toplvl | The Good, The Bad and The AU

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."

"Seems like an unfair trade," Betty said slowly, her smile betraying her - she wanted to be adequately suspicious, but the excitement of having her baby back was too tempting.

"What else would you be after?"

"That's only if you don't know how much I enjoy kicking the ass of the restless dead," she replied, hefting her weapon. Which ought to be the first hint about just how mad tonight is going to get.

And oooh, that was a pretty, pretty smile. The kind you'd like to see in the morning, with tousled hair and...focus, Jillian.

"Secondary and tertiary objectives after that," she said, carefully clamping up what had, for a moment, been an face obviously interested in something other than machinery.

"Besides, getting my hands on a lady like this would be a privilege."

There she went, goddamn blushing again. She spared a smirk, though. That was definitely the future.

"I think I'm going to enjoy watching this," she decided, and offered a hand to shake on the deal. "You need to get your stuff, then?"

She shook, eagerly, getting a little closer than she strictly had to, because eyes like that bore a careful examination. But then she practically danced back at the reminder.

"You definitely will," she said, making finger guns. "Gimme half an hour. Get the lady ready, slip on your dancing shoes, and if you want to get even more gorgeous, why not...because we're going to have ourselves a party tonight."

And as she practically skipped towards the door, she reflected that she was definitely bringing the pretty colors.

Betty watched her leave with a faint glimmer of exhilarated shock still coursing thtough her. It took a few seconds for her to regain her composure.

But she managed it eventually: set about pulling her machine out to the field at the back of the shed, carefully dusting out and extending the wings, filling up the balloon overhead, and dusting out all the controls.

By the time Holtzmann returned, she'd cleaned out the machine a lot more thoroughly than herself - but she had conceded to switch a shirt out for one whose pinned sleeve was much more carefully sealed - no loose parts to catch on machinery - and a leather vest for warmth.

But the furnace was starting and her own goggles were firmly in place as she peered towards the town.

It was short work to get to her equipment, but longer to select what she'd need. Betty added a new variable to the equation. She might have a glimmering of an idea of what was up there, but nothing could quite prepare a first-timer for the reality of it.

So she took up a carpet bag and started to add to it. A small backpack went into it, attached by a cord to what had once been a revolver, but now had an elongated barrel, reinforcing supporting rings around it - to hold it together - and where the revolver-y bits had been (she'd never bothered to learn gun names) here was an electrical relay capacitor.

Then the modified Ketchum Grenades - which at last she'd probably be familiar with. Probably not with the effect, though. They'd knock out normal humans just fine - but they'd be a real pain to the spectral helpers she was certain the ol' Dead Boss would have on-hand.

And just as she was about to leave, she hurried back to pull the bottle of whiskey out of her case, wrapping it in some newspaper and stowing that, too. Just in case, for later.

When she came back, she positively clanked.

"You sound heavy," Betty said dryly. At this point she had a thick leather strap around her waist and attached to the inside of the cabin so she could lean out without needing to use her only hand to steady herself.

She used it now, offering that hand to her new companion to either help her in or take the bag, whichever it was used for.

"What is all this crap?"

"Mother's little helpers," she said, taking the hand to help pull her up inside. Once there, she patted the carpet bag.

"Look, you seem to know how to handle things, but...it's going to get weird up there, so I better give you some basics."

She paused, putting her hands together in front of her mouth.

"So, ghosts are real, most of the occult is based in some form of reality, I swear I'm not crazy, we're going to go blow up a ghost today, you're probably going to want to help, which is great, and I don't have the time to explain the entirety of spectral physics and paranormal engagement technology to you, so basically just leave it at 'I kill ghosts' and also you're very pretty and I think you're fun so just getting that out of the way and making 100% sure I'm reading this whole 'we should maybe try kissing after' feeling going on."

She stopped for a breath and beamed. "So. Questions?"

Edited 2021-03-24 12:50 (UTC)

"Some questions."

Betty points very firmly at a leather seat built into the wall, between two levers, the inclination being get there and leave me to pilot. The same finger she used to point then gets held up to start counting. Three questions, each with the appropriate space between them for the answer.

"Did you bring me a weapon?"

And (more of a comment):

"Pretty sure you are crazy."

And:

"Just kissing?"

Old West AU

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