2017-04-07: Thirty Seconds Left of Life

• Log: Thirty Seconds Left of Life
• Cast:Jude Moshe, Cassidy Cain
• Where: Somewhere between Adlehyde and Lacour
• Date: April 7, 2017
• BGM: Nagai Nagai Yume no Naka no Utage - Yoshimori Makoto (Baccano! OST)
• Summary: Directly connected to the events depicted in The Art of the Swindle. Jude Moshe boards the High Noon Express from Adlehyde to Lacour to meet his partner, Cassidy Cain, knowing that at some point, it's going to get robbed....except that he is unaware that the blonde troublemaker has made sure that the train gets hit by /two/ bandit gangs, instead of just one, resulting in a massive firefight between the rival camps in their separate efforts to rob a metallic beast cutting through the continent in irresponsible speeds. With the warring factions busy killing one another, and other drifters interfering, it should be easy enough to get what she is after, but they do not anticipate getting trapped in the middle, putting them in a situation that's just a /touch/ deadlier than they would like, and of course, because Cassidy is involved, that's just the /beginning/ of their problems. And through it all, as things go from bad to worse, the damning realization that this mistake that they've acknowledged and laughed about is bigger than they initially imagined.

---

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

THE EVENING BEFORE

Whenever Jude Moshe, investigative reporter for the Guild Gazette, manages to slip into the lobby of his hotel, he would find the innkeeper lifting his hand for his attention. Situated behind a large oak desk and surrounded by keys, the balding gentleman in a gray waistcoat and black slacks adjusts his spectacles when the red-haired journalist comes closer, though whatever he has to say to him is unceremoniously interrupted by a very loud sneeze. Wheezing an apology around his thick mustache, the innkeeper blows his nose noisily on his handkerchief.

"Damn all this dust and...and...cuccoo guano," he tells him around the folds of the clean linen square in his grasp. "I swear to God, I'll never leave this lobby again." Stripping his gloves off, he reaches into the desk and hands Jude a plain white envelope. "This came for you this afternoon."

Whenever opened, he'd find a plain white card, with a message etched in black, flowing script; he has had a chance to learn in the days following their sudden partnership that Cassidy Cain, for all of her more overt eccentricities, has surprisingly beautiful penmanship - a practiced hand that, once upon a time, has had some manner of appreciation for the written word and its inherent artistry.

If you had to rob a train, how would you do it?

Enclosed are two tickets, one for the main line leaving Adlehyde in the early morning, and a transfer mid-way to the Kingdom of Lacour.

Any additional inquiries would have been for naught. At some point in the day, the blonde hurricane had already left the town, doing god-knows-what in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of night.

No worries there, at least. There is that famous addage about bad pennies, after all.

THE HIGH NOON EXPRESS
MIDWAY BETWEEN ADLEHYDE AND LACOUR
RIGHT ABOUT NOW

The transfer station isn't as crowded as expected for the time of day, and the day of the week. While a few passengers wait for their turn to board, he can glimpse some activity at the very end of the line.

Trains are the same everywhere; the front of the line that houses the massive engine, a couple of passenger cars, one dining car and the end of the line in which goods being shipped from one end to another are stored. Chances are there is some of that, it can't be helped. Jude would be able to witness sacks of grain, the day's mail, several crates and others being loaded up, but it is the very last that is the most interesting. Railroad workers are presently unlinking the storage car to make room for another, slipped in through an intercepting track that runs perpendicular to the station's main line. Its doors are locked, barricaded on the outside by steel grilles, and there are four visible riflemen dressed in black suits, two in the front, and two at the back, all exuding the unmistakeable air of professional security.

Those boarding are ushered in by the conductor, and as he passes through the passenger cars and its separate compartments, he'd find varying individuals from all walks of life - a family of four, its young mother attempting to soothe her colicky toddler, three men dressed in rough drifter's gear smoking and playing cards. Two sisters traveling together, twins, who eye Jude appreciatively as he passes before they turn to giggle among themselves. A businessman who immediately shuts the door to his compartment, in case the reporter has any grand ideas of joining him, before settling in and clutching a case greedily in his sweaty palms. Those sharp amber eyes would catch a chain and a cuff, linking the man to whatever it is he's carrying.

An old Baskar shamaness sits in a compartment by herself, her manner of dress wholly unrepentant of its reflection of her culture. Watery gray eyes follow his wake, but she otherwise says nothing.

Whenever he steps into the dining car, he would find it sparsely populated - a group of young friends have somehow crammed themselves in the first two of the booths, and the well-dressed bartender is busy polishing glasses. At the very end is a woman's hat, small and fringed with delicate ribbon work, tilted slightly forwards. It is peeking from the top of an unfurled, but familiar newsprint - THE GUILD GAZETTE is splashed across the top of the very front page, held up by elegant fingers encased in gloves.

" 'Every man must leave a track, and it might as well be a good one'," quotes the obscured woman behind the newspaper, pulled straight out of one of his articles; the brogue he is expecting is gone, as if it never existed, replaced instead by an accent he can identify easily from Adlehyde's southernmost plantations. Her head lifts, gold-green eyes peering at him from the top of her copy of the Guild Gazette, situated on a pale face framed by red-gold curls. "Riveting stuff, Mr. Moshe. As always, you don't disappoint....and ah am so ever a big fan of yours."

She extends a hand across the table, mischief in full force within those eyes; she has eschewed her usual leathers and linens in favor of a cotton blouse and a long skirt, with laced up lady's boots underneath. Stylish, delicate lace fringes suggest some capital, and while she isn't dressed expensively enough to give off the convincing facade of a traveling heiress, they do imply a good amount of funds. "Miss Amelia Hux-Stratton," she introduces. "You wouldn't deny a lonely young lady the pleasure of your company now, would you? Especially when she's so desperate for an autograph?"

There is a blare of the horn, and the violent expulsion of steam and exhaust. Giant metallic wheels grind into the tracks underneath, gradually picking up speed as the High Noon Express pulls out from the station to tackle the long road to Lacour.

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

How would you rob a train?

                                                   B e f o r e                                                     

Jude Moshe is greeted into a chicken-free world with the sound of an agonized and belabored sneeze.

"Whoa, hey, watch where you point that thing, it's loaded," is of course Jude Moshe's easy-going response to his unceremonious welcome to the sanctity of his hotel, arms held aloft, palms faced forward, in a gesture of joking surrender -- joking in a way that masks the subtle once over he gives himself to make sure he -wasn't- a tragic victim of collateral damage. He -just- got this coat all fixed up. He can't be held responsible for what would happen if it got ruined -again- so soon.

"Yeah, it's... I don't really know what it is out there, to be honest. Sure as hell not my problem, anyway." Jude: ever-selfless. "But, you know what they say about expecting trouble when you least expect it," continues the redhead conversationally, his words of wisdom like a prophecy unto themselves as he plucks up that envelope between two gloved fingers. "Get too used to it here, and those birds might just get half a mind to barge in here..."

He opens the envelope, peers at the card inside. His sentence trails for a perilous half-a-second.

"... and bring the trouble to you."

That card is tucked away; Jude meanders off to his room as easy as he came, hands locking behind the back of his head. Any attempt to pry is just met with the easy wave of a hand and a simple excuse:

"My secret admirer's trying to court me with sweet nothings. What a headache, right?"

And that door shuts. Additional inquiries are for naught. But it doesn't stop him from penning his own message in elegant script. He rolls it up. Prepares to send it.

He knows it'll get where it needs to go.

                                          S l i g h t l y   B e f o r e                                            

It isn't Jude Moshe that first greets that darling Southern belle that Cassidy Cain has forged herself into.

It's knock on the window nearest her.

As Jude Moshe wanders his way leisurely through the train cars, sidestepping unruly families, giving Drifters a deliberately wide berth to suggest he finds them intimidating -- offering a charming little half-salute to those sisters with his index and middle fingers before finding his greeting rudely cut off by the slam of a sweaty, frantic businessman's compartment door, bow his head respectfully to the shamaness -- Cassidy Cain's world is filled with the sound of tapping glass. If she should turn, if she should look, she'll see it:

It looks like a bird, by all accounts, from that distance. Head cocked curiously, clinging tenaciously onto the window of the train. If she gets closer, she'll find that bird is not made of feathers and flesh, but metal and gears, the surprisingly lifelike motions of the small automaton undercut by the whirr and click of every motion. Around its right foot, is a simple, rolled piece of paper. If she dares open the window and take it, she'll find a lone, two-word message scrawled eloquently across a vast expanse of white. An answer, delivered right on time:

I wouldn't.

The 'bird' will fly off unless stopped, with plentiful amount of time for Cassidy to find her seat, prepare herself accordingly as she needs, for...

                                                      N o w                                                        

... for Jude Moshe's world to be filled with the sound of a cultivated young woman who is very much the definition of uncultivated.

The corner of his lips quirk in the faint hint of a smile.

"Well, that's just me," he says leisurely as his trajectory subtly shifts, as if drawn to the table by the woman's glowing praise -- and not, of course, that he had intended to go that route all along. "I always aim to rivet."

The smile that becomes of that brief quirk is one lopsidedly charming, like the kind you'd offer to put your best foot forward for an intriguing stranger. It comes as easily as the way he insinuates himself at her table as if he just always belonged there, settling into the seat opposite hers with a practiced ease. "I like your accent. From the south, right? To be honest, it's a pretty refreshing change of pace. My partner has this lovely voice, from somewhere I can't quite place... but I'd be lying if I didn't say sometimes it sounded like someone was pulling a mandrake out by the roots."

If his smile has a slightly teasing edge to it, it's probably just because he's joking with a stranger and not ribbing an acquaintance. Right?

He even laughs, good-naturedly, before taking her hand in his, mischief met with that devil-may-care look from the redheaded man as he gives her hand the warm squeeze of someone meeting a smitten fan. "Miss Amelia Hux-Stratton it is then," he echoes back. "I'd introduce myself, but I think you've already got me beat there. So, considering you still want me around even after my reputation precedes me, I guess I could find it in my heart to stay and see about that autograph. Wouldn't want to break the heart of someone dressed up so nicely."

Those words are chosen carefully despite the careless way he delivers them; a pen produced from his pocket, he brings it tapping against the surface of that table, in quiet offering in the midst of that violently steamy screech -- if only she might give him something to sign with.

"I'm surprised, though," he continues on as the train starts to move. As their fates are sealed. "Seeing a delicate lass," definitely not deliberate, "like yourself riding a train by her lonesome. These are pretty dangerous times -- I hear trains like these have been a target for unsavory types, recently." His head tilts, amber eyes glinting with subtle amusement.

"Definitely not the kinda trouble you want to get tangled up in, if you're in any way the sensible type."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

The messenger bird was certainly a curiosity; for something so complicated and so efficient, it was clearly not inexpensive. By her initial accounting of Jude Moshe, she knew he liked to be comfortable, indicative by the choice of hotels and the way he dresses himself; he took his time, and the more a person made him hurry, the more languid he becomes. She had thought that it would be the same with his professional life - he'd write whatever he wanted, get it published whenever he wanted, whenever he had the time to send his scribbles off. But the automaton's presence in his life is almost incongruous, an ill-fitting puzzle piece to the effortless, nonchalant veneer he exhibits to the rest of the world.

It's curious, certainly, but it's a mystery that she leaves alone. For all that she never hesitates to interject herself on the path of others, especially when she wants something from them, she has been surprisingly respectful of the man's privacy.

His answer burns in the pocket of her skirt, but given that Jude himself is well-versed in keeping someone's attention, she lets that part of him draw out the role. There's a delighted smile as she squeezes his hand, a hint of teeth, as delicate and refined as the lace fringing of her blouse, nothing like her usual - those edged expressions that cut like knives and blind those who witness them. "That's correct, Mr. Moshe," she says. The note that suggests that she is impressed is genuine. "Did you spend much time there? Ah do miss it, you see. Ah've been traveling for only a few months now but ah miss seeing green out my window when ah wake every morning. Sand is so..." She waves a hand dismissively. "Bland. No color at all. And it gets everywhere. Ah really don't know how you do it, gentlemen like you who travel constantly."

He mentions his partner; it earns him a laugh, a light flutter of fingertips at the base of her collar. "Oh? Ten seconds in the conversation and you're trying to make me jealous already? Then again, ah suppose a face like yours can't help it. She sounds lovely, your partner, even with the horrendous accent. But ah hope you'll be generous to mah more unfortunate brethren, Mr. Moshe." Eyes glitter with good humor underneath long lashes. "After all, ah can hardly expect any of them to be as perfect as me."

With him seated, and pen in hand, the woman folds the paper, with the article she is reading and his byline facing up. Placing it on the empty table, she slides it towards him, for him to sign. "Much obliged."

'Amelia' crosses her legs by the ankles underneath her skirt, turning her attention to the rolling scenery whenever he scribbles onto the paper, eyes lidding in a languid fashion as tracks give way to more of the sand she was just lamenting about earlier, gaze catching distant rock formations and silhouettes of towering cactii. "Dangerous, yes," she says. "Ah won't lie, Mr. Moshe. At the first sign of trouble, my first instinct is to hide always. After all, what can a poor young woman like myself do against deadly bandits, especially when ah've no weapons on my person. And do you see this?" She flaps her wrist, laughing lightly. "Ah bet my poor bones can't take to deliver a single punch."

She rolls her head back and sighs. "But then again, the act of riding the train without an escort could arguably be considered an insensible thing to do." She gives him a sidelong glance, and a lopsided smile. "So ah suppose ah should count my blessings and thank God that you've obliged to keep me company. You're a right gentleman, Mr. Moshe."

After all, he didn't have to come.

Whenever he's finished signing the paper and hands it back to her, a velvet bag is waiting for him as the young lady tucks away her precious autograph. Lying on his side of the table, its dark folds accentuate the outline of a rectangular object, slim and flat, but with some heft whenever he picks it up.

"Buying you tickets tae see the country and a present on top of it," she murmurs. "Your writing must be made out of gold." She gives him a wry look at that, but a hint of that sharp, brilliant smile returns. "Should I take that as a warning not tae do whatever it is you think I'm gonna do?"

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

He takes to this with remarkable ease. Part of it is unsurprising -- given how easily everything seems to wash off the man's back, him taking her remarkably different appearance in stride is more than likely just expected.

But Jude Moshe commits to the act with such an earnest conviction to the lie that it might as well be real. That they might as well be strangers, meeting for the first time under the auspices of a lone newspaper article. That she is nothing more than a simple but well-to-do Southern belle, conversing gleefully with a man she proclaims to be an avid fan of.

That he's nothing more than a simple journalist, graciously occupying the time of a rare admirer of his work.

"I spent a handful of months out there a while back," he explains matter-of-factly at her wonderings. "I was a bit greener back then. Then again, so was everything else. Never thought someone could miss grass so much." I really don't know how you do it, she says, with that dismissive handwave. Jude leans in with the faint creak of his chair; one gloved hand lifts to create a wall in the open space between them, like someone confiding a deep, dark secret.

"All it really takes is being too damn foolish to be able to be satisfied with just the pretty sights." A beat passes.

"And alcohol. Man's best friend."

That smile broaches briefly into the domain of a grin at that, leaning back once more into his chair as he hooks the leather-encased thumbs of his hands into his pants pockets. It's a look of easy amusement that fades into something more haphazardly apologetic at those light-hearted condemnations. "Sorry, sorry. I really can't help myself sometimes. I just hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, miss." His head tips in lieu of a hat to doff, a little half-show of languid respect. She sounds lovely. Even with the horrendous accent. "How do I put it?" wonders the redhead aloud, head cocked slightly towards the left as he looks towards the window that bird had once occupied.

"She makes me want to brag and vent about her all in the same breath. Can't get that kinda sentiment just anywhere, right?"

The sigh that accompanies that is somehow both exasperated and wistful at the same time, exhaled deeply as if just to let the conflicting impulses mingle for as long as they can stand. His eyes filled with an certain expectancy, his dark brows lift as she goes on -- even as he lifts a hand to press fingertips against the surface of that folded newspaper.

"I'll try my best not to hold it against them," he offers, as he drags the paper towards him with only the barest exertions, letting the barest friction of the table do most of the work for him. "No promises, though."

A lone wink, and the man diligently tapes the tip of his pen to the paper's smooth surface, letting the beaded ink smudge faintly across the crisp material. His signature comes with a calm flourish of someone who's spent years of their life making a habit of signing it. "Oh, you'd be surprised," he asides as he writes, "at what people can do when they have to. The stories I could tell -- they might stop your heart to hear 'em. I bet you could manage to stop -my- heart if you ever had half a mind to." He smiles that charming smile of his, slides that paper back over with the same, gradual, lackadaisical motion. "Might just be worth the price of admission to see it."

The paper, signed simply:

To my admiring Amelia,
May your spirit remain as sweet and steadfast,
as your accent.
~Jude Moshe

He doesn't even blink.

