20 – Dress to Impress

“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with a grenade launcher,” Sofia groaned as she tried on one of Anna’s padded biker leathers. “Like, the glue canisters are the only thing I’ve got that isn’t indiscriminately deadly. Do I use them and hope Erika can ignore them or do I get everyone killed?”

Erika laced up a new pair of combat boots—a gift from The Gadget. She wasn’t sure what she had done to warrant such affection, but she sure wasn’t going to turn down fancy shoes. According to the overly colorful instruction manual they came with, the shoes were reinforced with some living-iron alloy. Erika didn’t know exactly what that meant; they looked like typical military boots, though they did feel squishier when Erika first slipped them on.

“I feel like The Warrior was making fun of me,” Sofia continued with a heavy sigh, shooting a weary gaze at the broken-open grenade launcher and its accompanying bandoleer. Both sat on a shelf in Varn’s back room. “Like, couldn’t I have a…” Her eyes wandered around the room, pausing on Erika. “A magic baseball bat instead? That sounds safer and more usable.”

Erika snorted. “Don’t really see you getting up-close and personal with The Monk.”

“No… but… a grenade launcher?”

“You aren’t supposed to fight The Monk with a grenade launcher,” Anna corrected. “You’re supposed to clear the way for the rest of us to fight. Well, technically, my shotgun is supposed to clear things away too.” She clicked her tongue in annoyance, glaring at her shotgun not far from the grenade launcher. “Maybe I should have used it, made that… thing take me seriously.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Erika hurriedly said. “That dragonbreath shot, I could probably deal with. I’m a lot less confident about the electricity version.”

“Can’t you just…” Anna mimed toggling a large switch up and down. “A breaker switch.”

“Maybe. Not something I’m interested in figuring out in the split second between getting shocked and getting electrocuted.”

“Fair enough.”

“The Butler and Rick were nearby too,” Erika added, trailing off as she glanced to the meeting table.

Rick sat in the far seat wearing one of his red and white Hawaiian shirts, back hunched, as he stared down at the table with flat, harrowed eyes. For perhaps the first time that Erika could remember, his sword was out of its cardboard tube without him planning on using it. It was still in its roughed-up scabbard, now featuring a fresh wrapping of duct tape.

In a delayed reaction, Rick jerked his head up. “Huh? Did someone say something?”

With a heavy sigh, Erika grabbed the chair next to Rick, spun it around backwards, and sat with her hands holding the backrest. With a huff, blowing a long strand of hair out of her face, she stared at him.

“What?”

“Rick.”

“Wh… What?”

Rick gave the impression of someone who wouldn’t miss out on the chance to visit a strange village practicing odd rituals. Yet he claimed work. Even with the arcade, what kind of work did Rick have that he couldn’t push off for a few days? The answer was none. Erika hadn’t commented at the time, figuring he just needed a break from everything after the ordeal with Jack.

Despite having been in the group chat where Daniel announced that they were headed into The Castle, he had been so delayed as to have missed the entirety of the mimic-Anna incident. Again, Erika hadn’t thought much of it; Leslie hadn’t shown up until the end as well, and it wasn’t like Varn’s was right next door to Chinatown, so his absence hadn’t felt like much of an issue.

And it wasn’t like Sofia had been at either event, so Rick didn’t stand out.

But now, worried and annoyed, Erika pressed her lips together as she stared at him. Once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, but three times was a pattern. Though it was true the pattern differed—Rick had shown up to this event—Erika had a feeling that the root cause remained the same.

“Can you draw your sword?” Erika asked, maintaining eye contact with Rick.

He broke away almost instantly, pulling back aghast. “I’m not going to draw my sword!”

Both Anna and Sofia made surprised noises, but Erika didn’t even glance in their direction. “I didn’t ask if you would, I asked if you could. Can you draw your sword?”

“I… Of course I can,” he said, putting his hand on the table just out of reach of the scabbard. “But I’m not going to.”

“Ever?”

“Yes. I mean… no?” He paused and started muttering under his breath, “I’m not going to, ever—no.” With a shake of his head, he looked back to Erika. “Eventually, I will.”

