Seconds to Impact

A suspicious sounding cry of pain brought the prison guard running. Well, not running per se, which would imply the guard had been grossly undertrained. Rather, it brought the guard cautiously approaching, sword at the ready in case of any funny business.

The prisoner was lying on his back on the straw-covered dirt that made up the cell floor, doing his best to appear as if he was in copious amounts of pain.

The guard wasn't convinced.

"'Ello yew stewped preesonare, yew expect me tew fall for thees destracshion like a leetel fewel? Ha! What dew yew take me for?"

To emphasise his point, the guard reached between the bars and prodded Skylar roughly with his sword.

Skylar rolled away from the prodding, and groaned again, now with his face pressed into the straw.

The guard muttered to himself about how he didn't have time for this, and twisted his moustache as he tried to think of what to do.

The prisoner was obviously faking, but if there was even the smallest chance he wasn't, Pepe did not want to be the one to have to explain why the strange foreigner in the weird clothing had died before Guillaume's whereabouts had been ascertained.

He sighed.

"Okay meester preesonare... Yew stay right where yew are..."

He jangled the oversized key ring that every prison guard must by law carry in any fictional setting, and quickly located the key for Skylar's cell - seeing as how it was the only key on his key ring, and Skylar's cell could more accurately be described as 'that cage in the corner of the French camp' than as a real prison cell of any sort. He put the key into the lock, sighed again, and unlocked the cell.

Then he winced out of habit, closing his eyes briefly.

Nothing happened.

Pepe opened his eyes thoughtfully, and looked again at the groaning and unconvincing invalid before him. Usually the turning of the lock was when it happened. That was when the 'sick' patient would suddenly 'recover', at which point the guard would be rendered unconscious, and the prisoner would make their break for freedom. It was as traditional as the key ring, and the fact that Skylar had missed his cue made Pepe extremely uneasy.

"Um... Pardo' me meester preesonare... But are yew planning on escapeeng any taim soon?"

Suddenly, the 'sick' patient seemed to 'recover', and Skylar looked up at Pepe staunchly.

"Not exactly" he stated.

Skylar pointed his hand at the food bowl in the corner of the cell, and then gestured to Pepe. Like magic - or rather, like telekinesis - the bowl flew from its resting place, and struck Pepe and the face.

The guard fell to the ground heavily, feeling a simultaneous mix of relief and unconsciousness flood through him. That was more like it.

Skylar stood to his feet, brushed the straw from his robes, and looked down at the unconscious guard before him. First, he would need to steal the guard's uniform, and then...

He sighed.

Without any time manipulating device, it was not as helpful as one might think being the Overseer of time. And telekinesis would only get you so far as well.

No, Skylar was going to have to go all out on this one.

It was time to find a Timothy.

* * *

Finally, the Bender stopped blinking, and returned to its sleep-like state.

Warren breathed a sigh of relief.

How many times had the Bender jumped in succession since he had shaken it and demanded guns? How many time periods had they passed through? And where were they now?

No, Warren had learned that perhaps shaking and yelling at the Time Bender was not the best course of action. It was not something he was likely to do again.

However, the fact that Warren had now learned this did nothing to change the fact that he had just jumped six, no, seven(!) times, a fact he could verify simply by counting by up the number of gun-wielding individuals the Bender had seen fit to drag along with him and Guillaume. Along with the German World War Two lieutenant, there now stood an American Navy SEAL from the 1990s, a cowboy from the Wild West, an African Big Game Hunter, a Napoleonic War musketeer, a laser-gun toting police woman from the 25th century, and a pirate, who despite not having a gun of his own, had been transported with a whole ships cannon.

With their current location appearing to be a snow-bound cabin in the Canadian wilderness, the various warlike individuals were understandably a little bit confused, and beginning to lose their tempers with one another.

Guillaume, on the other hand, was overwhelmed by the various weapons on display, and was interrupting as many of the growing arguments as he could to try and ask questions about how their guns worked. The only one of the seven who had thus far shown him any interest was the pirate, who shared Guillaumes hatred of the British, although Guillaume had been fairly confused by the pirate's overuse of the letter R. 

It was all a bit much for Warren to deal with at present.

Sighing, he reached into a coat pocket, and pulled out a new tin of cold spaghetti.

Now that he could deal with.

A Moment Ago *** A Moment Ahead