Dawn in Loshis was hardly ever greeted by the rising of the sun over the calm waters of the Harbor so much as by a gradual, dull change of color from black to grey. Fog clung to the ships docked at their piers and the water was black and foamy from the near-constant drizzle intermittently interrupted by the occasional downpour. This morning was no exception, the bland colors that marked the day coming somewhere behind layers of clouds reluctantly brightening under the clinging mist.

Brogan had been given a pier number and a ship name. He'd also been told that he wouldn't have to work alone.

Amber stood in one of the remaining shadows against some abandoned storage shed, wrapped in her coat and pretending to be still up looking for a date, a bit of leg showing despite the morning chill. The witch kept her weapons hidden at least, tucked away in various places along with her excitement over finally getting to cott a few clogs on a real Drain ship.

She wasn't the only one on the pier this early, though at least she knew the description of who to look out for once the highwayman arrived. Dockhands were beginning to stir, ships had been loaded and unloaded all night long. The crew of the Wandering Eel had been up all night drinking on shore, however, and if all was to go according to plan, they'd still be drooling in their bunks.

An hour or so had passed while Brogan sat in the shadows of crates stacked just over a stone's throne from the Eel. He had noticed the girl near the shed, she seemed to fit the description he'd been given and assumed this to be his partner. But he wasn't one to assume.

Scanning the pier, he felt it safe to make a move and crept from his hiding spot. He moved across the cobbled road, dancing from cover to cover until he was back in the safety of the shadowed shed. Cautiously he approached the girl and drew his new pistol, its beautiful sheen covered in coal dust to keep it from reflecting light.

He snake's smile split his face as he closed the distance behind her. "Hesta pretty, lookin for a balach to keep ya warm?" He hissed.

If Amber noticed the weapon, the inviting, sly grin that crept over her face from under the stray strands of hair that gave her her nickname didn't give anything away. Instead, she laughed demurely as if on cue, a little batting of her eyelashes completing the part,

"Oes. Who ent lookin' ta be warm on a mornin' like this? Been up all night already, kov?" The witch purred, knowing very well where each of her sharp objects were tucked away at should she need them, "Your ship just get in or are you 'bout to set sail?"

She grinned then, green eyes darting briefly to the pier before returning to Brogan's face expectantly.

Brogan liked this one immediately. He tucked his pistol back in his shirt and began absent mindedly scratching an imaginary itch on his upper arm.

"That'd be the ship I'm looking to board tonight, got a meetin with the Captain so to speak." Brogan responded. Her very body language suggested violence, this was all the proof he needed of her identity.

"I'd say it would be about time, day break ent far away." He stated, watching the ship again. That very special, dark piece that demanded violence was tightening its grip. There was blood to spill and he was morbidly curious to see his new associate in action.

"Well, if Hollis an' some boys did their work right, then they ent awake yet anyways. They should all be plum guttered." She grinned impishly, trusting in her associates to bring this long-awaited plan into fruition. It was about time they got their hands on something solid on the Drain: all the clocking clogs seemed to keep slipping through their fingers until now.

With a toss of her hair, she nodded in the direction of the slumbering wooden vessel through the fog, she added mischievously, "Let's go bring 'em breakfast in bed, then."

The dock that led out to the ship looked clear enough; only a few groggy folks dragging cargo from another ship down the pier. With the fog and the dark, it was still too hard to tell if the Wandering Eel captain had bothered to keep any look outs.

"I can go take a look. Unless you'd rather." Amber rolled her shoulders as if she wasn't particular.

It mattered little to Muck which of them went first, the pier was free of Eel mates from the look of it. The killing would start soon enough.

"Go on and see what's what beata, I'll watch yer back and be right behind ya." Brogan said, he scanned the area again and got no particular feelings of being watched. This was his kind of game after all.

He pulled out his pistol and one of his favorite knives. The pistol was loud so he'd use the knife until their presence on the ship needed to be revealed. All worries about microbes and exotic illnesses left Brogan's mind, every muscle tensed in anticipation, this is what he lived for.

Amber flashed the wick a wickedly bright smile before sauntering off in a purposefully unhurried pace, hands straying to straighten her jacket and fluff her hair as if she was still looking for work. She wandered down the pier and into the fog, hidden after a few moments despite the presence of phosphor lanterns and a few sputtering torches. It would be another wet day, judging from the thickness of the mist that clung to the docks.

Eventually, she found a lamppost and some crates to lean against, using the opportunity to both adjust her corset and scan the deck of the Eel at the same time, pausing only to smile demurely at a passing dockhand tugging a cart laden with crates,

"Hesta, kov." She winked at him, only to giggle as he stumbled and walked faster, perhaps pressured by the coming sun to end his shift.

