"Hot damn" Jeremy said to no one in particular, like he always did.

He had finally reached his point of destination after a few good weeks. It probably would have been sooner had he not been forced to take all those detours and end up getting lost, then having been helpfully pointed back onto the right direction, which meant he had to backtrack a bit. He was now situated in front of a small café in the village, while massaging his sore feet that were currently bare of his boots for the moment. Jeremy soon dropped his current task in favor of simply staring placidly into the sky while zoning out once more as he re-assessed the current situation.

A good deal of the village citizens had recently evacuated to God-knows-where. Apparently, a big ass Gear came into the town with intent of wiping it out. Of course it was now dead, and doing an excellent job of stinking up the place, thanks to two extremely lucky bounty hunters. Oh yeah, the Holy Knight guys were here too (Miraculously still functioning properly even though the organization was *this* close to being disbanded altogether). The knights were 'overseeing' and investigating the gear attack on the town. Which basically meant the knights helped themselves to whatever the town offered before the majority of the village people deemed it safe to return. Not that it mattered to Jeremy, he did a bit of a 'shopping trip' himself the moment he entered the village and saw that no one was here. Taking a small break wasn't an option to him when he was extremely close to meeting the Gandhi-Gear. So basically he was in a ghost town that was barely populated by a few of the braver village people and some knights. Yay.

Colt fitted his boots back on, got back up before retrieving a bag of devices and things he decided to bring along with him for his little hike he decided to attempt, then set off. His little jaunt would take him deep into a wood that the Knights suspected the Gandhi-Gear was holed up in, for the knights were here for the same reason he was here as well: for the Gear. Anyways, the rumor of the Gandhi-gear being here, along with that gear attack on the town was proof in itself that the gear *must* be here, since it was also part of the rumor that new Gear was those kinds that could control other Gears. Of course Colt would be the one to get to the Gandhi-Gear first, since the knights were nothing but rules and protocols: it would take forever for a correct order saying, "enter the woods and kick ass" to pop up. Yay some more. Besides, it's not like they can-

"Are you going to the woods?" a young, but mature, female voice broke the silence along with Jeremy's over-length line of thought.

By the time he had his thoughts interrupted, he already reached the village perimeter that faced the small forest. Jeremy then swiveled around to look over to his inquirer. Obviously one of the braver village people, for one thing. As guessed, a young woman of about… 20-ish. Wearing a plain old white dress with a bit of a plaid design in the front that reached down to her ankles. She was probably cute enough to catch a few men. The interesting thing was that she wasn't from around here, as she was obviously Asian in descent. Of course now that everyone was emigrating constantly from one place to another, no surprise there, not unlike before in the old days when everybody just-

"Excuse me, did you hear me?"

Colt snapped out of his little world once more. Scolding himself for being too longwinded, he replied with a rather cheerful smile, "Sorry, bad habit. I seem to zone out much too often. You were asking?" Good thing she was polite.

"I was just saying, are going into the woods?"

"Yeah, actually I was going to, how'd you guess?"

The woman giggled a bit "Ha, it's too obvious not to see. Of course it's new to see somebody who's not a bounty hunter heading into the forest for once"

'not a bounty hunter'? Shit, don't tell me… Colt's cheerful demeanor was suddenly more artificial, "Bounty Hunters, hmmm? What sort of hunters?"

The lady put a finger to finger to her chin and looked upward while she tried to remember, "Well… not too many actually, just three."

"I see… do you remember what they look like?" Jeremy was now the inquirer.

"Well the first one was a rather large man, he came quite a few weeks ago, rude too. He was carrying a funny looking sword, in fact he looked a lot like those knights around here, with that funny belt buckle he wore. The sword looked like something the knights used too…" While the woman tried to conjure up more memories, Jeremy moved on to other questions.

"When he went into the forest, he did return, right?"

"Sheesh, you already ask even more questions than me"

"Hey, when I get curious, I get curious"

"I suppose… anyways, of course he did return"

"Did he return with extra baggage?"

The lady gave a quirky look, "Of course not, how would that be possible?"

