Chapter 4: The Track To Success

Chapter 4: The Track To Success

In the morning, Pierce, Kit and Tyria met up in the guild hall. "How about you pick?" Tyria suggested. "I wouldn't know where to begin," she admitted.

"Fair enough," Pierce nodded, walking over to the bar along the far wall. "Wait, the job board's over there!" Tyria pointed out.

"I know. But sometimes a special sort of job turns up, and I ask Sarah to snag any jobs like that and save them for me," Pierce called over his shoulder, perching on a stool at the bar. "Anything?" he asked of the barmaid.

"Sorry, nope. Maybe tomorrow?" the blue-haired bartender shook her head in reply, serving a beer to one of the guild's other members.

"Drinking, this early in the morning? Really, Larry?" Pierce frowned at the older man.

"Don't knock it till ya try it, kid," the orange-haired patron shrugged in response.

The Tamer sighed, crossing to the request board and sizing up the posters.

His gaze lingered on one, two words leaping out of the page and staring him in the face: Severed Tusk. A dark guild, and one that was far too familiar to him.

Pierce banished the uncomfortable thought, looking at the other end of the board for another job, and spotting one, which he snatched from the board. "This one looks good," he shrugged, offering it to Tyria for inspection. Kit jumped onto her shoulder to read as well. "Provide escort for a group of traders who fear they might be attacked? Both easy and ironic," she noted with a slight chuckle.

"I know, right?" Pierce chuckled in reply.

"So, taking our first job, are we?" a voice interrupted. The three wheeled in surprise to see Master Feng had appeared behind them. "It's always a pleasure to see a new guild member so eager to pitch in for the guild as a whole,"

"Uh, what do you mean? We're taking the job for ourselves," Tyria frowned.

"Maybe so, but you're taking the job as Phoenix's Eye wizards. And as long as you carry that emblem on your skin, you carry the heart and soul of the guild with you, wherever you might go. No matter what, the family you have here in this hall will always stand right behind you, supporting you in everything you do," the Fire wizard explained.

"But, what is that soul? I've heard that guilds have a creed, a motto of sorts. But I haven't seen the creed of Phoenix's Eye anywhere," the TechType wizard asked with a small frown.

Feng chuckled, shaking her head. "You want to know what our creed is?" she smiled, gazing down at the dark-skinned wizard. "Well, Pierce? Kit? On the count of three," she declared, holding up three fingers and dropping them one by one. When the third finger fell, Master and members alike declared, in perfect unison; "With the fire of our souls, we shall set the night ablaze!"

Tyria blinked. "What does that mean?"

"Pierce can explain it to you on the way to your job. Now, off with the three of you," Feng waved her hand, turning away and walking towards the stairs. "Oh, and Pierce?"

"Yes, Master?" the Tamer looked at her as she mounted the stairs.

"Please don't bring another criminal back to join the guild this time. One's all well and good, but it isn't the kind of thing that we want to be making a habit of, sweetie," she sweetly smiled, before vanishing into the doors that led to her private quarters, within the tower at the building's corner.

Pierce and Tyria spluttered in shock, and Kit was dumbfounded. "She knew?" Pierce demanded.

"And she doesn't care," the girl nodded, smiling. It felt as though a weight had been lifted from her heart, knowing that she had the full acceptance of her guild master. "Alright! Let's go!"

~P's E~

"I take it that you're the wizards from Phoenix's Eye?" their employer asked. He was waiting on the platform of the train station they had been asked to come to, sizing them up impatiently.

"Yep, that's us. The name's Pierce," the Tamer replied. Kit was off somewhere, invisible, and Tyria stood next to him.

"Well, it's about time. Come along, you two, we're late as it is," the man huffed, leading them off the platform, towards a siding on the rail network that carried a train, which had five carriages hooked up to the engine. "Now then, I've heard rumours that a notorious bandit known as the Shellshocker is inhabiting the region that we're going to be passing through. And even if we don't run into him, there's bound to be dozens of other threats. It's your job to keep them away from this shipment," the man explained.

"Shipment of what?" Tyria asked, carefully hiding a smile.

"Maximum-sweetness strawberries. It's an extremely rare and delicious kind of fruit that only blooms once every ten years. It's extremely valuable, and anyone who wants to get at it will have to go through you. Understand?" the businessman asked, gesturing to the carriage directly behind the engine.

"Right," Pierce nodded. "So, what's in the other four carriages?"

"Three of them are empty, they're only there to provide camouflage and prevent anyone from simply uncoupling the cart and making off with the strawberries by rail," the man shrugged. "The fourth is my personal quarters for the trip. No entry unless absolutely necessary," he frowned, before walking away and boarding the final carriage in the trail. "All clear?"

