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Chapter 4
What if I had been 'born' a small child instead of a young man? He observed the question as if it was written in thin white letters floating around in the sea of darkness around him.
Not a great many people in the world could ask themselves such a question. Still, Jet didn't feel much pride over his uniqueness.
But despite all his resentment toward any form of dwelling on the past he couldn't deny the fact it was an intriguing question. What if…
Might Werner have stayed with him then? Raised him? Probably not. The man had been nothing more than a ghost even back then.
Still, someone might have stayed with him. If he had been a small child he couldn't have been expected to take care of himself, could he? Instead of being alone all the time he might have had a family and a childhood like the one Virginia always enjoyed talking about.
How different would he have ended up? Better or worse?
Jet slowly became aware of the strangest sensation of a feather light touch stroking the side of his face. It had a soothing effect and he found himself actually enjoying the tender caress. Was this the way a mother might caress her small child or the way a lover might touch the receiver of her affection? He had experienced neither and had no way of telling.
And what was this, anyway? A dream? It didn't feel like one…
His eyes remained closed for a moment but shot wide open when he remembered where he was, or should be anyway.
The sight of Virginia watching him from above greeted him. Her face was lit by the orange shine of a torch burning somewhere beside him. He could actually see the flame reflected in her large blue eyes.
He noticed the hint of a smile playing upon her lips despite her otherwise obvious worry. Still in a half dream like state Jet marveled at the sheer beauty of every small little detail of her face. Her eyes especially. He couldn't help but wondered if they'd always been so blue.
If she was there it had to be a dream.
"Are you ok, Jet?" she sounded anxious. He watched as she pushed some of the free locks of brown hair that fell down toward him behind her ear. A few strands broke loose and fell right back again. Somewhere in the back of his head a voice wondered how it would feel to touch that hair, caress it just like she had caressed his face just moments earlier.
It couldn't possibly be a dream. His dreams weren't usually this pleasant.
Judging by his upside-down view of her and the soft support he felt under the back of his head, Jet suddenly came to the terrifying conclusion he was laying with his head cradled in her lap. Quickly shooting up from the embarrassing position he winced as he was rewarded by a dull, throbbing pain in the back of his skull. It sure as hell didn't feel like a dream.
"Jet?" Virginia still sounded worried.
"I'm fine" he half-lied, resting his forehead in his hands clasping his eyes tightly shut.
"It was so scary!" the girl suddenly exclaimed, "I found you lying on the ground and I - and I lifted your head 'cause I didn't want you to lie on the… on the ground. But then I remembered you're not supposed to move people who've fallen and hurt themselves. And I thought I'd killed you…"
Jet turned around to face her feeling his headache slowly subside.
"You know, somehow I always figured you'd be the end of me" he told her.
"That's not funny!" she exclaimed.
He shrugged. Humor is such an individual thing.
"…But you know," when she spoke again her tone had shifted toward her usual playfulness, "you looked really cute when you were unconscious. Like you were sleeping." she smiled fondly in remembrance.
"Jeez, thanks for worrying…"
"But I did!" Virginia exclaimed, "I was really worried! Don't ever do that again."
"Fall off a ladder? Thanks Virginia, I would have done it again right away had you not said that. You really saved me there." Jet stood up slowly testing the stability of his legs. They seemed just fine but he noticed a slight stiffness in his neck. Virginia tried to follow but her own legs seemed to give away under her weight and she fell back again. "What's wrong with you?" he asked sounding perhaps a bit too gruff.
"…They're asleep" the girl replied rubbing her legs.
"Jeez, how long have you been sitting there?" and how long had he been out cold, anyway?
"I don't know. Fifteen minutes, maybe." she replied indifferently.
Looking around the small space Jet took notice of a couple of wooden crates stacked up against a corner. They were really the only objects in the room.
"What's in those? I suppose you came here for the treasure too, right?" he wondered.
"Yeah, but I haven't had look around yet." she had removed her shoes and was busy massaging her numb feet, "You really scared me you know…" she muttered again.
"You told me already." Jet replied, "Just put you're shoes back on," he sighed, "you'll never get better that way. Here." He offered her his hand, patently waiting as she tied her shoelaces.
