The Blazing Gun Saloon

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

O'Callahan, sitting alone in the half-lit corner, removes what appears to be a deck of cards from a pocket of his duster, and lays them out in order on the tabletop. To a casual observer, it would appear that he is playing some version of Solitaire, and in a sense, he is. These cards, however, are unique. They are hand crafted, by O'Callahan himself, and are carefully and wonderfully drawn, beautiful in their own right, and as colourful and ornate as the illuminated manuscripts of old. Each one has the picture of a wanted man on its face, and the illustrations are almost photographically accurate. The "ranks" are assigned according to the severity of the crime, and, surprisingly, murderers are not in the "Ace" category...those four slots are reserved for "Horse Thieves." In this rough country, stealing a man's horse is considered worse than merely killing him, for to leave a man on foot in the high desert is to condemn him to a slow and painful death by thirst or starvation. O'Callahan lays out the cards, and studies each face, transferred painstakingly from the original "Wanted-Dead or Alive" poster. "Kings" are multiple murderers, "Queens" are "black widows," generally women who have poisoned a succession of wealthy husbands and then moved on after selling off the property of their "dearly departed" spouses. Laying out the rank of "Jacks"...usually notorious hired guns... he pauses. Some of these men are wanted in some territories, not in others, and most have been convicted in absentia. These distinctions mean nothing to O'Callahan..it is enough that they are Wanted, and that there is a bounty to be collected. As he finds these miscreants, he removes their card from the deck, and replaces it with a fresh one, gleaned from stacks of posters in the Courthouses of territorial capitols through which he occasionally passes. The gaunt priest bends slightly forward, and peers intently at the Jack of Clubs. It is one of the more recently added cards, and the illustration on the original poster was not the best...but the picture on this card just might be that of Jedidiah Gunn. The name is not correct, but then, names mean little out here in the wild West. Perhaps there is work to be done in this misbegotten burg after all....

[Miles (a sailor)Martin]

 
( MWBailey

> thanks man i wouldn't mind but as i have a lot going on real world i may only be able to catch up my posts once or twice a week, if this is a problem let me know, and i'll just set back and watch y'alls show. i enjoyed the heck out of the last one.
                                   respectfully
                                     Miles)

[The Abiliegh]

She continued watching the room behind her, partially convinced that there was something going on. A card playin' preacher, a laboratory in a bar, and the man with a mission... it added up to... something. Might be that she'd get some entertainment instead of a bed tonight, but that was never something worth complainin' over. She had more talents than just liftin her skirts, and she privately delighted in a possible chance to stretch those muscles.

[[OOC: I'm leaving for the weekend, will be back saturday late late night or sunday. If anything happens, assume I am being wonderfully sneaky and following the more interesting of things happening. Sgt.Major, should you feel i'm needed to get caught, i trust you to write for me ]]

[Miles (a sailor)Martin]

Following Brantley, while apologizing for the mis-identification, Miles says' I have been caught up in a temporal anomaly a time of twelve in the past as it seems that my g'pop was a member of the History Monks as a result I tend to remember split infinitives and bifurcated trousers with multiple crotches, ( think of a set of trousers for Chuthulu),but so far i have been able to keep my self and those around from losing to much of our sanity(SAN 45%)....           ... taking up a guard position at the smithy he pulls out his  .36 revolver and checks all 12 caps then puts it back in the holster and removes the thong wrapped around his leg. keeping an eye on the storm and watching for more trouble to show up ,he oils up the brace on his knee.

[MWBailey]

(OOC: Sorry for the lack of a post last night and today; added new chapter to Between the Threads last night, and was fully exhausted after; then busy this AM with car woes and financial and prescription anomalies... and now have monthly Dulcimer Society meeting. I'll write a long one tonight after I get home. It will probably be up by 1 am. Sunday. Thanks folks!

Miles: sounds good to me.

My next post will most likely happen in tiny increments, fits, and starts and stops -- but it will get done eventually --taking hopefully no more than a couple of hours. We shall see...)

"Really? I've often wondered who made the trousers of those who live in alternate realities, wherein the Shoggoths are the staunch allies of  man against the no-goods of the universe, he said. nice to know they don't just grow them or something...

