Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Highlander: The Series. They all belong to Davis/Panzer. I just be chillin'. This is a lyric wheel story. The challenge was to write the story in the city where you live. Thanks for the lyrics, Sarah/Loves to Write. They are "Let Me Touch You for A While". I would have written a love story, but I just don't do those. It's a matter of principle. I am a woman of principles, and I don't mean Victoria. Blades Talk By Amand-r In the vaguest of senses the rest of your life will never seem as confusing as these moments. Some old joke used to say that when things couldn't be going any worse, then is when the shit really hits the fan. I don't own any fans. But I do know a proverb when I hear one. Most of them aren't as old as I am, but for some mystic reason, that doesn't ever make them any less true. I hate cities. I know it always seems as if I live in the city all the time, but there's only one reason I do live in a metropolitan area. Many could make guesses; perhaps it's because it's easier to divert a challenge that way. It's easier to get lost. It's even a good place to get beer. They're all wrong. There's only one reason, and that can be summed up in two words: Pizza delivery. You laugh, but really, the invention of the pizza available in 30 minutes or less for less than ten dollars is possibly the most revolutionary invention I have seen since, well, beer. And that was a long time ago. It was pizza delivery that got me into this mess, as it were, flying into a crappy city whose only virtue is the only reason I need to get there as soon as possible. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Mac lets me stay on the barge sometimes when he's not there. In lieu of charging me rent, I get to stay there if and only if I promise not to (a) break anything (b) sell anything for any reason (c) change his CDs (d) have any lady friends over (e) have raucous parties a la Fellini's Satyricon. There are more than these, really, and they're on the fridge with a little magnet affixing them there so that I see them every time I go for a beer or leftover sushi. I could argue that I have yet to break any of them. For example, Heather was not a lady but a rather comely pizza delivery girl, and in fact I never really learned her last name despite knowing her biblically, so one could hardly say we were friends. I could also argue that I didn't exactly sell that replication vase because I had no advance way of knowing that she would take that instead of the 50 francs that I had given her earlier, so it's not as if it's actually *sold*, per se. The mirror was broken, but it was a six hundred year old Venetian handmade mirror (crafted specifically for the Borgia woman, if I am correct), and so that's hardly *anything*. Perhaps that was too much information. In any case, by the time I found out that Heather had taken off with said vase, I had already broken the mirror in a fit of blind groping and tangling sheets. Later, as I ran down the street with my sword, clad in nothing but a sheet and a pair of leopard underwear (not mine-don't ask), I was suddenly taken aback with the idea that I was well, naked, and armed. And in a crowded square with lots of people. Okay, I know you want to know if I was drunk. The answer is emphatically yes. Three sheets to the wind, tied to the mast and pulling the vessel all the way to the Americas. Call me the Nina, the Pinta, and the fucking Santa Maria. The cops didn't call me that when they gave chase. A little thing I have learned is that even though the city is a great place to lose challengers, it is not a good place to go to lose the cops. They know the city better than you do. In reality, I was running down the back street in an attempt to find a place to ditch the sword. Go ahead. Laugh. It was fatal humor that made me dump it in a huge garbage canister. It was complete and utter irony that after I had spent three hours in the precinct house, explaining how my "girlfriend" (whose last name or address I embarrassingly didn't know, which prompted the second lie that I had short term memory loss, which also doubled for the feeble excuse to cover for the reason that I have no current address.) had stolen a very valuable artifact belonging to a friend or mine. It was however, possibly one of the worst moments of my life when I made it back to the dumpster to realize that it had been emptied by the city workers in a preciously rare moment of unheard timeliness, seeing as how the last time the workers weren't on strike and actually did their jobs was during the German occupation. And even then I am sure it was because they had an armed escort. And so, the search for a new sword has left me on a globe trotting goose chase. I should have known that Sean LoCacchio would come to this place. And since he never sets foot on a plane, hasn't since he got to the States in the late eighteenth century, it's a matter of going to him. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* PITTSBURGH: Sean is probably the best sword maker in the Immortal world. Hell, he's probably the best sword maker in the mortal world right now, unless you want one of those "faggy ass Jap swords", as Sean calls them. Since I like my blades with two edges (double the pleasure, double the fun), I go to Sean. The Ivanhoe I had last was not something that I had picked up ages ago and kept because of sentimental value. I kept it because it was a damn good sword. When exploring the Paris dump was not successful in discovering its whereabouts, I gave up on it, because in my opinion, the less time one spends without a sword *at all*, the better. If it turns up later, I might be interested in getting it back, but right now, fond memories don't keep one alive. Sean lives in Pittsburgh, the city of steel. Or it used to be the city of steel. All but one of the mills are closed down now, but trust Sean to be working in that last bastion. I suppose that it makes it easier for him to forge blades. I know that he still sells them on the side, though I have no idea who his clientele is. Immortals, no doubt, but one has to wonder just how he manages to keep his head while dealing with so many of our kind. Not everyone is like Mac, as any given week in the Scotsman's presence will show. Rather violently. I drive by the mill, a destitute huddle of buildings still spewing toxins even at this late hour. I know that the furnace rarely shuts off. Edgar Thompson is located in the middle of what was probably once a very popular part of town, but what is now a slum, a ghetto. The faces that walk down the street are desperately trying to look satisfied, but fail, knowing that somewhere, something failed them. I count the bars as I speed out of he area: eight in a ten-block radius. Sean lives somewhere else, I am sure. He may prefer the work of the mill, but he likes the feel of silk sheets. He also likes pools and Maseratis. The bar he has chosen is a little thing, by the name of Charley's in the next borough over. It is nondescript and dim, just the way I like it. I dressed for nondescript: old jeans, sneakers, beat up t-shirt. I let my eyes adjust to the light in the room (or lack thereof), hoping that the presence I feel is Sean and not some other person. The way my luck is running lately, it would be another Morgan, hell bent on my blood for something I don't even remember. I mean, I don't even remember most of the early seventies. But it's Sean, because I hear him holler "Ey, Adam!" and a large arm down at the end of the bar waves. Sean is missing a tooth, the right front one. He told me once that a stubborn gelding had kicked it out when he was just a boy. When he grins, he is all teeth and that gap, a very trusting look, complemented by a cap of straw colored hair that is short on the top and long in the back. He rather looks very dull witted, in a Lenny from "Of Mice and Men" kind of way. "Hey," I say as I plop down next to him on one of the over-used stools, its padding long pressed down to nothing. The drinker on the other side of me belches and tells the bartender to please put on the hockey game, though not in such a polite fashion. I'm acutely nervous. I've been without a sword for three days, and I don't like the feel of it. I edge closer to Sean and mutter under my breath, "What the hell do they drink here?" Sean chuckles and orders me an Iron City. The first taste reminds me of every little backwater piss ale I've ever tasted. This produces another chuckle. "You need to relax, Adam." One cornflower blue eye winks at me, and I know he thinks my current situation is hysterical. He actually dropped the phone when I had been forced to explain to him how I had lost the Ivanhoe. "You relax when you're in my position, "I mumble into my beer head, "then get back to me." The TV screeches as Lemieux scores, and the bar crowd echoes it. The man next to me orders a shot of Yaggermeister, slamming the flat of his hand down and demanding "a hat trick". Have I mentioned that I hate sports bars? I mentally run through everything I've been through in this city that I have encountered so far: non-gridded city plans, tunnels desperately in need of repair, construction detours, driving a Volvo in a run down area, and lastly, local pubs with a sticky bar and a TV over it, a TV whose channels can only be changed with a pair of pliers. The only thing worth checking out would be the Liberty Avenue gay bars that I saw on Showtime's "Queer As Folk". Surprise, surprise, I saw Liberty Avenue: no bars, just lots of hookers and XXX Girls Girls Girls hangouts. Color me disappointed. But Sean is happy here, amidst the beer nut bowls and empty cans of Rolling Rock, the local sports playing on that degraded TV. His eyes scan the crowd, the few mill workers on the opposite end of the bar, and some thirty something women with Penguins jerseys who are trying to get the frightfully old jukebox to work. Even the bartender looks ragged. Maybe it's the hairstyle. Mullets do not flatter any man. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* "I don't know what you see in this city," I mumble as Sean speeds his pickup truck down the Tri-Boro at a pace that cannot be normal, but which Sean assures me is common. I gesture to the neon signs long gone dead and hollowed out churches gone silent, bells waiting to teased into announcing morning mass. Sean chuckles, and when I look over at him, I am unsure if he has had one too many. "Adam," he drawls, "you don't see the big picture." His hand leaves the steering wheel in a circular motion, and the truck swerves onto Braddock Avenue. I know that we are returning to the mill, and part of me doesn't want to see it. I have been to Sheffeld lately. All those steel mills are closed, and everyone is put of work, and it's not a romantic situation, no matter what The Full Monty told anyone in the theatres. I don't want to see any more ghettos. Instead, I close my eyes and press my head to the gritty window. "What is the big picture?" I ask. Sean's voice is rough, like the dirt on the outside of the window, like this town. "Steel is something special. These people have it in their veins." He sighs. "When I was a boy, my father taught me to fold the steel to make things. But they were always small things, you know?" His voice is wistful. I glance over to look at him, finally, this larger than life man who still molds things with his bare hands. How long has it been since I can say I did that? Amand-r/MethosMuseUnion#666/Super Evil Methos Clone: Aku. Soku. Zan