spectator entry chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE: SLADE.

"So it—it seems like we have exited what c-can be called normal time," Ichabod summed up for us. His teacup rattled like clanking bones as he picked it up, unsteady hand shaking and spilling the cup's contents. He took a long and grateful sip. "Th—that's fascinating. We've nev...never been outside the normal sc-scope of human history b-before."

"So where all have you been, then?" Twygal asked. Of the girls present, I liked her the most. It'd been a while since I had saw a piece of clothing—that aviator jacket—I could readily identify as being from my time. There was no recognition in her eyes, though, of my trench coat or fedora, so after our 411 session the spark of optimism that we had something in common had cooled into just another false hope.

It's always obvious when Ichabod's about to go into one of his long-winded lectures. It starts with his thumb and index finger as he fiddles with his glasses, then follows up with the clearing of his throat. The sickness that has overwhelmed him since the Hessian came rolls back like the tide and for a while there's some life beneath his paper-thin skin.

Fortunately, we were interrupted before he could really get started detailing what would've been the unabridged, annotated version of our travels from the last year. Unfortunately, it was by Polaris—she had come back by herself.

Knew it was a bad idea.

"Where is he?" I asked, abandoning the chair the girls had pulled out for me.

"He's … gone," she answered, her voice smaller than it was before. "I—I'm sorry, but I stopped at the front desk for some information, and by the time I turned around he was—"

"This is all my fault," I said. "I shouldn't have let him go—or I should have went with him. You're just a kid, you don't know how he is. God, by now he could have found another time rift, or—"

From our table at the bistro I had a good view of the rest of the courtyard. A window of a far-off building was suddenly lit with fire before shattering from thermal shock.

"...Or he could have gotten into trouble. Any of you know what room that window belongs to?"

---

We found Pecos in one of the foyers. Broken glass still dripped from the empty windowpane like a halfhearted rain. Both the curtains that had framed the window and—much to Ichabod's displeasure—the bookcase that stood just behind it had been reduced to smoldering ruins. The staircase was peppered with shards of glass, mirror, and marble. Sharing that same space was a dame with feathers in her hair, previously unconscious, but now struggling to her feet with the aid of the banister. There was a twelve foot span of ice, and just beyond that was Pecos, kneeling in front of another woman. Her sailor uniform was one of the more elaborate I'd seen, blacks and turquoise beads and ribbons hanging off a jacket that looked like it belonged on a corpse, not some pretty thing like her.

"You have chutzpah, running away in a place like this," the broad—a blond—said as she extended her hand to him. She had the kind of smile a man wants to fight for—the kind he spends his whole life in gin joints hoping to find. It was crooked like a politician's and beautiful. "This whole satellite is powered on love and justice and miniskirts. Thousands of sailor soldiers, bored, looking for a good cause. Chasing down some intergalactic fugitive would be a bright spot in an otherwise ordinary day."

Pecos could only stare at her outstretched hand like it was a loaded gun. Come to think of it—it might as well been, it was just as dangerous. Her words took some time to settle in his mind, like the froth on a cold beer, before it dissipated down to its essentials:

Criminal. She had called him a criminal.

"Shucks no, miss, I ain't no criminal. I'm a lawman and a cowboy, but I ain't no criminal," said Pecos, who scrambled to his feet and then to take off his hat, holding it over his chest to reveal that head of blond curls. I thought it was doing him a disservice—without the hat, he looked more like a schoolboy than a rancher.

"Really?" she said, and that smile of hers curled in a way that made me nervous. She looked beyond Pecos, to survey the damage left in his wake, before she nodded in approval. "I think I like your brand of justice, darling. It keeps things interesting."

"Well, shoot, it was an accident—I—you do?" Pecos babbled before he had a chance to really understand what she had to say—and once he did, he could only stand there in shock. After a moment's pause, he sang like a stool pigeon, "Gosh, miss, you sure are awful pretty."

That was enough—if he wasn't going to get himself blown up by some trigger-happy soldier, he was going to proverbially hang himself by acting like a fool in front of one. I made my way down the stairs and put a hand on his shoulder. Ichabod followed suit not too long after.

"Well, aren't you sweet?" said the blond with a laugh. She looked down just in time to see a small dog—Ichabod tells me it was a papillon—pad up beside her. "Dizzy, Hopalong here just called me pretty. Isn't he the sweetest?"

In a rare moment of bravery (maybe because he was dealing with a dog no bigger than a bread box) Ichabod knelt and reached out to pat the dog on the head. Suddenly, Ichabod shrieked and toppled over when the dog met him in reply—"Hands to yourself, slick."

Pecos was undeterred by the behavior of this woman's animal, though. Instead, he weaved back and forth from the heels to the toes of his boots, wringing the brim of his hat like it was handkerchief. "Shucks, I—would you—I..."

"And such turn-of-phrase," the blond teased, reducing Pecos to gibberish.

"Xena!" said a pink haired woman who was obviously as impatient as I was with this situation. She was dressed to the nines, but with a flash of light she was reduced to a blue school uniform. With it, her cold expression melted. "Lunch date, remember?"

"Of course, darling—I would never forget something so important!" said our femme fatale. She turned her attention to Pecos for one last time, leaning close to him. She tucked one of his stray curls behind his ear and smiled. "Let me know when you ditch those handcuffs...and your little entourage. It could be fun."

With that, she stood on her tiptoes and sealed the deal. When she stepped away, Pecos was  wearing a ring of bright pink lipstick on his right cheek. She was gone, and he was doomed.

Pecos's lip quivered, perhaps in anticipation of some quick witted line, but there was nothing else to say. It was only after she and the pooch had disappeared into a crowd of girls that he finally got the chance to speak again.

"...Gosh," he whispered, gloved hand to his cheek. He was quiet, but you could tell the wheels of his mind were already turning. This might have been the first escape attempt, but it wouldn't be the last.

"I—I think that was Eris," Ichabod finally piped up behind me, collecting himself off the floor. "S-soldier of chaos and upheaval."

"Jesus," I murmured with a sad shake of my head. "I can believe it."