toplvl | The Good, The Bad and The AU

1877, Arizona Territory

She came walking out of the heat a little past noon. It was a dusty, dry summer day. She appeared out of the clouds, on foot, near-caked in dust. But she was smiling. The small town might have what she needed, and that was always reason to smile. Because it meant there was a chance of science happening. And she'd bring the light from that torch into any dark and dusty place.

She strode down the main street, slouch hat pulled low over goggle-covered eyes, streaks of blonde hair being whipped like wisps in the breeze. The long duster coat, pockets full of strapped-in tools and gadgets, clanked gently, sometimes, depending on how it bounced off of her. Black, scuffed-up boots thunked with each step, and above them were rugged jeans and above that a black vest with faded pinstripes, and a high-collared shirt with a loosened tie. Hell, that tie had probably never been tightened.

One hand was in a pocket, and the other held the rifle in place over her shoulders. An astute eye, up to date, would recognize a new, Fusil Modèle Gras rifle - but it'd been changed out of all recognition. Strange canisters with a weird, phosphorescent liquid, were strapped on now. There were dials, and wires. That alone told all and sundry who this was.

Some people called her the Madwoman. The Hopi, to whom she'd shown respect and who knew a hell of a lot more than the locals about a hell of a lot more things, had other, secret names for her.

She strode into the saloon by kicking the swinging doors wide, dust falling off of her as heads turned before warily looking away. They said what she did wasn't natural, that she wasn't natural - but in the dark of night, all those who'd heard the stories wondered if maybe their definitions weren't just plain wrong. They also ignored, but were impressed by, the loud and accurate use of the spittoon she made on her way to the bar - a good distance by any standards.

She slid the rifle down against it, slipping off the hat and lifting the goggles to her forehead, revealing blue eyes with circles of non-dusty skin around them. She gave the redheaded bartender, with the pretty freckles, a nice long wink. Which resulted in a blush, a somewhat unexpected and confused smile, and ultimately a glass that hadn't been used like the spittoon.

"Water, please, Miss," she said, in a dry voice, "and something that kicks as strong as you do."

Doc Holtzmann had arrived in town.

All of this was watched.

Okay, all of it was watched by the entire saloon - it's not the kind of entrance that gets ignored by anyone.

But at least one of the men who watched this performance then turned their heads to the corner of the room to see if there was any reaction from the shadows.

Elizabeth Barnes sat back, leaning her chair so far back that her shoulders rested on the wall behind her, and tapped a thoughtful tattoo on the holster of her single pistol.

The left arm on her shirt was tied off below the shoulder, sewn roughly to the seams to keep it out of the way, and she watched the new arrival from under the rim of her old Hardee hat - she had long left behind the ability to pass as even an adolescent boy, but she kept it for nostalgia.

She had a nickname of her own - one born of destruction and devastation rained from above. But it's not the soldier in her that was alert right now.

It'd been a long time since Betty talked to a scientist.

She downed her water easily, with a smile, turning and leaning back against the bar.

She eagerly took in the other occupants of the bar. It helped to know what might be coming at you, after all.

She was, after all, a woman on a mission.

She definitely had that look - the look of a person with a target in their sights. Betty briefly wondered, with the modifications on that rifle, whether this mission had anything to do with the entirely un-supernatural contents of the cattlebarn just out of town.

In which case, they were going to have a problem.

If not - well, it paid to be polite.

She waited until the woman's eyes eventually fell on her, lifted the rim of her hat and jerked her head towards the empty chair on her table.

Well now, now there was intrigue. There were two reasons a pretty one-armed lady would want her attention. Either business or pleasure - and either way it'd be fun. Though her thoughts were immediately drawn to that pinned sleeve. With the right pneumatics, an implanted signal wire to the brain...

She sauntered on over, drink in one hand, rifle in the other, and fell into that chair with a small explosion of dust.

"Nice hat," she said, by way of opening greeting, "Doc Holtzmann, genius lunatic. And who are you?"

Unless Holtzmann could come up with a way of contructing pneumatics that weighed the same as flesh and blood, or less for preference, those thoughts would have to stay theoretical. But Betty watched that approach and that collapse with some hint of amusement. There was a confidence there that intrigued, and the smile didn’t hurt.

"Barnes. Not a genius." But probably a lunatic, that was up for debate.

She didn’t say Sergeant - she'd given up rank around the same time she'd given up following men to her near-certain death. Following women around was harder to give up, and usually led to a less lethal kind of trouble.

(She had no idea.)

