Mel Odrum had never been taken seriously. As a child in Verkell, he had always had such grand plans. He was going to grow up and be one of the rich folk, knock those snobby foxes off their perches. The other kids had just laughed, and told Mel that he’d always be poor, even by human standards. But every day, Mel told them different, and he got in plenty of fights with the kids who chose to dispute his claims. Mel rarely if ever won those fights. More often than not, he staggered home with a bloody nose or a fat lip, mumbling about how different things would be when he got older.

Well, Mel got older, but nothing was different. He never had a steady job; he was a hard man to employ. He hated taking orders, even considering them a personal affront at times. When he worked sweeping up floors, he somehow managed to break more than he swept. When he worked the shops, he drove customers away or fought with them, usually winding up on the losing end. Mel was an unhappy man, and he wanted the rest of the world to know it. He wanted all of Jakkard to share it with him.

One day, while out looking for another job, Mel happened on a public hanging. Three bandits had been caught out in the Wastes, trying to rob a fox’s train. They stood proud and tall up on the gallows, their hands firmly clasped behind their backs, the hangman’s rope secured to their necks, knot in back. None of them had paid off the hangman to make sure their necks snapped cleanly. As Mel watched those three, dangerous criminals, he couldn’t help but notice their demeanor. They stood straight, chests out, heads high, with a dismissive contempt in their eyes that Mel had to respect. A little girl in the crowd got too close, and one of the men snarled at her, sending most of the crowd half a step backwards. Now that was respect.

As the three bandits were dropped and dangled from their ropes, the crowd watched in morbid fascination, and so did Mel. More than anything, he was watching their faces. The fierceness in their eyes, the hard expressions, and the thick, defiant mustaches that lined their upper lips. Even in death, these were men to be feared, begrudgingly respected, taken seriously. Mel nodded approvingly as he walked away from the scene. That was the sort of man that Mel Odrum needed to be. He needed to learn to carry a fierce gaze in his eyes, so that no one could stand to meet it. He needed to fix a hard, rugged expression on his face so that the world knew he was a hard, rugged man. More than anything, though, he needed to grow a mustache.

His first two attempts at a mustache were terrible. The first one was too thin in places, too thick in others, and made him look like an animal with mange. The second one grew in uneven, and he had overcompensated by shaving the right side too far. Rather than producing an effect of awe and respect in people, it usually just made them laugh. Mel’s fierce eyes and hard expression did little to help the situation, because as one passer-by pointed out, he merely looked constipated. Dejected, Mel went home and shaved clean, trying again from scratch. Fortunately, his third mustache was a thing of beauty. It was thick and dark, and he was able to curl the ends up with some grease he had saved up for. Truly, this was the mustache that would make him a feared and respected man.

Unfortunately for Mel, everyone in his neighborhood in Verkell had known him for years, and no mustache, no matter how grand, would wipe away the memory of the unpleasant man he was. The solution was simple: Mel Odrum had to move. Of course, he couldn’t afford to move anywhere else in Verkell, except maybe to some of the old Noggle slums, but it didn’t mean much to be a big man amongst Noggles. No, Mel wanted to be a big man amongst everyone, particularly other humans. He wanted to be taken seriously, like those men at the gallows. And there was only one place to do that.

The Wastes did not prove much kinder to poor Mel. He scraped up all the money he could, getting a string of terrible jobs along the rails. He usually worked loading and unloading freight or sweeping up the trains. He even had a brief stint laying track, but that came to a crashing end when he lost a fistfight with the foreman. Badly. While recovering in a Dayko hospital, Mel constantly reminded himself that Centaurs were much, much stronger than he was. After a month or so, when he was strong enough to walk again, Mel stiffed the hospital of his bill, bought a gun, and tried to rob the First Dayko Bank and Trust. No one even put their hands up when he told them to. No one ever took Mel Odrum seriously.

