Prologue
In the year 2127 humanity scaled new heights in space travel. The breakthroughs in aerospace technology allowed for travel to other nearby star systems. It was only in the year 2134 that a habitable planet was discovered in a star system humanity would later call Constellation. Humanity didn’t name this star system themselves, nor did they name the planet Grandiose. Instead they found these rough translations left behind.
Not only was the planet habitable, but also contained many species of animals and insects and it was apparent that the planet was also once home to a species just as intelligent as humans. However, for some, this intelligent species had left the planet behind. Humanity would soon uncover all sorts of machinery left on the planet. Some claimed they found pieces of robotic bodies, but none functioned well enough to learn much about the previous inhabitants of the planet. Nevertheless, this technology was more impressive than anything found on Earth. It was made from the pure metals the planet was abundant in. Treasures ripe for the taking.
Humanity did what they always seemed to have a penchant for. They colonized. By the year 2137 the First Colony ships arrived on Grandiose. They took the land for their own and gathered the fortunes left behind. They remained blissfully ignorant of why these treasures were abandoned along with the planet Grandiose. One possible answer appeared the first time a human put on a treasure in a familiar shape, a mask. The masks known as the Wretched Treasures.
The man called Silver entered the bay door of the satellite city Arkus 12. It had been a long flight from the surface of Grandiose. At first, the satellites may have orbited somewhat nearby the planet, but like all real-estate, property inevitably became expensive.
The satellite cities were typically owned by larger research corporations on Earth. These cities were constructed in order to house the hundreds of researchers looking to study the space around Grandiose. Constellation was a binary star system comprising three planets, Grandiose, Exigent, and Verona. Though Grandiose was the only one of the three planets with life according to their sensors, many remained interested in studying the two gas giants as well as the star Grandiose orbited, Veris Minor.
The corporations often purchased several of these satellite cities and hired landlords to sell or rent each property within the cities. The further from the planet, the less the buyers had to pay. The longer trips to the surface for fresh air and resources could still be a pain even with recent advancements in space travel. Silver was skeptical about taking jobs from stations on the far edges of Grandiose’s orbit. Silver figured they typically couldn’t afford to pay much if they lived so far out, though this one did promise to be a big pay day.
Silver was a fairly tall man. He had long grayish hair and clothes to match. A grayish-silver cloak flowed from his back and hung low next to his tattered gray pants and boots. On his hip he had both a gun holster holding a revolver and a sword belt that held both knives and a long blade. Across his back, he also had a sword strapped which was typically hidden beneath his cloak. On his face he wore a mask, pulled down so that the eyeholes were aligned with his mouth. The mask, however, was quite a bit more than just a fashion statement.
“Hey if it isn’t old Sharp,” said a man passing through the docking bay.
The man calling to him was one he had seen before while checking out shady characters. Frequenting satellite cities, always looking for a new scheme, not unlike Silver himself. The man called Silver by a nickname he seemed to have made up, but Silver itself was a codename he had earned when he first started working as a bounty hunter.
Since the planet was still fairly new to the people of Earth, they were yet to establish a true government. Therefore, the rule of law was not very clearly defined. Many governments of Earth’s nations had tried to stake their claims and establish their own order, but none truly had dominion over the new planet. It was, however, apparent to all as to which lines of work seemed to be legitimate, and which ones were, in essence, the trade of new world outlaws.
Silver couldn’t manage to remember the man’s name so instead he just gave him a nod as he approached, but the man’s body language clearly signaled his interest in having a conversation. The strange man had started calling Silver by the nickname Sharp because of his Wretched Treasure.
“Sorry old man. No time for a drink. Duty calls,” said Silver.
“What duty? My duty is drinking today.” The man let out a hearty laugh, “So you think you could use that sharpened nail trick to open this beer bottle for me? I’m no good at party tricks like you.”
Silver chuckled at the man, popped his bottle open for him, and continued on.
Silver felt bad about not being able to recall the man’s name, but there was so little he remembered about even his childhood on Earth, and so little about the day he decided to embark on the journey to this strange new planet. He had some sort of undiagnosed condition. It caused his long-term memories to be extremely fuzzy. Most of what he remembered about his life was after he had arrived on Grandiose. Although the new planet now had a good number of doctors, neurologists were still in short supply, and they charged an absolute fortune. For this reason, Silver let his condition worsen, and decided to ignore it entirely until later in life when he had the money and time.
Even the moment he found his Wretched Treasure was blurry, yet oddly clear. It was almost a paradox of sorts. He couldn’t recall what led up to finding it, but he was able to remember the first time he looked upon it. Staring into the empty eye holes as it stared back at him. It was like a recurring dream. One thing that was consistent in his memory was how much he had wanted it, how much he desired to put it on, and his ensuing transformation as a result of it.
