Chapter 1"It's not that I don't like you or anything, you seem like a nice guy. That's why I'm telling
you, you need to beat it." The bartender whispered, almost crossly, as if a harsh infliction in his
voice would influence the man's decision whether to stay or not. The man seated at the bar was
rather tall, he had long flowing black hair that cascaded down to his shoulders, it was flecked
with a few lingering gray hairs. His face seemed as if it was chiseled from stone, it was hard,
definite, and populated in the lower regions by some rough stubble. He wore a large black trench
coat, faded blue jeans, and a gray t-shirt. A black fedora was suspended on the back of his neck
by a leather hide stampede string. The string was connected by three large wooden beads. The
man lifted his black gloved hands and massaged his temples for a moment.
"I know I don't have any money but, I can pay you back other ways. Labor maybe? I
could wash the dishes for a while, take out the garbage..." The man's voice was deep and
gravelly, as if he had been screaming for one thousand years.
The saloon was populated by a few scrawny people, obvious residents of the small town
on the outskirts of a desert. Round tables of maple were scattered across the saloon. The right
wall as one walked in was where the bar was, and several stools lined the bar. No one was at the
bar besides the man with the black hair. The saloon was mostly lit by white daylight that poured
in from various windows, but there were a few iron lanterns hung on the wall and at some of the
tables. A piano, dusty with disuse, sat at the back of the saloon on a wooden platform, its keys
may as well have been virgins.
Of course, these regular residents didn't worry the man with the black hair, he had already
seen a grouping of four mountains of men near the back corner of the saloon. They sat at a round
table, playing poker or some card game of the like, grumbling to each other. The men were
brutes, muscled, large... The man with the black hair could easily understand why the bartender
feared them.
"You need to get out of here, it's for your own-" The bartender stopped, looking up past
the man with the black hair. The man with the black hair shifted his head slightly as he heard old
wooden chairs scraping across a wood paneled floor, as he heard heavy feet falling on the
wooden floor, pounding it. A large hand came from behind the man with the black hair and
placed itself on the glossy bar. The man with the black hair cocked his head and looked to the
right. A muscular bald man leaned on the bar, looking between the bartender and the man with
the black hair.
"Is this man bothering you Mr. tender?" The bald man asked in a deep booming voice.
"Ahh." The bartender waved his arms, exasperated, and walked through a batwing door
back into the kitchen.
"You hear that... That's the sound of no one caring about you. You should probably beat
it." The bald man said, clenching the bar and getting close to the man with the black hair.
"Is there a problem here?" The man with the black hair pulled back his trench coat,
revealing a makeshift holster sewn inside the coat that housed a large silver revolver.
The bald man looked down at the gun and scoffed.
"You probably picked that up from some dead guy, you don't even know how to use it.
Look at you, you're old and withering." The bald man chuckled, and his three buddies followed
up with nervous laughter.
"Hmm, perhaps we should test your theory then." The man with the black hair stood up
from his stool and the four bandits simultaneously took a step back. He reached into his pocket
and pulled out a large copper coin.
"Heads or tails mates?" He asked in a strangely drawn out accent.
"Heads or-" The bald bandit began, grimacing.
"Heads it is!" The man flipped the coin high in the air.
Two seconds. The man with the black hair felt the flow of time around him slow, as his
instincts and adrenaline took over.
That's 0.5 seconds for each man. The man began a mechanical counter in his head, he
could hear it ticking.
"You little-" The voice sounded slow and slurred. The man with the black hair lifted his
leg, chambered it, and thrust it outward, striking the blade of his foot into the chest of one of the
large bandits. The bandit flew back, knocking over tables and chairs. He desperately reached to
grasp something, something to keep himself stable, but failed and fell to the floor with an earth
shattering painfully slow thud.
The man with the black hair pushed off the ground with his left foot, his right foot still
suspended in the air. He began rotating, hugging his arms close to his body. His left foot came
careening out of the spin, and slammed into one of the bandit's heads, fracturing his skull and
knocking him to the ground unconscious.
One second. One second felt like a lifetime, the man with the black hair dared to look up,
and still saw the coin flipping through the air, not quite having reached its apex yet.
The man with the black hair landed gracefully on both feet, and thrust both of his arms
out like cannons. One rock hard fist pounded into the bald bandit's stomach, causing a few
organs to explode, the other fist crashed into another bandit's ribcage, fracturing it in seven
different places. Both bandits fell to the ground, blood dripped from the bald bandit's lips.