After pulling her up from the chill earthen floor he reluctantly let her lean against him as they walked around in a small circle trying to get the feeling back into her legs. Virginia clung to him tightly, wrapping both her arms around his. The closeness alone made her feel a lot better.
"Thanks" she said after a moment, "I'm better now"
Jet didn't reply and it took her awhile before she realized she was still clinging to his arm. She let go and turned away to hide the blush on her face. Jet walked over to the crates by the corner. There were two piles: one consisting of only two crates that reached about waist-high and another one of twice the height. Jet began working on the top crate in the smallest pile. It was nailed tightly shut.
"So, I guess you must've found the map?" Virginia asked after a brief silence.
"Yeah." he replied running a hand through his unruly, white hair. He winced visibly as he brushed over the bump on the back of his head. "How do you know about it?" he muttered a silent curse as he caught a large splinter from the wooden box in his index finger.
"The ARMs smith told me about it"
"Oh" the lid finally gave away and Jet removed it from the box. He stared at the contents for a moment without uttering a sound.
"Well? What's in there?" Virginia wondered walking over to have a look. Biting her lip as she thought of how her plans were royally screwed now that Jet was there. How was she now going to find him the perfect present?
"Cheese" Jet said. His voice was steady and emotionless.
"Cheese?" she repeated, "…Is that good or bad?"
"What the hell do you mean good or bad?" he sounded a trifle annoyed.
"Do you like cheese? Is it expensive cheese? I don't know." Virginia shrugged. Taking a look over his shoulder she saw it; the pale, faintly greenish mass with islands of fuzzy mold covering parts of the surface laying in the center of the open crate. Packed around it was something that looked like hay, although she wasn't completely sure if it was.
"Of course it's bad!" Jet near shouted, "It's freakin' old cheese!" needless to say he was very annoyed by now.
"Can't we sell it then?" Jet had already began frantically tearing at the next box by the time Virginia asked the question. He wasn't very pleased to find the same contents in there as well.
"Virginia" his voice oozed of some sort of fake patience, "how long has it been since anyone lived here?" Virginia opened her mouth but Jet silenced her by holding up his hand, "Except for the Gob's." he added. Virginia closed her mouth again and thought for a moment.
"I don't really remember…" she then said, "somewhere between five to eight years, maybe"
Wow, this cheese is almost as old as me, Jet couldn't decide whether to weep or laugh at the stray thought. He pushed it aside for now.
"Nobody in his right mind would eat eight year old cheese" he claimed with certainty.
"Are you sure? Maybe it's like wine? It gets better with age?" Virginia tried.
"Well don't let me stop you then" Jet didn't bother opening anymore boxes after the fourth one. They all smelled of moldy cheese. "Go ahead, eat! I'm getting the hell out of here."
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Leaving the 'treasure' behind the two young drifters scaled the ladder and emerged out of the hole in the floor they had entered so full of hope and purpose now completely drained of any such feeling.
Virginia looked at the holster in which the Airget-lamh rested on Jet's back with growing self-pity. Its overall good shape and obvious high quality mocked her and the present that lay covered in colorful gift wrapper hidden underneath her pillow back home. He really, really, really didn't need a new one.
She sighed despairingly. Trying to convince herself it wasn't such a big deal wouldn't work. In fact any kind of logical approach to the matter seemed to fail. All she could see was Jet's disappointed face when he opened the gift. His first ever birthday present: a complete disappointment.
'I had higher expectations of you Virginia…'
Neither of them had said much during their climb and the silence continued as they stood above ground again, gathering their thoughts and watching the fading daylight filter through the grimy windows illuminating otherwise invisible dust particles floating around the room.
Nearby the floorboards creaked unnaturally loud. Both drifters turned their head at the sound just in time to catch two unfamiliar men of very different size entering the room.
"Well, well, well" the shorter man said upon seeing them. The handkerchief that covered the lover part of his face fluttered as he spoke. On his belt he carried an ARM. "What have we here?" he used one of the standard villain opening lines. It was usually meant as a rhetorical question so no one answered.
"Who are you?" Virginia asked, her hands discreetly hovering over her own ARMs.
The question seemed to please the little man greatly. So much it was apparent even though his large smile was covered under the handkerchief. Jet noticed this with worry, he desperately hoped the man wouldn't be one of those talkative, preacher-wannabe kind of thieves.
