(A/N: Um, Grady has a bit of a foul mouth and mind, so some of the things he says and thinks are particularly vulgar and close-minded. If you take offense at this, please remember that this is only a story and not meant to harm its readers. But if it really bothers you, just tell me in a review and I'll try to fix things.)
"So it's a gem." Virginia said at last, over a small metal table set out in Malik's laboratory. Some spare chairs from other rooms nearby had been brought in especially for this meeting, as there had not been enough room for everybody to sit down. Her circle of friends was seated around her, with Jet unexpectedly conducting the course of their meeting. He and Clive had probably gone through a conversation similar to this one, but now Virginia and Gallows needed to be included as well. She was the leader, so it was her decision to ultimately select where they had to go.
"I guess we could go get it." Virginia said thoughtfully, genuinely interested in the idea but still a little hesitant. These three men around her were her responsibility and she had a duty to keep them safe. "It'd be dangerous. There's still a large bounty on our heads. Do you think we could make it all the way to Leyline Observatory without being spotted? I guess we could avoid all the towns, but we'd have to be really careful with the supplies…"
Clive offered his input brightly, as if he had thought up the information earlier and had kept it to himself. "Once we have acquired the crystal in question we could bring it over to my home for further study. There may be some properties within it that we are as of yet unaware of. Yes!" He clapped his hands together in a rather overt show of delight. "I find that to be a genuinely splendid idea!"
"You're only saying that because you want to see your wife and kid real badly." Gallows argued with a surprising amount of bluntness in his tone. "No matter how interesting or special this crystal is, it won't be worth anything to us if we get found out or killed over it. I don't want to die yet, I still got lots more stuff I need to do first." Clive grimaced at the accusation and hung his head slightly, a sure fire sign that Gallows had touched upon the truth.
Jet found the clarity of Gallows' words to be particularly astounding. Clive was on his side regarding the finding of the gem, but Gallows was against it? Perhaps he worried more than the others? Virginia looked like she was going to be sitting on the bench for this decision, but it was her word that counted most of all. Jet's eyebrows knitted together as he shot a purposeful glare at the Baskar sitting across the table from him. "So you're saying we should hide in this puny little tower until all the people who remember us either die or suffer amnesia? I'm not gonna do that. I'd rather have bullets flyin' at me rather than just sittin' here being bored to tears. We were looking for info, right? We just found some, and you don't want to look into this?"
"It's more complicated than that-" Gallows began to retort.
"I disagree." Clive cut in, backing Jet all the way. "Gallows, Virginia, please consider this. Say that for your entire life you had no idea where your true home lies. Suddenly you discover its location through a remarkable stroke of luck. Would you not wish to see it? This is what Jet is experiencing right now. This gem is his home. It is where his very soul came from. If you can put yourself in his situation, wouldn't you want to pursue this lead for as long as you possibly could?"
He was a little touched that Clive had chosen to support him, but also knew that it was most likely for his own selfish reasons. Nevertheless, it helped. "It's not really all like that." He assured the others gruffly. " It's just that I'd like to see it, is all. It might be worth a fair bit of money too."
"…We are running low on gella, food and supplies." Virginia informed them. "With things as they are, we'll have to move along to a town anyway. Look, Leyline Observatory is between two towns, Humphrey's Peak and Little Rock. If anybody knew we were going to head for that facility they'd expect us to move via Humphrey's Peak because that's where Clive comes from. It'd be safer if we took the long way and went from Sunset Peak station to Westwood, and then bypass Little Twister to go straight to Little Rock. We'll try and find this gem and take it back to Little Rock. It's a mining town, maybe somebody there might know something about it."
Their resident sniper looked to be moderately disappointed. It was a compromise, but not what he really wanted. "Even if we do bypass Little Twister you cannot deny that we would be travelling through the most dangerous area on Filgaia. That area is filled with bounty hunters. May I not appeal for the secondary route?" Clive hesitated, and then added with a heavy heart, "We do not have to enter Humphrey's Peak, but the lands around it are much safer to travel through. Let us please go from East Highlands station to the observatory and then onwards to Little Rock. I should like to avoid the rats nest of Little Twister for as long as possible."
"Well I guess the only thing we can do is ask for a show of hands." Virginia concluded after all the arguments had been made. One way or another, they had to leave Yggdrasil soon or resort to killing monsters for food. They didn't deserve to live that way after all they had been through. "Who wants to go get this crystal through the highlands and then Little Rock?" Clive studiously raised his hand alongside Jet, who appeared to be embarrassed to do such a thing. "Who wants to do the same except through Little Twister?" Nobody moved. Gallows appeared to be thinking. Virginia sighed. "Who doesn't want to go at all?"