He just takes the bag like it was her own price of admission, drawing it towards him as easily as if it was always a part of his personal affects -- like it always belonged there.

"What can I say? I've got some generous secret admirers, so I guess I'm doing something right," is his response to her murmured words as that accent drops with perfect timing, his smile the kind that one uses when sharing a secret with a close confidante.

Should I take that as a warning not tae do whatever it is you think I'm gonna do?

"Nope," is his answer, without so much as a beat missed as he parts the opening of that velvet cloth, to casually glance within. "Just not the way I'd do things. You do you. You're good at it. And besides..." He looks up, back towards her, something wry on the fringes of his tone.

"... you gave me tickets to see the countryside, and a present on top of it. So I probably owe you a helping hand now, anyway."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

"Oh, mah word, Mr. Moshe, you certainly do exaggerate," Amelia tells him without skipping a beat, though that edge of mischief visibly grows. "You don't strike me as the type to be all that foolish." The smile that she quells is more implied around those glade-green eyes, watching him fall so seamlessly in the facade they're weaving together in the mostly-vacant confines of the dining car. But should she expect any differently from someone who writes for a newspaper? He could hardly be an effective newsman without an appreciation for drama, and being able to spin what is given to him and breathe fresh life onto it. It's a kind of artistry in itself.

Though he goes on about the alcohol, and the facetious apology towards his severity towards women who are less than perfect. Perhaps she has spoken too soon about Jude not being a fool, given the practiced and skeptical winging of a pair of graceful brows upward. But it isn't long until she's laughing again, shaking her head and giving him a look that is both incredulous and exasperated, as if disbelieving that a creature such as him exists in this world, much less sitting across from her. If nothing else, maintaining the display is easy; this is a sentiment that she and her blonde alter-ego share.

"Well, except perhaps the drinking," she amends. "And maybe this partner of yours. Contradictory impulses in the same breath?" She tsks quietly, the sound leaving between the precise clasp of teeth. "It sounds complicated, Mr. Moshe - maddening at best and downright deadly at worst, but it could be mah own biases talking." Her brows waggle teasingly from under a fringe of fire-and-gold tresses. "In the event ah become very serious in my attempts to get you to leave her for me."

His observation, while done out of jest, rings true to a point. Everything else might be farcical, but in that, at least, she has no doubt that he means what he says. "Well, you've very generous with your faith in mah survival instincts," she tells him. "But ah've not worked a day in mah life, and ah certainly don't get in the habit of embroiling myself in the kinds of dangerous and exciting situations a man of the world like you must have experienced well before ah could even read. Ah'll only disappoint you, ah think. Ah hope you'll find it in your gentleman's heart to forgive me."

The paper dedication has those eyes ticking down to read the words scrawled next to his article, and while an accomplished actress in her own right, there are some things she can't help. His handwriting catches her eye, but only because of her blatantly unrepentant need to appreciate beautiful things for what they are, and her head tilts faintly as she inspects the words and the ink that has given them life without even being conscious of it. The sentiment itself, and the implications of it, barely touches her lips, though he would find silent laughter buried in those expressive irises when she finally looks up to face him.

There had been hopes for a spirited argument, in the event that he does try to talk her out of it, but he returns her statement with a quip and she reaches somewhere in the pockets of her skirt to retrieve her pack of cigarettes, shaking out a slim stick. Like a lady, she oh-so-delicately lets it slip between her lips with a lift of those gloved fingers. The compliment earns him a warmer smile; it's a subtle thing, something more felt in the air than visible on the line of her mouth, and easily missed if one was paying less attention.

You're good at it.

"We'll see," she tells him. The dice had been tossed a few weeks ago; they have yet to fall and reveal her fortune. Only now, she isn't alone, and whatever she has accounted for might not be prepared for the reporter's presence.

When the velvet folds part, he'd find a slim cigarette case - of polished nickel and gunmetal fringed with silver, near-invisible runes etched on the underside of the cover once opened. There is no other design; it is elegant and masculine in its simplicity and a match for his tastes in clothing.

Should he look up at her, he'd find her watching him, a smile quirked around her cigarette.

"I wouldnae count myself as any kind of..." She gestures vaguely with one hand. "Fortune teller. Whatever kind of ridiculousness that makes people believe they can read stars or cards or whatever else. But I'm nae discounting the fact that one day, I might have tae shoot you. So it would be verra helpful, luv, if you told me what side your favorite pocket is in."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

It is a performance. For who seems an open question, considering just how empty the dinner car very nearly is. But it is a setting that would convince any passerby; two people, in their element, bantering as naturally as a shark takes to swimming. It's there in the way he defensively holds up his hands as she levels that skeptical stare upon him, palms up in defeat. In the way he heaves a helpless, "Maybe I said too much there," with the sly slice of a smile.

"Apologies if I ruined that ideal image you had of me, Miss Amelia."

Natural, and necessary.

It's with the cluck of his tongue that the journalist first answers those quiet musings from his fiery-haired companion. The words come soon after, with the shut of amber eyes and the shake of his head. "Honestly? I think deadly's the best I'm gonna be able to hope for, when all's said and done. Who can even say what the worst would be in that kinda situation?" He lifts a leg to cross over the other leisurely, ankle resting against his knee as his elbows press into the back of his chair in a much more relaxed position to contrast the prim and almost expertly exacting posture of his companion.

"But then again, that's part of her charm, too," he asides, with a certain gravity to his words, matched by the brief, sympathetic flicker of his expression, "... so you've got your work cut out for you. But who knows? Might be nice, to have someone swoop in and save me from her clutches before it's too late."

It's a suggestion as inscrutable as his expression, one that lasts only as long as it takes for disappointment to, tellingly, take hold of his stare when she confides her less-than-suitable skillset towards peril. For a brief moment, that 'man of the world's' gaze returns to that window, lips pursed faintly and inscrutably. "... Huh. I don't know whether to ask just how young you are or just how old you think I am. Either one seems like it can only end poorly," he declares with a sorry sigh, as if -that's- the real source of that flicker of lament in the amber of his eyes. That let down never quite reaches his eyes, though -- even as he presses a hand to his chest. "Well, regardless, I'm sure I'll be able to forgive you. One day. 'Til then... I guess I'll just have to do my best to make sure you stay out of trouble during this train ride. I practically feel obligated, at this point."

Obligated, indeed.

There it is -- that silent laughter, that little acknowledgment of the meanings behind that dedication; if he notices it, he doesn't say so -- not directly. No -- it's there in all the little things. A conversation without words, shared with lifted brows and the hint of pearly white teeth in the small sliver of his grin. Laughter. In their own ways.

It's a sense of ease that permeates him right down to even the shift of conversation -- where it goes towards places where conflict seems inevitable. Instead, he just defuses it as if unwilling to even expend the effort for a fight on a matter like this. It begs the question -- if this isn't his tipping point, then what is? It's a question that Cassidy, of all people, is liable to find out sooner than later.

"Cigarettes, huh?" he wonders aloud as she takes up one of those sticks, daintily as can be. "Not very ladylike. Or maybe that's a new custom in the South?" The words are teasing, abandoned as quickly as they're delivered in favor of what he finds inside that bag. A case -- engraved subtly. Understated in a way that in no way dilutes the style of it. His hands slip inside the velvet confines of that bag, gloved fingertips drawing that case out and flipping it open to feel the faint etchings upon the underside with a careful, curious brush. His gaze is scrutinizing with an experienced and observant eye -- perhaps the eye of a worldly man who's grown accustomed to a certain level of comfort and sophistication in their lives.

"Huh," he murmurs as he looks up, head cant toward the right. "Can you believe I've never had one of these before?" She talks of fortunes and other preposterous things. Of shooting him one day. "Ouch," is his kneejerk response, hapless in its casual defeatism. "A bit too fatalist, coming from you. Maybe we ought to get your fortune read, just to make sure you won't be putting a bullet in me anytime soon." He considers, weighing that case against his palm. He doesn't quite answer that question.

"But then again... I guess that's a reasonable price for a case this nice."

And then he answers -- by tucking the case away in the interior breast pocket of his jacket -- the left side. Over his heart.

"So," he continues on, his voice conversational, natural, and unhesitating despite the exact context of where they are,

"If you had to rob a train, how would you do it?"

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Her work cut out for her. To swoop in before it's too late for him.

His inscrutable stare at that moment earns him another glance; it is brief, but in its own way telling with the way those green-and-gold eyes slide towards him in the corners while her face is turned out toward the rolling scenery with all the open wonder a young woman out on her own for the first time could allow. Good humor remains, but undercut by something else that looks like an incomprehensible thing that borders on melancholy, contrasting sharply with whatever bits and pieces he has managed to glean about her - and it is undeniable that he has, for all of her mischief; she wouldn't be allowing any of this, if she didn't find him either fascinating, refreshing, dangerous, or all of the above...and he would be neither of these, if he wasn't sharp. Much like his bird, that small glimpse of whatever lurks underneath the calcified layers that crust the beating, molten core of her is an ill-fitting puzzle piece that doesn't belong, but exists anyway in the overall tableau she presents to the world, in turn.

But that shared laughter, however buried under the subtlest of tells, is enough to banish all of it away, brushfire to kindling and reducing that glimpse to ash, to be remembered in all of its befuddling glory later, or not at all.

As much as she wishes for conflict - and she does, there is no question, she is drawn to it like moth to flame most days (as Morgan Newkirk would attest in his latest gambit, where she practically made a beeline for the person who was most openly hostile towards her presence) - his unwillingness to rise to whatever bait she presents doesn't cull any hint of frustration, or a loss of temper. If Jude has a limit, she has yet to find it, and chances are, she will probably be the first to discover it, given their status as partners and traveling companions. But neither is she in any hurry to do so; he gives her enough to chew on with the razor-edges of his own wit that it is less exasperating coming from him than it would any other.

"Ay, that actually is surprising," she tells him, when he confesses that he has never owned a cigarette case before. "What do you know? I learn something new about you every day. Lucky me, that. Just means you will nae be re-gifting it or anything, in the event that any mate of yours has a birthday or wedding or sommat."

His open wince is enough to hide whatever surprise he may have had when she delivers that coup de grace, at the real purpose of the thing she has given him. Whether successful or not, he would find that familiar smile turned up to its full glory, sharp as a scalpel and as brilliant as the dawn and risen from the crimson horizon fashioned by carefully applied lipstick. "I call it the Panic Button," she tells him simply, eyes wandering to watch the passing scenery once more. "Dinnae I tell you once, the prattle about patience and experience? Experience is talking now, luv. Now I wonder..." It doesn't last long, her stare moves back to him, whatever expression had been there replaced by that familiar, brimming, unapologetic humor. "If you believe in curses, also, with what you're so willing tae throw me at the mercy of some Southern crone that'll just point a bony finger at me and say sommat about how I'll meet my end in three days."

Her lighter is out, and as she flicks her thumb to bring a small flame to light, heat burning away at the air above it, a brow curls upwards when she watches him take the case, and slip it over his left breast pocket. It takes everything in her to quell a sudden laugh, however it wells up and burns like a furnace within her ribs.

"What do you know, luv," she says, lighting up her cigarette, in open defiance of genteel Southern lady norms. "I was right about you." Eyes twinkle from underneath long, dark lashes. "Deep down, you are a romantic."

It was inevitable, in the end, that he would turn her query back on her - after all, she was purportedly the expert. Taking a leisurely drag of her cigarette, she tilts her head towards him.

"Tricks of the trade, luv," she reminds him. "It's like a magician and his secrets. But I think you know me well enough tae anticipate, at the very least, that I like tae live dangerously."

And like a magician, the words are like a spell. Because the moment they leave her lips, a hole suddenly blows the dining car door wide open, and a few, heavily armed bodies pour in.

A FEW MINUTES AGO, AT THE FRONT OF THE LINE

There are many ways to rob a train, but given the nature of the gang he rolls with, Carter 'Kid' Bartlett has elected to take the front.

With the blue-and-black scarf flapping around his arm, colors chosen by the Mercy Killers, he flies off his horse with a loud, victorious whoop, landing on the side of the first passenger car, the closest to the front where the massive engine of the High Noon Express resides. The rest of his party follow suit, bodies with like colors landing on the sides of the other cars, horses left on the wayside to be gathered up by other members of Jeremiah Black's gang; for all of their disregard for human propriety, property and life, they are simply too valuable a resource in the wilds of Filgaia to simply be discarded, and while Jerry was brutal, he was not wasteful.

The aim of every train robbery, for anyone experienced and savvy enough to embark on such a dangerously risky enterprise, is to control the train. And if you want to control the train, you want to control the engine.

And that is precisely what Kid is going to do.

AROUND THE SAME TIME, AT THE BACK OF THE LINE

Lenny 'Squints' Monroe had been looking forward to an easy take.

With all the information provided to him and his gang by Cassidy Cain, and a sizeable capital besides to go into planning and profit, it was easy for him and his to round around the back of the train, past the main storage car and towards the secured storage that had been left sandwiched between it and the dining car. The sight of them coming around does not go unnoticed by the professional security armed to protect the contents of that mysterious car against all comers, and a massive gunfight ensues immediately, the loud crack of ARMs and sorcery-augmented projectiles leaving streaks of crimson blowing in the wind as bodies are savagely shredded by the sudden onslaught. A few of Lenny's people die, but they have them by numbers.

Once boarded, the plan, from their end, is relatively simple - to rig charges on the thick, metal links attaching the car to the rest of the train, blow it, and leave the rest still running while Physics did its work to slow the car, as well as the storage compartment behind it - a more efficient way of robbing it, really. They even have the wagons on standby.

Except bandits and thieves, no matter what colors they wear, have one consistent commonality among them. As people who take for a living, it is entirely expected that they wouldn't be satisfied unless they took everything they can get. Greed, as usual, remains a powerful motivator.

BACK IN THE DINING CAR

Kid swaggers in, coated in dust and swathed in leather, and the metallic grin on his features lies in disconcerting contrast to his very obvious baby face - well into his thirties, and he still looks like a teenager, hence the moniker that he had decided to own instead of hate. Four of his men pile in behind him, guns pointed at the passengers within.

"Hello, folks!" he announces, amidst the horrified screams of the others in the car. "In case it ain't obvious, this is a god damn robbery and I ain't entertaining no funny bus-- "

The door at the other end of the dining car explodes outward; Squints shoves the remains of it away, spurs ringing as he and a few of his other boys take the rear of the car. "Alright, you poor bastards!" he yells. "Hands in the air and no funny bus-- "

There is a pause. Both groups of bandits stare at each other across the way.

Somewhere across from Jude, Cassidy's cigarette dangles limply from her lips, and he would be rewarded by a sight as rare as a unicorn wandering out from a forest: absolute, uncomprehending surprise. Because while there is absolutely no doubt that the woman has somehow managed to make sure that another gang is present to foil the efforts of the Mercy Killers to rob the train, and probably kill each other in the effort of trying to take it, she did not expect them to converge in the same dining car while she and Jude are in it...

...and trapping them in a kill box where there is little maneuverability, and too much everything in the way.

"...ah, shite," she whispers.

The inevitable happens. Both gangs do try to kill each other. There are bullets flying everywhere, and there they are, caught in the middle of a storm of hot lead and screamed out epithets.

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

Her gaze, for the briefest moments, straddles on the edge of something melancholy. A brief stutter of something uncommon, something rare. And just like the rare things on this world, it is gone just as quickly as it came.

I learn something new about you every day.

"Huh. Yeah? Crazy. I was kinda thinking the same thing.

"But, hey -- that just helps make every new day an adventure, right?"

The words come with a practiced lack of concern for the details of his life he may or may not be giving away, tapping a finger on the surface of that case as if to test the quality of the metal. His smile is a faint thing, bordering on the edges of appreciation -- a glimmering sense of appreciation that lingers even as the truth of that quality metal is revealed. She calls him a romantic. He lifts his palms to the open air and shakes his head in a dry scoff.

"What, you weren't already convinced?" he asks, his voice laced with a injured edge that borders so perfectly with the subtle sarcasm. "I'm a little hurt, Miss Amelia. And here I am, boarding a dangerous train just for you. Do you know how frequent train robberies have become, these days? I did a report on it, once." A hand stuffs into his pants pocket, fishing for his pack of cigarettes.

"Never did get a definite answer. All the people I asked about it kept dying in train robberies."

His sigh is a long-suffering one, heaved heavily from his lips, a moroseness that never quite reaches the glimmer of those unassailably bright amber eyes. He shakes loose a plain white cigarette from his pack, bringing it towards his lips. She talks about danger, and secrets.

"I swear," he mutters, eyes rolling towards the heavens as if to plead with them, "losing my heart to a callous woman like you." He takes his own lighter, bringing it towards his cigarette, half-held between his lips as he mumbles around it.

"I -must- be --"

Kid bursts in with that cocky swagger. In case it ain't obvious, but this is a god damn robbery--

"-- cur --"

Squints bowls his way in from the opposite end, squealing authoritatively. Two forces of oppositional bankrobbing collide.

