gift…but, you have to come with me.”
“What, a present, for me? It is not my birthday though, you are tricking me!”
“No no, I got you something, but it’s going to be awhile before I can give it to you. Its not here, but it is out there, far away from West Metro.”
Mettal stood, thinking in his mind of what to do.
“Here,” Isaac stuck out his hand, “help me up, and let’s go.”
“We’ll, ok,” with two palms Isaacs arm was nearly yanked out of his shoulder.

“You see that”, pointing to the hopper, “we’ll ride on that to the surprise for a few days ok? Let’s go now, before the surprise goes away.” Isaac turned and walked, and grunted, and pondered, and rubbed the handkerchief between his thumb and fingers. On his way back to the hopper he passed the poor woman, rest her soul… she deserved nothing of this pain she’s been released from. All in all, this turned out better than expected. This man o many horror stories hasn’t proved too be too much a problem so far. Isaac stepped up to the hopper, and turned a few dials, to support the weight of that thing.
“Get on”

Randall was standing in his same spot, and then leaped to right before the hopper. With one step, the hovercraft dropped down and smacked the ground. The gyroscopes worked on overdrive to right the platform. His other leg followed and the thing must have forced the hopper revved up to full power.
“Alright buddy, lets go.” Isaac pulled a lever, and pushed a few buttons. The hopper rose, and its engines whined with stress, dragging forward a few feet, and picked up to a brisk flight. It took a while, but not before long the machine was moving at a somewhat respectable pace. This was going to be a long trip.



Part III

I didn’t always used to be a hunter. I used to have a wife, kids, a dog. Deep blue eyes, Maria… I pulled the handkerchief out of my worn pocket.
“Mettal, why do you it?” The hopper had been going for only a few days now. But there weren’t any interruptions along the way, except for a stop at a small village to fill the water sacks. Randall kept quiet the entire time; I want to finish his days, but, something inside isn’t quite sure if…that’s the right thing to do. Mettal turned his chin to Isaac, the bolts in his forehead glistened from the moonlight.

“What do I do?”
“That woman back in West Metro, why’d you do it to her?”
“That is what I always do.”
“How’s it make you feel, does it make you feel good?”
“No, nobody likes my work!”

With a quick draw, Isaac pressed the tip of a revolver to a soft spot unguarded by steel.
“Listen up, and listen well, if I wanted to, I could shoot this bullet and let it ricochet all around the inside of your skull. Nobody appreciates anything about your work, no one likes your work, when you kill people, nobody likes it. No one is going to appreciate what, you, do.” Mettal flinched… “Ah ah ah…move another muscle and I’ll be facing a court martial for the failure to follow clear instructions. Now I’m going to take a guess Mettal, and I’m going to guess you didn’t manage to teach yourself all this. In fact, you seem like to stupid of a man to put one and one together, but you do, and you put body parts together. You’ve got a partner.”
“Master…doesn’t like when I give out… I mean, no… mas..o…I’m in trouble now.”
“Not as much trouble as your going to be in if you doesn’t start talking.
"He will yell at me...if I tell you who he is...he will hurt me. He says if I don’t practice on people, he will hurt me."
"Tell me where can I find him?"
"You don't want to find him...he will hurt you."
"It's something I don't worry about. You know, I was expecting for you to...well, there was a man, who came to kill you a while ago. Son of a great man, a real fighter."
"There was a very mean man, who wanted to hurt me, and he almost did, but I was to fast for him. He used weapons and everything, but he didn’t understand how much better my body was than his. "
"So did you kill him?"
"I didn't kill him, I don't hurt anybody, I just make them better, and I can make you better."
"I'll pass on the enhancements."

Isaac pulled the gun from the side of the beasts head.
"We just need to take you back up to my town. There are going to be a lot of people who are going to want to talk to you, make fun of you, and probably hurt you. But you don’t do anything, you just stay calm and you don't go off and try to fix somebody with a better body? We're friends right? Don't let me down."

"I've...never had a frien...you, said...no..." Mettals face twisted around...he was smiling, like a child would. He's never heard anything like that before. Isaac turned his head away...he didn’t want to see Randall smiling. But behind him Isaac knew Randal was still beaming…unknowingly of what to say or do.

So brutal, but did he even know what he was doing was wrong? It's as if he were still a child...the more I learn about this creature...I realize this. But even a child would know better than to kill...but, if he were brought up in that sense, it would have taken a close relationship to make him think that way, a fatherly ...or motherly figure. If the reports are true though, and from what I’ve seen I know they are, he’ll have no place in this world. That girl…so distraught…the eyes, so much pain…so blue.

Isaac’s fingers rubbed gently across the revolver ends…feeling the texture of the smooth chrome. It’s all he could do to ease what he was feeling inside. Something he hadn’t known for years, remorse. She died, so terribly, and there was nothing that could have been done. She was to bear a son, who’d help take over the small piece of land. The local demand for the crops would bring in just enough to get by week after week…month after month. Isaac lowered himself into the hoppers seat, resting his head against the back, letting the wind blow after his breath. He clicked the barrel around, and started to slide the weapon out…

“Why do you want to be my friend?”
Isaac looked up, letting go of the revolver again. He didn’t quite have an answer to respond with. He blankly stared into Metal’s black eyes, starring. Standing up,
“Mettal, have you ever lost someone, and felt like you couldn’t keep going without them.”
“No? I don’t know what that means?”
“Somehow I knew you wouldn’t understand..” Isaac removed a revolver… and flipped it in his palm.
“It’s hard to explain,” he continued, “it has to be felt, loss, you’ve never experienced it before have you?”
“I lost my arm once, but I found it later.”

Isaac stepped backwards to the edge of the speeding hopper.
“No one is going to like you, simply because you look like a mutant trashcan. You can’t go and kill them either, or mutilate them simply because they make you mad. My suggestion, you take off two arms, take off those metal plates, and try to start over in a place no one knows your name. Meet a nice person who can show you what else you need to learn.” Isaac raised the gun to his temple, leaned backwards, and pulled the trigger.

Mettal turned back just in time to see Isaac’s feet tip over the edge. His eyes went opened wide, unable to register that he was alone on the hopper and the lump in the distance was quickly fading from sight.
“Friend!” Mettal kicked off the hopper and met the ground running. He leapt and bound over the dry and cracking ground, thud, thud, thud, thud, he leapt once more, and landed before the body of a groaning Isaac. He extended all four arms and shook him furiously.
“Friend! No… friend! No ho hoo…….”

“Don’t worry,” Isaac coughed, “It didn’t work… I’m ok.”
“You, why…? Randal was at a loss of words.
“I guess, you should help me up…” In a way...that poor girl back there just saved my life…just one of those chambers hadn’t a bullet. “We don’t have the hopper anymore do we…” He could make it out in the distance, driving away without him.

Randall still wasn’t quite sure as to what to say other than a random “Friend”, here and there. But managed to lift Isaac up onto his shoulders.
“Alright” Isaac pointed in front of him, “we…need to go in that direction…and fast…whooaff”

The tin-man jumped forward into a fast sprint. He kept running, he was running extremely fast. Isaac, was surprised, they’d make good time after all. After a minute, they even passed the hopper, which was still going on its way.
“Do you want to get back on the flying machine?” “No that’s quite all right, you just keep running, run me to my money because I’ve earned every tin, and...I think a paid vacation is due.”

To be continued…. Bounty