Guns & Roses

Chapter 8: Trickster Town

[Sheriff]

Since the talk he'd had with Deimos, the past couple days had gone much smoother, or, much smoother than before. Of course, both Hank and Sanford were still probably very suspicious of him, but it seemed Deimos was a little too trusting, and so he'd actually started to make some progress on getting himself into their group. Each time he'd consider trying to join conversations, Deimos made an opening for him to join, without even having a hint that he'd been thinking about it.
'If things keep going like this, it might not be such a hard mission after all.'
He thought to himself, considering his course of action to try and get himself on better terms with the other two.

He shifted the bag more evenly across his shoulders,
'God this thing got heavy'
Since the others didn't have something to carry all their things, they'd all agreed to use the bag to store the more important stuff. However, he underestimated the amount they all carried with them, especially Hank, discovering they had pockets on the inside of their trench-coat, which he had managed to fit a surprising amount of things for how flat the coat had looked.

Sheriff zoned back into the present, tuning back into the conversation at hand.
"Yeah but, why would you need to put pumpkins in a fridge?" Sheriff almost burst out laughing, the conversation had definitely shifted from what he'd last heard of it, judging from Sanford's tone, they didn't seem sure how the conversation had ended up like this either.
"To keep them cold" Deimos replied, stating it like it should be an obvious conclusion,
"But.. they're pumpkins, they're fine in room temperature." Sanford explained, Sheriff decided he would be better kept out of their quarrel, considering he had no context to why they were arguing over a rather useless topic.

He looked over to where Hank had been keeping pace beside them, staying a small distance from their immediate position. Though it didn't seem it, he knew they were listening, which almost seemed worse than if they would regularly join the conversations, he noticed they had begun to turn their head toward their group, to which Sheriff averted his gaze to the space ahead of him,
'I swear, that man is the scariest thing about Nevada.'

"Hey Sheriff! Back me up here, will ya?" Deimos asked, catching Sheriff off guard. After a moment on consideration, he spoke, "personally, I think people should keep pumpkins in the microwave." He joked, hoping it would be a good enough cover to keep them from questioning him further about their conversation. Thankfully, they went along with it, making off-hand jokes about it, to which Sheriff zoned back out after the first few.

After briefly scanning the scene ahead of him, he spotted a man-made structure, barely visible in the distance. At first, he figured he wouldn't mention it, deciding he would try to keep the population in the building alive, but then he thought about it,
'If I never "spot" the buildings until they've been pointed out, they might catch on.'
Reluctantly, he waited until a break in the banter between Deimos and Sanford to bring up the building.
"Hey guys, looks like there's a building up ahead." He mentioned, to which the duo began focusing on spotting it for themselves. Then there was Hank, who seemed unfazed.
'Did he already see it before me?' He wondered, as the group got ready for the long walk ahead.

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[Sanford]

The single building The Sheriff had noticed had turned out to be better described as a town. They realised around halfway there when he noticed a second, smaller building close-by, followed by a third after they got even closer. Sanford and Deimos decided to make a bet on how many buildings would be there when they eventually got there. The way it was turning out, it looked like Deimos would win after all, after none of them had spotted another structure after the fifth building that got pointed out.

The place seemed relatively abandoned, the road was pretty much indistinguishable from the normal dust-covered rocky ground that Nevada had to offer. From the end of the street, he could see four buildings in a row, each old and seemingly empty, the road leading up to a massive warehouse of sorts. He felt a punch on his shoulder,
"Looks like I won." Deimos stated slyly, a smug smile plastered on their face.
"Can't say that yet, we haven't checked behind the buildings." Sanford replied, knowing he'd probably already lost.
"You're on then, big man!" Deimos began running to the alley to their left, not wanting them to get in trouble, Sanford found himself running closely behind them.

They emerged on the other side, Sanford looked over to his left.
'nothing..'
And quickly looked over to his right.
'shit.'
He thought, seeing that there were no other buildings.
"We still have to check behind the other buildings, and that warehouse... thing." He said, hoping that if he got lucky them might stumble upon something else.

"Mmm, I dunno, sounds like you can't take a loss to me." Deimos told him, Sanford knew it was a trap to make him give up,
'I'm not letting this go so easy.'
He thought.
"I haven't lost yet, we still don't know for sure how many buildings there are." He replied, he knew that Deimos knew that he wasn't wrong, "Alright, if you insist." Deimos sighed, and began walking toward the warehouse, Sanford keeping pace next to him.

They barely peeked the corner, when Sanford spotted a red-haired figure just next to them, attending to a hot-dog stand. Sanford barely gave himself time to think before he grabbed Deimos by the collar, dragging them back behind the corner with him. A moment of silence passed between both of them, as they stuck to the concrete wall like glue.
"D'you think they saw us?" Deimos whispered, barely loud enough for Sanford to catch what he said. As if it had waited for this moment, the wall next to them exploded outward into the air, a metal sign zooming past, fast enough that if he didn't know beforehand what it was, he would be at a loss.
"Yep! They saw us!" Sanford yelled as he was already running, dragging Deimos by the arm with him, knowing he would be slower to react than him. As they ran a loud, somehow glitched voice, boomed from behind them, "YOUUU!"