With a flash of light, the car burst from the darkened road and onto a wide, grassy field. Hills and valleys played out in a rolling landscape with sporadic trees breaking up a green and lush landscape that hosted ten thousand blue and gray uniformed men standing in lines and shooting one another.

“What the blazes is going on!” Steve shouted as he barreled past a Confederate flag. A grey-uniformed soldier waved this flag with pride as he fell under a hail of smoke.

The clack-ack-acking of rifles heralded Steve’s arrival as the car shot straight between two Civil War armies. Union soldiers waving American flags, desperately trying to reload mid-nineteenth century rifles, occupied the hill to the car’s right. Charging up the hill to the car’s left, Confederate soldiers shouted a ferocious war cry that accompanied the bursts of their guns and the clanging of their bayonets.

“Yes!” Gore cheered. “We shall rewrite this chapter of history as well!”

“What are you going to do, kill Lincoln?” Steve scolded, looking for a way off the battlefield that didn’t require committing a hit and run through either the Union or Confederate lines.

“Don’t kill Lincoln! He freed the slaves!” Dawn shouted as she pulled her hoodie over her head.

“I shall destroy all in my path and enslave everyone!” Gore cried.

“You can’t enslave people, Gore! That’s horribly racist,” Steve said.

“I shall enslave all peoples, black and white, red and yellow, even slightly purplish in hue. All colors and creeds are universally crushed beneath my will!”

“At least you’re an equal-opportunity enslaver,” Dawn noted.

Burney probably had an interesting point to make about whether or not killing Lincoln was a good idea, but this was lost in his screams as Union cavalry made a charge around the car. They bunched around the vehicle and both horse and car were equally blocked and forced to travel through the center of the battlefield.

The end of the Union line was fast approaching, but so was a cluster of trees. Steve knew he could either crash into the trees or the armies, and didn’t particularly like the thought of either decision. When the horses managed to separate from the car and make a quixotic charge through a hail of Confederate gunfire, Steve saw a gap between two cannons. The artillery was aligned with the far end of the Union lines, with crewmen scrambling to reload them. But Steve honked his way through.

“Out of the way!” Steve shouted as a cannon fired just in front of him. The ensuing wave of smoke engulfed the car as the Japanese sedan crested the hill and escaped the Union lines.

The smoke cleared, and Steve found himself racing down a steep hill toward a swarm of armored men clashing with shimmering swords and axes. Arrows rained down upon the car as Steve tried to keep from rolling down the hill and avoid what was apparently a medieval battlefield playing out in all directions.

“I definitely don’t remember a Japanese compact being the decisive weapon in the battle of Agincourt!” Steve shouted, straining against the wheel to keep from spinning as the tires dug trenches in the soft ground.

“Onward!” Gore cried, swinging his sword. “We sack Rome by the rise of the moon!”

“It’s going to really look bad on my good and evil balance sheet if Gore sacks Rome!” Dawn noted. “Maybe we should kill Hitler to make up for it?”

“Gore’s not going to sack Rome because that didn’t happen!” Steve said.

“Surrender, ye men of Rome!” Gore challenged the very confused medieval soldiers watching the car drive by. “Or better yet, don’t surrender, and I shall slaughter you all!”

With a fish-tailing bump, the car reached the bottom of the hill. The central part of the sword and spear-clashing battle lay straight in front of the out of control compact. Steve tried to slam on the brakes, but knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid the approaching melee. Honking and shouting for people to get out of the way, while Gore shouted that they stay put so he could laugh at their stupid faces getting run over by a puny car, Steve turned the car away from the melee.

Just barely missing the now dispersing battle, the car spun away from the soldiers and sprayed dirt like a hockey player spraying up ice as it came to a shuddering halt. Before the car finished its sliding, Gore leapt out of the window. He stood in the midst of the brawl, sword held in challenge to all comers.

