Fan Fiction - Idly Tossed Aside

Despite her subtle and not-so-subtle tricks of seduction, Setzer rarely--after all, he was a grown man with normal hormones, if his skin didn't show it--thought lustily about his best friend. Surely she was beautiful, and he loved her more deeply than any game or coin, which was saying a lot for his feelings. But things had never been quite that way between he and Daryl. Oh, he could remember times when nearly unquenchable fire had raged through his entire body to but touch her; each of those times he'd beaten the desire down hard, but not quick enough for her to not notice and, without saying a word or moving anything but her eyes, offer herself fully to him. Damn her all-seeing eyes!

That was the only reason Setzer refused to play cards with her. He hated losing, especially to Daryl, but he also kind of enjoyed it. That he most certainly did NOT need. Great gamblers of the world had to maintain a reputation for hating losing in all its forms, or they'd be made to taste defeat until they wretched.

He had only ever embraced her once, and that was a clinging, spasm-wracked embrace that had been almost totally devoid of lust.

Almost.

"Shall we race, so that I may have some of my dignity back?" she shattered his reverie with a soft, mirthful chuckle.

"You've gotten faster, then?" he replied, twirling the dart between his fingers slowly and carefully. Her reply was a rude gesture known to every child and elder from Narshe to Vector, with seveal intricate embelishments of her own. He smiled broadly, flashing teeth that, for all they're charm, were noticable less white than his skin. He spun about swiftly, his long white hair and dark overcoat rustling into the air more or less in unison.

He strode up the steps to the deck smoothly. Every step and gesture of his was carefully crafted to give the casual observer every reason to believe all the rumors about his luck and arrogance, though the same careful attention to detail would have caused the same observer to have a very difficult time believing that he lived only for the games, and not for wenching in every Inn under the sun. Alas, Setzer only stepped into an in to look for the next smiling sucker to be swindled, not bedded.

Daryl bounded up the steps after him onto the deck of the Blackjack. Where Setzer was cool and possesed, Daryl was an open book of emotions, or perhaps an ocean of them. She bounded hither and thither, skipped, bounced, chattered, smiled, and was gone again in a quick trailing of red streaks from her shirt, a man never really sure if she had been there or simply came from too much ale taken. He would be sure of it in the morning, when his coin purse was unbelievably light in his hand and the slow headache of being hung over AND broke would bite home into this temples.

She stared off into the clouds port side, thinking up some way to either beat Setzer in a race or beat into his skull her love--and need--for him. She sighed heavily, a gesture he either didn't hear in the breeze over the deck, or chose to ignore out of habit and prudence.

It must have been the latter, for when she caught her sigh in a wet choke he whirled about, pulling the wheel of the massive airship and nearly pitching her over the side in the sudden tilt of the deck. He spat out a curse, corrected the keel, and wrapped a leather cord about a handle on the wheel to keep it from tipping them both out into the empty air, all before leaping to grab hold of her shirt and bodice, bearing most of a breast in the process. She righted herself, turned around and adjusted her bodice, slowly enough to tease him. Some day, woman, you'll catch me far too off guard for that and then all hell will break loose.

She gasped as her eyes went wide and spun on her heel to peer out over the rail again. Sure enough, bearing down on them like a fell wind, the Raptor was speeding towards them in unherralded haste.

Setzer's eyes widened noticeably for only a second, and then his face became as impassive as ever. The Raptor, nearly a match for the Blackjack in a straight race, but smaller and far more easy to turn. And unless some catastrophe had befallen that had not yet reached his ears, Vertan Mearloon was at the helm.

His gaze lowerd slowly on Daryl, brow raised in question. "Well, I might have ligtened him of a few more coins than was strictly fair in a small game in Jidoor," was her reply, overflowing with feigned innocence.

He sighed, let his eyes roll ever so slightly, and started to reach darting hands into his sleeves, pockets, and any other place on his person you coulp possibly imagine, pulling out tinking, razor-edged cards with each grasp. "Well, you've claimed to be a better pilot than I, and I know I can hurl these far more acurately than you, so get you to the helm in haste, woman." His voice was neither raised, nor mocking--okay, maybe a little mocking--and she quickly did as she was bid.

Godesses forgive him, he spat forth a stream of curses when he turned to loock back at the Raptor, closing in hard and already at full speed. It would take but a few moments for Daryl to power the Blackjack to a speed greater than that of the chasing craft, but it would be within bowshot by that time.

He whistled sharply and made a gesture in front of him, pushing his hand towards the oncoming vessel, then down and up swiftly. Daryl nodded just as swiftly and turned the wheel about, careful to make sure Setzer had a firm grip on something. The massive airship arced wide and came directly into the path of the Raptor, then dipped suddenly as if it had dropped from a high cliff, only to come back up just as suddenly as the Raptor screamed by, clipping the hull of the smaller airship and sending it bouncing off course.