"-- sed."

Jude's cigarette half-hangs limply from his partially opened mouth in a perfect mirror to Cassidy Cain's own starkly shocked expression. His eyes squeeze shut, his entire expression one of hapless dismay.

"Christ, can't a guy even get the thought out before the irony bowls him over--"

Gunfire drowns out Jude Moshe's helpless complaint; the second he sees those bullets flying, he's already moving to dive under the table; there is the brief sight of his heavy ARM, some sort of strange shotgun with a revolving chamber, slung to his side beneath that coat before he falls beneath the only sanctuary he has in this tight compartment with the motions of someone who's had to be in one too many firefights for their own good.

A second later, a gloved hand is grabbing for Cass' own to try to drag -her- down too.

"SO," he begins, a casually irritable shout over the sound of firearms going off and pungent aroma of gunpowder, "IS THIS DANGEROUS ENOUGH FOR YOU?"

The wheels in his head turn. He puts together the gist of what's going on. An idea starts to click in his head. A helpful, innocent idea. He just needs one answer:

"WHICH OF THESE CLOWNS ARE JUNIOR'S?"

He'd be more vague about it. Maybe act like he doesn't know. Possibly ask which one she's trying to screw over. But:

1) HE HAS PEOPLE -SHOOTING AT HIM-, THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BE COY, HE JUST GOT THIS COAT FIXED

2) He's pretty sure if he asked Cassidy "which one are you trying to screw over" the answer would be,

"both of them."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

That brief, quiet moment is thusly interrupted. Because of course it would. This is how her Luck rolls; this has been her life ever since she decided to put her old one to the fire ten years ago.

The roar of gunfire from rival sets of ARMs is perfectly capable of drowning out everything they could ever say between them, and Cassidy isn't a fool. She's already moving when a rough hand seizes her own and drags her down under the table, just a half-second before an incendiary round plows into the area of the booth where her head was just a few moments ago. Her hat tumbles free from her head, setting loose a cascade of tight, red-gold curls - most definitely not her hair, as Jude knows she is unapologetically blonde under whatever she has disguised that with. Tucked in an even tighter corner with him, green-gold eyes look downright luminescent in the shadows, much like some manner of jungle cat, and within them, he'd find more, these broken pieces of her that somehow manage to put together a full, complicated, but colorful picture, akin to the stained glass windows that dominate the parishes that he must be familiar with, given his purported history as a priest.

She is afraid...and exhilarated. Fear and the willingness to gamble with everything she has puts color in her cheeks and brightens her expression. Huddled next to him, digging frenetically for something as blood and mayhem explode all around them, she practically radiates wild, reckless energy; one which threatens to consume her and everyone and everything around her. And that wouldn't be surprising, to those who already know her, this force of nature that Jude is still getting to know: Cassidy Cain is never more alive than when she is about to die.

SO, IS THIS DANGEROUS ENOUGH FOR YOU?

"NAE EVEN CLOSE!" she says, breathlessly, and she manages to laugh despite their situation. "I'M NAE EVEN BLEEDING YET!"

Her hand is closed in a fist, lifting something from the voluminous folds of her skirt. His amber eyes would catch...

...the distinctive, metallic case of a grenade.

It is small, certainly not enough to blow them all to hell, with a strip at the back that she tears off with her teeth to reveal the adhesive underneath. "JERRY'S GUYS ARE THE DAFT IDIOTS IN BLUE AND BLACK!" she yells over the din, pointing at their direction even as she tries to peek out from around their booth to regain her bearings.

Shots crackle dangerously close to her head. She draws back immediately and takes a deep breath, then flings the incendiary device away from their booth, across the way, to stick into the far opposite wall of the car. A slender arm completes the curve, turning to throw half her body on top of the journalist's, to brace him tight against the juncture where the seat and table meet.

The epithets exchanged between the two camps are suddenly drowned out by a deafening roar, a portion of the wall reduced to kindling and falling into the mercy of red-brown sands. Smoke obscures their vision, causing eyes to water at all the dust and particles kicked up, skin tasting the kiss of heat from the ring of fire eating away at the sudden exit the conwoman had just provided them...and others who might take it. It won't be long until the screen it provides them dissipates entirely, but through the haze they can see it - the rushing landscape, in speeds that are guaranteed to break all of their bones should they decide to actually leap out of the train.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, LEONARD?!" yells Kid from the front of the car, firing a cascade of bullets from his sleek, long-range ARM. "AIN'T THIS JOB TOO BIG FOR YOU?"

"YOU AIN'T ONE TO FLAP OFF ABOUT THAT, KID!" comes the response from the back, Squints huddled in a protective corner. "CONSIDERIN' YER BALLS AIN'T EVEN DROPPED YET!"

"YOU SONUVABITCH, I'M THIRTY-SEVEN!!"

"Nae exactly the best repartee I've ever heard," Cassidy murmurs, fingers reaching up to wreathe over the side of Jude's face in a warm cradle. Against his skin, fingers tremble from the rush. Her lips graze his cheek, damp and humid.

He needs all the good fortune he can get; he might be cursed, as he says, but her own is different, if Baskar shamans were to be believed, and it does not account for those who choose to be around her.

"Keep up, would you?"

And with that, she takes off from underneath the table like a shot.

She moves like the hounds of Hell are snipping at her heels, through the deadly hail of hot lead whirling around them like an uncontrollable maelstrom. She keeps herself low, doing what she can to glean whatever advantage she can from her environs; the smoke, the chaos, the bar in which the poor bartender is huddled in. Splinters fly, glasses shatter, but she doesn't stop even as her skirt is shredded by the onslaught, even as a streamer of crimson erupts from the side of one arm, where two bullets graze her. Pain explodes white-hot up her shoulder, down her fingers.

The other side rushes at her and she reaches out in the last moment to clutch the jagged edges of the opening with leather-clad fingers, and bodily swings herself sideways out of the car and against the wall outside, reaching out to clutch the rung of one of the maintenance ladders hooked against it - the things that make these vehicles so easy to board despite their superiority to horses.

She doesn't look back; either she doesn't actually care whether Jude survives this, or she trusts him enough to be able to handle himself. She makes quick work of the rungs underneath her feet, to scale up and get to the top of the train....

...only to see chaos erupting in both sides of it.

The drifters from the earlier cars are out, doing battle with the other Mercy Killers that are doing their level best to try and take the engine. Somewhere behind her, an all out skirmish has erupted between Lenny's gang and the stragglers from Kid's camp that have managed to get their grips on the prized, secured storage car where the dead bodies of private security still hang. Combat-ready bodies bleed and fall in rapid succession. And before she can even gauge her next move...

One of the Mercy Killers leaps from the other passenger car, to get away from the gunfire from the three drifters Jude had seen before. His rifle swinging, he takes Cassidy around the knees, sending her legs flying out from underneath her, body skidding across the roof, at the mercy of the whipping winds buffeting around the train. It is enough to knock off the main part of her disguise, red-gold curls flying in the wind. Rivulets of pale gold spill wildly around her collar.

The blue-and-black clad man stares disbelievingly at the woman on her hands and knees. "....Cassie?!"

A helpless smile turns up the corners of her mouth. "Long time, Mortimer."

Realization twists his features. Fury ignites over sunburned skin. "YOU BITCH!!!!" The barrel swings between her eyes.

She launches herself off the roof, getting close, arms around his waist. Both go down in a heap, the rushing train sending both their bodies swirling across the surface. Past her head, she barely glimpses the sight of more of Mortimer's and Kid's ilk hopping in between cars, exchanging gunfire with Lenny's gang, and whoeevr else is in the way. One of the drifters, having taken up the task to secure the safety of the passengers, manages to blow one of the bandit's heads off, he clearly does not care which one, but a Mercy Killer manages to leap on his back, driving a knife into the side of his neck.

There goes one Good Samaritan.

< <Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

Afraid, and excited. Like someone bearing down to ride an adrenaline high. He sees it in that wild look burning in her eyes, in the way she wedges herself underneath that haphazard and poor man's cover with him and yet is already moving towards action. It spells out another part of her that was fairly clear even from the beginning -- and yet now has the unmistakable clarity of crystal in those frenetic motions. And if she reveals herself in the thick of the action, in the way she thrills in the face of death...

... so too does Jude, perhaps, like the other side of the coin. There's no wildness in his eyes, no joy from the pull of fear; pupils dilate in amber eyes as a purely physiological response to danger as the rest of him moves with a certain sort of honed efficiency of someone who's had to deal with situations like this for most of his life. The differences are subtle, but there. He is, in the thick of things, in his natural element just as much as she is. Fueled by fear just as much as she. The way his hand goes down to the ARM in his coat. The way the gears in his head clearly turn in those sharp, amber eyes.

But if Cassidy Cain is exulting in her joie de vivre, then Jude Moshe is tackling it with all the lackadaisical air of a veteran just looking to get the job done.

"YEAH, WELL..." And that half-hearted professionalism carries out all the way to his shouted words as he ratchets open that ARM, shoving slugs etched with runes into the revolver as he speaks.

"... PRETTY SURE YOU'LL FIND A WAY TO FIX THAT. I'VE GOT FAITH IN YOU."

Ever the encouraging sort.

His attention shifts on cue. He looks out towards the Mercy Killers. His thoughts tumble into something coherent, something resembling a plan. "Well, I've got an idea, but I dunno if you'll really like--"

And looks back just in time to see her pulling a grenade out of her skirt.

"--it."

There is a long, pensive moment of silence where Jude Moshe just... stares at Cassidy, holding her grenade. His lips press into a slow, thin line.

"I feel like I oughta ask where you managed to get that--"

And then, rather than let him complete the thought, she just hurls it, and sends him careening to the floor of the train, pinned up against that little, safe slice of space against table and chair with a meaty whud of impact. His head knocks against the back of the seat; his free hand grips to the back of her to brace her for what he knows is coming in exactly three... two... one...

BOOM

The entire train car rocks from a sudden, volatile expulsion of kinetic force, setting it rattling off dangerously on the screeching rails, and Cass just up and makes them a door where there was none. Eyes squeezed shut look up as dust and debris rain down. He sucks in air, and quickly spits it back out in a cough, the heat licking at the edges of his skin as he sputters out the smoke and dirt. His ears are ringing, his fingertips feel strangely raw. He ignores it.

"--BUT I GUESS IT DOESN'T REALLY MATTER NOW."

One way or another, Jude Moshe finishes his thought.

But even through figurative and literal explosions, that firefight endures. Jude listens to the way those men spit those petulant words out like bullets; amber eyes just end up rolling in open criticism. Which doesn't stop him from offering a simple,

"Ah, give 'em a break. They're clearly trying their best,"

when she decides to speak up, as if coming to their defense.

If only the actual content of the words weren't so disparaging.

But those fingertips find the reporter's face soon after, framing it as if they might protect it from the hell outside of them. He blinks, that inquisitive stare levels itself questioningly upon Cassidy. "Getting ready to say your farewells?" he asks, his voice a whisper as they share their private conversation amidst the chaos. Her lips find his cheek in a brief caress, leaving a lingering warmth that quickly goes cold with the fresh reminder of the open air. His head tilts.

And despite himself, the smile that manages its way to the corners of his lips, however mild and sardonic it appears, is genuine.

"What kinda fortune am I looking forward to today?"

And just like that, she's out of his hands and into the wind.

Jude Moshe watches her go. He looks down to the crumpled up remains of his unlit cigarette. He shakes his head.

"...Gonna be the death of me... and yet, here I am. Not doing the smart thing and staying away."

It's an open question whether he means the cigarettes, or Cassidy.

Within the next second, the redheaded journalist is shoving himself up out from under that table, pushing off with one gloved hand while the other swings that ARM up into place, slung over his shoulder. "Dammit, Cassidy, wait up!" he shouts -- just loud enough to be heard over the din of the firefight. Maybe it was just a slip up -- but Jude, generally speaking, isn't that much of a fool. Especially when he makes sure to say it -right- before he he lunges past Kid and out into the open, unforgiving winds. He clutches onto that metal rung with a vise's grip.

... and then slowly takes a moment to peer back inside.

"Hot damn, is that Carter 'Kid' Bartlett?? Man, the bounty on that guy's head...!" This, too, is shouted just loud enough to be heard, punctuated with a whistle -- targetted at those good Samaritans to provide some focus for their rampage. Those that are left, anyway.

Because he is far, far from a good enough man to have any compunctions about using bystanders for his benefit. They have guns. They came prepared. No reason to feel guilty.

It's then, and only then, that Jude braves the violent winds of the outside world, pushing past the painful whipping friction of a train accelerating at who knows how many miles per hour, dragging himself up onto the roof of the locomotive with a hellacious huff of breath just in time to see Cassidy body-tackling one of the Mercy Killer's men. Onto the top of a high speed, moving train. His brows furrow inward into a perplexed knot as he levels his shotgun from where he waits at the edge of the roof. He levels off his shotgun and fires off a single shell towards the space in between train cars; the shotgun shell, crackling with energy, impacts the junction before bursting into a massive wall of air chilled down into frosted ice, aiming to block off the path of any more bandits. Jude winces at the recoil, a burst of sudden and surprising pain coming from his side. He blinks, looks down... and grimaces as he sees the bullet wound carving an angry path at his side, just beneath his rib cage, barely even noticed before now in the thick of everything.

This, too, he ignores, carefully draping his coat to hide the growing spread of crimson against the white of his shirt and making sure the pain never reaches his voice as he calls out, casually,

"SO DO YOU HAVE THAT WHOLE SITUATION LOCKED DOWN YET OR--?"

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

His earlier inquiries would receive nothing but that same sharp, cutting smile, all the more brilliant with the way adrenaline rushes through her veins and making her heart soar, as if strapped on a pair of bottle-rockets set alight. They are both quick thinkers, but it is almost inevitable that while Jude is about to outline his plan that Cassidy is already executing hers, setting the tone of their partnership right away - like a pair of gunslingers in a high noon duel, whoever acts on their moxie first gets to call the shots. The blonde prides herself on her prodigious adaptability, but it seems that she has already observed enough about the journalist's personality to realize that he, too, is situationally malleable.

Had she lingered, she would be tremendously appreciative of the quick and clever gambit that he throws out just before he follows her out of the car by means of their improvised egress. Those sharp, amber eyes espy the two other drifters moving through the other passenger cars through the blown-open side of the dining car to the front - it seems that they are able to take down the group of Mercy Killers that attempted to take control of the train. The fact that it hasn't stopped already attests to the fact that they were successful.

Somewhere in the first train car, the Baskar shamaness stows her dual pistols, and shuffles away in unhurried steps, leaving a group of dead men - Mercy Killers and Lenny's gang alike - at her wake, to sit back down in her vacant compartment and pull out her pipe.

Kid moves on instinct - the smoke obscures his vision for just a few seconds longer and for a moment, he hears Jude first before he sees him. He has quick reflexes - the man with the baby face has carved a bloody name for himself as having a lightning-fast gunhand, and his slim, wiry body twists away before the journalist with the ridiculously complicated looking ARM barrels out the opening.

Damn it, Cassidy, wait up!

His pupils shrink disbelievingly. Jude would only be able to glimpse it in the split second before he disappears out the hole on the side of the dining car...

...and identifies the orchestrator of this fell disaster by name.

"That bitch!" he hisses; he only knows of one Cassidy, and much like Jude a few moments ago, everything clicks into place. The Guild Gazette correspondent may just be beginning to peel away the layers that keep his blonde puzzle of a partner intact, but Kid is very much familiar with the woman and her unorthodox, brazen, canny methods in getting her way. She is what happens, Jeremiah Black had told him once, when you don't pay attention.

"God damn it!" He picks up his rifle, and is about to follow Jude out...

...and that aggravating smiling visage pokes back in and alerts the drifters coming up behind him as to who he is. For a moment, dark eyes lock on Jude, lips twisting up in an unpleasant grin.

"You're gonna pay for that," he promises, just before another hail of gunfire drowns out the rest.

The landscape surges past Jude in a blurry vortex of color; the train has managed to remain unmolested enough that it starts carving a path through the most perilous part of the line that takes them up the inclined path of a deep canyon, carved out of rocks striated with pink and red under the glare of the midday sun, its rays catching the metallic slash of tracks running across their present line, veering off to God-knows-where across the other side of the ravine. The air outside is humid, and down the dangerous height, he can see the body of a serpentine river twisting sinuously through the plain, feeding into a dam somewhere below.

He creates his barrier right before three more bandits decide to jump from the second passenger car and into the top of the dining car in which Cassidy is embroiled in her struggle against Mortimer, and they smash into a wall of ice. One manages to rebound off impact, rolling off the roof before he screams, falling to his death from several dozens of feet up. The other manages to hang onto the edge of the car while the other topples off after a marked effort to balance himself, the sick crunch of several bones breaking drowned out by the beleaguered train's screaming wake as his body brutally bounces off rocky earth and doesn't stop, considering he's rolling down the incline, every vertebra in his spine crushed out of alignment when the corpse finally slams into a free-standing lever switch, the mechanism often used to make trains switch tracks, though the cars are already way past the intersection point when this happens.