"I guess so," Pierce shrugged, climbing onto the first carriage of the train. Tyria followed as, with a shake, the train roared to life, rattling onto the tracks leading in the direction of Croacus. "You're here, right Kit?" the Tamer called for confirmation.

The yokai materialised on his shoulder. "Boo!" Pierce jumped, flinching away from him and causing the white-and-red fox to, as usual, lose his grip and fall to the ground, narrowly avoiding falling off the train.

"Will you please stop doing that?" the Tamer protested.

~P's E~

Two hours into the trip, and everything had been peaceful so far. "I'm bored. I'm going to do a perimeter check," Tyria decided from their position on the balcony outside the carriage.

"How? We're on a train," Pierce frowned.

"Observe," the wizard grinned, jumping off the carriage.

The Tamer watched in shock, seeing his new friend plummet towards the ground - until she brought her legs together with a blaze of magic energy. "TechType: Motorbike!" she declared, her entire lower body fusing and elongating, forming a blue and silver motorbike with thick tyres that landed easily and, turning, ran alongside the track. "Nice trick, huh?" she called with a wave, before driving away to check the area around the train.

"Sweet ride," Kit commented, sticking his head out of the wall of the carriage.

Another hour passed, and Tyria returned, reporting nothing. "This is a little boring. Are jobs always like this?" she asked, settling back down.

"It depends, really. Guard duty can be boring, but you never know when -" Suddenly, a blade attached to the end of a chain flashed in front of them, cutting the coupling and causing the four other carriages of the train to slowly drop away, no longer attached to the engine. The blade was pulled back, vanishing into the distance. "Something fun might happen," he smiled. "Kit, go check the engine. The smart thing for the bandits to do would be to hijack the engine, unless the driver's working with them. Either way, check on things," he commanded, and the yokai vanished. "Tyria, stay here. Whoever threw that sword is probably gonna show himself sooner or later, and this is the best place to combat him,"

She nodded. "What are you gonna do?"

"Go upstairs," he smiled, grabbing the ladder that led to the roof and beginning to climb it.

A minute later, Pierce stood, braced, on the roof. He carefully maintained a stance to prevent the wind from blowing him away, and scanned the horizon. There were no imminent threats incoming, that he could see. But there was a sensation, which he couldn't identify. It wasn't anything he could see or hear, or even smell, just this feeling in his skin that there was something he was missing. He turned around once more, and spotted something that didn't seem right.

The engine wasn't where it should be, the gap was wider than it had been a moment ago, and still steadily growing.

Kit appeared on the roof. "Someone cut the other coupling, too," he explained.

"But that doesn't make any sense. The other carriages are just fifty metres away, why leave us here?" Pierce frowned, trying to puzzle out the bandits' motives.

Suddenly, there was a massive thunk directly behind him. The two turned in surprise to see a massive spike, attached to a chan, had fallen out of the sky and pierced the roof of the carriage. In unison, thy looked up, to see what looked like a black boat floating in the air above them. "Is that an airship?" Pierce gasped.

The carriage shook, and began to rise, lifted into the air by the airship, and beginning to tilt as it did so. Beneath them, Tyria squeaked in surprise as her perch became unstable, and she clung to the rail as the wall she leant on fell backwards. She frowned, and carefully gripped the ladder, standing up and swinging onto its rungs.

Pierce looked over in surprise as Tyria appeared on the roof. "So, what's the plan, boss-man?" she asked.

"The best thing would be to get onto that airship, but we can't exactly climb up. And the floor's rocking too much for me to summon Raya," Pierce frowned. The anchor chain that was lifting the carriage into the air was dropping out of a hatch in the otherwise flawless hull in the ship's bottom. Even if they could climb up, there was no way onto the deck from the anchor.

"That's the problem? Jeez, you should have just said so," the wizard shook her head, placing her hands on her hips. "TechType: Jetpack!" Her back shifted to metal, unfolding into long struts, to which were attached a pair of massive blue turbines. "Grab on," she smiled, grasping his wrist. Kit frantically clung to his wizard's leg as the jetpack roared to life, blasting into the air. Pierce screamed while Tyria rocketed far away enough that there was no danger of crashing into the ship, rolling her eyes at his antics, before pivoting and going straight up, affording them a good view of the black-hulled airship with its purple gasbag above it. The gasbag was inscribed with a white motif, that was almost definitely the logo of a dark guild.

"I don't recognise that logo," Pierce admitted, getting used to the sensation of flight by his right wrist.

"Me neither. You wanna go ask?" Tyria smirked, before levelling out and blasting towards the main deck, which had about half a dozen crew members helping run the ship, one of which was on an elevated platform with a tiller.