Queue inward sigh of relief now. "You never know"

The woman was silent for little while longer, then suddenly got that look that would have been complemented nicely with a floating light bulb above her head. "But now that you asked that, I suddenly thought of something else similar. You know those two other bounty hunters I mentioned?"

I take that back. "Yeah?"

"Like I said, two bounty hunters entered the woods, a man and a young girl a few days after the first guy, in case you were wondering."

"Uh-huh" Jeremy shook his head lightly.

"So they both entered the woods, but he funny thing was when they came back, a *third* girl was with them" She gave a nod and a wave of the finger in a sort of 'I told you so' way. Colt's surprise was genuine.

"What?"

The lady gave a sympathetic nod, "I know, I thought the same thing too"

"What did this third girl look like? And she didn't come back in handcuffs or anything, did she?"

"No handcuffs there, and she was a frightfully shy girl, had pretty blue hair that suited her nicely. But like I said, very shy, had her head looking at the ground the entire time she and the other people passed through here."

"You know where they were heading to?"

"Yes, they mentioned amongst themselves going to the St. Germain Air Docks."

"You know where it is?"

"Yes, of course. It's on the outside of the village on the west side-"

"Shit! Gotta go now. Bye!" Jeremy moved from asking obscene amounts of 'casual' questions to charging back into the village.

"HEY!" the lady cried out at the rushing figure, who was now a good few blocks a away from her, "WHAT'S ALL THIS BUSINESS ABOUT?"

Jeremy stopped in his tracks momentarily to give the lady a funny look, while wondering if he ever looked up a Guinness world record book, if he would ever find a picture of her face for 'densest person ever'. Wait a second… that's right; Guinness world records don't exist anymore.

"Uh…old friends a such. Bye!" Colt re-continued his rush down the street. Leaving a rather confused girl in the dust.

*************

"Damnit…." Jeremy kicked open the front door of the evacuated house that he decided to crash the night in while he was on his 'shopping trip', and trudged in, dragging his hiking bag in as well. When he reached the air docks, he discovered to his much displeasure, that his bounty hunter opponents had already left the entire country on their own Airship. Having already dropped his bag somewhere, he continued to drag himself through a well-decorated hallway.

"GOD DAMNIT!" Jeremy threw his fist into the wall next to him in a vain attempt to rid himself of the black cloud that loomed over his head. It didn't help when he winced and pulled back his bruised hand and covered it in the other to smother the pain, "FREAK!" Flopping on to the bed, Colt laid there, face down, while letting the black cloud above him grow bigger.

"I WAS THIS CLOSE! *THIS* CLOSE!" He shouted into the bed, rather in a way a child would when he found out he couldn't get that toy after saving up his or her  money for so long, This close…. This close to finding her and having this curse on my soul be removed… damnit, think logically He felt better after hearing the word 'logically' sounded out in his mind. He turned around and thought.

Well, the fact that the Gear-girl (He decided that sounded better than 'Gandhi-Gear') came left here without handcuffs means that the bounty hunters convinced her. The fact they had an Airship means they're rich and the since they didn't turn her in first chance they had, which was here in France, and not in said handcuffs means they're probably not bounty hunters either. What the hell do they want with her? Oh yeah, she looks very human too, since the lady and I *are* calling the Gear-girl a girl. St. Germain Air docks is a public facility…that means…

**************

"Hey" Jeremy, carrying his traveling bag, cried out to the 'boss' of the Air docks while walking up to him. The place was still under control of the Knights, but limited civilian air activity was allowed. Under heavy supervision of the Knights, of course. Bastards.

"Ah, you again. Need a flight this time?" the chunky man in suspenders called back to the hunter of the 'Gear-girl'

Meeting up with him, Jeremy continued, " Uh, yeah… sort of. You know those friends I asked you about?" Jeremy, of course, was substituting 'friends' with 'those assholes that ran off with the Gear-girl'

"Yeah, you only asked me an a hour or so ago"

"Yeah, I forgot" Jeremy rolled his eyes and gave an artificial, but convincing chuckle, "Anyways, do you know where they probably flew off to?"