The man with the black hair held out his hand. Catching the copper coin, he placed it on
the back of his other hand, and looked to see what the results were.
"Sorry mates, looks like you lose. I'm not rusted in the slightest. Take this with you to the
afterworld." The man with the black hair flipped the coin over one of the bald bandit's eyes as the
bandit breathed his last.
"Organ failure's a bitch isn't it?" The man with the black hair drove the ball of his foot
into the dead bandit's side. "That's for terrorizing these good folk here." Then he spit on the
bandit's face. "And that's so you can stay hydrated in the burning afterworld." The man with the
black hair seated himself on the stool he was on before, and knocked on the glossy wood bar.
The bartender came out from the kitchen, his eyes bulging with astonishment. He walked
over to the bar and looked over the edge at the four bodies.
"H-how did you..." He stuttered in disbelief.
"Don't worry your pretty little head over it. Do you think I could get a meal now?" The
man with the black hair asked politely.
"O-of course... But first you'll have to tell me your name." The bartender looked out over
his saloon at the few townspeople seated at the round tables. They were all smiling with glee.
"You can just called Mr. Saint." Mr. Saint readjusted the stampede string around his
neck.
The bartender nodded, and disappeared into the kitchen. After a few moments, he came
back out carrying a white stoneware plate that had a large steak and seasoned baked potato on it.
"Delicious." Mr. Saint drooled, taking the fork and knife off of the plate after the
bartender placed it down in front of him and dug in. "So, do you know why those guys were
here?" Mr. Saint asked through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
"Well... They said they were working for some big guy hunting something, some
machine or something. The guy they were working for... I think they said his name was Umbra."
Mr. Saint coughed and choked slightly on the thick creamy mashed potatoes. He pounded his
chest a few times, swallowing down the potatoes and gasping for air.
"Umbra?" Mr. Saint said in between coughs. "I haven't heard that name in a long time.
They were searching for a machine you say?"
"Yeah. Well, the way they talked about it, it sounded like a machine. The Aug Project,
that's what they said they were hunting." The bartender snapped his fingers as his mind recalled
their intentions.
"Mhmm..." Mr. Saint said, this time through a mouthful of medium-well steak. He
finished the last bites of his steak and the skin of his baked potato. "I suppose you wouldn't
happen to have any apple ale or something?"
"How silly of me." The bartender grabbed a large glass mug and put it under the spout of
a dark brown barrel with the red word APPLE sprayed across it. He twisted a knob on the spout
and filled the glass mug with ale, then shut the spout off and handed the glass to Mr. Saint. Mr.
Saint chugged the ale down, then placed the glass on the bar.
"Thanks for the meal." Mr. Saint motioned to the dead bodies. "Bury them in shallow
graves, they don't deserve six feet."
"Will do Mr. Saint." The bartender smiled. Mr. Saint headed for the door and stopped as
he heard a slow clap coming from the back of the saloon. He turned around and saw an old
scrawny man clapping his hands. The man stood up, and other people began clapping with him.
Soon the whole saloon was alive with the weak clapping of a small audience, even the bartender
was in on it. Mr. Saint smiled, put his black fedora on his head, tipped it to the crowd, then left
through the batwing doors of the old saloon.
Mr. Saint took a fresh breath of air, looking around the small quiet town.
"Mr. Saint!" A voice called from back in the saloon, and a young boy ran out holding a
white cloth drawstring bag. "Mr. Saint, I think you forgot this." The boy held the bag out and Mr.
Saint took it, nodding to the boy.
"I can be so forgetful sometimes." Mr. Saint ruffled the young boy's hair and threw the
bag over his shoulder. The boy ran back into the saloon. "Jeez, what's the world coming to these
days. Kids in saloons." Mr. Saint shook his head slowly as he stepped onto the hardpan desert
that the small town was built on. The sun was high in the sky, and a few miles away outside the
town, once could see the beginnings of a large forest.
"Umbra... The Aug Project. My mind fails to recall what's important. Whatever this Aug
Project is... I better find it before Umbra does." Mr. Saint began whistling a tune as he stepped
through the small town. An old man rocking on a chair on the small wooden porch of a barber's
shop recognized the tune as "When The Saints Go Marching In."
***