A rune-infused round narrowly misses him, though it leaves a dangerous crackle of lightning on impact - from the direction of the secured compartment on the rear end of the dining car. He'd hear members of Lenny's gang well before he sees them, heavy boots thumping on the roof in an effort to reach them. One manages to leap and land on their car, a blocky device in hand, while the other lays down a few rounds of that tazing ammo - pistols, now...the ensuing gunfights have become very expensive with respect to bullets and projectiles. It is the team tasked to blow the cuplinks latching the secured car to the dining car, though its objectives have been handily derailed by the presence of the Mercy Killers and the fact that their fearless leader has been pinned down by Kid Bartlett.

"YOU WHORE!" Mortimer spits as he struggles to stand up on the dining car before Cassidy can, rifle swinging to aim at her. "WAS THINKING MAYBE I OUGHT TO TAKE YOU ALIVE SO THAT FAT BASTARD CARILLO CAN PACK YOU OFF TO JET AS A GIFT BUT YOU'RE AS ALWAYS TOO MUCH OF A PAIN IN THE ASS TO COUNTENANCE KEEPING AL--!!"

"Tunnel."

Mortimer blinks. "What?"

"SO DO YOU HAVE THAT WHOLE SITUATION LOCKED DOWN YET OR-- ?" Jude's voice yells out from somewhere behind her.

"TUNNEL!" Cassidy cries, for his benefit this time, before following through on her kneeling position to flatten herself. And sure enough, should Jude turn his head sideways, somewhat obscured the wall of ice he had just called up....is a tunnel, a dark, yawning pathway carved through a mountain to give passage to wayward locomotives carrying valuable cargo or more.

It is narrow, leaving Jude to make a choice - to swing up and abandon his protective position braced on the side of the car, or chance that he won't get crushed by the edges. Either way, he'd have a glimpse of Mortimer turning around, eyes wide when he sees what's beyond the wall of ice, darkness waiting for them in three...

...two...

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

You're going to pay for that.

"Yep, probably," is Jude Moshe's reply, supplemented with a jaunty salute. He does not sound particularly concerned. He sounds more like someone trying to assuage a child.

"You just keep at it and I'm sure you'll manage, kid."

One can practically feel the distinct lack of a capital K, there.

And just like that, Jude is gone. The redhead takes stock of the situation as he ascends the metal rungs of that ladder, even while the violent winds batter at his skin. He knows roughly how long he'll have before the bulk of them catch up -- the Kid would likely be waylaid by whatever was left of Squint's gang and the Drifters. Their window of time isn't... great, but it's enough, he decides.

Actually getting off the train -- now that's going to be the tricky part.

Water below -- far below. Probably not an option. Moving too fast to just extricate themselves without turning into giblets of former train robbers like those other poor sods that start rebounding off the freezing ice of his barrier. Though he winces, it's faux-sympathy at best -- it never reaches the detached practicality of his gaze as he sets himself up just beyond Cass and Mortimer in the middle of their screaming collision.

"Ouucchhh."

But at least he puts in the effort. Right?

Everything a smudge of light and light around him, winds forcing him to flatten himself against the train and cling to the rungs with his free hand lest he be just ripped free and lost to the deadly vortex of the winds, Jude solidifies at least one decision: walking on the outside of the train is not nearly as much fun as it seems. He is still weighing those options--

-- right about when electricity arches and tingles as a magic-infused bullet screams right past his tanned features. Amber eyes blink; they are instantly upon the source the moment that charge excites at the nerves of his skin, focusing on that secured dining car just beyond. "... huh," he murmurs thoughtfully to himself. More rounds are fired, more bursts of electricity, and Jude arches suddenly and violently from the side of the train to avoid the taze of those rounds, hanging precariously off the rungs of the train later with an amount of skill and strength that hardly behooves a journalist before he drags himself back to the side, listening to the invective that Mortimer spits like it's venom more poisonous than any snake's.

"Eesh. Some people just don't know how to talk to a lady..." mutters the redheaded sellsword half to himself as he ratchets open his shotgun to check the symbology-inscribed rounds within. He smiles, a private indulgence, before his gaze refocuses on Lenny's crew. The secure car. The wheels in his head turn once more.

TUNNEL!

And then his amber eyes turn. Right in time to see the gaping hole that cuts through its natural edifice. Those eyes widen. Brows screw together in consternation.

Three... two...

"Oh, for fuck's sake--"

He has barely a handful of seconds to make his decision; ultimately, he makes the one he was planning on from the beginning. Gripping tightly onto the sun-warmed metal of that ladder, Jude hefts himself up along it with sudden swiftnessm lunging onto the top of the car and flattening himself against the heated surface -- right in time to fire one more buckshot round to lay out a frozen path across the dining car right where Lenny's crew stride, to unsettle them right in time for--

... one.

"GO FOR THE REAR COMPARTMENT!" he shouts over the roar of wind and train regardless of the outcome of poor Mortimer's date with the tunnel roof. "I CAN TAKE CARE OF THE REST!"

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Plenty of bloodshed occurs in swift and savage succession.

The Symbology-imbued round fires towards the roof, the resulting explosion once more icing the wood curving over the ruined dining car just as more of Monroe's gang land upon it. The exclamation from Jude - assurance yes, in part, but also one that promises a not-insignificant amount of mayhem has Cassidy, despite her precarious position on her front right in front of Mortimer, flashes him a thumbs-up, currently too preoccupied to do anything else. At the Mercy Killer's perplexed expression, the blonde kisses the air, then after a glance over her shoulder and the path of ice that Jude leaves, she flexes her wrists, braces her weight against the heel of her palm, and shoves.

Her skirt, the speed of the train, the push she gives herself while flat against clothes that would reduce the friction she would generate, all work in concert to have her flying across the roof of the train. Jude would get a glimpse of her rushing past him, literally carried by the wind, uncaring of the precarious height the train is in, if she falls, if she dies at the attempt, just before everything around him darkens to pitch-blackness, with nothing to anchor his senses save for the screaming grate of metal on metal and the dangerously close sounds of rounds being fired, though he is sharp and practiced enough to be able to determine despite the lack of visibility that most of these are occurring somewhere behind him than in front of him. There is less and less chaos going on in the front of the train, though he has already figured that - with the two drifters that he had spotted earlier, and who knows who else, people who wouldn't take this in stride. Certainly not the sweet old Baskar woman he saw earlier. Hopefully, she's doing just fine.

There is no further sound from Mortimer, save for the squelching, viscous sound of a sickening crunch and a heavy couple of thuds, the sound of a body thumping off the roof before vanishing. They are, at least, spared that sight. It was not bound to be pretty.

Light tears into their eyes when the charging locomotive razes a path through the tunnel, catching on garish crimson streaks and splatters on the roof, though Jude would find that not all of them are dead; there is the hanging outlier from the earlier Mercy Killer charge, hanging on the roof of the dining care facing towards them and hanging on for dear life, though he has not lost his weapons. Another one of his compatriots has managed to crawl into the very edge of the passenger car in front of the dining car, fumbling for his pistol and struggling to aim for whoever else is left that needs killing, his sights on Jude.

Somewhere at the very rear of the dining car's roof is Cassidy, who had used his ice path to slide right into one of Lenny's men, having knocked him off his legs and has left him dangling from the roof between the dining car and the secured compartment. The Monroe Gang member with the tazer rounds has managed to land and flatten himself on the roof on the other side of the redhaired journalist; not much of an improvement, really, from their earlier situation in the car, with Mercy Killers to the front of them, and the Monroe Gang to the back of them.

The rest of the gang who had tried to join the party with them had vanished - for a 'respectable reporter', he is certainly efficient in being able to clear as many bodies with as little effort as possible. The crimson spatters left behind suggest that they, too, have met Mortimer's fate thanks to the distraction that single ice round provided.

"...what...YOU?!" Tazer-rifle recognizes the blonde, who stows the blocky device she had snatched from his comrade, Cassidy moving the minute she can stand. It would be easy to think that she would be the sort of person not to listen to anyone, determined as she is to live by her own rules and make her own way. But she takes Jude's instructions to heart, and she leaps towards the secured compartment, which still holds the battling remains of Lenny's gang and Kid's Mercy Killers - just a few, but enough for it to fill the other car full of noise. She lands in a thump, and turns to look over at where the journalist lies. She does not seem to care that the man holding the tazer-rifle has swung the barrel of his ARM towards her - either she is looking to die today, or she trusts the other man when he says that he'll take care of the rest.

A hand reaches down and whips through the tattered shreds of her skirt, pulling a small, palm-sized derringer from the hem of her stocking. Gold-green eyes narrow along her sights. Standing as she is in the middle of the chaos, swept up in a swirling torrent of colorful fabric and pale-gold hair, ribbons of crimson pouring down one arm, she looks more elemental than human, untouched by the surrounding violence...everything she has and is, focused on this one task.

She does not aim for her immediate threat.

The hammer pulls back. Her finger squeezes the trigger. The single, hefty round discharges from the snub-nosed, but powerful muzzle, the scent of cordite stinging her nose and the leavings of gunpowder caking her leather gloves. It finds its purpose; a hole blows through the skull of the furthest Mercy Killer, poised to make Jude's life a little more difficult than it presently is. Sunlight flickers through his new orifice before he topples off the roof.

With a rattling platform, the distance and the winds against her, it should have been an impossible shot.

There are rumors about her - so outlandish that none of them could possibly be true; that Luck has a powerful hold on her, that she has died many times, only to come back. That she constantly survives and prevails in difficult, downright unsurvivable odds. And when, through the constant distractions of her own mercurial nature, she decides to do something, a small miracle in itself, she gives it her everything with no mind to the risks to herself...and manages the absolutely absurd.

It is a thing of deadly, baffling beauty. But like all beautiful things in this world, it costs.

A lightning round plows into her, though it is hard to determined where through the tempest of tattered cotton and silk. It has enough force behind it to have her twisting around and cause her entire right side to go numb, though she manages to regain enough footing to divert her falling body onto her knees instead of flailing dangerously to the side where the cliffs drop off to oblivion. She lands in a heavy thud, left hand reaching out to grasp the nearest handhold, uncontrollable spasms shooting up into her shoulder and scrambling her brain. Her teeth grind together, but for all of her delicate appearance, she can withstand a tremendous amount of punishment, but she can do nothing for her side but ride it out.

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

It's carnage and chaos in every direction you look. And of course, Jude Moshe thrives in the thick of it.

Like any good investigative journalist.

Bleak blackness blots out his senses as the train wooshes through the impenetrable darkness of the tunnel. What he cannot see, though, he certainly hears over the din of the shootout; the snap and pop of bones, the wet shred of flesh and muscle and tendons, the sloppy squish of mashing organs. It all paints a clear enough picture for the active and experienced expanse of Jude's imagination. He just clings onto the surface of that train for dear life, knowing that even the slightest deviation could spell his end in so many different ways.

And when it's all over, and light floods back into his life, and all he sees of Mortimer is a pile of viscera assembled into a nice, bloodied, drooping pile, Jude Moshe just winces in a way that suggests he's just doing it to do it, rather than any genuine disgust.

"... I kinda feel like saying 'I told you so' is a little moot at this point...

...

... but I did tell you so."

Generous to a fault.

At this point, though, he's weighed his options; the fate of the good, random strangers below never really factors into his list of concerns, brave as they are -- in the end, that bravery is just something that ended up useful for him, so at the very least he can be grateful for that much. As it stands, he has a lot more to be concerned about. There's Mercy Killers still clinging to the roof, on top of that one Monroe gangster with the rifle still being exceptionally tenacious. The redhead assesses his situation swiftly even as he drags himself back into a kneeling position; blood smears a coppery stain across the warmed-over sheen of the train's rooftop where he had laid out. Ignoring the pain, he ratchets that revolver compartment on his ARM open once more, and slides in one last shell, with different symbols laid out upon it. "... waste of time..." he mumbles to himself. "... ah well."

He feels the gun trained on him. He sees Cassidy, in the distance, on the secured compartment, leveling her own ARM in preparation for a shot that is long with the most optimistic of measures. He sees the rifleman training his weapon on Cassidy. His eyes squeeze shut. Prudence tells him that he should shoot down the man at his back. It's the obvious answer. Cass should have looked out for herself. She brings it on herself.

It's the easy solution. The efficient solution. He'd easily take it, any other day of the week.

And yet...

Whatever the reason may be for it, the second Jude makes his move, he doesn't once look back towards the men behind him. No -- he dashes -forward-, spitting a curse unheard into the air as he puts his life in Cassidy Cain's hands. Two gunshots go off.

And as the man behind him falls from the train, bloodied and lifeless, Jude never once hesitates. Never once stops moving.

The timing is exacting: the very moment that the rifleman is recoiling from his shot, Jude is upon him, introducing the man's face to his elbow with a, "Comin' through!"; the blow is surprisingly solid, aimed at unsettling the already unbalanced man completely to send him careening off the roof while Jude keeps barreling past. Boots hammer the rooftop as he moves with the rush of wind; his coat whips behind him through the air, the growing red stain visible on the white of his shirt beneath his vest. The pain sears at him. He doesn't have the luxury of acknowledging it.

He just braces himself, waits for the right moment, holds off until the very last second...

... and then he -jumps-. Soars in mid-air. Aims his shotgun downward.

And while gravity sends him careening towards the surface of the secured car's rooftop, he squeezes the trigger on that weapon, and a single slug fires off. Crackling with trails of volatile, sputtering flame, it is aimed for the coupling below. And the second it makes impact?

The demolition shell -explodes- into a violent fireball, to hopefully do what the Monroe Gang were waylaid from earlier the very second that Jude lands on the car, hitting the surface in shoulder-first and rebounding off into a dangerous roll across the roaring winds before he just barely manages to cling upon the surface. It feels like he dislocated something. His ribs feel like they've been freshly powdered.

He still manages to reach out for Cass with a firm hand as the flame and force roll around them, with one question shouted against the wind:

"NOW IS IT DANGEROUS ENOUGH?"

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

As Jude throws himself bodily into the rifleman that had just shot her, Cassidy is already picking herself back up; the right side of her tingles, pins and needles crawling over her skin and aggravating her synapses, renders her unable to breathe properly. But her eyes burn with that molten, virid-gold fire, lips peeled back faintly to bare her teeth as she forces herself back up to her knees. Slowly, surely, she manages to get on her feet, blinking away hot pinpricks of moisture that had been left there by the tazer-shot. While she can withstand a tremenduous amount of punishment, that does not mean that she can't feel pain - she does, moreso than people would think to expect.

She has survived the wilds of Filgaia for ten years - the last few has seen her alone, riding from town to town, spreading her mischief even as she deftly sets up her pieces, using that silver tongue to talk her way in and out of trouble, and robbing everyone else blind, walking off to the sunset without any of them knowing the wiser. Deeper, still, in the shadows of the history she has tried to forget, before and after she had thrown her old life into the pyre of her own making to emerge reborn like a phoenix out of its own ashes, she has seen and suffered wonders and terrors only a dead world rife with secrets could provide. It is not easy to scare her. She has seen too much, experienced too much, to be locked into place by some ordinary thing.

Fortune itself tends to drop her reminders that as much as it loves her, it also hates her with a passion, and often takes the most inopportune moment to remind her of that burning, unyielding, inequitable derision. It does so now as her determination to pull herself up, to keep going as she always does, dooms her utterly to experience that rare moment of pure, freezing, unadulterated fear. It has been years. It has been forever.

But it rushes in full force, icewater surging through her veins and braiding down her spine, as Jude Moshe doesn't just accept the gift she gives him - he throws his entire life into her hands.

Something inside her screams and for a moment, she doesn't see him, staring through him, past him into the ether. Her already taxed, burdened, burning heart nearly shatters her bones and escapes the cage of her ribs, to fly off into the sky in an effort to leave her bloody corpse behind. Blood rushes through her ears and the sheer, incandescent fright of it sets every single nerve ending on fire, in open defiance to the numbing effects of the shell lodged somewhere on her right side.

She had always known this was a mistake. They acknowledged it. They laughed about it.

But she never knew just how big until this moment and she tastes the panic and the urge to bolt at the back of her throat. And she does not hesitate at all to act on it.

Long fingers grab the device she had wedged into her pockets, ripping it out, holding it to the light. As she turns to face him across the way, she forces a casual smile and a light shrug, a lift of those shoulders. The chaos at the front of the train was dying, if not dead altogether. The rest of the trouble was on her car. He'll be fine.

He'll be fine.

Her thumb flicks over the switch, delicate features writ with every intent to blow the cuplink before he even gets to the secured compartment.

