The Extended Steam Salon

[Captain Brandsson]

"Well, the where is pretty obvious. It's leaking here." She stood, smothing her skirt over ther thinghs. "But Tommy is right. You couldn't have got that weight shackled to ya 30,000 years ago. Where were you before that? And how fast were you jumping between times?"

"Atlantic City...  Five days from now.   Had a 'philosophical disagreement' with a fella who wanted me dead over something I haven't done yet and figured dumping me in the primordial drink would make his point."

[The Abiliegh]

"So he intiatiated the first time-jump, then?" She paused, rubbing her hands over her arms in thought. "And lemme guess, you jumped right here, not really letting things settle in around you?"

[Captain Brandsson]

"So he intiatiated the first time-jump, then?" She paused, rubbing her hands over her arms in thought. "And lemme guess, you jumped right here, not really letting things settle in around you?"

"Yeah, one of his goons took me back.  I managed to get the drop on him and get this," I dangled the 'watch' and then pocketed it again, "Away from him as we sank and pop myself out."

[The Abiliegh]

She looked at the watch. She couldn't help but look at the watch. It had been the same when Billy had one around...

"May..." Her velvet voice caught in her throat. "May I see it?"

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Brandsson is right..it's almighty hard for T.E. to wrap his head around any of this. He knows he ain't the brightest piece of brass in the box, and everything he knows about time travel is what he's read in National Chronographic....and even that was mostly to look at the pictures of the nekkid cave-ladies.He's just an aging gumshoe, past his prime, a relic in his own right. Still, he's like a terrier on a bone when he's following a lead."What fella?" he inquires a bit sharply. "How's this tie up with Lawrence Livermore Lipschitz?" There's no time for social niceties now...from the look of that catastrophic fireball he "saw" from the bridge, there ain't going to be five days to figger this....maybe not even five hours, if Mrs. Cross's calculations are correct.

[Captain Brandsson]

She looked at the watch. She couldn't help but look at the watch. It had been the same when Billy had one around...

"May..." Her velvet voice caught in her throat. "May I see it?"

I tossed Cross the time peice.
"Don't get too attached to it, doll.  I'm pretty sure it's good luck on top of everything else."

[The Abiliegh]

She caught it, and sank into a chair, just looking at the little golden clock. Her green eyes were soft as she gazed at it, her lips just a little slack. And she had stopped trembling.

She seemed to move on instict as she fliped the cover up and checked it's settings, glancing from it to the clock on the wall. The times did not match, but on the up side, it seemed mathematically sound to assume that it matched what time it *ought* to be.

She ran her fingers over the back and edges of the timepiece, memorizing the dials and the ways with which to alter it.

A tear rolled silently down her cheek.

[Captain Brandsson]

"I take it that you and the 'piece are acquainted?"

[The Abiliegh]

"I take it that you and the 'piece are acquainted?"

His voice startled her out of the daze. She looked up, re-focusing on the present. Brandsson, Tommy, Honey, Ms. Storm, and FarmGirl. Her sassy composure came back, wrapping around her like a blanket, and soon she stood, extending the piece back to the Captain.

"You might say that..." She dropped it into his palm, and turned quickly on her heal, heading straight for the office door, and out into the bar. She didn't even bother with the machine this time. Instead, she pulled down a glass and a bottle. She kept her back to the group in the office while she drank.

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Obviously, something about the Timepiece affected Mrs. Cross deeply. Tommy's hard as flint on the outside, but he's got a soft heart, especially when it comes to pretty dames..can't stand to see a woman cry. Frankly, the golden "watch" gives him the creeps...just being near the thing is apparently enough to cause a fella's moorings to slip...not an hour ago he was bouncing around through time like a spastic kangaroo, or, he mentally shrugs, who knows how long ago...or ahead, it was. What time is it now outside the walls of this place? If it was up to him, he'd put the damned thing on the table and pound it into a pile of little brass cogs with the butt of his Colt. "I still got some questions fer you, bub," he says flatly to Captain Brandsson. He follows Mrs. Cross out into the bar. She's already knockin' back her second..."Hey, darlin'," he says gently, "Hey, now...gettin pie-eyed ain't gonna help things, now."

[Captain Brandsson]

Too many coincidences had piled up for my tastes.  This wasn't just chance or my patented dumb luck.
There was a ticking time-bomb of fate about to go off and we were probably standing right on it.

