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[Kadzar]

"Well, our job here is to guard Mr. Martin's cargo, so that takes priority over your insane paranoia. If you can't trust us enough to do the job properly, there's no reason you should be trusted enough to do the job in the first place."

[Xantalos]

"I'd take all your suspicion to be rather suspicious myself if I was a harder man. As it is, I'll be watching you."

[SeriousConcentrate]

"I agree. Could be he just wants single-person shifts so he can make off with the cargo at his earliest convenience," Marianne noted.

[Dwarmin]

Marianne returned the frown with a raised eyebrow instead, then nudged her little brother with her elbow. "...Don't think he cares too much for the look of us, bro," she said, faintly smiling. She was used to this sort of thing; not many people took her that seriously until they got to know her. The train arrived before she could say much more to him, and she shrugged. "Might as well get this thing loaded up," she said, moving to help the stranger get it aboard. "So, what's your handle, anyway, mister? I'm Marianne Blake. This is my brother Gerome." She indicated him with a tilt of her head.

Marianne speaks to the man and helps him load the crate.

"Well, I can't be quite that charming enough for us both, Sis." He had replied with a subtle wink.

Gerome had otherwise kept quiet, letting Marian introduce him and talk over the plans-it wasn't usually his way to be overshadowed by 'big sis' but he was on edge tonight, and would have all in all been preferring to be with someone a little warmer and more perfumed, than sitting with this smelly crate of strange, nay perhaps diabolical useless things. The crazy paranoid parts of their group were already making him grin. What exactly was supposed to happen, he didn't know-would a bunch of old ladies leap from the rooftops to try and make off with a bunch of chintzy knickknacks?

He stayed close under the electric lights, talking smoothly and pacing, deliberately not looking out into the inky night they were ensconced in.

"...ahh, lads? We're probably guarding a crate of knockoff Russian Katyroshka dolls for a paranoid collector or a lonely widow or something. No reason to sweat-like Marie said, two person shifts for eight hours. I mean, I don't even have a gun, how dangerous do you think these things could really be?"

He remembered reading the strange little ad in the local newsletter...given that his sister had been in the same area, it had certainly seemed like a good idea at the time...granted the only parts he had read were "$$$", "BIG MONEY", and "QUICK AND EASY". All of which mattered to him, greatly so. He had missed the parts about "PAID FOR YOUR SILENCE", "POSSIBLY DANGEROUS" and "PERSONAL DISCRETION ADVISED".

Gerome decided to be nice and help his sister with the crate, but he was more interested in figuring out what was inside...the group probably had more to worry about him than anyone else, really. He knew alot of paranoid collectors and lonely widows who would buy things 'on the sly', 'fallen off the wagon', 'second hand', etc, etc.

"Mr. Martin, what is in this crate anyway? I mean, if we knew, we'd know exactly who to be on the look out for and all..." He said smoothly, sounding like a concerned professional.

Marianne knew all his tricks, though, and he had already prepared for a long night of sisterly elbows to the ribs.

Action: Try to get a peek inside the crate during my shift, or at least try to figure out whats in it from anything I can see on the inside or glean from smooth talking our employer.

[SeriousConcentrate]

"...ahh, lads? We're probably guarding a crate of knockoff Russian Katyroshka dolls for a paranoid collector or a lonely widow or something. No reason to sweat-like Marie said, two person shifts for eight hours. I mean, I don't even have a gun, how dangerous do you think these things could really be?"

"Could be that, too. People do like to stir themselves up, huh?" Marianne said amiably, moving aside a little so Gerome could also get a good grip on the crate. She - as always, and perhaps foolishly - was letting him off easy on the assumption that maybe THIS time he really had turned over a new leaf and was trying to actually earn some money instead of conning people out of it. She wanted to ask him what he had been up to since the last time they had crossed paths, but there would be plenty of time for that on the train.

[Dwarmin]

Gerome had agreed, nodding.

"People with too much get riled up when they're afraid of losing a small piece of what they own. Like a Dragons sitting on a bed of gold, they don't care about the pieces, but only that it's theirs and no one elses. The love of possessions, rather than the love of the possessions themselves.

Wouldn't surprise me at all, if someone like that happened to hire a bunch of top dollar no nonsense hard-cases like us to guard something odd on the remote off chance of trouble. The moneys good, though, and who am I say no to that?

Yes, still-it's a sad world we live in-truly, the love of money is the mother of all sins." He replied solemnly, sounding as sincere as a Sunday preacher. Hiding a small, subtle smile Marianne could only really make out after growing up with him.

[SeriousConcentrate]

Mari quirked an eyebrow. Despite himself, he's right. I can't say that, though. He'll just get a big head about it. Instead, she smiled back at him and shook her head. "You do talk a lot of horse feathers, hun. No one loves money more than you. Could be you love it even more than you do yourself, but I'm not sure that's possible," she said teasingly.