Brantley unfolded his idea and the Committee's orders to Thalesia in due course, but the revelation of the existence of Regulators (like Brantley himself) whence there seems to be no organized law, and then of regulatory bodies (Sally and the Committee) whence one believes there to  be no real regulators or a structure to regulate them, is traumatic, to  say the least. Brantley did his best to not only explain these things, but also to keep it brief so that the meaning would not be lost in the verbage...

...While away across countless possible alternate realities and several years of the history of Sgt. Gunn's universe, Mad Jack Pulsifer watches as the St. Elmo speeds off into the sunset over the Yangtze valley in 1880's China of the RTAF's home reality, too fast for him to follow, while a man who looks like Dreyfuss battles a female Asian assassin, or maybe one o' them ninja type people, atop the St.Elmo on the Hybrid War Zeppelin's obs deck, dodging and weaving among the struts and projections of the rather massive deck gun.

After a while, the St. Elmo fades from view, but then a different distraction altogether boils up from the valley below: A stupendously-giant storm, which sucks Pulsifer and his ship into its maw like a fly into the mouth of a Natterjack toad. The misanthropic old man smiles grimly, and flips the switch on the wooden box beside teh helm, inside the cabin of the air-travelling scow. a glow surrounds the Beau Rosin, but the storm does not disappear; in fact, it grows stronger, seeming to feed on the energies surrounding the Beau.

Pulsifer tries repeatedly to get any answer at all from the Aetherphone, but as he feared, there is just  too much static and other interference. Pulsifer begins to pump lofting gas into the on-board storage tanks, thus causing teh Beau to descend thriough teh violently-tossing wrack of the storm, until he begins to see, far below, between curtains of rain and clouds of dust a town...a western town, much like the place he grew up in! In CHINA!??

He finally sets the ship down clumsily, with a thump that echoes amid the winds in the relatively-narrow street, in front of what looks like a saloon. The impact of landing throws Pulsifer to the floor, where he fetches up against the side of the wheel, and just before getting knocked out by the falling logbook, manages to pull the lever that launches the rocket grapnel that serves as the Beau's anchor. It goes rocketing out to one side, burying its self in the boardwalk just to the side of the Saloon's entrance...

"What the heck was that?! Brantley echoed several of the other denizens of th Saloon. looking out through the still-open doorway, Brantley sees...no, it can't be! "My Gods, it's the BEAU ROSIN!" Brantley shouts in a mixture of suspiscion,surprise, and worry that he might be about to meet himself, or worse, someone he knows....

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

At Brantley's cry, although his iron self-control allows him to display no telltale outward sign, O'Callahan brings his focus fully on the door of the Saloon. Without looking down, he takes the two of hearts by the edge and using that card as a scoop, with lightning speed he gathers the deck of cards back into a stack, doing it so smoothly that it looks like a magician's trick. The deck of fifty-two goes back into its box. Aside from the face cards, the remainder of the deck is composed, in descending rank, of less important potential captures. Rustlers, Grifters, Mexican Bandidos and Renegade Indians, mostly, all with a price on their heads, of course, and all with the "Dead or Alive" condition appended to their original posters, but generally there is not enough of a monetary reward offered to make it worth O'Callahan's time to make them the purpose of an exclusive hunt. He'll take them if he runs across them..a soul's a soul, after all...but usually doesn't go out of his way to find them. There is, however, one other card in the box, one which he doesn't often remove when he scans the others. A card originally introduced in the game of Euchre, not Poker, a fact that O'Callahn has always found privately amusing, because of the play on words with Eucharist, for this card truly represents his own personal "Holy Grail." This card is one that O'Callahan has never replaced. Top Trump. This card has been reserved for a man with dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of warrants on him, the combined value of the prices on his head is almost astronomical. He is "Wanted" in many Territories, and even a couple of European Countries. Some say he is a legend, a ghost, a will o' the wisp...he appears from nowhere, and disappears in an equally capricious manner. The legend says he has appeared in many places, and at diverse times, and that sometimes he looks older, sometimes younger, and not always in the proper order of such things. O'Callahan slowly, almost reverently, withdraws the 53rd card from the back of the box, then withdraws his Rosary from beneath his cassock, kisses it, replaces it, and then crosses himself for good measure. The question of whether Jed Gunn is or is not the face on the Jack of Clubs is forgotten for the moment. There is a bigger...much, much bigger... fish to fry. The 53rd card is The Joker, and the face on that Joker is that of Jonathan "Mad Jack" Pulcifer. Moving very carefully, O'Callahan reaches down and undoes the hammer loop from the big Colt, but leaves it holstered, while with his left hand he reaches over and gathers the Sharps rifle to him, and lays it on the table, barrel pointed towards the door. With his left thumb he cocks the rifle. Then, barely breathing, he waits.

