Chapter Text
It wasn’t unusual for the group to split up. This barren wasteland was full of monsters, and traveling in too big a group was a great way to attract trouble. As a result, splitting into smaller groups, exploring areas that they could access, and then regrouping at the large castle was the standard procedure.
This time, the weary cowboy found himself with the kid who liked fist fighting, and the kid who liked fist fighting, but was a hell of a lot more prickly about it. The three had, after some deliberation he didn’t take part in, decided to investigate the mountain for clues as to why the hell they were brought here. He was content to let the two brats talk and argue amongst themselves, he was never one for excessive words. They fell into an easy rhythm: He’d handle shooting anything that got too aggressive, and they’d lead the search.
For a few hours, everything was fine: They traveled around the mountain, despite it lacking the actual temperature of a mountain, and other than the occasional strange monster or aspiration, things were… quiet. Calm, even. Again, despite the monsters, but even those were beginning to become familiar to him.
(And the one thing Sundown couldn’t stand about this place was the shapes of the monsters, visions that just bordered on familiar, but were always wrong: a misshapen jaw, a discolored hat, close but forgotten all the same. He absently wondered if it was the same for the others: the way the girl would tighten her fists in barely contained rage at tattooed brutes, the way the boy would look at some of the more eccentric aspirations as if they were forgotten friends.)
Well, it doesn’t matter now, he supposed.
Eventually, their haphazard search led them to a large boulder on the mountainside. Nothing special there: the terrain was full of the things, and it was also one of the few things that Sundown could mark as familiar in this damned land. He leaned back against the cliff face, not for the first time wishing he had a stiff drink. He closed his eyes for a moment: There weren’t any other monsters in the area, and the things were so loud there was no way in hell they were sneaking up on them.
His eyes snapped back open when he heard the sound of an impact, followed by a loud, shuddering noise. Looking back, he saw the girl standing in some sort of fancy-folk punching stance, hand outstretched, with a now collapsed boulder lying in several pieces around them.
“...What the-”
“Damn, that was sick!”
Before he could rightfully call out Brat 1 for being a special brand of dumbass, Brat 2 decided that this particular feat was worthy of praise, and began feeding into the girl's already too-big ego.
“Heh! With the right technique and placement, you can destroy much larger things with even less force! If you think this was special, you should have seen the rock up on mount aspiration!”
The brat with the bandages on his hand began grinning, as if nothing was wrong.
“Oh yeah? Bet I can do that too!”
“Hah! Prove it!”
Oh for the love of fuck, these idiots didn’t just say what he thinks they just said.
Before he could stop the girl’s dumbassary from infecting the boy, the boy was charging at one of the larger boulder pieces that had fallen from the original, grabbing it and tossing it in the air.
“Hyaah!”
The boy thrust his fist forward in a similar stance as the girl’s, and surely enough, the rock crumbled into powder underneath his fist.
“Damn, I didn’t think you could do it.”
“Jeez, thanks for the faith. Oh, hey old man!”
Ignoring the brat’s jab at his age (He wasn’t old.) He approached the two of them, and glared at them, as if hoping they could be cured of their foolishness if he believed hard enough. Of course, that wasn’t how this worked.
“Hey, whats with the glare?! This is why I thought you were suspicious before, you know. I mean, you are kinda suspicious- Actually, wait, that’s not what I mean-”
“Show me yer hands.” He grumbled to the two children, already beginning to fish around his worn napsack for some bandages.
“Eh? My hands are fine- Oh shit.”
The boy wasn’t completely wrong: his left hand was fine. His right, however, had just been slammed into a hard piece of stone, most likely shattering several of his fingers.
“Looks like you got the stance wrong. Makes sense, you didn’t learn it from-”
“You too, girl.”
“What?! Unlike that guy, I’ve done this before. See, my hands are- Oh shit.”
The girl’s hands were NOT fine. She may have had the technique to break stone with her hand, but that didn’t mean she had the developed muscles for that sort of nonsense. Although she wasn’t in as bad a stance as Masaru, her hand was beginning to form a bruise.