The Wretched Treasures were unique and horrifying in equal measure. Just as the planet's name was translated by artifacts left behind, so too was the name of these Wretched Treasures. Each of them was shaped like a mask, similar to the kind one might wear in a play, or on Halloween back on Earth. Despite differing widely in appearance, they all gave the wearer a special gift... albeit at a terrifying cost. The gift could never be taken away, but the same was true for the cost as well.
The second an individual placed a mask on their face it became linked to them. It was speculated that the mask somehow linked itself to the wearer’s brain. Each of them had a sharp piece of metal at the edges of the eye line that briefly pierced the temple when they were put on. It was a very small spike, a quick pinch, and then the spike came back out. Like a shot in a doctor’s office, but it was enough to make this connection. It created a sort of addiction, a need unlike anything man had ever heard of. More so even than any drug. The wearer came to believe the mask was needed to survive. The user could move the mask to any other position on their body, but it always had to touch them. They could not throw it away, or even let it be destroyed.
There was a single acidic compound developed, most said by the newly established Alchemists Guild, a group of scientists who decided that science needed to reopen the possibility that so many laws of science could now be wrong after the discovery of The Wretched Treasures and technology left behind on Grandiose. Others claimed the Alchemists Guild was merely taking credit for the creation of Wretches Bane after translating a recipe found left by the lost civilization. Wretches Bane was supposedly developed after research deemed the Wretched Treasures dangerous to humans. This compound alone was able to melt the masks. No normal fire, explosives, or even chemicals could do the job. The compound was aptly named Wretches Bane.
Even with the compound, destroying the masks was no easy task. The wearer would not allow it no matter how much they wanted it gone. They would fight to defend it. Perhaps even more curiously the mask would not allow them to willingly end their own life either. Even those that seemed to be suicidal suddenly found the urge to survive greater. It was as if the masks needed the wearer to live. Because of this fact some speculated that the masks were living creatures, ones that needed a host to survive, like a parasite. However, initial analysis of the objects showed no organic material. Instead they typically seemed to be composed of materials similar to metal, though with slight variances to the metals found on Earth. Elements found on Grandiose often differed from known elements after all.
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Silver’s own mask he called the Mask of Sharpness because of its “First Edge”. Every Wretched Treasure was said to have two edges since they functioned like a double-edged sword. They gave the wearer great power, through some form of control of scientific forces around the user. This power seemed to border on magic, but researchers said it was merely science they had not yet come to understand. They were like cavemen studying fire.
The First Edge was enough to entice many men and women to try on one of the masks, but like many things in the world the scales of science seemed to need there to be a balancing factor, the Second Edge. A terrible cost that came with the mask based on its power. The Mask of Sharpness was a prime example of this, nearly defining the phenomena. The First Edge allowed the user to fold and compact any material, to the point of making that material extremely sharp. This however also affected the user’s own body. Their bones and nails could narrow and become sharp, sometimes at the user's control, and sometimes without it. Therein lies the Second Edge. Often Silver would go to scratch himself in his sleep and wake up with a slice that required stitches. At times he had been careless in a fight and even stabbed himself with his own hand. Some said the Treasures were a blessing and a curse, but Silver knew they were far more curse than blessing.
Silver walked through the long corridors of the satellite city. The halls were lined with doors displaying apartment or house numbers on digital displays. The term house was used a bit more loosely here in the satellite cities. The outsides looked no different than the apartments, but the insides were often fairly vast, though not quite as large on the outer orbit of the planet. Aside from housing, many doors led to office spaces, recreation rooms, and even restaurants, lined with glaring digital signs displaying all sorts of foods, attractive men and women, anything that would entice people to come in.
Silver overheard one of the television sets through an open door, “Ten years after the colonization of Grandiose humanity has made great strides in making Grandiose a second home for the people of Earth. Experts estimate that in the next fifty years nearly five percent of Earth’s population will have migrated to Grandiose,” said the newscast.
Silver found it best to ignore predictions so far into the future. For now, he enjoyed the planet still feeling fairly empty and new. Still he was surprised it had already been ten years since the colonization.
How far is this damn place? Silver thought as he continued down the halls of the satellite city.
Silver went by just about every door to every establishment in the city. He wasn’t quite as spritely as he used to be, but he still kept in good shape for his business. Still this walk could tire anyone. Each corridor he went down seemed to have increasingly more lights either out or flashing like their batteries were at their end. Silver began to wonder if this job could even be worth it in a meeting place like this. The door numbers he came across were few and far between now, 2286, 2287, 2283...? Now they aren’t even making sense… great, he thought.
Somehow it took him another five minutes before he finally hit 2299. It was the last door in the entire corridor. He reached for the door with his revolver at the ready by his hip. Just in case. Silver had made plenty of enemies in his time as a bounty hunter. The thought was always in his mind that a job could be a setup.
No passcode?