Calling Tyria's landing just that would have been overly flattering to her flight skills. It was more of a tumbling smash in which she flung Pierce and Kit free onto the deck before carving a gash in the floor and lying on her back, dazed. The crewspeople looked at them in surprise and anger. "Legal wizards," one of them frowned as Pierce rapidly recovered and stood protectively over his teammate. He raised his flute, returning Kit with a quick tune.

"What, you want to play a little ditty for us?" one of them mocked.

"Naah. I have a better idea," Pierce grinned, playing a tune that repeated the same three descending notes, over and over. A portal appeared, and a massive cerberus emerged, barely fitting on the deck.

"Ooh, snacky humans!" the left head grinned.

"Can we eat them?" the middle one barked.

"Go wild, Brakodidon!" Pierce grinned.

Brakodidon howled in delight. "Still not sold on having a name," the right head snorted.

The left head grasped a wizard in his jaws and commented, through his food; "I like it,"

"Don't talk with your mouth full," the middle head reprimanded the left.

"I'm good," Tyria nodded, picking herself up. She looked over at where the Cerberus was terrorising the majority of the crew. "I'll check to see if anyone's below decks. You take control of this thing," she suggested, breaking for the hatch leading into the belly of the ship. "TechType: Gatling Gun!"

Pierce nodded, looking back at the cowering crew and walking towards them. "Now, if I send the giant dog away, will all of you behave?" he asked, and received a series of frantic nods. He smiled and played the tune to return Brakodidon to the inside of the flute. "Keep in mind, I can bring him back any time. So you all just stay here," he commanded, and played the melody to summon Kit back. "Kit, I need you to possess the airship and get the train back on its tracks. Can you do that?" he asked.

"You bet!" the yokai grinned, vanishing into the planks of the ship in search of the engine.

Pierce looked towards the only other member of the crew on the top of the deck, the one manning the tiller. "Oi! Are we gonna have a problem here?" he demanded.

"N-no! Not at all!" the helmsman shook his head frantically. "I'd be grovelling over there with the others, but if I don't man the tiller then the ship will fall out of the sky. I'm really sorry, please don't hurt me," he begged.

Pierce mulled this over.

"Argh!" the man suddenly screamed as Kit's head poked out of the tiller. "Well, I'm driving for now. So you can go and grovel over there with the others," he grinned, before vanishing back inside the ship. As if to prove his point, the tiller jerked independently of his actions, and Pierce chuckled, watching this. "Yes, sir!" the helmsman nodded, scrambling away from the tiller, and crossing the deck to join the others. He gave Pierce as wide a berth as possible.

The Tamer smiled darkly. "Hey, just out of curiosity, what dark guild do you belong to?"

"Plagued Vulture," one of them weakly stammered. "It's basically just us and the others below decks. We operate using this airship,"

"So, if we get rid of your airship, you're all screwed," Pierce mused. "Good to know,"

There was a thump from below them, and Kit's voice echoed through the ship. "Train's back on the tracks. Not sure what we're going to do about the destroyed couplings, though," he pointed out.

The hatch opened, and Tyria shepherded eight groggy-looking crew members out of the door, sending them to join the others. "Found this lot asleep downstairs,"

"We have another problem. The train's engine's disappeared," Kit reported.

Pierce considered this. "Kit, land. We need to drop this lot off and pick something up,"

Obediently, the yokai released the anchor from the carriage and carefully landed the airship next to the tracks. Tyria immediately left, running towards the other carriages that had been abandoned fifty metres down the line. "Everybody out!" Pierce ordered the fifteen people huddled before him.

"But -" one of the eight members who hadn't seen first-hand the horrors Pierce could unleash protested, but one of the seven who did immediately clapped his hand over his friend's mouth. "We're leaving, no trouble," he meekly nodded, and the entire guild abandoned ship, chased by Pierce's stormy glare.

Tyria returned, followed by the businessman who had hired them. "Your friend has explained the situation," he nodded to Pierce. "I assume you have a plan?"

Pierce cocked his head with a slight shrug. "Depends. Did you leave anything in that carriage back there you don't want left behind?"

~P's E~

The people who were at the train station in Hargeon that day were treated to a very unusual sight; an airship who didn't seem to have anyone flying it, painted in the colours of a dark guild, lifting a train cart by way of its anchor, swinging its cargo into the empty platform and sending it crashing into the rails, sending up a spray of sparks. The anchor was released, and the airship landed nearby.

