2017-04-17: Twenty Four Hours of Ridiculous

• Log: Twenty Four Hours of Ridiculous
• Cast: Cassidy Cain, Noah Hawthorne
• Where: The Blue Adlehyde River, somewhere between Adlehyde and Lacour
• Date: April 17, 2017
• Summary: Directly connected to the events portrayed in What's the Worst that Can Happen? and Thirty Seconds Left of Life. Cassidy Cain, in a rare fit of tempestuous, ruthless fury and bent on dispensing some due comeuppance for what happened aboard the High Noon Express, boards the Mamma Mia, the prized riverboat casino of gambling mogul and shipping magnate Sonny Carillo, during its twelfth annual high stakes poker tournament, with every intent to take and destroy something precious to Jeremiah Black's premier supplier. Meanwhile, Noah Hawthorne, in pursuit of an artifact disguised as one of the onboard auction's offerings, embarks on the same three-day voyage with longtime friend Professor Ambrose Montagu of the University at Linga to retrieve the item he has so painstakingly attempted to keep from the clutches of other interested parties mistaken of its true nature. These two personalities, ultimately, prove too much for the boat to handle as they /inevitably/ get in each other's way, resulting in the rampage of a wild ferret, the revelation of mass cheating, yet another gunfight from all sides, the sinking of the riverboat casino, non-gratuitous nudity, a near-drowning, a wild horseback chase through the surrounding canyons, a devastating rockslide...and a surprising bit of coincidence. It must be a day that ends in 'y'.

---

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Drifting on the long river cutting through the bottom of the canyon somewhere between Adlehyde and Lacour, the Mamma Mia riverboat casino cuts through the glassy water like a blade, weighted down by bodies presently engaged in the very serious business of gambling away irresponsible amounts of gella. While the details of most of his holdings remain buried deep in ledgers housed in various banks all over Filgaia, the fact that the casino belongs to Sonny Carillo, gambling mogul and supplier of various goods, is very well known. The day marks the twelfth outing of the Mamma Mia's high-stakes poker game, one of the more illustrious offerings within the many gambling circuits Ignas has to offer; the buy-in is as usual, an exorbitant amount: 50,000 gella, and with the number of participants, the resulting pot promises a generous payday for the lucky winner.

The boat is massive, powered by steam and moving slowly across the water through a combination of coal and the mechanisms of the large wheel propelling it from behind. It has two decks above the main floor, where well-dressed gentlemen and socialites with the rougher sorts - drifters, clearly, the more successful ones who have enough money to risk. Women hired for the purposes of facilitating certain services to the lonely are plentiful within and as always, given Carillo's demands, dressed to the nines, all colorful layered chiffon, feathers and plunging necklines. With live musicians and copious amounts of alcohol served, there is enough entertainment on board to while away the three days for which the tournament is scheduled.

Today is the first day.

There are rooms - small, but opulent enough for guests to easily forget the lack of space. Food pours out regularly from the kitchens located in the lower decks. And taking its cue from Adlehyde's Ancient Cultures Exhibit, there are artifacts on display and put up for auction, a variety of tablets chiseled with ancient writing, though given the demographic present, it's a safe bet that not many would be interested, though a few have been purchased already, undoubtedly to go to private collections in some decadent household in one of the bigger cities in the continent. Security is relatively strict; weapons are checked in at the door, no exceptions, to be locked in the casino's vaults only to be returned by the end of the trip. Overall, it is a pretty slick operation. And given that, in general, many of the Mamma Mia's guests leave happy despite whatever losses they might have suffered, it is a good bet that there are many who are more than enthused to give the casino plenty of business. In fact, one could almost agree that almost all of its patrons would.

Almost.

Cassidy Cain had arrived at the Mamma Mia's port of call two days ago to assess her options and go over certain information she had received before boarding. Insinuated now, amidst the lively hubbub, she is presently busy...

...well. Causing a scene.

As usual.

Dressed in a pricey, but supremely gaudy gown stitched with clashing blues, oranges and bright lemon yellow, blonde hair piled high in an intricate coiffure, and for some reason, a limp ferret wrapped around her shoulders that looks so lethargic, one can't help but wonder whether she either drugged or tranquilized the thing before she decided to wear it, her gloved hands are gesticulating wildly at the casino's floor manager, whose balding head is already dotted with agitation sweats. An equally gaudy piece of jewelry, a ruby set on gold and flanked by diamonds, rests heavily against the line of her exposed collarbones.

The floor manager's mustache twitches, monocled eye squinting in consternation.

"Miss, if you could keep your voice dow-- "

"Nae!" she cries, flinging her hand wildly to the side, 'accidentally' slapping the bellhop waiting at attendance and causing him to yelp and spin around, cap flying off. "Nae, I willnae keep my voice down! What kind of establishment are you running here when a wee lass cannae even safeguard her frilly underthings in peace?! You have a panty thief in your bloody hands! I've been here two hours, y'ken. Two bloody hours and I've lost a corset, three pairs of stockings, two garters and a fistful of skivvies! All locked up in my room, y'ken and suddenly vanished! If this keeps up at the rate they're disappearing, I'll have nae anything by the third day and I willnae resort to frolicking around with nae anything to shield my nethers from the rampant perversions of your establishment. Because there's clearly someone in your staff collecting underthings and I willnae stand for it! Dinnae tell me your boat is lacking in the very serious business of keeping its fine womenfolk safe and secure!"

The poor man's face drains of color. "I assure you, miss, that our security is-- "

"He took my lucky garters!" shrieks Cassidy, her hand going wide again, gloved fingers managing to slap the bellhop around at the same place on his cheek and causing him to spin around again. "My lucky bloody garters! How am I s'posed tae have a prayer in winning the pot now?!"

There are stares, and while the manager attempts to turtle into his collar at the force of the blonde's fury, there are a few ladies in the crowd who politely excuse themselves to go running to their rooms.

"W...we'll look into it immediately, miss," the manager says helplessly, snapping his fingers frantically for the nearest security person to come over. "We...we certainly don't want to ah...make any of our fine ladies uncomfortable with this...this incident..."

"Ay, you do that! Search every bloody room if you havetae for clues or...or...sommat." Cassidy waves her hand again, causing the bellhop to drop reflexively and a hand to clap over his cheek in a protective fashion. "I dinnae ken! What do I bloody look like, a detective?!"

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Seaworthy chintz on a muddy crick.

That had been Noah Hawthorne's first impression of the fat, belligerent silhouette of the Mamma Mia, squatting in all of her overburdened opulence on the docile ribbon of water seamed into a small crack within a bigger one, leaving him with the impression that the river in the canyon was a river only because it was the lowest point rather than owing itself to any kind of natural font in the earth. A ditch, in essence. A long one.

He'd said as much to the man with him, an older gentleman, white-hatted, wearing one of the well-tailored suits that he somehow, sheerly by association, manages to make seem frumpy. How he accomplishes this is beyond Noah's ability to explain.

'Uncharitable, my dear boy. They say she's the Queen of Blue Adlehyde.' Ambrose Montagu had a predilection for speaking with hyperbolic grandeur. He dabbed daintily at his wet crown with a lace-edged kerchief. 'Blue Adelhyde being, of course, the poet's way of saying all of the winding, fertile waterways of the, of the--'

'Blue.' Noah could not flatten his voice more than that.

'Well...' Montagu had jabbed the dirt with his cane, panted quietly in the heat of the day, and screwed up his brows as he looked out at the slow-moving brown water. 'It's poetic, I said.'

There had been hours to kill after boarding, each gone their separate ways: Ambrose to begin evaluating -- through a peculiarly large monocle on a waistcoat chain -- some of the various and sundry artifacts on display in the casino's many temporary glass cases; Noah to order a tub, enough hot water to bathe in, and a woman equipped with questionable morals, a taste for gella, and a scrubbing brush to do the bathing for him. Three days out of Linga, and he believed he had dust the color of blood in places he'd never once in his life laid eyes on.

The sunset is pending by the time he hauls himself into clothing suited for his -- for their purposes. 'We'll not get anywhere if you don't have something nice on,' Montagu had said in Linga, 'And forgive me, Noah, your gifts may be many but you have the aesthetic instincts of a brain-damaged wolverine. Noble creatures though they may be, there is a time and a place, my boy, to show the teeth, and then again a time and a place to hide those teeth in a silk glove.' He'd caught a glimpse of the look on Noah's face and puffed his cheeks out. 'Forget the metaphors! I'm going to have my tailor in, is my point.'

And so he had, becoming responsible in virtually every way for the well-heeled appearance of the tall, lean, broad-shouldered figure who leans -- perilously within backhanding range of the agitated madame in the gown made out of a circus tent, himself a wedge of white shirt, dark blue brocade waistcoat, jodphurs and riding boots -- to insert a knit-browed, concerned remark into a conversation that needs anything other than his help.

He has his reasons.

"I just saw a man with a corset and several silk stockings on my way in, actually; he was on his way to the upper deck. I assumed he was taking them to be laundered, most especially in light of the way he was sniffing them -- 'what thoughtful service,' I thought to myself, thinking to check what sort of fragrances the ladies preferred, but now I wonder if I hadn't got it very wrong. You don't suppose he plans to string the unders up on the flagpole, do you? That would be a scandal."

And then he slips through two opposing currents of mingling guest and is folded into the general milieu, sliding his hands into his pockets and allowing himself the faintest upward twitch at the corner of his mouth. With any luck, the floor manager is handled, then.

Now, where is Ambrose...?

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

The blonde woman in the ridiculous gown would have said more, until a tall shadow dwarfs her own, with a faint lean right into the range in which her flailing hand would be. Green eyes flecked with motes of gold angle sidelong towards the supposedly Good Samaritan as he tells the manager of what he had witnessed. She tries not to stare in mute astonishment, knowing full well there is no such a man considering how she had just made that story up, schooling her features despite the slight widening of her eyes even as the floor manager sputters near her.

"Well, you heard the gentleman!" he exclaims, gloved hands pushing the security guard. "Get up there and stop that...that...that pervert!"

Despite herself, Cassidy's teeth clamp lightly on the edges behind closed lips, though she manages to put the reins in her expression before it completely runs away from her. There had been a specific aim in that she had hoped a team of Mamma Mia's finest would be inspecting every room, leaving a few areas of the riverboat casino woefully unattended. While she is confident that the search will continue once they discover the Panty Ghost Thief is nowhere in the upper decks, it still pushes her timeline back by an hour, maybe two. And she doesn't want to stay on this boat for longer than necessary.

Still, she plays along, swatting the air. "See?! You heard the gentleman! Find this...this...this miscreant and bring him tae justice immediately! Hang him up by the ankles on said bloody flagpole or...or...sommat!"

Can't drop it now, Cassidy Cain. You'll just have to find another way.

She eyeballs the interloper's back, though not for long. With a sniff and a whirl of her skirts, she flounces into the milling throng of guests, though the intent is certainly far from blending in. Not with the kind of gown she wears, made to catch the eye...and then turn it away if the beholder is in any way aesthetically discerning. Because the gown is absolutely hideous.

LATER...

Two hours later, the tournament is in full swing.

The audience clusters around the main event area where several tables are set up, layered with green felt and accompanied by uniformed dealers with their fast fingers and mechanical card machines. By quick observation alone, one would find the demographics of Filgaia well represented on the floor; drifters from all areas, a few socialites from the more opulent kingdoms, a few infamous outlaws that would fetch a pricey bounty and even a few Baskar tribesmen all gather up at the tables with their chips and no small amount of greed as smoke from countless cigarettes curl towards the ceiling like white-gray serpents. The atmosphere is charged with anticipation, and for the life of her, she is not immune to it when she arrives with a sweep of skirts and a hand on her ferret-stole.

For someone who has just lost her lucky garters, she is doing remarkably well, having cleaned up her first table and laughing as slender hands reach over to gather her mountain of chips to her enthusiastically, before the dealer tallies her winnings and gestures for her to join the next table that is being prepared for those who have managed to survive the bloody, ruthless culling of the last few rounds. One of the only few women left participating, she gamely throws daggers with her eyes at the rest of the poker grand dames as she moves, a hand on her ferret stole and a satisfied smile plastered on her face - the very picture of a woman confident in her chances.

And with good reason. She is especially familiar with the gambling circuits in Filgaia, and how it works.

Gold-green eyes skate towards the presence of security guards as well as a few others moving towards the decks where the riverboat's rooms would be.

A hand falls on a vacant chair, beaming at the faces clustered around her table.

"Gentlemen," she greet, brows lifting towards her hairline. "I s'pose I'll be laughed out of your undoubtedly august company if I either ask you all tae go easy on this wee lass or if I called for your surrenders tae spare you the inevitable humiliation of being absolutely wrecked by said wee lass? Or should I say it anyway if not just tae start the obligatory shite-talking early?" She bats her lashes. "Was never the sort not tae be proactive in any and all endeavors, y'ken."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Having unwittingly derailed one manipulation of the staff in order to commandeer it for his own purposes, Noah shortly thereafter found Ambrose Montagu squinting through his oversized monocle at a fragment of pottery that barely, according to Noah's expert eye, rated as being worth the glance he gave it to find that out -- which could only mean it wasn't what the professor was looking at.

"Well?" he'd asked, drawing up beside the portlier older gentleman, swirling a glass of something amber with deft flicks of the wrist.

"Oh, it's here," said Montagu. Light played off of the convexity of the monocle and caught the swirling, ever-so-faint hues painted along the crystal surface, like the rainbows of an oil slick or the tailfeathers of a peacock. "But..." He straightened, turned to look at Noah with the monocle, and after startling and pulling a grimace of a face lowered the thing and slid it into his jacket pocket. "It's sold."

A look of surprise crossed Noah's face like an exclamation point, then shattered to make way for a sharp, short knife of laughter, both of his brows arching, dipping, drawing inward above glittering, incredulous eyes the color of some overshadowed glen. "It what? ...Really?"

Even Ambrose had looked amused, somewhere underneath that luxurious moustache. "There's no accounting for taste, I suppose."

"It sold," Noah had repeated, staring off into the crowd over Montagu's head, wonder and horror comingled on sly features. "Amazing." Two seconds later he blinked, slashed his gaze downward to meet Montague's paler set. "Who?"

"Haven't the foggiest. They're very mum about buyers for their pieces."

"Well. In this case I can understand why." Something in the way Noah murmured those words against the lip of his glass, dry and sotto, drew an embarrassingly falsetto giggle out of his traveling companion. The taller, younger man shot him another look, this one subtly affectionate, and then he'd leaned in, resting one forearm on top of the glass case and pivoting to close their angles to one another, pitching his voice low. "Listen. There's some panty-thief on board. I told the floor manager I'd seen him, so we'll use that. Mitnick is-- ?"

"Oh yes. Raring to go, I should think."

"Well, have him lift a few pairs and, eh...you know."

"He'll want hazard pay."

Noah's smile had contained a great many very white, very straight teeth. He straightened and clapped Montagu on the back. "Tell him he can keep them when we're done!"

AND SO:

Across the span of the evening, there are reports of ladies suddenly discovering that their garments have gone missing. Word gets around quickly, boats like these being what they are. Periodically certain very specific elements of the security team disappear into the warren of narrow corridors servicing the claustrophobic bunks below -- surgical distractions, small-scale and orderly, and never in the same location twice. Anyone keeping a canny eye on the movements of the boat's crew would notice, though nothing aside from ladies' undergarments ever seems to turn up missing, so the purpose of this periodic imposition on the crew's time is beyond interpretation -- for now.

Meanwhile, the young man with the accent of an upper-crust merchant son of Adelhyde has been merrily pissing away poker chips, only to quite suddenly recoup virtually all of his losses in a last-minute showdown with the major player at his table, chasing the hand all the way to the river card...with a two-seven offsuit in his hand. It is the worst possible hand to call the flop with, assuredly the worst possible hand to stay in the game with, and to win with it is virtually an obscenity: well-mannered poker players fold trash hands like those, or expect to have their kidneys softened in an alleyway.

There are no alleyways on the water. Noah dons a sheepish look as he rakes the chips into a pail. "I don't know!" he exclaims, to a table full of disgusted faces. "Beginner's luck, I guess!" The rest of his opponents, their confidence shaken by the realization that the heavyweight at the table has no idea what he's doing, no longer have any idea how to read him, and they trickle the last of what they have away, leaving him free to -- against every last condition of decency and fairness, and all odds -- advance to the next round.

The pail of chips hits the felt of the table beside a very familiar figure in a tragic dress. "Well I'll be," he says. "If it isn't the little miss with the missing littles. Hah! Looks like we're going to be playing for your lunch money, kitten." He drops bonelessly into the chair beside hers, tossing her a wink, his smile appropriately gormless for the kind of witless aristocrat he's trying to look like, though there's something about the shine in his eyes that's more amused than it ought to be, failing to entirely mesh with the rest of the facade.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

There is a pause when another pail thunks on the green felt, and a familiar voice. Cassidy slowly, languidly, rolls her head towards the dark-haired man as he drapes into the chair next to hers with flawless ease, and if she were embarrassed by the mention of her littles in the company of other poker players, she doesn't show it. Considering the row she had just exhibited to the floor manager a few hours ago, one should expect her to be more embarrassed than that, having handily established herself as some kind of defender of the sanctity of women's underthings. But the smile she gives Noah is just as telling as the sharp amusement glinting from his hazel eyes; it cuts like a knife, to match the glitter in those virid irises.

Looks like we're going to be playing for your lunch money, kitten.

"Mew," she tells him, folding her skirt under her and taking a seat, folding her fingers over her chips. "Take it if you can, luv." Though the way she she says it is more laden with dry irony than anything remotely meant for flattery. To the rest of the table, that expression becomes immediately obliging. " Certainly the rest of you've heard, ay? The panty thief? I was a tragic victim, y'ken. Any more of this and I'll have tae resort tae stealing them, myself."

"Oh yeah, I heard about that," says one of their tablemates, a golden-haired youth with blue eyes and dressed impeccably in a three piece suit. "Mary Sue's all nervous about it, I had to assure her that she's being paranoid, but we checked her things regadless. Nothing was missing, thankfully-- oh is it me?" Positioned to the left of the dealer, he places his bet before checking his cards.

Cassidy inspects her cards once they're doled out, the pre-flop betting round commencing. "Oh, ay, nasty business, all of that. But dinnae mind us, lads." She winks at the rest of them, nodding towards Noah. "This one's a right Good Samaritan, assisting the good crew of the Mamma Mia tae catch the rampant pervert stealing ladies' underthings on board and was just there when I lodged my complaint. We've nae met until today. Indeed, we absolutely dinnae know each other at all. Certainly nae partners for some kind of swindle. Or sommat."

The rest of the table pauses. As the air suddenly thickens with suspicion, all eyes gravitate towards Noah and Cassidy, the latter of whom continues to pick at her cards.

"I mean, that would be absolutely preposterous, ay?" Eyes lift, the devil's own mischief glinting within them. "After all, that never happens in established tournaments such as this."

A completely bald-faced erroneous assertion. Because it most definitely does happen in events like this one.

Putting her cards face down on the table, her smile lifts higher on the corners, carrying on as if she does not notice the blatant change in the atmosphere around them.

"Well, then! Shall we play? I call."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

"You'd better believe I can," Noah says, when she dares him to take her money. "I just won out my table with a seven and a two. They told me it's the worst hand in the game. I just won with the worst hand in the game! How's that for natural ability?" He shoots her a look defined by its cocked brow and smug self-satisfaction, then shares that look with the rest of the table, as though trying, somehow, to impress upon them his mastery of the game...in spite of the fact that what he is claiming is probably the most heinous failure to comprehend how the game actually works conceivable to man.

"Is it paranoia if they're really out to get you?" He asks of the golden-haired boy in the suit, lifting a hand and tapping his nose, winking yet again. "That's a very clever thing I heard once. But it's true. So true! Because there are at least four other ladies I've heard had their things taken after I heard this gentlewoman complaining, so your miss Mary Sue should keep one eye on her smallclothes at all times. Or I could do it for her!" The laugh he follows this remark up with is an unpleasant rich-boy chortle that belongs in the mouth of someone with at least half as much chin and jaw as he has, but it's natural enough: laughter is like a language, in its way, and what he lacks in the commitment to seamlessly inhabiting personas he more than makes up for in their affectations.

He punctuates this god-awful joke by dropping his bet onto the table and continuing to chuckle at himself.

It seems to occur to him belatedly that something at the table has changed, as though the brittle atmosphere were only gradually penetrating his thick, privileged skull. His humor wanes slowly, gaze ticked from one unfriendly face to another, and ultimately around to the blonde beside him, whereupon his expression splits into an absolute dazzler of a smile, momentarily too authentic, though it widens almost instantly into absurd enthusiasm. "Ohhhh, I see. I see! Very good! Are we roles playing? Hah! Yes! I can be an excellent scoundrel. Have you got a lip tint? I can do up a very ominous scar. I'll be, ah...ah..." He seems to fumble, searching his limited aristocratic knowledge for the name of some suitably intimidating outlaw, and then snaps his fingers. "Jack Dove," he says.

Jack Dove is, of course, an over-the-top figure in a series of questionable books written about the titular figure's escapades all across the deserts of Aveh. They are borderline bodice-rippers, very poorly written, and contain nothing whatsoever even remotely believable. They sell like crazy, obviously.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

"Ay?" Good humor stitches over her expression, up along with the incline of her head. "Well, excuse me, luv. I s'pose I oughtae be calling you Prodigy instead of Good Samaritan. S'got a better ring tae it, dinnae it? My mistake."

Lips twitch faintly at the mention of Jack Dove, currently bearing the likeness of one Vin Barrett, the poor Baskar guide who met Cassidy's acquaintance just a few weeks ago and has probably regretted it since, but with the opportunity right there, ripe for the plucking, the blonde does not hesitate in the slightest. At the growing suspicion and bafflement of the rest of the table, she claps her hands from where she sits, features affixed with pure delight. "Brilliant!" she says encouragingly. "I love those books. Since I'm the only lady at the table, I oughtae play the female protagonist of this chapter, ay? Should I have you rip my bodice now or later? Now? Well, of course now! We have an audience and we shouldnae disappoint! Here, do me a favor and hold my ferret."

A deft hand and fleet fingers whips her 'stole' from her shoulders. With a flick of her wrist, digits surreptitiously pinch at its tail as she tosses it lightly towards Noah.

Mid-air, the supposedly dead creature suddenly comes to life.

It squeaks. It attempts to latch onto Noah's face, squirreling about as it tries to get off him the moment it lands. The poor, discombobulated creature leaps onto the green felt and launches itself towards the blond gentleman, who yelps and drops his chips, teteering dangerously off the chair. The agile creature springboards into the next player, who screeches something about allergies, arm whipping wildly away as a metallic contraption suddenly erupts from his shirt cuff, holding a few aces, which spray into the air like confetti.

The animal eventually finds the ground, and keeps running, vanishing into the tablecloth. The cheater at their table stares uncomprehendingly at the rest, contraption waving about like a white flag of surrender.

What follows is something that could only be described as a wave effect: a woman from the next table jumps up from her chair as she shrieks, shaking her skirts as cards that she shouldn't have spill from its numerous confines; another man reflects her yelp, toppling into the person to the right of him just as he's about to palm for a better hand, sending more cards sliding across the floor. Similar events unfold in rapid succession as the wild ferret just climbs into unsuspecting gamblers' skirts and pantlegs, resulting in a growing pandemonium and the realization handily exclaimed by a member of the audience:

"....holy shit, everybody's fuckin' cheating!!!"

That fact, probably, isn't surprising to the likes of Cassidy, who had been counting on the very thing.

What is surprising to the blonde is what follows after, when a disgruntled outlaw, who, unaware of the sheer irony of what he's about to do or say, shoots up from his chair in righteous fury, ARM pulled out seemingly from nowhere even as extra cards spill from his lapel at the gesture.

"YOU FILTHY GOD DAMN CHEATERS!" he roars, anger braiding over sunburned features. "NOBODY CHEATS BLOODY HARRY, BLOODY HARRY CHEATS YOU!!"

The sight of the weapon causes another wave effect. Namely everyone else, somehow, pulls out an ARM of some kind, despite the fact that there have been weapons checks prior to boarding, and supposedly everyone else's weapons should be in the casino vaults. The conwoman stares mutely from where she sits.

Seriously?! Not again!!

"...excellent security my tight wee ars-- !"

The deafening exchange of gunfire from everywhere explodes in the main room. There are screams admist the shredding, splintering sounds of bullets cracking through wood and shattering glass, and amidst it all is the terrified ferret, squeaking pitifully as it hops this way and that, and miraculously avoiding getting shot. That thing is lucky, she can sense good fortune when she sees it.

But there's nothing else to be done but for Cassidy to hit the proverbial deck, and scrambling to get under the table to kick its legs out from underneath it in order to give herself some kind of barrier against the deadly hail.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Something subtle passes through Noah's expression when the young lady next to him claims to love the Jack Dove books. It's too genuine, too difficult to see -- actively suppressed, just not well enough to escape the eye of someone practiced in detecting subterfuge -- to be part of whatever ludicrous false identity he's been inflicting on the people around him. A twitch of the lips, a slight lowering of the lids as he looks down at the cards on the felt, bending the edges closest to him up slightly so that he can see what he's been dealt. "Oh? That right?"

And then everything goes ferret-shaped.

He glances up from his cards just in time to have a long, furry mammal half-wrap itself around his eyes before it flails, whipping around like a particularly aggressive pasta in order to hurtle away from him, sleek body little more than a blur of color as it proceeds to unmake an entire poker tournament in a matter of moments.

For Noah, well-practiced in the art of keeping a finger on the pulse of a chaotic moment, it all unfolds in something like glorious slow-motion, cinematic with vibrant, perfect clarity, a parade of small and perfect moments: he sees cheque-edged chips in a dazzling array of colors topple from their neat stacks and flip end over end through the suddenly busy air; he sees the stain on the bottom of the shoe of the blond man as he tilts over backward and the knife in a garter holster strapped to one of his ankles, momentarily rendered visible in the way the fabric of his trousers ripples over the silhouette beneath in the sudden rush of air. Beyond the cards that spray out of a sleeve at the end of what is in his opinion an extremely slipshod device, the shocked, garishly made-up face of a woman in a dress wholly the wrong color for her, and behind her as she spins the wolfish leer of the man whose hand has found its way into her bustle.

