we need to go back [Lost Luau fic. Richard, Miles, Ensemble. sci fi AU fusion crossover]
Title: we need to go back
Summary: AU fusion crossover with (higlight the next line)
Samurai Jack
At the LAX Space Port, Miles runs into a time traveler from 1867 with a possibly even stranger sword....
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard a.k.a. Ricardo, Miles, Daniel/Charlotte, Frank, Naomi, Jacob, Esau a.k.a. MIB a.k.a Smoke Monster (sorry, not referred to as Samuel in this), ensemble (can be hints of Richard/Miles if that floats your boat, but they work as simply platonic too)
Genre: sci-fi gen
Rating: PG-13 to R for language and violence
A/N: Posted for toestastegood at the 2010 lostsquee Luau for her prompt, "future." POV starts out with Miles' then mixes with 3rd person and others' POV (i.e. Richard's, etc.). Artistic license for characterizations considering I put a bunch of these characters in a wildly different AU fusion crossover setting, especially Jacob and Esau.
LAX Space Port was a sprawling mess of steel and hover cars, with offworlders mingling with Earth's human, mutant, and robotic natives. They crawled all over conducting their business: departing on flights; hailing guides; processing in the immigration office, where the most unfortunate ones waited their turn for an audience with Esau, to beg the shapeshifting demon for permission to live on his planet....
Miles couldn't help but think that listening to the dead instead of this chaotic, depressing din was preferable. Especially since he was currently nursing a drink in one of the port's many cantinas with uninspired light shows, Triclops women dancing in cages, and some boy band screeching out "you all everybody" over and over again. Naomi had said the guys were "Driveshaft," that they started back in her home city-state--but then their fearless leader was back to business as she conducted her interviews with more mercenaries in their relatively cloistered booth at the bar.
Which as far as Miles was concerned, was going nowhere fast. Dan and Charlotte had gone off to explore (more like fuck); Frank was up on top, at one of the balconies for fresh air, doing his best to stay the Designated Pilot; Naomi was all on her lonesome now with all sorts of thugs and weapons experts, not like that was a cause for alarm. Frankly, Miles felt their real problem was their total lack of monetary incentive for any mercenaries--doubtless they at least had to offer some goon really damn fine compensation for the prospect of essentially committing treason against Esau.
Miles downed another shot. His thoughts turned more accusing, guiltier--he should've said to hell with his dad's concerns about some pyscho scientist probing into his 'gift' and dragging him off to a lab for experiments, he should've gone farther out, visited real far-out boondocks and snatched up more paying customers for conversations with the dead, maybe then they'd have enough to--
Miles saw another newcomer enter the cantina. Along with the hope of getting wasted on reportedly high-grade LAX alcohol unlike anything back home, Miles had grabbed a seat near one of the entrances to people-watch, in case there was anyone particularly interesting, or possibly a new type of offworlder he'd never seen before.
Guy that walked in was another human, but he was definitely in the 'interesting' category--for one thing, he was dripping blood everywhere. Another was his fashion sense--even if there was rip and tear, dried blood, and wet blood soaking through, his clothes were so odd, though Miles couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly was weird about them. Dude wore a long dark blue coat, but the material looked real unfamiliar, and his boots and hat were cut out of a style he'd never seen before--pirate, Miles realized with a start. Dude looked like a pirate out of one of the old CineScopes; Miles guessed he was an actor then, or maybe he was one of those seafarers that revisited retro clothes.
The stranger's dark wild waves of hair and that beard certainly matched that pirate look, and that sheathed sword at his side was an absolute clincher. Then there was his eyes--Miles immediately noticed the man's eyes, especially since they had grown wide. He was pretty damn sure he'd never seen anyone's eyes go that wide, like a damn puppy dog's. Miles could see them perfectly, see how they were amazingly dark all over--definitely some eyeliner, some kohl, some kind of cosmetic.
Miles wondered what the hell had the half-dead, filthy-looking stranger look so freaked out, and he followed his line of sight to a tall reptilian offworlder with a really long neck and wielding a prosthetic right arm--and he wasn't the only one, others of his species were around and with the same prosthetic (though not always the right arm). It made Miles wonder if it was some kind of clan thing or what.
He rolled his eyes, assumed some loan shark crap was going on--
"What are you looking at?!"
--and then his brow furrowed; it seemed the two were strangers.
Instinctively, Miles winced when the offworlder finally had enough of being gawked at, and slugged the stranger across the face, sending him crumpling to the ground. At least it hadn't been the reptile's freakin' huge metal arm that delivered the punch.
Dark Eyes dragged himself up into a sitting position, hacking out another splotch of blood onto the cantina floor, and Miles saw out of the corner of his eye the crowd edging in their direction, itching for a fight to watch, and it wasn't like he could say he was so different from them--it wasn't as if was about to help the wide-eyed idiot.
The man rubbed at his mouth, wiping away blood, and his eyes still wide and flickering around, from the pissed off reptile towering over him, to other offworlders and robots enjoying and working at the cantina, to the Triclops dancers (one of whom had bent down and coquettishly winked at him). Dark Eyes then moved into a kneeling position, turning back fully to the reptilian offworlder, took a couple of breaths, and bowed his head, eyes closed and wild hair falling down to cover his face, his hat tipped down
"I'm sorry--I'm new here, and meant no disrespect." Miles watched the strange pirate-looking man with complete fascination; the guy even sounded different. "I did not mean to stare."
The digits on the offworlder's prosthetic instead sharpened into claws. "Get up."
The stranger only bowed his head lower. "Again, I apologize for my rude behavior."
"I said get up," snapped the reptile, and Miles began to retreat a little from his lone table, away from the impending slaughter. Though he new no matter how far he went, he'd probably hear the guy's last thoughts, the death would be too recent and violent, Miles would still be too close, and maybe it was the alcohol, but even the prospect of learning more about this weird stranger didn't exactly make him look forward to listening in on the deceased's thoughts this time. If the dude would just get up and not look so helpless, if his stupid dark eyes hadn't look like a damn puppy's before....
"I wish you no harm."
That got the offworlder laughing. "It is not I who will be harmed." And then he lunged forward, his prosthetic claw raised…and it was promptly sliced off.
It wasn't a completely clean cut either; some flesh was torn, some flecks of blood flying, nerves rendered, whatever--either way, the offworlder howled, even more pissed off, and in pain this time. Miles just blinked at Dark Eyes' raised sword and the offworlder's neon green blood dripping off that steel already dotted with black stains and a little red--it was making a fucked up rainbow right there. Miles saw a complete 180 in the guy's eyes, they were a cold hard emotionless black now, and when the hell had he unsheathed his sword anyway?
The offworlder hissed, and his freaky twin brothers immediately rushed their comrade's attacker.
More prosthetic arms flew.
"Miles, what--" and a twitchy hand fell on his shoulder. Miles turned around to find Dan behind him with an even more baffled look on his face, Charlotte at his side and watching the bar fight--she winced when one of the metal arms slammed into one of the Triclops women with a pained shriek (but her fellow dancers immediately stepped forward and helped her up, pushing the ruined prosthetic aside).
"That's the guy!" Miles turned to Frank, scruffy-looking as ever but looking completely shocked.
Charlotte whirled on Frank, "That's him?!" And she pointed to Dark Eyes, who dodged another swipe from a particularly persistent reptile who just attacked him with his remaining flesh arm. A split second later the man rammed into the guy with the hilt of his sword, knocking all the wind out of that huge behemoth. "That's the guy you--"
"And everyone else on that balcony!"
"--everyone sober saw fall out of the sky from a flashing portal of light, land on a bunch of cars, then disappear into the alley?!"
Dan slid between Charlotte and Frank, adding, "Must've been an alley near this bar." When they stared at him, he shrugged, and said, "The security cameras probably caught whatever happened."