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

A growling from his midsection reminds Tommy that he hasn't eaten in almost twenty-four hours. Clark the Clockwork Barkeep is ten feet away, polishing some of the bar's brass appointments. "Hey, Clark," says T.E.
"Yes, sir?" the automaton responds in his slightly tinny voice. "Is there a griddle in this joint? Do you know how to cook?" asks Tommy. "Why, yes, sir, I do, I'm a very good cook," answers Clark. "Howzabout you fry us up a mess o' them fish that arrived with Cap'n Brandsson, then...and throw some eggs on there, too, if ya've got 'em. Drinkin' on a empty stummick ain't a good idea even when things ain't going ta Hell in a handbasket." Tommy returns his attention to Mrs. Cross. "How 'bout it, girl...think you could stand to eat a bite? Might as well get some use out o' them fish...they're about th' only good thing ta come outa this
crazy night."

[The Abiliegh]

She looked to Tommy, eyes wide a moment. He could see the steel of her will slide into place in those eyes.

Setting the glass down, she nodded. "That's the thing that stole my Billy, Mr Gunn. In it's way, at least. I was able to stop using it. I saw what it did to people. I saw the problems it could make. And I stopped." She leaned against him, laying her head on his shoulder, needing the physical contact. "But he didn't. Couldn't."

She paused, taking a few steadying breaths. "So, we got ourselves a couple of problems, but they just might work out to be our solution, really. We've got a doomsday device set to go off the day after tomorrow. We've got a bar that wont even see tomorrow if it does. We've got a golden chronometer that will take us to any time in the aether. Seems to me we might be able to combine these things to make an answer. And yes, I could stand a bite to eat while we try an' figure this mess out."

[fireheart storm]

Ms storm had watched in silence, and finally spoke up, "Am I the only one present not acquainted with time travel?" she frowned, ten times faster out there... She watched Mrs Cross's reaction to the time piece, her hand slipping in her pockett, fingers closing aruond a small silver coin.
"What ever is happening with all this time travel business, I'm a bit lost. I',m just an honest worker with some oddities in my past, so point me to what you need me to do, and I'll do what you need."  she hated feeling useless, but all this planing, she had little to contribute. Monsters she could tell you about in a heart beat, spirits? Them to.

[The Abiliegh]

She looked to Ms Storm. "I don't know what any of us can do yet, truthfully. Familiar with time travel as I may be, one never does truly understand it."

[MWBailey]

A strange feeling overtook MW as he walked back to that eclectic little bar....salon, , whatever it called itself. A strange, greasy, electrical feeling, but not unfamiliar; it was the kind of feeling one got when a chronojammer, the first of the actual time-travelling ships, as opposed to tiny, discreet devices carried on the person (The chronojumper on the Beau Rosin was a whole other sort altogether), when on ewere close to the timeline that the 'jammer was travelling on. he heard noise from the sky, a cacophony of steam engines, artillery reports, and shells whistling down upon the city--but not the same city! it was like he was back in Chicago, and a version of Chicago that he had never seen before, all shining glass-and-steel domes and fanciful traceries in stone and concrete, all being pounded to burnt dust by the airship fleets. a second, thirty, forty-five, and then he was back on the Waterfront lane, running, now; he knew there wasn't much time, if the slips were that big and that noticeable... he hung a left, went up the street, saw a kid leaning a putter scooter against the wall, paid him a fifty for it, and sped up the streets and up the alley, past the dumpster with the shotgun-slug dents in it, and hung a left to skid sideways to a stop in front of the salon.

There were no time cops, as far as he knew; but he was still on call with the Customs Bureau, despite everything, and undeclared shipments of bombs and warlike implements were at least partly his business; since the Welles Affair  during the last century, it had been internationally agreed that time machines were subject to search-and-seizure by customs officials when used for violent purposes. he checked to see that he had the badge in it's leather wallet, an dstepped throiugh the door...

[The Abiliegh]

You see Mrs Cross leaning against Mr Gunn at the bar. Ms Storm is standing nearby, and Clark seems to be preparing fish. The door in the back is open, and it appears that Honey, Captain Brandsson, and another woman are in the back office. It is also very much obvious that it is not the same time of day inside the salon as it is outside the salon.

[fireheart storm]

Ms Storm looked up at MW, feeling a bit of...fear? No, maybe not that, but something close run up her spine, she stared hard at him something in her memory stirring, though she couldn't quite grab it before it slipped away. She turned so her back was to him, She was Ms Storm now, no one knew the hunter Storm here, or at least she hoped not that was part of the reason she disguised herself as a man to do all the hunting business anyway, and none of this situation had anything to do with that part of her past.

Right?

"Mrs Cross.." she whispered, shuffling a bit,  looking over her shoulder at him. "Is he trouble?"