Not seeing a sign of anyone stirring yet on board, Amber made a few subtle hand signals, most of which looked more like fussing with her rather lacking attire than actual communication to the casual observer.

The coast was clear as far as she could tell.

Brogan sprinted through the shadows and was barely in the light of the globes long enough to leave a shadow. He paused as he passed his accomplice and stood at the foot of the plank leading up to the ship. The time for caution was nearly at an end, the rising sun would soon make all attempts at stealth fruitless. Brogan stalkied up the plank and stepped foot on the deck.

His blood was boiling with barely contained violence. A flick of the wrist motioned Amber to join him. He covered the deck with his pistol as he waited, soon as she was on board, he knew his control over the killer in him would disappear completely.

There certainly didn't appear to be anyone on deck, and it was impossible to think of anywhere someone could be hiding. It was a smaller vessel, perhaps just big enough to travel to the Mulukus or Mugroba and back with a small crew and limited cargo. Everything seemed mostly clean, and there was only one door leading below deck other than the locked cargo hold door.

The fog rolled over the starboard side and the Wandering Eel rocked with the waves. Amber noticed his signal, stretching as if bored before taking her time walking onto the ship, for all appearances totally climbing on board as if she'd been hired to do so.

This was a much more entertaining job than being stuck with the Cudgel or some of the other freshies, she decided, offering Brogan a wolfish grin, whispering mischievously, "Well, looks clear enough. Now to find where to start trouble."

"We seem to be short on choices, front door seems a good start." Brogan replied. It seemed the most direct route and seeing as how the cargo they were after was flesh and blood the hold seemed a waste of time.

Brogan strode quickly but quietly up to the door and leaned against the frame. He checked his pistol once more, it was new after all and though he'd spent hours getting used to it, his new gun had yet to prove itself in battle.

"Let's get on, got your play things ready nanabo? You pop the door and I'll lead with my riff and save the shoota for when the racking starts." Brogan said quickly, now that they were down to it he was all business. Mind clear, reflexes sharp, and his cold blood pumping.

Amber batted her eyelashes as if on cue at the word nanabo, suppressing something of a callous giggle with a shake of her head. She knew were her weapons were, alright, tucked away in various places, but she wasn't in a hurry to draw them. Sidling up to the door, she tested the handle carefully, noting it was unlocked.

With a shrug and a grin, she cracked it open without a sound and paused to listen.

A few muffled voices drifted faintly from deep within the hold. They were too quiet to make out words, but it definitely wasn't snoring.

The witch considered for a moment, silently judging distance as she peered down the stairs and into the darkness of the hall below. No phosphor lamps had been lit and had probably been out all night below decks.

She eased the door open to keep it from squeaking and made a flourish of a mocking formal motion to Brogan, "After you."

Silently as he could, Brogan crept down the stairs. He heard the voices coming from below, he tried to catch a slurred word or some other indication of intoxication from the speakers. Bit of drink on his targets always made things interesting. They were more prone to foolish mistakes.

The highwayman neared the bottom of the stairs and crouched down close to the bottom. He looked back up the darkened stairwell to be sure his cohort was behind him before he ventured into the hold.

Leading with his pistol, Brogan peered into the room below.

The stairs led down into a narrow hallway of five doors, two on each side and one on the end. All the doors looked the same—sturdy small things without peep holes nor locks. At least one of them was a place to sleep, with probably a tiny kitchen and a place to eat. One of them was probably the captain's quarters. It might have even been the furthest door.

All the phosphor lamps between the doors had yet to be lit, and as the ship bobbed a little in the waves, the low voices could be heard from one of the closer doors. The speech wasn't slurred so much as quiet, and occasionally it was interrupted by a bout of laughter.

Amber joined Brogan down the stairs, thankful that their newer construction made them quiet. She stood still against the opposite wall, listening intently before pointing to the first door on the right, apparently indicating she felt the voices were definitely coming from there.

Another round of hushed, secretive laughter confirmed her suspicion.

She considered using the noise as cover for checking the other rooms, eying the other doors curiously. Hooking a thumb over her shoulder, she indicated the door across the hall from the occupied one, arching her eyebrow with a sly smile.

Checking out the other rooms made sense and Brogan nodded to Amber. So long as the inhabitants of the room kept up their casual conversation Brogan would know where they were and if they had become aware of the intruders.

Brogan crossed over to the door his partner had indicated and eased the door open a crack. He listened for a moment and then slowly began opening the door wider.

