Trains

Saffron groaned in annoyed exhaustion to herself. Having her motorcycle in the shop was actually the worst. Normally it would have been easy enough to have Mercury swing by Fairy Tail to magic up some repairs to the bike, but Mercury was so deep down the rabbit hole with the investigation into Maker that Saffron didn’t even bother asking the woman. Mercury certainly would have taken the time to help her, but Saffron simply did not want to pull her away from work that was much more important. And while the blonde knew enough about mechanics to fix most surface issues with her bike, this particular repair was beyond her expertise, meaning she’d had to drop the vehicle off at an actual shop.

And in the meantime, she was stuck with public transportation. Saffron both hated and loved people in equal parts. She was extremely outgoing and never afraid to strike up conversation with strangers, but she also recognized that people were fundamentally dumb and irritating. These days, it was also harder for her to blend in and be ignored in a crowd. Ever since she’d been signed on to be the new drummer for the increasingly popular band known as Delinquent Ward, she’d become a bit of a pseudo-celebrity, which made it more difficult for her to go places without being recognized by at least a few people. Not everyone who recognized her would approach – many were happy enough to respect her personal space. But there were always at least one or two that wanted to take their chance at an autograph or a picture.

Saffron made it a point to always oblige such requests and to be kind, but it was more complicated on a train. If she was just walking around in public doing some shopping or something, she could easily stop to snap a picture with someone who asked and then be on her way. But on a train? She was trapped in a space where there was nowhere to go, meaning that people would try to pass the time with small talk. If there was anything she hated more than public transportation, it was small talk. Small talk was grueling, cringy, and above all: boring, the most cardinal of all sins. Given how tired she currently was after having been in rehearsal with the band all morning, all she could do was hope and pray that her train ride home to Magnolia from Reinford would be completed in relative solitude.

Currently, she was dressed in a pair of snug black pants and an orange top, with a brown bomber jacket over it. She had a leather belt around her hips and a small leather pouch strapped around one of her thighs. Saffron was slouched a bit in her seat, one booted foot on the ground, and the other raised up and resting against a nearby vertical pole that was more meant for standing passengers to hold to keep their balance, though the train car she was in was only half full at the moment so no one was using it. One of the hands that peeked from the sleeves of her jacket was a normal hand with a fingerless tan glove. The other appeared to be mechanical in nature, a yellow and black robotic limb that moved as naturally as her original hand once had. She had an overabundance of thick blonde hair, and purple eyes that periodically glanced up from her phone to idly look around the car with relative disinterest.

Though there were a couple of guys in one corner that her eyes returned to more than once, narrowing slightly in suspicion. Something about them was off. The way they huddled with each other, not saying a word but also darting their gazes around like they were on high alert. It was fishy as fuck… but unless they gave her a reason to, she had no intention of confronting them. Though she would continue to keep an eye on them, just in case. Years of military training had honed her instincts if nothing else, and she had learned on more than one occasion to trust her gut, though for the sake of listening to the music in her earbuds in peace she hoped her instincts were wrong this time.

♫ “Oh, I been so down and under pressure, I’m way too fine to be this stressed, yeah. Oh, I’m not the girl I was or used to be, uh, bitch I might be better. Turn up the music, turn down the lights. I got a feelin’ I’m gon’ be alrigh- hello…?” ♫

Saffron had been off in her own little world, bobbing her head rhythmically to the music and quietly singing along under her breath to the lyrics, when she found the barrel of a gun being shoved in her face. She had taken her eyes off the suspicious men in the corner a few minutes into the train ride, as they hadn’t done anything, leading her to figure she was overreacting. By the looks of things now, she was quite wrong. One of the men was in front of her with a shotgun, yelling at her something that she couldn’t hear through the music, while a quick glance around told her that his partner was doing the same to others further down the car toward the storage area. Pulling away a bit and giving the weapon a look that was more offended than frightened, she carefully withdrew one of the buds from her ear. “You say something?”

“Give… give me your wallet and valuables..!” He shook a burlap sack under her nose, but it didn’t take a genius to see that he wasn’t the most confident of would-be thieves. His voice lacked the command and refinement of a more practiced thief, and she saw the adam’s apple in his neck bob as he took a hard swallow.

“First time, eh buddy?”

He faltered again, not sure how to react to her lack of intimidation. After a moment of thought, he elected to double down, settling his grip on the weapon again and pushing it closer to her. “I said give me your wallet, lady..! A-and your phone, too!”

“Alright, alright. Chill, my man,” Saffron told him, slowly raising her hands to indicate her compliance. Everyone else in the car was freaking out, lots of people crying and huddling in on themselves in the hopes that they would just escape from this encounter alive. Starting a fight with civvies around was always a risk. Did she have enough wiggle room to take him down without getting anyone else hurt?