As Mel was fleeing wildly through the streets of Dayko, he was wondering what had gone wrong. He had his mustache, his new and improved fierce-eyed look, and a face as hard as granite, yet for some reason, no one at the bank listened to him. They just started shooting, and he ran. On his way out of town, Mel spotted a small corral of acridians, already saddled up and everything. Finally, Mel thought to himself, my luck is changing! Mel jumped the fence and leapt on the back of the nearest insect, which immediately bucked him. He had never ridden before, of course, but it had always looked easy enough. Now, as the acridians were bouncing him around in the little corral, he thought maybe there was something more to it.

Eventually, Mel managed to clamber out of the corral, battered, bruised, and in a decidedly foul mood. He wandered out into the Wastes depressed and dejected, wondering why his mustache had failed to produce the desired result. He made it to the rails before he passed out, and when he woke up again, he found himself in a tiny room with a straw bed. His vision was somewhat blurred, and he staggered to his feet and started fumbling around for a way out. He could feel the dehydration eating at his energy, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get out of wherever he was and find his way to wherever he was going. Fortunately, he found the opening in the floor leading downstairs fairly quickly. Unfortunately, he found it by falling straight through, landing with a hard thump on the wooden floor below.

As Mel’s vision was clearing from his most recent in a long series of misfortunes, he felt a soft hand on his shoulder. Mel started slightly, but looked up to see the face of a beautiful young woman looking down at him in concern.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Uh, I, uh, balloons?” Mel responded.

The woman looked decidedly confused, but just shook her head and tried to help Mel up. “You must have hit your head,” she grunted, pulling him to one knee. “My name’s Kait, by the way.”

“Mel,” the mustachioed man said, rising to his feet. “Where am I?”

Kait smiled and led him over to a nearby table. “This is my home, Mel. Here, let me get you something to drink, you must be dying!”

Mel nodded, since that was exactly what it felt like. As Kait was pouring the water, Mel looked her over. She was not quite as beautiful as he had first assumed, but attractive in a plain sort of way. She was short and slender, with long blonde hair that fell down her back. She was wearing a simple dress of yellow and white, which hung down to her ankles. As she turned around to give him the water, he noticed a small, red pendant hanging from her necklace.

“Thanks,” he said, taking a long drink. “So, what town is this?”

“New Progress,” she said matter-of-factly. “Do you remember anything about how you got here?”

Mel thought back, remembering the blown bank job in Dayko and the acridian attacks, but not much after that. “Not really, no.”

Kait nodded. “A Rail-Runner found you lying by the rails. When he saw you were alive, he picked you up and ran you here.”

“Why here?”

The blonde woman shrugged. “Next town on his run, I guess. Anyway, no one knew you, so I offered to look after you until you got better.”

“Much appreciated,” Mel said, eying her suspiciously. “You got my gun?”

Again, she nodded. “Yep, it’s up in the attic, where you were sleeping. I put it in the end table. Hope you don’t need it for anything specific.”

He thought about that for a minute. “Nothing specific, no. But everyone needs a six-shooter out here in the Wastes.”

“I don’t,” Kait offered with a shrug.

Mel downed the rest of his water and slid the glass across the table to Kait. “You don’t? Ain’t it dangerous?”

The woman smiled, then looked over at her teapot sitting on her unlit stove. “Would you like some tea?”

Mel was momentarily shaken by her change of subject, but nodded. The cool water was refreshing, and now he could use something hot in his system. “Sure.”

Kait smiled and, while still sitting, she outstretched an arm toward the pot. A moment later, a small stream of flame burst from her palm, momentarily engulfing the pot and lighting the stove as it did. Mel jumped back in his seat, falling backwards over his chair and landing hard on the floor once again. Kait looked back at him with a subtle laugh.

“Are you alright?” She giggled.

“I’m not sure,” Mel admitted. “Did you just throw fire, or am I seeing things?”

She nodded sympathetically. “I did, Mel, and it’s alright. Just a little magic, nothing more. But maybe now you see why I’m not so worried about six-shooters.”

Mel nodded as he picked his chair back up and tentatively sat down. Kait seemed to look him up and down for a minute before she spoke again.

