Bullet_proof

The woman that entered the bar didn't fit the scene of the 40's much more than the one that'd walked in straight off of a patrol route. If anything, she looked vaguely like MacGuyver sans mullet: Faded blue jeans, t-shirt with a light brown leather jacket, sneakers and a mop of blonde hair. She didn't seem entirely bothered by it either. She was still smiling over her husband's grudging acceptance of the idea. Turning to him and motioning to a bank of tables near the wall she said, "Get us a seat and I'll go talk to the manager if I can find 'em."

"Er, sure." The place was crowded, but rather classy-retro-chic for a 'modern' establishment. Truth be told, Brendt hadn't been in a club since he was eighteen, and it wasn't because he held any animosity towards drinking. He shrugged though and picked out a seat.

For a minute, Grace's attention was on the woman at the microphone. She had a lovely, clear voice and the song was at a charming climax. But her husband was second to draw her golden-eyed gaze. "Brendt, no!" She shrieked over the music and general chatter, racing to stop him before he took the seat. The look went from alert to scolding, "And to a veteran... how could you!" She leaned around the bulk of her husband and met the gaze of the decidedly phantasmal being occupying the chair. "I'm so sorry, Sir. It won't happen again." So saying, she took Brendt's hand and led him to a seat at the bar.

"I'm sorry," she added quietly, "I should've warned you about them." And then she just pranced off across the dance floor as though she was fully expecting to be allowed to speak with the manager. Or, at least, knew remotely where to find him.

He blinked twice at his wife's sudden chastising, but was left at the bar to wonder who exactly she'd been apologizing to. He squinted a bit at the seat, but thought it was too dark to see anything since he'd forgotten where he'd put his sunglasses. "Them?" But she'd already traipsed off to get herself into trouble, and he was left to address the robotic bartender. Robotic bartender? Well, it didn't look like a clock. But then, after a few drinks, probably nobody would care. "Hey, gizmo. I'll have a tall Red one and a Diet 7-Up on ice for my invisible lady friend." As the robot delivered his order as though it'd been spat out from some indeed inhumanly efficient assembly line, he'd just become aware of the glint of steel coming from another corner of the bar. Drink in hand, Brendt turned to witness a very loudly-accented woman fleeing the side of a man with an axe. So much for checking your heavy-duty surgical equipment at the door? Maybe he was security, but Brendt kind of doubted it. He shrugged it off for the moment, though, enjoying his Red Beast and the Greatest Empathic Hits of the '40's from the only woman in the club that seemed dressed to fit in with the atmosphere. As much as anyone could dress to 'fit in' anywhere in Paragon City...

(By- Jet Blue and Bulletproof)

Northern China, 1890s

Master Wu Han, revered emissary of the Forbidden City and the legendary Scholar of Caoxu, was not impressed. He had been sent to educate the barbarians of the far north, to lands where grass was sparse and the climate intolerable. He had left the Forbidden City with promises of a royal escort and a lavish residence upon his arrival. He was greeted by a tired old pony and, when he finally arrived at the site of his 'luxurious manor home', a pile of sticks and clay.

No, yesterday was not at all a good day for Master Wu Han. Yesterday, Master Wu had to complain bitterly about the laziness of barbarians and cobble together his own stick-and-clay shanty. Master Wu fancied himself a learned man, but yesterday, he learned how not to build a house.

Today, Master Wu would have been on the road to yet another neighboring barbarian village in desperate need of his tutelage. Trouble was, there was no road. "Lazy barbarians," complained the renowned imperial scholar to his fat pony. "To think that we have anything to fear from such slovenly, oafish, uneducated-" he paused. Few things could have caused Master Wu to pause in the middle of one of his passionate speeches. And the sound he heard, the sound of a distant song ringing like a bell-charm across the mountains, was one of those few things. In fact, it made Master Wu pause another a moment longer to listen. It was a girl's voice, and though she sung in the barbarian tongue, Master Wu had never heard a song so beautiful and yet so haunting. "I must meet this songbird," Master Wu assured his pony, who wheezed in eager agreement. "So lovely a nightingale must not be wasted on singing barbarian anthems!" And so Master Wu left his pony near the freshest-looking rain puddle he could find and took to the clouds.

