Chapter Text
“Got a ping,” Artie crowed, flapping the pages as he bustled into the office. “Pete, for crying out loud,” he grumbled, shaking his head at the grown man bent over backwards in Claudia’s swinging chair dangling a giant gummy snake into his mouth.
“Where to?” Myka came up behind Artie and tried to peer over his shoulder at the pages while Pete righted himself and winked at Claudia, who was grinning. Artie scowled at them both, and handed Myka the pages.
“Purgatory,” he announced, and three pairs of eyebrows lifted.
“At least it’s better than Hell,” Claudia quipped, recovering the quickest from the odd place name. She gave Pete a joking punch on the shoulder and slid away in her chair. “Better you two than me, I’m just gonna sit over here and be the computer genius.”
“And where is this ‘Purgatory’?” Myka asked, flipping through the pages with a concentrating crinkle between her eyebrows. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Small town, central USA, somewhere you’re gonna have to take a plane and at least two buses to get to,” Artie replied, pulling out a wad of pre-purchased tickets. He handed them to Pete and made a shooing motion. “Off you go.”
“But wait – what are we looking for?” Pete protested as Artie pushed them out the door.
“Wyatt Earp’s gun.”
Pete’s eyes widened again. “The Wyatt Earp? The gunslinger? What’s so special about his gun?”
“It reanimates all the people he killed,” Myka replied before Artie could. She looked up from the pages. “It says here his great-granddaughters still live there, we just have to find them, get the gun and neutralise the thing. Right?”
“And bring it back to the Warehouse where it can never reanimate any criminals ever again,” Artie added with a nod, and flicked his hands at them again. “Now go, go get that gun!”
Pete and Myka spent the two hour plane ride and two four hour bus rides pouring over the pages of information Artie had given them on the Earp family, the gun, and scouring the internet for anything they couldn’t find. Which, unfortunately, was a lot.
“Y’know, for so many pages there’s really not a lot to go on here,” Pete grumbled, leaning back in his seat and staring out the window into the night. “And I don’t like the vibes I’m getting as we get closer and closer to this place. Who the hell names a place Purgatory? They’re practically asking for something to be messed up with the town.”
“There are placed named Heaven and Hell too, and probably places with still weirder names than Purgatory,” Myka replied, taking his page and putting it back into the pile on her lap. “Let’s run through what we know.”
“Wyatt Earp had a gun, and somewhere along the line, it became an artefact that could resurrect the criminals he had previously killed with it,” Pete said.
Myka continued. “And we know that his great-granddaughters still live in Purgatory – Wynonna and –” she checked one of the pages, “Waverly. They probably have no idea what it can even do.”
“So we just find them and pretend to be, what, gun experts?” Pete offered. “There’s not going to be a way we can get close enough to that gun without being suspicious, Mykes. It’s Wyatt Earp’s gun.”
Myka shrugged and tucked the pile of papers into her bag. “We’ve managed far harder situations. Hopefully they’ll oblige our ‘curiosity’ and just want to get us out of their hair – a quick dunk in the bag and we’ll be on our way.”
The headlights of the bus lit up a sign as they sped past. Pete caught a glimpse of the words: Welcome to Purgatory. The vibes crawled up the back of his neck.
“Yeah, this’ll be a piece of cake.”
When Pete emerged for breakfast, he found Myka was already in the small dining room of their motel digging into waffles and a bowl of fruit salad. The smell of the food hit him and he felt his stomach grumble. Sleeping in a motel meant there was no way to get a 2am sandwich, and the loss of his overnight meal had hit Pete hard. Going via the buffet, he loaded up his plate and went to sit with Myka.
“You need to see someone about your snoring,” she greeted him, popping a piece of pineapple into her mouth.
“Well good morning to you too.” Pete acted offended. “And I wasn’t going to mention it, but let me just say you’re not the quietest person to share a room with either. In fact, I think I’ll just call you the machine gun from now on.” Myka screwed up her face at him and Pete dug into his waffles, grinning widely at his partner’s snarky expression in response.
Myka finished the last of her breakfast and left Pete to his, venturing into the lobby. The woman behind the desk smiled at her. “Hi, can I help you?”
“Hi.” Myka smiled back, hoping she could leave her badge out of this conversation for as long as possible. Big cities were better at responding to the badge, but its appearance usually made small towns close up. “I was wondering if you could tell me some of the best Wyatt Earp hotspots? My fiancé just loves him and it’s his birthday tomorrow, I’m wanting to treat him with a tour.” Myka smiled again as the girl bobbed her head.
“Sure, let me grab a pen and I’ll write them down for you!” She rummaged behind the desk. “One of the best is Shorty’s, it’s the bar Wyatt Earp always went to. They’ve even preserved the place where he sat!” Myka nodded and tried to look semi-enthusiastic as the receptionist rambled and wrote at the same time, until finally she was presented with a list of places to visit, all concerning Wyatt Earp.
“Thanks so much –” Myka squinted at the name badge the girl was wearing, “- Cindy, this is gonna be a great day. Bye!”
Myka retraced her steps to the dining room where Pete was still eating. She rolled her eyes; where he put it all, she would never understand. “When you’re done eating out the motel, I’ve got us an itinerary.” She waved the list in front of his face and he gave her a thumbs up.
A good fifteen minutes later, the two agents were out of the motel and walking down the street, arms crossed against the overcast chilly day. As it was late morning, the town had emerged out of the early morning stupor and become a normal hub of activity with cars driving past every so often, and people out on the street.
“I see Shorty’s,” Myka pointed out, gesturing to the joint just down the road on the opposite side from them. They stopped walking and stared at the bar.
“Looks a bit run down, doesn’t it?” Pete commented, stepping back from the path of a young woman running past in her active gear. “I bet it hasn’t been –”
“Waverly!”
A shout interrupted Pete’s observation, and both the agents started. The young woman running stopped and turned, and as Pete and Myka watched, a smile lit up her face as she walked towards the person who shouted, a redhead in a cop’s uniform.
“Well, well, well…” Myka breathed as the two met and embraced, then shared a kiss. The redhead’s hat fell off due to their kiss; both the young woman laughed as the shorter one picked it up and deposited it back onto her girlfriend’s head. They started talking, out of earshot of Pete and Myka. The two Warehouse agents looked at each other, and started towards them.