Every shiny-armored, martial weapon-wielding man and woman surrounding Gore stepped back from the hell knight. All but one. And as Steve spun the wheels of his car to get out of the ditch his wheels had dug into the soft dirt, this one man stood before the Dark Lord Gore.

“Ivan think you not understand rules of game,” said the unafraid fighter.

Steve saw a man standing taller than Gore. The fighter wielded a terrible war hammer and shield. In a panic, Steve fought to free the car, shifting to reverse and drive with no more progress than to dig the car further into the dirt. When Steve blinked back at the defiant soldier, he made a sudden realization. The armor the tall man wore was not metal. It was not something Steve recognized from what he thought knights and soldiers were supposed to look like either. The armor the man wore… was tables.

Wooden tabletops and legs had been shaped around the large man’s frame. His shield was a small, round table, and his war hammer was a large table leg. A fuzzy cap, like the fur of a stuffed animal, had been taped to the tip of this table leg war hammer.

“You bring car to sword fight, while Ivan bring table,” the table-armored man said. “Ivan fight you with table. Even if you bring car to sword fight and Ivan bring table, Ivan still win. Beat you with table leg, is good for health.”

“Gore accepts your challenge, table man,” Gore declared.

Burney screamed at Gore.

“Shut up Burney, I don’t care if it’s a fair fight,” Gore said.

“It’s not a fair fight at all,” Dawn said, though she made no attempt to get out of the car. “He’s got a table leg and you have a sword forged in the fires of the deepest circle of hell imbued with a power that exists beyond the scope of reality.”

“Ivan table just as strong,” the table-armored man insisted.

“See? Fair fight,” Gore said.

“Hi there, delusional table man, we seem to be lost,” Dawn said with a smile. “Before Gore slaughters you, could you direct us to the nearest twenty-first century?”

“Ivan not talk you now. Talk to black iron man,” the man who called himself Ivan said, casually twirling his table leg war hammer.

Steve, hoping to stop a wholesale slaughter, or at least to make some distance between himself and wholesale slaughter, got out of the car and tried to get Gore to lower his sword. “Gore, calm down,” he said.

“I haven’t had a mortal challenger in generations — don’t blow this for me!” Gore declared.

“Shut up, Gore.” Steve cleared his throat and did his best to address the assembled crowd of confused medieval soldiers. “I know this may seem strange to you, but we’re from the future! We will not affect you in any way.”

From his place still chained to the car, Burney screamed.

“Like Burney said, we may ask for a sandwich,” Steve clarified. “But aside from that—”

Burney screamed again.

“What do you mean they haven’t invented the sandwich yet? How does a sandwich even need inventing, it’s a sandwich!” Steve said.

As Steve and Burney argued over whether or not a sandwich was a universal truth or something that required invention, the crowd of soldiers burst into laughter.

“You is not from future,” Ivan said over the jeers and chuckles of his compatriots.

“Beg pardon?” Steve asked.

“Oh no! Steve, we must have run over Lincoln with your car!” Dawn shouted. “We’ve created an alternate timeline where the Union lost the Civil War and people beat each other with furniture for survival!”

“That wouldn’t happen, Dawn. And we didn’t run over Lincoln!”

“Quick! Back in the car so we can go back in time and save President Lincoln from us!”

“Lincoln not dead,” Ivan said. “He is in other camp.”

Using his table leg war hammer, Ivan pointed back up the hill toward a cluster of trees. Amidst a near endless row of A-framed tents and smoldering cook fires, a man dressed as President Lincoln waved down at the medieval soldiers. The man tilted his top hat with one hand. With the other, he held what appeared to be a turkey sandwich.

Burney, seeing this, screamed a declaration.

“No Burney, Lincoln did not invent the sandwich,” Steve said. “Wait, how is Lincoln here? What year is it?”

“I shall check my calendar,” Gore said, and looked at his sword. He examined the runes inlaid in the dark blade and thrust it back at Ivan. “It is the fifth of crush-you-into-oblivion in the year two thousand and your-face-plastered-against-my-blade!”