It was rare for jobs of this kind to have such lax security, but there was no way Silver was going back down that long corridor with no money. He opened the door to see a faintly lit room. There was a monitor, a few chairs, and two other men sitting to the side. The few working lights cast them in a slight shadow. Silver glanced at them for a second to check for drawn weapons before looking back towards the monitor as it began to speak.
“Well the last of the three is here. Now we can begin the briefing. Silver, I trust you remember your colleagues.” The voice came from a staticky looking figure on a computer screen. Not only was the picture blurry, but the man seemed to be streaming his image from a dark room to remain anonymous.
Silver looked back, confused by the man’s statement about remembering his colleagues. He stared at the two men sitting in the dark. He saw now that he did indeed recognize the men in the shadows. He quickly pulled his revolver with his right hand and slid a knife from his sleeve into his left hand.
“What the fuck are you two doing here?” Silver asked.
The closer of the two men stood up slowly. He was clothed in mismatched gold armor, a yellow cloth shirt, and a golden cape. Even the man’s mask was gold. The mask was elongated and extended back like a tricorn hat. He wore an eye patch, black, sitting oddly over the left eye hole of the mask. The man extended a hand towards him and Silver tightened his finger on the trigger.
“You know I can take it from you,” said the man. “We were just as surprised as you when we saw each other. This asshole on the monitor is who we should really point the guns at, but clearly he’s not actually here.”
It was Gold, a code name just like Silver, dressed the part as usual, and covered in gold jewelry. The man sitting to his right was hardly a man at all, but Silver recognized him all the same. Mercury, an intelligent robot, and a bounty hunter from their same former organization. The Heavenly Metals were a group of seven bounty hunters. Each of them were given code names for seven metal elements. These metals were called ‘Heavenly’ during antiquity and represented different heavenly bodies: Gold for the Sun, Silver for the Moon, Iron for Mars, Tin for Jupiter, Copper for Venus, Lead for Saturn, and Mercury for… Mercury. The six men were hand-picked killers who all wore Wretched Treasures. Mercury, who claimed he was a male robot, did not have a Wretched Treasure, but that did not mean he lacked special skills of his own.
A man named Johnathan J. Platt had been the one who gathered them. He was a new world business man who ran a company called the Platinum Corporation. The business specialized in the biggest new market on Grandiose, rare metal trading. Mr. Platt’s business emerged into the market well, but he had needed a bit of extra funding to build his empire. That’s how he got into the business of bounty collecting. Grandiose was a bold new world with only a few groups powerful enough to define and enforce any kinds of law. In a lawless land plenty of people made enemies, and plenty of people paid to have their enemies killed.
Platt had paired up six of the seven bounty hunters as partners. Gold and Silver often called the Prized Pair, Mercury and Iron: The Caustic Combo, and Tin and Copper: The Bronze Brothers. The seventh, Lead, worked alone. He was an assassin, and he took no live bounties. The pairs may have all had abilities that worked well together in theory, but partnerships between contract-killers rarely lasted long. Silver and Gold were a prime example of that.
The two men weren’t a terrible pair at first. In combat they seemed to always know what the other was thinking, and their abilities complimented each other well. Gold’s first edge was the ability to pull any object with heavy traces of metal in them towards himself. It was like a form of magnetic attraction. He named this power Thief’s Hand. As amazing as the power was, his second edge was even more fascinating in a way. Memories the owners had of the objects he stole would pour into his head in quick flashes. It seemed that people often attached strong memories and feelings to their possessions. The stronger the attachment, the more powerful the flashes were. Sometimes people had little to no connection to the objects, like with money or disposable objects. Yet other times people had unbelievably strong connections to their trinkets. Sometimes even horrifying ones. A knife they had used to kill someone, a necklace that belonged to a lost love. These flashes were horrible and full of emotion. Gold called these “mementos”.
One might think that the memories not belonging to Gold himself would mean they wouldn’t affect him strongly. In fact, that is just what Gold used to tell Silver, but Silver had a strong hunch he was lying. In a fight Gold would often steal the weapons and ammunition of his enemies. Any melee weapons he stole he would toss to Silver to sharpen with his own mask and use against their enemies. He was always so fast and quick witted, yet occasionally Silver would see him pause, stare into space, and even nearly fall as he experienced the memories.
“Listen whoever you are, I'm afraid you’ve brought the wrong guys together. I won’t work with Gold or Mercury. I have worked with them before and I don’t trust either of them,” said Silver to the man on the screen.
“I’m aware of your history together, but that’s why I need you three. Together you have the specific skill set I will need for this job. I will pay you with consideration to your objections. The job should take no more than a day,” said the man.
Silver considered the offer. As much as he distrusted Gold, he couldn't deny they worked well together for a time. Nothing truly went wrong until Platt tasked them with collecting a bounty on the captain of The Black Sunset.