“I like you, Mel. I think you’re funny. And you have a very nice mustache.” She paused briefly as his eyes lit up a little. “I don’t know who you are, where you’re going, or anything, but I don’t think you’re a danger to me.” Mel looked over at the teapot and reluctantly agreed. “So you can stay here if you want, up in the attic.”

Mel thought about this for a few minutes. He was unaccustomed to such kindness. He didn’t entirely trust it, either, because it was such a foreign experience to him. However, he had few choices, and none of them seemed any better. He had no money, and his career as an outlaw had already proven less than spectacular. Life had not been kind to Mel Odrum, nor he to it, but Kait, for whatever reason, was. Mel smiled his best smile at her, which was more bent and lopsided than he ever realized, and nodded.

“I’d like that, Miss Kait,” he paused, trying to remember what should come next. Suddenly, it came to him. “Thank you.”

From that point on, Mel made himself at home. As much as he could, he respected the rest of the house and left it to Kait and her dealings, while he took the attic for himself. It was a relatively small space, but more than enough for Mel. He tried his hand at a few jobs around New Progress, but nothing ever suited him too well. It was primarily a mining town, and Mel had neither the strength nor the patience to work the mines. He worked for a week or two with the undertaker, helping to dig graves, but the labor didn’t suit him, and when he almost got into a fight with one of the deceased, who had naturally done nothing wrong, he was asked to leave. He dealt cards at the saloon for a single night before its owner discovered that Mel wasn’t entirely clear on the rules of the game. Mel lost the saloon a small fortune, then he lost his job, and then he lost a fight with the bouncers. He had had better nights.

Kait, meanwhile, didn’t have to work. As Mel learned, she was relatively well-off, and lived mostly on the interest from the bank. But she was a friendly sort to everyone, and often had guests over, whom Mel usually avoided. When she would ask him why, he would always explain that he didn’t want to intrude on her business, but really, he just wasn’t that fond of people. They usually beat him up. Also, he was growing to like his little attic room. It was quiet and solitary, and gave Mel time to think. And increasingly, Mel thought about Kait.

Kait was always friendly and kind to Mel, far more than he deserved, a fact that was not lost on the mustachioed man. They spent many evenings together, chatting and laughing about any number of things. Mel had never known this kind of companionship before. Back in Verkell, there had never really been anyone interested in talking with him for very long, nor were there many people he had been interested in talking to with anything but his fists. But Kait was different. She was the first, and perhaps the only, genuinely good person Mel had ever known. He would lie awake at nights in his lonely attic, replaying his conversations with her in his head and smiling. He almost hated to admit it, but he was smitten, and he was convinced she was, too.

Then, one day, Mel Odrum came down from his attic to find Kait in the arms of another man. She was smiling and laughing, even more than Mel had ever seen her before. The man was a young, handsome man wearing a businessman’s suit, and sporting a mustache very similar to Mel’s, only even better. Mel’s spirit deflated in an instant, but he said nothing. A few moments later, Kait noticed him standing there and called him over with a broad smile on his face.

“Oh, Mel! There’s someone I want you to meet. This is my fiancé Dolin. He’s finally back from Verkell. Dolin, darling, this is Mel Odrum. You remember, the silly man I told you about in my letters.”

The young man smiled a little too broadly and a little too honestly for Mel’s liking. He crossed the floor with long, confident strides and held out his hand to Mel. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Odrum. I understand you’ve kept Kait entertained while I’ve been away. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.”

Mel let the other man’s hand wait a little longer than was strictly polite, but eventually shook it for Kait’s sake. “My pleasure,” he managed.

“Come, Mel,” Kait said happily, “Dolin and I were just about to have a bit of lunch. Would you like to join us?”

“No,” Mel said a little too quickly as he moved for the front door. “You two should.” He spoke as though he were going to finish the sentence but didn’t. “I have some things I need to take care of in town. Thank you, though.”

Mel moved to go through the door and smacked right into it instead, to a pair of polite laughs from the other two. He looked back at them quickly, but said nothing as he opened the door this time and slid outside. He closed the door only most of the way and listened for a moment to the two inside.