Luckily, like the stairs, the door wasn't rusty or squeaky or loud. It didn't even whine so much as sigh as Brogan leaned against it, opening slightly into a dark room. There were no sounds of breathing, no signs of anyone sleeping inside. It looked like maybe this was the mess, if only for the collection of chairs sloppily gathered around a long, immobile table.

Another door in the room probably led to the kitchen, and a small hatch against the same wall as the door was something that probably lifted to make serving more efficient.

The sounds down the hall roared into life with another round of laughter, then some muffled yelling. If people were asleep elsewhere on the ship, they wouldn't be that way for long if the noise continued.

Amber had slunk further down the hall, quietly listening to doors, field sucked in tight and tense like so much held breath. There were already a mix of fields aboard the ship, none of them feeling golly. Hopefully, no one was particularly talented at reading fields ...

Sidling back toward the door and the highwayman, she shrugged, indecisive as to what door to try next. Her eyes did drift to the noisy room, but she was still trying to decide whether or not crashing that party was the next best move.

This was not what they needed. Searching room by room took time and eventually they would be discovered. Besides, Brogan wanted to send the Drain a message. He turned his chilling snake like eyes on the door of the noisy room. His mind was made up.

Brogan slid his knife into its sheath and pulled his second pistol from inside his shirt. As he pulled back the hammers on both guns he rammed his heavy boot into the door.

"Let's deal out some hurt." He growled to his new partner.

Amber didn't hesitate to agree to the wick's wordless decision, brandishing a pair of knives from somewhere on her person (it was unclear as to where they came from, let alone whether or not she had more stashed elsewhere). She was just as suited to outright violence as she was to sneaking around; she'd been a Brother long enough to enjoy both sides of the coin.

The door was unlocked and gave in to Brogan's boot-slamming without much resistance, swinging open on its hinges with a squeal and a whine. The four occupants of the room, obviously drunk, looked up from their places on the floor around a game of sloppily played cards. They certainly weren't prepared for an armed surprise, but that didn't stop them from attempting to make up for it.

Their level of sobriety was indeterminable, given that there was at least one empty container of mysterious alcohol scattered about the mess on the hard wood floor. Their bunks were a mess, but at least to of them were still armed. As the men struggled to their feet, one of them drunkenly pulled his gun as another brandished a dagger of his own. A third was so clocking big he needed little more than his fist or the ugly mug of his face to fight with, and, unfortunately, the forth on the floor just found the whole thing hilarious and kept laughing while he glanced about all the others' hands thrown to the floor in their haste.

The blond-haired witch simply smirked, "I hate it when I don't get invited to parties. You boys sounded lonely in here."

"Who th'clock're you?" Sputtered the man with the gun, perhaps the most guttered of the four.

Brogan scanned the room as he crashed through the splintered door. They had the four drunk sailors at their mercy. The highwayman barely heard his counterparts quip, his blood was pounding in his ears. He honestly had no desire to banter with sauced sea dogs. Brogan's new pistol was leveled at the tank in the corner, he didn't wager someone that big was drunk off what he saw in the room and he wasn't taking chances. His old reliable shoota was trained on the fellow with an iron of his own.



"You're answering our questions swab! Tell us where your Captain is or me and my macha partner will decorate this room with your wretched innards." Brogan stated in his most terrifying voice, a deep, commanding rasp that had been perfected on the highways of Vienda.

Brogan's viper grin met his cold reptilian stare. Men had wet their trousers at less.

There was a moment of awkward, surprised silence. Expectation hung thick in the air like the fog outside that coated the harbor docks in the coming dawn. Then, the man with the gun sputtered a laugh so inappropriate and so loud he turned red in the face,

"Oooohhharrrr!" He shook, waving his gun a bit in the process, "This's a good 'un, this is. Come tae shock th'bones outta our skin an' tell us tae get tae work, ehhh? Nice 'un. Y'got me, y'did!"

He seemed to find Brogan and Amber a joke, eyes moistening, deep-set in his reddened face. He laughed some more. Everyone followed suit with a cautious chuckle, but the big man under the highwayman's sights didn't even smile.

"Captain ent up top?" Blinked the towering human, swaying a little, "Then 'e's'sleepin'."

"Shut yer head." Came the only slightly fearful voice from the previous laughing man on the floor, "Y'ent gonna decorate nothin' with our innards, ye scum."

The last man, the one with the knife, took that statement as a call to action and leapt clumsily at Amber, starting the fight amidst the momentary confusion.

There was no greater feeling than that of frenzied combat. Brogan could almost pin-point the second the adrenaline powered through his body. Time seemed to slow, his vision and instincts sharpened, and his cold blood pounded in his ears.