"Oh yeah, sure I do." The Boss of the Air docks pointed out to one particular length of the horizon, " They headed westward. My best guess is that they're going Spain, probably oh…." The man waved his hand a bit while evaluating the odds, " … most likely Madrid" He nodded to himself in confirmation.

"I see…" Jeremy trailed off his sentence after looking of to the horizon that showed a setting sun he promptly returned to the matter at hand and turned to his companion, "You'll be chartering me a flight to Madrid, Spain"

The fat man gave a sly smile, "Chasing your friends, I see"

Jeremy returned with a smirk, "Indeed"

"When will you be leaving?"

"Now", Jeremy turned on his heel and faced the buildings holding the aircraft and walked in that direction. The fat man looked on in shock before chasing after Colt.

"Hey! Wait!" the chunky boss caught up Jeremy, "You haven't paid yet, and the paper work-"

Jeremy slipped a large wad of bounty-money he had been collected for a while into the fat man's breast pocket, gave it a friendly pat, and continued walking. The now considerably richer man stood there dumbfounded before continuing his protests and following the fleet footed character in front of him.

"Okay, you can do that, but we still have to prepare the ship…"

"How long?"

"Probably a few hours"

Jeremy was unfazed, "That's why you're going to start right now"

"Woah, woah, woah" The fat man held out both his hands and stopped Jeremy, "I can tell your expecting a first class, grade A flight, man. But we can't give you that"

Still unfazed. "Oh?"

"The Holy Order took all my best planes for their transports and such, I can only give you my third-hand planes"

"How long would it take in a third-hand to get to Spain?"

The larger of the two shrugged "About a week…"

Jeremy gave a quirky look, "Why the hell are you arguing? I'm paying you a shit-load of money for a cheap flight. Let's go"

*********************

After a week of surviving on crappy peanuts, sandwiches that tasted remarkably like cardboard, and water that tasted funny, Colt finally made it to Madrid, Spain without any intestinal problems. The moment he checked into his motel room and dropped his bag inside (save the handgun and an extra clip, which he concealed in a holster somewhere in the darkness of the cape he had been wearing), he went out into the city asking the fair citizens asking where his 'friends' went, among other questions. His interrogating of the city led him to an out of the way bar called 'Fallen Angel'. Upon entering the bar, Jeremy found himself in a light crowd, since it wasn't the popular hours for partying. The people here consisted of gossipers and a few bounty hunters, all people being rooted in deep discussion. Seating himself and asking for the ever so simple beer, Jeremy began to pick out the conversations behind him until he got a useful source of talk to listen in on, the victims consisting of two local bounty hunters, both a little red in the face from their alcohol.

"You're shitting me"

"No really, that billion dollar gear was actually here, yesterday night. Believe me, man, I was there", the storyteller pointed a finger out of his folded arms.

"What happened?"

"Well that shit of a Gear came to dance, right?"

The other nodded "Right"

"And did a good job of tricking the people there too, then its tail came out"

"That Gear must have been stupid"

"Yeah, anyways, there was a bit of confusion for a second, then everyone started freaking out… except me, of course"

"Okay"

"So, then the gear showed off its wings and spewed all this bullshit about 'not wanting to hurt us', not that anybody believed it"

"Uh-huh"

"So, there I was, the only bounty hunter in that place. So I decided to do something about it, even if I was unarmed"

"You really are crazy"

"That's why I'm called that", the storyteller, now known as Crazy answered back.

"So what happened?"

Crazy took another swig of whatever he was drinking before he continued; "Now before I did anything, a girl took out an anchor and said she'd defend that piece of shit against anyone who came near"

The listening party gave a strange look, "An anchor?"

"Yeah, come on, don't tell me you don't know about Johnny's crew"

A blank face from the listener.

"Oh come on, Jesus man, how the hell do you expect to be a hunter like me if you don't even know about 'The Jellyfish'?"

"Jeez, sorry man" the listener, revealed newbie hunter shot back in a sarcastic tone.

"Whatever, anyway, I was about to beat the shit outta them both, then Johnny stuck out his sword and said he'd defend the Gear, too"

"Wait, you mean the leader of the Jellyfish was here, too?"