[The Abiliegh]

Well well well... she smiled, tossed back the rest of her whiskey, and set down the glass with an authority not expected from one of her look. Everyone seemed still with the shock... except for the preacher, who seemed content not to move from his seat and his firearm. Interesting, interesting character, that one...

She stood, adjusted her skirts, and walked to the door of the saloon. A coy smile flashed to her lips, seeing the ship, hiding her thoughts. Stories flashed through her mind, and she wondered... could this be it?

Stepping out into the dusty air, she looked for movement on the deck.

[Thalesia Turnblood]

(OOC [Which I assume means Out Of Context]: My apologies for my sudden disappearance. Dratted real life. As my signature notes, it keeps intruding into my fiction. I hope I can figure out where I need to go next!)

More madness. More chaos. And the resounding crash of the airship outside caused her to spill her coffee.

Heathens.

Reluctantly drawn to the mayhem outside the saloon, Thalesia put aside for the moment the all-too-delicious idea of toying with Martian generators and snatched up her medical supplies, on the supposition that there might be survivors. And even if there weren't, one never knew what one might harvest from the leftovers.

[MWBailey]

Brantley looked to Mis Thalesia, and said, " I think I'd better get myself involved in this; if thats who I think it is, things could get beyond merely hairy; suffice to say that Dame Misfortune tends to follow the poor fellow like a plague-ridden bloodhound."  He wlaked away from the Laboratory setup into the non-laboratorified area of the saloon, and sidled up to the Preacher.

"O'Callahan, is it?" he pulled his badge folio and showed it to the gun-toting cleric. "I'd Appreciate it if you could do two things; yes, keep the guns handy; BUT, if that's Pulsifer, DON'Tshoot or apprehend him unless he refuses to help us; Two, if it isn't Pulsifer, then be prepared to act with impunity. Pulsifer's not the only person who's used that ship; I'm one, and in some realities there are some very deadly and evil people who want my hide and that ship (and any and everybody with me) chopped into tiny gory pieces."

Second, don't let anybody but me, Pulsifer, or Miss Thalesia try to fly it; it has a time travelling  device on board, and anyone other than those three would probably cause untold damage to not only this but all othe realities as well...

HE then walked over to the door, and said, "Ma'am? Name's Brantley, US customs." he stuck out his hand in an affable manner, and continued after she shook it, lowering his voice somewhat, I couldn't help noticing that you seem to be expecting something , perhaps in regard to that vessel, yonder. All I ask is that you let me go first and check it iout. It might be the one everybody thinks it is, or it might not." he raised his voice then so thatthe entire room could hear, and said, "In any case, don't approach the ship until I yell for somebody to help out. if it's Mad Jack, he'll be paranoid as all hell, and since nothing has stirred all this time, something is probably wrong..."

Brantley approached, looked in several portholes (the flat-bottomed sailing scow that served as teh control car being small enough that such was easily possible. Tere seemed to be some sort of large, orange-haired monkey-like thing on the roof of the cabin, but it stayed hidden among the coiled spare ropes and lashed-down provisions, softly "ook--ooook" ing to itself. Brantley drew his blaster, and climbed aboard, cautiously making sure teh thing on top of the cabin didnt launch itself at him, and opened teh door, cursing when he saw Jack unconscious on the floor...

He moved to the rail, and shouted, "Miss Thalesia? Just Miss Thalesia for now, please! If you have head trauma supplies, you might want to double back and get it, looks like somebody hit him with something really heavy..."

[The Abiliegh]

"Like hell." She muttered under her breath.

She watched the customs officer go towards the cabin, and she clambered on board, as gracefully as possible, given the circumstance.

She looked towards the prow of the vessel, hand gently rested upon a rail. "Well... I'll be damn'd." She looked back over her shoulder, more to make sure that no one was going to actively remove her from the ship than worrying about who all was behind her.

Her hand moved to a locket at her throat, fingers delicately playing over what looked like simple filigree. It began to whir softly, and a pressure built in her chest, drawing her further towards the railing.

And then she stopped. This was it.

