It was nearly three years ago that Platt had given Silver and Gold the bounty on the captain of The Black Sunset. The Black Sunset was the flagship of a space pirate crew that robbed other ships heading to and from Grandiose. On rare occasions they also robbed satellites or small satellite cities. Their captain owned a handful of other small ships, but the Black Sunset itself struck fear into any ship that wandered too far from Grandiose’ s inner orbit. There wasn’t an abundance of space pirate crews around Grandiose, being that it was such a dangerous business, but the crew of The Black Sunset were among the most notorious.

The two men had known it would be difficult when they first accepted the job, but very few of their contracts came easy. They had to search for outer lying satellites the ship frequented. These were often dangerous enough places on their own, but getting on the ship itself was almost impossible.

Eventually they had to threaten the customers of small bars and bartenders in the satellite cities to find where the ship would stop next. Silver did not like using his skills to scare innocents, but it was not the first time he had to sacrifice his morals for his job. When the ship first showed on the dark horizon of space Silver’s nerves had begun to set in. The ship itself seemed to be a grayish color originally, but it had turned nearly charcoal black. Rumor had it the color was from the soot and ashes of the ships it had destroyed. Banners hung from the wings like the sails of an old-fashioned sea pirate ship. The banners were gray and depicted a black sun being swallowed by a dark blue sea.

Silver and Gold had decided the only way to get on the ship safely was to become a part of the crew, at least temporarily. The men on the ship may have been hardened killers, but they recognized their own kind. Silver and Gold’s plan to get on the crew was to show off their Wretched Treasures. The Treasures were quite a rarity, and even men who had heard of them were still amazed to see something so close to magic for the first time. The men admired them for their Treasures and their power. After observing it for himself Captain Bill Bellows allowed them to join the crew

Silver and Gold’s gifts became very handy to the crew. They stayed on the crew far longer than they had expected. It was supposed to be in and out in a few days. Find the captain, get one of the smaller ships ready, and either toss him in alive, or toss his corpse onboard instead. The bounties were always higher pay for live captures, but dead would do if need be. Unfortunately, things rarely went as planned in the bounty hunting business. Captain Bellows was very paranoid. Old sayings claimed there was honor among thieves, but there was no honor among these pirates. Apparently even the previous captain had been mutinied upon. Since then Captain Bellows had kept only a few trusted men at his side. At least one of them always guarded his cabin where he spent nearly all of his time.

Silver quickly became fed up with hanging around as one of the crew. Sure, they were skimming money from their new pirate ventures, but Platt was getting impatient with their reports. Not only was Platt’s pay going to be bigger than a small share of piracy, but he also wasn’t someone to be crossed, not when they knew he had five other bounty hunters at his disposal. They could end up next on his list if they weren’t careful.

Gold was starting to enjoy his time as a space pirate a bit too much for Silver’s liking. Apparently, Gold had his own stint of piracy on the actual seas of Grandiose. The oceans on Grandiose were far rougher and more dangerous than the ones on Earth. Silver couldn’t imagine why anyone would take such a risk, but Gold had always seemed a man with a high risk and high reward mentality. His days on the seas of Grandiose had apparently been how he came across his mask so he claimed he didn’t regret any of it.

Silver thought that Gold must have missed being a part of a crew. Gold became much closer with the crew of the Black Sunset than he had. Silver could feel himself drifting farther away from his partner. While he was focused on the mission, Gold was more focused on the treasure, robbing ships, and drinking rum. It came to Silver as a surprise when Gold was the one who found a way to escalate their plans.

“We will plot a mutiny of our own,” he had suggested.

The crew’s discontent with their captain was clear. Bellows took the lion’s share of their hauls despite barely lifting a finger, he worked them to the bone and made his men take most of the risk, sending them out in space suits to collect the scraps and cargo from ships they destroyed. Men often died collecting the loot. Luckily Gold was great at it since he could pull all of the metal towards himself even in the vacuum of space using the magnetic powers of his mask.

Silver and Gold went about sowing seeds of discord among the crew. All it took was adding a few words to whispers that had already started. Before long they already had nearly half the crew onboard with the mutiny. Less than half may not have been ideal for a true mutiny, but Silver and Gold only needed to cause a large enough distraction to abduct the captain and escape. Silver did not know at the time that Gold was using their plans for his own purposes.

When the night of the mutiny came everything was going according to plan at the start. The mutineers held up those who chose to remain loyal to the captain at sword and gunpoint. There was a bit of fighting but only a few willing to die for their captain. There was actually less chaos than Silver would have preferred. The more gunshots that rang out the easier it would be to sneak off the ship with the captain as their prisoner.

