Chapter 40 - Culture Shock

Fairy Tail: Paths of the Soul

Though it still lasted for hours, this train ride was significantly shorter than the one's they'd taken on their last few jobs. Traveling east to Treetop or Lowendell seemed to take the entire day, but this time the train headed west and reached its destination in around six hours. There also wasn't much in the way of scenery either. Barely half an hour after leaving, the train was surrounded on all sides by a vast rocky plain that got rather boring to look at after a few minutes. There was a noticeable lack of stops as well, which Amber couldn't help but think was a little concerning.

Another thing that didn't reach her expectations was the state of the train station itself. It was dirty, mostly made of stone or concrete, and she could count more than a few windows that had been broken. Trash spilled out from overflowing bins, rust stains flowed down the walls, and there was something leaking up through a crack in the floor that she wasn't sure she wanted to identify.

"Is... Is this it?" Amber mumbled, definitely regretting her choice to come along.

"Yep, this is it." Rift assured, pushing his shades up on his nose. "Remember the capital? Well, this is Creghirst city. The other end of the spectrum."

Shelly stepped off the train next with Zeke hanging in her arms. "What happened here?"

"Exactly what Jaina said; this is what poverty does to a place." Rift glanced back at her as Axel and Geno disembarked as well. "Ok, show of hands; who's been out this way before?" Amber looked around, but nobody moved, and Rift began to chuckle. "Alright then, two rules; ignore people, and don't get separated." He turned around to leave, but stopped mid step to add one more thing. "Oh, and keep a hand on your wallets, because that's a problem out here too."

They all headed out, but from the back of the group, Geno said. "We've dealt with criminals before. What's the big deal now?"

"That was when there was one or two." Rift laughed, sliding his hands into his pockets as he walked. "Out here, pretty much everyone is looking to get a leg up on someone else. Quick cash, zero effort is the name of the game in this town."

The group rounded a corner and stepped outside, and everyone but Rift took a moment to take in their surroundings. Stone buildings stretched out on either side of the street, all looking rather aged. There was no real road, just the same rocky terrain they'd seen for most of the train ride. A few run-down shacks stood littered around the street, some opened at the front with a shop sign on top. What really caught their attention though, where the people. Ragged clothes, unkempt hair, huddling around in groups, and most of them looked their way when they emerged from the train station.

Amber felt Shelly draw closer to her, apparently having second thoughts as well. "So where are we going?" She asked earnestly.

Rift waved for them to keep up first, and began to speak once they where closer. "First we got to find out as much as we can about the robberies, and I figure the best place for that is the railroad's head office." He glanced back over his shoulder; where for the first time, Amber could have sworn she caught a glimpse of the whites of his eyes behind his shades. "Any objections?"

Nobody voiced any complaint, and the group continued on their way. Shelly gently tugged on Amber's arm, falling back behind Axel and Geno. Assuming they where out of earshot, she said. "Hey... Did you really want to come along?"

Not having an answer at first, Amber stuttered. "N-not really." She didn't want to tell her why she went, and lying to her never seemed to work in the past. But given the shake in Shelly's voice, she figured there was more to this than her just being nosy. "Did you?"

"I don't know..." She shook her head, looking a little downtrodden. "Dad saying I couldn't go made me want to go, but now I..." She shook her head again to clear her thoughts, and smiled up at Amber. "Be honest; do you think I was being immature?"

Amber began to laugh. "Maybe a lit-."

"Uff." Not looking where she was going, Amber walked straight into someone without even seeing them. It was a man in a long cloak, who grunted when her head hit his chest. "What's your problem?"

Amber jumped back in surprise, realizing that there where three of them and that she had Shelly had fallen behind. "N-nothing." She mumbled, not wanting to start a confrontation. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, you're sorry?" The second man asked, taking a step closer. Amber stepped back again, and felt Shelly latch onto her arm. "I think you can do better than that. You owe my friend here a little more than an, I'm sorry."

Slowly, Amber began reaching for her belt, ready to attack at a moment's notice. "Hey!" Rift shouted, making his way back to them. "Back off dude."

