Adel The Bounty Hunter 4.5: Love Is Simple

"Um, excuse me? I hope that this isn't a bad time,"

Adel, Neptune and Georgette all resisted the urge to outright groan when they saw who they suspected was Timothy Youngfeather step back inside less than 30 minutes later. The fact that he was speaking differently or looked less confident in his approach than when they first met him did not reach their notice.

"What the hell do you want? We got the memo already! We don't know what's taking the repair guy this long, okay?"

"Um, actually, I'm Jacob Youngfeather." the man who looked exactly like Timothy Youngfeather said.

"Oh...well, what the hell do YOU want then?"

Jacob was a whole different beast compared to his brother, a very timid and bashful beast, so really he was less of a beast and more of a mouse of sorts. It was understandable that he'd allow Timothy to do all of the speaking then, when it seemed he himself was having trouble simply putting his words together despite being offered a willing audience to listen. The fact that Adel was giving him the death glare (and Neptune was 'implying' a death glare, lacking actual eyes to make a real glare) probably helped little next to none.

"I...I wanted to tell you that you should probably dispose of the Dragoon now, while you still have the chance..."

Adel's ears perked up, her eyes bulging wide in their sockets. Jacob glanced back over his shoulder at least three times as he spoke. When he suddenly stepped aside, the repairman waddled into the room with a slow and cautious gait, eliciting a sigh of relief from Neptune.

"Finally!" Even though he was not the one being fixed, the alien had been the most impatient of all.

"Sorry, sorry..." the repairman hiccuped, running his stubby fingers through a scraggly white beard. "I...I got a little preoccupied...needed time to gather all the materials and tools..."

"Just fix her arm back on, alright?" Neptune snapped back.

"What do you mean 'dispose of the Dragoon'? The hell are you saying?" Adel, however, had seemingly not noticed the entrance of the repairman at all. Every single ounce of her attention hung on Jacob and his words. Even Georgette showed no reaction when the repairman loudly dropped his tool kit down onto the counter in front of her.

"I'm saying, uh, you should just ignore what my brother said, and...and do what you need to do with it. Honestly, he's not going to care much by the end. Hell, he'll probably have forgotten all about it after the mission. He has memory issues, you see."

"He did say that!" Georgette pointed out.

Jacob nodded. "I'm just saying, it seems like getting rid of that Dragoon's corpse is important to you. Obviously Timothy isn't going to care whether or not that's true, but...I could tell, from the way you were all worked up, that it meant something. You should go ahead and do it before meeting up with my brothers. I won't tell."

Adel didn't know if she could trust him. He looked exactly like all of the other Youngfeather brothers. For all she knew, the Youngfeathers had the uncanny ability to alter their voices and try to pass each other off as one another. This could be Timothy Youngfeather himself trying to lead her into some kind of utterly stupid and unnecessarily complex trap, the sort of thing she could easily see him doing. Then again, she may have simply grown too accustomed to being suspicious with everyone she'd met and barely knew. She lived in the kind of world where genuine trust was nearly as rare as finding a well-done Salisbury steak in the middle of the desert. She would have rather been able to burn the body now than burn it later, though.

Malcolm seemed like he was being honest in what he was saying, a rare jewel found in a mountain of trash. He was a likable chap.

It took two hours for her prosthetic arm to be repaired. After paying the old man, Adel immediately went to work. She brought the corpse far out to an empty ditch she happened to pass on her way back to town last night. It was a good five and a half miles away from the town itself. Georgette and Neptune did not go with her; they both knew, despite not knowing anything of the actual truth, that she had to do this by herself.

Adel heaved the two garbage bags, the severed halves of the Dragoon shoved into individual bags, into the ditch. They hit the ground like any old corpse would; a dull, depressing thud. The cloud of dust they summoned quickly settled onto the bags. Adel sighed. She was ready to do this, it wasn't going to be difficult, she told herself. This was certainly not (pleasure) for her, despite it being vengeance against the foe that had stolen her arm. This was not (business) for her either. If anything, it was simply (obligation).

Although Neptune had accepted Adel's request to stay in the town, he had given her something rather useful for the burning itself. A flamethrower.

Adel unhitched it from the side of her motorcycle. She already knew how to operate a flamethrower from prior uses, but it had still been some time since she'd used it last. She checked that the gas canister was probably attached; even though she wouldn't believe that Neptune would ever make such an amateur mistake, she had to be careful anyway. It was a very heavy weapon, not one she would normally lug around on any other sort of occasion, not to mention its range was quite weak. She always came to appreciate her pistol more after having to use something so unwieldy and cumbersome that she couldn't even aim it correctly. Adel stared across the long, black length of the fire-spewing gun, looking down at the pair of bags lying motionlessly inside the dirt pit.

"You're not going to suddenly come flying out of there, are you?" she asked aloud, even though she knew she would receive no answer. The bags remained still. There was not a single sound from them to be heard except, if she focused her ears intently, a quiet drip drip drip coming from inside the larger bag, where the upper half of the body was contained. She'd thought they'd drained most of the blood out, but neither she nor Georgette were particularly skilled in that sort of work. Less blood meant less mess and less weight when lugging the bags around.