The ferret completes its circuit of Noah's table, dragging his attention around with it, and as he twists at the waist in his seat other tableaus present themselves: greedy fingers taking advantage of the chaos to dip into pockets, dealers sending signals to other dealers, a drink spilling down some poor unfortunate's cleavage and sending her into a dead and earnest faint--

Confronted with this sudden fortune of outlandish incidents he forgets and abandons entirely his manufactured persona, jaw hanging lax, hazel eyes widening, his heartbeat picking up to a sprightly rhythm well-suited for dancing.

And here he'd thought tonight was going to be a crashing bore.

His slack-jawed look is only just beginning to change its tenor, eyes igniting and lips starting to hook into the kind of smile wide, sharp, and disreputable enough to disembowel the unwary, when the ARMs begin to appear. It's not enough -- not at first -- to derail the eager wildfire of that mounting glee, but when there isn't just one ARM...or two...or ten...and instead it becomes an entire room full of them...his expression suddenly empties completely.

"Oh," he begins, "sh-- "

By the time he's articulating the 't' at the end of that word he's flat on his back under the table, booted feet having yanked him into a slide straight off of the seat of his chair, and cannot seem to decide whether to cover his head every time a spray of bullets nail the floor near him and send shards of wood spitting and fountaining up into the air...or his stomach, because he's laughing too hard to make any use of himself.

"Ohhhh, saints of Aquvy. And they told me eastern Ignas was no fun," he tells the blonde with the equally good survival instincts, in a radically different voice than the snob's Adlehyde enunciation of moments ago. All of the syllables are colored with -- what, exactly? As accents go, it's difficult to place. It has elements of countless places piled atop one another, a mongrel hybrid of too many lands to name, borrowed diphthongs and glottal stops kneaded together, molded into something new.

As fate would have it, he does not have his ARMs, and momentarily wonders why he's the only soul on the entirety of the riverboat without them, though he knows perfectly well what the reason is: when you're up to something more serious than cheating at cards, you play everything else as close to by-the-book as you're able. Still, though: in hindsight, perhaps a mistake.

He drags a long, deep breath into the breadth of his chest, exhales it in a sigh of bone-deep satisfaction, regaining some semblance of composure. Planting a heel and with a small kip of a movement he flips himself over, push-up position, preparing to make his exit; Ambrose is out there, somewhere, and as distractions go he imagines this one is going to be difficult to beat: they should probably do what they came to do.

Only, once he's upright, he can see that goddamned ferret out there, barely dodging feet and bullets. What he needs to do is move in the opposite direction, not straight into the middle of the typhoon of hot lead death, but...

He hesitates. Knows, the moment he sees someone kick it, that he's going to do the dumb thing. The dumbest thing.

He closes his eyes, rubs agitatedly at his face, and groans -- at himself.

Slants a look at the blonde, reaching blindly up over the lip of the table at his place setting as he does so. In spite of the fact that there's every chance he'll wind up thirty seconds from now with a hundred more holes in him than he had when he arrived, there's a sharp spike of anticipation in his eyes in the look he shares with her, and the phantom of something like a smile, unformed, nascent, vapors from the adrenaline in him: "Well," he says, "What the hell. Why not. Raincheck on that bodice ripping? But seriously..." A flicked glance. "Not in that dress. Orange is really not your color."

And with that, he curls his fingertips over the lip of the pail of chips above him and uses that grip to sling the contents of his winnings across the churning chaos of the room in a rooster tail of wealth as he vaults out from underneath cover.

To save a ferret.

Noah, he thinks to himself, we should have a talk soon about our life choices.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

What happens next is a study of perfect kinetic harmony. As Cassidy slips herself under the table, so does the dark-haired man sitting next to her, placing himself underneath just as the table tips over from the blonde's well-placed kick, the heavy wooden affair slamming hard into the ground on its side in time to prevent smaller slugs from making their evening a little more difficult than either of them would prefer. Twisting her body to her front, green eyes peer cautiously from on top of their improvised cover - pupils dilated, her heart pounding wildly in her chest, the reality of getting caught in yet another shootout from all sides puts color on her cheeks and stokes the familiar, roaring wildfire of her temperament. With a reckless grin suddenly curling on her lips, somewhere next to Noah Hawthorne, she positively ignites as fear and adrenaline courses through her blood and catalyzes a volatile chemical reaction that sears through the rest of her, reasserting an incontrovertible fact that the golden-haired troublemaker has never tried to hide about herself: she is never more alive unless mired in situations like these.

She would have expected the other man with her to start lambasting her for being mad over the cacophony of deafening gunfire, a truth which she has no room to deny considering what just happened, but as she turns her head to look at him, he lances her with a look of his own, hazel eyes as bright as torches and lips split in a broad, almost giddy smile, the leavings of laughter straining a baritone that sounds nothing like the upper-crust accent he had adopted earlier. The change in diction is not a surprise to her, she had pegged him as an operator the moment she saw that self-aware amusement when he sat down at the table. It reminds her less of Jude, who would be the first to ask her, acerbically, whether the circumstances are dangerous enough for her, and more like how Morgan would react even as he pretended that he wasn't enjoying any of this. Only there's no pretending with this one.

Ohhhh, saints of Aquvy. And they told me eastern Ignas was no fun

"Ay?" she hollers over the din. "Dinnae they tell you, luv? It's all about the company!"

Punctuated by the sudden slash of an incendiary slug that ricochets past their cover and slams somewhere behind them, erupting in a small explosion on impact and blanketing their vicinity with a surge of black-and-gray smoke. And in the middle of it is the harried ferret, scrambling as it attempts to wind around the stampede of frantic feet, skittering and sliding away from expended shells...

...just as it's kicked, and sent flying with a pitiful squeak.

MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE OF THE MAIN EVENT ROOM...

His comeback was to be the stuff of legends. While he mourned the bloody deaths of his rivals three years ago ('A nasty business, that,' he would tell anyone who listened. 'Theresa Kilcannon was a lovely woman and a fine primadonna.'), it had taken much of his own creativity and capital to poise himself in the precipice, to take over the empty space that the grande dame of traveling stages had left behind at her untimely death. A gloved hand reaches down to pull at his lapel, to straighten it with a decisive snap.

"Maestro!" his assistant wheezed, wiping his sweaty brow with his handkerchief. "I don't think they're ready for you, yet, it sounds positively chaotic in there!"

"Nonsense!" the tenor declared, brushing past him. "Everyone is always ready for the great Mario Lanzo!"

Shoving the double doors open with a bang, he sweeps his hand out in a flourish and takes a deep breath.

BACK IN THE MAIN EVENT ROOM....

As the ferret goes flying in the air, additional chaos unfolds and while the spilling chips and drinks had earlier drawn a beautiful, almost choreographed slow-motion moment for Noah, it is the same for Cassidy now. The animal soars, paws spread and tumbling, as the booming, sonorous notes of a familiar song come out of seemingly nowhere.

"AND IIIIIIII~ WILL ALWAYS LOOOOO-- GGGRHHKK!!!!"

It lands on the Great Mario Lanzo's face, utterly dashing his hopes of a dramatic entrance. Both man and ferret go down in a heap even as Noah decides, privately, that he's going to stage a one-man ferret rescue operation across a literal field of death.

What follows are two streaming, glistening trails from a pair of emerald irises set alight by exhilaration and incredulity as Cassidy falls back against her cover, practically sobbing with laughter. Fire and pain spear through her sides and twist, momentarily robbing her of breath, because everything around her has officially gone from bad, to worse, to absolutely ridiculous, and there's really only so much a relatively sane person can take in without defaulting to unhinged amusement or abject misery and by the look on her face, she may have elected to choose both. A hand comes up, to brush her knuckles over her eyes, pale cheeks flushed.

"Ach," she says, breathlessly, turning her gaze to the ceiling as if in silent prayer. "Fook me running."

Raincheck on the bodice ripping?

The upper-class merchant princeling-who-isn't addresses her once he's managed to push himself in a position more suited for quick reaction, and her blonde head rolls languidly over to look at him, brows lifting faintly.

But seriously...not in that dress.

There's a quick glance down at the blue, orange and lemon yellow monstrosity she's wearing, and that edged expression returns, as honed as a blade, glinting between her lips and effortlessly gleaming through the vestiges of smoke around them. "Nae exactly the purpose," she tells him. "But methinks, with that, it's working better than intended."

With that, Noah is in the wind, vaulting off the table and into the cascade of hot lead. A befuddled stare follows him as he risks his life for the ferret that's busily engaged in a bit of a catfight between itself and the performer, his black-and-white figure writhing in the middle of it all, gloved hands flailing as paws dig into his face and bushy tail slaps at his nose. Wood cracks and splinters under the relic hunter's feet as he makes that crazed, heedless dash across the battlefield for the creature, leaving the conwoman to open her mouth, close it, then open it again:

"...well, there's no saving that one," she mutters, turning to make a blind, wild sprint of her own towards the exit. Feet pick up, putting as much speed as possible as she can with a bustle and petticoats weighing her down. As bullets ping and tear at her clothes, she keeps her head low and her arms up, though considering what she's wearing, disaster inevitably happens. Her boot catches on the hems and she goes sprawling on her front, chiffon and silk forcing her to slide out of the room and into another one in an uncontrollable fashion. As Physics mercilessly exerts its will on her flailing body, she lets out a cry, spinning uncontrollably into the auction area adjacent to the main event room, slamming painfully into one of the foundations of the glass cases....

...that slowly tips over.

"Oh, fook."

Cassidy throws her hands over her head and braces herself. The metallic-and-wood display finishes its tilt. It smashes in an angle above her head, spraying her with fragments of glass.

After a few moments of non-movement, she slowly looks up.

Some ancient ceramic artifact falls off its clamp, thumping on top of her head and sliding down on the ruined floor in front of her. More out of instinct and curiosity, she picks it up between an index finger and thumb, letting it dangle as she squints at it, taking in the spherical protrusions attached to the base, and the rest of it curving up to flare at the end.

It looks kind of like...

"...what bloody worthless piece of shite is thi-- ?"

Something else falls on her head and clatters in front of her. She picks up the placard that handily informs the viewer that the item is no longer in auction, and takes in the amount of zeroes involved in its starting bid. Her confusion only grows.

"...it sold? Amazing."

A blast of gunfire has her ducking again, followed by a trail of screams. Peeking between her fingers, she manages to catch sight of black booted feet as several of the riverboat casino's security team barrel down the hall towards the main event room. Reminded of the opportunity she is busy squandering while lying where she is, without even thinking about it, she shoves the artifact deep into her skirts and launches herself back up. In a spill of blues, oranges and yellows, she looks this way and that from the auction room, before twisting on her heel and moving for the stairs. Now was the time. Security will have their hands full trying to quell the disturbance in the main event room, and the absolute disaster the gambling tournament has become.

This is not how her original plan was supposed to play out.

Oh well, no one could ever accuse her of being inflexible.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

If only reality would oblige him and continue to spool out as slowly and beautifully as threads of cold honey once he breaks from the flimsy shield of the half-collapsed poker table. No such luck. Noah re-enters the stream of universal time as though tossed into a storm at sea as he abandons cover, the world once again a furious smear of color, light, and noise, rife with competing fragrances that assault him like fists to the nose: blood, ozone, cordite, alcohol, sweat, smoke, a thousand colognes and perfumes. The winnings he'd whipped out into the frenzy had sloshed into that seething wall of bodies like a cresting wave of temptation, but culled few of the combatants. Most of those devoted to violence in the moment have a habit of coming by their windfalls dishonestly and a distinct lack of interest in scrabbling for hundred-gella chips on the sticky floor. It's therefore a miracle that he's able to traverse without incident even half of the distance between himself and the errant ferret, which appears to have moved on from its war against iniquity and poor sportsmanship to assaulting whatever passes for culture on-board the ill-starred Mamma Mia.

Every agile bootfall, every limber twist of the torso, every duck snapped beneath a scything arm contains a silent internal litany of foul words belonging to tens of languages, no single tongue enough to encapsulate the breadth of his need to cuss the world around him for having created in him a fool vulnerable to the plights of the genuinely innocent. What on all of this sand-blasted, forsaken world is more innocent than a wild animal, after all?

His luck holds far longer than it by all rights should, though not long enough to see him free and clear. Two thirds of the way to achieving his ridiculous goal, close enough to see the tiny pink scratches on the waxen face of the man in the tux and hear his indignant lamentations over the roar of barking firearms and the howls of victims and victorious alike, Noah is clotheslined by a thick, hairy arm that folds closed around his throat like a steel trap, wrenching him around front-facing into the worst of the firefight. He knows what this position is called because he's been in it more than once: 'human shield.' As positions go, one of his least favorite.

He recognizes not the arm around his throat but the ARM in the hand of its opposite as belonging to the logically-challenged man who spurred the firefight into existence to begin with: Bloody Harry, or so he claimed at the top of his lungs just before the night split open in a hail of bullets and projectiles more obscure and insidious, spat from the ends of weapons crafted by ancient hands. Under other circumstances he would view this veritable glut of artifacts with rapt fascination...but there are a handful of things he cares about more than mysterious and heretofore-unseen ARMs, and most of those are inside of him, engaged in the very important business of keeping him alive. He wants them to stay there.

And so:

"This was a mistake!" he warns as he offers token resistance, raising his voice and flinching as a bullet sings past his ear, ripping a funnel of emptiness through the air. "You should probably let me go!"

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH," is the response he gets from Bloody Harry, just before he's cuffed in the side of the head with the butt of the outlaw's ARM.

Noah folds his hands over the forearm and its wiry sleeve of thick, dark hair, lifts his booted feet and knifes them backward between the legs of his captor. Bloody Harry keeps his footing in spite of this sudden, weighty burden, but is defeated when Noah hooks those feet behind the hinge of the man's knees and forces them to fold, sending the pair of them toppling forward onto the ground, Bloody Harry atop Noah's back. The ground rushes up like an open palm made out of hardwood to slap every inch of him from chin to groin -- the latter earns a short, agonized sound, hazel eyes rolling up and back beneath not-quite-closed lids and pitifully knitted brows -- but minor hurts are quickly sloughed away in the pressure of unfolding violence.

With his legs trapped against the floor by Noah's and his arm likewise pinioned beneath his former shield's chest, locked tightly there by a hand with an iron grip, Bloody Harry has few options left save to dispatch of Noah's dead-weight. His one free limb is the arm with the ARM, so the decision is an easy one: bring it to Noah's head, and fire. He begins to do that very thing, the contraction of muscle in his chest and shoulder amply telegraphing his (anticipated) intentions. Noah does not have to look to see the hand with its fist full of death coming. It's all part of the plan, but his heart stops in those last few moments, every nerve in his skull alive with the expectation of a muzzle-press, the possibility of miscalculation--

It's the very last possible moment when he snaps his hand up to grasp the one with the ARM and adjust the angle, facilitating Bloody Harry's inadvertent suicide. The weapon bucks and the body atop his unstrings, dead weight. He wrests the ARM free of lifeless fingers, rolls them both over, grimacing at the heat he feels drizzled down the back of his neck, over his shoulder, wet and red. Booted feet propel him in a slide on his back into the shadows beneath the next table, this one adjacent to the entertainer with the furious ferret.

"Told you so," he tells the ghost of Bloody Harry breathlessly, head tilted back hard enough to have an upside-down look at the wall just on the other side of the table. Shadows knife over the cords of his throat, dig into tenuous creases in his crown as sharp hazel eyes dance over the options and hands intimately familiar with the machinery of murder move blindly through the motions of snapping the ARM open, investigating its configuration and the amount of ammunition left. His gaze finds a thick rope leading down on a diagonal to a mooring chock bolted to the wall, traces it up to an oversized carriage-wheel chandelier. By the time it gets there, he already has a plan.

Sort of. Most of a plan.

Enough of a plan.

The man in the tux lets out a sudden WHOOP of shock as he goes down, hard, on his tailbone, his pantleg yanked from beneath a table. He hits the floor and slides underneath it, reeled in on his back to find a pair of glittering green-and-brown eyes staring down into his -- once the ferret's been removed. "It's safer under here," Noah points out unnecessarily, tucking the ferret after a moment's hesitation into the top of his shirt and making a mental note to point out to Ambrose that jodphurs tight enough not to contain pockets are even more useless than he'd presupposed. "You probably want to stay dooooOOOOOW YOU LITTLE SHIT!"

Terrified, the ferret is making no distinctions between its rescuer and its prior victim, flipping and writhing around inside of his clothing, biting and scratching until it descends far enough to be pressed snugly against his body by the waistcoat, at which point it seems to calm itself or be overpowered by the tension.

"I SWEAR TO GOD," Noah is saying, irritatedly kicking a chair close to the wall out from under the table, sending it skittering into a crowd no longer in any possession of ammunition, reduced to fist-fighting -- and after the arrival of the chair, grappling on the floor. He breaks for the wall at a sprint, using his momentum to leap upward, plant one boot on the wall and use that to vault higher still, reaching to grasp the rope with one hand. "IF YOU DON'T STOP BITING ME AND START APPRECIATING WHAT I DID FOR YOU I'M GOING TO TURN YOU INTO A SWEATER FOR MY D--"

Bloody Harry's ARM bucks once in his hand with a ear-ringing CRACK, a single bullet bursting through the rope close to the chock on the wall. With the rope severed the chandelier collapses toward the floor and into the midst of the berserking crowd, the length of remaining rope whipping upward and hauling Noah -- and his angry passenger -- with it.

Five breathless minutes later, having achieved some sort of temporary understanding with the ferret -- now tucked into his shirt across broad shoulders, its head poked up out of his collar to watch goings-on -- Noah appears in the more-or-less deserted gallery. He finds Ambrose standing near a toppled pedestal in a puddle of shattered glass and heaves a sigh of relief. "At least something worked out. C'mon, let's get the hell off of this boat."

Ambrose's wide blue eyes turn toward his young companion, and he shakes his head in mute bewilderment. "I don't have it."

Noah stares. At Ambrose, at the shattered display case. "What?"

"I don't have it! It was taken!"

"It was WHAT?"

The older man wrings the brim of his hat. "I came out here as everything started to go -- I mean what did you do in there? -- and I saw a young lady pick it up and put it into her skirts."

Noah's mouth has yet to close. The world has ceased to make sense. "I...what?" he asks, weakly. He closes his eyes, lifts a hand, knits his brows, shakes his head, attempting to wrap his mind around what he's hearing. It doesn't work, so he gives up entirely, focuses on necessity instead, reopening his eyes and grasping Montagu's shoulder, expression focused. "What lady?"

"She was, oh...blonde, slender, she had the most dreadful gown. Ran off with it toward the private rooms to do saints only know what with it."

And the hits just keep on coming.

Noah slumps backward against the wall, staring into the middle distance. "Wh..." Long pause. Then, annoyed: "You know what? No. I'm not going to wonder. I'm not going to. Let's just -- wow. Okay. Let's just go down there and get it and then try to forget that this ever happened. I know who you're talking about. I guess. I -- wow. Just...wow."

And with that, Noah and his gentlemanly companion begin to descend into the lower decks of the ship, where Noah begins to open -- or kick in, as necessary -- doors to the passenger cabins.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Removed, for now, from the chaos happening on the main event room, Cassidy continues moving, climbing up the stairs heading for the upper decks, and vanishing around the bend just before Noah and Ambrose scramble for the stairs themselves, going the opposite direction instead, going down to the lower decks where all the guestrooms are. Lungs burning, muscles sore and laden with bruises, she bulls on upwards, coruscating adrenaline boiling hot in her veins and honing every reflex to battle-readiness. She lives her life as a creature slavishly devoted to her whims, spinning from one direction to another depending on how she feels and what interests her. Now, however, is completely different, and the Mamma Mia is besieged by what actually happens when the blonde conwoman is determined to do something and finish it to the very brutal, bloody, destructive end.

Because she isn't here to steal. She isn't here to swindle anyone. She isn't here to pull one of her elaborate games and hare off into the sunset, laughter on her lips and pockets fat with her ill-gotten gains. The Mamma Mia belongs to Sonny Carillo, who, among other things, is Jeremiah Black's primary supplier, currrently the sole recipient of every nerve inside of her that is capable of savage retribution, and with the train job from the last week having gone tits up in the most spectacular way possible, and nearly killing her partner in the process, she is driven by this single, white-hot, burning need to let the gambling mogul know something. And when Cassidy Cain decides to do something, it will get done, come hell or high water.

She leaps into the landing of the topmost deck, also the most secure, where the manager's suite is and where the tournament's pot is kept. While the weapon vaults are at the lower decks, somewhere close to the kitchen, the casino's valuables are located up above within easy access of the person who keeps its day-to-day operations running as smoothly as possible. It is a room with double doors at the very end of the hall, the only one on the topmost deck. With most of the security team downstairs attempting to quell the disturbance, there are only two personnel guarding the door, armed with rifles.

"Ach, thank God you're here!" she cries, and heedless of the weapons she glimpses, starts rushing for the guards, their eyes wide with alarm at seeing her state and the fact that she's there in the first place. "You have tae help me get off this god damn boat, it's madness down there, I dinnae want tae die!"

"LADY, GET THE HELL OUT OF THIS FLOOR RIGHT NOW!" cries one of them, ARM lifting, muzzle pointed in readiness. The momentary glimpse of hesitation she sees is all she needs.

The blonde suddenly launches herself off the floor through her dead run, arms reaching upwards to snag one of the swinging light fixtures affixed to the ceiling. The momentum carries her quickly, a blur of oranges, blues and yellows. Years traveling with the Thespians spill over the forefront of her memories, muscle memory engaging as her body recalls, by instinct, all those hours spent on the trapeze. Her legs split under her skirt as knees bend and the drive carries her upwards, unfolding by as she brutally kicks at the faces of both guards, blessing them with one hard bootheel apiece, sweeping up from under their jaws and driving them right into the double doors. They crack and groan under their combined weight, splintering them open. As bodies topple over, the woman spills in a pile of torn chiffon and silk on fine carpet, rolling and righting herself up on one knee, both sets of fingers splayed on the ground underneath her. Looking up, she blows an errant lock of pale-gold hair away from her eyes.

There it is - the Mamma Mia's vault.

It is a towering, mechanical beast, stamped with five dials and interlocking tumblers, all of which have to be disengaged in a specific order just to get past the first layer of security. The Montrose Carbuncle, invented and patented by Montrose & Company, was, as its name suggests, the gem of the outfit's inventory, and long considered in her profession to be a safecracker's worst nightmare. It is fireproof, rustproof, grenade-proof, acid-proof...God knows what else. She has never seen one in its full gunmetal glory until today, and the sheer challenge it presents screams at her to try her hand on it. The temptation is nigh-near overwhelming. She practically tastes it in the back of her throat.

Sadly, today, she has to rise above it. Biting back a groan and shaking her head, she reaches up to pull her coiffure apart, fingers hastily diving into its lustrous victory curls to pull out the small grenades she had been carrying, all this time, within the fancy updo. Ripping off the adhesive backs with her teeth, she gets on her knees and plants them not on the vault, but the floor underneath.

The incident with Morgan is all too fresh in her mind. She doesn't arm them this time until she is well and truly ready, and knows what she's doing.

SOMEWHERE ON THE LOWER DECK...

As Noah and Ambrose tear through the hall, the splintering sound of doors kicked open only adds onto the overwhelming cacophony that has taken over the riverboat casino. Most of the rooms are empty when the relic hunter goes through them as quickly as possible in an attempt to hunt down his quarry, but there are a few that are occupied. There are a few stares when he manages to invade a couple in flagrante delicto on what looks to be a very rigorously used mattress until he decided to make his presence blatantly known, and another where a pair of girls are changing; their outraged screams are heralded by a collection of objects hastily snatched and thrown at Noah, spilling out in a mess in the hall.

Somewhere above them is another ominous sound - that which sounds like rolling thunder, a roaring sound unable to be drowned out even by the intervening layers of boat. Given Noah's own predilections as to how he lives his life, he would recognize it easily.

As he moves with Ambrose, and kicks down another door, the rush of a massive metallic object just plows through the ceiling of the guestroom deck somewhere behind him and his scholarly gentleman friend, and doesn't stop. It is simply too heavy to be deterred by planks of wood, no matter how sturdy they are, once it decides to fall from the goddamn sky. It smashes through the floor, leaving spiderwebbing fissures and splinters at its wake, and continues its disastrous descent down until it plunges into the service area and punching a hole right into the hull, all of the gella and valuables it is carrying quickly getting lost in a rush of deep, dark, cold blue...

....that starts fountaining up, rapidly filling the lowermost deck.

That is what they see, if they elect to look down in the hole. Should they decide to look up, however...

...they would find green eyes on a flushed face, blonde hair in complete and utter disarray. Looking down as she is, she's just as surprised to see Noah down there, following her astonished look with a furrowed-brow squint.

"The bloody hell are you two doing down there?" she calls out. "I dinnae want tae be the bearer of bad news or nae anything, but I think this entire thing's about tae sink!"

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Down into the belly of the beast, its hallways thick with brassy light and pipe smoke, muffled as a tomb. Doors yield beneath well-placed bootsoles should they fail to open by hand, one after another in swift succession, each one slapping aside into the interior wall to disclose first the presence of a cocked and aiming ARM: Noah leads with his stolen weapon, no longer in the business of dissembling. Behind him Ambrose Montagu winces and ducks his head, grasping the at atop it every time there's another loud POP-BANG, glancing around behind him with a cringe that seems to anticipate they'll be intercepted at any moment, as though the boat weren't in the process of losing it's goddamn mind.

They make quick progress and Noah stops only twice, first when he finds himself poised at the threshold of a room in which he is unable to initially make visual sense of the tangle of bare limbs he sees, his head sloooooowly tilting over to one side, brows stitched together. "Oh," he says, when one of the startled participants recoils and retreats enough for him to grasp the implications of the configuration they'd been in. "...oh." Judgement closes his expression like a fist just before he closes the door in turn, already striving to forget.

The second time he stops he nails the door with his foot, leans to look inside, and then flattens his back against the exterior wall again as feminine outrage splits the air and various and sundry objects pelt the opposite side of the hall: clocks, shoes, empty tumblers, someone's knitting, a few womanly accouterments he can neither identify nor speculate as to the purpose of. It goes on longer than it should, this endless flinging of material goods that keeps him from being able to safely slip past the open doorway, ornamented with unholy shrieking -- long enough to prompt him to fire the ARM at the ceiling with impatience, which sends the occupants scattering and silent. Before he moves on he pokes his head through the door, thunderclouds scudding over his usually clear brow, to call out: "Don't flatter yourselves, ladies! I didn't see anything worth that kind of racket!"