The third man, the shortest among them, turned around to challenge him. "Or what?"

Absentmindedly, Rift glanced away and began scratching at his chin. Swiftly, he caught the neck of his shirt and pulled it down a bit, revealing the top half of a gray version of the Blazing Soul emblem on his chest. "I dunno. You tell me."

The short man began elbowing his comrade, losing any confidence he might have had. "Oh shit, he's a mage." He glanced back at Shelly and Amber. "They're mages."

The other two spun around, and all three of them took a step back when they saw the mark for themselves. After a few tense seconds, the one who Amber had innately bumped into waved his hand. "Screw this. Let's go."

They watched the three men take off, all in different directions, and only after they where gone did Shelly let go of Amber's arm. "C'mon guys, keep up." Rift waved them along.

The girls followed after them, Shelly more quickly than Amber, and once they had regrouped she asked. "How did you do that?"

"What? Intimidate them?" He shrugged like it was nothing, but none of them could put off the feeling that he was trying to be sarcastic. "There's no mage guild in this town, so mages are sort of a rarity." He glanced back to Amber to make sure she heard too, still trailing behind them a little bit. "If you ever get caught up in something; flash your guild mark, show off a bit of magic, something like that. It'll get you out of about... Ninety percent of the trouble you could get into."

The others all exchanged a questioning glance, save for Geno who looked like he understood pretty well. "What about the other ten percent?" Zeke asked, looking just as nervous as Shelly had been.

"Well..." Rift grinned again, and the sight of his pointed teeth was something Amber was beginning to find a little annoying. "That's when you got to kick some ass."

A few minutes later, they had arrived at the railroad dispatch office, eager to get their first lead. Two large men stood guard at the door; they looked like knights, but not so refined. Inside a lanky man behind a desk led them into a backroom to explain the situation.

"It feels like they've been hitting us every few days now..." He mumbled in response to Rift asking what the situation was. "Even in broad daylight. And we're beginning to lose conductors because everyone's too afraid to make the trip anymore."

"Can't you just higher some guys to act as security?" Axel asked.

The operator gave a disappointed huff, looking like he was in an unwinnable situation. "We barely have enough money to keep things running as it is. Those two you saw at the door? That's all the security we can afford. If we had a team watching every train we'd go bankrupted by the end of the week."

"What about the police?" Shelly asked, looking more than a little confused. "Can't they help?"

"Don't you think we-?" He stopped himself, realizing he was getting frustrated. He took a long breath to calm himself, but it was evident this had become vary personal to him. "Look, we're out of options. People are getting hurt, staff are getting scared, and we can't keep shutting down the tracks every time something like this happens. There's got to be something you can do."

Everybody looked to Rift, the only one sitting down at the time. But as usual, the shades that never seemed to leave his face hid any thought his eyes would have given away. "Ok, so let's start from the top." He began. "What's being stolen?"

The operator opened his mouth, but had nothing to say. He began digging through his desk, and pulled out a large book and opened it to a page with a red tab. "The first time was just a passenger car." He said, running his finger down the page. "They grabbed whatever was valuable off the people on-board, then disappeared. Next one they hit was coming out of the mines. Emptied a whole car but they didn't get anything valuable."

"How do you know?" Zeke asked.

"All that train had on it was old machine parts. Nothing they could have sold." He looked up a moment, remembering something. "We found the parts dumped in a heap about a week later." After reading a bit more, he closed the book and sighed again. "After that, it's always been trains from the mine."

Shelly glanced at the others, looking for something she'd missed. "Only them? Not the passenger trains?"

"They're one and the same to us. Most of our business comes from the mines." The operator shrugged. "Passengers are mostly mine workers. Incoming trains are new parts, outgoing is scrap and whatever they pull out of the ground."

Geno turned his head to the side. "if they wanted the stuff from the mine, wouldn't it be easier to just rob the mine instead?"

"It'd make my life easier, wouldn't it?" He said, almost smiling in the process. "But the companies that own the mines all hire their own security. We don't have any part in that though. We just move stuff from A to B."

