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“We’re closing in on the Rift!” Jeto shouts to the other Nobodies above the wind roaring past all of them at top speed. “Get ready for a fucking party!”
From the shotgun seat of the skirmish-crawler Bennet is driving, Zeeland starts humming and raises his hands up in preparation to cast. Over in Ashton’s crawler, Shady Sally loads her light crossbow. Back in Jeto’s crawler, Pocket charges up their handheld eldritch cannon.
The warning from their leader came just in time, too. A massive mammoth-crawler erupts from behind a tall sand dune nearby and charges forward, the mounted rifle on its top platform already firing in the direction of Bennet’s crawler. Bennet swerves away while Zeeland releases his readied spell, and there are a few muffled thumps from the mammoth-crawler’s bottom platform.
Sally and Jeto both let out loud cheers, and Ashton shouts above the wind, “Fucking get ‘em, Zee!”
The mammoth-crawler creaks to a halt as apparently the driver had been hit with Zeeland’s sleep spell. As their own crawlers speed past, Pocket launches a ballista of pure force energy from their eldritch cannon at the long rifle mounted on the top platform while Sally releases her crossbow bolt at the gunner manning it. Both projectiles meet their targets. The gunner falls from the platform while the rifle explodes in a shower of flames and twisted metal.
More cheers erupt from the Nobodies before they’re met with a pair of rival skirmish-crawlers racing towards them from the base of the 300-foot tall cliffside that makes up the Rift between the Hellcatch Valley and the Oderan Wilds. Sally loads another bolt into her crossbow. Zeeland starts humming again. Pocket gets ready to reactivate their cannon.
As the rival crawlers rapidly approach, the Nobodies begin making out the details of the vehicles, including multiple spears and spikes added along the entire body of the crawler. If this is going to be a game of crawler chicken, then the Nobodies would likely lose due to their lack of protective weaponry around their crawlers.
“We gotta fuckin’ split!” Jeto shouts to his group.
“Hold onto your fucking tits,” Ashton tells Sally before veering their crawler sharply to the left.
“Fuck you,” Sally shoots back, even as she braces herself against the side of her seat.
Bennet’s crawler peels off to the right while Jeto’s crawler continues straight along the original trajectory. After a second, the rival crawlers split themselves to follow the two crawlers off to each side. Sally and Zeeland both grin in anticipation for the fights they’re about to have with these rivals.
Matching projectile spells of fire and ice fire off from the two rival crawlers. Zeeland ducks away from the flames while the ice flies over Sally’s near-hidden form and lands harmlessly in the sand somewhere behind her. Ashton and Bennet maneuver their respective crawlers to meet along the sides of these rivals instead of getting into head-on collisions with the various spikes and spears.
It’s Sally who first spots the red paint on the rival crawler racing towards her. “Are these fucking Fists?” she calls over to Ashton.
“Fuck,” Ashton swears as he also catches sight of the distinctive symbol of a bleeding eye that denotes the Fist of the Ruiner gang painted on the front of the rival crawler. “What the fuck are they doing this far from fucking Bassuras?”
“Don’t fucking ask me,” Sally says, returning fire with her crossbow.
“It was fucking rhetorical, and you fucking know that. Hold on!” Ashton makes another sharp turn further to the left as another blade of ice magic shoots toward one of their front wheels.
Over in Bennet’s crawler, Zeeland has just finished viciously mocking the rival crawler’s driver when Bennet calls over to him in a steady voice. “Switch with me for a second, Zee.”
Grinning, Zeeland grabs the handlebars and slips into the driver’s seat as Bennet switches over into the shotgun seat and grabs his half-rusted shield. Bennet deflects another firebolt with the shield and retaliates with a guiding bolt that lights up the rival spellcaster. The spellcaster’s scream quickly grows louder as the rival crawler speeds toward Bennet and Zeeland, then just as quickly grows distant as it races past without contact. A sharp screech of burning tires alerts the Nobodies that the rival crawlers have both turned around and are now chasing after the group from behind.
Unfortunately, the half-cobbled together crawlers that the Nobodies had managed to acquire through not exactly legal means are no match for the dedicated crawler gang’s more expensive vehicles in terms of speed. The rival crawlers catch up within seconds and sidle up along the sides of Ashton and Zeeland’s respective crawlers.