Her single hand left the gun, splashed something from the bottle on her table into her glass (and topped it up with water from the pitcher because she wasn't that much of a lunatic.)

"Nice shooter. You planning on using it around here?"

Edited (Tense!) 2021-03-16 13:27 (UTC)

Counterweights were a thing. But give her half an hour and some sketch paper and you never know...

But she shrugged, expansively.

"Depends. On whether or not Boss Henry is still operatin' outta these parts."

Which, by itself, was a bit of an indicator. Boss Henry had run half the rackets in the state for years. A big, angry ol' dandy - but quick to violence and never exactly stinging with it, either. But two years back, a dance hall girl had gotten a hefty dose of poison into his evening meal as part of her own, private revenge - but his network still operated, here and there.

But it was a weird sort of here and there - including, very much so, here. And the handful of his people brought in seemed much more afraid of a dead man than the law.

It drove Betty to distraction, is what it did. She'd moved here shortly after Boss Henry should have moved out, and it should have been easy to keep a small town like this peaceful enough for a woman to get on with her work. But he kept showing up in a way she couldn't abide.

She liked to think she could keep her head down and not be bothered by them, but she was bothered, and that interfered with her peace of mind. Not the idea of a dead man - she'd seen enough death - but that the people in the town were still plagued by a problem which should have been solved.

She studied the woman in front of her for the length of time it took to swallow another mouthful of her drink.

"You'll be wanting to go up to the peaks," she said after a moment. "They don't operate from town.

"But you can't ride up there, neither: horses won't go near. So you're looking at one hell of a hike, or some other means of transportation."

"Well, these legs are made for walking," she replied, folding her legs on top of table.

"And that tracks," she said, absently, "they seek high ground in this part of the country, the assholes.."

And now that she's looking at the arm again, her thoughts are trending to electrolysis and aluminum. Pneumatics would give strength, sure, but aluminum could be grace. Why, she could hold a spoon with that, or flip off the finest gentleman...

"I mean, if you happen to have a special kind of ride handy," she said, with an easy grin. "Or I could ask Will Kempe over there?" She said, thumbing over her shoulder towards the other agent. She looked over at him.

"Hi, Doc Holtzmann, London Times - do they pay you extra to try and look intimidating, or did the squint just happen naturally?"

They were... good legs, Betty had to give them that. But Holtzmann's eyes had gone to her shoulder again, and with no way of knowing what she was actually thinking, it made her sour.

A sourness that all but dissolvd to see the look on Kempe's face to be sassed like that. She breathed her amusement into her glass and set it down, watching the Pinkerton with a smile that would be pleasant except for the glint in her eye. There was no love lost there for any of that agency.

"You could ask," she said, uncaring if he overheard. "If you think you could survive longer than the last fool to partner up to him."

"Ahh, right right, so let him go through doors first, got it."

She leaned forward suddenly, legs swinging right back down, head resting on her hands.

"So now should we dance more, or should you just tell me what you're doing here, and how we can help each other? Otherwise, I've got a hot bath to get to, and maybe a crack a the hot redhead tending bar. I mean, so far? This is way more interesting..."

But she's a busy lady.

The suddenness of the move didn't make Betty flinch at all. She let the dust settle while she took another sip of her drink and said:

"I live here," as far as you could call this living, in any case, "and Boss Henry doesn't. But he still bugs me, and even I can't kill a man who's already dead."

She gave a careful look over the woman in front of her, including the rifle, and added:

"Lunatic you may be, but plenty of sane men have tried to pull that reward in and didn't stay sane for long. So I figure a lunatic's got no worse a chance than them. I can get you up to the peaks, save those legs of yours, if you can clean this place up for me.

"Think she likes you, by the way. I haven't seen her blush like that in a while."

"It's the goggles," she said, with a grin, "they have mystical seductive properties in addition to shielding your eyes."

But she was grinning. Quite a lot.

"Let's just say that people who are dead-but-not-quite-gone-enough are a biiiit of a specialty for me," she replied, pulling out a fine pocket watch. "And most of my gear should be getting delivered to my room in the next half hour - assuming the train porters haven't lost it - so I'll be good to go."

"Get me up there, and he'll be gone. Half hour. Forty-five minutes. Probably."

An hour fifteen - plus journey time - to get rid of the monster that's been plaguing this town sounded almost too good to be true. But it was worth the risk.

"Half an hour, then," she said. "You planning on getting that bath, or you want to come and inspect the transport?"

She put on a look like there was only one possible choice, now.

"Intriguing and mysterious technology before anything, obviously!" she said, pushing to her feet and snatching up her weapon.

