Guns & Roses

Chapter 35

                                   [Sheriff]

"Oh, by the way 2B wanted us to start teaching you the basics of fighting." Sanford said, still focussed on re-pitching one of the stakes keeping the tent up.

"I thought he wanted me to master the medical stuff?" He assisted by keeping the polyester in place, making sure the stake was accurate. Sanford shrugged, before pushing the post into the ground, through the hole that had already been established from the previous one.

"He must've changed his mind," He dusted his hands off. "You'll just have to ask him once he takes over your training again."

"What does he even teach?" Sheriff paused and wondered for a moment, "Did he teach either of you?"

"Not that I remember." Sanford frowned, deep in thought. "He tried teaching Deimos hand-to-hand once, but Deimos ended up getting too frustrated to keep going."

Sheriff gave a small hum in response, wondering what sort of things he'd learn. Better yet, he wondered what he'd be capable of even doing. "What're you two going to do with me in the meantime?"

"Exercises, probably."  They made their way back inside to escape the blistering heat. "You know how to do push-ups, right?"

Sheriff lay on his sleeping bag, taking in the temporary coolness it had accumulated in the shade. "Yeah, not sure how many I can do at a time, though."

"I'm sure you'll be fine." Sanford replied, disappearing into the extra space carved out in the earth. Granted, it wasn't much, just enough to put all their things down without cluttering the place up.

"Heyy." Deimos appeared at the entrance, leaning against it as he adopted a flirtier tone. He promptly fell over as the fabric bent.

"What'd you do this time?" Sanford called out as he appeared back from the other room with the stake which had snapped.

Deimos quickly pushed himself up onto his side before responding. "Nothin', just showing how hard I fell for you."

Sanford rolled his eyes, despite smiling in amusement. "Dumbass."

"Only for you." Deimos gave him a finger gun, before actually pushing himself back to his feet. "What're you two doing, anyway?"

"We need to get our broken pole replaced, after that we need to teach Sheriff a bit of fighting." He threw a piece over to Deimos, who fumbled it a bit before grabbing it properly.

"Why do we need to teach him fighting?" Deimos asked, waving the broken stake around like a sword.

"Because 2B wants him-"

"Are we still listening to that old fart?" Deimos complained, dropping the arm with the stake to his side. "We're 'sposed to be relaxing!"

"We're only here while they recover, nobody said it was a vacation." Sanford reminded him, to which he rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, but when do we ever get a break out there?" Deimos followed Sanford as he began walking out, to which Sheriff brought himself to his feet to tag along.

The heat hit him like a truck as he emerged from the tent. He almost stumbled backwards from the pure force of it. Clearly the heat was ramping up quickly. He struggled to keep up as Sanford and Deimos weaved through the crowd expertly, picking up on little bits of their argument, but not enough to know what was going on. Eventually they made it to some other tent. He wasn't exactly sure why they came to this one, almost all the tents looked the same to him, but he wasn't about to question their judgement.

Pushing past the entrance flaps he realised that this tent was way bigger, in terms of depth at least. Most of it was carved out from the wall the tent covered, and it was surprisingly well lit at that. He half-jogged to catch up with the other two, looking at the stalls which flanked each wall. It definitely explained why he'd never seen any stalls outside. They stopped at a random stall, at least it seemed that way. Of course, each one was selling something different, but there was nothing to make any particularly stand out, not that he could see, anyway.