Shelly gave an annoyed huff. "That's not fair."

The operator began to chuckle. "You're telling me."

"Well, rest easy." Rift assured, rising form his chair. "We'll take care of your robbery problem for ya. Right guys?" The others grumbled, but Rift carried on. "When's the next train out?"

It took a moment for the operator to respond, both because he seemed to be in shock and because he had to stop and flip through a log book to find the answer. "Tomorrow. One's leaving at eight O'clock tomorrow morning."

"Then make sure we got a spot on it." He ordered, waving the others out. "We'll be back tomorrow and we'll see what we can do."

After their meeting with the railroad, and the sun sinking lower and lower in the sky, the group decided it best to turn in for the night. Most of them wanted to get something to eat, but Rift seemed to be more interested in thinking of a strategy at the moment.

Luckily for everyone, they soon stumbled across a motel that they could order pizza from. Unluckily, it was just as ratty as the rest of the city. Wallpaper was coming off the wall, there where cobwebs on the ceiling fan, and one of the rooms didn't even have a bed, just a fold out couch. The place was the embodiment of a bad motel stereotype.

Finishing the last piece of an incredibly greasy pizza, Rift sat everyone down around a small coffee table to go over the plan. "So... Basically we wait."

The others looked at him in amazement. "That's it?" Amber asked in disbelief.

"We don't know where they're coming from, and we don't know where they go." Geno said, rubbing his chin in thought. "We really don't have much of a choice. It wouldn't be called hunting if the pray was easy to find."

"It's all we got." Rift shrugged. "If we knew where their hideout was, the Council wouldn't have sent us in the first place."

Resting on Axel's shoulder, Zeke mumbled. "What if they don't show up?"

Rift began to chuckle. "Then we pick another train and try again." Everyone sighed at the idea, and Rift's chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh. "And now you know why the Council didn't want to waste their time on this."

"Really...?" Throughout the talk, and because there wasn't much room at the table, Shelly had stayed on the couch, listening from across the room while sketching something in her book. "If people are getting hurt then shouldn't the Council be here instead of us?"

Though he didn't sound agitated, Rift still gave a disappointed sigh. "Think of it this way. You're a bandit, who's making a pretty good living ripping off the local railway; what do you do when the cops show up?"

Shelly huffed. "Hide, I guess..."

"Right." Rift rested his elbows on his knees, and Amber could swear he was beginning to sound like the guild master while talking to Shelly. "You go back to your hideout, lay low, and wait for the cops to leave." Shelly puffed out her cheeks in annoyance, apparently feeling like she was being talked down too. "In a city like this, with almost two thirds of the buildings being abandoned, you'd have a pretty safe bet they'd give up in only a few days."

There was silence at first. Shelly looked like she understood, but her expression told them all that she still didn't agree. "That's not right..."

"I didn't say it was, but that's just how thing's are around here. It's what happens when the bad guys outnumber the good guys." Rift explained. Shelly went back to whatever she was drawing, and with little else to discus, Rift stood up and clapped is hands. "Alight, well, we should be getting to bed. Who wants the room with no bed?"

"I'll take it." Geno quipped, stepping out the door. "It's just one night, right?" They all exchanged glances as Geno disappeared from sight. Axel and Rift headed out as well, after the latter spied Shelly's half unpacked bag on the bed.

Half an hour later, Amber emerged from the bathroom in her pajamas and Armeria flew from her waist to land on a bookshelf next to Shelly. They both peeked over her shoulder to see a in the midst of shading a night sky behind a clock tower.

A knock came at the door, and after taking a moment to straighten out her pajamas, Amber went to answer. "Hello?" The moment she opened the door, a gray blur shot past her. She dodged out of the way, feeling a soft wingtip brush by her face, but was quick enough to spin around at catch the intruder by the tail. "Zeke! What're you doing?"

"I'm missing my shows!" He said desperately, yanking on his tail to get out of Amber's grasp. "Our room doesn't have a TV."

Shelly half spun around on the bed, and giggled at Zeke's panicked tone. "You can stay for a little while, but you have to leave before we go to bed, ok?"