[Thalesia Turnblood]

Thalesia added a hand drill to the bag and pushed through the crowd. She handed the bag up to Mr. Brantley and looked for a way up onto the ship. Having made her way to the deck, she followed Mr. Brantley to the small, dim cabin, eyeing the orange ape askance. A flash of skirt caught her eye, but as it was headed the opposite direction, she paid it no mind.

Aside from a copiously bleeding head wound, the man on the floor didn't appear to be otherwise injured, so she set to work examining and binding the gash on his temple. His pupils appeared normal and his color somewhat gray, but not unduly so.

"We'll have to keep a close eye on him, Mr. Brantley," she said, only to discover that her companion was paying no attention to the wounded man, but conducting a thorough search of the cabin instead. The corner of a large book was visible beneath his capacious duster, that particular edge stained with fresh blood. She deduced that the tome had been the weapon that put her patient in his current stupor.

"Ahem. Mr. Brantley." She cleared her throat until she caught her companion's attention. "Is there something about this ship that affects our timestream? Does it also have Martian innards? Or is there something else going on here that I should know about?"

A tremor filled the air, pinging and prickling along the malletium implants in her left arm, causing a tingling sensation to thrill through the bones. To her dismay, tiny electrical sparks began to gather at her fingertips.

"Oh, this can't be good."

[MWBailey]

Brantley looked out on deck toward teh bow, and cursed sulphurously, following the epithet with a hissed "dammit, not another rogue device!" At the siound of both a beep and a loud, rapid clicking sound,He snatched both the cigarette case and the pocket watch out of his clothing and opened and consulted both., then looked back toward teh bow, seeing teh lady from the doorway on the deck.

"Miss Thalesia," he said, gesturing to the varnished wood Wells Fargo cabinet to the left of teh ship's wheel, cast your eyes upon the very second Chronojammer  timetravelling device. I happen to know that it is teh second, because I built the first in about 1910 at MIT in the 20th century; three years later, in 1878, I helped Captain "Mad Jack" Pulsifer, here at our feet, build the chronojammer in front of us. May God, or the Gods, or whatever really is in charge of the spiritual, have mercy on both his soul...and mine. No, I amn noty  off in my reckoning, nor an I mad as a hatter, though I sometimes wish, and have done many times over, that I were so.


I regret that I cannot tell you more just now. I can tell you to please not actuate the device infront of us, because it is, like all of its specific type, injurious to temporal and physical reality when it is running. to date, only Mad Jack has been able to operate it without completely disrupting the timestream onto which it latches in order to navigate -- and he's unconscious."

"Not anymore, Brantley, you long-winded Bastard. Let the lady speak, she's not as ugly as you." Pulsifer said with a groan in his voice. "and tell whoever's out on deck to get in here before the Orang gets amorous!"
(OOC: Oops! pardon the typo. fixed it, now. I hope...)

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

As Brantley approaches him, O'Callahan has a feeling he knows what's coming, and his supposition is verified seconds later. "Don't shoot or apprehend." Indeed, that is exactly what he expected the Customs man to say. He is not particularly impressed by the badge...O'Callahan recognizes two authorities-the Vatican, and God Himself. Brantley, obviously, is neither. However, the rest of the man's conversation comes as a surprise. Other realities? Tiny gory pieces? Time travel?!? The priest's dark eyes narrow, and a low involuntary hiss escapes his tightly compressed lips. "Blasphemy!" Brantley has already turned on his heel and is out the door, though, so he doesn't hear the sibilant hiss or the single word. O'Callahan knows there are other realms..Heaven and Hell, for sure. The one Brantley mentions sounds more like Hell. Time travel, though...that's a new one, though he has to admit, it explains a lot. Prophecy, for one thing, the stories of Pulcifer's fluctuating age another. He sits back, and uncocks the Hawkins. This is input which deserves consideration, evaluation. He'll bide his time, perhaps whoever crashed that craft outside is not even Mad Jack. In any case, no one is going anywhere...this town is a trap, and everyone here is in it. At least, he considers, if it is Pulcifer, then he knows why he was led here, and why he has been delayed here until now. Were it not for the strange device in the blacksmith's shop, he would have been gone yesterday. Now, if indeed that is Pulcifer outside, the greatest prize he could hope for, at least as far as Earth is concerned, is close to being his. Providence is good.