"Of course. He always comes here. Anyways, if I had my sword, I would have kicked all their asses, but I didn't so I had to give up, *that* night. The moment after they all ran away. Heh, bunch of cowards"

The newbie hunter finished the story, "And that's why you're going to surprise 'em today, when they take off"

"Hey!" Crazy and the newbie both turned to face the new voice, whose owner was a man dressed in a lot of green and wore a funny hat.

Crazy responded first, "Yeah?"

"When these Jellyfish guys going to take off?"

Crazy thought for a second before answering, "At three 'o' clock"

Jeremy's face twisted into angered frustration, "SHIT!"

Crazy just raised an eyebrow while the newbie spoke up, "What's the matter? We got plenty of time", Crazy slapped his friend in the shoulder for being stupid enough to think that the man in green was joining their team.

Jeremy frowned, "What the hell? Did that beer get into your sense of time too?", before the two could retaliate, Jeremy turned to the bald man on the other side of the stall, "Hey Bartender, what's the time?"

"Two-Fifty, sir"

Jeremy looked back to his two momentary allies. Both their faces were paper white.

****************

"FASTER!" Crazy shouted back to Jeremy and his friend the newbie. In a time of seven minutes, the trio managed to get to the boundary of the Airfield. Obviously ignoring all moving objects expect the biggest Airship, which was the groups' target.

"HOLY SHIT! *THAT'S* THE MAYSHIP?" Jeremy shouted to the bounty hunter in front of him.

"YEAH! HURRY GUYS, IT'S GOING TO TAKE OFF!" Crazy yelled into the air.

Unfortunately, it already was taking off. The Mayship launched its heavy frame at an incredible speed along the paved runway. While Colt charged madly ahead, the other two decided to call it a day and stopped to catch their breath.

"Jesus…man… how does he do that?" Crazy said through gritted teeth in between weak wheezes of air

Keep going, keep going, keep going Colt shouted to himself while closing the distance between him and the massive steel bird containing his 'prize', Can't give up, must get her. Not when I'm this close… He kept running, despite the fact he lost all feeling his legs and his guts felt like spears were shoved through them. Managing to get along side the vehicle, Colt got in range and used his abilities he had deemed as the 'curse'. Fingers elongated and formed into deep purple talons that reverted back into human flesh and bone where the fingers met the rest of the hand. Throwing himself unto the Airship, Jeremy managed to get a hold unto the vehicle's metal flesh as the talons sunk in. Just in the nick of time, the Mayship left the ground into the safety of the air, unbeknownst of the parasite attached to its tail section.

****************

The only shitty thing about his impulsive action, Jeremy decided to himself as he hung onto the vehicle while 20,000,000 feet in the air and 100-plus miles per hour, was that he left his bags in Spain while he was going to God-knows-where. He also reminded himself that he should workout more often to avoid further 'Spears in stomach' attacks as he so noticed on his marathon run towards the Airship when it was taking off. It was after a good hour and a half of wall crawling, avoiding windows, and making sure he didn't lose his hat, but he finally got himself latched onto the left wing now. Yay.

Jeremy inspected the new surrounding, as hard at it was with the wind blowing in his face. The wing was covered in a good deal of spray painted graffiti, like the crewmembers consisted of a lot of rebellious teens. Colt also noticed that it was in need of a repair job, as the front section was showing a lot the framework amidst the torn steel skin. But no way in-

"Ah-ha" Jeremy Colt said to himself in a small victory as he found an entrance into the ship. A small gun turret jutted out of the horizon of the wing, the kind with the exposed roof, meaning Colt could slip inside, which he did. Jeremy crawled/fell into turret head first, meaning when he was entirely inside; he was in a rather awkward upside down position. Finally getting out of his predicament, he looked around. The room underneath the turret was empty, and was more like a small ready room for gunners with a ladder in the middle leading up to the turret. An area to spend little more that five second in, which was connected to a metal hallway that lead into the core of the ship. Jeremy pulled out his weapon, the handgun, out of its hidden holster then chambered its first round. It was then Colt heard a large 'crash' reverberate through the metal hallway.

