Artificial 7: Genesis Requiem

Chapter 14: Problems

Narration: Shortly after meeting Crashville's cowboy,
he introduces himself as Billy Bob Schneider.
Everyone introduces themselves,
and he introduces them to the town folks,
not that they'll really remember their names,
and they hold a town hall meeting on what needs to be done.
In short,
the men were mostly separated from the woman unless the jobs happened to overlap.

The men had to spend days rebuilding with the men of the city while the ladies had to organize homes.
Which was harder than building with people's belongings scattered everywhere due to frequent monster attacks.
One day, Seth, Terra,
and Billy Bob Schneider was fixing the roof of the church,
and the window Billy crashed through when they first met him.
Downstairs, Azura,
Maddie, Glacia,
and Elizabeth was reading the few books about Regalia in English while Selena was working hard,
dusting,
and organizing while Chase and Sora moved shelves for her or created a replacement shelf based on the church folks's memories.

When Selena was done with her workload,
she paged Billy,
who trusted the men to keep working while he went to Selena.
"Yes, senorita?"
Selena pulls out some photos from her uniform.
"Do you know any of these Demons?" Among the 5 photos,
there was the middle one which wore an all too familiar white suit and black tie. Selena couldn't bring herself to look at Billy's face and hair as it reminded her of her parent's killer.

"Well, they all have the same hair color as me, but they don't look familiar." Selena retracts the photos and puts them inside her coat pocket.
"Sorry to have wasted your time. You look like the man in the middle photo, I wanted to know if any of them might possibly be your dad."
Selena says in a low and very vulnerable tone.

"Maybe. Who knows? I've lived in this town since I could remember. My ma raised me by herself. She was a prostitute and the stories she told of pa was that he was a foreigner with the same hair color as me, and he just passed by, knocked her up without her knowing, and dipped. She did say he dressed very fancy, but the likelihood of my pa being one of these five and being your parents' killer is pretty dern low."

Billy gives Selena a sympathetic look, and she looks at Billy's face only to be reminded of that day 13 years ago.
It took every ounce of her being to not draw her gun as her heart rate accelerated as the memories came pouring in.
Hours later,
Billy pulls Terra and Seth aside and asks them to run deliveries for him, giving them a old fashioned map with his route and giving them firm instructions to pass on the bad news of all the people who passed in the latest monster raid. Terra took the letters, the map, and the list of names,
while Seth refilled their water bottles.

"Hey boys, do either of you know how to ride a hog?" Billy asks Terra and Seth. "You mean an actual hog like a pig?" Seth replied. "Yes, sir." Terra responds. "No you dumb fuck, I mean a motorcycle!" Billy walks over to Terra and hands him the keys to his bike.

Male Terra's POV:

Seth gets on the back,
wraps his hands around me,
and holds on as I drive us through the forest section of Regalia.
We spent several hours delivering mail and breaking the news to relatives that lived outside of Crashville,
and it wasn't easy being the ones to break the sad news.
Between the both of us showing concern and talking to these people about their times with the people,
we helped them grieve.
Lots of hugging pats on the back and homemade snacks were given to us, which I felt guilty taking,
but they insisted that we did since we're new to their community.
On the final stop,
we came across a modern looking house with lawn mowers,
tractors,
and other power equipment just laying around.

I knocked on the door and was greeted by an elder cowboy with long grey hair in a curly pony tail and a long mustache that reaches his chin.
I delivered his mail.
He shook my hand,
and then he locked eyes with Seth.
"Seth Thompson?"
He asked.
"Grandpa Lopsheers?"
I looked at them,
both confused as they apparently knew each other.
"I'LL KILL YOU, YOU LITTLE SHIT!"
I side stepped as he drew his revolver and shot Seth in the head 3 times and twice in the chest!
Seth fell over,
as it'd take more than that to kill him, but still.
He took 5 shots.