[Miles (a sailor)Martin]

Hearing aloud crash in the distance Miles quickly reties the knee of his trousers then slips over to the doorway and looks out, upon seeing the very strangly built airship he scratches his head then asks the blacksmith to come over and take a peek to see if he as ever seen it before. as he is waiting Miles notices the name in very faded paint on the bow of the small sailboat that is the gondola " Beau Rosin", pulling out a pair of oversized goggles from an inside pocket of his duster he starts cranking a handle on the top of them for thirty seconds the puts them on and takes a good look at the airship thru the IR setting then switches to UV then EM and finaly to radiation detection.making a note of each set of readings. looking at the combinnation of readings he starts to swear under his breath,' Should have known the army couldn't keep it hands on the durn thing , now it is S.N.A.F.U. city just like I told Admiral Heinlin it would be, damn it, Lazurus why did i ever let you talk me into this.' miles then puts the goggles back into the pocket he got them from and reaches into another and pulls out a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses,pouring them full he then hands on to the smith says 'Mazel Tov' and slams it down,then says 'I really must be getting along back to the saloon'he watches the smith sip then slam the remainder of the shot. 'J.D. Green label 75 years in the barrel, I have yet to find a better sipping wiskey made on the north american continent.' watching the smith for a moment miles says ' don't let any one except Brantly near that infernal contraption till I get back.he steps out and heads towards the saloon to find out what or who is screwing things up even more.

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Having left the smithy a few moments earlier, Jed is walking down the dirt street towards the tanner's place. The tanner is a Mexican fellow named Gonzales, and he is as good an artist with leather as any Gunn has ever seen. He needs his boots resoled now, in addition to wanting to get a better holster custom fitted for the new LeMat. Something overhead in the chaotic sky catches his attention, at first just a shadow, which quickly resolves itself into an airship...perhaps a generous appellation, since it appears to be a scow slung beneath a blimp...and Jedidiah watches in amazement as it plummets down into the street in what is less a landing than a controlled crash. It comes to rest in front of the saloon, and Jed sees several people emerge, Brantley in the lead, and clamber aboard. "Huh!" he says to himself, "Shore don't see thet everyday!" He decides that whatever is going on down there can wait, and resumes his walk to the tannery. "Fust thangs fust...I needs ta git m' boots fixed, an iffn' I put hit off, I reckon I might not git aroun' to hit later." Sarge is a practical man first and foremost, and, with all the weirdness coming thick and fast lately in this little town, tending to practical matters first makes the most sense to him.

[The Abiliegh]

She listened to the talking from the cabin. Even if she hadn't used the resonator, she'd know she was in the right place. Seems to have been some slight changes on board, but nothing so excessive as to make it unrecognizable.

She turned on her heel, and headed for the cabin, hearing a familiar voice. "Jack Pulsifer, you old damn buffoon." Her voice was tart, almost verging on acrid. Only the well-trained would catch the hitch in her voice as she saw the blood beginning to clot on his head. "You make a mighty fine habit of bustin' into little places like this all manner of unceremonious, don't ya?"

Her hand was on the revolver. She didn't know how he would react to this reunion, and, well, he was called MAD Jack for a reason...

[MWBailey]

Jack stood upright with Brantley's help, after hearing the voice. THAT voice...

Her name? what was her name; Now, that's damned aggravating, he thought. Ever since that Brazilian job, and that damned Mate' from that medicine man, I can't quite recall her name. It was that job right after the African airlift operation that had nearly cost the lives of all three of them, and the two crewmen they had hired in Zanzibar; After ...she... had disembarked in Galveston, They had flown down to Rio del Flaco in Brazil, hired three bravos there, and then continued to a rendezvous in the interior in a big rush in response to a telegram from an old friend of Dreyf's, to ferry an archaeologist to a vine-covered temple, where the old codger had expected to... find a... an... an Angel? was that it? And found an empty ruin with evidence that someone else had recently been there and uncovered all of its secrets...

And then the blimp's forward gas cell developed a leak, and Jack caught a weird fever, and Dreyf and...one of the bravos had taken him to the local witch-doctor/medicine man, and the bastard had brewed a Mate' that tasted like rancid laudanum. He was cured of fever almost within the hour, but unfortunately, as with all "magic," there was a price; in his case it was his memory of the name of the woman who was now in front of him. Now that he had let Brantley and Miss...Tal Issia? No, more like Thalesia, that was it, had let them help him out on deck, he could see her clearly.

"Girl, you're a sight for eyesores!" Damn, there I go again! He thought.

