Location: Quarry, somewhere in England, 2018
Skills: History, Bow
Skills: N/A
Nancy was smoking a cigarette as she waited for James at the swamp. She didn't usually smoke, but the last Paradox had gotten on her nerves. She didn't regret anything she did to Alexandra. If anything, she regretted that she hadn't pushed her farther. The chaotic Emendator, often mistaken for Loki, the Norse God of Mischief, had grinned hearing Evelina's words before. Living without restraint, training without a limit...She could get used to that.
Dressed in grunge, Nancy took another drag of the cigarette. She was beginning to understand why Evelina always had that pipe with her.
"Good morning, James - or do ya prefer Jim? Jimothy?" Nancy asked with a slight smirk.
"Or...what was it...Black James? Feels a bit odd, that one, I've got to say." "Well, mornin' to you too, Miss Nancy." James regarded the clothing choice of the younger-looking Emendator. His first impression was that this training session would be someplace where he was familiar with the culture and language, which was optimistic.
"Jimothy now? Oh, that's a good'n. James is fine. As I'm sure you well know ('cause y'all Emendators seem ta know everythang), that's James Mandingo Grady, name from birth. But ah, there was a lot of Jameses where I was, an' I mostly hung around with the paler, rednecky types, so yeah. Black James! I don't think they meant no insult by it; stuck with me." He was starting to ramble. In truth, James was a bit nervous. He had heard of the "Cuckoo's Nest" treatment that her last Paradox got. Rumors anyway, and reasons for it. James had open-palm slapped The Hat, though he suspected that the guy let it through. Nonetheless, there was some concern. He held his hat in his hands and spoke politely,
"James is fine, ma'am." That was perhaps James' first mistake - agreeing that Jimothy was a good name. And as Nancy looked at him, it clicked into place. She wasn't sure if he was acting incredibly formal around her if that was because of his personality or if Alexandra had shared her training experience with him.
"I'm going to stick with Jimothy - and please, don't call me ma'am. It makes me feel like you're about to ask if you can help me cross the street in order to earn a merit badge." She then tossed him a bag of clothing - the pieces were pretty much what James had been accustomed to wearing in Newnan.
"Also, ditch the Miss Nancy. That'll just make me want to tell the other Emendators I've decided to go by Violet now." "Sorry ma'a... Mis.. Sorry, Nancy. It's my southern upbringin', y'understand. Hard habit to break, ma... damnit." He kicked a nonexistent rock on the ground, and looked into the bag that his latest (and final) teacher had tossed to him. Briefly looking around, he didn't quite find a good spot to go into or walk behind to change, so he just shrugged, removed his hat, and started stripping down to his boxers.
"My 'pologies for the ungentlemanlyness, Mi... um, Nancy. Not related to me gettin' to my fundies in front of ya, but if'n it's alright I'd be obliged if we could keep the 'Jimothy' bit to just this one road trip." He quickly replaced his button down for a flannel, his overalls for alternate overalls, his cowboy hat for a remarkably similar stetson, and his work boots for another set of work boots. Shrugging, he just accepted that there was a reason for the likeness and went with it.
"Nancy? Is it aight if I bring my new knife?" Nancy stared at James for a moment, before she pulled her cigarette away from her mouth, holding it in her hands, and she laughed. It was incredibly cathartic, even more than her training session with Alexandra had been.
"Aww, you're cute," she said, not even trying to stop laughing yet.
"But if you like that knife, Jimothy, I must recommend that you don't take it with you," she warned. She didn't bat an eye as he undressed and dressed in front of her. She had seen too much over the course of her lifetime to be phased by that. And she was certain Giouse would admire the efficiency.
Taking another drag of the cigarette, Nancy motioned for James to follow her as she walked through a portal. On the other side, the pair would find themselves on the edge of an English quarry. There was a fence that seemed to be in decent shape along the perimeter, made out of wooden stakes and some wire. It wouldn't be immediately obvious as to which timeline they were in - or if walkers could be lurking in the midst. At any rate, Nancy put out her cigarette, grinding it with the toe of her boot.