“Eventually,” Erika repeated, voice a little harsher than she intended. “How far off is eventually? Months from now? Weeks? Tonight? When this all turns out to be the trap we suspect it’ll be?”

Rick shrank down, hand slipping off the table back into his lap. “I can do what I need to do.”

“When The Monk was right up in your face, holding onto the sheath, you could have pulled the sword out and stabbed him in the stomach.”

Rick nodded, eyes down. “I know. But it just… it felt like he was taunting me. Like ‘Go on, draw that sword, and I’ll just dodge and leave you needing to stab something else.’ Like if I drew it, I’d be walking into his trap.”

Erika drew in a deep breath through her nose, leaning back—holding onto the back of the chair since there was nothing to lean back against. “That sounds reasonable,” she started, letting the sentence hang as she considered what he said. “But also sounds like something you’ve reasoned out in retrospect.”

“So what?” he asked with a more aggressive tone slipping into his voice. “Better to be cautious than charge head-on into a situation like that, right?”

“You were already in the situation—”

“What do you want from me, Erika?”

“I want to know that you can draw your sword when a fight breaks out. I want to know that you won’t charge into a fight if you can’t fight. I want you to be as safe as is reasonably possible given the forces at work.” Erika slumped forward, arm dangling over the back of the chair. “I just want to know that you aren’t going to lock up and die because you can’t pull your sword out.”

Rick’s teeth ground together. “It isn’t that easy. I’ve stabbed—I’ve killed before,” he said, correcting himself with an angry shake of his head. “My friend, just because he was there with me when I found the fucking thing, is dead. I should be in prison, manslaughter at least. In hindsight, the only reason I’m not is probably because The Eclipse realized a cursed sword was involved and covered it up.”

Anna rested a light hand on his shoulder, making Rick jolt. “That was the sword,” she said, “not you. No normal person could possibly have been prepared for a situation like that.”

Rick let out a humorless snort. “Yeah, well, that’s why we do what we do, isn’t it? Keep other people from stumbling into shit they can’t handle.”

Anna offered a wan smile. “You don’t need me to patronize you,” she said, keeping her hand on his shoulder as she half-sat on the table.

He closed his eyes, drawing in a slow, shuddering breath. “It took years before I could draw it again. Chopped up a ghost to save my new best friend. ‘Course, had to stab a chicken after, because ghosts don’t bleed, but…” He took another breath, more steady than the last. “Just give me a bit. Every time I grab the handle, or even think about drawing it, I see—”

Leslie swung open the door, pushing into Varn’s back office with Daniel half a step behind. “Spoke with The Warrior. She was as surprised as I was at the reduced effect my bullets… had…” He trailed off, heavily scarred face turning from Rick to Anna, then to Erika and finally off to Sofia where she stood by the coffee machine. “Something happen?”

Rick stood, all smiles, leaving Anna to give him a worried look from behind his back. “Just a brief strategy meeting. We were wondering if a grenade launcher counts as a melee weapon if you swing it hard enough.”

Erika shared a concerned look with Anna. She didn’t need the context of the whole conversation to see the way Rick’s smile was forced. Knowing what Rick had been about to say, she almost wondered if Leslie had been hanging outside, ear to the door, waiting for the most opportune moment to step in—she couldn’t picture him doing that.

From the way Leslie’s lips twitched into a subtle, gentle smile, one that might have been completely hidden if he still had his beard, he wasn’t buying it either. Rather than grill Rick, he nodded. “I’m sure Erika has a spare bat if Sofia wants to get up close,” he said, leading to Sofia rolling her eyes. “The Fixer and Delilah will be here shortly. Carter and Anna’s mother are with Piper,” he added, lightly scratching at the lower part of his scar.

His face did look better than it used to, thanks in part to The Doctor adjusting the sutures holding his skin together, and some cream provided by The Orderly that reduced his inflammation. Unfortunately, as a curse scar, it would never heal completely.