"Where've you been all these years?" He vaguely remembered some kind of disagreement, maybe it was his forgetting her name? No, that wasn't it, she hadn't been on that job. He'd said something just before they hit Galveston, and just like always, said it the wrong way, and then she was gone. He had a feeling he was still missing a huge part of the puzzle, but that was immaterial now. "Where... Where in China, and when, am I now? And how did you get all the way here, and why's this li'l' Chinee village look like Brokenrifle Gap, --or is it Bodie, in th' Arizona Territory?" He had not yet caught up to the idea that it just might really be in Arizona, and that once again he had escaped a deadly crash, only to potentially have found another, more roundabout, way to his own death; "Once the time-winds taste a person's essence, they will seek to taste it again, and again, for the rest of that person's days." That was what the old Witch-doctor had said, all those years ago...Sometimes Jack thought that was the first and only time that anybody's prophecy rang true...

[The Abiliegh]

"Eyesores?!" Her voice rose a bit, taking what sounded a damn lot like umbrage. "You must still be sore that I took off with your..." She paused, looked around, and decided that she best not mention just what she left with.

She wondered exactly how angry he actually was. Her hand still rested on the butt of her firearm, but she didn't seem all that ready to draw. "I've been around, by the way. Doin' a bit o' this and a bit o' that, just like always. And you're not in... China. You're in Colorado."

Letting that reality settle, she took the moment to eye the Brantley and Miss Turnblood. "Interestin' friends ya keep, madman. The man there even blanched to see you injured. Precious, really."

Memories flooded her. That had been a good time, sailin with Dreyfus and Jack. Terrifying and dangerous, to be certain, but good nonetheless. The man was a damn fool, but a good damn fool, at least by her. Too bad I wasn't so good by him... Gotta be more lucrative than mussin my skirts in the dust...

With an adjustment of those skirts, and a fluff of her curls, she closed the distance between herself and the group. "And I'll bet you're just seein' red, finding me on your ship like this again. Not so different than last time, really. You're bleedin', and I'm smilin'."

[Miles (a sailor)Martin]

As he steps out onto the street Miles stops short turns and runs down the alley to the barn he left his airship in , opening the people door in the front of the barn he quickly shifts to the side and waits 30 seconds for his eyes to adjust, then looks up to inspect the A.P.A Archerion lll bow  and check the skin for tightness " Well  old girl it looks as we may be here awhile", patting the underside of the port keel as he walks between the twinned gasbags ducking under the control space in between." I just may have cooked our goose this time, trying to make a little money on the side" he says to the ship,"but it looked like a way to get a bit ahead on the bank payments without having the Revenuers all over my case again but that sudden downdraft and a almost miss with a tree sure has fouled that idea up" a low creaking seems to reply " it may not be all that bad".Miles continues the external inspection finding noting differrent from when he left then climbs upthru the belly hatch and gets out the generator set and lowers it to the ground and ties it of, then he goes forward to the cokpit and rotates two wheels while watching the strain gages on the landing wheels when they show 200k he stops,then goes back to the hatch getting a medum cylynder that is marked 'L HYD' and lowering it out the hatch as well. miles then lowers himself out, then drags the two items out  as well. Leaving the  cylinderhe folds out the handles on the generatorand rolls it to the doorway then gets the 60 lb bottleand carries it over and puts it in place. turning to the ship he sats "Back in a bit Darling hopefully with a fresh gas charge ".  Miles then grabs the wheelbarrow generator set and heads for the saloon figuring he may be able to get 200 gallons of water there

[MWBailey]

I can think of one difference, Miss Meta." THAT was it! he struggled not to smile and laugh right out loud; her name was Meta! "I havent said anything backwards, and you haven't shot me for it." He paused a minute, remembering that that was a large part of the huge piece of the puzzle.he had meant to say that ...well, hell. Now that memory just skipped away off behind his medulla oblongata. He then said, "after all that time, I cain't figure out why you did it;  You shoulda known I cain't seem to say the right thing frontways half the time."

[The Abiliegh]

"S'funny, ya know. I'm the double-crossin' snake, as I recall you tellin' me on more 'an one occasion, yet you've got the parts that double-cross even your own damn self."

Brantley and Miss Turnblood both seemed content to watch the interaction, and seeing as that Mad Jack was still bleedin' somethin' awful from his scalp, she picked up a piece of some cloth or another from the floor and moved towards him.

