23Ello again! Long time no see, innit? I've finally begun to rewrite this story, and I have split the whole thing up into several stories-one world per story, ish-and have finally found a way around the site's anti-WordPerfect prejudice. :C This part of the series has stayed pretty much the same, although you may notice certain differences here and there. The majorly changed parts will come later, I promise. This 'episode' is completely finished, and so will receive one update per week (unless I'm feeling generous.) Enjoy and review! Happy Easter!
Chapter One: A Visiting Mate and Reacting Others
It was a chilly winter day in Center City, Philadelphia. Today had been labeled a 'code blue', and everyone was inside keeping warm. ...Or...in their cars. ...The streets were irritatingly congested. Even more now than usual. A van filled with teenagers was ensnared in the mix, and off all the ones listening to music and chatting with one another, only one girl was looking out the window, her brown eyes lost in thought. She sighed, her breath fogging the glass. The other four girls were chattering excitedly, completely un-bored by the long drive from home to here, made longer by the traffic backup. They were on a mission trip with their church, doing service in their own city for a change. It was true, she wasn't exactly looking forward to the trip. All her friends in church had been unable to come, and thus would she be stuck with perky and preppy and other people she didn't know too well. She hated perky. She also disliked being with people she already wasn't friends with. She blamed her introvertedness. The only person she was even remotely comfortable around was the Youth Pastor who was accompanying them. However, he was in one of the other two vans packed with other peers she was not fond of. But that was all right, she reasoned. She was content with her own silence and the promise of a weekend filled with new experiences and opportunities. Keeping busy would give her an excuse not to socialize.
Oh well, thought she, watching a small group of people hastening down the sidewalk, hurrying to their (hopefully) warmer destinations. She sighed again, this time in relief, glad for the heating in the van. Yay, we're moving again! I can't wait to see where we'll be staying this weekend, she thought as the traffic began to pick up. But it seemed her thinking had jinxed things, for as they were going over a bridge, that said traffic decided to come to a standstill.
"They say it's like this every morning," said their driver, Mrs Kel, a mother of one of the other kids, and the three girls in the back seat groaned. "But I don't think we'll have to come this way every day." Everyone sighed in relief. Battling this kind of jam was the last thing any of them wanted.
The daydreamer had to blink a few times behind her new glasses before she realized it had begun to snow. Tiny white crystals flurried lazily about, landing on windows and cars, melting immediately. Minutes passed faster than the cars did, and the flurries eventually grew into clumps. A rather large one landed on her window, obscuring the gray view of the bridge's sidewalk, the bridge which they were still stuck on. She watched in mild fascination as the white fuzz became clear and liquid. Through it, she could see a blurry, blue blotch on the walkway. The water dripped leisurely down the pane, revealing the figure: A man in a powdered wig and standard 1700's rear Admiral naval uniform, hat in hand. He whipped his head around, looking this way and that, very confused, as if with absolutely no idea where he was, or where he was going, or perhaps even whether he was going anywhere at all. A car sped past, filling a hole made by someone turning off, and he recoiled, watching it as if he'd never before seen a sedan. To the average Philadelphian passerby (or driverby, in this case), what with their common lack of knowledge of wear from certain times and locations, he was just one of the people who dressed up old-fashioned like and gave tours of historical sites and landmarks and such in the city. Another passing car beeped its horn at him before turning off, thinking him some new attraction to Philly. He nearly jumped out of his skin. Well, he really only seemed to startle slightly, but the girl had a way of seeing these things. ...Just like when they had first met...
Her eyes widened with recognition, and without a second thought, she flung open the door and stepped out into the unmoving mass of automobiles and cold. "Ellie!" she called to the figure, hands cupped around her mouth, breath forming a cloud in the air before her, glasses steaming up. The man looked to her, and she beckoned him closer.
"Amy?" he asked as he wove through the still-standing cars to her.
"James!" He rushed to her and they embraced. "What are you doing here, where—," she stopped. "Never mind. I'm sure we both have questions to bombard one another with, and we can take care of that once we get you off the streets." She led him to the door of the van. "Come on, get in."