"YOU'VE DONE ENOUGH, LUV!" she hollers even as he runs. She holds up the black box as a warning. "I CAN TAKE IT FROM HERE!"

Literally. She doesn't know how she's going to somehow neutralize the rest of the bodies in the car by herself, but she has faced worse odds in the past and--

-- and he's leaping.

She forgets the switch in her hand as she outright stares at him as he flies, coat flapping behind him, blood drops flying off his form, a trail of glittering rubies cast away to the wind. The ridiculous modified shotgun twists in his grip as he fires, sending the demolition round right into the cuplink and the other explosives already wired into it to blow it.

The black box slips through nerveless fingers, skittering off the roof. She hits the proverbial deck, arms over her head as the ball of fire and the deafening roar severs their part of the train away from the main body. It remains close, inertia would do that to large metal bodies encased with steel, but without an engine to pull it, the secured car and the car behind it will slow eventually.

Eventually.

Except that they've been climbing up and they're still on an incline.

They have time to worry about that later. As Jude crashes onto the roof and rolls dangerously to the side, the blonde is already leaping, skirt and legs sliding across the roof and taking advantage of the car's forward rush and the winds pushing her back. Her arm swings out, the other hooking into the ring of the locked rooftop hatch, fingers snaring his wrist in time for him to reach out for her with that firm grip.

NOW IS IT DANGEROUS ENOUGH?!

Yes, she decides. In more reasons than the most obvious. Something in her expression twists as words pile up between her teeth, a torrent almost too fast to be held at bay that all meaning is dangerously at risk of getting lost. There is the briefest, but nigh-near overpowering urge to let go of his hand and send him hurtling to his death in fiery, tempestuous fury, at his ruination of the truncated effort to try and give him at out, and not be responsible for what follows afterwards.

She could. She has to.

Or pretend I'm insane enough and you're wild enough to make everything work out.

Her grip tightens over his instead, the memory too recent for her to be able to forget it if she tried. "Ach, fook me running," she mutters. She was going to pay for this later, somehow.

"WELL," she shouts back instead. "DINNAE WANNA TEMPT THE OL' BITCH FATE BY SAYING THIS BUT SINCE WE STILL HAVE ALL OUR LIMBS INTACT, METHINKS WE CAN SUFFER JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE."

And like magic, movement happens again.

The hatch suddenly swings open, forcing Cassidy to let go and slide down further along the roof, closer to Jude, and farther away from what's coming. A slim, body emerges from the hatch, ARM leveled towards their heads, sighted down by a pair of squinting dark eyes set on a blood streaked face. As the furious visage of Squints Monroe comes into view, the sight of the blonde gives him a brief pause...but not long.

He steps out into the roof, weapon in one hand, a black case in the other. It seems he's managed to leap into their car while Kid was preoccupied with the drifters Jude had set on him. His lips part, teeth flashing under the sun with razor sharpness.

"I KNEW IT. I KNEW THERE WAS AN ANGLE. I KNEW YOU WERE GONNA SCREW US," he roars, apoplectic with rage. As he should. His gang had been slaughtered, the stragglers were killing each other somewhere below him, and Cassidy's presence on the train just alerts him to the realization Jude and Kid had already reached. He is the last to know, and his fury is palpable.

"GIVE ME ONE GOOD GOD DAMN REASON WHY I SHOULDN'T KILL THE BOTH OF YOU RIGHT NOW."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

He'll be fine.

But Jude Moshe doesn't seem to settle for being 'fine' today.

You've done enough, she says. She can take it from here. It doesn't stop his run. If anything, the sight of the detonator just seems to make Jude run all the faster, to build up the speed necessary to make that leap--

-- and hit the compartment car just as he sets it free with his own hands.

Today, at least, Jude Moshe preempts that gut instinct to cut and run before it can be acted on.

There's a trail of bright crimson left in the wake of the redhead's impact, glistening in the dying light of the sun in ways that might be pretty if it weren't for the fact that it was -his blood- spattered all over the train rooftop. His hand reaches out, and that gloved extremity clings onto hers. His ears roar to the point that barely anything seems audible save for their numbed protests; blood loss has him feeling fatigued and woozy, and he's pretty sure that impact has just agitated the injury further. It's far from the way he would have done any of this, or the way he would have gone about neutralizing the problem.

And yet the person largely responsible for all of this going so blissfully pear-shaped is still the very specific person he quite literally puts his life in the hands of.

And as Jude clings onto the roof, and onto her hand, held in place entirely by the lifeline of her grip, there is that tenuous moment where it could all be for naught. He sees the way her expression twists; it's not all that dissimilar a look to when she was preparing to punch that button and leave him on the dining car. The urge to cut and run. He knows it well -- he's made that look, and acted on it, many times before. His teeth grit, his hand clenches tighter -- but there's something detached there, too. Like a simple acceptance. An acknowledgement: in this moment, his life is hers to save or cast to the winds.

She could. It would probably be the smart play for her. And if he was in her shoes, would he do the same? ...

It's an answer that never quite comes for either of them as that grip tightens and anchors him to the train, saving his life, burden, consequences, and all. She mutters something to the wind, and though he can't quite hear it, the mere utterance of noise to the wind makes a lopsided smile forge its signature lazy path across his lips. They part, and his words are lost to the violent surge of the air rushing all around them, stolen away into the sky:

"Guess we both make pretty piss-poor adults, huh?"

All of this is most assuredly a mistake.

But he still clings onto that lifeline as tightly as the grip she offers in return.

He'd have more to actually say to her, so that she could hear, save for the swing of the sudden and violent swing of that roof hatch. Cassidy slides, and Jude takes a firmer grip of her forearm to keep her from falling completely off of it and down towards the slowing but still fatal passage of the rails beneath. Amber eyes refocus past the smudges of high speed motion to see that familiar face. Slim, blood-streaked, and signatured squinted stare focusing its furious attention on both of them... along with the focused attention found at the end of the barrel of his ARM. Squints Monroe. Jude's lips purse faintly.

"JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR," he begins, quite conversationally to Cassidy,

"THIS IS NOT HOW I WOULD ROB A TRAIN."

The leader of the Monroe Gang spits, gnashes, all grinding teeth and red-faced rage focused entirely on Cassidy. How inevitable she was going to screw them. Jude could point out the fact that he seems so angry makes it seem like maybe he DIDN'T put that seemingly obvious fact together until just NOW, but, then again, he's got a gun trained on them, so maybe not. That amber stare looks sidelong towards Cass, instead, in a stare that says 'is this guy serious?' but also something else. The faint glint there.

Be ready.

GIVE ME ONE GOOD GODDAMN REASON WHY I SHOULDN'T KILL THE BOTH OF YOU--

Here, it should be noted, Jude Moshe blinks and points at himself in utter bafflement.

--RIGHT NOW.

"WELL," begins the redhead, voice laced in sincerity.

"PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU OUGHT TO DEAL WITH THE TUNNEL COMING UP FIRST."

He points ahead. Pointedly. The probability of a tunnel coming up again is fairly low, really, and Jude hasn't actually looked himself. But he also knows that this car is still going fast enough that it -would- be a fatal problem if there was one--

--and he's banking on Squints being -just- smart enough to know to treat it as a real threat.

All they need is one second for his guard to drop, one second for him to believe his head might be blown off his shoulders by the great misfortune of momentum, and then, well...

... he'll leave the rest to the one who got them in this mess.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

If Cassidy Cain ever believed in kindred spirits, she would be inclined to believe she found one.

But she is a woman entrenched in harsh realities and all the brutal truths it brings, however determined she is to scrape out as much happiness and entertainment as she can out of this dead, but wonderful world. She does not believe in soulmates and curses, gods and monsters. The closest altar in which she worships is the one devoted to Hedony, and whatever superstition she might have held close to her chest has been taken up by whatever mysterious thing hangs over her head that prevents her from dying when she wants to, simply encouraged by that insurmountable pride and cowardice to do the deed herself.

Whatever propels her to hang onto Jude Moshe is a mystery, even as it harshly scrapes against instincts honed by the road and her past exploits, screaming at her even as she pulls him up and closer towards where she's flattened against the roof of the speeding railcar. His own mutter is lost to the wind, but she sees that smile and all she can do is laugh, lips parting, the sound torn out of her throat by the wildly buffeting winds. How else was she going to react, when that crushing realization sets in?

That she will either have to try harder to chase him away, or get him killed, and carry his ghost around her forever - and those never stay buried. She knows. She has tried.

But she has no time to grieve this. Both of them turn to watch Lenny with his case, his ARM turned towards them, with a stamp from an appraisal company clutched in his greedy spare hand. He levels the barrel at the both of them, and...

Jude says what he does.

Cassidy doesn't react but to widen her eyes, her lips parting as she stares past Lenny. She doesn't even look at the redhaired man when she puts on the face of a woman alarmed at the false fate that will inevitably befall all of them. And if there is something she can do, it is //this//, to put on the best performance of her life, whenever it is called for. That delicate, expressive face gives its all on the very effort.

The Monroe Gang's leader turns, whips around. The distraction planted, Cassidy whips her derringer around and fires. She does not stop at one.

There is no indecision as several bullets plunge into the bandit's back, though undoubtedly she has already made that quick and deadly calculus at the heat of the moment that propels her to make the decision she makes without batting an eye, or even hinting that there was a conflict in the first place. She is going to kill him. And once he is dead, his body will drop and slide off the roof, and then she will have to make the choice again between hanging onto Jude, or let him go in order to grab the case before it, too, joins Lenny in oblivion. And it is precisely the thing she was after. The thing she had come to this train and orchestrated all of this chaos in the first place.

She is going to lose her prize.

And she does.

Jude would see it in her expression; lament, genuine to the point of it being almost pained, over that pale, gold-threaded profile as she watches the man's corpse tumble away and the case with him, perhaps never to be found in the river below. Stowing the gun away, she braces her heels on the roof, rolling on her back. His wrist still gripped, she uses both hands, this time, to lever him up and on more stable foundations before she finally lets go of him. She groans, resting on her knees, his blood soaking into her skirt, lifting a hand to wipe her knuckles over her forehead. There's a helpless glance over the edge.

"WELL," she says. "THERE GOES WHAT I WAS AFT-- "

Her words die on the vine, green-gold eyes staring over his head.

The car full of valuables and the storage compartment behind them are busily speeding backwards, and gaining momentum as they are going //down// an incline instead of up. It does nothing but pick up more and more of it, in the mercy of the laws of the natural world. The tracks curve off around the mountain, but to keep going this fast means going off track eventually, and send them flying off the ravine.

"SO THE WAY I SEE IT, WE HAVE TWO OPTIONS," she tells him. "ONE, WE CHANCE LEAPING OFF THIS TRAIN AND BREAK ALL OUR BONES, LEAVING US IMMOBILE IN THE MIDDLE OF A GOD DAMN DESERT. TWO, WE STICK WITH THE CAR SOMEHOW, RIDE IT TAE THE EDGE AND FLY DOZENS OF FEET IN THE AIR AND HOPE THE WATER LANDING DINNAE KILL US."

She pauses. The gunfire has ceased. Her stare turns to the open hatch that Lenny has left open.

"OR THREE. FIND A THIRD OPTION WHERE OUR CHANCES ARE A LITTLE BETTER THAN INEVITABLE DEMISE."

Groaning, but moving quickly, she stands up and extends her hand down to Jude. That wild, reckless grin returns, sundering her earlier, silent lament utterly, and threatens to put the sun above them to shame.

"COME ON, LUV. WE'RE NAE DONE YET!!"

If accepted, she will pull him up; otherwise, she is shoving her body through the opening, and dropping.

The car is full of valuable objects - art, statues, bags of gella. There are antique jewelry pieces trapped in locked display cases, and a few vaults that have already been opened, wealth spilled haphazardly on the floor and stained with blood. There are a few bodies, from the Mercy Killers and Monroe Gang both. One is twitching, with the blue-black band of the former, blood frothing from his lips as he attempts to lift his rifle towards the newcomers.

There doesn't seem to be anything useful, so the good news is that they're rich. The bad news is that they're going to die if they don't do something.

Somewhere in the car is a length of long rope, and underneath scattered bags of gella and finery are maintenance tools left in case repairs need to be made on the car. There are nails, screws, hammers, measuring instruments....and a heavy cabling hook, rusted on two of the four long, wicked prongs.

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

There is something to be said about two people sharing the same wavelength. Beyond superstition or gullibility or simple, sad idealism, there is that simple fact that some people simply click.

The idea of it being anything more than that is something that Jude Moshe would be inclined to scoff at, if only by knee-jerk response.

And perhaps that, too, is another reason why they work so well together. And another reason why they cling, despite it being against both their best interests.

It certainly leads towards the all-too natural one-two combination that inevitably brings Lenny 'Squints' Monroe to his likely very timely and bloodied demise. One shot comes. Several more follow, probably more than strictly necessary -- but certainly more than enough to ensure his inevitable, downward trajectory. Him... and that case he carries with him in that death's grip.

Once more, she could release him, or he release her; that case is clearly valuable. Jude remembers it clearly even from when he boarded the train, and its (original) owner clung to it like it was more precious than his life -- which it clearly ended up being. Whatever's inside it, many people want it, Cassidy included. It's simple odds: drop her before she drops him. Take the odds that he could make it without her support. Take the case for himself. Easy. Simple.

... which makes the way that case slides and topples off the side of the moving train all the more damning, in so many ways.

The curse Jude utters under his breath is kept to himself, for himself. His gaze, however, eventually focuses on Cassidy, and that sense of loss is almost as disarming as the fear that came earlier -- like she had just lost something truly precious, more precious than even whatever wealth of material goods might be stored away below. His brows furrowed inward towards each other in something akin to an impassive sort of contemplation, Jude stows his own shotgun back away into the hidden depths of his coat before he finds his hand gripped in unison by the blonde's own. He blinks -- winces, briefly, at the force it exerts in making his injured side stretch -- but eventually puts his own weight into it to help her with the motion until he's brought sprawled upon the roof on his own back, huffing stolen breaths into the air as he stares blankly at the waning light of the sky. His thoughts are a muddied blend of complications he finds himself not quite caring for as his hair whips wildly with the frenzy of the winds. She starts to lament the loss. He might question just what she was after in that case, but...

"... HEY," he begins, slowly, as his amber eyes shutter in a slow blink. "DOES IT FEEL LIKE WE'RE GOING BACKWARDS?"

He looks. They most certainly are.

"BEAUTIFUL."

Sarcasm: an essential tool, even in the most dire of circumstances.

Cassidy lays out their options; either one seems like a pretty safe bet for disaster to Jude, who tilts his head forward to squint at the way the cars are accelerating. It's going to be messy -- and either way will end very poorly for them. But still. That hand is offered out, and Jude stares at it as the fire reignites in the intensity of Cassidy's stare.

COME ON, LUV. WE'RE NAE DONE YET!!

"PROBABLY THE MOST OMINOUS WORDS I'VE HEARD IN A LONG WHILE."

And yet, that hapless smile is back on the would-be 'respectable' reporter's lips by the time his hand clasps with hers, and he drags himself back onto his feet with a wince. Everything aches. He can feel the sting of that wound all the more accutely now. But it doesn't stop him from dropping into the traincar after her, landing with a metalling whud of boots striking floor.

To his credit, Jude barely even wobbles as he hits ground, and any he does make is concealed handily by his forward march as he makes his way towards the back of the car. He looks around him, whistling faintly to himself, even as he off-handedly looks to kick the bandit's lifting rifle out of his hand with the natural movements of his forward steps. He doesn't finish the job. They don't really have time for that right now, do they? And besides.

It might do the man some good, to suffer a little longer before he meets the maker.

There's so many wondrously expensive things here that could be translated into more gella than Jude's ever had in his entire life put together, and the very fact alone should be dizzying; but the redheaded journalist scarcely seems to be paying attention to them, eyes roaming about him as he looks for something else. Something more useful to their current predicament: staying alive.

Eventually, beneath the commodities, Jude sees something. He blinks, crouches down with the vaguest kind of grimace, and clutches at his side with one hand while the other roots around the valuables stored here.

"Hey..."

And as he stands, he turns to face Cassidy, holding up that long rope and half-rusted cabling hook between his two hands. He glances out through a nearby window, where the scenery just becomes more and more of a blur. They don't have much time left.

"... feel free to take this the wrong way if you want to, but I think we oughta consider tying the knot before we croak."

And here, Jude Moshe waggles that rope and hook with the very careful heft of his brows.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

The rifle goes flying from the dying Mercy Killer, and numb fingers attempt to keep ahold of it, but Jude's almost nonchalant kick sends it far out of his reach, and his body is too battered to move any further. He wheezes from his perch, blood bubbling between his lips.