Bennet grabs his spear and begins stabbing at the still-illuminated spellcaster throwing more fire at him. Meanwhile, in Ashton’s crawler, Sally throws down her crossbow with a manic laugh in exchange for a pair of handaxes and actually leaps across the narrow gap between crawlers to start hacking away at the spellcaster who had frozen her tangled hair.
The parties exchange several blows, each a relatively even match for one another. It’s only when the rival crawler next to Zeeland’s crawler takes a blow of pure force energy that the tides begin to turn in the Nobodies’ favor. Zeeland and Bennet peel away from the smoking vehicle left in their wake and turn towards where Jeto and Pocket have already moved to help out Ashton and Sally.
Ashton, who has spotted Jeto and Zeeland’s crawlers in their peripheral vision, shouts over to Sally, “Fucking jump!”
Without hesitation, Sally leaps back over to Ashton’s crawler just as another force ballista hits the rival crawler she had been standing on. A final vicious mockery from Zeeland takes care of the rival spellcaster, and all the gang members are left in the Nobodies’ dust.
Exhilarated cheers and shouts of praise rise up from every single Nobody as they turn their crawlers together back onto their original path towards the Rift.
Once the initial noise has died down, Sally calls over to Jeto, “D’you think the party’s finally fucking over?”
“I wouldn’t fucking bet on it,” Jeto replies.
By the time the Nobodies reach the base of the Rift’s massive cliffside, they’ve encountered three more groups of skirmish-crawlers that they fortunately were able to avoid and outmaneuver without engaging in further combat. Each of the rival crawlers have that same bleeding eye symbol of the Ruiner painted in red somewhere along the body of the vehicle.
As the Nobodies bring their crawlers to a halt near the edge of the border settlement sitting at the base of the Rift, Zeeland wonders aloud, “What are the godsdamn Fisters doing this far out from fucking Ass-uras?”
“That’s what we were fucking wondering when those first few crawlers came after our asses,” Sally adds as the last Nobody dismounts.
“It’s none of our fucking business now,” Jeto says. “We paid their usual ‘tribute’ with their own fucking blood, so they should be leaving us alone long enough for us to cross the Rift. After that, the Fists and all the other fucking gangs outta Bassuras will finally be behind us.”
Ashton shares a grin with the others. “A-fucking-men to that, boss.”
Jeto rolls their eyes and gives Ashton’s shoulder a solid shove with a good-natured “fuck you.” Despite their protests, however, the rest of the Nobodies follow their lead in speaking with the border officials about acquiring passage up the Rift and out of the Hellcatch Valley. Jeto produces signed papers to document the work that the group had been hired for in Jrusar and offers the usual—if under the proverbial table—bribe of giving all of their crawlers to the officials in exchange for the border crossing. The officials accept both the documentation and the bribe, and the Nobodies are soon allowed to start walking up the winding, narrow path built into the 300-foot tall cliffside.
“Y’know,” Pocket begins as they look up from where they’re walking alongside Jeto, “you never answered Bennet’s question about whether we’re stopping in the Green City or not.”
Jeto sighs but returns Pocket’s questioning look with a begrudgingly fond one of his own. “Remind me to never get on your bad side, Pockie. The grudges you could hold would be downright legendary.” Raising his voice to address the rest of the group, he asks, “Do we wanna stop in Gujjar-Serai, or do we wanna camp out along the Trails?”
Sally spits off the side of the cliff. “Fuck the Green Shit-ty. If the Republic think they can fucking rule us from some high seat on top of the godsdamn Rift, they’ve got another thing coming. And if we stop there, that thing’ll be me coming to slit their fucking throats in the night.”
Zeeland laughs. “Fucking preach, sister.”
“I’ve heard that the Honored Trails aren’t the safest to camp out on,” Bennet adds.
“More dangerous than the fucking Hellcatch?” Ashton asks in clear disbelief.
“Not quite that bad,” Bennet concedes.
“Let’s just get to the top of this godsdamn too-tall shitty-ass motherfucking cliff, and then, we can decide on where to crash,” Jeto says. The rest of the group murmurs their collective agreement among exerted panting as they continue climbing up the Rift.