He peered cautiously inside. "What is it?"
"It's a carriage. Go on, go on," and she gently shoved him inside the teal/grey automobile, climbing in after. She directed him to sit right in between the seats that made up the middle row, and again took her seat, buckling her seatbelt."
"Amy, you can't just bring a stranger off the streets—," Mrs. Kel began.
But Amy interrupted. "—I think you'll find that I can. Look, I'll explain everything later, with all the chaperones so as I won't have to repeat myself, savvy?" Mrs. Kel agreed grudgingly. As if on cue, the traffic light changed, and they were soon leaving behind that accursed traffic backup.
"Where are we?" murmured James.
Ames grinned that crazed grin of hers and said in an uber cheap French accent, "Welcome to de esteemed citee of Philadelphia, my friend."
He blinked. "Truly nothing like the Port I once knew, then."
"Save for, maybe, the Delaware," she added. He nodded agreement.
Finally removing his wig, he set it before him, atop his elaborate hat, and ran a hand through his short, tousled, light brown hair. "So this is your kind of carriage, then?"
"Yep."
"Curious. No steeds. Then how does it move?"
"Believe me when I say it's too complicated and am not fully sure of any of it."
"Eh?"
"Summat about gasoline, oil, turbines, motors, cylinders, suspension systems, batteries, brakes, electricity and suchwhat energy, and—man, it'd take all day to explain it, and I don't really even know what I'm explaining. Let's leave that to the experts, huh?"
He gaped at her for a moment before agreeing with a chuckle. "Yes."
"So, uh...stupid question, I know, but...what'cha doing here?"
"I was in trouble and asked to come here."
She snorted. "Trouble? You?"
He smiled somewhat shamefully up at her. "I betrayed the Navy, pet."
Her disbelief turned to shock. "No way!"
"It's true."
"Whad'ja do?"
He smiled again, this time less shameful. "I let my brother go free."
She beamed in pride at him and reached out with one hand to squeeze his shoulder, as her seatbelt wouldn't allow her to glomp him as a proud aunt should. "That's m'boy. Remind me to give you a cookie."
He glanced up at her, a puzzled expression on his face. "Cookie?"
She smiled mischievously. "You'll see."
"Oh dear."
"You'll love it, I promise."
"Of course I will," was his somewhat resigned reply. "So this is Philadelphia, then?"
"Meerw! ...Wait, sorry, that's catfrog for yes."
He shook his head almost bewildered, as though he had forgotten her peculiarities. He wasn't sure he still had the patience to deal with this child. "I thought you said you lived in the 'suburbs.'"
"I do. I'm here to do mission work with my church. Service. You know."
"Service?"
"Perhaps you don't know," she amended. "Rebuilding and/or cleaning up old churches, feeding the hungry, bringing warm wintry garments to the homeless, and so on and such forth."
"Homeless?" James lowered his eyes, looking somewhat unnerved. "Among the poor and the dirty and the thieves?" He shuddered as though the thought of such people disgusted him.
Her jaw dropped, and her soft brown gaze shifted into a sharp, black glare. "They're people too." Her voice was soft and calm, almost as if trying to hold back sadness, rather than anger.
"My apologies." He looked away ashamedly. "It's just...in our world, it is generally accepted that only certain sorts of people would burden themselves with trying to help people who cannot be helped."
"Burden!" He flinched visibly. "I'm sorry. But why does it have be a bad thing to help those in need?"
"It's their own fault that they need such that they do," he muttered crossly but softly. "They should get themselves out of such a situation."
"God's bread, James!" The van went silent a moment as she quieted. "You know, maybe it's a really good thing you showed up here and now. Perhaps we can turn you around."
He looked up to see her studying him with a mischievous glint in her eyes, fingers stroking an imaginary beard, all former signs of hostility nonexistent. "What?" he startled.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing at all," she replied, voice betraying a hidden laughter as she continued to study him.
He laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head. "Of course."
"Running for your life first chance you get?" Ames suggested.
"Without a doubt."
"Heh."