"Oh, hey, Tommy," Cassidy says, tone flippant and almost absent, preoccupied with the very business of saving their own hides as she walks past the blue-and-black clad bandit, but otherwise she doesn't address the soon-to-be dead man, tossing gella bags side to side in an effort to find something they could use, sparing a glance at her red-haired companion when he does the same. For someone who professes that she had him at funding the night she met him, he is exhibiting a very distinct lack of interest in the car's contents. Then again, pragmatism in that regard will always win out - it's not like they can enjoy any ill-gotten gains if they die.

Well, she, at least, isn't immune. Even as she shoves things around in an effort to find something that would inspire her to finagle a plan, she stops at those display cases. Oddly, the big, bright and beautiful gems winking at them from behind the glass panes don't interest her; her long history with thievery has her fencing flawless gems as quickly as she gets her hands on them, converting them to gella and sending them off to the banks that hold her not-insignificant nest egg. Instead, there is a glance at a set of lustrous pearl jewelry in a case, her head tilting in an assessing fashion.

Hey...

Her attention diverts immediately, blonde head turning towards him. Her glade-green eyes find the half-rusted hook in his hand, and the length of rope. Her expression flattens, though surprisingly, it isn't because of his joke about tying the knot before they die. Because her brain is running along the same lines as he, and...

She takes in the state of the rope, the state of the hook, the way the world outside them is rushing by and going faster. She lifts a hand and buries her face into it. Her laugh, this time, sounds more iike a sob.

"We better get tae work then," she says, turning around and moving towards the front of the secured compartment, away from the end facing the edge of oblivion. "And while we do that, you can clarify for me as tae what the wrong way is tae take the statement so I wouldnae disappoint you in your last moments of life." She shoves everything away; cases, bags, clearing a path as she gets to where the railing is, shoving through the damaged door that the explosion had blown apart. Her hair and skirt whips wildly around her as she reaches open air once more, but given that they're emerging from the interior of the car, hands bracing against it and looking around her. Eyes cast a wide net over the remains of the roof, the roar of the metal tracks below them.

Whenever Jude gets to her position, she takes one end of the rope, leaving the other end with him, to secure on the half-rusted, four-pronged instrument. She climbs over the rail, to make sure she's at the very front of the car, and on precarious balance before meeting her end with broken bones in the middle of the desert. He is going to have to do the same, if this is going to work.

"Well, feel free tae take this the wrong way if you want tae in turn, but I'm about tae shove us together crotch-tae-crotch," she tells him, with all the brazen shamelessness expected from a woman like her. Eyes lift to meet his, mischief in full force within the dancing line of her stare. "Hope you got a better set of safewords than Crennie does, luv. This is gonna be a tight fit."

She has never exhibited any qualms in invading his personal space. As he tries to finagle the other end of the rope with the hook, she is doing precisely what she says, looping the rope and securing it around one of his thighs, and then the other, slipping the extra lengths through his belt and lifting her arms to secure a pair of trussing over his shoulders, pinching into his coat. Deft fingers do quick work; knots appear as if from nowhere, expertly tied as she goes about the business of making sure that, whatever happens with this next gamble, nobody ends up breaking their necks or spines at the inevitable brutal snap of rope from the fall.

What results is a hastily put together cradle, or a sling, macrame'd out of thick, industrial-grade rope. Skills that would not be so unusual for a sailor, but Cassidy Cain makes her living in other ways; the fact that she knows such expert knotwork does not run consistently with what anyone knows about her. She unspools more of it, before she loops the additional length around her body in very much the same way, and it's only then that she secures them together around their waists, turned face-to-face, her own cinched higher - while a tall woman, Jude manages to tower over her by a few inches. With a final tightening of a double knot binding them together, and a testing tug, she takes a breath and casts a look towards the tracks before them.

So many things can go wrong, and for one who enlivens every moment with her brash and reckless ways, she is surprisingly quick at calculating the risks. From her profile, her face turned away from him so she could look at their environs, Jude would find her eyes narrowing faintly.

The hook might not catch the tracks once thrown, the rusted prongs might crack off immediately when it hits the dirt. The rope might not be able to handle the weight of two people, much less bear them up in the violent fall that will most assuredly follow. They could time the jump wrong, and leave them smashing helplessly into the rocks, their blood and brains splashed across the side of canyon walls, to further add to the striated red-and-pink tableau dominating the landscape.

"....well," she says finally. "At least our chances of surviving this option is nae zero."

With all of their other options, she will take non-zero.

Looking over at him, a sudden laugh escapes her, ridiculous and ill-timed, but unable to be helped. As the sinking sun peeks over his shoulder, silhouetting his face and setting fire to the amber of his eyes, that smile reappears, cutting and brilliant through the shadows his taller form casts over her face.

"In retrospect, that's what I should have asked you, ay?" she wonders, breathless. She can practically see the sands of her life's hourglass trickling down before her, and being so close to the Reaper's invitation to dance puts all of that heightened color back on her. "Instead of the bloody train question. Thirty seconds left of life, what then? And if you choose in your verra last moments tae curse the day you met me as you fall..." Her grin broadens, with all of that sheer, ballsy temerity to even look smug about the following fact. "Just remember you dinnae have tae jump. I gave you a bloody out, luv, so dinnae expect me tae feel guilty if we dinnae make it."

After a pause, her face gentles. Those softer notes that render her so unreadable when the mood strikes her fill her eyes, punctuated with a slight lifting of the corners of her mouth.

"You're remarkably forgiving tae someone who just tried her best tae ditch you," she murmurs, good humor returning despite it. "I think we need tae talk about any outstanding abandonment issues if you're gonna ask tae tie the knot with every woman who tries tae leave your arse."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

We better get to work then. And while we do that...

"If I have to clarify," Jude Moshe points out as he loops that rope against the bloodied palm of his hand; the strain in his voice from his injuries is only a subtle undercurrent, like a soft, unnoticed aftertaste.

"... then I'm already gonna be disappointed."

He watches her leave towards the front of the compartment as the train cars screech in increasingly erratic, wobbling protest against the rails. Amber eyes keen, they eventually track towards the area she was peering at beforehand in contemplative silence. It takes him about two seconds to start moving again, stepping over the dying Mercy Killer with an off-handed, "Bye, Tommy," to offer him as the final words to hear before his passing. He pauses just in front of that jewelry case, assessing the pearls with a critical eye of his own.

The sound of him smashing the case open with the butt of that hook might not quite be audible against the raging winds that Cassidy braves.

When Jude pushes past the rent metal ruin that was once that door to the outside world, he's in the midst of finishing up stuffing something into his coat pocket. His hair churned into a frenzy of flailing red locks as he squints against the rush of winds, Jude lifts one blood-stained glove up against his forehead like an impromptu shield as he makes his own, brief assessment of the surrounding area -- and their current acceleration. His teeth grit against the buffet of the winds as his coattails billow out haphazardly behind him.

"This is looking better by the second," is his helplessly glib conclusion.

It doesn't stop him, though, from handing off that rope to her with all the second nature of the motion to attest to a lifetime of working together instead of just a handful of days. It's a kind of trust that's forced by the hand of fate in this particular situation; either way, they're screwed. In this moment, they need each other. And that is why it's similarly so easy for him to start twining that rope around the hook to make sure it is looped in nice and securely before he starts working the knots.

Well, feel free tae take this the wrong way if you want tae in turn...

Jude takes a single second out of the preciously rare resource that is their time left on this earth to pause and stare at her with that rakish ease. Exactly one second, before he's back to work.

"... Damn. The one time I can't afford to take it the wrong way. You really are as cruel as they say."

A second passes as he ties up a knot, tight and unyielding, with the deft tug of his fingers.

"... I'm thinking 'crotch-to-crotch'. What d'you say? Sounds about as safe a word as we're gonna get here."

No, he never misses a beat.

By this point, though, it's not quite a matter of will -- for as glib as he can be even in the face of what may very well be the very messy, very painful end for him, there's still a smattering of sweat beading at skin that looks slightly paler than its usual, tanned complexion. When she works that rope around him, his stance isn't quite as subtly at the ready as it normally is. Vague hints of the accumulation of injuries that have been adding up over the day, that never reach that easy smile of his, nor stop him from holding still as she makes her surprisingly deft and skillful work of binding him up. Yet another piece of her he was unaware of, and another one that adds to the whole of a picture that isn't quite clear yet -- like how the individual dots of a pointist portrait mean nothing until you see the whole. He blinks. Tilts his head. Purses his lips.

"... I feel like there's questions I'm gonna have to ask about your personal life once we get out of all of this," is all he says, his lone acknowledgment of that out-of-place talent, delivered with nothing more than the cheekiest of grins.

It's just another thing to file away, for now.

Eventually, though, she has him bound; eventually, though, she has -them- bound up against each other. He watches her, her expression darkened by the shadow cast over her vivacious features. It's a subdued and distant thoughtfulness that takes over his own in contrast to the vibrancy of her overcast smile, illuminated features pressed together in quiet consternation.

Thirty seconds of life, what then?

...

"... I'd probably spend it offering up one last, half-assed prayer, I guess."

For all Jude might claim to have once been a priest, or at least worn the vestments, he's hardly ever struck the sort to take religion in anything other than irreverence. And still, those words that slip out -- while rueful and full of a certain, opaque kind of disdain -- don't necessarily sound insincere. Perhaps not religious... but not insincere, either.

And it's gone, in the flash of a hapless grin.

"Lamenting to the Lord Above how I ever thought it was a good idea to try to hitch my wagon to a twister."

She grins, and it's returned just as easily as he grips onto her by the back with his free hand, his grip still firm for all his fingers tremble with the mild physical response to his accumulated bloodloss. It's adrenaline that propels him at this point, pupils dilated as he looks out over the edge of the train and snakes his fingers securely around that hook.

Alright. One --"

Jude starts to steady himself, swaying just enough to get a rhythm going. To prepare for what's to come.

"I distinctly remember you giving me free reign to complain, so I think cursing the day I met you is within my rights if I wasn't just so damn smitten. Two..."

He angles them, just the right way to - hopefully - avoid just rebounding off the tracks and becoming a bunch of friction-induced roadkill.

"... what can I say? Underneath all this charm and good will, I've secretly got a heart of gold that yearns for the quiet life with a woman that tries to get me killed every other day. It's my great shame. If you're daring enough to try to play therapist for me though, I'm not gonna stop you. And--"

He tenses, spares one last look to her, bound so close.

"--three--"

He leaps. No hesitation. No regrets. That hook goes flying as the breath is stolen from his lungs, angled towards the rails. So much could go wrong. So many things against them. The only thing they really have left on their side now is luck.

Thirty seconds left of life.

How do you spend it?

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Thirty seconds left of life and this is how Jude Moshe spends it - making her laugh.

There are worse ways to die, and his return riposte about how cruel she is lets loose a silvery peal of unfettered laughter, sadly lost in the gale-force winds surrounding them as the car does nothing but pick up more speed on the way down. She says nothing to those assertions, but by the way those eyes glitter at him, the very picture of an absolute lack of apology that she makes suggests that she is not sorry for that, either; he was sharp, he knew what he was signing himself up for the night he met her. He scrawled his name on the dotted line in blood, and this is where it takes him - careening in impossible speeds towards certain death off a cliff, trussed up against a woman he hardly knows, who brought him to this end in the first place, gambling with their last remaining seconds in hopes that they can pull off a miracle.

A long shot. Odds impossible. The very thing that Cassidy Cain thrives on, these inadvisable maelstroms of activity, sweeping Jude's battered wagon along.

"Ach," she tells him; she does not miss the way his injuries are taking a toll on him, but her lack of acknowledgment of them suggests either a callous heart or a determined one, because it isn't as if there is any time to worry about the blood soaking through his vest, or the state of his ribs, the pale underlay of his tanned complexion and the cold sweat dotting his skin. "And there you were, critizing Crennie's choice in safewords. You're a writer, I thought? Brevity is the soul of wit, ay? Then again it's not as if we have a lot of time left, dinnae we?"

The railcar goes faster and faster. Her hand grips the railing to steady herself and him, by the way they're bound together, a network of knots that, for the time being, binds her fate with his - the remains of her very life with his own. There's a glance down at them, a smirk tugging on the corners of her mouth when he suggests that there might be a few things in her personal life that she ought to explain. "No matter what you're thinking in that regard, I'm almost positive it's nae what you're thinking." Whether benign or questionable, the story behind the ropework will either make him laugh or cry...or both. This is certainly one of those situations that would warrant it, without anybody in the world judging.

Her face turns to look at him fully when he confesses that he would offer up a last half-assed prayer, reminded of that one maybe-genuine fact about him. The thoughtful look earns him a different twist to that smile, as inscrutable as it gets. She is, as ever, a woman with a million different expressions, and just as many ways to shape her mouth. As trembling fingers grip tight into the back of her, to secure her to him, she falls in line with it, her foot slipping in between his, the tattered shreds of her skirt tangling against his trousers, knotting around his boots.

"A prayer, ay? Now I'm the one that's disappointed."

Twenty seconds.

"I had another partner, once," she tells him through the roar of air. "She died bloody, clutching my hand and suffering 'till the last. I offered tae put her out of it, anything tae ease the pain, but she gripped me tight and looked me in the eye and said tae me 'tae the last drop, Cassie'. So ever since, nothing else would do. Nothing."

Her arms wind around his neck, easy given their proximity, and the fact that they have absolutely no choice with the way they're trussed up together. A handful of seconds of life left, and she fills his vision entirely, through the storm of the myriad of colors she has donned on her person - gold and green, the pink of exhilaration on her cheeks and the way they round into apples to make room for her smile.

"You can keep your bloody prayers. I'm taking it back, Jude."

A few weeks and this is only the second time she's called him by name, but he wouldn't have time to fully hear the single syllable spiced by her brogue, or the way it elongates the 'u' just slightly when she clutches him tight and her mouth slants over his, in the end as always a creature that simply takes what she wants, when she wants it. The wild, crazy, deadly world around her condenses in a single fine point down into the exchange of humid breath as she hungrily consumes the taste of him, restless and white-hot, the smell of expended gunpowder and magic on her nose, salt, menthol and copper shared on a tongue that is very much practiced in getting her every desire. Her body leans into his, her very soul thrown into the dual effort of draining him of breath while reminding him of life. In these very brief, precious seconds, with absolutely no guarantees for their survival, she chooses to give one person everything she is and everything she could have been.

In her last thirty seconds of life, she chooses to burn.

Her mouth leaves his by the five-second point of their window between salvation and doom, and through lowered crescents of lash, he'd find that grin, bright enough to shear through the way his shadow eclipses her face.

"The last drop," she reminds him quietly. "Dinnae know if your Luck is shite or not, but I know mine isnae. I'm nae done with this world yet." Every little bit helps, as she anchors his fate to hers. "So I guess we get tae see if She loves me enough tae carry us both."

She feels his move to leap well before it happens; the tightening of his body suggests it. As the hook goes flying, the distant clang of it ringing in her ears as the train drags it along, bashing against metal rungs and scraping through debris, lengths of rope unspooling in a crazed, chaotic twist, her arms tighten around him and she turns her head and looks right into her death. Her pupils are dilated, her heart jackhammers savagely against her chest and soon enough, there is nothing but air.

The secured compartment and the storage car fly off the track, the dying sun glistening over ruined metal frames as gravity pulls it down into its well, drifting down dozens of feet towards the river below. They fall with it, over the cliff and down, walls of sunset rock rising above them as their tether to salvation continues to unfurl, leaving their fates unresolved. She doesn't look down, but keeps her head tilted up, her breath held within her lungs; she can practically see it, the way the hook clangs and scrabbbles for purchase somewhere above them, the distance only growing as they fall.

Suddenly, the line snaps taut, jerking them up painfully with bone-jarring force, the metallic squeal of bending prongs and flaking rust unheard through the way rope constricts around them to rob them of breath once more. Winds and the way they've dropped force them to swing into the rockface before them, and it will take some quick thinking for them to bend their knees and let their boots meet it instead, to prevent them from slamming into it lengthwise and add into their growing tally of bruises. Bodies dangle like bait on a line, and below them there is a loud crash punctuated with the erupting geyser of water forced to make room for one fourth of a train, the groan of tangling metal distant, but still heard.

Slowly, she tilts her head down to look at the slow way the secured compartment and all of its valuables start sinking into the water in the throes of helpless bubbles. Her gaze tracks back up to the rope holding them precariously aloft.

The smile is back, and brighter, sharper than ever. A hand lifts, punching a fist in the air, index finger extended to point towards the sunset, delivered straight to an invisible cosmic opponent. Triumph surges over that pale, vivacious expression.

"HAH!" she cries, her voice echoing over miles of deep canyon. "I WIN!!!"

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

"You want to know the real secret to writing?

"'Make up the rules as you go.'"

