Don't call it a clunker

[dodgyallround]

It had taken months of hard work, a fact which would have had some of the clan loudly wondering what Xigbar considered to be hard work, but they'd finally been able to afford an airship. Still, the budget had been a little restricted, and the nefarious purposes Xigbar had in mind meant that he'd gone for the ability to hide things over mere

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[gotitmemorised]

"This heap is a total clunker," Axel said, standing in the main cockpit room and staring out of the window at the rolling clouds before them.

He stood with his arms folded and his head tilted to one side in thought -- mostly those concerning how long he'd live while riding Xigbar's latest mechanical purchase. He idly transferred his weight to his other leg and glanced to Noir. Well, if anybody seemed comfortable, that weird thing did.

In his opinion, the ship could have been worse. Xigbar could have really skimped and bought an even worse deathtrap, but it could still be better. It could have been good to begin with rather than needing to be built from the ground up with almost all but the hull replacing. It was only down to luck that Deidara's sister happened to be a first-class mechanic and even she'd despaired at the sight and age of the salvaged rust bucket when first showed to it. Firefly Class, apparently. More like Greenfly Class. Gnat class. Caterpillar class

1/2

[dodgyallround]

"You wanna talk like that, kiddo, you know where the exits are." Xigbar was happy with the ship. Even though everyone else had their reservations, and he knew that it would have been easier to simply get a newer model, he liked this one. She had a few years on her, and she was still fighting.

Not to mention that nobody with any common sense was going to look at something they considered a clapped out old rustbucket and immediately think it was being used for smuggling, or, for that matter, transporting dangerous ryoka. They'd expect something a bit newer, a bit faster...

... a lot less likely to break down.

But in the hands of the right pilot, and with a decent mechanic, this little gem would do more than simply service them.

Xigbar wasn't daft. The others could grumble all they liked, though Xigbar reserved the right to threaten to let them off in midair, but they'd see, in time, that she was a good little ship.

2/2

[noirdiem]

"If everyone who thought this ship was a deathtrap walked off it, you'd crash," Noir said. Flying, even in gravity, came easily to it, but it had been more than a little skeptical when it had seen the ship. It would have preferred something significantly faster, and that was reliable enough to be able to make even a short journey without a fully qualified and tooled up mechanic on board.

In other words, not this. This was a flying coffin.

But at least it was flying. Noir disliked being terrabound, and it liked being simultaneously grounded even less. It was one thing to be unable to leave a planet. To rely on its own feet, or the transport of others while there was humiliating and uncomfortable.

Noir liked to be able to up and leave at a moment's notice. On that front, this ship was an improvement.

Though admittedly not a vast one.

[gotitmemorised]

"You're pretty alone in thinking this piece of crap ship is a worthy investment, you know." He pointed out, almost grinning when Noir almost agreed.

Noir was, as far as he was concerned, pretty creepy but when it agrees with you... eh, he couldn't complain. Any backup was better than none, even if it amounted to absolutely nothing.

"What's this job, anyway?" He asked, looking at the... well, he figured he must be the 'captain', but if Xigbar wanted to be called that, he'd better be prepared to experience disappointment.

[myfullmeaning]

If he was trying to look inconspicuous, it absolutely wasn't working.

Xigbar's contact and client, the man with the .... cargo, sat in a darkened upstairs corner of Celapaleis' Amber Tavern, a nice little establishment in the Lamberro District. Clad in a stiff, black three piece suit and red glasses, he looked like a professional and that would have been fine, but he looked a little bit out of place in the bar. Had they agreed to meet in the port, he would have been able to get away with how he looked much more easily.

Even so, he wasn't the only strange looking person in there, so he wasn't exactly subject to too many suspicious glances. What made him look stranger than his outfit was the fact that he was clock-watching. His contact wasn't exactly late, but the closer the time crawled to the agreed one, the more concerned he started to feel that he was going to be left high and dry. That wouldn't do.

He needed out of Jylland. Now.

[dodgyallround]

Noir had cited 'business' and left. That had given Xigbar limited options. On the one hand, he'd have preferred to take Xaldin with him in case there was trouble, and on the other hand, he wanted someone he could trust and with decidedly non-flammable abilities to guard the ship in case trouble came to wait for them while they were gone

[gotitmemorised]

Axel took the money and gave him a nod, unsure how to feel about being made the drinks bitch. That he didn't complain might have come as a surprise, but he was inwardly glad of not having to deal with the initial meeting. He was less a go-between guy and more of an action one, so he left it entirely to Xigbar and didn't argue. If nothing else, the lack of debating over 'orders' made the client's escort team look more professional. That... and, if he was the guy, he looked like a total weirdo. If he needed '....cargo' moving, and quickly, by Xigbar, it was presumably a secretive operation. That, of course, begged the question of why he had gone out of his way to look as obvious as possible. His getup was probably the equivalent of him riding a rainbow-sprayed chocobo through Midgar, naked, while waving a big neon sign reading "HI SHINRA, I'M YOUR RYOKA

[myfullmeaning]

His eyes, if they scoured the people coming and going, were hidden from view by the red lenses over his eyes.

He seemed slightly on edge, like somebody awaiting the results of a medical test or academic examination. It wasn't quite nervousness, it didn't touch quite the same level of jumpiness, but he was obviously eager to see who he was supposed to meet and get gone. It was, quite obviously, badly concealed impatience.

When the scarred man with the eye patch ascended the staircase, he only glanced at him briefly, trying against all the odds not to make it clear how much he wanted to be out of that bar and out of not only the city, but the country too.

