Advent Of A Gunslinger

“...’She’ who?” Axel asked.

Monocrow responded with a low growl. “My mother. Crusty old broad…she married him but only did so for his money. And as I got older, I could see for my own eyes how she was using him…”

Every day when he came home from school, the young osprey watched as his mother routinely asked his father for favors or money. And every single time, Crow’s father--an osprey just like him--obliged to the eagle lady.

And whenever Monocrow asked his father to spend time with him, he was denied every single time, claiming he was too busy. While this was true to an extent, the osprey man was too busy spending time with his wife that showered him with affections and promises to think about his only son.

What didn’t help was that this eagle lady was also Crow’s teacher at school…

“Hold up--what?!” Axel interrupted the story when Monocrow mentioned the fact that his mother was also his teacher. “That...that don’t sound good at all.”

“It doesn’t...because it wasn’t…” the osprey replied with a scornful tone, “It was a pain in my feathery ass because I would get a pass on every assignment. No matter how hard I worked or how much I bullshitted it, it was a pass. Every. Single. Time.” With a flick, he turned on a lighter, and lit up a small rolled joint to smoke as he explained the rest. “You can imagine how right-fucked this made my social life.” He took out another one, and offered it to Axel. “Want one? You might need it to digest what I’m about to tell ya.”

Axel didn’t smoke often, but he wasn’t going to turn down a generous offer. “Sure, friend. Light me up.”

“Let me know how ya like it. It’s got sunflower seeds in it.” Monocrow lit up the second joint, and offered it to Axel. The latter accepted, and gave it a quick puff.

Naturally, Axel’s hippogriff biology got along well with the seeds. “Hm. Damn good,” he said as he blew some smoke into the air. “Now...how did this affect yer life around others?”

“It was...horrid.”

The young osprey could not catch a break at the schoolhouse. No matter his grades or lack of effort, he was given free passes from his teacher due to the fact that she had a bias towards him as her son. As a result, this caused the other students to resent him. Crow’s marks on his assignments were always high because of this bias, and everyone slowly pushed him away because of it. Thankfully things never got physical, but the overwhelming social isolation formed a sense of self-loathing within him.

After all, he wanted to be graded fairly and acknowledged for the work he did for himself. But nothing changed. No feedback on his work. No effort made to teach him new things. Just free passing grades on all assignments. That, combined with how much had been shunned, caused Crow to simply stop trying anymore.

“...Nowadays, I know that I should focus on my passions for myself…” the osprey looked down at the wooden ship floor beneath him. “But when you’re a kid that wants some sort of engagement or acknowledgement from anyone and don’t receive it...it makes you seek other options. Not a single person asked me how I felt about school, what I wanted to do in life--or cared about me at all.” He took another hit from his joint and coughed a few times. “Painful for a growing boy, you know?”

“...Poor man. Nobody loved him at all…” Axel thought hard about what he had just been told, and finally asked. “...First off, what sorta school were you attendin’? Was it a special one or somethin’?”

“Ah, right,” Monocrow chuckled, “I neglected to tell you that detail. I went to a wood-carving school in Ornithia. It’s...where I found my passion. A passion that I wanted to share with the world.” He opened his claw once more, showing Axel the dice blocks. “These things here are all I got left. Made ‘em myself.”

Axel took a closer look at the dice, and found that they were chiseled out of wood and polished to the point of looking smooth on all six sides. At first glance, one wouldn’t even be able to tell that they were made of wood! “Landsakes,” he muttered, his tone filled with amazement, “That’s some pretty skilled clawwork ya got goin’ on there, pard.”

Monocrow put the dice away and sighed. “It was. When I still cared about it…”

“...Whatcha mean?”

Because of his dwindling motivation, Monocrow found himself at a loss. His father barely spent any time with him and his mother treated him as a tool to get into her boyfriend’s good graces. The osprey boy no longer found joy in his art, and things came to a head when he caught his mother outright stealing money from his father.

But when he informed his father of it, he wasn’t believed and was told to stop making things up as a foolish child. The devious look of satisfaction on the eagle woman’s face was enough to make Monocrow call it quits.

So he left. And during his travels, he befriended a certain red vulture...

“Wait…” Axel tilted his head, “That’s it?”

“Yup,” the osprey man lied down on the stern of the ship. “Guess you could say I fell into a sort of depression. I left home one night and never looked back. Old bastard probably won’t recognize me anymore and I don’t even care. They had no value to me anyway. But ol’ Rustman? He and I grew into the only ones who looked out for each other. But that’s a story for another time.”

That was a new perspective. On the one hand, Axel had lost his entire family--people that he cared for deeply. On the other, Monocrow walked away from his family of his own free will. This was something that the gunslinger couldn’t relate to, but did his best to comprehend.

“...Sorry. Can’t imagine what that’s like,” was all he could say.

“Don’t worry about it,” Crow replied, “All you need to know is that we all share similar forms of pain on this vessel. And it’s through that pain that we’ve united under Celaeno’s leadership. Sounds ridiculous, I know--but I wouldn’t lie to ya.”

“No, no,” Axel shook his head, readily accepting the osprey’s words. “I believe ya. Must be nice’ta have folks you can depend on…”

“Don’t you feel the same way?” Crow asked, raising a brow.

“Whatcha mean?”

The avian man sat upright. “About your little group. The griffon and the abyssinian. Don’t you feel like you can trust them?”

Axel paused, and wondered to himself about the possibility of him really leaving to keep them out of trouble. But was that really the right thing to do? “...Chang did say that they liked me…” For the moment, he would respond simply, “S’pose I do. I ain’t got no reason not to.”

“Hahak!” Monocrow reacted with a wheezing squawk of a laugh as he released smoke from his mouth. “Just be straight with me. No need to shy away from what you really think of them.”

“...I’m proud to call ‘em my companions…” Axel replied, “Ya happy?”

“Just be sure to let them know that every now and then, yeah? They’ll appreciate it.”

“Yeah yeah…” Axel said, “I will…” “Just hope Rose can recover…”

Meanwhile…

On the bow (front) of the airship, Celaeno was hard at work piloting the vessel with her claws on the wheel. However, it wasn’t long before she had herself a visitor…

“Señorita Celaeno,” Vido said as he flew up to the upper deck, “Got a minute?”

“Sure,” she replied with a smile, “We have clear skies for the rest of the way, so shoot. Did you find anything important while you were down there in Wukong Territory?”

The griffon shook his head. “No...I didn’t find anything physical. I actually just wanted to check up on you. See how you were doing.”

“...Really?”