The Lost Boy, The Hollow, And The Courier [Request]

In a world driven by those with the power to break planets in two, it was hard for the average every day working man to find a means to pay his bills. To be honest, most men were either in construction, working in the military in some fashion or another, or were busy studying new ways to fight their own personal battles against whatever they deemed a worthy cause. For Steiner Franz, the man who had once found his place in life, he had found himself among none of these classes of people. He wasn't an educated man in the sense that science was something he yearned to exceed at. He didn't want to be a construction worker as it meant he could spend little time on his own training himself up to reach the next stage of his training. Neither was he a soldier, though he had tried it once, and that was due more to personal taste than anything else. His time in the Vanguard had been rather sour and after returning from being injured and learning that they couldn't help him get back what he lost, maybe just maybe he held a vendetta against them.

So for quite some time, Steiner had been what some would call "homeless", as he had no means to fund himself, and every little dollar he had earned from being a member of the Vanguard had evaporated after a mere few months of being without employ. Try as he might, the young man just couldn't find a job, and for months after losing his apartment, Steiner had found himself hanging out in the outskirts of where he had once called home, and sleeping under the stars. There were worse fates. Yet, it seemed luck had taken a like to the man who had at one time been so unlucky as to have lost his powers, luck gave him a job. Not a high paying job mind you, but one that Steiner didn't mind working as it allowed him to train, and also allowed him to travel around to different locations across the land that he had wanted to explore since he was young. He had become a courier.

He would pick up packages from Lonene Shipping Service (LSS for short) and then deliver them by land, air, or sea to their destination. Sometimes he would get a tip, other times he would meet some unsavory people who were looking to take advantage of him, and other times he would just actually enjoy himself. It was a typical nine to five job and for a man who had lost everything, maybe it was what he needed. A sense of normalcy, in a world that had just become so much more lonely for the young man, and for a while that had been good enough for Steiner. Traveling around, delivering packages, and picking up a steady pay check, but eventually Steiner got a familiar itch in his sword swinging arm. Training alone wasn't enough to sate his thirst for combat which had grown ever steadily since his days from returning alive and powerless to civilization. Yet, things would be hard for Steiner now to find a fight worth fighting. He had developed a reputation in the LSS as a guy who was squeaky clean, his days of fighting long behind him, and the owner of the company wouldn't allow someone to pick meaningless fights just so he could sate some kind of weird feeling of anxiety of not actually fighting.

So, Steiner adopted an identity. He started small, hiding his face, and fighting battles against thugs looking to pick on people making their way to the outskirts, people with jobs who were similar to his own. It began to escalate over time as he began to tackle more threats. Fighting roaming hollows, dealing with gangbangers in the wastelands, and sometimes playing the rescuing hero to a damsel in distress. Eventually his adopted identity gained a reputation of its' own, some kind of white hooded vigilante that protected innocent people from harm out in the wasteland. His adopted identity even gained its own name: White Phantom. He didn't really care for the name, but it was something the people had called him, and it stuck rather well for no apparent reason. As his deeds escalated, so did the injuries he received, and the questions that he had to answer from his boss became more and more difficult to lie as an answer for. He was never a dishonest man and bluffing had never been something that he was remarkably good at. Yet, Steiner had eluded being fired, and he still got to kill two birds with one stone. He fought for justice in his own way and got money for doing a good job from his employer.


It was on one particular day that Franz found himself out in the wastelands, doing his job, and delivering a package out in the middle of the wastes to some construction workers. For what purpose this package was designated for, Steiner didn't ask, all he knew was that the package was extremely heavy, and required him to deliver it with the company vehicle: a dark brown van. He wasn't too particularly fond of driving the van, its' breaks didn't quite work right, and sometimes the blasted thing just wouldn't start back up if you didn't shut it off in a particular way. It wasn't a very good method to transport goods, but it was the only vehicle the LSS had laying around for delivery services by land that required heavy lifting. Steiner sighed, remembering when picking things like this up would have been easy, and remembering a time where he had once had someone to accompany him across the world.