Wincing at the use of his apparent codename for this upcoming adventure, "Jimothy" kept his knife sheathed and placed it in the bag with the rest of his clothes. It was a fair enough assessment of the upcoming training, he reasoned, that he should leave it behind, especially if the likelihood of it going missing was high. Of course, that just made him question the nature of the training session. Losing a sheathed item on his person took a little doing, by either himself or someone else. It raised vague concerns. Well, he wasn't there to make waffles, he was there to learn valuable things from an Emendator. Wincing yet again at the thought of the last time he tried to make waffles (and the culinary abortion that resulted), James followed Nancy through the portal and emerged to a fresh new scene. His intelligent eyes regarded the cigarette butt dropped on the ground and snuffed out. Wherever they were, the locals would recognize what it was, another hint that it might be a time period relatively close to the one from his previous life in the beginning of the 21st century. Softly, he whispered to Nancy,
"Hey, can we talk? Or is 'The Quiet Game' one o' them life savin' decisions right now?" Nancy froze for a moment. A Paradox from the twenty first century had once offered to teach her a new game. And Nancy had prided herself on winning it. She could go decades at a time without a single slip up, yet in that moment, it came rushing back to her and she swore, cussing a bit as she stomped her foot on the ground.
"Damn it, ya made me lose the Game!" Nancy informed James. If he wasn't playing the Game before, he was now. She hoped that he'd lose as well. She took a moment, shaking her head, before she started to walk forward.
"And yeah, we can talk. Now, ya see the slope here?" Nancy said, motioning for James to follow. As soon as he looked where she indicated, he'd see a sign that said
WARNING - QUICKSAND! and Nancy gave him a good shove, sending the Paradox tumbling into the quicksand pit.
There was confusion at first, then the sudden realization that he was actually falling end over end down a hill toward something that, while he hasn't really experienced it in person, had been an irrational fear since childhood. Somehow, during the rolling waltz with ground and gravity, the thought slipped into his head,
"The Game? I remember that! Oh..." Survival instinct kicked in; experience while alive directed James to silence, even as he splatted into the shifting ground below.
"If it helps, I don't think talking will improve or worsen your current situation," Nancy called down to him.
"Aw, well thank you, Miss Nancy!" screamed Jimothy from below, his voice tinged with fear, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to be learning right then, but he did partially figure out the situation with the change of clothes - if was in the event that he soiled himself, which admittedly was a possibility.
Nancy perched on the edge, her knees bent and hugged to her chest as she peered down at him with a shit-eating grin on her face.
"You are quite welcome, Jimothy," she called down to him. The last Paradox to treat her with disrespect had ended up being locked in an asylum for a month. Yet of course, Alexandra's treatment had been without provocation and had treated her as less than an Emendator. James just seemed to be furious at having to encounter one of his worst fears and while she didn't like being called Miss Nancy, it was part of his upbringing. People reverted to that in times of peril.
"So, are you ready for this to escalate or would you like some more time to comprehend your predicament as it currently stands?" Nancy asked. James would be able to see Nancy pull something that had been hidden amongst a small patch of grass closer towards her.
Short of making "quicksand angels" and sinking even faster into the muck and slag he had tumbled into, James had little in the way of options. The concept of rational thought was difficult, but not entirely fleeting; he understood what Nancy had said and wasn't particularly looking forward to it. Besides, with her reputation as of late, James was eighty-eight percent sure that if he told her NO, she would march along to the music of his screams anyway. With short breaths, so as to make as little movement as possible and delay his eventual descent into the quicksand, he replied,
"Ain't likin'... that word... Escalate." He could feel his heartbeat throb in his face.
"If Escalate... mean... 'done sooner'..." He nodded an affirmation, more to himself than to Nancy,
"Then bring it." The tremor in his voice aside, he still spoke with more conviction than he actually felt. The Emendator knew what scared him. There were only a couple more options available, short of watching his friends from his former life die, again. If he had a drink, he would raise a toast to not blowing out the back of his pants with whatever came next.
"What are you in such a rush to get to?" Nancy asked, raising an eyebrow.
"We'll arrive back at the loop the same time we would if we spent an hour here or a week - provided we don't miss the portal, but I imagine Giouse would notice I hadn't come back and he'd come to fetch me. Not sure about you though. I give it fifty fifty chance," she added, standing up from her crouched position as she took up the object she had hidden in the grass - a bow. Notching an arrow on it, she aimed down into the quicksand pit.