Silver had walked towards the captain’s cabin. He had begun to worry. Gold was supposed to be with him at this point to disarm the guards, but he was nowhere to be seen, and the guards didn’t seem to be at their posts either. It didn’t sit right with him. Something was wrong. The cabin door appeared to be cracked open so Silver entered with caution, sword in hand and his revolver at the ready. He walked deeper into the cabin and saw something bright shift in the darkness. He nearly drew his gun but then he saw that it was Gold. He was standing over a body.

“Don’t worry it’s already taken care of.” Gold said.

Silver glanced down at the body and pool of blood on the floor. Black coat, gray beard, it was the captain. Silver looked back up at gold. He was holding an odd-looking blade, it was gold in color, appearing to be a sort of split blade, one prong on each side and nothing in the middle until the hilt.

“Like it?” Gold asked, “Look what it can do.” Gold clicked a button on the hilt and electricity began to bounce back and forth between the two prongs. It was blue in color and each spark reminded Silver of lightning.

“I’m more so wondering why you killed him.” Silver questioned. “We spent all this time here and now we’re going to get a lower bounty. I thought we agreed to take him alive unless it was absolutely necessary to kill him.”

“It was necessary. I did what I had to do,” Gold responded.

“What you had to do? You couldn’t have disarmed him with your powers? This neurotic old man?” Silver was growing more frustrated. His grip on his sword tightened. His nails grew sharper and nearly started to pierce into the leather hilt of his blade. Gold stayed silent. Looking back at him intently. It hadn’t gone over Silver’s head that he still had the electricity running on his new blade. Something was wrong.

“I suppose what’s done is done,” Silver said reluctantly. He didn’t want tensions to rise too high with the mission at hand. “Grab the feet. I’ll get his arms and we will sneak him out of here quietly while the others sort out the mutiny… as planned!”

Silver walked closer to the body of the captain. He stood near the captain’s head and was about to lean over to grab onto the body, but he noticed Gold across from him. He showed no signs of leaning over to grab the feet. Silver narrowed his eyes. He could not tell the expression on Gold’s face. His golden mask rested there at all times. The black eye holes stared back. The shadows covering his eyes made it hard to read him.

“I’m not leaving Silver.”

“What do you mean you aren’t leaving Gold?” Silver’s grip tightened even more. He noticed Gold shifting where he stood. Widening his stance and turning his body slightly to the side so he was less wide, less of a target. Silver knew a fighting stance when he saw one, and Gold was clearly anticipating a fight.

“I’m staying here. This crew needs a new captain and that is what I’ll be now. You may not have realized it, but as we were planning this mutiny, I was suggesting to the others that I take the captain’s spot. It seems they have taken quite a liking to me. They agreed,” Gold said.

Silver shook his head in disbelief. “No… No, you’re not. We have a job to do.” One that is less likely to get us thrown into a military prison than robbing shitty transport ships. One that pays a lot more per job than what we will get splitting the cut with a crew full of untrustworthy assholes,” said Silver.

“We won’t get caught. If this dunce of a captain was good enough to not get caught, how will I? If you’re worried about the money just remember that I’ll get the captain’s share and you… if you’re smart enough to stay I’ll let you be my quartermaster and you’ll get a larger share as well.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Gold… Let me put this in perspective for you. If we abandon this bounty. If we run off on some space pirate ship with all of the supplies and funds Platinum fronted us… We will be the next ones on the bounty list. He will send the other five after us and they will kill us!”

“I hear the Bronze Brothers went missing actually,” said Gold. “That leaves only three to hunt us, and I’ll have a whole crew and spaceship to back me up. I’m staying. You can make your own choice. If you want to bring back some ammo and a few pieces of this treasure to pay Platt back what we owe, fine. Take it!” Gold threw a handful of coins at Silver. Some hit his feet and Bellow’s body, others rolled across the floor. The sound alone was enough to irritate Silver even more. Gold could see it on his face. “Oh, and if you think you’re going to come for me if he asks… then maybe I should kill you right here and now. It will save you the trouble of dying later.”

Silver didn’t want to kill Gold, but he could sense he likely had to fight him to leave with the captain’s body. He hoped knocking some sense into him might change his mind. He moved his left hand away from his revolver into a pocket hidden beneath his cloak. He quickly pulled his oldest and sharpest knife. He had it since the day he arrived on Grandiose and after he put on his mask, he had sharpened the knife twice a day. Silver flung his arm forward quickly hoping to catch Gold off guard, but as he loosened his grip before the release, he felt the knife being pulled from his hand. Before he knew it, Gold was holding the knife. Silver couldn’t see his eyelids beneath his mask, but he knew from experience that once Gold had stolen something, he experienced the drawback of the owner’s memories in a quick flash.