Remaining rooms to check are swiftly dwindling, tipping the scales of Noah's exasperated frustration. He's pivoting in place with acerbic words for Montagu lined up on his tongue and prepared to march when from above comes the percussive rumble of explosives in brisance and subsequently the deafening sound of incalculable weight punching abrupt holes through sturdy construction, countless riches making a swift bid for the bottom of a muddy river. The safe plummets past in a rush of shredded wood, torn cloth, billowing plaster dust and other things best left unconsidered, cutting as it did a brutal swath through multiple decks of heavily peopled space. Spikes of floorboard jut out from the ragged brink not two feet from the toes of Noah's boots, and while he first leans to look down into the boiling froth of water eager to surge into the heart of the boat...he looks upward moments afterward, squinting into dervishes of dust, arm raised against clots of architecture dribbling downward from overhead, to see--

To see--

He straightens, turns, and flings his arms out wide, staring at Ambrose with wide eyes. "ARE YOU SERIOUS," he demands, inflected as rhetoric. "You said she came down here!"

"W-well," Montagu says, helplessly blinking up at the blonde's tousled silhouette with owlish eyes, "Where else would someone take it?" He casts a worried glance over the edge of the shattered floor to the seething pool of rising water. "Perhaps this is an argument we can have la--"

"WHY WOULD ANYONE STEAL IT IN THE FIRST PLACE, BROSE? IT'S A-- " A heavy wooden beam crashes down through the hole from the top deck, temporarily obliterating any hope of overhearing what's being said. It strikes one edge of the hole, whips around like a baton and plunges into the hungry river. "-- SO MANY THINGS THAT WOULD BE BETTER THAN THAT!"

"Now...Noah," Montagu says, flustered, turning red to the ears. "You're upset, bu-- "

"YES! I AM! BECAUSE I HAVE JUST SPENT AN ENTIRE EVENING STRUGGLING TO PUT MY HANDS ON A-- "

Another massive wooden support comes toppling downward, this time striking the floor not more than a yard from where the two men are standing, sending a shockwave across the boards that's enough to tilt them and slam Noah into the sidewall of the hallway, shoving Ambrose right up to the edge where he pinwheels his arms and would have succumb to physics, much like his cane -- which falls over the edge and is consumed swiftly in the debris-choked foam below -- had Noah not anchored lightning-fast fingers in the back of his coat. The grey-haired gentleman sweats as he's hauled back, clutching Noah for support, and Noah wraps one arm around him beneath his ribs, his other hand hooked to a sconce on the wall to keep them steady as the boat begins to shudder and tilt.

The cane was not exclusively for show.

Bickering forgotten in favor of pressing, present dangers, he looks upward into whorling angels of silt and dust toward the blonde head of hair, now haloed with backlight that spills past her to coalesce in worried hazel irises: "He can't take the stairs like this. Throw me a rope!"

He seems to think nothing of asking a perfect (imperfect?) stranger for that kind of help, every expectation of having that help provided writ across the hard planes and angles of his countenance.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Hazel eyes lock into emerald irises and for a moment, Cassidy Cain's expression, as that hard, expectant stare turns up at her, is utterly unmoved.

He interfered. Had her original plan go off without a hitch, she wouldn't have had to come up with a Plan B (for Break Everything, as Jinty commented, once upon a time), which has resulted into this. But as usual even with the best, most thorough approximations of a strategy will always run afoul of wildcards and while normally she is that specific factor, this isn't the case today with the presence of this dark-haired interloper and his blue-eyed elderly companion. But the look of him is serious, and she does not miss the way the younger man clutches at the older protectively - they can't be related, considering how Ambrose looks absolutely nothing like Noah, but she gauges the relationship for what it is with that simple gesture, ever so familiar with the nuances of social transactions that define human connections, for all that she limits her own. As indecision wars within her, her lips press in a thin, displeased line. She really should just leave them to stew (or sink, as it were) in their own mistake for getting in her way.

But in the end, she is not a monster, despite her tremenduous capacity to be; the look in Ambrose's eyes softens something in her, suddenly reminded of Crenshaw Worth, caught up in circumstances too chaotic for his intellect to parse. Pulling her fingers through her hair, frustration tugging at her follicles, she sighs: "Dinnae move, I'll be right back."

With that, in a swirl of garish blues, oranges and yellows, the blonde vanishes from the hole in the top deck. She searches the office and finds absolutely nothing - rope would all be downstairs and that is rapidly filling with water. But she does espy the fancy tapestries lining the large windows overlooking the gorgeous sunset descending unhurriedly over the Blue Adlehyde.

A series of loud, vicious tears of fine fabric fills the space, drowned out by the chaos still occurring on the lower decks. Stripping as many as she can find, relieving the mattress of its bedding, she knots them all together and doing a quick job of it - her knotwork is expert, and while not too out of place with those with seafaring occupations, the fact that she knows it so well is yet another ill-fitting puzzle piece in the worn fabric of her tumultuous yet vibrant life; a story that she has yet to tell, no matter the questionable implications. Putting a sliding knot on one end, with every intent to hook it into the frame of the heavy, four-poster bed in the manager's suite, she winds up the bundle, then moves quickly to the hole. With a fling of her arms, the cascade of tapestries and bedclothes comes spilling from the topmost deck to the guestroom deck, the end of it dangling in front of Noah and Ambrose.

Spinning around, she tosses the loop over one of the bedframe's spokes, securing it with a brace of her foot and a hefty tug.

"Alright!" she hollers. "You should be se-- "

Heavy bootsteps thunder somewhere behind her. Cassidy spins around, eyes wide.

Noah would only be able to glimpse the rushing shadow of someone tall and solid, garbed in black; the blonde smells the rust-tang of blood first before the body takes her clean off the floor and into the bed. The frame cracks under the strain, the taut line of bedsheets and curtains shuddering at impact.

Disbelieving eyes wander up to find dark ones staring down at her. The man's fury is palpable, set on a familiar face. While she knew that there will, inevitably, be a Mercy Killer or two present in the tournament, even she does not expect the presence of this one on the boat. The face is familiar, and as lips part to say something, a large hand encloses around her throat. Fingers reach up to grab him around the wrist, gritting her teeth; she catches the way tendons ripple from underneath tight, darkened skin. And yet, she manages to twist her mouth in something resembling a tight little smile.

"Gordie." The name comes out as a breathless choke.

Gordon Howle presses his palm flat into her windpipe, and while the look of him is as stoic and unmoving as she remembers, white-hot rage brightens that pitiless stare.

"Cassie," he greets, in a manner that in no way suggests he is busy squeezing the life out of her as the spoke holding Noah's makeshift rope continues to splinter and crack. A free hand reaches behind him, withdrawing a wicked curved blade from the small of his back. The deadly point gleams silver under the dying light of day spilling from the windows, holding it in front of her.

"Troublesome as ever. But as you know, I'm not a monster. I'll make it quick." Eyes roam down her front. "Jet did say once that he wanted your hea-- "

Her fist snaps up in a flash, burying the hard impact of knuckles right into his Adam's apple. As he chokes and sputters through suddenly truncated breaths, blade clattering away, instincts take over, the rush of practice and memory steeling her nerves. She angles her arm, the point of her elbow driving into the inner hollow of his in an effort to dislodge his grip. Her body twists, a knee comes up, pushing her flexibility to the limit as Gordon struggles, looping one leg over his shoulder while the other works to curl around his other side, to pin one of his arms against his neck from where he grips it to try and relieve the pain, and locks her ankles in place.

Cassidy's arms go up over her head, hugging onto the rapidly detaching spoke, using her own body and the caught Mercy Killer's own to anchor it. Pale skin flushes red around the face; her back arches as she digs the whole of her weight into the mattress.

"OH MY GOD!!!!" she shrieks from her contorted position as Gordon struggles against her legs, directed to bodies she can't see, voice bled through with both desperation and panic. "HURRY THE FOOK UP!!!"

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Few Filgaian souls not educated in the fine art of clockwork repair are as conscious of time as Noah Hawthorne. The very backdrop of his life consists of seconds trickling through his fingers to be lost in the chasm of his yawning past, motes that accumulate into irretrievable minutes, minutes into hours and more terribly leviathan measurements of dwindling life still. Every last precious moment -- to the finest, thinnest, most fleeting -- in which he is not incandescent with living as fully and wildly as his body can stand is one he considers wasted, and for him there is no tragedy greater.

Which is to say two things, the first being that his reasons for traveling alone are bound up in that very same philosophy: under any other circumstances he might be standing here as the world burned, staring down into the abyss of a cold grave and imprinting the memory of it all within himself as a thieved jewel to carry away with him: the brackish mist of spewing water, the woodsmoke of incendiary rounds smoldering within wooden floors and walls, the rib-rattling creaks and groans of something as massive as the Mamma Mia being torn apart by forces beyond its capacity to endure. But there is Ambrose, gripped to him and needing his help, and so it's all ruined. Until Montagu is safe, everything else is necessarily shifted aside as a matter of priority.

The second thing implied in this deep-seated connection with the passage of time is that Noah is increasingly aware of just how long the blonde has been gone. For all the world waiting with determined patience, eventually something inside of him flips like a coin, turns grim. She isn't coming back.

"Come on, Brose," he says briskly, turning just enough to show the man more of his back. "Up you go."

With little time to argue or debate, violently swirling waters rising swiftly and carrying on their churning currents dangerous pieces of broken vessel, Ambrose consents to this most-undignified method of transportation, finding it in himself to somehow shimmy onto Noah's back. The latter chokes through the tight grip of Ambrose's arm, eyeballing the slick and treacherous footing between himself and the crooked, half-slant stairs he must climb with now not one but TWO passengers: "What are they feeding you in Lin-- "

Whispering cloth spills out of the heavens and hits the boards below, and relief floods his chest cavity. The soundness of the knots worries him, differing fabrics difficult to link together that way, but he is -- has been -- out of options for long moments now. Nothing for it but to leap, and trust.

He hits the descending strand with not only his weight but that of the man on his back (and the ferret, one supposes) and screws his eyes shut, half-expecting to be dumped into the drink as one of the knots overhead unknits beneath the punishment. The fabric stretches, but no such failure follows.

Hand over hand, legs twined around the makeshift rope, he hauls the three of them upward with massive expenditures of effort that would have been impossible had he not spent over a decade climbing shit, often carrying a considerable amount of weight and just as often under serious pressure. A thousand deep delves into the heart and perilous traverses along the high and crinkled sides of cliffs flash through the darkened theater of his skull, and in spite of himself, in spite of the burning in his lungs from muscles in back, shoulders and thighs taxed to the limit of what they can give, he exhales one of those hot breaths as a shuddering laugh.

"WHAT'S SO FUNNY?" Ambrose shouts, clutching his hat to the top of his head with the hand that isn't keeping him perched on Noah's back.

"YOU SAID--" Noah begins, only to duck his head and lean hard as a chunk of what looks like piano comes sliding down off of the intermediary floor between the one they'd been on and the one they're climbing up toward. It hits the churning water below with an unmusical din. "God damn!" He swings his hand up higher over the other, strains to pick up the pace. Perspiration and spewing mist from the water below are starting to sheen his skin and dampen his clothing. "YOU SAID NO CLIMBING." Another half-smile, shot through with a breathless laugh. "'IT'S ON A BOAT, NOAH,'" he mimics, poorly, voice ragged from his effort. Montagu is not a small man. "YOU SAID THAT."

They approach the lip of the highest floor, and the moment he's high enough to see over the ledge of it his humor disappears, levered out of him by a wedge of ice. He turns his head, wiping his crown on his shoulder: "Brose, in my waistband in the back, get the--"

"The -- I've got it! Yes!"

"Good, now just--"

"My dear boy," says Ambrose Montagu, fumbling awkwardly with the ARM near Noah's head in a way leaves the younger of the two wide-eyed and sweating cold bullets, "I know how to fire a pistol!" Finger on the trigger, he waves it about demonstrably just beside Noah's face.

"AT HIM BROSE," he says desperately, voice weakening and pitching upward as he laments, "Oh my god...!"

"I KNOW!"

And he does, very fortunately, know how to fire an ARM. Had he not, he might easily have ventilated Cassidy Cain in any one of the various parts of her presently and bendily entrapping her assailant. Instead, a slug of hot metal punches its way into Gordie Howle's chest, causing him to collapse, and then Ambrose is climbing Noah's body like a ladder, hauling himself up over the ledge, sitting on the edge of it to one side of the place the rope slices down into the gloom below. "YOUNG LADY! Young lady are you quite alright, I do hope I didn't give you a scare, but it seemed you could use some assistance!"

A single sun-gilded hand reaches up and over the lip, holding aloft a very alarmed-looking ferret. Ambrose reaches for it. "Come on, Noah! No time to dally!"

There is a long pause.

"I mean, are you sure? Because I thought I might just spend the rest of my life dangling over a goddamn pit in a sinking boat, you...unbelievable..." There's a quiet grunt of sound as he plants his hands and hauls himself upward, getting a booted foot on the lip and rising to what is his not-insignificant full height. Eyes like pools of moss and whiskey slip across the scene, and then he reaches down to give Montagu his hand, hauling the big man up to stand. Breathless though he may be, all of the muscles that rope together shoulders, neck and back soaked in gasoline and lit by the climb, he still manages to start framing a wry smile. They made it, after all. He can go back to enjoying the chaos for what it is.

"Well," he begins, turning to plant a boot on the body of Gordon Howle, "I guess it could've been w--"

As he pushes the body over in a roll to shove it over the edge, one of Gordie's hands gets itself in Noah's pants, his teeth grotesquely red, thick with the blood he's aspirating from the hole in his chest. And just like that, both men are gone over the lip with a sudden gasp of air, down into the madness of sucking water and boiling debris.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Wide, frantic eyes fix into the hole as Gordon twists and struggles against the grip of her thighs, tangling himself further into the tattered remains of her skirt. "Nnnghhhhh!!!" grates out of her from between clenched teeth, holding onto the spoke with dear life and ensuring that, at least, it doesn't snap off and send Noah and Ambrose back into the drink. Thankfully, it appears that she doesn't have to wait for too long, her stare catching a dark-haired head peek out from the pit....

...and Bloody Harry's deadly ARM in the hands of the blue-eyed older gentleman, who levels it towards her and her constricted position. Her jaw hangs open. Gordon's flushed, tanned face turns his now-bloodshot eyes towards the hole in the floor.

"Nae, wait!" Cassidy cries. The click of the hammer pulling back sounds thunderous, a fresh shot of adrenaline dumping into her bloodstream. Oh god, how good is his aim?! She doesn't know any of these people!

The Mercy Killer's struggles become even more frenetic. Gritting her teeth, the blonde suddenly releases Gordon, lifting her knee even higher up until it's almost pressed against her chest, the flat of her foot bracing against the man's chest and shoving with all of her strength, pushing the heavier body back. The force of it levers him up on his knees just as Noah's companion fires his pilfered ARM, the slug piercing through the broad expanse of his chest. Hot, crimson rain splatters all over her legs and the bodice of her gown.

She is still wide-eyed when Gordon topples over, the slow, uncontrollable tilt of the sinking boat forcing the corpse to slide slowly towards the duo as they slowly extricate themselves from their blanket-and-curtains rope. As they slowly pick themselves out of the pit, the blonde sags bonelessly against the mattress, chest heaving quickly in an effort to reclaim all the breath and whatever sanity is left to her, lightheaded from the strain and lack of oxygen. The ceiling spins around her in a dizzying loop. She barely hears the inquiries to her well-being from the elderly academic.

Finally, she slowly rolls her body on one side, to her front. Palms push herself upwards from mass of sheets and feathers.

"Nae one tae scare easy, dinnae worry," she finally manages to tell Ambrose, lifting a hand to wipe her cheek and leaving a sticky wet streak across it. The wryly grinning Noah has her furrowing her brows momentarily at him, but her own, cutting smile returns on her lips. "Now that nasty business is bloody done with, maybe the two of you'll do me the tremendous favor by telling me just who the hell you a-- "

Noah decides to tempt Fate before her eyes, and the bitch answers by way of Gordon Howle suddenly coming back to life for just the requisite amount of seconds it takes to head for the Abyss, and take the relic hunter with him. Cassidy's stares wordlessly as the two of them vanish back into the hole, scrambling off the bed and moving towards it, nearly sliding over booted feet while the riverboat casino continues its gradual tilt towards oblivion. Eyes dip towards the churning dark waters below, already taking up most of the guestroom deck.

"...s'like he dinnae know things can always get worse," she mutters, because she knows this quite well, and embraces the fact. The conwoman slides those glade-green irises towards Ambrose and the ferret, the inquiry on her lips - but her own savvy with these kinds of matters gives her pause, resignation slipping over features pink with exertion. A man who can convincingly fake accents, play a decent hand of poker, steal an ARM, and climb with another man latched onto his back, she is very certain that whoever the dark-haired interloper is can swim. Something tells her that this is a basic skill that wouldn't have escaped whatever accolades he keeps under his belt.

Though while she is relatively confident of the younger man's chances out in the chaos, it's the older one that she's not very sure of, though the man can shoot. Spinning on her heel, she reaches towards the mattress to snatch up the wicked blade Gordon had intended to use to butterfly her open, turning the blade along her wrist in her grip as she moves towards the front of the room. A foot lifts to kick the double doors leading to the deck open, moving quickly out and taking a look down in order to gauge how bad the chaos is.

It's bad.

While she can see a handful of dead bodies littering the lower deck, the fight is still happening even while the Mamma Mia takes in water, this time the brawl has turned towards the general purpose of getting to the life preservers attached to the sides of the boat. Bullets spent, the surviving populace has resorted into fistfighting and brawling, and in spite of herself, her eyes roll skyward to the heavens as if in silent petition for patience, though it overtly conflicts with the smile that curves over her mouth. Compared to some of the more picturesque parts of Filgaia, Ignas was a shithole, but she can appreciate the fact that its people just simply don't accept misfortune lying down.

"Great," she sighs, turning around to head back inside. The first thing she does is flash a quick smile at Ambrose before she moves past him to throw open the manager's closet, blade turning against herself to start shredding the gown she wears, layers of cloth shredding as the wicked edge of it rips her out of it. Uncaring of her state of undress, or the fact that she is doing so in front of a scholar and a ferret, she discards the blue, orange and yellow travesty, leaving herself in nothing but scanty underthings, garters and stockings, pulled up from the hems of her laced-up boots. The supple, sinuous line of her spine and bare swaths of skin are turned towards Ambrose, demonstrating all signs of a woman who takes near obsessive care of her skin, though the man could probably make a few guesses of his own as to why that is: bullet scars, faded and smoothed out due to those fastidious treatments, dot the pale expanse...too uniform for all of them to have come from separate incidents, all leading to the easy conclusion that this woman, whoever she is, should be dead.

Should be, but somehow isn't.

She finds a man's dress shirt within the closet, pulling it over her torso and buttoning it up. Ill-fitting trousers come next, shorter, given the manager's height, and larger around the waist. She belts them hurriedly; if she's going to end up in the water, the last thing she needs is a lady's finery weighing her down.

"Nae going around it, luv," she tells the scholar, looking over her shoulder and winking at him. "We're gonna havetae get wet together, you and I. And I dinnae know about you, but I think our chances in getting out are better up here than down there."

Cassidy pauses by the bed, giving it a considering glance, before dismissing it entirely - the mattress was stuffed with feathers, while it'll float for a few minutes, it'll start soaking in water quickly and leave it to sink. She moves for the manager's easy chair instead, pulling out the leather-encased cushion and eyeing it critically. It will have to do. While she can accurately gauge her capacity to be able to swim across the Blue if necessary, she isn't sure about the older man and his injured leg. A few strides take her back to the older man, pushing the cushion against his chest.

There's another tearing sound, cutting off some of the rope she has made out of the blankets and tapestries, to wind it around the man's torso to bind the leather cushion to him - a makeshift flotation device. It will have to do. Picking up one of the rifles from the fallen security guards, she cocks it and aims for the nearest windows. Several shots clear out most of the glass, and sweeps of the butt do the rest.

The fact that Noah had just made all of that effort to make sure the older man does not get wet, just for her to return him into the drink, does not escape her. But considering how inevitable the Mamma Mia's sinking is, it isn't as if they have much of a choice. She was just going to have to find a way to get around all of this without making the two of them a target for the messy fighting below decks.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

All of the ingredients for a proper ghost ship accrue across the mortally wounded decks of the Mamma Mia: bodies tumble and slide as the stern begins to pitch low, sweeping and stuttering broad, bright swaths of scarlet as they go, lines of gruesome morse code on wood hungry to soak the blood deep into the grain. Fevered violence explodes in pockets from baser instincts: greed in the casino, selfishness at the life-preserver stations, both provoking wrath -- sins compounding sins as the death toll continues to rise, built upon the backs of earlier moral crimes in lust and sloth. The participants in the vessel's ritual demise are preoccupied with their own sagas of mortality, unlikely to bend that attention toward a young woman and her elderly companion unless they aim to compete for what few seats of safety remain to evacuees -- and so the blonde fabricates her own exit strategy, the first step of which involves peeling herself out of carnival fabrics, to the utter dismay and mortification of the man she's decided to save. After, of course, watching the younger of the two plummet into water thick with foam and broken things, like the head of the world's least appetizing ale.

"Oh! Noah! ...Oh! Blast and damn!" Ambrose rocks forward as much as he's able around the compact keg of his middle, staring down into the rising abyss with open-faced dismay. Though his expression is worried as blue eyes find the petite figure beside him, pragmatic resignation keeps him from suggesting they do anything rash to correct for Noah's abrupt disappearance, lending if anything credence to her surmise: that the best person for the job of saving Noah is now himself. "I am terribly sorry to have burdened you this way," he begins to say, tugging his kerchief from his suit pocket -- somehow still there, still neatly folded into a perfect, dapper square -- to dab at his brow. The linen is as wet from the rising motes of water as the skin he pats in futility, but the gesture rides on stress. "We expected some amount of trouble, of course, but nothing of this magnitude." He contemplates, and then utters three sharp little sounds of modest amusement, pauses between each. "Well! Of course that's how things go with that boy. Really, after so many years I ought to-- "

His sentence stops dead, owed to the glance over his shoulder that fills his head with expansive stretches of bare, fair skin, broken apart only by scraps of feminine garment. His mouth works like that of a fish -- open, closed, open, closed -- and then he turns back to the fore, gradually sinking through shades of pink and red toward something very like eggplant. "Oh," he says, entirely to himself. Mortified. "Oh dear." The glance he sneaks after that is brief and guilty, though it's to confirm what he thought he saw rather than to ogle: divots paler still, silvery scar tissue marking points of perforation. The rest just depresses him; well into his sixties and decades from fit condition, naked young women only serve to remind him of all of the fun he's no longer having.

By the time she's affixing a leather cushion to him he's laid his hands on his composure again, and allows himself to be wound about with scraps of cloth with all of the docility one might expect in a man ready to furnish apologies for the inconvenience of looking after him in their present circumstances. As glass tinkles and topples from the window at the urging of the rifle stock, he smiles broadly. "One of the very few benefits of my present physique, I should think. I float very well." It takes him a moment to rise, but rise he does. He's stable on two feet, but hindered in movement speed and certainly agility. Three or four hobbling steps have him joining her at the window's naked frame, for all intents and purposes prepared to squeeze himself through it and out onto whatever surface exists beyond like a calf being birthed from the world's most ungainly sow...

When he suddenly remembers: "That's right! Young lady, I do believe you have something that belongs to us, tucked away in those skirts you were wearing." He hesitates, then. She'll want an explanation, no doubt. He tries to come up with one and does, smiling beatifically at his own genius. "He collects them, you see."

MEANWHILE:

Cassidy may not ever know just how closely her plan aligns to Noah's, abandoned once he was grappled into the deeps. It isn't water itself he hoped to keep Ambrose out of, but the maelstrom of debris-choked undertow rising through the center of the riverboat, fanning out through corridors in wild, powerful currents that the older gentleman would never have been able to navigate even had he escaped being brained by heavy chunks of floating dross.

Corridors, currents, and churning debris into which he is himself unceremoniously dragged by the heavier mass of an angry mercenary. Water agitated to frenzy encloses over his head after they strike the surface, like curtains of night, the brilliance of the ship interior incapable of penetrating the froth and countless objects stewing along the chop. Before he's even able to get his bearings he's engaged in struggling against the dying man cuffed to his ankle, determined to drag Noah down to a drowning death in compensation for his own inevitable demise. He lashes out with his free foot, directing vicious downward kicks into the void near its opposite, praying his sole connects with something as solid as a skull, and all the while the Mamma Mia continues to obstinately spin its paddlewheel and tangle itself up in the movements of the river itself. Inrushing water through the hole in the hull catches in the sinking stern not unlike wind in a sail, placing the boat -- and everything, and everyone, within the watery interior -- firmly at the mercy of the current.

As a door bursts open at the end of a long corridor low in the stern, a sudden cable of water races to fill it, and this coil of liquid shunts Gordie and Noah deeper into the flooded depths, wreathed in broken furniture, twists of bunting, and other objects impossible to identify. Down on a hard, disorienting slant, until the darkness becomes so absolute that he may as well be floating in crowded nothingness.

It was too much to hope that this deadly predicament would satisfy his assailant's need for revenge. In the pitch black, feeling the warning ache of air in his lungs grown too stale to support life, he feels a sharp, silvery high note of pain in his calf and involuntarily shouts into the water, a cloud of bubbles bursting out of him and tickling along his features -- helping, against all odds, as the direction in which they move gives him his first insight into which way is up. Desperate fingers scrabble at his wrist. His cufflink pops away, lost in the deep, and beneath his cuff itself as it flares open he fumbles within numberless bracelets for--

Light, searing and brilliant, explodes from the point of his wrist, casting eerie luminescence through the filthy jade of the water. Clothing and sheets ripple and swirl all around him in the hall, lending the impression that he's submerged in an impossible washtub -- one being swiftly tainted with ribbons of ink that ooze into it from below. Looking down identifies the source: there is a letter opener, or perhaps an actual knife, embedded in the calf of his boot. A final spiteful act from the man latched to his leg even now in death. He perished the way the Mamma Mia will soon enough: taking on water through the hole in his chest. In the gloaming he looks satisfied with his retribution, though blood vents from the cavern of his mouth.

Noah turns himself over, chest up, tracking the movement of silvery bubbles along the corridor's ceiling. They rill along it busily, then seep sideways through the open door of a passenger room, and he follows. Something jams the propped door from the other side. One hand on the door's edge and one on the frame, he uses the last of his air to wedge himself into the gap and with his uninjured leg push, cracking the door at the hinges and creating a gap large enough for him to slip through.

