I've decided upon writing more here. It was to clear my head more, organise my thoughts and such. So to simply put, it's to keep me going.
Me and Dew are getting along quite well, if I were to state my own opinion... But then again, I'm a wanted human, he's a wanted faunus. Only difference is race, but that doesn't matter when the law is trying to gun you down.
First thing that should be done is getting a better engine. I could build a new steam engine, but problem is that this locomotive doesn't use that sort of system. The main driving force are the electric motors in the wheels of the train. So it can't utilize «Full Power» to move quickly.
Then we have another problem. We need a passenger car. Mainly to have a place to sleep in and a kitchen to have. Finally a separate workshop wagon, presumably a cargo wagon. That way I could focus on fixing our guns as well as making new items.
Hopefully the townsfolk we will meet (I do hope so) will let us take unwanted scrap and such. Though, Dew will also have to stay with the engine. He's still has clothes marking him as a 'White Fang' member... Whatever that is.
And most important thing to consider: Fuel. Lots and lots of fuel is needed...
Trip to Nova Ferra.
A few days had passed, Thomas is at the train controls and is focused on driving, whilst Dew is standing outside, on the platform of railing, looking outward as a look out.
Dew lets out a sigh and walks back into the cabin. "Still nothing?" Thomas asks, getting a grunt in response. "Well, we best get there soon." The self-proclaimed engineer retorts, taking a quick peek at his PDA, "Otherwise, one of us will have to start powering the generator manually. We've got only a liter of fuel left."
Dew grunts again in response, sitting down on a chair. He pulls out a flask from his pocket and takes a quick sip. Suddenly, he noticed something.
His eyes trained towards the left-side window, squinting. Thomas notices, "What's up?" He asks, worried.
Dew keeps staring, "We seem to have found a solution to our little fuel problem." The bear faunus answers, causing Thomas to frown.
"You see what it is?" Thomas asks, getting mentally ready for a possible fight.
The faunus nods, "A truck. can see 5 people. Possibly bandits." He replies, then his eyes widen, "STOP THE ENGINE!" He yells suddenly.
Thomas quickly reacted and pulled on the train's brake. The locomotive's wheels skidding in an attempt to stop. As a truck suddenly drove infront of the locomotive, seemingly an attempt to ram the train off the track. Said truck also has a trailer on the back.
The truck cab is long, rusty and brown. Broken windows and loud radios. The trailer is something that was originally meant for transporting cars, but it has been repurposed as a home, with guns on it and a liquid tank on the back. Second floor has a bolted shack on top as well. A 4 bandits are on the second floor, guns ready. And unknown amount can be presumed on the first floor, where it is bolted up with metal.
Thomas looks at the truck, then back at the faunus. He says, "Take the controls. Keep dodging, whilst I man the guns." leaving the control panel and heads outside of the cabin, onto the right-side railing. Dew looks wide-eyed for a moment, before grabbing the train controls and starts focusing on the offending vehicle.
Thomas quickly runs up to the right-side turret, checks if it's loaded, before firing rounds at the truck, specifically at the people on second-floor of the truck.
The bandits up top duck from the fire, one unlucky person got shot in the chest and died.
Sounds of metal clunking could be heard, coming from the first floor. Turns out there were 2 openable gaps, which had just opened and revealed mounted machine-guns.
Thomas ducks, muttering out "Bollocks!" as he heard the bullets whizzing by his head.
The truck suddenly jumped forward. Dew, spotting this and on instinct, puts on the brakes of the locomotive again, causing the truck to barely miss the train locomotive, moving to the other side of the engine.
Thomas runs quickly to the other side of the train and starts controlling the cannon there. Ready to fight the bandits off.
The second-floor bandits get up and start firing.
Sensing that Thomas needs to be more creative, he decided to use his PDA and quickly searched "Basic Grenades" then let it do the rest, whilst he focused on surviving.
As soon as the second-floor bandits stopped shooting, the first floors flaps open up to the mounted machine guns, firing soon afterwards.
