#she was a privateer until 1830; she was 18; and she kept practicing piracy until she was 24 and has lived as an outlaw for 29 years
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Okay, I’m gonna write something.
Miss Le Miestre kicked the church door shut as she jumped to the inside. Two shots followed her in.
“Those connards are back. Barely got away, but this ol girl can still weave like she used to. Please tell me the rest of ya have more than that rifle Madame Reyes carries between ya.”
Miss Reyes spoke up first “Got a Colt in my boot. Same one the knife is strapped to. Draw it to surprise fools who think I’m going for a knife.”
Mr. Darby was the next, he said nothing, simply produced a derringer seemingly out of thin air, and then a stiletto in his other hand.
Mister Mori was the last to say anything.
“I apologize, but I have not had a chance to purchase a gun yet. If I could borrow one from one of you, I’d be quite grateful. I am better with rifles, but I understand if Miss Reyes doesn’t want to give me her rifle”
Miss Reyes handed Mister Mori her rifle before retrieving the revolver from her boot. She then stared directly at Miss Le Miestre and asked one question.
“You got a gun?”
In response, Miss Le Miestre removed her blue longcoat, revealing that beyond her cutlass, she had kept two flintlocks, one with an ivory handle, the other with jet, as well as an imported European revolver.
“I have a handful of guns, I’ll still never get used to those new-fangled revolvers, even if being able to shoot five times before clubbing someone with it is nice.”
Then she drew the revolver in her left hand, grabbing her cutlass with the right as Mister Mori crouched behind a pew and Mr. Darby and Miss Reyes stepped to the side of the door.
Miss Le Miestre stepped towards the door, deciding that she’d insult them in English so they could understand, and shouted to the men outside, all of whom were dressed in old grey uniforms and wore improvised masks.
“I’m coming out ya damned bastards! I’ll make all you regret not giving up when you could, I’ve been making scared little devils like you die since your grandfathers were cabin boys!”
She kicked open the doors, firing her revolver from the hip to make all eight of the men outside take cover. She then ducked back into the church, drew her jet-handled gun, and made ready.
The first of the men stood up from behind a barrel, Mister Mori put a bullet in his head before he’d fully processed what happened. Seconds which felt like hours passed. One of the survivors stuck his repeating rifle above a wagon and started firing, as soon as Mister Mori ducked to avoid the gunfire the four of the men ran down to flank the door while the three left in the street stood with rifles trained to keep their enemies from shooting out the doorway
Only one of the men going to flank made it, Miss Reyes shot two of them from inside the church window hitting both in the gut. And one made the mistake of trying to pull her through the window. She stabbed him with the knife on her belt as he grabbed her gunarm.
That left one man, one overconfident man. He knew he had to shoot Miss Reyes first, and then that rifleman. He knew there was no way the one who had attacked them had reloaded yet, and the limey one didn’t have a weapon.
So he tried just that, before a puff of smoke and the smell of black powder filled the air, and he fell to a weapon nearly a century older than he was.
During all this, Mr. Darby had slipped away out one of the other windows. He slipped back as he jumped from an awning behind the gunmen. He managed to shoot one of the men on the way down before stabbing another in the gut as he stood. The third man had his gun pointed at Mr. Darby in time to make him pause. Another click made the last man standing pause.
“Hey, we got business here, and I see that officer sabre on your belt. Think you can take an old woman in a swordfight? Get done with all this guns business?”
So, the last man standing out down the gun and drew. He figured that he’s more likely to survive this fight than the previous one.
At the same time, the man who fell in the church began crawling along. He knew to fake injury when shot. He’d take care of the rifleman first, a knife to the gut should work and then he’d shoot the vacquero.
Outside, metal clashed, the old pirate falling back into her familiar rhythm, high, low, step together and raise the sword at an angle. Try to cut his shoulder as he swung and missed. Skill was on her side, but her opponent was clearly never trained, he kept holding his saber in two hands, and yanking away when he felt a cut bounce off his guard. This made him an unpredictable brute, and somehow, he was gaining ground.
Inside, things had not gone as planned for the man with the knife. He had kicked the rifle away, and the tapestries that hung meant the gunslinger couldn’t get a good shot, but the rifleman was good up close. He seemed to flow around the knife, even as low as both were. A kick found Mister Mori’s hip, and he fell across a familiar sheath. He rolled backwards as the knife tried to reach his gut. He took the sheath with him. He stood up and faced the man with the knife, both out of reach from the other, hand on the hilt of his sword as his foe stepped forwards
Outside, Miss Le Miestre found herself losing ground, so she stepped back, holding her sword out with one hand to stop her opponent’s advance for but a second. Her opponent swatted the cutlass to the side, but he should have paid attention to the other hand instead.
A loud bang echoed. A blade glimmered silently. Both of the gunmen still standing clutched their guts. One felt immense pain, the other felt nothing even as his blood fell on the church floor. Both fell, one backwards and one forwards. A pirate put her ivory-handled pistol back in her belt, and a samurai put his bronze-hilted sword back in its sheath.
Consider:
Victorian England: 1837-1901
American Old West: 1803-1912
Meiji Restoration: 1868-1912
French privateering in the Gulf of Mexico: ended circa 1830
Conclusion: an adventuring party consisting of a Victorian gentleman thief, an Old West gunslinger, a disgraced former samurai, and an elderly French pirate is actually 100% historically plausible.
#look#Reyes and Darby would get more screen time if I were writing more#and people would have given names#it’s in English 1. because I speak neither Romance languages nor Japanese#also it’s the only language they share#Miss Reyes learned it from other cowhands#Mister Mori learned some English in Japan and a lot of it in San Francisco before heading east#Miss Le Miestre was part of a crew with both English and French and she learned English fairly well because it intimidated Americans better#Mister Darby actually knows French; Japanese; Spanish; and Irish in addition to English#but he thinks it’s best that people who don’t need to know don’t know#his father was minor nobility from Ireland; his mother was a heiress in danger of being dispossessed by male cousins#he lost his titles and turned to theft because he stopped charging rent in the famine and went bankrupt#Miss Le Miestre escaped from a French-speaking plantation when she was 16 and found herself a pirate soon after#she was a privateer until 1830; she was 18; and she kept practicing piracy until she was 24 and has lived as an outlaw for 29 years#Miss Reyes became a vacquero after her home burnt in a lightning storm#She dresses masculine; and is bisexual; she became an outlaw after she shot a judges son for saying she should marry#Mister Mori failed to safeguard someone he was tasked with escorting through dangerous country in Japan#instead of facing the punishment he’d receive he went to America#San Francisco specifically; he left to see if any part of the country treated people better#he became an outlaw because some racist bastard tried to run him out of town with a sledgehammer and got a leg cut off for his trouble#Mister Mori has been here the shortest amount of time; having arrived in 1864#Double action exists in 1865 by the way#just not from American gunsmiths#last note: Darby is a pseudonym; he stopped using his original name when he lost his titles
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