[noirdiem]

Noir returned at an almost relaxed pace. One bulky package was hoisted up onto a shoulder and supported by an arm, another was carried underneath an arm on the other side. A cigarette, or what looked like one if you didn't know better, hung out of its mouth as it walked into the cargo hold and unceremoniously dumped its luggage.

For Noir it had been a fruitful visit. It had managed to obtain a nice supply of inhalable bacteriostatic agent, or as Noir called it, birth control, and it had got the bits Xigbar had asked for. It had also managed to make a contact here, which would prove useful in the future.

It liked Jylland, for a given value of like. There was less magic, which was definitely a bonus, and more technology, and while the technology was primitive by Noir's standards, it still felt more familiar than the bizarre world down below. If it was going to find a way off this rock, Jylland would be where it started

[gotitmemorised]

Axel nodded, scratching the back of his head as he glanced at the case to make sure it wasn't about to fall over or slide the moment the ship took off. He doubted very much that their client would be pleased if his valuable Mystery Cargo ended up sliding all over their ancient and rather crappy ship. He convinced himself that it would be fine and then threw a look over his shoulder at Simon and waved him to go with him. He wasn't about to let him linger in the Hold, so taking him to the living area was probably for the best, seeing as how he wasn't sure that Xigbar would appreciate him in the cockpit.

"C'mon," he said, not looking altogether too thrilled at being the babysitter.

He paused for a moment and grinned at Noir, not being too revolted at the bacterial life form. It was still icky, of course, but he'd probably met worse in his lifetime. Like Vexen.

"I think the Captain might want a word," he told it before carrying on up the stairs.

[sixdragonspears]

Xaldin sat at the console, his face illuminated by the glowing screen and flashing lights of the various dials on the 'dashboard' in front of him. He was certainly no expert at using it, but his hands and fingers ran across both the raised buttons and flat, virtual ones as though he knew what he was doing. He wasn't plotting a course -- that was Noir's job -- but he was looking to see which routes were fastest out of there should anything untoward happen.

Avoiding Jagd filled with untraversable Micropurvama was paramount should the ...Cargo turn out to be much more dangerous or sought after than Xigbar had accounted for. Airborne chases weren't unknown, but they weren't an every day occurrence either. With any luck, should that happen, they would be able to plot a course through the safer Jagd to shake off any unwanted pursuers, providing they had new ships, anyway.

When Xigbar entered, Xaldin didn't look up.

1/3

[dodgyallround]

Xigbar eyed Xaldin playing with the controls for a second before he informed him, "Cargo's aboard. We're just waiting on the pilot." He smirked a little and perched himself against the doorway. "Our client's naive, and desperate, but he's not dumb. My bet is that he's taking desperate measures. He's got no plan beyond getting off this continent. If you keep fiddling with those controls you're gonna make me think you're after Noir's job," he said, making it sound like one stream of consciousness despite the sharp left turn at the last sentence.

It was Xaldin; he was bound to be listening even if he wasn't acting like it, but Xigbar would like, one day, to catch him out.

[nopowerinverse]

Or at least, didn't seem to have woken until Xigbar turned away. Then she sat up sharply, screaming one long syllable and scrabbling, naked, out of the case.

She crouched on the floor and babbled in an obvious panic, "Lost! The world's gone upside down. Now it's all thieves and vagabonds." She shook with fear, her words quick, and breathless, and her voice unnaturally high.

"Too noisy," she whimpered. Her nakedness seemed the last of her concerns as she looked around in quick, darting movements. Her legs were weak, so were her arms; the clumsy way she'd scrambled out of the case was evidence of that.

[myfullmeaning]

Simon, thinking quickly, reacted in a rather less smart way than he usually would. With gritted teeth and a scowl on his face, he struggled against Xaldin for a moment before rather unceremoniously elbowing him in the gut. It was, of course, effective enough to make him let go and once free, Simon ran forward to meet the panicking girl.

He ignored Xigbar completely and made an effort to calm her down, his speech littered liberally with soothing 'shhh's and similar.

"River, calm down, it's me... look, look, it's me. Calm down, shh."

When given enough space and enough of an opportunity, he leaned forward to hug her, pulling her against himself to stop her panicking further or lashing out. He didn't spare Xigbar so much as a glare.

[gotitmemorised]

Axel could hardly believe what he saw.

He, of all the things in the world, hadn't expected the case to contain a girl. He couldn't help putting his hand to his face and turning his back on the scene at Xigbar's initial reaction, but he turned back sharply at the scream and following stream of gobbledegook.

"Oh boy," he muttered, scratching his head awkwardly as Simon escaped Xaldin to run to her.

Despite his role on the current job, he didn't make any effort whatsoever to stop him. She was unstable and, in his experience, unstable people on worlds where magic is prevalent, is a bad combination. He decided to let the good doctor deal with it and, secondary to that, Xigbar. He'd caused the trouble, after all.

[nopowerinverse]

River continued to shake and at first she refused to make eye contact with Simon. "It's all in my head. It's all in my head. Needles and scalpels and whispers. I can feel them."

Only then did she look up at Simon. At first she didn't seem to recognise him because she continued, "It's sharp inside. Brain of broken glass. They broke it." And then she said, more quietly, "You came. I asked. You came." She frowned at him, looking him clearly in the eyes with a note of misery in her voice as she said, "I want to go home."

She was, at least, considerably calmer.