In the air, even amid the roaring of wind and clouds, the mountain girl's song was heavenly. It seemed to touch Master Wu even as his Sparrow-strides took him past the highest peaks, across the darkest cloud banks, and it was with him still as he lighted down on a desolate mountain trail leading up from the banks of one of the very few rivers to cross the northern lands. From the air, he had spied the bearer of that voice: a young northerner girl, her hair curled into dark, winsome little braids, her skin tanned and yet not roughened by a life of physical labor. Two large buckets hung from a wooden pole flexed across her shoulders, and in each was the weight of water that could have easily overpowered a girl of her stature. And yet, she continued to haul her burden up the steep mountain slope, singing her song and balancing her water all the while. For just a moment, the sight made Master Wu's heart ache, and he went to greet the girl the only way he knew how: by standing in her way.

The trail was wide enough to accomodate only either Master Wu or the girl and her burden, and so the girl stopped, just as Master Wu expected. However, Master Wu had also expected the girl to lower her eyes and at least make some adorable pretense of stepping aside, perhaps even spilling some of her water in the process. And at that point, Master Wu had expected to use his secret Shadows-over-water technique to rescue her from spilling a single drop. But not everything, of course, came out as Master Wu expected.

The girl did stop, but instead of casting her gaze downward in deference to the Master's superior status, she looked straight at him. The fire in her eyes not only startled Master Wu, but it also made him forget how indignant he had felt mere moments ago. In fact, it even made him forget a good portion of his upcoming lecture on Confucius's analects on feminine propriety. So the girl spoke for him.

"Strange man, you must be blind, and so I must point out that this trail is not wide enough for you to be walking in the middle. Please, step aside and I may lead you to safety."

Master Wu made an attempt at a haughy chortle, but it came out only as a startled gasp. "I humbly beg your pardon, lady," he addressed her in her native dialect. "But I must point out that it is you who is in my way."

The girl looked around, down, up the mountain side, and finally back at him. "These must be strange lands to a strange man like you."

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

"Because only strange men think such strange thoughts."

Master Wu was reminding himself he should be livid, and so he was a little sterner in demanding, "And what do you mean by that?"

"Only a strange man would think that the ways of the mountain belong to anyone else. And so I could not possibly be in 'your' way." She sighed a faint breath of vapor. "I will ask you one more time. Please stand aside so I may return home. You can come along behind me. I will walk slowly and step loudly so an old blind man will not lose himself in the mountain again."

Master Wu could not have seen the sudden look of furious consernation on his own face then, but the girl will treasure the sight for the rest of her life. Master Wu had only managed a garbled imperial curse and an angry "Silly little girl!" before he found her heel planted squarely in his jaw. The blow was an unexpectedly forceful one and it threw the taller man a few paces back, but he caught himself and wiped the dust off his clean-shaven chin. "Blood?" Master Wu did not startle easy, and this was the second time today that he was startled. It was not a good day.

"Humble apologies," the girl had swung herself into a surprisingly graceful fighting stance, bent at the knees and still shouldering the weight of the water buckets. "I had not been able to stop to get that pebble out of my shoe for miles."

The girl obviously knew how to fight. She faced him not with her front but her side and, armed with her heavy burden that she wielded like twin shields, she was virtually unassailable... from the front. Master Wu saw this and literally leapt at the opportunity, soaring into the air above her and planning to plant only the teasing nudge of a foot to the top of her head, where he thought she was vulnerable. Hovering as if standing still in mid-air, he yelled, postured and certainly made an effort to frighten the girl into acknowleding who was the superior martial artist, before launching at her in a full-bore flying kick.