The ceiling of the cabin is gone, leading upward by another floor. The room above it is unflooded, a pocket of air held in by ceiling and four walls, and he breaks the surface with a ragged gasp and splashing arms. Once he's caught his breath he slings his head, sending a fantail of water out of his hair, and raking it back hauls himself to sit on the broken floor. He's cautious as he pulls the leg with the knife in it from the water, commandeering the first scrap of clothing to drift by -- a silk stocking -- for a tourniquet. A test tug tells him the blade is not serrated; he slips it free, tosses it aside, and quickly binds the calf over the hole in the leather, powerful tension tightening the fabric hard for compression.

Then...

Then he looks around the interior of the small room, listening to the sound of other partitions nearby crumpling beneath the weight of so much water, and presses his lips together.

"Well...shit."

At least he has air, and time to formulate a pl--

The stern of the Mamma Mia abruptly collides with something on the bottom of the river -- something heavy and, to gauge from the sound of it, positioned as he is to receive the acoustic nuances of what's taking place not more than twenty feet below him, something metal.

The Mamma Mia lurches, one corner of its sunken tail snagged or braced immovably, the result being that the bow rears heavenward with sudden ferocity and the riverboat begins to swing around on the fulcrum of that immobile point, entering a slow spin that adds yaw to pitch. Should the bow find itself more downstream than the stern, the current will rapidly begin to fill that, as well -- and that's if the vessel doesn't complete the trifecta of Bad News Movements, adding roll to yaw and pitch.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

As Ambrose declares that he floats very well, Cassidy gives one last testing tug of the cushion and looks up at him with a smirk, the devil's own mischief glinting from those glade-green eyes. "Ay?" she replies in a humoring fashion. "It's nae the ability that concerns me, luv, it's the stamina required tae get from here tae there." If her bare back and underthings have only reminded him of all the fun he's not having, those next few words probably don't help much either. There's a glance at the poor ferret clutched on the man's shoulders. "I see you survived," she tells it; no thanks to her, surely. "Made new friends, did you? Good for you, then."

Despite the fact that it can't speak, the ferret somehow looks genuinely affronted by the woman's words.

As the boat continues its tilt, Cassidy reaches out with an arm, bracing herself against the windowsill, strapping the rifle on her back. One leg braces onto the other side, already expecting the gradual incline into the deep. If anything else, at least she won't make the older gentleman jump for it, the way the boat is rapidly descending into the water will make that kind of strain unnecessary in a few moments. Her other arm reaches out, to curl her fingers around the bind holding the scholar against his cushion.

She is so preoccupied gauging the movements on the boat that Ambrose's words don't sink in until just a few seconds later after the last ones have been said. There is a pause, and the blonde rolls her head at his direction, brows lifting in an inquiring fashion. Turning to where the remains of her gown are, she would have forgotten about the object were it not for the mention. Pulling away and retrieving it, turning the object over in her hands, her expression flattens.

"He collects d-- ?" The loud groaning of the boat as it is slowly eaten up by the churning maw of the Blue drowns out the rest of the baffled query. "Why? He cannae go tae a pleasure house for that? I mean, no judgment, there's nae anything wrong doing that yourself, but I figured by the looks of him he'd want a more interactive experience. Plus it's eons old! He dinnae know where it's been!"

The waters rise. Shifting, she tugs the professor closer and flashes him a winsome smile. Tilting her head, she purses her lips lightly on the man's cheek.

"She's always been a lady, old son," she tells him simply...

...before she twists and shoves him through the vacated window, ferret and all, sending him plummeting just a foot into the water. She follows after, unfolding her body and moving, launching herself off in an effortless dive, plunging into the dark waters and surging into the depths as the Mamma Mia's bloated corpse continues to sink from one end. It doesn't take her long to resurface, whipping her head around and pushing sodden tresses out of her eyes in an attempt to find Ambrose. That endeavor doesn't take her too long either.

"Come on, luv," she says, reaching out to snag him from the back of the collar. "We better-- "

The piercing, shrieking, grating sound of decimated wood and metal cuts off her words. Cassidy slowly looks up as one end of the Mamma Mia, unseen to those bobbing haplessly on the surface of the river, jostles something underneath. The remains of the riverboat casino suddenly lurches, swinging up and suddenly towards their direction, its deadly shadow eclipsing their astonished faces, slanting diagonally over widened eyes.

"ARE YOU FOOKIN' KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?!" she cries, frustration and disbelief both, comment aimed heavenward towards her perpetually gleeful, cosmic opponent. Gripping Ambrose tighter, she turns and starts swimming as fast as she can out of the dangerous slant, all instincts keyed to flight suddenly in DEFCON ONE as she cuts through the water in a quick, lateral fashion away from the shadow in an effort to come out from the other side of it. Legs kick, pushing against currents and gale in an effort to drag them out of it and the wake that follows. Somewhere behind her, she hears rope snapping, more wood splintering. Cries pepper the twilight air from those still in the water and who are just now leaping away from the Mamma Mia.

And after one last, mighty bellow, the rest of it comes crashing back down, geysers of water spit into the air on impact as the riverboat casino, once the pride and joy of the Blue Adlehyde, rolls belly-up into the surface, large, hapless bubbles blooping from around its frame.

If she feels any twinge of remorse for the rampant destruction she has just caused, Cassidy doesn't show it. There's a slight furrowing of her brows at the boat as it slowly starts disappearing into the waves, amidst the distant dots of red life preservers circling those who haven't been killed by the massive gunfight that had exploded from the tournament. The river is already doing what it must to erase this particularly violent chapter of its very long life from view, and there's still no sign of the scholar's young companion.

If he had managed to find the breach in the hull after prying Gordon Howle off him, he should be out by now. But the fact that he isn't means...

"I cannae believe I'm actually considering coming back for the...the...butt stuff enthusiast..." she groans, rolling her eyes up to the heavens and flashing them a look, before she lets go of Ambrose. "Dinnae go anywhere, I'll be right back."

Unless she somehow finds him before everything goes tits up again, like it often does when she's around, she'll start paddling towards the remains of the boat, and once she's close enough, she takes a deep breath and submerges.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Realization and regret surface in Montagu's expression as Cassidy makes inferences he never intended. Innocence, thy name is Ambrose Montagu. Stroking the irritated ferret's sleek head with the fingertips of one hand he tries to fix things and makes them worse. "I'm -- oh no. I'm afraid you misunderstand me, it's -- I am assured that he has an purely academic interest in the, uh, in the...antiquities of menti-- "

He stops speaking, rapidly blinks, and smiles at her with prim, paternal happiness as she busses his cheek. "Well, that's very kind of yo-OOOOOOH MERCY!" He flails as he tilts through the window, anticipating a far longer descent into the drink. The ferret, knowing what's what, clambers up into the now-frizzy pewter spray of hair atop Montagu's head -- but whether it's owed to his bulk or the cushion lashed to his chest, Montagu has to expend little to no effort at all to bob along on the surface. He beams at her when she reappears. "Brilliant my dear! Brilliant! A finer escape could not have been executed by the Marquis of ancient Ketterly, the man with -- he was a thief of concubines!" He splashes with one hand, rubs at the bifocals he's wearing, though they're hopelessly spotted with water. "Though I somehow very much doubt he ever had cause to abandon ship mid-sailing. Concubines and water are very, they don't blend, I tell you. Cosmetics of six centuries ago simply didn't hold up to the-- to the..." His cheerful blue eyes widen as they angle upward toward the sudden rise of the bow into the sky. He blink-squints twice, adjusting his glasses again. "Drat," he says, just as Cassidy's fingers curl into the bindings of his improvised life jacket, and she hauls him with frantic urgency out of the line of collapse. He kicks loafered feet as best he can, gritting his teeth.

Once they're clear and the worst of the boat's death throes have passed, she'll find Ambrose staring with pale-faced dismay at the ruin of the boat, searching pointlessly the specks of color that must be life vests on escaped passengers, none of whom look familiar. He nods at her when she tells him to remain, eyes heavy with worry. "I'll just...get to shore then, and, oh. Do be careful, miss, and take no unnecessary risks." It visibly, audibly pains him to say the words that follow, for what it implies may have happened to his young friend: "There's no sense in further tragedy."

MEANWHILE:

Locked in a horizonless vault, Noah has no means to guard himself against the disorientation that comes as the room he's in rolls drunkenly over onto its side, halving the remaining airspace as the water levels itself with the doorway, now a horizontal slot in the wall. He tumbles with countless other pieces of forgotten flotsam, emerald shadows and verdant light worming like bolts of lightning across every surface of that drowning pillbox, thrown up by the light still emanating diamond-bright from his wrist, now once more plunged below the surface. For some breathless handful of seconds he thinks the Mamma Mia may have found its place of final repose, the wild slosh of water settling once again...and then a creak, pop, bang, groan all follow in swift and deafening succession as the vessel is wrenched around by the river's constant invasion of her deepest spaces. His world upends again, and this time he has the sense to draw as deep a breath as possible while the opportunity remains. Less than a heartbeat later it no longer does, and he's plunged once again into that deadly centrifuge of water and debris.

No time to waste. He braces his feet against the side of the hull and shoots himself through the open door, planting his hands on the corridor wall and springing along it, following as ever the rush of bubbles, ever-upward. Fine in theory. In practice, a mistake: the way is blocked, clogged with broken chunks of interior wall. His beating heart ticks down the moments remaining to him, lungs alight as he turns around and retreats the other way, further down, deeper and deeper, a desperate bid for some manner of exit or another envelope of life-giving air...

Nothing.

At the very rear of the vessel he braces his hands and feet on the walls to either side of him and listens to false whalesongs, the sounds of the Mamma Mia catastrophically unmaking herself, and he reflects that this is not how he expected to go. Drowning is so anticlimactic. Feeling the swiftly approaching moment at which his lungs will empty convulsively and draw a breath with or without his permission he spares a brief moment of thought for Ambrose, and then a longer one for all of the holes in eastern Ignas he'll never have the opportunity to explore -- their types various, sundry, and not all of them relevant to his life as a hunter of relics, or even palatable for mixed company.

There's a poignant pang of regret for that. All that remains, he thinks, is to be wholly present for the experience of his own death, the last great adventure left to him. He marks the way his vision begins to blur, the ever-increasing rapidity of his heart's hammering in his chest as it strains to milk every last drop of enriching oxygen from the air within his lungs, the dizziness, the trembling in the elegant fingers splayed against the walls. The way cloth floating in the water billows, heaves, seeming to breathe where he cannot, and the sound of the vessel being rent to pieces seems suddenly cacophonous to him, louder than ever--

No, wait.

Wait.

That last one, he realizes, is actually happening, and simultaneous to that realization he witnesses the bottom of the boat wrenched in two, whatever strange thing on the bottom the Mamma Mia has been tangled up with cracking the hull open like a bottle opener pries the cap from a bottle. He glimpses faint shadows beyond the widening hole, braces his feet and shoots through it without a second thought, into...

Into...

...into a train...?

OH GREAT, he thinks, intoxicated with lack of air. Out of one watery death trap and into another. In a fit of pique he lashes out with a fist, strikes something in the dark. It splits open, fills the murky green depths with a faint light that counters his own, a tiny beacon of ruddy illumination, fainter than the star of brilliance at his wrist.

What the...

Reaching, his fingertips graze the edges of a small container and find the source of the light within it, small and hard. He is dying and still, still, he cannot resist the lure of newness. Whatever it is, the stone radiates warmth into his palm.

Much like the blonde, to take is his nature. Without a second thought he slides it into his pocket, and then he begins to disentangle himself from the half-destroyed train car, piled haphazardly atop and beneath others of its kind. The edges of his sight flutter with tattered shadows, growing dim, but his focus is absolute, following the twinkling silver spheres of his leaking lungs, up through snarls of twisted metal, through broken windows and shattered walls toward a surface that seems impossibly distant.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

The day above her head is dying a slow, burning death, and all the light with it. In a few minutes, she will not be able to see down there.

Unlike the relic hunter she is trying to find, time has lost all meaning for Cassidy Cain, and has remained as such for almost a decade. These days, her life is measured in moments, and not in the passage of seconds - the next big swindle, the next big trip, the countless bouts of trouble and mayhem in between nights rendered blurry by the consumption of alcohol and the twist of bodies against her own on the sheets. As recent events have proven, however, the only time when Time does matter to her is when she's about to die, when the sands of her life's hourglass dwindle down to nothing, the decisive point in which she goes harder with every drop of blood still left in her, and takes even bolder risks in her perpetual gamble to see just how far she can push her limits. If her history is any indication, she can push it rather far.

The world underneath the surface gets darker the deeper she goes, the rush of water clearing enough for her to be able to distinguish the complicated shape of the ruined Mamma Mia, hopelessly filled with water and decorated with the bodies that perished in the mad gunfight that had erupted in the ill-fated poker tournament. Her form pauses by the overturned bow, bubbles spilling in a controlled trail from her lips, already feeling the telltale pressure in her lungs that suggests that despite her capacity to withstand a tremenduous amount of punishment, she is only human. She has to do this fast. Kicking off the hull, she manages to get to the massive hole where the Montrose Carbuncle had punched into it, though god knows where the safe and all of its treasures are now.

And speaking of treasures...

She pauses, realizing that the Mamma Mia is not the only thing there. As she turns her head and squints a little harder, through silt and sand kicked up by currents, the silhouettes of a very familiar pair of railway cars beckon at her from where she drifts. Unseen by anyone, her expression contorts - she nearly laughs while she's submerged, because she spies with her very eyes, in a mere handful of days after that incident, are the missing compartments of the High Noon Express, scheduled to arrive at Hilton several days ago, and which never made their destination due to yet another one of her machinations. She knows precisely what is in it; apart from grain and the day's mail is an entire secured compartment stuffed with gella, jewelry, art and antiquities of all kinds, meant for an auction house in Lacour. In fact, a piece of it, a string of pearls lifted by Jude before they made their death-defying escape, has become part of the lion's share of her kit, stowed away under the floorboards in her favorite hotel room in Adlehyde.

Something is also moving within it, a spark of light, going through the decimated railcars. It is dark enough that there is no way she can miss it, and the fact that it isn't stationary means that someone is trapped in there.

Turning her body, she braces herself against the Mamma Mia and kicks off it, sending her body towards the fallen cars, leaving a trail of bubbles at her wake. She does not bother to knock on the windows, or use her rifle to make another exit. Much like her status as the engineer of the Mamma Mia's destruction, she, too, was the architect of the disaster that had befallen the High Noon Express, though really, she would tell anyone what she had done was the infinitely lesser of two evils: two dangerous bandit gangs have been cut down by each other's bullets, the inevitable massacre of the train's passengers by the Mercy Killers had been diverted (albeit some still died, but better than all of them), nobody ended up with the cache of irresponsible piles of money and goods, and she and Jude didn't die. All things considered, she will take it as a win.

But her familiarity with the structure does mean one thing. She knows precisely where the open rooftop hatch is, as she had used it to get in while the train was careening towards the ravine.

As Noah Hawthorne, already delirious from the lack of air, attempts to navigate the darkened compartment, he'd bump into other things: the telltale wink of the dying light from rows of jewelry cases, several expensive statues, and sodden bags of gella just sitting there. He'd also find several bloated corpses, all armed and who look like rougher sorts, though a few of them seem to be dressed in some kind of uniform by way of a blue-and-black scarf tied around their upper arms. As seconds of his life dwindle down to his final ticks, he would find himself surrounded by more wealth than anyone has any right to, a predicament Cassidy experienced herself just a week or so ago. There's not so much use for it, now, when one's about to die.

He would suddenly find the back of his shirt caught by a firm grip.

A slender arm seems to have found its way to him through the ceiling, though if he looks up he would find a hatch, obscured by dark water and now filled by drifting pale-gold hair and green eyes lit up with amusement stemming from some manner of private joke. Her other hand grasping the top of the hatch, she pulls, yanking him up through the opening, much like a kitten caught by the scruff of his neck. There's a twist, a turn, before fingers snare into the front of his collar and her mouth seals over his, her lungs decompressing as she fills his own with whatever she could spare, a tiny stream of bubbles drifting up from conjoined lips at the effort. He hasn't resurfaced the entire time since Gordie had pulled him down into the depths, the fact that he is still alive means that he won't be for long unless she does something.

Pulling away, she kicks off, hand still gripping his shirt as she moves to make their way to the surface. And she will have to do it now, before she drowns and her death isn't exactly part of her list of objectives today. She isn't done with this world yet.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Deep in the bowels of the foundering riverboat Noah had reflected that drowning was an unsatisfactory end to what has been a remarkable life -- more remarkable than anyone other than Noah may ever understand, housing as it does a trove of buried secrets.

Deep in the bowels of a fully-foundered train and surrounded by bewildering piles of riches, however, he's forced to reconsider. Poetic irony and perhaps justice would be served for him to drift into eternal sleep amidst forgotten treasures like these. All of the gella in the world cannot buy him a single sip of air.

His will to survive is the stuff of legend, carrying him as it has through countless dire straits, but however immortal his drive to exist, his body is flesh and blood and vulnerable to the privations of being half-drowned. Pieces of him begin to fade along with the periphery of his vision. Hands, face and legs are sheathed in encroaching numbness, the piercing, burning ache in his chest drying up along with most of his wits. By the time she curls her fingers into his collar he's moving entirely without conscious thought, reflexes honed across years taking over where his mind falters, starved for the oxygen it needs. He isn't even aware of what's happening when he's pulled through the hatch, not capable of feeling the press of unfamiliar lips as they close over his.

The breath that she exhales into him changes all of that in an instant. All of the pressure of resistance that meets her lungs suddenly reverses itself, his cramping chest expanding with a sudden, greedy intake of air, deep and hard. His eyes open and life floods back into his limbs, roused from the onset of torpor into absolute confusion. He's still underwater, so how--?

Realization and determination pass through dimly-lit features in quick succession. He is -- they are -- by no means across the threshold of danger and once more safe, precious few seconds purchased with that shared breath.

The risk she took in that sacrifice proves itself well worth the cost to her own submerged longevity. With it she no longer has to drag him by the shirt as dead weight; longer arms and legs bend themselves to the task of cutting hard arcs against the pressure of the water around them -- enough to draw level with her on the ascent, and possibly even ahead of her, pulling her along in turn.

For the second time tonight he breaks the surface of the water with an explosive gasp, this one followed by a moment of abrasive coughs. He subsides in the water on his back and novae burst in the darkness behind his closed lids as oxygen rushes back through the expanse of him, soaking through tissues half-poisoned with lack of air, extremities tingling. The words that leave him on his swift, quiet exhales are foreign, staccato either by nature or because of the way his head spins on the axis of his neck, thoughts a swirled and disjointed muddle.

It's Ambrose's voice that pulls him out of himself. Standing on the shore some distance upriver, ferret in the sand beside him, the older man is waving his hands and uproariously cheering the blonde, his ungainly silhouette brimming with relief and open joy.

A throbbing headache expands in Noah's head with every beat of his heart, but it's difficult not to furnish a wincing smile as he lifts his hand high to wave in that direction, the universal gesture for 'I'm alright.'

And he owes this fact to...?

He turns in the water, more actively treading against the currents, in search of his savior, little more than a blurry impression rendered indistinct by the condition he was found in.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Sometime amidst their ascent, the currents break them apart, and for a moment, she is lost in the waves, difficult to discern with the way his senses are still scrambled by his brush with near-drowning.

But he'd find that pale blob suddenly break through the surface a few yards ahead of him; within the struggle back to open air, she had opened her mouth prematurely in anticipation and swallowed a mouthful of river water in the process. She returns from the deep gasping and coughing, choking on it as arms flail in defiance of the water's persistent push further down river, struggling for a moment before she adopts a more acceptable tread. Cassidy takes several deep breaths, hands coming up to push her hair from her eyes, and wring water from her lashes. She looks around.

There is nothing left of the Mamma Mia but the very tip of its back end, wooden arse and all pointing towards the heavens. In the distant length of shore are its waterlogged passengers, nothing but specks from where she has ended up. Ambrose and his ferret wait on the shore, the former clamoring with victory, and the dark-haired interloper who she blames for this entire affair having gone this way in the first place appears to be fine. There's a sidelong glance at him in an appraising fashion; the sight of that slightly pained smile assures her that he will live.

With that, the blonde turns herself into the water and points at the darkening skies; blues and violets are busily pushing down the vestigial remains of the sunset into the horizon, a glowing red and a sliver of gold the only glimpse left of its corona. And right towards the spray of stars that is slowly becoming more and more visible as the evening grows deeper, her lips part to heave an exclamation of her own:

"AY, WELL! ARE YOU BLOODY DONE YET? I HOPE YOU ARE, BECAUSE THE LAST BIT OF THAT WAS FOOKIN RIDICULOUS, EVEN FOR YOU!"

Noah will, at least, get the impression that she is not yelling at him or Ambrose. For starters, she's not looking at him, she's looking right up at the sky. It could simply be that the strain and oxygen deprivation have driven her absolutely mad. At the moment, given what the blonde has been up to this entire ill-fated voyage, it would explain a few things. She might have been crazy before she boarded.

With a groan, she flicks another glance at Noah, and as if the earlier display hadn't happened, she grins at him, lips and teeth cleaving through the growing darkness.

"Come on, butt stuff," she tells him, impressing upon him the importance of simple introductions considering she doesn't know what else to call him, turning around and adopting the broad strokes she needs to get her drenched, exhausted form to shore where the scholar beckons. "Methinks we've been in the water long enough."

It takes minutes that feel too long for her liking before she finally reaches reddish sand and clay, stumbling forward into the river bank and collapsing in a wet heap into it, rolling on her back and staring at the sky. For a while, she says nothing, and does nothing but breathe, silently marveling at the fact that once again, she is still alive...and while yet another careful plan had gone spectacularly off the rails, she's managed to do most of what she had set out to do. She had departed Adlehyde with every intent to send a message, and even as the visible remains of the Mamma Mia start sinking down in increments, she is certain of two things:

One, there'll be no sign of it left by tomorrow.

Two, the message she intended to send was done so very loudly and clearly.

Despite herself, the unseen complications, and the travails of the day, she laughs. Mirth escapes her in a sudden gust, relieved and incredulous. Because really, how is she not dead after everything in the last two weeks?

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Hazel eyes find what they're searching for but disbelieve that finding. Noah blinks, lifts a hand to press a broad palm into either eye and blinks again, but the results are the same: he's been saved by the young lady with questionable taste in not only her dress but the kinds of artifacts she deems worthy of theft. His surprise is evident, no less so for watching her crane her head back, bare her throat, and use the latter to hurl invectives at the smouldering sky, a single finger pointed to illustrate her contempt.

Her glance cuts his way like green fire in the waning light, and she'll find him looking at her with the side-eyed care of a man uncertain how to feel about young ladies shrieking into the heavens. She tosses him a sharp smile that refuses to acknowledge any of the moment previous, and through it she says things that fail to elucidate anything -- and in fact have the opposite effect. He watches her turn to begin swimming for the shore. The back of her pale head is impenetrable to concerned hazel eyes. "Butt stuff," he says, as though enunciating the words aloud might peel back the bewildering lack of significance. It does not. Did he mishear what she said? He toys with that puzzle for some scattered few heartbeats more, then dismisses it entirely. Much more pressing for him is the question of why she risked herself on his behalf, but if he's going to be saved from imminent demise by anyone for reasons beyond his fathoming he's willing to chalk it up to 'bad taste in all things.' Why not? His lips twitch toward something vaguely like a smile as he applies himself to the arduous task of fighting the river all the way to the shore.

By the time his boots find the sucking mud of a silty bottom Ambrose is close enough for Noah to see his flushed, excited face, and the --

As Noah sloshes his way up onto shore, planting one hand in the ocher soil and pivoting himself around to sit, he knits his brows, gestures at the professor. "What's all this?"

Ambrose follows his gaze down to the leather cushion still strapped to his middle. "Oh! Oh, I'd quite forgotten in the excitement. Ingenious, isn't it! The young lady did me up before valiantly swimming us to safety! I'm much obliged, I'm sure." There's a pause. "Ah, but she did tie the knots in the back. Quite well, I should say. Remarkable talent with knots!" Another pause. "I've been unable to untie them, you see."

Mottled eyes of every forest hue, already narrowed as he catches his breath, turn their narrowed assessment back to rest on the prone sprawl of the young woman in the ill-fitting clothes, weighing her behind the translucent wall thrown up in that momentarily inscrutable gaze. It's no mystery, the nature of that look, should she chance to glimpse it by turning her eyes that way: she'll have worn it countless times herself, running across any good samaritan and being forced to wonder what manner of creature they really are. Good deeds in a weary world never fail to win caution out of any practiced cynic.

"Well, it sounds as though we're doubly in your debt, 'little miss,'" he drawls, the honey baritone steeped in both affable, easy warmth and a faint trace of irony, like a steel cap on a fine boot. He lifts his hand and beckons Ambrose over, tilting his chin at the glittering red sand between his splayed, extended legs. "C'mon, Brose. I'll unhitch you."

The portly man does eventually find his way to sit. Deft hands begin the process of unknitting the knots, the make of each a small piece of information about the girl on the sand: knots can tell a man a lot about the place a person comes from, whole schools of thought about how best to bind things together evolving independently from one culture to the next. And as he does these two things -- untying his friend, and learning about their companion -- he leans and murmurs, "Did you get it?"

"Hmm? The...? She has it. I did communicate our desire to have it safely in our possession again, however, and I've no cause to believe she'll not be amenable, as she was fully prepared to leave it behind to go down, as it were, with the ship." After a pause, Ambrose starts. "Oh! My boy, you're bleeding."

Hazel eyes track down to sodden silk wrappings, where dark liquid stains and drizzles from the fabric onto sand red enough that it disappears altogether. "It's fine."

"But--"

"It's fine." Impatient. Then, more gently, and with a polished shine of humor: "Really, you're too goddamn fat to get worked up over nothing. Your heart'll stop." And while Ambrose puffs his cheeks and stammers, Noah tilts his head, swings his gaze over and around to alight on the mystery beside them. "We've got horses not too far downriver. I'm sure Brose won't mind if you borrow his to get where you need to go."

Because surely -- surely -- the worst insanity of the day is finished.

Surely.

FIVE MILES OUT:

The sunset gleams wickedly in convex lenses, plays like backlit blood on the ornate brass cylinders of binoculars held in gloved hands.

