Shalom of Yarech or The Ballad of the Robot Cowboy
By
Deathfang,
Posted on: 2008-05-15 24:59 in Roleplaying
((In answer to the RP Server Question: Virtue))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Thanks. any criticism for the story?
There's also an alternate reality story of him...
--
Instead of being given a rifle Shalom was given nothing-it was wanted for him to die. However he succeeds in holding his young self hostage, tramatizing himself, and gets the caterpillar. This Shalom was never a gunslinger and instead was an intellectual misfit as a result of the tramatizing bein held hostage, and the subsequent killing of his parents because of this Shalom's complete evil. So this Shalom goes through time and becomes a figure of evil throughout history-a dark magician. He eventually stops his mad time vortex at his current time. He kills the "real" him at this time so he will be real, and then joins the Rogue Isles, with the purpose of going up the ranks and becoming the leader of the Rogue Isles, manipulating Lord Recluse himself.
Oh, and the Young Shalom manages to get into the "real" reality and thus the "real" rogue isles. Why? He manipulates Portal Corp. a bit.
So far the only criticism I have is to break it up. Put a line of space between each paragraph and this should be a lot easier to read. It's not the same as in a book, so there's a certain discomfort with the classic method of writing.
Around these forums it's called the "Wall of Text" problem.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Thanks for telling me. I'll have to try and fix it.
It was a cool night. The thief quietly leapt from building to building. "Twas dusk and the night was still. Suddenly a scream lights up the night. Two adults, joyous parents, are dead. Crying over their corpses is a young child. He faces the thief and cries, cries for what had been done. The thief laughs, and suddenly his face turns red. He begins to choke, as the boy cries the tears of one who has seen much. The thief, nearly dead, shoots the child in the head.
The thief's name was Shalom. Under the assumed name Mordecai, he had killed many, and orphaned hundreds. His reasons are unclear to many, except he dresses like a Wild West gunslinger and many whisper that he himself is an orphan. The corrupt paragon city police (this was before statesman came) turned a blind eye under threat of their children being orphaned.
The thief, having killed this young boy, takes the stairs to the top of a rooftop. What had that boy done? He had nearly killed the thief. As the thief begins to ponder this, he feels a hand on his back. "I can show you what just happened," the voice whispers as the cold steel of a sword touches his heart, the warm hand still there. And then the hand pinches, and Shalom falls unconscious.
Shalom dreams. He dreams of his parents, now dead, and his home in Jerusalem. How his parents had been killed. That man with the mechanical arm...he had killed them. And the boy had ran. He had escaped to Paragon City, home of the gangs. He had found solace only in the legend of the gunslinger, immortalized in books like stephen king's dark tower series. And that's what Shalom became. He was able to handle nearly any weapon, although at that time he had prefered pistols. He became his own idol. And then he started killing for more than simple vengeance...
Shalom awoke with a start. He screamed in horror at what had been done to his body: it had been hooked up to a huge machine. His body was bare and hairless. And he was in a tube filled with some green substance. The outside of the tube had a simple marking: Crey industries.
"Good," said a voice, "you're awake."
Shalom looked outward and saw a beautiful young woman. She had short blond hair.
"Who are you?" Shalom asked angrily.
"I'm Ivy," she replied. "I'm known as 'Poisonous Ivy.'"
"Never heard of you," Shalom replied.
"I bet you haven't," replied Ivy humourously. "I work for Crey Industries," she told him. "I acquire artifacts for them. Such as the one that will be hooked up to your heart in a moment."
At this Shalom gave a start.
"Oh relax," she replied. "It won't hurt...too much. We just have to cut off your right arm."
Shalom screamed silently as Ivy walked out of the room. Suddenly he punches through the green gel he's being contained in and charges at Ivy.
She laughes and raise her twin blades. He kicks her in the stomach, yet she appears to be unfazed. A small bruise quickly healed.
"I have my own abilities," she quietly tells him, before walking away.
"Good evening," says a man, walking towards Shalom's body.
Shalom punches him in the stomach, and brings back his hand, throbbing in pain.
The man laughs and raises a hand covered in electricity, knocking Shalom out with a single punch.
"Time to operate," he laughs.