It was hard on the young man, not having what he had thought would have been his partner for life standing by his side in a spiritual sense to offer him guidance. Sometimes he thought he could hear his voice or he woke up in cold sweats with nightmares reliving the events that had occurred to him on that day. The psychologists told him it was natural for him to experience such things, but Steiner didn't believe anything happened that day was natural for anyone to bear. He had lost everything that day and to this day he was still looking for a way to make things right. Sometimes he imagined that he had found the sons of bitches that had left him to die and slowly, but surely exacted his justice down upon them, but it was all just his imagination. Those arrancar were in hiding, where he didn't know, but one day he knew, just knew, he would find them. And when he did there would indeed be hell to pay for what they had done to them and probably many more people before him.

Steiner grunted as he saw in the distance a distant sandstorm coming in, instinctively turning on the headlights, and readying the defunct set of windshield wipers on the van for what was to come. It had been a long trip and he was still a few hours out from his destination and he sure as hell wasn't going to allow some little sandstorm to get in the way of him finishing his big job for the day. After all, maybe if he braved a sandstorm to deliver the part he might get a tip. Oh who was he kidding, he probably would be called an idiot, and for his persistence in finishing this job the van probably wouldn't make it to its destination. He chuckled to himself, realizing that maybe driving through the sandstorm wouldn't be the most appropriate thing to do at this point in time, after all if the van died he would have to drag the package to the destination, or worse, have to call his boss and tell him about what had happened. Out of fear of being scolded and losing his job, Steiner decided to turn the van in a different direction. Maybe just maybe he could get around the storm.

Sure it would add time on to the commute, but Steiner would rather spend more time cramped up in a van than being broke down in the middle of a sandstorm. So he began to head North, hoping he could beat the storm, in that moment something passed by his vision. "Is that a...a boy?", Steiner spoke to himself, dumbfounded by the fact that anyone would be running around in the wastes by themselves, let alone with a sandstorm on the way. That is when his eye sight caught a second sight, something that helped him get a grasp on the situation in a much more complete manner. A hollow, a big, quadrupedal, rhino of a hollow was chasing the boy. And it was gaining on him. There was no doubt in Steiner's mind that the boy would be killed by this thing, it would destroy him, and that was something he just couldn't allow. He wanted to be a hero a year and a half ago and to be honest that feeling still was there, the drive to protect people from harm. He found himself looking in the back of the van for anything, not caring if the hollow was a threat to himself, after all this was a massive hollow, only caring for what was going to happen to the unarmed boy running through the wastes.

"I need a weapon...damnit I wish I had brought my sword.", Steiner spoke of course of the broken Excalibur he had left at home which he had regretted not bringing with him now. He spotted a crowbar and a bat, two things that probably wouldn't be too effective at doing any harm to a beast of that size and strength, yet he had to try. He had to do something because doing nothing would only make him out to be a coward. So after taking a big, deep breath, it was fight time. He found himself pressing down hard on the gas, putting the shitty van through its' ropes at ramming speed. He only had once chance for this and he would be damned if he would mess this up. He took careful aim for the beast's side, making sure to grab his bat and crowbar before pushing the van to go even faster. As it finally neared its' target, Steiner jumped out of the moving vehicle, tucking and rolling as all the books had taught him on the subject of acrobatics.

He didn't land gracefully and pain shot up his left leg, which was probably now all scratched up from hidden rocks in the sand. Yet, the thing that took the most damage was the van as a sickening sound of metal on flesh filled the air as the van full throttled its way into the Hollow's side. The Hollow didn't go far, but it was pushed a decent distance away, letting out a roar of pain, and confusion as to what had just occurred. Steiner stood up, clutching the bat in one hand, and the crowbar in the other. He looked over to the boy with a slight grin on his face to hide the pain in his leg before speaking loudly over the sound of the coming sandstorm: "Could you use a hand?"