"Well?" says another voice -- a feminine one. The figure holding the binoculars lowers them, his eyes dark and flinty. "It sank," he says, with small wonder.

"Of course it sank," says the woman. She sniffs, flips a hand through hair the color of cinnamon. "Hawthorne was on it."

The leather saddle in which the man is sitting creaks as he turns at the waist to look back at the woman, and the knot of other mounted figures with him. "He ain't gonna sink his own boat, Marza."

"It's not his. It's that Carillo's. We should just let him deal with it. He'll string Hawthorne up by the stones."

"Oh, sure. That's a great idea," says the man with the voice like gravel. Sarcasm bleeds through every syllable. "Let's ride across a got-dam continent, get ourselves piles for no got-dam reason. Let this Carillo guy take the-- "

"Okaaaaay," the woman cuts in, rolling brown eyes. "Point taken, but if he sticks you with one of those plague-knives I'm not lancing your boils, buddy."

"Marza," says the man neutrally, turning to the fore and lifting the binoculars again, "If you was on fire I wouldn't piss on ya to put it out."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

She doesn't need to look at him to know what he's thinking, though she does anyway with the slight angle of her head, uncaring of the sand and clay caking into her blonde hair as she lies there. That devil's glint remains in that glade-green stare, good humor maintaining its stubborn hold on the conwoman's features, though if she recognizes the expression in any way, she doesn't show it. Instead, she even gives Noah a cheeky little flick of her fingers from where she lies, the middle of her palm open from the gash rent there by the desperate way she was grasping the splintering spoke as they climbed their way up, trickles of crimson fashioning thin rivers of their own towards her wrist. But she doesn't seem to pay that any heed either, be it complete and utter disregard for her well-being or due to the curse of adrenaline keeping the pain at bay. Either way, the flat of her stomach contracts, sitting up on the shore and moving back up on her feet, unable, really, to stay still for too long despite the aches and pains she is bound to suffer in the next few days.

Cassidy moves for the bank, back into the water, to pull fingers through her hair in an effort to wash the sand and clay off it, letting the rush of water carry out their leavings down river. Moving back up, she strides past Noah and Ambrose, to sling her pilfered rifle off her back to retrieve a slug and pry it open with the curved blade that used to belong to Gordon Howle, now deceased. Crouching on one knee, she taps the powder out of it onto the rise of canyon stretching above them; a silver lighter spins out of seemingly nowhere, to ignite the smear and leave a mark, the scent of cordite stinging her nose.

Pocketing it, that blonde head angles over her shoulder to smile with languid ease towards Noah and Ambrose. "Oh, ay, you do," she tells the relic hunter, finally turning around, the hook of her thumb and index framing the flaring curve of one hip. "But you'll find that I tend tae accumulate those, nothing as fancy as your ancient ceramic...." The pause tells him everything he needs to know how she finds all of that. "...anal apparatus, y'ken, but they're useful enough. Debts, I mean. Sometimes, I even collect on them when I have tae."

There's a squint downriver where she finds the specks of red still littering the Blue, though most of the survivors have now gathered at the banks of that. There's a furrowing of her brows. "Though, if we intend tae hoof it, we better start heading in a direction opposite from there. Dinnae know how long it's going tae take for that fat bastard Carillo tae find out that his pride and joy's quite literally sunk, but I dinnae want tae find out. Because he'll insist on us joining him for dinner, y'ken, and you dinnae want tae know what the main course is."

Or who. In this case, it's them. They are the who.

The offer of the horse has her smiling brilliantly at the dark-haired man, head tilting low in a dip. "Much obliged," she murmurs; if she was wearing a hat, she would be tipping it to the gentlemen. "Horse-hooves would be faster than our boots, methinks. This way, then, ay? We better get tae it while nothing else is happening. It's a state of affairs that dinnae last verra long with me, so we best take advantage."

Boots start turning towards where they would leave; by now, the blade is gone as well, lost in the folds of her ill-fitting clothes. "The name's Cassidy Cain," she tells them, in case the younger man persists on calling her 'little miss.' "And I s'pose until we get tae the next town or sommat with a train line, I'll be your charming and not-so-quiet traveling companion." Eyes glitter from underneath long lashes. "Besides, it would nae be sporting, would it? If I dinnae give you the opportunity tae take back your wee trinket. I look forward tae being dazzled by your attempts."

And with that, they're off, to get to those horses, and get the hell away from the river before Carillo's men arrive to investigate.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

That the contents of the bullet will even ignite is a minor miracle unto itself, really, given it was just literally underwater: moisture, the ultimate destroyer of firearms in this world and the next. A sign of peculiar ammunition, perhaps, or a lucky streak a mile wide. Both, possibly, but the viability of the round is another small piece of information to tuck deliberately away.

Loops of ribboned cloth spill suddenly loose of Montagu's bulk, spirals of tension unwinding almost explosively, swollen with moisture. The professor rises, frowning after the blonde woman and the rivulets of lurid blood that paint her fair skin as they trickle from the wound in her palm, wringing his sodden hat. Where he's comfortable fussing over Noah all he can do with the self-styled Cassidy Cain is fret, casting the occasional worried glance after that wounded hand as he totters along in the channel of rucked-up sand in her wake.

Still seated, Noah's spine arches to the sensation of tiny little claws digging into the fabric of his soaked clothing, quiet pops from scrabbling mammalian feet sounding in the air behind him. In short order the ferret has gained the summit of his shoulder, the man to whom it belongs giving it a speculative side-eye, as though trying to decide whether or how he ought to do something about that, brows expressing bone-deep skepticism. It has enough of his attention as a minor problem that he misses the emphasis the blonde puts on the word 'collect,' leaving him in the undisturbed dark as to how Montagu's given her entirely the wrong idea about his interests in the artifact she's carrying. The piece about debts does not escape his attention, though.

"Mmmhm," he says, tone distracted, casual, almost toneless as he finds his feet, testing pressure on his punctured calf. Swollen and cinched as it is, he feels no pain in it. That will change later, but for the time being it's good enough to march on. "Brose and I aren't much to have in a pocket, I'm afraid, but we'll find some way to settle what's owed, I'm sure." Ahead of him, Ambrose chimes in eagerly: "We're the very soul of honor, you'll find."

It's all Noah can do not to shatter the dusk with a laugh. He settles for a cough and a smile wide enough to catch the silver light of the night's infant stars.

Third in their winding line of departures but first in length of leg, he takes his time, strolls, unbuttoning that waistcoat to strip it off, fold it, and wring the gathered brocade, river water splattering heavy on the sand. Introductions begin, and Ambrose is more than willing to facilitate.

"Cassidy Cain. What a lovely alliteration. Well, I'm very pleased to make your acquaintence, Miss Cain, not least because I've profited greatly from your quick thinking. My name is Ambrose Montagu. Professor," he adds, with a chest-puffing beat of pride, "Of the university at Linga. The young man behind me is Noah Hawthorne, lately of Jun--"

Noah cuts in abruptly: "Aveh," he says. "Lately of Aveh. Dazil, actually." He elongates his pace to draw abreast of Ambrose, and shoots him a sidelong look quickly subsumed beneath affable ease, the latter dominant by the time he's closed the distance between himself and Cassidy, the better to train an eye on her profile. "Brose must like you. Usually I'm the one doing the talking." Two steps along wry unfolds in his face like the dawn, carrying with it a light that paints his particolor irises with a shine the dusk can't account for. The smile is a small one, but it suggests the intensity of which its fuller expressions could be capable. "And you know I'm the sort who likes a game and a challenge, so I hope you don't take this the wrong way, Miss Cassidy Cain, but if you hang on to that artifact, well...I'd say that would put us right out of your debt, on account of us having come all this way just to get it, and for no other reason. But if you're that fond of it, well..." The tenuous smile gains a handful of degrees of heat, embers to a naked flame still a long way off from the bonfire it could be. "Far be it from me to deny a lady her satisfactions."

The cadences of his common speech suggest open-plains simplicity of the kind that would blend seamlessly in conversation around a campfire on the veldt, surrounded by cattle. The accent, though, gives the lie. The man is no agrarian or shepherd.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

He will, eventually, learn that with Cassidy, 'both' is often a safe bet.

As the trio move towards where the horses have been tied, Cassidy's mouth lifts by the corner, inadvertently sharing Noah's mirth about the two of them being the very souls of honor. "Are you now?" she murmurs, slanting a look towards Noah and lifting a brow. "Anyway, you dinnae worry. Money is easy, and I dinnae usually demand gella when I collect."

As Ambrose compliments her on her name, she can't help but laugh, though she doesn't quite explain just why - the temptation to tell the man that it is a stage name of a sort is there, but bright eyes and an equally brilliant smile do turn towards the scholar as they walk, fingers tapping lightly on the strap banding diagonally across her front, toting her stolen rifle as they go. "The pleasure is mine, professor," she tells him, tone brimming with mirth, though to her infinite credit, this is genuinely meant. The tidbit dropped about Linga does earn him a ripple of interest passing over that expressive face. "Ay? And what do you teach there, professor? Would certainly explain why you're so interested in the auctioned items."

He supplies Noah's name, though whether she notices the sudden interjection is difficult to discern; that blonde head turns this way and that to gauge their surroundings and present position as they slowly make their way up the craggy trails leading out of the canyon, sunset rock rising above their heads, their brilliant color muted at the onset of the evening hours. Here, the air smells like dust and water, and dried brush; the chilly edge of the air signifies a brief respite from the desert heat for a couple of hours before icy, deadly cold sets in. Hopefully they'll have found more comfortable confines by then, but it does serve to dry her clothes, gooseflesh mottling her skin as moisture evaporates. To Noah: "You're a long way from home, luv. Hope all this trouble is worth it."

The comment about Ambrose has her turning her attention to the taller, dark-haired man, lips turning up in a grin laden with mischief. "Well, I would certainly hope the professor likes me," she begins as boots crush debris underneath, swinging those eyes that way. "Especially now that he's seen me naked. A shared moment between us in the heat of the moment, ay, professor? I'd be hurt if you'd think ill of me after that." Followed up with a wink at the older gentleman's direction.

The trail opens up to a wider road lined with a few dessicated trees, parched branches extending woefully up over their heads in a pathetic bid for rain. She catches sight of the animals, moving closer so she could rest her hand on the damp muzzle of one of the horses. Towards Noah, there's another grin, punctuated by a skeptical lift of her brows. "You? Like a game and a challenge? Ach, luv, that caught me by absolute surprise. Certainly dinnae peg you for the sort after all that talk about taking my lunch money and pretending tae be Jack Dove, Rough Rider Rake. How could I have missed sommat like that? I must've had too much tae drink."

Whenever directed to the horse, she should be taking, she braces a foot on the stirrup, looking over her shoulder at the relic hunter. "Besides, you got it all wrong, methinks. The question is nae whether I'll be satisfied with the thing, but whether you'll satisfy me with the act of taking it." Brows waggle at him suggestively before she braces a wounded hand on the saddle, swinging a leg over on the other side of the horse and settling easily into the creak of leather. "My curiosity, y'ken, just tae clarify. All the way from Aveh just tae steal sommat like that, I may not have a fancy education enough tae be able tae gauge the value of such items, but the journey and...well..." She gestures vaguely riverward. "...that speaks of a ridiculous amount of investment intae nothing, unless the thing is nae nothing at all and you dinnae strike me as a daft idiot. Hence my earlier touted curiosity....why are you after it?"

Inclining her head, her smile returns. "Believe me when I say I'm nae interested in the thing itself. Could nae think of anything more boring that scrambling intae the dirt for broken pieces trying tae find out what happened before. Your story involving said thing, though, that I'm interested in."

With that, she kicks her heels lightly on the horse's flanks, turning it towards the road to the nearest town, knowing very well where it is; it hasn't been all that long since she's been in this area.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Bless her heart, she asks after the professor's area of scholarly interest, and Noah foreshadows the monsoon of enthusiasm by uttering a low sound that stays caged in his chest and throat, eyes turned heavenward. At least the necessary silence on the part of everyone who is not Montagu gives him time to slide the waistcoat back on and refasten it, sharply-tailored lines fated to distend as the fabric dries, until it no longer sits flush with the declining wedge of his frame. The knees of suede jodhpurs never meant for swimming are already loose with walking. All of which goes to show why Noah never invests in dress attire without good reason: it has a very short lifespan in his care.

Ambrose is delighted with the opportunity to wax academic. "A little of this, a little of that! This year I'm focusing on ancient cultures of Kislev. Very controversial stuff, you know, in light of recent events." He pauses at the shoreline, leaning down, and retrieves a stairwell banister from amidst a snarl of washed-up remnants of the Mamma Mia, testing its tensile strength by whacking its end on the sand. Satisfied, he uses the knob at the top to brace his hand, and employs it as a makeshift cane, continuing, "War has a way of rewriting history, you see. A privilege of victory, to say nothing of the destruction wrought on historical record by the blasted violence of it all. Valuable pieces of art, etchings in stone and steel, grand monuments half-sunk into the rising sands, to which all of Filgaia is being gradually reduced, stone begetting sand, sand begetting further sand from what stone remains in the, in the racing winds that cross the continent of Ignas like trains overburdened--"

It is at this point that Noah slants his gaze down at the petite figure beside him, cocking a brow and allowing himself a splinter of a smirk: 'you asked for this,' says the look, before lancing back into the growing darkness ahead of them.

"Last year it was antiquities of Aquvy. Barnacles on every last thing. Sextants everywhere, and the smell of seaweed. Well! Salt is no friend to the archaeologist or historian, I tell you. Corrosive stuff. Delicious in the kitchen, but there it should stay."

"Brose is a man of many talents," Noah intervenes at last, putting a merciful stopper in the endless outflow of information from that quarter. After a beat he adds: "Dazil isn't home, though I like it well enough. Drifters, by and large, don't have much use for 'home.'" He rolls his shoulders, plays his eyes along the fiery sidewalls of the canyon, sunset hues soaked into stone from the sky. "'Home is where my horse is,' and all that."

Not far from where they are, horses in silhouette. The two could not be more different: one palomino palfrey, light and agile, roped off to a dead tree; the other, ground-tied, nothing less than a destrier, massively and powerfully built, patched with white and some darker color difficult to make out in the dying light of day. Black, or perhaps very, very dark brown. "You're riding with me, Montagu. The lady can manage on her own."

He snags the reins of the larger of the two horses up off of the ground, slinging them over its thick and arching neck. He plants his boot in one stirrup and swings himself easily up and over in spite of the animal's statuesque profile, then double-takes at what he hears about Cassidy spending time with the professor deshabille, skewed brows sending Ambrose a wryly baffled look. "That right?"

Ambrose, flustered, opens his mouth to protest, and then changes his mind, exacting retribution for Noah having called him fat, amongst other sundry offenses. "That's right. Which just goes to show you, dear boy, what a little bit of gentlemanly behavior is worth in such a tiresome world. And don't even begin to ask me for a report about it; I never witness and tell, you'll just have to-- oh, fiddlesticks." Far shorter than Noah, he struggles to even get his loafered foot into the stirrup to mount up, but Noah lets him try -- probably in a kind of retribution of his own, to gauge from the dryly amused way he watches that awkward fumbling. Ambrose appears to know that, scowling upward. "Will you lend me a hand already, you...rapscallion."

"All you had to do was ask, prof." Hand down, he hauls the bigger man up into the spot behind him, head turned to watch Ambrose get settled over his shoulder, though Cassidy tugs an easy smile out of him well before he's able to look her way. "Oh, is that the question? I'm not so sure. Double-deep in debt to someone I hardly know...you've got to ask yourself, do I have incentive to try to take it back, knowing I could pay off that debt by giving that artifact up to your care? I wonder." He fishes the reins up out of the painted strands of his horse's mane, and the beast wheels itself around in answer to some unseen signal from pressing boots. "But sure, I can tell you the story, though I'm not sure you'll believe the truth."

Quite suddenly, Ambrose pipes up: "I've already told the young miss that you collect them."

Noah, mouth open in preparation to spin a golden yarn from cow patties, blinks and stares ahead, processing this piece of information. Ambrose winces at the silence, hastens to add: "Purely out of academic interest, I assured her!"

Noah closes his mouth. Heels nick into the horse's middle, urging it onward. "Well that was mighty kind of you, Brose," he intones at length, tone of voice light and steeped in good humor, though he's shaking his head with incredulity. It takes him little time to reorganize his thoughts around this piece of information.

"Well, I was going to sell you a story about how it once belonged to a famous courtesan some thousand years ago or more, but as Montagu's gone ahead and given you a piece of the truth, I suppose you won't be satisfied with anything less than the rest of it. You'll have a harder time believing it than you would the story about the courtesan, I reckon, but it's too late now."

A nudge drives the destrier forward on a lazy trot, drawing even with the smaller palfrey, and then he lets it lapse back into an efficient walk.

"I'm sure you noticed there was a trace of falsehood in Ambrose when he gave you the story that he did, though you shouldn't blame him for it, as he was only aiming to protect me, you see. Truth is..." A pause. A long one. He seems to gird himself, square-jawed face tightening around as much dignity as he can muster. "Truth is, I had an accident years back that left me less a man than I was. It was summer in Elru, this being before the fall of Arctica two years ago, of course, as most know it's unfit for visitation by even a canny Drifter ever since. I'm a poor fit for a martial land, lacking the temperament for peaceful coexistence with any culture that values order and discipline, but I had business there at the start and lingered on long after I should have left on account of a pretty pair of blue eyes, a head of the reddest hair you've ever seen, and legs I'll spare you the description of as we've only just met and I like to make a good first impression."

Behind him, Ambrose rolls his eyes.

"Long story short, or at least shorter, it turns out Ellurians are biters, and ever since that fateful day I've been looking to fill the hole in my heart left behind by the theft of what was my most treasured possession, and the darling of more than a few popular watering holes across the breadth of Filgaia. A lesser man might pack it all in and retire under circumstances like mine, but I pride myself on my ability to improvise, and there's something very gratifying in besting not only one's greatest personal tragedy but also the best accomplishments of gifts given by a generous god before they were cruelly stolen away. Which just goes to show you," he adds philosophically, "That you'll never know what highest heights you can achieve until you've had everything taken away."

Two, three hoofbeats on, he turns a placid, lid-eyed smile on her. "You're traveling with a legend in the making, and you never knew it 'til you asked."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

She can't fathom anything more boring than ancient history. In her opinion, the world would be a much better place if the past simply stayed buried.

But people need to make a living, and considering what has been going on in Filgaia ever since she hit the surface, she will have to at least know about some of these things eventually, if not just to keep her head afloat before this dead, but beautiful world attempts to drown her under the weight of geopolitical ambitions. She has spent a decade ignoring these, but considering she is surrounded by people who have at least some passing knowledge of the basics, Cassidy doubts that she'll be able to keep herself from it. Still, she is a seasoned enough actress to feign nothing short of rapt interest when Ambrose waxes poetic about his life's work, meeting Noah's eyes when he casts his own towards her, 'what have you done??' plainly writ in hazel eyes full of expression. A slanted smile hooks on one corner of her mouth as they go.

"Wouldnae profess myself tae have understood half of that, professor, so I s'pose if I come across some ancient, important looking doodad or sommat one day, you'll be the first person I'll look up," she promises him, though she overexaggerates her incapacity to comprehend what he means. So many years removed from her own origins, that prodigious intellect remains, no matter how hard she tries to ignore its beginnings. Still, the dark-haired relic hunter provides a reprieve from the inevitable stream of words that follow, though she refrains from giving him a grateful look. To her credit, she isn't out to actively hurt Ambrose Montagu's feelings. With the honest way he goes about his work, there are aspects of him that remind her of Jinty McGuintie of the Last Resort, forever situated in the ladder of her esteem as the most honest man she has ever known.

Arguably not a herculean feat, however, considering the kind of people she's often surrounded by.

Words regarding Dazil are taken in stride. "Aveh's interesting enough in its own right, though I've not been lately. Memorable, though, for a few reasons." There's a hint of an absent smile, but one that fades, tilting a look at Noah once she's settled on the palfrey and they're on the long road towards the nearest town. Heels tap lightly on the horse's flanks, coaxing it to move in a quick trot. Conversation is well and good and she intends to capitalize on the information they provide, or whatever stories they deign to tell her - but she won't exactly be able to take back any of it if they catch their deaths in the freezing desert once the late hours hit.

Her head tilts back to let loose a brief peal of laughter. "Ay, you think so? I doubt it verra much, though admittedly I could be guessing. Imagine, all the way from Aveh just tae get your hands on it, and the way the professor keeps asking about whether I have it. I think it's too late tae diminish your clear personal investment in the bloody thing, luv, as the man helpfully says." She nods to Ambrose. "But dinnae worry, I'm sure you'll be verra convincing enough tae press me tae hand it over, especially given my lack of interest in old things."

The tale unfolds amidst hoofbeats on dirt, Cassidy listening quietly even as they continue moving through the canyon paths, the quick canter of horses bouncing off the natural acoustics carved into the surrounding rockfaces. Even while her attention seems to be elsewhere, that attentive gaze slipping around the growing shadows, it'd be easy enough to ascertain that she is listening; the smile playing on her mouth grows wider, and wider, chest constricting as the beginnings of a laugh bubble up from the back of her throat. The sound later spills once he gets to the part about Ellurians being biters, the implication as to the reasons as to why he is less of a man very clear.

"I'll take that lesson tae heart for sure," she tells him gamely, her grin so broad dimples are visible on both cheeks. "And you're right enough that this one's a little harder tae believe than the existence of a courtesan a millennia ago with a fondness for nine inches of endless possibilities. But you know as well as I that there's a verra easy way tae verify that story and that's tae just whip it off and let whatever's left of it hang proud and free in the bloody wind."

She lifts a palm, with the good grace to look distressingly convincing as she takes pains to look very much like she's swearing solemnly at something. "I promise not tae laugh, or render judgment. I'll even be doubly kind and not express any pity and even do you a favor by comparing specimens and making absolutely sure that your skintone matches the thing in question. And if nothing else..." She shoots him a look, another laugh threatening to spill over. "...you know verra well that I have an absolutely fine eye for color." Said she who wore the hideous gown.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

For all the world he seems not to notice her ever-widening smile or the laugh that sings out when he reaches the pivotal point of his purported maiming in the story he tells, expression grave to the last, until that serene little smile of his finds purchase amidst all of that solemnity.

He schools it quickly enough as she suggests the remedy to her disbelief, the look on his face folding around mild disapproval or something like disappointment. He tchs to ensure that she reads it properly. "Now you know I've come to terms with the lot I've been handed, or I wouldn't be so free with the tale, but if my pa -- saints rest his soul -- taught me anything, it's that a man shouldn't draw unless he means to fire. I didn't take many of his lessons to heart -- a more ornery wildcat of a man you've never met in your life -- but that one's served me well and I mean to stick to it. It's important," he says, meaning none of this at all, "To have a code, however meager it may be. Now on the other hand," he adds, as though the thought is only just occurring, "If you told me you intended to personally find out what all of the fuss was about, I imagine you'd get your chance, though of course I'd hate to step on the toes of Ambrose Montagu, whose own exploits in the straw are nothing to be sneezed at unless you're prone to hay fever brought on by sudden overexposure to alfalfa."

There's never once a single hitch in all of these long and rambling sentences, words that take sudden left-hand turns into nonsense before veering back toward believability, blended together as seamless patter. In another life he'd have been well-suited to life as a sideshow barker or the dedicated role of distraction in a grift operation: he has the gift of silver speech and no accompanying inhibitions of shame to cause hesitation when it matters most. ...Unless, of course, he really was disfigured the way he claims to have been, and really did make peace with it. It can only be one or the other. For his part Ambrose remains silent on the condition of Noah's private life, though he appears duly tickled when his status as a lothario is inflated by his younger companion. He does, however, lean to put in, "Speaking of, ah, holsters, and such..."

Noah arches a brow and hms? over his shoulder, then flicks a look at the tooled-leather saddle bags bulked beneath Montague's knees. "Oh. Right. Expecting trouble, Brose?"

Ambrose returns the look with a flat expression, and for the first time since his night went sideways in an explosion of ARMs fire, Noah breaks into a full laugh, a smile with the white crescent sharpness of a new moon and all of the blazing brilliance of the midday sun searing its way into place, quick -- like all things that burn so brightly -- to consume itself and bank to embers again. "Alright. Hold up a tick, if you would, Miss Cain. The esteemed professor feels we oughta be ready for anything."

Dropping the reins bolts his horse to one spot as surely as if he'd tied them to the earth itself, leaving him free to reach back with one hand, palm upward, in expectation of the burden he receives shortly thereafter: Montagu's digging produces a pair of leather belts, each heavily laden with a single holster containing an ARM, one matching the other, or so the identical pale grips suggest. Too large by far for pistols, too short for rifles. Not unlike a howdah, perhaps, but girthier than that, and affixed with vials, peculiarly jointed. The holsters sheath most of the weapons, occluding other details from view.

"He's not wrong," Noah says, planting his weight in his stirrups to rise out of the saddle and ease his self-arming, one belt slung over a squared shoulder while he slings the other about his hips. "That rifle took a swim. In your shoes I don't know as I'd like to rely on it to keep me alive. Brose may have something more reliable you can borrow until you're safely on your way."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

"Sounds like excuses tae me," Cassidy tells him lightly, with the explanation he provides that prevents him from dropping his trousers right this very instant. "And of course I intend tae find out firsthand. I meant what I said about contrasting and comparing, certainly you need an extra pair of hands tae heft up this thing that you're being so nonchalant about getting back from me. For I, too, know the value of first impressions, luv. Considering I offered already, dinnae think it'd be sporting if I went back on my word." Angling her blonde head over at him, she flashes him a wink. "Dinnae worry. I'll try tae be fair in my assessments. My poor mum, God rest her soul, always did tell me tae be nice and charitable tae the handicapped."

With Ambrose's interjection behind, she doesn't look over at the professor, content as she is to take in the scenery. The evening is cool enough to make the ride pleasant, though the prickles that come with the breeze are there. Just because she ignores her own survival instincts half the time does not mean she has them, or that they are not fastidious in warning her that they are, at the very least, being watched. Still, she maintains her easy, unhurried gait - her blood is already up, exchanging words with the dark-haired relic hunter the way she is, the prospect that their problems may not be over only escalates the way anticipation sings in her veins.