"Me and my associate here," he nodded toward the larger man with the scar across the bridge of his nose beside him, "are what you might call treasure hunters. But let me just say before I continue that I have no illusions regarding our trade. We are really nothing but dangerous criminals and should you stay in our way you will most certainly end up dead." the man took a brief pause to examine the two young drifters. Much to his surprise neither of them appeared particularly frightened by his threats. In fact, the white-haired boy looked nothing shy of bored and the girl seemed to be looking more at him than at them. He cleared his throat in an attempt to gain their attention, "Anyway, in our possession until just recently we had an interesting blueprint of this place but regretfully my big friend here lost it while we were restocking ammo in that cute little town just around here. What was it called again?"
"Boot Hill" his larger companion said in a deep, thundering voice.
Jet yawned loudly. The story was already getting far too long. No one seemed to notice his blatant signal of boredom and he steadily grew more and more annoyed.
"Yes, anyway" the smaller man's voice was becoming a steady drone in his ears, "We had lost this map and we couldn't seem to remember just how it had looked. So we've been searching this place for a couple of day's now until you two youngsters came and gracefully showed us where we should have been searching all this time. We were way off, let me tell you." he took a deep bow to express his gratitude. When he straightened himself again the ARM, a rifle with a pistol grip and a short 12 inch barrel, was in his hand and he had released the safety.
"So what's down there?" his friend the bulky man nodded toward the hole in the floor. He carried an insanely large and unwieldy cannon over his shoulder. It was about the same height as the smaller man and probably weighed three times as much.
"Boxes of cheese." Virginia told him.
"Cheese?" he looked very confused for a brief moment, "What are you, a comedian? Did you really think we'd fall for that?" he looked over at his smaller friend as if to make sure if they did or did not fall for it.
"But there really is-" Virginia started.
"Tons of gold and jewelry." Jet finished for her.
Virginia took aim and brought her foot down very hard on Jet's.
"What are you doing!?" she whispered very loudly into his ear. He ignored her, staring at the two different sized treasure hunters/dangerous criminals.
"Just as I suspected." The smaller man with the handkerchief went on speaking. Jet felt his patience slip away like fine sand between his fingers. The man had a very annoying voice, "well then, me and my friend here will be takin' that." he paused there and thought for a moment, "…and the lady too." he added.
"What!?" Virginia stomped her foot down again. Jet's was still underneath. Nobody noticed but he had developed a worrying tic under his right eye.
"So we can demand a ransom" the little man somehow felt compelled to explain, "Like I said we're treasure hunters as well as dangerous criminals." he sounded as if that was something worth being very proud of. The scarred man grinned a wide grin and displayed a set of teeth that was really more a set of gaps.
"You wouldn't get any money. No one likes her" Jet said. Virginia glared viciously at him. He gave her a half-hearted just-trying-to-help look. She reminded herself to hurt him later.
"Okay…" the handkerchief-man looked over at his buddy 'scar-face'. "So, uh…" He didn't really know what he was supposed to say anymore, "What are you going to do about it?" that was good. He made sure to flaunt his ARM as he spoke for good measure.
"I don't know…" Jet replied dully, "we have these guns so I thought you know, maybe we could have a shootout or something you stupid, ugly piece of human garbage! What the hell do you think!?" the two men nearly jumped at the unexpected explosion of anger.
"W-What's wrong, Jet?" Virginia whispered beside him. She hesitantly put her hand on his shoulder.
"I'm freakin' pissed off that's what's wrong!" Jet growled, "Today's been a shitty day and now I'm freakin' out!" he brushed her hand off, "And no you can't have the lady and you can't have the cheese. It's my cheese now, what are you going to do about it!?" he took a threatening step toward the two very confused outlaws.
"…I think he's crazy." the scarred man stage-whispered to his little friend. "And didn't he say there was gold down there?"
Jet released the safety on his Airget-lamh.
Crazy? Yes, very much so.
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I don't know crap about guns. Don't know how to describe them, don't know what to call them. Then again maybe it's not that important...
The word cheese is mentioned 12 times in this chapter (actually, 13 if you count this sentence). It might not be a record but I'm still proud.