And then the peasant girl, who really must have been more than a foot smaller than the wizened Master in every dimension, did another unexpected thing. In an act that would have required the strength and balance of a skilled warlord three times her size, she hoisted her burden off her shoulders and, with but a flick of her wrist, flung it high above her head. The impromptu pole-and-buckets weapon twisted vertically upward like disembodied helicopter blades before catching the airborne Master Wu completely off-guard. Thankfully, it was the pole and not the weighty water buckets that struck him out of the air. Before he knew it, he was hanging off the mountain side, dazed and clinging onto the girl's outstretched hand as her opposite shoulder cushioned the full weight of the descending pole and its attached water buckets, with naught but a slight bounce to her step. She hadn't lost a single drop of water.

"You know," admitted the suddenly very beleaguered Master Wu. "All I wanted was to hear you sing..."

"You could have asked." Her tiger-shaped eyes gave but the slightest snarl of a glint. "Even barbarian girls respond well to compliments."

"Well... Perhaps I am but a strange man, with strange ways."

So. After some persistent poking, it's finally happened. I guess this might be the closest thing to an 'official' origin for Bulletproof, aka, Brendt Hudson, so darn it, it's gonna be *very* long-winded. The man did live through some very... interesting times. So here we go.

He didn't know what was more hazardous to his health -- contesting with potentially man-eating ivy or trying to shop for an unknown number of guests who were coming in from Paragon City. What if the tanks wanted seconds? What would you feed some otherworldly entity without a mouth? Would the mechs, cyborgs or gizmotrons prefer regular or unleaded? Was anyone allergic to chicken?

Grace had only told him to 'expect company', so it looked like dinner for two was off. But he should've stuck around a little longer for the shopping list particulars instead of racing off with the keys and a kiss the moment he was relieved of ivy duty. Oh well, he thought. Better to err on the side of an overstuffed fridge.

And so, barely an hour and a full trunkload of frozen meats, fresh produce and refreshments later, Brendt Hudson backed the household Explorer into the driveway and got out. As he hauled out a monstrous cooler and lugged it over his shoulder like some fuzzy neanderthal returning with the week's kill, he stopped and surveyed the front yard... which had apparently been overrun with a small international army of (hopefully 'user-friendly') small tables and a wing-backed single-seater that a decidedly un-neanderthal Grace was busily dusting off. Wait-- "You're dusting." It wasn't a question or an exclamation, but a statement. Brendt had long since known that beneath the mask and warpaint, beneath even the woman he knew and loved, there lived the secret life of a compulsive duster. But normally, Grace had the tendency to just... well, wiggle her fingers and wreak electro-static annihilation on whole colonies of dust bunnies in a fell swoop. He didn't mind it at all, himself... he kind of liked that little buzz of residual static the first time he'd sit down on something that went through the 'shock treatment'. But now was different. Now Grace was dusting with like a normal little girl . And it was not something Grace did lightly... only when she was expecting very serious company indeed. And instinctively, Brendt's eyes went to scanning the nearby curb lanes. "Your parents're stopping by and they want furniture?"

The blonde-haired, electro-static princess was working (dusting cloth in hand) on some of the furniture she'd brought up from the basement. But she'd hardly finished dusting down the last piece when their white Ford Explorer pulled into the driveway. She had to wonder, seeing the cooler slung over his shoulder, what part of 'a few guests' he didn't understand. As long as they were making enough money to keep up with him, she couldn't say she really minded. Brendt seemed to be the sort with a highly accelerated metabolism. -And a suspicious mind...she thought with a grin. "You were in such a hurry to go shopping, I didn't get to tell you. We've got our first customer coming over soon."