The PDA finished loading, giving a blueprint to create "Junk 'nades" instead. To which he decided was good enough and had it uploaded to his head, with slight discomfort.
As he began focusing creating the grenades, using unspent ammo and some scrap he had on him, the PDA screen suddenly flashed, displaying a message:
WARNING! LEFT-SIDE ARMOUR CRITICAL!
DESTROYED IN 5 SECONDS!
"Oh, bollocks." Thomas mutters, as he finished creating a grenade. The truck itself lurched forward again and attempted to ram the engine off the track. But the attempt failed again, missing the locomotive.
4...
Thomas ran to the other side of the engine, ready to fight back again.
This time though, the truck was driving closer slowly. The bandits preparing to board the locomotive... But this gave Thomas an idea.
3...
When the truck was close enough, he used his gun to leverage the metallic window open. He armed and threw the junk grenade through the trailer window and slammed it shut, grinning.
2...
A few moments later, a sudden explosion occured in the truck's trailer, forcing the truck to back away suddenly, swerving slightly from the explosion, some of the bandits fell off to their death, either onto the railroad, under the trailer or being left in the wild.
1...
The locomotive itself also got shook from the explosion, tilting to the side a bit, whilst still going down the tracks with speed. Then the plating on the left-side of the engine fell off, unable to stay on the locomotive anymore. And the shaking caused the turret next to Thomas to fire off a few rounds in a random direction.
Thomas could hear Dew scream, mainly cussing him out for being so reckless.
The moustached man paid no heed, as he grabs hold of the cannon and begins firing onto the truck, still not enough to slow it down. Though it was easier to shoot some of the now-disorientated bandits down.
The trucker wasn't having any of that, and attempted to steer right away into the train, not giving much time for Dew to react. Thomas had to jump away from the potential impact zone.
The truck hit the side of the locomotive, the cab grinding against the train, attempting to push it off.
Slowly, the locomotive began tilting to the side again, as the truck pushes more and more. Thomas, witnessing this happening, let out a yell "Oh, no you don't! You tub o' lard!" As he jumps onto the truck cab, slipping and almost falling off of it.
He grabs hold of the mirror, bending it quite a bit, before forcing the passenger-side door to open. Climbing in and started punching the driver, over and over again whilst the truck began drifting out of control, slowing down as well.
"You stupid sunnava bitch!" Thomas states with utter venom towards the driver, as he kept punching them with his fists. Finally, the driver was dazed enough for him to grab hold of the driver-side door and opening it, pushing the dazed man out onto the road and killing him.
Thomas quickly grabbed hold of the wheel and jumped into the driver seat. Getting the truck under control, then honking multiple times.
Dew gets agitated from hearing the honking from the truck, so he stops controlling the engine, opting for it to slowly slow down, then ran outside the train cabin, "Shut the hell-," He spots the moustachioed man, "Thomas?!" He yells, surprised by seeing the man in the truck.
"Get your ass here and start driving-!" Thomas commands, before being interrupted by a bandit trying to climb into the cabin through the window. He took out his pistol and fired at the bandit, causing them to fall down and get run over, "-Start driving this damn truck! I need to scavenge the fuel from the tank and loot it!" He yells out.
Dew nervously looked, before running over towards the truck, as Thomas opened the driver side-door. Dew took a deep breath and jumped, managing to land into the truck, and onto Thomas.
The moustached mam then got out from under Dew and said with a smile, "Keep her parallel with the train." Then climbed out of the cabin, holding onto the side, dragging himself over to the trailer. Lifting himself up and onto the trailer.
There is a bandit who is focused on worrying about presumably dead friend, not noticing Thomas. The moustached man walked up to the bandit, gun in hand and placing it on the bandit's head.
The person freezes up, Thomas speaks up, "Well, I'll let you join your dead friend there, lad." before firing and killing the bandit.
Thomas spots a hatch and opened it. Looking inside, he sees all the bandits he managed to kill earlier with the grenade he had.
Thinking for a moment, he threw down the nearby bandit body down the hatch and watched, waiting if anyone would come out or at least peeked out from hiding.
Thinking that it was safe, he then jumped down himself.