Across the room, Miles saw Naomi peek her head from their booth, then completely step out and walk toward them, toward the fight, watching Dark Eyes with growing interest.
"Miles, watch it--" Miles wasn't sure who voiced that warning, but Charlotte and Dan and Frank all yanked him out of the way as another arm flew straight past where he had been before--this time it was flesh, a soggy, twitchy stump on the floor.
Miles and the rest looked back, and found that it was all over--moaning offworlders were strewn across the floor around Dark Eyes, defeated. But the swordsman whirled around, sword raised and eyes alert, and just about everyone in the watching crowds took at least one step back (which really slowed Naomi's progress in reaching them). The man's eyes flickered around, found the reptiles, counted them--then relaxed, sheathed his sword, and managed to take a couple of steps before falling down flat on his face, his hat toppling off.
Okay, so apparently that wasn't completely effortless for the guy.
"Pick him up," ordered Naomi briskly when she finally made it, gesturing back to their booth. "Can't have him dying on us." As Miles and Frank each took a hold of Dark Eyes' arms, Miles heard their fearless leader mutter, "Might be just what we're looking for."
When they had the swordsman in their booth and fixed up as best they could with their MedKit, and Frank had driven away all the following, prying eyes ("do you seriously want this guy to wake up with your ugly mug the first thing he sees?"), their little team took the time to breathe a little.
"Ricardus, are you all right?" Everyone stilled, and Naomi's hand went to her gun. "Damn it, wake up--"
"Who's that?" Naomi snapped. Dan popped a head outside their booth, just in case; Charlotte's eyes probed their booth, and Miles' and Frank's searched the man for a CommLink without actually getting close to him.
"Ricardus? He's the man you just helped--"
"No, who are you?" And Naomi simply took the man's (Ricardus', apparently) shoulder, eyes drifting over for a CommLink. "Where are you transmitting from--"
A light arm on the shoulder finally woke the guy up; his eyes flew open, and his hand went to his sword--
"Ricardus, wait!" Snapped that mysterious voice wired somewhere. Ricardus' only got his sword half unsheathed, half up, when Naomi firmly pressed her gun into his forehead. But his blade was high enough to press against her neck--Ricardus saw out of the corner of his eye four more guns trained on him.
Miles, Dan, Charlotte, and Frank had come armed as well for this little interview process.
"Ricardus, these people helped you," soothed the disembodied voice. "See, you're all bandaged now--"
The man slowly withdrew his sword and edged away from Naomi, who lowered her gun and nodded to the rest, signaling them to lower theirs too.
"I'm sorry, I'm--I'm a little…on edge." Ricardus' eyes went over each of them. "I did not mean to--"
Dan was the first to put up placating hands, a nervous, gentle smile on his face, "Oh no, it's--it's all right, Ricardus--"
The man shook his head, looking faintly annoyed, mostly dazed. "It's Ricardo, actually. Only Jacob calls me that."
"Speaking of Jacob, where the hell is he?" Miles snapped, leaning forward, hands clenched around another shot of tequila.
"I'm right here." This time Charlotte rolled her eyes along with Miles at that mysterious voice again, while Frank just had his eyebrows raised and Dan once again looked politely confused; Naomi had her poker face on, her eyes calculating and focused on Ricardo.
"You're speaking out of a CommLink, and we'd just like to know where you're transmitting from," said Charlotte flatly with an irritated glare in her eyes.
Ricardo's brows had furrowed, and he blinked owlishly at them.
"…I have no idea what you just said," Jacob's disembodied voice finally answered.
Noticing the growing fury in Charlotte's eyes and her mouth opening up with a sneer, Ricardo quickly said, "I'm sorry, but we're just both confused--what is a 'CommLink?' What is 'transmitting?'"
Charlotte's mouth clicked shut and she just stared at him, confused and shocked. Naomi's face still read no emotion. Miles and Frank both looked at the bandage around Ricardo's forehead, wondering just how hard the guy was hit. Daniel looked surprisingly unconfused--instead, his brows were furrowed down and his mouth set in a thin line as he quickly contemplated many things.
Ricardo looked at each of them for another silent second, then shook his head. "Forget it." His fists clenched at his sides. "First damn question I want answered--where are we?" Ricardo's voice rose and his glare intensified, and Miles' eyes focused on his sword as Naomi placed a hand on her gun again. "Why is Esau's face plastered on virtually every wall outside and moving around on screens--"
Daniel blinked, and automatically answered, "You're at the LAX Space Sport. And those moving screens are videos. And Esau is, well, he's" and Daniel titled his head, a little in disbelief he had to explain this part, and recited from one of the very first lessons he learned in school, "he's the planet's ruler--"
"What?!" Ricardo's fisted banged on the table, Jacob softly whispering the approximation of his name as some kind of calming entreaty. Naomi's hand tightened on her gun, and Miles would've grabbed his just in case if he hadn't seen terror mixed in with the growing anger in those dark eyes. Charlotte and Frank shot each other puzzled, slightly alarmed looks, but Daniel pressed forward, nervous as he looked at Ricardo, trying his best to explain.
"Esau makes all our laws; he, um, encourages rampant experimentation; decides how our natural resources are used; he opened up Earth to other worlds, decides who can stay and who'll--"
"No--" Ricardo's eyes then filled with panic as he fully realized how everyone looked at him as if he were mad. "I--I--how did this happen?"
"Don't know," Miles grunted, and tried not to flinch when the full force of Ricardo's intense stare flashed to him. "It's always been this way."
Ricardo opened his mouth, but this time Charlotte cut him off (changing the topic since he frankly looked like he needed some kind of reprieve, and she was still curious). "Jacob, what do you mean you're 'here?' There's only Dan, Miles, Frank, Naomi, and Ricardo in here--physically here, anyway."
"I'm the sword."
Everyone stared at Ricardo.
In response, the man only pulled out the blade, and laid it out on the table. All eyes shifted to the weapon.
"Now, if you brought me close to your ear, I sound louder, right?" Charlotte was the first to grab for the blade. They blinked and their eyebrows raised when she had trouble lifting it. Ricardo on the other hand, had just buried his head in his hands, sighing deeply.
"Bloody hell, what--"
Miles snickered and went to help her…and found the damn thing wouldn't budge.
"What the fuck--?"
Then Frank lent a hand, then Dan, then finally Naomi--all together, they got the sword to move like a tenth of an inch to the left.
"Oh right, you can't--um, Ricardus, would you mind--?"
Ricardo snapped up with a barely contained exasperation in his eyes, took the blade, then easily held it up to Charlotte's ear.
Jacob spoke, "Louder, right, Ms…?"
Charlotte stilled; Jacob did indeed sound louder. This close, the sword seemed like an oddly shaped CommLink, a receiver held to her ear. "Lewis. Charlotte Lewis."
As Ricardo stiffly held the sword named Jacob to the rest's ears, Frank remarked (after his turn), "The hell are you, some kinda King Arthur?"
Ricardo's eye twitched, but he stayed silent. Jacob answered instead. "It's similar, I suppose. Ricardus is the only one who can wield me. In anyone else's hands, I'm impossible to carry, totally useless."
"How the hell did that happen?" Continued Frank, eying Ricardo as he sheathed the Jacob blade.
"Oh give me a break, the thing's just wired," snarled Miles, downing another gulp from his drink.
Jacob--the sword--whatever--the voice snapped, "I am not wired!... What does 'wired' even mean?..."
"How can no one have any idea how Esau came into power?" Ricardo shot back at Frank, ignoring Miles and Jacob.
"'The victors write history'...or something like that," replied Naomi, finally breaking her silence. "Esau has pretty much total control over mainstream media here. He could say he popped out of a cave of rainbows and unicorns and proclaimed 'let there be light,' and no one could really survive disputing his word."
Miles found that Ricardo got that kicked puppy dog look in his eyes again. The man squeezed them shut, leaned back in his seat and looked utterly defeated.