Setzer steadied himself and let fly a handful of cards, then a second. The first was aimed at the archers he'd expected standing nigh the rail of the other craft. Four of the six bit home into eys and throats. The two archers spared sent arrows not at Setzer, but at the great gas-filled balloons attatched to the Blackjack. They found their mark, and just as the archers were about to get pleased looks on their faces and gloat, the deck of the Raptor dropped from beneath their feet, leaving only emptiness and death beneath them. They hung there in wretched agony for a few moments, wondering where the ship had gone, and then noticed the severed cords that had once held the Raptor's balloons to its own deck; Setzer's second volley had been completely on target. He watched the two men tumble helplessly out of sight into the waiting clouds below.

The Blackjack leveled, and, more quickly than he'd hoped, began to sink back down to the level of the Raptor's stricken form.

Setzer leapt aside as a sword crashed loudly into the deck where his feet had just been, and began plucking at his coat again as he saw Vertan alight next to it. Why did all gamblers have to be so damn agile?

Vertan said nothing as her wrenched his sword from the deck, and then cried out in visible pain as he saw Setzer fling his razor-cards not at his face, as he'd expected, but at the remaining cords that held the hull of the Raptor to its flight giving balloons. He shuddered as his most prized possession fell from view, and the balloons ascended far out of knowing.

He swung his head around, batting aside a few well aimed cards with his sword. He was about to charge at the albino barring his way to revenge, when the ship pitched to one side, causing him to lean far back toward the rail, and then drop from beneath him as it turned the other direction. He managed to drive his sword nearly hilt deep into the deck and remain on board, but his mind raced to think of some way out of his current plight.

Vertan's fingers erupted into fire and blinding pain as Setzer crashed his boot down onto the hilt of the sword. He stood there for a moment, and with the ship still pitched to one side, only his foot now held the screaming gambler on board. "You lose this day, my friend. Yield?"

The only answer he got was a thrown dagger. Setzer lifted his foot and leaned hard against the deck, letting Vertan fall laughing to his doom, as he realized that the dagger hadn't been aimed at him at all. His head swirled around in time to see Daryl duck none too soon from its path, and then to see it hew a rope on the oposite side of the Blackjack's deck. The remaining ropes groaned, and then snapped under the new strain. The deck toppled over the other way, Setzer sliding along it to the opposite rail.

It held his crashing weight, thankfully. He turned his head upwards in time to see Daryl sprawled out nearly right in front of him, falling sickeningly slow towards the clouds.

He leapt from the rail, embracing her, as he plucked his only dart from his pocket. He heaved it at the quickly shrinking rail, praying that the small cord would reach it, and then hold their weight when they came haltingly to its end.

The dart sailed above the rail, then, as the cord slid along it, it spun back down between it and the deck. The combined weight of himself and Daryl pulled the cord taut about his hand, causing blood to spew forth into his already stinging eyes. Why are my eyes stinging already? he asked himself as he felt the warm wetness of tears along his cheeks. The cord miraculously held their weight, and without a word Daryl began to climb up it, wretching at how close death had come to claiming her and her love.

Setzer soon followed, and they sat for a long while on the rail shuddering and taking deep, soothing breaths. Setzer was dimly aware that the ship had drifted down below the clouds at some point in all this gathering of wits, and was actually coming upon the ground quickly, though not at a deadly pace for them or the mighty Blackjack.

Eternities passed as they sat silently on the rail, waiting for the solid earth to greet them. Setzer's mind wandered far and wide over every inch of the planet and the skies above it, and finally the ground was scarcely twenty feet below them. He turned to Daryl, and she nodded slowly, then they both leapt to the ground below, jogging away from the stricken airship to avoid being crushed beneath it.

"Well," Setzer said jovially, "now there are but two airships in the world." Daryl looked incredulously at him for a brief moment and then smiled weakly as her body gave in to dry heaves and was wracked with spasmodic flailings as the whole unreal episode flowed back through her mind.

Setzer went over to hold her up and leave her some dignity, when she turned on him with a swiftness he'd never seen, reached for his head, and pulled his lips forcefully to hers as she wrapped her other arm about his waist.

He tried to pull back for a brief moment, and then let himself go in the pleasure. For one brief moment in his life, he simply let go. All the terror and pain of the experience just passed washed away from him, and he felt...

Bare. He must end this now or be forever held in her grasp. Almost as if they were not going to obey his commands, his hands pushed Daryl away from him. "Gotta fix this mess," he murmmured as an afterthought while turning toward the injured Blackjack, his own wound going unheeded.

Daryls face was a study in absolute pain for one brief moment, and then her mask of joy slid right back into place.

Someday you'll know what you missed, and you'll come running to take me in your arms, Setzer. I just pray I'm there when that moment comes.