Looking around, he started looting the scrap and ammo on the trailer, depositing the resources onto the locomotive by throwing a sack.
But suddenly he was attacked from behind, getting knocked into the wall plating, getting cuts and bruises and some bleeding on his leg.
He turns around and ducks, barely being killed by a shotgun shell aimed at his face. Rolling to the side, he shoots at the person's leg. Only to find that the bullet did nothing.
He was then suddenly kicked, knocking him to the floor with blood coming out of his nose and mouth. He feels himself being pinned down, his vision being too blurry to recognize what is going on. It took a few minutes for his vision to become clear. Finding that a gun was pointed at his head by an assailant.
He saw that the person wielding the gun was a woman with red messy hair, her mouth and nose being covered by a red-scarf. Wearing a brown, dirty, long coat.
Thomas looks on with fear, having recent memory caught up to him and witnessing the bullet do no damage to her. And to how she managed to effortlessly disarm him and pin him down.
For just a few moments, Thomas was frozen in fear, unable to find a way to escape death...
...
Yet luck seemed to have smiled on him. He spots a small boy hiding behind a cabinet, seemingly crying quietly whilst staring at the moustached man.
The boy had short blue hair, the tips of which get navy blue. He has a beige sweater and brown pants. His eyes are red though, as in colored.
Thomas moves his eyes to look at the boy, coughing a bit. Causing the one wielding the gun to look at him in confusion. But soon the woman decides to turn her head slightly, only for her eyes to widen at spotting the boy.
After a moment of hesitation, the woman lets out a sigh and places the gun down, deciding to walk over to the boy and comfort them.
The moustached man took it as an opportunity to get up, deciding to continue looting. Searching the place, he found a lot of scrap metal that he thought was useful and looted it. Even looting the guns that was used to attack the locomotive.
He searches more, until he suddenly finds a teddy bear hidden inside a weapon cabinet.
Being confused for a moment, he looks at the duo. The woman still comforting the boy, whilst the boy kept crying. Deciding that it was for the best (and that he generally disliked being cruel) He walked up to the duo.
"Oi." He spoke up, getting a glare from the woman, the boy hiding behind the woman. But he wasn't bothered, he instead gave the teddy bear to the woman, "Here. I found it in one of the cabinets." He says, before remembering something.
"Oh, and could you help me up the hatch? I need to turn stop the locomotive and give my buddy a signal. Alright?" Thomas asks. He gets no reply, only a softened glare, causing him to sigh, "Fine. I'll do it the hard way." He mutters.
He walks over to one of the cabinets and commands, "Move out of the way!" getting the duo to move to the other side of the trailer. He then pushes the cabinet over, it landing with a thud on the side. Which he uses to climb and reach up to the make-shift hatch.
Now back on top of the speeding vehicle, he jumped to the locomotive, grunting in pain from the damaged leg. Before turning to look at Dew and yelling "SLOW HER DOWN! IT'S SAFE TO FULLY LOOT!"
Dew nods in the truck cabin and waits for Thomas to get to the locomotive controls. Though, he looks with slight worry, as the moustached man is dragging himself to the controls.
Thomas, after a while, finally got to the controls. He sat down on a chair and gave the signal to slow down. As he put on the brakes on the locomotive. The iron wheels grind on the rails for a good while, as Dew slowed down in roughly the same speed.
Finally, both vehicles came to a stop, prompting Thomas to get up and use the shotgun he has as a crutch, making sure that it has safety on and the barrel end is capped to prevent dirt from getting in.
Dew climbed out of the truck and walked up to Thomas with slight concern, "You okay?" The faunus asks, getting a grunt, "I'm fine. There's quite a strong woman in there, protecting a kid." The moustached man states, "Seems they don't care about us, if we leave 'em alone."
"Well, we best have to take them with us then." Dew reasons, "We do that, we could slowly redeem our own self, still keeping or fixing our morals." "I don't care about that." Thomas interrupts, a bit peeved. But ultimately sighs and states, "But I will consider it..."