"Yeah, yeah, I promise." Zeke nodded vigorously, and Amber let go of his tail after Shelly winked at her. He flew to the end of the empty bed and clicked on the television, instantly becoming engrossed by the bright screen.

Watching Shelly return to her drawing, Armeria's monotone voice was barely audible over the TV when she asked. "Did you want to go home?"

Amber huffed in annoyance as she returned from the door; somehow her familiar had gained a habit of asking the worst questions at the worst times. Likewise, Shelly looked at her like she had asked her herself. "I mean... A little."

Amber sat down on the other bed, pulling Armeria onto her lap and hopefully discouraging her from speaking out again. "Did you want to go now?"

"No!" Shelly quickly shook her head, then checked to make sure Zeke hadn't heard her. "We're here after all, we might as well..." She slid back and leaned against the headrest, trying to decide what to do. Amber found it weird to see her like this; she was usually so decisive. "If we don't finish the job by tomorrow, then I think I'll go home."

"Ok." Amber nodded her head. "Me too."

Shelly smiled, and quickly returned to her drawing. Amber rolled over and pulled the covers up over herself. There wasn't much of a point staying if Shelly wasn't going to stay too, it's not like she needed the money right now. Before nodding off, the last thought she had was the wish that tomorrow would pass uneventfully and she'd get to go home and relax for a little while.

Steam belched through an old pipe, shooting straight across Amber's path. She stood in a hallway of machinery; turning gears, flexing pumps, and creaking levers. It didn't make any noise, but Amber couldn't help but feel unnerved as she walked past it all. She felt her midriff for Armeria, but the belt form she usually took was missing, as was any other trace of her. Amber gave a disappointed grunt, but continued on regardless.

Something scuttled across the floor ahead of her, but she barely gave it a second thought. She could only just make it out in the shadows just beyond her sight, an insect like shape with six glowing blue spots for eyes. It scuttled backwards every time Amber took a step towards it, so she assumed it was either afraid of her or trying to keep out of sight.

Either way, after a few minutes of walking she spotted a doorway coming at her. With nothing but an inky darkness down the hall, she decided to enter, if only to get a break from the norm.

The inside was lit a little better, through she still couldn't make out much detail. It looked like a workshop, tools and parts covering just about ever surface. Something made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, and she broke out in goosebumps.

Just as she was about to leave, she heard a man speak. "Amber? Is that you?"

She spun towards the corner to see someone sitting there, though their features and general appearance remained an unrecognizable haze in the shadows. She took a deep breath, catching a scream in her throat, then said. "Yeah..."

The person, whoever it was, slowly stood up. "Where did you go?" He asked slowly, almost with care.

Amber just shook her head. "Sorry..." She mumbled. Wait, sorry? What did she have to be sorry about? She didn't even know where she was.

"It's alright." The figure assured, reaching out to her. A gray gloved hand stretched out of the darkness, which Amber timidly accepted. "You survived. You always will." A blinding bright light appeared behind the figure, obscuring everything in Amber's sight. She covered her face, feeling the light sting her eyes while the figure said. "You're a survivor."

She awoke suddenly, lurching upright in the same motel room they where sleeping in. It took a moment for her to get her bearings, mostly looking around to affirm she was in fact in the motel and not in the middle of another vivid dream.

Shelly was sound asleep in the other bed, her clothes and sketchbook pilled into a chair in the corner. Zeke was curled into a ball against her back, gently purring away the night. The TV was still on, which Amber assumed it was the source of the flash that had woken her up.

She reached across the end table for the TV remote, only to find Armeria staring down at her. "Again?" She asked slowly.

Amber rolled over after turning off the TV, trying not to face her. "Yeah, again."

There was silence for a moment, during which Armeria hopped into bed and sat down against Amber's back. "Try not to think about it." Amber began to giggle. If it where that easy then it wouldn't be a problem in the first place. "You'll get over it." She added, and the last thing Amber heard her say before nodding off again was. "You're a survivor."

Next Chapter – Crazy Train