Jimi Tombstone

Jimi was born almost twenty-two years ago, though he's not entirely sure. He stopped counting the years when he left his hometown, and that was a long time ago.

He was born in a small village a few dozen kilometers north of Phoenix. His grandparents took care of raising him, if you could call him toughening him up, because his parents died in what Jimi's grandfather called a "tragic way." Jimi never learned how his parents died, but that didn't hinder him; in fact, it helped him blend in.

At fourteen, he made his first firearm; from childhood, he was fascinated by guns. He didn't know how, nor did he enjoy, building or repairing them. The power of a single bullet fascinated him; guns were a kind of god to him.

Not long after, he killed his first man. The whole thing was quite accidental, but it was then that Jimi realized the wonderful feeling of having power over another person's life. One day, after a day of work in a small field, Jimi was playing with his firearm. With his hard-earned money, he acquired a 9mm bullet and loaded it into his firearm. Previously, he'd only played with spent shell casings. As he returned home, his excitement was at its peak. He still had a loaded bullet, which he'd preferred to save. Then it happened. Some drunken idiot had stopped him on the street. Jimi apologized, even though it wasn't his fault. The drunk pulled out his gun and started swinging it at the kid. Except Jimi was faster. Unfortunately, neither the drunk nor the firearm survived the encounter. The powerful force ejected lead from the barrel acted in all directions. Jimi was thrown back.

He'd been born and raised after the war, so he knew the rules perfectly well, and anyway, why would a grunt need a gun? When he picked up a magical piece of steel, he became a man. The little boy who had somehow lived inside him before was brutally murdered, and besides, it was Jimi who experienced his first orgasm. He ejaculated the moment he aimed the gun at the corpse. A small, handy S&W, with a few bullets still in the magazine. He'd never received anything like that, never received anything. He returned home and told his grandfather everything. His grandfather claimed that Jimi had taken after his father, who was also a killer. He even told him he was a "natural born killer." Those words deeply moved him, and he decided that this was the only way to survive his life. A few years later, on his fourteenth birthday, he received the only gift of his life from his grandparents. A pre-war silencer, a true work of art, and it perfectly matched the Beretta they'd given him.

Maybe before the war, he would have been an ordinary brat, but now, in this post-apocalyptic nightmare, he was, or rather, had to be, an adult.

It may sound ironic, but since that incident, Jimi has shot a few more people, but somehow never managed to get anything interesting from them, and even when he did, it was for ammunition or food for himself and his grandparents. After his sixteenth birthday, he didn't kill anyone else in his village. This was for a simple reason. A few days later, the village was attacked by mutts. Some people died, including Jimi's grandparents, but he managed to escape. He wandered the surrounding towns for a while, begging for food, and survived for a month. Then something inside him snapped. He went berserk and returned to his old village. Interestingly, everything was razed to the ground, with almost no trace of human presence. The ruins looked as if no one had visited them since the invention of the machines, but they did.

In all that devastation, his parents' gravestone was untouched. This was one of the things Jimi paid for, with the gamblés from the dead victims. He then concluded that the old Jimi had just died and a new Jimi had been born. He needed a new name, but as soon as he looked at the tombstone, he knew. From that day on, his name was Tombstone.

Knowing his past was dead, he decided to set out into the world.

He wandered through the settlements until he reached Phoenix, where he decided to stay for a while. He earned his keep by helping on some farms, sometimes doing things that others found abhorrent, even working as a security guard for a few days. He even found himself a dilapidated shack with all the access points blocked off. But for some reason, he persisted and forced his way inside. It was essentially a single room, where some weirdo must have once lived.

He had never prayed to any god before, but the first time he heard a preacher, he began to wonder. He could read well, and within a few days, he had gone through the entire Bible and several other books he found in his abode. On the walls of the shack were images of robots and various strange creatures, which Jimi had never seen before. He was particularly fascinated by one image he found almost intact among the ruins. It depicted a man in metal armor with the symbols of the sun and moon painted on his breastplate. The figure stood on the devastated earth, surrounded only by death, yet it emanated an unwavering will to live. What most captivated Jimi was a hammer, from which magical lightning bolts radiated. From then on, this image always accompanied him; he carried it in his leather wallet, always close to his heart; it was close to his heart. He felt lonely and abandoned, but he wanted to fight. He called the figure in the image the Wind Master, and whenever he appealed to a higher power, he always used that name. Even once, when he tried a tornado, he felt as if he had a momentary conversation with it. He returned with such a strong bad trip that he resolved never to use tornado again.

He stayed in Phoenix for a few more months. When he saved up enough money to buy a motorcycle, he left town to seek his fortune elsewhere.

He didn't have to wait long.

On the road, he met a nearly dead guy whose bullet-riddled bike was useless, but he had something on him that radically changed Jimi's approach to guns. He finished the guy off and took his rifle, along with two magazines and a pair of Tornado cannons, which, oddly enough, he also carried with him. He later learned that the rifle was called the Dragoon Mk2 and that he had been incredibly lucky. He sold the Tornado and paid for the maintenance. When he tried it out, he was speechless. He also had a special strap and a barrel guard made for it.

He cared for his guns like they were his own children.

He traveled from town to town, looking for work as a gun cleaner. Thanks to his efficiency, he always managed to take down a target and landed new assignments. He lived a "peaceful" life until he was hired to take down the leader of the Ghost Riders gang.

The Ghost Riders are a small gang that gives local punks a hard time. The gang's leader, Dark Joe, was once a member of Dark Visions, but due to minor disagreements, he left them and formed his own group—you could say he's chosen a solo career.

It was a cold, unpleasant day. It was hard to breathe. Jimi ambushed a small hill, waiting for Dark Joe. When the gang arrived a few hours later, he quickly located his target.

Joe rode at the head of the parade. It was already clear they were high, that specific high you get from a tornado. Their smiling faces indicated they were somewhere far, far away, but the leader looked a bit different. He was lost in thought and focused on the ride, though he was clearly high. Jimi had heard that Joe was a tornado veteran, and he also received a brief description of what happens when you take tornado drugs for too long. Joe had just had his own spiritual ride.

Jimi put his finger on the trigger and waited for them to get closer, to be sure he'd hit where he wanted. But suddenly, something happened!

Joe started screaming, so loud that even Jimi heard him, though it was inarticulate. Suddenly, the Dark One raised the front wheel of the bike, which ignited with a black flame. The black flame slowly engulfed the entire bike and its passenger. Joe burned with a fire that had no right to exist. He raised his arms high, screaming even louder, as if someone were flaying him. If it weren't for the distance, Jimi could have sworn he heard a dull "poof" as Dark Joe disappeared. He lowered the barrel of his rifle and was speechless.

Officially, Jimi had completed the task, but only he knew what had truly happened. No other gang member knew where their leader had gone.

He decided this was too much and decided to move on. He promised himself he would find out what had happened to Joe.

He rode his motorcycle from town to town until he came to Markstone, a ruined city on the Rio Grande.