It was a three penny world he could barter for at least twice that, considering his silver tongue, then again, maybe not. There was positively no reason to be here, short of as some purgatory for the soul. Maybe if he was in more of a repentant mood.  

"You sure you want me to leave you here?" The dirthian pilot looked more suited to this world than the rock next to him, rising above the ground a good six feet like an indigenous weed. Dargan saw no reason why he'd be so anxious to leave. His face was as pale and pockmarked as the rugged desert terrain. He didn't look like blood ran through his veins so much as formaldehyde and alcohol, which might explain why he needed the wind to keep him upright; it was buffeting him from two directions, front and back.  

"Ordinarily I'd slit your throat just for considering it." Dargan sighed as he surveyed the terrain one last time. "But as it so happens, I'm supposed to meet someone here who will explain the meaning of all things. Let's hope he can talk fast before the sun finishes baking my brains." 

"Buddy, if it's answers you're looking for, I'll save you the trouble. The answer is: we're all fucked." The pilot may have been an unrepentant sinner of the first order with zero redeemable qualities, but he was growing on Dargan.  

"True enough, my friend. Maybe I'm just a masochist for wanting the picture drawn in with a little more detail."  

"Have it your way. I'm sweating out all the intoxication I worked so hard to acquire. I'll be damned if I stand here a moment longer." With that, he turned his back on Dargan and hiked back to the dirthian two-person transport. Dargan watched as his long straggly, hair-that grew as if his own body couldn't wait to rid itself of the heavy metals stored in each follicle-was tussled by the wind. His black smock, dusty and faded, flapped behind him as if he might be a dignitary from a long forgotten underworld, if only he himself could remember what rung of Dante's hell from which he'd escaped.  

"I never did get your name!" Dargan shouted back at him, not really knowing why he'd picked now to up the ante in civility, a quality foreign to both of them. 

The dirthian pilot stopped briefly to chortle. "Shit, if it makes you feel any better, I won't remember you or what sorry world I dropped you off on five minutes from now. If it was a round trip you had in mind, better get to dying and being reborn in a hurry." 

It was Dargan's turn to laugh. He watched the dirthian transport fire up, like some semi-fossilized predatory bird that had been wrangled by the man-with-no-name into doing his bidding. From all the groaning and screeching it was doing trying to get off the ground, the protests of a living creature would probably pale by comparison, thus ending the analogy. Still, it had a secondary mode that was compelling enough. It could jump space like nobody's business, and that it did as smooth as Capueran silk.  

And then the dirthian transport was just gone-and with it any hope for being rescued from the mind numbing monotony of the landscape. Not that the landscape was much to look at in the first place but, between the glare of the sun and the dust kicked up from the wind, it was becoming an even greater exercise in minimalism.  

He hiked for what seemed like days. Hours or days, weeks or months, who could tell? Delirium had no doubt set in long before he landed.  

Ripping out of the earth in front of him was a serpent big enough to take him down if he was of a mind and eat him whole. Though, no doubt, it would have had to sit around for a week digesting him; not a smart move in this desert. He readily grabbed it in his hand, tore the head off, along with a foot of length, and walked casually on. The snake's flesh and juices would revitalize his spirit, if nothing else.  

He could go months without eating, thanks to the nano-infested body. The nanobots would simply commit suicide in successive waves to keep him going, converting their own body parts into sustaining nutrition. The added strength they gave him in the meanwhile also explained why the serpent didn't have much of a chance. Honestly, he rarely remembered the upgrades, anymore. It was outdated tech, several generations old, that he'd never bothered to enhance as it seemed more than adequate for his purposes. If immortality or playing superman had been more his thing, well, they had better nano for that, for a price of course, always for a price. The devil had become superfluous to the business of selling souls.  

"I believe you're looking for me." The image of a painfully awkward pasty-faced male scientist in his twenties doing the talking kept projecting itself from different locations. He was not what Dargan had expected; he didn't exactly jive with the notion of a sage. He poured a glowing green liquid from a vial into a beaker as he talked. 

