Chapter X – Blessed are the fugitives.

“Welcome home, master.” One of the ‘employees’ of Jacob’s café, a white-skinned waitress, bowed down in greeting. A few of the employees did the same in response, even the ones under his mind-control spell as he made them do so. This felt great to Jacob, a former nobody back in Florida.

Life was great.

Before he could move upstairs to his office, he heard the bell on the door jingle as the first customer of the day entered. “Hmm… This place is in line with how I imagined it to be.” To his shock, this customer spoke in English in perfect Yankee dialect. He turned around to see an old man, dressed in a sharp leather coat, perusing his establishment in a most casual manner. This customer seemed to have the appearance of a well-bred gentleman, which aroused Jacob’s curiosity as to why he was visiting a maid café in Azdavay.

Jacob replied to the man in English with his Southern accent. “Howdy- Ahem, I meant to say, welcome, sir. How may I help you? I reckon a gentleman like you wouldn’t have an ordinary reason to be here?”

“You see Sir Jacob, I’m on a tour to… study how these ‘maid café’ establishments work.” Brown, over his sixty years of living, had become quite adept in bluffing and BS-ing. He had been working on his script while following Jacob into the café. “I’ve heard yours being mentioned by a few of my acquaintances as a ‘maid café of exemplary quality’, I couldn’t pass by Azdavay without checking it out.”

Jacob was touched by the praise (apparently) being showered on his establishment. The American education system had failed him so greatly that he couldn’t recognize who the man in front of him was. “Oh, now ain’t that nice… Well, sir, I’ll say that you’ve stumbled upon the right establishment! We only have the finest girls here, as y’all will see shortly. I’ll carry you sir, through a tour of my establishment.” Jacob clapped his hands, and the waitress from before showed up to answer him. “What’d you like, sir?”

“Prepare, for me and this gent, a glass of coke and some fried taters and chicken.” He turned back to Brown. “Let me give you a taste of Southern hospitality, sir. It wouldn’t do to give you a tour on an empty stomach.” Jacob then led the Brown upstairs to his lavishly decorated office. It was a brightly lit room, with a huge window looking toward the street and the rooves outside, with a desk for personal business and a table for welcoming guests. “Come on sir, don’t be hesitant.” Jacob and Brown sat face to face.

Jacob initiated the conversation. “Now sir, I’ve been so rude as to not ask your name.”

“I’m…” Brown stopped just before giving his name. It probably wasn’t a good idea to give the Florida man his real identity. “…Isaac Smith. Pleased to meet you.”

“And you’re from the North, I imagine? Which state, and from when?”

“I’m from Connecticut, though I do not get what you mean by ‘when’ I am from, Sir Jacob.”

“I mean, what year was it, on Earth, when you toted yourself to Gemeinplatz? For example, it was 2023 when a truck hit me.” Jacob seemed too happy for a man recounting his death.

Brown was confused as to how this young man could have been killed by some small carriage. Maybe a ‘truck hitting someone’ was a weird Southern phrase from the 21st century he had never heard of? “Right, I believe it was 1859 when a… truck hit me as well.”

Jacob became even more confused than Brown. “Huh? I don’t think trucks existed in the 19th century.”

“I can assure you, young man, that trucks existed back in the 19th century.” He had last seen a truck holding the cannon that pointed at him during his execution.

“Moving on from that, you’re from the 19th century?!” Jacob was surprised to see a man who was, chronologically, more than two hundred years older than him. He dropped his air of formality in excitement. “Man, you’re from back when America was based. Holy moly…”

“Based? Based on what?” Brown hadn’t had the chance to be updated on newfangled Internet lingo, nor did he even know what an ‘Internet’ was.

“Ah, sorry. It’s a modern English phrase meaning something like ‘admirable’, or something like that.” Jacob was now sincerely excited to be speaking to someone from the past. “So, do you know what ‘cringe’ means?”

“Uhm… This?” Brown flinched his eyes, cringing as if he was disgusted by something (not to mention the actual disgust he was feeling at this moment).

“I mean, cringe means that too, true. But ‘cringe’ can also be used as an antonym for ‘based’. You got that, Sir Smith?” Jacob couldn’t keep himself from immaturely giggling at the inherent absurdity in teaching a real 19th century man Internet lingo.

Brown himself was internally cringing at the conversation. Thankfully, he was saved for a moment by two servants entering the room with ‘coke’ and ‘fried taters and chicken’. They served these ‘delicacies’ on the table, before bowing a farewell and leaving the room.

“Sir Smith, I advise you taste some of this coke.” The coke rested in a wine glass, as if it was some high-class drink. “It’s nothing like what I had back in America, but I think I got close enough.” Jacob raised one of the glasses to take a sip himself. Brown took one too, and struggled not to spit it out immediately afterwards. The drink, being a mix of carbonated water, weaponnapper nectar and an ungodly amount of sugar, tasted too alien for Brown’s palate.

Brown tried to steer the conversation to a more ordinary place after struggling to gulp down the coke. “Cough, hack- Ahem. So, Sir Jacob, what were you meaning to say when America was ‘based’ back in my time?” He was curious as to how the United States had developed in his long absence.

“Yeah, the country really fell off, you know? Became too woke.” Brown wasn’t sure as to what the hell a ‘woke’ could mean, other than being the past tense of ‘wake’, but he continued listening to Jacob “Like, I think you might’ve been hit by the truck before that happened, a civil war happened. Guess who won?”

Brown didn’t know who the sides were in the American Civil War as he had died just before it, but he could make an educated guess as to what it might have been about and why this Southerner was lamenting it. “The North?” Brown was surprised that this young man seemed so angry at an event that had happened over a hundred years before he was born. This young man seemed to be a lost cause.