“I see what you mean,” Dolin said. “Funny little man.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” She answered back with a chuckle. “He’s always good for a laugh. I swear, you can’t take that man seriously!”

Mel was glad that no one could see his reaction to those words. Except perhaps the old woman across the street, but he was fairly certain her eyesight was going, and was likely laughing at something else entirely. Angrily, Mel wandered around town for the rest of that day, trying to decide what to do. He had been so sure that Kait was different, but she, too, had never taken him seriously. And that Dolin. Who did he think he was! To waltz back into Kait’s life and steal everything from Mel, including his prized mustache! This would not stand. It could not. Mel had to do something. He had to be taken seriously once and for all. But what could he do?

For the next week, Mel sat up in his attic and thought, but answers eluded him. He had to be taken seriously, like those proud bandits he had seen that fateful day in Verkell. They had tried to rob a train, as he remembered it. Maybe Mel could do that? Of course, his own attempts at robbery had proven far less than successful. So had that of those bandits, now that he thought about it. Besides, even if he could rob a train, it wouldn’t do anything to put Kait and Dolin in their places. Dolin was a businessman, though. Maybe one of those trains was his? No, it would take too much work to figure out which one, if any, would hurt him. But there had to be some way!

Finally, after seven days of deep, contemplative thought, he finally had his plan. All of his problems would be taken care of in one fell swoop. Dolin, that rich, pompous businessman, would pay for what he had done, quite literally. Kait would get hers, Mel would be taken seriously, and everything would be right with the world. That next morning, as Dolin made his way into town to conduct some business, Mel prepared himself. He collected the rope he had bought, the large, burlap bag he stole from the general store, and a simple cloth he would use as a gag. Before heading downstairs, Mel checked himself with his dirty pocket mirror and applied a little more grease to the curls of his mustache. As he descended the ladder, there was nothing left of his in Mel Odrum’s attic.

As he walked into the kitchen, Kait was pouring herself a glass of water. She smiled at him as he stepped in. “Morning, Mel. You’re up early today. Starting another job? Want something to drink?”

“Please,” he said, narrowing her eyes. As she turned around to grab a new glass, Mel drew his six-shooter, took a step toward her, and clubbed her on the back of the head. With a soft groan, she slumped to the floor. For a moment, Mel felt really bad. He had rarely if ever successfully hurt anyone before. Remembering his purpose, though, he quickly set to work binding her hands and getting her into the large sack. When he was done, he was already exhausted, and realized just how difficult these sorts of schemes are. Still, he was determined, and fortunately, Kait had her own wagon tied up along the side of the house.

Careful to avoid being seen by that pesky old lady and her rotten sense of humor, Mel finally managed to get Kait’s bound, gagged, and packaged body into the wagon, hook up her acridian (who was fortunately much more tamed than those he had battled in Dayko) and take off into the Wastes. He knew he wouldn’t have to go far, and with the heat of the day hammering down on him, he didn’t. He pulled the wagon right up next to the rails and rubbed his hands together, appreciating his own plan. It was flawless. After several more minutes of working with the bag, the ropes and the unconscious body of his friend, Mel was finally finished. He laughed to himself, twisted the curled edge of his mustache, and headed back into town.

When he arrived back at Kait’s home, Dolin was already there, drinking the water that Kait had offered to pour for Mel. The young man looked up and smiled as Mel walked in.

“Oh, hiya, Mel!” he said in a friendly tone. “Say, have you seen Kait around?”

“What, she’s not here?” He said, trying and failing to act surprised.

“No,” Dolin said, eying Mel and his poor acting with an edge of suspicion.

“Well, I’m certain we can track her down,” Mel offered, placing far too much emphasis on the word ‘track.’

Dolin set his glass down hard on the table. “Are you saying you tied my fiancée to the railroad tracks?”

“I, wha, you, how’d you know?”

Dolin’s eyes widened. “Wait, you did? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Mel stammered for a few moments before managing an unconvincing “No!”

