Advent Of A Gunslinger

As the airship set sail for the open skies, Axel would approach Rose’s room within the crew’s section of the ship. While he did express concern over her health and wellness, he wasn’t exactly sure how to express it. After all, it wasn’t every day that a close friend lost their father. Something that he could relate to.

“Hm...maybe I should...” To make himself more approachable, he decided to remove his mask so that she could see his face. “Alright…” He raised his claw to the door...

Tap-tap-tap.

And hit it with a few quick knocks. Soon enough, it would open…

And standing there was the young minotaur woman with pulsating, bloodshot eyes. Bags also formed under them, indicating that she had not had any good sleep since her father was taken from her. Her hair was in a mess with split ends as well. This bovine had seen better days.

“...Rose? Er...got a minute?”

Roseanne didn’t respond immediately. She almost fell asleep while standing up, and blinked awake seconds later. “H-huh? Wha? Oh...Axel...sup?”

“Yeah, I wanted’ta see how you were doin’ if that’s alright,” he responded as he took a peek behind her and into her room. It was just as much of a mess as she was with clothes strewn about the floor. “...Mind lettin’ me in?”

“Meh...whatever…” Rose backed away from the door and sat down on her bed before promptly flopping upon her back. “Do whatever you want. My life’s practically over.”

Axel stepped into the room, trying his best to figure out how to navigate such a delicate situation. “Hey now…hm…” He paused mid-sentence and took another step forward. “...I feel ya. That’s exactly how I felt when I lost my folks a long time ago. But...how should I say this...ya can’t...ya shouldn’t...hm…”

The minotaur woman’s eyes shifted over in his direction, and glanced at him lazily. She turned over, unable to face him.

“...Dammit. What am I tryin’a say here? Think, boy, think…” The gunslinger racked his brain to try and think of what to say to the orphaned bovid woman. He went and sat on the bed next to her and tried to offer her comfort. “...Listen...I know my words ain’t much...but they all I got. Now, your pa was a great man. I only knew him for a little while, but I felt a connection with him too.”

No response. Rose had given him the cold shoulder. It was hard to tell whether or not his words had any effect at all.

Nevertheless, he continued. Given that he wasn’t being thrown out of her room, Axel chose to resume his efforts.

“And from what I know...I don’t think he’d want ya’ta be down and out forever...you gotta come out and return to the world sometime, ya know?”

Silence.

After about two long, deafening minutes, Roseanne would finally sit upright while clutching a pillow against her abdomen. Her body was caught in a state of jitters, shaking uncontrollably as she sat there. “...I never shoulda left him…” she muttered in a weak, broken tone.

At first, Axel wasn’t sure how to respond. Maybe if she was living closer to him, then he may not have died? But there was no guarantee of that either. Tony’s death was a product of being involved with the wrong people at the wrong time.

“Listen...he loved ya and wanted ya to do what you wanted to do with yerself,” he replied slowly. “That’s why he letcha go. You were your own woman by then. So don’t blame yerself.”

Her eyes slowly shifted to the right to look in his direction with a tense expression. “...Are ya sayin’ there weren’t nothin’ I coulda done? That he was gon’ die no matter what I did?”

“...” Axel was stunned into silence from such an inquiry. The implication that Tony’s death was fate was not his intent at all. “Wha? N-naw I’m just sayin’ that...you gotta keep goin’ cuz the world don’t stop...or somethin’ like that.”

“Maybe not...but I…” Rose tilted her head downwards, forcing her face into the pillow. “I don’t know. I just wanna be left alone right now, okay?”

“Dammit boy. Ya bungled it right up the cat’s ass. Just bite the bullet and leave.” Defeated, Axel would concede and accept her wishes. Part of him felt bad because he knew that he could have handled that far better. But his lack of good communication skills prevented him from making any progress.

“...Understood,” he said as he hopped off the bed, “But just know that we’re all here for ya...sis.”

Rose’s sobs stopped for a second. Could she be pondering what Axel had just said to her? The fact that he thought of her as a sister…

Our gunslinger didn’t stick around for much longer though. He quickly left the room, and shut the door behind himself. Upon exiting, he sighed, “Ugh...tension in that there room be thicker than smoke from a pit fire in the middle of a dry summer’s day. Gotta do better than that…”

“Better than what, friend?”

“EK!” Axel let out a small, bird-like squawk, and turned around to find the osprey man from before. “...Oh, it’s you. Monocrow, yeah?”

“That’s right. Glad to see you remembered me,” he glanced at the door that led to Rose’s room, and could immediately gather what had just happened. “...Oof. I see things haven’t gotten much better, have they? Wish there was something I could do…”

“It’s a damn shame…” Axel muttered to himself, “A good man was lost for no good reason and how an equally good young woman is without her father. Shit sucks, don’t it?”

“That it does…” said the osprey as he glanced down at the floor. “I feel her pain too…”

“That’s right…” Axel started to recall the conversation that he and Monocrow had previously where the latter referenced his father. “...Is your pa gone too?”

There was a bit of hesitation in his voice until… “Follow me,” he said as he walked to the upper deck of the ship to which Axel followed.

Having taken off about an hour ago, the ship was high in the air and floating back towards the desert landscape that covered the vast regions of the southern hemisphere. With their course plotted for Ornithia, the ship sailed away from the Saddle Arabian border and off towards the South where Celaeno’s home nation was located.

In the meantime, Monocrow led Axel to the stern of the ship where they had conversed before. The osprey sat down, and could be seen holding a pair of dice in his claws. “...You remember what I told you about my old man, yeah?”

“I do,” the gunslinger nodded as he took a seat next to the osprey, “Said that he was spineless as all get-out. Does...that got somethin’ta do with it?”

“It does...you know how folks say that the world isn’t black-and-white?” he asked, showing Axel the die charms. They were six-sided and solid black with white dots for each numerical value.

“That’s right--hear it all the time…”

Monocrow clasped the dice in his claw and put them away. “...The world is actually far more black-and-white than you’d think. My dad was, to put it simply: dumber than a sack of rocks. He was hella successful, but that success got the better of him right quick.”

Now more interested, Axel would ask, “What did your pa do for a livin’, sir?”

“He was an Ornithian delivery boy for most of his youth--transporting materials and packages around the region with nothing but his raw speed and stamina,” he said with a faint, soft smile on his face, “He got so good that he ended up running the entire postal service by the time he got older. He was raking in gold by the second for how well he treated his employees and how good their service was. Always getting everyone’s packages and materials delivered on time.”

Axel understood completely. The post was an important aspect of life down in the Southern hemisphere where things were as advanced in the North where Equestria was located. Everyone getting their mail, parcels, and heavy duty building components on time was something that many often took for granted. If it wasn’t for the network of esteemed postal workers handling everyone’s necessary items, then nothing would get delivered when it needed to be.

“...The unsung heroes of the south,” Axel said, “Your pa is doin’ the lord’s work.”

“Was.” Monocrow corrected him with a stern tone as his smile faded away completely. “That is, until she came along.”