They confirm it, Noah with what he says, and the flat look that the professor flashes at him, weighed down by both experience and history. Some part of her wonders just how long the two of them have been working together, if not traveling together, but considering the easy affection and the overt worry Hawthorne demonstrates around Ambrose, she reckons there are a few easy years there. Still, she waves a hand sideways at his address. "Cassidy," she tells him, their heedless foray into facetious banter dropping in favor of delivering that note. "Dinnae think I'm enough of a lady tae warrant that kind of address. Besides, it's only fair." Laughter folds over her brogue once more. "I certainly dinnae intend tae call you Mister Hawthorne."

She follows the progress of his hands, into which Ambrose delivers a pair of twin ARMS; pistols and shotguns are plentiful in her part of the world, but it's rare that she finds weapons that are situated so cleanly in between. Unique, those. She can't help but incline her head slightly, lips pursed in thought, but that expression doesn't last and she lifts a hand, expectantly, towards the professor, but she does not discard the rifle, for all of Noah's very helpful advice about it not being helpful considering how waterlogged it is.

"Sound advice," she tells him. "Professor, would you so kindly oblige me?" All with another smile punctuated with the absolute lack of shame, running with the joke and whatever misunderstandings have hitched onto it as far as it would go. "Given our special relationship and all. Though I'd also like tae ask what sort of trouble you're expecting."

An arch glance to Noah: "Let me guess, other people want what you're after. More butt stuff enthusiasts, then? This a tournament or sommat? Competitive anal jockeying? I learn something new every day."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

There's no immediate riposte in the ongoing debate about what is, or is not, contained in those waterlogged jodphurs of his. Obligatory propositions made and at least in the spirit of banter accepted, he lets all of that lapse, attention better spent on preparing for the worst, though not with any evident haste.

With the second belt in place, slung on a crossed angle to the first so that either holster hangs low at either hip, Noah sinks back into the saddle and reaches for the reins, tightened eyes probing the darkness, heavy shadows reflected in eyes that seem less hazel in the night than they do some manner of eclipse, ebony round the edges infringing on golden-brown explosions centered on widened pupils, the saturation of the green almost entirely lost. Behind him, Ambrose pillages their belongings, rifling the contents of the saddlebags to retrieve a simple but well-made revolver as ornamental as Noah's ARMs are plain: engravings depict fanciful creatures and swirling autumn winds starred with fallen leaves and clusters of acorns and berries. This he hands to Cassidy along with a clutch of spare ammunition in moon clips, silent while Noah continues to speak.

"Fair enough, Caz." It was probably too much to hope he'd just do what he was told. "No one calls me Mister Hawthorne 'less they're trying to arrest me, or gloat while I'm tied up and fixing to roast."

They always gloat.

"With Noah here," Ambrose says once he's able to get a word in edgewise, "It's not what kind of trouble you're expecting, it's enough to expect trouble in the first place. It loves him the way few other things in Filgaia can."

Noah's brows knit, the look he bolts over his shoulder at the scholar -- who wears smugness very well -- one of surprised betrayal. "That," Noah says, "Is hurtful."

Ambrose hoists his shoulders, well-pleased with himself, and Noah's gaze returns to Cassidy, humor warm in a leonine face in spite of the gradual theft of his body's heat by desert air soon to turn bitterly cold. "First," he begins, hand up and index finger raised from the rest, "I told you: it's to be used on other people and not on myself, though I suppose if that's what they're into I'm not the sort to judge. And second," Here his middle finger joins the first, counting out points as he goes, "You're assuming for no reason I can fathom that I'm only up to one thing at a time, which is shockingly myopic of you. I can be in more kinds of trouble at once than one, and in fact am, bringing me to point three--" Ring finger aloft, "Which is that I can't tell you what kind of trouble, because it could be any number of things. And I get the feeling," He adds a fourth finger without going to the lengths of narrating the reason, "That it's equally likely the trouble could be here for you and not me, so it could be I oughta ask you the same thing. Which I didn't, you'll notice, because--" Five fingers, now, thumb unfolded from his palm, "--I'm not the kind of man who digs into anybody else's private business."

That last one stretches the definition of the truth, a fact openly acknowledged by Montagu's skeptical frown.

"All I need to know," Noah concludes as he plucks the ferret from his shoulder and holds it aloft over the saddlebag recently emptied of his ARMs, upon which gesture Ambrose unlatches it and lifts the lid to allow him to drop the creature inside, "Is whether or not you can ride a horse."

The saddle bag relatches, a little click of punctuation at the end of all of those words.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

"Well, that's good tae know. Better stick with Noah, then, in the event that I have enough reason tae roast you. Would nae want tae give it away by calling you Mister Hawthorne once it's time tae strike."

She doesn't seem to take issue with the shortening of her name, as many do it all the time.

Cassidy inspects the perfectly serviceable revolver with a critical eye, taking in the engravings embossed on gunmetal and nickel. It's beautiful work, for all of its ornamentation, and she was ever one to stop and admire beautiful things. Fingertips draw over the depiction of autumn leaves and other designations of the Fall, a flick of her wrist disengaging the chamber so she can look at the type of bullets that rest within. She seems familiar with them enough that another snap of those fingers slides it back into place with a telltale click, engaging the safety and stuffing it into her stolen belt. For someone supposedly anticipating trouble, she seems to be taking everything well stride - a fact that she is certain does not surprise Noah.

"Ay, well, that sounds familiar," she tells Ambrose after his helpful note and warning, giving him a grin. "Dinnae worry, professor. I'm certain in the next few hours, we'll find ourselves in a saloon drinking a few pints after whatever's coming blows over."

She nudges her horse forward, lifting her brows at Noah when he starts his very thorough enumerations, amusement rippling over those pale features as the litany continues, a rush of corrections that his own humor paints less seriously than the words themselves imply. The comment about being shockingly myopic has her letting loose another laugh, disbelief underscoring her expression. "It's nae all that shocking, is it?" she wonders. "I only just met you, and for all you know, I'm a perfectly courteous creature who dinnae like just casting such aspersions tae your character and assuming you're capable of multiple forms of trouble at once right away. Unknown entities would do that, y'ken, especially since I was busy causing most of the trouble earlier that I dinnae have the time tae observe your own capabilities in that regard."

A hand lifts to push her hair back from her eyes. "Besides, I'd like tae think I left behind all the trouble associated with me back in the river, for now. It might verra well be your turn, luv, if nothing else but tae cure my sudden onset of situational nearsightedness. But ay, see? You, too, are a courteous person by nae asking, so I dinnae really see what's all that shocking in the first place. Is it so hard tae believe I'm the same?" And with that, lashes flutter at him, an overly saccharine gesture that she does not bother to temper to be believable; the sight of good humor easing the hard planes and angles of his face gives her enough impetus to unleash that bit of exaggerated drama - to match the healthy skepticism she feels about the likes of him not bulling into someone else's private business.

The question about her ability to horseback ride has her pausing. Shoulders lift in a shrug. "Well," she tells him, a hint of uncertainty lacing her normally confident voice. "I'm passable enough. Why?"

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

'Perfectly courteous creature,' she says, winning a look from Noah that wouldn't be out of place if he'd bitten into a lemon, though he keeps hold of his tongue, editorializing deferred. She has, dubious claims of decency aside, been courteous enough to let him declaim at length, and the least he can do is return the favor, though he remains distinctly unmoved by even the coquettish fan-flutter of her honey-dark lashes. "In my experience," he begins at last, retrieving a pair of skin-thin leather half-gloves from a crease beneath the front of his saddle, tugging them on unhurriedly, "Sinking a boat doesn't end trouble. Though I'd like to point out for the sake of fairness that this revelation does tip the scales of what we owe you back to something like nothing, since we'd have hardly needed your assistance if you hadn't blown a hole in her in the first place." He curls experimental fists within those gloves, well-oiled enough that neither one makes a single sound, no creak or groan to be heard.

He is equally leisurely in fishing the reins out of the ample thicket of light and dark strands of his mount's mane, taking his time in untwisting the braided lengths, eyes downcast to the work of his hands. "As for courtesy, I feel I ought to remind you that not five minutes ago you asked to see my-- "

"Now...Noah," Ambrose cuts in, scandal painting every silhouette, a light veneer atop a deeper note of warning.

The broad, flat plane of Noah's chest heaves a long-suffering sigh, the muscle that straps his jaw's hinge tightening. "Well, she did," he points out, "But fine. Fine!"

"It's not that," Ambrose says, and hesitates. "Well. It is also that, but it's--"

"I know. As for why I asked," Noah lifts his eyes, tilts his head to study the elfin figure on the palfrey, eyes narrowed, pensive. He thumbs backward with his left hand, over his shoulder. "There's enough dust kicking up behind us to mean four, five horses minimum at a dead gallop in the canyon we were in." The scrutiny disappears all at once, his expression clicking almost audibly into subtle, simmering anticipation, lights in his darkened eyes and sly humor threatening at the corners of his mouth. "Keep up," he suggests, and then gives the destrier beneath him a hard kick just as Ambrose grips him about the middle, clinging for dear life.

For all of its massive size, the paint horse moves like a grease fire, tail up, neck out, leaving a boiling comet-trail of rust-hued motes in its wake, clots of the earth carved up and kicked behind it by hooves the size of dinner plates, each armed with wickedly edged shoes.

BEHIND:

Kissinger, Marza, and their coterie of hired guns spent minimal time lingering on the shore near the final resting place of the still-capsizing Mamma Mia, ignoring calls for help, their horses stirring up mud in the shallows. "Shame," Kissinger said, tracing the lines of the ruined vessel with his eyes.

"Enh," Marza opines, disinterested.

"All that gella, though."

"There'll be vultures all over it soon enough, if there aren't already. Anyway, it's probably cursed. Last town we were in, I heard there was a thing with a train over this very same river." She lifts her kid-gloved hand, patting at the back of her chignon beneath the wide-brimmed hat she wears over it.

"Didn't figure you for superstitious," Kissinger said, giving the auburn-haired woman a thoughtful look.

"I don't believe in coincidences. ...Hey! You!"

A man with blond, curly hair and a fine grey suit staggered out of the river, gasping and panting, and looked up at the mounted posse, every line of him tense with expectation of assault. "Yes ma'am?"

"We're looking for a man. Tall, dark hair. Can't keep his mouth shut. He's with an older gentleman, perhaps?"

The soggy figure knits his brows, then his crown smooths again. "And a blonde?"

Kissinger and Marza exchange looks. Marza asks: "She good-looking?"

The blond man smiles sheepishly, opens his mouth to answer, but Marza read the look well enough. "Then yes," she says. An educated guess.

"Saw them mount up and head that'a'way," says the suited man, pivoting and pointing. "Though I think they might be crazy, so I'd stay c-- "

Before he can even finish his sentence he's choking on the mud spewed up by galloping horses, staggering backward and collapsing once more into the river. .

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

"Ay? I thought the discussion was about the other's propensity for causing trouble, not the capacity tae end it," Cassidy wonders with a lift of her brows, though the smile remains. "And I wouldnae have had tae do what I did if you had nae interfered with my initial plan by diverting the security teams above decks instead of below. As for asking tae see what's in your pants..." She pauses when Ambrose chastizes Noah, and his rebuttal earns the two of them another one of those flashfire grins. "It would nae be an issue, methinks, if there was nae anything there like you were saying. I dinnae think it's all that discourteous tae ask tae look at nothing, unless you were spinning a yarn. In which case, well, shame on me, I s'pose, for falling for your carefully crafted charade."

There's a tilt of her head, turning to look behind them at the dust cloud at a distance, a single brow lifting higher on a single green eye. "Huh. These the kind of -people you dinnae want tae wait around for? Do they call you Mister Hawthorne? And here I thought Carillo was the only cannibal around these parts."

But she's asked to keep up, and for someone passable, the click of her heels on the flanks of her horse is an unhesitating thing, reins looped on one side and using it to coax the animal faster by quick flicks of the length from side to side, a style of trick riding meant to convince the horse to gain momentum in a relatively short amount of time; Noah, for all of his travels, would easily be able to identify it as relatively popular method in southern Ignas, though God only knows how an inveterate conwoman and thief would know that much about it, much like her unexpectedly expert knotwork. Dust and debris kick up at her wake as she tears off after the destrier. Not once does she look back.

For all of their rapid-fire exchanges in the last few minutes, one thing that he said does ring true - there's no telling whether this latest onset of incoming trouble is meant for him or her, and really, the odds of that are squarely equal at the present moment. Still, eyes roam over the familiar terrain as their party of two horses cut through the night, memories from the last time she was here triggered in full force. She and Jude had been marooned on the other side, but on a higher plateau. They've had to walk around the bend of the higher levels of the canyon, forced to look at the scenery of the lower ones as they struggled with their injuries to rendezvous with Ethan.

"Nae much chance of losing them out here," she tells him. "The path opens up tae nothing but flat. You can watch a dog run away for two weeks once we're out, so either we take the chance tae outrun them, which will nae solve our problems since the terrain makes us easy tae track, or we set a trap!"

Take them before they take...well, them.

Canyon walls continue to rise above and stretch before them for a few miles yet, though the wide expanse of plain that is waiting for them at the very end does not provide for much cover either. Above their heads, the skies have settled for a deep, dark blue, reminiscent of the river they had just left behind, and decorated by an endless spill of glinting stars. Night rides were enjoyable this way, when one is so far away from civilization that the haze of lamplights and smoke from countless torches and cigarettes do not affect this glimpse of pure, perfect eternity. Unfortunately, in the last two times she has had an opportunity to do this, she was in one spot of trouble or another, and something tells her that specific streak will only continue.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Ambrose jostles behind the saddle in the very way that Noah does not, the leaner of the two as connected with the saddle as if his hips were bolted to the leather swail. The lead he has from his unannounced head start diminishes and disappears, the palfrey whipped to a gait like the wind, and what it lacks in the destrier's ferocious physique it more than makes up in its fleet-footed agility, with hooves that barely seem to grace the ground: a far cry from the earth-shaking thunder of broader hooves, lost beneath heavy feathering low on the destrier's legs.

Ambrose huddles into Noah's back, one arm hooked around his middle, the other hand clutching his hat to his head, but he manages to scrunch a smile for the blonde as she draws abreast. Noah does not look, but lifts his voice to be heard over the white noise of the wind and the pounding of hooves on parched soil, echoing back at them from the stone walls to either side: "Most of the people I don't want to wait around for would call me Mister Hawthorne. I'd rather not find out if it's all the same to you!" Hazel eyes slant sidelong, marking the style of her horsemanship, but the time for questions is later -- assuming there is a later to be had.

Regrets are difficult to come by. Moments like these are small jewels sewn into the tapestry of a life that aspires to greatness of a peculiar character; there they are, oceans of sand the color of blood rippling away from them at the end of the canyon's opened vein, while overhead the raw gasp of the night sky is pricked with ever-increasing numbers of stars, perforations in a perfect world. The temperature is plunging, fingers of wind slipping stealthily beneath still-damp clothing to caress bare skin gently enough...but promising the icy bite of full evening soon enough. The claws will come. For now it razes weary nerves, dashes his senses to wakefulness after endless days of travel, an alertness they'll shortly need, as she so cannily observes: if they cannot outrun, disappear in some far-flung town, they'll have to confront sooner or later.

He turns his head long enough to flash her a half-smile in the dark air. "The two of us being new to the area," he says with inordinate amounts of cheer, "I'm willing to hear any suggestions you may have." Twisted around that little bit more, he fixes one verdant eye over his shoulder, gauging the margin of distance that remains between them and the ominous smear of dust in the sky, smoke signals of trouble. "Not that I'm averse to an about-face to take the bull by the horns, but contrary to popular belief I don't actually enjoy being shot full of lead."

In spite of his white-knuckled clutching, Ambrose manages to participate in this conversation, provoked: "COULD HAVE FOOLED ME, MY BOY."

Noah's laugh slashes through the chill, rich with open sentiment, rarely ever guarded. He reaches back to pop the catches on the loops of leather that keep his sidearms securely locked into each holster. "I don't! I enjoy a lot of things that lead to people shooting at me! It's completely different."

Long, deft fingers curl about the strange grip of one of those weapons, tugging it free. In the leaden light it glints with wicked, murderous purpose, light sheened on brushed metal, plucked across the grooves of its oversized revolver cylinder and drooling along its pair of barrels, mechanisms oiled to pristine readiness. "Little miss, I'd be obliged if you furnished those suggestions in a hurry. Been a long day and talk of pints and missing pants sounds a far cry better to me than bleeding out in the desert."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

They continue to cut through the canyon, miles and miles of rock lining the way as the blonde tilts her eyes up to watch the way their silhouettes cut through the darkness. Now that she knows they're being chased, the inevitable danger that often comes with deadly encounters such as these makes itself known by that familiar tingle at the back of her throat, white-hot anticipation razing pathways through her nervous system and setting everything else about her on fire. With a sharp 'hi-yaah!', she quickens her horse's gait, the palfrey gaining even more speed as she charges ahead of the destrier - she will need it so she could see farther ahead of her. Chilly winds whip at her pale gold tresses, a wild torrent of spilled sunlight curling around her shoulders and fluttering in the wind like her own personal banner. Emerald irises narrow.

Think, Cassidy Cain.

"Far be it for me tae turn my coat considering our special relationship, professor, but he's right!" she calls out from her horse in the wake of the sharp laughter from Noah, said almost automatically as she can hardly help herself. "There's a significant distance between wanting things tae happen that lead you intae getting shot, and actually wanting tae get shot. Leagues, in fact!"

Ahead of them, she eyes the way the canyon narrows. Her gaze flicks upwards again and her lips purse, catching sight of rocks and boulders, how stone stretches upwards and thins, creating red-and-pink structures striated now and then with gold and brown, before thickening again and forming suspended pillars. They occupy a stretch of canyon that she knows the locals call the Basilica, given the way the formations form a natural half-dome that nearly stretches over the most narrow point of the way. Chewing on her bottom lip, she angles a skeptical gaze over at Noah.

"Well," she begins. "I've got two grenades left. We might be able tae use those..." She points towards the rock formations. "Tae wedge in the thinnest points of the foundations, take them out and drive the rest of it down. Dinnae think horses would be able tae scale that big of a rockslide!"

Why is it that everything this woman suggests tantamounts to some kind of wide-scale destruction of something?!

"So the good news is that what I got might have enough yield!" she calls out from her horse. "The bad news is there's absolutely nae way tae get up there easily! There's nae a path!"

And while she doesn't say it in so many words, the implications are clear enough. Once again, Noah might have to put those ridiculous climbing skills to use, and this time, he doesn't have any rope to aid him.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Another man might worry that such a burst of speed meant Cassidy had every intention of employing her mount's superior speed to leave him in her dust to whatever fate awaits him at the hands of their pursuers. One does not need to run endlessly, but only faster than the next man -- so and and so forth. Noah is not another man, and rests easy in watching her knife past them, her hair and the mane and tail of the palfrey all golden-blanched-silver in the moonlight. After investing so much effort in the saving of them to begin with, it would be a waste to let them die now...and beyond that, something in her resonates on a frequency not wholly like, but not very unlike the hum of the engines that drive him, similar enough to leave him with the suspicion that she might like to know how the saga ends.

He would, in her shoes.

Hawkishly sharp eyes follow her roving gaze, climbing the corrugated sidewalls of the canyon, zipping across to the opposite side by way of the promontory overhead, its scarlet arch imposing against the black of the sky overhead. The view plants a tiny seed of suspicion in him -- one she's swift to nurture. His expression flattens, returning the emerald fire of her gaze with anvil-hard stubbornness. "There's got to be some other way."

Ambrose stirs at this plaintive assertion. "Noah Hawthorne, now is most certainly not the time for your theatrics!"

"But--"

"Right now I could be sitting in Linga with my slippers in front of a roaring fire, sipping cognac! Instead I am half-drowned, suit ruined, covered in dust, my posterior being soundly battered by the hindquarters of a--"

"But you-- "

"-- galloping horse in a veritable wasteland, ten hours out from my last meal which was dreadful, all to help you acquire--"

"OH MY GOD, FINE, BUT YOU SAID NO CLIMBING. YOU SAID THAT."

Ambrose does not dignify this furious remark with a response -- not that he would have had much luck had he tried, as the destrier quite suddenly leans back into its hind legs, wheeling off to one side as it decelerates with a rasp of hooves on earth, dust billowing up around it.

The moment it's no longer moving, Noah drops out of the saddle, shoving his ARM back into his holster with no little pique, the catches on either refastened. His study of the cliffside is swift and dark with annoyance. He has time to discern the route he means to take while he waits for Cassidy to about-face, and in the interim Ambrose somewhat clumsily reseats himself in the saddle with a sigh of relief.

"Gimme the -- I can't believe this is happening. Gimme the grenades." He holds out one impatient, beckoning hand palm-upward, brows jagged down and inward, his contempt for the act of defying gravity on full and petulant display. "You're gonna have to keep them down here if I can't make it up there in time and Brose, just -- get the horses clear and stay low."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Trouble senses its own; Noah would not be wrong in that regard, and while what drives them occupy different layers in the adventurer's spectrum, they are, at the very least, similar enough on the surface that he is accurate in his estimation that she will stick around. It is less due to some kind of personal investment and more to do with that insatiable, burning curiosity, unable to help herself - to see what happens next, to experience it, another thing to look back on in the twilight of her years and marvel at the life she has led, if she ever lives to see it. Really, confining it that way, it doesn't take much for her to stick around should one trigger those predilections...but the flipside is also true. Luckily, the motley pair have enough chemistry, history and camaraderie between them to make things interesting. It's not every day she comes across such a mismatched duo.

And they are entertaining. The bickering between the two has her choking back another laugh, nonplussed at the air of petulant stubbornness he turns to her direction. He asked and she gave him a truthful answer; their options here are decidedly limited, and he knows as well as she that running away will not exactly solve their problems. Or, at least, not without help from nature.

Because if they can pull this off, the party pursuing them will be forced to turn around and find their way around and over the canyon, and if that happens, it'll take hours for them to get back on their trail again. By then, she, Noah and Ambrose would be close enough to a town with a train line, putting miles between them and their pursuers. It was a better option, she thinks, than engaging in a gunfight in the middle of an open desert, with Ambrose, two horses and the lack of cover to worry about, outnumbered and outgunned.

Thoughts that come to her so naturally that they are almost instinct, running through avenues hammered into her in the years that did the most good. The familiar cocktail of revulsion and bitter thrill mingles with the white-hot strains of adrenaline.

With a cluck of her tongue and a tug of her reins, the palfrey starts to turn around, but she doesn't wait for it to stop before she's already dismounting. The blonde braces one foot hard on a stirrup, her other leg swinging as her body lifts and twists off the horse, letting go once that trick dismount is executed, landing on the ground with solid feet and soft knees. Her prime years as an acrobat may be behind her, but she can still do this at least, a memento from her three years in a traveling circus and stage show. Reaching into the pockets of breeches too big for her, she pulls the pair of palm-sized metallic cannisters out, with their adhesive backs, moving to deposit them in his waiting palm. There's a cheeky little grin.

"If it makes any difference, I believe in you," she tells him, laughter twisting over her brogue. "If not just because I dinnae have much of a god damn choice."

The directive to keep them down there, whoever they are, has her inclining her head, and moving past him and a few feet towards where trouble is about to intersect with the female personification of the very thing. Light fingers drop to rest lightly on the butt of the revolver stuffed on her pilfered belt by the front. Feet astride, she stops, a lone sentinel in the middle of a narrowing path.

To wait.

It does nothing but heighten her anticipation, suddenly recalling images steeped in the red haze of grief, when she did nothing but this, standing to stare at her potential demise amidst the strike of a single bullet. Only there is an entire group heading their way, and it is less a duel and more of a brutal cutting down. After all, what can one woman with just one pistol do against a gang of four or five, with only six bullets?

A smile tugs on the corners of her mouth.

"Professor," she declares, contralto tinged with good cheer as she angles a single eye over her shoulder at him. "Dinnae want tae jinx it or anything, but I believe I like my odds tonight."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Any other time, Noah might appreciate the honed center of balance that allows her, even whilst wearing what amount to clown pants, to dismount a moving horse with such seeming ease. Alas, for he's too entrenched in his sullen displeasure -- only half as thorough as he purports it to be, it must be said.

His disenchantment with scaling the impossible is real, but while his preference might be to tackle some other variety of challenge, sheer walls still present a puzzle to be teased apart and odds against which to hurl himself, still capable of delivering the satisfaction inherent in shattering barriers. And there are worse ways to die, as he's reflected more than once, than at the end of a long fall. At least it's over quickly.

The warmth of metal kept close to her frame brands his palm with twin lines, and he folds his fingers over them, leeching into chilled bones what little comfort they have to give. A cursory glance tells him all he needs to know about arming them, and the gesture that follows suggests his attire is anything but typical: he reaches without thinking to slide them into pockets that aren't there, an absence that fuels the downturn of his mouth. Muttering, he stoops and slides them carefully into the top of his right boot, enough protruding from the top for him to retrieve them when he's in position, little deadly caps winking in the gloom.

If it makes any difference, I believe in you.

"I know you do," he answers, straightening, his eyes traversing again the invisible trail he's picked out for himself, identifying likely anchors for hands and feet by the tell-tale shapes and depths of shadows chiseled into the wall's face. "If you didn't, you'd be long gone." One brief pause later, he rolls his head to the side and favors her with a look that gleams, knowing and open, warm as lit coals, nascent but real affection there: he likes her, he's decided, and has no cause to pretend otherwise. Always quick to fold people in when he's made up his mind: here is a soul recklessly, freely giving from the bottomless well of a tempestuous but vibrant inner life, all of those high spirits and attendant camaraderie, as though life had never punished him for that generosity of the heart. "When I get back down here, I'm calling this debt paid." He winks, glances off ahead of them to check on Ambrose, and then starts for the base of the wall with a hollow popping of knuckles, shaking his hands at his sides to coax blood back into cold-numbed fingertips. "It takes stones to climb something like this, so you can't hold them hostage anymore."

His hands find the wall, fingers playing lightly across the sand-blasted texture of it all, and it reflects the sound of his own sigh back at him, one last hang of the head putting punctuation on the end of his grousing. "Here we go again," he says to no one in particular.