Dew looked at Thomas' form going to the trailer, opening up the door to the lower floor. Taking a look inside, he finds that he had interrupted a bonding moment between the woman and the kid.
The kid, looked scared but also curious, while the woman glared at the possibly crippled man. Not liking them being here.
But Thomas wasn't bothered by it. He sat down on the cabinet he pushed over, staying silent for a while.
The silence... was indeed deafening. But Thomas finally spoke up first, "I will be honest with you," he starts, "I could leave you two behind and all that crap. Going off on my merry way to another town-," The moustached man states, leaning back "-but I've got a feeling that my buddy outside would be a bit mad from doing that." Thomas explains, checking his pockets to see if he had looted anything he could drink. He found a canteen with strong alcohol, and decided to take a sip from it. "So..." He drawls out, leaning forward, before getting a small coughing fit, "I... I wished to know how you ended up here. How you got to this bad road here." he manages to mutter out, before continuing to cough.
The two other people gave no answer, getting a sigh from Thomas, "Alright then." He says, "I'll start with myself then." As he leans back again, "I used to live in a small village, out of contact of anyone." He starts making up a tale, making in believable, "Folks there only knew of Vale. Mainly because it wasn't needed to know of other places." He moves his arms and the gun, leaning his head on the stock, "Mainly because it wasn't needed to know of anything else. 'Cause you most likely weren't gonna leave the village anyway," He then snickers, "News days were always slow. Mainly reported about what happened inside, like a neighbour had his- ah-, Books stolen." He joked, though no one laughed.
"Well, one day my village fell to a bandit attack." The moustached man states, "They set up a bomb in our storage-," He interrupted his speech with splaying out his arms for moment, "went Ka-Blooie!" Then he placed his hands back onto the shotgun stock, "-and the entire village was gone. Nothing left."
The man then leaned back, "I spent a few weeks traveling. Scaled the mountains near Vale and even scaled the pitiful wall it has." He boasts with a smile, before a sudden frown appeared, "I roamed the city a few days, having to steal inorder to survive and afford for my... projects. Those being that would help me make money according to the law, but..." He paused, before letting out a sigh, "But I was forced to be a gang member of a gang that I..." His face briefly became angered, "Don't want to think about them." He said with venom, before his voice turned toward being more cold than angry, "The leader there ruined my life. So when I get to see him one day," He puts out his right arm, palm up and open, "When I get him one day," He balls his hand into a fist, "I'll stick my thumbs in his eyes and blind him, I'll shove a damn bayonet up his arse, then I'll give a kick straight between his legs, before finally choking the bastard with my damn bare hands."
... After a long silence, he unclenched his fists and pushed himself up, "But until then, I will be living in the outskirts, trying to right my wrongs." He states, leaning on the shotgun, before heading towards the exit. At the doorway, he turns his head and says, "Oh, and I'm giving you an option to come with me. Either join up with me or to be dropped off at the town we're headed." Then finally leaves the trailer, hopping down.
Thomas walks towards the locomotive, as Dew walked out of the cabin of the train, a frown still present. "So?... How did it go?" The bear faunus asks the man, curious if they were accepting or not.
"Both of them said nothing." Thomas replied, "I gave them a choice to do something, so we will need to wait for answer." Then a frown appeared, "If decision is not made by half an hour from now, we'll be leaving them behind."
Dew nods to that, before smiling. Albeit, slightly sadly, "Well, at least you are a bit better than the ones I had to work with." He says out loud, causing Thomas to scoff and mutter, "Fuck you too" to the faunus.
Then Thomas decided to check his PDA. Specifically, the time. He was thankful that he didn't need to search for the time function. Though he did frown when he saw the time. "7 o'clock..." He mutters, before looking at Dew, "Change of plans. We need to set up camp." He states, "We aren't making it to Nova Ferra on time. Tell our potential recruits the news as well."
Dew nods and hops off the railing, whilst Thomas climbs onboard himself and to the locomotive cabin, deciding to have a rest on one of the seats...