"Um, Ricardo," Daniel broke in, fiddling with his satchel, looking for something. "Uh, what um…what's the year?"
The man rubbed his bandaged forehead, over Jacob's protests that he should leave the wound alone. "Last time I checked, 1867."
Immediately Miles whirled on Dan. "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."
Daniel ignored him, instead saying to Ricardo, in a sheepish, sad voice, "I--I'm real sorry, but it's…it's 2004 for us."
Ricardo just stared at him with wide eyes, while Jacob said something that was incomprehensible to everyone else but Charlotte, whose eyes narrowed in on the sword, a contemplative furrow in her brow now (was that…Latin?).
"Time travel?!" Miles continued, practically shouting in Dan's face. "Freakin' time travel, Dan?!"
"Sonofabitch--Danny-boy, you were right about that?" Breathed Frank, eyes flickering back and forth between their resident mad scientist and Ricardo, whose face was completely draining of all color at this point.
"Dan, that's impossible," said Naomi calmly.
Continuing to search his satchel, Daniel absent-mindedly asked, "How can you explain him then?"
"Well, for one, he's insane. A powerful warrior, but insane."
Ricardo whirled on her, banging his fist on the table again. "I'm not!"
"He isn't." And Daniel pulled out something that looked like a cross between a video controller and a slim cell model CommLink.
"You got it working on organics?" Charlotte asked with barely contained excitement, leaning in closer to Dan as he clicked buttons and set it up.
"Yeah," he answered, blushing and grinning fondly (and oh man, Miles could gag if he wasn't too busy watching Ricardo look at the thing with narrowed eyes and look so damn confused, like a baffled and wary wolf this time). Daniel turned to Ricardo, gesturing to his little controller, "This can date objects and organic beings--I mean, it can tell how old you are--y'know, confirm that you're really old as you claim--"
"Ricardus is thirty--"
"No Jacob, not that, his--his total age--that is, this'll confirm that he did come from 1867--"
"We came from 1867--" muttered Jacob, his voice definitely, impossibly drifting out from the blade.
"Right, you both did…listen, for this to work, I need a sample of your blood--"
Miles snorted, eying the dirty bandages they had gone through, their first attempts at binding him bleeding through quickly. "That shouldn't be too hard."
"A fresh sample, just in case," said Daniel, pulling out a syringe that Ricardo immediately eyed warily.
"Please hold out your arm," and Dan gave such a puppy dog earnest look that even Ricardo complied, though he still looked wary.
"This'll sting a little...." The needle was inserted in Ricardo's arm, and other than a small twitch of one eyebrow, the man remained pretty much unmoved. He watched his blood fill up the syringe, and his eyes narrowed at that.
Then Daniel slipped the needle out, inserted it in his controller, waited, and then gave a great sigh when the thing beeped and the color of the screen shifted.
"You're 167, he's 167," Daniel breathed, turning to Charlotte and showing her the readout, which made her eyes widen. He showed it to the rest of them, but for Miles, Frank, and Naomi, it was just that age Dan kept excitedly muttering and other incomprehensible data--but they were beginning to believe. Daniel last showed it to Ricardo, but wilted when the man was breathing very, very harshly.
"Damn him, damn him, damn him...."
"Ricardus, we just need to figure out a way to return to our time...." Miles still couldn't deny that Jacob's voice seemed to come from the stupid sword's direction.
The freakin' genuine time traveler still breathed harshly, and Miles grumbled, pouring him a glass of water from the untouched pitcher offered by the waitress. He slid the drink to Ricardo, who looked at it as if it were another alien too, then took it and began sipping. Then he gulped, and soon tilted his head back and poured the rest of the water down. As if he had chugged down alcohol instead of water, Ricardo put the glass down shakily, rubbed hismouth dry.
"Yes, we have to go back…stop Esau before--" Then Ricardo looked back up, his eyes drifting over Miles, Daniel, Frank, Charlotte, Naomi; there was a weird contemplative look on his face.
"Okay, you're a time traveler, and you're a magical talking sword--" Frank pointed to Ricardo and the blade in turn.
"Prefer the term 'enchanted....'" Muttered Jacob, and even if the voice did come from the sword, there was a weird quality to it--one could get the sense of a different sound that happened when it didn't pass through flesh and blood and bone, or even through a crackling radio channel.
"--who fell out of the sky--now, how. Did. That. Happen?"
Ricardo ran a hand down his face, but muttered, "Esau, he--he did something, we were fighting back on the Island, and he did something, he--we had ended up fighting underground, and there was a--a wheel, he pushed me into it and it turned and then there was this blinding flash of light and I fell through the stone wall and--"
"Hold up. You fought Esau?" Miles gaped at him. He wasn't the only one, everyone was staring at the time traveler with mostly an appalled horror and a small dose of amazement and total disbelief.
Ricardo fidgeted under their attention, snapping impatiently, "Yes, I had been injured before I went into the cantina, that was from fighting him--"
"And you survived?"
Fixing a hard flat glare on Miles, Ricardo snapped, "Esau somehow flung Jacob and I over a century into the future, where he's apparently now the supreme ruler over the entire world." The man gave a very lopsided, very pissed off, very hysterical smile. "I think that monster just proved to me death isn't the worse outcome."
Dead silence, and then Jacob broke it. "…Why did you help Ricardus?"
Naomi took a breathe. "I'll try to make this short. We--"
"And which is which?" The sword asked, and Ricardo and Naomi both stared at it--him--the voice, whatever.
"What?" Naomi asked with a slight impatience edging her voice.
"Charlotte's the red head and I believe Dan's the one with the tie, and you'll probably Naomi since you're the only other woman, but which one's Frank, Miles?..."
Naomi quickly pointed and said their names without even letting said Miles and Frank speak for themselves (who just rolled their eyes--it was just one of those nights) and pressed forward, "Anyway, we came out here looking for someone to help us liberate our people from the Dharma Initiative, one of Esau's scientific branches."
Charlotte added, "Much of our community had been conducting their own research before, and our archaeological division--"
"Charlotte's," muttered Miles, and Ricardo nodded, everything about him rapt with attention.
"--yes, that's mine--but I had barely got to start my apprenticeship with them when they had just discovered an amazing site--there were skeletons of a more primitive, less sentient polar bear, all sorts of artifacts," the excited light in the red head's eyes began to dim as she grimly continued, "along with a new type of crystal that could serve as another power source when properly refined."
"Esau wanted that," said Frank.
"He took over, forced us to drill for those crystals, and if anyone protested...." Daniel trailed off, a distant look in his eyes, and Ricardo felt a familiar sinking in his stomach.
"We'd rather not lose any more people, or spend the rest of our lives digging in the dirt…well, Charlotte would, but she just hates anyone telling her what to do...." And Miles shot her a smirk, which she returned with a glare, though her mouth was smiling a little.
"Daniel here's a physicist, with time travel as his pet theory for the longest time," began Naomi, nodding to Dan, who massaged his neck anxiously. "Lend us a hand, and he'll help you get back to the past, or whatever time you want." (Naomi wasn't quite sure of that, but as Miles constantly harped about before, they needed to provide incentive.)
Miles was surprised at how quickly Ricardo nodded his agreement. (He had no idea that Ricardo would've done it without any hope for compensation--the guilt he felt over failing to kill Esau before was steadily eating away at him, to think that these people's current dilemma was all his fault, because of his failure, he failed, he failed…)
Nikki had grown efficient at waiting tables, figuring out how to maneuver the crowds and find the right nooks and crannies. She even knew where to go and be unnoticeable, to listen in on customers' talk, especially treasonous talk.