Silence and speed are his partners in the ascent. Even in boots never made for the sport, he gains altitude at a rate that belies the wound in his leg, pricked nerves singing sudden hymns as he demands his punctured calf muscle give him more than the movement of a steady walking gait. He feels it when blood, hot as molten rock, begins to trickle from the wound, a patch of fire radiating beneath damp leather over skin clammy with riverwater and the cold of a desert night. Feels it when it oozes thickly downward, an oily slick beneath his heel. Distractions, all; there is no room for their like with gravity turning a watchful eye on him and inevitable violence closing rapidly in. He forgets Ambrose, the horses, the artifact and the girl who has it, all that remains a resolve that glows with all of the constancy of the illusion of Lunar's shattered, barren surface as it sweeps, luminous and slate, through the sky. Fingers know their business, insinuating themselves into gaps that would be difficult to make out in full sun, let alone in this graveyard haze -- but his exasperated contempt for ascending walls and scaling cave interiors is well-earned, the product of what feel like endless hours of the same. Instinct for the nature of stone is just one of many languages he's learned to speak, the rest all to do with his own body, its hows and limits. Twice he coils his feet up beneath him and unwinds that clockspring tension in an upward vault to reach some otherwise distant point to grasp; the second time fills his skeleton with electrical current as one hand finds a solid hold and the other breaks away from the wall as the upper rind of a protrusion peels away, a heavy flake of rock cracking free to tumble end over end the distance to the canyon floor below, leaving him swinging one-handed, kicking his feet over close to a hundred feet of emptiness. It feels as though he does all of his sweating at once, then, aftershocks of static and heat pulsing over every inch of him. Adrenaline plucks him like a harpstring.

But up, and up, sidelong to a better route, carefully hands-only through an inverted overhang until he gains the summit and reels himself up onto the high arch of his intended target, rolled supine to let his ribs accordion air into him. His fingers tremble when he passes the back of his half-gloved hand over his perspiring crown, fingers delved into thick, damp strands of hair, upturned gaze full of stars that don't seem to hang any lower even at this altitude.

"I swear to god," he says, words woven through his breathing, "If she doesn't hand it over when I get down there I can't be held responsible for what I do." Whatever god he informs, matter-of-factly, steadfastly refuses to comment.

One small groan later he's on his front and leaning to examine the points of connection between the brink of the cliff and the stone projection they intend to collapse. It takes him very little time to see just where it is he needs to place the charges she passed into his care.

It takes somewhat longer to affix them there, clinging as he must to inconveniently sheer surfaces, half-upside down, and trying to convince the adhesive to stick to something porous and uncooperative, teeth gritted. "Come on, you little...bastard..."

The sound of hoofbeats is substantial motivation.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

If you didn't, you'd be long gone.

"Is that right?" the blonde wonders with a laugh, that sharp, brilliant grin shearing through the surrounding shadows. "And here I thought I was sticking around because you still owe me, unless you're talking about my belief that you'll pony up." All comments done in jest, considering there is absolutely nothing serious in her expression when she says this. At the warmth present on Noah's face, however, burgeoning affection scrawled over the comely planes and angles, she pauses briefly, her head canting at him in an angle with a hint of brief confusion, baffled at just what had prompted its presence; it isn't as if she's made their present interactions easy...and all vanishing at his next words.

You can't hold them hostage anymore.

"Have you come across anyone like me who took kindly tae you telling them what she can or cannae do?" Cassidy wonders, giving him a look as his hazel eyes track his imagined course up the Basilica, though good humor remains. "Really, it's like you've nae read this book before."

But he's off, and she only stops long enough to watch him start scaling through the rising pillars of the half-dome stretched partway over their heads. With a breath, there's a glance to the ground, feeling those staccato vibrations under her boots, rolling from underneath the earth. She doesn't know who was pursuing them, and really, in the grand scheme of things, she didn't really care, but knowing her luck - and possibly Noah's - it was only too much to hope that it would be people liable to hurt them. If anything, she expects that this is entirely the opposite.

Because really, she has read this book before.

"Great," she murmurs. As Noah dangles somewhere above and behind her, quick fingers draw the elaborate revolver from her borrowed belt, narrowed eyes glimpsing the growing dustcloud at the visible end of the stretch of canyon before her, its density becoming more pronounced the closer the group gets to their position. Cocking the hammer back, her face turns, pressing her lips against the chamber, savoring the way the cold of its metal bites into warm skin. Arm locked by the shoulder and elbow, she levels the gun towards the incoming group.

SEVERAL YARDS AWAY:

Kissinger, Marza and their group of three other hired guns tear through the chasm, horses coaxed to full gallop. Surrounded by miles of sand and rock, the tracks on the narrowing pathway before them have become more and more visible, their freshness suggesting that it hasn't been long since Noah Hawthorne, Ambrose Montagu and the unknown blonde had passed by. The sight of the tracks have only propelled the pursuers to go even faster.

"They're close!" Kissinger hollers towards the head of cinnamon-hued tresses by the side of him. "I think we're gaining on them!"

"Doesn't make sense!" Marza returns. "Hawthorne's not an idiot, he ought to know we're on his tail by now, so why are they slowing down instead of speeding up?!"

It is a question that finds its answer, or at least part of one, in the form of a fair-haired woman in the distance, standing just a few feet away from the narrowest point of the canyon path. Silver fire from Filgaia's two moons outline the shape of the engraved revolver clutched in her grip, familiar enough that the woman's eyes go wide, before pupils dilate in a fury. She would know the shape and shine of it anywhere, knows precisely how she lost it...and exactly who was responsible.

"THAT'S MY GUN!!" she exclaims, rage and incredulity rendering her voice hoarse. "THAT BITCH IS GOING TO SHOOT ME WITH MY OWN GUN!"

"Relax, Marza, it's a fuckin' revolver!" Kissinger replies. "There ain't no way she's gonna fire all the way from-- "

The crack of a shot from the far away muzzle sounds absolutely deafening in the natural sound chamber the canyon walls provide all around them. On the left side of the female bounty hunter, one of their hired men tilts back at the force of the shot, head craning back as blood fountains from his open mouth, the rest of it spilling behind him from the new hole in his chest.

"Holy shit!" The invective spits from Kissinger's lips, wide-eyed as he's proven spectacularly wrong.

Another gunshot roars from the other end of the canyon, taking another one of their men by the center mass. The chaotic din grows in increments, echoes left behind layered over by the frantic sound of neighing horses, some of them skidding into a stop at the deaths of their riders. One of them nudges into Kissinger's mount, nearly causing him to spill from his saddle. His folding, modified shotgun click-click-clicks as it winds up in his grip, discharging a slug towards their attacker.

"How do you wanna play this?!" he yells towards Marza. "Woman's got good aim!"

"Take cover!" Marza cries back, turning her horse to move as close to the canyon wall as possible. "Let her run out of bullets!"

AT THE BASILICA:

The slug impacts a foot away from Cassidy's boots, exploding when it hits and sending a spray of crumbled rock and debris upward, leaving a small crater in the middle of the canyon path. Despite the close call, the woman doesn't move; either she has nerves of steel, or she has a death wish.

Or both, always a safe bet as far as she was concerned.

"NOAH!" she calls, directing her words upward. "I'VE GOT FOUR BULLETS LEFT. I WOULD BE VERRA GRATEFUL IF YOU CAN MOVE YOUR ARSE A WEE BIT FASTER!!"

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Folk wisdom holds that it's best in situations involving heights to resist the temptation to turn one's eyes down, as though to witness the possibility of a fall is the same as to invoke its inevitability. For mere tourists of the high places perhaps such a philosophy makes sense, finding themselves on the rarest of occasions forced to traverse spaces buffeted by thin winds. For involuntary and semi-permanent citizens like Noah, however, that is a directive without any merit: half of the time he's moving upward, it's to escape from trouble below. (The rest of the time he's ascending toward it, but that is neither here nor there.)

He is upside-down some hundred and fifty or more feet above the canyon floor, limbs twisted to express tension against holds into which hand and feet have been wrenched as his other hand strains to place the last of the grenades where it needs to go, the adhesive blunted to uselessness, grit and dust having neutralized its staying power. Sweat trickles down his crown and into his eyes in stinging droplets, or lightly traipses down the back of his neck, the shallow crease at the center of his chest leading to his sternum, tickling at the join of throat and shoulder or pooling in the hollow of it, maddening itches he cannot afford to scratch. Rock-hard shoulders are cauldrons of fire, blood draining impertinently from his raised arms. His fingers feel like they may never unlock, clawed for dear life into a surface that would like nothing more than to dump him off of it.

And this is when he hears the first of the gunshots, a whipcrack report that echoes up at him out of the amplifying bowl of the crevasse. His breath catches in his throat, the hand with the grenade lowering to a point below him, to open his chest up to the air under him so he can turn his head and look down.

Just in time to see her dispatch rider number two with her second shot. Out in front, reeling off to the side now to avoid being run through with bullets, he recognizes Kissinger and Marza. How could he not, after so recently making their acquaintances in June City...?

Jaw tight, he lifts the slim cylinder of explosives and places it very gently between his teeth, palming with his now empty hand at the side of his boot until a glint of knifelight winks into view. Ten hours since his last meal on a day of hard riding, he would already have been weaker than usual without having been stabbed, half-drowned, clotheslined, nearly shot in the head, clawed and bitten by an angry ferret, slapped in and around the groin and face areas by a hardwood floor, forced to climb a godforsaken canyon wall in spite of countless promises that nothing of the sort would be necessary (in tight, wet suede pants and a waist coat, no less), to dangle over certain death and plant grenades that have not had the decency to hold up their end of the bargain and STICK TO THE GOD DAMN ROCK--

It has been A Day.

He reflects on this as he uses the knife in his hand to stab into a crease in the overhead arch, deepening the gap and ensuring that he can add 'sand in the eyes' to his list of general complaints.

Far below, Cassidy Cain shouts, I WOULD BE VERRA GRATEFUL IF YOU CAN MOVE YOUR ARSE A WEE BIT FASTER, and his eye twitches twice, red mist floating up into his vision like a veil. If his mouth were not full of high explosives, it would be unleashing an almost equally explosive volley of profanity.

It does lend his assaults on the arch further strength, though, using his inner tantrum to bury that knife as deeply into the rock as it will go. Soon enough he's cored out a gap big enough to insert the cylinder, which means that he's just reached The Hard Part.

Arming both and getting clear before they blow and take him down into the abyss with the rest of it.

Eyes close. Heart pounds. His pulse is fast, visible in his throat.

The countdown begins as he strips both pins at once, and everything after that is a haze of electric urgency, conscious thought blasted from his skull entirely. All that exists in those breathless, bone-shaking moments of fear is his physical self, the desperate maneuvers that raise him high enough up to the edge of the arch that he can, with a fine display of athletic prowess driven by adrenaline, swing himself up and over the edge, to his feet, and into a frantic sprint toward the cliff's edge.

He leaps the last meter and a half, and it's a damn good thing, too, because the Basilica disappears from beneath his feet in massive chunks, leaving him to hit the ground on the bank of the cliffside and tumble-roll into a skidded stop that reverses on the instant, bringing him back to the cliff edge. To look down and ensure that she's on one side and they are on the other, though that won't be clear for moments yet: there's too much smoke and dust in the air, and he can hear nothing, ears ringing, echoes of the cacophony of the explosion still ripping up and down the canyon's length.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

If she knew just how Noah Hawthorne is so tired of climbing shit, Cassidy could have elected to think of a different solution.

But there are equal odds that she would have simply kept being the merciless, mischievous bint she is and tried to convince him that this is the only way to ensure that they aren't followed into the next town.

Before she even hears the answering shots, the grenades do their work; a shower of rock spits from the Basilica's foundations, taking out two of its most important legs. The severed limbs start to tilt, aggravating its already precarious hold on the stone canopy above it, and as everything starts to fall, more and more of it break apart. The sound the collapse makes, when paired with the natural acoustics surrounding them, is downright cataclysmic, loud and liable to puncture eardrums as the uncontrollable cascade starts bearing down into the point in which the canyon path narrows.

The very moment she hears the explosions, Cassidy is already moving. Bullets whip dangerously close to her fleeing form, streaks of hot lead cutting through the burgeoning dangerous chill of the night air as she sprints. She throws her everything into the act of running for her life, because if she doesn't make it before everything folds in and forms the wall she had envisioned, she will have to climb for her life, and she knows she is not as skilled as Noah is in that regard, now that she has seen how he does it. Boots kick up dust and dirt, more and more of it billowing about her form as she dashes, closer and closer towards the deadly avalanche that will inevitably fill the canyon in just a few seconds.

Her heart lurches in her chest; adrenaline sings in her veins. Every part of her is lit up like a Yule tree and that wild, reckless glee fills her again, despite herself, because she is never more alive than when her Fate is uncertain. She is never more alive than when she is about to die.

As the heavy concave arch descends, pulled mercilessly by gravity's unforgiving well, she twists her body and angles it. Her footwear digs shallow grooves into the silt underneath, kicking up more of the film as she slides her way into salvation, rocks shattering behind her and doing what they've intended - to form an impossible barricade between themselves and their pursuers.

She coughs, particles filling her lungs, her body naturally doing what it has to in order to expel them. Green eyes sweep upward in search of Noah and once she manages to glimpse his lean, expectant form standing on the cliff face, her fingers lift in a wave.

"TIME TAE GO!" she shouts, her voice echoing through thick, smoke-filled air.

THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN ADLEHYDE AND LACOUR
A FEW HOURS LATER

Compared to the wild ride through the canyon running along the east end of the Blue Adlehyde, so far, the late evening train excursion heading back to the capital has been relatively peaceful. God knows how long that will last, but for the moment, there is some respite to be had here.

Most of the compartments are silent, filled with passengers either sleeping or content to mind their own business. Trains look the same everywhere, with the engine in front pulling along two passenger cars and their compartments, a dining car, two storage cars and the very last set aside for horses, in which Noah's destrier and Ambrose's palfrey have been checked in, busily being fed bales of hay as a reward for the day's adventure. Most of the compartments in the passenger cars are dark, though a few sport the telltale dim lamps of late night readers.

Unlike the passenger cars, however, the dining car is still relatively well lit, with a compact bar serving libations and small plates of late night snacks. The selection of foodstuffs is not as hefty as others would expect from lines that leave during the day, but it is passable and hungry stomachs can't be said to be picky. The menu includes fried potatoes, mixed grilled skewers of beef and boar, sliced fruit chilled in a bowl before serving, roasted chestnuts and baskets of woefully wilted salad.

Perhaps unexpectedly for a young woman of such a slender figure, Cassidy has a healthy appetite.

She would be found in a booth at the very back, washed as thoroughly as she's able and dressed in clothing that fits her better than her earlier ensemble, outing her almost reflexively larcenous nature instantly, if Noah hadn't keyed on it already. There had been plenty of opportunities for her to steal some poor woman's suitcase ever since they boarded, and has somehow managed to find something that closely approximates her usual attire - a button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a pair of fitted dark breeches. Her hair remains in its wild, pale-gold tousle down her back, and she's busily savoring her third skewer while she pores through the day's issue of the Guild Gazette, a relatively widespread periodical headquartered in Aquvy. The front page bears the latest updates on the King of Lacour's mysterious disappearance, though really, it's less of an update and more extrapolation of the fact that nobody has any idea what the bloody hell happened to him.

There's a bottle of whiskey on the table amidst the plates of food, already half-gone, two shots in the tumbler waiting on Cassidy's side of the table; her right hand has been bandaged with clean linen.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

It would be forgivable if Noah, taxed by every last kind of exertion but one, had been a silent traveling companion in the aftermath and let the sound of hooves on earth and creaking leather provide all of the texture of the evening. He does not, as much a testament to his character as any other feat for the day; he cannot be accused of being anything but lively company even at the most trying of times. Quick to furnish any one of a battery of different kinds of smiles in his arsenal, ready to laugh and driven to make others do the same, he picks up where they left off in light and mostly meaningless banter, though there are fragments of him in there to be discovered and used to fill in the many empty blanks of who and what he is.

To wit: He and Ambrose have known one another for 'years,' unspecific but sufficient to explain their comfortable rhythms with one another. He's not yet thirty, a fact uncovered when he uses that milestone to lament his aches and pains, swearing it isn't fair that they've arrived earlier than is right or decent. Womanizing to a certain fault, though not of the sort to take that, or himself, too seriously; he seems to go about his louche flirtations the same way he banters about almost everything else -- with the subtle but distinct underlying impression that for him it's all just one great, big laugh. In fact, it seems to expect rejection, almost to invite it, as though the natural order of the universe is for him to be so over the top and reprehensibly obvious that the objects of his attention can hardly do otherwise than to brush him off with a roll of the eyes -- still smiling, of course.

It isn't symptomatic of a dislike of silence, but instead a genuine enjoyment of the age-old sport of crossing tongues in conversation, playful volleys energetic to the very last word. From whence he summons those deep reserves is impossible to say, but not even a day like today has been able to sap him of his readiness to spar with his wits or spin absurd stories for the sake of the art of the lie.

It held until the moment they set foot on the train platform and he was able to make his way inside, at which point he promptly disappeared. Asked where he was going by Ambrose, he'd given his reply without turning around: "I'd rather not end a fine day with sepsis."

And that had been that.

It's an hour later that he returns in clothes far more comfortable to his person. They are his, rooted out of the saddle bags in the livestock car. It's remarkable what textiles and tailoring can do for anyone: polished little lordling long since gone he now looks every ounce what he actually is, and then some. Bandoliers and gun belts are the hallmark of the beginning or the swift end of trouble.

There's a faint scent of antiseptic as he slides into the booth opposite her, instantly shrugging himself down into a lazy, long-limbed sprawl within the corner, eyes closing. Carried on the breath of air surrounding his arrival, seconds after the distinct smell of medical attention, is an equally faint trace of some masculine personal scent of some sort, a single note of vanity amidst what is otherwise an entirely utilitarian mode of dress. "I want to eat," he says after a long moment, voice low and for the most part resonant in his chest, "But it sounds like a lot of work." Some slow breaths later one of his eyes cracks open, a thin seam of jade and amber momentarily visible. "Any good news in that rag?"

Meaning the Gazette, one imagines.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

I want to eat, he says.

From around the paper, Cassidy reaches out, extends a finger and pushes her plate of meat skewers towards him. After another pause, an entire bowl full of fried potatoes also parks next to the first set of offerings.

"As well as you should," the blonde says, green eyes still affixed on the printed text in front of her. "All that swimming, horseback riding, climbing, you've got stamina tae burn, I'll give you that, but that dinnae come out of nowhere." Looking up, finally, from the newspaper, she flashes him a grin. "So fill your stomach tae your heart's content so I can saddle you with the bill."

It sounds like a jest, but considering everything else he's learned about her in the last few hours, that is probably something he shouldn't risk. On her side of the booth, the blonde shifts in her seat, folding the paper carefully and placing it to one side of the table so she can reach into her pockets and pull out the artifact, its spherical protrusions and curved extension finding the light. Pale fingers heft it up, tilting it this way and that under the golden glow of the nearby lamplight.

"Good news, nae, but there's plenty of bad news and a smattering of 'eh' news," she offers. "Admittedly nobody's writing much of anything but His Majesty of Lacour's disappearance these days, though I know a reporter covering the Ancient Cultures Exhibit in Adlehyde. Honestly after what the professor said, I'm surprised that was nae your first stop when you decided tae ride all the way here from Aveh, it sounds like the kind of thing you would sink your teeth intae, at the very least." Good humor underscores her carefully schooled expression; she was not even remotely exaggerating when she told him that she finds archaeology boring.

"Would probably want tae stay away from the town center for a bit, though," she tells him helpfully. "It's teeming with chickens."

What.

"Cuccoos. You know, the white birds that cluck that apparently's got some hive mind going when it comes tae offense. You mess with one, you mess with all, and rumor has it some wee daft idiot decided tae try and send one tae the heavens with the end of his boot and before you know it, it was an invasion. If you want tae experience yourself how fast civilization devolves back into its barbarian roots, you should see how quickly everyone said that they oughtae leave the lad tae die for his sins. But days, Noah. Days of nothing but feathers and guano. If nothing else, I was glad I had an excuse not tae be there when it all happened." Because she was on a train, parts of which ended up tangled up with the Mamma Mia in a matrimony of ruin and the loss of irresponsible amounts of gella.

Somewhere behind Noah, the bartender chances to swing his eyes towards their table, and takes a very long, very pregnant pause from where he's polishing a beer stein. Catching the man's expression, the conwoman smiles blithely, with a wiggle of bandaged digits: "Dinnae worry," she says cheerfully. "I'll go easy on the lad! I promise he'll nae scream too loudly."

Gesturing to the artifact, she lifts a brow. "You still dinnae explain just who was chasing you. I think I distinctly remember one of them abusing me so evocatively when she thought I was about tae shoot her with her own gun." Which she still hasn't returned.

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

"I'll pay for it if you do the feeding," Noah offers, eyes still closed but brow drifting upward in perfect synchrony with one corner of his mouth. In a show of what amounts to whatever exists at the closest possible meeting of bravery and recklessness, he opens his mouth and points helpfully, though not long enough to give her the opportunity to stuff it full of something that doesn't belong there -- prescient of him, what with how moments afterward she produces from the depths of her trousers a thing that would, should he produce a similar model from his own, get him thrown off of a moving train. His pointing hand falls lightly back down to rest on the table, merely a prop for weary limbs. The bright warmth of the dining car's light plays over the many tangled bracelets banded about the bones of his wrist, from glass, wooden and ivory prayer beads to braided leather thongs of ranging hues. Half-lost in the rest, a wider leather cuff set with a perfectly clear cabochon stone like a fat, arching line with rounded ends: the source, one might fairly guess, of the star-bright light that helped her find him in the murky shadows of the sunken train cars.

She mentions Lacour's errant regent problem, and even through the placid stillness of his face at rest she can probably glimpse his disdain. All of the disinterest she has for the buried past is reflected in him as talk turns to royals -- or perhaps just Lacour's King, specifically.

It's easier to draw him out with talk of the exhibition. "I'll stop in eventually. Everything on display there's already been catalogued a hundred different ways, opened up and put back together again. Don't misunderstand me, it's interesting enough, but by the time these things wind up perched on a pedastal so they can be gawked at, summarized with little plaques...the magic's gone. No soul left."

There are whole worlds of information about him in that little opinion of his. The last one he offers on the matter, though, either because he's making concessions to her aforementioned disinterest in the subject or because she raises a more interesting one just afterward. He listens with simmering, brandy-warm amusement to her description of the way a flock of food items got unholy retribution on their tormentors. "Well, that's what he gets, innit? Put your boot in the duff of lesser things enough and eventually they're going to have had enough, and there's almost always more lesser around than anything else." A beat. "Bet they were quick to cry fowl play."

Another beat, and then a slow, almost feline smile on his part, his middle and his legs underneath the table tightening in reflexive expectation of whatever reprisal usually follows a pun.

Whether it comes or no, his eyes do finally open as she says something that makes no sense to him, finding her with the artifact he's been after there in one of her hands, her eyes angled above and beyond him. He has to crane his head from his low position in the booth to see at whom she's directing her slanderous reassurances and meets the bartender's eye. It's only ha heartbeat before the half-smile comes, lazy and content. "Lost a bet," he says for the hell of it, and settling back in the booth again rolls his shoulders just enough to limber up the span of his upper back, reaching to snare the neck of the whiskey bottle with one hand and drag it over, glass corner lightly rumbling on the wooden surface of the table. "I'm not a screamer anyway," he adds in that mellow, almost drowsy way, and then eschews all politesse to have a pull straight out of the bottle itself.

It thunks around a hollow slosh as he sets it down. Vapors climb into his sinuses, his sniff hardly enough to chase them away, but the burn of the spirits rolls open in his chest like a map across a war table, all the more potent for an empty stomach. "That," he says, rolling his head against the back of the dining car wall, a better angle for lidded hazel eyes to rest on her, "Wasn't the deal. You wanted to know why I was after it and I, at great risk to my personal reputation, gave you a very good reason. I might be willing to expound, though, if you finally give me what's mine." Lassitude and mirth pair well in his expression. He extends the hand on the table, palm upward, both brows lifted just enough to issue challenge.

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

By the change in her expression, Noah's prescience serves him well - to say such a thing was to tempt fate as far as Cassidy is concerned, because she will do it, and she would feed him something that isn't necessarily food. Especially with the artifact she's carrying, it would even be more questionable with the way the bartender is eyeing their table with puzzled incredulity lying open on his features. All he does really, in the end, is shake his head, turning away so he could finish the act of polishing his beer stein and not look at the thing just sitting on the table for God and what little number of people in the dining car there are.

Because, good heavens, some of these drifters.

The strange light-generating cuff on the man's wrist catches her notice effortlessly, but that is expected. The woman has a fine eye for value when it comes to things that haven't been buried in the dirt for countless decades, unless such things are gems of some kind. It's a curiosity, to be certain, and something rare. She doesn't see many of those, and especially ones that are as useful as that one. She wouldn't have been able to find Noah in the depths of the Blue without it and one could say it is solely responsible for the fact that he is still alive and has prevented her from dwelling, too deeply, on the fact that she had gotten a relatively innocent bystander killed. Not all too innocent, by the end of it, in her estimation. The man, after all, had gotten in her way on a job that she was determined to finish come Hell or High Water; whatever her reasons for sinking the boat, it had to have been personal. What kind of thief, if that was all she truly was, would discard that much gella, and without even taking anything for herself?

Save, perhaps, the satisfaction of having done what she had.

And the blonde looks extremely satisfied; the carefully subsumed tension that she had been carrying all throughout the moments in which everything had gone pear-shaped is gone, if it had been there to begin with, for she had been nothing but either composed or supremely cheeky from the second they met. Here she is, comfortable in her stolen items, savoring every bite. Judging by how many sticks have been discarded already suggests the tendency to be a glutton, but in a way that is unhurried. That isn't surprising either, she would never ever strike anyone as the sort of person who did not indulge herself whenever she has a chance, especially after the day they've just had. Now in the (not-guaranteed) safety of the train, and recent events have only impressed upon her as to how dangerous train rides could really be, she freely gives into the sensory vices she had discarded in favor of that crystal-clear focus that has driven her to wreak unfettered destruction aboard the Mamma Mia...and in the doing earning her the unbridled wrath of Sonny Carillo.

The man with whom she will have to bargain at some point in the future.

Strategically, sinking his pride of joy before doing so has to be one of the stupidest things she could have done in the long run. She's certain that the botched train job in which none of the parties involved got what they wanted had already angered the gambling mogul, but to layer this on top of everything would garner criticism from everyone she knows - those who are familiar with how the game works and are familiar with the way she operates when she's on the ball. But she has always been a creature driven by passion, and while it is rare for her to act out of anger, the one emotion she curbs for very many good reasons, it does not mean that it doesn't happen. In retrospect the continent was probably fortunate that she doesn't, when the end result is this.