"We're here," said Mrs. Kel as they turned down a narrow road, ended up going the complete wrong way, drove around the block since it was all one-way, and parking before a decrepit-looking building.
"Great, now we can get this all sorted out," sighed Amy with a mixture of dread and relief.
"We have to wait for the others to get here."
"Are we the first ones here?" asked one of the aforementioned girls in the backseat.
"Yup," was Mrs. Kel's response. "Oh, there's Justin." She pointed out another van parking some distance up the street.
The first van emptied as everyone stepped out into the cold to wait for the final two vans. James pulled his coat more snugly around him. "Gracious. Is it always this cold here?"
"Only on a code blue at the peak of winter. What, doesn't it get cold down in the Caribbean?"
"I thought it did. But now that I experience it, our winter must be like spring to you. By the by, what is a code blue?"
"I knew you were going to ask. It's where it's so cold that the police and all them official people get everyone off the streets because it's a health hazard to be out. It's why the streets're so congested." She sniffled. "...Like my nose." The wind picked up and James shivered. "Okay, share body heat time, come on." And she huddled closer. However, even as she was beginning to get him warm, his lips and hands were starting on blue. "Ohp. That's why it's called a code blue, huh." He nodded, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.
The other vans pulled up. Out stepped the rest of the high schoolers...And the rest of the chaperones. James immediately stopped shivering and straightened, composing himself for confrontation, reverting to 'unyielding-Commodore' mode. "Hey everyone," called a fairly young man, perhaps in his early thirties, with short, dark hair and a slightly hooked nose.
"That's out pastor, Scott," Ames murmured to her nephew. They watched as Mrs. Kel gathered with the chaperones and Scott, and spoke to them in a huddle in somewhat hushed tones. The young minister glanced at James, listening intently, thoughtful frown on his face. "Oh-oh, here it goes..."
True enough, Scott approached moments later, appearing as amiable and eager to make a new friend as ever. "Hello there," chirruped he in his friendly tenor, smiling affably to show no hostility. "So, it looks like you came to join us. Scott Braschevitz." He extended his hand, which the Navy man shook.
"Former Commodore James Norrington."
"Now why does that sound familiar?" The young pastor scrunched up his face, racking his memory.
"You'll find out once I explain," cut the girl into his train of thought. "But I'll need to talk to everyone, in private, kay?"
The reverend bobbed his head. "Cool. Let's get everyone settled first, and then we can talk."
"Sounds like a plan."
So everyone was gathered and led inside to a lounge that looked (and was) comfortable and cozy, rather than cold and decrepit and falling apart as the exterior gave pretense to. There, they met two representatives of the Foundation they were working with, then shown to the two bunk rooms up a couple of steep flights of stairs; one for the girls, one for the boys, the 'no purple' rule applying as always. Girls were off the landing at the peak of the first flight, the boys atop the second. They received an introduction and orientation, then left to unpack and claim their mattresses.
Ames made certain to finish quickly, and was back down in the lounge where James was, to wait for the chaperones. She happened upon him studying the mural on the wall of the Philadelphia skyline, hat on head, wig in hand. "It' rather bewildering. ...So many things I don't understand, after coming from a life where everything I saw I understood; now I find there is so much more that I will never know—that even with all my knowledge, I know truly nothing."
"Such intrigue be the world," the girl mused wisely.
"Aye."
He was about to continue, but she cut him off before he had the chance to begin. "Lemme guess; you want to know what they are," she gestured to the silhouetted skyscrapers.
He smiled at her powerful intuition. "Yes."
She grinned. "Two in a row, I'm on fire!" she beat the air. "These, dear boy, are buildings. Offices, stock markets, trade, shopping centres...landmarks..."
His eyes widened. "And yet they stand steady? Remarkable. It's as though they touch the skies..."
"Hence the term 'sky scrapers.'"
"Ah."
"Yep."
"Okay, I think it's time we were told what the whole situation is," came a voice. The two turned around to see Scott, along with the other assembled adults, at the top of the stair leading from the main level landing down to the lounge. They descended and sat in the couches and armchairs, waiting for her to explain.