"Have you ever heard of Cambyses II? You see, once when he was drunk, one of his men decided to tell him off for his drinking habits...And to prove that he was just as fit as ever, he grabbed his bow - like I am doing now - and sent for the man's son. If he were too drunk to function, he'd miss," she explained. Cambyses and Smerdis, those two had been odd.
"He killed the son, piercing his heart with the arrow - a perfect shot..." This training session was not quite going to the ideal that James (Jimothy) had hoped. Behind the sinking feeling that he was getting, both metaphorical and literal now that he was laying in a pit of quicksand, he was beginning to foster doubts that this was a training session at all. In fact, he had the beginnings of doubts as to whether this was just something that Nancy liked to do in her spare time, not unlike some of the younger generations enjoyed frying ants with a magnifying glass or throwing rocks at stray dogs. He even considered his chances were he to shift into his Peccary Form and make some attempt to free himself from his situation. But he would still be stuck in this hole, still sinking; probably even faster than before.
"Uh, I'm 'fraid I don't know no Cambecles, second, third, or fourth, y'understand," he began, unable to keep the anxiety out of his voice as he slowly sunk into something he was pretty sure was filled with asphyxiating, oozy tendrils of swallowing dirt and decay,
"but I'm thinkin' I gots me that lesson! Whoo doggie, was that a good Paradox lesson! I'm all learned out fo' the day, maybe you could toss me a rope or somethin'? Hot damn, learned me a lot today! All good now. All good..." "Jimothy, if you've learned the lesson, then tell me what it is," Nancy challenged. She kept a steady hand on the bow, having not pulled the bowstring back completely yet. Of course, she wasn't entirely surprised that he was reacting like this - it was rather what she expected. There was some moderate irritation that he was proclaiming the lesson to be other as well.
"Your lesson ends when you get yourself out of the pits," Nancy explained, emphasizing the use of the plural as a hint.
"If you'd like, I can escalate things again. I am a crack shot if I say so myself, however." Oh, but James was a tiny and suckling pig, treated to the hind teat of the situation. He could readily figure out that Nancy's intent to fire upon him was largely (he hoped) more of a motivating factor than anything truly aggressive. Then again, the backwoods wereboar knew about as much about Emendator psychology as he did nuclear physics, with the exception that there was a time when he might have glimpsed a book or read an article about the more scientific pursuit, whereas there was zero possibility that he knew what was going on in the head of someone who had been aware of their existence for millennia.
"Lesson is, I gotta get my black ass outta here on the muthafuckin' quick!" His voice was still a touch higher than it ordinarily was, but to his credit James had established enough mental wherewithal to access the part of his brain that contained sardonicism. It was something.
Reaching out to his left, James was able to grasp his newly acquired hat that had come off during the unpleasant tumble. A man ought not go without his hat when he was able. He then began his first graceless, flopping motions toward the steepish hillside that was his point of entry.
"Actually, that's not how you escape quicksand," Nancy pointed out to him.
"So if that were your lesson, you ought to be afraid since the quicker and more erratic movements will actually increase your chances of death - and I'm not in the mood to kill a Paradox, not now anyways," Nancy said, laughing a bit at the end but it wasn't all too clear as to whether or not she was joking. She then sent off the arrow she had, the arrow landing about seven feet away from James in the quicksand.
"I'll tell you a secret - the only way out is to calm down," she advised.
Telling James to calm down for any lasting amount of time was more than a touch unlikely, though the prospect of dying by means of being suffocated in wet sand was something that he'd really rather avoid if at all possible. And by "avoid", he would just as soon lather up in bacon grease and dance naked through a Cannibals Anonymous meeting, with or without a platter full of "fixin's" tenuously in his grasp.
"Calm! Yes'm, that there's real likely while I'm inna bigass puddle o' death mud an' some real nice lady's firin' pointy sticks at me! Hells yeah!" Sarcasm notwithstanding, James did take her advice and slow his movements, adopting more of a tortoise-y sort of backstroke instead of the wiggling and grunting he was attempting previously. Given the solution, aside from the potentially pant-soiling predicament he was literally thrown into, he was willing to effect a change in tactic.