She laughs at the quip; she has an expressive face of her own, and the sound somehow pairs with a grimace. "Ugh, get out of my booth," she tells him at the wake of the well-placed pun. "I dinnae need that shite after all of what just happened."

At Noah's remarks about the group after them, there's a faint twitch at the corners of her mouth. "I did ask for a story," she says in a considering fashion. "As obviously laden with bullshite as it was. But I meant what I said-- "

And with that, she suddenly flips the artifact over towards him, leaving him to catch it.

"I dinnae care about some centuries-old trinket. Especially one obviously used tae burrow into places where the sun dinnae shine." Her blonde head canting sideways, her brows lift higher to her hairline. "So long as your not-friends dinnae think I was in league with you and bring me trouble later, we're square."

This time, she does remember the revolver, drawing it out from the small of her back and sliding it towards him across the table, uncaring, clearly, of the possibility of him turning the gun on her and shooting her full of holes; she knows nothing about Noah Hawthorne and anyone with sensible survival instincts simply wouldn't risk it - but she does. "There," she says, plucking her tumbler up and flashing him a winning smile. "You're officially back on top." With that, she takes a solid swallow of her whiskey. "I hope you dinnae fall off it, but then again, I'm certain if you do, you'll manage tae climb your way back up."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

There may have been more to the note of challenge in his expression than its subtlety seemed to suggest. He waits with what appears to be bottomless patience to see which way the moment will go: will she hand it over, or ask him to jump through more hoops? Her decision to yield it, however impertinent in her effortless tossing of the thing through the air -- snapped out of that air by a gestures that manages to look lazy and be viper-quick, illustrating reflexes that almost certainly explain why he isn't dead yet -- seems to change something in him. Something taut and waitful lets go, relaxes into contentment or satisfaction, and he is immediately more tractable in virtually every way, signs of a judgement of some sort rendered in silence, without context. It's a shift that transmits through his posture; he turns fully sideways in the booth, aligning his upper back flush to the outer wall of the train car and drawing his left leg up, bootsole planted atop the bench, a more settled sprawl by far.

Another man might look self-conscious about what happens next, all things considered. Large, clever hands lift it up for the closer perusal of narrowed eyes, irises of bottle-green and topaz-brown reflecting its curvature in the brilliant overhead light as he scrutinizes the hairline craquelure in the glaze -- pale, with just a hint of rosy glow. Someone put a lot of time and effort into this idyllic device. He turns it over and over, tests the texture with the slightly callused tip of one thumb. He's inspecting the craftsmanship, but given the very unique nature of the thing in question, it's all unintentionally suggestive in a way that he would...probably not care about even if he realized, actually.

I dinnae care about some centuries-old trinket.

"It's not centuries old," he says, his drawl easy and comfortably forthcoming now that he has it in his possession again. "It's fake. A good fake, granted. Good enough to get it on that boat as part of an exhibition. Not good enough -- or so we thought -- to actually fool anybody who knows what they're looking at into paying a single gella for it. Hell, I don't know...maybe the person who paid for it didn't care that it wasn't authentic. Maybe they just wanted to try it on for size. It wouldn't be the least advisable thing I'd ever heard about somebody--"

The train's whistle drowns out the somewhat lengthy end of that sentence.

He spends a moment tucking the object into a square, flattish satchel that depends from the lowest point of the bandolier he wears diagonally across his chest, and with that returns his gaze to her in time to see the silver revolver slid across the table. This, too, he plucks up off of the table and spends some moments in silent examination of, fingertips swept across fine engravings in the same way they'd played across the falsified weathering on the 'artifact's' glaze: evidence of a deeply tactile nature. He pops the revolver's cylinder open and tilts his head to look into the chambers, allows the corner of his mouth to twitch upward ever-so-faintly, and then reseats it and slides the weapon back toward her. "I don't need it, and Ambrose shouldn't have it. You took some good shots with this. Drew blood with it. You should keep it." As though doing so had some sort of significance; as though blooding it meant something, even if only to Noah.

And as though that digression had never happened he flows back into sudden truths, relinquished with a willingness she perhaps purchased with her decision to return to him what he came to eastern Ignas to get. "They want, or think they want, what they think is in it. It isn't. Well..." His lazy, leonine smile returns, grows in increments, like dawn light. "It is, and it isn't. A scroll case containing a scroll they can't read describing a thing they don't understand, but have been hired to obtain because there's somebody out there who thinks they want what it describes how to get. They're wrong about everything, but that won't stop them from trying to beat me to it." Head back against the wall, he uses its surface as a fulcrum for rolling his head over to the side, fixing her with lazy eyes laced with irony. "It's not worth anything, before you get to lamenting your decision to give it back. Not the 'artifact,' not the scroll, and not the thing it's supposed to lead to. You want gella, you go back and find that little scorch mark you left on the canyon wall. Poke around in those train cars."

Only that reminds him suddenly of something he'd practically forgotten, virtually insensate at the time he'd picked it up. Hazel eyes weigh her with swift, sharp analysis, an abruptly cutting look in the midst of so much feline repose, like the glimpse of a knife as one pulls back the edge of a velvet sheath.

It doesn't take him long to decide. It rarely does. He slides his hand off of the table to do something with one of the pouches of the thick leather bandolier that crosses his torso, and withdraws from it a softly glowing red stone. Elbow braced on the tabletop he tilts it against light that it seems to refute with its own muted radiance. "This," he says, "On the other hand, is actually worth something...to the right people." The stone winks and tumbles, threaded through fingers that know a thing or two about making matter disappear, and then pops up into the air with sudden, glinting rapidity, flipping end over end fast enough to strobe the light of the dining car. For the most part up, but also across. Toward her, to be caught.

"Just be careful who you give it to." He reaches for one of the kabob sticks, too hungry not to take his chances with her threat, and pauses before his first bite just long enough to cock one brow upward, gaze trained on his food. "Or don't," amends, with a barely-there trace of humor too compact and vague to have obvious meaning. One bite, chew, and swallow later, he adds in that offhand way, "Believe it or not, I care less whether I'm on top or on the bottom. It's more about how much fun I'm having while I'm there."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

One doesn't get far in her profession without being able to read people well. It's either that, or she meant what she said back in the river - she has absolutely no interest in relics.

"Oh, ay?" Oddly enough, the fact that the artifact was thousands of years old just moments ago did not even spark a hint of curiosity in the depths of those gold-spangled emerald fields, but its revelation as a forgery draws out that glint. There's a suddenly fresh, appraising look at the questionable ceramic device in Noah's hands. "I've got a good eye for fakes." In a tone that suggests that good probably means excellent in her case. "But in other things, certanly nae the ones of archaeological importance, that's a little beyond my wheelhouse. Still, must be of terrible interest tae you and the group that was after us if you paid for quality work, and then whatever rate the middle man you used charged you tae sell it to Carillo's collector - nae the kind of lad that gets fooled by fakes easily, either, which means your middle man probably dealt with his apprentice while he dealt with something else. The fat bastard considers himself a man of the world, so naturally he has his underling running around all over Filgaia trying tae snap up as many black market bits he can find before Ethos gets tae them....not like he can do the running around himself. I think he gets winded if he even so much as tries tae extend a finger. Gabriel Penn's the name. The apprentice is Lyle Cuzco."

The return of the beautifully engraved revolver has her lifting her brows, though at the look he flashes her at the revelation of the empty chamber, she only gives him a lazy little smile and a 'what can you do?' shrug, a slight subtle lift of her shoulders that would barely be visible were it not for the fact that Noah's own powers of observation are anything but pedestrian. Deft fingers pick it up, examining it carefully under the faint silver traces of the two moons slipping through their shared window. Her other set lifts, to start depositing her four bullets back into it.

"I hope that's nae chivalry talking considering we're parting ways in the next station," she tells him. "I've done good with little tae none, but if it's some kind of tradition, far be it for me tae deny you, being the oh-so-obliging lass that I am. I've a few of my own, though I'm nae exactly the God-fearing sort." She winks from across the table. "Thanks, luv." Her mind can't help but backtrack to the cinnamon-tressed bounty hunter that shrieked at her from the canyon, as always galvanized by the very potential for conflict. Suddenly she regrets not having asked her name.

The bounty hunter would hardly be the first person she's shot with her own gun, though she recalls the very first time she had and dimly remembers the white-hot drip of satisfaction that coursed through her veins at the act.

His recounting of the reasons why the group that attempted to accost them at the canyon was after them earns him a sudden laugh, and a return of that reckless, cutting smile, teeth pearl-white against the rosy hue of a mouth slightly chapped from the desert cold and the trials of the day. A state of affairs that apparently aggravates her more than she is willing to admit, given how her teeth worry the surface and the occasional sip of cold water from a glass close to her whiskey. "Figures, dinnae it?" she wonders. "They probably think it's some kind of...what, buried treasure? All for the pursuit of....what is it, for the likes of you and your dirt-digging, cave-diving brethren? Fortune and glory, ay?" There's a quiet chuff, picking up her tumbler and bringing it to her lips, her smile pressed against the edge. "I can relate tae that."

There's a subtle shift on her seat, her attention turning to the passing landscape. "Wonder if that's a mistake in the end," she tells him, her voice almost absent. "Divorcing myself from all that - archaeologists are a dime a dozen around these parts for a reason, there's too much tae find. I oughtae probably learn some if not just enough tae keep my head above water. Nae one tae lament about my ability tae attract or generate trouble, mind, but I'd like tae keep surviving it."

She turns her face back towards him just in time for him to toss the red glowing stone at her, which she catches in one hand, and then casually examines in the other. While her methods for getting what she wants have changed since the heydey of her younger years, her sleight-of-hand, only perfected with her years with a traveling show, is flawless. The unmistakeable look of recognition flares in her eyes - something deeper, more significant than mere accurate identification of the object in her hand.

And she starts laughing.

She tilts her head back. Mirth flushes her cheeks. She leans desperately against the back of the booth and practically sobs with it, tears glistening from the corners of her eyes as fire and pain, exacerbated by sore, waterlogged muscles, braid up along her ribs and seizes at her ability to breathe. She attempts to speak, but she can't, and all she can do is ride the gale of the uncontrollable explosion until it abates....and it doesn't for a while. Because this just figures, doesn't it? While she has had ten years to come to grips with the fact that Luck has an uncommonly strong hold over her life, circumstances...events such as this one just absolutely floors her.

Finally, she leans forward on the table, fingers drawing over her face. Peering at him through damp, dark-honey lashes, her smile is visible at the corners of those virid, almost-feline tilts. A hand disengages to reach into her pocket...

...to produce a red, faintly glowing gem necklace, situated in a yellow gold setting trimmed with diamonds; what she had been wearing on the boat. The centerpiece is cut and shaped exactly like the warm stone pulsing in her other hand. And he would know just by looking at both items that one is a very well-made copy. Another forgery. Her eyes practically glitter with mirth.

"I think you and I have more in common than I initially thought," she tells him. "S'nae all about the gella with me either, luv."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

Of the fakes, whether or not he paid, and how he arranged for the artifact to wind up on the riverboat casino in the first place, Noah says nothing. She speculates at length and he listens while he eats, not without a sparkle of appreciation for her demonstrative knowledge and the tiny pieces of information she hands him in the process -- but he doesn't volunteer anything, himself. Not until she refers to Carillo's physical condition, words that strike sparks on the ever-ready flint of his humor. "Doesn't he just sound like a peach," he drawls, eyes lidding, gaze flicked over the oil from the kebab stick still lingering on his fingers. He glances over the table, fails to find something to wipe his hands on, and a flicker of annoyance passes through his otherwise neutral expression, hints of an inclination toward fastidiousness perhaps unusual in someone who spends all of his time scrabbling around, as she said, in the dirt.

When she says the word 'chivalry' he snaps his head up and leans forward, slanting his gaze down the length of the dining car aisle. It's a good deadpan, but humor swirls in bright eyes when they return to her. "Hey, keep your voice down. I have a reputation to protect, okay? Do I look like the chivalrous type?" Dark brows skew in abject skepticism. "Besides, I could hear Marza shrieking at the top her lungs about how you had her gun, and to be honest the thought of her pantaloons being tied in knots over it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, so..."

He's quiet again until she says the words 'fortune and glory' -- words that get her an odd look from the man across from her, a small hitch in what is otherwise a flawless, fluid affectation of character. Moments later it earns her a direct volley of one of those top-shelf smiles of his, a thing beyond the scope of any of the others, no matter how wry. He sets the small wooden stick down on the plate and sits back, torso a slung curve of flats and angles in telescoping size, so that he can indicate with a light tap of index fingertip each grip of the ARMs holstered low at either hip: "Fortune," he says, brow sliding upward as he taps the one on the right. On the left: "Glory." As he reaches for the kebab again humor seeps back in. "I'm not usually the type to create more competition for myself but I could probably show you a few things, since I'll be in eastern Ignas a while." The corner of his mouth tilts upward, as disreputably charming a smile as there ever was: "Properly incentivized, of course." He follows up his next bite with another pull from the bottle. "It never hurts to know people." Or have them owe you something, he doesn't say. Needless, likely, in present company.

The surprise that jumps both of his brows and stills the rest of him physically as his tablemate descends into what can only be described as a seizure of hilarity is obvious, but short-lived. He watches her defeated by wave after crippling wave of it, enough to steal away even the breath she needs to explain, and the promise of an upturn suggests itself at the corner of his mouth or the lambent quality of his eyes though it never quite fully realizes itself. There are enough context clues for him to guess that she recognizes the stone but he stops shy of speculating as to how or why, content to eat, drink, and wait for her to gain the upper hand in her battle for composure.

And there it is: a reproduction. One he'd seen on the boat, too, and failed to remember until she shows him, prompting him to tch quietly at himself. Sloppy, Hawthorne.

He lacks vast swaths of her craft -- more than he can possibly in this moment begin to guess -- but knows more than a thing or two about what an object is worth and how to see it for what it really is. Without that, a man in his profession doesn't get very far. In this case the forgery is easier to spot than usual. Not for lack of quality, but because the genuine article has properties than no reproduction can hope to emulate with any exactitude.

He still reaches out to touch it, dangling there on the end of a necklace. Passes his thumb over the perfect ridge lines of the jeweler's lap. He can't help himself.

I think you and I have more in common than I initially thought.

The heart's-blood light that passes through the false stone on the necklace winks in the pools of his pupils like a distant torch on a black night, a tiny glint of something sanguine reflected back at her as he ticks his gaze from the object to the woman. He cants back into his easy lean. "Maybe," he says, though there's doubt in not only that velvet register of voice but in the way he looks at her. "Danger's just a side-effect of what I do, but that?" Brows arched, he dips his chin and points at the crystal with his eyes for a single beat of time, "Is dangerous all on its own." Looking through the windows on the opposite side of the dining car, he braces his table-side elbow and pulls at the hollow behind the squared hinge of his jaw with his thumb, skin rasping over stubble gradually beginning to reappear: he was clean-shaven this morning, at Montagu's insistence. His eyes tighten, distant with inward thoughts. "I've always been the type to stick my nose in where I shouldn't, because I want to know everything. See it, try it, best it, hell -- I'll fail at something on purpose if I think it'll make for an interesting day. But I'm still not sure I want to ask you what you want with something like that."

He lets the clack-hum of the wheels on the track rap out a few bars of railroad rhythms before he poses a different question instead, curiosity stitched through webbings of jade and amber: "So it's fortune and glory for me -- or at least something worth telling a story about later. What about you, Cassie? What's on the other side of sinking riverboats that pulls you through the needle's eye to the other side?"

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

Do I look like the chivalrous type?

There's an appreciative glint of humor there, punctuated with an exaggerated lean against her window, a hand coming up just enough so her index and middle fingers can touch her chin in a gesture so convincingly thoughtful, he can't be faulted for believing that she was actually gauging that part of him. Emerald eyes and their golden motes sweep over his features, finally taking the time to get a good look at the man in whose company she has spent a few hours now, and the examination gives way to even more of that earlier appreciation, the smile curling on her lips suggestive of the fact that she likes what she sees and is not of a demure enough disposition to hide the fact in a manner more befitting a lady. Then again, that's not surprising either - Cassidy Cain has a sizeable ego of her own, enough to spare three people for two lifetimes apiece, she has always considered herself more force of nature than woman.

But she answers his rhetorical question with a laugh: "Oh, nae. You dinnae look that at all, but I'm well acquainted with other roguish, handsome sorts with faces that would suggest reputations otherwise but who are surprisingly gentlemanly when it all comes down tae it." Jude and Morgan, really. "I've learned not tae put anything past the lot of you, even that."

He identifies the woman, though - Marza - whose face is but a memory glimpsed from afar; doubtless that Cassidy would recognize her by voice first and appearance later. Still, it's another bit of information to file away.

The offer, conditional of the proper incentive, has her grinning. "Well, at the very least you'll nae be developing any competition, really. I'm reckless, ay." Understatement of the century. "But I'm nae stupid, I'll be dead in the water if I dinnae learn what I can while out here. I'm nae an academic like your professor, but anything that helps me survive is sommat I take tae water and keep in my growing arsenal." That and her line of work is extremely dependent on her ability to sound credible in a variety of subjects, depending on the guise and aim. "But we'll see. I'm perfectly happy tae let the Lady sort that out. If we see each other again after this, that might warrant a lengthier discussion." Evidence there that there are some traditions that she holds onto.

As he extends his fingers to touch the necklace, she turns her grip around and deposits it right in his hand; it remains cool to the touch, despite its facsimile of heat suggested by the flickering lighting apparatus wedged inside the cut glass. The rest of it is also as such, the diamonds as fake as the centerpiece, and gold plating over lead links. Whenever returned, it disappears within the closing of those long fingers, to seemingly vanish in the air. That vacant hand now reaches for her tumbler again, plucking it off the table. For a while, she says nothing about the warm glowing crystal on her other hand, turning it this way and that, inspecting it quietly with a half-lid stare; curiosity burns in those virid depths, but overshadowed by something else.

Something closer to triumph. Or determination. So intense that it's liable to cut through the thing between her fingers like a white-hot laser beam, to etch her name upon it and leave the initials smoking on the faceted surface. A woman who doesn't do anything by the halves, no matter the objective, whenever she finally decides to do something about it.

Those eyes tick back over to Noah's face, and the easy smile returns. "So you do know what this is," she murmurs. "Well enough. I shouldnae be surprised, should I? Would you believe I dinnae know what the bloody hell this was until just a few weeks ago? You probably knew what it was the moment it landed in your pocket. Ach, me, maybe I really oughtae give your offer some due consideration after all."

Finally having had her fill of playing with it, the crystal vanishes within her clothes. "Oh, Noah." Her tone is breezy, the intonation of his name almost affectionate, the way her brogue plays over the syllables completely incongruous to the words that follow after: "Methinks you might've killed me after all."

But she doesn't give it back. Instead, with hands free of their earlier burdens, she brings one into a loose cradle around her tumbler and downs the rest of her glass.

He doesn't ask, and so she doesn't tell him - to her, social transactions don't necessarily have to be complicated. Watching the lazy swirl of amber around her glass, her expression goes briefly pensive, though it's difficult to determine whether she's taking the time in that silence to weigh her answer to his last query, or whether she finds something in the liquor in her hand that she finds particularly interesting.

"The next big score," she says at last, eyes still on the glass.

"And I dinnae mean the take...not just, anyway. The challenge of it. I dinnae just thrive in surviving the impossible, luv, but winning against it." A philosophy that doesn't just apply to heists and her confidence games. "Did you know there was a Montrose Carbuncle on that boat? It's one of the handful of things that I've nae done in the history of being what I am, professionally, and I cannae even begin tae describe tae you how much it hurt watching it sink into the depths of the Blue. I've nae seen one before, y'ken. This was my first, and I had tae let it go." Good humor returns on her face, inclining it towards Noah. "Ach, well. Next time, I'm sure. But there's your answer, I s'pose. That expected divide. You dinnae go looking for your trouble - it seems tae find you. Me, I go out there and look for mine." Her lips curl upward yet again. "Sometimes. Nae always, before you open that smart mouth. I like tae get some beauty sleep."

<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.

"Only an uppity tart would describe chivalry as something she 'wouldn't put past anyone,'" Noah observes, and not without a great deal of humor, once she's finished with her lengthy, theatrical inspection of his particulars: something he submits to with unruffled humor and perfect grace, inhabiting every last inch of himself the way he does. Probably no surprises there, after he unabashedly inspected what most people would consider an embarrassing object in a very public place and then all but confirmed the bartender's worst fears with throwaway quip. If it's possible to make him feel self-conscious, it must require an act of god or something very, very specific, narrow enough to pierce a chink in that prodigious armor of his.

Finding her noncommittal to his offer of an education in the basics, he hoists one shoulder, then rolls it as a shadow whispers into the smooth stretch of skin between his brows. Sore, already.

She's quick to reassess though, and the reason why deserves a rueful quirk of the lips. "Wouldn't be much good at what I do if I didn't know more than the guy next to me about what's out there, would I? And I am." The quirk becomes a cocky upward hook, feeding the charge of something that rarely ever seems to go out of those eyes -- humor now, but just as often an intensity of anticipation, eagerness, wickedness, fascination, all facets of the same electric core of who he is. A man with batteries to spare, always throwing off lively little sparks no matter the particular flavor. And just in case she wasn't sure what, exactly, he is, he goes the distance to clarify. "Good at it." The last of the kebab on the stick slid off of the pointed end with his teeth, he chews just long enough to let him speak around the bite of his food without a lick of irony for the presentation's contrast with the claim: "And I make it look good. Anyway I did not actually know what it was the moment I put it in my pocket because I was basically dead at that point, but I had a good look at it while I was letting the nurse on the train ruin my day with antiseptic. ARMs are a specialty of mine. The less usual, the more interesting."

He tosses the empty rod onto the table, shoots the bartender an annoyed look over the lack of anything to wipe his hands on. The way she says his name tugs his attention back, unanticipated. What follows clarifies the tone she used, lifting away the dreamy quality to expose the sly bite of the thought underneath, and he looks immediately wry again. "C'mon, now. Don't put that on me. I've got enough blood on my hands already and, you know? I am already damn sure I don't need to be responsible for anything to do with you. There's not even time enough in my day to be responsible for everything to do with me, so..." He lets the thought hang, sliding out of the booth with only the most minute evidence of a hitch in the right calf to cross to the bar where the bartender continues to studiously avoid looking at him. Brow cocked and then notched inward, he leans and snares one of the dishrags from the service side and proceeds to take his time wiping grease from his hands. The flurry of movement must catch the bartender's attention; when he turns to look Noah tosses him a wink and a blown kiss and ensures that he has enough time to finish cleaning himself up unaccosted before tossing the rag back onto the bar and sliding back into the booth, adopting once again that lazy position within it.

"Is that what it was," he says, lacking the up-rising inflection of a question. "Strangely I didn't get a good look at it while it was punching through the ceiling and then the floor and nearly goddamn cutting Brose and I in half." Said without rancor or accusation: he's alive, so the near-miss doesn't bother him. "I don't know why you're talking about it like you've missed your chance, though." He knits his brows, studies her with eyes that eschew, if only briefly, the lingering look of a man laughing at something he's not sharing with the class. "It's not like that river's gonna push it downstream, is it? It's still there. Gonna have to hurry to get there ahead of salvagers, but they're still going to have to open it. Speaking as an expert on moving heavy things out of inconvenient places -- nobody's pulling that thing out of the silt, I can tell you that for free."

Nae always, before you open that smart mouth, she says, a correction that gets her a little twinkle in hazel eyes. He's musing, though, when he finally responds. "Sometimes I'll go looking for trouble." Contemplative, almost pensive as he trains his eyes on his upraised knee, the rounded angles of bone suggested under cloth and faint shadows on the flats. "If it's interesting enough." For a moment it's almost as though he means to continue, words held in the staging area of his mouth, weighed on his tongue...and then set aside in favor of a lazy half-smile that looks like goodbyes. "Well, Cassidy Cain -- it's been a day. All this talk of interesting trouble reminds me that I've got a professor to update, plans to make, and then...maybe some interesting trouble to shack up in a sleeper car with until I get where I'm going. Shouldn't be hard to get in touch with me if you feel like learning something about the world you live in, though. Drop a note at the Adventurer's Guild and it'll get to me one way or another -- eventually." He extends his propped-up leg then swings it under the table and meets her gaze with his level own. "Unless I'm dead, obviously. But even then, you never know." As he begins to shift toward the end of the booth seat, thumb slid beneath the bandolier strap where it rests on one shoulder, he murmurs in dry sotto, "Those blow-hards would probably find a way to hassle a dead man if he owed them half a gella."

<Pose Tracker> Cassidy Cain has posed.

C'mon, now. Don't put that on me.

"Aha," Cassidy muses, in a tone that suggests an epiphany that is greater in scope than what the reality actually is, large eyes rounding, fingers pressing to her lips as her other set of fingers point at Noah to punctuate the gasp. "A conscience! That might be a deadlier revelation than your bloody chivalry, luv, you better put a lid on it before people can hear."

He makes a good point about the safe, though that brilliant smile returns. "Ay, well, you already know why I put that scorch mark on the wall, but it might be easier for me tae wait until the salvagers try, find out where it's gone, and then try my hand in it. God only knows how suicidal that is, in the end, trying tae crack that open while underwater." There's a considering pause, thoughts turning inward as white teeth worry her lower lip. "Though it would handily neutralize its first couple of layers of countermeasures..."

She abandons the thought in favor of giving him her full attention when he hints at leaving. "Oh, ay, you do that. Good luck with your scroll case, sommat tells me you may need it." Plucking her tumbler off the table, there's a wiggle with her other set of fingers. Mention of the Adventurers Guild earns him a nod, but otherwise she says little else.

With him gone, she leans back against the back of her booth, eyeing the rolling landscape sidelong as she takes another contemplative sip of her tumbler; all gestures reflecting the calm she doesn't feel. Her heart races wildly along with the pulses of warmth that she feels somewhere in her pocket, marveling at the convoluted circumstances that have brought something she thought she lost back to her. It isn't all that often that happens, all too familiar with the loss of precious things that stay gone no matter the desire to find them again.

Maybe it's finally turning around.

As quickly as the thought comes, she dismisses it just as fast. She can't afford to think that. For all of the things she risks, all the things about her that she's willing to gamble, it's in Hope that she refuses, time and time again, to place her bets on.