With the swordsman being the horrified gossip of the hour, and hearing the cantina's security review their camera recordings in amazement, remarking that those drunkards were actually right, that maniac did fall out of the sky from a flash of light…of course, Nikki was intrigued, and would hang around. She knew how to maneuver around that scruffy blowhard, and after she served them their drinks, found a spot to listen in on them without interruption. She got the gist of it--Nikki only hoped it was enough to get her some cash, maybe something above her average fee.
"Paulo, I'm taking a break," she snapped at her bartender boyfriend as she left him with the empty tray of glasses and flung on her coat. She went down the path she had walked down many times before, toward the elevator with entrances and buttons reserved for those serving as Esau's freelance informants.
She entered, stated her business to the computer, and the elevator shifted--Nikki still felt ill, still felt pinpricks crawling all over her skin, (something like sand hitting her flesh), whenever that elevator shifted through hyperspace and transported her to that ancient-looking lighthouse on that secret Island Esau claimed.
Nikki quickly walked through the sand (that was probably why she always felt it on the elevator) and entered the lighthouse, spoke with the guards. They said they received news of her arrival from the elevator's computer and let her pass, straight up the winding stairs.
When she saw Esau with another audience of offworlders (this group was a species she'd never seen before, short little things in suits with tanks on their back and globes filled with water around their tube-like heads), she waited to the side, honoring protocol.
Nikki watched her planet's veritable god, and once again admitted he was handsome in a silver fox way. He sat in a simple wooden rocking chair, next to his contraption of mirrors and pulleys and what looked like a large compass dial.
"--our planet's oceans have been devastated, unable to serve as our homes, and we've travelled a long way to--"
From his simple wooden rocking chair, Esau waved an airy hand. "I know, I know, I was the one that ruined them after all…and now you're here to ask if you may coexist in my oceans--"
"What?!" Screamed one of the aquatic offworlders, shoving forward and stabbing a finger at Esau. "That was you?!"
Esau rolled his eyes, looking faintly bored. "Yes, I've said that already--"
"You monster, you--"
The elder offworlder who had described their plight and started making the group's request ordered, "Be silent!"
The younger obeyed, though there was still a hateful look in his eyes.
The elder looked up at an increasingly bored-looking Esau, beseeching him. "Please excuse the boy--he is young and rash; he does not know what he says."
When the clicking started, Nikki felt her hairs stand straight up. Esau did not completely transform (she hoped to never see that)--his shadow simply stretched and shifted and clicked as it snatched away that young mouthy offworlder. With a final snap the creature was engulfed in the dark, where he grotesquely bulged out against that smoky shadow, as if trying to futilely escape, before melting away, and it was as if he were never there, save for the elder's sobbing. The rest of the aquatic offworlders trembled.
As his shadow dwindled back to something resembling a mortal's, Esau leaned back in his rocking chair, staring at the ceiling.
"You'll see him again after he's served some time at Hydra."
The elder offworlder sniffled, and said tremulously, "Thank you my lord for your wisdom and mercy." Even Nikki knew the words were a monumental effort for the alien to choke out. "But will you, my lord, allow us to call your oceans home?"
Still staring at the ceiling, Esau nodded. The aquatic offworlders sagged with relief.
"But every year, I want you to build this--" and from his hand smoke drifted out and clicked into the shape of a something human looking, except with what seemed like a crocodile's head, and two ankhs held in its hands. "--statues of Taweret, rising out of the seas." And with another click, the smoky statue dissipated. "It'll be a reminder of who's in charge."
Esau then flicked his hand toward the exit, and the offworlders immediately rushed out, some of them propping the still grieving elder out.
"Next," called out Esau, still sounding vaguely bored.
Nikki stepped forward, bowed, then stayed in her kneeling position as she looked up at him. She went straight to the point; "My lord, the miners in the Swan sector are planning a rebellion, and they've recruited a swordsman unlike any other to help them."
That shook Esau out of his boredom, and Nikki really wished it hadn't. He immediately stilled, unnaturally so, a hard, feral look entering his eyes.
"What?"
"They--he--" Nikki stumbled as Esau stood up from his rocking chair and went to his set of mirrors, tugged on the pulleys and turned the compass dial, and the writing and numbers on it shifted and melted into different numbers and words until it settled on a set that seemed to satisfy Esau. When that was done, Esau growled something in his secret tongue, and the mirror flickered in response, revealing the image of that swordsman.
Nikki blinked; the vicious warrior that had slashed through those reptiles was replaced by an anxious looking man eyeing a plane with trepidation. The miners tried to coax him in, their attempts ranging from gentle entreaties (mostly from that twitchy guy in the tie) to scolding words (mostly from the dark woman with the bandana around her head) and even mocking taunts (mostly from the Asian).
She had no idea what to think when Esau's eyes widened, fixating on the swordsman. When they grew possessive, Nikki felt an odd sick sympathy for the target of that stare, and a petty relief that she wasn't in his shoes.
"He--they said he was a time traveler--"
"Yes, I know." Esau waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder, not even looking at her, still focused entirely on the swordsman pictured in the mirror. "Speak with the computer, it'll have your payment ready; the usual fee."
With that, Nikki instantly bowed and left, and only started shaking when she was back at the cantina with paycheck in hand.
Esau's fingers covetously grazed the mirror. "You're back, Ricardus. You and my brother." He grinned. "Lately, every day's been the same as the last." He then whispered the pass code in Latin, and when he glanced out the window of his lighthouse, he saw them assemble in response--steel glittering in the night, scarab beetles as large as tanks drifting out of the jungles, across the beaches and into the ocean. They would swim across the oceans to the Swan sectors. It would take time for his little army to reach their target this way, but it amused him to give Ricardus and those humans at least some time to assemble whatever traps or forces they wanted in defense.
"Hopefully you'll shake things up a bit."
"I swear to god, if you throw up on me--"
Ricardo just clutched his seat's armrests, wondering why Frank had assigned Miles to sit next to him in their limited arrangements on board this impending death flying abomination if people were meant to fly they would have wings--
Miles narrowed his eyes when Jacob the Way-Too-Goddamn-Talkative-Sword muttered something else in his incomprehensible language. "Ricardo, what did he say?"
Ricardo just squeezed his eyes shut, his hands tightening on those armrests.
"Your stupid sword just cursed me out, didn't it?"
"It's a he," Ricardo finally snapped.
"Oh please, it may have the voice of a guy, but it--if I'm hearing you guys right--doesn't even have a freakin' body to--"
"You're just jealous I've been literally turned into a phallic symbol."
Ricardo just groaned as Miles struggled for a worthy retort, and Jacob gave a very self-satisfied chuckle.
Looking in his mirror, Frank switched his gaze from those three to Dan and Charlotte, who whispered and laughed with each other in the other aisle. He then glanced to Naomi next to him in the co-pilot's chair, who just shrugged as Jacob and Miles exploded into a full blown argument that rang across the plane and in all their ears. If they weren't so damn loud, Frank would fully admit that Miles looked damn funny in the mirror's view--looked pretty much like he was screaming at thin air, or at a Ricardo whose eyes remained shut and seemed busy ignoring him.
When the argument between sword and human slowed down into a lull, Ricardo finally muttered to Miles, "You don't like flying either, do you?"
Miles shot him a filthy look as Jacob burst into laughter again.
Ricardo sighed, and prayed (to whom, he had no idea), that the flight wouldn't take much longer.
(And tried, very hard, to ignore that nagging fear--that if he did return to the past--if he did kill Esau at that point…then maybe the people who'd he just met, who'd helped him, and sought his help in return would somehow cease to exist if their past, their history, were changed.)
A/N: Besides Samurai Jack, smaller crossover elements with Joss Whedon's "Fray" graphic novel in terms of some vocab used and Stars Wars' obvious Mos Eisely cantina vibes and like just a sense of a bunch of other dystopia sci fi. I think if Jacob were without a body and essentially turned into a sword, not only would he start to lose it more, he'd be more talkative, given talking would be one of the few things left he could still do. And I still like playing with Esau as the Big Bad.