Silver had time to quickly pull another knife. This one he was able to throw before Gold could make a move. It looked for an instant like it may hit him in the shoulder where Silver aimed, but suddenly Gold snapped out of the memory and stretched his left arm out to the side. His fingers moved outward in a grabbing motion and suddenly the second knife’s trajectory changed and moved towards Gold’s outstretched hand. He moved his hand away at the last second. It had been coming too fast to catch this time. The second knife just barely missed Gold’s hand and stuck with the blade end in the ground about 10 feet behind him.

Silver could see this wasn’t going to be as easy as throwing a few knives. He drew his sword, leapt forward over the body, and aimed a two-handed slash at Gold’s upper torso. Gold blocked Silver’s sword with his electric blade stolen from the captain. The electricity flowed freely between the two points, flickering blue lights flashed over each man’s face as they stared each other down. Suddenly Silver heard metal shifting on the ground. It was the second knife he had thrown. Gold was using his powers to pull it off the ground, it flew several feet into Gold’s empty left hand. He caught it quickly and lunged towards Silver’s neck. Silver knew not to use his sword to parry or Gold would be open to slice and electrify him with the sword. Instead Silver dropped the right hand that was holding his sword, leaving only his left to fend off the crossing blades. He then swung his right arm in a chopping motion and cut the assailing knife clean off the handle. He had sharpened the bones of his forearm and hand significantly to accomplish the feat.

Gold was now overpowering his left hand that was holding his sword. Silver had He kept his hand pointed and this time sharpened the tips of his fingers. Even with gloves on, they were now as good as daggers. He moved his feet and lunged forward in a thrusting motion with his right arm. Gold spotted the move just in time to shift his body to the side and evade it. Gold then swung his sword forward forcing Silver to parry several times. When Silver went back on the offensive Gold turned his blade sideways causing Silver’s sword to cross through the electricity between the two blades. It gave him a momentary shock that caused his body to tense up. He pulled back again, but Gold pulled one of Silver’s other knives out of his pocket and now assaulted him with both knife and sword.

Silver could sense the danger increasing. Gold had shifted from going for wounding cuts or stabs to deadly ones. Silver backed away just far enough to pull a second sword from the hidden scabbard behind his cloak. Silver’s skill with swords was unmatched on Grandiose since most preferred to use guns. He started to gain the upper hand on Gold. Slicing the blade from the handle of his knife. Then Gold used his powers to pull over a chest within the cabin. It topped open with necklaces, jewels, and small gilded blades spilling onto the floor. Gold pulled nearly half the pile towards him and then jumped out of the way allowing most of the treasures to strike Silver. Silver cut some to the sides, spilling beads of an ornate necklace on the floor. He couldn’t evade all of them however and was badly bruised and cut by the trinkets.

Silver was angry now and pursued Gold with far more vicious intent. Gold tried to pull everything he could into his free hand to fight with; candlesticks, small daggers, everything Silver cut to pieces. Still Gold’s electric blade seemed to hold. Silver was able to make objects so sharp that they could cut through most normal metals, yet this blade barely had a scratch on it. It must have been made of solid gold or some unknown metal native to Grandiose.

Silver hammered away at the blade with both of his own and still couldn’t get it to break. Gold was playing the fight more defensively now, backing up and only parrying rather than going for risky counterattacks. Silver moved straight forward fast but he didn’t notice, until it was too late, that Gold was barely gripping the sword in his right hand. Two of his fingers were stretched outward and then quickly brought back into a grip. That’s when Silver felt it. A knife hit his back. He was too focused on moving forward, he had forgotten about all of the weapons on the ground behind him. Two fingers were all Gold needed to pull the knife with his powers and stab Silver in the back. Silver was distracted by the pain. Gold swung his blade in upward slash cutting across Silver’s face and his left eye. That’s when the electricity shot out.

For a moment all Silver saw was light. A flash and then a memory… A memory he didn’t know he had. It was a white light, it formed an arrow and pointed towards something. Perhaps it was the sun, or some other star. He heard a voice saying “North. North. North,” over and over.