Thus she took a long, deep breath to calm her nerves—public speaking wasn't one of her strong points—and began."You've all seen or heard of Pirates of the Caribbean, right?"
"It's a movie," Scott added to the parent or two who, by some manner of deprivation, had not.
"Well, those of you who have may recall the Commodore Norrington what, for all intents and purposes, was an enemy of the main character, Captain Jack Sparrow? The one who wanted to hang him and marry Elizabeth?" She received a few comprehending nods and continued hesitantly, gesturing at James. "This...this is that Commodore, after much self improvement."
"What, you mean the actor?"
Amy facepalmed. "No! Not the actor. The real deal. The character in all manner of reality." The chaperones looked at her with disbelief clear on their faces. She took a deep breath to slow her hammering heart, eyes squeezing shut for that instant. She was considering telling them she had been joking and just say he was a relative, but she had said too much already. James placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and she found herself calmed. "When I went missing, months ago... I went to another world; one that's parallels to ours, and that happened to be the world in which Pirates of the Caribbean took place."
"You ran away from home—you told the police that yourself."
"It were pretense," James put in. They merely gave him an odd look, and he glared at them. "So this is what your world has come to, is it?" he muttered to the lass. "To the point at which the word of an innocent mind cannot be taken for truth."
"James...think about it. You read a fictional book over and over again. Then, out of nowhere, someone comes to you and says they're a character from that book. Just how easily would you have been able to believe that before I came into the picture?"
He rubbed at his eyes. "You're right," he sighed. "Then how do we prove to them that we're telling the truth?"
"I don't know," came the soft, uncertain reply.
The room went silent for several long moments which seemed to stretch into infinity. Then, suddenly, there was a good deal of rattling in the walls and ceiling, and a groan from some mechanism in the building. James started, looking around alarmed and wide-eyed. "What? What's happening?"
"The heat is coming on."
"...Coming on?"
"More mumbo-jumbo I can't explain."
"But...what is it?"
"Some system takes in air and heats it, then pushes it through pipes and vents throughout the building, thus heating it." The former-commodore's green eyes darted around apprehensively, as if half-expecting the thing to roar. "Just think of it as a magic fireplace."
"That I can do."
The chaperones, having witnessed this little episode, were now watching them with somewhat thoughtful expressions. "All right, we'll buy it.'
James and Amy exchanged expressions.
"So he can stay?" she asked Scott hopefully. "We can always use another helping hand, can't we?"
Scott shrugged. "Sure, why not."
"He may need to borrow warmer or more appropriate clothes, if that's all right."
"Later," said James. "I get the feeling we're holding up some event or other, and we don't want that." He elbowed Amy as she opened her mouth to protest. "Do we?"
"No."
"All right," Scott bobbed his head. "Hey, Justin, Michelle, you two wanna go round everybody up and get them down here so we can go?" The couple nodded and left. It wasn't long before they heard the creaks of floorboards above them, and the stomps of those descending the steep stairs.
"Where are we going?" James leaned down to her.
"No idea."
The rest of the high schoolers filed into the lounge and took up seats on the couches and chairs and odd bean bag. "All right, everyone! We're going to take a little trip around the city and learn what kinds of problems people have to deal with. Same vans as before." He turned to instruct the other adults and sighted James, still with his hand upon his aunt's shoulder, and turned back to the kids again. "Oh, almost forgot. Everyone, this is James." He gestured to the man behind him. "He's a friend of Amy's, and he's going to be helping us out this weekend." James smiled friendly and gave a curt wave of the hand in response to the cacophonous greeting that often accompanied such a horde of teenagers. "All right, let's get going!"
And so, everyone upped and went outside, filing back into their respective vans. "All right," Ames murmured to James. "Let's do this." He nodded, easing down to his knees on the floor beside her. The vans sped off, splitting into two groups of two to go off and view the city.
Be sure to brush after all the chocolate! I know what sensitive teeth are like (I can't even drink milk unless it's been warmed a little!) and I don't want anyone else to end up with 12 filling a year like me.
Enjoy the holiday! Review?