"It's not that I'm afraid," Gallows muttered after a moment, "it's just that I don't believe that a soul can come from something as earthly as a gem. I was always told it was higher than that. More spiritual. Sorry if I sound pigheaded, but I just don't want us to get caught out over something that was never real to begin with."
"But we'll never know if it's real unless we look." Said Jet, his hands gently clenched on the surface of the table. "Risk-taking is part of our job, have you forgotten that?" He stood up suddenly, slamming his hands onto the table hard, making everybody flinch a little. "I'm gonna go pack." He called over his shoulder and he left the room, heading towards where he had been sleeping for the past few days.
Gallows frowned. "Even if we chose to stay here it looks like he'd still be going. We're a team, but that kid'll always be a loner. Pain in the ass…" He started to grumble as he got up himself.
Virginia watched her team break up and wander away. Clive excused himself politely and practically skipped with glee to the locker that held his sniper rifle. The pressure of being wanted outlaws was getting to them, to each and every one of them in their own ways. It was like cracks were starting to appear over the contract that bound them together, stronger than paper, blood or flesh. Yet these three elements in themselves were weak. The Maxwell Gang was not invincible, in combat or otherwise.
She was all too aware that the one thing that might finish them off for good could be themselves.
xxx
So, they were headed to that dead scientific laboratory. It was a shell, nothing more than a meaningless foundation. This computer was equally useless, because he already fucking knew that! His foot threatened to lash out and shatter the monitor's flickering glass screen, but the eavesdropping device the damn brat had set up might have been a two-way street. The drifters on the other side of the world might have cause to wonder why the computer within earshot sounded like it was busting itself up inside. Best to lay off, for now. Nothing screamed innocence as much as inaction. It had been a hard business of sorts for him to get this far, he could afford to be lazy.
Grady could hear their voices from seemingly a fair distance away, faint and hollow, like he was using a drain pipe as a listening aid. His mother had beaten him hard and true for the sin of eavesdropping and he would be lying to himself most blatantly if he didn't acknowledge the sense of guilt that he felt. He had been as proud as a parson on the Sabbath day when he walked into this clan of crazy devil worshippers and promptly shoved the whole lot of them under his boot, it had been easy now that their leader had been sent to Hell. He had never felt so much as a twinge of guilt when he had made the lads and lasses miserable, because that was part of his job.
The bastards probably deserved it, anyway.
He felt that putting the fear of God into their useless little heads was his ultimate responsibility as their new unofficial leader. They had bought him like an item of interesting commodity, a drifter who could slit a throat with only the barest notions of movement at all, and with a tenacity that only a mad terrier could surpass. They had asked him to murder the ones who had taken the life of their most exalted leader and they had been willing to pay any comission that he could have asked of them. But all Grady wanted, and would ever really want, in truth, was a promise of good meals and a roof over his head, along with any little bits or pieces of help that they could offer him in regards to capturing the Maxwell Gang.
It had been as easy as pie, and all he had to do was work his way up from there. The contract had been forged by his pen and under his terms from day one. The Ark of Destiny had been a multicellular organism that had had its heart ripped out and its head cut off. What the Ark had come to realise was that needed justice to be the tincture that would restore it back to life and wholeness once more. Justice would give them a new hope and maybe, just maybe, the Ark might thrive again. It wasn't pleasant, but they understood that Mr. Tyler Grady was the ugly prosthetics needed to survive. They took his abuse with good humor because they so desperately needed the small glimmer of hope that lay within him.
Sometimes, hope can be such a deadly, dangerous, vicious, evil thing.
"Zephyr flies on wings of black, its bitter horseman laughs as he drives a tamed God into a mountainside." Grady chuckled lowly to himself, listening to the voices from the other side dropping away, one by one. He pushed his feet off the table and stood up, his line of sight attracted to the drying blood on the Ark's polished floor. His floor. He'd have to make somebody clean that up soon before it coagulated fast like glue, one of the lasses maybe, or that piddling brat who had spilled the blood in the first place. He would have liked to have seen the boy clean the bloodstains away with his tongue.
But he had more pressing matters to attend to for the time being. He couldn't forget that his purpose here was to take care of the white-haired brat, the young cunt and the two older blokes, one white, the other lightly coloured. He knew how to take care of all of them. Lord, he knew.
The mention of the gem, the so called 'Heart of Filgaia' intrigued him greatly, for more reasons than one. He could probably get there before the Maxwell Gang did and wait for them with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, but Grady had done his homework devotedly and liked to savor each job, a little bit at a time. Only the truly daft worked alone. He was going to pull a few strings for this job.
A few heartstrings, too.