-Three-
I only got two additional hours of sleep. That was when I woke up and heard chattering noises outside of my dumpster. Gutless must've been back, and I could've sworn that they sounded pretty happy. The raid must've been another success. But this didn't feel like an average victory. Something special had happened, and I wanted to know what.
I went out of my dumpster to take a look. There was all of Gutless, standing in the alley next to my dumpster. There was Falpaine, Relt, Yulup, Rumpet and Temor Hilow, and Silent Bone all standing together. They had come back with more goods. But what really caught my eye in the pile of stolen loot were the weapons. When I saw what was in that weapon pile, my eyes had shimmered like diamonds.
They had guns. Guns! They weren't those old-fashioned guns, those were industrial guns, like the ones that sligs had, only not attached to their pants! How did they find those in a town near Raville? Falpaine stood staring at the guns like he was impressed, in a way. Relt, Yulup, Rumpet and Temor held the weapons smiling with glee. The only one that didn't look too happy was Silent Bone. He was never a fan of weapons, and I bet that he despised guns. He must think that the true way to fight is to use your fists. He wrote a message in the dirt once saying that only a fool would put trust in his life to a weapon. Gutless must not have cared about his messages, anyways. He simply wandered away from the group and threw some small rocks at the broken-down buildings.
“Where shall we store these?” Falpaine asked.
“Can I store those?” Yulup asked.
“We wouldn't trust you to store a single knife!” Rumpet remarked. Temor nodded in agreement.
“I can store these.” Relt replied seriously. “We got a shack that is in good condition that I can watch over.”
“Then it is decided.” Falpaine said.
The members of Gutless were too busy with the guns that they practically tossed everything else aside. I looked through the pile and found nothing to my interest. The guns in the pile were like finding golden bars inside a junkyard. I saw Relt walking to the shack with the advanced weaponry, so I decided to catch up to him to chat for a while. Lately, I've been trying to befriend Relt, but it hasn't really been working. I ran up to him, and he noticed me before he even saw me. He was carrying the guns plus the boxes of ammo out to the shack for storage.
“Heya, Cal.” Relt had said in his dark and shady voice. It sometimes spooked me a little bit. “Did you sleep well last night?”
“Very funny.” I replied. “Where'd you find those guns in that one town?”
It seemed almost as though Relt was eager to tell me how he and Gutless found them. “We found them in a town called Hebington. We were capturing citizens and killing the law enforcement people there. It was all just an average raid...until we came into this one empty shop. We found this suspicious-looking floorboard, and decided to open it up. When we came down, that was when we found these. They were all sitting there for no reason, and these were industrial guns with mechanical parts! We didn't even know that your casual Steef town would steal these. So, we stole the already-stolen guns and took these back into Raville.”
Me and Relt arrived at the shack and opened the door. It wasn't very spacious but it could store the guns and ammo. “We will use these eventually, but for now will just put them somewhere. I was told by Falpaine that we could use these to take down one of those even bigger towns. Who knows? Maybe one day you'll use one of these.”
I wanted to laugh myself silly after he said that, but I didn't. Me use a gun? I couldn't even kill a person with a knife at that age! It was a silly thought to think. Relt was pretty happy, at that moment. Guns will give us a huge advantage over the law. Ever since Gutless was first formed we had never used guns before. Now he have the real deal. Mechanical guns and fresh ammunition. But then I became curious, and then I asked Relt a question.
“Relt,” I said, “we here at Gutless have never used or even held a gun before. How to you expect to learn how to use one and how to put the bullets in and how to do all those other things?”
Relt had pondered the question for a mere five seconds. “Well, I can always learn how.” He replied. “Then I could teach everybody else. Honestly, Calvarr. How hard can using a gun be? All you do is load, aim, and shoot the kill.”
For no apparent reason, Relt pushed me down onto the ground. He put a small grin on his face while I got up. He asked me if I had been studying about the basic herbs of poison. When I said yes, he replied, “be ready, pretty soon. Falpaine is gonna quiz you on poison today. If you pass, good for you. If you fail, you're sitting through all his lessons all over again. I'm going to the Town Hall to wind down a bit. Later...twerp.” Then he simply walked away into Raville Town Hall.
When I was strolling around Raville, I found Yulup talking to the Hilow brothers for some reason.
“I could've stored those guns.” Yulup said shyly.
“Mmmmm.” Rumpet hummed. “Nope! I much rather prefer Relt watching them.”
“We couldn't watch them either, Rumpet.” Temor added. “Be easy on the big guy, will you? We would be too tempted to steal them.” Temor picked up a rock and tossed it up and down for a while. “Even Calvarr would do a better job than you, Yulup!” Temor simply chuckled as the thought.
Yulup growled, hideously. “Calvarr is no smarter than I. At least I could maul him in hand-to-hand, no weapons battle!”
“Really?” Asked Rumpet. “In that case, why don't you prove it right now?”
Yulup cracked his knuckles. “Where is the little runt, anyways?”
“Uh oh.” I said silently. I sneaked away from them without making a single sound. I wasn't in the mood for fighting, now. In fact, I wasn't in the mood for fighting at all, that day. I couldn't win against a brute like Yulup, even if he was the dumbest member of Gutless. He could pin my face to the ground and suffocate me in a matter of seconds. Even if I did win against him, what would it prove? Congratulations! You proved that you are stronger than Yulup! Big whoop. If I won against Relt, though, maybe that would prove something.
I saw Silent Bone sitting still in the shade. Relt says that after he finishes a fight, he sits somewhere so he could do some kind of meditation. He thought it was freakish. That's only because Relt throws a celebration to his victories. Maybe Silent Bone worked in a different way. Perhaps he feels the pain of the victims he killed. There must have been some part of his brain that made him so sad when he took a life. I was spying on him once when I was younger. He was standing inside what used to be a general store. He was standing in a dark corner with his head looking towards the ground. I had no idea what was happening back then, but he was actually hitting himself. He lunged his fist towards his face, smacked his head on the hard, wooden ground, and other things that could injure himself. He didn't even grunt or scream. But I had seen tears run down his face during that moment. It shocked me, and that picture had been hammered into my mind when it happened. I didn't dare talk about it to anybody else. I kept it to myself.
I walked towards Silent Bone, but before I could say hello he gestured his hand towards me, signifying that I should stop. I went into a dead freeze. Silent Bone was the kind of person that could easily bring a small chill down your spine. He wrote a message into the dirt with his finger. Not now, it said.
“Okay.” I quietly said. Silent Bone erased his message as I slowly walked away from him. That Steef sure does like to be alone, especially when he is trying to think about things.
The excitement winded down after about an hour. Everything was then back to the way it was. All the members of Gutless simply socialized, play cards, and got into fights with one another, except for Silent Bone. He just still sat there in the shade, drifting away into his mind. I wandered around Raville Town Hall to take a short look at it, when suddenly I heard voices from one of the cracks in the building. I recognized those voices immediately. They were the voices of Falpaine and Relt. I assumed that they we're in one of the smaller rooms of the town hall, trying to have a private conversation. As curious as I was, I decided to listen in.
When I heard Falpaine say my name, I was dying to know what they were talking about.
(Not my best chapter, but I'm just having a small lack of creativity because of tiredness, at the moment.)
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