Moving one hand slowly as if to reach into her pockets, she waited until he was lulled into enough of a sense of security before snapping out her robotic limb, snatching the barrel of the shotgun and crushing it like tinfoil. The man barely had enough time to blink and stammer before she pulled back her foot and rammed it hard into his stomach, sending him crashing to the other side of the car in a heap with the valuables he’d already stolen spilling out onto the ground. With him momentarily out of commission, she immediately turned to his companion, knowing he would be turning to find the source of the commotion. Luckily, the second man didn’t appear to have a firearm. Rather, he had used his plant based magic to bind up his victims with vines, restricting them and allowing him to dig things out of their pockets and shove purses and jewelry in his own bag.

By the time he started turning toward her, all he would see was the butt end of his partner’s broken shotgun hurtling toward his face. His eyes went wide in surprise and he managed to conjure a wide leaf in front of him to block it from hitting him. The leaf did not protect him from her fist, however, which broke through the shield to punch him square in the face, causing him to stumble back hard enough into the wall of the storage compartment to break through it.

“Alright everyone, get into the next car. Go!” Saffron ordered the other passengers. Rolling up her sleeve, a knife popped out from the back of her fist and she used it to cut the bindings of the others so they could flee with the rest. Then, she turned her attention back to the first robber, who was getting to his feet and looking even less confident than he had previously been. Saffron pointed at him. “Not you. You get to stay right here with me.” Pressing a button on her synthetic arm, the music she had been listening to switched off from her ear buds and started playing on speaker. She grinned at him, cracking the knuckles of her only flesh hand as she stalked toward him, bouncing on the balls of her feet to the beat of the song as she squared off against him, ready for round two.

“What are you doing, you moron? Get her!”

“M-my gun–”

“She’s unarmed! Just fight her!”

“Well, that’s just insensitive.” The plant mage was yelling at his less experienced companion from inside the storage compartment, crawling his way out of the rubble of suitcases and yelling commands in the process. Saffron wasn’t bothered at all by the comment about being unarmed. If anything, she enjoyed opportunities to make people uncomfortable by turning their comments into rude remarks about her amputation – though in this instance, she very much doubted these criminals cared about respecting her body image. “Anyway, you heard the man. Fight me.”

Her opponent seemed exceptionally unkeen to do that, his eyes flicking back and forth between Saffron and the spot where his companion was unburying himself. Unfortunately, Saffron wouldn’t give him much of a chance to consider his alternatives. Leaping forward, she began to swing her fists at him in steady, practiced motions, forcing the man back as he did everything in his power to dodge her attacks without reciprocating them. Eventually he tripped over some of the dumped goods they had been trying to steal, flopping onto his back and immediately curling into fetal position, covering his head with his hands and bracing for impact.

Saffron merely stopped, standing over him and looking down with a slight frown. Boy, this guy really was fresh off the boat to crime, wasn’t he? It was feeling more and more like he had never even been in a fight before, which made her feel uncomfortably like a bully on a playground. She liked a fight as much as te next asshole, but not when they couldn’t put up a decent one. “Man, you are really killing my vibe, you know that?”

Right when she was about to say something else, she was interrupted by the appearance of a new person – well, two new people. A woman came crashing through from the back door of the combine car in a flurry of curses and playing cards. Saffron turned her head to watch her tumble past, brows raised in surprise, before turning her head back the other direction to peer into the compartment from where the woman had been tossed. Inside, she spotted a figure clad in skeletal looking armor that fully covered their face, with a halo adornment on the helmet and wielding a staff.

“Bitchin’...!” She didn’t know just yet which of the two of them was part of the heist and which, like her, had stepped up to protect the train. The armored individual certainly looked more imposing, but she was hardly in a position to judge anyone based on looks. Either way, she was clearly appreciative of his entire aesthetic, her lips opening in an excited, almost childlike grin. The guy looked like he walked off the page of a comic book, or out of a video game.

Of course, just as he was distracted by her music, she’d found herself equally distracted by his visage. Just as a spray of cards flew past her once more to knock the armored man off his feet, she felt a thick vine wrap itself around her flesh wrist. “Uh oh.” Saffron was yanked hard onto her back, where she landed with a grunt. Twisting her body and using the momentum of the attack as best she could, she tumbled up into a half crouch so she wasn’t completely prone, raising her synthetic arm to cut the vine off her hand, only to find a second vine snapping out to ensnare the robot limb as well.

Well, two could play at that game. Tapping into some of the reserve power she had stored in the synthetic arm, a rush of energy surged through her body, greatly increasing her physical strength. Standing to her feet and planting them firmly, she jerked hard with her arms, wrenching the mage on the other side of the vines off his feet where he flew toward her with a yelp. Their faces met violently as Saffron slammed her forehead hard into his own. He fell to the ground in a daze, the vines slipping from her wrists as she shook her head to clear her vision. With a growl, she took hold of a pole in the train and ripped it from its frame, quickly wrapping the man up with it like the metal was little more than a shapeable pool noodle. “There. That oughta keep you out of trouble,” the blonde informed him, making sure his arms were completely pinned to his body so he would have a difficult time using his magic. As she wrapped up her task, her purple eyes flicked up to the other battle to see how it had progressed and looking for any kind of clue that might tell her which of them was an ally in this fight and which was just another would-be train robber.