Two shots lit the room in a flash of light and crack of thunder. Both pistols roared to life, biting the air with their hateful retort. The tangy, metallic taste of powder filled the air. Comparable to the taste of the blood that always followed. The mountain and the gunner were sent an unhealthy dose of lead.

The dog with the knife was ignored, by her demeanor alone Brogan could tell that Amber was a fearsome fighter and could handle one drunken fool with ease. His targets were their biggest threats and he wished them dead immediately.

If his bullets flew true, he suspected they soon would be.

(( Dice + guns = terrible fun. 6, 16 ))

The sound of gunfire didn't seem to affect the blond witch at all, used to enough Harbor combat as it was. She met the wobbly armed man with her own weapons, gritting her teeth at the flash but otherwise unfazed.

Brogan's first bullet found a home in the larger human's arm. Like a wounded bear, he balked briefly, perhaps surprised but otherwise undeterred from violence. If anything, the flash of determination as his big limbs swung into action was a sign that he was made more dangerous by pain than without. It would take a few more to bring the hulking mass down, but avoiding the swing of a meaty fist as he closed the distance would have to be the wick's first priority.

The armed man didn't get the same slice of luck, Brogan's next shot burying itself without apology into his stomach. It was a show-stopper, obviously fatal if untreated, and a bleeding wound that certainly would make a mess. Unprepared and quite guttered, the man yelped and stumbled backwards, not losing grip on his weapon but distracted by his wound.

The man on the floor had managed to scramble to his feet by this time, but he seemed to be having trouble coming into any real sense of focus for combat. The gunshots were slightly sobering to the reality of the situation, which only made the man decide that bolting towards the door, despite the need to pass the two intruders, seem like the best course of action.

Amber appeared to be capable of gaining the upper hand in her close combat, but she was in no position to stop the escapee.

To say Brogan was displeased with the giant's flesh wound would be a gross understatement. Luckily, his old trusty pistol had taken the pistol armed sailor out of the equation.

Imminent violence drew nearer as the giant rushed them, Brogan swung up his second barrel at the man beast and fired point blank as he slid to his knees to dodge the swing of the sailor's tree trunk like arm.

From his peripheral vision Brogan saw the coward previously inhabiting the floor make a break for the door. The last thing they needed was more company from the docks. Twisted in his evasive posture, the wick evoked the words for Gust at the deserter's legs, hoping he could knock the fool off his feet long enough to deal with the Mountain.

The second shot was fired close enough that the heat and smoke of the flash washed backwards across Brogan's hand and face even as the large human grunted and stumbled slightly, a swath of fresh red blossoming against his side. Still, he was a big man with a big momentum, and as the wick opened his mouth to begin speaking the monite necessary to stop the escapee, a meaty fist still managed to catch him with a glancing blow.

Instead of the aimed hit for the wick's side, the large human knocked him across the side of the head. It wasn't hard, considering he was stumbling now, other hand reaching for the bullet wound torn underneath his ribs. Brogan was already down on his knees, but his spell was clipped.

He may not have misspoken so much as been interrupted, and the chaos of the situation only seemed to accentuate the twinge of aggravation that rose up in the mona as they reacted to the spell. The fleeing man wavered, knocked into the door, but kept his footing, scrambling to continue leaving by steadying himself against a bunk.

"I got it." Hissed Amber, dodging her opponent's swing to slip past his guard, burying a chiv between his ribs with a grin as she did so, "Jus' keep that thing busy."

The large human groaned, wounded for sure, turning weakly to swing again for Brogan's head, obviously slowed and definitely short on time left.

The blow to the head was maddening. Brogan hissed through clenched teeth, spittle spraying. As the wounded monster readied another swing, Brogan stowed his old pistol and drew the foot long, straight silver knife sheathed at his belt.

It was all or nothing now, Brogan was not about to let some big clocker punch him in the head. He gathered his balance and sprang at his attacker, knife held in a fighting position, the glimmering steel fang braced along his forearm. As the giant fist careened toward him, Brogan slashed at the man's face and throat.

Evading the attack wasn't his biggest priority, the sustained wounds would take some of the force off the monster's strikes. Besides, if anyone could take a punch it was Brogan.

The lumbering human was slowed by his wounds, but still determined with pain and anger. Still, he stumbled, taking a misstep that sent Brogan's swing up and across his broad chest, deep and raking since it was meant for softer flesh. His own meaty fist missed completely, but the brush of air from the force of his blow let the wick know it would've hurt had it landed.

Now the two men were terribly close. The bleeding, hulking human groaned and brought both hands up toward Brogan's head, his motions making it obvious he intended to smash the smaller man into a knee.

By the sounds of things, Amber had managed to catch the escaping man in the hallway. If there was anyone else on board, they'd be awake by now.