Summary: AU fusion crossover with (higlight the next line)
Samurai Jack
At the LAX Space Port, Miles runs into a time traveler from 1867 with a possibly even stranger sword....
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Richard a.k.a. Ricardo, Miles, Daniel/Charlotte, Frank, Naomi, Jacob, Esau a.k.a. MIB a.k.a Smoke Monster (sorry, not referred to as Samuel in this), ensemble (can be hints of Richard/Miles if that floats your boat, but they work as simply platonic too)
Genre: sci-fi gen
Rating: PG-13 to R for language and violence
A/N: Posted for toestastegood at the 2010 lostsquee Luau for her prompt, "future." POV starts out with Miles' then mixes with 3rd person and others' POV (i.e. Richard's, etc.). Artistic license for characterizations considering I put a bunch of these characters in a wildly different AU fusion crossover setting, especially Jacob and Esau.
LAX Space Port was a sprawling mess of steel and hover cars, with offworlders mingling with Earth's human, mutant, and robotic natives. They crawled all over conducting their business: departing on flights; hailing guides; processing in the immigration office, where the most unfortunate ones waited their turn for an audience with Esau, to beg the shapeshifting demon for permission to live on his planet....
Miles couldn't help but think that listening to the dead instead of this chaotic, depressing din was preferable. Especially since he was currently nursing a drink in one of the port's many cantinas with uninspired light shows, Triclops women dancing in cages, and some boy band screeching out "you all everybody" over and over again. Naomi had said the guys were "Driveshaft," that they started back in her home city-state--but then their fearless leader was back to business as she conducted her interviews with more mercenaries in their relatively cloistered booth at the bar.
Which as far as Miles was concerned, was going nowhere fast. Dan and Charlotte had gone off to explore (more like fuck); Frank was up on top, at one of the balconies for fresh air, doing his best to stay the Designated Pilot; Naomi was all on her lonesome now with all sorts of thugs and weapons experts, not like that was a cause for alarm. Frankly, Miles felt their real problem was their total lack of monetary incentive for any mercenaries--doubtless they at least had to offer some goon really damn fine compensation for the prospect of essentially committing treason against Esau.
Miles downed another shot. His thoughts turned more accusing, guiltier--he should've said to hell with his dad's concerns about some pyscho scientist probing into his 'gift' and dragging him off to a lab for experiments, he should've gone farther out, visited real far-out boondocks and snatched up more paying customers for conversations with the dead, maybe then they'd have enough to--
Miles saw another newcomer enter the cantina. Along with the hope of getting wasted on reportedly high-grade LAX alcohol unlike anything back home, Miles had grabbed a seat near one of the entrances to people-watch, in case there was anyone particularly interesting, or possibly a new type of offworlder he'd never seen before.
Guy that walked in was another human, but he was definitely in the 'interesting' category--for one thing, he was dripping blood everywhere. Another was his fashion sense--even if there was rip and tear, dried blood, and wet blood soaking through, his clothes were so odd, though Miles couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly was weird about them. Dude wore a long dark blue coat, but the material looked real unfamiliar, and his boots and hat were cut out of a style he'd never seen before--pirate, Miles realized with a start. Dude looked like a pirate out of one of the old CineScopes; Miles guessed he was an actor then, or maybe he was one of those seafarers that revisited retro clothes.
The stranger's dark wild waves of hair and that beard certainly matched that pirate look, and that sheathed sword at his side was an absolute clincher. Then there was his eyes--Miles immediately noticed the man's eyes, especially since they had grown wide. He was pretty damn sure he'd never seen anyone's eyes go that wide, like a damn puppy dog's. Miles could see them perfectly, see how they were amazingly dark all over--definitely some eyeliner, some kohl, some kind of cosmetic.
Miles wondered what the hell had the half-dead, filthy-looking stranger look so freaked out, and he followed his line of sight to a tall reptilian offworlder with a really long neck and wielding a prosthetic right arm--and he wasn't the only one, others of his species were around and with the same prosthetic (though not always the right arm). It made Miles wonder if it was some kind of clan thing or what.
He rolled his eyes, assumed some loan shark crap was going on--
"What are you looking at?!"
--and then his brow furrowed; it seemed the two were strangers.
Instinctively, Miles winced when the offworlder finally had enough of being gawked at, and slugged the stranger across the face, sending him crumpling to the ground. At least it hadn't been the reptile's freakin' huge metal arm that delivered the punch.
Dark Eyes dragged himself up into a sitting position, hacking out another splotch of blood onto the cantina floor, and Miles saw out of the corner of his eye the crowd edging in their direction, itching for a fight to watch, and it wasn't like he could say he was so different from them--it wasn't as if was about to help the wide-eyed idiot.
The man rubbed at his mouth, wiping away blood, and his eyes still wide and flickering around, from the pissed off reptile towering over him, to other offworlders and robots enjoying and working at the cantina, to the Triclops dancers (one of whom had bent down and coquettishly winked at him). Dark Eyes then moved into a kneeling position, turning back fully to the reptilian offworlder, took a couple of breaths, and bowed his head, eyes closed and wild hair falling down to cover his face, his hat tipped down
"I'm sorry--I'm new here, and meant no disrespect." Miles watched the strange pirate-looking man with complete fascination; the guy even sounded different. "I did not mean to stare."
The digits on the offworlder's prosthetic instead sharpened into claws. "Get up."
The stranger only bowed his head lower. "Again, I apologize for my rude behavior."
"I said get up," snapped the reptile, and Miles began to retreat a little from his lone table, away from the impending slaughter. Though he new no matter how far he went, he'd probably hear the guy's last thoughts, the death would be too recent and violent, Miles would still be too close, and maybe it was the alcohol, but even the prospect of learning more about this weird stranger didn't exactly make him look forward to listening in on the deceased's thoughts this time. If the dude would just get up and not look so helpless, if his stupid dark eyes hadn't look like a damn puppy's before....
"I wish you no harm."
That got the offworlder laughing. "It is not I who will be harmed." And then he lunged forward, his prosthetic claw raised…and it was promptly sliced off.
It wasn't a completely clean cut either; some flesh was torn, some flecks of blood flying, nerves rendered, whatever--either way, the offworlder howled, even more pissed off, and in pain this time. Miles just blinked at Dark Eyes' raised sword and the offworlder's neon green blood dripping off that steel already dotted with black stains and a little red--it was making a fucked up rainbow right there. Miles saw a complete 180 in the guy's eyes, they were a cold hard emotionless black now, and when the hell had he unsheathed his sword anyway?
The offworlder hissed, and his freaky twin brothers immediately rushed their comrade's attacker.
More prosthetic arms flew.
"Miles, what--" and a twitchy hand fell on his shoulder. Miles turned around to find Dan behind him with an even more baffled look on his face, Charlotte at his side and watching the bar fight--she winced when one of the metal arms slammed into one of the Triclops women with a pained shriek (but her fellow dancers immediately stepped forward and helped her up, pushing the ruined prosthetic aside).
"That's the guy!" Miles turned to Frank, scruffy-looking as ever but looking completely shocked.
Charlotte whirled on Frank, "That's him?!" And she pointed to Dark Eyes, who dodged another swipe from a particularly persistent reptile who just attacked him with his remaining flesh arm. A split second later the man rammed into the guy with the hilt of his sword, knocking all the wind out of that huge behemoth. "That's the guy you--"
"And everyone else on that balcony!"
"--everyone sober saw fall out of the sky from a flashing portal of light, land on a bunch of cars, then disappear into the alley?!"
Dan slid between Charlotte and Frank, adding, "Must've been an alley near this bar." When they stared at him, he shrugged, and said, "The security cameras probably caught whatever happened."
Across the room, Miles saw Naomi peek her head from their booth, then completely step out and walk toward them, toward the fight, watching Dark Eyes with growing interest.
