Mucklebones watched the pair carrying the wriggling bagged-body towards their agreed rendezvous and thought about
the past that the man in the top hat had come from.
Ninurta had been born after the Energy Wars that had changed the way Earth had governed itself. What was to become the
lean stoic man's stomping-ground of North America had been re-labelled 'The Autonomous Republic of Vandalia' and as the
boy grew, he became acclimatised to the only element nurtured within the region that wasn't mined for immediate external
-exploitation, namely poverty-enriched confrontation.
The legendary Clans Wars of the 23rd century had honed his character and acrimony down to a cold, calculated being that
surveyed his environment in the manner of a distrusting predator. Always prepared to take, but always aware of the chance
of being taken and at all times, never wasting his energy on sentiment.
The Witch glanced over to where her husband managed the craft's controls and smiled to herself in regards of the present
situation. Tibbs and herself were currently eight-feet above an ancient flood-marsh that absorbed the ebb and flow of the
tidal river a hundred yards to the south. A river that would be known centuries in the future as the river Thames.
And yet in the same time-frame of Mucklebones and the little Vithian checking the frequency-vibration of his invention, they
were also half-embedded in a Bakery wall comprised of burnt clay bricks and looking out at three males travelling fast along
a 19th century alleyway. One was captive, one was the captor and the other wore a bonnet.
Boy In A Dress had something else that made him different from his fellow-escapees and it wasn't the strapped-in bosom that
bobbed up and down as he ran. It was a small leather bag that Jack The Ripper had been carrying when Ninurta had arrested
the famous killer. Arrested -as in brained him until he'd stopped struggling, that is.
Now, Tibbs manoeuvred the craft from it's duel-location and not only startled a heron from it's boggy pre-roman angling site,
but out away from the crusty wall that forced travellers of that dirty byway of Whitechapel to turn right.
"Are we close enough?" Tibbs asked without taking his eyes off the small screen.
Muckles saw Ninurta grit his teeth at his exertions of holding the writhing form over his shoulder and probably at his annoyance
that the meeting seemed delayed. "We're clear and ready" the crone barked and felt the time-machine begin to lower.
With a flick of a switch, the spine-covered craft exposed itself to the two men panting in the alley.
Any unaffiliated observer of the reunion would now realise that Ninurta's earlier beating of the murderer who had terrorised old
London had now become inoperative as the man in the tied-bag marked 'Potatoes' began to wriggle again.
"How dare you Sir, I'm a Doctor..." he snarled from his position of looking at Ninurta's inverted ass. "...And there seems to have
been some sort of mistake" the stranger added haughtily from inside the hessian sack.
Tibbs appeared at the hatch with his wife and deliberated on whether the reported injuries of James Forrestal could be delivered
here in order to quieten the replacement or to... the decision came quicker as the bundle's exertions began to increase.
"His face was damaged from the fall and his knees were bleeding from where he hit the third-floor roof..." Tibbs stated over the
grumblings of Ninurta's burden and reluctant to step off the time-machine, the small man looked into his friend's emotionless
eyes for an understanding.
"Gotcha Chief" the GunMan said confidently and dropped the squirming sack onto the cobbled ground. BIAD walked on and
without a word, placed the surgery-bag inside the craft and pushed it under the sawn-off park bench out of the way. The night
was beginning to give way to another grey-day in the capital and everyone -except the Ripper, knew they didn't have much time.
Only Tibbs saw the irony.
Ninurta leaned over and pulled the neck of the sack open and didn't miss BIAD moving to counter any escape attempt down the
alley next to the Bakery. Jack The Ripper gathered himself and failing to maintain the awe-inspiring infamy that the media had
portrayed him in, clambered out of his cloth-prison. He wasn't much.
Victorian men of standing did sport beards and moustaches, but in George Gaston's case, it was different.
Tibbs silently sighed to himself and was thankful that they wouldn't be shaving a dead man's face later.
"What is the meaning of this..." Gaston said indignantly and brushed unseen debris from his top-coat. "...Never in my life have I
been so abashed in my duties as a surgeon" he supplemented and ran his fingers through his hair. Ninurta moved slowly towards
the outraged gentleman and scanned the man's face for proof of a Forrestal semblance.
Two seconds later, the GunMan realised the nose had to be flattened a bit.
What happened next was always the part that Tibbs could never understand about the detached immortal who had once loved a
woman called Margot and bore an unnamed son. Inflicting damage to serve a purpose was not only barbarous to the little man
watching the proceedings from the craft, it was -in his view, down-right sadistic.
Granted, needs must at times and for the sake of getting to the leader of the Mainyu, physical abuse was the only course of action to
save the US Secretary of Defence from his faux suicide. There was the saving-grace that they were also ridding this time and this
existence of a horrible serial-killer, but still... witnessing it is always difficult.
As Ninurta went about his brutal business, Boy In A Dress watched the alleyway entrance for a passing Peeler or even another
appearance of his brother. Apart from a man pulling a barrow in the main street, nobody came to investigate the suffering that
Jack The Ripper was going through.
"Forrestal was reported to have tried to hang himself with his dressing-gown sash" Tibbs said reluctantly and moving away to
prepare to return to 1949, he inadvertently touched the leather case beneath the homemade seating. What horrors reside in that
terrible satchel? -he thought as he turned engraved dials and flicked chunky switches
What can one human do to another? -came another inner-voice that he hadn't encouraged and failed to ignore Ninurta's grunts
of his efforts.
Muckles stayed quiet as BIAD and the heavy-breathing man bundled Jack The Ripper's lifeless body onto the time-machine
and following his movements with her tear-shining eyes, the Witch of Carbiox recalled a comment her husband had relayed to
her from Ninurta's Psychological Profile that had been logged with a star-ship he'd served on.