"Is that what they called arrows in Newnan - pointy sticks?" Nancy asked curiously. She was regretting not bringing a book with her to read, given James' predicament. James' switch in technique, at least, was promising as Nancy saw him getting close to the edge of the quicksand pit. She couldn't help but grin, a bit proud of the Paradox.
"Now once you get to the edge of the pit, you want to roll - kinda like a dog," Nancy said, setting aside her bow. She didn't feel the need to fire another arrow off at him - yet anyways.
As much as Nancy was openly taunting him, James was glad for the conversation. Even something adversarial was a thing to occupy his mind and keep it, at least in part, away from the fact that he was very slowly being consumed by the ground beneath him. The struggle to move to the edge of the pit was going a hell of a lot slower than he had hoped it would, and this whole "being calm" business was weighing on him. If there was any one good thing about this ordeal, being exposed to actual quicksand and not just something he saw on television or in stories was blunting the edge a little. At least for now. Boredom and fear simultaneously was a new experience for James. Still, he kept talking, even as he inched toward the side.
"Oh yeah! Arrows was pointy sticks, hogs was fo'legged bacon, an' gettin' shot at while sinkin' in the mud was called flirtin'! You wanna get a drink afters? Or is that gettin' me shot at again?" The tone suggested sarcasm rather than an actual proposition, but that didn't stop the Paradoxical Blackneck from thinking he probably crossed a line.
James would manage to awkwardly roll himself out of the quicksand pit, finding himself on solid ground once more. Nancy glanced at him, contemplating what he had said for a moment. On the inside, she could feel the anger boiling to the surface. And had he not just suggested it, she would have shot at him. The same frustrations were coming back to the surface - would he have made a comment like that at Eve? At Giouse? At Gilbert? (Though if he did at Gilbert, he'd at least have Alex for company).
"...Sure, let's go get a drink, come on." She clenched her fist slightly.
The Paradox-in-Training stood clumsily. His limbs were still shaking from before and he was covered with dirt and grime. The good news was that he hadn't died (again), but he bone tired from the effort and the departing adrenaline birthed of core fear wasn't helping. With unsteady swats, he succeeded in knocking just about zero dirt from his hat, not that it stopped him from putting it back on his head and awkwardly walking alongside Nancy. He didn't expect that his trainer would actually him seriously about the drink, and in fact it scared him just a bit. Coupled with the fact that he figured he stepped over some boundary of propriety earlier, he very nervously responded with,
"Wait, huh? Oh! Um... Okay, Ma'a... ah, Miss Na... damnit. Yes'm." Figuring damage was done one way or another, he attempted injecting a touch of humor into a situation that was quickly beginning to feel like its own little variation of quicksand,
"Just a drink though, aight? I know I'm lookin' all available an' such, but I'm savin' myself for the next lady what takes a shot at me. K?" She looked at him for a moment and although her face didn't show it, her attitude changed. Instead of tricking him into drinking cow blood, as she had been intending, Nancy took off her leather jacket and held it in between her knees, pulling up on her left sleeve to reveal a lengthy scar. She very rarely showed it to Paradoxes. The Emendators themselves had likely only seen it a handful of times, typically when the disguise for the day demanded bare shoulders.
"Courtesy of my husband on the night of my wedding...And a few of his friends," she said, her voice a monotone. She tapped the scar once before she pulled down the sleeve and replaced her leather jacket.
"Emendators bleed too." It turned out that he
had crossed a line, just not the one he thought he did.
"Damn, girl." he responded quietly. He wasn't looking at some universal power right then, nor a few millennia old worldly wise matron and trainer. He saw a woman who was once treated as horribly as anyone ever had been, and still lived. A survivor. The same kind of person that, even denied her abilities as an Emendator, might have prospered in his clearest former timeline. A big part of him wanted to give her a hug, but a bigger part wanted to keep breathing unencumbered. Instead, he removed his soiled hat and held it in front of him with bowed head, saying,
"I'm sorry, Nancy. Won't go tellin' nobody. Let's get us outta here, if'n that's aight by you." 
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