"Now sit down, ya old goat, before ya fall again from the dizzy. Let little ol' Meta see to that head wound you've got there." Her voice was patronizing, but not in the worst of ways as she put a chair behind him, urging him to sit by getting dangerously close to invading his personal space. Not close enough to really anger him none, but close enough to encourage him to sit to escape her.

[Thalesia Turnblood]

Her patient was awake, moving, and, as far as she could tell, suffering from no lack of whatever intellect he had previously possessed. But this...this was interesting.

She touched her fingers together and received a tiny shock. She clamped down on a surprised giggle. It tickled. She did it again. It still tickled. As an experiment, she reached out and surreptitiously poked Mr. Brantley. No response. Disappointing, but with all his Martian parts, perhaps not surprising. She poked at a wooden cabinet door. Nothing, but wood was not a good conductor.

A small mirror, it's tarnished silver marring the edges of the glass, hung above the bureau. Glass was an insulator, but silver was an excellent conductor! The rumpled silk of her gloves, however, might interfere with the results. Making certain that no one watched, she slipped the glove from her left hand, frowning at the network of fine scars that covered her skin.

Everyone was absorbed in the other woman's faintly threatening posture over her patient. Thalesia covered her face with her right hand and touched her fingers to the mirror.

Glass exploded, showering the cabin with tiny fragments, though none seemed injured. She twiddled her still-electrified digits.

"Oh, *that* was highly satisfying!"

[MWBailey]

"Well, of course I blanched," Brantl;ey exclaimed. "Jack, here. is an old friend and comrade, and the only person besides me who's worked on a chronojammer and still alive to tell about it.Yeah, I know you don't have a clue what mean, miss Meta, and if you did know without my tellin' you, that pistol there would be the same as holding a small iron teddybear, for all the good it would do you against What I've got." He noticed Thalesia's discomfiture and the tiny arcs and sprks jumping from her fingers and what looked like freckles, and realized what they probably meant...

Jack's ship had been the one that Brantley took along with the four other airships that had risen to the fringes of space above th earth to meet the First Martian onslaught head-on; Jack had piloted her, and Brantley had manned the guns, and then made that ill-advised rush out on deck to join the five hundred men from the other airships who were jumping onto the Martian Cruisers as they came in close to fight the airship battlecruisers and other craft. (HE guessed that Tommy, wherever, whenever he was, now, must have been one of the Jarheads from the USAS Round Top, that big top-decker ship stuffed with guns and radar, that had led the sortie to the outer limits of the atmosphere).

HE, Brantley, had nearly perished with the forty who got captured, but because he carried the stygmata of unshielded time travel and dimensional shifting - the sparks and arcs when in the presence of a Zigma Field - and the Martian organs transplanted after his own first brush with the chronojammer (Zigma) field, the invaders had assumed him to be an operative, and let him go. He smiled a death's-head smile when he saw the results of Miss Thalesia's experiment with the moirror, while Jack's reaction was classic for a gunman in such a situation -- pull iron and crouch.

At that moment, the Orangutan dedcided it had had aenough, and swung into the cabin through the open porthole and began screaming "OOO! OOOK! EEE!" and then ran out of the cabin, forward,  and faster than the lady could move and grabbed Meta's gun, then backed off and covered the four of them. It then suddenly shot Jack in the shoulder, shook the gun from its hand while screeching bloody murder, then jumpedback to the cabin and back out the porthole and disappeared...

"Damn you, Tzeda! I toldja teachin'  Jasmine ta shoot was a bad idea!" Jack yelled, his voice sounding choked, and then crumpled to the deck, favoring his shoulder, as Brantley pulled his blaster, ran inside to the porthole, and stuck the blaster out the window, fired several banshee-screaming thaumic bursts, and blew half of the western corner wall of the brick-walled mercantile store to oblivion as the Orangutan dashed around it. "BLAST and bloody DAMN that animal!" he roared, and nearly went after it, but decided he needed to stay, and help with Jack's shoulder. he pulled roll of bandages from the pocket of his duster, and handed them to Thalesia.