The bear faunus knocks on the trailer door, before opening it, "Yeah, uh... Not to bother the two of you, but there was a change of plans. We will be camping for the night." He said to the two, "I advise taking out some camping equipment or something from there and set up a tent for yourself... and, uh..." The faunus pauses, "I'll be getting some firewood. The mean moustached guy is also in the locomotive cabin, if you want to see him... for some reason." He says hesitantly, before leaving towards the nearby trees, equipping an axe along the way.
The woman and the child sit there, hugging each other. Mainly it's to comfort the small child, who's still frightened.
The woman whispers to the child, "It's okay. They left us alone for now." As she stroke the kids' back.
"Are... are they mean?" The child asks, their voice sounding quiet and weird sounding... As if an old school, low-quality speaker was used.
She pauses and stares at the door, before answering honestly, "I don't trust the two of them... But the bear faunus is genuinely friendlier and more caring than the human." She explains, but then frowns, "The human though... Whilst they do seem mean and hurtful, they also appear to be hiding or suppressing something." The woman squints, "Their soul seems... Sad, overall. Isolated, it seems. They must feel out of place, if I were to comment on it..."
The boy looks up at the caring woman, wondering what she means. But the woman smiles, having thought up of a plan, "Don't worry. I've got an idea on how to get us out of this. Maybe even get us a place to live." She says, causing the child's eyes to widen. "Really?" The boy asks, "Will we get a good home?"
The woman pauses, before patting the boy's head, "Hopefully." She whispers, before hearing noises outside...
Thomas was outside, using the toolkit he has to pry off some of the plating on the trailer.
When he notices that the two people that were inside the trailer had exited and were watching him, he decided to ask, "What is it?" his voice dripping with annoyance.
The boy decided to speak up, "Why are you working with hurt legs?" They ask, getting a surprised look from Thomas, mainly because of hearing the voice of the boy for the first time.
After debating if to answer the question, he finally did and said "It's because I'm the only engineer. On the entire locomotive..." He comments, whilst continuing to work, "Honestly, it's a miracle that it kept up with the fire fight before-hand. Considering it was using a truck's engine to move forward." He then pointed with one of his tools, a wrench, at the train engine "Just look at her for a moment. It's left-side armour fell off from the abuse. It genuinely just came off like a sheet of paper!" Then he gets back to work, still commenting "And if I even had a wagon at the back of the engine, I could store the extra scrap and turn it into either useful equipment or sell it for some cash and raw ammunition components."
"Raw ammunition components?" The woman asks with slight confusion, "What's wrong with regular rounds?" "Regular rounds are fine and all, and we don't have any sort of ammo manufactory, it's a good idea in short term to buy ammo..." He pauses, "But if we can produce our own ammo, it'd be much cheaper. As currently, that little fight we had had depleted a good amount of our ammo." He states, continuing to work, "Thankfully, it was a net-gain this time around, due to my quick thinking."
"But why don't you have aura?" The woman asks, "I'd assume you'd have one, considering your daring fight." as they lean against the trailer.
"That's because I was living under a rock, practically. I got no aura, 'cause I had no aura. Never got it." Thomas states with a deadpan tone, "How would I even answer that? I just never got mine. Now go bother Dew or something, I need to keep working here."
The woman nods, leaving Thomas alone, the boy following suit.
Thomas continues working, managing to finally peel off a plate from the trailer. Then getting back to work on pulling off more plates...
Dew's currently carrying a few logs over his shoulder, placing them infront of the truck. He deems it to be enough and starts chopping them with a axe he found in the truck.
It was then that the woman and the child walked up, where he stopped working for a bit, "Heya. What's wrong? Went to meet with Tom and he was being a bit aggressive?" He asked, wiping sweat off his forehead, "No surprise, considering his been through a lot."
"Yes..." The woman nods, then asks the bear faunus, "Why is there a white fang member working with a human?"
The bear quickly reacted, "Woah, woah there! No need for such interrogattion..." He pauses for a moment, then remembers he has to chop wood and continues to do so whilst talking, "But to answer your question, I'd consider myself as ex-member. Was left in a town to die, see?"
