Bane

May 25, 1980

Bane stared at the polished piece of skull, the faceplate of his once self, and he screamed, kicking Cassus' feet out from underneath him.

Bane rolled onto his side, and pushed himself to his feet, drawing his long bladed dagger and thrusting it into the outlaw's belly. Cassus Finley flickered out, reappearing behind Bane, and grasping his head in hands nearly large as Bane's. He snapped Bane's neck with an effortless twist, and Bane collapsed onto the rough log floor of Cassus Finley's cabin.

"Ya jackassed cud chewin' acorn calf, I made you." Cassus Finley stamped a heavy, worn boot on Bane's throat. There was a sharp crack. "You think yer still that thing on the mantle? Shit, yer jist a pale shadow o'power, ya addle headed bed-fagot."

Bane felt the bones in his neck shifting, and the numbness in his limbs turned to agony, burning, then tingling.

Cassus Finley turned away from Bane, taking heavy, deliberate steps toward the mantle. His picked the polished bone faceplate up from the mantle, turned and tossed it at Bane.

It landed on his chest.

Bane moved, raising his hand, and placing it over the polished bone faceplate. His eyes welled up, and something rose inside him - an emotion he was unfamiliar - as a solitary tear beaded from the corner of his eye, and ran down his temple into in a thin stream into his shaggy, dreadlocked hair.

"I bellied through the bush, and kilt the devil myself." Cassus Finley drew the twin pistols, custom wonders of his time.

Perfect creations in his time.

A familiar shadow crossed his face, one not since he gunned down his comrades for a few measly satchels of loot, which in the end were lost while he battled the Emim that would become Bane. "It's my time again."

Cassus turned and found himself face to face with Bane. Bane struck him over the side of his face with the polished bone faceplate before Cassus could displace himself.
The outlaw cried out in pain, and surprise, tumbling to the floor, his twin pistols in hand.
The old man recovered in a tight roll, taking cover behind a dusty looking rustic couch made from boughs and branches.

He rose up from his cover, firing his revolvers.

Bane felt the impact in his vest, each round hitting with the force of an earthquake, leaving gold slugs embedded in his armor. By the time Cassus Finley's smoking guns were empty, Bane was flat on his back, bleeding from grazing wounds along his neck, and cheek where the outlaw pulled his shots.

He had to have those guns.

Cassus Finley stared at his pistols. Fired for the first time since he last fought this monster.
He stared down at Bane as the creature in men's flesh as it struggled to right itself.
He pushed with his mind, and Bane screamed, pressing his hands to the sides of his head.

"Ya see? I made ya... an' no worse for it, these damnable infernal gifts come-a-floodin' to me."

"...and I made you." Bane grimaced, shaking his head, and pushed himself up, leaning on his palms, the polished bone faceplate falling to the floor beside him. Bane shudders, and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

Cassus Finley flicked out, and reappeared beside Bane.

He knelt, and put a heavy hand around Bane's throat. "Ya see? Yer not right, monster. Weren't a thing natural 'bout ya. Ya belong dead."

"Arrogant old man." Bane drew his short dagger and plunged it in the outlaw's throat, sawing the blade deep into the man's throat to the bone.