"C'mon, show me the pretty, it'll be great!"

"I'd have opted for the bath."

This was a lie - Betty would have opted for the pretty technology as well. She brought the bottle with her when she stood, and tilted her hat to first the barmaid and then to Kempe before strolling towards the exit.

"What kind of doctor are you anyway? Learned medicine in school did you?"

"Medicine? Pfft, medicine is for chumps," she replied, flippantly. "Physics, in New York. And Paranormal Studies from...let's just say less accredited subjects."

She blew the barmaid a kiss as she stepped towards the door, and spun a half circle to crank out a slow middle finger in the direction of Kempe.

"I'm just kidding, ya big galump!" she called as they stepped out into the gathering dusk. She thumbed over her shoulder when they were out. "So, if you're just a happy townsperson or whatall - what's with the sack of potatoes?"

"Oh, he's not here for me," Betty replied. Grabbing her hat to sheild her eyes from the afternoon sun, she turned and headed down the central track of the town towards the outskirts.

"He's hoping he can get lucky and bring Henry in somehow. But that don't mean I'm not pleased to help someone else beat the fucking scab."

She was a lot of things still, and one of those was Irish.

And after they'd made it a few more yards down the street, she added:

"Okay, also he really wants to find out what I'm about to show you, I guess. You can keep a secret, right?"

"Yeah, good luck to him," she said, "I bet he hasn't even heard of a phantasmatron or parallel energy extractor." All of this uttered with the air of a mildly aggrieved professional, imposed upon by an amateur.

She slung the rifle over her shoulder like she was carrying a fishing pole down to the watering hole.

"You're about to show me high technology that is a secret," she added, "I'd hold a whole lot of things for that."

It was flirtation in her usual manner - with all the subtlety and restraint of a siege howitzer.

Betty was used to having to be the aggressor in flirtation - which is probably why she hadn't managed to get a girl to kiss her since she stopped dressing as a man. She looked sideways at Holtzmann in order to check that she was serious, and attempted not to blush too fiercely.

"How much do you weigh?" she asked. "With your gear included?"

The reason for this question became obvious when they got to the cattleshed, and she set about the complex series of locks on the door to reveal a complex contraption of leather and canvas and wood and aluminium: a small bullet shaped carriage in the middle of a network of sails, folding in and around it. It dominated the shed, filling the space like a brooding dragon.

It had once been painted in Union colors, but this had long since been allowed to fade in the sunlight, and never bothered to replace.

She was just grinning eagerly at the machine, immediately running up to it and running hands all over it.

She started murmuring to herself, doing calculations, looking over it and examining every detail. Betty would make out some of it, at least: "Cubic volume of...helium filled, so...assuming construction of lightest materials..."

So when she came back, leaning against it with a very eager sort of look...

"Got maybe a hundred kilograms of lifting capacity to spare, so maybe we get some champagne, a nice blanket and a picnic basket, go kick some ass and take this baby for a spin?"

Which ought to answer the serious question, belatedly.

"Hey!"

But that was a pointless thing to protest against, wasn't it? Of course the scientist was going to run over and get her hands all over it.

But it was still undeniably a relief to see someone touch her baby with the air of something who knew and understood it. Someone who could really restore and improve it where Betty had just been maintaining.

She was blushing for real now, thrown by the overt flirtation, not sure what to do with it - although a wry smirk would have to do.

"Not if you want to go at speed," she said, coming up beside Holtzmann to put her own hand on the side of the machine. "But she'll get you where you're going okay. If you tell me what you're planning on doing when you get there."

Edited 2021-03-21 20:52 (UTC)

"Slow is way more enjoyable," she said, running her hands along the length.

"But look at you, I thought they'd scrapped you after the war and what a shame that thought was."

She moved back towards the engine.

"Also, these old Leftwicks were notoriously underpowered. Let me at her after we're done and I'll have her up to, oh, forty miles per hour? Forty-two, if the wind's right?"

"They tried to scrap both of us."

Betty followed closely, half an eye on her to make sure she doesn't do anything crazy. "You know the designer didn't make it out - they're just not making them anymore."

It needs the touch of an engineer, and it needs it badly.

"Shame," she said, referring to both.

She stepped back a moment, as if assessing.

"Tell you what. How 'bout you give me a ride up to do my business - and in return, I'll get her back to the way she was the day she came out of the sheds. Better, even."

Old West AU

Top Level

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Dr. Jillian Holtzmann (AU) | Ghostbusters: Answer the Call

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