Grace gave the furniture a hawk-eyed once over. There was a heavily-built and ornate, walnut coffe table that had looked promising. Next to that, a few stacking tables with positively ancient carved leather tops sat on the wide brown stones of the house's walkway. The final piece, the wing-backed chair, had wonderfully aged material... soft, pale-golden tapestry fabric with a modest floral pattern against wood with a warm matte stain. She hadn't been entirely sure the fabric would've kept so well, but the basement was a surprisingly good storage room. Other than dust, there was little wrong with the pieces other than respectable age. And many people in the world could be accused of the same thing.

She tucked the dust cloth into a back pocket of her faded jeans and turned to her husband and the groceries. "Need a hand-? Hey," she added, "I called Sam Richardson. You know... the woman from Steel Canyon? I thought maybe she could use some time out of town."

"Richardson," he thought as he handed a load of groceries to her. "Oh. Right, that woman you saved with a comb." He winked at the crafty mistress of static-tism. Richardson, Richardson... What else was familiar about Richardson, mate? Well, he'd have to mull that one over some other time. "S'fine by me, so's long as she eats like a horse. And you found ourselves some business, too?" He grinned, that wink turning into a decidedly brown-eyed twinkle as he set down the cooler and unearthed a can of 7-Up for the missus, and a tall one of Red Beast for himself. "I think this calls for a toast." To suckers born every minute? Nah... aside from the odd bloodthirsty ivy and coffee table-shaped extra-dimensional prison, the house that Uncle Leo had left them was stocked with quite an impressive array of (mostly) harmless paraphernalia, most of which could even be used to furnish a home . "To buyers with impeccable taste in sellers. And killer furniture."

(By- Bulletproof and Jet Blue.)

Little did she know, her man was not, in fact, just pruning muta-magical vegetation.

He'd just ridden into the meanest-lookin' town that ever dared to bite back in rattlesnake country. The folks here gave strangers looks as hard-bitten as the noon hour sun beating down on his back, and every shop, saloon, heck, even the funeral parlor shut their doors and windows as he rode past 'em on the way to the corral.

Yep, old man 'Bulletproof' Brendt was gonna have us an old-fashioned showdown. Face-to-face, man-to-man... but for all the blood, sweat and itchy saddle tacs it was worth, all he could think about was his lil' lady back at the ranch.

"Wah can't ya stay with me, Brendt?" She'd looked at him with that look. He couldn't ever figure the darndest if that look meant she was angry or upset. Either way, she was a damned fine sight for sore eyes. "Don't Ah mean anythin' to you?"

"Darlin'," he'd said, gruffly catching her chin and gazing into her deep blue eyes. They had halos in 'em, he noticed... tawny yellow rings that smoldered out of each lightnin'-blue core. "'fraid this ain't about you no more. This is about... bein' a man."

A dead man, if the townsfolk were to be believed. Old 'Bulletproof' Brendt's done faced down his own fair share of bad guys, but he ain't seen nothin' like what's about to face him down today.

"Well I'll be a darned," he said as he swung off the saddle. Old Bulletproof wasn't a short man, but even he had to look up to the bad guy today. And today, if size did matter, it sure did look like Brendt was gonna be buzzard chow.

'course, our hero was undaunted. All he did was bite down on his cheap cigar, rolled the smoke around in his mouth, then spat the stubs onto the sands of No Man's Land.

"Looks like there ain't room 'nough on this chimney for the both of us."

Then, 'fore the last word had time to break loose from the cracks between his growling voice, he reached for his belt and brought out the gardening shears.

And in that second, he was a black whirlwind of precision strikes, each severing another trailing vine, another overgrown limb. After the blink of an eye and at the end of the elaborate 50-move kata, about a good foot of thick, leafy green matter lay at his feet. "One foot down..." He took a step back to examine the rest of the ivy that made their chimney a definite fire hazard. "Two storeys to go." He scratched a hand through his thick-bladed bands of hair and took a breather before hollering out to the driveway. "Bull's Eye all the way, baby. You know it." He paused and looked back at the ivy. Apparently it'd already regrown its severed appendages and was sprouting more right before his eyes. "On second thought, skimp on the sauce and get me a six-pack, will ya?"