"...Sometimes you gotta do what's wrong to do what's right".
the past that the man in the top hat had come from.
Ninurta had been born after the Energy Wars that had changed the way Earth had governed itself. What was to become the
lean stoic man's stomping-ground of North America had been re-labelled 'The Autonomous Republic of Vandalia' and as the
boy grew, he became acclimatised to the only element nurtured within the region that wasn't mined for immediate external
-exploitation, namely poverty-enriched confrontation.
The legendary Clans Wars of the 23rd century had honed his character and acrimony down to a cold, calculated being that
surveyed his environment in the manner of a distrusting predator. Always prepared to take, but always aware of the chance
of being taken and at all times, never wasting his energy on sentiment.
The Witch glanced over to where her husband managed the craft's controls and smiled to herself in regards of the present
situation. Tibbs and herself were currently eight-feet above an ancient flood-marsh that absorbed the ebb and flow of the
tidal river a hundred yards to the south. A river that would be known centuries in the future as the river Thames.
And yet in the same time-frame of Mucklebones and the little Vithian checking the frequency-vibration of his invention, they
were also half-embedded in a Bakery wall comprised of burnt clay bricks and looking out at three males travelling fast along
a 19th century alleyway. One was captive, one was the captor and the other wore a bonnet.
Boy In A Dress had something else that made him different from his fellow-escapees and it wasn't the strapped-in bosom that
bobbed up and down as he ran. It was a small leather bag that Jack The Ripper had been carrying when Ninurta had arrested
the famous killer. Arrested -as in brained him until he'd stopped struggling, that is.
Now, Tibbs manoeuvred the craft from it's duel-location and not only startled a heron from it's boggy pre-roman angling site,
but out away from the crusty wall that forced travellers of that dirty byway of Whitechapel to turn right.
"Are we close enough?" Tibbs asked without taking his eyes off the small screen.
Muckles saw Ninurta grit his teeth at his exertions of holding the writhing form over his shoulder and probably at his annoyance
that the meeting seemed delayed. "We're clear and ready" the crone barked and felt the time-machine begin to lower.
With a flick of a switch, the spine-covered craft exposed itself to the two men panting in the alley.
Any unaffiliated observer of the reunion would now realise that Ninurta's earlier beating of the murderer who had terrorised old
London had now become inoperative as the man in the tied-bag marked 'Potatoes' began to wriggle again.
"How dare you Sir, I'm a Doctor..." he snarled from his position of looking at Ninurta's inverted ass. "...And there seems to have
been some sort of mistake" the stranger added haughtily from inside the hessian sack.
Tibbs appeared at the hatch with his wife and deliberated on whether the reported injuries of James Forrestal could be delivered
here in order to quieten the replacement or to... the decision came quicker as the bundle's exertions began to increase.
"His face was damaged from the fall and his knees were bleeding from where he hit the third-floor roof..." Tibbs stated over the
grumblings of Ninurta's burden and reluctant to step off the time-machine, the small man looked into his friend's emotionless
eyes for an understanding.
"Gotcha Chief" the GunMan said confidently and dropped the squirming sack onto the cobbled ground. BIAD walked on and
without a word, placed the surgery-bag inside the craft and pushed it under the sawn-off park bench out of the way. The night
was beginning to give way to another grey-day in the capital and everyone -except the Ripper, knew they didn't have much time.
Only Tibbs saw the irony.
Ninurta leaned over and pulled the neck of the sack open and didn't miss BIAD moving to counter any escape attempt down the
alley next to the Bakery. Jack The Ripper gathered himself and failing to maintain the awe-inspiring infamy that the media had
portrayed him in, clambered out of his cloth-prison. He wasn't much.
Victorian men of standing did sport beards and moustaches, but in George Gaston's case, it was different.
Tibbs silently sighed to himself and was thankful that they wouldn't be shaving a dead man's face later.
"What is the meaning of this..." Gaston said indignantly and brushed unseen debris from his top-coat. "...Never in my life have I
been so abashed in my duties as a surgeon" he supplemented and ran his fingers through his hair. Ninurta moved slowly towards
the outraged gentleman and scanned the man's face for proof of a Forrestal semblance.
Two seconds later, the GunMan realised the nose had to be flattened a bit.
What happened next was always the part that Tibbs could never understand about the detached immortal who had once loved a
woman called Margot and bore an unnamed son. Inflicting damage to serve a purpose was not only barbarous to the little man
watching the proceedings from the craft, it was -in his view, down-right sadistic.
Granted, needs must at times and for the sake of getting to the leader of the Mainyu, physical abuse was the only course of action to
save the US Secretary of Defence from his faux suicide. There was the saving-grace that they were also ridding this time and this
existence of a horrible serial-killer, but still... witnessing it is always difficult.
As Ninurta went about his brutal business, Boy In A Dress watched the alleyway entrance for a passing Peeler or even another
appearance of his brother. Apart from a man pulling a barrow in the main street, nobody came to investigate the suffering that
Jack The Ripper was going through.
"Forrestal was reported to have tried to hang himself with his dressing-gown sash" Tibbs said reluctantly and moving away to
prepare to return to 1949, he inadvertently touched the leather case beneath the homemade seating. What horrors reside in that
terrible satchel? -he thought as he turned engraved dials and flicked chunky switches
What can one human do to another? -came another inner-voice that he hadn't encouraged and failed to ignore Ninurta's grunts
of his efforts.
Muckles stayed quiet as BIAD and the heavy-breathing man bundled Jack The Ripper's lifeless body onto the time-machine
and following his movements with her tear-shining eyes, the Witch of Carbiox recalled a comment her husband had relayed to
her from Ninurta's Psychological Profile that had been logged with a star-ship he'd served on.
"...Sometimes you gotta do what's wrong to do what's right".
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.