It's those final thirty seconds that should be pitched with tension, perhaps. Regrets, almost certainly. A growing wellspring of anxiety and doubt. Yet if either feel any of those things they don't seem inclined to share it; in the end, they take as naturally to this as a nice, leisurely stroll through the park. Cassidy burns like a wildfire; and Jude, well... Jude washes over it like a lazy spring breeze, rolling with it as simply and indolently as most things in his life. Starkly different, yet leading to the same result:

"What can I say? I'm just a disappointing guy."

Two people having a defiantly casual conversation right in the face of their all-but certain ends.

And simple confessions, poured out persistently past the nigh-deafening howls of the wind.

His confession is ultimately one undercut and obscured by the glibness of his ammendment. Hers comes so very earnestly, fueled by the vibrancy of the burning flame in her eyes. He quiets as she speaks, his expression turning toward the questioning with the thinning of his mouth and the etch of a quizzical wrinkle across his brow. As if there were things that he could ask, so many things... but they fall by the wayside. At least... for now.

She smiles in a way that brightens even the shadows he eclipses her with, growing simultaneously darker and brighter the closer she invades into the comfortable bubble of his space. To the last drop. Is that how he would go?

His lips part; there is a rebuttal that very nearly spills from his increasingly hoarse voice, some glib rejoinder that would flick off the tip of his tongue so naturally the weak quiver of his voice would likely go unnoticed. There would be.

But the thought, whatever it may be, dies on the vine, burned out by the wildfire of her impulsive embrace.

Her mouth finds its place over his. And for a moment, there is no response -- no reciprocation, yet no pulling away either, for all that it would be impossible for how they are so tightly and inexorably bound now. For a moment, it seems like maybe that cool indifference won't abate, even for a single sliver of a moment...

And then that hand that was at her back finds itself buried in the wild, wind-whipped mass of her golden tresses as he pours himself wholesale into those final handfuls of moments before they cast their fates to the skies. Sharing it with her, the coppery tang, the hint of cigarettes and menthe, the taste and scent of violence and chaos still heavy in the air between them as he holds fast against her for those few, frenetically intense moments, taking as much as he's taken -- giving as much as he's given. His fingers curl and squeeze, to send jolts through her scalp with every faint tug of follicles as his lips press unhindered against hers.

Letting himself, at least for these final, precious seconds, be burned, even just a little.

The breath that heaves from his lips when they part is one he hadn't even realized he'd been holding until he felt the telltale burn of his lungs. His amber eyes fall on those gold-flecked greens as she smiles up at him, intense for a few flickering moments before it dies away back with the passing of those precious moments, laziness reclaiming his gaze. His hand loosens from her hair, following a path down her back once more to grip with the bunching of fabric against his palm, as if nothing had happened. She mentions luck.

And that smile is so shiftless in such a familiar way one could practically picture the ambivalent roll of his shoulders that would normally accompany it.

"... Not much of a guy for fortune," he replies, his voice tinged with a certain, lingering headiness. "But She's probably got plenty of reason to hate me, if we're being completely forthcoming here. But hey -- it'll be exciting to find out, eh?"

And with the leap off the side of that train...

Normalcy is reasserted, in the most unenviable of ways.

She looks towards their death. Jude looks up at their possible salvation. He watches, past the way the wind stings at his eyes, past the way the turbulence of their descent punishes his injuries, as the hook hits the tracks, scrapes across it, until he can't even hear the metallic screech of metal clamoring across metal for a home to snag. And then--

• snap*

--the line practically rebounds them up into the air in a way that knocks him like a ragdoll through the air, a tangle of limbs and protesting bones and muscles that are barely built to withstand such persistent abuses. Respectable journalist that he is, though, Jude Moshe makes for a surprisingly limber man in mid-air. He sees that wall coming. He barely has the time to sling an incomprehensible curse into the heavens before he holds onto Cassidy tightly, twists their bodies, and slams into the side of that rocky edifice feet-first in a way that -still- makes his knees quake in painful protest as the impact sends tremors up his bones.

The crash of the train cars is deafening, but he can hardly hear it at all beyond a distant, numbing sting as he stares, dumbly, at the geyser of water erupting far past them. Cassidy celebrates, thrusting an accusational finger towards the firmament. Jude Moshe just stares at the sinking of that train.

"... Huh. I guess she doesn't hate me as much as I figured." Then again...

"... but all that gella..."

And as Cass surges in triumph, Jude Moshe's shoulders sag in resignation.

"When this is done, and we're not dangling over a precipice on a very old piece of rope that feels like it ought to be some kinda metaphor..."

He looks back to her. And for all that he grouses, that smile of his is still as lopsidedly affable as ever -- and that spark in his amber eyes no less dimmed.

"... we need to have a long talk about how you rob trains."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

For a moment, they swing through the air and she feels like she's flying, the wind pulling through those pale-gold strands and whipping additional color on her cheeks. When it all ends in a crunch and splash, and the impact of tired bones against rocks, Cassidy's own grip tightens on Jude's; never an idle creature, her own knees bend, the tears on her skirt baring a single leg and the webs of blood wicking into pale skin and the mesh of her stocking, pouring still from whatever hiddens wounds she has suffered in turn. But the heels of those lady boots slam into rock to assist with taking the pressure off his knees, knocked against him even then as thick rope scrapes against the cliff-face above them.

She casts him a sidelong glance, the broad smile remaining, lips shaped to fullness and tingling, still, with the force of his reciprocation, shocks of electricity lingering from where gunslinger's fingers have tugged into those pale-gold ribbons framing her irrepressibly joyous features, threading through her scalp and left to spark somewhere at the base of her skull. Dozens of feet in the air, not out of the woods yet, swimming in the memory of the intense look in his gilded irises in the aftermath, and the overwhelming urge to reach for him and lose herself on him makes itself known by the tremors flitting through deft fingertips, leaping over her knuckles like tiny lightning arcs. Instead, her gaze drifts down to the sinking weight of so much fortune, trapped in the twisted carcass of one fourth of a metal beast.

...but all that gella...

A reminder as to just how much money they passed on sinks in and it tempers that victorious expression. "...ay." She will never live this down, on her reputation as a master thief. The least she could have done was grab a bag of cash and those pearls, but the rope was old and she could not chance the additional weight. "...ay. That. Well...next time, I s'pose."

Jude's face lifts and she's reminded of the unhealthy pallor creeping up underneath his tan. And as he promises a chastisement about the way she atttempted to rob this train, a warm hand lifts, her thumb passing over the curve of his lower lip, to dislodge a hint of red left there by her lipstick.

"Ay, well, I did say you could complain tae your heart's content, but I think..." There's a tilt of her head, looking up at the rope. "We better try and find our way up before our circumstances give us a giant 'fook you' and send us both down intae the deep anyway. So..."

A gloved hand reaches up, to grasp the length of rope.

"Let's get the hell out of here."

LATER....

It's a hard climb, and made all the more difficult with the way they've been trussed up together.

They make it anyway and by the time they do, the sun has sunk over the horizon, the blues and purples of twilight pressing down into the last, clinging colors of the day, burning red and gold cast in jagged splinters over distant mountain peaks and elongating the reach of shadows around them. A swipe of a knife from the high-end of Cassidy's boot finally sets them free of one another, and it's all she can do to sprawl backwards onto the dirt, chest heaving with all of her recent exertions. Gold-green eyes slip upwards, watching a pair of lazily circling buzzards, long necks and curved beaks tilted down in their direction below, as if assessing whether their next meal had just landed on their proverbial laps.

There's a look cast to the pair, 'I dinnae think so' practically scrawled on her fair complexion, before taking one glance at the state of the far away horizon and groaning. "We're so late," she mutters. "E's gonna wonder where the hell we are."

Who?

But restless is as restless does; a few weeks into their ridiculous partnership and he has never once seen her stay in one position for long, as if every part of her is so attuned with that inherent, reckless energy that being unable to bleed a fraction of it off may very well cause something disastrous. She rolls to her front, palms pressing on the ground and pushing herself up. Turning her attention to Jude, she is already cutting strips off of her tattered skirt, finding the cleanest underlays to do so. She is busily folding a strip into a square, deft fingers working over fine cloth with the speedy efficacy of a woman too accustomed to what else she intends to do.

"You're gonna have tae let me get a look at that, luv." She doesn't indicate what she means, but it's probably obvious. "Unless you want me tae leave you in the company of the birds."

Unless stopped, she'll reach for him, peeling back the side of his coat to inspect the profusely bleeding injury on his side. For all the words that she had told him about her former partner, whoever she was, there's no tightening of expression in those eloquent irises. No girlish, wilting shrinking away from whatever remembered traumas. No tears. Either the woman has a heart of stone, or a tremenduous capacity to bury those hurts in favor of the moment, or the context of the tale she had communicated earlier was completely and utterly different - there are all sorts of ways to bleed in Filgaia, after all, and not just by gunshots.

"You getting the dizzies, yet?" she murmurs, reaching for the buttons closest to his injury, picking them apart; the care and attention he gives his clothes was one of the first things she has learned about him, and now that they have the time to breathe, she treats them delicately. She's not a monster, no matter her tremendous capacity to be one if the circumstances dictate it, pushing back layers of fabric to try and get a glimpse of the injury that is doing him the most harm. Whatever she sees, she sips the air between the tight press of teeth at the glimpse of it, face twisted in a visible wince.

"Ach. And I thought I liked tae live dangerously."

She presses the square into it, palm flat and leaning in, applying pressure to the wound. The warmth of his blood is already soaking through her skin, and the feel of it only encourages her to apply more into it.

"You probably have verra many questions. All of that ended up too bloody messily than I liked. But since we dinnae get what I was after, I'm just gonna have tae switch over tae my Plan B." Eyes lift to meet his amber ones. "Sorry, luv. I cannae do more than this while we're here, and I'm gonna have tae force you tae walk once I do a hurried patch job. We're around the bend, I arranged for a ride, but we're a bit aways off the mark from where he'd be waiting."

Not that Ethan was the idle sort; he knew the terrain, and she didn't know a better transporter in Filgaia. He will come looking for her, and whoever she was with, but they would have to intercept him. The runaway traincar has veered them completely off course.

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

Let's get the hell out of here.

Jude Moshe heaves a world-weary sigh and grips taut onto the dangling, slightly frayed edges of that old rope.

"Amen to that."

...

He's honestly not sure how long it takes. He could measure it in terms of how every tug and lift strains his muscles and probably agitates that wound on his side further but, well... that's probably not so great a measurement of time as it is a measurement of cold, sinking dread.

So he instead just chooses to focus on the climb itself until it all blends together into a nice, numbing rote that carries him right up until the very point that he spills out over the sun-warmed surface and away from the weighty embrace of gravity on his hanging form. He sucks in a breath and inwardly curses himself for that shuddering moment of weakness that grips him, scraping rough, gloved fingers across the wooden ground beneath him. His amber eyes look up briefly towards the waning twilight skyline cast out by the sunken sun as Cassidy slices through those rope bindings; the taut material makes hempen snapping sounds as if suddenly released from the pressure of the knots he had been leaning back against, Jude rolls flat onto his back, pale-faced and staring at the sky with an indifferent kind of expression.

"... I'm gonna eat you if you get any closer," he informs those buzzards circling above him, in no uncertain terms, with a blank-faced stare that suggests the sheer lunacy of eating raw buzzard at this point is not exactly outside his wheelhouse at the moment.

We're so late, she murmurs, and that golden gaze rolls lazily over to her, to peer with the slightest of squints.

"Oof. Wouldn't wanna worry E," he commiserates, like he was talking about someone he's known for a whole lifetime.

"Especially because I don't know who the hell E is."

That, too, comes quite naturally.

"Talk about a bad first impression... ngh."

A little wince that Jude admirably holds back into a scarcely-noticeable flinch, and the sellsword lowers his right hand to clench at his side. Bright crimson smears an errant little path across his palm as the blonde above him steadfastly works on tearing off swaths of cloth from her skirt; he doesn't need to look up. He can already guess at what she's doing. He just keeps his eyes fixated on the sky, as if staring at some indiscernable point somewhere far off in heaven above.

"'S fine," he utters in a joking slurr, waving a hand through the air. "Me and the vultures have a good repartee goin' already... thinkin' of makin' 'em my new partners..."

Even in this situation, he can't help but manage a blithe grin, etching itself weakly across his blood-drained lips.

"... if I don't eat 'em first anyway."

Always the dilemma.

But she'll find no resistance from Jude when she finally reaches out for him, no attempt to bat away her hand. That crimson has shaded into different hues of different ages, brighter towards the fringes and darker with its intensity towards the epicenter of that wound, caked on and matting that shirt up against his flesh.

"Mm. Stars are swimming," is his answer to Cassidy's question. "It's kinda nice, actually. Not that I feel like getting used to it. Good thing I'm pretty sure I'll make it. Woulda been a lot easier to deal with if I didn't... act like a gungho preteen asshole and agitate the damn thing." He speaks about it so matter-of-factly even as she peels vest and shirt slowly and carefully away from his tanned flesh. That injury is an ugly one, a bullet wound that went clean through his side -- but he's largely right, at that: it doesn't seem life threatening if they get to somewhere that can treat it -- and that wound has all the hallmarks of something that's been opened and worsened by continuous and increasing strain.

Like from some gungho preteen asshole.

"Hey, hey -- you didn't... gh -- you didn't corner the market on acting like an idiot, Cassie."

This time, it's his turn to wince as she applies pressure to the wound, helping to put a stopgap on that bloodflow even as he feels the slick scarlet fluid stain and wet at her clothing. He listens to her speak throughout -- but he seems like he's only half paying attention; sitting halfway up with a grimace as she speaks, he reaches a hand into the interior pocket of his frock coat. He doesn't say a word, and he doesn't hear any sort of protest on him not to move -- not that he expects any from the blonde beside him, of all people. No -- he doesn't stop until he's found what he wanted.

Until he's taking her free hand against his to slip something up against her palm:

A string of pearls, only slightly marred by the streak of crimson that decorates their surface with its smudgy brightness.

"Well, no time like the present then, yeah?"

He's only going to wait exactly as long as it takes her to finish before he pushes himself back up with a weak wobble that refuses to become something worse, steadying himself on his feet soon enough; whether with her support or not, he's going to get moving -- in whatever direction she decides.

"I'm pretty excited to get over this so I can enjoy the headache I know I'm gonna get listening to your Plan B."

And despite all his fatigue, all his blood loss, all his pain, he still manages to cast a wink her way.

Because appearances are everything.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

"Ach, well. I always knew this was a mistake, then. I dinnae wanna get eaten, if that was the fate you were planning for me. Luckily I've aggravated you enough tae start looking intae other options."

His banter as usual does not go unanswered - if anything, it seems to give him something to turn his mind towards and keep him conscious, something to fight off the shock as she adds more squares on the way his blood rapidly soaks through the first. She creates a thickened pad by the end of it, and uses another length of cloth to bind it around his torso, coaxing him to lift his hips a few inches so she could do so, binding it securely on the narrow line of his waist. Deft fingers button him back up, as he laments about swimming stars and acting like a gungho preteen asshole. There's a sharp smile at that, laughter implied on her expression.

"You already know what I'm gonna say tae that, luv," she tells him. As stated so eloquently in their precious seconds before their inevitable deaths, he didn't have to jump on the car she was in. He could have elected to sit back on the roof and wait for her to catch up to him in Hilton, the line's final destination. She draws his coat back up, to hide the damning splots of blood, and while she doesn't address it, she knows that the injury is serious.

You didn't corner the market in acting like an idiot, Cassie.

"Oh, ay, I definitely see that," she tells him, her low brogue tart, but humored. "To be frank, cannae say I wouldnae have done the same thing you did. If nothing else just tae make sure you dinnae frolic off without me tae live out the rest of your days as a wealthy gentleman without my share of the take. But what am I saying? You're a verra giving kind of lad, are you nae?"

There was no going around it - whenever they catch up with Ethan, they were going to have to bring him back to the Last Resort. There's a glimmer of good humor, there. If nothing else, Jude would probably appreciate the name.

He suddenly shifts upwards and his movements despite his injury draws the very first flashes of annoyance on the woman's features. If he did not expect a protest, she as always runs contrary to his generally spot-on foresight, practically sent to this world to exact with sheer mercilessness her ability to confuse or surprise others. "I will finish the job myself," she begins. "If you dinnae lay back down and let me make sure you-- "

There's no resistance when a tanned bloodstained hand reaches for hers, to deposit the string of beautiful pearls she had been admiring on her palm, all the more accentuating her earlier remarks about him being a giver. Green-gold eyes blink from where she kneels, turning the string in her fingers and taking a look at them under the dying light of day. They gleam like moonfire, in defiance of the blanketing shadows. Eyes hood in an effort to mask the softening of that glinting emerald stare, a wry smile tugging on the corners of her mouth as she examines them. The thin streak of blood almost doesn't register, but as her fingertips brush over their perfect, lustrous surfaces, she is inclined, privately, to keep that bit of him on them - a badge of honor, almost, or the indication of a good story, just another sequin to sew into the worn but vibrant tapestry of her life. She did so love beautiful but imperfect things.