Adel slipped the body armor on and the gas mask over her face. Heaving a deep sigh from her lips and readjusting the flamethrower, she pulled the trigger. Like a blood-red flower blossoming from the stem that was the flamethrower's barrel, the fire spewed forth, quickly engulfing the bags and their contents within. The fire was so hot that it prickled the hairs on her skin, but Adel kept her hand clasped over the trigger. She would continue to hold her position until she felt that she could trust the rest of the disposal to the fire itself. The pungent stench of burning flesh did not take long to drift into the air. Adel did not react, even as the smell rolled into her nostrils and trickled down her lungs. The black bags were so entrenched in flames that she couldn't even make them out anymore. She could only see wisps of black inside the red and orange, tearing plastic and molten scales, flickering in and out as they were gradually reduced to ashes. Adel was glad she wore a forearm-length glove on her flesh hand, or else she may have burned herself from the intense heat the gun exuded. Her prosthetic felt no pain, nor would it ever again.

Eventually, she felt like she'd done enough. Adel tossed the flamethrower aside, her arms shaking and exhausted from holding it for so long. The dirt pit was engorged with a raging fire, and Adel watched as it viciously tore apart what remained of the bags and the Dragoon's corpse. She had no doubt that it would do well to eliminate the torn body once and for all. The end for both the Dragoon that had stolen her arm and the man who had been so close to her.

Adel popped open the ring finger of her prosthetic and removed a small jewel. This was the first time she'd thought of it in years; she'd carried it inside her finger for so long, she'd almost forgotten it. Thinking of him reminded her. It was something she'd found hidden among his belongings, long after the incident. She'd had no idea if he'd ever meant to give it to her. He'd never said a single word about their lives taking that next step together. They'd both been bounty hunters from the day they first met, even Georgette herself had made their group a trio off the bat, so that sort of placid lifestyle would have been hard to fathom, if not entirely impossible. Still, she'd found it, and up until now, she'd held onto it, for reasons that she could no longer recall.

When the Dragoon had stolen her arm those several years ago, she'd already accepted the facts. The Dragoon and the man were two separate entities as far as she were concerned. She'd never told Georgette the truth because it would be like forcing herself to relieve and accept those memories all over again. Even though the Dragoon appeared before her again today, she still didn't let herself look at it as anything other than an enemy. However, the more they fought, the more those agonizing memories started to resurface, to the fact of being literal old wounds in some cases.

"I could have killed you without any problem, but then you said you remembered..." Adel murmured under her breath. She'd shot it in the head to finish the deed before anything more could be drudged up. Why did it have to remember at the last seconds of its life? Why did she have to remember too?

Adel rolled the unused ring in her palm. She wasn't going to keep it. Knowing him and how he used to be, if he had actually given it to her and they had made that fateful pact, if he had died some point after that, he would have been happier if she'd traded it in to some pawn shop for a few extra bucks than hold onto it. Of course, the ring itself would have held valuable meaning to her, but money was even more meaningful in a society as mangled and manipulated by greed as was theirs. A happy memory of the man she'd married would not keep her alive, it would not feed her nor would it provide her the ammo to fight off those who wished to harm her. So that was what she was going to do. She would hold onto it for this one mission, but when she returned, she'd find out how much she could make for selling it. From appearance alone, it seemed to be a very genuine chunk of diamond; surely Javon or one of his deep-pocketed cronies would want it.

"Well...thanks for the gift..." She meant that, and it was for more than just the diamond.

Adel placed the ring back inside her false finger. She looked over to see that the flames were beginning to lose some of their luster, the winds of the desert plains deflating some of its original strength. The bags, the corpse, had been left as little more than an unrecognizable, smoldering lump. There was nothing salvageable from it, that much she was certain. No one would be able to find anything of use, not even the carrion-feeders that so regularly populated the plains. Adel headed back to her motorcycle, reattaching the flamethrower to the side-compartment. It fit snugly.

Adel soaked in the image of the dwindling fire. She reached down her backside, but found that her shorts did not need readjusting for this once. She knew it was a bad idea, but she found herself thinking about him some more. He'd at least been smart enough to keep his mouth shut when it came to her weight, even when she first began her gaining process. Then again, in hindsight, maybe it had been a poorer choice on his end. He could have easily been killed by her before becoming that monster had he been stupid enough to insult her to her face about her plush behind. That might have been a better end than this one, Adel thought with bitter amusement. Actually, she thought again, in his last moments, she'd been the one to do the deed anyway. Maybe he was relieved that it'd been her, when he finally regained his mind on his final breath?

She placed her hefty self onto her motorcycle, the full cheeks of her rear conforming to the molding of the seat. She turned on the switch that activated the battery-powered, automotive machine. It rumbled to life, sending her body into a jiggling frenzy. She could no longer feel the stinging heat on her skin, nor did she feel it beating into her back. The fire was on the last of its ropes, she figured. Nothing left to see here. It was time to depart and leave all of this baggage behind.

"See ya."

Adel drove away, back in the direction of the town. She needed to meet with the Youngfeathers to learn more details of the mission. She didn't want to go in fighting the Jabberwock without being properly informed first.

She'd only driven halfway back along the path when she started to realize she'd never be able to entirely forget him, no matter what happened.