Survival is Crucial

Some Context

A young square chinned man stared deeply into the stone ground below as Jack came out of the darkness surrounding the man, sitting down on a seat in front of the man. "Hello,"

The square chinned man squinted to look at Jack, "Hi..."

"So, I wanted to ask you some questions." Jack cleared his throat.

"What would these questions entail?"

"First, what's your name?"

The square chinned man, slack-jawed, sarcastically said, "Peier Mannayo."

Jack sighed before leaning forward, "Hey, man, this isn't an interrogation, this is legit just me asking some questions. We know that you're a bounty hunter, and all we need to know is basic information, not movements of other bounty hunters, nothing like that, just things that you, yourself, know."

"Shut up!" The square chinned man laughed loudly.

"My name is Jack, what is your name?"

"Still going with this?" He mumbled, "Logan, that's the name."

A smile came upon Jack's face, "Nice to meet you," Jack sighed, "Alright, I have some questions."

"Whatever."

"Yeah," Jack chuckled, "What do you know? Like, do you know why Tyche has a bounty on his head?"

Logan pressed his lips together, considering if he should say something or not before continuing, "Yeah, but barely."

"Alright, then, what do you know?"

"Something about the dude's ancestors."

"What?"

"Yeah, his ancestors did something that caught some asshole's attention and somehow it's led to this, I don't really know anything more than that."

Jack smiled, "Cool, that's all I needed to know."

Jack shot Logan in the head, watching as he went limp in the chair, blood dripping onto the ground as his eyes hung low and his lips remained half-open, saliva loosely dripping from his bottom lip.

Jack sighed, thinking out loud, "First, it was something about Brazil, now it's related to ancestors. This is dumb... at least, it sounds dumb."

Back over at the cruise ship, Marshall is having a smoke on the deck of the ship while Nixon is sat nearby, leaning against the railing, lightly rubbing the bullet wound he had received on his shoulder a few hours ago, "Hey..."

Marshall sighed, "Stop, I'll tell you," Marshall, brought himself around, staring out at the sea before him, "I'll leave out what you already know -- Nixon Driver, your... great, great grandfather came across a man named Seth, who was the great, great grandfather of Tyche, that dude who looks like a kid." Marshall paused, "The facade is cracking, huh?"

Nixon raised an eyebrow, "What?"

"Nah, never mind, you haven't noticed," Marshall said, pointing to himself, "Back on topic, Nixon met Seth, they became friends, then as they were traveling together one day, they came across some interesting information about some infinite wealth pool, something like that. The information on what that wealth pool could've been was vague, hell, it could've been a literal pool of gold for all I know, but, this was what started them to go on their journey to find said wealth pool. Of course, this led them to come to know some unscrupulous individuals."

"Right...?"

Marshall blew out a cloud of smoke before continuing, "Apparently, they managed to reach this wealth pool, but for some reason didn't even touch it and instead encased it in secrecy. We don't know why, but, that's what happened. As the years went by, more information within the underworld had begun resurfacing and they all started to figure out where it could be again, or the fact that it could exist, s**t like that. The thing is, Seth and Nixon had already figured that they would find out and had some additional protections in regards to not letting anyone find this wealth pool. This had everything to do with their family's security method, expansionism."

"What?"

"You guys have really large families, especially Tyche's family. Some parts of the family know, and some parts don't, so then, the underground assholes decided, 'Let's just purge them all!' And, here we are."

"I don't understand, how will they know where the wealth pool is if they kill everyone?"

"Your family is the least important out of the two, so they were planning to utilize your family rather than Tyche's, though, they want you out of the picture first."

"This s**t doesn't make sense."

"I don't fully understand it either, all I want is to completely tear these dickheads apart."

"So, is their plan working?"

"Not really, though the plan has been in action for around ten to twenty years now so, that should go to say as to why they're upping the ante now."

"All this s**t for a treasure that might not even be worth it anymore."

"Well, they could still make a lot of profit from it since it's apparently ancient or something. Stupid rumors like that always go around as an attempt to justify what they're doing."

"To be honest, I was better off not knowing because I just feel like this is all so f*****g stupid now."

"Nothing is stupid about trying to survive."

"Yeah, but their reasoning is..."

Marshall sighed, "There are probably reasons that we can either not comprehend, or will never know. What I do know is that the biggest benefactor in all of this is one of the biggest gangs in Brazil, so we're going there."

"What's it called?"

"Escravos, that's the gang's name."

"What does it mean?"

"Slaves or something, stupid name if you ask me, but it's as big as it is now because of its namesake."

"How?"

"Nothing, it's cheesy."

Nixon made a bored expression before standing up, "Whatever," Nixon turned to Marshall, "Hey, can I have some semblance of rest though, like, a week or so. These bullet wounds are..." Nixon looked uncomfortable, looking over to his discolored nails. "Having to sew the stitches over and over again, having to bleed constantly..."

"We can try, that's all I can offer. Since we're about to head into the heart of the jungle, they're probably going to send more than just bounty hunters and hitmen."

Nixon nodded, "Alright... I'm going to sleep."