"Miles, watch it--" Miles wasn't sure who voiced that warning, but Charlotte and Dan and Frank all yanked him out of the way as another arm flew straight past where he had been before--this time it was flesh, a soggy, twitchy stump on the floor.
Miles and the rest looked back, and found that it was all over--moaning offworlders were strewn across the floor around Dark Eyes, defeated. But the swordsman whirled around, sword raised and eyes alert, and just about everyone in the watching crowds took at least one step back (which really slowed Naomi's progress in reaching them). The man's eyes flickered around, found the reptiles, counted them--then relaxed, sheathed his sword, and managed to take a couple of steps before falling down flat on his face, his hat toppling off.
Okay, so apparently that wasn't completely effortless for the guy.
"Pick him up," ordered Naomi briskly when she finally made it, gesturing back to their booth. "Can't have him dying on us." As Miles and Frank each took a hold of Dark Eyes' arms, Miles heard their fearless leader mutter, "Might be just what we're looking for."
When they had the swordsman in their booth and fixed up as best they could with their MedKit, and Frank had driven away all the following, prying eyes ("do you seriously want this guy to wake up with your ugly mug the first thing he sees?"), their little team took the time to breathe a little.
"Ricardus, are you all right?" Everyone stilled, and Naomi's hand went to her gun. "Damn it, wake up--"
"Who's that?" Naomi snapped. Dan popped a head outside their booth, just in case; Charlotte's eyes probed their booth, and Miles' and Frank's searched the man for a CommLink without actually getting close to him.
"Ricardus? He's the man you just helped--"
"No, who are you?" And Naomi simply took the man's (Ricardus', apparently) shoulder, eyes drifting over for a CommLink. "Where are you transmitting from--"
A light arm on the shoulder finally woke the guy up; his eyes flew open, and his hand went to his sword--
"Ricardus, wait!" Snapped that mysterious voice wired somewhere. Ricardus' only got his sword half unsheathed, half up, when Naomi firmly pressed her gun into his forehead. But his blade was high enough to press against her neck--Ricardus saw out of the corner of his eye four more guns trained on him.
Miles, Dan, Charlotte, and Frank had come armed as well for this little interview process.
"Ricardus, these people helped you," soothed the disembodied voice. "See, you're all bandaged now--"
The man slowly withdrew his sword and edged away from Naomi, who lowered her gun and nodded to the rest, signaling them to lower theirs too.
"I'm sorry, I'm--I'm a little…on edge." Ricardus' eyes went over each of them. "I did not mean to--"
Dan was the first to put up placating hands, a nervous, gentle smile on his face, "Oh no, it's--it's all right, Ricardus--"
The man shook his head, looking faintly annoyed, mostly dazed. "It's Ricardo, actually. Only Jacob calls me that."
"Speaking of Jacob, where the hell is he?" Miles snapped, leaning forward, hands clenched around another shot of tequila.
"I'm right here." This time Charlotte rolled her eyes along with Miles at that mysterious voice again, while Frank just had his eyebrows raised and Dan once again looked politely confused; Naomi had her poker face on, her eyes calculating and focused on Ricardo.
"You're speaking out of a CommLink, and we'd just like to know where you're transmitting from," said Charlotte flatly with an irritated glare in her eyes.
Ricardo's brows had furrowed, and he blinked owlishly at them.
"…I have no idea what you just said," Jacob's disembodied voice finally answered.
Noticing the growing fury in Charlotte's eyes and her mouth opening up with a sneer, Ricardo quickly said, "I'm sorry, but we're just both confused--what is a 'CommLink?' What is 'transmitting?'"
Charlotte's mouth clicked shut and she just stared at him, confused and shocked. Naomi's face still read no emotion. Miles and Frank both looked at the bandage around Ricardo's forehead, wondering just how hard the guy was hit. Daniel looked surprisingly unconfused--instead, his brows were furrowed down and his mouth set in a thin line as he quickly contemplated many things.
Ricardo looked at each of them for another silent second, then shook his head. "Forget it." His fists clenched at his sides. "First damn question I want answered--where are we?" Ricardo's voice rose and his glare intensified, and Miles' eyes focused on his sword as Naomi placed a hand on her gun again. "Why is Esau's face plastered on virtually every wall outside and moving around on screens--"
Daniel blinked, and automatically answered, "You're at the LAX Space Sport. And those moving screens are videos. And Esau is, well, he's" and Daniel titled his head, a little in disbelief he had to explain this part, and recited from one of the very first lessons he learned in school, "he's the planet's ruler--"
"What?!" Ricardo's fisted banged on the table, Jacob softly whispering the approximation of his name as some kind of calming entreaty. Naomi's hand tightened on her gun, and Miles would've grabbed his just in case if he hadn't seen terror mixed in with the growing anger in those dark eyes. Charlotte and Frank shot each other puzzled, slightly alarmed looks, but Daniel pressed forward, nervous as he looked at Ricardo, trying his best to explain.
"Esau makes all our laws; he, um, encourages rampant experimentation; decides how our natural resources are used; he opened up Earth to other worlds, decides who can stay and who'll--"
"No--" Ricardo's eyes then filled with panic as he fully realized how everyone looked at him as if he were mad. "I--I--how did this happen?"
"Don't know," Miles grunted, and tried not to flinch when the full force of Ricardo's intense stare flashed to him. "It's always been this way."
Ricardo opened his mouth, but this time Charlotte cut him off (changing the topic since he frankly looked like he needed some kind of reprieve, and she was still curious). "Jacob, what do you mean you're 'here?' There's only Dan, Miles, Frank, Naomi, and Ricardo in here--physically here, anyway."
"I'm the sword."
Everyone stared at Ricardo.
In response, the man only pulled out the blade, and laid it out on the table. All eyes shifted to the weapon.
"Now, if you brought me close to your ear, I sound louder, right?" Charlotte was the first to grab for the blade. They blinked and their eyebrows raised when she had trouble lifting it. Ricardo on the other hand, had just buried his head in his hands, sighing deeply.
"Bloody hell, what--"
Miles snickered and went to help her…and found the damn thing wouldn't budge.
"What the fuck--?"
Then Frank lent a hand, then Dan, then finally Naomi--all together, they got the sword to move like a tenth of an inch to the left.
"Oh right, you can't--um, Ricardus, would you mind--?"
Ricardo snapped up with a barely contained exasperation in his eyes, took the blade, then easily held it up to Charlotte's ear.
Jacob spoke, "Louder, right, Ms…?"
Charlotte stilled; Jacob did indeed sound louder. This close, the sword seemed like an oddly shaped CommLink, a receiver held to her ear. "Lewis. Charlotte Lewis."
As Ricardo stiffly held the sword named Jacob to the rest's ears, Frank remarked (after his turn), "The hell are you, some kinda King Arthur?"
Ricardo's eye twitched, but he stayed silent. Jacob answered instead. "It's similar, I suppose. Ricardus is the only one who can wield me. In anyone else's hands, I'm impossible to carry, totally useless."
"How the hell did that happen?" Continued Frank, eying Ricardo as he sheathed the Jacob blade.
"Oh give me a break, the thing's just wired," snarled Miles, downing another gulp from his drink.
Jacob--the sword--whatever--the voice snapped, "I am not wired!... What does 'wired' even mean?..."
"How can no one have any idea how Esau came into power?" Ricardo shot back at Frank, ignoring Miles and Jacob.
"'The victors write history'...or something like that," replied Naomi, finally breaking her silence. "Esau has pretty much total control over mainstream media here. He could say he popped out of a cave of rainbows and unicorns and proclaimed 'let there be light,' and no one could really survive disputing his word."
Miles found that Ricardo got that kicked puppy dog look in his eyes again. The man squeezed them shut, leaned back in his seat and looked utterly defeated.