Before he knew it, he was back to looking at Gold, standing across from him with his blade dripping blood that seemed to disrupt the electrical current. Silver’s vision was odd. He could still see out of his left eye just barely, but it was like a like white streak blocked the center of his vision. He closed it so only his good eye could stare ahead, and he noticed even Gold seemed stunned as well. Had the memory affected him too somehow? It was something silver wondered about even to this day.

After Gold had nearly taken out his eye Silver grew angry at the attempt on his life. One inch deeper of a cut and he would have been dead. He dropped his swords and drew his revolver. He moved the barrel in place and fired. Gold must have snapped back to reality as he heard the barrel turning, as he quickly thrust his left hand just as the shot rang out. The bullet was actually pulled towards his hand, but that in no way stopped it. Blood started to bloom like a flower from Gold’s palm. The bullet had gone straight through and landed on the ground behind him. The bullet shone on the ground; it was silver with little drops of red blood dripping slowly down the sides. Silver turned the barrel to ready his next five bullets. Gold pulled all of the jewelry on the ground in front of him as Silver fired. Silver still fired through the storm of trinkets almost blindly but consistently. He heard many of them clink off of pieces of metal, but once they cleared, he found one had hit its target. Gold was dripping blood from his hip. Silver was out of bullets, but one still remained intact on the ground, the silver bullet.

Silver bullets were always somewhat special. Usually made just for show or by some nut job that thought they were a monster hunter, but this one was even more unique. Silver spun the barrel and the bullet was pulled towards the weapon. Gold tried to pull it with Thief’s hand as well and It hung suspended in midair, halfway between the both of them.

“You’re going to use it against me then? The gun we made together? You couldn’t have engineered that revolver without my powers,” said Gold.

“I remember those days well, as an engineer I was always fascinated with your mask’s powers. Magnetism was the one thing I felt the two of us could be smart enough to replicate. I wanted to try making a weapon that could recover its own ammunition. You thought I was crazy until we made that “junker rifle” for you,” said Silver. He was hoping to distract Gold with his old stories.

“I’m the one who thought of the large magazine and wide barrel. With my powers I was able to fire anything, even scrap metal. I still use it once in a while. Even this beaten up it has nearly infinite ammunition,” said Gold.

Silver had found even himself reminiscing as if he had fallen for his own trick. Next the two had set out to discover if they could apply the same concept to a weapon that Gold wouldn’t be using himself. They started work on a super magnet, but the magnet was always too large to fit in a gun until Silver used his own powers to fold and compact the metal. Then Silver managed to sharpen his knife enough to make just the slightest scratch on Gold’s Wretched Treasure. They took the metallic dust from the scratch and melted it into the magnet. They then designed a mechanism on a revolver that would trigger the magnet. At first, they had little luck with most basic metals that bullets could be made out of. However, eventually they found a winner. Silver thought of his own code name and gave making a silver bullet a try. It was pure luck really. He melted down the metal and fashioned the bullet like a true gunsmith. Sure enough the first time they spun the barrel it returned. It took them days of tweaking to get the return right so it didn’t just miss the barrel and hit Silver or destroy the revolver, but now it worked perfectly every time.

It had been a unique few days. The project was one of the rare times the two men had genuinely enjoyed each other's company and worked together as true partners. Silver almost felt guilty for using it against him now, but he had no choice.

“Remember what you said when we were done making it? Silver asked, “Just like you; shiny, cold, and kills people.”

Gold chuckled, “I stand by what I said. You haven’t changed a…”

As Gold was talking Silver pulled his last knife. He threw it straight at Gold’s face forcing him to stop his pull on the bullet and redirect the knife. Silver pulled the bullet straight back in through the barrel and into the chamber. Gold had already done him the favor of closing his left eye with the slash earlier. It focused his aim. He wouldn’t forget that attempt on his life and he couldn’t risk another. Silver aimed directly at Gold’s own eye as his head turned back towards him. To this day Silver recalled what it felt like to pull that trigger. BANG!

The shot rang out loud and startled even Silver, but what startled him even more was what he had done. He had pulled the bullet back at the last second with a spin of his barrel. He wasn’t sure why he had stopped it, he guessed it may have been no more than an instinct, but he heard Gold shout out in pain. He had fallen onto his knees and clutched his eye. Silver was certain he had stopped the bullet just an inch from Gold’s brain. Whether it was instinct or emotion he walked away that day without taking Gold’s life. Instead he took only the ship captain’s hand that he severed from his corpse. Platt accepted it, but was angry to learn that Gold had turned coat. His anger only grew when he heard the rumors that the Black Sunset was back to robbing more ships under a new captain. A man who wore an eye patch over his golden mask.