Dolin stood up slowly and pulled his suit jacket back to reveal his six-shooter. “Now listen to me carefully, Mel. I know you’re not right in the head sometimes, but this is really too much. Where is Kait?”

This was not going entirely as expected, but Mel forced himself to calm down. This was all part of his plan, even if it was progressing ridiculously faster than he had expected. “Well, wouldn’t you like to know?” He said, trying to sound menacing.

“Yes, I would,” Dolin said slowly. “That was rather the point of my asking, and reaching for my gun.”

“Right,” Mel said simply.

Dolin sighed, and then drew his six-shooter and leveled it at Mel. “Let’s try this again. Mel, tell me where Kait is or I will shoot you. Several times. In as many uncomfortable places as I can think of.”

Mel jumped a bit, but then remembered that he had a gun as well. Mel twisted his mustache and indicated to his own holster. “I could shoot you, too.”

Dolin glanced down at Mel’s six-shooter. “Really? You ever shoot that thing before?”

Mel looked down at his own gun, trying to remember. Probably not, now that he thought about it. Then he shook his head. “Look, I ask the questions around here!”

Dolin’s face contorted in a look of abject confusion. “What questions do you need answering?”

Mel thought about this for a while, coming up with a blank. Finally, he said, “If you ever want to see Kait alive again, you’ll pay me…” he paused here, realizing that he had never thought of an amount. Having been destitute for most of his life, he really didn’t even have an idea of what a realistic number would be. How much could Dolin afford? How much could he carry? Dolin looked like he was growing impatient, so Mel improvised. “a quarter…no, half, of what you’re worth!”

Dolin considered. “I have a counter-offer.”

“Oh, okay, good! What is it?” Mel was pleased he was making so much headway. He had been briefly concerned that Dolin would have flat-out refused.

“My counter-offer is I shoot your kneecaps if you don’t tell me where Kait is.”

Mel frowned. This didn’t seem like headway at all. “Look, if I just tell you where she is, it sort of defeats the purpose. Then I don’t get anything out of the deal, you see?”

“You get to keep your kneecaps,” Dolin offered flatly.

“Right, but those are already mine, you see.”

“Not if I blast them off,” Dolin reminded him.

“Good point,” Mel conceded, trying to think. This wasn’t going well at all. “Ah ha! You want to know where Kait is, and I’m the only one who knows! So if I don’t tell you, you won’t know! And if you shoot me, I won’t tell you!”

“I bet if I shot you enough you would,” Dolin said.

“Nope!” Mel obstinately stated.

Dolin sighed heavily, then pulled the hammer back on his pistol and pointed it at Mel’s knee. “Let’s find out. Where is Kait?”

“I’m right here,” came the irritated voice of Kait from behind Mel. The mustachioed man turned around in shock to see the small woman enter her house, her dress dusty and her face displeased.

“You, I, how did you…”

“I’m a pyromancer!” She said as she hit him hard in the left shoulder. “What kind of idiot ties a pyromancer to the tracks of a fire leyline?”

Mel didn’t have an answer for her as he rubbed his sore shoulder. Dolin walked over to him and took his six-shooter, then glanced over to Kait. “Glad you’re okay. You want me to take care of this moron?”

She thought for a moment, rubbing the back of her head. She looked Mel in the face, and in a final act of defiance, he let his eyes go fierce and his expression go hard. Kait laughed. “No, I’ll take care of it.”

Mel’s eyes widened as her fiery hand reached for his face. The world went bright and hot, and then he passed out. When he woke up, he was lying on the ground by the rails, somewhere out in the Wastes. He couldn’t see New Progress anywhere, or any other town, for that matter. He was pretty sore all over, but nowhere more than his upper lip. He reached up, and couldn’t believe what he felt. In a panic, he fumbled into his pocket for his mirror, held it up, and confirmed the bitter truth. Where once had been his glorious mustache, now there was only scar tissue. His mustache was gone and would never grow back again. In a moment of sheer grief, Mel Odrum climbed to his knees, threw his head back, and screamed until his voice left him.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”