"The fuck?"

Jeremy climbed up the ladder just enough to peek out of the turret to see a large new hole decorating the main hull of the ship. Since there was no explosion and mass destruction following the hole, that meant something with the idea of making permanent damage deep in Mayship, rather than just making holes on the ship. The sound of combat soon echoed down the hallway as well.

"Ah, shit"

Jeremy jogged down the metal corridor, gun at ready. When something *smart* infiltrates a structure, that means it's here for a very specific reason, other than just hurting stuff, the only specific thing Jeremy could think of at the moment was the Gear-girl. Perfect, competitors for the Gear, veterans at that, judging from the prolonged battle he was hearing. At the end of the corridor was another ladder; at the top was a hatch. Jeremy crawled up the rungs and up to the steel hatch, from which he promptly threw it open and saw the hatch get stuck in a 90-degree position. Colt was about to continue climbing up when a yelp of surprise rung out and something hit the opened hatch, which slammed down on Jeremy's head since he was in the 90-degree range. Falling back down, he clutched his head for a few seconds and moaned before getting back up, which was a challenge since the world was now spinning from the blow to the head. Colt shook his head loose of the remaining cobwebs when he heard a girl's voice from above.

"Don't move!"

Heh, my time for the spotlight. Obviously saying that so they can let me out first Jeremy grinned at the unexpected attention. After successfully climbing up the entire length of the ladder and into the next floor, the moment Jeremy managed to get to his feet he found himself in a regular standoff, with two sides, a hostage, and the ever famous damsel in distress. Amusingly enough, the entire hallway was quiet ever since the hatch bashed his head in. Apart from the quiet whispers behind him, which consisted mostly of:

"Another one?"

Jeremy ignored the silent commotion behind him, more focused on his adversaries in front of him. The first being a young girl in a good deal of orange apparel, face first on the floor. Easily identified as the one who tripped over the metal hatch. Beside her a large anchor lay, identified from Crazy's story as the one who defended the Gear-girl. Luckily, she was still recovering from the tumble, so Jeremy didn't need to deal with her. Further up from her was a woman, wearing the smile of a malicious sly fox on her face, and some red leather that barely covered everywhere else. She wore similar hat to Colt's, apart from the red color as opposed to his green, and the skull faced design. This showed Jeremy from which the 'Another one?' comments stemmed from. The 20th century guitar slung across her back contradicted her clothes and gave some trouble for Colt when he tried to figure out what her *real* occupation was. In the steel grip of the fox-lady's arms was…

Her.

Blue hair. Wings. Tail. Red eyes as well. It was HER. At last! The salvation for Colt's curse that had been carved into his soul, right in front of him. Unfortunately, the fox-lady had one hand gripped hard on the Gear-girl's neck, the fox-lady had her other hand pull one of her captive's arms behind her back. The Gear was weakly tugging on the hand holding onto her throat with her free arm while taking shallow gasps. Looks like she was a having a hard time breathing…

Both wear leather, both showing a lot of skin, what the hell? They buy clothes from the same shop? Jeremy subconsciously raised an eyebrow and also his gun at the interlocked duo.

"Oi, guitar whore, I call dibs on the Gear-girl. Back of from her. Now" Colt swore he felt knives the people behind him glared him with.

The fox gave another malicious grin.

"That's funny, I don't see your name on her"

"You know what's even funnier? Me putting a bullet in your fucking head because you were stupid enough to stay where you are"

The red bitch's grin grew even wider before she got the message. The wrong one.

"Really? Then try me. I dare you." The bitch then hid her face behind the head of her prisoner, while her hold on the Gear's throat grew even tighter, making the Gear-girl give off a pained whimper.

Colt twisted his face in frustration along with all the crewmembers around him, Shit, if I do nothing, She'll choke her to death. If I try being Rambo, she'll probably choke her to death even faster

Analyzing the situation, the first thing that came to Jeremy's mind was that he had to get that bitch of a strangler off balance. The second thing was that it had to be done with a single bullet. Jeremy checked all the surfaces of the hallway section that surrounded the guitar whore.

