[center][i]Let’s see if you saw this coming[/i][/center] Smoke filtered the yellow sunlight into clouds of orange. The upstairs of the creaky wooden tavern received the worst of the tobacco fog as a man in sturdy boots clicked and clattered his drunken way to the rough brim of an unpainted door almost as thin as paper, and rigged out of soft chipped wood. He stopped and he laid a calloused working hand on the brim. A disgusting belch rumbled from his scraggly bearded throat and he rubbed his muddy brown eyes. A large hat rested on his nest of hair, and the worn clothes of a rancher clung to his hairy body. He put his hand on the door, where a knob normally would grace the wood. With a rough push the door flung on it’s squeaky hinges and reciprocated into the interior wall with a loud bang. Dust kicked up and the sickly fog of the downstairs rolled in. A square shouldered woman covered in bright clothes head to toe jumped from her seat on the off white and pestilent bed. From behind a bright green burqa and veil the woman squealed in an undistinctive falsetto, summoning a sickly curl on the large man’s lips. The man laughed and unclasped his gun belt, walking forward with a slight limp. “You must be one o’dem damn oriental girls,” the man’s voice was scratchy and acidic with years of alcoholism. The woman was unresponsive but instead slipped her thin dress up slightly, revealing a smooth ankle. The man’s pants clattered to the ground around his feet as a dog like smile gaped his mouth, “I was always a leg man myself.” he barked in a wet guffaw. The woman slithered over, exaggerating a swinging hip. The man’s breath shuddered as the exotic woman laid a flat palm on his stubbled cheek. From behind the burqa the falsetto whistled again, revealing a hidden baritone behind the mocking female voice, “I prefer it all myself.” The “womans” knee shot up and slammed in between his legs, and with a crushing smash the burqa covered forehead of the attacker slammed across the ranchers face. The drunk’s eyes spun as he fell backwards onto his back with a powerful thud releasing his breath from his tar stained lungs. “who… are you,” the man gasped for air. The woman ripped off her burqa, revealing striking blue eyes on a masculine man’s face, stern yet witful under short dark brown hair. “[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUC8dJ0D6sA]Twain[/url]” The man squeaked in his fake feminine voice. He cleared his voice and shook his head, replacing his falsetto with a powerful and manly voice, “Mark Twain.” The cross eyed rancher looked up at him through watery eyes as he held his crotch. He croaked, “the novelist?” “No you twit, the doctor,” Mark hissed in a thick Boston accent and rolled his eyes. Mark reached down and ripped a shimmering steel necklace from the man’s pocket that laid crumpled around his ankles. “And I believe this is mine.” The rancher started to stand up as the man in the dress skirted over to the window, peeking outside. The rancher’s face was beat red and his limp exaggerated. He pointed a shaking finger, “I remember you, the one who worked on my leg... you came all this way for that?” “A doctor never forget his patients,” Mark said as he started to open the window from it’s loose hinges. “What kind of doctor-” The rough pantsed man started. He was interrupted by the stampede of his fellow gang members pouring through the door with pistols drawn. Hammers clicked back and angry squinted eyes spelt trouble. Mark smirked a vulpine grin and bowed, “no kind of doctor.” Before the pistols could belched flame and bullets, Mark leapt from the window. The men rushed to the window in surprise. As they looked out onto the dusty road below, all they saw was Mark sitting on top of a moving wagon with the name “Pemberton” etched across in black. His tropical dress fluttered in the wind as he waved back to the fuming men, slowly thinning into the distance. Mark laughed to himself as the tavern slowly became smaller and smaller, and the wheels of the wagon became more and more apparent between creaks and crunches of wood and soil. He untied the back of his dress after a short struggle and nearly popping his arm out of it’s socket. As the wind took the dress, it revealed a tall and slender athletic build covered by a rich dark suit notably tailored in the north.The man rubbed his shaved legs and frowned as he pulled his pant leg down over the smooth skin, “that’s gonna prickle.” “Who the hell are you,” a deep voice bellowed from the driver's seat of the wagon, “and what's going to prickle?” Mark slid down from the rough covering of the wagon, landing next to the dark bearded man