Jacob seemed to be seething. “Yes! The War of Northern Aggression concluded with the feds curtailing our states’ rights!”

Brown lowered his voice, staring directly at Jacob. “States’ rights to what, young man?”

Jacob didn’t seem taken aback. He had had this argument many times on forums before. “States’ right to determine their own laws and keep their own autonomy, of course!”

Brown kept passively-aggressively staring at Jacob. “States’ rights to determine what, young man?”

This was usually the point where Jacob would call his opponent a slur and disengage the debate, but he couldn’t exactly do that when his opponent was a man that was sitting right across him. “Never mind that! What was important was that the poor Southerners were subjected to the tyranny of the majority!” At least moving goal posts still worked, right?

“Yes, but I am still curious, and I’d like it if you could enlighten a poor old man like me on history. States’ rights to what, young man?” Brown wasn’t a stranger to debate; this young man was nothing to someone like Frederick Douglass. Such cheap tricks wouldn’t work on him.

Jacob had lost his composure by this point. “States’ rights to treat those…” here he dropped a racial slur that has been omitted from the text “…like they deserve to be treated, of course! You know how many…” here he dropped another one “…frolic in the South, dirtying our land? For God’s sake, some of those dirty commie…” Jacob sure loves that word, doesn’t he “…even elected one of their own asses as president! We gave them the right to vote due to some bleeding hearts crying about ‘racism’ and whatnot! It’s been a slippery slope all the way down to…” yep, that’s another one “…degeneracy since the 1850s!”

Brown was surprised and ashamed to see, from what he had seen as a modern man of the second millennium, a slurry of slurs that could rival the average Southern plantation owner in its audacity.

Jacob paused, going back to ‘hiding his power level’, so to speak. “Ahem… Excuse my heated gaming moment.” He coughed a few times to calm himself down. “Of course, a fine gentleman like you wouldn’t be- What?” His eyes were drawn outside the window, where a group of about a dozen were scurrying on the streets. From the cuffs on their hands and necks he could see that they were slaves. “Jesus Christ, what the hell’s going on?!” He quickly got up from the chair and began watching the ruckus outside, forgetting about his guest.

Brown could see the ruckus outside too. There seemed to be an exodus of slaves… An exodus? That seemed familiar to him. Perhaps there was a way he could help…

“Ah shi- IE?!” Jacob found his throat being penetrated by the business end of Brown’s knife. He couldn’t cast spells, thanks to an excess of iron in his body blocking his vocal cords, leaving him without protection.

“Young man, I’d say that you were the one being ‘cringe’ and ‘unbased’ all along. May God have pity on your soul.” Brown held the knife there until Jacob stopped flapping his arms in a futile attempt to preserve his (after)life. The young man’s lifeless body dropped on the floor, running the expensive rug covering the floor. Thankfully, Jacob wasn’t in a state to care about his favorite rug being ruined.

Brown had done it now. It was time to act quickly, quietly, and efficiently. His first act was to being concealing himself. He quickly took the pompous fur cape of Jacob, his very-much-wide-brimmed hat, and his table cloth. He wore the cape and the hat to disguise his clothing, and wrapped the table cloth around as a bandana to conceal his face. Brown had been stuck for two months up on some mountain without being able to do anything; he was now ready to brawl.

While Brown was busy being a master of disguise, he heard the loud thuds from the bottom floor, along with trays crashing down and plates breaking. He quickly ran downstairs, to find the maid café in a state of utter chaos. The few customers in the café were shouting in panic, the non-mind-controlled slaves were joining them in panic, and the former mind-controlled slaves were laying on the ground.

One of the customers, a with clothing even more pompous than the late Jacob’s, noticed Brown as he was heading down. Brown hadn’t had time to wash his bloodied hands, one could easily understand that there had been some sort of crime committed upstairs.

This gentleman, furious at his fine dining being ruined, decided to apprehend this impostor among them. “[Binding Vines]!” Vines shot out of his hand, and headed toward Brown. Brown answered to this gentleman’s cheap parlor trick by slashing the vines with his knife before they could reach him. Brown began running toward the gentleman, slashing through the barrage of vines flying towards him. It wasn’t that Brown was too experienced in countering magic attacks; it was that the gentleman was too inexperienced in combat and attacked in a predictable manner by always aiming for Brown’s legs.

Brown took off the tablecloth of one of the tables, and a cacophony of crashing plates and cups ensued. “Sir, I think you should halt that uncouth mouth of yours casting the Devil’s work.” He folded the tablecloth into a rope-like shape while continuing to run towards the gentleman, who had exhausted his mana at this point.

The gentleman drew his saber, getting ready to enter close-quarters combat. Brown had other plans.

This gentleman was equally inexperienced in non-magical combat, so his stance was abysmal. He held the sword sideways, with not a shred of confidence in his face. Still, someone holding a sword was still dangerous no matter their skill. Brown began with remedying this issue, by kicking the gentleman’s hand holding the sword. The gentleman let go off the sword in pain; it flew off to the corner of the room. Before the gentleman could recover, Brown restrained and gagged the gentleman using the tablecloth / rope to block him from casting any spells. Holding the gag with his one hand and a knife next to the gentleman’s throat, Brown announced to the room:

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen, calm down and listen to me or else this man’s life shall be forfeit!” Brown hadn’t planned any of this; he was winging it to the best of his capabilities at this point. He didn’t even know if the hostage he captured had any value. The people in the room, who were now all slaves as all the other customers had already escaped from the front door, suddenly took notice of Brown. They were quite confused as to why some old man was threatening them.

“Now that I have gotten your attention, I’d like to announce the beginning of your exodus.”