He sighed. He can already feel his hair graying. Seizing the boy’s wrist (and ignoring his brief cry of alarm), he deftly began to wrap the dusty gauze around his hand. After a moment, it was- well, not patched up, but it would keep the fingers from being jostled around while he dragged his dumbass back to the castle and let the metal contraption work its voodoo and heal the boy back to full health.
Of course, given what Sundown knew about this idiot, he’d probably do the same thing again in some stupid effort of ‘getting stronger’ Pah.
He went to do the same to Lei: Her hands probably weren’t as bad as the boy’s, but she probably still needed it to be wrapped. The girl glared at him.
“Give me that! I’ll do it myself!”
With surprising deftness, she snatched the roll out of his hand, wrapping her hand. She was quick at it, with the experienced grace of someone used to patching up their own wounds: A somewhat worrying trait he noticed all of the brats exibhit at one point or another.
(He pretended not to notice her pocket the roll of gauze after she was finished.)
“Thanks for the bandages. Let’s get moving: I have a feeling there’s something special in this cave-”
“No. We’re headin’ back to base.”
Without giving the other two anytime to debate, he turned on his heel and began wandering back to the castle, leaving the other two dashing behind him
“Hey! C’mon old man, we came all this way: we can’t just leave this for later-!”
“It’s a cave. It ain’t gonna grow legs and run away. We’re gonna go get the contraption to heal yer hands. You’d just be dead weight otherwise.”
“Yeah, and that's also gonna waste time!” The boy groaned in protest.
“Jeesh, you really have that little faith in us, huh?” Lei questioned?
“...at the end of the day, all of you are a bunch of kids. Leavin’ these sorta injuries unattended isn’t smart.” With that, he turned back around, and ignored the two kids complaining for the rest of the (thankfully) peaceful walk.
The trip back to the castle was quiet, thankfully. Maybe some god was looking out for them. Not that he'd ever put my stock in religious affairs, mind you. He glimpsed back into the frozen waters of the fountain. Everything in this damned land seemed dead, and this castle was far from being an exception. Nothing moved, be it water or air, as if stuck in some sort of stasis. It was almost fascinating. Well, it would be if they weren't stuck in this damned place. He has quite a few choice words prepared for the son of a bitch who trapped them here. He also has a few choice bullets.
When they returned, the other group was already waiting, with the masked brat off hiding somewhere, the magic brat lounging around like he owned the castle, the wild brat eating something, and the contraption waiting for them by the entrance. He dumped the brats off with it, declaring the two of them it's brand new problem to deal with, and went to find some quiet in the courtyard. Which he got!
For about 5 minutes.
“Yo! Old man!”
Sundown groaned from his spot next to the frozen fountain. He was hoping for some peace and goddamn quiet, maybe a bit of... what did Mad Dog call it? Introspection? But of course Masaru decided he wasn’t gonna let that happen. Turning around, he saw that he wasn’t alone, and Brat 1- That is, Lei, was with him.
“Whattya two want. I’m busy.”
He wasn’t busy, but they didn’t need to know that.
“Nah, Don’t really need anything. Just figured we oughta thank you.”
“Yeah… In all honesty, my hand was starting to hurt on the way back here to the castle. In the end, it was probably smart to get this checked before continuing. It would have bugged while we were fighting, and then I wouldn’t be at my best. So, thanks!”
He stared at the brats for a moment. Then two. Then, he scoffed and looked back to the fountain. Why the hell were they thanking him? He didn't do anything special, other than point out some practical knowledge that any 5 year old ought to know by age 4.
“It was just common sense. ‘S more worrying if you two couldn’t recognize it.”
He smirked, and looked over his shoulder. An idea had come to him. Might be a way to get these two off his case for a little while...
“Hard fer either of you to be the strongest with a broken hand, isn’t it?”
Hook
“Yeah, course not-”
Line
“I suppose not-”
On cue, the two looked to each other, faces contorted into a grimace. At the same time, they spoke:
Sinker
“When he said ‘The Strongest’ he was talking about me!”
The two then broke into a loud argument. Sundown stifled a chuckle.
Yeah, at the end of the day, they really are just kids, huh?