Shalom has another dream. In this one he is running down a street, tearing, killing, his body an agent of massive destruction. Others are with him. They are wolves. A pack of wolves running in the mist. He knows without saying that these are his pack. Those sent by Yarech the Moon Goddess to aid him in his elimination of all humans. And then Shalom sees his parents. And then they are dead.
When Shalom awakes he doesn't know where he is. He raises his arms and screams in horror. His right arm has been replaced by a glowing mechanical abberation.
"Welcome," said a voice in his mind. "Do exactly as I say."
Shalom nodded in his mind. He had no choice. He felt an electrical chip in his brain, one that could kill him at a whim.
'Good. I need you to search for a certain artifact. It is here at this time, before it disappeared forever. It is quite powerful, and certain...clients in Germany would like it a great deal."
Shalom nodded again, nauseous as he looks around, a dull horror surrounding him. This was his Jerusalem neighborhood. Yep, it was him intended to...kill his own parents.
"Find the artifact. It is shaped like a catterpillar. I will upload the coordinants to your brain. Find the artifact. Now."
Shalom walked towards the coordinates slowly, examining his old neighborhood. Only now it wasn't old. It was new at that time. Shalom himself is dressed in standard Israeli garb, with a magen david stitched in red on his yellow tunic. All too soon, he arrives. "Do it," the voice says. Selfish to the end, Shalom raises his rifle and fires. The parents fall to the road. The young Shalom with them runs away. And then he sees the artifact, a caterpillar. He grabs it.
'We've lost connection!" a voice yells in the Crey computer lab. "What?" asks the head scientist, the man with electric hands. "THat...that's impossible. Give the chip a vague shock."
"I can't. It's all gone."
"Then may the devil have mercy on all our souls," whispered the head scientist, as pandamoniom erupts.
Poisonous Ivy, as she is called, just wanted to run away. She hated Crey, hated how they used her. How they used Mordecai (Only Shalom and his parents know his real name!). She takes advantage of the pandamoniom, concentrates her healing energies, and fades into the darkness.
Shalom feels the darkness overcoming him and embraces it. "I have created monsters," the caterpillar whispered. "Willingly. But you are the darkest of all. The blood price has been payed for the first time." Its voice echoed. And Shalom felt the dark energy overcome him again and an explosion in his left shoulder, as the time capsule sent his body into chaos and linked him to his weapon...
Shalom was sent to the past. He was sent to the pyramids, to the the great wall, and had part in nearly every modern day discovery. During this time his darkness became his and he mastered it. Unlike so many others who have the vampiric power he had mastered it. The artifact itself changed, turning into a new, powerful artifact-arm. But something strange happened. Shalom did not get older. He got gradually younger. For every century he lost his age until he seemed around 8 during the time he started out in. There his mad ride through time stopped. And there he once again met his parents.
He met them in a dark alley, and was secretly pleased at how he had cheated fate. He had never killed his parents; he had wounded them. He had changed everything. He was about to embrace them, and they were about to mindlessly embrace their long lost son, when a gunshot killed Shalom's parents. Who had killed them? The older Shalom himself. Screaming, the young Shalom tried to kill the older him, but is hysterical with the all-too-bitter death of his parents and thus failed; the older him shot the younger him and killed the young him.
That would be the end of this story, a time paradox that went on forever, but the vampiric powers are not to be underestimated. The younger shalom's spirit carried on into the older shalom. With a flash of light the now unified Shalom grew bat wings, a reward for his labors, and his arm, a tribute to recovering the soul of Shalom, ripped off seemingly of its own will, the vampiric presence manifesting itself again in a new artifact arm. This now unified Shalom does not have the mastery and control of his younger form, but is ready to go to the place of rumor he had heard about during a stay in fascist europe: the Rogue Isles.
--
So that's the "real" Shalom of Yarech. A side note: He achieved dracula-like immortality as long as he keeps his artifact with him, so since his wanderings finished he stays at a pretty solid 23 or so. Poisonous Ivy, the well known artifact thief, achieved immortality also, using the Swords of the Chinese Dynasties (her weapon). She had lost her memory after nearly being killed by the Freedom Phalanx and stopped being a villain for a while, being an archeologist searching for chinese artifacts, until she re-encountered Shalom while researching the Shiva.
BTW, What's the best server for RPing villain side? I don't really remember...