"Um, Ricardo," Daniel broke in, fiddling with his satchel, looking for something. "Uh, what um…what's the year?"
The man rubbed his bandaged forehead, over Jacob's protests that he should leave the wound alone. "Last time I checked, 1867."
Immediately Miles whirled on Dan. "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."
Daniel ignored him, instead saying to Ricardo, in a sheepish, sad voice, "I--I'm real sorry, but it's…it's 2004 for us."
Ricardo just stared at him with wide eyes, while Jacob said something that was incomprehensible to everyone else but Charlotte, whose eyes narrowed in on the sword, a contemplative furrow in her brow now (was that…Latin?).
"Time travel?!" Miles continued, practically shouting in Dan's face. "Freakin' time travel, Dan?!"
"Sonofabitch--Danny-boy, you were right about that?" Breathed Frank, eyes flickering back and forth between their resident mad scientist and Ricardo, whose face was completely draining of all color at this point.
"Dan, that's impossible," said Naomi calmly.
Continuing to search his satchel, Daniel absent-mindedly asked, "How can you explain him then?"
"Well, for one, he's insane. A powerful warrior, but insane."
Ricardo whirled on her, banging his fist on the table again. "I'm not!"
"He isn't." And Daniel pulled out something that looked like a cross between a video controller and a slim cell model CommLink.
"You got it working on organics?" Charlotte asked with barely contained excitement, leaning in closer to Dan as he clicked buttons and set it up.
"Yeah," he answered, blushing and grinning fondly (and oh man, Miles could gag if he wasn't too busy watching Ricardo look at the thing with narrowed eyes and look so damn confused, like a baffled and wary wolf this time). Daniel turned to Ricardo, gesturing to his little controller, "This can date objects and organic beings--I mean, it can tell how old you are--y'know, confirm that you're really old as you claim--"
"Ricardus is thirty--"
"No Jacob, not that, his--his total age--that is, this'll confirm that he did come from 1867--"
"We came from 1867--" muttered Jacob, his voice definitely, impossibly drifting out from the blade.
"Right, you both did…listen, for this to work, I need a sample of your blood--"
Miles snorted, eying the dirty bandages they had gone through, their first attempts at binding him bleeding through quickly. "That shouldn't be too hard."
"A fresh sample, just in case," said Daniel, pulling out a syringe that Ricardo immediately eyed warily.
"Please hold out your arm," and Dan gave such a puppy dog earnest look that even Ricardo complied, though he still looked wary.
"This'll sting a little...." The needle was inserted in Ricardo's arm, and other than a small twitch of one eyebrow, the man remained pretty much unmoved. He watched his blood fill up the syringe, and his eyes narrowed at that.
Then Daniel slipped the needle out, inserted it in his controller, waited, and then gave a great sigh when the thing beeped and the color of the screen shifted.
"You're 167, he's 167," Daniel breathed, turning to Charlotte and showing her the readout, which made her eyes widen. He showed it to the rest of them, but for Miles, Frank, and Naomi, it was just that age Dan kept excitedly muttering and other incomprehensible data--but they were beginning to believe. Daniel last showed it to Ricardo, but wilted when the man was breathing very, very harshly.
"Damn him, damn him, damn him...."
"Ricardus, we just need to figure out a way to return to our time...." Miles still couldn't deny that Jacob's voice seemed to come from the stupid sword's direction.
The freakin' genuine time traveler still breathed harshly, and Miles grumbled, pouring him a glass of water from the untouched pitcher offered by the waitress. He slid the drink to Ricardo, who looked at it as if it were another alien too, then took it and began sipping. Then he gulped, and soon tilted his head back and poured the rest of the water down. As if he had chugged down alcohol instead of water, Ricardo put the glass down shakily, rubbed hismouth dry.
"Yes, we have to go back…stop Esau before--" Then Ricardo looked back up, his eyes drifting over Miles, Daniel, Frank, Charlotte, Naomi; there was a weird contemplative look on his face.
"Okay, you're a time traveler, and you're a magical talking sword--" Frank pointed to Ricardo and the blade in turn.
"Prefer the term 'enchanted....'" Muttered Jacob, and even if the voice did come from the sword, there was a weird quality to it--one could get the sense of a different sound that happened when it didn't pass through flesh and blood and bone, or even through a crackling radio channel.
"--who fell out of the sky--now, how. Did. That. Happen?"
Ricardo ran a hand down his face, but muttered, "Esau, he--he did something, we were fighting back on the Island, and he did something, he--we had ended up fighting underground, and there was a--a wheel, he pushed me into it and it turned and then there was this blinding flash of light and I fell through the stone wall and--"
"Hold up. You fought Esau?" Miles gaped at him. He wasn't the only one, everyone was staring at the time traveler with mostly an appalled horror and a small dose of amazement and total disbelief.
Ricardo fidgeted under their attention, snapping impatiently, "Yes, I had been injured before I went into the cantina, that was from fighting him--"
"And you survived?"
Fixing a hard flat glare on Miles, Ricardo snapped, "Esau somehow flung Jacob and I over a century into the future, where he's apparently now the supreme ruler over the entire world." The man gave a very lopsided, very pissed off, very hysterical smile. "I think that monster just proved to me death isn't the worse outcome."
Dead silence, and then Jacob broke it. "…Why did you help Ricardus?"
Naomi took a breathe. "I'll try to make this short. We--"
"And which is which?" The sword asked, and Ricardo and Naomi both stared at it--him--the voice, whatever.
"What?" Naomi asked with a slight impatience edging her voice.
"Charlotte's the red head and I believe Dan's the one with the tie, and you'll probably Naomi since you're the only other woman, but which one's Frank, Miles?..."
Naomi quickly pointed and said their names without even letting said Miles and Frank speak for themselves (who just rolled their eyes--it was just one of those nights) and pressed forward, "Anyway, we came out here looking for someone to help us liberate our people from the Dharma Initiative, one of Esau's scientific branches."
Charlotte added, "Much of our community had been conducting their own research before, and our archaeological division--"
"Charlotte's," muttered Miles, and Ricardo nodded, everything about him rapt with attention.
"--yes, that's mine--but I had barely got to start my apprenticeship with them when they had just discovered an amazing site--there were skeletons of a more primitive, less sentient polar bear, all sorts of artifacts," the excited light in the red head's eyes began to dim as she grimly continued, "along with a new type of crystal that could serve as another power source when properly refined."
"Esau wanted that," said Frank.
"He took over, forced us to drill for those crystals, and if anyone protested...." Daniel trailed off, a distant look in his eyes, and Ricardo felt a familiar sinking in his stomach.
"We'd rather not lose any more people, or spend the rest of our lives digging in the dirt…well, Charlotte would, but she just hates anyone telling her what to do...." And Miles shot her a smirk, which she returned with a glare, though her mouth was smiling a little.
"Daniel here's a physicist, with time travel as his pet theory for the longest time," began Naomi, nodding to Dan, who massaged his neck anxiously. "Lend us a hand, and he'll help you get back to the past, or whatever time you want." (Naomi wasn't quite sure of that, but as Miles constantly harped about before, they needed to provide incentive.)
Miles was surprised at how quickly Ricardo nodded his agreement. (He had no idea that Ricardo would've done it without any hope for compensation--the guilt he felt over failing to kill Esau before was steadily eating away at him, to think that these people's current dilemma was all his fault, because of his failure, he failed, he failed…)
Nikki had grown efficient at waiting tables, figuring out how to maneuver the crowds and find the right nooks and crannies. She even knew where to go and be unnoticeable, to listen in on customers' talk, especially treasonous talk.
With the swordsman being the horrified gossip of the hour, and hearing the cantina's security review their camera recordings in amazement, remarking that those drunkards were actually right, that maniac did fall out of the sky from a flash of light…of course, Nikki was intrigued, and would hang around. She knew how to maneuver around that scruffy blowhard, and after she served them their drinks, found a spot to listen in on them without interruption. She got the gist of it--Nikki only hoped it was enough to get her some cash, maybe something above her average fee.