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Meanwhile, O'Callahan has finally decided that he has waited long enough...maybe too long. He rises, and rapidly crosses the saloon to the door, where he pauses, peers cautiously out, and sees nothing and no one, save for the bulk of the scow sitting in the street, the gasbag above it buffeting about a bit in the howling wind. Climbing onto the deck, he quickly ascertains that everyone must be in the cabin, so he quietly goes to the stern, and listens carefully. His sensitive hearing picks up some of the conversation inside...enough to be sure that his quarry, Pulcifer, is indeed on board, and furthermore, he overhears a voice he identifies as Brantley's refer to him as " an old friend and comrade." "Hmmphhh!" he thinks to himself, "Don't shoot or apprehend, indeed! Sorry excuse for a lawman, that one...no help from that quarter, then." There is an unknown in the equations he has run through in his mind. He is relatively certain that no one can leave this town by land-whether or not escape can be accomplished by air is the question. He pulls a large folding knife from his pocket, a Navaja, Spanish steel, razor sharp and a foot long. He quickly and methodically begins cutting the ropes that secure the blimp to the hull of the scow, working his way forward. Near the wheelhouse, he is startled by a large orange ape, who in its turn is equally startled by him, and the anthropoid scurries to the cabin and dives through an open porthole. He crosses himself, muttering "Satan spawn" under his breath, and resumes his cutting of the lines. He makes short work of it, and as he is cutting the last few, he hears breaking glass, almost immediately followed by the report of a revolver. "Damnation!" he exclaims, as the ape comes barreling back up the deck towards him, screeching at the top of its simian lungs, and launches itself past him and into the rigging he has just severed, and from there to overboard. The priest ducks down as several screaming shots come from the cabin, and obliterate part of a nearby building. Apparently concentrating on the fleeing creature, the shooter does not notice that the blimp is hanging literally by a thread, or O'Callahan, who promptly cuts the last line. The gasbag, freed from the weight of the scow, rapidly rises skyward, but halts its rise at a couple of thousand feet, and begins circling, like a piece of cork circling a drain. "Well, I guess the 'limit' holds true for the air, also," he muses. Satisfied with his work, he vaults back over the rail, and, straightening his clothing, calmly walks back into the saloon, and resumes his place at the table in the shadowed corner.
"At least," he thinks to himself smugly, "nobody is going to be taking that ship out of here, unless we get another Great Flood, and the Almighty has promised that He would not do that again! The nearby El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas en Purgatrio-The River of Lost Souls in Purgatory (usually just called the Purgatory River, after which the town is named)- will have to rise quite a ways to float that scow. And if that shot I heard found Pulcifer, ah well...no absolution for him, then, if someone else has killed him..no one since Iscariot has deserved Hell more....as long as he leaves this town in the back of my hearse, it's all the same to me."

(ps: Tommy, the Marine about whom Brantley wondered, is in another place and time, getting a tan with the lovely Mrs. Cross, drinking Ernest Hemingway's good whiskey and admiring Papa's latest batch of  kitties with seven toes on each paw.)

[The Abiliegh]

"Well, I'll be damned..." Her voice was low as she watched the primate scurry away with her revolver. Brantley was after it with his blaster, blocking any attempt she may have had to retrieve the weapon herself. Let him... she thought. No need to play all my cards yet anyhow...

And in that moment, she saw a flash of movement from the deck. She didn't see his face, but she was certain it was the preacher. The movement was determined, methodical, quiet, and as non-invasive as possible, given the situation. Of the parties she'd encountered thus far, he was the only one aside from herself that could likely pull it off, and she was pretty damn certain she was standing where she was. Which, incidentally, was not always as easy a bit of knowledge to hold as one might think.

But it was a matter to take up later. Whatever he was doin' out there, with nothing exploding and the peek-a-boo Gatling still below deck, it wasn't like to be more important that taking care of the bleeding airman shot by her own damn gun.

The mirror, however. That was something that needed to be addressed now. "Miss Turnblood, is it?" she arched a brow in the girl's direction, and continued with the introduction. "Meta McKinnley, a pleasure I'm certain. However, we've a bit more pressin' matters than pleasantries at the moment. Jack seems to be lyin' here bloodier than ever, and your hands seem to be causin' and awful mess of..." she pauses, looking to where the mirror once had been whole and hale. She frowned a bit, she'd always liked that mirror. "Of things. How about you let me take care of Jack. I'd hate to se him all manner of crispy before we got to finish our joyful reunion." She held out a hand for the gauze that Brantley had passed over.

"And while I'm patchin' this man up, you can tell me all about what in god's green earth just happened with your explodin' mirrors and causing monkey's to go batty." Her voice was actually friendly. One would almost call it warm.