“Ivan think your calendar is broke,” Ivan said.

In the silence that gripped the two men glaring at each other, Steve overheard a burst of cannon amidst a clatter of gunfire.

“Wait, is this…” Steve said, and suddenly saw the battlefield with eyes that weren’t distracted by speed and terror.

Dozens of soldiers surrounded him. They gripped their weapons with practiced handling. Their armor glistened in the sun. But when Steve blinked the sunlight out of his wary eyes, he realized the soldiers’ armor glistened only because it was covered in aluminum foil.

Plastic chest pads and over-used football shoulder pads, bike helmets by the bucket load, soccer shin pads mixed with the occasional cardboard and duct tape ensemble, were the foil-laced armories these soldiers wore into battle. Their swords were plastic, their staves refurbished lacrosse sticks. And while their bows were true to form, the arrows they fired were tipped with tennis balls.

And that was when Steve realized why this Ivan had a fuzzy cap at the end of his war hammer. It was a bit of foam, painted to look like steel, that would soften every blow to make it as if this terrible weapon were nothing more than a toddler’s baseball bat. A large toddler’s baseball bat, mind you, and it probably wouldn’t be recommended for ages under five by any but the most libertarian regulatory body. Still, it was much less dangerous than an actual war hammer.

“Oh no,” Steve said, suddenly realizing exactly what they’d encountered.

“So… we didn’t randomly go back in time and create an alternate universe where we killed Lincoln and Hitler?” Dawn asked.

The sound of Steve slamming his palm into his face almost deafened the laughter from the aluminum foil soldiers. “No Dawn, that…” Steve said, trying to gather his thoughts and his pride from whatever realm they’d escaped to. “First of all, that wouldn’t happen. Unless there’s a Japanese car company that makes a John Wilkes Booth model compact, that would… never mind. They’re re-enactors, Dawn. Very, um, devoted re-enactors.”

“Not a real army?”

“Not a real army.”

“And we’re not the past?”

“Very much in the soon to be apocalyptic present, sadly.”

“And Lincoln is safe,” Dawn said, turning to the distant hill where the man reenacting as President Lincoln was finishing his sandwich. Lincoln waved. “But Hitler’s still alive?”

“I… no?”

“Ivan think funny hat man and scale shirt lady need relax more,” Ivan said with a deep chuckle. “Reenactment is big fun. Is game. You join game. Maybe have fun, is good for health.”

“This is no game, mortal,” Gore challenged. “Your only hope is to make a worthy sacrifice to my glory. Pray that I consider your pathetic—”

“Gore’s ramblings may be useless, but they do have a point,” Steve said, once more putting himself between Gore and Ivan. “We’re sort of on a trip here. A, well, mission. And my car’s stuck.”

“What sort of mission is you is on?” Ivan asked.

“A mission to destroy all that might challenge us!” Gore said.

“So far, that’s included several birds, a turtle, and a surprisingly-sturdy grill,” Dawn noted.

“Any challenge Gore enacts is a worthy one.”

“Yeah. The grill was quivering in fear.”

“We’re not on a mission of destruction,” Steve said, glaring at both Dawn and Gore. When Burney screamed what mission he wished they were on, Steve added that the search for the world’s largest bowl of ice cream would have to be a secondary quest. “We’re looking for a sandwich.”

“A sandwich?” Ivan asked, scratching his red whisker-laden chin with his table leg war hammer.

“The sandwich that will usher in the battle of Armageddon!” Gore cried with his hands held skyward. He wished that a dark cloud and lightning would have appeared around his upraised sword. Instead, a cloud of smoke from the rapidly finishing Civil War battle reenactment lazily rolled past.

“Just a sandwich, but preferably a good one,” Steve said, elbowing Gore to make him lower his sword. Of course, all this did was make a small bruise in Steve’s elbow.

“Then you is in luck,” Ivan said. “Not only is Ivan best at make table. Ivan is also best at make sandwich.”