"Doesn't really explain why still." The woman states with a frown, getting a snort from the bear.
"That's because it was for our own survival." He responded, "Of course, first thing I did was threaten him, but considering how I only threatened and not killed him on the spot, it's a massive improvement." He continues chopping wood, "And when we both met, we understood that both of us are needed to survive." He finished and swung the axe down, leaving it stuck in the ground and turned to look at the scarlet woman. "Now, I know how it sounds stupid, but first we took the train. He said he arrived into toen with a truck-, even used the truck's engine for the locomotive-, but I don't understand why we just didn't use the truck." He lets out a chuckle, "Guess he had bigger plans, is all."
The boy decides to speak up, "Do you know what sort of plans, Mr. Bear?"
Dew bellows out a laugh, "Mr. Bear? I appreciate that. Helps me forget about my family name."
The woman raises an eyebrow, "Family name? Who are you associated with?" She asks with curiousity.
Dew cough at that, "Yeah, I'd rather not answer that... Look, all I say is this: It's associated with one of the weapon manufacturers, not SDC, but one of the more smaller competitors who are not afraid to get their hands dirty." He said with a serious face, "I originally joined the White Fang just for that reason, but it didn't come out that well... Well, atleast me and Tom there have a thing in common."
"What's that?"
"We both were criminals, but only because we mingled woth the wrong group. He was presumably stabbed in the back and I was left to rot. Both of us being disposed in someway." He answered plainly.
"Alright..." She nodded, "But... is there anything we can do to set up camp?"
"Ya could go huntin' for some fppd fpr us to cook," Suddenly, another voice interrupted their chat, "It'd be nice if you did so. I'd do it myself, but I've got biated legs." The voice of Tom, to be precise, havimg walked up to them.
"Do you have a gun?" The woman asks, to which Tom throws his shotgun to her.
"Does that answer yer question? Now get goin'. There's little daylight as is, and you'd rather not want to be stuck in the dark here, now would ya?" Tom asks rhetorically, "With 'em bandits and Grimm's and such. 'Cause the wildlife could make ya their food, if ya ain't careful." He says in a slightly threatening manner, scaring the little boy and getting a glare from the woman. Dew only sighs at this. They watch Tom slowly shuffle away, going back to work.
Dew looks at the woman, "He may not be hospitable, but he does look out for you. So don't worry much about it." He then looks at the boy for a moment, "Oh, uh... It's best for you to stay here, whilst she goes hunting." He says, then looks back at the woman, "I'll make sure Tom wouldn't do anything stupid to the little rascal."
The scarlet woman nods, slightly relieved but also still worried. She walks off into the forest, Tom yells "And bring my shotgun back later, alright!?" towards her, but gets no reply...
After we set up camp here, the woman brought some food back. A dead deer to be precise. She also skinned and cleaned it for us and Dew cooked the meat with the little tools we have available. Turns out he used to work as a chef a certain point.
No one spoke a word during the entire thing, each of us minding our own business... I personally didn't care what the others were doing at that point. I was busy fiddling with the PDA. I know that there is a possibility of me dying in this world, so I was looking up ways to escape such fate... No luck though...
The night was uneventful. All of us slept on the locomotive for now. There wasn't enough room for all four of us, so I slept outside the cabin... Dew and the boy protested at that, citing that I was injured and needed to heal. The bear also said that I was the only 'engineer' they have to fix and maintain the engine, me being out of commission could potentially ruin our chances of survival...
I insisted though. So I just slept on one of the side walkways of the engine... No, I actually slept inside the engine bay. Turns out replacing the engine for something smaller made a lot more room, enough to comfortably sleep in.
Tomorrow though, we will head off to Nova Ferra, hopefully arriving there in the middle of the day. I could potentially buy scrap and build some home-made guns for us to use... For our small group.
Speaking of, I assume right now that the woman and the boy will soon depart in Nova Ferra... They don't seem to have much of a reason to stick around right now...
But that's something to worry about tomorrow... I should sleep now as well, wake up early and all that...
A/N: Hello! Hope you enjoy the new chapter!
It's over 5k words!