Ceiling lights too far away from her. Nope

Right wall was a bunch of doors. Nope

The only thing the floor offered of use was the anchor. Nope

But implanted in the left wall was a hatch that opened out into the outside. Obviously it was locked, but it could be smashed…

Colt fired and the lock on the left wall broke in a spark.

The hatch easily gave way to the rushing winds outside and burst open. The winds rushing inside threw the interlocked duo off their feet for a few precious seconds.

Jeremy charged at the two (avoiding the girl in orange, who had recovered and had been watching the entire time, interestingly enough).

Before Jeremy could effectively close the distance, though, the red-woman caught balance in time. She gave an animalistic snarl and matching glare before turning to one side and because she still was hanging onto the Gear-girl, lashed out one of her oversized boots at Colt's in between. The attack instead struck at his gut, making Jeremy keel forward whilst clutching his stomach with both hands (regardless of the gun) and his eyes widening in the ensuing shock and extreme pain. The musician capitalized and moved an arm from the Gear's throat to Colt's shirt collar, from which she neatly pulled forward the man in green, causing his head to contact the Gear's.

Jeremy stumbled around from the second severe blow to the head, clutching his head and stomach, and trying to regain his balance again amidst the strong wind from outside and the pain in his head. He then (easily) lost his balance completely, swung his arms about momentarily, before tumbling through hatch and over the side of the plane. Finally overcoming his dizziness, he found himself dangling from the open entrance of the hatch because his foot was stuck in its corner. His hat was caught on a piece of metal sticking out of the hull below him and the gun (miraculously) was still in a knuckle-white hold in his hand.

"Hey, hotshot"

Jeremy looked up to see the guitar whore, in the same hold on the Gear-girl as before, standing above him at the opened hatch.

"Thanks for exit, I was hoping to finish her off alone…" with a sneer and a shove, the musician shoved the Gear off the vehicle into bare sky. Colt looked on in mixture of disgust, horror, and frustration as he saw the screaming, flailing mess of feathers and flesh disappear over the large wing of the Mayship. A red blur flew over the same path before diving downwards after the source of the echoing cry of the Gear.

"SHIT!" Jeremy, with his free hand, grabbed his trapped leg roughly and wrenched it out of its own metal grip. He then fell down onto the wing and slid over and off the metal surface, grabbing his soul mate, the green hat, in the process and shoving it onto his head crudely. Falling through the air in a more controlled manner than his objective, he found that neither the Gear-girl, nor the guitar whore was visible in the air or in the lush forest below. Forget them, time to save *himself* now.

Using the 'curse', purple coils sprouted out of his shoulder blades, through his shirt and cape. The cables flailed and dangled in the air momentarily before they started moving as if in its own will, flattening, adjoining to each other, and forming into solid, usable forms.

Wings.

The purple elements caught the air and threw the wings' owner up into the air. From there Colt gracefully glided in circles around the wooded areas below him, searching for any signs of his targets again. None found.

"Fucking Christ…" Jeremy let the sentence trail off through his gritted teeth. She was right there, and then it had to screw up because of that little…

 "If I ever get my hands on that musical bitch-whore…" Not now, one step at a time he told himself, Think

This little fiasco was in vain, leaving him a fair distance away from help and his bags and materials.

Colt shivered for a second and looked up to see snow falling from the graying sky.

I don't have winter clothes for the impending winter either. Neither does the Gear-girl. But she's a Gear. Gears are made to be tough. I'm not.

Colt turned his head to the Airship and winced at the sight of a portion of it exploding. It was also landing. Good, if it lands that means the Jellyfish people will look for her, and most likely find her.

What about the guitar bitch?

She'll leave during the snowfall as well; she is only bounty hunter, after all. All in all, I'll have to post-pone my hunt for the bulk of the winter. Don't worry, the Gear-girl will make it, I'm sure of *that*.

With an annoyed sigh, Colt swung around and flew in the opposite direction of the landing Mayship.

This had been a bad day, I need a drink.