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

The arrival of MW back into the Salon is a welcome distraction, well, sort of welcome. The smell of Mrs. Cross's hair, the warmth of her leaning against him reminds Tommy that food's not the only thing he hasn't had in a while.  "M.W." says Tommy, "Good to see you're back..we got a ..situation." Suddenly, another cog slips into place in his brain, and he mutters under his breath, "Oh, no..."
Calling out to the back room, he says, "Hey, Cap'n...if you got back five days before you left...then ain't there a doppelganger of you still out there running around...and ain't he got a Timepiece of his own?!?"

[MWBailey]

So, thats it! My 'jumper isn't about to blow apart! Somebody in this town's runnin' a chrono-jammer, and and its messin' up the continuum! Mr. Branndsson, is it? Name's MW Brantley, U.S. Customs," He drawled, his accent thicker than it was last night, as he took out the badge, hung it in his shirt pocket, nodded to Tommy, and --Holy Coil Burns, what's up with this place? He wondered. Then he remembered Mrs. Cross's file, and the Storm woman, na dthe whole Welles Affair. Twentieth-century man was not alone...

"Miss Storm, no, I'm not exactly trouble, unless your real name's Lenore, or you've been running microwave grenades. They are illegal on the twentieth-century timeline." He noted her surprise, and said "Your reputation precedes you, ma'am; I know what the grenades are used for, Miss Storm, it's not you I'm concerned with -- as long as you've not gotten bored with draculas and zombies."

"Mrs. Cross, The last Time I heard anything about 'em, chronojammers weren't being disguised as drinking establishments, because camouflage circuits are stymied by the coil emanations. No, this is either a pocket device-induced field, or you've got a 'jumper in your back closet."

None of these are my concern, unless they're being used to conduct or support violent endeavors; that is, "violent" endeavors that run contrary to national or intra-temporal security."

"But... somebody's running a regular timeship, and the type that messes up timelines if it ain't maintained properly. Their intentions are anything but peaceful -- and the Major Anomalous Incidents are getting to be more than five minutes long. Maybe you don't know you know it, but I'd bet somebody in this building knows something that could save us all a lot of hell."

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Everyone has by now gravitated back out to the bar, and Tommy's about to speak, when Clark whirs up behind him with a large covered dish, sets it on the bar, and removes the top with a flourish. "Brunch," announces the Tin-man,"is served." Three of the larger fish have been skinned and deboned whole, cooked with dill and other spices and are artfully arranged on the platter on a bed of spinach. Surrounding the fish around the edge of the platter are at least a dozen eggs, fried and prepared huevos rancheros style. Tommy is astonished...considering the limited resources Clark had to work with, this presentation is worthy of a cordon bleu chef. "Incredible!" exclaims Tommy. "I told you I was a good cook," says Clark matter-of-factly. Tommy thinks to himself, "Once this is all over, I'm gonna have to ask Mrs. Cross where she got this mechanical marvel." For the moment, their impending doom is forgotten, as everyone chows down on the repast prepared by the surprisingly talented Clockwork Barkeep.

[von Corax]

At a table by the door, a nondescript gentleman closes a notebook and drains his glass. Rising, he consults a pocket watch; annoyance flickers across his face. He pockets the watch, lays a few coins on the table, and slips out the door into the darkness.

[MWBailey]

MW frowns; in his experience, nondescript people often do rather exciting work, and get away with it, because they look as if they couldn't possibly be into such things, because they're so, well, nondescript...

"Who was that feller that just left?" MW Asked the other denizens of the salon.

[fireheart storm]

Ms Storm jumped, blushing when he started talking about vampires and zombies but keeps her mouth clamped shut.  She starts to eat in silence, turnign her head when she hears some one get up, watching a nondescript leave.  When MW asks she says,
"Not a clue...should some one follow him?" she asked, her way of volunteering.

[Sgt.Major Thistlewaite]

Finishing off a couple of eggs and a good sized piece of fish...completely unfamiliar, but tasty, Tommy feels a little better about things."Ya can't fight evil on an empty belly, and nothing seems quite so bleak when you've got some nourishment," he thinks. Wiping his mouth with a bar napkin, he says, "Well done, Clark, well done." He answers MW's question first..."Nobody knows, MW...he left, but nobody here ever saw him come in, or noticed him at all. How do you reckon that's even possible?" Still, not the weirdest thing happening around here..."There was no "Boom," so he didn't arrive by chrono...maybe he was an apparition..not really there at all." To Ms. Storm, he says, " No...let's concentrate our efforts here, whoever or whatever he was, he's gone now...we've got more than enough to deal with, now, here...but," he adds," suit yourself. I'm certainly not in charge...Mrs. Cross, Captain Brandsson, and MW seem to know a lot more about this time traveling than all the rest of us put together."