The path up the Rift is treacherous, no matter how well-tread it might be by fellow travelers. Loose roots prove to be tripping hazards, and falling stones rain down on the group’s heads every so often, threatening to cause concussions or worse. Bennet stays in the center of the group so that he can access any member quickly, and Ashton brings up the rear to catch anyone stumbling towards the edge. After multiple trips that almost turned disastrous, Bennet finally scoops up little Pocket stumbling over their short legs and holds them atop his broad shoulders. The rest of the Nobodies snicker and sneer a bit at the sickeningly cute imagery, but none of them protest what is objectively a good idea.
It takes the group a few hours to reach the top of the Rift. At the top, they all immediately collapse off the side of the Trail leading away from the cliffside. There are actual patches of soft grass for them to lay on, which is a novel discovery for those born and raised in the desolate desert of the Hellcatch Valley. On the horizon, vast expanses of multicolored jungle terrain stretch beyond their collective vision. The Nobodies have made it to the Oderan Wilds.
At one point while the group is taking a short rest from their long trek here, Ashton wanders over to inspect some lingering desert shrubbery along the edge of the cliffside. Something about the orange flowers blooming on the shrub looks familiar, though he swears that he’s never seen such a plant in or around Bassuras before. Before he can determine where he might have seen these flowers before, a figure suddenly bursts from the shrub and barrels into him, knocking him clean over the cliff’s edge.
“Fuck!” is all Ashton manages to yell before tumbling over the edge and landing heavily on part of the pathway they just walked up. The breath gets knocked out of them, and they lay spread-eagle on the pathway for a moment, stunned by the impact.
Cursing and cries of “Ashton!” reach them from back over the top of the Rift. The sounds of combat soon follow. Once they’ve caught their breath, Ashton struggles to their feet and wraps their usual chain knuckles around their clenched fists.
“Motherfuckers!” Ashton shouts as he charges back up the pathway and into the impromptu battlefield. Immediately, he spots several figures sporting the red facial tattoos of the Fists of the Ruiner gang who are fighting against the other Nobodies. Throwing a punch at the first Fist he can get to, his chain knuckles make a satisfying sound as they crush the cheekbones of the gang member.
The ensuing fight is quick and dirty. The Fists may have had the initial jump on the Nobodies, but the Nobodies end up outnumbering the gang members. Plus, the Nobodies know how to fight scrappy, which these would-be cultists don’t seem to be trained in.
When the final Fist is left trembling in Bennet’s grip with her allies unconscious around her or mysteriously missing from the area, Jeto kneels down next to her and gets real close to her bruised face. “Why the fuck were you assholes following us?” he asks her.
“Why else? To steal from you, of course,” the Fist says, her defiant tone undercut by the way her voice shakes with barely concealed fear.
“To steal what, exactly?” Jeto asks.
There is a moment of hesitation where the Fist is likely debating whether she is more afraid of the group that is holding her captive or her own gang who wouldn’t appreciate her betrayal. “Your documents. A ticket to Jrusar.”
Jeto glances back at the other Nobodies. “If we ever come back through here, we need to either teach those border assholes a lesson or we need to have a bigger fucking bribe with us.”
The Nobodies nod in agreement. At Jeto’s signal, Bennet knocks out the final Fist with a targeted blow to the head.
As the group dusts themselves off from the fight, Jeto scans the surrounding area. “Alright, fuckers, let’s pack up and go. We can crash somewhere else. This place is way too out in the fucking open for my liking anymore.”
With minimal grumbling, the Nobodies begin packing up their meager supplies in preparation for more travel down the Honored Trails that cut through the Oderan Wilds. At one point in his rounds around the group, Jeto stops by Ashton and claps a hand on their shoulder.
“Oh, and Ashton? Try not to fall off anymore fucking cliffs,” Jeto tells them with a grin.
Ashton returns the grin. “I’ll do my fucking best, boss.”
Jeto raises their voice to address the rest of the group again. “Let’s roll out, motherfuckers! To Jrusar!”
Accompanied by laughter and good-natured teasing, the Nobodies continue their journey to the city of spires and to what they all hope will be a brighter future.