"My favorites." Hints of something more genuine tease the line of her mouth as she turns to look back at Jude. Reaching up, she fastens the bloodstained pearls around her neck, letting it rest underneath the open collar against her throat's hollow, his lingering warmth impressed upon them. A hand reaches for the side of his face, head tilting down to press the softness of her mouth in a damp, insistent ring against his forehead.

"Willnae be responsible if you burn yourself," she whispers, tease, truth and warning. "Playing with fire like you do."

With that, she eases away, and helps him up, slinging one arm across her shoulders so they can make their very pitiful, hobbling way through the desert.

"The case," she begins as they head into the night, the horizon before them peppered with stars, the railroad tracks stretching endlessly before them. "Holds a necklace." She produces it in her spare hand, tilting it towards him - the fading light catching the multiple facets of a deep red stone that looks like a ruby, flanked with clear gems that look like diamonds, set on an elegant yellow gold setting. It looks expensive, but Jude is no fool, though given his present state of wooziness, she isn't sure whether he'd know by looking at it that it's a very good, very convincing reproduction. "Looks exactly like this, as a matter of fact. Had a copy made up just in case, though dinnae know what would happen with this job, whether I was gonna make a switch or what. It was gonna go tae a fancy auction in Hilton, I got a tip that the train was gonna be hit by the arseholes I'm after, but when a contact looked intae the job some more, I found out that they were after this wee thing. So naturally, I got verra curious and started digging."

Her arm bands tighter around his back, falling in step with him. She supports his weight and in doing so, manages to favor her uninjured leg.

"It's nae a ruby," she says, eyes forward. "Poor goldsmith dinnae know what it was when he made it, cannae blame him. It's not like anyone would know what it is just by looking at it, or why Jerry would be interested in it. Dinnae know how much you know about the man, but he's got....a really stupidly powerful ARM that he swears up and down is some leftover shite from some ancient highly advanced civilization. Likes I nae seen. Family heirloom, or sommat, 'inherited' it from his da. Eats up a rare power source that looks like red rubies. Can always tell whether it's the genuine article when it feels warm tae the touch. So you can imagine why he's verra interested in collecting them. They're hard tae find."

She exhales. "Sonny Carillo's his supplier and put the job together, which means that he'd know where Jerry is at a given time. Was gonna take the thing and use it as a bargaining chip for information, because he's dead if he dinnae deliver - either he risks Jerry's displeasure, and gets turned tae ash, or he risks turning his coat dealing with me and trust that I end Jerry before Jerry ends him. Woulda liked tae have the real thing in our hands but...I guess I get tae play with fire with this replica, after all."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

Muscles beneath tan skin hitch with the pained beginning of a laugh at Cassidy's words as she buttons back up that bloodstained shirt; the end result sputters out into a pained spasm that reflects in the annoyed heave of shuddered breath from Jude Moshe's lips, but he looks no less amused for however much it hurts to laugh. It's always strange, how easy it is for laughter to hurt.

"You're really -- planning on killing me today, huh?" he chokes out with wry amusement tinging the fringes of his otherwise cracked voice. "Gotta... give you an A for effort and style, I guess. But just so you know, I've been through worse, so you'gh-- you're gonna have to do better than that next time."

Despite the pain that increases with the slow ebb of adrenaline in his system, he still manages to make a vaguely offended face scrunch at his brows, crinkle at his nose and pinch at his lips when she speaks of his generosity. "You wound me," he announces, absolutely unapologetic for the morbid wordsmithing. "I'm starting to... to think you don't really believe in my good nature."

He looks hurt.

Aside from the obvious reasons.

He looks askance for a moment after that, however, at her surprising round of protests (threats) as he begins to move. However, he doesn't stop, only offering a simple, "Then you'd have to live without this pretty face to brighten up your life," as if that nonchalant aside could assuage her vengeful commands. No -- in the end, he averts her wrath with those very pearls she'd so been eyeing before there near-calamitous jump. He remains quiet, watching her with a fatigued yet still ineffably carefree look however dulled the luster of his amber stare has become. He takes in her words, the slow, subtle change of her expression from something wry to the hint of sincerity that starts to undercut their gesture. Her favorites.

"Lucky guess, huh?" he wonders aloud as he pulls that coat back a little more firmly to him. The tone seems as haphazard -- if not hitched -- as ever. It's the look in his eyes that suggests that modesty isn't anything more than a shallow ruse at best.

He feels the touch to his cheek -- the soft warmth of her lips on his forehead. His right hand lifts, albeit with a bit of a tremor to its motion, hooking fingers against her neck until he feels the small hairs at the back of it tease against his fingertips. His thumb brushing against her chin, he listens to her words with slit eyes and the dawn of a messy, weak smile.

"Yeah, well," he begins amiably enough within that brief, whispered moment.

"... I've never really been known for making the best choices in life. So I guess we're both in good company."

Hefted up, Jude's arm falls away only to inevitably find its home at her shoulders, supporting his weight against her with an utter lack of shame of the pitiful indignity of it all. No -- the red-haired man seems to take it all well in stride as he listens to her speak, focusing in on her words even as the pictures painted in his vision start to smudge in a growing haze of blurry colors. His unfocused vision drops to the ruby necklace, peering at it through squinted ambers as if trying to make heads or tails of what he's seeing -- just cognizant to tell something's amiss but too weary to know what.

"Huh," he utters, scratching his head with his free hand. "That's one hell of a pretty-looking fake. I'd like to meet your people, I have a couple things I technically owe people but don't wanna cough up the money for... ugh."

And here, he very helpfully coughs, a wet, hacking thing.

"... maybe that was karma."

Which isn't going to stop him from trying anyway.

No -- it's what she says next that steals the real bulk of his attention away. For all that he is glib even while possibly dying, it's those words he focuses on, pockets away... remembers, just in case. "So he's got some kinda... rockmuncher ARM. Right. Remember them talking about those back in class." His free hand swivels though the air in a circle as if in a little 'duh' sort of gesture. Ancient civilization. His brows knit together.

"There are ARMs excavated every day that most people wouldn't even know how to squeeze the trigger for, let alone use," Jude mumbles, half to himself. "Whole fields of dragon graveyards out in Aquvy -- giant, metal ribcages just jutting out of the sand. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. But usually, Ethos gathers that kinda crap up as soon as it gets found..." Or worse things still.

"... if his family's really been using something like that then his avenues he can go through must be pretty damn limited already." Even in pain, the wheels in his head turn. And deeper thoughts still.

"... whelp, guess I'm just gonna have to play with fire with you." He looks at her, brows raised. "Gotta see it through to the end. Right?"

...

"... Just... once I can feel the right side of my body again, I'll get... right on it."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

In the end, it is the sound of his laughter that loosens the bands of ice constricting her ribcage, and already hating herself for the fact that they're there, watching him as the sun disappears over the horizon and finally gives the evening its due berth. Under an endless canopy of stars, miles of dirt ahead of them, a multitude of paths full of possibilities that are just as numerous, she keeps company with a soul who plays along a different tune than she does, but with enough similarities that the end result is this, easy camaraderie and casual affection that ought to take years to develop, but which took them mere days....a development that is telling and dangerous enough that she knows.

This something she wants, resonating with old memories crammed in the back of the Last Resort with familiar faces, connections she brutally torched once she realized what it all meant, unable to cope with the idea of the blood that would follow due to the loyalty that cursed them all. Getting Crenshaw shot. The incident with Darren and his wife.

Knows that she can't, for all of that desire, because it is when she discovers something else to live for that the world will try to kill her, and she has already died outside of her own terms more times than she is comfortable with.

There's a hint of a smile but nothing in response when he jokes about doing her best to kill him, her kiss and his quiet rejoinder doing what she needs it to; to fill the silence of that lack of a response. She has done everything, and keeps trying, to dissuade him from hitching his horse to her tempest, but the harder she tries, the more he clings. She can't help wonder whether he has elected to undertake the risks he has and bleeds this way to increase the associated difficulty and test her boundaries...and why not? She's doing the same to him.

The evening gives them a small reprieve, humidity petering away to cooler climes over a desert that is sweltering in the day, but not so much in the late hours. His slurring words and his careful steps reach her ears. "Ay, well, I dinnae know much about all of that, as you may have already discovered, my skillset falls in a verra specific arena. But as always, you dinnae disappoint. Every day spent with you, I learn something new every day. Certainly would explain why he's so fastidious about collecting these, ay? And you wonder why he's so dedicated to his banditry."

Her blonde head tilts towards him, brow angling upwards. "Dinnae know there's a journalism school out there that talks about that kind of thing." Indicative that she catches on his mention of a 'class'. Jude Moshe hardly ever misses anything, but she is sharp in her own right...and as usual, given her confrontational, conflict-seeking ways, she gravitates towards it like a moth to flame.

The wet cough has her pausing, her other arm banding about his middle to shore him back up. Her face doesn't change, not a hint of worry seeping in her expression, but she keeps looking forward as she continues on with him.

The ground underneath their feet rumbles. Cassidy halts, angling her body to push them towards the shadows of a hard rock outcropping, her derringer out and the hammer cocked in readiness. Eyes narrow, but save for that hint of deadly, dangerous focus, everything else about her is relaxed. Outside of the brief moment he had glimpsed on the speeding roof of the High Noon Express, pure unadulterated fear never figures into her quick risk assessments, though she has a healthy respect for it - there is the kind of fear that comes to a person naturally when embroiled in dangerous situations, and there is the kind that locks her in place, renders someone helpless and unable to move or think.

She does not experience the latter often, but she did today. That instance might as well have not happened at all, with the way she positions herself.

The beat of hooves and the distant neigh of horses drift through the night, and the shadow of a carriage suddenly pulls from the very end of the visible tracks. Pulled by one red horse and one black, the rumble grows louder the nearer the vehicle becomes, steered by a thin man with a poncho and his hat pulled low on his head. Axles rattle as wheels crush dirt and debris under their wake. Right next to Jude, Cassidy relaxes.

"E!" she hollers, stowing the gun away, pulling Jude with her. "About bloody time!"

The carriage pulls up in a stop. A head lifts up; the face underneath is surprisingly youthful and androgynously delicate, though his age is given away by the crow's feet lining the corners of his eyes, framed as they are by protective goggles. A large rifle is strapped diagonally across his back, mounted with a scope. Weather-beaten fingers clutch easily on the reins. For as long as she has known him, Ethan Ethan has never worn gloves, and despised the very thing. He gauged nuances by touch, from the right way to steer horses to testing which way the wind blows to make sure that his shots hit the mark....and they almost always do.

"Cassidy." His voice is soft, almost effeminate - the thing that always gets him underestimated in rougher drifter crowds. "Well, ah should say the same damned thing."

Plantation accent.

"You weren't at the rally point so ah thought ah better run the line just in case." Keen, pale blue eyes find Jude. "And it's a good thing too. Who's this? He looks like he's dying."

"Ethan Ethan," what, really? "Jude Moshe," Cassidy introduces, reaching out to pull the door of the carriage open. "My partner. And he is dying, so I'd verra much appreciate it if you gave me the eight-hoof special and get us the fook tae the nearest Baskar camp."

There is a long, significant pause. Ethan turns his head to regard the redhaired reporter with a different expression, guarded and skeptical; either due to the fact that his demise is probably imminent, if he doesn't move fast, or something about Cassidy's identification doesn't sit well with him. While he says nothing, unfailingly polite, as it usually is with the Southern types, those eyes speak volumes.

"Jinty's expecting us," he reminds the blonde. "You know how he gets."

"Ay, well. He'll just have tae nurse more gray hairs than he'd like. We dinnae have time."

"There's no guarantee they'll be friendly."

"You can let me deal with that." Cassidy shoots him a sharp look, before her lips grow pliant at the corners. "Please, E."

Please.

The air, thick and tense with history, curls around the very word. The rifle-toting driver exhales, and waves them on. "You two'd best hold on, then," he tells them, ever-so-gentle. "Because ah'm not stopping."

<Pose Tracker> Jude Moshe has posed.

It's like an endurance test. All of this. One that most likely would have balked at if they had any sense.

But if there's one thing that Jude Moshe has, it's a damnably dogged persistence.

And, some might argue using this entire incident as the proof, a complete lack of sense.

Night settles in with the dying vestiges of the setting sun, the deep purples and blues transitioning towards darker blues, transitioning to pitch night. If there's anything the desert is, it is as unforgivingly cold at night as it is sweltering in the day time, and while the cooling temperatures are welcome now, even his fatigue-addled brain knows it's only a matter of time before that nice cool turns into a deep and unpleasant chill. "Sure hope your friend isn't the impatient type," he asides, apropos to that, as he leans his weight on the blonde.

"Because... 'freezing in the desert' isn't exactly in my top ten list of favorite ways to die."

Does he even keep a list like that? Perhaps something to ask when he's a bit more coherent. As it stands, his wrist flops his hand back and forth as Cassidy speaks about Jeremiah and his criminal ways. "And here I thought... it was so Junior could live up to his daddy's proud shitkicker heritage, even though... he never got his approval before he croaked, and it haunts him 'til this very day, driving him ever-madder like the damn spot that never goes out," and here, Jude weakly shoves a hand into his coat pocket, fishing for his smokes. He hangs a stick between his lips, even as he declares a round, "... or some trite garbage like that. Ah well. I guess not everybody's gotta have a complex motivation for doing dumb things in life."

He only sounds a little disappointed.

His free hand fumbling for his lighter, his shakey thumb flicks at the flint once, twice, three times, five times -- but he doesn't stop, even as his weakness makes it an increasingly dangerous proposition to be handling open flame of any kind -- not until he gets that flickering tongue. Not until he lights the tip of that cigarette. Not until he feels the menthol cooling its way down his throat.

"Journalism school? Nah. This was a..." His brows furrow, faintly. "... verra prestigious institution for verra... lessay lucky youngsters when I was... was but a wee lad, ya ken?" His words mumbled and increasingly more faint, that approximation of Cassidy's brogue is still impressive in its own right as he sucks down that cigarette with the crackle of embers and the billowing plume of smoke. "... they never actually taught us about insane, rockmunching ARMs though. Sorry."

He imparts this particular nugget dourly, as if the revelation of his previous sarcasm was some great, troubling news.

He feels the tremors beneath his feet long before he hears the approach of something; it's what lets him, even in this state, relax just enough to become more easily maneuverable -- trusting Cassidy to be able to guide him better than he could actually move his own body at this point. He flattens against that rock, cigarette hanging from his lips, looking for all the world barely there...

... which makes the fact that his free hand is still tucked against the shotgun hidden in his coat all the more telling of the sort of man he is.

Horses. He can tell. Two of them. Caravan? His teeth grit faintly, even as Cassidy relaxes. And while he visibly relaxes -- while he slouches his leisurely path limping alongside her with the most helpless smile in all the world for the approaching caravan...

... his hand also doesn't fall away from his coat until the very moment he sees mutual recognition between Cassidy and that newcomer.

Only then does his bloodied hand lift in a wave all too casual for the state he's in. The man's accent calls to mind memories still fresh of the beginning of this entire endeavor, brows lifting just a bit. Ethan... Ethan.

"You've gotta good eye, Ethan Ethan," Jude declares, not even remotely in a state to begin commenting on the absurdity of that name. Who is he to judge? He just jumped off a runaway train. "I am, in fact, dying."

Which really doesn't stop Jude from being Jude, regardless.

Introductions finished, that skeptical stare leveled on him, Jude's only response is to lift his hand and twitch it by the wrist, coupling it with a simple, "Howdy, partner," spoken with a wavering voice into the tense, scrutinizing silence. Unfailingly easy going. To the last drop.

Jude, otherwise, just lets the two carry on their conversation uninterrupted; he has neither the strength nor the desire to interject at this point, just observing that back and forth with a quiet, keen amber gaze. Please, E. His brows slowly knit towards their center. Please.

"..."

The soft exhale of a shuddered breath, and ultimately, Jude's only obvious response to Ethan's ultimate acquiesence is the half-salute he offers that would be jaunty if it weren't so steeped in trembling weakness. He'll slide into the caravan afterwards, slumped against the side of it, staring almost blankly out into the night sky. "Feel like he was gonna bless my heart," he remarks distantly at poor Ethan Ethan's scrutinizing suspicion, a glib remark as his thoughts drift elsewhere.

This is a mistake.

This feels too good, too nice, too... anything. Even with a wound bleeding him out.

He should be anywhere else but here.

And yet, here he is. At his insistence. To her detriment.

... How does he live with himself?

"Oh, good," mumbles the redhead as he stares out towards the night sky, the faint glint of metal in the sky as a passing bird soars overhead. He smiles, despite himself, an inscrutably nostalgic thing.

"... here I was worried it wouldn't be a painful trip..."

And with that, he just slumps, at least confident that the caravan will do its job in forcing him to stay awake for every last mile of their journey to wherever they may go.