[Dwarmin]

"To that point, I love spending money. Earning it is where the sin comes in, and all in all, it's my least favorite part.

Also, horses have feathers? Next you'll be telling you saw a house fly..." He had replied with a smile, quoting the ancient joke between them, in mostly the same tone. He was calming down, though, and he sounded a little less nervous...and probably not as bitter as usual. It was true, you could never go home again-in his case, quite literally after what had happened when he left-but Mari always kept him in good spirits...one could ask why, but...

There were things you couldn't tell anyone, he knew-things you kept them to yourself.

Nyctophobia was what it was called-he had read it in a fancy medical journal from New York-it was a fancy word for being ascared of the dark. He was a grown man, but he couldn't get over it. It still got to him. Only Mari knew. He had never really told anyone, not even ma and pa. He didn't know if she understood the why, about the storm he had gotten lost in...the way it seemed the cold and dark had been a hungry, cruel thing-that nothing mattered, not love, or money, or being good or bad-since it was all going to be eaten up in the end. The shadow held sway over all, and life was a flickering candle.

Because, deep down, he was still afraid of dying...and death was all around him, crowding around the undersides of porches, pooling around buzzing electric lights, swarming outside of locked doors and windows. The Dark was death, and he didn't want to die. So he avoided it. The price of that avoidance was a crippling fear, one he paid reluctantly.

Gerome himself only knew these things on an instinctual level, he couldn't put it into words. It was why he lived like he did. Nothing mattered. Nothing was sacred. Nothing lasted. Might as well enjoy the lights before they go out for good, he would reason...nothing mattered...yet...

...yet, to him, his sister Mari did matter. When on the worst nights back when they had been kids, when the snow had begun howling and the branches began tap tap taping on the windows of their home with long splintery limbs...Mari had stayed up with him, sometimes read to him, other times just talked. She hadn't asked him why or pried, only knew he needed his big sister-so he wouldn't feel completely alone...and he had never forgotten those simple acts of kindness, or stopped treasuring those old memories. Even as he himself did bad things, for worse reasons-he had tried to not be cruel or unnecessarily selfish, trying being the operative word. He had tried to remember he hadn't always been alone, and the world wasn't so dark there wasn't any hope at all. He had tried, and that was enough.

These were the things Gerome couldn't tell anyone.

[Kadzar]

"Wait, what do you mean, you don't have a gun? How do you plan to guard the cargo without a gun? Are you just going to convince thieves not to steal the cargo with your honeyed words?"

[Dwarmin]

"Wait, what do you mean, you don't have a gun? How do you plan to guard the cargo without a gun? Are you just going to convince thieves not to steal the cargo with your honeyed words?"

Gerome shifted the crate slightly to respond to the annoying man.

"I'm more of a lookout that a guard, see? If some fellows come around the corner packing hard calibers and vile intentions, well, I'll probably call out there's trouble afoot...but I'm keen on dying over it, yeah. It's just a crate, there are many like it in the world, and I've only got one life.

I also figured my sisters one gun would be worth two guns in my own hands, so you could also call me a talent scout, here to earn my commission for services rendered." He responded adroitly.

[SomeStupidGuy]

Soon enough, the crate ends up within the train's main cargo hold.
"That's that, I suppose. And as for the crates contents, well, it's just some kind of little statue thing. Not even all that good looking, but 'parently, something about it has some people more than a little interested."

It soon begins to rain, prompting Francis to head back aboard the train.

((No one saw any unfinished posts here. Just so you know. ))

[Dwarmin]

Gerome pulls his coat a little tighter against the rain, following Francis on board an odd smile on his face.

Action: Get my ticket punched and snag a window seat before Marianne does

OOC: I suggest everyone post a general 'get on the train' action, after finishing whatever RP you have, so SSG can move us on.
Lets try not to get bogged down before the game starts!

[Tiruin]

((Body aches. Oww DX))

Lets try not to get bogged down before the game starts!

((It's gone off in the night, on the train, through several pages and your scholar is still busy checking if the first aid kits are ready. I know, I pretty much need one -- given the exaggerated tone here ))

Will. Edit. Reading RP.

Nice game. Just wanted to say.

[Kadzar]

"Well, great, not only do we have a lunatic on this team, but it turns out we've also got a pacifist."

Silas also gets his ticket punched and finds a seat.

((Oh, and SSG, I only just now thought of it, but, if you had wanted to offer a cheaper version of a gun than the revolver, a derringer would be very appropriate, either as a single-action or double-action variant.))

[Greenstarfanatic]

Alexander grumbles, and gets on the train for himself.