"Paulo, I'm taking a break," she snapped at her bartender boyfriend as she left him with the empty tray of glasses and flung on her coat. She went down the path she had walked down many times before, toward the elevator with entrances and buttons reserved for those serving as Esau's freelance informants.
She entered, stated her business to the computer, and the elevator shifted--Nikki still felt ill, still felt pinpricks crawling all over her skin, (something like sand hitting her flesh), whenever that elevator shifted through hyperspace and transported her to that ancient-looking lighthouse on that secret Island Esau claimed.
Nikki quickly walked through the sand (that was probably why she always felt it on the elevator) and entered the lighthouse, spoke with the guards. They said they received news of her arrival from the elevator's computer and let her pass, straight up the winding stairs.
When she saw Esau with another audience of offworlders (this group was a species she'd never seen before, short little things in suits with tanks on their back and globes filled with water around their tube-like heads), she waited to the side, honoring protocol.
Nikki watched her planet's veritable god, and once again admitted he was handsome in a silver fox way. He sat in a simple wooden rocking chair, next to his contraption of mirrors and pulleys and what looked like a large compass dial.
"--our planet's oceans have been devastated, unable to serve as our homes, and we've travelled a long way to--"
From his simple wooden rocking chair, Esau waved an airy hand. "I know, I know, I was the one that ruined them after all…and now you're here to ask if you may coexist in my oceans--"
"What?!" Screamed one of the aquatic offworlders, shoving forward and stabbing a finger at Esau. "That was you?!"
Esau rolled his eyes, looking faintly bored. "Yes, I've said that already--"
"You monster, you--"
The elder offworlder who had described their plight and started making the group's request ordered, "Be silent!"
The younger obeyed, though there was still a hateful look in his eyes.
The elder looked up at an increasingly bored-looking Esau, beseeching him. "Please excuse the boy--he is young and rash; he does not know what he says."
When the clicking started, Nikki felt her hairs stand straight up. Esau did not completely transform (she hoped to never see that)--his shadow simply stretched and shifted and clicked as it snatched away that young mouthy offworlder. With a final snap the creature was engulfed in the dark, where he grotesquely bulged out against that smoky shadow, as if trying to futilely escape, before melting away, and it was as if he were never there, save for the elder's sobbing. The rest of the aquatic offworlders trembled.
As his shadow dwindled back to something resembling a mortal's, Esau leaned back in his rocking chair, staring at the ceiling.
"You'll see him again after he's served some time at Hydra."
The elder offworlder sniffled, and said tremulously, "Thank you my lord for your wisdom and mercy." Even Nikki knew the words were a monumental effort for the alien to choke out. "But will you, my lord, allow us to call your oceans home?"
Still staring at the ceiling, Esau nodded. The aquatic offworlders sagged with relief.
"But every year, I want you to build this--" and from his hand smoke drifted out and clicked into the shape of a something human looking, except with what seemed like a crocodile's head, and two ankhs held in its hands. "--statues of Taweret, rising out of the seas." And with another click, the smoky statue dissipated. "It'll be a reminder of who's in charge."
Esau then flicked his hand toward the exit, and the offworlders immediately rushed out, some of them propping the still grieving elder out.
"Next," called out Esau, still sounding vaguely bored.
Nikki stepped forward, bowed, then stayed in her kneeling position as she looked up at him. She went straight to the point; "My lord, the miners in the Swan sector are planning a rebellion, and they've recruited a swordsman unlike any other to help them."
That shook Esau out of his boredom, and Nikki really wished it hadn't. He immediately stilled, unnaturally so, a hard, feral look entering his eyes.
"What?"
"They--he--" Nikki stumbled as Esau stood up from his rocking chair and went to his set of mirrors, tugged on the pulleys and turned the compass dial, and the writing and numbers on it shifted and melted into different numbers and words until it settled on a set that seemed to satisfy Esau. When that was done, Esau growled something in his secret tongue, and the mirror flickered in response, revealing the image of that swordsman.
Nikki blinked; the vicious warrior that had slashed through those reptiles was replaced by an anxious looking man eyeing a plane with trepidation. The miners tried to coax him in, their attempts ranging from gentle entreaties (mostly from that twitchy guy in the tie) to scolding words (mostly from the dark woman with the bandana around her head) and even mocking taunts (mostly from the Asian).
She had no idea what to think when Esau's eyes widened, fixating on the swordsman. When they grew possessive, Nikki felt an odd sick sympathy for the target of that stare, and a petty relief that she wasn't in his shoes.
"He--they said he was a time traveler--"
"Yes, I know." Esau waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder, not even looking at her, still focused entirely on the swordsman pictured in the mirror. "Speak with the computer, it'll have your payment ready; the usual fee."
With that, Nikki instantly bowed and left, and only started shaking when she was back at the cantina with paycheck in hand.
Esau's fingers covetously grazed the mirror. "You're back, Ricardus. You and my brother." He grinned. "Lately, every day's been the same as the last." He then whispered the pass code in Latin, and when he glanced out the window of his lighthouse, he saw them assemble in response--steel glittering in the night, scarab beetles as large as tanks drifting out of the jungles, across the beaches and into the ocean. They would swim across the oceans to the Swan sectors. It would take time for his little army to reach their target this way, but it amused him to give Ricardus and those humans at least some time to assemble whatever traps or forces they wanted in defense.
"Hopefully you'll shake things up a bit."
"I swear to god, if you throw up on me--"
Ricardo just clutched his seat's armrests, wondering why Frank had assigned Miles to sit next to him in their limited arrangements on board this impending death flying abomination if people were meant to fly they would have wings--
Miles narrowed his eyes when Jacob the Way-Too-Goddamn-Talkative-Sword muttered something else in his incomprehensible language. "Ricardo, what did he say?"
Ricardo just squeezed his eyes shut, his hands tightening on those armrests.
"Your stupid sword just cursed me out, didn't it?"
"It's a he," Ricardo finally snapped.
"Oh please, it may have the voice of a guy, but it--if I'm hearing you guys right--doesn't even have a freakin' body to--"
"You're just jealous I've been literally turned into a phallic symbol."
Ricardo just groaned as Miles struggled for a worthy retort, and Jacob gave a very self-satisfied chuckle.
Looking in his mirror, Frank switched his gaze from those three to Dan and Charlotte, who whispered and laughed with each other in the other aisle. He then glanced to Naomi next to him in the co-pilot's chair, who just shrugged as Jacob and Miles exploded into a full blown argument that rang across the plane and in all their ears. If they weren't so damn loud, Frank would fully admit that Miles looked damn funny in the mirror's view--looked pretty much like he was screaming at thin air, or at a Ricardo whose eyes remained shut and seemed busy ignoring him.
When the argument between sword and human slowed down into a lull, Ricardo finally muttered to Miles, "You don't like flying either, do you?"
Miles shot him a filthy look as Jacob burst into laughter again.
Ricardo sighed, and prayed (to whom, he had no idea), that the flight wouldn't take much longer.
(And tried, very hard, to ignore that nagging fear--that if he did return to the past--if he did kill Esau at that point…then maybe the people who'd he just met, who'd helped him, and sought his help in return would somehow cease to exist if their past, their history, were changed.)
A/N: Besides Samurai Jack, smaller crossover elements with Joss Whedon's "Fray" graphic novel in terms of some vocab used and Stars Wars' obvious Mos Eisely cantina vibes and like just a sense of a bunch of other dystopia sci fi. I think if Jacob were without a body and essentially turned into a sword, not only would he start to lose it more, he'd be more talkative, given talking would be one of the few things left he could still do. And I still like playing with Esau as the Big Bad.