with a thud. A white smile uncommon to these parts broke between the man’s lips, “Twain, Mark Twain.” “The novelist?” The driver asked as he looked back to his horse who had spooked from the sudden visitor, urging the beast on with a crack of a riding stick on the side of the wooden wagon. Mark frowned, “the doctor. And you are?” “John Pemberton, also a doctor,” John Pemberton remarked, “well, pharmacist.” Mark gurgled an approving remark as he gulped down a dark fizzy liquid from a rough jar that he had procured behind the curtain of the wagon. His face twisted in disgust and he quickly clamped the lid back onto the glass. He spat the liquid and looked at the man in horror. “Something's wrong with your wine,” Mark exclaimed as he tossed the jar back into the wagon stocked full of the liquid. “It’s not wine, it’s medicine, that’s just the cocaine,” John said contently as he continued to drive his horses. “You put eye medicine in your alcohol? What are you trying to kick a morphine addiction or kill a horse?” Mark huffed as he folded his arms. “Maybe,” John nervously said with wide eyes, speeding up his horses with a crack. “heading to Brogden?” “If you are,” Mark shrugged as he looked over the liquid, “so like the coca wine from France, just with enough drugs to knock out Ulysses S Grant?” “Pretty much,” John grunted, uninteresting in critique. “I would label it something catchy, like Cool Coca or Coca Cola, and kill the whole drugs and alcohol nonsense,” Mark stated matter of factly as he leaned back. John raised an eyebrow and thought for a moment, “I think this is your stop!” The man shoved Mark from the carriage. With a poof of dust Mark landed in a roll. By time he rubbed the stinging dirt out of his eyes, the crazy pharmacist was long into the dusty distance. Mark growled and dusted off his now brown tinted clothes as he continued in the direction of Brogden. “I didn’t spar with John L. Sullivan to simply get pushed off a wagon,” he mumbled under his breath as he shadowed a few mock punches in the air, “coward…” With a huff of acceptance, Mark kicked up the soil as he walked towards his destination. As he walked, his mind wandered to parts of his youthful and unusual life. How he was born on the exact day the Civil war started, and how ever since then he had seemed to always found trouble, and with trouble, adventure. When he was only twelve he had first found himself face to face with the excitingly deadly facts of reality. He had been in a commercial warehouse, working for some money for his mother who had fallen to the devastating fact that Mark’s father was not coming home. It was a simple job, but when the basement suddenly lit up on fire, he was the first to see it and report it. Dubbed a small hero at first, until the fire managed to evade being put out for twelve hours and ate up over sixty three acres. The great Boston fire they called it, one step on a trail of devastating adventures, is what Mark nicknamed it. Shortly after that he had found himself out of a job, and his mother courted by a German doctor immigrant. With his family now well off and him not needing to work, he found life suddenly boring. Even after taking up a pen pal to a teen in Austria named Freud, he found life boring ever still, even after all the wonderful ideas he had shared with the boy on his thoughts about dreams and social development. No, he needed more. He felt like a caged animal, doomed to a simple existence but cursed with the hunger of a tiger. At the age of fourteen he left home. Mark smiled to himself , raising a hand to block the sun from further interrupting his reverie as he strolled. As he started to think about the chinese railroad worker who had taught him a great deal of oriental culture, a wagon screeched up by him, old iron rubbing against the wooden wheels. “[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLZJaAm2hw]Docta Twain! Docta Twain![/url]” A young voice called out from the covered wagon. A small face popped from behind the wooden folds. It was a young boy Mark had hired back in some nameless town, just to get him to the gang he had been following. “Wan Li!” Mark smiled, quickly climbing into the wagon. The boy was tanner and of clear eastern origin as he slapped a heavy briefcase. “You forgot your stuff Docta Twain,” Wan Li quickly spouted. Mark patted the boys head and threw on a dark city hat that laid on top of the leather briefcase. The doctor looked at the small boy and nodded, “think you can spare a trip to Brogden?” “Sure thing Docta Twain, half charge,” Wan Li said excitedly as he urged the horses forward. Mark smiled to himself, onto the next adventure.