"Settle the hell down, will ya?" 

"After your recent savagery, you can hardly blame me for not wanting you to get a fix on my real location." 

"As I recall, the serpent tried to eat me. I was just defending myself." 

"You should respect life more." 

"So they keep telling me. But life these days leaves a lot to be desired." Dargan noticed the glitchy image of the dark, curly haired man lacked depth and substance. "What is that, thought projection? I hear you monks are good at that." 

"Very perceptive of you. Most dullards of your type usually have to shoot me a few times before they catch on." 

"The thought had occurred to me. I figured I'd give you a chance to get a little more annoying, first." 

"So ask your question." 

"I didn't come looking for your sage advice." 

"So you were lying to the pilot back there?" 

"Yeah, I do that a lot. I hope you're not tallying my vices - at least not without some sort of recording device to help you keep track." Dargan saw the smirk on the sage's face, which he was quick to suppress, probably not wanting to weaken his bargaining position by showing any affection for the rogue standing before him now. He knew the game well.  

"Well, then?" 

"Look, buddy, as upgraded humans go, I may be part of a dying breed, and maybe I deserve to be a dinosaur stuffed and mounted in a museum somewhere. But right now, there's very little in this universe more lethal than me."  

"Somehow, I doubt that." 

"Let's just say I'm good at playing the underdog." 

"All the same, you saw fit to seek my help." 

Dargan let out a sigh. "Call it a willingness to face up to my mortality at long last. I've slowed down a bit with age. And most days I'm about ready to kill myself and save the bad guys the trouble."  

"You can't really be looking for a sidekick?" 

Dargan chuckled. "Hell, you're the younger man. If age hasn't humbled you yet, then you can consider me the sidekick." 

"What is your quest?" 

"To destroy the empire. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you; I'm the hero in this story. I can see how you might need me to clarify." 

"The empire is the only thing holding a hundred or so ragtag planets together. Without them, you'd probably have war on an epic scale." 

"Maybe. But they deserve to learn the hard way the price of the choices they make, rather than have the choices made for them." 

Swirling the two colored liquids in the beaker, the scientist locked eyes with him. "Your quest is noble, your heart true, your crusty outer exterior not so much the camouflage you think it is. I will assist you." 

"You shitting me? Just like that? No debate? No complaint? No derisive remarks? Surely coming up against the empire deserves a few derisive remarks."  

The phantom smirked again, pushing his thick eye glasses up his nose.  

"So you have a soft spot for smart-asses, too. Well, we have one thing in common."  

"I'm five klicks to the north. I'll put on some tea." 

Dargan couldn't help notice the reflective turn on the phantom's face; on a dime he'd grown inward and sullen. This call to battle was no cause for celebration for either of them, considering that what they were contemplating was complete suicide. But Dargan thought there might be more to the lad's expression. The figure was handsome and young, as Dargan had been once. His eyes were piercing, veritably aglow with intelligence and insight. A different kind of intelligence and insight than flowed through Dargan - but recognizable even to his kind all the same. 

The first piece of the puzzle was in place. A good omen, perhaps. Though he knew little of what he was getting into with this mythical figure. Stories on virtually all the worlds spoke of him in one guise or another, as more god than man. That could come in handy, Dargan thought. But they weren't warriors as a rule, though Dargan didn't mind, as he could handle the fighting well enough for the both of them. Maybe the monk was right. Maybe he did just need a sidekick, someone to nudge him on now that his own will was flagging. Maybe he was just getting lonely in his old age as the inability to settle down had just played itself out. Or maybe he could really do with the help. He didn't trust himself, anymore. The mission he was undertaking was a young man's game, for someone in far better mental and physical shape than he, upgrades or no.  

Ordinarily, a demi-god and a warrior-king would be enough to bring the universe to its knees. But not these days. They would still be the underdogs. But a hope and a prayer were better than no hope at all. And that's all the empire had for sale these days. Hopelessness.