Not unless he agreed to The Doctor’s proposed treatment: a full face replacement. Leslie shot that idea down without even giving it a minute’s consideration.

Given The Doctor’s skills, Erika was fairly sure that Leslie wouldn’t notice the difference in the mirror, let alone anyone else.

Erika offered to see if she could break the curse.

Leslie turned her down. He hadn’t even let her check for that telltale film of magic. The Doctor’s suggestion, she could understand—she doubted she would agree to someone wanting to rip off her face—but Erika wasn’t going to do anything if she thought she’d make the problem worse.

The only thing Erika could reason out was maybe Leslie wanted to keep it. It could serve as a reminder to himself, or as a reminder to Rick.

Or maybe Piper just thought scars were hot.

Leslie remained standing at the door, probably guessing that they had just been discussing him and Rick. There was an awkwardness there, one that Erika could probably shatter with a few consolatory words, but she refrained in the hopes that Rick might say something himself. Given that Anna didn’t say anything and could easily have done so even without Erika’s abilities, she felt she made the right choice. That didn’t stop her sigh when Rick grabbed his cardboard shipping tube and shoved the sword back inside.

“What?” Rick said, looking around the room as he slung the tube over his shoulder. “We need to figure out how we’re going to handle tonight, don’t we?”

Lips pressed into a firm line, Leslie fully entered the room, taking a seat at the table opposite Rick. Daniel followed him, giving suspicious looks at everyone, though his gaze lingered on Erika at the end.

She just shook her head, closing her eyes.

“Are we sure we shouldn’t use tonight as an opportunity to handle the aspect in the snowfield?” Leslie asked, interlacing his fingers on the table.

Erika looked between them as Sofia and Anna joined the table proper, her eyes lingering on the cardboard tube. A part of her just wanted to break it now and be done with it, but she wasn’t going to do so without Rick asking her to… at least not until he started swinging it toward his allies again. All bets would be off.

“We don’t know what’s in there aside from mimics. I’d have to figure out how to handle a god on the fly, and who knows what kind of havoc those mimics could enact while I’m trying to do that. The Castle is working on their countermeasures for the mimics, and they aren’t a widespread problem yet—”

“That we know of,” Sofia interrupted with a pointed glance at Anna, who returned her look with a heavy glare.

“That we know of,” Erika admitted with a nod. “Which is why we’re sending The Fixer and Delilah to try to figure out what aspect is in there… while we keep the people of Chicago from being mind controlled or whatever The Monk is planning.”

“I was thinking about that, but is this actually a trap?” Daniel asked. “I mean, isn’t he just going to do what he did with you—” He nodded at Erika. “—but to the whole supernatural scene? Try to convince them to join him with promises of immortality.”

“Why bother inviting us then?” Erika asked, glancing at the corkboard covered in red strings and notes.

They had burned the invitation, but Rick made a photocopy beforehand. Currently, it was pinned up front and center, side-by-side with a picture of a snowstorm.

The snowstorm image was not actually from the other side of the portal; The Fixer hadn’t taken pictures. Instead, it was just some random snowy picture off the internet. One of its red strings connected off to a picture of fake-Anna, which itself branched to Anna and The Castle.

Erika didn’t think the board actually helped that much, but it did let her reference the actual text of the invitation. “We’re cordially invited to learn our place in their future.”

Rick nodded along, concerns about his sword seemingly forgotten. “Maybe they trap us in and say that last faction standing gets to leave. Or whoever offs The Hunters gets the elixir of life.”

“I’d like to see them trap me,” Erika said, cracking her knuckles as she rolled her neck.

“What if they trap us with chains?” Anna asked, ruining Erika’s grandstanding. “Getting out frees another aspect, unleashes its monsters into the real world, and contributes to potentially ending the world. We should probably just skip out entirely.”

“The Castle, The Eclipse, and The Puppet are all going,” Erika said. “I don’t know who these other factions are, but we can’t leave all our allies… or risk losing them to a convincing argument we’re not there to refute. If they trap us with chains…

“Then we handle it, just like we dealt with the maggot and the bird.”