A little later, the businessman who hired them looked at the damaged platform and cart in dismay. "Well, the strawberries all got here just fine, so I can't really fault you. But I am going to have to take the repair bill out of your pay," he frowned. "Still, the strawberries are the important part, so thank you for that," he nodded, with a smile.

"Aww, really?" Tyria blinked, disconsolate. "That doesn't happen much, right?" she asked Pierce, who just laughed. "Welcome to Phoenix's Eye, Tyria. And don't look too down. Sure, the reward took a hit, but we got something better,"

"What's that? Pride? Honour? Reputation?" the wizard asked skeptically.

Pierce grinned, looking to the grassy area outside the station. "Nope. Our very own airship!"

~P's E~

"Y'now, I just remembered. You never told me?" Tyria made conversation. The two were standing at the helm of the 'liberated' airship, and Pierce was already making plans to repaint it in Phoenix's Eye red and cover up the Plagued Vulture logo with something a little more tasteful. Like a mural of Kit's face (in the yokai's dreams).

"Told you what?" Pierce replied.

"What the guild creed means. 'With the fire of our souls, we will set the night ablaze," Tyria pointed out. "You never explained what it means,"

"Oh, that. No one's told you about how Phoenix's Eye settled in Magnolia, did they?" the Tamer queried.

"No - wait, settled? it didn't start there?" Tyria echoed in surprise.

"Nope. Phoenix's Eye was born in a town called Diamauros. A town that no longer exists, because it was wiped out by a cultish dark guild," Pierce shook his head. "The survivors regrouped and decided that, like their namesake, they would rise from the ashes and start afresh, so they moved to Magnolia, bought and renovated an old barn to serve as the new guild hall, and that was that. Of course, it was only after they settled in that they realised Magnolia already had a wizarding guild, and it was too late to move again,"

"That's good and all, but what does it have to do with the creed?" the TechType wizard asked in surprise.

"After the original guild hall in Diamauros burnt down, there was nothing left. Barely even ashes. If they'd not gone to Magnolia and just disbanded, then there wouldn't have been any evidence that Phoenix's Eye ever existed at all. So, when the guild was rebuilt, the survivors swore to leave their mark on history, to burn an indeliable seal into the face of the planet, so Phoenix's Eye would never be forgotten again. To reflect this, they changed the creed," he explained with a smile.

"Well, you aren't doing that good a job of it. I'd never heard of you until I tried to rob you," Tyria shook her head.

"Aren't we? Did you see the smile on that man's face when he knew that his strawberries were safe?" the Beast Tamer asked.

Tyria thought back. "He did seem pretty happy," she nodded.

"That's the mark we left on him," Pierce explained. "And it'll never be erased,"

~P's E~

"Welcome to Doctor Kit's Documentaries! As usual, I, the best yokai in Magnolia -"

"You're the only yokai in Magnolia!" Boomer's voice shouts from off screen.

"Shut up!" Kit commands. "Anyway, I am going to be your host today, discussing the best topic yet and possibly ever; myself!"

A cue card is waggled off screen. Kit reads it, and sighed. "Or, 'more specifically', yokais in general," he

"Yokais are a type of monster who are similar to ghosts, in that we can possess things and pass through solid objects, our bodies are usually a little bit translucent, and we don't need to eat or sleep. However, we are living beings, and as such cannot be considered ghosts, especially since we can touch things, and they can touch us. For example, in a rainstorm, the water will hit me and slide off, not pass through me," To demonstrate, a deluge of water fell from the top of the screen and soaked him. "Hey!" Kit shouted. "In short, we can pass through things, but things can't pass through us,"

"In addition, yokais technically aren't spirits. We're living beings who are fully capable of reproducing. Maybe someday I'll find a cute girl yokai and settle down," Kit grinned at the thought. "Also, we can possess the lacrimas within machines, like Boomer's boombox, or the car Hare rented in Chapter 2, and use them to control the machines. We can also possess living things, like people, but only for short periods of time. Telling you more about that would constitute spoilers, so more on that another time,"

Kit grinned, pointing to a board showing the outline of a crown with a question mark in it. "There's also legends of a Yokai King, who I normally wouldn't mention but Pierce already let that slip, so not much point. I've never seen him, so I don't know what he looks like, or what he can do. It I would imagine that he's something like this,"

Kit jumped off screen for a second, and when he returned, he was wearing a crown and a red cape. "Hear me, hear me! I am king of all yokais! Bow down before me! And invent a way for yokais to eat! I want to taste chicken!" He ditched the costume. "That's all for now. See you next time, on DK's Ds!"

A/N

A/N

Two character submissions already. Great. ^^ Though characters submitted don't need to have deep, depressing backstories. All I really need is name, appearance, personality and magic type used.

So, yeah. Peace!