Doctor Funtimes showed immediate alarm at Sam's shoeless state, wheeling on her in a flurry.
"Sammy! You didn't get any shoes! Now you'll get bit by something poisonous and your feet'll fall off and you'll have to walk around with no feet and—"
Remington Springfield sighed from nearby. "Just get her some shoes," he said, speaking as if he hadn't been beaten for a lack of respect earlier.
Instead of a beating, Funtimes rewarded him with a giggle. With a wave of her hands, a small boulder became a pair of shoes.
The pinkest, brightest, shiniest shoes Sam had ever seen, stuffed to the brim with fluffy purple socks.
"There you go," Funtimes said happily. "Now you'll have feet forever."
Sam looked at the shoes, decided there wasn't a way out of it, and started pulling them on. "Thanks," she told the Doctor, who was already chatting with the white Epic.
"I think," she grumbled under her breath.
Standing up, she took a few steps around in them. They were actually somewhat comfortable, in an undignified sort of way.
Revolution stepped up beside her, smiling. "Just think of the defiance you express by wearing those shoes, Samantha."
"By drawing attention to myself?" Sam asked skeptically. "I already did that."
"No, no," Revolution replied, a glitter in her eyes. "An Epic must have died to create those shoes."
"How do you figure?"
"Why, obviously the Pink Pinkness exploded in a shoe factory."
Sam groaned, casting a glance at Lightwards. The necromancer was looking uncharacteristically cheerful this morning. It wouldn't do to let that last for long. "Let's save the wit for the Epics, Revolution."
The lady Epic listened to Aldo, still seeming suspicious.
"Very well," she said finally. "You may escort us to your leader. But first, would any one like some tea?"
Before anyone could respond, she had pulled out a number of supplies suited for the most elegant of tea parties, only to then stand in the room silently for a minute.
Then, the furniture made an appearance. Lines and lines of ants carried chairs and a table into the living room, casting the illusion that the items were gliding into the room on their own.
Aldo let out a whistle. "Neat trick," he said politely, taking a seat across from the lady. "I must say, I am impressed--"
Cricket, however, was unimpressed. "Well rust this," she proclaimed, turning away from the dining room and retreating to the far end of the room. "No offense, lady, but last time we had a tea party was with Earl Greyback in New New England. The slontze tried to poison us."
"Forgive my assistant," Aldo cut in, shooting Cricket a look. "She's allergic to high society. What she's saying is that we have no intention of imposing on your tea reserves. Not in this economy. I'll merely partake of this bottle of scotch, if you have no objections."
He pulled out a tiny glass bottle from his own sleeve, swelling it back to full size with a flare of his hands. He poured himself a shot, then passed the bottle to Purple Phoenix.
"Would you care for a shot, my good man? I pulled it out of the private reserves of Emperor Apostrophe the Apostate. Terrible man with a wonderful taste in scotch."
Backtrack enthusiastically breathed in the cool autumn air, kicking the ground to keep the swing in motion. The playground was quiet and still now, with not a soul in sight. There was a scattering of pancake crumbs in the grass, slowly being picked off by one or two grackles hopping about in the grass. Blood stained the grass beside a playground merry-go-round, with not a body in sight to explain its origin.
The history of the playground would have been a mystery to any other man. Backtrack squinted through his pink sunglasses and stared into the past.
At once, the playground was filled with the ghostly shapes of his spatial predecessors. They walked, they squirmed, they cried with tears they'd spilled yesterday. It was all clear to Backtrack: yesterday at around afternoon, this place had been packed to the brim with scared vanillas.
The reason for their packing was evident in the enormous specters that haunted the playground's boundaries. Enormous man-eating dinosaurs shepherded the people within the park, fiercely devoted to preventing any vanilla's escape.
Leaning against the merry-go-round was a crazed professor with a bloodstained coat and a bright green bowler hat. An old man was horrifically disemboweled at the man's side, screaming as smaller dinosaurs ripped into his flesh.
"I am the master of death," the professor was proclaiming. "I defeat it with a mere touch. If you you fear death, then fear me doubly so. I am the man who will rescue you from Death's tyranny."
Backtrack yawned and skimmed through the rest of the ghosts. He saw the shapes of humans move and cluster around him, but most of them were the same boring old mixes of terror and shock. There were a few worth noting, though--he was amused to see a perky Goth girl pointedly rolling her eyes at the megalomaniac professor, a hippie who seemed more intent on preening her hair then listening to the speech, a particularly seditious redneck who polished his rifle in front of an Epic, and a strange little man who rode a unicycle while wearing a Darth Vader mask.
Eventually, an insane alleged cannibal stood up at the merry-go-round and offered her own speech. It was as strange and quirky as the dress she wore, and involved her spiritedly making out with her boyfriend and causing pancakes to rain out of the sky. At the end, she picked the four people who payed the least attention to her speech and declared them her servants, and the Empire of Light's Epics left the area.
Backtrack watched and rewinded the past a few times, taking it all in. Tracking down this Lightwards fellow was the most fun he'd had in months. Epic battles in the suburbs, hijinks with a teleporter, shenanigans with a matter manipulator... this guy led a very interesting life.
Tilting his pink sunglasses away from his face, Backtrack stared up at the floating museum that loomed over the city.
Thomas Cardinal--alias Lightwards--it's about time we met.
